18 Apr 2013 | United Kingdom
The Queen’s Speech is set to take place on 8 May this year, and according to UK-based campaigning group 38 Degrees, Home Secretary Theresa May is still pushing for the controversial Communications Data Bill to go through.
The £1.8 million plan — known as “the Snooper’s Charter” by opponents — would require that all telecommunications companies monitor the phone, e-mail, and web usage of citizens. Index has previously called the draft bill “unacceptable”, and said last year that “the decisions the UK Parliament takes on this bill will impact on human rights both in the UK and beyond, not least in authoritarian states.”
Write to your MP to and let them know that the bill should be dropped.
18 Apr 2013 | Brazil, Politics and Society
A photojournalist was gunned down on 14 April in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais. Photographer Walgney Assis Carvalho was shot in the back during a day spent fishing in the town of Coronel Fabriciano.
According to the police, Carvalho was accosted by a hooded man on a motorcycle who shot him several times before fleeing. The crime has been linked to the killing of a radio presenter last March.
Police have not confirmed the cause of the crime. However, state deputy Durval Ângelo, who is president of the Human Rights Committee for Minas Gerais’s Legislative Assembly, posted on Twitter that the photographer had information about the shooting of radio presenter Rodrigo Neto, who was killed in the town of Ipatinga on 8 March.
Although Neto’s murder remains unsolved, state deputy Ângelo claims the presenter had given Carvalho information about policemen involved in crimes on the Ipatinga area. The case is still being investigated by police.
Walgney Carvalho worked freelance for 5 years at Vale do Aço’s Police desk. Rodrigo Neto had started working on the same newspaper one week before getting killed.
Both Brazil’s National Newspapers Association and the Brazilian Association of Investigative Journalism issued statements denouncing the photographer’s killing.
17 Apr 2013 | Newswire
This is a statement from the Libel Reform Campaign
How can it be right that companies delivering public services can’t be criticised by citizens?
At a debate in the House of Commons on Tuesday 16 April 2013 the Government rejected attempts to reform the libel laws to limit companies’ ability to use sue individuals. The reform would have asked companies to show they had been harmed before they would be allowed to take it case. It would also have put the Derbyshire principle, which prevents public bodies from suing individuals for libel into law, and would have extended this principle to private companies performing public functions. Labour pushed the Government on this clause and forced a vote which the Government won 298 to 230.
But Minister for Justice Helen Grant MP said the Government would “actively consider” amendments to the Defamation Bill that would require corporations to show financial loss before they can sue for libel, following pressure from Shadow Minister for Justice Sadiq Khan MP. The Defamation Bill will be debated in the House of Lords on Tuesday 23 April.
Kirsty Hughes, Chief Executive, Index on Censorship: “It is a very unwelcome blot on an important bill that the Government voted to allow corporations to continue to pressurise and sue in ways that chill free speech”
Tracey Brown, Sense About Science: “We are pleased that so many MPs recognise the need for corporations to show actual financial harm and grateful to the MPs who worked for this. While it is deeply disappointing that the corporations’ clause has been removed, their efforts have at least led the Government to concede that this should be revisited in the Lords. It cannot be right that the court is not asked to consider whether companies have faced loss, or are likely to, before a case can go ahead. It cannot be right that citizens can’t criticise delivery of public services whether by private companies or by the Government.”
Jo Glanville, Director, English PEN: “The Government needs to do more than “actively consider” amendments. Ministers in the House of Lords should now table an early amendment, requiring corporations to show financial loss before they sue. We’re depending on the Lords now to deliver the reform that all the parties signed up to. It’s essential that companies are no longer allowed to exploit libel law to bully whistleblowers into silence. This has always been a key demand for the campaign.”
Simon Singh, defendant in British Chiropractic Association v Singh: “The majority of the cases that galvanized public support for libel reform involved corporations, so the final Defamation Bill must include a clause that limits the powers for corporations to bully their critics into silence. The proposal on the table is reasonable, modest and fair. Ignoring this proposal on corporations would leave the door open to further abuses of libel law by those who want to block the public’s access to information concerning everything from consumer issues to medical treatments.”
17 Apr 2013 | Russia
Self-censorship has poisoned Russian media, art and other spheres.
In the past few years, criminal prosecution of artists and new laws have made it clear for those who criticise the Kremlin or Russian Orthodox Church in their creative work, will face consequences for portraying either of these institutions negatively.
A Russian artist came under fire for depicting members of Pussy Riot as religious icons
Just last week, the State Duma passed two controversial laws in the first hearing. One forbids obscene language in movies, books, TV, and radio during mass public events. The other stipulates criminal punishment — including five years in prison — for “insulting believers’ feelings”. Both laws, as far as human rights activists are concerned, limit artists’ freedom of expression, and encourage self-censorship.
Index spoke to three notable artists to find out how the art community deals with self-censorship, and the ever-increasing restrictions on freedom of expression in Russia.
Artyom Loskutov, an artist from Novosibirsk, is famous for holding “monstrations” — flash mobs with absurd slogans like “Tanya, don’t cry” and “Who’s there?”. In 2009, he was arrested on drug possession charges, but he claims that the marijuana was planted on him by police. A blood test proved that he had not taken any drugs, and his fingerprints were not found on the package. Three years on, he faced three administrative cases, and paid a 1000 rouble fine for creating icon-like images of Pussy Riot members Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alekhina and placing them on billboards. He was accused of insulting believers. He is currently appealing the court ruling in the European Court of Human Rights.
The artist told Index that the cases against him are acts of censorship, but vows to remain defiant and continue with his work:
The icons idea concerned two kinds of mothers: one mother is honoured as a saint, the two others — Tolokonnikova and Alekhina — were thrown in prison. The authorities, including the court, are becoming more insane, and one wouldn’t want to cause persecutions. But I can’t say that given that, I refuse to implement any of my plots. In the 90s my generation felt that we had nothing, except free speech, and all the 2000s attempts to take it away meet nothing but incomprehension
In 2010, The prosecutor’s office in Moscow’s Bassmany district examined the works of Moscow-based artist Lena Hades, “Chimera of Mysterious Russian Soul” and “Welcome to Russia”. Russian nationalists appealed to the authorities claiming these paintings insult Russians. The case did not go to court, but Hades told Index that Russian galleries feared exhibiting her paintings after the incident.
“Galleries are afraid of financial sanctions,” Hades says, “Although 95 per cent of my paintings are about philosophy rather than about social events, they are only exhibited in Tretyakov Gallery and Moscow Museum of Modern Art”.
Despite reduced chances of her work being exhibited, Hades still painted Pussy Riot’s members, and went on a 25-day hunger strike against their prosecution. The artist is no fan of self-censorship, even if it comes at a cost. According to her, no artist that responds to reality can accept self-censorship:
This is not courage, this is aristocratic luxury of doing what you want. Self-censorship is more harmful for a modern Russian artist than censorship. He is frightened of scaring away galleries and buyers and prefers to paint landscapes with cows — anything far enough from real social life
Artist Boris Zhutovsky has a long-standing relationship with censorship. In 1962, he was slammed by then Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, who banned work by Zhutovsky and his colleagues. For several years following the incident, the artist faced difficulties in finding employment, and his work was not exhibited in the USSR.
Zhutovsky continues to court controversy today: in the past few years he has painted the trials of Russia’s most well-known political prisoners, businessmen Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev, who were first convicted in 2005. He explained Russia’s culture of self-censorship to Index:
Self-censorship is based on fear, and the amplitude of this fear has changed throughout my life. In the times of Stalin, it was the fear of the Gulag and execution. In the times of Khruschev it was the fear of loosing a job or a country – a person could be forced to leave the Soviet Union. After Perestroika the fear shrank, and now the fear which nourishes self-censorship is the fear to anger your boss
He is optimistic that a younger generation of artists will not accept self-censorship as a standard, as the the era of Putin is far from that of Stalin, but only time will tell.
