By From the Evening Standard

Copyright standard

Tommy Robinson continues to rile up his right-wing base by claiming that the UK recorded the highest number of arrests in the world for “online comments” in 2023.

Taking to social media, the political provocateur — whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon — claimed that 12,183 people in the UK had been arrested in 2023.

Based on his post, the UK tops a list of 19 countries that he alleged had made arrests for “online comments” that year, seemingly trying to paint the UK as a place with less freedom of speech than places like Saudi Arabia, Russia and Iran.

It plays into a narrative that many demonstrators who turned out to the Unite The Kingdom rally expressed concerns about: that freedom of speech is seemingly under attack.

In just one day, the post had reached 26.9 million views and was liked 59,000 times on X, with many commentators responding with memes and expressing concern about our freedoms being taken away.

But here’s the thing: the post raises a lot more questions than it does answers. And what does he exactly mean by “online comments”?

Not only does Yaxley-Lennon make no reference to where he pulled the data from, but The Standard was also unable to find any credible source, organisation or watchdog that shares such a similar list.

What’s more, reference to “online comments” is vague, and doesn’t explain complex laws regarding online activity that vary based on each country and can also pose a legitimate risk in some instances.

Such social media posts where UK data is compared with that of authoritarian regimes, where arrest data isn’t public, are misleading.

Here are some facts that we were able to pull.

The UK has a lot of laws about how we behave online, such as the Online Safety Act, which is designed to protect children and adults online, as well as mechanisms to reduce online hate like cyberbullying and harassment.

The data regarding 12,183 arrests made in the UK for “online comments” appears to have been taken from a Times article published in April of this year, which is considered a credible news source.

The report claims that this number came from custody data obtained by the outlet, which revealed that around 12,000 arrests were made in 2023 by 37 police forces under Section 127 of the Communications Act 2003 and Section 1 of the Malicious Communications Act 1988.

People may be arrested under these acts if they are thought to post things that cause distress and are grossly offensive or of an indecent, obscene or menacing character.

But it’s not just “online comments” as Yaxley-Lennon seems to imply. A police officer quoted deep within the article explains that these acts include “any form of communication,” and can relate to “serious domestic abuse-related crimes.”

“Our staff must assess all of the information to determine if the threshold to record a crime has been met,” they explain.

The number of arrests was also down from 2022, according to The Times report, and most arrests didn’t lead to a prosecution either.

The report also highlights “government data shows that the number of convictions and sentencings for communications offences has dramatically decreased over the past decade.”

This shows that there’s a lot of nuance when it comes to laws surrounding arrests, prosecution, and the legality of online behaviour. But there is more to this statistic than what Yaxley-Lennon shared.

Next up on the list is Belarus, which allegedly arrested 6,205 people for online speech in 2023, according to the online post.

Known for its authoritarian regime, Belarus is regarded as a nation where freedom of expression and press freedom are severely restricted.

As well as a lot of censorship, people risk arrest in Belarus for a number of reasons, including insulting the president, which is punishable by up to five years in prison.

Based on our research, it was impossible to find any reference online to 6,205 being arrested for “online comments” but we did find data from the Freedom House, which claims “in 2023, the government oversaw 6,386 arrests,” which falls into a similar ballpark.

These arrests related to “online activities, including libel, defamation, and activities involving extremist groups and materials,” rather than just online comments.

Belarus, like many countries on this list, doesn’t appear to publish data regarding arrests of the nature that Yaxley-Lennon shared in his post. Boasting a population of 9.1m, it’s also considerably smaller than the population of the UK so it’s not really effective to compare statistics anyway.

According to Yaxley-Lennon, 3,500 people were arrested for ‘online comments’ in Germany in 2023.

Germany is often considered to have strong free speech, but hate speech, inciting hatred and even denial of the holocaust can lead to jail time.

Again, The Standard was unable to find any verified source where Yaxley-Lennon’s number came from, and no official data from German authorities was discovered related to this.

However, a report about Germany’s prosecution of online trolls refers to prosecutors in Lower Saxony processing “3,500 cases of crimes of talking, posting, and internet.”

This is simply too vague to assume it relates to all online activity. A total of 750 hate crime cases were reportedly prosecuted over the last four years, according to the report.

Yaxley-Lennon claims that 1,500 people were arrested in China for “online comments” in 2023, but we couldn’t find any credible information to back this statement up either.

There is no public information about China’s arrests for online activity, and given China’s history of cracking down on dissent, it isn’t easy to pinpoint what an accurate figure would be.

China is known for its strict policing of its population, with reports revealing that posting criticism of the government online can lead to jail time.

According to the South China Morning Post, China’s Ministry of Public Security confirmed that 1,500 people were arrested in December 2023 following a campaign to stop online rumours.

The report goes on to imply that this statistic relates to people posting fake news and false allegations, as deemed so by the Chinese government. It also shut down 63,000 illegal accounts and “cleaned up” more than 735,000 posts.

Robinson claims 500 people were arrested in Turkey for online comments, but no credible source of information could be found that verifies this.

Freedom of speech is somewhat limited in Turkey, and defamation is considered a crime. There has also been a clampdown on opposition to Turkey’s leadership and a target on press freedoms, too.

In 2023, Freedom House claims 9,314 people were detained, and the Ministry of Interior found a further 132,310 social media users to have committed “acts of terrorism” online.

Tommy Robinson’s alleged list continues to name several other countries, including Poland, Thailand, Brazil, Syria, India, Iran, France, USA, Vietnam, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Azerbaijan and Hungary.

The list includes several nations where information is heavily censored and populations have been silenced in the past for voicing dissent.

In some places, lives are at stake, while in others, even staging a demonstration like Robinson did last weekend would have had severe consequences.

Countries with more liberal and open democratic systems may record higher numbers of arrests in this area, but we also have more freedom to do so in the first place.