Monthly Archives: March 2021

Most Arab journalists nowadays are imitating the proverbial three wise monkeys see, hear and speak no evil to ensure survival in a region that quickly regressed to dictatorship mode after a brief lull brought about by the 2011 Arab Spring upheavals.

Journalists in the MENA region have never had it easy. The Arab Spring was a moment of hope and the media found a more critical voice, but this did not last long. When things started to go downhill around 2014 after military rule had returned to Egypt, journalists in the largely authoritarian region quickly returned to the habits of many of their predecessors. If they did not, they risked job losses, beatings, arbitrary trials, harassment and jail all courtesy of upgraded anti-terror laws or new cybercrime laws in Jordan, Egypt, Morocco, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia after brief flirtations with reform.

Today, under these laws, anyone who likes the wrong Facebook post or tweets something that the authorities could misinterpret, risks arrest or trial as has happened to at least a dozen journalist colleagues across the MENA region.

These laws, along with internet restrictions including website closures and blackouts, curb the proliferation of free speech, particularly on social media platforms. A whole range of repressive policies and dictatorships resurging in these states have effectively hammered the final nail into the coffin of free speech.

A decade later, Tunisia alone enjoys relative security, freedom and a flourishing free media. Today, however, the single largest threat is the spectre of corruption in the struggling industry as most private outlets are owned by political parties or businessmen seeking power. State television, after years of being the mouthpiece of Tunisias deposed president, is trying to regain peoples confidence and is often more balanced than its private competitors.

Every other Arab state either collapsed into chaos and war as in Libya, Syria, and Yemen or returned to business as usual. Like never before, regimes that survived uprisings are using state-of-the-art electronic surveillance systems to monitor the general population to ensure no one can ever challenge their one-man systems.

As a result, many mainstream journalists, columnists, and talk-show hosts, fearful of losing their livelihoods, have opted to remain silent, look the other way or join the growing band of rulers cheerleaders.

Most journalists seek survival by serving as mouthpieces of rulers and governments in Jordan, for example, at least three pro-reform journalists were co-opted into ministerial posts in the last three years. All this leaves independent journalists and editors who put their career on the line to hold officials to account open to attack: from governments, corrupt politicians, oligarchs, militias, the man in the street and often their chief editors these gatekeepers of information.

Reporters without Borders World Press Freedom Index colours countries on a map according to their ranking. For years, the MENA region has been black, indicating the worst ranking.

At every turn, journalists, like ordinary Arabs, have given up on basic freedoms and democratic rights for nothing more than vague promises of stability and economic prosperity.

They are more afraid of chaos and death than of the normal Arab repression they grew up with. They have found ways to coexist with it; it is the evil they know best. They have accepted dictatorship in return for false security or state perks.

It is hardly surprising, therefore, that free and independent journalism is low or non-existent on their list of priorities. It is likely to remain this way for the foreseeable future.

The COVID-19 pandemic has further silenced the media.

Throughout the region, governments have made it clear that criticism over management of the crisis or of weak health systems will not be tolerated. Officials bridle the medias narrative of the pandemic to keep public opinion under control. Regimes have turned most media outlets into propaganda tools praising government efforts to battle the pandemic, and fined or jailed journalists who have challenged the official narrative.

As someone who has spent nearly four decades reporting across the region for international media and coaching more than 600 Arab investigative reporters under two pioneering media organisations Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism (ARIJ) and the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) the past seven years have been the most catastrophic and disappointing.

I have experienced and witnessed massive regression of civil and political rights in my country, Jordan where I stopped writing for two local publications because I was being censored and in Egypt, where human rights abuses and harassment of the media have become the hallmark of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi since he took power in 2014.

As a journalist and pro-reform columnist, I am subjected to unprecedented state pressure and to increasing surveillance. Colleagues and sources I contact for information on anything from biometric passports to cigarette smuggling often pass on my inquiries to officials. This happened to me at least three times in January alone.

I have watched Arab governments come out with ominous new measures against journalists since 2014, taking their cue from Egypt, which set the trend.

Information is being withheld, even in countries like Jordan, the darling of the West and the first Arab state to endorse a law guaranteeing the right to access public information. Today, two in every 10 requests submitted by journalists I work with are answered compared with 6 out of 10 in 2011. The rest are ignored, meaning reporters will struggle to find missing critical information.

Media houses are being censored or forced into self-censorship. In Jordan, 95.2 percent of 250 journalists surveyed by a local media advocacy group in a 2014 report admitted practising self-censorship. Most said they were too scared to criticise the king, the security forces or tribal leaders.

Journalists are being intimidated. For example, a Jordanian colleague working on a sensitive story involving embezzlement of state funds told me he was called in by security who themselves expressed opposition to corruption before asking him whether the timing for such a story was right.

Weeks later, police, supposedly responding to a noise complaint in a nearby apartment, entered the colleagues place and stripped his shelves. The forces had no court authorisation to enter the flat. He decided to sue the government.

There are threats of imprisonment. Egypt has jailed 183 journalists since 2013, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).

Journalists have adopted pseudonyms to protect their families from punishment. They face defamation and threats on social media and orchestrated online attacks.

Journalists have also been forced to seek refuge in other countries as has happened to at least 20 individuals from Syria, Yemen, Iraq and Egypt who, starting in 2013, informed me of their decision to leave their home countries. They were threatened by ISIL (ISIS), the Syrian regime, Houthi fighters in Yemen, militias in Iraq and Arab governments.

And journalists have paid the ultimate price. At least 166 Arab journalists have been killed in crossfire and other circumstances between 2013 and 2020, according to CPJ figures.

They have also been targeted for assassination, including Jamal Khashoggi who was butchered inside Saudi Arabias consulate in Istanbul in 2018, and Lebanese Hezbollah critic Lokman Slim who was shot dead in Lebanon in early February.

No one was ever under the illusion that journalism and investigative reporting in particular was an easy ride in one of the worlds riskiest regions for reporters.

But what was possible in Jordan and Syria, for example, after the younger generation of rulers succeeded their fathers and promised reform at the turn of the century, or in Egypt where the regime of President Hosni Mubarak was under pressure to open up, is impossible now.

Scores of editors, publishers and reporters who prided themselves in working with ARIJ in 2009 to promote accountability journalism, supported us to engage in serious corruption investigations after the toppling of Mubarak in 2011. But since el-Sisis rise to power, they stopped answering our telephone calls. They have banned their journalists from attending most of our workshops.

Disinformation, outright repression and state intelligences command over the media became the tools of media control under el-Sisi.

After Mohamed Morsi was deposed, successive governments in Cairo have waged an arbitrary battle to control virtually all forms of public expression and independent media. No longer content with simply influencing press coverage, state security services began buying up much of the media in the last four years.

Yes and no is the answer.

The recent rapprochement between Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar after a three-year crisis, is slowly easing a media tug of war between their regional television stations, which contributed to unprecedented media polarisation and coverage of the war in Yemen, Libya, Syria and ties with Iran. But the reversal has come at a high price for owners and talk show hosts, who have had to change their editorial tone overnight at the expense of credibility in the eyes of their ordinary viewers.

There is hope that new US President Joe Biden can hold his countrys Arab autocratic allies, especially those dependent on Washingtons economic and military aid, namely, Egypt and Jordan, more accountable to improved human rights and free speech. He can take the lead to reverse this trend as a matter of global strategic importance.

He should make the protection of press freedom a priority for his foreign policy, tie this to foreign aid, and appoint a special presidential envoy for press freedom. The envoy should oversee the rebuilding of structures that have traditionally supported journalists around the world and investigate abuses against journalists.

Technology continues to develop and to offer new freedom and connectivity choices. The report, Social Media in the Middle East: 2019 in review, says that in the past five years mobile social media in the region has doubled, and is now at 44 percent. Nine out of 10 young people every day use at least one social media channel. Facebook continues to grow with Egypt at 38 million daily users, making it the regions largest market. Saudi Arabia is the fifth-largest market for Twitter in the world, although the use of Twitter across the region has been cut nearly in half compared with 2013.

In 2019, greater scrutiny from Facebook, Twitter and Telegram prompted the platforms to close hundreds of accounts to prevent state actors and terrorist and armed groups from manipulating their audiences with mis- or disinformation campaigns, the study says.

New independent nonprofit media models are emerging across the region, relying on growing foreign institutional funding. Mada Masr, Egypts last independent website, is one example. Its co-founder and editor-in-chief Lina Attalah was listed among Times 100 most influential people around the world in 2020 despite Cairos continued harassment of the donor-funded platform, which insists on holding power to account. Professional coverage has helped. Whenever Attalah or her team are detained, an international outcry leads to their rescue. Daraj in Lebanon, 7iber in Jordan and Inkyfada in Tunisia, are other donor-funded media platforms focusing on investigative journalism and taboo issues.

But the choices most Arab journalists face will continue to be stark and unenviable: to be pro or anti-regime, to work for the government or against it.

But that is neither our role nor our job.

When there is no free press, this is what you will get: One government, one judge, one propaganda machine. And many, many jails.

Journalists should not remain silent.

Independent journalists will continue to root out injustice and hardship, to speak for the helpless and hopeless, to not accept staying silent about injustice, incompetence or worse still, the denial of basic rights.

It will take generations before we see the glimmer of free speech, before independent voices can be heard again in the Arab media before governments can properly be held to account.

This will not be easy. We have to brace for the worst, calculate risks and strive for journalism that serves the publics right to know and to make decisions based on facts and the truth.

The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial stance.

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There is a long road ahead for Arab journalists and free speech - Al Jazeera English

The writer of the March 4 letter regarding cancel culture has it exactly backward (Time to speak out about cancel culture). As troubling as certain aspects of cancel culture are, this is not an issue of free speech.

The First Amendment protects Americans from government repercussions for speech. People calling for the cancellation of others, distasteful as you may find them, are exercising their own free speech right to do so.

Lumping in cancel culture with free speech is not only inaccurate but dangerous, as this could be used to justify actual government repression of speech.

Indeed, in New Hampshire, Iowa, South Dakota and elsewhere, there are currently bills under debate that would outlaw divisive concepts and ban schools from teaching material associated with efforts to reframe this countrys history in a way that promotes racial divisiveness and displaces historical understanding with ideology, among other things.

These bills are actual threats to free speech. Language like divisive and historical understanding can and will be wielded by politicians of every stripe to achieve their own goals.

I dont know the best answer to the cancel culture problems, but I do know that less speech is never a solution in a society that truly values free speech.

And I hope that the same folks decrying cancel culture conjure up the same fiery passion for the anti-free speech/academic freedom bills being debated in state legislatures across the country today.

Ryan Ries, Maplewood

Im a-political but in my older age Im tired of both parties getting into bipartisan squabbles that make good news but costs us taxpayers a lot of money, time and resources. These events take politicians away from important matters that public servants should be engage in. It appears to happen more on the federal level than in state politics. Nonetheless, after these events are over the costs can be immense because nothing seems to get accomplished. But what the L, its only the taxpayers money.

Lets look at the last presidential election. Our ex-president lost by over 7,000,000 votes, he lost the electoral vote by 306 to 232, and yet he didnt and hasnt conceded the election. He says this election was stolen from him. That there was voter fraud and voting machine tampering. He had legions of followers listening and acting on his beliefs. There were 64 federal and state court cases about voter fraud that never got to first base because there was no evidence. We had several states doing recounts which found no voter fraud. We had many states having security issues between the election date and the inaugural date-these issues continue today. We even saw an insurrection in our own federal Capitol building that cost lives and property damage. In my opinion, all this was caused by one man who wouldnt take responsibility for considering or understanding the election results.

In the end, his refusal to concede and his followers actions cost us taxpayers an excessive amount of money. Its estimated these taxpayers costs, on both state and federal level, is upward of $1 billion. Members of his own party feel Trump should have consequences for his rhetoric and actions but nothing happens.

Therefore, what the Trump administration have cost the American taxpayer I would like a good and brave law firm to litigate Trump and his cohorts to get back some of our money that was needlessly spent. I believe part of the settlement should be Trumps PAC money. Just think, if this case is won by the taxpayers and PAC money is on the table, it might make politicians more prudent in their decision-making In future events similar to the above.

Kevin Byrne, Eagan

The number of cases of police misconduct and the overwhelming worldwide demonstrations against police brutality reveal several things. First, that the scientific experiments that show that normal humane people placed in authoritative positions akin to being police or jailers quickly succumb to overbearing cruelty are valid. That this is a common thread of policing rather than the exception, and we must have transparency and be vigilant. We must have processes that help the officers, and that we must catch this early.

The numbers also show that not only is police management next to helpless and useless in combating police misconduct and violence but that the police unions are complicit; that police departments dealing with problems privately or internally doesnt work: nearly all of the killings and murders and maimings and beatings are by repeat offenders known to management and the force.

If there was any accountability in policing, supervisors and management who ignored problem employees and authorized bogus and wrong-address raids and exhibited abuse of authority and incompetence would be charged, jailed, fired and infamous.

Accountability and transparency are the only weapons we the people have to fight intransigence and corruption.

John Crivits, St. Paul

Perhaps the letter writer of Subsidizing incompetence? (March 11) could illustrate examples of incompetent leaders of outstate jurisdictions that would rival those of Mayor Frey and Gov. Walz last summer?

Pat McKenzie, Hastings

In the March 1 paper was an article about Mayo Clinics revenue. Their total revenue increased in 2020 to $13.9 billion from 2019. They received $338 million through the CARES act. They were so nice to return $156 million. They kept $182 million. Their quote: We didnt want to keep a dollar more than we deserved or was helpful or appropriate.

I and we all probably know small business owners who lost big time or closed down during the pandemic. But of course the rich keep getting richer.

Mike Nohava, Prescott

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Letters: Less speech is not the solution in a society that truly values free speech - TwinCities.com-Pioneer Press

In 40 years of following the Colorado legislature as a journalist, Ive seen many attempts occasionally successful to curtail free speech in the name of an alleged greater good.

There have been bills to restrict the rights of certain protesters; to obstruct citizens from spending their own money to leaflet neighborhoods on behalf of a political cause; to protect fruits and vegetables from disparagement; to sabotage our right to collect signatures for ballot initiatives, and so forth.

Suffice it to say, however, I dont recall ever seeing such a bold, comprehensive attempt at government speech control as the project outlined in Senate Bill 132 by Democratic Sen. Kerry Donovan of Vail to regulate digital communications.

It is stunningly broad, probably in part unconstitutional and ominously ambitious. It creates a division of state government and a commission devoted to regulation of speech, with the duty to register digital communications platforms such as social media and to fine those who resist $5,000 a day. The new bureaucracy would investigate practices that promote hate speech; undermine election integrity; disseminate intentional disinformation, conspiracy theories, or fake news; or authorize, encourage, or carry out violations of users privacy.

Although the bill makes no attempt to define hate speech, fake news or disinformation, it explicitly foresees government suppressing speech it doesnt like. Upon detecting an unfair or discriminatory digital communications practice, the commission would issue an order requiring the respondent to cease and desist from the practice and to take action that the commission orders.

It is tempting to dismiss Donovans bill as a fringe anomaly that will be killed thanks to the good sense of colleagues, but that would miss its larger context. Concern over false, misleading or hateful speech on social media has been growing for years, but spiked to near hysteria with the violent riot at the Capitol two months ago.

Now, everyone from leftists like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., to establishment figures like columnist and former Republican speechwriter Peggy Noonan has concluded something must be done. Ocasio-Cortez wants to rein in the media environment so that you cant just spew disinformation and misinformation while Noonan waxes nostalgic for the days when government imposed the Fairness Doctrine on broadcasters. Many other opinion leaders voice similar desires.

The irony is that the Capitol riot was inspired by falsehoods largely invented by President Donald Trump himself an official with the largest megaphone in the world even without social media. Whatever digital medias culpability in empowering obscure cranks, presidential lies are nothing new. Trump was simply more brazen and inflammatory with his falsehoods.

Nor is there a regulatory solution for misinformation and disinformation, which has always been rampant in society and too often fanned by the dominant media of the day. Concern over sensationalism in the 1940s, for example, spurred a national commission of intellectuals led by University of Chicago president Robert Maynard Hutchins to breathlessly lament how the press can spread lies faster and farther than our forefathers dreamed a complaint with distinct echoes in todays indictment of social media.

There is of course some truth in the worry that lies spread faster and farther today than ever before, but then so does their rebuttal. And before we go too far in regretting the digital age, lets at least acknowledge its democratizing benefits, a few of which UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh itemized in a draft article for a law review he posted online.

Thanks to digital communications, Volokh reminds us, its easier than ever for ordinary people to speak to large groups. Its easier than ever for them to create audio and visual works, as well as text. Its easier than ever for a few of them to get mass individual followings without the need for an imprimatur from the mainstream media. Its easier than ever for groups of ordinary people, whether formally organized or just loose sets of social media connections, to spread ideas that they find worth spreading.

But there are downsides, Volokh admits. Cheap speech also allows people to forward hoaxes, false conspiracy theories, and generally fake news at the click of a button.

I dont have a solution, and maybe there isnt one. Libel law is mainly a threat to people or institutions with assets. And Big Tech has flubbed attempts to weed out dangerous speech by allowing progressive fact-checkers to impose a blatant political filter on the process.

So should we remove Section 230 liability protections for Internet platforms as Trump and right-wing populists advise? Thats a baby-with-the-bathwater approach that will also kneecap Internet sites like Wikipedia (according to its founder) that almost everyone admires.

The worst possible solution, meanwhile, is one that relies, as Donovans does, on the government to determine what qualifies as fake news and unfair practices. The whole point of free speech is to empower an individual right that historically has been most often opposed and suppressed by the government itself.

False speech, the king and queen inevitably conclude, is speech that criticizes them.

Contact Vincent Carroll at vincentc_carroll@comcast.net.

To send a letter to the editor about this article, submit online or check out our guidelines for how to submit by email or mail.

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Carroll: Its tempting to dismiss Colorado Sen. Kerry Donovans bill attacking free speech as fringe. But its bigger than that. - The Denver Post

LONDON In the fall of 2019, an undergraduate student in a midwifery program at a British university was barred from placement in a hospital. The reason? Her pro-life beliefs.

It was clearly linked to my involvement in the pro-life movement. I was so confused by how they were able to use that against me, Julia Rynkiewicz told the Register this month.

The 24-year-old student at the University of Nottingham was blocked from entering her midwifery programs hospital placement phase after the university learned of her pro-life beliefs and that she was prominent in the universitys pro-life student group, Nottingham Students for Life (NSFL).

When I heard that I had been suspended from my placements you have to do something quite bad to be suspended immediately, she said, and I couldn't work out what I had done to justify such a response! She went on to discuss the four-month-long investigation that followed, which she described as very stressful.

Eventually, in January 2020, the decision to suspend her was overturned by the university. Thereafter, Rynkiewicz was allowed to continue as a midwife student; but the investigation and placement ban set her studies back a whole year.

Later, in November 2020, Rynkiewicz was awarded a financial settlement and an official apology from the university for the treatment she had received. A spokesperson for the University of Nottingham said: While all universities take fitness-to-practice considerations extremely seriously, the university has offered an apology and settlement to Ms. Rynkiewicz and is considering how we might approach such cases differently in future.

However, the same spokesperson went on to state: The university and Students Union supports the rights of all students to bodily autonomy and access to safe, legal abortion services, which is the position in law. The spokesperson added, Universities should be spaces to debate, discuss and disagree points of view, and with more than 200 student societies, covering the full range of beliefs and perspectives, we are confident this is the case at Nottingham.

Established this February, the Free Speech Union (FSU) is a United Kingdom-based organization that advocates for freedom of speech. Toby Young, general secretary of FSU, told the Register this month: The free-speech crisis at Britains universities is very real. In the past year, he says, the FSU has received 100-plus requests for help from students and academics who are being subjected to a disciplinary process at their universities for saying something lawful that other members of their university have complained about. He points to the findings from 2017, when Britains largest academic trade union commissioned research on the subject of freedom of speech at universities. He says this research concluded that free speech was less well protected in Britains universities than it is in every any other country in the European Union bar one. Since then, he added, things have got worse by an order of magnitude."

Given the treatment of Rynkiewicz, and other students who hold unfashionable beliefs, how free are British universities when it comes to freedom of expression for the students who study there?

Grace Deignan is president of Glasgow Universitys Students for Life. She says she could not have imagined the difficulties trying to start a pro-life group at Glasgow University, but, upon submitting our affiliation form to the university, we were told we couldnt become a group on campus because the university didnt take a stance on abortion. But after discovering there were already three pro-abortion societies active on campus, we knew we were being silenced. So she wrote back to the student body stating that she and the others in Students for Life were a group of students who deserved representation like any other group on campus. Yet, she says, time and time again, we had staff ignoring us until we had to physically pursue any leads we could on campus to get anyone to respond to us.

Ironically, Deignan decided to attend Glasgow University because, it boasted, she says, an inclusive, friendly environment for all students. The experience of trying to do so, however, left her feeling completely betrayed by how unprofessional and unpleasant the study body were to students who were asking to form a group about promoting the dignity of all human beings.

Georgia Clarke, co-president of Oxford Students for Life (OSFL) from 2016 to 2017, recalls that during her time at Oxford University, OSFL members were told repeatedly that abortion was not up for debate, because womens rights were not up for debate. As a result, OSFL was labeled as inherently sexist and religiously extremist. It was hard for OSFL to book events and the group was even asked to pay for its own security, something she says other more controversial societies were not asked to provide. Inevitably, OSFL events met with loud protests. Police were called to one event because one of the protesters became aggressive with a security guard, she recounted. With such a closing down of debate among students, Clarke wonders how these same students will ever learn to engage, persuade, negotiate or even listen in the real world.

Vincent Elvin is a member of Oxford Students for Life (OSFL). He cites a specific example of the suppression of debate. The OSFL had hoped to facilitate a Zoom event with pro-life speakers, but with the floor open to anyone, whether they supported, questioned or were critical of the pro-life view. The group advertised the event via various student Facebook groups, including that of his colleges Junior Common Room (JCR). But within a few hours, the advertisement was removed by the JCR president with the following explanation: The comments underneath it have raised welfare concerns for a lot of people [in accordance with our guidelines,] posts which include sexism are not to be tolerated.

Baffled by this, Elvin points out there was nothing in the Facebook event advertising that actually gave an opinion on abortion. When I asked to see the guidelines (which were not publicly available), I could not find where my post lay at fault, he says. I was further informed that the JCR president was compelled to take it down not only because of welfare concerns for the students, but because the post displayed sexism. The only possible interpretation is that the words pro-life were considered sexist or triggering by the colleges JCR.

Despite subsequently formulating a new post with a trigger warning approved by the president, the second version of the advertisement was again removed by the same president only 30 minutes later with the following message: To ensure the Facebook page does not become a toxic environment for any members of [the college] the admin are removing your post.

At this point, OSFL took the matter to the dean, citing the colleges freedom of speech policy, which makes clear that students should expect to be exposed to views with which they disagree, and also noting the Education Act 1996 and the Equalities Act 2010, both of which guarantee the right of freedom of speech. The dean passed the matter to the principal (the head official, above the dean). Elvin says, At the next meeting of the Governing Body the matter was decided in our favor, and the de facto advertising ban against the society was lifted.

Although on this occasion, the Oxford pro-life students were vindicated, Elvin feels they also were given a message: While our right to have a voice has been recognized by higher levels of university governance, our peers and student representatives will do all they can to suppress and eliminate pro-life views.

Peri Dalkic, president of the Aberdeen Life Ethics Society (ALES) at Aberdeen University, has a similar depressing tale to tell. When news spread that ALES had been affiliated [to the student body], our opponents began to use bullying tactics to intimidate us to be quiet about our beliefs. She tells of how this bullying of its members soon got worse. On a Facebook page, a student posted that he was going to assault members of ALES. Another stated on the same page that all the girls in ALES were fat mutants, which received many likes. Following some of our on-campus activism, a picture was posted to the ALES Facebook page of myself and two fellow committee members outside the library. On this, one student commented, We didnt know you were there, else youd be covered in milkshakes. She goes on to say that this ongoing intimidation was not confined to the virtual world. Whilst a few other members and I were handing out pro-life literature on campus, a male student filmed us while jeering and laughing in an intimidating manner. We also had condoms thrown at us. All these incidents were reported to the university, but she says little was done about it, with some of her complaints receiving absolutely no response, and all resulted in no consequences for the students involved.

Of all places, university is where students should be free to debate and explore ideas especially those with which they disagree, said Ryan Christopher, director of ADF International (UK). His organization has been assisting many of these student groups and individual students at British universities in what has become an increasingly hostile environment for those with pro-life views.

While Christopher is pleased with the settlement and apology from Nottingham University given to Julia Rynkiewicz, polling carried out recently for ADF International (UK) shows that Julias treatment is not an isolated incident. From this, he concludes that a discriminatory silencing of those who hold similar views is likely to happen again: 1 in 3 students fear that their [pro-life] views would be considered unacceptable. He went on to add: Todays censorial culture on campus can easily become cancel culture in the public square.

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Is There Free Speech on the UK University Campus? - National Catholic Register

Members of the Undergraduate Student Government at the University of Connecticut will now be required to have a faculty advisor present at events and must attend weekly check-up meetings and additional trainings after the free speech bill chaos and resignation of incoming chief diversity officer B Diaz engulfed the organization last week, according to advisor Krista OBrien.

The bill in question, which caused heightened controversy and led to insults and threats from both sides, was pulled last week. Diaz resigned from their position prior to the bills removal, citing mental health concerns and continued onlineharassment.

Internal activities in the organization will be closely monitored through the end of the 2021-2022 academic year, and USG will be required to satisfy a selection of terms and conditions as determined by theAssistantDirector of Trustee Student Organization Support in order to avoid further disciplinary action.

It is clear to me, as advisor, that the organization is not currently in a place to be productive, is causing significant harm to its membership, and is in need of immediate assistance to address serious, unproductive, unhealthyand harmful internal actions that could threaten the ability of the organization to fulfill its mission for the foreseeable future, OBrien said.

All formal USG meetings, including governing board, committees, caucus and senate, will be required to have an assigned advisor present. Additionally, governing board members must attend weekly advising meetings during the academic year and must make arrangements to follow up during the summer months and calendar breaks.

Advisors will also meet with executive board members to plan and lead a required USG orientation for the fall 2021 and spring 2022 semesters, which will be mandatory for all active members to attend. USG will also be required to send four members to triad biweeklies for the 2021-2022 school year.

It is my belief that these measures reflect the seriousness of the situation in USG and offers the organization and its members an opportunity to learn from this experience and improve the organizations culture, OBrien said.

Finally, those specifically involved in the issues pertaining to the bill are slated to receive separate invitations from advisors to have an open conversation with other members about how to restore faith and positivity in the organization.

Our intentions are not to impact your advocacy or initiatives which remain fully under your control and authority, but to step in to help shift the culture in USG and to allow the organization to be a positive, learning and growth opportunity for all involved, OBrien said.

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Sanctions imposed on USG following free speech bill controversy, CDO-elect resignation - UConn Daily Campus

Two hundred professors launched the nonpartisan Academic Freedom Alliance this week to advocate for free speech in academe and, in some cases, legally defend professors academic freedom. Members include Cornel West, Robert P. George, Jeannie Suk Gersen, Jay Parini and Claire Potter. Membership is currently by invitation only, but the group plans on opening up to all academics.

The AFA will provide strength in numbers for its members, physicist Shivaji Sondhi of Princeton University said in a statement. As membership continues to expand, administrators will have to think twice before baselessly censuring or terminating an employee.

Lawyer Lisa Blatt, a member of the AFAs Legal Advisory Council, said, Academic freedom should be synonymous with higher education. Celebration of diversity of thought in academia would go a long way toward reducing polarization in society and perceived elitism in American colleges. If we cant celebrate it, I guess we have to litigate it.

Keith E. Whittington, William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Politics at Princeton, and chair of the AFAs Academic Committee, in an interview said that the groups makeup -- which spans the ideological spectrum -- is key to promoting free speech and academic freedom.

There are people on university campuses as well as off university campuses who are not very committed to those principles and would like to see them significantly modified or changed, Whittington said. I think it's important that we be able to talk across some of these divides in order to convey the real sense that there's a sense of shared threat here. I do think it's true that those on the right and those on the left can easily imagine that they're the only ones being threatened.

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New Nonpartisan Faculty Group Will Promote and Defend Free Speech, Academic Freedom - Inside Higher Ed

CNNs Jake Tapper drew quite a reaction with a recent tweet about a British regulatory agency investigating comments made by television personality Piers Morgan.

This is what happens when you live in a country where there is no First Amendment, he wrote. Insanity.

Krishnan Guru-Murthy, a journalist on Britains Channel 4 News, took exception.

Not insanity, he wrote. A democratic choice to have broadcast media regulated with a duty to be fair and duly impartial. It stops TV from taking sides to support or oppose things the way you do in America and upholds a code of standards.

Morgans remarks came in response to Oprah Winfreys interview with Meghan Markle and Prince Harry. Morgan said he was skeptical of Markles claim that she had been turned down by people in the royal institution when she asked for help in dealing with thoughts of suicide.

Who did you go to? Morgan demanded. What did they say to you? Im sorry, I dont believe a word she said, Meghan Markle. I wouldnt believe it if she read me a weather report.

Tappers tweet included a link to a Variety story reporting that Britains Office of Communication, better known as Ofcom, had received more than 40,000 complaints about Morgans comments by 2 p.m. the next day.

We have launched an investigation into Mondays episode of Good Morning Britain under our harm and offence rules, an agency spokesperson told the publication.

Like any good champion of free speech, Tapper was beside himself.

Governments should have no role in policing news broadcasts, he wrote. You can tweet Piers what you think of his comments. Thats not what this is about.

Iesha Mae Thomas, social media producer for a country radio station in London, had a different take.

Jake, honey, do your research, she tweeted. Were perfectly fine without a First Amendment. (And Ofcom isnt the government.)

Part of the problem, Tapper later acknowledged, could be summed up by the old saw that the United States and Britain are two countries separated by a common language. We use the same words, but those words dont necessarily have the same meaning.

Take the word government.

For Tapper, it seemed obvious that a public agency would be considered an arm of the government. For the British, though, a government is more tied to politics. Its what a prime minister forms after putting together a majority in Parliament. The word is used in a way similar to the way Americans use the word administration.

On its website, Ofcom describes itself as an independent agency funded through fees paid by the companies it regulates. The agency has broad responsibility. It oversees all types of communication, including not just radio and television, but also broadband, telephone services and even mail delivery.

British citizens responding to Tapper suggested that the real insanity was in an American system where news operations broadcast lies with near impunity.

OAN wouldnt last five minutes here, one said, referring to the Donald Trump allies at One America News Network.

Neither would MSNBC, another shot back.

For Guru-Murthy, putting oversight of broadcast news outlets into the hands of a nonpartisan agency only makes sense.

The alternative is TV news that can mislead, manipulate and lie without consequence acting as cheerleaders for politicians, helping grow division and conspiracy theories with the only regulator being the commercial market, he tweeted. To many Brits, thats dangerous and undesirable.

Hyunsu Yim, business reporter for the Korea Herald, said its not just the British who look askance at the American model.

Its really hard to emphasize and get it through to Americans sometimes, he tweeted, but most countries are NOT envious of Americas no-holds-barred approach to freedom which seems like pure chaos to the rest of the world.

To be honest, it sometimes seems that way to Americans.

See the original post here:
Kelly Hawes column: Is it free speech or a free-for-all? - The Herald Bulletin

Otabek Sattoriy crossed a line. That much is plain.

Something that the 41-year-old self-styled citizen journalist and blight of local officials in Uzbekistans southern region of Surkhandaryo did was enough to land him in jail.

Sattoriys family say it was his unflinching reporting on local problems.

He brings social shortcomings to public attention, his father, Abdumannon, told Eurasianet in an interview at the family home in Termez, capital of Surkhandaryo.

Prosecutors say Sattoriy, who was arrested outside his house on January 30, is a fraudster and a blackmailer. That he was exploiting his activist journalism to pump officials and businesses for cash.

On March 11, Surkhandaryo regional court is due to begin considering which version is true. Given how criminal trials tend to play out in Uzbekistan, Sattoriys prospects are not good.

Another more complicated question is unlikely to be resolved in court.

The putatively reform-minded president, Shavkat Mirziyoyev, has explicitly encouraged anybody with a social media account to criticize those ruling over them. Many have taken up the challenge, often with obstreperous zeal, dubbing themselves bloggers.

But one persons truth-teller is another persons troublemaker. Those viewed as overreaching, in either the tone of their commentary or the nature of their allegations, still risk sanctions or threats. And the criminal code remains the authorities tool of choice in reminding the public about what they are permitted to say.

Ahead of Sattoriys trial, it has not been easy to understand what precise offense he is supposed to have committed.

Uzbek officials are far more open to the press and their queries than they were in the days of Mirziyoyevs tyrannical predecessor, Islam Karimov, who died in 2016. In criminal investigations, though, the culture of obfuscation has persisted.

All that is known for certain about the charges levied against the citizen journalist are the scant crumbs offered by police and prosecutors. Nearly two weeks after Sattoriys arrest, policewarnedsocial media users to refrain from speculating on the case, hinting darkly that disobedience could trigger prosecutions.

But investigators were not able to cover their tracks altogether. There is Sattoriys work as a fitter of close-circuit surveillance systems to thank for that.

A camera affixed to a tree outside the home in which he lives with his parents, wife and two small children captured the scene that unfolded about half an hour before sunset on January 30.

In the footage, Sattoriy is seen emerging from a white sedan with a plastic bag under his left arm and saying some final words to the driver before taking the few steps to his front gate. The contents of that bag are at the heart of the states case. Before Sattoriy can reach the door, his way is barred by a plainclothes officer on foot. Another two cars then pull up behind him, disgorging more men. After three minutes, the whole operation is completed and Sattoriy is driven away.

Later that same night, an even larger group of plainclothes men arrived. After one read a warrant issued by the prosecutors office, they all piled into the home.

Abdumannon Sattoriy said they stayed for three hours and turned the house upside down.

They confiscated two computers, two flash drives that were lying on his desk, and all his papers, he said. They even took away a tablet the children use to watch cartoons and five jackets.

Most of what the Interior Ministry has had to say on this case wasincludedin a press release posted on February 1, two days after the arrest. The statement claims that a man called Lochin Turayev, the director of a privately owned bazaar in the city of Sherobod, about one hours drive from Termez, on January 29 complained to the police that he was being blackmailed by Sattoriy. The alleged price for bowing to Sattoriys demands was a new Vivo X50 mobile phone worth around $500.

Eurasianet submitted a written query to the Interior Ministrys regional headquarters in Termez for clarification as to how a relatively paltry offense occasioned such a disproportionate response.

By all appearances, dozens of officers were deployed to arrest Sattoriy and then search his home. Sattoriy has been in jail and denied the right to see his family for more than five weeks.

Eurasianets request was ignored. An in-person visit to the Interior Ministrys regional headquarters yielded an initial pledge that an investigator would be made available to answer questions, but this offer was later retracted.

Sherobod farmers bazaar, which lies slap on the towns main thoroughfare, is standard fare.

Porters pushing carts barge through tight spaces, somehow narrowly missing shoppers. The entrance is dominated by household wares. Most of the vegetable, fruit, meat and pickled-goods sellers ply their trade under the covered section, which is in turn lined with shops selling much the same items.

The spacious indoor bazaar caf surges with custom at midday and then mostly empties after that. Smoke from a shashlik stand wafts over the huddle formed around a crude six-number roulette-style game that may or may not be a scam.

Lochin Turayev, the man whose complaint landed Sattoriy in jail, runs the covered section, which is separated from the government-owned part by an invisible line. It was people like him that were the objects of President Mirziyoyevs populistexhortationsin December to ensure that prices for food were kept affordable in advance of the holiday season.

Considering the growing demand ahead of the New Year, it has been noted that it is important to saturate the market with food, to organize fairs at farmers bazaars and at major shopping complexes, the presidential websitestated, summarizing a December 16 government meeting presided over by Mirziyoyev.

These edicts typically come with a tinge of menace. Crafty speculators defying instructions to keep prices low know they do so at their own risk. Uzbek citizen reporters the bloggers live for the chance to expose such opportunists.

That is what Sattoriy, together with fellow Termez blogger Farhod Ismailov, was doing on December 18, according to his family.

They went to Sherobod market to capture on video how the fair was being organized for the people, Abdumannon Sattoriy told Eurasianet. When they began to film, two or three bazaar overseers accosted [Sattoriy] and asked why he was filming.

Sattoriys father says, citing his sons account, that a physical altercation then ensued. The phone and selfie stick that Sattoriy was using to film was knocked out of his hand by bazaar security guards, damaging both in the process, he said. Some of Sattoriys clothes were ripped during the struggle, Abdumannon Sattoriy said.

Sattoriys defense will be that he was not taking receipt of a new phone through extortion when he was detained. He was just receiving a replacement for the one that was broken.

Some bazaar traders interviewed by Eurasianet offered different accounts.

One of them, Lola Samadova, said that she herself protested when Sattoriy began to film her stall.

I told him not to do it because my husband wouldnt like it, she told Eurasianet.

Samadova says it was she that summoned the overseers to force Sattoriy to stop filming. She denied there had been any use of physical violence. Even as she was telling her story, though, beefy bazaar guards sidled up to glare and listen intently.

Another trader who spoke to Eurasianet on condition of anonymity scoffed at Samadovas version of events, saying that she was only parroting the managements line because she had a coveted spot in the bazaar.

Turayev, the bazaar director, declined to meet with Eurasianet, saying he was forbidden from speaking about the case before the trial.

The head of the Sherobod district, Ziyodulla Davlatov, volunteered an account tallying with that of the bazaar, but he added some important details. He said that Sattoriy went to his office after the run-in with the market guards to complain that his phone had been confiscated. Davlatov said he then followed Sattoriy back to the bazaar, and that by the time he had caught up with him, the phone had been returned.

Davlatov professed to be bemused by the whole episode, which occurred only a couple of weeks after he was installed in his post. He complained that Sattoriy had purportedly come to film his report on food prices two days before the Mirziyoyev-mandated fair was due to start and that he was intent on producing misleading content, but he expressed generally positive sentiments about bloggers.

There are bloggers who look at things from both sides. I regard them positively, he told Eurasianet through a mask, between bouts of coughing caused by an allergy to raw cotton. As long as Ive been here, Ive always spoken with them.

Fact-checking is not bloggers strong suit, as some of them will freely admit.

Like the time Dastagul Ravshanovna, 50, announced on her Facebook account that Surkhandaryo governor Tura Bobolov had died. It was fake news.

Although it is true that Bobolov had at one stage contracted COVID-19 and needed treatment in the capital, Tashkent, he eventuallyreturnedto work.

It was late summer when Ravshanovna committed her fateful error. The coronavirus was tearing through the country.

Officials were radically undercounting the number of infected people and, almost certainly, the death tally too. Even as of this month, the government acknowledges only around 80,000 total cases and a little more than 620 deaths. Meanwhile, research hasindicatedthat Uzbekistan experienced 14 percent excess mortality last year when compared with available figures from the previous five years.

This chasm between official narrative and reality is an ideal ecosystem for loosely sourced rumormongering.

Ravshanovna lives in Shargun, a small town close to the border with Tajikistan and a long, bumpy trek from Termez.

By day, she is a medic at a local hospital. In her free time, she updates herFacebook pagewith assorted fodder, including a fair amount of mild criticism of local authorities. She occasionally initiates fund-raising drives for down-on-their-luck cases.

Ravshanovna published her first post about three years ago, after tragedy struck.

I wrote that my daughter had died with an illness. That was all, she said, fighting back tears. I needed to tell somebody. You cant live alone.

Mushtarihon was 20 when she died and had for many years battled severe cognitive and physical conditions. Ravshanovna remains bitter her daughter did not get the help she needed.

After her death, I became a blogger, so that other sick people would not suffer too, she told Eurasianet.

Now that she has gained some following, Ravshanovna receives requests for help from all over the country. Her correspondents want their stories amplified.

I get messages from people in Ferghana, from Khorezm, from Kashkadarya, from the regions, she said. They tell me about how they are suffering with illnesses or how they are stuck in poverty. Some have troubles with the law. And they all want one thing: justice.

The appeal of social media for Ravshanovna is its immediacy.

Bloggers are people who see real life, she said. Journalists, when they get an interview, for example, they go back to their studios and offices, and then they have to think about whom this material might harm, whom it might benefit.While theyre thinking it over, a blogger has already published their material.

That lack of mediation undid Ravshanovna, however. One day, she got a call from an acquaintance who works in the Surkhandaryo regional healthcare department. Her caller had shocking news: Governor Bobolov had died with COVID-19. Ravshanovna says she was skeptical at first.

I said to her: Hand the phone over to the doctor who works with you. Is there a doctor there? She said there was, Ravshanovna recalled.

A man identifying himself as a senior doctor at the hospital repeated the claim. Ravshanovna is eager to stress that the message she then posted on Facebook was not meant to be sensationalist. She merely wrote to express her condolences.

A call from Bobolovs office arrived within minutes. And then the police rang. The next day she was summoned to the offices of the Interior Ministry in the nearby town of Sariyoso. The price of Ravshanovnas mistake was the confiscation of her beloved phone and a $270 fine.

The authorities still readily wield the whip, if only in monetary terms in most cases, against untutored social media users who blunder or engage in anything perceived to be offensive or insulting.

Sirojiddin Salomov, head of the Surkhandaryo department of the state media regulator, said that ignorance of statutes relating to insults, libel and the dissemination of false information was not tantamount to exemption.

We can accept criticism. But bloggers should not view the idea of freedom of speech as a shield, Salomov told Eurasianet in an interview at his office.

In countries with more evolved media systems and livelier democratic marketplaces, politicians must resign themselves to being verbally pilloried day and night. Uzbekistan is not there yet, Salomov said. Reputations there are far more delicate things.

In our region, if somebody writes something [negative] about you, it can be really harmful for your career, Salomov said.

Sattoriys predilection for incendiary accusations and a sharp turn of phrase landed him in a separate spot of bother at almost exactly the same time as his arrest.

At the start of January, he posted a message on his Telegram account accusing employees at the local zoo of stealing animal feed. Two weakened deerdied of hunger as a result, he claimed, citing alleged evidence from other unnamed zoo workers. Sattoriy does appear to have had genuine sources, since he posted a photo of the deceased deer that only an insider could have snapped.

Zoo director Shukhrat Ulashev rejected Sattoriys charges and said that an investigation by government scientists confirmed that the deer had succumbed to a pulmonary condition brought on by cold weather.

The zoo managements first instinct was to handle the matter as a public relations exercise.

We issued a statement saying that what he said was not true. That it was not fair to spread such lies, Ulashev said. He should have just come here, studied the situation for himself, and then he could have written whatever he liked.

Sattoriy did not do himself any favors by doubling down and taking to Telegram once more to describe zoo employees as rats.

Rats? Whos a rat? Were all people here. And we should respect one another like people, Ulashev said.

The zoo then took the case to the authorities. It was not alone. Another complainant was a coal depot company that also felt it had been defamed by Sattoriy.

Sattoriy would be charged on three counts defamation, insulting a public official and dissemination of false information and was fined around $1,000 by Termez city court. As of March 9, that fine had been suspended provisionally by a higher court pending further investigations.

The director of Sherobod bazaar is only one of eight known plaintiffs in Sattoriys upcoming trial.

In a March 1statementannouncing the end to its investigation, the Surkhandaryo Interior Ministry offered only a little more detail on the states case. The bloggers extortion spree had, it said, spanned over a period starting from June 2020 and ran up to the day before his arrest. One of the other plaintiffs is the mayor of Termez.

No further specifics have been offered and the Interior Ministry turned down Eurasianets requests to elucidate this and other matters.

Salomov, the state media regulator, declined to comment specifically on Sattoriys case, citing the need to allow the judicial process to play out. He nonetheless dwelled at length on how certain citizen journalists have made corrupt use of their new-found influence.

There are some bloggers who have turned this line of work into a way of gaining financial remuneration. There are cases of extortion that we hear about on TV. Somebody takes nude photos of a person and then blackmails them by threatening to post the images on social networks, Salomov said.

But are such analogies valid for Sattoriy? The ultimate question is whether his true offense was extortion, as the police claim, or simply embarrassing and irritating officials.

Shortly after his arrest, the bloggers family received a letter from the residents of a Termez neighborhood called Guliston. The signatories were among many families that had had their homes in the center of the city seized undereminent domainand were compensated with new buildings on the edge of Termez.

For four years they complained fruitlessly that the roads outside their new houses were unpaved and that their homes had not been attached to the gas grid. This was just the kind of story that the irascible gadflySattoriy could sink his teeth into. One time, he upbraided the governor, Bobolov, during a public assembly, accusing him of failing to provide citizens with basic amenities. In time, the badgering produced results and the neighborhoods demands were met.

But that was not what the letter was about.

The 31 signatories claim in a petition addressed to regional and national prosecutors that they were approached by a police officer on February 2 and asked to put their name to a letter accusing Sattoriy of demanding money from them.

We responded that we would not get involved in this slander against Otabek. We request that you adopt measures against this precinct inspector for this false accusation against the blogger, the petition concludes.

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Uzbekistan and the red lines of free speech: A citizen journalist goes on trial - Eurasianet