The Global Expression Report 2021 The state of freedom of expression around the world The Global Expression Report 2021: First published by ARTICLE 19, July 2021 The state of freedom of expression around the world www.article19.org ISBN: 978-1-910793-45-9 Text and analysis Copyright ARTICLE 19, July 2021 (Creative Commons License 3.0) ARTICLE 19 works for a world where all people everywhere can freely express themselves and actively engage in public life without fear of discrimination. We do this by working on two interlocking freedoms, which set the foundation for all our work. The Freedom to Speak concerns everyone’s right to express and disseminate opinions, ideas and information through any means, as well as to disagree from, and question power-holders. The Freedom to Know concerns the right to demand and receive information by power-holders for transparency good governance and sustainable development. When either of these freedoms comes under threat, by the failure of power-holders to adequately protect them, ARTICLE 19 speaks with one voice, through courts of law, through global and regional organisations, and through civil society wherever we are present. About Creative Commons License 3.0: This work is provided under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-ShareAlike 3.0 license. You are free to copy, distribute and display this work and to make derivative works, provided you: 1) give credit to ARTICLE 19 2) do not use this work for commercial purposes 3) distribute any works derived from this publication under a license identical to this one. To access the full legal text of this license, please visit: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/legalcode Cover image: A police officer orders Reuters journalists off the plane without explanation while the plane is parked on the tarmac at Urumqi airport, Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, China, 5 May 2021. Photo credit: REUTERS/Thomas Peter 3 Contents Acknowledgements 6 Chapter 5: Europe and Central Asia 84 List of abbreviations 7 5.1 Regional overview 86 An introduction to the Global Expression Report 8 5.2 2021 Hindsight: Regional trends 89 Essay: In a pandemic, protecting people means protecting Expression 9 5.3 Country in focus: Belarus 94 Headlines and highlights 13 Chapter 6: Middle East and North Africa 96 The right to freedom of expression in a pandemic 16 6.1 Regional overview 98 Chapter 1: The Global View 18 6.2 2021 Hindsight: Regional trends 100 2021 Hindsight 19 6.3 Country in focus: Tunisia 102 Global scores 20 Regional scores 25 Annex 1: Methodology 106 Developing the GxR metric 107 Highs and lows, rises and falls 27 Key periods analysed 107 What has been driving the change? 29 Country and population data 107 1.1 Global trends 30 Overall GxR scores and country rankings 108 1.2 Democracy amid coronavirus 34 Significant declines/advances in expression 108 1.3 Misinformation, disinformation, and fake news 36 Indicators of GxR 108 1.4 Protest 39 Annual changes in indicators of GxR 108 Chapter 2: Africa 42 Examining how changes in the indicators of GxR relate to changes in overall GxR score 108 2.1 Regional overview 44 Exploring the relationship between GxR and violations of democratic standards over the 2.2 2021 Hindsight: Regional trends 47 course of the pandemic 109 2.3 Country in focus: Guinea 52 Annex 2: Complete set of GxR tables 110 Chapter 3: The Americas 54 3.1 Regional overview 56 3.2 2021 Hindsight: Regional trends 59 3.3 Country in focus: Brazil 64 3.4 Country in focus: Mexico 68 Chapter 4: Asia and the Pacific 72 4.1 Regional overview 74 4.2 2021 Hindsight: Regional trends 77 4.3 Country in focus: Thailand 80 4 The Global Expression Report 5 Acknowledgements List of abbreviations ARTICLE 19 wishes to thank everyone who has contributed to this year’s report, About the BLM Black Lives Matter HRDs Human rights defenders and all those behind the scenes who know how important the insights of such a report are. V-Dem Institute and data set CAR Central African Republic ICCPR International Covenant on At the time of a global pandemic, we remember that the report is the sum of Civil and Political Rights Founded by Professor many efforts, gathering as it does the work of many organisations and human Staffan I. Lindberg in 2014, rights activists all over the world. Without you, we would not have the Global CSO Civil society organisation the V-Dem Institute is an Expression Report. LGBTQI+ Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, independent research queer, and intersex institute that produces one Journalist Emily Hart and statistician Nicole Steward-Streng develop and deliver the DMA Digital Markets Act of the largest-ever social insights of this report, drawing together and making sense of a vast range of data, science data-collection experience, and contexts. Emily and Nicole have worked together to evolve the GxR NGO Non-governmental organisation efforts in the world, with a metric to its current form, with Emily undertaking extensive research, analysis, and DOS Denial of service database containing over writing, and Nicole generating the data set that underpins the metric – helping us to 28.4 million data points. dive into layers of analysis previously difficult to reach. PiS Prawo i Sprawiedliwość (Law The headquarters are DDOS Distributed denial of service and Justice Party, Poland) based at the Department of Our numbers are based on the peerless data set from V-Dem, and bringing all this to Political Science, University life is the extensive on-the-ground experience of our regional and thematic colleagues of Gothenburg, Sweden. all over the world. Thank you to everyone for all that you have contributed to this FOI Freedom of information SLAPPs Strategic lawsuits against year’s edition. public participation Our production team this year has been brilliantly led by communications expert GxR Global Expression Report metric Raahat Currim who assembled a terrific team and kept everyone focused on getting us to the finish line: thank you to Hannah Austin and Angela Yates for their detailed work on the text and to Sharon Leese for expert layout for creating the visual coherence in the design of the data. It is because of everyone involved that we can continue to keep our #EyesOnExpression. 6 The Global Expression Report Back to contents 7 Introduction Foreword An introduction to the In a pandemic, protecting people Global Expression Report means protecting Expression: so let us seize this moment. The Global Expression Report is a global, data-informed, the big movers at a geographic level. It also presents annual look at freedom of expression worldwide. With analytical overviews of the trends and events of 2020, Quinn McKew, the benefit of data and hindsight, we take a look at 2020 with essays on democracy, disinformation, and protest Executive Director, ARTICLE 19 – how this fundamental right fared, what the key trends in the context of the coronavirus pandemic. were, and how global events affected its exercise. From Chapter 2 to Chapter 6, we zoom in on the five The Global Expression Report’s metric (the GxR Metric) different regional contexts for expression, and in The pandemic has brought the world to a tipping point where tracks freedom of expression across the world. In 161 particular look at where progress and downward countries, 25 indicators were used to create an overall trends are visible. governments and private actors face a stark choice. They must freedom of expression score for every country, on a scale of 1 to 100 which places it in an expression category. Hyperlinks to sources are provided in the text rather either commit to building a world based on rights to expression and than as footnotes. information or they must become bystanders to the rapid decline GxR rating GxR score Category A detailed methodology for the metric is provided in in the freedoms which sustain robust and engaged societies. Annex 1. This section explains how the metric has In Crisis 0–19 1 been constructed and the data sets analysed. Annex 2 lists the GxR data for each of the 161 countries. Around the globe, everyone is speculating on what the essential life-saving information. Highly Restricted 20–39 2 long-term impact of the COVID-19 pandemic will be. Yet these arguments have prevailed because our Restricted 40–59 3 rights were under attack long before the arrival of the As governments all over the world pandemic: the state of global democracy has been Less Restricted 60–79 4 deteriorating for at least a decade. continue to grapple with the We know that expression is the sharp end of the spear Open 80–100 5 challenges of lifting restrictions, Freedom of expression is when it comes to attacks on our rights, and certain and re-opening the global states and other actors have used the pandemic as a the fundamental human near carte blanche to accelerate those attacks and The GxR reflects not only the rights of journalists and economy, we are all asked to take even induce former ‘champions’ of expression to adopt civil society but also how much space there is for each right that enables us all a much closer look at where the retrograde policies. Populist leaders and those who seek of us – as individuals and members of organisations – to entrench their own power hate accountability: that to express and communicate; how free each and every to demand the highest boundaries between benefit and is why we have seen attacks on journalists and online person is to post online, to march, to research, and to convenience lie.