Venue Doughty Street Chambers,
54 Doughty Street
London, WC1N 2LS (map) Time 6.30pm RSVP[email protected] Space is limited, so please reserve a place early
Edward Snowden’s leaks about the US’s international mass surveillance programmes has prompted perhaps the definitive debate of our age: How free are we online? Can we ever trust technology with our personal details?
Have democratic freedoms been subverted by surveillance programmes such as PRISM and Tempora, justified on the grounds of security?
Join Index on Censorship and Doughty Street Chambers on 25 July to discuss these issues and more.
A Turkish student attacked while participating in anti-government protests died Wednesday. Ali İsmail Korkmaz suffered a cerebral haemorrhage after unknown assailants attacked him during a protest in the northwestern city of Eskişehir on 2 June.
Korkmaz is the seventh protester to die since the start of unrest on 28 May, when protesters first rallied against the government’s plan to turn Gezi Park — one of Istanbul’s important green spaces — into a shopping mall. The protest movement quickly snowballed, after police used tear gas to disperse the initial 50 protesters.
On 28 July, members of IFEX are calling on seven people to stand silently in front of Turkish embassies around the world for seven minutes at 12:00 PM, in solidarity with Turkey’s ongoing protests. The silent protest has become a symbol of Turkey’s peaceful protesters. Participants are asked to wear the names of those who have been killed.
Mass protests eventually overtook Istanbul’s Taksim Square, and protests were sparked across the country, after the government’s heavy-handed response.
June saw clashes between protesters and security forces, as both camps battled for control of the square. Riot police forced protesters out of Taksim Square during an overnight raid on 11 June.
The Turkish Ministry of Interior has reported over 4,900 protesters in custody, as well as over 400 policemen and 4,000 demonstrators wounded.
Read more here about the campaign, and for details on how to organise a protest.
A Russian Orthodox has launched a video game in which players attack members of punk feminist group Pussy Riot with a crucifix
According to Reuters, “Players use a mouse to move a cross over the screen and zap colorful cartoon representations of the women from Pussy Riot – each with a balaclava like those worn by the band members in their protest — as they try to enter a white church.”
Pussy Riot have declined to comment on the game.
Two of the punk group, Maria Alyokhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, are serving sentences in a penal colony after they staged a protest against Vladimir Putin at Moscow’s Christ The Saviour Cathedral in February 2012. A third, Yekaterina Samutsevich, was released on appeal.
Index on Censorship met two members of the eight-woman strong collective in London last month. You can read the interview here.
BELARUS Praying in Homeless Shelter a Crime
A young Catholic layman, who turned his home into a shelter for homeless people with a prayer room, is being accused of leading an unregistered religious organization. Aleksei Shchedrov, who says he has helped about 100 local people since December 2011, is being investigated on criminal charges under Article 193-1. As a result, he now faces a maximum possible sentence of two years’ imprisonment.
(Canadian Free Press)
Censoring Canadian science
Last summer, a rally of over 2,000 researchers, scientists, and students gathered on Parliament Hill to protest a federal trend of scientific censorship that began when the Conservative party took control of the Federal government in 2006. For the protesters, the government had crossed the line with numerous budget cuts to environmental research programs, extensive job cuts to Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, and numerous restrictions on investigators’ communications with the media.
(McGill Daily)
GHANA Journalist freed in Ghana amid free speech concerns
A Ghanaian newspaper editor was released Thursday after serving a controversial 10-day jail term ordered by the west African nation’s supreme court for criticising the judges’ handling of a dispute over last year’s presidential election.
(AFP)
GUINEA Radio Station Director Charged for Libel
Managing Director of Planete FM, Mandian Sidibe, has been charged with libel and placed under judicial review by a Magistrates’ Court in Conakry, the capital, for comments he made during a radio programme.
(All Africa)
INDONESIA Indonesia Affirms Restrictions to Freedom of Expression
On July 10 and 11, 2013 the UN Human Rights Committee reviewed the implementation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, one of the most important human rights treaties Indonesia has ratified and has the obligation to implement to ensure protection of these rights in Indonesia.
(Scoop)
NEW ZEALAND Suicide reporting rules under review
The Government has announced that New Zealand’s 25-year-old censorship of suicide reporting is to be reviewed by the Law Commission. JAMES HOLLINGS talks to two leading experts who think the restrictions should go.
(The Press)
RUSSIA New Russian video game takes aim at punk band riot
A Russian Orthodox youth group unveiled a video game on Thursday that gives players a chance to “kill” members of the punk band Pussy Riot, whose profanity-laden protest in a Moscow cathedral last year angered the church and offended some believers.
(Reuters)
TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO Defending press freedom
Although freedom of the press is enshrined in our Constitution, it is a right which nonetheless requires eternal vigilance. This is because powerful persons and groups are continually trying to erode this right, to the detriment of the average citizen.
(Trinidad Express)
TUNISIA Tunisia’s version of Tamarod
A Tunisian version of the Egyptian Tamarod movement has been collecting signatures against the country’s government and institutions, writes Lasaad Ben Ahmad in Tunis
(Al-Ahram)
TURKEY Scientific Conflict in Turkey
The Turkish government’s refusal to fund a summer school course on evolution has brought into sharp focus the divisions between political Islam and secular society in Turkey.
(BBC)
UNITED STATES Porn Producers Say Unprotected Sex Is Free Speech Right
Pornographic movie makers told a judge that a Los Angeles County voter-approved measure requiring adult-film actors to wear condoms violates their constitutional right to free speech.
(Bloomberg)
Removing the Kahane Google App Isn’t Censorship
In a recent Open Zion column, Zack Parker criticized Google’s decision to take down a Google App containing Kahane quotes, to which the radical settler extremist Baruch Marzel had linked, as censorship. While the objective of preserving free speech is pure, the criticism of the takedown as censorship misunderstands the nature of free speech and the implementation of the criticism would be a severe blow to counter-radicalization efforts.
(The Daily Beast)
My fight for free speech at LSU
I decided in seventh grade that one day I was going to attend Louisiana State University’s law school, and anyone who knows me can tell you that I’ve bled purple and gold ever since. So when I finally got there last fall, I never expected that in a few short months I would be involved in a lawsuit against the school.
(Live Action News)
