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Last year, FIRElaunched the Free Speech Dispatch, a regular series covering new and continuing censorship trends and challenges around the world. Our goal is to help readers better understand the global context of free expression. Want to make sure you don’t miss an update? Sign up for our newsletter. 

Exhibit on authoritarianism censored by authoritarians

These days, repressive regimes are not content with just censoring their critics within their own borders. They also think they have the authority to determine what the rest of the world can see, hear, and say, which is how we wind up with news like the latest out of Thailand. 

In late July, staff from China’s embassy  the Bangkok Arts and Cultural Centre, along with local city officials to demand the censorship of the exhibition “Constellation of Complicity: Visualising the Global Machinery of Authoritarian Solidarity.” The gallery granted their demands and “removed pieces included Tibetan and Uyghur flags and postcards featuring Chinese President Xi Jinping, as well as a postcard depicting links between China and Israel.” Words including “Hong Kong,” “Tibet,” and “Uyghur” were redacted. But even this was not enough for the Chinese embassy, whose staff  to seek further redactions and “reminded the gallery to comply with the One China policy.” 

In a statement, China’s foreign ministry  Thailand’s quick action to pressure the gallery to censor “shows that the promotion of the fallacies of ‘Tibetan independence,’ ‘East Turkestan Islamic Movement,’ and ‘Hong Kong independence’ has no market internationally and is unpopular.” What it actually shows, though, is that the Chinese government often throws its weight around on the global scale — and gets its way. , my new book out this month, documents precisely how China has attempted to enforce this kind of censorship in global higher education.

The co-curators of the show, a married couple, have since fled Thailand, citing fears of  by Thai authorities. They plan to seek asylum in the UK. 

Palestine Action, internet speech, and the disastrous Online Safety Act rollout 

As I explained in the last Dispatch, UK police are enacting a widespread crackdown on protests surrounding Palestine Action, a group banned under anti-terrorism legislation for damaging military planes in a protest. They’re not just arresting the group’s activists, but also any and all members of the public who express “support” for the group. That even includes a man who  of a political cartoon — one legally printed and available for sale in a Private Eye edition — that criticized the ban on Palestine Action, as well as an 80-year-old woman who was  for attending a protest.

These arrests were just drops in the bucket. Police  532 protesters over one weekend this month, with all but 10 being arrested for words or signs “supporting” the banned group. “We have significant resources deployed to this operation,” Metropolitan Police  on X. “It will take time but we will arrest anyone expressing support for Palestine Action.” Northern Ireland police also  protesters that they could face prosecution.

That’s not even the only troubling free speech scandal from UK police these past weeks. 

Carmen Lau, a Hong Kong activist now living in the UK and still a target of censorship from the Chinese government, says Thames Valley police asked her to  that she would “cease any activity that is likely to put you at risk” and “avoid attending” protests to limit the likelihood of overseas repression. Then a magistrate court  a gag order placed on a firefighter, suggesting that police officers were attempting to enforce a “police state.” Police raided the home of Robert Moss, a firefighter who won a wrongful termination challenge in 2023, over Facebook comments he’d posted about Staffordshire’s fire department, and then told him he must not only stay silent about leadership of the fire department, but was also not permitted to even discuss the investigation itself. 

Meanwhile, overzealous police are far from the only problems facing internet speech in the UK. Looming even larger is the Online Safety Act, now in effect and wreaking havoc on the UK’s internet users and the companies and platforms they engage with online. A useful  from ��𲹲��Dz�’s Elizabeth Nolan Brown shows how requirements that sites verify age for material “harmful to children” created some absurd fallout. Age-gated content has included an X post with the famous painting Saturn Devouring His Son, news about Ukraine and Gaza, and a thread about material being restricted under the act. 

The Wikimedia Foundation’s challenge to certain regulations of the law  this month, meaning many of its concerns about the act’s threats to the privacy of Wikipedia’s anonymous editors remain. But now, the message board site 4chan is pushing back, refusing to pay a fine already doled out for its noncompliance with the law. “American businesses do not surrender their First Amendment rights because a foreign bureaucrat sends them an email,” the site’s lawyers wrote in a .

And to the UK citizens who understandably are uncomfortable with the burdensome and privacy-threatening process of age-verification just to use the internet, Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology Peter Kyle warns: Don’t look for a workaround. Bizarrely, Kyle  adults verifying their age “keeps a child safe,” as if an adult’s VPN use somehow poses a risk to some child, somewhere. 

Two women sentenced to a decade for printing anti-Hugo Chávez shirts 

In what certainly looks like a case of entrapment, two Venezuelan women who run a T-shirt printing business were recently sentenced to 10 years in prison on  of incitement to hatred, treason, and terrorism. They had accepted an order to print shirts featuring a photo of a protester destroying a statue of late Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez. The women were initially wary of taking the order — apparently, for good reason — but eventually accepted it from the insistent customer. While delivering the order, they were arrested by police, who also confiscated their equipment and inventory. 

It’s not just in Venezuela. More censorship of political speech, protest, and journalism globally:

• Ugandan authorities  a student for weeks, and when public outcry finally forced them to explain his whereabouts, he “resurfaced” at a police station and was charged with “offensive communication” for intent “to ridicule, demean and incite hostility against the president” on TikTok.
• Moroccan feminist activist Ibtissam Lachgar was arrested this month for posting a photo of herself wearing a shirt with the message, “Allah is Lesbian.” A public prosecutor  her “offensive expressions towards God” and post “containing an offense to the Islamic religion.”
• An Argentine legislator is being  for social media posts comparing Israel to the Nazi regime and calling it a “genocide state.” In 2020, Argentina adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism. (FIREhas repeatedly expressed concerns about codification of the IHRA definition and the likelihood it will censor or chill protected political speech.)
• Belarusian authorities  dozens of activists and critics who took part in anti-government protests outside Belarus, in countries including the U.S. and UK.
• Russian journalist Olga Komleva was  to 12 years on “extremism” charges for her ties to the late Alexei Navalny and for spreading alleged fake news about the Ukraine invasion.
• Cities across Canada have  permits for performances by Sean Feucht, a right-wing Christian singer and vocal supporter of President Trump, with one Montreal church facing a $2,500 fine for going forward with his concert. Montreal mayor Valérie Plante , “This show runs counter to the values of inclusion, solidarity, and respect that are championed in Montreal. Freedom of expression is one of our fundamental values, but hateful and discriminatory speech is not acceptable in Montreal.”
• Indonesian authorities are  about the country’s regulations on flag desecration and respect for state symbols in response to a trend of citizens posting the Jolly Roger flag from the manga One Piece as a form of protest.
• Six journalists, including four with Al Jazeera, were killed by an Israeli airstrike. The Israeli military  one of the journalists, Anas al-Sharif, of being a Hamas cell leader, but the Committee to Protect Journalists  it “has made no claims that any of the other journalists were terrorists.”
• A 34-year-old Thai security guard, originally sentenced to 15 years, will  seven years in prison for Computer Crimes Act and lese-majeste violations for insulting the monarchy on social media.
• A  from the U.S. and a number of European nations accused Iranian intelligence authorities of widespread plots “to kill, kidnap, and harass people in Europe and North America in clear violation of our sovereignty.”
• Chinese officials in eastern Zhejiang province  warnings to performers about material on gender relations in response to a comedian’s viral set about her abusive husband. “Criticism is obviously fine, but it should be … constructive rather than revolve around gender opposition for the sake of being funny,” the warning read.

Book banning abroad

Under the criminal code of 2023, Indian authorities in Kashmir  over two dozen books, including those by novelist Arundhati Roy and historian Sumantra Bose. The books allegedly promote “false narratives” and “secessionism.” Selling or even just owning these books can result in prison time.

This ban follows  by Russian authorities of bookshops carrying titles from a list of 48 banned books, often those with LGBT themes. 

Tech and the law

• In enforcing its under-16 ban for social media, Australia  course and now will include YouTube in the group of platforms subject to the country’s age-gate ban.
• French prosecutors are  Elon Musk’s X to see if the platform’s algorithm or data extraction policies violated the country’s laws.
• Indian media outlets are  past reporting amid “growing pressure from the Indian government to limit reporting critical of its policies.” One journalist told Index on Censorship that “404 journalism” is “becoming a new genre of journalism in India — stories that once were, but are now memory.”
• A new law in Kyrgyzstan  online porn to “protect moral and ethical values” in the country and “requires internet providers to block websites based on decisions by the ministry of culture”
• Starting this autumn, Meta will no longer allow political or social issue ads on its apps within the EU,  “significant operational challenges and legal uncertainties” from the forthcoming Transparency and Targeting of Political Advertising rules.
• Qatar approved an  to a cybercrime law that criminalizes publishing or circulating images or videos of people in public places without their consent, raising an outcry from press freedom advocates. Offenders can face up to one year in prison and/or a fine of up to 100,000 Qatari riyals (about $27,500).

More suppression in and outside Hong Kong, as Jimmy Lai’s trial nears its end

Readers of the Free Speech Dispatch are likely aware of how grim the situation for free expression in Hong Kong has become in the past few years, and there are no improvements in sight. It even reaches globally. Late last month, officials  arrest warrants for overseas activists, including those based in the U.S., for alleged national security law violations.

In recent weeks within the city, eight of Hong Kong’s public universities  an agreement announcing their intent to comply with Xi Jinping’s and mainland China’s governance, another conspicuous sign of academic freedom’s decline in the city. The Hong Kong International Film Festival cut a Taiwanese film from its schedule for  to receive a “certificate of approval” from the city’s film censors. Then a teenager was arrested by national security police for writing  in a public toilet. Police said the messages “provoked hatred, contempt or disaffection against” Hong Kong’s government.

And the trial of Jimmy Lai, the 77-year-old media tycoon and founder of dissenting newspaper Apple Daily, is now reaching its conclusion. Lai, who is in poor health, has pleaded  to charges of conspiracy to collude with foreign forces and conspiracy to publish seditious material in Apple Daily.

In a troubling incident in an already disturbing case, a judge overseeing the case cited speech suppression in the U.S. to justify the prosecution of Lai. “People who were freely expressing their views on Palestine, they were arrested in England… [and] in the US,” Judge Esther Toh  in court last week. “It’s easy to say ‘la-di-da, it’s not illegal,’ but it’s not an absolute. Each country’s government has a different limit on freedom of expression.”

It should be a warning sign to Americans when our government’s actions are cited abroad in favor of, not against, censorship.