The Silencing Spreads: A Global Wave of Censorship Hits Books, Internet, Press and Justice

Photo: Unsplash | The global machinery of silence is accelerating across continents

There is a particular kind of violence that does not leave bruises. It does not break bones or draw blood. It arrives instead as a letter from a university press, a blocked website, a fingerprint scanner that no longer works, a courtroom verdict that convicts twenty but acquits twenty-five. It arrives as the sound of thousands of printed books being sent to a recycling facility - a sound nobody outside a warehouse will ever hear.

This week, that sound echoed from Brisbane to Buenos Aires, from a village in Assam to a mansion off the Champs-Elysees. In five countries across four continents, the machinery of silencing clicked into gear within days of each other. Not coordinated - these are not the work of a single hand. But the pattern is unmistakable, and the direction is always the same: inward, toward control, toward a version of events that fits cleanly into the narrative of the powerful.

This is not a story about one censorship event. It is a story about the moment you realize they are all the same event.

I. The Book That Never Reached a Child

Photo: Unsplash | Thousands of copies of "Bila, A River Cycle" face recycling in a Queensland warehouse

Jazz Money is a Wiradjuri woman. She is a poet who won the 2025 Kate Challis RAKA Award, which celebrates Indigenous artists. She is a recipient of the First Nations Emerging Career Award from the Australia Council for the Arts. She wrote a children's book called Bila, A River Cycle, illustrated by Matt Chun. It was an Indigenous children's book. It was about a river. It was for children.

It will never reach them.

The University of Queensland Press has pulped every copy. Thousands of books, printed and bound, sitting in storage while the university considers "recycling options" - a sterile phrase for the destruction of art. The reason: Matt Chun, the illustrator, wrote an essay on his personal Substack newsletter in January criticizing how the Australian left and media responded to the Bondi beach shooting, where fifteen people were killed at a Jewish festival in December 2025.BBC News, April 24, 2026

In the essay, Chun criticized Chabad - the Hasidic Jewish organization that organized the festival - because its leader, Rabbi Eli Schlanger, had publicly supported Israel's military actions and illegal settlements in Palestinian territories. Chun accused the "Australian left" of performing respectability to avoid accusations of antisemitism while failing to engage with the actual political context. He criticized media coverage. He wrote about power and silence and the things people refuse to say out loud.

The University of Queensland said Chun's comments were "abhorrent and hateful to the innocent victims of the attack." It said it "cannot overlook or condone them and cannot proceed in a way that suggests endorsement or association." It also said it regretted the impact on Money, "for whom we have enormous respect" - and then it destroyed her book anyway.UQP statement via BBC, April 24, 2026

There is a specific cruelty here that deserves naming. The university did not pull the book because of its content. Bila, A River Cycle is about a river. It is an Indigenous story for Indigenous children. It was killed not for what it said, but for what someone associated with it said in a completely different context, on a completely different platform, about a completely different subject. This is guilt by association rendered as institutional policy. This is collective punishment applied to literature.

And it was not Chun's book that was destroyed. It was Money's. An Aboriginal woman's voice, silenced because a non-Indigenous man expressed a political opinion. The math of whose art gets sacrificed is never random.

The reaction was swift. Award-winning poet Evelyn Araluen rescinded all remaining contracts with UQP. Australian-Palestinian writer Randa Abdel-Fattah - whose disinvitation from the Adelaide literature festival in January had already sparked uproar - announced her upcoming book would be her "first and last" with the press. Melissa Lucashenko and Natalia Figueroa Barroso also terminated partnerships.BBC News, April 24, 2026

The New South Wales Police confirmed they were "working with the Engagement and Hate Crime Unit" in relation to Chun's essay. A man wrote political criticism on his personal newsletter. The police's hate crime unit is now involved. The book is being recycled. The illustrator is under investigation. The author has lost her work.

This is not a story about antisemitism or its boundaries. This is a story about what happens when institutions decide that the safest response to contested speech is to destroy everything it has ever touched - and how that destruction falls heaviest on those who were never the ones speaking.

II. The Digital Iron Curtain

Photo: Unsplash | Russia's sovereign internet is becoming a one-way gate

Halfway across the world, in the town of Vladimir, 190 kilometers from Moscow, a woman named Yulia Grekova tried to organize a protest against internet restrictions. She filed applications with the local authorities, suggested several venues. They replied that all eleven proposed locations would be undergoing street cleaning on the requested date. They offered an alternative. Then they revoked it, citing the danger of Ukrainian drone attack.BBC News / Steve Rosenberg, April 24, 2026

Then the police visited her workplace. A police car and three people. They filmed her signing an official warning from the prosecutor. "I felt like some kind of terrorist," she said.

Similar protest applications were rejected across dozens of Russian towns. In the Moscow region, authorities cited coronavirus concerns - in April 2026. In Penza, officials claimed a rally could not proceed due to a roller-skating masterclass at the requested location. The excuses are not meant to be believed. They are meant to be heard.

Russia's internet crackdown has accelerated dramatically in recent weeks. Access to WhatsApp and Telegram has been heavily restricted. VPN services are being targeted by state regulators. In many parts of Russia, the only sites and services that open on a mobile phone are those approved by the government. The state is promoting its own messenger, MAX - a name that sounds like it was chosen by someone who had never met a human being. People are wary. As former MP Boris Nadezhdin put it: "Many people think that this messenger is made especially by the government to check our messages."BBC News / Steve Rosenberg, April 24, 2026

Putin has acknowledged the disruption, describing it as related to "operational work to prevent terrorist attacks." Officials claim mobile internet blackouts disorient Ukrainian attack drones, though such attacks have continued even in areas where the internet has been switched off. The stated purpose and the observed effect have diverged entirely. The internet goes dark. The drones keep coming. The citizens stay disconnected.

Yulia - a different Yulia, a catering company owner queuing outside the presidential administration to submit a petition - said she was "very scared" and "shaking." She explained that her business website had become inaccessible during internet blocks. "We couldn't generate revenue. My business is entirely on the internet. Without internet access, in this form it will not exist."BBC News / Steve Rosenberg, April 24, 2026

From across the street, security officers were filming the petitioners. And the BBC crew filming them. A matryoshka of surveillance, each layer watching the one inside it.

There is a woman named Maria in Vladimir, strolling with her baby, checking her phone. The taxi app works. State media loads. Google searches don't. Independent news sites don't. "It's much harder to communicate," she said. "We want to keep across the latest news and trends. Instead, we're lagging behind."

Columnist Andrei Kolesnikov from Novaya Gazeta - the opposition outlet that has survived poisonings, assassinations and foreign agent designations - described the project as a digital Iron Curtain. "Russia was always blocked, primarily from the West, which was the source of 'bad, revolutionary, liberal ideas'. It was always like this." The internet was the exception. For two decades, Russians could access the same information as anyone in London or New York. That window is closing.

Activist Yulia Grekova made a crucial observation: the outrage is less about freedom of speech and more about habit. "People have got used to paying for things and ordering taxis with their mobiles. They sit in the bus messaging friends. There are very few people who don't use mobile internet for work, public services and to keep in touch with family. That's why there's such an angry reaction. Everyone's affected."

This is the architecture of modern authoritarianism. It does not need to convince you that censorship is good. It needs to make censorship feel like infrastructure. Like the plumbing. Like something that was always there. And when you notice it is gone, you are told it was for your safety.

III. "Filthy Scum" - The Press War in Argentina

Photo: Unsplash | Argentina's Casa Rosada: the pink palace where press access is now controlled by fingerprint

In Buenos Aires, accredited journalists arrived at the Casa Rosada - the presidential palace - on Thursday morning and tried to enter as they always do, via fingerprint scanning. Their fingerprints did not work. The system had been changed overnight.Al Jazeera, April 23, 2026

The head of Argentina's Secretariat of Communication and Press, Javier Lanari, posted on X that the removal of journalist fingerprints was "a preventive measure in response to a complaint filed by the Military Household regarding illegal espionage." He cited an incident where two journalists from the channel TN had secretly filmed inside the palace. "The sole objective is to guarantee national security," he wrote.

President Javier Milei's response was less measured. He called the journalists "repugnant trash." He challenged "the 95% who carry press credentials" to defend what the two journalists had done. He has repeatedly reposted messages critical of the news media accompanied by the acronym "NOLSALP" - "No Odiamos Lo Suficiente A Los Periodistas" - "We don't hate journalists enough."Al Jazeera, April 23, 2026

"Someday, that filthy journalistic scum (95%) will have to understand that they are not above the law," Milei wrote on X. "They abused legal precedent. It does not come without a price."

The media advocacy group Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has documented a pattern since Milei took office in 2023: hostile rhetoric toward journalists, increasingly restrictive policies, the gradual narrowing of physical access to government buildings. Last year, Milei's government capped entry to certain rooms in the Casa Rosada and placed other areas off limits. This week's fingerprint lockout is an escalation, not a departure.Al Jazeera, April 23, 2026

There is a grammar to how press freedom erodes. First, the rhetoric: journalists are "scum," "trash," enemies. Then the policy: restricted rooms, revoked access, changed locks. Then the legal framework: accusations of espionage, national security justifications. Each step follows from the last, and each step makes the next one easier. By the time the doors are locked, the public has already been told that the people behind them deserved it.

The two journalists from TN may have overstepped. That is a legitimate subject for investigation and, if warranted, prosecution. But the president's response was not to pursue legal channels against two individuals. It was to declare war on an entire profession - "95%" of it, by his own estimate. When a head of state uses the language of extermination - "we don't hate them enough" - against the press, the target is not two reporters who filmed a hallway. The target is the idea that anyone has the right to ask questions inside a building paid for by the public.

IV. A Rumour, a Lynching, and Eight Years of Waiting

Photo: Unsplash | Karbi Anglong, Assam: where a rumour killed two men in an afternoon

One summer afternoon in 2018, two men set out on a road trip from Guwahati into the Karbi Anglong region of India's northeastern Assam state. Abhijeet Nath, 30, was a businessman. Nilotpal Das, 29, was a musician. They were friends who liked to explore places together. Their parents told the court that they often took these trips.BBC News, April 24, 2026

They stopped in Panjuri Kachari village to ask for directions. A rumour spread that they were child abductors. Within minutes, a crowd of 150 to 200 people gathered. At least 50 participated directly in the attack, using sticks and other weapons. The two men were beaten to death.

When Nath's father tried calling his son, a stranger answered the phone. "He had been killed," the stranger said, "and the news would soon appear on television."

This was not an isolated incident. Across parts of India in 2018, rumours about child-abduction gangs were spreading through WhatsApp messages and viral videos. The technology amplified existing anxieties - about strangers, about outsiders, about people who did not belong - and converted them into violence with terrible speed. A forwarded message. A grainy video. A crowd. A death. The algorithm did not swing the sticks. But it gathered the crowd.

Nearly eight years later, a court in Assam has convicted 20 people of murder and participation in an unlawful assembly. Twenty-five others were acquitted for lack of evidence "beyond reasonable doubt." The sentencing is Friday, April 25, 2026.BBC News, April 24, 2026

The families are not satisfied. Das's father, Gopal Das, said they would consult their lawyer on possible next steps and seek the strictest punishment for those convicted. Nath's family expressed similar concerns and said they were considering legal options over the acquittals. Of 45 adults charged, more than half walked free.

There is a particular kind of silence in a verdict that convicts some and frees others. It is the silence of a system that acknowledges something terrible happened but cannot - or will not - hold everyone accountable. The court noted that "the involvement of the entire locality is established from the evidence on record." But the legal standard of "beyond reasonable doubt" meant that half the accused went home.

Eight years. For two men who stopped to ask for directions. For a rumour that turned a village into a killing ground. For the families who learned of the deaths from a stranger on a phone. The silence between the lynching and the verdict is its own form of violence - a drawn-out erasure where the dead wait and the living age and the village goes on as if nothing happened, because legally, for more than half the accused, nothing did.

WhatsApp still works in Karbi Anglong. The videos still get forwarded. The rumour economy that killed Abhijeet Nath and Nilotpal Das has not been dismantled. It has not even been seriously addressed. The conviction of 20 people is accountability. The acquittal of 25 is a message about the limits of that accountability. And the eight-year wait is a message about who gets justice on a human timeline and who gets it on a bureaucratic one.

V. The Headscarf and the Beret - Fashion as Resistance in Paris

Photo: Unsplash | Paris Modest Fashion Week: where a headscarf meets a beret and refuses to apologize

And then there is Paris. Where silence is being answered with silk.

Inside Hotel Le Marois, a mansion just off the Champs-Elysees, nearly 30 designers presented collections at Paris's first ever Modest Fashion Week. The garments were loose, long-cut, covering arms and legs and sometimes hair. Headscarves appeared on the runway - one styled with a beret on top, a quintessentially Muslim Parisian look that would be illegal for a public schoolteacher to wear at work.BBC News, April 24, 2026

France is home to an estimated 5 to 7.5 million Muslims. Under laicite - the French brand of secularism that decrees the state and public institutions should be free of religion - people cannot wear religious clothing while working in public-sector professions like teaching or the civil service. Burkinis are banned in most public swimming pools. Headscarves are restricted in various public spaces. The message, for decades, has been clear: you can be French, or you can be visible. You cannot be both.

Rukaiya Kamba, creative director of Nigerian brand Flaunt Archive, said the decision to present in Paris came from "a very intentional place." Fatou Doucoure, founder and creative director of French brand Soutoura, said exhibiting in Paris filled her with pride. She had struggled with her hijab in France but now felt it was not holding her back. "Women who cover their hair or dress modestly could take on any role in any society," she said.BBC News, April 24, 2026

The market for modest fashion has grown rapidly, with global consumer spending expected to exceed $400 billion by 2027, according to research firm DinarStandard. While initially catering to Muslim women, it increasingly appeals to other religious communities and secular shoppers. Nike and Adidas now champion modest sportswear. The economics have shifted. The politics have not.

One young French attendee of Malian heritage told the BBC that the event had brought her joy as someone who had previously faced discrimination for wearing a headscarf. Seeing international designers in the heart of Paris made her "never want to leave France." Another said something had changed - her hijab no longer felt like the centre of political discussion. She felt that on the streets, too, people had begun to see beyond it.

There is a particular power in showing up. Not in arguing. Not in demanding. In arriving at the address where you have been told you do not belong, walking through the door, and putting your work on the runway while the laws that say you should not be there remain in force. Modest Fashion Week in Paris is not a protest in the traditional sense. It is a presence. It is the refusal to be invisible in a country that has legislated your visibility out of public life.

The beret over the headscarf is a perfect image for this moment. It says: I am both. I am French. I am Muslim. I am not choosing. And I am here, on a runway, in a mansion off the Champs-Elysees, while the laws that restrict my clothing exist in the same city, enforced by the same state that cannot figure out how to process what I am showing it.

Silence says: choose one. The beret says: no.

VI. The Pattern and the Pivot

Photo: Unsplash | The global pattern: different methods, same direction

Look at the map. In Australia, an institution destroys a book because an associated individual expressed a political opinion, and the person who pays the price is an Aboriginal woman. In Russia, a state dismantles the internet because of "terrorism," and a catering company owner cannot generate revenue while the drones keep flying. In Argentina, a president calls journalists "filthy scum" and locks them out of a public building. In India, a court takes eight years to partially address a lynching that happened in an afternoon. In France, women dress on a runway in ways the state has told them they cannot dress in a classroom.

Each case has its own context, its own history, its own specific wrongs. But the direction is consistent. Power - whether institutional, governmental, or mob-shaped - is narrowing the space where contested expression can exist. The methods differ: recycling options, fingerprint locks, internet blackouts, legal delays, dress codes. The effect converges: fewer voices, fewer questions, fewer ways to say the thing that makes someone uncomfortable.

And the people who pay the highest price are never the ones who said the thing. Matt Chun wrote the essay; Jazz Money lost the book. Two journalists filmed a hallway; all accredited reporters lost their fingerprints. A rumour killed two men; 25 accused walked free. The architecture of silencing is designed this way. It punishes association, not action. It penalizes proximity, not speech. It makes the cost of expression so diffuse that no single person can fight back - because no single person was the target.

But here is what the silencers cannot control: the responses. Writers pulling their contracts from UQP. Russians submitting petitions despite the cameras. Journalists showing up at the Casa Rosada anyway. Families pursuing appeals after eight years. Designers putting headscarves on a runway in the city that has banned them from classrooms.

These are not coordinated. They are not a movement. They are the spontaneous human response to being told to disappear: the refusal to disappear. It looks different everywhere because it is everywhere. It is the same instinct in different languages, different legal systems, different hemispheres. The instinct that says: you can pulp my book, but you cannot pulp the precedent it sets. You can block my internet, but you cannot block my memory of what it was like to be connected. You can call me scum, but you cannot make me stop asking questions. You can acquit half the mob, but you cannot erase the fact of the killing. You can legislate my clothing, but you cannot legislate my presence on a runway.

The silencing spreads. But so does the insistence on being heard. The question for 2026 is not whether censorship will accelerate. It will. The question is whether the responses will keep pace - whether the reflex toward visibility, toward accountability, toward the basic human demand to exist in public without apology will move as fast as the machinery that tries to prevent it.

In a warehouse in Queensland, thousands of copies of a children's book about a river wait for recycling. In a town called Vladimir, a woman checks her phone and cannot reach Google. In Buenos Aires, journalists stand outside a pink building with fingerprints that no longer work. In Assam, two families wait for sentencing eight years after their sons were killed for asking directions. In Paris, a woman walks a runway in a headscarf and a beret.

These are not separate stories. They are chapters in the same book. The one that has not been pulped yet.

Sources

• BBC News. "UQP: Aboriginal children's book Bila pulled over illustrator's Bondi attack comments." April 24, 2026. bbc.com/news/articles/c87wzv3lv1vo
• BBC News. "Kenyan leader sparks uproar after mocking Nigerians' spoken English." April 24, 2026. bbc.com/news/articles/c0ledd82ed0o
• BBC News. "Paris Modest Fashion Week: Muslim designers showcase floral dresses and boxy streetwear in Paris." April 24, 2026. bbc.com/news/articles/cx23zmxd2z3o
• BBC News / Steve Rosenberg. "Kremlin's tightening grip on internet fuels Russian discontent." April 24, 2026. bbc.com/news/articles/cr510de17jlo
• BBC News. "A rumour, a lynching in India and a long wait for justice." April 24, 2026. bbc.com/news/articles/cly07kk2pm2o
• Al Jazeera. "Milei administration in Argentina blocks journalist access to Casa Rosada." April 23, 2026. aljazeera.com
• DinarStandard. Global modest fashion market spending projections. Via BBC News, April 24, 2026.
• Reporters Without Borders (RSF). Argentina press freedom monitoring, 2023-2026. Via Al Jazeera, April 23, 2026.