Archives: Free Expression

The ruling United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government in New Delhi is known to introduce regulations on the sly, but this one comes across as sinister. The new Information Technology Rules Act 2011 seeks to regulate Web content that is deemed to be “disparaging,” “harassing,” “blasphemous” or “hateful.” The Department of Information Technology (DIT) can now block any website that displays disparaging content based on a list of criteria defined by the new rules. Any official or private citizen can demand the removal of content that they consider objectionable. The...

India's Central Board of Film Certification has refused a censor certificate to Inshallah, Football, a documentary film about an aspiring footballer who was denied the right to travel abroad on the pretext that father was a militant in the 1990s. The film's director Ashvin Kumar said, "This morning (December 23) I received a call from the Indian censor board stating that after having referred the film to a revision panel, censor certification will not be given. We have not been asked to make any cuts. The reason given was that it spoke against the Indian government and that...

The Singapore High Court on Wednesday found a British author guilty of insulting the city-state’s judiciary in a book on the death penalty in Singapore. Alan Shadrake, 75, would be sentenced for contempt of court next Tuesday. The Briton is likely to face a possible jail term, a fine or both. "This is a case about someone who says among other things the judges in Singapore are not impartial... (and are) influenced by political and economic situations and biased against the weak and the poor," Justice Quentin Loh said on Wednesday. Loh said Shadrake had been "selective" in the way...

Comments posted on Facebook about a female mathematics teacher has resulted in 16 students of a leading private school suspended from their school in the Indian city of Chandigarh. The students, all from Class 12 of Vivek High School, have been suspended for three months, according to the Times of India. Asaf Parvez, son of a high-ranking government official, recently got low marks in his mathematics exam. He then posted his answer sheet on Facebook with rude and abusive comments about the female teacher. Fifteen of his classmates egged him on with their comments. All the posts were...

The former editor-in-chief of Playboy Indonesia Erwin Arnada has surrendered. His lawyer said Arnada complied with the law on Saturday and turned up at the prosecutor’s office. He has been convicted for violating the Islamic nation's indecency laws. “He was not taken to the prosecutor’s office by use of force. He would not escape, but he gave up himself,” Todung Mulya Lubis was quoted by Jakarta Post as saying. When asked why the journalist did not surrender earlier, Todung said his client needed time to complete his motion for a case review. “The motion is done, therefore...

A Montana woman drove 1,500 km from Montana to a museum in Loveland, Colorado so she could destroy a controversial piece of art featuring Jesus. Kathleen Folden has been arrested for damaging a print that portrays Christ engaged in a sex act. The woman entered the Loveland Museum Gallery on Wednesday, used a crowbar to break glass over the art and ripped the print, the Associated Press reported quoting the Loveland Reporter-Herald. ...

Morocco's topselling Arabic language weekly Nichane, which had taken up in the past taboo subjects like monarchy and Islam, closed shop last week blaming "the highest circles of power" for organising a boycott of advertisers. The trouble for the magazine began last year after Nichane, its French-language sister publication TelQuel and France's Le Monde newspaper conducted an opinion poll on the monarchy. The poll, which found that King Mohammed VI had done a good overall job in the first decade of his reign but needed to do more to reduce poverty,...

An arrest warrant has been issued against the former editor-in-chief of Playboy Indonesia, Erwin Arnada, after he failed to surrender himself to court on Thursday. Arnada has been sentenced to jail for violating the Islamic nation's indecency laws. The chief of the prosecutor’s office in South Jakarta, Muhammad Yusuf, told the Jakarta Post that they had given Erwin enough chances to give himself up. “We had been waiting for him since 10 a.m. But till 4.30 p.m. when our office closes, he had not surrendered voluntarily. Therefore, we issued the arrest...

A Brazilian student of tourism who was expelled from her university for wearing a minidress that was deemed too short has won $23,800 as compensation from her university. Geisy Arruda, now 21, was thrown out of Bandeirante University in Sao Paulo last year for wearing the short, pink dress to class. She was expelled for her lack of "ethical principles, academic dignity and morality" by wearing provocative and "inadequate clothing," the Associated Press has reported. Arruda was jeered by male students who repeatedly called her a "whore." She had to wear a professor's white coat and...

A young Muslim girl in the Indian state of Kerala has been receiving death threats for not wearing the burqa, and instead often opting for jeans. She is an aeronautical engineer by qualification striving to get into the country's civil services. For Rayana R Khasi, a resident of Kasargode, 600 km from state capital Thiruvananthapuram, her problems began after she returned from Chennai city last year after completing her engineering studies and coaching classes for the civil services exam. Initially there were polite pleas from her relatives to don the traditional Muslim attire....