Society for Defending the Freedom of Expression

The Society for Defending the Freedom of Expression was founded following up the Stop Censorship petition initiative. Our mission is supporting the freedom of expression as the elementary condition for democracy and opposing new forms of censorship on the social networks that become the main public forums for civic debates.

“STOP CENSORSHIP” PETITION
About 25,000 people signed our petition in 5 months without any paid advertising. Our goal is at least to double the number before the parliamentary elections in October in order to force our government and lawmakers to take legislative steps.

BECOMING THE MAJOR SOURCE IN CZECHIA
We run the website stop-cenzure.cz providing the overview on the digital censorship and mapping the current situation in the Czech Republic and abroad. Currently it is the most comprehensive Czech source on the topic. Almost every day we publish content on our social media channels (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube) and in the newsletter with 10,000 subscribers in total.

COLLECTING CASES OF CENSORSHIP
In February, we started collecting cases of censoring the Czech citizens by social networks and evaluating them with our own methodology. Our goal is to provide the legislators with processed and sorted documents needed for negotiating with the global platforms representatives in the Czech Republic.

GETTING PARLIAMENTARY PARTIES SUPPORT
We have gained the support of MPs from six parliamentary parties and we talk with the other ones too. In spring we plan to organize a seminar in the Parliament dedicated to the topic. We are preparing a proposal of legislative measures in cooperation with law experts.

ESTABLISHING INTERNATIONAL LINKS
We have established contacts with the Commission for Digital Freedoms at the Hungarian Ministry of Justice and were the first one in the Czech Republic to report on the Polish bill against digital censorship. We actively participated in the discussion on the „Action Plan for European Democracy“ (EDAP) with the European Commissioner Věra Jourová and debated with her on CNN Prima News. Currently we establish cooperation with international free speech organizations and similar initiatives and projects across Europe.

FUNDRAISING
We do not receive any subsidies and fund our activities ourselves so far. We are starting to receive the first contributions from our fundraising campaigns and appreciate any support from individual or collective donors who care about freedom of speech. Do you want to support us?

Contact

Společnost pro obranu svobody projevu, z.ú.
Králova 1a, Brno 61600, Czech Republic
E-mail: [email protected]
Bank account: Fio banka a.s., IBAN CZ9320100000002101930409, BIC: FIOBCZPPXXX