Category Archives: Free Speech

(Reuters) - A St. Louis suburb's law that restricts protests around funerals does not violate the free-speech rights of a church known for holding anti-gay demonstrations at military funerals, a federal appeals court ruled on Tuesday.

The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the ordinance passed by the city of Manchester, Missouri, to curb picketing at funerals by members of the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas.

Pastor Fred Phelps and other church members have protested at hundreds of funerals of military members killed in Iraq and Afghanistan as part of their religious view that God is punishing America for tolerance of gays and lesbians.

The church has gone to court to defend its right to protest and courts have wrestled with how to balance the group's right to free-speech against individuals' rights to privacy.

In March 2011, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the group's funeral protests were protected speech under the First Amendment in a suit brought by Albert Snyder, the father of a Marine who had died in Iraq. The protesters had carried signs that stated, "God Hates You," "You Are Going To Hell" and "Thank God for Dead Soldiers" at his son's funeral.

The 8th Circuit case is the first to be decided since the Supreme Court upheld the group's free speech rights.

Although the church had never held protests in Manchester, two of its members, Shirley Phelps-Roper and Megan Phelps-Roper, sued in 2009 to challenge the city's ordinance, which bars protests within 300 feet of a funeral site within an hour before or after the ceremony. The law imposes a fine of up to $1,000 and up to three months imprisonment.

Both the district court and a three judge panel ruled in favor of the Phelps-Ropers, finding that the court could only shield unwilling listeners outside residential homes. But a larger 8th Circuit panel disagreed.

"The ordinance does not limit speakers or picketers in any manner, apart from a short time and narrow space buffer zone around a funeral or burial service," Judge Diana Murphy wrote for an 11-judge panel.

Anthony Rothert, a lawyer at the American Civil Liberties Union who represented the church members, criticized the court for carving out a new exception to the broad right of free speech on public sidewalks. He said the Supreme Court had previously recognized exceptions outside private residences and abortion clinics.

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Court upholds city's ban on protests at military funerals

TOM HENEGHAN, RELIGION EDITOR

Western opposition has made it impossible for Muslim states to obtain a ban on blasphemy, including anti-Islamic videos and cartoons that have touched off deadly riots, the Islamic world's top diplomat said.

Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, secretary general of the Organisation of Islamic Co-operation (OIC), said his 57-nation body would not try again for United Nations support to ban insults to religion, but appealed for states to apply hate-speech laws concerning Islam.

"We could not convince them," said the Turkish head of the 57-member organisation which had tried from 1998 until 2011 to get a United Nations-backed ban on blasphemy.

"The European countries don't vote with us, the United States doesn't vote with us."

Western countries see the publication of such images and materials as a matter of free speech.

The posting of an amateurish US-made video portraying the Prophet Mohammed as a foolish womaniser and the publication of caricatures of him in France last month led to violent protests and renewed calls from the Muslim world for a global law against blasphemy.

The protests claimed some two dozen lives.

Ihsanoglu told a conference in Istanbul at the weekend that the OIC had failed to win a ban at the United Nations and would not revive its long diplomatic campaign for one.

Asked about recent media reports that the OIC wanted to resume the campaign for a blasphemy ban, he said: "I never said this and I know this will never happen."

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West's free speech stand bars blasphemy ban

Syracuse, N.Y. -- Lamees Dhaif, a 34-year-old journalist from Bahrain, won the 2012 Tully Award for Free Speech tonight at Syracuse University.

Dhaif won the award for not backing down from violence and intimidation intended to silence her reporting. At a ceremony tonight in Syracuse, she described repeated government threats, the jailing of her family, and a hasty exile that forces her to "live out of my bags." She described watching her house burn down after pro-government forces firebombed it with Molotov cocktails. Government officials repeatedly told her to stop reporting, and she described how one member of the all-powerful royal family told her he would have her cut in half.

The award is presented annually to journalists like Lamees by the Tully Center for Free Speech in the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. It is given to a journalist who has faced a significant free speech threat.

Dhaif has worked for several newspapers in Bahrain, a small country on the Persian Gulf, including Akhbar Al-Khaleej, Sadaa Al Isboua, Al-Qabas, Al-Afaaq and Al-Waqt.

She said she began her professional career in 2005. She first reported on radical Islamists and then began reporting on widespread government corruption. Both topics resulted in pressures to keep quiet but intimidation and violence started in earnest as she reported on the 2011 Arab Spring movement in Bahrain.

She was branded as an "lying witch" and quickly blacklisted from media throughout the Persian Gulf. Following the widespread government censorship, Dhaif turned to Twitter, Facebook and her blog http://lameesbahrainperceptions.blogspot.com.

Earlier, Dhaif endured several cultural and legal challenges to free speech. For instance, she was discouraged from pursuing journalism as a career unsuitable for a woman. She was told if she thought reporting was important work, she should have her brother or another male relative do it. According to a news release accompanying her award, in 2009, she was accused in a legal complaint of insulting the judiciary after she wrote a series uncovering allegations of bias against women in Bahrains family courts. Though the case was dropped, officials made it clear that they could revive the charges at any time.

In 2011, after the large-scale anti-government protests, Dhaif was again called into court for criticizing the regime, according to the release. These charges were also dropped, but the stakes were raised when the pro-government forces burned her home.

Despite these threats, she remained unbowed in her criticism of the government's attempts to suppress the protest movement. In addition to her large social media audience and reporting published on her blog, she also writes a weekly column for the Saudi newspaper Alyaum and presents a television program on the Kuwaiti television station Al-Rai. During her speech at tonight's ceremony, Dhaif showed a film she made, graphically showing the deaths of protest members who had been shot by police.

During her talk in the Joyce Hergenhan Auditorium on campus, Dhaif touched on several topics. Among them:

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Lamees Dhaif, journalist from Bahrain, wins free speech award at Syracuse University

ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Western opposition has made it impossible for Muslim states to obtain a ban on blasphemy, including anti-Islamic videos and cartoons that have touched off deadly riots, the Islamic world's top diplomat said.

Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, secretary general of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), said his 57-nation body would not try again for United Nations support to ban insults to religion, but appealed for states to apply hate-speech laws concerning Islam.

"We could not convince them," said the Turkish head of the 57-member organisation which had tried from 1998 until 2011 to get a United Nations-backed ban on blasphemy.

"The European countries don't vote with us, the United States doesn't vote with us."

Western countries see the publication of such images and materials as a matter of free speech.

The posting of an amateurish U.S.-made video portraying the Prophet Mohammad as a foolish womanizer and the publication of caricatures of him in France last month led to violent protests and renewed calls from the Muslim world for a global law against blasphemy.

The protests claimed some two dozen lives.

Ihsanoglu told a conference in Istanbul at the weekend that the OIC had failed to win a ban at the United Nations and would not revive its long diplomatic campaign for one.

Asked about recent media reports that the OIC wanted to resume the campaign for a blasphemy ban, he said: "I never said this and I know this will never happen."

The OIC respects freedom of expression but sees anti-Islam videos and cartoons as an abuse of this freedom that Western countries should sanction through their own blasphemy or hate crime laws, he said.

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West's free speech stand bars blasphemy ban: OIC

Students can now apply for enrollment in a spring semester seminar that will focus on comparative legal and cultural issues relating to free speech and the media in a developing democracy, and include spring-break field study in Ghana.

Developed by Professor Joseph Blocher, enrollment in the seminar, titled Democratic Development and the Public Sphere: Freedom of Speech and Press in Ghana, will be capped at 12 students. Weekly class sessions will engage students in discussion of relevant readings including a mix of primary sources, historical and cultural materials, and scholarly commentary. The intensive fact-finding trip to Ghana will allow students to assess the legal and cultural issues in context; meet with stakeholders such as government officials, print,broadcast, and online journalists; lawyers and judges; NGOs; and tribal leaders. Following their return, students will work collaboratively on written educational, advocacy, or strategic planning materials that could be used by Ghanaian partners and stakeholders in their work.

Blocher, a constitutional scholar who spent a year in Ghana as a Fulbright Scholar before attending law school, said the three-credit seminar will offer a timely examination of the role of the public sphere in the development of a young democracy. Ghanaians will vote in December in the sixth presidential election held since the passage of the countrys 1992 constitution which offers guarantees of freedom of the press. A Constitutional Review Commission recently recommended the passage of a Right to Information Bill, a Broadcast Bill to improve regulation of broadcast media, and the promulgation of professional press standards.

Ghana has a really interesting record of wonderful successes and also some persistent challenges in relation to speech and the press, said Blocher, who focuses much of his scholarship on the First Amendment. A lot of the press is state owned, and reporting is often shaped to put whatever the government is doing in the best light. You can hold the front page of a state-owned paper beside the front page of an independent paper and get totally different reports of the same event, which is stunning. It says a lot about what it means to have a free speech culture and its interfaces with politics.

Thats why Blocher hopes the seminar will attract students interested in law and development, as well as those interested in international and comparative law. Sometimes people focus on law and development as being about just economic concerns narrowly defined, he said. But in a maturing democracy like Ghana, one of the most successful countries in all of sub-Saharan Africa, how do you nurture the link between government and civil society in a way that keeps them both strong? If they are not, theres no amount of economic tinkering you can do that will keep the country stable. He also hopes the seminar will students with strong interests in the First Amendment, an area in which relatively little comparative work has been done, particularly in young democracies like Ghanas.

Professor Kwame Karikari, executive director of the Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA) will serve as Blochers full-time partner in Ghana during the students weeklong trip. Because of Karikaris connections with more repressive parts of West Africa such as Gambia and Cote dIvoire, the students work has the potential to have broader regional resonance, Blocher said.

The spring-break trip to Ghana is being subsidized by Dukes Center for International and Comparative Law (CICL), but each student will be expected to contribute to travel costs absent a demonstration of financial hardship. The deadline for submitting completed applications for enrollment to Sharon Sebolt, Blochers assistant, is Oct. 22, 2012, at 5:00 p.m. Application requirements can be found here.

Blochers seminar continues a Duke Law tradition of spring-break seminars offering students hands-on learning experiences in international and comparative law and human rights. Earlier seminars and trips supported by CICL have focused on Afro-Brazilian land rights, housing issues in East Jerusalem arising from the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and customary law, statutory law, and womens property rights in Ghana. Two other seminars have engaged students in law reform initiatives pertaining to womens rights, housing, and rebuilding infrastructure in Haiti.

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Duke Law Spring Project to Focus on Free Speech and Media in Ghana

Traditions like Speakers' Corner protect free speech on the street, so why can't we do it on the internet?

Communist MP Saklatvala Shapurji holding forth at Speakers' Corner in 1933. Photograph: Getty Images

Visitors to Hyde Park on a Sunday can see people standing on stepladders engaged in passionate debate with groups clustered around them. Speakers Corner is a symbol of Britains centuries old commitment to freedom of speech.

When it comes to free speech on the internet, however, Britain seems to have lost its way. Recent prosecutions for material posted on social media sites and internet forums raise troubling questions about the state of the law and limits of free expression. These prosecutions are causing dismay not just in the UK but among those battling internet censorship around the globe.

This week alone, a 19-year-old man was sentenced to 12 weeks in a young offenders institution after posting comments, some sexual, about two girls who are missing and presumed dead. A 20-year old man was sentenced to 240 hours of community service for posting comments about dead soldiers on his Facebook page.

In March, a 21-year old man was sentenced to 56 days in prison for racist comments on Twitter about a seriously ill black footballer. In August, a 26-year old man was given a two-year suspended sentence and community service after posting racial insults on the website of Liverpool football club.

It should be well-established that freedom of expression includes the freedom to shock, offend or disturb. Yet with the amplifying effect and legal novelty of social media, that basic truth is too often overlooked. Even in cases involving incitement to violence, there are questions about whether the response of the authorities has been proportionate. Police arrested a 17-year-old boy in August for death threats on Twitter against a British Olympic swimmer, and cautioned rather than charging him. But four-year sentences for two men for incitement during the August 2011 riots were upheld by the Court of Appeal later that year, despite the lack of evidence that anyone was actually incited to riot as a result.

There is a growing recognition in Britain that these trends threaten free expression. In July, a panel of High Court judges, including the head of the judiciary, quashed the 2010 conviction of a 27-year old man and the 1,000 fine - for a tweet in which he jokingly threatened to blow up a local airport because of his frustration that it was closed because of bad weather. The ruling in what social media referred to as Twitter Joke Trial quoted Shakespeare for emphasis: They are free to speak not what they ought to say, but what they feel. But the ruling appears not to have deterred prosecutors and the lower courts from pursuing similar cases.

The top prosecutor in England and Wales, Kier Starmer, has said he is concerned about the potential chilling effect arising from prosecutions for offensive speech and this week began consultations with lawyers, police, free expression groups and social media companies, as part of a review of guidelines for such prosecutions. Part of the problem is that the laws in place were designed for a different era. The offence the two men were prosecuted for this week grossly offensive electronic communication is part of the Communications Act 2003, passed when social media were in their infancy and Twitter and Facebook, which can quickly transform private thoughts into mass communication, did not exist. The offense dates back even earlier, though, to the 1930s and was designed to protect telephone operators.

The Director of Public Prosecutions will hopefully bring some much-needed restraint to the social media prosecutions, helping to delineate distinctions between material that is merely offensive, however so, and material that is part of a campaign of harassment, credible threat or clear incitement to violence. Prosecutors already have a duty to ensure that any prosecution is in the public interest and to protect free expression -- a right given particular emphasis in the domestic Human Rights Act.

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Social media prosecutions threaten free speech in the UK - and beyond

13 October 2012 Last updated at 07:38 ET

A North West MEP has condemned the prison sentence given to a man who wore an offensive T-shirt on the day two police officers were shot and killed.

Barry Thew, 39, was arrested wearing the top with anti police slogans on hours after the deaths of PCs Fiona Bone and Nicola Hughes in Mottram.

He admitted a public order offence on Thursday and was jailed for four months at Minshull Street Crown Court.

Liberal Democrat Chris Davies said he should be entitled to free speech.

"I think even offensive idiots should have the right to freedom of expression in a free society," he said.

"I don't know how you draw the line if you don't allow that.

"I think it is completely wrong for someone to try and incite someone to commit a criminal act or to kill a policeman or anyone else."

He added that when people are locked up for expressing an opinion "we are on a slippery slope".

Police said Thew, of Worsley Street, Radcliffe, had been arrested after being seen wearing the T-shirt in Radcliffe town centre "just hours" after the constables died in a gun and grenade attack in Mottram, Greater Manchester, on 18 September.

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Sentence 'takes away free speech'

12-10-2012 07:42 Segments: Segments: Tunisia Free Speech 0:51, Obama and Romney Campaigns Target Virginia 6:26, Traditional Stoves: Nigeria's Quiet Killers 11:10, Damascus School Struggles to Carry On 16:16, Prayer Adds Special Touch to Nuns' Cheese 18:52

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On Assignment 12 October - Video

A challenge may be mounted to the free speech restrictions at SteelStacks in Bethlehem after opponents heard from an expert today about the restrictions unconstitutionality.

Columbia Law School Professor Mark Barenberg said the provision disallowing labor-related gatherings and any activity offensive to Sands Casino Resort Bethlehem on city-owned property at SteelStacks could be overturned for a multitude of reasons.

Bethlehem officials have said they dont plan to enforce the provision that was included in a deed they signed with Sands to get the land for free. Barenberg told a crowd of 50 gathered at Lehigh University today that theyd have a winning case in either circumstance of the city enforcing or not enforcing the provision.

If the city enforced it, opponents would have a very strong first-amendment lawsuit because of the right to free speech on publicly-owned land, Barenberg said. If the city didnt enforce just one labor-related gathering on the property, it would legally nullify the entire provision, Barenberg said.

If they dont arrest you and throw you off, thats a huge victory, he said.

Lehighs South Side Initiative brought Barenberg to Bethlehem to lead a public forum on the free speech restrictions at SteelStacks. Initiative Director Seth Moglen said he and others have continued to be troubled by the restrictions since they were approved in June 2011.

Members of both the United Steelworkers and the American Civil Liberties Union said they were interested in testing the restrictions following Barenbergs talk. Joe Welsh, an ACLU member from Forks Township, said the groups local chapter has been monitoring the question of free speech at the city-owned land at SteelStacks for some time but needed more legal insight.

We are so grateful for the input and analysis given tonight, Welsh said.

The decision of whether to challenge the restrictions would be made by the state ACLU chapter, he said.

Some Lehigh Valley labor leaders have said theyre not worried about the speech restrictions because they dont think legally enforceable. United Steelworkers Local 2599 President Jerry Green, however, said hes grown more concerned about the restrictions the more he learns about them.

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Free speech restrictions at SteelStacks in Bethlehem may be put to test

We need to return to civility and respectful disagreement in our national discourse instead of defending all types of rancorous discussions and fallacies under the banner of freedom of speech.

I am a supporter of our nation's freedom of speech. It allows me to preach my beliefs from the pulpit, criticize my own government when need be and push back against bigots, who sow seeds of division under the banner of the First Amendment.

I also strongly believe that with freedom of speech comes responsibility, and that our misuse of it can have serious consequences.

There used to be a time in our socio-political discourse that discussing certain subjects in overly provocative and insulting forms was off-limits. Nowadays, personal attacks against politicians, even insulting the first lady, seem normal.

Let me be clear that I am not an advocate for imposing America's standards of free speech upon other nations, nor do I advocate restricting our freedom of speech in America through legislative means. As a minority who understands well the history of selective enforcement and prosecution of laws in America, my racial and religious groups could be the most adversely affected if such restrictions were set into law.

My call is for people of faith and good conscience to remind fellow Americans of our national values of promoting diversity and inclusion. This includes readjusting our societal mores to vigorously challenge those who misuse freedom of speech to promote hate. As Americans, we are not responsible for policing the world, but we are responsible for the climate of our own society.

Dawud Walid

Executive Director

Council on American-

Islamic Relations --

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Letters: Free speech includes responsibility to be civil