The assassination of Hrant Dink has, fortunately, sparked renewed challenges to the censorious Article 301. But the Turkish state seems to be trying to squelch the debate. Would Dink have wanted his funeral to be used in this manner? From the Turkish Daily News, Jan. 24:

Responding to calls from prominent Turks and foreign leaders to annul a controversial law immediately, Justice Minister Cemil Çiçek said on Tuesday that the last thing Turkey needed was to begin another debate on Article 301 of the penal code, arguing that the matter should be discussed after slain journalist Hrant Dink, convicted under the article last year, was laid to rest.

Freedom's on the march. From the San Francisco Chronicle, Jan. 24:

One of the Bush administration's most far-reaching assertions of government power was revealed quietly last week when Attorney General Alberto Gonzales testified that habeas corpus -- the right to go to federal court and challenge one's imprisonment -- is not protected by the Constitution.

From AP, Jan. 24:

Former Social Distortion Bassist Killed

Placentia, Calif. -- Brent Liles, a former bassist for the 1980s punk rock group Social Distortion, was struck and killed by a truck while riding a bicycle, authorities said Wednesday. He was 43.

Freedom's on the march. From AlJazeera, Jan. 18:

The US defence department has released new rules allowing terror suspects to be convicted and possibly executed on the basis of hearsay evidence and some coerced testimony.

The current violent unrest in Bangladesh is generally portrayed (when the global media bother to take note of it at all) as a contest between the secular, left-leaning Awami League which governed until July 2001 and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), which has been ascendant since then in alliance with political Islam. But Taslima Nasrin, the dissident writer whose novels have been repeatedly banned by the government, says both parties have betrayed the country's founding secular values. From the Malaysia Sun, Jan. 11:

An international commission of human rights observers announced Jan. 21 that at least 23 people were killed and a number of cases of physical abuse and sexual assaults against women were recorded during the months-long conflict in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca last year. The Barcelona-based International Civil Commission for Human Rights Observation (CCIODH), headed by Spain's Ignacio Garcia, presented a preliminary report on the violations of the rights of civilians, teachers and activists of the Oaxaca People's Assembly (APPO).

From the Editor & Publisher, Jan. 22:

Conrado de la Cruz Jiménez, the publisher of the most influential daily in the Mexican state of Chiapas, has died in Miami, where he fled to escape prosecution by the state government, the Mexico City newspaper El Universal reported.

This is what George Bernard Shaw called "the extreme form of censorship." From the New York Times, Jan. 19:

ISTANBUL — The editor of Turkey's only Armenian-language newspaper was assassinated today on an Istanbul street.