5 Sep 2025 | Americas, Asia and Pacific, Canada, Europe and Central Asia, Georgia, Nepal, News and features
Bombarded with news from all angles every day, important stories can easily pass us by. To help you cut through the noise, every Friday Index publishes a weekly news roundup of some of the key stories covering censorship and free expression. This week, we look at the Alberta school library book ban, and the sentencing of twenty protesters in Georgia.
Alberta pauses controversial book ban amid backlash
The government of Alberta has paused a proposed book ban, which aimed to take out books from school libraries which contained what the authorities called “explicit sexual content”
Books such as Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World were included in a list of more than 200 that would be removed under the new measures.
There was a public outcry and Atwood released a short story on social media, stating: “Here’s a piece of literature by me, suitable for 17-year-olds in Alberta schools, unlike — we are told — The Handmaid’s Tale.”
Now, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith says she has pressed pause in order to review the policy and “preserve access to classic literature.”
The Christian parents group Action4Canada had previously hailed the book ban as a “great victory” following a meeting with the state’s education minister.
Byline Times Journalists denied access to Conservative Party annual conference.
The UK Conservative Party has banned Byline Times from attending its annual conference, refusing to give an explanation as to why.
It has been normal practice for political parties to allow journalists from established outlets to cover their annual gatherings which take place in the autumn. However in recent years that convention has been eroded.
The Labour Party was criticised in 2024 by Reporters without Borders for refusing to accredit critical journalist John McEvoy from Declassified.
And in 2023 the Conservative party faced an accusation of discrimination, when some journalists were forced to pay for entry whilst others were not. In the same year 2023 the Scottish Tory Party tried to restrict a q&a session with then Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to only six carefully chosen outlets.
Nigel Farage’s Reform Party last year also banned Byline Times from attending their conference as well as Carole Cadwalladr from the Observer.
Anti-Government protestors sentenced in Georgia amid torture allegations
Georgian courts have sentenced 20 protesters including actor Andro Chichinadze and activist Saba Skhvitardze to prison in connection with anti-government rallies.
Skhvitaridze, who was arrested on 5 December, alleges that he faced torture whilst in prison, a claim that according to Amnesty has not been properly investigated. He was jailed for two years after being found guilty of causing “intentional bodily harm” to a police officer during a protest.
Chichinadze, who was also sentenced to two years following charges of disruption of public order said: “I want to address the prosecutors and you from my side, I forgive what you have been doing to me for so long.”
Georgia has faced widespread demonstrations following the 2024 parliamentary elections, which saw the ruling Georgian Dream party secure victory. Claims of electoral fraud triggered the protests as well as the arrest of opposition leader Zurab Japaridze who has not only now been jailed for seven months but barred from holding public office for two years.
Social media platforms banned in Nepal
Nepal’s Ministry of Communications has issued a ban on all social media platforms that failed to register with the government following a 25 August directive.
The ban comes following a Supreme Court ruling from 17 August that required the registration of online platforms in order to “monitor disinformation”.
Multiple large platforms, including Facebook, YouTube and Reddit failed to register before the deadline. Japanese social media Viber and Chinese owned TikTok remain accessible.
The Committee to Protect Journalists has warned that the ban severely undermines press freedom and the public access to information, urging the government to reverse its decision.
CPJ Regional Director Beh Lih Yi said: “Blocking online news platforms vital to journalists will undermine reporting and the public’s right to information. The government must immediately rescind this order and restore access to social media platforms, which are essential tools for exercising press freedom.”
4 Jul 2025 | Africa, Algeria, Americas, Asia and Pacific, China, Europe and Central Asia, France, India, News and features, United Kingdom, United States
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 the complete shutdown of USAID, and the imprisonment of a French football journalist in Algeria.
The end of an era: USAID closes its doors
After six decades, USAID – the world’s largest humanitarian aid agency – has been completely shut down. Following an increasing number of funding cuts, restrictions and staff layoffs that left it with only 20% of its agency programmes still running by March, the Trump administration has ordered USAID to be absorbed into the US state department, under the control of Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
Founded in 1961 under President John F Kennedy with the goal of fighting extreme poverty, disease and fostering democratic societies around the world, USAID also supported initiatives protecting free expression – like in Uganda, where crucial shelters and aid for LGBTQ+ citizens has been withdrawn, leaving them at the mercy of ever-increasing government crackdowns on their community. Such initiatives were criticised by Rubio, who described USAID as inefficient and stated that Americans will no longer “pay taxes to fund failed governments in faraway lands“. The state department will look to ensure that any foreign spending “prioritises national interests” to align with Trump’s “America First” approach.
The move has been condemned by former presidents Barack Obama and George W Bush; Obama stated at a video conference with USAID workers that “Gutting USAID is a travesty, and it’s a tragedy. Because it’s some of the most important work happening anywhere in the world”.
A Lancet study estimates that by 2030, roughly 14 million lives will have been lost as a result of USAID’s dismantling.
Arrested for sport: French football journalist imprisoned for seven years in Algeria
Prominent French football journalist Christophe Gleizes has been sentenced to seven years in prison by an Algerian court.
Gleizes, who was in Algeria to report on football clubs Jeunesse Sportive de Kabylie (JSK) and Mouloudia Club d’Alger, was held in the country for 13 months following his arrest on 28 May 2024. He has been charged with “glorifying terrorism” and “possessing publications for propaganda purposes harmful to national interests”, charges that Reporters Without Borders have described as “shockingly unfounded” and “nonsensical”.
Gleizes allegedly corresponded three times with an individual who was a prominent figure at JSK, but is now the leader of Movement for Self-Determination of Kabylia (MAK); a separatist group dedicated to independence of the Kabylia region of Algeria and the Kabyle people, a minority group in the country. They were proscribed as a terrorist organisation by Algeria in 2021.
RSF have stated that two of the three interactions with this person were before MAK’s proscription, and that all discussions were purely related to football. So Foot, a French Football magazine to whom Gleizes would regularly contribute, stated that he was “imprisoned for doing his job”.
No freedom to write: Women arrested in China for writing gay erotica
Female authors in China are being targeted and arrested for writing danmei – homosexual erotic novels, largely written for a straight female audience. It has garnered a strong following amongst young Chinese women in recent years, but at least 30 danmei authors have been arrested in China since February 2025, accused of breaking China’s law against “producing and distributing obscene material”.
The law specifically targets “explicit descriptions of gay sex or other sexual perversions”, meaning that similar novels depicting heterosexual relations are often subjected to far less scrutiny. Authors who earn a profit from such material could face up to 10 years in prison, while any online work that garners more than 5,000 views is seen as “criminal distribution”.
Public backlash has been significant despite censorship around the topic. Chinese social media websites Weibo and WeChat have both seen discussions and articles critical of China’s anti-obscenity laws swiftly taken down. Xi Jinping has overseen increasing crackdowns on LGBTQ+ expression in recent years, calling for the “purification” of the internet, and in 2021 China’s National Radio and Television Administration issued a directive banning the appearance of “effeminate men” on screen.
State-sanctioned truth: Proposed jail terms for fake news in India
Legislation has been drafted in India that would see up to seven years’ jail time for those deemed to be spreading “fake news”. Proposed by the state of Karnataka, a prominent tech-hub state in southwest India, the Misinformation And Fake News (Prohibition) Bill outlines that posting fake news, “anti-feminist” content or “promoting superstition” would be subject to fines and imprisonment, but has not yet specifically defined what these offences entail.
Misinformation and fake news have been rampant online in India for years, with AI generated reports, deepfakes and lies causing major problems in a country with over 1 billion internet users. But this new proposal has raised concerns among free speech advocates over how it would be implemented, risking selective enforcement and honest mistakes being met with judicial punishment.
Apar Gupta, founder of the Internet Freedom Foundation who first made the draft legislation public, argued that misinformation is subjective in some cases, and that “every person who uses the internet is susceptible to falling within the dragnet of this law“. An opinion piece in The Deccan Herald, an Indian-English publication based in Karnataka, slammed the legislation as “anti-democratic” and a “remedy worse than the menace”.
UK book ban: Trans books removed from children’s sections across UK council
A Reform UK councillor at Kent County Council has announced that he has ordered the removal of all transgender-related literature from the childrens’ section of libraries in the county based on a single complaint from a “concerned member of the public”. The ban will affect 99 libraries and five mobile library vans.
Reform UK’s communities portfolio holder Paul Webb, who has responsibility for libraries, compared transgender literature to “alcohol, cigarettes and gambling” in terms of potential damage to children and stated that they should be protected from “potentially harmful ideologies and beliefs such as those held by the trans lobbyists.” Kent County Council leader Linden Kemkaran described it as a “victory for common sense in Kent”.
LGBTQ+ activists have expressed deep concern over the decision. Erin Strawbridge, manager of an LGBTQ+ bookshop in Folkestone, Kent, told the BBC that the ban “pushes kids into the closet, into worse mental health situations”. Liberal Democrat opposition leader Anthony Hook said that “it feels like an act of bullying towards a small, vulnerable group of people”, and that “We risk becoming a narrow-minded society if we limit what individuals choose to read.”
6 Mar 2025 | News and features, United Kingdom
Today, my son trotted off to school in a hastily assembled knight-doctor-dragon combo, firmly taking on his role as the knight from Zog, whose name I can never get right. Sir Galahad? Sir Gallopalong? Ah yes, Sir Gadabout. This was his first World Book Day, and as a book-loving writer mum, it was quite the moment.
Aside from fond memories of my own childhood World Book Days dressing up as Ratty from The Wind in the Willows (including homemade tail) and Hermione from Harry Potter (hair my own), I now have another reason to love the annual literary celebration.
Last summer, we at Index published an investigation into book censorship in UK school libraries. I have been following the worrying trend of book bans in the USA for several years, and I wanted to know whether any of that censorship is creeping into UK schools. I found out that yes, it is.
In the survey I sent to school librarians, 53% of respondents told me they had been asked to take books off their shelves. And 56% of those actually removed the books in question. When I spoke with librarians directly, many had been left shaken by their experiences.
The censored books largely featured LGBTQ+ content, as well as other areas. In one school, the entire Philip Pullman collection was removed by a senior staff member in a school with a Christian ethos. In another, all books with a hint of LGBTQ+ content were boxed up and left to gather dust.
Since publishing my investigation, even more librarians have been in touch to tell me about censorship in their schools, often telling me how lost they feel. There is no statutory requirement for a school to even have a library in the UK, let alone there being any official policy.
Recently, someone reported to me that when pupils were invited to take books into class, a child who brought a copy of Room on the Broom was swiftly turned away. They were told that they couldn’t read it because it is a Christian school. For anyone who doesn’t know this Julia Donaldson staple (that’s the second Donaldson mention in this piece, so that gives you a sense of how popular her books are), it’s about a witch, and a series of events that means she – you guessed it – does not have room on her broom.
I can’t help imagining how that child felt to have their choice of book rejected, butting up against censorship at such a young age, and being told that their favourite book was “wrong”; the parents or carers of that school second guessing what they might be allowed to send their child into school with; and then suddenly, there is a culture of self-censorship in that school.
World Book Day, in part, is a bit of a pain for parents. Costumes can be time-consuming to make or expensive to buy, and plenty of households up and down the country awoke this morning to a chorus of “World Book Day is today?” Children are ushered out the door, assured that a t-shirt and shorts is actually a very acceptable costume for the kid in insert any ordinary child in any book ever written.
But for me, in spite of whatever costume dramas might arise in the coming years (I may eat my words when that day inevitably comes), it’s a day to celebrate a love of books. And that means fighting for them.
As culture wars continue to heat up in the USA, it’s important that we do not let that slide into our classrooms, and that classrooms do not become battlegrounds. Just as it’s important that a child is not shamed for bringing in Room on the Broom, it’s vital that young people must be able to access stories where they can see their own experiences (and those of their peers) reflected.
Julian is a Mermaid by Jessica Love is one of our favourite stories at home. It is beautifully illustrated, and tells the tale of a boy who wants to dress up as – even imagines he is – a mermaid. He is encouraged to use his imagination by his grandmother, and he is not shamed for exploring his identity. It’s not only a gorgeous story, but a lovely way to introduce young children to discovering who they are and how others around them might explore their own identities too. Despite this, it was one of the books that librarians in my investigation reported as having been banned.
Stories help us understand the world, and they help us understand ourselves. They help us navigate things that are scary, complicated and confusing. They help flex our imaginations. And they’re joyful.
I do not want our schools to face the level of censorship that many schools in the USA do, and for our librarians to be fighting off book challenges instead of helping children find their next great read. I don’t believe widespread book bans are a real threat right now, but we now have evidence that there are pockets of this happening across the country. So this World Book Day, I’m going to harp on again about the importance of the freedom to read, and keeping our schools free from book bans.
If you care about books as much as I do (and why wouldn’t you?), please join me in celebrating books, and kicking up a fuss about the importance of good school libraries, where librarians are empowered to curate a diverse and creative collection.
11 Feb 2025 | Israel, Middle East and North Africa, News and features, Palestine, Statements
EDIT (13/02/2025): It has now been reported that Mahmoud and Ahmed Mouna have been released.
Index on Censorship is alarmed by the arrest and ongoing detention of author Mahmoud Muna, owner and bookseller of Jerusalem’s Educational Bookshop. The Educational Bookshop specialises in Arabic and English language books on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the history of Jerusalem.
Mahmoud and his nephew Ahmad Muna were arrested in the bookshop by undercover Israeli police on the afternoon of Sunday, 9 February 2025. According to their family, dozens of books were confiscated, including all books that had the words “Palestine” or “Palestinian” in the title and that contained images of the Palestinian flag. Mahmoud and Ahmad were arrested on the charge of “inciting and supporting terrorism”, but the charge was reportedly changed to “disturbing the public order” during their interrogation. Ahmad Muna has since been released.
The arrests are part of broader attacks to artistic freedoms within both Israel and the Palestinian territories. Last year, Index covered the blocking of a film screening in Haifa.
The Educational Bookshop is a well-known, family-owned chain that has operated for over four decades. It sells a wide collection of books by Palestinian, Israeli and international authors and has a cafe attached to one of the branches that hosts regular literary events. Mahmoud Ahmad is also a writer and active in cultural initiatives across Palestine. In 2022, he published the first Arabic edition of the literary magazine, Granta.
Jemimah Steinfeld, CEO of Index on Censorship, said:
“Book banning has no place in a democracy and these actions don’t even stop there. The two men, Mahmoud Muna and Ahmad Muna, are remarkable by all accounts and should never have been put through this ordeal. Their arrests were another example of how authorities in Israel today are trying to silence the speech of Palestinians and the speech of those who challenge government lines more broadly. Freedom to read is not a luxury that can be given to those whose views you agree with only. It’s an essential part of free speech and it cannot happen if booksellers are unable to carry out their work safely, without fear of reprisal.”
Andrew Franklin, Profile books founder and trustee of Index on Censorship, said:
“Books are a bulwark of freedom. When they are banned, dark things follow. So for a bookshop to be raided, books seized by the police and the booksellers arrested is shocking and appalling. It speaks of grim repression and echoes the darkest days of book seizures and book burning.
“I know Mahmoud well and admire him greatly. Bookselling is never an easy profession and it’s really challenging under occupation. Mahmoud’s shops are a haven of ideas, stories and imagination in a bleak place. He’s a quiet hero.”
For press enquiries, contact: Jemimah Steinfeld at [email protected]
