In this week’s column, Egyptian writer Hamdy el-Gazzar offers a personal account of the evening of February 11, 2011, the day former president Hosni Mubarak stepped down from office, ushering what he and many in the streets of Cairo celebrated as a new promising chapter for Egypt.
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Political cartoonist Sergei Tunin (Russia) takes a look at the action taken by three Russian television providers of pulling the plug on Dozhd (TV Rain), a TV station known for covering the country’s massive anti-government protests. The channel’s chief said the move amounts to censorship.
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Jack Straw, the ex-foreign secretary of Britain, recently visited Iran and what he found surprised him: a modernizing Tehran (despite heavy economic sanctions), an American-educated political administration, and a people ready to reach a lasting agreement with the West.
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In today’s cartoon Ethiopian political cartoonist Nayer Talal comments on the ongoing protests in Ukraine, which are splitting the country apart.
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Read an exclusive excerpt from Rewa Zeinati‘s first creative nonfiction book, Nietzche’s Camel Must Die: An Invitation to Say ‘No.’ A compilation of 115 daily Facebook notes, the themes range from women’s status and gender roles to kitchen sink grinders and men’s beards.
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In this interview Jason Q. Ng discusses the place that the social media site Sina Weibo has in Chinese culture, the origins of the Great Firewall and its censorship office, and why certain terms have been blocked on Weibo. Ng is author of Blocked on Weibo.
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Since the coup in Honduras of 2009, at least 32 Honduran journalists have been killed and many more continue to work in a climate of fear and self-censorship. A new PEN International report documents the intertwining roles that allow the violence to continue with near complete impunity.
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