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The week in free expression: 19–25 April 2025
In the age of online information, it can feel harder than ever to stay informed. As we get bombarded with news from all angles, important stories can easily pass us by. To help you cut through the noise, every Friday Index will publish a weekly news roundup of some of the key stories covering censorship and free expression from the past seven days. This week, we cover El Salvador’s plan for a prisoner swap and look at how Hungary has been placed on an EU watchlist.
Political prisoners: Bukele condemned by families of American deportees for Venezuela swap plan
Last week, the Donald Trump administration once again made headlines for wrongfully deporting Maryland resident Kilmar Ábrego García to a jail in El Salvador, and failing to facilitate his return. The president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, has become a prominent figure in this story, aligning himself with Trump and stating that he “does not have the power” to return Garcia to the USA – a claim that experts say is false.
Now, Bukele has proposed a deal to send 252 Venezuelans incarcerated in El Salvador (following deportation from the US) back to their home country, in exchange for Salvadoran “political prisoners” currently held in Venezuela. President Nicolas Maduro has stated that the Venezuelan nationals held in Salvadoran prisons were “kidnapped”, while Bukele has accused Maduro of imprisoning political opponents and activists.
These Venezuelans, many of whom are believed to have no criminal background and were deported on evidence as spurious as having tattoos, have now become pawns in a game of politics – which both their families and human rights groups alike have denounced. Nelson Suárez, whose brother is among those Venezuelans imprisoned in El Salvador, told The Guardian that he feels his brother is being treated “like political merchandise”.
Under surveillance: Hungary clashes with EU over use of facial recognition tech for LGBTQ+ Pride attendees
Last month, Hungary passed a law that banned LGBTQ+ pride marches in the country, with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán stating that he “won’t let woke ideology endanger our kids.” This move sparked outrage, with opposition leaders lighting flares in parliament and demonstrators taking to the streets of Budapest. Now, one aspect of the law has drawn further ire.
The new legislation allows the use of biometric cameras by police for facial recognition and tracking of LGBTQ+ demonstrators and those attending Pride gatherings, which Politico reports could be in breach of the EU’s newly adopted Artificial Intelligence (AI) Act.
The European Commission is currently investigating whether this is the case, which has increased existing tensions between the EU and Hungary’s leadership.
This is just the latest threat to democratic rights in Hungary – last week, parliament rushed through a bill to allow passports of dual citizens to be revoked if they are perceived to have acted “in the interest of foreign powers” and to have “undermined the sovereignty of Hungary”. The bill’s passing through parliament has drawn fears about how it could be abused to strip dissenters of their citizenship.
AI deep fakes: False videos of James Bulger circulate on social media
While AI is being used against the public in Hungary, closer to home in the UK, public-generated AI videos have taken a concerning new turn – social media content creators are using AI to create “avatars” of murder victims describing their own deaths.
One harrowing example includes depictions of James Bulger, the two-year-old boy who was abducted and murdered in 1993. Fake videos are being generated that portray Bulger himself describing the details of the crime – content which Bulger’s mother, Denise Fergus, has described as “absolutely disgusting”.
Fergus is pushing for a new law to be passed that would prohibit the creation and sharing of this sort of AI content. Such videos are becoming increasingly prevalent online, with some accounts creating likenesses for multiple murder cases.
Index’s CEO Jemimah Steinfeld spoke to the BBC this week, stating that these videos already break existing laws, and that there is a concern that further regulation could restrict legitimate, legal content.
Steinfeld said that while we should “avoid a knee-jerk reaction that puts everything in this terrible box”, she sympathises with Fergus. “To have to relive what she’s been through, again and again, as tech improves, I can’t imagine what that feels like.”
Imprisoned for a hashtag: Algeria clamps down against peaceful online activism
Amnesty International has condemned the Algerian government for its continued moves to repress online activism within the country.
The organisation reports that at least 23 activists and journalists have been arrested and convicted for human rights activism and protests over the past five months, with a focus on the use of the hashtag “Manich Radi” (“I am not satisfied”), which first came to prominence in December 2024.
The hashtag started being used after the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria, with many Algerians reportedly drawing similarities between the situations in Syria and Algeria and becoming hopeful of a fight for democracy in their nation.
But Algerian authorities responded to this with swift arrests, and have continued their campaign against those posting the hashtag. Algeria’s President Abdelmadjid Tebboune said of the online movement: “Let no one think that Algeria can be devoured by a hashtag”.
Academic asylum: American professors seek refuge in Canada
Hundreds of Canadian professors have urged the Canadian government to open its doors to “academic refugees” from the USA amid President Trump’s attack on universities and education.
CTV News reported this week that more than 500 Canadian university faculty members had signed an open letter calling for greater funding to Canada’s higher education system and programmes to allow more foreign professors and academics to resettle in the country, to fight the “rising anti-intellectualism” in the USA.
This follows a continuing stream of reports of American academics looking to seek exile in Canada as their professions come under fire by the Trump administration. Many US universities have seen increasing restrictions, most notably Harvard University, which is currently locked in a major funding dispute with the US federal government. The university’s president Alan Garber told NBC that he is “very concerned about Harvard’s future”.
University professors across the country are equally as concerned about the future of education in the USA. One such professor is Jason Stanley, professor of philosophy at Yale University. Stanley, who has written multiple books about fascism, recently accepted a position at the University of Toronto. He told the Daily Nous that he was leaving the USA to “raise my kids in a country that is not tilting towards a fascist dictatorship”.
Elon Musk’s attack on public broadcasters is destroying Reagan’s Cold War legacy
In the blizzard of announcements, statements and threats made by President Donald Trump’s administration over the past few weeks, those concerning public broadcasters should have a particular resonance for readers of Index on Censorship.
On 9 February, Richard Grenell, the U.S. presidential envoy for special missions, wrote on X that Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Voice of America are “state-owned media” and “are a relic of the past.”
The billionaire Elon Musk, appointed by Trump to oversee the new advisory body, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), agreed: “Yes, shut them down. Europe is free now (not counting stifling bureaucracy). Nobody listens to them anymore. It’s just radical left crazy people talking to themselves while torching $1B/year of US taxpayer money.”
These Cold War institutions have been symbolic of American soft power since their inception. Each, in its way, was designed to counter authoritarian propaganda: Voice of America was founded in 1942 to counter Nazi ideology and Radio Free Europe in 1950 as a response to the Soviet equivalent. Radio Liberty had the specific task of broadcasting inside Russia.
These barely-veiled threats to foreign-facing broadcasters mirror similar announcements on the defunding of American broadcasters, including National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). DOGE subcommittee chair Majorie Taylor Greene has called on executives from the two organisations to give evidence to DOGE, which has accused them of “systemically biased news coverage”.
This may seem like small beer compared to the geopolitical earthquake represented by the US administration’s proclamations on the Ukraine war and the Gaza conflict, or its sabre-rattling on Greenland or Canada. But these moves are part of the same epochal shift in American foreign policy. There is much to criticise about America’s record in the post-war period. But even the worst abuses were driven, at least rhetorically, by an opposition to authoritarianism. It is no exaggeration to say that Trump and Musk are now increasingly aligned with the authoritarian heir to Stalin in the shape of Vladimir Putin, and the heirs of Hitler in the AfD (Alternative for Germany).
The irony of Musk categorising Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Voice of America as the “radical left” will not be lost on those of the European left who traditionally saw these outlets as the ideological wing of the American government or even the CIA. Indeed, they are often credited with playing a key role in providing the propaganda underpinnings that led to the dismantling of the Iron Curtain and the subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union.
Index has always felt a close affinity with Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty due to its origins fighting for dissidents in the former Soviet Union. The role of these twin broadcasters took on a renewed significance after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, something we covered in summer 2022. At the time Patrick Boehler, head of digital strategy for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty told me: “We have 23 news rooms. They are in Afghanistan and Pakistan, up to Hungary… We have fantastic teams serving Russia. And I think it’s really one of those moments where you see our journalists living up to the task and the challenge that they face. And it’s really inspiring.” His words have a sombre resonance today.
An added poignancy to the attacks on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Voice of America is given by the fact that Musk and other American authoritarians seem to be learning from the so-called “hybrid democracies” of central Europe. As we reported in November, state broadcasters were one of the first targets of the ultra-right governments of Viktor Orbán in Hungary and Robert Fico in Slovakia.
In 2017, my colleague Sally Gimson also looked at attacks on Radio Free Europe from the government in Georgia and asked what role it would have in the future.
She remarked that as a young actor, future US President Ronald Reagan was proud to promote the work of the broadcaster in the early 1950s, fronting up an advertisement for it. “This station daily pierces the Iron Curtain with the truth, answering the lies of the Kremlin and bringing a message of hope to millions trapped behind the Iron Curtain,” he said.
The position the present US government takes towards such a venerated institution is a sign of how far it has drifted from what was once considered patriotic. That old cold warrior Ronald Reagan will be turning in his grave.
Golazin Ardestani: “They controlled my voice, my body, my agency”
This article first appeared in Volume 53, Issue 4 of our print edition of Index on Censorship, titled Unsung Heroes: How musicians are raising their voices against oppression. Read more about the issue here. The issue was published on 12 December 2024.
In around 2009, Golazin Ardestani was preparing to go on stage in Tehran. The venue was sold out. She and her university classmates had been through months of rehearsals for their traditional concert and had followed all the rules: they had their songs cleared by the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, the lead singer was male, the musicians would be seated on the floor and everyone was dressed appropriately, including the correct hijab protocols. And yet, as Ardestani – who goes by the stage name Gola – walked towards the stage, she was told: “No, you can’t perform with them. No female musician can go on stage tonight.”
She stood at the side of the stage and watched her friends perform without her, clutching the formal permission papers which should have allowed her to sing, and which had been wilfully ignored. This is just one of the heartbreaking memories she has of being a female musician in Iran.
A few years later, Ardestani left Iran for good. Now in her 30s, she is based between Europe and the USA, where she creates music that speaks out against the regime. In 2018, she founded her own record label, Zan Recordings, so that she could finally release music on her own terms.
Ardestani was born in Isfahan, in Iran. She taught herself to yodel as a child and grew up in a house filled with a mix of the traditional Persian music favoured by her parents, and the Iranian and Western pop smuggled in by her older siblings, whose musical preferences were inspired by their desire for freedom.
“My teenage years were full of those stolen moments listening to forbidden songs on satellite,” she told Index over email. “Music, and especially female performers, gave me a sense of freedom that was completely absent on our heavily censored government TV.”
Growing up, Gola had never seen a woman on an Iranian stage. At age 19, fed up with trying to conform to traditional norms and still being prevented from singing, she joined some friends and a group of three sisters to create Iran’s first girl band, Orchid.
They wanted to challenge the narrative of female singers being “provocative”, and to resist patriarchal and authoritarian forces. Behind their music was a deep understanding of the history of Iranian music from before the Islamic revolution of 1979, when female singers like Googoosh and Qamar-ol-Moluk Vaziri had been celebrated and were free to perform to mixed audiences.
Orchid was only allowed to perform for female audiences, who had to remain seated. Gestures or movements that could be interpreted as dancing were strictly forbidden. The performers themselves had to avoid showing emotion on stage.
“There were female morality police at the end of each row, watching us and the audience,” Ardestani recalled.
The memory of those performances, in front of thousands of women, is still vivid.
“It was such a powerful experience that I remember making a promise to myself that night: that I would sing, I would sing solo, and I would one day sing for a mixed audience,” she said. “I held onto this vision of a day when our fathers, brothers, husbands and sons could feel proud of the women on stage.”
Whilst in Iran, Ardestani was arrested three times by the morality police, experiences which she said shaped her music and her determination to keep fighting.
The first occasion was when she was just 16, when she was arrested because her hijab wasn’t covering the front of her hair. She sat terrified in a cell and sang to distract herself. A woman shouted at her: “Shut up, close your mouth, shut your ugly voice!”
The last time she was arrested was particularly brutal and was due to the clothes she was wearing. “As they were about to push me into the van, I put on my fighting face, but chaos quickly ensued,” she said. A crowd began to form, and she hit something hard, breaking her arm. With the situation out of control, the police’s superior told her to go home in a taxi.
“All of this because of my ripped jeans, even though I was wearing a long manto [overcoat] and a scarf covering my hair.”
Ardestani considers herself lucky to have escaped alive. Under similar circumstances, Mahsa “Jina” Amini died in custody in September 2022, the moment that sparked the Woman, Life, Freedom uprising.
Iranian singer Golazin Ardestani demonstrating in Washington DC. Photo by Nathan Napolitano
Before leaving Iran in 2011 both to perform without persecution, and to study for a master’s in music psychology in London, Ardestani made a final attempt to plead her case and gain permission to record an album.
“I had to trick my way through the system just to get my foot in the door of the Department of Direction, where the man who granted permissions for male singers worked. But when I finally met him, he wouldn’t even look at me, staring at the floor as he spoke,” she said. She was told that Iran didn’t need a Céline Dion.
Ardestani knew then there was no coming back. “Once I started singing freely, I would lose my home forever,” she said. On the day she left, after Norouz (Persian New Year) in 2011, she decided she would dedicate everything to fighting for change.
“I promised myself that my music would carry the voices of those who can’t be heard,” she said. “There was no way for me to be fully myself as a musician, as a singer or even as a woman. They controlled every aspect of my voice, my body, my agency.”
She knows that she cannot return, and is confident that if she did, she would be arrested and charged with Mofsed fel-Arz, or “spreading corruption on earth”, due to her open challenges to what she calls Iran’s “fabricated religious theocracy”. This charge could carry a death sentence.
The songs she has finally had the freedom to create include Haghame, meaning “It’s My Right”, which is about the freedom to choose whether or not to wear the hijab. Another, Khodavande Shoma, translates to “Your God”, and includes the lyrics: “Your god is sick, it seems – a sick, dangerous criminal. Your religious beliefs, death, and destruction. Your prayers are for murder and blood.”
For female musicians in Iran, freedom is still out of reach. Many women rely on underground scenes, Ardestani told Index, but this comes with its own risks. Posting performances on social media can also lead to arrests, intimidation and the charge of Mofsed fel-Arz.
And censorship does not always respect borders. At a concert in Canada in 2023, designed to support the Woman, Life, Freedom movement, Ardestani was told she could not sing Khodavande Shoma, because the organisers believed it was “attacking people’s religion”. This, she said, is not what the song is about. Rather she is “confronting the twisted version of religion that the Islamic regime has created”.
“I am an Iranian woman fighting for freedom and, specifically, for women’s freedom of choice and speech. Yet here I was, outside of Iran, being told by an organiser – of a concert for freedom, no less – that I couldn’t sing a song in a free country,” she said.
She told the male Iranian organisers that she would sing that song, or not sing at all. They relented.
For every performance Ardestani gives, another song in Iran is silenced. She often posts on social media about the plight of imprisoned Iranian musicians. She condemned the arrest of Zara Esmaeili, who often sang covers of international pop hits in public with her hair uncovered. One social media video showed Esmaeili performing Amy Winehouse’s Back to Black. She was arrested on 25 July 2024, and it is believed that she has not been heard from since.
Ardestani is a huge admirer of Iranian rapper Toomaj Salehi, who won an Index Freedom of Expression Award in 2023. He was first arrested in 2022, and after being detained multiple times and tortured, he was charged with “corruption on earth”, jailed and given the death sentence. The death sentence was dropped after campaigning from prominent musicians and human rights organisations including Index, and Salehi was released in early December.
“It’s unimaginable that a musician, simply expressing himself through lyrics, could be sentenced to death for his art,” Ardestani said. “Iranian music is powerful and resilient; it’s the heartbeat of a people who have been silenced in many other ways. Each song is a form of resistance, a declaration of our existence and our hope.”
As to why Salehi and other musicians are targeted, she has a strong theory: “They know the power of a good song, the potential of meaningful lyrics and the way music can unite people to inspire change.”
For Ardestani now, everything is about fighting for freedom for all – not just in Iran, but globally. She describes music as a way to transform personal struggles into a collective moment. In another of her songs, Betars Az Man, or Fear Me, she sings:
“The butterfly is fleeing its cocoon.
Fear me, as I am that butterfly.
Fear me, as freedom is my voice.”
In her upcoming song Zaloo, she says she will offer her vision for ending theocracy in Iran – a musical call to action. For Ardestani, music is a form of rebellion. And as she told Index, far from being afraid herself: “Those who wish to silence me should be the ones who are afraid.”