Last May Amnesty International UK in conjunction with The Observer newspaper here in the UK, launched an internet repression campaign and a related website called irrepressible.info.

The campaign has met with great success – the petition for freedom of expression on the internet has been signed by over 66,000 people, while the dynamic campaign logo is currently being viewed by over two million people per month on thousands of blogs. However, attempts to clamp down on freedom of expression on the internet are spreading and intensifying. As the list of ‘cyber-dissidents’ grows, so do innovative means of subverting state attempts at censorship.

On 6 June we will use the internet to link activists from around the world to discuss the struggle against internet repression and to celebrate the unquenchable desire of people for freedom of expression. In addition we will launch an update to irrepressible.info of a news hub, which will enable people to link news stories on ‘internet repression’ to the irrepressible site.

The event will include participation in person, remotely and by pre-record of the following:

Martha Lane-Fox – co-founder of lastminute.com
Jimmy Wales – Wikipedia
Richard Stallman – Free Software Movement
Clark Boyd – BBC Technology Correspondent
Cory Doctorow – boingboing
Yu Ling – wife of imprisoned cyber-dissident Wang Xiaoning
Sami Ben Gharbia – Tunisian dissident
Ron Deibert – Open Net Initiative
Dan Gillmor – Citizen Media
Shava Nerad – TOR Project
Ethan Zuckerman – Global Voices
Morton Sklar – The World OrganIsation for Human Rights USA
Markus Beckedahl – Network New Media
Josh Wolf – US Cyber-dissident
Kevin Anderson – The Guardian
Sina Motalebi – Iranian journalist
.. and YOU

The event will be webcast at www.amnesty.org.uk/webcast. Listen to a trailer for the event by Clark Boyd who will chair the event on 6 June at
http://www.amnesty.org.uk/events_details.asp?ID=405.

The event is ‘invitation only’ but if you’d like to go just send me an email and I’ll put my best leg forward for you (as they say in Dutch). Unfortunately I won’t be able to attend the event myself as I need to correct exams that day