Who is 2025’s Tyrant of the Year?
Choose from our shortlist of 10 authoritarian leaders and vote on who you think has done most to crack down on freedom of expression this year
New report: Breaking encryption is legally and practically unworkable
Index on Censorship has today published a new report entitled Breaking encryption is legally and practically unworkable which sets out our position on why governments should not break end-to-end encryption (E2EE).
Major service providers such as WhatsApp – which alone services 42 million users in the UK – Telegram, and Signal, use E2EE, allowing their users to securely send private messages that only they can read. E2EE works by scrambling the contents of a message into unintelligible code using a pair of cryptographic keys. In systems protected by E2EE, only the sender and the recipient hold the keys needed to decrypt the message, meaning that no one else – not even the service provider itself – can access its contents.
E2EE is an essential factor in protecting individuals and businesses from hacking, identity and personal data theft, and fraud, and it is a critical tool used by individuals for whom their safety and security depend on their communications being private and secure. This includes journalists communicating with their sources, dissidents under authoritarian regimes, human rights defenders, and victims in victim support groups.
The report builds upon years of work by Index on Censorship, parliamentarians, and independent counsel at Matrix Chambers to clearly and unequivocally demonstrate that “Technology Notices” that can be issued by Ofcom under s. 121 of the Online Safety Act 2023 (the “OSA”) are fundamentally incompatible with international and domestic human rights laws: their effect would amount to ending access to end-to-end encrypted messaging in the United Kingdom, contravening Articles 8 and 10 of the European Court of Human Rights and breaching Ofcom’s obligations under the Human Rights Act 1998, fundamentally alter the face of digital communications in the United Kingdom, and leave the UK government vulnerable to a barrage of diplomatic and international legal disputes.
At Index on Censorship, we have published censored writers across the globe since 1972. Today, we’re using encrypted messaging apps to keep in touch with our network of correspondents around the world, from Iran, to Afghanistan, to Hong Kong.
We were vindicated in raising the alarm over the government’s ongoing crusade against encryption, its potential abuse under the IPA, and we have repeatedly called for Ofcom’s power to issue Technology Notices to be removed from the OSA given their legal and practical failings.
While the OSA’s aims are commendable, the road to mass censorship is paved with good intentions, and the Government still has the chance to avoid this legal headache and practical international embarrassment.
Read the report here or flip through it below.
How artist Sai’s exhibition in Thailand was censored after Chinese protests
If you had told Sai a month ago that his latest exhibition would force him to flee across the world, he might not have been surprised.
After spending hundreds of days hiding above an interrogation centre in his home country of Myanmar, sneaking cameras illegally through military checkpoints and risking his life raising awareness about the horrors of the junta through art, he seems immune to shock.
He told Index that to get out of the country and come to Thailand in 2021, he had to “imagine himself dead”.
This experience influenced his work as an artist and curator who has become renowned for his powerful works about the trauma of political persecution and Myanmar’s military coup.
His latest Bangkok show, co-curated with his wife, is Constellation of Complicity: Visualising the Global Machine of Authoritarian Solidarity. It links his experiences with artists from around the world in a powerful exploration of how authoritarian regimes collude internationally in systems of repression. But for some, its message struck too close to home.
It opened at the end of July at the Bangkok Arts and Cultural Centre (BACC), where Sai and his wife had settled in exile. But shortly after it opened, he says that Chinese embassy officials arrived with Thai authorities and demanded that it be shut down.
A display showing artist names which were redacted after complaints from Chinese embassy officials in Thailand. Photo: Pran Limchuenjai
A compromise was reached, but what followed was a wave of censorship that stripped the audacious exhibition of artists’ names, politically sensitive references and some of its bravest works.
The names of Uyghur artist Mukaddas Mijit, Tibetan artist Tenzin Mingyur Paldron and Hong Kong artist duo Clara Cheung and Gum Cheng Yee Man were all blacked out and their works pared down or removed entirely.
Tenzin Mingyur Paldron was the most heavily censored, with the televisions screening his video installations about the Dalai Lama and LGBTQ+ Tibetans switched off.
Tibetan and Uyghur flags were removed and a description of the censored artists’ homelands was concealed with black paint. An illustrated postcard comparing China’s treatment of Muslim populations to Israel’s was also taken down.
Sai, who goes by a single name to protect his identity after repeated warnings that he is being sought by the junta, is no stranger to state power.
His father, the former chief minister of Myanmar’s biggest state, was abducted and jailed on falsified charges after the 2021 coup. His mother lives under 24-hour surveillance, constantly fearing for her safety.
This experience has shaped both his politics and his practice. “My works usually combine social experiment with institutional critique,” he explained. “But since 2021, it has mostly been reflective of my lived experience.”
This inspired the most recent exhibition, which brings together exiled Russian, Iranian, Syrian, Burmese, Tibetan, Uyghur and Hong Kong artists. It’s a snapshot of life under repression, mapping the contours of a global authoritarian network.
“We formulated what would happen if all of the oppressed united together against the few [oppressors],” Sai explained about his defiant stance which quickly stoked retaliation.
“We were very used to absurdity, with what happened to my father, my country, my loved ones. But this was another international-level absurdity happening – the absurdity of transnational repression.”
Thailand, which Sai had once seen as a place of refuge where a large community of pro-democracy artists and dissidents from Myanmar could work with relative freedom suddenly felt perilously unsafe.
“Thailand has long tried to balance being a host for dissidents with keeping strong relations with China,” he said. “The intervention by the CCP, and Thailand’s willingness to comply with it, shows just how fragile that space really was.”
After being informed that police were looking for them, Sai and his wife booked flights out of the country. They fled within hours and are now seeking asylum in the UK.
But he is sympathetic towards the BACC. It is funded by the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration, and he said it decided to censor the show due to its “connection to city authorities and the political sensitivities such as threats to diplomatic relations between Thailand and China”.
“They were under immense pressure and chose partial censorship as a way of protecting the institution,” he concluded.
However, the irony was almost too much to bear as the Chinese response handed the exhibition, which might otherwise not have been noticed, a global platform. The artists who had their names blocked out have gone viral, reaching new heights of fame. Visitors have flocked to the exhibition, while the gallery has faced uproar for its decision to bow to censorship.
Sai also says it also taught him a valuable lesson. “When we got out [of Myanmar] we promised that we would make something for our country. Now we’ve learned something – we can’t just do it for our own country, because all of these geographical boundaries are just constructs. We live in one world, and we need to fight against global repression together.”
We’re going on a bear hunt: Spitting Image challenged over Paddington satire
Rebooted British spoof series Spitting Image came under fire recently from the rights owners of Paddington Bear after the character was featured in a video posted to YouTube in July titled “Spitting Image Presents: The rest is Bulls*!t”.
In the video, a parody of the popular The Rest Is… podcast series, Spitting Image’s Paddington drops his soft-spoken upper-class English accent for something more akin to his native South America whilst swapping the marmalade jam for a pile of suspicious white powder.
Dr Alberto Godionli from the University of Groningen puts forward the question, does the parody actually take aim at the idealised Britishness that Paddington represents?
The mockery looks through the facade of Paddington, described as being the “embodiment of a good immigrant archetype” by James Greig in an article for GQ following the death of Queen Elizabeth II, who famously sat down for tea with the Peruvian immigrant in a YouTube video posted by the royal family in 2022 to mark her Platinum Jubilee. Greig comments on this meeting, writing: “It’s a form of soft monarchism for people who want to buy into a cosy, benign and progressive vision of Britishness”.
Speaking to the Radio Times, Al Murray, one of the comedians behind the latest iteration of Paddington on Spitting Image, slated the legal action as “an attack on comedy” going on to say: “In my experience people find you funny taking the piss out of things, until you take the piss out of something they like. Then they don’t find you funny anymore.”
Spitting Image’s version of Paddington Bear, Photo from Spitting Image/Facebook
This legal attack on English satire that uses the image of a beloved bear harks back to the 1971 obscenity trial against counter-culture magazine OZ involving the character Rupert Bear.
Rupert Bear first appeared in Daily Express comic strips in 1920, depicted as a young bear living in the fictional countryside town of Nutwood which served as an idyllic depiction of an old-fashioned British living.
The case started after the release of OZ’s Schoolkids issue in May 1970, which was the result of an invitation to people under 18 to contribute to, and edit, an issue of the magazine.
Among the offending pieces was one submitted by 15-year-old schoolboy Vivian Berger who had modified a comic strip by American artist Robert Crumb to include Rupert Bear as the main character engaging in an explicit sexual act.
The comic drew attention from the British Obscene Publications Squad, later known for its own corruption, with OZ editors Richard Neville, Felix Dennis and Jim Anderson facing charges including “conspiracy to corrupt public morals” in what became the longest obscenity trial in British history.
Jonathan Dimbleby, reporting from the trial wrote: “It was certainly revealing; not least for the fact that the prosecution conspicuously ignored the bulk of the magazine – some 21 pages of the youthful anti-authoritarian political writing. According to the Crown, neither ‘politics’, nor what the kids thought of ‘the pigs’, were relevant in what was merely a criminal trial.”
Neville, Dennis and Anderson were found guilty and sentenced to up to 15 months’ imprisonment, however the verdict was overturned on appeal.
Rupert, like Paddington, represented a sense of Britishness that amounts to little more than a nostalgic look at a Britain still stuck between the wars, before the end of the British Empire, and before the start of the welfare state and the decline in raw global power which would mark the next 100 years.
Other examples of famous bear characters being used for political satire prove however that this is not a uniquely British phenomenon.
Yogi Bear was the subject of a 2020 Onion headline that read: Heavily Armed Fans Guard Statue Of Yogi Bear In Case It Turns Out He Supported Confederacy, mocking the reaction to the removal of a number of Confederate statues that had occurred across the United States that same year.
And again from the USA, the often-mocked Smokey Bear, with his slogan “Only YOU can prevent forest fires” was depicted in a 2022 Seattle Times cartoon saying “I hate to say it but climate change has beat me”, as part of a comment piece on that year’s wildfires.
In China images of Winnie the Pooh have been used to mock President Xi Jinping and they emerged as a symbol of dissent during protests in Hong Kong. This has led to the removal of images of the bear across Chinese social media, where users had been claiming a visual resemblance between Xi and the bear. The mockery at times included other members of government such as former Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam being compared to the character Piglet after appearing in an image with Xi.
Political artist Badiucao has used Winnie the Pooh in a series of images mocking Xi’s efforts to censor the character, with the piece “‘Xi’s going on a bear hunt” showing the President holding a rifle over the bear’s corpse.
In Russia the bear has been used to represent the country for centuries and demonstrate Russian strength, even when the bear is seen as tamed. With its sharp teeth and knife-like claws aimed towards Ukraine the bear has reared up again. Not that Russian nationalists mind – and mock-ups of Russian President Vladimir Putin riding a bear are are still shared to bolster his strong man image.