16 Jul 13 | In the News
INDEX EVENTS
18 July New World (Dis)Order: What do Turkey, Russia and Brazil tell us about freedom and rights?
Index, in partnership with the European Council on Foreign Relations, is holding a timely debate on the shifting world order and its impact on rights and freedoms. The event will also launch the latest issue of Index on Censorship magazine, including a special report on the multipolar world.
(More information)
19 July: What surveillance means to YOU
Join us 19 July for a live Google hangout with Index on Censorship as Trevor Timm of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Rebecca Mckinnon of Gloval Voices discuss what mass surveillance means to all of us as individuals. Hosted by Padraig Reidy of Index, the hour-long event will delve in the issues around government surveillance of innocent civilians.
(More information)
BAHRAIN
Bahrain warns against attending protest rallies
A spokesperson for the Bahrain government has warned against participation in the so-called “Rebellion of Bahrain” rallies and said participants will face legal action.
(Khaleej Times)
CHINA
Head of Google China leaves post, to be replaced by executive from Europe
Google’s leader for its China operations, John Liu, is leaving his position as the company continues to maintain a low-key presence in the nation following heated disputes over online censorship.
(PC World)
Incoming West Kowloon museum curator vows to be ‘politically incorrect’
Censorship has no place in at ideas places like venues such as museums, which should stimulate people to think for themselves, says a top New York curator who is due to join Hong Kong’s West Kowloon Cultural District’s visual culture museum.
(South China Morning Post)
INDIA
India Marks End of Era with Last Telegram
Thousands of people crowded telegraph offices around India to send the country’s last telegrams, as the government shut down the 163-year old service on Sunday.
(VOA)
MALTA
Malta FA presidential candidate sues for libel
Peter Fenech is to file two libel suits against Maltatoday and the newspaper’s website, maltatoday.com.mt, over two articles published yesterday entitled ‘Peter Fenech in impossible attempt at MFA presidency’ and ‘Dede’s supporters play down MFA rival’s transparency credentials’.
(Times of Malta)
RUSSIA
Russia’s Putin wants Snowden to go, but asylum not ruled out
President Vladimir Putin said on Monday he wanted Edward Snowden to leave after three weeks holed up at a Moscow airport, but also signaled that the former U.S. spy agency contractor was moving towards meeting Russia’s asylum conditions.
(Reuters)
TUNISIA
Tunisia’s dark turn
While Egypt’s revolution devolves into chaos, Tunisia’s democratic transition, which until now has been the most promising of any in the Arab world, is also in jeopardy. A bill being pushed by Islamists and their allies in National Constituent Assembly called the “law for the protection of the revolution” seems in reality designed to protect the ruling Islamist party, Nahda, from having to face real competition in the next elections.
(Los Angeles Times)
UNITED KINGDOM
The murky world of literary libel
Lawsuits, pulped books, family rifts: when novelists base their characters on real people, trouble tends to follow. John Preston investigates literary libel.
(The Telegraph)
Want to force ISPs to censor porn? Pass a law
As I write this, representatives from ISPs are meeting with the government for further talks on parental controls.
(PC Pro)
Online blogger set to appeal libel ruling
THE Towy Valley blogger, who lost her libel case against Carmarthenshire chief executive Mark James, is appealing against the ruling.
(South Wales Guardian)
UNITED STATES
ACLU says new Fairfield social media policy violates free speech rights
Maine’s American Civil Liberties Union says a new policy governing the online habits of Fairfield town employees is unconstitutional, but town leaders say they’re just trying to prevent their workers from attacking each other on social media sites.
(Kennebec Journal)
Zimmerman lawyer says he’ll move to sue NBC for libel
George Zimmerman is preparing to resume their effort to sue NBC News for libel following the network’s extraordinary breach of trust when they edited Zimmerman’s 911 call to make him look like a trigger happy racist.
(American Thinker)
Canned for Speaking Out?
It’s not unheard-of for a college to tell a faculty member partway through a probationary period before tenure that things just aren’t working out. And that may well be why Weber State University failed to rehire Jared Lisonbee, a professor of child and family studies. But the timing of his termination – after he and his wife spoke out against plans to name a new family program after a Mormon leader who has expressed controversial views on gays, women and intellectuals – has raised suspicion about what motivated the decision.
(Inside Higher Ed)
Would the Supreme Court silence pro-lifers?
A few weeks ago, the Supreme Court decided to hear a major free-speech case during its next term. The case, McCullen v. Coakley, concerns a 2007 Massachusetts law that prohibits some speakers from coming within 35 feet of free-standing abortion clinics. In effect, the law bans pro-life advocates from trying to peacefully persuade those entering the clinic to consider alternatives to abortion.
(The Washington Times)
Previous Free Expression in the News posts
July 15 | July 12 | July 11 | July 10 | July 9 | July 8 | July 5 | July 4 | July 3 | July 2 | July 1
10 Jun 13 | In the News
GLOBAL
UN report slams government surveillance
The UN’s Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression Frank La Rue delivered a report to the Human Rights Council outlining how state and corporate surveillance undermine freedom of expression and privacy. (Index on Censorship)
GREECE
Kostas Vaxevanis faces fresh trial
The Greek journalist who published the infamous “Lagarde list” of Swiss bank accounts could face two years in jail for breaching privacy. (Index on Censorship)
INDIA
HC directive on film posters a springboard for double censorship
The Kerala High Court’s directive to the State Police Chief to take up investigation of cases registered for indecent representation of women could end up as a double censorship, it is felt. (The Hindu)
Defying censorship, the reporter who exposed the killings
Brahma Chellaney exposed the killings of young unarmed Sikh youths for a foreign news agency, and faced severe government harassment (The Hindu)
IRAN
Regime’s media slam mullahs censorship
The Iranian regime’s own media has spoken out in protest at the censoring and restrictions imposed on their work. More than one hundred media staff covering next week’s election have released a statement criticising the oppressive scrutiny of their news websites, including reporters from the state-run Fars news agency. (National Council of Resistance of Iran)
IRELAND
Media must be free to ‘be arrow and not target’
THE first President Roosevelt coined the term “bully pulpit” when describing the less obvious charms of the American chief magistracy. (Irish Independent)
JAMAICA
Free Speech And Gay Rights
Boyne: Tolerance does not mean acceptance. And this is my problem with some gay people: … Any rejection of homosexuality as morally wrong is seen as homophobia. That is nonsense and an abuse of language to shut down conversation. (The Gleaner)
MALTA
‘Adult plays should be protected from police’
When censorship laws were relaxed last year, theatre buffs rejoiced thinking that no play would suffer the same fate as Anthony Neilson’s Stitching. (Times of Malta)
SINGAPORE
Singapore Bloggers Protest Licensing Rules for News Websites
More than 2,000 Singaporeans gathered at a downtown park to protest a regulation requiring websites that regularly publish news on the city state to be licensed. (Jakarta Globe)
UNITED STATES
Former FCC Chairman: Let’s Test an Emergency Ad Hoc Network
As the Boston Marathon bombings unfolded, thousands of anxious people in the region pulled out their mobile phones to connect with friends and family—and found that calls couldn’t be placed or received. Rumors that officials had shut down these mobile networks for security reasons weren’t true. The system was simply overloaded at a time when people needed it most.
(MIT Technology Review)
Produced By Conference: Death Threats, But No Network Censorship For ‘Walking Dead’ Execs
The Walking Dead exec producer Gale Anne Hurd admitted this afternoon that one of the hazards of her job is receiving death threats from the rabid fan base of smash hit AMC zombie drama when it dares to kill off a character. “That’s one of the dirty little secrets of social media,” she admitted.
(Deadline Hollywood)
School deliberately cuts valedictorian’s mic mid-speech
A US high school valedictorian had his microphone deliberately switched off in the middle of his graduation speech because the school had not approved what he was saying.
(9 News)
Freedom of speech under attack by Islamophobes in Tennessee
I’ve noted before that Pamela Geller Does Not Understand Freedom of Speech when she found fault with American Muslims and others for denouncing her hate ads. This she called an attempt to “impose blasphemy restrictions on free speech”.
(The American Muslim)
Do news organizations hurt free speech when they ban offensive words?
From now on, no one will be described in an Associated Press news story as an “illegal immigrant,” “illegal alien,” “illegal,” or as “undocumented.”
(Denver Post)
OPINION: Pro-Palestinian groups don’t respect free speech on campus
College is meant to be a place where free speech comes alive. Different viewpoints are supposed to be welcome and intellectual diversity celebrated.
(Campus Reform)
Disputed ads are protected speech
The ad we placed on city buses quoting Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu comparing what Palestinians endure to South African apartheid was meant to educate the public about Israeli and U.S. policies.
(San Francisco Examiner)
Conservatives as Defenders of the Media
The conservative pundit Glenn Beck took the lectern at a conference center on Manhattan’s East Side last Thursday to accept the Freedom of Speech Award for his commentary on TheBlaze television network and his syndicated radio show.
(The New York Times)
VIETNAM
Vietnamese Directors Speak Out On CHO LON and Censorship
The banning of the Nguyen brothers’ Cho Lon caused extreme rage in Vietnam yesterday. And not just for filmmakers or film geeks, but all over the country; I haven’t seen anything like this before. Previously banned films came and went quietly, but Cho Lon is now the focus of a national conversation. (Twitch)
04 Aug 11 | Asia and Pacific, China
Beijing district police last month enforced regulations requiring café owners and other businesses to install web monitoring software. The software costs businesses around 20,000RMB (2,000 GBP), and provides public security officials the identities of customers logging on to the wireless service, while monitoring their online activity. Since this fee is costly for most cafés, a solution chosen by many has been to stop providing free Wi-Fi. The result? A Wi-Fi drought in some of the busiest – and most touristy – areas in Beijing, say regular users who are unhappy about the new rules.
It remains unclear how strictly these rules will be enforced, with districts across the city receiving different orders. Eastern areas such as Chaoyang have reportedly not been subject to any regulations, while Wudaoying Hutong, a spot with bars and boutique cafés in Dongcheng district frequented by the technology savvy Chinese youth, has. While authorities might not always know how to control the surfing habits of China’s new Mac-owning, cappuccino-swilling generation, they certainly keep trying.
28 Apr 11 | Iran, Middle East and North Africa
Nasrin Sotoudeh, 47, writer, lawyer, and women and children’s rights activist, has been awarded PEN’s Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write Award.
The award honours international literary figures who have been persecuted or imprisoned for exercising or defending the right to freedom of expression. Sotoudeh is currently in Tehran’s Evin Prison, serving an 11 year sentence for outspoken advocacy in defence of her clients, she was arrested after the June 2009 presidential elections. Sotoudeh gave interviews to the media and human rights organisations about her client’s cases, the charges against her include spreading lies about the regime, acting against national security, and cooperating with the Center for the Defenders of Human Rights. She has been banned from practicing law and traveling outside the country for 20 years, a term that begins after her release from prison.
“From the start, Nasrin Sotoudeh has insisted on voicing the unspoken realities of post-revolutionary Iran,” Freedom to Write Program Director Larry Siems said.
The struggles of women, the experiences of minors swept up in Iran’s judicial system, the aspirations of writers, journalists and ordinary Iranians to engage in free and open debate about their country’s future — Nasrin has risked her own freedom to make sure these are acknowledged in Iran. That they have been acknowledged by sending her to prison speaks volumes about the Iranian leadership; that she is a hero and an inspiration to millions of her countrymen says even more about the Iranian people.
Nasrin Sotoudeh began her activism in 1991 as the only female writer for the Nationalist-religious publication Daricheh Goftegoo. One of her first projects was to prepare a series of interviews, reports, and articles on Iranian women to mark International Women’s Day, all of which her editor refused to run. After completing her Master’s Degree in International Law at Shahid Behshti University, Sotoudeh passed the bar exam in 1995 but was not permitted to practice law for another eight years. She therefore concentrated on journalism instead, writing for several reformist newspapers, including Jame’e. When she was finally granted a law license in 2003, she specialised in women’s and children’s rights while continuing to write articles addressing these issues, which she also discussed in a recent letter to her daughter.
“Nasrin Sotoudeh not only embodies the spirit of the PEN/Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write Award, but also the spirit of this remarkable year,” said Kwame Anthony Appiah, president of PEN American Center. “As a writer, as an activist, and as a lawyer she has dedicated herself to a simple and powerful idea: the principle that the rights guaranteed by law are absolute and shared equally by all. At a moment when women and men around the world are standing together peacefully to reclaim this most basic truth, she is in one of the world’s most infamous prisons, to the great shame of the Iranian government. In honoring her with this award, we stand with the millions of Iranians she has stood up for and inspired, and we urge individuals and governments around the world to join us in pressing for her immediate release.”
The Freedom to Write Award is an extension of PEN’s advocacy on behalf of the more than 900 writers and journalists who are currently threatened or in prison. Forty-five women and men have received the award since 1987; 32 of the 36 honorees who were in prison at the time they were honored were subsequently released.
