01 Dec 22 | Egypt
While world leaders met in Sharm el-Sheikh for COP27, British-Egyptian pro-democracy activist and writer Alaa Abd el-Fattah began a full hunger strike. He is imprisoned for “spreading false news” and has been denied access to diplomatic and legal counsel.
Sadly, Alaa’s case is far from unique. In fact, Human Rights First estimates that there are up to 65,000 political prisoners in detention in Egypt, though the real figure is unknown. Perplexingly, the Egyptian President Abdel Fatah el-Sisi has alleged that Egypt does not hold any political prisoners at all.
News that el-Sisi ordered the release of hundreds of prisoners in 2022 ahead of COP27 has been met with caution. “It might be tempting to think that positive change is on the horizon in Egypt following the releases of political prisoners.” says Index on Censorship’s Emma Sandvik Ling. “However, former political prisoners report continued intimidations and warnings of rearrest should they speak out against el-Sisi’s government. There is an important distinction to be made here between optics and genuine efforts to protect human rights.”
Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who became Egyptian president after a coup in 2013, has shown increasingly authoritarian tendencies over the last decade. Among other things, el-Sisi has argued that freedom of expression “stops” when it offends Islam and urged opposition movements to “look and listen” before they speak.
Dissidents fighting for civic rights, democracy and transparency face intimidation, threats and arbitrary detentions. Alaa Abd el-Fattah’s case represents the heartbreaking reality for thousands of political prisoners in el-Sisi’s Egypt. El-Sisi is a tyrant in the true meaning of the word and his rule has a detrimental impact on freedom of expression.
01 Dec 22 | Artistic Freedom, China, News and features, Press Releases
A new report from Index on Censorship published today (Thursday, December 1st) has laid bare the shocking extent to which Chinese Communist Party (CCP) activity is driving a new era of artistic censorship across Europe.
The report – Whom to Serve? How the CCP censors art in Europe – builds on in-depth interviews with more than 40 leading artists, curators, academics and experts from across Europe, and the findings of more than 35 Freedom of Information requests. It paints a worrying picture of the coordinated campaign by the CCP to undermine artistic freedoms.
Key findings include:
- Ruthless CCP techniques to limit the spread of critical art, including diplomatic pressure, direct threats to individuals and the propagation of pro-state art.
- A concerted drive to impose self-censorship on artists working in Europe, including surveillance, interrogations, graffiti and physical attacks.
- Threats made to those with family in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan.
- The spread of CCP soft power from visual arts into fine art, sculpture, graphic art, film, fashion and theatre.
- A murky network of extensive financial and non-financial ties between Chinese companies and state bodies, and European art institutions, the full scale of which is almost impossible to ascertain.
Jemimah Steinfeld, editor-in-chief at Index, said:
“With the kidnapping of a Hong Kong bookseller in Thailand nine years ago, we have long known that the CCP’s police state stretches beyond its own borders. But what this report shows in startling detail is just how far it stretches and how common aggressive tactics are.
“The scale of the CCP’s reach across the arts world is as staggering as its nature is coordinated. This is not a fringe pursuit or some dabbling at the margins – it is a new and growing weapon in China’s arsenal to burnish its image abroad, control how people both view it and discuss it, and to ruthlessly target those who create or curate art they class as dangerous.
“European art galleries and museums are relentlessly targeted by the CCP using a variety of tools. From diplomatic pressure aimed at European artistic institutions to cancel or forcibly change exhibitions, to the championing of a counter-narrative through artistic work that amplifies state propaganda, there is a battle being fought in institutions across Europe.
“With the recent re-entrenchment of Xi Jinping’s leadership and the growth of China as the 2nd largest art market, there are no signs of the CCP stopping.”
The report shows how the CCP targets dissident artists with overt censorship to prevent critical artwork from being made public, and self-censorship to dissuade artists and institutions from taking the risk of criticising both the party and the country. Fear of reprisals against both themselves and their family pushes many artists, even those living in Europe, to avoid sensitive topics.
While large-scale and coordinated, the report shows the CCP’s efforts to be only partially successful. While self-censorship is rife, attempts to pressure European governments to censor artists has largely failed, even in the face of financial hits to both private galleries or museums.
Nik Williams, policy and campaigns officer, Index on Censorship, added:
“With China one of the world’s largest and most rapidly expanding markets for contemporary art, there are also increasing connections between European art institutions and Chinese state linked firms or individuals sympathetic to the CCP.
“The difficulties we faced in tracking and tracing these connections, murky in their nature and opaque in their arrangements, is concerning in itself. We remain fearful of how these relationships could inform how institutions engage with dissident artists or sensitive topics.”
ENDS
NOTES TO EDITORS
- You can read the full report, “Whom to Serve?: How the CCP censors art in Europe”, here
- The report includes exclusive artwork from leading dissident artist, Badiucao, as well as pieces from Lumli Lumlong, Jens Galschiøt and Yang Weidong.
For press and broadcast interview requests, or for further information, please contact:
Luke Holland // [email protected] // +44 7447 008098
01 Dec 22 | Artistic Freedom, China
“If a painting can overthrow a government, then the government must be very fragile”
Since its inception, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has sought to exert influence over every component of Chinese society, including the world of art. Art is perceived by the CCP as a tool to legitimise its systems of government, not as an expression of human creativity. This project has taken on global relevance as the CCP has sought to utilise art and culture to counter international criticism on a range of topics including the state’s treatment of Uyghurs and Hong Kong’s independence, and assuage concerns about its growing influence in the world economy and international institutions.
The CCP sees itself as the single arbiter of Chinese culture. By the CCP’s definition, being “Chinese” encapsulates not only Chinese nationals but the entire global diaspora. As a result, even artists living in Europe but originally from mainland China, Tibet, Xinjiang, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and elsewhere can be subject to attempts at censorship if their art does not toe the party line. The tactics used to achieve this goal are diverse: from physical violence and the leveraging of financial ties over European galleries to the threatening of family members. Fear of repercussions for themselves or their families is enough to silence many artists even if they now live in Europe.
The extra-territorial nature of CCP censorship should concern anyone wishing to ensure artistic expression is protected. The perpetual threat of violence against artists and their family members in Europe is a stark reflection of the challenge to freedom of expression that the CCP poses across the world. The ability of the CCP to silence critics and curate conversations about themselves globally is unprecedented.
However, the CCP’s struggle against dissident artists also reflects its weakness. Lumli Lumlong, a Hong Kong painting duo based in the UK, told Index “We really want to expose the cruelty of the CCP. They are fragile, their hearts are made of glass.” While the CCP’s soft power operations in Europe have struggled to influence the artistic landscape in Europe, artists have played a crucial role in raising awareness in Europe of the CCP’s human rights abuses.
To investigate the current state of artistic freedom in Europe, and whether and how the CCP attempts to undermine it, Index on Censorship has submitted over 35 Freedom of Information requests and has conducted interviews with more than 40 artists, curators, academics and experts from 10 European countries. The report demonstrates how art can be used by states to extend the reach of censorship into cities across Europe, while also offering a powerful way for artists to challenge state power.
You can download the report here
29 Nov 22 | News and features, United Kingdom
There has been significant commentary on the flaws of the Online Safety Bill, particularly the harmful impact on freedom of expression from the concept of the ‘duty of care’ over adult internet users and the problematic ‘legal but harmful’ category for online speech. Index on Censorship has identified another area of the Bill, far less examined, that now deserves our attention. The provisions in the Online Safety Bill that would enable state-backed surveillance of private communications contain some of the broadest and powerful surveillance powers ever proposed in any Western democracy. It is our opinion that the powers conceived in the Bill would not be lawful under our common law and existing human rights legal framework.
Index on Censorship has commissioned a legal opinion by Matthew Ryder KC, an expert on information law, crime and human rights, and barrister, Aidan Wills of Matrix Chambers. This report (a) summarises the main legal arguments and analysis; (b) provides a more detailed explanation of the powers contained in Section 104 notices; and (c) lays out the legal opinion in full.
The legal opinion shows how the powers conceived go beyond even the controversial powers contained within the Investigatory Powers Act (2016) but critically, without the safeguards that Parliament inserted into the Act in order to ensure it protected the privacy and the fundamental rights of UK citizens. The powers in the Online Safety Bill have no such safeguards as of yet.
The Bill as currently drafted gives Ofcom the powers to impose Section 104 notices on the operators of private messaging apps and other online services. These notices give Ofcom the power to impose specific technologies (e.g. algorithmic content detection) that provide for the surveillance of the private correspondence of UK citizens. The powers allow the technology to be imposed with limited legal safeguards. It means the UK would be one of the first democracies to place a de facto ban on end-to-end encryption for private messaging apps. No communications in the UK – whether between MPs, between whistleblowers and journalists, or between a victim and a victims support charity – would be secure or private. In an era where Russia and China continue to work to undermine UK cybersecurity, we believe this could pose a critical threat to UK national security.
The King’s Counsel’s legal opinion includes that:
● Section 104 notices amount to state-mandated surveillance because they install the right to impose technologies that would intercept and scan private communications on a mass scale. The principle that the state can mandate the surveillance of millions of lawful users of private messaging apps should require a much higher threshold of legal justification which has not been established to date. Currently this level of state surveillance would only be possible under the Investigatory Powers Act if there is a threat to national security.
● Ofcom will have a wider remit on mass surveillance powers of UK citizens than the UK’s spy agencies, such as GCHQ (under the Investigatory Powers Act 2016). Ofcom could impose surveillance on all private messaging users with a notice, underpinned by significant financial penalties, with less legal process or protections than GCHQ would need for a far more limited power.
● Questionable legality: The proposed interferences with the rights of UK citizens arising from surveillance under the Bill are unlikely to be in accordance with the law and are open to legal challenge.
● Failure to protect journalists: if enacted, journalists will not be properly protected from state surveillance risking source confidentiality and endangering human rights defenders and vulnerable communities.
The disproportionate interference with people’s privacy identified by the legal analysis paints an altogether different picture of the Online Safety Bill. Far from being a law to establish accountability for online crime, the legislation, as drafted, opens the door for sweeping new powers of surveillance with little public debate over their purpose and proportionality. Unless the government reconsiders or parliament pushes back, these powers are set on a collision course with independent media and journalism as well as marginalised groups.
Download this new legal opinion on the Online Safety Bill here
29 Nov 22 | News and features, Statements, United Kingdom
29 November 2022
To the Rt. Hon. Dominic Raab MP
Deputy Prime Minister and Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice
Copies sent to:
Rt. Hon. Dominic Raab, Deputy Prime Minister and Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice
Rt. Hon. Rishi Sunak MP, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
Rt. Hon. Michelle Donelan MP, Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport
Rt. Hon. James Cleverly MP, Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs
Mr. Steve Reed MP, Shadow Labour Secretary of State for Justice
Rt. Hon. Alistair Carmichael MP, Liberal Democrat Spokesperson for Home Affairs, Justice and Northern Ireland
Ms. Anne McLaughlin MP, Shadow SNP Spokesperson (Justice)
Mr. John Penrose MP, UK Government Anti Corruption Champion
Mr. Paul Philip, Chief Executive, Solicitors Regulation Authority
Mr. Mark Neale, Director-General, The Bar Standards Board
Ms. Dunja Mijatović, Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights
Ms. Teresa Ribeiro, Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, Representative on Freedom of the Media
Ms. Irene Khan, United Nations Special Rapporteur on on the Promotion and Protection of the Right to Freedom of Opinion and Expression
Re: Adoption of a UK Anti-SLAPP Law
As a group of leading editors, journalists, publishers, lawyers and other experts, we are writing to express our support for the Model UK Anti-SLAPP Law launched this November by the UK Anti-SLAPP Coalition – and to urge you to move swiftly to enshrine these proposals in law.
Events over the past year have shone a light on the use of abusive lawsuits and legal threats to shut down public interest speech. This is a problem that has long been endemic in newsrooms, publishing houses, and civil society organisations. In an age of increasing financial vulnerability in the news industry, it is all too easy for such abusive legal tactics to shut down investigations and block accountability.
We welcome your commitment to bring in reforms to address Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPPs), as you said on 20 July 2022, in order to “uphold freedom of speech, end the abuse of our justice system, and defend those who bravely shine a light on corruption.” High-profile cases – such as those targeting Catherine Belton, Tom Burgis, Elliot Higgins, and more recently openDemocracy and The Bureau of Investigative Journalism – are just the most visible manifestation of a much broader problem which has affected newspapers across Fleet Street and the wider UK media industry for many years.
The public interest reporting targeted by SLAPPs is vital for the health of democratic societies, including law enforcement’s ability to investigate wrongdoing promptly and effectively. This is of acute importance in the UK, which journalistic investigations have repeatedly shown to be a hub for illicit finance from kleptocratic elites. As of April 2022, the National Crime Agency (NCA) has estimated the scale of money laundering impacting the UK is in excess of £100bn a year.
Journalism has a huge role to play in tackling this problem. For example, investigations by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) into the ‘Azerbaijani Laundromat’ scandal supported the NCA in seizing millions in corrupt funds from a number of individuals, including £5.6 million from members of one Azerbaijani MP’s family. Prior to the NCA’s seizure, the same MP had spent two years pursuing Paul Radu, co-founder of OCCRP through London’s libel courts. The inequality of arms in such cases is clear. As Radu notes: “The people suing journalists in the UK rely on these huge legal bills being so intimidating that the journalists won’t even try to defend themselves.”
In March 2022, at the launch of the Government consultation on SLAPPs, you stressed that “The Government will not tolerate Russian oligarchs and other corrupt elites abusing British courts to muzzle those who shine a light on their wrongdoing.” The findings of the consultation, published in July, clearly stated that “the type of activity identified as SLAPPs and the aim of preventing exposure of matters that are in the public interest go beyond the parameters of ordinary litigation and pose a threat to freedom of speech and the freedom of the press.”
Fortunately, there is an oven-ready solution to this problem. The Model Anti-SLAPP Law, drafted by the UK Anti-SLAPP Coalition in consultation with leading media lawyers and industry experts, would provide robust protection against SLAPPs, building on the framework proposed by the Ministry of Justice in July. Key features include:
- A filter mechanism that empowers courts to swiftly dispose of SLAPPs without the need for a subjective enquiry into the state of mind of the SLAPP filer. This mechanism should subject claims that exhibit features of abuse to a higher merits threshold.
- Penalties that are sufficient to deter the use of SLAPPs and provide full compensation to those targeted. Such penalties should take into account the harm caused to the defendant and the conduct of and the resources available to the claimant.
- Protective measures for SLAPP victims including cost protections, safeguards, and measures to reduce the ability of SLAPP claimants to weaponise the litigation process against public watchdogs.
The need could not be more urgent. Research by the Foreign Policy Centre and other members of the UK Anti-SLAPP Coalition has found that SLAPPs are on the rise and that the UK is the number one originator of abusive legal actions. In fact, the UK has been identified as the leading source of SLAPPs, almost as frequent a source as all European Union countries and the United States combined.
The EU has already taken steps, with a proposed Anti-SLAPP Directive announced in April. In the US, 34 US states already have anti-SLAPPs laws in place, and this year Congress has introduced the first federal SLAPP Protection Act. Moreover, the US has also launched the Defamation Defense Fund, recognising the impact SLAPP actions have on journalists, as they “are designed to deter them from doing their work.”
You have made clear your commitment to strengthening legal protections against these legal tactics. It is crucial momentum is not lost. We encourage you to put forward, in the earliest possible time frame, legislation in line with the model UK Anti-SLAPP Law, to ensure that the UK can keep pace and contribute to this global movement to protect against SLAPPs.
Yours,
John Witherow, Chairman, Times Media
Emma Tucker, Editor, The Sunday Times
Tony Gallagher, Editor, The Times
Victoria Newton, Editor-in-Chief, The Sun
Paul Dacre, Editor-in-Chief, DMG media
Ted Verity, Editor, The Daily Mail
Katharine Viner, Editor-in-Chief, The Guardian
Paul Webster, Editor, The Observer
Alison Phillips, Editor, The Mirror
Oliver Duff, Editor-in-Chief, i
Roula Khalaf, Editor, The Financial Times
Chris Evans, Editor, The Telegraph
Alan Rusbridger, Editor, Prospect Magazine
Ian Hislop, Editor, Private Eye
Zanny Minton Beddoes, Editor-in-Chief, The Economist
Alessandra Galloni, Editor-in-Chief, Reuters News Agency
John Micklethwait, Editor-in-Chief, Bloomberg
Drew Sullivan, Co-founder and Publisher, Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP)
Paul Radu, Co-founder and Chief of Innovation, OCCRP
Rozina Breen, CEO, The Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ)
Peter Geoghegan, Editor-in-Chief and CEO, openDemocracy
Nick Mathiason, Co-founder and Co-director, Finance Uncovered
Gerard Ryle, Director of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ)
David Kaplan, Executive Director, Global Investigative Journalism Network (GIJN)
Michelle Stanistreet, General Secretary, National Union of Journalists (NUJ)
Dawn Alford, Executive Director, Society of Editors
Sayra Tekin, Director of Legal, News Media Association (NMA)
Sarah Baxter, Director, Marie Colvin Center for International Reporting
Paul Murphy, Head of Investigations, Financial Times
Rachel Oldroyd, Deputy Investigations Editor, The Guardian
Carole Cadwalladr, journalist, The Observer
Catherine Belton, journalist and author of the book, Putin’s People: How the KGB took back Russia and then took on the west
Tom Burgis, reporter and author of the book, Kleptopia: How dirty money is conquering the world
Oliver Bullough, Journalist and author
Clare Rewcastle Brown, investigative journalist and founder of The Sarawak Report
Richard Brooks, journalist, Private Eye
Matthew Caruana Galizia, Director of The Daphne Caruana Galizia Foundation
Mark Stephens CBE, Partner at Howard Kennedy LLP
Caroline Kean, Consultant Partner, Wiggin
Matthew Jury, Managing Partner, McCue Jury and Partners
David Price KC
Rupert Cowper-Coles, Partner at RPC
Conor McCarthy, Barrister, Monckton Chambers
Pia Sarma, Editorial Legal Director, Times Newspapers Ltd
Gill Phillips, Director of Editorial Legal Services, Guardian News & Media
Lisa Webb, Senior Lawyer, Which?
Juliette Garside, Deputy Business Editor, The Guardian and The Observer
Alexander Papachristou, Executive Director of the Cyrus R. Vance Center for International Justice
José Borghino, Secretary General, International Publishers Association
Dan Conway, CEO, Publishers Association
Arabella Pike, Publishing Director, HarperCollins Publishers
Joanna Prior, CEO of Macmillan Publishers International Limited
Meirion Jones, Editor, TBIJ
Emily Wilson, Bureau Local Editor, TBIJ
James Ball, Global Editor, TBIJ
Franz Wild, Enablers Editor, TBIJ
James Lee, Chair of the Board, TBIJ
Stewart Kirkpatrick, Head of Impact, openDemocracy
Moira Sleight, Editor, the Methodist Recorder
Paul Caruana Galizia, reporter, Tortoise
Tom Bergin, journalist and author
James Nixey, Director, Russia and Eurasia Programme, Chatham House
Edward Lucas, Author, European and transatlantic security consultant and fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA)
Sean O’Neill, Senior Writer, The Times
Dr Peter Coe, Associate Professor in Law, Birmingham Law School, University of Birmingham
Alex Wilson, Partner at RPC
George Greenwood, Investigations Reporter, The Times
Simon Bowers, Investigations Editor, Finance Uncovered
John Heathershaw, Professor of International Relations, University of Exeter
Tena Prelec, Research Fellow, DPIR, University of Oxford
Thomas Mayne, Research Fellow, DPIR, University of Oxford
Jodie Ginsberg, President, Committee to Protect Journalists
Dr Julie Macfarlane, Co-Founder, Can’t Buy My Silence campaign to ban the misuse of NDAs
Zelda Perkins, Co-Founder, Can’t Buy My Silence campaign to ban the misuse of NDAs
28 Nov 22 | News and features
It is now three days since protests erupted across the country after 10 people died in an apartment fire in Urumqi, Xinjiang. Protesters, both on the streets and online, have blamed the country’s strict Covid-zero policy, closely associated with leader Xi Jinping. Millions have joined a call to find out whether the building’s fire escapes were blocked as a result of the policy.
The protests have been wide-ranging – and has the crackdown. Already Wulumuqi (Urumqi) Middle Road in Shanghai has been cordoned off, police present on every corner. There have been arrests of protesters around the country. A BBC journalist has been assaulted and detained. An elderly woman in Hong Kong has been beaten. As for China’s internet, the censorship machine is in overdrive with searches blocked or diverted and state-approved pundits are blaming the protests on foreign influence.
And yet still the protests continue. It is remarkable.
Contrary to many people’s assumptions about China and protest, the two are not wholly unhappy bedfellows. There have been many big protest movements since the Chinese Communist Party came to power in 1949. Tiananmen in 1989 is of course the most oft-cited and arguably the largest both in terms of how long it went on for (well over a month) and the sheer numbers who headed to the capital’s square and the other protest sights across China. But there have been others both before and after, as well as those in Hong Kong. On occasion Beijing even welcomes a protest – they can be a handy distraction and forum for people to vent, just not at the CCP. In 2012, for example, as news continued to swirl about the arrest of popular Chinese politician Bo Xilai and his wife, hundreds of thousands took to Beijing’s streets in anti-Japanese protests.
So what makes these remarkable then? Well firstly they offer a glimmer of hope. This isn’t hope in the “CCP will collapse” way – there have too many false dawns in the past to believe that might happen. But hope in a way that makes us start to believe that China’s incredibly extensive censorship machine is not quite so well-oiled as we imagined. Since Xi Jinping came to power 10 years ago, the amount of control he has amassed has been terrifying. What the last few days have shown is that it’s far from absolute. News of the deaths in Urumqi have reached people across the country: attempts to censor the information came too late.
People were outraged, perhaps in part because they’d also heard news of the awful treatment of Uyghurs over the years – news that the Chinese government has tried hard to crush or manage – and they felt the sense of injustice.
A more likely reason for the rage is that many who have been locked down have had their own fire escapes blocked. The Urumqi deaths spoke to their greatest fears. And they spoke to these fears at the very time people were most angered – when lots of the country was locking down, again, against a backdrop of smiling, mask-less crowds at the World Cup.
The protests are also remarkable because of how widespread they are. Most protest movements in China are in one geographic area or on one issue. Workers strike about poor factory conditions; young parents about tainted milk. Here people across the country and in Hong Kong are all uniting. Their irks might sometimes differ – some want Xi Jinping to resign, while others just want to be able to leave their house and watch a movie. But there is a common thread – a desire for more freedom and free expression. You can see this in the photos of people holding up blank sheets of paper (a form of protest that incidentally first happened in Hong Kong) to protest censorship – saying nothing at all is the only safe thing to say. You can see it online. “When can we have freedom of speech? Maybe it can start at Beijing’s Liangmahe [an area of the city],” one person wrote on Weibo. Another said: “Before going to sleep I saw what was happening in Liangmahe on my WeChat Moments and then I looked at Weibo and saw that the Xicheng area had added 279 new Covid cases. I started thinking about my own everyday life and the things I am doing. I can’t help but feel a sense of isolation, because I can’t fight and do not dare to raise my voice.” The examples could go on and on.
Have we overstated just how much control the party have? Perhaps. We’ve always known Chinese social media users are in a constant battle of cat-and-mouse with the censors and so it’s no surprise that people did find out about Urumqi (as for World Cup envy, that probably just caught officials off-guard). Or maybe it’s the Chinese state themselves who have slipped up, in this instance in underestimating the bravery and fury of the population, and in creating the conditions for more widespread dissent ironically through their Covid-zero policy. The policy has kept people locked away yes, and the now ubiquitous health QR codes are excellent tracking devices. But people have bonded with those who they’ve spent inordinate amounts of time either literally inside or online and created the very thing the authorities fear – networks.
The question will be whether this dissent will be violently silenced by the CCP, will just peter out over the coming weeks or whether the growing and more united number of voices can bring about long-lasting change. We really hope for the latter.
25 Nov 22 | Ruth's blog, United Kingdom
One of the core tenets of media freedom is the ability to speak truth to power, to hold decisionmakers and political leaders to account. At Index we see every day what happens in countries where media freedoms are curtailed, where journalists are arrested or threatened for doing their jobs, where there is no such thing as a free press. We were founded to ensure that there would always be a platform to publish the stories of those people who cannot be heard in their own countries – media freedom is therefore one of the core principles which Index defends every day.
In my opinion the way in which journalists are treated is a health-check on the state of a government’s commitment to human rights. On whether they are upholding the democratic values that we all hold so dear. Whether that’s at a local or national level.
In the last decade the importance of news coverage has been made clear every day. In the UK, since 2014, we have had two referendums, three general elections, five Prime Ministers, a pandemic and a recession. We have never needed engaged journalists more – nor politicians to be accessible. Historically this was never an issue, politicians tend to like featuring in the media (and I say that as someone who was elected) and journalists are usually happy to oblige. A mainstay of British political engagement is the traditional morning media round – designed to set the news agenda for the day. Every day Government Ministers speak on the morning TV and radio news programmes – not just to announce new initiatives but to respond to the news of the day. I don’t doubt for a second that this is challenging and at times pretty uncomfortable for the politicians – but it is how we daily ensure that our politicians are accountable to their constituents.
However in recent days the British government has changed tack. The new Prime MInister, the Rt Hon Rishi Sunak MP, has decreed that the morning media round will no longer be a daily occurrence. Ministers will not appear on news outlets unless they have something to announce, or if there is something the government wants to discuss. Journalists will struggle to speak truth to power if the power isn’t showing up. This is not the action of a government that is prepared to be held to account on the issues that matter to the people they seek to represent.
Where countries claim a democratic tradition, each has a cultural difference. They have a different feel and a different tradition. It is difficult to judge one against another. Journalists adhere to both their career and cultural norms and for some that may not be a daily interrogation of their government, but in the UK it has been for as long as I can remember. This is a bad decision by the new PM, a decision that I think he will regret and one that will be quietly dropped. We all deserve to know what our government is doing and in the UK – we are dependent on our journalists to find out. This is why we defend journalists both at home and abroad, because media freedom is a core tenet of our democracy.
23 Nov 22 | Magazine, News and features, Volume 51.03 Autumn 2022, Volume 51.03 Autumn 2022
The football commentator’s well-worn cliché about the sport being a game of two halves usually refers to the action on the pitch. But in the build-up to the game between England and Iran at the 2022 FIFA World Cup earlier this week, it was the off-field actions of the teams which showed a divided response to events in the wider world.
Shortly before kick-off, it was decided by the English FA (among other European football governing bodies) that England’s Harry Kane would forgo wearing the OneLove captain’s armband, which displays a heart containing colours representative of all backgrounds and is part of a message promoting inclusion. The reason given by the FA was that “we can’t put our players in a position where they could face sporting sanctions including bookings.”
Then, just before the match, as the Iranian national anthem rang around the Khalifa International Stadium in Doha, the Iranian players remained silent. Referencing the now-months long protests in Iran, which are pushing for regime change after the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in Tehran on 13 September 2022, Iranian captain Ehsan Hajsafi said that: “We have to accept the conditions in our country are not right. Our people are not happy. We are here but it does not mean we should not be their voice or must not respect them.”
The actions, or rather inactions, of the English FA and the Iranian footballers have had contrasting results. By aiming first but then relenting on the promise to have Kane wear the armband shows just what a failed empty gesture it was. A financial fine would have been accepted, but the fear of a single yellow card forced the FA’s hand (and that of other countries, such as Wales, Germany and the Netherlands). Were the teams and players ever really behind it if they could u-turn so quickly?
On the other hand, the silence of the Iranian footballers has shown the courage that a united action brings, not least given how much higher the risks – the repercussions the footballers may face on the return to their homeland, where they will have family and friends, are far more severe than a card brandished on the pitch.
That said we should be careful about where we lay blame in terms of not wearing the armband. It is understood that Kane still wanted to wear it, and even if he didn’t, is it fair to expect the England players to be politically active in the course of what essentially is their day job (as Julian Baggini argues in our last issue)?
The bigger fault lies squarely at the hands of FIFA for awarding the tournament to Qatar, as well as the governments and authorities around the world who have said very little about the country’s abuses since 2010. When news organisations have reported on abuses, especially on the Kafala system, which ensured an extremely cheap labour force was on hand to build the infrastructure for the World Cup, journalists were detained and threatened – again to very little public outcry. While minor changes have been made to improve the labour system, reports that at least 6,500 migrant workers still died since 2010 has again received far too little outrage.
Even during the immediate build up to, and including the tournament so far, FIFA appears happy to kowtow to Qatar’s last-minute demands. While the consumption of alcohol isn’t a free speech issue, FIFA’s agreement to Qatar’s last-minute ban on the sale of alcohol in stadiums is yet another sign that it is Qatar who are setting the rules. Also, despite assurances from FIFA, rainbow-coloured flags and attire were prohibited in spectator areas, as seen by the Welsh fans who had rainbow-coloured bucket fans confiscated before their opener against the USA. In a nation where homosexuality is still illegal these are hardly surprising actions but they show how arguments like “the World Cup will improve the rights situations in Qatar” was never a commitment taken seriously. The activist Peter Tatchell, an Index contributor who was himself detained following a protest to highlight LGBT rights in Qatar in October, puts it well: “#FIFA and #Qatar promised that LGBT+ fans & rainbow insignia would be allowed at #WorldCup. They have trashed that promise – and their reputations. But what did you expect from a sexist, homophobic & racist dictatorship?”
We at Index on Censorship love the fact that football is the world’s game, able to unite people across gender, race, religion and nationality. From Norway to Nigeria, it’s the universal language where a conversation about Manchester United or Lionel Messi can take place without knowledge of the native tongue. We have no issue with football and our Autumn issue showed its amazing power to transform lives. It’s for this reason that we remain angered that it is taking place in Qatar, who seem to be normalising their autocracy on a world stage. And it’s for this reason that we are angered that the simple threat of a yellow card has determined a retreat from taking a stand on such an important issue, even if that stand was small and largely symbolic. Iran might have lost against England on Monday but they proved to be the real winners when it came to courage and conviction.
18 Nov 22 | Opinion, Ruth's blog
Freedom of expression is an amazing human right. It guarantees each and every one of us the right to speak, to write, to create. For many of us it also provides a legal framework to protect our voices, to make sure that every viewpoint, on every issue has a counter view available. At its best it drives debate and progression and makes our society stronger.
There is, however, one thing that freedom of expression doesn’t grant and that is the right to be heard and listened to. It only protects the right to speak. In some instances that isn’t necessarily a bad thing – some fringe views should stay on the fringe…
However in too many instances a lack of voices fails us all. Freedom of expression doesn’t guarantee you a seat at the table and it doesn’t ensure that a diverse range of voices influence the people making decisions that affect every part of our lives.
A case in point was this month’s COP27 conference. Only 34% of the negotiators sent by their nations to discuss the impact of climate change and efforts to get to net zero were women. This should come as no surprise. After all, most governments rarely reflect the gender balance of their countries. Of the people elected to the US Congress this month 27% are women. And 24% of the US Senate will be women. The British Cabinet only has seven women – 23% of the total. And last month’s Chinese Communist Party Congress didn’t have a single woman present.
I realise that for some this could be seen as a feminist rant. It isn’t. The lack of women just highlights how few voices get to the top table and how little room there seems to be for alternative views and perspectives. Which is why our right to freedom of expression is so important – the more voices that exist, the more arguments made, the more difficult it is for policy makers to ignore them. Which means ultimately we all win.
Our right to freedom of expression has underpinned every progressive campaign that has reshaped society since the advent of the printing press – from the end of slavery, to universal suffrage, the right to strike and the right to gay marriage, to name but a few. These views were not of the mainstream, they were not the prevailing views of the elected politicians and governments. They were however discussed, debated and then demanded by their citizens. Just as they should be – which is why we fight every day to make sure that our rights to freedom of expression are protected and cherished. Because while freedom of expression isn’t the same as the right to be heard, it’s a good start.
16 Nov 22 | Italy, News and features, Statements
Members of the Coalition Against SLAPPs in Europe (CASE), with the support of the coalition’s Italian group and Media Freedom Rapid Response (MFRR), express solidarity with Roberto Saviano who attended the first hearing in the proceedings for aggravated defamation initiated against him by current Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. We are seriously concerned about the criminal proceedings initiated in 2021 by the current Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, the leader of Fratelli d’Italia. Under the current provisions on defamation, Roberto Saviano risks imprisonment for his criticism of Meloni during a TV programme.
Such accusations act as a gag on freedom of expression, a fundamental right enshrined in the Italian Constitution and international law. No journalist or writer should be prosecuted for expressing their honest opinion on issues of public interest. A criminal defamation suit is not an acceptable response in a democracy, all the more so when it comes from a high ranking representative of the institution. This threat to Saviano reveals, once again, the degree of the abuse of defamation suits or SLAPPs (Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation) in Italy.
The lawsuit for aggravated defamation was initiated by current Prime Minister Meloni in November 2021, in response to comments made by Roberto Saviano during the episode of the TV programme Piazza Pulita which aired on 3rd December 2020. Saviano’s comment was formulated in response to the controversial rhetoric employed in recent years by the two political leaders to describe the migration emergency in the Mediterranean.
In November 2020, the NGO ship Open Arms rescued a number of displaced individuals from a shipwreck, caused by a collapsing dinghy in the Mediterranean Sea. The delayed rescue by the Italian authorities had prevented timely assistance to the survivors who were in dire need of specialist medical care, including a six-month-old infant who later died on the Open Arms. Following Piazza Pulita’s coverage of the investigation on the authorities’ delayed response, Roberto Saviano had referred to both Meloni, the then leader of Fratelli d’Italia and the Lega secretary, Matteo Salvini as ‘bastards’.
The possibility that Roberto Saviano, in his role as a writer and journalist, could incur a prison sentence for expressing his opinion on a politically sensitive issue, such as the treatment of migrants in Italy, once again draws attention to the serious inadequacies of Italian libel laws. The right to freedom of expression is enshrined in Article 21 of the Italian Constitution. Furthermore, international law and jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) guarantees that the right to freedom of expression extends to statements and ideas that may ‘offend, shock or disturb‘ and that opinions are entitled to enhanced protection under the guarantee of the right to freedom of expression. Further, the ECtHR has clarified that public figures and, in particular, political actors must tolerate higher levels of criticism and scrutiny given their public position within society, and that in such cases criminal prosecution has a chilling effect and is violating the right to freedom of expression as guaranteed by Article 10 ECHR.
Those who express their opinion on matters of public interest should not fear nor be exposed to intimidation, conviction, or imprisonment. On this last point, the Italian Constitutional Court has made its position clear, urging lawmakers to initiate a general reform of the legislation on defamation that would bring Italian legislation in line with the standards of European and international law. With the ruling of 9 June 2020 and the decision of 22 June 2021, the Court, in line with previous judgments of the ECtHR, declared prison sentences in cases of defamation in the press unconstitutional. However, the provision of prison sentences remains in place for cases of ‘exceptional gravity’. In accordance with such provisions, Saviano still faces a custodial sentence because the formal charge is aggravated defamation.
At the conclusion of the first hearing at the Criminal Court of Rome on 15 November 2022, it was decided that the trial will be re-assigned to a new judge and adjourned to 12 December. The current Minister of Infrastructure, Matteo Salvini, has filed a petition to become a civil plaintiff. The Lega leader has also a pending defamation lawsuit initiated against Roberto Saviano in 2018: its first hearing is scheduled for 1 February 2023. Further, on 28 January 2023 another defamation trial instigated by Gennaro Sangiuliano, current Minister of Culture, awaits Roberto Saviano.
At the end of the first hearing in the Meloni case on 15th November, Saviano reiterated the central role that writers play in a democratic society: “My tools are words. I try, with the word, to persuade, to convince, to activate”. Exiting the courtroom, he argued that: “Democracy is based not only on a consensus that can lead to winning the electoral lottery, but exists if dissent and criticism are allowed. Without such premises there is no democratic oxygen”.
The perilous situation in which Roberto Saviano finds himself must also be taken into account. Life under escort, already a cause of marginalisation for journalists, was only necessary due to threats made against Saviano by organised crime and these threats should not be amplified through further threats made by high ranking politicians.
Joining the dissent expressed by Italian and European journalists’ associations, the undersigned organisations call on Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni to immediately withdraw the charges against Roberto Saviano. We support the recommendation formulated by Italian and European civil society and international organisations to the new parliament to act against vexatious complaints and to quickly adopt a comprehensive reform of both civil and criminal defamation laws in Italy. Finally, we urge Italy to bring forward legislation to tackle the use of SLAPPs in line with the EU Anti-SLAPP Recommendation of 27 April 2022. The Italian Government is also urged to give its full support to the Anti-SLAPP Directive as proposed by the European Commission.
Signed
OBC Transeuropa (OBCT)
aditus foundation
Access Info Europe
ARTICLE 19
Blueprint for Free Speech
Civic Initiatives
Civil Liberties Union For Europe
Ecojustice Ireland
European Centre for Press and Media Freedom (ECPMF)
European Federation of Journalists (EFJ)
Global Witness
Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights
Index on Censorship
International Press Institute
Irish PEN/ PEN na hÉireann
Justice & Environment
Legal Human Academy
Libera Informazione
PEN International
Presseclub Concordia
Solomon
The Daphne Caruana Galizia Foundation
Whistleblowing International Network
16 Nov 22 | News and features, United Kingdom
Irene Khan
UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, by email.
CC – Dr. Ana Brian Nougrères, UN Special Rapporteur on the right to privacy, by email.
15.11.22
Re: Concerning developments for human rights online in the UK
Dear Ms Khan,
We are writing to you regarding the UK Government’s Online Safety Bill; legislation which we believe will fundamentally undermine the rights to freedom of expression, privacy and other human rights online in the UK.
We note that in March 2022 you wrote to the UK Government expressing concerns about this Bill (OL GBR 5/2022). In your correspondence you stated:
“I believe the proposed Bill, as currently drafted, contains some key provisions that could undermine its overall objective as well as international human rights principles.”
Regrettably, since this correspondence, the legislation has in no way been materially improved to protect human rights. This is despite the fact that it has now been laid before Parliament and has been subjected to considerable revisions. We therefore urge you to use your mandates to provide recommendations to the UK Government to amend the following concerning aspects of the Bill:
The Bill will lead to the restriction of speech considered “legal but harmful”.
We are particularly concerned over the provisions of the Bill which will place pressure on the largest platforms to restrict content the government has designated to be “harmful” (clause 13). In your correspondence to the UK Government of 14 March 2022 you said of this obligation:
“The duty of care placed upon online providers to protect users of their services against legal but harmful content uses vague terms that are open to broad interpretation, such as “reasonably identify”, “material risk”, “significant adverse physical or psychological impact”, “ordinary sensibilities”, and so risks undue removal of content.”
Despite further revisions to the legislation, the Bill continues to place an obligation on online intermediaries to address content which is “legal but harmful”. Where speech of this nature was given a definition in the draft Bill, no such definition exists in the full Bill. An indicative list of possible categories of harmful content was issued by the government in June this year.1 However, this list is not legally binding and cannot be considered sufficiently precise to meet the legality requirement under international human rights standards. Rather, the power to designate speech which is “legal but harmful” lies within the power of the Secretary of State, which creates scope for political censorship and seriousl compromises the independence of the regulatory framework.
As you noted in your letter, the Bill provides little detail of the obligations regarding harmful content and providers could be required to make subjective assessments of its potential impact. Consequentially, forms of speech which are permitted in the offline world and are protected under international human rights law would be censored online, creating two different standards of permissible speech.
The Bill will mean online platforms, not courts, enforcing UK law
In your letter to the UK Government of 14 March 2022, you noted your concerns about the obligations the Online Safety Bill places on platforms to perform functions – namely the duty to remove illegal content – which should be the preserve of law enforcement bodies and independent courts. You stated:
“I am concerned that this obligation delegates to private companies a responsibility that should be exercised by law enforcement, particularly for offences where the boundary between offensive but legal and illegal conduct may be difficult to discern, such as hate crime.”
The Bill continues to require online platforms to determine whether the speech of people in the UK is legal or not and then remove it if they believe it is illegal, undermining the rule of law (clause 9). Online platforms will inevitably turn to machines, not trained people, which are unable to make such nuanced and difficult legal assessments. As a further development of this obligation, platforms will now have a duty under clause 9 of the Bill to “prevent” content (and not only limit its visibility as required under the draft Bill) that they “reasonably consider” could be what the Government describe as “priority illegal content”. Such priority content is defined in Schedules 5,6, and 7 of the Bill, as a list of criminal offences. The list includes provisions from public order and anti-terror legislation which would set the legal limits of legitimate expression. We are concerned that the new language in clause 9 could push platforms to use “upload filters” and risks collateral censorship on a large scale.
Private actors should not be tasked with making such decisions over the legality of people’s behaviour. This is the role of transparent, independent and accountable public authorities such as courts. However, the Bill does nothing to ensure that the police and courts are properly resourced to prosecute, convict, and sentence those who break the law online, depriving victims of justice.
The Bill compromises end-to-end encryption of private messages
In your letter of 14 March, you noted the importance of the right to privacy as a right which also reinforces protection of the right to freedom of expression. You stated:
“I am concerned that the inclusion of direct private messaging within the scope of the Bill could impact negatively on encryption, security and privacy. I have similar concerns regarding Ofcom’s ability to compel a service to use technology to detect child sexual exploitation and abuse (CSEA) and terrorism content on private and public channels and CSEA content on private communication channels”.
The latest version of the Bill continues to bring encrypted chat services into scope via a definition of content as anything that is “communicated publicly or privately”. The obligations on services mandated by the Bill could be imposed on providers of encrypted messaging services via an enforcement power handed to the regulator, Ofcom, without any further judicial or administrative oversight. This would allow Ofcom to mandate that a service use government-“accredited technology” to surveil private channels, even if they are protected by end-to-end encryption (clause 104).
Encryption tools have become vital for individuals to communicate securely. This is particularly true for human rights defenders, journalists, whistleblowers, victims of domestic abuse or individuals from marginalised groups. Undermining these individuals’ ability to communicate privately and securely would threaten both their safety and their right to freedom of expression.
Your other concerns regarding a media exemption; the lack of any quality standards required for the internal complaints mechanisms; the scale of fines that could be imposed on providers; the inadequate requirement on providers to “have regard” to freedom of expression; and the excessive powers granted by the Bill to the Secretary of State; have also not been addressed.
We believe an intervention from you on the legislation would be timely. The Bill has nearly completed its passage through the House of Commons and will soon enter the House of Lords for further consideration. However, in recent weeks, the Bill has been paused for further review.
We urge you to issue a statement or communicate your concerns with the Government, recalling their long-standing obligations in international and domestic law, and their recent pledges to defend freedom of expression in the UK and abroad.
Yours sincerely,
Mark Johnson – Big Brother Watch
Barbora Bukovská – ARTICLE 19
Sam Grant – Liberty
Dr Monica Horten – Open Rights Group
Daniel Pryor – Adam Smith Institute
Ruth Smeeth – Index on Censorship
16 Nov 22 | BannedByBeijing, China, News and features
Twenty-three years after writing his best known work, Red Star Over China, Edgar Snow returned to China in 1960 to investigate claims that a radical agrarian reform programme had resulted in devastating famine. “I diligently searched, without success, for starving people or beggars to photograph … I do not believe there is famine in China,” Snow wrote.
Snow was wrong. The famine in China was both real and devastating. It is estimated as many as 30 million died in it. Snow’s bias lens had ghostly echoes with Walter Duranty’s reporting from Ukraine, during the Holodomor, the mass famines engineered by Stalin. Only when faced with overwhelming evidence did he eventually concede that the genocide occurred, “to put it brutally – you can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs” he said.
In information vacuums, common during times of conflict such as the civil conflict in Syria, as well as in areas controlled by authoritarian regimes, reporting from independent journalists can quickly define or redefine the public’s perception of a regime or situation. While journalists can play a powerful role in challenging censorship and propaganda from the state, they can also act as the state’s servants. Such was the case for both Snow and Duranty, whose rose-tinted views of the countries impacted global perceptions. Herein lies the point – those who claim to be independent reporters can be incredibly useful to the state, sometimes more so than those working within state media, because the notion that they are independent carries with it a level of authority and weight.
The use of “junket journalism” to obscure reporting on crimes against humanity has only grown in prominence and sophistication. Nowhere has this been more evident than in China where the government has co-opted a range of journalists and social media influencers to help strengthen the CCP’s control over its narrative and obscure legitimate scrutiny of a number of important issues, most notably the genocide of the Uyghur population. Recent party documents and officials have emphasised the need to bolster the CCP political line, and inject positivity into the CCP and China’s image. Current President Xi Jinping said, “Wherever the readers are, wherever the viewers are, that is where propaganda reports must extend their new tentacles”.
A recent International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) survey confirmed that “China is conducting a media outreach campaign in almost every continent” with the 31 developed and 27 developing countries that participated in the survey similarly targeted. The researchers told the Guardian, “China is also wooing journalists from around the world with all-expenses-paid tours and, perhaps most ambitiously of all, free graduate degrees in communication, training scores of foreign reporters each year to ‘tell China’s story well’”.
While many other countries, including established democracies, have sought to influence and shape independent reporting through tours, capacity building opportunities and other tactics, the CCP’s overt prioritisation of journalism that “depends upon a narrative discipline that precludes all but the party-approved version of events” raises significant concerns as to its intentions.
In this effort to shape global news, the CCP is advantaged by its huge pockets. It has spent around $6.6 billion since 2009 on strengthening its global media presence, supposedly investing over $2.8 billion alone in media and adverts. Sarah Cook, NED reporter and researcher, emphasised that “no country is immune”.
This ambition is best summarised by the Belt and Road News Network (BRNN), which includes 182 media organisations from 86 countries as members, and a Council, which includes 26 countries, including Spain, France, Russia, Netherlands and the UK. The launch of the BRNN was announced in a paid advertorial in The Telegraph produced by People’s Daily. In September 2019, BRNN hosted a workshop for international journalists in Beijing as part of the 70th anniversary celebrations of the People’s Republic of China, which was organised in partnership with the State Council Information Office of China. It included a visit to the offices of People’s Daily, Xinhua News Agency and other “central media units”, as well as trips to “Shaanxi, Zhejiang, Guizhou and Guangdong provinces for interviews and researches in order to personally experience China’s unremitting efforts and fruitful results in poverty alleviation, ecological civilization, big data industry, urban planning, and independent intellectual property rights.”
While the workshop was attended by representatives from 46 mainstream media outlets from 26 Latin American and African countries, it would be overly simplistic to suggest that China is only focusing on countries from the global south. Since 2009, the China-United States Exchange Foundation (CUSEF) has taken 127 US journalists from 40 US outlets to China. This foundation has been identified as working with China’s United Front as highlighted by US Senator Ted Cruz, in a letter to the President of the University of Texas at Austin, who stated that “[t]oday, CUSEF and the united front are the external face of the CCP’s internal authoritarianism”.
The IFJ report notes that “the Chinese Embassy has sought out journalists working for Islamic media, organising special media trips to showcase Xinjiang as a travel destination and an economic success story.” Xinjiang and the treatment of Uyghur communities is a prominent area in which the CCP has focused its efforts. After a visit to Xinjiang, Harald Brüning, author and director of the Macau Post Daily, stated that “the anti-China forces’ allegations of genocide are preposterous judging by what the Macao journalists, most of whom had not visited the region before, saw and heard in Xinjiang.” In his piece, Brüning did not disguise the genesis of his trip, exclaiming in the third paragraph “[t]he extraordinarily well-organised tour took place at the invitation of the Office of the Commissioner of the Foreign Ministry of the People’s Republic of China in the Macao Special Administrative Region.” The piece is heavily framed around rebutting existing reporting – labelled in the piece as lies – including the use of forced labour in the cotton fields of Xinjiang, as well as decrying the “brutality the religious extremists and separatists [have] resorted to”.
However an all-expenses paid junket does not guarantee full control of a journalist’s coverage. Olsi Jazexhi (below), a Muslim Canadian-Albanian journalist and historian sought a way to travel to Xinjiang because he was sceptical of the dominant narrative in the West that Muslims were being oppressed in China. He approached the Chinese embassy in Albania who invited him on a trip to Xinjiang with other “China-friendly journalists”. Once in Xinjiang, Jazexhi was shocked by the detainees’ testimonies of having been jailed for simple expressions of their religious identity, such as reading the Quran or encouraging others to pray. In Urumqi, he was lectured by state officials who equated Islam with terrorism and was shocked by the number of empty mosques or those repurposed into stores.
Olsi Jazexhi (right) listens to a handler during a tour of a mosque in Aksu city, Xinjiang in August 2019. Photo: Provided by Olsi Jazexhi
Other journalists who have tried to move away from the organised tours have faced a number of difficulties. When journalists have attempted to film camps that the government has not previously cleared for access, they have been turned away by local authorities. Road works or car crashes suddenly block their way and when the journalists attempt to return the next day, the roadworks suddenly reappear again. Members of a Reuters crew reported being tailed by a rotating cast of plain-clothed minders and “within an hour of the reporters leaving their hotel in the city of Kashgar through a back gate, barbed wire was erected across the exit and fire escapes on their floor were locked.”
While influencing journalists can sometimes be difficult, the expansion of blogging and social media influencing has opened up another avenue for state intervention. Travel vloggers who visit authoritarian countries say they just want to educate their viewers and avoid politics. Irish travel vlogger Janet Newenham told Al Jazeera after a controversial visit to Syria that “every country deserves to be shown in a different way and in a positive light even if most stuff about there has always been negative”. However, what can seem innocuous can take on more explicit political implications. “A lot of these vloggers are saying they’re apolitical in this and I’m sure that they are but the issue is, when you’re entering a conflict zone, your direct presence there becomes political,” researcher and adjunct professor, Sophie Kathyrn Fullerton told Al Jazeera.
A similar trend is increasingly evident in China. “I’m here because lots of people, right now, outside of China, want to know what Xinjiang is like,” says British vlogger, The China Traveller, at the start of a video, which focuses on him sampling a variety of local food while Uyghur women appeared to spontaneously dance behind him. Videos of this genre can be seen as part of what has been labelled the CCP’s project to “Disneyfy” Xinjiang. Uyghur culture has been co-opted by the state and amplified as a tourist attraction to change the narrative and drown out reports of genocide against the Uyghur community. In another video, The China Traveller praises the central government for rebuilding sections of the city, while failing to address the government’s other influence on the Xinjiang skyline: the mass demolition of religious institutions.
While Chinese culture is celebrated by The China Traveller and other vloggers in Xinjiang, French photographer Andrew Wack had a different experience when he returned to the region in 2019. Speaking to Wired a year after his trip, Wack commented on the stark absence of “men aged 20 to 60, many of whom had likely been rounded up and herded into indoctrination camps”. Throughout his visit, he was followed by plain-clothes police officers “and at checkpoints he was sometimes asked to show his photographs. On one occasion, he was asked to delete images”.
Many vloggers and journalists obscure any coordination or funding from Chinese bodies, or underplay how it may affect their coverage. Lee Barrett, a British vlogger, states in a video, “we go on some sponsored trips to places … our accommodation is paid for, our travel is paid for … nobody tells us what to say, nobody tells us what to film”. Due to the opaque nature of these relationships, it is impossible to interrogate the influence this type of support has on the vloggers’ reporting. However at times this veil is lifted. In a number of popular videos, minders sent by the Chinese state to monitor another vloggers’ trip can be clearly seen monitoring their behaviour.
When the BBC’s lead China reporter, John Sudworth, was invited into Xinjiang’s ‘re-education’ camps, he was presented with a highly choreographed and Disneyfied presentation of Xinjiang culture, which apparently even moved the Chinese officials accompanying the BBC crew to tears. However, Sudworth’s commitment to “peer beneath the official messaging and hold it up to as much scrutiny as we could” led him to scrutinise everything, including scraps of graffiti written in Uyghur and Chinese. This approach has had lasting consequences; he now reports on China from abroad, having had his visa revoked.
In modern day China, independent reporting from foreigners is one of the few avenues left in order to scrutinise power beyond the dominant state narrative. However, through the funding and coordination of junkets, training opportunities and other tactics, the Chinese state has followed in the footsteps of Assad’s Syria to try and control the message these foreigners send out into the world. This turns the principles of journalism against itself and manipulates the free expression environment in favour of the state.
Edgar Snow remains venerated in China. In 2021, the Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying proclaimed on Twitter: “China hopes to see and welcome more Edgar Snows of this new era among foreign journalists”. John Sudworth provides a powerful counterweight, reminding us that we must “peer beneath the official messaging and hold it up to as much scrutiny as we could”.
- The authors approached The China Traveller and Lee Barrett for comment for this article. No response had been received by the time of going to press.
