Abstract
A round-up of events in the world of free expression from Index’s unparalleled network of writers and activists Edited by
Pictured: A Palestinian artist paints a mural in honour of slain Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in Gaza City on 12 May 2022, the day after she was killed. Abu Akleh was shot while covering an Israeli raid in the occupied West Bank town of Jenin. The journalist was known for her balanced coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. As yet no one has been held officially accountable. A Palestinian investigation concluded she was intentionally shot by an Israeli soldier, but Israel’s defence minister called the report “a blatant lie”.
CREDIT: Majdi Fathi/NurPhoto/Getty
Election Watch
CREDIT: (Marcos) Christian Roar Pedersen, CC-BY-2.0; (Lourenço) Olaf Kosinsky, CC BY-SA 3.0-de, (Odinga) Simbawamara, CC BY-SA 4.0
In May, the Philippines elected a dictator’s son to run the country. The new president is Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr, whose father was the notorious Ferdinand Marcos, a dictator who ruled over the country between 1965 and 1986.
In his speech after his electoral victory, Marcos Jr said “judge me not by my ancestors, but by my actions”, perhaps an attempt to distance himself from his father’s legacy. However, during his campaign he used the slogan “together we shall rise again”, hinting at a return to former greatness that many understood as a reference to his father. On his first official day as president, he only invited three reporters, from SMNI, NET25 and GMA News, to a press conference. SMNI and NET25’s owners openly supported Marcos Jr’s campaign.
He leads with vice-president Sara Duterte, daughter of former President Rodrigo Duterte, who was the leader from 2016 through to 2022. Under his leadership, human rights and media freedom severely deteriorated.
Tensions are building in Angola as the general election scheduled for August approaches. João Lourenço, the current president, is seeking re-election as head of the People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola, a party that has run the country since 1975.
Lourenço is expected to be challenged by the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (Unita), who joined forces with other opposition parties to create the Patriotic Front, with Adalberto Costa Júnior chosen as their candidate.
Angola has been facing an economic crisis due to its dependence on oil exports and an increase in prices. To make things worse, there are concerns about the election’s transparency – Lourenço has proposed a bill to centralise the counting of votes, which is usually done by each county and province.
There have also been crackdowns on peaceful protesters. In April, 22 people were arrested in Luanda for taking to the streets to call for free elections.
9 AUGUST
As Kenya once again prepares to go to the polls, there are fears it could be similar to the 2017 elections, which were marred by intense ethnic violence. With incumbent President Uhuru Kenyatta not eligible to run for a third term, the contest is likely to be between William Ruto from the United Democratic Alliance party and Kenyatta’s vice president, and Raila Odinga, from the Orange Democratic Movement.
In 2017, Odinga lost to Kenyatta but claimed polling results were manipulated and that the electoral system had been hacked and was rife with fraud. As soon as word spread that Kenyatta was re-elected, violence and protests scaled up. There were numerous human rights violations, with some people killed.
Kenyatta and Ruto have also had a bitter fall-out and are no longer presenting a common face as they did when they were first elected. At the beginning of May, Ruto accused Kenyatta of not convening a cabinet meeting for two years.
The Kenyan people don’t really trust the country’s electoral management body, the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission, who were blamed for the post-election violence that took over in 2017.
The Latest from Our Campaigns
The proposed Online Safety Bill has simple, laudable aims – to make the online sphere safer. But despite almost seven years of debate, thousands of hours of parliamentary scrutiny, analysis from civil society, business and the media, there is still significant uncertainty about how the bill will work in practice.
To fill this gap and help explain what the bill will mean in practice, the Legal to Say, Legal to Type campaign, which includes Index, has instructed media law expert Gavin Millar QC of Matrix Chambers to produce the first analysis of the implications of the Online Safety Bill on UK citizens’ freedom of speech.
The QC’s opinion explains and analyses the broad implications of the government’s new online safety regime against current freedom of expression laws and found that the bill will significantly curtail freedom of expression in a way that has profound consequences for the British media and journalism, courts and the UK’s digital economy. The bill gives the Secretary of State overseeing the legislation unprecedented powers to curtail freedom of expression with limited parliamentary scrutiny.
Read the QC’s report at
Physical attacks on journalists have increased dramatically over the past year, according to the latest annual report from the Council of Europe (CoE) Platform on media freedom in Europe.
The platform, of which Index on Censorship is a partner, reports on serious threats to the safety of journalists and media freedom in Europe in order to reinforce the CoE’s response to the threats and member states’ accountability.
The new report, Defending Press Freedom in Times of Tension and Conflict, reveals that the number of cases involving the safety and physical integrity of journalists has jumped by 51% year-on-year, with 82 cases reported to the platform.
Many of the attacks on journalists have taken place during public protests.
“Violence against journalists during street protests is fed by a wave of media bashing and an avalanche of hate speech on social networks – very often prompted by political figures – which directly target journalists, questioning their independence and legitimacy and therefore making them more vulnerable to physical aggression,” the report says.
Overall, the number of alerts in all categories published by the CoE platform has sky-rocketed to 280 in 2021, up from around 200 in 2020 and more than double the level reported in 2016. Of the 280 alerts, 110 related to the harassment and intimidation of journalists.
Read more on the report at
Ink spot
PATRICK CHAPPATTE, PRESIDENT of the Freedom Cartoonists Foundation, said at the May award ceremony in Geneva: “We are particularly proud to present them with the Kofi Annan Courage in Cartooning Award in the presence of prominent journalists and co-laureates of the Nobel
Peace Prize, Maria Ressa and Dmity Muratov: they all share a strong sense of justice and a will to resist. Cartoonists do it through their art and take huge risks in showing the emperor is naked and in depicting the full brutality of autocrats.”
Pàpai works for the only remaining opposition newspaper in Hungary Nepszava, which has been the subject of attacks and legal proceedings by the authorities.
Pàpai continues to critically observe and draw all political actors in Hungary and beyond.
This cartoon shows his take on the evolution of man.
People Watch
CREDIT: (Jenull) Miran Hladnik, CC BY-SA 4.0; (Orlov) Anna Artemyeva; (Shevchenko) Ekzemplyar, CC BY-SA 4.0; (Danilovich) Frontline Defenders
Jasã Jenull is a theatre director and activist from Slovenia who got into hot water after engaging in peaceful protests in the country against outgoing Prime Minister Janez Jansa and his government. Jenull has denied being behind the protests but faces the possibility of paying thousands in legal costs.
According to Amnesty International, these arbitrary actions seek to intimidate and constrain other demonstrators, as well as silencing and putting a financial strain on people fighting for human rights.
On 6 March 2022, Oleg Orlov, member of the Council of the Human Rights Center Memorial, was arrested after attending a peaceful protest against the war in Ukraine. He was charged with “violating the established procedure” for a demonstration. Following a 10 hour detention, he was released but was fined.
A month later, Orlov was arrested again due to another anti-war demonstration. Even though he was set free on the same day, he could be sentenced to five years in jail.
Olena Shevchenko, an important LGBTQI and women’s rights voice in Ukraine, was forced to leave Kyiv for Lviv when Russia invaded.
On 14 April 2022, Shevchenko was assaulted by two unidentified individuals who threw tear gas on her face, burning her face, eyes and hands. She later reported it to the police.
Harassing LGBTQI people is not something new in Ukraine. Shevchenko herself has already been a victim, when two men beat her in Kyiv in 2019 while yelling homophobic words.
On 29 April 2022, human rights defender Irina Danilovich was abducted in Koktebel, Crimea as she returned home from work. Police told her father that she had “transferred unclassified information to a foreign state”.
Danilovich has spoken out about the response of the healthcare system during Covid and been labelled a foreign agent. At the time of going to press, she was being held in a detention centre in Crimea’s capital, Simferopol where she faces up to eight years in prison.
‘We feel responsible for the future of Russophone culture’
During a historical catastrophe a cultural institution has to reinvent itself. After Russia invaded Ukraine, Pushkin House handed over its social media accounts to artists from Ukraine for them to share their experiences of the war. Several artists took up this opportunity, including Olia Fedorova, Anton Karyuk, Mykyta Lyskov and Kateryna Lysovenko.
As an independent cultural organisation, we feel responsible for the future of Russophone culture and it is our duty to create opportunities for people in the UK to express solidarity with Ukraine. We have platformed those voices that speak out effectively against the war. One of the most impressive oppositional forces that has appeared recently in Russia is the Feminist Anti-War Resistance. Pushkin House has organised a panel discussion with one of its coordinators, Ella Rossman. A new political movement is being shaped that amasses tens of thousands of participants. Pushkin House has also organised several successful fundraising events, including an art sale at the end of March. It contributed towards the financial security of Yellow Fields Blue Skies, a grassroot initiative that provides psychological support to women and children displaced in Ukraine.
Given the Russian state’s crackdown on independent thinking inside the country, it is crucial for us in London to use our free voice as an institution and promote this important collective anti-war message.
Banned Books Watch
In this graphic novel, Kobabe, who uses e/em/eir pronouns, takes us on a visual journey through eir own journey of gender identity. E explores topics like first kisses, the importance of names, and who’s allowed to remove their shirt at the beach. Kobabe wrote the book not only for teens, but for eir own family, who struggled to get to grips with what it means to be non-binary.
This autobiography faced such strong opposition that it landed the spot of most banned book in the USA last year, being removed from specific libraries and classrooms across multiple states.
Like many others in the top 10, the censor’s pen was wielded due to LGBT content. South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster wrote a letter to the department of education saying the book contained “sexually explicit and pornographic depictions, which easily meet or exceed the statutory definition of obscenity”.
Journalist and activist George M Johnson, who uses they/them pronouns, recounts their experiences of race and sexuality in this memoir. They lay out memories and explore their identity through a collection of essays, showing what it’s like growing up in New Jersey as a Black, queer person. The book deals with bullying, consent, and in one scene, Johnson recounts an experience of sexual assault that they experienced as a child.
Libraries and classrooms in a number of states removed the book from their shelves, following complaints that it contained sexually explicit material.
Moms for Liberty, one of the groups spearheading the campaign for the book to be banned nationwide, tweeted: “They [school board members] want to rob children of their innocence.” Multiple reviews on Amazon condemn the book with one word: “Porn!”
This American Dream story follows Mike Munoz, a young gay man who is on a journey of discovery, trying desperately to get ahead in the world.
Like the other books in the most-banned line up, this semi-autobiographical novel was taken off shelves for its LGBT content and sexually explicit material. One of the offending passages describes a sexual encounter between two primary school aged boys. In Leander, Texas, police are even investigating the book being in school libraries.
On Instagram, Evison wrote: “I have received a number of threats to my health this week, because a lady in Texas is on a crusade to get Lawn Boy banned, because it features a gay protagonist who has had gay life experiences.”
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has since signed a bill that allows parents to search lists of books available in schools, and to object. He specifically referenced Lawn Boy as containing passages of “paedophilia”.
World In Focus: Ethiopia
On 1 May 2022, eight armed men raided the residence of editor and founder of the privately-owned YouTube-based broadcaster Voice of Amhara, Gobeze Sisay, abducting him, and holding and questioning him for eight days.
During his detention, Sisay was repeatedly questioned about his critical reporting and affiliations with opposition political groups and was warned to stop such reporting or they would detain him again.
Sisay told the Committee to Protect Journalists on his release that he believed some of the men were members of the Ethiopian National Defense Force.
Angela Quintal, CPJ’s Africa programme coordinator, said:
“Instead of arresting reporters, the government must act swiftly to expose those within its ranks who seek to silence and harass the press, and should publicly commit to ensuring that all journalists can work safely without fear of arrest or prosecution.”
On 6 April 2022 Tamerat Negera Feyisa, co-founder and editor of the Terara Network online news outlet, was released on bail but only after spending four months in a detention facility in Oromia regional state.
Tamerat was arrested on 10 December 2021 as part of a nationwide state of emergency declared a month earlier, which had seen 14 journalists detained, according to the CPJ.
It is believed he was detained for alleged dissemination of disinformation, smearing the name of Oromia regional state, and defaming senior Ethiopian government officials including Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed Ali.
However, the journalist was not charged with any crime during those four months.
The Ethiopian Human Rights Commission said it is investigating a video which has been circulating on social media, showing fighters in the Ethiopian army uniform abusing and shooting a young boy from Tigray. The soldiers taunted, kicked and stoned the boy before shooting him in the stomach.
Reuters reported that one solider said, “Don’t kill him, let him suffer,” while another said: “He can’t talk now, we were first supposed to get information from him.”
The soldiers then force banknotes into the boy’s mouth and threaten to bury him alive.
In April, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch released a report stating that administrators in the Western Tigray zone, as well as regional officials and security forces from Ethiopia’s Amhara region, are responsible for a campaign of ethnic cleansing, carried out through crimes against humanity and war crimes, targeting Tigrayan civilians in Western Tigray.
Our first and founding editor writes…
Dear Editor,
Congratulations on producing such a compendious edition of Index to celebrate the magazine’s 50th anniversary. Its articles shine a bright light on the practice of censorship over the past half-century. I was surprised however to see you have set your new account of Index’s history, Dissidents, Spies, and the Lies that Came in from the Cold, for which I was interviewed, in the context of the Cold War. We were not fighting the Cold War in the period you mention, nor did we have any truck with outfits such as the CIA, which was the business of statesmen and politicians, not crusaders for human rights. What Index fought was censorship (as the author, Martin Bright, correctly notes) all over the world, and in the name of freedom of expression, a human right that transcended wars and was violated on all sides. It may sound like a small distinction, but is an important one, and explains, among other things, why Index is still here.
Tech Watch: Elon Musk’s On-Off Twitter Deal
ON 25 APRIL, Twitter announced that it had entered into a definitive agreement to be acquired by an entity wholly owned by the world’s richest man, tech entrepreneur Elon Musk, in a transaction valued at approximately $44 billion.
Musk has hinted for several years that he might be interested in buying the platform. In the announcement, Musk was quick to outline his plans for the platform, making freedom of expression activists nervous. He said: “Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated. I also want to make Twitter better than ever by enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all humans.”
Musk describes himself as a “free speech absolutist”, posting that he would not remove access to Russian news sources through his satellite internet company Starlink, “except at gunpoint”. He later clarified his position on free speech, saying: “By “free speech”, I simply mean that which matches the law. I am against censorship that goes far beyond the law. If people want less free speech, they will ask government to pass laws to that effect. Therefore, going beyond the law is contrary to the will of the people.”
There was speculation that Musk’s acquisition would see him reinstate Donald Trump to the platform. The former president was permanently banned from Twitter on 8 January 2021 “due to the risk of further incitement of violence” following the storming of the US Capitol by his supporters. Trump himself says he won’t rejoin, even though his own platform is struggling.
The commitment of Twitter’s other investors to free speech is also worth considering. Saudi Arabia’s Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Al Saud owns 5.2% of Twitter through personal holdings and through Kingdom Holding. He initially rejected Musk’s offer, saying it undervalued the company.
Digital civil rights organisation Access Now wrote an open letter to Twitter shareholders and financial institutions looking to back the deal calling for it to be examined in more detail. The signatories said, “Twitter’s content moderation policies, which have been put in place to ensure user protection, are at risk under Elon Musk’s leadership. In fact, Musk appears to view these policies as a form of censorship and is reportedly considering measures to weaken these protections.”
In early June, Musk’s lawyers wrote to Twitter accusing it of not providing sufficient detail on its false users and threatening to terminate the deal.
To Think, To Express, To Be
THE FIRST THING I do when I wake up every day is check the growing WhatsApp, Signal and Telegram groups on my phone. I see picture after picture of beaten and bruised men, women in distress and, sometimes, dead bodies.
Then I open Twitter to see what Afghans have shared on groups there. Again, I’m flooded with pictures and videos of men, women and children running after a loaf of bread, men being tied to a pole or held by four others while being tortured or women protesting yet another violation of their rights.
Then I open my Apple News app and click on the word “Afghanistan” – which I’ve followed as a topic – just to see if any of the user-generated content has been verified by any mainstream media or what stories have been written from or about the country. About 95% of what I read on the app is written by non-Afghan journalists or Afghans who now live in exile. This is because, since the Taliban regained power in August 2021, many journalists have left Afghanistan or are no longer in the profession.
According to a report by the International Federation of Journalists published in February 2022, only 305 out of 623 media outlets remain active in Afghanistan following the Taliban takeover. There were up to 6,000 journalists before August 2021; that figure is now 2,334. Female journalists are most affected – only 243 of the 979 women are still in their jobs.
On top of that, the Taliban authorities have introduced several measures which Afghan journalists say increasingly restrict their ability to do their jobs. New guidelines from the Vice and Virtue Ministry ordered female TV presenters and other women on screen to cover their faces while on air. Previous decrees issued by the same ministry prohibited soap operas and entertainment programmes featuring female actors.
Prince Charles talks with Sana Safi BBC Afghan senior presenter while visiting the TV studio at BBC Broadcasting House in London, April 2022
CREDIT: Hannah McKay/Alamy
Friends, colleagues and ordinary Afghans I talk to about what’s happening – especially regarding the media – are worried. They are worried about not being able to access free and impartial news, anxious about being cut off from the rest of the world, and concerned about what this means for their rights to think, to express and even to be.
What gives me hope and inspires me every day are the men and women in Afghanistan who, despite all the difficulties and increasing restrictions from the de-facto authorities, remain committed to delivering the sort of free and fair news that Afghans so desperately need.