It has been over a decade since WikiLeaks released its cache of leaked documents and a little under a decade since it was awarded The Economist New Media Award at the 2008 Freedom of Expression Awards. In the following years, the non-profit organisation has published a considerable body of documents, holding to account states, corporations and individuals. Such actions would imply that it remains an apolitical organisation, whose mission is to ensure the defence of free speech and vitiation of censorship, although of late some would dispute its primary function. On the day of this year’s Dutch general election, WikiLeaks made separate Tweets with links to all documents referencing either Prime Minister Mark Rutte or right wing populist Geert Wilders.
Their fight for freedom of expression is often amorphous, which is well demonstrated by two publications from 2009. First, the March release of a website blacklist, proposed by Australia’s then communications minister, Stephen Conroy. Although it had been suggested by the Australian Government that the compulsory firewall would obstruct access to child pornography and sites related to terrorism, it was revealed to have included numerous websites which suggested a veiled political agenda. Second, the September release of an internal report on a toxic incident clean-up in the Ivory Coast by the oil trading company, Trafigura. That draft report was released after Trafigura obtained a super-injunction against The Guardian. Comparing the two, it is clear they share a commonality in combating instances of censorship, but beyond that an underlying characteristic in the material released is hard to find.
Where the organisation has had a focused, profound, and some would say not impartial, impact is on American politics. Three particularly notable moments were the 2010 Iraq and Afghanistan ‘War Logs’ and diplomatic cables associated with Chelsea Manning, the 2016 Democratic National Committee email leak, and the recent CIA Vault 7 release. It is perhaps the second of these that questions WikiLeaks’ apolitical position; in an interview with ITV, Julian Assange stated that he hoped the leaks would harm Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Certainly, the furore which surrounded Clinton’s use of a private email server in handling sensitive documents and the March 2016 release of her email archive was a boost for the Trump campaign. It remains to be seen whether the Trump administration or affiliated groups will be the subject of a WikiLeaks publication.
Whether one considers WikiLeaks a paragon, a zealot, or Machiavellian, it remains a powerful force against censorship. Although their profile has grown since being awarded The Economist New Media Award, they are still an organisation that appears wholly unconstrained by diplomatic pressures in holding bodies to account, who or whatever the target.
Samuel Rowe is a member of Index on Censorship’s Youth Advisory Board. He is currently a law conversion student at City, University of London, planning on practicing as a public law barrister with a focus in information law.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_single_image image=”85476″ img_size=”full” alignment=”center” onclick=”custom_link” link=”https://www.indexoncensorship.org/2016/11/awards-2017/”][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]
Index on Censorship Freedom of Expression Awards
Seventeen years of celebrating the courage and creativity of some of the world’s greatest journalists, artists, campaigners and digital activists
US Secretary of State John Kerry (Photo: AAP Images via Demotix)
The US Secretary of State John Kerry’s speech before the fourth annual Freedom Online Coalition conference has all the makings of anti-censorship agitprop. “The places where we face some of the greatest security challenges today are also the places where governments set up firewalls against the basic freedoms online.”
Indeed, like his predecessor, Hillary Clinton, he has taken to banging the drum of internet freedom as if it is a transforming given of modern life. On January 21, 2010, Clinton made the remark at America’s “interactive museum of news” otherwise called Newseum, that “information freedom supports the peace and security that provide a foundation for global progress.”
As the Belarussian writer and researcher Evgeny Morozov put so eloquently in The Net Delusion, such sentiments promote two delusionary sentiments, the first being cyber-utopianism itself, and the second, being that all problems of the modern world must somehow be tied to matters of the internet.
The philanthropist and high-tech investor Esther Dyson exemplifies both streaks. Writing in 1997, she claimed in Release 2.0 that, “The Net offers us a chance to take charge of our own lives and to redefine our role as citizens of local communities and of a global society.” It provides opportunities of self-governance and autonomy, “to work with fellow citizens to design rules we want to live by.”
The obvious point lacking in Dyson’s analysis is that behind every utopia is a dystopia waiting to happen. All governments, whatever their creed, have been guilty of the same vice.
Freedom provides its own vicious subversions – the open use of Twitter and social media sites invariably allows for infiltration, trolling and forms of cyber counter-insurgency. The simple suggestion that authoritarianism is somehow an enemy of Internet freedom is naïve in so far as it suggests a total misunderstanding as to what such regimes can, in fact, do. All states, autocratic or otherwise, have made it their business to stifle Internet freedoms. They just disagree on how best to do it.
Sounding much like the former Soviet minister of culture, Andrei Zhdanov, Kerry claimed that, “Today, we’ve learned that walls can be made of ones and zeros and the deprivation of access even to those ones and zeros, and that wall can be just as powerful in keeping us apart in a world that is so incredibly interconnected.” This is somewhat ironic – Kerry himself is obsessed by the behaviour of authoritarian regimes and those who would police internet content, ignoring exactly what might be happening at home.
So many myths have been bound up with the Internet, it has become almost mandatory for Kerry to fall into the rather unreflective pose of technology as freedom. Zeros and Ones do nothing to liberate a people, let alone facilitate revolution and institutional change. This is another form of dastard cyber-utopianism – extolling a system of freedom that is merely the straw man of liberty.
Kerry and his colleagues, in truth, are all about regulation and the velvet glove of policing. They decry efforts to control the net in Venezuela, Russia and China, the traditional bogeymen of cyber-freedoms, but prove happy with puritanical measures that police inappropriate content or regulate traffic via private enterprise.
The recent move by the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to initiate what it terms a “net neutrality” plan is even more indicative of the scope of control being exerted by the powers that be. Initiated by its chairman, Tom Wheeler, the proposal came about in response to failed efforts by his predecessor, Julius Genachowski, to defend net neutrality.
More than 100 technology companies, including Facebook Inc, Google Inc, and Amazon.com Inc, have expressed concerns about the proposal that regulates the way Internet providers manage traffic. They have urged the FCC to “take the necessary steps to ensure that the Internet remains an open platform for speech and commerce.”
The cardinal warning here is that any suggestion that finds home with the label “open” is bound to be only slightly ajar, if not closed altogether. The Wheeler plan, which purports to be an “open Internet” idea, imports commercial reasonableness into the management of the web. In other words, companies responsible for content would be able to purchase greater speeds on the Internet from broadband providers, within the bounds of commercial prudence.
The consequence of such a superficially liberal plan is that the Internet will be carved up, a case of managing traffic on the “fast lanes” via such companies as Verizon Communications or Comcast Corp, leaving others to languish in their use. The green light to discriminatory deals is being suggested. Even one FCC commissioner, Jessica Rosenworcel, felt that, “Rushing headlong into a rulemaking next week fails to respect the public response to his [Wheeler’s] proposal.”
An internal revolt in the FCC may well be on the cards. But what is an even more striking note is that internet freedom will be dealt a blow, not only by the orthodox authoritarians, but by closet regulators with their fingers on the switch.
Brian Merchant, writing for Motherboard is certainly right to note the fallacious binary embraced by Kerry: “Democracies with private internet service providers, good. Autocrats who block Twitter, or say that the CIA invented the internet, bad.”
Index joins a group of international rights groups in calling on UK Foreign Minister William Hague and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to push for the prisoners’ release
Since March, Emirati authorities have arrested over 50 activists and human rights defenders in a widespread crackdown on dissent.
Dear Foreign Secretary,
We are writing to draw your attention to some disturbing human rights developments in the United Arab Emirates, where the authorities have launched a campaign of arrest, arbitrary detention and deportation to repress and intimidate peaceful political activists.
Since late March, the authorities there have arrested at least 50 Emirati civil society activists and human rights defenders. In recent weeks there has been a marked escalation in the crackdown on those advocating political reform in the UAE, with two prominent human rights lawyers, Mohammed al-Roken and Mohammed al-Mansoori, amongst those detained in a spate of arrests and detentions.
Although none of those arrested have been formally charged with any offence, there are strong indications that the detentions are being linked to issues of national security. A July 15 statement by the UAE’s official news agency said Attorney General Salem Sa’eed Kubaish had ordered the arrest and investigation of “a group of people for establishing and managing an organisation with the aim of committing crimes that harm state security”. The statement also accused this group of having connections with “foreign organisations and outside agendas” and promised to “expose the dimensions of the conspiracy”.
Al-Roken is a prominent human rights lawyer in the Emirates, and has provided legal assistance to al-Islah members detained without charge since March, including a group that authorities stripped of their citizenship. In 2011 he served as co-defence counsel for two of the five activists known as the “UAE 5 ,” who were imprisoned for seven months and tried in 2011 after allegedly posting statements on an internet forum critical of UAE government policy and leaders.
Al-Mansoori is the deputy chairman of al-Islah and a former president of the Jurists’ Association. The UAE authorities dismissed him from his position as a legal advisor to the government of Ras Al Khaimah in January 2010 after he gave a television interview in which he criticised restrictions on freedom of speech in the country. They have barred him from travelling since October 2007 and have refused to renew his passport since March 2008.
On 24 July the Abu Dhabi Court of First Instance sentenced a former judge and University of Sharjah law professor, Dr Ahmed Yousef al-Zaabi, to 12 months’ imprisonment for fraud and assuming another person’s identity. Al-Zaabi’s conviction was based on the fact that his passport still registered his profession as “judge” after his public support for political reform in the UAE had resulted in him being forced into retirement. The authorities’ targeting of lawyers has discouraged members of the Emirati legal profession from offering their services, thereby denying the detained men legal assistance.
On 16 June, the UAE deported Ahmed Abd al-Khaleq, an advocate for the rights of stateless residents known as Bidun. He had been held in detention without charge or explanation since 22 May and was informed that he would be indefinitely detained if he did not agree to leave the UAE. Abd al-Khaleq is one of the UAE 5. UAE authorities charged the UAE 5 in early June 2011 under articles 176 and 8 of the UAE Penal Code, which criminalise “public insults” of the country’s top officials. They were detained throughout a seven-month pre-trial and trial process. The Federal Supreme Court convicted them on 27 November and sentenced them to between two and three years in prison. Shortly afterward, Shaikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the UAE president, commuted the sentences and they were released. However, the events of recent days have again revealed the lengths to which the UAE authorities are prepared to go to curb dissent.
In January of this year, you wrote that freedom was “still flowering” in the Arab Spring and described how protection against arbitrary punishment and freedom of expression were taking hold in the region. This is manifestly not the case in the UAE, where freedom of speech is being aggressively repressed by intimidation, arbitrary detention and deportation.
We urge you and the UK government to raise these issues at the highest levels with the UAE authorities, and to criticise publicly the repression of free speech and free association, the harassment of members of the legal profession, and to call for the immediate release of the detained activists.
Yours sincerely,
Rachid Mesli, Director, Legal Department, Alkarama Foundation
Mary Lawlor, Executive Director, Front Line
Khalid Ibrahim, Acting Director, Gulf Centre for Human Rights
David Mepham, Advocacy Director, Human Rights Watch
Kirsty Hughes, Chief Executive, Index on Censorship
Update: the Associated Press has spoken via Skype to a close friend of Chen, Zeng Jinyan, who claims that Chinese officials forced the activist to choose between going into exile alone or staying in China with his family. More details as we get them.
Chinese dissident activist Chen Guangcheng has left the US Embassy in Beijing, been treated at a hospital in the city and reunited with his wife, reports said today.
In the first confirmation that the blind legal activist had been housed under US diplomatic protection following his escape from house arrest last week, US ambassador Gary Locke called the Washington Post to say he was with Chen en route to Chaoyang Hospital in east Beijing. Chen is also said to have spoken to US secretary of state Hillary Clinton, who is due to arrive in Beijing today for bilateral talks, with whom he “shared a mutual admiration”.
State news agency Xinhua said that 40-year-old Chen, a prolific human rights activist known for his campaign against forced abortions in China’s Shandong province, left the embassy “of his own volition” after staying there for six days.
China’s foreign ministry spokesman Liu Weimin has demanded an apology from the United States, accusing the country of taking a Chinese citizen “via abnormal means” into its embassy and of having “interfered in the domestic affairs of China”.
US officials told Reuters that “this was an extraordinary case involving exceptional circumstances, and we do not anticipate that it will be repeated.” They added that Chen plans to remain in China to continue his work, and that the Chinese government had given them assurances of his safety.
Today’s developments come after several days of sensitive negotiations designed to resolve the activist’s fate ahead of Clinton’s arrival in Beijing. US president Barack Obama signalled his support for Chen yesterday, noting that China would “be stronger” if it were to improve its human rights record. Clinton said that a “constructive relationship includes talking very frankly about those areas where we do not agree, including human rights”.
Chen spent four years in prison on charges of disturbing public order before being placed under house arrest in the village of Dongshigu in September 2010. He fled to the Chinese capital last week and a video was released online in which he claimed he and his family had been tortured by officials.
Whether or not Chen is indeed “a free man”, as one of his lawyers Li Jingsong was quoted as saying today, remains to be seen. “I am highly sceptical in terms of promises about the rule of law,” Beijing-based writer and documentary film-maker Charlie Custer told Index, noting that the government has “virtually a zero per cent track record” of treating Chen according to Chinese law.
He added: “I highly doubt Chen will be allowed to be entirely free; I suspect he’ll be sent back to where he was before. He won’t be allowed to operate as a regular Chinese citizen would and should be.”
“He should have been a free man 18 months ago when he should’ve been released from prison,” said Joshua Rosenzweig, a human rights researcher based in Hong Kong, adding that the Chinese government had a long time to protect the activist.
“They only gave these assurances because of the actions of Chen to escape and because this became a high-profile diplomatic incident,” he said.
The safety of several of Chen’s supporters, such as activist He Peirong (@pearlher) also remains uncertain. He, a Nanjing-based activist and one of Chen’s most prolific supporters, is thought to still be detained after police took her from her home on 27 April for having helped Chen escape house arrest. Chen’s nephew, Chen Kegui, is understood to be in hiding.
“If China was serious about assuring Chen’s safety then they’d release them [his supporters],” Beijing-based writer and documentary film-maker Charlie Custer told Index. “The fact that they’ve not done that speaks volumes as to China’s intentions of how they’ll treat Chen.
“All He Peirong did was drive him to Beijing, why is she being held by police?” Custer added.
Meanwhile, security was tight at the hospital where Chen was being treated. Tom Lasseter, Beijing bureau chief for McClatchy Newspapers, tweeted from the scene:
Today’s developments need to be monitored closely to ensure the guarantees promised to Chen are not a one-off, Rosenzweig added. If China does not fulfill its promises, he said, “there is not much in the way of progress.”
“Serious questions need to be asked about nature of political system that places a high priority on maintaining stability above all else, and how that kind of a system makes it possible for local agents to carry out egregious infringements on individual rights for such a long time without intervention,” he said.
Marta Cooper is an editorial researcher at Index. She tweets at @martaruco
