The treatment of Vittorio Filippis, former publisher of Libération, signals the deteriorating situation for the media in France. Natasha Lehrer reports A demonstration was held on 5 December outside Paris’s Palais de la Justice to protest against...
Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa against Salman Rushdie marked a new era: a retreat from the ideal of tolerance and the spirit of the Enlightenment, says Bernard-Henri Lévy in this exclusive article from the new issue of Index on Censorship Twenty years...
Oleg Panfilov assesses the twists and turns of the investigation into Anna Politkovskaya’s murder and considers the chances of a fair trial The killing of Anna Politkovskaya two years ago split the Russian public. The majority of people chose to...
While the Anna Politkovskaya murder trial descends into farce, her newspaper, Novaya Gazeta, is cutting reporting staff. Is there more to the move than the financial crisis, asks Maria Eismont Novaya Gazeta, the Russian newspaper known worldwide...
Civil disobedience is sometimes the only way of making a democratic point, says Leo Murray of Plane Stupid ‘Sir, it is with very great regret that I must ask leave to visit the toilet as a matter of some urgency.’ Acting as my own lawyer had...
A new crackdown on the country's dissidents shows that Than Shwe's junta fears the power of the Internet, writes Larry Jagan Burma’s military rulers have launched a fresh crackdown on dissidents in the country, with more than a hundred activists...
Indonesia's rich and powerful such as Aburiza Bakrie prefer to subject media outlets to criminal proceedings rather than use the press law, writes David Jardine Above the ruck and reel of the city traffic the sound of crisp litigation documents...
Vietnam's journalists suffer when they dig too deep, writes Nick Caistor The 2005 Vietnamese code of practice for journalists stresses first and foremost that journalists should be: ‘absolutely loyal to the cause of nation building and protection...
Privacy cases in the UK continue to pose a significant challenge to press freedom, says Gavin Millar No one would describe coverage of Max Mosley’s subterranean trysts or Sienna Miller’s cleavage as cutting-edge investigative journalism. But Mosley...
Chris Ames identifies a worrying trend in the government’s latest refusal to release documents under the Freedom of Information Act The government has blocked disclosure of a controversial email in which the current head of MI6 is alleged to have...