Friday, 25 June 2021

As Apple Daily closes down, speech crime comes to Hong Kong

Apple Daily newspaper. Photo: tse Pui Lung / Alamy Stock Photo

Ten months after the arrest of Next Digital founder Jimmy Lai and a massive raid at the group’s headquarters in August last year, the Hong Kong Police’s national security department launched a bigger strike against the Apple Daily last week which has now seen the newspaper forced to close.

They were accused of colluding with foreign forces, one of the crimes under the national security law, the first time it has been used against journalists, writes Chris Yeung.

Online Safety Bill will be “catastrophic for ordinary people’s freedom of speech”

Photo: Victoria Heath/Unsplash

A coalition of experts including David Davis MP, Index on Censorship chief executive Ruth Smeeth, and Gavin Millar QC has savaged the government’s proposed Online Safety Bill, as they launch the ‘Legal to Say. Legal to Type.’ campaign. Read the story here.

Watch: Don't SLAPP the messenger

Why abusive legal threats and actions against journalists must be stopped. Watch the event again here

Bill Browder, Head of Global Magnitsky Justice Campaign (chair)
Annelie Östlund, financial journalist
Herman Grech, Editor in chief of Times of Malta
Justin Borg Barthet, Senior lecturer at University of Aberdeen

World Whistleblowers Day: why we must be able to speak freely

Unless you are a classical Greek scholar or a student of the French philosopher Michel Foucault, it is unlikely that you will have heard of parrhesia. It is an Ancient Greek term meaning “to speak freely”. It is also the name of a new charity aimed at helping whistleblowers set up by Ian Foxley, a retired lieutenant colonel in the British Army and the man who revealed corrupt payments in dealings between the UK and Saudi governments. Read about it here.

A year is a long time in human rights violations

"The last 12 months have been an emotional rollercoaster," writes our CEO Ruth Smeeth. "The impact of Covid-19 has been a cloud over our lives; we’ve lost people close to us, we’ve all feared the effect of a virus no one had heard of 18 months ago, we’ve missed our loved ones and we’ve looked on in horror at events both at home and abroad as political leaders have both failed to manage the pandemic and undermined basic human rights under the guise of public health protections." Photo: Jana Shnipelson

With Europe's attention focused on the football, we take a look at the records of the competing nations when it comes to free speech.

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Index on Censorship defends people's freedom to express themselves without fear of harm or persecution. We publish censored writers and artists, monitor and campaign against censorship, and encourage debate.

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