Fifteen years after she was detained for allegedly perpetrating a terrorist attack in Istanbul’s Spice Bazaar, and eleven years after she was acquitted of those charges, the Turkish sociologist Pınar Selek again found herself on the wrong side of...
A recently released report from the European Union contains recommendations that would endanger media freedom, says Kirsty Hughes
December provided further evidence that the Russian authorities’ prime targets in their quest to censor allegedly illegal websites are not those containing content harmful to children, as they have claimed, but those publicising “extremist”...
Prominent journalist and activists Emin Milli and Khadija Ismayilova were among those detained in Baku today as people demonstrated in support of civic action in Ismayilli earlier this week. Protesters posted photographs and videos of clashes...
This week the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) did not pass a resolution pressurising Azerbaijan to release or retry its political prisoners. Rebecca Vincent looks at how the body’s lack of pressure further endangers free expression in the country
The future for political prisoners in Azerbaijan looks bleak after politicians at the Council of Europe (CoE) failed adopt an important resolution today calling for more than 80 cases to be resolved. Azerbaijani authorities repeatedly deny the...
30 Jan: Amazing Azerbaijan! A film screening and discussion
Autocratic, authoritarian and totalitarian states take it upon themselves to actively stifle freedom of expression. These states can look very different – “socialist” North Korea may seem very different to “theocratic” Iran, but even with vastly differing cultures and political landscapes, we can draw similarities between the methods used by these regimes to suffocate and in some cases entirely suppress free speech
A Russian court yesterday dismissed the appeal of Maria Alekhina, one of the three members of feminist punk group Pussy Riot. Alekhina, 24, appealed to the local court asking to defer the remaining 13 months of her two year sentence until her...
Writing for Index on Censorship magazine in 2007, the late Stan Cohen argued that child pornography and jihadi violence were testing the limits of tolerance