Harry's Place

On Tuesday Marine le Pen addressed the Cambridge Union.  Not surprisingly, the decision to invite her attracted criticism.  Student Rights, for example, expressed reservations:
“Universities do have a duty to uphold freedom of speech, but they are no place for the promotion of fascist views, and university authorities have a duty of care to their students [...]

After finally getting a passport allowing her to travel outside Cuba, the great dissident blogger Yoani Sanchez has arrived in Brazil.
You can follow her blog posts here and her tweets here.
A small group of pro-Castro demonstrators have made a point of trying to harrass and silence her. They blocked the screening of a documentary film [...]

It’s great to be able to record a small victory for freedom of speech:
MPs have confirmed that a controversial public order law that criminalises “insulting” words or behaviour will be reformed to permit greater freedom of speech. The move follows the Government giving way on the issue last month, after a bruising vote in the [...]

I was shocked to read (via Alan) about the recent attack on Lars Hedegaard, who seems to have narrowly escaped being assassinated on account of his views on Islam/Muslims.  You can hear a recent interview with Hedegaard here. As Ben Six notes:
Opinions can be ignored and gunmen can’t, and when you are in the vicinity of [...]

Back in September Baroness Warsi signed an agreement at the United Nations pledging that the UK and the Organisation of Islamic Co-operation would ‘work together on issues of peace, stability and religious freedom’. She is currently attending an OIC summit in Cairo.
I view both Warsi, and her interactions with the OIC, with ambivalence – perhaps [...]

The Independent reports how the BBC censored a Radio 4 drama about ‘honour’ killings, written by Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti, author of the controversial Behzti.  Performances of this play had to be cancelled back in 2004 following protests from the Sikh community:
Bhatti’s episode, called Heart Of Darkness and due to air on Friday, tells the story of an [...]

Following in the wake of regional anti-LGBT legislation, Russia’s Duma looks set to make similar laws binding at a national level.  Depressingly, only one parliamentarian voted against this measure at its first reading on Friday, and 86% of Russians apparently support the bill. 
The draft law, submitted in March 2012, details that the “promotion of homosexuality” [...]

I posted last year about the prosecution of pianist Fazil Say for ‘insulting Islam’.  Now English PEN reports that six members of the PEN Turkey board have been summoned for questioning by the Istanbul Public Prosecutor’s Office in connection with their support for Say.
In June 2012, PEN Turkey’s website carried a statement condemning the prosecution of the [...]

When determining the limits of freedom of speech the issue of incitement is often invoked.  Free speech fundamentalists might argue that only the most direct kind of incitement – offering payment in return for murder being an extreme example – should be outlawed, whereas most people set the bar a bit lower, and worry about [...]

I thought people might like to sign this petition in support of Raef Badawi, a liberal Saudi blogger who faces the death penalty for apostasy.
We demand that Saudi Arabia free and safeguard Raef Badawy and stop threatening people merely for expressing nonorthodox views on Islam or religion in general, because without freedom of speech, one [...]