Is it ‘hate speech’ to say Jesus needs a haircut?

Last year, FIRE launched 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. 

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Hate speech sentence for TikToker’s joke about Jesus’ hair

Is it a crime to joke that Jesus needs a haircut? In Indonesia, the answer is apparently yes. Ratu Thalisa, a popular TikToker in the country, was just sentenced to two years and 10 months in prison after holding up a picture of Jesus in a video and saying, “You should not look like a woman,” adding that he should cut his hair. 

Thalisa, a trans woman, was responding to a commenter telling her to cut her hair like a man’s. Two days after she posted the video, Christian groups reported her to the police for blasphemy violations and she was soon arrested. She was ultimately found guilty of hate speech against Christianity under Indonesia’s Electronic Information and Transactions law for comments that could affect “public order” and “religious harmony.” 

Thalisa is one of hundreds found guilty for speech-related offenses under this law in recent years. Similarly, opponents of a demolition project linked to a Roman Catholic diocese in Indonesia now have reason to fear they’ll be targeted under the country’s blasphemy law. The United Catholic Youth Forum, a Catholic group in Indonesia, is pressuring police to arrest a critic who posted a cartoon “depicting a Catholic priest with an excavator,” claiming it “insults the symbol of the Catholic religion.”

Blasphemous speech remains a target globally

• Greek politician Nikolaos Papadopoulos took his feud against artwork he once criticized as offensive to Orthodox Christianity to a new level this month. The country’s National Gallery had to temporarily close after Papadopoulos partially destroyed four works, caricatures of religious icons from artist Christoforos Katsadiotis, by throwing them on the ground.
• Pakistan’s Lahore High Court issued a ruling intensifying the country’s attack on VPN use and blasphemous speech online. The ruling “ordered the immediate termination of all types of VPNs, the registration of all social media websites, and the establishment of special courts nationwide” to combat online blasphemy.
• A Pakistani court sentenced a man to death for “disrespectful remarks against the Holy Prophet.”
• Last month, I wrote about a man who was arrested “on suspicion of a racially aggravated public order offence” for publicly burning a Quran in Manchester, UK. Another man was arrested on similar charges after burning a Quran outside the Turkish consulate in London. And that’s not all — his expression was also met with violence. An attacker was charged after slashing at the Quran burner with a knife. 

Online Safety Act, threats to China’s critics, and more out of the UK

Another charged Quran-burner isn’t the only speech news coming out of the UK. Here’s the latest:

• The UK’s Online Safety Act has now gone into effect. The law is wide-ranging and, among other things, requires platforms to take measures against and have in place systems for removing content including extreme pornography, racially or religiously aggravated public order offences, controlling or coercive behaviour, and terrorism. Hundreds of small websites — like The Hamster Forum, “the home of all things hamstery” — have already announced they are shutting down out of fear that they will be unable to meet compliance requirements under the law.
• Earlier this year, the UK shocked privacy advocates when leaks reported that the country’s Home Office demanded Apple offer a backdoor in its encrypted cloud service for users around the world. Apple refused, withdrawing its advanced data protection tool for UK users rather than comply, and responded with an appeal to the country’s Investigatory Powers Tribunal. A hearing was held this month — but it was closed, and media outlets were denied access.
• Neighbors of Hong Kong activists Tony Chung and Carmen Lau, now living in the UK, received disturbing letters offering £100,000 for “information” on their alleged national security crimes against Hong Kong or, even more shocking, for taking them directly to the Chinese embassy in London. An embassy spokesperson claimed the letters were staged but said that “I also want to stress that it is legitimate and reasonable to pursue wanted fugitives.” Similar letters were sent in Melbourne to the neighbors of Kevin Yam, an Australian citizen also wanted in Hong Kong.

Facial recognition’s role in censorship 

Last week, Hungarian MPs passed a law making it “forbidden to hold an assembly in violation” of the country’s 2021 law banning the depiction of homosexuality to minors, making Pride marches illegal in the country. Those who hold or attend Pride parades may now face fines — and police “are also allowed to use facial recognition technology to identify possible offenders.”

Facial recognition is playing a role in Iran’s censorship and suppression of women, too. To enforce its oppressive forced veiling policies, Iranian authorities use a slew of tools to target women failing to wear hijab. Those tools include drones, a phone app to report unveiled women, and facial recognition tech. 

Speech about Israel and Gaza continues to be a target for law enforcement and legislators

• Germany’s State Security Police are investigating an incident during the Berlin International Film Festival, where Hong Kong director Jun Li read out a speech from Iranian actor Erfan Shekarriz, who accused German institutions of supporting “the brutal extermination of the Palestinian people.” The investigation likely rests on the director’s use of “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” a phrase that has sometimes been criminalized in Germany.
• In an effort to combat anti-Semitism, New South Wales in Australia has passed new protest and hate speech laws despite some concerns about their breadth. The laws, among other things, restrict protests “near” places of worship and criminalize “intentionally and publicly incit[ing] hatred towards another person, or group of people, on the grounds of race.”
• Canadian writer and activist Yves Engler was hit with harassment and indecent communication charges late last month over comments he made in reply to media figure Dahlia Kurtz on X last summer. Engler said “Racist Dahlia supports killing Palestinian children. 20,000 is not enough she wants even more Palestinian blood spilled.” Engler then alleged he was hit with a new set of charges for writing about the initial ones. Engler spent five days in jail before being released.
• Universities Australia, the representative body for Australia’s higher education institutions, agreed upon a new definition of anti-Semitism to be adopted across its 39 universities after urging from the Australian Senate to create one that “closely aligns” with the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition. (FIRE has expressed concerns about enforcement of the IHRA definition on U.S. campuses and its potential to chill or censor protected speech about Israel.)
• Saying “freedom of expression underpins everything we do at LSE,” the London School of Economics rejected a campaign to cancel a talk for the book “Understanding Hamas and Why That Matters.” Israeli ambassador Tzipi Hotovely had sent a letter to LSE calling for the event cancellation, writing that she was “deeply concerned that the event is providing a platform for Hamas propaganda — a terror organisation proscribed under United Kingdom law.”

Record high internet shutdowns in 2024

As Dispatch readers know, many of the most pressing free speech fights today take place over how, and whether, we can speak freely online. A new report from Access Now revealed that 2024 was the worst year yet for internet shutdowns, finding 296 shutdowns in 54 countries, with seven new countries using the tactic for the first time compared to 2023. The most shutdowns occurred in Myanmar, India, Pakistan, Russia, and Ukraine, with some of those shutdowns imposed by other nations and actors.

Prison for a ‘false post,’ satirical cartoon blocked in India, and more speech news out of the Middle East and Asia 

• An elderly Malaysian man was sentenced to six months in prison after failing to pay a fine punishing him for posting “false content” about the king of Malaysia.
• Kyrgyzstan recriminalized libel and insult on the internet and in the media. Now, “complaints will be handled by police and adjudicated by so-called administrative courts in an expedited format” and new fines will be assessed for violations.
• Police handling online crime in India’s Maharashtra state sent a notice to the Wikimedia Foundation to remove “objectionable” content from the Wikipedia page for Chhatrapati Sambhaji Maharaj, a king in 17th century India.
• There’s more Wikipedia news out of India. The Wikimedia Foundation is asking India’s Supreme Court to reverse an order directing Wikipedia to take down a page about its legal dispute with an Indian news agency. The underlying dispute centers on a Wiki entry describing the outlet as a government “propaganda tool.”
• And India’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology reportedly blocked the website of Tamil-language weekly magazine Ananda Vikatan over a satirical cartoon depicting Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in chains behind President Donald Trump.
• Vietnamese scholar and journalist Truong Huy San, who goes by the pen name Huy Duc, was sentenced to 30 months in prison for Facebook posts “abusing democratic freedoms to infringe upon the interests of the state.”
• An escalation in President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s campaign against his opponents and critics, Turkish police just arrested Istanbul’s mayor and popular Erdogan rival Ekrem Imamoglu and banned protests for four days in Istanbul.
• Two of Singapore’s government ministers have filed a libel suit against Bloomberg over the outlet’s reporting about real estate in Singapore. Under the Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act, Singapore previously ordered Bloomberg to issue a “correction direction” on its reporting, which the outlet did with a note that it was done “under threat of sanction.”

Guilty finding in egregious case of transnational repression in the U.S.

Last week, two men were found guilty of a plot to murder Iranian-American journalist and activist Masih Alinejad in New York City. Alleged Russian mob members Rafat Amirov and Polad Omarov were found guilty of charges including murder for hire, firearms possession and conspiracy to commit money laundering. 

Prosecutors accused the Iranian government of putting a $500,000 bounty on Alinejad and of other plots to harm her. The case is yet another disturbing reminder that oppressive regimes overseas are attempting to silence speech — and critics — within U.S. borders.