12 Feb 15 | Digital Freedom, mobile, News and features, United Kingdom
In his new ebook, tech expert Jamie Bartlett describes what he sees as the long-term ‘Snowden effect’: the explosion of new ways to keep online secrets and protect privacy, and the challenges that presents for state security services. In this extract, Bartlett uncovers some of the more revolutionary plans in the privacy pipeline.
Motivated by an honourable desire to protect online freedom and privacy, hundreds of computer scientists and internet specialists are working on ingenious ways of keeping online secrets, preventing censorship, and fighting against centralised control. A veritable army motivated by a desire for privacy and freedom, trying to wrestle back control for ordinary people. This is where the long-term effects will be felt.
Soon there will be a new generation of easy-to-use, auto-encryption internet services. Services such as MailPile, and Dark Mail – email services where everything is automatically encrypted. Then there’s the Blackphone – a smart phone that encrypts and hides everything you’re doing. There are dozens – hundreds, perhaps – of new bits of software and hardware like this that cover your tracks, being developed as you read this – and mainly by activists motivated not by profit, but by privacy. Within a decade or so I think they will be slick and secure, and you won’t need to be a computer specialist to work out how they work. We’ll all be using them.
And there are even more revolutionary plans in the pipeline. An alternative way of organising the internet is being built as we speak, an internet where no one is in control, where no one can find you or shut you down, where no one can manipulate your content. A decentralised world that is both private and impossible to censor.
Back in 2009, in an obscure cryptography chat forum, a mysterious man called Satoshi Nakamoto invented the crypto-currency Bitcoin.* It turns out the real genius of Bitcoin was not the currency at all, but the way that it works. Bitcoin creates an immutable, unchangeable public copy of every transaction ever made by its users, which is hosted and verified by every computer that downloads the software. This public copy is called the ‘blockchain’. Pretty soon, enthusiasts figured out that the blockchain system could be used for anything. Armed with 30,000 Bitcoins (around $12 million) of crowdfunded support, the Ethereum project is dedicated to creating a new, blockchain-operated internet. Ethereum’s developers hope the system will herald a revolution in the way we use the net – allowing us to do everything online directly with each other, not through the big companies that currently mediate our online interaction and whom we have little choice but to trust with our data.
Already others have applied this principle to all sorts of areas. One man built a permanent domain name system called Namecoin; another an untraceable email system call Bitmessage.
Perhaps the most interesting of all is a social media platform called Twister, a version of Twitter that is completely anonymous and almost impossible to censor. Miguel Freitas, the Brazilian who spent three months building it, tells me he was sparked into action when he read that David Cameron had considered shutting down Twitter after the 2011 riots. ‘The internet alone won’t help information flow,’ Freitas says, ‘if all the power is in the hands of a few people.’
This trend towards decentralised, encrypted systems has become an important aspect of the current crypto-wars.† MaidSafe is a UK start-up that, in a similar way, wants to redesign the internet infrastructure towards a peer-to-peer communications network, without centralised servers. Its developers are building a network made up of contributing computers, with each one giving up a bit of its unused hard drive. You access the network, and the network accesses the computers. Everything is encrypted, and data is stored across the entire network, which makes hacking or spying extremely difficult, if not impossible.
Nick Lambert, the Chief Operating Officer for MaidSafe, explained to me the vision. When you open a browser and surf the web it might feel like a seamless process, but there are all manner or rules and systems that clutter up the system: domain name servers, company servers, routing protocols, security protocols. This is the stuff that keeps the internet going: rules that route your request for traffic, servers that host that web page you’re after, systems that certify for your computer that the site you’re trying to access isn’t bogus. Because it all happens at the speed of light, it doesn’t feel cluttered up, of course.
But all these little stages and protocols create invisible centres of power, explains Nick – be they governments, big tech companies or invisible US-based regulators – and they are all exercising control over what happens on the net. That’s bad for security, and bad for privacy. MaidSafe strips all this out. The end result, says Nick, will be a network that is very difficult to censor and offers more privacy. ‘Even if we wanted to censor users’ content, we couldn’t – because with this system we don’t know or have access to anything the users do.
They’re in control.’ Nick accepts some people will misuse it – but that’s true of almost any technology. ‘Kitchen knives can cause harm,’ he says, ‘but you wouldn’t ban kitchen knives.’
As I see it, this powerful combination of public appetite and new technology means staying hidden online will become easier and more sophisticated. It might feel unlikely at a time when every click and swipe is being collected by someone somewhere, but in the years ahead, it will be harder for external agencies to monitor or collect what we share and see; and censorship will become far more difficult. A golden age of privacy and freedom. Perhaps.
* You’ve probably heard of this pseudonymous digital cash because it was, and still is, the currency of choice on the illegal online drugs markets.
† And increasingly, I predict, politics. Although no political parties – save the occasional fringe party – have given any thought to what crypto-currencies might mean. What does a modern centre-left party think of crypto-currency, or of blockchain decentralisation? They have no idea.
@JamieJBartlett is the director of Centre for the Analysis of Social Media, Demos and a tech blogger for @telegraph.
This extract was published on 12 February 2015 at indexoncensorship.org with the author’s permission.
12 Feb 15 | mobile, News and features, United Kingdom
(Illustration: Shutterstock)
Should we be worried about anti-Semitism in the United Kingdom? Wrong question. We should always be worried about anti-Semitism. There is no point at which we can relax about anti-Semitism in the UK. Should we be more worried about anti-Semitism in the UK?
Probably.
Britain’s All Party Parliamentary Group on Antisemitism has just released a report that unequivocally tells us we should be. The list of incidents in the UK that could reasonably be described as anti-Semitic is discouraging reading. Some are tied to the Israel/Hamas conflict, some are not. Some come under the cover of “legitimate criticism of Israel”, some do not bother to wear that cloak.
What does it mean to boycott an Israeli theatre production? Or to tell a Jewish film festival it cannot take money from the Israeli government? On a superficial level, it is, of course, nothing more than a simple stand against militarism, in solidarity with oppressed Palestinians. Of course. Jewishness has nothing to do with anything; though, you’d think, with their history, they’d know better. Better than persecuting others; better than standing out and blending in simultaneously, confusingly; better than once again bringing down wrath upon themselves.
And suddenly it’s all about Jewishness. And that’s how we get so quickly from picketing plays to supermarkets hiding kosher products for fear of vandalism.
And then there is the simple, straightforward, hatred: an attack on a north London kosher cafe; a Holocaust Memorial Day poster daubed with the word “liars”. A proposed Nazi march on a Jewish neighbourhood.
Anti-Jewish bigotry is not alone in this complexity: too often, too easily, criticism of political Islamism, or jihadist violence, spills into discrimination against Muslims. In the United States, and in Britain, “counter-jihad” really means “anti-Muslim”. Populist parties suddenly present themselves as deeply concerned about animal welfare in halal slaughterhouses, or even women’s rights, when it gives them a chance to make Muslims feel uncomfortable.
But this is not a competition, a race to find which people are more oppressed. Too often, concerns about anti-Semitism are shrugged off because Jews are perceived as, by and large, “comfortable”. This is to ignore how quickly such “comfort” can be upended, and has been in the past. And as if assumed financial status wasn’t a classic component of anti-Semitism in the first place.
The worry that little has really changed, and things may in fact be getting worse, is borne out in the All Party Parliamentary Group on Antisemitism’s paragraph on social media. To quote the report, which covers August to November 2014:
Tweets that read (sic): “The Jews now are worse than they were in Hitler’s time no wonder he wanted to get rid, right idea!!”, “If anyone still believes jews have a “right” to exist on this planet, you are a f****** moron” and “Somhow bring back Hitler.. Just for once to finish off the job he startd & show the Muslim world how to do it”
• Pictures shared on Twitter of individuals with waxworks of Hitler and accompanying antisemitic messages
• Antisemitic imagery such as that sent to Luciana Berger MP (for which the perpetrator was later prosecuted)
• An antisemitic trope about Jewish control of politicians referenced by a BBC journalist
• The presence of Hitlerian themes and imagery on Facebook comment chains for pro-Palestinian demonstrations, organised by groups such as Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Stop the War Coalition and Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.
So far, so familiar: at this stage it’s barely even worth pointing out that anti-Semitic comments were found on left-wing Facebook pages. We’ve seen how it works.
Can anything be done to change this? The APPG suggests that the Crown Prosecution Service examines the possibility of “prevention orders” (“internet ASBOs”, as they have been dubbed by the press), which would ban people expressing anti-Semitic views from posting on certain social media sites. The group expresses “limited” sympathy for social media providers in their efforts to control hate speech on their platforms, given the volume of content posted every day, while suggesting a greater role for prosecutors.
But will it really help to simply kick these people off Twitter? Bigotry existed and thrived long before the internet. It would be lazy to imagine that the best way to stop a phenomenon which sometimes manifests itself on the web would be to ban it from the web itself: that way lies complacency.
Three weeks ago, I attended the official Holocaust Memorial Day commemoration at Westminster Central Hall. There, to his credit, David Cameron told Holocaust survivors of the government’s plans to fund a Holocaust Learning Centre and a permanent memorial. Many of the remaining survivors of the Holocaust have spent their old age travelling the country, talking and talking and talking, telling the world. They understand that the only hope we have to stop a repeat of what happened is to keep on talking, to pass on the stories, to ensure no one has an excuse for ignorance about what they went through.
The risk with attempting to ban anti-Semitic language is that the ban becomes bigger than the counterspeech. The ban consumes, while the story fades. And if the story fades, the bigots can rebuild, this time on their terms, high on resentment and low on truth.
This article was posted on 12 February 2015 at indexoncensorship.org
11 Feb 15 | Azerbaijan, Azerbaijan Statements, mobile, News and features, Statements
In January, Index on Censorship reported on the beginning of the trial of human rights activist Rasul Jafarov, who is being tried on spurious charges. The Azerbaijani embassy has written to Index on Censorship responding to that article. This is the Index response to the embassy.
Dear Ambassador Tahir Taghizadeh,
Thank you for your letter in response to our report on the beginning of the trial of human rights and democracy activist Rasul Jafarov.
In your letter, you wrote:
“In my country, human rights and fundamental freedoms are ensured in full compliance with the national and international commitments that Azerbaijan has subscribed to. No one is persecuted for his/her political views and activities as proved by Azerbaijan’s vibrant political process and free and diverse media.”
We beg to differ with your point of view.
Azerbaijan’s record on human rights and a free press has been discussed with great concern at the international level many times in recent years.
In March 2012, Index on Censorship joined with Article 19, Human Rights House Foundation, International Federation of Journalists, Media Diversity Institute, Norwegian Helsinki Committee, Reporters Without Borders and World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers to co-produce Running Scared: Azerbaijan’s Silenced Voices. The report opened with this stark warning: “The current state of freedom of expression in Azerbaijan is alarming, as the cycle of violence against journalists and impunity for their attackers continues; journalists, bloggers, human rights defenders and political and civic activists face increasing pressure, harassment and interference from the authorities; and many who express opinions critical of the authorities – whether through traditional media, online, or by taking to the streets in protest – find themselves imprisoned or otherwise targeted in retaliation.”
In December 2012, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe issued a monitoring report that included the comments that the “situation with regard to basic freedoms, including freedom of expression, freedom of assembly and freedom of association is preoccupying. The committee expresses its alarm at reports by human rights defenders and domestic and international NGOs about the alleged use of so-called fabricated charges against activists and journalists. The combination of the restrictive implementation of freedoms with unfair trials and the undue influence of the executive results in the systemic detention of people who may be considered prisoners of conscience. Alleged cases of torture and other forms of ill-treatment at police stations, as well as the impunity of perpetrators, raise major concern”.
In April 2013, the Human Rights Council of the United Nations work group issued its report from Azerbaijan’s universal periodic review. Among the recommendations were suggestions for improvements on human rights and more specifically freedom of expression:
• Ensure the full enjoyment of the right to freedom of expression in line with country’s international commitments (Slovakia)
• Guarantee the rights to freedom of expression, association and peaceful assembly particularly by allowing peaceful demonstrations in line with the obligations stemming from the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (Switzerland);
• Put in place additional and fitting measures to ensure respect for freedom of expression and of the media (Cyprus);
• Ensure that Azerbaijani media regulations uphold diversity among media outlets, as per international standards and best practices (Cyprus);
• Expand media freedoms across print, online and, in particular, broadcast platforms, notably by ending its ban on foreign broadcasts on FM radio frequencies and eliminating new restrictions on the broadcast of foreign language television programs (Canada);
• Take effective measures to ensure the full realization of the right to freedom of expression, including on the Internet, of assembly and of association as well as to ensure that all human rights defenders, lawyers and other civil society actors are able to carry out their legitimate activities without fear or threat of reprisal (Czech Republic);
• Ensure that human rights defenders, lawyers and other civil society actors are able to carry out their legitimate activities without fear or threat of reprisal, obstruction or legal and administrative harassment (Sweden);
• Put an end to direct and indirect restrictions on freedom of expression and take effective measures to ensure the full realization of the right to freedom of expression and of assembly (Poland);
• Ensure the full exercise of freedom of expression for independent journalists and media, inter alia, by taking into due consideration the recommendations of the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights (Italy);
• Ensure that journalists and media workers are able to work freely and without governmental intimidation (Germany);
• Ensure that journalists and writers may work freely and without fear of retribution for expressing critical opinions or covering topics that the Government may find sensitive (Slovenia);
• Protect and guarantee freedoms of expression and association in order to enable human rights defenders, NGOs and other civil society actors to be able to conduct their activities without fear of being endangered or harassed (France);
• Strengthen measures to guarantee a safe and conducive environment for the free expression of civil society (Chile);
• Remove all legislative and practical obstacles for the registration, funding and work of NGOs in Azerbaijan (Norway);
• Ensure that all human rights violations against human rights defenders and journalists are investigated effectively and transparently, with perpetrators being promptly brought to justice, including pending unresolved cases requiring urgent attention (United Kingdom);
• Ensure prompt, transparent and impartial investigation and prosecution of all alleged attacks against independent journalists, ensuring that
the media workers do not face reprisals for their publications (Slovakia);
Though Azerbaijan has the modern legal framework in place to respond to these suggestions from the international community, the respect for the rule of law is sorely lacking.
In October 2013, Index on Censorship published Locking up free expression: Azerbaijan silences critical voices, which described the situation in your country in the run up to the presidential elections.
We wish that was the end of the story, that our insistence that Azerbaijan respect free of expression was based on outdated information or thoroughly implemented international recommendations.
But in 2014 the assault against journalists and human rights activists accelerated with detentions of well-respected individuals with international profiles and the temerity to speak some uncomfortable truths to the government of Azerbaijan.
These are just a few of the cases against journalists and human rights activists that we follow:
Anar Mammadli and Bashir Suleymanli
Anar Mammadli and Bashir Suleymanli — sentenced to 5.5 and 3.5 years respectively in May 2014 — are prominent human rights activists and founders of the Election Monitoring and Democracy Studies Centre. They were arrested and jailed in 2013, following outspoken criticism of presidential elections in October 2013, despite international protests. Those are the same polls that invited election observers from the OSCE found lacking. On 29 September 2014, Mammadli was awarded the Václav Havel Award for Human Rights by the Council of Europe.
Arif and Leyla Yunus (Photo: HRHN)
Leyla Yunus — arrested 30 July 2014 — is the director of the Peace and Democracy Institute, which among other things works to establish rule of law in Azerbaijan. She has been charged with state treason (article 274 of the Criminal Code of the Republic of Azerbaijan), large-scale fraud (article 178.3.2), forgery (article 320), tax evasion (article 213), and illegal business (article 192). On 18 February, her pre-trial detention was extended for another five months. Her husband Arif Yunus was arrested 5 August 2014. Arif Yunus is facing charges of state treason and fraud. Both have had their initial three month pre-trial detentions extended.
Human rights and democracy activist Rasul Jafarov (Photo: Melody Patry)
Rasul Jafarov — arrested 2 August 2014 — one of the initiators and coordinators of the campaign “Sing for Democracy” and “The Art of Democracy”, advocated for the rights of political prisoners, actively participated in the International Platform “Civil Solidarity.” He is accused of: tax evasion (Article 192), illegal business (Article 213) and malpractice (Article 308). The charges carry a possible sentence of 12 years.
Lawyer Intigam Aliyev
Intigam Aliyev — arrested 8 August 2014 — is a human rights defender and a lawyer specialized in defending rights of citizens in the European Court of Human Rights. He is charged with Articles 213.1 (tax evasion), 308.2 (malpractice) и 192.2 (illegal business) of the Criminal Code. Index was heartened to hear that Aliyev was at least allowed to sit with his lawyers in court on Feb 3.
Journalist Seymur Hezi
Seymur Hezi — arrested 29 August 2014 — works for independent newspaper Azadliq and host of the news programme “Azerbaijan Hour”. He is a member of the opposition Popular Front Party. Index reported on January 29 that Hezi was sentenced to a five-year prison sentence on charges of “aggravated hooliganism” on 29 January.
Emin Huseynov, journalist and human rights defender, director of the Azerbaijani Institute for Reporters’ Freedom and Safety (IRFS)
Emin Huseynov — went into hiding in August 2014 — is an internationally recognised human rights defender and leader of the Institute for Reporters’ Freedom and Safety (IRFS). IRFS is the leading media rights organisation in Azerbaijan and one of the main partner organisations of the Human Rights House Network in the country. Huseynov was charged with tax evasion, illegal business and abuse of authority after he went into hiding at the Swiss embassy. Florian Irminger, head of advocacy at the Human Rights House Foundation (HRHF), of which Index is a network member, called on Switzerland to continue to host Huseynov. “His location at the embassy is justified by the level of the repression in the country, the bogus charges brought against human rights defenders in Azerbaijan and the impossibility for them to defend themselves in court, due to the lack of independence of the judiciary and the harassment of their lawyers.”
Khadija Ismayilova
Khadija Ismayilova — arrested on 5 December — is an investigative journalist and radio host who is currently working for the Azerbaijani service of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. She is a member of the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project. She was arrested under charges of incitement to suicide, a charge widely criticised by human rights organizations. Ismayilova is currently being supported by two petition campaigns by Index on Censorship and Reporters Without Borders. On 13 Feb, lawyer Fariz Namazly told Contact.az that new charges have been filed. According to him, Ismayilova is charged under the Article: 179.3.2 (large-scale embezzlement), 192.2.2 (illegal business), 213.1 (tax evasion) and 308.2 (abuse of power.) The charges carry a possible sentence of 12 years.
Award-winning newspaper Azadliq was forced to halt its print edition in July 2014 as its bank accounts were frozen. We reported on this in August 2014.
In September, the European Parliament adopted a resolution on the human rights situation in your country.
In November, Nils Muižnieks, the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, called his autumn 2014 mission to Azerbaijan one of the most difficult of his tenure. He wrote, “In late October I was in Azerbaijan, the oil-rich country in the South Caucasus, which just finished holding the rotating chairmanship of the 47-member Council of Europe. Most countries chairing the organisation, which prides itself as the continent’s guardian of human rights, democracy and the rule of law, use their time at the helm to tout their democratic credentials. Azerbaijan will go down in history as the country that carried out an unprecedented crackdown on human rights defenders during its chairmanship.”
You mention in your letter that individuals are not being arrested for their human rights work but it seems an astonishing coincidence that all these prominent human rights defenders should all be guilty of such an array of financial crimes. And that brings us full circle to the present. Since we received your letter, there have been several developments that we would like to brief you on:
On 29 January 2015, a provisional resolution before the CoE called attention to the cases of investigative journalist Khadija Ismayilova, human rights activist Emin Huseynov and the closure of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Further on in the resolution PACE was being asked to call on Azerbaijan to properly investigate the murders of journalists Elmar Huseynov (2005) and Rafiq Tagi (2011).
On 3 Feb, President Aliyev signed an amended media law that restricts press freedom by making it easier to shutter media outlets.
Just today, Reporters Without Borders released its World Press Freedom Index 2015, which places Azerbaijan at 162. That’s down 2 spots from last 2014.
We wish Azerbaijan’s commitment to a “free and diverse media” was more than just words and we will continue to report on these detentions – as we do globally – for as long as these words are not translated into action.
Best regards
Jodie Ginsberg
Chief Executive
Index on Censorship
11 Feb 15 | Bahrain, mobile, News and features
Ali Abdulemam is a Bahraini blogger and founder of Bahrain Online, a pro-democracy news website and forum. He is also a member of research and advocacy group Bahrain Watch and a human rights defender with Bahrain Center for Human Rights. In August 2010, Abdulemam was arrested by Bahraini authorities, accused of “spreading false information” and imprisoned. He was released in February 2011 and subsequently went into hiding following anti-government protests and a crackdown by the government on protesters. Convicted in absentia for plotting to overthrow the government, Abdulemam was sentenced to 15 years in prison. In 2013, Abdulemam was granted political asylum in the UK.
Last week, Bahrain revoked Abdulemam’s citizenship along with another 71 Bahraini citizens, many of whom are journalists or bloggers. This is in contravention of Article 15 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states: “Everyone has the right to a nationality. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality.”
This is Abdulemam’s reflection on losing his citizenship.
When I first registered on Facebook back in 2005, I wrote in my biography “Lost Identity”. It wasn’t an expectation of what is going to happen to me 10 years on, so much as expressing my thoughts regarding “identity”, and how it works in everything around me, how it affects me, affects my way of thinking, the way I look into other people, the way I define things, this century we can call it the “Identity Era”.
I first heard the news about the stripping of my nationality while I was talking with a friend on the phone. A popup message in Whatsapp appeared, saying: “Urgent. 72 citizenships revoked.” I told him “I think my citizenship has been revoked” and he laughed at me. Hearing him laughing I opened the link to see the names and scrolled down to No. 49 and there was my name “ Ali Hasan Abdulla Abdulemam”. I confirmed it to him. I said: “I think yours is also there” and scrolled down to No. 70. It made him stop laughing when I told him: “Your name is there as well”.
The first thing I did it was to tweet: “When I woke up this morning I was Bahraini, and when I wake up tomorrow I will be Bahraini”. I am sticking with my identity. I don’t want to leave it. Now, I have my own definition of the “identity” that I love and the main part of this identity is not “lost” it is “BAHRAINI”. It is not for the government to give it or take it away, it is not for them to take me from my roots, I will not accept to be unrecognised by the world. I will keep telling myself, my kids, and my friends that I am from the country that created the “Lulu” revolution (the uprising of 2011 named after the Pearl or Lulu Roundabout that was the site of demonstrations against the government).
“What does it mean to be Bahraini?” is a question with different answers depending on the time you want the answer. I got to know the real meaning of this question when I first left jail at the end of February 2011 at three in the morning and went directly to Lulu square where the protesters were freely sleeping in peace. I felt the dignity and smelled my real “identity” which I almost lost inside prison, when they tortured and threatened me. I felt they were targeting my identity not targeting me personally: those officers who imprisoned and tortured me didn’t know me, hadn’t met me before, they had a problem with me being different from them, they wanted me to be like them.
Now I am stateless, I don’t know how I will be able to visit my aged mother, my brothers, sisters and my friends. There are so many places I love in Bahrain that I can’t imagine I will die before I visit them again: that beach I use to play in it when I was kid, that unpainted wall with graffiti that says “the parliament is the solution” from the 1990s. I still want to take a selfie with it. I miss going to Spalion cafe where my friends are still gathering to share stories and chat about culture, politics, religion etc. and again to ask Abbas the waitress for “one bastard tea”. The most important place I want to visit, and spend as much time as I can is the cemetery where my father has rested in peace for the past six years. I haven’t been there for almost five years; my father is the first person who taught me what is meant to be Bahraini.
There is a proverb my father used to tell me when I was a child: “Those who disown their roots, don’t have any”, and that’s what I want to tell my nine year old son. I will point his finger to that beautiful, tiny island in the gulf and tell him “Your father came from here, and here where we belong”. I refuse to recognise this decree by the king, I will keep writing I am Bahraini in any application form. I will not accept to be “Lost Identity” again, I have an identity and I am proud of it.
This article was originally posted on 11 February 2015 at indexoncensorship.org
09 Feb 15 | Ecuador, mobile, News and features
Ecuadorean cartoonist Xavier Bonilla, known as Bonil and an arts nominee in the 2015 Index on Censorship Freedom of Expression awards, faces a hearing today at 9am (2pm GMT) under the country’s controversial communications law, which was introduced in 2013.
Bonilla and his newspaper, El Universo, will appear in front of Ecuador’s Superintendence of Information and Communication in response to the photographic montage pictured above. He was originally accused of racism – publicly by President Rafael Correa on his weekly TV broadcast – and then the charge was changed to “economic discrimination”.
The newspaper could face a $180K penalty since Ecuador’s communications law specifies a doubling of fines for each incident. Previously, El Universo was fined $93K for a cartoon that mocked a police raid.
The work mocks assemblyman and ex-footballer Agustín Delgado, nicknamed Tín, as he fumbles during a speech. It features a play on words – Pobre Tín, meaning Poor Tin, and Pobretón, meaning poor guy (with no money). The joke implies that people may feel sorry for Delgado for stuttering during his speech but no one feels sorry for his hefty government salary.
Bonilla’s critics say that because Delgado comes from a poor background and has no college degree, he should not be mocked.
“Freedom of expression here is permanently at risk”, Bonilla told Index during a recent interview. “Cartoons represent a satirical and humorous take on all things that happen in public life. It’s part of debate in societies that are democratic, modern and civilized. The public identify with a cartoons through their humour, and often humour represents a chance for a sort of revenge. When there is an excessive power, the normal citizen can see in a cartoon, in comedy, or in a TV sketch, that they have been defended. Because the power has been ‘censored’, morally censored, because a cartoon is an imaginary triumph against the powerful, the abusive, the arrogant, the corrupt.”
Read more on Ecuador’s media controls:
Ecuador’s crackdown on Twitter critics
Cartoonist sanctioned after under Ecuador’s communications law
Ecuador’s president wages social media counterattack aimed at ‘defamers’
This article was posted on 9 Feb 2015 at indexoncensorship.org
05 Feb 15 | mobile, News and features, United Kingdom
Joshua Bonehill (Wikipedia user JoshuaBonehill92)
Joshua Bonehill is a national socialist, in an almost refreshingly old-fashioned way. When young Joshua speaks out against those who are destroying-our-society, undermining-our-culture, and so on, he does not equivocate with “neo-cons”, “internationalists” “bankers” or “global finance”. No, dear young Joshua comes straight out and says he’s against Jews (sometimes “the Jew”).
Bonehill hit the news this week after he said he would organise a march in Stamford Hill, north-east London on 22 March. Bonehill says his march is against the “Jewification” of Stamford Hill, to which one is tempted to answer “bit late, Joshua”. Stamford Hill is home to roughly 30,000 ultra-Orthodox Jewish people, mostly of the Haredi persuasion.
Bonehill is a keyboard Führer, an online agitator. His most notable “success” so far in his activist life has been spreading a false story about a pub in Leicester refusing to serve people in military uniform. The pub received threats of firebombing. Bonehill was convicted of malicious communications, though he escaped jail. He has a court appearance for similar offences lined up next week, and could quite conceivably go to prison for them, which would be a severe blow to his chances of rallying in Stamford Hill.
This hasn’t stopped a certain level of excitement spreading through social media (and indeed traditional media). Leftist and leftish friends on Facebook and Twitter have been excitedly discussing the prospect of Bonehill turning up on Clapton Common with hundreds of goons ready to make the borough of Hackney Judenfrei. In spite of his non-existent real world base, there is a very, very slight possibility that Bonehill could get more than a half-dozen. The Guardian points out that Bonehill has over 26,000 Twitter followers, “raising fears that even without a genuine political organisation behind him, his plan could draw in other far-right groups …”. To put that in slight perspective, I have a quarter of that number of Twitter followers, and can’t even muster people for an after work drink on a Friday evening, but then, I suppose I’m not trying to make a grab for the leadership of a scene that has been a mess since the collapse of the British National Party’s vote in the last European and local elections.
That is what Bonehill is getting at here. In his promotional YouTube videos for his march, he repeatedly calls for unity among “nationalists”. By targeting a Jewish area, he is hoping to rally the hardcore of British nationalism to his side; fascism’s attempt at populism, under Nick Griffin, had its thunder stolen by Ukip, and the hard core needs the reassurance of conspiracy theory and naked anti-Semitism.
Bonehill also appeals to his fellow racists’ sense of history, invoking the famous Battle of Cable Street, in which Oswald Mosley led the British Union of Fascists into (then Jewish area) Whitechapel and was met by local opposition from Jews, trades unionists and communists. Bonehill describes the 1936 rally as a “glorious victory”, which will come as a surprise to most leftists for whom Cable Street is shorthand for left virtue. (The Times’s Oliver Kamm has an interesting take on this.)
The memory of Cable Street is obviously looming large in the imagination of leftists and anti-fascists steeling themselves to organise against Bonehill. Cable Street is the universal good that everyone on the fractious left can share, and some would probably like to reenact it in some way in Stamford Hill, without necessarily working with the Jewish groups such as the Community Security Trust and the Shomrim, a community group Bonehill wrongly describes as a “Jewish Police Force”.
Cable Street was not the only time Mosley attempted to march in east London. Much later, in 1962, Mosley and his son Max (yes, that Max Mosley) were driven from the streets in Dalston, not far from Stamford Hill (watch this fantastic Pathe News footage).
So what is this then? Cable Street? Dalston? Even Skokie, Illinois, where the American Civil Liberties Union stood for the right of the American Nazi Party to march through a town populated by many Holocaust survivors (that march, in the end, never went ahead, but the position taken by the ACLU is often presented as a paragon of free speech principle, or bloodymindedness, or foolhardiness, depending who you talk to).
Bonehill has appealed to “the free speech community”– I’m guessing that’s you and me, dear reader – to stand with him, because “the Jews want us silenced” and his proposed protest has become “a battleground for free speech”. This is, of course, tosh. It is idiotic to conflate the support of free speech with the support of what people are saying. But that does not mean we could sit back and ignore this.
It would be wrong if Bonehill’s planned demonstration was banned in advance. Wrong because unpleasant though he is, he does have a right to protest and face counter protest (as did say, the EDL in areas with high Muslim populations), and wrong because it may lend a small bit of credibility to a deluded clown who may well be in jail by the time the appointed date comes round.
This column was posted on February 5, 2015 at indexoncensorship.org
04 Feb 15 | mobile, News and features, United Kingdom, United States, Volume 43.04 Winter 2014
On the day when the four surviving copies of the original 1215 Magna Carta were briefly brought together for the first time, Index on Censorship held a debate to celebrate the launch of the winter issue of the magazine.
With a panel hailing from both sides of the Atlantic, speakers included MP and former Attorney General Dominic Grieve, University of East Anglia Professor Sarah Churchwell, Artistic Director Madani Younis of the Bush Theatre and author and President of YouGov Peter Kellner.
04 Feb 15 | Africa, mobile, News and features, Nigeria
Walls are plastered with campaign posters ahead of the 14 Feb elections in Nigeria. (Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung/Flickr)
Update: This article was posted before Nigerian election authorities postponed the polls until March 28, 2015.
As Nigeria’s 14 February general election approaches, the menace of Boko Haram has intensified. Attacks are more frequent and brutal. No Nigerian is entirely safe.
In Baga, a community in Borno state in Nigeria’s north-east, over 2000 people were reportedly killed in a single attack in January. Boko Haram is easily one of the world’s deadliest terror groups — a group that slit 61 school boys’ throats in a raid; that straps bombs on 10 year-olds; that has kept 276 school girls abducted for almost a year and is abducting more; that has killed over 30,000 Nigerians and left over 3 million displaced.
The group now controls a land mass the size of Costa Rica, collects taxes, has its own emirs and has declared a caliphate incorporating parts of Nigeria, Niger, Chad and Cameroon. On 25 January 2014, the group, in a very daring move, made efforts to seize Maiduguri, the Borno state capital.
Boko Haram’s activities are not restricted to the north-eastern part of Nigeria as generally believed. The attacks on the UN headquarters and police headquarters in Abuja, the federal capital city, and several other deadly assaults occurred in Nigeria’s north central states.
The group’s attacks have stagnated economic growth in the north east and weakened diplomatic relations between Nigeria and neighbouring countries. In an escalation, Chadian troops have attacked Boko Haram positions in Nigeria, the BBC reported on 3 Feb.
Local views
While the group has consistently reiterated that it is out to Islamise Nigeria, a good number of Nigerians — Muslims and Christians alike — find this implausible.
Initially it was a convincing strategy because the group targeted mostly Christian places of worship and a few government institutions. Over time, however, the attacks became more random and less deliberate. Individuals of different ethnic groups and religious convictions were dragged off buses and killed in vile operations in broad daylight, typically lasting several hours with no interruption from security agencies. Entire villages have been ransacked regardless of religion or ethnicity.
Some Nigerian Christians however, opt to stick with Boko Haram’s initial script, pointing out that the group’s attacks bear a close resemblance to those of ISIS, known to have a very low tolerance for people of other faiths and liberal Muslims. A handful of northern Muslims agree with this line of thought.
There are also those who believe the group is being funded by some members of the northern Islamic political elite for selfish gain. Such theories appear to have basis in fact. At least one sitting senator and a former governor of Borno state, have been closely linked at various times to the group. Why none of them have been investigated leaves most Nigerians baffled.
There are other theories about the rise of Boko Haram that pin the blame on the government. This line of reasoning cites the president’s southern heritage for a lack of interest with the violence in the north. Southerners are seen to be taking vengeance for the loss of lives and property suffered at the hands of northerners during the Biafran War of 1967. Boko Haram also presents another route for siphoning Nigeria’s funds into private accounts.
The accusations of a self-acclaimed Australian “negotiator”, Stephen Davies, that Nigeria’s former Chief of Defence Staff, Major General Azubuike Ihejirika, a southern Christian, was actively involved in funding Boko Haram activities while working to undermine Nigeria’s army, resonated with many Nigerians of northern extraction who believe the current administration is out to cripple the region. Some southerners, on the other hand, say the northerners brought Boko Haram upon themselves and should therefore reap the fruits of their folly. Such people neither see Boko Haram as a national threat nor believe there is any truth to some of the harrowing stories coming out of the north, viewing them simply as an attempt to frustrate President Goodluck Jonathan, himself a southern Christian, out of office.
Media silence
The media in Nigeria, despite their seeming independence, are divided along political lines depending on ownership. Government media are biased in favour of the government while the private media lean towards the political loyalty of the owner. Accountability to the citizens is low.
Investigative reporting on the situation in the north by local media is limited. Local journalists are quick to point out that they lack the support of their respective organizations to report these stories. The lack of insurance, social benefits or recognition in the event of death is also cited as reasons for this reluctance. Indeed several media houses have been attacked without any response from the authorities.
Nigerians will often quote foreign press in authenticating their stories, since other local sources are generally viewed as suspect. For instance, while authorities put the deaths in Baga at 150–based primarily on guess work, foreign media reported 2,000 deaths based on satellite imagery and interviews with some who escaped the carnage.
The military appears helpless. Stories are told of soldiers who trade their arms for mufti from the locals or wear civilian clothes under their uniforms in order to enhance escape in the event of an attack. Boko Haram is considered more brutal to soldiers.
In a recent interview with CNN anonymous soldiers said that supplies and incentives are low, morale is lacking and wounded soldiers are made to pay for their treatment. A spokesperson for the military has since denied these allegations, labelling the claims “satanic”. There has been at least one incident of mutiny among the troops in the north.
Most Nigerians see BH as a threat to Nigeria’s development and would want an end to the menace. Life is now altered. Roads that were four lanes in the past are now narrowed to a lane or two in areas with a heavy government presence. The roads in the country are heavily guarded, and a general sense of unease and fear rules especially in northern Nigeria.
Will Nigerians speak to the situation in the coming presidential elections? Tough question. Ordinarily yes, Nigerians will respond by voting out a government that has shown a complete lack of determination, political will or focus to counter Boko Haram.
But this is Nigeria. The political elite have successfully used religion and ethnicity to divide the populace, wherein voting, even if it counts, will be coloured by ethnicity and religion. Even so, for the first time in the annals of Nigeria’s history, the president’s campaign convoy has been repeatedly stoned.
February 14, Valentine’s day, Nigeria’s Presidential elections day, will tell where the love truly lies.
This article was originally published on 4 February 2015 at indexoncensorship.org
03 Feb 15 | About Index, Bahrain, Campaigns, mobile, Statements
On 31 January 2015, Bahrain’s Ministry of the Interior revoked the citizenship of 72 individuals, including journalists, bloggers, and political and human rights activists, rendering many of them stateless – its latest attempt to crack down on those critical of the government.
“Bahrain is using citizenship, the most basic of human rights, as a weapon to intimidate and silence critical voices,” said Index CEO Jodie Ginsberg. “This latest violation of international human rights standards comes amid continuing attempts to suppress free expression in the country.”
The Ministry of Interior published a statement claiming that “each citizen of Bahrain has the responsibility to act in ways that do not harm the interests of the Kingdom.” Alongside spying, financing terrorism, participation in terrorist actions, the statement lists: “defaming the image of the regime, inciting against the regime and spreading false news to hinder the rules of the constitution;” “defaming brotherly countries” and “inciting and advocating regime change through illegal means” as justification for their decision.
Sayed Ahmed Alwadaei, Director of Advocacy for the Bahrain Institute for Human Rights and Democracy, and who is among those who had their citizenship revoked, said: “Bahrain has forcefully stifled, through both force and national law, any form of free expression through their vicious crackdown against free thinking. They have now turned to wiping out the only identity held by individuals exercising their rights to call for human rights and democratic reform; their virtue of being a Bahraini. The nature of belonging to a country since ones existence has now become another tool used by the government to strangle its critics with impunity.”
Ali Abdulemam is a human rights and online activist who also had his citizenship revoked. He said: “revoking the citizenship in Bahrain is used as a tool of punishment and instills fear. It sends a message to other activists and freedom fighters to stop their activities or they will face the same situation.”
Index on Censorship joins Americans for Democracy and Human Rights in Bahrain (ADHRB), the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights (BCHR) and the Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy (BIRD) in condemning the continued use of citizenship revocation by the Government of Bahrain as a reprisal against human rights activists, journalists and pro-democracy campaigners, and calls on international governments to ensure Bahrain meets its human rights obligations.
02 Feb 15 | Egypt, mobile, News and features
Peter Greste, Mohamed Fadel Fahmy and Baher Mohamed are three Al Jazeera journalists were among those sentenced to prison on terrorism charges.
As journalist Peter Greste returns to Australia to a hero’s welcome home, his two colleagues Canadian-Egyptian journalist Mohamed Fadel Fahmy and Egyptian journalist Baher Mohamed languish in an Egyptian prison.
The three Al Jazeera English journalists have spent more than 400 days in jail for no other crime than doing their work. In June 2014, Cairo court sentenced Greste and Fahmy to seven years in prison while Baher was handed down a ten-year sentence on the charges of “spreading false news and supporting a terrorist group.” Baher was given the harsher sentence for allegedly having in his possession an empty shell case that he had picked up at a protest site.
Analysts said that Greste’s abrupt deportation to his native Australia was the result of immense international pressure and a persistent international campaign for his release. The move followed the issuance of Presidential Decree No. 104 some months earlier, allowing foreign detainees to be deported for retrial in their own countries. The decree issued by President Abdel Fattah El Sisi in November 2014 came in response to widespread criticism of Egypt’s brutal security crackdown on dissent and the stifling of free expression in the country where four years earlier, opposition activists had taken to the streets to demand “Freedom, Bread and Social Justice.”
Former MP Mostafa Bakry had posted a message on his Twitter account on Saturday night (the day before Greste boarded a flight home via Cyprus) stating that the Australian journalist would be released the following day. On Sunday, Bakry followed up his earlier tweet with another message saying that journalist Mohamed Fahmy (Al Jazeera English Cairo Bureau Chief) would also be freed after having his Egyptian nationality revoked. Negad El Borei, Fahmy’s Defence Lawyer meanwhile, told the independent Al Masry El Youm newspaper that while it was necessary by law that Fahmy drop his Egyptian nationality if he wished to be deported to Canada, Fahmy had not decided to do that. A source close to the presidency also denied allegations that the jailed journalist had been granted amnesty, calling the rumour “baseless and unfounded.” Fahmy, has repeatedly denied in court that he has any links with the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, insisting he was “a patriot” and “would never do anything to harm Egypt’s national security.
Meanwhile, in a letter addressed to President Abdel Fattah El Sisi on Sunday, Fahmy’s mother, Waffa Bassiouny, pleaded for her son’s release on grounds of ill health.
“As a mother and an Egyptian citizen, I appeal to you Mr. President to pardon my son,” she wrote, adding that “Fahmy is innocent and needs urgent medical treatment for Hepatitis C and a shoulder injury.”
Fahmy had suffered from a dislocated shoulder before his arrest and detention in December 2013 but the lack of treatment (despite his repeated pleas to the judge overseeing the case for medical care) has left him with a permanent disability in his right arm. El Sisi had earlier insisted that Egypt’s judiciary was “independent” adding that he could not influence judicial verdicts and would only be able to pardon the detainees once the legal process had been exhausted. On January 1, 2015, the court ordered a retrial for the three journalists but has not yet set a date for the new trial.
While Peter Greste’s deportation has raised hopes for the imminent release of Fahmy (who has dual citizenship), Egyptian producer Baher Mohamed’s sttuation is somewhat more precarious. His case has received far less media attention than his two high-profile colleagues simply because of the fact that he is solely Egyptian, a case that Rights Lawyer El Borei said “underlines the discrimination in Egyptian legislation against local detainees.”
Egyptian media which has aligned itself with the military-backed authorities since the ouster of Islamist President Mohamed Morsi in July 2013, has remained largely silent about the case of the three AJE journalists, (referred to by some media as the “Marriott-cell case”) save for denunciation by some media of Al Jazeera, accusing the Qatari-funded news network of complicity with the outlawed “terror group.” The network has been banned in Egypt since the overthrow of the Islamist President and had its offices ransacked by security forces several times before the imposition of the ban. Before their arrest and detention at the end of December, 2013, the three journalists had worked without valid credentials out of a makeshift studio in the Marriott Hotel in Zamalek.
In a telephone call on Monday (a day after Greste’s release), Jehan Rashed, Baher’s wife who gave birth to their third baby in August last year while her husband was locked up behind bars, decried the country’s discriminatory policies against native Egyptians.
“I know that the two ‘foreign’ journalists will walk free while Baher will be left to bear the brunt of this whole case. He is paying a heavy price for simply being an Egyptian,” she told Index.
She also complained that prominent TV talk show presenter Lamis El Hadidi had the night before referred to Greste and Fahmy by name on her show on the privately-owned satellite channel CBC but had said she was not sure if the third detainee was named Baher.
“This kind of attitude is typical of the discrimination in the country against one of their own,” she said, sounding distraught.
Egyptian journalist Khaled El Balshy meanwhile told Index that members of the Journalists Syndicate had called for an emergency meeting on Tuesday to discuss possible measures to pile pressure on the authorities for the release of 11 journalists currently behind bars in Egypt, including both Baher and Mohamed Fahmy.
“We had previously signed a petition for their release which was presented to the authorities,” El Balshy told Index by telephone. “We feel that it is now time to send the government another reminder,” he added.
El Balshy did not rule out organizing a rally outside the Syndicate in the coming days to press for the release of the journalists whom he said “should be out doing their work instead of being locked up.”
Egypt was listed among the top ten worst jailers of journalists in the world in an annual report published last December by the New York-based Committee for the Protection of Journalists, CPJ. According to the CPJ report, Egypt had “more than doubled the number of journalists behind bars to at least 12 in 2014, including the three AJE journalists.”
While Egyptian citizens and the country’s pro-government media is paying little attention to Baher Mohamed, he is not forgotten by the international community and the foreign media. In reporting Greste’s release on Sunday, several foreign journalists working in Egypt reminded their audience that Greste’s two colleagues “must not be forgotten” and that “the campaign for their release is far from over.”
The plea was echoed by Greste’s family which vowed to continue its campaign until Fahmy and Baher were also released.
At a press conference in Brisbane on Sunday (held before Peter’s arrival home), Peter’s brother Andrew Greste said, “We want to acknowledge that Peter’s colleagues are still in jail.” His father Juris Greste also said that he “felt deeply for those left behind.”
“Peter will not rest until his colleagues are freed,” said Andrew.
01 Feb 15 | Events, mobile, News and features
A book event on “The Content and Context of Hate Speech – Rethinking Regulation and Responses” edited by Michael Herz and Peter Molnar (Cambridge UP 2012)
Hosts: The Rafto Foundation, Vivarta, Institute for Strategic Dialogue and Index on Censorship.
The attack on Charlie Hebdo dramatically increased the pressure on freedom of speech in all of Europe. How do we respond to audiences who do not recognize satire as a legitimate form of free expression, without increasing this pressure?
All are invited to this public discussion with leading thinkers and activists, starting with a reception including short slam poetry performances at 6 pm.
PANEL:
– Jodie Ginsberg, CEO Index on Censorship (moderator)
– Peter Molnar, free speech scholar, writer, slammer, radio host (CEU), Radio Forbidden)
– Rashad Ali, Director of CENTRI, Senior Fellow to ISD
– Timothy Garton Ash, Director of freespeechdebate.com, Oxford University
Where: Free Word Centre
, 60 Farringdon Road
, London, EC1R 3GA
When: Friday 13 Feb at 6pm
Tickets: Free entrance
30 Jan 15 | Events, mobile
The London Irish Comedy Festival is hosting a free event about comedy and censorship.
Controversy has always surrounded the comedy industry, from stand-up to sitcom to satire. During the discussion, ethics, censorship, freedom of expression and taste will be explored by special guest panellists and the audience.
- What makes us sometimes laugh at the very worst of human nature?
- Is comedy a natural and positive way of coping with horror?
- When is a joke just too offensive to use?
- When exactly is “too soon”?
- What’s off limits?
- Is every aspect of life fair game?
Join the London Irish Comedy Festival to grapple with these and many other questions in a provocative and interactive event.
PANELLISTS INCLUDE
Steve Moore, Entrepreneur, Campaigner and Facilitator
Jodie Ginsberg, Chief Executive, Index on Censorship
Eddie Doyle, Head of Comedy, Talent Development & Music, RTÉ
Austin Harney, Chair, Campaign for the Rights and Actions of Irish Communities
Gráinne Maguire, stand-up comedian, comedy writer and columnist
WHERE: Comedy Café Theatre, 68 Rivington Street, Shoreditch, EC2A 3AY
WHEN: Thursday 19th February 2015 – 8:00pm
TICKETS: Free but must be reserved – available here
