More than a year and a half ago, we brought you the story of an American citizen jailed in the UAE for making a spoof YouTube video. In October 2013, Shezanne Cassim and a group of friends produced a video which poked fun at some youths in the Satwa neighborhood of Dubai. Dubbed the […]
UPDATE: Spoof Video Maker Seeks Restitution, Pardon From UAE Government
Posted May 5th, 2015 at 1:06 pm (UTC+0)
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Standing Ovation for RFE/RL Azeri Journalist Ismayilova
Posted May 2nd, 2015 at 10:24 am (UTC+0)
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We have more news about Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reporter Khadija Ismayilova: When the detained Azeri journalist entered a Baku courtroom Tuesday of this week, she received a standing ovation and loud applause from onlookers. That prompted guards to place her into an all-glass, sound-proof box. When her lawyers asked the judge to release her […]
Jailed RFE/RL Reporter Khadija Ismayilova Wins Prestigious Literary Prize
Posted April 16th, 2015 at 4:31 pm (UTC+0)
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I read with some pleasure this afternoon news that a former VOA colleague has been awarded a top prize for her work. Khadija Ismayilova, 38, spent time as a reporter for the VOA’s Azerbaijan language service a few years ago, where I got to know her as a a cheerful but fearless reporter, who often […]
Cuba: #FreeTaniaBrughuera
Posted April 13th, 2015 at 4:39 pm (UTC+0)
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Back in 2009, Cuban performance artist Tania Bruguera staged her work Tatlin’s Whisper #6 in Havana without a hitch. This past January, she planned to restage the event in Havana’s Revolutionary Square, but authorities not only stopped the performance, they arrested Bruguera, who has been blocked from leaving the country ever since. Tatlin’s Whisper […]
Mexicans Want Carmen Aristegui Back On Air
Posted April 10th, 2015 at 12:15 pm (UTC+0)
“A cross between Christiane Amanpour and a dog with a bone.” That’s how the Los Angeles Times describes the prominent, hard-hitting journalist Carmen Aristegui, who is famous throughout Mexico for her tough investigations into government corruption. In addition to blogging at Aristegui Noticias (“News”), Aristegui anchors a news program on CNN Spanish and, up […]
Turkey Blocks Social Media Over Hostage Photo
Posted April 6th, 2015 at 2:05 pm (UTC+0)
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Turkey on Monday blocked access to Twitter, Facebook and YouTube over the publication of an image of a Turkish prosecutor who was taken hostage and killed last week by leftist militants. The ban on Facebook was lifted after the social media giant removed the photo. Twitter reportedly also complied with the demand to remove […]
Another Blogger Hacked To Death In Bangladesh; Calls To End Impunity
Posted April 1st, 2015 at 10:33 am (UTC+0)
Activists are expressing outrage in the wake of the second brutal murder of a blogger in Bangladesh in recent weeks. Monday morning, blogger Oyasiqur Rahman was attacked by three men with large knives in the streets near his Dhaka home. Police arrested two suspects at the scene, identified as students at two separate madrassas — […]
AP Chief: ‘Killing Journalists Should Be A War Crime’
Posted March 30th, 2015 at 2:36 pm (UTC+0)
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Since 1992, more than 1,000 journalists have been killed while doing their jobs in conflicts across the globe — 61 in 2014 alone, and four of those worked for the Associated Press, the world’s oldest and largest news gathering organization. It was, says the wire service’s CEO Gary Pruitt, as deadly as any year […]
#CollateralFreedom: RSF Unblocks Nine Censored News Sites
Posted March 12th, 2015 at 12:33 pm (UTC+0)
In an effort to counter online censorship in 11 countries it labels “Enemies of the Internet,” Reporters Without Borders is unblocking access to nine news websites that have been blocked in their respective countries.. It has done so by mirroring blocked sites – that is, duplicating the censored sites and uploading their contents on internet […]
Bangladeshi-American Blogger Murdered In Dhaka
Posted February 27th, 2015 at 1:36 pm (UTC+0)
From Bangladesh today comes news that prominent writer and blogger Avijit Roy was attacked and killed on a busy sidewalk as he and his wife Rafida Ahmed (seen with him in Twitter photo above) were returning from a Dhaka book fair Thursday night. She was injured but survived that attack. A group calling itself Ansar Bangla […]
