May 2022 | Digital Rights Regional Briefs
Danae Tapia, Global Community Manager & Resident Hechicera
We are so happy to share with you the first regional briefs written by our new community leads!!
Every month, our talented researchers will be dispatching from Latin America, MENA, Africa and Asia the latest news on digital justice issues, the emerging challenges of our field, and their insights on the state of the regional communities of digital rights defenders.
The reports of this month highlight a variety of issues that demonstrate the heterogeneity of our space and the multiplicity of challenges ahead: from topics of labor rights in the gig economy to digital anthropologists examining the impact of technology in African societies.
Furthermore, our researchers also examined matters related to the emotional health of their communities, such as experiences of grief after the loss of fellow activists in Latin America and in the MENA region but also instances of joy as in the case of Asian filmmakers producing movies to advance the cause of digital sovereignty.
Our goal with these reports is to provide updated mappings of the many global developments on digital justice, and in the long term, produce effective cross-regional strategies to improve the wellbeing of members of our communities.
Are you thinking about a digital justice issue that should be shared in our briefs?
Please reach out! We will always be happy to hear from digital rights advocates, multimedia artists, hackers, climate tech activists, scholars against surveillance capitalism, and the many actors that are playing a role in shaping our digital futures.
Note, each report is divided under the following sections: Current Opportunities for Digital Rights Defenders, Emerging Topics on Digital Justice, Community News, Regional News And Updates
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Danae Tapia
Global Community Manager
Asia Regional Brief
Africa Regional Brief
Latin America Regional Brief
MENA Regional Brief
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Africa Regional Brief
African digital rights defenders are steadily working on addressing online violence, promoting digital security, and advocating for comprehensive internet governance policies and laws that protect vulnerable communities from potential harm. They want to increase the number of individuals with digital skills in the region, and hope to engage in more inclusive creative product designs, research and services. Meanwhile, social media this month was an active space to campaigning against violence and demand justice for both a Nigerian student and queer person in Kenya that were gruesomely murdered by homophobic and religious fundamentalists.
Current Opportunities for Africa Digital Rights Defenders
Techno futurism in Africa: In light of creative digital anthropology, and imaging technology futures, Pollicy is providing an opportunity to submit a speculative fiction piece that uses futuristic technology and imaginations to document how Africans could advance their work in technology.
Apply to join Kenya School of Internet Governance as a Fellow
Emerging Topics on Digital Justice in Africa
Digital Anthropology
Author: Mardiya Siba Yahaya
Mardiya Siba Yahaya is our Africa Community Lead. She is a feminist digital sociologist, researcher , learning designer and storyteller whose work examines the internet and its cultures from the margins of gender and location. She has a Global Challenges degree from the African Leadership University, was awarded the Mandela Rhodes Scholarship in 2021, and is currently awaiting her Masters Degree in Sociology from the University of the Witwatersrand.
African digital rights communities currently feel that technology research and justice work lacks the digital anthropological grounding that allows them to examine the realities of Africans in connection with the socio-cultural influence of digital technologies on our lives, including how we access, experience and use technology. (Digital anthropology examines the interactions between humans and technology and its impact on society, arguing that instead of separating the impact of digital technologies from societal challenges, digital worlds must be explored and understood in the context of more comprehensive social relations and practices.) A great example of this gap is connecting Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) to gender and development, which would help create a contextual outlook on the concept(s). Despite the efforts by African women technology researchers’ work on providing anthropological grounding, existing capacity and technology gaps limit how much work can be done in this area.
Community members shared that while technological issues continue to be looked at in silos, intersectionality is critical to advance their work on achieving digital justice and an ideal internet. They further shared that more research on the impact of technology on society and people's interactions with it, would help them better imagine and build more inclusive and less harmful digital futures.
An important question being raised is how to consider and respect diversity in digital justice in terms of focus, given that different communities focus their activism on different issues. For instance,conversations on digital labour rights and the gig economy are important for some regions, while other regions are more concerned with data governance. In the African context, for example, digital rights community members note that AI and Machine Learning is still an abstracted idea in the region.
Online Violence, Digital Security and Safety
Conversations, policy and advocacy surrounding online violence in the African region continue to emerge, as digital rights organisations, researchers and communities explore the effects of online violence and mis/disinformation against women leaders, journalists, women, girls and queer people. For instance, in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), girls and young women are continuously blackmailed online with threats to nonconsensually share their intimate images on social media and other digital community channels.
As a result, more organisations and individuals are highlighting the need for contextual digital safety and security toolkits, strategies and training that consider the realities and social contexts of vulnerable communities in Africa.
Concepts of Privacy Need to be Further Cultivated
African digital rights communities share that the concepts and elements of online privacy, security, safety and digital rights - which go hand-in-hand - need to be further cultivated in the region. For example, many people struggle to understand the concept of cookies; how to control their data; or how to protect themselves from privacy breaches and surveillance. Like in other regions, the widespread rhetoric against digital privacy is that 'If I have nothing to hide, I have nothing to fear”. Within this continuum, digital rights defenders share that African communities and governments need to work on building robust data protection and governance policies and frameworks.
Community News in Africa
Community Health
The digital rights community seem to be doing well individually and are more motivated when they secure funding to advance internet freedom in their locations. However, activists working at the front lines are mentally drained as they engage directly with the threats associated with their work.
They also share that since the digital space is fast-paced, there are always new players, making it difficult to consistently keep up with the broader digital rights community. In addition, challenges local to the region are causing frustration and delays in their work. For example, when African digital rights defenders are conducting research, accounts and interactions they are studying may get blocked, suspended or deleted.
The digital freedom and justice field are not totally depressing for Africans who work within the sector. The work on digital humanities provides people with a chance to think creatively and adopt innovative solutions on a large scale. However, community members point out that there is a need for more talent and opportunities to grow expertise. Further, organisations would like to see their work informing regional and governance decisions and policies.
Who Pays Digital Justice Defenders?
While there is an increase of diverse work being done by African digital rights defenders - especially in the areas of advocacy, research, technology inclusion, access, protection and freedom of expression - there are still very few organizations and individuals working on these issues in the region. For many, the question remains: 'how do they fund and get compensated for their work?'.
Community members also share that the level of effort and resources required to secure funding and the right team is discouraging. In addition, limited funding in the ecosystem forces organisations into an individualistic mindset where they are forced to compete for funding. This has a counterproductive, negative effect on the African community, and impacts the dynamics between individuals. Community members feel that their labour continues to be undermined.
Digital Right Community Struggle with Labour Exploitation and Access to Skills
Since the digital rights sector is relatively new, organisations are having difficulty finding the right people with the needed skills to conduct research and advocacy work. Making recruitment more challenging, funders push back on budgets that include paying individuals a competitive amount, resulting in a lack of liveable and fair payment for work. Many believed that underfunding and the low pay happens because the work of Africans is undervalued. Digital rights defenders in the region are expected to undertake and implement projects worth hundreds of dollars for significantly less, placing a strain on their work. In addition, some donors are putting digital rights communities at risk by requesting highly sensitive data and information to be publicly shared without much care or consideration of the threats stakeholders may face.
Legislative Loopholes Used to Target Digital Rights Defenders
Governments are engaging in malpractice and bad actors are taking advantage of loopholes because of the lack of nuanced and robust legislation to protect digital rights, data, human rights defenders, and the lives of vulnerable communities For example, in Uganda, the 'computer misuse' act is weaponised against activists and journalists. Recently, a nurse was arrested in Malawi for 'insulting' the President online. DRC and French West African countries have close to no digital protection laws. And in countries like Nigeria, governments are trying to implement laws that stifle freedom of expression online.
A digital justice defender explained that internet penetration is very low in Francophone Africa partly because the internet is expensive, resulting in less coverage within these regions than in English-speaking countries.
Social Media Critical Tool for Activists in DRC
According to a grassroot digital rights defender we spoke to, the North Kivu province of DRC continues to face terrorist attacks. In response, activists are using social media to organise campaigns and shed light on their realities, despite experiencing government facilitated censorship and repression. In contexts such as these, where activists do not have the freedom to organize in physical public spaces, the internet is a powerful tool to express themselves. However, activists are struggling to effectively use digital media, and digital safety and security techniques.
Designing Contextual Solutions
As we imagine feminist digital futures, it is still challenging to create a one-size-fits-all module in the region, and build seamless transnational collaborations and solidarity around issues. This is because countries are at different stages of engagement with digital issues, topics and trends, and individuals interact and experience technologies differently, forcing solutions and work to be highly contextualized. For example, while in some countries people are having analytical conversations about metaverses, in other countries people are still struggling to increase internet penetration and access.
Digital Creativity
A creative technologist we spoke to this month explained that they would like to witness more creativity in Africa's digital rights space. For example, creative work such as Common Voice's Swahili bots, NFTs and possible metaverses that center the diversity of the African experience, and allows individuals a space to think creatively about the digital. Noted project was My Data Rights Africa, a project that reviews AI, privacy and data protection by using imaginative feminist frameworks to enhance digital rights in the region.
Education and Advocacy
In DRC, activists and digital rights advocates conducted a training workshop with parliamentarians on creating better technology protection and ICT policies. The workshop included ranking themselves against other countries on access, inclusion, privacy, and safety indicators. The digital rights community in the country is also looking to bring members of their parliament to the upcoming internet governance forum.
Digital Rights defenders from DRC are working to repeal digital taxes such as Register Mobile Devices (RAM) tax that affect access to already expensive internet and digital services.
An Innovation Centre in DRC specifically in Goma secured a grant from the Association of Progressive Communication (APC). They are working on creating a space with computers where they train young people in villages and neighbouring cities in digital skills and etiquette.
Regional News And Updates in Africa
Progress in Including African Languages
Mozilla foundation's project on the Common Voice is working to make voice technology accessible to everyone. Some of their projects include the digital Umuganda to include Kinyarwanda in the Common Voice database. For other East African communities, the inclusion of Kiswahili.
#JusticeforShiella is a campaign created to demand justice for the queer person who was recently murdered in Kenya. Feminists online began the hashtag to highlight the threats and violence queer people in Kenya and Africa face. This is also in light of the recent raid of the centre for LBTQ persons in Uganda and the discriminatory bill proposed in Ghana. Digital and human rights activists and feminists campaign against state and hate-group-facilitated threats using social media.
Tigray: over a year without internet : It has been over a year since the internet was shutdown in Tigray region of Ethiopia. Digital rights activists and organisations are continuously tracking the situation using #KeepingitOn to highlight that access to uninterrupted internet is a fundamental human right.
Uber and Bolt strike in South Africa : If you lived in South Africa, and requested a ride or ordered food during the week of the 22nd of March, you would have noticed that there were no cars, extremely hiked prices, or food delivery was unavailable. These happened because ride-hailing and delivery services were on strike demanding better profit for the long-hours of work, and labour protection for gig workers. What’s more, an upcoming threat is.
New Electronic Levy in Ghana : Ghana introduced a new electronic levy that taxes all digital transactions, but with a particular focus on mobile money (MoMo) transactions. Mobile money provided access to financial services to many people without needing internet connectivity. Yet with the new levy that charges extra transaction fees, vendors, business owners and citizens are beginning to return to cash only transactions.
Tyranny in the workplace: The chaotic culture of Bento Africa : This article on the toxic technology startup culture in the Nigerian tech space forces us to rethink labour protection as not only within the gig economy sector, but within every workspace. It highlighted the sexual and emotional abuse people face in this specific startup, but most importantly provided the space for more people to share their experiences of abuse working within the start up space.
Murder of Deborah for Speaking Against Posting Religious Content in her Class WhatsApp Group : Patriarchy and religious fundamentalism is murderous (Gqola,2021). Deborah was murdered for requesting her classmates not to post religion-based content on their WhatsApp group. The men who killed her openly posted their pride in killing and burning her online, and others shared their gratitude to the group for killing Deborah. Posts applauding the murder remain facebook and twitter without any moderation. Meanwhile, the religious and patriarchal hate-groups continue to abuse and threaten people who demand justice for Deborah.
Cited Work
Gqola, P. D. (2021). Female Fear Factory: Unravelling Patriarchy’s Cultures of Violence. Cassava Republic Press.
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Author: Astha Rajvanshi
Astha Rajvanshi is an independent journalist based in Mumbai, where she writes on gender, marginalized communities, and human rights across India and South Asia. Recently, she was awarded the Matthew Power Literary Reporting Award by New York University. As part of her reporting in India, she is currently examining tech surveillance and internet shutdowns. Previously, she was a Fellow for the Institute of Current World Affairs in Washington DC. She has also worked for the New York Times Magazine and Reuters in New York. She was born in New Delhi and raised in Sydney as a proud daughter of immigrants.
Asia Regional Brief
Current Opportunities for Digital Rights Defenders in Asia
Job opportunity: The International Committee of Jurists, @ICJ_org, is looking for a consultant to help assess the challenges faced by LGBTI Individuals in securing digital rights in Southeast Asia. The location is southeast Asia, preferably Malaysia. Apply here.
Call for Consultants: Media Defence is looking for a consultant to develop a set of summary modules on freedom of expression in South and South East Asia for use in our litigation surgeries. Apply here.
Emerging Topics on Digital Justice in Asia
Since the beginning of the year, governments across Asia have continued to clamp down on free speech, especially in online civic spaces, by employing tactics like state surveillance, the spread of disinformation, internet shutdowns and the passing of new defamation and censorship laws.
Here’s a recap – both recent and not so recent – of what these developments have looked like:
Chinese Online Censor Blocking Criticism of Pandemic Management
In China, the government is actively restricting its citizens from leaving the country, while simultaneously blocking public criticism of the government’s handling of the pandemic through online censors. The World Health Organization (WHO) was recently pit against the Chinese leader, Xi Jingping, for his commitment to strict border controls, widespread lockdowns and mass quarantining. A video clip from WHO Director-General Dr Tedros was circulating widely on the microblogging platform, WeChat, when it was quickly removed with a tag of “violating laws and regulations”--meaning it could still be read, but not shared across the platform. On Weibo, China’s Twitter searches for #Tedros stopped working soon after. But Chinese citizens are finding ways around such restrictions through a trending GitHub repo called 润学/Run Philosophy, which is being used to discuss why, where, and how to "run"/emigrate from the country. The repo is primarily being used as a hub to share tactics for emigrating, with poses about the visa process for entering various countries, advice for applying for PhD programs overseas, the H-1b situation in the US, strategies to leave on a budget, and more.
Sri Lanka Citizens Ask Hacktivists and Anonymous for Help Demanding Privacy, Security
With Sri Lanka’s political crisis against the president, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, soon entering its ninth week, the lack of protections for citizens from unwarranted surveillance has raised concerns over the government’s use of intimidation tactics to stifle protests and criticism over the worst economic crisis since its independence. Many Sri Lankans have been asking digital activists and cybersecurity collectives – like the hacktivist collective Anonymous – to step up and show support by using hashtags like #GoHomeGota2022 and #AnonymousSaveSriLank. However, attempts to do so recently backfired when Anonymous hit the websites of the Ceylon Electricity Board, the Sri Lanka Police, and the Department of Immigration and Emigration using distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks on April 20, starting the #OpSriLanka hashtag in support of the people and“declaring cyberwar against the government.” The move publicly shared thousands of usernames, passwords and email addresses from the private database of Sri Lankan higher education institutions, putting thousands of individuals at risk of cybercrimes and phishing attacks. At present, the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission of Sri Lanka (TRCSL) lacks the independence it needs to protect citizens from unwarranted surveillance and falls under the direct purview of the President.
India Government Demanding VPN Companies Collect User Data
In India, the government recently passed an order asking VPN companies to collect user data and hand it over or face bans and prison time. It is also asking the companies to keep records of users’ usage patterns and other personally identifiable information. The directive isn’t limited to VPN providers – data centers and cloud service providers are both listed under the same provision, and required to store the information for a minimum of five years, even after a customer cancels their subscription or account. VPN companies are also legally bound to provide all IP addresses issued to a customer by the VPN and a list of IP addresses used by its customer base generally. It’s a hugely concerning development, since VPNs are critical for the work of journalists, advocates and organizers, and applying pressure on providers will only harm Indians' right to access information – just last year, young activist Disha Ravi was arrested in the city of Bangalore for sharing a Google doc with climate-related info.
Equality Labs Report: Islamophobia in India Started on Social Media
A recent report by Equality Labs into Islamophobic Covid-19 hate speech and disinformation found that much of the hate speech has originated on Twitter and then spread to other social media forms like Facebook and WhatsApp. The content originated in India from Hindu Nationalists, the majority of whom are young men between the ages of 18 and 34 based primarily in India and the US, but was later amplified by global actors with established Islamophobic social media accounts, pages and groups.
The reticence of the platforms to remove known Islamophobic and casteist handles has renewed alarm with Elon Musk’s recent, controversial vow to restore free speech to Twitter. The Tesla CEO, who is currently in talks to buy the platform, has said he wants to remove many of the rules currently governing the social media site to allow more “diverse” conversation. But in India, which has an estimated 38.6 million users and represents Twitter’s fourth-largest market, the rightwing government has also weilded regulatory power to pressure the site to take down critical posts of the government, while simultaneously allowing hate speech against minorities across the site. According to reports released by the platform, Twitter received 43,387 legal demands between January and June 2021 to remove content globally, covering some 196,878 accounts — the largest increase since it first started releasing reports on such requests in 2012. About 95 percent of those requests originated in five countries: Japan, Russia, Turkey, India and South Korea. In India alone, Twitter received 4,903 legal demands to remove content, and complied with 12 percent of them.
Increase in State Surveillance, Threats in Southeast Asia
Southeast Asia has not only seen a general increase in state surveillance, but also threats that are increasingly creeping into the digital space. In 2021 alone, this included the extended period of internet restrictions in Myanmar; Pegasus spyware attacks on Thai activists (which confirmed the use of such spyware in Southeast Asia for the first time); and the distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks in the Philippines against media and fact-checking organizations like ABS-CBN, Rappler, and VERA Files. The region is increasingly moving towards making internet restrictions the norm with tightened control of social media platforms and state-sponsored information disorders: in Malaysia, we saw the case against the online news portal Malaysiakini; in Singapore, the government used foreign interference, and in the Philippines, new tactics were adopted vis-a-vis cyberattacks. Now, activists are expecting such restrictions to expand to platforms like TikTok and Telegram.
Community News in Asia
Tech Tales Film Collection: Highlighting Human Rights Issues in Asia-Pacific
EngageMedia worked with eight filmmakers across the Asia-Pacific region to produce the Tech Tales film collection — short films that employ various storytelling forms and tools including narrative fiction, documentary and animation — to highlight the region’s pressing human rights issues in the digital age. They cover stories on online surveillance in India, Malaysia and Thailand; data privacy and online gender-based violence in Indonesia; massive disinformation campaigns in Myanmar and the Philippines; online freedom of expression in Cambodia and Malaysia; and digital sovereignty in the whole region.
The full film collection is now permanently available to watch on Cinemata, a platform for social and environmental films about the Asia-Pacific. The collection has also been showcased at various community screenings – both online and at physical events – across the region, and will also be used for advocacy and training.
If you would like to host a Tech Tales screening, or include the films in festivals or events, reach out to us via the Tech Tales Partners section here.
Regional News & Updates in Asia
Cambodia Should Scrap Rights-Abusing National Internet Gateway
32 human rights organizations, including Access Now, Article 19 and Human Rights Watch, have called on the Cambodian authorities to revoke the Sub-Decree on the Establishment of the National Internet Gateway (NIG) that was established on February 16, 2021. The NIG sub-decree paves the way for the establishment of a digital gateway to manage all internet traffic into and out of Cambodia, allowing government-appointed NIG operators to block or disconnect any online connections (article 6), retain traffic data for a year and provide other network information as requested by authorities (article 14), and issue overbroad penalties for non-compliant telecommunications operators (article 16). The government has yet to address the serious human rights concerns raised by civil society groups and tech companies while being wholly non-transparent about the infrastructure, implementation, financing, and cooperating companies, agencies, and organizations involved in supporting the NIG.
#KeepItOn: Internet shutdowns across Asia
The findings from the #KeepItOn report, which looked at incidents of internet shutdowns across the world in 2021, found a dramatic increase of shutdowns in the Asia pacific region: In 2021, the report recorded a total of 129 internet shutdowns in seven countries in Asia Pacific, compared to 114 shutdowns across five countries in 2020.
India was responsible for at least 106 incidents, making it the country imposing the highest number of shutdowns globally for the fourth consecutive year. Of these, 85 were in Jammu and Kashmir, a region where authorities continue to impose intentional internet disruptions that last for long periods, disrupting and endangering people’s lives for months on end. Myanmar imposed the second highest total number of shutdowns in 2021 with 15 disruptions.
Author: Úrsula Schüler
Úrsula Schüler was born and raised in Chile, South America, where she studied Journalism and worked in media and various organizations for seven years. Spanish is her first language and years ago she was a student representative in high school and her university. After this, as a journalist, she reported two presidential and legislative elections for national media in Chile. She worked in newspapers, a television channel website, and internal communication for universities and companies. Currently, she is studying a postgraduate program in Digital Media Marketing, in Toronto, Canada.
LATAM Regional Brief
Current Opportunities for Digital Rights Defenders in LATAM
FRIDA Funds, deadline - May 31
RightsCon: The 11th edition will take place online from Monday, June 6, to Friday, June 10, 2022. Several Latin American activists and organizations will participate in this event.
Emerging Topics on Digital Justice in LATAM
Canadian companies are outsourcing and underpaying virtual cashiers from Central America, putting their human rights at risk:
The Canadian Restaurant Freshii, a Canadian restaurant chain, is training and hiring people from Central America as virtual cashiers. These Central American cashiers live and are subject to the policies and laws of the respective Central American countries they live in, but work online serving Canadian customers. They are paid by a Canadian company, and despite the legal general minimum wage in Ontario (where Freshii is based) of $ 15 CAD, these outsourced virtual cashiers are only being paid $ 3.75 Canadian Dollars (CAD) per hour.
In many countries, there currently exists no protections for workers for next-generation labor issues, such as exemplified by this case. The development of this case is incredibly important for the future of labor rights, as it sits at the intersection of technology and digital rights. While we don’t know the full impact that this new type of practice will have, it is clear this is an injustice and challenge to human rights. Luckily, in Canada people have been sharing their discontent on social media.
This case reflects many of the same labor and human rights issues we see in other transnational and outsourcing scenarios, which are being implemented by online platforms, such as IT services and customer call centers. In several cases, this means employing workers in countries with minimal labor protections and/or no access to unions, who can be underpaid and no benefits given. You can find more information about this digital trend in Fairwork’s researches and rankings
We will be speaking to digital rights defenders in Central America in coming months and keeping you all updated on any developments.
Huge leak of electoral personal data in Chile:
On April 27, the Chilean Electoral Service (Servel) leaked the personal information of more than 15 million voters on their institutional website. According to the news, the personal data correspond to the electoral roll for the 2021 municipal elections, including the voter's ID number (called RUT in Chile), whether they voted in the 2021 municipal elections, age, nationality, political party, and whether they belong to a indigenous/first nation population group.
The leak occurred via upload of a zip file on Servel’s website, with several journalists and political marketing agencies having access. After the criticism that the institution received through social media, the file was deleted from the website.
As a result of this leak, the Chamber of Deputies summoned Servel’s National Director, Andrés Tagle. He has to provide background of the situation and proposals to prevent this type of event from happening again. Read more about the case here.
Community News in LATAM
The region has developed a fatigue with the increased amount of online meetings posted after the lockdowns. They are progressively focussing more on establishing more in person meetings.
The Latin America Meetup hosted by TCU was held on the 11th of May, we had a Latin America Meet up. People from R3D (México) and VE Sin Filtro (Venezuela) were the guest speakers. You can read the notes of the meetup here.
Good digital rights news from México: At the end of April, the Mexican Supreme Court rejected obligatory biometric SIM card registrations. This achievement was made thanks to non-profit organizations (like R3D) and digital activists. In 2021 the Mexican Congress approved an obligatory biometric SIM card registration. The decision was challenged by the data protection agency, turning the case to the Supreme Court. After a long and important campaign from civil society, the registration was overturned by the Court. Here, for more details about the news.
New Chilean Constitution will include digital rights topics: After the protests in 2019, Chile is writing its new Constitution and at the moment the text will include digital rights, personal data protection rights, and the installation of a Personal Data Protection Agency as an autonomously acting institution. The current Chilean new Constitution draft (needs to be voted upon first before being the legit official new Constitution) can be found here.
Chilean journalist was murdered by anti demonstrations mafia with illegal guns: On the other hand, the country experienced a critical drop in their Press Freedom position as seen from the global report made by Reporters without Borders. This past month, the Chilean journalist Francisca Sandoval died after being shot during a demonstration while covering the scene for a community channel.
The murder has shocked the country. At the moment, the suspects are sellers from an informal market, who usually complain about the demonstrations because they have to close their business during the marches. They possess illegal guns and act against the protestors during the demonstrations. The police talked with the suspects during the march, without even confiscating their guns. Journalists are citing the existence of a parapolice network who has informal agreements with the police for disrupting the demonstrations by acting against protestors.Colombian journalist Luis Ángel was irregularly detained on Saturday, May 14th, by police officers at the Playablanca substation in Barú, Colombia. Ángel was reporting on the murder of Paraguayan prosecutor Marcelo Pecci, who was gunned down by hit men on a beach during his honeymoon. The identity of the suspects and the motives are not yet clear, but authorities believe Pecci was targeted for his work investigating “international terrorism, money laundry, drug trafficking, and corruption.”
The Oversight Board is receiving comments about a Colombian case:
Of the three cases up for consideration by Meta’s Oversight Board, this is a Colombian police cartoon which was removed from Facebook in 2020 by an automated evaluation tool. The user’s appeal to restore the content, petition which was first rejected, but later accepted. Note: individuals can currently submit public comments on the Oversight Board website regarding Meta’s policies, automation tools and insights about the socio-political context in Colombia.
The post was published in September, 2020, but 16 months later, the company removed the content as it matched with a picture in its ‘media matching bank’ of content violating Facebook’s Dangerous Individuals and Organizations Community Standard. At the time of removal, the content had received three views and no reactions. No users reported the content.
According to the Board, “the user primarily expresses confusion about how their content violated Meta’s policies. They describe the content as reflecting reality in Colombia.” As a result of the Board selecting this case, “Meta identified the removal of the content as an ‘enforcement error’ and restored it. Meta explained to the Board that the removal decisions were wrong as the content did not contain a reference to any dangerous individual or organization, nor did it contain a threat of violence or statement of intent to commit violence.”
For more details about the case, here.
Regional News and Updates in LATAM
Elections in Colombia - Presidential elections will be held in Colombia on May 29th. If no candidate receives a majority of the vote, a second round will be held on June 19th. Currently, Gustavo Petro (left wing) leads the polls.
Elections in Brazil - General elections are scheduled to be held on October 2nd, 2022. They are going to elect the President, Vice President, and the National Congress. Lula da Silva launched his campaign on May 7th, 2022.
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Author: Islam al Khatib
Islam al Khatib is a Palestinian feminist born and raised in Beirut. She researches feminism(s), hegemonies in the 'technocene', ecologies, and grief. She holds BAs in Political Science and Philosophy from the Lebanese University (LU). She is currently pursuing a masters in Gender, Media and Culture at Goldsmiths, University of London.
MENA Regional Brief
Several worldwide and regional changes occurred in May, ranging from Elon Musk's intention to purchase Twitter to the publishing of the 2022 Big Tech Scorecard, in which none of the big businesses received a passing grade.
Various attacks against human rights advocates have occurred across the Middle East and North Africa, causing a shared sense of outrage within the community. In Syria, digital rights activists are confronting a new cybercrime law – that legalizes censorship in very loose terms, perhaps inspiring other governments to follow suit. Many privacy advocates fear that the bill will be used as a tool to silence human rights campaigners.
Current Opportunities for Digital Rights Defenders in MENA
Mellon Fellowship Program:
In partnership with the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Columbia Global Centers | Amman has established the Mellon Fellowship Program to support emerging displaced scholars working in the humanities and humanistic social sciences. The goal of the program is to create opportunities for scholars to reintegrate into academia and resume their academic pursuits.
Emerging Topics on Digital Justice in MENA
Tadamon Massacre in Syria–Anonymity, Digital Impersonation and Safety
In Apri 2022, the Guardian shared verified videos of the Tadamon massacre which was perpetuated by the Syrian Army against Syrian and Palestinian civilians in the Damascus suburb of Tadamon, Syria in 2013. The Guardian obtained the videos through two academic researchers, one of which is Annsar Shahhoud. After leaving Syria, Annsar wanted to understand the tactics of the Syrian regime. To do so, she reated a pro-Syrian regime Facebook profile in order to find her way into the networks of Syrian security officials During this time, she was in touch with many soldiers and officers, and and “befriended'' one of the massacre perpetrators who eventually shared gruesome videos from Tadamon. In many respects, this is a violent process, since she spent two years trying to track down and engage with war criminals in the aim of unearthing and documenting crimes.
More human rights defenders are engaging oppressors through online channels to better understand their plans, objectives, and future measures. However, in this situation, a new technique that activists may use in reaction to the silence and erasing of specific occurrences has now become publicly available, and it was effective in the ways it got certain data. This technique demonstrates what activists in the area have long said: these oppressive institutions have their own communities that support them. According to the Guardian article, both Shahhoud and Prof Uur Ümit Üngör thought that establishing an 'alter ego' that could infiltrate these spaces meant having a more in-depth understanding. Shahhoud was able to obtain information from resources that are sometimes overlooked: online places.
However, It is still unclear to digital and human rights campaigners how this method may pose so many challenges at the same time.
Free Speech Absolutism–at What Cost?
Image’s source: Romain Guy via Flickr CC
In a recent interview, Frederike Kaltheuner, director of the tech and human rights division at Human Rights Watch, shared what Elon’s purchase of Twitter under the umbrella of “free speech absolutism” could mean for people. This is a particularly important question for the MENA region, given the digital silencing and erasure taking place in certain contexts such as Occupied Palestine, Western Sahara and Syria. Specifically, how will this purchase impact digital and human rights defenders in the region? Free speech absolutism–as advocated by Musk–seeks to allow a certain kind of freedom of speech that has no ethical, moral or legal restrictions.
In a region in which states practically have entire structures and loose laws set out to silence any form of free expression and dissident, this may seem desirable However, unregulated freedom may only favor individuals with the privilege and social and political currency to express themselves online.
As an example, in the MENA digital sphere, women, non-binary, LGBT and queer communities have been struggling to engage in public discourse, mainly because of the online harassment and abuse they receive. Organizations, collectives and activists have been asking social media companies to protect women from online harassment, and despite several promises, it seems like there is no serious effort being done to curb digital violence. However, the guise of “safety” by social media companies has also impacted human rights defenders in the MENA region negatively. On May 3, 2022, Irene Khan, the UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of expression, asked states and digital media companies to protect women journalists from online and offline violence.However, to-date, in MENA-specific contexts, social media platforms have used this narrative to censored struggles, events and actions of human rights defenders.
A Note on Reproductive Rights and Privacy
Recently, a leaked document drafted by Justice Samuel Alito was shared within the court and shows that they are planning to overturn Roe v Wade, which legalized safe abortion as a constitutional right in the United States
In light of this, many conversations around reproductive rights and privacy have been brought to light, many of which are related to violations of the right to privacy, which is a common theme in the MENA region. The Digital Defense Fund has a guide on how to keep abortions private, especially amid companies such as Meta and Google storing information related to people’s periods, pregnancies and abortions. The guide can be found here.
According to the Health and Human Rights Journal, impact of abortion laws on women's health in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) area is unknown, and there is a dearth of credible data on unsafe abortion in countries where access to safe abortion is restricted or nonexistent. In the midst of an international backlash against women's rights, particularly body autonomy, it is critical to draw parallels between different contexts, not only because states adopt each other's tactics, but also because feminist activists in the region engage with campaigns in the United States and Europe to bring to light situations that are occurring here. So, to many of them, it is also important to situate this conversation within a right to privacy framework.
Community News in MENA
Community Health
Developments in the last month have truly left this region's digital and human rights defenders out of breath, trying to keep up with so many catastrophes. In times like this, community is needed more than ever in the MENA digital rights space. As shared recently by a MENA digital rights defender, spaces like TCU’s monthly regional meetups have become a social space where individuals breathe, vent and connect safely with each other. These safe spaces are not only respite from state-violence, but also from toxic online cultures that have made it extremely difficult for uncomfortable conversations to happen. When discussing the wellbeing of digital rights defenders, online toxicity needs to be further discussed, particularly given how many digital rights defenders are experiencing threats like doxing and blackmail.
Alaa Abdelfattah on Hunger Strike, Needs Support
Human rights defender Alaa Abdelfattah has been on hunger strike since April 2. Alaa, an Egyptian-British pioneer in open source technology and an Amnesty Prisoner of Conscience, has been imprisoned in Egypt for two and a half years in inhumane conditions. His visits are limited to one family member each month, for twenty minutes, behind a glass barrier, with no privacy. FreeAlaa.net has an action you can take. Sign here. https://freealaa.net/take-action
Journalist Shireen Abu Akleh Killed by Israeli Forces
On 11 May, journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was killed Israeli forces as she was covering news from and about Jenin camp. Her deaths came a few days before the 74 Nakba commemoration. Abu Akleh has been covering Palestine with Al Jazeera for over two decades. During her funeral, Israeli police used stun grenades and beat mourners with batons. Abu Akleh has a distinct position not just in Palestinian history, but also in the collective Arab memory, as she was the reporter who covered the second intifada.
Regional News and Updates in MENA
Internet Shutdowns in Iran, Iraq, Jordan and Sudan in 2021
As reported by Access in their new report, 'The return of digital authoritarianism: internet shutdowns in 2021'. state-sanctioned Internet shutdowns occurred in Iran, Iraq, Jordan, and Sudan, as well as the Israeli destruction of two towers supporting essential communications in Gaza. With an increasingly oppressive climate region, fueled by rising geopolitical tensions, it is important to know how to stay connected during government shutdowns.
Dr. Anna Younes Solidarity Campaign
In Palestine, digital authoritarianism continues. However, such repression is not limited to Palestinian borders; it is also spreading to other countries where pro-Palestine advocates are being silenced. In Germany, Dr. Anna Esther Younes, a Palestinian-German scholar who works on postcolonial thought and critical race theory, have been fighting censorship for the past two years. In November 2019, the Berlin Department for Research and Information on Antisemitism (RIAS) prepared a secret file that patches together distorted selections of Dr. Younes’s writings to defame her distorting her scholarly work as allegedly supporting Islamism, sexism, and by extension anti-Semitism. On May 17, the Berlin Court, Berlin Data Protection Authority and RIAS/MBR finally recognised Dr. Younes’ right to access her data. This move of blocking Dr. Younes’ access to data that is about her is viewed by the European Legal Support Center as 'state surveillance through a state-funded civil society organization’.
Anxieties Around the New Cybercrime Law in Syria
The Syrian government issued a new cybercrime law – that legalizes censorship in very loose terms, perhaps inspiring other governments to follow suit. Many privacy advocates fear that the bill will be used as a tool to silence human rights campaigners. The law that seeks to ‘punish’ people who share content on digital platforms related to ‘overthrowing the regime’ or ‘undermining the state’. Similar laws exist in other countries in the region such as Jordan (monarchy laws), and Saudi Arabia and UAE (anti-rumor’s law). In addition, the Moroccan government has been cracking down on journalists and activists in occupied Western Sahara through anti-defamation and charges of disseminating false news;. However, none of these examples had explicit legislation that permitted censorship under the guise of "preserving state reputation” as is now available in the Syrian cybercrime law.