China’s state broadcaster CCTV fired a journalist for criticising its practise of airing live criminal “confessions” (Image: Matthew Niederhauser/Demotix)
In November 2013, Wang Qinglei, a TV producer at the state-broadcaster CCTV, left his office for the last time. “Long-time co-workers lamented with me, ‘Over all these years, there have been editors, reporters, producers, and directors who have been suspended because of stories, but you are the first producer who has been fired for speaking your true feelings! What is wrong with CCTV these days?'” he later wrote.
“In the space of a year, we get upwards of a thousand propaganda orders,” Wang had controversially vented on an internet forum prior to his dismissal. “We should ask ourselves: How many of these orders were issued in the national interest, and how many were issued to serve the political and economic interests of some individual, group or leader?”
The open letter that he posted online, which CCTV would subsequently fire him over, focused on a new practice of airing live criminal “confessions.” State-owned CCTV had been broadcasting dramatised admissions by petty criminals for years, in an attempt to win new viewers, but in recent months, a string of high-profile political suspects had also been made to confess to crimes on air. The suspects are often filmed handcuffed and wearing jump suits. The footage is designed to be humiliating. The practice is ongoing.
Chinese-American Charles Xue, a social media celebrity and successful venture capitalist, had been amongst the first victims of the tactic, just two months previously. He “confessed” to having been “in a negative mood” while tweeting criticisms of the government, admitting that his thoughts were “a neglect of the social mainstream.” Separately, the authorities had arrested him for consorting with prostitutes, charges which some say are fabricated.
As Wang put it, when decrying the TV confessions in his open letter to CCTV executives: “We abused the public institution of media to wantonly bombard an individual indiscretion. Journalistic integrity and professionalism were nowhere to be found.”
The ironies of the circumstances surrounding Xue’s confession were either unintended or highly cynical. While the Chinese authorities are still having trouble taming the internet, the government remains in control of print and TV media.
Footage of Xue’s confession, for example, was widely discussed by Chinese TV and print outlets, whose freedom of expression is heavily limited by state involvement. Meanwhile, Xue’s online media presence was rapidly disappearing. Mentions of previous campaigns on microblogging site Weibo were removed. Wang’s open letter to CCTV, the one which had got him sacked, was also removed. Directives issued from the Ministry of Information detailed how links to any of the content would result in arrests.
Wang, and other critics of the policy, argued the on-air confessions, forced on high-profile enemies of the state such as Xue, were an unfair skip round a proper judicial process. Human rights lawyers and even some Communist Party officials have condemned the practice. The confessions sit alongside new legislation that forbids what the government call online “rumour mongering,” and allows anyone who retweets an “unfounded rumour” to be arrested. Thousands have now been arrested, including several high profile “social media celebrities.”
State newspapers say the new laws to control “rumour mongering” are necessary: “The Internet has grown into an easily accessible platform for the Chinese public, an increase in crimes such as defamation and blackmail has occurred online over the past few years.”
Indeed, authorities were quick to link Charles Xue’s arrest with those of Qin Zhihui and Yang Xiuyu – two so-called “black PR” professionals. Xue had allegedly invested in their controversial public relations outfit.
“Black PR” is a rapidly growing sector in China – which polishes the online reputation of celebrity and corporate clients – while spreading malicious rumours about their enemies. Rumours started by Qin and Yang were often fabricated, sometimes falsely accusing CEOs of infidelity, or involvements with prostitutes and causing a significant scandal when they effectively destroyed the Chinese Red Cross’ reputation, over made up allegations of sexual impropriety amongst senior officials at the organisation. The pair employed a 15,000 strong portfolio of online personalities to help spread their rumours – known as a “water army.”
Yet industrial smearing from the pair had gone unchecked for years — the government simply wasn’t interested in the malicious rumours Qin and Yang routinely disseminated. In fact, it was only when Qin and Yang’ decided to attack a senior Communist Party official, Lei Feng, that new “rumour mongering” legislation was suddenly used to arrest the pair. They now face long jail sentences.
Charles Xue, who was accused of backing the pair financially when he was arrested, has long been of interest to the party apparatus. As a young man, his father was imprisoned by Mao Zedong, and Xue was forcibly exiled to the countryside, put to work in attempt to reduce the threat he, and other academics, supposedly posed to communism. His outlook since the effective imprisonment has been increasingly international – as a young man he quickly learned English, did some translation work of American texts for publication in China, and travelled to Stanford to study.
In recent years, Xue has amassed not only vast wealth through his various business enterprises, but also several million followers on social media. He leverages this considerable audience for awareness campaigns around issues such as clean water, kidnapping and human rights. He also speaks passionately about the potential for Weibo to affect change.
The irony of the state abusing their control of TV and print to control those who “abuse” the media online has also been noted by local Chinese observers. Government bodies “spreading falsehoods” have come in for focussed criticism. Activists simply ask “why are men like Charles Xue being arrested, when the authorities regularly spread false rumours themselves?”
For example, an article about the Beijing police in a state-run newspaper, which reported on a supposed new crackdown on prostitution, was quickly identified as a fake. The article was in fact a repeat of an identical piece published several years earlier, which had simply been reprinted with a new date at the top.
International media has been suggesting Weibo is being”neutered” as a result of the new anti-rumours crackdown – with people too scared to use it. But newer analysis of online conversations since the legislation has been passed has revealed something strange. Record numbers of Chinese netizens are now politically active, in particular chatting about the relatively obscure political ideology “constitutionalism.” Constitutionalism is a reformist movement that advocates tying the Communist Party to a constitutional framework. In Weibo terms, the volume of conversations is enormous: there are currently twice as many microblogs referring to “constitutionalism” as were being made around the time of the Jade Rabbit moon landing. The Chinese foray into space held the previous record for most microblogs on a single topic, the analysis showed.
But on balance, the laws are chilling. The arrest net the “anti-rumours campaign” has thrown is big, with thousands already in custody. In politically troublesome Inner Mongolia, the state has made fifty arrests. And the firing of Wang Qinlei at CCTV will shake employees at state-owned media outlets, but also “social media celebrities” who are contemplating effecting social change online. The sacking starkly shows how the Communist Party stands behind CCTV as a broadcaster: endorsing public confessions to made-up crimes, as an agent of the state. Criticism of these public confessions will not be tolerated — instead it will be destroyed. And consider the “victim” of the confession, Charles Xue. Trumped up prostitution charges were probably difficult to explain to his wife. His kids won’t remember fondly, watching their dad on TV, confessing to being an enemy of the state. Nor the bullying that goes on in the school yard afterwards. The gossip and rumours behind his family’s back. “Saving face” is an all-important concept in China: public humiliation is the antithesis of that. Televised confessions, an unsettling and bizarre spectacle, are making even the most influential scared to speak out.
Ismayilova — an award-winning investigative journalist, who has in the past been blackmailed for her coverage of government corruption — was called first called in for questioning by the country’s General Prosecutor on 18 September. This came “after pro-government media outlets claimed that she had handed files on Azerbaijani opposition politicians and other prominent figures over to the aides, who were allegedly working as US intelligence agents,” reports RFE/RL.
She believes it was due to a dinner she had with US senate staffers in January. “The prosecutor in charge of my case told me that they have information that I passed some kind of state secrets to visiting Americans. I told them it is impossible, since I don’t have any state secrets in my possession. This is an absurd allegation,” she said.
Things get more complicated here. So there are couple things I want to ask for:
TO INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVISTS
You are doing everything right. Keep doing it.
TO DEMOCRATIC COUNTRIES, DIPLOMATS, INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS
Just in case, I want to remind my request to international community in terms of possible advocacy actions regarding my possible arrest:
Some of you want to help, but can do it only with private diplomacy.
Thank you, but No.
WHEN MY CASE IS CONCERNED, if you can, please support by standing for freedom of speech and freedom of privacy in this country as loudly as possible. Otherwise, I rather prefer you not to act at all.
I don’t want any private diplomacy for my case. I don’t believe in human rights advocacy behind closed doors. People of my country need to know that human rights are supported.
I also don’t want any release-appreciation trade for my release. My possible arrest will be just one of the more than hundred politically motivated arrest and government of Azerbaijan has managed to use revolving doors of prisons for getting positive feedback from the West: releasing one prisoner, getting praised, arresting two.
TO FELLOW INTERNATIONAL JOURNALISTS
IF/WHEN I get arrested, I want you to make sure that your audience understand the reasons. Anti-corruption investigations are the reason of my arrest. The government is not comfortable with what I am doing. I am about to finish three investigations. I will make sure to finish them before anything happens, if not my editors and colleagues will finish and publish.
İnvestigations I am working on are on the same topic:
SELECTED REPORTS AND INVESTIGATIONS
Latest report (in Azeri) is about Czech company of Arzu Aliyeva, president’s daughter. The company is sold to tax minister’s advisor. Law bans officials from owning businesses and it is not clear where the 1,2 millions EUros are taken?
2012 President awarded family stake in gold fields
Lucrative gold mining contract signed in 2007 with unknown companies is about to bring millions to it’s secret owners. Khadija Ismayilova and Nushaba Fatullayeva discover familiar names hidden behind offshore companies. Azerbaijani President’s daughters are among beneficiaries.
2012 President’s family has a stake in Eurovision concert hall
Azerbaijan spends hundreds of millions to host Eurovision contest, with more than a hundred millions of public funds invested into the concert hall. Khadija Ismayilova’s investigation traces one of the subcontractors, involved to the expensive project and finds a link to the president’s family. The same company is involved into construction of state funded “patriot” project in 2010– the highest flagpole in the world (which became second highest after Tajikistan beat the record few months later) and shady privatization of energy construction facilities.
For more than five years government of Azerbaijan lied to citizens about ownership of the mobile phone operator, naming German Siemens as an owner of Azerfon company, enjoying favorable conditions in the market, not available for competitors. The investigation reveals that president Aliyev’s daughters were behind Azerfon through shell companies in Panama.http://www.rferl.org/content/azerbaijan_president_aliyev_daughters_tied_to_telecoms_firm/24248340.html
2010 President Aliyev’s family and the illegal privatization of the public airport
The investigation conducted with Ulviyya Asadzade documented how President IlhamAliyev’s family was involved in the illegal privatization of the public bank and other parts of state owned Azerbaijan Airlines company, to benefit the Aliyev family. The government never publicly announced the privatization. The report was declared “the best investigation of Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty in 2010” among the 28 language services of the radio.http://www.rferl.org/content/Aliyevs_Azerbaijani_Empire_Grows_As_Daughter_Joins_The_Game/2127137.html
Today, she also used her Facebook page to call attention to a number of other attacks on press freedom in the past week. Ilgar Veliyev, a journalists with axar.az, resigned from his post following the website’s “smear campaign” against Ismayilova. Natiq Cavadli was fired from Bizim Yol newspaper after publishing an interview with an economics expert who has “revealed corruption in customs”, and Ayten Farhadova resigned from the same paper in solidarity. Yafez Hasanov from RFE/RL has received death threats in connection with his reporting on human rights violations in in Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic of Azerbaijan.
The state of press freedom in Azerbaijan is notably poor. An Index on Censorship report released in connection with the country’s recent presidential election highlighted the ongoing “clampdown on independent and critical media”.
Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal called off the 30-hour protest (Dharna) outside Rail Bhavan on January 21, 2014 after few of his demands were considered.
Arvind Kejriwal, Delhi’s erstwhile chief minister, gained popularity among the ‘aam aadmi’ – ordinary citizens – because of his tough anti-corruption stand. Many saw his newly formed party, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) as a breath of fresh air. His antics and strategies to grab media attention didn’t disappoint either.
During his campaign for Delhi’s highest seat, he cut off electricity wires outside peoples homes to mark his defiance of what he said are corrupt electricity meters that overcharge people. Once in office, he sat in protest against Delhi’s own police force, demanding that the Central Government that controls the Police in Delhi, the country’s capital, immediately transfer its control to his government. Kejriwal has become an urban icon. Always wrapped in his trademark muffler, with a seemingly constant cough, his image is being parodied intensely on the internet. He insisted on being sworn in as Chief Minister of Delhi, in an open –to-all public function at one of Delhi’s biggest grounds instead of at the office of the Lt. Governor of Delhi, as is practice. For a while, he was adamant about holding a special session of the Delhi Assembly, called for legislating the Jan Lokpal Bill seeking to establish an anti-corruption ombudsman, in one of the capital’s largest stadium instead of inside the Assembly itself. On 14th February, after unsuccessfully trying to introduce the Jan Lokpal Bill on the first day of Delhi’s State Assembly, he held a press conference in the pouring rain to announce that he was resigning over this issue. This capped his 49 day tenure, and just before ending his press conference, he declared that che is ready to “sacrifice his life for the country” in his fight against corruption.
In terms of theatrics that inescapably accompanies his politics, Kejriwal is caught the imagination of India’s common man. He is always on television. That any politician willingly resigned as chief minister will not be lost on Indians, used to seeing politicians hang onto power with dear life. Many are looking to Kejriwal to make a sizable dent in the national elections, projected to be held in April 2014.
While campaigning and during this term in office, Kejriwal unveiled an arsenal of ideas to battle status quo – and take on people in authority head on – including his idea of asking the common man to use the mobile phone as a “weapon” to secretly film government and police officials demanding bribes. This proof then could be turned over to his government, which had set up an exclusive hotline to deal with corruption charges. Don’t get mad, get even – seems to be his motto as he urged residents of Delhi, “setting kar lo” – or fix them.
Media reports confirm that as a result of “open season on sting operations” the sale of spycams have increased in Delhi, with some shopkeepers estimating that the sale of these hidden cameras have shot up almost 90%. Spy cameras are available in the form of pens, keyrings, buttons, watches, pen-drives and eyeglasses, and on a more expensive scale, in jewellery and other bespoke items.
This isn’t the first time AAP has recommended the use of spycameras. Days before the New Delhi vote, the media reported that AAP were fitting slums with spycams to ensure that candidates of other parties did not go there to try and buy votes – and if they did – they would be caught. Over 2,000 spycams were reportedly used for this operation.
The AAP party is not the first — and certainly won’t be the last — in suggesting the use of cameras, especially through mobile phones, for citizen empowerment. In fact, when Delhi’s traffic police first launched a page on Facebook, citizens began posting pictures of cops breaking traffic laws in hopes that they be reprimanded. Similarly when the Municipal Corporation of Delhi started its Facebook page, people took advantage of the platform to post pictures of shoddy or incomplete works in their neighbourhoods.
Community video project, India Unheard, has armed citizen journalists from small towns and villages with cameras, and they report on development and other issues, and publish these videos on the internet. In many areas, due to the spotlight on them, government officials have responded to these negative reports and taken action. The parent outfit, Video Volunteers, even ran a campaign to check the “real” progress of India’s Right to Education Act, by bringing out over 100 videos that document the real implementation of this act on the ground.
The use of technology “from below” to hold those in power accountable is also known as sousveillance, a word that comes the French word “sous” (from below) with the word “viller” coined in 1998 by Professor Steve Mann of the University of Toronto. In the West, sousveillance is being looked at by some as an foil to mass surveillance; a manner in which citizens can watch those watching them. Others, however, express some doubts at a society where citizens are pointing cameras at a state that is watching them, and perhaps ultimately leading to a situation where everyone is watching each other. Surveillance is normalized because it is so institutionalized.
However, sousveillance is not necessarily targeted towards government and law enforcement officials alone. In New York, a project called Hollaback asks women to take pictures of their harassers and upload it to their site. The movement has expanded and extends to Indian cities as well. And gadgets like Google Glass will make humans capable of recording their perspectives on a 24/7 basis, amassing huge data.
So it appears that at a time when civil society is up in arms against big brother surveillance schemes run by the government because of their privacy breaches, we are simultaneously doing the same to ourselves, with what some call little brother surveillance.
Jay Stanley, Senior Policy Analyst at ACLU writes, “Under the old expectation, the default expectation was that any given event would not be photographed… That is rapidly being replaced by a new mindset in which the default expectation is that something taking place in public will be recorded. Thus you often hear expressions of disappointment when a disputed or dramatic public event is NOT caught on video.” He also raises the point that citizen video footage might give the state a reason to scale down their mass surveillance activities, because video evidence can simply be collected from private photos and videos. However, it seems unlikely, given what we know about governments world wide, that most countries will be ready to give up their schemes to the off-chance that somebody-recorded-it.
Of course, one can argue there is a subtle difference between CCTV cameras that clearly announce their existence, people pointing mobile phones at each other on the street, and the proliferation of spycams to “fix” people. There is also legitimacy attached to this process when the chief minister of a state asks its citizens to collect proof of wrongdoing as the basis of taking action, as has been done in New Delhi. In fact, in a speech made just about three weeks after he took office, Kejriwal announced that he is quite sure that corruption must have come down at least 20-30% in Delhi, to thunderous applause. A helpline the new government has set up even offers to tutor citizens in how to conduct sting operations against corrupt officials. In an editorial by the Indian Express, the paper advises that, “Sting operations are an ethical minefield. They are based on lies and entrapment, even if in the service of a larger cause. They are easy to manipulate at several levels, including editing to convey the desired impression of a meeting. This unease about the subterfuge and distortion of using undercover cameras is the reason stings are not admissible as legal evidence. How can they be the basis of prompt government action, then?”
The truth is that India has a problem of entrenched corruption, and the AAP’s ride and subsequent anti-graft ideas address these concerns head on. Previously India’s Central Vigilance Commission in 2010, had encouraged people to conduct stings on government officials, even as a draft privacy law, yet to be passed by the Indian parliament, said such operations could violate individual privacy. Others worry that programs like these need protections such as a Whistleblowers Act and provisions to protect anonymity. However, the concept of sting operations, made popular by a vigilante media has become so popular that there is now an Indian website that collates India sting operations for anyone to see.
The government of India’s capital is installing more and more CCTVs for safety reasons, the Central Monitoring System is being deployed to track citizens online behavior, and now the Delhi government is glorifying sting operations through radio ads and billboards. Ultimately, the AAP, consciously or unconsciously, has given its vote to a society based on sousveillance.
Can the encouragement of spycams and secret mobile tapings end up in people spying on neighbours, and perhaps even blackmail them? Could Delhi’s public spaces shrink because of the “spycam moral police”? Are adequate privacy frameworks in place?
The AAP needs to think about these questions, especially if it plans to field these ideas during the national election campaign trail.
Point and shoot are never orders to be given lightly.
Inna Lillahi wa inna ilaihi raji’un. I am informing all brave Muslims of the world that the author of The Satanic Verses, a text written, edited, and published against Islam, the Prophet of Islam, and the Qur’an, along with all the editors and publishers aware of its contents, are condemned to death. I call on all valiant Muslims wherever they may be in the world to kill them without delay, so that no one will dare insult the sacred beliefs of Muslims henceforth. And whoever is killed in this cause will be a martyr, Allah Willing. Meanwhile if someone has access to the author of the book but is incapable of carrying out the execution, he should inform the people so that [Rushdie] is punished for his actions. Rouhollah al-Mousavi al-Khomeini.”
On 14 February 1989, 25 years ago today, the supreme leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran handed down a death sentence not just on British author Salman Rushdie, but on anyone associated with the publication of his novel the Satanic Verses.
It’s always worth writing down exactly what happened. A medievalist tyrant decided a novelist and his editors and publishers should die, because he was offended by a book he could not claim to have read.
Rushdie went into hiding. Hitoshi Igarashi, the novel’s Japanese translator, was murdered. Because he had translated a novel.
The controversy did not begin with Khomeini – he merely attempted to capitalise on it. No, the first countries where the book stoked the ire of Islamists were South Africa and India, both countries whose divide-and-rule laws (the Indians’ law inherited from British colonial law, the South Africans’ in a diabolical league of its own) meant it paid to promote communal grievance.
Khomeini’s fatwa seems, in hindsight, a desperate bid to distract the people of Iran, and the rest of the Muslim world, from the fact that his reign, about to end, had been a disaster. Iranians had hoped their 1979 revolution would deliver them from the oppression of the Peacock Throne. Instead they just found their oppressors had simply grown beards.
The disaster was not entirely of Khomeini’s own making, perhaps. He could not be blamed for having the equally psychopathic Saddam Hussein as a neighbour, but nonetheless, he had sent hundreds of thousands of Iranians to their death, promised martyrdom as they marched into Saddam’s poisoned gas during the Iran-Iraq war that raged for almost the whole of the 1980s.
The Iran Iraq War ended in 1988. Neither side could legitimately claim victory. The Islamic Republic had not swept all before it. And Khomeini needed something new to establish his Shia theocracy as the leader of the Islamic world. He found it in harnessing the mounting anger over Rushdie’s book.
In Britain, this was the moment for political Islam. Young second generation South Asian Islamists exploited their parents’ folk memories of anti-Muslim violence during the torturous period before and after partition in 1947 (the subject of Rushdie’s great work, Midnight’s Children) to mobilise Muslims against Rushdie.
Inayat Bunglawala of the Muslim Council of Britain wrote in 2007:
So on February 14 1989, when the Iranian Islamic leader, Imam Khomeini delivered his fatwa calling for Salman Rushdie’s death, I was truly elated. It was a very welcome reminder that British Muslims did not have to regard themselves just as a small, vulnerable minority; they were part of a truly global and powerful movement. If we were not treated with respect then we were capable of forcing others to respect us.
Yusuf Islam, formerly known as cuddly hippy musician Cat Stevens, told a television audience at the time that he felt Rushdie deserved to die. Some on the British right were pleased, seeing the death sentence as comeuppance for a man who was a vicious critic of the racist establishment.
Khomeini is dead and Rushdie is a knight of the realm (though some, such as Shirley Williams, considered that elevation in 2007 unwise). But it is perhaps on those grounds only that victory can be claimed for free speech. As Kenan Malik has suggested, writing for Index on Censorship, we live still in the “shadow of the fatwa”.
Religious sensitivity has become an excuse for threats. “Offence” is something to be taken greedily, and then pumped back out with a mixture of aggression and self pity.
And the shadow of that fatwa does not only fall on Islam. Every zealot of every creed will now offer up special pleading for their right to be protected from mockery, debate and challenge with the line “You wouldn’t say that about Islam.” What they mean, always, is “We want you to be scared. We want you to be as scared as Salman Rushdie was when he received that threat. We want you to be so scared that you will never question our literalism, our version of events. Truth is ours and ours alone.”
Rushdie’s friend, the late Christopher Hitchens, wrote that the fatwa represented “an all out confrontation between the ironic and the literal mind: between every kind of commissar and inquisitor and bureaucrat and those who know that, whatever the role of social and political forces, ideas and books have to be formulated by individuals”.
