Monday 23 October 2006

Darfur: The End of an Insider's Blog?

From my Reuters AlertNet blog, 23 October 2006.

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Khartoum has ordered Jan Pronk, Special Representative of the Secretary-General of the UN in Sudan, to leave the country by Wednesday because of comments Pronk made on his blog. Some may dismiss this as hardly surprising because diplomacy and openness don't exactly mix.

I'm always a bit cautious of claims about the revolutionary character of blogging, and in some respects, I remain so in this case. After all, a diplomat can get kicked out of a country for saying the wrong thing in any forum, and annoying a host in a blog is little different from doing so in a media release or op-ed.

But there has been something unique about Pronk's blog.