14 Aug 2014 | News and features, United Kingdom
Top flight football is back! Back! BACK! After an agonising entire month since the World Cup Final with nothing to sustain people but the made-up soccer tournaments designed to draw American crowds, and the Commonwealth Games, and the England India cricket tests, the people of Britain can relax, and fall trustingly into the loving arms of the Premiership.
Once more, it will be deemed legitimate to spend Saturday afternoons in a pub, watching other men watching football; once more we can spend Saturday nights complaining about Mark Lawrenson and Alan Shearer’s dull observations on Match of the Day; once more Arsenal will be a little disappointing.
I say “once more” but of course the football never really ends, it just sleeps for a few weeks every year. But now it is awake.
At this point, fans of leagues that are not the premiership will be pointing out that their leagues started last weekend, and they’re right.
And what was the main story from the (non-Premiership) Football League this week? The news that Millwall fans had upset their Leeds United rivals with a new chants about serial sexual abuser Jimmy Savile, a Leeds native. Not to exactly repeat it, but the chant essentially suggested that Leeds fans may be the offspring of Savile.
Milwall’s manager Ian Holloway criticised his own fans, saying: “Let’s stop and think about what [Savile] has actually done. That’s the most important thing and we don’t see that. ‘Oh, it is a bit of banter’. It isn’t funny, is it? I don’t think so.”
Now clearly, some Millwall fans did find this funny. Or they found the idea of offending Leeds fans funny. Because offending the opposition has for a long time, been part of going to football.
My home team, Cork City, who play in Ireland’s Airtricity League, have a pretty good relationship with Derry City. Derry, despite being based in Northern Ireland, play in the Republic’s league. Their fans are mostly nationalist rather than Unionist, and they are a widely respected group , admired for travelling long distances in large numbers to support their team, and making a lot of noise when they get there.
In spite of all this admiration, Cork fans greet Derry fans, who have literally travelled the length of the country, with the chant “What’s it like to have a Queen?” a dig at the fact that Derry fans live in the United Kingdom whether they like it or not.
It’s certainly calculated to offend, but that is the point of that much-vilified concept, “banter”. It’s part of the contest, complementing the action on the pitch (sometimes bettering it during dull games).
Football banter (or, in modern usage, “bants” or even “#bantz”), can range from the strange to the self-deprecating to the plain awful. When tiny Barnsley FC had a brief glimpse of top-division glory in the 96-97 season, they would sing “Barnsley – it’s just like watching Brazil” (it wasn’t). Fans of lower league Gillingham became famous in the late 90s for a slightly lewd song involving celery, that had absolutely nothing to do with football or Gillingham.
Chelsea fans, or anyone who’s ever been on a District Line underground train on the day of a Chelsea home game, will know the interminable tale of the man (men) who went to mow a meadow.
That’s the more innocent end of things.
Inevitably, things do not stay so innocent.
There’s references to incidents’ in rival clubs’ histories (“who’s that lying on the runway…” referring to the 1958 Munich Air Disaster that killed several Manchester United players), there’s the digs at perceived poverty (“In your Liverpool slums” or, as used happen in the 1980s, fans from southern English teams chanting “Unemployed, unemployed, unemployed” at Northerners. There’s the historical rivalries (Rangers fans singing “The Famine’s Over, Why Don’t You Go Home” at Celtic’s Irish-identifying supporters).
Personal abuse towards players, particularly those regarded as turncoats, can turn vicious: racist, homophobic, and ableist in nature. Rangers goalkeeper Andy Goram, having admitted to mental illness, was subjected to the chant “There’s only two Andy Gorams”. One chant directed at England defender Sol Campbell, who moved from Tottenham Hotspur to north London rivals Arsenal, managed to pack pretty much every modern taboo into three lines.
In the countries of Europe, South America and Africa where it is the majority participation sport, its supporters are not especially worried about upholding the image of the game. Supporters of minority sports will be aware of the constant feeling that one has to talk up your pastime not just as more entertaining, but more edifying than other sports in order to justify your devotion. Hence constant appeals to the spirit of cricket, and the inherent sportsmanship of rugby union (at least when players aren’t gouging each others eyes out).
Football doesn’t have this problem. It doesn’t have to convince anyone of anything. It has the most fans, therefore it is the best sport. Even in countries such as Ireland where actual match attendances are low, the omnipresence of English (and increasingly Spanish) football means fans don’t feel obliged to impress anyone. With that assurance comes a certain cockiness: to adapt the popular chant: “We are football, we’ll do what we want”. Or perhaps “[Everyone] likes us, [so] we don’t [have to] care”.
The game is played to different rules in the soccer stands.
The question is what, if anything, should be done about this. The Scottish government’s attempt to silence sectarian singing at Rangers vs Celtic “Old Firm” games, the Sectarianism At Football Act, ended up in the ludicrous situation of a Partick Thistle fan being arrested for singing a song lampooning the Catholic vs Protestant posturing of the two big Glasgow clubs (“Fuck your Pope and Fuck Your Queen”). The law has been derided as “mince” by one senior sheriff, and the opposition Labour party has vowed to scrap it should they win the next Scottish election.
Meanwhile, south of the border, attempts to stop footballer supporters using the word “Yid” ran into trouble due to the fact that fans of Tottenham – a club with strong Jewish self-identification – quite liked using the word, having re-appropriated the term. It did not help that the campaign was led by writer David Baddiel, himself Jewish, but more importantly in that argument, a Chelsea fan.
Must anything be done at all? I think (and I speak only for myself) that it is reasonable for footballers to be able to go about their working life – i.e. the 90 minutes on the pitch, without being subjected to racial or homophobic abuse, certainly not from players and not from fans either.
But this is only a call to, at most, uphold the law as it stands. Football clubs are private entities that can make their own rules, but they should be wary of cracking down on the songs, the slights, and yes, the top, classic, legendary banter that make football what it is.
As for the idea of specific football laws, as in Scotland? As the song goes: No, nay, never.
This article was posted on August 14, 2014 at indexoncensorship.org
13 Aug 2014 | Azerbaijan, Azerbaijan Letters, Campaigns, Statements
Mr Thorbjørn Jagland
Secretary General of the Council of Europe
67075 Strasbourg Cedex
France
Fax: +33 3 88 41 27 99
Email: [email protected]
13 August 2014
Re: Wave of repression in Azerbaijan
Dear Secretary General,
We are writing to you to express our concern and disappointment with your 11 August 2014 public statement, following your agreement with President Ilham Aliyev that a joint Committee between the Presidential Administration and representatives of the civil society, established in 2005, would be re-convened. You called this initiative “a good opportunity to go through the charges brought against the human rights defenders and to re-launch dialogue between the authorities and civil society.”
This announcement comes in the midst of an “unprecedented repression against civil society leaders in Azerbaijan.”[1]
Just in the last days many indispensible voices were indeed arrested in an attempt to silence them: a well-known and widely respected human rights defender Rasul Jafarov[2]; human rights defenders Leyla Yunus, a Chevalier of the National Order of the Legion of Honour as a tribute for her longstanding work promoting human rights; and human rights lawyer Intigam Aliyev, “a man who many refer to as ‘müəllim’, or ‘teacher’ – an honorific that in Azerbaijan bestows the utmost respect, who […] taught, educated, trained, and provided guidance to Azerbaijan’s newest generation of human rights defenders.”[3] Intigam Aliyev is also engaged as a regional tutor in the Human Rights Education for Legal Professionals (HELP) programme of the Council of Europe.
This new wave of repression comes after the sentencing on 26 May of Anar Mammadli and Bashir Suleymanli to respectively 5 years and 6 months and 3 years and 6 months imprisonment. Those two human rights defenders are the leaders of the only independent group monitoring elections in Azerbaijan. At the same time, 8 activists of NIDA, a non-governmental youth movement, were convicted on charges of hooliganism, possessing drugs and explosives as well as intent to cause public disorder. On Friday, 4 July, another NIDA activist, Ömar Mammadov was sentenced to 5 years imprisonment on charges of drug possession with the aim of selling it.
We are disappointed that you have abstained from any public comment on the charges against the human rights defenders. The Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights considers the charges against Rasul Jafarov and the travel ban against Emin Huseynov as “another disturbing illustration of how human rights defenders in Azerbaijan are systematically threatened with an instrumental use of criminal suits.”[4] In her statement issued on 3 August 2014,[5] the rapporteur on human rights defenders of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe Mailis Reps denounced Leyla Yunus’ arrest and detention and expressed “concern for the true motivation underlying the charges levied against her,” calling the arrest “another example of the unrelenting suppression of independent voices and crackdown on civil society in the country. This is an unacceptable violation of Azerbaijan’s duties as a member of the Council of Europe.”
We are surprised that you did not publicly call for the release of the detained human rights defenders, at least from the pre-trial detention, which is not necessary[6] and presents a risk to the heath condition of Leyla Yunus. Intigam Aliyev and Arif Yunus also have problematic health conditions.
It is unclear to us which committee you refer to, and we understand it is in fact a working group established in 2005 on political prisoners in the country. The people, who have been over the last years working on the issue of political prisoners in the country and on core human rights issues, are now behind bars or left the country for security reasons. The civil society in Azerbaijan has grown in size and developed in professionalism in the last decade, and now includes strong voices for the promotion of human rights, such as the Institute for Reporters’ Freedom and Safety (IRFS), which was sealed whilst you spoke with President Aliyev on 11 August.[7] Who will today choose the representatives of Azerbaijani civil society in that working group?
To launch a dialogue platform in these conditions and without first step by the government, meaning the unconditional and immediate release of human rights defenders, will at best be ephemeral, and might possibly be counterproductive. How will this group operate without the key professional and defenders who are now jailed or detained? There is no need to “go through the charges brought against the human rights defenders”; they just need to be dropped because they are unfounded and unfair, and indeed based on laws, which de facto criminalise the work of human rights defenders. As Secretary General, you indeed give the impression that you endorse policies by which governments can choose their civil society, fostering it with support for loyal voices and repression for critical voices, contrary to the values embodied by the Council of Europe.
Those persecuted and arrested human rights defenders in Azerbaijan are also the ones, which inform and cooperate with institutions of the Council of Europe, including yourself. They have international recognition and wide outreach. In June 2014, when President Aliyev addressed the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, Emin Huseynov, Rasul Jafarov and Intigam Aliyev together organised a side-event in Strasbourg, critical of the Azerbaijani human rights record. This wave of repression is related to Azerbaijan’s chairmanship of the Council of Europe and indeed a reprisal against critical voices cooperating with and reporting to the Council of Europe mechanisms.
This reprisal did not start recently but started with the order to the Human Rights House Azerbaijan to cease its activities in March 2011, following an event organised by HRH Azerbaijan at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe in January 2011.[8]
We believe that your role is to protect and defend Council of Europe institutions, including those cooperating with them. We therefore regret that you have not chosen to use your influence and the power of your office to call for immediate and unconditional release of those human rights defenders and have not condemned their arrest.
As said by the Commissioner in the statement quoted above “by stifling dissent, Azerbaijan is failing to comply with its international obligations which require safeguarding freedom of expression, assembly and association. It is necessary that Azerbaijan reverse the situation. A first step would be to free all those detained because of the views they expressed.”
Sincerely,
Jodie Ginsburg Florian Irminger Adela Pospichalovaon
Index on Censorship Human Rights House Foundation People in Need
For correspondence:
Florian Irminger
Head of Advocacy and HRHF’s Geneva Office
Human Rights House Foundation (HRHF)
Rue de Varembé 1, PO Box 35
1211 Geneva 20
Tel: +41 22 33 22 552
Fax: +41 22 33 22 559
Email: [email protected]
[1] Human Rights House Foundation’s press release of 9 August 2014, available at http://humanrightshouse.org/Articles/20335.html.
[2] More information on that case available at http://humanrightshouse.org/Articles/20306.html.
[3]Article about Intigam Aliyev’s arrest by Giorgi Gogia, Senior Researcher at Human Rights Watch, available at http://www.hrw.org/news/2014/08/08/dispatches-azerbaijan-jails-yet-another-rights-defender.
[4] Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights statement of 7 August 2014, available at http://tinyurl.com/qh6snqc.
[5] Mailis Reps’ statement is available at http://assembly.coe.int/nw/xml/News/News-View-EN.asp?newsid=5153&lang=2&cat=5.
[6] Human rights defenders have been facing travel bans and hence, cannot leave the country, despite the fact that they do not present any risk to society if not detained. Conditions making a pre-trial detention necessary are hence not fulfilled, abiding by article 5 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms.
[7] The visible persecution of IRFS and its leader began on 8 August with a search of its offices. More information available at http://www.indexoncensorship.org/2014/08/azerbaijan-press-freedom-arrest-free-expression-baku/.
[8] More information on the situation of the Human Rights House Azerbaijan available at http://humanrightshouse.org/Articles/20037.html.
13 Aug 2014 | Bulgaria, Mapping Media Freedom, News and features, Politics and Society
Index on Censorship and Osservatorio Balcani e Caucaso are joining forces to map the state of media freedom in Europe. With your participation, we are mapping the violations, threats and limitations that European media professionals, bloggers and citizen journalists face everyday. We are also collecting feedback on what would support journalists in such situations. Help protect media freedom and democracy by contributing to this crowd-sourcing effort.
Bulgarian journalists covering the financial beat can breathe freely as the most controversial parts of the so-called “bank censorship” amendment to the criminal code have been removed by the legal committee of the national assembly.
In July, parliament adopted the amendment on first reading. The text of the draft outlined sentences of two to five years in prison for circulating “false or misleading information” about banks that could “cause panic”.
The amendment was suggested indirectly by the Bulgarian National Bank (BNB) after a series of bank runs involving Bulgaria’s fourth largest credit institution, the Corporate Commercial Bank (CCB) and later an unrelated run involving financial institution the First Investment Bank (FIB).
It is still unclear who was behind these incidents. The run against CCB was likely caused by disagreements between media tycoon Delyan Peevski, one of the CCB’s large depositors and his old friend, Tsvetan Vasilev, the owner of CCB. Peevski started to remove funds, sparking a bank run which undermined the bank’s liquidity.
In the FIB case, three people have been arrested. They are suspected of spreading rumours about the imminent bankruptcy of FIB via emails and short text messages to the bank’s clients. This stirred mass panic, as people rushed to withdraw their money from the bank: in a few hours, BGN 800 million (£327 million) were withdrawn.
“Society is very sensitive especially to issues that affect the financial and banking stability as the memory of the banking crisis in 1996-1997 is still fresh,” said Petya Stoyanova, a financial and banking journalist from Bulgaria. During that crisis, 14 Bulgarian banks collapsed.
The memory of the mid-1990s financial crisis is the main reason behind the low public confidence in the Bulgarian banking system, which can easily be moved to panic. As a response, BNB proposed an amendment to the criminal code on 1 July stating that those who “disseminate misleading or untrue information on a bank or a financial institution that could create panic among the population, be punished with five to 10 years of imprisonment”.
BNB also proposed a fine ranging between BGN 5,000 and BGN 10,000 (£4,061) to be imposed in such cases. People causing significant damage or those having received significant illegal revenues through the aforementioned activities would be punished the same way.
According to Stoyanova, the proposals have been criticised by politicians and lawyers because of its vague language which, in a broad interpretation, could lead to a conviction for dissemination of any information related to the banking sector, even if it is not false or misleading.
After the first reading of the amendment in parliament, members of the legal committee applied a number of corrections. The revised amendment removes the danger of censorship by tightening up the language, which now refers to disseminating “false” banking information. While the potential fines for those spreading such information were increased, the possibility of prison has been eliminated.
The banking scandals hinted at the dimensions of backstage political machinations in Bulgaria. Stoyanova believes responsibility for malicious behaviour should have a place in future changes to the criminal code. Future lawmakers, she said, should not be allowed to quickly alter laws in violation of rules and best legislative practices, without public discussion.
The second reading of the amendment will be left to the next national assembly, as parliamentary elections will be held on 5 October.
More reports from Bulgaria via mediafreedom.ushahidi.com
Election law amendment could limit press freedom
Attacker sprays substance in Bulgarian sports journalist’s face
Bulgarian journalist beaten by football fans
Newspaper reporters attacked, threatened in Bulgaria’s city of Plovdiv
Arson Attack Against Bulgarian Journalist Genka Shikerova
This article was posted on 13 August 2014 at indexoncensorship.org
12 Aug 2014 | Israel, News and features, Palestine, Politics and Society
Khaled Hamad was killed while reporting on the Gaza conflict.
News coverage of the ongoing Gaza conflict would be infinitely poorer without local journalists, but it’s clear that international media needs to show their commitment by providing Palestinian reporters and fixers with extra support.
Images of bloodied press vests have become a dark motif of the latest Gaza war. One of the most striking came from 22-year-old photographer Rami Rayan, killed during the shelling of a market in the Shujayah district on the 30 July. The same attack also killed journalist Sameh al-Aryan, aged 26. Before this came the pictures of Khaled Hamed, pulled from the rubble of Shujayah with his broken video camera at his side on the 20 July. In total, 13 Palestinian journalists have been killed in over a month of fighting, according to the International Federation of Journalists.
An earlier statement by the IFJ also listed the names of seven journalists who had been injured when they were struck by shrapnel, with six of these injuries occurring while the journalists were in the field. The seventh was injured when her house was destroyed by an Israeli bombardment.
A journalist’s bullet-proof vest does more than just physically protect the wearer – the “PRESS” marking it is designed to show that they are never a legitimate target. This should stand apart from even the high civilian death toll of this war. Marking oneself as a journalist is to appeal to the so-called “rules of engagement”, that attacking journalists or anywhere where there may be journalists, is a breach of a code that has, until now, lasted since journalists first took to the battlefields to report.
In Gaza, this code has sadly long since worn thin. Hamid Shehab was killed when his parked car was struck by a rocket outside his house on the 9 July. According to the IFJ, his car was “clearly marked as a press vehicle”.
There is no doubt that covering this war has taken its toll on every journalist that has operated in Gaza since fighting began on the 8 July. But sadly, the body count suggests that the dangers for Palestinian media workers covering their homeland in a time of crisis, and those for international journalists who enter to cover the war, are distinctly different. Palestinian media workers include those working for international or local outlets, as well as those working as fixers for international media. The role of a fixer is one that is often overlooked – especially in terms of safety.
In a statement on the 6 August, the Israeli Government Press Office (GPO) stated that they had issued accreditation to 705 journalists from over 42 countries. This is not necessarily the number of journalists who entered Gaza to cover the war, but a GPO card is needed to do so. If even half of this number succeeded to enter and leave Gaza without coming to any harm, they still compare favourably to the numbers of Palestinian media workers who have been harmed.
The Israeli Defense Force (IDF) have taken a certain amount of care to protect international journalists operating on the ground in Gaza, at one point relocating them to two hotels in the strip in order to provide a level of protection during a period of particularly heavy shelling. Although fixers or other Palestinian media workers were free to shelter alongside the international press in the lobby of these hotels, the journey alone may have proved lethal. Add to this that Gazan journalists are unlikely to choose to leave their families at home to suffer heavy shelling while they themselves enjoy this nominal protection.
Even with the IDF awareness of media workers the offices of Al Aqsa TV and Radio, Wattan Radio and the National Media agency were destroyed, and workers at Al Jazeera’s office in Gaza city were forced to evacuate following “warning shots” fired at the building. This occurred days after Al Jazeera was threatened by Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, who stated at a press conference on 21 July that the foreign ministry was taking steps to investigate the network, with “the intent of not allowing it to broadcast anymore from Israel”.
A tentative ceasefire is currently allowing some respite on the ground in Gaza. But many of the journalists who have left the strip have said that this is not the last war they expect to cover there. Sadly, this is also not the first time that attacks on media outlets have been part of wider attacks on Gaza.
The deaths of Palestinian journalists was also a feature of the 2012 war, when three journalists were killed. One of the most hotly-debated points of this latest bout of destruction has been what constitutes a “legitimate target”. There is one lesson that must stand apart from this discussion: no journalist should ever be included in that category.
The following are statements from fixers and journalists who have been involved in covering Gaza.
In the case of Gaza, nobody is safe. As a fixer I am more exposed to dangers because of continuous movement to the “hot zones”. Last Friday, during the ceasefire, I was 100m away from the front line with the Israeli army in Beit Hanoun. I don’t have equipment for protecting myself like a flak jacket or helmet – my movement from my house to the hotels [where journalists stay] adds more risk. We depend on marking our car with words like TV, hoping that the Israelis will avoid us. What normally privileges foreign journalists over local ones is their financial capabilities.”
— Amjed Tantish is from Beit Lahia, in the north Gaza strip.
Moving around under constant shelling, I wasn’t sure if I would make it back home. I couldn’t get a bulletproof vest, as they are so expensive and I’m a freelancer – I can’t afford it. But also, there is no one who would volunteer to bring one into Gaza from Jerusalem for me. Working without it is risky though. Another danger to Palestinians is that they can be accused of being pro-Israeli. Internationals can come and go, but Palestinians will point fingers at me if I write something they don’t like. I wish that there was an organization that was protecting Palestinian journalists – but as a freelancer, I am responsible for my life. International outlets should take into account that the dangers faced by the local journalists they hire may be quite different – but that should apply to all conflict zones, not just Gaza.”
— Abeer Ayyoub, freelance journalist, Gaza City.
I am usually lucky to find an available flak jacket. Usually I don’t wear protective gear- I would like to buy some, but they are expensive and hard to get during wartime. Instead, I try and assess whether the situation is safe enough to be in, and if it seems too dangerous, I leave. I call ahead to people in the area to see if it’s safe, to find out what the safest route is and to coordinate with people on the ground. For sure, I could get killed. I feel like I could lose everything sometimes. But it’s my work, it’s what I do to get the message out to the world. Some of the people I work with appreciate the work and the risk, but 80 percent don’t care about the risks we take. Most people don’t know about what we do for them. They don’t think about us dying for a picture they sell for $50.”
— Mohammed Rajab, a fixer based in Gaza City.
Danger in this war is everywhere- nowhere is safe. You could survive the hardest hit places, and die in places you think are the safest. I thought that heading to church to do story on displaced families is safe. The next day, it was bombed. Palestinian journalists face different dangers to international journalists – there is a form of discrimination among Gaza-based news agencies. Local staff don’t dare to speak out on this, but if there is a bulletproof car, then international staff have priority to drive it. International journalists are protected by insurance and an affiliation to international and national journalists unions. This gives them protection and insurances if something goes wrong. In Gaza, if a journalist is killed, media outlets cannot care less about their families. Some news agencies know Palestinian journalists well enough in crises, but after the war ends, they dump them. It’s hard for journalists to make themselves indispensible. The outlets I have freelanced for do understand the limitations – but I’ve heard of others that seem to think you could get close enough to danger to hold a rocket in your hands, i.e. get exclusive shots. A friend of mine was injured and his outlet dumped him to find someone new, exactly like you do with car spare parts.”
— Mohammed Omer, a freelance journalist based in Rafah
Israeli forces will open fire on Palestinians, but not internationals. Internationals are just less likely to be shot at – I make sure I wear a bulletproof vest and a helmet, and make sure that I’m clearly marked as press. We need this protective gear. The vest and helmet cost me $1000- and there is no compensation for hazards, even when I work for international media outlets. If you are a Palestinian national that means no insurance either. Foreign journalists at least have the chance of getting their media outlets to cover their life insurance or provide compensation.”
— Yousef Al-Helou, a journalist who covered the two previous wars in Gaza, currently in London
This article was published on August 12, 2014 at indexoncensorship.org
