Abstract
Are people willing to trade liberty for safety?
Dictators like public order. They like traffic in lanes, trees lining avenues, soldiers marching in parade, not one man out of step. They don’t like anyone disturbing peace. When the Czechoslovak government arrested mild-mannered playwright Vaclav Havel during the Communist era, it was for ‘disturbing the peace’.
Peace disturbed means instability. It is the point at which people demand change and expect dictators to be accountable. Bertolt Brecht has a nice little poem about the annoyance such people cause:
After the uprising of the 17th June The Secretary of the Writer’s Union Had leaflets distributed in the Stalinallee Stating that the people Had forfeited the confidence of the government And could win it back only By redoubled efforts. Would it not be easier In that case for the government To dissolve the people And elect another?
But since another ‘people’ can’t be elected, dictators want to manipulate them, because dictators consider upholding public order as a duty of paramount importance. They distrust people because people do funny things, like think differently and change their minds, becoming swayed by demagogues with powerful oratory. People – or crowds, as Shakespeare reminds us – are fickle. Dictators think they play a role in restoring a nation’s dignity and sense of stability, especially when they seize power from elected civilian governments, which are voted in by people with disparate needs and which lack unity, resulting in fractured, weak coalitions. It is so much better, the heads of authoritarian regimes reason, to have law and order established, with no nonsense: no noise, no disturbance, and a nation marching together towards a common purpose. They give themselves names that illustrate their ethos: in Burma, the generals who jailed Aung San Suu Kyi and thousands of others in 1990, outlawing the electoral verdict that would have brought the National League of Democracy to power, called themselves the State Law and Order Restoration Council.
Since the end of the Cold War, we’ve learned a sad lesson: many people like a sense of order. They are willing to trade off liberty for safety.
Silencing dissent
Globalisation was supposed to change the way we saw our world. When the Berlin Wall fell, it was assumed that the Great Wall of China too might fall. A student had walked up to the tank on Tiananmen Square, climbed on it, and tried to plead with the soldiers to return to the barracks. Nothing is known today about who he was, and what happened to him. Thousands of students died in 1989; the country continued to pursue the path of economic progress because, as Deng Xiaoping had said, to get rich is glorious.
The internet was meant to be another major means of empowering people to challenge their governments. If the state-owned newspapers wouldn’t publish controversial opinions, blogs expanded the reach of today’s refuseniks; samizdat went online. But the moment they did, some dissidents became vulnerable, more visible. Other technologies enabled governments to find out who sent what information from where, helping them to track down the sender. Today, some 36 governments deploy spyware technology, ostensibly to fight terror and other crimes. Many more may be doing this without our knowledge.
Some governments still opt for old-fashioned ways to go after dissidents. In 2004, Shi Tao, a poet and journalist, revealed details of the Chinese government’s plans to block coverage of the 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre, using information he’d received via his Yahoo! email account. The Chinese government simply approached Yahoo! and asked for details about the anonymous message. Shi Tao was tracked down and arrested. He is still serving a jail term. Egyptian and Tunisian activists and journalists also used mobile and internet technologies to make their voices heard (despite government attempts – with some success – at blocking networks), but these innovations did little to support Syrian dissidents in their pursuit to get information out, or to prevent Syria’s disintegration as a nation-state.
In other words, the more the world has changed, the more it has remained the same. States don’t like giving up the power they already possess. Many states saw the emergence of the internet as a threat – they have now used the power within their laws, and the opportunity that the war on terror provides, to extend those laws in the cybersphere to go after people who challenge political orthodoxy. Dictatorships are doing it, but often, democracies are no better. (Consider the transparency reports of Google and Twitter, for example.)
Then consider the case of India, the world’s most populous democracy, with a vibrant press and a country that takes its elections seriously. Governments change hands after elections and nobody seriously believes a military coup is ever possible. And yet, the Indian government asks Google, Facebook, Blackberry, Twitter, and other Indian Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to remove or block content it does not like. India does this more than most other governments in the world. It praises domestic companies for their compliance, singling out multinationals for non-cooperation. It expects these companies to comply because its own laws permit it. Under Indian law, individuals can lodge cases against those who disrupt communal harmony; a study by the Centre for Internet and Society revealed that when its researchers made random requests to internet companies, asking for specific pages to be removed, some of the companies complied beyond what was requested, blocking entire websites.
This has become possible because governments like establishing controls on free expression; companies comply with such laws by arguing that they always abide by the rule of law. But it’s also because, in many parts of the world, the public approves of restrictions. The dismaying reality is that people who would otherwise benefit from free exchange of views want to impose restrictions on views they disagree with or find repulsive.
Vociferous, well-organised and influential public campaigns often support government restrictions.
In Britain, a coalition of celebrities, politicians and former journalists, outraged by the behaviour of some sections of the media, nearly succeeded in introducing state-sanctioned controls on the media, ostensibly to protect the privacy of citizens. Following the Leveson Inquiry, a spirited battle by bloggers, journalists and civil society groups (including Index on Censorship, ARTICLE 19 and English PEN) challenged the campaign. ‘We know no spectacle so ridiculous as the British public in one of its periodical fits of morality,’ wrote Thomas Babington Macaulay. Such fits of moral outrage aren’t restricted to the British. Middle-class morality is a useful shield to defend a society against the onslaught of vulgarity in other parts of the world too. Pratibha Naithani, an academic in Mumbai, has run successful campaigns against adult films being shown on television, and courts and government have complied by imposing restrictions.
ABOVE: Tunisian citizens galvanised support for protest online, which helped them oust President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. The sign reads ‘Ben Ali, Leave!’, 14 January 2011
Credit: epa/Alamy
The essence of freedom of expression
What accounts for the public acceptance of restrictions? Most people like to say they believe in freedom of expression. But the caveats come in quickly – not if it offends someone’s religion (as an Indian ISP executive said at the recent Stockholm Internet Forum); not if it exploits children; not if it incites hatred; not if it helps criminals and terrorists; not if it is immoral; and not if it destabilises society. In six swift strokes, the caveats have drained out the very essence of freedom of expression. But if something doesn’t offend, it is probably not provocative or interesting.
Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) categorically says: ‘Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.’ But its nobility and universality get curtailed when the same right is read in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The first two clauses of the Covenant elaborate on what the UDHR states:
Everyone shall have the right to hold opinions without interference.
Everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of his choice.
But there is a third clause:
3. The exercise of the rights provided for in paragraph 2 of this article carries with it special duties and responsibilities. It may therefore be subject to certain restrictions, but these shall only be such as are provided by law and are necessary:
For respect of the rights or reputations of others; For the protection of national security or of public order (ordre public), or of public health or morals.
Public order has become an excuse to silent inconvenient voices
The restrictive clause is fairly broad-brush – defence of ‘reputations’ can potentially lead to endless libel trials, and the sub-clause (b) can allow a government to use any excuse to prevent the dissemination of unpopular ideas, if, in its opinion, it affects national security, public order, or public health or morals.
The European Convention on Human Rights adds even more caveats: ‘The exercise of these freedoms, since it carries with it duties and responsibilities, may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence, or for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary.’
And as if that is not enough, there is Article 8, which states the right of privacy such that it enables anyone to use the law to prevent any possible criticism of an individual’s conduct if it violates his privacy.
Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence.
There shall be no interference by a public authority with the exercise of this right except such as is in accordance with the law and is necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security, public safety or the economic well-being of the country, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.
It is important to note that these laws have not emerged from a vacuum: they represent the consensus view of what lawmakers assume to be good for society. And, looking back, governments notice that those who have challenged or provoked society have often had to surrender eventually – because the majority view must prevail; because disturbing the peace is not good for society. There is a saying in East Asia: the bamboo shoot that is too tall is the first to get chopped off.
And yet, it is by constantly questioning authority, challenging conventional wisdom, defying the ruling class, and exhorting the people to take to the streets that mavericks have encouraged an apathetic public to seek change. They force others to think and demand change, because the status quo won’t do.
Lands in need of heroes
At the end of Costa Gavras’s classic film Z (1969), the junta that takes over the country (which was a thinly disguised portrayal of Greece) stops an inconvenient inquiry into a political death and removes the investigator from the case. It promptly bans a long list of works, people, and ideas: the rolling crawl at the end of the film mentions what’s banned: ‘Peace movements, strikes, labour unions, long hair on men, the Beatles, other modern and popular music (‘la musique populaire’), Sophocles, Leo Tolstoy, Aeschylus, writing that describes Socrates as a homosexual, Eugene Ionesco, Jean-Paul Sartre, Anton Chekhov, Harold Pinter, Edward Albee, Mark Twain, Samuel Beckett, the bar association, sociology, international encyclopaedias, free press, new math, and the letter Z.’ (The letter means ‘he lives’ in Greece, alluding to the slain politician whose murder is at the heart of the film.)
States ban; people figure out a way to defy bans. Even when they acquiesce, they figure out ways to challenge the state. Socrates urged individuals to honour principles over blindly following the will of the majority - he was accused of corrupting the youth and asked to drink poison. Galileo was forced to recant his theory that the earth revolved around the sun. James Joyce’s Ulysses was published in France because the English-speaking world was horrified by the author’s imagination. Nazis burned the books of Jewish and left-leaning authors at Babelplatz in Berlin. Aleksandar Solzhenitsyn, Andrei Sakharov and Osip Mandelstam were sent to the gulag or into exile because they challenged the Soviet worldview.
ABOVE: Innovative and influential playwright Anton Chekhov was among those on the fictional banned list featured in Costa Gavras’s 1969 film Z. The film focuses on a junta takeover of an unnamed country, a thinly disguised portrayal of Greece
Credit: CSU Archives/Everett Collection/Rex Features
Indonesia’s President Suharto sent the controversial writer Pramoedya Ananta Toer to Buru, a remote island used to jail dissenters. It was convenient for Suharto to jail Pramoedya, whose radical ideas supported communism. Ayatollah Khomeini pronounced a fatwa on Salman Rushdie for writing The Satanic Verses. Bangladeshi fundamentalists hounded out writer Taslima Nasrin because, in her fiction, she challenged the reality of Islamic orthodoxy in her country. Burmese generals imposed a 59-year jail term on the humourist and writer Zarganar (later reduced to 35 years; he is now free, after serving three years in jail). Hindu fundamentalists in India drove the painter MF Husain out of the country, forcing him into exile because they were offended by his paintings of Hindu deities in the nude. Lasantha Wickremetunge, editor of the Sunday Leader in Sri Lanka, was murdered – a death he had anticipated – for his spirited challenge of the Sri Lankan government. The list is long, and can go on.
What is it that united these ideas and people? They challenge, question and critique the established order; they provoke new thought, fresh ideas. And in almost each instance, there were people who benefited from the system and who were not part of the government who supported the arrests and clampdowns. The real significance of Galileo’s treatment is illustrated in Brecht’s eponymous play. When the character of Andrea laments that ‘Unhappy is the land without heroes’, Galileo responds: ‘No, unhappy the land that is in need of heroes’.
When writers, artists and philosophers challenge orthodoxy they are seen as dangerous – and it is also the point at which the possibility of real change is visible.
In each of these instances, the battle for free expression is fought by a few, not many. These writers and artists disturb the sense of complacency and self-assuredness that a society feels about itself; often, that society doesn’t want inconvenient thoughts and ideas to destabilise its comfortable universe. And so the public acquiesces, keeping the battle between the individual and the state unequal.
Public order, then, has become an excuse to silence inconvenient voices. Sometimes, those voices are silenced forever. Since the passage of the Right to Information Act in India in 2007, many Indian activists have made use of the law. Twenty-three people have been killed, one has committed suicide, 55 have been assaulted, one has been shot, and 71 have faced harassment. There has been little outcry in India over these shocking statistics.
The end of globalisation and the spread of the internet were supposed to free us; the world would be more like the United States, not the Soviet Union; more like India, not China. But the same technology makes surveillance easier, and the ‘war on terror’ has allowed governments to erode our freedoms - and how! Look at the scale and reach of the Prism project, which enables officials to monitor internet activity in the US. And when democracies – wealthy ones, like the US, those in the European Union, or developing countries, like India – curtail freedoms, other countries feel emboldened and maintain their intrusive infrastructure.
Technology, laws, democracy, openness, globalisation, the internet: these were the means that were supposed to empower individuals. Instead they have been used as tools to identify and single out vulnerable, brave individuals. And the public is complicit in the charade. Welcome to the brave new world.