25 Apr 2025 | Algeria, Americas, Canada, Europe and Central Asia, Hungary, Middle East and North Africa, News and features, United Kingdom, 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 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 cover El Salvador’s plan for a prisoner swap and look at how Hungary has been placed on an EU watchlist.
Political prisoners: Bukele condemned by families of American deportees for Venezuela swap plan
Last week, the Donald Trump administration once again made headlines for wrongfully deporting Maryland resident Kilmar Ábrego García to a jail in El Salvador, and failing to facilitate his return. The president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, has become a prominent figure in this story, aligning himself with Trump and stating that he “does not have the power” to return Garcia to the USA – a claim that experts say is false.
Now, Bukele has proposed a deal to send 252 Venezuelans incarcerated in El Salvador (following deportation from the US) back to their home country, in exchange for Salvadoran “political prisoners” currently held in Venezuela. President Nicolas Maduro has stated that the Venezuelan nationals held in Salvadoran prisons were “kidnapped”, while Bukele has accused Maduro of imprisoning political opponents and activists.
These Venezuelans, many of whom are believed to have no criminal background and were deported on evidence as spurious as having tattoos, have now become pawns in a game of politics – which both their families and human rights groups alike have denounced. Nelson Suárez, whose brother is among those Venezuelans imprisoned in El Salvador, told The Guardian that he feels his brother is being treated “like political merchandise”.
Under surveillance: Hungary clashes with EU over use of facial recognition tech for LGBTQ+ Pride attendees
Last month, Hungary passed a law that banned LGBTQ+ pride marches in the country, with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán stating that he “won’t let woke ideology endanger our kids.” This move sparked outrage, with opposition leaders lighting flares in parliament and demonstrators taking to the streets of Budapest. Now, one aspect of the law has drawn further ire.
The new legislation allows the use of biometric cameras by police for facial recognition and tracking of LGBTQ+ demonstrators and those attending Pride gatherings, which Politico reports could be in breach of the EU’s newly adopted Artificial Intelligence (AI) Act.
The European Commission is currently investigating whether this is the case, which has increased existing tensions between the EU and Hungary’s leadership.
This is just the latest threat to democratic rights in Hungary – last week, parliament rushed through a bill to allow passports of dual citizens to be revoked if they are perceived to have acted “in the interest of foreign powers” and to have “undermined the sovereignty of Hungary”. The bill’s passing through parliament has drawn fears about how it could be abused to strip dissenters of their citizenship.
AI deep fakes: False videos of James Bulger circulate on social media
While AI is being used against the public in Hungary, closer to home in the UK, public-generated AI videos have taken a concerning new turn – social media content creators are using AI to create “avatars” of murder victims describing their own deaths.
One harrowing example includes depictions of James Bulger, the two-year-old boy who was abducted and murdered in 1993. Fake videos are being generated that portray Bulger himself describing the details of the crime – content which Bulger’s mother, Denise Fergus, has described as “absolutely disgusting”.
Fergus is pushing for a new law to be passed that would prohibit the creation and sharing of this sort of AI content. Such videos are becoming increasingly prevalent online, with some accounts creating likenesses for multiple murder cases.
Index’s CEO Jemimah Steinfeld spoke to the BBC this week, stating that these videos already break existing laws, and that there is a concern that further regulation could restrict legitimate, legal content.
Steinfeld said that while we should “avoid a knee-jerk reaction that puts everything in this terrible box”, she sympathises with Fergus. “To have to relive what she’s been through, again and again, as tech improves, I can’t imagine what that feels like.”
Imprisoned for a hashtag: Algeria clamps down against peaceful online activism
Amnesty International has condemned the Algerian government for its continued moves to repress online activism within the country.
The organisation reports that at least 23 activists and journalists have been arrested and convicted for human rights activism and protests over the past five months, with a focus on the use of the hashtag “Manich Radi” (“I am not satisfied”), which first came to prominence in December 2024.
The hashtag started being used after the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria, with many Algerians reportedly drawing similarities between the situations in Syria and Algeria and becoming hopeful of a fight for democracy in their nation.
But Algerian authorities responded to this with swift arrests, and have continued their campaign against those posting the hashtag. Algeria’s President Abdelmadjid Tebboune said of the online movement: “Let no one think that Algeria can be devoured by a hashtag”.
Academic asylum: American professors seek refuge in Canada
Hundreds of Canadian professors have urged the Canadian government to open its doors to “academic refugees” from the USA amid President Trump’s attack on universities and education.
CTV News reported this week that more than 500 Canadian university faculty members had signed an open letter calling for greater funding to Canada’s higher education system and programmes to allow more foreign professors and academics to resettle in the country, to fight the “rising anti-intellectualism” in the USA.
This follows a continuing stream of reports of American academics looking to seek exile in Canada as their professions come under fire by the Trump administration. Many US universities have seen increasing restrictions, most notably Harvard University, which is currently locked in a major funding dispute with the US federal government. The university’s president Alan Garber told NBC that he is “very concerned about Harvard’s future”.
University professors across the country are equally as concerned about the future of education in the USA. One such professor is Jason Stanley, professor of philosophy at Yale University. Stanley, who has written multiple books about fascism, recently accepted a position at the University of Toronto. He told the Daily Nous that he was leaving the USA to “raise my kids in a country that is not tilting towards a fascist dictatorship”.
4 Apr 2025 | Americas, Europe and Central Asia, Hungary, News and features, United States
When Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán delivered his annual state of the nation speech in February, he declared the Trump administration was an inspiration.
But if you look at Orbán’s record you can see that the Hungarian prime minister could actually be the inspiration for Donald Trump’s recent manoeuvres. Orbán was bullying universities, threatening the free press and raging against LGBTQ+ rights way before the second Trump administration started taking aim at those things.
Orbán sees Trump as a “comrade-in-arm[s]” and well he might, as the Trump plan has plenty of resonance with what the Hungarian leader enacted after his second election win in 2010. If Trump had been studying what Orbán had achieved and jotted down notes, he could easily be following the same tick box list of opponents.
Take note of the similarities in language. Orbán talks of: “Pseudo-NGOs, bought journalists, judges, prosecutors, politicians, foundations, bureaucrats – an entire machine that operates the liberal opinion dictatorship and political oppression in the Western world”. This sounds awfully like a Trump speech.
But here’s the thing; Orbán was way ahead of Trump 2.0 in closing down cash flows to universities, which he saw as breeding grounds for opinions he didn’t like.
In 2021, Orbán massively overhauled the way Hungary’s universities were run. A new law meant that 11 universities passed out of state hands and became foundations instead with supervisory boards of politically like-minded people, excluding anyone with “internalist” or “globalist” views, the prime minister said. Several members of the government at the time were installed on these boards including foreign minister Peter Szijjarto. Opposition figures accused Orbán’s government of wanting to control what was taught and researched. “They want ideological control over the universities,” Jozsef Palinkas, a former member of Orbán’s Fidesz party and president of the Academy of Sciences told the German news outlet Deutsche Welle at the time.
The highly ranked Central European University had already been forced to move its main campus out of Hungary and relocate to Austria in 2019, because of the Orbán government’s continuous attacks on it and its founder, the Hungarian-born, US-based George Soros.
Does this all sound familiar? Trump is in the first round of a bloody battle with US universities, demanding removal of diversity programmes, crackdowns on student protests, and possible changes to the syllabus.
Already this is bearing fruit. The University of California has agreed to drop a policy where new staff had to fill in a statement about how they would contribute to diversity on campus. Meanwhile, the Trump administration has cut $400 million in research grants from Columbia University. Trump’s team are linking the cuts to criticism that the institution had not done enough to crack down on antisemitism by allowing pro-Gaza protests. Fearful of what might happen next, Columbia has caved to Trump’s threats and has already agreed to give its campus police more power to arrest student protesters and to replace those running its Middle Eastern studies department.
While there were rumblings about the “liberal elite” running US universities during Trump 1.0, these vague threats mostly came to nothing. This time, though, the attack on the university sector is wholehearted. It partly stems from a belief of Trump’s MAGA (Make America Great Again) Republicans that universities and any critical media are part of a bastion of oppression for those with right-wing values. Such a deep and dangerous attack on US universities and their academic freedom via their research funding has never been attempted with this vigour.
Back in 2021, now vice-president J.D. Vance gave plenty of warning about what might happen next, when he outlined why the Republicans had to take action against “hostile institutions” who control “what we call truth”. Vance said: “If any of us want to do the things that we want to do for our country … we have to honestly and aggressively attack the universities in this country.” That’s clearly what’s happening now.
Amelia Hadfield, head of the department of politics at Surrey University in the UK, said: “Trump is following a long-established autocratic playbook. Dictatorial heads of state including Orbán have for years provided a populist-led model based on a sharp ideological tilt to the right, filleting their state’s reach in terms of social, welfare, and humanitarian and international support whilst repressing anything resembling open debate, let alone criticism.”
Trump has continued his swivel against the liberal media that he began in his first term. He expects uncritical support, otherwise – as The Associated Press (AP) has already experienced – your access to the White House will be removed. Again Orbán had reached this point earlier on, with a plan to get rid of critical media that might get in his way.
While Orbán set the groundwork for creating a pro-rightwing media sphere in Hungary during his first term, the hard work really began when he returned to office in 2010. Orbán set out, with a little help from his friends, to force out, close down or neutralise unfriendly media outlets. International media conglomerates such as Axel Springer sold up and moved out as foreign news outlets were vilified, and government advertising contracts were removed from those that didn’t publish pro-Orbán editorials. Meanwhile, wealthy allies of Orbán bought out significant national and regional media. Suddenly it was possible to find all the same stories with the same angles and headlines in news sources across Hungary, all run by Orbán’s friends.
Orbán and Trump have an awful lot else in common including tough migration programmes and a warm relationship with Russia’s Vladimir Putin. But Trump is moving a lot faster than Orbán did and for those trying to fight back against Trump’s plans to erode media and academic freedoms, one thing they might want at the forefront of their minds is that Orbán has now been in power continuously for 15 years. This is something that Trump might well put on his to-do list, if he can work out how to achieve it.
13 May 2023 | News and features, United Kingdom
The heavy-handed treatment of anti-monarchy protesters at King Charles III’s ceremony is ominous
We are still reeling from the events of last weekend when a series of protesters were arrested in London. The protesters, from the anti-monarchy group Republic, had liaised with the police in advance and been given the green light for their demonstration. Despite this they were arrested as soon as they turned up, with no reason given. They spent the day in jail.
This overreach by the police is, sadly, part of a broader pattern of peaceful protesters and journalists reporting on these protests being arrested, all of which has been exacerbated by the passage last week of the Public Order Act 2023 – which Index has opposed from the get-go.
Commentators have raised the alarm bell. We’re sleep walking into a dictatorship, some have said. Others have warned of the UK turning into an illiberal democracy, like Hungary. So what lessons can we learn from other places that have seen their rights to protest crumble? We asked a series of people – artists, journalists and activists – to share messages with us here.
‘Akrestsina prison wasn’t born in a day’
I read Julian Assange’s letter to King Charles III from HMP Belmarsh. I recognise the prison he describes. 1,768 political prisoners in Belarus recognise it. Thousands of Belarusians who took to the streets for peaceful protests recognise it. The name of the prison is insignificant. When I tell people in so-called “first-world countries” that I spent nine days in prison for a peaceful demonstration in Belarus, they get shocked. We come to these countries for security and protection, because we believe that the rule of law works there. Who will protect their own citizens from their state?
As I followed the news from Coronation day, I questioned: why is the smoothness of the show more important than an individual’s right for freedom of assembly? Why is it so much more important that a bill is passed to make detentions of the organisers legal. They were detained before the protest even began. I remember police in Minsk in 2020 arresting us as we walked from different parts of the city, trying to gather in one spot. I remember the Belarusian oppositional candidate Uladzimir Niakliayeu being beaten up and arrested on his way to the protesters on the post-election night on 19 December 2010. I don’t remember it but I read about the opponents of Lukashenka disappearing in the 90s…
Do you think I’m dramatising and it won’t happen in the UK? Not to that extent? Akrestsina prison, this torture chamber where 53 women were kept in a cell for eight, listening to the screams of men raped with a baton on the corridor, wasn’t born in a day. It is the Frankenstein of a society which disregarded the detentions and calls of activists. Don’t let Britain become Belarus.
Hanna Komar, poet and activist from Belarus
‘Authoritarian governments are watching closely’
After Hong Kong finally lifted its last pandemic restrictions in March this year, the first protests were authorised in more than three years. Ever since coronavirus arrived in the city in January 2020, the pandemic had been used as a pretext for banning demonstrations, giving rise to absurd situations where it was legal to gather in a restaurant in a group of 12 but illegal to congregate outside in groups of more than four. Protests still happened during that time, particularly in response to the introduction of the National Security Law in June 2020, but once the Hong Kong government raised the fine for violating the four-person assembly rule to HK$5,000 (£500), many people were deterred. Nonetheless, a blind eye was turned to larger groups who turned out to support the government.
When it became legal to protest again, there were a lot of strings attached, often literally. In March protesters against a proposed land reclamation project and waste-processing facility were forced to wear number tags and walk in a cordoned-off line with heavy police presence, while the organisers had to agree not to exceed the permitted 100 participants. Another march, for women’s rights, was cancelled by organisers after police said there was a risk of violence. Former members of the now-disbanded Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions called off a May Day march after one of the organisers was harassed by police.
The right to protest in Hong Kong is now severely circumscribed, to the point that to do so is to invite police attention designed to deter turning out. The National Security Law has also had a chilling effect on people, who might be fearful of losing their job if they take to the streets. The Hong Kong government continues to claim there is freedom of assembly but, like many freedoms in the city these days, it is highly conditional, even hollow.
Tens of thousands of Hongkongers have moved abroad in the past few years, to Taiwan and Singapore, and also to Western countries, including the UK. For many, it is a refuge away from the deteriorating situation back home. But some are also conscious of how things are not perfect in their new adopted countries. The UK’s Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act, with its emphasis on disruption, has aspects that are similar to restrictions back in Hong Kong, while in France, many have been shocked by the brutality of the police in repressing protests against the government’s pension reform law. Unlike in Hong Kong, there is still the possibility of legal recourse against these measures, but Western countries ought to be aware how their repressive tools undermine their own criticism of governments such as China’s and Hong Kong’s. When British police arrest anti-monarchy protesters, authoritarian governments are watching closely, and are only too happy and eager to use this as a justification, however disingenuously, next time they round up protesters on their own turf.
Tammy Lai-Ming Ho, poet from Hong Kong
‘Continue standing up for your voice’
Hungary has a long history of protests. In March 1848, a group of intellectuals kicked off a demonstration against the Habsburg empire, which led to the creation of the dual monarchy after a year-long fight. In 1956, university students sparked a mass protest against the USSR, in which over 2,000 people were killed, but which ultimately resulted in a softer governance. It was a series of protests that led to the toppling of Hungary’s last socialist PM, Ferenc Gyurcsány, too, following the leaking and broadcasting of a profane and controversial speech in 2006. A young right-wing party, Fidesz, organised multiple protests.
Ultimately, these events and Fidesz’s role contributed to the election of party chair Viktor Orbán in 2010. Since then, he has been leading the country into an increasingly anti-democratic future, including cracking down on protesters’ rights.
The country has witnessed plenty of protests since, despite increasingly strict laws and growing retaliation. In the latest, students marched against the restrictions of freedom of teachers. Two events, held one week apart in April and May, were both ended by the police spraying tear gas, in some cases directly in the faces of minors.
The popularity of these protests shows that the Hungarian youth isn’t keen on standing down and giving in to a future without voice, joining youth around the world, be it protesting against monarchy, for pensions or human rights.
Videos of this protest see visibly young people tearing down the metal fence in the Buda Castle, climbing on buildings and chanting the mantra of protests around the world: we won’t allow this.
“This shows that we got under someone’s skin, we started doing something… And maybe we will get even more under their skin,” one young protester said when asked why she persists, by the independent portal Telex.hu. Perhaps this should be a message for all protesters around the world: to continue standing up for your voice and displease those who are trying to take it away.
Lili Rutai, journalist from Hungary
1 Apr 2022 | Hungary, News and features, Uncategorized
LGBTQI rights. Gender equality. Media freedom. The fate of liberties in Hungary hang in the balance as the nation heads to the polls on Sunday. With a falling currency, a mismanaged response to the pandemic still fresh to mind and a stronger opposition under United For Hungary – a coalition of six parties spanning the political spectrum – the election campaign has been the closest in years. But the war in Ukraine, right on Hungary’s border, has changed its course in unexpected ways. Below we’ve picked the most important things to consider when it comes to the April 2022 elections.
Basic rights could worsen
Since his election in 2010, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has whittled away fundamental rights in the country to the extent that Hungarian activist Dora Papp told Index in 2019 free expression had no more space “to worsen”.
Orban’s main targets have been people who identify as LGBTQI. Last year, amid global outcry, he passed a law that bans the dissemination of content in schools deemed to promote homosexuality and gender change. Seeking approval for this legislation, Hungary is holding a referendum on sexual orientation workshops in schools this Sunday alongside the parliamentary elections.
Orban also takes aim at the nation’s Roma and immigrants, and has revived old anti-Semitic tropes in his attacks on George Soros, a Hungarian-born Jewish philanthropist who Orban claims is plotting to flood the country with migrants (an accusation Soros firmly denies).
As for half of the population, Orban’s macho-style leadership manifests in rhetoric on women that is dismissive, insulting and focuses on traditional roles. Asked in 2015 why there were no women in his cabinet, he replied that few women could deal with the stress of politics. That’s just one example. The list goes on.
His populist politics have seeped into every democratic institution and effectively dismantled them. The constitution, the judiciary and municipal councils have all been reorganised to serve the interests of Orban. Education, both higher and lower, has seen huge levels of interference. Progressive teachers and classes have been removed. Even the Billy Elliot musical was cancelled after Orban called the show a propaganda tool for homosexuality.
But the media can’t freely report much of this
In response to claims of media-freedom erosion, the Hungarian government likes to point out that there are no journalists in jail in Hungary, nor have any been murdered on Orban’s watch. But as we know only too well there are many ways to cook an egg. Through gaining control of public media, concentrating private media in the hands of Orban allies and creating a hostile environment for the remaining independent media (think misinformation laws and constant insults), the attacks come from every other angle. Orban has even been accused of using Pegasus, the invasive spyware behind the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Kashoggi, to target investigative journalists.
It’s little wonder then that in 2021 Reporters Without Borders labelled Orban a “press freedom predator”, the only one to make the list from the EU.
As election day approaches the attacks continue. In February, for example, pro-government daily Magyar Nemzet said it had obtained recordings showing that NGOs linked to Soros were “manipulating” international press coverage of Hungary, a claim instantly rejected by civil society groups.
Ukraine War has shifted the narrative, for better and worse
Given Orban’s track-record on rights, it comes as no surprise that he’s the closest EU ally of Vladimir Putin. This wasn’t a great look before 24 February and it’s even less so today, as the opposition are keen to highlight. They are pushing Orban hard on his neutral stance, which has seen him simultaneously open Hungary’s borders to Ukrainian refugees and oppose sanctions and the sending of weapons.
But Orban is playing his hand well. Fears of becoming embroiled in the war appear to be stronger in Hungary than anger at Putin’s aggression, many analysts says. Orban is claiming a vote for him is a vote for stability and neutrality, while a vote for the opposition is a vote for war. He’s even tried to cast his February visit to Moscow as a “peace mission”.
And though he has condemned the invasion, he has yet to say anything bad about Putin himself. Worse still, Hungarian media is blasting out Russian propaganda. Pundits, TV stations and print outlets are pushing out lines like the war was caused by NATO’s aggressive acts toward Russia, Russian troops have occupied Ukraine’s nuclear plants to protect them and the Ukrainian government is full of Nazis.
Anything else?
Yes. Orban met with a coalition of Europe’s far-right in Spain at the start of the year. They discussed the possibility of a Europe-wide alliance. What that looks like now in a post-Ukraine world is hard to tell. We’d rather not see.
Then there’s the fact that Serbia also goes to the polls Sunday. Like Orban, the ruling Serbian Progressive Party (SNS), led by president Aleksandar Vučić, has been unnerved by growing opposition. Also like Orban, they’re close to Putin and using the Ukraine war to their advantage – reminding people of the 1999 Kosovo war when NATO launched a three-month air strike. Orban and Vučić have developed close ties and will no doubt be buoyed up by each other’s victories should that happen on Sunday.
So will the Hungary elections be free and fair?
If the 2018 elections are anything to go by, they will be “free but not fair”, the conclusion of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), who partially monitored the 2018 election process. That’s the optimistic take. Others are fearful they will be neither free nor fair, so much so that a grassroots civic initiative called 20K22 has recruited more than 20,000 ballot counters – two for each of Hungary’s voting precincts – to be stationed at polling centres on election day with the aim of stopping any voting irregularities.
News from yesterday isn’t confidence-boosting either. Hungarian election officials reported a suspected case of voter fraud to the police. Bags full of completed ballots were found at a rubbish dump in north-western Romania, home to a large Hungarian minority who have the right to vote in Hungary’s elections. Images and videos shared by the opposition featured partially burnt ballots marked to support them. As of writing, no details have been provided of the actual perpetrators and their motives, and Orban has been quick to accuse the opposition of being behind the incident. Either way, it leaves a bad taste in the mouth.
