The week in free expression: 12–18 April 2025

17 Apr 2025 | Africa, Americas, Belarus, Europe and Central Asia, Mexico, News and features, Nigeria, United Kingdom, United States

Today, the torrent of online information, misinformation and disinformation makes it harder than ever to stay in the loop. 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 from the past seven days. This week, we look at more news from Donald Trump’s USA, yet another rapper having his music banned for criticising the powerful, and the announcement of a new uncensored social media network from former UK Prime Minister Liz Truss.

Deportations: Trump administration faces contempt ruling over ignoring Supreme Court order

US district judge Paula Xinis says she is considering instigating contempt proceedings against the Trump administration for failing to facilitate the return to the US of Salvadorean national Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, who was deported in March.

Garcia, originally from El Salvador but who entered the US illegally as a teenager, is one of tens of alleged members of the MS-13 and Tren de Aragua gangs who were flown on US military planes and detained in El Salvador’s notorious Cecot (Terrorism Confinement Centre) in March. Garcia’s lawyer denies he is a member of either gang.

Garcia’s deportation came despite an immigration judge’s 2019 order barring him from being sent to his home country. The US Government said he was taken there as the result of an “administrative error”.

On 11 April, the US Supreme Court ruled unanimously (9-0) that the Trump administration must “facilitate” Garcia’s release.

Trump advisor Stephen Miller has since portrayed the ruling as being unanimously in favour of the government. “We won a case 9-0, but people like CNN are portraying it as a loss,” he said. This is despite the Supreme Court declining to block the Maryland District Court ruling that the government should do everything in its power to facilitate his return. On a recent visit to the US, El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele said he won’t release García because he isn’t fond of releasing people from his prisons, adding that he didn’t have “the power” to return him to the USA.

The New Yorker says the Trump administration has “slow-walked or outright failed to comply with court orders related to a range of issues, most notably immigration and government funding”.

Music censorship: Afrobeat track criticising Nigeria’s President banned

On 9 April, Nigeria’s National Broadcasting Commission banned the Afrobeat track Tell Your Papa from TV and radio.

Tell Your Papa was released three days earlier by the rapper Eedris Abdulkareem with lyrics in Nigerian Pidgin English and Yoruba. The song is aimed at Seyi Tinubu, the son of Nigeria’s President Bola Tinubu, calling on him to ask his father about his jet-setting lifestyle against a backdrop of worsening socio-economic conditions in the country.

Abdulkareem rose to prominence in the 1990s as a pioneer of Nigerian hip-hop as part of the group The Remedies.

Throughout his career, he has courted controversy with his music, attacking sexual harassment in Nigeria’s universities in the song Mr Lecturer and criticising corruption and poor governance by former President Olusegun Obasanjo on the 2004 album Jaga Jaga, the title track of which was banned.

Reporting curtailed: Families of exiled Belarusian journalists harassed

Belarusian dictator Alyaksandr Lukashenka has continued his crackdown on independent journalists in exile reporting on the country and its president from abroad.

The Belarusian Association of Journalists (BAJ), which was declared an extremist organisation and banned from operating in Belarus in 2023, has reported that security forces in the country have intensified pressure on journalists remaining in Belarus, as well as on the relatives of media workers forced into exile.

BAJ reports that security officers have visited the registered addresses of independent journalists who are currently working abroad. In some instances, these visits included searches of the premises in connection with criminal cases opened against the journalists.

In January, the United Nations criticised the country for the growing use of in-absentia trials – there were 110 people subjected to these trials in 2024 compared to 18 in 2023. BAJ says that a large number of media workers have become subjects of criminal investigations as a result.

Many Belarusian journalists have also been added to Russia’s wanted persons database at the request of the Belarusian authorities, according to Mediazona. The list includes Belsat TV channel director Alina Kovshik, Euroradio’s Maria Kolesnikova and Zmitser Lukashuk, and Radio Svaboda’s Dmitry Gurnevich and Oleg Gruzdilovich from Radio Svaboda.

Journalists under attack: Indigenous radio reporter intimidated after criticising Mexican road project

An Indigenous journalist and human rights defender has received intimidating messages and calls from local authorities in Mexico after she reported on a case of land dispossession that potentially involved one of the authority’s advisors.

Miryam Vargas Teutle is a Nahua Indigenous communicator from the Choluteca region of the country who works as a journalist for Cholollan Radio. In the radio show, Vargas highlighted the Bajadas del Periférico road construction project, which could affect the ancestral territories of the Tlaxcalancingo people and limit their access to water.

After the programme was aired, posts attempting to discredit her work appeared on Facebook and she allegedly started to receive intimidating WhatsApp messages and calls by staff of the municipality of San Andrés Cholula.

According to Vargas, the senders also threatened to restrict Cholollan Radio’s airtime.

Social media: Former UK Prime Minister Liz Truss to launch social network

The Conservative ex-Prime Minister Liz Truss, who succeeded Boris Johnson in 2022 until she resigned just over six weeks later, has said she wants to launch an “uncensored” social network to counter mainstream media.

Truss’s plans mirrors those of US President Donald Trump, who launched Truth Social in 2021 to provide a platform for “people of all political stripes, and all different viewpoints, to come and participate once again in the great American debate”.

Truss revealed the news at a cryptocurrency conference in Bedford last weekend. She said the UK needs a network that is “really demanding change of our leaders” and that issues were “suppressed or promoted” by the mainstream media – “the kind of thing that we used to see going on in the Soviet Union”.