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Freedom from Fear: A Definition

To build a world without fear, we must be without fear. To build a world of justice, we must be just. And how can we fight for liberty if we are not free in our own minds? How can we ask others to sacrifice if we are not ready to do so?[1]

— Former U.N. Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld

Freedom from fear is not just another freedom, like freedom of the press, freedom of religion, or freedom of association. It is the threshold freedom — a vital gateway to the other cherished freedoms.

The tactic most used by illegitimate governments, under pressure from opposition parties, the media, or dissident groups, is to deploy the instruments of fear. People are fired from state-controlled university jobs, institutes are closed, media voices are silenced by abducting journalists or by intimidating licensed media owners; extra-judicial killings and abductions abound, and religions are suppressed. In order to execute this tactic, such governments will often facilitate the creation and operation of militias or roving gangs of pro-government, but not formally controlled forces. This allows the enemies of freedom, in or out of government, to claim deniability as a targeted reign of terror is deployed against the proponents of freedom or peaceful change.

This violence produces a state of fear, not only amongst those who are the principal targets of such forces but also amongst the population generally. Being afraid is the first precondition for paralysis, inertia, or, while others are targeted, looking the other way — a crowd impulse on which dictatorships and authoritarian juntas always depend. Fear also serves as a strong motive for conforming, in order to avoid falling prey to governmental persecution. To lead an ordinary life, citizens are required to pledge obedience to the party or group in power. One could not, in places like pre-perestroika Eastern Europe, teach in the public school system or at university, or practise one of the professions, without being a member of “the party.” The same is also true in Syria or in the “state-owned enterprises” of China or in North Korea.

Oxford defines freedom as “the power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants” and “the absence of subjection to foreign domination or despotic governments.” Fear is defined in many ways but usually as “an unpleasant emotion caused by the threat of danger, pain, or harm.”[2]

In the absence of freedom from fear, it is only fear that remains and the manipulation of events, lives, communities, and prospects by the purveyors of fear. Totalitarian and authori-tarian administrations depend on fear — it is their lifeblood.

When freedom from fear is diluted or destroyed, other freedoms are reduced as well. The military juntas that ruled in Argentina and Chile in the recent past understood and the authoritarian regimes in Cuba, Syria, Libya, North Korea, and Iran today understand the leverage that the weight of fear can exercise, when expertly applied, to the scope of freedom. The fear of a confiscatory, punitive, and capricious government, accountable to no electorate, court, elected legislature, or media becomes the basis used by the fearful to negotiate for their own economic or physical survival; it is, of course, a context defined by the fear-dispensing regime itself. The currencies demanded by such regimes for escape from the punishments they threaten are typically loyalty, subservience, silence, material support, or cash. The agents of fear in such regimes, almost universally corrupt, all have whims to be indulged, and, depending on their rank and level of power, significant or relatively insignificant, are able to demand from citizens seeking service or attention or justice something “extra.” They are able to tell those seeking help, “You had better negotiate.” This was true in pre-perestroika Eastern Europe. It is still true in modern Russia or today’s China. It is neither surprising nor new that the greater the degree of authoritarianism of an administration, the greater the level of corruption exhibited by agents of the administration. Average citizens must face daily examples of dishonesty and corruption in their dealings with the state, greatly increasing the level of fear in their lives. Usually the only way to deal with such situations is through the payment of bribes; indeed, in most authoritarian states the need for such transactions is found in almost every aspect of life. Those with little resources to negotiate are the ones who are most afraid.

In Russia, for instance, corruption is rampant, and freedom from fear is not remotely a reality. The rich and powerful oligarchs who control much of the Russian economy are friendly with the Kremlin; part of the essentially corrupt economic structure, they are able to do well. Those who choose not to be part of that system, however, or who do not show sufficient fear of authority, place themselves in danger of being jailed. Falling afoul of the justice system is something that instills great fear amongst Russians; for them, knowing who amongst the police, the local administration, or the armed forces can be trusted to be honest and fair is a difficult if not impossible task. Despite the fact that there are laws and a parliament, Russia does not offer a fair and just home to its citizens. Purporting to be a democracy does not mean you are a democracy.

Another freedom diminished when there is a lack of freedom from fear is that of freedom of expression and freedom of the press. Looking at Russia again, it now stands 172nd out of 197 nations in the world in the “freedom of the press index,” next to Zimbabwe, Gambia, and the Congo. On July 13, 2012, the Russian Duma brought in a new law that changed libel from a civil offence to a harshly punished criminal one. It introduced particularly severe financial penalties for anyone who might criticize public officials. The Putin regime has targeted websites, NGOs, journalists, and think tanks. The message from all of these actions is that no one is safe who is not loyal to Putin.

To be fair, historically, authoritarianism has never been very far from Russia’s soul. The tsars who ruled the country earlier and the Communist leaders who replaced them all relied on terror and a culture of fear to maintain their grip on power. Maintaining that culture of fear today takes consistent and dili-gent application. Threatening freedoms and spreading fear can take no holiday when democratic legitimacy is sketchy at best. But redeploying fear does not sustain legitimacy. It weakens it.

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Healthy freedom from fear, when present, underpins a society of robust achievements. Freedom from fear allows for freedom to innovate and change. Freedom from fear results in a democracy where those elected to public office face genuine competition for those positions at regular intervals and accountability to judicial restraint and process. Freedom from fear goes hand in hand with a presumption of innocence and a police-judicial process that is subject to the rule of law, not just the product of the whims of those who happen to be in office. Freedom from fear in a democracy permits a broad spectrum of media and press who owe no fealty except to the media organizations they serve, their market, the democratically legislated laws of the land, and their own consciences.

Freedom from fear also means freedom from official discrimination on the basis of gender, race, creed, colour, or sexual orientation. Even more important, in terms of day-to-day life, it means no tolerance, official or unofficial, for discriminatory activities that create fear within specific groups. Extreme harassment, or worse, by Buddhists of Muslim populations in Myanmar or Sri Lanka is a new but serious manifestation of intimidation-based extreme nationalism. Tolerating hate crimes or violence against minorities is as bad as officially sanctioning such crimes or violence. A society where the legitimate apparatus of the state does its best to prosecute the illegal purveyors of fear is a society where freedom from fear is real. A society or state that looks the other way when minorities of any kind are subjected to violence is a society that tacitly encourages the use of fear against its own people.

In recent years, Sri Lanka has become a discouraging case in point. At the end of a brutal anti-terrorist war in 2009, the spirit of reconciliation, accountability, and generosity, that was so essential to the rebuilding that took place in post-apartheid South Africa and post–Civil War United States, seemed to be furthest from the mind of the Rajapaksa administration.

While nominally democratic, the government was, in fact, a family dynasty, with Rajapaksa brothers in control of Defence, Economic Development, the Parliament, the Presidency, and all aspects of state regulation and private enterprise. The brothers used fear to energize a soft ethnic cleansing of the Tamil population and serious harassment of the Muslim minority. Media voices were intimidated, brutalized, or murdered. Muslim stores and properties were destroyed by roving gangs of thugs while police stood idly by. Not one scintilla of accountability was exacted from either side for the thousands of civilians who had been killed by the end of the civil war with the terrorist Tamil Tigers in 2009.

Judicial independence was done away with when the chief justice of the Supreme Court was summarily and unconstitutionally impeached because of a ruling the Rajapaksa clan disliked. While the United Nations human rights commissioner made serious findings and a multitude of recommendations, very few have been addressed. The Commonwealth of Nations, of which Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) was a founding member, has done almost nothing of substance to defend its own core values of rule of law, defence of democracy, judicial independence, and human rights. In fact, it gave Sri Lanka the privilege of hosting the 2013 Heads of Government Meeting in Colombo in November of that year — the first meeting in more than four decades where the queen, as head of the Commonwealth, did not attend.

Terrorism in any country is about the targeted and energized use of fear as a political and tactical weapon. The damage any terrorist attack achieves is rarely, if ever, an existential risk to a country or community. But the fear it seeks to generate, and the overreaction it hopes to incite is all about creating a circumstance where freedom from fear begins to erode. Depending on the extent of the extreme fundamentalism of the terrorist group, or its nihilist excess, a society’s freedom from fear, its belief in diversity as a basis for rational discussion and open debate, and its tolerance of a multiplicity of views, will serve as strong counters to the agents of terror — in fact, they are likely their worst enemies.

The challenge for national security agencies in a democracy is that of balance and of choosing the right approaches in their fight with terror and the appropriate level of intensity. The main purpose of terrorists, whether homegrown but externally inspired or externally sourced, is the manifest and literal explosion of fear, beyond whatever death and destruction their initiatives produce; meanwhile, the legitimate forces of a democratic state have a duty to protect national security. They have a series of tools at their disposal; these vary from country to country but cluster around some common elements. Police intelligence networks, electronic intelligence shared between allies, Interpol, undercover security operatives, and terrorist units of the kind one can now find in major cities such as New York, London, Montreal, or Paris all enhance a democracy’s capacity to protect its citizens from attacks on the freedom from fear. The caveat, of course, is that in democratic societies the reduction of overall freedom or legitimate privacy so as to protect the “freedom from fear” can become, in extremis, counterproductive. Finding the right balance between security and freedom, and maintaining legitimate and democratic oversight over security operations is all part of the architecture of the threshold freedom, freedom from fear. Pre- and post-9/11 realities in North America, pre- and post-Madrid, London, and Paris realities in Europe, and pre- and post-Sinai and Beirut realities on the issue of freedom and security are not only instructive but also indicative of the balances to be addressed and calibrated.

A central question emerges: Against what standard will national security practices be judged? If there is a legal framework for that assessment, what is the instrument by which discretionary judgments are made? Why does any of this matter? Because for citizens to be free from fear in their day-to-day lives, in their workplace, in their neighbourhood, in the cafés or concert halls they frequent, or in their places of worship, they must be confident that the law applies to everyone and is broadly applied in the same way. They must be certain that all have access to due process before open and uncorrupted and unintimidated courts. This is fundamental. Citizens must be certain that those who protect the peace and order of a society, who work against the purveyors of fear, be they criminal gangs, terrorist networks, or violent racists, are governed by laws and procedures that underline the fact that the security forces are not in business for themselves but are agents of a democratic society. And, further, they must be sure that this society has norms, rules, laws, and legitimate expectations of appropriate standards of behaviour — standards for which security forces have been trained and to which they are accountable.

One Canadian example that makes this point is the 2001 Summit of the Americas in Quebec City, where police and security forces anticipated serious though largely peaceful demonstrations. There was an expectation, however, that there was an unavoidable risk that some “black ops” or “direct action” vandals would seek to infiltrate the legitimate demonstrators. In the lead-up to and training for the summit, the various police forces in charge of the planning for an event that would bring most hemispheric heads of government to Quebec City were, much to the surprise of the demonstrators and even the media, given detailed briefings on the content, purport, and interpretation of both the Quebec Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The briefings on these, and on the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Act and the Criminal Code provisions that applied to mass dissent, were an integral part of the preparation for the multi-day event. There were still demonstrators who got out of hand and not every police officer was beyond criticism, but the broad framework of rights, i.e., the right to lawfully demonstrate one’s opposition and the right of the public to law enforcement and maintenance of the peace, were kept in balance — as both are essential parts of the freedom from fear.

A few years ago, I recall my wife Donna and I visiting Newfoundland for a brief summer holiday during the celebration of their “400th” Anniversary of Discovery. The province was alive with countless artistic, cultural, and music events. Newfoundlanders are unfailingly friendly and deeply hospitable. We enjoyed our trip very much. One day we drove out from St. John’s, the capital, to Trinity, along the eastern coast, where we spent a wonderful day visiting galleries, having a relaxed lunch of cod cheeks, and doing some afternoon whale watching. In the evening, Trinity featured a summer stock company with local folklore — light but enchanting fun. At about 10 p.m. we headed onto the Trans-Canada Highway for a three-hour drive back to St. John’s. That night was very dark and on a very isolated patch of road we were pulled over by an RCMP police cruiser. An extremely tall RCMP officer approached our vehicle. He pointed out that we had been driving about fourteen kilometres per hour over the local speed limit. We acknowledged that that was probably true. He then asked if either of us had been consuming alcohol. Donna indicated she had not — that is why she was driving. I confessed to local draught beer that had been consumed with dinner about two hours earlier — that was why I was not driving. He was friendly, asked to see our licenses and insurance, and inquired if he might inspect our trunk “just to make the stop worthwhile.” He did so and then returned to our driver’s window to thank us, indicating that ten kilometres or so over the limit was not serious, warned us about dark roads and the genuine hazard of moose, and wished us well.

The next morning, chatting with Donna over breakfast, I wondered about how many countries in the world there are where one could be stopped by a police car late at night, on an isolated highway, and be unafraid of a very tall officer, fully armed, approaching one’s vehicle. You might worry about a speeding fine, about the results of a breathalyzer because of when you had your last tipple, but you would not worry about being mugged, raped, robbed, or murdered. While the RCMP would be the first to accept evidence that they are by no means perfect, the core integrity, discipline, and public purpose of the force, indeed of all other Canadian police forces, are not in question. Freedom from fear requires a context where the police are, by and large, trustworthy and respected. A “peace officer” cannot and must not be an agent of fear.

Belief in the legitimacy and honourable purpose of the state, in its democracy-based right to govern a society of many diverse individuals, is tethered to trust in the way the state seeks to operate, however imperfectly. What a police officer may have done, what a border security officer sought to do may not have been perfect; what they failed to do may be a problem too — human beings make mistakes — but the motivation for, the intent of their actions cannot be in dispute. When they are in dispute, or are found to be in bad faith or outside the framework of freedom and order by which a democratic society abides, disciplinary or criminal pursuit by authorities must be followed. Failure to do so creates those dark spaces where the public purpose of an officer of the law or peace officer becomes grey. And when that problem permeates society, the sense that there exists a “state within a state,” or a separate, self-directed, and self-reverential security establishment disconnected from the balance of public values and broad standards can emerge and weaken the public’s sense of freedom from fear. There is no greater threat to that freedom than impunity of those in authority. Where police brutality and other criminal actions by agents of the state go unpunished, where there is state protection that affords impunity for some, freedom from fear is most likely to erode.

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Freedom from fear is intimately connected with freedom of expression. Public discourse can, at times, become strained, as different elements within a society, such as its political, business, and labour leaders, and those representing its various religious and minority groups, seek do defend their interests. However, this kind of debate does not weaken freedom from fear. The intensity of that debate, the openness of the disagreements, the variety of forums that hold them, their amplification by the media, may in fact strengthen freedom from fear. The intensity of the debate is a reflection of an absence of fear. The absence of fear enriches the debate, a climate that sustains freedom itself.

When, after the collapse of the Soviet Union and Ukraine’s success in securing its independence from Russia, the Ukrainian government sought to strengthen the democratic capacity of the country, outside groups (for example, the Building Democracy Project in the School of Policy Studies at Queen’s University, which was aided by CIDA — the Canadian International Development Agency — in co-operation with the Open Society Foundation) undertook efforts with Ukrainian authorities in a host of ways to build that capacity. Work took place with political-science and history teachers on the fundamental tenets of open democracy; with political parties on the basics of organization, planning, policy, and nominative campaigning in an open democracy; and with the police so that they could understand that open debate during an election campaign was not justification to arrest opponents of the government. And while repressive, anti-democratic traditions, based greatly on the use of fear and all its tactical offshoots, could not, after sixty years, be eradicated in one election, the fact that the police and the army stood by and allowed the thousands of young people and others who hit the streets in 2004, as part of the Orange Revolution, to demonstrate and stand their ground (against a stolen election) indicated what progress against fear can look like. The subsequent jailing of a prominent player in the Orange Revolution, Yulia Tymoshenko, speaks just as eloquently of how the forces of fear and repression are never far from the main square and stand always waiting to deploy. Old habits amongst authoritarians do not die easily — not in Russia, not in China, and not in Syria, Iran, or North Korea. So “freedom from fear” is never something that is forever free. A forceful, continuing definition of that freedom — and an active, engaged, and uncompromising defence of it — matters greatly.

The economic collapse in the 1930s that inexorably led to aggression, extremism, racism, and, ultimately, a catastrophic war in which millions perished, both civilian and military, still informs our duties and responsibilities today. Fear not only comes from the plans of a terrorist cell, the excesses of a police state, or violence within one’s own community. Fear also wins when a sense of economic chaos or embedded system failure produces a strong collapse in the democratic model’s stability and its ability to sustain a sense of hope. Because, when that collapse is threatened, the forces of darkness, dictatorship, and authoritarianism are always close at hand. Some may be on the far right, others on the left; inevitably they view democratic debate, such as that found in Canada’s Parliament, in the U.S. Congress, or in Westminster, as divisive and economically unproductive. And if the economic circumstances for middle-income and low-income citizens deteriorate, showing little hope of improvement, while the context for the very wealthy is unchanged, the fear of economic loss becomes deeply problematic.

Typical media stories (they are just doing their job) highlight such things as youth unemployment, the compression of the middle class, the instability of the financial system, and the widespread public distrust of government and its motivations and integrity. Such stories, which many see as cynical, breed a range of responses and policy options in most countries. Political dissent and a clamouring for a change of government are one set of understandable and not always unconstructive options. The fact that these are options shows that people have some measure of choice over the context in which they live their lives.

But there is a tipping point, when financial uncertainty, government controversy, and external economic pressures combine to produce new sources of fear, ones that can dilute the freedom from fear that is so essential to any architecture of civility, opportunity, peace, and progress. For example, in challenging economic times, when financial institutions are on shakier ground than usual and the demand for and price of commodities is depressed, foreign governments (like China) seeking to increase their international resource base can contribute unwittingly to a sense of fear in target countries. This heightened sense of economic vulnerability — not acute or intense — steadily builds and contributes to public angst about exposure to forces beyond anyone’s control. When the acquiring state enterprises are owned by countries where human rights, the rule of law, democracy, and due process are, at best, emergent, or at worst, a cruel charade, this sense of vulnerability is intensified. Russian and Chinese companies often fall on this list.

Freedom from fear requires freedom from dominance by foreign repressive regimes and their economic and political interests, which rarely differ from each other in one-party state, government-owned enterprises. Democracies and open economies that embrace free trade, democratic government, and the largely unlimited movement of people, goods, capital, and ideas find addressing these kinds of foreign investment by state enterprises challenging. But the extreme reactions these kinds of investments provoke, dismissing them as just another kind of business transaction, or declaring them to be always impermissible, are too simplistic. Engagement with non-democratic economic players is not wrong; complete submission to their unique cultural and political prejudices when they are opposed to your own — all in the name of business — is never right. For freedom from fear to flourish in a nation, there must be a balance between economic and trade priorities and social and political considerations in its public policy. Processes that are open and rational, in which these sorts of deals are assessed against a realistic analysis of the broad public interest, are vital to managing these pressures.

Back in 1990, Aung Sang Suu Kyi delivered what is widely known as her “Freedom from Fear” speech. She was eloquent about how corruption and fear interconnect.