15 Feb 13 | Index Index
At least 17 prisoners of conscience are on hunger strike in Oman. They began the strike on 9 February at Muscat’s Samayel prison, and other detainees have since joined them, making the total number of hunger strikers 23. Six who were reported to be in a critical condition were taken to hospitals around the capital on 13 February. Yaqoob Al-Harith, a lawyer to seven of the original 17 refusing to eat said they are protesting against the time it is taking to transfer their cases to the supreme court to appeal their jail sentences. The have all been imprisoned for between six and 18 months. The free speech defenders, political activists and civil society representatives were jailed under charges of cyber crimes, illegal assembly, violating communications regulations and insulting ruler Sultan Qaboos on online social networks. Relatives of those imprisoned wrote to the National Human Rights Commission on 10 February and have appealed to the Omani authorities to have the detained released.
Iranian opposition candidate Mirhossein Mousavi has been under house arrest for two years
Two daughters of a former presidential candidate held under house arrest for nearly two years have been arrested in Iran. Zahra and Narges Mousavi, daughters of Mirhossein Mousavi, Iranian prime minister in the 1980s, were arrested by security forces on February 11. Along with Mousavi’s third daughter, they had written in a statement that authorities had denied Mousavi and his wife Zahra Rahnavard access to their children for weeks. Mousavi and Rahnavard were placed under house arrest along with opposition figure Mehdi Karroubi and his wife Fatemeh, after they called for demonstrations to support the Arab uprisings across the region in February 2011. The Islamic Republic is facing a presidential vote in June, and hardliners have accused opposition leaders of plotting a second sedition after the last protests were crushed by security forces. They have also called for the execution of both men, but the government are choosing to keep them in solitary confinement.
Saudia Arabia’s minister for media and culture has confirmed that a range of government bodies have been censoring Twitter, reports on 13 February said. Abdel Aziz Khoga called on Saudi citizens to “raise their awareness” and monitor their social media activity more carefully, as it was proving increasingly difficult to monitor the three million Twitter subscribers around the kingdom. Under the Sunni monarchy, writer Turki Al-Hamad is one of many journalists in prison under blasphemy charges. He was arrested for insulting Islam in January, after he accused radical Islamists of corrupting Prophet Mohammad’s “message of love” in a Tweet in December 2o12. Online activist Raif Badawi was arrested in June 2012 and was charged with apostasy for his tweet, a sentence which carries the death penalty.
On 14 February, two Nigerian journalists appeared in court for criticising the government’s polio campaign. Yakubu Fagge and Mubarak Sani were charged with criminal conspiracy, abetment, defamation of character, obstruction of a public officer carrying out his duty, intentional insult, and incitement to violence. They plead guilty before judge Ibrahim Bello during their appearance before a senior magistrate court in Gyadi Gyadi, Kano. The pair were arrested after hosting a radio show on Wazobia FM on 6 February, where they alleged the government had forced parents to immunise their children against polio, claiming officials were abusing their power. Fagge and Sani have been granted bail with two sureties each at NGN 100, 000, on the condition the surities are community leaders or heads of department of government organisations. The case was adjourned until 13 March.
15 Feb 13 | Uncategorized
A ruling at the Appeal Court in London yesterday could set a dangerous precedent on one of the most important issues in online free speech. The ruling could mean that Internet Service Providers such as Google and Facebook become recognised as “publishers” of material, rather than “mere conduits” and thus legally responsible for material posted on their platforms.
The case, brought by aspiring Conservative politician Payam Tamiz against Google*, hinged on whether or not Google was responsible for comments posted on a blog hosted on its Blogger blogging platform. Tamiz claimed to have been libelled by the “London Muslim” blog, which was hosted on the platform. He had approached Google to ask the blogger to remove the defamatory comments. After five weeks, Google did approach the blogger, asking him to delete the alleged slurs, which he duly did. But Tamiz continued to pursue a case against Google.
Tamiz initially lost his case, and, it should be noted, he lost his appeal this week too.
But the ruling on the appeal raises some interesting questions, and could pave the way for future actions against Internet Service Providers.
The key question seems to be what is a respectable time between being told of alleged defamatory publications, and actually becoming responsible for them.
Referring to Byrne v Deane, a 1937 case involving a defamatory note posted on a golf club notice board, the Master of the Rolls, Lord Justice Richards, commented that “[…]it is in my view open to argument that the time taken was sufficiently long to leave room for an inference adverse to Google Inc on Byrne v Deane principles.
“The period during which Google Inc might fall to be treated on that basis as a publisher of the defamatory comments would be a very short one, but it means that the claim cannot in my view be dismissed on the ground that Google Inc was clearly not a publisher of the comments at all.”
The suggestion is that eventually, Google does become responsible for content.
This reads like a threat to the concept of “mere conduit”, the concept enshrined in the European Union e-Commerce Directive establishing that ISPs cannot be held responsible for content on third party blogs, Facebook updates, tweets etc.
That concept is increasingly coming under threat. Just recently, Belfast lawyer Paul Tweed suggested to the Guardian that companies such as Google, Facebook and Twitter could be subject to “EU defamation cases”, in the courts in Ireland, where all three companies have major European bases.
Such a move could seriously threaten the way the web works. We rely on private ISPs to host our various interactions. Making them legally responsible for everything we post could lead to a situation where they severely narrow their terms of service, and even attempt to engage in some kind of censorship in order to avoid litigation. This shift in responsibility is not what the ISPs want, and certainly not what web users need.
*Google is one of Index on Censorship’s funders. Index’s editorial positions are independent of all its funders
14 Feb 13 | Index Index
A Bahraini teenager has been killed by security forces today (14 February) during demonstrations to mark the second anniversary of the Bahrain revolution. Al Jazeeera reported the 16-year-old boy’s name as Ali Ahmed Ibrahim al-Jazeeri. He allegedly died from internationally banned exploding bullets after Bahraini authorities opened fire on the mounting crowds in Al DAih, near the capital Manama. The interior ministry announced a death on its Twitter this morning, but didn’t disclose any further details.
— A child painted with the national colours of Bahrain during the uprisings second anniversary protests, in which a teenager was killed
Evidence given by Jeremy Paxman and a senior BBC official to the BBC internal inquiry into its handling of the Jimmy Savile affair will be removed from public transcripts detailing the investigations evidence. Lawyers examining the soon to be published transcripts said that evidence from the Newsnight presenter and global news director Peter Horrocks was potentially defamatory, and was particularly critical of how BBC management handled the criticism arising from the Savile scandal in Autumn last year. The findings of the inquiry, overseen by former head of Sky News Nick Pollard, were published by the BBC in December. The report examined the corporation’s handling of Newsnight’s dropped investigation into the case in 2011, and its later response after Savile was allegedly outed as a paedophile in October 2012. At the time the transcript was produced, those giving evidence reportedly didn’t know the report was to be made public. Overall, less than 10 per cent of the Pollard review transcripts will be redacted before publication.
A powerful new firewall used to censor online activity could be established in Pakistan within the next month. The Pakistani government has allegedly been working with the same technology companies that helped Iran, China and Libya curb online dissent, to allow authorities to block pornographic or blasphemous online content. Pakistan’s interior minister Rehman Malik confirmed the reports on Twitter, saying The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) were in their final negotiations for obtaining the software. The PTA originally tried to introduce a similar $10million measure in 2012, which was quashed after being met with fierce public opposition. Whilst Pakistan claims to use the firewall to protect the country’s internet users from blasphemous and pornographic content, it has already blocked a number of unrelated sites, such as the US-based Buzzfeed.
An NHS whistleblower under investigation for high mortality rates has voiced concerns over patient safety despite a legal gag preventing him from speaking out. Gary Walker warned civil servants that he had been given the same choices that had resulted in the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust scandal. He was fired from his job as chief executive of United Lincolnshire Hospitals Trust in 2010 for gross professional misconduct, allegedly because he swore during a meeting. Walker claims he was fired for refusing to meet Whitehall targets for non-emergency patients and then gagged as part of a reported £500,000 settlement emerging from an unfair work dismissal tribunal. He said he was instructed by the East Midlands Strategic Health Authority to meet the 18-week non-emergency target “whatever the demand” and was told to resign when he refused to do so. East Midlands Strategic Health Authority refuted the claims. The Francis report published last week recommended that gagging orders on NHS staff be lifted, orders which Walker said were due to a “culture of fear” within the service. His case has been raised in the commons.
The Israeli government has admitted that “Prisoner X”, the mystery detainee who later committed suicide in solitary confinement, was in fact a spy for Israel. Ben Zygier, as he is now known from reports, was part of Israel’s external intelligence forces known as the Mossad and was arrested in 2010 for charges which still remain unspecified, though they were revealed to be serious. The detention of Australian-Israeli Zygier was reportedly enshrouded in such secrecy that even the prison guards didn’t know his true identity or alleged offence. The information was revealed after a gagging order which forbade the media in Israel from reporting on the case was partially lifted by the Israeli government on 13 February.
14 Feb 13 | Uncategorized
A Bahraini teenager has been killed by security forces today (14 February) during demonstrations to mark the second anniversary of the Bahrain revolution. Al Jazeeera reported the 16-year-old boy’s name as Ali Ahmed Ibrahim al-Jazeeri. He allegedly died from internationally banned exploding bullets after Bahraini authorities opened fire on the mounting crowds in Al DAih, near the capital Manama. The interior ministry announced a death on its Twitter this morning, but didn’t disclose any further details.
— A child painted with the national colours of Bahrain during the uprisings second anniversary protests, in which a teenager was killed
Evidence given by Jeremy Paxman and a senior BBC official to the BBC internal inquiry into its handling of the Jimmy Savile affair will be removed from public transcripts detailing the investigations evidence. Lawyers examining the soon to be published transcripts said that evidence from the Newsnight presenter and global news director Peter Horrocks was potentially defamatory, and was particularly critical of how BBC management handled the criticism arising from the Savile scandal in Autumn last year. The findings of the inquiry, overseen by former head of Sky News Nick Pollard, were published by the BBC in December. The report examined the corporation’s handling of Newsnight’s dropped investigation into the case in 2011, and its later response after Savile was allegedly outed as a paedophile in October 2012. At the time the transcript was produced, those giving evidence reportedly didn’t know the report was to be made public. Overall, less than 10 per cent of the Pollard review transcripts will be redacted before publication.
A powerful new firewall used to censor online activity could be established in Pakistan within the next month. The Pakistani government has allegedly been working with the same technology companies that helped Iran, China and Libya curb online dissent, to allow authorities to block pornographic or blasphemous online content. Pakistan’s interior minister Rehman Malik confirmed the reports on Twitter, saying The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) were in their final negotiations for obtaining the software. The PTA originally tried to introduce a similar $10million measure in 2012, which was quashed after being met with fierce public opposition. Whilst Pakistan claims to use the firewall to protect the country’s internet users from blasphemous and pornographic content, it has already blocked a number of unrelated sites, such as the US-based Buzzfeed.
An NHS whistleblower under investigation for high mortality rates has voiced concerns over patient safety despite a legal gag preventing him from speaking out. Gary Walker warned civil servants that he had been given the same choices that had resulted in the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust scandal. He was fired from his job as chief executive of United Lincolnshire Hospitals Trust in 2010 for gross professional misconduct, allegedly because he swore during a meeting. Walker claims he was fired for refusing to meet Whitehall targets for non-emergency patients and then gagged as part of a reported £500,000 settlement emerging from an unfair work dismissal tribunal. He said he was instructed by the East Midlands Strategic Health Authority to meet the 18-week non-emergency target “whatever the demand” and was told to resign when he refused to do so. East Midlands Strategic Health Authority refuted the claims. The Francis report published last week recommended that gagging orders on NHS staff be lifted, orders which Walker said were due to a “culture of fear” within the service. His case has been raised in the commons.
The Israeli government has admitted that “Prisoner X”, the mystery detainee who later committed suicide in solitary confinement, was in fact a spy for Israel. Ben Zygier, as he is now known from reports, was part of Israel’s external intelligence forces known as the Mossad and was arrested in 2010 for charges which still remain unspecified, though they were revealed to be serious. The detention of Australian-Israeli Zygier was reportedly enshrouded in such secrecy that even the prison guards didn’t know his true identity or alleged offence. The information was revealed after a gagging order which forbade the media in Israel from reporting on the case was partially lifted by the Israeli government on 13 February.
