30 Jul 2025 | News and features, United Kingdom
The introduction of the Online Safety Act’s child protection provisions last week has reignited serious concerns about the future of free expression online in the UK. Many companies must now introduce safety measures to protect children from harmful content, typically via age-checking procedures. This includes pornography sites, but also includes big social media platforms, who could be required to use “highly effective” age checks to identify under-18 users in order to comply with the Act. Not only will the provisions impact under-18s’ ability to access information online, they will – by default – limit anyone who refuses to verify their age on certain sites.
The Act risks overreach, creating a chilling effect on legitimate speech. In the lead-up to the Act’s passage in 2023, we were vocal about our concerns around certain aspects of it and were pleased to see the clause around “legal but harmful” removed. We remain concerned about end-to-end encryption, which is not sufficiently protected in the Act’s wording. Our concerns go beyond encryption though, as the child protection provisions reveal.
Overall, we fear the Act opens up too many avenues for increased surveillance and monitoring, all of which fosters an environment of self-censorship, stifles open dialogue and erodes the right to free expression and access to information. The fact that the age limitations specifically target young people is doubly concerning when you consider that the UK plans to lower the voting age. It has the potential to limit young people’s access to information and their ability to participate in democratic life.
Creating a safer internet for young people is a noble cause and we don’t criticise the intentions of those behind the Act. We do though take issue with the aforementioned and whether it indeed does make the internet any safer. And with that in mind please do read more about the negative implications of the age verification system introduced by the OSA, as argued by James Ball, political editor of the New European, in his piece on Substack earlier this week. We are re-publishing it here with his permission.
Okay, so age verification is pretty painless. It’s still not a good thing. At all.
Two years ago, British politicians passed the Online Safety Act, a wide-ranging law which – among many other measures – introduced widespread age verification for anyone wishing to access “adult” content online.
This sort of measure is always very popular, because it’s easy to make opposing it look bad: why do you want children to be able to access porn online? Many supporters of this kind of bill are all too eager to jump to that kind of argument, and do so shamelessly – it’s presented as obvious and agreeable. Decent people want to protect children online. This measure protects children online. So…who would oppose it?
Despite that, the minority of us who do oppose these kinds of measures tend to be quite vocal, sometimes to the point of exaggeration. At one point, the UK’s age verification was going to be for specialist adult sites only – meaning that verifying your age was essentially an admission you wanted to watch porn.
That could have created blackmail potential, even within a secure system – if someone could access which bank card had been used to verify age for a domain showing gay porn, just that information alone might be useful. But as it happens, it is being rolled out more broadly: Bluesky, for example, is requiring it for anyone to use the DM function. This means it affects far more people, but does mean the fact of being age verified can’t be used to shame anyone. That’s probably good.
Similarly, there are numerous posts going viral suggesting that the age verification law is resulting in Reddit search results being more anti-LGBT, and some are suggesting that was even the intent of the legislation (despite the law being passed by a different government than the one now in office). The basic factual claim here is false: Reddit search results haven’t been altered by the legislation.
This is just another version of the online chain letters that do the rounds now and then – like messages saying you need to copy/paste certain text to stop Facebook’s new privacy policy applying to you (never true), or the one that went around the other week about WeTransfer, which was also almost entirely false/misunderstood.
Anyway, let’s get into the realities of the new age verification regime.
The good: it’s quick, easy and pretty secure
So far, the only website that’s asked me to verify my age is Bluesky. It has, like almost every site affected by the law will, outsourced this to a third-party provider, who offers multiple quick ways to verify – which for most people means either a quick automated confirmation using a live image, or else a check with a bank card.
In my case, the technology took an insultingly short amount of time to confirm that the haggard 30-something in front of it was clearly an adult, and the process was completed in less than a minute. The verifier promises to delete all images and data used in the process, relaying only the successful result to the site.
This is a good system, but there is a long track record of services saying that they don’t store personally identifiable information, and then accidentally storing it anyway – which tends to only emerge later, after they’re hacked. But hopefully the companies involved in this one are aware of the heightened scrutiny on them with this legislation and have audited everything more carefully.
So…what’s not to like about this process? If you’re an adult trying to verify yourself, this is about the best version of things. It’s not difficult, it’s not intrinsically intrusive, and it’s fast. This was enough to have quite a few people – including some friends of mine – post their “I told you so” takes about why age verification was fine, actually. I’m not there yet.
The bad, part one: it’s quick and easy to avoid, too
The stated aim of age verification is to protect children and teenagers from inappropriate content – this usually means sexual content, but can also be extended to include violent online imagery and video.
Broadly speaking, there are two separate groups we are trying to protect here – younger children and teens who might accidentally or unwittingly encounter inappropriate content, and older teens who are deliberately seeking it out. Age verification doesn’t work very well for either.
Evidence – including that collected by the regulator Ofcom itself – consistently shows that when younger children (typically age 10-14) encounter adult content they don’t wish to see, they overwhelmingly see it via messaging apps, typically from their peers. Most of these apps aren’t supposed to be used by under-13s, but sites barely enforce this requirement and many parents don’t supervise it.
The current age verification rules do almost nothing to help protect this group. There are some people calling for under-16s (or even under-18s) to be barred from messaging apps – or even all social media – entirely. That’s a legitimate position, but one I personally find ridiculous: life is lived online now.
If we try to keep young people away from it, they will be woefully underskilled, undersocialised, and unprepared for the world they’ll first encounter as 16-year-olds and 18-year-olds. A phased, parentally supervised introduction to the internet is clearly the only way through here. Too much of this debate feels like efforts to outsource parenting to social media companies.
So much for the younger children who might be accidentally exposed to adult content. What about older teenagers who are trying to find it, who might be stopped by age verification? The short answer is that teenagers are very good at avoiding anything that stands between them and porn – especially when they’re often more tech savvy than their parents.
The UK’s age verification requirement can be bypassed simply by downloading a VPN, which lets you spoof where your traffic is coming from – if you use a VPN and say you’re browsing from the USA, the age requirement prompts vanish immediately. At the time of writing, VPN apps are in the 1st, 2nd, 4th, 5th, 6th and 9th spots in Apple’s app store. Go figure.
Making VPNs illegal is the stuff of dictators (and would also be terrible for corporate remote workers and other legitimate business use purposes), so they are likely to hang around as an effortless way to avoid age verification. In the short term, the technology can also be fooled by various simple tricks.
At the moment, using photo mode in the game Death Stranding fools age verification – and since the service doesn’t save the photo, presumably if it works once there is no way to tell how many people falsely verified themselves in this way. This loophole will doubtless be closed, but new ones will be found just as quickly. Again, the government is trying to do through regulation and tech quick fixes what can only practically be achieved through parental supervision.
The bad, part two: it creates new problems
Using a paid VPN is good for your online security – it can help restrict tracking and protect you from sites trying to steal your card details. But teenagers downloading and using VPNs will inevitably be looking for free services, and these are a very different story.
At best, they’re monetising by selling browsing data, showing questionable ads, or some similar practice. But malicious software often poses as VPNs and is then used to harvest and steal credentials used while the VPN is running – which might include the bank or card details of parents using the same laptops, phones or networks.
Not every teen is going to be tech savvy or connected enough to set up a VPN, but others will try different ways to avoid age verification tech. That means a lot of them will look for small or niche adult sites, who haven’t bothered trying to comply with the law – unlike the relatively ‘respectable’ mainstream adult companies. This does mean that one unintended consequence of age verification could be sending teens towards more extreme adult content than they would otherwise deliberately seek out.
This is going to do some serious damage, and there will be deliberate criminal enterprises working to target teenagers looking to circumvent age verification. While those people are responsible for their criminal acts, we shouldn’t forget that they’re a direct consequence of the legislation, either.
The bad, part three: it won’t stop at age verification
If you’ve read this far, you hopefully get the impression that I think the current system of age verification is mostly harmless, but also largely pointless – I don’t think it will do anything to make the internet safer.
But that in itself is part of the problem: the policy’s advocates won’t take failure as a sign that the approach is wrong. They will instead frame it as proof the policy doesn’t go far enough. Much of this is sincere campaigning on this issue, but it is also deliberately exploited by the UK’s intelligence agencies as part of their efforts to regain surveillance capabilities in the online era.
I recognise this makes me sound like someone who wears a tinfoil hat, so let me give one qualifier here: I don’t think intelligence agencies do this as part of a nefarious Deep State agenda. I think they are legitimately working to keep the UK safe, and their inability to access all messaging on the internet feels like an obstacle to that. I don’t assume any bad faith on their part.
GCHQ had a programme called “Mastering The Internet”, which we revealed during Edward Snowden’s revelations. It was more-or-less what it sounded like: GCHQ wanted to be able to access everything on the internet so that it would be able to find the bad stuff it needed to keep people safe.
In reality, this approach has consistently failed: when asked to evidence what US plots had been foiled thanks to mass surveillance programmes specifically, the American agencies could only come up with a single $8,000 donation to a proscribed terror group, a terrible return on a multi-billion dollar investment. Targeted surveillance works. Mass surveillance is a concerted effort by agencies trying to find a needle in a haystack to make that haystack bigger.
You may or may not agree with me on mass surveillance, but it is the case that since end-to-end encryption has become the default online, intelligence agencies are very keen to find ways to circumvent it – and to make the internet possible to monitor again.
The Home Office and intelligence agencies have consciously and deliberately put child protection at the forefront of these broader efforts, because it’s the easiest argument to win. When they push for measures that would help all of their surveillance goals, they frame it in terms of protecting children or tracking down people who view child sex abuse material online. The Home Office’s efforts to do this have occasionally bordered on the ridiculous, as I’ve reported before.
Trying to require us to use our real-life verified identity whenever we browse online would be a difficult political ask to do in one go. That’s why the efforts are incremental – first you introduce age verification, which is quick, painless and ineffective. When it doesn’t work, you go one step further, asking them to tie an identity token to that verification and allow it to be used for serious crime. In small and measured increments, you can end online anonymity – at least so far as the government is concerned.
So what? I don’t need online anonymity anyway
Perhaps you don’t! But we do generally have anonymity offline and most of us like it that way. In the UK, we aren’t required to carry ID with us, and even in countries where people do, it’s not out on display – when we’re out in the real world, people who know us can identify us and to everyone else we’re just a stranger.
It’s this that lets us talk and relax freely in public places: we can have a private conversation in a café or pub without worrying too much about being overheard, because even if the person at the next table is listening in, they don’t know who we are. Offline interactions are fleeting, without a permanent record.
The internet is different. There is no shortage of people who’ve faced ‘cancellation’ or consequences for casual online conversations on social media from ten or fifteen years’ previous. What is said there is forever, and that comes with social consequence even for speech that’s perfectly legal.
I do a job in which I’m paid to have opinions in public, and part of what goes along with that is putting up with the consequences of it. Some people will disagree with your opinions, sometimes aggressively so. Some of those will decide as a consequence that they hate you as a person. Sometimes that even spills over into the real world.
I’m largely fine about that, because it’s part of the career I chose. But most of us choose not to have opinions in public – and that’s before we start thinking about whether it could affect our employment, or other aspects of our life.
That doesn’t mean we don’t have opinions that we share with friends or families. Most of us want to be able to have relaxed conversations off-guard – and some degree of online anonymity or pseudonymity is essential for that.
Publicly connecting our online presence with our real identity is essentially condemning ourselves to a future of relentless scrutiny and self-censorship. This should not be a future any of us want.
The idea of tying our online identity to real-world ID only the government can see is much more compelling to people, but it honestly amazes me this is so. In 2013 as we reported on documents released by Edward Snowden, we would constantly hear American liberals shrug off what we found – saying, essentially, that they trusted the government needed those powers, and accusing us of scaremongering when we invited them to imagine those powers in the wrong hands. Less than four years later, Donald Trump was elected. I won’t labour that point.
People aren’t scaremongering when they say that the UK criminalises speech too much in the online world, even if certain elements of the British right exaggerate the problem.
More than 1,000 people are arrested every month over something they say online on social media, and that’s more than doubled in a decade. Most of those arrests lead to no further action, and the overwhelming majority of the rest result in nothing more than cautions – but this isn’t a small number and isn’t a zero risk.
People just trying to comment on politics, tv, or something else might fear a knock at the door and censor themselves. People deserve the same speech rights online as they have offline, both in the letter of the law and in terms of how freely they feel able to express themselves in practice.
Tackling criminally abusive speech online is important, but so is allowing free speech – a fundamental human right – in a democracy. When I look at the first few days of age verification, I don’t look at it and think “problem solved”, I see the thin end of the wedge – on its own it’s not particularly harmful, and largely useless. But as the shape of things to come, it’s a step in a bad direction.
This raised an eyebrow as I have a blue tick on there, suggesting Bluesky believes it has verified my identity as a Proper Person according to whatever mysterious criteria qualify you for a tick. But they simultaneously thought I might be a child?
30 Jul 2025 | Africa, News and features, Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe’s brutal regime, under President Emmerson Mnangagwa, is using social media, particularly X, to smear and silence mostly female anti-government political activists and human rights defenders in the country.
President Mnangagwa’s army of paid pro-government social media trolls is known as the Varakashi —propaganda stormtroopers—with some using names of prominent people to open fake X accounts without their knowledge. One ghost X account uses the name of Zimbabwe’s former vice president, Joice Mujuru. Even President Mnangagwa’s spokesperson, George Charamba—who is also a senior government employee —runs two toxic ghost X accounts—@Jamwanda2 and @dhonzamusoro007—which he uses to attack and post completely fabricated and malicious information about female human rights defenders and political activists in Zimbabwe. The first of these accounts was suspended in 2022 but was reinstated after Elon Musk acquired Twitter and renamed it X.
In the past year there has been a proliferation of toxic X accounts in the country and they are flourishing. At times, these X accounts incite physical and sexual violence against female political and human rights activists. In one post, a ghost X account threatened a prominent human rights activist that “[I’m] waiting to rape you.” The post drew outrage from X users, and it was later deleted.
And in a study published in 2023, Constance Kasiyamhuru from the University of Johannesburg in South Africa said the Varakashi in Zimbabwe operate mostly on Twitter/X to “shut down” the political opponents of the governing Zanu PF party.
“Through trolling, name-calling, threats, mocking, mobbing, labelling, ridicule, casting aspersions, delegitimation, disinforming, and other strategies, Varakashi seek to regulate, censure, and ‘discipline’ anti-musangano [anti-ruling party] online discourse,” Kasiyamhuru wrote.
Tendai Ruben Mbofana, a Zimbabwe based social justice advocate and writer, said the systematic deployment of online trolls—particularly targeting female human rights defenders and political activists—has become a chilling hallmark of repression in Zimbabwe.
“These smear campaigns are not just personal attacks; they are part of a broader strategy to delegitimise our work, intimidate us into silence, and discredit our credibility in the eyes of the public,” Mbofana said.
He added that the abuse often takes on a deeply misogynistic tone, laced with gendered insults, threats of sexual violence, and false accusations designed to shame and isolate women.
“It creates a climate of fear and forces many women out of digital spaces that should otherwise be used to amplify their voices and advocacy,” he said.
Sophia Gwasira, who was elected as the first female mayor for Mutare City in eastern Zimbabwe in August 2023, told Index on Censorship that the fear of being smeared and attacked on social media platforms by Zanu PF social media trolls was forcing many women to abandon opposition politics and activism. She said social media platforms were no longer safe places for women in opposition politics in Zimbabwe, with the attackes affecting both them and their families.
“It’s affecting us not only physically but emotionally too. We are trying to find ways of countering these attacks. But currently we don’t have any protection from our own political parties or from the government,” Gwasira said.
But Gwasira said she will continue to fight for the people and, given the opportunity, she would contest the general elections slated for 2028. Gwasira and many other opposition mayors, MPs and councillors were recalled in late 2023 after her party, the Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC) was hijacked by President Mnangagwa’s ruling party Zanu PF through its proxy, Sengezo Tshabangu. This forced the CCC leader Nelson Chamisa to abandon the opposition party and he took a sabbatical from party politics in January 2024.
Promise Mkwananzi, spokesperson for opposition party Citizens Coalition for Change—which is still loyal to former leader Nelson Chamisa— told Index on Censorship that as opposition, they have been identifying and exposing some of these social media ghost accounts and to direct their members to counter the toxic narratives on X.
“It must be noted also that these trolls are paid using taxpayers’ money to denigrate women and bully voices of the alternative on social media,” Mkwananzi said.
But Mkwananzi was quick to add that his party will continue to fight and mobilise people for a better Zimbabwe.
“We are also educating our members to be strong and to remain focused on recruiting mobilising, educating and radicalising the base.”
Although women are the main target, men critical of the ruling party are also targeted.
“In my own experience, I have faced repeated, coordinated attacks on X, particularly from anonymous accounts believed to be run or supported by high-ranking government officials, including the president’s spokesperson. These attacks are aimed at silencing dissent and discouraging public engagement. But we will not be silenced. If anything, these attacks only reinforce the urgency of our work,” said Tendai Ruben Mbofana Mbofana.
When President Mnangagwa seized power through a military coup from Zimbabwe’s long-time dictator, Robert Mugabe in 2017, President Mnangagwa promised sweeping reforms; economic and political reforms, including upholding human rights and rule of law in the country.
However, Zimbabwe has become worse under President Mnangagwa than Mugabe; political opponents to Zanu PF have been brutalised, tortured and killed and corruption is widespread.
A recent report by Human Rights Watch said authorities in Zimbabwe have continued to restrict civic space and the rights to freedom of expression, association, and peaceful assembly and the human rights, political and economic situation in Zimbabwe continues to deteriorate.
Under the current constitution, President Mnangagwa’s term of office—his second and last term—ends in 2028 but his party is now planning to amend the constitution to keep him in office till 2030. Meanwhile, Mnangagwa’s Varakashi are flooding social media with messages in support of the extension of his term and touting his “achievements” so far.
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29 Jul 2025 | Asia and Pacific, India, News and features
On the eve of 23 March 2025, hours after stand-up comedian Kunal Kamra released a video titled Naya Bharat (New India), dozens of members of a right-wing ruling party of Maharashtra barged in and vandalised the Habitat comedy club where the show was performed.
The workers, who represented a faction of Shiv Sena, a right-wing Marathi regional political party in India, alleged that the comedian made fun of their party leader and the deputy Chief Minister of Maharashtra, Eknath Shinde.
Kamra, in his show, sang a song referencing the word gaddar or traitor. The song did not name anyone directly, but its lyrics referenced Shinde’s separation from his party in 2022 and allying with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Shiv Sena spokesperson Krishna Hegde urged Mumbai police to arrest Kamra, lock him up behind bars, and open a case against him as his jokes insulted the people of Maharashtra.
After the event, a First Information Report (which initiates a potential criminal case) was filed against Kamra. He was later granted bail. The police also arrested a number of Shiv Sena party members who were also granted bail by a Mumbai court.
The attack on Kamra is just the latest instance of comedians in India being targeted and penalised simply for telling jokes and using satire. More broadly, it reflects an ongoing assault on freedom of speech, especially when it challenges the moral framework upheld by dominant political groups.
Responding to the threats against him, Kamra issued a statement saying, “Attacking a venue for a comedian’s words is as senseless as overturning a lorry carrying tomatoes, because you didn’t like the butter chicken you were served.”
He added, “I don’t fear this mob & I will not be hiding hide under my bed, waiting for this to die down.”
The incident at the popular Habitat club comes amid a spate of attacks against comedians in India. All highlight that while their humour may push boundaries or tackle bold themes for their audience, there’s only so much room for expression in a space where jokes are heavily scrutinised and the repercussions for comedians are severe.
Radhika Vaz, a stand-up comedian, highlights that freedom of expression can’t have any limits and there is an urgent need to protect it.
“We are at the lowest ebb. Comedians do not hold the same power that a politician does in terms of being able to influence police and judicial movement. It is not a fair fight. This is truly a David and Goliath situation, and the Goliaths should all be ashamed,” she said.
Vaz points out that censorship is not new to India. Writers, filmmakers, artists, and journalists have long been muffled, she says, but what has changed is the public complicity. “We, the public, should be held responsible because we only care when it is our team that is being censored. Freedom of expression can’t have any limits, and it certainly can’t be convenient.”
Growing censorship
What happened with Kamra is not just an isolated incident in the Indian stand-up comedy scene. Just a few weeks back, Samay Raina, who hosted a show titled India’s Got Latent, which featured a different set of judges in every episode, also faced severe backlash. The show has a huge audience in India and is infamous for its risqué humour.
The joke, made by one of the judges and India’s famous podcaster Ranveer Allahabadia, otherwise known as BeerBiceps, led to filing of multiple police reports against him and other show judges, a visit by Mumbai police to Allahabadia’s house, and also the removal of the video from YouTube based on a request by a member of India’s National Human Rights Commission.
Back in 2021, comedians Kunal Kamra and Munawar Faruqui were forced to cancel several shows across different cities after right-wing groups threatened violence and state authorities declined to provide security. That same year, Vir Das faced political backlash for his satirical poem Two Indias, performed during a show in the USA, which critics accused of tarnishing India’s reputation abroad.
Earlier in 2021, Munawar Faruqui was arrested in Indore before even performing, accused of making offensive jokes about Hindu Gods.
In 2020, Agrima Joshua became the target of death and rape threats after a stand-up video surfaced where she was alleged to have mocked the revered 17th century ruler Chhatrapati Shivaji. In reality, Joshua’s jokes had critiqued exaggerated claims about a planned Shivaji statue on Quora, not the historical figure himself, though she was well within her rights in either case.
Going back further, in 2016, Tanmay Bhat from Mumbai-based comedy collective All India Bakchod (AIB) drew criticism after a Snapchat spoof involving Indian legends Lata Mangeshkar and Sachin Tendulkar, which offended some sections of the public. The previous year, AIB had faced a barrage of FIRs for a roast event, where the use of profanity was labelled a threat to Indian cultural values.
Manjeet Sarkar, a stand-up comedian, says he never feels safe on stage when he performs political or critical material.
“It’s not about Kunal Kumra, it was always there. Journalists are doing the story now because the Kunal Kamra situation is happening. For comedians like me, who aren’t in the same position as Kunal Kamra, we have felt this for a long time,” he said.
He added that stand-up comedy as an art form talks about the current realities of the country.
“If a particular democracy is doing well, the jokes would reflect that. If not, they’ll reflect what it is. Comedians don’t do it because they want to be activists; it is because they are being true to the art,” he said.
A shrinking space for dissent
The situation for comedians mirrors the broader erosion of democratic space in India. According to a recent paper published in the Journal of Asian and African Studies by Abdul Fahad and Siti Mustafa, stand-up comedy has increasingly stepped into the role that traditional mainstream media once occupied: challenging the government, critiquing societal norms, and raising uncomfortable questions.
In a media landscape where many outlets now function as “government public relations” rather than independent watchdogs, comedians like Kunal Kamra, Vir Das, and Varun Grover have become some of the few remaining critical voices. The paper notes that these comedians “use humour to address sensitive topics, empowering audiences to engage with critical political issues,” making comedy a powerful tool for free expression beyond the reach of traditional media censorship.
But this visibility comes at a cost. As Fahad and Mustafa document, comedians in India today face serious risks: legal harassment, threats of violence, show cancellations, and loss of income.
Threats and economic retaliation are not just random acts; they are often orchestrated. Government supporters and political loyalists regularly organise social media campaigns to discredit and intimidate comedians. Sarkar highlights how platforms, too, play a role in censorship: “Social media platforms shadow-ban people like me. If they put people in jail, it’ll be hard to reach audiences, right?”
Meanwhile, the government is using incidents like Kamra’s to justify further tightening of digital spaces under the guise of “protection”. The new Digital Personal Data Protection law, critics argue, could make online dissent even riskier by giving authorities broader powers to monitor and restrict speech.
The broader message is clear: artists who mock, critique, or even simply question dominant narratives do so at their own peril.
Hope, resistance, and an uncertain future
Despite the risks, comedians are not giving up. They continue to find ways to speak, sometimes more subtly, sometimes more defiantly, pushing back against an environment that increasingly demands silence.
“I guess I look at countries with better standards and hope that by chipping away we can one day walk amongst them,” Vaz said, adding with a wry laugh, “maybe in 100 years.”
For Sarkar, change must come from those with privilege. “The most privileged in our society should push back, because they can afford to,” he said. “Until there is a shift in their awareness, it’s going to keep going in this direction. It will eventually impact them too – and that’ll be the funniest moment.”
The research by Fahad and Mustafa also underlines this need for solidarity. They suggest that alliances among comedians, other artists, and civil society can create pockets of resistance that protect free expression. Comedy, after all, thrives on community, and its survival may depend on collective defence against growing censorship.
In the meantime, the stakes for telling a joke in India have never been higher. What was once considered harmless or even patriotic satire is now treated as sedition in all but name. “We cannot attack or accost any journalist for what they’ve said,” Vaz warned. “We cannot attack or accost a comedian for a joke they made. Both deserve to be protected by the law of the country.”
As India’s democracy becomes increasing authoritarianism, comedians find themselves unlikely warriors for free speech. Armed only with a mic and a sharp sense of humour, they continue to stand on stage and say the things others dare not, even as the space to laugh – and to dissent – keeps shrinking.
The Winter 2023 issue of Index on Censorship, Having the last laugh, looked at how comedy is being censored around the world. Explore the issue now.
28 Jul 2025 | Americas, Israel, Middle East and North Africa, News and features, Palestine, United States
In a story of censorship that spans two continents, it was revealed this week that an entire body of scholarly work was cancelled by the Harvard Educational Review (HER) shortly before publication. The work focused on ‘education and Palestine’ and its raison d’être was paramount: Since the war in Gaza started the educational system there has been decimated. All schools have been closed for children for almost two years, and almost 90% of schools will require reconstruction or major work to be functional. Every university in the strip has been partially or fully destroyed too, as have the Central Archives of Gaza, containing 150 years’ worth of documentation, in addition to every ministerial archive of official records. The scholar Henry A Giroux called the destruction “deliberate … part of a broader effort to annihilate Palestinian history and identity”. He used the term (employed by others too) “scholasticide”.
The HER special issue was a response to this, and was going to cover topics including the annihilation of Gaza’s schools. It was due to be published this summer. Contracts had apparently been finalised and articles edited. Then on 9 June, the Harvard Education Publishing Group, the journal’s publisher, cancelled the release. The publisher cited “a number of complex issues”, including the need for “considerable copy editing” and certain legal checks. They claim the cancellation was not “due to censorship of a particular viewpoint”.
Others disagree. “Even within the broader landscape around Palestine in the university, it’s unprecedented. You just don’t solicit work, peer-review it, have people sign contracts, advertise the articles, and then cancel not just one article, but an entire special issue,” said Professor Chandni Desai, author of one of the articles, in The Guardian.
It’s impossible to ignore the wider US context too. Since October 2023 US universities have come under pressure over accusations of tolerating antisemitism on campuses. Many have responded by restricting pro-Palestine speech and scholarship, as we reported here.
But the story goes beyond Palestine. After Donald Trump’s win in November, Index contributing editor, the academic Emma Briant, asked whether academic freedom would survive Trump 2.0. It’s too early to say definitively. What we can say though is it’s being extremely tested. Everyone is familiar by now with the attacks to Columbia University – stripped of funding and given a list of demands, including external oversight for certain academic departments – and of Harvard resisting only to be punished too. Add to these big picture stories smaller ones – academic journals accused by officials of “bias”, threats to ban scientists from publishing in leading peer-reviewed medical journals, government subscriptions to several leading journals ended. Another story from this week: a new government investigation into Harvard’s exchange programme.
Against these two backdrops – a devasted Gazan education system and an embattled US one – an important project to save research on Palestine has been stopped. The knowledge economy is much poorer for it.
