Chinese censors have been working overtime on social network Weibo after users noticed that the new headquarters of state propaganda sheet the People’s Daily News (see pic) looked, er, a bit phallic.
According to the South China Morning Morning Post, Weibo searches for “People’s Daily” and “building” appear to show that the terms have been blocked.
“It seems the People’s Daily is going to rise up, there’s hope for the Chinese dream,” quipped one Weibo user.
Padraig Reidy is senior writer for Index on Censorship. @mePadraigReidy
The “quantity v. quality” debate around global digital access seldom gets the attention it deserves. Here I define “quantity” as the spread of internet access to remote and marginalised communities and “quality” as the extent to which these connections are free from corporate or government restrictions and surveillance.
With more than four billion people yet to come online around the world, basic connectivity is an obvious and necessary prerequisite for digital access. But handing out one laptop per child and selling low-cost smartphones does not solve the quality problem, and can in fact worsen it.
Repressive governments and opportunistic companies sometimes exploit their citizens’ and customers’ ignorance and apathy towards personal privacy and data protection in the name of national security and financial gain. Countries like Iran and China’s biggest web companies are obvious offenders, but western democracies and Silicon Valley startups are far from perfect.
Doling out laptops and ethernet cables without also spreading the internet’s core values of freedom and openness can inadvertently harm newly connected users and the wider web.
NGOs with good intentions sometimes make this mistake. More troubling are companies with financial incentives to lay cables and sell hardware in new markets. Africa is one of the least connected territories, making it, from a corporate perspective, a digital desert ripe for cybercolonialism. Despite being framed as aid, a $20 billion pledge from China to Africa last year was primarily about business. Chinese companies with troubling track records on digital rights and freedoms are also competing to lend their security and surveillance expertise to African governments, a serious cause for concern on the quality side of access.
Frank La Rue, the UN’s special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, has described internet access as a right and acknowledged both the quantity and quality components inherent and critical to the enjoyment of this right. Other digital thought leaders, like Google’s chief internet evangelist Vint Cerf, has described the internet as an enabler of human rights but not a right in and of itself. Both perspectives hold weight, but we must not forget that the internet can also be used as a disabler of human rights.
Rather than a panacea, the internet can be poison when used to monitor, suppress and prosecute online speech and offline action.
Cyberutopians who think smartphones will set us free have been proven wrong time and time again. On the flip side, this does not mean that cyberdystopians who fear governments will exploit our dependence on technology and digital communications to neutralise dissent are necessarily correct. Increasing the quantity of internet connections without minding the quality of those connections forged can potentially bring greater harm than good for digital access, but such harm is not inevitable. Companies and NGOs working to spread access should ensure that the benefits they bring outweigh potential dangers they create or expose and should ensure that quantity is balanced by quality at the corporate and government levels. Only when this balance is achieved can global digital access truly be advanced.
The Chinese government’s two main bodies of censorship, SARFT (State Administration for Radio, Film, and Television) and GAPP (General Administration for Press and Publications), are to merge and become one super administration.
Although some denied the reports, the merge was announced during the 2013 session of China’s parliament, with the motion passed in March.
Over the last 30 years of the opening up and reform period, both GAPP and SARFT have developed tremendously, but with this development of industry and flourishing of culture, many new problems have risen, for example the lockdown of departments, and individual management by each media type of themselves, and approval [for content] department by department.
GAPP and SARFT didn’t want, under any under circumstances, to deal with each other. GAPP only paid attention to newspapers and print media and not broadcast media, and SARFT doesn’t get the support of the print media, making the merging of industries difficult.
The new body replacing SARFT and GAPP — unofficially translated as the General Administration of Press and Publication, Radio, Film and Television — will be responsible for regulating and overseeing print media, radio, film, television, as well as the internet. It will also handle rights and contents.
SARFT is the body that censors films — recently facing controversy for cutting science fiction film Cloud Atlas by 40 minutes. GAPP also came under fire earlier this year for overseeing the censoring of newspaper Southern Weekly New Year’s editorial. The Guangdong provincial propaganda chief rewrote the paper’s heading and editorial without consulting editorial staff, forcing the reform-orientated paper to run a piece toeing the official Party line.
While both SARFT and GAPP monitored the internet, the specifics of their responsibilities were never clear — but now new and uniform regulations have been revealed.
The China Press and Publishing Journal reported that there will be three new rules for internet use under the new body: use of news reports from abroad on websites will be forbidden without permission; editorial staff must not use the Internet for illegal content; and the microblog accounts of news media must be supervised, and an account holder appointed.
Whether the merge will create or lessen the chaos surrounding content control still remains to be seen.
WATCH A LIVE PERFORMANCE OF THE ARREST OF AI WEIWEI FROM 7.30pm GMT
A few days after China’s most famous dissident artist Ai Weiwei was released from jail in June 2011, writer Barnaby Martin called his old mobile phone number. Unexpectedly, Ai answered call. Through subsequent meetings and conversations Martin recorded a full and unparalleled account of Ai Weiwei’s incarceration, from his airport detention to final release.
#aiww: The Arrest of Ai Weiwei is a new play by Howard Brenton, based on Barnaby Martin’s novel and directed by James Macdonald, showing now at the Hampstead Theatre. Index on Censorship is taking part in the worldwide live web streaming of the play, from 1930GMT on Friday 19 April.
This elegant performance centres on communication and miscommunication. In a series of baffling scenes the artist tries and fails to convey his version of events to a steady stream of guards, interrogators and officials who do not want to know. Challenged about his blog, Ai replies, “It’s the net, it’s freedom, why can I not say what I want? I’m human.”
He might as well be inhabiting a different world. In rare moments when we watch prisoner and guards communicating, for instance about how to cook Beijing noodles, it feels like Ai Weiwei might have won. His belief in the basic human need to think, believe and act freely has permeated even the Party’s most brain-washed foot soldiers.
These moments don’t last long, however. Although he was never beaten, Ai emerged from 81 days of imprisonment and psychological torture a different man.
This production serves as a reminder that arguments for national security and “harmony” will always be used in authoritarian regimes to limit freedom and condemn artists as “hooligans” and “conmen”, guilty of subverting state power. But all that Ai Weiwei claims to have been doing was depicting “humanity”, “nakedness” and “life”.
Index is glad to support Hampstead Theatre’s live streaming of #aiww: The Arrest of Ai Weiwei. You can watch it live from 19:30GMT on Friday 19 April
A boy hasdied today (11 February) after being shot by security forces in Kashmir during protests against the execution of a separatist. Ubaid Mushtaq, said to be 12 or 13 years old by doctors, died in a Srinagar hospital from bullet wounds following the 10 February protests in the village of Watergam, in which paramilitary forces opened fire on demonstrators.
The news of Mohammed Afzal Guru’s death in a New Delhi prison on 9 February ignited fierce objection and protests in three areas of India administered Kashmir, surrounding claims the men accused had not been given a fair trial. The Kashmiri man was from a village close to Watergam, and had been convicted of helping to plot an attack on the Indian parliament in 2001 that left 14 people dead. Police said an inquiry has been launched into Mushtaq’s shooting.
Chinese authorities said Elton John dedicating his Beijing concert to Ai Weiwei was “disrespectful”
China has tightened its restrictions on foreign singers performing in the country after Elton John dedicated his Beijing concert toAi Weiwei in November. Chinese police questioned John after his Beijing performance last year, which he had dedicated “to the spirit and talent of Ai Weiwei”. Authorities then allegedly asked John to sign a statement saying that he had been inspired by Ai’s artistic achievements exclusively, rather than for his efforts to defend free speech. John was permitted to go ahead with his Guangzhou show in early December, but an editorial letter in the state-run Global Times said that the singer was “disrespectful” to include political sentiment in his performance, adding that authorities would think more carefully before inviting foreign artists to perform in future. Culture minister Cai Wu is now allegedly requesting degree certificates from international performers since John’s appearance, only allowing them entry into the country if they can prove they have been university-educated. Classical musicians have reportedly been required to submit proof of degrees when performing in the country since the start of the year.
A Hong Kong activist has been sentenced to nine months in prison on 7 February after burning a Chinese flag. Koo Sze-yiu was also discovered to have burned a Hong Kong flag, during two separate demonstrations against the government. In June 2012, Koo burned a Chinese flag outside the Liaison Office of the Central People’s Government, in protest against the staged suicide of Chinese activist Li Wangyang, and on 1 January he was seen waving a Chinese and Hong kong flag with holes in both. He was charged with four counts of flag desecration. The maximum punishment for flag desecration is three years in prison and a fine of 50,000 HK dollars (approximately £4,000). Shortly after his arrest, a Chinese netizen was arrested for posting a picture of a defaced flag on to a social networking site.
A UK journalist isfighting a court application submitted by the police requiring him to hand over video footage of the English Defence League (EDL), it was reported today (11 February). Jason Parkinson has refused to hand over his footage, saying that journalists are “not evidence gatherers for the police”. He fought a similar case in 2011, where police attempted to seize his footage of the Dale Farm eviction of travellers in Essex. Greater Manchester police applied for a production order hearing on 18 February to view all published and unpublished footage obtained during an EDL and counter protest march by Unite Against Fascism in Bolton 20 March 2010. The National Union of Journalists intends to contest the application. Parkinson said that handing over the evidence “could overturn the incredibly important victory for press freedom” that was achieved during the Dale Farm eviction.
In Bangalore, India an artist was forced to remove his pantings from an art gallery on 5 February because they depicted Hindu deities in the nude. Anirudh Sainath Krishnamani was told by police that they received a complaint from a member of Hindu nationalist political group the Bharatiya Janata Party, claiming the paintings ”hurt the sentiments of society”. Police threatened to shut down Krishnamani’s exhibition at Chitrakala Parishath gallery if he refused to remove the offending pieces, which police said were a potential law and order threat and could cause protests or an attack. The paintings removed included a picture of a nude goddess Kali as well as Shiva and Sati hugging each other. MN Krishnamani, Anirudh’s father and a senior supreme court advocate will contest the decision.
The $600m sale of Next Media, one of Taiwan’s most popular media companies, has raised the spectre of a media monopoly that could be disastrous for press freedom on the island. Ching-Yi Liu and Weiping Li report (more…)
With more than four billion people yet to come online around the world, basic connectivity is an obvious and necessary prerequisite for digital access. But handing out one laptop per child and selling low-cost smartphones does not solve the quality problem, and can in fact worsen it.
Mike Harris explains how modern authoritarian regimes censor their citizens
The $600m sale of Next Media, one of Taiwan’s most popular media companies, has raised the spectre of a media monopoly that could be disastrous for press freedom on the island. Ching-Yi Liu and Weiping Li report 