Secularism and the role of religion have always been charged subjects in Turkey—perhaps more today than ever before. Tarik Günersel, playwright and President of Turkish PEN gives us his views on...

“The basis of democratic freedom is freedom of speech”, said Aung San Suu Kyi in 2010, right after she was released from nearly 20 years of house arrest. In Burma neither freedom of speech or the...

Mexico is one of the most dangerous countries in the world for journalists. The main reason is the drug wars between criminal organisations. “Some people say that being a journalist in this country is...

The fundamental human rights are not open for negotiation. But what do we do when a democracy starts to legalize torture? Larry Siems, writer and the Director of Freedom to Write and International...

What happens to the children of dissidents? To tell an unwelcome truth or to protest against oppression takes a lot of personal courage. But only too often the authorities tries to silence dissidents...

Being stateless means that you do not have any civil rights such as personal documents, education, employment, or access to medical care. In Kuwait there are currently around 100 000 stateless people...

The Egyptian revolution showed us how people with very different backgrounds could work together for one cause: to fight a totalitarian regime. But who were they? And how can the conflict between the...

The Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and his party Fidesz controls over two-thirds of the parliamentary seats. Now they are putting the country through a thorough makeover. The Canadian-Hungarian...

In 2010, the Hungarian parliament voted for a new media law that gives great powers to a new Media Authority to impose fines and revoke licences, with no possibility of appeal. There have also been...

Shaun de Waal, a leading film and literary critic at the Mail & Guardian (Johannesburg), reports on some key developments in South Africa today. Seventeen years after the end of apartheid and fifteen...

One of the charges brought against the Kurdish writer and lawyer Muharrem Erbey, imprisoned without trial since the Christmas of 2009, is that he gave a lecture in the Swedish Parliament where he...