18 Jun 2007 | Comment
It is one of the most common refrains of the lawyers who run modern Britain under the cloak of New Labour: the effect of the Human Rights Act is grotesquely exaggerated, they say, its scope misunderstood by ignorant people who attribute to it powers it does not possess.
Lord Falconer, Tony Blair’s one-time flatmate and our minister for justice, was at it again on the radio only recently: a police force which had refused to issue pictures of wanted criminals in case it breached their human rights had simply got it wrong. In this instance they may have done. But in other ways the Human Rights Act is having the most profound consequences, both for freedom of speech and for democracy.
Both of these issues are at the heart of a battle that is being fought through the English legal system, between the Mail on Sunday and the Prince of Wales. We published a story based on a leaked account he had written about one of his overseas trips, and the prince sued, claiming breach of confidence.
This is the real Human Rights Act in action. The man exploiting it is as far removed from a criminal on the run as it is possible to imagine: he is the heir to the throne itself. But the principles at stake are the same. Which takes precedence: the individual’s right to privacy or the public’s right to be informed?
To explain what is going on, we will start with Richard and Judy. Leaked documents are part of the lifeblood of any newspaper. Take just one recent Mail on Sunday front page: ‘Richard and Judy TV Quiz Scam’. A disgruntled employee hands over a bundle of emails which suggest that companies involved in the production of Channel 4’s Richard and Judy programme are making £7,000 a day by soliciting premium-rate telephone entries to the quiz section of the show after the cut-off point at which they can no longer be processed to take part.
Technically we have no right to see these emails, nor have the public: they are confidential. But viewers, it would appear, are being cheated: there is a public interest. We publish and Channel 4 takes the quiz off air pending an investigation. Textbook journalism – and a victory for tens of thousands of TV viewers who have been paying £1 a time to take part in a quiz that is already closed. But what if Channel 4 follows the path taken by the Prince of Wales and sues us for breach of confidence?
As the law of confidence has worked until now it would stand no chance. The public interest in championing the cheated viewers would always trump the embarrassment caused to Channel 4 by having its emails made public. But the Prince of Wales employs an aggressive firm of showbusiness lawyers and they have seen, as have other showbusiness lawyers, what Lord Falconer
cannot see: the Human Rights Act does have teeth.
The case of the Hong Kong journal began, like the Richard and Judy case, with a disgruntled individual who had in her possession some documents. Through an intermediary she handed them to the Mail on Sunday.
There are eight of them altogether, and they are among the most fascinating items I have ever read. Written by the prince in his own wry, lucid, Goonish style, they are accounts of official trips he has taken abroad.
They describe places he has visited, events he has witnessed and people he has met, complete with his own observations, some of them waspish. They are clearly written for an audience – the prince’s private secretary, Sir Michael Peat, later confirmed to me that the intention was to publish them at some point. They were typed up by our disgruntled former palace employee and distributed to people the prince wanted to impress – between 30 and 75 individuals. No one is quite sure how many because no one, including the prince’s own office, kept a proper list.
They contained much of interest, but one news story stood out. In the week we authenticated the journals, the Chinese president was making a state visit to Britain that included a banquet at Buckingham Palace. But the prince would not be going to the banquet, apparently because a trip of his own to America had been extended unexpectedly.
It was not the first Chinese state banquet he had missed, and on the previous occasion he had let it be known it was for political reasons: he did not approve of the Chinese communist leadership.
The Hong Kong journal made this abundantly clear. ‘Appalling waxworks’ was the phrase he used to describe China’s leaders.
As with Richard and Judy, textbook journalism you might think. Not according to the Prince of Wales, his lawyers Messrs Harbottle and Lewis, Mr Justice Blackburne, or the Court of Appeal.
Unlike Lord Falconer, who thinks it is all as warm and cuddly as he is, they see that the Human Rights Act lays the foundation stone for a law of privacy; something which, from Magna Carta onwards, has never existed in English law.
The problem is that, like all bad law, the Human Rights Act is contradictory. Article 10 guarantees freedom of speech. Article 8 guarantees the privacy of the individual. Or at least the privacy of individuals who can afford expensive lawyers – the bill for the prince’s case so far is £500,000 and it’s not finished yet.
The prince’s lawyers sued us for breach of confidence. To do so they used a procedure called ‘summary judgement’. This had the advantage for them that they did not have to produce witnesses – meaning the prince would not be obliged to give evidence in his mother’s own courts.
It had the disadvantage, for them, that they had to show that our case – that the public had a right to know what the heir to the throne thought of China’s political leadership, just as he had informed them all too clearly what he thought of carbuncular architecture, ‘grey goo’ nanotechnology and an Englishman’s right to go foxhunting – was so hopeless that it had no chance of success at all.
On seven of the eight journals the judge ruled that the issue should go to full trial. But in the case of the Hong Kong journal he ruled otherwise. This despite that fact that the journal contained nothing of an intimate, medical or sexual nature, indeed nothing that any normal person would regard as private, beyond the revelation that he had had to fly to China club class, whereas the prime minister and various other politicians had flown first. (Even then, he omitted to tell his coterie of correspondents that he and his entourage had been given the whole of the club class cabin to themselves.) And also despite the fact that the prince’s lawyers had happily made the entire journal a court document (we had only published a news story quoting brief key passages).
When other newspapers argued that, as a court document, it was publishable, Mr Justice Blackburne quite bizarrely allowed reporters to read it for an hour and make notes, but not to photocopy it. Perhaps he thought that if he let newspapers publish as many interesting bits as they could copy out in 60 minutes he could preserve the privacy of the uninteresting bits.
His judgment makes interesting reading and reflects the unconscious prejudices of one who is a member of what was once called the Establishment. He pays almost no attention to our constitutional argument, developed elsewhere by the historian Tristram Hunt and others, that the journal illustrates and supports the case that the prince, notorious for writing to cabinet
ministers and memorably described during the trial as a ‘dissident’, has been assiduously developing a political role for himself, in defiance of his constitutional position.
He accepts most of the prince’s evidence as fact, and dismisses ours as hearsay, despite the fact that our main witness, Mark Bolland, worked for the prince as his deputy private secretary at the time the journal was circulated, whereas his main witness, Sir Michael Peat, was working elsewhere.
He seems much perturbed that the source who handed the journals to our intermediary was a secretary. One wonders if he would have taken a different view if the source had been one of the journal’s intended recipients, Sir Nicholas Soames perhaps.
The Court of Appeal took a different tack, ruling that while there was a public interest, it was not enough of a public interest. We had argued, in part, that as the Prince of Wales had authorised the leaking of his views of the Chinese leadership in the past, he could hardly claim that our amplification of those views was private.
They turned that on its head, saying that because his views were already partly in the public domain we could not claim a public interest that overrode his right to confidentiality.
As I write, we are preparing to take the case to the House of Lords, where David Pannick QC will argue forcefully that, even under the Human Rights Act, privacy is relative; that because of the public position he occupies, and because of the effect that his beliefs and actions have on the lives of others, a politician or a prince must be more open to scrutiny than a private citizen.
If we win, we will be able to write about some fascinating and historic documents. If we lose, the consequences for a free press are deeply disturbing.
First, it will establish that it is for a judge to decide what is or is not newsworthy for a newspaper to publish. Simply throwing light on what important people think and do will not be enough. Even criminality may not be enough, as recent cases are beginning to show.
Second, it will suggest that the social status of the whistleblower will determine whether a story can be published. Any political editor will tell you that the greatest leakers of stories, apart from ‘friends’ of the royals, are cabinet ministers. I have yet to see a privacy action over documents leaked by a government minister. Why should a secretary be prevented from doing the same?
Third, it will endorse a remedy only open to the rich. The law firm Schillings, whose boss describes himself as the ‘Prince of Darkness’ and which has done most to develop the use of Article 8, has been thwarted by Mr Justice Eady in an attempt to recover £450 an hour for its services.
This is by no means the only case where the Human Rights Act has been deployed against freedom of expression. It stands alone only in that our story has already been published, and the arguments are being heard in open court. Much more worrying are the increasing number of instances in which rich and powerful people use Article 8 to suppress news before publication.
One notorious case involves a leading figure in the world of sport who had an affair with a woman. When the woman’s husband found out, he tried to go public with his story. Mr Justice Eady, sympathetic to the feelings of the adulterous football figure, who claimed he had patched up his marriage, ruled that the wronged husband must not talk about the affair to anyone. Thus not only has he been cuckolded, but the man who cuckolded him now has the protection of the law.
It is an not an edifying case, but the principle that has been breached, that the law should not protect wrongdoing, is a very important one. At least in this instance Mr Justice Eady, who hears the majority of these cases, gave his judgment in public, albeit with the identities of the individuals involved kept secret.
The Mail on Sunday is nowadays threatened with injunctions nearly every Saturday afternoon. Many of these cases concern issues much more serious than
adultery in the world of sport; in some, criminal acts are involved. But if the individual about whom we plan to run a story can convince a duty judge, sitting alone and hearing the arguments by conference call, that the allegation impinge on his private life, the court will generally play safe and impose an injunction. Routinely the terms of the injunction prohibit the newspaper from
reporting the fact that an injunction has been granted, or the arguments that were presented for and against.
One of the fundamental principles of English law is that justice should be public: it must be seen to be done. There is a very good reason for this: if judges know they are not open to scrutiny, they are tempted to take shortcuts and allow themselves to be swayed by their prejudices.
That is what is happening with Article 8 of the Human Rights Act. Not only are important news stories being suppressed, and wrongdoing protected, but a law of privacy is being created, not by our elected representatives in open debate, but by lone judges, sitting in secret.
And that is why it is so important, in cases like that of the Prince of Wales, where the arguments are heard in public, that someone stands up for free speech.
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1 Oct 1989 | Magazine Editions, Volume 18.09 October 1989
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Tiananmen Square, 14 April 2009
By Adewale Maja-Pearce
The massacre and arrest of thousands of pro-democracy movement members in June has been followed by a purge, the biggest clampdown on dissent since the Cultural Revolution in the sixties. According to official sources, the purge and purification policy embraces education and the media, literature and the arts, and economic policy. This hardening of Party policy was confirmed by Song Ping, the newly elected member of the Standing Committee of the Party’s Politburo, the supreme decision making body, on 22 August. After attacking ‘bourgeois liberalism’, which had many supporters among top party ranks, he said that the Party’s 47 million members were to undergo ‘elimination’ and ‘purification’.
Since July, universities and other higher education institutes throughout the country have undergone purges of staff and a change of policy on student admission and curriculum. The intake of first-year university students this year has been cut from 640,000 to 610,000. The intake of Beijing University (Beida), the most prestigious in the country and the ‘hotbed’ of student movement, was slashed from 1,900 to 800. Its president, the liberal mathematician Professor Ding Shisun, has been replaced by the orthodox marxist economist Wu Shuqing. Similar changes of university, heads have been reported elsewhere.
First-year students are now required to spend a year in factories or in the countryside to familiarise themselves with the lives and work of workers and peasants’ before going to university. First-year students at Beijing University have been singled out to undergo one year’s military training before commencing studies. Those already studying must attend political indoctrination classes, especially on the official version of the ‘turmoil’ and ‘counter-revolutionary rebellion’. Sensitive subjects such as history and social science have been neutralised.New graduates have been ordered to take humble jobs far from politically sensitive cities so as to disperse and punish those who were involved in the student demonstrations. The number of students sent abroad this year has been severely reduced and their vetting made more rigorous. The number of foreign scholars and students studying in China has been reduced. The plan for sending 23 Fulbright scholars to teach in Chinese universities has been cancelled altogether by the Chinese government, apparently out of fear of American influence on the university campuses. Many see all of this as a desperate attempt to ‘nip in the bud’ any potential student protest.
Journalists and those working in the press and media have also been systematically purged and vetted. Many of them, together with the strong foreign press corps, were responsible for reporting the pro-democracy movement to the Chinese people and those abroad last spring. For about one week in May (12-19) China was said to have had the freest press in its recent history. Many of the journalists also took part in the demonstrations, demanding press freedom and honest reporting. For instance, on 9 May, in Beijing alone, there were over a thousand journalists, mostly from New China News Agency (Xinhua), the People’s Daily and China Central Television (CCTV), among the student demonstrations in Tiananmen Square.
The clampdown on the Chinese press and media started immediately after the imposition of Martial Law in Beijing on 20 May. A new working group was set up by the Propaganda Department of the Party’s Central Committee to supervise and impose stringent prior censorship on the press and media in Beijing. Troops took up position near the offices of the People’s Daily, Xinhua and CCTV to ensure that government directives were followed. However, because of the confusion and political uncertainty within the Party leadership at that time, a number of Chinese journalists continued to defy government directives. Most were later dismissed, arrested or shot when Party hardliners gained the upper hand in the political power struggle. After the massacre on 4 June, People’s Daily director Qian Liren and editor-in-chief Tan Wenrui were arrested. So were Mu Qing, editor of Xinhua and Dai Qing, the famous writer and reporter of the Guangming Daily, to name but a few.
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Foreign journalists who ignored Martial Law were beaten up; some were detained and later expelled. The government then began to move against several Hong Kong newspapers and magazines which they controlled, but which were also sympathetic to the pro-democracy movement.
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Li Zisong, the publisher of the Chinese daily Wen WeiPo, was dismissed. In protest at Li’s dismissal, more than 30 members of the newspaper’s editorial staff, including its deputy editor Ching Cheung, resigned. Other independent Hong Kong publications such as Ming Pao, the Express, the Hong Kong Economic Journal, the Mirror magazine, the Emancipation Monthly and the Nineties Monthly were accused of being ‘subversive’ and warned about their maladminstration and abuse of office.
However, human rights violations continue to occur in parts of the country where rebel armies opposed to the NRM continue to offer resistance.
The Report points out that no secrecy is made about arbitrary detention in areas designated as being under a state of emergency. According to the government’s own figures, 4,183 people were held in February 1988; by January 1989 the number had fallen to 2,925.
As usual, the state of the country’s press offers a useful indicator to the right of free expression. The Report catalogues instances of government harassment of newspapers and journalists by the NRM, as follows:
Sully Ndiwalana Kiwanuka, editor of Focus, a Muslim-owned paper, was charged with sedition following an article in the issue of 4 March 1986 which reported that the NRM was finding its operation ‘rough going’ (in the rebel territories). After publishing the article, Focus claimed that security officials were ‘haunting’ its office and ‘making it impossible for us to work’. Sully Kiwanuka was arrested on 14 March 1986, held for three days and charged with sedition. He was released on bail.
In June 1986 the government banned the Weekend Digest. A government press release stated that it had been ‘reluctantly compelled’ to ban the paper after a series of ‘concocted stories’. The paper had just published a story which claimed that the DP (opposition Democratic Party) was plotting with the government of the Federal Republic of Germany and Italy to overthrow the NRM. A few days later the co-editors, Jesse Mashate and Wilson Wandera, appeared in court charged with publishing a false rumour. They were released on bail.
Francis Odida, editor of the Sunday Review, has been a repeated target of government criticism. He was charged on two accounts of seditious publication and one of publishing false news because of articles published in November and December 1986. At the end of December 1987 he was again arrested and initially charged with sedition in respect of an article he had written and published in October 1987. Odida is himself believed to be a supporter of the Uganda People’s Congress of Milton Obote. At a second court appearance in January 1988 an additional and alternative charge of treason was added. Odida remained in custody for more than seven months.
Two other Sunday Review journalists, George Ongaya and Ben Kitara, were arrested on the same day as Francis Odida but have not so far been charged.
Four employees of The Telecast, an independent daily, including the editor, Tony Owana, were arrested by the army and briefly held for questioning on 10 December 1987. The arrests were prompted by two stories in its 9 December issue, one claiming that 27 people at an NRM political school had died of rabies, the other quoting a denial by a senior army officer that he was building himself a house in a Kampala suburb. The Telecast immediately published a front-page apology to the NRM for the rabies story, but charges of sedition and libel respectively are apparently still pending.
Antholy Ssekweyama, was arrested along with a number of prominent figures in October 1986 and charged with plotting to overthrow the government. The charges against him did not mention his activities as a newspaper editor. In March 1988 the High Court acquitted him and he was released from custody.’
On 29 December 1987 the paper’s acting deputy-in-chief, John Kakooza, was arrested by police on a charge of seditious publication. He was released on police bond. The charge apparently concerned three separate items that appeared in the weekly: a report which stated that opposition guerrillas controlled tracts of territory in the Teso region; a commentary on the political implications of a religious rebellion; and a line-drawing of Museveni which was deemed to be disrespectful. These instances apart, the press in Uganda remains in a far healthier state than at any time in the previous 20 years.
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_custom_heading text=”What Price Protest?”][vc_column_text]The winter 2017 Index on Censorship magazine explores 1968 – the year the world took to the streets – to discover whether our rights to protest are endangered today.
With: Ariel Dorfman, Anuradha Roy, Micah White
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29 Aug 2025 | Americas, Europe and Central Asia, Iran, Israel, Middle East and North Africa, News, Palestine, United Kingdom, United States
Bombarded with news from all angles every day, important stories can easily pass us by. To help you cut through the noise, every Friday Index publishes a weekly news roundup of some of the key stories covering censorship and free expression. This week, we look at the Israeli “double-tap” strike on a hospital that killed 20 people, and the sexual misconduct libel case of actor Noel Clarke.
In public interest: Actor Noel Clarke loses libel case against The Guardian
Prominent English actor Noel Clarke has lost a lengthy sexual misconduct libel case in High Court against The Guardian in which 26 witnesses testified against him.
The landmark case was based on a series of articles and a podcast published by the Guardian between April 2021 and March 2022 in which more than 20 women accused Clarke of sexual misconduct, with allegations ranging from unwanted sexual contact to taking and sharing explicit pictures without consent. The actor claimed that these allegations were false, bringing libel charges against the Guardian over what he believed was an unlawful conspiracy, reportedly seeking £70 million in damages if his case was successful.
Mrs Justice Steyn, ruling on the case, gave the verdict that the Guardian succeeded in defending themselves against the legal action on truth and public interest grounds, with Steyn stating that Clarke “was not a credible or reliable witness”, and that his claims of conspiracy were “born of necessity” due to the sheer number of witnesses testifying against him. In a summary of the findings, she ruled that the allegations made were “substantially true.”
The UK Anti-SLAPP Coalition, headed by Index on Censorship, have stated that while this is a crucial ruling, the case “exerted a significant toll on The Guardian and its journalists”, and that a universal anti-SLAPP law is necessary to avoid similar situations from occurring. Index also stated that “public interest journalism needs greater protections”. Katharine Viner, editor-in-chief of the Guardian, wrote this was a landmark ruling for investigative journalism and for the women involved. During proceedings, the court heard that one woman had been threatened with prosecution by Clarke’s lawyers in what was described by the lawyer acting for the Guardian as an attempt at witness intimidation.
Back–to–back strikes: more journalists killed in “double tap” attack on Gaza hospital
An Israeli attack in which two missiles hit back-to-back on the same Gaza hospital has killed at least 20 people, including four health workers and five journalists.
The attack struck Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, at approximately 10am on Monday 26 August. An initial missile hit the hospital, killing at least one person – then approximately ten minutes later, when rescue workers and journalists had flooded the scene, a second strike hit the hospital. This second attack was broadcast live on Al Ghad TV, and showed a direct hit on aid workers and reporters,. The nature of the attack has led to it being dubbed a “double-tap”, a military tactic in which an initial strike on a target is followed up shortly after with a second strike, which targets those who rush to the scene.. The IDF have released an initial inquiry into the attack, and are further investigating “several gaps” in how this incident came to pass.
The five media workers killed were Reuters journalist Hussam al-Masri who died in the initial strike, and Mohammad Salama of Al-Jazeera, Mariam Dagga of Associated Press, Ahmed Abu Aziz of Middle East Eye, and independent journalist Moaz Abu Taha killed subsequently. The attack follows a targeted Israeli strike on 10 August that left four Al-Jazeera journalists and three media workers dead. The Committee to Protect Journalists have documented that at least 189 Palestinian journalists have been killed by Israeli attacks in Gaza since the start of the war.
Putting out fires: Trump attempts to ban the burning of American flags
Donald Trump is moving to ban the burning of United States flags – an act that has been protected under a Supreme Court ruling since 1989.
Stating that burning the flag “incites riots at levels we’ve never seen before,” Trump signed an executive order that calls for Attorney General Pam Bondi to challenge a court ruling that categorises flag burning as legitimate political expression under the constitution. He outlined how anyone caught committing the offence would be subject to one year in jail – a statement that will be tested soo. Mere hours after signing the order a 20-year-old man was arrested for burning an American flag just outside the White House.
The White House published a fact sheet that described desecrating the American flag as “uniquely and inherently offensive and provocative”, and referenced the burning of the flag at the 2025 Los Angeles protests alongside conduct “threatening public safety”. They argue that despite the 1989 ruling, the Supreme Court did not intend for flag burning that is “likely to incite imminent lawless action” or serve as a form of “fighting words’” to be constitutionally protected.
The crime of online activism: Iranian activist sentenced to prison over social media activism
Iranian student activist Hasti Amiri has been sentenced in absentia to three years in prison for her social media advocacy for women’s rights and against the death penalty.
Amiri, who previously served 7 months in a Tehran prison in 2022 over her anti-death penalty stance, has been sentenced by a Revolutionary Court in Iran to three years imprisonment and a 500 million Iranian rial fine for “spreading falsehoods” and “propaganda against the state”, as well as a 30.3 million rial fine for appearing without a hijab in public.
Amiri reported all of the charges against her in a post on Instagram, writing that “When simply opposing the death penalty is considered propaganda against the state, then execution itself is a political tool of intimidation”. She is the latest human rights activist to face criminal charges in Iran – Sharifeh Mohammadi was recently sentenced to death for “rebelling against the just Islamic ruler(s)”, and student activist Motahareh Goonei was this week sentenced to 21 months in prison for the same crime of “propaganda against the state”.
Reforming local government: Reform UK bans local press access in Nottinghamshire
Journalists from the Nottingham Post have been banned from speaking to Reform UK members of Nottinghamshire County Council in what has been called a “massive attack on local democracy.”
Mick Barton, Reform’s council leader in Nottinghamshire reportedly took issue with the paper following an alleged dispute over an article covering a disagreement between councillors. The decision has been condemned by three former county council leaders, and has drawn scrutiny from national groups such as the National Union of Journalists and the Society of Editors.
The ban also covers reporters at the Nottingham Post from the BBC-funded Local Democracy Reporting Service which shares stories with media outlets across the country. The newspaper has also found out that press officers at the council have been told to take reporters off media distribution lists, meaning they won’t get press releases or be invited to council events. Leader of the opposition and former council leader Sam Smith criticised the ban: “The free press play a key role in keeping residents informed of actions being taken by decision makers and in return the press express the views of residents to the politicians and public in publishing balanced articles.”
Reform MP for Ashfield Lee Anderson, who has a history of disagreements with the Nottingham Post, has announced that he will also be joining the boycott. This follows social media posts from the MP accusing journalists of having a negative bias towards the party.
18 Jul 2025 | Afghanistan, Africa, Asia and Pacific, Benin, China, Côte d'Ivoire, Europe and Central Asia, Middle East and North Africa, News, Palestine, Russia, 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 publishes a weekly news roundup of some of the key stories covering censorship and free expression. This week, we look at how UK police are interpreting the proscription of Palestine Action, and the detention and extradition of a Beninese government critic.
An oppressive interpretation: Kent woman threatened with arrest over Palestine flags
On 1 July 2025, UK Home Secretary Yvette Cooper proscribed Palestine Action, a pro-Palestinian activist group founded in 2020, calling it a “dangerous terrorist group”. The move, which sees PA’s name added to this list, was made after two members of the organisation broke into RAF Brize Norton airbase on scooters and defaced two military planes with red paint, the latest in a long line of actions taken by the group to halt proceedings at locations and factories they believe to be aiding Israel’s offensive in Gaza. Proscription means that joining or showing support for Palestine Action is punishable by up to 14 years in prison.
The Home Secretary’s decision has provoked controversy. The move has been described by Amnesty International as “draconian” and a “disturbing legal overreach”. Since the ruling, over 70 protesters have been arrested for displaying signs showing direct support for Palestine Action, and numerous lawyers, UN experts and human rights groups have voiced concerns that the vague wording of the order could be a slippery slope into more general support for the pro-Palestinian cause being punished.
On Monday 14 July, peaceful protester Laura Murton was holding a Palestinian flag as well as signs that read “Free Gaza” and “Israel is committing genocide”, when she was threatened with arrest under the Terrorism Act by Kent police. Despite showing no support for Palestine Action, she was told by police that the phrase “Free Gaza” was “supportive of Palestine Action”; police were recorded by Murton stating that “Mentioning freedom of Gaza, Israel, genocide, all of that all come under proscribed groups, which are terror groups that have been dictated by the government.” She was made to provide her name and address, and was told that if she continued to protest, she would be arrested.
Murton told the Guardian that it was the most “authoritarian, dystopian experience I’ve had in this country”. Labour’s Minister of State for Security Dan Jarvis seemed to condemn the incident, stating “Palestine Action’s proscription does not and must not interfere with people’s legitimate right to express support for Palestinians.”
Defying refugee status: Beninese journalist forcibly detained and extradited
On 10 July, Beninese journalist and government critic Hughes Comlan Sossoukpè was arrested in a hotel room in Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire and swiftly deported back to Benin, in violation of his status as a refugee.
Sossoukpè, who is the publisher and director of online newspaper Olofofo, had been living in exile in Togo since 2019 due to threats received regarding his work criticising the Beninese government and has held refugee status since 2021. He had reportedly been invited to Abidjan by the Ivorian Ministry of Digital Transition and Digitalisation to attend a forum on new technologies – one of Sossoupkè’s lawyers accused Cote d’Ivoire of inviting him for the purpose of his capture.
Another of his lawyers, speaking to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), reported that Sossoupkè recognised two of the five police officers that arrested him as being Beninese officers rather than Ivorian. They allegedly ignored his request to see a judge, confiscated his personal devices and escorted him to a plane back to Benin.
On 14 July, Sossoukpè was brought before the Court for the Repression of Economic Offences and Terrorism (CRIET) in Cotonou, Benin, and charged with “incitement to rebellion, incitement to hatred and violence, harassment by electronic means, and apology of terrorism”. He has been placed in provisional detention in a civil prison, and numerous groups such as CPJ, Frontline Defenders, and the International Federation of Journalists have called for his unconditional release.
The crime of a Google search: Russia ramps up dissent crackdown under guise of “anti-extremism”
Russia’s lower chamber of parliament, the State Duma, passed legislation on 17 July that greatly extends the state’s ability to crack down on dissenters. Starting in September, in addition to criminalising taking part in activities or groups that the Kremlin deems “extremist”, you can be fined just for looking them up online.
Anti-extremism laws in Russia have long been used to crack down on organisations whose views do not align with the state’s; There have been over 100 extremism convictions for participating in the “international LGBT movement”, and lawyers who defended opposition leader Aleksei Navalny were also arrested and imprisoned on extremism charges. But with the new changes passed on Thursday, those who “deliberately search for knowingly extremist materials” will face fines of up to 5000 roubles, or around £47.
Extremist materials are designated by the justice ministry via a running list of over 5000 entries which includes books, websites and artworks. Other materials that could result in a fine include music by Russian feminist band Pussy Riot, articles related to LGBTQ rights, Amnesty International and various other human rights groups, pro-Ukraine art or works..
The ruling has been met with a backlash from politicians and organisations from across Russia’s political spectrum; the editor-in-chief of pro-Kremlin broadcaster Russia Today said she hopes amendments will be made to the legislation, as it would be impossible to investigate extremism if online searches are prohibited, while Deputy State Duma speaker Vladislav Davankov reportedly called the bill an “attack on the basic rights of citizens”.
The Taliban vs journalism: Local Afghan reporter detained
In the most recent case of the Taliban’s crackdown on journalism in Afghanistan, journalist Aziz Watanwal was arrested and taken from his home on 12 July alongside two of his friends in a raid by intelligence forces.
A local journalist of the Nangarhar province of eastern Afghanistan, Watanwal had his professional equipment confiscated. Despite his friends being released in the hours following his arrest, Watanwal is still in custody with no information regarding his whereabouts, and the Taliban reportedly gave no reason for his detention.
Since the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan in August 2021, journalistic freedoms have taken a sharp decline. Afghanistan Journalists Centre have reported that in the first half of 2025, press freedom violations increased by 56% compared to the same period in 2024. In the three years following the Taliban’s return to rule, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) reported that 141 journalists had been arrested for their work, and the country currently sits 175th out of 180 countries on RSF’s Press Freedom Index.
Censorship of an archive: Chinese tech corporation seeks closure of crucial social media archive
Chinese multinational tech conglomerate Tencent has launched legal action against censorship archive organisation GreatFire to take down FreeWeChat, a platform run by GreatFire that aims to archive deleted or blocked posts on prominent Chinese messaging and social media app WeChat.
WeChat is one of the most popular apps for Chinese citizens and diaspora, and posts on the platform critical of the government are frequently subject to censorship. FreeWeChat was created in 2016 in an effort to catalogue posts taken down by Chinese authorities, but it is now under threat from this legal attack by Tencent.
Tencent’s claim is that FreeWeChat’s use of “WeChat” in the domain is a trademark and copyright infringement, submitting a takedown complaint with this reasoning on 12 June. GreatFire rebutted the allegations, stating that they do not “use WeChat’s logo, claim affiliation, or distribute any modified WeChat software”, and claim that Tencent’s intent is to “shut down a watchdog”.
Martin Johnson, lead developer of GreatFire, stated that the organisation have previously dealt with state-sanctioned DDoS attacks, but they have outlined their intent to keep FreeWeChat up and running despite a takedown order from the site’s hosting provider.
