Welcome to our special coverage of the Index Freedom of Expression Awards 2014. The awards ceremony kicks off with a reception at 18:00 GMT. Awards will be presented from 19:00 GMT. Follow live on Twitter @IndexCensorship or #IndexAwards2014
Shubhranshu Choudhary accepting his award (Photo: Alex Brenner for Index on Censorship)
Journalist Shubhranshu Choudhary is the brain behind CGNet Swara (Voice of Chhattisgarh) a mobile-phone (no smartphone required) service that allows citizens to upload and listen to local reports in their local language.
CGNet Swara is a vital tool giving people who are deprived of a voice and platform in mainstream media, on the wrong side of the digital divide, a chance to have a say on and learn about the issues that affect them the most. Furthermore, CGNet Swara also manages to circumvent India’s strict broadcast licensing laws.
Choudhary estimates that there are some 100 million people in India for whom mainstream methods of communicating news don’t work, whether due to language barriers, low levels of literacy or lack of access to internet and newspapers among other things. This represents a serious barrier to their socio-economic development, as they are not updated on stories of importance to them, and their views and grievances and demands are not voiced and addressed.
CGNet Swara aims to solve this problem. It is a voice-based portal, freely accessible via mobile phone, that allows anyone to report and listen to stories of local interest. “Reporters” call a Bangalore number to upload a news item, and reported stories are moderated by journalists and become available for playback online as well as over the phone. They get around 500 messages per day. Fifty are recorded and about five are broadcast. The moderators are elected by the community, and therefore represent them.
“We are providing a new platform which the villagers can use to talk to each other and the outside world about issues that are important to them,” Choudhary said.
Human rights organisations suspect a live YouTube broadcast detailing abuses by the Indonesian government may have been the real reason behind “technical difficulties” at an environmental conference in Oregon.
Two Papua tribesmen had travelled to Oregon specially for the Public Interest Environmental Law Conference in Oregon, “the world’s most important environmental law conference.”
A live broadcast of the conference mysteriously went silent when the tribesmen started telling the audience about human rights violations by the Indonesia government, perpetrated in their homeland
The pictures on the slideshow, illustrating their points, were behind them and still visible, although their commentary was not audible to anyone listening from home.
Survivor International, who also sent a delegate to the conference, told Index on Censorship that they suspect the attack was a hack, and that their organisation has been targeted by Indonesian agents in the past.
“In 2010, our website was taken offline,” said Sophie Grig, South East Asia Researcher. “We had posted a video of Indonesian soldiers torturing Papuan trible people. Other groups who also posted the video were hacked.”
The attack lasted for two days, during which all websites who had posted the video were bombarded by thousands of requests from thousands of computers worldwide, and the German police began an investigation after one of the hacked groups, based in Germany, made a complaint.
At the time, Survival’s Director Stephen Corry commented ‘This isn’t a couple of geeks in a shed, it’s an expensive and sophisticated attack amounting to cyberterrorism. The damage to Survival International may be substantial but is of course nothing compared to that inflicted on West Papuan tribes.
He added “This is a struggle for the survival of the one million oppressed tribespeople in Indonesian West Papua.”
The two Papuans who attended the conference in Oregon, are members of the Amungme tribe, whose land is home to Grasberg, a mining facility operated by 19,500 employees.
“In the area around the mine, we’ve seen forced displacements, reports of torture and illegal detention by the Indonesian military” said Grig. “We also have strong concerns about the environmental impact.”
Positioned on Papua’s highest mountain, Grasberg is home to the largest gold mine in the world, as well as the third largest copper mine in the world. It produces around
Local charities, as well as international environmental charities, are concerned about the increasing number of land slides and acidifying waste products in local water sources, although the mines operators, Freeport and Rio Tinto, insist their operations fit within international regulations.
Indonesia has occupied Papua (the western half of the island of New Guinea) since 1963, and more than 100,000 Papuans are believed to have been killed since then, many at the hands of the Indonesian military. The government hold a 10% stake in one of the companies operating the mine.
Although it is unclear which software was used to execute this hack, according to Amnesty International in Indonesia, the Papuan military have already purchased invasive internet monitoring technology from Gamma International, a UK-based company. Gamma International manufacture FinnFisher, software which is capable of monitoring all internet communications in a country. The software has been used by repressive regimes including Bahrain, UAE, Turkmenistan, Egypt (under Mubarak, although it is unclear whether the software is still in use).
Andreas Harsono, Indonesia Researcher for Amnesty International, also told Index about some of the human rights abuses he regularly observes in Papua
“I mainly deal with cases where freedom of expression is being denied, as well as impunity amongst the military, police and prison wardens,” he said, “There are also extra judicial killings,” he adds.
There are believed to be over seventy political prisoners held in brutal Indonesian prisons – some serving up to twenty years.
Sophie Grig from Survivor International warned Index
“West Papuans are no strangers to having their voices silenced. Journalists are effectively banned from the region, other than in exceptional circumstances and where they are accompanied by Indonesian government minders. People are imprisoned when their only crime is to raise the banned West Papuan flag, or to speak out against military atrocities and the Indonesian rule of West Papua.”
In 2013, National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden leaked thousands of documents detailing US government surveillance to the press, igniting a global debate on the ways authorities can watch citizens’ communications.
Snowden was one of tens of thousands of people who had access to data collected by the NSA.
The revelations detailed the extent of the PRISM programme, which allows NSA agents and contractors to view any user’s metadata based on a number of search terms. This warrantless surveillance is seen as a breach of the US’s fourth amendment, which guarantees the right to privacy.
Snowden also revealed details of the UK’s TEMPORA programme, which intercepts data carried on fibre optic cables to allow agents to monitor communication, again without a warrant.
After leaking 58,000 files, he fled from his home in Hawaii to Hong Kong, and from there to Moscow, where he found himself stranded after the US government revoked his passport.
Snowden’s revelations have shown the lack of scrutiny and oversight intelligence agencies face. Equally worrying has been the willingness of the UK government to try to intimidate the Guardian, with veiled threats of prosecution after it published a mere fraction of the information contained in the leaked files.
As a whistleblower, Snowden has in fact helped make the world more secure by highlighting the potential abuse of monitoring capabilities and there have been calls to grant him asylum in the European Union. Above all else, he has got the world talking about what privacy and free expression mean in an age when surveillance has never been easier.
