Message to Cameron: No more fish and chips with Xi please

Over seven years after he left office, former UK Prime Minister David Cameron, now Lord Cameron, has returned to frontline British politics after being appointed Foreign Secretary by current Prime Minster Rishi Sunak. As prime minister, Cameron often overlooked human rights issues. He hosted Egyptian President General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi less than two years after Sisi’s forces, as defence minister, killed 800 unarmed protesters at Rabaa al-Adawiya square in Cairo. He was also accused of secret vote-trading deals with Saudi Arabia so both states would be elected to the UN Human Rights Council. At home, Cameron angered civil rights groups by vowing to scrap the Human Rights Act. And he rolled out the red carpet when Chinese leader Xi Jinping came to the UK, even enjoying a pint and fish and chips with Xi. That was in 2015, just days after Gui Minhai, a Hong Kong bookseller, disappeared in Thailand only to later appear in a Chinese prison.

But let’s not look back. Let’s look forward. Below are some of the key areas, from a free speech perspective, that Index hope Cameron will urgently address:

Call China out on all violations

From a self-described “golden era” of ties with China during his premiership to accepting a role as vice-president of a £1 billion China-UK investment fund after his resignation, Cameron’s relationship with the country has long been close. As recently as September, Cameron spoke at two glitzy events in support of Colombo Port City, a Chinese-funded, multibillion-dollar project to build a metropolis in the Indo-Pacific which critics fear could become a Chinese military outpost. With these links in mind, questions may be raised about Cameron’s suitability in dealing with the Chinese government as Britain’s top diplomat – all of which is very worrying as China’s human rights record goes from bad to worse. Within the country, millions of Uyghurs have disappeared into a network of prisons and camps. Scores of feminist activists, journalists and human rights defenders also reside in jail. Then there is Hong Kong, where the erosion of human rights has been staggering in scope and pace. And as illustrated by our Banned by Beijing reports, China’s long arm is reaching into Europe and the UK where a number of Hong Kong, pro-democracy activists reside. These activists currently have arrest warrants issued against them by the Hong Kong Police Force which have been described as a “Chinese Fatwa”.

A cross-party group of MPs urged the government to block a planned visit to the UK by a senior Chinese official accused of overseeing the violations in Xinjiang in February and we think Cameron should push further by directly pressuring the Chinese authorities. Let’s not trade in human rights for, well, trade.

Specifically mention Jimmy Lai

Jimmy Lai is a Chinese-born, pro-democracy newspaper publisher and activist who is also a British citizen. Currently imprisoned in Hong Kong and in solitary confinement, Lai was charged with violating Hong Kong’s National Security Law for colluding with foreign forces. He was also charged with fraud, sedition and organising and participating in an unlawful assembly and is still awaiting trial for serious national security charges. His case exemplary of the crackdown on free speech and assembly in Hong Kong and his imprisonment has been condemned by human rights group around the world. This summer James Cleverly, the former Foreign Secretary, had brought up Lai’s case when he met with China’s Vice President. We urge Cameron to continue pushing for Lai’s release.

Also mention Alaa Abdel Fattah

Another activist who is currently imprisoned abroad, like Lai Egyptian Alaa Abdel Fattah is a British citizen. Abdel Fattah went on hunger strike in prison in Egypt in 2022 in protest at the conditions he is being held in. A blogger and pro-democracy activist, he is one of the best known of Egypt’s 60,000 political prisoners and is currently serving a five-year-prison sentence for allegedly “spreading false news”, a charge which human rights groups worldwide have condemned as false. The Egyptian authorities continually refuse to recognise Abdel Fattah’s British citizenship and allow embassy officials to see him, something which Index believes Cameron should raise immediately.

No more camping trips with Saudi Arabia

As recently as 2018, just months after the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul by Saudi-sanctioned assassins, Cameron was pictured with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on a camping trip in the Saudi Arabian desert. With Saudi Arabia’s Specialised Criminal Court (SCC) handing extremely harsh prison and death sentences to human rights defenders, and indigenous tribes being displaced from their settlements, imprisoned and even killed, Cameron needs to put aside this personal relationship to challenge Saudi Arabia on its human rights record and treatment of human rights defenders.

Like China, Saudi Arabia has also been accused of transnational repression on UK soil. Take Ghanem al Masarir as an example. A prominent satirist and regime critic, al Masarir is suing Saudi Arabia in the UK. At the centre of his case are allegations that he was physically assaulted by agents of the kingdom in London in 2018 and that Saudi Arabia ordered the hacking of his phone. The outcome of the case will have profound implications for individuals targeted by spyware in the UK and likely the UK’s relationship with Saudi Arabia.

Press for press freedom in Israel-Hamas conflict

With the devastating conflict between Israel-Hamas still relatively new, Cameron will understandably have a lot to deal with. Index urges him to keep a close eye on the free speech situation there, such as the potential closure of the local bureau of Al Jazeera in Israel, which the country has indicated it will hold off from, and the broader media freedom landscape in both Israel and Gaza. We’ve outlined other free speech challenges here and again we hope Cameron doesn’t shy away from those that fall within his remit.

Avoid Trump cards

Assuming Cameron remains in place for more than a year, which is a big assumption given the current turnover within the Conservative Party (not to mention a potential UK general election), he’ll be in place for the next US election. The battle is already heating up and former US President Donald Trump is doing what he does best – firing verbal missiles at his opposition and critics. On Saturday at a rally in New Hampshire, Trump said he’d “root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country that lie and steal and cheat on elections,” once again repeating his false claim of election fraud depriving him of a win in 2020. It’s hard to forget that incredibly awkward handshake between Trump and the late Queen Elizabeth II and the Trump era certainly tested the UK and USA’s “special relationship”. So what will our special relationship look like if Trump is voted back in?

Postcard campaign provides comfort to Jimmy Lai in prison

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”119624″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes” alignment=”center”][vc_column_text]On the east coast of the USA around 100 children have sent postcards to a man they do not know who is incarcerated over 8,000 miles away. The man is Jimmy Lai, the Hong Kong media mogul and activist.

The postcards have provided a brief ray of light in an otherwise dark chapter for a man locked up for his political beliefs, and the city state of Hong Kong which is currently in the ever-tightening grip of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

Lai is imprisoned on charges most us will, hopefully, never have to face. The billionaire publisher and founder of Apple Daily has been jailed since December 2020 after he lit a candle during a public commemoration of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.

The charges were related to this and his other pro-democracy protests. He is perhaps the most high-profile victim of the National Security Law, which was passed in the summer of 2020 with the precise aim of punishing and stifling dissent. This month he faces a trial without jury, where he will plead not guilty to the national security charges.

April Ponnuru’s daughter with the postcards.

April Ponnuru has organised the campaign on behalf of The Committee For Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation (CFHK). It was her idea for children at her daughter’s school, in Virginia, to send supportive postcards to Lai after learning he is a devout Catholic.

“My children are in a Catholic school and are Catholic, and I was thinking about how Catholics believe in the idea called corporal works of mercy, and they are these physical acts we do for people that import a lot of grace and mercy, and one of those is visiting the imprisoned,” she said.

She explained how Lai being persecuted for his ideas and belief – not only political but also regarding his faith – inspired her to contact her children’s school.

“This is a great example for these kids of somebody who stood up for their faith and is suffering unjust consequences for that. I thought they could write postcards to Jimmy and tell him they know a little bit of his story, and they’re praying for him and admire him.”

Lai is currently held at Stanley Prison, a maximum-security facility in Hong Kong where he has spent time in solitary confinement. Already a believer, he has found strength through his faith. A drawing of Jesus Christ on the cross done by Lai from prison was printed on the postcards the children sent.

This drawing was originally published in Index on Censorship’s spring 2022 magazine, alongside letters of his, many of which reference his faith.

Ponnuru said: “We thought it would be nice to include some religious art by Jimmy, and it would be a really meaningful thing that this art he sent out in the world would come back to him from a lot of children. For the children it was a great way to participate in corporal works of mercy that they ordinarily wouldn’t be able to do so. By sending him a card and message, they are visiting him.”

Jimmy Lai’s drawing of Jesus Christ.

She is eager to point out that she wants any child to have the opportunity to send a postcard, as the message of the project should not be defined just by Catholicism.

“This isn’t limited to Catholic schools. We would love any child to participate, children of all faiths and no faith. It’s about understanding the injustice of what is happening to Jimmy and others in Hong Kong. This pilot programme is just the beginning, and we would be very happy to create a postcard that would be appropriate for students at public and other schools to send as well,” Ponnuru said.

“Overall, a number of people have said to me they would love to bring it to their school, and priests have told me they are interested in copying the programme. We are going to write to other schools to encourage them to join the project.”

It’s understood the postcards were received in prison within three months of being sent, and that Lai is being allowed to read one daily, enabling him to have regular contact with the outside world.

If you would like more information about the project, and to request postcards for Jimmy Lai, please contact [email protected].[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Why journalists and dissidents turn to Telegram

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]As you scroll through your Telegram feed, one image jumps out.

It shows crowds of young Hong Kongers, all dressed in black, at a protest, holding their smartphones aloft like virtual cigarette lighters from a Telegram channel called HKerschedule.

The image is an invitation for young activists to congregate and march to mark the anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre on 4 June. Wearing black has been a form of protest for many years, which has led to suggestions that the authorities may arrest anyone doing so.

Calls to action like this have migrated from fly posters and other highly visible methods of communication online.

Secure messaging has become vital to organising protests against an oppressive state.

Many protest groups have used the encrypted service Telegram to schedule and plan demonstrations and marches. Countries across the world have attempted to ban it, with limited levels of success. Vladimir Putin’s Russia tried and failed, the regimes of China and Iran have come closest to eradicating its influence in their respective states.

Telegram, and other encrypted messaging services, are crucial for those intending to organise protests in countries where there is a severe crackdown on free speech. Myanmar, Belarus and Hong Kong have all seen people relying on the services.

It also means that news sites who have had their websites blocked, such as in the case of news website Tut.by in Belarus, or broadcaster Mizzima in Myanmar, have a safe and secure platform to broadcast from, should they so choose.

Belarusian freelance journalist Yauhen Merkis, who wrote for the most recent edition of the magazine, said such services were vital for both journalists and regular civilians.

“The importance of Telegram has grown in Belarus especially due to the blocking of the main news websites and problems accessing other social media platforms such as VK, OK and Facebook after August 2020,” he said.

“Telegram is easy to use, allows you to read the main news even in times of internet access restrictions, it’s a good platform to quickly share photos and videos and for regular users too: via Telegram-bots you could send a file to the editors of a particular Telegram channel in a second directly from a protest action, for example.”

The appeal, then, revolves around the safety of its usage, as well as access to well-sourced information from journalists.

In 2020, the Mobilise project set out to “analyse the micro-foundations of out-migration and mass protest”. In Belarus, it found that Telegram was the most trusted news source among the protesters taking part in the early stages of the demonstrations in the country that arose in August 2020, when President Alexander Lukashenko won a fifth term in office amidst an election result that was widely disputed.

But there are questions over its safety. Cooper Quintin, senior security researcher of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a non-profit that aims to protect privacy online, said Telegram’s encryption “falls short”.

“End-to-end encryption is extremely important for everyone in the world, not just activists and journalists but regular people as well. Unfortunately, Telegram’s end-to-end encryption falls short in a couple of key areas. Firstly, end-to-end encryption isn’t enabled by default meaning that your conversations could be intercepted or recovered by a state-level actor if you don’t enable this, which most users are not aware of. Secondly, group conversations in Telegram are never encrypted [using end-to-end encryption], lacking even the option to do so, unlike other encrypted chat apps such as Signal, Wire, and Keybase.”

A Telegram spokesperson said: “Everything sent over Telegram is encrypted including messages sent in groups and posted to channels.”

This is true; however, messages sent using anything other than Secret Chats use so-called client-server/server-client encryption and are stored encrypted in Telegram’s cloud, allowing access to the messages if you lose your device, for example.

The platform says this means that messages can be securely backed up.

“We opted for a third approach by offering two distinct types of chats. Telegram disables default system backups and provides all users with an integrated security-focused backup solution in the form of Cloud Chats. Meanwhile, the separate entity of Secret Chats gives you full control over the data you do not want to be stored. This allows Telegram to be widely adopted in broad circles, not just by activists and dissidents, so that the simple fact of using Telegram does not mark users as targets for heightened surveillance in certain countries,” the company says in its FAQs.

The spokesperson said, “Telegram’s unique mix of end-to-end encryption and secure client-server encryption allows for the huge groups and channels that have made decentralized protests possible. Telegram’s end-to-end encrypted Secret Chats allow for an extra layer of security for those who are willing to accept the drawbacks of end-to-end encryption.”

If the app’s level of safety is up for debate, its impact and reach is less so.

Authorities are aware of the reach the app has and the level of influence its users can have. Roman Protasevich, the journalist currently detained in his home state after his flight from Greece to Lithuania was forcibly diverted to Minsk after entering Belarusian airspace, was working for Telegram channel Belamova. He previously co-founded and ran the Telegram channel Nexta Live, pictured.

Nexta's Telegram page

Nexta’s Telegram page

Social media channels other than Telegram are easier to ban; Telegram access does not require a VPN, meaning even if governments choose to shut down internet providers, as the regimes in Myanmar and Belarus have done, access can be granted via mobile data. Mobile data is also targeted, but perhaps a problem easier to get around with alternative SIM cards from neighbouring countries.

People in Myanmar, for instance, have been known to use Thai SIM cards.

The site isn’t without controversy, however. Its very nature means it is a natural home for illicit activity such as revenge porn and use by extremists and terror groups. It is this that governments point to when trying to limit its reach.

China’s National Security Law attempts to censor information on the basis of criminalising any act of secession, subversion, terrorism, and collusion with external forces, the threshold for which is extremely low. It has a particular impact on protesters in Hong Kong. Telegram was therefore an easy target.

In July 2020, Telegram refused to comply with Chinese authorities attempting to gain access to user data. As they told the Hong Kong Free Press at the time: “Telegram does not intend to process any data requests related to its Hong Kong users until an international consensus is reached in relation to the ongoing political changes in the city.”

Telegram continues to resist calls to share information (which other companies have done): it even took the step of removing mobile numbers from its service, for fear of its users being identified.

Anyone who values freedom of expression and the right to protest should resist calls for messaging platforms like Telegram to pull back on encryption or to install back doors for governments. When authoritarian regimes are cracking down on independent media more than ever, platforms like these are often the only way for protests to be heard

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Exclusive: New short story from award-winning writer Lisa Appignanesi

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”The award-winning writer speaks to Rachael Jolley about the inspiration for her new short story, written exclusively for Index, which looks at the idea of ageing, and disappearing memories, and how it plays out during lockdown.”][vc_column_text]

British-Canadian writer Lisa Appignanesi has found lockdown a difficult time to write, but despite this she has created a new short story exclusively for Index.

Appignanesi, a screenwriter, academic and novelist, said: “It’s very hard to move within the instability of the time to something imaginative.”

Her story, Lockdown, focuses on an older man, Arthur, who reflects on his past in Vienna during the period between the two world wars.

Appignanesi has a long relationship with the Austrian city.

“I’ve done an awful lot of work on Viennese literature and, indeed, on Freud, so Vienna always feels very, very close to me and I lived there for a year,” she said.

“Vienna is a fascinating place. It was a great city – first of all head of an empire with many, many immigrant groupings in it, and then when it lost its imperial status in World War I it was a very impoverished city.”

She says the period of lockdown focused her mind on the restrictions imposed upon the elderly. “I have long thought about what happens to the mind within the body, people’s relationship to time in that sense. You grow old and stuff happens to your body and, initially at least, it doesn’t seem to affect your mental capacity and the way you grow through time as you are living it.”

She is also interested in the idea of people being present in different ways and how, for instance, the potential anonymity and the disembodied nature of Twitter means that people can unleash their anger differently from how they would if they were in the room with someone.

“Some of the rampant emotions of our time, particularly anger,” she said, “were to do with the fact that people on Twitter are not only anonymous but they are disembodied.”

In an article for this magazine in 2010, Appignanesi wrote: “The speed of communication the internet permits, its blindness to geography, seems to have stoked the fires of prohibition. The freer and easier it is for ideas to spread, the more punitive the powers that wish to silence or censor become.”

Appignanesi, a long-time campaigner for freedom of expression, was born in post-war Poland as Elżbieta Borensztejn. Her Jewish parents had what she has described with understatement as “a difficult war”, hiding under different aliases to escape arrest. The family moved then to Paris, which she remembers, and later to Montreal, Canada. She once told BBC Radio 3 that she “grew up with the ghosts of those that died in the concentration camps”. Given the family history, it is no wonder she worries about authoritarian governments and restrictions on speech.

She is now concerned about how governments are changing the rules of freedom of expression while the world is distracted by Covid-19, and the threats that may manifest themselves. “Your attention is distracted by something – something happens behind the scenes, and usually the same people are doing the distraction. This time it was the virus.”

One news item that grabbed her attention recently was about the closure of Guatemala’s police archives (see page 27), a library of information about the country’s civil war. Her concern is that “those archives are about the disappearances of people under the dictatorships, which were lethal”.

As others track governments who want to control the national story, Appignanesi says we must learn from history.

“It’s very important for our documents in Britain to be interpreted in different ways, and supplemented by stories we don’t know.

“There are always new histories to discover.”

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Lockdown by Lisa Appignanesi:

Arthur was old. Very old. So old that when the word “lockdown” had made its way onto the radio news he was listening to with only half an ear – and even that half tuned to inner voices – he had thought they were talking about him.

It seemed the world was joining him now. In lockdown.

But the whole country had been in metaphorical lockdown for some time, he reflected, its politicians preventing every connection between a fragmented people except angry sparks or empty boasts.

Lockdown was a perfect word to describe his present condition: confined to his cell for his own good by a greater authority. If he promised not to riot, he was allowed out for exercise at regular intervals.

Yet the notion of exercise took all the pleasure out of movement. He preferred to think of it as a walk, better still, a passeggiata. He always dressed carefully for the occasion – a suit, perhaps a silk waistcoat, a bow tie. The joy of a stroll was in part that people looked at, and greeted, each other – even smiled. So no stretchy joggers and sweatshirts for him of the kind his grandchildren wore. He liked form. He had always been something of a dandy, though these days, as he heaved what seemed to be boulders rather than legs along the streets, it was harder to turn a casual half smile on the world and appreciate its offerings. But then his senses, too, were in all but lockdown. His new glasses had him stumbling, the ground far closer than where he had last left it, as if he had shrunk back to childhood and well below what was once an adequate height for a man of his generation.

His first grandson had once asked him if he was named after King Arthur since he had a round table and Arthur hadn’t liked to contradict him – but the only table that had featured in his own childhood had been the one at the Professor’s house in Vienna. He played happily under that while the adults talked and occasionally the Professor would put a hand below the edge of the tablecloth and tousle his hair, then pat him as he did his dogs. He liked the Professor, who gave his name a proper ‘T’ – Artur. In fact, it was the writer who was called the professor’s “doppelgänger” who was responsible for Arthur’s name.

Doppelgänger was a word he learned early. Another, heard from beneath the table, was Zensur. He had thought that had the word hour in it, had thought maybe it meant ten o’clock, zehn Uhr. Amidst the chatter of the adult voices, he saw TEN blotting out all the hours that came before, a censoring hour.

Maybe that’s why he had this odd relationship to time now, as he reached his midnight. He was convinced that at this late age he finally understood, was indeed living, what Einstein had meant about time slowing in the presence of heavy objects. Arthur was so light now, his bones s0 hollowed out, that time didn’t slow for him. It sped.

Or maybe its racing effect was linked to the fact that there was so little of time left that what had once been full and slow was now racing towards an end. The thought of death could no longer be censored or repressed. No bonfire could destroy it. But then it hadn’t really worked for the books either. They had sprung up in other editions and elsewhere.

Arthur had been born in Berlin just weeks after the great conflagration of books the Nazis had staged and only a few months after the Reichstag fire. His mother had been walking near the Staatsoper on the night of the book burning. She had loved Arthur Schnitzler’s work and had known him a little, so he had become little Arthur.

It was as well the Professor was still alive or he might have become Siggy, since his books were in that bonfire too.

Was that why he had spent his life in books and collected so many in the process? He looked up at the study’s walls lined in first editions, one side leather bound, the other brighter in their contemporaneity.

“Arthur?”

He checked that the voice was real and forced himself into the present.

In the doorway stood the young woman he liked to think of as his companion, though his granddaughter, Mia, had called her – in insisting on the need for her – an au pair plus. Stella was certainly more than his equal, not only as tall as he once had been but with poise and a razor-sharp intelligence he sometimes thought could penetrate his thoughts without him needing to speak.

So she knew he liked the fact she was decorous and she hadn’t – at least not yet – upbraided him for it, as his granddaughter would. Stella was completing a PhD at Cambridge, and with a rueful smile admitted that she had been completing it for an unconscionable while, which most recently had included divorcing her husband. That was why she found herself in need of a room and an extra wage. No one had imagined lockdown.

Now she wanted him up and ready to begin the Sisyphean task of the morning passeggiata.

His study door opened onto a terrace and from there down into communal gardens, a square where the trees today were in full glorious flower. He was a lucky man. Doubly lucky that his granddaughter had somehow gifted him this magnificent creature.

“We’re going to begin today,” Stella said when they paused for him to catch breath beneath the flowering cherry. The sky between its branches was a Mediterranean blue. The blackbirds were in full throat. The young Americans with their twin toddlers weren’t out yet.

“I’m not ready.” Arthur heard the plaintive high pitch in his own voice and rushed to blur it in a cough.

If you wish to read the rest of the extract, click here.

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Lisa Appignanesi is an award-winning writer and campaigner for free expression. She is the author of many books including Memory and Desire, Losing the Dead and The Memory Man.

Rachael Jolley is the former editor-in-chief of Index on Censorship magazine. She tweets @londoninsider. This article is part of the latest edition of Index on Censorship’s autumn 2020 issue, entitled The disappeared: how people, books and ideas are taken away.

Look out for the new edition in bookshops, and don’t miss our Index on Censorship podcast, with special guests, on Soundcloud.

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_custom_heading text=”Listen”][vc_column_text]The autumn 2020 magazine podcast featuring Hong Kong-based journalist Oliver Farry, who discusses the crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrations in the region

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