On 5 May the Bahraini regime arrested prominent human rights activist and 2012 Index award winner Nabeel Rajab for inciting violence on social networking sites. This is the second time Rajab has been arrested for so-called "cyber crimes", and last...
Six months after Tunisia’s first free elections, the country’s newspapers are filled with nostalgic longing for its former dictator. Even if his rule was a "veritable one-man-show", muses La Presse, "was his dictatorship really harmful to Tunisia?"...
According to pro-government daily Al-Ayam, Bahrain has now announced plans to prosecute citizens who post video footage from protests, or offer a "distorted" picture of Bahrain's "renaissance". Well-known human rights defender and Index award...
Nebil Jridet, General Director of the Arabic-language weekly newspaper Al-Oula, has entered his sixth day of hunger strike in protest against the Tunisian government's "unequal" distribution of state ads among newspapers. Jridet told Index that the...
As Egypt prepares for presidential elections in less than two weeks’ time, the country is on the brink of chaos. Tensions have been brewing for more than a year and the patience of Egyptians is wearing thin. They yearn for stability and many feel...
UPDATE: Yara Bader, Mayada Khalil, Hanadi Zahlout, Sanaa Mehsen, Razan Ghazzawi, Joan Ferso, Ayham Ghazzoui and Bassam Alahmad were released on 12 May. Five members of the Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression remain in prison,...
An Iranian cartoonist has been sentenced to 25 lashes after drawing a caricature of a MP. Cartoonist Mahmoud Shokraye depicted local conservative MP Ahmad Lotfi Ashtiani dressed as a footballer. Iranian politicians were recently criticised for...
Two Egyptian journalists were reportedly beaten while in military custody. Ahmed Ramadan and Islam Abu al-Ezz, of the online independent daily Al-Badil, said unidentified thugs beat them with swords while covering clashes in Cairo's Abbasiya...
In its annual report published on World Press Freedom Day (3 May), the National Syndicate for Tunisian Journalists (SNJT) announced that it had registered 60 physical assaults against journalists over the last year. The syndicate criticised the...
Index condemns last night’s arrest of Index’s 2012 Award winner and head of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights (BCHR), Nabeel Rajab and the ongoing harassment of human rights activists in Bahrain