[vc_row][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_single_image image=”116569″ img_size=”full”][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]Join us for the launch of the new Index on Censorship magazine, China: A century of silencing dissent. In this special edition we are marking the centenary of Chinese Communism with a series of long reads by writers, historians and journalists in the field, including acclaimed writer Ma Jian, whose exclusive personal essay on the legacy of the Chinese Communist Party is a centrepiece of this edition
Ma Jian will open the event with a reading from China Dream, his 2018 dystopian novel about repression and state-enforced amnesia set in contemporary China. The reading will be followed by a conversation with Tania Branigan, The Guardian’s foreign leader writer.
Ma Jian was born in Qingdao, China. He is the author of seven novels, a travel memoir, three story collections and two essay collections. He has been translated into twenty-six languages. Since the publication of his first book in 1987, all his work has been banned in China. He now lives in exile in London.
Tania Branigan is foreign leader writer for The Guardian. She was previously its China correspondent from 2008 to 2015, and before that its political correspondent.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]
As images of serious violence in Northern Ireland beamed around the world last week, many outside the post-conflict society wondered what had gone wrong.
The province, long hailed as one of the best examples of peacebuilding, was for the first time in recent years seeing petrol bombs, vehicle hijackings and masked figures back on the streets on an almost nightly basis.
There is no simple or straightforward explanation for the unrest, which started off in loyalist areas under the guise of peaceful protests.
Those demonstrations surrounded the ‘Irish Sea border’ or Northern Ireland Protocol, part of the Brexit deal that keeps NI aligned with EU rules and treated differently to the rest of the UK.
Controversy over the state prosecutor’s move not to prosecute alleged coronavirus breaches by senior Sinn Fein members at the 2020 funeral of republican and former IRA man Bobby Storey, has also inflamed tensions. The belief in unionist and loyalist circles is that political favouritism played a part in that decision.
Add into the melting pot the recent disruption to loyalist paramilitary crime networks by the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI), you now have a dangerous mix in a place where anger and frustration has long played out through street violence.
As rioting broke out and escalated across towns and cities, it didn’t take long to spread to interface areas – adding a dangerous sectarian element to the violence.
On 7 April, three days before the 23rd anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement, a bus travelling close to a peace divide in the capital of Belfast was hijacked and petrol bombed by loyalist youths.
It sparked scenes not seen on the streets of the loyalist Shankill Road and the Irish Republican stronghold of Lanark Way for some time.
As masonry, fireworks and Molotov cocktails were fired back and forth between hundreds of rival youths, a car rammed into the so-called peace gate that was locked to separate the two communities.
Ironically painted with the words, ‘There Was Never A Good War Or A Bad Peace’, the padlocked steel doors were eventually prised open allowing disorder and destruction to continue into the night, and years of priceless cross-community work put at risk.
News agencies around the world reported on the danger to Northern Ireland’s fragile peace, and the fear that escalating sectarian violence could spiral it back to the dark days of the Troubles, when more than 3,000 people lost their lives.
Sporadic violence, unfortunately, has long been a part of Ulster’s journey from war to peace; a peace that is not perfect but that has achieved the goal of convincing most people that a return to those days cannot, and will not, happen.
Rightfully, international political leaders took notice, expressing concern and calls for calm.
US President Joe Biden said he remained “steadfast” in his support “for a secure and prosperous Northern Ireland in which all communities have a voice and enjoy the gains of the hard-won peace”.
What many do not realise is that the voices he refers to have been under threat for quite some time.
Over the last two years, dozens of journalists in Northern Ireland have been threatened by both loyalist and republican paramilitary groups for their work in exposing criminality and the grip these gangs still have on communities.
Those threats, mainly from loyalists, have escalated in recent times and are having a detrimental impact on press freedom in Northern Ireland.
In May 2020, reporters at both the Sunday World and Sunday Life newspapers received a blanket threat from South East Antrim Ulster Defence Association (UDA), a loyalist criminal cartel that was recently the subject of a high-profile drugs bust.
The gang threatened to take violent action against the journalists, with police informing each of them that intelligence suggests the gangsters may also intimidate their families.
The threats were condemned by major politicians, who in turn then each received death threats from the gang for speaking out in support of the media workers.
In November, the same criminals threatened a journalist with the Belfast Telegraph.
The same month, further loyalist death threats were delivered to the homes of two reporters working for the Sunday World newspaper.
They were informed by police that West Belfast UDA planned to carry out some form of attack on them.
Both had been covering intimidation and threats to those living in a loyalist area and had been named in threatening social media posts prior to being informed of the death threats.
Senior police told one journalist she would be shot, and that the PSNI had received information that the crime gang may try to entrap her.
Since the Northern Ireland Protocol was put in place on 1 January, threats have continued.
Two journalists had their names spray-painted on walls with gun cross hairs in February.
At least one of those was targeted by a paramilitary gang involved in talks with other loyalist groups over discontent over the Irish Sea Border.
Hours before the interface violence broke out in west Belfast last week, press photographer Kevin Scott was attacked as he covered the disorder for the Belfast Telegraph newspaper.
He was pulled to the ground by two masked men who smashed his cameras and threatened, before being told to: “fuck off back to your own area you fenian cunt”.
At the same time 70 miles away, billboards were being erected in Derry by the family of murdered journalist Lyra McKee, appealing for information over her killing.
The 29-year-old was shot dead two years ago by a New IRA gunman as she observed a riot in the city’s Creggan estate. No-one has been convicted over her murder.
As the anniversary of her murder approaches, threats to the safety of journalists have escalated to levels many have not seen in recent times, or even in their entire careers.
The distress and trauma of such threats is compounded by the fact those responsible are continually treated with impunity by the police.
Twenty years ago, Sunday World journalist Martin O’Hagan was assassinated by members of the violent Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF).
The killing gang – who have never been convicted – later released a statement saying the reporter had been murdered for “crimes against the loyalist people”.
Two decades on the same type of language is not only bedecking lampposts across Northern Ireland in the form of anti-Irish Sea Border placards, but is also being used by those with influence in unionism and loyalism.
It is this type of hard rhetoric that has fed into the hostility to media workers here, who have been murdered and attacked as they go about their jobs.
Northern Ireland has paid a very high price for its peace; but what price must it pay to protect press freedom?
Ahead of feminist activist Yulia Tsvetkova’s trial today, Index on Censorship calls for the charges against her to be immediately and unconditionally dropped. Tsvetkova, who received an Index on Censorship Freedom of Expression Award last year, is facing up to six years in prison on the charge of “producing and distributing pornography” in retaliation for her artwork, which promoted body positivity and women’s rights.
“Yulia has already faced nearly a year and a half of judicial harassment at the hands of the Russian authorities for doing nothing more than exercising her right to freedom of expression by publishing her artwork online. She has already been subject to extortionate fines and has been under house arrest as a result of her work in defence of LGBTQ+ and women’s rights,” said Jessica Ní Mhainín, policy and campaigns manager at Index on Censorship. “We call on the Russian authorities to immediately and unconditionally drop these absurd charges against her.”
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”116543″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes”][vc_column_text]A popular poet and comedian, and a women’s rights campaigner who co-founded Myanmar’s independent Mizzima news channel are the latest in Myanmar to fall foul of the military junta.
The military, led by General Min Aung Hlaing, has recently targeted poets, comedians and celebrities in order to silence protest against its power grab following democratic elections last November in which Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy party won a landslide victory.
The miltary authorities recently published a list of 120 celebrities wanted for arrest, some of whom have since been detained.
Popular comedian, poet, actor and director Maung Thura, known commonly as Zarganar, was arrested and detained on 6 April without charge.
Zarganar spoke to Index in 2012, a year after his release from an earlier 59-year prison sentence imposed in 2008 by the former military dictatorship in the country.
In the article, he describes his time in prison and told Index: “Freedom of speech and freedom of expression is very important for our country, for openness and transparency.”
“Over the 40 years [of the last military regime], we were living in a dark room. People could not see us,” he said. “Free art, free thought, freedom. It is very important.”
Paing Takhon, a 24-year-old actor who had expressed support for the protests, has also been detained.
The detained are perhaps the lucky ones.
Poet K Za Win was killed on 3 March by Myanmar’s security forces during protests in Monywa. On the same day, footage of bodies being dragged through the street by army personnel surfaced online.
Meanwhile, Daw Thin Thin Aung, a journalist and women’s rights activist who co-founded the banned independent news channel Mizzima in 1998, has also been detained by the Tatmadaw military.
Mizzima lost its licence to broadcast in early March along with other broadcasters Khit Thit Media, Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB), 7 Day and Myanmar Now. Despite this, Mizzima has continued its coverage of the violent arrests, shootings and other actions taken by security forces against both citizens and journalists online.
Former Mizzima journalist U James Pu Thoure has also been detained by the authorities, continuing General Min Aung Hlaing’s attack on journalists reporting on protests in the country against the coup.
Mizzima editor-in-chief Soe Myint said in a statement: “Mizzima Media is deeply concerned to learn that Daw Thin Thin Aung and U James Pu Thoure, former members of Mizzima, have been detained without charges.”
Myint said that both Thin Thin Aung and Pu Thoure had formally left the organisation since the coup of 1 February 2021.
Thin Thin Aung had previously worked as a journalist for the BBC while in exile in India. As well as her journalism, she spent many years campaigning for women’s rights in Burma, also founding the Women’s League of Burma (WLB).
Of her detainment, the WLB said “We are extremely concerned about the life and safety of Thin Thin Aung. We urge the international community to press the military coup council for the immediate release of Thin Thin Aung and other detained activists.”
Concerns have also been raised over Thin Thin Aung’s health, particularly as prison conditions in the country are notoriously poor. Mizzimia’s Soe Myint said she had been unwell for some time and had withdrawn from active working life prior to leaving Mizzima.
Since the coup, many journalists have been arrested and charged under Section 505(a) of the country’s penal code which makes it a crime to publish any “statement, rumour or report”, “with intent to cause, or which is likely to cause, any officer, soldier, sailor or airman, in the Army, Navy or Air Force to mutiny or otherwise disregard or fail in his duty”, essentially making criticism of the military government impossible.
According to Myanmar’s Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP), as of 9 April, 40 journalists had been arrested of which 31 have been detained and sentenced. It said that seven other journalists facing arrest warrants remain in hiding.
The AAPP says that the total number of people killed in Myanmar since the coup is 614. In the same period, more than 2,850 people have been arrested or detained without charge.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][three_column_post title=”You may also want to read” category_id=”38″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
