We express our dismay and condemnation over the presence of a FinFisher Command and Control server on a network operated by the Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited (PTLD’s). FinFisher, developed by a UK-based company Gamma International, has been used to target activists in Bahrain. Privacy International is currently engaged in a lawsuit over the export of FinFisher, and has also filed a complaint with the OECD.

In February 2012, alongside an international coalition of civil society groups, we actively campaigned to stop the impending nation-wide firewall and to inform the government and international surveillance companies of the repercussions of the firewall would have on academia, businesses, trade, and civil society. As a result, five major international companies known to sell surveillance, filtering, and blocking systems publicly committed not to apply for the government’s call for proposals last year.

In March 2013 the Ministry of Information Technology made a commitment to shelve their plans for acquiring the technology for URL filtering and blocking.  With the Citizen Lab report we have now learnt that servers at PTLD, one of the largest ISPs in the country, are hosting a command and control server for FinSpy. Based on the report, there are two possibilities: (1) elements of the Government of Pakistan are deploying FinFisher trojans or (2) a foreign government is using a server inside Pakistan for a digital espionage campaign.  Either one of these possibilities is highly troubling, and the findings warrant immediate investigation.  Moreover, given that a Pakistan Telecommunications Authority’s representative has admitted in court that PTCL has acquired a traffic filtering system, we feel that this acquisition and surveillance capability represents a further threat to the free flow of information, user rights, freedom of expression and privacy in Pakistan.

As members of Pakistan’s civil society and organizations committed to ensuring the government upholds democratic principles in Pakistan, and with concerns about restrictions on privacy as well as access to information, we strongly urge PTCL to immediately investigate the existence of FinFisher Command and Control Servers and to publicly disclose their findings.  PTCL to should follow the example of the Canadian ISP SoftCom that investigated and then disabled the FinFisher server on its networks that was similarly identified by Citizen Lab in March 2013.  By keeping their users in the dark any further PTCL would harm open and secure access in Pakistan. PTCL should under no circumstances allow FinFisher or other remote intrusion or filtering tools within their network, as their presence directly violates user’s rights and privacy, as well as threatening Pakistan’s network security.

If PTCL wants to further support business, innovation, entrepreneurship, trade, international investment, academia and human rights, it should immediately investigate and disable this  espionage equipment on its network.

Signed:

ARTICLE 19,  Association For Progressive Communications, Access Now, Bolo Bhi, Centre For Democracy & Technology, Centre For Peace & Development Initiatives, Christopher Parsons,Chunri Chuopaal, Digital Rights Foundation, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Free Press, Global Voices Advocacy, Index On Censorship, Intermedia Pakistan, Individual Land Pakistan, Jacob Appelbaum (The Tor Project), Leila Nachawati,  Privacy International, Reporters Without Borders, Renata Avila (Human Rights & IP lawyer),  Simon Davies (Privacy Surgeon), Institute for Research Advocacy and Development Pakistan, The Internet Democracy Project India, and Nawaat

The post Global coalition of NGOs call to investigate and disable FinFisher’s espionage equipment in Pakistan appeared first on Index on Censorship.

India’s large population and increasing teledensity, especially in urban pockets, has spurred an impressive jump in the number of people online. Moreover, a recent report released by the Internet and Mobile Association of India and IRIS Knowledge Foundation has revealed that of India’s 543 constituences, 160 can be termed as ‘high impact’ — that is, they will most likely be influenced by social media in the next general elections. As the report explains, high impact constituencies are those where the numbers of Facebook users are more than the margin of victory of the winner in the last Lok Sabha election, or where Facebook users account for over 10% of the voting population. The study then goes onto declare 67 constituencies as medium-impact, 60 as low-impact and 256 as no-impact constituencies.

The study certainly seems to echo the general euphoria over social networking as a political tool. However, the number of Facebook users might not translate into any change in voting patterns -– in fact, for all we know most the 78 million Facebook users in India might not be interested in politics at all. The study, however, clearly seems to signal that the ability to connect with voters through this medium indicates that political impact could be high.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has been the first national political party to have embraced technology to reach out to voters, with a Twitter account, Facebook page, YouTube channel, mobile app and live streaming over the internet. Its controversial leader Narendra Modi –- who some believe could become India’s next prime minister -– has over 1,600,000 followers. Modi has also been quick to embrace digital technology including a 3D projection of an address in 53 places in the country at the same time. India’s other big national political party, the Congress Party is catching up. Media and IT cells have been set up with an eye towards elections, and one of their star politicians on social media, Shashi Tharoor, has over 1,700,000 followers.

There is some merit to this strategy, although in a nascent stage. Right now, there is a small but very active Twitter base in India that is highly political and there are constant fights between the right-wingers and the rest, which can be read as BJP-Congress fights. Major political episodes in the country become trending topics and both sides are able to make TV news headlines quite regularly. However, at this point it would be safe to assume that most middle class Indians experience political activity on Twitter through news reports on TV than actually by engaging with the medium themselves.

Even the politicians who have invested in social media are quite realistic about what it can do for them. Many of them, including Shashi Tharoor and Orissa-based politician Jay Panda admit that people from their own constituency are not following them on Twitter. Therefore, while they can reach a large number of people through the medium, as yet, they cannot swing an election based on social media.

As the middle class expands, more Indians are expected to get online. Young people are digital natives, and those who can afford smartphones are addicted to them. The general feeling is that politics needs to adapt to the habits and lifestyle of this demographic, and perhaps in that enthusiasm its real role gets overplayed in the media.

However, there is good reason to believe the future is closer than we might imagine. A recent election in the ‘modern’ city of Bangalore saw all politicians engage heavily with social media. And, India’s huge anti-corruption movement led by activist Anna Hazare and his colleague Arvind Kejriwal in April 2012 was almost entirely fuelled by media support and a very engaged online stategy. The movement led to an anti-corruption bill being tabled in Parliament. Many of the members of that movement have now formed the Aam Aadmi Party (literally translated into ‘ordinary man’ party) and rely very heavily on social media to reach their constituency – the middle class. However, Kejriwal only has just over 300,000 followers on Twitter, especially when compared to BJP’s Modi or Congress’s Tharoor. Kejriwal’s erstwhile movement, India Against Corruption has under 1,000,000 likes on Facebook. For a movement that aims to represent all of the middle class, the numbers don’t yet show their true potential.

And in the end, that might well be the final analysis of social media in India right now. The numbers, while impressive, do not yet indicate deep engagement and involvement in the political sphere. In 2014, politicians might do well to remember a computer screen is no match for campaigning in the heat and dust of the smallest corners of the country. Because, truly, that’s where their people are.

More India Coverage >>>

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The post Will social media be a game changer for Indian politics? appeared first on Index on Censorship.

It was also one of the bloodiest elections in the country’s history. At the end of three weeks of campaigning, at least 117 people including election candidates have been killed. Former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif began talks on Sunday to form a new government, The New York Times reported.

As the campaigns proceeded, the rift became clearer: the Taliban threatened and attacked specific political parties namely, Awami National Party, Pakistan People’s Party and Muttahida Qaumi Movement, derailing their campaigns to the point where the parties had to shut down their election offices. Even that didn’t stop the terror attacks, as locked and empty political party offices continued to be targeted. The Taliban claimed that the political parties being targeted were secular and worked against the ideology of Islam. Although the Taliban were the biggest perpetrators, they weren’t the only ones: political rivalries and attacks continued throughout the country during campaign time. Only Punjab, one of the country’s largest provinces, remained relatively terror free.

Moreover, the political parties that were not on the Taliban hit list shied away from calling out the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan over the attacks, despite condemning the attacks vocally. Eventually, as a gesture of solidarity, Pakistan Tehreek – e – Insaaf, party led by Imran Khan, announced to it would withdraw all its scheduled events for election campaigning in Karachi.

Violence, Moral Policing and the Constitution

Violent attacks by far have been the biggest deterrent to political campaigning this election, sustaining attacks because of their secular ideology shunned political workers from expressing their views, further bifurcating the already polarised political and social discourse.

But hindrance to freedom of expression began as early as the election process itself. The election commission sparked a huge debate when the nomination papers of a renowned columnist were rejected by the district returning officer, or RO, “for writing against the ideology of Pakistan” in his columns. But even more concerning was the fact that the objection was raised by invoking the constitution’s Article 62 & 63, introduced during the much-reviled dictatorship of Zia-ul-Haq. To paraphrase, the articles made it mandatory for prospective political candidates to have a clean criminal record; of being of noble and sound character reflecting the Islamic beliefs and of not having ever worked against the security and interest of the nation or having criticized the military or the judiciary, amongst other things.

The account of journalist and politician Ayaz Amir was even more revealing: “I was told that in my column I have endorsed liquor drinking. I really don’t know from where the RO has got this impression, as I have not written anything like this.” As fellow journalist Omar Warraich aptly summed it, it seemed Amir was being disqualified for a thought crime. Amir challenged this in the Lahore High Court, which reversed the RO’s decision, allowing Amir to contest elections. However, that hasn’t stopped the much needed debate around Pakistan’s amended constitution, which successfully cripples freedom of speech, expression and even privacy by subjecting it to ‘reasonable restrictions’ from vague terms like ‘glory of Islam’  to a subjective issue of ‘morality’.

The missing voters

It’s hard not to acknowledge the void left by the missing voters — women, the nearly 1.5 million people of Gilgit Baltistan and the four million Ahmadis. Although their plights may vary, the issue remains the same — a significant segment of the society will watch the elections unfold from a distance and not enough has been done to ensure their participation.

The Ahmadiyya community has boycotted the elections process for at least three decades after a law declared them ‘non-Muslims’. This was exacerbated in 2011 when the election commission created a separate voters list for the Ahmadis. This action marginalised them even further. Even though Pakistan’s Supreme Court took the discrimination complaint under serious consideration, it ruled that the court couldn’t over rule a constitutional command.  The past few years have been tumultuous for the country’s religious minorities, the boycott from the Ahmadiyya community might deter other religious minorities from voting.

A report published last year by Pakistan’s Fair & Free Election Network, approximately 10 million Pakistani women were unaccounted for in the draft electoral rolls released in 2011. With the exception of a few, political parties have remained largely negligent of mobilising the women voters. Despite powerful women in the assembly and strikingly powerful stories of women candidates the issue remains: How many women will turn up to exercise their right to vote? Will the stories of candidate Veeru Kohli, bonded labourer from Hyderabad and  Badam Zari of Bajaur inspire more women voters to practice their rights? Reports suggest otherwise.

More Pakistan Coverage >>>

• Global coalition of NGOs call to investigate and disable FinFisher’s espionage equipment in Pakistan

Sana Saleem is a Karachi-based journalist and human rights activist working for advocacy group Bolo Bhi.

The post Pakistan’s Sharif moves to form government after historic vote appeared first on Index on Censorship.

Thai editor Somyot Prueksakasemsuk may no longer be at the helm of his bygone political magazine, a sharp tongue that mocked a former government. But no matter what the circumstances, Somyot stays true to his love for words. He now works as a librarian in, well, a Thai prison.

Thai editor Somyot Prueksakasemsuk was sentenced to 11 years in prison late last month.

Somyot has languished for 22 months in jail over accusations of defamation and Lèse majesté, or defaming the monarchy. He was detained in April 2011, denied bail, and late last month was sentenced to 11 years imprisonment. “He has his hopes high,” said his wife, Sukunya “Joop” Prueksakasemsuk. “He was depressed for two weeks after the sentencing. But we’re going to appeal, even if it takes many years.”

Her husband’s crime? At the height of Thailand’s political crisis in 2010, Somyot published two articles in Voice of Taksin, a defunct political magazine named after the former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who was overthrown in a 2006 military coup and now lives in self-imposed exile. The magazine passed off the writing as slapstick fiction. But the court retorted that the satire was a thinly veiled attack on the king, Bhumibol Adulyadej, who the main character resembled.

There’s another twist: Somyot didn’t actually write the articles that led to his imprisonment.

The real author, Jakrapob Penkair, is a fugitive in Cambodia who put together the pieces under a pseudonym. A former minister under Thaksin, Jakrapob is a founding member the United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship (UDD), a movement more commonly known as the “Red Shirts.” Calling for Thaksin’s return to Thailand, the protestors confronted soldiers in May 2010, sparking a political crisis that left 91 people dead.

A little background: Thaksin supporters claimed the ex-premier, who served from 2001 to 2006, was a democratically elected populist. His opponents, known as the “Yellow Shirts”, say he was a gangster whose strongman tactics overrode checks and balances and threatened the primacy of the king. Many of the Yellows are from Bangkok, representing a middle class that, in a drift away from what the West would expect, has turned against the idea of representative government, the journalist Joshua Kurlantzick argues in Democracy in Retreat.

It’s a trend that reveals much, in this once-promising democracy, about the increase in censorship using lèse majesté laws. More than 400 cases have been brought forward between 2006 and 2011. The rules shield the country’s monarchy from scrutiny and are used to jail government critics in general, thanks in part to the vagueness laid out in article 112 of the Thai criminal code: “Whoever defames, insults or threatens the King, Queen, the Heir-apparent or the Regent, shall be punished with imprisonment of three to fifteen years.”

What makes the law dangerous is that anybody can file a complaint against anybody. Authorities then investigate and decide whether or not to press charges using the hazy definition of “insult.”

“Everybody is afraid of crossing the line, but nobody knows where the line is,” said Andrew MacGregor Marshall, a former Thomson Reuters journalist in Thailand, now living in Singapore because of his controversial writings on Lèse majesté. (No criminal complaint has been filed against Marshall in Thailand yet, to his knowledge.) “The law is being used by a great many people for a great many reasons.”

It’s an open secret that members of the royal family, including Queen Sirikit, actively peddle patronage amid the country’s political networks. That factionalism and political jockeying means neither end of the political spectrum is immune from Lèse majesté accusations. At the same time, both sides claim to be acting in the interests of the king. Many Thais perceive him as an untouchable figurehead whose on-paper support is needed, for the most part, to get things done in the Thai political scene. Publicly oppose that perception, and arrest is a possibility.

As Somyot’s case demonstrates, judges are not just handing sentences to critics themselves, but to people who simply allow others to criticise. He’s not the first editor to be targeted in this way. In May 2012, the same judge presiding over Somyot’s case found Chiranuch Premchaipoen — more popularly known as “Jiew” — guilty of violations of the 2007 Computer Crimes Act. She was lucky in one respect: getting away with a rather lenient, suspended eight-month sentence.

Police claimed that as editor of the news website Prachatai, she wasn’t quick enough to remove 10 comments posted by others that were critical of the monarchy. “It’s a climate of fear,” she said in reference to both Somyot’s case and her own. “A professional editor can be held accountable even if he didn’t do anything.”

Then there’s “Uncle SMS,” real name Amphon Tangnoppaku, who’s become a sort of martyr for the anti-Lèse majesté movement. In May 2012, the 61-year-old died of natural causes in prison after being sentenced to 20 years in prison for insulting Queen Sirikit. Accusers claimed the grandfather sent four anti-royal text messages to a government official, but he maintained that he didn’t even know how to send a text message.

It is a reality that Joe Gordon, an American citizen of Thai ethnicity, looks at with disdain. In 2011, Gordon was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison for posting excerpts on a blog from a widely available biography of the king. In July 2012, the king pardoned him, a luxury afforded to foreign nationals but rarely given to Thais.

“The prison conditions were horrible,” he told Index from Los Angeles, recalling the time he shared in a prison cell with Somyot. “And I can tell you Somyot was not a criminal. He spent time writing every day, working in the library. He was always helping other people.”

It is a reputation of kindness that Somyot’s wife takes pride in, looking to her husband as merely one trying to help many. “Looking at my husband’s conviction, it’s not individual anymore,” she says. “It shows we, everybody, don’t have freedom of speech or publishing, and no real freedom or democracy.”

Geoffrey Cain is an editor at New Mandala, the Southeast Asia blog at the Australian National University

The post Where insulting royalty will put you in jail appeared first on Index on Censorship.

However, despite being off of Facebook, the band’s identity is still being threatened online, as other pages pretending to be Pragaash have now appeared on the social networking site. Two of these were pages that previously existed on Facebook, but have very opportunistically changed their names from previous topics (such as cricket) to the name of the band. One is anti-India while the other anti-Pakistan. Any average user could be fooled into believing that this was indeed the band’s original Facebook page, and that these are their political views.

Meanwhile, three people have been arrested for posting abuse and threats on Pragaash’s own (now removed) Facebook page. They are in police custody until 15 February, and have also been charged under Section 66A of India’s Information Technology Act. The police have indicated that more arrests are on the way.

The Pragaash case yet again raises the question about the increasingly diminishing space for artists to perform their work without fear from any number of outraged and offended groups in India. Recently, an extremely popular actor from South India, Kamal Haasan, had to cut scenes from his latest movie due to major protests by Muslim groups. Around the same time, the Jaipur Literary Festival was mired in controversy when an academic’s remarks offended certain political groups, as Index reported.

In the case of Pragaash, while the guilty parties face arrest due to their abusive language online, there are reports that human rights groups are considering taking action against the offline portion of this controversy. Interestingly, they want to take Kashmir’s Grand Mufti to court for issuing fatwas that project the state of Jammu and Kashmir in a “bad light”.

Mahima Kaul is a New Delhi based journalist. She tweets from @misskaul.

The post How a fatwa stopped the all-girl rock appeared first on Index on Censorship.

Autocratic, authoritarian and totalitarian states take it upon themselves to actively stifle freedom of expression. These states can look very different – “socialist” North Korea may seem very different to “theocratic” Iran, but even with vastly differing cultures and political landscapes, we can draw similarities between the methods used by these regimes to suffocate and in some cases entirely suppress free speech.

The three main methods authoritarian states use to curtail free speech are: the chill through direct intimidation; the chill through repressive laws and the chill online — using the internet to curtail free speech.

Direct intimidation

Ai Weiwei

Threats, imprisonment, torture and even murder are used to curtail free speech, particularly that of regime critics and activists. This is particularly common in the most authoritarian countries such as China or Iran. The murder of journalists and political activists in authoritarian states remains frequent and the arrest and beating of Chinese artist Ai Weiwei changed the country’s political landscape by showing that no one, however famous or influential, was beyond the state’s reach.

States that inhibit freedom of expression often curtail a spectrum of co-dependent human rights: freedom of association (UNDHR Article 17), the right to privacy (UNDHR Article 12), even the right to life (UNDHR Article 3) and freedom from torture (UNDHR Article 5). And because these rights are co-dependent, the most active members of civil society place themselves in direct danger of reprisal: journalists attempting to document human rights violations are targeted by the state as they attempt to stop such information being diseminiated. Azeri journalist Idrak Abbasov, an Index on Censorship award winner, was beaten earlier this year by security guards for writing about the government of Azerbaijan’s demolition of private housing. States generally don’t attempt to hide these attacks, knowing that the fear they arouse in civil society is useful in dissuading others from challenging its power.

In autocratic states —  those that at least attempt the veneer of democratic respectability — repressive laws are at the forefront of the state’s attempt to silence dissent. In Apartheid South Africa, the hated Publications Act banned any work “harmful to the relations between any sections of the inhabitants of the Republic”, which the authorities defended as an attempt to stop racial violence (like similar race hate legislation elsewhere). Every member of the ‘committee of experts’ on the censoring Appeal Board was white and part of the regime and the legislation was used to silence dissenting voices calling for change. Russia, which as a Council of Europe member must implement rulings by the European Court of Human Rights, has recently passed a series of strikingly repressive laws including legislation making protesting extremely difficult, a new law to restrict NGOs accepting foreign donations and the re-introduction of criminal defamation.

Using the law to silence opposition

The most effective repressive laws mirror edicts also on the statute books of more democratic states. Russia can justify its position on criminal libel by noting that this legislation is still on statute in France and Italy.

Repressive laws in authoritarian states act to shut down the space for dissenting opinions: focusing on limiting independent media, the right to freedom of association (by banning certain NGOs) and the right to protest and organise. Restrictions on the free media may include laws that enforce the registration of newspapers; draconian libel laws, the offence of lese majeste, and laws that prevent whistleblowing or harm to “national interests”.

Legal impositions on free speech typically use a politicised judiciary to act as the censor within a restrictive legal framework that may also include tough laws on public order, hate crime, anti-terror legislation, blasphemy and the protection of public morality. These laws are often used against those deemed to pose the greatest threat to the stability of the regime – with the broader legal framework making it hard for opposition media to succeed commercially, or for civil society to operate legally.

Online censorship

Autocratic states are highly alert to the challenge they face online in the wake of the Arab Spring. Online freedom is increasingly under fire through server-side ISP blocking of particular websites, or even the use of national firewalls to create a highly sanitised state intranet. This prevents the spread of politically sensitive information from external sources.

In Belarus, the opposition news website Charter97 has been subjected to systematic DDOS attacks in an attempt to close the site down. These attacks often force the website’s webhost to pull the site as it causes their servers to fail. In many ways, this method is simply a continuation of the physical assaults and raids on newsrooms practiced by the regime against opposition journalists.

The internet is often seen as a force for good in these states, but it can be used against activists. State surveillance online has expanded dramatically in recent years, in part as the cost of equipment has fallen. Index has raised concerns over the export of surveillance equipment by Western firms, a failure of corporate responsibility that has allowed authoritarian states to exponentially increase their knowledge of the activities of civil society. As we are discovering, technology such as the integration of GPS into smartphones can be used in authoritarian states to track dissidents and monitor their movements to a single metre. The anonymity of the internet whilst generally useful as a tool for protecting the privacy of human rights activists, can also cloak the actions of states.

By understanding the methods of repression, democracies can act to prevent complicity.

Mike Harris is Head of Advocacy at Index on Censorship

The post The modern Big Brothers appeared first on Index on Censorship.

Sanal Edamaruku is facing up to three years in an Indian jail for telling the truth.

For the past two decades Edamaruku, president of the Indian Rationalist Association, has been spearheading a campaign of de-mystification and public education aimed at undermining the power of the fake gurus and God-men who still wield considerable power in India. In a never-ending series of rationalist roadshows Edamaruku and his merry band of debunkers have traversed India, setting up on street corners in big cities and small towns. On first glance they are no different from the travelling shows of the sadhus and gurus who criss-cross India performing miracles for cash. The rationalists perform a series of these same “miracles” — coconuts crack open and appear to bleed, beds of nails are reclined on, bodies levitated under sheets, flesh pierced without blood. Once the crowd is sufficiently enraptured, the curtain is dropped, and Edamaruku’s team explain that each miracle is a trick, and how that trick is performed. When they pack up, they leave ordinary Indians inoculated against the tan-tricks and supernatural claims of the fakirs, and better informed about basic scientific processes. “What may look like Sunday entertainment for children,” Edamaruku says, “is nothing less than breaking the little hook on which the god-men’s enormous power, and the fate of their victims, hangs.”

In recent years the roadshow has moved into the TV Studio. Edamaruku has become something of a star, the hardest working man in the debunking business – last year he estimates he did 200 appearances.  He is usually called on to pour cold water on supernatural claims. In one famous instance, the “Great Tantra Challenge” of 2008, he challenged the self-styled guru Pandit Surinder Sharma to prove his claim that he was so powerful he could kill with the power of his mind. After several hours of trying to kill Edamaruku he was forced to withdraw, utterly deflated.

Alongside vanquishing charlatans Edamaruku delights in debunking miracles — revealing the mundane scientific processes that lie behind these supposed supernatural events. The statue of Ganesh that actually drinks milk? No, capillary action as the stone dries. The coconut that rolls by itself compelled by mystical force? Nope, there’s a mouse inside. A statue of Christ dripping holy water? Sorry, it’s just a leaky tap.

But this is where the trouble started. Following these last revelations in April this year concerning a “miraculous” weeping statue at the Catholic Church of Our Lady of Velan Kanni in Vile Parle, Mumbai, the debunkees went on the offensive. Various Catholic groups, including the seemingly unironically-named Catholic Secular Forum, acting, apparently, with the tacit support of the Archdiocise of Mumbai, brought a complaint against Edamaruku, under article 295(a) of the Indian Penal Code which functions as a de facto blasphemy law, making “deliberate and malicious acts, intended to outrage of insult religious feelings” an offence punishable by up to 3 years in jail. Letters started to arrive at Edamaruku’s Delhi offices from the Mumbai police demanding that he present himself to answer the allegations. His legal attempt to secure “anticipatory bail” — which would have meant he could be sure to be released after questioning — was turned down. He found himself facing the prospect of being picked up by the police and incarcerated for an indefinite period, pending whatever case was eventually brought. Edamaruku felt he had no option but to leave the country — he is currently staying in Europe and visiting Britain briefly next week (where he will speak at a free event to publicise his case).

However, he is not running from the case. Since the original allegations were made something of a public furore has been ignited in India. The Archbishop of Mumbai has claimed that he was not behind the allegations, and that all could be smoothed over if only Edamaruku issued an apology, something he refuses to do. After all, he says, why should he apologise for telling the truth? More than that he thinks it’s time that India’s blasphemy law — legacy of colonialism, put in place in 1860 to tamp inter-communal strife and ensure a smooth-running Raj – was challenged. He would like to take his case to the Indian Supreme Court and challenge section 295(a) on the basis that it conflicts with provisions in the Indian constitution which protect free speech and promote the scientific temper.

The case could have major consequences, and not just in India. Neighbouring Pakistan also inherited 295(a) from the British, which General Zia l-Huq went about strengthening in the 80s adding sections (b), (c) and (d) which explicitly outlaw blasphemy against the Qur’an and Muhammad, the latter offense carrying a mandatory death sentence. These laws have become a weapon for settling personal scores and furthering the agenda of religious extremism, according to the journalist Beena Sarwar, and there is growing clamour in Pakistan for reform. Edamaruku’s campaign could help bring the issue the public attention and support needed to push through legal reform in both countries.

There is a serious debate to had about whether countries with histories of inter-faith violence do need to protect religions from hate speech. Religious minorities continue to require legal protection from persecution. But can the law be used to protect feelings? Can you legislate against offence without compromising free speech? Hopefully participants in Wednesday’s debate, including the retired judge Stephen Sedley, can kickstart such a debate. What is clear is that in bringing such charges against Sanal Edamaruku, someone articulate, determined and armed with irrefutable scientific facts, these Catholic groups — no doubt cheered on by Sadhus and gurus with lucrative snake-oil careers to protect — have chosen the wrong issue, and the wrong target.

Caspar Melville is editor of New Humanist Magazine. For tickets and details of New Humanist and Index on Censorship’s free event with Sanal Edamaruku, Stephen Sedley and journalist and novelist Salil Tripathi, click here

The post India: Blasphemy backlash appeared first on Index on Censorship.

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