Stories about Freedom of Speech from March, 2013
Iran: “We Want Our Children to be Free”
The mother of dead blogger, Sattar Beheshti,said in a message in YouTube that she gave her son for Iran and added “we want our children to be free”. Sattar Beheshti died...
Trying to Get Through: Hungarians Send Video Messages to Prime Minister
Young Hungarians are shocked by the government's stubborn refusal to acknowledge their protests and their demands for a more democratic decision-making. To get their message across, four young people launched...
Angola: Arrested and Disappeared for “Thinking Differently”
Yet another protest in Luanda ended up with 18 detained. The protest action called for "dignity and the right to life for those who think differently", remembering silenced journalists and...
As Liberal Russia's Secret Superhero ‘KermlinRussia’ Unmasks, Some See Evil
Arseny Bobrovsky, the owner of a Russian PR firm called “Daily Communications,” would be a thoroughly typical example of Moscow’s “creative class” liberals, were it not for one thing: Bobrovsky...
Brazilian LGBT Advocates Beaten, One Arrested
On March 27, a protest against the recent election of congressman and controversial evangelical preacher Marco Feliciano as chairman of the Committee for Human Rights and Minorities in the Brazilian Deputy...
Censoring Censorship in China
The above screen capture of a local news brief has gone viral on Chinese social media yesterday. It said: “Recently Myanmar has unblocked Facebook, the world's most popular social media...
Regime Critic Goes Missing in Tajikistan
An outspoken regime critic and leader of a minority ethnic community has gone missing in Tajikistan. The country's internet users have largely missed his disappearance. The reactions from those who...
Arrest Warrant Issued for Egyptian Blogger Alaa Abd El Fattah for a Twitter Mention
Egyptian blogger Alaa Abd El Fattah surrendered himself to the public prosecution today (March 26) after an arrest warrant was issued for him last night. The investigation, tweets Abd El...
Venezuela: New Wave of Online Threats
Several Venezuelan cartoonists, journalists, writers and artists have been the target of a series of threats through Twitter, telephone and text messages, according to news portal Noticias 24. They began...
Saudi Royal Advisor to Sue Twitter User
On Riyadh Bureau, Ahmed Al Omran writes: A member of the Saudi Shoura Council said today that he is going to sue a conservative writer for attacking him on Twitter....
Saudi Arabia Threatens to Block Skype and WhatsApp
Saudi Arabia, an Enemy of the Internet, is threatening to block a number of popular communication tools, such as Skype and mobile messaging service WhatsApp, unless the operating companies agree...
Digital Freedom: Principles and Concepts
The Egyptian Institute for Freedom of Thought and Expression issued its first statement on digital freedom, a simplified research paper to propose definitions for digital rights and related principles which...
China's Red Army Returns Online and Hunts Students
In China's Southern Guangdong province, a local University has been monitoring student conversation online and controlling their negative sentiment for the last 3 years.The news triggered outrage online; many think...
University Builds Internet Red Army in China
Since 2010, Guangdong Baiyun University started running a “Students’ Internet and Social Media Information Monitoring” team to watch students’ online activities. More from Off Beat China.
Ethiopians Jailed for Protesting Italy's ‘Butcher of Ethiopia’ Memorial
A group of protesters were detained in Ethiopia after demonstrating against a small Italian village's publicly funded memorial to Rodolfo Graziani, a general under fascist Italian dictator Benito Mussolini whose...
Shedding Light on Macedonia's “Black Monday”
In order to shed light on the events of Dec. 24, 2012, when journalists and opposition MPs were thrown out of the Macedonian Parliament [en, es, mk], Foundation Open Society...
Cries of Censorship as Brazilian Satire Blog Ordered Shut Down
A Brazilian court has ruled that satirical blog Falha São Paulo must remain shut down because its name is too similar to the newspaper it mocks, a move that critics...
Vietnam Police Question Activist Over Article
According to a Radio Free Asia report written by Y. Lan and Rachel Vandenbrink, Vietnamese activist Le Cong Cau of the Unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam was accused by the...
