As part of our series of dissident profiles, Index looks at Nasrin Sotoudeh, the imprisoned Iranian human rights lawyer who ...

Drakulić was one of Europe’s strongest feminist voices and penetrating chronicler of the wars still being waged on the ...

In this letter from Mogadishu Central Prison young women’s rights activist Sadia Moalin Ali Hassan, 27, issues a plea for freedom. She was jailed last month for “insulting state institutions” and “inc ...

The Bill, which builds on the 2023 National Security Act, would allow the UK government to label state-backed groups as terrorist organisations. Superficially there’s much to like. It’s clearly been ...

In this letter from Mogadishu Central Prison young women’s rights activist Sadia Moalin Ali Hassan, 27, issues a plea for freedom. She was jailed last month for “insulting state institutions” and “inc ...

This article first appeared in the Spring 2026 issue of Index on Censorship, The monster unleashed: How Hungary’s illiberal vision is seducing the Western world published on 2 April 2026. Smoke rose ...

UK news this week is dominated by a damning report led by senior midwife Donna Ockenden that reveals how more than 500 ...

In June 2026, Dr Mahrang Baloch was sentenced to life in prison by an anti-terrorism court in Quetta, Balochistan’s capital. She and fellow Baloch activist Sibghatullah Shahji had been accused of ...

I’m a woman in the Afghanistan of 2026. Here, days tick like gears in a clock, each moment predictable, each night a mirror of the last. Adventure sleeps and routine reigns. This is my life. I wake up ...

Russian artist Semyon Skrepetsky may have achieved exactly the wrong level of fame. He was prominent enough to be known to the Kremlin – and to annoy them – but not so renowned that his murder would ...

In a secondary academy in England, a librarian is putting books into a box. Just moments before, they were proudly on the shelves, rainbow flags waving across their covers and words such as “queer” ...