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HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH  Free Expression
Among the countries in which we conducted free expression work in 1996 were: Albania, Algeria, Bangladesh, Belarus, Cambodia, China, Egypt (including the case of a Cairo University professor who was declared an apostate on the basis of his academic writings and ordered to be separated from his Muslim wife), Hong Kong, Indonesia, Jordan, Russia (including the case of Aleksandr Nikitin, who was arrested on treason charges for passing on information about the environment), the Slovak Republic, Syria, the Sudan, Tunisia, Turkey (including the trial of the translator and the publisher of a Human Rights Watch report), Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. Human Rights Watch/Asia sent observers to the trial of Irene Fernandez, accused in Malaysia of “false reporting” for publishing a report on abuses against migrant workers. Human Rights Watch/Americas, together with the Center for Justice and International Law (CEJIL), was involved in 1996 in three complaints brought before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights for violations of the right to free expression protected under the American Convention on Human Rights. We also raised free expression questions involving the United States, most notably in our report on the state of Georgia, Modern Capital of Human Rights?: Abuses in the State of Georgia, where freedom of expression is undermined by local school boards and by state assembly resolutions that have condemned the state’s public broadcasting system and have opened up broad new possibilities to prosecute Internet users. We participated in a challenge to the state of Arizona’s new law requiring public employees to use only English in the course of performing their official duties, arguing that this violates international legal protections of language rights. 
CYBERSPACEIn 1996 Human Rights Watch expanded its work on freedom of expression in cyberspace. In February Human Rights Watch became a plaintiff, together with nineteen other organizations and individuals, in a suit brought in the U.S. by the American Civil Liberties Union challenging the Communications Decency Act (CDA), an amendment to a sweeping telecommunications bill signed by President Clinton in February 1996. Human Rights Watch objected to the CDA because it criminalizes on-line communication that is legal in other media, specifically communication that might be deemed “indecent” or “patently offensive” to minors. These vague terms go much further than the prohibition of pornography on the Internet, a prohibition legally in force before the act. Ironically, the act would criminalize speech that is protected by the United States Constitution’s first amendment when uttered aloud or printed in a newspaper. Human Rights Watch was also concerned that the effort to censor indecent communication could impede the work of our own and similar organizations, which transmit graphic accounts of human rights abuses that we believe are necessary to convey fully the suffering that these abuses cause. The CDA was ruled unconstitutional by a panel of judges in June; the government then appealed directly to the Supreme Court, which is scheduled to hear the case in March 1997. In the past year, there have been increasing attempts by governments around the world to censor electronic communication. In January 1996, for example, the State Council in China issued a draft set of rules to regulate use of the Internet; subscribers were ordered to provide a written guarantee that they would not use the Internet for purposes “harmful to the state.” In May 1996, responding to such attempts to restrict the use of the Internet, Human Rights Watch published Silencing the Net: The Threat to Freedom of Expression On-line. The report documents the wide range of methods currently being used to restrict the Internet, recommends principles for governments and international and regional bodies to follow when formulating public policy and laws affecting the Internet, and sets forth the international legal principles governing on-line expression. Human Rights Watch also participated with several coalitions of on-line rights groups to protest Internet censorship agreements by the G-7 countries and the ASEAN nations, and a specific instance of on-line censorship in Germany. We wrote a letter to the Singapore government protesting its restrictive Internet policies and another to the Indonesian government to protest an arrest related to on-line communication.
HELLMAN/HAMMETT GRANTSHuman Rights Watch administers the Hellman/Hammett grant program for writers who have been victims of political persecution and are in financial need. The program gives grants of as much as U.S.$10,000 to writers all over the world. Established in 1989, the grant program is funded by the estates of Lillian Hellman and Dashiell Hammett, American writers who were victimized for their political beliefs and associations during the U.S. anti-communist “witch hunts” of the early 1950s. With this experience in mind, Ms. Hellman left the legacy to provide support for writers who have been persecuted for expressing political views. In addition to providing much-needed financial assistance, the Hellman/Hammett grants focus attention on repression of free speech and censorship by publicizing the persecution that the grant recipients have endured. In some cases the publicity is a protection against further abuse. In other cases, the writers have requested anonymity because of the dangerous circumstances in which they and their families are living. In 1996, forty-four writers from twenty-three countries received Hellman/Hammett grants, including nine from China, seven from Nigeria, four from Vietnam, and three from Iran. For additional information regarding the Hellman/Hammett grants, please e-mail Marcia Allina at allinam@hrw.org. 
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