20 Aug 13 | News and features
I don’t have a problem with sending journalists to gaol.
Sometimes we break the law, and sometimes we do it in ways that are not defensible as being in the public interest, or for reasons that are not related to our journalism. I also think it’s okay for the police to detain and question journalists, as they may anyone else. I work on the assumption that we should all, as citizens, respect the rule of law and act within legal constraints – a big part of any journalist’s training covers legal issues around contempt, defamation, confidentiality and copyright.
I don’t even want special protection under the law as a “journalist” because then someone has to decide who counts as one, and as we’ve seen in the UK with the debate over the Leveson inquiry, that quickly ends up with some sort of state-approved licensing mechanism which none of us would find acceptable.
If there is to be protection then it should cover “acts of journalism”, no matter who commits them, and it should by and large rely on case law established by brave people taking risks to make information public and then defending their actions, also in public. As a working journalist I’m prepared to make promises to sources that could result in my spending time in prison, and I respect those of my colleagues who have put themselves on the line to establish the boundaries of acceptable journalistic practice.
Unfortunately, while we in the press have by and large played fair, it’s now clear that the state hasn’t. The revelations about the way the NSA and GCHQ operate have confirmed the view that many agents of the state either consider themselves outside the law or feel confident that the laws have been written to allow them to act in the ways they wish. They make it impossible to respect the law as it stands, and impossible to argue that we as citizens must simply obey laws that have been written to take away our liberty, our freedom to speak without being monitored, and our ability to act to change the world for the better whether by speaking truth to power, telling the world what is really going on, or campaigning in the streets and online to reform laws and practice.
This week’s detention of David Miranda under the UK’s Terrorism Act is a defining point. Miranda may have been carrying digital copies of secret documents made available to Laura Poitras and his partner Glenn Greenwald, but that does not make him a credible suspect in an investigation into terrorism, except to a paranoid state whose laws have been written to allow the security services unfettered power to detain and investigate anything they consider threatening.
But of course, that is what we have. Here in the UK the word “terrorism” has been stripped of all meaning so that it can routinely be used to cover any activity that the state does not fully approve of, or anything that might disrupt the free operation of the security apparatus ostensibly built to protect us from that same “terror”.
As a result many activities, from campaigning to marching to writing to helping uncover a vast, illegal conspiracy to surveil and monitor the entire internet, is covered by provisions of anti-terror legislation passed by frightened legislators willing to be persuaded that such draconian powers would only be used against clearly wicked people planning clearly horrible acts of mass murder. They were unable or unwilling to foresee that it would be used to hound journalists or those working for newsgathering organisation or that it would be used to justify oppression of anyone who stands out against any government policy. This is the security state, and while we may have watched it being assembled brick by brick in the last decade, the final brick snapped into place this week.
It is time for us to call on Obama, Cameron, Clegg and the other architects of oppression to “tear down this wall“. And yes, the irony of finding that I need to quote Ronald Reagan has not escaped me.
Bill Thompson is a writer and broadcaster. This post was originally published at The Bill Blog
12 Jul 13 | Campaigns, Europe and Central Asia
A Turkish student attacked while participating in anti-government protests died Wednesday. Ali İsmail Korkmaz suffered a cerebral haemorrhage after unknown assailants attacked him during a protest in the northwestern city of Eskişehir on 2 June.
Korkmaz is the seventh protester to die since the start of unrest on 28 May, when protesters first rallied against the government’s plan to turn Gezi Park — one of Istanbul’s important green spaces — into a shopping mall. The protest movement quickly snowballed, after police used tear gas to disperse the initial 50 protesters.
On 28 July, members of IFEX are calling on seven people to stand silently in front of Turkish embassies around the world for seven minutes at 12:00 PM, in solidarity with Turkey’s ongoing protests. The silent protest has become a symbol of Turkey’s peaceful protesters. Participants are asked to wear the names of those who have been killed.
Mass protests eventually overtook Istanbul’s Taksim Square, and protests were sparked across the country, after the government’s heavy-handed response.
June saw clashes between protesters and security forces, as both camps battled for control of the square. Riot police forced protesters out of Taksim Square during an overnight raid on 11 June.
The Turkish Ministry of Interior has reported over 4,900 protesters in custody, as well as over 400 policemen and 4,000 demonstrators wounded.
Read more here about the campaign, and for details on how to organise a protest.
11 Jul 13 | Americas, Religion and Culture
Journalist José Cristian Góes says case brought against him is a “direct attack on free speech. Rafael Spuldar reports
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28 Jun 13 | Digital Freedom, In the News
Index on Censorship is pleased to announce Charley-Kai John as the winner of our first student blogging competition on free speech. Entrants were asked to submit an essay about the biggest challenges to free expression in the world today. Here is John’s winning entry:
The biggest challenge facing freedom of expression in the world today is that the world wide web is not worldwide.
You see something. You Tweet about it. You post a status on Facebook. You share. You express. While it may not always be obvious at the time: you are flexing your freedom of expression. It is an everyday thing that can be found in your pocket or on your desk. Internet access is your tool to comment on society with. I am uploading this to Index right now using the internet.
It was given to ‘us’ for free. However the ‘you’ and ‘us’ I speak of are subjective. I am speaking about people in Britain, and other countries where the web access is widely available. This subjectivity undermines the freedom of expression embodied in the premise of a ‘world wide’ web. Having open internet access is a privilege that I and many people often take for granted.
A trending # has the ability to connect people across the world instantaneously but that does not mean it will be seen by everyone in every country. North Korea is an extreme and yet important example. “Technically” this is a country with internet, however to say it is a country with internet encapsulates access which is not limited to certain members of society and heavily censored by the government.
The country recently gained its own wireless 3G network. It is a 3G network unlike any other. The 2 million North Korean citizens who now use this service are unable to access the internet. The DPRK twitter account cannot even be accessed. A shame for any North Korean wishing to see the same message its government relays daily, regurgitated through a medium designed to expand the world. What little internet access North Koreans do have is used instead to make their world smaller.
A country that is secluded from the internet is secluded from the world. The North Korean government has been able to hold its grasp by limiting access to a world outside the one they have created. An outside world is not a possibility without a world wide web to present it. This access needs to be in the hands and homes of North Koreans because at the moment, it is an understandably difficult external world to visualise.
‘Hello world from comms center in #Pyongyang.’
Journalist Jean H. Lee tweeted this on February 24 2013. It may only be one tweet floating around the Twittersphere that day but it is believed to be the first twitter message sent using the country’s mobile 3G service. It is also probably one of the last. Internet access withheld from its own citizens was offered to those coming into the country and even this service has reportedly now been stopped.
I want to see a tweet, not from a journalist, but from a North Korean: expressing views that are not the government’s but their own. I want this blog post to be easily accessible in North Korea. The world wide web has turned freedom of expression into a truly global thing but there is still room for it to grow.
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John is a first-year undergrad at the University of Warwick studying English literature. His blog post focuses on the limits of digital freedom of expression in authoritarian North Korea.
The judging panel — which inculded Index on Censorship CEO Kirsty Hughes and former Chair Jonathan Dimbleby, Global Publishing Director at SAGE Ziyad Marar, and Head of Journalism at City University London George Brock — commended John’s entry for his original point of view, fresh and engaging style, and clear understanding of one of today’s greatest challenges to freedom of expression.
John’s winning entry will be published in the Index on Censorship magazine. He will also receive £100, a one-year magazine subscription and will be invited to our magazine launch party in September.
