60 NGOs from 13 Human Rights Houses call upon the Azerbaijani authorities, in their joint letter to President Ilham Aliyev, to immediately and unconditionally release Leyla Yunus, Arif Yunus and Rasul Jafarov, and lift all charges held against them.
Hollins University currently forbids students from making any legal or biological step toward becoming male. Now it’s reconsidering its approach. Cathryn Asip reports
A piece of proposed legislation in the senate in Australia is attempting to wrestle with the legacy of the Snowden leaks with potential implications for media freedom. Nicholas Williams reports
Azerbaijani human rights activist Rasul Jafarov has been charged with tax evasion, illegal entrepreneurship and power abuse and sentenced to three months of pre-trial detention. Jafarov’s detention follows the arrest last week of Leyla and Arif Yunus and the disappearance of the print edition of Azadliq.
Index Award winning Azadliq newspaper was forced into cancelling its print run last week with little hope of restoring its publication.
Since the beginning of this year, cases of assault against journalists, legal threats and lay offs worsened Turkey’s already precarious state of press freedom. Catherine Stupp reports
The Global Network Initiative and the Internet and Mobile Association of India have launched an interactive slide show exploring how India’s internet and technology laws are holding back economic innovation and freedom of expression.
Religious persecution is real, and should be fought. Freedom of belief is a basic right. But blasphemy laws protect only power, and never people.
Malian band Songhoy Blues spoke to a London audience about the challenges musicians face in their country, where music has been banned by a local armed Islamist group in the north of the country since 2012
Leyla Yunus has been charged with “high treason (article 274), tax evasion (article 213), illegal entrepreneurship (article 192), forged documentation (article 320) and fraud (article 178.3.2)”, reports Meydan TV.