The Freedom of Expression Project

About the workshop

The workshop was held in Yogyakarta, Indonesia from the 4th to 7th of November 2007. It was hosted by Global Partners & Associates (UK), and Combine Resource Institution (Indonesia).

This was the final workshop in a series of discussions held on behalf of the Ford Foundation. The programme’s overall aim is to explore the implications of the development of digital communications for the human right to freedom of expression. An important goal is to help shape the Ford Foundation’s future funding priorities in this field globally.

The programme of the workshop was designed to enable debate about challenges and opportunities specific to Asian countries or regions, and also to explore global issues. Participants came from 11 countries in total, and contributed their diverse perspectives and specialist knowledge to detailed and creative discussions. The workshop also gave participants an opportunity to compare experiences, share knowledge and develop international links.

Discussions were set in context with:

• presentations from Asian contributors, including original research, that gave political, economic and cultural information
• background to the Freedom of Expression Project and its objectives
• briefings based on the Project’s own research into the global networked communications environment, including its ‘layer model’ analysis.

Key themes

The following emerged as key themes in the discussion over the three days.

Mapping a complex environment

• The region is hugely diverse: politically, economically, culturally and in communications environments. Analysis needs to take account of this complexity and the differences between south east and south Asia regionally, and between individual countries.

• Patterns of access and usage differ widely, often with marked divisions between rural and urban experiences. Examples highlighted included:
  • Some countries have well-developed infrastructure and high levels of access to networked communications (Malaysia, Singapore); 85% of Indonesians have access to the internet.
  • 72% of the urban poor in India have not heard of the internet.
  • Cost can be a significant barrier to access. E.g. in Indonesia a monthly subscription to broadband is $75 and a graduate’s (above average) monthly income is around $120. In India, the cost of a proprietary PC software suite is equivalent to over 40% of the average per capita GDP.
  • Literacy and language are key factors in the uptake and usage of technologies. E.g. mobile phone usage is high in the Philippines as levels of literacy are relatively good and Tagalog is written using the Roman alphabet; whereas a lack of Khmer-based software in Cambodia initially affected communities’ access to new technologies.

• We need to continue to build a detailed and up-to-date understanding of how people are accessing and using technologies. For example, research in India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Philippines and Thailand shows that:
  • although ownership of mobile phones is low, levels of access are high because people share facilities
  • people evolve creative and cost-effective ways to use new technologies: sharing facilities, ‘missed call’ strategies to keep mobile phone costs low
  • while mobile phone use is primarily social, new uses include creating support networks for alternative political candidates (Philippines: Father Ed and Grace Padaca).

About freedom of expression in practice

• Challenges to freedom of expression in the region include:
  • direct censorship in various forms. State censorship and control spans a broad spectrum (intense control exercised by the military in Burma; interception of mobile phone communications in the Philippines; action by Malaysian authorities to discredit critics of the government)
  • legal threats (including blasphemy in Pakistan, lèse majesté in Thailand)
  • impunity for action against journalists and media distributors
  • lack of access to information. Some countries are implementing regulations (Indonesia, China)
  • factors that prevent a pluralism of voices, such as commercialisation and political ownership of the media (Malaysia).

• Existing indices of ‘free’ or ‘not free’ media do not always take account of the complexity of communications environments, and digital communications and print media may be subject to different regulatory regimes and levels of control. In some circumstances this can open up spaces for expression (e.g. ‘Family Trees’, about corruption in Cambodia, circulated freely on the internet but was suppressed elsewhere).

• There is no straightforward relationship between levels of access to or usage of technology and freedom of expression. A highly developed communications infrastructure may enable political and civil society activism but does not engender it.

About freedom of expression and democracy

• Participants accepted ‘freedom of expression’ as a framework for discussion and action in the region, and emphasised the importance of an expansive definition. Freedom of expression:
  • is far wider than a media issue: it’s also important to engage communities - is a tool for opening up issues and for forcing governments to confront e.g. brutality, corruption
  • has to be a practical concept; it must be able to accommodate the scope and speed of change in the communications environment
  • must accommodate ideas of cultural expression and indigenous rights
  • needs to be defined so that the concept is not hi-jacked or abused, e.g. by corporations, so as to marginalise some voices.

• Some concepts that are significant to freedom of expression are understood differently than in the global North. In many Asian societies, identity is considered more as collective than individual, which means that:
  • concepts of privacy may have little currency. E.g. Indonesian languages have no word for ‘privacy’
  • notions of copyright attaching to individual ownership have less meaning. Where cultures are based on sharing and distributing (e.g. knowledge, art), the idea of ‘piracy’ may be entirely alien.

• Concepts of democracy, its value and aspirations to it are not universally shared. It was not suggested that democracy is not compatible with ‘Asian values’ and Confucian culture; however, participants stressed that democracy does not necessarily provide solutions to all problems (poverty, ethnic conflict), that it can take many forms and that it needs to be ‘home-grown’:
  • Burma: democracy is seen by many in black-and-white opposition to dictatorship
  • Indonesia: public feeling includes some nostalgia for the stability of Suharto’s presidency
  • China: the process of reform can be understood as ‘top down’, planned and implemented by government. In this unique context, indicators such as levels of civil society activity and press freedom may not be applicable as measures of success of the process.

Interactions between culture and technology

• Arguably, people who are poor and excluded may demonstrate a greater ability to innovate and capitalise on the potential of the internet in the absence of developed regulatory systems. Points made here included:
  • The networked, interactive character of the new communications environment is sympathetic to Asian cultures that are primarily oral rather than written; it may also help to recreate opportunities for creativity.
  • Piracy (e.g. of software) can be seen positively as a contributor to the growth of infrastructure and capacity, particularly when state-funded and organised development is deficient
  • There may be barriers to the uptake of open source software: it has to compete with widely pirated proprietary software and the level of technical knowledge needed to use it can exclude significant numbers.

Valuing creativity

• Innovative applications of new technology have been developed, both by individuals and civil society rather than state-sponsored groups. These tend to take place ‘outside the rules’ or as alternatives to established structures. Examples from Indonesia included:
  • Jalin Merapi Project, a community-based information and early warning system about the volcanic activity of Mt Merapi
  • open source software to set up a free telephone network via the internet
  • education to enable communities to build low-cost wi-fi networks with a wok and other readily available materials
  • satirical commentary and cartoons on political events – though the majority of civil society groups have yet to exploit fully the potential of ‘web 2.0’ as an environment.

• Art and cultural expression can thrive outside the structure of the conventional marketplace. Art forms can be significant in: preserving heritage, becoming a foundation for activism (e.g. by providing politically excluded groups with a means of communication), building bridges between social groups and generations (e.g. using new technologies to create traditional forms of music). The new communications environment needs to enable creative forms of expression. It is geared to being swiftly responsive to social and cultural change.

Building alliances and collaborations

• Different types of collaborations can advance understanding about the opportunities and challenges of the networked communications environment. These include alliances between groups that usually work in different spheres: to educate and build capacity in civil society groups, particularly on technical issues; to share information; to organise around campaign and common political objectives; to draw international attention to domestic situations; across disciplines.

• International linkages are valuable. Participants noted:
  • how international communication routes out of and back into countries can affect domestic decisions and politics (Burma, Malaysia)
  • the importance of the international human rights community as a means of enforcing rights that exist in law (e.g. Malaysian bloggers)
  • south/south alliances can explore ways to address common issues (e.g. access, language, literacy, low-cost community technologies)
  • it is essential to engage with the Internet Governance Forum as the only international and multi-stakeholder forum on internet governance.

Next steps

Participants were positive about the diversity of perspectives at the event and valued the opportunities to share experiences and build networks. There was agreement that further collaborations were important to enable progress towards and protection of freedom of expression.

The Project will continue to provide opportunities for mutual learning and development by: sharing learning and debate through its website www.freedomofexpression.org.uk, and through the next phase of its work. This will include:

• developing public interest principles that guarantee freedom of expression at each layer of the communications environment
• involving key stakeholder groups, including business, regulators, other donors and global civil society
• establishing a global network to promote the principles, monitor developments regionally and identify opportunities for advocacy
• convening a gathering of key stakeholders in late 2008 to agree on a programme of action that will promote these principles.

Kate Wilkinson
November 2007