Turkey's parliament ap-proved changes to a free speech law yesterday in a move to placate the European Union. But critics said the changes were so opaque that they could make jail threats for writers more - rather than less - likely.

Parliament amended article 301 of the penal code, which is modelled on one used in fascist-era Italy. The article penalises "insulting Turkishness" and has been used to prosecute the novelist Orhan Pamuk, winner of the 2006 Nobel prize for literature, and Hrant Dink, the Turkish-Armenian newspaper editor murdered on an Istanbul street last year.