04 Dec 13 | Africa, Kenya, News and features
As Kenya prepares to mark its golden jubilee on 12 December, the country is still behind in tackling its biggest threats to free expression. Corruption, ignorance and political meddling still reign supreme.
Articles 33 and 34 of the Constitution of Kenya respectively grant the freedom of expression and the freedom of the media. The articles cover individual as well as media freedom and independence free of government interference or intimidation, provided the rights and reputations of others are not infringed. These freedoms, however, will seemingly come at a heavy cost to the recipients.
Corruption has permeated every aspect of Kenyan life. Institutions of repute have fallen prey to the graft menace including the police service, the judiciary, and government ministries. The private sector has also not escaped corruption’s grip. Corruption robs Kenyans of their rights. Various reports by organs like Transparency International perennially rank Kenya among the top most corrupt countries.
There are often untold stories of how envelopes with “tokens” are passed around to journalists after press conferences or meetings by certain organisations, spokespersons or public figures. For all intents and purposes, this is in exchange for good press coverage. There are also cases of journalists being bribed to kill stories that may incriminate or taint the images of certain politicians or advertisers.
The duo of investigative journalists, John Allan-Namu and Mohamed Ali, were once offered a bribe of one million dollars in early 2009 to drop a story they were working on regarding a certain company offering vehicle tracking services. They declined the offer, going on to expose the company’s fraudulent activities, as well as the bribery attempt itself. But this raised the question: how many journalists have accepted bribes?
Media literacy is also a problem. The average Kenyan takes up whatever they see, hear or read about in the media as absolute truth. Media literacy is important for a person to be able to analyze and evaluate content disseminated via the various media outlets as well as to distinguish truth from falsehood, hoax or propaganda. Without this, most Kenyans accept everything portrayed in the media. This is dangerous as messages can be tailored with ulterior motives and used to manipulate the masses and their perceptions.
Ignorance also causes people not to know where the boundaries are in terms of their freedom of expression as well as how much power they really wield. Many crimes go unreported yearly because citizens may be apathetic or unaware of reporting procedures. It is not uncommon to find people who do not know their leaders are.
Political and government interference also play a major role in liberty of expression. The Kibaki administration saw many strides made in the expansion of the democratic space although it was no stranger to controversy. The infamous raid on the Standard Group by masked gunmen on March 2, 2006 sticks out like a sore thumb in the history of media freedom. Even more recently, there is the Kenya Information and Communications (Amendment) Bill 2013, more popularly known as the Media Bill. Some contentious sections of the bill include forming of a powerful Communications and Multimedia Appeals tribunal to handle regulatory matters; receive complaints and provide judgment over contravention within the new Communications Authority of Kenya or the Media Act.
There is also the imposing of fines of up to 20 million Kenyan shillings for media houses and one million shillings for individual journalists, as well as the powers to suspend and remove a journalist from the roll of practice. This is an unacceptable state of affairs. The media’s role as the fourth estate providing oversight over the other arms of the state, cannot be taken for granted or trampled on.
This article was posted on 4 Dec 2013 at indexoncensorship
03 Dec 13 | Canada, Politics and Society
(Photo illustration: Shutterstock)
Journalists in the Canadian province of Alberta could see their right to free speech stifled as new legislation, aimed at suppressing the illegal striking of union members, will impose heavy fines on those who comment publically in favour of those picketing.
For members of the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees (AUPE) it has been illegal to strike since 1977. The new legislation, introduced by Alison Redford’s Progressive Conservative government, will abolish the action of arbitration, as well as freezing wages and imposing fines, both for those who take part any form of “illegal” striking and those who comment on it.
According to Bob Barnetson, the director of the Human Resources and Labour Relations programme at Athabasca University, Bill 45 would see newspaper columnists who write opinion pieces about the plight of workers, or those who merely comment “the only option they have is to strike” handed a hefty penalty for their work. Making such comment would be a violation of section 4.4 of the bill.
“So what happens to the editor or academic?” Barnetson wrote on his blog last week. “Well, s.18.1 says that if you violate s.4.4 you are guilty of an offence. Under s.18.1(d), the editor or academic would be liable for a fine of $500 a day per day of the contravention. Section 20(a) says that prosecution may occur within 1 year of the last day the offense occurred”.
David Climenhaga, a well-known labour blogger in Alberta, believes the imposed fines would stretch as far as catching-out members of the public who showed up at an “illegal” picket line or members of other unions, not subjected to the legislation, who joined a picket out of solidarity: “So, while the bill is mostly careful to restrict penalties to union members and officers, on the always dangerous question of free speech, it extends its attack to “any person” who says the wrong thing to a civil servant.”
Bill 46, which will run alongside Bill 45, will see the 21,642 members of the AUPE forced back to the bargaining table in January or accept a 0% wage increase for the next two years.
An earlier version of this article referred to Alberta as a state. It is a province.
26 Nov 13 | Africa, Digital Freedom
Amid concerns that the proposed African Union Convention on Cybersecurity (AUCC) will limit free speech online the drafters of the AUC have agreed to receive input from outside organisations.
The Web We Want, a campaign aimed at promoting an internet where everyone can participate in the free flow of knowledge, ideas, collaboration and creativity, put forward a proposal after criticism that the convention should not be passed until changes have been made to it.
The convention, which will be signed in January 2014, proposes the prevention of cybercrime in 15 African states “through the organisation of electronic transactions, protection of personal data, promotion of cyber security, e-governance and combating cybercrime”. According to the Norton Cybercrime Report 2012, South Africa ranks 3rd globally for the number of cybercrime victims, behind Russia and China.
However it has been suggested that the convention should not be passed in its current form as it “dangerously imposes broad limitations on freedom of expression by permitting the interception of content data and traffic data on unfounded grounds, such as ‘where the imperatives of the information so dictate’”.
According to the Kenyan-based Strathmore University’s Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Technology (CIPIT) the convention could abuse Africans’ right to privacy, harm freedom of expression and place too much power in the hands of judges who, in the “public interest”, will have the authority to intercept individuals’ electronic communications without their permission.
Taking this into account this week will see an online discussion on the proposed changes to the AUCC by Kenyan and Ugandan stakeholders. Sponsored by KICTAnet, the Kenya ICT Action Network, and in partnership with Web We Want the five day digital event will call for a discussion of articles from the convention in need of further clarification and recommendations. The Web We Want has called upon international NGOs to put forward their concerns regarding the AUCC and internet freedom to be deliberated over the coming week.
This article was posted on 26 Nov 2013 at indexoncensorship.org
22 Oct 13 | Comment, Digital Freedom, News and features
The question anyone who defends free speech gets asked most frequently is “Where do you draw the line?”
The announcement by Facebook today that it will allow users to post videos of beheadings is bound to raise that question.
So where do we draw the line? The answer is that it is nigh-on impossible, when discussing free speech, to take general positions on any specific kind of speech or content. One must always look at the context.
Facebook’s own statement reflects this:
“Facebook has long been a place where people turn to share their experiences, particularly when they’re connected to controversial events on the ground, such as human rights abuses, acts of terrorism and other violent events,” the company said in a statement.
“People share videos of these events on Facebook to condemn them. If they were being celebrated, or the actions in them encouraged, our approach would be different.”
This might sound frustrating, particularly when, as the Guardian’s Jonathan Freedland points out, you contrast it with Facebook’s oft-cited banning of pictures of breastfeeding women.
But the blocking of breastfeeding pictures illustrates exactly the problem with drawing arbitrary lines on free speech. One can see a certain logic behind not allowing pictures of bare breasts; Facebook doesn’t want its platform to be given over to soft and hard porn; but most adults realise that images of bare breasts are not necessarily pornographic. Facebook policy, by the way, is not to ban pictures of breastfeeding women. But they admit to making mistakes and removing content that should not be removed. They do have a blanket ban on nudity.
Not every video of extreme violence can be automatically categorised as “snuff”, and there is an argument that if one wants to discuss brutality, one must be able to see it. Perhaps in an attempt to counter claims that allowing beheading videos to be viewed would somehow create a market for them, Facebook has said it will not allow videos posted by people seeking to praise the content. This, in terms of the free speech argument, yet again raises questions about the use and abuse of the notion of “glorification of terrorism” laws. We’re back to attempting to draw lines.
Debates over what is and isn’t “acceptable” free speech will never go away. And we will never honestly establish where the “line” is. Any discussion should begin with the premise of free speech as an absolute, and, if necessary, tiptoe backwards cautiously from there.
This article was originally posted on 22 Oct 2013 at indexoncensorship.org
