12 Sep 19 | Magazine, Magazine Editions, Volume 48.03 Autumn 2019
Novelist
Elif Shafak is an award-winning Turkish novelist and advocate for free expression. Her latest novel 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World has been long-listed for the Booker Prize.
Novelist
The award-winning novelist Kerry Hudson’s memoir Lowborn captured the imagination of the British public this year because of her vivid description of her dysfunctional family and growing up in poverty in the UK.
Writer
Chen Xiwo is a censored Chinese author, most famous for his collection of stories The Book of Sins which was published in English in 2014. His controversial novella I Love My Mum remains banned in China
05 Sep 19 | Index in the Press, News and features
Index on Censorship editor-in-chief Rachael Jolley wrote in The Times’ Thunderer column today about how countries are increasingly wanting to look at our social media before we cross their borders.
“The world’s borders are increasingly becoming places where governments can strip-search our thoughts and contacts. Journalists and activists are being targeted in ways that may stop them doing their work, with the risk of being forced to give governments access to the names and addresses of those who have helped them on a story or project. This is a worrying development that has the power to stop reporters reporting and activists protesting,” she wrote.
Read the full column here
18 Jun 19 | Events
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”107412″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes”][vc_column_text]In the 15 years since the advent of Facebook, social media has become theway we communicate with one another online. It’s a space where revolutions and romances start but also where hate and anger bubble.
Who decides what content remains or is removed is one of the key challenges of our age. Should social media giants police content or should governments regulate expression online? How do we challenge their decisions?
Join us for an evening with one of the leading thinkers on this issue – UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression David Kaye – as he marks the the UK launch of his new book Speech Police: The Global Struggle to Govern the Internet.
Kaye will be in conversation with presenter, comedian and data geek Timandra Harkness.[/vc_column_text][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/2″][vc_single_image image=”107415″ img_size=”full”][vc_column_text]David Kaye is the United Nations special rapporteur on the promotion and protectin of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, the global body’s principal monitor for freedom of expression issues worldwide. He is also clinical professor of law and director of the International Justice Clinic at the University of California, Irvine.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/2″][vc_single_image image=”107416″ img_size=”full”][vc_column_text]Timandra Harkness is a presenter, writer and comedian who hosts the BBC Radio 4 series, FutureProofing and How To Disagree. Her book, Big Data: Does Size Matter? was published in June 2016. She will be appearing in a new solo comedy show at the 2019 Edinburgh Festival Fringe: Take A Risk.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/4″][vc_single_image image=”60288″ img_size=”full” onclick=”custom_link” link=”https://www.article19.org/”][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/4″][vc_single_image image=”102960″ img_size=”full”][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/4″][vc_single_image image=”107417″ img_size=”full” onclick=”custom_link” link=”https://www.wayra.co.uk/”][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/4″][vc_single_image image=”85975″][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner][vc_column_text]
Special thanks to Wayra for hosting and to our friends at Flying Dog Brewery for donating the beer for this event.
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When: Tuesday 9 July 2019 18:30 – 20:30 BST
Where: Wayra, 20 Air Street London W1B 5AN
Tickets: Free. Registration required via Eventbrite
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21 May 18 | Digital Freedom, European Union, Germany, News and features, Russia, United States
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”85524″ img_size=”full” alignment=”center”][vc_column_text]For around six decades after WWII ideas, laws and institutions supporting free expression spread across borders globally. Ever more people were liberated from stifling censorship and repression. But in the past decade that development has reversed.
On April 12 Russian lawmakers in the State Duma completed the first reading of a new draft law on social media. Among other things the law requires social media platforms to remove illegal content within 24 hours or risk hefty fines. Sound familiar? If you think you’ve heard this story before it’s because the original draft was what Reporters Without Borders call a “copy-paste” version of the much criticized German Social Network law that went into effect earlier this year. But we can trace the origins back further.
In 2016 the EU-Commission and a number of big tech-firms including Facebook, Twitter and Google, agreed on a Code of Conduct under which these firms commit to removing illegal hate speech within 24 hours. In other words what happens in Brussels doesn’t stay in Brussels. It may spread to Berlin and end up in Moscow, transformed from a voluntary instrument aimed at defending Western democracies to a draconian law used to shore up a regime committed to disrupting Western democracies.
US President Donald Trump’s crusade against “fake news” may also have had serious consequences for press freedom. Because of the First Amendment’s robust protection of free expression Trump is largely powerless to weaponise his war against the “fake news media” and “enemies of the people” that most others refer to as “independent media”.
Yet many other citizens of the world cannot rely on the same degree of legal protection from thin-skinned political leaders eager to filter news and information. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has documented the highest ever number of journalists imprisoned for false news worldwide. And while 21 such cases may not sound catastrophic the message these arrests and convictions send is alarming. And soon more may follow. In April Malaysia criminalised the spread of “news, information, data and reports which is or are wholly or partly false”, with up to six years in prison. Already a Danish citizen has been convicted to one month’s imprisonment for a harmless YouTube video, and presidential candidate Mahathir Mohammed is also being investigated. Kenya is going down the same path with a draconian bill criminalising “false” or “fictitious” information. And while Robert Mueller is investigating whether Trump has been unduly influenced by Russian President Putin, it seems that Putin may well have been influenced by Trump. The above mentioned Russian draft social media law also includes an obligation to delete any “unverified publicly significant information presented as reliable information.” Taken into account the amount of pro-Kremlin propaganda espoused by Russian media such as RT and Sputnik, one can be certain that the definition of “unverified” will align closely with the interests of Putin and his cronies.
But even democracies have fallen for the temptation to define truth. France’s celebrated president Macron has promised to present a bill targeting false information by “to allow rapid blocking of the dissemination of fake news”. While the French initiative may be targeted at election periods it still does not accord well with a joint declaration issued by independent experts from international and regional organisations covering the UN, Europe, the Americans and Africa which stressed that “ general prohibitions on the dissemination of information based on vague and ambiguous ideas, including ‘false news’ or ‘non-objective information’, are incompatible with international standards for restrictions on freedom of expression”.
However, illiberal measures also travel from East to West. In 2012 Russia adopted a law requiring NGOs receiving funds from abroad and involved in “political activities” – a nebulous and all-encompassing term – to register as “foreign agents”. The law is a thinly veiled attempt to delegitimise civil society organisations that may shed critical light on the policies of Putin’s regime. It has affected everything from human rights groups, LGBT-activists and environmental organisations, who must choose between being branded as something akin to enemies of the state or abandon their work in Russia. As such it has strong appeal to other politicians who don’t appreciate a vibrant civil society with its inherent ecosystem of dissent and potential for social and political mobilisation.
One such politician is Victor Orban, prime minister of Hungary’s increasingly illiberal government. In 2017 Orban’s government did its own copy paste job adopting a law requiring NGOs receiving funds from abroad to register as “foreign supported”. A move which should be seen in the light of Orban’s obsession with eliminating the influence of anything or anyone remotely associated with the Hungarian-American philanthropist George Soros whose Open Society Foundation funds organisations promoting liberal and progressive values.
The cross-fertilisation of censorship between regime types and continents is part of the explanation why press freedom has been in retreat for more than a decade. In its recent 2018 World Press Freedom Index Reporters Without Borders identified “growing animosity towards journalists. Hostility towards the media, openly encouraged by political leaders, and the efforts of authoritarian regimes to export their vision of journalism pose a threat to democracies”. This is something borne out by the litany of of media freedom violations reported to Index on Censorship’s Mapping Media Freedom, which monitors 43 countries. In just the last four years, MMF has logged over 4,200 incidents — a staggering array of curbs on the press that range from physical assault to online threats and murders that have engulfed journalists.
Alarmingly Europe – the heartland of global democracy – has seen the worst regional setbacks in RSF’s index. This development shows that sacrificing free speech to guard against creeping authoritarianism is more likely to embolden than to defeat the enemies of the open society.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_single_image image=”100463″ img_size=”full” onclick=”custom_link” img_link_target=”_blank” link=”http://www.freespeechhistory.com”][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]
A podcast on the history of free speech.
Why have kings, emperors, and governments killed and imprisoned people to shut them up? And why have countless people risked death and imprisonment to express their beliefs? Jacob Mchangama guides you through the history of free speech from the trial of Socrates to the Great Firewall.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_basic_grid post_type=”post” max_items=”12″ style=”load-more” items_per_page=”4″ element_width=”6″ grid_id=”vc_gid:1526895517975-5ae07ad7-7137-1″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
