13 Oct 2025 | Awards, Fellowship 2025, News and features, Press Releases
Today Index on Censorship announces the shortlist for its annual Freedom of Expression Awards. The remarkable individuals and organisations that make up the shortlist are testament to how free expression can be protected at a time of shrinking democracies, worsening conflicts and heightened disinformation and censorship.
Each nominee addresses diverse and critical issues including transnational repression, enforced disappearance, attacks on artistic freedom, the protection of journalists in conflict zones and in exile. The nominees tackle oppression in a variety of ways, responding to threats with bravery and at times great creativity.
The awards are divided into three categories: Arts, Campaigning and Journalism. They’re a poignant and important opportunity to celebrate the courage and creativity of the journalists, artists, campaigners and dissidents who, against all odds and facing threats of persecution, including harassment, imprisonment and even death, speak up and out to defend human rights and democracy for all.
The shortlist announced today is:
Arts
Campaigning
- The Saturday Mothers (Turkey) – the longest peaceful protest campaign in Turkish history focusing on raising awareness of enforced disappearances.
- Chloe Cheung (Hong Kong) – a prominent member of the pro-democracy movement who has continued her advocacy from exile in the UK.
- Unchained Vibes Africa (Nigeria) – an organisation and social enterprise monitoring and responding to censorship threats and actions across the country and continent, which target artistic freedom.
- Exile Hub (Myanmar) – an organisation working across the region to support public interest journalism and establish protections for journalists reporting under threat.
Journalism
Jemimah Steinfeld, CEO of Index on Censorship, said:
“We’re living through an especially challenging time for freedom of expression on the global stage, and it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. But this shortlist reminds us that there are still many brave and brilliant individuals out there using their voices to make a difference. While on awards night only a few may take home a prize, from where we stand every one of these individuals and organisations is a hero. It’s been an honour to learn more about them and through this announcement I hope others learn about their vital work too.”
Can Dündar, award-winning journalist, said:
“Lies are bigger today than ever before. That is why truth is more precious than ever. The pressure is immense, and therefore the need for resistance is even greater. Supporting those who defend truth against falsehood and democracy against autocracy, and standing shoulder to shoulder with their struggle for rights, is both our duty and our responsibility. Freedom fighters around the world defend freedom of expression in their own ways. I am grateful that, thanks to Index, we were able to honor a few honorable members of this brave army. If the world still holds hope for tomorrow, it’s partly thanks to their tireless struggle.”
The Index on Censorship Freedom of Expression Awards, established in 2001, have long championed those who have risked everything for the right to speak out and defend democracy and human rights. Previous winners include the imprisoned Iranian rapper, Toomaj Salehi; the Pakistani education campaigner Malala Yousafzai; the global whistleblowing platform, Wikileaks; the Turkish artist, Zehra Dogan; Honduran investigative journalist, Wendy Funes and many others.
This year’s shortlist demonstrates the creative, courageous and diverse voices opposing authoritarianism and silence. The winners will be announced on 19 November at a ceremony in London. The jury panel for the 2025 awards is made up of Baroness Hollick OBE; Can Dündar, award-winning journalist; Sir Trevor Phillips OBE, chair of Index on Censorship; Ben Preston, Culture, Arts and Books Editor of The Times & Sunday Times; Jemimah Steinfeld, CEO of Index on Censorship.
ENDS
Media contact:
Index on Censorship is a non-profit organisation that campaigns for and defends free expression worldwide, including by publishing work by censored writers and artists and monitoring threats to free speech. We lead global advocacy campaigns to protect artistic, academic, media and digital freedom to strengthen the participatory foundations of modern democratic societies. www.indexoncensorship.org
10 Oct 2025 | Asia and Pacific, News and features, Pakistan
The weather was pleasantly cool in the Degari area outside Quetta when I visited along with a local guide at the end of September. There is silence because the population is scattered. But the district is dominated by the local Satakzai tribesmen in this part of Balochistan, a southwestern province of Pakistan, sharing a border with Afghanistan and Iran.
In recent months, the Degari region has attracted nationwide media attention for all the wrong reasons: a gruesome video went viral on social media, in which a couple can be seen being shot multiple times at point blank range.
They were later identified as Noor Bano Satakzai and Ehsan Sumalani. And they were killed in the name of honour – the murder of a person, especially of a girl, bringing shame to the family. In most of the cases, the victims are killed for refusing to marry, committing adultery or being in a relationship that displeases their relatives or family members. The crimes are frequently committed by those family members against their female relatives. In this case it was allegedly the local tribal council, the Jirga which was involved in their deaths.
“In Balochistan, honour killings take place due to socio-economic reasons, as well to show muscular power by men to settle personal scores over matters such as land disputes and debts,” says Sadia Baloch, a human rights defender in Balochistan who documents gender-based violence.
“When I studied cases in Balochistan, I came across a lot of cases in a short period, in which women have been silenced or killed in the name of honour.”
Sadia hails from Balochistan’s Nasirabad belt, where women are routinely silenced. One tragic incident in this region took place in 2008, when three teenage girls – believed to have been aged between 16 and 18 – were buried alive in an honour killing.
In a high-profile case in 2023, three bullet-riddled bodies—one girl and two boys—were found in a well near the house of Balochistan’s minister and tribal chief Sardar Abdur Rehman Khetran. He was arrested in connection with the triple murder and for keeping the children in his private jail in Balochistan. He was given bail and quickly released and remains in the Provincial Assembly of Balochistan.
Even after the Degari incident, honour killings continue to take place in the said division and innocent lives are taken away, particularly of women and girls.
According to Sadia, families abandon if not kill women involved (even allegedly) in cases of honour. They give women to the Sardars (tribal leaders), particularly in the Sindh province, who hold social legitimacy and who largely decide their fate.
This can involve them being forcibly married off in exchange for money, made to work as servants in the Sardar’s home or being murdered in an honour killing which take place with absolute impunity.
“The families hand over their girls to the tribal heads who sell them out [and] take a small amount,” she laments. “The said cases don’t get reported at all, which is why there is no end to the women being silenced in the name of honour.”
According to human rights organisations, a thousand women are killed in the name of honour in Pakistan annually, although most of these cases go unreported in the country itself.
The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) states that at least 405 women were killed in Pakistan in the name of honour in 2024.
According to activists, the actual figure is higher because cases of honour killings don’t come into the limelight, because they get buried along with the victims.
Punjab is one of four provinces that share the grisly record of having most honour killings.
Based in Lahore, Punjab’s provincial capital, Sunny Zia works at the HRCP.
“It is a known fact Punjab is the most populous province in a country with a population of over 100 million people, where almost half of Pakistan lives. This is why the figure related to honour killings of the women is reportedly higher than the other provinces. There is better media coverage too,” Sunny told Index.
“In Punjab, there is a strong caste system just like in India. In many cases, honour killings are related to the caste system as well when inter-caste marriages take place which are not socially accepted.”
Shah Mohammad Marri, a prolific author and historian who writes frequently about tribal affairs, told Index: “In Pakistan’s tribal belt, Sardars get to decide about cases of honour killings as there are no laws or police stations for the local tribesmen. The reason, the Sardar is the supreme authority there and they rule the roost.”
Jahanzeb Rind, an assistant professor at LUMS (Lahore University of Management Sciences), told Index: “In Pakistan’s patriarchal society, even though both male and female couples are killed in the name of honour, the majority of the victims are female.”
“Our judicial system is weak,” added Rind. “The state has neither given its citizens the proper rights nor due statuses, especially in the tribal belt of the country, which is why people go to tribal leaders to sort out their issues out of court. This is why honour killing persists.”
While writing this piece, I picked up a newspaper and came across an article about Pakistan’s women which attracted my attention for all the wrong reasons.
The article said 93% of women in Pakistan experience some form of sexual violence in public places during their lifetime and 73% of women and girls face physical or sexual violence from their intimate partners, family members, friends, relatives or neighbours; 62% of the reported victims are between 10 and 19 years old.
Pakistan has clearly failed its women.
Honour killings are the pinnacle of this shame but the problems go deeper. Even today, women are silenced in the name of honour as if society was still living in medieval times.
7 Oct 2025 | Europe and Central Asia, News and features, United Kingdom
Transnational repression (TNR) allows states and their proxies to reach across national borders to intimidate, threaten and force silence, targeting everyone who speaks out in the public interest, wherever they are. Index has documented TNR targets across society, including journalists, artists, writers, academics, opposition leaders and members of marginalised groups such as Uyghurs and Tibetans.
Yesterday, Index joined other human rights organisations, academics, legal experts and TNR targets calling on the Office for Students and UK Government to establish robust protections for all academics, students and support staff against TNR in the higher education sector. This followed threats made against Roshaan Khattak, a Pakistani human rights defender and film maker, while he was researching enforced disappearances in Balochistan, a province of Pakistan, at the University of Cambridge.
The letter highlights the challenges he has faced, the gaps in the institution’s response to the threats and what the broader sector must to do ensure everyone in the academic space is protected.
Read the letter below
Sent Electronically
Susan Lapworth
Chief Executive
Office for Students (OfS)
Nicholson House
Castle Park
Bristol BS1 3LH
Cc: The Rt. Hon. Bridget Phillipson MP, Secretary of State for Education
Professor Arif Ahmed, OfS Director for Freedom of Speech and Academic Freedom
6 October 2025
As demonstrated by the threats to Cambridge post-graduate student Roshaan Khattak, the Office for Students and the broader higher education sector must establish robust protections against Transnational Repression.
Dear Ms Lapworth,
We, the undersigned organisations and individuals, write to call on the Office for Students, as well as the broader Higher Education sector, to establish tailored and robust protections for academics, students and support staff facing threats of transnational repression (TNR). This follows significant concerns regarding the response of the University of Cambridge to threats made against Mr Roshaan Khattak, a Pakistani filmmaker and human rights defender enrolled as a postgraduate researcher at the institution. This case is illustrative of the threats facing academic inquiry and the need for significant action. As a result, we call on the Office for Students (OfS) to establish policies that relate to universities’ obligations to establish protocols to respond to acts of TNR against their staff, students and the wider academic community.
The UK Government has described TNR as “crimes directed by foreign states against individuals”. While a global phenomenon, examples of TNR in the UK have been documented targeting journalists, human rights defenders, academics and members of diaspora or exile communities based inside the UK by repressive regimes such as Iran, Russia, Pakistan, and China (as well as Hong Kong), as well as democracies with weak institutional protections. The central goal of TNR is to exert state control and censorship beyond state borders to intimidate critics into silence, stifle protected speech and undermine the safety and security of those based in other jurisdictions. Earlier this year, the Joint Committee on Human Rights published a report on TNR following a public inquiry on the issue, which stated “[d]espite the seriousness of the threat, the UK currently lacks a clear strategy to address TNR”. We believe that in the context of higher education, TNR represents a significant threat to students’ ability to “access, succeed in, and progress from higher education” and benefit from “a high quality academic experience”.
The threats facing Roshaan Khattak are illustrative of this risk. On 21 December 2024 Mr Khattak received a message warning that neither Cambridge nor the UK is “safe” for him or his family if he continues his research into enforced disappearances in Balochistan (a province in Pakistan). While the origin of the threat is unknown, there are allegations that the Pakistan military and Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency have targeted those in exile, including Shahzad Akbar and journalists Syed Fawad Ali Shah and Ahmed Waqass Goraya. This also comes at a time when work on human rights violations in Balochistan is increasingly dangerous, as evidenced by the suspicious deaths of Sajid Hussain and Karima Baloch. Despite police awareness of the threat, Mr Khattak reports that his progress towards his PhD has been stopped for now, with Wolfson College having also repeatedly cancelled meetings, revoked his accommodation and changed the locks to his room without notice, limiting access to and compromising his sensitive research materials and data. They have also encouraged him to fundraise from the Baloch community in the UK to secure private accommodation, therefore disregarding the university’s responsibilities to him. We believe that the university should be exploring ways to ensure Mr Khattak’s safety, in collaboration with the relevant authorities, instead of trying to put him out of sight, out of mind. MPs including John McDonnell and Daniel Zeichner, as well as the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders, Mary Lawlor, and other leading human rights defenders have raised awareness of this case or shared their concerns with the University. Additionally, McDonnell has submitted an Early Day Motion in UK Parliament, backed by cross-party support, drawing attention to the threats faced by Roshaan and the wider impact of TNR on UK academia.
The Higher Education and Research Act 2017 outlines OfS’s “duty to protect academic freedom”, while also establishing the legal underpinning for OfS’s regulatory framework which states that both “academic freedom” and “freedom of speech” are public interest governance principles, which should be upheld by all higher education institutions. Further to this, the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2023, amends the 2017 Act to require institutions to establish codes of practice as it relates to their procedures to protect free speech and for the OfS to establish a free speech complaints scheme. These, as well as the “Regulatory advice 24: Guidance related to freedom of speech”, which came into force in August, establish an important baseline. However, in response to the impact of TNR on free speech and academic freedom, the OfS must build on this to establish specific and tailored responses for academics, students, staff and all university personnel as it relates to TNR.
Due to our concerns related to the absence of sector-wide protections against TNR, as evidenced by the University of Cambridge’s handling of the threats against Mr Khattak and the implications they have on his ability to continue his academic work and express himself freely, we request the OfS to:
1. Review the adequacy of existing sector-wide guidance to ensure it can protect academics, students and other relevant stakeholders from transnational repression;
2. Establish tailored and specific policies as it relates to transnational repression to offer support for the targets and practical guidance for the broader higher education sector. This should include methods by which all relevant authorities, such as the police can be engaged with constructively; and,
3. Commit to report publicly on findings and any regulatory action taken as it relates to TNR, to assure current and prospective students that UK higher-education providers will not yield to acts or threats of TNR.
The undersigned organisations believe that Mr Khattak’s situation is a wake-up call for the higher education sector as it relates to defending both student welfare and the principle of academic freedom in the face of transnational repression. A robust response from OfS will not only safeguard one vulnerable researcher but also support other institutions and at-risk academics who may be facing similar concerns or threats.
We stand ready to provide further documentation or expert testimony and would welcome the opportunity to discuss this matter with your team.
Yours sincerely,
Index on Censorship
Peter Tatchell Foundation
Amnesty International UK
National Union of Journalists
ARTICLE 19
Cambridge University Amnesty Society
Martin Plaut, Senior Research Fellow, Institute of Commonwealth Studies
Dr. Andrew Chubb, Senior Lecturer in Chinese Politics and International Relations, Lancaster University
Sayed Ahmed Alwadaei, Advocacy Director, Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy (BIRD)
Salman Ahmad, UN Goodwill Ambassador, HRD, Author, Professor at City University of New York-Queens College, Target of TNR
Marymagdalene Asefaw, DESTA MEDIA, Target of TNR
Maria Kari, human rights attorney, Founder, Project TAHA
Professor Michael Semple, Senator George J. Mitchell Institute for Global Peace, Security and Justice; Former Deputy to the European Union Special Representative in Afghanistan; Former United Nations Political Official
Hussain Haqqani, former ambassador; currently Senior Fellow and Director for South and Central Asia, Hudson Institute, Washington D.C.
Dr. James Summers, Senior Lecturer in international law, Lancaster University
Dr. Thomas Jeff Miley, Lecturer of Political Sociology, Fellow of Darwin College, University of Cambridge
Aqil Shah, Adjunct Associate Professor, School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University; non-resident scholar at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Ahad Ghanbary, TNR Target
Dr. Lucia Ardovini, Lecturer in International Relations, Lancaster University
Dr. John McDaniel, Lecturer in Criminal Justice and Crime, Lancaster University
Yana Gorokhovskaia, Ph.D., Research Director for Strategy and Design, Freedom House
Afrasiab Khattak, Former Chairperson of Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), former Senator
Professor Pervez Hoodbhoy, nuclear physicist, nuclear disarmament advocate, public intellectual
Taha Siddiqui, Pakistani journalist in exile (NYTimes, Guardian, France24), Founder The Dissident Club
Shahzad Akbar, Barrister, human rights lawyer, TNR acid attack victim, founder Dissidents United
