Tighter privacy laws would only serve the rich and powerful
The report by MPs on privacy talks of the importance of free expression, but the measures it proposes fly in the face of that aim, says Index’s John Kampfner
Bahrain: For freedom
Prominent Bahraini human rights defender Abdulhadi Al Khawaja has been serving a life sentence since April 2011 for his involvement in anti-government protests last year. Al Khawaja has now been on hunger strike for 26 days. His daughter, Zainab Al Khawaja, also a human rights activist, writes about her imprisoned father.
When my father started his current hunger strike, he was already weakened as he had just ended a seven-day hunger strike 48 hours before. On the 10th day of this hunger strike my father was taken to the hospital, having collapsed in prison. He was taken back to the hospital on day 13, again on day 17 and again on day 24. Each time the doctor pleaded with him to just eat something, anything; each time my father refused, reiterating that he would only leave the prison free or dead.
That previous seven-day strike, undertaken with his 13 co-defendants/co-inmates, was made to protest the ongoing imprisonment of those who had taken to the streets last February and March and were being punished for demanding civil liberties and democracy. For my father, it was personal as much as political — his younger brother was sitting in the same prison as him. His two sons-in-law were arrested with him and also subjected to torture. His wife was fired from her job of 10 years by order of the Ministry of Interior.
My father is not a fanatic; or rather he is only a fanatic when it comes to believing that every person should have her or his basic human rights respected in full. He has worked his whole life for this principle, by documenting and reporting abuse, by training others to do the same, by working to effectively campaign for human rights, by speaking out against abuse and by joining with others to peacefully protest when rights are systemically trampled.
Abdulhadi Al Khawaja with his granddaughter, Jude
Following his arrest, my father refused to give up on the struggle for human rights; he continued his human rights work behind the walls of a military prison, at a site that is not found on any map. My father paid a high price for speaking out on several occasions in the military trial about the torture he and others were subjected to. When his two-month solitary confinement came to an end my father engaged in discussions in the prison, continuing to spread human rights education and the example of nonviolent protest. My father gave the other political prisoners a full course in human rights. He then asked the commander of the prison for paper so he could write certificates for his fellow inmates to document that they had completed a human rights education course.
When I was growing up with my sisters, and we were living outside Bahrain, my dad would talk about the day we would return and the kind of country we would one day live in — where all our rights would be respected, where we could live with dignity and freedom. We did return to Bahrain in 2001, but what we returned to was not my father’s dream. Though not the nightmare it has since become, it was clear even then that there were limits to individual rights and as a community, one group in Bahrain faced systemic discrimination. My father could not live with that, and so he did what he always did — he started working for human rights and opened the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights.
Abdulhadi Al Khawaja with the current director of the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights, Nabeel Rajab
When the uprising in Bahrain started last 14 February, inspired by events in Tunisia and Egypt, my father quit his job with international human rights organisation Front Line Defenders and went to Pearl Roundabout to join the youth, who seemed all at once to have heard his message. This may have been the closest my father got to his dream, those days at Pearl, but now he is caught in the worst of nightmares. But even here he is teaching, leading by example and proving to be the most dangerous kind of men — the kind whose ideals cannot be shut away.
My father is Abdulhadi Al-Khawaja. He has been beaten, jailed, tortured, abused, sentenced to life in prison in a sham court trial, harassed, intimidated, had his family punished and seen friends and loved ones face harm. The last person who saw my father found him very thin, barely able to walk, stand or even sit up. But they also saw a sparkle in his eye. My father has spent his life struggling for others; he would rather die fighting the only way he can, than to ever give up on his dream. My father is Abdulhadi Al-Khawaja, and he is on the 26th day of his hunger strike for freedom.
Zainab Al-Khawaja, daughter of Abdulhadi Al Khawaja, and known as @angryarabiya on Twitter, is a Bahraini activist. Like her father, she has been jailed for protesting. She is a dual Danish and Bahraini citizen
In Zimbabwe, it’s not the media that spreads the news
In places like Zimbabwe the need for “outsider” critique is essential: solipsistic regimes create complex narratives about betrayal and patriotism; no more so than in Zimbabwe. Whether material originates from “inside” or “outside” the regime can be important in establishing its veracity.
A very small minority of Zimbabweans (about 3 per cent) live in isolated elite comfort, with their cable televisions buffering the reality of Zimbabwe’s weak local media situation, watching whatever they feel like, from Hollywood films to BBC to Al Jazeera and DSTV, whilst the rest of the citizens either see it with their own eyes, or rely on the local media.
And herein lies the problem: no critical, debating, investigative or contextual news gets reported.
The recent news that the government plans to invoke a peculiar mangle of laws to prevent “foreign” papers (including the Sunday Times and various South African papers) distributing unless they have local offices, means that Zimbabweans access to information is even more limited than it was previously.
For some wealthier Zimbabweans, this move is not necessarily being greeted with alarm. Linda, a Zimbabwean journalist in who works across the region, says “Yes, I get foreign media, I like it. But it’s a pose, getting your information from abroad. Local media is fine. We get constant Russian television, that’s sufficient.” Others, however are astonished, and see this bill as an extension of the theme that Zimbabwe’s media really only exists to bolster and defend the ailing, and increasingly vulnerable president Mugabe.
Zimbabwe is a peculiar beast: at one level it is now several steps away from the hyper-inflation days of 2008. But, it is still floundering in economic and social chaos. Since the introduction of the Botswana pula, the South African rand and the US dollar, trade is improving, but this is not reflected in the health of the country’s media.
In the absence of spare cash to buy papers, the shoddy state of local newspapers, and the restrictions imposed on media operations, people get inventive. Kubutana stays afloat using a variety of techniques which employ both technology and people’s ability to talk to each other face to face. They’ve changed the way milions of people vote in Zimbabwe. They provide a symbolic and actual hub for information. Still it’s the life on the street that is important, the constant mingling, chatting and gossiping that keeps the public sphere alive, with a few exceptions.
In this context, the Zimbabwean market traders and street vendors are essential. They know stuff. They see it with their own eyes and they constantly have a stream of people to interact with: at a micro level they are intellectual hubs. When the licencing system of street fruit vendors forced Tunisian Mohammed Bouazizi to burn himself to death, Zimbabwe’s street traders clocked it.
In January 2012 in Harare, several police officers were left injured during clashes involving removing street vendors from central areas. The Zimbabwean reported that two vendors had to be hospitalised after being tortured by police, and two reporters from the local newspaper the Daily News were detained by police. But they didn’t give reasons, context or views of those involved. Although the protests are a long way from sparking a revolution in Zimbabwe, the determination of vendors to fight for their livelihoods is a sign that people will speak out.
Street vendors, like many in Africa, are living a hand to mouth existence, often moonlighting several jobs, and the licencing system is a well-known ploy of governments here in the region to “clean up” their unsightly presence- particularly when there’s foreign dignitaries visiting, or an African Union delegation. Even streets get renamed. It’s all about looking good, yet paradoxically street vendors are essential for the large majority’s needs. They only exist because of the numerous trade agreements the Zimbabwean government has signed with the Chinese to ensure there’s a steady flow of buckets, washing up bowls, plates and radios, which of course local people need, want, and it’s all they can afford. But still Zimbabweans are ambivalent and disparaging “We want real money, not zhing-zhong,” taxi driver Jourbet Buthelezi, referring to the pejorative term Zimbabweans use for sub-standard Chinese goods.
Samir Feriani trial delayed
On 16 February a court postponed the trial of Samir Feriani to 1 March. Ferani is charged with “distributing false information”, and “accusing a public employee of violating law without proof”.
Feriani, a former senior official at the Interior Ministry, became known to the public in May 2011 when he published in two local newspapers, L’Audace, and L’expert, a letter in which he accused high ranking officials at the Ministry of being responsible for the killing of protesters during the 2011 uprising. Before publishing the letter, Feriani addressed it to the Interior Minister at that time Habib Essid, who seems to have ignored it.
In his letter Feriani also claimed that classified documents showing collaboration between ousted Tunisian President Ben Ali and the Israeli secret service Mossad were intentionally destroyed by officials in the ministry.
After the allegations were made, Feriani was arrested and taken into military detention on 19 May 2011. He described his arrest as a “murder attempt”. “A car sought to crash over me”, he said.
On 22 September, a military court in Tunis provisionally set him free, acquitted him of the charge of “harming the external security of the state”, and deferred his case to a civil court.
“I do trust the judiciary…just like the military justice proved my innocence, the civil justice will do the same”, Feriani toldIndex a few days before the 16 February hearing.
He also denied that he is on a hunger strike, saying: “I would like to assure the public opinion, that I feel high in my spirits.”
Feriani is still plagued by the allegations made against him. On 1 February he was sacked from his job at the Interior Ministry. “The decision to sack me was abusive…there is a smear campaign organised against me by the old secret police”.
Feriani is often described as Tunisia’s first prisoner of conscience in the post Ben Ali era.