This is one of the most extreme examples of Beijing meddling in UK academia to date but it's alas far from the only one. I have many examples of Beijing's long arm chilling speech on our campuses here. So the question is, can this be a wake-up call, finally? www.theguardian.com/education/20...

Christianity has grown faster in #China than anywhere else in the world - and Xi Jinping isn't happy. This month, over 30 pastors & churchgoers were arrested. Our CEO @jemimahsteinfeld.bsky.social looks at the crackdown on faith: in the People's Republic: www.indexoncensorship.org/2025/10/ther...

“It’s just that the new rules might simply shift where that fear lies rather than tackling the root cause.” Our CEO @jemimahsteinfeld.bsky.social on whether the Office for Students can apply new legal duties evenly to tackle free speech issues on campus: www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/politics/fre...

A privilege to have met Pasha, the protagonist of the new film Mr Nobody Against Putin, earlier this week. Insanely brave, cool and humble. I implore everyone to see this film. Understand what is happening inside Putin's Russia to the youngest minds. www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...

"Pity the ones who fear a girl with a pen. Pity the ones whose ideas are so small they must crush something bigger to feel powerful. But do not pity us." Read this because a) it's brilliant & b) Afghan women need their voices amplified, again and again and again. rukhshana.com/en/they-shou...

"It feels different this time" said an exiled Chinese Christian in response to the arrests of scores of pastors in China this month. The CCP has never been hot on Christianity but under Xi the attacks to the faith have grown exponentially. It's desperate now. www.dw.com/en/why-is-ch...

Humbling being on a panel with Verity & Lucy Nevitt behind @thegeminiproject.bsky.social & lawyer Jennifer Robinson, speaking about how SLAPPs further silence victims of sexual assault. What a disgrace SLAPPs are. @indexoncensorship.org report here for more www.indexoncensorship.org/2025/10/the-...

End-to-end encryption keeps us safe. Without it, we'll all be at risk. On #GlobalEncryptionDay, we call on the UK government to protect our privacy. www.indexoncensorship.org/2025/10/why-... @globalencryption.org #EncryptTheParrot

🚨The UK Government is trying to break encryption. If they succeed, we can say goodbye to our privacy and security. On #GlobalEncryptionDay, join us in demanding the protection of end-to-end encryption: www.indexoncensorship.org/2025/10/why-... #EncryptTheParrot

Iran reportedly plans to deploy 80,000 new morality police in Tehran to enforce women’s dress codes, while those close to the Ayatollah break them. Let's not shame this woman. But let's speak out about the grotesque hypocrisy & the need to end all shame. www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article...

Holy smokes. Check out my prompt and then check out the answer on this Google AI overview about Liu Xiaobo. If anything highlights the problems of AI from a mis/dis-info perspective...

An amendment to UK extradition laws passed on Tuesday allowing some extraditions to #HongKong puts those in exile at risk. Our CEO @jemimahsteinfeld.bsky.social responds. www.theguardian.com/law/2025/oct...

Three headlines that tell a very disturbing story

No answers as to why this professor wasn’t allowed to board a plane to leave the USA but let’s concentrate on what we definitely know, which is terrible - he was leaving because threats to his life due to his teaching had become so extreme he feared for his life www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

"The Party’s tight control on historical narrative has rendered much of the pain afflicted in the name of liberation — or after liberation had ostensibly been achieved — unspeakable." Powerful from @yangyangcheng.bsky.social on voicelessness of Chinese women chinabooksreview.com/2025/10/09/f...

Belarus rarely makes Western headlines — but it should this week. A quiet move by the Trump administration has just handed Alexander Lukashenka, and indirectly Vladimir Putin, an unexpected gift. 🧵👇

What’s the point of party conferences if not to be open to scrutiny? Reports that journalists have been barred from the Labour Conference with no reasonable explanation given are deeply concerning. Critical voices must be heard. Transparency is non-negotiable.

Another day of digital darkness in Afghanistan. This is desperate and devastating. Global leaders need to condemn this at top volume.

“Yet for all their claims of free speech absolutism, it now seems clear comedy’s champions of liberty are all too happy to censor themselves for the right price.” Excoriating but fair. Huge inconsistency here on the part of the currently in Saudi comedians. www.theguardian.com/culture/2025...

Afghan girls and women use the internet for everyday communication, alongside education, both having been extremely curtailed since the Taliban came back. With a soaring mental health crisis, the internet is therefore a lifeline for them. This isn't just an inconvenience. This is about survival.

Best Friends Forever statue has been removed as fast as it went up. Shame! Autocrats have no sense of humour. www.npr.org/2025/09/24/n...

NEW: The Pentagon told journalists it will require them to pledge they won’t gather any information — even unclassified — that hasn’t been expressly authorized for release, and will revoke the press credentials of those who do not obey. @washingtonpost.com

It’s hard to state enough just how serious the Jimmy Kimmel episode is. This isn’t your standard cancel culture story, which typically comes from the bottom. This is censorship from the top, from fear of Trump. This is exactly what the First Amendment is meant to protect against.

Free speech isn’t just the right to speak - it’s the right for others to speak too. #TommyRobinson invoking “free speech” on Saturday in London while marching against entire communities isn’t about freedom. It's about control. Defending free speech means opposing that too.

This is escalating with terrifying speed - a disturbing site has emerged to punish people who haven’t said the “right” thing about Charlie Kirk. People are being encouraged to snitch on others & some employers appear to be taking punitive action. edition.cnn.com/2025/09/13/b...

People missing an important point about folks getting fired for whatever they said about Charlie Kirk: Americans are being conditioned to be snitches on their fellow citizens who don’t toe a party line on what is “allowed” to be expressed. And employers are going along. It’s the new secret police

The essayist Wang Xiaobo (王小波) was a “sent-down youth” during China’s Cultural Revolution. One of his most famous works is called “The Pleasure of Thinking” (思维的乐趣) - a meditation on the contest for freedom of thought under authoritarianism. There are some important lessons for us in this work

Imagine fearing a film so much that you kill people to keep it out. That’s North Korea for you. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

We don’t know why Charlie Kirk was killed but we do know that the responses have been awful, from people like Trump threatening those on left to Kirk's political opponents thinking it's just desserts. These reactions will only increase polarisation. My take www.indexoncensorship.org/2025/09/char...

We're shocked by news of Charlie Kirk's murder. University campuses should be places of learning & lively debate. Different views should be argued, not met with violence. To kill someone because of their beliefs is an egregious attack on free speech, the cornerstone of democracy.

Climate change is like gravity - you may not believe in it but you are still bound by its laws. We are constantly being told to Meet People Where They Are when where they are is 16th Century Pisa burning Galileo www.thetimes.com/article/a339...

Turkey today where the main opposition is locked away and getting arrested is becoming "the easiest thing", said @gonultol.bsky.social. “You just have to like a tweet or a Facebook post criticising Erdogan." www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

The details of this new report from @thecfhk.bsky.social should shock anyone and especially those who still (somehow) cling to the idea that Hong Kong remotely respects human rights. The treatment of political prisoners there is breathtakingly grim. thecfhk.org/research/we-...

Iran has murdered another Woman, Life, Freedom protester in its textbook way of no transparency or due process. And according to this piece “from July 23 to August 22, at least 160 people were executed in Iran, averaging one every five hours.” One person every 5 hrs. www.iranintl.com/en/202509062...

Some Afghan women this week were left trapped under the rubble because of a prohibition on contact between unrelated men and women. I continue to be sickened by the cruelty of the Taliban and frankly it’s good I’m not yet inured cos that’s when complacency sets in. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/04/w...

Concerning news that the Conservatives led by Kemi Badenoch have banned @bylinetimes.bsky.social from attending their annual conference - ironically amid the party's claim to uphold free speech: bylinetimes.com/2025/09/04/k...

Today, #MaksimZnak spends another birthday behind bars, unjustly imprisoned in #Belarus. Part of Index's Letters from Lukashenka's Prisoners campaign, we are honoured to share a poem written by Znak. We call for his immediate and unconditional release: www.indexoncensorship.org/campaigns/le...

The UK must act fast to save Jimmy Lai's life. Since 2014, 12 older male diabetic prisoners like him have died in Hong Kong prisons, most after late transfers. For yrs @caoilfhionn.bsky.social & her team have asked to meet Keir Starmer. No reply. Time is running out www.thetimes.com/comment/colu...

Rise of the “so-called” in China - a way to discredit critics of the country and/or info the CCP don’t like. I’d definitely be labelled a “so-called”. Solidarity with all the others. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

"This is, at the moment, the official voice of the US government: a rancid mixture of trolling, cruelty, propaganda, and crass jokes about the human suffering they’re creating."

Taliban marking 4 yrs in power by showering Kabul with flowers is a cruel parody. While they celebrate, women suffer under gender apartheid, 10 million face starvation & dissent is severely punished. This is not a day of celebration. It's a day of mourning. www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/0...

The criticism of the UK's free speech record keeps on coming from across the pond. Yes, we're not great. But pot calling kettle black? My incomplete list of the free speech violations currently happening in the supposed land of the free for @bylinetimes.bsky.social bylinetimes.com/2025/08/11/e...

"Israel denies it deliberately targets journalists. But the evidence shows otherwise." Essential read from @jodieginsberg.bsky.social, who in her leading role @pressfreedom.bsky.social has done more than most to shine a light on massacre of Gazan journalists. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

“They [the Taliban] found him, made him tell the joke and killed him." An important intervention here from several high-profile campaigners to rescue hundreds of Afghan creatives at extreme risk. I hope our politicians listen and, more importantly, act. www.mirror.co.uk/news/politic...

A horrifying statement published today by the Editorial Committee of the Agence France-Presse (AFP) news agency. "Without immediate intervention, the last reporters in Gaza will die" Translation from French to English by @cnorristrent.bsky.social:

“These deaths were not a mistake. They were a tragedy.” The @theguardian.com name six children who were killed at the weekend in Gaza, a small but powerful gesture. There are too many others. As they say "they were children. They were loved." www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

In Gaza, people have been holding a silent protest w pictures of Israeli children killed Oct 7th. Grieving parents in Gaza stand in the heart of the destruction, in siege and rubble. "We live together, die together" - for an end to the war and the release of all hostages and to end the killing.

Meanwhile in Russia: in an Orwellian fashion, head of RT Margarita Simonyan urges the deletion of inconvenient information from history books and inducing neighboring countries to erase information about being oppressed by Tsarist Russia and the USSR. www.youtube.com/watch?v=0GQ0...

On 7 July 2025, The Rights Practice & 30 other orgs issue joint statement to mark 10 years since "709" crackdown. We call on concerned governments and the United Nations to establish an independent, international investigation into Beijing’s persecution of civil society. tinyurl.com/5dnezenw

It’s been five years since the passage of the NSL in Hong Kong. Some hoped it might have been symbolic & rarely used. It was not. Dissent has mostly vanished. Thousands are in prison. We owe it to them to fight for the freedoms that they too fought for. www.indexoncensorship.org/2025/06/deat...