Index on Censorship

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.

Journalists routinely face harassment, intimidation and violence for pursuing stories that tackle everything from corruption to security concerns.

“We are a simulated democracy. Angola is really a dictatorship,” said Elias Isaac, country director for the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa (Osisa).

The IFEX-TMG is alarmed at attacks and prison sentences based on religious morality charges, as well as the use of force by police on demonstrators.

An open letter by 44 organisations calls Iraq’s proposed Information Technology Crimes law a threat to the fundamental freedoms necessary for the evolution of free speech and a vibrant press. The law will come to vote in the Iraqi Council of Representatives in April.

A letter by the coalition comes as a follow up to a verbal commitment by the Secretary IT that the plan for a national URL filtering and blocking system, announced earlier this year, has been withdrawn.

Television in Mauritius has become nothing more than a government tool for managing public opinion, the island republic’s president declared as he called for reform to allow the establishment of independent television broadcasters.

Two members of punk feminist group Pussy Riot will remain in pre-trial detention until 24 April, when they face trial on charges of hooliganism and could be sentenced to up to seven years in prison for performing a protest song in Moscow’s Christ the Saviour cathedral.