Index Index – International free speech roundup 21/01/13

21 Jan 13 | Uncategorized

Two journalists have been killed in Syria while reporting on the front line. French journalist Yves Debay was shot twice while covering the conflict between the Syrian regime’s army and rebel forces on 17 January, reportedly killed by a regime sniper. Al Jazeera correspondent Mohamed Al-Massalma was shot with three bullets the following day during fights in the town of Busra Al-Harir in the southern province of Deraa. The Syrian journalist for Al Jazeera, who used the pseudonym Mohamed Al-Horani, was an activist in the revolt against President Bashar al-Assad before he joined the news network. More than 60,000 people have died since the Syrian conflict began in March 2011.

Eva Rinaldi - Flickr

Lupe Fiasco – ejected at Obama’s reelection event

On 17 January, a Cameroonian man who text his friend saying “I’m very much in love with you” had a three year jail sentence upheld. Jean-Claude Roger Mbédé had already served a year and a half in prison for homosexual conduct when he was released on bail for medical reasons in July 2012 — he was malnourished and injured after being assaulted. Cameroon is considered the worst place in Africa for persecution of homosexuals. Last year, 14 people were arrested for homosexuality, 12 of whom were prosecuted.

On 19 January, a journalist in Somalia was killed whilst walking to work. Abdihared Osman Aden, a veteran producer for Shabelle Media Network was shot by unidentified assailants, becoming the fifth Shabelle worker to be murdered in 13 months. Twelve journalists were killed in Somalia in 2012, the highest rate of murders in Africa that year. All the deaths from last year remain unsolved, accoring to Committee to Protect Journalists’ research. President Hassan Sheikh Mohamoud had vowed to establish a task force to investigate the deaths of media workers in November, but has failed to take action so far, according to local journalists.

Google will decline personal information requests from authoritarian governments in Africa, it announced on 17 January. In a press conference in Nairobi, Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt said Google are careful where they place servers and staff, as refusing frequent information requests from the government could lead to arrests and harassment.

Rapper Lupe Fiasco was removed from the stage during an event to celebrate Barack Obama’s inauguration. Headlining the StartUp RockOn concert, Fiasco took to the stage at The Hamilton in Washington, saying that he didn’t vote for Obama during a 30-minute anti-war performance. The performance ended with security eventually moving him along for the next performer, after the rapper refused to leave the stage. Co-founders of the festival Hypervocal later released a statement putting the removal of the star down to a “bizarrely repetitive, jarring performance”, as opposed to his opinions. Lupe Fiasco has previously voiced opposition to the Obama administration, when discussing the President ordering drone attacks.

From Baku: Voices for internet freedom

08 Nov 12 | Digital Freedom, Uncategorized

The Baku Expo Centre is a fairly bland setting for the Internet Governance Forum 2012 — even if the choice of Azerbaijan as host is not —  but debates, discussions and overlapping conversations are lively, pointed, sometimes heated with voices from politics, business, activists, academics, officials around the world arguing about our digital world.

One thing is clear in this melee: a big international debate on how — and whether — we keep the internet free is under way, and there is a lot of support for the sort of bottom up, diverse, varied debate (or in techno-speak “multistakeholder governance model”) the IGF is part of.

Here’s a flavour of some of the views and debates of the first two days.

A common starting point at the IGF has been that offline rights must apply equally online. But views diverge rapidly on whether access to the internet is or should be a human right. “No,” says a lawyer, jumping to his feet, “we cannot defend that in court”; “yes” is the riposte from a senior Kenyan official, adding that “as more people in Kenya use mobiles for simple money transfers, lack of access to such a service would block many people from normal economic activities as well as from wider information and debates.”

Switch to another session and a Council of Europe official is arguing — strangely — that we probably cannot avoid population-wide databases on our digital comms, so we must control who has access and how. A speaker from India in a subsequent session disagrees strongly calling such big data projects “a big catastrophe”.

Azerbaijani writer, Emin Milli explains that in Azerbaijan you can freely write on Twitter or Facebook, but the problem is what happens afterwards. The regime targets writers and bloggers with the aim of creating more widespread intimidation and self-censorship — online and offline censorship intertwine.

 

EU MEP Marietje Schaake talks of “cat and mouse” games between states pushing for security — and repression — and of activists creatively finding ways to assert their freedom and rights. She calls for export controls on digital surveillance technology as a priority and urges the EU to develop a full digital strategy that can be applied to its external policies.

In yet another session, the need for anonymity online is debated and strongly defended with the chairman summing up by saying that “protection of anonymity is an absolute priority and ISPs (Internet Service Providers) must go as far as possible to defend it.”

As I head off to join a panel on cyber security, privacy and openness, I am sure I will encounter a range of views including some passionate disagreements. But I know too that many, if not all, of these voices will be arguing about how to keep and promote our internet freedom — and if we can build this debate and these networks, then we can stand up to those who are acting both openly and covertly to undermine those freedoms.

Kirsty Hughes is Chief Executive of Index on Censorship