From India to Russia, no country for bad news
Critics of Russia’s so-called “special military operation” in Ukraine could soon have their property confiscated, if Russian legislators get their way. A bill has been submitted to the State Duma, the lower house of parliament, to allow authorities to exact revenge on those who spread “misinformation” (read: facts) about the war. And revenge is the obvious, if not only, motive. Vyacheslav Volodin, the parliament chair and a confidante of President Vladimir Putin, said it was “necessary” for the Kremlin to be able to “punish scoundrels, including cultural figures, who support Nazis, pour dirt on our country, soldiers and officers.”
The Kremlin appears to believe that its existing powers to jail critics for years, classifying them as terrorists and foreign agents, are not repressive enough. It needs more excuses to throw people in prison, like former journalist and opposition politician Vladimir Kara-Murza, sentenced to 25 years in prison in 2023 for supposedly spreading misinformation about the Russian military. In December, a popular Russian-Georgian novelist, known by his pen name Boris Akunin, was added to the register of “terrorists and extremists” and is now being investigated for allegedly spreading fake information about the Russian army. Akunin, who doesn’t hold back his disdain, most recently called Putin a “psychologically deranged dictator.” He responded to being added to the register by dismissing the charge succinctly on Facebook: “Terrorists declared me a terrorist,” he wrote from his home in London.
But Akunin, by being sentenced in absentia, is one of the luckier ones. Writers, dissidents and anti-war activists in Russia have been beaten and sentenced in show trials to several years of imprisonment. In March, Russia holds its presidential election. Putin will likely now have another legal means, alongside new media restrictions, to clamp down on any kind of opposition.
The dozens of other countries going to the polls this year have to be vigilant to prevent organized interference from, among others, Beijing and Moscow. The Australian Strategic Policy Institute reported that it had “uncovered a covert campaign orchestrated by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to manipulate Taiwan’s recent election through AI-Generated Disinformation.” On January 13, Taiwan re-elected the candidate of the governing Democratic Progressive Party despite warnings from China that it would exacerbate conflict. According to the institute’s report, inauthentic social media accounts linked to the Chinese authorities used artificial intelligence to spread false stories that the presidential candidate was “America’s pet” and had signed under-the-table agreements to buy billions of dollars worth of arms from Washington.