9 May 2025 | Africa, Americas, Asia and Pacific, Europe and Central Asia, Ghana, India, News and features, Pakistan, Russia, United States, Venezuela
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 Voice of America could be morphing into a right-wing mouthpiece, and analyse the Indian government’s censorship of Pakistani online content.
Throttling the free press: Voice of America to use newsfeed from right-wing network
Voice of America (VOA) has been one of Donald Trump’s key targets since his inauguration in January 2025. The government-funded news outlet prides itself on “[exemplifying] the principles of a free press”, broadcasting uncensored news to those in restrictive regimes such as Iran or Russia. The Trump administration however has seen the outlet as a threat, accusing VOA of spreading “radical propaganda” and holding a leftist, anti-Trump bias.
VOA journalists have been shut out of their newsroom for almost two months following an executive order aimed at slashing government funding for news media. A legal battle has ensued, and victory for more than 1,000 VOA workers initially appeared likely following a court ruling in their favour. However, a federal appeals court has now blocked the ruling that had ordered the Trump administration to allow VOA to go back on air, stopping staff from returning to work for the time being. Hopes of a return to their normal broadcasting have also been dashed after Senior Trump adviser Kari Lake announced that VOA will be made to use the newsfeed of right-wing outlet One America News (OAN).
Beyond being a pro-Trump mouthpiece, OAN has become notorious for misinformation, spreading conspiracy theories such as coronavirus being created by Anthony Fauci to harm the first Trump administration. OAN’s takeover of an organisation that has championed objective, independent reporting since World War Two is only the latest development in the dismantling of a free press in the USA.
Online censorship: Muslim social media accounts and Pakistani content banned in India
On 22 April 2025, a terrorist attack in Indian-administered Kashmir killed 26 people. India accused Pakistan of orchestrating the attack, while Pakistan denies responsibility. India has since retaliated, and the incident has led to rapidly escalating tensions between the two historically-opposed nations, with both sides of the border in Kashmir reporting air strikes. This has claimed further lives in a disputed region that has already seen two wars fought over its contentious borders.
Now, as a result of the increased tensions, the Indian government has tried to purge the country’s internet of all things related to Pakistan. The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting issued an advisory note to Indian streaming services that all Pakistani content – such as movies, songs and podcasts – should be taken down immediately. Meta, under the direction of the Indian Government, blocked the prominent Instagram account @Muslim from being accessed in India, alongside the accounts of many prominent Pakistani celebrities. On X, the platform’s official global government affairs team’s account posted its compliance with executive orders from the Indian government to ban more than 8,000 accounts, such as international media and other prominent users – despite @GlobalAffairs clearly stating its discontent at doing so.
“To comply with the orders, we will withhold the specified accounts in India alone. We have begun that process. However, we disagree with the Indian government’s demands,” reads the post. “Blocking entire accounts is not only unnecessary, it amounts to censorship of existing and future content, and is contrary to the fundamental right of free speech.”
A daring escape: Five Venezuelan opposition politicians rescued from Argentinian embassy
Five aides of Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado have been rescued and brought to the USA after spending more than a year trapped in the Argentine Embassy in Caracas, Venezuela, in what US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has dubbed a “precise operation”. The aides, all of whom are part of Machado’s political party Vente Venezuela, had taken refuge in the embassy last March after a warrant was issued for their arrest in Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s intense crackdown on political opposition.
Vente Venezuela ran against Maduro’s party in last year’s presidential elections – a highly controversial affair in which Maduro claimed victory and was sworn in as president despite numerous claims from opposition politicians of fraud, inciting sanctions from western nations. Since these elections, Maduro’s government has cracked down on dissent, committing widespread human rights abuses against protesters and critics, according to Human Rights Watch.
The five aides, who were victims of these crackdowns, escaped from the embassy whilst under intense government surveillance. Some are reported to have fled through the Dutch-Caribbean island of Curacao, 40 miles off Venezuela’s coast. It is as yet unclear whether US forces were directly involved in the escape, but some argue that the success of the operation shows cracks are beginning to form in Maduro’s regime.
From Russia’s clutches: Escape of kidnapped Russian journalist orchestrated by Reporters Without Borders
The five Venezuelan aides were not the only captured dissidents to escape – the 63-year-old Russian journalist Ekaterina Barabash, known for being critical of Russia’s war in Ukraine, was under house arrest and faced a potential 10-year prison sentence for her anti-war Facebook posts made in 2022 and 2023, and was labelled a “foreign agent”. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) intervened, and helped to orchestrate a risky, arduous escape from her home country to Paris, France.
This escape involved her ripping off her electronic tag and making a journey of over 1,700 miles, using “clandestine routes” to avoid any Russian agents that would be looking for her. Declared as “wanted” by Russia since 21 April, RSF’s director said that at many points along her journey she was believed to have been arrested, and at one she was even suspected to have died – but two weeks later, exhausted but undeterred, she arrived in Paris to give a press conference. Of her perilous escape, she stated: “I fled – I had no other choice. Journalism no longer exists in Russia.”
Suspension of law: Ghanaian Prime Minister suspends chief justice without due process
Hundreds of opposition protesters have taken to the streets this week in Ghana after President John Mahama suspended the country’s Supreme Court chief justice without following due process. They are accusing him of violating the nations’ constitution to further his own political agenda.
Chief justice Gertrude Torkornoo was suspended last month following the filing of three petitions with undisclosed allegations against her, marking the first time a chief justice has ever been suspended in Ghana. Opposition parties have claimed that this is an attack on the judiciary’s independence, and that Mahama is attempting to pack the courts with his sympathisers. Torkornoo was nominated in 2023 by previous president Nana Akufo-Addo, and she has been accused of siding with his now opposition party, the New Patriotic Party (NPP), on key legal decisions.
The NPP led a coalition of opposition parties in submitting a petition to reverse Torkornoo’s suspension, and took to the streets of Accra on Monday 5 May to protest against Mahama’s decision, with one protester telling the BBC that “The youth (of Ghana) will not sit for him to do whatever he wants to do”.
1 May 2025 | Americas, News and features, Venezuela
This article first appeared in Volume 54, Issue 1 of our print edition of Index on Censorship, titled The forgotten patients: Lost voices in the global healthcare system, published on 11 April 2025. Read more about the issue here.
When lawyer Perkins Rocha was seized by forces while leaving a pharmacy in Caracas on 27 August 2024, his family found out he had been taken only when they saw a post on social media platform X.
A frantic investigation began to find out where Rocha, the legal co-ordinator for Venezuela’s election campaign for the political opposition, was being held – and to speak to those who had seen what had happened.
“Witnesses told us that hooded men approached him and a strong struggle began. They hit him and dragged him to one of the unmarked vehicles they were in, and took him away,” his son Santiago told Index. The family haven’t seen or heard from him since.
The highest number of political prisoners in Latin America
Rocha’s case is far from an isolated one. According to human rights organisation Foro Penal, Venezuela had 1,196 political prisoners as of 3 February 2025. The country has the most political prisoners in Latin America – followed by Cuba with 1,150 – and has a history of using repression and arbitrary detentions as a means of silencing and punishing those with anti-government views.
This pattern has intensified following the July 2024 presidential election, which incumbent Nicolás Maduro insisted he won despite evidence from voting tally receipts showing opposition candidate Edmundo González Urrutia won by a landslide with 67% of the vote.
Protests demanding that the state acknowledge the opposition’s legitimate win followed, and with them a swathe of arrests and detentions during random street searches by police looking for content on people’s phones that criticised the government. Others were detained during Operation Knock Knock, where security forces arrived at people’s houses (often late at night) to arrest them and take them to prison.
Arbitrary detentions designed to force dissenters to stay silent started well before last year’s election. But according to human rights group The Venezuelan Education-Action Programme on Human Rights (Provea), the sheer number of arrests in a short space of time during the 2024 crackdown was on a different level from previous years. Between 29 July and 13 August, roughly 2,400 people were arrested, which is an average of 150 arrests a day.
It is not only the scale of detentions that highlights the intensified repression but also the charges against those being held. According to Marino Alvarado, legal action co-ordinator at Provea, all the prisoners were initially charged with terrorism, including children and teenagers. Maduro referred to those detained as “terrorists” in a televised address.
“In some cases, in addition to the crime of terrorism, [they were charged with] treason, criminal association and other crimes, but all were tried by anti- terrorism courts,” Alvarado told Index. Legal representation is also unsatisfactory, with public lawyers being “imposed” on political prisoners rather than them having the option to choose a “trusted, private lawyer”. “In addition to having a lot of work, public lawyers receive direct orders from the state, and detained people are left without the right to a defence,” said Alvarado.
Dire conditions within prisons
Conditions within prisons are notoriously grim. Some do not permit visits from families, but others allow them every 15 days – although sometimes these are cancelled by the authorities. When people do see their loved ones, it is often a heart- wrenching experience. “I noticed he was shaky and nervous and I asked him what was wrong,” said Maritza, whose name has been changed for her own safety and for that of her son, who was detained a few days after the July 2024 protests. She described him as a young man who was normally calm and confident.
“Eventually he said to me, ‘Mum, when I get out of here I’m going to tell you everything I’ve been through, but while I’m here I’m going to keep quiet and endure what I’m living [through] because I don’t want to anger [the authorities].’” A report from the Committee for the Freedom of Political Prisoners (CLIPPVE) highlighted that food rations inside the prisons were often tiny and insufficient, sometimes contained insects and were rotten or not sufficiently cooked. The information is based on testimonies from families of those in jail, as well as ex-prisoners. Many of the prisoners have lost weight and have experienced stomach illnesses. One woman whose son has been held in Tocuyito Prison said she couldn’t even recognise him when she saw him. “He was so thin and malnourished that I had him in front of me and I wouldn’t know it was him,” she said.
In November and December, three political prisoners died. One of them, Jesús Manuel Martínez Medina, was detained on 29 July and allegedly mistreated and denied the necessary medical care to treat his Type II diabetes, according to CLIPPVE. The NGO says the 36-year-old’s health deteriorated rapidly due to lack of treatment. Although he was transferred to hospital, he died on 14 November during an operation to amputate his legs.
Medical attention is severely lacking in the prisons. Santiago Rocha said he was constantly worried about the health of his father, who suffers from hydrocephalus – a build-up of fluid in the brain. He has a fitted valve connected from his brain to his stomach to drain the fluid.
“We always have this fear that no one is watching him, no one is checking on him. Any blow or movement that is abrupt could alter the functioning of that valve and the hose,” the 30-year-old said. He eventually discovered his father had been taken to el Helicoide, a notorious jail known for holding political prisoners and for its use of torture. “We don’t know if my dad has seen the sun in days, weeks or months, if he has eaten well or if they have tortured him,” he added.
Erosion of a democratic state
Some of those taken have been tortured. One of those is Jesús Armas, an engineer, human rights activist and member of the opposition campaign team, who was taken by hooded individuals on 10 December 2024 while leaving a restaurant in Caracas and whose whereabouts were not known for days. “His girlfriend managed to see him for 15 minutes before he was transferred to el Helicoide prison. He told her he had been held in a clandestine house, suffocated with a bag and left tied to a chair for several days,” said Genesis Davila, a lawyer and founder of Defiende Venezuela, an organisation that presents human rights violations in Venezuela to international legal institutions.
As is the case with many political prisoners, public prosecutors, judges and defence lawyers denied knowing about Armas’s detention for days. “But while they said this, Jesús had already been presented before a court, there was already a prosecutor who knew the case and there was also a public defender who had been assigned to [his]’ case,” Davila said.
Repression has intensified under the socialist regime. When Hugo Chávez first took office in 1999, he did so on a wave of popular support and spent huge amounts on social programmes such as adult literacy projects and free community healthcare for impoverished communities, largely funded by the country’s oil wealth.
But alongside this he started to concentrate power, taking control of the Supreme Court and undermining the ability of journalists, human rights defenders and other Venezuelans to exercise fundamental rights, according to a Human Rights Watch report that reflected on his legacy.
Maduro took over the presidency when Hugo Chávez died of cancer in 2013. A drop in oil prices, mismanagement of resources and corruption led to a dire economic and humanitarian crisis (exacerbated by US sanctions, according to many analysts). Brutal state crackdowns on anti- government protests in 2014, 2017 and 2019 led to deaths and mass detentions. For Phil Gunson, a senior analyst at the think-tank International Crisis Group, repression has worsened significantly in Venezuela since 1999. The less popular the government became, the more it used repression to stay in power, which became even clearer in its use of heavy-handed tactics in the 2024 protests.
“The government is entirely dependent on the army and the police,” said Gunson. “That doesn’t just mean harassing and detaining dissidents but treating them so badly that no one dares to protest.” The analyst says impunity is another reason for rising repression. “Venezuelans have no recourse if they suffer abuse at the hands of the government, and members of the security forces can be fairly certain there will be no consequences if they commit human rights abuses.”
For those with families in prison, their daily nightmare is unbearable – yet they say giving up hope for their loved ones’ release and a free Venezuela is not an option. “I try to keep him in mind as I go about my day-to-day life, asking myself what he would want me to do at this moment,” Santiago Rocha said, describing his dad as a loving father and a man with strong ideals. “I keep him like this so I don’t feel far away from him and remember that all the work he – and the people who have worked with him – have done will not be in vain.
11 Jul 2024 | Azerbaijan, Europe and Central Asia, News and features
Last month, Ibad Bayramov – son of renowned economist and activist Dr Gubad Ibadoghlu – received a letter from a cardiologist based in the USA warning of an “imminent threat” to his father’s life.
“The cardiologist has recommended that my father has an aortic root aneurysm and must go under surgery as soon as possible,” Bayramov told Index. “The government falsified his medical results during the communications with the ECHR.”
This is just the latest development in the tragic case of the 52-year-old academic Ibadoghlu, who was arbitrarily detained alongside his wife in July 2023 on fabricated charges of producing, acquiring or selling counterfeit money.
The move has been widely condemned as a political one by the Azerbaijani government because of Ibadoghlu’s long history of environmental activism and criticism of the state. Although his wife, Irada Bayramova, was later released, Ibadoghlu still faces charges and is now under house arrest. It means he can’t leave the country to get the medical help he needs.
His son described the harrowing ordeal to Index.
“My parents were brutally physically assaulted and psychologically abused by Azerbaijani police,” he explained. “Our mother had to be hospitalised as a result of the stress she had been going through due to police violence she faced when she was detained.”
Bayramov is one of Ibadoghlu’s three children, all of whom are fighting for their father’s release. He told Index of another man, economist Fazil Gasimov, who had been arrested in the same case and subjected to torture until he testified against Ibadoghlu.
“He was forced to provide false testimony under severe duress, including electroshock torture and having his head submerged in a toilet,” said Bayramov.
“His government-appointed lawyer colluded with the authorities to extract these false statements.”
According to his brother, Gasimov went on a hunger strike in June in protest of the investigation against him and Ibadoghlu.
If convicted of his trumped-up charges, Ibadoghlu – who has had his pre-trial detention extended on three occasions – could face up to 17 years in prison. This would be a shocking miscarriage of justice towards a man who has spent his life fighting for environmental rights and democracy.
Since receiving his PhD in economics from Azerbaijan State University of Economics in 2000, Ibadoghlu has conducted a wide range of research, looking into corruption and money laundering in Azerbaijan as well as petro-authoritarianism and how being oil-rich impedes democracy in post-Soviet nations.
He has previously worked in a number of world-class universities, including Duke University in California and the London School of Economics, and has garnered huge respect in the academic world. A number of academics – alongside several human rights and environmental groups – signed a letter calling for his release which was sent to then-Secretary of State David Cameron in April.
Ibadoghlu’s condition becomes more critical with each passing day. His health, which already had its issues prior to his arrest, has rapidly declined. He has lost 15kg during his time in detention and requires extensive care and possible surgery which Bayramov says is beyond the capabilities of Azerbaijan’s medical system.
“We will try to transfer him to the foreign hospital as soon as possible. However, due to the travel ban he can’t leave the country to get medical assistance,” he said.
Ibadoghlu is currently under house arrest having been moved from detention on 22 April, which his son said is due to pressure on the government over his health.
While under house arrest, Ibadoghlu is prohibited from leaving home between 10pm and 6am or from leaving the capital city of Baku at all. The authorities have to be able to contact him at all times and he has no national ID, therefore cannot register at a hospital.
His trial is currently due on 20 August, but as this date has been pushed back before, Ibadoghlu’s family are wary of getting their hopes up that this saga could end sometime soon.
This is just one of many accusations faced by the Azerbaijan government of violating the human rights of dissenters. On 3 July, the Council of Europe’s Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CPT) issued a public statement detailing the refusal of the Azerbaijani authorities to co-operate with them.
In the statement, the CPT said that it “continues to receive allegations of severe acts of ill-treatment and even of torture by police officers” in the state. Such an extraordinary step demonstrates just how alarming the free speech environment in Azerbaijan has become.
The situation Ibadoghlu faces is outrageous but sadly all too common. There is no basis for his arrest, which has been made for purely political reasons. His detainment is a serious miscarriage of justice and an affront to free speech. Given his waning health, his release can’t come a moment too soon.
13 Oct 2014 | Azerbaijan, Azerbaijan News, Europe and Central Asia, News and features
Thousands of Azerbaijanis took to the street on Sunday, calling for the resignation of President Ilham Aliyev, the release of political prisoners and an end to human rights abuses in the country. The protest comes during an ongoing and wide reaching crackdown on regime critics.
On Saturday, investigative journalist Khadija Ismayilova was placed under a travel ban. The award-winning reporter has covered corruption allegedly connected to Aliyev, and has been targeted by government supporters in the past. She is currently facing criminal charges of libel and document forgery, which she denies and vows to fight.
Last week, Index reported journalist Arzu Geybulla being threatened on social media and accused of treason after being interviewed by Azerbaijani news site Modern.az.
These cases follow the jailing of several prominent and critical voices within Azerbaijan’s civil society. Human rights defender Leyla Yunus and her husband Arif were detained in July, followed by fellow rights activist Rasul Jafarov, lawyer Intigam Aliyev and journalist Seymur Hezi.
The European Parliament recently called on Azerbaijan — currently chairing the Council of Europe — to release several prominent political prisoners and proceed with reforming the country’s human rights policies. Before being arrested, Jafarov had worked on putting together a detailed list of the country’s political prisoners, with the latest figure coming to 98.
The protest, which also called for closer ties to the European Union, was approved by authorities, but took place in a remote part of Baku.
All photos by Ramin Deko
This article was posted on 10 October 2014 at indexoncensorship.org
