20 Sep 2011 | Events
Date: Tuesday 20 Sept
Time: registration 6pm, presentations 6.30-8pm
Venue: The Law Society, 113 Chancery Lane, London, WC2A 1PL
Tickets: Free – register here
The Law Society Public Debate Series: Privacy, Free Press and the Public Interest
Index on Censorship’s editor, Jo Glanville, will be speaking alongside Gideon Benaim (Partner, Schillings), David Leigh (Investigations Executive Editor, The Guardian) and Hugh Tomlinson QC at the Law Society’s debate on privacy and super injunctions, chaired by Desmond Hudson (Chief Executive, the Law Society).
With the Joint Committee on super-injunctions expected to report this autumn, the panel will tease apart the issues raised by both their use and the growing profile of anonymity orders. What conclusions should the Joint Committee on super-injunctions or the inquiry into press regulation be coming to? How should Parliament and the courts tread the line between the many principles of free speech, privacy, reputation, the public interest and open justice? What is the role of the press and modern communications in upholding this balance? Have recent developments mandate a freestanding privacy law?
This event will be followed by drinks in the Law Society bar.
20 Sep 2011 | Uncategorized
The suspension of one of China’s top editors, Zhao Lingmin, who has worked for seven years at one of the major magazines in the industry, Window on the South, has gripped the Chinese press who are concerned that media freedoms are being curbed.
Zhao spoke exclusively to Index on Censorship. She noted that even in the haven of China’s most liberal media, the southern province of Guangdong, where Window on the South is based, media regulations are tightening. “Looking at the individual cases, it seems definite that the press here is not as free as before”, Zhao said.
Window on the South is under the control of the local propaganda bureau of Guangdong. Every province in China has a propaganda bureau with its own level of severity when it comes to controlling media. For a long time the south had exemplified how liberal Chinese media could be –– Barack Obama gave an exclusive interview to a paper in the region upon his visit in 2009.
What got Zhao Lingmin in hot water? She was responsible for an article called “China Has Risen, We Must Say Goodbye to the Foreign Policy of Revolution”, which took the words of a Taiwan historian to explain the Xinhai Revolution of 1911 and presented Sun Yat-sen, the founder of modern China, as a warmonger. The Communist Party has always maintained Sun Yat-sen as a figure who supported communism and started what communists now term as the beginning of “New China”, a definitive break from the past. In all communist history, Sun Yat-sen is lauded as a “Founding Father” figure even though he was a Nationalist. Smearing him, or perceived smearing, is not a smart move.
Even though it’s something that Zhao had been prepared for — she knew the risks of working in the media in China —this time it’s serious. Even before she was suspended, there were changes within the editorial department. “Our magazine has persistently cultivated an independent spirit. But the editor-in-chief was replaced by someone who headed a newspaper in nearby Dongguan, and didn’t know much apart from Dongguan. This is the first time that both the editor-in-chief and the president (previously Chen Zhong) of the magazine were both selected by the top.”
The other thing that Zhao Lingmin was punished for was to interview a Taiwanese historian, Tang Chi-hua. When the article was published she was told that it had “fundamental problems.” Zhao does not agree with this point of view, obviously. She says the majority of intellectuals in Mainland China agreed with what the Taiwanese professor said.
However, the Guangdong Propaganda Department didn’t see it that way. Zhao needs to be reinstated before long, but she is optimistic about one thing: “I have only left temporarily. My name is still on the masthead.” There is hope, after all.
20 Sep 2011 | Index Index, minipost
In the first sentence of its kind, a farmer from mainland has been jailed for three weeks after setting fire to a Chinese flag in Hong Kong. Zhu Rongchang, 74, from Jiangxi province, pleaded not guilty to flag desecration, arguing that he was exercising his right to free speech. He burned the flag in Golden Bauhinia Square in central Hong Kong on 22 July, in a protest against the Beijing government.
20 Sep 2011 | Index Index, minipost
The publication of Halkin Gunlugu (The People’s Agenda) newspaper was suspended for one month on 10 September. All copies of the paper were seized and distribution of the latest issue is to be stopped under Article 25/2 of the Press Law and Articles 6/2 and 7/2 of Law No.3713 (Anti-Terror Law). The decision stems from a series of articles in the 18th issue of the weekly paper which covered the deaths of militants in the Maoist Communist Party and its armed wing, the People’s Liberation Army, in armed conflicts. The prosecution ordered the publication ban on grounds of alleged “propaganda for an illegal armed terrorist organisation”.
