Since becoming a journalist almost 30 years ago, Pakistani journalist Hamid Mir has had to choose between his life and his career. Mir is now one of Pakistan’s best-known journalists, the host of Geo Television’s flagship political show Capital Talk. He also now lives under armed guard, recovering from yet another assassination attempt, with his family sent abroad for their safety.
“My family is not happy with me,” he told Index. “They think that my life is more important than the profession.” Mir does not agree.
“I think that if I leave Pakistan, it’s like I surrender, and I don’t want to surrender to the Taliban, I don’t want to surrender to the rogue elements in our intelligence agencies and the security agencies. I don’t want to surrender to the enemies of democracy.”
Mir became a journalist after his father, who himself taught journalism at the University of the Punjab, died in mysterious circumstances in 1987. Mir saw his career as a continuation of his father’s fight for democracy, human rights and minorities’ rights in Pakistan.
“When I decided to become a journalist, Pakistan was ruled by a military dictator,” Mir told Index. It was not long after he started at a small paper in Lahore that Mir first met the violent opposition to his reporting that would characterise his career and life.
“When I started facing trouble, I was not aware that I was touching some controversial subject,” he said. “I was only doing my job as a reporter.”
In 1990, Mir broke a story about the military establishment and the then-president trying to remove the democratically elected Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.
“I was kidnapped by the intelligence agency and they tortured me and asked me to tell them who is my source.” Bhutto’s government was removed days later.
Fast forward 30 years and Mir is still reporting on issues many Pakistani journalists won’t touch.
His tireless and outspoken reporting has earned him enemies in Pakistan’s intelligence agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence, the Pakistani Taliban and local terrorist groups, and Pakistan’s political parties.
It has also earned him a lifetime of assassination attempts – the latest a near-fatal attack in 2014 which saw him shot six times as he drove to work – has left Mir living under constant protection. He is driven to and from work in a bulletproof vehicle, alternating between cell phones and residences, and away from his two children, who were sent abroad after a car they were riding in was attacked.
But, for Mir, reporting on these untouchable-topics is not a question. “Maybe it’s controversial for the others but it’s not controversial for me,” he says.
“If a military dictator is suspending the constitution of Pakistan which was approved by the elected parliament, and I, being a journalist and a TV anchor, am opposing that, for me it’s not controversial,” he says.
“And again, if some intelligence agency is trying to dictate me – you should report this and you should not report that – and if the religious extremists, the Taliban, they are issuing threats to women, they are bombing the girls’ schools, and I am criticising the Taliban. I don’t think that it’s controversial.”
Threats to his life intensified in late 2015, and under pressure from his family, Mir planned to take three months off-air.
“After one month, I realised that it’s too much, I have to come back.”
For Mir, if not for his family, his duty to Pakistan and to his colleagues, will always outweigh his own safety. The guilt he feels for those journalists who have died for their work is too great to ever allow him to stop, he says.
“There were some colleagues who used to come to me and take advice about what should we do because we are facing pressures. Should we continue our job as a journalist? I used to advise them, yes you must continue your job as a journalist, nothing bad will happen. But they were killed, they were kidnapped.”
“If I leave Pakistan today, on the pressure of my family, maybe I will leave a very safe life in London or in Berlin or in Paris or in any other country. But it will be very difficult for me to live a normal life, because the ghosts of my martyred friends, they will not allow me to have a comfortable sleep.”
Mir believes he is one of the lucky ones in Pakistan – he has survived. And life in Lahore is a lot easier for journalists than for those living outside the city, he says.
Although he sees media freedom in Pakistan getting worse, with pressures from the extremist forces and state agencies intensifying, his long-view is an uplifting one.
“The good thing is that the people, the majority of the people of Pakistan, the civil society, is the main source of our strength. If I am living in Pakistan, if I am surviving in Pakistan, it’s only because the common man is supporting me,” he said. “The common man believes in democracy, they don’t like extremist ideology, they don’t like dictatorship, they want rule of law. There is a ray of hope for me in Pakistan.”
Living and working in Aleppo, Syria, Erhaim directed the film series Syria’s Rebellious Women over a period of 18 months to offer a rare insight into the challenges facing women living and working in rebel-held parts of Syria.
Revealing a side of Syria that is often absent from the news, the films tell the individual stories of a diverse group of strong, resilient women. As well as facing the constant threat of bombing, the women must battle the conservative traditions of a male-dominated society and tackle restrictions on their movements, dress and behaviour. Despite disapproval from their families, the women continue undeterred along the paths they have chosen – documenting war, delivering supplies to civilians, and providing medical services.
Erhaim currently lives and works in Aleppo, Syria. Over the last two years, she has trained over 100 citizen reporters from inside Syria, approximately a third of them women, in print and TV journalism. Erhaim is also the Syria project coordinator for the Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR), an international organisation that support journalists in countries undergoing conflict, crisis, or transition. Many of Erhaim’s students, from all walks of life, have been published in major international news outlets.
When: Tuesday 12 April 2016, 7:00 PM Where: The Frontline Club (map) Tickets: Standard – £12.50, Concession – £10.00. Book here.
Referred to as Shashibiya or Old Man Sha, Shakespeare’s star is shining bright this year in China. On top of a UK government-funded initiative to translate his complete works into Mandarin, the Royal Shakespeare Company has embarked on its first major tour of China. Called King and Country, the tour includes performances of Henry IV Part I, Henry IV Part II and Henry V in Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong.
None of this would have been possible 40 years ago, when China was still under the dark shadow of the Cultural Revolution, between 1966 and 1976. Shakespeare was banned, alongside a series of other Western playwrights, his work was labelled bourgeois and lumped into the doomed category of moral and spiritual pollution. When the government finally lifted their ban on Shakespeare in 1977, it was seen as a sign of political liberalisation. Indeed his coming back into favour was evidence that the Cultural Revolution really was over and that China had moved on.
But Shakespeare’s re-emergence was still political, albeit of a different political nature. After the death of communist leader Mao Zedong in the late 1970s, a new ideology was being propagated. This ideology supported a market economy under the banner of socialism with Chinese characteristics. Shakespeare could easily adapt to this new look – and his plays quickly did. Enter the era of the big and brash Shakespeare shows, which continue today. State productions are typically extravagant and driven by a message: China is modern, culturally plural and open to the West.
Chinese-British actor Daniel York was part of one of these big productions. He acted in a 2006 bilingual version of King Lear in Shanghai, the bare bones of which he outlined to Index. It was set in a future Shanghai, which is a leading international centre with a bilingual population, where King Lear was played by a Hong Kong billionaire businessman. The play climaxed with a battle, as in the original, only the location had shifted away from the jagged cliffs of Dover to the heat of the Chinese stock exchange.
Whatever the political mood, the Chinese government uses Shakespeare to reflect it. It’s made easy by how Shakespeare is taught in China, namely in the Chinese department as part of world literature, and the drama department, but not in the English department. Tuition is in Mandarin and so the pupil is directly at the mercy of the teacher.
As scholar Murray Levith writes of Shakespeare: “Perhaps more than any other nation, China has used a great artist to forward its own ideology rather than meet him on his own ground.”
The Chinese Communist Party does not have a monopoly on Shakespeare and what ideologies are advanced through his plays. Other Chinese voices have come to the fore, some of which are overtly critical of the government. A case in point is the film, Prince of the Himalayas. This 2009 movie, based on Hamlet, was an instant hit, airing at cinemas across the country and even spawning stage recreations. The film – shot in Tibet – was about a prince who returns to his kingdom to find he has been usurped. The allegory of modern Tibet was not lost on many movie goers. Yet it was set in a pre-modern mythical kingdom and it was Shakespeare, so it was allowed. In some instances Shakespeare can extend the limits of free speech.
Other interpretations are less political and yet still use Shakespeare as a means of furthering their own agenda. Alexa Huang, an expert on Shakespeare in China, told Index about watching The Taming of the Shrew in Beijing back in 2006.
“They took the taming literally, disciplining Katherine for her behaviour,” said Huang, who is a professor at George Washington University. She’s also seen productions of King Lear, which have been interpreted in China as an allegory for fulfilling filial duty. Unlike the typically sympathetic portrayal of Cordelia, in China she is seen as stepping out of line, a defiant character who publically shames her father. Placed within the context of a country which has a long way to go in terms of female liberation and still values Confucianism, the message behind both of these examples is clear.
“With Shakespeare you almost have a total free licence,” said Huang. That certainly might be the case. China’s current president, Xi Jinping, is a huge fan of Shakespeare. He even went out of his way to seek banned copies of the plays during the Cultural Revolution.
Alison Friedman from Ping Pong Productions, a company that seeks to bring China and the world closer through the arts, has a similar view. She helped stage a US version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in 2014. Friedman said she has had no problemsproducing her work in China.
“Generally speaking (and it certainly changes when the pendulum swings, which it does), we find if you don’t bother them they don’t bother you.”
She added: “When it comes to the performing arts, China is a much more open space than the outside world thinks it is. What a lot of young and independent artists face is lack of funding rather than political persecution.”
Naturally part of the success of more controversial Shakespeare interpretations lies in the main arena being the stage. The CCP does not approach theatre in quite the way they do other more mainstream media.
“Playwrights joke that censors only pay attention to films and TV. They [the censors] are busy. They don’t read between the lines and they’re not literary critics,” said Huang.
This does not mean that anything goes. Huang highlights another play, based on Hamlet, which has yet to see the light of day. Called Tomorrow We Are Carrying The Coffin To The Cemetery, it was written by a young playwright straight after the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989. He never allowed it to be performed because of fear of death threats.
And back to the futuristic Shanghai of King Lear, York believes self-censorship came into play. “It steered clear of politics, corruption and triads,” he said.
Shakespeare’s introduction into China can be traced back to British colonial efforts in the 19th century, and a translation of Charles and Mary Lamb’s Tales From Shakespeare (1807), was published in 1903 and 1904, with the first complete translation of a Shakespeare play appearing in 1921 when Hamlet was published.
Performances of Shakespeare’s plays did not gain their audiences in China just against a backdrop of the political. Rather, they were always central to the political scene. They grew in popularity in line with a new form of theatre. Huaja, known as spoken drama, was more confrontational in nature. It was in direct contrast to xiqu, Chinese opera, which dominated the stage until the early 20th century. China’s young revolutionaries and reformers viewed xiqu as decorative. Huaja, by contrast, could serve a political or educational purpose.
An early 20th-century performance of The Merchant of Venice exemplifies this. Influenced by ideas of female liberation coming out of the new women’s movements, students at Shanghai’s St John’s University staged the play with the character of Portia given a very positive portrayal.
As the political mood shifted in China in the middle of the century, so too did the interpretation of Shakespeare. Under the early communists, the bulk of literature in translation came from the Soviet Union, having been reworked to reflect Marxist-Leninist values. King Lear was described as “a portrayal of the shaken economic foundations of feudal society”; Romeo and Juliet was about “the desire of the bourgeoisie to shake off the yoke of the feudal code of ethics”. Then there was Hamlet, the most translated of Shakespeare’s plays and the most in line with the CCP. Bian Zhilin’s 50,000-word essay on Hamlet from 1957 set the tone. Bian depicts Hamlet as someone who aligns himself with society’s underdogs.
“Through his bitter thinking (ie his soliloquies) and his mad words, Hamlet realises the social inequality and the suffering that the masses have borne. Such an experience not only makes Hamlet hate his enemies more but also gives him more strength to carry on his fight.”
“This was Shakespeare with Chinese socialist characteristics,” said Huang. “The belief was that Shakespeare spoke for the proletariat.”
China might have largely moved on from thinking Shakespeare speaks for the proletariat, or even that Shakespeare is Western spiritual pollution, but utilising Shakespeare for a political or social cause continues. Time will tell how he will be used in the future.
Mada Masr is an Egyptian online news site formed just before the military coup in July 2013 by 24 friends and journalists. Published in both English and Arabic, the site aims to offer an alternative to newspapers censored by state-owned printing and distribution facilities and media owned by industrial conglomerates. Wanting to represent in practice what Egypt was trying to achieve, Mada aims to be entirely democratic and is owned and run by its original founders and the journalists who write for it.
Editor-in-chief, Lina Attalah is well-known Egyptian media figure and former editor of Egypt Independent, which was shut down in April 2013 by the management of Al-Masry Media Corporation. When the editorial team tried to release a final edition explaining why, it was also pulled just before going to print.Attalah published it anyway,with the promisethat “In keeping with our practice of critical journalism, we use our final issue to reflect on the political and economic challenges facing Egyptian media, including in our own institution.” Many of the founders of Mada Masr are former employees of Egypt Independent.
Since its formation, Mada Masr has seen Egypt go throughthe popular uprising against Islamist President Mohammed Morsi, the military’s overthrow of Morsi and the subsequent violent crackdown on Muslim Brotherhood protesters, and the spread of terrorist violence in the country. Mada’s reporters work in a country with 186 laws restricting freedom of the press and expression.
In November 2015, Mada journalist Hossam Bahgat was summoned by Egypt’s military intelligencedetained for two days, after he wrote a story about the prosecution of about two dozen military officers for allegedly plotting a coup. The arrest was condemned globally, and Bahgat was eventually released, after which Mada published hisstatement describing the detention.
With many investors are politically aligned with the military regime, and those that weren’t facing huge pressure, funding has been a problem for Mada Masr. Valuing its independence above all else, Mada has come up with some innovative fundraising ideas, including, apop-up marketplace launched in April which sells designer clothes and urban crafts.
One of Mada’s new editorial initiatives is to create networks of citizen journalists to bring in more local reporting — and readers — throughout Egypt’s governorates.
“We have established a cooperative media organisation independently, at a time when media are controlled and only made possible through either the state or wealthy businessmen,” said Lina Attalah. “We are experiencing some deal of fear while doing our jobs every day.”
But Mada Masr has not allowed this to guide them towards self-censorship, she says. “With our minds and hearts grappling with being progressive and practical, we build our institution with an ambition to respond to that which we critique in our coverage.”
“I want us, down the line, many, many years to come, to be a reference of what happened.”
