The week in free expression: 24–30 May 2025

In the age of online information, it can feel harder than ever to stay informed. As we get bombarded with news from all angles, important stories can easily pass us by. To help you cut through the noise, every Friday Index publishes a weekly news roundup of some of the key stories covering censorship and free expression. This week, we look at a controversial new monument to an infamous dictator, and Uganda’s “state-sanctioned bigotry”.

A tribute to repression?: Moscow unveils new Stalin statue in subway station

At the Taganskaya metro station in central Moscow, a controversial new monument has been revealed: a life-sized figure of Joseph Stalin, perhaps the most infamous and brutal of Soviet Russia’s dictators, amongst a crowd of adoring citizens. He stands before St Basil’s Cathedral and the Kremlin’s Spasskaya Tower, with a banner to his predecessor Vladimir Lenin unfurled above his head.

A monument to a leader who executed nearly 800,000 people, whilst millions more died in prison work camps known as Gulags and from famine under his reign, is of course highly controversial. The display has been dubbed a “gift” to the people who travel Moscow’s metro, and opinions have been firmly split amongst citizens – bouquets of red carnations adorn the feet of Stalin, left by those who look back fondly on the man who industrialised the Soviet Union, while others, such as members of Russia’s liberal Yabloko party, have protested the installation of a homage to “a tyrant and a dictator”, describing the statue as “an act of mockery against the descendants of the repressed”.

Should such a monument be permitted? To many, Stalin symbolises decades of brutality, repression, fear and censorship, and many have raised concerns that honouring him in this way embraces a history of violence at a time when Russia is waging an aggressive war in Ukraine. But some Russians see the monument as a memorial to a man who shaped much of their nation’s history. Artistic expression must be protected and history, including its horrors, must not be forgotten. However, ironically, when protesters left a poster on the monument displaying quotes from Vladimir Putin previously condemning Stalin, it was quickly removed, and one of the activists was detained, somewhat undermining the notion of artistic agency.

State-sanctioned bigotry: Human Rights Watch report condemns Uganda’s anti-LGBTQ+ laws

International NGO Human Rights Watch (HRW) has issued a damning report detailing how the Ugandan government has consistently repressed and restricted LGBTQ+ people throughout the reign of president Yoweri Museveni, particularly since the introduction of the Anti-Homosexuality Act in May 2023.

Uganda has been described as having the world’s harshest anti-gay laws, and the report reinforces this notion. The report details the 2023 act’s egregious punishments, which include the death penalty for “serial offenders” of “aggravated homosexuality”, and life imprisonment for same-sex conduct. It also enforced censorship, making any advocacy or discussion of LGBTQ+ rights punishable by up to 20 years in prison.

HRW reported a surge in threats towards LGBTQ+ Ugandans over the past two years, due to a targeted effort by Ugandan politicians to spread misinformation and shape public discourse against the LGBTQ+ community. Oryem Nyeko, senior Africa researcher at HRW, stated that Uganda must “end its assault on LGBT people and choose a future of dignity, equality, and freedom for all those who live there.”

The dangers of defamation: Samoa urged to repeal defamation law that silences journalists

On 1 May 2025, Samoan journalist Lagi Keresoma published an article alleging that a former police officer had appealed to the Head of State to have charges against him removed, reported to be forgery charges regarding a loan application. Just over two weeks later, Keresoma, head of the Journalists Association of (Western) Samoa (JAWS), was arrested and charged with defamation under a law which has long drawn international scrutiny.

Samoa’s harsh criminal libel law was previously repealed, but was reintroduced in 2017 with harsher penalties, and has since been weaponised against critical and investigative reporting. JAWS has stated that the case represents “a troubling development for press freedom in Samoa”, and that the defamation charges could be perceived as “an abuse of power to suppress public scrutiny and dissent.”

The country treats defamation as a criminal rather than a civil matter, something which the UN Human Rights Committee has warned against. Samoa has fallen significantly in Reporters Without Borders’ Press Freedom Index, from 22 in 2024 to 44 in 2025.

Arbitrary detention: UN rules that Alaa Abd el-Fattah is being held illegally in Egypt 

Following an 18-month investigation, an independent UN panel has found that the British-Egyptian writer and activist Alaa Abd el-Fattah is illegally detained in Cairo, and has called on the Egyptian government to release him immediately.

Detained since 2019, el-Fattah was sentenced to five years in prison in 2021, convicted of spreading false news and harming Egypt’s national interests. Amnesty International described the verdict as a “travesty of justice”. Since September 2024, his mother Laila Souief, who is based in London, has been on hunger strike to protest his detention. She was admitted to hospital this week, marking the second time she has been hospitalised since February.

Many leading figures have called on the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Development Office (FCDO) to issue warnings against travelling to the north African country, with former British ambassador to Egypt John Casson describing the country as a “police state” in a letter to The Times. He said that British citizens in the country “cannot expect fair process, nor normal support from the British government”, and that “Alaa Abd El-Fattah’s case is not isolated.” UK prime minister Keir Starmer has called Egyptian president Abdel Fattah el-Sissi twice, urging for el-Fattah’s release, but no movement has yet been seen regarding the fate of one of Egypt’s most prominent writers.

An uncontested victory: Maduro make big gains in elections as opposition parties boycott

On 25 May, Venezuela’s regional and parliamentary elections took place, but the ballot papers were notably barren. Nicolás Maduro’s United Socialist Party of Venezuela’s (PSUV) stormed to victory in 23 out of 24 states. However, it was largely uncontested, due to a decision by the majority of opposition parties to boycott the vote in protest at last year’s presidential election, the results of which were proven to have been falsified.

Opposition leader María Corina Machado was a leading voice in the boycott campaign, stating that the true results of the 2024 presidential election must be adhered to before any other vote. In a video posted earlier this month, she announced that “We voted on 28 July. On 25 May, we won’t vote.” Venezuela’s electoral council claimed that the turnout was above 40%, but have neglected to post the election results online as was standard practice before 2024, with the pollster Meganálisis claiming turnout was actually around 14%.

Not all opposition members agreed with the boycott; former presidential candidate Henrique Capriles continued to campaign and urged Venezuelans to vote, arguing that by not voting, “all you’re doing is making things easier for the government.” But it seems that regardless of the outcome, Maduro would have clung on to power – and now, with an overwhelming majority in government and an ever-increasing crackdown on political dissidents, the future of both free speech and fair elections in Venezuela looks bleak.

When the old fox walks the tightrope

Despite a petition from a group of activists and legal experts, Uganda’s Constitutional Court recently made the decision to uphold the Anti-Homosexuality Act, one of the most oppressive anti-LGBTQ+ laws in the world. A few parts of the Act were struck out, including the “duty to report acts of homosexuality”, and the restrictions on publishing “material promoting or encouraging homosexuality”, but the rest remains strong. In our summer 2023 magazine, just as the Act was passing, Danson Kahyana and Stella Nyanzi discussed the implications for free speech, and what the petition from activists would mean for President Yoweri Museveni’s balancing act where this law was concerned.

To a chorus of outrage at the end of May 2023, Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni signed the Anti-Homosexual Bill into law, which can apply the death penalty.

When Museveni returned the bill to parliament for “strengthening” soon after it had been passed in March, it was clear that the old fox who has ruled Uganda since 1986 with an iron hand and “pretensions to the trapping of democracy” – as political scientist Aili Mari Tripp calls it – was in a fix.

On the one hand, his populist self loves the passion that the framing of homosexuality as a Western import and a corrupter of African morality arouses, so signing the bill into law gives him a new lease of political life.

Styling himself as the champion of African values, Museveni believes norms and morals can easily translate into political support at the next presidential and parliamentary elections in 2026, given the influential groups in support of the bill (the Muslim fraternity, some Christian denominations and traditionalists). This support is priceless, considering the populace’s increasing anger at his regime, which has received unflattering labels including an “empty autocracy” (Yusuf Serunkuma) and “vampire state” (Allan Tacca).

On the other hand, the regime survives partly (if not mostly) because of the economic and political support it receives from Western governments such as those in the USA, Canada and some in the European Union.

These “partners” have, over the decades, closed one eye to his political excesses (rigging elections and brutalising members of opposition political parties, for example) and bankrolled him in different ways – the most obvious ones being budget support and providing large sums of money to enable Uganda’s participation in continental and regional missions. Signing the bill into law could spell doom for his hold on power, since these Western governments have warned of political and economic consequences, which the USA has already made good on by revoking the visa of Anita Among, Uganda’s speaker of parliament.

This is the tightrope he had to walk – but not for the first time. He did the same in 2014 when he signed the 2013 Anti-Homosexuality Bill into law. That time, what saved him from serious reprisals from the West was the Uganda Constitutional Court which, later that year, quashed the law on technical grounds. (It had been passed in parliament without the required quorum, thereby rendering it null and void). His saving grace now could be a petition from 11 activists, including lecturers, journalists and an MP, to block the implementation of the law.

Before May’s developments, I asked Dr Stella Nyanzi, Uganda’s leading and celebrated researcher on sexualities, what was new with this 2023 bill compared with the bill of 2013, and she said that as far as she was concerned there was nothing substantially new.

Both bills were enacted in the spirit of criminalising sexualities that were considered alien and wayward in order to protect so-called African values – a claim that is absurd given that it is colonial in origin.

“Before colonialism,” Nyanzi told Index, “Africa embraced different sexualities like polygyny, polygamy and polyandry, to mention but a few. The view that Africa has always had one form of sexuality is ahistorical and a figment of the imagination.”

There is something new, however.

“While the 2013 Anti-Homosexuality Bill was proposed by a Pentecostal Christian with very strong support from the US Evangelical churches, this time round the proposer of the bill is a Muslim man, with a strong backing of the Islamic faith in Uganda,” she said. “He is a Member of Parliament who belongs to an opposition political party, unlike the proposer of the 2013 bill who belonged (and still belongs) to the ruling party.”

Besides the pretensions to African morality that motivated this act, there is a more serious threat at stake – the government’s desire to have total control over the bodies of its citizens.

Nyanzi said: “For this reason, the bill should be seen in the context of other repressive laws that the Museveni regime has passed – for instance, the Public Order Management Act (2013), the Computer Misuse Act (2011), the Anti-Pornography Act (2014), the Non-Governmental Organisations Act (2016) and the Computer Misuse (Amendment) Act (2022), among others.

“The Anti-Homosexuality Bill should be seen in the spirit of all the above laws – criminalising dissent, even in sexual matters.”

Even before it was signed into law, the bill sent tremors through Uganda.

Some people fled the country, as evidenced by what is happening at welcome centres in Kenya and South Africa, to mention just two countries.
“[It] will have far-reaching effects,” Nyanzi warned.

“It will be criminal, for instance, to offer certain kinds of sex education, provide certain kinds of medical services, report certain kinds of news, write certain kinds of scholarly work or works of fiction, produce certain kinds of movies, make certain kinds of speeches, and to rent your premises to – or even employ – certain kinds of people, because you could be accused of promoting homosexuality, and therefore contravening Section 14 of the bill.”

This means that the law will not only stifle the lives and work of the people who identify as homosexual but also affect the lives and work of all Ugandans.

Even the very people who pushed for the legislation will not be safe. A religious leader could, for instance, be dragged to court for having someone who identifies as homosexual enter his or her church or mosque for prayers or for a service.

After the bill passed in parliament, Museveni found himself in a dilemma. If he did not sign it into law he would have risked alienating the pretentious, self-righteous, politically powerful Christian, Muslim and other morality crusaders who were pushing for the legislation.

And by passing it, he could at last be losing the support of his beloved Western partners who have stuck with him even as he brutalised Ugandans who do not toe his line.

And in the time before the bill became law, he might have been facing another challenge in the background.

“The people at the helm of Uganda’s parliament – [speaker] Anita Annet Among and her deputy, Thomas Tayeebwa – might want to assert their independence from the executive arm of government in a move aimed to show how powerful they are. So, while President Museveni is known to control what happens in parliament because his party has an overwhelming majority there, this time round he might find it hard to have his way to the letter.”

But this being the skilled manipulator that he is, I believe that we should not underestimate him: he could still have his cake and eat it.

How? He signed it into law and waited for others to petition the Constitutional Court, as has been done by the group of 11 activists, so that the judiciary pronounces itself on the constitutionality of the new law. If the court upholds it, he will say he has nothing to do because his regime is law-abiding.

However, if the court annuls it in its entirety (as it did in 2014) or some sections of it, the West will be satisfied, to a certain degree, that Uganda’s courts have a modicum of independence.

Museveni will be in his usual element. He will have survived yet another dilemma.

Calls to sanction architects of Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Act grow

A prominent Ugandan LGBTQ+ activist Steven Kabuye, who nearly lost his life when he was attacked by unknown men in January this year, believes politicians and other leaders fomenting hate in his country against vulnerable communities must be put under targeted sanctions. As a result, Kabuye backs calls by LGBTQI+ campaigners in the United Kingdom to bar the Speaker of the Ugandan parliament, Anita Annet Among, from entering the country to attend celebrations around the Commonwealth.

Commonwealth Day will be celebrated on Monday 11 March with a series of events and activities that will include a contingent of speakers and presiding officers from the Commonwealth countries, while the 75th anniversary of the modern Commonwealth will be celebrated on 26 April. Kabuye told Index that Among must be barred from these events as she championed the passage of the Anti-Homosexuality Act last year, which has triggered a rise in attacks against LGBTQ+ persons. Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Act imposes mandatory life imprisonment for consenting same-sex acts, and the death penalty for “serial offenders”. Anyone who rents property to persons who commit offences under the legislation faces up to seven years in jail.

Kabuye, the co-executive director and co-founder of Coloured Voices Media Foundation, a youth-led organisation that advocates for equal rights for the LGBTQ+ community, told Index that the environment he finds himself in after the passage of that law is so dangerous that he fears for his life. In January this year, he was hospitalised for three days in Uganda and two weeks outside the country after he was attacked by two men on a motorbike. He said a colleague who took him to hospital after the attack was arrested for assisting him.

“The attack was aimed at silencing me. What the attacker said while trying to swipe a knife to cut my neck and what transpired after the attack clearly shows that,” he said adding that the attacker said “Ffa Musiyazzi Gwe“, translated as “Die you homosexual”, to Kabuye.

He said he has received a lot of death threats, especially on his X account. “Someone could come and tell you, I know your address. We are coming any day, count yourself dead. Dead or soon dead, that’s how I can describe that environment,” he said.

Kabuye’s fears are not unfounded. In 2011, a Ugandan gay rights activist, David Kato, was beaten to death at his home outside Kampala. Before his death, Kato had brought an injunction against a local newspaper, Rolling Stone, which printed his name, photograph and address alongside those of dozens of others the paper claimed were gay or lesbian and called for them to be hanged.

Kabuye believes the architects of Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Act must be sanctioned, hence his support for the campaign both in Uganda and the UK for Among to be barred from entering the UK.

“Banning the speaker from the UK will send a clear message to any politician out there who is willing to support laws like the Anti-Homosexuality Act 2023. You will be punished,” said Kabuye.

“We want all politicians, religious leaders, and other entities who supported the Anti-Homosexuality Act 2023 to be sanctioned individually.”

Samantha Ainembabazi from Kuchu Times, an online platform that gives a voice to LGBTQ+ people whose are otherwise censored in the mainstream media in Uganda, emphasised in a phone interview with Index the key role that Among played in passing Uganda’s draconian law. She added that the environment the Ugandan LGBTQ+ community lives in can be summarised by a report from late 2023 compiled by the Strategic Response Team, a coalition of Ugandan LGBTQ+ rights organisations, which showed how the controversial law has not only created a hostile environment for LGBTQ+ individuals but has also been used as a pretext to infringe upon a wide range of human rights.

“By the time of this report there had been 180 cases of evictions targeting LGBTQ+ individuals and families, 176 cases of torture, abuse, and degrading treatment inflicted upon LGBTIQ+ individuals. One-hundred-and-fifty-nine cases of violations and abuse of the right to equality and freedom from discrimination have been documented,” said Ainembabazi.

“LGBTIQ+ individuals in Uganda continue to face systemic discrimination and prejudice, which hinders their access to education, healthcare, employment and other essential services and 102 cases of mental health issues among this community highlight the psychological trauma endured due to discrimination, violence and social exclusion. These numbers have almost doubled since the last report.”

UK rights campaigner Peter Tatchell has since joined the campaign to bar the Uganda speaker. Tatchell wrote a letter to Sir Lindsay Hoyle, the Speaker of the House of Commons, saying Among is one of those who championed Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Act, which he described as one of the world’s harshest anti-LGBTQ+ laws.

“Among’s presence in the UK would send a terrible signal that Britain tolerates the extreme homophobia of those who advocate the killing of LGBT+ people. There should be no facilitation and collusion with a politician who has blood on her hands,” wrote Tatchell.

He said Hoyle should make representations to the UK home and foreign secretaries that the Ugandan Speaker of Parliament should be denied entry to the UK because she opposes the British values of respect and equality, and that her presence would not be conducive to public good, harmonious community relations and public order.

Such a move would certainly send a strong message and for people like Kabuye can’t come soon enough. For them every day brings with it new fears.

Contents – Having the last laugh: The comedians who won’t be silenced

Contents

The Winter 2023 issue of Index looks at how comedians are being targeted by oppressive regimes around the world in order to crack down on dissent. In this issue, we attempt to uncover the extent of the threat to comedy worldwide, highlighting examples of comedians being harassed, threatened or silenced by those wishing to censor them.

The writers in this issue report on example of comedians being targeted all over the globe, from Russia to Uganda to Brazil. Laughter is often the best medicine in dark times, making comedy a vital tool of dissent. When the state places restrictions on what people can joke about and suppresses those who breach their strict rules, it's no laughing matter.

Up Front

Still laughing, just, by Jemimah Steinfeld: When free speech becomes a laughing matter.

The Index, by Mark Frary: The latest in the world of free expression, from Russian elections to a memorable gardener

Features

Silent Palestinians, by Samir El-Youssef: Voices of reason are being stamped out.

Soundtrack for a siege, by JP O'Malley: Bosnia’s story of underground music, resistance and Bono.

Libraries turned into Arsenals, by Sasha Dovzhyk: Once silent spaces in Ukraine are pivotal in times of war.

Shot by both sides, by Martin Bright: The Russian writers being cancelled.

A sinister news cycle, by Winthrop Rodgers: A journalist speaks out from behind bars in Iraqi Kurdistan.

Smoke, fire and a media storm, by John Lewinski: Can respect for a local culture and media scrutiny co-exist? The aftermath of disaster in Hawaii has put this to the test.

Message marches into lives and homes, by Anmol Irfan: How Pakistan's history of demonising women's movements is still at large today.

A snake devouring its own tail, by JS Tennant: A Cuban journalist faces civic death, then forced emigration.

A 'seasoned dissident' speaks up, by Martin Bright: Writing against Russian authority has come full circle for Gennady Katsov.

Special Report: Having the last laugh - The comedians who won't be silenced

And God created laughter (so fuck off), by Shalom Auslander: On failing to be serious, and trading rabbis for Kafka.

The jokes that are made - and banned - in China, by Jemimah Steinfeld: Journalist turned comedian Vicky Xu is under threat after exposing Beijing’s crimes but in comedy she finds a refuge.

Giving Putin the finger, by John Sweeney: Reflecting on a comedy festival that tells Putin to “fuck off”.

Meet the Iranian cartoonist who had to flee his country, by Daisy Ruddock: Kianoush Ramezani is laughing in the face of the Ayatollah.

The SLAPP stickers, by Rosie Holt and Charlie Holt: Sometimes it’s not the autocrats, or the audience, that comedians fear, it’s the lawyers.

This great stage of fools, by Danson Kahyana: A comedy troupe in Uganda pushes the line on acceptable speech.

Joke's on Lukashenka speaking rubbish Belarusian. Or is it?, by Maria Sorensen: Comedy under an authoritarian regime could be hilarious, it it was allowed.

Laughing matters, by Daisy Ruddock: Knock knock. Who's there? The comedy police.

Taliban takeover jokes, by Spozhmai Maani and Rizwan Sharif: In Afghanistan, the Taliban can never by the punchline.

Turkey's standups sit down, by Kaya Ge: Turkey loses its sense of humour over a joke deemed offensive.

An unfunny double act, by Thiện Việt: A gold-plated steak and a maternal slap lead to problems for two comedians in Vietnam.

Dragged down, by Tilewa Kazeem: Nigeria's queens refuse to be dethroned.

Turning sorrow into satire, by Zahra Hankir: A lesson from Lebanon: even terrible times need comedic release.

'Hatred has won, the artist has lost', by Salil Tripathi: Hindu nationalism and cries of blasphemy are causing jokes to land badly in India.

Did you hear the one about...? No, you won't have, by Alexandra Domenech: Putin has strangled comedy in Russia, but that doesn't stop Russian voices.

Of Conservatives, cancel culture and comics, by Simone Marques: In Brazil, a comedy gay Jesus was met with Molotov cocktails.

Standing up for Indigenous culture, by Katie Dancey-Downs: Comedian Janelle Niles deals in the uncomfortable, even when she'd rather not.

Comment

Your truth or mine, by Bobby Duffy: Debate: Is there a free speech crisis on UK campuses?

All the books that might not get written, by Andrew Lownie: Freedom of information faces a right royal problem.

An image or a thousand words?, by Ruth Anderson: When to look at an image and when to look away.

Culture

Lukashenka's horror dream, by Alhierd Bacharevič and Mark Frary: The Belarusian author’s new collection of short stories is an act of resistance. We publish one for the first time in English.

Lost in time and memory, by Xue Tiwei: In a new short story, a man finds himself haunted by the ghosts of executions.

The hunger games, by Stephen Komarnyckyj and Mykola Khvylovy: The lesson of a Ukrainian writer’s death must be remembered today.

The woman who stopped Malta's mafia taking over, by Paul Caruana Galizia: Daphne Caruana Galizia’s son reckons with his mother’s assassination.

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