A big week to remember

Index held its annual awards on Wednesday, the biggest night in its organisational calendar. This year another crop of amazing individuals enter the Index fold and we pledge to do as much as possible to help them fight oppression (whilst not forgetting about our previous winners – we will free Toomaj Salehi).

I want the names of the 2024 winners to become household ones, so allow me to repeat them here – Iranian journalist, Nasim Soltanbeygi; Palestinian human rights lawyer, Diala Ayesh; the Ugandan media outlet, Kuchu Times; Russian “artivist”, Aleksandra Skochilenko; and Evgenia Kara-Murza, the wife of former Russian political prisoner Vladimir Kara-Murza, who was the powerhouse behind his release. Read more about the winners here.

It was a big week for Index. It was also a big week for Hong Kong. On Tuesday 45 of the pro-democracy activists HongKong47, as they’re known, were sentenced to between four and 10 years in prison. The Hong Kong authorities have tried to present this as justice and the usual Chinese Communist Party (CCP) nationalists came out of the shadows to attack people who claimed otherwise.

My response to these online trolls is that these people simply campaigned – legally and peacefully – to maintain some semblance of democracy and due process in a city once regarded as the most free in Asia. Fortunately, jail has not fully crushed their spirits. Joshua Wong playfully yelled from court as he was escorted away shouting “I love Hong Kong, bye bye”, whilst Tiffany Yuen wore a Liverpool FC top (the team’s anthem is You’ll Never Walk Alone).

With barely a day to process this grim news, Hong Kong media mogul and democracy activist Jimmy Lai was then in court to resume his case. I’ve not met Jimmy, but through a combination of meeting his remarkable son Sebastien, publishing his letters from prison and reading a lot about him, I feel as if I know him by this stage. Keir Starmer raised Jimmy’s case with Xi Jinping on Monday and I hope this signals a change in direction from the UK government, who’ve been far too quiet on this until now. It’s a disgrace that Jimmy has already spent so many years in jail.

I want to end with news that I heard via Fawzia Koofi, who was a prominent female MP in Afghanistan before she fled the country. It has not been reported internationally – school girls in certain areas of Afghanistan are failing year six on purpose because they are barred from attending the next school year. Repeating the same grade is the only way to stay in school.

The situation for girls and women in Afghanistan is so extreme and horrible that many people simply try not to think about it. But we can’t do that. At our Wednesday awards, a top UK journalist spoke to me specifically about what we can do to help in the UK. It’s a question the Index team often asks; we’ve done a lot of work in this area, including publishing journalism from and by Afghan women and pressing the UK government on its visa policy for Afghan journalists. But it’s clear that we need to do more.

Afghan women and girls are the most censored people in the world today. So if you’re in Afghanistan, reading this right now, know this – you’re not forgotten. A group of dedicated, engaged and influential people and organisations really care. Together we will try our hardest to help.

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