Iran’s Supreme leader has ordered the creation of an “internet oversight agency” to control the web. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ordered the creation of the “Supreme Council of Cyberspace” which aims to prevent harm to Iranians who go online. Dangers expected to be tackled by the Council include computer viruses created by Iran’s rivals aimed at sabotaging its industry, and a “culture invasion” which would undermine the Islamic Republic. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will head the cyberspace council, along with powerful security figures.
Woeser, a Tibetan writer who has authored online articles and non-fiction books about her birthplace, has been prevented from attending a ceremony in which the Dutch Ambassador in China was to present her with an award from the Prince Claus Fund.
The writer was prevented by police from leaving her house in Beijing to accept the award at the Dutch Embassy last Thursday.
Woeser wrote Notes on Tibet in 2003 and has been widely published in Taiwan. It is rare for Tibetan writers (she is three-quarters Tibetan) to write in Mandarin Chinese, Woeser maintained two blogs within China before they were shut down in 2007. Woeser now maintains a blog outside of China, which is also sometimes hacked.
She blogged about the prize, reposting a statement released by the Dutch embassy:
Woeser is honoured for her courage in speaking for those who are silenced and oppressed, for her compelling combination of literary quality and political reportage, for recording, articulating and supporting Tibetan culture, and for her active commitment to self-determination, freedom and development in Tibet.
It is a politically sensitive time for the Tibetan writer — who cannot travel abroad without permission. The Chinese capital is in the midst of its annual National Legislative Sessions and March also marks the fourth anniversary of the Tibet uprisings.
Immolations in Tibet have escalated recently, the Western media have reported around 25 Tibetans self-immolating since last March, 18 of whom are believed to have died.
A Paris university closed its doors for two days this week after members of Collectif Palestine Paris 8 threatened to hold an unauthorised conference on the campus. The conference, entitled “New sociological, historial and legal perspectives on the boycott campaign: Israel, an Apartheid State?”, was scheduled to take place on 27 and 28 February at the University of Paris 8, in the northern suburb of St Denis. However, the university’s president, Pascal Binczak, who had originally agreed to the conference taking place within the university’s precincts, withdrew permission several days earlier.
The closure of the university was ordered by Binczak after Collectif Palestine Paris 8 announced that the conference would still take place at Paris 8 in spite of Binczak’s announcement. Students arriving on Monday morning found the gates locked and all lectures cancelled. Photocopied leaflets and volunteers directed conference participants to another venue nearby.
In an article published on 24 February in Le Monde, Binczak justified his decision, citing security concerns and objecting to the unbalanced nature of the conference which breached laws concerning objectivity and diversity of opinion on university campuses. Binczak strongly objected to claims that he had bowed to pressure from the CRIF (Conseil Representatif des Institutions Juives de France), the official Jewish umbrella organisation of France, which had raised concerns about the conference some days before the decision to withdraw permission was taken by the university’s administration. In an article published on the CRIF website on 14 February, Marc Knobel claims that calls for a boycott, whether cultural or academic, incite discrimination which is illegal within the precincts of a university.
In a strongly worded response to Binczak, also published in Le Monde, the conference organisers accused the university of censorship and argued that the cancellation amounted to a serious attack on freedom of speech. An open letter to Pascal Binczak on Mediapart, an independent online news outlet founded by a former editor of Le Monde, has garnered several hundred signatures from academics both in France and abroad.
Three professors from Paris 8 responded to the petition with a further article published in Le Monde on 27 February explaining why they refused to sign the open letter. Objecting to what they consider the instrumentalisation of political dogma and propaganda in the guise of academic debate, they point out that without free dialogue there can be no freedom of thought, and counter claims by the organisers that the two-day programme could be considered a conference, given the absence of genuine debate from all sides.
Natasha Lehrer is a writer and translator. She lives in Paris.
Egypt’s secretary of education has instructed educational institutions to prohibit students from engaging in political activities.
The prohibition is understood to include taking part in political debates, writing articles, joining demonstrations, and setting up blogs. The Education Secretary’s announcement comes on the heels of escalating legal and electronic assaults that target Egyptian children who show an interest in future reforms to the political system of their country.
The case of Ayaa and friends
Ayaa is a 14 year old student. With other Egyptian youngsters she set up online activist group Revolution Under Age or “Thawra mama’hash bitaqa”. Their ages range from 14-16 and their backgrounds represent the range of religious and social groups of their country. Revolution Under Age has one purpose: to champion civil freedoms. Through art and words, these youngsters express their views on what they believe to be the threat of a return to the oppressive political culture that existed in Egypt before the Revolution un Tahrir Square. Although most have never met, these internet friends all want a civil democratic government that represents an egalitarian society.
In mid February, Ayaa and Ali Hisham, another 14-year old founder of the blog, appeared in a popular TV programme, Children of the Arab Spring. Also appearing in the programme were 9-year old Ali Hani and 17-year Mazen Hilmy. The four urged continued activism, saying this alone could prevent a return to the corruption of the past. Ayaa, whose parents both have a military background admitted that she was never allowed to join demonstrations. However, Ayaa and her fellow young guests of the programme rejected the continued rule of their country by the Military Council SCAF.
The youngsters also discussed the contents and approaches of Egyptian education. They noted that in their schools history, religion, and other subjects central to Egyptian identity were all geared to glorifying the rulers. They felt that questions were often discouraged, that school officials did not approve of dialogues. The TV series alarmed military rulers and those who defend the political culture that these young people hoped to change.
There are more and more young people like Ayaa and her friends in Egypt. In order to quash the example that their voices may set, the state apparatus went on an all fronts offensive against Egypt’s young people who dare to express political views. To further sustain its assault against adolescents, the state seeks to intimidate their parents and any media outlet that associates itself with young voices. Two lawyers with close ties to SCAF and former President Mubarak filed a complaint against the presenter of the programme to the Public Prosecutor. The complaint accuse him of abusing children by engaging them in political debates. Mubarak’s lawyers described the programme as the devil’s idea aimed at instilling novel standards in future generations. Children’s exposure must be restricted to children’s topics, the complainants noted. Other SCAF/Mubarak voices in the media repeated similar accusations in condemnation of the programme’s makers.
Yet more worrying, however, is the daily war of intimidation on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, blog sphere, and email accounts directed at young Egyptians who campaign for civil freedoms and against the continued rule of the Military Council SCAF. The State’s electronic militias target their websites and use fake accounts to bombard the children’s Twitter and Facebook pages with abusive messages. The electronic militias, or electronic committees, as Egyptians now call them, were first set up by the party of the ousted President Mubarak. The ruling party’s Media and Youth officials ran their operations. Their official purpose was to reach younger Egyptians. In the case of Ayaa and her friends, they receive messages describing them as traitors soiled by Western ideas, and with a barrage of obscene insults. In the past week, young activists received a threat from an email account named “mubaraksons”.
In late 2010 younger Egyptians used the electronic media to organise themselves into what became the Tahrir Square Revolution. Now these electronic state-sponsored militias appear to be a key player in the struggle between two political cultures competing to decide the shape of Egypt. The keenness with which SCAF is using the might of the state apparatus to pursue the children of its country is cause for concern, and not only to groups that defend freedom of speech.
Haifaa G Khalafallah is a former Middle East Editor for Index on Censorship
