ARTICLE 19

Jailed Vietnamese blogger and human rights lawyer Le Quoc Quan has launched a hunger strike to protest the refusal by prison authorities to provide him access to legal counsel, access to legal and religious books, and access to a priest for spiritual guidance, ahead of his appeal trial on 18 February 2014 in Hanoi.

In its Artist Alert for December 2013-January 2014, ARTICLE 19 highlights cases from Turkey, Uganda, Argentina and France, among others.

On 11 February, The Day We Fight Back, organisations and individuals around the world demanded an end to mass surveillance.

On the morning of 5 February 2014 journalist Gregorio Jiménez de la Cruz was kidnapped in the city of Coatzacoalcos, Veracruz. Jiménez has worked as a crime reporter for various outlets and recently reported on some abductions in the Villa Allende region.

ARTICLE 19 and PEN International urged the international community to address the increasingly severe crackdown on free speech in Viet Nam, while at the UN in Geneva. Rather than improving, the human rights situation in Viet Nam has deteriorated markedly since 2009, when the country last underwent a Universal Periodic Review (UPR).

ARTICLE 19 is alarmed at the Cambodian government’s failure to answer for abuses before the international community. Cambodia made a mockery of the UN’s human rights review process in Geneva, while it continued to oversee a violent crackdown on peaceful protests and the right to freedom of expression at home.

195 civil society organisations from around the world have called on the UN to put government accountability and independent media at the centre of a new framework for global development.

ARTICLE 19 has launched a social media project to facilitate discussion about issues surrounding religious intolerance in Malaysia, in partnership with the website Projek Dialog. By supporting the website, ARTICLE 19 hopes to promote greater interfaith and intercultural understanding in the country.