Archive for January 28th, 2011

DAP calls for Royal Commission of Inquiry into Kugan’s death in police custody as the criminal justice system has completely broken down beyond repair to deliver justice in cases of mysterious deaths in official custody

DAP calls for a Royal Commission of Inquiry into A. Kugan’s death in police custody as the criminal justice system has completely broken down beyond repair to deliver justice in cases of mysterious deaths in official custody.

It is not only Kugan’s family members and relatives headed by his mother, N. Indra, 41, hotel worker, who are shocked by this morning’s acquittal of constable V. Navindran for causing grievous hurt to Kugan, 22, when interrogating him at the Taipan police station in USJ-Subang Jaya on January 16, 2009, all decent Malaysians who had expected justice are also outraged.

This is another blot in the service record of the Attorney-General Tan Sri Gani Patail who had said that 11 officers were involved but only one was charged – and even the one charged ended with his acquittal when the Sessions Court judge Aslam Zainuddin said the prosecution had failed to prove a prima facie case against the accused.

If the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak can finally agree to the establishment of a Royal Commission of Inquiry into Teoh Beng Hock’s mysterious death at the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission more than 18 months ago following public outrage at the unsatisfactory “Open Verdict” of Teoh’s inquest, there is no reason why a Royal Commission of Inquiry is not established into Kugan’s death because of the most unsatisfactory and irresponsible handling of Kugan’s case in the past two years to establish the circumstances of his death, identify and punish the police personnel responsible for Kugan’s life and deliver justice to Kugan’s aggrieved family.

There have been too many cases of mysterious deaths in official custody as well as the result of police shootings. Read the rest of this entry »

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Egypt cuts off internet access

By Charles Arthur
Friday 28 January 2011
guardian.co.uk

Most of the major internet service providers in Egypt are offline following week-long protests

Egypt appears to have cut off almost all access to the internet from inside and outside the country from late on Thursday night, in a move that has concerned observers of the protests that have been building in strength through the week.

“According to our analysis, 88% of the ‘Egyptian internet’ has fallen off the internet,” said Andree Toonk at BGPmon, a monitoring site that checks connectivity of countries and networks.

“What’s different in this case as compared to other ‘similar’ cases is that all of the major ISP’s seem to be almost completely offline. Whereas in other cases, social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter were typically blocked, in this case the government seems to be taking a shotgun approach by ordering ISPs to stop routing all networks.”

The cutoff appears to have happened around 10.30pm GMT on Thursday night.

Only one internet service provider appears to still have a working connection to the outside world: the Noor Group, for which all 83 routes are working, and inbound traffic from its connection provider, Telecom Italia, also working.

Protests in Egypt at the government’s rule have been building all week, and Friday was expected to see the largest demonstrations so far.

An analysis by Renesys, which provides real-time monitoring of internet access, says that “every Egyptian provider, every business, bank, internet cafe, website, school, embassy and government office that relied on the big four Egyptian ISPs for their internet connectivity is now cut off from the rest of the world. Link Egypt, Vodafone/Raya, Telecom Egypt, Etisalat Misr, and all their customers and partners are, for the moment, off the air.” Read the rest of this entry »

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Egypt blocks social media websites in attempted clampdown on unrest

Facebook, Google, Hotmail and Twitter among services blocked by government, report users

Charles Arthur, technology editor
Guardian UK
26th January 2011

Internet sites such as Twitter and Facebook were cut off within Egypt today as the government of President Hosni Mubarak tried to prevent social media from being used to foment unrest.

Many sites registered in Egypt could not be reached from outside, according to Herdict.org, a website where users report access problems.

Twitter, YouTube, Hotmail, Google, Chinese search engine Baidu and a “proxy service” – which would allow users to evade obvious restrictions – appeared to be blocked from inside the country, according to reports on the site.

Twitter said blocking was intermittent and some users were able to tweet while Bambuser, a Swedish site for streaming video from mobile phones, said it had been blocked after being used by some protesters this week. Read the rest of this entry »

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