21 Nov 2012 | Africa, South Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa
South Africa’s Right2Know Campaign (R2K) is “Camping out for Openness” outside parliament in Cape Town this week as deliberations over the draconian Protection of State Information Bill draw to a close.
The National Council of Provinces, the second house of parliament, is due to adopt the bill by the end of November. The bill is ostensibly aimed at instituting a long-overdue system to regulate access to government documents.
However, despite persistent appeals from, among others, luminaries such as Nobel Laureate Nadine Gordimer, the Secrecy Bill’s system of classification and declassification has not been couched in the country’s constitutional commitment to an open democracy and the free flow of information.
Instead it opens the door to the over-classification of state information while instituting harsh punishments for the possession of classified information, undermining basic citizenship rights.
Pressure from civil society, led by the R2K Campaign, produced limited concessions this year. One of the most pertinent demands was to include a public interest defence clause to ameliorate the anti-democratic effects of the bill. The ruling African National Congress (ANC) eventually conceded by allowing a clause enabling a public interest defence, but only if the disclosure revealed criminal activity. This has been criticised as an unreasonably high threshold.
Right2Know march in Pretoria, South Africa, September 2012. Jordi Matas | Demotix
The ANC this month backtracked on two other key concessions, as pressure from state security minister Siyabonga Cwele on ANC parliamentarians seemingly paid off:
- The Secrecy Bill at first took precedence over the Promotion of Access of Information Act (PAIA). PAIA allows citizens to request information from government agencies. The ANC then agreed to an amendment that would give PAIA precedence. This decision was again overturned after pressure from Cwele. Activists argue that allowing the Secrecy Bill to trump PAIA is unconstitutional, as PAIA is prescribed by the constitution and has to remain the supreme law in access to information matters.
- A five-year sentence for disclosing classified information has been reintroduced after the ANC agreed to have it removed. This will actively discourage whistleblowers in the civil service from coming forward with information revealing corruption.
Cwele’s predecessor, Ronnie Kasrils, this week addressed the R2K camp outside parliament, distancing himself from what he deemed the “devious” and “toxic” bill. While he was minister, he withdrew the 2008 version of the bill after a similar outcry about its lack of constitutionality.
According to R2K, the other remaining problems with the Secrecy Bill include:
- It criminalises citizens instead of holding to account civil servants who are responsible for keeping secrets.
- A whistleblower, journalist or activist disclosing classified information with the purpose of revealing corruption or other criminal activity can still be prosecuted under the “espionage” and related offences clauses to avoid them invoking the limited public interest defence.
- Persons in possession of classified state information face draconian jail terms of up to 25 years.
- The bill’s procedure to apply for the declassification of information conflicts with PAIA, while the newly created Classification Review Panel is not sufficiently independent: “The simple possession of classified information appears to be illegal even pending a request for declassification and access.”
- Someone can be prosecuted for “espionage”, “receiving state information unlawfully” (to benefit a foreign state), and “hostile activity” even without proof that the accused intended to benefit a foreign state or hostile group or prejudice national security — only that the accused knew this would be a “direct or indirect” result.
- Information classified under apartheid law and policies that may be counter to the constitution remain classified, pending a review for which no time limit is set.
Parliament’s engagement with the bill, which started in July 2010, has been characterised by Orwellian “doublethink”, as exemplified in Cwele’s declaration that “protect(ing) sensitive information … is the oil that lubricates our democracy and we have no intention — not today, not ever — to undermine the freedom we struggled and sacrificed for all these years”.
R2K has vowed to continue pressuring parliamentarians to replace the Secrecy Bill with a law “that genuinely reflects a just balance between the public’s right to know and [the] government’s need to protect limited state information”.
Christi van der Westhuizen is Index on Censorship’s new South Africa correspondent
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7 Sep 2012 | Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa
South Africa’s parliament is in its final stages of reviewing a bill that, if passed, could have severe implications for press freedom in the country and the African continent. The Protection of State Information Bill (also known as the Secrecy Bill) could result in the imprisonment of journalists and whistleblowers who possess, publish or leak state secrets for up to 25 years.
(more…)
25 Oct 2010 | Middle East and North Africa, News and features
By harnessing the internet to expose the hidden mechanics of war, WikiLeaks puts governments on notice — obsessive secrecy cannot be sustained. Emily Butselaar reports
The most interesting element of WikiLeak’s publication of almost 400,000 leaked secret Iraq war files has been the lack of criticism. This time, military claims that the leaks threaten security and will put the lives of coalition troops in Afghanistan and Iraq in danger have been widely ignored.
There is clearly a public interest in the conduct of wars by our armies and governments and the files reveal that the US did — despite earlier denials — record civilian casualties. They also confirmed the existence of the now infamous Frago 242, the 2004 US army order that directed coalition troops not to investigate allegations of abuse unless US forces were involved. Some of the documents detail thousands of incidents of often stomach-turning torture, abuse and molestation. And others demonstrate governments’ excessive reliance on secrecy.
The anodyne nature of many of the documents demonstrates the over-classification of sensitive material. Secrecy rather than transparency is the norm — national security the justification even where that argument has no validity. If governments are to seek some secrets, they must cultivate a greater culture of transparency as the convention. The US Department of Defence has admitted that July’s unauthorised release of the so called war logs — 91,731 classified US military records from the war in Afghanistan — has not resulted in the disclosure of sensitive intelligence sources.
Julian Assange, Wikileaks’ founder and spokesman, and his band of hacker activists set up the whistleblower site in 2006. With its simple “keep the bastards honest” ethos, Wikileaks was carefully designed to be an “uncensorable system for untraceable mass leaking”. It aimed to discourage unethical behaviour by airing governments’ and corporations’ dirty laundry in public, putting their secrets out there in the public realm.
But with its success — and its many exposés — has come criticism. Earlier this year it released a shocking video of a 2007 US attack in Iraq. Alongside the unedited footage it released an edited 17-minute version that critics claimed was misleading. The release and the title they gave it, “Collateral Murder”, marked WikiLeaks’ move from reporting to advocacy: it was actively protesting the war in Afghanistan.
Handwringing began over the site’s move from objectivity. No longer would it be just a repository of raw source documents. Assange expressed surprise that the site had ever been cast as a bastion of impartiality, describing the concept as idiocy. But a politically active stance made it easier for outsiders to attack the site’s integrity. It could no longer be seen as an objective, neutral spokesman, a change of image that may have long-term ramifications.
The site was also damaged by failures in WikiLeaks “harm minimisation” system, the system by which they redact information. When Reporters Without Borders accused Julian Assange of “incredible irresponsibility” after the release of the Afghan War logs, he cited a lack of resources, an argument it is difficult to find sympathy with when the safety of individuals is involved.
For an organisation on a mission for total transparency the organisation is notoriously secretive about its own activity. It maintains its cloak and dagger antics are necessary to protect its sources, but the very questions that WikiLeaks was set up to address, power without accountability or transparency, can be applied to its own operations.
Today’s Independent focuses on internal rows that have been long-rumoured within WikiLeaks amidst claims that the focus on the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan has subsumed the rest of the organisation’s activities.
It’s easy to forget just how many stories WikiLeaks has broken. Its tremendous success has meant the site has often struggled under the volume of users. It has faced down corrupt governments, investment banks and the famously litigious Church of Scientology, made public top-secret internet censorship lists and broken injunctions — as in the case of the press gag granted to UK solicitors Carter Ruck in the interests of their client, Trafigura.
It’s possible the site will eventually force governments world wide to re-examine concepts of privacy, transparency and secrecy. WikiLeaks is just the vehicle, in the internet age leaks will continue. All governments can do is strive towards a greater culture of transparency if they want to keep their legitimate secrets under wraps.
Emily Butselaar is online editor of Index on Censorship
21 Mar 2009 | Uncategorized
British Member of Parliament George Galloway plans to challenge the Canadian immigration ministry’s decision to ban him from entering the country, it was confirmed last night. (more…)
