Paul Andrew Greaves, 54 has been charged with stealing £113,000 from a police evidence locker. Warwickshire police had initially refused to name him.

According to the Daily Telegraph, a Warwickshire police spokesman said:  

“As a result of concerns raised following the publication of a press release regarding a man charged with theft, we accept that our decision not to name him was wrong and inconsistent with the current national guidance.”

“We will now be adopting the national Association of Chief Police Officers guidance in respect to naming individuals on charge.

“We apologise that our previous approach has not been consistent with this.”

In an announcement released on Wednesday the Warwickshire Police said that “a 54 year old man from the Stratford area has been charged with the theft of £113,000 from the former Warwickshire Police headquarters at Leek Wootton. The man, a retired police officer, will appear before magistrates in Leamington on May 22.”

But the announcement also said included this note to editors: “Due to a change in policy we no longer release the name of an individual on charge.”

A senior officer apparently blamed this move on a recommendation made in the Leveson report into press standards.

Neil Brunton, Deputy Chief Constable (temporary) with Warwickshire Police, later tweeted, “The policy was recently changed to align with national policy post Leverson [sic] and not because of today’s outcome.”

Lord Justice Leveson did recommend anonymity for arrested people, but stopped short of suggesting that people charged with a crime should not be identified.

The Association of Chief Police Officers is set to recommend that officers “neither confirm nor deny” the identity of people who have been arrested. But ACPO told Index that the new guidelines have not yet been signed off.

Index on Censorship CEO Kirsty Hughes commented:

“Keeping secret the names of people who have been charged with crimes goes against the principle of open justice that we have in this country. Although there may be instances when it is appropriate not to release a name, this should not be a general policy. That the police have decided not to name a former police officer is extremely worrying.”

The post Police apologise for withholding name of charged officer appeared first on Index on Censorship.

Indian filmmaker Ashvin Kumar is in a curious position. His documentary, Inshallah Kashmir, recently won this year’s India’s National Award for “Best Investigative Film”. Kumar also won the 2012 National Award for “Best Film on Social Issues”, for his documentary Inshallah Football. Despite the press and adulation he has received, Kumar is still struggling to have his films screened on TV. Even the public service broadcaster refuses to air his films as they have received an “A” (Adult) certificate — a “polite” form of censorship, as Kumar told Index.

Kumar’s story begins in Kashmir, the backdrop for both of his films. His first film, tracking the journey of young footballers trying to arrange visas to attend a tournament in Spain, exposed raw nerves within Kashmiri society. What should be a simple process for any talented footballer became an ordeal for one young boy, who was refused a visa for having a surrendered militant for a father. Out of this story came Kumar’s next documentary, a raw and in-depth look at the Kashmiri people, including those who participated in militancy against the Indian government in the 1990s.

When Kumar applied to the Censor Board to approve Inshallah Football in 2010, his application got rejected outright, despite an early indication that he would get approval. This, after he had been assured by the Board that certification was only a formality at this point. In 2011, the Censor Board eventually awarded Kumar’s film Adult (A) certification. Confused, Kumar filed a RTI (Right to Information) request and was told that the Board felt the characters were not authentic. The board also felt Kumar’s film was too critical of the government.

What bothers Kumar is the “quasi ban” that results from the A-certificate, a decision normally reserved for feature films with gross violence and nudity. The film, which amazingly went from censored by the government to being honoured by it, can’t be shown on TV because of its alleged adult content. At the time Kumar stated in an extremely frank interview:

“The cynical view is that they are now trying to come across as more equal and liberal than they are. Some other filmmakers I’ve spoken to said this is exactly what they do. They first ban it, and then when they see that public opinion is not working in favour, they give it a National Award. I hope we got the National Award on the merit of the film and not because of political reasons.”

Worried that his next venture would be met with the same fate, especially since Inshallah Kashmir deals directly with militancy and its fallouts in Kashmir, Kumar decided to release it online for one day, 26 January 2012, India’s Republic Day. At the moment, the film has both an “A” certification and despite its honour from the government, it still cannot be aired on TV. Kumar has now put the film online for free.

The exchanges with the Censor Board has made Kumar and others question both its role and its intentions. Many filmmakers feel that the censor board’s excessive and unnecessary interference has resulted in “pre-censorship” for filmmakers. Kumar told Index that, as a result, he feels like movies from this generation will not reflect today’s realities, and because of censorship “we are losing precious documentation of where we are as a civilisation.”

An online petition to Save Indie Cinema is challenging this status quo. The petition, which includes some of India’s most respected names in film, is trying to draw attention to the fact that indie cinema is being marginalised by both the government and distributors. They feel the government should budget for exhibition space for smaller movies, and even A-rated movies should be screened by the public broadcaster, albeit at a later time at night. The other complaint is that some of India’s biggest blockbusters, shown freely on both state and private channels, get “U” (universal) ratings by the Censor Board, despite containing violence and vulgarity. And distributors often relegate indie films to awkward showtimes, therefore sidelining them.

Perhaps as a response to this, the government has recently announced that  National Award winning films will be broadcast on Doordarshan, an Indian public broadcaster. They also added that they will consider screening them in commercial theaters.

For Kumar, this is a moment for cautious joy. “I hope this is true,” he wrote on Facebook about the news.

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

The post India: Kumar versus the censor appeared first on Index on Censorship.

Today, headlines from around the world resonate with the news that there are nearly six million Spanish citizens currently unemployed. Spaniards are in the process of losing their quality of life, along with their access to health, education and even food. The number of homeless people is rising and cutbacks and “reforms” continue without respite.

How is it possible for the country to accept that over half its population of under 25-year-olds are unemployed? How does a society sustain itself with over a million members living in households where not so much as a euro comes in by way of a monthly salary? How sick is a society when the only social group not to lose its purchasing power in recent years are the retired and when there are more than 150 home evictions per day? What is the impact of such a profound crisis on freedom of expression?

As could have been foreseen, street protests have only increased in size and intensity since the start of the crisis in 2008. And authorities have responded in equal measure.

Evictions are one of the most dramatic consequences of the economic and financial crisis — there are more than 150 home evictions per day in Spain. Jose Luis Cuesta / Demotix

The turning point was 15 May 2011, when — summoned by organisations such as Juventud sin future (Youth without a future), Democracia real YA! (Real democracy NOW!) and about 200 smaller citizen platforms — thousands of protesters occupied plazas and streets in 58 cities, starting with Puerta del Sol in Madrid. They claimed they weren’t being represented by traditional politics; they demanded a radical change in society. Immediately, the media linked the protests to the Icelandic rallies of 2009, to the 2011 revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt and to the movement set out in the best-selling book Indignez-vous! by Stéphane Hessel, a French Resistance hero, concentration camp survivor and co-author of the UN Declaration of Human Rights. Indignez-vous! (Time for Outrage!) rails against apathy and argues that anger and indignation can be a powerful motive for change. The protesters became known as the Indignados movement, or 15M, and became a global symbol.

A survey published by RTVE (Spanish public TV) reported on 6 August 2011 that, since 15 May 2011, between 6 and 8.5 million citizens had participated in the 15M movement, visited the campsites where protesters gathered, joined assemblies or took part in the demonstrations organised by Democracia real YA!

On assuming office in December 2011, Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy unleashed a seemingly unstoppable agenda of cuts intended to slim down Spain’s welfare state. It had to be defended. The protection of and provision for society had been secure for decades, but now it was regarded by Rajoy’s party as a luxury, and by the opposition as a key political victory that had to be won. For grassroots activists, it provoked an even stronger reaction, led by 15M.

As one reform followed another in waves, the 15M movement discovered who its allies were: state employees and civil servants who now perceived public services — basic health, education, assistance to immigrants and disabled people in vulnerable situations — to be at great risk, along with their own jobs. Civil servants became a target for conservative media. They were slow,they were “lazy”, they were “privileged”, they abused the system. A type of Orwellian Newspeak was being born. Spain has over three million state employees and the tales spun by the media talked endlessly of an over-abundance of public sector workers, in spite of the fact that, according to the International Labour Organisation, the percentage of public sector employees, compared to the overall workforce, is lower than that of some 15 other European countries.

An “indignado” struggles to escape from a policemen during riots in Barcelona’s main square (Plaça Catalunya) during ‘Movimiento 15M’ — The occupy movement in Spain. Juanfra Alvarez / Demotix

Seeing that the regenerated social movements, along with trade unions and public sector employees, were uniting against government policies, it was virtually guaranteed that the streets would be permanently filled with protesters. “Labour reforms are going be at the cost of a [general] strike,” Rajoy practically bragged in January 2012, unaware that the television cameras were on him as he had an informal chat with his Finnish counterpart, Jyrki Katainen, on the fringes of a Council of the European Union meeting. Rajoy’s government has lived through two brutal general strikes that have affected the entire country and thousands of demonstrations. In Madrid alone, at least ten demonstrations are recorded daily.

Doctors, underground train and bus drivers, journalists, judges, district attorneys, lawyers, teachers, firefighters … every day a demonstration, almost never assembled by a trade union, but which can regularly count on the support of other movements, always connected through online social networks.

Police brutality

To every action there is always equal reaction on the opposite side. Excessive behaviour on the part of the police is hardly new, even at the least officially organised smaller demonstrations taking place in Spain. In their annual review of human rights across the world, Amnesty International has been recording police abuses of power in the country for some time. But in the course of the last two years, both political discourse and police heavy-handedness have increased to such an extent that public protest has been virtually criminalised.

In previous times, police only charged the crowds after dark, once the number of protesters had diminished and only those considered to be the most radical stayed behind. But recent months have seen police charge into town squares filled with families protesting peacefully.

The 15M movement emerged in a relatively peaceful environment. The first reports of major brutality by police were during a march to support miners from northern Spain in June 2012. On 11 July, a small group of troublemakers set off fireworks (an act that on earlier occasions would have raised tensions but not led to anything more disruptive), resulting in the deployment of hundreds of police, who, moving at full speed, shoved, hit and used truncheons against anyone in their way, many of whom sought refuge in the shops and bars that were still open. Seventy-six people were injured and seven were arrested.

Similar episodes took place outside the Congress building in September 2012, when the slightest provocation resulted in a massive police charge, with officers lashing out indiscriminately, firing off rubber bullets and pursuing individuals even inside train and underground stations, whether or not they had participated in the demonstrations. The media reported that 64 people were injured and that 35 had been arrested. Interior Minister Jorge Fernández Díaz declared the police had acted ‘magnificently’ and that ‘some demonstrators’ had used ‘excessive violence’.

Such an excess of police zeal gives rise to intermittently absurd situations. Feli Velasquez was stopped in the doorway of her own court hearing. She had been brought before the judge for having joined in one of the daily protests against the fact that, on average, 517 people are made homeless every day in Spain. As she entered the courthouse, a small group of people gathered in the doorway to support Feli and her colleagues. She was detained for participating in a gathering “without official approval”.

Repression has not always been physical: at times, it has taken the form of a political or economic deterrent, criminalising the act of protest. Members of local government in Madrid have indulged in phrases such as “extreme right-wing”, “extreme left-wing”, “illegal demonstration” or “coup d’etat”, soundbites that the press are often reluctant to question. This is clearly a strategy to typecast those who call for demonstrations as always violent, and one that seeks to damage the movement’s immense success in and reputation for attracting the support of people from all backgrounds. Prime Minister Rajoy has often praised those “normal ‘ people who “remain at home”.

Once the demonstration has taken place, the strategy of dissuasion goes on: in December more than 300 individuals received a fine of €500 euros (US$656) for nothing more than having attended a protest on 27 October against the 2013 budget. According to information published by Spanish state news agency EFE, they constituted 10 per cent of the participants. The legal pretext was that the authorities had not been notified in advance of the gathering, a ruling that could have been applied exclusively to the organisers and not to the protesters as a whole.

A demonstration through the streets of Madrid in Spain Square to Puerta del Sol to protest against the European financial markets. Alejandro Martínez Vélez / Demotix

As journalists, we have taken to wearing high visibility identity jackets and helmets. We’ve not quite reached the stage of wearing gas masks, as now happens in Greece. Yet. However, there have never been so many cameras, both professional and amateur, photographing everything — every police action, or reaction on the part of the protesters. Despite all this, and despite being clearly visible, there is no lack of examples of journalists being beaten, wounded or detained over the course of the past two years.

It has often been impossible to find out who is responsible for the brutality: the law states that police officers must identify themselves, displaying relevant information on their lapels. But riot police have on several occasions removed insignias from their uniforms or else covered them up with other articles of clothing as soon as they come into direct contact with demonstrators. The outrage on behalf of both the public and the media regarding the concealment of police identification numbers has evoked no political response whatsoever.

Has public protest become a crime?

In practice, the opposite has occurred: the Director General of Police, Ignacio Cosidó, let slip during a session of parliament that the Ministry of the Interior was looking into prohibiting the recording of police actions that could then be shown over the internet. It was a way of seeing how the idea was received and intended to cause alarm rather than lead to actual implementation. Still, even mention of it demonstrated a clear threat to press freedom in Spain.

Former minister of the interior and current president of the Grupo Popular (the governing Popular Party)in the European Parliament Mayor Jaime Oreja endorsed it on numerous occasions, commenting that it was “crazy that it was possible to view all these problems of public order on television because it only incited people to demonstrate all the more”. Although Cosidó moderated his remarks later on, dozens of journalists and commentators reacted to the director general’s statement with anger and vociferous debate.

The new penal code, to be introduced later in 2013, is more than just a threat. It will make passive, peaceful resistance — for example, chaining yourself to a door so you cannot be forcibly removed, or throwing yourself to the floor while being forcibly evicted from your home —  into a serious crime against the authorities, equivalent to the public disorder of violence on the street. There has even been discussion about a clause permitting legal action against those who use the internet to encourage people to attend demonstrations that could potentially result in violence.

The endless ways to discredit, harass and criminalise citizen protest has direct opposition online. Social networks have become dramatically re-politicised since 15 May 2011. It was then that the seeds of indignation were sewn. They have developed into a vigilant citizen lobby, a furious but peaceful movement informed by a sense of outrage and distrust of power. Social movements give validity to the rearguard, to the intellectual construction of a model that resists both attacks and criminalisation. The network has confidence in itself as an underground labyrinth, well adapted to slip loose from the reins of power.

Further cutbacks are predicted, along with further economic adjustments, and more austerity, in the course of this year. No doubt they will come accompanied by further demonstrations.

Juan Luis Sánchez is a Spanish journalist and deputy editor of eldiario.es. He tweets from @juanlusanchez

This article appears in Fallout: free speech and the economic crisis. Click here for subscription options and more.

The post Spain: The formidable voices of the plazas appeared first on Index on Censorship.

Brazil’s indigenous population have gone online to campaign against social injustice in their community – Alberto Cesar Araujo/Demotix

Despite their poor economic and living conditions, Brazil’s indigenous peoples are increasingly using the internet to make their struggle for rights known to the world.

Historically, native Brazilians have been deprived of proper citizenship, first by slavery and the loss of their homeland in the 16^th century and, after that, by prejudice, impoverishment, the loss of cultural traces and the disappearance of entire populations. But, the emergence of the internet has allowed Brazilian Indians access to a new era of free speech and civil activity.

One example of their fight to be heard is the campaign against the Draft Constitutional Amendment #215, currently being debated in the Chamber of Deputies. If the amendment passes, it would remove the Federal Government’s power to delimit indigenous lands and pass it to Congress.

Indigenous leaders fear this would strengthen landowners’ powers, who already have a strong lobbying position in Congress and would likely do their best to inhibit the creation of new reservations.

An online petition against the amendment has gathered more than 27,000 signatures.

Their cause also attracted huge support through social media late last year. Facebook users showed support to the Guarani and Kaiowá peoples by adding “Guarani-Kaiowá” to their profile name. The 45,000-strong group perpetually struggle to protect their ancestral province from land-grabbing farmers in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul.

In January 2013, however, Facebook ordered the additional names be removed, reminding users that they were forbidden from adopting fake names on their accounts.

Access to justice

Considered to be one of the main platforms for indigenous discussion, the Índios Online website is maintained by indian peoples from the states of Alagoas, Bahia, Roraima and Pernambuco.

Supported by the Ministry of Culture and Thydewá, an organisation protecting the rights of indigenous peoples, Índios Online allows “offline” Native Brazilians from all over the country to voice their needs and interact with other users.

According to the president of Thydewá, Sebastián Gerlic, those who feel their interests have been threatened by the website often approach the Justice system to censor its content — particularly regarding videos produced and uploaded by the indians.

Ingigenous Brazilian Potyra Tê Tupinambá ended up in court for her film documenting land reposession in an indigenous reservation in the northeastern state of Bahia. The ongoing lawsuit was taken out by a land owner interviewed on camera. It was a testimony, according to Gerlic, given spontaneously and with no animosity.

“The farmer accused Potyra of transmitting his image on the internet without his permission, and now he looks for reparation,” says the president of Thydewá, who took reponsibility for the director’s legal defence.

The internet was also a strong ally in the indigenous peoples’ struggle against the looting of the natural resources on their reservations. In mid-2011, the Ashaninka people used a solar-powered computer to denounce the invasion of their land by Peruvian woodcutters. This information was passed to authorities in federal capital Brasília, who sent a task force formed by the Federal Police and the Brazilian Army to arrest the invaders.

The Ashaninkas also addressed chief justice of the Supreme Court Joaquim Barbosa in an online petition, urging the Supreme Court to address the problem of tree cutting in their native territory. They demanded financial reparation for the lumbering activities that could reach 15,000,000 BRL (around 30,000,000 USD). 

Limited access

Indians usually access the internet through centres maintained by Funai, Brazil’s National Indian Foundation or in LAN (local area network) houses, schools or in private homes. Funai does not have any digital inclusion programme specifically for the indigenous peoples – this responsibility goes to the Ministry of Culture. Through its programme called “Points of Culture”, the Ministry invested more than 1,300,000 BRL (about £447,000) on installing internet connections inside the Indian communities.

Despite public investments, online access has grown far less in indigenous communities than in poorer urban areas. According to a survey led by Rio de Janeiro State’s Secretary of Culture, in partnership with NGO Observatório das Favelas (“Slum Observatory”), 9 out of 10 people living in low-income areas in Rio have internet access.

Brazil has a population of 896,917 indigenous people divided in 230 different ethnic groups, according to the last Brazilian Census from 2010. This represents around 0.47 per cent of the country’s population.

Amongst this populus, access to employment is a problem. According to the last Census, 83 per cent of adult Brazilian indians earn no more than minimum wage (678 BRL a month, about £233) and 52.9 per cent of them don’t have any income at all.

According to the Indigenous Missionary Counsel, an organisation aiding native Brazilian peoples, at least 200 indians have been killed in Brazil in the last decade, mainly because of land disputes.

The post Brazilian indians go online to demand their rights are protected appeared first on Index on Censorship.

The conference declaration said: “All human rights are universal, indivisible and interdependent and interrelated. The international community must treat human rights globally in a fair and equal manner, on the same footing, and with the same emphasis.” It went into considerable detail about what this means for women.

However the Vienna Declaration said very little about free expression. Nor was this omission rectified in the Beijing Declaration on Women’s Rights in 1995. The year before, after serving as founding chair of the International PEN Women Writers Committee, I had become President of a new organisation, Women’s WORLD (Women’s World Organisation for Rights, Literature and Development).

Women hold a banner to ‘Save the Girl Child’ during a 2012 International Women’s Day rally in Agartala

Women’s WORLD was set up to investigate and advocate against gender-based censorship, both formal and informal, and to defend feminist writers. We prepared a document for Beijing called The Power of the Word: Culture, Censorship and Voice, emphasising the importance of voice and thus of women writers to the struggle for women’s equality:

“The subordination of women is basic to all social systems based on dominance; for this reason, conservatives hate and fear the voices of women. That is why so many religions have made rules against women preaching or even speaking in the house of worship. That is why governments keep telling women to keep quiet: ‘You’re in the Constitution,’ they will say, ‘you have the vote, so you have no right to complain.’ But having a voice is as important, perhaps more important, than having a vote. When censors attack women writers, they do so in order to intimidate all women and keep them from using their right to free expression. Gender-based censorship is therefore a problem not only for women writers, but for everyone concerned with the emancipation of women.

“Women writers are a threat to systems built on gender hierarchy because they open doors for other women. By expressing the painful contradictions between men and women in their society, by exposing the discrepancy between what society requires of women and what they need to be fulfilled, woman writers challenge the status quo…[and] make a breach in the wall of silence. They say things no one has ever said before and say them in print, where anyone can read and repeat them.”

As President of Women’s WORLD, I produced an analysis of the Declaration and Platform for Action that came out of the Beijing Conference. While recognising the Platform of Action was a huge step forward in translating women’s issues into the language of human rights, I concluded that it fell short in the area of free expression, for these reasons:

•  The Platform of Action did not consider the centrality of voice to female emancipation. It did not mention censorship nor recognise that women’s right to free expression is jeopardised in many parts of the world, and that the silencing of women is a barrier to both development and democracy.
• With the exception of indigenous women, who were seen to have a culture and the right to develop it, the Platform of Action framed culture in negative terms, as something that limited women’s rights rather than as something women make, transmit, and shape.
• The Platform of Action’s main concern with media was in terms of harmful portrayals of women, with some slight emphasis on the need for women to have access to the new electronic media. Nowhere did it mention that free expression is not only a right but the means to protect other rights, nor the social contributions women could make if their voices were not continually suppressed.

Our paper for Beijing said, “While there is no question that indigenous and colonised peoples are under particular cultural assault, all women need cultural rights. We need the time and space and access to means of cultural expression to be able to articulate our own social values. Without attention to culture, sustainable development and real democracy are not possible, because profound changes must necessarily be culture-related. Women’s silence is thus as serious a problem as poverty itself, and is both a cause of poverty and its effect.”

In the years after 1995, Women’s WORLD struggled to raise issues of voice but kept running up against a narrowing of women’s human rights to the issue of violence against women, while we were striving for a more inclusive vision that would connect this violence to culture, religion, economics, power politics, censorship and war. Our work was also affected by a separation within the human rights movement between groups that deal mainly with free expression and the big mainstream multi-issue groups.

This same separation was reflected in the global movement for women’s human rights. For instance, when the Women’s Human Rights Defenders International Coalition released a global report in 2012 on dangers facing feminists in various regions, it did not even think of drawing on the many years of experience of groups that defend writers and journalists, many of whom are women.

In the last few years, the global women’s movement has found itself stonewalled by the rise of religious fundamentalism to the degree that many activists now oppose moves for another UN conference on women, fearing that the gains of the 90s will be undermined.

The UN Council on Human Rights has been a battleground over issues of culture, with a newly religious Russia forming a bloc with many African and Muslim-majority countries, to support a resolution calling for the application of the “traditional values of humankind” to human rights norms. Such “traditional values” are, of course, invoked whenever women, sexual minorities, or religious minorities want equal rights, including the right to free expression.

In the darkness of this backlash against women’s human rights, the UN’s 2009 appointment of Pakistani feminist Farida Shaheed, first as an independent expert and now as the special rapporteur in the field of cultural rights, was one of the few rays of light. In her 2012 report, Shaheed flagged ways in which fundamentalism impinges on women’s exercise of their cultural rights, as when “solo female singing has been banned and restrictions have been placed on female musicians performing in public concerts.”

She linked culture to violence against women, pointing out that when women try to deviate from the dominant culture of their communities or interpret and reshape them, “they often confront disproportionate opposition, including different forms of violence, for acts as apparently simple as choosing who to marry, how to dress, or where to go.”

She has taken a proactive approach to women’s cultural production, shifting the perspective from seeing culture as an obstacle to women’s human rights to ensuring that women have equal cultural rights. Hopefully her work as special rapporteur will help turn back the proponants of the “traditional values of mankind,” and encourage a wider recognition that freedom of expression is critical to equality for women.

MMeredith Tax, an American writer and activist, is Chair of the Board of the Centre for Secular Space, a new thinktank based in Londonhttp://www.meredithtax.org/

The post Why free speech is a feminist issue appeared first on Index on Censorship.

This grim reading is made worse when one looks at the facts. According to official statistics, women in Belarus have higher levels of education (49 per cent of Belarusian females graduated from universities — in comparison to 42 per cent of men) and are better at foreign languages (59 per cent of Belarusians who speak English are women, whilst 63 per cent of German-speaking Belarusians are female). At the same time, men are much better represented at top managerial positions.

Alexander Lukashenko is often seen in public with his son, but Nikolay’s mother or the President’s own wife never make an appearance

According to Iryna Sidorskaya, Head of the journalism institute’s department of communication technologies at Institute at the Belarusian State University, men don’t like losing to women; men are afraid of looking weak against strong and intelligent women.

“Men are unlikely to hear out women. There is a strong stereotype in our society about women being talkative and just capable of blabbing; and talking is not ‘real work’, but just a waste of time. One can notice during any working meeting in a company or an organisation that men often don’t listen to women talking; even if the latter make the right point, the former perceive their interventions as ‘too much talking’,” says Sidorskaya.

Such attitudes are present in many fields of activity; thus it works as a “natural” acceptance of a restriction of women’s freedom of expression on many levels.

“Women are just not regarded as equal to men, even if they have the same job positions; they are regarded to be inferior to male colleagues. One can see the same trend in business as well as in politics,” Sidorskaya admits.

No change without gender education

Belarus has gender-neutral laws; there are no designated state programmes or strategies aimed at enhancing women’s participation in decision making processes at any levels.

“Women in Belarus face discrimination; not only do they have less access to high managerial levels of decision-making, their freedom of expression is restricted in comparison with men,” says Elena Eskova, former leader of the Belarusian Women’s party Nadzeya (Hope), which was liquidated by the authorities in 2007.

According to Eskova, the issue goes back to the leader of the country itself. Authoritarian politicians and diffident managers tend to surround themselves with dull people in order to stand out against their “grey” background:

“The Belarusian president does not like talented and bright people with striking personalities, especially women. That is exactly why there are almost no women in government or other bodies of power, as they just don’t fit into his authoritarian and masculine style of management. There are 29 female MPs (out of total of 110 in the lower chamber of the national parliament), but none of them are really influential or well-known,” says Eskova.

The role of women is underestimated — and not just by the authorities; women are misrepresented among the opposition leaders, too. It can be explained by long-lasting patriarchal history that suggested men are in charge. Nothing is going to change unless gender education is introduced starting from entry school level.

Borscht vs politics

The hallmark of an “official” attitude to women’s participation in political life was a comment by Lidziya Yarmoshyna, the Chair of the Central Election Commission, made on 20 December 2010, after a brutal dispersal of protests against fraudulent presidential elections. During a press conference she replied to a remark from a journalist about police using force against peaceful demonstrators, including women:

“You know, such ‘women’ have nothing else to do. They’d better stay home and cook borscht instead of hanging around at squares… It is a shame for a woman to participate in such actions… If a grown woman joins protests, it just shows there is something wrong with her intellect.”

People who have access to the top governmental bodies in Belarus say there are just two official receptions or celebrations where officials are invited together with their wives; those for New Year’s Eve, and for Defender of the Fatherland Day on 23 February, which is essentially “Men’s Day”.

Other parties and receptions exclude wives from celebrations. Lukashenko himself has never been seen in public with his wife. He tries to position himself as a strong politician, who is a good father for both his nation (often being referred to as “batska”, which means “a father” in Belarusian) — and his youngest son Nikolay.

“The fact that he takes his younger son everywhere with him, but has never been accompanied by the boy’s mother or any other ‘first lady’ rouses the indignation of every woman I know, regardless of their political views. It appears that the president’s women are the most discriminated in the whole country. Halina Lukashenko, the president’s wife, in fact lives under house arrest; and Nikolay’s mother has never even been named at all (she most likely to be Iryna Abelskaya, Lukashenko’s former doctor). What kind of a country do we live in, if we don’t have a first lady, but have a president with a child?” Elena Eskova asks.

Is there a new trend?

The attitude towards women may partly come from the leader of the country, but it is also well-built in the culture of the society.

“This statement can be proved by the results of our opinion polls,” says Dr. Aleh Manaeu, Head of the Independent Institute of Social, Political and Economic Studies (IISEPS).

According to IISEPS, 45.5 per cent of Belarusians consider men to be better political leaders than women; 44.6 per cent think they are equal, and only about 8 per cent of the country say women can lead in politics better than men do.

Sixty per cent of Belarusians also believe men have more possibilities in politics, business and other areas of activities.

“It goes back to our history and culture. And still, we can see some positive dynamics in these responses in comparison to what we used to have 15 or 20 years ago, when the public opinion was even more ‘masculine-centred’,” Dr. Manaev says.

Interestingly, women occupy more and more senior roles in independent media. The question is whether the rest of the Belarusian society will follow this trend.

Maryna Koktysh is an award-winning Belarusian journalist

The post Dictatorship: it’s a man’s game appeared first on Index on Censorship.

“We have a peaceful and quiet life here. I cannot remember a single skirmish on religious grounds in Belarus, not even an argument,” Lukashenko told representatives of Vatican and Belarusian Orthodox Church at a joint meeting in Minsk in November 2012.

But the absence of  religious fights does not mean freedom of conscience is not challenged in Belarus.

According to official statistics, there are 3,374 religious organisations that represent 25 different denominations officially registered in Belarus. Almost half of the religious communities are Christian Orthodox; the Catholic Church is the second most popular (479 communities or about 15 per cent of the total registered in the country). Both Orthodox and Catholic Christmas and Easter are official state holidays. The Orthodox Church is considered to be an “official” one — its leaders are quite close to the authorities, and there is even a special Agreement on Cooperation between the Belarus Orthodox Church and the country’s government, signed in 2003.

The agreement formally pursues “noble” objectives of “spiritual development of the nation” — but in reality forms of cooperation between the state and the church can be quite oppressive. For instance, the practice of compulsory church donations by employees of state-run companies is notorious.

Aleh is from Salihorsk, a city of Belarusian miners, and he works for Belaruskaliy, one of the biggest exporting companies in the country that mines potassium. He says 100,000 roubles, equivalent to about £7, is deducted from each worker’s salary several times a year as a “compulsory voluntary donation” towards building of a new Orthodox church in the city. Most of the workers are not happy about that, but none of them dare to protest openly, says Aleh:

“The sum deducted is not significant enough to risk losing a job. The thing is we are all on short-term contracts. If you protest against these ‘donations’ or make any kind of trouble for your employer, they won’t renew your contract once it expires — they have this right according to Belarusian laws. That’s why everybody silently agrees; Catholics, and even Muslims and Jews all donate to building of an Orthodox church.”

New Life and old methods

Facts like this don’t really add supporters to the “official” church. Members of the New Life Protestant church in Minsk disagree that the Orthodox Church is the real leader in terms of the number of believers.

“Even official figures say there are only about 300,000 people who visit Orthodox churches around the country during major holidays, like Christmas and Easter. Their usual congregation is hardly higher than 50,000 people. So, the official statistics that say 80 per cent of the Belarusian population is Orthodox is far from the real state of things,” sources in New Life told Index.

New Life is a religious community that feels direct pressure from the authorities. Twenty years ago they built their Protestant church on the site of an abandoned cowshed on the outskirts of Minsk. In 2005 the authorities revoked the license for the land the community used. Its members were on a hunger strike for one month before the officials stepped back. But in 2009 the authorities re-initiated the case and deprived New Life of the propriety right for the church building. The case was again put on hold during the period of the so-called “liberalisation”, but in 2012 it was re-initiated. On 5 December 2012 New Life was supposed to leave the premises — but at the last moment the Minsk Economic Court suddenly closed the eviction case.

There are 25 different religious denominations officially registered in Belarus — almost half of which are Christian Orthodox

Uladzimir Matskevich, a Belarusian philosopher and civil society leader, says the case of New Life shows a model strategy of the ruling regime — and sets an example of a strategy for civil society:

“This community demonstrates its unity and determination to do whatever it takes to fight for their rights and not to give up whatever the actions of the regime are. That is why the community wins local conflicts with the regime. The regime accepts those local defeats, but keeps to its strategic goals. It keeps pressing the church, but never goes till the end. Why? Because the authorities do not really want to destroy the community, but just to see how it prevails, and watches if it can become a core for consolidation of other forces in civil society. So, the regime leaves the New Life community alone for some time — until it needs to check the state of protest readiness of the civil society again.”

The law with no freedom and no conscience

According to Aliaksei Shein, a coordinator of a civic initiative called Christian Movement, the right to freedom of conscience and religion is violated in Belarus, as well as other human rights.

“In 2002 Belarus adopted the Law ‘on freedom of conscience and religious organisations’ that is the most repressive in Europe. Despite its name, the law has no freedom and no conscience. It makes registering new religious organisations almost impossible; it critically complicates creation of new religious communities; it deprives believers of the right to spread their beliefs outside the walls of their churches,” Shein claims.

For instance, the law only provides three places where people can pray without special permission — inside officially registered religious buildings, as well as at cemeteries and crematoria. There have been numerous cases of people getting fines or administrative arrests for breaking these rules.

The reason for the oppression is that active religious organisations are a part of civil society, which the authorities of the country try to put under tough control.

“It is the most active and independent who get the most trouble, Protestants first of all. But sometimes the Orthodox and the Catholics feel oppression too, as well as representatives of other, non-Christian confessions,” Shein says.

Natallia Vasilevich, a political scientist and the editor of a Belarusian online portal Churchby.info, agrees the oppressive law provides the main tension in the legal field of the religious freedom. Besides, she says, problems lay in the absence of clear mechanisms to implement the law, allowing local authorities to apply it arbitrarily.

Religion as a tool to fight dissent – and please partners

The authorities of Belarus also use the issue of religion in other ways to curtail free speech. In January 2008 Aliaksandr Zdvizhkou, deputy editor of Zhoda independent newspaper, was sentenced to three years in prison by the court of Minsk for “inciting religious enmity”. The newspaper had covered the story of Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten printing cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed — re-publishing some of the cartoons. It is worth mentioning that the cartoons were re-printed in 143 newspapers in 56 countries of the world, including Islamic states – but secular Belarus, with its “Orthodox atheist” leader was the only one that actually put a journalist in prison as a result.

Zdvizhkou received a wide international attention following the sentence, and he was released in February 2008. It was obvious the trial was entirely politically-motivated — Ismail Varanovich, the chairman of Spiritual Department of Muslims of Belarus, called the sentence to Zdvizhkou “too harsh.”

“He just published information about what the Danish newspaper printed. There could not be any response from the Belarusian society, no incitement of any violence,” the Belarusian Muslim leader said at that time.

It looked like the Zdvizhkou case was an attempt of the Lukashenko’s regime to “make friends” with the Islamic world. At that time the authorities of Belarus were thinking of large-scale joint projects with several Muslim countries. Lukashenko himself visited United Arab Emirates and Azerbaijan, and also hosted Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Minsk.

Believers are opposition?

The state in Belarus tries to control all spheres of life, and religion is not an exception. Natallia Vasilevich believes:

“There are no prerequisites [suggesting] that Belarus can change from a secular state into a clerical one. But the influence of church and religion in Belarusian society can increase as the result of activities of religious organisations if they are able to gain trust of the population and provide them with necessary and convincing answers to actual vital questions.”

But the government is unlikely to allow this to happen, as state ideologists want to preserve their monopoly control over people’s minds. They are ready to battle fiercely for this control.

According to Aliaksei Shein, a new oppressive trend has become vivid over the last two years, as the regime started using one of the most popular “political” articles of the criminal code — Article 193.1 — against members and activists of religious organisations. This article results in criminal liability for activities on behalf of unregistered organisations. The KGB (the State Security Committee) issues official warnings to non-registered Christian communities – and there are around a hundred of them in Belarus.

“After ‘cleaning out’ the political and business fields, the authorities of the country started cleaning out the next sphere, and that is religion and culture,” Shein concludes.

Zmitser Yanenka is the editor of Camarade.biz news website from Belarus

The post Religion in Belarus: no conscience, no freedom appeared first on Index on Censorship.

Opposition protesters in Minsk in 2010. Kseniya Avimova | Demotix

Europe’s last dictatorship plans even tighter controls over citizens’ access to the digital world, Index shows in a new report

Belarus has one of the most hostile media environments in the world and one of the worst records on freedom of expression. New digital technologies, in particular the internet, have provided new opportunities for freedom of expression but have also given the authoritarian regime new tools to silence free voices and track down dissent. As the internet has become an increasingly important source of information, the Belarus authorities have used a variety of different means to control it. Keeping a tight rein on information remains at the core of their policy of self-preservation.

This report explores the main challenges to digital free speech in Belarus, concentrating in particular on the ways the state authorities restrict freedom of expression online.

Firstly, it is done by applying a repressive legal framework, including draconian laws such as criminal libel, legal prosecution and the misapplication of the administrative code. Secondly, free speech is restricted by the use of new techniques, such as online surveillance, website blocking and filtering, and cyber-attacks against independent websites and content manipulation.

Our research indicates that the authorities now plan even tighter controls over citizens’ access to the digital world.

New legislation gives the authorities wide powers to censor online content, in particular on the catch-all grounds of “distribution of illegal information”, and to implement mass surveillance of citizens’ activities online. The government is spending heavily on the development of software that will allow the tracking of nearly all the activities of every internet user in the country. Western firms have been instrumental in providing equipment that has facilitated state surveillance. Since the growth in use of social networks, there have been several waves of arrests of moderators of popular online opposition groups and communities. Journalists and activists who express their opinions online have found themselves subject to criminal prosecutions for libel. Denial of service attacks have been used frequently against independent online media and opposition websites, especially on the occasion of elections and other major political events.

Protesters at the Revolution through Social Networks demonstration in Minsk, summer 2011. Photo by Siarhei Balai.

Index on Censorship calls on the government of Belarus to stop all disproportionate and unnecessary legal and extrajudicial practices, online and offline, that compromise freedom of expression. We call for immediate reforms to be launched to ensure free speech, as outlined in the conclusions and recommendations chapter of the report.

The European Union (EU), its member states and other European bodies, such as the Council of Europe and the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), should further push the Belarus government to respect human rights in general and freedom of expression in particular and call for immediate reforms to facilitate the development of Belarus as a democratic state.

You can read the report in full in English here.

Доклад о цензуре интернета в Беларуси можно прочитать здесь.

Даклад аб цэнзуры інтэрнэта ў Беларусі магчыма прачытаць тут

More on this story:

Press Release - Internet explosion backfires for Europe’s last dictator

The post Belarus: Pulling the plug appeared first on Index on Censorship.

While they exist harmoniously on paper, free expression and religion often conflict in practice, and free speech is often trampled in the name of protecting religious sensibilities — whether through self-censorship or legislation that censors.

History offers many examples of religious freedom being repressed too. Both free expression and religious freedom need protection from those who would meddle with them. And they are not necessarily incompatible.

Over 200 years ago, the United States’ founding fathers grouped together freedom of worship and freedom of speech. The US Constitution’s First Amendment, adopted in 1791, made sure that the Congress couldn’t pass laws establishing religions or prohibiting their free exercise, or abridging freedom of speech, press and assembly.

More recently, both religion and free expression were offered protection by The United Nations Declaration of Human Rights (UNDHR) drafted in 1949. It outlines the ways in which both free expression and religious freedom should be protected in Articles 18 and 19. Article 18 protects an individual’s right to “freedom of thought, conscience, and religion” and the freedom to change religion or beliefs. Article 19 states: “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”

Why is it, then, that for centuries — from the Spanish Inquisition to the Satanic Verses — free speech and religion have been cast as opponents? Index on Censorship has explored, and will continue to explore, this crucial question.

Offence

Muslims gathered in Malaysia’s capital to protest against the controversial Innocence of Muslims film (Demotix)

Sporadically explosive conflicts arrise when words or images offensive to believers spark a violent response, the most recent example being the reaction to the controversial Innocence of Muslims film. Index has stated before that the majority of states restrain by law distinct and direct incitements to violence; however, causing offence doesn’t constitute an incitement to violence, much less a good excuse to react with violence. Yet violent protests sparked by the YouTube film led many countries to push for the video to be taken down. As the controversy unfolded, digital platforms took centre stage in an age-old debate on where the line is drawn on free speech.

The kind of connectivity provided by the web means a video uploaded in California can lead to riots in Cairo. Real-time transmission, real-time unrest. It presents a serious challenge for hosts of user-generated content like YouTube and Facebook.

Before the web, British-Indian writer Salman Rushdie’s “blasphemous” 1988 novel — The Satanic Verses — sparked protests and earned its author a death sentence from Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini, who called upon Muslims to assassinate the novelist, his publishers, and anyone else associated with the book. The Japanese translator of the Satanic Verses was killed, and Rushdie’s Norwegian publisher was shot and wounded, leading some to think twice about publishing works potentially “offensive to Islam”.

These fears were renewed after the 2005 decision of Danish newspaper Jyllands Posten to publish caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad, which were protested about in riots worldwide, largely initiated as a result of agitation by Danish clerics.

The Jewel of Medina, a historical novel about the life of Muhammad’s wife Aisha was due to be published by Random House in the US in 2008, but it was pulled when an academic warned the publishers of a possible violent backlash to the novel. After the UK-based publisher Gibson Square decided to take on the novel, Islamic extremists attempted to firebomb the home of the company’s chief executive. More recently, ex-Muslim and author of The Young Atheist’s Handbook Alom Shaha wrote that initially, staff at Biteback publishing had reservations about releasing his book in the UK. Upon being presented with the book, one staff member’s reaction was, “we can’t publish this, we’ll get firebombed”.

Protecting religious sensitivities at price of free expression

Many countries have legislation designed to quell religious tensions and any ensuing violence.

India, for example, has a Penal Code with provisions to protect “religious feelings”, making “acts” or “words” that could disturb religious sensitivities punishable by law. However, while such laws exist to address prevent sectarian violence their vagueness means that they can also be used by groups to shut down free expression. This opens up a question, which is when do states have the right to censor for public order reasons even if the actual piece of writing, art or public display is not a direct incitement to violence.

Indian artist and Index award winner was forced to leave his native India in the 1990s after being threatened for his work

In the 1990s, Indian artist and Index award winner MF Husain was the subject of a violent intimidation campaign after painting Hindu gods and goddesses naked. He received death threats and had his work vandalised. Hundreds of complaints were brought against the artist, leading to his prosecution under sections 295 and 153A of India’s Penal Code, which outlaw insulting religions, as well as promoting animosity between religious groups. Locally these laws are justified as an effort to control sectarian violence. While the cases against Husain were eventually thrown out, the spectre of new legal battles combined with violent threats and harassment pushed Husain to flee his home country. He never returned, and died in exile last year.

Across the world restrictions on free expression are imposed using laws designed to protect religious sensitivities.

Pakistan’s blasphemy laws are notorious for being abused to silence and persecute the country’s religious minorities. Although the country’s Penal Code has always had a section on religious offence, clauses added in the 1980s set a high price for blasphemy or membership of the Ahmadi sect of Islam — an Islamic reformist movement. These laws, including a possible death sentence for insulting the Muslim prophet Muhammad, have been slammed by civil society inside and outside of Pakistan.

A report issued in September by the Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, Frank La Rue, says that blasphemy laws should be repealed. Controls on free speech in order to protect religious sensibility seem to run parallel to controls on religion.

Globally, restrictions on religious expression have increased according to a report released last month by the Pew Research Center. In 2010, the study found that 75 per cent of the world’s population lived in countries where restrictions placed on religious practice were rated as either “high” or “very high”. The study found that the greatest restrictions on religion take place in the world’s most heavily populated countries — India, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, and Russia stood out on the list.

Outrage and incitement to religious hatred

In 1977 Christian campaigner Mary Whitehouse successfully brought charges against the publishers of a magazine that printed a graphic sexual poem about Jesus Christ

In 2007, the UK introduced the offence of “incitement to religious hatred”, which some feared was merely a replacement for the scrapped blasphemy law, made more wide-ranging by covering not just Christianity but all religions. The last conviction under that law was the infamous 1977 Gay News case, where Christian campaigner Mary Whitehouse brought a successful private prosecution against the publishers of Gay News magazine for publishing a poem describing a Roman soldier’s fantasy of sex with Jesus Christ.

In the UK, one of the most pernicious means by which restrictions on free speech have grown tighter has been through the use of incitement laws, both incitement to hatred and incitement to violence and murder. In some cases, as in the outlawing of incitement to religious hatred through the Racial and Religious Hatred Act, the law is being used to censor genuine debate. In other cases, incitement law is being used to shut down protest, as in the convictions of Muslim protestors Mizanur Rahman and Umran Javed for inciting racial hatred and ‘soliciting murder’ during a rally in London against the publications of the Danish Muhammed cartoons. Over the past decade, the government has used the law both to expand the notion of ‘hatred’ and broaden the meaning of ‘incitement’. Much of what is deemed ‘hatred’ today is in fact the giving of offence. And should’t the giving of offence be viewed as a normal and acceptable part of plural society?

In 2009, Ireland created for the first time a specific blasphemy offence. This law states a person is guilty of blasphemy if

“he or she publishes or utters matter that is grossly abusive or insulting in relation to matters held sacred by any religion, thereby causing outrage among a substantial number of the adherents of that religion, and

(b) he or she intends, by the publication or utterance of the matter concerned, to cause such outrage.”

This wording was later used as a template for attempts to introduce the idea of “defamation of religion” as an offence at the United Nations. The attempt to introduce this concept failed, but the UN Human Rights Council did pass a resolution condemning “intolerance, negative stereotyping, stigmatisation, discrimination, incitement to violence, and violence against, persons based on religion or belief”.

On the other hand, according to Frank La Rue, quoted by Journalism & Intolerance said: “blasphemy is a horrible cultural phenomenon but, again, should not be censored or limited by criminal law. I would like to oppose blasphemy in general by being respectful, but that’s something you build in the culture and the traditions and the habits of the people, but not something you put in the criminal code. Then it becomes censorship.”

Crushing religious freedom

Other European countries have had their own free speech versus religion battle when a push towards bans on the veil or niqab began, infringing on choices of Muslim women. France’s controversial ban on the niqab went into effect last year. Offenders must pay a 150 € fine or take French citizenship classes. There have been similar discussions in the Netherlands, Denmark, the United Kingdom, and Belgium. Such bans are not restricted to Europe — in 2010 Syria banned face veils from university campuses. From 1998 – 2010, Turkey banned headscarves from university campuses. In fact, Turkey has a much wider ban on headscarves in public buildings, a ban the government faces difficulties overturning though it would like to. Just as troubling — countries like Iran and Saudi Arabia have strict dress codes for women that visitors must comply with as well.

Both enforced secularism and enforced religiosity constitute a form of censorship; the key word being “enforced” as opposed to “free”. Whether it is tackling enforced religion, religious offence, hatred and incitement to violence, or enforced secularism, only a constructive approach to free speech can genuinely guarantee freedom of conscience and belief, whether in one god, many or none.

Also read:

Kenan Malik on The Satanic Verses and free speech and Why free expression is now seen as an enemy of liberty

We need to talk about Islam says Alom Shaha

Salil Tripathi on how Pakistan’s deadly blasphemy laws have killed free speech

Michael Nugent on why Ireland’s 2009 blasphemy law is a backward step

The post Religion and free speech: it’s complicated appeared first on Index on Censorship.

The fight for freedom begins with freedom of speech, says Burma’s pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi. This is one of a series of manifestos demanding a more outspoken world in the 40th anniversary issue of Index on Censorship

The gift of speech is the most effective instrument for human communication. The ability to communicate enables us to establish links across time and space, to learn to understand different civilisations and cultures, to extend knowledge both vertically and horizontally, to promote the arts and sciences. It also helps to bridge gaps in understanding between peoples and nations, to put an end to old enmities, to achieve detente, to cultivate new fellowships.

Speech allows human beings to articulate their thoughts and emotions. Words allow us to express our feelings, to record our experiences, to realise our ideas, to push outwards the frontiers of intellectual exploration. Words can move hearts, words can change perceptions, words can set nations and peoples in powerful motion. Words are an essential part of the expression of our humanness. To shackle freedom of speech and expression is to cripple the basic right to realise our full potential.

Can freedom of speech be abused? Since historical times, it has been recognised that words can hurt as well as heal, that we have a responsibility to use our verbal skills in the right way. What is the “right” way? The Ten Commandments include an injunction against bearing false witness.

Misusing the gift of speech to deceive or harm others is generally seen as unacceptable. Buddhism teaches that there are four verbal acts that constitute “tainted failure in living”: uttering deliberate lies for one’s own sake, for the sake of others or for some material advantage; uttering words that cause dissension, that is, creating discord among those united and inciting still more those who are in discord; speaking harshly and abusively, causing anger and distraction of mind in others; indulging in talk that is inadvisable, unrestrained and harmful.

Modern laws reflect the preoccupations of our ancients. Perjury, slander and libel, incitement to communal hatred, incitement to violence, all these are indictable offences in many countries today. The recognition of the negative consequences of misusing our gift of speech has not however been matched by an awareness of the detrimental effects of stifling free speech.

It is most generally in societies where the plinth of power is narrow that freedom of speech is perceived as a threat to the existing order. When speaking out against existing wrongs and injustices is disallowed, society is deprived of a vital impetus towards positive change and renewal. Censorship laws that ostensibly protect society from iniquitous influences generally achieve little that is positive. The most usual result is a pervasive atmosphere of uncertainly and fear that strangles innovative thought.

It was only in the 20th century that freedom of expression began to be recognised as a basic human right. Today, freedom of speech and expression remain tenuous or even unknown in many nations that are signatories to the UN’s declaration of human rights. As in the distant past, it is those in positions of power and influence who stand against the freedom to articulate common grievances and aspirations.

It has been rightly pointed out that what is most important is not so much freedom of speech as freedom after speech. Through long years of authoritarian rule, members of the movement for democracy in Burma have been punished for speaking out in protest against violations of human rights and abuses of power. The few who spoke out were articulating the silent protest of the many who had been cowed into submission. To stand as a few against the juggernaut of power is not hard. It was the solidarity of like-minded people, at home and abroad, that strengthened our advocates of freedom of speech.

An advocate of freedom of expression is necessarily also a practitioner. The basic law for those who want to defend freedom of expression is that they must demonstrate their commitment by practising what they preach. When we speak out for our right to freedom of speech, we begin to exercise it. When we write about our right to freedom of expression, we begin to practise it. There can be no theoretical advocacy of these freedoms, there can only be practical, practising advocacy.

Aung San Suu Kyi is leader of the National League for Democracy. She was awarded the Novel Peace Price in 1991

This article appears in 40 years of Index on Censorship which marks the organisation’s 40th anniversary with a star line-up of the most outstanding activists, journalists and authors. Click here for subscription options and more

The post The practice of freedom appeared first on Index on Censorship.