The week in free expression: 5–11 April 2025

11 Apr 2025 | Americas, Asia and Pacific, Israel, Middle East and North Africa, News and features, Pakistan, 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 will publish a weekly news roundup of some of the key stories covering censorship and free expression from the past seven days. This week, we look at targeted families of activists in two parts of the world and how the US president is punishing those who defy him.

Activists under pressure: Human rights defenders in Balochistan face new threats

On 5 April, the father of Baloch human rights defender Sabiha Baloch was arrested by Pakistani authorities, and his whereabouts are currently unknown. This has been widely considered as an attempt to silence Sabiha Baloch, who advocates for the rights of Baloch people, in particular against the killings, enforced disappearances and arbitrary arrests that have been happening for years. 

There are reports that authorities refuse to release Baloch’s father until she surrenders herself, and raids are being carried out in an attempt to arrest her. This is not the first attempt to silence her. Other family members have previously been abducted and held in detention for several months.

Two days later on 7 April, another Baloch human rights defender, Gulzadi Baloch, was arrested. It is believed that her arrest was particularly violent, and that she was beaten and dragged out onto the street. Both women are members of the Baloch Yakjehti Committee, which advocates for human rights for Baloch people. Its founder, Mahrang Baloch, was arrested on 22 March along with 17 other protesters, after they staged a sit-in to demand the release of members of their group. During the crackdown, at least three protesters were reportedly killed.

Toeing the line: Trump gets to work silencing critics

US President Donald Trump has made several attempts to silence or punish his critics this week. On 9 April, he signed an executive order placing restrictions on the law firm Susman Godfrey, including limiting attorneys from accessing government buildings and revoking security clearances. The firm represented Dominion Voting System in their defamation lawsuit against Fox, accusing the media company of lying about a plot to steal the election and claiming Dominion was involved. It ended with Dominion getting a $797.5m settlement in April 2023. This week’s move comes after Trump took similar measures to target five more law firms, connected with his political rivals.

The next day, Trump took aim at former homeland security officials, Miles Taylor and Chris Krebs, who both served in Trump’s first administration and both publicly spoke out against Trump’s election fraud narrative.

Taylor turned whistleblower in 2018, anonymously speaking out in a New York Times article and after quitting writing a book, before eventually revealing his identity. Trump has accused him of leaking classified information. Krebs, whose job it was to prevent foreign interference in elections, corrected rumours about voter fraud in the 2020 election, and was subsequently fired by Trump. Trump has ordered the Department of Justice to investigate the two men, and revoke their security clearances. 

Attorney and former congresswoman Liz Cheney described the move as “Stalinesque”. As he signed the executive orders, Trump took the opportunity to repeat lies about a stolen election.

Not safe to report: Journalists killed as Israeli airstrike hits media tent

On Monday, an Israeli airstrike hit a tent in southern Gaza used by media workers, killing several journalists and injuring others. The journalists killed were Hilma al-Faqawi and Ahmed Mansour, who worked for Palestine Today, wth Mansour dying later following severe burns. Yousef al-Khozindar, who was working with NBC to provide support in Gaza, was also killed.

Reuters say they have verified one video, which shows people trying to douse the flames of the tent in the Nasser Hospital compound. The Committee to Protect Journalists and the National Union of Journalists have denounced Israel’s strike on the journalists’ tent.

The Israel Defense Forces wrote on X: “The IDF and ISA struck the Hamas terrorist Hassan Abdel Fattah Mohammed Aslih in the Khan Yunis area overnight” … “Asilh [sic], who operates under the guise of a journalist and owns a press company, is a terrorist operative in Hamas’ Khan Yunis Brigade.”

The deaths add to the growing number of journalists and media workers who have been killed in the conflict since 7 October 2023, which the International Federation of Journalists place at over 170. The journalists killed are Lebanese, Syrian, Israeli and overwhelmingly Palestinian. Journalists are protected under International Humanitarian law. This is vital not only for the safety of individuals, but so that accurate information can be broadcast locally and internationally.

Whistleblowing triumphs: Apple settles unfair labour charges

Whistleblower Ashley Gjøvik came out on top on 10 April, when Apple agreed to settle labour rights charges after she claimed their practices were illegal, including barring staff from discussing working hours, conditions and wages, and speaking to the press.

Gjøvik was a senior engineering programme manager at the tech giant, when she raised her concerns about toxic waste under her office. She was fired after engaging in activities that should be protected under labour rights laws. She was let go after supposedly violating the staff confidentiality agreement.

In a memorandum, Gjøvik highlighted that there is still plenty to be concerned about. She wrote: “The settlement’s policy revisions, while significant—do not address several categories of retaliation and coercive behavior that remain unremedied or unexamined, including: surveillance, email interception, and device monitoring in relation to protected activities; threats or internal referrals aimed at chilling protected disclosures; and retaliation based on public statements regarding working conditions.”

Circles of influence: Hong Kong family taken in for questioning

On Thursday, the Hong Kong national security police targeted the family of Frances Hui, a staff member at the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong (CFHK) Foundation, and a US resident.

Hui’s parents were taken in for questioning, even though Hui cut ties with them when she left for the USA in 2020. She now fights for democracy and freedom in Hong Kong, from abroad. This week’s move comes shortly after the USA placed sanctions on six Chinese and Hong Kong officials who have enforced repressive national security policies in Hong Kong.

In December 2023, Hong Kong police put out an arrest warrant for Hui, and placed a HK$1 million bounty on her head.

The CFHK Foundation said: “By placing a bounty on her and other U.S-based Hong Kong activists, the Hong Kong authorities are encouraging people to kidnap them on U.S. soil in return for a reward.”

Back to school: a hard lesson for Hong Kong

6 Sep 2024 | Asia and Pacific, China, Hong Kong, News and features, Newsletters

It is September and the kids are back at school. Many will likely be excited for the year ahead but perhaps not Hong Kong students. They’re returning to a new lesson: Xi Jinping Thought. As announced this week, the curriculum has been updated in secondary schools to include teachings from China’s leader. The new module aims to instil “patriotic education”.

I pity these kids, I really do. Firstly because unlike Mao, who many saw as a great wordsmith (a tyrant yes but a tyrant who could write lyrically and coin a zinger, “revolution is not a dinner party” being one classic example), Xi’s words are flat. The Economist declared his Thought “woolly: a hodgepodge of Dengist and Maoist terminology combined with mostly vague ideas on topics ranging from the environment (making China “beautiful”) to building a “world-class” army.” The academic Kevin Carrico studied his Thought through a distance-learning course and wrote that it was impoverished. “It comes across as a cash-rich North Korea,” he said. I’ve never got very far. Sentences like “The fundamental reason why some of our comrades have weak ideals and faltering beliefs is that their views lack a firm grounding in historical materialism” contain too many words and too little meaning.

But beyond criticising the content is a much bigger issue. As one Hongkonger said in response to the announcement, it’s “brainwashing”. That it is. And more than that. It’s another way to strip Hong Kong of its unique identity. The curriculum is aimed at “cultivating students’ sense of nationhood, affection for our country and sense of national identity” and by identity that means one dictated through the narrow lens of the Chinese Communist Party from Beijing.

Since it was introduced formally in China in 2017, Xi Jinping Thought has become a mainstay of academic life throughout the country for all levels of students. In our forthcoming Autumn magazine, which looks at how scientists are being attacked worldwide, Chinese novelist Murong Xuecun lays bare some of the absurdities of this:

“Every scientist needs to study Xi’s speeches and thoughts. Their Western counterparts may not be able to empathise with this but imagine a group of physicists or astronomy professors sitting in a conference room at MIT or Harvard, studying Donald Trump’s or Joe Biden’s speeches, and then considering how much it would help in their research.”

Xi Jinping Thought should be relegated to the history books not promoted to textbooks. But classrooms have always been central to Beijing’s ambitions in Hong Kong, which partly explains why many of the protest leaders were students. In 2010, for example, then Hong Kong chief executive Donald Tsang announced plans to change primary education so that its messages were more in line with the CCP (one teaching manual called the CCP an “advanced, selfless and united ruling group”). These plans were shelved due to widespread protests, protests which themselves were later removed or reworded in textbooks. More recently, in 2022 history textbooks were rewritten to downplay the city’s colonial past. Today they’re taking the textbook meddling one step further.

Here’s a kicker: interference in textbooks by Beijing is happening in the UK too. The Telegraph reported this week that British GCSE books were edited to remove references to Taiwan after complaints from Chinese officials. The AQA GCSE Chinese textbook deleted references to “the Republic of China” (Taiwan) from subsequent editions. The first edition of the GCSE textbook said: “Yangmingshan National Park is the third national park of the Republic of China, and the park is located in the northern part of Taipei City.” Later editions: “Yangmingshan National Park is a very famous national park.”

The UK is not Hong Kong and the CCP cares a lot less about what British textbooks contain. And yet they still clearly care. There’s a long road to be taken before a few words removed from a Mandarin-teaching title turns into Xi Jinping Thought on the UK syllabus and it’s encouraging that Lord Alton raised the issue in Parliament this week. We must not journey further down this road and not just because his Thought is deathly dull.

Finally, on the note of back to school a reminder of the many girls of Afghanistan who are not starting school at all. Last year we gave the Index campaigning award to Matiullah Wesa, who together with his brother founded Pen Path, a remarkable organisation dedicated to improving girls’ education in Afghanistan. For over a decade, Wesa has travelled the country with his mobile library, distributing books to children and working to establish schools in conflict-riven areas. Today he meets with Taliban leaders to call for schools to be reopened for girls. Wesa is a frequent target of the Taliban and has been imprisoned. He dreams of a time when he can retire this work because access to education – a universal right – is respected and promoted in Afghanistan. Today that dream has never felt further away.

All of the above reinforces a line we often say at Index: freedoms are hard won and easily lost. So students: cherish learning, enjoy debate and never take the ability to enquire more, to read widely and to speak freely for granted.

The latest rubbish joke from China

19 Jul 2024 | China, Hong Kong, News and features, Newsletters, Russia

Has China entered a “garbage time of history”? Some netizens think so. According to a Guardian article from yesterday, the term is trending, coined to reflect a generation who feel squeezed by rising costs and other social burdens. Those behind the term even created a “2024 misery ranking grand slam”, which tallies up the number of misery points that a person might have earned this year (one star for unemployment, two stars for a mortgage, another for hoarding the expensive liquor Moutai and so on). I always felt bonded to many of my Chinese friends by what I’d say was a shared sense of humour – the dry, acerbic sort that Brits are famed for, the one that is still able to chortle no matter how bad the news. It’s very much on display in this story.

The censors though aren’t laughing. They’re scrubbing. Pity these people who take away the lemonade from those with lemons.

Two other stories emerged from the region this week that, while not necessarily “garbage”, were bad. The first concerned a rumour that Xi Jinping had a stroke (side note: Xi is 71, his mother is 97, and his father died aged 88). The rumour spread across Chinese social media and was picked up on X by the activist Jennifer Zeng, who has a huge following. It was later debunked, including by the Reuters Fact Check team here. In the interim, China’s censors blocked posts about it.

The story was troubling, and not just the censorship angle. There are perils to getting things wrong when you are meant to be on the side fighting for freedoms, a central one being that it’s an own goal, a way to feed into the autocrats’ line that it is others, not themselves, who can’t be trusted.

Another troubling story this week came out of Hong Kong. On Wednesday Wall Street Journal reporter Selina Cheng was laid off. The Post said it was part of a restructuring. Cheng believes it was linked to her taking up the position of chair at the Hong Kong Journalists Association, a union that campaigns for media freedom. She said she was pressed by her employer not to stand for election for chair, being told the role would be “incompatible with my employment at the Wall Street Journal”. The WSJ have not commented on her firing. But a pattern appears to be emerging of major international outlets being spooked by association with the HKJA. According to an article from the China Media Project, three recently elected members of the HKJA board, alongside an outgoing leader of the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China, said they faced similar pressures.

“All asked to remain anonymous, fearing reprisals from their employers, but confirmed that the Journal is not alone: the biggest names in Hong Kong and China’s foreign press have been pressuring their employees to stand back and stay quiet, or face the repercussions. For the territory’s embattled journalists, defending the free press has become a fight on two fronts: against both an increasingly authoritarian government and their own employers, based in the West and nominally committed to liberal principles,” the article said.

Meanwhile Tom Grundy from Hong Kong Free Press, one of the few independent media to still operate from Hong Kong, told Index that the news added to the sense of vulnerability felt by journalists there. He said:

“When a giant international news organisation fails to support the city’s only independent media union and its officers, they further erode press freedom by closing precious space. It sends a terrible signal, and makes their own remaining staff more vulnerable in the long run. Especially locals.”

The Beijing supporting media of course is loving it. The Global Times tabloid was calling the press union “a malignant tumour that harms the city’s safety and security”.

Finally on the note of the WSJ, we have just heard news that the reporter Evan Gershkovich has been sentenced to 16 years in a Russian prison on espionage charges after he was arrested last March while on a reporting trip in the city of Yekaterinburg 1,600 km east of Moscow. That this news was predicable doesn’t make it any less disturbing. We will continue to fight for his release.

Contents – The long reach: How authoritarian countries are silencing critics abroad

10 May 2024 | Bahrain, Belarus, Brazil, Canada, China, Ecuador, Eritrea, Hong Kong, India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Magazine Contents, Mexico, North Korea, Palestine, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Swaziland, Tajikistan, Thailand, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, United Kingdom, United States, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, Volume 53.01 Spring 2024

Contents

The Spring 2024 issue of Index looks at how authoritarian states are bypassing borders in order to clamp down on dissidents who have fled their home state. In this issue we investigate the forms that transnational repression can take, as well as highlighting examples of those who have been harassed, threatened or silenced by the long arm of the state.

The writers in this issue offer a range of perspectives from countries all over the world, with stories from Turkey to Eritrea to India providing a global view of how states operate when it comes to suppressing dissidents abroad. These experiences serve as a warning that borders no longer come with a guarantee of safety for those targeted by oppressive regimes.

 

Up Front

Border control, by Jemimah Steinfeld: There's no safe place for the world's dissidents. World leaders need to act.

The Index, by Mark Frary: A glimpse at the world of free expression, featuring Indian elections, Predator spyware and a Bahraini hunger strike.

Features

Just passing through, by Eduardo Halfon: A guided tour through Guatemala's crime traps.

Exporting the American playbook, by Amy Fallon: The culture wars are finding new ground in Canada, where the freedom to read is the latest battle.

The couple and the king, by Clemence Manyukwe: Tanele Maseko saw her activist husband killed in front of her eyes, but it has not stopped her fight for democracy.

Obrador's parting gift, by Chris Havler-Barrett: Journalists are free to report in Mexico, as long as it's what the president wants to hear.

Silencing the faithful, by Simone Dias Marques: Brazil's religious minorities are under attack.

The anti-abortion roadshow, by Rebecca L Root: The USA's most controversial new export could be a campaign against reproductive rights.

The woman taking on the trolls, by Daisy Ruddock: Tackling disinformation has left Marianna Spring a victim of trolling, even by Elon Musk.

Broken news, by Mehran Firdous: The founder of The Kashmir Walla reels from his time in prison and the banning of his news outlet.

Who can we trust?, by Kimberley Brown: Organised crime and corruption have turned once peaceful Ecuador into a reporter's nightmare.

The cost of being green, by Thien Viet: Vietnam's environmental activists are mysteriously all being locked up on tax charges.

Who is the real enemy?, by Raphael Rashid: Where North Korea is concerned, poetry can go too far - according to South Korea.

The law, when it suits him, by JP O'Malley: Donald Trump could be making prison cells great again.

Special Report: The long reach - how authoritarian countries are silencing critics abroad

Nowhere is safe, by Alexander Dukalskis: Introducing the new and improved ways that autocracies silence their overseas critics.

Welcome to the dictator's playground, by Kaya Genç: When it comes to safeguarding immigrant dissidents, Turkey has a bad reputation.

The overseas repressors who are evading the spotlight, by Emily Couch: It's not all Russia, China and Saudi Arabia. Central Asian governments are reaching across borders too.

Everything everywhere all at once, by Daisy Ruddock: It's both quantity and quality when it comes to how states attack dissent abroad.

A fatal game of international hide and seek, by Danson Kahyana: After leaving Eritrea, one writer lives in constants fear of being kidnapped or killed.

Our principles are not for sale, by Jirapreeya Saeboo: The Thai student publisher who told China to keep their cash bribe.

Refused a passport, by Sally Gimson: A lesson from Belarus in how to obstruct your critics.

Be nice, or you're not coming in, by Salil Tripathi: Is the murder of a Sikh activist in Canada the latest in India's cross-border control.

An agency for those denied agency, by Amy Fallon: The Sikh Press Association's members are no strangers to receiving death threats.

Always looking behind, by Zhou Fengsuo and Nathan Law: If you're a Tiananmen protest leader or the face of Hong Kong's democracy movement, China is always watching.

Putting Interpol on notice, by Tommy Greene: For dissidents who find themselves on Red Notice, it's all about location, location, location

Living in Russia's shadow, by Irina Babloyan, Andrei Soldatov and Kirill Martynov: Three Russian journalists in exile outline why paranoia around their safety is justified.

Comment

Solidarity, Assange-style, by Martin Bright: Our editor-at-large on his own experience working with Assange.

Challenging words, by Emma Briant: An academic on what to do around the weaponisation of words.

Good, bad and everything that's in between, by Ruth Anderson: New threats to free speech call for new approaches.

Culture

Ukraine's disappearing ink, by Victoria Amelina and Stephen Komarnyckyj: One of several Ukrainian writers killed in Russia's war, Amelina's words live on.

One-way ticket to freedom?, by Ghanem Al Masarir and Jemimah Steinfeld: A dissident has the last laugh on Saudi, when we publish his skit.

The show must go on, by Katie Dancey-Downs, Yahya Marei and Bahaa Eldin Ibdah: In the midst of war Palestine's Freedom Theatre still deliver cultural resistance, some of which is published here.

Fight for life - and language, by William Yang: Uyghur linguists are doing everything they can to keep their culture alive.

Freedom is very fragile, by Mark Frary and Oleksandra Matviichuk: The winner of the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize on looking beyond the Nuremberg Trials lens.

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