Right to Protest and Freedom of Speech

General Overview

The area of freedom of expression in Argentina during the period under analysis is dominated by a pattern that has no equivalent in the other countries monitored by MIDA: the periodic and systematic repression of pensioners’ demonstrations in front of the National Congress. This pattern, which began to take hold during the early months of the Milei government and consolidated throughout 2024 and 2025, combines the use of police force — tear gas, rubber bullets, batons — with the criminalization of demonstrators and arbitrary detentions. At the same time, the period saw civil resistance of remarkable breadth and diversity.

Repression as State Policy Against Protest

On June 5, 2024, workers from the National Institute of Industrial Technology (INTI) protesting against layoffs and the closure of offices were evicted and repressed. On June 12, thousands of people demonstrating in front of Congress during the debate on the Ley Bases were repressed with rubber bullets, tear gas, and beatings; 33 people were arbitrarily detained and the national government accused them of “terrorism” and attempting to obstruct legislative proceedings — a criminalization that CELS documented and formally denounced. On August 28, pensioners marching against the presidential veto of the pension benefit update law were repressed with pepper spray by the Federal Police.

Throughout 2025, this pattern deepened. On January 29, March 5, and March 12, new episodes of repression occurred during pensioners’ marches in front of Congress. The March 12 episode was the most serious of the period: more than 100 people were detained, at least 15 were injured, and photojournalist Pablo Grillo was struck by a rubber bullet and suffered serious injuries that put his eyesight at risk — a direct attack on the practice of journalism in public space, which MIDA records as a specific setback in the press freedom sub-variable.

The regularity of these episodes configures them not as isolated incidents but as a deliberate policy of protest deterrence through the use of force. This systematic nature is the most distinctive feature of the Argentine case in this area and represents an indicator of deterioration of the right to protest as a fundamental democratic right.

Resistance: Breadth and Diversity of Mobilization

In response to this situation, civil society’s reaction was sustained and increasingly organized. On October 2, 2024, demonstrations across the country defended public universities and called for wage improvements for higher education teachers. In October, students from various universities occupied their faculties in repudiation of Milei’s veto of the university funding law. On February 1, 2025, a federal anti-fascist, anti-racist LGBTIQ+ march — with rallies in more than 130 cities across the country and 15 cities around the world — responded to Milei’s stigmatizing and homophobic remarks at the Davos Forum.

On April 10, 2025, the General Confederation of Labor (CGT) carried out the third general strike against the Milei government — the previous ones had been on January 24 and May 9, 2024 — with high participation nationwide. On June 4, 2025, the march marking the tenth anniversary of Ni Una Menos converged with the mobilization of pensioners and workers from the Garrahan Hospital under the slogan “Uniting struggles is the task,” seeking to express the articulation of different demands in a shared space of resistance.

The persistence and scale of these mobilizations — which in several cases extended well beyond the city of Buenos Aires and involved very diverse sectors of society — constitute a relevant indicator of democratic resilience in the Argentine case.

General overview

The area of freedom of expression and the right to social protest in the Brazilian case during this period presents events of a positive nature worth highlighting. Press freedom shows verifiable and internationally recognized improvements compared to the situation under the Bolsonaro government. Moreover, as noted for each set of rights, we observe an active and mobilized civil society in the face of situations perceived as attacks or threats to rights already won or still being fought for.

Advances in press freedom

According to Reporters Without Borders (RSF), the Lula government normalized relations between the State and the press after four years of systematic hostility under the Bolsonaro government. In the RSF 2024 index, Brazil improved its position with concrete advances in press freedom protection and fulfillment of transparency commitments. In May 2025, Brazil rose to 63rd place in the RSF 2025 World Press Freedom Index, climbing 47 positions since 2022, and was highlighted as an exceptional case on a continent where 22 out of 28 countries regressed. As contextual data, the FENAJ 2024 Report documented a proportional increase in judicial harassment of journalists — from 13.81% to 15.97% — with 38.9% of cases occurring during the municipal election campaign. This trend indicates that advances in the institutional environment do not eliminate more diffuse harassment practices that persist in the judicial and political system.

The right to social protest / Civil society resistance

The June 2024–June 2025 period recorded an active and mobilized civil society on multiple fronts.

In defense of sexual and reproductive rights: The most immediate and massive social response of the period came in June 2024, when the Chamber of Deputies approved Bill 1904/2024 — which equated abortion from week 22 onwards with simple homicide — in just 23 seconds. Mobilizations took place in São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, and Brasília in rejection of the measure. This social pressure contributed to the bill never being implemented. In March 2025, on International Women’s Day, thousands of women marched in the country’s main cities against femicide, for the decriminalization of abortion, and for more resources for gender policies, in a context of record femicide figures in 2024.

In defense of labor rights: The period recorded trade union and labor protest activity of notable scale. In November 2024, large-scale mobilizations across the country placed the 6×1 working schedule — the regime of 6 consecutive working days with 1 day of rest, implying up to 44 hours per week and particularly affecting workers in commerce, services, and healthcare — at the center of debate. These mobilizations had a direct legislative impact: in February 2025, Representative Erika Hilton (PSOL-SP) introduced PEC No. 8/2025 to eliminate the 6×1 schedule, backed by 234 lawmakers’ signatures and nearly 3 million citizens’ signatures. In March 2025, gig workers in several cities halted activities for two days demanding a minimum rate of R$ 10 per delivery. On May 1, 2025, the trade union federations delivered to President Lula the “Workers’ Class Agenda 2025,” with demands including the regulation of app-based work, reduction of working hours without salary reduction, restoration of retirees’ purchasing power, and the end of the 6×1 schedule.

In defense of indigenous peoples’ rights: In June 2024, the 20th edition of the Acampamento Terra Livre was held in Brasília under the motto “Indigenous Emergency: Our Rights Are Non-Negotiable,” bringing together thousands of indigenous people who marched along the Esplanada dos Ministérios in defense of their territorial rights.

General overview

The area of freedom of expression presents a large number of events and reveals a sharp tension between institutional setbacks and civil resistance. The setbacks on record respond to different logics: the repression of pro-Palestinian protest, the criminalization of climate activism, and the dispute surrounding the far-right magazine Compact. The acts of resistance, for their part, express the vitality of broad sectors of civil society in the face of the AfD’s advances and the tightening of migration policies.

Criminalization of climate activism

In June 2024, the Flensburg Public Prosecutor’s Office filed charges against Miriam Meyer, an activist with the climate justice group Letzte Generation (“Last Generation”), accusing her of participating in a criminal organization under Article 129 of the German Criminal Code. The indictment identified her as an organizer of actions targeting critical transport and supply infrastructure. This case is part of a broader pattern of criminalization and judicialization of climate activism in Germany, which applies criminal statutes designed to prosecute organized crime to individuals carrying out non-violent acts of civil disobedience.

Repression of pro-Palestinian protest

The period saw an escalation in the repression of pro-Palestinian voices. In July 2024, more than two dozen protesters were arrested during a police operation in Berlin, which Amnesty International described as brutal and disproportionate against peaceful demonstrators. In September 2024, authorities banned the association Palestinian Solidarity Duisburg, alleging its alleged support for Hamas, and raided the homes of its members, seizing documents and electronic devices. The ban on this association illustrates a pattern: the application of anti-terrorism and anti-extremism legislation to civil society organizations expressing solidarity with the Palestinian cause, in a context where the debate over the limits of permissible speech regarding the conflict in Gaza is extremely sensitive in Germany for historical reasons.

The dispute over the magazine Compact

In July 2024, Interior Minister Nancy Faeser announced the ban on the magazine Compact, a far-right publication known for its antisemitic, revisionist, and Islamophobic editorial line, and for its alignment with the AfD. The measure was suspended in August 2024 by the Federal Administrative Court, which allowed the company to continue its operations while legal proceedings unfolded. This episode illustrates the complexity of the legal tools available for containing far-right media outlets within a rule-of-law state: the government’s action was halted by the judicial system itself, which applied press freedom protections to a far-right publication as well.

Questioning civil society organizations

In March 2025, the CDU demanded in parliament information on the “political neutrality” of civil society organizations that had participated in demonstrations against the tightening of asylum policy. The maneuver sought to use institutional oversight mechanisms to pressure organizations critical of the government and the AfD. In response to this offensive, more than 2,000 academics signed a public letter defending the role of civil organizations in democracy, underscoring their function in promoting and defending human rights and fighting right-wing extremism.

Resistance: mobilization against the AfD and for migrants’ rights

The period also recorded significant acts of resistance in the realm of freedom of expression. In January 2025, 15,000 people gathered in Riesa — where the AfD was holding its national congress — to demonstrate their rejection of the far-right party. Police intervention resulted in the detention of protesters and left a member of the Saxon state parliament for the Left party Die Linke injured. That same month and in February, tens of thousands of people protested in Berlin and other cities across the country against plans to restrict immigration backed by the conservatives with AfD support, in what constituted one of the largest mobilizations of the period.

General Overview

The area of freedom of expression records setbacks in the Spanish case during the period under analysis. Episodes of police repression of protest and the imprisonment of young antifascists reveal the persistence of a restrictive legal framework — inherited from the 2015 Citizen Security Law, known as the “Gag Law” — that the Sánchez government has not managed to reverse during its tenure. This tension between the executive’s progressive agenda and the continued existence of repressive legal tools is one of the most characteristic and problematic features of the Spanish case in this period.

Repression of Protest: Antifascists and Pro-Palestinian Demonstrators

In October 2024, nine people were detained and several injured during a police crackdown on a pro-Palestinian protest in Santiago de Compostela. The detained youths were charged with public disorder and assault on authority — legal categories that the Gag Law notably expanded, facilitating their use against peaceful demonstrators. In April 2025, four young antifascists from Zaragoza were imprisoned for their participation in protests against the far right, in a case that generated mobilization from the left and from human rights organizations, who characterized it as the criminalization of antifascism.

The persistence of these episodes under a self-described progressive government points to a structural contradiction: the Sánchez executive has driven significant advances in other rights, but has been unable — or has failed to gather the necessary parliamentary votes — to modify the legal framework that enables the repression of protest. The Gag Law remains a tool available to the security forces, regardless of the national government’s political color.

Resistance: Antifascist Mobilization

Facing the advance of the far right, in November 2024 the Madrid Antifascist Coordinating Body convened a demonstration that brought together thousands of people, as part of a cycle of civil society mobilizations in Spain against the growth of Vox and the positions of the radical right. This mobilization is part of a tradition of social response to far-right advances that, in the Spanish case, has historical roots associated with the memory of Francoism.

General Overview

The area of freedom of expression shows a negative trajectory throughout the entire period under analysis, with serious episodes both under the Biden administration and — in a more systematic and direct manner — under Trump. Unlike other areas, setbacks in press freedom and the right to protest did not begin in January 2025 but had been accumulating in the context of the pro-Palestinian protests of 2024.

Biden Administration (June – January 2025)

The final semester of Biden recorded the first significant setback: throughout 2024, there were 48 arrests of journalists covering protests against the war in Gaza, half of them at the hands of the New York Police Department. In July 2024, the Capitol Police detained around 200 people for protesting in Congress during the visit of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu. These episodes remind us that the repression of protest and the harassment of the press are not phenomena exclusive to far-right governments, though they do find their most systematic expression under administrations of that character.

Trump Administration (January – June 2025)

Press Freedom: Direct and Institutional Attacks

From the very first day, the Trump administration adopted measures with direct impact on the media:

• Suspension of 268 million dollars in federal funds for international independent media, including Voice of America and Radio Free Europe, through executive order (January 20).
• Indefinite exclusion of an Associated Press reporter from the Oval Office and Air Force One for refusing to use the term “Gulf of America” instead of “Gulf of Mexico” (February 11). A federal judge ordered their immediate reinstatement.
• Arrest of photojournalist Matthew Kaplan while covering an anti-deportation protest in Indiana (January 18).
• Arrest and detention for more than 100 days of journalist Mario Guevara, while livestreaming a protest against ICE raids in Georgia. He was kept detained despite charges being dropped and a judge ordering his release on bail (June 14).
• Invocation of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 — last used during World War II — to deport Venezuelans to El Salvador without due process (March 14).
• On the institutional resistance front, a federal judge blocked the dismantlement of Voice of America in March 2025, ordering the reinstatement of more than 1,200 journalists placed on leave and prohibiting the closure of offices.

The Right to Protest: Repression and Resistance

The period recorded growing tension between state repression and citizen mobilization:

• Demonstrations under the slogan “No Kings” on Presidents’ Day (February 17), rejecting Trump’s policies including the first ICE operations.
• Mass protests in Los Angeles following ICE raids in June 2025, with thousands of people gathering peacefully at the Metropolitan Detention Center.
• Arrest of David Huerta, leader of the California janitors’ union (SEIU), during a protest against an ICE raid (June 6).
• Trump signed a memorandum deploying 2,000 members of the California National Guard in Los Angeles to suppress protests, without the consent of Governor Newsom — the first federalization of the National Guard to suppress civil protest in recent times (June 7).
• Thousands of people marched through Manhattan in national demonstrations against immigration raids and the military deployment in California (June 11).
• Mass march in Chicago against ICE raids and immigration policies (June 12).

The set of mobilizations during the period — which at their peak brought together tens of thousands of people across the country — represents one of the broadest expressions of civil resistance in the early months of the Trump administration.