Index on Censorship

Fourteen organisations have called on INTERPOL to clarify its involvement in the arrest warrant issued against British journalist Clare Rewcastle Brown, amid fears she may be arrested in Spain following threats by the Malaysian government.

Detained since January 2021, journalist and human rights defender Andrej Aliaksandraŭ is now facing up to 15 years in prison on baseless charges of “treason to the state”.

“ENRC’s campaign of legal action across two jurisdictions targeting more than a dozen people and other entities seems a deliberate attempt to shift the focus away from ENRC’s alleged corruption to those conducting legitimate investigations, whether journalists or public authorities.”

Chris Yeung, the chair of the Hong Kong Journalists Association, writes about the decision of Hong Kong authorities to ban activities commemorating the 1989 Tiananmen massacre.

“Realtid” is being sued by a Swedish businessman and his group of companies for eight articles they published in 2020. Organisations are concerned that this SLAPP appears to be an effort to discredit the journalists and force them to remove their investigative articles.

The Chinese regulator said that the British broadcaster has broken rules on truth and impartiality.

A new Index on Censorship report provides a concise snapshot of the legal systems that are being abused by the powerful across Europe to intimidate and silence journalists who disclose inconvenient truths that are in the public interest.

“We are alarmed at the ferocity of some of the attacks on media freedom we are seeing being unveiled. In some states journalists are threatened with prison sentences for reporting on shortages of vital hospital equipment. The public need to know this kind of life-saving information, not have it kept from them.”