A recent crackdown on journalists and opposition activists has increased fears that Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi will use tactics similar to his...
Journalists defiant despite fears of return to Egypt’s bad old days
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CATEGORY: Middle East and North Africa
Free speech on hold in Tunisia as rapper faces jail
On 21 March, a Tunisian court sentenced rapper Ala Yacoubi (aka Weld El15) to two years in prison in absentia, over an anti-police song and video,...
Free speech on hold in Tunisia as rapper faces jail
On 21 March, a Tunisian court sentenced rapper Ala Yacoubi (aka Weld El15) to two years in prison in absentia, over an anti-police song and video,...
Index calls on Bahrain government to free Nabeel Rajab
Index on Censorship has called upon the Bahraini government to release 2012 Index  Freedom of Expression Award winner Nabeel Rajab and other prisoners of conscience
Tunisian woman under fire for bare-breasted protest
A 19-year-old Tunisian women’s rights activist, known only as Amina, has come under fire for posting a topless photograph of herself online. Amina is a member of FEMEN, a Ukranian radical feminist group notorious for their topless protests. Weeks ago, Amina uploaded a picture of herself to a website she started for the group in Tunisia, with ”My Body is My Own and Not the Source of Anyone’s Honor” written across her bare chest. Late last week, the Paris-based head of the group, Inna Shevchenko, claimed that Amina had been committed to a psychiatric ward by her family members. Shevchenko told the Atlantic that she last heard from Amina on 18 March. Her disappearance came after a 16 March appearance on Tunisian talkshow Labes to […]
The free speech agenda for John Kerry’s “listening trip”
The US Secretary of State is headed for the Middle East and the Gulf. Sara Yasin explains the censorship issues in the region he needs to hear about
Two years on, what’s happened to Egypt’s dream of religious freedom?
Egyptians who took to the streets in mass protests in January 2011 demanding the downfall of Mubarak's authoritarian regime were rebelling ---...
Doubts over Bahrain “dialogue” as teenager protester killed on anniversary of uprising
Second anniversary of Bahrain uprising is marked amid violence and scepticism over talks. Sara Yasin reports
Israel’s “Prisoner X” case and the creep of military censorship
OPINION: In June 2010, Israel’s Ynet website reported on the detention, and then six months later on the death, of unknown detainee “Prisoner X” in...
Israel’s “Prisoner X” case and the creep of military censorship
OPINION: In June 2010, Israel’s Ynet website reported on the detention, and then six months later on the death, of unknown detainee “Prisoner X” in solitary confinement. A gag order issued by an Israeli court soon after put an end to any reporting on the case, or even reporting of the order itself. “Prisoner X” became a byword in the Israeli media for yet one more of the kind of security-related stories that no-one quite knows the truth of, and probably never will. Nothing more was heard until this week, when an Australian TV documentary claimed that the man in question was one Ben Zygier, a 34-year-old father-of-two and an Australian citizen who had moved to Israel a decade earlier. […]
The battle to keep women in Tahrir Square
Egyptian Salafi preacher Ahmed Mahmoud Abdulla — known as Abou Islam — recently made remarks justifying sexual violence against female protesters in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, claiming that women who join protests are asking “to get raped”. The preacher, who owns private religious television channel Al-Ummah, has previously stirred controversy when he burnt a Bible outside the US Embassy in Cairo during last year’s protests over anti-Islam film the Innocence of Muslims. In a video posted online last Wednesday, Abdulla said that women who join the protests are “either crusaders who have no shame or widows who have noone to control them”. He also described them as “devils”, and added that “they talk like monsters”. A few days before he made […]
Egyptian court orders month-long ban on YouTube
Over the weekend, an Egyptian court approved a month-long ban on YouTube, for refusal to remove controversial anti-Islam film the Innocence of...
