29 Apr 2022 | China, Media Freedom, News and features, Russia, Ukraine
Physical attacks on journalists have increased dramatically over the past year, according to the latest annual report from the Council of Europe Platform on media freedom in Europe.
The platform, of which Index on Censorship is a partner, reports on serious threats to the safety of journalists and media freedom in Europe in order to reinforce the Council of Europe’s response to the threats and member states’ accountability.
The new report, Defending Press Freedom in Times of Tension and Conflict, reveals that the number of cases involving the safety and physical integrity of journalists has jumped by 51% year-on-year, with 82 cases reported to the platform.
Many of the attacks on journalists have taken place during public protests.
“Violence against journalists during street protests is fed by a wave of media bashing and an avalanche of hate speech on social networks – very often prompted by political figures – which directly target journalists, questioning their independence and legitimacy and therefore making them more vulnerable to physical aggression,” the report says.
Overall, the number of alerts in all categories published by the CoE platform has sky-rocketed to 280 in 2021, up from around 200 in 2020 and more than double the level reported in 2016. Of the 280 alerts, 110 related to the harassment and intimidation of journalists.
Index’s policy and campaigns manager Jessica Ní Mhainín
Speaking at the launch of the report, Index’s policy and campaigns manager Jessica Ní Mhainín highlighted cases of impunity in CoE’s report.
“Impunity for crimes against journalists refer to failure of states to identify, prosecute and punish anyone including the assailants and masterminds involved in committing a crime against a journalist,” she said. “Cultures of impunity contribute to self-censorship by making journalists more vulnerable to pressures out of fear of reprisals or harm.”
Some 35 cases of impunity have been registered on the platform since 2015 and two new impunity cases – those of Turkish journalist Uğur Mumcu, murdered in 1993, and Turkish-Cypriot journalist Kutlu Adalı, murdered in Cyprus in 1996 – were added to the impunity category during the year.
“In 2021, we welcomed the Slovak Supreme Court’s decision to overturn the not-guilty verdicts of the suspected masterminds of the 2018 murder of journalist Ján Kuciak and his fiancée Martina Kušnírová. The case will be heard in the Specialized Criminal Court later this year,” said Ní Mhainín.
Last year also saw the publication of a 438 page-report from the public inquiry into the assassination of investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, which concluded that the state of Malta “must bear responsibility for the assassination because it created an atmosphere of impunity”.
“We once again call on the Maltese authorities and the Commission of Experts to implement the recommendations of the Public Inquiry,” said Ní Mhainín.
Russia, Turkey and Ukraine account for 60% of all the cases relating to impunity on the platform. Last October marked the 15th anniversary of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya’s murder.
Ní Mhainín said, “The masterminds of her murder are still at large, sending the incredibly dangerous message that killing a journalist is a low-risk crime.”
Yet impunity is not restricted to these countries.
A BBC Spotlight investigation has uncovered serious concerns over the police investigation and the failure to prosecute those behind the murder of Irish journalist Martin O’Hagan, who was killed in September 2001 for his reporting on paramilitary activities in Northern Ireland. The concerns raised in the programme, which aired on 2 March 2022, came in the wake of several Police Ombudsman reports that uncovered collusive behaviour between the police and loyalists in Northern Ireland. According to the BBC’s investigation, police did not act on important information – including individual names – that were handed over to them within 48 hours of the murder. The journalist’s family are now taking legal action against the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) and the Ministry of Defence.
“Press freedom is the canary in the coal mine – it is a key indicator of the clear and worrying degree of democratic backsliding that is taking place across Europe,” said Ní Mhainín. “That’s why we once again call on Council of Europe member states to ensure that the highest priority is given to conducting thorough and transparent investigations into all crimes against journalists and we remind member states of the 2016 Recommendation of the Committee of Ministers which requires states ‘adopt appropriate criminal law provisions to prevent impunity’”
22 Apr 2022 | China, News and features, Russia, United States
A new report from civil rights group GreatFire has revealed that Apple acts on virtually every takedown request it receives from the Chinese and Russian governments for apps in its App Store, a far higher compliance rate than with requests from other governments.
The report, Taken Down: A Look into Apple’s Transparency, is published this month as part of GreatFire’s AppleCensorship campaign. Written in collaboration with Apple whistleblower Ashley Gjovik, it reveals that the tech company receives an app “takedown” request from a government every 2.5 days on average and removes an app from the App Store every 16 hours. Overall, Apple complies with 74% of these requests, but in the cases of China and Russia the rate is 98% and 95% respectively.
Apple whistleblower Ashley Gjovik is co-author of the new report
Gjovik, who wrote the report’s foreword, was fired by Apple after complaining about toxic waste under her office. Her case was first raised by Index last year. She said of the findings: “Human rights are not determined by borders on maps, or by borders between the physical and online worlds. Freedom of expression is a fundamental right which must be protected: everywhere. Private corporations should not be allowed to deprive people of their rights, nor should we tolerate off-the-record, backroom discussions between corporations and authoritarian governments. We must demand transparency, respect, and dignity.”
Benjamin Ismail, AppleCensorship project coordinator and GreatFire’s campaign and advocacy director, added: “[Apple] must acknowledge the deeply flawed management of its App Store and start taking the necessary steps to prevent government-led and corporate censorship from depriving millions of users of their fundamental rights to access to information and freedom of expression.”
The report calls for more detailed disclosures in Apple’s Transparency Reports, which simply publish the number of take-down requests and the number of apps removed but provide no further information. There is no information, for instance, about the apps themselves, what laws they are alleged to have breached or the legitimacy of the government requests.
Ashley Gjovik first began to raise questions about toxic vapour intrusion under her office, which, like much of Silicon Valley, was built on polluted industrial land. She had become ill after discovering a similar problem under her apartment block and began to ask questions when Apple staff were asked to return to work after the Covid-19 pandemic.
After a six month battle over the contamination, her contract was finally terminated on the grounds that she had disclosed “confidential product-related information”. This refers to concerns Gjovik raised about experiments carried out on Apple employees involving facial identification and studies of ear canals. Gjovik now believes the corporation retaliated against her for raising her concerns about the risk to her and her fellow employees from the pollution. But instead of walking away she has continued to pursue Apple over its record on safety, privacy and labour rights, both in the United States and Europe.
Gjovik, who was training as a lawyer while working at Apple and now specialises in human rights law, has since taken on numerous cases against Apple. She told Index: “They all focus on one end goal: initiating a serious, global conversation about how to reset domestic and international relationships with these megacorporations. We need to demand transparency, accountability, legal compliance and a workforce that is treated with dignity.”
22 Apr 2022 | Afghanistan, China, France, Israel, Opinion, Palestine, Russia, Ruth's blog, Ukraine, United States
I regularly start my weekly blog with the exclamation “there is just too much news!” Too much horror and heartbreak and this week the assertion is all too true.
Russia has invaded a sovereign country and daily we are seeing evidence of war crimes on the continent of Europe; China is arresting yet more democracy activists on the flimsiest of excuses; there have been bombings targeting schools in Afghanistan; a neo-fascist is, yet again, in the final run-off in the French Presidential elections; there are riots in Sweden against the far-right with dozens hurt; people are starving in Shanghai under Covid-19 restrictions; there is active conflict again in Jerusalem, with over 150 Palestinians hurt in clashes after a series of terror attacks targeting Israelis in recent weeks; another video of a black man being fatally shot by the police has emerged in the US – Patrick Lyoya was killed, while being held on the ground, defenceless, on 14 April and riots have followed in Michigan.
Our team at Index is working on every one of these news stories. We work with people on the ground, and we commission dissidents and writers, in country, to give us a first-hand account. In the twenty-first century we can speak to people in every corner of the globe, as events are happening, because of the internet and the social media platforms which afford us all a level of protection because of end-to-end encryption. We work with people on the ground who would be arrested, tortured, or even killed because they want to share their experiences with the world. They want the world to know what is happening to them and to their communities. They are on the frontline in the perpetual fight for our democratic right to freedom of expression. They are vulnerable because of who they are and what they want to share with us, whether that’s their writings, their opinions or their art.
They are brave and inspirational and determined to stand up for what is right. For as long as they want to tell their stories there is a moral onus for us to listen to them.
Which brings me to the current proposals to regulate our online lives currently being progressed in the European Union and in the United Kingdom. In Europe, today (Friday) the final negotiations on the substance of the Digital Services Act are underway and, in the UK, the Online Safety Bill began its parliamentary journey on Tuesday. Index is working actively with partners to try and mitigate the worst aspects of both pieces of legislation and we were in Brussels this week to make the case for additional protections for freedom of speech. Our overriding goal is to make sure that our access to those brave dissidents is protected and that our rights to discuss the detail of these horrors are protected. To make sure that while legislators are trying to ‘protect’ us online they don’t end up inadvertently silencing us.
Index advocates for free expression within the protections afforded to us by the European Convention on Human Rights. There is no right not be offended. There is no right not to see things online, or in real life, that will upset you. Of course, we all want to protect each other from seeing the worst aspects of human life – that’s an admirable aspiration but it isn’t the grounds for making new law. In fact, it’s the exact opposite – legally we have protected freedom of expression, it’s a fundamental right. I have written before about our concerns regarding online regulation and in the coming months I’ll be writing extensively on it – but we start with the basic principle – what is legal to say should be legal to type. And that should be the case whatever any new legislation seeks to amend.
14 Apr 2022 | News and features, Russia, Volume 51.01 Spring 2022, Volume 51.01 Spring 2022 Extras
The story of Index on Censorship is steeped in the romance and myth of the Cold War.
In one version of the narrative, it is a tale that brings together courageous young dissidents battling a totalitarian regime and liberal Western intellectuals desperate to help – both groups united in their respect for enlightenment values.
In another, it is just one colourful episode in a fight to the death between two superpower ideologies, where the world of letters found itself at the centre of a propaganda war.
Both versions are true.
It is undeniably the case that Index was founded during the Cold War by a group of intellectuals blooded in cultural diplomacy. Western governments (and intelligence services) were keen to demonstrate that the life of the mind could truly flourish only where Western values of democracy and free speech held sway.
But in all the words written over the years about how Index came to be, it is important not to forget the people at the heart of it all: the dissidents themselves, living the daily reality of censorship, repression and potential death.
The story really began not in 1972, with the first publication of this magazine, but with a letter to The Times and the French paper Le Monde on 13 January 1968. This Appeal to World Public Opinion was signed by Larisa Bogoraz Daniel, a veteran dissident, and Pavel Litvinov, a young physics teacher who had been drawn into the fragile opposition movement during the celebrated show-trial of intellectuals Andrei Sinyavsky and Yuli Daniel (Larisa’s husband) in February 1966. This is now generally accepted as being the beginning of the modern Soviet dissident movement.
The letter itself was written in response to the Trial of Four in January 1968, which saw two students, Yuri Galanskov and Alexander Ginzburg, sentenced to five years’ hard labour for the production of anti-communist literature.
The other two defendants were Alexey Dobrovolsky, who pleaded guilty and co-operated with the prosecution, and a typist, Vera Lashkova.
Ginzburg later became a prominent dissident and lived in exile in Paris, Galanskov died in a labour camp in 1972 and Dobrovolsky was sent to a psychiatric hospital. Lashkova’s fate is unclear.
The letter was the first of its kind, appealing to the Soviet people and the outside world rather than directly to the authorities. “We appeal to everyone in whom conscience is alive and who has sufficient courage… Citizens of our country, this trial is a stain on the honour of our state and on the conscience of every one of us.”
The letter went on to evoke the shadow of Joseph Stalin’s show-trials in the 1930s and ended: “We pass this appeal to the Western progressive press and ask for it to be published and broadcast by radio as soon as possible – we are not sending this request to Soviet newspapers because that is hopeless.”
The trial took place in a courthouse packed with Kremlin supporters, while protesters outside endured temperatures of 50 degrees below zero.
The poet Stephen Spender responded to the letter by organising a telegram of support from 16 prominent artists and intellectuals, including philosopher Bertrand Russell, poet WH Auden, composer Igor Stravinsky and novelists JB Priestley and Mary McCarthy.
It took eight months for Litvinov to respond, as he had heard the words of support only on the radio and was waiting for the official telegram to arrive. It never did.
On 8 August 1968, the young dissident outlined a bold plan for support in the West for what he called “the democratic movement in the USSR”. He proposed a committee made up of “universally respected progressive writers, scholars, artists and public personalities” to be taken not just from the USA and western Europe but also from Latin America, Asia, Africa and, ultimately, from the Soviet bloc itself. Litvinov later wrote an account in Index explaining how he had typed the letter and given it to Dutch journalist and human rights activist Karel van Het Reve, who smuggled it out of the country to Amsterdam the next day. Two weeks later, Soviet tanks rolled into Czechoslovakia to crush the Prague Spring.
On 25 August 1968, Litvinov and Bogoraz Daniel joined six others in Red Square to demonstrate against the invasion. It was an extraordinary act of courage. They sat down and unfurled homemade banners with slogans that included “We are Losing Our Friends”, “Long Live a Free and Independent Czechoslovakia”, “Shame on Occupiers!” and “For Your Freedom and Ours”.
The activists were immediately arrested and most received sentences of prison or exile, while two were sent to psychiatric hospitals.
Vaclav Havel, the dissident playwright and first president of the Czech Republic, later said in a Novaya Gazeta article: “For the citizens of Czechoslovakia, these people became the conscience of the Soviet Union, whose leadership without hesitation undertook a despicable military attack on a sovereign state and ally.”
When Ginzburg died in 2002, novelist Zinovy Zinik used his Guardian obituary to sound a note of caution. Ginzburg, he wrote, was “a nostalgic figure of modern times, part of the Western myth of the Russia of the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s, when literature, the word, played a crucial part in political change”.
Speaking 20 years later, Zinik told Index he did not even like the English word “dissident”, which failed to capture the true complexity of the opposition to the Soviet regime. “The Russian word used before ‘dissidents’ invaded the language was ‘inakomyslyashchiye’ – it is an archaic word but was adopted into conversational vocabulary. The correct translation would be ‘holders of heterodox views’.”
It’s perhaps understandable that the archaic Russian word didn’t catch on, but his point is instructive.
As Zinik warned, it is all too easy to romanticise this era and see it through a Western lens. The Appeal to World Public Opinion was not important because it led to the founding of Index. The letter was important because it internationalised the struggle of the Soviet dissident movement.
As Litvinov later wrote in Index: “Only a few people understood at the time that these individual protests were becoming a part of a movement which the Soviet authorities would never be able to eradicate.” Index was a consequence of Litvinov’s appeal; it was not the point of the exercise and there was no mention of a magazine in the early correspondence.
The original idea was to set up an organisation, Writers and Scholars International, to give support to the dissidents. It was only with the appointment of Michael Scammell in 1971 that the idea emerged to establish a magazine to publish and promote the work of dissidents around the world.
Spender and his great friend and co-collaborator, the Oxford philosopher Stuart Hampshire, were still reeling from revelations about CIA funding of their previous magazine, Encounter.
“I knew that [they]… had attempted unsuccessfully to start a new magazine and I felt that they would support something in the publishing line,” Scammell wrote in Index in 1981.
Speaking recently from his home in New York, Scammell told me: “I understood Pavel Litvinov’s leanings here. He understood that a magazine that was impartial would stand a better chance of making an impression in the Soviet Union than if it could just be waved away as another CIA project.”
Philip Spender, the poet’s nephew, who worked for many years at Index, agreed: “Pavel Litvinov was the seed from which Index grew… He always said it shouldn’t be anti-communist or anti-Soviet. The point wasn’t this or that ideology. Index was never pro any ideology.”
It has been suggested that Index did not mark quite such a clean break – it was set up by the same Cold Warriors and susceptible to the same CIA influence. In her exhaustive examination of the cultural Cold War, Who Paid the Piper, journalist Frances Stonor Saunders claimed Index was set up with a “substantial grant” from the Ford Foundation, which had long been linked to the CIA.
In fact, the Ford funding came later, but it lasted for two decades and raises serious questions about what its backers thought Index was for.
Scammell now recognises that the CIA was playing a sophisticated game at the time. “On one level this is probably heresy to say so, but one must applaud the skills of the CIA. I mean, they had that money all over the place. So, I would get the Ford Foundation grant, let’s say, and it never ever occurred to me that that money itself might have come from the CIA.”
He added: “I would not have taken any money that was labelled CIA, but I think they were incredibly smart.”
By the time the magazine appeared in spring 1972, it had come a long way from its origins in the Soviet opposition movement. It did reproduce two short works by Alexander Solzhenitsyn and poetry by dissident Natalya Gorbanevskaya (a participant in the 1968 Red Square demonstration, who had been released from a psychiatric hospital in February of that year). But it also contained pieces about Bangladesh, Brazil, Greece, Portugal and Yugoslavia.
Philip Spender said it was important to understand the context of the times: “There was a lot of repression in the world in the early ’70s. There was the imprisonment of writers in the Soviet Union, but also Greece, Spain and Portugal. There was also apartheid. There was a coup in Chile in 1973, which rounded up dissidents. Brazil was not a friendly place.”
He said Index thought of itself as the literary version of Amnesty International. “It wasn’t a political stance, it was a non-political stance against the use of force.”
The first edition of the magazine opened with an essay by Stephen Spender, With Concern for Those Not Free. He asked each reader of the article to say to themselves: “If a writer whose works are banned wishes to be published and if I am in a position to help him to be published, then to refuse to give help is for me to support censorship.”
He ended the essay in the hope that Index would act as part of an answer to the appeal “from those who are censored, banned or imprisoned to consider their case as our own”.
Since Index was founded, the Berlin Wall has fallen and apartheid has been dismantled. We have witnessed the “war on terror”, the rise of Russian president Vladimir Putin and the emergence of China as a world superpower.
And yet, if it is not too grand or presumptuous, the role of the magazine remains unchanged – to consider the case of the dissident writer as our own.
