29 Nov 2013 | Academic Freedom, News, United Kingdom
In bid to address the issues surrounding people with extremist views giving talks at British campuses, Universities UK recently released new guidelines on external speakers. “Universities have to balance their obligation to secure free speech with their duties to ensure that the law is observed — which includes promoting good campus relations and maintaining the safety and security of staff, students and visitors,” says the body, which represents vice-chancellors.
This is not the first time they have spoken out about the topic. However, a set of guidelines from 2011 reads: “It is the law alone which can set restrictions on freedom of speech and expression and on academic freedom — it is for the law and not for institutions or individuals within institutions to set the boundaries on the legitimate exercise of those rights”. It appears they are calling for somewhat stricter regulation this time around. The current guidelines are also more in line with the view of the National Union of Students, which maintains that “(…) many students’ unions may wish to go further than the law on securing ‘freedom from harm’ when restricting some speaker activity.” The NUS’ own “No Platform” policy, banning certain speakers from their events, puts this theory into practice.
This is one of those topics that seems to come up at fairly regular intervals, and the outline of the debate is familiar by now. One side argues that speakers with outwardly hateful or discriminatory views don’t deserve a platform through which to legitimate them; while the other side argues that to deny them this is to deny them the right to freedom of expression, which also extends to those with whom we disagree. The following speakers have been responsible for at one point reigniting the debate, each in their own way.
1) Nick Griffin
Nick Griffin outside the Old Bailey court on the first day of the trial of the murder of Lee Rigby (Image: Velar Grant/Demotix)
The most famous case in recent years was the 2007 appearance of BNP leader Nick Griffin (and Holocaust-denying historian David Irving) at an Oxford Union debate on free speech. The invitation caused massive uproar, with protesters picketing the event. “It is not just an Oxford issue, this will have ramifications for other places where the BNP are active… this is going to give legitimacy and credibility to their views,” said Student Union President Martin McClusky at the time. “I find the views of the BNP and David Irving awful and abhorrent but my members agreed that the best way to beat extremism is through debate,” argued Oxford Union president Luke Tryl. This is not only time the Nick Griffin has caused controversy as a potential university speaker. Trinity College Dublin cancelled plans to include him in a debate immigration, saying “it could not guarantee the safety and wellbeing of staff and students”.
2) Mufti Ismail Menk
Mufti Ismail Menk giving a lecture (Image: soukISLAM/YouTube)
Islamic preacher Mufti Ismail Menk spoke at Liverpool University earlier this month. He has previously stated that gay people are “filthy” and “worse than animals”. The event was initially reported to be part of a longer tour stopping at Glasgow, Leeds, Liverpool, Leicester, Cardiff and Oxford universities. However, all except Liverpool, where he was hosted by the Islamic Society, revoked their invitation or said he had not been officially invited in the first place. Liverpool responded that it is “not the role of the university to censor people’s views”.
3) Mohamed El-Nabawy
A video captured the protest that erupted when Mohamed El-Nabawy was due to speak at SOAS (Image: YouTube)
A representative of Tamaroud, the grassroots movement which played a significant role in the ousting of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood-backed elected government, was chased away by angry protesters prior to a scheduled talk at London’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). The protesters, who were not students, chanted and brandished posters associated with the Muslim Brotherhood at the open lecture. SOAS security had to escort El-Nabawy off campus using an emergency exit . A spokeswoman for the Palestinian Society, which had organised the talk, said: “In the pursuit of freedom of speech and expression, some people may find some of the views expressed at our events objectionable.”
4) David Gale
David Gale on the BBC’s Sunday Politics Show (Image: UKIPDerby/YouTube)
In 2012 the Student Union at the University of Derby banned David Gale, UKIP’s candidate for Police and Crime Commissioner, from taking part in a Q&A session at the university. The Union has a no platform policy for “individual(s) who they believe to be a member of a group with racist, fascist or extremist views”, a category the Union believed was applicable to UKIP . UKIP leader Nigel Farage weighed in on the issue at the time, saying: “It is frightening that a Derby student body is so frightened of free speech and public opinion.”
5) George Galloway
George Galloway attends an anti-war rally in 2011 (Image: Paul Soso/Demotix)
In March, George Galloway was set to speak at an event organised by the University of Chester Debating Society. However, the invitation was revoked by the Student Union, acting in line with the NUS’ No Platform policy on Galloway. This move came after the Respect Party MP was involved in a string of controversial incidents, including refusing to debate with an Israeli student at an Oxford University panel discussion. Galloway’s camp have called the policy “idiotic, anti-democratic and politically-motivated”.
6) Julie Bindel
In September, the Debating Union at Manchester University (MDU) invited feminist writer and campaigner Julie Bindel to speak at their discussion on pornography. A number of people objected due to Bindel’s reported views about transexual people, which have led to the NUS implementing a No Platform policy for her. Some transexual students and their supporters “felt Julie Bindel’s transphobic statements and views made them both unwelcome at the event, and unsafe on campus, as it seemed that transphobia was being allowed and possibly encouraged,” said Loz Webb, the university’s Trans* representative. Despite this, MDU refused to replace Bindel, though she eventually chose to drop out after receiving death threats.
This article was originally posted on 29 Nov 2013 at indexoncensorship.org
29 Nov 2013 | Czech Republic, Europe and Central Asia
Nominations are now open for a writing award for people and organisations contributing to the profile of Czech literature around the world.
The award, set up to commemorate a former editor of Index on Censorship magazine, is presented at the Prague Book Fair in May. The prize was first awarded in 2011 with freedom of expression in mind, and is given to a person or an organisation outside of the Czech Republic contributing in a major way to the promotion and dissemination of Czech literature abroad. The winner is chosen by a five-person jury, and also receives a prize of £1000. Nominations close on 15 February.
World of Books, which runs the annual Prague Book Fair, set up the literary award to commemorate George (Jiri) Theiner. He found his niche in England as Index on Censorship’s deputy editor in the 1970s and, following Michael Scammell’s departure, as the editor in the 1980s. George was held in high regard by writers and poets in Czechoslovakia not least because he worked tirelessly to publicise their fate and their work through translation into English. They included Vaclav Havel, Ivan Klima, Ludvik Vaculik, Bohumil Hrabal and others post 1968, or poets such as Miroslav Holub and Antonin Bartusek pre 1968.
The first recipient of the prize was Andrzej Slawomir Jagodzinski, a prolific journalist and translator of Czech literature into Polish who, from 1976 onwards, was closely involved in the Polish and Czech democratic opposition. After the collapse of the totalitarian regimes in central and eastern Europe he became the director of the Polish Cultural Centre in Prague.
The 2012 prize winner Ruth Bondy is a representative of the Czechoslovak pre WWII generation of intellectual Jews who, like many others, was deported to Theresienstadt and subsequently to Auschwitz and, towards the end of the war, to Germany. She moved to Israel in 1948 and worked as a journalist on the Hebrew daily Davar. She taught journalism at the Tel Aviv University in the 1980s and 1990s. She has translated a diverse group of Czech authors into Hebrew (including Hasek and Hrabal) and written studies centred on the fate of Czech Jews during the Holocaust.
Last year the prize was received by Paul Wilson, a journalist, literary critic and translator of many of Vaclav Havel’s works into English. He was closely associated with the persecuted band Plastic People of the Universe, as a result was thrown out of Czechoslovakia in the early 1970s. He has remained a committed publicist of Czech causes and authors.
18 Nov 2013 | Palestine
A Palestinian news agency closed down in the Gaza Strip for allegedly fabricating reports regarding Hamas and their support for pro-Morsi Egyptian Islamist groups is to reopen after four months.
The decision to allow work once again at the offices of Ma’an News Agency, the largest independent TV, radio and online media group in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, was the result of a meeting between the Hamas leader President Haniyeh and those of Palestinian factions on Saturday. According to Khaled al-Batsh, leader of the Islamic Jihad Movement, the meeting was called by Haniyeh to deliberate issues in the Gaza Strip, including potential reconciliation among Palestinian political factions. The Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah movement was not represented at the meeting.
A spokesman for Hamas, Ehab Ghissin, stated that Haniyeh “gave his instructions for the Ministry of Information to open the agency’s bureau” as long as Ma’an abides by professionalism and accuracy in its work.
The office of Ma’an was closed down in July after publishing reports suggesting Hamas was involved in supporting terror groups opposed to Egypt’s new regime. Citing Israeli sources the article stated the Hamas government gave refuge to fugitive leaders of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood in a Gaze hotel. After the meeting President Haniyeh spoke of the importance of a positive relationship between Egypt and Palestine, emphasising that Hamas is a national movement that does not depend on external organisations.
The decision to reopen the news office in Gaza was welcomed by Ma’an General Director, Raed Othman. “Ma’an aims to provide its media services to all Palestinians everywhere,” he said, adding that the news organisation will attempt to increase its activity in the area in the coming weeks.
The Saudi Arabian news channel Al-Arabiya was also shut down for the same reason and at the same time as Ma’an. Despite discussion during Saturday’s meeting to reopen Al-Arabiya too, the organisation remains closed in the Gaza Strip. The news channel has openly stated it was in favour of the removal of President Morsi from power.
25 Oct 2013 | Asia and Pacific, Digital Freedom, India, News
Just days before the United Nation’s led Internet Governance Forum in Indonesia, India, held its own – and first of its kind – conference on cyber governance and cyber security.
With the support of the National Security Council Secretariat of the Government of India, the two-day conference was organized by private think-tank Observer Research Foundation and industry body, Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry, (FICCI). Speakers were from a host of countries including Estonia, Germany, Belgium, Australia, Russia, Israel, and of course, India.
It was ironic, that in a post-Snowden world, buried under allegations of the extent of the NSA’s spying, US officials were unable to attend the conference due to their government’s shutdown. Instead, other views took center stage, and India also visibly demonstrated the various positions its stakeholders take around the questions of governance and security.
Right at the kickoff, India’s Minister for Communications and Technology, Kapil Sibal, challenged the question of sovereignty and jurisdiction in cyberspace. “If there is a cyber space violation and the subject matter is India because it impacts India, then India should have jurisdiction. For example, if I have an embassy in New York, then anything that happens in that embassy is Indian territory and there applies Indian Law.”
India has, over the last few years, flirted with the idea of an UN-lead internet governance structure, and subsequently backed away from it. Minister Sibal said that India believes in “complete freedom of the internet”, however, at the same time needs to acknowledge that along with cyber freedoms come cyber gangsters, and the state and its citizens need to be protected from them.
India, with its 860 million mobile subscriptions (although, the numbers of users would be lower than this figure) is looking more and more to the internet as a delivery platform of socio-economic programs and a tool to boost the economy. That the internet can raise GDP by 10% is a much favored figure for those who promote the internet for economic reasons. The fact is that as the remaining unconnected population of India begins to acquire net connections through desktops and smart phones, the government is increasingly looking at security and surveillance over the internet as a necessary and inevitable route. This also means that the government needs to rely on industry to help them with this gigantic task.
The possible synergy between businesses and government in India was a central theme for discussion; as industry bodies asked the government to invest in training more cyber security specialists and also start moving towards uniform security standards and protocols. In fact, Indian industry most certainly wants to be relived of the financial burden of training personnel, and to an extent, investment in security R&D, and is keen to partner with the government to achieve both ends. Indian industry is often in the news because it appears almost universally under prepared for cyber attacks, both from within the country and externally. Suggestions of a government-led cyber awareness program were made as well, with calls to allocate funds for these exercises in the budget.
However, as has been the case in India, the real source of friction still lies between civil society and the government over the question of surveillance and monitoring. In a session entitled ‘Privacy and National Security’; perhaps the only India-centric panel of the entire conference, the debate became overheated. The panel consisted of a senior police officer involved in surveillance, India’s director-general of CERT (Computer Emergency Response Team), a representative from the mobile industry and a privacy expert. The government official was pushed by civil society members and journalists to explain the workings of the Central Monitoring System, still very opaque to the public, and later the official definition of privacy. He did neither. Unsurprisingly, India is yet to really define what privacy is, leading to simultaneous furor in the room and twitter (#cyfy13) about why this hasn’t been done as yet.
The sense in the room was that surveillance, while necessary to protect citizens, is only really effective when it is conducted in a targeted manner. Mass surveillance leads to self-censorship and is, in the end, counter productive. The other bone of contention was the question of identity, with the government making arguments that verifiable cyber identity is a possible solution to cyber crime. However, other participants found the issue troubling, as anonymity is necessary for a number of reasons, including as we have seen around the world, political dissent.
Finally, panelists discussed how best to inculcate a multistakeholder approach when legislating the internet. It was pointed out more than once that the internet was a product of private enterprise, made on open standards and principles, but now governments are attempting to control this resource. However, while public calls for multistakeholderism were made for many reasons; human rights, protection of privacy and even to benefit business in the long run (as they would not risk being caught up in lengthy court cases in the future if they took civil society on board from the start), there was still an elephant in the room. Offline, many official participants wondered why Chatham House Rules were not observed, or why there were no closed-door meetings only for government officials. It was clear that much of the weighty – and honest – discussions still don’t involve the public. Perhaps not where the question of governance is, but certainly when the question of security is.
Ultimately, there are two broad outcomes of this conference. The first is that India has indicated its willingness to start shouldering discussions to do with the global cyberspace. The other is, as India’s National Security Advisor put it, — ““India has a national cybersecurity policy not a national cybersecurity strategy.” This is certainly a start to building a consensus for that strategy.
This article was posted at indexoncensorship.org on 25 Oct 2013.
