The right to use the Kurdish language has been one of the major issues of controversy in Turkey during the republic’s entire existence. In recent years, the situation has been dedramatized and it is...

In the late 90s, several Turkish media outlets decided to build a common network, “Bianet,” to help each other meet the numerous threats facing the freedom of speech at the time. The 1990s were a dark...

PEN International has directed its spotlight on the situation in Turkey, which has been afflicted with serious throwbacks in the field of freedom of speech. Reforms aimed at opening up the society...

Turkey has recently carried out several reforms rendering the country more democratic. At the same time, the same government imprisons increasing numbers of writers and opponents of the regime. How...

The Russian state is tightening its grip over the church, the media and the courts. Russia claims to be a democracy, but the sentence against the three members of the punk band Pussy Riot could not...

In the last few months, the repression in Belarus has tightened even more. Iryna Chalip, correspondent in Belarus for the Russian newspaper Novaja Gazeta, tells us about the recent attacks on freedom...

The diplomatic crisis between Belarus and Sweden goes much deeper than to the recent “teddy bear incident”. The poet and former president candidate Uladzimir Njakljajeu, who was imprisoned after the...

Books and the written word have always invoked fear in dictatorial regimes. Martin Ezpeleta visits the Library of Forbidden Books in the Argentinian city Córdoba, and reminds us of one of the military...

All over the world, the “social networks” continue to play an important role in the struggle for democracy. This is happening right now in Belarus, known as the last dictatorship of Europe, where KGB...

It has been exactly a year ago since Ethiopian forces in the Ogaden Province arrested the two Swedish journalists Martin Schibbye and Johan Persson. They have been sentenced for “terrorism” and remain...

Afghanistan has never before had more news outlets, with 200 print media, 44 television stations, 141 radio stations and at least eight news agencies. On the other hand, in the past decade it has...

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...