UK authorities have announced an outright ban on The Human Centipede II (Full Sequence). But how do censors make these decisions? Murray Perkins is a film examiner who classifies hard-core porn. He spoke to Index about what it takes to make the grade
A Canadian twelfth grade student has been suspended for posting satirical videos on his own private YouTube account. The animations, criticising aspects of the American government and the behaviour of large corporations and were considered by the...
Index on the Big Questions
The killing of Syed Saleem Shahzad has highlighted the precarious situation for Pakistan’s brave journalists.
Daud Khan Khattak reports
The United Nations special rapporteur for free expression Frank La Rue has called for the abolition of criminal defamation laws. Guatemalan lawyer La Rue also condemned the use of “national security” reasons to curb free expression: In a report...
Iranian activist, Haleh Sahabi, 56, died yesterday (1 June) after a scuffle with Iranian security personnel during her father's funeral procession. Sahabi died in hospital after apparently suffering a heart attack. The regime tightly controls...
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) reports Gwinnett County schools in Georgia employ a filter, Blue Coat, that blocks access to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender site and classifies them as sexually explicit or pornographic. The ACLU...
Jordanian journalist, Alaa Fazza, was released from prison Wednesday, on the orders of King Abdullah II yesterday (1 June), the country’s independence day. Fazza was been detained 14 days by a military court on charges that he had accused the...
Russian authorities arrested Rustam Makhmudov in Chechyna on Tuesday (31 May). He is suspected of shooting Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya to death in 2006. Politkovskaya was one of the fiercest critics of now Chechyan President Ramzan...
Surveillance and spamming — how the Syria’s embattled regime and its supporters battle protesters on social media. Jillian C York reports
The deaths of two ethnic Mongolians, allegedly killed by Han Chinese, in China’s Inner Mongolia region in May, has sparked the worst riots this region has seen in decades. Many areas, including the regional capital, Hohhot, are under martial law....
The Singapore High Court has denied writer Alan Shadrake’s appeal against his six-week jail sentence. Shadrake was convicted of "scandalising the judiciary" in November after he published "Once A Jolly Hangman" a book criticising the use of the...