In October of 2009 a Saudi journalist was sentenced to 60 lashes and is under a two-year travel ban for her involvement in a television show in which a man bragged about his sex life. The man himself who spoke was sentenced to 1,000 lashes 5 years in prison because of his boast. These charges were placed under religious law and obviously the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was not taken into account when assessing these two people's right to freedom of speech.
Seeing this happening in Saudi Arabia distances many Americans from the problem, it could never happen to us, we have the right to free speech, we are a developed country. Then what of Canadian Reverend Stephen Boissoin who was sentenced with a lifetime speech ban preventing him from saying anything about homosexuality publicly or privately after he wrote a letter to a local newspaper objecting to the "homosexual agenda". This happened just over the northern border of our own country.
Roxana Saberi, the journalist who was sentenced to 8 years in prison on counts of spying for the United States, was American. Euna Lee and Laura Ling, the journalists who were arrested and held for 140 days in North Korea, were American. Not even under the values of freedom that the United States boasts can all Americans be free from the consequences of free speech in other countries. These problems are still relevant to the United States no matter how distant the issues may seem.
All these stories have links you can check out here:
http://www.internationalfreepresssociety.org/2009/10/saudi-journalist-sentenced-to-60-lashes/
http://www.internationalfreepresssociety.org/2009/12/mark-steyn-lifetime-speech-ban-lifted/
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/19/world/middleeast/19iran.html
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32294577
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