16 Dec 22 | Afghanistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, China, Iran, Nigeria, Opinion, Qatar, Ruth's blog, Somalia, South Sudan, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Ukraine
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image="120168" img_size="full" add_caption="yes"][vc_column_text]As we all start to think about the forthcoming holidays and the end of the year it’s a good opportunity to reflect on what happened in 2022.
For regular readers you’ll know I have at various points over the last year despaired at the sheer volume of news. Too many crises, too many heartbreaking stories, too many people and families destroyed by the actions of tyrants.
There has been so much news it is easy to forget the range of issues that have impacted human rights and freedom of expression around the world. So it would be remiss of me, in my last blog of the year, not to remind you of some the key events of 2022 (forgive me, there are many missing).
The year started with Abdalla Hamdok resigning as the Prime Minister of Sudan after three years of pro-democracy protests, where dozens were killed. A few days later, a week of government clampdown in Kazakhstan led to the deaths of over 220 people with over 9,000 people arrested.
In February we thought the biggest issue for Index would be the attempted sportswashing of the CCP as they hosted the Winter Olympics. Unfortunately that was not to be the most devastating act by a totalitarian regime in 2022. By the end of the month Putin’s government had launched an illegal invasion into Ukraine, causing the largest refugee crisis in Europe since the end of World War Two. Nearly 7,000 civilians have been killed during the war and over 13,000 Ukrainian troops and over 10,000 Russian troops have made the ultimate sacrifice. In response to the war, media freedoms and freedom of expression have been completely curtailed in both Russia and Belarus with thousands detained.
Events in Ukraine rightly continued to dominate the news agenda for the rest of the year. But this in turn provided cover for dictators and tyrants around the world to move against their people with limited global outcry.
March brought more extremism and death. In Afghanistan an IS suicide bomber killed 63 people at a mosque. April was dominated by events in Ukraine and the impact on food and fuel inflation leading to sporadic protests around the world.
In June a suspected IS attack on a church in Nigeria saw at least 40 people killed. In July anti-government protests in Sri Lanka led to the deaths of 10 protesters, with over 600 arrested.
In August our friend Sir Salman Rushdie was attacked by an extremist. We are incredibly grateful that he survived and remain in contact with him as his long recovery continues.
In September the United Nations published their report about the CCP’s treatment of the Uyghur community in Xinjiang province - declaring that their treatment may constitute crimes against humanity. September also saw clashes on the Armenia-Azerbaijan border resulting in nearly 300 deaths in a three-day period. This was followed within days by similar clashes on the Kyrgyzstan - Tajikistan border with dozens killed.
On 16 September Masha Amini was murdered by state forces in Iran for not having her hair covered appropriately. This horrendous act of state terror has led to country wide protests, at least 448 people have been killed in the protests and over 18,000 people have been arrested across 134 cities and towns in Iran. These demonstrations continue today as the Iranian government begins executing protestors. These events are truly some of the most egregious of 2022 and we stand with Amini and all those protesting in her name.
In October Xi Jinping was appointed for an unprecedented third term as general secretary of the CCP, consolidating his grip on power. And a couple of weeks later Elon Musk purchased Twitter for $44billion, we still don’t know what the final effect on global free speech will be…
At the end of October a terror attack in Mogadishu killed over 100 people.
November saw the start of one of the most determined efforts at sportswashing of an appalling human rights record with the beginning of the football World Cup in Qatar. Protests were banned and football players were forbidden from wearing LGBT+ symbols while playing.
And that gets me to December - in the last fortnight we have seen 1,700 people flee violence in South Sudan which has already killed 166 people. Chinese diplomats have left the UK after a protester was beaten by Chinese staff at a consulate in Manchester earlier this year. Twitter has banned journalists who have criticised Elon Musk and Jimmy Lai was sentenced to five years in jail in Hong Kong, as he awaits his trial for being a democracy campaigner.
And yet there is still a fortnight to go before we close the door on 2022 - I pray that it’s a quiet fortnight for those on the front line.
As we approach the end of 2022 my prayers will be with the people of Ukraine as they remain on the front line in the fight for freedom - especially as the temperature plummets. But the women of Iran won’t be too far from my thoughts too.
So to you and yours from the Index family, Happy Christmas, Chag Sameach and Happy Holidays and here’s to a better 2023![/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][three_column_post title="You may also wish to read" category_id="41669"][/vc_column][/vc_row]
09 Dec 22 | China, Latvia, Opinion, Russia, Ruth's blog, United States
Every day there seems to be a new public controversy, with clear free speech elements, which dominates our public discourse for a day or two. Each one typically leads to a discussion within Index, our professional staff debating not just whether we should make an intervention and what that could look like. But sometimes, more importantly, the team has the intellectual debate about where the lines on the right to freedom of speech fall. What are the rights and responsibilities we all have towards the societies we live in? Where is the line on incitement, on hate speech, on civility?
From Kanye West, to the revoking of TV Rain’s broadcast licence in Latvia, to the death of Jiang Zemin. All had freedom of expression angles, all were complicated, no part of the reality behind the news was clear cut and nuance in the debate was seemingly lost in the maelstrom of the debate.
Personally I struggle with Kanye West being given a platform by anyone; his words incite violence against a minority and there can be little debate that his public statements amount to hate speech. I have spent the majority of my life campaigning against racism and anti-Jewish hate and Mr West, aka Ye, is clearly a racist who espouses views that I will always challenge. And I struggle to be convinced that he has the right to celebrate and justify his racism on every platform available.
However, there are those within the Index family, including some of our founders, who consider (or considered) free speech to be an absolute right - where no limitations on speech could be tolerated. That freedom of expression enables us to shine a light on extremist views and therefore can act as an antidote to them. Intellectually I can understand that approach, I even have huge sympathy with it. Pushing extremist views to the fringes and making them illicit, gives them a mystery and an appeal that they otherwise might not attract. But there has to be a balance, at least in my opinion.
Which brings me back to the right to speak versus the right to be heard. I have the absolute right to write this blog but you have the absolute right not to read it. I have the right to speak, to draw, to argue, but you have the right to ignore me. Because the Universal Declaration of Human Rights gives me the right to have my own views and to be able to share them without fear or favour - but it doesn’t force anyone to have to listen to them. So the onus is on all of us to find the balance between respecting our freedom of expression and protecting and enhancing the public spaces of the societies we live in.
02 Dec 22 | China, News and features
Acts of civil disobedience in the recent protests in China have been, unsurprisingly, swiftly suppressed by police. Even before this happened, protesters encoded their message through hidden symbols - tapping into a history of creative protest in China - in order to evade persecution and silencing. Here’s how citizens are currently saying no to being controlled, often by saying nothing at all.
The blank piece of paper has become the most widely recognised symbol of the protests. Many say it first emerged in Hong Kong in 2020, though the use of blank paper in China to highlight censorship stretches far back. Today it is a powerful sign of the government’s limits on free expression that avoids the language associated with protest being censored online. Taking the paper protest one step further, a video of a woman carrying the blank paper while walking through the street with chains around her wrists and duct tape covering her mouth went viral on Twitter.
Sadly online posts about blank pieces of paper are now disappearing on social media.
Other messages with more complex, hidden meanings began to emerge. Students at Tsinghua University in Beijing were pictured holding pieces of paper with the Friedmann equation written on them, a formula that outlines the expansion of the universe and whether it is open (expands forever) or closed (eventually reverses and everything goes back into a Big Crunch). Some have suggested the message is a play on the phrase “free man” while Twitter nerds have said it is more likely an analogy about whether Chinese society is open or closed.
Another protester held up paper with the sign that appears on WeChat – China’s instant messaging and social media app – when a message cannot be delivered, implying that their voices are unheard.
Some demonstrators made a powerful statement against control by doing exactly as they were told. One group chanted sarcastically in support of Xi’s policies, shouting "I want to do a Covid test" and calling for "more lockdowns".
On Sunday, hundreds of people gathered on the banks of a river in Beijing and sang the national anthem. The song tells the story of China’s fight against foreign invaders and was chosen by the current regime as their Communist anthem. However, the lyrics "rise up!" and “march on!” have a revolutionary message that seemingly reflects the protesters’ ardour in their fight for freedom.
While Twitter is banned in China, many people have been circumventing blocks and posting to the international community using VPNs. As online censorship intensifies in response to the protests, users have employed creative methods to circumvent government technology such as applying filters and taking videos of other videos. The sheer number of posts going out online has also overwhelmed AI censorship by China’s Great Firewall and made it difficult for them to be taken down.
One woman even walked three alpacas down a road in Xinjiang, a reference to a meme that was created in 2009 in response to China’s growing internet censorship. Known as “the grass mud horse”, or cào nǐ mā, the creature – which is similar in appearance to an alpaca – is a homonym for the insult “fuck your mother”.
These individuals have taken great risks with their protests in Xi’s China but social media users have been demonstrating their solidarity with the protesters by posting repeated one word “Moments” on WeChat such as “support support support” and “okay okay okay”.
And Winnie the Pooh, a favourite internet meme in China if people want to dig at Xi, made a fleeting appearance. In this instance looking confusingly at a blank sheet of paper.
Isolated acts of protest over recent months have suggested that the Chinese people are weary of President Xi Jinping’s zero-Covid policy. In October, anti-zero-Covid slogans began to appear on the walls of public bathrooms and in various Chinese cities. Days before President Xi cemented his third term in power, a lone protester hung banners on an overpass in Beijing. They called for an end to zero Covid and Xi’s presidency. The protests have begun to pick up momentum in the past few days, but the likelihood of a change of president or government remains unlikely.
Public protest, while more common than people might assume, comes with huge risks in China, where the CCP has a stranglehold on dissent and freedom of expression. If people want to be seen and heard, protests must be clever and playful. In some instances this means not actually saying anything at all.
01 Dec 22 | Belarus, Campaigns, China, Equatorial Guinea, Iran, Mexico, News and features, Nicaragua, North Korea, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia
At the end of every year, Index on Censorship launches a campaign to focus attention on human rights defenders, dissidents, artists and journalists who have been in the news headlines because their freedom of expression has been suppressed during the past twelve months. As well as this we focus on the authoritarian leaders who have been silencing their opponents.
Last year, we asked for your help in identifying 2021's Tyrant of the Year and you responded in your thousands. The 2021 winner, way ahead of a crowded field, was Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, followed by China’s Xi Jinping and Syria’s Bashar al-Assad .
The polls are now open for the title of 2022 Tyrant of the Year and we are focusing on 12 leaders from around the globe who have done more during the past 12 months than other despots to win this dubious accolade.
Click on those in our rogues' gallery below to find out why the Index on Censorship team believe each one should be named Tyrant of the Year and then click on the form at the bottom of those pages to cast your vote. The closing date is Monday 9 January 2023.
VOTING HAS NOW CLOSED. SEE WHO YOU VOTED AS TYRANT OF THE YEAR 2022 HERE.
