9 Dec 2025 | Afghanistan, Campaigns, El Salvador, Hong Kong, India, Iran, Israel, News, Russia, Tanzania, Turkey, Tyrant of the Year, United States
At the end of every year, Index on Censorship launches a campaign to focus attention on human rights defenders, dissidents, artists and journalists who have been in the news headlines because their freedom of expression has been suppressed during the past twelve months. As well as this we focus on the authoritarian leaders who have been silencing their opponents.
This year we see the return of an old favourite.
Jemimah Steinfeld, CEO of Index on Censorship, said, "After a couple of years’ rest, Tyrant of the Year is back. We’re reviving our most popular end-of-year campaign at a moment when leaders from around the world seem ever more determined to silence criticism. In the spirit of the satirists we so often champion in the pages of Index, we’re leaning in and poking fun at these leaders. After all, thin-skinned officials loathe mockery because, as Mark Twain said, “Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand". But let’s be clear: Tyrant of the Year isn’t about downplaying the real harm caused by the actions that put them on the list. The reality is stark: the world is getting worse for free expression, and some countries now featured were unthinkable additions only a few years ago."
She added: "A note on the list too: it highlights those who have escalated attacks on free expression this year, not necessarily the world’s absolute worst offenders (that grim crown is hard to pry from the likes of Xi Jinping, Nicolás Maduro, Isaias Afwerki, Aliaksandr Lukashenka or Kim Jong Un). We’ve chosen people whose actions in 2025 have delivered fresh shocks, sudden crackdowns or moved a region further away from pluralism and respect for free speech."
The polls are now open for the title of 2025 Tyrant of the Year and we are focusing on 10 leaders from around the globe who have done more during the past 12 months than others to win this dubious accolade. Previous winners of the Tyrant of the Year have been Andrés Manuel López Obrador from Mexico and President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of Turkey.
The ten contenders for Tyrant of the Year 2025 are (in alphabetical order by country). Click on the links to find out whay they have made our shortlist:
- Mullah Hibatullah Akhundzada, Afghanistan
- Nayib Armando Bukele, El Salvador
- John Lee, Hong Kong
- Narendra Modi, India
- Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran
- Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel
- Vladimir Putin, Russia
- Samia Suluhu Hassan, Tanzania
- Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Turkey
- Donald Trump, USA
So dive in. Read what they've done. Vote. And if you want the winner delivered straight to you in early January, sign up to our newsletter and you’ll be the first to know who claims the crown no one wants.
To cast your vote, click on their face below to highlight your chosen tyrant and then click on the Vote button.
The closing date is Monday 5 January 2026.
9 Dec 2025 | Americas, Tyrant of the Year, United States
There’s been nothing softly, softly about Trump 2.0. Since his return to the White House in January, Donald Trump quickly set his sights on his critics, the media and marginalised people. First up were the slew of executive orders, which led to transgender references being removed from the Stonewall monument on the National Parks service website and to the banning of hundreds of other words and phrases from government websites and documents. Next, he took on the universities, attempting to defund colleges due to his perception of their ideologies. Then he weaponised ICE against protesters, literally picking people off the streets, the most famous of course being pro-Palestine activist Mahmoud Khalil.
Did the people push back? Absolutely. Democracy isn’t dead in America, yet. Did he push back harder still? Yes. In the summer he deployed National Guard troops in Democrat-led states to clamp down on protesters and journalists alike.
Let’s also spare a thought for the media, famously labelled “the enemies of the people” during Trump 1.0. He’s throttled Voice of America, directed insults towards individual journalists (“ugly”, “piggy”, “stupid” being just three choice words he’s used) and taken out a slew of mega-dollar law suits. And then this: in December the White House opened a “Media offender of the week” leaderboard, naming and shaming journalists that it claims are biased. Isn’t Trump the media offender of the week though, every week? Offender, tyrant – you choose.
To cast your vote, click on your chosen tyrant's face below and then click on the Vote button. And if you want the winner delivered straight to you in early January, sign up to our newsletter – you’ll then be the first to know who claims the crown no one wants.
The closing date is Monday 5 January 2026.
To view the other contenders for Tyrant of the Year, click here.
8 Dec 2025 | Americas, Asia and Pacific, China, Hong Kong, News, United States
The Chinese telecoms giant Tencent is trying to muzzle a service that offers an uncensored view of what users of the Chinese social media platform WeChat, which has 1.3 billion users, are posting.
The FreeWeChat platform.com is operated by China-based anti-censorship organisation GreatFire.org (a 2016 Index Freedom of Expression award-winner) which tracks censored and uncensored posts from WeChat.
FreeWeChat works by identifying WeChat posts that contain certain “sensitive” keywords and archives and monitors them all to see whether they are subsequently deleted from the social platform.
Typical words that cause content to be flagged include the so-called three Ts: Tiananmen, Taiwan and Tibet. If a monitored post subsequently disappears, FreeWeChat marks it as “censored” or “user deleted” depending on who has removed it – WeChat or the user themselves.
FreeWeChat is an invaluable resource for shedding light on the workings of China’s censorship regime. In the time FreeWeChat has been operating, it has allowed more than 700,000 censored WeChat posts to remain available for both Chinese users and others with an interest in censorship in the country.
Now, the very existence of FreeWeChat is now under threat, and Index has teamed up with other human rights groups to try and stop it being taken down.
The first threat to FreeWeChat came on 12 June 2025 when Tencent, the Chinese media company which runs WeChat, engaged Singapore-based cybersecurity firm Group IB to send a letter to Vultr, the USA-based cloud hosting provider of the FreeWeChat.com website. The letter, according to sources close to GreatFire, asserted trademark claims, without citing any activity that violated US laws.
Tencent claimed that FreeWeChat was infringing intellectual property rights by using the WeChat trademark and wording as well as “displaying articles which are censored/blocked by WeChat official channels and features an app download QR code in order to access more ‘banned’ WeChat content.”
The letter called on Vultr to suspend the freewechat.com website. On receipt of the letter, Vultr suspended the server and asked for a response from GreatFire on Tencent’s allegations.
GreatFire said: “We responded promptly, raising both process (did Vultr have any evidence that Group IB was actually an authorised agent of Tencent?) and substantive (our use of the name WeChat on a website tracking censorship on WeChat does not infringe on those marks) concerns.”
A subsequent letter from Group IB to Vultr doubled down on Tencent’s complaints, saying that FreeWeChat’s use of the logo was not permitted because it was not an informative website but was instead “clearly acting as WeChat by promoting content forbidden by the platform”.
It went on to argue that FreeWeChat is not only infringing Tencent’s trademarks but also its copyright. It also said that FreeWeChat was breaking US cybersquatting and competition laws.
Index on Censorship became involved in the case earlier in the summer, helping GreatFire respond to the allegations. In July we sent Vultr a letter co-signed by 17 human rights, free expression, press freedom, and digital rights organisations, reiterating concerns that Tencent was weaponising Vultr’s trust and safety process against public interest actors.
In early August Vultr’s lawyers assured Index on Censorship that the company was “committed to resolving all disputes, including this one, in an efficient and equitable manner”.
However, on 28 November, Vultr issued GreatFire with a formal 30-day notification of termination of services, a threat to the service’s very existence. For now, the freewechat.com site is still live as GreatFire has moved FreeWeChat to a second hosting provider. Yet how long it will remain live remains unclear. GreatFire says it is unsure whether the new provider has been contacted by Group IB or Tencent. It seems certain it will be.
A GreatFire spokesperson said, “We don't want this to happen again to our projects. It's difficult enough for us to fight the Chinese censorship apparatus. Even though we have come out on the losing end of this dispute, we hope that by sharing our story, we will dissuade other bad actors from taking a similar approach in the future.”
You can read more details of the case and how to support GreatFire here.
8 Dec 2025 | Asia and Pacific, China, Japan, News
As the chief executive of Index, it’ll be of no surprise to anyone that I’ve attended my share of protests. What may be more surprising is that the largest of them all, by a long way, was in Beijing. In late summer 2012, nationalist fury against Japan erupted over the disputed ownership of islands off Taiwan’s coast.
Japanese restaurants and cars were vandalised, Chinese flags adorned offices, and central Beijing filled with thousands – perhaps hundreds of thousands – of protesters outside the Japanese Embassy. I found myself on the outskirts of the protest, mesmerised. For the record, I wasn’t participating, merely passing through.
Such unrest might seem curious in a nation where the government tightly controls dissent, but these demonstrations were not only permitted, they were actively encouraged. Apparently, attendees were bussed in from neighbouring regions, given free transport and daily allowances.
Anti-Japanese sentiment is never far away in China. Switch on the TV and you’ll likely come across a show about Japanese atrocities during World War II or something similar, as I reported here. And in 2012, such sentiment was politically expedient. Authorities weaponised it to divert attention from domestic grievances.
It’s a different story today. There are no mass street protests to be seen, even though tensions have once again flared between China and Japan. Last month, Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said that a Chinese naval blockade of Taiwan could pose an existential threat to Japan and justify a military response. The comments enraged many in China. But these days the Chinese economy is too fragile to risk unrest spiralling. Leaders need only recall how the 2022 Urumchi fire protests rapidly morphed into nationwide criticism of Beijing’s rule, to fear their effects.
Still, Beijing is punishing Japan for Takaichi’s words. They’ve asked her to retract them and she’s refused, so now the knives are out. The “wolf warriors” have re-emerged, spouting anti-Japan vitriol online. Major Chinese travel companies have stopped selling tours to Japan. Screenings of Japanese films have been paused, cultural exchange events cancelled. Perhaps the most dramatic retaliation has been against Japanese singers. Multiple concerts have been shut down. In Shanghai last Friday, Maki Otsuki, best known for singing the theme tune to the Japanese anime series One Piece, had the lights and sound cut mid-performance. A video shows her stunned as staff remove her microphone and lead her offstage. The following night, pop icon Ayumi Hamasaki posted an apology to fans after her show was axed minutes before it was due to begin. She shared photos of herself and her dancers performing in an empty venue (see photo above). Other organisers report similar cancellations.
The throngs of young Chinese who are big fans of Japanese culture feel put out and have taken to social media to say as much. They can see that a Japanese politician shouldn’t have to parrot Beijing lines in order for musicians to finish a concert in the country. Though who knows where that rage will go?
