19 Mar 14 | Campaigns, Europe and Central Asia, Statements, United Kingdom
Index welcomes the report by the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA) on the worrying state of press freedom in the UK. The WAN-IFRA report criticises the use of national security concerns to threaten and restrict investigative journalism, in particular the Guardian’s revelations and reporting on the Snowden mass surveillance scandal. WAN-IFRA also provides detailed analysis of the post-Leveson debate about press regulation, and challenges in particular both the involvement of politicians in the Royal Charter approach, the use of exemplary damages enshrined in statute for those who do not participate in a “voluntary”, Royal Charter-compliant press regulator, and the failure to bring the print industry on board in the final discussions around the Royal Charter.
Index CEO, Kirsty Hughes, said: “It is a sad day when the state of press freedom in Britain is so degraded that an international mission of editors and journalists finds so many concerns – from mass surveillance to politicians intervening in press regulation to national security being used to trump investigative journalism.”
She went on: “Index hopes that politicians from all parties will read and take very seriously this damning report – it should be a wake-up call to all those who see a free press as fundamental to our democracy.”
This statement was posted on 19 March 2014 at indexoncensorship.org
19 Mar 14 | China, Digital Freedom
WeChat was the darling of the Chinese start-up scene, the sexy competitor to Weibo domestically, and Twitter and WhatsApp, on the global stage. The design of the website meant that freedom of speech was for a while preserved – mainly because messages between users remained relatively private and insulated from the wider internet. But Beijing has orchestrated a sudden clampdown on the service : closing several high-profile accounts, some with hundreds of thousands of followers.
When users access the banned accounts, a Chinese message appears, translated as:
Due to reports from users that have been confirmed, all functions for this public account have been shut down for violating regulations. We suggest you cancel your subscription.
Users operating the site in English received a slightly different message – notably without any mention of “We suggest you cancel the subscription.”
WeChat started as a messaging service – however in 2012 the company behind the app – Tencent, introduced public accounts so that subscribers could follow celebrities, brands and well-known journalists and media outlets.
All of these subscription-based accounts on WeChat come with a “report” button at the bottom right of the content page. Some accounts had hundreds of thousands of subscribers.
Tencent has not stated its reasons for shutting down the accounts. The Chinese authorities have previously warned users that “spreading rumours” online is a crime – “spreading rumours” being a euphemism for speculation about corruption amongst senior Chinese officials.
Users of WeChat had already reported that the app blocked certain sensitive words.
Analysts have said they are not surprised by the censorship – although admit that WeChat has survived longer than most websites in China without restrictions on freedom of speech.
“I don’t find the suspensions surprising, though it’s still disheartening,” Jason Ng, author of Blocked on Weibo and social media expert.
“It would’ve been foolish of authorities not to regulate WeChat, like they do all other social media when they clearly have the capability and the will to do so.” Ng added “The only thing holding them back perhaps was a lack of resources.”
Ng pointed to the original “insular nature” of WeChat messaging, meanig it was less likely for “rumours” to go viral. However since 2012, the introduction of “new public accounts had clearly changed the authorities assumptions [about WeChat]”.
Yunchao Wen, a freedom of speech activist and Chinese social media expert told Index
“The Chinese government have never leaves any permanent space for political expression – sometimes they don’t find them straight away, sometimes they’re too busy dealing with other issues, but they are always censored.”
Wen also stressed that more than two hundred people were jailed by the Chinese authorities over political or human rights issues in 2013, as well as suggesting that the news had been “buried” while journalists were distracted.
“They closed down the Wechat public accounts on the last day of 12th National People’s Congress, trying to make sure foreign journalists didn’t notice,” said Wen.
Speculating on whether the censorship campaign will have hit WeChat commercially, Ng was sceptical.
“I don’t think it’s hit them too hard; it was only 50 or so accounts.” Ng also quipped “One Lionel Messi commercial and this event will probably be forgotten,” referring to the high profile celebrites who are regularly featured on the site.
WeChat was launched in early 2011, reportedly attracting 100 million registered users in its first fifteen months. The company revealed that it had 270 million active monthly users, up 124% from the previous year.
Sina Weibo, a key competitor for WeChat, is gearing up for an IPO on the Nasdaq – targeted to raise $500m. However investors have been warned that China’s censorship policies may negatively affect business – with several paragraphs in their sales materials relating to censorship.
Sina Weibo faced similar censorship to WeChat in 2012, telling investors “we had to disable the comment feature on our platform for three days to clean up feeds related to certain rumors.” Users were speculating about a possible coup d’etat in Beijing.
This article was published on 19 March 2014 at indexoncensorship.org
19 Mar 14 | Digital Freedom, News and features, Turkey
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan (Photo: Philip Janek / Demotix)
In February, Turkish president Abdullah Gül prompted intense criticism when he approved restrictive new amendments to the law that regulates internet activity in Turkey, known as 5651. Since then, the Turkish government has continued to threaten internet freedom, placing added pressure on social media platforms. Earlier this month, prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan suggested that his government could block access to Facebook and Youtube after municipal elections on 30 March.
With over 34 million Facebook active users, Turkey is among the top 15 countries on the platform, and both the prime minister and Gül each have over four million Twitter followers. One day after Erdoğan’s statement during a live television interview, Gül countered that blocking access to social media was out of the question. Last week, Erdoğan followed by backtracking on his own comments.
Considering the already strained relationship that Erdoğan’s government has to social media, the turnaround on his comments is still no promise that there may be less restrictions on internet freedom to come in Turkey. In recent months, a number of wiretapped telephone recordings, allegedly of Erdoğan’s conversations, have been leaked onto social media platforms, including YouTube, SoundCloud and Vimeo, suggesting the prime minister’s meddling in corruption and intimidation of mainstream media. On the day that Erdoğan’s television interview aired, a new phone conversation was leaked onto YouTube, purportedly featuring the prime minister berating the media magnate Erdoğan Demirören for coverage in his daily Milliyet of a 2013 peace talk with Abdullah Öcalan of the separatist Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK).
Erkan Saka, an assistant professor at Istanbul Bilgi University and a researcher on new media, says
Erdoğan’s comments about Facebook and YouTube reflect his interest in controlling Turkish media. “Most of the mainstream media is already under their control, so this seems to be the only way now for people to express their opposition,” Saka said. With leaks appearing on video or audio sharing websites and spreading through Twitter and Facebook, social media platforms have become instrumental for circulating information related to the ongoing government corruption scandal.
Shutting down entire websites as Erdoğan suggested would mean going beyond the very recent amendments to law 5651 that make possible URL-based blocking of individual web pages ruled offensive, without restricting access to entire websites. YouTube was previously censored in Turkey for over two years after a video was posted on the site that was deemed insulting to Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of the Turkish Republic. Earlier this year, Vimeo and SoundCloud were both temporarily shut down within Turkey following leaks that were published on those websites. Lawmakers from Erdoğan’s party, the AKP, have defended the controversial new version of 5651 because it allows for an alternative to restricting access to entire websites. Supporters of the law claim that with URL-based page blocking, defamatory content can instead be removed selectively.
In the run up to the elections at the end of this month, the recurring leaks and violent protests around Turkey threaten to tarnish Erdoğan’s popularity with voters. Responding aggressively in the televised interview, Erdoğan’s derision of social media platforms is personal, tactical, and aimed to discredit the websites as a threat to internet users’ safety. “We will not leave this nation at the mercy of YouTube and Facebook,” the prime minister said in his interview with journalists on broadcaster ATV. Calling the websites immoral, Erdoğan added, “they don’t have limits.” By casting social media websites as damaging to all internet users in Turkey, Erdoğan set the stage for potentially restricting access to those sites on moral grounds. Even after correcting his statement, Erdoğan’s suggestion that social media platforms are a source of danger is in line with his government’s use of internet filtering programs and ad campaigns that portray the internet as debauched to justify restricted access to content it considers harmful.
Aside from facing access restrictions, websites operating from Turkey are forced to comply with other laws that compromise their users’ privacy. Sedat Kapanoğlu, founder of the popular satirical, user-generated online dictionary Ekşi Sözlük, says internet companies in Turkey are put under pressure by laws requiring them to share user data. “A successful platform must create a free environment which protects its users’ rights. We are not able to do that. We are forced to provide IP addresses to prosecution even for completely legal content,” Kapanoğlu said.
One of the social media websites that Erdoğan singled out in his interview, Youtube, which is owned by Google, has an office in Turkey, while other large platforms like Facebook, SoundCloud, Vimeo, and Twitter do not.
Although he later rescinded his original statement, Erdoğan’s recent threat is alarming because it shows that in Turkey’s precarious climate for media independence, it might be plausible for his government to increase control of social media. With elections approaching this month, Erdoğan is himself coming under more pressure to win votes while facing a corruption scandal playing out on social media. The amendments to 5651 already make it easier for the Turkish Directorate of Telecommunication (TİB) to remove web pages from the internet. As more leaks continue to emerge, there is a lingering risk of new restrictions targeting social media platforms that have been at the centre of freedom of speech debates in Turkey.
This article was posted on 19 March 2014 at indexoncensorship.org
19 Mar 14 | China, News and features
Hong Kong journalists are anxious at present – with good reason. On the morning of 26 February Kevin Lau, former chief editor of Hong Kong daily newspaper Ming Pao, was attacked as he got out of his car. Suffering stab wounds to his back and legs, Lau was rushed to hospital where he underwent emergency surgery.
Nine men have since been arrested over the attack, with police saying some are linked to organised crime. But many media workers believe differently, namely that the stabbing was provoked by Lau’s record of pushing journalistic boundaries at Ming Pao, and that it’s a message for local journalists to beware criticising Beijing.
Once a British colony, Hong Kong reverted to Chinese rule in 1997. Under the policy of “One Country, Two Systems”, Hong Kong was granted a degree of autonomy, with press freedom protected under the Basic Law.
The law isn’t a total farce. To this day, the city’s newsstands display a varied, vibrant collection of papers. In Reporters Without Borders’ World Press Freedom Index 2013 Hong Kong was ranked 58 globally, just one slot below Italy and far above China at 173.
However, beneath the surface a different story emerges. Over the past year, half a dozen violent attacks on people in media who are critical of the Hong Kong and Chinese governments have been reported, as have abrupt dismissals and resignations of several outspoken journalists.
Meanwhile, self-censorship is growing.
“It’s a creeping, insidious type of thing. If you want to keep your job, you tow the line. I work with guys who are pro press freedom, but they are still censoring constantly,” said a journalist who only agreed to talk on condition of anonymity. The man, who is a reporter at a prominent local newspaper and has been living in Hong Kong for three decades, explained how self-censorship started to emerge in the mid-90s and has become rife in recent years.
Then there are the “gatekeepers”, as he refers to them – journalists who have been educated in the Chinese school of journalism (“never question authority”) and are encouraged to run stories according to a Beijing agenda. They now get their information from Chinese media sources such as Xinhua and China Daily, as opposed to the past practice of using Reuters, AP and other international news wires.
Why has this situation emerged? Money’s a big factor. Media owners in Hong Kong used to be either local business tycoons or people in media themselves. Now they’re predominantly international businessmen with links to China, who are reliant on Chinese currency to stay afloat. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, over 50% of Hong Kong’s media owners are closely connected to the Chinese government. Other media owners, such as the Malaysian billionaire Robert Kuok from the South China Morning Post and Malaysian Tiong Hiew-king of Ming Pao, have strong commercial interests in China.
One exception to the rule is Next Media, a profitable company that owns Apple Daily, one of Hong Kong’s most widely read newspapers – and the most openly critical of China. Next Media has survived the onslaught. But certain advertisers have withdrawn sponsorship, acting as a deterrent for smaller, less profitable papers.
Gregory Lee, an academic and writer who lived in Hong Kong on both sides of the handover, says the academic press is under attack too. The days of people publishing in Hong Kong because they couldn’t in China have ended. Lee knows of one academic who criticised China’s former leader Hu Jintao and had his entire book pulled.
Lee currently teaches Chinese studies at the University of Lyon, France. Even thousands of miles from Beijing, the Communist government’s touch is still felt.
“I’ve got Hong Kong students here who are desperate about the encroachment of mainland China on Hong Kong culture. What’s interesting is that these students were very young when the handover happened, but they still see their identity as Hong Kong.”
One thing’s for sure, Hong Kong residents will not be easily silenced. In the wake of Lau’s attack, thousands took to the streets to voice support for press freedom and to denounce the violence, and this protest was just a warm-up. Occupy Central, which is set to take place in July, should see plenty more out in public demanding rights to freedom of expression.
“Hong Kong has a golden opportunity to be a watchdog for what’s happening in the mainland, due to its proximity and links to China, and yet the press are failing in their duties,” says prominent blogger and activist Tom Grundy, who plans to attend Occupy Central. Grundy believes the protest will be “a defining moment for Hong Kong autonomy” as the government is presented with different ways to respond.
Attending Occupy Central is not just about protecting Hong Kong’s present – it’s about the future too.
“There’s a concern that when 2047 comes, Hong Kong will be absorbed by the mainland,” Grundy says of the “One Country, Two systems” agreement that will expire then.
Back in the hospital, Lau’s recovery is underway. The nerves in his legs are healing and doctors are confident he will walk again. The future of Hong Kong’s free press, on the other hand, remains in the balance.
This article was posted on 19 March 2014 at indexoncensorship.org
18 Mar 14 | Asia and Pacific, News and features, Pakistan
(Image: Aleksandar Mijatovic/Shutterstock)
Pakistan’s record of abuse of its dubious blasphemy law has been criticised by a report from the US Commission on International Religious Freedom. The country currently has 14 individuals known to be on death row while 19 others are serving life sentences on charges of committing blasphemy.
Take for example the case of Aasia Bibi, accused of insulting the prophet Muhammad. The 45-year old Christian and mother of five says she was “falsely accused to settle an old score”. In jail since June 19, 2009, she has yet to have her appeal heard. Sameena Imtiaz, founder of Islamabad-based Peace Education Development Foundation (PEAD) says the commission’s findings are another “reminder of the religious intolerance that has permeated the society at large”. The hearing on March 17, before the Lahore High Court was “cancelled by order” yet again, informed her lawyer Mohammad Yasin Badar, who does not know the reason. “I got a text message from the court,” he said but surmises: “This is a very sensitive case.”
But while Bibi may be only Pakistani woman to have been sentenced to death for blasphemy, she is not alone. In November 2013, a 72-year old homeopath doctor Masood Ahmed, a British national of the minority Ahmadi sect, which has been declared non-Muslim by the constitution, was jailed for discussing Islam — a criminal offence punishable with death under Section 295-C of the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC). His conversation was filmed using a mobile phone in which he is seen reciting verses from the Quran. He has been released on bail. Then there is a mentally ill, 69-year-old British citizen, Mohammad Asghar, convicted in January this year, for sending letters proclaiming he was Prophet Mohammad. He remains in prison today.
The original blasphemy law, drawn up by the British and amended in 1986 by then-dictator General Zia-ul-Haq, puts in place a mandatory death sentence under section 295-C. Imtiaz says since the amendment more than a 1,000 cases have been registered against Ahmadis, Christians, Hindus and even Muslims.
The National Commission for Justice and Peace has also been keeping a close watch on the numbers. According to them, from 1987 to 2013, as many as 1,281 people have been charged, of which 616 are Muslims, 474 Ahmadis, 171 Christians and 20 Hindus.
Pakistan has never executed anyone under the offence but the between 1990 to 2012, several of the accused have been killed in associated vigilante violence outside the courts or in prisons.
According to a report by the Islamabad-based Center for Research and Security Studies, since 1990, extra judicial murders of 52 accused have taken place.
In its State of Human Rights in 2012 report, the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan states: “Abuse of the blasphemy law continues to take a heavy toll in terms of human lives and harassment of citizens.”
“The sheer number of cases registered in the past 25 years suggests the law has been widely abused,” concedes Imtiaz, adding that investigations have revealed that often the reasons for the abuse stem from personal enmity, property disputes, religious hatred.
“Decades have passed but none of the governments that followed, found the courage to repeal the discriminatory laws that have contributed significantly to intolerance, violence, bigotry, hate and injustice in the country,” says Bushra Gohar, a senior member of the Awami National Party. A legislator in the last assembly, she had submitted a bill in the assembly for the repeal of the blasphemy clauses inserted by Zia ul Haq, but it was never tabled in the assembly.
And for that reason, says Imtiaz there was an urgent need for debate to include “all segments of society on the pros and cons of the law and how it is abetting religious intolerance”.
In the meantime, she said, “an effective counter law that prohibits the abuse of the law for settling personal gains and inciting hatred” should be implemented. “The current law is not only vague but is rarely put to use due to fear of persecution and pressures,” she points out.
There have been half-hearted attempts to initiate a debate but after two high profile assassinations — of Punjab governor, Salman Taseer and minister for minorities, Shahbaz Bhatti — took place, for speaking on Bibi’s behalf and opposing the blasphemy laws, all efforts have been stalled.
“Political expediency, compromise and appeasement of a handful of religious extremists have prevented each subsequent government to initiate a meaningful debate, or even initiate pertinent legislation in the parliament to repeal or amend the discriminatory laws that continue to play havoc with the lives of women, minorities and the poor,” Gohar said.
Citing the recent torching of a temple in Larkana, in Sindh over blasphemy allegations, she says: “It shows how easy it is to incite mob violence and as in numerous similar cases in the past the root cause will not be addressed.”
According to the former legislator, strong political will is seriously lacking to review and amend or repeal the blasphemy law. “We cannot hope for justice for the victims and their families if we cannot even have an open debate on the discriminatory laws in the parliament and if the parliament, the courts and the government are threatened, coerced and silenced by a bunch of religious extremists.”
The annual report prepared by the Commission on International Religious Freedom looks at the state of religious freedom around the world.
This article was posted on March 18, 2014 at indexoncensorship.org
18 Mar 14 | Awards, China, News and features
Internet censorship is rife in China. Social media sites are not exempt — there are 2,000,000 people employed in the country specifically to monitor microblogging sites. Against this backdrop, FreeWeibo works tirelessly to keep track of and publish all the censored and deleted social media messages, providing a fascinating insight into the regime’s priorities and fears.
On October 4 2013, an app version of the site was launched in the Chinese Apple app store, created in association with Radio Netherlands Worldwide. The creators fended off some initial attacks, assuming the only way the app could be truly be blocked was through blocking the entire app store. They were in for a surprise when, on November 28, Apple themselves decided to take down the app following complaints from Beijing.
The people behind FreeWeibo remain undeterred. They have launched a new type of mirror site, which they say can circumvent Chinese censorship.
Index on Censorship’s Taylor Walker interviewed FreeWeibo.
Index: How does it feel to be nominated for Index’s Digital Advocacy award and why do you think FreeWeibo was nominated?
FreeWeibo: We are totally honoured to be even thought of for this award especially given the strengths of the other projects. To be considered in that kind of company is humbling. We are delighted that we can make it onto the radar for Index on Censorship. We tend to think that a lot of people feel that fighting Chinese censorship is a lost cause. Obviously, we don’t feel that way but we get a general sense that a lot of other organizations, companies, or individuals don’t feel that it was a battle worth fighting. We very much think that not only can we fight the battle but we can win the battle.
Index: Could you describe the changing composition of FreeWeibo over the past few years?
FreeWeibo: We started as GreatFire.org in 2011- that website still exists. What we do is we track what websites and key word searches are being blocked in China. We started just covering just a few hundred websites now we have 90,000 websites in our database that are constantly being tested for censorship. We also want it to be a resource for people that want to know more about what’s happening with censorship in China. We’ve been very successful with that as well. We started FreeWeibo because we thought it was the obvious thing to do to combat censorship on Sina Weibo.
Index: How was government scrutiny following the launch of FreeWeibo?
FreeWeibo: After we launched Free Weibo it was blocked in 3 days. The government is paying close attention to what we are doing. They were paying close attention to what we were doing before FreeWeibo. But now we are working a on a new concept which we call “Collateral Freedom”. We are basically creating mirror websites that are blocked in China and hosting them on global cloud services. It’s been proven that the Chinese authorities are unable to block our mirror websites without blocking everything that’s being hosted on the cloud. We are gambling that the Chinese authorities won’t move to block everything that’s hosted in the cloud because that would create a huge disturbance in internet service in China and there would be severe economic consequences related to such a block. We are leveraging the cloud to deliver sensitive information back into China – including our own FreeWeibo website.
So far, our mirror websites have not been blocked. What we are doing now is delivering others using that same method. I don’t know how high on the radar we are for the Chinese authorities but regardless, all co-founders have close ties to China and from the time we started the project we all knew that we were getting involved in something that the Chinese authorities probably wouldn’t agree with so we took precautions right from the start to protect our identities and to basically make our involvement as secure as possible and we will continue to do that.
Index: Last year FreeWeibo teamed with Radio Netherlands Worldwide and created an app described as “unblockable.” What was your reaction to finding that Apple blocked the app?
FreeWeibo: That was actually the worst feeling. Worse than finding out that the Chinese authorities had disabled one of our test locations, for example. We expect that the Chinese government will do whatever it takes to stop us and we know that that will put pressure on foreign multinationals. But to actually know that Apple listened and obeyed the censorship authorities – it was a really low and sad moment for all of us – truly disheartening. Apple presents this totally other side to its customers and if you look at the way it markets the company it’s not the kind of karma that you’d expect from Apple.
We increasingly recognize that one of the biggest threats to our operation are large multinational companies. We’ve proved time and again that we can defeat the great firewall and we can defeat censorship in China but we need to leverage other platforms to be able to do that. If multinationals continue to concede to censorship requests from the Chinese authorities then we are going to be left with fewer options in terms of defeating censorship.
Index: How would you describe Freedom of Expression?
FreeWeibo: Freedom of expression and freedom of speech are actually written into the China’s constitution. We think that these are basic rights that Chinese citizens should enjoy – as should citizens of many other countries around the world. With the Snowden revelations, people are becoming more aware of different types of surveillance and censorship – the landscape is changing. I can say with confidence that we have a very clear path to ending censorship in China. We are also confident that we can actually bring our anti-censorship tools to other countries. This year, we are hoping to expand what we are doing with Collateral Freedom, what we are doing with GreatFire, and maybe what we are doing with FreeWeibo so that we can bring freedom of expression and freedom of speech to countries that need our help.
Nominees: Advocacy | Arts | Digital Activism | Journalism
Join us 20 March 2014 at the Barbican Centre for the Freedom of Expression Awards
This article was published on 18 March 2014 at indexoncensorship.org
18 Mar 14 | Magazine, News and features, Volume 43.01 Spring 2014
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A destroyed tram is surrounded by the rubble on Dumbarton Road, Clydebank, after a WWII bomb raid
(Image: West Dunbartonshire Libraries and Cultural Services)
On a moonlit evening on Thursday 13 March 1941, just after 9pm, the first of 236 German bombers converged on Clydeside. By 9.10pm, over the western suburbs of Glasgow, over Bowling and Dalnottar and – especially – over the crowded, densely housed and productive little town of Clydebank, the bombs had begun to fall. And the next night, it happened all over again.
This was bombing of such ferocity that the explosions could be heard clearly at Bridge of Allan in Stirlingshire. The fires were of such frenzy that their glow could be clearly seen from rural Aberdeenshire and Northern Ireland.
Clydebank was all but destroyed. According to the official statistics 528 people, from one geographically small community, were killed, 617 seriously injured. Hundreds – perhaps thousands – more were superficially hurt and cut, or traumatised by blast. Of some 12,000 dwellings – including tenement blocks as well as villas and semi-detached homes – only seven were left entirely undamaged. Four thousand homes were completely destroyed, 4,500 more so severely damaged as to be uninhabitable for months.
The morning of the 14 March saw thousands of dazed survivors shambling along Dumbarton Road into Glasgow and, by the night of Saturday 15 March – as official records would eventually reveal – it was reckoned that more than 40,000 people had left the town amid utter chaos.
And, in the days immediately following the German assault, soldiers and servicemen came home on leave to Clydebank wholly innocent of what had happened. John Bowman, in March 2011, bleakly recalled – for a BBC Scotland audience – returning from his distant base in Sussex to find not only his house obliterated, but most of the street; and that his mother, two brothers and a younger sister had been killed.
There is still a place called Clydebank, and many who survived March 1941 still live there. But thousands who fled never returned. The community that had retired for the evening of Thursday 13 March 1941 was smashed beyond recovery in a single night in what, in proportion of lives lost and homes destroyed, was the worst bombing raid anywhere in Britain in the entire war. Clydebank, the historian Angus Calder bleakly noted in 1969, “had the honour of suffering the most nearly universal damage of any British town”.
But, outside Scotland, few have ever heard of the Clydebank Blitz. The Blitz, to most today, conjures up images of heroic London and battered Coventry – the first because it was, of course, the capital; and the second because the authorities deliberately exploited its ordeal for newsreel propaganda.
Of course very many towns and cities were bombed. Those particularly hard-hit included Liverpool, Hull, Southampton and Belfast. Besides, Clydebank is readily confused with the vague term “Clydeside”, used to describe the greater Glasgow area. But – beyond that – there was calculated wartime censorship by what was laughably known as the Ministry of Information.
Officials refused to allow any mention of the town’s name in subsequent newspaper reports – which only speak of the bombing of “a town in western Scotland”. No film-crews were allowed into the ruins. Neither royalty nor Prime Minister Winston Churchill sped north to visit and console. And, when one survivor, Thomas Kearns, wrote a detailed letter to family in Belfast, it was intercepted (and held) by censors. His words would not see publication till 1971.
A stark photograph, days later, of a Clydebank mass burial, was cropped before publication – on ministry orders – so that the public would not grasp just how terrible the disaster had been; sixty-seven people, or bits of them, lay in it. And the government did its best at first not to issue casualty figures at all and then to give most misleading ones.
On 18 March 1941 that the Ministry of Home Security – headed by Home Secretary Herbert Morrison – issued a foolish communiqué declaring that “about 500 persons had been killed on the raids in Clydeside”. In fact, 647 had died in Glasgow alone – quite apart from the Clydebank death-toll – and, on hearing of this fatuous announcement, a Home Guardsman in Clydebank is said bitterly to have exclaimed: “Which street?”
Bureaucrats seem to have been determined deliberately to conflate Clydebank and Glasgow fatalities, to the point where the home secretary was accused in the House of Commons of making “misleading statements”. Inevitably, feelings around Clydebank ran high.
A high official warned Tom Johnston, secretary of state for Scotland, that locals heard such official statistics with “frank incredulity” and, a year on, there was great consternation in high places when a Sunday Post anniversary piece, on 15 March 1942, lamented the “1,200 Clydebank people” who had died “as the result of the savage two-night blitz on the town”.
This article had somehow evaded censors. Clydebank Burgh Council now held a furious debate, in which all sides demanded hard, accurate numbers from the government.
But these it refused to yield for the rest of the war. Thus, to this day, many regard the official death toll, as at last made known, with profound scepticism – especially when, years and even decades after the attack, human remains were still being found in Clydebank rubble.
Such games of officialdom were not unique to the Clydebank catastrophe. As the historian Peter Lewis dryly notes, after the dreadful bombing of Manchester on 22 and 23 December 1940 The Manchester Guardian “was not allowed to name the city in its reports of the raids on ‘an inland town in north-west England’ or state that ‘a newspaper office’ hit by incendiaries was its own. Only when the Germans boasted of hitting Manchester was Manchester entitled to be told how heavy the raids and the damage were.”
Hull, the worst-bombed city in England, likewise grew inured to being described as “an east-coast town”, even as sailors came home on leave and lamented through incessant raids that they felt safer at sea. Yet the suppression of detail on Clydebank’s ordeal was determined and exceptional.
There were four evident reasons for this. The first was military. The Clyde generally was a vital workshop for ships, munitions and ordnance. Clydebank was of particular importance, notably for the great yard of John Brown’s. The authorities genuinely believed the Germans should never be told what they had actually hit, far less missed, lest they return and make good their failures.
The second was mortification. Though the imminent attack had been known for hours by the authorities, no warning of any kind had been given the people until German aircraft were practically within earshot. RAF tactics for the defence of greater Glasgow on those nights – too complex to discuss here – had been a humiliating failure. The scant anti-aircraft guns by Clydebank had run out of ammunition. Scottish Office officials had treated the town so contemptuously that Clydebank could not bury her dead even in cardboard coffins; most finally deposited in that huge grave were in bed-sheets tied with string.
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[/vc_column_text][vc_separator color=”black”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row content_placement=”top”][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_custom_heading text=”The war of the words” font_container=”tag:p|font_size:24|text_align:left” link=”url:https%3A%2F%2Fwww.indexoncensorship.org%2Fnewsite02may%2F2014%2F02%2Fthe-war-of-the-words%2F|||”][vc_column_text]Through a range of in-depth reporting, interviews and illustrations, the spring 2014 issue of Index on Censorship magazine explores how modern propaganda was invented and looks at poster campaigns, partisan journalism in the USA, WWII, Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”80560″ img_size=”medium” alignment=”center” onclick=”custom_link” link=”https://www.indexoncensorship.org/newsite02may/2014/02/the-war-of-the-words/”][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″ css=”.vc_custom_1481888488328{padding-bottom: 50px !important;}”][vc_custom_heading text=”Subscribe” font_container=”tag:p|font_size:24|text_align:left” link=”url:https%3A%2F%2Fwww.indexoncensorship.org%2Fnewsite02may%2Fsubscribe%2F|||”][vc_column_text]In print, online. In your mailbox, on your iPad.
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SUBSCRIBE NOW[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_separator color=”black”][vc_custom_heading text=”Don’t lose your voice. Stay informed.” use_theme_fonts=”yes”][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]Index on Censorship is a nonprofit that campaigns for and defends free expression worldwide. We publish work by censored writers and artists, promote debate, and monitor threats to free speech. We believe that everyone should be free to express themselves without fear of harm or persecution – no matter what their views.
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Evacuees in Whitecrook Street, Clydebank
(Image: West Dunbartonshire Libraries and Cultural Services)
A third undoubted concern was the spectre of Scottish nationalism. Tom Johnston had talked it up at every opportunity in the pursuit of London largesse, especially after a succession of witless mistakes. The BBC had ended all Scottish regional broadcasting when war began. The new BBC Home Service then persisted, for months, in the incessant playing of There’ll Always Be An England and authority at every level persisted stubbornly on using “English” as a synonym for British. In a spectacular gaffe – when a newsreel described the unambiguously Scottish RAF hero Donald Farquhar as an “English airman”, there was booing throughout Scottish cinemas.
The final factor was a baseless fear of Marxist sedition. Clydeside was an early – and, by 1941, the most organised – fortress of British socialism. She had Independent Labour Party and communist councillors. During World War I, her womenfolk had waged a determined (and successful) rent-strike against rapacious landlords. David Kirkwood – by 1941, the town’s veteran MP – had, as an earnest and vocal pacifist, been locked up in Edinburgh castle during that conflict and, in 1919, unrest was such that the Coalition government even sent troops and tanks into the streets of Glasgow.
In fact these “agitators” were a decent and remarkably conservative bunch; most, for instance, regularly attended church. But, in distant London, shattered Clydebank was viewed as a tinderbox of Bolshevism – especially as, at the time of the raids, there had been a protracted strike of apprentices in the local shipyards. (Not, in fact, greedy young lads, but time-served tradesmen still, unjustly, on apprentices’ wages.)
On all these counts, then, officialdom toiled tirelessly to block, from wider national consciousness, the effective destruction of an entire community.
It is only fair to remind ourselves – seven decades later, in a comfortable age – that Britain in March 1941 was battling for national survival – bombarded from the air, throttled in the Atlantic, close to starving and in real fear of invasion and conquest.
The desperate desire to maintain morale, deny useful information to the foe and stamp on defeatism was by no means dishonourable. And the public information films and perky propaganda posters of the struggle are maddening today less for their bossiness than for their sexism. All the same, the fatuity of wartime censorship and propaganda – much of it to mask incompetence – is remarkable.
Churchill himself intervened in two grave misjudgements. The first was in the wake of the Dunkirk disaster, when the Ministry of Information urged folk to report “defeatists” – having established it as an offence in law to spread “alarm and despondency”. Some 70 people were prosecuted after being shopped by ministry spies (cynically dubbed “Cooper’s Snoopers” after the minister of information, Duff Cooper) until Churchill ordered the nonsense to stop.
The second was after Buckingham Palace was bombed on 12 September 1940, when the king and queen only narrowly escaped death. “The Ministry of Information, with its genius for missing propaganda opportunities,” notes Lewis, “was busy suppressing news of the Palace bombing when Churchill heard of it. ‘Dolts, idiots, fools!’ he is said to have exploded. ‘Spread the news at once. Let it be broadcast everywhere. Let the people of London know that the King and Queen are sharing the perils with them…’”
Royalty was one matter; the people of Clydebank another. Whatever the motives and by whatever authority – perhaps even that of the prime minister himself – “official estimates of the damage and dead were deliberately played down”, as Meg Henderson, whose novel The Holy City is based on the experience of wartime Clydebank, put it in 1999.
“Unlike modern conflicts… there were no TV cameras to bring the horror directly into the nation’s living-rooms, but there were newsreel cameras. What Clydebank has never understood is why in Coventry and London the newsreel films were widely broadcast with proud boasts of ‘We can take it’, while in Clydebank the official view was that there had been little damage and few casualties…”
The town was never properly rebuilt; most of its March 1941 citizens never returned; and by the mid-1980s Clydebank had lost almost all her traditional industry. It’s a ragged, palpably sad place today, and with one lingering legacy from past ship-building glory – leading all Europe in asbestos-related illness and death.
This article is taken from the spring 2014 issue of Index on Censorship Magazine. Get your copy of the issue by subscribing here or downloading the iPad app.
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17 Mar 14 | Volume 43.01 Spring 2014
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”In the Spring issue of the magazine, we include a special report, the war of words, on the use of propaganda and censorship during conflicts.”][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]
This theme seems particularly timely with the current situation in Crimea, where we are seeing classic propaganda techniques being rolled out to rally support for the vote to join Russia. Our special report of 15 articles and essays, starts with WWI where the current use of the term propaganda was invented and looks at poster campaigns, and propaganda journalism in the USA, but our writers, who include Lyse Doucet, David Aaronovitch, Rana Mitter, and serving army officer Ric Cole, also look at WWII, Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria.
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Natasha Joseph interviews a journalist who worked in South Africa during apartheid, and what it was like to file stories from a newsroom knowing one of your colleagues was a spy; and Scottish journalist John MacLeod reports on a bombing cover-up in Clydebank, near Glasgow, where a huge swath of the town was flattened, and the rest of the country was left completely unaware because of wartime censorship. This Scottish story is still not that well known, even today. Something that illustrates the power of the cover-up during wartime, is the way details of the wartime flu epidemic was kept from millions of people all over the world.
In the other sections of the magazine, Irena Maryniak looks at the rise of racism and nationalism in Hungary; and Konstanty Gebert reports on hate crime and anti-semitism in Poland. The magazine includes two articles about censorship in science, one from Canada and one from the United States.
Also in this issue:
• Samizdat still going: underground newspapers in Belarus
• First extract in English of a controversial Turkish play
• Film fans go head to head on which decade has seen the strongest women’s voices on film. And don’t miss our competition to votes on the decade, and win tickets to a screening at Rich Mix cinema
• How do you feel about propaganda? Take our survey.
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Copies are also available at the BFI, the Serpentine Gallery, MagCulture, (London), News from Nowhere (Liverpool), Home (Manchester), Calton Books (Glasgow) and on Amazon. Each magazine sale helps Index on Censorship continue its fight for free expression worldwide.
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17 Mar 14 | Awards, Digital Freedom, News and features
The Incognoto Amnesiac Live Operating System (TAILS) is an open-source encryption tool that can help protect the free online communication of journalists and sources in any country, regardless of official limits on free expression.
Tails was developed by a global network of individuals, working in international obscurity, united in their dedication to protecting the security of computer users. This is a vital service to journalists and activists working in the NSA era and closed societies, where authorities rely heavily on censorship and tracking of online activity to clamp down on dissent.
Tails is an operating system, much like Windows and Mac OS, and can be used by anyone, anywhere, without having to have substantial technical knowledge. A member of the anonymous group behind the creation of Tails spoke with Alice Kirkland about their nomination and why online security is not just a requirement for journalists and hackers.
Index: How does it feel to be nominated for the Index on Censorship digital activism award and why do you think Tails was nominated?
Tails: It is an honour to be on the list of nominees. Especially after all that happened this year! We find it interesting to see a free software project in such a list. I think Tails was nominated because we are the safest operating system available for online anonymity and digital activists. This was even acknowledged by the NSA itself.
Index: What is the importance of internet security and how has this changed over recent months?
Tails: The fact is that in our modern world our communications are inevitably more and more mediated by digital technologies. On the other hand, the characteristics of digital communications as well as the way the internet is built create a very interesting challenge: it is relatively easy to spy on people on the internet, but it is also relatively easy to defeat this spying by using the right techniques.
I don’t think that the nature or the role of internet security changed over the recent months. The recent Snowden revelations only confirm the assumptions on which our work is based. What really changed is the public awareness regarding those issues. It is now hard to deny that internet security has to do with politics and not only with technology.
Index: Do you think journalists should have access to different online security options than the general public?
Tails: I don’t think so. We all need efficient tools to protect our communications online whether you are a journalist, an activist, a hacker, or a layperson. Recent events, from the Snowden revelations to the Arab Spring, proved that the boundaries between those roles are actually being challenged by the way people use the internet.
Furthermore, from a more technical point of view, anonymity tools like Tor need a wide range of users in order to protect the anonymity of every one of them. Tor is being used equally by dissident bloggers, privacy concerned citizens, whistleblowers, businesses, victims of intimate partner abuse, and even military and law enforcement agencies.
Anonymity loves company.
Index: What was the thought process behind Tails and how has the software evolved over time?
Tails: The first version of Tails announced on our website dates back from June 23, 2009. Our vision was to create a toolbox for computer security that would be easy to use and hard to misuse. The challenge was to combine very good security by default while being accessible to a large public.
Since then, we released 34 versions of Tails and we have been really successful. In 2013, our approximate number of users was multiplied by 2.5. Today, someone is starting Tails every 10 seconds somewhere in the world.
Just to give an example, all connections to the internet are forced to go through the Tor network without having to configure anything. I think that we share the same target audience as the people who are using the Tor network.
The main function of tails is to hide the location of internet users.
Index: What other features does Tails have for its users?
Tails: For us online anonymity is only one of the major aspects of Tails:
– Online anonymity. All connections to the Internet are forced to go through Tor or I2P, which is the second anonymity network available in Tails.
– Amnesia. Tails runs from a DVD or USB stick and by default leaves no trace on the computer that you are using. This allows you to use Tails almost anywhere and also prevents you from leaving traces of sensitive data on computers.
– Cryptography toolbox. Tails provides a selection of state-of-the-art cryptographic tools to encrypt your files, emails and instant messaging, selected for their security features and ease of use.
Index: What role does freedom of expression have to play in the debate surrounding online privacy and where do you see the future of this?
Tails: Tools such as Tails or Tor relate to both online privacy (private communications), and freedom of expression (opinions expressed publicly). For example, Tails can be vital to both an activist writing a dissident blog, and a victim of intimate partner abuse communicating with her lawyer. In this case, the actual technology used to protect both freedom of expression and privacy on the internet is the same.
Still, the recent leaks proved that freedom of expression is a central mechanism in bringing those issues to the public debate and making clear they are political issues, and not merely technical issues.
Index: Online privacy and the NSA received a lot of media coverage over the past year. Would Tails have come about if it wasn’t for the likes of WikiLeaks & Edward Snowden?
Tails: As our record of releases proves, Tails existed before the NSA leaks, and even before the major WikiLeaks releases in 2010. I think that in this recent history, the tools and the way they are being used have a symbiotic relationship. Recent whistleblowers probably used online security tools such as Tor and Tails. In turn, the consequent media coverage and public interest provides us with a social context that is positive for the further development of our tools.
Nominees: Advocacy | Arts | Digital Activism | Journalism
Join us 20 March 2014 at the Barbican Centre for the Freedom of Expression Awards
This article was posted on March 17, 2014 at indexoncensorship.org
17 Mar 14 | Egypt, Middle East and North Africa, News and features
Supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood and Egypt’s ousted President Mohammed Morsi (Image: Nameer Galal/Demotix)
Amid deep polarisation and a widening crackdown on dissent in Egypt, the country’s military-backed authorities have now taken their conflict with the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood to a new front — houses of worship.
Egypt’s mosques have become the new battleground in the country’s political standoff, with the authorities recently introducing a set of measures to control religious discourse and silence pro-Muslim Brotherhood clerics they accuse of “mobilising anti-military protests and inciting violence”.
The latest measures include forbidding prayers in small mosques that are not under state control, and restricting sermons to graduates of Al Azhar University — Sunni Islam’s most prestigious institution. In recent months, no fewer than 55,000 imams lacking such credentials, have been dismissed from their jobs.
Ministry of Religious Endowments officials defend the move, insisting it is “necessary to stop lay preachers from exploiting the pulpits to advance their political interests”. For decades, the country’s mosques and universities have been fertile ground for enrolment of Muslim Brotherhood recruits and the spread of the Islamist group’s ideology. The Muslim Brotherhood , which rose to power following former president Hosni Mubarak’s ouster in February 2011, was designated a terrorist organisation by authorities in December.
In another controversial move tightening the state’s grip on mosques across the country, the Ministry of Religious Endowments has unified the theme of the weekly mosque sermons preceding Friday noon prayers. Previously, Egypt’s imams or preachers were free to choose the topic of their weekly sermons but it is now the ministry that decides what the imams should preach to the millions of worshippers attending Friday prayers.
Since the measure came into effect on 31 January, the ministry has announced a different theme each week on its official website, addressing topics that affect the daily lives of millions of Egyptians. In recent weeks, preachers have tackled a broad range of issues including developing squatter areas, environmental pollution and the role of youth in the society. The ministry has also been handing out guidelines to preachers at mosques under its control, warning that violators “will face dismissal and prosecution”.
Despite the warnings, some preachers remain defiant, refusing to comply with the instruction. They say they are the ones who should decide what to tell their followers.
“I will not be dictated by the state,” said Khalaf Massoud who preaches at the Montazah Mosque in the working class neighbourhood of Imbaba, adding that his duty is to “obey God” not “those in power”.
Other preachers have also denounced the measure as “a restrictive procedure that stifles free speech and religious freedoms”. But not all preachers are against the measure and some have even welcomed it, perceiving it as necessary for unifying the country and defusing current political tensions.
In an interview broadcast on CCTV on Friday, Imam Yasser Khattab who preaches in several mosques, said: ” The Muslim Brotherhood manipulated people and spread Islamist fundamentalism through their mosques. They incited hatred and divided the society in the last three years. There should be a stand.”
Since the toppling of Muslim Brotherhood President Mohamed Morsi by military-backed protests in July, clashes sparked by heated debate between Muslim Brotherhood supporters and opponents have frequently occurred in and around mosques after Friday noon prayers.
With a limited number of monitors to supervise the religious discourse, it is difficult for the ministry to keep track of rebel preachers refusing to abide by the new rule. Last week, four imams were summoned for interrogation at the ministry after they had allegedly called for anti-government protests during their sermons. The risk of criminal prosecution however, has failed to deter preachers like Massoud who vows to continue “to criticise any wrongdoings as people turn to me for religious guidance”.
The latest move by Egypt’s Ministry of Religious Endowments is part of the widening crackdown on Islamists and comes hot on the heels of other repressive measures taken by the authorities to curb dissent. Since the ouster of Islamist President Mohamed Morsi, the regime that replaced him has closed down TV channels and publications with links to the Muslim Brotherhood. It has also arrested and detained thousands of the group’s supporters while security forces have killed at least 1,400 Brotherhood loyalists. But with inadequate funding and insufficient manpower, it will be a daunting task for the ministry to exercise control over the country’s estimated 130,000 mosques — 10,000 of which are already independent of the state. Skeptics say it may be an impossible feat to undertake as the ministry’s resources are already stretched thin.
This article was posted on March 17, 2014 at indexoncensorship.org
17 Mar 14 | News and features, Religion and Culture, Young Writers / Artists Programme
A few weeks ago, 13,000 writers swarmed Seattle for the annual Association of Writers and Writing Programs conference. In the seaport city known for its ideal reading (and writing) weather — and home to poet Maged Zaher — writers filled hotel rooms and bars. On official panels they debated the state of contemporary literature, and at offsite readings and parties, they celebrated the written word.
The song of the nightingale / Is not up for sale
Ziba Karbassi, Gravequake
On the other side of the hemisphere, Ziba Karbassi doesn’t need to attend a conference to know what contemporary literature looks like. Born in 1974 in Tabriz, Iran, this rising star of Persian poetry, who also writes in her first language of Azeri Turkish, has been living in exile in London since leaving her country in 1989. Karbassi has published eight books of poetry in Persian, and with Stephen Watts, she has translated much of her work into English.
Taken from an incident close to the author’s family in the 1980s, her poem “Death by Stoning” depicts a young pregnant woman taken to prison, tortured, and stoned to death:
I am not a scaffold to be toppled
not a felled tree to be sunk in the flood
I am only a bag of bones and skin
smashed about
The heavy consonants in the nouns and adjectives and the scattered form of the poem demonstrate the mother-to-be’s “anguished, loving, and crazed” state of mind. “Death by Stoning” shows how poetry can give us a view into worlds distant from — but not entirely unlike — our own. Poetry can also play a part in shaping our world.
After the US invasion of Iraq by the Bush administration in 2003, over 13,000 poets rallied in the global movement Poets Against the War. During Occupy Wall Street in the autumn of 2011, poets from around the world contributed to the People’s Library in Zuccotti Park to form a living, breathing, inclusive anthology of the moment. At Occupy Oakland’s Port Shutdown on 2 November, 2011, there was a strong poets’ contingent, and when protestors in Cairo marched on Tahrir Square in solidarity with Occupy Oakland, the meme “Don’t Afraid” from one protestor’s sign quickly became a poetic rallying cry for Oaklanders.
But for artists as for whistleblowers — especially those working against repression, colonialism, and the destruction of the environment by big business — exercising free speech, online or off, can still lead to worst-case scenarios of exile, as in Karbassi’s case, and execution, as friends, relatives, and fans of Arab-Iranian poet Hashem Shaabani can attest to.
What! Graveyard? Fear? Are you kidding? You’re kidding, right?
Gravequake
Karbassi, however, is not afraid of expressing herself, and poets continue to organise, as manifested at the Revolution and/or Poetry conference in the San Francisco Bay Area in October 2013.
Our poetry is not exactly our politics, and our politics are not necessarily our poetry, but the line between them is blurry and easily crossed. Poetry remains a relatively free space: there are plenty of freely accessible journals on the internet; house and salon-style readings are growing in and around urban centres; anyone could submit to the Occupy Wall Street anthology, and all submitted poems were accepted. The art form remains a hopeful space for full participation in cultural and everyday life, whether we gather at conferences or in the streets — or both.
This article was posted on March 17, 2014 at indexoncensorship.org
17 Mar 14 | News and features, Politics and Society, Rwanda
Flowers at the Rwandan Genocide Memorial in Kigali Photo: Shutterstock
April 2014 marks the twenty year commemoration of the Rwandan Genocide that saw over one million Rwandans killed in less than one hundred days. The genocide demonstrated, in brutal terms, how societal divisions could be politicised, and ultimately militarised, to reach political ends. But in the years that have followed, the peace that has emerged is one defined by consolidated state control.
There are reasons to be optimistic. As well as the 2012 revision of the Access to Information law and the softening of the ‘genocide ideology’ legislation, in 2013 the Media Law was reformed. One key improvement is the recognition of self-regulation, as opposed to state-led control, as the primary regulatory framework for media houses and journalists, as well as a number of steps to present the media as both a professional and inclusive entity. These are bold steps forward to both enable and strengthen the media’s capacity to hold the state to account.
The reforms, however, left a number of key restrictions intact. Both Freedom House and Article 19 comment on the continued existence of requiring state approval for the launching of new outlets, as well as state-led definitions of legal duties required of journalists. Concerning the latter, Article 19 goes on to state that there is “a lack of clarity in the law about exactly who will enforce these obligations.”
When it comes to analysing both the events and legacy of 1994, the state remains prominent. Freedom House, in their 2013 Freedom on the Net summary, identified that the “Government-run Media High Council systematically monitors all print and broadcast media coverage during the country’s annual genocide mourning period every April.” We will have to wait and see if this occurs in 2014, but the state apparatus appears flexible and fluid enough to adapt quickly to the changing face of journalism – Freedom House noted that April 2012 marked the advent of online and social media monitoring.
In the monitoring report from 2012, the Media High Council, while praising the media as a whole for its coverage of the commemoration, singled out BBC Gahuzamiryango, stating it “[disseminated] genocide ideological issues” with content such as:
I recognize the Genocide against Tutsi, and I pay tribute to killed Hutu as well; yet, they only commemorate Tutsi.”
The legacy of the genocide, while affecting every community – many Hutus were among those killed, no one was truly left untouched – is a narrative defined and controlled by the state.
One of the main aspects that enabled violence to spread across Rwanda so quickly in 1994 was how perceived divisions between Tutsis and Hutus could be co-opted by state mechanisms, militias, elders, community leaders and the media. But does a centralised state-led narrative, strengthened in part by the criminalisation of genocide ideology, confront this divisionism or, in fact, does it pit free speech and the legacy of the genocide at odds with each other?
Prior to these reforms, journalists and media outlets have faced a range of punitive measures, including fines, incarceration and, at times, violence – in 2012, a radio presenter was incarcerated for 3 months for mixing up the Kinyarwanda terms for “victims” with that of “survivors”. While the reforms go some distance to protect journalists and media outlets, the true test of these reforms lie in how the relationship between media bodies and the state is to be reconfigured.
There have been well-documented disappearances, attacks and assassinations of prominent Rwandan journalists, civil society leaders and opposition-leaders in exile. While there is limited evidence directly implicating the Rwandan state, key officials have made statements regarding the fate of a number of these targets. In January 2014, this message was posted on the official twitter account of the Rwandan presidency, after the assassination of Patrick Karegeya, former head of Rwanda’s external intelligence services:
Those who criticize Rwanda know how far they go to protect their own nation.
This nexus between ‘criticism’ and national security, illuminating the ghost of 1994, offers a dangerous precedent for journalists and media houses. Criticism cannot divide the state and the media. If the move towards self-regulation is to fulfil its promise, the reform’s implementation is of utmost importance. Instead of feeling the need to be protected from the state, to be able to properly hold the state to account, the media needs to feel protected by the state.
No community was left unaffected by the events of 1994. Indeed its lingering effect is still felt across the entire region. These reforms are a positive step forward, empowering the media to take an active role in building dialogue and facilitating debate on the events and legacy of 1994. But as self-regulation establishes a foothold, how the state reacts to it will determine the true nature of media freedom in Rwanda for this year’s commemoration and all those that follow.
This article was posted on 17 March 2014 at indexoncensorship.org
