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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. The previous entry covered Australia’s ban on teen social media, South Korea’s martial law decree, and more. Want to make sure you don’t miss an update? Sign up for our newsletter. 

China’s censorship in the news — and in the U.S.

• Late last month, a New York man pleaded  in Brooklyn Federal Court to his role in running a secret Chinese government police station in Manhattan. The Chinese government is  of setting up over a hundred such stations worldwide and using them to surveil, threaten, and silence dissidents outside its borders. His prosecution is the latest in a series of Department of Justice efforts to combat foreign governments’ targeting their critics within U.S. borders.
• On a related note, President Joe Biden  a “China Censorship Monitor and Action Group” in December. The group’s mission is to “monitor and address the effects of any efforts by the PRC to censor or intimidate, in the United States or in any of its possessions or territories, any United States person, including a United States company that conducts business in the PRC, exercising its freedom of speech.”
• If you’re a gamer, you might be excited about the popular new video game “Marvel Rivals.” But you may be disappointed to learn that the game comes with some strings attached — namely, users cannot make political statements that the Chinese Communist Party dislikes. The game, created by Marvel and Chinese developer NetEase,  users from typing phrases in the chat function including “Tiananmen Square,” “free Taiwan,” “free Hong Kong,” “free Tibet,” and “Taiwan is a country.” What is allowed? Negative commentary about Taiwan. 

On a somber anniversary, a glimmer of hope for blasphemers

Jan. 7 marked the tenth anniversary of the , in which cartoonists and staff from satirical French magazine Charlie Hebdo were killed by gunmen over the magazine’s depictions of the Prophet Muhammad. The magazine commemorated the date with a  for the “funniest and meanest” depictions of God. 

As I wrote about the anniversary, we have failed to protect blasphemers since the killings and, in some ways, the legal realities are getting even worse for those accused of transgressing against deities. But there are a couple of bright spots in the wake of the commemoration. 

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A BBC report released on the anniversary itself announced that Nigerian humanist Mubarak Bala was  from prison after a nearly five year legal battle. Bala was initially sentenced to 24 years in prison for blasphemous Facebook posts. His sentence was reduced last year, and although he has now been released, he is not exactly free. Bala is in hiding in a safe house, due to concerns that he will be attacked by vigilantes or mobs.

And, now, Spain is looking to set a good example, with the Socialist party’s introduction of a bill that would, among other things,  the country’s blasphemy law that hands out fines to offenders. This law “rarely achieves convictions and yet it is constantly used by extremist and fundamentalist organisations to persecute artists, activists (and) elected representatives, subjecting them to costly criminal proceedings,” the party’s spokesperson said. 

The legislation was  by a lawsuit “brought by Abogados Cristianos (Christian Lawyers) against comedienne Lalachus after she, in a state television appearance during New Year’s Eve celebrations, brandished an image of Jesus on which the head of the cow mascot for a popular TV program had been superimposed.”

The latest in speech rulings and regulations

From the UK to Germany to Singapore: Police are watching what you post

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Police detained a pro-Palestinian activist in London under the UK’s Terrorism Act for, as the arresting officer put it, “making a hate speech.”

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• Lithuania’s Constitutional Court  as unconstitutional a provision in the country’s Law on the Protection of Minors from Negative Effects of Public Information, which stated that information about non-traditional families was harmful to minors and could be restricted.
• Irish media regulator Coimisiún na Meán  a decision last month warning Meta to take “specific measures” to reduce the “dissemination of terrorist content” on Facebook and report its progress. The nature of the “terrorist content” remains unclear.
• The UK’s Investigatory Powers Tribunal issued a ruling  that an “undercover surveillance operation” by the Police Service of Northern Ireland and Metropolitan Police to identify journalists’ sources was “disproportionate” and “undermined” media protections
• Albania announced a one-year ban on TikTok, with the country’s prime minister  the app for violence among young people, including the recent stabbing death of a 14-year-old. (The Supreme Court is deliberating the TikTok ban here in the United States, a ban ������ýapp�ٷ� opposes as a First Amendment violation.)
• On Christmas Day, Vietnam  a new decree requiring social media users to verify their identity, a tool that’s ripe for abuse in a country known for its crusade to silence online government critics.

Maker of infamous Pegasus spyware loses to WhatsApp in California court 

Meta’s WhatsApp won a major  in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California against the NSO Group, an Israel-based spyware company. The NSO Group was accused of exploiting WhatsApp to install its infamous Pegasus spyware program into over a thousand phones. 

Pegasus, sold to governments around the world by NSO Group, became the center of blockbuster  in recent years over its use to target human rights activists and journalists — and the , the U.S. based journalist who was brutally  in the Saudi consulate in 2018.

Deepening repression continues into 2025

The new year unfortunately doesn’t mean an end to repressive trends around the world, some of which have been building for years or even decades. 

• Hong Kong is once again attempting to punish its exiled pro-democracy activists. Late last month, Hong Kong police offered large  for information assisting in the arrest of activists now in the UK and Canada who are accused of national security law violations. Then the city’s government canceled the passports of seven activist “absconders,” including some based in the U.S. “You will become a discarded soldier, you will have no identity,” Secretary for Security Chris Tang  at a press conference. “After I cancelled your passport, you cannot go anywhere.” And early this week, police  a pollster’s home and office over claims he assisted a “wanted person who has absconded overseas.”
• Meanwhile, critics are still being punished regularly within Hong Kong. A 19-year-old student is battling charges that he insulted China’s national anthem by turning his back while it played at a World Cup qualifier. He pleaded  this month.
• A teenage girl spent the holidays in pre-trial  in St. Petersburg, Russia, after being detained on charges of “public calls for committing terrorist activities or public justification of terrorism.” The 16-year-old allegedly put on her school’s bulletin board flyers celebrating “Heroes of Russia” — Russian troops who defected to fight for Ukraine. 
• It’s difficult to imagine any more ways the Taliban could dream up to suppress the expression and presence of women of Afghanistan, but they found another. A government spokesman  that existing buildings and new construction would be required to obscure or eliminate windows showing “the courtyard, kitchen, neighbour’s well and other places usually used by women,” as the sight of them could “lead to obscene acts.” 
• Human rights lawyer Arnon Nampa, whose repeat and unjust prosecutions I’ve discussed in previous Dispatch entries, has once again been sentenced to prison for his commentary about Thailand’s monarchy. This time he’s been  to nearly three years in prison over an anti-monarchy Harry Potter-themed 2020 protest. In total, that puts him at almost 19 years in prison.
• Apple and Google  VPNs from their app stores in India in response to an order from the Indian Ministry of Home Affairs, an act that “marks the first significant implementation of India’s 2022 regulatory framework governing VPN apps.” These regulations require VPN providers to keep for five years records of users’ names and identifying information.
• A Uyghur woman was  to 17 years in prison for engaging in “illegal underground religious activity” by teaching about Islam to her sons and neighbor.
• Kenya’s president  for months that allegations of forced disappearances of activists connected to a youth protest movement were “fake news” but now appears to admit the government’s responsibility and promises an end to the kidnappings. “What has been said about abductions, we will stop them so Kenyan youth can live in peace, but they should have discipline and be polite so that we can build Kenya together,” president William Ruto said last month.
• This month, Vietnamese lawyer Tran Dinh Trien went on  for “infringing upon the interests of the state” in three Facebook posts criticizing the chief justice of the Supreme People’s Court of Vietnam. He’s potentially facing up to seven years in prison.
• And last week, María Corina Machado, opposition leader against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, was “” and arrested after exiting a protest in Caracas. Machado had previously been in hiding from an arrest warrant issued against her. She’s since been  but her team alleges that she “was forced to record several videos” before being set free.

Recently unbanned Satanic Verses is popular in India’s bookstores — for now

In November, I noted that India’s ban on Salman Rushdie’s controversial bestseller “The Satanic Verses” was ending for an absurd : No one could find the decades-old order from customs authorities banning its import. 

The book is now available in the country’s shops and appears to be a hit. One store manager said he was  out of copies, despite the book’s higher-than-average cost. But not everyone is thrilled by its popularity. Groups calling for a reinstatement of the ban  the Forum Against Blasphemy and the All India Muslim Jamaat, whose president , “No Muslim can tolerate seeing this hateful book on any bookstore shelf.”