09 Feb 23 | FEATURED: Katie Dancey-Downs, News and features, Turkey
Monday’s devastating earthquakes in Turkey have led to the loss of thousands of lives but one of the government’s responses to the disaster is troubling. At midday on Wednesday, Twitter was restricted in Turkey. The quake caused a number online connectivity issues, but this was not the reason that users couldn’t get onto Twitter. It was a direct response to political criticism.
This is according to Alp Toker, founder and director of NetBlocks, which tracks cybersecurity and digital governance.
“Up until Wednesday, we were tracking connectivity issues in real time, on the ground,” Toker told Index, describing regions in southern and central Turkey that have been laid waste by earthquakes. Knowing which regions are offline and have infrastructure impact, is useful for rescue operations, he explained.
“Suddenly, on Wednesday afternoon, we observed filtering of Twitter — which was unexpected — and we were able to verify that this was unrelated to the connectivity issues happening in the south, and that this was targeted censorship of Twitter.”
NetBlocks uses the same techniques that they developed to track internet shutdowns, validating and reporting in real time. It verified the information through its monitoring network, checking the connections, the ability to connect, and looking at the underlying reasons for the service not working. On closer inspection, they discovered that the filter had been applied at ISP (internet service provider) level using an advanced technique that’s been deployed before in Turkey, preventing users from accessing Twitter. This is the 20th such incident that NetBlocks has tracked in Turkey since 2015.
“These mass censorship incidents happen after political scandals, they happen after terrorist attacks, they happen in a variety of circumstances — also during military operations in the south — but it’s the first time that they’ve been applied in the aftermath of a natural disaster,” Toker said.
Turkey’s government has faced intense criticism following the earthquake. Some of those critics, including journalists and academics, have been detained and arrested.
“It was intentional mass censorship applied at a time when people are really using Twitter and relying on it to seek help, and to ask for equipment supplies, but also to get in touch with loved ones and see if friends and family are okay. The idea that such a vital tool would be withheld is shocking,” Toker said. “There are reports that people under the rubble use Twitter to connect with the outside world. So it’s literally a lifeline in that context.”
When phone lines are overloaded, he said, using Twitter to reach out for help makes sense.
“All of these use cases have been an absolute reminder that freedom of expression, the right to impart knowledge, is more vital than ever in a crisis and must not be curtailed.”
By midnight, 12 hours later, the restriction was lifted. It came following an outcry, and NetBlocks’s role in validating and reporting the restriction.
What very nearly happened, Toker said, was an internet freedom protest outside the IT Ministry’s office in response to the restriction. Twitter was back before the planned protest took place.
The restoration of Twitter might seem like a success story, but it came at a price. While people were fruitlessly refreshing their timelines, something else was happening.
“Turkish authorities had a meeting with the head of policy at Twitter,” Toker said. “They pressured Twitter into complying more thoroughly with their own takedown demands in future, and they spoke about what the Turkish State perceives as disinformation, but which many others perceive as legitimate free speech and criticism.”
Toker said that Elon Musk’s company is once again in the fray of the Turkish filtering and censorship regime. And as the disaster response continues in the wake of the earthquake, criticism will continue on and offline.
“The big question now is whether Turkey is going to increase its demands for censorship of individual posts from Twitter, and whether Twitter is going to comply with that,” he said. “If Twitter does comply, it’s going to be the first time the company has really engaged in that level of censorship since Elon Musk’s takeover.”
If Twitter complies with Turkey, he said, the door might also be cracked open for censorship demands from other countries.
11 Nov 22 | Egypt, Ruth's blog, United Kingdom, United States
Sanaa Seif, the sister of Egyptian writer and activist Alaa abd el-Fattah, speaking at COP27
It shouldn’t surprise anyone reading this that I care passionately about freedom of expression. I have dedicated my life to political engagement and campaigning and have used every right afforded to me under article 10 of the Human Rights Act as I have sought to fix problems in our society.
At Index I spend every day seeking to ensure that those people who are silenced by despotic regimes have a platform for their words and their art. I speak to journalists and stakeholders daily about threats to freedom of speech at home and abroad. After all, Index was founded to protect this most fundamental of human rights everywhere it is threatened.
But there are some weeks when even I am surprised by the scale of news coverage of freedom of speech. Especially in the UK. It increasingly feels like the phrase freedom of speech is dominating political debate as well as the comment pages in our mainstream media. Of course I welcome every mention and the truth, in an age of disinformation, trolling and political populism, is that we need a national conversation about how language, speech and debate need to be protected and cherished as our communication tools evolve and develop.
But in the last week I’m not sure that’s what we’ve seen. I want a debate about freedom of speech and expression. About how to protect and promote media, artistic and academic freedoms. Instead what we have seen is journalists arrested, in the UK, for doing their job and covering the news. We’ve seen an elected politician denounce media outlets for having the audacity to cover protests.
On the international stage we’ve seen a social media platform used by millions of people change dramatically on the whim of a billionaire within a matter of days of his taking ownership. World leaders attending COP27 in Egypt failing in all efforts to intervene in the case of Alaa Abd el-Fattah, a democracy campaigner, imprisoned because he dared to support a political protest. And in the US we’ve once again seen too many politicians undermining the very basis of their democracy as a political tool.
We deserve so much better than this.
We deserve more than political rhetoric about free speech while populists seek to hijack their own definition of free speech for political gain.
We deserve more than token diplomatic gestures when people are rotting in prison for having the audacity to demand their basic human rights.
We deserve more than our police forces arresting journalists and undermining media freedom because they seek to cover the news.
We deserve better. And Index will keep demanding better – at home and abroad.
15 Oct 22 | Middle East and North Africa, News and features, Saudi Arabia, United Kingdom
Rt. Hon. James Cleverly MP
Foreign Secretary
Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office
King Charles Street
London
SW1A 2AH
United Kingdom
15 October 2022
Dear Foreign Secretary,
On behalf of the below signed organisations, we would like to congratulate your appointment as Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs. At a time of significant global uncertainty and unrest, the UK can and must play a leading role in promoting human rights globally. While we appreciate the wide and diverse range of issues facing you and your department, we are contacting you today to draw your attention to the treatment of political prisoners in Saudi Arabia who have been imprisoned for expressing themselves.
The Specialized Criminal Court (SCC), established in 2008 to try those suspected of acts of terrorism, has instead administered disproportionate sentences, including the death sentence, to people solely for expressing themselves online. Cloaked in the language of cybercrime, this has effectively criminalised free expression and has also been brought to bear against individuals outside of Saudi Arabia.
You will have heard about the shameful case of Saudi national Salma al-Shehab, who was a student at the University of Leeds at the time of her alleged ‘crimes’ – sharing content in support of prisoners of conscience and women human right defenders, such as Loujain Alhathloul. For this, upon Salma al-Shehab’s return to Saudi Arabia, she was arrested and held arbitrarily for nearly a year, before being sentenced to 34 years in prison with a subsequent 34-year travel ban. The fact that the sentence is four years longer than the maximum sentence suggested by the country’s anti-terror laws for activities such as supplying explosives or hijacking an aircraft demonstrates the egregious and dangerous standard established both by the SCC and the Saudi regime to restrict free expression. It also further illustrates the Saudi government’s abusive system of surveillance and infiltration of social media platforms to silence public dissent.
But the actions aimed at Salma al-Shehab did not happen in isolation. In fact, her sentencing is the latest in a longstanding trend that has seen the Saudi judiciary and the state at-large being co-opted to target civil society and fundamental human rights. The same day that al-Shehab was sentenced, the SCC sentenced another woman, Nourah bint Saeed Al-Qahtani, to 45 years in prison after using social media to peacefully express her views. Ten Egyptian Nubians were sentenced to up to 18 years in prison after they were arrested and detained – for two months they were held incommunicado and without access to their lawyers or family – after organising a symposium commemorating the 1973 Arab-Israeli war. Dr Lina al-Sharif was arbitrarily detained for over a year following her social media activism after a group of agents of the Presidency of State Security raided her family home and arrested her without a warrant. A worrying dimension is the use of violence and torture to coerce confessions, as well as ongoing persecution or surveillance following a prisoner’s release, further eroding the legitimacy of the SCC and its verdicts.
The UK’s close relationship with Saudi Arabia should not bind your hands to upholding human rights commitments and calling out violations when they are brought to your attention, particularly, in the case of al-Shehab, where they relate to the application of Saudi legislation for actions that took place within the territory of the United Kingdom. In fact, this relationship places you in a strong position to call for the release of all prisoners unlawfully held in Saudi Arabia without delay.
Acting definitively so early in your tenure would be a powerful symbol both to our allies and others that the UK can be a trusted protector of human rights and the rule of law.
We await your action on this important issue and further support the calls to action outlined by over 400 academics, staff and research students from UK universities and colleges in a letter authored to you and the Prime Minister.
If you require any more information we would be happy to organise a briefing at a time that works best for you.
Kind regards,
Index on Censorship
ALQST For Human Rights
SANAD Organisation for Human Rights
CIVICUS
Electronic Frontier Foundation
Gulf Centre for Human Rights (GCHR)
SMEX
Vigilance for Democracy and the Civic State
Access Now
Human Rights Watch
PEN International
English PEN
Front Line Defenders
IFEX
26 Aug 22 | Opinion, Ruth's blog, Saudi Arabia
I love working at Index but it isn’t always an emotionally easy place to work. Every day my team and I are exposed to some of the most heartbreaking stories of human rights abuses around the world. We routinely have to read the details of toture, persecution, detention and murder and whilst we try not to become immune to the daily horrors – sometimes that is the only way to do our jobs.
However there will always be a case that makes us collectively stop. A person’s story that makes us feel impotent. That touches our hearts. That demands even more from us. That personifies the reason why Index was established in the first place – and sometimes it won’t be the most graphic of cases – but rather one so unjust we cannot move on.
And that happened again this month.
There has been limited media coverage about Salma al-Shehab. An academic, a PhD student at the University of Leeds. A wife, a mother of two and a Saudi citizen. She also happened to occasionally use Twitter to support the plight of women in Saudi and to call on those dissidents and clerics who had been detained to be released. She isn’t a leading political activist or a leading light of a human rights organisation – her PhD is in medicine.
Last year Salma returned to Saudi on holiday and was immediately arrested, tried and convicted by a terrorism tribunal of aiding dissidents seeking to “disrupt public order” and publishing “false rumours”. Her initial sentence was six years in detention. However this month, after an appeal, her sentence has been increased to 34 years followed by a 34-year restriction on travel. For the ‘crime’ of occasionally using social media while in the UK to highlight the detention of others in Saudi Arabia, she will be held in a Saudi prison until she is 68 years old and will not be allowed to leave Saudi Arabia again until she is 102.
This is the longest sentence ever issued by a Saudi court for a peaceful activist. To all intents and purposes it is little short of a death sentence. For the crime of using social media.
Salma deserves more than the words of protest that come from Index and others, although we do protest her arrest and are horrified by her treatment. She deserves her liberty. She has been imprisoned for using her voice, when in a democratic country, to defend others who no longer are able to be heard. She acted in the best traditions of a dissident.
So from here on in, Index will seek to use its voice to raise hers. We will not let the world forget her, as she sits in a Saudi prison.
On the 15th of every month (she was initially arrested on 15 January 2021), we will tell her story. Shining a light on her plight. And in the coming months we will work with partners both in the UK and across the world to make sure her case doesn’t get forgotten as just another case of human rights abuse by Saudi Arabia.
