As
an Englishman, I find particular inspiration in the example of
Free-Born John, and those of all our other free-born Johns: John Milton,
John Wilkes, John Stuart Mill (and George Orwell, a free-born John in
all but name). More broadly, there is no reason to understate, let alone
to deny, a specifically Western tradition of courage in the advancement
of free speech, one that can be traced from ancient Athens, through
England, France and a host of other European countries, to the US,
Canada and all the liberal democracies of today’s wider West. But it
would be quite wrong to suggest that this habit of the heart is confined
to the West. In fact, there have been rather few examples of such
sturdy defiance in England in recent times, while we find them in other
countries and cultures.
Consider, for instance, the Chinese
dissident Liu Xiaobo. Liu was sentenced to 11 years’ imprisonment in
2009 for ‘subverting state power’. Both his written response to the
charges against him and his final speech in court are, like many of his
earlier writings, lucid and courageous affirmations of the central
importance of free speech. He definitely does not draw only on Western
traditions. For example, in his book
No Enemies, No Hatred
(2012), he quotes a traditional Chinese 24-character injunction: ‘Say
all you know, in every detail; a speaker is blameless, because listeners
can think; if the words are true, make your corrections; if they are
not, just take note.’
After paying a moving tribute to his wife
(‘Armed with your love, dear one, I can face the sentence that I’m about
to receive with peace in my heart’), Liu looks forward to the day ‘when
our country will be a land of free expression: a country where the
words of each citizen will get equal respect, a country where different
values, ideas, beliefs and political views can compete with one another
even as they peacefully coexist’. The judge cut him short in court
before he had finished speaking, but free-born Xiaobo, like free-born
John, still got his message out. In his planned peroration, Liu wrote:
‘I hope that I will be the last victim in China’s long record of
treating words as crimes. Free expression is the base of human rights,
the root of human nature and the mother of truth. To kill free speech is
to insult human rights, to stifle human nature and to suppress truth.’
‘They will send me to prison,’ al-Johani says, ‘and I will be happy’
Liu
was by this time famous, and that great speech made him more so. He was
awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010. But perhaps the most inspiring
examples of all come from people who are not famous at all: so-called
ordinary people doing extraordinary things. People such as the Hamburg
shipyard worker who, at the launch of a naval training vessel in 1936,
refused to join all those around him in making the Hitler salute. The
photograph only achieved wide circulation on the internet more than 60
years later. There he stands amid a forest of outstretched arms, with
both his own firmly folded across his chest, a portrait of stubborn
worker’s pride. His name was August Landmesser. He had been a Nazi party
member but was later expelled from the party for marrying a Jewish
woman, and then imprisoned for ‘dishonouring the race’. After his
release, he was drafted to fight in the Second World War and never
returned.
Again, such moments are emphatically not confined to the
West. During the Arab Spring of 2011, a ‘day of rage’ was proclaimed by
dissidents in Saudi Arabia. Faced with a massive police presence at the
appointed location in the country’s capital Riyadh, almost nobody
showed up. But one man, a strongly built, black-haired teacher called
Khaled al-Johani, suddenly approached a group of foreign reporters. ‘We
need to speak freely,’ he cried, with an explosion of pent-up passion.
‘No one must curb our freedom of expression.’ A BBC Arabic service film
clip, which you can
watch
on YouTube, shows a tall secret policeman, in white robes, headdress
and dark glasses, looming in the background as he snoops on al-Johani’s
speech. A little further away, armed police mutter into their
walkie-talkies. ‘What will happen to you now?’ asks one of the
reporters, as they escort the teacher back to his car. ‘They will send
me to prison,’ al-Johani says, adding ironically: ‘and I will be happy.’
He was subsequently condemned to 18 months’ imprisonment.
In many places, we can find monuments to the Unknown Soldier, but we should also erect them to the Unknown Speaker.
This
is an edited extract from ‘Free Speech: Ten Principles for a Connected
World’ by Timothy Garton Ash © 2016, published by permission of Atlantic
Books.
