Free Speech: Indispensable Freedom or Frivolous Desideratum?
Freedom of speech is a double-edged sword.
During his Newburg Address, George Washington once said:
“ …If freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent, we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.”
As one of the founding fathers of the United States, Washington’s acknowledgement of free speech as a fundamental liberty would go on to be enshrined in the First Amendment of the United States Constitution which would later be recognized internationally and regionally under Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Article 10 of the European Convention of Human Rights, respectively. The freedom to express individual thoughts is a liberty with its origins traceable to the early 6th century as part of Athenian democratic principles (Kurt et al., 2007).
Currently, free speech is a constitutional right, albeit with increasing limitations, still practiced by the citizenry of democratic nations across the world. However, there have been unfortunate circumstances in these democratic societies where free speech was suppressed to appease a certain group or to attain a political agenda while authoritarian governments continue to tighten what little freedom of speech is present within their borders. A thorough analysis of these events would undoubtedly help us determine the nature of free speech as a whole: whether it is a fundamental right or simply an inconsequential wish.
Free Speech In Malaysia
Our country Malaysia is a nominally democratic state that guarantees free speech under Article 10(1)(a) of its Constitution. Despite this, a lapse of such protection occurred during the crackdown undertaken by the Royal Malaysian Police in particular the Special Branch that would later be known as “Operasi Lalang” or “Weeding Operation” when translated (Matthews, P. 2014). Between 27 October till 20 November of 1987, approximately 106 to 119 people were arrested at the behest of the Prime Minister at the time Dr. Mahathir Mohammad (Ho Kay Tatt et al., 1987).
While official sources claim that the arrests aim to protect public order, commentators believe that it is in fact a political manoeuvre to intimidate political rivals in order to overcome political challenges (In Hon Hwang, 2003, p.152). In addition, following the first arrests, the Home Ministry withdrew the licences of the English language newspapers namely The Star and Sunday Star, the Chinese language daily paper Sin Chew Jit Poh, and the Malay language paper Watan (Eileen Ng, 2012). This had further hampered press freedom and the exercise of free speech by the media which was seen as Mahathir’s attempts to curtail fundamental liberties by tightening executive control (Liu, J. 2014).
In the aftermath of this event, newspapers began to self-censor and amend pre-existing legislation such as the Printing Presses and Publications Act 1984 which worsened the situation as news outlets have to renew their license annually and revocation of these licences could not be questioned by the courts. This will be reflected below when free speech in Taiwan is discussed. However, following another amendment in 2012, these limitations have since been removed and judicial review of any such revocations are reinstated (Kenyon A.T. et al., 2013).
Thus, it is clear that free speech is a fundamental liberty that must be protected in a democracy otherwise such crackdowns on free speech would be no different than those in authoritarian nations that either outright denies free speech or fails to protect it. It would be rather disheartening to see our nation slip further into authoritarianism, no? Thankfully, the separation of powers introduced by the British model of governance ensured that the executive branch could no longer enforce such draconian laws to suppress dissent any further.
Free Speech In Other Asian Countries
Since we have looked at how free speech was once suppressed in our nation during the late 80s, it is only fair to examine the state of free speech in other Asian countries as an overview of free speech in the region would allow us to have a greater and fuller grasp of the topic in debate: does free speech really matter? Is it as indispensable a right as it is perceived or is it just a myth that free speech is currently in crisis thus necessitating this debate in the first place? The myth of the free speech crisis and its implications will be discussed below.
To simplify the analysis of free speech throughout Asia, the comparison between the following two pairs of countries would show the degree of difference of how much regard the respective governments have towards the freedom of expression. According to Reporters Without Borders’ 2020 World Press Freedom Index, out of 180 countries included in the index the pair of countries that holds free speech in higher regard are Taiwan and South Korea at 43rd and 42nd place respectively while the other pair of countries whose government regularly censor opposing opinions are Singapore and Thailand at 158th and 140th place. This is likely due to the fact that the former pair utilises fully democratic systems of governance while the latter are nominally democratic as Thailand is a constitutional democratic monarchy while Singapore is officially a parliamentary representative democratic republic.
Despite its official type of government, Singapore is commonly compared to China as it practises a type of ‘soft authoritarianism’ in the way that the ruling party the People’s Action Party (PAP) have possessed an insurmountable advantage over any other political party which guaranteed political stability while sacrificing free speech and subsequently press freedom (Roy, D., 1994), hence the aforementioned low global ranking.
Meanwhile, Thailand has a turbulent track record since its transition into a constitutional monarchy in which the military has controlled the government in the form of a military junta which suppresses anti-monarchical speech (as the monarch is revered in the country) for several decades and had recently been roiled with pro-democracy protests calling for the monarchy to be overthrown in recent months (BBC, 2020).
Despite this, free speech is still possible in these countries with the use of social media. However, as the governments of these countries are increasingly prone to amend their penal codes to penalise anti-government expressions on multiple social media platforms activists seeking to expand free speech have no choice but to innovate and use less-traceable platforms such as Telegram. To sum up, it is evident that free speech is a fundamental human right that is increasingly at risk and needs to be protected.
Taiwan, the Beacon of Free Speech?
As mentioned above, Taiwan is one of the Asian nations that looks more favourably towards press freedom in the wider context of free speech. Notwithstanding that, similar to Malaysia during Operation Lalang, Taiwan too has taken harsh actions against news outlets that are unfriendly to the ruling party. Unfortunately, that is where the similarities between the two ends as Taiwan’s attempt at stifling dissent occurred much more recently, in fact only some 20 days ago as of the time of writing. The Straits Times reported that Taiwan’s National Communications Commission (NCC), the country’s mass communication regulator, had unanimously decided in the prior month to not renew the broadcast license of the cable news network Chung Tien Television (CTi), effectively forcing the network to go off air and shutting it down (Katherine Wei, 2020). This was believed to be have an immense impact on press freedom in Taiwan as the station’s closure was widely believed to be politically motivated as CTi’s pro-China content is vehemently against the rhetoric of the pro independence ruling party Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).
The reason I mentioned this news story is because Taiwan had been seen as the beacon of democracy and free speech in East Asia countering the state-sponsored censorships in neighbouring countries such as North Korea and China. If such a highly regarded democracy could curb press freedom at a whim then other authoritarian regimes in Asia namely China and Saudi Arabia might see this as hypocrisy and continue to deny their citizens, the right to free speech since the supposedly democratic states are also silencing dissent where they see fit.
Despite this, while Taiwan’s courts rejected CTi’s injunction in face of their closure, its democratic institutions might see to it in the future just as the Malaysian government did decades after Operation Lalang had concluded. This is however mostly impossible in nations leaning towards or outright authoritarian, without any major political reforms, that is. For example, the Saudi government has continuously silenced journalists and activists calling for reform or accountability by the nation’s leaders for the tragedy surrounding Jamal Khashoggi, a journalist who was murdered in 2018 by Saudi agents in their Turkish consulate located in the city of Istanbul, though fortunately the kingdom’s actions at hampering free speech has drawn international attention in which a U.N. Human Rights Council investigator called for the Saudi government to free women activists right before the ban on women driving was lifted (Reuters, 2020).
In China, the situation is similar if not even worse as it is evident from their respective rankings in the 2020 World Press Freedom Index: while China is ranked at 177th place, Saudi Arabia is ranked at 170th place. Thus, it is clear that certain countries in Asia are tethering on the brink of slipping into authoritarianism where free speech is indeed at stake therefore further protections are required to secure this indispensable liberty for everyone in this region.
The ‘Free Speech Crisis’
Meanwhile the Western hemisphere regarded globally as the staunch defender of the freedom of expression increasingly concerned with the ‘free speech crisis’. This so-called crisis is perfectly encapsulated in a decades-old quote from Winston Churchill:
“Everyone is in favour of free speech. Hardly a day passes without its being extolled, but some people’s idea of it is that they are free to say what they like, but if anyone else says anything back, that is an outrage”
This quote basically meant that the individuals claiming that free speech are in crisis (which is really just a myth) as they think that they should have the right to express their views, regardless of whether their speech represent a certain political or religious extreme and all legitimate responses or defences to these words are not allowed.
In Nesrine’s article, this myth is believed to normalise hate speech and shut out or silence any opposing opinions to these expressions and such actions will only further the divide by pouring fuel on the fires of already bitter debates surrounding the foreign policies of Western nations in the areas of immigration, terrorism and so on. This is due to the fact that views prior to the rise of this “crisis” constrained to political fringes have become increasingly mainstream as major social media sites and renown news outlets such as BBC and CNN invite controversial commentators to participate in debates where government policies are called into question. Nesrine concludes by saying that this myth of a “crisis” has increased intolerance of free speech rather than expanding the protection of free speech which would have been the intended effect.
Personally, I would say that while it is important to accept all views, irrespective of whether they are marginalised or extreme, suitable moderation and regulations are still required to mitigate the damage of such views against minorities who are already marginalised in the West due to the effects of rising Islamophobia inadvertently worsened by the proliferation of far-right views and successful elections of politicians that hold such views across Europe and the United States.
In the end, the bottom line is that free speech in the West is in fact much more open than any other period prior to the present day which is a crucial indicator that democratic values and institutions in the West are strong enough to withstand attempts to undermine them by those seeking to further their political agendas. This essentially means that pre-existing protections of such freedom should be preserved and those with the malicious intent of silencing certain views must be stopped before they could poison free speech beyond recognition by turning the freedom for all individuals to express themselves without the fear of state persecution into a right that can only be enjoyed by the privileged elites who would reject any unfavourable opinion that is at odds with their own beliefs.
The Dangers of Free Speech
While the notion that free speech is a right that must be preserved and granted to all is valid in the preceding arguments, we cannot simply dismiss that free speech could also be a double-edged sword in which some cases of the application of free speech are frivolous and pointless which would effectively render free speech a sorry excuse for those attempting to exert hate or spreading misinformation. Examples of such uses would be expressions that are either baseless or provocative in nature.
Let us start off with baseless and often harmful speech that are expressed under the guise of free speech. I am sure that the COVID-19 pandemic is old news now, but conspiracy theories surrounding it are instead still being circulated across major news sites and social networks till this day. Among them is the pair of conspiracy theory videos “Plandemic” starring Judy Mikovits, a formerly discredited researcher. The videos, like other conspiracies originating from the United States this year adopts a similar tone to that of QAnon, a far-right conspiracy theory group spreading misinformation and theories based around an elite cabal within the US government trying to exert power by taking advantage of the global crisis. These videos have since been discredited and swiftly removed from major sites such as Facebook, YouTube, and the likes, however this will not be the last piece of misinformation about the pandemic thus we must stay vigilant.
Moreover, following the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines by Pfizer, AstraZeneca and other companies, pre-existing fears of vaccines were exacerbated by the circulation of misinformation by conspiracy theorists and anti-vaxxers which the latter is defined as a person who opposes vaccination or laws that mandate vaccination. In response, news outlets call for transparency and candidness from public health authorities worldwide in order to alleviate public fear and concern towards the vaccines.
As a sub-conclusion, it is abundantly apparent that such groundless and borderline pernicious exercise of free speech will only serve to hamper the current form of free speech granted to most individuals around the world as governments will only seek to clamp down on free speech if it has an adverse effect towards public interests.
In addition to baseless expressions, provocative uses of free speech that will usually invite scorn and incite hatred against certain peoples or ethnicity also relegate the freedom of expression as a fig leaf to deliver hate speech or express xenophobic views whilst avoiding moral consequences as they could argue that they have the right to express their genuine thoughts. While this is somewhat similar to the myth of the free speech crisis mentioned above but the ‘crisis’ attempts to forbid any antagonistic responses but in this context, it is likely that they anticipated a strong response to the inciting words or materials that they expressed publicly.
However, when Samuel Paty, a French teacher, showed cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in class he was subsequently killed in retribution by an 18-year old French Muslim which represented yet another conflict (the previous one being the killing of 12 people when French magazine Charlie Hebdo published cartoons of the Prophet) between the exercise of freedom of speech by French citizens and the lack of respect towards the taboos and culture of Islamic world as it is offensive to all Muslims to show caricatures of the Prophet or their god, Allah. In an opinion piece from Al-Jazeera, the writer, Asma Barlas opines that the publishing of such images is not inherently just about exercising freedom of speech it is instead a sign of provocation and promoting racism towards Europe’s largest Muslim population as they make up 10% of France’s total population.
In my opinion, I would submit that while freedom of expression does mean that anyone can say anything it is not without its boundaries. Thus, free speech is simply unimportant in face of respect for the other’s religion and culture and this means that limitations must be placed on such provocative uses of free speech.
However, Barlas pointed out that this does not mean she condones violence from other Muslims, and I agree with her as retaliation for someone merely exercising free speech cannot be murder or any sort of violence instead a fine imposed by the authorities would have sufficed.
It is clear that provocative usage of this right will only divide our societies further. Thus, free speech must be limited when they only seek to direct hate towards another culture or race.
In conclusion, it is to a great extent that I believe that the freedom of expression is a fundamental human right that must be preserved and granted to all. However, I would caution against baseless or provocative ways of practicing this freedom and we should seek to maintain a balance between stemming the flow of hate speech or misinformation while protecting free speech at the same time.
[Written by: Christopher Min Jie Lim]
References
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