Every government has the positive duty to ensure that peaceful protests are the country’s prominent form of the citizens’ dissenting voice. Yet, ironically no government wishes to deal with demonstrations against its policies and rule. This begs the question, which is the government’s actual priority: to give the public strong enough avenues to voice their upsets or to hold their ground in administration?
The answer to the above question varies, from country to country. To allow protests to happen is to give permission to citizens to rebuke existing policies and schemes of which a supermajority of Parliament approved that these initiatives sanctioned towards the very citizens dissenting would have been plenty beneficial. This duality of conflict was exacerbated and thrown into the public spotlight due to the recent international political upheaval.
Overall, in all democratic states, the question is not about choosing the end of either two sides but striking the perfect balance between the two. It is a tug-of-war between citizens and their elected representatives.
You can flip through all the law and legal scripture, you won’t find the term ‘right to protest’ in bold, highlighted, underlined or even at all. That is because the right to protest is not expressly written in law in many countries but is a manifestation of the right to freedom of assembly, the right to freedom of association, and the right to freedom of speech. These three rights are (fortunately) written in law and are typically constitutionally entrenched in most democratic countries. It is the exercise of a citizen’s constitutional right to protest within the legal limits due to the cumulative effect of the three freedoms above; and that right is protected by the constitution, the most supreme national law.
Since the term ‘right to protest’ is not lawfully written in broad daylight, the legislature and the judiciary of various countries have used this opportunity to speculate what the legal defines of a protest should and could be. Specifically, the line between ‘protests’ and ‘riots’ becomes blurred due to the ambiguity in law. Most would think that riots are basically an upscale of protests, taking it to another extent through violence or disorder. The truth is that whilst it is certain that riots are criminally punishable under the relevant laws, an illegal protest does not have to be violent. That is because there is no absolute right to freedom of expression and assembly in the interest of the government.
Thus, deciding what is a legal protest and what is not becomes a balancing exercise between public consensus and the government’s interest in maintaining the status quo.
Where the Media Comes to Play
However, the power to controllably determine what protests and riots separately are does not rest on the sole powers of our elected authorities. Many public figures and academicians have urged the public to read on the social context and history behind public outlash as most often, protests are not isolated incidents.
Nonetheless, the general public’s opinions about protests and the social movements behind them are formed in large part by what they read or see in the media. This gives journalists a lot of power when it comes to driving the narrative of a demonstration, particularly in the field of digital media. In our era of modern information uptake, bits and pieces of news and reports are much more compressed and occurring at a higher frequency.
Therefore, the media has the responsibility to properly and as accurately as possible report the happenings and incidents based on the background factors, such as past protests and social factors.
Scholars James Hertog and Douglas McLeod identified how news coverage of protests contributes to the maintenance of the status quo, a phenomenon referred to as “the protest paradigm.” They held that media narratives tend to emphasize the drama, inconvenience and disruption of protests rather than the demands, grievances and agendas of protesters. These narratives trivialize protests and ultimately dent public support.
In short, we are underestimating the power and responsibility media journalism has on the outlook, perception, and public interpretation of what a protest/riot is.
USA: Where Peaceful Protests are Labelled as Riots
The term protest as used above is not formally defined in the U.S. Code; the federal Anti-Riot Act (1968) defines the term riot in part as “a public disturbance involving…an act or acts of violence by one or more persons part of an assemblage of three or more persons, which act or acts shall constitute a clear and present danger of, or shall result in, damage or injury to the property of any other person or to the person of any other individual…”. Each state may have its own definition of a riot. Many states and municipalities have their own laws against rioting and incitement to riot based on similar definitions, while others prohibit the criminal elements of rioting.
The right to engage in peaceful protest is said to be protected by the First Amendment of the US constitution. Yet, police officers have “hit, punched, shoved, and otherwise assaulted the demonstrators with their fists, feet, batons, and shields”. The officers’ conducts appear to be treating all demonstrations, peaceful or violent as riot cases.
In roughly 2,800 articles published between May 26 and June 2 — related to events that were spurred by the killing of George Floyd, ‘protest’ appeared most frequently, about seven times for every use of the word ‘riot’. But the use of ‘riot’ was widespread too, about 28 times more common than ‘uprising’ and 175 times more common than ‘rebellion’. In relation to anti-black racism movements, 43% of Texas papers framed the related protests as disruptive in behaviour and the involvement of use or threat of violence.
Compared to ‘riot’, a word like ‘uprising’ or ‘rebellion’ does more to suggest a struggle for justice, a warranted response to oppression, an attempt to demand change outside a system that has failed to yield it. By doing so, peaceful demonstrations are casually pushed into the legal defines of the criminal offence of rioting which subsequently warrants law and order. Law and order is the language used and framed to describe actions that police have taken in response to the Black Lives Matter protest — like firing rubber bullets into a crowd. The implicit logic is that rioting is always disorder, and so whatever is done in response to it must be the opposite.
This portrayal and simplification of the anti-racism movements in the US is magnified by digital journalism through the lens of institutionalised background influences: qualified immunity, zero-tolerance policies, heavy policing in black communities, and even lurking bias among journalists themselves. Therefore, the fault is not solely on the news reporting industry but one fault that can be justified on them is that they have certainly catalysed for the movement against the social movements. The shift in focus of the narrative causes a niche but substantial group of politically charged individuals and the ruling authority to be in ‘urban warfare’ against peaceful protests.
UK: Where BLM Protests were ‘Facilitated’
Rioting is a statutory offence in England and Wales. Enough said.
However, since the coming to force of the Human Rights Act 1998 (HRA)the British people can finally say that they have a right to peaceful protest. What the HRA does is that it incorporates the international European fundamental freedoms into national law (freedom of speech, peaceful assembly…). That is not to say that this right is absolute, like any other freedom it is limited by a multitude of laws.
This backing of the law has more force than one assumes. This vital law is important as it functions as a background factor in influencing and driving how numerous industries are operating around these human rights. And it’s not just this specific statute but many cases have come to court in dispute of the freedom of expression/assembly issue; the courts tend to decide in favor of upholding the freedoms instead of restricting them. It is now clearly written in wording that the UK public bodies must respect both the right to assemble and to express one’s views.
This can be seen through the word of mouth of police officers interviewed by media journalists in light of the Black Lives Matter movement. Chief constables today talk about their public duty to “facilitate” demonstrations, instead of opposing it. Here’s a line taken from a BBC news report on the English police handling the demonstrations:
And over the first weekend in June, it was pretty clear that the police didn’t want to break up peaceful Black Lives Matter demonstrations even though, on paper at least, they would breach coronavirus laws.
MALAY-(A)SIA: Where Protests Lose Legitimacy
In countries with relatively traditional and conventional democratic practices, protest movements sometimes have more trouble getting legitimacy from the crowd. In Malaysia, a multiracial and multiethnic South East Asian country, protecting racial and religious sensitivities is believed to be of utmost importance. the right to citizenship under Part III of the Constitution; the status of the Malay language. This led to the Malaysian Parliament passing laws that prohibit public discussion of sensitive matters, including the right to citizenship under Part III of the Constitution; the status of the Malay language; the special position and privileges of the Malays and the natives of Sabah and Sarawak due to the social contract and the prerogatives of sovereign state rulers (sultan).
Needless to say, this has engendered a climate of fear and apprehension among many otherwise decent Malaysians who might want to comment on such matters, but have been reduced to silence. But lately, a movement is stirring as political awareness spreads among a wider demographic as well as the rise of youth activism. An evidence showcasing this recent change in atmosphere is a recent solo protest by a university student calling for the resignation of his varsity’s vice-chancellor for racially charged remarks based on the sensitive social contract. Subsequently, he was charged under Section 504 of the Malaysian Penal Code for intentional insult with intent to provoke a breach of the peace and denied his graduate certificate.
Still, a successful movement moves without its leader. News stories often pay considerable attention to the appearance and behaviors of protesters in a way that draws attention to their deviance from social norms. Similarly, news stories about radical protest pay particular attention to violations of law in a way that points out how protesters oppose mainstream values. Concerning the above-mentioned student protest, the main headline of a leading English news article was…
“Activist doesn’t regret protest at UM convocation, says would do it again”.
The movement that student activist stirred up or whatever that started it ended on a quick whim.
However, something is stirring as Malaysia’s neighboring countries, Indonesia and Thailand have both reached their boiling points and are retaliating to their countries own unfair and dehumanizing policies enacted. For Thailand, the people were dissatisfied with the Thai monarchy and insisted three demands to the Government of Thailand: the dissolution of parliament, ending intimidation of the people, and the drafting of a new constitution. For Indonesia, student and workers opposed the new jobs law which greatly harmed labor rights.
CONCLUSION
The media should avoid focusing on the appearance of the protesters, downplaying clashes with the police in favor of covering clashes with policymakers. It means taking the time to interview protesters and articulating their viewpoints accurately, then going to their chosen target for a response. It means taking the protesters and the issues they raise seriously enough to avoid disparaging them through the techniques of delegitimization and demonization.
In this digital age, up and coming new methods of organizing social movements have been brought in huge waves. Technology has fueled a ‘leaderless protest’ in Hong Kong where they navigate through a world of online anonymity and encrypted apps in hosting orderly and timely demonstrations. Online anonymity is to avoid the drastic repercussion when caught by the Hong Kong government and is also a feature of Hong Kong’s particular movement in that it has no one specific leader of the movement.
Still, it can be said the same on the opposite side to the story: the digital world is just as much a challenge as it is facilitating for these movements. Social media segregates us to two groups: either we are entirely for it or passionately against it; there is no in-between or willingness to compromise. We should consider whether these aim of protests is to spark resolve among which target groups: the people who are likely to support the movement or the people who are not or both?
Then again, why can’t it be both? When I ask myself that question, I point my finger towards media journalism as one of the culprits behind this phenomena.
