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Serbia: Guca and Exit Music Festivals

Ljubisa Bojic · 16:37 · Eastern & Central Europe

Traditional Guca Trumpet Festival is held anually in Guca, a town hours south of Belgrade, near the city of Cacak, from Aug. 30 to Sept. 3. The event remains the main topic of the country’s bloggers these days. Their talk ranges from pure drivel about how it feels to have a piece of history turned into a mainstream event, to harmless remarks made by happy visitors who experienced the actual event in Guca, to criticism of the Serbian Prime Minister using this celebration for his premature political campaign, to a serious debate which depicts what some call a “Serbian sociological phenomenon.” What should be simple blogger chats turn vigorous and scathingly rich as online residents compare two national music festivals (traditional and localized Guca to modern and west-oriented Exit). By reading Serbian blog writers wrangle about what appear to be, at first glance, innocent issues, one could easily conclude how deeply the nation is divided. They show how troubled Serbian society is at the moment, healing after decades of madness throughout the region.

This year, there is also the premiere of a documentary showing how people invade the sleepy village of Guca for a week of music, drinking, dancing and utter madness:

[…] The film centres around the ambitions of two young trumpet players in their quest to win ‘The Golden Trumpet'. […]

Typical remarks are available for the reader to browse in the online Guca guestbook, which is filled with joy and tributes.

Bob from New York applauds the atmosphere he discovered in the small Serbian village:

This is the best summer music festival in Europe. The festival has great music and is very eventful. You won’t regret coming because you will also get to explore beautiful Serbia. The fantastic site, great people, excellent performers and cheap drinks make it the place to be! The Guca festival in Serbia is an absolute must for any music fan.

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Blogcamp Unconference in Chennai: Remains of the Day

Neha Viswanathan · 11:25 · South Asia

The last weekend saw BlogCamp being held in Chennai. Promoted as the largest unconference on blogging thus far in India, it saw quite a range of people attending the event. A cursory glance at the list of attendees here and topics discussed here. The blogsphere is buzzing with reactions on the BlogCamp. Even as the unconference was on, the IRC channel dedicated to the blogcamp was full of remote participants catching up with the live webcast.

Dina writes about an open session discussing some of the deeper issues of blogging.

In the closing session, before the quiz, Kiruba, Peter and I, with Veer's inputs thought we'd like to hold an open discussion with the whole group, on some of the deeper issues around blogging - responsibilities of bloggers, blogging as an addiction, Jace's neat insights into the overlapping of our public, private and secret selves as we blog, and on what popularity means. I thought that went off quite well and was happy to hear many many views.

Thejesh writes about some of the things he wished the BlogCamp would have covered.

We have people who blog about Bangalore and Mumbai once in a while but that is not the sole purpose of their blog. I think we need to have subject specific blogs to make the indian blogosphere more interesting. I would like more of Indian food Kitchen Blog, Mahanandi or Events Bangalore ( Blog about events in bangalore,by your truly).We still don't have an Engadget, TechCrunch or a Life Hacker). When will we have that quality blogs?

Recursive Hypocrisy on why while the concept of an unconference may be interesting, it may not always be effective.

In other words, the conference assumes the speaker earned the right to speak and is validated by a selection of speaker and the topic. For example, Sunil Gavaskar speaking to an audience is not an unconference. He speaks. We listen. Period. And, it's good. He's Sunny. He speaks well and makes his point. We already like him. So, even better.

Meanwhile, between the two days of unconferencing, quite a few appear to have had fun at a Beach House party. Venki on the idea of the Paper Wiki that helped put together sessions at the unconference. Scribez has notes from various sessions, including how the topics were arranged. Digital Inspiration compiles a list of quotes from various bloggers who have written or spoken about the event. Our World has a list of various people who contributed to the event. A mainstream media journalist who is also a blogger covered the event and had this to say.

There were bloggers who talked about pet fish and pandas, fashion (unrelated to the pandas), rural connectivity, disaster management, sleeping on the job while your blog earns for you, body shopping, blog journalism, podcasting, firewall skirting, how to avenge those that steal your content, how to increase your hitcount (I need to learn a thing or two), how to be likeable.

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China: Government's video-censorship foiled

Sameer Padania · 07:26 · East Asia

lingua → zht · zhs

When a young teacher is found dead outside her apartment building in Ruian, the police report concludes suicide, but her family and students suspect a cover-up. Over a thousand people take to the streets in protest, and are met with police violence. Protestors film the clashes on their cellphones, and upload the clips to Chinese video-sharing sites, but the clips are rapidly taken offline - only to re-appear on other sites, as respected English-language Chinese blog Danwei reported on Tuesday. The Dai Haijing story - pieced together online by Roland Soong of another blog EastSouthWestNorth, or ESWN - is, despite the best efforts of the Chinese authorities, gathering pace online.

Since GVO’s own John Kennedy blogged about the disappearing protest videos, also on Tuesday, at least three have emerged on YouTube and on Photobucket, including the video below:

It’s clear why the authorities don’t want this footage to be seen. Despite the low definition of the cameraphone, the video clearly shows police officers beating protestors. ESWN quotes one commenter on bingfang.com as saying “Post those video clips and photographs onto international websites and let the world see the so-called democracy in China.” The consequences of doing so are unclear - whoever uploaded the videos to YouTube has a blog, http://dhj2006.blogspot.com/, which now returns the message “Sorry! Blog temporarily closed!” One US-based law professor's blog suggested that the authorities are sensitive because it reveals the lack of trust in public institutions.

It's more likely to be a question of timing. Wen Jiabao was in the UK on Tuesday to talk climate change with Tony Blair, and this is a bad time for a story like this to be leaking. The authorities have been concerned by the increase across the country in organised protests - against farmland seizures, corruption, pollution - of which the government said there were 87,000 in 2005, or around 240 per day. The latest release from the Public Security Ministry a month ago showed a slight decrease in protests for the first half of 2006, to 39,000, still well over 200 a day - and well before the Dai Haijing case.

The Network of Chinese Human Rights Defenders issued a statement Monday claiming an intensified crackdown by the Chinese authorities ahead of two Chinese Communist Party events and the 2008 Olympics. The statement calls for the release of a number of journalists, writers, lawyers and activists arrested and imprisoned in the last month, and robustly states that:

“The ruling authorities appear not to appreciate that their conventional tactics of using harsh crackdown to tighten control in advance of major political or social events has become obsolete. Rights consciousness is on the rise in China and grassroots activities to defend rights have been spreading rapidly. Repression has contributed to a growing and more active community of human rights defenders.”

This series of posts at ESWN illustrates the challenges faced by bloggers trying to get stories like this out to a wider audience, but this doesn't just affect China's bloggers – we’d like to hear your stories, wherever you are, about how you make sure videos like these remain online when the authorities seem extremely keen to ensure they get deleted.

This section of GVO is a collaboration between WITNESS and Global Voices Online, and in the coming weeks we're going to be highlighting a wide range of footage filmed by citizens, as with these videos, or by perpetrators of human rights abuses themselves, as I wrote about last week. We'll be seeking out videos from cellphones and camcorders, depicting - as in today's post - protests and reactions to human rights violations, but also many other rights issues including gay rights, refugee rights, prisons, police brutality, and violations by the military as well as the economic, social and cultural rights like those to water, housing, and health and a host of other human rights-related footage. We'll also be looking for footage of survivors of violations speaking out about abuses.

If you come across videos of this kind, whether on video-sharing sites like Google Video, Photobucket, BlipTV or YouTube, via email, or via MMS, please do let us know, either through the comments facility below, or by email.

In the guidelines, you’ll find an outline of the kinds of footage we’re looking for, and here are instructions on how to upload the footage to websites securely, and so we can find it easily.

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