From Academy Award-nominated director Richard E. Robbins comes Girl Rising – an innovative new feature film about the power of education to change a girl – and the world. Each girl is paired with a renowned writer from her native country who tell the girls’ stories with profound resonance.
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Iranian painter Nicky Nodjoumi left his country in 1980 after an exhibition of his work opened in Tehran. “[The authorities] saw the show and they labeled me as anti-revolution, anti-Khomeini, and anti-regime,” he says. He is now an established artist living in New York.
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First sentenced in 2011 to life in prison for purportedly criticizing the emir in his poem “Tunisian Jasmine”, Qatari poet Mohammed al-Ajami had his reduced 15-year prison sentence upheld by the Court of Cassation in appeal this October.
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Author and Booker Prize winner Salman Rushdie discusses the roots of freedom of expression in the Indian tradition at last session of the India Today Conclave, March 17, 2012. Rushdie is the author of The Satanic Verses, a novel whose import is currently banned in India.
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Pakistan’s move to ban access to the gay social networking website Queerpk reflects the conservative society’s inability to accept a “larger world view”, activists say. Keeping with Pakistan’s internet censorship policies, some say the ban is aimed at curbing alternate and progressive discourse.
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More than 600 journalists, media workers and social media producers have been killed in the last ten years. To put an end to violence against journalists, the United Nations has developed the UN Plan of Action on the Safety of Journalists and the Issue of Impunity.
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“The arrest of [Ali] Anouzla is the latest chapter in a series of harassment cases against uncompromising journalists. Such instances reinforce the impression that media freedom is under attack in the country.” – Hassan Masiky, former advisor to Amnesty International USA.
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