Together for Justice condemns the latest wave of censorship targeting Saudi dissidents, human rights defenders, and opposition voices living abroad, after several of them received notices from X stating that their accounts or content had been withheld inside Saudi Arabia following official requests from Saudi authorities.
The danger of this campaign lies in its precise nature: these activists are not inside Saudi Arabia. Many live in exile and continue their political and human rights work from abroad. Yet the Saudi authorities are seeking to block people inside the kingdom from accessing their voices, cutting the digital link between exiled dissidents and the public they are trying to reach.
This is not a global suspension of the accounts. The accounts remain visible outside Saudi Arabia. The censorship is geographic and targeted: it prevents users inside the kingdom from seeing content produced by Saudi opposition figures, rights organizations, and activists abroad. In effect, Riyadh is building a digital wall around its population, deciding which voices Saudis are allowed to hear.
Saudi researcher and dissident Abdullah Alaoudh, son of detained preacher Salman Al-Odah, published a notice from X stating that the platform had received a request from Saudi Arabia’s Communications, Space and Technology Commission concerning his account, and that the content had been withheld inside Saudi Arabia in compliance with local laws. Alaoudh stated that other Saudi dissidents had received similar notices.
The same pattern was reported by Saudi human rights activist Yahya Assiri, who said that his account, the account of ALQST for Human Rights, the account of The National Assembly Party-NAAS, and accounts belonging to members of the party had also been withheld inside Saudi Arabia following an authority request. Assiri described the move as direct censorship against those demanding rights, democracy, and freedom.
Activist Ahmad Al-Hakami also published a similar notice, criticizing X and Elon Musk for complying with the commands of Gulf monarchies, and pointing to the contradiction between the platform’s public claims of defending free speech and its willingness to enforce censorship requests from governments that imprison and kill people for speaking out.
The fact that multiple Saudi activists and organizations received similar notices within a short period suggests that this is not an isolated enforcement action against one account. It is a coordinated censorship campaign aimed at Saudi voices in exile and designed to prevent people inside Saudi Arabia from accessing independent political and human rights content.
Together for Justice stresses that “compliance with local law” cannot be used as a neutral excuse when the local laws in question belong to a state that systematically criminalizes peaceful expression. Saudi cybercrime, media, counterterrorism, and state security laws have long been used to prosecute people for tweets, retweets, comments, online communication, and peaceful criticism.
When a major American platform such as X complies with such requests, it is not simply applying ordinary legal procedure. It is enabling an authoritarian state to extend its censorship beyond its borders. The Saudi authorities may not be able to easily arrest exiled activists abroad, but through country-withholding requests, they can still block their voices from reaching people inside the kingdom.
This is the core danger of the campaign: it targets not only the activists whose accounts are withheld, but also the public inside Saudi Arabia. Citizens and residents inside the kingdom are being denied access to independent information about arbitrary detention, torture, death sentences, political repression, and human rights abuses.
The campaign reflects a modern form of transnational repression. Saudi Arabia is not only threatening dissidents abroad, smearing them, or pressuring their families at home. It is also using global technology platforms to isolate them from their natural audience inside the country.
X presents itself as a platform for free expression. Yet in this case, it is allowing Saudi authorities to decide which Saudi voices can be heard inside Saudi Arabia. A platform that claims to defend speech cannot become a tool for authoritarian censorship when the speech comes from exiles, dissidents, and human rights defenders.
The withholding of accounts belonging to Abdullah Alaoudh, Yahya Assiri, Ahmad Al-Hakami, ALQST, The National Assembly Party-NAAS, and others does not protect public order or national security. It protects the Saudi authorities from scrutiny and prevents people inside the kingdom from accessing voices that challenge the official narrative.
Together for Justice calls on X to disclose all censorship requests it has received from Saudi authorities, including the number of affected accounts, the legal basis cited by Saudi officials, and the criteria used by the platform to approve or implement these requests.
The organization also calls on X to immediately lift the withholding imposed on accounts targeted for peaceful political expression, human rights advocacy, independent documentation, or opposition activity, and to adopt a clear policy refusing any government request that seeks to silence exiled dissidents from reaching people inside their own country.
Together for Justice further urges the U.S. Congress and relevant oversight bodies to investigate the compliance of American technology companies with censorship requests issued by authoritarian governments, especially when such requests target activists, dissidents, and human rights defenders living in the United States, Europe, or elsewhere abroad.
This campaign shows that authoritarian governments are no longer satisfied with controlling public space inside their own borders. They now seek to control what reaches their citizens from outside those borders as well. A dissident may be in exile, but their voice remains targeted at home. A platform may be American, but its enforcement decisions can become an instrument of Saudi censorship.
Blocking exiled Saudi voices inside the kingdom will not erase the truth. It will only expose the Saudi authorities’ fear that their own citizens might hear it.