Riot Crackdown Nets Bloggers

[Guest Greg]

French prosecutors shut down several blogs this week and arrested bloggers suspected of inciting violence, as officials moved to squelch riots that have rocked France for more than 10 days.

A prosecuting attorney from Le Tribunal de Grande Instance de Paris, who spoke under condition of anonymity, told Wired News that three bloggers and forum visitors allegedly posted messages that violated French criminal statutes governing violent speech. Two of the bloggers, who were arrested earlier this week, could be arraigned under violent speech statutes, the prosecutor said. The blogs in question, he said, were hosted on a French site called Skyblog, which is owned by Skyrock.

One of the blogs, called Hardcore, allegedly published violent, racially tainted hate speech that, according to the prosecutor, incited violence with a post called "Destroy France."

"We arrested the site's creator and the author of a posted message, which called for rioters to 'take out all of France' last Friday between 9 and 10 o'clock," the prosecutor said, adding that the alleged perpetrators were a minor and an adult in the Paris region who are under house arrest and facing criminal charges.

Authorities in Aix-en-Provence, the prosecutor said, are questioning another minor who was arrested for having allegedly called for "anyone who is man enough to go and burn down the local police department," on his site, Nike La France, which means "take out France."

Skyblog has shut down many other sites, a Skyrock spokesman said, but he would not elaborate on their content.

"All I can say is that we don't comment on exactly why we shut down certain sites, which we systematically do as a matter of policy when they violate certain guidelines," David Roizen said. "Other than that, I can't say anything more and I don't have the time to go into it, either."

Skyrock deletes roughly 6,500 articles and shuts down 10 blogs every day that violate its policy prohibiting racist, obscene or violent content, the company said in a statement.

"In some of the serious cases, we alert the authorities," the statement said.

But Ahmed Meguinia, a political activist who saw some of the Paris region's hardest-hit areas during the past week, said many bloggers feared prosecution for publishing even nonviolent content. While not condoning blogs that incited violence, he said that there was a lack of media coverage explaining why ethnically segregated inhabitants of some of France's poorest cities have been driven to riot. Instead, the world repeatedly sees CNN images of burning cars and shops, he said.

"Many think that you can get arrested by only saying that you agree with the riots," Meguinia said. "Meanwhile, journalists are only writing about what the public officials tell them, and won't go into certain neighborhoods because they think they are as dangerous as Baghdad."

Since the civil unrest began Oct. 29, nearly 1,500 individuals have been arrested or questioned by prosecutors, according to the French Ministry of Justice .

NEWS SOURCE: WIRED News

[nsane]

yet another reason i'm glad to be american, i mean, it's pretty retarded when people get arrested over WORDS :o

[Chicano666]

yet another reason i'm glad to be american, i mean, it's pretty retarded when people get arrested over WORDS :o

Being American has certain advantages...or does it? Eventhough the American goverment isn't shutting down blogs there are other things...

[Guest Greg]

Yeh, sure it has it's advantages. All USA citizens have the 'Freedom of Speech' law, you can say anything to which you wish as long as it's what you think, or near enough.

But, some guy takes the michael out of another Religion is pushing it too far, we can't bring racism to the net aswell as hackers.