Inside Expression

October 2024

This month: In armed conflict, free expression is more vital than ever

More than 500 activists, many from Jewish Voice for Peace, at the New York Stock Exchange demanding an end to US support for Israel's war on Gaza. 14 October 2024. (Middle East Monitor / CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

Dear John,

Lessons from the battlefield of history

ARTICLE 19 has defended free expression in armed conflicts for nearly 40 years.

During that time, we’ve witnessed drastic changes in the technology used to censor, surveil, and silence.

In 1992, we documented Israel jailing a West Bank journalist for owning a fax machine. Today, we raise the alarm about AI-powered warfare (as in Gaza) and the harmful effects of digital disinformation (as in Sudan and Ukraine).

Yet some things haven’t changed.

In today’s armed conflicts, governments and armed groups may deploy new technologies, but they still follow the same old playbook:

• Control the narrative: Conflict parties have always used propaganda and disinformation to shore up support, mislead the public, and whip up hate. This can limit accountability, undermine peace efforts, and lead to more violence against civilians.

  
  

• Silence the media: The importance of journalists in conflicts can’t be overestimated: they disseminate crucial information and bring war crimes to light. For precisely these reasons, they are attacked, murdered, and prevented from reporting the reality on the ground.

  
  

• Shut down communications: The internet enables civilians trapped amid violence to communicate with loved ones, document atrocities, and access food, water, and safety. Yet from fax machines to social media, communication blackouts have always been weaponised during war.

Being aware of these deep, lasting problems is vital for creating deep, lasting solutions.

In these harrowing times, we must stand together, learn from history, and refuse to let corrupt leaders control what we see, hear, and say.

Israel and Palestine: A year on, the assault on free expression continues

A Palestinian mother and child rest under the rubble of a destroyed house in Khan Younis, Gaza, on 16 October 2024. (Mohammed Salem/Reuters)

On 7 October, the world marked 1 year since Hamas’s horrific attack on Israel, in which 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken hostage.

Israel’s brutal and disproportionate response has so far claimed over 43,000 Palestinian lives, displaced 95% of Gaza’s population, and left 96% facing high levels of acute food insecurity. Meanwhile, 10,000 people remain trapped beneath the rubble, and Israel has devastated Gaza’s economy so completely that it would take 350 years to rebuild.

Israel’s retaliation has also extended to Lebanon, resulting in 2,593 deaths and an estimated 1.2 million displacements at the time of writing. On 25 October 2024, an Israeli air strike killed 3 media workers in Lebanon in what looks to be a targeted attack.

A year into this conflict, there is no resolution in sight, geopolitical posturing is failing people on the ground, and we are now on the brink of the abyss: an all-out regional war.

Amid this senseless death, displacement, and hunger, freedom of expression has been caught in the crossfire.  

Israel’s censorship has prevented human rights violations from being documented and the truth from circulating freely – and disinformation has rushed in to fill the vacuum. Israel has baselessly accused journalists, humanitarian organisations, and the UN of supporting terrorism; Hamas has spread fear, shared propaganda, and stoked violence online.

Meanwhile, social media platforms have fallen drastically short of their responsibilities, removing vital evidence of human rights violations while failing to stem the tide of hate speech.

Israel’s war on Gaza has threatened free expression worldwide, as a 2024 report by the UN Special Rapporteur shows.

‘The conflict in Gaza has unleashed a global crisis of freedom of expression. Rarely has a conflict challenged freedom of opinion and expression so broadly and so far beyond its borders.’

– Irene Khan

(UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of expression)

The report, to which ARTICLE 19 contributed, documents restrictions on protests, online content, academia, and the arts relating to the Israel–Palestine conflict globally. We urge governments, social media companies, universities, and cultural institutions to implement its recommendations.

ARTICLE 19 stands with the communities affected by the conflict and calls for an immediate ceasefire.

Our work to protect expression in conflict

Tackling hate speech while protecting free speech

International law prohibits incitement to discrimination and violence. But too often, efforts to prevent it end up over-censoring expression while failing to tackle actual incitement. This is problematic even in peacetime, but it can have disastrous consequences during conflicts.

That’s why, back in 2012, we set out to protect free expression while properly addressing hate speech. We created a 6-part test to help states assess whether speech constitutes incitement and should be restricted.

Our test was included in the UN Rabat Plan of Action, which 87 states have endorsed, and Meta’s Oversight Board now uses it when assessing Meta’s content moderation decisions.

Do you know when hate speech can be restricted?

Supporting sustainable peace in post-conflict countries

Since 2022, we have investigated content moderation in 4 post-conflict countries: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Colombia, Indonesia, and Kenya.

Our research found that social media companies often ignore local communities and contexts. This can be disastrous in post-conflict countries, where online tensions easily spill over into offline violence.

That’s why we helped to set up local coalitions to advise on content moderation in these countries, whose members include tech companies, media, fact-checkers, civil society, and academics.

‘Bringing together all these brains in one room makes for a stronger platform for us to speak in one new unified voice. Then the tech organisations can actually listen to us.’

– Virginiah Gitome, Code for Africa

(Kenya coalition member)

By harnessing the power of collective voice, collective participation, and collective action, they aim to contribute to sustainable peace.

Defending the truth in Mexico’s Dirty War

Poster demanding Alicia’s return. The text reads: ‘Freedom for Alicia de los Ríos M! Detained with excessive violence by federal security and the White Brigade, on January 6, 1978, in Mexico City. Lately, she has been seen alive and in good health in the military camp. We demand her return! They took her alive! We want her alive!’ Mexico City, 6 February 1978 (via Archives of the Resistance)

On 5 January 1978, Alicia de los Ríos Merino was picked up by Mexico’s military – and hasn’t been seen since.

She was one of an estimated 3,000 left-wing guerrillas, activists, political opponents, and students ‘disappeared’ or killed by the Mexican government – backed by the US – during a period of state terrorism known as Mexico’s Dirty War. An estimated 3,000 more were imprisoned and 7,000 tortured.

45 years after Alicia’s disappearance, her daughter filed an appeal to prevent the military from destroying or hiding evidence relating to her case. ARTICLE 19 Mexico and Central America supported her through her trial.

And on 18 January 2024, she won.

A judge ordered the Secretary of Defense to ‘refrain from destroying, purging, eliminating, hiding or concealing’ any documents related to the Dirty War between 1965 and 1990. These documents are key to reclaiming stolen histories, seeking justice, and uncovering the truth.

This was a victory not only for Alicia and her daughter, but for all survivors and their relatives.

Coming soon…

Clearing the fog of war: Protecting free expression in armed conflict

On 7 October 2024, families of the hostages held in Gaza held a silent protest in Tel Aviv, Israel, to mark 1 year since the Hamas attack. (Gonzalo Fuentes/Reuters)

In principle, free expression remains protected in armed conflicts. Yet in practice, existing legal frameworks provide little guidance on the rules that regulate key expression issues – including media restrictions, internet shutdowns, information manipulation, and hate speech – during conflict.

ARTICLE 19’s new policy brief aims to fill this vacuum.

Slated for November publication, this is essential reading for everyone invested in clearing the fog of war: from military commanders to humanitarian organisations, and from tech companies to the public.

Stay tuned!

Now more than ever, we must end impunity for crimes against journalists

A journalist receives medical attention during an Israeli raid in Tulkarm, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, 3 August 2024. (Raneen Sawafta/Reuters)

This year’s International Day to End Impunity for Crimes Against Journalists (2 November) could not come at a more pressing time.

In the past decade, no country has lost as many journalists in a single year as Palestine did last year.

According to UNESCO:

• 24 of the 74 (32%) journalists killed in 2023 were Palestinian

• 17 of the 58 (29%) journalists killed so far in 2024 were Palestinian

• None of these cases have been resolved

Now more than ever, the international community must end the cycle of impunity and hold journalists’ murderers accountable.  

Join us in Ethiopia for a day of action against impunity

On 6–7 November, UNESCO and the African Union will mark International Day to End Impunity with an in-person event in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on the safety of journalists in crises and emergencies.

ARTICLE 19’s East and West Africa offices are joining forces to host a panel at the event called Journalists on the Front Line: Addressing Threats to Press Freedom in Eastern Africa and the Sahel Region.

Join us for an action-packed 2 days of talks, workshops, and exhibitions!

Amplifying the voices of journalists under fire

In the latest episode of Silenced, Syrian journalist Ali Al-Ibrahim tells us about his work investigating human rights abuses in his country, the challenges of gathering evidence from exile, and the importance of holding the regime and ISIS militants accountable.

Catch up with earlier episodes featuring journalists on the frontlines:

• The Israeli journalist who came under fire from Hamas

• The last international correspondent left in Sudan’s capital

• The Ukrainian journalist who spoke to us from a bomb shelter

Forbidden Stories: The Gaza Project

Under international humanitarian law, targeting journalists is clearly prohibited and any potential violations must be investigated.

Faced with the record number of journalists killed in Palestine, Forbidden Stories, whose mission is to pursue the work of journalists who are killed because of their work, set out to investigate the targeting of journalists in Gaza and the West Bank.

The Gaza Project brings together 50 journalists from 13 organisations around the world. From targeted attacks to the destruction of media infrastructure, it reveals a damning array of evidence against the Israeli government, and calls into question their army’s denials about targeting the press since the war began.

‘Not just a number’:

The power of artistic expression

A mother and daughter at an exhibition of 15,000 teddy bear sculptures, each representing a child killed in Israel’s war on Gaza, by Bachir Mohammad. Doha, Qatar, 20 September 2024. (Ibraheem Abu Mustafa/Reuters)

Artist Bachir Mohammad and his family were forced to leave their home in Kuwait during the Gulf War. They moved to Lebanon, where they survived 2 Israel–Hezbollah wars.

Mohammad’s new exhibition, Echo of Lost Innocence, launched in Qatar last month. It consists of over 15,000 teddy bears – each representing a child killed in Israel’s war on Gaza – emblazoned with the message:

‘I’m not just a number. I’m human. With an identity. With a homeland. I am Palestine. #FreePalestine’

Mohammad’s work reminds us that, even amid profoundly senseless conflicts, there are powerful ways to resist and remember.

What gives you hope in the dark?

We know that many of you – like us – are working for a freer, fairer world.

In the midst of global conflicts, what inspires you to continue your vital work?

Does a particular painting, photo, poem, song, book, or film give you hope in the dark?

Send us your recommendations – we’d love to hear from you!

ARTICLE 19 stands with the communities affected by the Israel–Palestine conflict and calls for an immediate ceasefire.

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