14 Aug 2013 | Belarus, Digital Freedom
Andrei Karelin
A theatre playwright and a former worker from the Minsk Automobile Plant were found guilty of using offensive language online in Belarus.
Andrei Karelin, a playwright, was sentenced to an administrative fine of 10 million Belarusian roubles (about £725) for two comments he had made on a forum of a popular Belarusian internet portal TUT.by. The comments reflected his negative attitude toward Belarusian police.
According to Karelin, he had to call the police when he was attacked and beaten in Minsk on 18 May this year, but said he did not receive proper assistance, and was offended by officers instead. Among other words he chose to describe the officers on the forum were “bastards” and “boors”. He also said they were “fat and imposing” and concluded that “all normal citizens hate” the police.
A district court in Minsk had two hearings on the case (on 11 July and 26 July) and sentenced Karelin to fines for “insulting an officer on duty”, despite the fact the allegedly insulted officers admitted at court they had not seen his online comments themselves.
The playwright denies his guilt saying he did not insult anyone, but merely expressed his indignation at lack of professionalism of Belarusian police officers. He started a website to crowd-fund the fines he calls “enormous” as they are equal to 3 months of his salary.
Another Belarusian, Ruslan Mirzoev, got 7 days of administrative arrest for videos he posted. He became popular last year after he started posting online videos about daily life of workers of Minsk Automobile Plant (MAZ), one of the biggest enterprises in Belarus. Mirzoev was finally fired from the plant in July 2013, but he continued production of his videos.
Ruslan started his own video project, Chronicles of a District («Хроники района»), on YouTube, and made two videos about drug addicts, a prostitute and alcoholics, who live in Kurasoushchyna, the district of Minsk where he lives. On 9 August he was detained and sentenced to seven days of administrative arrest for using obscene words in those videos.
This article was originally published on 14 Aug 2013 at indexoncensorship.org. Index on Censorship: The voice of free expression.
8 Aug 2013 | Czech Republic, Digital Freedom, News and features, Politics and Society
When the Guardian published the news about the Prism case, it soon became clear that the Czech Republic was also one of the countries monitored by the NSA. In a country in the midst of political turmoil, the news of mass surveillance generated little interest from the media or the public.
“Friends should not be spied on,” commented Angela Merkel on the discovery that US intelligence spied on European citizens and authorities by exploiting their private data gained from internet companies, including Google. But no such clear comments have been made by the majority of Czech politicians.
Both the Czech president Miloš Zeman and prime minister Jiří Rusnok have remained quiet about the revelations. Only one member of the largest party in parliament, the Social Democrats, criticised both the surveillance itself and the fact that Edward Snowden broke his confidentiality agreement with the NSA. “It is an unprecedented insult to the mutual trust with the EU,” wrote the Social Democrat Libor Rouček, who is vice president of the European Parliament, on his official blog. “The USA should put maximum effort both into arresting Snowden as well as explaining why they spied on their European allies,” Rouček wrote. The second largest party, the Civic Democratic Party, has made no official statement on the issue.
The Communist Party (currently holding 11% seats in parliament) did not comment either, but their sister organisation, the Communist Youth Union, has published numerous articles on their website, calling the spying “a brutal attack on freedom“, and praising Snowden as a hero. The party that has offered Snowden the most support is the non-parliamentary Czech Pirate Party (holding 2. 2% support in the opinion polls). The Pirates asked the interior minister to grant Snowden asylum, but they did not receive an answer before the government’s summer recess, which began in early July.
Surveillance: no longer big news?
Just a few hours after the Guardian and the Washington Post broke the news on Prism in June 2013, the Czech media reported on it . But most of the coverage has been neutral and very few comment pieces have been published regarding the issue. In the commentaries that have been published, Snowden has been portrayed as an ambivalent character. He has been criticised for breaking his contract with his employer, but also praised for his courage to speak out about what has been suspected for a long time. Most commentators have stressed that the idea that information has been obtained through spying on big companies such as Google is not a new thing.
“It has been known for a long time that the NSA has been building big IT centres with super fast computers,” writes Jiri Sobota, a leading commentator for the weekly Respekt. “On the other hand, we are all involved in the same thing on a daily basis,” freely allowing Google to do basically the same thing: analyse our data “in order to ‘understand’ us better”.
It is hard to sum up the public reaction as there has been no Czech opinion poll on the Prism case, but a brief look at social media shows interest is on the wane. The revelations have been discussed more on social media than in regular media outlets. On Facebook, which is used by every third Czech, it was a heavily debated topic in the first half of June, but then the interest soon declined. Twitter, used by about one Czech in a 100, has seen more consistent coverage of the news. There have been about 3,500 tweets on Snowden since the Prism case started. For comparison, the hottest current issue discussed in the country – the love affair of the former prime minister Petr Necas with the head of the government´s office Jana Nagyova, who spied on Necas’s wife with the help of the state security and helped scuttle the Necas government — was tweeted about 4, 000 times in the same time period.
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Worry-free Czechs
In general, the Snowden case has created little interest in the Czech Republic. That may be surprising due to the 2012 Eurobarometer survey. While, according to the survey, 25 % of Europeans said they were worried about spying on the internet, the number was much higher among Czechs: 37%. However, though they may be worried, Czechs do not have a very strong tradition of public protest and they have never protested against mass surveillance.
When Germans protested heavily against the Google Street View recording in 2011, Czechs remained without one critical word towards the very same activity in their country. The public also remain relatively mute to the government’s draft legislation that would enable the state institutions to monitor the cell phones of every citizen in the country.
One of the explanations of the lack of interests in the Prism case is also the fact that it came in the middle of the biggest political turmoil the country has witnessed since the fall of the Iron Curtain, so the focus has generally been more on domestic politics. Also, Czechs — unlike Germans, British or other nationalities — have not yet witnessed a major scandal related to mass surveillance yet, so the public fear of such activities might be lower.
Historically, the general perception of the US has been very positive in the Czech Republic, which is why some commentators are saying that had another country been caught spying the reaction would have been stronger.
7 Aug 2013 | Africa, Digital Freedom, Index Reports, News and features, Politics and Society, Religion and Culture, South Africa
(Photo illustration: Shutterstock)
Though the shackles of apartheid and the public role of Nelson Mandela have faded, South Africa is confronting questions about government surveillance in the digital era, media regulation and artistic censorship.
Apartheid in South Africa (1948-1994) was partially kept in place with restrictions on the flow of information. The state attempted to draw a veil of secrecy over the intensification of repression through detention without trial, house arrests and the torture and killing of opponents from the 1960s onwards. Music and literature were among the modes of anti-apartheid resistance from the 1960s onwards. Literature and music supportive of political opposition or that was deemed sexually permissive was banned. Some journalists, authors and musicians left the country to escape prosecution while many who stayed were persecuted. Television was only allowed in the country in the mid-1970s and only when the then ruling National Party was convinced it could control the medium.
The transition to democracy in the 1990s under Mandela marked a radical departure, with openness and transparency declared primary aims. Clause 16 of the Bill of Rights in the South African Constitution of 1996 guarantees that “everyone has the right to freedom of expression, which includes freedom of the press and other media; freedom to receive or impart information or ideas; freedom of artistic creativity; and academic freedom and freedom of scientific research.” However, this right is not absolute. The same clause warns that it “does not extend to propaganda for war, incitement of imminent violence; or advocacy of hatred that is based on race, ethnicity, gender or religion, and that constitutes incitement to cause harm.” Clause 14 (d) of the Bill of Rights safeguards the right to privacy, including the right not to have the privacy of communications infringed.
South Africa’s adoption of the right to freedom of expression in its Constitution is reflected in a lively national debate as democracy takes root. However, as pundits claim the space to hold to account the government and, less frequently, business, the past five years have seen worrying moves against free expression. These range from verbal threats to legislative measures to the irregular arrest of a journalist. Protesters have also targeted journalists at community-level demonstrations about socio-economic rights.
Media Freedom
Four large corporations dominate South Africa’s print media sector, which limits diversity in opinion. While the sector has been battling plunging circulation figures, as elsewhere in the world, it has still managed to invest in investigative journalism, which remains vibrant. Art and related types of journalism have however suffered from a lack of resources. The media stand at the centre of vehement political debates in the country, with newspaper leaks common in the infighting between factions of the ruling African National Congress (ANC). The combination of political and investigative exposures has led to ANC threats of appointing a “media tribunal” to replace the system of self-regulation. In response, the media funded a public consultation process, and a new system has been instituted which remains self-regulatory but includes more mechanisms to allow greater accountability of the press to the public. However, the ANC has decided that the country’s parliament should still investigate the creation of a media tribunal “that is empowered to impose sanctions without the loss of any constitutional rights”.
The Protection of State Information Bill was adopted by parliament this year, despite concerted resistance from a wide range of organisations and individuals. The bill, driven by state security agencies, is expected to undermine access to state information and inhibit investigative journalism. Revisions did not address its draconian penalties of up to 25 years or the overly narrow scope of its belatedly included public interest clause. In a significant improvement, however, the bill no longer overrides the Protection of Access to Information Act or the Protected Disclosures Act, both passed in 2000.
Recent changes in print media ownership have seen the Independent Newspapers (former Argus) group returned by the Irish company Independent News and Media (INM) to South African control. While INM is generally regarded as having “harvested” the Independent Newspapers and thereby stunting its growth in South Africa, the acquisition by Sekunjalo has raised concerns about political control as business allies of the ruling party are involved in the deal.
Most South Africans remain dependent on television and especially radio for information. The state-owned South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) remains the dominant TV and radio outlet with its programming in all 11 languages. However, the SABC has been riddled with management battles and repeated allegations of political interference, which included the blacklisting of commentators critical of the government.
Digital Freedom
After a good start in the 1990s when Internet use was commercialised in South Africa, tardy and expensive broadband has slowed connectivity. Recent research suggests that 39 percent of adults, or 14 million people, access the Internet at least once a week. Another study found that a relatively high percentage of South Africans use mobile phone services (66 percent). According to the 2011 government census, half of those who use the Internet use their mobiles to do so, as only about 23 percent of households have a computer at home. Internet service providers believe this number would be higher if mobile broadband prices were more competitive. While mobile broadband is more affordable and faster than fixed-line services, prepaid mobile customers pay more than contract customers, which means poorer people have less access.
Regarding government measures, the Regulation of Interception of Communications and Provision of Communication-Related Information Act of 2002 (RICA) requires service providers to record and keep customer information, which can be requested by government agencies. The act disallows interception of communication, subject to judicial approval. Similarly, a judge has to grant permission before government agencies can access mobile phone records.
The Right2Know (R2K) civil society campaign in 2012 mobilised against the General Intelligence Laws Amendment Bill, which would have empowered state-security operatives to monitor e-mails and social media communication without permission from a judge. While this expansion of powers was avoided, R2K pointed out that the final version of the bill still did not provide clarity regarding the monitoring of electronic communication passing through a foreign server. The Mail and Guardian newspaper has reported on the illegal bugging of private citizens’ communication. Security agencies’ illegal monitoring of communications has become a weapon between factions in the ruling party. In the most notorious case, the ascendancy of the current president, Jacob Zuma, to the highest office was clinched with the withdrawal of corruption charges against him on the basis of “spy tapes”. These recordings, seemingly illegally made, allegedly showed a political plot against Zuma that involved the National Prosecuting Authority. Interceptions by the police’s crime intelligence divisions rose sharply between 2009 and 2010, including illegal bugging that led to the recent resignation of the head of the South African Revenue Services for attempting to recruit someone in return for sexual favours. Meanwhile, the implications are unclear of the National Cyber Security Policy that the ANC wants the government to adopt by 2014 to prevent the distribution of “harmful and anti-social” content.
Artistic Freedom
Artists have enjoyed unprecedented freedom to be creative in South Africa since the transition to democracy. However, political tensions have risen about art seen as ridiculing Zuma. In 2012, Brett Murray’s painting called “The Spear” was exhibited at a Johannesburg art gallery, depicting Zuma in a well-known pose of Communist leader Vladimir Lenin but with his genitals exposed. ANC leaders pressurised the gallery by leading a march of ANC supporters to its doors. Two men defaced the painting while on display.
An amendment in 2009 to the Film and Publications Act of 1996 that every unregistered print and online publication that contains sexual content be submitted for classification by the Film and Publications Board has since been declared unconstitutional by the High Court. The Constitutional Court still has to confirm the High Court’s decision. The board has been skittish about films depicting teenagers in sexual situations, whether consensual or forced. In 2008 it banned the Argentinian film “XXY” and this year it banned the South African film “Of Good Report” on the basis of being “child pornography”. Both bans have since been overturned.
This article was originally published on 7 Aug, 2013 at indexoncensorship.org. Index on Censorship: The voice of free expression
