Right to free speech and public protest being suffocated across the world

Chris Stone writes that the right to public protest is just one area in which autocratic regimes are limiting the right to free expression.

Before November’s terrorist attacks in Paris, it was legal to stage a demonstration in a public square in that city. Now it isn’t. In Uganda, although citizens campaigning against corruption or in favour of gay rights often faced a hostile public, they didn’t face jail time for demonstrating.

However, under a frighteningly vague new statute, now they do. In Egypt, government authorities recently raided and shut down prominent cultural institutions — an art gallery, a theatre, and a publishing house — where artists and activists once gathered.