[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”100763″ img_size=”full”][vc_column_text]To fight copyright infringement, policymakers want to force internet companies to scan literally everything users attempt to post on their platforms. If Article 13 in the EU’s Copyright Directive passes into law, an algorithm will decide whether the content you upload is seen or blocked.
Automated filters will struggle to identify the vital legal exceptions to copyright that enable research, commentary, creative works, parody and so much more. From academics and journalists to parents uploading videos of their children, Article 13’s upload filter would impact professional and ordinary content creators alike.
Our MEPs will vote on the proposed Copyright Directive soon. Please take a minute to tell your MEPs that Article 13 is a terrible idea. You can use our points below to help construct an original message in your own words.
• Creativity and free speech will be harmed by Article 13 because algorithms struggle to tell the difference between infringement and the legal use of copyrighted material vital to research, commentary, parodies and more. This is far too high a cost for enforcing copyright infringement.
• No filter can possibly review every form of content covered in the mandate including text, audio, video, images and software. Article 13’s mandate is technically infeasible.
• It is a bad idea to make Internet companies responsible for enforcing copyright law. To ensure compliance and avoid penalty, platforms are sure to err on the side of caution and overblock.
• To ease compliance platforms will adjust their terms of service to be able to delete any content or account for any reason. That will leave victims of wrongful deletion with no right to complain – even if their content was perfectly legal.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”Email your MEP” use_theme_fonts=”yes”][vc_raw_html]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[/vc_raw_html][/vc_column][/vc_row]
Each youth advisory board sits for six months, has the chance to participate in monthly video conferencing discussions about current freedom of expression issues from around the world and the opportunity to write blog posts on Index’s website.
The next youth board is currently being recruited. The next youth advisory board will sit from July to December 2018.
We are looking for enthusiastic young people, aged between 16-25, who must be committed to taking part in monthly meetings, which are held online with fellow participants. Applicants can be based anywhere in the world. We are looking for people who are communicative and who will be in regular touch with Index.
Applications include:
Cover letter
CV
250-word blog post about any free speech issue
Applications can be submitted to Danyaal Yasin at [email protected]. The deadline for applications is 9 July at 11:59pm GMT.
What is the youth advisory board?
The youth board is a specially selected group of young people aged 16-25 who will advise and inform Index on Censorship’s work, support our ambition to fight for free expression around the world and ensure our engagement with issues with tomorrow’s leaders.
Why does Index have a youth board?
Index on Censorship is committed to fighting censorship not only now, but also in future generations, and we want to ensure that the realities and challenges experienced by young people in today’s world are properly reflected in our work.
Index is also aware that there are many who would like to commit some or all of their professional lives to fighting for human rights and the youth board is our way of supporting the broadest range of young people to develop their voice, find paths to freely expressing it and potential future employment in the human rights, media and arts sectors.
What does the youth board do?
Board members meet once a month via Zoom to discuss the most pressing freedom of expression issues. During the meeting members will be given a monthly task to complete. There are also opportunities to get involved with events such as debates and workshops for our work with young people as well as our annual Freedom of Expression Awards and Index magazine launches.
How do people get on the youth board?
Each youth board will sit for a six-month term. Current board members are invited to reapply up to one time. The board will be selected by Index on Censorship in an open and transparent manner and in accordance with our commitment to promoting diversity. We usually recruit for board members during May and December each year. Follow @IndexCensorship on Twitter or subscribe to our Facebook feed to watch for the announcements.
Why join the Index on Censorship youth advisory board?
You will be associated with a media and human rights organisation and have the opportunity to discuss issues you feel strongly about with Index and peers from around the world. At each board meeting, we will also give you the chance to speak to someone senior within Index or the media/human rights/arts sectors, helping you to develop your knowledge and extend your personal networks. You’ll also be featured on our website.
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”100749″ img_size=”full”][vc_column_text]Two days after the publication of an investigation into alleged inappropriate behaviour by a member of a Honduran military unit involving young female students, digital newspaper Reportero de Investigacion was targeted with a misleading story that purported to be from the outlet.
The news outlet, which was founded by 2018 Freedom of Expression Awards Fellowship winner Wendy Funes, had posted an 8 June 2018 article which exposed how members of a military unit were going into schools, teaching children without parental consent or notification, collecting personal information and, in at least one case, texting sexually harassing messages under the guise of the “No Drugs, Live Better” programme. The Reportero de Investigacion article included screenshots of a text conversation between a mother and a military officer. The officer thought they were texting the woman’s daughter.
The publication drew a large amount of the attention in Honduras, which is one of the world’s most dangerous places to be a journalist.
Two days later, a faked article began appearing that used the Reportero de Investigacion logo and included screenshots from gang members who discussed the difficulties of distributing drugs, claiming they had less access after the military had begun its in-school training programme. The false article is being shared on WhatsApp groups among members of the law enforcement community in Honduras, Funes told Index on Censorship.
This is not the first time that fake news stories have been circulated in Honduras to discredit the work of investigative journalists and human rights activists and undermine their personal security.
For Funes, it is vital that the appropriate government agencies investigate these false publications. She said she will be addressing a complaint to the new Honduran Special Prosecutor for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders, Journalists, Social Communicators and Justice Operators, (FEPRODDHH), which has the responsibility for determining where the faked article purporting to be from reporterosdeinvestigación.com came from.
“For us it is necessary to carry out an investigation, although we do not have the certainty that it is a smear campaign against our newspaper, we believe that an investigation is urgent to determine the origin of the messages and the State has the tools necessary to do it.” Funes said.
Perla Hinojosa, fellowships and advocacy officer at Index on Censorship said: “It’s important to call out efforts to discredit the investigative work of journalists like Wendy. Even though this was not a direct physical threat, the spread of false information undermines Wendy’s news organisation, which seeks justice and identifies human rights abuses.”[/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:1528734389898-5507b00f-068d-2″ taxonomies=”23255″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]This article is part of Index on Censorship partner Global Journalist’s Project Exile series, which has published interviews with exiled journalists from around the world.[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]
Egyptian journalist Abdullah Elshamy
“I face probably a life sentence or maybe even worse. The idea of not being able to go back to your own country…is just heartbreaking.”
For a time, journalist Abdullah Elshamy was the face of resistance in Egypt.
After then-army chief Gen. Abdel Fatah el-Sissi led a coup, in July 2013, toppling the democratically-elected president Mohammed Morsi, major street protests against the military took place in Cairo.
Elshamy, who is originally from Beheira in the Nile Delta, was a correspondent working for Al Jazeera at the time. He had only recently returned to Egypt from an assignment in Nigeria to cover the unrest.
On Aug. 14 of that year, Elshamy was covering a sit-in near the Rabaa al-Adawiya mosque when security forces began to open fire. More than 800 people were left dead at Rabaa and one other protest site in Cairo in what Human Rights Watch has called the “world’s largest killings of demonstrators in a single day in recent history.”
Elshamy managed to avoid the bullets, but he and hundreds of others were arrested as crowds fled the area around the mosque. Elshamy was taken to prison and held without trial for months.
Losing hope, in January 2014 Elshamy decided to begin a hunger strike. Over the next several months, he would lose about 88 pounds (40 kg). His case garnered international headlines, especially after he managed to record a dire video from inside jail on the 106th day of his hunger strike and have it smuggled out. “If anything happens to my safety, I hold the Egyptian regime with the responsibility of that,” he said on the video.
Update: In September 2018 am Egyptian court sentenced Abdullah Elshamy in absentia to 15 years in prison.
Efforts by prison authorities to force-feed him and punish him by placing him in solitary confinement failed. In June 2014 Egyptian prosecutors decided to release him because of his declining health. Elshamy was met outside the prison by a throng of family members, supporters and the press.
“I have won,” he told the cameras. “And everybody who is a freedom fighter, either a journalist or anyone doing his work credibly and with honesty has won. This experience has changed my life.”
Elshamy soon moved to Qatar and resumed work for the Qatari-owned al-Jazeera, which Egyptian prosecutors brought charges against him in absentia, as well as against hundreds of others imprisoned after the 2013 demonstrations. A verdict in the trial is expected in the coming months.
Meanwhile, press freedom in Egypt has not improved under el-Sissi, who has been president since 2014. More than 35 journalists and bloggers are in prison in the country, according to Reporters Without Borders.
Now 29, Elshamy lives in Doha and hosts the monthly investigative show “Eyewitness” for Al Jazeera’s Arabic channel. Nearly four years after his release, Elshamy spoke with Global Journalist’s Taylor Campbell about his ordeal and the consequences of exile. Below, an edited version of their interview:
Global Journalist: What happened in the lead-up to your arrest?
Elshamy: Back in 2013 I was working as a reporter for al-Jazeera when the events started taking place in Egypt, the tensions between the president [Morsi] and the army. Just a few days before the military coup took place in Egypt on the 3rd of July 2013, I was asked by management to go from Nigeria where I was stationed, to Cairo, to be able to cover events.
I never had in my wildest dreams [thought] things would end up like that. I mean, I covered more serious and dangerous things. Before this I was in Libya during the [civil] war back in 2011 and I was also in Mali when the [2013] French intervention happened in the north of the country. So it was for me, probably just another round of demonstrations and things would cool down eventually and the politics would work out.
So I went there and I covered the events from both sides. Things went on for several weeks [after the coup] until the army and the police moved in on the demonstrations on the eastern side of Cairo.
On the 14th of August 2013, the army and the police were detaining everyone coming out of [the Rabaa al-Adawiya] area. I was among those arrested.
And from that point, from the 14th of August 2013 until the 18th of June 2014, I was put in detention without trial.
GJ: How did being a journalist affect your time in prison?
Elshamy: At the beginning, they didn’t know I was a journalist because I tried not to mention that. I feared there might be a severe response if they found out.
When the authorities [learned] I was a journalist it didn’t actually change much. It made them put more restrictions on my time in prison. They monitored the letters I got and the visits from my family. But at they put me among the demonstrators that were arrested on that day. They insisted I was a criminal, not a journalist.
There were I would say, focused attacks on me because when they found out I was a journalist at al-Jazeera, relations between Egypt and Qatar were not the best. I was harassed by the guards because they thought of me as a spy.
Nothing made sense at that point…I was not the only journalist in prison. One of my colleagues [Mahmoud Abu Zeid, better known as Shawkan], is a freelance photojournalist who was detained on the same day with me, and up until this day he is in prison.
Shawkan is a freelance photojournalist detained in Egypt since 14 August 2013, he was my cell mate and he doesn’t deserve death as the prosecution demanded. #MyPicForShawkanpic.twitter.com/PK9SvSpeRJ
GJ: Tell us about the hunger strike and how it led to your release.
Elshamy: The last week of January 2014 I decided I was going on a hunger strike, because I was in prison at that point for five months and nothing was happening in terms of my release. My lawyers gave several documents to prove I was [at the protest] doing my work. They’d requested I be released on bail.
When I decided that I was going on hunger strike, the prison authorities at the beginning…they made fun of the whole thing. But then when it was March and I was losing weight and my health was not the best, the Ministry of Interior thought that they would start to intimidate me into giving up on the whole thing.
It eventually came to the point where the prison’s manager, an assistant of the minister himself, came to see me and said: “This is not good. What are you doing? You are young, your health isn’t going to take it.”
Eventually, when they found out that I wasn’t giving up on the hunger strike, I was sent to a maximum security prison for the next five weeks before my release.
That was the hardest part of the whole prison experience because I only saw my family once in those five weeks. I was kept in a solitary confinement cell. I wasn’t allowed to see anyone. Even when I was given time to walk out of my cell, it was at the end of the day while all the other inmates in the ward were not present. It was psychological pressure. They thought maybe this would break me down.
GJ: How is life for you now?
Elshamy: Although I was released four years ago, I’m still being tried in absentia. I cannot go back to Egypt. I risk being arrested and it’s kind of a dead end for me at this point. As the trial approaches its end, I face probably a life sentence or maybe even worse. The idea of not being able to go back to your own country is just heartbreaking.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_video link=”https://youtu.be/tOxGaGKy6fo”][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]Index on Censorship partner Global Journalist is a website that features global press freedom and international news stories as well as a weekly radio program that airs on KBIA, mid-Missouri’s NPR affiliate, and partner stations in six other states. The website and radio show are produced jointly by professional staff and student journalists at the University of Missouri’s School of Journalism, the oldest school of journalism in the United States. [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”Don’t lose your voice. Stay informed.” use_theme_fonts=”yes”][vc_separator color=”black”][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]Index on Censorship is a nonprofit that campaigns for and defends free expression worldwide. We publish work by censored writers and artists, promote debate, and monitor threats to free speech. We believe that everyone should be free to express themselves without fear of harm or persecution – no matter what their views.
Join our mailing list (or follow us on Twitter or Facebook). We’ll send you our weekly newsletter, our monthly events update and periodic updates about our activities defending free speech. We won’t share, sell or transfer your personal information to anyone outside Index.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/2″][gravityform id=”20″ title=”false” description=”false” ajax=”false”][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][vc_separator color=”black”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_basic_grid post_type=”post” max_items=”6″ style=”load-more” items_per_page=”2″ element_width=”12″ grid_id=”vc_gid:1542640554551-b7c870c1-3f87-6″ taxonomies=”22142″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
