The Indian Constitution guarantees freedom of speech and expression under Article 19(1)(a). The Supreme Court has repeatedly recognised the press as a vital democratic institution. In Indian Express Newspapers v Union of India, the Court emphasised that an independent press is essential for public accountability. More recently, the Court has continued to affirm that free expression occupies a preferred position within India’s constitutional order. Yet India now ranks 157th out of 180 countries — below Palestine, Pakistan (153rd), and Bangladesh (152nd) — a placement that cannot be explained away as a problem of abstract metrics.

The RSF report identifies several concrete factors behind India’s decline. Colonial-era laws — including sedition, criminal defamation, and anti-state activity provisions — continue to be deployed against journalists. The Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act has been increasingly invoked in cases involving reporters covering Kashmir and minority communities. Recent legislative developments, including the Telecommunications Act and the Digital Personal Data Protection Act 2023, expand the State’s regulatory reach over digital media. Economic dependency compounds the problem: RSF notes that Indian media organisations rely heavily on government advertising revenue, structurally compromising editorial independence. The result is a landscape where critical journalists face harassment campaigns, coordinated online abuse, arbitrary arrest, and what amounts to judicially assisted silencing.

International human rights law provides the framework for understanding why this matters. Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) protects the right to seek, receive, and impart information. The United Nations Human Rights Committee has clarified  that States must create an environment in which journalists can operate without fear of intimidation, harassment, or legal retaliation. The 2026 RSF report identified the “criminalisation of journalism” as one of the principal forces driving press freedom’s global decline — defined as the misuse of defamation statutes, national security laws, and emergency legislation against journalists. RSF’s legal indicator specifically measures the adequacy of the legal framework governing journalism, the independence of the judiciary, and the extent to which legal mechanisms are used to constrain rather than protect reporting. India was among the countries where this indicator worsened most severely in 2026, reflecting a growing pattern in which the law functions less as a safeguard for journalists than as an instrument deployed against them.

The European Court of Human Rights has consistently warned against measures that create a “chilling effect” on public-interest reporting. In Cumpănă and Mazăre v Romania, the Court held that disproportionate sanctions deter not only the individuals targeted but also others engaged in public debate. The European Union’s 2024 Anti-SLAPP Directive, adopted precisely to protect journalists from abusive litigation, reflects a growing recognition that legal processes can themselves become instruments of suppression. India has no equivalent statutory protection.

India’s position in the 2026 Index should be read for what it is: an indictment of the conditions in which journalism operates in a constitutional democracy. The gap between Article 19(1)(a)’s guarantee and the reality facing journalists covering the government, Kashmir, or communal violence is not incidental. It reflects deliberate legal choices. Constitutional protection that cannot withstand the deployment of sedition laws, anti-terror statutes, and advertising-revenue pressure is protection in name only. Meaningful press freedom requires not just a permissive constitutional text, but institutions and procedures that actively resist its erosion.

As of 2024, Afghanistan ranks 178th of 180 countries in Reporters Without Borders’ Press Freedom Index—a staggering fall of 56 places since 2021. Since their return to power, the Taliban have shuttered more than 300 media outlets and pushed hundreds of journalists—particularly women—out of public life. This post outlines the legal violations, ideological frameworks, and urgent international responsibilities related to press freedom in Afghanistan.

From Constitutional Protections to Theocratic Controls

Under the former Islamic Republic, a combination of domestic and international legal frameworks—including Article 34 of the 2004 Constitution, the 2009 Mass Media Law (amended in 2015), and the Access to Information Law (2014, revised in 2018 and 2019)—guaranteed freedom of expression and institutionalised access to information.These safeguards, though unevenly implemented, enabled independent journalism to flourish amidst the Taliban insurgency.

While the Taliban nominally acknowledge aspects of these laws, they have replaced them in practice with a theocratic model rooted in hisbah (moral policing) and siyāsa sharʿiyya (discretionary Islamic governance). Drawing on the ideology articulated by Chief Justice Abdul Hakim Haqqani, this model collapses the distinction between law and fatwa, enabling coercive edicts without codified legal safeguards. It is enforced through vague instruments such as 11-point media guidelines (2021) and the 2024 Law on the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice (VPVPV) which prohibit content “contrary to Islam,” mandate prior approval of media, and—in some provinces—ban women’s voices. Seven additional new directives were issued in 2024 alone.

These measures violate Article 19 of the ICCPR, which guarantees the right to freedom of expression, including the freedom to seek, receive and impart information of all kinds. The UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Afghanistan, Richard Bennett, has stressed that “freedom of expression has been severely restricted,” with journalists facing arbitrary arrest, intimidation, and gender-based exclusion.

Criminalisation and Collapse

According to the Afghanistan Journalists Center, 181 press freedom violations occurred in 2024 alone, including 50 arrests. At least five journalists received prison sentences between two and five years. Women journalists have been disproportionately affected—84% have lost their jobs, and many provinces have banned them from field reporting or broadcasting.

In early 2025, Radio Begum, a women-led outlet, was closed for alleged collaboration with banned foreign media, and allowed to resume only after agreeing to vague Taliban “principles”. Such coercion, including the criminalisation of collaboration with exiled media, illustrates the regime’s arbitrary use of authority.

Meanwhile, widespread economic hardship undermines media sustainability. One in four Afghan households now struggles to afford food, and media outlets face prohibitive licensing fees, arbitrary taxation, and the withdrawal of donor support.

Digital Dissent and Taliban Control

During their first rule (1996–2001), the Taliban banned most forms of independent media and criminalised entertainment. During their insurgency (2004-2021), they reversed the course—leveraging media and digital tools for recruitment, propaganda, and psychological warfare. Since returning to power, they have shifted tactics once more: rather than banning media outright, the Taliban seek to maximally control the information environment. Fewer than half of pre-2021 outlets still operate, and many have shifted to regime-approved formats.

The Taliban exploit digital platforms to tighten control. They monitor digital activity through surveillance tools. Their state-run Radio Television Afghanistan, among others, floods platforms like X with regime messaging to drown out dissent—a tactic widely used in other authoritarian contexts. Facebook, WhatsApp, and other apps remain critical for public access to information, but self-censorship is widespread.

Why Press Freedom Still Matters

Despite the repression, Afghanistan’s journalists continue to report human rights abuses, contributing to investigations by international mechanisms such as the UN Human Rights Council and, (indirectly,) the International Criminal Court. Independent media play a vital role in exposing corruption, informing humanitarian responses, and amplifying marginalised voices.

These functions align with Afghanistan’s obligations under the UN Convention Against Corruption, ratified in 2008, which calls for public participation and access to information. Survey data show that women place a higher value on media than men, despite having lower access—making their exclusion particularly damaging to civic discourse.

What Should Be Done

Support for Afghanistan’s media must go beyond symbolic gestures. Abandoning journalists now would undo two decades of international investment in the country’s media development and erase hard-won gains for transparency and accountability. Donors should prioritise support for women-led and provincial outlets, fund investigative and human rights journalism, and scale up digital safety initiatives. Exiled media outlets require sustainable funding and technical support to counter Taliban narratives. Sanctions should be imposed on Taliban officials responsible for media suppression.

Another year should not pass with statements of concern alone. The international community must act—decisively and collectively—to preserve what remains of post-2001 Afghanistan media landscape before only Taliban narratives remain.

Six civil society groups are credited with initiating the process of drafting a set of principles in this sensitive area. The civil society version of the Commonwealth Media Principles was published in 2018 using somewhat more exacting language. It was later revised by senior officials of the member governments in terms that proved acceptable to all member states using the principle of decision-making by consensus.

But therein lies a sharp tension with the expectations of 21st century populations for monitoring and enforcement of the human rights protections that exist in international law. The Media Principles acknowledge the media’s essential role in the democratic process by promoting transparency and accountability and sets out in broad terms how member states “should” or “must” respect these non-binding guidelines to ensure that the media can work free from violence, intimidation or interference. Yet no adequate enforcement mechanism has yet been considered nor discussed.

The task is urgent. Targeted attacks aimed at silencing journalists have increased alarmingly in Commonwealth states, as elsewhere. Between 2006 and 2023, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) condemned journalists’ killings in 16 member countries. The rate of impunity for those killings is about ten percent higher than the global rate of (now) 85 percent, meaning that almost all instances go unpunished. Those figures should be unacceptable to a multilateral organisation which aspires to champion free speech, accountability, and the rule of law.

On 2 November 2024, UNESCO’s Director-General published its biennial report on journalists’ killings with a renewed call for states everywhere to stop impunity for these crimes. The Commonwealth’s Media Principles as adopted call for state authorities to “act decisively” to end impunity, yet no action is foreseen to remedy the poor record of its member countries. Civil society groups urge the organisation to exert its influence by providing technical and legal expertise to states that require help or lack resources and engaging vigorously with ongoing international initiatives to protect media freedom and journalists’ safety.

A second urgent task is to mobilise resolutely to bring about the speedy repeal of punitive laws that criminalise speech and the legitimate work of journalists in member states. During the CHOGM, meeting the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative and Commonwealth Journalists Association released startling evidence about the scale of deviations from international standards regarding legal protections for free expression in Commonwealth states. Their forthcoming research shows that 41 member countries continue to criminalise defamation; 48 retain laws related to sedition; and 37 still have blasphemy-related laws. Many of those laws carry harsh jail sentences for offenders.

The Media Principles say only that Commonwealth governments “should consider repealing or amending laws which unduly restrict freedom of expression”. NGOs wish to see action-oriented initiatives in cooperation with national governments and legislatures, with institutional support to achieve compliance with global standards. International lawyers have called on the UK to lead these efforts, as most of those criminal laws have their origins in colonial times.

The Leaders’ Statement and Samoa Communiqué urges member states to take “concrete and meaningful steps” to implement the Media Principles within their domestic frameworks. Yet several member states have conspicuously declined to engage with those who protest against the repression of media independence and free speech. That must change.

The global assault against free speech mirrors a global slide towards the breakdown in the rule of law. The Commonwealth must now back up its words with decisive actions to stand on the side of the watchdogs for accountable governance and media freedom.

‘Seditious publication’ was one of several offences in the Crimes Ordinance that were based on the British concept of ‘seditious intention’.  Since 2020, the Hong Kong authorities had reactivated enforcement of these type of offences. Against the Stand News defendants, the prosecution claimed that they and others agreed to publish and/or reproduce publications that involved, among others, ‘bringing into hatred or contempt or to excite disaffection against the Chinese Central Authorities and the Hong Kong Government’, and ‘raising discontent or disaffection amongst Hong Kong inhabitants’.

The trial began in October 2022. The trial court reserved verdict in June 2023 but delayed delivering it, pending the Hong Kong Court of Appeal’s judgment in the Tam Tak Chi case. This author discussed this appellate judgment in an April 2024 blogpost.

When the trial court delivered its verdict convicting all the Stand News defendants on 29 August 2024, it rejected the defence’s constitutional arguments, relying on the Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal’s decision in Tam’s application for leave to appeal, which held that it was not reasonably arguable that the seditious intention offences were legally uncertain and disproportionate restrictions of freedom of expression. Instead, the verdict, now officially translated into English, offers a detailed and contemporary approach on the distinction between journalism and sedition.

The prosecution relied on 17 articles (which was less than 1% of Stand News’s output) as ‘overt acts’ of the criminal agreement. The trial court found 11 to have ‘seditious intention’. Nine were blog articles, i.e. short articles of 500 to 1,000 Chinese characters. The trial court found them to have denigrated law enforcement actions, attacked the Hong Kong National Security Law and the seditious intention offences, and used incomparable examples to incite public hatred of the Hong Kong Government. Two went further to rally readers to be ready to act against the Chinese Central Authorities. None substantiated claims with any objective basis.

The foundation of the findings above was the trial court’s appreciation of the ‘context of the relevant time period’, following the jury directions reported in R v Aldred (1909). Reading opinion surveys, the trial court concluded that throughout the publication period, a few to several million Hong Kong inhabitants distrusted the Chinese Central Authorities and the Hong Kong Government, and were susceptible to incitement, disinformation or rumours. Conflicts between the Government and inhabitants and social divisions became more likely to happen.

Pui-kuen Chung and Patrick Lam, the two former chief editors, were convicted on the findings that each of them had, in that capacity and knowing of the intention of the seditious articles, approved them for publication, and that each of them had agreed with Tony Tsoi, who directed Stand News’s corporate proprietor, regarding the continuous publication of seditious articles on Stand News. The editors’ claim that they only sought to achieve quality journalism and disseminate information and pluralistic views was rejected.

Rather, the trial court found from its reading of Stand News’s ‘Launch Statement’ (which included this indication: ‘Hong Kong is the home turf of Hongkongers; defending the home turf is our unyielding stance.’) that this online media (and its backers) had a political proposition, which was ‘Hong Kong’s localism for Hongkongers’ autonomy excluding China’. And, during the Anti-ELAB Protests, Stand News allowed itself to ‘become a tool for smearing and vilifying the Central Authorities and the [Hong Kong] Government’.

Whilst the verdict made stark and political findings and it has been seen as exemplifying the decline of Hong Kong’s press freedom, commentaries continue in the press here. For example, John Burns, a political scientist, had written on the press’s watchdog role after the verdict. What the verdict does frown against are articles that offer a singular political viewpoint or interpret governmental acts with exaggeration and emotion. Omitting basic facts in a dispute is risky. Coincidentally, one Hong Kong newspaper’s chief editor wrote to columnists recently, urging them to be ‘more prudent’, base comments on ‘accurate facts’ and be ‘law-abiding and measured’. His note ended ominously: ‘Otherwise it is difficult to say whether one day crisis may come.’

Readers of this blog may find one detail in the verdict remarkable. The trial court referred to British and European free speech and journalistic ethics materials. It was positively impressed with their emphases of ‘good faith’, ‘reliability’ and ‘verification of facts’ in news reporting and of ‘a sufficient factual basis even for a value judgment’. Editorial decision-making carries duties and responsibilities. This Hong Kong verdict’s prohibitions could well be not wildly far from the restrictions on press freedom internationally accepted as permissible.

Alliance of Independent Journalists v Minister of Communication asserts that the government’s decision to shut down the internet in West Papua and Papua province was unlawful. Despite not being the first case concerning a government-imposed shutdown, it is considered a landmark case to this day due to its degree of complexity and wide-ranging consequences.

The bulk of the defence proffered by the Government was related to concerns of national security and public order as a part of their mandate under Law No. 11 of 2008 on Electronic Information and Transactions or the ITE Law [p. 112]. This reflects the classic argumentation previously raised in cases from other jurisdictions like Banashree Gogoi v Union of India and Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights v Minister of State, National Security. The government saw fit to quash the protests, which arose following news of racist actions committed against Papuans, by throttling or slowing down connectivity in the region. The Ministry, by way of their own admission through no less than nine press releases between the months of August and September [pp. 81-82], had both throttled and even fully blocked connectivity in parts of the island during the two-month period as a way to deter hoaxes and provocative information reported by various news outlets that were alleged to have caused the series of events [pp. 63-64].

As an organisation that advocates and protects — through legal avenues — journalistic integrity and freedom, AJI dealt with these claims by bringing the State to court. Being one of the few court cases where international law is cited a great amount, two assertions quoting the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) were prominent in this case. First, derogations of human rights under Article 4, as provided in General Comment No. 29, can be made chiefly during a state of emergency. Second, as extrapolated by General Comment No. 34, limitations to the exercise of freedom of expression should be done 1) on permissible grounds as provided in Article 19.3 of the Convention, 2) based on the law, and 3) in a proportional manner [pp. 249].

The latter is worth highlighting due to the depth of reasoning by both sides. The condition set out by Article 19.3, with special attention to national security and public order, is often argued in conjunction with the existence of a legal basis. Although the defendants provided several laws that allow for the limitations of freedom of expression and internet connectivity individually, it is evident from the posture of argumentation that correlation between the two is not strong enough, and especially not to such an extent that warrants two months of on-and-off shutdowns. This is even more true when a connection is drawn between AJI’s interests as an entity representing journalists and the accusations thrown at the media. The media, as General Comment No. 34 suggests broadly and specifically in paragraphs 13 through 17, has a special position in conveying information and is an inseparable part of public opinion-making. Independence and accountability as well as accuracy of reports are among the rudimentary principles of the press, so accusations to the contrary are huge claims that could set a precedent for undermining the press’ role in a democracy.

One could not understate how dangerous the repercussions would have been had the court ruled for the defendants. At a time when freedom of expression is often repressed, the last thing Indonesia needs is a judicial branch that fuels the negative framing of the media as untrustworthy. The fourth pillar of democracy needs to be able to do its main job, regardless of medium and interfering motives – that is, delivering truth to the people.