March of the censors: France, Turkey and China clamp down on freedom of speech

(From GlobalVoices)

Two weeks ago, the French blog AgoraVox, one of the leading European citizen media blogs, warned against what it termed the gradual “berlusconisation” of the French media and the threat posed by the rise of Nicolas Sarkozy, French Minister of the Interior and conservative party head, to freedom of speech in the country.

Yesterday, France’s Constitutional Council passed the Sarkozy law [Fr] ( Loi sur la prévention de la délinquance - Law on the prevention of criminality), which criminalizes the filming or broadcasting of acts of violence by people other than professional journalists. During the parliamentary debate, government representatives said the law is meant to target a practice known as “happy slapping”, defined in Wikipedia as “a fad in which an unsuspecting victim is attacked while an accomplice records the assault (commonly with a camera phone or a smartphone).”

In France, therefore, the filming and broadcasting of acts of violence such as the riots which took place in the Paris suburbs during the month of October and November, 2005, will henceforth be the prerogative of accredited journalists only. Under this new law, any other eyewitness who records acts of violence, or anyone who makes the content available online (the operator of a web site, for instance) could face up to five years’ imprisonment and a fine of nearly US$100,000.

In an ironic twist, the law was announced on March 3, 2007, exactly 16 years after amateur videographer George Holliday filmed African-American Rodney King being beaten by Los Angeles police officers (see the video on YouTube). The officers’ eventual acquittal in 1992 sparked off riots in the city.

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