26 Jun 2025 | Americas, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Czech Republic, Europe and Central Asia, News and features, Russia, Ukraine, United States
A version of this article was originally published in the British Journalism Review.
Let me tell you about four brave journalists. One morning last May, Farid Mehralizada was arrested by masked police. The Azerbaijani financial reporter later described how the officers put a bag over his head, handcuffed him and forced him into a police car. They accompanied him home, where they searched for incriminating evidence as his pregnant wife watched. He was charged with smuggling and money laundering. Mehralizada has been in prison ever since and missed the birth of the child his wife was carrying. His only crime was exposing Azerbaijan’s overreliance on its reserves of oil and gas. “90% of Azerbaijan’s exports and 50% of its budget revenues depend on the oil and gas sector, which poses significant risks for the country,” he told a Baku court in April. Earlier this month, Mehralizada was convicted and sentenced to nine years in prison following a trial his employer called a “sham”.
Belarusian journalist Ihar Losik was detained in June 2020 in advance of the rigged elections in his country and accused of “organising mass riots” and “incitement to hatred”. In December 2021, he was sentenced to 15 years in prison. Losik was transferred to a labour camp in June 2022 and added to a terrorist watch list. He has since used hunger strikes to protest against his detention but is currently incommunicado.
Ukrainian Vladyslav Yesypenko left Crimea after the Russian annexation of the peninsula in 2014, but he kept returning to his homeland to report on Vladimir Putin’s illegal occupation. He was arrested in March 2021 on suspicion of collecting information for Ukrainian intelligence and later charged with the “possession and transport of explosives”. In February 2022, he was sentenced to six years in prison. He was finally released on 22 June 2025, after more than four years of detention and separation from his family.
In November 2024, Russian freelancer Nika Novak was sentenced to four years in prison on charges of “confidential collaboration” with a foreign organisation. Earlier this year, she was placed in a detention centre usually reserved for prisoners at risk of escape, violent inmates or members of extremist organisations. At the end of March, the court of appeal in Novosibirsk in the far east of Russia upheld her sentence, fined her 500,000 roubles ($6,380) and made her pay prosecution witnesses’ expenses.
What these journalists have in common – apart from their courage and determination to report on authoritarian abuses – is that they all worked for the US Congress-funded broadcaster Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) before their detention.
In February, Richard Grenell, presidential envoy for special missions, posted on X [now deleted] that “state-owned” broadcasters such as RFE/RL were “a relic of the past”. Elon Musk, the billionaire former head of Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) responded: “Yes, shut them down. Europe is free now (not counting stifling bureaucracy). Nobody listens to them anymore. It’s just radical left crazy people talking to themselves while torching $1B/year of US taxpayer money.”
It’s hard to imagine a more ill-informed statement about the state of liberty in eastern Europe. It would be laughable to describe Mehralizada, Losik, Yesypenko and Novak as “radical left crazy people”, if the consequences of Musk’s words weren’t so catastrophic.
On 15 March, barely a month after Grenell and Musk’s statements, RFE/RL was informed by the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM) that its grant from Congress had been terminated. Lawyers acting for the broadcaster immediately challenged the decision to terminate the funding and Judge Royce Lamberth of the US District Court for the District of Columbia granted the application. He concluded that closure would cause “irreparable harm” and added “in keeping with Congress’s longstanding determination… the continued operation of RFE/RL is in the public interest”.
Despite the ruling, USAGM at first refused to release funds for April, forcing RFE/RL to furlough staff to keep the organisation afloat. Then, on 29 April, Judge Lamberth concluded that USAGM’s refusal to pay the grant on the same terms as the previous month was “arbitrary and capricious”. He rejected USAGM’s argument that it could withhold the funds until a new grant agreement had been signed with amended working conditions. The judge concluded that the actions of the agency could “threaten the very existence” of RFE/RL.
RFE/RL president and CEO Stephen Capus said the ruling meant his journalists could “continue doing their jobs holding dictators and despots accountable”. The organisation will continue to fight for funding to be restored in full.
Meanwhile, at the time of going to press, the future of its 1,300 journalists and support staff hangs in the balance. The fate of its imprisoned staff is even more precarious.
One peculiar and surreal aspect to the Trump administration’s attacks on RFE/RL is that the organisation was traditionally seen by the “radical left” as a propaganda arm of the US government, along with its sister broadcaster Voice of America (VOA), which also faces closure. The soft-power value of these institutions seems lost on those surrounding the US president.
It was not lost on Ronald Reagan. As a young actor in the 1950s, the future Cold War warrior recorded an advert for RFE that recognised its ideological worth in the battle against communism. “This station daily pierces the Iron Curtain with the truth, answering the lies of the Kremlin and bringing a message of hope to millions trapped behind the Iron Curtain,” he said.
It is perhaps not surprising that Musk has conflated the various Congress-funded broadcasters as they are often mixed up in the public imagination. But they have very specific origins and functions. VOA was founded during the Second World War to counter the fascist ideology of Nazi Germany, while RFE was a post-war response to communist propaganda in Soviet-occupied countries. RL had the specific task of broadcasting inside Russia. VOA was designed, as its name suggests, to speak for the US government and the American people, whereas RFE/RL began by representing dissident views from within Soviet-occupied countries. As a mark of its significant role during the Cold War, the Czech president Vaclav Havel, himself a former dissident, invited RFE/RL to move its headquarters from Munich to Prague in 1995.
RFE/RL now operates in 27 languages across 23 countries, with specialist services in Iran and Afghanistan. In recent years, it has made the case for independent journalism in the countries where it operates, part of the reason it is so despised by Putin and other authoritarian leaders across Europe, Central Asia and the Middle East. In February 2024, it was designated an “undesirable organisation” in Russia, forcing many of its journalists to move into exile and operate remotely from Lithuania and Latvia. In April this year, the US government shut off a satellite that transmitted its Russian-language service into Russia.
The move against RFE/RL came as a surprise to the organisation’s management, who had no inkling that it was a potential target. No one within the organisation was consulted and no warning given.
Nicola Careem, vice president and editor in chief of RFE/RL, said: “In some of the places we work, we’re not just one voice among many – we are the media. When every other outlet has been silenced, taken over or driven out, our journalists stay. They keep reporting, often at great personal risk, just to make sure the truth still gets through. I’ve seen what that means on the ground. For millions of people, we’re their only source of trusted news. If RFE/RL disappears, so does independent journalism in those countries. That’s the reality. There’s no safety net – except us.”
One tragedy among many in this miserable saga is that RFE/RL had begun to find a new role for itself in the Putin era. This was especially true after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Its Russian-language channels reached a peak of 400 million views on YouTube in February 2022 as the invasion began. This is why the recent blocking of the Russian-language satellite takes on such a sinister edge.
When I spoke to Patrick Boehler, head of digital strategy for RFE/RL, in the summer of 2022 for Index on Censorship, he was full of optimism: “We have fantastic teams serving Russia. And I think it’s really one of those moments where you see our journalists living up to the task and the challenge that they face. And it’s really inspiring.” That optimism has been torpedoed by the news from Washington.
The reality is that in parts of Central Asia, where independent journalists find it difficult to operate, RFE/RL is there to provide an important check on Russian and Chinese misinformation. As a result, its affiliates have been periodically blocked across the region.
Careem said: “Make no mistake – we’re in the middle of an information war. Authoritarian regimes in Russia, China and Iran are standing by, ready to take over any space RFE/RL is forced to leave behind. They will spend billions to capture our audiences, flood the region with propaganda, and fuel instability. This is not the moment for the free world to look away, or to leave the field open. If we step back, they step in. It’s that simple.”
But the picture is complicated. The organisation has not been without its critics, even before the arrival of Trump in the White House. Journalists in the region already expressed their concern in 2023 when the broadcaster announced its Kazakh service (Radio Azattyk) would move away from broadcasting in Russian. The US organisation argued that a combined service operating across Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan would pool resources and produce better journalism. Local journalists, some of whom had been critics of REF/RL for years, were not convinced.
Asem Tokayeva, who worked at Azattyk for 14 years, has been calling for reform of the organisation since she left in 2017. Speaking to The Times of Central Asia in April in response to the grant cut, she said: “The organisation has long had an opaque management system and a culture of mutual protection. Real control over the content and personnel decisions rests with mid-level managers, vice presidents, and regional directors, who actively resist reforms. The leadership shields its own from accountability, allowing the system to remain unchanged.”
RFE/RL’s critics in Washington are not motivated by these criticisms and are unlikely even to be aware of them. The drama playing itself out in the US District Court for the District of Columbia is existential. On 22 April, Judge Lamberth ruled that the decision to require VOA to stop broadcasting was illegal. He ordered the administration to restore VOA and two other independent networks operated by the USAGM – Radio Free Asia and Middle East Broadcasting Networks. He did not make the same order for RFE/RL.
The uncertain situation at RFE/RL raises unsettling questions for the future of independent journalism across Central and Eastern Europe, not least for the exiled journalists who could find themselves stranded and jobless in Prague or the Baltic countries.
As the future of the broadcaster hangs in the balance, the Czech government has led the way by pledging to support RFE/RL’s continued presence in Prague. Prime minister Petr Fiala told the Financial Times in March: “We will do everything that we can to give them the chance to continue in this very important role.” He also emphasised the historical significance of the organisation. ‘‘I know what it meant for me in communist times,” he said. At the same time, Czech foreign minister Jan Lipavský celebrated its relevance to the present global situation on X: “Radio Free Europe is one of the few credible sources in dictatorships like Iran, Belarus, and Afghanistan”.
The Czech government has led calls for the European Union to step in to fill the hole left by USAGM. That is likely to face resistance from the so-called “hybrid democracies” of Hungary and Slovakia, where the leaderships are sympathetic to Russia and independent media are under attack. The UK government has so far not commented on developments, but Index on Censorship has called on the Foreign Office to make representations on behalf of the stranded journalists.
Could there also be a role for the BBC World Service, a historical competitor? There are certainly parts of Eastern Europe and Central Asia where the BBC’s coverage could benefit from the expertise of RFE/RL journalists. Careem is exploring all possibilities: “We’re facing real financial and political uncertainty, but one thing is clear: anyone who values democracy, press freedom, and truthful information has a stake in ensuring RFE/RL survives. We’ve been deeply gratified by the support from our European partners as we work through a range of solutions that would allow us to continue this critical work.”
Meanwhile, the exiled journalists at RFE find themselves in the bizarre position of being double dissidents: in their home countries and now, effectively, in the USA too.
To see Index’s coverage of these broadcasting institutions, click here.
13 Jun 2025 | Europe and Central Asia, News and features, Russia, Ukraine
Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022, brave journalists have travelled across the country gathering testimonies from civilians about war crimes committed by the Russian army.
It’s a crucial, difficult and sometimes deadly job – the tragic killing of journalist and writer Victoria Amelina is a stark reminder of this – but these accounts now form a vast database of evidence documenting the atrocities of war inflicted on Ukrainian citizens.
That’s why the recent play The Reckoning, co-written and directed by Dash Arts co-founder Josephine Burton, currently showing at the Arcola Theatre in London, is so powerful. The production is drawn from real testimonies of survivors of Russian oppression in Ukraine, collected by The Reckoning Project – an organisation recording, preserving and conserving witness statements from across the country.
The play follows the story of a journalist (played by Marianne Oldham) travelling around Ukraine to collect these testimonies. As part of her work, she meets “The Man from Stoyanka” (played by Tom Godwin), a security guard who chooses to stay rather than flee as Russian forces approach a village in Ukraine. He recounts to her his traumatic imprisonment by Russian soldiers, who ultimately decide to let him go.
As he shares his experience, the audience is confronted with the many ways in which war pushes people to their very limits: the inner strength we don’t know we have, the instinctive courage to help others, but also the enduring pain of trauma and guilt as ordinary people try to navigate a new and brutal reality.
The play owes much of its emotional resonance to two Ukrainian actors, Olga Safronova and Simeon Kyslyi, who embody the testimonies of innocent civilians while also sharing their own lived experiences of the war. Halfway through the show, to ease the heaviness of the topics covered on stage, they play a game together recalling the positive things happening in their lives. It is this blend of personal witness, light comedy and bittersweet nostalgia that underscores the horror of the crimes committed against Ukraine.
There are moments of relief. One of the most memorable is the making of a Ukrainian summer salad, which the audience watches being prepared and are then invited to eat together at the end of the play. The intimacy of the space, with the audience surrounding the stage on all sides, and the deliciously simple dish unite the viewers and actors. The smell of fresh dill was so evocative that it moved some audience members to tears.
At the end of each performance, Dash Arts invites different individuals and organisations to bring a speaker to the stage to reflect on the play. Last week, Index on Censorship’s editor-at-large, Martin Bright, paid tribute to an individual killed during the war: Victoria Roshchyna. Roshchyna was a fearless Ukrainian journalist with an essential voice who reported from the front lines. In August 2023, she was captured by Russian soldiers while travelling to eastern Ukraine. She died a year later, aged just 27, in Russian custody. A forensic exam showed multiple signs indicative of torture and inhuman treatment.
In her memory, Bright read out Roshchyna’s harrowing account originally written for Index in April 2022, describing an earlier kidnapping by Russian forces while she was en route to Mariupol.
Just as the actors had tried to find a glimmer of hope amidst the devastating stories of war, Bright too sought to shed a positive message following Roshchyna’s death.
“There’s not a lot of good in this [war],” said Bright. “Except I do hope that the publishing of Victoria’s words will retain something of the spirit of Ukraine for the future.”
It is the words of Roshchyna, Amelina, and all the civilians who have shared their stories that will keep the spirit of Ukraine alive for generations to come.
The Reckoning is now showing at the Arcola Theatre in London until 28 June 2025.
2 Jun 2025 | Europe and Central Asia, Hungary, News and features, Newsletters
The European Convention on Human Rights was set up in the aftermath of World War Two to protect the rights of people in the Council of Europe’s 47 member states. Enshrined within it are fundamental obligations around free speech, including the right to free expression and the right to protest. It was intended to act as a blueprint for democracy and a rules-based order – but certain member states are tearing up this rulebook, none more so than Viktor Orbán’s Hungary, and seemingly getting away with it.
In recent years, Orbán has intensified his crackdown on democratic principles, including eroding academic freedoms and increasing hostility towards the media. In April, Orbán even decided to withdraw Hungary from the International Criminal Court – a pan-global organisation set up to uphold the rule of law and hold those charged with the gravest war crimes accountable.
The LGBTQ+ community has been particularly targeted in Hungary, with laws passed abolishing the legal recognition of transgender people in 2020 and banning the depiction of homosexuality to under-18s in 2021. A recent escalation is a law banning Pride marches, introduced in March, under the guise that such gatherings are harmful to children. At the time, Orbán said: “We won’t let woke ideology endanger our kids.”
Hungary’s parliament has since passed a series of other amendments tightening the government’s grip on those seeking to attend Pride, which will allow authorities to use facial recognition technology to identify people at events, and potentially fine them up to 200,000 Hungarian forint (HUF), the equivalent of $560. Protests have erupted across Hungary since the law was passed, and thousands are expected to turn out in defiance at Budapest Pride on 28 June.
Meanwhile, other draft legislation is making its way through parliament that is reminiscent of Russia’s “foreign agent” law – the Transparency of Public Life bill, if passed, would allow the government to penalise and ban dissenting voices and critics deemed detrimental to Hungary’s national interests, including the press and NGOs.
Hungary’s recent actions not only contravene the ECHR, but also the European Union’s (EU) policies around democracy and human rights, as laid out in its treaties and the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, of which its 27 member states are meant to abide by.
But the political tide appears to be turning. Hungary is clearly moving further and further away from the fundamental values of the EU, and many member countries are growing frustrated with the Central European state, and with the European Commission for not taking strong enough action.
This week, 17 EU countries, including France, Germany, Ireland and Spain, signed a declaration expressing their concerns and dismay over Hungary’s anti-Pride law. They have called on Orbán to revise it, and have asked the European Commission to take legal action against Hungary if it does not do so.
Michael McGrath, the EU commissioner responsible for democracy, said this week the “willingness is there” to take action against Hungary, and that a “comprehensive analysis of the relevant legislation is underway now”.
But so far, retribution for Hungary’s actions has been negligible. The European Council has discussed Hungary’s rule of law violations seven times in the European Parliament since 2018, but has never taken the next step in the process, which would allow member states to vote on sanctions against Hungary.
There have been some financial penalties, but relations between the EU and Hungary are likely complicated by the need for cooperation against Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. In December 2022, the European Commission froze €30 billion ($34 billion) in funds to Hungary, after the country’s failure to address concerns around democracy and the rule of law; a year later, a third of these funds were unfrozen, with speculation that Orbán was threatening to impede the EU’s actions in supporting Ukraine.
Patience with Hungary amongst EU nations appears to be wearing thin. The question is: how long will Orbán’s impunity be allowed to continue, and what example does this set for other EU countries wishing to replicate his methods?
30 May 2025 | Africa, Americas, Asia and Pacific, Egypt, Europe and Central Asia, Middle East and North Africa, News and features, Russia, Samoa, Uganda, United Kingdom, Venezuela
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 a controversial new monument to an infamous dictator, and Uganda’s “state-sanctioned bigotry”.
A tribute to repression?: Moscow unveils new Stalin statue in subway station
At the Taganskaya metro station in central Moscow, a controversial new monument has been revealed: a life-sized figure of Joseph Stalin, perhaps the most infamous and brutal of Soviet Russia’s dictators, amongst a crowd of adoring citizens. He stands before St Basil’s Cathedral and the Kremlin’s Spasskaya Tower, with a banner to his predecessor Vladimir Lenin unfurled above his head.
A monument to a leader who executed nearly 800,000 people, whilst millions more died in prison work camps known as Gulags and from famine under his reign, is of course highly controversial. The display has been dubbed a “gift” to the people who travel Moscow’s metro, and opinions have been firmly split amongst citizens – bouquets of red carnations adorn the feet of Stalin, left by those who look back fondly on the man who industrialised the Soviet Union, while others, such as members of Russia’s liberal Yabloko party, have protested the installation of a homage to “a tyrant and a dictator”, describing the statue as “an act of mockery against the descendants of the repressed”.
Should such a monument be permitted? To many, Stalin symbolises decades of brutality, repression, fear and censorship, and many have raised concerns that honouring him in this way embraces a history of violence at a time when Russia is waging an aggressive war in Ukraine. But some Russians see the monument as a memorial to a man who shaped much of their nation’s history. Artistic expression must be protected and history, including its horrors, must not be forgotten. However, ironically, when protesters left a poster on the monument displaying quotes from Vladimir Putin previously condemning Stalin, it was quickly removed, and one of the activists was detained, somewhat undermining the notion of artistic agency.
State-sanctioned bigotry: Human Rights Watch report condemns Uganda’s anti-LGBTQ+ laws
International NGO Human Rights Watch (HRW) has issued a damning report detailing how the Ugandan government has consistently repressed and restricted LGBTQ+ people throughout the reign of president Yoweri Museveni, particularly since the introduction of the Anti-Homosexuality Act in May 2023.
Uganda has been described as having the world’s harshest anti-gay laws, and the report reinforces this notion. The report details the 2023 act’s egregious punishments, which include the death penalty for “serial offenders” of “aggravated homosexuality”, and life imprisonment for same-sex conduct. It also enforced censorship, making any advocacy or discussion of LGBTQ+ rights punishable by up to 20 years in prison.
HRW reported a surge in threats towards LGBTQ+ Ugandans over the past two years, due to a targeted effort by Ugandan politicians to spread misinformation and shape public discourse against the LGBTQ+ community. Oryem Nyeko, senior Africa researcher at HRW, stated that Uganda must “end its assault on LGBT people and choose a future of dignity, equality, and freedom for all those who live there.”
The dangers of defamation: Samoa urged to repeal defamation law that silences journalists
On 1 May 2025, Samoan journalist Lagi Keresoma published an article alleging that a former police officer had appealed to the Head of State to have charges against him removed, reported to be forgery charges regarding a loan application. Just over two weeks later, Keresoma, head of the Journalists Association of (Western) Samoa (JAWS), was arrested and charged with defamation under a law which has long drawn international scrutiny.
Samoa’s harsh criminal libel law was previously repealed, but was reintroduced in 2017 with harsher penalties, and has since been weaponised against critical and investigative reporting. JAWS has stated that the case represents “a troubling development for press freedom in Samoa”, and that the defamation charges could be perceived as “an abuse of power to suppress public scrutiny and dissent.”
The country treats defamation as a criminal rather than a civil matter, something which the UN Human Rights Committee has warned against. Samoa has fallen significantly in Reporters Without Borders’ Press Freedom Index, from 22 in 2024 to 44 in 2025.
Arbitrary detention: UN rules that Alaa Abd el-Fattah is being held illegally in Egypt
Following an 18-month investigation, an independent UN panel has found that the British-Egyptian writer and activist Alaa Abd el-Fattah is illegally detained in Cairo, and has called on the Egyptian government to release him immediately.
Detained since 2019, el-Fattah was sentenced to five years in prison in 2021, convicted of spreading false news and harming Egypt’s national interests. Amnesty International described the verdict as a “travesty of justice”. Since September 2024, his mother Laila Souief, who is based in London, has been on hunger strike to protest his detention. She was admitted to hospital this week, marking the second time she has been hospitalised since February.
Many leading figures have called on the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Development Office (FCDO) to issue warnings against travelling to the north African country, with former British ambassador to Egypt John Casson describing the country as a “police state” in a letter to The Times. He said that British citizens in the country “cannot expect fair process, nor normal support from the British government”, and that “Alaa Abd El-Fattah’s case is not isolated.” UK prime minister Keir Starmer has called Egyptian president Abdel Fattah el-Sissi twice, urging for el-Fattah’s release, but no movement has yet been seen regarding the fate of one of Egypt’s most prominent writers.
An uncontested victory: Maduro make big gains in elections as opposition parties boycott
On 25 May, Venezuela’s regional and parliamentary elections took place, but the ballot papers were notably barren. Nicolás Maduro’s United Socialist Party of Venezuela’s (PSUV) stormed to victory in 23 out of 24 states. However, it was largely uncontested, due to a decision by the majority of opposition parties to boycott the vote in protest at last year’s presidential election, the results of which were proven to have been falsified.
Opposition leader María Corina Machado was a leading voice in the boycott campaign, stating that the true results of the 2024 presidential election must be adhered to before any other vote. In a video posted earlier this month, she announced that “We voted on 28 July. On 25 May, we won’t vote.” Venezuela’s electoral council claimed that the turnout was above 40%, but have neglected to post the election results online as was standard practice before 2024, with the pollster Meganálisis claiming turnout was actually around 14%.
Not all opposition members agreed with the boycott; former presidential candidate Henrique Capriles continued to campaign and urged Venezuelans to vote, arguing that by not voting, “all you’re doing is making things easier for the government.” But it seems that regardless of the outcome, Maduro would have clung on to power – and now, with an overwhelming majority in government and an ever-increasing crackdown on political dissidents, the future of both free speech and fair elections in Venezuela looks bleak.
