Free speech outrage in Britain

One can expect occasional outrages against free speech in lingeringly post-Soviet and post-Communist Eastern Europe (sorry, Ed Lucas) because these people -- the ones running the police and legal systems -- simply have not learned in 20 years. That is why this blog was started in late 2008-- because neo-KGB goons in Latvia arrested a slightly wacky college economics lecturer for remarks he made at a public discussion about banks and the national currency, the lat.  There have been more incidents since then, but after all, this country and places immensely deeper in the not-even-post-Soviet mentality morass (hilariously barbarian Belarus and its Teddy Bear arrest) were never considered cradles of democratic liberties, the rights of free men and all that. That is where both Britain and the US have, at least historically, been beacons of freedom in a world with two, three many Eastern Europes and worse.
But now this from The Guardian:



Lawyers for the BBC are considering making a formal appeal against a court order that has banned the corporation from showing a dramatised film about the experiences of rioters who took part in last summer's disorder.

The ruling from a judge prevented the docu-drama, which had been due to be broadcast on BBC2 at 9pm on Monday, from being broadcast "by any media until further order".

The channel's executives were forced to pull the film, which is based on the testimony of interviews conducted for the Guardian and London School of Economics research into the disorder.

A second BBC film in the two-part series, which is based on personal interviews with police officers and was scheduled for broadcast on Wednesday, is also banned under the order.

For legal reasons*, the Guardian cannot name the judge who made the ruling, the court in which he is sitting or the case he is presiding over. However, it is understood that lawyers for the BBC strongly object to his ruling, the nature of which is believed to be highly unusual.

Hours before Monday's programme was due to be aired, the BBC tried and failed to appeal the order over the telephone. The corporation's lawyers are now working on legal arguments for a second potential appeal, which may be lodged tomorrow.

The programme, part of a two-part series, features actors who play anonymous rioters speaking about their experiences of the riots last August. The BBC said in a statement on Monday: "A court order has been made that has prevented the BBC from broadcasting the programme The Riots: In their own Words tonight. We will put it out at a later date."

The script from the programme, written by the award-winning playwright Alecky Blythe, was produced from verbatim transcripts of interviews conducted as part of the Reading the Riots study, which conducted confidential interviews with 270 rioters.

The ban on the film has created a major headache for BBC executives, who are being forced to reorganise a packed schedule, which includes Olympic coverage and journalism based around next month's anniversary of the riots.

The BBC did not give details about the nature or contents of the court order. However a copy seen by the Guardian states: "It is ordered that the BBC programme 'The Riots: In their Own Words' due for broadcast on BBC 2 tonight is not broadcast by any media by any means until further order." Another part of the ruling states: "Further the clip currently available for viewing on the BBC website be removed forthwith."

The clip referred to by the judge appeared on a blog posted last Friday, in which a BBC producer on the project said that using the "important and illuminating" interviews in the drama would provide insight into "why and how the riots had happened". The clip, a short preview of the actors playing rioters speaking about their experiences, has now been removed from the site - although the blog remains.

Kirsty Hughes, chief executive of Index on Censorship, said: "This is a disturbing move. The Reading the Riots project gives a valuable insight into the events of last summer in England. As we approach the anniversary of the riots, it is important that broadcasts and discussion about the events are allowed to take place. Censoring television programmes is not in any way helpful to our understanding of the important issues and factors underlying the disturbances."

*WTF??! Great Britain?? Are we going back to the Star Chamber? Secret trials? Anonymous "judges" who need give no reason or argument for their decisions?  Where is Anonymous when we need them? The film V is Vendetta was about a future dystopian Britain, but it seems that future is arriving.
Curiously, Index on Censorship simply ignored a couple of cases in Latvia that I reported to them, but I am not going to return the "favor". I will express my solidarity with the BBC reporters trying to do their job and tell a story.

Latvia is not defending freedom for the the thought it hates

Freedom of expression – what is it good for? For your neighbor to say that despite the clouds, it is a nice day? For your workmate to say she prefers mayonnaise to ketchup on her french fries? For some dude on the street to shout that he loves a sports team you absolutely despise? This is everyday stuff.

The real test of freedom of speech is how an allegedly free society treats its really extreme, repulsive, provocative and offensive crackpots. Can we truly grant freedom to the thought we hate? Latvia may be failing that test again in the case of Aleksandrs Giļmans, a member of For Human Rights in a Unified Latvia (PCTVL), a pro-Russian party that was voted out of the Latvian parliament or Saeima.

An article Giļmans said he wrote some six years ago was republished. In it, (according to press reports) he downplayed the deportation of some 15 000 Latvian citizens, saying it was not the tragedy that it is made out to be, and adding that Latvians themselves were involved in the deportation of their countrymen. There is probably some truth to the latter, or it is at least worth researching how the Soviet occupation authorities came over lists of whom to arrest and deport and where to to find them.

What has happened now is that the Latvian Security Police, no friends of free expression in the past, have started a criminal investigation of Giļmans for the “crime” of glorifying and justifying genocide,crimes against humanity, crimes against peace and denying that such crimes had occurred. It is the equivalent of a Holocaust denial case in countries where that is forbidden.

While extreme sensitivity to Holocaust issues may be understandable in Germany and Israel, to forbid the peaceful advocacy of a false and offensive viewpoint is, nonetheless, a serious restriction on speech. I am convinced that granting the state the power to punish any speech is more dangerous than the substance of what a private person without police, prosecutors and jails behind them, may say or publish. Giļmans assertions were answered by Latvian historians, who called them nonsense. In a free, democratic society, as a means of dealing with offensive opinion, that is enough. Call off the Security Police. 

Latvia gets another badge for banana republic repression

Well, Latvia got what it was “working” for – a drop of 20 places to 50^th place in the world in the Reporters Without Borders Press Freedom Index. It was in “good” company, just three places behind the 47^th place United States, which has disgraced its own benchmark First Amendment press freedom protections by arresting journalists covering the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations in several cities.

Latvia earned its sharp drop, according to Reporters Without Borders, for two incidents this year – a raid by anti-corruption police on the newspaper Neatkarīgā Rīta Avīze (NRA) and the detention, for 48 hours, of the editor of a website in Latvian which exposed what it claimed was suspcious e-mail correspondence between Riga mayor Nils Ušakovs and the Russian Embassy.

Unfortunately, I missed the NRA incident in this blog, or perhaps I thought that an investigation by the anti-corruption police (KNAB) was justified, since the newspaper is effectively controlled by Ventspils mayor, oligarch and accused money-laundered and economic criminal Aivars Lembergs. I may have been wrong.

In any event, if you scroll back through what I have posted during 2011, there is plenty of reason to consider the freedom of expression (not just the rights of journalists) to have been dragged down to the level of a black humor banana republic by several actions of the authorities. So this ranking is well deserved, though I am more worried about the decline of press freedom in the country where I grew up – the United States. I frequently refer to the clear language of the First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law...”. That, for me, sets the standard for freedom of the press and speech, and it is very disturbing that the US cannot live up to its own standards. What can one expect of Latvia.

Nonetheless, respecting the rights of journalists and the freedom of expression is a low cost enterprise. Just let them be. And it has been proven possible in a country with much the same historical experience and “post-Soviet” political culture as Latvia – it's neighbor to the north, Estonia, ranked number three in the press freedom index after Finland and Norway. Another lesson not learned by a country that seems to want a downward spiral into cheap-ass (no concentration camps, just petty and stupid repression) banana republic status. 

Latvian website journalist jailed

I am reposting this item, apparently written by Reporters without Frontiers (or Borders) in Latvia. I was out of town when this happened on December 15 and I had assumed www.kompromat.lv to be a Russian-language website, which I don't read because I don't speak Russian. This is not to say that repression against Russian-language media in Latvia should get the short shrift, just that I cannot examine the issues as precisely as if the reasons (or excuses) for the repression were in a language I read. So here it is.
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Reporters Without Borders strongly condemns yesterday’s arrest of Leonīds Jākobsons, a news website owner and editor who for the past month has been posting copies of a series of compromising emails that had been sent or received by Nils Ušakovs, mayor of Riga and a former member of the Latvian parliament. The organisation demands his immediate release.

The emails that Jākobsons began posting on his website Kompromat (www.kompromat.lv) on 17 November indicated that Ušakovs provided information to a member of the Russian embassy in Riga and engaged in a strange correspondence that has aroused suspicions about the nature of Ušakovs’ activities.

The winner of the National Journalism Prize in 2009 in the “Defence of Media Freedom” category, Jākobsons is reportedly also in the possession of other – so far unpublished – emails suggesting that illegal commissions were used to finance a political party’s election campaign illegally.

“We demand Jākobsons’ immediate release,” Reporters Without Borders said. “It is unacceptable that a journalist can be jailed for an alleged media offence in a European Union member country. “The confidentiality of journalists’ sources is being seriously threatened by the seizure of all of his computer equipment and by the pressure being put on him to reveal how he obtained the emails.

“The mayor of Riga can bring a legal action against Jākobsons if he thinks it is necessary, or he can take advantage of the right of reply if he thinks he has been defamed. But Jākobsons’ arrest and imprisonment and the confiscation of all of his equipment seem more like an act of revenge than the actions of an impartial judicial system.”

During a raid on Jākobsons’ apartment yesterday, police seized two computers and all the computer storage material and devices they could find. After completing their search, they arrested Jākobsons on suspicion of illegally acquiring electronic communication data. The police also went to the premises of an Internet Service provider and seized the three servers that hosted the Kompromat website, which can no longer be accessed.

The day after Jākobsons posted the first emails on Kompromat, the site began being the target of a major DDoS attack that lasted several days. On 21 November, a hacker succeeded in deleting all of the site’s archives (more than 10 years of content in Russian and Latvian). The site’s editors were able to restore all the content from a backup but the attacks continued.

The police had refused to accede to a request by Jakobsons for an investigation into the origin of the cyber-attacks on his site.

A well-known and widely-read site, Kompromat has done a lot of investigative coverage of corruption, organized crime, drug trafficking and other criminal activity. It has often been pressured and prosecuted, but none of its personnel had ever been attacked or arrested in the past.

Currently held at Čiekurkalns police station in Riga, Jākobsons is expected to be transferred to the city’s main prison shortly. Conditions in the jail are poor and Reporters Without Borders has been told he will probably have to share a cell with ordinary offenders.

Dumbass "censors" move against Russian language news in Latvia

The National Electronic Media Council (Nacionāla elektronisko plašsaziņas līdzekļu padome/NEPLP) has brought charges against the mainly Russian-language television broadcaster TV5 for including, in a news item video, a clip of a person calling Latvia "a fascist state." According to media reports (I don't understand Russian and don't watch Russian-language broadcasts), the words, called "discrediting the Latvian state" were apparently  uttered by a vox pop (one of several people-in-the-street interviewed to illustrate a news spot).  Since the news item dealt with the somewhat emotionally charged subject of collecting signatures to make Russian a second state language in Latvia, it is no surprise that some Russians interviewed may have strong feelings on the matter and about Latvia in general. To show them in a news broadcast is to give an accurate, even if disturbing (both to Latvians and Russians) view of the range of feelings. In fact, I am sure most Russians, even most signing the petition, would not rationally call Latvia fascist, because if it was fascist, there would be no free and open petitioning.
What has taken Latvia a tiny step toward authoritarianism is precisely this kind of fuckwit reaction by the NEPLP. After 20 years as a free country, and seven years in the European Union, Latvian state institutions should not have to be tapped on the head with a blunt object to be reminded that only autoritarian states punish "discrediting the state".  WTF??
Moreover, it was not the editorial view of TV5 that Latvia is fascist, but that of a person on the street as part of a legitimate news item. And even if TV5 were to claim, absurdly, that Latvia is fascist, it is entitled, as in any democracy that grants the right to free speech and expression, to even express moronic and crackpot views. That is what free speech is all about. Why does nobody fucking get it!? Time and energy are wasted and activities that in fact do discredit Latvia as a democratic country are undertaken against crackpots of all persuasions -- such as efforts by the Riga City Council to stop a march commemorating the "liberation" of Riga by the German army (running out the Red Army) on July 1, 1941.  There are others who demand that the gathering by old Red Army geezers and their supporters on May 9 be banned. While I consider the commemoration of the Latvian Legion on March 16 neither historically nuanced (a huge waste of life and bad PR for the next 70 years) nor a crackpot undertaking (although it gathers some ultranationalist crackpots and foaming-at-the-mouth anti-fascists to have fun with each other), it should not be banned either. Why is is so hard to get the simple idea of free expression (and in this case, of news editorial independence) across to anyone with authority in Latvia? The smart thing for the NEPLP to do would be to drop its charges, apologize, and stay the fuck out of post-factum censoring the news.

Latvian talk show host booted after 16 years for calling politicians "whores"

Kārlis Streips, a Latvian-American  host for Skats no malas (A View from The Sidelines), a talk show featuring local journalists, has been fired for calling the Latvia's Green and Farmer's Union political party "whores" (maukas in Latvian). Streips made the remark in his first post-election Monday evening show. He has been hosting the show, featuring himself and three Latvian journalists (in rotating, different groups) for the past 16 years.
While Streips guests have represented different political views and included both Latvian and Latvian-speaking representatives of the local Russian media, the host (who worked for local TV in the US before moving to then Soviet Latvia in the late 1980s) often ended the program by talking directly to the camera and saying what he thought about the issues under discussion -- from politics to admonishing his viewers not to drive and drink (on the Midsummer holiday).
The management of Latvian Television accused Streips of violating rules against prime-time vulgarity and a breach of good taste. However, viewers now able to turn off the Latvian voice-over on interactive cable TV can hear a stream of obscenities when watching certain American ir British films. Also, Streips "vulgarity" was political speech, not his attempt to wrap up his Monday evening show with an Eddie-Murphy style tirade.
Comments on internet portals have been generally favorable to Streips and have accused Latvian TV of political censorship. On Twitter Latvians have created a hashtag #maukas. Some observers link his firing to the resignation of Ilze Nagla, the host and a reporter of De Facto, an investigative news program, and to the failure of LTV to renew its contract with Jānis Domburs, the host of a topical current events discussion program Kas notiek Latvijā? (What's Happening in Latvia). As one observer put it, LTV has been reduced to running just straight news programs, light entertainment and reruns from its past glory.
It is rumored that Streips may be quickly hired by the private, Swedish-owned channel TV3 where several frustrated LTV journalists have gone in recent years. The fact that Streips is controversial both for his opinions and the fact that he is one of a handful of openly gay public figures in Latvia (Streips is not an activist and generally low-key about his sexual orientation). He is seen as a workaholic who also runs a radio show and teaches journalist at the University of Latvia, as well as working as a translator and English language voice-over talent on some commercial and documentary films.