Eleanor Roosevelt and the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948)—Article 19 states that "Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers."
Freedom of speech is a principle that supports the
freedom of an individual or a community to articulate their opinions and ideas without fear of retaliation,
censorship, or legal sanction. The
right to freedom of expression has been recognised as a
human right in the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights and
international human rights law by the
United Nations. Many countries have
constitutional law that protects free speech. Terms like free speech, freedom of speech, and freedom of expression are used interchangeably in political discourse. However, in a legal sense, the freedom of expression includes any activity of seeking, receiving, and imparting information or ideas, regardless of the medium used.
Article 19 of the UDHR states that "everyone shall have the right to hold opinions without interference" and "everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive, and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of his choice". The version of Article 19 in the
ICCPR later amends this by stating that the exercise of these rights carries "special duties and responsibilities" and may "therefore be subject to certain restrictions" when necessary "[f]or respect of the rights or reputation of others" or "[f]or the protection of
national security or of public order (order public), or of public health or
morals". (Full article...)
In
Taiwan, the
White Terror (
Chinese: 白色恐怖;
pinyin: báisè kǒngbù) was the suppression of political dissidents following the
February 28 Incident. The term "White Terror" in its broadest meaning refers to the entire period from 1947 to 1987. Around 140,000 Taiwanese were imprisoned during this period, of whom from about 3,000 to 4,000 were executed for their real or perceived opposition to the
Kuomintang (KMT, Chinese Nationalist Party) government led by
Chiang Kai-shek. Most of those prosecuted were labeled by the Kuomintang as "
bandit spies [
zh]", meaning spies for Chinese communists, and punished as such.
The KMT mostly imprisoned Taiwan's intellectual and social elite out of fear that they might resist KMT rule or sympathize with communism. For example, the
Formosan League for Reemancipation was a
Taiwanese independence group established in 1947 which the KMT believed to be under communist control, leading to its members being arrested in 1950. The
World United Formosans for Independence was persecuted for similar reasons. However, other prosecutions did not have such clear reasoning; in 1968
Bo Yang was imprisoned for his choice of words in translating a
Popeye comic strip. A large number of the White Terror's other victims were mainland Chinese, many of whom owed their evacuation to Taiwan to the KMT. Often, after having come unaccompanied to Taiwan, these refugees to Taiwan were considered more disposable than local Taiwanese. Many of the mainland Chinese who survived the White Terror in Taiwan, like
Bo Yang and
Li Ao, moved on to promote Taiwan's democratization and the reform of the Kuomintang. In 1969, future president
Lee Teng-hui was detained and interrogated for more than a week by the
Taiwan Garrison Command, which demanded to know about his "communist activities" and told him "killing you at this moment is as easy as crushing an ant to death."
The following are images from various freedom of speech-related articles on Wikipedia.
Image 1Eleanor Roosevelt and the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948)—Article 19 states that "Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers." (from Freedom of speech)
Image 16George Orwell statue at the headquarters of the
BBC. A defence of free speech in an open society, the wall behind the statue is inscribed with the words "If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear", words from
George Orwell's proposed preface to Animal Farm (1945). (from Freedom of speech)
Image 21Orthodox priest
Libor Halík with a group of followers. Halík has been chanting daily for over five years against abortion via megaphone in front of a maternity hospital in
Brno,
Moravia. (from Freedom of speech by country)
Larry Claxton Flynt, Jr. (born November 1, 1942) is an
Americanpublisher and the president of
Larry Flynt Publications (LFP). In 2003, Arena magazine listed him as the number one on the "50 Powerful People in Porn" list. LFP mainly produces sexually graphic videos and magazines, most notably Hustler. Flynt has fought several prominent legal battles involving the
First Amendment, and has unsuccessfully run for public office. He is paralyzed from the waist down due to injuries sustained in a
1978 assassination attempt. In 1988, Flynt won an important Supreme Court decision, Hustler Magazine v. Falwell, after being sued by Reverend
Jerry Falwell in 1983, over an offensive ad parody in Hustler that suggested that Falwell's first sexual encounter was with his mother in an out-house. Falwell sued Flynt, citing emotional distress caused by the ad. The decision clarified that public figures cannot recover damages for "intentional infliction of emotional distress" based on parodies.
...that Chen Chi-li, late head of
Taiwan's
United Bamboo Gang, claimed to have killed dissident journalist
Henry Liu out of patriotism, and refused the
$20,000 payout he was offered?
That there is a social problem presented by obscenity is attested by the expression of the legislatures of the forty-eight States, as well as the Congress. To recognize the existence of a problem, however, does not require that we sustain any and all measures adopted to meet that problem. The history of the application of laws designed to suppress the obscene demonstrates convincingly that the power of government can be invoked under them against great art or literature, scientific treatises, or works exciting social controversy. Mistakes of the past prove that there is a strong countervailing interest to be considered in the freedoms guaranteed by the First and Fourteenth Amendments.
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