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Tawakkol Karman, right, a prominent opposition figure and the face of Yemen’s anti-government movement over the past nine months has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her role as “a leading part in the struggle for women’s rights and for democracy and peace in Yemen”. Human rights organisations congratulate the Nobel committee for recognising the importance of women fighting for free speech.

Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel has expressed concern over the Deutsche Bank issue of Belarusian government bonds after the post-election crackdown in which seven of the nine presidential candidates and 600 opposition activists were jailed. She promised to contact the bank directly over the issue.

On 3 September a journalist, poet and activist Faranak Farid was arrested in Iran. On 8 September a prominent journalist, playwright, film-maker and member of Iraqi PEN Hadi al-Mahdi was murdered in Baghdad. On 21 September Omani court sentenced two journalista of an independent newspaper to five months in prison and ordered to shut the newspaper down for a month.

Five opposition activist and five journalists have been recently arrested in Ethiopia under abusive Anti-terrorism law. Terrorism charges brought against two Ethiopian journalists and one Swedish reporter on 6 September could see them imprisoned for up to 20 years if convicted.

Index on Censorship and Article 19 express their concern that the Hungarian Media Council is stifling free speech and disregarding media pluralism in the country. One of the most popular Hungarian radio stations famous for its political debate and criticism of government „Klub Radio“ is in danger of losing its licence.

While Index supports whistleblower initiatives such as Wikileaks, it expresses concern over the need for careful redaction of documents in order to protect dissidents living under authoritarian regimes like Belarus. Publicity and criticism bring results as the Royal Bank of Scotland has announced that it will no longer engage in “any type of capital-raising” on behalf of the government of Belarus after an Index and Free Belarus Now campaign.

East Africa still struggles with old problems. Legal guaranties provided by constitutions of East African countries should protect freedom of expression in the region, however it is not always so. Even new laws sometimes threaten free speech as it happened in Sudan. Article 19 and Index on Censorship analyze freedom of expression and human rights situation in Uganda, Tanzania and Sudan.

As the amount of the internet users grows rapidly each year all over the world, the internet becomes more powerful tool to express one’s opinion. The online activity is more visible; it affects more people and is treated as a real behaviour, not the virtual one. There is an obvious change of perception of the internet recently. The proof of it is imprisonment of two social network users in UK and three internet writers in United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Vietnam.

Index on Censorship will be at all three of the main UK political parties’ conferences speaking about press freedom in light of the phone hacking scandal, recent concerns over privacy law and super-injunctions and our on-going Libel Reform Campaign.