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Two Chinese dissident writers Chen Xi and Chen Wei were sentenced to ten and nine years in prison for «inciting subversion of state power» in essays published on Chinese websites overseas.

The latest in a series of regular events, giving members the opportunity to debate the free speech issues of the moment.

This six-part course, led by Dr Sophie Mayer, will consider some of the best known and most dramatic challenges to free speech: attacks on poems, plays, novels and films.

The 12th annual Index Freedom of Expression Awards will be held on 28 March. They will honour those who, often at great personal risk, have given voice to issues and stories from around the globe that would otherwise have passed unnoticed.

In the first of a series of events between Index on Censorship and the Southbank Centre, South African novelist Nadine Gordimer will be speaking at the centre’s Literature and Spoken Word Festival on 14 March.

One of the last acts of Vaclav Havel was signature of the statement calling for free speech in Belarus. He signed the document along with Ai Weiwei. “Prison taught them both of the evils of totalitarianism”, said Irina Bogdanova, sister of political prisoner Andrei Sannikov, sentenced to five years hard labour for “organizing a mass disturbance” after last year’s Presidential elections. “Confronting evil means taking action”, she says.

The prolonged series of arrests and prosecutions indicates systematic use of the anti-terrorism law by the Ethiopian government to silence opposition politicians and the independent media. This week’s conviction of two Swedish journalists by an Ethiopian court on charges of supporting terrorism is emblematic.

Just before midnight on 15 December – coincidentally national day for remembering killed Russian journalists – the founder of the independent weekly newspaper Chernovik, Khadimurad Kamalov, was shot dead in the southern Russian republic of Dagestan.

Join a demonstration on 19 December to mark a year since Lukashenko’s vicious crackdown on dissent and political opposition in Belarus.