Do you live in Germany and want to download the ebook version of The Compatriots: The Brutal and Chaotic History of Russia’s Exiles, Émigrés and Agents Abroad by Russian journalists-in-exile Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan? If yes, good luck. Since 11 October the ebook has been pulled from the digital shelves after Alexey Kozlov, a Berlin-based financier, successfully brought an injunction against Hachette, the publisher, saying the book in its current form risked his reputation. Those who know Index will know we've been campaigning for some time against legal actions targeting public interest reporting, so we've joined organisations from across Europe to raise our concerns about the case. For us the legal action is aimed "not only at further intimidating and isolating Soldatov and Borogan, but at threatening their reputation in the exile community.” You can read more about our concerns in The Guardian here.

This isn't the only news from the world of SLAPPs this week. I've just returned home after the third annual anti-SLAPP Conference organised by our fellow UK Anti-SLAPP Coalition chair, Foreign Policy Centre, as well as Justice for Journalists Foundation and the International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute. It brought together lawyers, regulators, journalists, campaigners and SLAPP targets to see how we can maximise the progress made and where we are still falling short. Courageous individuals such as Nina Cresswell, Zelda Perkins, Eliot Higgins, Carole Cadwalladr and Catherine Belton spoke powerfully on how legal threats and abuses disfigure the world around us. The conference was closed by the justice secretary, Alex Chalk KC MP. While he gamely stayed to answer a few questions, we are no closer to knowing the government’s plans – the words “when Parliamentary time allows” are tattooed on my soul. 

Sadly a slowing of progress is not unique to England and Wales. Scotland is even further away. Roger Mullin, a former SNP MP, has presented a petition to Scottish Parliament and we are awaiting an oral evidence session, but we know the Scottish government is not keen. The recent defamation reform is too young, even though we all know SLAPPs are not the causes of action, but the abuse of our legal system. To make this case, Index is hosting a conference in Glasgow in February next year with the Law School at the University of Glasgow. Featuring a keynote from Paul Radu, the co-founder of OCCRP, it will look at what needs to happen for Scots Law to be protected from abuse, the kind of abuse that has made free speech south of the border far too expensive. Register now here.

Meanwhile Europe is leaving us on tenterhooks. EU Commission VP, Vera Jourova, proclaimed this week that we will “have a law on countering abusive lawsuits against public participation”, after the trilogue meeting regarding the EU Anti-SLAPP Directive concluded with a deal. We can't rejoice yet. We still need to see the draft. As a member of the Coalition Against SLAPPs in Europe we have been increasingly worried that the Directive has been watered down so much as to make it useless – there are fears that previous drafts of the Daphne’s Law (as it has been dubbed) would have done nothing to protect Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia who faced 48 legal threats when she was brutally murdered. We are also awaiting the finalised draft of the Council of Europe Recommendation on Countering SLAPPs. The UK Anti-SLAPP Coalition submitted evidence to the consultation and we hope the ambition of the draft has been retained. In both instances, the devil will be in the detail but we can hope that we are closer to Europe closing its doors to SLAPPs once and for all.

Here at Index we know progress is long fought for and it never moves neatly from A to B. The journey towards stamping out SLAPPs is long, complicated and full of potholes and barriers. But it's an important fight to have. Free speech must remain free, not restricted by the rich and powerful. 

Nik Williams, policy and campaigns officer

New online platform provides free education to girls in Afghanistan

It is accepted around the world that children and young people have a right to education. But for girls in Afghanistan, this is not the case. 

In 2021, the Taliban seized power after launching a military offensive which lasted three and a half months. One of the first measures they imposed was a ban on girls over the age of 12 returning to school. A year later, they extended this ban to include universities, leaving millions of Afghan girls without any access to higher education at all. 

Accessing education was already a struggle prior to the Taliban’s return to power due to the scarcity and inadequacy of learning facilities for girls. It is estimated that 30% of girls in the country have never even entered primary school. Now, in light of the current ban, receiving education beyond this will be close to impossible.

The Begum Academy has been launched in an attempt to combat this, writes Daisy Ruddock.

Moments of Freedom in a bleak year

Our CEO Ruth Anderson talks about our year-end campaign, launched next week, which will focus on the times when light breaks through the darkness.