In some countries, there have been flourishing underground music scenes sprouting up in the last few years, despite a continuing trend of censorship of the arts and governmental suppression
“Tonight, please don’t forget to laugh and dream out loud, that would be the best tribute you could pay to Sabeen”, said Mahenaz Mahmud via video at Unsilencing Pakistan, a Thursday 23 July event co-hosted by Index on Censorship at London’s Conway Hall.
Pakistani education campaigner Malala Yousafzai will accept the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize today in Oslo
Religious persecution is real, and should be fought. Freedom of belief is a basic right. But blasphemy laws protect only power, and never people.
Pakistan’s journalists are daily confronted with a bleak statistic: Since 1992, 30 journalists have been murdered in Pakistan; 28 with impunity. Milana Knezevic reports
Militant group Lashkar-e-Islam (LI) in Pakistan’s Khyber agency has asked residents to enrol at least one of their sons to madrassas run by LI or pay large fines. Zofeen T. Ebrahim reports
More than three weeks after the abduction of over 200 schoolgirls from the northern Nigerian town of Chibok by Boko Haram (BH), an Islamist militant group, the world is finally awake to the tragedy. Zofeen Ebrahim reports
Early last month when human rights lawyer Rashid Rehman, from Multan, in Punjab province, was threatened that he would not be present at the next hearing as he would not be alive, it was no idle threat. Zofeen Ebrahim reports on the latest assassination to rock Pakistan
The U.S. State Department names and shames eight “Countries of Particular Concern” that severely violate religious freedom rights within their borders. Now an independent watchdog is naming and shaming the State Department, saying its list should be doubled. Brian Pellot reports
Pakistan’s draft computer crimes law is the latest example of vaguely worded legal frameworks that have severe implications for freedom of expression in the country, Nighat Dad writes