Mordechai Vanunu was granted Index on Censorship’s Special Award in 2004 for his work as a whistleblower on Israel’s nuclear programme. While working as a nuclear technician for the Israeli government in the 1980s he was sentenced to 18 years in prison for exposing their possession of nuclear weapons to the Sunday Times.
In April 2004 he was released and has since been fighting for his right to leave Israel – the foundational condition of Vanunu’s release from prison was a prohibition on leaving the country. In addition, he is prohibited from contacting embassies or having any interaction with foreigners that has not been pre-approved by Israeli officials. Shortly after his release he unsuccessfully applied for asylum in Norway, Ireland and Sweden. He has been rejected asylum status numerous times since it is not legally possible to apply for asylum in a country without physically being there. Essentially, so long as the prohibition on leaving Israel remains, he cannot meaningfully seek asylum.
Israel’s High Court has had a central role in determining Vanunu’s fate since 2004. In 2008 24 influential Norwegian lawyers signed the “Norwegian Lawyer’s Petition for Vanunu”. In September of the same year the eighth petition calling for Vanunu’s conditions to be lifted was rejected by the High Court. And less than 2 months ago Vanunu was convicted of violating the terms of his release by meeting with two US citizens in 2013 without permission from the authorities. He is to appear in court for sentencing this month.
This is only the latest struggle in the past 30 years of Vanunu’s life, after he first leaked photos of Isreali nuclear production plants to the Sunday Times in 1986. Vanunu’s struggle for freedom has not gone unnoticed by the world. He has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize every year since 1987. In 2010 the International League for Human Rights sent open letters to Benjamin Netanyahu seeking Vanunu’s free release. In 2015 Vanunu said that he had no desire nor even any means of spilling more secrets on Israel’s nuclear programme. He stated that he simply wants to join his wife, theology professor Kristin Joachimsen, in Norway. In the same year the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament wrote to the Guardian calling for a vigil to be held outside of the Israeli Embassy in London in honour of Vanunu’s birthday.
However, there may be hope. In October 2015 Vanunu appealed the terms of his release to the Israeli Supreme Court, and in January this year he shared on Facebook that the Supreme Court would rule on his appeal in the coming month. On March 3, 2017, Vanunu wrote: “We are now waiting for the Supreme Court decision, it could be anytime soon. And it could be good or nothing, I am used to all this for 31 years, 1986-2017. Freedom must come.”
Fionnuala McRedmond is a member of Index on Censorship’s Youth Advisory Board. She graduated last June from the University of Cambridge with a degree in Classics. She is now studying for a MSc in Political Theory at the London School of Economics.[/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
Since becoming a barrister in 1987, Sir Keir Starmer has made headlines for offering free legal counsel during the McLibel trial, won awards as a leading human rights QC, and set precedents as director of public prosecutions (DPP) in England and Wales. During the five-year post as DPP, he took on prosecution guidelines for the abuse of women and sexual abuse of children. He also tackled the as yet largely unchartered territory of cases involving social media and is mooted as a Labour candidate in the UK’s 2015 general election.
In this Index podcast Rachael Jolley, editor of Index on Censorship magazine, speaks to the newly knighted former DPP about his time overseeing the prosecution service, plus the right to offend, whistleblowing and legal challenges for social media.
On online abuse: “We haven’t got a law that has been designed to deal with this. We are falling back on the Communications Act, which was designed for abusive messages on telephones in the 1930s that might have been listened to by exchange staff.”
On the web: “You can’t have a law-free zone. If you simply say it doesn’t matter that the court order is breached because you are using social media, you undermine the entire criminal justice system and you remove all the protection that’s intended for very vulnerable victims.”
On whistleblowing: “It is important that legal protection is there and that everyone appreciates it. A lot of people labour under the misrepresentation that if you whistleblow you are necessarily engaging in wrongdoing and it is something you can’t do. There is still a great fear.”
Read the full interview in the latest issue of Index on Censorship magazine. This issue’s writers include Lyse Doucet, David Aaronovitch and Julian Baggini. You can buy it, or take out a subscription here.
Index on Censorship calls upon the US government to uphold the First Amendment. Whistleblowers such as Edward Snowden — as well as journalists reporting on the Prism scandal, who have come under fire — should be protected under the first amendment, not criminalised.
Index also condemns the alleged tapping of communications cables by the NSA and GCHQ, that would allow the mass surveillance of both meta data and content from individuals’ private communications.
Index CEO Kirsty Hughes said:
“The mass surveillance of citizens’ private communications is unacceptable – it both invades privacy and threatens freedom of expression. The US government cannot use the excuse of national security to justify either surveillance on this scale or the extradition of Snowden for revealing it.”
A former CIA officer was sentenced on 25 January to more than two years in prison for leaking official information to the media. John Kiriakou had released the name of a covert officer to a reporter in 2007 in media interviews which were among the first to confirm the waterboarding of detainees, including al-Qaida terrorist Abu Zubaydah. Defenders say the former officer acted as a whistleblower to the CIA’s use of torture to interrogate detained terrorists, whilst prosecutors said his intention was purely to gain fame and status. He pleaded guilty to violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act in 2012, the first conviction under the law in 27 years. Kiriakou was initially charged under the World War I-era Espionage Act but swapped charges in a plea deal. The deal meant US district judge Leonie Brinkema was restricted to imposing a two and a half year sentence — which she said she would have extended if she could.
Poster for the play Behzti – Gurpreet Bhatti has faced censorship of another play by the BBC
Human rights defenderAlaa Abdel Fattah was arrested in Egypt on 29 January for allegedly defaming a judge. The political activist and 2012 Index on Censorship awards nominee was released on bail by Judge Tharwat Hammad on Tuesday, as part of a wider investigation into allegations against private satellite channels. Charges have been filed by 1,164 judges, who complained that TV station workers had invited guests on air who had criticised the judiciary. Abdel Fattah was charged with incitement against the military in October 2011 during the Maspero demonstrations in which 27 protestors were killed.
Playwright Gurpreet Bhatti said that her play scheduled for broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on 1 February has had lines removed from the script. During Index on Censorship’s arts conference Taking the Offensive at the Southbank Centre on 29 January, Bhatti told attendees that her play Heart of Darkness had been altered by broadcasters. The episode, due to be played on the Afternoon Drama slot, followed the investigation into the honour killing of a 16 year old Asian girl – a case investigators are told to handle sensitively because of her Muslim heritage. Bhatti’s play Behzti was axed from a Birmingham theatre in 2004 following protests from the Sikh community. The playwright denied the BBC’s compliance department accusations that lines were offensive in Heart of Darkness, saying “we live in a fear-ridden culture.”
Germany’s foreign ministersaid on 28 January that Russia’s draft bill banning “homosexual propaganda” could harm Russia’s ties with Europe. In a meeting on Monday evening, Guido Westerwelle told Russia’s ambassador in Berlin, Vladimir Grinin, that the law violated the European human rights convention and will harm Russia’s image and relationships within Europe. The draft legislation was passed by the State Duma, Russia’s lower house of parliament, on 25 January and prompted protests by the gay community, including a kiss-in protest by activists which was broken up by police on Friday. The law will ban the promotion of homosexuality amongst children and is alleged to intend consolidation of public support for President Vladimir Putin.
On 28 January, Twitter began censoring porn related searches on its video sharing app Vine yesterday, after a six-second porn clip was accidentally made editor’s pick. Searching for terms such as #sex and #porn came up with no results, but users could still access pornographic content if it had been posted under a different hashtag. The social networking site apologised for circulating the video of a graphic sex act on the app launched last week, blaming the slip-up on a “human error”. Vine was introduced to Twitter as a video programme similar to Instagram, where users can upload six second video loops, some of which proving to appeal to a more adult audience. Last week, Apple banned 500px, a photography app with a section dedicated to nudity, from its app store.
