Hili's application, which has been outstanding for for three years, prevents him from travelling and therefore, his supporters say, inhibits his efforts to raise the profile of Iraqi LGBT, a London-based group which started campaigning in 2003.

“Hili has received many requests to speak about the situation in Iraq internationally, including from US-based groups such as the Gay Liberation Network and the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Campaign, which he has been unable to pursue,” say campaigners.

“He desperately wishes to do this [travel] in order to further the aims of his organisation, that is, supporting lesbians and gay men in Iraq and bringing the world's attention to their plight,” Hili's solicitor wrote to the UK Border Agency in 2009.

Over 700 Iraqi LGBT people have been assassinated in the past six years, says Iraqi LGBT. Hili has been issued with a fatwa from inside Iraq.

Pink News has more background details in a comment piece by Paul Canning, gay rights activist and LGBT Asylum News webmaster, at this link. Canning says:

It often shocks people to hear this but talk to Iraqi gays who've made it out and they'll tell you – life was better under Saddam.

In November 2009 the Gays Without Borders blog published this Iraqi LGBT account of the situation for gays and lesbians in Iraq.

Using the internet as a means to track down new victims, militia members are now employing computer analysts to monitor traffic on gay dating and networking websites in the region. They work with internet café owners to single out people who frequent these sites and set up fake profiles in the attempt to lure them out.

Despite the reported risks, UKBA's latest response that refuses Hili a priority application says:

• the assistance given by Hili to the Foreign Office “does not count”
• the fatwa [issued on Hili] does not mean that Hili “falls within the classification of clear and immediate vulnerability”
• that the delay in deciding Hili's asylum case (since July 2007) “is not in itself an exceptional circumstance”
• his case is not “compelling”

Photo agency Demotix has a picture of Hili protesting in London here, displaying a simple link to his campaign: http://bit.ly/alihili.

Iraqi LGBT has some suggestions for UK citizens who wish to help appeal against Hili's case: for example, writing to the home secretary, the prime minister, and your local MP.

For those outside the UK the campaign suggests asking politicians and organisations to invite Hili to your country (something he wouldn't be able to do under the current restrictions) and publicizing the requests.

Meanwhile, supportive comments are gathering on the petition to the home office asking the UK government to expedite the case (with just under 600 names at the time of writing).

One signatory, Paul Allen, says:

Would you want to live any longer in a society that treats you, the person you are with fear, hatred and violence, an agenda pushed by religion?

Ron Addison adds simply:

Shame on you, Sort it out NOW.

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Late last year a group of U.K. citizens launched a simple campaign to end the detention of children and babies by immigration authorities. The campaign, called End Child Detention Now (ECDN), has since been backed by some high-profile British figures and the group has quickly gathered names for its petition to the U.K. government, nearly 4,600 at the time of writing. In February, I joined the group to help with online campaigning.

The U.K. is the only European country to detain children of asylum seekers without a time limit: around 2000 each year, some for months at a time. Other countries have already taken action — Australia, for example, has pledged never to put another child in a detention center.

The ECDN volunteer-led campaign is also raising awareness of cases where children are treated like adults when they are actually under 18. This month, a 14-year-old boy from Afghanistan, ‘M' (name protected for legal reasons), was mistaken for an adult, arrested and was about to be deported from the U.K., before a judge ordered his release, pending a full judicial review hearing [pictured above, with his elder brother]. 

Writing on the Web site OpenDemocracy campaign co-coordinator Clare Sambrook shares M's story, as well as that of 17-year-old Rima, who fled religious persecution in Eritrea. Expanding on Rima's story she says:

Rima fled, moved from house to house, lived rough until twelve months ago when Alison and Robert took her in as their natural daughter. In May last year Rima was seized and locked up in Dungavel, a former prison.

When Rima’s solicitor lodged an application for judicial review, the Border Agency swept her out of its range, taking her 356 miles south by caged van to Yarl’s Wood, Serco’s notorious Bedfordshire detention centre. Another application for review, deportation averted. After seven days in Yarl’s Wood Rima was home again.

And then, last month, the day after Valentine’s Day, the government told Rima she would be forcibly deported to Italy within weeks. The family campaigns vigorously for clemency, fearing that each new dawn will bring the Border Agency’s arrest squad to their door.

Sambrook goes on to say:

“M’s fate and Rima’s hang in the balance — here, in Britain, a country where asking for sanctuary is a right, not a crime, and where, according to the government, every child matters.”

Other projects are also trying to put pressure on the government to address the problems surrounding the detention of children.

NCADC (the National Coalition of Anti-Deportion Campaigns), for example, also raised the case of ‘M', with ideas for further action.

The organisation Medical Justice is calling upon doctors to raise their concerns about the issue. In its petition for doctors, it says:

“The administrative detention of children is damaging to them, cannot be made otherwise, and is unacceptable in a civilised society. We call for the immediate cessation of this practice which is demonstrably and permanently harmful to children’s health, both in the short and long term.”

Other related groups include the Bail for Immigration Detainees and Citizens for Sanctuary.

So far, there has been a lot of mainstream press attention to the issue, following the publication of a recent report. ECDN hopes that bloggers and social media users will increasingly engage with the issue too. The campaign can be followed on @stop_child_det on Twitter and has a Facebook group.

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After a strange week of battling between Trafigura's lawyers from the firm Carter-Ruck and The Guardian, and a week of terrible publicity for the company, Trafigura finally gave in and said the preliminary report could be made public.

The draft study contains details of waste dumped in Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire, in 2006 - and evidence of its chemical components, and their potential effect.

The injunction banned The Guardian from reproducing or reporting the Minton Report which was already available on Wikileaks.org and the Norwegian media (maybe elsewhere, too). The order was obtained by lawyers Carter-Ruck on behalf of its client Trafigura.

“No newspaper can reveal the contents of this report, but at least we can now say that it exists and has been rendered secret. The option of ‘publishing and be damned' is not available.” [The Guardian, 14.10.09]

But until last week no-one, except those it involved, knew that the injunction existed and that The Guardian could not report the order. Why? It's one of many existing secret injunctions, which not only ban reporting a story but also the existence of the ban itself.

The only reason we know about it now, is because of one British member of parliament (MP), Paul Farrelly. As Private Eye, a UK magazine famous for its investigative journalism and its disdain for Carter-Ruck, a leading media libel litigation firm, said this week on its website, Farrelly's “intention was to test this conspiracy of silence [i.e. secret 'super injunctions'] by asking questions about it in Parliament”.

How? Because MPs are protected under the Bill of Rights of 1689, which declares that “freedom of speech and debates or proceedings in Parliament ought not to be impeached or questioned in any place or court outside Parliament.”

Therefore an MP's comments can be published without fear of legal action (a fuller history at this link). But The Guardian knew that to reproduce Paul Farrelly's question (below, tabled in Parliament, see point ii.) would contravene the existing order. So it contacted Carter-Ruck to see if they could change the terms of the injunction. “We were advised by Carter-Ruck that publication would place us in contempt of court,” stated The Guardian.

Carter-Ruck meanwhile maintained that The Guardian's account was ‘misleading'. Its full statement can be found at this PDF link. The lawyers acting on behalf of Trafigura said they would take further instructions from their clients, but The Guardian published its article first.

A very comprehensive account of the extraordinary activity online can be found on the Online Journalism Blog but to sum it up:

• After the Guardian posted an account stating that it was not able to report a Parliamentary question that was publicly available without mentioning any details at all, an online frenzy whipped up, with several bloggers working out what the question in question was. The notion that journalists could not report Parliament shocked readers of The Guardian's article - both its critics and fans.
• Twitter users and blogs willfully ignored the injunction - if its possible to ignore a secret injunction - and passed on links and keywords connecting Trafigura and Carter-Ruck to Paul Farrelly's question, and even the Minton Report. At one point, for example, #Trafigura was the top trending topic on Twitter - globally.
• So although the Guardian had still not reported the question or broken the terms of the Order, all the information contained in Farrelly's question was out there. The Guardian intended to go to court to fight the Order, but Carter-Ruck said it would no longer try to prevent his publication reporting MP Paul Farrelly’s parliamentary question about Trafigura. “The parties have now agreed to an amendment to the existing Order so as to reflect that,” Carter-Ruck reported in its statement.
• The Guardian's editor, Alan Rusbridger, who tweeted sporadic updates, said the firm had “caved-in” and the paper finally reported Farrelly's question. The Guardian, and other mainstream media, praised social media for its role in applying pressure throughout the day.

Simply put - whether defiant online users were the reason Carter-Ruck agreed to vary the order or not - Paul Farrelly's question could not be suppressed online. And what's more, thousands of people who had never heard of Trafigura now knew its name and its connection to a toxic waste scandal.

Then, later in the week  Carter-Ruck suggested debate could be blocked in Parliament by claiming that the secret injunction it had obtained is “sub judice,” ie. in active legal proceedings. If proved, it would prohibit any motion, debate or question concerning the matters going ahead, under Westminster rules.

A day later the Minton Report injunction was lifted in the British press.

Before, journalists could only say it existed, nothing more. And that's what was really controversial here.

Because the report is all to do with the dumping of waste in West Africa.

For background on the waste dump in the Côte d'Ivoire in 2006 please read this commentary on Journalism.co.uk: ‘The journalist and NGO collaboration to expose Ivory Coast toxic waste dump'. For more detailed information on events themselves, visit The Guardian's section on Trafigura and the Probo Koala.

Further information on the Trafigura-Guardian story can be found in the Journalism.co.uk blog updates at this link.

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If you live in a part of the world where being open is difficult, sites like Global Voices Advocacy help advise bloggers on safety and rights to freedom of expression.

Citizens if the United Kingdom are lucky to be able to use the Freedom of Information Act 2000 to request specific information held by public authorities.

Nonetheless the British are a little behind the US: just as it took a little while to catch up with Freedom of Information (FoI), the UK government has only recently taken the lead of the US Data.gov site and is releasing over 1000 data-sets online.

There was more good news for political transparency in October, with the news that a network of volunteers have formed the Democracy Club to hold UK election candidates and representatives to account for the forthcoming general election.

But at the same time there was a stark reminder that vast parts of the UK's data is still under wraps. Postcode data, for example.

The Royal Mail holds the commercial rights to the database and recently sent ‘cease and desist' letters to a site which allowed developers to get round the copyright - if unofficially.

But amid the setbacks, the open data campaign is fast gaining pace, and political support. One of the first people to write about the Royal Mail's action? Tom Watson, MP, an advisory council member to the Open Rights Group (ORG).

MySociety is an organisation which has broken new democratic ground with its network of sites across the UK. Its active community voluntarily scrutinise, upload, comment and generate new ideas to improve society.

You can see its founder Tom Steinberg talking at Gov 2.0 in Washington here:

The organisation is about to turn six years old; on its birthday last year, developer Francis Irving said that the UK sites actually led the way before the US:

“UpMyStreet is a UK site, has been around for 10 years, and was developed by some of the people who made FaxYourMP. It was the Everyblock of its time, well before Everyblock.

“Likewise, when mySociety started people in the US were surprised that we were not partisan. Back then, it was normal in the US to try to use the internet for partisan (Republican/Democrat) advantage. Nowadays there are more politically neutral projects, such as GovTrack.us and the Sunlight Foundation.”

Its projects include TheyWorkForYou, No. 10 Petitions, Mapumental, FixMyStreet, GroupsNearYou, PledgeBank, WriteToThem, HearFromYourMP and Travel Maps.

Case study: WhatDoTheyKnow.com

WhatDoTheyKnow is an application designed to help extract information from government departments and agencies, via Freedom of Information requests.

It's pretty straightforward: choose a department, submit a request, and then mySociety's application does the processing and tracking.

As the site explains, WhatDoTheyKnow is also an archive of FoI requests and responses made by other people, so users can search for information already in the public domain, and set up email or RSS alerts to get notified of relevant updates.

Another useful feature allows users to leave annotations or comments on FOI requests.  Finally, a blog was recently set up to track their work.

Statistics released on the performance of UK central government departments show that more FoI requests were made via WhatDoTheyKnow.com than the last quarter.

For example:

“32.3% of FOI requests to the Home Office (which includes the UKBA and the IPS) were made via WhatDoTheyKnow in the second quarter of 2009. In absolute terms this was 206 out of 638 requests.”

The idea is that by centralising the project, work is not duplicated, and the fruits of FoI are shared more widely.

It's also much easier to track the progress of your research. This correspondence between the Ministry of Defence and Ben Laurie from Wikileaks makes for an extremely interesting read and annotations by Francis Irving make it easier to understand. Laurie wanted to find out what data about Wikileaks was held by the British Ministry of Defence.

One of the results of the release? This Guardian story by its head of investigations, David Leigh: “The Ministry of Defence is trying to block all internet access to the whistleblowing site Wikileaks from thousands of its own computers after discovering that dissidents have been using it to leak copies of British military manuals.”

The FoI results have also been archived by Wikileaks at this link.

This is what works well about mySociety: it is all about collaboration in an effective narration. In that spirit, at the weekend, Tom Steinberg told ‘The Social Reporter' (David Wilcox) that the hyperlocal bloggers gathered at a conference in Stoke-on-Trent are ‘the future of local news' (via paidContent.org).

Steinberg, fresh from Washington in September, came up with these ‘nine flavours' of transparency websites in 2009; have a look at this link.

But he asked for help, especially with knowledge of non-English sites.

What have you got? Please share links to projects and websites in your country in the comments below.

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Some examples:

• The Amnesty UK Refugee and Asylum Blog. Herve, also known as Aimee, who left Cameroon, after suffering harassment and assault for being homosexual, blogs here. Here's his story. An extract:

“Four years ago I was living a busy life [in Cameroon], running my own business. Now I am in the UK, waiting to hear the result of my asylum case. The reason for my altered situation is that in my home country there is a lot of prejudice and harassment of people who are gay. It is illegal to have a homosexual relationship, and sentences range from a fine to five years imprisonment.”

• The Refugee Council. The organisation's website officer, Kelly Arnstein, told me about Poliblog - which contains contributions from staff and volunteers, many of whom are refugees - and the BASIS project - a collaboration with another organisation, Refugee Action. The blog features videos about Refugee Community Organisations' (RCOs) work and development. Some examples can be found here and here. This is a video featuring Dan Cissokho, who came to the UK is 2002 as an asylum seeker, before being given refugee status.

• The Refugee Council also features podcasts with women refugees involved with its Vulnerable Women’s project, available at this link.

• Asylum Stories. A campaigner uses this platform to draw attention to individuals' personal stories. He and a friend also camped on Parliament Square last year to campaign against the UK's treatement of refused asylum seekers.

• Twitter: Anselme Noumbiwa from Cameroon has been using Twitter to draw attention to his case (http://twitter.com/anselmenoumbiwa). His story can be found here, on the ARDC website, but I wasn't able to establish exactly his current status. His last tweet was June 26, 2009, and his page indicates that while he had been released from the detention centre, his situation is still vulnerable. An example update from May 2009:

“Hi i am laying on the bed, watching TV and believe something will happen before the end of week.”

• National Coalition Of Anti-Deportation Campaigns (NCADC). This site presents the cases of refugees, and publicises them via an email list. You can read more about the campaign here.

• The Testimony Project. Newly launched, this is an extremely exciting endeavour. Testimony Project's Holly Pelham told me about its aims. Powerful film speaks above all else, she says. By showcasing various women's testimonies on film she hopes these cases will be picked up on by the world.

She sees the stories spreading via both traditional media brands, as well as social and online-only media. “One of the important things is for the project to find its own place,” Pelham says. “I want it to be able to grow organically. “You can see some of the first testimonies here. An extract from Mercy's, a victim to sexual and physical abuse in Kenya, before escaping to the UK.

“I would rather die than go back to Kenya. I flew a thousand miles to be safe in this country, so if they take me back, it’s just like killing me. I’d rather die here tomorrow than go back there.”

Another element to the project is the site's forum. Anonymous commenters have begun leaving requests for help. For example:

“My solicitor has said that she can no longer represent me, I don't really understand why and she's not picking up the phone when I call. Where can I get free legal advice? Can anyone help me?”

Someone else helps out below the post with links and information.

• The Refugee Week Simple Acts campaign on Twitter and here on YouTube. Ben Matthews of Brightone.org.uk, a volunteer-run communications agency for the Third Sector, helped run it: “It was a great online campaign, using small actions across a number of social media platforms to raise awareness and participation in the campaign, leading up to the final event - Refugee Week itself. There were nearly 7,000 simple acts completed, which generated lots of interest on Twitter and numerous blog posts, as these in themselves were simple acts.”

“The Simple Acts campaign was about inspiring individuals to use small, everyday actions to change perceptions of refugees,” adds Gerdy Rees, online and marketing officer at Refugee Week UK. “It consisted of 20 actions that can be completed by anyone and that encouraged people to learn and do more with refugees. With every person who joined the campaign and did a small thing with and for refugees, we got a little closer to removing barriers between communities and to creating the kind of world we all want to live in. Every journey begins with a single step and it is with simple acts of kindness, generosity and empathy that we begin the change.”

So what are the problems these organisations face in publicising the stories?

It's not easy getting nuanced and accurate refugee and asylum stories to the attention of the public. In theory, access to the internet should allow asylum seekers communicate their personal stories themselves. But certain barriers are difficult to overcome.

“I am trying to develop ways of getting more refugee voices online, but computer access and language confidence and abilities can be a deterrent for many people,” says Kelly Arnstein from the Refugee Council.

For example, the Refugee Council ran a fundraising campaign where ordinary citizens (normally non-destitute) had to live on £1 a day. On their blog, one person raised the point that free internet access at the local library would be a bit tricky to organise if you weren't fluent in English, and really did have no money.

“We’re hoping to set up a blog for refugee volunteers who are working on an allotment project in Leeds later in the year– many people have been put off by thinking their English won’t be good enough,” says Arnstein.

Independent voices

As you can see, the list is formed mainly of examples that have gone through the filter of an ‘organisation'. If you know of any cases where people have used blogs and social media campaigns independently, please do leave comments below.

There is increasingly less dependence on mainstream media to tell a story. If it's powerful enough it should be able to reach the influential people it needs to, without necessarily negotiating precious printed column inches. And it can be told accurately, at length, and in a person's own words.

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Last week, in the England and Wales High Court, Mr Justice Eady ruled that a police officer who previously wrote about his working life on his NightJack blog, did not have the right to remain anonymous.

The claimant - now known to be Detective Constable Richard Horton - had unsuccessfully attempted to get an injunction against The Times newspaper (UK) to stop it naming him. Following the court's ruling Horton has now been issued with a written warning by his police force, the Lancashire Constabulary.

A victory for freedom of expression (The Times')… or a severe restriction for freedom of expression (anonymous bloggers)? Popular opinion is divided, though a blog search would indicate that blogger opinion veers towards the latter.

NightJack, the judge said, did not “qualify as information in respect of which the Claimant has a reasonable expectation of privacy – essentially because blogging is a public activity”. Eady, who is well-known in the UK for his privacy-protecting rulings, stated:

“Furthermore, even if I were wrong about this, I consider that any such right of privacy on the Claimant's part would be likely to be outweighed at trial by a countervailing public interest in revealing that a particular police officer has been making these communications.”

And the implication for bloggers? “Those who wish to hold forth to the public by this means often take steps to disguise their authorship, but it is in my judgment a significantly further step to argue, if others are able to deduce their identity, that they should be restrained by law from revealing it.”

It's hard to find anyone in the UK (or international) blogosphere overwhelmingly in support of The Times' ruling; and The Times' own stories about their battle received severe criticism from commenters, even if, as Malcolm Coles suggests, some of the negative comments are a little tricky to find…

Three things to bear in mind for background:

• NightJack had had undergone the scrutiny of a judging panel in order to win the prestigious Orwell Prize for blogging. The prize's director, Jean Seaton, argues why she believes Eady's ruling to be wrong, here, on the Guardian Organ Grinder blog.
• Horton, who ended his postings after being shortlisted for the award, donated his prize to the Police Dependants' Trust.
• One of The Times' main arguments for outing him was its claims that ‘he was also using the blog to disclose detailed information about cases he had investigated, which could be traced back to real-life prosecutions.'

The bloggers and commenters have reacted with force, many personally attacking Patrick Foster, the journalist at the centre of what Eady called the ‘deduction and detective' process. I've previously rounded up a good mix of links on the Journalism.co.uk Editors' Blog and my own blog which tell the story, but here are a selection of the best blog posts, which draw out interesting nuances. Opinions include:

• Those with experience of being ‘outed'. Eg. The Girl with a One Track Mind - once Abby Lee, now known by her real name, Zoe Margolis.

• Those who defend their right to anonymity as a blogging police officer. Eg. PC Bloggs.

• Others who work in the public sector and write about their life and work. Eg. Tom Reynolds, an ambulance driver with a book deal.

• Those who think NightJack was a little naive in his attempt to remain anonymous: Eg. Letter from a Tory

• Those who think The Times, in some respects, had a fair point on the right to name. Eg. Martin Cloake and FleetStreetBlues.

• Those who make comparisons between anonymous bloggers and anonymous journalistic sources. Eg. Sara McConnell and Justin McKeating.
  

• Those with other criticisms against The Times' approach to the case. Eg. Hopi Sen, once an anonymous blogger.

This is just a summary of a complicated debate. Perhaps the court's decision has surprised onlookers so much because it happened in the UK. We're not living in a repressive autocracy with threatening media laws. While we have stringent libel laws, our freedom of expression extends far more widely than it does for many societies. Perhaps more than it does for most nations in the world - not least because the English language is understood by so many. Yet an award-winning blogger, whose voice, it could be argued, aided the democratic process (see Seaton's article), was not able to stay nameless.

To what extent it affects UK bloggers' future privacy and right to anonymity remains to be seen. I shall report back. In the meantime, all those who are blogging anonymously might do well to take a look at Global Voices Advocacy's guidelines … then they might stand a chance of keeping it that way. Perhaps taking up jiu-jitsu in a Lancashire town, and then writing about it, was a reckless decision on Horton's part.

Please do add any other good links below.

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