Serbia is in the process of forming a new government. Following the Progressive Party ‘s (SNS) landslide victory in Sunday’s elections — securing 48% of the votes and 156 of 250 parliamentary seats — one man in particular holds the keys to the country’s future. Leader Aleksandar Vucic, Deputy Prime Minister in the previous coalition, is dropping the prefix and taking the top spot this time around.
While at 44, he would be a relatively young leader, he has had plenty of experience in high politics. Indeed, back in the 90s, he served as Minister of Information under Slobodan Milosevic. Many people spend their twenties trying figure out what to do with their lives. Vucic, meanwhile, was busy introducing a notoriously hardhanded media law, among other things, introducing fines to punish journalists and banning foreign media. As he now prepares to take office, should Serbia’s press be worried?
On the one hand, Vucic has worked hard to shift his image from hardline nationalist, to pro-EU reformer, his focus firmly fixed on Serbia’s struggling economy. He has gone after some of the country’s biggest financial criminals in a high-profile anti-corruption campaign. He has pushed for normalisation in the strained relationship with Kosovo, to put EU accession on track. On election night, the Foreign Minister of the United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed al Nahyan, could be found celebrating with Vucic at the SNS headquarters. The man who once said that 100 Muslims should be killed for every Serb, is securing loans in the billions from the UAE to help fund ambitious regeneration projects in Belgrade.
Yet, despite this apparent commitment to transparency, and despite claiming freedom of the media as one of his “five priorities” — his own personal regeneration, if you will — big words have not really translated into action when it comes to Serbian press freedom.
The country’s journalists have long been working under less than ideal conditions. From the direct, physical threats suffered under the Milosevic regime, to repressivelegislation, free expression has been well and truly chilled. But the biggest challenge today is soft censorship, according to the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN).
“Press freedom in Serbia is mostly endangered by soft censorship meaning that it is mostly endangered by discriminatory and un-transparent allocation of state funding towards media outlets. This money is usually used to reward those who are in favor of the government and to punish those who oppose it. As opposed to direct threats, soft censorship is much harder to detect,” BIRN’s Tanja Maksic told Index.
“In [the] last year and a half of the Vucic and [former Prime Minister] Dacic government, we haven’t witnessed much of the determination to stop this undemocratic practice,” she adds.
Indeed, evidence points to the Prime Minister to-be doing the exact opposite. A recent report analysing election content on TV showed that the Progressive Party, and Vucic specifically, were favoured in the, overall strikingly positive, coverage. And back in February, a video adding satirical subtitles to genuine footage showing Vucic rescuing a boy from a snowstorm, was taken down. The video, originally from public broadcaster RTS, was removed over copyright infringement claims, despite campaigners arguing it did not break copyright laws. Authorities are widely believed to have played a part in the removal. A number of websites that had published it were blocked or attacked from within the country, while individuals behind the sites saw their social media profiles hacked. The claims made in the subtitles — that the whole report was staged to paint Vucic in a favourable light ahead of the elections — might have cut too close to the bone.
Vucic’s alleged control over sections of the Serbian media is perhaps most evident in the case of former Economy Minister Sasa Radulovic. Following his resignation, not long before the eventual collapse of the previous government, he was, without explanation, dumped from a popular TV talk show. The last-minute replacement? Aleksandar Vucic. Radulovic soon tweeted that he couldn’t wait to tune in to the evening’s show “to figure out why I resigned”. He followed this up by publishing an explosive resignation letter, accusing the government, including the anti-corruption crusading deputy prime minister himself, of corruption. He added that he’d been subjected to a “media lynching” by tabloids friendly to the government, that self-censorship is rife in Serbian media and that “news is being smothered”. The letter was covered by state-funded news agency Tanjug, but the report was removed within minutes and only republished following complaints.
Lily Lynch is the co-founder and editor of Balkanist, an independent online magazine covering, as the name suggests, the Balkan region. They have first-hand experience of Serbia’s restrictive media environment, once having their power cut for three days after publishing government leaks. She says Vucic has been “disastrous” for Serbian media, and believes that with his newfound, unchecked power they will see “more censorship”.
“I think that self-censorship will likely get even worse than it already is, as compliance with the status quo is often the only way to keep a job in Serbia,” she explains to Index. “Independent media outlets like Pescanik will be allowed to work because their audience is small and marginal, and their existence actually benefits Vucic because he can cite them as evidence that there is media freedom in Serbia. Meanwhile, the media that the majority of the country reads or watches will continue to depict Vucic as the savior of the nation.”
This depiction seems to have made an impact beyond Serbia’s borders too. Vucic’s pro-EU stance, and especially his perceived pragmatism regarding Kosovo, has boosted his international profile. He’s been labelled “the man bringing Belgrade in from the cold”, and American ambassador Michael Kirby has even praised Serbia’s media freedom.
It is, however, also worth noting certain cracks in this image within Serbia. The turnout figures of 53.2% — following the downward trend of previous elections — would suggest the adulation among the population is not as widespread as on first glance. The Facebook group “I did not vote for Vucic”, set up on election day, with its some 2,400 likes and counting, might point to the same.
Tanja Maksic says the real test for the Vucic government will come with adoption of much needed laws prescribing stricter control of media funding from public budget. If these are passed and implemented it “will be a clear demonstration of a new political will to pass the reforms in media sector,” she adds.
Lynch is not optimistic. She says there is a real danger Serbia could go the way of Hungary, a country that under the leadership of Victor Orban has witnessed the state of media freedom nosedive. She is not the only one to make the link. A recent Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty asks if Serbia “is headed for Orbanization”?
“Vucic has used the media as mouthpieces to denounce opponents, smearing them and accusing them of crimes without evidence. I definitely think this will continue. Others say “everything is up to Vucic now, he has no one to excuses anymore” but he has attained this level of power and will not let it go so easily. Anything that goes wrong will be the fault of some minister or other, who will be sacked and humiliated in the press so that Vucic is not viewed as responsible in the eyes of the public,” Lynch says.
“Vucic’s arrests and “anti-crime crusade” has made many public persons, including journalists, very afraid.”
Singer Nancy Ajram is among those whose videos have been banned by Egypt’s censorship committee.
In a move that has sparked concern among Egyptian secularists, the country’s censorship committee this week banned 20 music videos allegedly containing “heavy sexual connotations” and featuring “scantily-dressed female singers and models.”
The decision to ban the video clips deemed “inappropriate” and “indecent” by members of the state censorship committee, comes two months after a new constitution guaranteeing freedom of expression and opinion was approved by 98 per cent of voters in a national referendum. The new charter replaced the 2012 constitution, widely criticized by rights organizations and revolutionary activists as an “Islamist-tinged” document.
The majority of Egypt’s secularists who celebrated the ouster of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in Tahrir Square in July had feared that the Muslim Brotherhood –the Islamist group from which he hails –was seeking to alter Egypt’s ‘moderate’ identity. The Islamist group has since been outlawed and designated a terrorist organization by the military-backed authorities that replaced the toppled president.
The banning of the video clips comes amid heated debate on “raunchy” music videos broadcast on some of the Arab satellite channels. In recent years, an increasing number of popular Arab female singing-stars have challenged social norms and broken cultural taboos by revealing more flesh in their video clips. The trend has stirred controversy in Egypt’s deeply conservative Muslim society with many Egyptians rejecting what they describe as “the pornification of pop music”. They insist that the “graphic, semi-porn sexual scenes featured in some of the music videos are not in line with Islamic tradition and culture”.
“Some of these video clips are more porn than music. We can hardly understand the lyrics; They are an insult to Arabic music and culture,” said Amina Mansour , a Western educated 30 year- old Egyptian freelance photographer.
It is no surprise that some liberal, westernised Egyptians agree with ultra-conservative Muslims in their society that the videos should be banned. Egyptian society–once a melting pot of different cultures has grown more conservative in the last 30 years. In his book Whatever Happened to the Egyptians, Economist Galal Amin blames the growing conservatism in the country on the introduction of Wahhabism –a more rigid form of Islam practised in Saudi Arabia and adopted by the millions of Egyptian migrants who travelled to Gulf countries after the oil boom in the seventies, seeking higher-paid jobs. The gradual transformation from a diverse, open and tolerant society into today’s conservative and far less tolerant Egypt is evident in the style of dress, behaviour and speech of many Egyptians. An estimated 90 per cent of women wear the hijab-the head covering worn by Muslim women -while the niqab, a veil covering the face , has become more prevalent in recent years.
Some analysts believe the trend of conservatism, which had steadily grown in Egypt recent decades, now appears to be regressing. A growing number of women and girls are removing their Islamic headscarf —once adopted as a political statement against the authoritarian regime of Hosni Mubarak and against Western-style values imposed on the society. Leila el Shentenawy, a 31 year old lawyer told Index she removed her veil after Morsi’s ouster to express her disappointment with Islamist rule.
“Morsi failed to deliver on promised reforms,” she said, adding that she and other liberal Egyptians were alarmed by the calls made by some hardline Islamists to bring back female genital mutilation and lower the age of marriage for girls.
“We were becoming a backward society instead of moving forward,” she said.
Shentenawi however, supports the ban on the video clips, arguing that such videos are “commercialization of women’s bodies and a downright insult to women.”
Other Egyptians have meanwhile expressed disappointment over the banning of the video clips, perceiving the move as “a reversal of the democratic gains of the January 25, 2011 Revolution” that toppled autocratic president Hosni Mubarak and the subsequent uprising against Islamist rule in June 2013.
“We had two uprisings for freedom and a modern, democratic society,” lamented 26 year-old graphic designer Amr El Sherif. “The video clips are popular with young Egyptians and the latest ban can only be considered as a means of stifling free artistic expression.”
In January, Egyptian TV imposed a ban on several video clips reportedly containing “seductive scenes”, deciding they were”inappropriate for viewers”. The ban on the music videos featuring Middle Eastern pop idols Haifa Wahby, Alissa, Nancy Agram and Ruby among others, came in response to complaints by some viewers that the “hot scenes” depicted in the videos were “provocative” and “went against the morals of Muslim society.”
While modest by Western standards, “the gyrations and revealing costumes featured in the videos were too sexy for Arab audiences”, the censors decided. The ban is a continuation of the ultra-conservative trend started by Islamists during their one year rule when some of their lawmakers had complained to Parliament (then dominated by Islamists) that “Egyptian performer Ruby’s pelvic thrust dance moves and bare midriff were too much,” warning that the “obscene scenes” depicted in the music videos would “trash the taste of Egyptians.”
The ban of the videos meanwhile, coincided with the sexual assault of a female student by a mob on Cairo University’s main campus on Monday–the first violence of its kind on an Egyptian university campus. While condemning the assault incident in a telephone interview broadcast on the private ONTV channel later that evening, University President Gaber Nassar implied the victim was to blame, saying her “immodest attire” had invited the assault. He urged students to dress modestly, adding that those who do not follow the university’s regulation would be barred from entering the university campus by security guards.
Some Egyptians believe that the “suggestive” and “explicit” music videos are partly to blame for a surge in incidents of sexual harassment and violence against women in the country since the January 2011 uprising.
“Sexual frustrations of youth –many of whom are unemployed and unable to afford the cost of marriage– are being fuelled in part by sexy music videos and other pornograhic material on the internet, causing unruly behaviour by some youth,” Said Sadek, a Cairo-based Political Sociologist and activist, told Index.
The recent ban on the video clips also comes hot on the heels of an International Women’s Day protest-rally staged by nude Arab and Iranian women in the Louvre Art Museum’s Square in Paris, calling for “equal rights” and “secularism” in their respective countries. Egyptian internet activist Alia Al Mahdi was among the participants in the Paris nudist rally which organizers said, was held to “highlight the many legal and cultural restrictions imposed on women in the Arab World”. El Mahdi had also protested naked outside the Egyptian Embassy in the Swedish capital Stockholm in December 2012 to express her opposition to what she called Morsi’s “Sharia Constitution.” Raising the Egyptian flag, she had the words ” No to Sharia” written in bold print on her naked body.
Many of the revolutionary youth-activists who led the uprisings in Tahrir Square in January 2011 and June 2013 had hoped the downfall of two authoritarian regimes would usher in a new era of greater freedoms including freedom of expression and opinion.But their hopes are fading fast amid increased restrictions and a climate of growing repression.Despite the challenges, they vow to continue to push for “reforms” and “a more liberal Egypt”. While many of the revolutionaries say they oppose Alia Al Mahdi’s method of protest, perceiving it as ” extreme”, they insist ” there is no going back to repression and censorship by the authorities.”
“We’ve had our first taste of freedom with the revolution three years ago and once you’ve had that, you can only move forward and never look back, ” said Mohamed Fawaz, an activist and member of the April 6 Movement, one of the two main groups that mobilized protesters for the January 11 mass uprising. Meanwhile, the battle between secularists and conservatives for the soul of the “new Egypt” continues.
Freedom of speech clashing with commercial concerns has been an ongoing theme for many media and internet companies operating on an international stage, but it’s rare that a country’s liberal approach to expression is presented, in itself, as a prime investment opportunity.
Now Qatar, the richest country in the world, is positioning itself as a liberal alternative to the other resource-rich Gulf states – as revealed in an op-ed by the CEO of a premier London-listed Qatari investment fund.
The chairman of the Qatar Investment Fund PLC, Nick Wilson, authored an article this week on ArabianBusiness.com, claiming the country “has a habit of pushing its progressive agenda, to the irritation of its more conservative neighbouring states elsewhere in the Gulf Co-operation Council.”
Qatar Investment Fund manages approximately £200m in assets – investing into Qatari equities and employing dozens of fund managers. Its website trumpets Qatar as one of the worlds fastest growing economies, as well as pointing to its hugely lucrative gas exports.
But in this piece, the investment managers emphasised a different aspect of Qatar – the the “liberal minded” Al Jazeera TV network and an apparent commitment to free speech, especially when compared with its Gulf neighbours.
“We’ve seen the consequences of blocking access to information in other countries of the region.”
“Qatar is a bastion of free speech – and the flow of information should help to create a benign environment for investors.” he added.
The piece also pointed towards progressive women’s rights in Qatar, noted the political unpredictability of the region, but concluded that Qatar was “less frightened of change,” and “safe for business.”
As Wilson mentioned, Qatar now faces an unprecedented rift with the other GCC members – in particular Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and UAE who dramatically withdrew their envoys from Doha recently. He noted that Qatar had not withdrawn their envoys in retaliation, suggestive of their “liberal” tendencies.
But Qatar’s support for the Muslim Brotherhood both in Egypt and the Gulf, has set it contrary to GCC security policy – with UAE and Saudi Arabia having designated the Brotherhood “a terrorist organisation.”
And Yusuf al-Qaradawi, a provocative Islamist preacher and key Muslim Brotherhood member, is based in Doha. He presents a weekly show and sermon on the Arabic version of Al Jazeera, reportedly watched by 20 million viewers.
The outspoken preacher recently incensed the UAE by denouncing the Emirates political policies as “un-Islamic,” in response to an Islamist crackdown orchestrated by UAE’s sophisticated state security apparatus.
Qatar, as Wilson noted in his article, has irked its neighbours by allowing al Jazeera, al Qaradawi and the Muslim Brotherhood to be supported by Qatar’s extensive financial resources.
It now faces potential sanctions from Saudi Arabia, and Bahrain has even called for the GCC to be split up – unless Qatar shuts down the al-Jazeera TV network, ejects al-Qaradawi and stops support for Islamists.
While secretive Qatar is keen to maintain its supportive stance of the Brotherhood, it’s unclear whether freedom of expression comes into play or if there are wider geopolitical considerations at play.
More likely it is the latter – analysts reaction to the Qatar Investment Fund’s glowing appraisal of Qatar’s “liberal” values has been muted.
“Qatar may be a freer society than some of it’s neighbours, but this is hardly a useful measure,” says David Wearing, a PhD candidate and Gulf Expert at SOAS University in London.
“Objectively, it is an autocratic monarchy; not liberal, and certainly not democratic. Some space exists in Qatar for criticism of other regional governments, but not of the Doha regime itself.”
Wearing pointed to the case of Mohammed al-Ajami who was sentenced to fifteen years imprisonment in October 2013, for “insulting the emir.”
Nader Hassan, a professor at the University of South Alabama, thinks the op-ed may fit into a broader PR narrative which is sanitising Qatar’s human rights reputation.
“Qatar has been playing a very skillful public relations game,” he told Index, “portraying itself as a beacon of free speech and press freedom in the region.”
“Compared to its more powerful neighbor, Saudi Arabia, this may be true. However, there are significant restrictions on press freedom in Qatar.
“Al Jazeera, for example, almost never carries any critical pieces on Qatar, such as the abuse of migrant workers.”
Hassan admitted that some Al Jazeera pieces favoured openness and journalistic professionalism- but concluded that calling the network “liberal” was “far from the truth.”
Mayam Mahmoud, award winning Egyptian Hip-hop Artist (Photo: Alex Brenner for Index on Censorship)
Rapper Mayam Mahmoud uses hip-hop to address issues such as sexual harassment and to stand up for women’s rights in Egypt. The 18-year-old rose to prominence through her appearances on the popular TV show Arabs Got Talent. Aged 12, she was introduced to poetry by her mother. She began writing her own work, which soon turned into rap — still a male dominated music genre across the world.
From her song:
Girls in our society are divided
Into those who wear the niqab, those who wear the veil
And those who are in between
There are a lot of cases that depend on the girl
How she dresses
And how she looks
But this is not the rule
How can you judge me
By my hair or by my veil?
If one day you look at me
I am not going to be the one
Hiding her/my embarrassment
You cat call and you harass
Thinking this is right not wrong
Even if these are words
This is not the kind of treatment
These are stones
It is not her clothing that is inappropriate or wrong
It’s this way of thinking which is
Sometimes the clothing is too much
But you are the one to blame
One look can be could hurt
And it is not right of you to be staring
You deserve to be slapped twice on the face
Femininity in Egypt is divided into two parts
There is a difference between what men and women consider
And both are wrong
Who said that femininity is about dresses
Femininity is about intelligence and intellect
It is also about the way she was raised
And her religiosity
Girls have lost confidence in themselves
Now she puts in makeup
And dresses in different colours on top of each other
The problem is not with the girl
The problem is with the society that influences the girl every second
If you ask girls if they have good taste in dressing
They will say yes we have
But our lives can not be described
Our lives have become very materialistic
And everyone wants something that would endure
You get what you pay for
The expensive things are better than the cheap.
Shubhranshu Choudhary accepting his award (Photo: Alex Brenner for Index on Censorship)
Journalist Shubhranshu Choudhary is the brain behind CGNet Swara (Voice of Chhattisgarh) a mobile-phone (no smartphone required) service that allows citizens to upload and listen to local reports in their local language.
Shubhranshu Choudhary acceptance remarks:
Over the last few centuries our politics, world over has got democratized, more or less.
But if you look at mass communication, media or Journalism it still remains aristocratic, top down and more power in the hands of few.
We understand that our political democracy can not mature, function well unless we have a democratic, equitable communication.
But is that possible?
That is the experiment we are trying to do in India.
I grew up in Central India amidst hills and forest with Indigeneous people, whom we also call Adivasis, the tribals.
Central India is in the middle of a bloody war between Maoist guerrillas and Indian security forces. Tribals are led by the Maoists.
My tribal classmates once told me “our smaller problems can be solved if we have a democratic communication platform where each has equal right to speak and being heard.
To create a democratic, more equitable media we are using mobile phone in this experiment. Mobile phones have reached deep interiors even in countries like India.
Everyone has a voice and can speak in their own mother tongue.They feel more comfortable speaking rather then writing as many do not know how to read and write. And even if they know they feel more comfortable as they are an oral community.
Though mobile is owned by many but it is a personal communication tool. We use internet to convert mobile phone into a mass communication tool.
Today the same people who had no voice before are picking up their mobile and are telling their stories in their own languages. The messages, songs get recorded in our computer using an Interactive Voice recorder system and people can hear the same messages on their mobiles once they are cross-checked moderarted by some volunteers.
The same messages are also available online for Urban activists to follow with officials if they are about any problem. We are seeing many problems getting solved by making this simple connectivity.
An accumulation of these unsolved simple problems create bigger problems like the one we are facing in Central India today, which our Prime Minister once called India’s biggest internal security threat.
If problems are not being heard, not being solved, they create the “future terrorists”
But to complete this experiment we need your help.
We need help to connect this experiment to Short wave radio to create a duplicatable and sustainable independent communication model which people can own.
India, though, is world’s biggest democracy, we do not allow Radio. We will need help from outside like yours who can give us space in Radio transmitters.
But it will be a different type of radio, new radio. In this democratic radio programs will not be created in studios or newsrooms but they will be created in far off forests and villages where people through their mobile phone will report. Some of us in the middle on computer/internet will work on improving/editing them.
We Journalists will also be elected by the community and not selected by the powerful few.
This way we will create news which is by the people, of the people and for the people.
If we want a better democracy, a peaceful tomorrow we can not leave Journalism in the hands of few any more. Time has come like politics, Journalism also needs to become everybody’s business.
Rahim Haciyev, deputy editor-in-chief of Azerbaijani newspaper Azadliq (Photo: Alex Brenner for Index on Censorship)
One of the few remaining independent media outlets in Azerbaijan, the newspaper Azadliq has continued to report on government corruption and cronyism in spite of an increasing financial squeeze enforced by the authorities.
Accepting the award on behalf of Azadliq is the paper’s Editor-in-Chief Rahim Haciyev.
Azadliq newspaper was set up in 1989 by Azerbaijan Popular Front Party, the main opposition organization (in the mid of 90s APFP stopped funding Azadliq and it became an independent newspaper). The first editor-in-chief of the newspaper was a famous journalist Najaf Najafov. Azadliq newspaper has always been a paper admired by free and freedom-loving people. A key motto of the paper was ‘serving the truth’. This was a main reason of constant pressure and attacks on the newspaper. In 2006, the newspaper was evicted from the office located in the city centre. It had been relocated into three small rooms at “so-called” state-financed publishing house.
Harsh repressions have been started against the newspaper staff. Later on, a chief editor and the staff member of the newspaper, poet-satirist were imprisoned with fabricated charges after court decision. The kidnapping and beating of a newspaper staff followed by similar incident when an Azadliq journalist was returning back from fulfilling his job duties and was beaten in the evening. Two journalists were stabbed for their critical articles. Last year, a court had fined the newspaper 65,000 euros. The newspaper website which had 9 million visitor IPs in 2013, was a target to severe attacks. Circulation of the newspaper is only 8000 copies.
Nevertheless, our newspaper has an enormous impact on public opinion. Even by your (Western) standards, this small circulation makes the government dis-comfortable who is doing everything to shut down the paper. It reminds us a quote from Shakespeare’s Hamlet: “To be or not to be?” With this dilemma the newspapers is moving towards its 25th jubilee. Despite all the repressions, unbelievable difficulties and problems, the newspaper team is determined to continue this sacred job – serving the truth. Because this is meaning of what we do and the meaning of our lives!
Thank you for your attention and support. In addition, I would like to thank the international democratic community and the democratic community of our country who support the newspaper and let me express our special thanks to our loyal readers.
Shahzad Ahmad accepting his award (Photo: Alex Brenner for Index on Censorship)
Shahzad Ahmad is one of the leading voices in the fight against online censorship in Pakistan. The country faces a deteriorating state of cyber freedom, as the government uses draconian censorship laws and increasing surveillance to police the internet.
Ahmad’s acceptance speech:
Thank you. I feel deeply honoured to be here today among the torchbearers of the freedom fighters. And I am truly humbled by this award. For there are so many who have struggled for our freedoms, for my freedom, crossing frontiers that I yet dream to cross.…they set the stage and I feel tiny next to their gigantic stature, their brave struggles and their monumental achievements. I stand here today, and speak as I speak, because of them.
And then there are all those who, like me, continue to struggle today. These are the unsung heroes of the human rights movement. And I would like to accept this honour, this award, on behalf of them, on behalf of each and every human rights defender who is putting his or her life and liberty at stake in trying to obtain the human rights we should all enjoy in this world.
We’re here today to celebrate our common struggle for the freedom of expression. Let me say, that to me this is the ultimate freedom: to me it means the freedom to live, to think, to love, to be loved, to be secure, to be happy. To be able to think as I do, and to be able to express what I think is inextricably linked with all my other freedoms. Hence my firm belief that Freedom of Expression forms the fountainhead from which flow all other freedoms. It is indeed the First Among Equals.
My personal struggle in Pakistan has been to bring this movement to the digital spaces – to contextualize our local predicament in light of the NSA and GCHQ revelations, for example. Censorship, surveillance, curbs on expression, and invasions of privacy in the digital spaces is rampant in my country now. The onslaught is led by government – but unfortunately extreme right leaning, and powerful lobbies are the other force that we have to contend with. These groups are violent, lawless, and often resort to vigilante action to try and silence us – while the states looks on. Either too fearful to intervene, or silently complicit.
Hence our struggle remains one both layered and complicated: on the one hand we resist the government’s infringements, and, ironically, on the other, we depend on the same government to protect our rights to life, liberty, security and freedom of expression against the very same vigilante action that continues unchecked throughout the country… We see it as our role to educate, and raise people’s awareness of their digital rights. We have to continue to provide the knowledge and language that can empower everyone to participate in this dialogue, in our country and globally, as technology evolves.
I want to thank many partners and networks who have helped and supported Bytes for All in carrying the torch in a such a hard and complex country. In particular, I would like to thank the Association for Progressive Communications (APC), Privacy International, Citizen Lab, Sigrid Rausing Trust, Forum-Asia, IDRC, Media Legal Defence Initiative, Global Partners-Digital, Frontline Defenders and Tactical Tech. Without you, we would not be where we are today.
Roosevelt said, “The only sure bulwark of continuing liberty is a government strong enough to protect the interests of the people, and a people strong enough and well enough informed to maintain its sovereign control over the government.” My inspiration and my goal remain embodied in these words.
Awards, like those presented by Index tonight, often say as much about the organisation who gives them as those who receive them. Index on Censorship plays a very important role in the UK in promoting and defending freedom of expression and as a result they are respected, considered a force to be reckoned with and serve as an example for many around the world. Giving the award to me tonight for our work in digital freedom says the same things about our work. It will inspire confidence in us to continue on this important path and illustrate to our government and fellow citizens that the future is here and that the world is watching. It also acknowledges the expertise, insight, commitment and capacity of those in Pakistan who will stand for nothing less than freedom and knowing this empowers us on the way forward.
Thank you for this important acknowledgement of our good work…it will serve as a great motivation and a sign of support for us all.
Welcome to our special coverage of the Index Freedom of Expression Awards 2014. The awards ceremony kicks off with a reception at 18:00 GMT. Awards will be presented from 19:00 GMT. Follow live on Twitter @IndexCensorship or #IndexAwards2014
Shubhranshu Choudhary accepting his award (Photo: Alex Brenner for Index on Censorship)
Journalist Shubhranshu Choudhary is the brain behind CGNet Swara (Voice of Chhattisgarh) a mobile-phone (no smartphone required) service that allows citizens to upload and listen to local reports in their local language.
CGNet Swara is a vital tool giving people who are deprived of a voice and platform in mainstream media, on the wrong side of the digital divide, a chance to have a say on and learn about the issues that affect them the most. Furthermore, CGNet Swara also manages to circumvent India’s strict broadcast licensing laws.
Choudhary estimates that there are some 100 million people in India for whom mainstream methods of communicating news don’t work, whether due to language barriers, low levels of literacy or lack of access to internet and newspapers among other things. This represents a serious barrier to their socio-economic development, as they are not updated on stories of importance to them, and their views and grievances and demands are not voiced and addressed.
CGNet Swara aims to solve this problem. It is a voice-based portal, freely accessible via mobile phone, that allows anyone to report and listen to stories of local interest. “Reporters” call a Bangalore number to upload a news item, and reported stories are moderated by journalists and become available for playback online as well as over the phone. They get around 500 messages per day. Fifty are recorded and about five are broadcast. The moderators are elected by the community, and therefore represent them.
“We are providing a new platform which the villagers can use to talk to each other and the outside world about issues that are important to them,” Choudhary said.
Human rights organisations suspect a live YouTube broadcast detailing abuses by the Indonesian government may have been the real reason behind “technical difficulties” at an environmental conference in Oregon.
Two Papua tribesmen had travelled to Oregon specially for the Public Interest Environmental Law Conference in Oregon, “the world’s most important environmental law conference.”
A live broadcast of the conference mysteriously went silent when the tribesmen started telling the audience about human rights violations by the Indonesia government, perpetrated in their homeland
The pictures on the slideshow, illustrating their points, were behind them and still visible, although their commentary was not audible to anyone listening from home.
Survivor International, who also sent a delegate to the conference, told Index on Censorship that they suspect the attack was a hack, and that their organisation has been targeted by Indonesian agents in the past.
“In 2010, our website was taken offline,” said Sophie Grig, South East Asia Researcher. “We had posted a video of Indonesian soldiers torturing Papuan trible people. Other groups who also posted the video were hacked.”
The attack lasted for two days, during which all websites who had posted the video were bombarded by thousands of requests from thousands of computers worldwide, and the German police began an investigation after one of the hacked groups, based in Germany, made a complaint.
At the time, Survival’s Director Stephen Corry commented ‘This isn’t a couple of geeks in a shed, it’s an expensive and sophisticated attack amounting to cyberterrorism. The damage to Survival International may be substantial but is of course nothing compared to that inflicted on West Papuan tribes.
He added “This is a struggle for the survival of the one million oppressed tribespeople in Indonesian West Papua.”
The two Papuans who attended the conference in Oregon, are members of the Amungme tribe, whose land is home to Grasberg, a mining facility operated by 19,500 employees.
“In the area around the mine, we’ve seen forced displacements, reports of torture and illegal detention by the Indonesian military” said Grig. “We also have strong concerns about the environmental impact.”
Positioned on Papua’s highest mountain, Grasberg is home to the largest gold mine in the world, as well as the third largest copper mine in the world. It produces around
Local charities, as well as international environmental charities, are concerned about the increasing number of land slides and acidifying waste products in local water sources, although the mines operators, Freeport and Rio Tinto, insist their operations fit within international regulations.
Indonesia has occupied Papua (the western half of the island of New Guinea) since 1963, and more than 100,000 Papuans are believed to have been killed since then, many at the hands of the Indonesian military. The government hold a 10% stake in one of the companies operating the mine.
Although it is unclear which software was used to execute this hack, according to Amnesty International in Indonesia, the Papuan military have already purchased invasive internet monitoring technology from Gamma International, a UK-based company. Gamma International manufacture FinnFisher, software which is capable of monitoring all internet communications in a country. The software has been used by repressive regimes including Bahrain, UAE, Turkmenistan, Egypt (under Mubarak, although it is unclear whether the software is still in use).
Andreas Harsono, Indonesia Researcher for Amnesty International, also told Index about some of the human rights abuses he regularly observes in Papua
“I mainly deal with cases where freedom of expression is being denied, as well as impunity amongst the military, police and prison wardens,” he said, “There are also extra judicial killings,” he adds.
There are believed to be over seventy political prisoners held in brutal Indonesian prisons – some serving up to twenty years.
Sophie Grig from Survivor International warned Index
“West Papuans are no strangers to having their voices silenced. Journalists are effectively banned from the region, other than in exceptional circumstances and where they are accompanied by Indonesian government minders. People are imprisoned when their only crime is to raise the banned West Papuan flag, or to speak out against military atrocities and the Indonesian rule of West Papua.”
In 2013, National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden leaked thousands of documents detailing US government surveillance to the press, igniting a global debate on the ways authorities can watch citizens’ communications.
Snowden was one of tens of thousands of people who had access to data collected by the NSA.
The revelations detailed the extent of the PRISM programme, which allows NSA agents and contractors to view any user’s metadata based on a number of search terms. This warrantless surveillance is seen as a breach of the US’s fourth amendment, which guarantees the right to privacy.
Snowden also revealed details of the UK’s TEMPORA programme, which intercepts data carried on fibre optic cables to allow agents to monitor communication, again without a warrant.
After leaking 58,000 files, he fled from his home in Hawaii to Hong Kong, and from there to Moscow, where he found himself stranded after the US government revoked his passport.
Snowden’s revelations have shown the lack of scrutiny and oversight intelligence agencies face. Equally worrying has been the willingness of the UK government to try to intimidate the Guardian, with veiled threats of prosecution after it published a mere fraction of the information contained in the leaked files.
As a whistleblower, Snowden has in fact helped make the world more secure by highlighting the potential abuse of monitoring capabilities and there have been calls to grant him asylum in the European Union. Above all else, he has got the world talking about what privacy and free expression mean in an age when surveillance has never been easier.
Restricting press freedom in the name of national security, the Royal Charter press regulator and the UK’s lack of constitutional guarantees for freedom of expression were only some of the things criticised in a new report by the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA). The organisation represents over 18,000 publications and 15,000 websites in over 120 countries.
Referring to the UK’s influence internationally WAN-IFRA says: “How changes to the system of press regulation are managed in the UK will have an unparalleled impact beyond its shores.” They fear that a regulator with government involvement — such as the Royal Charter — risks being “an open invitation for abuse” of press freedom in less democratic countries. The report in many ways echoes Index on Censorship’s position on press regulation and threats to press freedom in the UK.
The report comes after concerns were expressed by UK media and press freedom organisations over the state of press freedom following the Leveson debate, and the threats and pressure faced by the Guardian over their reporting on Snowden and mass surveillance, culminating in the destruction of hard drives in the Guardian’s basement overseen by GCHQ representatives. A delegation from WAN-IFRA travelled to the UK on a fact-finding mission in January.
The report agrees that the phone hacking scandal led to a major breach in public confidence in the press, but stressed that the vast majority of British journalists “adhere to professional standards”. It warns against conflating the hacking scandal with the regulatory debate, stressing that: “British law provides appropriate remedy for illegal activity in proven cases of wrongdoing.”
The report makes several heavy criticisms of the proposed Royal Charter system. Punitive damages, enshrined in statute, for not signing up to the regulator “defies any definition of ‘voluntary’ as understood by the WAN-IFRA delegation”. The report in particular says that it was quite inappropriate to develop a system of press regulation without the involvement of the industry in the final stages of discussion, when the government’s preferred Royal Charter was drawn up. The speed of implementation, the lack of legislative scrutiny, parliamentary vote or public consultation was criticised, with the report arguing the whole process should have been more transparent. “The Royal Charter system — used as an example or transposed elsewhere to countries lacking the United Kingdom’s historic commitment to human rights — risks an open invitation for abuse in other parts of the world,” it argues.
The report further states that claims of the Royal Charter being a “hands-offs” regulator is “undermined by the readiness of the UK government to intervene against the Guardian newspaper”. The treatment the Guardian has been subject to following their mass surveillance revelations was identified as a cause for concern. Prime Minister David Cameron’s claims that the reporting harmed national security, with no evidence to back this up, “suggest an unprecedented level of political interference in the freedom of the press”. The report states that he should distance his government from conflating terrorism with journalism. However, the recent court judgement finding the detention of David Miranda (partner of Glen Greenwald) legal under the UK’s Terrorism Act suggests that any positive response to this recommendation is unlikely. The report also criticised other publisher’s perceived lack of support for the Guardian, calling it a “low point” given “the apparent need for solidarity within the media fraternity”.
“If the UK government feels it is acceptable, in the name of national security, to dictate what is in the public interest, and given the UK’s continued influence over developing nations where media are essential for the spread of democratic values, the future of a free, independent press that can hold power to account is under threat worldwide,” said WAN-IFRA CEO, Vincent Peyrègne.
Recommendations include urging the UK government “to step back from any further involvement – perceived or otherwise – in the regulation issue”, to defend and support public interest journalism, and encourage investigative reporting “as an essential benefit to society”.
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