Since April, Venezuelan socialist dictator Hugo Chavez has developed quite the Twitter presence, amassing more than 650,000 "followers" -- me among them (although he always tweets in Spanish, and I'm not fluent). But apparently Chavez is not so open-minded when it comes to his own subjects (errrr, citizens) tweeting. Reports Forbes.com this week (first link at bottom for the full story):"Last week two Venezuelans, a 35-year-old woman and a 41-year-old man, were charged with marking statements on Twitter critical of Venezuela's banking system and face up to 11 years in prison . . . Fifteen more Internet users may face similar charges in the coming days."
The story also reports that this isn't first instance of Chavez "extending his tight control of the media to the digital realm":
"Last March, [Chavez] asked his country's parliament for a bill regulating the Internet, allowing the blocking of Websites and restricting access to a single Internet service provider, a move that would allow earlier surveillance."
Now, while such restrictions on free speech may seem appalling to us, Chavez is not without his admirers here in the United States, such as Obama's "diversity czar" at the Federal Communications Commission, Mark Lloyd (pictured above), who has previously called our First Amendment freedoms a "distraction" and has previously expressed his admiration for Chavez's restrictions upon the Venezuelan media (see my blog post on that topic from last year, second link below).
But are people like Chavez or Lloyd really all that much of a surprise (apart from the outrage of a person with Lloyd's views being permitted to have such a position at the FCC)? After all, no country in the history of the world has ever had a piece of law quite like our First Amendment or a law which extends all of the freedoms and rights that our First Amendment does. So of course there are always going to be plenty of folks, foreign and domestic, who will be very antagonistic towards the First Amendment's principles. And that's why we always have to keep an eye on those folks and battle to ensure that our First Amendment is never undermined, compromised or ignored. Lest you want to live in a place like Venezuela, that is.
http://blogs.forbes.com/firewall/2010/07/12/two-venezuelans-face-up-to-11-years-in-prison-for-twittering/
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