19 Apr 2007 | Comment, News and features
We are going to Moscow on Thursday evening. There are a few meetings arranged there. I could have gone at the very beginning of the week but was absolutely overloaded with the usual work in the office.
Stas [Stanislaw Mikhailovich] is thinking about whether to stay in Moscow through until Saturday to take part in the March of the Discontented. He is worried his participation might complicate his situation. He was detained in Gorky Square in Nizhny Novgorod during the March of March 24. They didn’t open a case into his alleged breach of the administrative law, for some reason. At the same time I feel that he has already made his choice and is morally ready to go further on. He demands that I leave Moscow on Friday evening. He feels that I will be of more help staying in Nizhny. I understand that his concerns about my safety are the only background of all this reasoning. OMON [the internal affairs ministry militia] in Nizhny demonstrated their readiness to follow whatever order they received.
We are taking the midnight train to Moscow. Our carriage is the last one. Some groups of passengers are shifting from one foot to another. Passing them, I recognize two familiar faces of the UBOP (special department on combating organized crime) servicemen. There is tension in the air as they watch us while we walk. Their chief, Maxim Bedyrev, rushes to us, saying:
‘Stanislaw, we would like to talk to you…’
‘What’s the reason? Any warrant?’
‘No, just let’s go aside and have a word.’
‘I don’t want to.’
We keep wrangling for a few minutes. Never forget to refer to Article 51 of the constitution: we have the right to remain silent. It’s clear that if we submit, the train will leave without us. Maxim squints at us. It is evident that he is furious and trying hard to hold his feelings.
‘Are you so sure that no accident will happen in your homes while you are away?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘You should not be that sure. What if you have failed to switch off an iron?’
We can’t wait any longer – the train is leaving. As we get on, we hear Bedyrev call ‘Stanislaw Mikhailovich, are you aware what will happen if you dare to go to Pushkin Square on Saturday?’
***
We arrive at Kursky station, Moscow, at 6 am on Friday. As we are getting off the train, three policemen enter our carriage. One of them introduces himself and demands our documents. We are asked to follow them to the police station.
The office is full of policemen. One detained man is looking at us through the bars of the cage. Another detainee is sweeping the floor of the police office. When they hear that we work with the Nizhny Novgorod Foundation for Promoting Tolerance, they inquire what we mean by the word ‘tolerance’. The policemen treat us in a much more polite way after I receive a call from journalists from the Echo of Moscow radio station. I tell them, ‘Guys, you are in the news.’ While I am commenting on our problem in a live interview, a young investigator is filling in his report asking Stas the usual questions about any criminal convictions. He confirms the conviction he received for incitement to racial hatred after publishing an article by Chechen separatist Aslan Maskhadov.
They are evidently puzzled after our comprehensive explanation of what tolerance is.
‘And what? Are people already taken to jails for publishing Maskhadov in our country?’
I am amazed by the simplicity of his reaction. Maskhadov is not a notorious ‘terrorist’ in the perception of this particular police lieutenant. Our conversation is just friendly after that. We are told that we will be released in just five minutes. The policemen drop a few sarcastic remarks about their colleagues from Nizhny Novgorod and we leave.
***
10 am on Saturday morning. I am going to my friends’ office to drop my backpack there. I still hope that I will manage to leave Moscow in the evening. My train ticket to Nizhny Novgorod for the previous night was just wasted.
The first coincidence happens when Stas and I meet activist Marina Litvinovich. She is taking huge heaps of roses out of her car. They are planning to distribute copies of the constitution of the Russian Federation among young people. I get a bunch of roses to distribute among those who join the March. Stas takes some copies of the constitution.
***
11.30. While approaching Pushkin Square, we see huge numbers of OMON and military. I am going along Tverskaya Square with my bunch of roses. Reserved men in plain clothes with wires poking out of their ears are casting suspicious glances at me but don’t try to stop. They must be consulting with their chiefs as their lips keep moving whispering something into receivers. Pushkin Square is blocked off. All the area around the monument to Pushkin is crammed with people in blue uniforms. There are around a thousand of them there. The opposite side of the square is also cordoned off. People start to approach us as they see the roses and take them for some sign.
Just in the middle of Pushkin Square we bump into one of the Dutch journalists who were detained in Nizhny. Remke was beaten in Nizhny Novgorod by the OMON servicemen as he failed to understand how wide they wanted him to spread his legs. He has mended his torn leather overcoat by now. He is not shocked by the sight of numerous military trucks and heavily armed police force after what he observed in Nizhny Novgorod when the protesters were dispersed on March 24. But he is evidently shocked by the minimal response from his own government to the violation of the rights of citizens of the Netherlands at the demo. The so-called political interests and double-dealing diplomacy of political and economical interests is clouding the eyes of European politicians so much that they don’t want to make a notice of the growing danger posed by Putin. Our Dutch friend says, ‘I am just worn out and don’t want to be detained once again.’ But he is in the square now, and nobody knows how the situation is going to develop.
***
11.45 We are trying to find out where our friends are. Marina Litvinovich’s phone answers that we can find her in Tverskaya Street. We head towards her. We overhear two police colonels giving the order: ‘There is a group of about 50 people going towards the Square. Detain them all.’ In a few seconds we see this group. It is being led by Garry Kasparov. We join them trying to distribute the constitutions and roses among the people. The OMON blocks our way. We are standing face to face with them. Kasparov tries to persuade them to let us go on. One of the OMON people is making a nasty remark about Kasparov being a traitor. He calmly responds:
‘You don’t have the right to call me a traitor as when I was your age I was gaining recognition and honour for my country, while you are breaking its main law.’
People start to shout out, ‘Give way!’ We are being supported from behind the chain of the OMON. It is they who are surrounded by people. People are protruding their hands over the hard-helmeted heads of the OMON. Then the slogan changes: ‘Russia without Putin!’ Immediately the OMON chiefs give the order to detain people. We try to escape through the open doors of some cafés and shops. The OMON grab an elderly woman who is clutching a lamppost. She squeals ‘They are killing me’, while three huge men are trying to tear her off the pole. I see Stas being dragged into the bus. He is screaming, ‘Let me go.’ Several men are trying to hold him and he is being dragged in opposite directions. People on the right and on the left of me are just disappearing one by one. The bus is crowded with people. Some OMON servicemen are taking Kasparov from a café.
***
I am looking around trying to calm down. We have to decide what to do next. I recognise a man in a blue windbreaker. It is Andrey Illarionov, a former Putin adviser, now a senior fellow at the Cato Institute in the US.
‘What are you going to do?’
‘We should try to get to Turgenev Square and take people from here.’
He is right. The authorized rally is going to start in under an hour in Turgenev Square. It is absolutely pointless to wait in Tverskaya Street until we are also loaded onto the buses.
We are going down the underground path. There are some journalists who recognize Illarionov. The flashes of their cameras attract people’s attention. When we get out, some 50 people are following us.
Andrey and I are getting close to the police cordon to find out what is going on in the buses with the detained people. I see Kasparov’s face through the broken window of a bus. Some minutes before that a young man broke it from the inside and escaped. Again we come face to face with the OMON. A CNN journalist is interviewing Illarionov. There are instigators in the crowd. One of them is screaming, pointing his finger at Illarionov, ‘What are you waiting for? Kick him with your baton at his head. Don’t beat Russians. Fracture the head of this American vermin. What are you doing here? Aren’t you still in Washington?’ Andrey ignores him. An OMON chief shoulders his way through the crowd. He tries to grab Andrey, but the people don’t let him.
We decide to go to Turgenev Square, taking a route that goes from the office of the Izvestia newspaper in the opposite direction to Pushkin Square. The OMON and the military bosses won’t expect us to take this route. Nastasyinskiy Lane is empty. The way is free. We call our friends, trying to find them and get them to join us. I get a text message from my friend Ilya, ‘I have been detained. We tried to break through the OMON cordon. People say that 1,000 people are marching to the Sadovoye Koltso.’ It is our column Ilya’s heard about.
Banners are unfolded. The red, white and blue banners of the Russian Federation fly over our heads. People shout: ‘Russia without Putin!’; ‘We want other Russia’; ‘No to a police state’. There are no obstacles in our way. We approach a Russian Orthodox church where we see people on the belfry. When we come alongside the church, they start ringing the bells, expressing their support. We feel free and cheered up. Stas calls me from a police station. I tell that the March is making its way. I hear him relaying the news to Kasparov.
As the march reaches Petrovka, 38, the famous address of the criminal police, people start singing, ‘Our proud Varyag is not going to give up’, a song of undefeated Russian sailors from the time of the Russian-Japanese war of 1905. We are also shouting, ‘No to the state with the FSB everywhere.’
In Trubnaya we see several hundred people more. Our two columns flow together.
The OMON chiefs have sent their watchdogs to stop us. They appear from Sretenskiy Avenue. Andrey is next to me. Marina Litvinovich is marching shoulder to shoulder to Ruslan Kutaev, a Chechen businessman and politician who was the co-chair of our Russian-Chechen Friendship Society for the first few years. Andrey is pulling me by a sleeve, telling me it’s time to run. I understand that he wants to pass the narrow street where the OMON is running to before they close their ranks.
We fail and run into the shields of the OMON. Andrey is telling them to let people go on. He keeps repeating, ‘This is our city’. Pointless. He pulls me out of the crowd just at the moment the OMON begin to detain people. We run over the OMON chain and jump over a fence. Many people escape with us. Hundreds of others keep running towards the Sretenskaya Square. Another OMON cordon. This time they are just chasing people as the column has already been dispersed. We see them dragging people, like sacks of flour, into their cars. We see them beating people with their batons.
Two OMON servicemen try to seize a young man who was marching next to us. Andrey and I run up to them and try to talk them into not detaining him. It is useless. They are hunters and the young boy is their prey. One of them is threatening us with his baton. Andrey tries to protect me. Suddenly, I feel an acute pain in my ankle. It is not a baton – it is the heavy boot of a policeman who is kicking my leg. As I limp aside, I see Litvinovich being chased by some other OMON militiamen.
***
Several hundred manage to get to Turgenev Square. The rally is underway. We have to go through the metal detectors. Policemen are searching Illarionov. There are several books in his inner pocket.
‘What are they?’
‘These are very interesting books…. This one is the constitution of the Russian Federation. The other one is the Criminal Code.’
They let us go through. Former Russian prime minister Mikhail Kasyanov is behind us. His face is red. He also had problems getting to the site as the OMON tried to detain him on the way. They failed. Andrey Illarionov refuses to make speeches although he is the person who has become de facto leader. Political satirist Viktor Shenderovich is making a speech. It is difficult to make out how many people have managed to get together here. Not less than 2,000. I am told that Putin has left Moscow for Saint Petersburg.
***
It’s time for the rally to finish. Marina and I decide to go to Presnenskiy police station, where the first detainees have been taken. Stas is among them with Garry Kasparov, and a range of activists, reporters and ordinary protestors.
There is already a crowd in front of the police station. I see Vladimir Ryzhkov, a member of the State Duma whose Republican Party of Russia is likely to be liquidated soon. He tells that some hundred members of the party participated in the rally. He has just seen the detained people. There are two lawyers with them: Karinna Moskalenko and Elena Liptzer. I again meet Andrey Illarionov. He has also come to support the friends. People from the Moscow Helsinki Group and the Demos Center are here. My friend Alik Mnatskanyan calls my cell phone. I see him standing on the steps of the police station. He is working as a journalist taking pictures. Nina Tagankina of the Moscow Helsinki group shows me a torn copy of the constitution. She picked it up in Tverskaya after the dispersal.
‘It would be one of the main exhibits in future. The constitution trampled by the OMON.’
I want to say that human rights defenders should do more than just pick up ‘exhibits’ after the events. But Nina’s eyes are shining with joy and I don’t want to upset her. She is here with all the people. And that’s important.
But time is passing. The prisoners have been detained for more than three hours now. The crowd of people is shouting ‘Freedom to political prisoners.’ We try to express our support, shouting out the names of the detainees. The site is surrounded with five-storey apartment buildings. Their residents are getting out onto their balconies and express their support to us.
The chief of the police station comes out with a megaphone. He is being followed by an OMON lieutenant-colonel. The pale-faced police chief is trying to persuade the crowd to disperse, but his voice is trembling. Andrey approaches him. He is very calm and reserved. He explains that it is better to release all the detained people as their custody has become unlawful. In response, the police chief murmurs, ‘The OMON isn’t following our orders. Somebody else operates them.’
The whole area is surrounded by the OMON again. Huge trucks can be seen on the main road. They don’t let people get past their cordons. Then the violence starts again. OMON beats people, seizes them and drags them to their buses.
We count our ‘casualties’. Eighteen people have been taken away this time.
Stas appears on the staircase. He is standing smoking. Then he comes towards us. Nobody is trying to stop him. The OMON has left and these policemen are sick and tired of the whole thing. He shows us the report on his ‘breach’ of the administrative law. It says: ‘Was detained while shouting out anti-governmental slogans in a big crowd of people.’ However, there are evident breaches in the report. No name and no signature of the person who made the ruling. No time of detention is indicated. This should mean it can be appealed.
We go to Amnesty International’s office. My foot is aching, and it is difficult to walk. I probably need to go to hospital. My friend who works with Amnesty is trying to get the address of the nearest hospital with a trauma surgery office. Failed, failed, failed…. She groans, ‘It is a disaster to fall ill in Russia.’ Yes, it is. At the same time, I’m trying to get the contact details of lawyers, as we keep receiving calls from Marina Litvinovich about violations of rights of many people who have been taken to other police stations. She is still in Novaya Square at the court building, waiting for Kasparov and the rest.
On the way to hospital Friederike is making phone calls to the most troublesome police stations. They respond as some minutes later we begin to receive calls that detainees there have not been so maltreated. It does help as these guys still don’t like international attention. They are dreaming about escaping their reality for good. Certainly, they won’t be able to afford Kurshavel, the resort of choice of the oligarchs.
I talk to Andrey Illarionov on the phone. He is going to be my witness. I really am going to report the trauma of being kicked. It will be pointless but I will do it.
In hospital we are not very welcome. They are evidently not going to provide me with help. I have no registration in Moscow. I have left my Russian passport in the office. I have to beg the doctor. She does me a favour in the long run but it takes me 200 rubles. No fracture, fortunately, but the foot is swollen. As I am leaving, she tells me that I was the 54th patient she’d seen from the demonstration.
When I get to Nizhny and wake up after a half-a-day’s heavy sleep, I turn on TV to learn that Putin has spent the weekend in St Petersburg in the company of Jean Claude Van Damme. Putin in a black shirt, with radiantly-smiling van Damme, is watching no-holds barred fighting. The white marble of Van Damms’s teeth looks even brighter against the background of Putin’s black shirt and pale face.
(more…)
24 Jul 2013 | In the News
INDEX EVENTS
NSA, surveillance, free speech and privacy
Edward Snowden’s leaks about the US’s international mass surveillance programmes has prompted perhaps the definitive debate of our age: How free are we online? Can we ever trust technology with our personal details?
25 July, Time 6.30pm, Free, but RSVP required. Space is limited.
Doughty Street Chambers, WC1N
(More information)
BELARUS
Belarus internet infested with spammers
Almost 30% of all net addresses in Belarus are blocked by anti-spam firms because of the amount of junk mail passing through them, says a report.
(BBC)
CANADA
Threats against lesbian couple aren’t a free speech issue. They’re a crime
A lesbian couple in Kingston, Ontario, has been on the receiving end of a couple of appalling, hateful letters, which are also certainly against the law.
(National Post)
CHINA
Chinese censorship will fail to hide Shenhua’s ruthless water grab
A Greenpeace East Asia investigation exposing how a Chinese state-run coal company is overexploiting water resources and illegally discharging toxic wastewater has made global headlines today.
(Greenpeace)
INDIA
India moves toward media regulation
As talk in India turns to media plurality and regulation, attention is turning to murky ownership structures and monopolistic practices. But some see the government’s moves as attempts to muzzle the press.
(Index on Censorship)
CJI criticises media excesses, but bats for ‘self-regulation’
Less than a week after taking over as head of the apex judiciary, Chief Justice of India P. Sathasivam plunged straight into key debates on the changing nature of the Indian media and the policy framework that should govern it. In a speech here on Tuesday, the CJI, while praising the media, also pointed to its excesses but favoured ‘self-regulation.’
(The Hindu)
RUSSIA
What Russia blocked in May
The Russian authorities came out with two new categories of website to be banned in May: on manufacturing explosive devices and bribery. If the first is the reaction of the authorities to the Boston bombings, the latter reflects major social problems of the society in Russia.
(Index on Censorship)
TUNISIA
Tunisia PM: Tamarod is danger to democratic process
Tunisia’s Tamarod movement, which has called for the dissolution of the National Constituent Assembly, is endangering the country’s democratic process, Islamist Prime Minister Ali Larayedh said on Monday.
(Middle East Online)
TURKEY
Turkey’s main opposition leader lambastes PM over media freedom
Turkey’s main opposition leader accused Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday of cowing local media into self-censorship after a journalist group said dozens of reporters were fired for their coverage of anti-government protests.
(Reuters)
UNITED KINGDOM
David Cameron’s online porn ban unravels amid debate over internet censorship
David Cameron is facing serious questions over how his plan for automatic internet “porn filters” in every British home would work – after he suggested that topless images such as those used on the Sun’s page three would be still be accessible online.
(Belfast Telegraph)
Author Marcus Hearn reveals censorship issues in his book The Bamforth Collection: Saucy Postcards
They have delighted millions in Britain’s seaside resorts over the years. But the cheeky cartoon postcards produced in Holmfirth also fell foul of the censorship laws. So much so that no less a figure than author George Orwell was involved in a campaign against them.
(The Huddersfield Daily Examiner)
UNITED STATES
East Bay commission tries to quell ‘hate speech’ directed at gays
Prompted by a series of controversies and ugly episodes at City Council meetings swirling around the local gay community and its critics, the city’s Human Rights and Human Relations Commission explored the line between free speech and hate speech late Monday.
(Mercury News)
#RushforSubway: Citizens show support for Limbaugh, free speech, and sandwiches
Mmm, freedom. Tastes like … sandwiches! While bitter #StopRush bullies and their doofus pals freak out over Subway having the gall to advertise on Rush Limbaugh’s radio show, hungry Dittoheads and free speech proponents are rushing out to show their support for the sandwich purveyor
(Twitchy)
Banned from campus over ‘Hot for Teacher’ essay, college student loses free speech suit
A federal judge in Michigan has dismissed a free-speech suit filed by an Oakland University student who was banned from campus for several semesters after writing an essay about his attraction to his creative writing instructor.
(ABA Journal)
Previous Free Expression in the News posts
July 23 | July 22 | July 19 | July 18 | July 17 | July 16 | July 15 | July 12 | July 11 | July 10 | July 9 | July 8 | July 5
13 Aug 2025 | News and features, United Kingdom, Volume 54.02 Summer 2025
This article first appeared in Volume 54, Issue 2 of our print edition of Index on Censorship, titled Land of the Free?: Trump’s war on speech at home and abroad, published on 21 July 2025. Read more about the issue here.
Ella Ward sat in jail in the UK for 10 months, waiting to be sentenced for planning to disrupt Manchester Airport in August 2024. When the sentence was handed down this May, it was 18 months in prison for Ward, with other protesters receiving up to 30 months.
Ward and their fellow activists from climate change direct action group Just Stop Oil never reached the runway, where they intended to glue themselves as part of a co-ordinated European action. Instead, according to an account from Ward, police arrested the activists on a side street in Manchester just after 4am on 5 August for planning the protest, which would have caused “severe delays”.
Four JSO activists were charged with conspiracy to cause a public nuisance and found guilty in February.
Ward, 22, a former environmental science student at the University of Leeds, is a serial activist. They have slow-marched down roads for JSO (for which they spent time in prison before charges were dropped) and thrown paint over think tank Policy Exchange, and they were one of three young people – under the banner of Youth Demand (an offshoot of JSO) – who left children’s shoes outside the home of Keir Starmer, then leader of the opposition, to protest against the killings in Gaza.
None of these actions have been violent, although many have caused offence and disruption. But the fact that Ward and others have been sentenced to prison for months demonstrates how the UK has been clamping down on protest when it would once have dealt with such direct actions with fines.
JSO, whose activists threw soup over Vincent Van Gogh’s Sunflowers at the National Gallery, announced earlier this year that it was stopping its activities.
The official reason given was that its demands – for no new oil and gas licences to be issued – had been met. But at the group’s final demonstration through London in April, it was clear that the imprisonment of key activists was a major concern: there were as many protesters holding up pictures of activists who had been jailed as there were messages about climate change and the fossil fuel industry.
Ths shift in protest policing
Mel Carrington, 63, is a JSO spokesperson who was acquitted in June after blocking the departure gates at Gatwick Airport with suitcases last year. She told Index: “We have to respond to repression, and all our most radical people are in prison. So it does have an impact.”
There are currently 11 JSO protesters behind bars. Co-founder Roger Hallam (also co-founder of Extinction Rebellion, or XR) is serving a four-year sentence (reduced from five years) for conspiracy to cause a public nuisance. His crime was playing a major role in a Zoom meeting where he was found to have conspired in a “sophisticated plan” for activists to climb gantries over the M25 – a motorway which circles London – and disrupt traffic. Hallam did not participate in the action, which took place in November 2022, but the law enabled him to be imprisoned for the protest nonetheless.
Locking up climate protesters is relatively new in the UK. Richard Ecclestone, an XR spokesperson and a former police inspector, said the attitude of the police, as well as actual laws, had changed dramatically over the last six years, which he found “very disturbing”. Police used to facilitate protest, now they are shutting it down.
“We don’t want to be like Russia, China or North Korea. That’s not who we are,” he told Index.
Recent anti-protest legislation has given police the power to stop almost any action they don’t like and granted the courts expanded powers to imprison protesters, although the Court of Appeal decided in May that the idea of “disruption” – which led to Swedish climate protester Greta Thunberg being arrested in London – had been drawn too widely and that “serious disruption” could not be categorised as anything “more than minor”.
The 2022 Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act has proved particularly effective at shutting down civil disobedience, while protest-related offences under the Public Order Act 2023 were introduced in direct response to environmental activism. Serious Disruption Prevention Orders introduced in 2024 also mean the courts can prevent people from taking part in disruptive protests after they’ve been convicted of protest-related offences, and breaching the order would be a criminal offence.
Mothers supporting daughters
The Labour government, elected last year, is seeking to give police even more powers to control demonstrations. Amnesty International has highlighted provisions in the new Crime and Policing Bill currently going through parliament which seek to ban face masks and criminalise climbing on war memorials.
The courts have also blocked the right for defendants to use beliefs and motivation as a lawful excuse for causing a nuisance, damage or disruption in most cases.
Ward’s mother (who didn’t want her name to be published) was on the march, as was Rebecca, the mother of Ruby Hamill, another protester who, at the age of 19, was held in prison for slow-marching. Ruby has now been released. Both mothers went on the final JSO march in support of their daughters.
Ward’s mother told Index: “My daughter is very passionate and compassionate and feels deeply about the injustice of the climate crisis and how it’s affecting the global south, and wants to let people know as much as possible. She’s done the most she possibly can do by putting her liberty on the line. She knew the potential outcome.
“She told the jury in the trial she would be at peace with whether she is found guilty or not guilty … the point of her action is to get the message out there. I’m here in solidarity with my daughter and all the other people who have been imprisoned.
“It’s a very conflicting place for a parent – so worried about them being in prison but conversely proud of them for standing up for their beliefs.”
The UK’s deteriorating record
The UK has a poor record when it comes to arresting climate protesters who, like JSO members, have been non-violent and allow themselves to be arrested.
A recent report from the University of Bristol, called the Criminalisation and Repression of Climate and Environmental Protests, looked at government responses across a range of countries.
The report found that 17% of climate and environmental protests in the UK involved arrest, making it the second most likely country (after Australia at 20%) to take environmental protesters into police custody.
It is not the only country to have clamped down heavily on climate protest. France has reached for anti-terror laws, and Spain, Germany and the USA have used legislation designed to tackle organised crime.
Separately, climate activists in the UK have often been subject to civil proceedings such as injunctions which prevent named (and sometimes unnamed) individuals from going near certain places. Carrington says these injunctions can be as intimidating as criminalisation, making people afraid they could lose their savings or their jobs.
In 2022, JSO protester Louise Lancaster was ordered to pay £22,000 for breaching an injunction preventing her going on the M25.
Carrington herself found that she couldn’t renew her house insurance because of proceedings against her. She also claimed teachers had discovered their jobs were at risk because criminal prosecutions for climate change action turned up in Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) checks.
Another way forward?
All of this risks environmental protesters going underground and carrying out actions with less accountability. There are already organisations such as The Tyre Extinguishers whose members deliberately let down the tyres of SUVs and then scarper, or Shut The System, which sabotages infrastructure.
But the authors of the Bristol report recommended another way forward.
“Governments, legislatures, courts and police forces should operate with a general presumption against criminalising climate and environmental protests,” it said. “Instead, climate and environmental protest should be regarded as a reasonable response to the urgent and existential nature of the climate crisis, and activists engaged as stakeholders in a process of just transition.”
The leaders of climate change movements agree and are working out how to pivot to a less disruptive street-based approach and one which might garner more public support. Ecclestone says XR was interested in using citizens’ assemblies to achieve change and that a lot of work was going on to see how that could be made to work.
Carrington said JSO had a project as part of the umbrella group Assemble which aimed to build on the idea that politics was broken and corrupt, and that building a political project from the grassroots up was the way to achieve change.
She said: “What we need to do more than ever is to come together and to work together to survive the storm that’s coming.”
18 Jul 2025 | Afghanistan, Africa, Asia and Pacific, Benin, China, Côte d'Ivoire, Europe and Central Asia, Middle East and North Africa, News and features, 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.
