The Guggenheim Museum in New York, after a week of resisting calls for the removal of three works from Art and China after 1989: Theater of the World, announced that it will pull the works from the exhibition. These include two videos documenting performances with live animals in 1994 and 2003, and a sculpture that replicates a 1993 work including live insects, snakes and lizards. Their removal came in response to “repeated threats of violence” and “concern for the safety of its staff, visitors and participating artists.”
The Guggenheim’s alarming action continues a growing worldwide trend in which threats of violent protest are silencing artistic expression and posing a danger to free speech in general. Whether or not the provocations of artists are defensible or morally unacceptable, we need to take an uncompromising position against threats of violence. When cultural institutions cave in to such threats, others who are convinced of the moral rectitude of their cause are encouraged to embrace similar tactics. This time it is animal rights activists. Next time it could be religious or political extremists.
Cultural institutions need to work with law enforcement to protect their staff, the public, and the works on view and to ensure that the right to protest does not override the right to free expression. Every time threats of violence succeed in silencing expression, fear’s stranglehold on the imagination tightens, stifling our ability to fully explore the world and our place in it.
The protesters insist that this is not about free speech: they claim the controversial works are not art expressing a controversial view but are themselves unacceptable acts of cruelty. That may have been a valid argument had the Guggenheim commissioned the performances represented in the videos. The Museum did not do that. The show’s curators sought to represent a period of art production from a specific political and cultural context. Artists in that period used live animals in their performances on multiple occasions.
Whatever the ethical issues may be, the fact of those historical performances remains. Their erasure from the show cannot reverse history, and will only succeed in offering viewers a sanitized version of an intense and troublesome period.
The only piece in the exhibition involving live creatures is Theater of the World (1993), where insects are likely to be consumed by larger animals. Asking for the removal of a piece that replicates what naturally happens between species and where the only animals harmed are insects that are bred to be fed to pets, suggests that the artistic representation of that process is always gratuitous because art is merely an “entertaining indulgence.”
While art can be indulgent or entertaining, this certainly does not characterize the work of Chinese conceptual artists of the 1990s. By exploring taboos and testing the boundaries of the permissible, their art reveals the brutality within the oppressive conditions of living in an authoritarian system and dealing with the massive displacements brought on by globalization.
By daring to face dark aspects of existence and represent them in all their stark cruelty, art can provide necessary insights into realities that are difficult to face. This is the type of art that censorship always targets, and it is this art that needs the most vigorous defense.
Hunter O’Hanian
Executive Director
College Art Association
Jodie Ginsberg, CEO
Index on Censorship
Chris Finan, Executive Director
National Coalition Against Censorship
Index on Censorship urges Ukraine to not extradite journalist Narzullo Okhunjonov to Uzbekistan where he faces prosecution.
On 20 September authorities detained Okhunjonovwhen he arrived at an international airport in Kyiv, Ukraine, following an Interpol red notice.
Uzbek authorities issued an international arrest warrant on fraud charges against Okhunjonov, who denies the charges.
A Kyiv court then approved a 40-day detention period for the journalist, the limit under an Interpol notice.
Okhunjonov along with his wife and five children were seeking political asylum from the Ukrainian authorities. The journalist has been living in exile in Turkey since 2013 in order to avoid politically motivated persecution for his reporting.
“This abuse of the Interpol system is a direct violation of Article 2 of its constitution and a clear effort to silence critical journalists,” Hannah Machlin, project manager of Index on Censorship’s Mapping Media Freedom platform, said. “We call on the Ukrainian authorities to allow Narzullo Okhunjonov to remain in Ukraine, grant him political asylum and reject requests to extradite him to his home country.”
Okhunjonov writes in Uzbek and Russian for media outlets including BBC Uzbek on topics such as Uzbekistan’s authoritarian government and has criticised by the late president Islam Karimov.
The journalist’s family is currently residing in Kyiv.
The Council of Europe’s parliamentary assembly published Resolution 2161 in April 2017 on the abuse of the Interpol system. The resolution underlined that“in a number of cases in recent years, however, Interpol and its Red Notice system have been abused by some member States in the pursuit of political objectives, in order to repress freedom of expression”.
In August, two exiled Turkish journalists, Hamza Yalçın and Doğan Akhanli, were detained in Spain following Interpol red notices from Turkey. Both are no longer facing extradition. [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_basic_grid post_type=”post” max_items=”4″ element_width=”6″ grid_id=”vc_gid:1506702230284-c0425a2a-f87f-6″ taxonomies=”6564″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
The government of Catalonia, the semi-autonomous northeastern-most region of Spain, is scheduled to hold an independence referendum on 1 October. Despite heavy opposition from the government in Madrid, Catalan president Carles Puigdemont says the plebiscite will go ahead.
The Spanish government has deemed the referendum illegal and unconstitutional, resulting in arrests, raids and clashes between protesters and the police. Mariano Rajoy, the Spanish prime minister, has since stated that the referendum “won’t happen” after the seizing of millions of ballot papers and a crackdown on Catalan officials. Puigdemont has announced that regardless of voter turnout, a majority of the “yes” vote will result in a declaration of independence within 48 hours.
The stern reaction by the national government has caused not only much conflict within the region but also violations against media freedom.
Francesc Fàbregas, the director for the magazine, later told reporters that police were looking for voting papers and ballots that could have been printed at the office. “We didn’t commit any crime. They didn’t take any voting papers because they didn’t find them.”
About a hundred left-wing supporters of Catalan independence, summoned by anti-capitalist political party CUP, protested in front of the local police barracks. At the same time about a hundred Spanish right-wing supporters organised a counter-protest against the independence movement and supported the police.
Gemma Aguilera, a journalist for the news website El Món, received death threats as an unidentified protester shouted at her: “I will find you and kill you.” Protesters shouted at Aguilera using the word “bitch” and threatened another male reporter, telling him they would “cut [his] throat”.
Responding to these media violations, the Association of Catalan Journalists, a Barcelona-based organisation committed to protecting press freedoms in the region, released a statement reporting that since the beginning of the referendum they have “received complaints from journalists who have been coerced or forced to identify themselves during the coverage of events of public interest, pressured on writings and warned about their work”.
“These events constitute a serious and frontal attack on the freedom of expression and information. As professionals of journalism and communication, due to the respect for the society we serve and to whom we are responsible, we cannot allow silence to be the answer,” ACJ stated. “The fundamental rights of freedom of expression and information cannot be eroded, and the public and private media have the duty and the right to work freely to be able to inform about them.”
ACJ have since “demand[ed] the immediate halt” of the threats and obstructions.
Daniel Gascón, an editor for Letras Libres España, has explained in a recent article on the referendum that the Spanish authorities are simply employing its full legal arsenal to stop the unconstitutional referendum. In a statement to Index on Censorship, Gascón said: “The Spanish government’s duty is to uphold the Constitution. The Spanish state has to protect the rights of its citizens – in doing so it must obviously respect its own laws, which consecrate the principle of freedom of expression.”
In regards to the Catalan media being a part of either side’s campaigning strategy, Gascón said that “public media in Catalonia have often assumed a partial point of view”, yet “there should be a conversation about the use of TV3 as a political instrument and about the promiscuity between the media and the political sphere”.
“In June the Catalan parliament passed a notion not to pay subsidies to media that did not publicize the referendum,” Gascón added. “In the last few months, there have been some worrying instances of journalists singled out by Catalan government officials.”
Reports submitted to Index on Censorship’s Mapping Media Freedom project regarding the referendum do not just show violations from unionists. Voices critical of the Catalan government have also been silenced in the heated run-up the referendum.
The piece, entitled The Media of the National Movement (Los Medios del Movimiento Nacional), mentioned Márius Carol, the director of La Vanguardia, and quoted part of one of his articles.
Morán accused the Catalan media of receiving large sums of public money and added that it was no surprise to see them praising Catalan independence. He also called the Catalan government “corrupt” and described them as the “taliban who govern us”.
Morán was not given an explanation as to why his article was pulled.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_basic_grid post_type=”post” max_items=”4″ element_width=”6″ grid_id=”vc_gid:1506684697693-438cce07-99f6-8″ taxonomies=”199″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
Manus Island, in Papua New Guinea, is the location of a controversial detention centre which the Australian government uses to hold over 1,000 asylum seekers indefinitely. It is also home to Iranian journalist and 2017 Index journalism award nominee Behrouz Boochani. His film Chauka, Please Tell Us the Time, which exposes the realities of life as a detainee on Manus Island, has been selected for the BFI London Film Festival.
An urgent and powerful documentary, shot in a detention centre where asylum seekers trying to reach Australian shores are indefinitely detained. Secretly shot on a mobile phone by Boochani while detained on Manus, the film is a collaboration with Dutch-Iranian filmmaker Arash Kamali Sarvestani. Boochani recounts, via the testimonies of fellow inmates, the abuse and violence inflicted and the precarious state of limbo they find themselves in.
Chauka, the name of the dreaded solitary confinement unit within the detention centre, was originally the name of a beautiful bird and symbol of the Manus Island. By interweaving dialogue with two Manusian men and shots of daily life on the island, the film gives a much-needed voice to Manus inhabitants, understandably distressed by the current situation. With marked restraint, the film exposes lives broken by shocking immigration policies.
