02 Aug 18 | Artistic Freedom, Event Reports, News and features
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_raw_html]JTNDaWZyYW1lJTIwc3JjJTNEJTIyaHR0cHMlM0ElMkYlMkZ3d3cuZmFjZWJvb2suY29tJTJGcGx1Z2lucyUyRnZpZGVvLnBocCUzRmhyZWYlM0RodHRwcyUyNTNBJTI1MkYlMjUyRnd3dy5mYWNlYm9vay5jb20lMjUyRmdheXRpbWVzJTI1MkZ2aWRlb3MlMjUyRjEwMTU2MjA2MDM5MDM2MjczJTI1MkYlMjZzaG93X3RleHQlM0QwJTI2d2lkdGglM0Q3MDAlMjIlMjB3aWR0aCUzRCUyMjcwMCUyMiUyMGhlaWdodCUzRCUyMjQwMCUyMiUyMHN0eWxlJTNEJTIyYm9yZGVyJTNBbm9uZSUzQm92ZXJmbG93JTNBaGlkZGVuJTIyJTIwc2Nyb2xsaW5nJTNEJTIybm8lMjIlMjBmcmFtZWJvcmRlciUzRCUyMjAlMjIlMjBhbGxvd1RyYW5zcGFyZW5jeSUzRCUyMnRydWUlMjIlMjBhbGxvd0Z1bGxTY3JlZW4lM0QlMjJ0cnVlJTIyJTNFJTNDJTJGaWZyYW1lJTNF[/vc_raw_html][vc_column_text]“When I started recording my music I made the decision that I would be out. But at the same time I was so conscious of using pronouns and not coming across as too gay or not coming across too assuming,” said MNEK, English singer, songwriter and record producer, speaking at the Sonos Store in London.
Expression Uncensored, which was hosted by Sonos, Index on Censorship and Gay Times Magazine, featured a panel — Julia Farrington, associate art producer at Index, MNEK, Sado Opera, a queer band, and Princess Julia, a DJ and music writer — that discussed queer music and censorship around the world.
Farrington defined the two main types of censorship that she believes exist — classic state-sponsored censorship imposed through laws and government, and self-censorship.
MNEK’s self-censoring in the beginning of his career was the result of societal pressures. While he said that his coming out was in general a positive experience, he also talked about growing up in a British-Nigerian household where the only thing you hear about homosexuality is that it is wrong. After coming out to his parents, MNEK said that while they support his career and the music he produces, they are sometimes still shocked because “it’s not something they’re used to but it’s all about them learning. There’s nothing wrong with learning something new.”
Living in London, Princess Julia said she had never faced state-sponsored censorship. Instead she faced self-censorship as a result of cultural pressures to look and be a certain way. As part of the Blitz Kids of the 1970s, she helped usher in an era of queer people being able to express themselves the way they wanted to.
She believes that “there’s always been avant garde scenes, underground scenes going on. In times of repression or rebellion even, these scenes tend to emerge. Obviously in Russia, that why there are pockets of creative people striving forth and trying to have an identity.”
Hailing from Russia, Sado Opera faced more state-sponsored censorship, which, in general, leads to self-censorship for fear of being targeted.
Sado Opera was originally created to fight the censorship and homophobia in Russia. The group talked about Russia’s homosexual propaganda law, which forbids talking about homosexuality in public. The name of the law was changed to Promoting Untraditional Family Values to hide the homophobia of the government. The government gives laws unassuming names to make it harder for people to discern the malicious intent behind the legislation, Sado Opera explained.
“Other artists might want to express support, but they can’t. The atmosphere makes you double-think what you say” said Sado Opera.
Although MNEK hasn’t experienced the level of state-sponsored censorship that Sado Opera has, he talks about how he hasn’t been to Nigeria in a long time because of unconscious “fears and my own insecurities with going back there and knowing the legislative issues that are there.”
Sado Opera was only able to be more open about their message when they moved to Berlin, where they have sponsorship from a club and have partnered with several organisations that support LGBTQ+ people facing persecution and women who have survived rape.
MNEK said “it’s a bonus when you realise your music is helping someone live their life” and each artist revealed similar sentiments. [/vc_column_text][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/4″][vc_column_text]
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Index encourages an environment in which artists and arts organisations can challenge the status quo, speak out on sensitive issues and tackle taboos.
Index currently runs workshops in the UK, publishes case studies about artistic censorship, and has produced guidance for artists on laws related to artistic freedom in England and Wales.
Learn more about our work defending artistic freedom.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][vc_single_image image=”101971″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes”][vc_single_image image=”101969″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes”][/vc_column][/vc_row]
27 Jun 18 | Campaigns -- Featured, Digital Freedom, Digital Freedom Statements, Russia, Statements
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”100082″ img_size=”full”][vc_column_text]The following statement signed by 52 international organisations was delivered by Article 19 at the UN Human Rights Council on 27 June 2018.[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]Thank you Mr. President,
The Russian Federation is pursuing policies that are significantly and rapidly encroaching online freedoms affecting not only the rights of people living in Russia but Internet users everywhere. Through the steady adoption of a raft of regressive legislation contravening international standards on freedom of expression, including access to information and the right to privacy, as well as placing unjustified pressure on Internet intermediaries, the Russian Federation is creating a framework, which, if fully implemented, would not only severely limit the free flow of information online but potentially give them access to the personal communication data of anyone, anywhere.
Last month, ARTICLE 19 together with 56 international and Russian human rights, media and Internet freedom organisations condemned the mass Internet disruption caused by the Russian Federation’s attempts to block the Internet messaging service Telegram, which resulted in extensive violations of freedom of expression including access to information. Almost 20 million Internet Protocol (IP) addresses were ordered to be blocked causing an unprecedented level collateral website blocking.
The basis of the authorities’ action was Telegram’s noncompliance with the highly problematic 2016 so-called ‘Yarovaya Law’, justified on the grounds of “countering extremism”, which requires all communications providers and Internet operators to store metadata about their users’ communications activities, to disclose decryption keys at the security services’ request, and to use only encryption methods approved by the Russian government – in practical terms, to create a backdoor for Russia’s security agents to access internet users’ data, traffic, and communications. In July 2018, other articles of the ‘Yarovaya Law’ will come into force requiring companies to store the content of all communications for six months and to make them accessible to the security services without a court order. This would affect the communications of both people in Russia and abroad, violating their right to privacy and creating a further chilling effect to freedom of expression and access to information.
Such attempts by the Russian authorities to restrict online communications and violate privacy, supposedly for the protection of national security, are neither necessary nor proportionate. The Russian Government must repeal ‘Yarovaya Law’ and refrain from pressuring Internet intermediaries to comply with requests that will violate their users’ rights or face having their services blocked inside the country.
Since 2012, Russia has operated a blacklist of Internet websites and incrementally extended the grounds upon which websites can be blocked, including without a court order. The permanent blocking of several online media outlets and also LinkedIn – are completely unjustified and can only be seen as examples to intimidate others into compliance. Individual Internet users have also been persecuted for online expression or even simply liking or sharing content on social media platforms.
Legislation currently under consideration includes further social media regulation (Proposed Bill № 223849-7) which would among other concerns eradicate the possibility of online anonymity and pressure companies to take down “unverifiable” information; as well as proposed amendments to the Criminal Code (Article 284.2) (Proposed Bill № 464757-7) that would criminalise information leading to ‘international sanctions’, which could be used to prevent the media reporting on public interest matters or NGOs conducting international advocacy. Both pieces of legislation, if adopted, would have a negative impact on the free flow of information and should not be brought into law.
Signed by
- ARTICLE 19
- Agora International
- Access Now
- Amnesty International
- Asociatia pentru Tehnologie si Internet – ApTI
- Associação D3 – Defesa dos Direitos Digitais
- Centre for the Development of Democracy and Human Rights
- Committee to Protect Journalists
- Citizens’ Watch
- Civil Rights Defenders
- Electronic Frontier Foundation
- Electronic Frontier Norway
- Electronic Privacy Information Centre (EPIC)
- European Federation of Journalists
- FIDH – International Federation for Human Rights
- Freedom House
- Free Word Association
- Glasnost Defence Foundation
- Human Rights House Foundation
- Human Rights Watch
- The Independent Historical Society
- Index on Censorship
- International Media Support
- International Partnership for Human Rights
- International Youth Human Rights Movement (YHRM)
- Internet Protection Society
- Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group
- Mass Media Defence Centre
- Moscow Helsinki Group
- Movement ‘For Human Rights’
- Norwegian Helsinki Committee
- Open Media
- Open Rights Group
- OVD-Info
- PEN America
- PEN International
- PEN St Petersburg
- People in Need
- Press Development Institute-Siberia
- Privacy International
- Reporters without Borders
- RosKomSvoboda
- Russia Beyond Bars
- Russian Journalists’ and Media Workers’ Union
- Russian LGBT Network
- Sakharov Center
- SOVA Center
- Team 29
- Transparency International Russia
- Webpublishers Association (Russia)
- World Wide Web Foundation
- Xnet
Background Information
New Legislation
- On 15 May 2018, Russia’s State Duma approved in the first reading proposed amendments (Proposed Bill № 464757-7) to the Criminal Code (Article 284.2), amendments that would criminalise ‘the provision of recommendations and transfer of information that has lead or might have led to the introduction’ of international sanctions, providing for up to three years’ imprisonment and fines of $8,000. (see ARTICLE 19, 17 May 2018, Russia: Proposed amendments to Criminal Code threaten media freedom – https://www.article19.org/resources/russia-proposed-amendments-to-criminal-code-threaten-media-freedom/ )
- On 12 April 2018, a new draft law (Proposed Bill № 223849-7) on social media regulation was adopted in the first reading by the Russian State Duma. The law draws inspiration from the German 2017 NetzDG law and would require social media companies to remove information that violated Russian law (within 24 hours) or face huge fines (up to 50 million RUB). In addition, social media companies would be required to establish representation in Russia and identify their users by their telephone numbers effectively preventing online anonymity (as all phone numbers are registered with the owner’s passport in Russia).
- Both bills are awaiting their second and third readings in the State Duma.
Yarovaya Law
- Various requirements of the ‘Yarovaya Law’ are plainly incompatible with international standards on encryption and anonymity as set out in the 2015 report of the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression report (A/HRC/29/32). The UN Special Rapporteur himself has written to the Russian government raising serious concerns that the ‘Yarovaya Law’ unduly restricts the rights to freedom of expression and privacy online (see http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/Opinion/Legislation/RUS_7_2016.pdf )
Telegram Case
- In October 2017, a magistrate found Telegram guilty of an administrative offense for failing to provide decryption keys to the Russian authorities – which the company states it cannot do due to Telegram’s use of end-to-end encryption. The company was fined 800,000 rubles (approx. 11,000 EUR). Telegram lost an appeal against the administrative charge in March 2018, giving the Russian authorities formal grounds to block Telegram in Russia, under Article 15.4 of the Federal Law “On Information, Information Technologies and Information Protection”.
- For Russian users, apps such as Telegram and similar services that seek to provide secure communications through the use of encrypted messages are crucial for users’ safety and, inter alia, rights to freedom of expression and privacy. They provide an important source of information on critical issues of politics, economics and social life, free of undue government interference.
- Between 16-18 April 2018, almost 20 million Internet Protocol (IP) addresses were ordered to be blocked by Russia’s communications regulator, Roskomnadzor, as it tried to restrict access to Telegram. The majority of the blocked addresses are owned by international Internet companies, including Google, Amazon and Microsoft and had a detrimental effect on a wide range of web-based services that have nothing to do with Telegram, including media. For more details see:
Russia: 50+ international and Russian NGOs condemn Telegram block and Russia’s assault on Internet freedom, 15 May 2018 – https://www.article19.org/resources/russia-international-and-russian-ngos-condemn-telegram-block-and-russias-assault-on-freedom-of-expression-online/[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row full_width=”stretch_row_content”][vc_column][three_column_post title=”Digital Freedom” full_width_heading=”true” category_id=”4883″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
30 May 18 | Campaigns -- Featured, Statements
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Updated statement: High profile Russian journalist and Kremlin critic Arkady Babchenko staged his own “murder”, it was revealed in a press conference where the journalist appeared on Wednesday 30 May. Earlier news reports have said he was shot and killed in Kiev, Ukraine, at his home, where he lived with his wife. However, that has since been revealed to be untrue.
Babchenko claimed it was necessary to do this in order to catch people who were trying to kill him.
Babchenko left Russia in February 2017, writing that it was “a country I no longer feel safe in”. Babchenko, a former war correspondent for Novaya Gazeta, was known for his fierce criticism of Russia’s annexation of Crimea, its support for separatists in eastern Ukraine and its military intervention in Syria.
Index calls on the Ukrainian police to continue their investigations into the 2016 murder of journalist Pavlo Sheremet, which has yet to be solved.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_basic_grid post_type=”post” max_items=”4″ element_width=”6″ grid_id=”vc_gid:1527698401910-293e4fff-01bc-10″ taxonomies=”15″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
21 May 18 | Digital Freedom, European Union, Germany, News and features, Russia, United States
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”85524″ img_size=”full” alignment=”center”][vc_column_text]For around six decades after WWII ideas, laws and institutions supporting free expression spread across borders globally. Ever more people were liberated from stifling censorship and repression. But in the past decade that development has reversed.
On April 12 Russian lawmakers in the State Duma completed the first reading of a new draft law on social media. Among other things the law requires social media platforms to remove illegal content within 24 hours or risk hefty fines. Sound familiar? If you think you’ve heard this story before it’s because the original draft was what Reporters Without Borders call a “copy-paste” version of the much criticized German Social Network law that went into effect earlier this year. But we can trace the origins back further.
In 2016 the EU-Commission and a number of big tech-firms including Facebook, Twitter and Google, agreed on a Code of Conduct under which these firms commit to removing illegal hate speech within 24 hours. In other words what happens in Brussels doesn’t stay in Brussels. It may spread to Berlin and end up in Moscow, transformed from a voluntary instrument aimed at defending Western democracies to a draconian law used to shore up a regime committed to disrupting Western democracies.
US President Donald Trump’s crusade against “fake news” may also have had serious consequences for press freedom. Because of the First Amendment’s robust protection of free expression Trump is largely powerless to weaponise his war against the “fake news media” and “enemies of the people” that most others refer to as “independent media”.
Yet many other citizens of the world cannot rely on the same degree of legal protection from thin-skinned political leaders eager to filter news and information. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has documented the highest ever number of journalists imprisoned for false news worldwide. And while 21 such cases may not sound catastrophic the message these arrests and convictions send is alarming. And soon more may follow. In April Malaysia criminalised the spread of “news, information, data and reports which is or are wholly or partly false”, with up to six years in prison. Already a Danish citizen has been convicted to one month’s imprisonment for a harmless YouTube video, and presidential candidate Mahathir Mohammed is also being investigated. Kenya is going down the same path with a draconian bill criminalising “false” or “fictitious” information. And while Robert Mueller is investigating whether Trump has been unduly influenced by Russian President Putin, it seems that Putin may well have been influenced by Trump. The above mentioned Russian draft social media law also includes an obligation to delete any “unverified publicly significant information presented as reliable information.” Taken into account the amount of pro-Kremlin propaganda espoused by Russian media such as RT and Sputnik, one can be certain that the definition of “unverified” will align closely with the interests of Putin and his cronies.
But even democracies have fallen for the temptation to define truth. France’s celebrated president Macron has promised to present a bill targeting false information by “to allow rapid blocking of the dissemination of fake news”. While the French initiative may be targeted at election periods it still does not accord well with a joint declaration issued by independent experts from international and regional organisations covering the UN, Europe, the Americans and Africa which stressed that “ general prohibitions on the dissemination of information based on vague and ambiguous ideas, including ‘false news’ or ‘non-objective information’, are incompatible with international standards for restrictions on freedom of expression”.
However, illiberal measures also travel from East to West. In 2012 Russia adopted a law requiring NGOs receiving funds from abroad and involved in “political activities” – a nebulous and all-encompassing term – to register as “foreign agents”. The law is a thinly veiled attempt to delegitimise civil society organisations that may shed critical light on the policies of Putin’s regime. It has affected everything from human rights groups, LGBT-activists and environmental organisations, who must choose between being branded as something akin to enemies of the state or abandon their work in Russia. As such it has strong appeal to other politicians who don’t appreciate a vibrant civil society with its inherent ecosystem of dissent and potential for social and political mobilisation.
One such politician is Victor Orban, prime minister of Hungary’s increasingly illiberal government. In 2017 Orban’s government did its own copy paste job adopting a law requiring NGOs receiving funds from abroad to register as “foreign supported”. A move which should be seen in the light of Orban’s obsession with eliminating the influence of anything or anyone remotely associated with the Hungarian-American philanthropist George Soros whose Open Society Foundation funds organisations promoting liberal and progressive values.
The cross-fertilisation of censorship between regime types and continents is part of the explanation why press freedom has been in retreat for more than a decade. In its recent 2018 World Press Freedom Index Reporters Without Borders identified “growing animosity towards journalists. Hostility towards the media, openly encouraged by political leaders, and the efforts of authoritarian regimes to export their vision of journalism pose a threat to democracies”. This is something borne out by the litany of of media freedom violations reported to Index on Censorship’s Mapping Media Freedom, which monitors 43 countries. In just the last four years, MMF has logged over 4,200 incidents — a staggering array of curbs on the press that range from physical assault to online threats and murders that have engulfed journalists.
Alarmingly Europe – the heartland of global democracy – has seen the worst regional setbacks in RSF’s index. This development shows that sacrificing free speech to guard against creeping authoritarianism is more likely to embolden than to defeat the enemies of the open society.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_single_image image=”100463″ img_size=”full” onclick=”custom_link” img_link_target=”_blank” link=”http://www.freespeechhistory.com”][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]
A podcast on the history of free speech.
Why have kings, emperors, and governments killed and imprisoned people to shut them up? And why have countless people risked death and imprisonment to express their beliefs? Jacob Mchangama guides you through the history of free speech from the trial of Socrates to the Great Firewall.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_basic_grid post_type=”post” max_items=”12″ style=”load-more” items_per_page=”4″ element_width=”6″ grid_id=”vc_gid:1526895517975-5ae07ad7-7137-1″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
