A critical autumn for freedom of speech

September 12th, 2012

After years of campaigning, we have the chance to pass defamation laws that are fit for the 21st century. We cannot miss this opportunity, says Jo Glanville (more…)

Soldiers in the fight for the open society need reinforcements

August 30th, 2012

Academics worldwide face economic and political attacks that restrict their freedom to challenge convention, says Jo Glanville

This piece was originally published on Times Higher Education

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Libel reform is no joke

June 29th, 2012

Comics Dara Ó Briain and Dave Gorman and scientist Professor Brian Cox joined Index and the Libel Reform Campaign at Downing Street to demand a public interest defence in the defamation bill

Why should Amazon be our taste and decency police?

June 26th, 2012

The online retailer has been criticised for profiting from ebooks featuring terror and violence. No one should tell us what to read, says Jo Glanville
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Chen Guangcheng knows exile isn’t easy, but it may be his best bet

May 4th, 2012

The desperate plight of Chen Guangcheng is a graphic illustration of how China treats its dissidents. Harassed and intimidated, Chen has spent the past seven years between prison and house arrest since he exposed the government’s forced abortion policy in 2005 (he was awarded the Index freedom of expression award for whistleblowing in 2007). House arrest is a common tactic in China for containing and controlling whistleblowers and activists. In Chen’s case, since his release from prison in 2010, it has meant a life of social isolation and fear. Other current well-known victims include Tibetan poet Tsering Woeser and Ai Weiwei, who famously attempted to turn China’s tactics on their head by installing his own in-house surveillance.

The week’s dramatic events echo the story of celebrated dissident Fang Lizhi, who died last month; Fang also took refuge in the US embassy following the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989 and stayed for more than a year until China allowed him to leave. Fang was one of the most important influences on the Tiananmen generation of young activists and the authorities considered him “the biggest black hand behind the 4 June riots”. In exile in the US for the rest of his life, as well as pursuing his academic career as an astrophysicist, he remained active in speaking out for human rights in China along with other exiles of 1989, including Wang Dan.

The experience of exile for dissidents, despite the continuing possibility for influence, can bring another kind of isolation. “Homelessness, loneliness and despair have almost driven me to self-destruction,” wrote the poet Liu Hongbin on the 20th anniversary of Tiananmen Square. It is only through memory, he has written movingly, that he has made the journey home. Writer Ma Jian, who has written the definitive novel of the Tiananmen generation, Beijing Coma, while in exile, was still able to visit China regularly until last year – a measure of how far the situation has deteriorated. Chen’s desire for “a rest”, as he told Congress, is likely to be more than a short stay.

However, there are networks that can only be built from exile and that have always been a lifeline for dissidents back home, long before Twitter, SMS and Facebook revolutionised the possibilities of making revolution. Under editor George Theiner, a Czech dissident in exile in London, Index on Censorship magazine published the leading lights of Czechoslovakia’s pro-democracy movement in the 80s, most notably Václav Havel, as well as publishing and distributing Polish and Czech samizdat – a vital outlet for opposition activists. When Index’s founding editor Michael Scammell started publishing the most famous dissident of them all, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the great man panicked: when he heard that his work was appearing so widely in English, he thought it was the KGB who was circulating his writing as part of a political provocation. But it was the first worldwide publication of much of his work in translation and an immensely important part of circulating the plight of dissidents in the Soviet Union.

Forty years on, Belarusian activists in exile have played a vital role in galvanising opposition to Alexander Lukashenko’s regime. Since the elections in 2010, following the mass arrests and imprisonment of the opposition, some of the leading lights of the pro-democracy movement have settled in London and Warsaw where they have helped to shape a successful European campaign alongside human rights groups. Natalia Kaladia, artistic director of the acclaimed Belarus Free Theatre, had to flee Belarus following her arrest and the intimidation of her family. In a campaign with Index, her new organisation Free Belarus Now, which she runs with Irina Bogdanova, sister of former political prisoner Andrei Sannikov, has helped to persuade Deutsche Bank and BNP Paribas to stop doing business with Lukashenko’s regime.

While none would choose exile, Chen is reported as telling the US ambassador that “he wanted to be part of the struggle to improve human rights within China”, thanks to the internet it is now perhaps more possible than it ever was in the days of the carbon copies of samizdat to continue to exert an influence back home.

Jo Glanville is editor of Index on Censorship magazine

Index privacy debate: replay

June 30th, 2011

Max Mosley, Hugh Tomlinson QC, Suzanne Moore and David Price QC debated privacy, free speech and a feral press at Index on Censorship’s event at the London School of Economics on Tuesday evening, chaired by Index editor Jo Glanville. Reports of the event can be found at:

• Index on Censorship
• Inforrm
• Press Gazette
• Spiked

If you missed it or want to listen again, the video and audio are embedded below:

The debate was held to mark the launch of the latest issue of the Index on Censorship magazine Privacy is dead! Long live privacy, which includes an interview with Sir David Eady, the High Court judge by legal commentator and writer Joshua Rozenberg. The new issue is available now.

Defining bona fide protest

July 6th, 2010

Narrow definitions of a bona fide protester smack of Victorian ideals of the deserving poor — Index defends everyone’s right to protest, writes Jo Glanville

Brett Lock’s despair at Index’s lack of sophistication raises of one of the great ironies for free speech activists. Many of the landmark free speech cases have been fought in defence of individuals whose ideas, beliefs and attitudes are singularly unattractive. Take the famous Skokie case of the 1970s, when the American Civil Liberties Union fought for the right of neo-Nazis to march through a Jewish neighbourhood. Or the celebrated Oz trial of the same decade. The Oz Schoolkids issue which was prosecuted for obscenity could never be called great literature, but the ultimate success of the case was an important milestone in protecting the freedom of expression of all writers. It is the principle in these cases that matters and that needs defending.

Brian Haw may have some questionable beliefs, but his longstanding presence in Parliament Square became a symbol of protest and of the defence to the right to protest under the last government. Would our critics prefer that Index choose only the most deserving cases? How does one decide who is or isn’t a bona fide protester, worthy of the support of a free speech organisation? Rather than pick and choose the apparently desirable causes and victims, it’s important for Index to be consistent and defend Haw and the Democracy Village. New Labour brought in a chilling number of laws that infringed the right to protest — including the freedom to demonstrate around parliament, and the use of stop and search counter-terrorism legislation — and the coalition government’s commitment to repeal the restrictions around Westminster is to be applauded. The removal of Brian Haw at the state opening of parliament was therefore a worrying moment so early in the life of the new government.

As Bibi van der Zee pointed out in her piece for Index last week, the British have a long tradition of pitching their tents in protest — from Heathrow to road bypasses — on public and private land. And what could be a better spot for making your voice heard than opposite parliament? The legal argument around this case pitches the protesters’ right to free expression against the public’s rights and freedoms to access Parliament Square. But it is surely not the worthiness of the protesters’ cause that should be the central issue here.

Jo Glanville is editor of Index on Censorship and a member of the Ministry of Justice working party on libel reform

Unanimous backing for real freedom of the press

February 24th, 2010

Aside from exposing the sins of News International, today’s MPs report boosts our campaign for libel reform, writes Jo Glanville

This article was first published in the Independent.

At the press conference launching the select committee’s report on press standards, privacy and libel, all that anyone wanted to talk about was the News of the World and phone hacking. The committee blasted News International and its witnesses for their “collective amnesia” in providing evidence to the inquiry and lamented the “substantial damage to the newspaper industry as a whole” of the phone hacking fiasco. Less attention was given to the inquiry’s call for libel reform – yet its recommendations are perhaps the most significant element of the report and an unequivocal support for press freedom.

Over the past 18 months, there has been an unprecedented groundswell for reform, as scientists, academics, NGOs, the media and pressure groups have lobbied for action. The committee’s recommendations echo many of those proposed by Index on Censorship and English PEN in a report published last November – tackling libel tourism, making it harder for corporations to sue, developing a public interest defence, reducing costs, a one-year limitation on internet publication. There has rarely been such a convergence of engagement by pressure groups and politicians on an issue. “There’s an opportunity for a thoroughgoing reform of our libel law,” said Paul Farrelly MP, an influential member of the committee.

When Jack Straw gave evidence to the committee last year, he appeared untroubled by the problem of libel tourism. Yet the phenomenon (where foreign claimants bring their libel actions to English courts) made a deep impression on the committee. A number of states in the US have introduced legislation to protect their citizens from being sued in our courts: “We believe it is more than an embarrassment to our system that legislators in the US should feel the need to take retaliatory steps to protect freedom of speech,” says the select committee report, recommending that the Government discuss the situation with its US counterparts.

So will it go anywhere? Some of the issues are already under review, others are being examined by the Ministry of Justice’s working group on libel. There’s little time left before the election and little indication that a Conservative government will be as supportive of reform. But we may never have another opportunity like this for freeing the press, publishers and academics from the tyranny of the UK’s singular chilling libel laws – and will have a greater impact for press freedom than the current flurry of interest in the sins of News International.

Jo Glanville is editor of Index on Censorship and a member of the Ministry of Justice working party on libel reform