11 Jul 14 | About Index, Comment, News and features, Religion and Culture
Martin Roth, Kate Maltby, Sebastion Borger, David Edgar, Tomasz Kitlinski and Timothy Garton Ash.
In 1977, the Russian dissident Alexander Ginzburg — whose detention and sentencing almost a decade earlier helped to spur the creation of Index on Censorship — was again arrested by the Soviet authorities. For 17 months, a team of KGB officers interrogated the poetry publisher, threatening to arrest friends and colleagues unless he co-operated, attempting to scare him with the prospect of the death penalty and denying him medical treatment.
In the midst of this, Ginzburg recalled: At least I knew they would not kill me before the trial. “This is because I was a defended person, someone whom the West knew about and was likely to make a fuss about. Without this form of defence, political prisoners just die”.
I was reminded of Ginzburg’s comments last night as we discussed freedom in Europe 25 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall. A question was posed: Are we more free than we were in 1989? In a surprisingly tightly contested vote, the majority edged it with the decision that we were freer.
Kate Maltby, one of our panellists, pointed out that her Hungarian family could now travel freely to meet loved ones outside the country, something they could not do before the wall fell. Others on the panel, which included historian Timothy Garton Ash and playwright David Edgar, pointed to political plurality and greater protections for free expression. Martin Roth, director of the V&A museum, recalled the East Germany’s transition to capitalism in Dresden, with graffiti reading “Elect money”. But a warning note was also sounded that reminded the audience that hard won freedoms need to be protected. Tomasz Kitliński, Polish political philosopher and civic activist, put it best when he described the new dissidents: artists and writers who continue to face threats from the authorities. He pointed to cases like that of Dorota Nieznalska, who was convicted of blasphemy, fined and prevented by a judge from leaving the country for displaying a piece of art that included an image of a penis on a cross. The exhibition of which her installation formed part was closed down by authorities.
Elsewhere, as we see in the reports coming into our EU media mapping project, authorities, particularly in the Balkans, are taking an increasingly hard line on the media and other civil society groups, while in countries like Russia and Turkey new laws are being used to suppress freedom of expression online. Threats also persist offline. Last week, Index joined calls for Tajikistan to release a Canada-based academic, Alexander Sodiqov, who was arrested for “spying” while on a research trip and who now faces a jail sentence of between 12 and 20 years. Sodiqov is also accused of treason a charge that was similarly laid at the door of Ginzburg by the Soviet authorities nearly 40 years ago.
Are we more free in Europe and the former Soviet Union than in 1989? Certainly. Are we all more free? No. And, as cases like those of Sodiqov remind us, we can never be complacent.
This article was posted on July 11, 2014 at indexoncensorship.org
06 Jun 14 | Azerbaijan News, Digital Freedom, News and features
(Image: Bplanet/Shutterstock)
Croatia’s new criminal code has introduced “humiliation” as an offence — and it is already being put to use. Slavica Lukić, a journalist with newspaper Jutarnji list is likely to end up in court for writing that the Dean of the Faculty of Law in Osijek accepted a bribe. As Index reported earlier this week, via its censorship mapping tool mediafreedom.ushahidi.com: “For the court, it is of little importance that the information is correct – it is enough for the principal to state that he felt humbled by the publication of the news.”
These kinds of laws exist across the world, especially under the guise of protecting against insult. The problem, however, is that such laws often exist for the benefit of leaders and politicians. And even when they are more general, they can be very easily manipulated by those in positions of power to shut down and punish criticism. Below are some recent cases where just this has happened.
Tajikistan
On 4 June this year, security forces in Tajikistan detained a 30-year-old man on charges of “insulting” the country’s president. According to local press, he was arrested after posting “slanderous” images and texts on Facebook.
Iran
Eight people were jailed in Iran in May, on charges including blasphemy and insulting the country’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Facebook. They also were variously found guilty of propaganda against the ruling system and spreading lies.
India
Also in May this year, Goa man Devu Chodankar was investigated by police for posting criticism of new Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Facebook. The incident was reported the police someone close to Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), under several different pieces of legislation. One makes it s “a punishable offence to send messages that are offensive, false or created for the purpose of causing annoyance or inconvenience”.
Swaziland
Human rights lawyer Thulani Maseko and journalist and editor Bheki Makhubu were arrested in March this year, and face charges of “scandalising the judiciary” and “contempt of court”. The charges are based on two articles, written by Maseko and Makhubu and published in the independent magazine the Nation, which strongly criticised Swaziland’s Chief Justice Michael Ramodibedi, levels of corruption and the lack of impartiality in the country’s judicial system.
Venezuela
In February this year, Venezuelan opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez was arrested on charges of inciting violence in the country’s ongoing anti-government protests. Human Rights Watch Americas Director Jose Miguel Vivanco said at the time that the government of President Nicholas Maduro had made no valid case against Lopez and merely justified his imprisonment through “insults and conspiracy theories.”
Zimbabwe
Student Honest Makasi was in November 2013 charged with insulting President Robert Mugabe. He allegedly called the president “a dog” and accused him of “failing to do what he promised during campaigns” and lying to the people. He appeared in court around the same time the country’s constitutional court criticised continued use of insult laws. And Makasi is not the only one to find himself in this position — since 2010, over 70 Zimbabweans have been charged for “undermining” the authority of the president.
Egypt
In March 2013, Egypt’s public prosecutor, appointed by former President Mohamed Morsi, issued an arrest warrant for famous TV host and comedian Bassem Youssef, among others. The charges included “insulting Islam” and “belittling” the later ousted Morsi. The country’s regime might have changed since this incident, but Egyptian authorities’ chilling effect on free expression remains — Youssef recently announced the end of his wildly popular satire show.
Azerbaijan
A recent defamation law imposes hefty fines and prison sentences for anyone convicted of online slander or insults in Azerbaijan. In August 2013, a court prosecuted a former bank employee who had criticised the bank on Facebook. He was found guilty of libel and sentenced to 1-year public work, with 20% of his monthly salary also withheld.
Malawi
In July 2013, a man was convicted and ordered to pay a fine or face nine month in prison, for calling Malawi’s President Joyce Banda “stupid” and a “failure”. Angry that his request for a new passport was denied by the department of immigration, Japhet Chirwa “blamed the government’s bureaucratic red tape on the ‘stupidity and failure’ of President Banda”. He was arrested shortly after.
Poland
While the penalties were softened somewhat in a 2009 amendment to the criminal code, libel remains a criminal offence in Poland. In September 2012, the creator of Antykomor.pl, a website satirising President Bronisław Komorowski, was “sentenced to 15 months of restricted liberty and 600 hours of community service for defaming the president”.
This article was published on June 6, 2014 at indexoncensorship.org
21 May 14 | Magazine
Rafal Rohozinski, co-founder of cyber-research thinktank SecDev Group (Photo: Frontline Club)
What is the future of journalism? The innovation report leaked from the New York Times this week highlights the need for change to keep up with fast-moving technology. How do news gatherers and publishers adapt to the volume of online content produced every day? In Syria, the combined duration of wartime YouTube footage now outweighs the realtime number of hours since the conflict began. Rafal Rohozinski, co-founder of cyber-research thinktank SecDev Group, spoke at London’s Frontline Club on Tuesday about redefining news. Here we round-up five of his key points – affecting everyone from readers to citizen journalists to the world’s biggest media organisations.
“Verification is key”
The Boston bombings were one of the most tweeted about events in history, generating seven million tweets – yet 60% were deemed to include false information. We are now swamped with data, but the successful operators will be the ones that know how to interpret it and validate it. “The expert isn’t the algorithm; it’s the human being in the loop,” says Rohozinski. We will see the rise of the “virtual bureau” – which tap into streams of knowledge coming up from the ground, but will be manned by “super journalists”, who understand the local language, politics, way of life etc. These well-trained individuals are able to work their way around both the data and the subject.
“Focus on one platform at your own peril”
Technology is fickle; it will change. “Imagine,” says Rohozinski, “if the BBC had focused only on MySpace.” Twitter is not the one and only route to the truth. Firstly, because it has a bias towards a particular type of user; secondly, because local platforms can often offer as much – or potentially even more – insight. Weibo in China is one example, but little-known localised platforms also exist in Kazakhstan, Tajikistan … Why are they popular? Because they are more accessible (having been developed for a specific group in their native language) and they are often linked to local telecommunications companies, so they are less expensive to access on mobiles. The internet of the future will cut across more platforms and try to link them.
“Syria is the first war being fought in the full glare of cyberspace”
At start of the Syrian war, there were 14 million mobile-phone users (in a population of 20 million). As people have fled, the number of in-country mobile-phone users has grown; there are now 500,000 more. This has done a great deal to empower citizens, but data can also be manipulated. Thousands of seemingly genuine pro-Assad posts – apparently backed up with pictures of houses and children – turned out to be entirely artificial when analysed by an algorithm. It was more subtle than propaganda; it was created to imply an act of discourse among a community. Twitter didn’t pick up that; field reports wouldn’t pick up on that.
“The social contracts that were formed over decades are now completely up in the air.”
News agencies and intelligence agencies are facing the same problems. Both are trying to answer questions that ultimately depend on people. Both are dependent on cyberspace. Do we use metadata? How much do we reveal? How much do we collect? The Snowden revelations have brought a lot of this to light. Biometric data collection is forcing change in social contracts between individuals and state. The rules are grey and undefined. In Syria, doctors are being arrested, because their phones contain details of gun-shot victims. Journalists and intelligence agencies need to look to new ways to protect their sources.
“Facebook and Google have big ambitions, but they are necessarily realities.”
Although Facebook and Google have been buying drone companies to further their reach, Rohozinski predicts complications: “Ultimately, the internet is based on a physical infrastructure of connectivity. When Facebook says they will use their own fibre optic cables so they aren’t subject to control, they are kind of wrong because at some stage the government will step in and say, ‘You are now a telecommunications company, regulation applies.’ Ambitions for becoming common carriers with a physical embodiment, as opposed to simply a virtual overlay, means they will be subject to much more regulation than they have been in the past.”
Rafal Rohozinski co-developed Psiphon, a software application that allows people in closed societies to access censored information. He has worked across the world, including in the former Soviet Union, the Middle East and Africa.
The next issue of Index On Censorship magazine – out in early June – explores citizen journalism and data-tracking in Syria. Subscribe from just £18 per year and find out about hard-hitting journalism under fire around the world.
30 Apr 14 | Egypt, Iraq, News and features, Nigeria, Pakistan, Religion and Culture, Syria, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Vietnam
In January, Index summarised the U.S. State Department’s “Countries of Particular Concern” — those that severely violate religious freedom rights within their borders. This list has remained static since 2006 and includes Burma, China, Eritrea, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Uzbekistan. These countries not only suppress religious expression, they systematically torture and detain people who cross political and social red lines around faith.
Today the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), an independent watchdog panel created by Congress to review international religious freedom conditions, released its 15th annual report recommending that the State Department double its list of worst offenders to include Egypt, Iraq, Nigeria, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Vietnam and Syria.
Here’s a roundup of the systematic, ongoing and egregious religious freedom violations unfolding in each.
1. Egypt
The promise of religious freedom that came with a revised constitution and ousted Islamist president last year has yet to transpire. An increasing number of dissident Sunnis, Coptic Christians, Shiite Muslims, atheists and other religious minorities are being arrested for “ridiculing or insulting heavenly religions or inciting sectarian strife” under the country’s blasphemy law. Attacks against these groups are seldom investigated. Freedom of belief is theoretically “absolute” in the new constitution approved in January, but only for Muslims, Christians and Jews. Baha’is are considered apostates, denied state identity cards and banned from engaging in public religious activities, as are Jehovah’s Witnesses. Egyptian courts sentenced 529 Islamist supporters to death in March and another 683 in April, though most of the March sentences have been commuted to life in prison. Courts also recently upheld the five-year prison sentence of writer Karam Saber, who allegedly committed blasphemy in his work.
2. Iraq
Iraq’s constitution guarantees religious freedom, but the government has largely failed to prevent religiously-motivated sectarian attacks. About two-thirds of Iraqi residents identify as Shiite and one-third as Sunni. Christians, Yezidis, Sabean-Mandaeans and other faith groups are dwindling as these minorities and atheists flee the country amid discrimination, persecution and fear. Baha’is, long considered apostates, are banned, as are followers of Wahhabism. Sunni-Shia tensions have been exacerbated recently by the crisis in neighboring Syria and extremist attacks against religious pilgrims on religious holidays. A proposed personal status law favoring Shiism is expected to deepen divisions if passed and has been heavily criticized for allowing girls to marry as young as nine.
3. Nigeria
Nigeria is roughly divided north-south between Islam and Christianity with a sprinkling of indigenous faiths throughout. Sectarian tensions along these geographic lines are further complicated by ethnic, political and economic divisions. Laws in Nigeria protect religious freedom, but rule of law is severely lacking. As a result, the government has failed to stop Islamist group Boko Haram from terrorizing and methodically slaughtering Christians and Muslim critics. An estimated 16,000 people have been killed and many houses of worship destroyed in the past 15 years as a result of violence between Christians and Muslims. The vast majority of these crimes have gone unpunished. Christians in Muslim-majority northern states regularly complain of discrimination in the spheres of education, employment, land ownership and media.
4. Pakistan
Pakistan’s record on religious freedom is dismal. Harsh anti-blasphemy laws are regularly evoked to settle personal and communal scores. Although no one has been executed for blasphemy in the past 25 years, dozens charged with the crime have fallen victim to vigilantism with impunity. Violent extremists from among Pakistan’s Taliban and Sunni Muslim majority regularly target the country’s many religious minorities, which include Shiites, Sufis, Christians, Hindus, Zoroastrians, Sikhs, Buddhists and Baha’is. Ahmadis are considered heretics and are prevented from identifying as Muslim, as the case of British Ahmadi Masud Ahmad made all too clear in recent months. Ahmadis are politically disenfranchised and Hindu marriages are not state-recognized. Laws must be consistent with Islam, the state religion, and freedom of expression is constitutionally “subject to any reasonable restrictions imposed by law in the interest of the glory of Islam,” fostering a culture of self-censorship.
5. Tajikistan
Religious freedom has rapidly deteriorated since Tajikistan’s 2009 religion law severely curtailed free exercise. Muslims, who represent 90 percent of the population, are heavily monitored and restricted in terms of education, dress, pilgrimage participation, imam selection and sermon content. All religious groups must register with the government. Proselytizing and private religious education are forbidden, minors are banned from participating in most religious activities and Muslim women face many restrictions on communal worship. Jehovah’s Witnesses have been banned from the country since 2007 for their conscientious objection to military service, as have several other religious groups. Hundreds of unregistered mosques have been closed in recent years, and “inappropriate” religious texts are regularly confiscated.
6. Turkmenistan
The religious freedom situation in Turkmenistan is similar to that of Tajikistan but worse due to the country’s extraordinary political isolation and government repression. Turkmenistan’s constitution guarantees religious freedom, but many laws, most notably the 2003 religion law, contradict these provisions. All religious organizations must register with the government and remain subject to raids and harassment even if approved. Shiite Muslim groups, Protestant groups and Jehovah’s Witnesses have all had their registration applications denied in recent years. Private worship is forbidden and foreign travel for pilgrimages and religious education are greatly restricted. The government hires and fires clergy, censors religious texts, and fines and imprisons believers for their convictions.
7. Vietnam
Vietnam’s government uses vague national security laws to suppress religious freedom and freedom of expression as a means of maintaining its authority and control. A 2005 decree warns that “abuse” of religious freedom “to undermine the country’s peace, independence, and unity” is illegal and that religious activities must not “negatively affect the cultural traditions of the nation.” Religious diversity is high in Vietnam, with half the population claiming some form of Buddhism and the rest identifying as Catholic, Hoa Hao, Cao Dai, Protestant, Muslim or with other small faith and non-religious communities. Religious groups that register with the government are allowed to grow but are closely monitored by specialized police forces, who employ violence and intimidation to repress unregistered groups.
8. Syria
The ongoing Syrian crisis is now being fought along sectarian lines, greatly diminishing religious freedom in the country. President Bashar al-Assad’s forces, aligned with Hezbollah and Shabiha, have targeted Syria’s majority-Sunni Muslim population with religiously-divisive rhetoric and attacks. Extremist groups on the other side, including al-Qaeda and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), have targeted Christians and Alawites in their fight for an Islamic state devoid of religious tolerance or diversity. Many Syrians choose their allegiances based on their families’ faith in order to survive. It’s important to note that all human rights, not just religious freedom, are suffering in Syria and in neighboring refugee camps. In quieter times, proselytizing, conversion from Islam and some interfaith marriages are restricted, and all religious groups must officially register with the government.
This article was originally posted on April 30, 2014 at Religion News Service
