24 Jul 2025 | Europe and Central Asia, Israel, Middle East and North Africa, News and features, Palestine, United Kingdom
It is a time of “firsts” in the UK – the first time a superinjunction has been deployed by the government and the first time a direct-action group has been proscribed as a terrorist organisation primarily on the grounds of property damage. Both examples have impacted freedom of expression and both show how laws in the UK – created with particular and legitimate purposes in mind – can be too broad and too ill-defined to protect our speech rights.
Let’s start with the superinjunction. Last week it was revealed that one was used to prevent the public from knowing about how thousands of Afghans were relocated to the UK after data about their work with British forces was leaked online. This placed them in extreme danger and the government spent hundreds of millions trying to correct course. Before the High Court decision on Tuesday, journalists were banned from disclosing anything about the leak, or even the fact that an injunction existed.
The length of the proceedings made the case a first too. According to court documents the Ministry of Defence originally asked for the superinjunction to last around four months, back in September 2023. By the time the superinjunction was lifted, two years had passed.
Furthermore, the superinjunction was made “against the world”, not just against named media organisations, meaning that any third parties who became aware of the proceedings were gagged. Mr Justice Chamberlain, the judge who oversaw most of the proceedings, had said that granting the superinjunction to the government “is likely to give rise to understandable suspicion that the court’s processes are being used for the purposes of censorship,” adding: “This is corrosive of the public’s trust in government.”
It has also only been a few weeks since Palestine Action was proscribed as a terrorist organisation, with three weekends in a row seeing protesters arrested for expressing their support of the group. When Home Secretary Yvette Cooper proscribed PA, it was noted as unprecedented, the first time an organisation that mainly targets property has been proscribed. Lisa Smart MP said in the parliamentary debate ahead of the proscription that “while there may be compelling legal arguments that the actions of Palestine Action have met the legal definition of terrorism in terms of serious criminal damage… there are still questions as to whether that discretion is proportionate in this case, given the level of threat posed to the general public.” As many argued, and irrespective of what one might think about PA and their tactics, we already have laws to criminalise their more aggressive and destructive ones.
The two cases are of course very different in nature, but both raise important questions about how fit for purpose some legislation in the UK is and how their applications can be oppressive.
In terms of the superinjunction, the procedure was created by the 1998 Human Rights Act. It was intended to balance protection of individuals’ privacy against protection of freedom of expression. The balance however was noted as off from the get-go and that the existence of superinjunctions would act as a serious threat to media freedom. We at Index were against them, except in exceptional circumstances, and recognised the risk of not defining what would qualify as an exceptional circumstance. Today, because of their very nature, we don’t actually know how many are in place and what stories we are missing. What we can say is that the Afghan story was of huge public significance. It concerned thousands of people and billions of taxpayer money and yet was shielded from public debate. Was suppression of the story necessary to protect the security of those impacted, which should absolutely be taken very seriously? The time lag in the leak happening and it being acknowledged would suggest damage had already been done. Was it necessary for the gag order to go on for so long? It’s hard to see that it was.
As for PA, they were proscribed under Section 3 of the Terrorism Act 2000. Someone who expresses support for them is now committing an offence and can face up to 14 years in jail, hence the series of arrests we’ve already seen. Their proscription also carries with it implications for freedom of expression that goes beyond being part of the organisation or directly supporting them. According to Section 12 of the Terrorism Act someone may be criminalised for being reckless in their speech supporting them in reference to how that speech is interpreted by those who hear it. Lawyers and human rights organisations have argued that such wording is too broad and too ill-defined, that it could be easily misapplied.
These are not abstract concerns. Last week, for example, police in Canterbury threatened a woman with arrest for using the phrase “Israel is committing genocide in Gaza”, making a tenuous link between his speech and PA. In another instance a man was arrested for carrying a placard featuring a Private Eye parody of the proscription. Add to these examples legitimate fears that many others will self-censor to remain fully within the law.
The Labour government has just rounded off their first year in power. Prime Minister Keir Starmer has said the past government have “serious questions to answer” in terms of how the breach and the superinjunction happened. It’s heartening to see that it’s being taken seriously and we can only hope that as they review the leak they too review whether superinjunctions fulfil anything useful in the UK, or at least will consider how the definitions around when they can be used could be better defined. At the same time it’s the Labour government who proposed the proscription of PA. We’re concerned we’re only at the start of seeing its free speech implications.
As Labour enter their second year in power, a commitment to freedom of expression would be welcomed. Addressing how appropriate versus oppressive the framing of some of our existing laws are would be welcomed.
24 Jul 2025 | Israel, Middle East and North Africa, News and features, Palestine, Volume 54.02 Summer 2025
This article first appeared in Volume 54, Issue 2 of our print edition of Index on Censorship, titled Land of the Free?: Trump’s war on speech at home and abroad, published on 21 July 2025. Read about the issue here.
When Diala Ayesh was arrested last year, her first thought wasn’t for her own safety – it was whether anyone would inform her loved ones of her whereabouts.
“Even though there was nothing against me, as Palestinians we always expect to leave home and not return,” she told Index.
On 17 January 2024, Ayesh was travelling north from Hebron to Ramallah via public transport when the vehicle was stopped by Israeli forces at Wadi a-Nar – a military checkpoint near Bethlehem. After the border police inspected everyone’s ID cards, a female officer asked: “Who is Diala?”
“I am,” Ayesh answered.
Before anything could happen, Ayesh leaned over and whispered to the woman sitting next to her: “If they take me, tell my family.”
Ayesh was pulled from the vehicle and beaten. The driver’s keys were returned, and they were told to drive on without her.
She was told she was being detained, and the police officer asked her whether she had links to Hamas. “These were ready-made questions with no evidence, as if just being Palestinian is accusation enough,” said Ayesh.
Over the next few hours, she was transferred from one military camp to another. At one point, she was placed in a metal container outdoors in the winter cold for six hours. She was blindfolded with her hands tied behind her back and officers banged on the bars of the cell to scare her. She was eventually transferred to Hasharon prison, where she was strip-searched and left in a “cold, filthy” cell, with no food or water.
The next day, she was transferred to Damon Prison, and placed with other female prisoners. It was the first time she had eaten since her arrest.
“When I was arrested, I felt frozen in time,” she said. “At first, I had emotional numbness, I couldn’t think or feel. That quickly turned into fear. And then, I felt I had to turn that fear into strength. I kept comforting myself, telling myself: ‘I am the strong one’.”
On 25 January 2024, she was issued with a four-month administrative detention order without charge or trial, and she did not appear before a court, aside from what she described as a “sham” court hearing held via video conference. She spent nearly a year in Damon Prison until she was eventually released on 14 January this year.
The human rights lawyer spoke to Index over a Signal video call from her home in Ramallah, intermingling English with Arabic, then later via email with the help of a translation tool. She was warm, relaxed, jovial, dressed in a stripy top and vaping, sat next to her younger sister who helped her translate into English. She spoke openly about her harrowing year in jail.
She endured unbearable conditions which she says had a “significant negative impact” on her mental and physical health. A report from the NGO Euro-Med Monitor has noted how conditions inside Israeli jails have seen an “unprecedented deterioration” since the start of the war in Gaza.
Ayesh said she received little medical care in Damon, despite developing severe stomach pain. After being released, she visited a doctor and needed to have her gall bladder removed.
“[The doctor said] if I had waited one more week, something bad would have happened,” she said.
Alongside facing strip-searches, beatings, solitary confinement and being deprived of family visits, Ayesh said she was denied basic necessities such as sanitary pads. Radios, TVs, games and books were confiscated, and prisoners were prevented from practising religious rituals and had their hijabs taken away.
“These became part of our daily reality. It wasn’t just an attempt to break our bodies but to crush our dignity and humanity.”
Ayesh described a “deliberate and systematic policy of starvation”. Meals consisted mainly of beans, chickpeas, lentils and toast. Boiled eggs were cooked once a week then reheated throughout the week, turning blue and emitting an “unbearable smell”.
But the worst part for her was the intellectual suppression.
“We couldn’t even hold a pen. This was a strategic move to suffocate us intellectually and emotionally – as if the goal was to kill the consciousness within us before anything else.”
Her detention order was renewed several times before her release. Every time, she was tried in a “sham court”, she said, where she would attend virtually via video call. These took place in a military rather than a civilian court – a practice previously described as a “discriminatory” judicial system by Sahar Francis, director of the Palestinian NGO Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association. Ayesh said parts of the sessions were conducted in secret between the judge and the prosecution, and the decision to extend her detention was based on “secret evidence” that was not shared with her or her lawyer.
I asked her if she ever lost hope. “There’s a saying we often repeat: ‘The prison door never truly closes on anyone’,” she said. “I truly believed that freedom would come, no matter how long it took.”
Her greatest source of anxiety was for her family’s welfare, not her own. Every time her detention neared its end she would get anxious and cry, ready to learn her fate but also wondering whether her family would be waiting for her nervously at a checkpoint.
The other women prisoners were her sole source of comfort, and “became like family” to her. “They did their best to lift my spirits,” she said. “They never left me to face it alone, and that love was my greatest source of strength.”
To date, neither Ayesh nor her lawyers have been given a reason for her year-long detention.
The 29-year-old lawyer has defended political prisoners detained in both Palestinian Authority (PA) and Israeli jails. She won Index’s Freedom of Expression Award for Campaigning last year for her bravery and dedication to free speech.
Ayesh spent nearly a year in Damon Prison in Israel, enduring grim conditions and what she describes as a “deliberate and systematic policy of starvation”. Here, she reunites with her parents after her release in January 2025
She was born in Jerusalem and grew up in Ramallah, where she has lived her whole life. She is the oldest sibling and lives with her parents, three sisters and brother. Her grandparents were displaced during the 1948 Nakba from Jerusalem and Gaza to Ramallah and Al-Bireh in the West Bank.
While she describes her childhood as normal “compared with other Palestinian children”, it was far from ordinary. In 2000, when she was six, the second intifada – a major uprising by Palestinians against Israel – broke out, and Ramallah was at the centre of clashes. Tanks would pass through the streets she played in, the army would frequently come to her home and the sound of explosions were part of everyday life.
“We learned to distinguish between live and rubber bullets, between gas and sound bombs,” she said.
She never consciously decided to become a human rights lawyer – but perhaps her childhood experiences drove her down that career path.
“There’s nothing more painful than witnessing injustice and staying silent,” she said. “I believed my role was not just to practise law but to use it as a tool to confront oppression and restore dignity [to people].”
In her final year of law at Al-Quds University, in Palestine, she attended a court session at Ofer Prison, an Israeli jail housing Palestinian prisoners in the West Bank. She was conscious of the irony that some of the officers she was speaking to “might one day arrest me, or someone close to me”.
In 2018, she started defending political prisoners held in PA prisons in the West Bank, providing them with legal consultations and advice, speaking to their families, documenting their conditions and representing them in court.
Three years later, after her uncle was sent to an Israeli jail, she began work with Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli prisons as well.
Her last visit to an Israeli jail was three days before her own detention, and she has not been able to continue that work since her release due to security restrictions.
Ayesh’s professional work has suffered because of her imprisonment – her family had to shut down her law office and she has been given a travel ban. She has managed to resume some work with detainees in PA jails.
But she has long endured intimidation on all fronts. Before her arrest, she was subjected to threats and harassment from the PA “almost on a daily basis”, she said.
This included online trolling, getting direct threats from people affiliated with the Palestinian security services, receiving warning messages via prisoners, and near-constant surveillance. A Palestinian intelligence agency car would often park outside her home for long periods of time.
“This was clearly meant to send a message: ‘You are being watched’,” she said. Israeli forces would also send her frightening anonymous phone messages.
In July 2021, Ayesh was arrested by the PA during a crackdown on a peaceful protest outside its police headquarters in east Ramallah. She was not attending the protest but was visiting the police station with a group of human rights defenders to advocate for the release of detainees being held there. During her arrest, she said she was sexually and physically assaulted by five police officers, who beat her on her breasts and buttocks.
But she has not been deterred. “These threats did not silence me or stop me – they made me more determined to continue defending human rights. When someone is threatened for their activism, it means they’re hitting a nerve somewhere, and their work is making an impact.”
Indeed, she has much work to do. Since 7 October 2023, repression of free speech has ramped up in the West Bank, and journalists, lawyers and cultural workers have all been increasingly subjected to imprisonment, harassment and attacks.
“Both the occupation and the Palestinian Authority impose tools to control the public sphere and break any dissenting voices,” she said.
Aside from judicial punishment, these include online and physical surveillance, threats to political prisoners’ families, and Israeli authorities increasing travel restrictions or terminating permits for Palestinians working in Israel.
“Many Palestinian people in the West Bank have been arrested or subjected to mistreatment simply for participating in a demonstration or sit-in, or even for writing a simple post on social media,” Ayesh added.
In her final year of studying law at Al-Quds University in Palestine, Ayesh attended a court session at Ofer Prison, an Israeli jail housing Palestinian prisoners in the West Bank. Although she was attending in a professional capacity, she was aware that Israeli officers might one day arrest her
Indeed, after her release, the first case she worked on was a university student who was arrested by the Palestinian security services for attending a sit-in at Al-Manara Square in Ramallah.
Since her release, Ayesh has been brave enough to speak to the media about the mistreatment of prisoners, but has been “filled with internal fear” for doing so.
Many female prisoners released from Israeli jails have been directly threatened and told not to speak to the media, she said.
Last year, the UN called for an end to the “prolonged administrative detention without charge” of human rights defenders in the West Bank by the Israeli authorities.
In July 2024, Mary Lawlor, UN special rapporteur on human rights defenders, drew attention to five individuals who were arrested and detained between October 2023 and March 2024, of which Ayesh was one.
Others included Bassem Tamimi, an organiser of peaceful protests against the illegal occupation of Palestinian lands, and Baraa Odeh, a campaigner for young people’s rights. All five had been arrested without warrants, interrogated without the presence of lawyers, and denied contact with their families.
“Everything has changed since 7 October,” Ayesh said. “Now anyone who opens their mouth will get arrested. Anyone who crosses a checkpoint, they [Israeli authorities] can check your phones; if you share anything about Gaza, Jerusalem or things happening in the West Bank, they can arrest or hurt you. If you are posting [online] for your job as a journalist, they can kill you.”
Since the Hamas attacks on Israel and Israel’s onslaught on Gaza, Ayesh has been impacted in more ways than one. Seven members of her extended family have died, and life in the West Bank has grown arduous, with more military checkpoints, curtailed freedom of movement and increased repression.
Meanwhile, monitoring the abysmal conditions faced by Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli jails has become increasingly difficult, with legal due process suspended and access to lawyers restricted. It was this lack of due process that meant Ayesh herself was stripped of her right to a fair trial during her detention.
For all these reasons, Ayesh believes she cannot give up her work. Continuing to be a lawyer is risky – but when human rights violations are so rampant, she feels she has no other option.
“I can take a rest, but I can’t stop my work. This is the situation [I am in] and after I was released, I told myself that I can still help. I am not afraid.”
She used to regularly attend peaceful marches in Ramallah, but now she is worried about being arrested again. She knows she must be careful – for her clients’ sakes as well as her own.
“I must stay safe to help more people. Out of prison, I can play a great role. In prison, I can do nothing.”
All photos by Diala Ayesh.
23 Jul 2025 | Asia and Pacific, India, News and features
When journalist Afraaz Hussain (not his real name) tried to revisit a series of investigative reports he had filed on human rights abuses in Indian-administered Kashmir, he was stunned to find the links broken and the pages wiped clean. Some of his most critical stories – on government surveillance, military misconduct and civil unrest – had vanished without explanation.
“A lot of my work from the region is totally missing,” said Hussain, who asked that his name be changed to protect his identity. “Entire archives of newspapers before 2019 are missing. Stories critical of the government have disappeared.”
Apart from losing most of his investigative work, which he first noticed had vanished around two years ago, Hussain says he is facing police intimidation and a ban on his travel outside the country.
Many reporters and editors based in India say media outlets are deliberately erasing or hiding their work amid what they describe as growing pressure from the Indian government to limit reporting critical of its policies. Stories that once documented surveillance, hate crimes and rights abuses are now vanishing from digital archives without explanation.
The government has also, in many cases, explicitly ordered the takedown of journalistic pieces that highlight alleged human rights abuses. For instance, last year, India’s Ministry of Information and Broadcasting directed a magazine to remove an article detailing accusations of torture and extrajudicial killing by the Indian Army in the Jammu region.
This is true not only for the conflict-torn Indian-administered Kashmir and Jammu regions, even if it may have started there. Across India, a quiet purge of digital content is underway. News stories critical of the government are being erased – scrubbed from websites, replaced with 404 errors or removed after veiled legal threats. Journalists and activists call it a “digital vanishing act” that’s increasingly common in the country’s shrinking press freedom landscape.
“404 journalism” is becoming the norm
Veteran journalist and author Ruben Banerjee calls it “404 journalism”.
“You click on a link and the story’s just not there anymore,” Banerjee told Index. “It’s becoming a new genre of journalism in India – stories that once were, but are now memory.”
Banerjee was ousted from Outlook Magazine in 2021, a move he believes is in part linked to the magazine publishing a series of stories critical of the Modi government which allegedly invited political pressure on the publication.
Banerjee cited daily Hindustan Times’ now-defunct Hate Tracker as one of many casualties of “404 journalism”. The tracker, which meticulously documented hate crimes across India, disappeared from the outlet’s website with no public notice or editorial clarification.
“Nobody disputed its facts,” he said. “But the political sensitivity was enough to have it pulled.”
The takedown coincided with the exit of editor Bobby Ghosh. The Wire reported that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had a personal meeting with the publication’s proprietor, Shobhana Bhartia, in the months before Ghosh’s departure, and government officials raised objections about Ghosh’s editorial decisions.
In some cases, journalists themselves are requesting takedowns, driven by fear rather than falsehoods.
“Some are scared because their old work is now being used against them,” Banerjee said. “But that is not journalism. That is capitulation.”
The erasure of digital archives is not new, but its scale and coordination appear unprecedented. In Kashmir, where Hussain worked as a correspondent for multiple outlets, entire archives were purged following the Indian government’s 2019 abrogation of Article 370, which revoked the region’s special status.
“Most English, Urdu and vernacular newspapers had their archives wiped clean,” Hussain said. “It is not like a few pieces were removed, it is an institutional erasure.”
These deletions, he said, targeted some of the most impactful journalism on record. “We spent weeks on those investigations. These were exclusive stories on grave issues. When that disappears, you are erasing the rough draft of history.”
The implications are serious.
“For students, researchers, even citizens trying to trace how events unfolded, that material is gone,” said Maariyah Siddique, a research scholar at Aliah University, in the state of West Bengal. “The government’s intention is clear: to intimidate journalists, activists and whistleblowers, reminding them of the government’s omnipresence.”
She added: “Even the government knows that in the digital age, information once posted online cannot really disappear, but such tactics are directed at creating long-term impacts [rather] than short term. It is more mental and psychological than physical intimidation of journalists.”
This subtle form of pressure, explained Siddique, is not only about erasing content but also about instilling a sense of vulnerability among journalists.
“Sometimes government action is simply meant to warn the concerned that their work is being heard and they will be chased next,” she said.
The chilling effect
The government’s legal toolkit also plays a role. A notable example is the 2022 arrest of Kashmiri PhD scholar Abdul Aala Fazili for an article he wrote in 2011. Since then, media houses and their contributors have grown more wary. Several editors told Index that authors and scholars now request takedowns of old pieces, fearing their writing could be used against them.
“What’s worrying,” said Banerjee, “is that many media organisations don’t wait for official orders. They self-censor, just to avoid displeasing the powers that be.”
The consequences go beyond deletion. The constant fear of retaliation has created a culture of self-censorship and editorial paranoia.
“No one even pitches stories critical of the government anymore,” said Qazi Zaid, an editor with Free Press Kashmir, one of the few independent media houses in the region. “We are walking on eggshells with every story. Many authors and journalists ask us to take their articles down because they think it is affecting their passport applications or fellowships.”
Experts say erasure of archives is not just about control but “erasing the past” to influence the future.
“When journalism disappears, so does accountability,” said Siddique. “Every post, every report, every fact contributes to an informed electorate. Erasing it is an act of political manipulation.”
Journalistic freedom in India has steadily declined in recent years, slipping to 151 out of 180 countries in the latest Reporters Without Borders (RSF) press freedom index. Journalists say the vanishing archives are just one more indicator of this decline.
“Press freedom is being eroded like never before,” said Hussain. “And now, it is not just what you can’t say, it is also what you did say, that gets you in trouble.”
For journalists and media experts, it is a moment of reckoning.
“You start reporting, knowing the risks,” said Siddique. “But this erasure… it is the last blow. If your work isn’t going to survive, what’s the point of doing it at all?”
