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How does one avoid being a potential target for murder by a jihadist? If you’re Jewish, you probably can’t, unless you attempt to somehow stop being Jewish (though I suspect, much like the proto-nazi mayor of Vienna, Karl Lueger, IS reserves the right to decide who is a Jew).
Everyone else? Well, we can be a little quieter. We can, perhaps, not hold meetings with people who have drawn pictures of Mohammed. We can, perhaps, recognise that the right to free speech comes with responsibilities, as The Guardian’s Hugh Muir wrote. The responsibility to be respectful; the responsibility not to provoke; the responsibility not to get our fool selves shot in our thick heads.
This seemed to be the message coming after last weekend’s atrocity in Copenhagen. Oddly, I just found myself hesitating while typing the word “atrocity” there. Felt a little dramatic. Because already, amid the condemnations and what ifs? and what abouts? that have dogged us since this wretched year kicked into gear with the murders in Paris, already, the pattern seems set. Young Muslim men in Europe get guns, and then try, and for the most part succeed, in killing Jews and cartoonists, or people who happen to be in the same room as cartoonists. Then the condemnation comes, then the self-examination: what is it that’s wrong with Europe that makes people do these things? The things we definitely know are wrong are inequality and racism, so that’s where we focus our attentions. Europe’s past rapaciousness in the Middle East, or its recent and current interventions: these, on a societal level, are believed to be mistakes, so they too, must be examined (it could be argued that non-intervention, particularly in Syria, has been at least as much of a factor).
What else? Maybe we caused offence. Maybe we crossed a line when we allowed those cartoonists to draw those pictures. Maybe that’s it. We’ve offended two billion or so Muslims, and of course, some of them are bound to react more strongly than others. So we’d best be nice to them in future (we leave the implied “or else” hanging). And being nice means not upsetting people.
This is, as I’m fairly certain I’ve written before, a patronising and divisive way of looking at the world. Patronising because of the casual assumption that Muslims are inevitably drawn to violence by their commitment to their faith, and divisive both because it sets a double standard and because it entrenches the notion that Muslims are somehow outside of “us” in European society.
That divisiveness is not merely useful to xenophobes and Islamophobes. It is equally important in the agenda for many types of Islamist.
Take a small but instructive example. The BBC Two comedy Citizen Khan is possibly the most normal portrayal of Muslims British mainstream comedy has ever seen. The lead character started life as an absurd “community leader” in the brilliant BBC 2 spoof documentary Bellamy’s People, before morphing into an archetypal bumbling silly sitcom patriarch in his own successful show.
Citizen Khan is a classic British sitcom in which the family happen to be practicing Muslims. It is not cutting-edge comedy, boldly taking on racial and religious blah blah blah; it’s family entertainment.
Cause for celebration, surely, that practicing Muslims are being portrayed as normal people rather than radical weirdos? Not according to the risibly-titled Islamic Human Rights Commission, a small group of Ayatollah Khomeini fans who have nominated Citizen Khan for its annual Islamophobia award, claiming the show features “Muslims depicted as racist, sexist and backward. Obviously”. They don’t want to see Muslims on television as normal people, because that would undermine the division they seek to engender. I doubt any of the people at the IHRC who suggested Citizen Khan was Islamophobic are genuinely hurt or offended by the programme; if they are, it’s because it features a portrayal of Muslim people, by Muslim people, that they cannot control. It’s really got nothing to do with “offence”.
Likewise, I refuse to believe that the killers of Paris or Copenhagen have been sitting around stewing for years over “blasphemous” cartoons. To imagine that these murders took place because of perceived slight or offence is to cast them as crimes of passion. I don’t buy it. These were, at best in the eyes of the killers, legal executions for the crime of blasphemy, carried out because their interpretation of the law demanded that they do so.
The same interpretation of the law means that these men are allowed, mandated even, to kill Jews. So that is what they do.
However much cant we spill about “no rights without responsibilities” (that is, the preposterous “responsibility” not to offend), the fact that people are being murdered for who they are rather than what they did should make us realise that there is no responsibility we can exercise that will mitigate the core problem: a murderous totalitarian ideology has taken hold. It has territory, it has machinery, it has propaganda, and it has a certain dark appeal, just as totalitarian ideologies before have had. ISIS or Daesh or whatever you choose to call it is calling people to its cause. AQAP competes for adherents.
Some will point to the previous violent criminal records of the killers in Paris and Copenhagen and say “You see? They were mere thugs: the ideology barely comes into it.” But come on, who do you think the Brownshirts recruited? Bookish dentists? The fact that thugs are drawn to a thuggish ideology mitigates neither.
This week, Denmark’s only Jewish radio station went off air due to security concerns. This is where responsibilities before rights leads us. Shut up, keep quiet, and if something happens then it’s your fault for being irresponsible. Irresponsible enough to wish to practice your culture and religion freely. Irresponsible enough to “offend” murderers with your very existence. This line of thinking is not just cowardly, it is accusatory.
The correct answer to the request that we show responsibility with our rights, is, as revolutionary socialist James Connolly put it, “a high-minded assertion” of rights themselves. Not just the right to speak freely, but the right to live freely.
Rafael Marques de Morais is an Angolan journalist and human rights activist. He is currently facing nine charges of defamation after publishing on human rights abuses committed during diamond mining operations in Angola. Since 2008 he has run an anti-corruption watchdog news site called Maka Angola – “maka” means a serious, nuanced problem.
Marques has dedicated his career to investigating his country’s maka: ingrained corruption in Angolan government and industry, and the repeated violation of Angolans’ human rights. This culminated in his 1999 article The Lipstick of Dictatorship, which said Angolan President José Eduardo dos Santos was propagating the country’s civil war to distract attention from his regime’s “incompetence, embezzlement and corruption”.
In retaliation, Marques was arrested and detained for 40 days without charge, during which time he was denied food and water for days at a time. His six-month sentence for defamation of dos Santos was then suspended on condition that he wrote nothing critical of the government for five years. Within three years he was writing a series of reports documenting government-sponsored human rights abuses in Angolan province Cabinda.
Journalists in Angola are routinely threatened for speaking against the state – seven have been murdered since 1992, including a pro-opposition radio presenter who was shot in 2010. Rights activists are also targeted. In November 2014, a female student was beaten for two hours by a group of police officers for taking part in an anti-government demonstration.
In terms of its natural resources Angola is one of the world’s richest countries, with extensive deposits of oil and diamonds under its surface. The end of the country’s civil war in 2002 paved the way for enormous economic growth: in the subsequent decade the government budget grew from $6 billion to $69 billion, as oil and diamond sales rocketed.
But this financial influx hasn’t trickled down to the Angolan populace, 70 per cent of whom still live on less than $2 a day. Angola is ranked 161st out of 175 countries in Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index. It’s easy to see why – between 2007 and 2010 $32 billion in oil revenue went unaccounted for in government ledgers.
Recently Marques has focused on following money trails between government figures and business leaders, especially in diamond and oil industries. A highlight of this work is his 2013 collaboration with Forbes magazine investigating the president’s daughter Isabel dos Santos, and the provenance of her $3.9 billion wealth. dos Santos, styled ‘Princess’ of Angola, is the richest woman in Africa – but Marques’ thorough investigations reveal the extent to which her father used his power to cut her into business deals.
Marques’ leading investigative work into corruption and human rights abuses at Angola’s diamond companies was distilled into his 2011 book Blood Diamonds: Torture and Corruption in Angola. He recounted 500 cases of torture and 100 murders of villagers living near diamond mines, carried out by private security companies and military officials.
Marques declared the bosses of these groups morally responsible for the atrocities committed under them, and filed charges of crimes against humanity against seven Angolan generals. After his case was dropped by the prosecution, the generals launched a series of retaliation lawsuits in Angola and Portugal, charging Marques with criminal libel. They are demanding a total of $1.6 million from Marques. The case will begin in March 2015.
In spite of the impending trial, last month Marques began publishing a series of pieces on land-grabbing generals who have displaced agrarian workers around Angola.
Writers discuss the representation of refugees in novels and plays. What ethical questions are involved? Is there a responsibility to represent refugees positively? How do you balance reportage with storytelling? What responsibility, if any, does the creative writer have to represent refugees positively or to tackle negative views?
Featured writers:
Nadifa Mohamed, author of Black Mamba Boy (winner of the Betty Trask Prize) and The Orchard Of Lost Souls. (“A haunting and intimate portrait of the lives of women in war-torn Somalia . . . it captures the bleakness of war and the triumph of the human spirit.” —Meenakshi Venkat, New York Journal of Books)
Chris Cleave, author of books including The Other Hand (“A powerful piece of art… shocking, exciting and deeply affecting.” – Independent). His other novels are Incendiary and Gold. He won the 2006 Somerset Maugham Award and was short-listed for the Costa Book Prize for The Other Hand.
Zodwa Nyoni, poet and playwright whose play Nine Lives is set to for a UK Tour later this year (“Nyoni’s interweaving of naturalism and poetry is superb, and lifts this show far beyond documentary, into unforgettable solo drama about one of the key experiences of our time.” The Scotsman). Her new play Boi Boi Is Dead also opens in 2015.
Tim Finch, author of The House of Journalists (“A savagely funny broadside aimed at the industry of suffering” Metro “[An] effective mixture of often-light comedy and often-brutal reportage from the front line against tyranny” Daily Mail) and former Director of Communications at the Refugee Council.
Presented by Counterpoints Arts and Platforma Arts & Refugees Network in association with Index on Censorship.
Where: RichMix 35-47 Bethnal Green Road, London, E1 6LA When: Tue 21 April, 7:30pm Tickets: £5 / Book here
Lirio Abbate is an investigative journalist working for the weekly news magazine L’Espresso. Abbate specialises in investigating the criminal activity and political connections of Italian mafia groups, from whom he is routinely subjected to violent threats.
“In Italy a synonym of censorship is ‘threat’: the concrete threats and intimidation that criminals use to discourage journalists from telling the truth about underworld activities. Unfortunately there are journalists who yield to the mafia. But there are reporters who do their jobs well and are threatened. I fight against the mafia through my articles and my books,” he told Index via email.
He is in his eighth year of living under 24-hour protection by armed police and travelling in an armoured car. Police took this step in 2007 after intercepting phone calls discussing plans to kill the journalist – soon after, his police escort caught men placing a bomb under his car.
“The mafia in Sicily, where I began my career, is strong and in the last 30 years politicians, priests, labour leaders, judges, policemen and journalists have been killed,” Abbate said. “The attacks against my life failed thanks to the Palermo police who told me it was necessary for me to leave my home because of the constant danger.”
The attempted murder was retaliation for Abbate’s co-authored book, I Complici (The Accomplices), one of four Abbate has written about mafia groups since 1993. The most recent, Fimmine Ribelli or Rebel Women (2013), illustrates the severe plight of women living under the sway of the ’Ndrangheta, the Calabrian mafia.
Through his investigative work, Abbate has helped expose complicit public figures who turn a blind eye to the mafia’s activities. His 2012 article The Four Kings of Rome brought public attention to drug- and people-trafficking carried out by Rome’s mafia groups – and also gained Abbate the attention of the mafia bosses. One of Rome’s “kings”, Massimo Carminati, was heard on a wiretap saying “We must put a stop to that reporter from L’Espresso”.
“In a few days my new book will be published. In it, I’m reporting about the inquiry known as ‘mafia capitale’ that judges have conducted in Rome. It’s the story about the worrying collusion between criminals and Rome’s city administrators. It’s a mafia system that is very well rooted and organised, and able to deal with and take possession of commercial and entrepreneurial activities at every level, using violence and corruption as its main weapons,” Abbate wrote to Index.
In addition to his journalistic work, Abbate is a leading member of a press freedom NGO called Ossigeno per l’informazione or Oxygen via information. He has also founded an anti-mafia literary festival called Trame, which takes place annually in the heart of Calabrian mafia territory.
Abbate’s extensive work linking Rome’s mafia groups and neofascist organisations put him back on the radar of Italy’s mafia networks in 2014. In September, a suspiciously parked car outside his office was searched and found to contain a high-caliber bullet, with a note saying “This is for Abbate”.
Then, one evening in November, Abbate found himself followed while being driven home from work by his police escort. The tailgating car was so close that when Abbate’s car stopped, the driver behind rammed into him, then sped off in the opposite direction.
In 2014 Abbate was named an information hero by Reporters Without Borders, and was also given the Giuseppe Fava award for his work on organised crime.
“Freedom of expression is the key principle of my work,” Abbate wrote. “It’s an honour to be nominated and it’s proof that we’re on the right track, that reporting is necessary to free ourselves from criminal systems that slacken and undermine our society.”
Screening: Cartoonists – Foot Soldiers of Democracy
Directed by Stéphanie Valloatto | 2013 | French with English Subtitles | 110 Mins
In the wake of the recent tragic events in Paris, this powerful and moving film follows 12 loveable and courageous cartoonists – from Tel Aviv, Moscow, New York, Caracas, and Paris – as they brilliantly capture the comedy and tragedy in the world, armed with just a pencil.
Produced by acclaimed Jewish director Radu Mihaileanu (Live and Become, The Concert), Cartoonists is a unique opportunity to explore close-up the difficullties and dangers for those who practice this extraordinary profession. ‘The cartoonists permanently test the degree of democracy in their country and put themselves in the frontline’ explains Mihaileanu, ‘they are the foot soldiers of democracy’.
‘Just like the best political cartoons, Cartoonists manages to synthesize a vast subject in ways both insightful and, at times, frightfully funny’ – Hollywood Reporter
This screening will be followed by a discussion featuring:
Martha Richler, an acclaimed political cartoonist, whose cartoons are also represented in the collection of the Victoria & Albert Museum, and in the Charles Saatchi Collection.
David Aaronovitch, a journalist and a regular columnist for The Times, and author (Paddling to Jerusalem: An Aquatic Tour of Our Small Country, Voodoo Histories: the role of Conspiracy Theory in Modern History). He won the Orwell Prize for political journalism in 2001, and the What the Papers Say “Columnist of the Year” award for 2003.
Jodie Ginsberg, CEO of Index on Censorship, and a former Bureau Chief of Reuters in the UK.
Where: JW3 Howard Hall 341-351 Finchley Road, London NW3 6ET When: Wednesday 25 February 2015 8.00pm Tickets: £5-£10 / Book here
This week we will be showcasing our shortlisted nominees from the journalism category. This year’s nominees include Lirio Abbate, an Italian journalist whose investigations into the mafia mean he requires round-the-clock police protection; Safa Al Ahmad, whose documentary exposed details of an unreported mass uprising in Saudi Arabia; radio station Echo of Moscow, one of Russia’s last remaining independent media outlets; and Rafael Marques de Morais, an Angolan reporter repeatedly prosecuted for his work exposing government and industry corruption.
Tuesday: Documentary maker Safa Al Ahmad
Wednesday: Investigative journalist Lirio Abbate
Thursday: Journalist and human rights activist Rafael Marques de Morais
Friday: Radio station Ekho Moskvy
In 2003, internationally recognised journalist Fergal Keane was the first to win an award under the journalism category, however, the previous year Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who was killed in 2006, won the Defence of Free Expression award. In 2001 the same award was given to Iranian journalist, Mashallah Shamsolvaezin.
Safa Al Ahmad is a Saudi journalist and documentary maker who has spent the last three years covertly filming an unreported mass uprising in Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province.
Her 30-minute documentary, Saudi’s Secret Uprising, was broadcast by the BBC in May 2014, and has drawn widespread attention to the violent and bloody protests.
Al Ahmad took enormous risks in her regular filming trips to the Eastern Province. First, as a woman travelling alone, she drew the attention of Saudi officials, who operate in a country in which women have limited control over their day-to-day lives. Second, she carried a camera full of footage of dissenting activists. Saudi Arabia is ranked by Freedom House as one of the most restrictive Arab countries in terms of free expression – Al Ahmad would almost certainly have faced severe punishment if caught filming.
She also directed Al Qaeda in Yemen: A new front in 2012, documenting one of the militant group’s principal strongholds; she is currently editing her second Yemen documentary. Her article about the restrictive treatment of women in Saudi Arabia compared to neighbouring Arab countries, Wishful Thinking, was featured in the PEN award-winning book Diaries of an Unfinished Revolution.
Al Ahmad’s film work was done in Qatif, an urban area home to the world’s biggest oil field. But the dilapidated area has seen little of the vast wealth provided by these natural reserves. Qatif is the centre of Shia Muslims in Saudi Arabia, who make up less than 15 per cent of the country’s population. Residents believe that they are subject to sectarian discrimination by the Sunni monarchy.
Impoverished and blocked from celebrating Shia religious festivals by authorities, people from across the Eastern Province began peacefully demonstrating in March 2011. Buoyed by the ongoing Arab Spring, the protests for improved civil rights quickly gained traction, becoming the biggest series of political demonstrations ever witnessed in Saudi Arabia.
But faced with a government which refused to meaningfully engage with protesters or recognise the demonstrations as a serious issue, activists soon turned violent. Stones and molotov cocktails were thrown at police forces, and handguns were increasingly used. In the subsequent two years of conflict, 20 activists and two policemen were killed, and hundreds of people were detained for months at a time without trial.
Al Ahmad single-handedly broke the media blackout on the protests holding sway both inside and outside the country, where the image of Saudi Arabia as a relatively stable region has dominated. She travelled into the heart of the violence and searched, sometimes for months, for protesters willing to speak to her. She interviewed activists on the government’s most wanted list, who would later be killed or imprisoned. Eventually, she gained the activists’ trust to the point that she was given dozens of hours of footage of the violent protests.
Extensive and violent online abuse has been directed at Al Ahmad by Saudi government supporters. They regard the documentary as sectarian propaganda, even though the documentary ends by showing the destructive belligerence of many protesters.
She has sparked a row between the BBC and the Saudi government, who contacted the broadcaster to express their displeasure at the documentary’s characterisation of events. She has been informally advised not to return to the country, where her family live.
Free speech is under attack. We need to defend it.
On Friday night, I moderated a public debate to discuss hate speech in the wake of Charlie Hebdo. The panellists were free speech experts and academics. The London audience was the largely familiar bunch of interested activists and writers, plus a handful of individuals newly interested in questions of free speech following the Paris attacks.
I left the debate feeling energised and upbeat: if one good thing had come out of the horrors of Paris, it was a renewed interest in debating the value of free speech, I thought. People might not always agree with our position – that incitement to violence should be the only legal limits placed on free speech – but at least there were more people interested in hearing the debate. That willingness to listen, to hear the views of others, as well as the ability to express them is – after all – what lies at the heart of free expression.
Less than 24 hours later, came news that at a similar event – a seminar discussing art and blasphemy in Copenhagen – a gunman had shot at the audience, killing a 55-year old filmmaker. This was an event just like ours. One of the speakers was controversial in a way none of ours had been – a Swedish cartoonist who had lampooned the Prophet Mohammed – but otherwise there was little difference: a small-scale event, with a small audience seeking to understand the benefits of free speech, and its challenges, one of many such events that have been held since the Charlie Hebdo attacks.
That incident generated intense debate about what constitutes offence, about whom we should be allowed to insult and how, even about the quality of satire. And it spurred a host of declarations that began “I support free speech” and which then almost always came with a qualification: “I support free speech, but I don’t think it’s right to offend anyone…” or “I support free speech, but if you insult my mother then it’s OK for me to punch you…” or “I support satire, but only when it’s good art…”.
If you were one of those people, try thinking about this: I find it offensive that in many parts of the world people are regularly beaten, jailed and murdered for daring to follow a different belief system or for daring to suggest they want a democratic government. I find it offensive that the majority of decisions in the UK parliament, in the judiciary, in the arts, are made by a small group of people who can shut out the views of large swathes of the population. I find the portrayal of women by much of the British media offensive. These things make me angry. But the fact that I find them offensive or anger-inducing cannot, and should never, be used as an excuse for shutting down their speech. Because that is exactly how millions of people are silenced the world over, how repressive regimes thrive through law, or through violence, or both. And what protects people’s rights to say things I find objectionable is precisely what protects my right to object.
Site of the 14th February 2015 terrorist attack on a debate discussing blasphemy and artistic expression at Krudttønden in Copenhagen, Denmark. (Photo: Benno Hansen / Flickr)
While Saturday’s deadly attack in Copenhagen has many similarities to the one on French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, one aspect sets it apart and marks a dangerous evolution in the assassin’s veto.
The attack on Charlie Hebdo targeted the magazine and its editors and journalists. So was the attack against Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard who in 2010 escaped an axe wielding Islamist by fleeing into a panic room. Other foiled attacks against Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten have been spectacular — one involved decapitating all journalists present and throwing their severed heads onto the street below — but also “limited” to the perceived offenders.
But when 22 year old Omar Abdel Hamid El-Hussein opened fire on café Krudttønden (in an area of Copenhagen where I was born and raised) he was attacking not only controversial Swedish cartoonist Lars Vilks. He was in fact targeting all the participants at a debate on free speech and Islam. Neither the film director who was killed nor any other participants (apart from Vilks) had anything to do with the cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed drawn by Vilks. For all we know some of the participants may have been offended by the cartoon and other material mocking Islam and would have expressed such feelings had they been given the chance.
That is after all the whole purpose of debate — differing viewpoints meeting and testing and probing each other’s strengths and weaknesses and thereby enlightening the public at large. By attacking such a public debate Abdel Hamid El Hussein and his enablers sent out a most disturbing message: to earn a death sentence for offending Islam, it is no longer necessary to actually make “offensive” expressions. Participating in a public debate on free speech and Islam will suffice.
That message is likely to have profound consequences for public debate on the very issues that are now more important for free societies to discuss than ever. For who can be expected to stage a debate on Islam and free speech, when it involves risking your life? Who would want to be part of the next panel involving Flemming Rose or Salman Rushdie, and who would be willing to act like sitting ducks in the audience? The few people brave enough to actually cross the red lines of the assassin’s veto will then have to think of the considerable costs involved in providing adequate security, and those participants willing to attend would then have to pay through the nose to risk their own lives.
One can only hope that these pernicious effects of the Copenhagen attack will cause what Salman Rushdie has labelled the “but-brigade” to reconsider the half baked defense of free speech that has become so characteristic since the Danish cartoon affair unleashed a global battle of values between free speech and religion. It should be clear that a free society cannot accommodate with special protection feelings of insult and offense that encompass the mere staging of a public debate on subjects of religion and politics. One also hopes that the victims of the Copenhagen shooting will be spared the shameful accusations of “racism” and “islamophobia” that were soon charged at Charlie Hebdo after the attack in Paris.
Despite the grim realities that confront free speech in contemporary Europe, I’m afraid that we must summon our courage and insist that no topics are off the table in public discourse and that murderers cannot be allowed to decide when, where and what we choose to discuss. The responsibility for crossing those red lines falls heavily on those of us who like to think of ourselves as the guardians of free speech.
Living in liberal democracies most of us will not have had much reason to fear for our safety as part of our free speech advocacy. But if we are serious about defending the right to offend, those of us heeding that call will have to stick our necks out too and get up on the podium next to the Flemming Roses, Salman Rushdies and Yahya Hassans of the world, armed with nothing more than the courage of our convictions.
Growth can only happen when old obsolete ideas are replaced with newer, relevant ones. If we don’t challenge the established system of thought, we can’t move forward. If ideas that don’t work anymore aren’t rejected, new ones won’t find space. Without new and better ideas there is no movement in any field. Freedom of speech and expression is fundamental to that forward movement and as Salman Rushdie said, “What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist”
We opened up the debate with Charlie Hebdo on our minds. The Hebdo massacre changed the world. Now there is an actual discourse on free expression across the globe. The world is coming together and expressing themselves collectively. Our twitter feed is proof of that. While a lot of people believe that the right to offend comes with the right to free expression, there are people who say that anything that leads to violence is wrong, and there is a fine line there which needs to be observed.
This is where we draw the line: somewhere in the ever-changing grey area between absolutism and stagnancy.
Below, are some young people from across India, who used photographs to join the #IndexDrawtheLine discussion. If you’d like to join the debate, tweet your photos or answers to #IndexDrawtheLine.
“The use of violence on a gathering exploring the intersection of religious and artistic freedom should send shivers down our spines.
“The Charlie Hebdo murders inspired intensified public debate about free speech and its value. Many people who had previously given little thought to free speech were drawn for the first time into online discussions or attended events to help them get a better understanding of the issues. It would be terrible if violent acts such as that in Copenhagen shut down free speech even further.”
“The ability to express ourselves freely, to attend meetings and debates without fear of violence, is fundamental to a free society. Free speech must be protected.
“This is not just about cartoons or offence. If violence is allowed to win, free speech – and all of our ability to be who we are, practice what religion we like, have relationships with whomever we want – dies.”
This collection was prepared for the EU NGO Forum that took place on 8-9 December 2005 and revised in 2006.
At the end of the Maastricht summit in l992, the Council of Ministers reported on what they saw as a paradox of history: that racism had increased as democracy had spread through the post-communist world. Not such a paradox really. As Hans Magnus Enzensburger once said:‘With democracy, all the dirt comes out.’
Index believes that free expression is the freedom on which all others are based. Ronald Dworkin famously said in its pages that free speech is what makes people feel human, makes them feel their lives matter. But we also need to be clear about our fierce defence of free expression – that there are prices to be paid for it – and we need to be clear about the cost, and who is paying it.
Hate speech – abusive, dehumanising, inciting discrimination and violence – is an integral part of the ‘dirt’ that goes with democracy, often directed at ethnic minorities, gays or women. It is certainly the most troubling matter for people who believe in free speech, and there has been fierce debate over the years about that difficult borderline between free speech and the demand for equality of respect – not least in the pages of Index on Censorship over its 33 years of existence.
But then, on 11 September 2001, the world changed, and hate speech acquired another, newer relevance. The ‘war on terrorism’ (a war that may never end, according to US Vice President Dick Cheney) put civil liberties under threat worldwide. And since then the right to free expression has too often become a fragile filling, sandwiched between the imperatives of security and fears about acts of terrorism. In these dangerous times, hate speech is centre stage, and the ways in which we respond to it are crucial to our future.
The importance of free expression is as great as ever, as is the need to debate openly difficult issues – ones which may cause pain, offence, anger. Nobody ever said free expression was easy. Index’s purpose is to do its small part in creating a world in which the right to speak for oneself becomes the condition for allowing those who speak antagonistic moral languages to hear each other. We hope Words & Deeds will play its part.
Ursula Owen
former Editor in Chief, Index on Censorship
December 2005
With essays and contributions by:
RONALD DWORKIN A new map of censorship
TOM STOPPARD Is there ever a time & place for censorship?
ARYEH NEIER Clear & present danger
VALERIU NICOLAE Words that kill
REMZI LANI Hate speech & hate silence
OLEG PANFILOV The rebirth of nationalism
HANEEN ZOUBI Follow the tune, relay the message
JONATHAN FREEDLAND Where the lines are drawn
MARTIN ROWSON A classic Stripsearch cartoon from Index on Censorship
SARFRAZ MANZOOR Thou shalt not give offence
KENAN MALIK Are Muslims hated in Britain?
AGNÈS CALLAMARD Striking the right balance
ANTHONY HUDSON Free speech & bad laws – what can be done?
AMIR BUTLER Warning from Australia: don’t legislate against hate
MARY KENNY When speech became treason
PAUL OPPENHEIMER In the name of democracy
DD GUTTENPLAN Should freedom of speech extend to Holocaust denial?
AIDAN WHITE Journalism & intolerance: setting standards for media action
RONALD KOVEN Put your own house in order first
RICHARD SAMBROOK Think what you say
KENAN MALIK Say what you think
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