Index on Censorship

There have been some sharply contrasting political reactions to the U.S. and U.K.’s mass surveillance programmes in European countries in recent days.

Iryna Khalip, known for her harsh criticism of Alexander Lukashenko’s regime, has had her two-year suspended sentence lifted by a Minsk court.

According to Bytes for All (B4A), a representative of the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority recently claimed that the country has an “arrangement”‘ with Facebook, which allows them to have “undesirable content and Facebook pages blocked as per directions from the authority”.

Burma is at a crossroads. The period of transition since 2010 has opened up the space for freedom of expression to an extent unpredicted by even the most optimistic in the country. Yet this space is highly contingent on a number of volatile factors.

From America to Azerbaijan, leaders have pledged themselves to a new era of openness and transparency. So why are whistleblowers and journalists still punished, asks Index on Censorship.

While two surveillance entities are being set up in India, there is increasing debate about how security concerns, through mass surveillance of all communication channels, are constantly coming head-to-head with the right to privacy.

Despite promising reform and introducing a new constitution in 2011, Morocco’s treatment of dissidents indicates the changes were just window dressing.

Taking their cue from the neo-nazi Golden Dawn, Greece’s far-right newspapers have recently been targeting alternative opinions. While hardly breaking news, the language and symbolism of the campaign is of vital importance because it represents just the tip of the iceberg, Christos Syllas writes.