Focus on Middle East and North Africa in December reporting

Mimeta’s December 2025 reporting focuses on the Middle East and North Africa, revealing how artistic life is increasingly constrained by overlapping systems of state power, religious authority and informal enforcement. From disappearances and arrests to quiet bans and moral campaigns, artists across the region face repression that is often unwritten yet deeply effective, shaping what can be seen, heard and performed, and who is allowed to appear in public cultural life.

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AuthorLitangen
CategoriesCensorship in Arts, Censorship MENA, Censorship SWANA, Middle East, Mimeta, North-Africa, Reports
TagsMimeta’s December reporting, Civsy, Ettijahat

UK Trustees Turn Palestine into Closed Culture

UK arts charity Queercircle has documented how trustees and senior leaders across England’s cultural sector are quietly restricting Palestinian artistic programming. By rebranding Palestinian shows as “contentious” and shifting them into closed, invitation‑only formats, institutions are building a hidden system of structural suppression that keeps Palestinian perspectives out of the public cultural sphere

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AuthorLitangen
CategoriesNorth Europe, Reports
TagsUK, Queercircle, Let’s Create Change: Artistic Freedom in a Time of Genocide and Rising Fascism, Palestine, Queercircle report

Sudan: 55 artists killed since 2023

A new report has brought grim clarity to Sudan’s ongoing war, confirming that more than fifty-five artists have been killed since fighting erupted in 2023. The African Centre for Justice and Peace Studies (ACJPS) released the findings in its November 26 publication, "Tears of Guitars", marking the first verified account of cultural casualties in the conflict. It paints a devastating portrait of how Sudan’s artistic community, once a cornerstone of civic identity and resilience, has become a deliberate target in a war shaped by fragmentation, impunity, and the battle for national memory.

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AuthorLitangen
CategoriesReports, Research, North-Africa, Global, Artist at Risk
TagsShaden Gardood, Asia Abdelmajid, Radio Dabanga, Sudanese Music Research Center, Sudan National Museum, Sudan

AI Analysis Reveals Global Patterns in Artistic Censorship

45 of the censorship cases published on Mimeta Memos have been analyzed by an AI-powered platform used for monitoring violations of artistic freedom. Instead of only summarizing text, it looks at meaning and context, using word sense disambiguation to understand sensitive, political, and legal terms correctly in multiple languages.​ It also performs relationship extraction, identifying who did what, where, and when in each case, so that actors, events, places, and timelines can be connected across all 45 incidents.

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AuthorLitangen
CategoriesGlobal, Reports, Mimeta, North Europe
TagsAI analysis, Mimeta Memos, Prescriptive Analysis, Predictive Analysis, Diagnostic Analysis, Descriptive Analysis, Norway

Analysis of Artistic Censorship Memos published by Mimeta in November 2025

From blasphemy accusations in Bangladesh to algorithmic suppression of Palestinian content, from the criminalization of artistic intention in Turkey to the chilling effect of vague laws in Peru—artistic freedom is no longer a niche issue. It's a barometer for democracy itself. The report shows that when governments arrest musicians for anti-war songs, prosecute filmmakers for planning documentaries, or shut down galleries and festivals, society loses not only cultural expression but also the capacity to challenge power, imagine alternatives, and hold authority accountable.

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AuthorLitangen
CategoriesCensorship in Arts, Global, Mimeta, Reports
TagsAnalysis, Nov 2025 Censorship Memos