#imweekly: August 12, 2013

China After multiple employees of Hong Kong-based company Phoenix Satellite Television accused the company's former Washington, DC bureau chief of sexual harassment last week, nearly all mention of the scandal was scrubbed from the Chinese Internet. Foreign Policy reports that videos about the story have been blocked, while articles on the case have been taken down from China's state-run news agency. FP notes that the current CEO of Phoenix's US subsidiary is the son of China's former Vice Premier.

Pakistan Pakistan's Minister of State for Information Technology said last week that the country is working to develop software that will block "objectionable content" worldwide. Once all such content is blocked, the minister stated, the country could theoretically lift its ban on YouTube. The video-sharing site has been blocked in Pakistan since September 2012.

Zimbabwe Zimbabwe held presidential elections on July 31; the resulting re-election of President Robert Mugabe is hotly contested. During and after the elections, DDoS attacks took down several human rights and media websites. In addition, Kubatana.net, which publishes human rights and civic information online and via email and SMS, was blocked from sending bulk text messages by an alleged government order.

#imweekly is a regular round-up of news about Internet content controls and activity around the world. To subscribe via RSS, click here.