1 Sep 2021 | Media Freedom, News and features
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Dear Editor,
As proud members of the LGBTQ+ community, we know first-hand the vile abuse that regularly takes place online. The data is clear; 78% of us have faced anti-LGBTQ+ hate crime or hate speech online in the last 5 years.1 So we understand why the Government is looking for a solution, but the current version of the Online Safety Bill is not the answer – it will make things worse not better.
The new law introduces the “duty of care” principle and would give internet companies extensive powers to delete posts that may cause ‘harm.’ But because the law does not define what it means by ‘harm’ it could result in perfectly legal speech being removed from the web.2
As LGBTQ+ people we have seen what happens when vague rules are put in place to police speech. Marginalised voices are silenced. From historic examples of censors banning LGBTQ+ content to ‘protect’ the public, to modern day content moderation tools marking innocent LGBTQ+ content as explicit or harmful.
This isn’t scaremongering. In 2017, Tumblr’s content filtering system marked non-sexual LGBTQ+ content as explicit and blocked it, in 2020 TikTok censored depictions of homosexuality such as two men kissing or holding hands and it reduced the reach of LGBTQ+ posts in some countries, and within the last two months LinkedIn removed a coming out post from a 16-year-old following complaints.3
This Bill, as it stands, would provide a legal basis for this censorship. Moreover, its vague wording makes it easy for hate groups to put pressure on Silicon Valley tech companies to remove LGBTQ+ content and would set a worrying international standard.
Growing calls to end anonymity online also pose a danger. Anonymity allows LGBTQ+ people to share their experiences and sexuality while protecting their privacy and many non-binary and transgender people do not hold a form of acceptable ID and could be shut out of social media.4
The internet provides a crucial space for our community to share experiences and build relationships. 90% of LGBTQ+ young people say they can be themselves online and 96% say the internet has helped them understand more about their sexual orientation and/or gender identity.5 This Bill puts the content of these spaces at potential risk.
Racism, homophobia, transphobia, and threats of violence are already illegal. But data shows that when they happen online it is ignored by authorities. After the system for flagging online hate crime was underused by the police, the Home Office stopped including these figures in their annual report all together, leaving us in the dark about the scale of the problem. The government’s Bill should focus on this illegal content rather than empowering the censorship of legal speech.
This is why we are calling for “the duty of care”, which in the current form of the Online Safety Bill could be used to censor perfectly legal free speech, to be reframed to focus on illegal content, for there to be specific, written, protections for legal LGBTQ+ content online, and for the LGBTQ+ community to be properly consulted throughout the process.
Stephen Fry, actor, broadcaster, comedian, director, and writer.
Munroe Bergdorf, model, activist, and writer.
Peter Tatchell, human rights campaigner.
Carrie Lyell, Editor-in-Chief of DIVA Magazine.
James Ball, Global Editor of The Bureau Of Investigative Journalism.
Jo Corrall, Founder of This is a Vulva.
Clara Barker, material scientist and Chair of LGBT+ Advisory Group at Oxford University.
Marc Thompson, Director of The Love Tank and co-founder of PrEPster and BlackOut UK.
Sade Giliberti, TV presenter, actor, and media personality.
Fox Fisher, artist, author, filmmaker, and LGBTQIA+ rights advocate.
Cara English, Head of Public Engagement at Gendered Intelligence, Founder OpenLavs.
Paula Akpan, journalist, and founder of Black Queer Travel Guide.
Tom Rasmussen, writer, singer, and drag performer.
Jamie Wareham, LGBTQ journalist and host of the #QueerAF podcast.
Crystal Lubrikunt, international drag performer, host, and producer.
David Robson, Chair of London LGBT+ Forums Network
Shane ShayShay Konno, drag performer, curator and host of the ShayShay Show, and founder of The Bitten Peach.
UK Black Pride, Europe’s largest celebration for African, Asian, Middle Eastern, Latin America, and Caribbean-heritage LGBTQI+ people.
Footnotes
(3) See:
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25 May 2021 | News and features, United States
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”116812″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes”][vc_column_text]George Floyd was my dad. He was my brother and my cousin, and my boyfriend and my criminology professor, and my pastor. He was every black man that I love. His death represented the death of a million black men. Every death of a black man at the hands of injustice threatens black men everywhere.
If you’re reading this and you’re white, when was the last time you watched another white person die a violent death on your phone? I have watched more black men and women die on Twitter and Instagram than I can count on both hands. The careless tossing away of black lives, especially by those who are supposed to protect and serve, has turned into a monthly episode on social media.
We should not have to watch ourselves die over and over at the hands of the police. We should not be used to hearing “not guilty” when police are put on trial for our murders. We should not be used to finding out about police departments covering up gruesome murders at the hands of their police officers. We should not be used to grieving, but we are.
George Floyd’s death was not the first or the last gruesome murder of an innocent black man caught on tape. In 1961, the author James Baldwin said so poignantly, “To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a state of rage almost, almost all of the time.”
When I watched Floyd die, I watched my father die, I watched my brother die, I watched my cousin die, not for the first time, but the twentieth time. His death felt like another wave of grief and anger. That’s how it felt in 1961, and still feels today, to be a black person in America with any semblance of consciousness; it feels like a constant state of grief and anger that comes in waves.
George Floyd’s murder was a horrendous and disgusting show of the carelessness with which the police and society treat black bodies. What adds to the tragedy is that his story is not the first or last of its kind; I have friends and family members who have lost loved ones to the police, been injured by the police, or have lost quality of life because of the police, but their names were not placed after a hashtag because no one was there to record it.
For many black people, George Floyd’s murder and America’s response felt like a little too late awakening as we have been dealing with this treatment, specifically by the police, for generations. However, I am optimistic that those who fought for George Floyd will continue to fight with that same ferocity for our black brothers and sisters who are still alive.
Since last year, I have started to see a sense of urgency from the white majority to eradicate certain racist systems, which is amazing. However, it is important that black lives also matter even when it is not palatable and marketable for businesses and organisations.
Black lives matter when the victim is a criminal, or homeless, or disabled, or loud, or not nice. Black lives matter even when the victim is not crying out for his mother. Black lives matter even when there is no phone screen recording it.
Last year, I was proudly among one of the many applicants for law school; applications for college, law school, med schools, and other graduate schools were in record numbers in America, seemingly as a result of the number of systemic injustices we saw unfold. This fall, I will be beginning law school with an intent to work in prison, criminal justice, and broad human rights reform (which also are areas that are inherently racist in America).
Seeing the urgency of our youth to get involved in helping change the racist healthcare systems, racist criminal justice systems, racist public health systems, racist education systems has been refreshing and gives me hope that in generations to come, we will see changes in social thought leading to a more inclusive and empathetic society.
But the battle from last year is not over. The battle from 20 or 100 years ago is not over. In my opinion, police departments across America need to be uprooted and completely flipped on their heads to reveal to everyone the nasty racist history upon which they were created. Crime-control systems that focus on mental health resources, improving social interaction, creating job security and job opportunity, providing access to quality education, and creating community-led programming, etc. need to be implemented, as those are the aspects of society that actually decrease crime rates.
People must learn and listen to minority issues and treat others as they would like to be treated. Systems need to be created that do not benefit the white majority in a way that encourages indifference. Less than 5 per cent of lawyers are black, and less than 2 per cent are black women. Around 5 per cent of doctors are black; 7 per cent of teachers are black. There is a stark underrepresentation of black people in positions that affect some of the greatest changes in society. As more black and brown people are able to ascend to new heights in society, their influence will hopefully facilitate new changes in laws, practices, and social thought that can move us further away from systems of racism.
Moreover, the white majority have to share their platforms, listen to the needs of the minority, set aside their selfish and unilateral stances for the sake of advocating for those discriminated against. As those in power are mostly white men, we need their support and not their indifference. We need to continue making white people feel as uncomfortable about the racism that exists in America as we do so they too feel compelled to facilitate change.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]
12 May 2021 | News and features, Russia
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”116753″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes”][vc_column_text]Alexei Navalny, the Russian opposition leader and Putin critic, is using Instagram to send messages from the penal colony where he is being held to the outside world about his ill-treatment.
Navalny has been in the colony since February, as a direct result of his poisoning with Novichok nerve agent last summer.
The vocal critic of Vladimir Putin’s leadership collapsed on a flight in August and was taken to Omsk where he was treated before being airlifted to Berlin. The doctors there concluded that he had been poisoned with the nerve agent, with the FSB in the frame for doing so, which they deny. [In a bizarre twist, one of the doctors at the Omsk hospital recently disappeared and was found two days ago wandering around a forest.]
He spent a month in Berlin in recovery before returning to Russia, despite threats that he would be detained.
On his return, he was arrested and put on trial for charges relating to an embezzlement case dating from 2014 for violating parole conditions associated with that case. Index and others believe that the charges are politically motivated and are designed to stop Navalny from contesting elections. Navalny’s argument was that he could not register twice per month as agreed in those conditions because he was in hospital.
Despite his arguments, Navalny was sentenced to almost three years in a penal colony in Vladimir Oblast, east of Moscow.
His Instagram feed – updated by his supports and family – reveals that he has been denied medical care, been tortured with sleep deprivation and is being held in unsanitary conditions with many fellow inmates suffering from tuberculosis.
On 31 March, Navalny announced he was going on hunger strike to protest that he was not receiving adequate medical treatment for acute pain in his back and a loss of feeling in his legs and was being deprived of sleep.
“I have the right to call a doctor and get medicine. They don’t give me either one or the other, “ he said.
“Instead of medical assistance, I am tortured with sleep deprivation (they wake me up eight times a night),” he wrote in one post.
A week later he revealed that there was a high incidence of tuberculosis in the colony, with three out of fifteen in his “detachment” with symptoms.
“Inside there are unsanitary conditions, tuberculosis, a lack of drugs. Looking at the nightmare plates on which they put gruel, I’m generally surprised that there is no Ebola virus here,” he wrote.
On the 13th day of his hunger strike, he complained that the books he had brought with him had been confiscated and that books that he had requested had not been provided.
Navalny had requested a copy of the Koran in order to better understand Islam.
He wrote, “I came here a month ago and brought a bunch of books. And ordered a bunch of books. But so far I have not been given a single one. Because all of them ‘must be checked for extremism’. It takes three months.”
He has now filed a lawsuit against the colony for their failure to provide them.
“Here books are our everything, and if you have to sue for the right to read, I will sue,” he wrote.
Four days later, his captors threatened to force-feed him.
“This morning, a woman colonel stood over me and said: your blood test indicates a serious deterioration in health and risk. If you do not give up on your hunger strike, then we are ready to move on to force feeding now. And then she described the delights of force-feeding to me: straitjacket and other joys,” he wrote.
By 20 April, Navalny called himself a “walking skeleton” but revealed that the messages of support from Russia and around the world were sustaining him.
On 23 April, he wrote, “As Alice from Wonderland said: ‘Here you have to run to stay put. And to get somewhere, you have to run twice as fast.’…I ran, tried, fell, went on a hunger strike, but all the same, without your help, I just broke my forehead.”
Navalny says that the attention focused on him has meant that he finally started receiving some medical treatment.
“Two months ago, they smirked at my requests for medical assistance, they did not give any medicines and did not allow them to be transferred. A month ago, they laughed in my face at phrases like: ‘Can I find out my diagnosis?’ and ‘Can I see my own medical record?’” he wrote.
He has now been examined twice by a council of civilian doctors and has now abandoned his hunger strike.
“It will take 24 days and they say it is even harder [than the hunger strike itself]. Wish me luck.”
On 27 April, he looked back on the previous 12 months, calling it “the year of doctors and nurses and physicians in general”.
“I have never talked so much with them in my life,” he said. “First, the doctors saved me, who was dying from chemical poisoning on the plane.”
He added, “Then they rescued me a second time, risking their careers, explaining to my wife and everyone that I should be immediately taken away from the Omsk hospital, where their evil colleagues will kill me (they will not just treat me) on the orders of the Kremlin.”
“Then the Charité doctors [in Berlin] turned me from a vegetable back into a human being.”
Navalny said in his Instagram message that some doctors had fought a desperate campaign to get him normal treatment.
“Thanks to my prison doctors. I understand that they are just working within the framework that was given to them by their superiors, and therefore by the Kremlin. I can see now that people are sincerely trying to help. Yesterday, the nurse made a mark on my wrist with a pen, so as not to forget the hour when I had to give the next three tablespoons of oatmeal.”
He added, “You know, even through what I had been through all these months: I want one of my children to be a doctor. Although the children are probably not already. Well, let one of the grandchildren then.”
On 2 May, the day that the Russian Orthodox church celebrates Easter, the following message was posted on Instagram.
“How long I have been waiting for this Easter? Lent this year turned out to be difficult for me. Unfortunately, I will not be able to share a fully-fledged Easter meal today: I am still in the first half of my fascinating transformation from a skeleton barely dragging its feet into just a hungry man. But I will eat a few spoons of porridge allowed for me with an excellent Easter mood. Indeed, on such a day, I know and remember for sure that everything will be fine.”
Index and the rest of the world are watching to make sure everything will be fine.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][three_column_post title=”You may also want to read” category_id=”15″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
16 Dec 2020 | Iran, Iraq, Media Freedom, Middle East and North Africa, News and features
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On Saturday 12 December, the founder of the Telegram news channel Amadnews, Ruhollah Zam, was hanged in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison.
Zam was born in Shahr-e-Rey, just outside Tehran, in 1978. He first came to prominence in 2009 after the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad when he was jailed for voicing his opposition.
In 2011, after his release from prison, Zam, together with his wife and young daughter Niaz fled the country and were granted asylum in France, living initially in Paris before moving to a small town near Toulouse after he received threats.
Two and a half years ago, Zam co-founded the Amadnews channel on Telegram, which is hugely popular in Iran – it has 50 million users there and was reported at one point to account for 60% of the country’s entire internet usage.
Amadnews became popular for its criticism of Iran’s leaders and informed descriptions on the 2017 protests, which started as a protest against the economic policies of the government before developing into wider protests against Iran’s leaders. Twenty-five people died during the nationwide protests.
The channel grew quickly to have a million subscribers but at the end of 2017 Telegram shut it down saying the channel had called for armed uprisings. The channel reappeared under a new same, Sedaiemardom (voice of the people), just a few months later.
The story of how he even came to be in Iran again is mysterious.
In 2019, it is believed that he was lured to Iraq from his exile in France to meet the grand Ayatollah Sistani, the spiritual leader of the Iraqi Shia Muslims. While there, he was captured by agents of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps which issued a statement saying he had been detained “in a complicated operation”.
The statement said: “Despite being under the guidance of the French intelligence service and the support of the US and Zionist intelligence services…, and being guarded round the clock by various means and covers, he fell into a trap laid by… the IRGC’s Intelligence Organization.”
He was thrown into Evin prison and tortured for months and forced to make televised confessions of his ‘crimes’.
In June this year, Zam was tried in front of the Islamic Revolutionary Court in Tehran, presided over by Judge Abolqasem Salav and convicted on 13 counts of “spreading corruption on earth”. He was sentenced to death.
Despite going to appeal, on 8 December, the supreme court announced it had upheld the death sentence.
Zam’s father, the moderate cleric Mohammad Ali Zam, has revealed on Instagram what happened after the sentence was confirmed.
Last Friday, he was telephoned by an Iranian intelligence agent who said he could come and visit his son in the notorious Evin prison but not to tell him that the sentence for execution had been confirmed. His father reports that during the visit the family started to cry and the agent was afraid that Ruhollah might find out why and told him.
“Don’t worry Ruhollah. These are happy tears from visiting you. Even if the execution is confirmed, the process would take a while to be carried out and we will inform you of the whole process.”
On Saturday 12 December at 8am French time, his eldest daughter Niaz received a WhatsApp call from a number she didn’t recognise. It was her father.
They talked about her studies and getting her diploma but after five minutes the call had to end and her father said goodbye. There was a finality in his tone and Niaz knew this would be the last time they would speak.
Just a few hours later, Zam was paraded in front of television cameras and hanged.
There has been widespread condemnation of his execution.
United States Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a statement, “The international community must continue to hold the regime accountable for its unconscionable actions…The Iranian people deserve a free and diverse media, not censorship, arrests, and the execution of journalists.”
The European Union said it “condemns this act in the strongest terms and recalls once again its irrevocable opposition to the use of capital punishment under any circumstances. It is also imperative for the Iranian authorities to uphold the due process rights of accused individuals and to cease the practice of using televised confessions to establish and promote their guilt.”
Masih Alinejad, author of The Wind in My Hair: My Fight for Freedom in Modern Iran and who had campaigned to prevent the execution of young Iranian wrestler Navid Afkari, told Index, “By killing Zam, the Islamic Republic has shown that it is not interested in diplomacy. It is ironic that Zam was named after Rohallah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic, an evil system that is not willing to tolerate dissent from journalists. Zam was a media pioneer who created the most influential news channel in recent memory.”
Javaid Rehman, UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran and Agnes Callamard, UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, said: “The conviction and execution of Mr Zam are unconscionable. The reports of his arrest, his treatment in detention, and the process of his trial, as well as the reasons for his targeting by the Iranian authorities, are a serious violation of Iran’s obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, including the right to freedom of opinion and expression and the right to life.
“It is clear that Ruhollah Zam was executed for expressing opinions and providing information on AmadNews that dissented from the official views of the Iranian Government.”
Index on Censorship’s CEO Ruth Smeeth has written a letter to the UN Secretary General condemning Zam’s murder.
She wrote: “Press freedom is a pillar of democracy. When journalists are targeted, all of society pays the price. Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights guarantees the right to freedom of opinion and expression to all…As a journalist, as a human rights activist, as a global citizen Ruhollah Zam should have been protected by the state of his birth, not murdered by them.”
Ruhollah Zam is survived by his wife Mahsa Razani and their two daughters.
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