Bahrain
Government bans Blackberry news alertsPosted May 3 2010
Bahrain’s Ministry of Culture and Information banned a Blackberry app used to share local news and traffic alerts April 7, according to the Bahrain Post.
The chat application attracted more than 11,000 subscribers in recent months before the government ban. The increasingly popular “Urgent News,” a news compilation of six local dailies, was suspended as a result. Journalist Mahannad Sulaiman was able to distribute them to subscribers free of charge through Blackberry. The news updates through the app are not available on other phones.
Al-Khalifa Ministry of Culture and Information official Abdullah Yateem told the Bahrain Post that the decision was made to avoid “confusion and chaos.”
Head of the ministry, Sheikha Mai Ibrahim is known to some activists as the “guillotine” of the Internet because of her repeated bans of websites like the Arab Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI), Google Earth, Facebook and Twitter since 2009.