Global Free Speech

Global Free Speech covers international stories and trends affecting the right to speak, publish, and share ideas across borders. From government crackdowns to grassroots movements, this category highlights the global fight for free expression in diverse political and cultural landscapes.

Our report with the University of Essex The weaponisation of travel bans to Silence Speech and Dissent is published today. Photo: Curated Lifestyle/Unsplash+ When we think of state censorship, we often picture prison cells, violent police crackdowns or control of newsrooms. However, our report titled The weaponisation of travel bans to silence speech and dissent published today by Index on Censorship reveals a quieter, less visible tool of state repression that is devastating civil society across the world. We found that rather than protecting public safety, governments are increasingly manipulating “national security” or “public order” exemptions to trap journalists, fracture families and exile critics. Our research shows that these bans are highly adaptable tools that occur around politically sensitive events such as protests, elections and crackdowns on democratic activity. Their shared, devastating objective is to control narratives, block external scrutiny and create a chilling effect on free expression. As we researched this topic, we strongly felt that to understand the severity of this crisis, the spotlight must remain entirely on the impacted individuals. The victims of this widespread authoritarian trend pay with their lives and livelihoods being upended by arbitrary and undemocratic measures. Our analysis highlights that in authoritarian contexts, travel bans act as overt tools of absolute repression. In Saudi Arabia, they function as a form of “quasi-detention”, ensuring that prisoners of conscience remain silenced long after they are physically released from their cells. Take the example of Salma Al-Shehab, a doctoral student at Leeds University, who was imprisoned simply for tweeting in support of women’s rights. Upon her release, she was handed an eight-year travel ban, effectively destroying her academic career by barring her return to the United Kingdom. Similarly, in Algeria, our research shows how journalists like Mustapha Bendjama find themselves trapped in a bureaucratic nightmare. Extrajudicial travel bans, known as ISTNs, are routinely issued by security agencies without formal judicial oversight, leaving targets in a legal vacuum with no clear avenues for appeal. Bendjama shared with us that this forced isolation acts as a “mental imprisonment” that has dried up his sources and severely compromised his ability to conduct rigorous journalism. One of our most troubled findings was that the chilling effect of these restrictions extends well beyond authoritarian states, creeping into hybrid democracies. In India, administrative tools like “Look Out Circulars” are deployed to trap critical voices within the country’s borders. Sanna Irshad Mattoo, a Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist, was prevented from travelling to New York to accept her award, sending a clear message that international recognition offers no immunity from state retaliation. In Georgia, foreign journalists who report critically on the country’s democratic backsliding have been arbitrarily denied re-entry at the border using generic legislative clauses. French journalist Clément Giradot was refused entry after reporting on political demonstrations, a decision that suddenly separated him from his home, his Georgian wife and his young child without any concrete legal justification. It became clear to us that these are not isolated administrative errors. We believe they are part of a coordinated assault on international human rights. Whether it is Nicaragua arbitrarily revoking citizenship to render critics stateless, Belarus forcing exiled dissidents into jeopardy by refusing to renew passports abroad or the United States deploying visa revocations and social media screenings against lawfully present critics, the goal appears to be one: to enforce widespread self-censorship and fear. The international community can no longer treat these administrative traps as routine border control measures. We urgently recommend taking action. States must do away with these opaque directives, end the use of secondary travel bans as a form of collective punishment against families and align their domestic laws with international human rights standards. Furthermore, democratic host nations must step in to provide secure legal status and alternative travel documents for exiled dissidents while applying sustained diplomatic pressure to demand the lifting of these arbitrary restrictions globally. Respecting and protecting freedom of speech should not know any ideological boundaries or state borders. With this report, we express our solidarity with the brave ones who raised their voices and with many more who were silenced and never known. While researching and interviewing participants at the front lines of this injustice, we were reminded of the importance of academia’s role as both a sanctuary for freedom of expression and a service to society at large. window.option_df_140795 = {“outline”:[],”autoEnableOutline”:”false”,”autoEnableThumbnail”:”false”,”overwritePDFOutline”:”false”,”direction”:”1″,”pageSize”:”0″,”source”:”https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/travel-bans-report.pdf”,”wpOptions”:”true”}; if(window.DFLIP && window.DFLIP.parseBooks){window.DFLIP.parseBooks();}   READ MORE

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When we think of state censorship, we often picture prison cells, violent police crackdowns or control of newsrooms. However, our…

Afghan journalist and director of Rukhshana Media, Zahra Joya. Photo: Associated Press / Alamy Stock Photo Nearly five years after the Taliban took control of her country and she fled Kabul, Afghan journalist Zahra Joya is telling her story. Her book The Vanishing Girl of Kabul, written with British-American journalist Amie Ferris-Rotman, is a mirror not just for Joya’s life, but for millions of other Afghan women and girls, who she describes as currently living in “home prisons”. The book tells the story of the Taliban’s brutal silencing of women and Joya’s own life of resistance. How she pretended to be a boy in the 1990s so she could go to school. How her family quickly packed up her grandfather’s handwritten Persian epic while the Taliban raided local villages for banned books. And how she feared for her life when the Taliban returned five years ago. Being a Hazara woman  – Hazaras are a persecuted minority in Afghanistan – she grew up with extreme violence levelled at her people. “It was important for me to record it, for people to understand, for the next generation and the history of Afghanistan,” Joya told Index. The day before the Taliban returned, she recounts in her book, she had the freedom to go the beauty salon. The next day offered a stark contrast. “Everything collapsed, including my own freedom,” she said. As the Taliban drew further into Kabul, she and her colleagues at the women-led publication which she had founded, Rukhshana Media, continued reporting. As Joya saw it, she was standing up for her rights and for freedom of expression, and was making sure the world knew about what was unfolding. “We never imagined that the Taliban would come to power so quickly, and everything would vanish very soon. We never thought that one day journalism would be a huge risk for the whole team,” she said. Joya had set up Rukhshana Media only a year before, and even then she was doing something courageous. In Afghanistan’s patriarchal society, the media space was dominated by men, who often held leadership positions. Now, Joya continues to run Rukhshana Media from London. Her journalists across Afghanistan work underground, protecting their identities by remaining anonymous and never meeting each other. Joya feels she has a heavy responsibility on her shoulders. Just before she spoke with Index, she received a voice message from one of her journalists describing how she wakes up every morning afraid of what she is going to lose on that particular day. Women and girls are banned from secondary and university education, and most jobs are closed to them. They must cover their bodies completely and even visiting a doctor requires a male chaperone. “The reality of Afghanistan under the Taliban regime is a complete gender apartheid system,” Joya said. Since she’s been in the UK, Joya has received a vast number of direct messages on social media from Taliban supporters, threatening her directly for her work and sending her videos of sexual abuse. But she has received supportive messages too. Now, she hopes readers of her book will reflect on the story, perhaps even take a photo of themselves with it and send her a message. Writing about her own life has been a difficult experience, and she has had to be careful around details of her relatives who are still in Afghanistan. But Joya said that remaining silent is not a solution. “It is part of my struggle against the misogyny, discrimination and injustice that is ongoing in Afghanistan,” she said. “The Vanishing Girl of Kabul. Maybe it’s me because I have had to disappear many times and find myself again, but I feel like she could just as easily be the millions of women of Afghanistan.” The Vanishing Girl of Kabul was published by Robinson on 23 July 2026 READ MORE

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Nearly five years after the Taliban took control of her country and she fled Kabul, Afghan journalist Zahra Joya is…

Australia ranks highly for LGBTQ rights. Photo: Tristien, CC BY-SA 4.0 A large Australian HIV charity which wanted to promote information about new treatments to its Facebook and YouTube followers has found its posts banned by Meta. The charity in question, the National Association of People with HIV Australia (NAPWHA), believe their posts were targeted by what they describe as a “loosely organised campaign of spurious complaints motivated by stigma” towards HIV and the communities affected by it (which include gay and bisexual men, other queer people, trans folks, sex workers and drug users). It’s a growing trend in Australia for organisations which promote sexual health and reproductive rights, and some rights groups fear that the social media teen ban in the country is just making the problem worse as platforms become more cautious about what they promote. When NAPWHA first launched its campaign in 2023 to inform people with same sex and other partners that new treatments meant they couldn’t pass on HIV, they found their ads were suspended on YouTube and Facebook. Sydney-based NAPWHA said that Facebook told them their promotional posts was rejected because they did not comply with their policies on ads about “social issues, elections or politics”. Eighteen months on, NAPWHA suspects that the campaign was subject to censorship via platform moderation and online hostility. They partnered with Swinburne University in Melbourne to investigate and last week published a report containing a legal and policy guide and a communications pack that provides practical tips and strategies for community-led public health organisations facing the same problem. Daniel Reeders, senior project officer at NAPWHA Learning, told Index at the report’s launch there had been an “absolute outpouring of stress and frustration” from small organisations facing a similar predicament. He said: “Platforms like TikTok, Meta and Google have walked away from their duty to moderate fairly and effectively, and we’re left with the wreckage of civil discourse.” The crackdown is part of a broader censorship of crucial sexual and reproductive health and rights information tracked by global NGO ReproUncensored all around the world. Founder and executive director Martha Dimitratou told Index they have documented nearly 600 cases across big tech platforms in Australia and globally, with more than a dozen new cases reported in just the last few days. Dimitratou said that Australia’s world-first teen social media ban, introduced last year and now set to be followed by about 20 other countries, could be to blame. Adam Finch, marketing, branding and communications coordinator for Brisbane-based nonprofit HIV charity, Queensland Positive People, said that he had recently had one set of the same posts approved one day but then censored the next. “I think we’ve just managed to dodge a bullet (but) in many ways it’s a matter of time,” he told Index, adding that they were starting to self-censor. Dimitratou said that Meta and Google must be held accountable and provide full transparency on why awareness campaigns were being restricted. “They must take immediate steps to ensure their moderation systems do not block lawful, evidence-based public health information,” she said. “Finally, governments must reclaim democratic oversight from the growing sovereignty of US big tech companies, enforce the law, and call these practices what they are: illegal.” Reeders said they were calling on Australia’s eSafety Commissioner, the Australian Government’s independent online safety regulator, to “take a moment away from banning things” – referring to the new social media law – to “consider how platforms can be regulated to allow better access for organisations promoting public health”. Meta has been contacted for a comment. READ MORE

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A large Australian HIV charity which wanted to promote information about new treatments to its Facebook and YouTube followers has…

An image showing a person wearing a t-shirt that the Reform party leader has reported to the police for incitement. Photo: X Reform UK have complained to police about Green Party leader Zack Polanski for sharing an image on Instagram [which Polanski has since removed] which they claim was an incitement to violence against their leader Nigel Farage. The image is of the slogan “We’re only making plans for Nigel” with the image of a guillotine. The line itself is a reference to the title of a 1979 song by the British band XTC which reached number 12 in the singles chart. While the t-shirt design has no image of Farage nor any branding pertaining to Reform UK, it also bears no reference to the visuals of the song’s sleeve, nor the band’s logo. As with many commercially sold t-shirts, a cultural reference has been repurposed to make its satirical point. T-shirt slogans are less a call for action, more a proclamation of allegiance. “This machine kills fascists” has the actual word “kill” in it, but is a reference to Woody Guthrie’s motto painted on his guitar (sold by the same company as the “plans” t-shirt, albeit it has since been removed from the website). Wearing the t-shirt is proclaiming an allegiance to the idea of art being used to win the battle for hearts and minds. The appearance of the guillotine in this case is hardly an incitement to imminent action, because a guillotine is an unwieldy weapon for any would-be lone wolf assassin. Were it a noose, gun or knife, that might be a different case. Since the guillotine is not a significant part of British history, we can deduce that here the guillotine serves to express a wish for a revolutionary state in the future (and the wearer’s allegiance to such political change). A future idealised political state of being is far removed from incitement to imminent action. When demonstrators hold up placards saying “Death to …” or “Kill all … “ that is far closer to incitement. People have gathered en masse in a licensed space for political protest, confident that the camera lenses of mass broadcast outlets will be trained on them. In such a formally constituted space, there can be no doubt about the expressly directed political nature of such signs. A lone individual walking an ordinary high street with “We’re only making plans for Nigel” on his chest may attract citizen lenses, but is not in any formally designated protest space, nor can he be directing his message to any specific audience, as there is no guarantee who will come into his orbit that day. As an author, I look at the phrase “We’re only making plans for Nigel” and it doesn’t make sense beyond a very specific context. I would never write it, unless there was a group of people from which “we” were only selecting Nigel for some plan, or that “we” wouldn’t even be making plans at all, were it not for Nigel. I would just write “We’re making plans for Nigel” which still retains either meaning, but where the word “only” has become redundant. This is important because it reattaches the phrase back to the XTC song in its specificity. My guess is that XTC simply inserted the word “only” to make the lyrics scan with the musical rhythm. Which makes it a word usage unique to them. Yes, it has been co-opted by the makers of this t-shirt, but to proclaim a specific allegiance, not an incitement to violence. READ MORE

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Reform UK have complained to police about Green Party leader Zack Polanski for sharing an image on Instagram [which Polanski…

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