In December of last year, the Chinese state jailed a physician in the city of Wuhan. His crime? Attempting to warn authorities against the occurrence of a potentially contagious and deadly new virus. The physician, Dr. Li Wenliang, has since died from the same disease whose spread he tried to contain.
Tag: Freedom of speech
How Much Should we Tolerate?
In his New Year’s Eve speech last year, King Harald used the expression “We should say kind words”. Some weeks later, many of us were saying “Je suis Charlie”, expressing solidarity with a periodical that published satire that many people certainly found was not kind at all. Can we reconcile these sentiments? Yes, I believe… Read more »
Weakening Russia Curtails Access to Publicly Available Information
These attempts at curtailing the flow of information and persecuting the disseminators of politically undesirable news (including bloggers) might appear old-fashioned and inspired by Soviet-era KGB practices, which are held dear by Putin and his henchmen. They are, nevertheless, more effective than the spread of Internet-based social networks would suggest—and not only due to the… Read more »
Imagine Novaya gazeta with the Nobel medal on the banner
In the past-but-still-present Soviet times, leading newspaper proudly carried a set of awards – like the Order of the Red Star – on their front pages. I can just imagine the fiercely independent Novaya gazeta sporting the Nobel medal on its banner (just above the usual political cartoon) – as an added challenge to the… Read more »