[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]A report by Index’s senior policy research and advocacy officer Jessica Ní Mhainín was cited in a piece in Politico about the trend of strategic lawsuits used to censor journalists. Ní Mhainín is working on a project on strategic lawsuits against public participation (Slapps), read the latest report here.
“Across Europe, powerful and wealthy people are using the law to try and intimidate and silence the journalists disclosing inconvenient truths in the public interest,” the free speech advocates Index on Censorship wrote in a recent report. “These legal threats and actions are crippling not only for the media but for our democracies.”
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”114740″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes”][vc_column_text]“Someone has to say enough is enough,” said Shabana Mahmood, a member of parliament (MP) from the UK in a speech she delivered last night in the British parliament about the genocide of the Uighur people from the Chinese province of Xinjiang.
“The Chinese government continue unhindered with a campaign of what can only accurately be described as genocide, but where we should expect leadership and action, there is only a yawning void.”
Mahmood said the testimonies from Uighurs are “ever more disturbing”, citing a recent ITV news item in which a doctor spoke of forced sterilisation and abortion (in one instance a baby was still moving when it was discarded into the rubbish) and a man spoke of torture so extreme that he passed out. These are not isolated examples. It is estimated that at least one million people are incarcerated in camps across the region, while the millions of others who are not in a camp are subject to constant harassment and are living under extreme surveillance and control, right down to the language they speak.
“The charge sheet is long and horrific,” said Mahmood.
Mahmood mentioned new Disney movie Mulan, which was filmed in the province, as “one of the most striking examples of choosing to look away” and said there was a savage irony given the story of Mulan is one of family and emancipation.
“We should all be alarmed and appalled by what we are seeing, but we should all also resolve to forge a path forward for Uighur freedom,” argued Mahmood, who said this path involves various approaches, such as corporate and government accountability. We “cannot allow the fruits of forced labour to end up on our shores and in our homes”, she said, adding: “The Chinese Communist Party has busily been buying up influence and the silence of other countries.”
She also spoke of legal avenues, including those that have been used in recent years to help the Rohingya from Myanmar.
“History will judge us for the unforgivable lack of action thus far,” said Mahmood.
Many of these moves Mahmood called for were at a governmental level. What can we as individuals do?
1) Shout about it
Yes, a Tweet and a Facebook post are easy, but they are still better than nothing. We must use our words, especially when those in Xinjiang are being so woefully deprived of theirs. This is not to say that if we remain silent we are complicit. As the philosopher Julian Baggini wrote for the magazine earlier this year: “There are innumerable injustices around the world. Save for a handful of full-time activists and professionals in organisations such as Index, the finite supply of time ensures that most of us are silent about the vast majority of them.” Baggini specifically mentioned the Uighurs. But he also spoke about the concept of a “speech act”. “The key idea is very simple: words do not only convey information, they can actually do things. When a boss says ‘You’re fired’, a person loses their job. When a male manager says something misogynistic, he diminishes the status of female colleagues and makes their opinions count for less.” We can, through our words, foster an environment in which these actions are not condoned, in which Chinese officials find it increasingly difficult to go on live television and claim the atrocities are not happening, and in which world leaders struggle to continue their inaction.
2) Be wise to where our products come from
We at Index do not advocate outright banning – it goes against what we stand for. But nor do we promote companies and organisations involved in exploitation and human rights abuses. In an interview earlier this year about companies working with China, Yaqiu Wang, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch, said: “By caving into the Chinese demands you are putting your values [aside] – social responsibility, freedom. It is really corrosive. You are affecting global freedom of speech.” As a consumer it’s difficult to know where everything comes from. That said, with each passing day evidence emerges linking major global brands to slave labour in Xinjiang. As consumers we can speak through our wallets. We can buy from the brands that we know aren’t complicit in the genocide; we can watch movies that aren’t filmed in the province. And we can support organisations like End Uyghur Forced Labour who are working hard to expose these links. We have choices here.
3) Protest on the streets
Live in London? The Chinese Embassy is located at 31 Portland Place, W1B 1QD. That’s a great place to start. Index have documented over the years countless examples of protest working, whether it’s a single person campaigning from their home or millions coming together. There’s a reason governments are so keen to control and clamp down on protest; it works.
4) Don’t normalise technology that is used against Uighurs
Genocides don’t happen overnight. The foundations for genocides are laid years, even decades, in advance. And while it’s difficult to pinpoint when the start date is, there are certain key moments. In the case of the Uighurs, one of these was the spread of mass surveillance. We need to fight against this, not just because video cameras sprouting up like mushrooms in our streets are bad for our own privacy. Also because if we are OK with it being used here we lose some of our moral high ground for arguing against it being used there.
5) Campaign for media freedom
There has been some phenomenal reporting on Xinjiang. Thanks to drone footage of camps by Buzzfeed and videos taken from inside a prison on the BBC, we are now gaining a far greater picture of what is happening in Xinjiang. Journalists are at the forefront of exposing the genocide. At the same time getting information out of Xinjiang is incredibly hard – the Chinese government tightly controls access to the province and some journalists have found their visas revoked as a result of their coverage. When we speak up for Uighurs, we must also speak up for the journalists who are putting their lives and careers on the line to bring us information. If you do hear of any media violations, whether related to Xinjiang or elsewhere, please report them to us or to our media map.
6) Give platforms to those in the Uighur community
Whether you are an events host, a media outlet or simply have your own blog, offer space for those from the Uighur community to talk. Uighurs have a rich and wonderful history of poetry and the spoken word. Why not publish some? That is what we are hoping to do in our winter issue. And in our forthcoming Autumn issue of the magazine, US-based Uighur activist Rushan Abbas, whose sister is in a concentration camp in Xinjiang, writes about her own experience and outrage. Please do subscribe to read this important article.
7) Finally, support organisations that are supporting Uighurs
Watch Mahmood’s speech in full here.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][three_column_post title=”Read more on China” category_id=”85″][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][/vc_column][/vc_row]
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”103857″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes” alignment=”center”][vc_column_text]Just 37% of UK academics have said they would feel comfortable sitting next to someone who, in relation to transgender rights, advocates gender-critical feminist views, a new report on academic freedom in the UK has revealed. The report by Policy Exchange, released today, is one of the largest representative samples of UK- based academics carried out in recent years. It explores the concern that strongly-held political attitudes are restricting the freedom of those who disagree to research and teach on contested subjects. The report also proposes what might be done, in the form of legislation and other measures, to ensure that universities support intellectual dissent and all lawful speech is protected on campus.
Protecting academic freedoms was one of the founding principles of Index in 1971 and continues to be an area that we are concerned about, so we very much welcome the debate inspired by this report and look forward to hearing from other voices.
Read Index CEO Ruth Smeeth’s foreword for the report:
“It was recently suggested to me that I might have been a target of a little too much free speech in recent years, so it could be viewed as strange that I am so passionate about protecting our collective rights to free speech. But honestly, I have a romantic view of one of our most important human rights.
Free speech should be challenging; it should drive debate and ultimately force all of us to continually reflect on our own views. Free speech should manifest in different ways in different forums. In literature, it should drive our intellectual curiosity about the world around us. In journalism, it should shine a light on the powerful and ensure that the world is informed. And in academia, it should drive debate about the status quo demanding that we continually evolve as a society. It’s only by the guarantee of this core human right that we can ensure that we are the best that we can be, that our arguments are robust and that they can sustain criticism. Simply put, debate makes us better as individuals and as a society, it also makes our arguments more rounded and demands of us the intellectual rigour that drives positive change.
That’s why this publication is so important. Throughout our history, we’ve seen a cyclical approach towards academic freedom, but the reality is that only when our centres of learning are truly independent have we thrived as a society. This research isn’t about determining who is right or wrong, or whose voice is more valuable on any given issue but rather the proposals are designed to ensure that there is still a free and fair debate on our campuses. That the academic freedom that we all should cherish is given the protections it needs. It does the country no good if our educators, our academics, our scholars and most importantly our students feel that they can’t speak or engage without fear of retribution.
We all know that legislation is not a panacea to the chilling effect of what is happening in our public space for anyone that challenges the status quo. It can’t and won’t change the culture on campus but what it can do and what this document squarely aims to do is inform, engage and start a debate about what should be important to us. As a society, we need to have our own national conversation about our core human rights and how they should manifest in the twenty-first century. We need to decide collectively where the lines should be between hate speech and free speech, between academic inquiry and ‘research’ designed to incite, between journalism and purveyors of fake news. This research is an important part of that conversation.”
Please read the report in full here.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][/vc_column][/vc_row]
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”113272″ img_size=”full” alignment=”center” onclick=”custom_link” link=”https://www.indexoncensorship.org/indexawards20live/”][vc_column_text]A Russian artist currently under house arrest for her work on gender and sexual equality and one of the first free investigative journalism and fact-checking websites in Poland are among the winners of the 2020 Index on Censorship Freedom of Expression Awards. The winners, who were announced today on Twitter as part of a digital gala hosted by BBC presenter Timandra Harkness, also include a prominent lawyer fighting for the release of activists and journalists unlawfully detained in Turkey, a Bahraini activist living in exile in the UK and an Arab non-profit promoting digital rights of Palestinians.
Awards were presented in four categories: arts, campaigning, digital activism and journalism. The winners are: Russian artist Yulia Tsvetkova (arts); Turkish lawyer Veysel Ok and Bahraini activist Sayed Ahmed Alwadaei (campaigning); Arab Center for the Advancement of Social Media, also known as 7amleh (digital activism); and OKO Press (journalism).
Selected from hundreds of nominations from across the globe – a list of some of the most inspiring and courageous individuals and organisations operating today – the winners of the awards represent those who have had a significant impact fighting censorship. Now celebrating their twentieth year, previous recipients of the awards include activist Malala Yousafzai, Chinese author Ma Jian and journalists Anna Politkovskaya, Rafael Marques de Morais and Mimi Mefo.
“Today we acknowledge the winners of the Index 2020 awards as amazing people who do amazing things, while overcoming incredible challenges in difficult times. They fight for freedom of expression when others can’t,” said Rachael Jolley and Matt Townsend from Index on Censorship.
“This is the 20th year of the Index on Censorship awards, and we would also like to mark the winners of the previous ceremonies here today. It’s a highly unusual ceremony this year. We were forced to move online at the last minute, but it has meant that people from across the globe can join us today in noting the work that our winners 7amleh, Veysel Ok, Sayed Ahmed Alwadaei, Yulia Tsvetkova and OKO Press have done,” they added.
Each winner is now part of a year-long fellowship, which involves them working closely with Index who offer long-term, structured support. The goal is to help winners maximise their impact, broaden their support and ensure they can continue to excel at fighting censorship and free expression threats on the ground.
This year’s panel of judges included New York-based artist Molly Crabapple, award-winning Guardian journalist Amelia Gentleman and Cindy Gallop, founder of social sex video platform MakeLoveNotPorn. Speaking on the awards, Gallop said:
“I am in awe of all of the candidates we were asked to review for these awards and just blown away by what they are doing around the world. And I am thrilled that the Freedom of Expression Awards exist to celebrate that courage and those triumphs at a time when the need could not be greater.”
All of the winners spoke of how the awards had given them hope.
“It shows that our work has found support from the international community,” Ok said, while Nadim Nashif of 7amleh said the award would motivate them “to work more to advance digital rights and to achieve our vision of a safe, fair and free digital world”.
“The award pretty much reminds me that not everything is that bad. That there are still people who believe that [what I do] is important. For me, it changes pretty much everything. So thank you,” said Tsvetkova, who explained that over the last year she had received death threats and found it hard to focus on why what she was doing was important.
They also spoke about the greater challenges posed as a result of the coronavirus crisis. Alwadaei said:
“During the coronavirus crisis, I would like to pay tribute to those imprisoned in Bahrain for speaking out against the regime. This award is very special to me because my dear friend, Nabeel Rajab, was awarded this prize in 2012. Nabeel is currently serving 5 years in prison for criticising the government on Twitter.”
He added: “In these difficult times, it is more important than ever that freedom of speech is protected and that independent, critical voices are heard.”
But looking ahead OKO Press sounded a note of optimism:
“We believe the danger will wane, both epidemic and political. We will wake up in a healthier world.”[/vc_column_text][vc_single_image image=”113163″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Winning in the Arts category was Yulia Tsvetkova, a Russian artist and activist promoting women’s well-being and LGBTQ awareness. Her work has brought about positive change in discussions towards body positivity and gender stereotypes in Russia. But this acclaim has also made her a target. In 2018 she began a campaign promoting body positivity which resulted in her being named a suspect in a criminal pornography distribution case. Tsvetkova, currently under house arrest, could face up to six years in prison if convicted. In March 2019, her youth arts festival was cancelled after officials accused Tsvetkova of illegally trying to hold a gay pride event under the guise of a youth theatre festival.
The award for Campaigning went to two individuals. The first is Veysel Ok. Ok is a prominent Turkish lawyer providing pro-bono legal support to journalists, activists and academics who have been subjected to intimidation, surveillance, smear campaigns and harassment. His work has been instrumental in the release of several unlawfully detained journalists and writers. Ok is one of the first to challenge the Turkish laws of accreditation which determine whether a journalist meets official requirements to do their job. As part of his work, he received a five month suspended sentence for criticising the independence of the Turkish judiciary. He has been subject to surveillance and harassment ever since.
The second winner in the Campaigning category is Sayed Ahmed Alwadaei, a Bahraini activist currently living in exile in the UK. He was forced to flee Bahrain in 2011 after being arrested for taking part in anti-government protests. The Bahraini government revoked his citizenship and launched a smear campaign labelling him a terrorist. As the director of advocacy at the Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy, his work has become a vital resource for international media and NGOs. One such case was the discovery that institutions supported by UK taxpayers have been implicated in torture and other human rights abuses. Despite the danger faced by him and his family, Alwadaei continues his work as a prominent critic of the Bahraini government.
The Journalism award and Digital Activism award both went to organisations doing invaluable work in the digital sphere. One of the first free investigative journalism and fact-checking websites in Poland, OKO Press picked up the journalism award. OKO investigate and evaluate statements made by politicians, monitor public spending and fight for access to public information. In so doing they’ve paved the way for other news sources to follow suit. This has contributed to a safer and stronger public sphere, fighting for immunity from government propaganda.
Their work also supports grassroots activism; crucial in Poland, a country which is sliding further and further into authoritarianism and censorship. Indeed, the environment in which they work is becoming increasingly hostile. Political polarisation, lack of transparency, suspicion, threats and withholding of information are common. In the face of this, OKO Press shows resilience and determination. As they said in their acceptance speech:
“We are honoured to receive the award, but also humbled but the fact that other nominees, from Hong Kong, Venezuela and Burundi are acting in much harder circumstances. Friends, we admire your courage, determination and quality of work.
Kaczyński is no Maduro, Nkurunziza, Putin, or Erdogan, but apparently he takes his inspiration from them. We are not a dictatorship yet, though we are close to the so-called electoral authoritarianism, where all forms of public scrutiny, besides the elections, are being suppressed.”
Finally, the Digital Activism award went to the Arab Center for the Advancement of Social Media, or 7amleh as they’re known, a non-profit organisation focused on protecting the human rights of Palestinians in the online space. As Israel increases online monitoring, Palestinians are taking to social media to express disdain. 7amleh’s work protecting online safety and digital rights has been crucial. Through capacity building, research, advocacy and campaigning, 7amleh works to ensure that policies and companies are complying with human rights and are working towards greater accountability. Their campaign work with NGOs has seen huge numbers of participants. They’ve worked towards amendments in the Palestinian Authority’s Cybercrimes Law, the development of the first Arabic Digital Security Manual and digital training being implemented into the Palestinian education system.
If you believe in the work Index do please think about donating. For more information on how to donate click here.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][/vc_column][/vc_row]
