2020 awards shortlist: Digital activism nominees announced

16 Mar 20 | Awards, Fellowship 2020, News and features

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”112645″ img_size=”full”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]This year’s three nominees in the digital activism category of Index on Censorship’s Freedom of Expression awards work in different areas of the online landscape but all are doing important work.

First up we have the Arab Center for the Advancement of Social Media, or 7amleh, a non-profit organisation focused on protecting the human rights of Palestinians in the online space.

The organisation’s research has shown that two thirds of Palestinian youth are afraid to voice their political opinions online.

Israel routinely uses Palestinians’ private information from social media in its surveillance, leading many young Palestinians to self-censor after seeing family, friends and journalists arrested.

7amleh’s work protecting online safety and digital rights, advocacy and research has been crucial. It has campaigned with NGOs for amendments to the Palestinian Authority’s Cybercrimes Law, the development of the first Arabic Digital Security Manual and digital training being implemented into the Palestinian education system.

Our second nominee is eQualitie, an international group of digital activists whose mission is to promote and defend fundamental freedoms and human rights, including the free flow of information online.

Based in Montreal, eQualitie develop technologies to prevent cyber attacks, work to circumvent internet censorship and secure online communication. Additionally, they launch critical investigations to find the source of attacks and expose them.

As well as advocating free expression online, eQualitie have also delivered security training to over 3,000 journalists, activists and members of the public in over 40 countries. They have defended over 400 organisations from cyber attacks, including Black Lives Matter, and more than a million people use their protected websites every day.

Founded in 2010, our third nominee – HarassMap – allows victims and witnesses of sexual harassment in Egypt to pinpoint on a map exactly where their harassment occurred and also gives them access to a community of people who can help them.

The organisation has collected reports of more than 1,500 incidents of harassment and these are used to put an end to stereotypes that blame the harassed, make people understand that sexual harassment is a crime that has serious consequences, build campaigns to change perceptions and equip volunteers and partners with information that they use to create zero-tolerance attitudes and behaviour in schools, universities, workplaces, and on the streets.

It is based on the idea that if more people start taking action when sexual harassment happens in their presence, they can end what they call “an epidemic”.

HarassMap’s work saw Cairo University become the first in the Middle East to implement an anti-sexual harassment strategy. HarassMap has also partnered with Uber on sexual harassment policy and training.

The winner of the digital activism category will be announced at our awards event at the May Fair Hotel in London on 30 April. Digital activism is one of the four categories that will be recognised at the awards, alongside campaigning, journalism and the arts.

Our 2019 winner in this category was Fundación Karisma.

The winner of the 2020 journalism award will be chosen by a panel of judges which includes Ruth Ibegbuna, founder of multi award-winning youth leadership charity Reclaim and now director of Roots — an initiative aimed at bringing together people from different walks of life.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

2020 awards shortlist: Meet our campaigning nominees

04 Mar 20 | Awards, Fellowship 2020, News and features

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”112495″ img_size=”full”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Campaigners for LGBT recognition in the heart of Africa, a group supporting long-term detainees in Turkmenistan, an exiled critic of the Bahraini government whose family have been imprisoned back at home and a lawyer who provides pro-bono legal support to Turkish journalists, activists and academics have made the shortlist for Index on Censorship’s 2020 Freedom of Expression Awards.

Botswana’s LEGABIBO, the Prove They Are Alive! campaign, Sayed Ahmed Alwadaei and Veysel Ok have campaigned fiercely for freedom of expression in the past 12 months and are shortlisted in the campaigning category in the awards, which are celebrating their 20^th year.

The winner will be announced at an event at The May Fair Hotel in London on 30 April. Campaigning is one of the four categories that will be recognised at the awards, alongside digital activism, journalism and the arts.

Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals of Botswana was officially recognised in 2016, allowing LGBT people the right to freely assemble in Botswana for the first time. The group played a crucial role in the fight to decriminalise homosexuality in the country in 2019 – a striking victory on a continent where homosexuality is illegal in the majority of countries.

LEGABIBO’s five-year plan includes healthcare for transgender people; improving mental health and unemployment rates for LGBT people as well as decriminalising discrimination.

Prove They Are Alive! is a campaign to protect the rights of a large number of detainees serving long-term sentences in Turkmen prisons.

Enforced disappearances of people sentenced to long prison terms is one of the most acute human rights violations in Turkmenistan. Prove They Are Alive! has documented hundreds of cases of this practice going back to the 1990s. At least 27 individuals have died in custody.

Thanks to significant pressure from Prove They Are Alive, ex-prisoners are now more likely to be allowed to leave the country and some disappeared prisoners have even been granted visitation rights.

Sayed Ahmed Alwadaei is a Bahraini activist currently living in exile in the UK. He was forced to flee Bahrain in 2011 after being arrested for taking part in anti-government protests. The Bahraini government revoked his citizenship and launched a smear campaign, labelling him a terrorist. His family have also been subjected to numerous human rights violations by the Bahraini authorities, including arbitrary detention, unfair trial, ill-treatment and possible torture.

As the director of advocacy at the Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy, his work has become a vital resource for international media and NGOs such as Amnesty International.

Veysel Ok is a prominent Turkish lawyer providing pro-bono legal support to journalists, activists and academics who have been subjected to intimidation, surveillance, smear campaigns and harassment. His work has been instrumental in the release of several unlawfully detained journalists and writers.

Ok is one of the first to challenge the Turkish laws of accreditation which determine whether a journalist meets official requirements to do their job.

As part of his work, Ok received a five month suspended sentence for criticising the independence of the Turkish judiciary. He has been subject to surveillance and harassment ever since.

In 2019, the winner of this category was Cartoonists Rights Network International, which challenges threats and abuses against editorial cartoonists worldwide.

The winner of the 2020 award for campaigning will be chosen by a panel of judges which includes Cindy Gallop,  founder and CEO of MakeLoveNotPorn, the world’s first user-generated, human-curated social sex videosharing platform

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2020 awards shortlist: Recognising the journalism that lets all the world’s voices be heard

24 Feb 20 | Awards, Fellowship 2020, News and features

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”112436″ img_size=”full”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Journalists are at the frontline of protecting freedom of speech around the world and we recognise these annually in Index on Censorship’s 2020 Freedom of Expression Awards.

Four individuals and media outlets have been shortlisted in the journalism category in the awards, which will be presented at The May Fair Hotel in London on 30 April. Journalism is one of the four categories that will be recognised at the awards, alongside campaigning, digital activism and the arts.

Meet this year’s nominees.

Hong Kong Free Press was founded in 2015 in the aftermath of the Umbrella Revolution, with the goal of becoming the most independent and credible English-language news source in the region. Since then it has published thousands of articles, many of them on the subject of censorship.

In 2018, HKFP worked with NGOs to create Free Expression Week, which provided space for controversial artists to exhibit their work. Badiucao, an artist critical of Xi Jinping and the Communist Party of China, was scheduled to display some of his work at the event but was threatened by the Chinese government, forcing him to retract his work, a conflict documented in the film, China’s Artful Dissident.

The organisation’s journalists and employees have been injured during recent protests, have faced arrest and even received death threats. Despite being blocked in mainland China, they’ve gained international acclaim.

Marco Ruiz Silvera is a journalist and head of the National Press Workers’ Union in Venezuela, working to protect journalists and promote media freedom. Ruiz is a founding member of the National Commission for the Protection of Journalists and the Alliance for Freedom of Expression in Venezuela. In 2009 he was one of the 12 journalists attacked and injured in Caracas by pro-government supporters.

Venezuela ranked 148^th out of 180 countries in RSF’s World Press Freedom Index 2019. In 2017, a Constituent National Assembly was elected to draft a new constitution, suspending the existing one which included commitments to protect freedom of expression.

For journalists in the country, especially those without access to a lawyer, Ruiz is the first port of call, and has helped to secure the release of dozens of individuals.

Poland’s OKO is an investigative journalism and fact-checking portal. It was originally set up in 2016 by the publishers of Polish liberal newspapers Gazeta Wyborcza and Polityka but is today supported by donations from thousands of its readers.

The award-winning team of writers and editors investigate and evaluate statements made by politicians, monitor public spending, and fight for access to public information. Their work also supports grassroots activism, crucial in an environment sliding further and further into authoritarianism and censorship.

SOS Médias Burundi is a 24/7 news media channel operating in Burundi. It was established in 2015 after an attempted coup resulted in the closure of independent media outlets in the country. The organisation says that nearly 80% of the country’s journalists have fled since then; many of those that remained now work with SOS Médias Burundi becoming “the voice of the voiceless”.

Their clandestine operations have allowed them to become one of the only reputable and functioning news sources in the country. Reporting is limited to social media but this hasn’t stopped SOS from reaching hundreds of thousands of people daily.

The 2019 award winner in this category was Cameroonian journalist Mimi Mefo.

The winner of the 2020 journalism award will be chosen by a panel of judges which includes award-winning Guardian journalist Amelia Gentleman, author of The Windrush Betrayal.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]