Why are India’s politicians scared of social media?

19 Nov 12 | India

A war over free expression between Indian citizens and their government is raging, with social media serving as the battlefield.

Two girls were arrested in Mumbai today, one for having updated her Facebook status asking why the city was observing a bandh — a city-wide shut down — to commemorate the death of an influential regional leader, Bal Thackeray. The other simply ‘liked’ the comment. The update was brought to the notice of Shiv Sena local leader, outraged at the insult to his party’s founder he went to the police and had them arrested. The pair were released on bail today, but not before one of the girl’s uncle’s orthopaedic clinic was ransacked by an angry Shiv Sena mob.

Shaheen Dhadha, 21, had written:

People like Thackeray are born and die daily and one should not observe a bandh for that

The incident comes only a month after India’s first Twitter arrest. In October 2012, Ravi Srinivasan, a small-town businessman was arrested for tweeting to his 16 followers that that Karti Chidambaram, a politician belonging to India’s ruling Congress party and son of Finance Minister P Chidambaram, had “amassed more wealth than Vadra” [Sonia Gandhi’s wealthy son-in-law].

Ravi Srinivasan was arrested for this tweet

Srinivasan was arrested for suggesting one cabinet minister’s son is more corrupt than the son-in-law of another senior politician.

The seemingly politically motivated arrest has just added fuel to the fire to a heated debate about how defamation and hate speech on social media should be dealt with. It also raises the question — is the government more interested in protecting itself than its citizens?

At a forum, The Power of Social Media for Governance organised in March 2011, while praising social media and e-government/commerce initiatives, Information minister Kapil Sibal suggested that social media users also discuss the dangers of this new platform:

All kinds of opinions are put forward and that is dangerous. Freedom of speech has some caveats. How do you ensure that (social media) sites incorporate constrains [SIC] of freedom of speech?

The comment seemed to be aimed at social media users using these new mediums to criticise the many corruption scandals in Indian public life. The Indian public were furious at their political leaders. Sibal’s predecessor, A Raja, was a perfect example. He was forced to resign after becoming embroiled in a huge telecom scam.

Although there had been a story the previous month about a riot that apparently broke out due to a Facebook page that denigrated the architect of the Indian constitution, Dr BR Ambedkar, social media had not really been used for positive political action in India.

In October 2010, however, an anti-corruption movement led by activist Anna Hazare slowly began to caputure the imagination of the nation. As Hazare, compared by the Indian press to Mahatma Gandhi, protested corruption, the media and the public rallied behind him. The movement, now known as India Against Corruption [IAC] used Facebook and Twitter to connect with urban Indians — the middle class — who had borne the brunt of corruption for years. IAC racked up followers and fans by the thousands, and in April 2012, Hazare went on an indefinite hunger strike to force the government to draft a stronger anti-corruption bill. It was all India social media users could talk about. The web was key to Anna’s success. Today, the IAC Facebook page has over 754,000 supporters.

2011 was marked by a face-off between the government and “civil society” that may mark a turning point in India politics. The sleeping giant, the middle class, woke up and logged on.

Toward the end of 2011 it was revealed that Sibal suggested pre-screening of social media content  to ensure that “objectionable content” was removed before it could offend.

According to leaked reports, Sibal pointed to a Facebook page that maligned Congress party president Sonia Gandhi and said “this is unacceptable”. At the time, experts like Pranesh Prakash from the Center for Internet and Society pointed out that the existing IT Act (amended in 2008) allows people who send information “that is grossly offensive and of a menacing character” to be sentenced to three years in prison. Prakash argued that the amount of content was too vast for social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Youtube to pre-moderate and would delay their immediacy. More importantly, why should a third party be forced to judge what is objectionable or not, if there were already laws in place?

This idea of pre-screening content has been revised. But the theme has been coming up again and again as the government seems to be unsure of what strategy it should employ to stop both really offensive material, but also, it seems, any criticism of itself from social media networks.

In February, Facebook agreed to comply with local laws and “remove content, block pages or even disable accounts of those users who upload contents that incite violence or perpetuate hate speech.” This, Sibal insisted, was not censorship but he still raised the spectre of new laws designed to curtail social media in India. It wasn’t long before #KapilSibalisanidiot started trending on Twitter. Later that month it was revealed in a Google’s Transparency Report that the government of India had asked the search giant to remove 358 items  in the first half of 2011. Only eight of these items were classified as hate speech; the vast majority were criticisms of the government (including videos on Youtube and posts on the social network Orkut.)

In August 2012, India found itself in an unprecedented situation caused by text messaging and social media. Rumours of an attack against Assamese migrants by Muslims were being sent across the country via SMS. Many Assamese, over 400,000 by some estimates, in different parts of the country started heading home, fearing their lives. The government put in place a restriction to only five-SMSes per day to control the rumour mill. Soon after, the minister gave more interviews about social media, suggesting that incidents like the Assamese exodus were the reason he wanted the help of intermediaries in helping curtail the influence of anti-national elements and protecting the sensitivities of individuals and communities. However, as Twitter agreed to comply with the government in blocking any communally charged tweets, the Twitter accounts of some journalists also got blocked, forcing the minister to clarify that the government was not seeking to block individual accounts. The damage was done, as most observers felt that the government had tried to silence its critics on social media instead pursuing any larger objective.

Which brings us back to the first Tweet (as well as Facebook update) induced arrest. Srinivasan was booked under Section 66A of the IT Act (amended 2008). This can jail, for up to three years, anyone convicted of disseminating material that is “grossly offensive”, has “menacing character” or is false with the aim of causing “annoyance, inconvenience, danger, obstruction, insult,” among other related cyber crimes. The women arrested for the Thackeray Facebook post were arrested under the same Act (and also Section 295A of the Indian Penal Code that relates to religious sentiments, event though they were discussing a political, not religious, figure).

Section 66A — the very piece of law that internet experts flagged  as an alternative when Sibal suggested pre-screening social media content, is now being abused. The current controversy is layered. The first point of contention is that the arrest would never have been made so swiftly if the “victim” had not been the son of a powerful minister. The second is that Section 66A (IT Act, 2000) is unclear, which means, say experts, its open to abuse, as can be seen by current events.

In India, the distrust of the political class has never been sharper, with extreme reactions from the establishment. In 2012 itself, a cartoonist was arrested  under Section 66A (IT Act, 2000) for mocking the chief minister of Bengal, while elsewhere in Uttar Pradesh, another cartoonist Aseem Trivedi was arrested under Section 124 of the Indian Penal Code for mocking India’s corrupt politicians. How the government balances Indian citizens’ right to free expression against the need curtail genuine incitement will be a test of its democratic credentials.

Mahima Kaul is a journalist based in New Delhi. She focuses on questions of digital freedom

Manchester man given eight months jail for cop-killer T-shirt

11 Oct 12 | Asia and Pacific, Index Index, minipost, News and features, United Kingdom

A man has been sentenced to a total of eight months in prison by a Manchester court for wearing a T-shirt daubed with offensive comments referring the murders of PC Fiona Bone and PC Nicola Hughes.

Barry Thew, of Radcliffe, Greater Manchester admitted to a Section 4A Public Order Offence today (11 October) for wearing the T-shirt, on which he had written the messages “”One less pig; perfect justice”” and “killacopforfun.com haha”.

Inspector Bryn Williams, of the Radcliffe Neighbourhood Policing Team, said: “To mock or joke about the tragic events of that morning is morally reprehensible and Thew has rightly been convicted and sentenced for his actions.”

Thew had been reported to police after wearing the article around three-and-a-half hours after the officers were shot dead in Greater Manchester on 2 October.

UPDATE: According to the Manchester Evening News, four months of Thew’s sentence was handed down for breach of a previous suspended sentence

Also this week
08 October 2012 | Man jailed for offensive Facebook comments about missing schoolgirl
09 October 2012 | Yorkshire man sentenced over offensive Twitter comments directed at soldiers

 

Tunisia builds blasphemy law

10 Oct 12 | Middle East and North Africa, Tunisia

In Tunisia, politicians and the people are abandoning freedom of expression. In a conservative society, Islamists’ obsession with blasphemy and the opposition’s passivity in defying an illiberal constitutional clause are placing free speech and Tunisia’s democratic transition under threat.

After years of being deprived of it, the Tunisian public agrees that freedom of expression is a fundamental right which needs to be guaranteed by the country’s new constitution. Six assembly committees which were elected last February have separately drafted different sections of the text which is yet to be presented for debate and voted in the 217-member constituent assembly. An absolute majority is required for the adoption of each article. MPs will then have to approve the entire draft by a two-thirds majority.

“Freedom of expression, opinion, media and creativity is guaranteed,” states article 26 of Tunisia’s draft constitution written by the rights and liberties assembly committee. Article 3 contradicts it saying: “The state guarantees freedom of religious belief and practice and criminalises all attacks on that which is sacred.”

But in August the Islamist Ennahdha party filed an anti-blasphemy bill which criminalises “curses, insults mockery, and desecration” of Allah, the Prophets, the three Abrahamic books, the Sunnah (the practices of the Prophet Muhammad), churches, synagogues and the Kaaba (the most sacred building in Islam). The bill also forbids pictorial representation of God and Prophet Muhammad.

Sadly, secular politicians are not pushing back against these new threats to free expression. When Islamists portray themselves as the guardians of the “sacred” in order to score points against their rivals, secular politicians face a dilemma. Should they stand up for their secular values and oppose blasphemy laws — and so risk losing popular support among the populace — or stay silent?

They have chosen silence.

In an essay entitled Speaking on the Unspeakable: Blasphemy & the Tunisian Constitution, columnist Monika Marks condemns their decision to stay mute:

Groups that would typically be expected to oppose Article 3, like the Tunisian League of Human Rights, journalists’ associations, and secularly oriented political parties, have kept silent — likely for fear of losing legitimacy with Tunisian society, which tends to view offences against Abrahamic faiths in general, and Islam in particular, as unacceptable.

Free speech advocate and journalist Henda Hendoud shares the Marks’ view and argues that the opposition is not strong enough to tackle the issue of religion and freedom of expression at the National Constituent Assembly.

“I think that if there is going to be pressure and controversy regarding article three, it will come from the civil society, which is somewhat more independent and distant from political calculations,” she says.

The view that freedom of expression must be regulated to protect “sacred religious symbols” is widely held in Tunisian society. It is a Sunni Muslim-dominated country and religion still plays a major role in the people’s daily lives despite 56 years of secular dictatorship under the presidency of Habib Bourguiba and his successor Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. It is likely that Tunisia’s new constitution will criminalise blasphemy, and the public will not protest because “protection of the sacred” and the “sacred” are important to them.

Nadia-Jelassi

A sculpture by Nadia Jelassi depicting the stoning of women at this summer’s Tunis Spring Arts Fair

Only a small group of free speech advocates, journalists and activists regard blasphemy laws as a curb on free expression. They are worried new blasphemy legislation will see similar incidents to that which took place at the Spring of Arts fair between 1 and 10 June this year, when ultra-conservative protesters clashed with police over an exhibition which they claimed included “blasphemous” artworks. The government and, surprisingly, the Minister of Culture blamed the fair for attacking Tunisians’ sacred religious symbols.

The “blasphemy” pretext was enough to bring “public disorder” charges against two artists, Mohamed Ben Slama and Nadia Jelassi. Ben Slama exhibited an artwork illustrating the “Praise God” phrase inscribed by ants, while Jelassi displayed sculptures depicting the stoning of women.

In late June, Hendoud helped set up a support committee for Ghazi Beji and Jabeur Mejri, two young men sentenced to seven and a half years in prison for publishing cartoons of the prophet on the internet. “The political parties are still not talking about the case of Ghazi and Jabeur,” she says. “However, the two young men are supported by Tunisian and international civil society.”

Blasphemy can be used as a pretext to stifle freedom of expression and pave the way for the comeback of dictatorship. Former dictator Ben Ali exiled, jailed and tortured his Islamist political opponents, who today rule the country, under the pretexts of “national security” and “extremism”.

Criminalising blasphemy is only going to deepen divisions in a country which endured decades of oppression and abuse.

ALSO READ: A NEW ARGUMENT FOR CENSORSHIP?

Blasphemy furore masking Morsi’s failure

20 Sep 12 | Egypt

Alber Saber, a young Egyptian blogger and computer science graduate has been arrested and detained for allegedly posting a trailer for an anti-Islam film on Facebook. The trailer for the film “Innocence of Muslims” deemed insulting to Islam and the Prophet Muhammad, had earlier been lifted from YouTube in Egypt after it sparked anti-US protests. (more…)