Category Archives: Transhuman News

State control on information and media and aggressive pressure on journalists seeking to maintain their independence are critical elementsof the modern Russian state. Although the Russian constitution has an article expressly prohibiting censorship, in reality censorship is a constant factor in the life of the Russian media. Censorship is carried out both directly and indirectly by state pressure and through self-censorship by journalists. The Kennan Institute hosted three well-known Russian publicists, analysts, and commentators, Konstantin Sonin, Konstantin Eggert, and Gleb Cherkasov, to discuss censorship and self-censorship in Russia and its role in Russian society.

Konstantin Sonin, John Dewey Distinguished Service Professor, University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy

"I think the second main reason leaders want censorship is because they just do not want bad things said about them. So I think a lot of frustration is not that they really fear a revolution or they really feel that theyre going to be punished for their corruption, but they just find that its extremely unpleasant to read about their corruption. So they dislike it."

"Now that 20 years have passed of Mr. Putins rule, a lot of people dont need to be told what to say, and how to present certain topics. They already know. Its not self-censorship; its just living in censorship."

"Media does not exist in a vacuum. And, essentially, if Russian society figures out that its right to know is an important right for it, then a lot of things will fall into place."

Gleb Cherkasov, Journalist; Former Deputy Editor-in-Chief, Kommersant (Live translation from Russian)

"We are living at a time of technological revolution in the media, and it is much easier now to create your own media than it was five to ten years ago. And so, its really incomparable: [the] technological advances we have now [and] those we had in the 90s. If you want to create some kind of product, all of us can have the tools. It may not necessarily be professional, but we have the technological basis to just pull out a phone and be newsmakers."

"Over the past year and a half, like mushrooms after a rain, we see small media projects that are being done by young people, very different young people. These media projects are about various news [items], various themes, and cover different subjects. The process is evolving, and I personally call this Media 3.0. Its usually a small partnership of people who are not connected with an official media market who produce a product, satisfying their own professional ambitions."

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Censorship and Self-Censorship in Russia | Wilson Center

Theres no way to know precisely where the line is, much less when you might go over it, except by means of delicately tuned antennae, said Orville Schell, who has written many books on China and is the director of Asia Societys Center on U.S.-China Relations (where I was formerly a fellow). But onceyouve crossed over into the observation zone of the Party, you know it, and the question of denied access cannot help but come into your calculations about what you say and what you write.

Paul Mooney, the journalist who recently was denied a visa for Reuters, doesnt know when he crossed the line. It could have been his reporting on AIDS or Tibet, or the fact that he worked on the dissident Chen Guangchengs English-language memoir. He told me that he didnt pull his punches in China, simply because he didnt see the point of being there if he couldnt write what he wanted. Other Americans advised him to be more pragmatic. Even over the past year, waiting for my visa to come through, journalist friends, academics and China watchers said to me, stop posting critical things on Facebook, he said. Many foreign journalists do their Chinese visa applications in December, to get them in before the end of the year. Mooney told me that a European journalist approached him for an interview recently but did not plan to write a story until after his own visa had been renewed. How many foreign journalists are doing the same thing every year at this time, or are now doing this throughout the year? Mooney wondered.

Countless Chinese journalists do this all the time. Of course, for them the stakes are much higher: They could end up behind bars. Self-censorship is in my blood, an outspoken Chinese Internet dissident once proudly told me. His years of carefully dancing around political land mines kept him out of exile or jail. Murong Xuecun, a writer and an increasingly bold critic, recently admitted: I often remind myself: Don't engage in self-censorship, and I was confident I had succeeded in this, but so far I have not yet written a single article about Tibet issues, even though I lived in Llasa for three years; nor have I openly discussed Xinjiang issues, even though they are of great concern to me.

This is not to say that all Western reporters censor themselves in China. Over the past year or so, there has been startlingly bold reporting. Oft-cited examples include David Barbozas Pulitzer Prize winning reporting on the riches acquired by the family of Chinese premier Wen Jiabao, and somewhat ironically, Bloombergs own investigation into the wealth of the relatives of President Xi Jinping. Those news organizations paid a price for their reporting, but others write on sensitive topics and emerge unscathed. In 2010, Evan Osnos, former Beijing correspondent for The New Yorker, did a profile of the Dalai Lama, and he didnt get the boot.Some writers are less fearful of expulsion because they are not career China hands, or perhaps because theyareChina hands who have just had enough.Jeremy Goldkorn, a Beijing-based blogger and the director of the research firm Danwei, told me, Every time I apply for a visa or leave the country and come back in, the thought always passes through my mind that maybe this time its not going to work. But I've been in China for so long, that Im thinking it would be a good thing if they kicked me out.

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Censorship in China: How Western Journalists Censor ...

YouTube has been removing videos of a press briefing in which two doctors criticize the sweeping shelter-at-home edicts that governments have imposed throughout the world in response to the COVID-19 outbreak. One of the videos had over 5 million views before it was taken down.

The original videos were posted by an ABC news affiliate in Bakersfield, California. When the affiliate reached out to YouTube about the removal, a company spokesperson issued a statement that offered the following justification:

We quickly remove flagged content that violate [sic] our Community Guidelines, including content that explicitly disputes the efficacy of local health authority recommended guidance on social distancing that may lead others to act against that guidance. (...) From the very beginning of the pandemic, weve had clear policies against COVID-19 misinformation and are committed to continue providing timely and helpful information at this critical time.

The claims of the physicians (Dr. Daniel W. Erickson and Dr. Artin Massihi, owners of Accelerated Urgent Care in Bakersfield) have been the subject of furious debate. Many health experts and organizations have denounced their remarks as unscientific and reckless. Even fellow critics of shelter-in-place who agree with much of the rest of their analysis have questioned some of their statistical inferences.

Whatever the veracity of the doctors claims, YouTubes censorship of unorthodox ideas in the name of protecting the public from misinformation is misguided and counter-productive. Sheltering the public from ideas, even bad ones, only makes society more susceptible to dangerous error.

One of the censored doctors critiques of shelter-at-home provides an apt metaphor for the folly of censorship. Dr. Erickson said:

Id like to go over some basic things about how the immune system functions so people have a good understanding. The immune system is built by exposure to antigens: viruses, bacteria. When youre a little child crawling on the ground, putting stuff in your mouth, viruses and bacteria come in. You form an antigen antibody complex. You form IgG IgM. This is how your immune system is built. You dont take a small child, put them in bubble wrap in a room, and say, go have a healthy immune system.

This is immunology, microbiology 101. This is the basis of what weve known for years. When you take human beings and you say, go into your house, clean all your countersLysol them down youre gonna kill 99% of viruses and bacteria; wear a mask; dont go outside, what does it do to our immune system? Our immune system is used to touching. We share bacteria. Staphylococcus, streptococcal, bacteria, viruses.

Sheltering in place decreases your immune system. And then as we all come out of shelter in place with a lower immune system and start trading viruses, bacteriawhat do you think is going to happen? Disease is going to spike. And then youve got diseases spikeamongst a hospital system with furloughed doctors and nurses. This is not the combination we want to set up for a healthy society. It doesnt make any sense.

Just as local health authorities are ostensibly trying to protect the public from COVID-19 through shelter-at-home policies, YouTube is seeking to shelter the public from misinformation. The following characterizes the perspective of YouTube and the health authorities that YouTube is serving in a metaphorical nutshell:

This is in keeping with the policy that YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki announced days ago, that YouTube would remove any content that contradicts the World Health Organization on COVID-19.

Even assuming all the doctors ideas are indeed bad, such a policy doesnt work, and only makes things worse.

Just as human immune systems are built up through exposure to viruses and other pathogens (as Dr. Erickson explained above), our intellectual defenses against error are strengthened through exposure to bad ideas.

When you encounter a bad idea, what can conceivably happen? You can:

In the case of #1, there is no problem. Next, lets consider #4, since that is the outcome that censors are most trying to avoid.

What happens when you adopt and implement a bad idea in your life? In the worst-case scenario, it could destroy you. But that is far less common in life than scaremongers would have us believe. More often, we suffer but do not die. And that is a very memorable way to learn that the idea implemented was indeed bad. We learn from experience, from failure, from the school of hard knocks. That is one of the reasons why what does not kill you makes you stronger, as the saying goes.

But not everybody needs to suffer to benefit from the lessons of suffering. That brings us to #2: we can investigate the idea. Through investigation, we can discover the accounts (whether first- or second-hand) of experiments with the bad idea and their bad results. Ideally, these would be rigorously scientific experiments whenever possible.

Finally, we have #3, which is adopting the bad idea without implementing it. What would be the point of doing that? Well, it could mean adopting it just enough to advocate it. And arguing for an idea is one of the most efficient ways to investigate it (making #3 really a subset of #2). That is because argument elicits counter-argument. And true, effective counter-arguments are, by definition, antithetical to bad ideas. Even if the apologist of the bad idea holds fast to his belief, the counter-arguments that emerge can arm debate spectators against error.

In all of the above cases, exposure to bad ideas strengthens our defenses against bad ideas. We come away equipped with truthsfacts, information, and counter-argumentsdrawn ultimately from experience, whether our own or that of others. These good counter-ideas are like antibodies that we develop through exposure to bad ideas. Bad ideas are not just pathogens, but antigens. We thus develop immunity, not only to those specific bad ideas, but to similar ones, because we learn to recognize the basic logical fallacies that they share.

The mind, like our immune system and our muscles, is antifragile to use the term coined by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. It grows stronger through exposure to adversity.

The flipside of that is also true. Just as sheltering from antigens can lead to immunodeficiency, sheltering from bad ideas ultimately makes us more susceptible to them.

When paternalistic censors seal us up in a sterile bubble of ideas for our own protection, they deprive us of the chance to develop through experience our own ability to identify and grapple with bad ideas. As soon as a bad idea penetrates our bubble, we have no defences against it. Our lack of experience with the responsibilities of intellectual independence has left us naive, credulous, and gullible.

The more that self-appointed gatekeepers like YouTube and its allied health authorities protect us from ideas they disapprove of, the more susceptible we will be to falsehood and error (including falsehoods foisted on us by our protectors themselves). This vulnerability will in turn be used to justify still more such protection. Such is the vicious cycle of sheltering.

Ironically, many secular leftists who support public-health influence sheltering probably fully understand the dangers of that practice in another instance.

The classic critique of a sheltered upbringing is that it deprives the child of experience grappling with potentially bad influences and so ultimately leaves her more vulnerable to them. The stereotypical example of this is a child raised in an exclusively religious and traditional environment, without exposure to non-traditionalist peers, popular movies and music, and tempting situations. Once this naif inevitably leaves home, perhaps to go off to college or the big city, she has no defenses against the wave of bad influences that she must then face all at once with little support, and so the wave engulfs her.

The same principle applies generally: sheltering backfires, whether the bad influences are cultural or medical.

This is one reason why open discourse is so important and censorship is so debilitating and disrespectful. We need to be allowed the responsibility and practice of identifying and guarding against falsehood to be any good at it.

Now, all of the above takes for granted, for the sake of argument, that the purported bad ideas are in fact bad, and that the censors are in possession of good ideas. However, that is often not the case. Heresies often turn out to be right, and orthodoxies often turn out to be wrong: and this includes scientific paradigms that wound up in the ash heap of history. Our protectors may be sheltering us from the truth and forcing falsehood upon us. Wrong orthodoxies are far more dangerous than wrong heresies, simply as a matter of the scale of the errors impact.

That is yet another reason why open discourse is so vital. For the sake of human welfare, orthodox falsehoods need to be overthrown, and heretical truths need to spread.

The remarks of the Bakersfield doctors are probably a mix of good ideas and bad, truths and falsehoods. Taking down the video does us a disservice regarding both sides of the coin.

To the extent that they are wrong, their errors should be aired out and refuted. Any mistake the doctors made will probably be made again, since the human mind tends to fall prey to the same basic fallacies. By developing and disseminating counter-arguments (mental antibodies) to them, we develop our immunity to these and similar errors.

By taking down the videos, YouTube has limited the extent to which that social learning can happen and insulated the error from debunking. If anything, YouTubes censorship has lent additional credence to whatever mistakes they made by feeding into the narrative that the powers-that-be fear its truth. The debunking is being drowned out by outrage over the censorship. And the Streisand Effect (how censorship can boost somethings publicity) is causing it to spread even more.

Moreover, even if the physicians are wrong in some ways (like in their statistical claims), they may be right in other important ways.

Whether or not sheltering bodies is a wise policy for the spread of COVID-19, sheltering minds is surely a bad policy for the spread of ideas.

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YouTube's Censorship of Dissenting Doctors Will Backfire - Foundation for Economic Education

I never thought I'd see the day that journalism professors would petition for censorship or that a liberal magazine would advocate we become more like China.

But I guess 2016 really broke their brains.

Writing in the Atlantic on Saturday, two law professors declared that online speech can "never go back to normal" after the COVID-19 pandemic. Instead, the United States must follow China's lead and police the internet with an iron fist, they said.

Significant monitoring and speech control are inevitable components of a mature and flourishing internet, and governments must play a large role in these practices to ensure that the internet is compatible with a societys norms and values, argued Harvards Jack Goldsmith and University of Arizonas Andrew Keane Woods.

Meanwhile, journalism professors blasted out a petition urging TV networks to police President Trumps COVID-19 press conferences. (I was asked Sunday to sign it but declined.)

The petition stated: We ask that all cable channels, broadcast stations, and networks (with the exception of C-SPAN) stop airing these briefings live. Instead, they should first review the briefings and, after editing, present only that information that provides updates from health officials about the progress and ongoing mitigation of the disease. Many journalists agreed.

In other words, the chattering class must control discourse because people are too stupid to think for themselves.

Goldsmith and Woods explain in the Atlantic: Ten years ago, speech on the American Internet was a free-for-all various forms of weaponized speech and misinformation had not yet emerged," but a wake-up call was Russias interference in the 2016 election. Though "not particularly sophisticated," it exposed the "legal limitations grounded in the First Amendment."

Mind you, Goldsmith is the same "expert" who was a legal adviser to President George W. Bush and the Department of Defense during the disastrous Iraq War, which was premised on Iraq having weapons of mass destruction. The damage done by that disinformation at a time when the internet had already displaced the traditional media as a news source incomparably outweighed the pittance Russia spent on farcical Facebook ads during the 2016 presidential campaign. Even famed election forecaster Nate Silver and Trump critic the Nation agree Russia was a nonfactor.

Yet, Goldsmith somehow believes this nothingburger warrants Americans abdicating their two-centuries-old free speech rights to the government. Moreover, he believes the U.S. should model its cyber crackdown after China, which detained doctors and censored social media users who dared warn the public about COVID-19. "In the great debate of the past two decades about freedom versus control of the network, China was largely right and the United States was largely wrong," he and Woods wrote.

By contrast, the authors of the petition to censor Trumps press conferences said they believe that our government cant be trusted as a steward of information. While they may be right, their solution to misinformation is as questionable as the Atlantic's.

The petition demands Trumps briefings be blacked out: Because Donald Trump uses them as a platform for misinformation and disinformation about COVID-19, they have become a serious public health hazard a matter of life and death for viewers who cannot easily identify his falsehoods, lies and exaggerations.

News flash: The public knows Trump lies. But they dont need to be told that by the media, which ranks 16 points lower than the president in handling the crisis. Many of the same journalists who would filter Trumps words have exacerbated the infodemic by spreading their share of misinformation about COVID-19. A CNN anchor was caught staging fake news about his quarantine. On multiple occasions, journalists have misrepresented Trump's statements related to the virus. No, he didn't call it a hoax or prescribe fish tank cleaner.

That's why TV networks should show exactly what the president says, unedited, and let the public evaluate for themselves. In fact, networks have a duty to do so. For nearly a century, radio and TV have been governed by a public interest standard. In exchange for the privilege of an FCC license to broadcast, stations have an obligation to cultivate a more informed citizenry through democratic dialogue and diversity of expression.

While this public interest standard is ill-defined, airing a presidents press conferences during an unprecedented crisis would seem to fit the bill. If Trump is lying, as many journalists and journalism professors contend, thats all the more reason to air his press conferences and expose his lies so voters can be aware, especially as an election looms.

Sunlight may not help fight COVID-19, as Trump claims. But, as Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis famously remarked, it is the best of disinfectants when it comes to public policy. At a time when many don't trust the government or the press, it's imperative to demand transparency from both.

Mark Grabowski is a contributor to the Washington Examiner's Beltway Confidential blog. He teaches communications law at Adelphi University in Garden City, N.Y.

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Journalists have learned nothing and call for Chinese-style censorship - Washington Examiner

May 01, 2020 Skye Arundhati Thomas on censorship and resistance in locked-down India

NEWSPAPER CLIPPINGS, identity papers, and crumpled, bloodstained notes lie next to pair of folded trousers. The photograph was taken by Kashmiri photographer Masrat Zahra, the items carefully arranged on a lavender cloth, embroidered with red and blue flowers, by Arifa Jan, the widow of Abdul Qadir Sheikh. Sheikh was shot by the Indian Army in 2000; we are looking at what was in his pockets on the day he died. Sheikhs death was the result of an encounter killingconfrontations staged between suspected militants and state forces that most often result in unarmed civilian deaths. There is little accountability after such killings, and many of the murders go unrecorded. Zahra visits the homes of those that have were gunned down and collects their stories. Her quietly moving photographs of objects animate the ways in which they are remembered. There were eighteen bullet holes and I still remember how deep they were, the widow Jan told Zahra, who posted the image on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram on April 18. She tagged it #KashmirBleeds.

Shortly after the photograph went online, the cybercrime police station of the Kashmir Zone booked Zahra under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), for uploading anti-national posts with criminal intention to induce the youth and to promote offenses against public tranquility. Zahra could be incarcerated for up to seven years and arrested at a moments notice. Despite being in the middle of a nationwide lockdown to curb the spread of Covid-19during which people are being beaten and fined for violating curfew restrictionsZahra was forced to appear at a police station in Srinagar on April 21.

In the document detailing the allegations, Zahra is referred to as a Facebook Usernot a journalist or artist. Her photographs and captions have been classified as having criminal intention. Special attention must be paid to the language here: The UAPA is an intentionally ambiguous piece of legislature that allows the state to label an individual as a terrorist simply if it believes so. On April 22, New Delhi police booked university students Meeran Haider and Safoora Zargar under the UAPA. Both students are from Jamia Millia Islamia Universityone of the central sites of the recent demonstrations against the Islamophobic and discriminatory Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and National Register of Citizens (NRC). Haider and Zargar were charged with conspiracy and inciting violence during the protests and are currently being held in judicial custody. Zargar, who is pregnant, spent the first day of Ramadan in a high-security prison in New Delhi.

Indias 2020 began with the revolutionary energy of the anti-CAA and anti-NRC protests, but also the police brutality that came with it, including a four-day-long pogrom in the working-class Muslim neighborhoods of New Delhi which happened to coincide with Donald Trumps state visit (dubbed Namaste Trump). Muslims were lynched by Hindutva mobs and their homes burned down. Many were relocated to refugee camps, some set up in graveyards. One of the strongholds of dissent was Shaheen Bagh, where a monthslong, women-led sit-in had become a generative site for community, public art, music, and book-sharing. On March 24, Modi declared that India was on lockdown. One of the first moves the police made was to bulldoze through the protest site, pull down posters and whitewash the murals and slogans that emblazoned its walls.

Across India, the pandemic and lockdown have provided an occasion for the free play of authoritarian impulses, writes Siddharth Varadarajan, a journalist, editor, and cofounder of the online newspaper The Wire. On April 11, a group of policemen delivered court summons to Varadarajan, the case against him relating to The Wires coverage of a large Hindu religious gathering in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, which was allowed to occur despite the lockdown. The charges claim that Varadarajan was promoting enmity, hatred or ill-will between classes simply for printing the news. The Wire is one of Indias only newspapers that neither censors its opinions nor panders to the Hindu-centric, jingoistic demands of the central government. The lockdown is giving the central government leverage that could not have arrived at a worse time: Protest is impossible, millions are starving or stranded because of the lockdown, and all political opposition has neared a complete standstill as state-level governments focus on combating the virus.

We are being organized and disciplined along the borders of identity: primarily of class and caste (there is no doubt that it is the poor and the already marginalized that are bearing the brunt of this crisis), but also the borders of culture, and whether it aligns with the intentions of the ruling government. The recent slew of arrests began with that of educator and activist Anand Teltumbde, who is, incidentally, married to the granddaughter of Dalit leader and scholar Dr. B. R Ambedkar. After months of scrutiny and psychological harassmentincluding the ransacking of his faculty houseTeltumbde was taken into judicial custody on April 14, on the one hundred and twenty-ninth anniversary of Dr. Ambedkars birth. Suspecting an imminent arrest, he published a letter with The Wire a day prior. In it, he details his case and unfair treatment, and signs off with this: [I] do not know when I shall be able to talk to you again. However, I earnestly hope that you will speak out before your turn comes.

Skye Arundhati Thomas is a writer based in Mumbai. She is a contributing editor at The White Review.

Link:
Skye Arundhati Thomas on censorship and resistance in locked-down India - Artforum

Every May 3, we are reminded of the importance of press freedom for the enjoyment of human rights. Press freedom constitutes one of the cornerstones of a democratic society as it can ensure the governments transparency and accountability.

World Press Freedom Day is also a reminder to governments around the world on the need to fulfill their commitment to the principles of press freedom. Unfortunately, the battle for press freedom is still the reality of our daily life in Southeast Asia.

In the past three years, the region showed an increasing number of journalists killed, attacks on the media and growing concerns over disinformation. As journalists work to uncover abuse of power, shed light on corruption and question opinions, they often face the specific risk of intimidation and violence.

As Indonesias representative to the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission o...

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Insight: Press freedom more pressing than ever amid virus controls, censorship - Jakarta Post

All these developments have taken place under pressure from Washington and Brussels. In hearings over the past few years, Congress has criticized the companiesnot always in consistent waysfor allowing harmful speech. In 2018, Congress amended the previously untouchable Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act to subject the platforms to the same liability that nondigital outlets face for enabling illegal sex trafficking. Additional amendments to Section 230 are now in the offing, as are various other threats to regulate digital speech. In March 2019, Zuckerberg invited the government to regulate harmful content on his platform. In a speech seven months later defending Americas First Amendment values, he boasted about his team of thousands of people and [artificial-intelligence] systems that monitors for fake accounts. Even Zuckerbergs defiant ideal of free expression is an extensively policed space.

Against this background, the tech firms downgrading and outright censorship of speech related to COVID-19 are not large steps. Facebook is using computer algorithms more aggressively, mainly because concerns about the privacy of users prevent human censors from working on these issues from home during forced isolation. As it has done with Russian misinformation, Facebook will notify users when articles that they have liked are later deemed to have included health-related misinformation.

But the basic approach to identifying and redressing speech judged to be misinformation or to present an imminent risk of physical harm hasnt changed, according to Monika Bickert, Facebooks head of global policy management. As in other contexts, Facebook relies on fact-checking organizations and authorities (from the World Health Organization to the governments of U.S. states) to ascertain which content to downgrade or remove.

Read: How to misinform yourself about the coronavirus

What is different about speech regulation related to COVID-19 is the context: The problem is huge and the stakes are very high. But when the crisis is gone, there is no unregulated normal to return to. We liveand for several years, we have been livingin a world of serious and growing harms resulting from digital speech. Governments will not stop worrying about these harms. And private platforms will continue to expand their definition of offensive content, and will use algorithms to regulate it ever more closely. The general trend toward more speech control will not abate.

Over the past decade, network surveillance has grown in roughly the same proportion as speech control. Indeed, on many platforms, ubiquitous surveillance is a prerequisite to speech control.

The public has been told over and over that the hundreds of computers we interact with dailysmartphones, laptops, desktops, automobiles, cameras, audio recorders, payment mechanisms, and morecollect, emit, and analyze data about us that are, in turn, packaged and exploited in various ways to influence and control our lives. We have also learned a lotbut surely not the whole pictureabout the extent to which governments exploit this gargantuan pool of data.

Link:
Internet Speech Will Never Go Back to Normal - The Atlantic

Independent journalism in Cuba, for decades, has had to deal with a penal code that criminalizes them when they do not work for state media, among other regulations that restrict their freedom. Since the new coronavirus arrived on the island, independent journalism has had to face the increasingly common fines of Decree 370, which penalizes the opinions of Cubans posted on social networks and digital platforms.

According to Maykel Gonzlez, director of Tremenda Nota, since the pandemic began, the persecution of journalists and cyberbullying have worsened. "We are all more muzzled than ever," Gonzlez told the Knight Center.

In the midst of the [COVID-19] epidemic, the police are mostly citing journalists [with Decree 370]. This law is not the only one against journalism, [but] it is only the only one that can be applied without the need for criminal proceedings. Decree 370 is of a minor nature [legally]. But therein lies its danger. There is no way to defend yourself in court," he said.

Since the COVID-19 crisis began, at least seven activists and journalists have been fined because of Decree 370, which was little used until recently, Hugo Landa, director of the site Cubanet, told the Knight Center.

The decree, created in 2018, was approved in May 2019 without going through the National Assembly of the People's Power, according to Periodismo de Barrio.

Decree 370, Art. 68, subsection i indicates as one of the violations associated with information and communication technologies, the dissemination, through public data transmission networks, information contrary to the social interest, morality, good customs and the integrity of the people.

We knew that subsection i would serve to repress, silence, punish, etc. public expression in online spaces, Elaine Daz of the Cuban site Periodismo de Barrio told the Knight Center about Decree 370, Article 68. "Subsection i was the legalization of Internet censorship," she added. But above all, what is published on social networks is censored, according to a note published by Periodismo de Barrio in 2019.

The fine imposed by this decree on natural persons is three thousand Cuban pesos (about US $120), and if the payment is not made within the indicated period, the penalties for not paying the fine and the threat of going to jail are greater. Another of the sanctions of this decree for those who violate article 68, is the seizure by the Ministry of Communications of the equipment and means used to commit the crime.

The only way to avoid this fine, specifically, is by not having social media or not posting anything critical of the government. In Cuba there is no separation of powers, Cuban journalist Mnica Bar told the Knight Center. You have no legal recourse to defend your rights; First of all, you do not have civil and political rights," she said.

Bar was fined on April 17 after being summoned for questioning conducted by an agent of the Interior Ministry. According to the journalist, the interrogation was not about her publications on social networks, but rather about the sources of financing for the journalistic projects of the magazine El Estornudo and the site Periodismo de Barrio, the media outlets where she collaborates.

Given the fine, the two options she has left, according to Bar, is to file a claim or go to court and then jail. "I do not have credentials, I am not recognized, my work does not exist. In fact, at the time when I was fined, they asked me Where do you work? I said at the magazine El Estornudo, and they said well, she doesn't work. My work in Cuba is illegal," Bar said.

According to Daz, from Periodismo de Barrio, it is no coincidence that they are applying the decree with greater zeal during this crisis of the pandemic. That there are independent journalists who report and others who prefer to remain silent implies that we do not know exactly how many are being threatened; but we know that they are being threatened and that these are not isolated cases, she said.

Gonzlez from Tremenda Nota said that police officers demanded over the phone that "he should not denigrate the Cuban government" in his publications while the epidemic lasts. I told them that I have never done it, that this is not the purpose of my work. They threatened to use the 370. In the past few weeks they have summoned me twice. I was summoned today (April 24), but they said they will confirm it by phone and they did not, he said.

Journalist Camila Acosta of Cubanet was also fined, in late March, for publishing information about the new coronavirus in Cuba on her Facebook profile, according to Cubanet. In addition to the fine of three thousand pesos, Acosta's cell phone was confiscated. During the interrogation, she was given a warning after being accused of living in Havana illegally, according to what Acosta said during an interview published on the YouTube channel of Radio Mart. She is from the Isla de la Juventud, a Cuban island south of Havana. "The major Alejandro, the repressor, already warned me, they are going to mount common offenses to sanction me and condemn me to prison, she said in the interview.

Hugo Landa, director of Cubanet, based in Miami, told the Knight Center that the Cuban government has "dusted off" new decrees to "legalize" the repression. In addition to Decree 370, Landa mentioned Decree 349 that regulates the work of artists, Law 88, known as the "gag law," and the legal concept of "usurpation of functions." The latter, according to Landa, has been applied against journalists who do not have a university degree and who are not members of the official Union of Journalists of Cuba.

"Cuba should urgently review Decree 370 which, as CPJ warned when it was enacted, has become an additional device in the regime's ever-expanding toolkit to target critical voices and silence the press, said Natalie Southwick, Central and South America Program Coordinator for the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).

They are not just censoring individuals, they are censoring another narrative about the impact of a pandemic in the country. They are censoring the only ones who can challenge the official story. That is why so many, that is why now, Daz said. Let's stop seeing them as isolated cases because they are not. Together, they are the network of alternative voices that are telling what is happening with COVID-19 in Cuba.

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Cuban government imposes more limitations on independent journalism by censoring content on social networks during pandemic - Knight Center for...

In the context of World Press Freedom Day, Amnesty International, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) and Article 19 are sending an open letter to President Miguel Diaz-Canel urging him to take immediate measures to guarantee press freedom and protect independent journalists in Cuba.

The organizations also sent this letter in light of recent worrying reports regarding independent journalists in the country who have reportedly been fined or intimidated by state security agents because of their work.

In the COVID-19 era its even more vital to guarantee freedom of the press and access to truthful and timely information. Its shameful how the censorship of independent journalists in Cuba, which we have documented for decades, seems to be worsening in recent weeks, with complaints from independent journalists fined for reporting on the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on the country. No journalist should have to decide between silence or jail. We demand that the Daz-Canel administration take immediate action to guarantee freedom of the press, said Erika Guevara-Rosas, Americas director at Amnesty International.

In the open letter, the organizations demand that the Cuban authorities immediately and unconditionally release Roberto Quiones Haces, a 63-year-old Cuban prisoner of conscience who has been held since September 2019 for practicing independent journalism and who is now at risk from COVID-19.

Its shameful how the censorship of independent journalists in Cuba, which we have documented for decades, seems to be worsening in recent weeks, with complaints from independent journalists fined for reporting on the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on the country

The threat of imprisonment and the imposition of fines have functioned as dissuasive and inhibiting tools for the body of independent journalists on the island. In this sense, the imprisonment of journalist Roberto Quiones since September 2019 has become a clear warning to all critical journalists and media workers, even though there have been widespread calls for his release. Without doubt, these demands are more valid than ever today, as there is real risk of contagion with coronavirus, particularly for the elderly and even more so for those held in jails like the Guantnamo Provincial Prison, where, according to the journalists own testimony, the conditions are inhumane, said Ana Cristina Ruelas, regional director of the Article 19 office for Mexico and Central America.

Cuban authorities must release imprisoned journalist Roberto de Jess Quiones Haces and ensure that journalists on the island do not face harassment, threats, intimidation, or jail time simply for reporting facts. As long as they remain behind bars, Roberto Quiones and other imprisoned journalists face an elevated risk of contracting COVID-19, as they cannot isolate, maintain social distance or follow other health guidelines. Journalism must not carry a death sentence, now or ever, saidCPJ Central and South America Program Coordinator Natalie Southwick.

The imprisonment of journalist Roberto Quiones since September 2019 has become a clear warning to all critical journalists and media workers, even though there have been widespread calls for his release

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and its Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression recently reiterated their concern about the state of freedom of expression in the Americas during the COVID-19 pandemic. Cuba remains the only country in the Americas to which Amnesty International and other human rights monitoring mechanisms do not have access.

For more information or to arrange an interview, contact Duncan Tucker: duncan.tucker@amnesty.org

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Cuba must guarantee press freedom in the COVID-19 era - Amnesty International