Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni on Friday denounced an attack on investigative journalist Sigfrido Ranucci after an explosive device detonated under his car outside his home late Thursday. No one was injured in the blast, which damaged a second family vehicle and a neighboring house in Pomezia, a municipality south of Rome. Anti-mafia prosecutors have opened an investigation, ANSA reported. “I express my full solidarity with the journalist Sigfrido Ranucci and the strongest condemnation for the serious act of intimidation he has suffered,” Meloni said in a statement. “The freedom and independence of information are non-negotiable values of our democracies, which we will continue to defend.” Ranucci and the Meloni government have a tense relationship. Report, the show he hosts, has repeatedly investigated government figures, including a probe into the alleged role of officials in the attempted takeover of Mediobanca by Monte dei Paschi di Siena, which led Meloni’s Head of Cabinet Gaetano Caputi to pursue leagal action in July against the program. In recent years, Ranucci has faced multiple lawsuits from members of Meloni’s government, the Senate President Ignazio La Russa, Finance Minister Giancarlo Giorgetti and prominent political families, including the Berlusconis. Other members of Meloni’s government also expressed solidarity with Ranucci. Defense Minister Guido Crosetto called the attack “extremely serious, cowardly and unacceptable,” while Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi pledged full police support to identify the perpetrators and strengthen the journalist’s protection. Ranucci has lived under police guard for years after he and his newsroom received threats due to their reporting on politicians, business leaders and other public figures but also mafia networks and corruption cases tied to organized crime. Earlier this week, he was acquitted in a defamation case stemming from one of Report’s investigations. Since taking office in 2022, Meloni has faced criticism for actions perceived as undermining press freedom, including legal threats against journalists and censorship attempts, raising concerns among watchdog organizations and European institutions about the state of media independence in Italy.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen delivered pointed remarks Wednesday to Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić about his country’s progress toward EU membership. “Now is the moment for Serbia to get concrete about joining our union,” said the Commission chief, during a press conference in Belgrade on her tour of the Western Balkans. “Therefore, we need to see progress, on the rule of law, the electoral framework and media freedom,” von der Leyen added. “I know these reforms are not easy,” she said. “They take patience and endurance. They must include all parts of society and the political spectrum. But they are worth the effort. Because they move you closer to your goal.” Von der Leyen also urged the Serbian president to join the EU in imposing sanctions against Russia. Belgrade has consistently refused to align with the bloc in sanctioning Russian energy and goods, especially since it is almost entirely dependent on Russian gas. “I commend you for reaching 61 percent of alignment with our foreign policy. But more is needed. We want to count on Serbia as a reliable partner,” said von der Leyen. Serbia applied for EU membership in 2009 and was subsequently granted candidate status in 2012, later opening accession negotiations with the EU in 2013. Since then, 22 of the 35 chapters of accession criteria have been opened — but only two have been provisionally closed. Leadership in the Western Balkan country has come under heavy criticism in recent years. Protests triggered by the collapse of the Novi Sad train station canopy in November last year turned into a wider revolt over corruption, accountability, and democratic backsliding, which was met with a violent response from police. The European Green Party criticized the Commission chief’s visit to Serbia, calling it “deeply regrettable that von der Leyen honors Vučić with an official visit without visible reservations, while his regime unlawfully detains students and opposition members and violently represses protesters,” its co-chair Vula Tsetsi said in a statement. The U.S. decided last week to sanction Serbia’s leading oil supplier, the Petroleum Industry of Serbia (NIS), because it is majority-owned by Russia’s Gazprom Neft. Vučić met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Beijing during a regional security summit in September, reaffirming Serbia’s commitment to purchasing Russian gas and potentially increasing it. “Since the beginning of the Ukrainian crisis, Serbia has been in a very difficult situation and under great pressure, but … we will preserve our neutrality,” said Vučić, utilizing Kremlin terminology for its war on Kyiv.

First published on caglecartoons.com, Sept. 23, 2025. | By Becs First published on PoliticalCartoons.com, Sept. 26. | By Bart van Leeuwen First published on caglecartoons.com, Sept. 26, 2025, Austria. | By Marian Kamensky First published on caglecartoons.com, Sept. 25, 2025, Austria. | By Marian Kamensky First published on PoliticalCartoons.com, Sept. 24. | By Dick Wright First published on caglecartoons.com, Sep. 23, 2025, Austria. | By Marian Kamensky

There’s a great deal at stake in the upcoming Czech election — for Russia. So perhaps it’s no wonder that Czechia has been flooded by pro-Russian disinformation of late. A victory by populist right-winger Andrej Babiš, who is ahead in the polls, would see him join Viktor Orbán and Robert Fico around the EU table. The Hungarian and Slovak leaders are on friendly terms with Russian President Vladimir Putin and have consistently torpedoed EU unity on Ukraine. Incumbent Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala has framed the Oct. 3-4 vote as no less than a battle over the country’s geopolitical future. “It’s about where the Czech Republic will go. Whether we remain a strong democracy, with full freedom, with prosperity, a country that is firmly part of the West … or whether we drift somewhere to the East,” Fiala told a rally in Plzeň in western Czechia earlier last week that was attended by POLITICO. Against that backdrop, analysts have warned Czechia is being inundated by pro-Russian propaganda and disinformation.  The volume of fake news has increased steadily since Russia’s February 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine to a record high of some 5,000 articles per month, according to Vojtěch Boháč, an investigative journalist with Czech outlet Voxpot. A recent Voxpot investigation found that the 16 largest disinformation websites churn out more content than all Czech traditional media outlets combined. Articles ranged from critical takedowns of the EU and NATO to extraordinary conspiracy theories, including claims that Brussels is promoting cannibalism as a solution to climate change. Analysts stressed that the pro-Russian disinformation drive is less about backing a specific candidate than undermining Czechia as a whole.  Recently, much of the political messaging has shifted to questioning the legitimacy of the election, calling into question the very value of democracy, said Kristína Šefčíková, head of the information resilience program at the Prague Security Studies Institute. “In the informational space, we can essentially see the Kremlin playbook being used,” she said.  A victory by populist right-winger Andrej Babiš, who is ahead in the polls, would see him join Viktor Orbán and Robert Fico around the EU table. | Radek Mica/Getty Images Russia isn’t the only foreign power interfering in Czech domestic affairs — China also plays a notable role — but its influence is by far the most visible. “Russia is definitely topic number one right now here,” Šefčíková added. MOSCOW’S CANDIDATE? Under Fiala, Czechia has spearheaded an arms initiative to accelerate ammunition supplies to Kyiv and has welcomed a vast number of Ukrainian refugees, who now make up about 5 percent of the country’s population — the highest per capita number in the entire EU. A win for Babiš, a former communist turned billionaire who co-founded the far-right Patriots for Europe group in the European Parliament, could well change that. His party manifesto pledges to axe the ammunition plan, and in interviews Babiš has called for “compromise” to end the fighting in Ukraine and avoid a larger war with Russia. His party, ANO, has also called to scrap a legal amendment that helps prosecute those who pass on sensitive information to foreign powers, including Russia. “Babiš is against this ammunition initiative, against spending on defence, he talks about peace without any conditions,” Fiala told the FT. “He helps Vladimir Putin, it’s very clear.” Babiš, meanwhile, has accused Fiala of trying to escalate the conflict in Ukraine, saying the prime minister “dreams of war with Russia.” “President Trump rightly warned President Zelenskyy and, by extension, Europe that he is playing with World War III,” Babiš said in March.  Babiš’ line echoes that of Georgia’s ruling party, Georgian Dream, which has stoked fears of war with Russia to justify a sharp turn away from Europe. But Tomáš Cirhan, a political analyst at Masaryk University in Brno, said Babiš is trying to win votes by appealing to a part of Czech society that is concerned increased defense spending will come at the expense of local services. He’s “a pragmatist populist politician trying to say what he needs to get their support, rather than being ideologically a pro-Russian person,” said Cirhan, noting Babiš’ “firm” track record on Russia when he was prime minister from 2017-2021.  Much will depend on whether Babiš forms a coalition with far-left or far-right fringe parties, which are far more explicitly anti-EU and pro-Russian, Cirhan added.  Czechia has spearheaded an arms initiative to accelerate ammunition supplies to Kyiv and has welcomed a vast number of Ukrainian refugees. | Michal Cizek/Getty Images Babiš did not respond to a request for comment. REVENGE SABOTAGE Although the Kremlin has consistently denied any foreign interference in Czechia, the fake news barrage fits into a broader strategy of what experts describe as an aggressive campaign of hybrid warfare. In its annual report published in July, the Czech intelligence service said Russia had used the Telegram messenger service to recruit new agents to spy on and target aid and military sites related to Ukraine.  Many of the agents did not know they were working for Russia, the report said, having been recruited by middlemen.  A spokesperson for the Czech Military Intelligence Service, Jan Pejšek, told POLITICO that the country’s strong support for Ukraine had “led to a reaction in the form of increased activity of Russian intelligence services on Czech territory, including cyber attacks.” The ultimate goal, said Šefčíková of the Prague Security Studies Institute, “is to sow confusion, fear and uncertainty about what’s true and what is real.”  Combating it is not straightforward. Like many European countries, Czechia has banned Russian state media outlets like Sputnik and RT. In March last year it led a successful European effort to sanction the Voice of Europe news website for leading a pro-Russian influence operation.  Yet according to Boháč of Voxpot, as many as one quarter of Czech fake news either directly translates or paraphrases lines from Russian state media. “There is a systematic breaching of sanctions,” he said, blaming a lack of political will to enforce the rules. In emailed comments, a spokesperson for Czechia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said enforcement of sanctions fell under the remit of the country’s Financial Analytical Office (FAÚ) and “where relevant, the police.” The FAU redirected POLITICO to the Ministry of Finance, which cited the “legal obligation of confidentiality” as a reason not to give further details. Russia’s Foreign Ministry did not respond to a request for comment. Czechia’s relatively short history as a liberal democracy means the government is loath to appear as a censor, according to Cirhan, the political analyst. The Czech intelligence service said Russia had used the Telegram messenger service to recruit new agents to spy on and target aid and military sites related to Ukraine. | Jaap Arriens/Getty Images  “Any attempts to close some media outlets or some websites claiming that they are disinformation websites is a very sensitive topic indeed,” he noted. SPOT THE FOREIGN INFLUENCE Further complicating the fight against interference is that proving Russian involvement is not always straightforward — even for seasoned propaganda-watchers.  There have been some documented cases of financial and other ties among Czech media figures or politicians and Russian-linked entities. But “in other cases there is ideological or narrative alignment, but no direct proof,” said Šefčíková.  Establishing the exact share of what is Kremlin-directed malign activity versus homegrown content that happens to align with Russian interests is “almost impossible,” she added.  However, the best defense against fake news is trust in traditional media and democratic institutions, she argued. In that case, the country stands a good chance of fighting back against disinformation. In 2024, the Disinformation Resilience Index — a regional ranking of 10 Central and Eastern European countries — rated Czechia as “strong.” But the report also warned of a “rising sense of uncertainty within Czech society and a growing distrust towards the state, its political leaders, the media, and even among Czech citizens themselves.” It’s likely to be music to Moscow’s ears. 

President Donald Trump on Friday reiterated his claim that critical television coverage of him is “illegal” and pushed back on criticisms that his administration was taking actions that chill free speech. “When 97 percent of the stories are bad about a person, it’s no longer free speech,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office, complaining about an apparent asymmetry between his victory in the 2024 election and his treatment by media organizations. It was not immediately clear what statistics or laws he was referencing. Trump’s comments came days after Disney indefinitely suspended the late night host Jimmy Kimmel after Federal Communications Commissioner Brendan Carr suggested on a podcast that his agency may take regulatory action against ABC, which Disney owns. Kimmel drew ire over comments he made about Charlie Kirk, the conservative activist and White House ally who was shot and killed last week. After Kimmel was suspended, Carr said “I don’t think this is the last shoe to drop” and suggested the FCC — an agency, overseen by Congress, designed to act independently from the president — may target other shows, including ABC’s “The View.” The Kimmel saga caused Democrats and some free speech hawks to protest. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer demanded Carr’s resignation. One notable Republican also weighed in: Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, who on a podcast released Friday called Carr’s actions “dangerous as hell” and “right out of ‘Goodfellas.’” Trump in the Oval Office defended Carr, calling him “incredible” and “a great American.” He said he disagreed with Cruz. “I think he’s a courageous person,” Trump said of Carr. “He doesn’t like to see the airwaves be used illegally and incorrectly.”

Jamie Dettmer is opinion editor and a foreign affairs columnist at POLITICO Europe. The five stone-faced police officers that detained Irish comedy writer Graham Linehan at Heathrow airport for three trans critical posts this week didn’t unholster their sidearms, but they nevertheless managed to shoot themselves in the foot. Or, to be more accurate, they shot British Prime Minister Keir Starmer in the foot, with a rankling arrest that unsurprisingly sparked a political firestorm — and the free speech debacle couldn’t have come at a better time for far-right ReformUK party leader Nigel Farage. “Politics is downstream from culture,” the late American conservative publisher Andrew Breitbart once famously argued. This is the maxim now guiding MAGA ideologues as well as the likes of Farage, who is now posing as a free-speech defender and stirring the pot for the benefit of populists. Never one to mute his hyperbole, Farage was touring Washington this week, stirring up trouble as only he knows how. Testifying before the House Judiciary Committee — a panel chaired by Republican Representative Jim Jordan, who’s been examining the impact British and European online safety rules are having on U.S. tech giants — the U.K.’s roister-in-chief was in his provocative element, reveling in clashes with irate Democratic lawmakers. Gleefully raising Linehan’s arrest as another example of the “war on freedom” being waged in Britain — and even Europe for that matter — he compared the U.K. to the likes of North Korea, calling it an “illiberal and authoritarian censorship regime.” He also highlighted the case of Lucy Connolly, a local politician’s wife who was jailed for 31 months for inciting violence, after calling for asylum seekers’ hotels to be set alight. Her goading posts came at the height of the Islamophobic anti-migrant riots that broke out in Britain in 2024. Now released, Connolly has grandiosely dubbed herself Starmer’s “political prisoner,” and her case has became a cause célèbre in MAGA world — despite the fact that in a more orderly era in the U.S., her incendiary remarks may well have been construed as posing a direct threat to public safety and, therefore, not protected under the First Amendment. But for Farage and his MAGA friends, Connolly is a political martyr, and His Majesty’s Prison at Peterborough, where she served her sentence, is no different than a Stalin-era Siberian Gulag. During a visit to the White House this winter, Starmer had rebutted rising MAGA criticism over the Labour government’s handling of freedom of expression and online rules, as U.S. Vice President JD Vance told him that Britain’s “infringements on free speech” also “affect American technology companies and by extension American citizens.”  “We’ve had free speech for a very, very long time in the United Kingdom – and it will last for a very, very long time,” Starmer chided gently in response. But according to Farage this week, Starmer had “talked about our proud history of free speech but what people say, what they do, are two very different things.” And isn’t that the truth. Of course, increasingly open-ended and vaguely drafted online safety regulations, as well as some undeniably heavy-handed policing of speech in Britain and elsewhere should be cause for some alarm. And it has prompted many across the political spectrum — not just populists — to rightly to question whether there’s a drift toward “unfreedom” in Western democracies. In Britain, police are now making around 12,000 arrests a year for offensive speech and social media posts that cause anxiety. For Nigel Farage and his MAGA friends, Lucy Connolly is a political martyr. | Neil Hall/EPA For many, the balance between freedom of expression and protection has gone askew and cancel culture has run amok — Linehan’s arrest certainly highlights that something’s amiss. And this has given Farage an opening. But what is it that really troubles the ReformUK leader and MAGA-style populists in the U.S. and Europe? Are they genuine advocates of the classic liberal virtue of free speech, or are they provocateurs using it to foment resentment in a culture war they hope to win? “You can say what you like, I don’t care because that is what free speech is,” Farage told a Democratic lawmaker during the midweek hearing. But despite his righteous rhetoric, much like his MAGA allies, Farage seems more intent on simply replacing the “woke language” of liberals with the anti-woke language of the populist right, on silencing and brow-beating opponents, and on intimidating media outlets  as best he can on the way to establish public cultural dominance. For example, just days before he set off for Washington, a county council led by Farage’s ReformUK party banned the main local newspaper and its website from attending events, and told the outlet’s reporters that elected officials wouldn’t respond to their queries. The ban imposed by Nottinghamshire County Council came after the newspaper had published a series of stories the municipal authority leader claimed “consistently misrepresented” the party. So much for free speech. Now lifted after Farage had a “little chat” with the council amid mounting public criticism, this ban is part and parcel of how Reform often tries to intimidate reporters — or “thuggish bullying” as it’s been described by the Independent’s David Maddox. But bans and bullying are part of the tactics used by every far-right populist. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán was the sherpa on this, shaping what he likes to call an “illiberal democracy.” U.S.-based think tank Freedom House labels Hungary as only partly free as its government “moved to institute policies that hamper the operations of opposition groups, journalists, universities, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) whose perspectives it finds unfavorable.” MAGA ideologues in the U.S. have now enlarged the Orbán playbook, targeting NGOs and universities and so-called mainstream media with gusto. They see themselves not just as warriors fighting a national battle but as combatants in a civilizational, politico-cultural crusade that’s to be carried out well beyond America’s shores. As far as they see it, they need save Western civilization — from itself, if necessary. Which means that for them, domestic and foreign policy are one and the same, and that liberal Europe also has to be remade in the MAGA image. “Trump and his MAGA camp believe a dominant liberal establishment has skewed U.S. culture towards a weak progressive ideology that does a disservice to America. This ideology is being fed by a ‘globalist elite,’ chief among them Europeans. The new administration is therefore going after all the liberal holdouts, at home and abroad,” argued Célia Belin of the European Council on Foreign Relations. “MAGA’s solidarity with conservative, nationalist and populist movements in Europe has an objective: finding partners for Trump’s effort to transform global culture.”

Nigel Farage claimed the U.K. had become like North Korea in its approach to free speech while giving evidence to the U.S. Congress Wednesday. In his opening statement, Farage, who was wearing a GB News badge, said the U.K. had sunk into an “awful authoritarian situation,” citing the cases of Lucy Connolly and Graham Linehan. Connolly was jailed after calling for migrant hotels to be “set fire” to in a post on X amid the Southport Riots last summer. Farage described her post as “intemperate.” Linehan was arrested by police at Heathrow Airport this week for posts, also made on X, about trans people. Farage said what happened to Linehan could “happen to any American.” Farage warned the U.K.’s Online Safety Act would “damage trade between our countries” and ended by asking “At what point did we become North Korea?” Neither Connolly nor Linehan were arrested under the U.K.’s Online Safety Act, rather the Public Order Act of 1986. Three hours before Farage’s appearance, U.K. prime minister Keir Starmer used his weekly session in front of the House of Commons to attack Farage. “He’s flown to America, to badmouth and talk down our country,” Starmer said. “Worse than that… he’s gone there to lobby the Americans to impose sanctions on this country, which will harm working people. You cannot get more unpatriotic than that. It’s a disgrace.”  Farage also came under fire from U.S. Congressman Jamie Raskin, the committee’s leading Democratic member, during the session. Before Farage gave his opening statement, Raskin labelled the Clacton MP a  “far-right, pro-Putin politician” a “Donald Trump sycophant and wannabe,” and a “free speech imposter.” “There is no free speech crisis in Britain,” he continued. “Mr Starmer has not shut down GB News, a station Mr Farage hosts a show on.” Raskin added Farage should be talking to his own Parliament about his concerns. The two sparred over freedom of speech in July, when Raskin was in the U.K. with a delegation from the House of Representatives.

Israel killed five journalists during an airstrike in Gaza, news outlet Al Jazeera reported.  Anas al-Sharif, a prominent Al Jazeera reporter, was killed in a tent alongside four colleagues and two bystanders, the Qatari-owned network said. He shared a video of Israel’s “relentless bombardment” of Gaza shortly before he died. The Israel Defense Forces confirmed the strike, claiming that al-Sharif, who is Palestinian, headed a Hamas terrorist cell and led “advanced rocket attacks” against Israel.  Al Jazeera has repeatedly denied allegations about al-Sharif’s links to Hamas, and the United Nations special rapporteur for freedom of expression, Irene Khan, said last month that the claims were unsubstantiated.  “I have lived through pain in all its details, tasted suffering and loss many times, yet I never once hesitated to convey the truth as it is, without distortion or falsification,” Al Sharif’s final message, posted on X, reads. “So that Allah may bear witness against those who stayed silent, those who accepted our killing.” Israel has barred foreign journalists from reporting in Gaza, but Al Jazeera has relied on local reporters to cover the war. Israel has accused the network of acting as a “mouthpiece” for Hamas and has killed other Al Jazeera journalists. American nongovernmental organization the Committee to Protect Journalists condemned the attack as an example of Israel labeling journalists as militants without providing credible evidence. Some 186 journalists have been killed since the start of the Israel-Hamas war in October 2023, at least 178 of them by Israel, according to the CPJ. “Journalists are civilians and must never be targeted,” CPJ Regional Director Sara Qudah said in a statement. Israel is escalating its assault in Gaza despite losing international support over the humanitarian crisis in the coastal enclave. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Friday approved a plan to take control of Gaza City, and said Sunday he expected to complete a new offensive “fairly quickly.” 

Elena Vasilyeva is a Belarusian journalist based in Warsaw, Poland. She explores the parallels between her country and others through her writing and documentary video reporting. Talking about the latest elections in the pub, first you lower your voice. Then, you come to realize the smart move isn’t to talk about politics at all. When someone sends a link with the latest news to the group chat, the conversation dies. It’s neither smart nor polite to send such a link. It can be seen as a provocation, or it might actually be one. And you certainly don’t discuss politics with a taxi driver because, well, you never know. I bet you can’t imagine this happening in your country. I couldn’t either — until it did. For me, it all started with a “thank you” in 2017. That spring, my best friend and I had called an Uber to take us to the “anti-parasite” protest in Minsk. At the time, people had taken to the streets to protest a law that would force the unemployed to pay a so-called parasite tax. In the 90s, international media referred to Belarus as a “Soviet-era relic.” It wasn’t a pleasant label, but it was probably accurate. Twenty years later, the label remained, but by then, it was neither pleasant nor true. There we were, openly chatting about our country’s political situation in the car, involving our Uber driver in the conversation. And we planned to continue our discussion at a trendy bar after the protest was over. But that’s not how our day went. At the protest, my friend was detained. Waiting for him on the first floor of the police station, all I knew was that he’d been brought to that building. And I remember meeting a woman there who didn’t even have that luxury. She was stuck waiting, not knowing whether the man she loved was there or some other police department in the city. My friend, however, was released later that evening. And that’s when I first heard it: “Be grateful they let him go.” I heard those same words again three years later, in 2020, right before another protest — we had many that summer. But this time, the police tried to detain every single journalist who was covering the event — literally, all of them. A blue van, the kind used by security forces, pulled up to where we reporters had gathered. They loaded all of us into the van and took us to the police station, stopping along the way to pick up any journalists who were running late to cover the protest. We were offered tea and cookies, and were released once the demonstration had ended. Again, they said: “Be grateful we let you go the same day.” Then, the gaps between those “be gratefuls” started getting shorter. Just a week after the cookies, I was asked if I had footage of a student march. Six journalists had been detained and accused of “leading the column” rather than covering the protests, and the video could help prove they didn’t. Those journalists weren’t released that evening, though. Nor were they released the next evening. This time, the court had decided on three days of detention. And again, I caught myself thinking: “We should all be grateful.” In an administrative case, there was always a chance it could have been 14 days — let alone the possibility of it turning into a criminal case. So, I didn’t dwell too much on my unhealthy “gratitude.” As it turns out, however, a criminal case for journalists was on the way — we need only have waited a couple months more. It didn’t take long after that for political dissidents in Belarus to reach the point of saying “thank you” for a year in prison. To them, a year became so little, many of considered it lucky. “I don’t want to say it, but that’s a lucky verdict,” is what they would say publicly. Then, that phase passed too. And by 2022, when a group of Belarusian activists tried to stop Russian military trains heading to Ukraine, the phrase became: “Be grateful it’s not the death penalty.” Because stopping a train could be qualified as terrorism — and Belarus still has the death penalty. Today, I think back on that woman in the police station in 2017. Her name is Marina Adamovich, the wife of Belarusian opposition leader Mikola Statkevich. And again, she’s in the same position she was all those years ago. Her husband was detained again in 2020, and has been kept incommunicado for 900 days. Back then, I suppose she “should have been grateful” when he came home the next day. I’m sure she wasn’t. But I was. I was grateful. My friend was released, and we went to the bar to celebrate. They made good cocktails there, and we could sit there and talk about politics, or anything else in the world. Just like in any other bar in Minsk. And we were able to carry on doing that for the next few years. But I couldn’t have imagined where our good manners could lead us. Now, all the bars I frequent — though not yet favorites — are outside Belarus. Here, it’s possible to talk about anything at all, including politics. And sometimes in these bars I hear Europeans or Americans compare their countries to mine, and say things like: “The screws are tightening here too.” My Belarusian friends usually get irritated by this. To them, it still feels like there’s a long way from canceling Stephen Colbert’s late night show to putting journalists in prison for years. But for me, I feel relieved when someone refuses to say that first “thank you” just because an evil could have been worse. That is how it grows.

Shyam Bhatia is an award-winning author and war reporter based in London. His books include “India’s Nuclear Bomb,” “Brighter than the Baghdad Sun” and Benazir Bhutto’s biography, “Goodbye Shahzadi.” The U.K.’s ability to laugh at itself — and listen to those who disagree — was once a point of national pride. From the satire of television’s “That Was The Week That Was” and “Spitting Image” to Hyde Park hecklers and heated radio call-ins, the country’s democracy was loud, cheeky and gloriously irreverent. That Britain is vanishing. Once admired for its rough-and-tumble pluralism, the U.K. long saw freedom of expression as a badge of honor. It tolerated irreverence — even prized it as proof of liberal strength — and saw dissent as not merely allowed but necessary. Now, that legacy is being quietly dismantled by legislation and fear, replaced by a more brittle state that polices protests and placards, as well as satire, sarcasm and even private WhatsApp messages; a state that, in the name of public order, criminalizes the freedoms once used to mock the powerful. Take the case of Marianne Sorrell: An 80-year-old retired teacher who was arrested in Cardiff for silently holding a placard at a peaceful pro-Palestine rally. She was detained and held in custody for nearly 27 hours. Police searched her home, seizing items such as books, percussion instruments, and a walking stick. Her bail conditions even barred her from returning to Wales. Her crime? Quietly dissenting. Then came Jon Farley: A 67-year-old former teacher in Leeds who, at a Gaza vigil, held up a cartoon from “Private Eye” — Britain’s longest-running satirical magazine, famed for lampooning politicians and exposing hypocrisy. The cartoon in question was mocking the government’s anti-terror rhetoric. And in response, Farley was arrested under the Terrorism Act 2000, handcuffed and interrogated for hours. “I was searched and treated like a criminal — for holding a satirical cartoon,” he said. And when he explained where the cartoon came from, by his account, the officers just looked blank. The magazine’s editor Ian Hislop was alarmed too: “If we’ve reached a point where holding up a ‘Private Eye’ cartoon gets you arrested under the Terrorism Act, then we’ve truly lost the plot.” But the intrusions aren’t limited to public space; they’re inside British homes as well. Earlier this year, Maxie Allen and Rosalind Levine — the parents of a 9-year-old girl in Hertfordshire — were arrested in front of their daughter after exchanging messages critical of her school’s new headteacher in a WhatsApp group. Six officers arrived at their home, seized their devices, and the couple was interrogated for hours over allegations of malicious communications. “We’ve gone from being concerned parents to criminal suspects — over a private conversation,” said Allen. The climate of fear has even extended into Britain’s comedy circuit. A couple of years ago, comedian Joe Lycett revealed he’d been reported to the police by an audience member offended by one of his jokes. Officers launched an investigation and asked Lycett to submit a written explanation of the routine. In the end, no charges were filed, but the case highlights how lighthearted satire can trigger official scrutiny. | Andy Rain/EPA “To be fair to them the fuzz were very nice about it,” he later said. “But felt they had a duty to investigate.” In the end, no charges were filed, but the case highlights how lighthearted satire can trigger official scrutiny — and why many in the profession may choose silence over summons. The reach of censorship now extends to include the murky terrain of “hate” as well. Introduced with the intention of protecting marginalized groups, hate crimes legislation can be applied with disturbing vagueness, with one widely cited example of police in 2020 investigating more than 120,000 so-called “non-crime hate incidents” — remarks that aren’t deemed criminal but are still logged in official records, sometimes affecting future employment checks. There’s other legislation treading similarly hazy ground: In 2022, the government passed the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act, giving law enforcement expanded powers to shut down protests deemed “noisy” or “disruptive.” It was a watershed moment, where volume not violence became grounds for arrest. And the law now acts as a muffler on public expression, particularly for those on the margins. Meanwhile, new legislation like the Online Safety Act empowers regulators to censor digital content deemed “harmful,” which is a dangerously elastic term. The act is meant as a shield for children and vulnerable users but, in practice, it extends state reach into satire, parody and legitimate political critique. And with pressure from the U.S. mounting after last week’s visit from Washington’s Congressional delegation, it’s becoming a transatlantic problem. When speech becomes risk, silence becomes strategy — and democratic discourse collapses inward. This isn’t about law and order. It’s about fear and control. And while the government insists it’s a matter of “balance” and protecting people from harm, especially in a volatile political climate, balance implies proportionality — and there’s nothing proportionate about arresting an elderly woman for a slogan or raiding a family home over a WhatsApp message. These examples aren’t outliers. They’re signals of a state clutching its narrative so tightly, it risks suffocating dissent altogether. None of these people were violent. None incited hatred. None posed any credible threat to public safety. Yet they were all treated as suspects — watched, arrested, interrogated and, in some cases, banned from expressing themselves again. And what of the baton-wielding police arresting elderly citizens as if they were threats to national security? They’re increasingly detached from the cultural heritage they claim to protect. There is, in all this, a sense of something quietly slipping away — not just rights but a deeper understanding of what it meant to be British. The tragedy isn’t just the loss of liberty but the fading memory of having once possessed it. Of course, the injustice is nothing new — what’s new is who it’s reaching. For decades, many people of color in Britain endured surveillance, suspicion and suppression, often without the headlines or outrage. Now, much of the majority-white population is getting its first taste of what others have long known: Free expression in the U.K. has always been conditional — on who you are, what you say and how palatable your truth is. There’s a reason comedians are self-censoring, journalists are consulting lawyers before making jokes, and people are hesitating before forwarding memes — in case it’s misunderstood, flagged as offensive or taken out of context. Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park — the open-air emblem of unfiltered public expression — was a highlight for many. Today, the space stands eerily silent. | CGP Grey via WikiCommons We’re witnessing the quiet dismantling of a democratic norm: The right to be irreverent, critical or even foolish without being criminalized. British icon George Orwell warned us of this: “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” But this isn’t just a domestic crisis. It touches everyone — even those just passing through. The U.K. once drew visitors not only for its cathedrals and castles but for its noisy, opinionated democracy. Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park — the open-air emblem of unfiltered public expression — was a highlight for many. Today, the space stands eerily silent. The crowds are thinner. The speakers fewer. The spirit diminished. And yet, Britain continues to lecture others. London-based human rights organizations are quick to highlight repression abroad, but perhaps the time has come to turn their gaze homeward. The erosion of civil liberties isn’t just something that happens in faraway autocracies. It is happening here — quietly, legally and with increasing speed. So, a word of caution: The Britain many once imagined — witty, tolerant, open — is no longer here. In today’s reality, a careless remark in a pub, an ironic slogan on a shirt or a misheard joke can attract a knock on the door. The spirit that made this island loud, plural and proud is flickering. And while Britain isn’t lost yet, it certainly needs watching.