Speaking Freely: Tanka Aryal
*This interview took place in April 2024 at NetMundial+10 in São Paulo, Brazil and has been edited for length and clarity.
Tanka Aryal is the President of Digital Rights Nepal. He is an attorney practicing at the Supreme Court of Nepal. He has long worked to promote digital rights, the right to information, freedom of expression, civic space, accountability, and internet freedom nationally for the last 15 years. Mr. Aryal holds two LLM degrees in International Human Rights Laws from Kathmandu School of Law and Central European University Hungary. Additionally, he completed different degrees from Oxford University UK and Tokiwa University Japan. Mr. Aryal has worked as a consultant and staff with different national international organizations including FHI 360, International Center for Not-for-profit Law (ICNL), UNESCO, World Bank, ARTICLE 19, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), ISOC, and the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA/DPADM). Mr. Aryal led a right information campaign throughout the country for more than 4 years as the Executive Director of Citizens’ Campaign for Right to Information.
Greene: Can you introduce yourself? And can you tell me what kind of work your organization does on freedom of speech in particular?
I am Tanka Aryal, I’m from Nepal and I represent Digital Rights Nepal. Looking at my background of work, I have been working on freedom of expression for the last twenty years. Digital Rights Nepal is a new organization that started during COVID when a number of issues came up particularly around freedom of expression online and the use of different social media platforms expressing the ideas of every individual representing different classes, castes, and groups of society. The majority of work done by my organization is particularly advocating for freedom of expression online as well as data privacy and protection. This is the domain we work in mainly, but in the process of talking about and advocating for freedom of expression we also talk about access to information, online information integrity, misinformation, and disinformation.
Greene: What does free speech mean to you personally?
It’s a very heavy question! I know it’s not an absolute right—it has limitations. But I feel like if I am not doing any harm to other individuals or it’s not a mass security type of thing, there should not be interference from the government, platforms, or big companies. At the same time, there are a number of direct and indirect undue influences from the political wings or the Party who is running the government, which I don’t like. No interference in my thoughts and expression—that is fundamental for me with freedom of expression.
Greene: Do you consider yourself to be passionate about freedom of expression?
Oh yes. What I’ve realized is, if I consider the human life, existence starts once you start expressing yourself and dealing and communicating with others. So this is the very fundamental freedom for every human being. If this part of rights is taken away then your life, my life, as a human is totally incomplete. That’s why I’m so passionate about this right. Because this right has created a foundation for other rights as well. For example, if I speak out and demand my right to education or the right to food, if my right to speak freely is not protected, then those other rights are also at risk.
Greene: Do you have a personal experience that shaped how you feel about freedom of expression?
Yes. I don’t mean this in a legal sense, but my personal understanding is that if you are participating in any forum, unless you express your ideas and thoughts, then you are very hardly counted. This is the issue of existence and making yourself exist in society and in community. What I realized was that when you express your ideas with the people and the community, then the response is better and sometimes you get to engage further in the process. If I would like to express myself, if there are no barriers, then I feel comfortable. In a number of cases in my life and journey dealing with the government and media and different political groups, if I see some sort of barriers or external factors that limit me speaking, then that really hampers me. I realize that that really matters.
Greene: In your opinion, what is the state of freedom of expression in Nepal right now?
It’s really difficult. It’s not one of those absolute types of things. There are some indicators of where we stand. For instance, where we stand on the Corruption Index, where we stand on the Freedom of Expression Index. If I compare the state of freedom of expression in Nepal, it’s definitely better than the surrounding countries like India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and China. But, learning from these countries, my government is trying to be more restrictive. Some laws and policies have been introduced that limit freedom of expression online. For instance, Tik Tok is banned by the government. We have considerably good conditions, but still there is room to improve in a way that you can have better protections for expression.
Greene: What was the government’s thinking with banning TikTok?
There are a number of interpretations. Before banning TikTok the government was seen as pro-China. Once the government banned TikTok—India had already banned it—that decision supported a narrative that the government is leaning to India rather than China. You know, this sort of geopolitical interpretation. A number of other issues were there, too. Platforms were not taking measures even for some issues that shouldn’t have come through the platforms. So the government took the blanket approach in a way to try to promote social harmony and decency and morality. Some of the content published on TikTok was not acceptable, in my opinion, as a consumer myself. But the course of correction could have been different, maybe regulation or other things. But the government took the shortcut way by banning Tik Tok, eliminating the problem.
Greene: So a combination of geopolitics and that they didn’t like what people were watching on TikTok?
Actually there are a number of narratives told by the different blocks of people, people with different ideas and the different political wings. It was said that the government—the Maoist leader is the prime minister—considers the very rural people as their vote bank. The government sees them as less literate, brain-washed types of people. “Okay, this is my vote bank, no one can sort of toss it.” Then once TikTok became popular the TikTok users were the very rural people, women, marginalized people. So they started using Tik Tok asking questions to the government and things like that. It was said that the Maoist party was not happy with that. “Okay, now our vote bank is going out of our hands so we better block TikTok and keep them in our control.” So that is the narrative that was also discussed.
Greene: It’s similar in the US, we’re dealing with this right now. Similarly, I think it’s a combination of the geopolitics just with a lot of anti-China sentiment in the US as well as a concern around, “We don’t like what the kids are doing on TikTok and China is going to use it to serve political propaganda and brainwash US users.”
In the case of the US and India, TikTok was banned for national security. But in our case, the government never said, “Okay, TikTok is banned for our national security.” Rather, they were focusing on content that the government wasn’t happy with.
Greene: Right, and let me credit Nepal there for their candor, though I don’t like the decision. Because I personally don’t think the United States government’s national security excuse is very convincing either. But what types of speech or categories of content or topics are really targeted by regulators right now for restriction?
To be honest, the elected leaders, maybe the President, the Prime Minister, the powerholders don’t like the questions being posed to them. That is a general thing. Maybe the Mayor, maybe the Prime Minister, maybe a Minister, maybe a Chief Minister of one province—the powerholders don’t like being questioned. That is one type of speech made by the people—asking questions, asking for accountability. So that is one set of targets. Similarly, some speech that’s for the protection of the rights of the individual in many cases—like hate speech against Dalit, and women, and the LGBTQIA community—so any sort of speech or comments, any type of content, related to this domain is an issue. People don’t have the capacity to listen to even very minor critical things. If anybody says, “Hey, Tanka, you have these things I would like to be changed from your behavior.” People can say these things to me. As a public position holder I should have that ability to listen and respond accordingly. But politicians say, “I don’t want to listen to any sort of criticism or critical thoughts about me.” Particularly the political nature of the speech which seeks accountability and raises transparency issues, that is mostly targeted.
Greene: You said earlier that as long as your speech doesn’t harm someone there shouldn’t be interference. Are there certain harms that are caused by speech that you think are more serious or that really justify regulation or laws restricting them?
It’s a very tricky one. Even if regulation is justified, if one official can ban something blanketly, it should go through judicial scrutiny. We tend to not have adequate laws. There are a number of gray areas. Those gray areas have been manipulated and misused by the government. In many cases, misused by, for example, the police. What I understood is that our judiciary is sometimes very sensible and very sensitive about freedom of expression. However, in many cases, if the issue is related to the judiciary itself they are very conservative. Two days back I read in a newspaper that there was a sting operation around one judge engaging [in corruption] with a business. And some of the things came into the media. And the judiciary was so reactive! It was not blamed on the whole judiciary, but the judiciary asked online media to remove that content. There were a number of discussions. Like without further investigation or checking the facts, how can the judiciary give that order to remove that content? Okay, one official thought that this is wrong content, and if the judiciary has the power to take it down, that’s not right and that can be misused any time. I mean, the judiciary is really good if the issues are related to other parties, but if the issue is related to the judiciary itself, the judiciary is conservative.
Greene: You mentioned gray areas and you mentioned some types of hate speech. Is that a gray area in Nepal?
Yeah, actually, we don’t have that much confidence in law. What we have is the Electronic Transactions Act. Section 47 says that content online can not be published if the content harms others, and so on. It’s very abstract. So that law can be misused if the government really wanted to drag you into some sort of very difficult position.
We have been working toward and have provided input on a new law that’s more comprehensive, that would define things in proper ways that have less of a chance of being misused by the police. But it could not move ahead. The bill was drafted in the past parliament. It took lots of time, we provided input, and then after five years it could not move ahead. Then parliament dissolved and the whole thing became null. The government is not that consultative. Unlike how here we are talking [at NetMundial+10] with multi stakeholder participation—the government doesn’t bother. They don’t see incentive for engaging civil society. Rather they consider if we can give them the other troublemakers, let’s keep them away and pass the law. That is the idea they are practicing. We don’t have very clear laws, and because we don’t have clear laws some people really violate fundamental principles. Say someone was attacking my privacy or I was facing defamation issues. The police are very shorthanded, they can’t arrest that person even if they’re doing something really bad. In the meantime, the police, if they have a good political nexus and they just want to drag somebody, they can misuse it.
Greene: How do you feel about private corporations being gatekeepers of speech?
It’s very difficult. Even during election time the Election Commission issued an Election Order of Conduct, you could see how foolish they are. They were giving the mandate to the ISPs that, “If there is a violation of this Order of Conduct, you can take it down.” That sort of blanket power given to them can be misused any time. So if you talk about our case, we don’t have that many giant corporations, of course Meta and all the major companies are there. Particularly the government has given certain mandates to ISPs, and in many cases even the National Press Council was asking the ISP Association and the Nepal Telecommunications Authority (NTA) that regulates all ISPs. Without having a very clear mandate to the Press Council, without having a clear mandate to NTA, they are exercising power to instruct the ISPs, “Hey, take this down. Hey, don’t publish this.” So that’s the sort of mechanism and the practice out there.
Greene: You said that Digital Rights Nepal was founded during the pandemic. What was the impetus for starting the organization?
We were totally trapped at home, working from home, studying from home, everything from home. I had worked for a nonprofit organization in the past, advocating for freedom of expression and more, and when we were at home during COVID a number of issues came out about online platforms. Some people were able to exercise their rights because they have access to the internet, but some people didn’t have access to the internet and were unable to exercise freedom of expression. So we recognized there are a number of issues and there is a big digital divide. There are a number of regulatory gray areas in this sector. Looking at the number of kids who were compelled to do online school, their data protection and privacy was another issue. We were engaging in these e-commerce platforms to buy things and there aren’t proper regulations. So we thought there are a number of issues and nobody working on them, so let’s form this initiative. It didn’t come all of the sudden, but our working background was there and that situation really made us realize that we needed to focus our work on these issues.
Greene: Okay, our final question. Who is your free speech hero?
It depends. In my context, in Nepal, there are a couple of people that don’t hesitate to express their ideas even if it is controversial. There’s also Voltaire’s saying, “I defend your freedom of expression even if I don’t like the content.” He could be one of my free speech heroes. Because sometimes people are hypocrites. They say, “I try to advocate freedom of expression if it applies to you and the government and others, but if any issues come to harm me I don’t believe in the same principle.” Then people don’t defend freedom of expression. I have seen a number of people showing their hypocrisy once the time came where the speech is against them. But for me, like Voltaire says, even if I don’t like your speech I’ll defend it until the end because I believe in the idea of freedom of expression.