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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?
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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.
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Jan 3, 2025 | 
indexoncensorship.org | Rizik Al-Abi
Three days before the start of the battle to oust Bashar al-Assad, a Syrian political figure I trust for his insights and analysis called me. With my 18 years of experience in journalism, his words carried weight to me. “The Assad era is officially over in Syria,” he declared. Wael al-Khalidi, the leading Syrian opposition figure, told me: “We will return to Syria.
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Sep 5, 2024 | 
indexoncensorship.org | Ben Lynfield |Shoaib Daniyal |Martin Bright |Rizik Al-Abi
Last week, Israel’s authorities took significant steps on the internal front to narrow political freedom, censor cultural expression and increase the power of police in Israeli society, critics of the most right-wing cabinet in Israel’s history say. Perhaps the gravest step was the unprecedented closure of the communist party office in Haifa to prevent screening of a new film by controversial Palestinian-Israeli director Mohammed Bakri.
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Aug 30, 2024 | 
indexoncensorship.org | Nik Williams |Martin Bright |Rizik Al-Abi |Ella Edwards
Many things can be true at the same time. Telegram is used by dissidents, including those in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, to get information out of severely restrained information environments. It is used to share child sexual abuse materials (CSAM), trade in drugs, weapons and other illicit materials, and coordinate riots and the transmission of weaponised disinformation.
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Aug 23, 2024 | 
indexoncensorship.org | Martin Bright |Rizik Al-Abi |Ella Edwards |Katie Dancey-Downs
Why do we tolerate X? Elon Musk’s poisoned well is fast filling up with far-right propaganda, disinformation, hate speech and now, it would seem, adverts for machine guns and grenade launchers from Iran-backed terrorists in Yemen. This is the reality of the free speech utopia the world’s richest man promised us when he took over Twitter. And yet we continue to populate it with content. I do, Index does and many of you reading this will continue to do so.
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Aug 22, 2024 | 
indexoncensorship.org | Rizik Al-Abi |Ella Edwards |Katie Dancey-Downs
Media freedom has been slowly dying in Syria since the Arab Spring, suffocated by a lack of regular funding and poor governance. The rise of the Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party and Hafez al-Assad’s coup in 1970 led to state dominance over all its institutions, resulting in a media monopoly that supports the regime. State television and several official daily newspapers have controlled the media landscape for over 41 years.
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Jul 24, 2024 | 
indexoncensorship.org | Clemence Manyukwe |Martin Bright |Jemimah Steinfeld |Rizik Al-Abi
Kenyan journalist Hanifa Adan faced harassment and attempts to censor her when she covered deadly protests and started fundraising for people injured during the unrest that have left more than 50 people dead in her country. Budget proposals that would have resulted in the prices of basic essentials such as eggs, cooking oil, bread and nappies going up spawned countrywide weeks-long demonstrations starting in June led by the country’s Generation Z mobilising on social media.
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Jul 23, 2024 | 
indexoncensorship.org | Jemimah Steinfeld |Rizik Al-Abi |Stefano Pozzebon
Toomaj Salehi's track Normal, like many of his others, talks about freedom and injustice in Iran Doughty Street Chambers, Index on Censorship and Human Rights Foundation jointly submitted a complaint to the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (UNWGAD) regarding the ongoing detention and mistreatment of Iranian rapper, Toomaj Salehi. The complaint was submitted on behalf of Mr Salehi’s family.
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Jul 22, 2024 | 
indexoncensorship.org | Martin Bright |Rizik Al-Abi |Ella Edwards |Katie Dancey-Downs
The Babyn Yar massacre is one of the bloodiest atrocities in Ukraine’s dark history. In late September 1941, 33,771 Jewish residents of Kyiv were herded by the Nazis into a ravine (“Babi Yar” in Russian, “Babyn Yar” in Ukrainian) on the outskirts of the city. Over a two-day period, the victims were shot and buried in mass graves as part of what became known as “the Holocaust of Bullets”.
