To submit a blog, please read the OxHRH Blog guidelines.
Snehal Dhote - 27th October 2020
On 7 October 2020, a three-judge bench of the Supreme Court of India held that the right to protest guaranteed under the Constitution of India cannot be exercised at public places for an indefinite period of time. This judgement resulted from a Special Leave Petition filed in the Supreme Court for the clearance of Delhi’s […]
- 1st October 2020
News stories emerging from Belarus resemble a gruesome shopping list of human rights abuses. Authorities have systematically violated the right to freedom of expression, freedom from torture, freedom of assembly, and freedom from arbitrary arrest, among others. In recent weeks, an even more concerning trend has emerged. Lukashenko has refocused efforts on silencing opposition activists […]
Rakshitt Bajpai - 23rd September 2020
The recent statistical report presented by the National Statistical Organization (NSO) indicates the deteriorating standards of availability of internet and computers to students in India, which violates their fundamental rights and creates a digital divide between the privileged and the unprivileged. The situation of India’s education sector is deteriorating rapidly, which is reflected in the […]
Ayush Mishra - 14th September 2020
The Special Marriage Act was enacted in 1954 to allow citizens of India to solemnize inter-faith and inter-caste marriages without the need to renounce their religion. The Supreme Court of India, however, has recently accepted a petition challenging the constitutionality of Section 6 of the act that mandates the Marriage Officer to publish the notice […]
Mathias Cheung - 13th September 2020
The press is always the first casualty of a new despotism. On 10 August 2020, Jimmy Lai, founder of the pro-democracy Apple Daily newspaper, was arrested in Hong Kong – the first in a wave of arrests, while over 100 police officers raided the newspaper’s offices for 9 hours. They were released on bail the […]
- 9th September 2020
South Africa celebrates more than twenty years of democracy based on democratic values, social justice, and protecting human rights. Despite this, racial tension and hate speech occurs with alarming frequency. To redress this, South Africa introduced a statute which prohibits hate speech, The Promotion of Equality and Prevention of Unfair Discrimination Act 4 of 2000 […]
- 27th August 2020
The federal government of Pakistan often issues directions to suspend cellular mobile services, ostensibly for reasons of national security. Mobile services (2G/3G/4G/LTE) are usually ordered to be suspended on specified days for long hours (such as 5am till 6pm for two days) on specified locations across all cities. The shutdowns occur around a wide range […]
Nikhil Purohit - 2nd June 2020
The French National Assembly passed a law (‘Avia law’) in order to curb the growth of hate speech on the internet. Although a draft of the law was first tabled in 2019, it was met with several criticisms [see, here and here], but in the light of the pandemic the government escalated the process and […]
Gehan Gunatilleke - 16th April 2020
On 1 April 2020, Sri Lanka’s police announced that it would arrest those who disseminate false or disparaging statements about government officials combating the spread of the Covid-19 virus. In the days that followed, the government deployed speech-related criminal law with increasing regularity. On 2 April, the police announced the arrest of several persons for […]
Josep Maria Tirapu - 26th March 2020
The imprisonment and conviction of the Catalan pro-independence political leaders by the Spanish Supreme Court has been largely criticised by numerous international human rights organizations. Amnesty International, the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention of the United Nations and Human Rights Watch, amongst others, have published reports pointing out that an overly broad interpretation of the […]
Stephanos Stavros - 27th January 2020
On 14 January 2019, the European Court of Human Rights found a violation of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) in Beizaras and Levickas v Lithuania, as a result of the Lithuanian authorities’ failure to prosecute homophobic speech targeting two young men (the applicants) who “had kissed on the Internet”. The kiss – a […]
Joseph Johnson - 25th October 2019
On 1 July 2019, the ‘Anti-False Content Bill’ was introduced in the Senate of the Philippines, seeking to ‘protect the public from the deleterious effects of false and deceiving content online’ and following in the footsteps of the Malaysian Parliament. Whilst the aim is prima facie defensible, the ‘Punishable Acts’ established by the Bill make […]