STATEMENT
UNHRC rejects attempts to dilute Internet freedoms
ARTICLE 19 welcomes the adoption by consensus of the resolution on Internet and Human Rights by the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC), with the support of more than 80 co-sponsoring States. The resolution reaffirms that the human rights people enjoy offline, also apply online, including the right to freedom of expression. Read more >
More on Human Rights Council's 26th session:
STATEMENT
Iraq: Blanket ban on access to the Internet is a violation of Freedom of Expression
In June 2014, the Iraqi government ordered internet service providers to shut down the internet in five provinces covering most of the central belt of the country: Ninewa, al-Anbar, Salah al-Din, Kirkuk and Diyala. The government also ordered an internet shutdown in eleven specific places, most of them in and around the Iraqi capital Baghdad.
Read more >UPDATE
Myanmar: Disappointment surrounds amendment to assembly law
ARTICLE 19 joins parliamentarians and civil society disappointed by the government’s failure to bring the Law on the Right to Peaceful Assembly and Peaceful Procession in line with human rights standards.
Read more>PRESS RELEASE
Egypt: Jazeera decision symptomatic of wider crackdown
‘Journalists are in the front line of the Egyptian government’s campaign against free expression. Six journalists have been killed in the past eleven months – while they were doing their jobs, and because they were doing their jobs. Many more are in jail. Unfair trials and harsh sentences, such as those handed down to Baher Mohamed, Mohamed Fahmy and Peter Greste, are part of a campaign to restrict everybody’s freedom.’
Read more >PRESS RELEASE
Somaliland: Journalists should be immediately released
ARTICLE 19 condemns the harsh and excessive sentences handed to two Somaliland journalists and the revocation of the license of a Media Network by the Hargeisa regional Court on June, 25 2014.
Read more >ADVOCACY LETTER
Letter to Eric Holder in Support of WikiLeaks
We, the undersigned press freedom and human rights organizations, call on the Justice Department to officially close all criminal investigations of WikiLeaks and its editor-in-chief, Julian Assange, and to stop harassment and other persecution of Wikileaks for publishing in the public interest.
Read more >
WORLD CUP
Russia: the relative cost of preparing for the battlefield
Russia is clearly keen on football – it will be hosting the next World Cup in 2018 - and according to
Bloomberg the government directly finances 56 percent of Russian Premier League teams, with another 19 percent backed by state-controlled companies - to the tune of approx. $1.1 billion a year. It’s expected costs to host the next World Cup – a cool $21 billion as
minimum. Such investment is in stark contrast, however, to how little the Russian state provides for the journalists it sends to foreign fields where the possibility of being shot at is very real.
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