9 Oct 2025 | Middle East and North Africa, News and features, Saudi Arabia
This is the final day of the Riyadh Comedy Festival so we thought we’d publish some jokes audiences probably won’t have heard during the last fortnight.
Index staff have used AI to imagine some gags from artificial facsimiles of stand-ups Bill Burr, Jimmy Carr, Jack Whitehall and Louis C.K.
We felt compelled to do this because we support those in Saudi Arabia whose voices are so often silenced and those who are currently in prison. Last week we published an article by Ghanem al-Masarir about how he was persecuted as a Saudi comedian, and we remember journalist Jamal Khashoggi who was murdered by the regime in the Saudi embassy in Turkey seven years ago on 2 October – a grim reminder of the stance the Saudi government takes against their critics.
For extra context, this is part of a leaked contract for performers at the festival and was a condition of them performing:
“ARTIST shall not prepare or perform any material that may be considered to degrade, defame, or bring into public disrepute, contempt, scandal, embarrassment, or ridicule A) The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, including its leadership, public figures, culture, or people; B) The Saudi royal family, legal system, or government, and; C) Any religion, religious tradition, religious figure, or religious practice.”
Google Gemini in the style of Bill Burr
“The whole thing with this Saudi oil money… everybody’s going, ‘How could you? How could you take that blood money?’ And I’m just looking at them like, ‘Have you seen the offer? That’s not money, that’s a yacht dealership. That’s a ‘Hey Bill, we’re giving you enough cash to never have to stand next to a TSA agent again.’ Suddenly, all that moral outrage I was preaching about two years ago? Yeah, that’s gone. It’s in a tiny little oil drum somewhere in the desert. I went from ‘Speak truth to power!’ to ‘Does this robe come with a gold chain?’ in like, nine seconds.”
Anthropic’s Claude in the style of Jimmy Carr
“The Saudi royal family spent 100 billion dollars on a futuristic city in the desert called NEOM. 100 billion! On a city that doesn’t exist yet!
You know what would be MORE futuristic? Women’s rights.
[pause for laughs]
Cost a lot less, too.
[short laugh]
They’ve got plans for flying cars, robot servants, artificial moons… but apparently equal rights for half the population? ‘Woah, woah, woah… let’s not get science fiction about this!’
[smirks]
And they claim it’s going to be this eco-friendly utopia powered entirely by renewable energy. Which is ironic, because the only thing they’ve been good at renewable is OPPRESSION.
[staccato laugh]
The Saudi government says journalists are always welcome to come visit and report on their progress. Just… maybe don’t write anything negative. Or critical. Or true.
You know, JOURNALISM.
[pause]
Because the last guy who did that? Let’s just say… he’s in pieces about it.
[waits for groan/laugh]
Too dark? Oh, I’m sorry—I didn’t realise we were suddenly worried about what’s inappropriate!”
Google Gemini in the style of Jack Whitehall
Right, so my agent, – you’d hate him, he wears a gilet indoors – he rings me up. “Jack, darling! Got a massive gig for you. Corporate do. The fee is… well, let’s just say you could buy a controlling stake in Waitrose.”
I’m in. Obviously. I’m thinking, lovely jubbly, probably some tech bros in a horribly trendy warehouse in Shoreditch.
He goes, “It’s in Riyadh.”
Ah. Right.
He says, “Don’t worry! They’re super keen. They’ve just sent over a small list of topics to avoid in your set.”
He starts reading it out. “Okay so… no politics, no religion, no mentions of the royal family, no observational stuff about men and women… and absolutely no sarcasm.”
And I’m just sitting there, thinking… my God. That’s my entire personality gone. What am I supposed to do for twenty minutes? Just list my favourite types of hummus?
But then he read the last rule: “And finally, absolutely no crowd work.”
And honestly? That’s where I drew the line. I mean, you can take away my freedom of expression, you can censor my political satire… but you will not take away my God-given right to bully a man in the front row for wearing terrible shoes. Some principles are just non-negotiable.
OpenAI’s ChatGPT in the style of Louis C.K.
“So the Saudi government…
You ever look at a country and think, ‘Wow… that place is like if God gave a toddler infinite money and zero supervision’?
It’s just oil, gold, and beheadings. Like… literal beheadings. Not metaphorical. Like, actual… ‘Whoops, I tweeted!’ — CHOP.
And people still say, ‘Well, they’re making progress!’
Yeah? So is cancer.”
[Crowd groans — Louis leans in, smirking]
“No, really — they let women drive now!
As long as they don’t drive… their own thoughts.”
[Beat — he shrugs, mock-defensive]
“I know. I shouldn’t talk. I come from America — the land of freedom, where we bomb the same countries we lecture about human rights.
It’s like yelling at your kid for smoking while you’re doing heroin in the garage. ‘Don’t do that, it’s bad for you!’”
[He pauses, then sighs]
“But I still fly through Riyadh sometimes. Why?
‘Cause I’m a piece of shit.
And they’ve got phenomenal airport lounges.
Like, terrifying government… but you can get a foot massage and a lamb biryani while pretending they don’t jail poets.”
7 Oct 2025 | Americas, Europe and Central Asia, Germany, News and features, United States
When award-winning author Rachel Seiffert met with Index on Censorship to talk about the freedom to read, she came armed with one of her favourite books, The Seventh Cross. Written by Anna Seghers, who was communist, Jewish and German, it’s what Seiffert describes as “an amazing cross-section of early Third Reich German life”. Published in 1942 in the USA while Seghers was in exile in Mexico and set in pre-war Nazi Germany, the novel tells the story of seven political prisoners who escape from a concentration camp and go on the run. Meanwhile the camp commandant has erected seven crosses which will serve as posts where they will be tortured on recapture. The novel, a graphic depiction, of German totalitarianism was made into a Hollywood film starring Spencer Tracy in 1944 (pictured top).
Seiffert has her own relationship with Germany’s dark past, and it is an uncomfortable one. The maternal side of her family was, as she describes it, implicated in Nazi crimes. To be precise, her maternal grandfather was in the Waffen SS, her step-grandmother was a social worker for the Nazi party and her great uncle was the deputy chief medical officer during the Third Reich. She grew up close to her German family and bilingual. Although her grandfather died the year she was born, she had a deep bond with her grandmother. Seiffert strongly identified with her own “German-ness”, but also knew about a lurking darkness.
“I’m still trying to find out whether my grandfather did anything during his time in terms of taking part in massacres, but it’s clear he was part of an organisation that was banned after the war,” Seiffert told Index. He had previously been in the SA, or Storm Troopers in Hamburg who she knows were involved in book burnings in the 1930s.
Before hearing about the Holocaust at school, Seiffert learnt about it at home. It was desperately important to her mother that she was aware of her family history. Knowing about her family’s past is something Seiffert carries with her.
This lifetime of trying to understand her family’s relationship with the Nazis has led directly to the subjects of her novels. She’s focused her work on trying to understand why people vote for dictatorships and hateful ideas, and why they follow these regimes even when they can see the cruelty.
The author Rachel Seiffert. Photo: Charlie Hopkinson © 2013
When Seiffert published her book A Boy in Winter in 2017, soon after Donald Trump had been elected US president for the first time, she could feel the echoes of Nazi Germany. She described how liberal people in the early 1930s would laugh at the Nazis, considering them anti-science and anti-knowledge. People thought they wouldn’t get into power, and if the Nazis did, people thought they were so incompetent that they wouldn’t last.
“People say it’s hysterical if you say Trump is like Hitler. But I saw so many parallels,” she said, describing how now Trump is in his second term “the gloves are off”. The ICE raids, the lawsuit against the New York Times, the censoring of comedian Jimmy Kimmel over remarks critical of the administration are all examples of what she describes as a fascist playbook.
This theme has remained current, and the political atmosphere has become more frightening to her. In the UK too, Seiffert sees parallels.
“History doesn’t repeat itself exactly, but there are so many rhymes here. The centre can’t hold, this is what we’re having at the moment, the hollowing out of the centre ground in terms of politics. And we’re all sitting somewhere at the extremes,” she said.
In this atmosphere, politicians feel they need to appeal to those extremes in order to get votes, she explained. As was the case in 1930s Germany.
“There was a period in my life where I thought it would never happen again in Germany. And I don’t have that conviction at all anymore,” she said. “Part of the drive to write is so that it doesn’t happen again.”
In her books, Seiffert puts readers into the shoes of those facing authoritarianism, showing that there isn’t a single, correct response. Her books also demonstrate that if you decide to stay silent, that is still an active decision. The idea that some people don’t have a choice is to her, inaccurate.
“No, you did have a choice, and you chose to stay silent. And that might have been absoluely the right choice for you and for your family, but it’s the wrong choice for other people, and we just have to be honest with ourselves about that,” she said.
She hopes that if people understood this better, they might step up more readily, unable to live with the idea that they chose to do nothing.
When Seiffert talks to Index, Banned Books Week UK is just around the corner. After a few fallow years, followed by a run of worrying violations of the freedom to read, a coalition led by Index on Censorship revived the annual event – the US version of which has been going strong for many years.
There are many UK examples of restrictions on the freedom to read: more than half of bookshop owners surveyed by the Booksellers Association have reported an increase in intimidating behaviour, school librarians told Index about LGBTQ+ books being whisked off the shelves; and a book-related row broke out in a school in Dorset just days before Seiffert spoke to Index.
In this particular example, a parent put pressure on a school to remove a book from a year 10 lesson plan. The book in question was The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas, which explores issues of race, identity and social injustice, and the parent raised concerns about other books, too. According to local reporting from the Bournemouth Echo, the school removed the book after the parent refused a meeting with teachers because he was not allowed to record it. The paper described how the parent took issue with the book due to what he considered the use of bad language and inappropriate themes, and for making white characters appear as “baddies”. Other parents fought back, and soon launched a petition.
Seiffert herself works in schools, and believes that it is absolutely the right of parents to have conversations about which books are in the classroom, but that schools need to engage in the conversation in a way which backs up their teachers. She feels that classrooms should be open enough so that children who are feeling aggrieved can air their concerns, and the teacher can have those discussions with the class. Removing stories is not the answer.
“If adults are worried that their children might learn about something that makes them feel uncomfortable, it can feel preferable that they don’t know about it,” she said. “But it doesn’t make them safer in the end, because those ideas are out there and those experiences are out there.”
Instead, she believes hiding these parts of the world makes young people more insulated, and withholding information is doing them a disservice.
“I would really emphasise that taking away stories reduces our world. It reduces the possibilities of thought and of empathy, and it’s very dangerous. It should count for stories written from all perspectives. We have to be tolerant of upset.”
Once upon a time, Seiffert didn’t worry too much about her personal risk of being censored, considering it a practice more likely to be waged against writers in, for example, Russia. But as she talked to Index, she recognised how some of the things she was saying could, in today’s USA and a near-future UK, be taken as offensive by some people.
For those like her who have so far lived with the right to freedom of expression, it is now “all very much closer to the bone”.
7 Oct 2025 | Europe and Central Asia, News and features, United Kingdom
Two names have rung through the halls of the Labour Party Conference last week – Nigel Farage, who was given a kicking – and Owen Jones, who was literally kicked out. The Guardian columnist had been vox-popping politicians and delegates for his YouTube channel. His style is confrontational. But did he cross a line? Apparently so. On Tuesday his conference pass was revoked over “safeguarding issues”. He was told: “After careful consideration, we’ve concluded that we cannot continue your attendance while ensuring we meet our safeguarding obligations to all attendees.” Jones has cried foul. He called it “Trumpian behaviour” and believes it was because of his “attempt to question Cabinet members and MPs about Britain facilitating Israel’s genocide”.
It was a similar story for Rivkah Brown from Novara Media, who had her pass revoked, safeguarding cited, and asked whether Labour was “purging journalists it doesn’t like”.
Whether their free speech rights were violated or not is hard to tell (of Owen’s behaviour specifically we spoke to some conference attendees who said it was aggressive and others who’ve said it wasn’t). If the safeguarding concerns were genuine then there isn’t much of a story here, for us at least. A free speech defence can’t be used to excuse bad behaviour. But Labour would do well to be open and transparent, to provide details of what specifically they think he did wrong. Otherwise, we’re left to draw the worst conclusions.
Labour is not the only party expunging its conference of critics. Reform and the Conservatives (whose conference started on Sunday) have banned reporters without explanation. One was Byline Times journalist Adam Bienkov, who has attended and reported from Conversative Party conferences for years now. Last year the Byline Times published an embarrassing story about Conservative party councillors pretending to be ordinary folk during a televised election campaign event. A year later, Bienkov is suddenly off the invite list.
A reminder – both parties are led by people who position themselves as guardians of free speech. It’s pretty revealing of the vacuity of such claims.
Meanwhile, the Green Party’s conference opened last friday. A few weeks ago a curious email came into my inbox. It was from an esteemed doctor who was organising a fringe event about medically unnecessary penile circumcision in children. It got cancelled. They’ve also not been given a reason and their suspicion is that it’s to avoid wading into something that might offend Jewish people and Muslims, and attract adverse media publicity as a result.
Party conferences are revenue-raising events yes, and the press are shipped in to capture the hot takes. But conferences are also places where policy is debated and agendas set. Journalists come to ask the tough questions and challenge politicians and even party members on inconsistencies or shortfalls. Fill the marquees with “yes” people and democracy is bound to suffer.
7 Oct 2025 | Europe and Central Asia, News and features, United Kingdom
Transnational repression (TNR) allows states and their proxies to reach across national borders to intimidate, threaten and force silence, targeting everyone who speaks out in the public interest, wherever they are. Index has documented TNR targets across society, including journalists, artists, writers, academics, opposition leaders and members of marginalised groups such as Uyghurs and Tibetans.
Yesterday, Index joined other human rights organisations, academics, legal experts and TNR targets calling on the Office for Students and UK Government to establish robust protections for all academics, students and support staff against TNR in the higher education sector. This followed threats made against Roshaan Khattak, a Pakistani human rights defender and film maker, while he was researching enforced disappearances in Balochistan, a province of Pakistan, at the University of Cambridge.
The letter highlights the challenges he has faced, the gaps in the institution’s response to the threats and what the broader sector must to do ensure everyone in the academic space is protected.
Read the letter below
Sent Electronically
Susan Lapworth
Chief Executive
Office for Students (OfS)
Nicholson House
Castle Park
Bristol BS1 3LH
Cc: The Rt. Hon. Bridget Phillipson MP, Secretary of State for Education
Professor Arif Ahmed, OfS Director for Freedom of Speech and Academic Freedom
6 October 2025
As demonstrated by the threats to Cambridge post-graduate student Roshaan Khattak, the Office for Students and the broader higher education sector must establish robust protections against Transnational Repression.
Dear Ms Lapworth,
We, the undersigned organisations and individuals, write to call on the Office for Students, as well as the broader Higher Education sector, to establish tailored and robust protections for academics, students and support staff facing threats of transnational repression (TNR). This follows significant concerns regarding the response of the University of Cambridge to threats made against Mr Roshaan Khattak, a Pakistani filmmaker and human rights defender enrolled as a postgraduate researcher at the institution. This case is illustrative of the threats facing academic inquiry and the need for significant action. As a result, we call on the Office for Students (OfS) to establish policies that relate to universities’ obligations to establish protocols to respond to acts of TNR against their staff, students and the wider academic community.
The UK Government has described TNR as “crimes directed by foreign states against individuals”. While a global phenomenon, examples of TNR in the UK have been documented targeting journalists, human rights defenders, academics and members of diaspora or exile communities based inside the UK by repressive regimes such as Iran, Russia, Pakistan, and China (as well as Hong Kong), as well as democracies with weak institutional protections. The central goal of TNR is to exert state control and censorship beyond state borders to intimidate critics into silence, stifle protected speech and undermine the safety and security of those based in other jurisdictions. Earlier this year, the Joint Committee on Human Rights published a report on TNR following a public inquiry on the issue, which stated “[d]espite the seriousness of the threat, the UK currently lacks a clear strategy to address TNR”. We believe that in the context of higher education, TNR represents a significant threat to students’ ability to “access, succeed in, and progress from higher education” and benefit from “a high quality academic experience”.
The threats facing Roshaan Khattak are illustrative of this risk. On 21 December 2024 Mr Khattak received a message warning that neither Cambridge nor the UK is “safe” for him or his family if he continues his research into enforced disappearances in Balochistan (a province in Pakistan). While the origin of the threat is unknown, there are allegations that the Pakistan military and Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency have targeted those in exile, including Shahzad Akbar and journalists Syed Fawad Ali Shah and Ahmed Waqass Goraya. This also comes at a time when work on human rights violations in Balochistan is increasingly dangerous, as evidenced by the suspicious deaths of Sajid Hussain and Karima Baloch. Despite police awareness of the threat, Mr Khattak reports that his progress towards his PhD has been stopped for now, with Wolfson College having also repeatedly cancelled meetings, revoked his accommodation and changed the locks to his room without notice, limiting access to and compromising his sensitive research materials and data. They have also encouraged him to fundraise from the Baloch community in the UK to secure private accommodation, therefore disregarding the university’s responsibilities to him. We believe that the university should be exploring ways to ensure Mr Khattak’s safety, in collaboration with the relevant authorities, instead of trying to put him out of sight, out of mind. MPs including John McDonnell and Daniel Zeichner, as well as the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders, Mary Lawlor, and other leading human rights defenders have raised awareness of this case or shared their concerns with the University. Additionally, McDonnell has submitted an Early Day Motion in UK Parliament, backed by cross-party support, drawing attention to the threats faced by Roshaan and the wider impact of TNR on UK academia.
The Higher Education and Research Act 2017 outlines OfS’s “duty to protect academic freedom”, while also establishing the legal underpinning for OfS’s regulatory framework which states that both “academic freedom” and “freedom of speech” are public interest governance principles, which should be upheld by all higher education institutions. Further to this, the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2023, amends the 2017 Act to require institutions to establish codes of practice as it relates to their procedures to protect free speech and for the OfS to establish a free speech complaints scheme. These, as well as the “Regulatory advice 24: Guidance related to freedom of speech”, which came into force in August, establish an important baseline. However, in response to the impact of TNR on free speech and academic freedom, the OfS must build on this to establish specific and tailored responses for academics, students, staff and all university personnel as it relates to TNR.
Due to our concerns related to the absence of sector-wide protections against TNR, as evidenced by the University of Cambridge’s handling of the threats against Mr Khattak and the implications they have on his ability to continue his academic work and express himself freely, we request the OfS to:
1. Review the adequacy of existing sector-wide guidance to ensure it can protect academics, students and other relevant stakeholders from transnational repression;
2. Establish tailored and specific policies as it relates to transnational repression to offer support for the targets and practical guidance for the broader higher education sector. This should include methods by which all relevant authorities, such as the police can be engaged with constructively; and,
3. Commit to report publicly on findings and any regulatory action taken as it relates to TNR, to assure current and prospective students that UK higher-education providers will not yield to acts or threats of TNR.
The undersigned organisations believe that Mr Khattak’s situation is a wake-up call for the higher education sector as it relates to defending both student welfare and the principle of academic freedom in the face of transnational repression. A robust response from OfS will not only safeguard one vulnerable researcher but also support other institutions and at-risk academics who may be facing similar concerns or threats.
We stand ready to provide further documentation or expert testimony and would welcome the opportunity to discuss this matter with your team.
Yours sincerely,
Index on Censorship
Peter Tatchell Foundation
Amnesty International UK
National Union of Journalists
ARTICLE 19
Cambridge University Amnesty Society
Martin Plaut, Senior Research Fellow, Institute of Commonwealth Studies
Dr. Andrew Chubb, Senior Lecturer in Chinese Politics and International Relations, Lancaster University
Sayed Ahmed Alwadaei, Advocacy Director, Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy (BIRD)
Salman Ahmad, UN Goodwill Ambassador, HRD, Author, Professor at City University of New York-Queens College, Target of TNR
Marymagdalene Asefaw, DESTA MEDIA, Target of TNR
Maria Kari, human rights attorney, Founder, Project TAHA
Professor Michael Semple, Senator George J. Mitchell Institute for Global Peace, Security and Justice; Former Deputy to the European Union Special Representative in Afghanistan; Former United Nations Political Official
Hussain Haqqani, former ambassador; currently Senior Fellow and Director for South and Central Asia, Hudson Institute, Washington D.C.
Dr. James Summers, Senior Lecturer in international law, Lancaster University
Dr. Thomas Jeff Miley, Lecturer of Political Sociology, Fellow of Darwin College, University of Cambridge
Aqil Shah, Adjunct Associate Professor, School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University; non-resident scholar at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Ahad Ghanbary, TNR Target
Dr. Lucia Ardovini, Lecturer in International Relations, Lancaster University
Dr. John McDaniel, Lecturer in Criminal Justice and Crime, Lancaster University
Yana Gorokhovskaia, Ph.D., Research Director for Strategy and Design, Freedom House
Afrasiab Khattak, Former Chairperson of Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), former Senator
Professor Pervez Hoodbhoy, nuclear physicist, nuclear disarmament advocate, public intellectual
Taha Siddiqui, Pakistani journalist in exile (NYTimes, Guardian, France24), Founder The Dissident Club
Shahzad Akbar, Barrister, human rights lawyer, TNR acid attack victim, founder Dissidents United
