3 Jul 2024 | Albania, Europe and Central Asia, Kosovo, News, Serbia, Switzerland
Following the controversy of the 2022 World Cup when organising body FIFA faced major criticism over the decision to hold one of the biggest sporting events on the planet in Qatar, a state with a terrible record on human rights, governing body UEFA have attempted to steer clear of any politics whatsoever at this summer’s European Championships.
This year’s competition – which is currently ongoing – has stressed a message of unity, togetherness and inclusion, with UEFA being determined to avoid the negative press garnered by FIFA two years ago by remaining tight-lipped on political issues.
However, no matter how hard you try, politics cannot be removed from football. A number of issues related to freedom of speech have given UEFA headaches during the tournament, showing that censorship can be experienced anywhere, even when you try to avoid it.
One of the most significant examples of free speech being curtailed at the Euro 2024 was the case of Kosovan journalist Arlind Sadiku, who was barred by UEFA from reporting on the remainder of the tournament after he aimed an Albanian eagle sign towards Serbia fans during a broadcast.
Kosovo, Sadiku’s home state, has a population made up of 93% ethnic Albanians and the countries have a strong connection. Serbia does not recognise the independence of Kosovo and there is a history of conflict between the two nations, with relations remaining tense since the end of the brutal Kosovo War in 1999. The eagle symbol made by Sadiku represents the one on Albania’s flag and was deemed by UEFA to be provocative.
Sadiku told the Guardian: “People don’t know how I was feeling in that moment because I have trauma from the war. My house was bombed in the middle of the night when I was a child.
“I know it was unprofessional from a journalist’s perspective, but seeing my family in that situation was traumatic for me and I can’t forget it.”
The conflict between Serbia and Kosovo has caused free speech issues in sport before. In 2021, a Kosovan boxing team was denied entry to Serbia for the AIBA Men’s World Boxing Championships. It was a similar story at the European Under-21 Table Tennis Championships in 2022, which were held in Belgrade, as Kosovo athletes were once again not permitted to participate by Serbian authorities.
Even in football this has been a long-standing issue. At the 2018 World Cup, Swiss duo Xherdan Shaqiri and Granit Xhaka were charged by FIFA for each making the eagle salute after scoring against Serbia for Switzerland. They were each fined £7,600 for their celebrations.
Granit Xhaka’s father spent more than three years as a political prisoner in Yugoslavia due to his support for Kosovan independence and Xherdan Shaqiri came to Switzerland as a refugee and couldn’t go back to visit his family due to the war. Such context was again not enough to mitigate the players’ actions according to FIFA.
Of course, there is an argument to be made that the symbol made by Sadiku, Shaqiri and Xhaka was incendiary and risked provoking aggravation among fans, which could potentially be a safety hazard. However, if those who have personally experienced persecution are then punished when making a peaceful protest, then there is surely no room for any dissent in sport at all.
Many of the other conversations around free speech at Euro 2024 have been centred around nations in the Balkans.
Jovan Surbatovic, general secretary of the Football Association of Serbia, suggested that the country may withdraw from the tournament completely due to hate chants he claimed were made by Croatia and Albania fans. Serbia themselves have been the subject of a number of complaints – they were charged by UEFA after supporters unveiled a banner with a “provocative message unfit for a sports event”, while the Kosovo Football Federation also lodged a complaint about their fans spreading “political, chauvinistic, and racist messages” declaring their supremacy to Kosovo. One Albanian player, Mirlind Daku, was banned for two games for joining in with fans’ anti-Serbia chants after their draw with Croatia.
When nations have such complex relationships and history outside of football it can easily spill out on the pitch. The heightened emotion and passion of sport makes for a compelling watch, but can also increase tensions between nations. In such a convoluted context it is sometimes difficult to know where to draw the line between the right to free speech and the protections against hate speech.
Global conflicts have thrown up more sticking points – when calls were made for Israel to be barred from competing at Euro 2024 due to their ongoing bombardment of Gaza – which has killed more than 37,000 Palestinians – in response to the 7 October attacks by Hamas, UEFA refused. Niv Goldstein, chief executive of the Israel Football Association, told Sky News: “I am trusting Fifa not to involve politics in football. We are against involving politicians in football and being involved in political matters in the sport in general.”
This doesn’t quite match up with the fact that UEFA banned Russia from the competition soon after their invasion of Ukraine, demonstrating the difficulties in finding where to draw the line when attempting to regulate political speech and expression in football. UEFA were spared the headache of dealing with further protest at the tournament after Israel failed to qualify.
Similar issues were raised when German authorities ruled that only flags of participating teams would be allowed into stadiums, which was widely seen as an attempt to avoid potential conflict over Palestine and Israel flags being displayed, but which raised concerns that it would limit support for Ukraine. Blanket bans are often difficult to reconcile with the idea of free speech.
Football can’t ever be fully separated from politics. Just look at the case of Georgian MP Beka Davituliani, who weaponised the country’s shock victory against Portugal in his attempt to roll back on human rights, stating that the country needed defending from so-called LGBTQ+ propaganda like Giorgi Mamardashvili defended his goal. For the most part, fans and players have been able to express themselves freely, but we have a duty to highlight any issues when they arise – and unfortunately, at this summer’s tournament, they have.
2 Jul 2024 | Ecuador, News, United Kingdom
Index on Censorship has had a close relationship with Julian Assange since he picked up our new media award in 2008 for his work with Wikileaks due to our shared concern for freedom of expression. We were therefore pleased to hear the news that he was finally able to be reunited with his family in Australia after five years in London’s Belmarsh Prison and seven years in hiding at the Ecuadorian embassy (pictured above). At a court in the US Pacific island territory of Saipan, Assange pleaded guilty to a single charge of violating the US Espionage Act. He admitted conspiring to obtain and disclose classified defence documents. Time will tell what chilling effect the deal struck between Assange’s lawyers and the American government will have on journalists attempting to expose future wrongdoing by the US military and intelligence services.
The British courts may have played a decisive role by insisting that Assange’s free expression rights be taken into account during the extradition hearings. But there was a sense that by the end of the proceedings that both sides were exhausted. As Chief Judge Ramona V. Manglona said as she announced the agreement: “I hope there will be some peace restored.” For free expression organisations such as Index, the dominant emotion is relief that this saga is finally over.
The unstinting support of our colleagues at Reporters Without Borders has been instrumental in keeping the case in the public eye. But the wider Free Assange campaign has, at times, been a huge distraction. The campaign allowed a whole range of wider questions to arise which were nothing to do with free speech. Was the Wikileaks founder a journalist, an activist or a publisher, for example?
Julian Assange has established his place in history as one of the most significant figures in 21st century journalism. The sheer scale of the leak of US diplomatic cables he helped facilitate forced rival journalists to work together. But it also made governments determined to stop it happening again. New measures in the UK’s new National Security Act, for example, were specifically designed to “modernise” official secrecy legislation in response to Wikileaks-style data dumps. At the same time, authoritarian regimes could always hold up Assange as an example of western hypocrisy when challenged on their human rights records.
The reality is that although the Assange campaign has redefined the way the free speech world works, it has also sucked lots of the air out of it. Julian and Stella Assange have asked for the space to build a life for themselves and their children in Australia. This is their victory. But let us hope that for those of us who care about free expression, the focus can now switch fully to other egregious cases around the world.
In a terrible coincidence, the release of Assange coincided with the beginning of the espionage trial of Evan Gershkovich, the Wall Street Journal reporter arrested in March 2023 shortly after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It also coincided with the case of Hong Kong publisher Jimmy Lai reaching the highest court of appeal. Lai stands accused of joining an illegal protest in 2019. Next month his trial resumes under separate national security charges.
While we’ve poured energy into campaigning for the release of Assange, there has been a race to the bottom elsewhere in the world. Reporters accused of subversion are held without trial in China’s “black jails”, while hundreds of Uyghur journalists have been imprisoned in the re-education camps of Xinjiang. Russia’s independent media has been eviscerated and President Lukashenka has rounded up any opposition voices in Belarus. The use of anti-terrorist or national security legislation to control journalists has become commonplace in Turkey, in Egypt, in India and across the former Soviet republics of Central Asia.
It would be good to think that the energy of the Free Assange campaign could now be harnessed in support of Gershkovich, Lai and the many brave journalists around the world held as spies or subversives whose names we don’t even know.
25 Jun 2024 | Digital rights, News, United Kingdom
Political parties in the UK are now in the final stages of campaigning as they approach the general election on 4 July 2024. During the circus of the campaigning season, important issues can and have slipped through the cracks. We, the undersigned, want to ensure that the next government, whoever it may be, will stand firmly on the side of free expression.
Back in January, Rishi Sunak laid out key targets he wished to deliver before the end of his term, with varying degrees of success. In this spirit, we have compiled our own manifesto outlining key issues relating to free speech that we would like the next UK government to address. They are:
Enact Anti-SLAPP Legislation
Strategic lawsuits against public participation, or SLAPPs, are a means for those with money to abuse the legal system by threatening critics with costly lawsuits in order to intimidate them into abandoning their position. They have become a silencing tactic in recent years, with journalists in particular being targeted, alongside environmental defenders, writers and sexual violence survivors.
Particularly worrying is the current trend of SLAPPs becoming more common throughout Europe. Over 820 cases were registered by Case, the Anti-SLAPP Coalition, in 2023, 161 of which were lawsuits filed in 2022, a significant jump compared to the 135 filed in 2021. Such lawsuits are a stain on our free speech and media freedom credentials. Many journalists live in fear of them. In addition to the lawsuits we know about there are likely scores of articles that never make it to print because newsrooms fear the potential legal ramifications, articles that could serve the public interest.
Prior to the election being called, a private members bill, called the Strategic Litigation Against Public Participation Bill, had been put forward by MP Wayne David in an attempt to address the issue. Although the bill itself contained significant flaws and was weaker than many had hoped, it was at least a promising starting point from which to address the problem. However, with the announcement of the general election, the bill is dead.
We call upon the next government to take up the mantle against SLAPPs and to push forward with another, stronger bill that takes a much firmer approach to resolve the problem.
Protect the right to protest
The UK has seen a number of concerning attacks being made on protest rights in recent years. Legislation such as the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 and the 2023 Public Order Act have given the police and government sweeping powers to restrict protest, a move criticised by rights groups such as Amnesty International.
In May 2024, former Home Secretary Suella Braverman was ruled by a high court to have acted unlawfully by making it easier to criminalise peaceful protests. Various groups conducting peaceful protests have suffered as a result, such as environmental activists being handed lengthy prison sentences and pro-Palestine protesters being arrested.
Index has previously spoken out against the increasingly authoritarian approach to protesting in the UK and the worrying climate this creates for those wishing to peacefully exercise their right to free assembly and free expression. We would like to see the next government address the issues raised by repealing these alarming pieces of legislation, ensuring that peaceful protesters are no longer restricted in such fashion, and releasing and/or compensating those who have already been punished.
Take a stand against transnational repression
Transnational repression refers to the various ways that authoritarian governments, such as Russia, China, Iran, Rwanda and Saudi Arabia, reach across borders in order to silence dissent, using a range of tactics including online smear campaigns, threats and physical violence. Awareness of transnational repression has increased in recent years but so too has the phenomenon, not least in the UK.
The most famous example is probably the poisoning of Russian ex-spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury in 2018. Other examples include high-profile Hong Kong activists, Iranian journalists and Saudi comedians being assaulted on UK soil. Even on a less violent level, there are too many reports of students being spied on and university courses changed in acts of appeasement.
In November 2022 the UK government formed the Defending Democracy Taskforce, which is meant to be reviewing the UK’s approach to transnational repression. Late last year the taskforce announced it would be taking a more active role in coordinating electoral security, which is welcome given several hacks that have been traced back to China. But as for the broader issue of protecting dissidents overseas, and indeed those who challenge authoritarian regimes, there is little movement.
Index, for example, has worked extensively to highlight the dangers of transnational repression and we ask the next government to take a more proactive approach to tackle it by both protecting those within the state and sanctioning foreign states who utilise such tactics.
Support journalists in exile and in the UK
In May 2024, the BBC reported that the number of BBC World Service journalists working in exile is estimated to have nearly doubled since 2020, in part due to crackdowns in countries such as Russia, Afghanistan and Ethiopia. Similarly, in 2023 Reporters Without Borders (RSF) provided financial assistance to 460 journalists in exile – nearly twice as many as in 2022 – after being inundated with requests from journalists who had been threatened for their work.
As the number of media workers forced to flee their home country grows, the need for the international community to step in and help intensifies. The UK has an obligation to support and protect journalists in this situation by prioritising press freedom in their foreign policy objectives and calling for accountability for those countries who violate it.
For a journalist facing the distressing and difficult reality of living in exile, one of the most useful pieces of aid is a visa. By holding a visa they can live without fear of being sent back to a country where they face persecution, and can continue their work. We call upon the next government to ensure that journalists from abroad who are living in exile are able to obtain emergency visas in order to be kept safe from authoritarian regimes.
At the same time we’d like to go one step further; the next government should place attacks on the media high on the list of their foreign policy priorities, calling for true accountability for those violating press freedom. Ideally emergency visas shouldn’t be necessary as journalists everywhere are protected and we ask the next government to lead the way in upholding and defending media freedom.
In the process the government must show it respects media freedom in the UK. Stories like “Braverman criticised for shutting out Guardian and BBC from Rwanda trip” must become a thing of the past and some of the sections of the 2023 National Security Act should be repealed given their concerning implications for both journalists and whistleblowers.
Don’t go soft on authoritarian regimes
Over the years, the UK has had a habit of welcoming leaders from authoritarian states and overlooking their poor records on human rights. This was a common theme when David Cameron was prime minister, for example. He welcomed, among others, Egyptian President General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi less than two years after 800 unarmed protesters were killed at Rabaa al-Adawiya square in Cairo and Chinese leader Xi Jinping just days after the arrest of bookseller Gui Minhai.
The tradition has continued since. Under current Prime Minister Rishi Sunak the UK has developed a unique relationship with Rwanda, with the state being at the centre of the Conservative’s policy on asylum seekers. It was recently revealed that Rwanda’s top diplomat in the UK oversaw the use of the international justice system to target critics of the regime overseas in a clear example of transnational repression.
Indeed Cameron, in his new role as foreign secretary, went to Saudi Arabia in April for the World Economic Forum and did not press them on their poor human rights record, which amongst other issues sees many punished under draconian blasphemy laws or, in the case of Salma al-Shehab, for simple retweets. Meanwhile senior British government officials last month congratulated the newly appointed head of the Ugandan army, a man accused of abusing critics and of torture. The list could go on.
The next government would do well to choose its friends wisely, rather than helping authoritarian rulers maintain their grip on power and improve their international status.
Reform the Online Safety Act
The aim of the Online Safety Act – to protect children and adults online – is a commendable one. However, there are elements of the bill that are problematic when it comes to the protection of free speech, particularly those relating to encryption. One section of the act seemingly requires service providers to search for illegal content online by breaking end-to-end encryption, which threatens both privacy and cyber-security, as well as leaving the door open for government interference and surveillance.
Encryption is vital to ensure people can express themselves online safely, especially when they’re living under a repressive regime. Not only does the Online Safety Act put the privacy of online users at risk in the UK, the problematic language used in the bill can also be co-opted by other countries with more sinister intentions.
The next UK government needs to address the issues that have been raised by the bill’s passing by reforming and re-wording the legislation.
Advocate for a global limit on commercial surveillance
Another growing threat to free speech both globally and in the UK is the rise in spyware. This problem has worsened as technology has advanced, with highly sophisticated surveillance software – such as the infamous hacking software Pegasus – becoming readily available to governments around the world.
Pervasive surveillance clearly encroaches on people’s right to privacy and data protection and is a threat to free speech more broadly. People can be put off political participation, or even just from expressing their opinion freely, if they think they are being spied upon by the state. Spyware also often targets individuals like journalists, politicians and activists as a means of repression and intimidation.
We call upon the UK government to support the implementation of a global moratorium on commercial spyware until proper safeguards are put in place to deal with these threats. Controls and guardrails must be enforced globally to ensure that any surveillance tools comply with human rights.
Preserve academic freedom
Threats to academic freedom are widely viewed to be more of a problem in the USA than the UK. That said there have been worrying signs here which ought to be addressed before the problem escalates.
The number of reports of university events and speakers being cancelled has grown in recent years. This was supposedly the motivation behind the government’s introduction of a free speech tsar in the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act, which came into effect in 2023 and has been criticised by some for being “lip service” to free speech issues.
The tsar, Arif Ahmed, said at the time of his appointment that he would remain politically neutral in his efforts to combat attacks to free speech on campus. We can only hope he is true to his word. The current government has tried to interfere in universities, such as threatening to regulate certain academic approaches (in 2020 the then-equalities minister Kemi Badendoch condemned critical race theory – an academic field focussed on discussions of white privilege and structural racism – and the government declared itself “unequivocally against” the concept, for example).
Another threat is aforementioned – that of transnational repression – with students reporting growing fears of surveillance on campus, especially Chinese students. When you add in increasing fears around book banning in school libraries, there is a clear argument that free speech in education needs close attention in order to truly preserve academic freedom. But this must not come from a party-political position. Politics must not enter the classroom or lecture hall.
Support British nationals overseas
There are several British nationals overseas who are currently in prison, serving time for no crime at all. They are people who have been committed to free expression, human rights and democracy and for this they have lost their own freedom. Three of the most prominent are Jimmy Lai, a media mogul who is in jail in Hong Kong, Alaa Abd el-Fattah, a writer and activist who has been in and out of prison in Egypt for a decade now, and Vladimir Kara-Murza, a journalist and activist who has been behind bars since 2022.
The UK government has demonstrated a lack of commitment to help free these three men and we urge the next government to reverse this trend. The unjust imprisonments of them, and others like them, must be a priority and must then act as a blueprint for future action if other British nationals find themselves at the mercy of authoritarian regimes.
Signed:
Index on Censorship
Article 19
Humanists UK
11 Jun 2024 | Israel, Moldova, News, Russia, Ukraine
Israel’s High Court of Justice this week heard a petition challenging new legislation allowing a ban on foreign broadcasters deemed a threat to national security.
Known as the Al Jazeera law, in honour of its inaugural target, this allows the communications minister, with the consent of the prime minister and the committee of national security, to impose far-reaching sanctions.
“There is no doubt that there is a violation of freedom of expression here,” the High Court panel’s head, Justice Yitzhak Amit, told the hearing.
Yet Israel’s May shuttering of Al Jazeera – described as a “terror channel” by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – passed without much domestic concern.
Any outrage was limited to Israel’s small liberal left wing, even though in banning Al Jazeera, Israel joins the august ranks of countries including Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Bahrain.
The issue is, of course, rife with politicisation. Al Jazeera is headquartered in Qatar, as is part of the Hamas leadership, and is hardly free from bias. Nonetheless, this law can be used in the future to ban other foreign broadcasters that are deemed to pose an amorphous “threat to national security”.
And crucially, it includes an “override clause” that even Israel’s high court cannot overturn.
It’s important to note that countries often introduce special legislation affecting media in times of war and crisis, amid legitimate national security considerations.
Ukraine is an obvious case in point, not least because it faces such a particularly sharp threat from Russian disinformation.
A year before Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, President Volodymyr Zelensky moved to shut down three pro-Russian TV channels judged to effectively be weapons in Russia’s information war.
Immediately after the full-scale invasion, all national news channels were united into a 24-hour broadcast, and a subsequent newly revised media law was intended to be muscular enough to withstand Russian malign influence.
Yet while criticism of the government in times of war – especially one being fought with a citizen’s army – is not easy, Ukrainian journalists have quite effectively held their leaders to account.
Reporting on corruption in the defence ministry, for instance, heralded the minister’s resignation of defence minister Oleskiy Reznikov and government pledges for greater transparency.
And critically, the Government’s moves in the information sphere have not gone unchallenged. Ukraine, with its history of authoritarian government and a media scene under the sway of oligarchs and political interests, knows all too well how fragile free expression can be.
While officials made clear that the telethon would be completely free of government intervention, not all outlets were included, and critics note that some of those excluded such as Espresso, Channel 5, and Priamyi, had often criticised Zelensky and to varying degrees were associated with his predecessor Petro Poroshenko.
And there was widespread criticism of the March 2023 media law for handing too much power to government intervention, with the same measures to counter Russian disinformation all too easily abused to limit critical voices.
In neighbouring Moldova, scores of pro-Russian outlets were banned under the state of emergency declared immediately after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. More than two years later, the TV channels and websites remain blocked despite the end of the state of emergency, and many critics would argue that the country remains as vulnerable as ever to Russian propaganda.
What is needed to ensure that national security considerations do not become a tool to control free expression is a robust civil society push back and an ongoing debate on the boundary between freedom of speech and the fight against fake news.
In Israel, where the national narrative has become an inextricable part of the conflict itself, the public appears increasingly supine in the face of the official version of events.
Israel has long championed its diverse and outspoken media sector as a sign of a vibrant democracy, alongside robust laws that purport to protect free expression. But civil society and media are now experiencing repression from both official and non-state sources, with Palestinian citizens of Israel bearing the brunt.
Anti-war protests have been curtailed and violently repressed; Jewish and Arab teachers fired over left-wing posts on social media, while students have faced disciplinary actions for simply supporting a ceasefire.
Dissenting voices and journalists are being directly targeted and doxxed. Just after 7 October, Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi suggested police be empowered to arrest those accused of spreading information that could harm morale or fuel enemy propaganda.
Haaretz journalist Rogel Alpher this week noted a column in Yisrael Hayom which called for articles in the penal law that mandate execution or life imprisonment enforced on those disseminating “defeatist propaganda” or “abetting the enemy”.
Of course, Israel is not about to start executing journalists. The vast majority of extreme proposals do not make it into law, just as most anti-war arrests do not lead to indictments. Even bans on specific outlets are not total; Al Jazeera can still be accessed with absolute ease online.
But this all helps create a chilling atmosphere, serving to normalise such actions and increasing self-censorship.
Israel’s Hebrew-language media has chosen to self-censor to such a large extent that Jewish Israelis experience what Esther Solomon, editor-in-chief of Haaretz English, describes as a “cognitive gap” between the content they consume and what the rest of the world sees.
This means that anything confronting the profoundly uncomfortable reality of war and contradicting the accepted IDF narrative is seen as traitorous and a threat to national security.
The public acceptance of vaguely worded censorious media laws seems to fit all too well with the ongoing slow and creeping deterioration of Israel’s democracy.
