In a major public lecture delivered at CEU on 7 June, organized and hosted by the the Center for Media, Data and Society (CMDS) at the School of Public Policy, David Kaye, the Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, warned that the world is witnessing "the greatest multi-front assault on freedom of expression since Mikhail Gorbachev introduced glasnost in the 1980s and rolled back censorship in the Soviet Union more than thirty years ago". This assault, Kaye argued, is caused by a range of factors encompassing "authoritarianism, dogmatic militant religious belief, terrorism and counter-extremism, online misogyny and propaganda, oligarchy and corruption, legal regulation and extra-legal intimidation, the desire for power and control of information." It is felt by a diversity of individuals – "journalists, artists, filmmakers, writers, regular citizens" – who face "threats, harassment, imprisonment, torture and even murder" simply for exercising their rights.
Read the full article on the CMDS website here.