19 Aug 2013 | Digital Freedom, France, News and features, Politics and Society, Religion and Culture
(Photo illustration: Shutterstock)
Freedom of expression is generally protected in France, although is limited by strict defamation and privacy laws. Several laws have passed since 1972 that have further restricted this fundamental right.
In addition to strict privacy laws, France’s libel laws make it easy to sue for defamation. Losing a libel case against a public official carries a higher fine (€45,000) than libel against a private individual (€12,000), which chills public interest criticism of politicians and government officials.
France has some of the toughest hate speech laws in the EU. The number of legal actions for hate speech have multiplied after the 1881 Law on Press Freedom was amended to introduce the offence of inciting racial hatred, discrimination, violence, or contesting the existence of crimes against humanity, which has been very broadly interpreted as the right not to be offended or criticised. Some civil society groups have even managed to force the cancellation of public debates in order to prevent potentially libellous or racist remarks[1].
Since 2004, wearing signs or clothing that overtly manifest a religious affiliation is prohibited in schools[2]. In 2011, France implemented a ban on the niqab or face veil in public places. In September 2011, Paris passed a ban on Muslim street prayers, restricting the right to religious expression.
Media Freedom
France’s media is generally regarded as free and represents a wide range of political opinion. Still, it faces economic, social and political challenges in particular from the security services and from the country’s stringent privacy laws.
Since 2009, France’s president has appointed the executives in charge of its public broadcasting outlets. This controversial measure was heavily criticised since, as it was seen as politicising public broadcasting and put into question its executives’ independence President Francois Hollande has promised to relinquish this privilege. He has also promised to review policies related to public broadcasting funding and management.
Another challenge for media freedom in France has been state intervention to prevent the exposure of corruption. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, former President Nicolas Sarkozy used the security services to identify the sources of leaks around the 2010 Liliane Bettencourt affair. In addition to accessing the phone records of a Le Monde journalist, journalists from major newspapers were also investigated. Not only did the chief of intelligence violate the confidentiality of journalistic sources, but he questioned the journalist’s right to investigate public corruption.
France’s privacy law is often described as the toughest in the world. This is because the publication of private details of someone’s life without their consent is a punishable offence, with limited public interest defences available. Privacy is safeguarded not only by civil law provisions but also by the existence of specific criminal offences which indirectly promote the withholding of information and self-censorship and limit the exposure of political corruption.
Digital Freedom
About 79.6% of the French population is online. Yet, digital freedom is curtailed by anti-terror laws, increased online surveillance and libel laws.
Online surveillance has been extended as a result of a 2011 anti-terror law[3] and Hadopi 2 (the law “promoting the distribution and protection of creative works on the Internet”) which is supposed to reduce illegal file downloading. Hadopi 2 makes it possible for content creators to pay private-sector companies to conduct online surveillance and filtering, creating a precedent for the privatisation of censorship. Another 2011 law requires internet service providers to hand over passwords to authorities if requested. Concerns have been raised over new legislation enabling the authorities to impose filters on the web without a court order and on the impact of new anti-terror laws that allows for the blocking of websites.
The French Press Freedom Law of 1881 – which guarantees freedom of expression for the press – has been amended so that it applies to online publication. It aims to extend the protections for press freedom online but also allows people to take legal action for libellous or hate speech online, including on blogs posts, tweets and Facebook comments. In October 2012, a French court ruled that Twitter should provide the identities of users who tweeted jokes deemed to be offensive to Muslims and Jews. This was after the Union of French Jewish Students threatened to bring the social media giant to court. During the course of the case, French Minister of Justice Christiane Taubira said that it is a punishable offence to make racist or anti-Semitic comments online. There is pressure to reframe the 1881 Law on Press Freedom, which many consider “no longer adapted to new technologies”.
Artistic Freedom
France has a vibrant art scene but one restricted in various ways by hate speech laws and by interference from public authorities.
Racial hatred and other discriminatory and violent language in artistic work with a potentially large audience is criminalised as a “public expression offence”. Many artists have been brought to Court for this offence which lies mainly in Article 24 of the 1881 Law on Press Freedom.[4] This offence is particularly serious since it is punishable by five years’ imprisonment and a €45,000 fine. Government officials, civil society groups, and individuals have repeatedly sued artists for defamation and incitement to violence.
The Code of Intellectual Property protects artistic works whatever their content and merit, and protects their authors. However, artistic freedom of expression can be restricted by various authorities – Ministry of Culture, Superior Council of Audio-visual (Conseil supérieur de l’audiovisuel, CSA) – whose decisions may limit not only the dissemination of works, but also their production (TV, films).The CSA for example, whose members are political appointments, is regularly exposed to pressure from the public, elected officials, or political authorities to censor artistic works.
[1] Loi n° 2004-228 du 15 mars 2004 encadrant, en application du principe de laïcité, le port de signes ou de tenues manifestant une appartenance religieuse dans les écoles, collèges et lycées publics [Law of 15 March 2004, forbidding signs and clothing showing religious affiliation such as headscarves, Jewish skullcaps and oversized Christian crosses in public primary, secondary and higher education]
[2] Loi n° 2011-267 du 14 mars 2011 d’orientation et de programmation pour la performance de la sécurité intérieure [Law of 14 March 2011 on guidance and planning for the performance of domestic security]
[3] Décret n° 2011-219 du 25 février 2011 relatif à la conservation et à la communication des données permettant d’identifier toute personne ayant contribué à la création d’un contenu en ligne [Decree of 25 February 2011 on the conservation and communication of data to identify any person who contributed to the creation of online content]
[4] Loi du 29 juillet 1881 sur la liberté de la presse, Version consolidée au 23 décembre 2012 [Law of 29 July 1881 on Press Freedom]
This article was originally published on 19 Aug, 2013 at indexoncensorship.org. Index on Censorship: The voice of free expression
16 Aug 2013 | Events
As part of Social Media Week 2013, debate the benefits and pitfalls of social media for you and your future career.
Social media skills are now required in almost any job, but what do employers really think of their employees’ online activity? Should you censor your output for the sake of your future? Paris Brown, former Kent Youth Crime Commissioner, stood down after tweets she’d written years earlier…
Join a specialist panel of media, law and freedom of expression experts to examine how what we say online can affect our futures?
#smwspeaknow
WHEN: 23 Sept, 2013, 6pm
WHERE: Centre for Creative Collaboration (16 Acton Street, London, WC1X 9NG)
TICKETS: Free, registration required. Please note this event is for 18-25 year olds.
NB Participants must be aged between 18-25 and be willing to debate and get involved with the issues discussed by our panel.
Student Journals is a website hosted and run for and by students, reporting on politics, lifestyle and culture across the UK.
Youth Media Agency is the strategic home of Youth Media in the UK; connecting and supporting over 300 Youth Media platforms including Radio, TV and Magazines, online and print.
The Centre for Creative Collaboration (C4CC) is an initiative of the University of London, supporting new types of collaboration using the principles of open innovation.
16 Aug 2013 | Russia
For the time being the identity of the man who allegedly ordered Nikolai Potapov’s killing is being kept secret by the investigators. The editor’s killers were caught early on by policemen who were hot on their heels.
When Nikolai Potapov, 66, was fatally wounded in the Stavropol Region on 18 May 2013, most of the Russian media referred to him as ex-chairman of the Prigorodny village council, and described him as a human rights defender and volunteer environmentalist. They failed to mention his role as founder, editor and author of the “Selsovet” (village council) newspaper, which he produced on his computer and personally delivered in his old Oka car around the village, tossing it into residents’ mailboxes.
Potapov published his newspaper (it had a print-run of nearly one thousand) for almost three years, using “Selsovet”, as well as the region’s independent media, as a way of exposing the abuses and corrupt practices of local leaders. It was there that he wrote about his landslide victory in local elections over a candidate from Vladimir Putin’s United Russia; how his fellow district deputies ignored him; why he went on hunger strike; why he and later his wife were beaten by unknown assailants, who then threw a Molotov cocktail through the windows of their home, and fired shots at the windows.
The reasons for this persecution were clear. It was revenge for his reports about the division of the district’s assets and crooked land deals, when land is a commodity worth its weight in gold in the health-resort area where he lived.
“When I was elected head of the village council, I still believed in the triumph of democracy and justice in this country,” Potapov wrote in one of his articles. “But an outsider moving into the echelons of power caused turbulent protests from my rivals, from higher-ranking officials, and from colleagues.” Repeatedly he complained to law enforcement about the threats he received; he even installed security cameras in his office. He reported the crimes committed against himself, his family and his property. The police never made any attempt to track down the perpetrators or those behind them.
Potapov was murdered near his home in Bykogorka village when a man in a black face mask jumped out of a car and fired eight shots at the editor point blank. Heavily bleeding, Potapov lived long enough to call his wife on the phone and tell her the license plate number of his killer’s car. The criminals were detained by pure chance: they failed to stop at a police checkpoint, and then, pursued by police, abandoned their car and tried to escape into a nearby forest.
This article was originally published at http://gdf.ru/digest/item/1/1097 on 12 Aug, 2013
15 Aug 2013 | Comment, Egypt, News and features
Egypt faced a new phase of uncertainty after the bloodiest day since its Arab Spring began, with nearly 300 people reported killed and thousands injured as police smashed two protest camps of supporters of the deposed Islamist president. (Photo: Nameer Galal / Demotix)
As the numbers steadily mount of those killed by the Egyptian military and police in yesterday’s attacks on Muslim Brotherhood camps, the prospects for Egypt’s ‘Arab spring’ are looking bleak.
The violent destruction of the two camps, and the indiscriminate shootings, beatings and arrests of supporters of ousted President Mohamed Morsi, and of journalists, was clearly planned. The country’s military rulers have taken little time to demonstrate their contempt for the many Egyptians who wrongly thought the army could usher in a more pluralist rights-respecting democracy. The hopes of those who saw July’s coup as somehow too positive to warrant such a label now lie in tatters, with Mohamed ElBaradei’s inevitable resignation just one small illustration of that.
Is this simply a return to square one – back to a Mubarak-style, military-run Egypt? At one level surely it is, with army head General al-Sisi showing neither shame nor compunction in such a murderous installation of the new state of emergency.
But while the similarities to the Mubarak era are clear, this is a new and different Egypt. The millions who demonstrated in Tahrir Square in 2011, and again this June in protest at President Morsi’s authoritarian approach to government, are not simply going to accede to corrupt and vicious military rule once more. And the brutal violence against the Muslim Brotherhood protesters is most likely to beget more violence rather than the destruction of the Brotherhood that the army appears intent on.
With the violent face of the new Egyptian regime now clearly on display to the whole world, with no respect for rights of protesters, or media, or ordinary citizens, the international response has been shamefully muted. The EU’s foreign policy supremo, Cathy Ashton, called for the military to exercise the “utmost restraint” and for an end to the state of emergency “as soon as possible, to allow the resumption of normal life”. Meanwhile Samantha Power, Obama’s UN ambassador, tweeted weakly that the “forcible removal” of protesters was “a major step backward”.
Earlier in the week, the US and EU failed in their mediation attempts to stop the attacks on the camps, that all could see were coming. The key question now should be whether they are prepared to go for tougher diplomacy in an attempt to exert some leverage on the disastrous social and political dynamics that have now been unleashed so far. This would have to revolve around suspension of the $1.3 billion of military aid the US gives Egypt each year.
Obama’s first statement of condemnation finally came today but with no hint of the sort of leadership or signal that suspension of aid would send. Obama’s cancellation of military exercises next month will not worry Egypt’s generals much. And his uplifting speech on a new beginning at Cairo University in 2009 – and his Nobel Prize that year – are surely now lost in the dust and ashes of the aftermath of Wednesday’s violence and the US’s refusal to use the tools of influence it has. For now, more urgent and serious statements are coming rather from the UN.
Whether Egypt’s citizens who demonstrated for an end to military rule, and for a genuine pluralist democracy can regroup enough to have the influence to stop the downward spiral looks doubtful. But the spirit of Tahrir Square did not die yesterday. And if Egypt is now in winter, then spring at some point must come again. But for now the winter looks to be just beginning.
This article was originally published on 15 Aug 2013 at indexoncensorship.org. Index on Censorship: The voice of free expression.
