Latest

On 15 June two Kazakh activists were arrested in Almaty. They are charged with incitement of social discord leading to the riots in Zhanaozen in December 2011. On 13 June five Russian journalists were detained in Moscow due to new regulations on demonstrations. They took part in a protest in support of a threatened colleague.

This week both houses of the Russian parliament passed and Russia’s president signed a legislative amendment that dramatically increases fines for people found guilty of participating in unsanctioned rallies. This amendment seriously threatens the right to freedom of assembly in Russia.

Russian radio journalist Sergei Aslanian was brutally attacked in Moscow near his apartment last week. The attack could be linked to the controversial statements he made about Prophet Muhammad.

London-based human rights and free speech organisation Article 19 welcomes Kenya’s initiative to foster greater transparency in the financing of election campaigns, and Uganda’s initiative to merge two overlapping communication acts into a single one.

At the World Summit on the Information Society Forum (WSIS), taking place in Geneva, Article 19 and 30 other NGOs asked for greater transparency and civil participation in the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and preparatory process undertaken for the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) 2012.

English PEN, Article 19 and Index on Censorship welcome the Government’s announcement that it will bring a Defamation Bill before Parliament. This is a major milestone in Libel Reform Campaign to widen the space for free expression in the UK and around the world.

These two post-soviet states are on the new Committee‘s to Protect Journalists (CPJ) list of ten countries in the world where free media is most heavily censored. Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan are the runners-up.

international artists with artists based in the UK, from the Middle East, Burma and Belarus, will reflect on what happens to the creative vocabulary when the political landscape changes.

In conjunction with the Free Word Centre’s exhibition ‘Politics and the Olympics’, Index on Censorship will host an event around the question, ‘Should sport be above politics and human rights?’