Freedom House

Recently the chairman of Bloomberg LP indicated that the company is backing away from its admirable investigative reporting on China’s elite, apparently with the aim of protecting its core financial-data business from political reprisals. This is alarming for many reasons, says Freedom House.

After a series of increasingly violent events, IFEX members and supporters call on Chief Executive Leung Chun-Ying to take clear and deliberate steps to defend press freedom.

In the face of new, sophisticated restrictions, frontline human rights activists are unprepared for the security challenges they face, while donors and international support groups struggle to collaborate effectively and protect and defend human rights, Freedom House concludes in a new report.

Iran, Cuba, UAE, Azerbaijan, India and Turkey are examples of countries whose leaders contradict their own policies and practices on restricting social media.

It is believed that Mr. Quan’s detention is politically motivated and a reaction to his blog, where he frequently exposed human rights violations by the Vietnamese government.

Journalist and editor Ali Anouzla was arrested on 17 September 2013 in connection with a 13 September news article published on the Arabic edition of news website Lakome. Ahead of a Rabat court hearing scheduled on 18 February, local and international rights organisations came together to call for the charges against him to be dropped.

Poet Hashem Shaabani was an Iranian of Arab origin and a founder of the Dialogue Institute, which tried to promote understanding of Arabic culture and literature in Iran. He was sentenced to death in July 2013 and executed on 27 January 2014.

A three-judge panel of the High Court in Nairobi has halted implementation of the Media Council Act 2013 and Kenya Information and Communications (Amendment) Act 2013 until the full Court considers the legal questions.