10 Oct 17 | Azerbaijan, Azerbaijan Reports, Campaigns -- Featured
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Executive Summary
1. The submitting organisations welcome the opportunity to contribute to the third cycle of the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) of Azerbaijan. This submission focuses on compliance with international human rights obligations with respect to freedom of expression, and peaceful assembly and of association, in particular concerns relating to:
- Constitutional amendments;
- Forced closure and harassment of independent media outlets;
- Arbitrary arrests and arbitrary detentions of critics, and allegations of torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment in detention;
- Legislative restrictions to freedom of expression online;
- Legislative restrictions to freedom of association;
- Legislative restrictions to freedom of peaceful assembly.
2. The Azerbaijani Government has failed to implement many of the recommendations relating to each of these issues accepted during its last UPR, with the situation deteriorating quite significantly in the period under review.
Constitutional amendments
3. Amendments to the Constitution of Azerbaijan were approved through a hasty referendum in September 2016, without any Parliamentary debate or scrutiny of the proposals, and amid a crackdown on journalists, activists and groups opposed to the amendments, preventing voters from having access to all relevant information and opinions. The referendum was also plagued by reports of irregularities, including ballot stuffing and fraud.(1) The Venice Commission also raised concerns that the referendum did not comply with even national legal requirements.(2)
4. The amendments include provisions with deleterious impacts on the rights to freedom of expression, assembly and association in Azerbaijan, including by consolidating the powers of the President and weakening democratic checks and balances, including by weakening the Courts.(3) Article 32 of the Constitution was amended to ostensibly protect against the publication of information about a person’s private life, but its broad scope potentially limits the ability of journalists and others to report information about public officials that are in the public interest. Article 47(III) was amended to prohibit propaganda provoking “hostility based on any other criteria”, which similarly may be applied to limit dissent against the requirements of international human rights law, while Article 49(II) of the Constitution was amended to enable sweeping restrictions on assemblies to prevent the disruption of “public order or public morale”.
5. These Constitutional amendments, and the weakening of the judiciary, further undermine the efforts of civil society, human rights defenders and others to bring national law into compliance with Azerbaijan’s international human rights law obligations, and to secure accountability for human rights violations.
Recommendations
- Initiate reforms to bring the Constitution of Azerbaijan in line with international human rights law, with full and effective public participation, and full Parliamentary scrutiny.
Safety of journalists
6. During its last UPR, the Azerbaijani government accepted 8 recommendations(4) related to ensuring the safety of journalists, including by conducting impartial, thorough and effective investigations into all cases of attacks harassment and intimidation against them, and by bringing perpetrators of such offences to justice.(5) These recommendations have not been implemented, with impunity for attacks against journalists and media workers cultivating a climate of self-censorship.
7. There is still total impunity for the March 2005 murder of Monitor magazine editor-in-chief Elmar Huseynov, as well as for the November 2011 murder of prominent writer and journalist Rafig Tagi.
8. In the period of review, the following cases are highlighted as evidence that impunity, as well as lack of adequate prevention and protection measures, are a continuing problem:
- On 28 April 2017, the blogger Mehman Galandarov was reportedly found dead in his jail cell, and the authorities claim he hanged himself. However, an independent autopsy was never performed, the body was not released and no public investigation was conducted. Civil society representatives refute that Galandarov had reason to commit suicide and that to do so inside his cell would have been extremely difficult.
- On 9 August 2015, well-known journalist and human rights activist Rasim Aliyev, died from injuries sustained from an attack the day before. Previously, on 25 July 2015, Aliyev reported he had received anonymous threats related to photos of police brutality he had posted online. Despite filing a complaint with the police, no action was taken to protect Aliyev or investigate the threats. While several of the people who physically attacked Aliyev were imprisoned in Mary 2016, the link with his journalistic work was never investigated and it appears the masterminds remain at large. In 2012 – 2014, Rasim Aliyev was part of IRFS’ research and investigation team that conducted alternative investigations into murders and attacks of journalists and media workers.
- In June 2015, the Director of Meydan TV and former political prisoner, Emin Milli, reported to the German police that he had received a threat, via an intermediary, from the Azerbaijani Minister of Youth and Sport, Azad Rahimov, in connection with his critical reporting on the 2015 European Games, held in Baku. Milli has publically stated that he believes the threat can be traced directly to President Aliyev, arguing that Rahimov would not have acted without presidential approval. (6)
Recommendations
Enact measures to ensure the safety of journalists, in line with Human Rights Council resolution 33/2,(7) including, inter alia:
- Publicly, unequivocally and systematically condemn violence and attacks against journalists;
- Ensure impartial, speedy, thorough, independent and effective investigations, that also seek to bring masterminds behind attacks to justice, and to ensure victims and their families have access to appropriate remedies, in particular in the cases of Mehman Galandarov, Rasim Aliyev, Elmar Huseynov and Rafig Tagi;
- Create special investigative units and specialised prosecutors, and adopt specific protocols and methods of investigation and prosecution, as well as trainings for key actors in the investigative and prosecutorial processes;
- Systematically collect data to inform policy making on safety of journalists; and,
- Establish protection mechanisms, including early warning and rapid response systems.
Arbitrary arrests and detentions of critics
9. During its last UPR, Azerbaijan accepted 16 recommendations(8) related to ensuring that human rights defenders, lawyers and other civil society actors are able to carry out their legitimate activities without fear or threat of reprisal, obstruction or legal and administrative harassment. Similar recommendations were accepted in relation to the treatment of journalists and writers, including that defamation should be decriminalised.(9)
10. Nevertheless, in the period under review Azerbaijan has continued its practice of targeting critical or dissenting voices with politically motivated arrests on spurious charges, extended pre-trial detentions (ranging from months to more than a year) and custodial sentences. The UN Human Rights Council’s Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, who visited Azerbaijan in May 2016, have noted that, notwithstanding the release of some high profile prisoners, the practice of the government to detain those with oppositional views continues, in violation of their international human rights law obligations.(10)
11. The Azerbaijani authorities arbitrarily arrest individuals for engaging in dissent and release them as a mechanism of control. There are often waves of arbitrary arrests and detentions prior to and around significant events, for example in the run up to and after the European Olympic Games in 2014 and the Formula 1 Grand Prix in 2015. As of August 2017, civil society activists within Azerbaijan estimate there to be 158 confirmed political prisoners. (11, 12)
12. Individuals arbitrarily arrested or detained for their political opposition include:
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- Ilgar Mammadov, the chairman of political opposition party REAL, was arrested in 2013 on fabricated charges of “inciting violence” and sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment. Despite a May 2014 European Court of Human Rights ruling, which concluded that Mammadov’s arrest took place with the goal “to silence or punish him for criticising the government” and violated his rights under the Convention.(13) In September 2017 the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe called again for Mammadov’s release, initiating infringement proceedings against the country.(14) However, he remains behind bars.
- In May 2017, Gozel Bayramli, a high-level official of the opposition Popular Front Party of Azerbaijan (APFP), was detained by Azerbaijani authorities on her return from Georgia where she had been receiving medical treatment.(15) Bayramli was accused of smuggling after border police claimed to have found an undeclared USD 12,000 in her bag and placed in pretrial detention.
- In January 2017, APFP’s deputy chairman Fuad Gahramanli was sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment, on a number of charges after being arrested in December 2015.
- In March 2016, an APFP advisor Mammad Ibrahim, was sentenced to 3 years’ imprisonment on hooliganism charges, having been arrested in September 2015.
13. Arbitrarily arrested and detained journalists and bloggers, include:
- Mehman Huseynov, well known photo-journalist and blogger. Repeatedly detained, he was imprisoned in March 2017 to 2 years imprisonment under Article 147.2 (slander, which relates to accusation of committing serious or especially serious crime).
- Seymur Hazi, a journalist who wrote for Azadlıq and presented the internet program Azerbaijan Hour was arrested in August 2014, sentenced to 5 years of imprisonment in January 2015 under Article 221.3 (hooliganism, committed using items used as a weapon).
- Aziz Orujov, the director of internet TV Kanal 13, was arrested on 1 June 2017 and his being held in pretrial detention under Articles 192.2.2 (Implementation of business activity without a licence), and 308.2 (abuse of official powers).
- Nijat Aliyev, the editor-in-chief of www.azadxeber.az, a religious-oriented website of a critical nature, was arrested on 21 May 2012. On 9 December 2013, Aliyev was sentenced to 10 years in prison under Articles 167.2.2.1, 234.1, 281.2 and 283.2.3 (ranging from drugs distribution to inciting religious hatred).
- Araz Guliyev, was the editor-in-chief of www.xeber44.com online newspaper, was arrested on 9 September 2012. He was sentenced to 8 years in jail on 5 April 2013 under Articles 228.1, 233, 283.1, 315.2 and 324 (ranging from gun possession, to inciting hatred)
- Fikrat Ibishbayli, also known as Faramazoglu, is editor-in-chief of www.jam.az the portal of the
Journalistic Investigation Center, was arrested on 30 June 2016. On 14 June 2017, he was sentenced to 7 years under Articles 182.2.1, 182.2.2, 182.2.4 (large scale extortion).
- Afgan Sadigov, an editor in chief of the www.azel.tv website, was arrested on 22November 2016. He was sentenced to 2.5 years imprisonment on 12 January 2017, under Article 127.2.3. (Causing serious harm).
- Rashad Ramazanov, an active micro-blogger using social media sites, was arrested on 9 May 2013. On 13 November 2013, he was sentenced to 9 years imprisonment under Article 234.4.3 (Illegal purchase or storage of drugs with intent to sell).
- Elchin Ismayilli,(16) founder and editor of Kend.info, an online news portal, was since arrested on 17 February 2017. On 18 September 2017, the Sheki Court for Grave Crimes sentenced Elchin Ismayilli to 9 years imprisonment. The court found him guilty under articles 182 (extortion of money by threats), 308 (abuse of office) and 311 (bribery).
- Javid Shiraliyev the founder and editor-in-chief of the 7gun.az news portal was sentenced on May 22, 2016 to five years in prison for extortion.(17)
- In an alarming development, Afgan Mukhtarli, a journalist and political activist, was kidnapped in Tbilisi, Georgia on 29 May 2017 and forcibly taken to Azerbaijan, where he reappeared a day after disappearing. He is accused of illegal border crossing and smuggling. His case has caused considerable distress to other Azerbaijani critics living in exile in Georgia.
- Most recently, Mehman Aliyev, who is not related to the ruling family but is a veteran journalist and director of Turan News Agency, was arrested in August 2017 on spurious charges of tax evasion, abuse of power, and illegal entrepreneurship. Though released from custody on 11 September 2017, he was placed under police supervision and the criminal charges against him have not been dropped.
14. The following writers and poets have been arbitrarily arrested and detained:
- Tofiq Hasanli, a poet who expressed his criticism in satirical poets and posted them on his Youtube channel before spreading them through social networking sites, was arrested on 12 October 2015. On 22 August 2016, he was sentenced to 6 years of imprisonment under Article 234.4.3.
- Saday Shakarli, a poet was arrested on 23 December 2015 after the poet published his book Qurd ürəyi (Wolf heart). On 16 May 2016, he was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment under Article 182.2.4 (extortion).
15. The following civil society actors have also been arbitrarily arrested and detained in the period under review:
- On 26 May 2014, Anar Mammadli, Chairman of the Election Monitoring and Democracy Studies Centre (EMDSC), was sentenced to five and a half years on charges of appropriation in significant size, tax evasion, illegal enterprise and abuse of power. He was originally arrested in December 2013 after criticising the October 2013 presidential electoral process. He was released by presidential pardon on 17 March 2016.
- In the summer of 2014, Rasul Jafarov, head of the “Human Rights Club”, Leyla Yunus, Director of the Institute for Peace and Democracy, and her husband and historian Arif Yunus, were arrested, just ahead of the publication of a comprehensive list of political prisoners in Azerbaijan that Jafarov and Leyla Yunus were compiling. Jafarov was sentenced in 2014 to 6.5 years’ imprisonment under Articles 192 (illegal business), 213 (tax evasion) and 308 (abuse of power), but was released by presidential pardon on 17 March 2016. In August 2015, Leyla Yunus was sentenced to 8.5 years’ imprisonment, while Arif Yunus was sentenced to 7 years on charges including fraud and tax evasion. Both were subsequently released from prison in late 2015 on the grounds of ill health.
- Aliabbas Rustamov, head of the Yasavul Law Firm, remains in prison since June 2014. Prior to his arrest, Rustamov had applied to become a legal counsel for Anar Mammadli (above). Sentenced in November 2015 to 7 years on charges relating to bribing an official, his sentence was reduced by one year in January 2017.
16. The following activists have been arbitrarily arrested and detained:
- On 6 May 2014, Ilkin Rustamzade, a member of the Free Youth organization and the National Council, was sentenced to 8 years in prison on charges of organising mass disorder and hooliganism.(18) Rustamzade was detained in May 2013 as part of the same criminal investigation in which seven youth activists of the N!DA Civic Movement were arrested, each later receiving sentences ranging from six to eight years. All were subsequently released, with the exception of Rustamzade, who remains imprisoned.
- In May 2016, two N!DA activists Giyas Ibrahimov and Bayram Mammadov were arrested after they painted graffiti on a statue of former President of Azerbaijan Heydar Aliyev in Baku. Both were sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment in December 2016, on fabricated charges of drug possession. Notably, the judge made the unprecedented decision to issue a harsher sentence than the one requested by prosecutor.
- In January 2017, Elgiz Gahraman, also an N!DA activist, was sentenced to 5.5 years on fabricated drug related charges.(19)
17. Released political prisoners are commonly unable to return to their previous work and political activities. Many have not had convictions quashed, are under surveillance, face travel bans, and ongoing harassment:
- On 22 April 2015, Intigam Aliyev,(20) Chairman of the Legal Education Society and award-winning human rights lawyer, was sentenced to seven and a half years’ imprisonment on charges of tax evasion (Article 213 of the Criminal Code of the Republic of Azerbaijan), illegal enterprise (Article 192) and abuse of power (Article 308.2). In March 2016 he was released when the Azerbaijan Supreme Court reduced his sentence to a five years’ suspended term, but the charges have not been quashed. As a consequence, Aliyev cannot run for public office.
- Prominent investigative journalist, Khadija Ismayilova, was released after 16 months’ detention in May 2016, after the Supreme Court commuted her sentence of 7.5 years’ imprisonment for the absurd charge of “incitement to suicide” to a 3.5 year suspended sentence. Ismayilova is still subject to restrictions on her movement, including a travel ban.
18. The family members in Azerbaijan of dissidents living abroad have also been targeted:
- In December 2016, three relatives of Jamal Ali, a rapper now based in Berlin, were called into the police in Baku shortly after Ali posted a satirical new years’ video, which mocked Azerbaijan’s recent arrests of youth activists from the N!DA movement.
- On 18 February 2017, 12 family members of Ordukhan Teymurkhan, a blogger now based in the Netherlands, were questioned by police to pressure Teymurkhan to stop his activism. Two of his relatives were sentenced to administrative detention.
19. During its last UPR, the Azerbaijan authorities accepted recommendations to enhance the role of the Ombudsman as a preventative mechanism against torture.(21) However, as the Working Group also noted, there are serious and credible allegations of torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment against those detained for exercising their rights to freedom of expression, which are not adequately investigated. These include the case of Bayram Mammadov (above)(22). Mehman Huseynov, a popular blogger known for exposing corruption among Azerbaijani officials, who was convicted to two years’ imprisonment on defamation charges in March 2017. The charges were in connection to a statement Huseynov made in January 2017, describing torture inflicted upon him by police officers after his detention.
Recommendations
- Fully implement the recommendations of the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention following its 2016 country visit, in particular to investigate promptly, thoroughly and impartially all allegations of arbitrary arrest and detention of human rights defenders, journalists, political opponents and religious leaders, and prosecute and punish appropriately those found guilty and provide victims with redress;
- Immediately and unconditionally release all persons arbitrarily detained for exercising their rights to freedom of expression, and, where applicable, quash their convictions and remove restrictions on their freedom of movement;
- Drop the criminal charges against all persons for exercising their right to freedom of expression, including Intigam Aliyev, Khadija Ismayilova and Mehman Aliyev;
- Cease the arbitrary arrest and detentions of individuals for politically motivated reasons;
- Take immediate measures to combat torture and end the practice of impunity, ensuring that those responsible for acts of torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment are held accountable and that victims obtain redress, including for convictions based on forced confessions.
Forced closure and harassment of independent media outlets and journalists
20. During its last UPR, Azerbaijan accepted 14(23) recommendations related to ensuring respect for media freedom, independent journalism, and media diversity, including to take into account Council of Europe in this regard.(24)
21. The Azerbaijani authorities dominate the country’s media landscape, through regulations, direct ownership or indirect economic control. In the period under review, the majority of independent media outlets have been forced to close or go into exile, with those still operating inside the country subject to police raids, financial pressures, and prosecution of journalists and editors on politically-motivated charges. Where media outlets have been forced to stop print publication and publish only online, their sites are subject to periodic blocking and throttling by the Azerbaijani authorities.
22. Forced closure of media outlets include:
- In June 2014, leading independent newspaper Zerkalo was forced to stop publishing in print, because government control of advertising and distribution networks made it economically untenable.(25) This was a consequence of government pressure on advertisers, and a ban on selling newspapers in the street or metro drastically reducing sales.
- In December 2014, the Baku Bureau of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) – Radio Azadliq – was forcibly closed after it was raided and placed under seal by police, supposedly in connection with financial mismanagement.(26) Journalists working for RFE/RL in Azerbaijan continue to be harassed by Azerbaijani officials.(27)
- In July 2016, ANS TV was abruptly suspended by Azerbaijan’s regulatory authority the National Television and Radio Council (NTRC), after the station planned an interview with the Turkish opposition figure Fethullah Gülen, under Article 11 of the Law on Television and Radio Broadcasting (to avoid propaganda of terrorism via TV or Radio).(28) The initial suspension was for one month, but in September 2016 the NTRC revoked ANS’ licence(29) and it remains off air.(30)
- In September 2016, the last independent daily newspaper, Azadliq, stopped publishing following the arrest of its financial director Faiq Amirov, cutting off access to the newspaper’s bank accounts and income. The outlet had been financially throttled for years, as the state-owned distribution network consistently failed to transfer sales proceeds that it owed to the newspaper.
- In August 2017, the authorities initiated a criminal case against Turan news agency for tax evasion, the last remaining independent media in the country. Its Editor-in-Chief, Mehman Aliyev, was also arrested on similar trumped-up tax evasion charges and its bank accounts have been frozen, forcing it to officially suspend all activities.(31)
23. Meydan TV, an independent online media outlet whose coverage includes human rights abuses and government corruption, closed its Baku office in December 2014 due to safety concerns. It continues to operate from its headquarters in Germany, in cooperation with journalists in Azerbaijan, despite relentless harassment and state-level blocking of the site since May 2017.(32) In August 2015, the Azerbaijani Prosecutor General’s Office launched a criminal case in relation to Meydan TV’s activities under Articles 213.2.2 (evasion of taxes in a large amount), 192.2.2 (illegal business) and 308.2 (abuse of power) of the Criminal Code. In April 2016, 15 individuals were named in the criminal investigation, with Aynur Elgunash, Aytaj Ahmadova, Sevinj Vagifgizi, and Natig Javadli subject to travel bans.(33) Journalists associated with Meydan TV have been repeatedly summoned for interrogations by the Prosecutor’s Office.(34) The case remains open.
24. Harassment of individual journalists who express critical opinions or deviate from official State accounts in their reporting remains a serious concern. In September 2017, dozens of journalists were dismissed from the government controlled ATV television channel after well-known journalist and TV host. Turan Ibrahimov spoke on a live broadcast about corruption, including how high-ranking officials targeted an entrepreneur to illegally take over his business.(35)
25. Access to foreign media outlets remains restricted, notwithstanding the government’s acceptance of a specific UPR recommendation to expand media freedoms across broadcast platforms, including by ending its ban on foreign broadcasts on FM radio frequencies as well as restrictions on the broadcast of foreign language television programmes.(36) A 2009 ban imposed by NTRC (based on Article 13 of Law of the Republic of Azerbaijan on Telecommunication), remains in place, preventing foreign entities from accessing national frequencies, which effectively took the BBC, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and Voice of America, off the air.(37) The NTRC, established on 5 October 2002 by Presidential Decree (#795), is fully funded from the state budget and the President directly appoints its members. Similarly, the Azerbaijani public service broadcaster, Ictimai, consistently demonstrates clear bias favourable to the government and ruling party, a problem exacerbated by the lack of media pluralism and alternative information sources in the country.
26. Civil society organisations focused on media freedom issues have also been targeted. In August 2014, the office of the Institute for Reporters’ Freedom and Safety (IRFS) was raided by the authorities in the capital Baku as part of a broader crackdown on NGOs in Azerbaijan. They confiscated equipment, documents, and assets, and the staff were harassed and interrogated by Azerbaijan’s Public Prosecutor office. As a result, IRFS has been forced to cease its operations in Azerbaijan; its Director, Emin Huseynov, remains in exile since fleeing Azerbaijan in 2014.(38)
Recommendations
- Support an independent and pluralistic media sector, ensuring that any official State advertising revenue is allocated according to a clear law, with non-discriminatory and equitable criteria, with allocations subject to full and detailed transparency, with guarantees for the editorial independence of media actors;
- Desist from extra-legal pressure on advertisers that support independent media;
- Desist from interference with the independence of media outlets, including through the harassment of their staff;
- Establish through law a truly autonomous and functionally independent public service broadcasting service to promote diversity in broadcasting in the overall public interest with full editorial independence;
- Replace Presidential Decree #795 which established the NTRC to establish through law a truly independent and adequately funded broadcasting regulatory body, in line with international freedom of expression standards, with clear, transparent and fair policies and procedures, including for the allocation, suspension and revocation of licenses, with the purpose of ensuring media diversity and pluralism in the public interest;
- Cease the regulatory and judicial harassment of independent media outlets, their editorial staff and journalists, including by dropping criminal charges against Meydan TV and the Turan News Agency, and by restoring the license of ANS TV;
- Amend Article 13 of Law of the Republic of Azerbaijan on Telecommunication and lift the ban prohibiting foreign entities from broadcasting on national frequencies, including the BBC, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and Voice of America to permit broadcasting by foreign outlets.
- Permit media outlets to sell their newspapers in the streets, without undue restriction;
- Ensure redress for the forced closure of IRFS, fully restoring confiscated property and allowing it to resume activities without harassment, including by allowing the return to Azerbaijan of IRFS director Emin Huseynov.
Legislative restrictions to freedom of expression online
27. During its last UPR, Azerbaijan accepted recommendations to protect freedom of expression online.(39) However, various laws have been amended to increase restrictions in the period under review.
28. On 15 November 2016, the Azerbaijani Parliament approved amendments to Articles 148 and 323 of the Criminal Code, creating a new offence of “slander or insult” through “fake user names, profiles or accounts”, as well as increasing penalties for “smearing or humiliating the honour and dignity” of the Azerbaijani president where the offence is committed online.(40) The government has not acted on its 2011 proposal to decriminalize defamation,(41) which currently carries a sentence of up to 3 years in prison. This is in spite of accepting a recommendation at the 2nd UPR cycle to abolish defamation provisions in the criminal code, and to “refrain from initiating defamation lawsuits against civil society activists and journalists”.
29. On 10 March 2017, the Parliament passed new amendments to the laws on “Information, Informatisation and Protection of Information” and “Telecommunications”, extending government control over online media.(42) The amendments establish obligations for website owners or hosts to delete within eight hours, on notice from the authorities, unlawful content.(43) Prohibited content includes any information criminalised under national laws, including broad “extremism” and “defamation” provisions. If the content is not removed, authorities can apply for a court order to block the website, though websites with information considered “a danger for the state or society” can be blocked without a court order, subject to subsequent judicial review.
30. Between March and April 2017, access to a number of online new sites with content critical of the government were blocked in Azerbaijan.(44) Contrary to the provisions in the above laws, neither the hosts or owners of these outlets were informed about the blocks in advance. On 12 May 2017, a Baku Court ruled to impose an official ban on five independent media websites deemed harmful and dangerous for national security. Along with Meydan TV, Azadliq newspaper, Radio Free Europe/ Radio Liberty Azerbaijani Service, Azerbaijan Saati website and video channel, and Turan TV video channel have all been blocked.(45)
31. In September 2017, access to the website of the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) was blocked inside Azerbaijan after they published the “Azerbaijan Laundromat” – a series of reports that uncovered high level corruption by Azerbaijani officials and implicated European and other diplomats and politicians.(46)
Recommendations
- Reform the laws on “Information, Informatisation and Protection of Information” and “Telecommunications” to remove reference to prohibitions on content that do not comply with international human rights law on freedom of expression, and to ensure that websites are only blocked on the basis of an independent court order and are strictly proportionate to the aim pursued;
- Decriminalise defamation fully, including by reversing the introduction of heightened penalties for online forms of defamation, repealing Articles 148, 148-1, 323.1, and 323.1-1 of the Criminal Code.
Legislative restrictions to freedom of association
32. During its last UPR, the Azerbaijan government accepted numerous specific recommendations to bring its Law on Non-Governmental Organisations into conformity with international human rights law and to create a safe and enabling environment for civil society,(47) but it has not done so.
33. In 2013 and 2014, amendments to the already-onerous 2011 Law on Non-Governmental Organisations (Public Associations and Funds) entered into force. These amendments provided the government with broad discretion to dissolve, impose financial penalties on, and freeze the assets of NGOs for infractions of administrative regulations, closing the few remaining loopholes for the operation of unregistered, independent, and foreign organisations.(48) The Venice Commission has found that the amendments “seem to be intrusive enough to constitute a prima facie violation of the right to freedom of association”(49), and their impact since has caused the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to call for their repeal.(50)
34. The 2014 amendments established a de facto licensing regime for NGOs, giving the government broad discretion to arbitrarily refuse or delay the registration of grants, establishing complicated and onerous procedures for registration, and allowed for restrictions on NGOs’ access to their bank accounts for non-compliance. The impact of these new rules has been to severely limit civil society space. While some NGOs have reportedly had their bank accounts unfrozen in April 2016,(51) several organisations no longer have in their possession many of the documents required for grant registration, because Azerbaijani investigative authorities seized them in the course of inspections and criminal investigations.(52) Meanwhile, the accounts of many other human rights organisations and independent NGOs remain frozen, including in July 2014 those of the Legal Education Society and its head, Intigam Aliyev, causing the NGO to cease operations.
35. The 2014 amendments have also made it much harder for foreign entities to provide grants to local NGOs, requiring them to have an agreement with government ministries. As a consequence, throughout 2015, foreign governments that previously provided grants to local NGOs postponed their activities.
36. The Government of Azerbaijan established the Azerbaijani State Council for Support to NGOs in 2007, which aims to provide a domestic source of financial assistance to local NGOs. However, NGOs applying to the Council for grants have reported that they were told to sign a statement promising to refuse to have any relations with international NGOs critical of the Government of Azerbaijan, such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, among others. In addition, one NGO receiving funding from the Council has reported that its activities have become subject to constant control by the state donor, undermining its ability to operate independently.
37. On October 21, 2016, President Aliyev signed into law a decree on the Simplification of Registration of Foreign Grants in Azerbaijan, effective from 1 January 2017.(53) The new regulations simplify some procedures for registration of foreign grants, but do not address the legal requirement for NGOs to register grants, and do not eliminate the requirement for the Ministry of Finance to provide an opinion on the expediency of each grant from a foreign donor, and most importantly, they do not change the broad discretion of the authorities to arbitrarily deny grant registration. The Law on Grants and the Law on State Registration and State Register of Legal Entities remains intact.
Recommendations
- Comprehensively reform all laws limiting the right to freedom of association, in particular the 2011 law on NGOs and the 2013 and 2014 amendments thereto, and bring them in line with international human rights law;
Restrictions to freedom of assembly and protests
38. During the last UPR cycle, Azerbaijan accepted multiple recommendations regarding protection of the right to peaceful assembly.(54) However, the authorities continue to severely restrict protests in public spaces and organisers of peaceful actions have been arbitrarily arrested and detained.
39. Amendments to the Law on Peaceful Assembly in May 2008 stipulate that demonstrations may only held in a number of approved sites, all of which are far from the centre of Baku, thereby diminishing the impact of protest. Further changes to the Law on Freedom of Peaceful Assembly, adopted in November 2012 and criticised by UN special procedures, criminalised participants of peaceful gatherings when they “cause significant violation of the rights and legal interests of citizens”.(55) On 14 May 2013, amendments to the Code of Administrative Offences increased the penalties for “organising, holding and attending an unauthorised assembly” to 60 days’ detention, receiving criticism from Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights.(56)
40. Police have used unlawful and disproportionate force to disperse protests,(57) and participants in peaceful assemblies have been arbitrarily detained.(58) For example:
- In April 2014, N!DA youth activists Turgut Gambar, Albulfez Gurbanli and Ilkin Rustemzade were sentenced to 10-15 days administrative imprisonment for participating in an unsanctioned memorial service on the four-year anniversary of a shooting at Azerbaijan’s State Oil Academy, and had their hair forcibly shaven off.
- On 6 May 2014, more than 25 protesters were arrested during a rally protesting the sentencing of activists at Baku City Grave Crimes Court. The next day, three protesters were sentenced to administrative detention for participating in an unauthorized protest, with the rest receiving fines. One protester, Kemale Beneyarli, sentenced to 30 days’ administrative detention, alleged that she was severely beaten on the head for refusing to sign an incriminating statement before the trial hearing, and there has been no investigation to these allegations.
Recommendations
- Comprehensively reform the 2008 Law on Peaceful Assembly (as amended) and the 2013 amendments to the Code of Administrative Offences, to bring them into compliance with Article 21 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, including by removing penalties for “unauthorised assemblies”, and removing blanket prohibitions on assemblies in the centre of Baku, ensuring that any location-based limitations are necessary and proportionate.
Footnotes
1. Institute for Reporters’ Freedom and Safety (IRFS), The Institute for Reporters’ Freedom and Safety Statement on the Outcomes of the Constitutional Referendum in Azerbaijan, (29 September 2016), available at https://www.irfs.org/news-feed/the-institute-for-reporters-freedom-and-safety-statement-on-the-outcomes-of-the-constitutional-referendum-in-azerbaijan/.
2. Council of Europe’s Venice Commission, Azerbaijan Preliminary Opinion on the draft modifications to the constitution submitted to the referendum of 26th September 2016, (20 September 2016), available at
http://www.venice.coe.int/webforms/documents/default.aspx?pdffile=CDL-PI(2016)010-e p. 5
3. See e.g., amendments to Articles 89, 98, 100, 101, 103, 105, 106, and 108 of the Constitution, available at http://www.venice.coe.int/webforms/documents/?pdf=CDL-REF(2016)054-e.
4. Recommendations of Canada, Italy, Germany, Slovenia, United Kingdom, Slovakia, Norway and Austria.
5. Specifically the recommendations of Canada, the United Kingdom, Slovakia, Norway.
6. Council of Europe’s Media Alert Platform, Meydan TV Director Emin Milli Threatened for Critical Reporting on European Games, (30 June 2015), available at – https://go.coe.int/1y4r2
7. ARTICLE 19, “Prevent – Protect – Prosecute: Acting on UN Human Rights Council Resolution 33/2”, (September 2017), available at: https://www.article19.org/data/files/medialibrary/38883/Safety-of-Journalists-guide.pdf
8. Recommendations of Austria, Ireland, Slovakia, United States, United Arab Emirates, Czechia, France, Italy, Canada (x2), Sweden, Chile, Norway, Mexico and Germany.
9. Recommendations of Slovenia, Germany, Canada, and Austria.
10. Report of the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention on its mission to Azerbaijan, A/HRC/36/37/Add.1, 2 August 2017; available at: http://ap.ohchr.org/documents/dpage_e.aspx?si=A/HRC/36/37/Add.1
11. The Working Group on Unified List of Political Prisoners in Azerbaijan, Updated Unified List of Political Prisoners in Azerbaijan, (28 August 2017), available at –
http://smdtaz.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Political-Prisoners-Report_Azerbaijan-August_2017.pdf
12. All Articles in this section refer to Articles of the Criminal Code of Azerbaijan.
13. European Court of Human Rights, Ilgar Mammadov v. Azerbaijan (Application No. 15172/13), 22 May 2014
14. Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe, Decision CM/Del/Dec(2017)1294/H46-2, 21 September 2017; available at: https://search.coe.int/cm/Pages/result_details.aspx?ObjectID=0900001680749f3c
15. Meydan TV, Customs Service Releases Info. on Arrest of Gozel Bayramli, (29 May 2017), available at – https://www.meydan.tv/en/site/politics/23173/
16. Council of Europe’s Media Alert Platform, Azerbaijani Journalist Elchin Ismayilli Sentenced to 9 year in Prison, (18 September 2017), available at – https://go.coe.int/alXEf
17. International Press Institute, Concerns as head of Azerbaijan news agency arrested, (31 August 2017), available at – https://ipi.media/concerns-as-head-of-azerbaijan-news-agency-arrested/
18. The Azerbaijan Free Expression Platform, Imprisoned (2013): Ilkin Rustemzade, (15 June 2016), available at – http://azerbaijanfreexpression.org/ilkin-rustemzade/
19. The Azerbaijan Free Expression Platform, Arrested (2016): Elgiz Gahraman, (18 August 2016), available at – http://azerbaijanfreexpression.org/arrested-2016-elgiz-gahraman/
20. The Azerbaijan Free Expression Platform, Conditionally Released (2016): Intigam Aliyev, (18 August 2016), available at – http://azerbaijanfreexpression.org/imprisoned-2014-intigam-aliyev/
21. Recommendation of Bulgaria.
22. Meydan TV, Youth activist Bayram Mammadov on torture in police custody, (17 May 2016), available at -https://www.meydan.tv/en/site/politics/14510/
23. Recommendations by Canada (x3), Cyprus (x2), Italy, Germany, Slovenia, United Kingdom, Slovakia, Netherlands (x2), Norway and Austria.
24. Specifically recommendations Italy
25. Reporters Without Borders (RSF), Deprived of income, Azerbaijani paper is forced to stop publishing, (20 June 2014) available at https://rsf.org/en/news/deprived-income-azerbaijani-paper-forced-stop-publishing
26. RFE/RL – Radio Azadliq, Azadliq Radio Baku Bureau Sealed Shut , (26 December 2014), available at -https://www.azadliq.org/a/26763625.html
27. RFE/RL, RFE/RL’s Azerbaijani Service: Radio Azadliq, available at – https://pressroom.rferl.org/p/6126.html
28. https://www.irfs.org/news-feed/private-broadcaster-ans-tvs-broadcast-suspended-for-one-month/
29. Council of Europe (CoE)’s PACE, The functioning of democratic institutions in Azerbaijan (provisional report), p.12
30. Chai-khana, Azerbaijan’s ANS: Death of a TV Station, (17 July 2017), available at: https://chai-khana.org/en/azerbaijans-ans-death-of-a-tv-station
31. CoE, Statement on the arrest of Mehman Aliyev in Azerbaijan, (25 August 2017) available at – https://www.coe.int/en/web/portal/-/statement-on-the-arrest-of-mehman-aliyev-in-azerbaijan
32. http://www.eurasianet.org/node/83591
33. Meydan TV, Fifteen journalists named in criminal investigation of Meydan TV, (21 April 2016), available at -https://www.meydan.tv/en/site/news/13829/
34. E.g. https://www.meydan.tv/en/site/news/24362/
35. IRFS, Major Shake-up at ATV, (27 September 2017), available at – https://www.irfs.org/news-feed/major-shake-up-at-atv/
36. As recommended by Canada.
37. RFE/RL, Azerbaijan Bans RFE/RL, Other Foreign Radio From Airwaves, (30 December 2008), available at https://www.rferl.org/a/Azerbaijan_Bans_RFERL_Other_Foreign_Radio/1364986.html
38. The Guardian, Swiss fly out opposition journalist hiding at its Azerbaijan embassy, (14 June 2015), available at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/14/swiss-fly-out-opposition-journalist-hiding-at-its-azerbaijan-embassy
39. Recommendations of Czechia and Canada
40. IRFS, Azerbaijani Parliament Approve Bill Restricting Online Speech, (29 November 2016), available at https://www.irfs.org/news-feed/azerbaijani-parliament-approves-bill-restricting-online-speech/.
41. See National Program for Action to Raise Effectiveness of Protection of Human Rights and Freedoms in the Republic of Azerbaijan, (27 December 2011), available at http://en.president.az/articles/4017.
42. IRFS, Azerbaijani Government Takes Big Steps to Keep Online Media under Control, as Parliament Adopts Restrictive Law related to Information, (10 March 2017) available at https://www.irfs.org/news-feed/azerbaijani-government-takes-big-steps-to-keep-online-media-under-control-as-parliament-adopts-restrictive-law-related-to-information/.
43. As above.
44. Meydan TV, Blocking of Websites in Azerbaijan Moving Ahead at Full Steam, (17 April 2017) available at – https://www.meydan.tv/en/site/news/22317/
45. Eurasianet.org, Azerbaijan: Court Upholds the Blocking of Independent Media Outlets (15 May 2017), available at – http://www.eurasianet.org/node/83591
46. Meydan TV, OCCRP blocked in Azerbaijan, (5 September 2017) available at – https://www.meydan.tv/en/site/news/24988/
47. Recommendations of Austria, Ireland, Slovakia, United States, Switzerland, Czechia, France, Chile, Norway, Mexico, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, and Uruguay.
48. US State Department, Country Reports for Human Rights Practices 2015: Azerbaijan, http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/253035.pdf p.22
49. Venice Commission Opinion, supra note 3, at para. 91
50. http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=16393&LangID=E
51. Minval.az, Власти снимают арест на банковские счета ряда НПО, (06 April 2016), available at – http://minval.az/news/123568530
52. US State Department, Country Reports for Human Rights Practices 2015: Azerbaijan, http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/253035.pdf p.22; See also: http://www.publishwhatyoupay.org/pwyp-news/azerbaijan-authorities-raid-civil-society-offices-in-continued-crackdown-on-ngos/
53. The International Centre for Non-Profit Law, Civic Freedom Monitor: Azerbaijan, (29 May 2017), available at – http://www.icnl.org/research/monitor/azerbaijan.html
54. Recommendations of Slovakia, United States, Germany, France, Uruguay, and Hungary.
55. http://daccess-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/G14/046/29/PDF/G1404629.pdf?OpenElement
56. CoE Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, Report following Commissioner Muižnieks visit to Azerbaijan – 22 to 24 May 2013, (6 August 2013), available at – https://wcd.coe.int/com.instranet.InstraServlet?command=com.instranet.CmdBlobGet&InstranetImage=2501767&SecMode=1&DocId=2130154&Usage=2
57. Such as the official shown in the photo on the cover of ARTICLE 19’s report ‘Living as Dissidents’, taken during a 14 April 2010 unsanctioned demonstration staged by the Musavat Party. See ARTICLE 19, ‘Azerbaijan: Authorities Clamp Down on Protesters in First Election-Related Demonstration’, 15 April 2010. http://www.article19.org/pdfs/press/azerbaijan-authorities-clamp-down-on-protesters-in-first-election-related-de.pdf
58. For example, a flash mob by 5 individuals in support Rasul Jafarov, one of the arrested human rights defenders, on his birthday on 17 August 2014, resulted in arbitrary arrests and police violence.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_basic_grid post_type=”post” max_items=”12″ style=”load-more” items_per_page=”4″ element_width=”6″ grid_id=”vc_gid:1507719850906-a6d11292-e9f6-0″ taxonomies=”7145″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
10 Oct 17 | About Index, News and features
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_video link=”https://youtu.be/Gy4ZfnnTOKM”][vc_column_text]A speech given by Index on Censorship CEO Jodie Ginsberg at St Mary’s Cathedral, Limerick, Ireland for the Limerick Civic Trust in association with Banned Books Week.
In 1634, the English lawyer and author William Prynne was sentenced to life imprisonment, fined £5,000 (more than £1 million in today’s money) and had both his ears cut off. His crime? The publication of Histriomastix – a thousand-page Puritanical tome dedicated to showing that plays were unlawful and incentives to immorality. He didn’t have many good things to say about women either.
It is a dreadful irony that this work, which in effect advocates censorship, resulted in some of the most gruesome punishments you can inflict on an author for their writing. Nor did his punishment end there – accused of publishing”seditious libels” again in 1637, Prynne had the letter SL branded on both his cheeks.
I mention the example of Prynne because it is the first cited in an exhibition of book covers currently on display at Pembroke College, Cambridge, where this week my organisation kicked off a series of talks and discussions for Banned Books Week, of which this lecture is the final event.
And I mention it because while it reminds us of how far we in the UK and Ireland have come in the past 350 years, the exhibition was also a powerful reminder of the fact that censorship is still alive and well – albeit in different forms – in our democracies. The exhibition ran along two sides of the library. On one side were the cases from the 1630s to 1800s. The entire other side reflected instances of censorship in the UK just in the past 100 years. This included – in 1946 – the burning of copies of insipid love story Forever Amber by Kathleen Winsor – not by the state but by public libraries no less.
Stop to think of that for a moment. In 1946, barely a decade after the perhaps some of the most infamous book brings in history – those of Nazi Germany, public libraries in the UK thought it fit and proper to burn a historical romance that one judge in the States described as “soporific rather than aphrodisiac”.
That was 1946. A bygone era perhaps? Sadly not. Sixty-four years later in 2000, a New York-based Limerick man took out a $800 half-page advertisement in Irish-American newspaper, the Irish Echo, inviting people to bring copies of Angela’s Ashes to a book-burning ceremony to protest this way this city was treated in the novel and the film of the same name.
The Angela’s Ashes incident shows us the urge to censor, to limit the publication or promotion of ideas we find offensive – whether on grounds of obscenity, of religion, or politics, remains strong.
This talk will examine the new sources of censorship – not just in the context of literature – and posit some ways we can resist the urge to silence others.
First, a little about myself and why I care about these issues and about the organisation I run. I am a journalist and have wanted to be a journalist for as long as I can remember. As a child, I would make my friends play ‘the news’ which we then performed to our long-suffering parents and I dreamed of being BBC foreign correspondent Kate Adie. When I finally got to cover a war – civil conflict in Ivory Coast – I discovered I did not after all want to become a war correspondent and ended up as London Bureau Chief for Reuters news agency. Whereupon I found myself in charge of coverage for the UK riots of 2011.
I became a journalist because I wanted to tell stories that were not being heard. I love literature because I believe in the power of the written word to convey and transport us to a world beyond our own imagining and that my own world is enriched as a result.
So it seemed a natural fit when I was asked if I was interested in running Index on Censorship, one of the world’s leading organisations in the defence of free expression. Index on Censorship was founded 45 years ago by the poet Stephen Spender in response to what seemed like a simple request: what could the artists and intellectuals of the West do to support their counterparts behind the Iron Curtain and those under the thumb of oppressive regimes elsewhere? Organisations like Amnesty and PEN already existed, doing then – as now – a formidable job of petitioning and campaigning, particularly on the cases of the imprisoned. What more could be done? The answer – those who established Index decided – was to publish the works of these censored writers and artists and stories about them. Index on Censorship magazine was born and we have continued to produce the magazine – this magazine – on at least a quarterly basis ever since. Writers for the magazine have included the likes of Arthur Miller, Nadine Gordimer, Hilary Mantel, Vaclav Havel – and Samuel Beckett.
One of the t-shirts featured in the Index on Censorship archive reads: “If Samuel Beckett had been born in Czechoslovakia we’d still be waiting for Godot”.
It was part of a campaign that Beckett supported to bring attention to the plight of writers in then Czechoslovakia. Beckett’s play was banned in the east European country at the same time as the communist government was persecuting its own writers. Beckett became drawn to the case of Czech playwright Havel, and committed to bringing world attention to the way writers were being banned.
Beckett was so incensed by what was happening to Havel that he wrote the short play Catastrophe, dedicated it to Havel, and allowed Index the exclusive, to publish it first in its pages.
Beckett’s action encapsulates the motivation of those who first established Index. This motivation, as Stephen Spender wrote in the first edition of the magazine, was to act always with concern for those not free, responding to the appeals from Soviet writers to their Western counterparts. “The Russian writers,” Spender wrote, “seem to take it for granted that in spite of the ideological conditioning of the society in which they live, there is nevertheless an international community of scientists, writers and scholars thinking about the same problems and applying to them the same human values. These intellectuals regard certain guarantees of freedom as essential if they are to develop their ideas fruitfully… Freedom, for them, consists primarily of conditions which make exchange of ideas and truthfully recorded experiences possible.”
I will ask in my talk this evening – given the debates about no-platforming in universities, the controversy over kneeling for the US flag, the fact that the BBC’s political correspondent needs a bodyguard to cover a political conference, whether we currently have the ‘conditions which make exchange of ideas possible’.
Why is it important to tackle censorship? Sometimes we forget to ask ourselves this question because we take it for granted that freedom is a good thing. Consider all those who were quick to shout ‘Je Suis Charlie’ following the attacks on French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo – the knee-jerk reaction in Western liberal democracies is often to say you are for free speech, without ever really stopping to consider why you might be for it. Or why free speech is and of itself a good thing.
I would argue this failure to understand the value of free speech lies at the heart of one of the dilemmas we face in modern democracies where free speech is being gradually eroded – where ‘Je Suis Charlie’ quickly became ‘Je Suis Charlie, but…’.
It is vital to understand the value inherent in free expression to understand why some of the current tensions surrounding free speech exist. It is also crucial for understanding ways to tackle the dangerous trade-offs that are increasingly being made in which free expression is seen as a right that must be pitted against safety, security, and privacy.
John Stuart Mill talks of free expression being fundamental to the “permanent interests of man as a progressive being.” “The particular evil of silencing the expression of an opinion,” he argues in On Liberty, “is that it is robbing the human race… If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth; if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth produced by its collision with error.”
This latter argument is particularly powerful when we consider, for example, the introduction of Holocaust denial laws. Such laws suggest that there are some truths so precious that they have to be protected by laws, rather than having their truth reinforced by repeated “collision with error.” You can imagine authoritarian regimes everywhere looking at such laws and rubbing their hands with glee at the prospect of being able to impose a single view of history on the populace, without any kind of challenge.
The free exchange of ideas, opinions, and information is in Mill’s doctrine a kind of positive cacophony from which clear sounds emerge. In this doctrine, it is not just the having of ideas, but the expressing of them that becomes vital.
Which brings us back to the question of whether we have the conditions for the exchange of ideas possible in 2017 across the world. I want to focus on four key areas on which Index campaigns for free expression: the arts, academia, media and online, and look at what I consider to be some of the main sources of censorship, by which I mean the attempt to silence and stifle ideas and debate, in democratic countries and further afield.
Let us begin with the arts. A number of recent cases I think highlight the contemporary censorious impulses in democracies: the first is the case of Exhibit B, a theatrical installation meant to highlight the horrors of so-called human zoos of the 19th century. Created by white artist Brett Bailey, Exhibit B was described by London’s Barbican as a “human installation that charts the colonial histories of various European countries during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries when scientists formulated pseudo-scientific racial theories that continue to warp perceptions with horrific consequences.” Exhibit B involved black actors often chained or in masks, sitting silently while viewers to the installation filed past.
In 2014, Exhibit B – which received five-star reviews elsewhere and was successfully shown just weeks before at the Edinburgh Festival – was pulled from a planned staging at the Barbican on the advice of police following a sustained campaign against the work online and off, including a very vocal protest outside the theatre.
Those who objected to the artwork – many of whom had not seen it – described it as racist. Now, I am not objecting to people’s right to protest against works or ideas they find offensive. Indeed, that is a fundamental tenet of freedom of expression. But what is salient, I think, about Exhibit B is that it demonstrates a growing belief that the opinions of one set of people should be allowed to infringe the legal rights of others to express themselves. Exhibit B was not closed down by police for hate speech or inciting violence, it was closed down because the police and the venue itself did not believe they could protect the audience or actors from any potential spillover from the protests about the work. In this case, one group of self-appointed spokespeople for a community infringed the rights of others to express themselves. As Stella Odunlami, an actor who took part in the Barbican Exhibit B, wrote in The Guardian: “I chose to take part in Exhibit B because I was inspired by the premise of the work… It forces us to examine the darkest corners of our mind. It is brutal, unforgiving and unapologetic. I decided, as an educated black artist, that it told a story that should be shared with the world, but sadly that will no longer be the case. My freedom of expression was taken the moment the protesters decided to attempt to storm the venue, causing it to be evacuated and deemed unsafe. It was at that moment that the protesters retained their right to free speech and I had mine taken away.”
Offence and hurt are in the eye of the beholder. Once we let a mob decide what can and cannot be expressed, we are in dangerous territory indeed.
We see this mob mentality most often reflected in the hysteria that whips up at speed when an individual or group of individuals takes offence on social media about something and how that fireball of fury can intimidate artists and others to self-censor as result. Irish author Claire Hennessy spoke eloquently about this at an event Index hosted in London last night.
Such campaigns do not just force self-censorship, they can prevent works from getting an audience at all. Consider a young adult novel called The Black Witch about a girl named Elloren who has been raised in a stratified society where other races (including selkies, fae, wolfmen, etc.) are considered inferior at best and enemies at worst. When she goes off to college, she begins to question her beliefs. The book was subjected to a sustained campaign of online abuse ahead of publication after one blogger wrote that the fantasy novel was “the most dangerous, offensive book I have ever read.” Its Goodreads rating dropped to an abysmal 1.71 thanks to a mass coordinated campaign of one-star reviews, mostly from people who admitted to not having read it.
Nervousness about offence is not restricted to concerns about the reaction it might generate in the online world. Salman Rushdie has said he does not think the Satanic Verses would be published today. And in the wake of the killing of those associated with Charlie Hebdo, the killings at the Bataclan nightclub in Paris, the shooting at a free speech event in Copenhagen it is not difficult to see why.
This mob as censor dynamic is something we shall see rearing its head again when we come to talk about media and academia and is one of the pincer movements I identify at being at the heart of modern censorship in democracies.
The second pincer movement is led primarily by governments and relates to a privileging of national security over almost all other values in modern societies. The crackdowns justified in the name of national security are widespread and increasingly misused. Take, for example, the current situation in Turkey. It is not just journalists who face the ire of President Erdogan as he seeks to weed out his enemies. Artists face his wrath too. Cartoonist Musa Kart, for example, has been in detention for the past 10 months and faces 29 years in jail for his cartoons satirising the government.
Jailing is one way to silence your enemies. Another is travel bans. In Malaysia, another cartoonist, Zunar, is currently subject to a travel ban – and faces 43 years in jail for his work satirising the Prime Minister and his wife.
In these democracies, those in power behave increasingly like despots. And one thing autocrats seem to hate more than anything is being laughed at. if you don’t believe me, consider the fact that President Erdogan tried to have the German government prosecute a German comedian for reciting – on German television – a poem that lampooned him. Even worse, German Chancellor Angela Merkel paved the way for his possible prosecution of Jan Böhmermann by leaving it up to prosecutors to decide whether to take the case forward.
If free speech cannot be defended by Germany within its own borders, what hope is there for its global defence?
I want to say something here about the importance of a robust defence of fundamental, universal rights and freedoms within democracies as standard bearers for these rights globally. Autocratic and repressive regimes look to justify their own behaviour by pointing to comparable actions in democracies.
That is why we at Index welcome the fact that Ireland’s blasphemy law will be considered in the upcoming referendum. Ireland is the only country in the western developed world to have introduced a blasphemy law in the 21st century and that has given succour to those countries who wield their own blasphemy laws to punish apostates.
For instance, the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation – which has 57 member states – cites Ireland’s law as best practice and has even proposed adopting its precise wording to limit human rights on freedom of conscience. It gives strength to the likes of OIC member Pakistan where a woman – Asia Bibi – is currently in jail awaiting execution for having drunk the same water as her Muslim neighbours.
Freedom to express one’s religious belief is on the barometer of the state of free expression.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”Stay up to date on freedom of expression” use_theme_fonts=”yes”][vc_separator color=”black”][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]Index on Censorship is a nonprofit that campaigns for and defends free expression worldwide. We publish work by censored writers and artists, promote debate, and monitor threats to free speech. We believe that everyone should be free to express themselves without fear of harm or persecution – no matter what their views.
Join the our mailing list and we’ll send you our weekly newsletter about our activities defending free speech. We won’t share your personal information with anyone outside Index.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/2″][gravityform id=”20″ title=”false” description=”false” ajax=”false”][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][vc_separator color=”black”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]A second important indicator by which freedom of expression can be measured is the state of its media. And on this measure, the picture is also far from rosy. Index has been running a project since 2014 on threats to media freedom in Europe and neighbouring countries. The picture that the Mapping Media Freedom project paints is alarming. Journalists in our region have been killed, arrested and systematically harassed for doing their jobs. And the harassment isn’t taking place only in countries where you might expect it: Turkey, Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, but much closer to home.
Only this week, we learned the BBC’s political correspondent has been assigned a bodyguard because of threats against her. Think about that for a moment. One of the most senior journalists at Britain’s public broadcaster requires a security detail to cover the conference of the country’s leading opposition party.
Online harassment, intimidation by the state, and legal measures are all ways in which attempts to silence the media are made. In some countries, the stakes for journalists are impossibly high. In Mexico, more than eight journalists have been killed this year alone as the cartels, vigilante groups and security forces wrestle for power. Few of these killings are ever solved, encouraging an atmosphere of impunity. In Turkey, hundreds of journalists are in jail. And at the far end of the spectrum, countries like Eritrea have no independent media whatsoever. In between are countries like Ireland, which a report in 2016 by human rights lawyers Doughty Street Chambers found had one of the most concentrated media markets of any democracy. The report said accumulation of what has been described as “communicative power” within the news markets was at endemic levels, and this, combined with the dominance of one private individual media owner in the State, created “conditions in which wealthy individuals and organisations can amass huge political and economic power and distort the media landscape to suit their interests and personal views.
And in discrediting and dismissing all journalism he doesn’t like as “fake news”, the President of the United States creates an environment in which attacks on journalists feel like fair game. Everywhere.
The President’s preferred communications milieu is, of course, social media and the internet is currently the battleground for some of the most important debates on free speech in the 21st century.
On the one hand, the internet offers an incredible tool for democratising speech: a relatively cheap platform that allows anyone with the access the means to make their voice heard. However, it also provides a tool for the nasty, cruel – and often just frankly the bored – to harass and bully others into silence. That is a challenge that we as free speech advocates would be wrong to ignore but for which censorship is the wrong answer.
Nor is the answer effectively abolishing privacy on the internet. This is the particularly pervasive argument used in Western liberal democracies to justify surveillance in the name of national security. If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear, the mantra goes: in liberal democracies, we’re not interested in your ideas, we’re just out to get the bad guys committing crimes. It shouldn’t stop you expressing yourself.
Except that it does. Knowledge of mass surveillance by governments is already changing the way in which writers work. A report from PEN American Center, Global Chilling, shows an astonishing one-third of writers – 34 percent – living in countries deemed “free” have avoided writing or speaking on a particular topic, or have seriously considered it, due to fear of government surveillance. Some 42 percent of writers in “free countries” have curtailed or avoided activities on social media, or seriously considered it, due to fear of government surveillance, the survey found. In countries that are not free, the consequence of a lack of privacy is acute. Colleagues in Azerbaijan, for example, note that authorities are quick to demonstrate the country’s openness by arguing a lack of curbs on social media. They don’t need a curb – as soon as you express yourself openly, the crackdown begins.
But it is not just in countries like Azerbaijan that we have to worry about surveillance or the misuse of national security laws. In 2014, British police used legislation introduced explicitly to tackle terrorism to obtain the phone records of The Sun newspaper’s Tom Newton Dunn for an investigation into whether one of its officers had leaked information about a political scandal, an action that seriously comprising the basic tenet of a free and independent media: the confidentiality of sources.
Even the hardware being used to quash free expression in authoritarian regimes comes from supposed democracies. Journalist Iona Craig, a regular reporter from Yemen, describes the phone tapping and other surveillance methods – using hardware and software bought from the West – that put her and her sources at risk. She and her colleagues now resort to traditional methods of reporting – meeting contacts in person, using pen and paper, to evade surveillance.
Privacy, then, is the natural corollary of freedom of expression. It allows reporters to protect their sources in pursuit of truth and advocacy organisations like ours to protect those whom governments seek to silence. But privacy rights should not trump freedom of expression in such a way that they prevent us coming closer to the truth.
It is for this reason that Index on Censorship opposed the so-called ‘Right to be Forgotten’ ruling that allows ‘private’ individuals the ability to remove links to information they considered irrelevant or outmoded. In theory, this sounds appealing. Which one of us would not want to massage the way in which we are represented to the outside world? Certainly, anyone who has had malicious smears spread about them in false articles, or embarrassing pictures posted of their teenage exploits, or even criminals whose convictions are spent and have the legal right to rehabilitation. In practice, though, the ruling is far too blunt, far too broad brush, and gives far too much power to the search engines.
This handing off of responsibility to internet companies to police and censor content is something we need to be far more alive to.
Increasingly, the protection of the individual, using notions of harm defined by the individual themselves – is used as an argument for censorship. I want to use the remainder of my talk to discuss ways in which this drive to shield from potential and perceived harm, is having an impact, with a particular focus on academia.
It is clear that something is going wrong at universities. Institutions that should be crucibles for new thinking, at the forefront of challenges to established thought and practice, are instead actively shutting down debate, and shying away from intellectual confrontation.
Driven by the notion that students should not be exposed to ideas they find – or might find – offensive or troubling, student groups and authorities are increasingly squeezing out free speech – by banning controversial speakers, denying individuals or groups platforms to speak, and eliminating the possibility of “accidental” exposure to new ideas through devices such as trigger warnings.
In recent years a number of invited speakers have withdrawn from university engagements – or had their invitations rescinded – following protests from students and faculty members. Former US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice withdrew from a planned address at Rutgers University in New Jersey after opposition from those who cited her involvement in the Iraq war and the Bush administration’s torture of terrorism suspects; Brandeis University in Massachusetts cancelled plans to award an honorary degree to Islam critic Ayaan Hirsi Ali; and Christine Lagarde backed out of a speech at Smith College following objections by students over the acts of the International Monetary Fund, which Lagarde runs. In the UK, the University of East London banned an Islamic preacher for his views on homosexuality.
Registering your objection to something or someone is one thing. Indeed, the ability to do that is fundamental to free expression. Actively seeking to prevent that person from speaking or being heard is quite another. As I alluded to earlier, it is a trend increasingly visible in social media – and its appearance within universities is deeply troubling.
It is seen not just in the way invited speakers are treated, but it stretches to the academic fraternity itself. The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign withdrew a job offer to academic Steven Salaita following critical posts he made on Twitter about Israel.
In an open letter, Phyllis Wise, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign chancellor, wrote: “A pre-eminent university must always be a home for difficult discussions and for the teaching of diverse ideas… What we cannot and will not tolerate at the University of Illinois are personal and disrespectful words or actions that demean and abuse either viewpoints themselves or those who express them. We have a particular duty to our students to ensure that they live in a community of scholarship that challenges their assumptions about the world but that also respects their rights as individuals.”
These incidents matter because, as education lecturer Joanna Williams wrote in The Telegraph newspaper: “If academic freedom is to be in anyway meaningful it must be about far more than the liberty to be surrounded by an inoffensive and bland consensus. Suppressing rather than confronting controversial arguments prevents criticality and the advance of knowledge, surely the antithesis of what a university should be about?”
Yet, increasingly, universities seem to want to shut down controversy, sheltering behind the dangerous notion that protecting people from anything but the blandest and least contentious ideas is the means to keep them “safe”, rather than encouraging students to have a wide base of knowledge. In the US, some universities are considering advising students that they don’t have to read material they may find upsetting, and if they don’t their course mark would not suffer. The introduction of “trigger warnings” at a number of universities is a serious cause for concern.
In the UK, increasing intolerance for free expression is manifest in the “no platform” movement – which no longer targets speakers or groups that incite violence against others, but a whole host of individuals and organisations that other groups simply find distasteful, or in some way disqualified from speaking on other grounds.
The decision to cancel an abortion debate at Oxford in late 2014, which would have been held between two men – and noted free speech advocates – came after a slew of objections, including a statement from the students’ union that decried the organisers for having the temerity to invite people without uteruses to discuss the issue. More recently, a human rights campaigner was barred from speaking at Warwick University – a decision that was subsequently overturned – after organisers were told she was “highly inflammatory and could incite hatred” and a feminist was banned from speaking at the University of Manchester because her presence was deemed to violate the student union’s “safe space” policy.
Encountering views that make us feel uncomfortable, that challenge our worldview are fundamental to a free society. Universities are places where that encounter should be encouraged and celebrated. They should not be places where ideas are wrapped in cotton wool, where academic freedom comes to mean having a single kind of approved thinking, or where only certain “approved” individuals are allowed to speak on a given topic.
Index on Censorship knows well the importance of the scholar in freedom of expression. Though we have come to be known as Index, the charity itself is officially called Writers and Scholars Educational Trust, an effort to capture as simply as possible the individuals whom we intended to support from the outset. The title was never intended to be exclusive, but the inclusion of “scholar” signals the importance our founders attached to the role of the academic as a defender and promoter of free speech. In 2017, as we watch the spaces for free expression narrow, I hope that together we can work doubly hard to ensure that traditional bastions for free speech — and indeed institutions like the church in which we stand that were not always its greatest advocates — remain arena for the clash of ideas, not the closure of minds.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_basic_grid post_type=”post” max_items=”12″ style=”load-more” items_per_page=”4″ element_width=”6″ grid_id=”vc_gid:1508139239119-b59a9835-c70f-3″ taxonomies=”6323″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
