Remember Liu Xiaobo

Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo has been sentenced to 11 years in prison in China for the crime of expressing an opinion that the authorities did not like. He was one of the authors of a document called Charter 08, which dared to suggest that Chinese citizens should not be locked up for criticising their government.

Since weblogs are a form of free expression, I think all bloggers should express their support for Liu and their disgust with the Chinese government.

Australia will soon join China and a few other select nations such as Iran and Myanmar in censoring the internet. We are told it is all about child pornography, and other stuff that is "refused classification". Interestingly, our Prime Minister has publicly declared "people smugglers" to be the scum of the earth, presumably putting them in the same basket as pedophiles and terrorists, so perhaps it won't be long before any discussion of the free movement of people around the world will join the new index urlorum prohibitorum.

• Official government announcement
• UNSW report "Untangling the Net: the scope of content caught by mandatory internet filtering