{"id":44426,"date":"2022-05-12T06:00:44","date_gmt":"2022-05-11T21:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2022\/may\/12\/vanuatu-police-crack-down-with-arrests-over-slander-of-mps-accused-of-breaking-covid-lockdown"},"modified":"2022-05-12T06:00:44","modified_gmt":"2022-05-11T21:00:44","slug":"vanuatu-police-crack-down-with-arrests-over-slander-of-mps-accused-of-breaking-covid-lockdown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=44426","title":{"rendered":"Vanuatu police crack down with arrests over \u2018slander\u2019 of MPs accused of breaking Covid lockdown"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>At least four people have been arrested and face charges of cyber stalking, cyber slander and cyber libel for Facebook comments<\/p>\n<p>A police crackdown in Vanuatu that has seen people arrested for allegedly posting comments on social media speculating politicians were responsible for the country\u2019s current Covid outbreak has raised serious concerns about freedom of speech in the Pacific country.<\/p>\n<p>At least four people on two separate islands have been arrested as part of a major investigation by Vanuatu\u2019s Serious Crime Unit in the last few weeks, including a factory worker, a printer, a business owner, and a Facebook page moderator. They face charges of cyber stalking, cyber slander, and cyber libel and face up to three years in prison and fines of up to three million Vatu (US$25,838).<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2022\/may\/12\/vanuatu-police-crack-down-with-arrests-over-slander-of-mps-accused-of-breaking-covid-lockdown\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>At least four people have been arrested and face charges of cyber stalking, cyber slander and cyber libel for Facebook commentsA police crackdown in Vanuatu that has seen people arrested for allegedly posting comments on social media speculating politi&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3068,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[41,1066,282,323],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asia-pacific","category-coronavirus","category-south-pacific","category-vanuatu"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3068"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=44426"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44426\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44427,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44426\/revisions\/44427"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=44426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=44426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=44426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}