19 May 2014 | News and features, Politics and Society, Religion and Culture, South Africa
Caster Semenya and Oscar Pistorius in 2012 (Photos: Jordi Matas / Demotix)
Caster Semenya carried the South African flag at the opening ceremony of the 2012 London Olympic Games; Oscar Pistorius waved it at the closing. Sandwiched between them was one medal, Semenya’s silver, one story of triumph over adversity, Pistorius, who is disabled after having both his legs amputated as a child ran with able-bodied athletes and proof that the country known as the Rainbow Nation does have some pots of gold.
Not even two years have passed since then and both flag-bearers have made the news for something other than sport. Pistorius has been on trial for the murder of his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp, who was shot dead on February 14, 2013 while Semenya’s lovelife has come under scrutiny. For both, the glory has turned into an uncomfortable glare with the spotlight shone on their most intimate moments.
The Pistorius trial is a first for South Africa because it has been covered on television in full. All proceedings have been broadcast on a specially-created channel on the satellite service DSTV although witnesses could choose if they wanted to be filmed while giving testimony. After the live feed, the focus would shift to a dissection and analysis of the day in court.
On May 14, statistics revealed the Oscar Pistorius Trial TV Channel was the fourth most watched channel on pay-television in South Africa. It is also the most successful pay TV channel ever launched in the country’s history, employs 180 freelance producers, reporters, researchers and presenters and has attracted audiences at all times of the day, even the traditionally quiet period in the mid-morning and mid-afternoon.
The success of the channel has also led to speculation the upcoming murder trial of Shrien Dewani, the Bristol-based businessman who was extradited to face charges of plotting the hijacking and shooting of his wife, Anni while on honeymoon in Cape Town in 2010, will be televised in the same fashion. South Africans, who live in a country where three women are killed every day by their partners, have shown an appetite for courtroom drama.
During the Pistorius trial viewers were able to watch the athlete retch into a bucket as he heard testimony about the damage the four bullets he shot at Steenkamp caused, to hear him cry on the stand when shown a picture of her bullet-hit head and observe how the legal process takes place. It has even given coverage to the trial in the courtroom next door where a man, Thato Kutumela was convicted of killing his girlfriend Zanele Khumalo, which would otherwise not have made the news at all.
The Pistorius trial has already had one postponement, a two-week adjournment to accommodate for public holidays over the Easter period, but it is now set for a much lengthier one. Pistorius will spend 30 days as an outpatient undergoing psychological evaluation. A psychiatrist called by Pistorius’ defence team testified that he suffered from generalised anxiety disorder from a young age which could have diminished his capacity when he shot Steenkamp.
While Semenya’s mental state has not had reason to be examined, another aspect of her private life, her relationship, has. Earlier this week news broke that Semenya had paid lobola – the traditional bride price which is comparable to dowry – for her girlfriend, fellow athlete Violet Raseboya. When newspapers tried to confirm the story, Semenya refused to help them. “I really have nothing to say about that article,” she said. Irrespective of Semenya’s statement, many public comments have been laced with nastiness about Semenya’s sexuality and gender.
These are themes that have stalked the runner since her champagne moment in 2009, when as an 18-year-old she won the 800 metre race at the World Championships in Berlin. Instead of celebrating the gold medal she faced a barrage of accusation over her gender. Fellow competitors accused Semenya of being a man and her appearance, underlined by her short hair, strong biceps and washboard abdominal muscles, did not help that.
She was required to have her gender tested amid a wave of protests that the procedure was invasive. The results were never made public although it was revealed that she had neither a womb nor ovaries and high levels of testosterone. A year later, the International Association of Athletics Federations cleared Semenya to compete against other women but the stereotype remained.
With the spectre of the tests hanging over her and because Semenya did not look typically feminine, she was thought of as something “other.” The foregone conclusion was that she was homosexual and when media reports unveiled a girlfriend, through Drum magazine which used Facebook pictures of Semenya and Raseboya, there was a collective nodding of heads and growing of stigma.
Being black and lesbian is not easy anywhere in Africa, and illegal in some parts. Sisande Msekele, writing in Curve magazine explained. “In many black cultures being a lesbian is associated with witchcraft. Coming out as a black lesbian is to risk being called a witch, demon possessed, raped, disowned and killed.”
Semenya, who is a public figure, may not face the same dangers from her community and the close inspection of her private life will be inescapable but not illegal. Same sex marriages have been legally recognised in South Africa since December 2006.
This article was published on May 19, 2014 at indexoncensorship.org
16 May 2014 | News and features, Turkey
Protesters hold a vigil in Istanbul. (Photo: Nurcan Volkan / Demotix)
On the 13th of May the Soma mining disaster caused by carbon monoxide poisoning left over 230 dead. Writing this from afar, sadly there is an excessive amount of police brutality being applied to the protesters who were simply expressing their sadness and fury.
There were arrests. The most painful of all was that there were relatives of the deceased among the people who were detained. This time it wasn’t the freedom of speech that was taken away. It was the freedom to mourn.
While dreaming of awaking each morning to sunlight, there were those who awakened to a coal black. Those, who sacrificed saluting the day with sunlight and nurtured their hopes in a coal black to bring home food and to prepare a future for their children… didn’t, couldn’t… their hopes buried in coal black…
One can struggle for anything, anywhere, in any condition. As long as one breathes… but what if coal black stopped one from breathing? Children left behind without a father, women left behind without a husband, sisters left behind without a brother, mothers and fathers left behind without a son…
the sound of pain has never been filled with this much fury, fury has never turned so bitter… death has never come this blatantly…
The reasoning that easily ignores safety for the sake of more production at a lower cost per ton, causes murders. The disaster in Soma is not an accident. For the sake of mining coal for a thermal plant to produce electricity, our workers have been buried in pitch darkness so that we may be illuminated.
When lust for power and potency takes place of conscience…
When power is built upon fear…
Those, who are out of breath because of coal black, are of no worth
Those, who die at a very young age, are of no worth
Child labor, is of no worth
Freedom of speech is of no worth
Freedom of expression, is of no worth
Trying to express your feelings is of no worth
Trying to put your fury into words is of no worth
The humanitarian values are of no worth
What is of worth is, justifying those, who says “these are usual things”
What is of worth is silencing those, who show resistance
What is of worth is shutting up those, who object
What is of worth is controlling the media
What is of worth is ignoring the facts
What is of worth censoring
What is of worth is banning
What is of worth beating up
What is of worth is submissiveness
What is of worth becomes obedience
Without questioning, at the cost of lives
Brutality of those who are lacking pain empathy…
The hatred and brutality of mercilessness…
And amidst all these, the sensibility of an injured miner, with his coal black face asking in the ambulance “shall I take my boots off? Don’t want to dirty the stretcher.”
And painfully realising that this mercilessness has even taken away your words…
This article was posted on May 16, 2014 at indexoncensorship.org
16 May 2014 | News and features, Religion and Culture, Russia
In September last year Vladimir Putin spoke at the Valdai Conference, an autumnal landmark in the Russian political calendar. The theme was values and identity and Putin proposed a “return” to morality and spirituality, praising the Russian Orthodox Church, religious tradition and resistance to political correctness.
Fast forward to Spring 2014 – and Putin’s appeal to nostalgic morality has collided with the internet age. “Swearbots” are the latest deployment – an attempt to curtail Russian’s propensity for foul language online and save the bruised fingers of online censors, who have until recently been tasked with checking over five thousand websites “manually” for profanities each day.
But how does this square off with Russian “identity,” which Putin was so keen to discuss? Russians love swearing, as much as they love vodka or not smiling at strangers. Browsing this eyebrow raising online dictionary (optimised for non-Cyrillic readers), demonstrates quite how large the Russian profanity compendium is. As one commentator cheekily told the BBC “If they ban swearing in Russia, all technical progress will grind to a halt …Warehouses will close and the army will lose its combat readiness. For our Motherland, it will be the end.”
In an attempt to police this ocean of foul language, enter the swearbot. It’s a computer programme forecast to go live this autumn, enforcing laws passed last spring. It should automate the rooting out of blasphemous Russians, and take the pressure off the media watchdog Roskomandzor, who were wilting under the pressure of censoring so much filth.
According to a statement from Moscow’s Academy of Science the law applies to “obscene references to the male and female reproductive organs, copulation and women of loose morals, and all words derived from them.”
Although that seems fairly vague, it’s a step up from when the legislation was originally passed last April. At that point, there wasn’t a specific list of forbidden words. It took until December for the the Institute of Russian Language at the Russian Academy of Sciences to confirm four words they believed should be censored – roughly translated as “c*ck” “f*ck” “wh*re” and “c**t”.
Although it’s still not exactly clear which swear words the swearbot will be primed with, those four seem a good start.
The fines for those cussing too strongly come in at 3000 rubles ($85) for an individual, and over $500 for an organisation. The bill, having passed through the parliament’s Lower House, is expected to be fully ratified by July – at which point it will come into law.
The Kremlin also announced that public performances, including cinema, theatre and stand-up comedy, would be subject to the swearing restrictions. Again, fines are in places as well as a three month suspension of business activities for repeat offences.
A trade magazine for comics, Chortle, lamented the news – worrying that comics would feel limited.
Irish stand-up comedian Rory O’Hanlon told Chortle the new rules would “make it difficult, near impossible to perform,” adding that “on the other hand it may push comedy underground and make it more exciting.’
The private TVC TV channel found itself in controversial waters when it decided to beep out the word “hrenovina” (“bullshit”). Eldar Ryazanov called the decision “an act of idiocy”.
The Ministry of Culture is defending its new legislation. “The law is not aggressive; its only aim is to regulate this sphere, so that swearing will have its purpose,” a ministry spokesperson told the Moscow Times. “It will be up to the artistic director to decide what to do with swearing, whether to break the new law or not, we will not interfere in the process.”
With the arrival of the “swearbot” program some analysts say bloggers might be at risk, especially as a law that defines major blogs as mass media is speeding towards approval.
Bloggers are now required to register as publishing entities, in a process similar to registration for TV stations and newspapers. Commentators have warned this will have a chilling effect as bloggers will be licensed to publish, as well as having their addresses logged with the government.
This article was published on May 16, 2014 at indexoncensorship.org
16 May 2014 | Egypt, News and features
A chilling message sent by award-winning photojournalist Mosa’ab El Shamy via his Twitter account on Monday filled his 41,000 online followers with dread. Alerting them that his brother, reporter Abdullah El Shamy, had been “removed from his prison cell and taken to an unknown location”, Mosa’ab added that he was “still trying to find out more.”
Abdullah, who works as a journalist with the Arabic-language Al Jazeera (AJ) Misr Mubasher Channel, has been detained at Cairo’s Torah prison since August. He was arrested outside the Raba’a El Adaweya Mosque in Cairo’s eastern residential neighbourhood of Nasr City while filming the forced dispersal of a sit-in by supporters of toppled Islamist President Mohamed Morsi. At least 600 protesters were killed and thousands more were injured in a single day of violence when security forces stormed the pro-Morsi encampment on August 14 .
Mosa’ab’s Twitter post provoked an angry outcry from hundreds of internet activists who demanded that the Egyptian authorities “immediately disclose the whereabouts of the 26 year-old AJ detainee.” The fact that Abdullah has been on hunger strike since January 27–and had reportedly lost a third of his body weight–further fueled concerns over his disappearance and ailing health.
“If they can let a prisoner on hunger strike like Abdullah El Shamy just vanish in Egypt, what does Foreign Minister Fahmy’s talk of ‘due process’ really mean?” asked Jonathan Moremi, a journalist with the independent Egyptian paper Daily News Egypt.
On a recent visit to the United States, Egypt’s Foreign Minister Nabil Fahmy told US Secretary of State John Kerry that the country’s courts were “independent of the government.” He insisted that a “due process” was allowed in all court cases, leading to “fair decisions” by the judges. His statements came in response to criticism from US officials and international rights groups of an April court decision sentencing 683 Muslim Brotherhood supporters to death for their role in protests last year against the overthrow of Mohamed Morsi. Kerry called the mass death sentences a “dangerous development.” Amnesty International, meanwhile, said “the Egyptian judiciary risked becoming a part of the authorities’ repressive machinery.”
In a blog titled “Where is Abdullah El Shamy?” posted on her website Wednesday, prominent Egyptian blogger Zeinobia said that blood samples taken by Abdullah’s family had shown he was “on the verge of kidney failure.” She also reminded readers that “journalism is not a crime.”
Abdullah is one of 17 journalists currently imprisoned in Egypt and one of four detainees working for the Al Jazeera news network , according to a recent report released by the Committee for the Protection of Journalists , CPJ. Sixty five journalists have been detained since the military takeover of the country in July 2013, the CPJ report adds. Analysts say Abdullah’s situation appears to be “more serious” than that of the other three AJ journalists who have been charged with “fabricating news that harms national security” and “aiding a terror group.” Abdullah has languished in prison for nine months (four months longer than his detained colleagues) and unlike them, he has not been charged thus far. Furthermore, he works for the Al Jazeera Mubasher Misr, a network that has been accused by the Egyptian government of being “a mouthpiece for the Muslim Brotherhood”, designated by Egypt as a terrorist organization last December. The three other AJ detainees work for Mubasher Misr’s sister channel, Al Jazeera English, generally perceived by Egyptians as being “more balanced” and “fair”.
In a letter smuggled out of his prison cell at the end of January, Abdullah described the dire conditions inside Torah prison, saying he was sharing a tiny cell with 16 inmates. Announcing his decision to go on hunger strike “to send a message to intimidated journalists practicing self-censorship” and “exhort them to overcome their fear,” Abdullah expressed a defiant spirit, telling the military junta that nothing would break his will or his dignity. In a video smuggled out of prison , he held the Egyptian authorities responsible should harm befall him. ” I have repeatedly asked for medical attention but to no avail,” he says in the video.
It took a nerve-wracking two days for Mosa’ab to find his “missing” brother. In a second message posted on Twitter on Wednesday, he informed his online friends and fans that Abdullah had been moved to solitary confinement in Tora’s high security “Scorpion Prison”. Abdullah was being punished “for refusing to end his hunger strike and for attracting international attention to his plight,” Mosa’ab said.
Heba Saleh, the Financial Times’ Cairo Correspondent, who visited the three AJE detainees on Wednesday, offered another explanation for Abdullah’s disappearance. She quoted prison authorities as saying that Abdullah was being punished “for a smuggled cell phone found in his possession.”
Meanwhile, the trial of the three Al Jazeera English journalists –Australian journalist Peter Greste, Cairo Bureau Chief Mohamed Fahmy and producer Baher Mohamed–took a turn for the worse on Thursday when Lawyer Farag Fathy– the Defence Attorney representing Greste–quit the case, accusing the international news network of jeopardizing his client’s case.
In a surprise move on Thursday, Fathy announced he was withdrawing from the case, adding that Al Jazeera was using the trial for “promotional purposes.” Fathy’s decision to step down came after the Qatari-hosted news network served a Notice of Dispute against Egypt for breaching a 1999 investment treaty with Qatar, Hayden Cooper , ABC’s Middle East Correspondent reported on Thursday. In an article published online by Australia’s ABC news network, Cooper said Al Jazeera was seeking US Dollars 150 million in compensation from Egypt for losses the media outlet had incurred as a result of the closure of its offices in Cairo, the jamming of its satellites broadcasting in Egypt and the mistreatment of its journalists.
Thursday’s court session made little headway as defence lawyers complained to the judge that the prosecution had asked them to pay an exaggerated fee of 1.2 million Egyptian Pounds to review “the evidence.” Adjourning the trial until May 22, the judge urged the prosecutors to allow the lawyers access to the video footage they claim contains “evidence” against the defendants. He also asked them to state in writing their “desired price” for making the footage accessible to the lawyers.
The new developments threaten to further prolong the case that has dragged on for four and a half months. Defence lawyers and analysts fear the recent turn of events may also threaten the final outcome of the case, resulting in an unfair verdict. The four detained AJ journalists, including Abdullah El Shamy, are caught up in the middle of the Egypt-Qatar political dispute, they say, adding that the case is clearly “political” and hence there is little hope that justice will prevail. Abdullah, who has completed 100 days on hunger strike, may not live long enough to hear the verdict.
This article was posted on May 16, 2014 at indexoncensorship.org
