Censorship and Freedom of Expression

A recent arrest of a U.S. journalist in Myanmar shows the junta is digging in.

Restrictions related to the COVID-19 pandemic have increased threats to press freedom in the region, raising questions over how to respond.   

Nigerian public opinion is intensely homophobic. In 2014, the Nigerian National Assembly passed—and then President Goodluck Jonathan signed—a law against homosexual activity as draconian as that of Uganda, which is better known. In a time of intense polarization along religious and ethnic lines in Nigeria, the legislation had near universal support. In Europe and North America, homosexual activity has long been decriminalized and same-sex marriage is legal in most places. Born in 1963 into a Yoruba family, T.B. Joshua is a Pentecostal preacher with a huge following. He is pastor of the megachurch Synagogue Church of All Nations, with tens of thousands attending his weekly services in Lagos. He and his church are well-known for their extensive philanthropies; his personal net worth is estimated to be $10 million. His church is fiercely homophobic. He regularly performs "exorcisms" to rid persons of evil spirits and demons that were the cause of their homosexuality. Some of these exorcisms appeared to be violent. The United Kingdom-based website openDemocracy complained about the homophobic content on the pastor's YouTube channel. YouTube has now shut down the channel, which claimed over 1.8 million subscribers and 600 million viewers. YouTube says that it "prohibits content which alleges that someone is mentally ill, diseased, or inferior because of their membership in a protected group including sexual orientation." Joshua is appealing the decision and has called on his flock—which is found across Africa and Latin America, but includes congregations in the United States and elsewhere—to "pray for YouTube." T.B. Joshua's hostility to homosexuality is a reflection of a deep-seated consensus in Nigeria, at least for the time being. (Homophobic attitudes in Nigeria have been decreasing but are still widely held.) The Obama administration made LGBTQ+ issues an important part of its human rights agenda in international affairs. The Biden administration could do the same. If it does, the administration is unlikely to have much success in Nigeria or in a number of other African countries where same-sex relations remain outlawed.

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Already the most dangerous region in the world for journalists, press freedom in Latin America is under attack. A recent case in Argentina underscores the pressures journalists face in speaking truth to power. 

In Nigeria, causation of arrests and release are murky, and the rumor mill operates overtime. Some Nigerians are suggesting that Omoyele Sowore was released because the authorities are aware of the stronger human rights emphasis of the Biden administration and wanted to start off on the right foot with the new administration. Sowore is a well-known Nigerian human rights activist and strong critic of the Buhari administration and of Nigeria's political economy in general. He is the founder of Sahara Reporters, a well-regarded news agency based in New York. He is a U.S. permanent resident and his wife and children are U.S. citizens. In 2017, he ran for the Nigeria presidency as fierce critic of the status quo, though he received few votes. The Buhari administration and Nigeria's "movers and shakers" generally regard Sowore as a thorn in their side. He has been arrested for "treason" for calling for nonviolent "revolution." He was finally released on bail after human rights activists made his case a cause célèbre with the support of Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ), among others. On December 31, 2020, Sowore was re-arrested in Abuja along with four other activists following a small demonstration denouncing police and other violations of human rights. This time, he was charged with unlawful assembly, criminal conspiracy, and inciting a public disturbance. But, on January 12, the Chief Magistrates Court in Abuja ordered his release on bail, and the police complied. The court set Sowore's bail at N20 million ($52,459). The police and other Nigerian security services frequently ignore court orders, especially in high-profile political cases. Why, this time, did they allow Sowore to be released? Parts of the Buhari administration are well aware that the incoming Biden administration will be more concerned about human rights than its predecessor. Further, Sen. Menendez, a strong supporter of the Biden presidential candidacy, is the incoming chair of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee. It is likely that at least a part of the Buhari administration advocated for Sowore’s release to cultivate good relations with the Biden administration.

Nolan Quinn is a research associate for the Council on Foreign Relations’ Africa Program. On January 19, U.S. Secretary of State Michael Pompeo—on his last full day in the position—announced visa restrictions on “Tanzanian officials responsible for or complicit in undermining” the general elections held in late October last year. As of yet, none of the individuals sanctioned have been identified publicly. In announcing the measures, Secretary Pompeo asserted that “there are consequences for interfering in the democratic process,” while the U.S. embassy in Tanzania said it had “kept its promise” to hold accountable those officials who had interfered in the elections. Prior to Tanzania’s elections, Secretary Pompeo released a nonspecific statement urging African governments to hold “free, fair, inclusive elections.” The Tanzanian government, led by President John Magufuli and the increasingly authoritarian ruling party, Chama cha Mapinduzi (CCM), undoubtedly failed to heed Secretary Pompeo’s call. However, the same could be said of incumbents in the Ivory Coast, Guinea, and Uganda, none of which faced a response from the Trump administration beyond rhetoric. While the reasoning behind the decision to single out Tanzania—one that belies the Trump administration’s weak record of defending democracy in Africa—is not clear, what is apparent is that U.S.-Tanzania relations have sharply soured in the past decade. Until recently, the U.S.-Tanzania partnership was strong. In 2013, President Barack Obama became the third successive U.S. president to travel to Tanzania. In a joint press conference with Tanzania’s President Jakaya Kikwete, who was also the first African head of state to visit the Obama White House, President Obama commended Tanzanians—and their government—for “doing their part to advance the good governance and transparency upon which democracy and prosperity depend.” Obama, in touching on the “spirit of friendship” the two countries enjoyed, was not merely offering a one-sided, feel-good bromide: from 2006 to 2012, approval of U.S. leadership in Tanzania stood at an average of over 72 percent; in 2015, 78 percent of Tanzanians expressed confidence that President Obama would “do the right thing regarding world affairs.” Tanzania has also consistently been among the top two or three recipients of bilateral aid administered by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in sub-Saharan Africa. However, the 2015 annulment of an election in Zanzibar—one initially praised as the smoothest in the semiautonomous archipelago’s history—precipitated what has been a rapid deterioration in bilateral relations. Citing the Zanzibar election and limitations on freedom of expression, in March 2016 the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), a U.S. foreign assistance agency, suspended its partnership with Tanzania. Magufuli further irritated relations when, in June 2016, his government unilaterally cancelled a contract with Symbion Power, a U.S. company that had received more than $110 million in MCC procurement awards. Pressure to act against the Tanzanian government rose further amid a crackdown on human rights, which included the president’s pledge to set up a “surveillance squad” targeting the gay community. On January 31, 2020, the Trump administration announced sanctions against Paul Makonda, the regional commissioner of Dar es Salaam, for his role in targeting “marginalized people,” and on the same day, the White House added Tanzania to a list of countries—considered by some commentators the final iteration of President Trump’s much-maligned “Muslim ban”—for its apparent failures to share public-safety and terrorism-related information. Pompeo’s final imposition of sanctions for electoral malfeasance is likely to command support across the aisle. In the U.S. House of Representatives, a bipartisan group of lawmakers introduced a resolution noting discontent with the Tanzanian government’s conduct in business disputes and its role in suppressing dissent in the lead-up to the elections. Following the vote, Senator Bob Menendez (D-NJ) called violence by security forces “the culmination of five years of sustained attacks by the Magufuli administration against the country’s democratic institutions,” while U.S. Ambassador to Tanzania Donald J. Wright, a political appointee, noted that “detaining opposition leaders is not the act of a government confident in its victory.” Tanzanian opposition figures have welcomed Pompeo’s move. Zitto Kabwe, a Tanzanian opposition leader, had already expressed a desire for other countries to sanction Tanzania. Fatma Karume, a former president of the Tanganyika Law Society who was disbarred seemingly for her political activism, thanked the United States for “saying NO to IMPUNITY” and giving those “who believe in DEMOCRACY and HUMAN RIGHTS renewed vigour.” Magufuli’s main contender for the presidency in October’s elections, Tundu Lissu, called the move a “clear and unmistakable warning to dictators who stole elections.” The question for the Biden administration is not whether it will repeal sanctions against Tanzanian officials. Without wholesale changes in Tanzania’s political climate, it will not, though the broader travel ban is almost sure to be axed. More pressing is for President Biden and his coterie of advisers to decide whether to send similarly strong messages to other authoritarians in Africa, particularly in Uganda, where reported abuses have been on par or worse than those in Tanzania. While the United States’ democratic credentials have certainly been damaged following the assault on the U.S. Capitol, failing to punish blatant abuses of human rights would do nothing more than leave autocrats comfortable in their ill-gotten victories.

Nkasi Wodu is a lawyer, peacebuilding practitioner, and development expert based in Port Harcourt, Nigeria. On January 6, a large group of rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol building in an attempt to unconstitutionally obstruct the certification of Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory, following his triumph in the presidential election held on November 3. Fortunately for U.S. democracy, centuries-old institutions held firm in the face of this assault, as Vice President Mike Pence officially announced President-Elect Biden’s victory after Congress completed the counting of the votes. Unfortunately, the events on January 6 could prove detrimental for democracy in the developing world.  For many years, the United States has stood as the beacon of hope for democracy in the world, using its resources to promote democratic values and discourage autocracy from Africa to Latin America to the former Soviet Union. While there have, admittedly, been valid criticisms targeted at some of these efforts, what is apparent is that for decades the United States has helped create space for civil society actors to push for reforms, hold their governments accountable, and build the capacity of emerging activists. Specifically, the United States has stood as the prototype for which civil society actors in African countries push their governments to pursue. However, in a dark twist of fate, many African dictators and faux democrats are now bolstered by the recent happenings in the United States—dubbed an insurrection by President-Elect Biden, while others have called it a coup or domestic terrorism—as an excuse not to uphold democratic tenets which the United States has long defended. Sadly, for many African countries, the events at Capitol Hill may have done irreparable damage to their struggling democracies. Civil society actors have pointed to seamless, non-violent transitions of power in the United States as norms that African governments should aspire to meet. There are numerous examples in sub-Saharan Africa—including Nigeria, Liberia, Ivory Coast, Burundi, and Ethiopia—where mismanaged election processes have truncated transitions and led to violence, military coups, and even civil wars. Activists in African countries have pushed for electoral reform as an essential ingredient for democracy and an antidote to African leaders’ penchant for decades-long terms. The allegations of fraud from many of President Trump’s supporters have not only cast a shadow on the integrity of the process, but also made the work of civil society actors harder by emboldening African political leaders—whose first victim is usually the integrity of the electoral process—to continue organizing elections in which results bear no resemblance to the collective will of the majority. Human rights abuses committed by security forces are another area where African activists have challenged governments. Many African leaders are quick to use the various security agencies under their control to suppress dissent. The efforts of civil society organizations in mobilizing against this practice in the past two decades have been impressive. While the United States has many documented problems regarding police brutality, particularly against persons of color, many civil society actors in Africa have pushed for more accountability of security agencies in their countries using the United States as an imperfect example. Following the violent response to Black Live Matters protests by many U.S. police departments in the summer of 2020, some African countries—such as Nigeria, Cameroon, Mali, Kenya, Uganda, and Ivory Coast—have also seen increasing crackdowns on peaceful protesters. The same can be said of restrictions on civic space in many African countries. While it can be argued that some African governments have consistently pursued dissenting voices, the Trump administration’s inclination to label unflattering news as “fake” and offer “alternative facts” has allowed governments to clamp down on dissenting voices under the guise of limiting the spread of fake news. Nigeria’s minister of information, for example, has continued to push for legislation imposing harsh penalties for the sharing of fake news on social media. When U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer said that “January 6 will go down as one of the darkest days of recent American history,” he was not speaking only for Americans. African civil society actors’ painstaking efforts to build the foundations of representative democracy have inevitably been made more difficult as the guiding light from the “shining city on a hill” has become dimmer. So, while American institutions have seemingly survived the latest assault, its effects will certainly reverberate abroad in many African countries. As then-President Biden begins the difficult task of rebuilding the country after taking his oath of office on January 20, he should consider that restoring functional democracy in the United States is a prerequisite for his foreign policy agenda of revitalizing the American commitment to human rights and democracy around the world. As Biden himself said, the United States leads not by the example of its power, but the power of its example.

Nolan Quinn contributed to this post. Twitter and other social media platforms have suspended or restricted President Donald J. Trump's access, mostly because of his and his followers’ use of them to incite violence, though their stated, precise reasons vary from one to another. They are all private companies, and thus are subject to few restrictions [PDF] on what content they choose to moderate or remove. Mainstream American opinion is outraged over the assault on the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. on January 6 and many Americans are incensed by related efforts to suborn the Constitution in blocking the certification of President-Elect Joseph Biden’s electoral victory. Barring the president from social media platforms has not been seen as an infringement on his constitutional right to free speech. The legal argument runs that companies are free to enforce their own standards and policies regarding the content they host. Further, President Trump remains free to make his views known by the myriad other means of mass communication that exist in the United States such as the press, television, radio, and other social media sites. Polling data shows [PDF] that a majority of Americans do indeed favor increased regulation of social media. But reactions to the moves by Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, and others to limit Trump’s social media access have followed a familiar partisan split. An ongoing debate about how much governments should regulate social media and what the boundaries are (or should be) between free speech and incitement to hatred and violence has been made more pressing by the events of January 6. This same debate is underway in sub-Saharan Africa, where social media is of growing importance and other types of media are weak or even absent. In some states trending toward authoritarianism or worse—Uganda, Tanzania, and Ethiopia, for example—regimes seek to limit social media to enhance their power by muzzling the opposition. But in others, especially those riven by ethnic and religious conflict, there is legitimate concern that media, now including social media, are a means to incite violence.  Nigeria is a case in point. The country is besieged by an Islamist revolt in the northeast, conflict over land and water in the middle of the country that often acquires an ethnic and religious coloration, and a low-level insurrection in the oil patch. The government is weak and commands little popular support. Under these circumstances, Nigeria is ripe for social media incitement to violence. Weak African governments are often heavy-handed and resort to draconian punishments which are difficult to carry out in practice; their responses to incendiary social media posts have been no different. In Nigeria, the government has introduced legislation to regulate social media that includes the death penalty for certain types of violations. Human rights organizations, many of which are suspicious the administration of Muhammadu Buhari is moving towards authoritarianism, see the legislation as infringing on free speech and stifling the ability to criticize the government. In Nigeria, as elsewhere in Africa, while social media is strong, more conventional media is less so. Hence restrictions on access to social media would, indeed, impede the flow of news and information to a greater extent than in the United States. Though it remains to be seen, major social media platforms’ barring of Donald Trump is likely to be cited in the Nigerian debate by those that favor the proposed legislation. In commentary by outside friends of Nigeria, it will be important not to impose on Nigeria the circumstances of the United States, which are not necessarily parallel.

Nolan Quinn contributed to this post. Omoyele Sowore, human rights activist and former presidential candidate of the African Action Congress, was arrested New Year’s Eve following a peaceful protest in the capital, Abuja. According to Nigerian media, he has been denied bail and arraigned at the Magistrate Court in Abuja; he and other activists are now being held in Kuje prison. Initially he and a small group of fellow protestors were taken to Abattoir police station, formerly a facility of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS), the police unit whose brutality ignited the October anti-SARS protests in Lagos that led to the notorious police murder of protestors at the Lekki Toll Gate. (Abattoir is the formal name of the police station, which is situated in a defunct abattoir.) SARS has officially been disbanded, but critics fear that it has merely been reconstituted with a new name. Though he has been a thorn in the side of the Buhari administration, why did the police arrest Sowore in the aftermath of a small, peaceful protest? He is an internationally known human rights activist and founder of Sahara Reporters, a well-regarded news site based in New York. He is a permanent resident of the United States; his family lives in New Jersey. His 2019 detention of 144 days without charge attracted the protest of Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ). Sowore is a fierce critic of Nigeria's political economy in general and President Muhammadu Buhari in particular. He has called for a “revolution” and organized peaceful protests across the nation. Some critics see his use of “revolution” as evidence that he is trying to overthrow the government extralegally, though his protests have been peaceful. He is at present charged with “treason” and had been out on bail following his previous arrest; one of the conditions was that he could not leave Abuja. Just before New Year's he was calling for nationwide “crossover protests” against bad government, the Lekki massacre, and other human rights grievances. In Nigeria and elsewhere in Africa, opposition to a government may be construed as treason. Because the protests were to be nationwide, the authorities (or some of them) may have seen Sowore as violating the provision of his parole that restricts him to Abuja even though he had not left the city. For them, that could be a pretext for jailing him. From media accounts, the arrests were heavy-handed: multiple police vans appeared and Sowore is reported to have been beaten.  Many of those who benefit from Nigeria's political economy, not least the police, detest Sowore. Instigation for his arrest could have a variety of sources, not necessarily including the presidency. The episode, if not quickly resolved, could further damage Nigeria's international reputation—particularly among the diaspora living in the United States. The incoming Biden administration has signaled that it will be deeply concerned about human rights issues. The arrest of Sowore and the denial of bail is a poor representation of Nigeria to the incoming administration.

There are signs that as the Nigerian army and the police continue to fail to meet the security needs of the Nigerian people, they will turn toward repression. In November, Chief of Army Staff Tukur Buratai called on all troops to put themselves in a “war mode.” An internal army communication obtained by the media exhorted Nigerian soldiers to treat all individuals in the region where Boko Haram is active as suspected jihadis until they are “properly identified.” The door is opening to yet more human rights abuses by the security services. Fears that the Buhari government may revive shelved legislation that would seek greater control over social media—including the death penalty for spreading “fake news,” as defined by the government—are also surfacing. Meanwhile, the Coalition of Northern Groups (CNG), a civil society organization that focuses on the welfare of northern Nigerians, is calling on local communities to defend themselves against Boko Haram and “bandits” because the Buhari government is failing to protect them. Last week, before the resolution of the kidnapping of hundreds of schoolboys at Kankara, CNG’s national coordinator said “northern Nigeria has been abandoned at the mercy of various insurgents, bandits, kidnappers, armed robbers, rapists, and an assortment of hardened criminals,” with a “huge vacuum in the political will and capacity of government to challenge” such violent actors. Around the country, numerous state governors are organizing and supporting more-or-less informal militias, ostensibly in support of the army and the police. In the current climate, such groups are likely now acting independently more often than in conjunction with security forces. Some evidence suggests that security service abuses contribute to the alienation of the population from the government, helping drive jihadi recruitment. With the growth of militias, the Nigerian state is losing an attribute of sovereignty: a monopoly on the legal use of violence. The government is also failing to fulfill its obligation to provide security for its people.

President Trump has threatened to veto a major defense funding bill over a law that protects social media companies from liability for what their users post. Why is it controversial?  

Human rights advocates in Nigeria and abroad are concerned that the Buhari administration is adopting a policy of repression following the demonstrations against abuses by the police’s Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS). The October demonstrations ignited in Lagos and later spread to other cities. The centerpiece was the police killing of a dozen demonstrators at the Lekki Toll Gate on October 20. Initially, the Buhari administration promised to abolish SARS, as had some of its predecessors. Vice President Osinbajo said that the government accepted responsibility for police brutality and affirmed that dialogue was the way forward. Thus far, however, there has been no public accounting for the Lekki Toll Gate killings or, more broadly, for police human rights abuses. Nor is there a public dialogue. Whether SARS has been disbanded or merely rebranded is unclear. The demonstrations, the largest since 2012, have fizzled out; how and why is not clear and would require studying. A strong law-and-order response, or repression, has played a role. According to Nigerian media, the bank accounts of twenty activists have been frozen for 180 days, pending "an investigation." The passport of at least one human rights lawyer was seized. A few days later, it was returned without explanation. Support for the demonstrations could have been weaker than appeared at the time. The demonstrations were concentrated in the south, especially Lagos, and among youth who adopted the rhetoric and style of the Black Lives Matter protests in the United States. At least at first, the demonstrators appeared to be relatively privileged. (Poor people in Nigeria do not have bank accounts that can be frozen.) The Nigerian diaspora, especially in the United Kingdom and the United States, vocally supported the demonstrations. However, SARS is not as hated in other parts of the country as it is in Lagos and the south. Demonstrations in the predominantly Muslim north were not extensive. Over time, broader support for the demonstrators appears to have melted away. The demonstrations had no designated leaders and no equivalent of a politburo. Demonstrations started spontaneously and were coordinated by social media. This decentralization at first appeared to be a source of strength: the movement had no leaders that the authorities could pick off. However, over time, it could have inhibited the sustainability of the protests much beyond a relatively narrow demographic. The Buhari administration is already being accused of repression. Muhammadu Buhari was among the military offices that overthrew the civilian government of Shehu Shagari and he was military chief of state from 1983 to 1985, when he, in turn, was overthrown in another military coup. As military chief of state, he was known for his "war against indiscipline," which many Nigerians, especially in Lagos, found repressive. Even after he was elected civilian president a generation later in 2015, some Nigerians are suspicious that he remains authoritarian at heart.