3 Apr 2018 | Awards, Fellowship 2018, News and features
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_video link=”https://youtu.be/1Tgkm4m3W7c”][vc_column_text]The Digital Rights Foundation based in Pakistan have been nominated for its work on a cyber-harassment helpline which was set up a year ago and has supported more than a thousand women.
It is the first service of its kind in Pakistan and helps women report cyber-harassment regardless of where they live in the country. The helpline is important because it is an innovative and practical way of challenging women’s exclusion from online spaces and bolstering women’s rights to freedom of expression.
DRF was founded by digital rights activist Nighat Dad. As well as the helpline, the organisation provides training for women in online harassment, carries out advocacy work for a safe internet and raises awareness of digital security and censorship issues.
“Digital Rights Foundation envisions a place where all people, and especially women, are able to exercise their right of expression without being threatened,” said DRF. “We believe that free internet with access to information and impeccable privacy policies can encourage such a healthy and productive environment that would eventually help not only women, but the world at large”.
The impetus behind the helpline was the murder last summer of the Pakistani social media celebrity Qandeel Baloch who had a million followers and lived in a small provincial town in Punjab.
She was killed by her brother for her sexually confident posts on Facebook, posts which would be normal in Western countries. In small town conservative Pakistani society, dominated by religious leaders they caused outrage.
While Baloch’s was an extreme case, women online – who make up only 20 to 25% of the online population – routinely face bullying including revenge porn, blackmail, impersonation, non-consensual usage of personal information, privacy violations and other kinds of harassment. Women are afraid to report how badly they are treated and so react by withdrawing from online spaces.
This silencing of female voices and the exclusion of women from social media and other sites, which mirrors the exclusion of women from public spaces and public life generally in Pakistan, is a significant threat to freedom of expression.
The support team includes a qualified psychologist, digital security expert, and trained lawyer, all of whom provide specialised assistance. The helpline helps women, children, human rights defenders, minority communities and anyone who might feel unsafe in digital spaces. It receives around 80 calls a month, and 60% of the requests for help are from women. Quite a few are also from men seeking advice on behalf of women.
Staff ensure victims can make official reports of harassment to the authorities. As law enforcement offices where victims can file a complaint are only located in provincial capitals, it can be extremely difficult for victims in more remote parts of the country to initiate an investigation. To address this, the helpline has its own legal officer who can pursue cases on behalf of victims.
The helpline team produce reports every six months, which include an analysis of the kind of issues callers ring in about, and recommendations for action by Pakistani institutions responsible for online safety to make sure that women’s voices are heard.
“We at Digital Rights Foundation are honoured to be nominated for the Index on Censorship Freedom of Expression Awards.” said DRF. “The recognition means a great deal to us especially given the shrinking spaces for activists both online and offline. The Award will go a long way in lending legitimacy to our work and will amplify our dissent in favour of a free and safe internet”.
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3 Apr 2018 | Awards, China, Digital Freedom, Fellowship, Fellowship 2016, News and features
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GreatFire are the 2016 Digital Activism Fellow
In a speech given this past February at an invitation-only Index event, Index 2016 Digital Awards Fellow GreatFire asked the audience whether “the global internet is bringing free speech, or is China bringing censorship to the global internet?”
Trying to do its part in bringing free speech to Chinese internet users, the anonymous nonprofit recently launched its Patreon crowdfunding campaign on March 30.
In the wake of the March National People’s Congress, which swept away presidential term limits, and Apple’s deal to have state-owned enterprise Guizhou-Cloud Big Data (GCBD) host its data, the fight against Chinese censorship is facing an uncertain future.
“Xi Jinping wants to make sure that all criticism, at home and abroad, can be silenced,” said Charlie Smith, GreatFire co-founder.
Apple is helping Xi Jinping and the Communist Party do just that, according to Smith. In the February speech, GreatFire said, “China’s Communist Party has surprised everyone by becoming experts at censorship technology.”
Smith wouldn’t be surprised if “Apple shared private user information about Apple customers outside of China with the Chinese authorities, in cases where those users may be ‘stirring up trouble’ against China.”
GreatFire’s February speech also cited that “when pressured by a letter from two US senators last year, Apple admitted to having censored more than 700 apps just in the VPN category.”
“Apple is working hand-in-hand with the Chinese authorities to implement censorship, not just in China, but around the world,” said Smith. “At the moment, this mainly affects Chinese [customers] but the writing is on the wall – all Apple customers will soon find that it will become increasingly more difficult and perhaps impossible to access negative information about the ruling Communist Party and party officials.”
However, Smith hopes other big-name companies like Google will re-enter China’s market without having to censor and not follow Apple’s footsteps. In 2010, Google shut down its operations after Chinese human-rights activists had their Gmails hacked, and the company has yet to come back.
“Google has the technical know-how, the expertise and the money to be able to offer an uncensored version of its search engine to an audience in China,” said Smith. “Google has the power to offer a 100% uncensored service to China’s 700 million plus internet users. If we can do it, they can do it.”
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[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][vc_column_text]The February speech also noted that following Google’s departure, “the vast majority of Chinese internet users exclusively use domestic services that are completely controlled by the Communist Party.”
If Google were to re-enter the market without censoring itself, it would destroy “a firewall that is preventing more than 700 million people from freely accessing information [and] would be the most important development in the history since the development of the internet itself,” said Smith.
Unlike his optimism for Google, Smith wishes China had lost Apple to Chinese censorship instead of it mixing its business with GCBD.
“Apple will likely not share transparency reports about requests that the Chinese authorities are making for private information,” said Smith. “People who get detained by the authorities for ‘stirring up trouble,’ which is a common, catch-all description for those who express their displeasure about anything related to the Communist Party, may not even know that they ended up in detention because Apple shared their private information with the authorities.”
With the stage set for the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, journalists, tourists and athletes will be hitting China’s Great Firewall “if companies and individuals do not stand up to [China’s] censorship,” said Smith, adding that “the situation will only get worse.”
Unable to fund its operations directly from Chinese users because of official intimidation, GreatFire’s Patreon launch looks to individuals for financial help, hopefully shifting itself away from reliance on funding organisations.
Because “most internet freedom funding is for shiny new things,” GreatFire is utilizing Patreon to fund its ongoing projects and not new ones, said Smith. Patreon, a member-subscription platform to generate funds for content creators, will allow GreatFire to maintain its existing sites and continue to combat China’s Great Firewall.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_basic_grid post_type=”post” max_items=”4″ element_width=”6″ grid_id=”vc_gid:1522746056610-05bb1437-96d7-5″ taxonomies=”8199″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
