UK social media campaigners among five denied US visas

After the State Department accUSed two British campaigners of attempting to coerce American tech networks to ban free expression, five people have been refUSed visa statUS in the United Kingdom. Imran Ahmed, an ex-Labour strategist who now leads the Centre for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), and Clare Melford, CEO of the Global Disinformation Index (GDI), were branded activists by the Trump administration and refUSed to enter the United States. Visas were refused to a French former EU commissioner and two senior figures from a Germany-based anti-online hate group. The European leaders have condemned the proposals, while the UK government has said it is fully committed to upholding free expression.

While every country has the right to set its own visa rules, we encourage the legislation and institutions that are working to keep the internet free of the most harmful material,

a UK government spokesperson said. The travel ban, according to French President Emmanuel Macron, was

intimidation and coercion aimed at undermining EUropean digital security,

while EU foreign policy head Kaja Kallas said it was

unacceptable and an effort to challenge our sovereignty. The US billed the steps as a result of activists and organisations who have called for limits on American tech firms, according to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who said they be part of a

global censorship-indUStrial complex.

President Trump has made it clear that his America First foreign policy condemns abuses of American sovereignty,

Trump said. There is no exception to the extraterritorial overreach by foreign censors targeting American speech.

Ahmed from the CCDH, which claims that it promotes government action against hate speech and disinformation online, has links to senior Labour figures. Morgan McSweeney, the company's chief of staff, and Labour minister Hilary Benn, was previously an aide, and Sir Keir Starmer's Chief of Staff Morgan McKeeney has been a director of Ahmed was dubbed a

collaborator

by the US government for the CCDH's ostensible past participation in the Biden administration. The CCDH has been contacted by BBC News for comment. In 2018, Melford founded the GDI, a non-profit that monitors disinformation dissemination. According to US Undersecretary of State Sarah B Rogers, the GDI accUSed US federal government of USing US federal funds to

encourage censorship and blacklisting of American speech and media.

The visa restrictions announced today are an authoritarian attack on free expression and an extraordinary act of government censorship,

a GDI spokesperson told the BBC.

The Trump Administration is now using the full weight of the federal government to intimidate, censor, and silence voices of opposition. Their behaviors today are immoral, illegal, and un-American.

Thierry Breton, the former top tech regulator at the European Commission, who said that a witch hunt was taking place, was also criticized. Breton was referred to by the State Department as the mastermind of the EU's Digital Services Act (DSA), which mandates content moderation on social media companies. However, it has enraged some conservatives in the United States, who see it as an effort to censor right-wing views. Brussels denies this. Breton has fought with Elon Musk, the world's richest man and X-owner, over the obligations to follow EU laws. The European Commission recently fined X €120 million (£105 million) for its blue tick badges, the first fine under the DSA. The platform's blue tick system was deceptive, according to the company, because the company was not

meaningfully verifying users. Musk's website blocked the Commission from posting advertisements on its website in response.

To our American friends: Censorship isn't where you think it is,Breton wrote on X.Anna-Lena von Hodenberg and Josephine Ballon of HateAid, a German company that the State Department said helped enforce the DSA, were also banned. The two CEOs called it a

act of repression by a government increasingly disregarding the rule of law and seeking to silence opposition by any means appropriate,

in a tweeting to the BBC.

We will not be intimidated by a government that uses censorship to muzzle those who advocate for human rights and expression,

they said.

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