Pianist Fazıl Say may no longer face a ten-month jail sentence for blasphemy charges related to his tweets as Turkey’s Supreme Court of Appeals overturned the decision, saying his social media posts fall within the realm of freedom of expression, Hurriyet Daily News reported. The court ruled by majority – …

A draft of China’s first film law aims to ease and clarify the country’s censorship process, though regulations will continue to exist. The law was debated on 30 October 2015 by the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, ABC News reported. The country’s film market is heavily regulated and …

Zimbabwe should abolish the censorship board and other bodies censoring or regulating artistic expressions in order to comply with Zimbabwe’s new constitution. Instead a new classification board should be mandated to issue age recommendations to protect children. This was a recommendation made by arts practitioners, artists, journalists and human rights …

Rather than protecting writers’ and publishers’ constitutional right to freedom of artistic expression, a Federal Court in Malaysia has made a principal decision to favour Islamic laws that protect ‘the sanctity of Islam’. ZI Publications and its director, Mohd Ezra Mohd Zaid, had challenged a Selangor religious enactment that they claim …

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 …

At first, much of the heavy-handed censorship on artists by the Ben Ali regime appeared to have been swept away. But as artists are more frequently being arrested and charged in courts with penal codes of the pre-revolutionary days, Tunisian legislation has increasingly come under fire from defenders of freedom …

“I feel there should be constitutional right of freedom of expression. Either you give cinema artistes complete freedom of expressing themselves or you don’t have them in the society because in cinema, people can’t be open for attack all the time,” Indian actor Manoj Bajpayee told IANS. According to the …

In the Punjab province in Pakistan, DJs, singers and show organisers are threatening to launch province-wide protest if Police continues to register cases against them while seizing their music equipment and loudspeaker systems because of a new legislation, the ‘Punjab Sound System Regulation Ordinance 2015’. The Punjab Government enforced the …

The local government of Pakistan’s northwest province wants to impose a Censorship Board Act to silence singers’ voices and curb artists’ activities, reports Sher Alam Shinwari from Peshawar By Sher Alam Shinwari The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) coalition government in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the northwest province of Pakistan, has recently tabled a …

“Like movies, censorship of music is a must and should be implemented immediately in our industry. This is the only way to preserve the sanctity of our music,” the renowned Indian singer Sukhwinder Singh told Times of India. He is displeased with the “visible vulgarity in present-day songs”. Sukhwinder Singh …