RSF is disturbed to learn that access to the Twitter pages of two Saudi human rights activists has been blocked, apparently because of the human rights content they had been posting on the micro-blogging webservice.
(RSF/IFEX) – Reporters Without Borders is disturbed to learn that access to the Twitter pages of two Saudi human rights activists, Walid Abdelkhair and Khaled al-Nasser, has been blocked since 20 August 2009, apparently because of the human rights content they had been posting on the micro-blogging webservice.
“We condemn the blocking of these cyber-dissidents’ Twitter pages and we call for their immediate restoration,” Reporters Without Borders said. “This situation is very worrying and is symptomatic of a growing crackdown on Saudi Internet users.”
Nasser and Abdelkhair said their Twitter pages had been blocked by the Saudi government’s Communications and Information Technology Commission. Nasser, who keeps a blog called Mashi Sah (“That’s not true”), said his Twitter messages included references to the human rights situation and governance in Saudi Arabia and links to human rights sites. Abdelkhair, a human rights lawyer and head of a Saudi human rights organisation, had also referred to human rights violations in his “tweets,” the short text messages that are Twitter’s speciality.
Read the article: http://www.rsf.org/Two-human-rights-activists-Twitter.html
