Has Lukashenko given up flirting with the west, asks Olga Birukova

Has Lukashenko given up flirting with the west, asks Olga Birukova
With maybe hundreds of human rights activists named in the WikiLeaks files, and frontman Julian Assange threatening to throw them open to the world, it’s time for fair assessment of the potential threat to free expression advocates argues
Rohan Jayasekera
Press censorship feared in Eastern Africa as the ICC indicts first media personality.
Ernest Waititu reports
Nikolai Khalezin in hiding after the KGB issue arrest warrant for the co-founder of the Belarus Free Theatre. Mike Harris reports
Index on Censorship calls on the head of Iran’s judiciary to overturn the prison sentences handed down this week to the film directors Jafar Panahi and
Mohammad Rasoulof
Trainee accountant Paul Chambers, who was convicted of sending a “menacing communication” after he joked on Twitter that he would blow Doncaster’s Robin Hood Airport “sky high” if his flight was affected by weather, has won the right to appeal the decision, Index on Censorship has learned
Iranian director Jafar Panahi has been sentenced to six years in prison for "colluding in gathering and making propaganda against the regime". Panahi has also been banned from directing films or speaking to the press for 20 years.
Entire staff of Charter97 held by KGB – Index on Censorship learns of prison abuse – Natalia Koliada released
Index has learned that Special Forces broke into the apartment of Nikolai Khalezin, art director of Belarus Free Theatre, this morning [20 December] and arrested him. He is reported to have been taken to unknown destination. He is already third...
Reports are emerging from Belarus that opposition leaders Andrei Sannikov, Nikolai Statkevich, Rygor Katusev and Vitaly Rymanshevsky have been arrested by police. Sannikov had earlier declared a provisional coalition in Belarus, after thousands...