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Article 19 and International Media Support (IMS) have releasing a report “No Justice for Journalists in Ukraine, Belarus and Russia: Impunity and Killings of Journalists Go Hand in Hand”. It documents impunity for violence and disappearances of journalists in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine over the last decade. The report shows that the lack of effective investigation of violence against journalists has had a detrimental effect on freedom of expression and facilitated a climate of impunity and a detrimental effect on freedom of expression.

International human rights and freedom of expression organisation Article 19 calls on the East African Community (EAC) to hold a special session on Uganda to discuss the country’s ongoing grave human right violations, including frequent attacks on freedom of expression.

After four years of wrongful imprisonment, the Azerbaijani government has pardoned journalist Eynulla Fatullayev. He was released ahead of Azerbaijan’s Independence Day on 28 May. His release was welcomed by many in Azerbaijan and also by international media groups, human rights, free speech organizations that had campaigned on his behalf for years.

Two unjust epochs; two stories of the high price paid for a commitment to human rights. In The House of Exile – a story of love, loss and war, which won the Australian Prime Minister’s Literary Award – Evelyn Juers recounts the life of Heinrich Mann, activist and writer, forced into exile after his books were burned in Nazi Germany.

English PEN welcomes the conviction and sentencing of two people in connection to the 2009 double murder of freelance journalist Anastasiya Baburova and human rights lawyer Stanislav Markelov, in a trial described by the Committee to Protect Journalists as ‘a landmark victory in the fight against impunity in press killings in Russia’.

The leading Belarusian opposition politician and former presidential candidate Andrei Sannikov has been sentenced to five years hard labour for his protest against the falsified elections of December 2010. Sannikov, the leader of European Belarus, was detained after protests against the disputed re-election of Alexander Lukashenko on 19 December last year. The trial of Sannikov’s wife Irina Khalip, a journalist with Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta, began last week.

Free speech, media and information flows increasingly ignore and elude physical frontiers or national boundaries. Many governments, fearful of this lack of control, are trying hard to restore or fortify barriers to trace, block, target and censor those who champion the truth.

The International Partnership Group for Azerbaijan (IPGA) condemns the 4 May 2011 conviction of youth activist Jabbar Savalan, who was sentenced to 30 months’ imprisonment on politically motivated charges of drug possession.

March brought nothing new to the grey side of art. Artists around the world were censored mostly because of politics, sexual content and religion. A new “Artist alert” published by free speech and human rights organisation Article 19 highlights cases in the Middle East region, Western Europe, USA and China.