A report from the BlogFest Asia 2010, the biggest asian bloggers festival, which happened last weekend in Penang, Malaysia, and how blogging and social networking can change the world…

This week end, I attended to the BlogFest Asia 2010, which happened in Penang this year.

The BlogFest Asia is the biggest festival for bloggers in Asia, annually.

This year is the second edition, whereas the first one was held in Hong Kong last year.

More than just a festival, the BlogFest Asia is THE place for exchange among bloggers from various countries in Asia. Participants can learn from each other on a lot of topics, such online business, internet technology and security, social issues, food, politics and many more.

Around 10 countries were represented, including bloggers from Myanmar, representing their organization, the Myanmar Blogger Society. Others include bloggers from India, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Indonesia, Taiwan, USA, and even France, with me.

Each country representative had time to present about their bloggers’ activities and internet trend in their countries. They are free to speak about the situation, including various difficulties faced by bloggers.

In some countries, where there is no freedom of speech, and even more freedom of press, bloggers can be a good source of information, and real witnesses about what happen in their country, especially when their government try to hide the truth from the rest of the world.

In 2008, after the Nargis Cyclone hit Myanmar, especially the Irrawaddy delta region, the world community could only guess what happened there, and how many casualties the cyclone did, as the government didn’t want to disclose any details. Some bloggers of the Myanmar Blogger Society went there to help the victims, as a humanitarian trip. With their blog, they could really tell to the world what was happening there. Of course, they are not allowed to talk about politics, or criticize their government on how it reacted to the event to help the victims, but they can talk about the work they did as volunteers, and publish some photos of the area. As all the international media were not allowed to go there to report, they were the only witnesses of the situation, to channel the information to the outside world.

In some other cases, bloggers can also help to report, when all the main stream medias are controlled by the government. For example back in 2009, in Iran,  the world could know about the protests after the Presidential election, because bloggers, or social networks users wrote these on Facebook, or Twitter. The same happened in China, in 1989, during the Tiananmen Square protest. The information and pictures could spread very fast because of the internet.

Bloggers, and users of social networks could be a real weapon against a closed door government, and help to know the truth about a situation, when the mainstream medias are controlled, and when the truth is officially hidden.

Another example is this Cambodian journalist, Keo Kounila, who writes in her blog, what she probably cannot writes in printed newspapers (http://www.blueladyblog.com , in english), and gives us a true and really interesting vision of Cambodian society today.

Recently, a video published on the internet (http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DFghTS7QL04g&h=bfe15) showing teachers tortured young students in Syria ( You can also read this article http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2010%2F09%2F30%2Fworld%2Fmiddleeast%2F30syria.html%3F_r%3D1%26scp%3D2%26sq%3Dsyria%26st%3Dcse&h=bfe15 in the New York Times for more info). After the wide publication of this video on the internet, the Syrian government decided to relocate these teachers to avoid that they having contacts with the kids. But for how long had this happened? Did the government knew about this before? Just a little video, published on the web, viewed all around the world, was enough to (I hope) to change the situation… But how many kids are tortured in the world every day? How many video like this will be enough to stop this? Of course, this is just a drop of water in the sea, but little by little things change, and people can be heard, they have voices through Internet. (Thanks to Prof. Peter Herford for the head up on this topic).

That’s why nowadays, several governments in the world try to block or control the freedom of internet, which can be a real threat to them.

On the first day of the BlogFest Asia 2010, as an introduction, and a way for the attendants to know each other, a dinner was hosted by the Ministry of Tourism of Malaysia, at The QEII, a famous night bar in Penang. More than 200 people were there, in a very beautiful place, as the QEII is built on a pier, above the sea. So we could enjoy our dinner with a wonderful view of the strait, and the mainland Malaysia.

The two other days were more oriented on work, with a lot of conferences on many topics related to blogging and internet, like multimedia blogging, journalistic values, the use of new media in education, Internet freedom, and security and privacy. I especially enjoyed two of them, which I will describe more in the following.

The first one was given by Ms Masjaliza Hamzah, who is the Executive Ofiicer of the Center for Independent Journalism in Malaysia (www.cijmalaysia.org), an organization fighting for the freedom of speech, freedom of press, and a free access to information in Malaysia.

Malaysia can appear for tourist as a kind of paradise, with its numerous beaches, islands and a large choice of food, but everything is not paradise here, especially for journalists. The media are highly controlled by the government; politics opposition is persecuted, mainly by the Internal Security Act (I.S.A.), established in 1960. The I.S.A. is a preventive detention law in force in Malaysia. The legislation was enacted after Malaysia gained independence from Britain in 1957. The ISA allows for detention without trial or criminal charges under limited, legally defined circumstances.

By this law, Malaysian government can detain anybody, who can be a threat, without a trial. One of the most famous case is Raja Petra Kamarudin, a Malaysian journalist, blogger, and political opponent. He was arrested two times under the I.S.A. law for articles he wrote. He was forced to exile by the Malaysian government, and now, runs a famous online newspaper from abroad, Malaysia Today (http://www.malaysia-today.net).

Journalists and writers, political opponents,… are considered highly dangerous by the government. A special detention center was even created for that reason. The Kamunting Detention Center, near the town of Taiping, in the Perak State. The prison is used by the government to detain and interrogate persons arrested under the Internal Security Act (I.S.A.). The detention is also known as Malaysia’s Supermax prison or Maximum security prison. It is alleged that this is the site where the Malaysian authorities would hold up political prisoners, usually from the opposition, and conduct torture against detainees.

The second one was given by Mr Bobby Soriano, a project leader for the Tactical Technology Collective (http://www.tacticaltech.org), about security and privacy on the internet, especially while using social networks. Mr Soriano is able to explain very technical topics in a very simple and interesting way. If you want to know more about your privacy and your security on the web, you can visit their website (www.onorobot.org), which illustrate the concept in a very clear and simple way, even for people who have minimum computer knowledge. It mainly explains how to surf the internet safely, and understand the risks to minimize them.

The BlogFest Asia also happened to deliver the Malaysian Chinese blog award 2010. A reward given to the best blogs in Malaysia, in Chinese, by categories (food, travel and photography, lifestyles, current affairs etc). Results can be seen on their website (http://mybloggercon.com), but unfortunately, it’s only in Chinese.

The BlogFest Asia 2010 was above all a way for me to discover the bloggers community in Asia, which is very active, for example, there are more than 4 millions bloggers in India. People love to blog here, on every topics.

Great thanks to Jeremiah Foo (http://jeremiahfoo.com) and all the organizing committee for this very successful event.

Nowadays, there are still countries in the world which trample Human Rights and Freedom of Speech, so these kind of initiatives are really important. As a journalist, lucky to be born in France, where the human rights and the freedom of speech is written in the Constitution, I know that a lot of my colleagues around the world don’t have this chance, I really enjoyed to see that some teaching were given to bloggers, especially about journalistic ethics, and for some, who live in countries where the Freedom of Speech doesn’t exist, some ways to surf anonymously, and erase your trace on the web.

Bloggers of these countries are not alone, they can write, and they are read.

As Ms Hamzah said, adopted from a famous asian airplane company, “now, everyone can fly…With Internet, now, everyone can be a journalist.”