Andrey Pochobut, a correspondent for the Polish newspaper GazetaWyborcza who stands accused of defamation and “insulting the president”, is facing a four-year prison sentence. The trial began yesterday in Leninski district court, Belarus, with...
In this issue, Index explores whether privacy is the friend or foe of free speech, as it is now one of the central issues of the digital communications age.
Turkish police yesterday arrested 32 computer hackers who are suspected of links with the anti-government hacker collective, Anonymous. Over the weekend cyber attacks were launched on a number of government sites to protest against proposed net...
At least 50 anti-government protesters were jailed in Bangladesh yesterday after the authorities broke up the second general strike staged this month. The Bangladesh Nationalist Party and the Islamic fundamentalist group, Jamaat-e-Islami,...
Twenty-year-old student, Ayat al-Gormezi, who recited poems critical of Bahrain’s rulers at a Shia-led protest in Pearl Square has been sentenced to a year in prison. In the lead up to her trial she claimed that she was beaten in prison and she has...
Jyotirmoy Dey, the investigations editor for the daily paper Mid day based in Mumbai was shot dead by four men on 11 June. He had recently written a piece on an oil mafia that had been selling tainted fuel. Dey was cremated on Sunday 12 June and...
There has been no news on the whereabouts of Marco Antonio López Ortiz, the news editor of Novedades Acapulco, a daily based in Acapulco, Mexico. He was kidnapped 7 June by a group of men. Ortiz oversaw the paper's crime reports, but according to...
June 20: Driven Out: Journalists and Exile
A radio journalist for DWEB, a private station based in Manila, was shot twice in the back on his way to work. Romeo Olea's wife said that he had received death threats and police believe the murder is linked to Olea's recent stories criticising a...
Chinese authorities evicted Zeng Jinyan, the wife of imprisoned AIDs and free speech activist Hu Jia, from her home in Shenzhen today. Zeng is also a human rights activist and keeps a blog and twitter account. Authorities are now warning Zeng that...
The British press loves to hate high court judge Sir David Eady for his judgments in privacy cases. He talks to
Joshua Rozenberg about balancing rights
Former U.S. National Security Agency employee, Thomas Drake, agreed to a plea bargain that will reduce his charges from a felony under the Espionage Act to a misdemeanor for misusing the agency’s computer system. In this new scheme, prosecutors...