Significant shortcomings in the promotion of democracy and human rights feature highly in the European Commission’s 2015 Progress Report on Turkey, which points to ‘significant backsliding’ on protection of freedom of expression in the last two years after several years of progress.

Critics claim there is a growing trend in Macedonia that artists who explore controversial issues calling into question the state or church are being censored and are practising self-censorship, Balkan Insight reported. A recent case in 2014 involved an artist, Irena Paskali, who created a billboard asking why so many …

Marat Guelman was handed an eviction notice to clear out of his rented exhibition space in Moscow’s Winzavod art centre by 5 November 2015. He was served the notice on 20 October 2015, just two days after he hosted an auction to help 12 people who were imprisoned for participating …

The world’s biggest toy manufacturer, the Danish company Lego, has been accused of oppressing free artistic expression after they declined to sell a large amount of lego bricks to the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, who was going to use them for what Lego defined as ‘political works’ at an exhibition …

The Swedes are currently debating whether the film ‘The dead still have a name’ is anti-Semitic or not, and whether it should be banned, as the Israeli ambassador to Sweden has demanded. ‘The dead still have a name’ is a new film focusing on the ship drama in 2011 when …

On 28 October 2015, Nobel Peace Centre in Oslo, Norway, hosted a two-hour event called ‘Let’s talk about freedom’, where Freemuse’s Daniel Brown was the moderator. Part 1  Children are the hope of the future. But what happens to the children and youth fleeing from war zones? Who are they …

An independent girls’ school in Ipswich has ignited a censorship row after it pulled a Rebecca Lenkiewicz play scheduled for 13 October 2015 due to “grave reservations” over its portrayal of child sex abuse. Censorship campaigners claim the move is part of worrying trend among schools and other education bodies …

A Belgian and a German artist have had an exhibition of their graphic novel shuttered in St. Petersburg’s Nabokov Museum, according to The Moscow Times. The artists, Dominique Goblet and Kai Pfeiffer, were displaying their work as part of an international comic, graphic novel and illustration festival called Boomfest, which …

On 29 September 2015, the First House of the French Parliament – Assemblée Nationale – adopted a new law on artistic freedom, architecture and heritage, which is now to be presented to the Senate. The law is to protect the principle of artistic freedom and freedom of dissemination. Laurence Cuny, who …

In September 2015, ‘Isis Threaten Sylvania’, a series of seven satirical light box tableaux by the London-based artist Mimsy, was removed from the ‘Passion for Freedom’ exhibition at the Mall Galleries in London after police raised concerns about the “potentially inflammatory content” of the work. The decision to remove the work from …