27 Sep 2021 | Egypt, Fellowship 2021, News and features, Statements
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Abdelrahman ‘Moka’ Tarek
Abdelrahman Tarek (widely known as Moka) is a human rights defender working with Al-Nedal Centre for Rights and Freedoms. His work includes defending free expression in Egypt and prisoners’ rights, especially in cases of forced disappearances. On 12 September 2021, Moka was awarded Index on Censorship’s Freedom of Expression Award in recognition of his campaigning work. The award celebrates individuals or groups who have had a significant impact fighting censorship anywhere in the world.
Moka was first arrested on 26 November 2013 in relation to the “Shura Council” case, when a number of activists organized a protest against military trials for civilians in front of the Egyptian Senate (Shura Council) and were subsequently arrested.
On 11 June 2014, he was sentenced to three years in prison and three years of police probation. He was held in Tora El Mazraa Prison; during his detention, he was frequently subjected to torture, as a result of which he still suffers psychologically. After his release in October 2018, he began to serve his three-year probationary period, during which he had to spend 12 hours a day at the Qasr Al Nil Police Station in Cairo. On 10 September 2019, Moka was forcibly disappeared during his daily probation session at Qasr Al Nil Police Station. A day later, he re-appeared at the office of the Supreme State Security Prosecution (SSSP), where he was interrogated in Case No. 1331 of 2019. He was accused of “joining a terrorist group, spreading false news, and misusing social media” by the prosecutor during the interrogation, and was ordered into pre-trial detention.
On 10 March 2020, a court ordered his release on probationary measures, which included reporting to a police station every few days. He was, however, never released. Instead, he was forcibly disappeared for 50 days. On 30 April 2020, the SSSP ordered Moka into pre-trial detention on new charges of “joining a terrorist group, spreading false news, and misusing social media” – the same accusations he faced in the previous case.
On 22 September 2020, a court ordered the release of Moka. However, once again, the release order was never implemented. On 3 December 2020, after being held arbitrarily for over 70 days, the SSSP interrogated Moka for “establishment and funding of a terrorist organisation.” On 3 December 2020, he was ordered into pretrial detention in that case. He started a hunger strike to protest the Prosecutor’s decision.
In mid-January 2021, Moka was transferred to Tora Prison, which is known for its inhumane detention conditions, such as lack of clean water, poor ventilation, and overcrowding. On 17 January 2021, he was hospitalised at Tora Prison Hospital for the first time, due to his deteriorating health. He had to be hospitalised several times afterward. On 3 February 2021, he ended his hunger strike.
Since Moka was detained in September 2019, two consecutive orders for his release have been preempted by the addition of new cases, allowing authorities to evade the two-year legal limit on pre-trial detention in Egypt.
In the first week of August 2021, Moka attempted suicide after he was denied a family visit. As punishment, Moka was placed in a disciplinary cell for 24 hours.
Accepting the award on behalf of Moka, one of his family members said: “I am sure that when Moka hears that he won this award he will be extremely happy and he will spend a happy night but when he wakes up the next day, he will be feeling disappointed and frustrated that he will be spending another day in prison.”
Moka is among the thousands of people arbitrarily detained in Egypt, including human rights defenders, journalists, politicians, lawyers, and social media influencers. They remain in prolonged detention solely for exercising and defending fundamental human rights.
“Today I tried to be Moka’s voice, and I want each of you to be his voice, until he comes out of prison alive,” his family member said. “Freedom for Moka and all detainees.”
We, the undersigned organisations, call on the Egyptian government to immediately and unconditionally release Abdulrahaman Tarek.
Signatories:
ARTICLE 19
Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN)
FIDH, within the framework of the Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders
Freedom House
Index on Censorship
International Service for Human Rights (ISHR)
MENA Rights Group
The Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms
The Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy (TIMEP)
World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT), within the framework of the Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]
27 Sep 2021 | China
“First, we stood up, then we got rich, and now we got strong.” Chinese officials are repeating this slogan over and over, China analyst Mareike Ohlberg recently told the audience at an Index on Censorship event. “Part of being a strong country means being able to influence or determine what people talk about, not just in China but globally.”
Confucius Institutes were established in 2004 with the stated mission of teaching Chinese language and culture abroad and are widely acknowledged as one of the ways China exerts its influence around the world. In 2010, the Confucius Institute headquarters (known as Hanban) received the ‘Chinese Influence the World Award’. “People often ask me about the Confucius Institute’s role in soft power,” said its founder, Xu Lin, at the award ceremony. “We are indeed trying to expand our influence.”
Confucius was a sixth-century philosopher, educator, and quasi-religious figure, who has since come to symbolise peace and harmony. By promoting this image and avoiding any reference to Marxist ideology, a Chinese state institution has made its way onto more 550 university and college campuses, and into 1,172 primary and secondary school classrooms around the world. According to the New York Times, “The carefully selected label [of Confucius Institutes] speaks volumes about the country’s soft-power ambitions.”
In the West, the largest number of Confucius Institutes are found in English-speaking countries. Why? “The Chinese government is minimalist,” Ohlberg replied. “If you have the government in your pocket, why do you need a Confucius Institute?” The UK has approximately 30 Confucius Institutes, five in Scotland. France has 21, Germany has 19, and Italy has 16. There are 103 in the EU.
By operating primarily on campuses, Confucius Institutes are unlike other countries’ cultural organisations, like the British Council, Alliance Française, or Goethe Institutes. Tao Zhang of Nottingham Trent University believes this enables the Chinese authorities “to gain a foot-hold for the exercise of control over the study of China and the Chinese language.”
Confucius Institutes are also unlike European institutes in that they are directly managed by the Chinese government. According to the Netherlands Institute of International Relations, “[t]his offers Confucius Institutes the possibility to unilaterally promote Chinese policy and ideas in a one-sided way, to commit censorship, or to stimulate self-censorship about China among students, pupils and the wider public”.
This report looks the rise of the Institutes and whether those fighting for freedom of expression should be worried.
24 Sep 2021 | Bosnia, China, News and features, Turkey, Volume 50.03 Autumn 2021 Extras
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”117556″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes”][vc_column_text]Almost three decades ago, some three million books and countless artefacts went up in flames when Sarajevo’s National and University Library – inside the Vijecnica (city hall) – was burned to the ground. The destruction of the Vijecnica at the beginning of the war was a symbol for one of the aggressor’s main objectives – silencing the soul of the city and crushing the cultural identity of an entire society.”
So said Dunja Mijatović, the current Council of Europe commissioner for human rights, who was born in Sarajevo when it was part of Yugoslavia.
Just weeks before the anniversary of the burning of the library on 25 August 1992, Mijatović spoke to Index about its symbolism and what its destruction was meant to achieve.
She quoted Heinrich Heine’s play, Almansor: “Where they burn books they will also, in the end, burn people.”
Libraries and archives have been targets for centuries, and the reason is always the same: it’s about taking away knowledge and stifling free thinking.
Libraries are, and have always been, symbols of freedom – the freedom to think and learn and find documents and books to debate and discuss.
Throughout history, when authoritarians take power and seek to control thought and behaviour, they either lock up libraries or destroy the manuscripts and books inside them.
The Serbian forces who burned the Sarajevo library were seeking to obliterate evidence of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s existence as a successful multicultural and multi-ethnic state. The documents they burned told a different history from the one that the army leaders wanted to portray.
Omar Mohammed, who reported as Mosul Eye on the Isis occupation of his city in Iraq, risked his life to blog anonymously about the occupiers’ wish to destroy books as well as to execute people as they sought to repress the population.
Mohammed told Index that it was not just the university library that was destroyed in Mosul, but it was the one that was reported on the most.
Many other libraries, even private collections, were wiped out. “The only possible reason is because knowledge is power,” he said. “Once you prevent people from accessing knowledge then you will have full control over them.”
Like many other scholars who have delved into the history of libraries, Mohammed understands that it is not about the buildings themselves.
“They don’t want people to have this access because they know if people write the history, it will be completely different from the one they wanted it to be,” he said.
Targeting libraries sends out a powerful message to scholars, historians and scientists, he added.
“When they see that such people are able to totally target the libraries, that they are literally able to destroy everything, it’s a manifestation of brutality.”
Today, Richard Ovenden, the most senior librarian at the Bodleian libraries at the University of Oxford, is worried about libraries in Turkey being closed under pressure from the government of president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
According to some sources, at least 188 libraries were closed there between 2002 and 2020.
Ovenden’s book, Burning the Books, looks at the history of the intentional destruction of knowledge. He was recently contacted by a Turkish student, who said: “I’ve just read your book and I want you to know how bad it is in Turkey, because libraries are being destroyed. And all the things that you write about are true in Turkey today.”
Ovenden said: “There is an absolutely authoritarian control over knowledge. Attacks on knowledge are being exercised by the authoritarian leader of Turkey right now. It is the ability for the population to generate their own ideas and to come up with their own thoughts that some governments, some authoritarian powers, some dictators and rulers do not like.”
When dictatorships seek to establish that certain minorities don’t exist, or haven’t lived somewhere, getting rid of the documentary evidence is very convenient.
Archives that establish the existence of Uighurs in China and Muslims in parts of India also look like targets.
Ovenden feels that what is fantastically important about libraries is that they “preserve the past thoughts and ideas of human beings so they’re parts of that evidence base”.
He added: “They’re also disseminating institutions [where] you can borrow the books, you can come and take those ideas away and write other books about them, or pamphlets, or newspaper articles, or whatever it is.”
Governments around the world are failing to protect libraries as a resource, sometimes by withdrawing or drastically reducing funding.
In the UK, almost 800 libraries closed between 2010 and 2019, and a major campaign kicked off in Australia this year to save the national archives.
Michelle Arrow, professor of history at Macquarie University in Sydney, argued in April that if funding cuts were not reversed, irreplaceable audio-visual collections would fall apart. After a public campaign, the national government has delivered some extra funding, but this has not solved all the archives’ problems.
She told Index that with a reduction in staff of almost 25% since 2013, more staff would be needed to deal with the large backlog of requests to view archived material.
She said the archives contained “unique records, and they touch almost every Australian: it is a democratic archive, a collection of ordinary people’s records, rather than famous or renowned Australians”.
While some countries are seeing numerous library closures due to financial or other threats, there are new defenders coming to light. In the coastal city of Santa Cruz in California, there’s a massive investment in upgrades to current libraries, and new ones are opening over the next two years.
Santa Cruz mayor Donna Meyers told Index: “In California, we just tend to believe in public institutions. We believe that public education, public libraries, all of that, lead to a better community, lead to a more informed society.”
Santa Cruz residents passed a special tax – by 78% of the vote – to pay for investment in the libraries which, Meyers says, is a sign of how committed the community is to libraries being around for future generations.
Back in Sarajevo, Mijatović can see the new library that rose from the ashes of the Vijecnica from her terrace.
She said: “One hopes that the soul and the people of Sarajevo will recover and that new generations will hopefully enjoy this magnificent symbol of Sarajevo and, more importantly, live in peace.”
Library destruction in recent history
1914: German troops destroy the library of the Catholic University of Louvain
1939: The Great Talmudic Library in Lublin is destroyed by the Nazis
1966-76: Chairman Mao destroys libraries across China as part of the Cultural Revolution
1976-79: The Khmer Rouge deliberately destroy libraries across Cambodia, including the Phnom Penh national library
2013: Islamic troops set fire to the library in Timbuktu, Mali
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16 Sep 2021 | Burma, Events, Iraq
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Marking Banned Books Week 2021, Index on Censorship and the British Library present a conversation with poets at the frontlines of protest movements fighting for the right to speak freely and without fear of persecution.
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]Poetry is frequently used as a tool in protest movements to inspire, unite, and mobilise support. From Black Lives Matter and women’s liberation to protest movements in Myanmar and Afghanistan, poetry holds the power to gather crowds during a rally, or grab attention online. Poets can offer support and guidance in the most challenging, tragic or dangerous situations. Join Myanmarese-British poet ko ko thett and poet and scholar Dr Choman Hardi for a live poetry reading and conversation about the power of poetry in protest movements. The event will be chaired by Index on Censorship deputy chair Kate Maltby.
Marking Banned Books Week 2021, which has the theme “Books Unite Us. Censorship Divides Us”, Index on Censorship and the British Library invite you to explore the role of poetry in protest. What role does poetry play in protest movements? And can poetry be a form of protest in its own right?
Kate Maltby is the Deputy Chair of the Index on Censorship Board of Trustees. She is a critic, columnist, and scholar. She is currently working towards the completion of a PhD which examines the intellectual life of Elizabeth I, through the prism of her accomplished translations of Latin poetry, her own poems and recently attributed letters, and her representation as a learned queen by writers such as Shakespeare, Spenser and Sidney.
ko ko thett started publishing poems in samizdat format at Yangon Institute of Technology in the early 1990s. After a brush with the authorities in the December 1996 protests, he left Burma, led an itinerant life in Asia, Europe and North America and moved back to Myanmar in 2017. He has published several collections of poems and translations in Burmese and English. His poems have been translated into a dozen languages and are widely anthologised. He now lives in Norwich, UK.
Dr Choman Hardi is an educator, poet, and scholar known for pioneering work on issues of gender and education in the Kurdistan region of Iraq and beyond. After 26 years of exile, she returned home in 2014 to teach English and initiate gender studies at the American University of Iraq, Sulaimani (AUIS), where she also served as English department chair in 2015-16. She is the author of critically acclaimed books in the fields of poetry, academia, and translation. Since 2010, poems from her first English collection, Life for Us (Bloodaxe, 2004) have been studied by secondary school students in the UK as part of their English curriculum. Her second collection, Considering the Women (Bloodaxe, 2015), was given a Recommendation by the Poetry Book Society and shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection. Her translation of Sherko Bekas’ Butterfly Valley (ARC, 2018) won a PEN Translates Award.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]When: Wednesday 29 September 2021, 18.30-19.30
Where: ONLINE
Tickets: Free, advance booking essential[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]
