Freedom House

UPDATE: The president of IFEX member Bahrain Center for Human Rights (BCHR), Nabeel Rajab, was re-arrested and sentenced to three years in prison on 16 August. Many other human rights defenders remain in prison, including BCHR’s founder Abdulhadi Al-Khawaja, and his daughter, Zainab Al-Khawaja.

Preparations are under way for the World Conference on International Telecommunications, which will be held in Dubai in December 2012. Civil society groups say the process so far has not been transparent and are calling for greater involvement.

Countries such as China, Ethiopia, South Korea, Russia and Thailand need to challenge and change specific laws and practices that restrict internet freedom, says Freedom House.

Hostile comments directed at independent media by the information minister on World Press Freedom Day further illustrate the precarious state of freedom of expression in the country.

On 1 May, jailed journalist Eskinder Nega, facing the death penalty, receives in absentia the 2012 PEN/Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write Award. Thirty-two IFEX members are calling for his release, and an end to the use of national security legislation against all writers and journalists.

According to the report, for the first time in eight years, global media freedom did not experience an overall decline, while the Middle East and North Africa saw dramatic if precarious gains in press freedom in 2011.

Twenty-seven IFEX members appeal for end to impunity in recent brutal attacks on journalists in Kazakhstan, including near-fatal attack on Luqpan Akhmedyarov in April.

In advance of the Formula 1, 50 IFEX members and partners call for detained activists and human rights defenders to be freed, including blogger and activist Abduljalil Al-Singace and human rights activist Abdulhadi Al-Khawaja, founder of IFEX member the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights, who is ailing in prison since starting a hunger strike on 8 February.