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.

A tiny proportion of sexual violence cases in Tigray have led to prosecution This article is written in two voices: First, Birhan Gebrekirstos Mezgbo, a researcher and advocate who lived through the Tigray war, then Veronica Blecker, director of the upcoming documentary on sexual violence in Tigray, Not Ours to Carry. Birhan: The moment everything shut down, it felt like the world had disappeared around us. No phone. No internet. No transportation. No banking. No way to know who was alive and who was not. My mother and sister were only around 120 kilometres away from me, but suddenly they felt unreachable, like they were in another universe. I couldn’t call them, I couldn’t travel to see them, and I had no way to know if they were safe. That silence was one of the hardest things I have ever lived through. Honestly, I don’t think the word “blackout” is enough to describe it. What made it worse was knowing that this darkness was not just about communication being cut. The darkness itself became dangerous. Everywhere you turned there was fear. Soldiers, killers, rapists, all operating inside this silence from which nobody could call for help or even tell the world what was happening. The blackout became part of the violence. At the time, I was meeting with survivors of conflict-related sexual and gender-based violence. I still remember walking for almost three hours to reach one survivor after being told where she was staying. When I arrived, she was gone. I walked that same route again and again, trying to find her. I never did. Veronica: The blackout was not simply the absence of communication. It was a weapon. The violence happened inside a closed circle, surrounded by guns and with no way in or out – not only from Tigray, but even within Tigray itself. Phone lines were cut, the internet was shut down, journalists were expelled, roads were blocked. The darkness was deliberate. It ensured that violence could happen unseen and unheard. Birhan: For survivors of conflict-related sexual violence, this darkness was devastating. Accessing medical care, reporting abuse, or seeking support became almost impossible. Ayder Hospital in Mekelle was one of the few facilities still functioning, sustained largely by the commitment of volunteer doctors and nurses. But reaching it could take weeks or even months. Along the way, survivors often faced even more violence. I still think about Abeba. She was raped three different times while trying to reach help in Mekelle. I often wonder whether her life would have been different if support had been available closer to where she lived. Instead, the journey to seek care exposed her to further harm. Eventually, she lost her life. For me, her story captures what the blackout did to so many survivors. The violence did not end with the assault. The darkness allowed it to continue. Veronica: Between 2020 and 2022, an estimated 600,000 people were killed in Tigray. The Commission of Inquiry on the Situation in the Tigray Region documented more than 280,000 cases of conflict-related sexual violence. A mere 25 military convictions have followed. Even if survivors could bring themselves to speak, to tell the world what was happening and what had happened to them, they are trapped inside a system of fear. In a system where armed men control every road and every community, speaking out can feel like a death sentence. I arrived after the blackout had already done its work. The violence had happened in the dark. There was physical evidence – detention sites, signs of torture, a landscape scarred by war. But there was little footage of the violence as it happened. The blackout had made sure of this. Every editorial decision – how to film testimony, how to protect identities, how to structure the narrative – was made in the knowledge that the official position was that there was nothing to document. These were the decisions that shaped Not Ours to Carry. The film captures what denial looks like in practice. One of the protagonists stands before the African Commission on Human Rights and reads survivor testimony into the official record. Later on, in the same session, the Ethiopian delegation responds on camera, rejecting in its totality what they call “baseless allegations”. The protagonist’s verdict: “Every time I go to these institutions, I feel like a clown in somebody’s circus. Going there and speaking is doing nothing but adding to their show.” Both governments were offered the right to reply. Ethiopia rejected the allegations in their totality. Eritrea did not respond. The denial is not historical. It is ongoing. What we documented is not only a record of violence. It is a record of censorship: the systematic suppression of evidence, testimony, and truth by governments that knew exactly what silence would allow. Survivors of conflict-related sexual violence carry two wounds. The first is what has been done to them. The second is being told that it didn’t happen – being told this by perpetrators, by institutions, by communities that impose shame rather than offer compassion and justice. The blackout prevented documentation. Then the world chose not to look. The silence did not end when the internet came back on. Birhan: I keep speaking because the difference between me and many of the women whose stories I carry is often nothing more than luck. I witnessed their pain and suffering, and I cannot simply move on with my life and ignore it. This is not only my voice; it carries the voices of hundreds of thousands of women and girls. From four-year-old children to grandmothers in their eighties. There can be no real accountability, and no meaningful future, if those voices continue to be ignored. That silence is not only theirs to break. It is ours too. Not Ours to Carry is premiering on 6 July at the Sevil International Women’s Documentary Film Festival, Azerbaijan’s only independent documentary film festival dedicated to women’s issues and gender equality If readers want to support survivors directly, donations go to One Stop Centres in Tigray here: https://www.notourstocarry.com/donate READ MORE

0

This article is written in two voices: First, Birhan Gebrekirstos Mezgbo, a researcher and advocate who lived through the Tigray…

On Tuesday 16 June, Baroness Tina Stowell introduced her anti-SLAPP Bill in the House of Lords. Photo: Parliament TV The UK Anti-SLAPP Coalition, which is co-chaired by Index on Censorship, had a significant campaign success this week when coordinated Bills were introduced in both the House of Lords and the House of Commons. On Tuesday 16 June, Baroness Tina Stowell introduced her anti-SLAPP Bill in the House of Lords. The next day, Sir John Whittingdale MP introduced a parallel bill in the Commons. Remind me: what is a SLAPP? SLAPP stands for strategic lawsuit against public participation. The term describes legal threats and actions that are used to intimidate and harass journalists, whistleblowers, campaigners, academics, and survivors of abuse (among others) by burdening them with time-consuming and costly litigation. Anyone who speaks out on an issue of public interest is at risk. Even if a defendant has every chance of succeeding at trial, the lengthy process of preparing a legal defence is so prohibitively expensive that they are forced to quietly submit to the claimant’s demands. This means they are silenced. SLAPPs threaten our right to freedom of expression and our democracy by preventing ordinary people from being able to hold power to account. They also remove information from the public domain, which means that SLAPPs have an impact on all of us. We have published case studies of a small number of the SLAPPs that have crossed our desks in the UK Anti-SLAPP Coalition. From cosmetic surgery patients to environmentalists, abuse survivors and campaigners, you can read them here. So, what would the new bills actually do? The proposal is simple: Anyone who believes that they are facing a SLAPP would be able to ask a judge to examine the case at an early stage. If the court concludes that the claim is being used to suppress public-interest speech, it could be dismissed before huge legal costs begin to accumulate. This “early dismissal” mechanism would shift the balance away from wealthy claimants who can use litigation as a pressure tactic, and towards defendants who currently face years of stress, uncertainty and expense. What these bills definitely won’t do is to protect public-interest speech across the UK. This is a devolved issue, and legislation passed in Westminster will only cover England and Wales. Separate anti-SLAPP bills will need to be passed in Scotland and Northern Ireland to ensure that everyone in the UK is protected from SLAPPs. Why now? Successive governments have acknowledged the problem of SLAPPs, but have failed to bring forward comprehensive legislation. Anti-SLAPP measures were, yet again, left out of this year’s King’s Speech despite repeated and widespread calls for their inclusion. Even after the speech, Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy confirmed that the government would bring forward legislation “as soon as time allows”. The introduction of parallel Private Members’ Bills is therefore as much a political signal as a legislative exercise: Parliament is being asked to show that the issue has not gone away. Will these Bills become law? The honest answer is that we don’t know. The second reading for Whittingdale’s bill is scheduled for late November, and no date has yet been set for Stowell’s bill. However, the impact is immediate as it keeps anti-SLAPP reform firmly on Parliament’s agenda, providing a ready-made legislative blueprint to show that legislation to stamp out SLAPPs can be done effectively and easily within the existing legal framework. In other words, the real question is not whether Stowell’s or Whittingdale’s bills become law exactly as drafted. It is whether the government will finally listen to mounting pressure to back these bills, and put their weight behind ensuring comprehensive anti-SLAPP legislation that will protect anyone who speaks out in the public interest. But I heard that anti-SLAPP legislation has already been enacted. Why then is the UK Anti-SLAPP Coalition pushing for more legislation? Because the UK’s existing anti-SLAPP protections are very limited. The Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act (ECCTA) introduced anti-SLAPP provisions in 2023, but they apply only to cases linked to economic crime. Many abusive cases fall outside that definition. It also depends on a subjective test, forcing the court to undertake a time-intensive process by which the intentions of the SLAPP filer have been identified. That’s why we need a broader law that can protect anyone facing a SLAPP, regardless of the subject matter. What can I do to support the UK Anti-SLAPP Coalition as they continue to call on the government to enact comprehensive anti-SLAPP legislation? You can support the work of the Coalition by writing to your MP, by posting your support for action on SLAPPs using the hashtag #StopSLAPPs, and by signing up to the newsletter of the Anti-SLAPP Coalition here. READ MORE

0

The UK Anti-SLAPP Coalition, which is co-chaired by Index on Censorship, had a significant campaign success this week when coordinated…

The UK plans to ban under 16s from accessing social media. Photo: Nick Fancher/Unsplash The UK government has announced a ban on social media for under-16s and then some kind of social media curfew at night for children between 17 and 18. I’m pretty sympathetic to the idea that we need to hold social media companies to account for children and young people’s unfettered access to the kind of content that would be pretty bad for me as an adult if I sought it out. I know of young teenagers who have been lured into sending nude pictures to a sexy “woman” online and then told the images will be sent to all their friends unless they hand over a lot of money. And anorexic girls who find others online to compare what food they have eaten and how to outwit the doctors and parents who are trying to help them. And 14-year-old boys who are pushed vile misogynistic content from the manosphere because the algorithm has identified them as being just that, a 14-year-old boy. Most young people will have seen hardcore violent porn – stuff that my generation couldn’t have even accessed in licensed porn shops – by the age of 11 or 12. At one time a few years ago, kids regularly shared videos of beheadings in the playground. When we carried out research for our Gen Z themed issue last year, many young people said they had seen the video footage of Charlie Kirk being shot. But ban children from most social media platforms altogether? What is their right to free expression? YouTube can push you manosphere videos, but many young people use YouTube to learn: from understanding maths to grasping complicated concepts. This is important in general and especially important for dyslexic kids who have problems reading, or for children from poorer households without books. Social media – often a gateway to the internet more broadly – can open up a world that as a teenager you might never experience at home: music, books and culture. Social media often gives people the words to describe how they feel and who they are. Instagram is just as much a place to share dance routines and comedy sketches as it is to learn about politics and news. Social media is a place of protest too, and yes, even for the under-18s. We didn’t object to the revelation that youth revolts against an elderly oligarchy in Nepal were organised via the gaming site Discord, and that a viral video of a schoolboy kicked them off. In 2026 digital rights are a central part of freedom of expression, not just an add-on, and freedom of expression is not just something you get as a grown-up. This is before we consider whether a social media ban is possible. It undoubtedly isn’t. Australia which introduced a ban (although not on YouTube, gaming sites or education sites) has shown us that young people and families can very well circumvent it. At least 60% of young people are still on social media, including on many much less regulated than sites like Snapchat. VPNs make it easier to bypass all national regulation. We use VPNs at Index as an extra layer of security and privacy and we acknowledge the crucial role they play in authoritarian states. Do we want the government to ban them too – or fine children’s parents if they let them use them? How the hell do you police a curfew for 17 to 18 year olds anyway? Will neighbours report young people hanging around the streets after 9pm on their phones? Governments who introduce policies they know won’t work just discredit themselves. The thing that shocked me most about Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s announcement was that there was no mention of the trade-offs between a social media ban and free expression as if it simply wasn’t an issue. No reassurance that the government wouldn’t decide at some stage that the ban on social media and gaming might extend to adults taking part in perfectly legitimate behaviour which the government might disapprove of. Or an admission that the government itself uses social media sites freely to push its own messages (including the latest announcement). In many ways, the government’s ban on social media for children feels like an evasion. The government doesn’t want to address the deep problems social media causes for all of us: that X is a platform run by a US-based trillionaire, Elon Musk, who wants to use it to influence our national politics. Or that Mark Zuckerberg talks a good free speech game but his company, Meta, is trying to suppress a book, Sarah Wynn Williams’ Careless People, about how the company operates. Or that extremist views and racist conspiracy theories – including from bad actors which ban social media in their own countries –  are being used to cause deep societal divisions and bring huge financial rewards for the social media companies themselves. That’s before we even talk about tax evasion and the way our data (and our children’s data) is being monetised.  How social media platforms operate is untransparent, complicated and changing all the time. How children are affected – or not – is doubly complicated. Platforms have vast computing resources – and could be regulated by government to be more transparent about the way they operate without affecting free expression. Then we might all be able to decide democratically what sort of a society we want online –  for us and our children. My kids, now in their 20s, grew up in the current atmosphere. Their generation distrust many things they read online, share tips on how to avoid scams and go on regular detoxes from social media so they don’t endlessly scroll. They have vast networks of real friends online but are increasingly trying to do more things IRL (in real life). They are incredibly lucky to be living in a liberal democracy, which mostly doesn’t restrict access to social media and where the internet has opened up their minds to untold possibilities and ideas. In China, social media is accessed through government-monitored websites centred round WeChat: every interaction can be seen by the censors if they choose to. VPNs regularly get blocked. Russia is tightening its grip on cyber space and people often find the internet has been taken down by the security services. It’s a similar story in Iran, which is just coming out of a months-long internet blockade. And in these countries and others, we regularly hear of people who comment or like a social media post from a person or organisation the government doesn’t like and end up in prison or worse. It would be hyperbolic at this stage to suggest the UK is moving in the direction of China, Russia and Iran. But nor should we downplay what a paternalistic move this is. It bypasses the benefits of the internet for children without actually tackling the risks. The internet, when it started, opened up a world of free expression. Today governments should be thinking about how to protect that right to free expression for everyone including young people, not issuing unenforceable bans that will ultimately punish teenagers and their parents –  and which ministers know won’t work. Perhaps the Prime Minister and his cabinet should be looking a little carefully at the older generation’s behaviour. Recent US research showed that it is the over 65s who are most likely to spread misinformation and fake news online. Or is this the next step? Remove the internet from the teens, next the boomers and then all of us.   READ MORE

0

The UK government has announced a ban on social media for under-16s and then some kind of social media curfew…

Photo: Fauzan Saari/Unsplash George Orwell didn’t mince his words when it came to international sporting events. In 1945, following Dynamo Moscow’s draw with Chelsea FC – a result that delighted Joseph Stalin – Orwell described such fixtures as “mimic warfare” and “orgies of hate”. Football fans will no doubt take issue with Orwell, arguing that the beautiful game is just as unifying as it is divisive and I’ll admit to a soft spot for a major tournament. But as with all things Orwell, the man has a point. Today the 2026 World Cup begins, hosted between the USA, Canada and Mexico. Players and referees have already been denied entry to the USA in a sign that the Trump administration’s immigration policy impacts everyone. This isn’t really a free speech issue, but it speaks to a broader chill around immigration, that has also targeted people on the basis of their speech. Organisations that campaign for media freedom are worried. The Press Freedom Tracker has expressed concerns about the role of ICE agents during the tournament and how journalists may be detained for less than favourable reporting. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) have issued guidance for foreign reporters in the country too. Seeing this, a friend of mine, a former Moscow correspondent, noted that the advice was strikingly reminiscent of guidance issued during the 2018 World Cup in Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Your average sports correspondent may not have a problem. Football is fairly safe to report on if you stick to what’s happening on the pitch. It does though become more dangerous once you probe beneath. Speak to journalists behind Football Leaks, a cross-border investigation that revealed “how agents, intermediaries and club officials are perverting sporting ethics and tax regulations to maximise their access to the riches generated from football, at the expense of the quality of the game, the development of talent and the wishes of the fans”. Getting the stories out as part of this investigation was riddled with risk. It makes sense. We know the rich and powerful abuse legal systems and professional football is a game of the rich and powerful. Of more immediate concern are the stories beyond the fixtures, the ones that curious journalists may understandably want to pursue once on the ground in the three countries. While media freedom in Canada remains high, it’s far more fragile in the USA and even more so in Mexico. I’ve heard reports of walls being erected and banners deployed to conceal poverty and urban decay in Mexico. As the nation tries to put its best foot forward, in every sense, will they want reporters snapping away at this? But it’s not all bad. Teachers in Mexico are protesting near the World Cup stadium in an attempt to use this sensitive moment to push through a pay rise. They may very well succeed and the president, Claudia Sheinbaum, has apparently ruled out a heavy-handed response, presumably in part concerned about the current global spotlight. This is far from the grotesque sportswashing exercise of Qatar 2022, a tournament “built on the corpses of migrant workers and the stolen wealth of the Qatari people”, and as a Qatari human rights activist wrote for us at the time. READ MORE

0

George Orwell didn’t mince his words when it came to international sporting events. In 1945, following Dynamo Moscow’s draw with…

Load More