Contents – Inconvenient truths: How scientists are being silenced around the world

Contents

Ever since Galileo Galilei faced the Roman inquisition in the 17th century for proving that the Earth went round the sun, scientists have risked being ruthlessly silenced. People are threatened by new discoveries, and especially ones that go against their political ideologies or religious beliefs. The Autumn 2024 issue of Index examines how scientists to this day still face censorship, as in many places around the world, adherence to ideology stands in the way of scientific progress. We demonstrate how such nations crack down on scientific advancement, and lend a voice to those who face punishment for their scientific achievements. Reports from as far as China and India, to the UK, USA, and many in between make up this issue as we put scientific freedom under the microscope.

Up Front

When ideology enters the equation: Sally Gimson
Just who is silencing scientists?

The Index: Mark Stimpson
A tour around the world of free expression, including a focus on unrest in Venezuela

Features

A vote for a level playing field: Clemence Manyukwe
In Mozambique’s upcoming election, the main challenger is banned

Whistling the tune of ‘terrorism’: Nedim Türfent
Speaking Kurdish, singing in Kurdish, even dancing to Kurdish tunes: do it in Turkey and be prepared for oppression

Running low on everything: Amy Booth
The economy is in trouble in Bolivia, and so is press freedom

A dictatorship in the making: Robert Kituyi
Kenya’s journalists and protesters are standing up for democracy, and facing brutal violence

Leave nobody in silence: Jana Paliashchuk
Activists will not let Belarus’s political prisoners be forgotten

A city’s limits: Francis Clarke
The Hillsborough disaster still haunts Liverpool, with local sensitivities leading to a recent event cancellation

History on the cutting room floor: Thiện Việt
The Sympathizer is the latest victim of Vietnam’s heavy-handed censors

Fog of war masks descent into authoritarianism: Ben Lynfield
As independent media is eroded, is it too late for democracy in Israel?

Movement for the missing: Anmol Irfan, Zofeen T Ebrahim
Amid rising persecution in Pakistan, Baloch women speak up about forced disappearances

Mental manipulation: Alexandra Domenech
The treatment of dissidents in Russia now includes punitive psychiatry

The Fight for India’s Media Freedom: Angana Chakrabarti, Amir Abbas, Ravish Kumar
Abuse of power, violence and a stifling political environment – daily challenges for journalists in India

A black, green and red flag to repression: Mehran Firdous
The pro-Palestine march in Kashmir that became a target for authorities

Special Report: Inconvenient truths - how scientists are being silenced around the world

Choked by ideology: Murong Xuecun, Kasim Abdurehim Kashgar
In China, science is served with a side of propaganda

Scriptures over science: Salil Tripathi
When it comes to scientific advancement in India, Hindu mythology is taking priority

A catalyst for corruption: Pouria Nazemi
The deadly world of scientific censorship in Iran

Tainted scientists: Katie Dancey-Downs
Questioning animal testing is a top taboo

Death and minor details: Danson Kahyana
For pathologists in Uganda the message is clear: don’t name the poison

The dangers of boycotting Russian science: JP O’Malley
Being anti-war doesn’t stop Russian scientists getting removed from the equation

Putting politics above scientific truth: Dana Willbanks
Science is under threat in the USA, and here’s the evidence

The science of purges: Kaya Genç
In Turkey, “terrorist” labels are hindering scientists

The fight for science: Mark Stimpson
Pseudoscience-buster Simon Singh reflects on whether the truth will out in today’s libellous landscape

Comment

On the brink: Jo-Ann Mort
This November, will US citizens vote for freedoms?

Bad sport: Daisy Ruddock
When it comes to state-sponsored doping, Russia gets the gold medal

Anything is possible: Martin Bright
The legacy of the fall of the Iron Curtain, 35 years later

Judging judges: Jemimah Steinfeld
Media mogul Jimmy Lai remains behind bars in Hong Kong, and a British judge bears part of the responsibility

Culture

The good, the bad and the beautiful: Boris Akunin, Sally Gimson
The celebrated author on how to tell a story, and an exclusive new translation

Song for Stardust: Jessica Ní Mhainín, Christy Moore
Celebrating the folk song that told the truth about an Irish tragedy, and was banned

Put down that book!: Katie Dancey-Downs, Allison Brackeen Brown, Aixa Avila-Mendoza
Two US teachers take their Banned Books Week celebrations into the world of poetry

Keeping Litvinenko’s voice alive: Marina Litvinenko
The activist and widow of poisoned Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko has the last word

All the news that’s fake to print

Hello, readers. This is Sarah Dawood here, the new editor of Index on Censorship. Every week, we bring the most pertinent global free speech stories to your inbox.

This week, headlines have been dominated by the ongoing devastation of the war in the Middle East, where the death toll is now more than 42,000 in Gaza, and more than 2,100 in Lebanon. Monday also marked a painful milestone for Israelis and Jewish people everywhere, as the first anniversary of Hamas’s attacks, which killed 1,200 people. You can read Jerusalem correspondent Ben Lynfield’s forensic analysis on the region’s risks to journalists and press freedom below.

Attention has also been on the destructive Hurricane Milton in Florida, which has killed at least 16 people. The climate event has resulted in human tragedy, physical damage and the distortion of truth, with false information and AI-generated images accumulating millions of views on social media, including a fabricated flooding of Disney World in Orlando. Such imagery has been seized upon by hostile states, far-right groups, and even US politicians to advance their own aims: Russian state-owned news agency RIA Novosti reposted the fake Disney World photos to its Telegram channel, whilst Republican members of Congress have proclaimed conspiracy theories of government-led “storm manufacturing”. This emphasises how crises can be manipulated and monopolised to stir up division.

But while disinformation can undermine democracy, so too can information blockades. This brings us to some important stories coming out of Latin America. In Brazil, the social media platform X is now back online after a shutdown in September. The platform was banned by a top judge during the country’s presidential election campaign, in an attempt to prevent the spread of misinformation. But as Mateus Netzel, the executive director of Brazil-based digital news platform Poder360 told Reuters, social media bans not only restrict public access to information, but can undermine journalists’ ability to gather and report on news. Elon Musk himself was using X to post about the development of the ban, but this was inaccessible to Brazilian journalists. “In theory, there are journalists and outlets who do not have access to that right now and this is a very important restriction because they need to report on this issue and they will have to rely on indirect sources,” said Netzel.

We also heard frightening news from Mexico, where a local politician was murdered and beheaded just days after being sworn in as city mayor of Chilpancingo. Whilst we don’t yet know the reason that Alejandro Arcos Catalán was killed, his murder is yet another example of journalists, politicians, and other public figures being routinely targeted by criminal gangs. Bar active war zones, Mexico has consistently been the most dangerous country in the world for journalists, topping Reporters Without Borders’ list in 2022.

Meanwhile, in El Salvador, climate activists are being silenced through false imprisonment. Five protesters, who fronted a 13-year grassroots campaign to ban metal mining due to its devastating environmental impacts are now facing life in prison for the alleged killing of an army informant in 1989. The charge has been condemned by the UN and international lawyers as baseless and politically motivated, and echoes heavy-handed prison sentences being handed to climate protesters globally, including in democratic countries. As Index’s Mackenzie Argent reported last month, human rights lawyers have called out the UK’s hypocrisy in claiming egalitarianism whilst disproportionately punishing environmental activists, pointing specifically to the sentencing of Just Stop Oil’s Roger Hallam to five years in prison in July. These two stories, although taking place 5,000 miles away from each other, underline how climate defenders are currently on the front line of attempts to be silenced.

Israel’s trajectory into a nascent police state

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. Although it was only for 10 hours, human rights lawyers stressed the office closure and film banning were done without a court order, setting a precedent for bigger blows to political groups that displease the coalition or police,

 “Police closure of a branch of a party is an action characteristic of dictatorial regimes,” Gilad Kariv, a liberal Jewish legislator wrote on X. “I have reservations about the movie and views of Mohammed Bakri but the attempt to claim that showing the movie represents an immediate danger to public security is a low point and part of a dangerous process.”

A previous Bakri film, Jenin, Jenin, which set in the same locale, the West Bank’s Jenin Refugee Camp in the aftermath of a 2002 Israeli West Bank military operation ordered after suicide bombings, was released later in 2002. After a protracted legal battle, Israel's high court rejected an appeal by Bakri against a lower court ruling that he had defamed an army officer and upheld a ban on the film, as well as payment of damages of $55,000.

Now, without additional legal ruling or basis, police are also banning the second film, Janin Jenin (Incubations of Jenin), which gives testimonies, some by the same eyewitnesses as in the earlier film, of another Israeli operation against the camp, this time in 2023.

Advocates of censorship say either that the two films are similar or that it doesn’t matter because Bakri is an “antisemite” bent on besmirching Israel. The filmmaker says his goal is to convey an often suppressed Palestinian narrative of life under occupation and the devastation caused to the camp, known as a hotbed of militancy which, as fate would have it, was targeted for another major operation last week.

Shamai Glick, a right-wing activist, took credit for the bans, stressing that police had acted on his complaints. “There is no reason people in Israel and the world should see an antisemitic film just like there is no reason they should see a film that harms the gay community,” he said.

On Tuesday, police ordered the director of a theatre in Jaffa to drop plans to screen Janin Jenin that evening and he complied. Still, Israeli education and culture minister Yoav Kisch called for closure of the theatre through a cutoff of state funding merely because it had planned to show the new movie.

There is more at stake here than the fate of a single film. The absence of court orders required in the past for bannings and the grabbing of more power by the police are seen by left-wing activists as markers on Israel’s trajectory of deterioration into a nascent police state. Their last hope is the moves can be overturned by Israeli attorney general Gali Baharav-Miara, herself a frequent target of the coalition and the right-wing minister in charge of the police, Itamar Ben-Gvir.

“It’s one thing if there’s a court order to prohibit a certain artistic event. Then of course police have to enforce it. But if there’s none and they do that out of their own initiative, that’s incredible,” said leading human rights lawyer Michael Sfard, who has represented Bakri in the past.

The closure order for the offices of the communist party in Haifa, which was reviewed by Index on Censorship, raises questions about transparency. The document said preventing screening of the film was necessary “to safeguard the security of the public” but did not delineate the alleged threat. It added that showing the film could lead to “disturbances of the public order” but specified that the intelligence information on which the decision was based needed to be kept classified.

The coalition says tougher steps are needed to thwart incitement during the Gaza war that was ignited by Hamas’s brutal attacks on southern Israeli communities on 7 October. This triggered Israel’s devastating assault on Gaza, which has killed more than 40,000 people, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.

Police, for their part, deny any ulterior motive in the recent steps. “The Israel Police operates as an apolitical entity, with our role being to enforce the law rather than create it,” the police spokesman’s office said in response to queries. “Our primary goal is to maintain order and public safety.”

But the more democratic tendencies in Israel view Ben-Gvir as an especially dangerous actor in the government’s ongoing bid to remove checks on its power. This started last year with proposals to undermine the judiciary and is now gaining renewed traction while the public is distracted by war.

The communist party, represented in the Knesset as part of the Hadash grouping, said the closure was ordered just before the film’s screening and limited to 10 hours to preclude the party from going to court to challenge it.

Reem Hazzan, the Hadash leader in Haifa who was interrogated by police before the closure, said the film was to be screened in a closed room in front of about 60 people and followed by the collection of donations for the relief of Gaza civilians. Hazzan says there has never before been such a closure, even when Israeli Palestinians lived under military rule until 1966. She alleged the move follows a pattern of interrogations and threats against Hadash activists for organising demonstrations

Bakri recently told the joint Israeli-Palestinian outlet Local Call that the new film “is the continuation of the first movie Jenin, Jenin but with different timing and circumstances.” He said some of his interviewees who spoke in the first film compared the two incursions. He does not show any soldiers in the new film.

According to Haaretz, it has segments from the first film, a section on Bakri’s legal and personal troubles as a result of the first movie, explanation of the plight of Palestinian refugees since their displacement in 1948 and it gives the most emphasis to Israel’s incursion into Jenin camp last year.

Glick admitted he had not seen the new movie, nor did he think this was necessary. “If Hitler today published a book then I would also come out against it without reading it,” he said.

Contents – The final cut: How cinema is being used to change the global narrative

Contents

The Summer 2024 issue of Index looks at how cinema is used as a tool to help shape the global political narrative by investigating who controls what we see on the screen and why they want us to see it. We highlight examples from around the world of states censoring films that show them in a bad light and pushing narratives that help them to scrub up their reputation, as well as lending a voice to those who use cinema as a form of dissent. This issue provides a global perspective, with stories ranging from India to Nigeria to the US. Altogether, it provides us with an insight into the starring role that cinema plays in the world politics, both as a tool for oppressive regimes looking to stifle free expression and the brave dissidents fighting back.

Up Front

Lights, camera, (red)-action, by Sally Gimson: Index is going to the movies and exploring who determines what we see on screen

The Index, by Mark Stimpson: A glimpse at the world of free expression, including an election in Mozambique, an Iranian feminist podcaster and the 1960s TV show The Prisoner

Features

Banned: school librarians shushed over LGBT+ books, by Katie Dancey-Downs: An unlikely new battleground emerges in the fight for free speech

We’re not banned, but…, by Simon James Green: Authors are being caught up in the anti-LGBT+ backlash

The red pill problem, by Anmol Irfan: A group of muslim influencers are creating a misogynistic subculture online

Postcards from Putin’s prison, by Alexandra Domenech: The Russian teenager running an anti-war campaign from behind bars

The science of persecution, by Zofeen T Ebrahim: Even in death, a Pakistani scientist continues to be vilified for his faith

Cinema against the state, by Zahra Hankir: Artists in Lebanon are finding creative ways to resist oppression

First they came for the Greens, by Alessio Perrone, Darren Loucaides and Sam Edwards: Climate change isn’t the only threat facing environmentalists in Germany

Undercover freedom fund, by Gabija Steponenaite: Belarusian dissidents have a new weapon: cryptocurrency

A phantom act, by Danson Kahyana: Uganda’s anti-pornography law is restricting women’s freedom - and their mini skirts

Don’t say ‘gay’, by Ugonna-Ora Owoh: Queer Ghanaians are coming under fire from new anti-LGBT+ laws

Special Report: The final cut - how cinema is being used to change the global narrative

Money talks in Hollywood, by Karen Krizanovich: Out with the old and in with the new? Not on Hollywood’s watch

Strings attached, by JP O’Malley: Saudi Arabia’s booming film industry is the latest weapon in their soft power armoury

Filmmakers pull it out of the bag, by Shohini Chaudhuri: Iranian films are finding increasingly innovative ways to get around Islamic taboos

Edited out of existence, by Tilewa Kazeem: There’s no room for queer stories in Nollywood

Making movies to rule the world, by Jemimah Steinfeld: Author Erich Schwartzel describes how China’s imperfections are left on the cutting room floor

When the original is better than the remake, by Salil Tripathi: Can Bollywood escape from the Hindu nationalist narrative?

Selected screenings, by Maria Sorensen: The Russian filmmaker who is wanted by the Kremlin

A chronicle of censorship, by Martin Bright: A documentary on the Babyn Yar massacre faces an unlikely obstacle

Erdogan’s crucible by Kaya Genc: Election results bring renewed hope for Turkey’s imprisoned filmmakers

Race, royalty and religion - Malaysian cinema’s red lines, by Deborah Augustin: A behind the scenes look at a banned film in Malaysia

Comment

Join the exiled press club, by Can Dundar: A personalised insight into the challenges faced by journalists in exile

Freedoms lost in translation, by Banoo Zan: Supporting immigrant writers - one open mic poetry night at a time

Me Too’s two sides, by John Scott Lewinski: A lot has changed since the start of the #MeToo movement

We must keep holding the line, by Jemimah Steinfeld: When free speech is co-opted by extremists, tyrants are the only winners

Culture

It’s not normal, by Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe: Toomaj Salehi’s life is at the mercy of the Iranian state, but they can’t kill his lyrics

No offence intended, by Kaya Genc: Warning: this short story may contain extremely inoffensive content

The unstilled voice of Gazan theatre, by Laura Silvia Battaglia: For some Palestinian actors, their characters’ lives have become a horrifying reality

Silent order, by Fujeena Abdul Kader, Upendar Gundala: The power of the church is being used to censor tales of India’s convents

Freedom of expression is the canary in the coalmine, by Mark Stimpson and Ruth Anderson: Our former CEO reflects on her four years spent at Index