GENEVA, July 7, 2016 — Turkey played a key role as co-sponsor of the U.N.’s “internet freedom” resolution, even as it censors and shuts down access to websites such as Twitter, Facebook and Wikipedia. 

All the while, President Erdogan’s increasingly authoritarian government has continued to implement policies which directly contravene the prescriptions of the resolution. Erdogan’s government practises restrictive censorship and policing of the internet. In the wake of recent terrorist attacks in Istanbul, Turkey effected multiple media blackouts, while the European Court of Human Rights ruled in December 2015 that the government’s prolonged blocking of video sharing site YouTube was illegal. In the second half of 2015, Turkey made more requests than any other nation to remove or block content on Twitter.

The suppression of internet freedoms is part of a wider, systematic attempt to stifle free speech in Turkey. These efforts came to a head in March, 2016, when the government seized Turkey’s largest newspaper, Zaman. The actions were met with strong condemnation, including from the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

And yet states like Sweden and the US, who profess to be standard bearers for human rights, are happy to enable Turkey in its bid to whitewash its own abuses, content for them to join as cosponsors on key UN resolutions.

This pattern of events is a near carbon copy of proceedings at the 31st session of the Human Rights Council, which took place in March. Then, Turkey joined Costa Rica and Switzerland as a sponsor of a resolution on “The promotion and protection of human rights in the context of peaceful protests.” Turkish police killed 11 and injured some 8,000 people in 2013 during the Gezi Park protests. 

The post Turkey cloaks rights abuses with UN activities: others let them appeared first on UN Watch.

GENEVA, February 18 – A coalition of 20 human rights groups announced today that Saudi blogger and rights activist Raif Badawi — sentenced to 10 years in prison and 1,000 lashes for “insulting Islam” by creating a website for Saudi liberals — has been selected as the 2015 recipient of the prestigious Geneva Summit Courage Award. Last year’s prize went to blind Chinese lawyer Chen Guangcheng.

“I am very happy to hear this,” said Ensaf Haidar, Badawi’s wife, now living in Canada, who will be accepting the award by video when it is presented next week in a ceremony before UN delegates, human rights activists and journalists, on Tuesday, February 24th, 2015, at the 7^thannual Geneva Summit for Human Rights and Democracy.

The NGO coalition is honoring Badawi “for inspiring the world with his extraordinary courage in the defense of liberty and universal human rights.”

“As co-hosts of the Geneva Summit, Liberal International is pleased to join forces with UN Watch and 18 other NGOs, to continue to fight for Raif Badawi’s liberation,” said Markus Loening, chair of Liberal International’s Human Rights Committee, and former human rights commissioner of the German government.  Read More

 ______________

On eve of UN rights session, dissidents to spotlight urgent human rights situations and call for action

GENEVA, Feb. 18 – World-famous human rights dissidents, activists, and victims will gather for the 7th Geneva Summit for Human Rights and Democracy next week on Tuesday, February 24, 2015. To register now, or watch live webcast, visit unwatch.org.
The event is organized by UN Watch as part of a global coalition of 20 human rights NGOs, and will take place days before the UN Human Rights Council opens its annual session.

The Geneva Summit aims to shine a spotlight on urgent human rights situations that require the Council’s attention.

Featured speakers include:

·  Alex Chow & Lester Shum, Student leaders of the Hong Kong protest movement
·  Saa, Nigerian schoolgirl who escaped from Boko Haram
·  Pierre Torres, French Journalist held hostage by ISIS for 10 months
· Yavuz Baydar, Turkish journalist
·  Maria Baronova, Russian human rights activist
· Tamara Suju, Venezuelan human rights lawyer
· Yeon-Mi Park, 21-year-old North Korean defector
·  Ashiq Masih, Husband of Asia Bibi, Christian mother of five on death row in Pakistan for blasphemy
·  Masih Alinejad, Freelance journalist who empowers women in Iran with her “My Stealthy Freedom” Facebook page
·  Dicki Chhoyang, a senior figure in the Dalai Lama’s Tibetan government-in-exile
·  Il Lim, North Korean defector and former slave laborer
·  Maria Corina Machado, Venezuelan opposition leader
·  Juan Francisco Sigler Amaya and Manuel Cuesta Morua, Dissidents in Havana
· Yang Jianli, Former Chinese political prisoner, survivor of Tiananmen Square massacre, president of Initiatives for China
·  Ladan Boroumand, Abdorrahman Boroumand Foundation for Human Rights and Democracy in Iran, member of Steering Committee of World Movement for Democracy

Now in its seventh year, the Geneva Summit enjoys widespread coverage by major news agencies.

Videos of past speaker testimonies are available here. Admission to this year’s February 24, 2015 summit is free to the public and media, but registration is mandatory. For registration, program and schedule information, visit www.genevasummit.org.

The post 20 NGOs Led by UN Watch to Bestow 2015 Courage Award Upon Saudi Blogger at Tuesday's Geneva Rights Summit appeared first on UN Watch.

 Click for video (begins at 7:00)

‘It’s too early to tell’

Let me first say thank you to the organizers, in particular to Arielle and her crew who have put this together. They have been extremely efficient — and we are not an easy bunch of people, either the speakers or human rights activists in general, having belonged to both groups now.

The job that I do is called Director of Public Policy for Google out of Washington D.C. I specialize in issues of free expression. It’s a fairly new job at Google and it’s also one of the most interesting jobs at the company, and we can get into why that is. In a past life for my sins, I think I was a speechwriter for someone who tended to go on at great length and so I will try to brief today.

A couple of caveats before I get into the topic of my remarks here. The first is that I’m not a human rights activist. I am honored to be in the company of so many people here who have been threatened for their beliefs, who have suffered for their beliefs, who have been in prison for their beliefs, and worse.

While I did do a few hours in public security bureau offices in rural China, many years ago, the closest I get to human rights violations these days is that I’m accused of them fairly regularly by my children.

I’m an American, that’s something you may have noticed as well, and Americans generally think we know more than everyone else. It’s not really a good thing because, number one, we don’t, and, number two, it tends to make people stop listening to what we’re saying.

So I would ask you to raise your hand if you think I am spouting out propaganda, or I’m doing something else that disturbs you, either as a European, an Asian, an African, or wherever you hail from.

I also work for Google, as you know, and that means that sometimes I can lapse into sounding like a salesman for our products. They are pretty cool, actually. And I work with a bunch of geniuses and it’s kind of fun, so please just give me a little leeway on that one.

On a more prosaic level, I am not a technology expert, I want to be very clear about that, so please do not ask me complicated questions when we get to the questions — I will not be able to answer them.

One other thing I’m not going to do is say a lot about China, and I’m not going to make a lot of predictions about what’s going to happen. The reason for that is fairly simple, and I think the best way to explain it is with a great anecdote about the opening of U.S.-Chinese relations in the early seventies, when Henry Kissinger used to go to Beijing and have talks with Zhou Enlai, who was then the Premier of China.

Over dinner one night they got into a discussion about the impact of various revolutions: the Russian Revolution, the American Revolution, the French Revolution, the Chinese Revolution. And Kissinger, as was his usual pattern, started going off on a grand historical theory, and after he had spoken for several minutes, he looked at Zhou Enlai and said, “And what is your opinion of the French Revolution?” And Zhou Enlai looked back at him and said, “It is too early to tell.”

This is a lesson that I think we should all have when we’re talking about the Internet. It’s a very important thing, you will hear a lot of people predicting exactly what is going to happen and when it’s going to do so, and I would warn you against listening to such people.

Internet censorship is a global problem

So what am I going to talk about today? I’m going to talk about the promise of Internet freedom, the perils of Internet freedom and what we might do in order to make sure that the promise overcomes the perils. I’m not going to illustrate this with a lot of examples today for a couple of reasons: (1) because they take a long time, and (2) there are people in this room who know these examples first hand, know them a lot better than I do, so I would wait for questions for you to tell me about them and so we can discuss them.

Let’s start, however, with some context because a few things seem as certain as you can get in this area. First, we all know that the Internet is growing phenomenally. I won’t spend a lot of time on this, but just throw out a few numbers for you to consider.

About two-thirds of the world’s population right now has access to mobile phone technology. This is the fastest spread of any technology in human history, and this number, about two-thirds, actually underestimates the number of people who are affected, because one phone can be used by an entire village.

More than 80 percent of Google search queries on mobile come from outside the United States; it’s a very important statistic for us to realize as a company. Here’s another statistic: every minute, 20 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube. Let me repeat that. Every minute, 20 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube. Now, if you watch a lot of YouTube, those who spend a lot of time on it, can rightly question the sanity of the global population at times. Some of the things that you’ll see are, to say the least, rather unusual, but you cannot question people’s commitment to the actual media itself.

Another thing that I would note in context is that Internet censorship is getting worse, and more sophisticated. More than 40 countries to date have censored at one time or another, and Google and YouTube have been cut off, or cut back, in 25 countries.

I would also note, however, that this is not only about repressive regimes, the most miserable regimes, the ones we hear the most about. One thing history teaches us is that we always have to watch our backs-we always have to be looking for what we’re not seeing at that moment. And while focusing on these ugly regimes is popular, it can blind us to other developments.

Now, I’m not someone who will compare the government in Burma or in Vietnam to Western democracies, but I do want to speak about one example that happened very recently where a Western democracy was involved in what could only be called Internet censorship.

A judge in Italy recently sentenced three Google officials to six-month suspended sentences for violating Italian privacy laws. The story goes back to 2006, when an Italian teenager uploaded onto, what was then called, Google Video, a video that was really quite horrendous. It showed teenagers abusing, both physically and verbally, a youth with autism.

Now, it took about two months for the Italian authorities to tell Google that they had found this, and to ask us to take it down, and it took us about two and a half hours to take it down. Nonetheless, the Italian authorities prosecuted our officials, not only on the grounds of privacy violations, but also on grounds of defamation. The grounds of defamation were dropped, [but] our officials were found guilty on the privacy charges.

Now, nobody for a minute would defend the content of that video; it’s precisely the kind of thing that makes people want to be in favor of censorship of different kinds. But I would note the danger that this kind of incident poses-not just to Google officials, but to everyone in this room and people around the world.

Because if, from now on, you’re responsible for anything that appears on your website, you’re criminally responsible for anything that appears on your website, that’s certainly going to have a chilling effect on what people are willing to put up. And another thing it’s going to do is encourage repressive regimes to say, “Wow, look at those Western democracies and what they do.”

The promise of the Internet

Now, let me turn to the Internet’s promise.

First, the Internet is global. It’s a median that pays no attention to borders, and it militates against control. And a particular interest to the people gathered in this room, it means that the diaspora from various countries can have an effect that is way out of proportion to its numbers.

A second area of promise that the Internet has is that it remains an open system, not a closed system. If you’ve got a connection, you are likely to be able to access information and to say what you want. It may take a lot of work in some societies, but you can usually get there.

Third, the Internet is cheap, and it’s important to note that it’s a relatively cheap form of advertising-not only for if you want to sell shoes of course, but also if you want to gather people to a cause. Never before has it been cheaper to come up with a political movement and to bring your followers along.

Fourth, the Internet is a two-way street. In many places, the monopoly on information, once confined to people who owned printing presses or television stations, has been broken, and everyone who wants to participate gets to participate. And the Internet certainly has the potential to be a force for small “d” democracy, for citizen participation and transparency, when it comes to government.

Fifth, and gaining more truth every day, the Internet is user driven. Now, in its highest form, something you know well in this room, this means that you’ve got a new power to bear witness to atrocity or to human rights violations, or expose a corrupt regime. I’m afraid that in its lowest form it’s spam that’s disguised as a personal narrative. No offense to people who run Twitter or who use it, but I don’t want to know what you had for breakfast, or that you left your umbrella at home-I just don’t care about it. And I think that we all have to reduce the amount of things that we put on the Internet if we are to find the things that are truly important.

Let me turn now to the Internet’s peril. First, it’s quite easy to see the Internet as a cure-all, and there is a theme running throughout people who look at these issues, the media in particular, to cite it as a cure-all. But it’s not.

We should remember that the Internet is a medium; it’s a tactic. Internet freedom does not bring about real freedom and what happens online does not magically happen offline. We have to resist what the dissident from Belarus, Evgeny Morozov, has called “techno-utopianism,” and I really apologize to the interpreters for using that phrase.

Second, content on the Internet is a mess, and at one point, my boss, Eric Schmidt, actually called it a “cesspool.” Perhaps that was ungracious of him, to refer to it as such, but I think what’s important here, if you’re considering the Internet’s impact on movements, is that it’s just as easy on the Internet to rally people to a good cause as it is to sell them non-existent bearer bonds. It is just as easy to fool people, and we’ve seen that proven over and over again, particularly in a wonderful University of Copenhagen study in which an expert there rallied a group of 10,000 people to a Facebook group in order to save a fountain in Copenhagen, that was not-repeat, not-slated for destruction.

Third, the Internet has made some of us forget tried-and-true methods of communications. Everybody is so focused on the Internet these days that they have forgotten things like radio. Radio is actually a very powerful media and it would be a shame if in the rush to adopt the Internet, people forget what works.

Fourth, and perhaps deadliest, technology on the Internet can be reversed. The same tools that give power to you also give new powers to governments, and yes, even corporations. That is not to encourage the conspiracy theorists in this room, of course. Think about the tracking of Iranian dissidents through cell phones, people who’ve dialed a single number and been tracked as a result of it. Or credible reports that governments are infiltrating chat rooms by putting their undercover agents online.

The Internet at war

Ivan Sigal, who’s head of Global Voices, which is a terrific group in this area, wrote a paper last year that was called “Digital Media in Conflict-Prone Societies”-perhaps better called “The Internet at War”-and he wrote as follows: “It is possible to build communications architectures that encourage dialogue and nonviolent political solutions. However, it is equally possible for digital media to increase polarization, strengthen biases, and foment violence.”

Finally, when you’re considering the perils, I would note that the technology in the Internet, fascination with the technology, masks what may be the most insidious form of censorship, and that is self-censorship.

Now, I would never urge any of you to put yourself in danger, and that’s particularly true after hearing yesterday’s stories [during the Geneva Summit]. But we always have to question the habits that we’ve formed and those that our various societies have silently, and for a long time, imposed on us.

Finally, what should we do, what can we do together, in order to make ensure that the promise triumphs over the peril?

The first thing that I would argue is: Don’t reinvent the wheel. The coolest stuff that I’ve seen out there is when a dissident or a blogger in one part of the world has his or her work picked up in another part of the world. There’s a lot of these tactics that can be transferred from place to place.

I would also refer you to great organizations that already exist. I mentioned Global Voices, I would also mention the OpenNet Initiative, which is part of Harvard’s Berkman Society. I would mention CyberDissidents.org and DigiActive.org. There’s a whole group of these, and many others, that are doing a great job.

The second thing that I would say is that we should work together. I won’t talk at length about the Global Network Initiative, but it’s something that our company and Microsoft and Yahoo have come together with human rights groups to put together, and we have in essence written a code of conduct for how information technology companies should operate in repressive regimes. It’s quite complex, it took a long time to do, you can imagine what it was like to putting those people in a room for two years together, but we have succeeded. And as of today we have hired an Executive Director to run the organization and to bring more companies and groups into the fold.

Third thing I would say, in terms of what you should be doing, is to go mobile. Everything is going to be focused on the mobile platform, and as a corollary to that, I would urge you not to overcomplicate what you’re trying to do. In some places it’s simply hard to download images, things like that, so when you’re going mobile, do it simply.

Fourth, I would urge you to translate. The best way to spread the story, of course, is to bring things into new languages, and we aim to do it in 40 different languages now. If you do it, it’s also a way that eventually you’ll help make the technology better because the more people who feed the computer translations, the better off the computer will get at translating idioms. And finally, I would say we should all push the old institutions, and some of the new ones, like Google, too, to make progress.

Just yesterday, to end on an optimistic note, the United States Treasury Department lifted what has been a long-time ban on allowing companies like ours to license certain kinds of software, our Earth software, our Picasa, which is our photograph collection software, and our Internet chat Talk software to countries like Iran and Sudan. Yesterday they lifted that and this is a great accomplishment. We feel it’s something the companies and human rights groups argued for together. We will now be able to offer those services, and we are hopeful that this will help people like yourselves in this room, and activists all over the world, take a small step down what is certainly a long road ahead.

Thank you.

The post Google: “Internet censorship getting worse, more sophisticated” appeared first on UN Watch.

 Click for video (begins at 7:00)

‘It’s too early to tell’

Let me first say thank you to the organizers, in particular to Arielle and her crew who have put this together. They have been extremely efficient — and we are not an easy bunch of people, either the speakers or human rights activists in general, having belonged to both groups now.

The job that I do is called Director of Public Policy for Google out of Washington D.C. I specialize in issues of free expression. It’s a fairly new job at Google and it’s also one of the most interesting jobs at the company, and we can get into why that is. In a past life for my sins, I think I was a speechwriter for someone who tended to go on at great length and so I will try to brief today.

A couple of caveats before I get into the topic of my remarks here. The first is that I’m not a human rights activist. I am honored to be in the company of so many people here who have been threatened for their beliefs, who have suffered for their beliefs, who have been in prison for their beliefs, and worse.

While I did do a few hours in public security bureau offices in rural China, many years ago, the closest I get to human rights violations these days is that I’m accused of them fairly regularly by my children.

I’m an American, that’s something you may have noticed as well, and Americans generally think we know more than everyone else. It’s not really a good thing because, number one, we don’t, and, number two, it tends to make people stop listening to what we’re saying.

So I would ask you to raise your hand if you think I am spouting out propaganda, or I’m doing something else that disturbs you, either as a European, an Asian, an African, or wherever you hail from.

I also work for Google, as you know, and that means that sometimes I can lapse into sounding like a salesman for our products. They are pretty cool, actually. And I work with a bunch of geniuses and it’s kind of fun, so please just give me a little leeway on that one.

On a more prosaic level, I am not a technology expert, I want to be very clear about that, so please do not ask me complicated questions when we get to the questions — I will not be able to answer them.

One other thing I’m not going to do is say a lot about China, and I’m not going to make a lot of predictions about what’s going to happen. The reason for that is fairly simple, and I think the best way to explain it is with a great anecdote about the opening of U.S.-Chinese relations in the early seventies, when Henry Kissinger used to go to Beijing and have talks with Zhou Enlai, who was then the Premier of China.

Over dinner one night they got into a discussion about the impact of various revolutions: the Russian Revolution, the American Revolution, the French Revolution, the Chinese Revolution. And Kissinger, as was his usual pattern, started going off on a grand historical theory, and after he had spoken for several minutes, he looked at Zhou Enlai and said, “And what is your opinion of the French Revolution?” And Zhou Enlai looked back at him and said, “It is too early to tell.”

This is a lesson that I think we should all have when we’re talking about the Internet. It’s a very important thing, you will hear a lot of people predicting exactly what is going to happen and when it’s going to do so, and I would warn you against listening to such people.

Internet censorship is a global problem

So what am I going to talk about today? I’m going to talk about the promise of Internet freedom, the perils of Internet freedom and what we might do in order to make sure that the promise overcomes the perils. I’m not going to illustrate this with a lot of examples today for a couple of reasons: (1) because they take a long time, and (2) there are people in this room who know these examples first hand, know them a lot better than I do, so I would wait for questions for you to tell me about them and so we can discuss them.

Let’s start, however, with some context because a few things seem as certain as you can get in this area. First, we all know that the Internet is growing phenomenally. I won’t spend a lot of time on this, but just throw out a few numbers for you to consider.

About two-thirds of the world’s population right now has access to mobile phone technology. This is the fastest spread of any technology in human history, and this number, about two-thirds, actually underestimates the number of people who are affected, because one phone can be used by an entire village.

More than 80 percent of Google search queries on mobile come from outside the United States; it’s a very important statistic for us to realize as a company. Here’s another statistic: every minute, 20 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube. Let me repeat that. Every minute, 20 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube. Now, if you watch a lot of YouTube, those who spend a lot of time on it, can rightly question the sanity of the global population at times. Some of the things that you’ll see are, to say the least, rather unusual, but you cannot question people’s commitment to the actual media itself.

Another thing that I would note in context is that Internet censorship is getting worse, and more sophisticated. More than 40 countries to date have censored at one time or another, and Google and YouTube have been cut off, or cut back, in 25 countries.

I would also note, however, that this is not only about repressive regimes, the most miserable regimes, the ones we hear the most about. One thing history teaches us is that we always have to watch our backs-we always have to be looking for what we’re not seeing at that moment. And while focusing on these ugly regimes is popular, it can blind us to other developments.

Now, I’m not someone who will compare the government in Burma or in Vietnam to Western democracies, but I do want to speak about one example that happened very recently where a Western democracy was involved in what could only be called Internet censorship.

A judge in Italy recently sentenced three Google officials to six-month suspended sentences for violating Italian privacy laws. The story goes back to 2006, when an Italian teenager uploaded onto, what was then called, Google Video, a video that was really quite horrendous. It showed teenagers abusing, both physically and verbally, a youth with autism.

Now, it took about two months for the Italian authorities to tell Google that they had found this, and to ask us to take it down, and it took us about two and a half hours to take it down. Nonetheless, the Italian authorities prosecuted our officials, not only on the grounds of privacy violations, but also on grounds of defamation. The grounds of defamation were dropped, [but] our officials were found guilty on the privacy charges.

Now, nobody for a minute would defend the content of that video; it’s precisely the kind of thing that makes people want to be in favor of censorship of different kinds. But I would note the danger that this kind of incident poses-not just to Google officials, but to everyone in this room and people around the world.

Because if, from now on, you’re responsible for anything that appears on your website, you’re criminally responsible for anything that appears on your website, that’s certainly going to have a chilling effect on what people are willing to put up. And another thing it’s going to do is encourage repressive regimes to say, “Wow, look at those Western democracies and what they do.”

The promise of the Internet

Now, let me turn to the Internet’s promise.

First, the Internet is global. It’s a median that pays no attention to borders, and it militates against control. And a particular interest to the people gathered in this room, it means that the diaspora from various countries can have an effect that is way out of proportion to its numbers.

A second area of promise that the Internet has is that it remains an open system, not a closed system. If you’ve got a connection, you are likely to be able to access information and to say what you want. It may take a lot of work in some societies, but you can usually get there.

Third, the Internet is cheap, and it’s important to note that it’s a relatively cheap form of advertising-not only for if you want to sell shoes of course, but also if you want to gather people to a cause. Never before has it been cheaper to come up with a political movement and to bring your followers along.

Fourth, the Internet is a two-way street. In many places, the monopoly on information, once confined to people who owned printing presses or television stations, has been broken, and everyone who wants to participate gets to participate. And the Internet certainly has the potential to be a force for small “d” democracy, for citizen participation and transparency, when it comes to government.

Fifth, and gaining more truth every day, the Internet is user driven. Now, in its highest form, something you know well in this room, this means that you’ve got a new power to bear witness to atrocity or to human rights violations, or expose a corrupt regime. I’m afraid that in its lowest form it’s spam that’s disguised as a personal narrative. No offense to people who run Twitter or who use it, but I don’t want to know what you had for breakfast, or that you left your umbrella at home-I just don’t care about it. And I think that we all have to reduce the amount of things that we put on the Internet if we are to find the things that are truly important.

Let me turn now to the Internet’s peril. First, it’s quite easy to see the Internet as a cure-all, and there is a theme running throughout people who look at these issues, the media in particular, to cite it as a cure-all. But it’s not.

We should remember that the Internet is a medium; it’s a tactic. Internet freedom does not bring about real freedom and what happens online does not magically happen offline. We have to resist what the dissident from Belarus, Evgeny Morozov, has called “techno-utopianism,” and I really apologize to the interpreters for using that phrase.

Second, content on the Internet is a mess, and at one point, my boss, Eric Schmidt, actually called it a “cesspool.” Perhaps that was ungracious of him, to refer to it as such, but I think what’s important here, if you’re considering the Internet’s impact on movements, is that it’s just as easy on the Internet to rally people to a good cause as it is to sell them non-existent bearer bonds. It is just as easy to fool people, and we’ve seen that proven over and over again, particularly in a wonderful University of Copenhagen study in which an expert there rallied a group of 10,000 people to a Facebook group in order to save a fountain in Copenhagen, that was not-repeat, not-slated for destruction.

Third, the Internet has made some of us forget tried-and-true methods of communications. Everybody is so focused on the Internet these days that they have forgotten things like radio. Radio is actually a very powerful media and it would be a shame if in the rush to adopt the Internet, people forget what works.

Fourth, and perhaps deadliest, technology on the Internet can be reversed. The same tools that give power to you also give new powers to governments, and yes, even corporations. That is not to encourage the conspiracy theorists in this room, of course. Think about the tracking of Iranian dissidents through cell phones, people who’ve dialed a single number and been tracked as a result of it. Or credible reports that governments are infiltrating chat rooms by putting their undercover agents online.

The Internet at war

Ivan Sigal, who’s head of Global Voices, which is a terrific group in this area, wrote a paper last year that was called “Digital Media in Conflict-Prone Societies”-perhaps better called “The Internet at War”-and he wrote as follows: “It is possible to build communications architectures that encourage dialogue and nonviolent political solutions. However, it is equally possible for digital media to increase polarization, strengthen biases, and foment violence.”

Finally, when you’re considering the perils, I would note that the technology in the Internet, fascination with the technology, masks what may be the most insidious form of censorship, and that is self-censorship.

Now, I would never urge any of you to put yourself in danger, and that’s particularly true after hearing yesterday’s stories [during the Geneva Summit]. But we always have to question the habits that we’ve formed and those that our various societies have silently, and for a long time, imposed on us.

Finally, what should we do, what can we do together, in order to make ensure that the promise triumphs over the peril?

The first thing that I would argue is: Don’t reinvent the wheel. The coolest stuff that I’ve seen out there is when a dissident or a blogger in one part of the world has his or her work picked up in another part of the world. There’s a lot of these tactics that can be transferred from place to place.

I would also refer you to great organizations that already exist. I mentioned Global Voices, I would also mention the OpenNet Initiative, which is part of Harvard’s Berkman Society. I would mention CyberDissidents.org and DigiActive.org. There’s a whole group of these, and many others, that are doing a great job.

The second thing that I would say is that we should work together. I won’t talk at length about the Global Network Initiative, but it’s something that our company and Microsoft and Yahoo have come together with human rights groups to put together, and we have in essence written a code of conduct for how information technology companies should operate in repressive regimes. It’s quite complex, it took a long time to do, you can imagine what it was like to putting those people in a room for two years together, but we have succeeded. And as of today we have hired an Executive Director to run the organization and to bring more companies and groups into the fold.

Third thing I would say, in terms of what you should be doing, is to go mobile. Everything is going to be focused on the mobile platform, and as a corollary to that, I would urge you not to overcomplicate what you’re trying to do. In some places it’s simply hard to download images, things like that, so when you’re going mobile, do it simply.

Fourth, I would urge you to translate. The best way to spread the story, of course, is to bring things into new languages, and we aim to do it in 40 different languages now. If you do it, it’s also a way that eventually you’ll help make the technology better because the more people who feed the computer translations, the better off the computer will get at translating idioms. And finally, I would say we should all push the old institutions, and some of the new ones, like Google, too, to make progress.

Just yesterday, to end on an optimistic note, the United States Treasury Department lifted what has been a long-time ban on allowing companies like ours to license certain kinds of software, our Earth software, our Picasa, which is our photograph collection software, and our Internet chat Talk software to countries like Iran and Sudan. Yesterday they lifted that and this is a great accomplishment. We feel it’s something the companies and human rights groups argued for together. We will now be able to offer those services, and we are hopeful that this will help people like yourselves in this room, and activists all over the world, take a small step down what is certainly a long road ahead.

Thank you.

The post Google: “Internet censorship getting worse, more sophisticated” appeared first on UN Watch.

————
 

Robert Boorstin, Google Director of Corporate and Policy Communications
Geneva Summit for Human Rights Tolerance and Democracy, March 9, 2010

 Click for video (begins at 7:00)

‘It’s too early to tell’

Let me first say thank you to the organizers, in particular to Arielle and her crew who have put this together. They have been extremely efficient—and we are not an easy bunch of people, either the speakers or human rights activists in general, having belonged to both groups now.

The job that I do is called Director of Public Policy for Google out of Washington D.C. I specialize in issues of free expression. It’s a fairly new job at Google and it’s also one of the most interesting jobs at the company, and we can get into why that is. In a past life for my sins, I think I was a speechwriter for someone who tended to go on at great length and so I will try to brief today.

A couple of caveats before I get into the topic of my remarks here. The first is that I’m not a human rights activist. I am honored to be in the company of so many people here who have been threatened for their beliefs, who have suffered for their beliefs, who have been in prison for their beliefs, and worse.

While I did do a few hours in public security bureau offices in rural China, many years ago, the closest I get to human rights violations these days is that I’m accused of them fairly regularly by my children.

I’m an American, that’s something you may have noticed as well, and Americans generally think we know more than everyone else. It’s not really a good thing because, number one, we don’t, and, number two, it tends to make people stop listening to what we’re saying.

So I would ask you to raise your hand if you think I am spouting out propaganda, or I’m doing something else that disturbs you, either as a European, an Asian, an African, or wherever you hail from.

I also work for Google, as you know, and that means that sometimes I can lapse into sounding like a salesman for our products. They are pretty cool, actually. And I work with a bunch of geniuses and it’s kind of fun, so please just give me a little leeway on that one.

On a more prosaic level, I am not a technology expert, I want to be very clear about that, so please do not ask me complicated questions when we get to the questions—I will not be able to answer them.

One other thing I’m not going to do is say a lot about China, and I’m not going to make a lot of predictions about what’s going to happen. The reason for that is fairly simple, and I think the best way to explain it is with a great anecdote about the opening of U.S.-Chinese relations in the early seventies, when Henry Kissinger used to go to Beijing and have talks with Zhou Enlai, who was then the Premier of China.

Over dinner one night they got into a discussion about the impact of various revolutions: the Russian Revolution, the American Revolution, the French Revolution, the Chinese Revolution. And Kissinger, as was his usual pattern, started going off on a grand historical theory, and after he had spoken for several minutes, he looked at Zhou Enlai and said, “And what is your opinion of the French Revolution?” And Zhou Enlai looked back at him and said, “It is too early to tell.”

This is a lesson that I think we should all have when we’re talking about the Internet. It’s a very important thing, you will hear a lot of people predicting exactly what is going to happen and when it’s going to do so, and I would warn you against listening to such people.

Internet censorship is a global problem

So what am I going to talk about today? I’m going to talk about the promise of Internet freedom, the perils of Internet freedom and what we might do in order to make sure that the promise overcomes the perils. I’m not going to illustrate this with a lot of examples today for a couple of reasons: (1) because they take a long time, and (2) there are people in this room who know these examples first hand, know them a lot better than I do, so I would wait for questions for you to tell me about them and so we can discuss them.

Let’s start, however, with some context because a few things seem as certain as you can get in this area. First, we all know that the Internet is growing phenomenally. I won’t spend a lot of time on this, but just throw out a few numbers for you to consider.

About two-thirds of the world’s population right now has access to mobile phone technology. This is the fastest spread of any technology in human history, and this number, about two-thirds, actually underestimates the number of people who are affected, because one phone can be used by an entire village.

More than 80 percent of Google search queries on mobile come from outside the United States; it’s a very important statistic for us to realize as a company. Here’s another statistic: every minute, 20 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube. Let me repeat that. Every minute, 20 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube. Now, if you watch a lot of YouTube, those who spend a lot of time on it, can rightly question the sanity of the global population at times. Some of the things that you’ll see are, to say the least, rather unusual, but you cannot question people’s commitment to the actual media itself.

Another thing that I would note in context is that Internet censorship is getting worse, and more sophisticated. More than 40 countries to date have censored at one time or another, and Google and YouTube have been cut off, or cut back, in 25 countries.

I would also note, however, that this is not only about repressive regimes, the most miserable regimes, the ones we hear the most about. One thing history teaches us is that we always have to watch our backs—we always have to be looking for what we’re not seeing at that moment. And while focusing on these ugly regimes is popular, it can blind us to other developments.

Now, I’m not someone who will compare the government in Burma or in Vietnam to Western democracies, but I do want to speak about one example that happened very recently where a Western democracy was involved in what could only be called Internet censorship.

A judge in Italy recently sentenced three Google officials to six-month suspended sentences for violating Italian privacy laws. The story goes back to 2006, when an Italian teenager uploaded onto, what was then called, Google Video, a video that was really quite horrendous. It showed teenagers abusing, both physically and verbally, a youth with autism.

Now, it took about two months for the Italian authorities to tell Google that they had found this, and to ask us to take it down, and it took us about two and a half hours to take it down. Nonetheless, the Italian authorities prosecuted our officials, not only on the grounds of privacy violations, but also on grounds of defamation. The grounds of defamation were dropped, [but] our officials were found guilty on the privacy charges.

Now, nobody for a minute would defend the content of that video; it’s precisely the kind of thing that makes people want to be in favor of censorship of different kinds. But I would note the danger that this kind of incident poses—not just to Google officials, but to everyone in this room and people around the world.

Because if, from now on, you’re responsible for anything that appears on your website, you’re criminally responsible for anything that appears on your website, that’s certainly going to have a chilling effect on what people are willing to put up. And another thing it’s going to do is encourage repressive regimes to say, “Wow, look at those Western democracies and what they do.”

The promise of the Internet

Now, let me turn to the Internet’s promise.

First, the Internet is global. It’s a median that pays no attention to borders, and it militates against control. And a particular interest to the people gathered in this room, it means that the diaspora from various countries can have an effect that is way out of proportion to its numbers.

A second area of promise that the Internet has is that it remains an open system, not a closed system. If you’ve got a connection, you are likely to be able to access information and to say what you want. It may take a lot of work in some societies, but you can usually get there.

Third, the Internet is cheap, and it’s important to note that it’s a relatively cheap form of advertising—not only for if you want to sell shoes of course, but also if you want to gather people to a cause. Never before has it been cheaper to come up with a political movement and to bring your followers along.

Fourth, the Internet is a two-way street. In many places, the monopoly on information, once confined to people who owned printing presses or television stations, has been broken, and everyone who wants to participate gets to participate. And the Internet certainly has the potential to be a force for small “d” democracy, for citizen participation and transparency, when it comes to government.

Fifth, and gaining more truth every day, the Internet is user driven. Now, in its highest form, something you know well in this room, this means that you’ve got a new power to bear witness to atrocity or to human rights violations, or expose a corrupt regime. I’m afraid that in its lowest form it’s spam that’s disguised as a personal narrative. No offense to people who run Twitter or who use it, but I don’t want to know what you had for breakfast, or that you left your umbrella at home—I just don’t care about it. And I think that we all have to reduce the amount of things that we put on the Internet if we are to find the things that are truly important.

Let me turn now to the Internet’s peril. First, it’s quite easy to see the Internet as a cure-all, and there is a theme running throughout people who look at these issues, the media in particular, to cite it as a cure-all. But it’s not.

We should remember that the Internet is a medium; it’s a tactic. Internet freedom does not bring about real freedom and what happens online does not magically happen offline. We have to resist what the dissident from Belarus, Evgeny Morozov, has called “techno-utopianism,” and I really apologize to the interpreters for using that phrase.

Second, content on the Internet is a mess, and at one point, my boss, Eric Schmidt, actually called it a “cesspool.” Perhaps that was ungracious of him, to refer to it as such, but I think what’s important here, if you’re considering the Internet’s impact on movements, is that it’s just as easy on the Internet to rally people to a good cause as it is to sell them non-existent bearer bonds. It is just as easy to fool people, and we’ve seen that proven over and over again, particularly in a wonderful University of Copenhagen study in which an expert there rallied a group of 10,000 people to a Facebook group in order to save a fountain in Copenhagen, that was not—repeat, not—slated for destruction.

Third, the Internet has made some of us forget tried-and-true methods of communications. Everybody is so focused on the Internet these days that they have forgotten things like radio. Radio is actually a very powerful media and it would be a shame if in the rush to adopt the Internet, people forget what works.

Fourth, and perhaps deadliest, technology on the Internet can be reversed. The same tools that give power to you also give new powers to governments, and yes, even corporations. That is not to encourage the conspiracy theorists in this room, of course. Think about the tracking of Iranian dissidents through cell phones, people who’ve dialed a single number and been tracked as a result of it. Or credible reports that governments are infiltrating chat rooms by putting their undercover agents online.

The Internet at war

Ivan Sigal, who’s head of Global Voices, which is a terrific group in this area, wrote a paper last year that was called “Digital Media in Conflict-Prone Societies”—perhaps better called “The Internet at War”—and he wrote as follows: “It is possible to build communications architectures that encourage dialogue and nonviolent political solutions. However, it is equally possible for digital media to increase polarization, strengthen biases, and foment violence.”

Finally, when you’re considering the perils, I would note that the technology in the Internet, fascination with the technology, masks what may be the most insidious form of censorship, and that is self-censorship.

Now, I would never urge any of you to put yourself in danger, and that’s particularly true after hearing yesterday’s stories [during the Geneva Summit]. But we always have to question the habits that we’ve formed and those that our various societies have silently, and for a long time, imposed on us.

Finally, what should we do, what can we do together, in order to make ensure that the promise triumphs over the peril?

The first thing that I would argue is: Don’t reinvent the wheel. The coolest stuff that I’ve seen out there is when a dissident or a blogger in one part of the world has his or her work picked up in another part of the world. There’s a lot of these tactics that can be transferred from place to place.

I would also refer you to great organizations that already exist. I mentioned Global Voices, I would also mention the OpenNet Initiative, which is part of Harvard’s Berkman Society. I would mention CyberDissidents.org and DigiActive.org. There’s a whole group of these, and many others, that are doing a great job.

The second thing that I would say is that we should work together. I won’t talk at length about the Global Network Initiative, but it’s something that our company and Microsoft and Yahoo have come together with human rights groups to put together, and we have in essence written a code of conduct for how information technology companies should operate in repressive regimes. It’s quite complex, it took a long time to do, you can imagine what it was like to putting those people in a room for two years together, but we have succeeded. And as of today we have hired an Executive Director to run the organization and to bring more companies and groups into the fold.

Third thing I would say, in terms of what you should be doing, is to go mobile. Everything is going to be focused on the mobile platform, and as a corollary to that, I would urge you not to overcomplicate what you’re trying to do. In some places it’s simply hard to download images, things like that, so when you’re going mobile, do it simply.

Fourth, I would urge you to translate. The best way to spread the story, of course, is to bring things into new languages, and we aim to do it in 40 different languages now. If you do it, it’s also a way that eventually you’ll help make the technology better because the more people who feed the computer translations, the better off the computer will get at translating idioms. And finally, I would say we should all push the old institutions, and some of the new ones, like Google, too, to make progress.

Just yesterday, to end on an optimistic note, the United States Treasury Department lifted what has been a long-time ban on allowing companies like ours to license certain kinds of software, our Earth software, our Picasa, which is our photograph collection software, and our Internet chat Talk software to countries like Iran and Sudan. Yesterday they lifted that and this is a great accomplishment. We feel it’s something the companies and human rights groups argued for together. We will now be able to offer those services, and we are hopeful that this will help people like yourselves in this room, and activists all over the world, take a small step down what is certainly a long road ahead.

Thank you.

The post Issue 228: Google: “Internet censorship getting worse, more sophisticated” appeared first on UN Watch.

GENEVA, March 12, 2010 – Marking the first World Day Against Cyber-Censorship, UN Watch and a global coalition of dissidents, non-governmental organizations and human rights activists submitted a new declaration on internet freedom to the United Nations, urging its endorsement by the world body.

The Geneva Declaration on Internet Freedom (click here for text), drafted by a committee of dissidents headed by two well-known political prisoners-Yang Jianli of China and Ahmad Batebi of Iran-calls for the protection of human rights activists imprisoned for social or political expression posted on blogs and other websites.

The manifesto was sent today to the President of the UN’s 47-nation Human Rights Council, Ambassador Alex Van Meeuwen of Belgium, after its adoption this week at the 2nd Geneva Summit for Human Rights, Tolerance and Democracy, an assembly of 500 dissidents and activists. The council is meeting this month for its main annual session. The text was also sent to Navi Pillay, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Both the UN rights chief and the council’s member states were urged to endorse the declaration, which affirms that “the preservation of a free Internet is essential to the full enjoyment of human rights, civil liberties and a free and democratic society,” and that “everyone has the right to equal access to the Internet, regardless of race, religion, ethnic or geographical origin.”

The Human Rights Council session is currently debating freedom of expression and other basic freedoms guaranteed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Next week it addresses specific countries that require its attention. NGOs can address the plenary, but a member state would need to formally table the declaration for it to be considered for adoption.

“Any attempt, to restrict or intimidate people from free, uncensored, and secure access of the Internet,” says the Geneva Declaration, “constitutes a fundamental abridgement of human rights and undermines the promotion of peace and world order.”

The declaration urges United Nations and international bodies, and “all like-minded supporters of freedom, human rights and democracy,” to adopt similar declarations, resolutions, or other statements “to support the cause of Internet freedom in the face of repression.”

The statement’s preamble declares that “the situation of Internet freedom in many regions of the world is increasingly perilous and under assault.”

It names several authoritarian states that regularly censor the internet and intimidate users through “cyber police,” including Belarus, Burma, China, Cuba, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Vietnam.

Authorities in China, says the declaration, have “seized computers, imprisoned individuals for sharing information online, blocked and deleted blogs and other online services, and incarcerated journalists and social activists for online activity.”

Iran is criticized for “suppressing the free flow of information,” “blockading Internet traffic,” and creating “a special police division to hunt down Internet users suspected of so-called ‘insults and spreading of lies’ against the regime.”

The declaration cites Cuba for imposing “near-total restrictions on access through prohibitive user fees, few public access points and slow connection speeds, and restricted distribution of service to a state-controlled provider.”

Activists, dissidents and former political prisoners attending this week’s Geneva Summit for Human Rights, Tolerance and Democracy, included Yang Jianli of China, Duy Hoang of Vietnam, Caspian Makan of Iran (fiancé of Neda, slain Iranian protest icon), Rebiya Kadeer of China’s Uighur minority, Bo Kyi of Burma, Phuntsok Nyidron of Tibet, Dr. Massouda Jalal of Afghanistan, Jose Gabriel Ramon Castillo of Cuba, Tamara Suju and Diego Sharifker of Venzuela, Donghyuk Shin of North Korea, Dewa Mavhinga of Zimbabwe, and Simon Deng Amer Adam Hesabu from Sudan.

Human rights organizations sponsoring the Geneva Summit included UN Watch, the Tibet Women Association, the International Federation of Liberal Youth (IFLRY), Directorio, Darfur Peace and Development Center, LICRA, Zimbabwe Advocacy Office, LiNK, Human Rights Activists in Iran, CADAL, Genocide Watch, the World Uyghur Congress, Ingénieurs du monde, Initiatives for China, (Burmese) Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, Freedom House, the Jalal Foundation, OL! Youth Movement, and the Venezuelan Student Organization.

  – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

The Geneva Summit for Human Rights

• To watch YouTube videos of all Geneva Summit debates click here.
• For summaries of the proceedings click here.
• To view photo gallery, click here.
• For news coverage of Geneva Summit click here. 

The post Dissidents Urge UN to Fight Cyber-Censorship appeared first on UN Watch.

Cites Belarus, Burma, China, Cuba, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Vietnam issidents Issue Call for Internet Freedom

GENEVA, March 12, 2010 – Marking the first World Day Against Cyber-Censorship, a global coalition of dissidents, non-governmental organizations and human rights activists submitted a new declaration on internet freedom to the United Nations, urging its endorsement by the world body.

The Geneva Declaration on Internet Freedom (click here for text), drafted by a committee of dissidents headed by two well-known political prisoners—Yang Jianli of China and Ahmad Batebi of Iran—calls for the protection of human rights activists imprisoned for social or political expression posted on blogs and other websites.

The manifesto was sent today to the President of the UN’s 47-nation Human Rights Council, Ambassador Alex Van Meeuwen of Belgium, after its adoption this week at the 2nd Geneva Summit for Human Rights, Tolerance and Democracy, an assembly of 500 dissidents and activists. The council is meeting this month for its main annual session. The text was also sent to Navi Pillay, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Both the UN rights chief and the council’s member states were urged to endorse the declaration, which affirms that “the preservation of a free Internet is essential to the full enjoyment of human rights, civil liberties and a free and democratic society,” and that “everyone has the right to equal access to the Internet, regardless of race, religion, ethnic or geographical origin.”

The Human Rights Council session is currently debating freedom of expression and other basic freedoms guaranteed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Next week it addresses specific countries that require its attention. NGOs can address the plenary, but a member state would need to formally table the declaration for it to be considered for adoption.

“Any attempt, to restrict or intimidate people from free, uncensored, and secure access of the Internet,” says the Geneva Declaration, “constitutes a fundamental abridgment of human rights and undermines the promotion of peace and world order.”

The declaration urges United Nations and international bodies, and “all like-minded supporters of freedom, human rights and democracy,” to adopt similar declarations, resolutions, or other statements “to support the cause of Internet freedom in the face of repression.”

The statement’s preamble declares that “the situation of Internet freedom in many regions of the world is increasingly perilous and under assault.”

It names several authoritarian states that regularly censor the internet and intimidate users through “cyber police,” including Belarus, Burma, China, Cuba, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Vietnam.

Authorities in China, says the declaration, have “seized computers, imprisoned individuals for sharing information online, blocked and deleted blogs and other online services, and incarcerated journalists and social activists for online activity.”

Iran is criticized for “suppressing the free flow of information,” “blockading Internet traffic,” and creating “a special police division to hunt down Internet users suspected of so-called ‘insults and spreading of lies’ against the regime.”

The declaration cites Cuba for imposing “near-total restrictions on access through prohibitive user fees, few public access points and slow connection speeds, and restricted distribution of service to a state-controlled provider.”

Activists, dissidents and former political prisoners attending this week’s Geneva Summit for Human Rights, Tolerance and Democracy, included Yang Jianli of China, Duy Hoang of Vietnam, Caspian Makan of Iran (fiancé of Neda, slain Iranian protest icon), Rebiya Kadeer of China’s Uighur minority, Bo Kyi of Burma, Phuntsok Nyidron of Tibet, Dr. Massouda Jalal of Afghanistan, Jose Gabriel Ramon Castillo of Cuba, Tamara Suju and Diego Sharifker of Venzuela, Donghyuk Shin of North Korea, Dewa Mavhinga of Zimbabwe, and Simon Deng Amer Adam Hesabu from Sudan.

Human rights organizations sponsoring the Geneva Summit included the Tibet Women Association, the International Federation of Liberal Youth (IFLRY), Directorio, Darfur Peace and Development Center, LICRA, Zimbabwe Advocacy Office, LiNK, Human Rights Activists in Iran, CADAL, Genocide Watch, the World Uyghur Congress, Ingénieurs du monde, Initiatives for China, (Burmese) Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, Freedom House, the Jalal Foundation, OL! Youth Movement, UN Watch, and the Venezuelan Student Organization.

About the Geneva Summit:

• For summaries of proceedings, click here.
• To view AP photos click here. For Facebook photo gallery, click here.
• To view videos of all speeches  click here.

The post Dissidents Urge UN to Endorse Declaration Against Cyber-Censorship appeared first on UN Watch.

On May 12, 2009, the UN General Assembly will elect 18 new Human Rights Council members. Twenty countries are candidates. However, each is not competing against all of the others, but rather only against the ones from the same UN regional group. In this year’s election, all but two regional groups have submitted the same amount of candidates as available seats. The Asian Group has 5 countries vying for 5 available seats, the Latin American and Caribbean Group (“GRULAC”) has 3 countries vying for 3 available seats, and the Western European and Others Group (“WEOG”) has 3 countries vying for 3 available seats. This does not mean that the candidate countries for these groups will automatically be elected; in order to become a Council member a country must receive the votes of at least 97 of the 192 General Assembly member states (an absolute majority). Competition between the candidates exists only in the African Group, where 6 countries are vying for 5 available seats and in the Eastern European Group, where 3 countries are vying for 2 available seats.

Methodology

According to Resolution 60/251, General Assembly members are supposed to elect Council by “tak[ing] into account the candidates’ contribution to the promotion and protection of human rights and their voluntary pledges and commitments made thereto.” The resolution also provides that consideration ought to be given to whether the candidate can meet the obligations of Council membership, which include (a) “to uphold the highest standards in the promotion and protection of human rights” and (b) to “fully cooperate with the Council.” Guided by these criteria, Freedom House and UN Watch evaluated each candidate’s suitability for election to the Human Rights Council by examining its record of human rights protection at home and its record of human rights promotion at the UN, based on the following sources of information and analysis:

• Its rating in Freedom in the World 2009, an annual survey by Freedom House that measures political rights and civil liberties worldwide, ranking countries as free, partly free, or not free;
• Its rating in The Economist 2008 Democracy Index, which considers a country’s electoral process and pluralism, civil liberties, government functioning, political participation, and political culture, and ranks it as a full democracy, a flawed democracy, a hybrid regime, or an authoritarian regime;
• Its rating in Freedom of the Press 2009, an annual survey by Freedom House that examines the legal, political and economic environments in which journalists work in order to assess the degree of print, broadcast, and internet freedom in every country in the world, ranking each as free, partly free, or not free;
• Its ranking in the 2008 Worldwide Press Freedom Index by Reporters Sans Frontières, which measures the degree of freedom that journalists and news organizations enjoy in each country, and the efforts made by state authorities to respect and ensure respect for this freedom; and
• Its voting record on key human rights proposals, which are classified as positive, negative or mixed based on the following assessments:
  • UN Watch analysis of 2007-2008 votes at the Human Rights Council;
  • Democracy Coalition Project (DCP) analysis of 2008 votes at the UN General Assembly.

Rating

Based on the above assessment of each country’s record of human rights protection at home and of its UN voting record, we find that 7 candidate countries are qualified for election to the Human Rights Council; 8 candidates have poor records and are not qualified to be Council members; and 5 countries fall somewhere in between, with qualifications that are questionable.

Qualified: Belgium, Hungary, Mauritius, Mexico, Norway, United States, Uruguay

Questionable: Jordan, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Nigeria, Senegal

Not Qualified: Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Cameroon, China, Cuba, Djibouti, Russia, Saudi Arabia

For supporting information, see the charts below.
Candidates from the African Group (for 5 seats)
To replace Cameroon, Djibouti, Mauritius, Nigeria, and Senegal

Candidates from the Asian Group (for 5 seats)
To replace Bangladesh, China, Jordan, Malaysia and Saudi Arabia

Candidates from the Eastern European Group (for 2 seats)
To replace Azerbaijan and Russia

Candidates from GRULAC (for 3 seats)
To replace Cuba, Mexico and Uruguay

Candidates from WEOG (for 3 seats)
To replace Canada, Germany, and Switzerland

The post Evaluation of 2009-2012 UN Human Rights Council Candidates: Joint Analysis by Freedom House and UN Watch Presented at United Nations Headquarters, May 5, 2009 appeared first on UN Watch.

• “U.N. rights council becoming Mutual Praise Society,” says UN Watch 125-page report, featured in Reuters, Associated Press, South China Morning Post, Canadian Press, Deutsche Presse-Agentur, Ottawa Citizen, United Arab Emirates’ The National…

GENEVA, February 12, 2009 — Delegates to a U.N. meeting this week on China’s human rights record praised Beijing for practicing the death penalty, imposing internet censorship, and for being a “moral and ethical country.”

While Western countries challenged China, many others congratulated it. Egypt lauded China’s “endeavor to protect human rights and socio-economic development” and said “we understand the need of China to keep the death penalty.” Iran congratulated China’s “efforts to promote human rights” and, citing “the negative impact of the internet,” encouraged China to tighten censorship to prohibit “defamation of religion.” Cuba praised China for being an “exceptional country,” and urged it to enforce “stict compliance with law. . . to prevent people disguised as human rights activists from trying to destroy the state.”

China’s review came under the U.N. Human Rights Council’s flagship review mechanism, known as Universal Periodic Review (UPR).

According to a new 124-page study by the Geneva-based UN Watch, a human rights monitoring group, only 8 of the 47 member states of the Council, including Canada, France and Britain, took a constructive approach to scrutinizing each other’s human rights records since UPR began last year.

Entitled “Mutual Praise Society,” the report found that the peer review sessions of the Council are being misused by countries to praise allies and criticize enemies instead of highlighting genuine cases of abuse. Click here for Mutual Praise Society report

UN Watch rated the performance of 32 other countries—including Russia, Iran, China and Cuba—as detrimental to destructive. The report evaluated 300 speeches made by 55 countries, including several that participate in the council as non-voting observers.

Major newswires and newspapers around the world — from the Persian Gulf to Hong Kong to Canada — quoted UN Watch’s report.

While the U.N. promised to reform itself with a procedure that would hold all countries to account on an objective and equal basis, and help human rights victims worldwide, instead the council has turned into a mutual praise society, giving a free pass to the world’s worst abusers.

In the current session alone, we saw Libya praise Cuba for “promoting freedom of thought and expression,” when Havana continues to keep human rights defenders and journalists behind bars, and Chinese praise for Saudi Arabia’s record on women’s rights, when they can neither vote nor drive a car.

But it’s not just repressive regimes protecting each other. Many democracies, too, are failing to review countries seriously, with some—like India, South Africa and Uruguay—undermining the process by congratulating countries for practices that deserve condemnation.

See the UN Watch report’s key findings and recommendations below.

MUTUAL PRAISE SOCIETY
Country scorecard and evaluation of the Universal Periodic Review system of the U.N. Human Rights Council

Key Findings and Recommendations

1. The primary innovation of the UN Human Rights Council is its Universal Periodic Review (UPR) mechanism, which is meant to review the human rights records of all 192 UN member states, once every four years. According to the Council’s Institution-Building Package of 2007, UPR’s objectives are to achieve “the improvement of the human rights situation on the ground” in the country under review, and “the fulfilment of the State’s human rights obligations and commitments.” Reviews are to be conducted in an “objective,” “non-selective” and “non politicized” manner.

2. The substantial data compiled in this study reveals, however, that the reviews conducted by the vast majority of countries participating in the UPR process are failing to achieve its stated purpose. More than 300 UPR interventions were analyzed and evaluated, as detailed in 12 country charts. Out of 55 countries examined—including all 47 members of the UN Human Rights Council—only 19 had average scores indicating that they contributed positively. Tragically, a majority of 32 out of 55 countries acted as a mutual praise society, misusing the process in order to legitimize human rights abusers, instead of holding them to account. (Four were neither positive nor negative: two with average scores of 0, and another two having made no interventions in any of the country reviews examined.)

3. As shown in Table 1, of the 19 countries with overall positive scores—who properly used the UPR process to promote human rights and fundamental freedoms—Canada was the only country that ranked as VERY CONSTRUCTIVE. It was the most consistent in vigorously challenging countries on specific human rights issues, with strong interventions that support the UPR’s purpose of reminding countries of their responsibilities in order to help victims and address human rights violations wherever they occur. We recommend that Canada continue to hold all countries to account, particularly the world’s worst abusers, and that other countries follow.

4. Close behind were France, Germany, Mexico, Netherlands, Slovenia, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States, all of whom were rated as CONSTRUCTIVE.  We recommend that these nations—which include some the world’s leading democracies—undertake to do better. While it is in the nature of governments to balk at confronting other countries for fear of affecting friendly diplomatic relations, human rights cannot be neglected, and countries must live up to their obligations as participants in the UPR process. The UN member states that conduct UPR will only engender accountability from the country under review, and thereby protect human rights victims, to the extent that they pose tough and specific questions for each country under review.

5. Another 10 countries were found to have made contributions to the review process that were positive, yet WEAK: Argentina, Australia, Bosnia, Brazil, Chile, Italy, Japan, Slovakia, South Korea and Zambia.  That so many respected democracies choose to ask soft questions, shying away from pointedly addressing violations and ensuring scrutiny, is unacceptable. We urge a dramatic shift in approach by countries that should be leading by example. (Included also in this same category were two countries whose contributions were neither positive nor negative:Cameroon and Ukraine.)

6. The rankings in Table 1 reflect only the average quality of interventions made. They do not measure the quantity of statements, the statistics for which are available in Tables 2 and 3.Switzerland, for example, spoke only in 6 out of the 12 country reviews examined in this report. Similarly, the United States spoke in only 7 of the 12 reviews, and of late has been silent at UPR sessions. Argentina, Bosnia, Chile and Slovakia spoke only a handful of times. We recommend that all countries—in particular, those who are members of the Human Rights Council—fulfill their duties by participating meaningfully in the UPR process.

7. Regrettably, a majority of the countries examined in this report not only failed to fulfill the stated objective of UPR, but acted to undermine it. Their interventions praised and covered up for the country reviewed, effectively blocking, undermining and spoiling genuine scrutiny of violations. When violators are granted impunity, victims are let down. This group includes five countries whose interventions were rated as DETRIMENTAL: Bolivia, Ghana, Russia, South Africa and Uruguay. Even worse, 11 countries were rated in their performance as VERY DETRIMENTAL: Angola, Egypt, Jordan, India, Iran, Madagascar, Malaysia, Mauritius, Nicaragua, Saudi Arabia and Senegal.

8. The 16  worst UPR performers of all, however—countries that specifically praised, legitimized and encouraged country policies and practices that violate human rights—were rated as DESTRUCTIVE: Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Bangladesh, China, Cuba, Djibouti, Indonesia, Libya, Nigeria, North Korea,  Pakistan, the Philippines, Qatar, Syria, Sudan and Zimbabwe.

9. The report demonstrates that bloc affiliations played an important role in determining how countries reviewed each other. For example, as a rule, members of the 57-strong Organization of the Islamic Conference strongly praised each other’s records. As a result, some of the poorest overall reviews were those performed on Algeria, Bahrain, Morocco and Tunisia, closely followed by Pakistan and Uzbekistan. We urge all UN members states not to allow bloc politics to override their obligation to conduct UPR reviews in an objective, non-selective and non-politicized manner.

10. While almost all of the countries that acted positively in UPR rank as free democracies under the annual survey by Freedom House, not all free democracies acted positively. On average, the UPR interventions of Ghana, India, Indonesia, Mauritius, Senegal, South Africa and Uruguayundermined human rights, while those of Ukraine were neither negative nor positive. It is time for democratic countries at the UN to act like democracies.

11. Each of the 12 country charts in this report begins with a list of human rights violations committed by the country under review, as documented by respected human rights NGOs, along with a link to the official UN compilation of NGO submissions on that country’s record. Regrettably, as the charts show, most country interventions failed to consider this NGO information, and failed to address the most prevalent human rights violations.

12. We urge the Human Rights Council to allow reliable NGO information to play a far greater role. We recommend an end to the exclusion of NGOs from the oral debate of review sessions. Moreover, in the modest time currently allotted to NGOs during the Human Rights Council’s plenary sessions that treat each UPR report, the freedom of speech of NGOs must be protected. States that frivolously interrupt NGOs on one or another pretext should be disciplined by the council President. At the same time, the UN secretariat should beware of submissions by “GONGOs”—phony, government-controlled NGOs—that seek to subvert the system.

For full text of the 125-page report, Click Here.

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Geneva, Oct. 20, 2006 — UN Watch today called on UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan to denounce Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for his government’s move to restrict internet speeds and curb access to information in Iran.  The Geneva-based human rights monitoring organization called Iran’s behavior repressive and “blatantly hypocritical” in light of Iran’s call this week at the General Assembly for increased access to information technology for the world’s poor countries.

Speaking on Tuesday at the General Assembly’s Special Political and Decolonization Committee, Iran’s General Assembly representative called for a “new order” of media responsibility. Citing European states in particular, Hossein Maleki demanded that the media avoid “violations of sanctities”—a reference to the Islamic countries’ ongoing effort at the UN to legislate international restrictions on free speech, a campaign that began with the controversy last year over the publication of Danish cartoons of the prophet Mohammed.

Maleki’s UN speech called on the international community to adopt measures to strike “a balance between capabilities of the media networks of the developed and developing nations and guarantee justice and free flow of information and embark on international campaign against one-sided and purposeful news broadcasts.”  He said that “currently there is an absence of balance on availability to modern information technology of the developing and developed nations.”  See full text here.

“Iran’s doublespeak on access to information is particularly audacious, even by UN standards,” UN Watch Executive Director Hillel Neuer said today.  “When Ahmadinejad’s government talks at the UN about free flow of information—while at home it bans satellite dishes, shuts down pro-reform newspapers, and now restricts internet speed—the regime is once again showing contempt for the world body and the principles of freedom that underlie its Charter.”

Neuer also criticized Ahmadinejad’s bellicose speech this morning about Israel that warned European countries “you may get hurt.”  Neuer said the latest broadside is one more example of the clear danger the Iranian regime—now known to be developing nuclear weapons—poses to the world.  “The same man who supplies weapons to Hezbollah is once again saying Israel has no reason to exist,” Neuer said.  “Silence by the UN and the international community will be interpreted as acquiescence to the storm of genocidal hatred and nuclear proliferation now gathering in Iran.”

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