Free speech is being threatened by a “dangerous climate of harassment and censorship,” a senior Government adviser has warned (Guardian, Mail, Telegraph, Unherd).
Dame Sara Khan identified the rise of “freedom-restricting harassment” in a report highlighting threats to the UK’s social cohesion, saying that not just politicians but also individuals were being subjected to rape and death threats, abuse and hatred to silence them and prevent them from expressing their views.
The Khan Review defines freedom-restricting harassment as “when people experience or witness threatening, intimidatory or abusive harassment online and/or offline which is intended to make people or institutions censor or self-censor out of fear. This may or may not be part of a persistent pattern of behaviour”.
According to the report, freedom-restricting harassment involves, but is not limited to, “acts of doxing, inciting hatred and violence against individuals and their families, sending death and rape threats, and other forms of threatening behaviour”. This form of harassment and resultant censorship is creating a ‘chilling impact’ on freedom of expression and other democratic freedoms, the report says.
Dame Sara’s findings come amid growing concerns for politicians’ safety amid rising abuse over the Israel-Hamas conflict, with MPs being given bodyguards for protection.
She also cited cases such as a civil society chief working against hate crime facing death threats, an imam given 18 months of police protection from Islamist extremists for his beliefs and a teacher in Batley, West Yorkshire, forced into hiding after being accused of blasphemy for using a cartoon of the prophet Muhammed in an RE lesson. New laws to create buffer zones outside schools are among 15 recommendations she has made to the government.
Dame Sara, who was appointed as an adviser to Michael Gove, the Communities Secretary, said conflicts between different rights and freedoms had also presented problems, such as the debate of biological sex versus gender identity and trans rights, protests by religious parents against schools which taught LGBT equality, and clashes over freedom of expression and intolerance.
She added that there is “a growing and dangerous climate of harassment and censorship which is undermining not only people’s ability to live their lives and speak freely, but also censoring institutions and wider society”.
The Khan Review follows Mr Gove’s announcement of a new definition of extremism as part of a crackdown to prevent Islamist and far-Right groups from benefiting from Government or state funds and support.
In a first-of-its-kind poll commissioned by Dame Sara, more than three-quarters (76 per cent) of 1,279 respondents said they had refrained from expressing their views in public amid fear of being subjected to freedom-restricting harassment.
“Life-altering harassment” had also been experienced by more than a quarter, of whom one in six (17 per cent) said they had taken additional security measures. One in eight (13 per cent) had been forced to move house.
