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.

Serbian journalist, editor and publisher, Slavko Curuvija, who was murdered in Belgrade on April 11, 1999. Image via Slavko Curuvija Foundation / International Press Institute Twenty-seven years after the assassination of Serbian newspaper publisher and editor Slavko Ćuruvija in Belgrade, the undersigned media freedom organisations mark the upcoming anniversary of the killing by lamenting the complete impunity for those responsible for one of the most serious attacks on journalism in the country’s history. Our organisations, which were part of a recent international media freedom mission to Serbia organised by the Council of Europe’s Platform for the Safety of Journalists and the Media Freedom Rapid Response (MFRR), have monitored the media freedom crisis in Serbia intensively in the past years. Following our visit to Belgrade, we warn that the current climate for the safety of journalists is so dire that we fear another journalist could be seriously injured or even killed unless urgent measures are taken to stop the downward spiral of violence. We echo the concerns of United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Völker Türk who warned on 9 April against “the continued targeting of journalists and the growing pressure on independent media outlets” pointing “to a broader deterioration of the media environment”. As we prepare to mark yet another grim anniversary on 11 April, our thoughts are with the family of Ćuruvija and their colleagues at the Slavko Ćuruvija Foundation, who continue the nearly three-decade fight for justice and accountability for the journalist’s murder. Ćuruvija, a well-known critic of the Milošević regime, was gunned down outside his apartment building in central Belgrade on 11 April 1999, amidst the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia. In the days leading up to his killing, he was placed under surveillance by members of state security. The broad-daylight killing became one of the most emblematic cases of impunity for the killing of a journalist in the Balkans. Twenty years later, in 2019 four former Serbian intelligence and security officers were finally found guilty of planning and carrying out the murder, securing a historic conviction. The combined 100-year prison sentences were upheld in 2021. However, following a retrial, in February 2024 the Belgrade Court of Appeal overturned the guilty verdicts and acquitted the four men. In October 2025, the Supreme Court ruled that significant violations of the provisions of criminal procedure were made during the retrial, including the unfounded dismissal of key witness testimony. The Supreme Court decision was only revealed in January 2026. Although the ruling identified important violations of the law in the acquittal decision, no further appeals are possible under Serbian law. The impunity for the killing of Ćuruvija, as well as for the murders of Dada Vujasinovic and Milan Pantic, stands out as a shocking example of the consistent failure of the criminal justice system to secure accountability for historic killings of journalists in Serbia, but also as a symbol of the wider breakdown of the rule of law in the country and the inability of authorities to protect journalists. Despite a massive surge in the number of physical attacks, death threats and intimidation against journalists in the last year, ranking Serbia among the highest in Europe for such cases, in 2025 only three convictions were secured. This shocking statistic points to a wider breakdown in the systems for protecting journalists. It is also fuelled by hostile and irresponsible rhetoric against independent journalists from high-ranking government officials. Following the mission on March 26-27, which was organised as part of the Council of Europe’s Platform for the Safety of Journalists and the Media freedom Rapid Response (MFRR), we warned that the current climate for the safety of journalists remains so toxic that the chances of further escalation in the severity of attacks against journalists are dangerously high. Since the mission, local elections saw yet another serious spike in violent attacks on journalists reporting from the streets. On the anniversary of Ćuruvija’s murder, we again urge the Serbian state to uphold its responsibility to end the impunity for Curuvija’s murder. At the same time, the government must take concerted action to stop the cycle of violence against journalists in the country, lead by example in reducing tensions and hostility, and ensure journalist protection mechanisms are functioning properly. If authorities do not act, they will bear significant responsibility for any future attacks or killing of journalists. In the coming weeks, our organisations will publish a post-mission report outlining recommendations for stopping this dramatic media freedom decline in Serbia, which will be provided to government officials as well as international bodies, such as the European Union, Council of Europe and the OSCE. As the Slavko Ćuruvija Foundation continues its legal campaign for justice, in the face of defamation lawsuits from the now acquitted defendants, our organisations again underline our support for their decades-long fight for justice and all efforts to secure accountability for this crime. As we remember Ćuruvija, we remind that no journalist deserves to be threatened, silenced, attacked or killed for doing their job of questioning and holding power to account. Signed: ARTICLE 19 Europe Association of European Journalists Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) European Centre for Press and Media Freedom (ECPMF) European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) Free Press Unlimited (FPU) Index on Censorship International Press Institute (IPI) Osservatorio Balcani Caucaso Transeuropa (OBCT) Reporters Without Borders (RSF) READ MORE

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Twenty-seven years after the assassination of Serbian newspaper publisher and editor Slavko Ćuruvija in Belgrade, the undersigned media freedom organisations…

Georgian police detain a protester during a protest outside the Georgian parliament building in Tbilisi, Georgia, Wednesday, March 8, 2023. Georgian authorities used tear gas and water cannon outside the parliament building in the capital Tuesday against protesters who oppose a proposed law some see as stifling freedom of the press. Photo by: AP Photo/Zurab Tsertsvadze/Alamy The Georgian authorities were probably hoping their terrible treatment of exiled Azerbaijani journalist Afgan Sadigov would pass unnoticed. No such luck. Their hopes were dashed. The news of his deportation has started to spread. It all happened last Sunday, when Sadigov, who is the founder of Azerbaijani news outlet and YouTube channel Azel.tv, was sent back to Azerbaijan. Sadigov had been living in the Georgian capital Tbilisi since 2023, after he left having been persected in his home country for his journalism. The Georgian authorities had allowed him to stay but had then detained him so they could deport him, only letting him go a year ago, after an interim order by the European Court of Human Rights. His deportation when it came was swift. It followed an arrest at his home on charges of “insulting police” on social media (a new crime, resulting from changes to Georgian legislation in 2025). There was a hearing by a judge at 4am which lasted only a few hours. And then the judge ruled Sadigov be immediately sent back to Azerbaijan. He imposed a three-year re-entry ban. Hours later Sadigov found himself in Baku, where he was immediately arrested. We, and partners of the Media Freedom Rapid Response, condemned his deportation here. I have never met Sadigov, but I met his wife and two young children in Tbilisi in October 2024 for a Council of Europe mission on media freedom in Georgia. At the time Afgan was in Georgian detention and I remember how exhausted she looked as she told us about him. Sadigov’s story is reflective of Georgia’s slide into autocracy. Gone are the days when the country could be considered a safe haven for journalists from neighbouring countries. Now it’s the place that deports journalists. It’s also about Azerbaijan. Sadigov had committed the cardinal sin there – reporting on corruption and social injustice – which led to multiple arrests. The most egregious was in 2020 when he was sentenced to seven years in jail. During a July 2021 appeal, his sentence was reduced to four years. He was later pardoned by President Ilham Aliyev. The situation in Azerbaijan is terrible. Hundreds of activists, academics and reporters are currently in jail and this week the Supreme Court of Azerbaijan rejected an appeal from journalists at the independent media outlet Azbas, who’ve been jailed for between seven and nine years. Nothing was fair about the hearing. I spoke to Gunel Safarova who is the acting director and editor-in-chief at Abzas Media. She told me about the immense pressures journalists face there. Many have left the profession altogether. The “space for free and critical reporting inside the country has been destroyed step by step”, she said, adding that “the law no longer feels like protection”. “When you see that the government can decide people’s fate and take years of their lives for their journalism, it destroys trust in justice even more. Maybe we already knew this in some way, but each case like this makes us lose whatever hope was still left, even the smallest hope that justice in our country could still mean something.” This is the country to which Sadigov has been returned, and even though he has apparently been released and spoken to his wife, they are not together and he is not safe. READ MORE

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The Georgian authorities were probably hoping their terrible treatment of exiled Azerbaijani journalist Afgan Sadigov would pass unnoticed. No such…

Portuguese politician Pedro Frazão speaks at the Battle for the Soul of Europe conference. Photo: mcc.hu This article first appeared in the Spring 2026 issue of Index on Censorship, The monster unleashed: How Hungary’s illiberal vision is seducing the Western world, published on 2 April 2026. Pedro Frazão is a Portuguese far-right politician who fancies himself as something of an orator. At the Battle for the Soul of Europe conference in Brussels last December, the youthful 50-year-old cut a dynamic and sharp-suited figure as he outlined his vision. He called for “patriots” across the continent to fight for its fragile, inherited freedoms. Without the courage to fight, he suggested, the whole edifice of Western civilisation could collapse. He ended with a flourish: “The West is here and being reborn.” Commenting on his YouTube channel immediately after the conference, Frazão refined his message: “Global elites buy media, hide truths and try to silence those who defend sovereignty, family and national identity. We cannot give in. It is up to us to protect the homeland, the borders and freedom. Portugal needs patriots who will not bow down.” The conference was organised by MCC Brussels, an offshoot of the Matthias Corvinus Collegium, a Hungarian institution with close links to the country’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán. Politico has described the MCC Brussels as “the EU’s most prominent hard-right pressure group”. Far-right revivalists such as Frazão claim they are fighting for key enlightenment values, including free speech, which they say are under threat from a tsunami of wokery, driven by European Union bureaucrats. Stars of the Far Right The line-up at the conference was a Who’s Who of the European far right, including the British academic Matthew Goodwin, who later announced he would be standing for Reform UK in the recent Gorton and Denton parliamentary by-election (which he lost). Goodwin told delegates there was “a political revolution under way”, which would destroy the traditional two-party system in the UK. “We will root out diversity, equality and inclusion policies or woke ideology from taxpayer-funded institutions,” he said, warning that a Reform government would look more like Donald Trump’s second administration in the USA than his first. Other speakers included Alice Cordier, the French anti-immigration activist and founder of the Collectif Némésis; Patrick Deneen, the prominent conservative author of Why Liberalism Failed; and the Polish Christian philosopher-politician Ryszard Legutko. The star turn at the Battle for the Soul of Europe was former Czech president Václav Klaus, a key dissident ally of Václav Havel during the Cold War who has tacked further and further to the right in recent years. MCC was founded in 1996 as a private higher-education institute by the conservative, anti-communist Tombor family and has grown into a hugely influential network of interlinked bodies. Combining the functions of a university, a youth movement and a think-tank, it has also developed a programme of political education under the banner of “talent development”. MCC Brussels is headed by the Hungarian-British academic Frank Furedi, emeritus professor of sociology at the University of Kent in the UK and a former leader of the Revolutionary Communist Party there. Furedi’s latest book, The War Against the Past: Why the West Must Fight for Its History, is a staunch defence of the legacy of Western values and history against attacks sustained during the culture wars. He sees his role, which he took up two years ago after a chance meeting with the Hungarian prime minister’s political director Balázs Orbán (no relation), as providing a counterbalance to European liberal orthodoxy. The links to the Fidesz government are explicit, with more than $1bn of government funds transferred to MCC at the beginning of the 2020s. Last year, the Brussels arm of the organisation received $6m from sources allied to Viktor Orbán, according to Politico. Balázs Orbán is its chairman. Media freedom In an interview with Index last year, Furedi said: “We are funded by two companies, the oil company MOL and Gedeon Richter, the pharmaceutical company. Now, you could argue that MCC Hungary [the orginal MCC] has got a close association with the government and it empathises with the government’s politics. Our particular organisation is entirely autonomous. That was the condition on which I took the job or set it up…” Furedi is a staunch supporter of the idea that there is media freedom in Hungary despite Fidesz and its allies owning 80% of media outlets, according to Reporters Without Borders. He also said: “I do think the attacks on Orbán’s government and Hungary over the free media are misconceived… You have a situation where there are TV channels in Hungary that are anti-government and have a very large viewership. You have a situation where the opposition has got a far greater presence on social media, on social media platforms, than the government has. [If] you go to Budapest and you go to newspaper shops, you’ll find that there are plenty of newspapers, not one, two or three, [that are] hostile and critical to government, so I don’t see it the way it’s represented.” Since it was established in 2022, MCC Brussels has pumped out a stream of anti-EU reports. In 2025 alone, the think-tank has published 11 substantial reports in an attempt to expose the supposed woke bias of the EU as it wages a war against the free speech of the silent majority. These include Mission Creeps: How EU Funding and Activist NGOs Captured the Gender Agenda, Brussels’s Media Machine: EU Media Funding and the Shaping of Public Discourse, Rule of Lawyers: How the ECHR is Hampering Action on Migration, and Indoctrinating Children: How Brussels Embeds Gender Identity in the Classroom. The ideological direction of travel is clear, but these reports are not the intemperate ravings of the traditional extreme right. These are detailed arguments honed over the years by the intellectual allies of Furedi as he made his way from the hard left to the populist right. Europe under threat? The consistent message at Battle for the Soul of Europe was this: European civilisation is under threat from the combined forces of mass immigration and political correctness. Free speech for people wishing to raise these issues is being stifled. Patriots of sovereign nations need to wake up and fight for the Christian values of the West and come to some kind of understanding with Russia. Just a week after the conference, Trump made it clear that his national security strategy’s Europe policy was based on precisely the same principles. Writing in Foreign Affairs earlier this year, Nick Cheeseman, Matias Bianchi and Jennifer Cyr identified the concept of The Illiberal International, which brings together far-right politicians to reshape the global order. They identified key gatherings of the far right such as the Make Europe Great Again rally in Madrid in February 2025, hosted by the right-wing party and MCC ally Patriots.EU. The annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), which met in Hungary in 2022, met again in Budapest on 21 March 2026 – just before parliamentary elections – with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu as the keynote speaker. These set-piece events provide a forum for what the Foreign Affairs authors describe as “narrative diffusion”. December’s Battle for the Soul of Europe was just such an event. The Illiberal International article describes this process brilliantly: “Attendees endorse each other in speeches, cultivate networks of contacts, and share ideas, building international connections that provide visibility and legitimacy for domestic movements. And because these events include both conventional conservative discourse and outright disinformation, they can blur the boundary between the two, making authoritarian messaging appear more palatable to mainstream audiences.” Viktor Orbán’s concept of “illiberal democracy” has often been cited as an inspiration for the Trump regime, and in recent months the ideological links between Budapest and Washington have become increasingly explicit. At the beginning of February, MCC welcomed an investigation by the USA’s House Judiciary Committee into alleged EU censorship. A statement from MCC Brussels claimed “internal communications from major technology platforms provides incontrovertible proof that the European Union’s regulatory framework is a ‘censorship operating system’ designed to systematically throttle free speech”. For some time, MCC Brussels has warned of an alliance between unelected EU institutions, tech companies and state-funded NGOs to stifle right-wing political speech. As far as the US committee and the European right are concerned, the EU’s Democracy Shield – an initiative launched in November 2025 by the EU Commission to target disinformation, fake news and foreign interference – is, in fact, a cover for silencing dissent by the liberal orthodoxy. In response, it launched the Democracy Interference Observatory to counter what it sees as EU interference in elections taking place in sovereign European states. It has announced that its first test case will be April’s Hungarian elections, where it will target EU attempts to identify foreign interference and electoral malpractice. Truly independent? The battle lines have been drawn. Opposition candidate Péter Magyar has already warned of Russian interference in the forthcoming election and has urged a stronger EU response. Meanwhile, Magyar’s chief of staff, Márton Hajdu, has called for the application of the EU Digital Services Act to counter disinformation. The latest AI-generated political advert from Viktor Orbán’s party shows a father being executed by a soldier in what looks like German uniform because the EU has dragged Hungary into the war in Ukraine. Few MCC authors are mainstream academics, and most are referred to as “independent researchers”. The most prolific of these is the Italian journalist and author Thomas Fazi, who writes on EU propaganda and media manipulation. His report on Brussels’s Media Machine is a direct challenge to the EU consensus on disinformation and dissent, arguing that it closes down genuinely alternative voices. He says Brussels funding is used to bolster mainstream media narratives within the EU and, significantly, beyond its borders. His arguments mirror those used by the Trump administration to cut funding to the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the United States Agency for Global Media. “The EU funds media outlets in Ukraine, the Western Balkans, the South Caucasus and Russian/Belarusian exile media. These efforts, under the guise of ‘supporting democracy’, often reflect geopolitical and strategic goals, mirroring methods associated with USAID-style influence campaigns,” he said. Fazi also pushes the MCC Brussels line in mainstream media outlets and is a regular contributor to the British publication UnHerd. Here he is last November on the European Democracy Shield: “[This] is just the latest vision in unfreedom: suppressing dissent and policing speech under the pretext of defending democracy from foreign interference and fake news.” EU commissioner for democracy, justice and the rule of law Michael McGrath told critics in the European parliament in November: “To those who question the Shield and who say it’s about censorship, what I say to you is that I and my colleagues in the European Commission will be the very first people to defend your right to level robust debate in a public forum.” The future Zalán Zubor of the Hungarian investigative non-for-profit publication Atlatszo, has been tracking the activities of MCC for several years. He said there was a common methodology to its work, where it identified freelance writers and paid them yearly grants to undertake unspecified research while writing specific articles adhering to the MCC line. He explained the forthcoming election was a high-stakes moment for the organisation as Magyar has pledged to set up an agency to prosecute groups that have been the beneficiaries of state largesse. “The MCC is going to be the target,” said Zubor. The future of MCC Brussels is unclear, but it is possible that it is part of the global strategy of the Hungarian far right in case Viktor Orbán loses the election. For Zubor, this would be an obvious next step for the Hungarian leader. “It is very clear he sees himself as an international figure, the Hungarian leader of the far right.” While a storm is coming for the MCC and its Brussels branch if Magyar wins the election, the same may be true for independent media if Fidesz returns to power in April. At present, Hungarian citizens can donate 1% of their taxes to civic society groups, including non-profit media organisations such as Atlatszo. The government recently withdrew proposals to make it illegal for these donations to be made to organisations judged “political”, which would have effectively bankrupted independent media. But if Fidesz wins, there is every possibility it will reintroduce the measure. Hungary and the British Right The Matthias Corvinus Collegium has funded right-wing propaganda in British universities and paid the salary of Reform politician Matthew Goodwin (left), according to investigations in the UK and Hungary. Legal campaigners Good Law Project revealed in February that the Roger Scruton Legacy Foundation (RSLF) has received almost $700,000 from MCC since 2023, amounting to 90% of its funding. Directors of the RSLF, set up in honour of the conservative philosopher, include Spectator editor and former Conservative Cabinet minister Michael Gove and Nigel Farage’s senior advisor James Orr. According to its founding documents the foundation is an “international network of institutions and scholars dedicated to furthering the philosophical and cultural achievements of the West”. In April 2023, the MCC signed a deal with Sophie Scruton, the widow of Sir Roger Scruton, to provide opportunities for Hungarian students at its “talent centre” to study at Oxford and Cambridge universities. RSLF has since organised conferences at both. Then, in June last year, the RSLF ran Now & England, a conference in Westminster, which brought together right-wing thinkers and politicians including Rupert Lowe, the Great Yarmouth MP who left Reform to set up his own party, Restore Britain, shortly afterwards and Conservative MP Danny Kruger, who defected to Reform in September 2025. Publicity for the event stated: “England stands at a crossroads. Mass immigration, detached elites, and decaying institutions have strained the country’s sense of identity and direction.” The connection between RSLF and Hungary was further reinforced when the country’s embassy hosted the Roger Scruton Symposium last October. Right-wing thinkers gathered to celebrate the legacy of the philosopher. They included Goodwin, who stood as the Reform candidate in the recent Gorton and Denton by-election in which he came second to the Green Party. Goodwin is a “visiting fellow” at the Matthias Corvinus Collegium and spoke at this year’s MCC Feszt, a festival of right-wing thought also addressed by Viktor Orbán and PayPal and Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel. According to leaked documents obtained by the Hungarian investigative reporting site Direkt 36, visiting fellows at MCC are paid between $6000 to $12,000 per month “plus housing, office space, health insurance and, where appropriate, family support”. The Direkt 36 investigation also revealed the vast sums the MCC spends on events, with $1.8 million laid out for catering alone. Many of these events take place in the Budapest café in the MCC’s Budapest headquarters. The name of the venue? Café Scruton. READ MORE

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This article first appeared in the Spring 2026 issue of Index on Censorship, The monster unleashed: How Hungary’s illiberal vision is…

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