12 Apr 2012 | Asia and Pacific, Digital Freedom
The past few months have seen the rise of a vocal and sophisticated anti-censorship campaign in Pakistan that has effectively shamed the government into shelving its plans for a national internet filtering system.
The Pakistan government’s ICT research and development fund issued a call in February for proposals from academia and companies for the development of a large-scale filter to block websites deemed “undesirable”.
According to the call, Pakistani internet service providers (ISPs) and backbone providers had “expressed their inability to block millions of undesirable web sites using current manual blocking systems.”
The document goes on to specify that the system should allow for the blocking of up to 50 million URLs with a processing delay of “not more than 1 milliseconds [sic]”. Were it to succeed, such a blanket system would put Pakistan’s internet on a par with the surveillance and filtering of China’s Great Firewall.
Human rights groups Bolo Bhi and Bytes for All have called on companies not to respond to the bid for proposals. Their methods seem to have worked, with five companies, including Websense, McAfee and Cisco saying they will not bid. Websense issued the following statement last month:
Broad government censorship of citizen access to the internet is morally wrong. We further believe that any company whose products are currently being used for government-imposed censorship should remove their technology so that it is not used in this way by oppressive governments.
The grassroots campaign has also garnered international attention, with a global coalition of NGOs, including Index, Article 19 and the Global Network Initiative, calling for the withdrawal of Pakistan’s censorship plans.
For Jillian C York, director for International Freedom of Expression at the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation, the support of, rather than initiation by, international groups has been key. “I think that it was a combination of strong Pakistani organisations working with international organisations in tandem that made this campaign so big,” York said in an email. “Bolo Bhi and Bytes for All made the campaign a local one, using the language they preferred, but were smart enough to get the right organisations to amplify their voices while still maintaining control of the tone. I think that’s the example that they set.”
“I don’t see a company going forward with it now because there’s been public outrage and naming and shaming,” Sana Saleem, CEO of Bolo Bhi (“speak up” in Urdu), told Index. “There has been consistent effort and collaboration (…) It is tempting to shout but we said ‘let’s sit down first’. If we were reactionary it would make it hard for businesses to join us.”
In addition to appealing to companies and receiving international support, activists continued to contact the Pakistani government. Eventually a member of the National Assembly notified Bolo Bhi that the country’s secretary of IT had confirmed to her that the proposals had been shelved. Yet no official statement has been released, with Bolo Bhi and other civil society members planning to file a consititutional petition tomorrow. Saleem says the verbal commitment could be seen as a delaying tactic, arguing that now is the time to “consistently build on the campaign.”
Saleem says the Pakistani government has been looking for more control of the internet — which is accessed by 20 million of the country’s 187 million population — and that the filtering proposals could give rise to blanket surveillance. The vagueness of the terms “objectionable content” and “national security” in the terms of reference might also make the plans prone to abuse.
The proposals also threaten secure, encrypted web browsing available via https. “Something that has always annoyed intelligence agencies is not being able to access https,” Saleem said, noting that the government currently needs a court order if they wish to monitor particular users. The proposals would essentially absolve ISPs of the responsibility of blocking content manually.
Her fear is where the filtering would stop. “If we allow the state to be our moral police, it could be pornography today and something else tomorrow,” she said, citing a case late last year in which the PTA issued directives to ISPs to block 1,000 pornographic websites.
Given its apparent backtracking, Saleem predicts that the government will now be more careful in how it approaches internet filtering and surveillance. “The government made a huge mistake in making the proposals public, so they might be more covert in the future.” She adds that more controversial issues of morality and blasphemy will continue to pose a challenge in the country. “These are very charged issues,” she said, adding: “when we talk about internet freedom and freedom of expression, the government will continue to use these [issues] as a shield to exert control.”
Saleem’s aim now is to get more stakeholders involved in a broader debate about Pakistan’s national security, starting by holding discussions with university students. “Ideally we’d want the internet to be completely free, but we do know Pakistan is a police state. This is a time when we can sit down and see what we want to do.”
Marta Cooper is an editorial researcher at Index. She tweets at @martaruco.
12 Apr 2012 | Middle East and North Africa
This letter was originally published in today’s issue of The Financial Times.
(more…)
12 Apr 2012 | Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa
In his 32 years in power, Angola’s President José Edouardo Dos Santos has adopted the maxim, “if you can’t beat them, buy them”. The silence of rappers, journalists and the occasional university professor has been secured for a few petro dollars, a sports car or a villa. But in the past year, new voices that won’t be silenced have emerged.
On 4 April, 2012, the country celebrated 10 years of peace. In the decade since the end of the country’s 27-year civil war, the economy has boomed and its diplomatic influence has expanded. But as war memories have receded, inequality has deepened as a tiny elite has reaped a rich peace dividend of oil and diamonds. Despite extensive infrastructure work — paid for with loans secured by oil — the majority of the population has remained poor and voiceless.
We are a simulated democracy. Angola is really a dictatorship,
said Elias Isaac, country director for the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa (Osisa).
This year is due to see elections being staged under a constitutional rearrangement ushered through parliament in 2010 that critics say could give Dos Santos another 10 years in power. Most analysts expect the poll to take place in August.
Human rights activists, including Isaac, travelled to South Africa earlier this month to mark their country’s 10 years of peace and to call for more international support for those bold enough to question President Dos Santos’s rule. They said there were already clear signs of the electoral process being manipulated in favour of Dos Santos and his staunchest supporters in the ruling Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA).
Horácio Junjuvili, a representative of the opposition National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (Unita) told journalists in Cape Town:
“Elections must be announced with 90 days’ notice. But already, even before the poll date has been given, the manipulation has begun with the appointment of Susannah Ingles, a lawyer who is a member of the MPLA, as president of National Electoral Commission (NEC). The opposition has appealed against her appointment and we are refusing to attend NEC meetings.”
The activists said that two protests against Ingles’s appointment planned for 10 March had been violently suppressed. In the southern coastal town of Benguela, armed police used batons to break up a gathering of about 20 people. In the capital, Luanda, the days preceding the planned demonstration were marked by raids on suspected participants.
On the morning of the planned protest, 30-year-old rapper Luaty Beirâo, who was one of the organisers, was beaten at the scene of the Luanda gathering and had to have stitches to his head. Filomeno Vieira Lopes, the 57-year-old secretary-general of opposition party Bloco Democratico was beaten with truncheons and sustained wounds to his head and arm that had to be treated in hospital.
Two days later, police bearing a warrant citing “crimes of outrage against the State” descended on the offices of the outspoken weekly newspaper, Folha 8, and confiscated 20 computers. Its editor, William Tonet, said the move was in retaliation at a photomontage published in December which lampooned President Dos Santos and his entourage.
Junjuvili said opposition to the ruling clique around President Dos Santos had become more vocal and courageous since March 2011 when protests began against the high cost of living and lack of political freedom. He said:
Angola is another example of the southern African phenomenon where power that has emerged from a guerilla movement does not entertain the idea of a change of power
Marcolino Moco, who was the first prime minister of independent Angola and remains a member of the MPLA, even though he is one of President Dos Santos’s harshest critics, said the situation is worsening. ”The president’s family has bought banks, ports, telephone companies and last month he made one of his sons a director of the oil sovereign fund. He gave a television channel to another of his children. The country is run like a family dynasty.”
Elias Isaac said western countries and entities had willingly sacrificed their principles and morals so as not to lose their economic foothold in Angola and their access to its oil. ”The European Union says it cannot put human rights issues on the table because if it does so it will lose out to China. The EU has already announced that it will not send observers to the forthcoming elections. The International Monetary Fund has opted to complete its loan disbursement and to turn a blind eye on $32 billion dollars that are unaccounted for in Angola’s public accounts. We do not see any prospect of the Angolan people being helped through western or regional African diplomacy,” he said.
But there are signs that Angolan activists are becoming more bold — or at least are increasingly less likely to be cowed – as they challenge the Dos Santos empire. Rapper Beirâo, whose protest movement is called Central 7311 — named after its first demonstration on 7 March 2011 — has instructed fellow activists to gather film and photographic evidence of protests and broadcast it on social media.
In an interview with this writer in Luanda in September last year, 19-year-old psychology student Diana Perreira said young people all over the country were using phone text messages to link up and organise protests. She had been the victim of an attempted kidnapping by plainclothes officers after she attended the trial of 24 people arrested at a demonstration in Luanda on 3 September.
Perreira said: “He was a big guy with a blue T-shirt – it must have been an agent from the secret services. With a friend, I had left the court to buy some food during a break. What we understood was that it was a kidnap. It could have been just an attempt to scare us. That is how they work. They work with fear and make people scared.”
She did not wish to name the group she belongs to and said she and her friends function by forming loose associations that are regularly disbanded and re-formed to avoid surveillance. She said that with other young demonstrators she believes Angola’s wealth is being mismanaged. ”The definition I have of democracy is freedom and equality and we don’t have that in our country,” said the student.
Alex Duval Smith is a freelance foreign correspondent, currently based in South Africa
12 Apr 2012 | Asia and Pacific
The case of a political cartoonist who was arrested and detained in 2010, and took the government to court as a result, continued last week.
Malaysian cartoonist Zulkiflee Awar Ulhaque, known as Zunar, lodged his complaint of unlawful detention against the Malaysian police and government, following his September 2010 arrest.
On 24 September 2010, police raided Zunar’s Kuala Lumpur office several hours before the scheduled release of a compilation of his cartoons, entitled “Cartoon-o-phobia”.
The cartoonist, whose work criticises public figures and organisations within Malaysia, was arrested charges of sedition and publishing offences. If found guilty under the Sedition Act, Zunar faced a maximum three-year jail sentence. During the raid on his office, 66 copies of Cartoon-o-phobia on the premises were seized by police, despite protests from Zunar’s lawyers.
Zunar believes that the arrest and detention process was an attempt to “scuttle the launch” of his cartoon collection, and was conducted in “bad faith”. The cartoonist said: “I perform my duty as a political cartoonist to be a ‘watchdog’ to the authorities and to represent the voice of the people through art. Thus, based on their continuous actions, I knew the Malaysian government was not happy with my work, and they try to do everything to stop me from producing cartoons.”
He added: “I think the arrest was politically motivated in order to prevent me from drawing cartoons that promote alternative thinking and critical voices.”
Following his arrest, police were unable to determine which cartoons were offensive, or what offence the cartoonist was in breach of. The cartoonist was moved between several police stations, but was not questioned during the first 24 hours of detention. He was released without charge on the evening of the 25 September.
Zunar has brought a civil suit against the government and the police, challenging them for his unlawful arrest and detention, and the confiscation of the books. Zunar is seeking general, aggravated and exemplary damages, along with the return of the property which was confiscated during the raid.
He said: “I know it is a big decision to challenge the Malaysian government in the court. The stakes are high. If I lose I have to pay up to RM40,000.00 (around GBP 7,000). But I vow to keep fighting as my rights of expression is guaranteed under the Malaysian Constitution. I also hope I can create more awareness to the public about the [state of] press freedom in this country, [where] drawing political cartoons has become a crime.”
In January this year, the case began at the Kuala Lumpur High Court. Four witnesses, including the arresting officer, who decided that the whole book and not selected pages were seditious, testified before the court. Government lawyers attempted to justify that the arrest, detention and confiscation of the cartoons were done in good faith, in accordance with the law.
The case resumed on 5 April. According to his Twitter feed, government lawyers told the court that Zunar was arrested under the Printing Presses Act, and that the cartoons offered an element of incitement. The lawyers added that all pages of “Cartoon-o-phobia” were inflammatory.
Zunar explained that in the sessions of the 5 and 6 April, police officers Zaihairul Idrus, Arikrishnana and Marina Hashim gave testimony to the court. He said: “in the last session on 5 and 6 April, three police officers testified and tried to justify the arrest. They constantly said: “Every page of Zunar’s book contains cartoons that depict political leaders, the police and the judiciary, and can incite hatred and misunderstandings among the public.”
Seven other books of the cartoonists’ work have also been banned under the Printing Presses and Publication Act, as the Home Ministry secretary-general Mahmood Adam described them as “not suitable and detrimental to public order.” It was also reported that Adam said the books could influence the public to overthrow the government. In July 2010, Zunar filed a suit to challenge the banning of his books, but this was rejected by the court later that month.
The court will return their decision on 23 May.
