United Kingdom

The prominent activist has spent much of the past decade imprisoned in Egypt for his writing and activism.

“As the humanitarian catastrophe continues to unfold in Gaza, and increasingly in the West Bank, there must be freedom to voice opinions and to protest everywhere” – ARTICLE19

The UK’s recently-passed Online Safety Bill (OSB) promises to make the UK “the safest place” in the world to be online. In reality, the OSB will lead to a much more censored, locked-down Internet for British users.

Contrary to recent pronouncements that “political correctness” is to blame for the UK’s declining state of free expression, it’s mainly driven by the government’s attempts to silence dissent.

The Committee to Protect Journalists said that the U.K. government should take action to secure the release of Jimmy Lai and other imprisoned journalists based on the report of Britain’s All-Party Parliamentary Group about Hong Kong media freedom.

Tech firms and privacy groups say the bill represents a threat to encryption and secure communication. Rights groups are worried that the outsourcing of decisions on illegal content to private platforms could incentivise the over-removal of legitimate content.

“Whilst we understand the UK government’s aim to update its espionage laws to protect national security, the draft Bill contains broad and vague definitions that we believe will, even if unintentionally, impact on legitimate whistleblowers and public interest journalism.”

“The threat these days doesn’t come just from repressive governments like those in Russia or Turkey. Nor it is even confined to democratic states on the road to authoritarianism like Hungary and Poland. It now also comes from elected governments in states whose democracies appear in better health, such as France, Greece, Italy, and the UK.”

The UK Anti-SLAPP Coalition has sent a model anti-SLAPP law to the UK Secretary of State for Justice. The model law outlines how best the UK Government can make good on its commitment to reform the law to introduce robust anti-SLAPP measures and protect those holding the powerful to account.

In Spain, two journalists were arrested while filming an action by Futuro Vegetal activists at the Prado Museum in Madrid; in the UK, three journalists were arrested while covering Just Stop Oil protests on the M25 motorway in Hertfordshire.

Rather than strengthening rights, the UK has proposed repealing and replacing the Human Rights Act, and its new home secretary has previously called for withdrawal from the European Convention on Human Rights. There are also deep concerns over the government’s approach to refugees and gender and reproductive rights.

The prominent activist has entered a full hunger strike in protest of his unjust detention as Egypt hosts the United Nations Climate Change Conference.

In a joint letter to the UK Foreign Secretary, rights groups raise the draconian sentences handed to Salma al-Shehab and several others who have been imprisoned solely for exercising their right to freedom of expression.

Investigative journalist Scott Stedman, his US media company Forensic News, and three of his colleagues, are facing legal proceedings over their reporting on a British-Israeli businessman summoned by the US Senate Intelligence Committee. The case is expected to go to trial before the end of 2022.

Assange faces up to 175 years in prison on charges linked to Wikileaks’s publication of information in the public interest.

CPJ is deeply saddened by reports that indicate that Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira were killed while working in the Amazon, and urges Brazilian authorities to ensure a timely forensic analysis and, if their deaths are confirmed, to thoroughly investigate their deaths and bring all those responsible to justice.