The Human Voice of Freedom , Notes from the Internet Freedom Fellows program – #freedomfellows
“The Human Voice of Freedom” , Notes from the Internet Freedom Fellows Program.
John Horniblow speaking at The Human Voice of Freedom- The Internet and Human Rights at the United Nations Office at Geneva, June 9.
In June 2011, I had an invitation to work with the US Mission to the UN and Institute for Media and Global Governance for the honour of organising and running the inaugral Internet Freedom Fellows Program. As you would expect I am not a new comer the understanding of connected world but have seen the internet and digital communications shift from the hands of the technically savvy and early innovators and empower rest of world digitally. With that change I believe that we have been witness to the emergence of what I would call “The Human Voice of Freedom”, a universal expression of humanity, through hyper connectivity. This is topic runs through my recent work stemming from Connections Across a Human Planet, a photographic book of documentary photography that draws upon geographical parallels to the human condition we all share globally.
The desire or need to communicate and the need to be understood has always been the pre-occupation of the human race. Communication shapes the way societies are built and progress and every person should have the right to express their ideas, their feelings and emotions as well as their hopes for the future. Providing forums, platforms and technologies for individuals to express themselves is an integral part of our free and democratic societies where freedom of expression and freedom of the press go hand in hand with human rights. In the beginning of 21st century the new challenge facing our free societies is Internet Freedom. Internet Access, as detailed by UN Special Rapporteur Report June 2011, is a basic human right. Access to an open and free internet is one of the looming human rights challenges of our times. More importantly, in these critical times as some governments react in ways to control every aspect of digital connection and communication under the guise of security and intelligence, we need to look to Universal Declaration of Human Rights and t uphold what is the human “Freedom to Connect”.
In the passing of the Arab Spring earlier this year the use of connection technologies or social media as tools to communicate, organise and distribute news to wider audience became well cemented in the minds of the global public as an alternate media power. While many governments, companies and even media outlets see this as new phenomena, in reality its not something new but something that has been emerging online over a period of the last five – seven years. The use of social media as an alternate source media power in the hands of skilled communicators and connectors has been exercised in many forms for a number of years, even at times involving crucially large numbers of people, either loosely organised or not, for sharing likeminded interests or precipitating political or social change.
During the 2009–2010 Iranian election protests or the Green Revolution, there was somewhat of a online media cyberwar struggling over the containment news reporting of the Iran government violent and sometimes lethal suppression the protests, not unlike what we see inside of Syria today . There was a pivotal emotionally galvanising moment that became the symbol of that failed revolution. A young Iran female student, Neda Soltani, shot by sniper fire, dying on the streets of Tehran, was captured by mobile phone video and quickly distributed out of Iran via social media. It like may other disturbingly violent news type images and footage, circulated and were picked on on mainstream in a matter of hours. While the Iranian government was busily employing a cyber based secret service media operation to curtail the spread of its citizen’s news and to stop the world from looking and hearing what was going on, it citizen’s sort new avenues in getting their message to a global audience. While it was dubbed the “Twitter Revolution” because of the protesters’ reliance on Twitter and other social-networking Internet sites to communicate with each other many things became apparent. Secret Service cyber agents of Iran’s revolutionary guards waged an information war to mis inform (by diluting and contradicting the news), track and block the citizen journalism that was taking place, anonymous groups of cyber activists rallied against both the Iranian government running DOS attacks as well deploying proxies to aid the dissemination of media being generated on the streets of Tehran, and the persistence of a population to try and get their story heard by what ever digitally connected means they could find prevailed.The likeness to what we saw in Eygpt in February 2011 was uncannily like history repeating itself. For a time the Iranian government shut down internet access and mobile networks across the country to contain the story and to stop the world from looking in. They stopped the news, by enforcing mass arrests and detentions. However, in the case of Egypt the moment they stopped their citizens from communicating and shut down internet access and mobile networks was the moment the Mubarak regime lost its legitimacy and control of the country. At this point the Egyptian people organised further resorting to older technologies and word of mouth and took to the streets en masse, desperate to ensure their voices could be heard and not shut up or shut down.
As a follow up on Secretary Clinton’s February 15, 2011 speech on internet freedom the US Mission to UN sponsored a high profile event at the 17th Session of the Human Rights Council at the UN in Geneva and an Open Forum event for diplomats, NGO’s and International companies on the broad global issues related to Internet Freedom. Highlighting not only the importance of Internet Freedom to the promotion of Human Rights but also the social, cultural, and economic importance of maintaining a free and open internet. On 9th June 2011 seven Internet Freedom Fellows, nominated and selected for their commitment to human rights and freedom of expression online, presented at the Human Rights Council, broadly representing “The Human Voice of Freedom” from around the world.
The selected voices included Wael Abbas, Egyptian blogger and activist; Aung San Thar, video journalist in exile from Burma; Rosebell Kagumire, online and print journalist from Uganda; Andreas Harsono, Indonesian journalist and rights activist; Henda Chennaoui, journalist and blogger from Tunisia; Wen Yunchao, Chinese blogger popular under the pen name “Bei Fung”; and Kwon Eun Kyoung, editor for the online Daily North Korea. Accompanying them on the panel were leading specialists; Ben Scott – Policy Advisor for Innovation, U.S. Department of State; John Horniblow (authorof this blog)-Digital Communication specialist and Founder of Photojournale; Rebecca MacKinnon- Co-Founder, Global Voices , Board of Directors of the Committee to Protect Journalists and the Global Network Initiative; and Marcia Stepanek -Managing Director, New Media at US and Partners.
While all the individual human voices in the world could not be invited into the Human Rights Council a virtual two-way exchange brought in outside participants and broadcast them back online. In the history of the Human Rights Council it was first. Live video feeds brought together outside participants and commentators into the audience at the UN. The subsequent impact of the connecting the conversation in the session to a global audience was significant. Inside the UN the Internet Freedom Fellows and others connected to their networks and the pivotal points raised in the session were agglomerated under the #Freedomfellows hash tag on Twitter. #Freedomfellows spread in real time quickly trending as a topic of digital conversation globally. The Human Voice of Freedom became very loud, momentarily dominating the digital conversation space of the world.
Before heading to Washington DC to participate in Blogging for Social & Political Change, the Internet Freedom Fellows, were also joined (in person and via Skype) for an Open Forum day of discussion with leading academics, media producers and practitioners of the topic of Internet Freedom; Clay Shirky, Andy Carvin, Ahmed Zaky producer of Revolution Uplo@ded, Xio Qiang and organizations including Rachel Silver of Movements.org and the Jon Vidar of The Tiziano Project, Yasmin Elayat of Groupstream.
Clay Shirky talks with Wael Abbas via skype- photo by Rachel Silver
During the day many topics were presented and discussed pivoting around the concept of Internet Freedom and exploration of how human rights are promoted in that environment . Both Rebecca MacKinnon and Clay Shirky (via Skype) spoke about, organizing the issue around the differentiation between Freedom “of the Internet” and Freedom “on the Internet”. It is important that we acknowledge that distinction.
Shirky described freedom “OF” the Internet as freedom to the actual pipes and infrastructure of the Internet, and he explained that when there is an attack either by an organization or the government on that infrastructure, and the Internet is shut down, this violates people’s right to freedom OF the internet. The 2nd class, he explained, is freedom “ON” the internet- the right to speech.
Rebecca MacKinnon elaborated on the issue of Internet Freedom by reminding us that both government and the private sector have a role to play in keeping the Internet open and free. She pointed to the example of repressive governments in the East using monitoring software being created by technology companies in the West. She went on to argue that the Nation State is actually not a good unit of governance for the digital world. She posed the question to the room of NGOs and diplomats, “How do we more forward in a way that preserves rights?”.
In a Westphalian world that defines our sovereign states the world of the internet blurs our notion Westphalian boundaries. The concept of the the internet or connection technologies being a global village or marketplace, touching many aspects of our daily life and crossing those geographical and geo political boundaries is one of the conundrums of the free and open internet. In a world where the Human Voice of Freedom exists Henda Hendoud from Tunisia summed it up:
“The world is in the midst of a revolution, it’s not just Egypt and Tunisia. … There is a whole group of youth who only know this new world and it is a world without borders. And that is the revolution.”
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