Vladimir Putin says [Ru] he doesn’t use the internet very much. But he has definitely recognised its power. The biggest protest rallies in post-Soviet Russia, against Putin and his party United Russia, were organised online. No wonder that...
Search engines and social networking sites are at the heart of Web 2.0. To unreasonably threaten them with liability for user content misses the point, says
Marta Cooper
Index on Censorship condemns the sentencing of feminist punk group Pussy Riot to two years in prison.
PLUS: Pussy Riot versus the Religarchy
This week Belarus asked the Swedish diplomatic mission to leave the country and recalled its own embassy from Stockholm. What sparked this international incident? That would be teddy bears. Small, cuddly soft toys. Alexander Lukashenko, Europe’s...
Fearing extremists reacting violently to the publication of books deemed to be offensive to Islam, many publishers have thought twice about what they release about the religion. Alom Shaha says it’s time to discuss faith properly
Next week will bring the verdict in the trial of feminist punk band Pussy Riot, who now face up to three years in prison for "hooliganism" motivated by religious hatred for performing a "punk prayer" against Russian President Vladimir Putin in...
Two Italian journalists have been sentenced to four months in prison and fined 15,000 Euros (11,700 GBP) for libel. Orfeo Donatini and Tiziano Marson, of newspaper Alto Adige, were convicted in June of alleging in a 2008 article that local...
The boom in surveillance technology sales is chilling free speech. We need to wake up to this reality, says Mike Harris
One year after heroic human rights activist Ales Bialiatski was arrested and jailed on politically-motivated charges, Index asks you to take action in solidarity
With the opening of the Pussy Riot trial in Moscow this week, Elena Vlasenko explains why the feminist punk collective is a threat to the church-state axis of Putin’s Russia