Afghanistan: Death Sentence for Distributing Blog Article
Parwez Kambakhsh was detained by the authorities on October 27, 2007 for downloading and distributing an article that he found on an Iranian weblog to friends. It spoke of women’s rights, the Quran and the Prophet Mohammed. A local court in northern Afghanistan in Mazar-e Sharif has convicted him to death for the alleged blasphemy.
Global media watchdog Reporters Without Borders say the trial was “carried out in haste and without any concern for the law or for free expression, which is protected by the constitution.”

Index on Censorship says : "Deeply conservative Afghan clerics, most of whom have never used a computer or the Internet, believe Kambakhsh himself wrote the article and therefore found him guilty of blasphemy. Because there is no clear punishment for downloading “un-Islamic” articles from the Internet, the primary court of appeal asked clerics to comment. The conservative clerics, who had not investigated the case, demanded the death penalty."

According to The Openet Initiative, the Ethiopian authorities are blocking access to oppositions websites and blogs hosted by Blogger. “Most of the sites that we found blocked were related to freedom of expression, human rights and political opposition,” OpenNet research director Robert Faris said to Reuters. “I think it’s a decision that makes the Ethiopian government look extremely hostile to free speech and to open political discourse,” said Ethan Zuckerman, co-fonder of Global Voices.