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.

Colin Firth accepts the Trustees Award for Sir Salman Rushdie at the 2023 Freedom of Expression Awards Index on Censorship is seeking an organised, creative and proactive Events & Partnerships Manager to lead the delivery of our public events programme, support our membership community and help maintain strong relationships with partners, funders and supporters. This is a practical, outward-facing role for someone who enjoys making things happen. You will work closely with colleagues across the organisation, including the CEO and programme teams, will be highly organised, will be comfortable managing multiple projects and confident working with a wide range of external stakeholders. Key responsibilities – Lead the planning and delivery of Index’s events programme, ensuring events are well organised, impactful and aligned with organisational priorities. – Manage the delivery of our flagship annual Freedom of Expression Awards, including creation of materials (video and text) as part of the event. – Coordinate Index’s involvement in Banned Books Week and other public-facing campaigns and events related to book challenges. – Support the development of new event partnerships and sponsorship opportunities. – Build and maintain positive relationships with key partners, funders, sponsors, supporters and the media. – Coordinate grant reporting and ensure funding requirements and deadlines are met. – Support growth and development of Index’s membership programme, including organising activities and events that help members feel connected to Index’s work. – Represent Index at events, meetings and relevant sector activities. – Build relationships across the arts, media, publishing, human rights and civil society sectors. Person specification Essential: – Experience planning and delivering events or public programmes from concept through to completion. – Strong organisational and project management skills, with the ability to manage multiple priorities. – Experience building and maintaining relationships with external stakeholders. – Excellent written and verbal communication skills. – Ability to manage budgets, timelines and administrative processes. – Strong attention to detail and the ability to deliver high-quality work independently. – Commitment to freedom of expression and Index’s mission. Desirable: – Experience delivering high-profile events involving speakers, partners or sponsors. – Experience with software/tools for slides and video editing assistance. – Experience working in the arts, media, publishing, charity or human rights sectors. – Familiarity with contact/supporter databases. – Experience managing relationships with funders. – Experience coordinating membership, supporter or community engagement programmes. Hours: Full time, contract. Salary: £33,000–£38,000 dependent on experience Location: Remote but with regular travel to London Index is a small and ambitious organisation that values diversity. We are committed to equal opportunities and welcome all applicants regardless of ethnic origin, national origin, gender, gender identity, race, colour, religious beliefs, disability, sexual orientation, age or marital status. To apply please send a cover letter with your CV by Monday 31st August 2026 to [email protected] READ MORE

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Index on Censorship is seeking an organised, creative and proactive Events & Partnerships Manager to lead the delivery of our…

Supreme Court of the United Kingdom. Photo: Jay Galvin/CC BY 2.0 It was game, set and match for Bahraini dissidents Saeed Shehabi and Moosa Mohammed in their case against the Kingdom of Bahrain this week. The UK’s Supreme Court ruled in their favour, rejecting an appeal from Bahrain, which was claiming sovereign immunity from allegations it used spyware to infiltrate the computers of the pair in the UK back in 2011. We’ve been following the case and it’s hard to downplay this victory both for the men and for the broader ecosystem. The Kingdom had argued that section 5 of the State Immunity Act 1978, which creates an exemption to the act in the event of personal injuries and damage to property, was being misinterpreted and unduly broadened in this case. It said that a proper reading of the Act would afford immunity to states in cases where the actors or some of the acts causing personal injury were located outside the UK. But section 5 was enacted long before sophisticated spyware existed. The Supreme Court judges therefore rejected these arguments, stating that: “Modern technology enables acts of surveillance to be carried out in the UK remotely. Even if carried out by foreign state actors located outside the UK, such acts involve an infringement of UK territorial sovereignty.” Leigh Day, the law firm representing Shehabi and Mohammed, said that “the Supreme Court judgment has now settled the scope of section 5 of the State Immunity Act 1978. A foreign state cannot rely on state immunity to escape accountability for personal injury caused by acts within the UK, even where other causative acts take place abroad and the state’s agents are not present in this country. The court has recognised that a rigid distinction between the location of an act and its effects is artificial and unprincipled.” Shehabi said afterwards that “this is not just a victory for us, but for everyone targeted by authoritarian states beyond their own borders.” He’s right. We’ve been bleating on about transnational repression for years now because it’s prolific and getting worse. And when a dissident is attacked abroad, spyware is often a feature. This ruling makes clear that states can now be held officially accountable. As Shehabi also said after: “The hardest part of being targeted by alleged state-sponsored hacking is the feeling that nowhere is safe”. The UK arguably becomes a touch safer now. Mohammed said that the “victory changes the balance of power”. He spoke about being tortured by the Bahraini regime since he was a teenager and pursued across borders. “Today, the tables have turned,” he continued. “I am no longer the one being chased. I am chasing justice. I am chasing accountability. The era of abusing victims while hiding behind state immunity is over.” The UK has earned itself a reputation as a hunting ground for authoritarian regimes, and that’s partly because our response to counter it has been woeful. In some instances, police have told victims to keep a lower profile and that their cases are too hard to tackle because the assailants are overseas. So, it’s good to now have legal clarity on the question of proximity. Being abroad doesn’t grant you a get-out-of-jail-free card. READ MORE

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It was game, set and match for Bahraini dissidents Saeed Shehabi and Moosa Mohammed in their case against the Kingdom…

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…

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