In the last week, Bahrain’s treatment of its citizens and their right to free expression has been repeatedly in the news. Sara Yasin reports on a spate of developments that raise questions about the Bahraini government’s commitment to free speech.
Blogger and activist Ali Abdulemam has been granted asylum in the United Kingdom. Abdulemam’s two years in hiding began shortly after the start of Bahrain’s political unrest in February 2011. He was sentenced in absentia to fifteen years in prison on charges of attempting to overthrow the monarchy.
Abdulemam is the prominent founder of Bahrain Online, a site that created an online space to criticise and discuss the country’s regime in 1998. Initially, he wrote anonymously, but he began to write in his own name in 2001. Public dissent in Bahrain comes at a price: the blogger was first arrested in 2005 and then once more in 2010.
News of Abdulemam’s heroic escape did not amuse Bahrain’s government:
Ali Abdulemam was not tried in court for exercising his right to express his opinions. Rather, he was tried for inciting and encouraging continuous violent attacks against police officers. Abdulemam is the founder of Bahrain Online, a website that has repeatedly been used to incite hatred, including through the spreading of false and inflammatory rumors.
The statement goes on to say that the country “respects the right of its citizens to express their opinion”, but makes a distinction between expressing an opinion and “engaging in and encouraging violence.”
Back in 2010, Abdulemam was jailed, tortured, and accused of being a part of a “terrorist network.” The real threat he posed to the state, as fellow activist Ala’a Shehabi put it last year, was that “his forum offered dissidents a voice.”
So what does “incitement” look like in Bahrain? For documenting a protest on Twitter last December, Bahrain Center for Human Rights (BCHR) member Said Yousif, was jailed and charged with “spreading false news.” According to the country’s laws, “the dissemination of the false news must amount to incitement to violence.” As Human Rights Watch’s Middle East director, Sarah Lea Witson put it:
If Bahraini officials believe that an activist is inciting violence by tweeting a picture of an injured demonstrator, then it’s clear that all the human rights sessions they’ve attended have been wasted.
The jailed head of the organisation, Nabeel Rajab, is currently serving a two year sentence for organising “illegal protests.” BCHR released a statement today expressing concerns that Rajab has been transferred to solitary confinement. He has been unreachable since relaying to his wife an account of young political prisoners being tortured earlier this week. Rajab was requesting a visit from the International Committee of the Red Cross, to document the case.
Still, Bahrain insists that freedom of expression is something that it upholds — in fact, it has gone so far as prosecuting individuals for supposedly abusing it. Just yesterday, year-long sentences were handed to six Twitter users for making posts insulting Bahrain’s King Hamad. For hanging a Bahraini flag from his truck during protests in 2011, a man was handed a three-month jail sentence today.
Looks like it might be time for Bahrain to reevaluate how it understands freedom of expression.
Today’s impressively short Queen’s Speech contained two nuggets of interest for Index readers. Firstly, there was the mention of intellectual propety:
A further Bill will make it easier for businesses to protect their intellectual property
The debate over copyright and free speech has been fraught, with widespread criticism of governmental attempts to create laws on copyright on the web. (Read Brian Pellot on World Intellectual Property Day here here and Joe McNamee’s “Getting Copyright Right” here.)
This is something the government will have to treat very carefully, and the consultation should be fascinating.
Further in, the speech addressed crime in cyberspace:
In relation to the problem of matching internet protocol addresses, my government will bring forward proposals to enable the protection of the public and the investigation of crime in cyberspace.
The Government is committed to ensuring that law enforcement and intelligence agencies have the powers they need to protect the public and ensure national security. These agencies use communications data – the who, when, where and how of a communication, but not its content – to investigate and prosecute serious crimes. Communications data helps to keep the public safe: it is used by the police to investigate crimes, bring offenders to justice and to save lives. This is not about indiscriminately accessing internet data of innocent members of the public.
As the way in which we communicate changes, the data needed by the police is no longer always available. While they can, where necessary and proportionate to do so as part of a specific criminal investigation, identify who has made a telephone call (or
sent an SMS text message), and when and where, they cannot always do the same for communications sent over the internet, such as email, internet telephony or instant messaging. This is because communications service providers do not retain
all the relevant data.
When communicating over the Internet, people are allocated an Internet Protocol (IP) address. However, these addresses are generally shared between a number of people. In order to know who has actually sent an email or made a Skype call, the
police need to know who used a certain IP address at a given point in time. Without this, if a suspect used the internet to communicate instead of making a phone call, it may not be possible for the police to identify them.
The Government is looking at ways of addressing this issue with CSPs. It may involve legislation.
Eagle-eyed observers will note that this echoes what Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg told LBC listeners on 25 April, after announcing that the dreaded Communications Data Bill (aka the “Snooper’s Charter”) was to be dropped. Clegg suggested then that IP addresses could be assigned to each individual device.
As I wrote at the time, “New proposals for monitoring and surveillance will no doubt emerge, and will be subject to the same scrutiny and criticism as the previous attempts to establish a Snooper’s Charter.”
Well, here we are.
Padraig Reidy is senior writer for Index on Censorship. @mePadraigReidy
Today’s impressively short Queen’s Speech contained two nuggets of interest for Index readers. Firstly, there was the mention of intellectual propety:
A further Bill will make it easier for businesses to protect their intellectual property
The debate over copyright and free speech has been fraught, with widespread criticism of governmental attempts to create laws on copyright on the web. (Read Brian Pellot on World Intellectual Property Day here here and Joe McNamee’s “Getting Copyright Right” here.)
This is something the government will have to treat very carefully, and the consultation should be fascinating.
Further in, the speech addressed crime in cyberspace:
In relation to the problem of matching internet protocol addresses, my government will bring forward proposals to enable the protection of the public and the investigation of crime in cyberspace.
The Government is committed to ensuring that law enforcement and intelligence agencies have the powers they need to protect the public and ensure national security. These agencies use communications data – the who, when, where and how of a communication, but not its content – to investigate and prosecute serious crimes. Communications data helps to keep the public safe: it is used by the police to investigate crimes, bring offenders to justice and to save lives. This is not about indiscriminately accessing internet data of innocent members of the public.
As the way in which we communicate changes, the data needed by the police is no longer always available. While they can, where necessary and proportionate to do so as part of a specific criminal investigation, identify who has made a telephone call (or
sent an SMS text message), and when and where, they cannot always do the same for communications sent over the internet, such as email, internet telephony or instant messaging. This is because communications service providers do not retain
all the relevant data.
When communicating over the Internet, people are allocated an Internet Protocol (IP) address. However, these addresses are generally shared between a number of people. In order to know who has actually sent an email or made a Skype call, the
police need to know who used a certain IP address at a given point in time. Without this, if a suspect used the internet to communicate instead of making a phone call, it may not be possible for the police to identify them.
The Government is looking at ways of addressing this issue with CSPs. It may involve legislation.
Eagle-eyed observers will note that this echoes what Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg told LBC listeners on 25 April, after announcing that the dreaded Communications Data Bill (aka the “Snooper’s Charter”) was to be dropped. Clegg suggested then that IP addresses could be assigned to each individual device.
As I wrote at the time, “New proposals for monitoring and surveillance will no doubt emerge, and will be subject to the same scrutiny and criticism as the previous attempts to establish a Snooper’s Charter.”
Well, here we are.
Padraig Reidy is senior writer for Index on Censorship. @mePadraigReidy
AUSTRALIA
Crotch rule takes many by surprise
News that certain “crotch” movements will be banned from performances at future Sunshine Coast Dance Eisteddfods left a Gympie instructor flabbergasted yesterday. (Sunshine Coast Daily)
SRI LANKA
US calls on Sri Lanka to ensure freedom of press
Expressing deep concern over the recent surge in attacks on Sri Lankan media organisations, the US today called on the country to ensure freedom of press. (Business Standard)
UNITED STATES
Lawsuit targets union fees collected from nonmember teachers
A conservative organization has joined with a group of California teachers in an effort to overturn laws that allow teacher unions to collect fees from those who don’t want to be members. (Los Angeles Times)
Christian group says Muslim organization’s $30M libel suit will expose terror ties
Muslims of the Americas is suing the Christian Action Network for defamation and libel following CAN’s recent publication of the book “Twilight in America: The Untold Story of Islamist Terrorist Training Camps Inside America.” Co-authored by CAN founder Martin Mawyer and Patti Pierucci, the book accuses MOA of “acting as a front for the radical Islamist group Jamaat al-Fuqra.” (Fox News)
ESPN supports Broussard after controversial Jason Collins comments
ESPN is standing by NBA reporter Chris Broussard after his controversial comments about Jason Collins, the NBA player who on Monday became the first active participant in a major men’s pro sport in the U.S. to publicly say that he is gay. (Washington Post)
A changing truth: Do online news stories about arrests constitute libel after expungement?
A class-action lawsuit scheduled for argument next month in Connecticut claims that the news media defamed arrestees in online news stories about criminal records that were later expunged.
(ABA Law Journal)
