The impasse in the US-Israel war on Iran has turned Lebanon into the conflict’s most active front. Israeli forces are entrenched in the country’s south, a de facto occupation, and have reduced entire neighbourhoods to rubble. Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump seeks to preserve delicate negotiations with Iran, but, as Israeli support for the war continues to grow, Lebanon remains a key point of contention.

Lead contributors:

Nicholas Noe – Senior fellow, Refugees International
Maya Rosen – Editor, Jewish Currents
Randa Slim – Middle East programme director, Stimson Centre

On our radar:

This week, two prominent American commentators, Cenk Uygur and Hasan Piker, had their UK visas revoked before scheduled speaking events in London. Both are outspoken critics of Israel, its occupation, its wars and the US policy towards it. The action by the UK authorities has called into question the right to free speech and political expression in the country. Meenakshi Ravi reports.

AfrofeminasGPT: AI through a Black feminist lens

Artificial intelligence systems are often trained on data shed by human bias. As a result, discrimination can spread through the systems that increasingly she our lives. In Spain, one woman is trying to change that with AfrofeminasGPT – a chatbot trained on Black feminist and decolonial thought, designed to challenge racism in AI. But can an alternative, built on the same model that it seeks to reform, ever truly be independent?

Feature contributor:

Mutale Nkonde – AI Researcher, Cambridge University
Safiya Noble – Professor, UCLA
Antoinette Torres Soler – Founder, Afrofemin

The vertical loyalty of officers runs not toward the Constitution but toward the ruling dispensation. Field officers, acutely conscious of the transfer-posting economy, calibrate their conduct to satisfy political superiors, Justice Vinod Diwakar said in his 31-page judgement in ‘Rajendra Tyagi and 2 Others vs State of UP and another’.

The bench made these observations while quashing a criminal case against three members of a family in Ghaziabad charged under the UP Gangsters Act.

Flagging misuse of the act, the court in its findings stated that the stringent law had been invoked over a commercial dispute.

Also Read | Allahabad HC grants bail to re-murder accused, slams poor forensic infra

The bench highlighted police overreach in the arrest of 35-year-old Lalita Tyagi, a homemaker, who the court said had been arrested the very next day after the FIR was lodged without there being any incriminating evidence against her.

It flagged encounter killings and selective crackdowns, saying the state was still driven by the feudal mindset of politicians and bureaucrats. Encounter killings, selective crackdowns, and targeted use of the Gangsters Act against inconvenient individuals have periodically attracted judicial notice, the bench stated.

Uttar Pradesh, by virtue of its demogrhic magnitude and political significance, has historically been a crucible of political hegemony, driven by the feudal mindset of politicians and bureaucrats, Justice Diwakar said in the judgement.

The court further highlighted that officers seen as loyalists receive favourable postings in the state, while those acting independently are punished.

Officers perceived as loyalists are rewarded with preferred postings- urban Commissionerates, lucrative districts- while those demonstrating independence are transferred punitively to inconsequential assignments, the court said, adding that this is a well-known fact.

Also Read | Time has come to make top bureaucrats criminally liable: Allahabad HC to UP govt

The bench backing its judgement highlighted arrests without following the due process of law, FIRs being registered or suppressed with ulterior motives, and provisions pertaining to preventive detentions being invoked arbitrarily.

The procedural safeguards under the Code of Criminal Procedure, and now the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, are routinely bypassed. Judicial orders are complied with in form but defeated in substance, the court said in a sharp rebuke. Justice Diwakar expressed deep concern regarding the role of the Home Secretary, who is the senior-most bureaucratic authority in the state’s law enforcement system and the administrative head of the home department.

Rather than functioning as an independent constitutional authority charged with implementing the government’s vision, policies, and programmes through impartial executive action. Certain officers who rose to the post of Home Secretary have, in practice, served as conduits for self-serving interests, the bench stated.

Accra, Ghana – Ghana has recorded 14 arrests linked to false news and offensive speech in less than 16 months, nearly double the number documented during the previous administration’s entire eight-year tenure, according to the Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA).

The rise has triggered a sharp debate in one of West Africa’s most stable democracies over whether authorities are simply enforcing long-standing laws in a new digital environment, or edging into a more restrictive proach to public speech.

The controversy carries added political weight because President John Mahama, while in opposition in 2022, warned that using state power to intimidate dissent was a dangerous blueprint for democracy.

Government: enforcement not repression

A senior ruling party official dismissed allegations that the arrests amount to a crackdown.

The opposition intentionally sponsors people to insult the President, he told Al Jazeera. When the law catches up with them, they cry persecution to score che political points.

He pointed to the case of TikToker Prince Ofori, known as Fante Comedy, who was arrested last August over alleged threats to President Mahama.

Days after his arrest, Ofori peared at a political rally alongside opposition figures, a development the official said showed how quickly such cases become politicised.

They paraded him at an opposition rally, he said.

Opposition: a warning sign for democracy

Opposition leaders see something more troubling taking she.

Minority leader Alexander Afenyo-Markin has been among the most outspoken critics.

The state-sponsored persecution must stop, he told Al Jazeera. Arresting citizens for words that do not constitute genuine threats is not justice. It is intimidation.

He said free speech has limits, but argued that the state is increasingly crossing a line.

Excessive use of state power risks undoing Ghana’s hard-won democratic gains, he said.

Where is the line?

At the centre of the debate are long-standing provisions in Ghana’s Criminal Code and Electronic Communications Act, which authorities say are now being plied to a fast-moving digital landsce.

Government supporters argue the increase in arrests reflects the explosion of anonymous and unregulated online content.

Critics say the problem is not the laws themselves, but how they are being used.

A legal consultant who reviewed recent cases said he counted at least 16 alleged misplications of Section 208 in the past 18 months, compared with roughly a dozen in the previous eight years.

The law has been abused beyond repair, he said. Repeal is the only remedy.

Veteran journalist Ben Ephson said Ghana needs clearer guidance on where free expression ends and harm begins.

The government must properly explain the arrests so people can draw the line between press freedom and responsible journalism, he said.

He added that both journalists and state institutions risk overstepping if the rules remain unclear.

When you compare the freedom of the media and the rights of the individual, we need to be careful that the media, in trying to do their work, don’t trample on people’s rights, he said.

A wider global debate

Others say Ghana’s debate mirrors tensions playing out in other democracies.

Tegha King of the Universal Peace Federation Ghana said concerns about shrinking civic space are not unique to Ghana.

The global civic space must cultivate more free speech, not less, he told Al Jazeera.

He said stronger institutions, not more arrests, are needed to manage the pressures of the digital age.

There must be independent courts, transparent enforcement, media self-regulation and digital literacy, he said.

Civic awareness and external concern

Some analysts point to gs in public understanding of constitutional rights.

There is a lack of constitutional education among many Ghanaians, said David Adofo of the African Chamber of Content Producers. People must know the consequences of their actions before they act, not after.

Concerns are also being voiced outside the country.

We have had many concerns from diasporans about perceived erosion of press and political freedoms, especially news of blogger arrests, said Nana Kofi Opoku-Agyemang of the NuGhana Expat Center. Negative news sells fast. The government must be cautious so it does not project a negative image of Ghana in the diasporan community.

Government stance

Officials insist there is no coordinated effort to silence dissent.

An NDC communicator said the legal framework in question predates the current administration and defended the proach.

Ghana’s laws, Section 208 of the Criminal Code and Section 76 of the Electronic Communications Act, have been on the books for decades, he said. What has changed is the sheer volume of reckless, anonymous and sometimes dangerous content on social media. There is no systematic crackdown. There is simply enforcement of existing law.

A political irony at the centre of it all

Ghana remains one of West Africa’s more open democracies, with a competitive political system and active media landsce.

But the rise in speech-related arrests has sharpened scrutiny of how far the state can go in policing online expression without undermining the democratic culture that helped define its reputation.

The debate is also politically charged because of Mahama’s own past warnings.

As opposition leader, he described the use of state power against dissent as a dangerous blueprint. Today, critics say his government faces accusations it once condemned.

For Alexander Afenyo-Markin, the moment calls for restraint — and reflection.

We should not continue to say that because it hpened yesterday, it should hpen today and tomorrow. That cycle must end, he said. President Mahama has an opportunity to leave a legacy of tolerance and free speech. I hope he takes it.

The decision was delivered by John McConnell in Providence, Rhode Island, who found that the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) implemented a series of unlawful policies affecting plicants from across Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Gulf region. The ruling coincided with the US Senate passing legislation tied to Donald Trump’s immigration enforcement agenda.

Those policies imposed a sweeping pause on immigration benefit processing for individuals from 39 countries already under full or partial travel bans, justified by the administration on national security and vetting concerns. The affected plications included asylum requests, work permits, permanent residency (green cards), and citizenship pathways.

USCIS’s hold on adjudications cannot be attributed to anything that these individuals did wrong; rather, it arises solely by the hpenstance of their birth, he wrote, as per .

The rule of law has to ply to everyone equally and, as evident here, USCIS has neither ‘followed the law’ nor ‘done things the right way’, McConnell added.

Indeed, the agency has violated the very immigration laws that Congress has charged it with administering, as well as the administrative laws that govern the agency’s actions.

The judge said the government lacked statutory authority for the blanket delays and said that plicants had complied fully with US immigration procedures.

The judgment could influence how strictly US authorities are allowed to delay or pause immigration plications, which may affect processing practices that also impact Indian plicants.

Every person seeking safety, stability, and opportunity deserves a fair chance to have their case heard under the law, Murad Awawdeh, president and CEO of New York Immigration Coalition, told The Guardian.

Today, a federal judge reaffirmed what we already knew: that the Trump administration violated the law, and did so with anti-immigrant malice. By shutting down access to asylum and preventing thousands of immigrants from receiving a decision on their immigration plications solely on the basis of which country they come from, the Trump administration acted against statute and against the rule of law. He added that the policies left families in limbo and undermined the legal immigration system established by Congress.

The plaintiffs, represented by Democracy Forward, also welcomed the ruling, saying it reaffirmed that the federal government cannot deny lawful immigration pathways based on nationality.

The policies were introduced amid a tightening of immigration enforcement following a shooting involving National Guard members in Washington, DC, after which Trump called for expanded migration restrictions and travel bans covering 39 countries, including Afghanistan, Iran, Haiti, Somalia, Venezuela and Syria.