1. Freedom of Speech

Category Archives: Freedom of Speech

HRW slams draft election laws

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Proposed election laws drafted in Cambodias National Assembly limit freedom of speech, assembly and a host of other rights, a statement released by Human Rights Watch (HRW) yesterday says.

The release criticises the Cambodian Peoples Party and Cambodia National Rescue Party for drafting legislation that includes such elements as a ban on insults to political parties by NGOs, and a shortening of campaign and rally periods.

Its hardly surprising that the CPP proposed these provisions, but the CNRP shares the blame for agreeing to criminalize and censor speech and limit the publics right to hold campaign rallies, HRW Asia director Brad Adams is quoted as saying.

HRW also took issue with the fact that the proposed laws were drafted between the CPP and CNRP without any consultation or the participation of civil society. But CPP officials have repeatedly rebuffed criticisms from other civil society groups making similar complaints, saying that NGOs hold no place in the government.

CNRP MP Eng Chhay Eang, who helped draft the prospective laws, yesterday called them imperfect, but defended them as an improvement.

In this proposed law, at least we have new [National Election Committee] members; before, NEC members were from only one party, Chhay Eang said yesterday. We have a new voter registration system, for which all voters need IDs.

ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY CHHAY CHANNYDA

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HRW slams draft election laws

Malaysia resurrects indefinite detention, passes anti-terror act

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Prime Minister Najib Razak had promised a new era of greater civil liberties. Photo: Bloomberg

Bangkok: Malaysia's government has revived a law that allows indefinite detention without charge that critics say could usher in a new wave of repression in the south-east Asian nation.

Parliament's passing of a highly contentious Prevention of Terrorism Act comes amid a crackdown on freedom of speech and civil rights where dozens of people have been arrested under a draconian Sedition Act and face up to five years jail.

The government argues the power to detain terrorism suspects without trial, court challenges or legal representation is necessary to combat the rising threat of extremists drawn to groups such as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

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Police claim that 17 militants arrested this week across Malaysia were plotting to attack army camps and police stations. None of them have been named.

Authorities have repeatedly warned that dozens of people from Muslim-majority Malaysia have volunteered for IS jihad.

"This is a real threat and prevention measures are needed," said Home Minister Zahid Hamidi.

But opposition MPs, human rights and civil society groups have attacked the new anti-terror law, which they say is a revival of a colonial-era Internal Security Act that was used to silence the government's opponents before it was repealed in 2012, as Malaysia Prime Minister NajibRazakpledged a new era of greater civil liberties.

Analysts say the Prime Minister's hard line is in response to criticisms of him by conservative figures in his ruling United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), including former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad, who has called on him to resign.

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Malaysia resurrects indefinite detention, passes anti-terror act

AMSA: Freedom of Speech – Where Should The Boundaries Lie? Birmingham University – Video

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AMSA: Freedom of Speech - Where Should The Boundaries Lie? Birmingham University
16/02/15 The recent heinous Charlie Hebdo massacre has triggered a whirlwind of discussion regarding the role and nature of free speech within our society. As the debate continues, this joint...

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AMSA: Freedom of Speech - Where Should The Boundaries Lie? Birmingham University - Video

Cultures of Intolerance Podcast 3: ‘Satire: Whose freedom of speech?’ audience discussion. – Video

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Cultures of Intolerance Podcast 3: #39;Satire: Whose freedom of speech? #39; audience discussion.
Podcast 3: Panel Discussion One: "Satire:Whose Freedom of Speech?" Audience discussion and summing up. Panelists: Merryl Wyn Davies (Muslim Institute), Tim Sanders (cartoonist), Pavan Dhaliwal.

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Cultures of Intolerance Podcast 3: 'Satire: Whose freedom of speech?' audience discussion. - Video

Friends of Science Promotes Freedom of Speech on Climate Change in English and French as a Precious Human Right

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Calgary, Alberta, Canada (PRWEB) April 09, 2015

In response to the 'denier' hunt on Barack Obama's website, Friends of Science Society has released two video productions promoting freedom of speech on climate change. The English version questions why people must follow the religion of the IPCC and informs people of past witch hunts during the Little Ice Age where people were tortured and executed for weather cooking. The video entitled "Freedom of thought" is on YouTube. youtu.be/I0TxfZZN59k

Friends of Science salute the integrity and courage of the thousands of scientists who hold informed and rational, dissenting views on the alleged climate change 'consensus' who are now being cyber attacked as deniers on virtually every front in the US as reported in the Washington Times Mar. 5, 2015. In a Nov. 18, 2013 article in Macleans magazine, while on tour in Australia, Canadian eco-guru David Suzuki reportedly " drew criticism for suggesting the countrys new prime minister, Tony Abbott, is guilty of negligence and crimes against future generations for scrapping a carbon tax..."

The second video, in French, is an on-camera rendition of an earlier blog post by Friends of Science wherein Freedom of Speech/Libert de parole is the central focus, reminding people that the Declaration of the Rights of Man were developed during the brutal climate of the Little Ice Age, when famine gripped most of Europe. The YouTube video is here: youtu.be/16GJbs4U0Qg An English version of the text was published by Troy Media, Dec. 5, 2014 and the HuffPost covered the charitable foundation angle of the story Nov. 13, 2014.

Article 11 of that declaration says:"The free communication of thoughts and opinions is one of the most precious rights of man: any citizen thus may speak, write, print freely, save to respond to the abuse of this liberty, in the cases determined by the law."

Friends of Science are calling out the climate change bullies with these two videos and asking people who stand for freedom, justice, and scientific inquiry to stand with them and stop the climate change bullies.

About Friends of Science have spent a decade reviewing a broad spectrum of literature on climate change and have concluded the sun is the main driver of climate change, not carbon dioxide (CO2). The core group of the Friends of Science is a growing group of earth, atmospheric and solar scientists, engineers and citizens.

Friends of Science Society P.O. Box 23167, Mission P.O. Calgary, Alberta Canada T2S 3B1 Toll-free Telephone: 1-888-789-9597 Web: friendsofscience.org E-mail: contact(at)friendsofscience(dot)org

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Friends of Science Promotes Freedom of Speech on Climate Change in English and French as a Precious Human Right

Sedition: A vague crime punishable by incarceration

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Effect of decriminalising criticism of government may be illusory.

KUALA LUMPUR: In an ironic twist in the wee hours of this morning, the constitutional right of freedom of speech was effectively jettisoned by Parliament via amendments passed to the Sedition Act 1948.

Effectively, that right was surrendered in favour of the right of the authorities to prosecute and incarcerate citizens for speaking on a whole host of subjects deemed seditious irrespective of criminal intent, ill-will or even the fact that the content of the matter spoken was true.

Under the Act as amended, a seditious tendency is now defined as a tendency to:

bring into hatred or contempt or excite dissatisfaction against any Ruler;

attempt to procure, the alteration, otherwise than by lawful means, of any matter as by law established;

raise discontent or disaffection amongst the subjects of Agong or the Ruler of any State or amongst the inhabitants of Malaysia or of any State;

promote feelings of ill will, hostility or hatred between different races or classes of the population of Malaysia;

promote feelings of ill will, hostility or hatred between persons or groups of persons on the ground of religion;

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Sedition: A vague crime punishable by incarceration

Saying less, talking more: my antisocial multiplayer experience

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Freedom of speech in multiplayer is overrated. It's hard to argue that when people have the power to say anything to their teammates or opponents online, things can go south pretty quickly. For every affable or witty stranger you meet in a multiplayer match, there seem to be at least five players who derive their self-worth through anonymous aggression. That's one of the many reasons I've come to appreciate the way some games utilize controlled conversation, retaining most of the good and expunging the bad. They force you to be creative in how you communicate, while feeling infinitely safer for an antisocial gamer like me.

I've found myself drawn to two games that implement brilliant systems for limiting - but not eliminating - the dialogue between players. There's Hearthstone, where you can only communicate via a stock selection of six basic emotes, with unique voiceovers to match your chosen character. Meanwhile, you've got the messaging system in Bloodborne, which continues the Souls series' tradition of letting you leave notes for other players. It relies on a fill-in-the-blank format that offers more possibilities than Hearthstone, but still ultimately confines what you're allowed to express to other players. And though I can technically say less with these systems than all-speak text or open voice chat, they make we want to socialize so much more.

If you've never been a shy person, the idea of fearing multiplayer communication might seem strange. And it's not that I fear the conversations themselves; it's more about the ways they can detract from my gameplay experience by putting me in an awkward or uncomfortable position. Nobody likes being berated by strangers, but in the multiplayer arena, people seem to assume that everyone just has a thick skin by necessity, and that whoever's on the other end of that monitor or TV screen can take it. Those assumptions create a space where one person doesn't see the harm in a little smack talk, and another observes something very hostile that they want no part in.

I'll admit, straight-up, that I can be a pretty antisocial guy - the kind who's perfectly content to sit in his room playing games while a party rages in his living room. But I can also be outgoing when the situation calls for it (meeting someone for the first time, a job interview, dating, and so on). It's just that this extroversion can only be maintained for so long before I need a break, and being chatty with people I don't know on the internet feels like an expenditure of that same energy. I still want human connection in games, of course - otherwise, I'd simply avoid multiplayer games altogether. But it feels like I've been conditioned to assume that taking part in an online conversation with a stranger will either detract from my experience or waste my time and mental energy altogether.

Riot Games has put a ton of effort and resources into reducing 'toxic player behavior' in League of Legends, spending what must be thousands of dollars at this point to analyze what makes people act like a-holes, and what subtle tweaks can trick them into curbing their a-hole-ishness. But Hearthstone and Bloodborne sidestep the need for any of these psychological cues or slaps on the virtual wrist for bad sportsmanship, because their mechanics for multiplayer exchanges simply don't permit the kind of behavior that LoL is determined to correct. They solve the problem by preventing it from ever happening in the first place, without taking away the possibility for making connections and building rapport.

The most obvious benefit to limited correspondence between players is the fact that you'll never be on the receiving end of a verbal assault, whether it's some pre-teen screaming at you through a mic or a grown-up spewing profanities and racial epithets like their life depended on it. But there's also a strenuous side to any nice conversations you strike up with strangers. It's that awkward feeling when you want to stop talking, but they don't; when you seriously consider moving someone from your friends list to the blocked list, just to avoid that sinking feeling when they send you an unwanted invite to join them. I can vividly remember playing World of Warcraft and feeling like I owed my time to people who I only knew through guild chat, prioritizing their concerns over my real-life responsibilities. That's pretty unhealthy when it stretches for weeks on end.

My disillusionment with the value of online interaction wasn't just a product of being a hardcore MMO raider, either. There was that one time I was having a friendly chat with a Diablo 2 player, and we got to talking about how we both liked fighting games. For whatever reason, he saw this two-hour conversation as an invitation to ask if he could stay over at my house if he ever attended a tournament nearby. Or the day that I legitimately felt like a worthless piece of subhuman garbage after being berated in League of Legends by a premade group of teammates for losing us the game. Whatever made that Diablo guy feel so attached, or those LoL players so hateful, exchanging words was the root of the problem, and it made me vulnerable. After a while, saying nothing just felt so much safer.

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Saying less, talking more: my antisocial multiplayer experience

Sedition is not murder

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Lawyers criticise proposed amendments as a serious attack of freedom of speech.

PETALING JAYA: Constitutional and civil liberty lawyers have criticised the proposed amendments to the Sedition Act, 1948 as a serious attack on freedom of speech, the Malay Mail reports.

Although the amendments recently tabled in Parliament via the Sedition (Amendments) Bill 2015 contain positive aspects by seeking to decriminalise criticism of government and the administration of justice, several other provisions make unacceptable inroads into the freedom of speech and the liberty of citizens, lawyers say.

The Bill makes for a chilling read, constitutional lawyer Syahredzan Johan was quoted as saying, and amounts to the most serious attack on freedom of speech Malaysia has ever seen.

Lawyers took issue with several provisions contained in the Act.

Chief among them was the creation of a new offence.

The proposed new section 4(1A) of the Act makes it an offence for anyone to utter seditious words which cause bodily injury or damage to property and imposes a minimum term of imprisonment of five years and a maximum of twenty years as punishment.

The loose wording of the provision has raised suspicion as to its actual intent, a senior lawyer told FMT today.

To me it appears ultimately to be targeting statements made at political rallies and other assemblies, and runs counter to the Peaceful Assembly Act, 2012, which the Prime Minister himself initiated, he said.

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Sedition is not murder

The fastest way to spread extremism is with the censors boot

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After the Charlie Hebdo shootings, heads of state marched abreast in Paris in symbolic defence of Frances long tradition of freedom of speech. This seemed reassuring. But that image was what political consultants call optics for democracies around the world have recently seen a striking wave of anti-speech legislation.

Amid national mourning over the deaths of the Charlie Hebdo staff including five cartoonists four French police officers arrested the cartoonist Zeon for incitement, identifying as the cause of arrest anti-Zionist or antisemitic cartoons.

A law in Canada recasts antisemitism so it can include criticism of Israel, and declares that freedom of speech should not be abused; supporters cite freedom of speech on campuses as an antisemitic threat that the law should target.

Related: The NDAA: a clear and present danger to American liberty | Naomi Wolf

In Britain the Tories have been fighting for months to introduce a bill to ban extremists from UK campuses; a recent iteration casts UK colleges as monitors of acceptable speech.

In Australia a new bill mirrors parts of Americas Patriot Act. Extremist groups face social media bans in Britain, and the same push is mirrored in democracies around the world. The US National Defence Authorisation Act criminalises speech it sees as offering material support to terror groups, without defining what that might be. (Obamas lawyers confirmed that the journalist Chris Hedges could be arrested under the NDAA for interviewing a terrorist.) Since terror threats are always invoked in these campaigns to justify banning certain kinds of speech, the public in all these countries has been largely passive. Surely, after one terrorist atrocity after another, stamping out the freedom to express extremist ideas on college campuses and online is a small price to pay for safety?

But the core assumption on which these politicians, including Cameron, are selling these laws to the public, is simply wrong. The concept underlying such bills is that dangerous ideas are like a virus. You can quarantine them or kill them, like germs. But ideas are like a vast, rushing body of water that will uproot checkpoints and reconfigure a landscape if barriers are placed in its way. In fact, the history of censorship shows that it is completely useless in stamping out ideas: the fastest way to spread an idea is to censor it.

Censorship by the state (rather than by the church) is a fairly recent invention. Before 1857 it was quite difficult to get arrested for speech in England. The free speech tradition dating back to Miltons Areopagitica, if not earlier, was so rich that one had to be disturbing the Kings Peace for a speech crime to take place, or to be proven (a very high bar) to have committed sedition or blasphemy. Parliamentary debate showed a clear non-partisan bias against censorship bills, and in favour of liberty of expression.

But in 1857 the Obscene Publications Act was passed followed in 1867-8 by Regina v Hicklin. The Obscene Publications Act criminalised the intent of the author for the first time, asking: did the author intend to inflame improper passions? The Hicklin ruling extended this to criminalising a works effect on a reader: if the work could raise a blush on the cheek of a virgin if the text could deprave and corrupt those who might be vulnerable to immorality, then not only had the author committed a crime, but potentially the publisher, distributor and printer had done as well.

The Victorians have become known for their modesty; in fact, we cant know that, as they were heavily censored by ever escalating speech laws. Oxfords Ashmolean Museum is currently showing an exhibition of the work of the satirical cartoonist James Gillray; by 1857, a fair amount of his work would have been illegal to print or distribute in Britain.

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The fastest way to spread extremism is with the censors boot


  1. Freedom of Speech