Amnesty International whose 2011 report charts how the "information age" is changing the world

“Information is a source of power, and for those challenging the abuse of power by states and other institutions, it is an exciting time” says Amnesty International’s 2010 Annual Report, which was released on Friday. It shows just how much the human rights political landscape is being shaped by the internet and by modern communications technology. New possibilities emerge for revealing the truth and holding debates that may evade state censorship and connect people without respect for national borders.

Watershed year

“The year 2010 may well be remembered as a watershed year when activists and journalists used new technology to speak truth to power and, in so doing, pushed for greater respect for human rights,” said Amnesty’s secretary general, Salil Shetty, in the introduction. “It is also the year when repressive governments faced the real possibility that their days were numbered.” The report sets out with clarity the extent to which the world is at a pivotal time. Not only are tyrants and despots are coming under increasing pressure from the internet, social networking sites and the activities of WikiLeaks, but so too are the democratic nations of the West under pressure in how to respond to the new playing field particularly when their own shortcomings are shown wide and far. The forces of repression are fighting against the tide when it comes to containing the new world of freely available information. As Amnesty International points out there have been “major shifts in the power struggle between those perpetrating abuses and the courageous and inventive individuals who expose their wrongdoing”. Old grievances, new tools – the rules of the game have changed. “Social networking sites may be new, but they are important because they are a powerful tool that can facilitate camaraderie and support between disaffected critics living under similarly abusive governments around the world.”

“My father is Li Gang”

The Report cites one example from China to illustrate the point. “The government attempted to bury the story of a young man who, when stopped by police after killing one woman and injuring another while driving drunk, dismissed them by proclaiming his relationship to a senior police official. The cry, “My father is Li Gang” became shorthand for lack of accountability and the story behind the line was posted and re-posted on the internet throughout China even as the authorities struggled for control.” Amnesty International, an organization that celebrates its 50^th anniversary this year, has a vision of  “a world in which information is truly free and in which [people] can exercise their right to express dissent peacefully, beyond the control of the authorities”. The recent uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa show that freedom of expression lies at the heart of human rights, the organization believes. The 432-page report reviews 156 countries, of which at least 89 were found to restrict free speech, 98 carried out torture and 48 had documented prisoners of conscience.

The Wikileaks drama

Central to the human battleground is the extraordinary story of Wikileaks which began posting hundreds of thousands of documents which were allegedly downloaded by a 22-year-old US Army intelligence analyst, Bradley Manning. He is currently in pre-trial detention and faces the possibility of more than 50 years in prison if convicted of espionage and other charges. Wikileaks created an easily accessible dumping ground for whistle-blowers around the world and showed the power of this platform by disseminating and publishing classified and confidential government documents. But “it took old-fashioned newspaper reporters and political analysts to trawl through the raw data, analyze it, and identify evidence of crimes and violations contained in those documents. Leveraging this information, political activists used other new communications tools now easily available on mobile phones and on social networking sites to bring people to the streets to demand accountability.” In July 2010, Wikileaks and several major newspapers began publishing nearly 100,000 documents related to the war in Afghanistan which led to immediate controversy. The documents provided valuable corroboration of human rights violations documented by human rights activists and journalists, which had been denied by the Afghan and NATO governments. But after the Taleban announced that they were going through the documents on Wikileaks and would punish Afghans who had co-operated with the Afghan government or its international supporters, the alarm bells rang. “New technology, like all tools, presents risks as well as benefits; Wikileaks took steps to ensure that future document releases would incorporate the long-standing principle of ”do no harm”, said the Report. What did the implicated governments do? Simple: they cried out that the leaked documents were a threat to national security and therefore illegal. The revelations were essentially ignored. In October, Wikileaks released nearly 400,000 documents relating to the war in Iraq. Amnesty International and other human rights organizations pointed out that the implicated governments “were failing to meet their responsibility to investigate and prosecute those responsible for war crimes and other crimes under international law. The documents also confirmed that even as these governments were dismissing the reports of these violations by Amnesty International and other human rights organizations, they were in possession of documents that clearly verified the accuracy of these reports.”

The West’s conundrum

Herein lies the rub for the West. When governments are shown conclusively to have been mendacious, respect ebbs away. This is especially poignant in the week when Tony Blair and Alistair Campbell have been forcefully accused of lying to the Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq war.  The accusation arises out of devastating secret evidence which was declassified – especially the accusation by Major-General Michael Laurie, the former head of intelligence collection for the Defence Intelligence Agency, that flatly contradicted Campbell’s claims about the purposes of the infamous dossier that made the case for Weapons of Mass Destruction. Free flow of information is a test for the democratic west too. To quote at length from the report: “Confronted with the situation in Tunisia and Egypt, the response of Western governments is instructive. The USA severed their long relationship with President Ben Ali of Tunisia. The French Minister of Foreign Affairs initially proposed helping the Ben Ali government to handle the protest, but outrage at such a position erupted in France and after Ben Ali fled Tunisia the French finally came out in support of the protesters. Faced with similar protests in Egypt, the USA and many European governments appeared caught off guard and unwilling to support the protesters’ initial call for President Mohammad Hosni Mubarak to leave power. “The USA in particular has invested heavily in the stability of the Mubarak government despite ample evidence of its brutality over the last 30 years. In fact throughout the world, many governments that proclaim to value human rights and democracy explicitly supported political leaders, such as Hosni Mubarak in Egypt and Ben Ali in Tunisia, whom they knew were corrupt, repressive and indifferent to the rights of their own citizens. In fact, the first extraordinary renditions (outsourcing of torture) happened under the Bill Clinton administration which sent detainees to Egypt – a place well known for its systematic use of torture. The evidence of this hypocrisy – reinforced by the many diplomatic cables available through Wikileaks – exposes these governments and casts doubt on their commitments to human rights. In the end, the courage of peaceful protestors riskng their lives on the streets of Cairo and other cities proved too much for President Mubarak and his allies. “In the wake of the leaked diplomatic cables, governments have been scrambling to figure out what crimes may have been committed by Wikileaks (and Bradley Manning). There are troubling aspects to this response. The US government, which has been most vehement in attacking Wikileaks, had a different view when it was supporting new advances in disseminating information about other countries. In January 2010, US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton gave a speech aimed at encouraging governments around the world to ensure that their residents had access to the internet, comparing internet censorship to the Berlin Wall. “Information has never been so free”, declared Hillary Clinton. “Even in authoritarian countries, information networks are helping people discover new facts and making governments more accountable.” “She went on to relate how, during his visit to China in November 2009, President Barack Obama had “defended the right of people to freely access information, and said that the more freely information flows the stronger societies become. He spoke about how access to information helps citizens to hold their governments accountable, generates new ideas, and encourages creativity.” But the USA is not alone in wanting a well-behaved internet or in its willingness to use cyber technology to violate the right to privacy. The internet further exposes governments’ desire to control access to information, as they seek to censor those using the internet when the content is perceived by those in power to be a threat even as they add hacking and surveillance to their own arsenals.” Of course WikiLeaks’ coup de grace was “the final chapter in 2010 when Wikileaks and five major newspapers started to simultaneously publish the first 220 of 251,287 leaked confidential – but not top secret – diplomatic cables from 274 US embassies, consulates and diplomatic missions around the world, dated from 28 December 1966 to 28 February 2010. The newly available information, analysed by veteran newspaper reporters as well as new but passionate bloggers, fed into existing movements and inspired new actors.” The “Wikileaks drama” has different perspectives “with some commentators describing it as operating in “a moral void” while others see it as the modern equivalent of the release of the Pentagon Papers. What is clear, however, is the impact that the leaks have had.” Is Bradley Manning a felon deserving of his fate and a life served behind bars, or a young man deserving of the Nobel Peace Prize? Take your pick. “While the “Jasmine Revolution” in Tunisia would not have happened without the long struggle of brave human rights defenders over the last two decades, support for activists from outside the country may have been strengthened as people scrutinized the Wikileaks documents on Tunisia and understood the roots of the anger. In particular, some of the documents made clear that countries around the world were aware of both the political repression and the lack of economic opportunity, but for the most part were not taking action to urge change. One leaked cable showed that the then Canadian envoy, the US ambassador and the UK ambassador all acknowledged that the Tunisian security forces torture detainees; that diplomatic assurances that the government will not torture detainees sent back to Tunisia are “of value” but unreliable; and that the ICRC does not have access to detention facilities run by the Ministry of Interior. “In another leaked cable, the US ambassador detailed how the Tunisian economy was in shreds due to the pervasiveness of corruption, ranging from shakedowns by the police to the long arm of “the Family” – that is members of President Ben Ali’s immediate and extended family who used their power to amass wealth.”

Governments are not in control

What is increasingly clear is that governments are not in control, however much they try. Technology will always outpace governments. Even today there are reports in the mainstream media that Chinese internet users have been subverting the Chinese “Great Firewall” by using Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) to access foreign websites and evade Chinese censorship, and that this has been interfered with by the Chinese authorities. Reports are that since 6 May, many users says that internet connections have become “unstable”. Apple’s apps are being blocked. But this is inevitably a temporary victory. The demands of the people, and the tide of information change is just too vast for governments to remain in control. The Report analyses this issue in depth: “Take Liu Xiaobo, the scholar and co-author of the dissident document Charter ‘08. He was inspired by the activity of Eastern European intellectuals fighting against Communist authoritarianism in the 1970s and 1980s. They too benefited from new technologies – copying machines and faxes – to disseminate their ideas and challenge, and ultimately topple, abusive governments. Liu Xiaobo was little known to most ordinary Chinese even after he was sentenced to 11 years imprisonment on Christmas Day 2009. And yet, when he was awarded the Nobel peace prize in October 2010 online activists around the world went into overdrive in seeking to acknowledge his role. Chinese authorities were eager to shut the discussion down. Caught off balance by widespread support for the man they had officially described as a “traitor”, they blocked searches for the phrase “empty chair” – a term many Chinese had begun to use in reference to the way that Liu Xiaobo was honoured at the prize-giving ceremony in Oslo, Norway. Until Wikileaks, it appeared that governments believed they retained the upper hand. But when the companies that were necessary for Wikileaks to function withdrew their support – and it remains unclear whether this was as a result of direct government pressure – the companies and the governments that were condemning Wikileaks came under attack from hackers around the world. This increased action by hackers and the continued dissemination of documents despite threats and outrage by various governments show how Wikileaks has changed the nature of the game with regard to who controls information. It also demonstrated a “take no prisoners” attitude among some hackers that threatened the privacy and security of individuals.”

Balance needed

The Report stresses the difficult need to find the right balance. “The desire to publicize information, if not balanced against individual rights, can lead to problems of its own”. “Human rights law is clear on this issue. Governments must be transparent and may only curtail freedom of expression (and the right to receive and impart information) to promote respect for the rights or reputations of others and to protect national security, public order and public health or morals. The claims by governments that national security is a carte blanche to restrict information is never justified – especially when the restriction appears to be covering up human rights and humanitarian law violations.” “Technology will serve the purposes of those who control it – whether their goal is the promotion of rights or the undermining of rights. We must be mindful that in a world of asymmetric power, the ability of governments and other institutional actors to abuse and exploit technology will always be superior to the grass-roots activists, the beleaguered human rights advocate, the intrepid whistleblower and the individual whose sense of justice demands that they be able to seek information or describe and document an injustice through these technologies. “In the debate surrounding Wikileaks, the dissemination of documents with apparent insufficient concern regarding the security of those exposed and the controversy surrounding the sexual offences case against Julian Assange made moral clarity difficult. “It is not a case that allows for the moral clarity that – at least in retrospect – we associate with the publication of the Pentagon Papers. For those who find Wikileaks amoral, it is important to note that when those who should be speaking truth to power fail, those who live with the daily abuses of power may understandably celebrate Wikileaks. Their last hope for accountability is disclosure – however messy, embarrassing and apparently counter-productive it may be.”

Tunisia: how it all unfolded

2010 ended with the public uprising in Tunisia that toppled that country’s longtime leader from power.  Similar public demonstrations at the start of 2011 had the same effect on Egypt’s autocratic president, Hosni Mubarak.

Flags and symbols from Tunisia where events showed the emerging power of communication

In Tunisia so many “felt that all hope was lost in the face of torture, economic deprivation, government corruption, police brutality and the unrelenting repression of political opposition and any others who voiced dissent.”  When Mohamed Bouazizi “began selling fruits and vegetables from a cart on the street, the police confiscated his goods. When he went to the political authorities to complain of police abuse, they declined to accept or investigate his complaint.” Here is the full story of how the events in Tunisia unfolded, as described in Amnesty’s Report: “A compelling and tragic example of the power of individual action when amplified through the new tools of the virtual world is the story of Mohamed Bouazizi. In December 2010, Mohamed Bouazizi, a street vendor living in Sidi Bouzid, Tunisia, set himself on fire outside the City Hall to protest police harassment, humiliation, economic hardship and the sense of powerlessness felt by young people like himself in Tunisia. “As word of his act of despair and defiance spread around Tunisia via mobile phones and the internet, it galvanized the long-simmering dissent against the country’s oppressive government with unforeseen ramifications. Mohamed Bouazizi died from his burns, but his anger lived on in the form of street protests throughout the country. Activists in Tunisia – a group comprised of trade unionists, members of the political opposition, and youth – some of whom did their organizing via social networking sites – took to the streets to demonstrate their support for Mohamed Bouazizi’s grievances. Experienced hands joined with young protesters in using new tools to challenge a repressive government. “The Tunisian government sought to enforce a tight media blackout and shut down individual access to the internet but news quickly spread thanks to new technologies. The protesters made it clear that their anger was about both the government’s brutal repression of those who dared to challenge its authoritarianism as well as the lack of economic opportunity caused in part by government corruption. “In January, less than a month after Mohamed Bouazizi’s desperate act, the government of President Zine El ‘Abidine Ben Ali collapsed and he fled the country, seeking refuge in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. The people of Tunisia celebrated the end of 20 plus years of unaccountable rule, setting the stage for the restoration of a participatory and rights-respecting government to be elected. “The fall of Ben Ali’s government reverberated throughout the region and the world. Governments which rely on torture and repression to suppress dissent and which grow rich through corruption and economic exploitation were looking over their shoulders. The local elite and foreign governments which propped up these illegitimate regimes while pontificating on democracy and human rights, were also nervous. “In no time the upheaval in Tunisia triggered tremors in other countries. People took to the streets in Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Libya and Yemen.”

Amnestey International, Arab spring, empty chair, Hilary Clinton, Internet, internet freedom, Mohamed Bouazizi, my father is Li Gang, Tony Blair, Tunisia Ecology, News