Freedom House

IFEX members issued a joint call for amendments to a deeply-flawed draft media law in Somalia before it goes to parliament for approval in August.

Nineteen human rights organisations have written to U.S. President Barack Obama to raise the issue of the detention of human rights defender and blogger Mr Le Quoc Quan when President Truong Tan Sang of Vietnam meets Obama on 25 July 2013.

On 18 July 2013, two journalists from Channel 5 were beaten and approximately 10 demonstrators were detained as they called for the reform of the police force and the resignation of the Minister of Internal Affairs in the Ukraine.

The arrest of leading public interest lawyer Xu Zhiyong is part of an ongoing crackdown by Chinese authorities against rights defenders and anti-corruption advocates.

“Democratizing the media” is a common refrain in Latin America these days. While the phrase may suggest a process that would lift restrictions on media and increase citizen access, it has been invoked to support policies that do the opposite.

Partnerships between authoritarian regimes have few ideological underpinnings other than a shared rejection of democracy and the rule of law.

IFEX members sent a joint letter to President Museveni calling for an end to impunity in cases of police violence against the media, after a violent crackdown on a demonstration in May over media closures.

The Jordanian government began, on 2 June 2013, to block over 200 news websites for failing to register and obtain licenses under a recently amended and controversial Press and Publications Law.