20 Jun 23 | Afghanistan, News and features
A rallying shout for people to write to their MPs and raise awareness of the plight of women and journalists in Afghanistan, and to pressure the government to improve the current conditions of Afghan refugees in the UK, were part of a panel discussion held by Index on Censorship last Thursday.
A Night For Afghanistan was hosted by Index’s Editor-at-large Martin Bright at Somerville College, University of Oxford. Alongside him were Zahra Joya, an exiled Afghan journalist and founder of Rukhshana Media, and Zehra Zaidi, a lawyer and advocate for Action for Afghanistan.
Joya spoke passionately about the plight of Afghan journalists that remain in her homeland. She said: “Their situation is just terrible. There is no independent journalism left after the Taliban takeover, and journalists that do remain face imprisonment and torture.” Referencing her colleagues left in Afghanistan, including those at Rukshana Media who focus on women’s issues in the country, she added: “I see a very big desire and trust from my colleagues in telling the story of marginalised women both from and in my country.”
Discussing the conditions of Afghan refugees in the UK, Zaidi raised the point of those held in hotels with the audience. She said: “All of them, which is about 11,000 people, have been given three months eviction notices. Without alternative accommodation, they are homeless.
“This isn’t just about the Taliban in Afghanistan. This is now about us, our values. Do we still care about human rights and democracy? We must put pressure on the government to support the process of people coming out of the hotels.”
Joya urged people to raise their voices with politicians; to keep the conversation alive and put pressure on the Taliban from outside the country. Speaking of a “shameful silence” about the Taliban’s actions in her country, she asked the audience to imagine such a scenario closer to home. “It is simply a gender apartheid. Imagine one day half of London being told “Sorry, you have to stay at home from now on””, she said. Joya also told a disturbing story about the father of a friend in Afghanistan who sold his kidney to raise funds for his daughter to escape the regime.
Discussing the role of Index, Bright talked about the UK’s government recent scheme to relocate women and journalists from Afghanistan to the UK, suggesting only a very small handful of people were successful in doing so. He added: “We won’t give up on putting pressure on the British government to fulfil the promises made to the Afghan people, but it makes sense for us to work with other countries’ schemes in helping to get people out.” Zaidi was more forthright to the audience in her views of the British government aims regarding Afghanistan:
“They want to forget. It was a failure for them. The UK got beat, and simply took all of the soldiers and systems with them, and fled”, she said.
“They hope we will simply just go away, but we’re not going anywhere.”
27 Apr 23 | China, FEATURED: Francis Clarke, Hong Kong, News and features, United Kingdom
The UK government is failing to acknowledge a British citizen unfairly imprisoned in Hong Kong amid a wider targeting of journalists and pro-democracy campaigners in the city state, said the authors of a new report on issues of freedom in Hong Kong.
On Monday, the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Hong Kong (APPG) met at Portcullis House, London, to discuss their new report, Inquiry into Media Freedom in Hong Kong: The case of Jimmy Lai and and Apple Daily, which offers a sobering look into the state of media freedoms in the once vibrant city. Index contributed to the report.
The session was headed by Baroness Bennett of Manor Caste, the joint chair of the APPG. Other speakers included Lai’s international lawyer, Caoilfhionn Gallagher KC, Baroness Helena Kennedy and Sebastian Lai, Jimmy Lai’s son.
One of the aims of the report is to provoke a response from the British government regarding Lai. A pro-democracy figure, media tycoon and British citizen, he is in a Hong Kong prison after sentencing for unauthorised assembly and fraud charges. In addition to these charges are more serious ones of violating Hong Kong’s national security law, which was passed in 2020. Six of his colleagues at Apple Daily, the newspaper founded by Lai, are also in jail charged under the national security laws.
Kennedy believes the case of Jimmy Lai should be treated as a political priority by the UK government not only because Lai is a British citizen, but also because of the the joint declaration that gives the UK a place in trying to guarantee the rights of people in Hong Kong.
She added: “It is the illegitimate use of law against a citizen by the government, and against the protection of media freedom and expression in Hong Kong.”
Lord Alton of Liverpool, a vice chair of the APPG, echoed Kennedy’s called for Magnitsky-style sanctions against allies of the Hong Kong authorities in the UK as further action is needed. “We have to go beyond sanctions, to freezing the assets and redeploying the resources of those who have been able to use London as a place for their activities,” he said.
Gallagher said the Hong Kong authorities have weaponised their laws to target pro-democracy campaigners and journalists in new ways. Gallagher, who represents Jimmy Lai, as well as Maria Ressa from the Philippines who was charged with tax evasion, says that this is a new tactic – trying to discredit them by painting them as bad people rather than using the more traditional tactic of defamation. “It’s straight from the dictators’ playbook,” she said.
Kennedy echoed this by stating fraud and tax affair charges are common tactics used against journalists in Hong Kong before more serious charges are later served. They added that as a result of supporting Lai they’ve received a series of threats and intimidation from state actors.
Sebastian Lai said he is also a target for the Chinese authorities. He acknowledged international support regarding his father’s cause but expressed disappointment in the UK government’s attitude. He said: “The language the UK government has used has been nowhere close to what America has used for not only a British citizen, but my father.”
However, he did acknowledge thanks for Anne Marie Trevelyan, MP and Minister of State in the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office, for meeting him.
Fiona O’ Brien, the UK bureau director of Reporters Without Borders (RSF), said it needed to be waved in the face of those in power, “along with journalists writing stories, lawyers pursuing legal routes and advocates in society. We need to continue to shine a light.”
The report can be found here.
14 Jul 22 | Opinion, Ruth's blog, United Kingdom
“Unintended consequences”, “ideologically incoherent”, “won’t change culture or make us safer”.
I have written all these words and many more about the British Government’s Online Safety Bill. Index on Censorship has spent the last eighteen months campaigning against the worst excesses of the Online Safety Bill and how it would undermine freedom of expression online.
Our lines have been clear:
1. What is legal to say offline should be legal online.
2. End to end encryption should not be undermined.
3. Online anonymity needs to be protected.
The current proposals that were progressing through the British Parliament undermined each of these principles and were going to set a new standard of speech online which would have led to speech codes, heavily censored platforms, no secure online messaging and a threat to online anonymity which would have undermined dissidents living in repressive regimes.
So honestly, I am relieved that the government has, at almost the last minute, paused the legislation.
I am not opposed to regulation, I do not for a second believe that the internet is a nice place to spend time and nor would I advocate that there shouldn’t be many more protections for children and those who are vulnerable online. We do need regulation to limit children’s exposure to illegal and inappropriate content but we need to do it in such a way that protects all of our rights.
This legislation, in its current iteration, failed to do that, it was a disaster for freedom of expression online. The proposed “Legal but Harmful’ category of speech would have led to over deletion by online platforms on a scale never seen before. Algorithms aren’t people and frankly they will struggle to identify nuance, context or satire or even regional colloquialisms. With fines and the threat of prison sentences, platforms will obviously err on the side of caution and the unintended consequence would be mass deletion.
So today, we welcome the fact that the legislation has been paused and we call on the new prime minister and the next secretary of state to think again in the autumn about what we are actually trying to achieve when we regulate online platforms. Because honestly, we won’t be able to make the internet nicer by waving a magic wand and removing everything unpleasant – we need to be more imaginative in our approach and consider the wider cultural and educational impact.
So, as I have said in the media overnight, this is a fundamentally broken bill – the next prime minister needs a total rethink. It would give tech executives like Nick Clegg and Mark Zuckerberg massive amounts of control over what we all can say online, would make the UK the first democracy in the world to break encrypted messaging apps, and it would make people who have experienced abuse online less safe by forcing platforms to delete vital evidence.
Let’s start again.
05 Apr 19 | Campaigns -- Featured, Digital Freedom, Digital Freedom Statements, Press Releases, Statements
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Index on Censorship is concerned that the government’s online harms white paper, due out on Monday, contains proposals that will restrict freedom of expression and limit access to information online.
According to leaked details, it will include a statutory duty of care, which will be enforced by a regulator. Ofcom is expected to take on the role of regulator to begin, with a new regulator established later. Online companies will need to comply with a code of practice. The regulator will be empowered to impose large fines and hold directors personally liable.
Index is particularly concerned about the duty of care. The concept is closely linked to the “precautionary principle”, which has been widely applied in the environmental field, where it means not waiting for full scientific certainty before taking action to prevent harm. This makes sense. However, applying the precautionary principle to freedom of expression runs a high risk of legitimising censorship, especially when combined with large fines. It creates a strong incentive for online platforms to restrict and remove content.
A wide definition of “online harms” would seriously damage freedom of expression. The Ofcom survey mentioned in the article above is quoted as finding that “45% of adult internet users had experienced some form of online harm”.
A closer look shows that the harms listed in the survey question included, for example, spam, targeted advertising and bad language. A significant proportion was rated as “moderately annoying”.
Joy Hyvarinen, head of advocacy, said: “The online harms white paper will set the direction for future internet regulation. Index is concerned that protecting freedom of expression is less important than the government wanting to be seen as ‘doing something’ in response to public pressure. Internet regulation needs a calm, evidence-based approach that safeguards freedom of expression rather than undermining it.”[/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:1554458465880-2f6a5b7d-bd9b-8″ taxonomies=”16927″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
