4 Aug 2025 | News, Statements
Transnational repression (TNR) is on the rise globally, fuelled by rapidly evolving technology, global democratic-backsliding and the rise of authoritarianism and years of neglect by previous governments. It is a major policy blind spot, resulting in significant constraints on the exercise of fundamental rights in the UK.
Repressive actors, including powerful and hostile states, have a growing set of tools to surveil, threaten, harass and attack individuals in the UK, violating their fundamental rights guaranteed under international and domestic laws such as the Human Rights Act 1998. Political dissidents, exiled journalists and human rights defenders have traditionally been the main targets of TNR, but today a broader array of groups and individuals also find themselves subject to transnational human rights violations here in the UK.
The UK’s responses to TNR to date have been sparse, incoherent and largely inaccessible to targeted communities and individuals. Law enforcement is an important part of the solution, but the cross-border nature of TNR demands a broader approach to protect the rights of those targeted.
Index on Censorship is a founding member of the Tackling Transnational Repression (TNR) in the UK Working Group. Formed in September 2024, the Tackling TNR Working Group is an informal coalition of individuals and organisations working to address TNR in the UK context.
The working group’s steering committee includes: The Foreign Policy Centre, Richardson Institute at Lancaster University, Index on Censorship, Reporters Without Borders, Azadi Network and The Rights Practice. The wider membership also comprises organisations such as the Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy (BIRD), China Dissent Network, Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation, FairSquare, Hong Kong Democracy Council, Hong Kong Watch, and Iran International, as well as other individual experts and researchers.
The aims of the group are to:
- To advance research and monitor incidents and effects of TNR in the UK;
- Support individuals and groups affected by TNR; and
- Identify and shape the development of a comprehensive policy response to TNR in the UK.
Together, the Tackling TNR WG has developed a ‘Four Part Approach’ for addressing TNR in the UK, which is outlined in detail below. This approach was included in the Tackling TNR in the UK Working Group’s submission to the Human Rights (Joint Committee) inquiry into ‘Transnational repression in the UK,’ in February 2025. Our evidence was published by the Committee in June 2025, and is available here.
Following the publication of the Joint Committee on Human Rights’ report on transnational repression in the UK on 30th July 2025, the Tackling Transnational Repression in the UK Working Group prepared a statement in response. To read the statement, click here.
The Tackling TNR Working Group’s ‘Four Part Approach’ for addressing TNR in the UK
Monitor
- Provide a clear, accessible and trusted contact point for lodging TNR complaints.
- Collect data, research and reports on the prevalence and forms of transnational infringements of UK residents’ human rights, in a consistent manner that is regularly made public (e.g. through annual reports).
- Play an active role within the international community (including through the Council of Europe, Interpol, the G7 Rapid Response Mechanism, OSCE and UN) to ensure information and data is shared to help combat TNR at a global level, while also protecting against international mechanisms being abused to further TNR.
Respond
- Inform relevant UK government agencies (across all four nations) to ensure legal threats and actions, extradition, deportation and freezing of assets are not used to violate human rights.
- Raise TNR cases, both individually and in aggregate, through diplomatic channels and in public statements.
- Provide rapid response protection mechanisms for individuals facing serious threats, and ensure coordination between all relevant agencies to warn targeted individuals.
Support
- Provide a clear, accessible and trusted point of contact for individuals experiencing TNR to access advice and support.
- Support individuals, communities and family members to access legal assistance, humanitarian visas and temporary traveling documents, as well as other potential avenues of redress.
- Provide appropriate physical or digital protections for victims or targets of TNR.
- Develop national guidance and provide training for local and national law enforcement and first responders about transnational repression, including tactics that might not be criminal offences but warrant attention.
Prevent
- Develop evidence-based proposals for necessary legislative and regulatory changes.
- Develop legal and diplomatic mechanisms to penalise perpetrators of TNR.
- Investigate and hold to account UK institutions, systems or professional industries complicit in TNR.
If you are interested to find out more about the working group and/or to enquire about joining, please email: [email protected]
16 Jul 2025 | News
For years, the United Kingdom has looked to the United States for moral clarity and strategic leadership in confronting the challenge posed by China’s authoritarian state. Whether it was the decision to ban Huawei from Britain’s 5G networks or to speak out against abuses in Xinjiang and the erosion of freedoms in Hong Kong, British policymakers often found strength in US resolve. Washington’s warnings were heeded, and alignment on values was assumed. That is why it is all the more jarring that a possible threat to Britain’s free press is now emerging, not from Beijing, but from a private equity office in New York.
The deal in question is RedBird Capital Partners’ proposed acquisition of The Daily Telegraph, one of the UK’s oldest, most important and influential newspapers. At face value, this might seem like a typical media buyout. But behind the gloss lies something more serious: a growing fear that this deal could open the door to Chinese influence in Britain’s media ecosystem.
At the heart of these concerns is John Thornton, RedBird’s chairman. Thornton’s connections to the Chinese state are not historical or incidental, but ongoing. He sits on the International Advisory Council of the China Investment Corporation (CIC), the country’s sovereign wealth fund. He has held senior roles at Chinese state-linked institutions. He has chaired the Silk Road Finance Corporation, a Belt and Road Initiative vehicle backed by state-aligned Chinese entities. Most tellingly, he has consistently echoed CCP narratives in public, once praising Xi Jinping as “the right man, at the right place, at the right time,” according to the Wire.
In 2023, Thornton himself related that he had told senior Chinese officials that they were losing the global narrative war because their story was being told by Westerners. He advised them to “get into” English-language media channels to shape international perceptions. He said: “The Chinese story is told by people who are not Chinese… until you start to get into those channels, you’re going to be at a big, big disadvantage.”
Now, under his chairmanship, RedBird is attempting to purchase The Telegraph.
This is where the line between ownership and influence becomes critical. The UK government is proposing to change the law to facilitate the RedBird deal, lifting the ban on foreign government ownership of UK media, and allowing up to 15% instead (coincidentally precisely the percentage needed to facilitate the Telegraph deal). This, argues the UK, will be sufficient to prevent foreign influence. But ownership, especially in an era of sophisticated financial engineering and opaque sovereign investment, tells only part of the story.
Thornton leads a firm with documented co-investments alongside Tencent, a Chinese tech giant designated by the US Department of Defense as a Chinese military company. RedBird has established a regional headquarters in Hong Kong, now subject to China’s national security laws. And Thornton himself maintains overlapping personal, commercial and political links to the CCP ecosystem that make it more than valid to question whether genuine independence would be possible. It’s not for nothing that Thornton received the CCP’s highest honour for foreigners in 2008, or was invited to tour Xinjiang when even the United Nations wasn’t allowed in to investigate atrocity crimes against Uyghurs and other minorities.
Influence can be subtle: a boardroom conversation, a commercial pressure, a well-timed phone call. But in the case of a national newspaper like The Telegraph, even subtle influence can be profoundly distorting. It sets the editorial tone, shapes hiring decisions, filters coverage, inculcates self-censorship and ultimately shifts public debate. The risk is not just theoretical, it is structural.
And yet, instead of confronting the risk, the UK government is falling over itself to facilitate the acquisition. Happily, not everyone is fooled. A major rebellion is brewing in the House of Lords, where, on 22 July, lawmakers in the UK’s appointed House will vote on a fatal motion to block these changes, in what could be one of the most consequential media votes in a generation. I hope they succeed.
Curiously, meanwhile, the British press has largely remained silent. A kind of omertá seems to be prevailing, perhaps for fear of offending potential future owners, or attracted by the possibility of selling 15% of their own business to foreign governments. But silence only compounds the danger. If influence is allowed to masquerade as passive ownership, the integrity of democratic debate really is at risk. Nobody in their right mind believes that news proprietors have no influence over editorial direction.
This isn’t just a British problem. It’s a case study in how soft power and sovereign wealth are used to circumvent democratic safeguards. RedBird has also been at the heart of the effort to acquire Paramount, drawing criticism from the House Committee on the CCP over the involvement of Chinese company TenCent. The fact that these media deals are occurring under the umbrella of a US firm – one led by a man who has publicly supported a more assertive Chinese media presence in the West – should raise serious questions.
Democracies must learn to distinguish ownership from influence, and legislation from reality. The Telegraph may soon become a test of whether we still can.
RedBird and Thornton were approached for comment
Luke de Pulford is creator and executive director of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China
10 Jul 2025 | Europe and Central Asia, News, United Kingdom
What’s one book that changed how you see the world?
Books can transform us. They open up new perspectives, help us understand lives different from our own, and spark ideas we might never have imagined. The freedom to read – to explore, question and connect through stories – is a vital part of any free and open society.
But that freedom is under threat.
Around the world, writers face censorship, imprisonment and violence simply for putting words on a page. Booksellers from Iran to Belarus, Israel to Hong Kong have been harassed and silenced. Publishers in China and Russia are being pressured and censored. In places like the USA, Brazil, Hungary and even the UK, books are being banned and pulled off the shelves in libraries because of the ideas they hold and the questions they raise.
Why? Because stories are powerful. Because reading can challenge the status quo.
Banned Books Week UK returns from 5–11 October 2025. It’s a week to celebrate the books that have been challenged, removed or silenced, and to stand with the people who write, sell and share them. Join Index on Censorship in honouring the right to read freely and the courage it takes to speak up. In partnership with the International Publishers Association and Hay Festival Global.
Get Involved!
- Booksellers and libraries are invited to host displays, organise events or highlight books that have been banned or challenged around the world.
- Writers and readers are encouraged to celebrate books that have come under fire ( globally or locally)
- Publishers and literature organisations are invited to join the campaign, whether curating online reading lists, hosting events or posting online
Email: [email protected] to take part.
About Banned Books Week UK
Index on Censorship is the UK partner for the USA Coalition, which runs ‘Banned Books Week’. Banned Books Week was launched in 1982 in response to a sudden surge in the number of challenges to books in libraries, bookstores, and schools. Typically (but not always) held during the last week of September, the annual event highlights the value of free and open access to information and brings together the entire book community — librarians, educators, authors, publishers, booksellers, and readers of all types — in shared support of the freedom to seek and to express ideas. You can read more about Banned Books Week here: About | Banned Books Week.
Banned Books Week UK is led by Index on Censorship as a parallel campaign to Banned Books Week in the USA. It ran successfully for a couple of years prior to the pandemic and is re-launching in 2025. Index invites booksellers, libraries, literary organisations, publishers, schools, writers and any other organisations interested in getting involved with the campaign. The aim of Banned Books Week UK is to become a truly nationwide campaign. Follow us on X.
2 May 2025 | Africa, Asia and Pacific, Europe and Central Asia, Hong Kong, Israel, Kenya, Middle East and North Africa, News, Palestine, Uganda, United Kingdom
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 the arrest of a prominent Palestinian journalist, and how the Court of Appeal struck down anti-protest legislation in the UK.
Press freedom infringed: Prominent Palestinian journalist detained by Israeli forces in West Bank
On Tuesday morning, Palestinian journalist Ali Al-Samoudi was arrested by Israeli forces in the city of Jenin in the northern West Bank during a raid on his son’s home. Israeli officials stated that he was suspected of the “transfer of funds” to a terrorist organisation – a claim made with no evidence, and that Al-Samoudi’s family strongly denies. The arrest has also been condemned by the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate.
Arbitrary punishment for Palestinian journalists has become a recurring theme; Reporters Without Borders has named Palestine as “the world’s most dangerous state for journalists”. Nearly 200 Palestinian journalists have been killed in Gaza since the 7 October 2023 Hamas attacks and ensuing Israel-Hamas war, and the Committee to Protect Journalists reports that at least 85 journalists have been arrested in Gaza and the West Bank.
Al-Samoudi has been targeted before; in May 2022, he was working near the Jenin refugee camp when Israeli forces shot and injured him, killing his colleague Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu-Akleh in the same attack. Over his career, Al-Samoudi has never faced accusations of terrorist affiliation, according to his family. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has reportedly said that he has now been transferred to Israeli security forces “for further treatment”.
The right to protest: UK anti-protest law defeated in the Court of Appeal
Protest rights have been under attack across the globe in recent years, and some of the most notable anti-protest legislation (the Public Order Act 2023) has been passed in the UK. This has drawn condemnation from human rights groups as they have made it more difficult to demonstrate within the bounds of the law, and have given the police more power to disrupt peaceful protest.
But on Friday 2 May, the London Court of Appeal dealt a blow to the ambitions of the UK Government to crack down on protests by agreeing with last year’s High Court ruling that anti-protest regulation was made unlawfully under the former Conservative government. The government appealed against this, but the Court of Appeal has now dismissed that appeal.
Human rights group Liberty, which initially challenged the anti-protest regulation, has described the decision as “a huge victory for democracy”.
Former Home Secretary Suella Braverman had tabled amendments to the Public Order Act 2023 using so-called Henry VIII powers to lower the threshold at which police could restrict protests to “more than minor” levels of disruption – a move which the High Court ruled as unlawful in May 2024.
Akiko Hart, director of Liberty, has stated that this ruling should serve as a “wake-up call” for Labour, who so far in its tenure in government have backed many of the same anti-protest laws as the Conservatives.
Attackers exposed: Kenyan government under fire after documentary investigates killing of protesters
On Monday, BBC Africa Eye released a documentary exposé that detailed how in June 2024 Kenyan security forces shot and killed three unarmed anti-tax protesters who were demonstrating against the Kenyan Government’s controversial finance bill.
According to the exposé, the protesters were posing no threat to the police officers at the time of the incident, and the BBC’s investigators claim they have identified the individuals who fired shots into the crowd.
The exposé has renewed calls for justice to be served to those officers who carried out the killings, with human rights organisations such as Amnesty International and the Kenya Human Rights Commission putting pressure on the Kenyan government to follow up on the BBC’s findings and ensure the identified officers “face the law”.
Government officials have been split on the documentary; a spokesperson called the documentary “one-sided”, and one legislator even called for the BBC to be banned in Kenya – while opposition politicians have largely been supportive of the exposé’s findings, with the main opposition coalition stating that the “execution of peaceful protesters was premeditated and sanctioned at the highest levels”.
Four years on: Pro-democracy lawmakers released from prison in Hong Kong
In 2021, the Hong Kong 47 were charged under a national security law imposed by the Chinese government. The 47 were made up of prominent pro-democracy campaigners, councillors and legislators in the city, accused of attempting to overthrow the government by holding an unofficial “primary” to pick opposition candidates in local elections.
The national security law was brought into effect in response to the wave of pro-democracy protests that swept across Hong Kong in 2019. Up to two million people took to the streets to protest peacefully; this was met with batons, tear gas, pepper spray, rubber bullets and water cannons by the Hong Kong police.
It wasn’t until November 2024 that the campaigners were sentenced and jailed; sentences ranged between four and 10 years, with many of the Hong Kong 47 having been imprisoned since their initial arrest in 2021. The jail sentences have been widely condemned by democratic nations.
But this week, on Tuesday 29 April 2025, the first wave of activists were released from prison. Four individuals, including prominent opposition politician Claudia Mo, were among those imprisoned since 2021, and this was taken into consideration for their sentence – after more than four years behind bars, they have been set free.
Military-level punishment: Ugandan president accused of sending dissenters to military court
Opposition leaders in Uganda have accused Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni of silencing political dissenters and opposition by trying them before military courts rather than civilian courts.
This practice was attempted against opposition politician Kizza Besigye last year – he was abducted in Kenya in November and tried before a military tribunal for treason. Besigye, 68, underwent a 10-day hunger strike in protest at his detention, before a ruling by the Supreme Court demanded that his trial be moved to a civilian court. The landmark ruling found that trying civilians in military courts was unconstitutional, and the Supreme Court ordered all such cases to be transferred. If Besigye, 68, is found guilty of treason, he could be sentenced to death.
While Besigye’s case was eventually moved to a civilian court, Museveni has not been deterred. The government is attempting to push through a law allowing civilians to be tried in military courts. Despite its current illegality, the government has continually weaponised these courts to abuse political opponents, such as supporters of the National Unity Platform (NUP), led by popular opposition politician Bobi Wine (Robert Kyagulanyi). According to Amnesty international, more than 1,000 civilians have been unlawfully convicted in military courts in Uganda since 2002.
