Ai Weiwei, China’s best-known dissident artist, is called God Ai by his supporters. Ai helped design the Bird’s Nest stadium for the 2008 Summer Olympics and more recently his Sunflower Seeds installation created a splash at the Tate Modern; but Ai...
One of China's best-known dissidents Liu Xiaobo won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday night. Liu is currently serving an 11 year prison sentence for “inciting subversion of state power” after the former litarture professor circulated Charter 08, a...
Last month, Xie Chaoping, author of The Great Migration, was detained for 30 days on the trumped up charge of operating an illegal business. The Great Migration is about the repairing of the Sanmen dam in Weinan, Shaanxi Province and the residents...
“No one living in China is more daring than the maverick writer Yu Jie,” journalist and historian Jonathan Mirsky wrote more than five years ago. It’s even more apt today.The 36-year-old Chinese dissident and writer is about to risk his freedom by...
On 18 November, journalist JS Tissainayagam, currently on trial before the High Court under the country’s Terrorism Act, was moved to the notorious Magazine prison in Colombo after more than 150 days in detention. He had not been informed of the...
The establishment of an independent press council may help protect journalists and Internet activists like Raja Petra Kamaruddin, writes Daniel Chandranayagam Tan is a young Malaysian, newly employed in the private sector. Like many Malaysians his...
New laws on digital media in Thailand may strengthen the nation’s lese-majesty laws, writes David Jardine Swingeing new controls on the use of the Internet have just been introduced in Thailand. In what is claimed to be an effort to curtail cyber...
Freedom of assembly is under threat in Kyrgystan after President Kurmanbek Bakiev signed an amended law on the rights of citizens on 6 August. The amendment makes it mandatory to register public gatherings twelve days in advance, and prohibits...
As the Games begin in Beijing, Index publishes a roundup of arrests, detentions and surveillance since January –-- a reminder that China has yet to meet its Olympic challenge of harmony and openness. JANUARY 24 January: Four journalists with German...
Continuing our series of articles from Index on Censorship’s ‘Made In China’ issue, Internet pioneer Isaac Mao explains why freedom of thought is what China needs most. Read here (pdf)