Tech companies’ censorship compliance abroad, dual U.S.-Saudi citizen facing jail time, and more free speech trouble in the UK

This 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. The previous entry covered media censorship in Israel and the legacy of Tiananmen today. In this entry, we’ll look at how tech companies have responded to censorship demands, how speech is faring in the U.K., and the punishment of a dual U.S.-Saudi citizen.

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How Apple, Microsoft, and other tech firms handle censorship abroad

A tale of two American tech companies in Russia: One ultimately rejects censorship, and one readily complies. In recent months, Russian authorities have cracked down on virtual private network access, which allows internet users, especially those in extensively censored or surveilled countries, to navigate the web more freely. Russian media regulator Roskomnadzor has in turn sent warnings to companies including Mozilla and Apple, which enable access to VPNs. 

Mozilla initially complied in June, blocking censorship circumvention add-ons to the web browser Firefox in Russia. But by June 13, Mozilla announced that in keeping with its “commitment to an open and accessible internet,” it would restore listings for the add-ons. Apple, however, has made no such reversal since its removal of over two dozen VPN apps from its app store. This is no surprise given Apple’s frequent and unquestioning compliance with government demands.

Meanwhile, more troubling reports have emerged about tech companies’ censorship standards when it comes to China. A new report from the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab made a disturbing discovery: In China, Microsoft’s foreign translation and search engine service Bing censors more material than its Chinese counterparts in the country. Bing translations discussing President Xi Jinping, for example, are wholesale censored while competing companies only censor the relevant sentences. The takeaway is that Microsoft isn’t just complying, but overcomplying — to an extent clearly not required or necessary given its competitors’ behavior.

And Google appears to have a worrying relationship with censored material from China — one that might affect what readers see in the U.S. as the company further builds into its services its AI tool, which is banned in China. An investigation from VOA found that when it asked Google’s AI assistant Gemini queries that criticized the Chinese Communist Party in Mandarin, Gemini either offered answers that appeared to share Chinese government propaganda or refused to provide information. When VOA asked about human rights, for example, Gemini said it did not understand the question. Similar questions given in English returned more neutral results. A likely culprit for these results is that material used to train the service in Mandarin comes from the Chinese government or the country’s heavily censored internet. 

Outlawing political lies and … coconuts? 

“Police were also seen to be seizing coconuts.” If you did a double-take while reading that sentence, you’re not alone. Yet U.K. police did indeed seize coconuts and placards from protesters outside a courthouse where Buckinghamshire resident Marieha Hussain appeared late last month in response to a “racially aggravated public order offence” charge. 

Protesters, five of whom were reportedly detained on similar charges, held coconuts in support of Hussain, who was arrested after holding a sign at a 2023 pro-Palestinian protest that depicted U.K. politicians Rishi Sunak and Suella Braverman as coconuts. The term coconut is a racial insult implying the target is “brown on the outside but white on the inside.” In November, Metropolitan Police posted a photo of a then-unidentified Hussain, seeking information from the public to assist in her arrest. 

Meanwhile, in Wales, the government is setting its sights higher than outlawing fruit (which a coconut is, according to the many articles I read online, the number of which I will not disclose). Members of the Welsh Parliament, the Senedd, intend to introduce legislation that will ban politicians’ lies. “We are at the beginning of a global movement,” politician Adam Price announced. “We are going to outlaw political lying.” While the details of the not-yet-written bill are still up in the air, Counsel General for Wales Mick Antoniw said that it will legislate “the disqualification of members and candidates found guilty of deliberate deception through an independent judicial process.” 

We’ll review the text of the legislation at the Free Speech Dispatch when it’s available, but it’s no lie that this bill is likely to be a mess.

Dual US-Saudi citizen sentenced to prison for popular cartoon show

Comedy can be a dangerous occupation in authoritarian countries — and even a major Netflix deal may not be enough to protect you. Such is the case for Abdulaziz Almuzaini, creator of the satirical cartoon show, “Masameer,” which has been “likened to a Saudi version of ‘South Park.’” Last month, Almuzaini posted and then deleted a video on social media explaining that he’s awaiting a ruling from Saudi Arabia’s Supreme Court regarding his conviction for “supporting extremist ideology.” A lower court sentenced him to 13 years in prison and a lengthy subsequent travel ban. Almuzaini says prosecutors deeply misunderstood a “Masameer” spinoff show that clearly mocked Islamic State jihadists as an endorsement of them. They also objected to some of Almuzaini’s old social media posts. 

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Almuzaini isn’t the first dual U.S. citizen to face repercussions in the kingdom. In 2021, a 72-year-old man from Florida was arrested while visiting family in Saudi Arabia. The reason?  Old tweets, including ones about Jamal Khashoggi’s murder. His initial sentence of 19 years was overturned, but he still faced a long travel ban. And in 2022, an American woman was temporarily detained while in the country for social media posts criticizing custody issues exacerbated by the male guardianship system.

More retaliation against dissidents in Cambodia, Tanzania, Uganda, and Russia

Prosecution and the imprisonment of dissidents are running themes in this series, and this month is no different. A Cambodian court handed jail terms of up to eight-to-ten years to 10 activists from an environmental group earlier this month. The charges? Plotting against the government and insulting the king in a leaked Zoom meeting about political cartoons. A Ugandan sentenced a TikToker to six years in prison on hate speech and “misleading and malicious” information charges after criticizing the president. In Tanzania, artist Shadrack Chaula was jailed after being sentenced to a two-year prison term or a fine on cyber-harassment and incitement charges for burning a photo of President Samia Suluhu Hassan in a TikTok video. Activists are attempting to raise money to pay the fine and free Chaula from prison, and some of the country’s lawyers are objecting to the underlying charges, alleging that Chaula’s expression broke no Tanzanian laws. 

And Yulia B. Navalnaya, a critic of Vladimir Putin and widow of Aleksei Navalny — the imprisoned and recently deceased opposition leader — is also at risk of retaliation. Last week, a Russian court issued an arrest warrant for Navalnaya for “participating in an extremist community.” Navalnaya fled Russia in 2021, and will now face arrest if she returns. 

A slew of media censorship incidents 

It’s been a bad few weeks for journalists around the world. In Algeria, police arrested two journalists on “incitement and hate speech” charges after they published footage of businesswomen protesting at a government event. Days later, Turkey’s media regulator revoked a radio station’s broadcast license after a guest made a statement commemorating the Armenian genocide. And in late June, Kazakhstan President Kassym-Jomart Tokaev signed into law a new media regulation bill with a number of worrying provisions, including one that authorizes a surveillance body to conduct “mass media monitoring” to ensure outlets do not violate undefined “national, cultural, and family values.”

Blasphemy punishments continue unabated — and sometimes mobs dole it out 

The outlook for Pakistan’s blasphemers — even just alleged ones — continues to be dire. In mid-June, a mob accused a local tourist in northwest Pakistan of burning pages of the Quran. Police took the man from the crowd and brought him into a police station, but the mob took over the station, set it on fire, and beat the accused man to death. In a separate incident, a teen boy stabbed to death a man accused of “speaking against the companions of Prophet Muhammad.” Just weeks after these killings, a Pakistani court sentenced a man to death for sharing images on TikTok of desecrated pages of the Quran, the same pages two men were accused of destroying last summer. That alleged defacement led to a wave of riots that resulted in dozens of acts of arson against homes and Christian churches in Jaranwala, Pakistan.

The outlook for Pakistan’s blasphemers — even just alleged ones — continues to be dire.

Attacks against alleged blasphemers are common in Pakistan as well as Nigeria, where a recent study identified hundreds of deaths related to blasphemy violence over the past 25 years. 

The Pakistani government also announced its intention to ban all social media from July 13 to July 18 to “control hate material, and misinformation to avoid sectarian violence” during Muharram, the first month of the Islamic calendar. Authorities have regularly enforced social media censorship in the country, often to crack down on blasphemy and immorality. TikTok is a recent target of these efforts. In a filing to a court considering a petition to ban the app,  the company “stressed its strict adherence to policies regarding blasphemous content in Pakistan” and pointed to the special access it offers the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority to review and take down content.

Iranian rapper’s death sentence overturned

And finally, dissident rapper Toomaj Salehi’s situation has improved but remains dire. The Iranian Supreme Court overturned the death sentence ruling against Salehi, convicted of “corruption on earth” for his support of protests over Mahsa Amini’s death. That’s the good news. The bad news is that Salehi’s case will be returned to a lower court for resentencing, meaning that his unjust imprisonment — and alleged torture — is likely to continue, perhaps for a very long time.