26 May 2011 | Azerbaijan News, Index Index, minipost, News and features
Azerbaijan journalist Eynulla Fatullayev has been pardoned by the country’s president Ilham Aliyev, according to a report on the News.az website.
Fatullayev’s name featured on a list of prisoners to be released on the morning of Friday 27 May.
Fatullayev, who worked as a reporter on Elmar Huseynov’s magazine Monitor and later founded and edited Realny Azerbaijan and Gundelik Azerbaycan, served almost four years in prison.
Index on Censorship, English PEN, Article 19 and Amnesty led an international campaign for the 34-year-old editor’s release.
Natasha Schmidt, Assistant Editor of Index on Censorship said:
“We’re absolutely delighted that Eynulla will be freed. This comes more than a year after the European Court of Human Rights ruled that he should be released. Only last month Index lobbied European leaders to ensure that this judgement was enforced and that freedom of expression is upheld. It is of concern however that bloggers and Facebook activists are still in prison.”
26 May 2011 | Iran, Middle East and North Africa
You may have seen Superman in action, flying in to join Iranian protesters on the streets of Tehran in the current 900th anniversary issue of Action Comics, its already being reprinted. Disappointingly, the superhero doesn’t achieve much in rescuing anyone, but his visit sparks him to renounce his American citizenship, saying, “The world’s too small, too connected.”
Now boxer Muhammad Ali enters the picture, earlier this week making a plea to the Iranian government to release the American hikers held in Iran since August 2009 on spying charges. His may actually be the most effective voice — a true champion in Iranian eyes and Muslim too. Great film stars and huge rock musicians have put their names to the Iranian people’s struggle since 2009, but Ali’s involvement brought to mind a clip of a roundtable with Harry Belafonte, James Baldwin, Marlon Brando, Charlton Heston and Sidney Poitier in 1963, during the American civil rights movement. Watch for the pure eloquence of their words.
Image: Action Comics
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26 May 2011 | News and features
A US-based billionaire is using English courts to force American online publishers to expose the identity of users. Judith Townend reports
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25 May 2011 | Index Index, minipost, News and features
José Cláudio Ribeiro da Silva, an outspoken opponent of illegal burning and logging in the Amazon rainforest, has been shot dead in an ambush near their his home in Nova Ipixuna, in Pará state, about 37 miles from Marabá, Brazil. His wife was also killed in the attack.
Da Silva had received frequent death threats from rainforest loggers. He confessed in a public conference in November that he feared for his life. A 2008 report compiled by Brazilian human rights activists also listed Da Silva as one of those “considered at risk” for assassination. But the couple had allegedly not asked for any police protection. Authorities are now investigating whether the killing was an assassination.
