Just last Sunday, Egyptian President President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi admitted that “innocent youths” may be held in Egyptian prisons, suggesting he would work for their release. The very next day, however, a Cairo court sentenced prominent Egyptian activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to five years in jail and fined him the equivalent of $13,000. El-Fattah […]

December 3, 2013: Ahmed Douma, an Egyptian youth activist who had played a prominent role in the April 6 youth movement, tweeted, “Security forces are arresting me this minute and taking me to Al-Basateen police station.” Later, he tweeted for the last time as a free man: “I’m now at Al-Basateen police station. I don’t […]

Irreverent? Admittedly.  Tasteless?  Often.  The French newspaper Charlie Hebdo regularly exercised a right to freedom of speech through satire. Everyone was a target–not just Islam and its radicals:  In a December issue, Charlie published a cover cartoon depicting a garish Virgin Mary giving birth to the infant Jesus. Today, the publication became a target itself.  […]

  Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty this week published a letter from their Azeri language service colleague, Khadija Ismailova, reporter is being detained in the Azerbaijan capital of Baku, as detailed in an earlier RePRESSed post. With characteristic cheer, she writes: My dear friends! Here in pretrial detention, my thoughts are with you. My only regret […]

  If you ask Azerbaijan prosecutors why they have jailed Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) reporter Khadija Ismayilova, they will tell you it is because she drove a former boyfriend to suicide. “Ismayilova was arrested for insulting [Tural] Mustafayev’s honour and dignity in the social networks and among her friends due to breaking off their […]

This week, U.S. Supreme Court is considering the issue of free speech in the digital age, reviewing the case of a Pennsylvania man who was sentenced to nearly four years in prison for posting graphically violent rap lyrics on his Facebook  page. Court documents show that back in May 2010, life wasn’t going very well […]

  The Syria Deeply blog today (SD) posted new guidelines for journalists covering the Islamic State (IS) in Syria’s Deir Ezzor province, now largely under IS control. A local journalist called “Amer” is alleged to have provided SD with  the new rules, which he says came out of a meeting between ISIS media staff and […]

Riots continue in Ferguson, Missouri–and so, too, have the arrests of journalists–at least 11 so far. Here’s a sampling of some of the criticism heaped on officials in Missouri: [View the story “#RePRESSed in Ferguson, Missouri” on Storify]