Mallam Tukur, editor and publisher of Desert Herald, an independent weekly in Kaduna state, has been arrested and threatened with prosecution on defamation charges. The Committee to Protect Journalists claim the threats are related to a recent...
France's has fast-tracked a law allowing the government to block websites. Amendments seeking judicial oversight and clauses specifying pages not sites should be blocked were rejected. The law has been classified as urgent, bypassing the normal...
Chinese authorities have told the US human rights group, the Dui Hua Foundation, that Gao Zhisheng - a human rights lawyer who has been missing for more than a year - is in Urumqi, Xinjiang. Zhisheng's case has drawn international attention due to...
Hackers took control of the website of Agos, a leading Turkish-Armenian newspaper last Friday, the cyber-attackers uploaded images of the alleged murderer of the newspaper’s former editor-in-chief, and winner of the Index on Censorship’s 2008...
British freelance journalist and documentary film maker Paul Martin was detained at a Gaza courthouse yesterday on the orders of Hamas officials. According to a Ministry of Interior Spokesman Martin - who has worked for the BBC and the Time - is...
Christopher Handley, 39-year-old office worker, was sentenced on 11 february to six months in prison for mailing obscene matter, and “possession of obscene visual representations of the sexual abuse of children." Following this sentence, Handley...
Laws protecting journalists and their sources are to be proposed next Tuesday. Julian Assange, editor of whistle-blowing website Wikileaks, has been advising parliamentarians and believes the parliament is receptive to the need for change. If the...
Prime minister Silvio Belusconi's party has pushed through rules which will drastically circumscribe political content during the run-up to Italy's regional elections. State broadcasters must now either accommodate over 30 political parties on...
Officials detained for 15 hours three human rights activists who were attempting to compile a list of missing persons. Aleksandr Cherkasov of the Moscow-based Memorial Human Rights Center said neither the reason for their detention nor their...
Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo's's appeal against a 11-year prison sentence rejected by a court in Beijing. Liu was convicted six weeks ago on charges of subversion, to widespread international condemnation. Roseann Rife, the deputy director for Asia...