Maha Ghazal

Jan 17, 2025 | indexoncensorship.org | Georgia Beeston |Maha Ghazal

What do you do when your culture has been destroyed? When your studios, galleries, and universities all lie in rubble? How do you plan to rebuild when war continues? And how do you find hope amidst utter devastation? These were some of the questions asked during Archiving Gaza in the Present, a two-day conference held at SOAS University by the Arab British Centre and the Centre for Palestinian Studies in December.

Jan 10, 2025 | indexoncensorship.org | Maha Ghazal |Rizik Al-Abi |Sarah Dawood

Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement this week of changes to Meta’s content moderation policies appeared to primarily be about building trust. Trust among users. Trust among investors. And trust among the incoming Trump administration. “It’s time to get back to our roots around free expression,” Zuckerberg said in his announcement. While we applaud anything that is generally trying to embolden free expression, will these moves actually do that?

Jan 8, 2025 | indexoncensorship.org | Elif Shafak |Rizik Al-Abi |Sarah Dawood |Maha Ghazal

A poster of former Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad in Damascus in 2023. Photo by hanohikirf / Alamy Stock Photo For more than five decades, Syria has lived under a repressive regime that has made freedom of expression a distant dream. Under Bashar al-Assad, expression was curtailed by repressive laws and strict censorship, while the security services were used as a tool to silence dissenting voices.