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.

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…

Cockroach Janta Party protestors holding posters of Bhagat Singh at Jantar Mantar, July 2026. Photo: Pelph Hoters/CC0 1.0 Towards the end of last year, when I was editing our magazine about Gen Z revolts around the world, I asked around about India. Was a Gen Z revolt likely there? After all, young people had toppled governments in neighbouring Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal. The consensus was that despite the increasing authoritarianism of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his government, India was on a different trajectory to its much smaller neighbours. The young middle class were largely apolitical. Earlier protests had simply “petered out” because the country was so diverse no one could agree with one another. Eight months later, it turns out there is something which unites young people – the understanding that they are despised by the political elites. The Cockroach Janta Party was formed after a satirical call on social media by student Abhijeet Dipke, a recent graduate from a US university who heard the chief justice of India comparing young unemployed people to “parasites” and “cockroaches”. What would happen, he wrote on Instagram, if all cockroaches came together? It was a call that resonated. Within days of being formed the party’s Instagram account had 22 million followers – far more than the nine million following Modi’s BJP. The authorities tried to strangle the movement at birth, and the Cockroach Janta Party‘s X account was closed down pretty quickly by Elon Musk’s platform after anonymous complaints. But that didn’t stop the momentum and soon the anger was focused on the leak of medical exam questions, meaning millions would have to do expensive retakes. The issue was emblematic of wider problems of graduate unemployment reported to be at 40% for under 25s. In the last week we have seen thousands of Gen Z demonstrators taking to the streets calling for the resignation of Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan. Even the India opposition leader Rahul Gandhi (who has not been popular with young people) has tried to get in on the act and was briefly arrested after joining a sit-in in Delhi. Other disturbing responses have included violence used against some protesters, the prohibition of protests near the parliament building in Delhi and the use of internet shutdowns being deployed in areas where demonstrations were planned to start on Monday. Internet freedom campaigners in India, including the Software Freedom Law Centre (SFLC), have condemned the targeting of the protest with an internet shutdown as setting “a dangerous precedent” as it “strikes at the heart of the fundamental right to freedom of speech and expression”. They also are demanding to know why no order was issued to authorise the blackout, seemingly in violation of the law and not in accordance with the Supreme Court’s ruling on this issue. India has long turned to internet shutdowns for the flimsiest of excuses. According to Access Now India was the world leader for shutting down the internet for six years in a row ending in 2023 (ahead of places like Iran, Russia and Myanmar). The SFLC warn that together with reports of social media content about the protest being “shadow banned”, as well as the closure of roads and metro stations, the government seems to be trying to disrupt protest rather than guarantee public safety. None of this is deterring Cockroach Janta Party supporters. If anything, it seems to be encouraging protesters to turn out. And the party’s popularity carries with it a message; globally connected young people are coming together and they are forces to be reckoned with. READ MORE

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Towards the end of last year, when I was editing our magazine about Gen Z revolts around the world, I…

The Royal Courts of Justice. Photo: StevovoB/NeedPix Years ago when still a baby defence barrister, a brief landed on my desk. The defendant, we shall call him Mohammad, was from Somalia. He was a PhD student travelling for his studies to Germany when civil war broke out. Mohammad’s sister was raped by soldiers; his father murdered. Newly married with a baby, he used all his money to pay for passage to the UK. This meant using forged travel documents. The family were eventually granted asylum. But Mohammad kept the forged passport; a symbol of his past life, perhaps. On a trip to visit German friends, the forged passport was discovered. He was charged with an offence to which he had no defence in law. The first trial saw running battles between me and the judge. At every opportunity he angrily reminded the court  of the defendant’s guilt. His summing up consisted of countering the arguments I had advanced in Mohammad’s defence. After two days deliberating, the jury were discharged, unable to reach a decision. The second trial was before a different judge. No angry exchanges. Just a measured, even-tempered stewardship of proceedings. A unanimous acquittal followed. Absent a bullying judge, this jury felt free to deliver a verdict according to their conscience; a principle called jury equity. I did not explicitly reference this principle in my closing speech. Nonetheless, it has often featured, in cases like Mohammad’s, when attempting to appeal to a jury’s sense of compassion. It was clear when Mohammad walked tearfully from the dock, that every right-minded person in that courtroom knew his prosecution, though lawful, was wrong. And so to the Filton trial and the unprecedented prosecution of my friend, Rajiv Menon KC, due to stand trial on 28 July for alleged contempt of court. Rajiv was lead counsel representing the first of six Palestine Action defendants charged with offences arising out of an incident in 2024 at an arms factory in Filton, Bristol, owned by Israeli-based Elbit Systems. During the incident, the defendents smashed equipment and one injured a police officer.  At the trial the judge made orders prohibiting defence barristers from mentioning jury equity in their closing speeches. That effectively meant forbidding them from telling the jury that they (the jury) were free to act on their conscience despite the law. The trial judge alleges that Rajiv disobeyed the order and has asked another judge to try him for contempt. The Filton trial was, in many ways, different from Mohammad’s. However, the principles at stake are the same. You may not agree with the Filton defendants’ cause or their methods. And, we can all sympathise with the police officer injured whilst doing her job, but we must all surely agree that every defendant deserves a fair trial. By severely limiting some defences, removing other defences altogether, and making orders disallowing defence counsel from referring to long-established basic principles like jury equity, a trial judge is at risk of reducing the jury’s role to a ceremonial one. That is why everyone should care about what happened in the Filton trial and what is happening now to Rajiv Menon. This is not just about a closing speech made by one defence barrister. Most defence barristers have, at some point, relied on the constitutional right of a jury to acquit even when a judge thinks that guilt is a forgone conclusion. It is a principle considered so important that it is enshrined on a plaque in the Central Criminal Court. And yet, today the very mention of it is being prohibited in protest trials, with the accompanying threat of contempt proceedings. This is about the essence of why the jury equity principle is necessary and has survived so long. It is recognised as a useful long-stop against state oppression. I would add, as a Black person who has observed first-hand the oppressive way in which our people are policed, the collective wisdom of twelve strangers along with jury equity, is sometimes our only chance of justice. Let’s be clear, this attack on jury equity and the heavy-handed attempt to gag defence counsel, is an attack upon basic freedoms. It will have a chilling effect on all defence barristers in politically sensitive cases as well as on the right to protest. Other important safeguards will be caught in the dragnet. Defence counsel’s obligation to fight fearlessly and the very concept of jury trial itself, are all up for grabs. In the 1980’s, during a wave of far-right attacks on Black communities in Bradford, twelve men were charged with offences linked to stockpiling 38 petrol bombs. One of the twelve, Tarlochan Gata Aura, admitted making and storing the bombs to protect his community. The late Sibghat Kadri QC, head of the chambers where I trained, was one of the defence barristers in that trial which ended with acquittals despite overwhelming evidence against them. Constantly interrupted by a hostile judge, the defence were warned against making the trial political. Kadri, a barrister who believed it was every lawyer’s duty to fight inside and outside the court, must be turning in his grave. READ MORE

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Years ago when still a baby defence barrister, a brief landed on my desk. The defendant, we shall call him…

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