Index on Censorship

In the April round-up: horrific attacks against secularists in Bangladesh, journalists arrested while protesting criminal defamation in the Maldives, crackdown on opposing voices in Cambodia, plus advocacy, awards and much more.

34 IFEX members are supporting RSF’s initiative to create the position of a Special Representative of the UN Secretary General for the Safety of Journalists.

Bahrain has intensified the use of stripping citizenship from those who dissent or speak out in protest as a form of punishment.

Harassment of Meydan TV and its journalists is not new. The station’s staff and their relatives have been facing extensive pressure ranging from threats to detention.

Critical blogging is the lifeblood of free societies, not a threat to social stability, say rights groups.

Dündar, editor-in-chief of Cumhuriyet, and Gül, the newspaper’s Ankara representative, face accusations of aiding a terrorist organisation, espionage and disclosure of classified documents for reports in Cumhuriyet claiming that Turkey’s intelligence agency secretly armed Islamist rebel groups in Syria.

The release of these political prisoners is a step in the right direction, say the Sport for Rights Coalition, but dozens of others remain in Azerbaijani jails.

Since his detention, many human rights groups have campaigned for his release. On 21 April 2015, the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention declared his detention a violation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and called for his release, yet the Syrian authorities refuse to free him.