On liberty

Friday, August 15th, 2008

The United Nations is right to condemn Britain’s free expression record. But its criticisms would hold more weight if it demonstrated a stronger anti-censorship line itself, writes
Jo Glanville
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Slightly chilled

Friday, July 25th, 2008

The latest high-profile, UK privacy case raises critical questions for press freedom, writes Jo Glanville
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Who killed Hrant Dink?

Monday, July 7th, 2008

As the murder trial continues this week in Turkey, the investigation remains far from complete. Jo Glanville spoke to Dink family lawyer Fethiye Çetin about the case
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‘Rachel’s law’ protects free expression

Wednesday, April 2nd, 2008

Saudi woman murdered for chatting online

Tuesday, April 1st, 2008

Victory for protest

Monday, March 31st, 2008

Mark Thomas led an inspired campaign against the UK government’s restrictions on the right to protest. He says good riddance

…And so farewell then to the anti-protest laws, repealed with a musty splutter from Jack Straw in Parliament last week. These laws were hastily brought in an attempt to evict Brian Haw, the peace protestor in Parliament Square, from his vigil. At the time, David Blunkett (then Home Secretary) admitted: “It might be a sledgehammer to crack a nut but he is a nut.” Perhaps inevitably, a law introduced to clear one man from Parliament Square proved to be narrow-minded, ill conceived and in the end unworkable.

The law said that anyone who wanted to demonstrate in Parliament Square, and a designated zone around it, would have to get prior permission from the police, six days in advance. For larger demonstrations, organisers such as Stop the War were well used to talking to the police and the law did little to affect them. Where the law really entered a Kafkaesque landscape of its own was in the smaller demos. One person with a small banner was deemed to be a demo and had to get permission. However, the police had an arbitrary power to define what was a demo. So a friend of mine was threatened with arrest for having cakes with slogans iced upon them – the word “Peace” in fact – at a picnic in the square. This was, the police insisted, an illegal demo. The instances of bizarre bureaucracy kept piling up alongside the infringement of the right to demonstrate. So, on one hand, I had to get permission to stand holding a placard saying “Support the Poppy Appeal” – as this was a political demo. On the other hand, Maya Evans was famously arrested for reading out the names of the Iraqi and British war dead at the Cenotaph: she was charged under the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act and found guilty of demonstrating without permission.

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Hidden message

Wednesday, January 23rd, 2008

Victory for freedom of information campaigner

Wednesday, January 23rd, 2008

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office has lost an appeal to prevent the release of a document that formed part of the government’s case for invading Iraq.

The document was written by John Williams, then Head of News at the Foreign Office. It formed part of the drafting process of the dossier ‘Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction’, which asserted that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction which could be deployed within 45 minutes. The dossier, published in 2002, was central to the government’s argument for invading Iraq. The furore which followed BBC journalist Andrew Gilligan’s claim that the document was ‘sexed up’ led to the resignation of the director-general Greg Dyke and chairman Gavyn Davies after the publication of the Hutton Report.

The government had claimed that the dossier was the work of the Joint Intelligence Committee, but the draft is evidence that government spin doctors had a hand in the process.

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