9 May 2025 | Asia and Pacific, India, News, Pakistan
As conflict intensifies between India and Pakistan, those in the disputed region of Kashmir have long faced human rights violations, including a higher level of surveillance and suppression of free speech.
On a cloudy day in January, 30-year-old Hanan* perched on a rock in a nearby forest close to his house in the Handwara area of India-controlled Kashmir. Amongst the daily hustle and bustle in his neighborhood, Hanan and his friends discussed a recent citizens’ survey allegedly conducted by the Indian Army. According to residents, the survey had required them to share private details about their families alongside photos.
“What is really concerning for the locals is [soldiers requesting photos of women],” said Hanan, as he braved the wintry cold breeze in the woods.
His friend, Anzar*, said he had been asked to share a photo of his family members, and had been threatened with severe consequences if he did not comply.
Last year, a similar data collection exercise was conducted throughout Kashmir by the local police force. Alongside personal information being requested, residents were also allegedly asked to share a geotagged photo of the house they were residing in.
Sheeraz* said he first heard about last year’s survey from his younger brother. He fears that the police are sourcing information which could be used to instigate “ethnic cleansing” of the area in future. He likened the surveillance to similar methods used by Israeli forces in order to monitor and track Palestinians, such as facial recognition technology.
Kashmir’s 2024 invasive policing exercise, which was termed “Village X Ray”, sought residents’ details such as their vehicle registration numbers, their affiliations with banned organisations and their Aadhaar numbers (a unique identity card provided by the Indian government).
“They are trying to shrink the space for us in ways unimaginable for many in other parts of the world,” said Sheeraz.
A new era of surveillance
Surveillance of the local population is not new in the contested piece of land between India and Pakistan, but fears have heightened since the region’s autonomy was further eroded in 2019.
In 1987, a state election took place in Jammu and Kashmir that was widely believed to be rigged. The years following this saw an armed rebellion. In an attempt to quell the uprising, India’s government brought approximately 600,000 troops into the region, forcing people to name sympathisers and supporters of the cause against Indian rule, making arbitrary detentions and using torture to stop dissent. It also used various repressive legislative measures, including laws such as the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, the Jammu and Kashmir Public Safety Act and the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act.
Three decades later in August 2019, Narendra Modi’s right-wing Indian government revoked the disputed Jammu and Kashmir region’s special status (Article 370), which had previously granted it semi-autonomy over its administration.
Article 35A was also scrapped, meaning that non-Kashmiris can now buy property in the region, giving a green light for outsiders to acquire the land of indigenous people. This has raised fears that the Indian government is trying to drastically change the demographic of the Muslim-majority region.
“Not only will we lose jobs, the only Muslim-majority [region] will be prone to communal conflicts after this arbitrary decision by the central government,” said Hanan.
Silencing voices
On the night of 5 January 2022, a young journalist from Bandipora’s Hajin area called Sajad Gul was arrested by men in uniform at his home. He was questioned for uploading a video clip to the social media platform X of women in a nearby area allegedly protesting the killing of a local militant leader. He had attended the protest to report on the incident.
The local police detained him under the Public Safety Act, which allows for a maximum two-year detention, among other charges, and transferred him to and from various jails. He was ultimately imprisoned for 910 days for reporting on a story.
In November 2023, the Jammu and Kashmir High Court quashed his detention, saying that there was no concrete evidence or specific allegations proving his actions were prejudicial to the security of the state.
Press freedom has deteriorated since the removal of Kashmir’s special status in 2019. Abdul Aala Fazili, a research scholar, was also arrested in April 2022 by the Jammu and Kashmir State Investigation Agency (SIA) for an article he wrote in 2011 for the online magazine The Kashmir Walla, titled “The shackles of slavery will break”. The news website has been blocked in India since August 2023.
“Since the nullification of the hollowed-out special status, not only are journalists in Kashmir being silenced by various intimidation techniques, but the general public is equally feeling the forced gag,” said Owais*, a history student who is well-versed with what is happening in the region. “People are scared of posting anything remotely related to the region’s disputed status on any social media platforms because they know the consequences.”
“We are all suspects here”
Leaning forward in his chair, a local politician called Saleem* spoke to me from his office in the outskirts of Handwara. When asked about the increasing surveillance in the region, his sharp and incisive response was: “The government of India sees us all as strangers. We are all suspects here for them.” These are strong words from someone who has taken an oath on India’s constitution.
The revoking of Article 370 has caused dynamics to shift, he said. “There was a lot in our hands back in the early 1990s, however now we have lost that bargaining power in the corridors of power.”
In 2022, the Jammu and Kashmir government took another step towards monitoring locals’ movements, even on roads and in shops. An order administered via its policing wing in the Srinagar region put pressure on shopkeepers to install CCTV cameras or face a penalty.
Many opposed it, saying they couldn’t afford the installation costs. Some were wary of installing cameras outside the front of their shops. “I clearly said to the party that I cannot install [it] because there is no need for installation,” said one shopkeeper. “Installing inside makes sense for my business, but not in front of the shop.”
History student Owais said that the attempt to silence people in Kashmir is now “two-pronged”: “One is reporting anyone who speaks for rights on social media platforms, and another is constant police raids at residences just to intimidate not only the suspects but the general public at large in the valley.”
Hanan, strolling back from the woods and towards his home, echoed Owais’s worries about the future of Kashmir. “I do not know what to do in these situations. I am not only concerned for my career, but now, for the last few years, my focus is more on the land I belong to, which I feel will be snatched away from me anytime by a single order of the government.”
* names have been changed to protect the identities of interviewees
7 May 2025 | Europe and Central Asia, Israel, Middle East and North Africa, News, Palestine, United Kingdom
In today’s world of hot takes and moral outrage, we all want clear answers – good, bad, right and wrong – and people we can easily rally behind or blast – villain, victim, hero, heretic. But the cases of Kneecap, Jonny Greenwood and Dudu Tassa have resisted such clarity, and they’ve forced us to reckon with an uncomfortable truth: freedom of expression, especially in moments of deep political pain and division, isn’t always neat, easy or even popular.
First a recap for those who might have missed the stories or got lost in the details:
At the end of April, Belfast band Kneecap came under fire following the circulation of videos in which the group appears to endorse political violence, declaring “The only good Tory is a dead Tory. Kill your local MP,” and another showing apparent support for Hezbollah and Hamas, both proscribed as terrorist organisations in the UK. Kneecap insists their remarks were taken out of context, that their tone was satirical and that they do not in fact support these groups. Nevertheless, they are under police investigation and have had several of their shows dropped, following political pressure from MPs including Kemi Badenoch, leader of the Conservative Party.
Meanwhile Jonny Greenwood, best known as a member of Radiohead, and his collaborator, Israeli musician Dudu Tassa, said this week that they were scheduled to perform two concerts in the UK in June. The events have since been cancelled due to serious and credible threats that made the performances unsafe. The cancellations followed calls from organisations aligned with the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. Tassa and Greenwood had previously performed together in Tel Aviv in 2024 and Tassa had performed for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in Gaza at the end of 2023. The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, who have called them out in the past, criticised the planned UK concerts as a form of “artwashing genocide” and welcomed news of their cancellation.
Greenwood has denounced the cancellations as censorship, while prominent artists such as Massive Attack have rallied behind Kneecap, framing the backlash they faced as part of a broader attempt to suppress dissent.
These are not simple cases. In the case of Kneecap, their rhetoric was inflammatory and, in invoking violence against politicians, reckless – two MPs have been murdered in this country in recent years after all. Their potential valorisation of Hamas and Hezbollah was far from funny – these groups are guilty of grave human rights violations. Kneecap have tried to deflect attention from their actions by saying that they are not the story and that Gaza is, but people should be free to challenge them and their views. It’s reductionist to say that doing so is somehow taking the focus away from Gaza.
And yet irreverence, political provocation and even transgressive speech have long been cornerstones of artistic expression. Search bands with the word “kill” in their name or album title and you won’t walk away short on examples. Whether Kneecap’s comments were satire or poor judgment, a response in the form of a criminal investigation raises important questions about proportionality and the appropriate limits of state intervention. The European Court of Human Rights has made clear that criminal sanctions should be a last resort in speech cases, and indeed the UK’s legal structures place a high bar on what constitutes incitement. Have the members of Kneecap met this threshold? It’s hard to see that they have.
Likewise, while boycotts are a legitimate form of protest, and protest is an essential pillar of free expression, they too can become a vehicle for coercion. The Greenwood–Tassa concerts were not silenced by public disagreement but by threats credible enough to endanger the performers, venue staff and audiences. That is not protest, it is intimidation.
Cultural boycotts specifically have other free speech complications too: while they typically target authoritarian regimes with the intention of effecting positive change, they can silence the very voices that are most helpful to the cause. In 1975, Index surveyed artists on their views about boycotting Apartheid South Africa and the general response was that it would do more harm than good. “Governments would not go to such lengths to secure silence if they did not fear speech,” said one respondent. “It is better to light one candle than to curse the darkness,” said another.
The truth is neither of the current UK situations present a clean clash between good speech and bad. Instead, they sit in an uncomfortable space where moral outrage, political solidarity and artistic freedom collide. Kneecap’s defenders are right to argue that Gaza must remain in focus; they’re wrong to say that this exempts artists from accountability for everything they say. Conversely, critics of Israel and its supporters must be free to speak and protest, but not through threats that endanger lives or undermine the very democratic principles they claim to defend.
At Index, we believe in a broad and inclusive approach to free expression. The right to speak must extend even to those whose views we find offensive, provocative or politically inconvenient. While this does not mean freedom from criticism, it does mean freedom from coercion and violence.
No artist is entitled to a stage and venues shouldn’t be beholden to host certain acts if the situation changes. However, when access to platforms is denied because the views, or even the identity, of the artists are politically contentious, something essential is lost. It becomes harder for culture to serve as a space of honest confrontation and productive dialogue, and easier for fear and conformity to set the limits of what is permissible.
Ultimately, for freedom of expression to mean anything, it must apply to everyone, not just those with whom we agree. Ideas must be challenged, yes, and artists held accountable too, but never through threat and only through the justice system when a high bar has been met. Greenwood said he was sad that those supporting Kneecap’s “freedom of expression are the same ones most determined to restrict ours”. His words are a warning: if you cheer shutting down space for one group, don’t be alarmed when the space of those you want to hear is shut down too.
6 May 2025 | Europe and Central Asia, Greece, News, Volume 54.01 Spring 2025
This article first appeared in Volume 54, Issue 1 of our print edition of Index on Censorship, titled The forgotten patients: Lost voices in the global healthcare system, published on 11 April 2025. Read more about the issue here.
In August 2022, one of the largest surveillance scandals in modern Greek history came to light. Often referred to as the Greek Watergate, it revealed that officials within the government and the National Intelligence Service (EYP), including associates of prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, had been involved in deploying Predator – a spyware tool developed by former Israeli military personnel.
Intellexa, the founding company, had sold multiple licences to the EYP and, according to reports from The Guardian, Reuters and elsewhere, the EYP had subsequently sent messages intended to infect mobile phones and enable electronic surveillance of certain individuals.
Hundreds were targeted, including political opponents of the ruling New Democracy party, journalists, and even government ministers. Among those targeted, the most prominent politician identified was Nikos Androulakis, leader of the Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) and leader of the opposition.
The Greek government continues to deny ever having purchased or used Predator spyware. On 5 August 2022, during a live television address, Mitsotakis responded to revelations of wiretapping. His inability to provide credible explanations for how the EYP obtained the spyware, combined with his denial of any knowledge of the scandal, heightened suspicions among politicians and journalists. Notably, he had restructured the EYP on the first day of his premiership in 2019, placing it directly under the control of the prime minister’s office. Consequently, many questioned how he could have been unaware of such activities.
Nearly three years have passed since the scandal emerged, yet most questions remain unanswered. The prosecutor investigating the case closed the probe last July and refused to further grill individuals linked to the deployment of Predator.
The government allegedly interfered with aspects of the inquiry – including the deliberations of certain committees – and hindered the work of oversight bodies such as the communication security regulator, reported Politico.
Meanwhile, courts have declined to prioritise journalistic and investigative efforts that continue to uncover evidence related to the wiretapping activities.
Unsurprisingly, the government’s actions extended beyond covert surveillance. Many people allegedly investigated for their involvement – including Mitsotakis’s nephew Grigoris Dimitriadis, the former secretary-general in the prime minister’s office – fought back by aggressively pursuing lawsuits against journalists and media outlets investigating the scandal, including Efimerida ton Syntakton and Reporters United.
These weren’t just ordinary lawsuits but strategic lawsuits against public participation (Slapps) – deliberately-initiated legal actions aimed at intimidating and silencing critics.
The party filing a Slapp – in this case Dimitriadis – typically does not intend to win the case. The objective is to overwhelm the defendant with legal expenses, fear and exhaustion, ultimately compelling them to cease their reporting or opposition.
Nevertheless, while investigating how the surveillance activities were carried out, Greek journalists managed to uncover something far more significant than they had anticipated – a system that undermines the democratic standards typically upheld by EU member states.
In this regard, Mitsotakis closely resembles Hungary’s prime minister Viktor Orbán, who has systematically controlled media organisations by placing them under direct supervision, suppressing criticism and dissent.
Since 2019, corruption has flourished under Mitsotakis’s administration and the government appears to have engaged in favouritism and a deliberate dismantling of fundamental human rights – undermining the very foundations of democracy in Greece.
He also allocated funding to the press – both during the Covid-19 pandemic and amid the Ukraine-Russia conflict – in ways that were widely condemned as attempts to financially control specific media outlets.
The funding excluded certain newspapers that were critical of the government, raising concerns about selective support for government-friendly sources, but did include far-right publications affiliated with Kyriakos Velopoulos (an MP known for spreading disinformation) and even non-existent news outlets.
The government has been accused of deploying an extensive network of online trolls on X and TikTok for damage control, including a dedicated war room called Omada Alithias which serves as its mouthpiece. These operations systematically target and suppress dissenting voices, critical media outlets and investigative journalists – particularly those who have exposed the wiretapping scandal – through co-ordinated attacks and gaslighting tactics. These have included downplaying the scandal and dismissing investigative work as fake news.
The impact on press freedom has been dire, with Reporters Without Borders (RSF) confirming some of the worst fears expressed by journalists. In the RSF index, Greece plummeted to 107th position in 2023 before improving somewhat in 2024, rising to 88th. Despite RSF’s concerns, Mitsotakis has dismissed the organisation’s findings and labelled any criticism of Greece’s press freedom as “crap”.
Research demonstrates that democratic backsliding invariably begins with media manipulation and the imposition of excessive control – tactics that Mitsotakis has prioritised since the start of his tenure.
The situation in Greece reveals a complex phenomenon, described by Dutch political scientist Matthijs Rooduijn as a “snowball effect”. Centrist parties previously perceived as moderate, such as New Democracy, are increasingly cloaking themselves under a liberal façade with the explicit intent of undermining democratic norms.
Instances such as those seen in Greece illustrate that Europe is confronted not only with an existential threat to its democratic institutions but also with the danger of normalising illiberal policies. This troubling trend is underscored by the EU’s increasingly permissive approach to surveillance, where the potential consequences are acknowledged yet policy measures remain inadequately implemented.
Additionally, the sustained erosion of press freedoms further exacerbates the vulnerability of democracy. These developments indicate a systemic weakening of safeguards, and the issue is further illustrated by the close and often opaque connections among elected officials which undermine transparency. Without decisive and comprehensive interventions, Europe risks undermining the very foundations that ensure its democratic resilience and integrity.
Greece serves as a prime case study of this troubling trajectory. The country endured a military dictatorship from 1967 to 1974, before democracy was re-established. It has also experienced a serious socio-economic crisis from 2010 to 2019, the subsequent neoliberal restructuring of its economy and a recent resurgence of neo-Nazism. Some of these phases of extreme instability are common in post-authoritarian countries that struggle to uphold the rule of law and democratic principles.
The legacy of the wiretapping scandal cannot be underestimated or overlooked. New Democracy and its successors may attempt to preserve these tools of suppression, potentially leading to further democratic backsliding. Without determined efforts to eliminate such practices, freedom of the press will continue to deteriorate, lacking the legal safeguards needed to prevent unconstitutional measures that can cause long-term damage.
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.
