5 Sep 2025 | Israel, News and features, Opinion, Palestine, United Kingdom
We run this piece the week five spokespeople, who were due to give a press conference about protests against a ban on Palestine Action, were arrested by the Metropolitan Police on suspicion of encouraging support for a proscribed organisation
The right to protest is under unprecedented attack in the UK. I should know. l’ve been campaigning for 58 years and participated in more than 3,000 protests, witnessing first-hand the way protesters’ rights have been progressively eroded.
The recent restrictions are merely an escalation of repressive legislation that has long existed and has often been used to stifle peaceful protest.
In the 1990s, under the ancient “breach of the peace” statutes I was arrested simply for holding placards urging LGBT+ equality. The police said that such a “controversial” demand could cause a violent reaction by members of the public, so I had to be arrested to prevent the possibility of violence. In other words, I was held liable for the potential criminal behaviour of others.
The public order laws against behaviour likely to cause “harassment, alarm and distress” were introduced in 1986, supposedly to combat football hooliganism and violent street disorder. But they have since been used overwhelmingly to suppress peaceful protesters. I was arrested under this law in 1994 for publicly condemning the sexism, homophobia and antisemitism of the Islamist extremist group Hizb-u-Tahrir. The group called for the execution of LGBT people as well as women who have sex outside of marriage. No police action was taken against Hizb-u-Tahrir[1]. But when I cited and criticised what they said, I was arrested for behaviour likely to cause “harassment, alarm or distress.”
In recent years, the criminalisation of peaceful protesters has been further expanded to include mere disruption and nuisance. Disruption? Isn’t that one of the objectives of a protest? To disrupt business as usual. Nuisance? Most people would associate nuisance with a noisy dog or a late train. But a peaceful protest?
The new legislation has given the police a green light to crackdown even more harshly, as my two recent brushes with the law illustrate.
I was arrested at the Palestine solidarity protest in London, on 17 May 2025. The police claimed I had committed a ”racially and religiously aggravated breach of the peace” by marching with my placard: “STOP Israel genocide! STOP Hamas executions! Odai Al-Rubai, aged 22, executed by Hamas! RIP!”
The police claim is nonsense. My placard made no mention of anyone’s race or religion. Detained by the police for nearly six hours, I was finger-printed, DNA-sampled, photographed and denied the right to speak to a solicitor. The police have since admitted I was arrested in “error” but only after adverse publicity and my production of video evidence of the police’s behaviour. It was the 103rd time I have been detained or arrested by the police during my nearly six decades of campaigning – in all cases for peaceful protests.
A week later I was forcibly and unlawfully ejected by police from the Birmingham Pride parade. My crime? The police objected to me holding a placard that read: “West Midlands police refuse to apologise for anti-LGBT+ witch-hunts. SHAME! #ApologiseNow”
When I challenged the police’s bid to remove me from the parade, officers said the Pride organisers told them I was not authorised to be on the march and they had requested the police to remove me. That was a fabrication. I was wearing a march wristband. The Pride CEO approved me to march in the parade and has since confirmed that he never gave the police any instructions to remove me. It looks like police ejected me in revenge for my exposure of their refusal to say “sorry”.
What’s happened to me is small fry compared to government and police sledgehammer tactics against the climate campaigners like Just Stop Oil: sentences of three to five years jail for merely discussing motorway protests. Over two years in prison for climbing on the Dartford Crossing.
The crackdown on protest has culminated in the proscription of Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation. This draconian measure is what we expect in Putin’s Russia, not in Britain.
And it only gets worse. Over 500 people were arrested outside parliament on 9 August 2025 for holding placards “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action.” They were expressing their opposition to the designation of the organisation as a terrorist group and supporting its efforts to stop what they regard as Israel’s genocide. What kind of country have we become when freedom of expression is a crime?
Breaking the law to non-violently challenge injustice has an honourable tradition, as espoused by Martin Luther King and the US black civil rights movement in the 1960s.
It can be ethically justified in three circumstances: when governments ignore the wishes of the majority, break their election promises or violate human rights. If these principles clash, the protection of human rights should always trump majority opinion and election promises. No government has the right to oppress people or deny freedoms and, if it does, people have a right to resist with non-violent civil disobedience.
And that is what I have done on many occasions. Until the 1990s, there had been a long-standing ban on protests within a mile of parliament, under ancient “sessional orders.” Myself and members of the LGBT+ group OutRage! were determined to challenge this unjustified restriction on the right to protest. We were repeatedly arrested in the 1990s for “unlawfully” standing opposite the House of Commons with placards demanding the repeal of anti-LGBT+ laws. Our ethical law breaking, to assert the right to protest outside parliament, which had imposed these laws, eventually changed the way the law was interpreted and enforced, thereby allowing protests where they were once banned.
Critics say that breaking the law is never justified in a democracy because elections give people the option of changing the government. But Britain is not a fully formed democracy with a fair voting system. No political party has won a majority of the popular vote since 1931.
We’ve had decades of unrepresentative parliaments, and governments ruling with minority public support. Labour won only 34% of the vote in the 2024 general election but bagged 63% of the seats and 100% of the power. That is not democracy. Keir Starmer has no majority mandate for his crackdown on the right to protest.
* For more information about Peter Tatchell’s human rights work: www.PeterTatchellFoundation.org
[Editor’s note: After taking legal advice, Index removed a section of this article pertaining to Palestine Action, because of draconian terror legislation and the lack of a defence of free speech.]
[1] Hizb-u-Tahrir were proscribed in 2024 as a terrorist group
4 Sep 2025 | Africa, Mali, News and features
The acclaimed Malian professor and author Étienne Fakaba Sissoko, who was released from prison in March this year, has fled Mali with his wife and young children following abduction threats. He was one of the few voices left criticising the military government.
Sissoko spent a year in jail in the country’s Kéniéroba Central Prison for “harming the reputation of the state” and “dissemination of false news disturbing the public peace” as a result of the publication of his 2023 book, Propagande, Agitation, Harcèlement: La communication gouvernementale pendant la transition au Mali (Propaganda, Agitation, Harassment: Government Communication During Mali’s Transition).
Speaking to Index, Sissoko said after announcing that he was going to publish three books written while in prison – an essay on the resurgence of authoritarian regimes in West Africa, an economic analysis applied to Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, as well as a biography of persecuted public figure Djimé Kanté – attempts to silence him intensified.
Sissoko said there were two attempted abductions at his workplace, the University of Social Sciences and Management of Bamako (USSGB), one of the institutions created after the breakup of the former University of Bamako. He also faced constant surveillance by plainclothes agents and threatening visits to his home, anonymous calls, and social media messages such as ‘We know where you live’”.
The military regime running Mali has long shown its intolerance to Sissoko’s books, many of which have made uncomfortable reading for the junta.
He has written that the security situation in the country has worsened despite “help” from Russian mercenary group Wagner which the author says has committed human rights violations.
In 2020, violence was concentrated in the centre and north of the country, he said, but it now affects every region, including the capital, Bamako.
“Wagner has not brought lasting improvements to security,” he told Index. “It has been involved in serious human rights violations. Its presence serves to consolidate authoritarian power rather than protect civilians. Public opinion is divided: some view Wagner as a symbol of sovereignty, others as a foreign force with no popular legitimacy.”
Sissoko said relations with Russia now extend beyond the military sphere to media relations and diplomacy. Pro-Russian outlets and disinformation campaigns are promoted and Mali is aligned with Moscow positions at the UN.
These relations are being expanded in the higher education sector: 290 scholarships were granted for 2024–2025 to Malian students at Saint Petersburg University, and Bambara, Mali’s national language, is now being taught in some Russian institutions.
“In practice, Mali has become more dependent on Russia than it ever was on its Western partners,” he added.
“The break with France and several Western countries has had three main consequences: including the withdrawal of aid and the collapse of foreign investment and market isolation.
Mali once enjoyed a genuine democratic culture where freedom of expression was a core value, says Sissoko. The 2000s and 2010s saw the emergence of a pluralistic media landscape: the creation of new radio and television stations, the rise of social media, and vibrant citizen mobilisation.
Since the military coups of 2020 and 2021, this progress has been reversed.
Mali is ruled by military leader General Assimi Goïta who overthrew the government of then president Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta in August 2020 following anti-government protests.
The cross-border Economic Community of West African States forced Goïta to hand over power to an interim government that was supposed to organise elections but the general staged another coup in May 2021.
Sissoko says repression has become systematic: arbitrary arrests of opponents and journalists, closure of media outlets that include RFI, France 24, TV5, Joliba TV) and dissolution of some movements such as student organisations.
“Today, Mali’s media environment falls into three categories: pro-regime outlets, financed or directly controlled by the military authorities; cautious media, practising systematic self-censorship to avoid reprisals; and independent voices, rare and often forced into exile or marginalised,” said Sissoko.
Opinions contrary to those of the government have also been criminalised by the country’s cybercrime unit, he added. Sissoko said as a result of heightened repression, Malians engage in digital self-censorship and modify their communication even in private as fear has become a method of governance.
Sissoko said in Mali researchers face severe political risks for any research deemed critical. He said there is an absence of independent, forward-looking research to inform public policy; lack of dialogue between academia and political decision-makers; chronic underfunding and lack of infrastructure for independent research.
He founded the Centre for Research and Political, Economic and Social Analysis (CRAPES) in Bamako to aim to fill that gap.
“Before 2020, university lecturers could address almost any topic freely. My own arrest in 2022 — the first time in Mali’s history an academic was imprisoned for research work — marked a turning point,” he told Index.
Since then: academics decline invitations to speak publicly on political topics, even in their own areas of expertise. Scholarly work linking political developments with current events has become rare; self-censorship is widespread,” he added.
“Students, too, avoid taking political positions in class. Fear has replaced critical thinking, eroding the university’s mission.”
The professor argued that these alternatives cannot replace the diversity and quality of former partnerships with western countries.
Sissoko’s coverage of the worsening state of freedom of expression in his books, Libertés en exil, pouvoir en treillis: Chronicle of an Authoritarian Drift in Mali (2020–2025) and De la transition à la régression: The Dissolution of Political Parties in Mali as a Symptom of Legal Authoritarianism has made him a target for the government.
He feels he was left with no choice but to leave the country with his family.
Sissoko told Index, “These systematic and organised threats aimed to prevent me from speaking out again. My family had to be evacuated for their safety. Even in exile, I remain under a suspended sentence, which illustrates the regime’s determination to maintain permanent judicial pressure.”
3 Sep 2025 | News and features, United Kingdom
There have been two stories this past week which could be read as incitement to hitting men in the bollocks. One of the perpetrators was met with five armed officers at Heathrow Airport, the other was lauded as a have-a-go hero. One involved the comedian Graham Linehan, and the other involved the Queen. Only one of them actually carried out the act (admittedly several decades ago), but she wasn’t the one who found herself in a police cell.
The story about a teenage Camilla Shand who, in her own words “whacked a man in the nuts” when he groped her on a train, is told in a new biography of the Queen. It has been used to explain why the Queen became an advocate for women’s rights in later life. Linehan, the creator of the acclaimed series Father Ted, The IT Crowd and Black Books is also a campaigner. As the introduction to his articles on the blogging platform Substack states: “I write about the current all-out assault on woman’s rights.” While Camilla’s campaigning has only served to burnish her reputation, Linehan was cancelled after his gender-critical views brought him into direct conflict with the trans rights movement.
In December he announced he was moving to Arizona as a result of this cancellation. But on Sunday he returned to the UK, only to be arrested, held in a prison cell for hours and questioned about his posts, as he documents in his Substack. While the Met police have not named Linehan, they have confirmed his account of events.
Which brings us to the offending posts. According to Linehan, they are as follows. One, posted on 19 April, shows an image of a trans-rights protest with the comment “A photo you can smell”. This is followed up with “I hate them. Misogynists and homophobes. Fuck em”. These are indeed offensive and intended to be so. But it is difficult to see how they could be interpreted as incitement to violence. The third tweet posted the next day is more problematic. But only the second half has been quoted in most of the media coverage of the arrest. The whole tweet reads: “If a trans-identified male is in a female-only space, he is committing a violent, abusive act. Make a scene, call the cops and if all else fails, punch him in the balls.”
Whether or not you agree with his definition of an abusive act he is making precisely the same argument as the cheerleaders for the young Camilla, although she whacked her groper in the nuts before she called the cops.
This is not Graham Linehan’s first run-in with the police over his anti-trans stance. On Thursday he will appear at Westminster magistrates court accused of the online harassment of 18-year-old transgender activist Sophia Brooks and damaging her phone at a public event last year. He denies all charges.
Linehan’s arrest is further evidence of a faultline in the free speech landscape where the trans debate is concerned. As Helen Lewis writes in The Atlantic, there have been several instances of trans allies calling openly for violence against those whose views they disagree with and who have not been dealt with in this way. A genuinely pluralistic society cannot have two-tier justice in this area.
Linehan’s case raises serious questions about how we police speech online. We know there are consequences when posts go viral and incitement to violence is a reality. But in many cases there are no consequences except to the author of the posts. We may not approve of Linehan’s call to vigilante action against abuse of women’s spaces, if that is what it was. But the suppression of his free expression rights may be more damaging in the long run.
Index on Censorship was founded as a response to the repression of writers and academics behind the Iron Curtain. Advocacy for dissidents remains the priority of the organisation. Some would argue that Linehan is a dissident. It is questionable whether it is ever possible to be a dissident in a country where freedom of speech has genuine legal protections – it is a strange kind of police state where ministers intervene to suggest officers have been too heavy-handed. The real concern is whether Linehan’s arrest is evidence of the erosion of those protections. JK Rowling condemned the action as “totalitarian”, while commentator Piers Morgan said “Britain’s turning into North Korea.” Although this is perhaps overstating it, what happened to Linehan at Heathrow airport this week certainly looks like police overreach. It also seems odd that Linehan has been instructed not to post on X while on bail, surely an unnecessary restriction of his rights.
It is tempting to see this as a comedy arrest by bumbling cops. But a genuinely open society does not police speech with the tactics of an authoritarian state.
3 Sep 2025 | Americas, News and features, United States, 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 more about the issue here.
In late April, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt decided to do things differently by holding a new type of press briefing. Instead of fielding questions from credentialled journalists, she held separate briefings specifically for social media news influencers.
“Tens of millions of Americans are now turning to social media and independent media outlets to consume their news, and we are embracing that change, not ignoring it,” Leavitt said at the beginning of the first such briefing on 28 April.
Jackson Gosnell – a college student who runs a popular TikTok news account and sometimes appears on the pro-Donald Trump broadcaster One America News – attended that briefing. He asked about Russia’s war in Ukraine given Trump’s promise to end it quickly.
“I thought it was important to ask questions that people at home wanted to know,” Gosnell told Index. “Not the fluff that others might have given.”
Unsurprisingly, nearly all the 25 people identified by NBC as having attended that week’s briefings at the White House have a history of clear support for Trump. The “fluff” from the other news influencers – dubbed “newsfluencers” or “news brokers” by various academics – included a combination of softball questions, overt praise for Trump, false information and conspiracy theories.
But how did these people make their way into the heart of the federal government? In January, Leavitt announced that “new media” – such as podcasters and social media influencers – would be permitted to apply for credentials to cover the White House. She began reserving a rotating “new media” seat at regular press briefings and giving its occupant the first question. Analysis by The New York Times found that the seat often went to either right-wing media or newer outlets such as digital start-ups Semafor and Axios.
The White House then took over the press pool in February, giving it control for the first time in a century over which reporters were permitted close access to cover the president. It announced it would start inviting “new media” to join the press pool, with most of the invited outlets being conservative or right-wing, according to analysis by the non-profit Poynter Institute for Media Studies.
Historically organised by the independent White House Correspondents’ Association, the press pool is a group of rotating journalists, who cover the president up close every day for a wider group of media, who are known as the press corps.
The rise of citizen journalism in the USA has been a long time coming. But in the months since Trump returned to the Oval Office, the phenomenon has quickly reached a crescendo as the White House embraces pro-Trump newsfluencers in a way that has never been done before.
Former president Joe Biden invited social media influencers to the White House, too. But the current administration openly welcomes, champions and legitimises pro-Trump newsfluencers and other members of the “new media” cohort – many of whom tend to disseminate falsehoods and conspiracies.
The White House has simultaneously used other mechanisms – such as co-opting the press pool – to box out traditional media and make it more difficult for mainstream journalists to cover the current administration.
Multiple academics said that, taken together, these phenomena are concerning for US democracy because they make holding the president accountable a taller order. They also send the message to the rest of the world that the USA doesn’t care as much about championing global press freedom as it once did.
“This is about trying to eliminate criticism and dissent,” Kathy Kiely, chair of free press studies at the Missouri School of Journalism, said. “[It’s] lapdogs versus watchdogs.”
The White House’s spokesperson Anna Kelly told Index over email that the media has enjoyed “an unprecedented level of access to President Trump, who is the most transparent and accessible president in history.”
“Under the president’s leadership, the press office has been more inclusive of new media, whose audiences often dwarf those of legacy media outlets, and local syndicates – ensuring that the president’s message reaches as many Americans as possible,” she added.
The concept of a newsfluencer is relatively new. In the USA, they were once on the fringes of the media ecosystem. But the 2020 election and the subsequent “big lie” narrative – that the election was stolen from Trump – was a major inflection point that accelerated the rise of far-right newsfluencers. False narratives about the Covid-19 pandemic and the 6 January insurrection in 2021 also helped facilitate their ascent.
Many rose to prominence by deliberately differentiating themselves from the mainstream media. But now some of them are on the verge of entering the mainstream themselves, if they haven’t already.
“These Maga [Make America Great Again] influencers see their role not as sceptical journalists but as boosters of the president and his administration,” said Aidan McLaughlin, editor-in-chief of the media news site Mediaite.
The months leading up to the 2024 presidential election crystallised the vast reach that newsfluencers now wield. Trump appeared on an array of podcasts and online shows popular with male audiences, including the Joe Rogan Experience podcast. Former vice-president Kamala Harris also turned to “new media” in her campaign.
It’s difficult to measure the extent that newsfluencers impact how people vote or think about societal issues, said Roxana Muenster, a graduate in communications at Cornell University in New York who studies far-right lifestyle movements online. She said the outsized role they played around the 2024 election was undeniable.
Shortly after the election, a Pew Research Centre report confirmed the growing power that newsfluencers hold. Roughly one in five Americans regularly get news from influencers on social media, the report found, and about two-thirds of that group say this helps them better understand current events and civic issues.
No longer on the outskirts of the US media sphere, right-wing TikTokers and podcasters are now welcomed into the White House. Some, such as Laura Loomer, influence Trump himself (her sway has allegedly led to the sacking of several government officials, including former national security adviser Mike Waltz).
Others – including Robert F Kennedy Jr, Kash Patel and Dan Bongino – have even become members of the administration.
To a certain extent, these newsfluencers don’t really need the White House, says Muenster, because they already have significant followings of their own. But they do get something else out of it.
“It bestows them with a certain legitimacy,” she said. “It says that these are reliable sources to get your news from.”
This can pose problems when the newsfluencers aren’t actually reliable or accurate, as is often the case. “They are not as strict with the truth as people in the actual news industry,” Muenster said.
That means false information and conspiracy theories can run rampant, which doesn’t bode well for the health of US democracy.
Disinformation and misinformation can erode trust in institutions and make authoritarianism seem more appealing, according to Mert Bayar, a post-doctoral scholar at the University of Washington’s Centre For an Informed Public.
“In a normal democracy, you want credible sources of information,” he said.
For instance, while in the “new media” seat during an official briefing in late April, Tim Pool – the prominent host of several conservative podcasts, which last year were found to have links to Russian state media – lambasted “legacy media” for “hoaxes” about Trump and asked Leavitt to comment on their “unprofessional behaviour”. (“We want to welcome all viewpoints into this room,” Leavitt replied.)
And at one of the influencer briefings, Dominick McGee – a highly-followed conspiracy theorist on X who operates under the pseudonym Dom Lucre – asked Leavitt whether Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton would ever be investigated for election integrity. Forbes reported that McGee was briefly suspended from X (then Twitter) in 2023 for posting a video of child sexual abuse.
Leavitt said McGee’s question was “refreshing” and that “the legacy media would never ask” it.
In a phone interview, McGee told Index he thought US media was “broken” and had “betrayed the American people”.
He said he considers himself a journalist; but he also said he was more concerned with being “freaking entertaining”.
Like McGee, Gosnell thinks mainstream media is dead and influencers are the future of the media industry.
But compared with other “new media” in the Trump orbit, Gosnell is relatively balanced in how he delivers the news. Even though he welcomes the rise of the newsfluencer, he knows it comes with risks. “It’s a little scary, too, because people on the internet can lie just as much as news hosts – if not [more],” Gosnell said.
Still, he is sometimes tempted to produce more opinionated content, adding: “It seems way more profitable.”
The White House gets something out of its new arrangement, too, according to Bayar. Speaking directly to Maga newsfluencers gives the White House a sympathetic ear to peddle its messages to. Meanwhile, prioritising these voices also limits the ability of journalists from mainstream outlets to ask hard questions that can hold the administration accountable.
To Bayar, the situation in the USA reminds him of his home country, Turkey, where the government picks and chooses which journalists are and aren’t allowed at press conferences with president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
“It is part of this authoritarian playbook,” said Bayar. “If you don’t get asked tough questions, you can actually control public opinion better because you control your answers.”
While the White House’s embrace of Maga newsfluencers appears to be bad news for democracy in the “land of liberty” and the home of the First Amendment, it also has implications for the rest of the world.
The USA has historically championed press freedom globally. But the administration’s simultaneous embrace of pro-Trump influencers and attacks on critical media signal that Washington doesn’t really care about independent journalism anywhere in the world, according to Kiely. “It sends a very strong signal to dictators elsewhere,” she said.
Some authoritarian countries appear to have already been emboldened by Trump’s actions. As part of the Azerbaijani government’s crackdown on independent media, authorities in May imprisoned Voice of America contributor Ulviyya Guliyeva. Press freedom experts and her colleagues believe the Trump administration’s campaign to gut VOA emboldened Baku to target the reporter.
As McLaughlin says, “this has a bad ripple effect on the rest of the world”.
