Aug 12, 2026 | 25 Stories 25 Years, Spotlight
In December 2013, Mohammed Mkhaitir published the first blog post of his life. In the blog he criticized the religious justification for slavery, a practice that is still prevalent in his home country of Mauritania. The next month he was arrested and sentenced to...
Aug 4, 2026 | 25 Stories 25 Years, Spotlight
If we measured your might it wouldn’t hold a candle to a constitution. We shed no tears for Ben Ali, nor any for his reign. It was nothing more than a moment in time for us, historical and dictatorial, a system of oppression, an era of autocracy. Mohammed Al-Ajami was...
Jul 28, 2026 | 25 Stories 25 Years, Spotlight
In September 2015, the U.S. Embassy in Tashkent, Uzbekistan received a visitor with a simple plea. She wanted to be put in touch with Freedom Now to help her son, Aramais Avakyan. Aramais was the owner of a fish farm in Jizzakh, a city of about 200,000 in eastern...
Jul 21, 2026 | 25 Stories 25 Years, Spotlight
Father Ly is a Catholic priest and one of Vietnam’s most prominent dissidents. He has been a strong advocate for religious freedom and democracy for over 40 years, having previously been imprisoned from 1977 to 1978 and again from 1983 to 1992. Freedom Now first...
Jul 14, 2026 | 25 Stories 25 Years, Spotlight
The Maldives is a tiny island nation about 500 miles southwest of India, perhaps best known as a prime tourist destination for its pristine beaches. What most people do not know is that since it gained independence from Great Britain in 1965, the Maldives was a...
Jul 7, 2026 | 25 Stories 25 Years, Spotlight
Alexander Lukashenko is the longest-serving European leader, having been the president of Belarus since 1994. In December 2010 he was cruising to a fourth term in yet another landslide election largely due to the violent suppression of opposition political parties and...
