04 Aug 22 | News and features, Northern Ireland, Statements, United Kingdom
Gerry Kelly MLA & Gerry Adams TD. Photo: Sinn Fein, CC BY 2.0
Index on Censorship is concerned at the lawsuits that have been filed against journalist Malachi O’Doherty and columnist Ruth Dudley Edwards. Both are being sued individually by Sinn Féin politician Gerry Kelly MLA, who is claiming aggravated damages for comments they each made – on radio and in print respectively – in relation to Kelly’s role in 1983 Maze Prison escape.
“Everyone has the right to defend their good name but as elected representatives, politicians have a duty to display a greater degree of restraint when it comes to taking to legal action against journalists. This is especially true when the contested statements are related to matters of public interest. Lawsuits against journalists can have a serious and damaging impact on media freedom and on our democracy,” said Jessica Ní Mhainín, Policy and Campaigns Manager at Index on Censorship.
Explaining Index on Censorship’s decision to file a media freedom alert to the Council of Europe Platform, Ní Mhainín said: “We are concerned that these lawsuits in particular have several characteristics of strategic lawsuits against public participation or ‘SLAPPs’. SLAPPs involve powerful people – such as politicians – making legal threats or taking legal actions against public watchdogs – such as journalists – in response to public interest speech.”
This is the seventh media freedom alert filed on the United Kingdom to the Council of Europe Platform to Promote the Protection of Journalism and Safety of Journalists this year and the third relating to SLAPPs.
14 Jul 22 | Opinion, Ruth's blog, United Kingdom
“Unintended consequences”, “ideologically incoherent”, “won’t change culture or make us safer”.
I have written all these words and many more about the British Government’s Online Safety Bill. Index on Censorship has spent the last eighteen months campaigning against the worst excesses of the Online Safety Bill and how it would undermine freedom of expression online.
Our lines have been clear:
1. What is legal to say offline should be legal online.
2. End to end encryption should not be undermined.
3. Online anonymity needs to be protected.
The current proposals that were progressing through the British Parliament undermined each of these principles and were going to set a new standard of speech online which would have led to speech codes, heavily censored platforms, no secure online messaging and a threat to online anonymity which would have undermined dissidents living in repressive regimes.
So honestly, I am relieved that the government has, at almost the last minute, paused the legislation.
I am not opposed to regulation, I do not for a second believe that the internet is a nice place to spend time and nor would I advocate that there shouldn’t be many more protections for children and those who are vulnerable online. We do need regulation to limit children’s exposure to illegal and inappropriate content but we need to do it in such a way that protects all of our rights.
This legislation, in its current iteration, failed to do that, it was a disaster for freedom of expression online. The proposed “Legal but Harmful’ category of speech would have led to over deletion by online platforms on a scale never seen before. Algorithms aren’t people and frankly they will struggle to identify nuance, context or satire or even regional colloquialisms. With fines and the threat of prison sentences, platforms will obviously err on the side of caution and the unintended consequence would be mass deletion.
So today, we welcome the fact that the legislation has been paused and we call on the new prime minister and the next secretary of state to think again in the autumn about what we are actually trying to achieve when we regulate online platforms. Because honestly, we won’t be able to make the internet nicer by waving a magic wand and removing everything unpleasant – we need to be more imaginative in our approach and consider the wider cultural and educational impact.
So, as I have said in the media overnight, this is a fundamentally broken bill – the next prime minister needs a total rethink. It would give tech executives like Nick Clegg and Mark Zuckerberg massive amounts of control over what we all can say online, would make the UK the first democracy in the world to break encrypted messaging apps, and it would make people who have experienced abuse online less safe by forcing platforms to delete vital evidence.
Let’s start again.
22 Jun 22 | News and features, Statements, United Kingdom
Today, the UK Government presented its new Bill of Rights before Parliament, claiming that it will “restore a proper balance between the rights of individuals, personal responsibility and the wider public interest”. In reality, the new Bill will undermine the universality of all human rights and weaken the ability of courts to give effect to protection of fundamental human rights, including freedom of expression. It will expand state power and hamper efforts to hold the Government to account, joining other legislative measures – such as the Judicial Review and Courts Act 2022 – that have reduced the ability to challenge government overreach.
The Bill is set to replace the Human Rights Act, which has protected human rights and the freedom of expression of people living in the UK for over twenty years.
The Government claims that replacing the Human Rights Act with a new Bill of Rights will strengthen freedom of expression. As human rights organisations that promote and defend the right to freedom of expression worldwide, we unequivocally reject this false narrative. Freedom of expression is too important to be used as cover for weakening the protection of human rights. On the contrary, as detailed in our joint consultation response, the Human Rights Act has bolstered free expression in the UK in a number of areas: strengthened defamation law; enhanced protection of journalistic sources and material; strengthened protection of the right to protest; and restricted perception-based recording of non-crime incidents, among other things.
ARTICLE 19, Index on Censorship and English PEN believe that if the Government is serious about its purported goal to strengthen freedom of expression in the UK, it should instead focus its attention on reforming a number of problematic laws and legislative proposals it has brought forward, including the National Security Bill, the Online Safety Bill, the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill, the Public Order Bill, and the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act.
Deputy Prime Minister and Justice Secretary Dominic Raab. Photo: Joe Giddens/PA Wire/PA Images
We urge the Government to abandon any proposal that would replace or weaken the Human Rights Act in any way. Moreover, it must follow the normal procedures for introducing new law – particularly a bill that could have such sweeping repercussions – and allow for proper, thorough democratic scrutiny of the bill. Rushing through such legislation could put the protection of human rights of the people in the UK at risk and fail to offer the levels of protection to which they are entitled, and which the Human Rights Act has already enshrined in law. One of the justifications for the Bill of Rights is to give greater weight to the views of elected lawmakers. By reducing the opportunity for these same lawmakers to scrutinise the Bill, it demonstrates the hollow commitment to democracy and the rule of law that underpins this Bill.
In the letter to Justice Secretary, Dominic Raab, this month, our organisations were among a coalition of 150 organisations from across civil society that called on the Government to provide pre-legislative scrutiny of the proposed Bill of Rights. We warned that the proposal to repeal and replace the Human Rights Act would be a significant constitutional reform, which requires careful and robust consideration. The rights of individuals could be compromised if such a process was hurried.
20 May 22 | Belarus, Media Freedom, News and features, Russia, Ukraine
The free press in Belarus is under threat like never before in the wake of the disputed re-election of Aleksandr Lukanshenka in August 2020, with journalists being threatened, fined, arrested and tortured for speaking out against the country’s ruler. Indeed, former Index employee and contributor Andrei Aliksandrau remains in prison, facing a sentence of up to 15 years for alleged “high treason”.
A year after the elections, the Belarusian authorities went a step further in clamping down on media freedom, banning the country’s journalism body, the Belarusian Association of Journalists.
Despite the challenges, the BAJ continues to receive support and, at the end of April, the organisation was awarded the 2022 UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize.
Index spoke with BAJ chair Andrei Bastunets in the wake of the award, talking about the worsening situation for independent media and how BAJ continues to support press freedom.
Is it still possible to work as an independent journalist in Belarus following the start of the war in Ukraine?
“The key problems for Belarusian independent journalists arose before the war in Ukraine, and even before the 2020 presidential election. But after the elections – and journalists’ coverage of post-election protests – the pressure on the media, journalists and bloggers has increased dramatically (although earlier Belarus had bad ranking positions in international free speech ratings and indexes too). In 2021, many journalists and even entire editorial offices were forced to flee the country in order to avoid criminal prosecution by the Belarusian authorities and to be able to continue their professional activities.”
“A lot of Belarusian journalists – more than 100 – who were forced to leave their country chose Ukraine as a place of refuge. But after the start of the Kremlin’s war against this country, they had to leave their homes and belongings again and move to other countries. Journalists and bloggers who continue to work in Belarus face additional persecution for expressing their anti-war position. However they spread truthful information on what is happening. Last week, Baranavichy-based journalist Yury Hantsarevich was detained and accused of passing on information about Russian troop transfers in Belarus.”
How many journalists are still in detention in Belarus?
Andrei Bastunets, chairperson of the Belarusian Association of Journalists
“There are 24 journalists behind bars at the moment. Eight of them are serving their terms in prison, and the rest are in custody pending trial. All are deemed political prisoners by Belarusian human rights organisations.”
“In the first four months of 2022, five sentences were handed down against journalists in criminal cases – from 1.3 to 2.5 years in prison. The maximum punishment for a journalist has been a 15-year strict regime sentence for blogger Ihar Losik, who was a consultant for the Belarusian service of Radio Liberty.”
“My friend and former Index staff member Andrei Aliaksandrau has been in jail since January 2021; and recently the Belarusian Investigative Committee reported on the charges against him under four criminal articles, including Article 356 (high treason) which outlines a punishment of up to 15 years in prison.”
How is the war (or special military operation as Putin would have it) being reported in Belarus?
“There is a difference in the approaches of state-run and independent media outlets. In the news agenda of the independent media, the war in Ukraine is being called ‘war’ and it is on their front pages. These media outlets are publishing mostly online now because they do not have an opportunity to publish in print after printing houses and state monopoly distribution chains were banned from cooperation with the independent press. The state television and other government-backed media in Belarus are reporting on the war in Ukraine spreading the narratives of the Russian pro-Kremlin media.”
Is the BAJ still operating and is it having to do so from exile?
“In August 2021, the Supreme Court of Belarus ordered the dissolution of the organisation, at the request of the country’s Ministry of Justice. Now, BAJ is not an organisation registered by the Ministry, it is not a formal structure. It is about 1,300 people united in implementing their common idea and their mission – to expand the space of free speech in Belarus. And an official’s resolution has not affected our activities. Most of the organisation’s leadership had to leave the country after a series of police raids and interrogations by investigators, after arrests of our colleagues and friends, but we continue our work from abroad. We treat all media outlets of Belarus, regardless of whether they stayed in the country or moved abroad, as a single Belarus media sector. And we are providing all the necessary and possible support to this media sector.”
How important is the recognition through awards of BAJ, such as the Unesco award recently?
“We regard the UNESCO award as support for the entire independent journalistic community in Belarus. By the way, within literally two days, BAJ received three awards. In addition to UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize, there was the award from the Swedish section of Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and Difference Day Honorary Title for Freedom of Expression from Brussels ULB and VUB universities. They are very important for our organisation as appreciation of our work, but even more as a high assessment of Belarusian journalists’ work in extremely difficult conditions. And, of course, it is important for us that Belarus has returned to the front pages of the international media. Although, we understand indeed that current events in Ukraine are attracting general attention as the state of affairs in the region and of the entire system of world security formed after WWII depend on their development.”
