Civil Liberties Under Pressure: Maartje van der Woude to hold webinar for Indonesian university
On Wednesday 22 July, Professor Maartje van der Woude will hold a webinar for Nusantara University (Indonesia). Her lecture is entitled ‘Governing Through Crises: Civil Liberties Under Pressure’.
In 2019 the Indonesian government shut down the Internet in the provinces of Papua and West Papua due to tension in those areas. People had taken to the streets in many cities calling for the independence of Papua. According to the government, the shutdown was necessary to protect the population from inflammatory messages that could have incited racial hatred.
Was the government entitled to shut down the Internet in such a case, limiting the freedom of the population to consult it? How are national security and the safeguarding of individuals’ legal rights related?
These and other questions will be the focus of this webinar. Professor of Law and Society Maartje van der Woude (Van Vollenhoven Institute), drawing on examples from the American and European context, will reflect on the continuing tension between national security and the safeguarding of individuals’ legal rights – something that is also discernible in the Global North.
For example, the way in which more and more laws in Hungary are affecting the rule of law in such a way that any comments or protests against the ruling authorities are curbed. Or the debate on limiting the right to demonstrate in times of corona.
In her lecture, Professor Van der Woude will reflect critically on how crises are being used as windows of opportunity – under the guise of crisis management or crisis control – to curb individual freedoms and liberal democratic values.