Freedom of speech

 Should the Freedom of Speech be preserved ?

introduction:

Freedom of speech is the political right to communicate one's ideas via speech.

6 January 1941 – Four Freedoms speech given by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt

The right to freedom of expression is recognized as a human right under Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and recognized in international human rights law in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights

I- we must preserve freedom of expression, it is a right.

freedom of expression was not designed to protect people who think and speak like everyone else, that evoke the weather and the passing of time, but for those who say things that upset, that shock or call into question the established order, it allows to talk about sensitive issues without fear of power, majorities or minorities.

I chose the movie "the lady" Luc Besson to illustrate this.

The film presents the life of Aung San Suu Kyi, a  Burmese politic woman, nicknamed "The Lady". Luc Besson's film portrays the difficult non-violent political struggle of Aung San Suu Kyi for freedom of expression and democracy in Burma prey to an oppressive and bloody military dictatorship, and the impact of this struggle on his family life.

The film is a tribute to a "human rights defender", through the portrait of this woman, the film supports citizen engagement in building a  just and humane world.

Freedom of expression is a power

denunciation of censorship:

Freedom of expression is an absolute weapon of power, "Animal Farm" is a great exemple. The book was banned by the Soviet Union in 1950, as Stalin understood that it was a satire based on his leadership. George Orwell describing a farm where the animals rebelled and took power and hunt men because of their negligence against them. This is a fable in which Orwell offers a satire of the Russian Revolution and criticizes Stalinism.

George Orwell wrote a preface in which he complained of censorship of his book by the British government and how it suppressed the criticisms against the Soviet Union,

"Animal Farm," George Orwell said:

"The issue involved here is quite a simple one : Is every opinion, however unpopular — however foolish, even — entitled to a hearing ? Put it in that form and nearly any English intellectual will feel that he ought to say ‘Yes’. But give it a concrete shape, and ask, ‘How about an attack on Stalin ? Is that entitled to a hearing ?’, and the answer more often than not will be ‘No’, In that case the current orthodoxy happens to be challenged, and so the principle of free speech lapses. Now, when one demands liberty of speech and of the press, one is not demanding absolute liberty. There always must be, or at any rate there always will be, some degree of censorship, so long as organised societies endure. But freedom, as Rosa Luxembourg [sic] said, is ‘freedom for the other fellow’. The same principle is contained in the famous words of Voltaire : ‘I detest what you say ; I will defend to the death your right to say it.’ If the intellectual liberty which without a doubt has been one of the distinguishing marks of western civilisation means anything at all, it means that everyone shall have the right to say and to print what he believes to be the truth, provided only that it does not harm the rest of the community in some quite unmistakable way. Both capitalist democracy and the western versions of Socialism have till recently taken that principle for granted. Our Government, as I have already pointed out, still makes some show of respecting it. The ordinary people in the street-partly, perhaps, because they are not sufficiently interested in ideas to be intolerant about them-still vaguely hold that ‘I suppose everyone’s got a right to their own opinion.’ It is only, or at any rate it is chiefly, the literary and scientific intelligent, the very people who ought to be the guardians of liberty, who are beginning to despise it, in theory as well as in practice".

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