Index Chair and Times columnist David Aaronovitch, and writer and broadcaster David Baddiel yesterday went head to head over the Football Association’s recent ban on the word “yid”.
The FA last week stated that “yid”, a derogatory term against Jewish people, is considered offensive and that fans using it could face criminal prosecution. The contentious nature of the new regulation stems from the fact that it seems to be largely aimed at fans of Tottenham Hotspur. The club is based in an area of north-London with a large Jewish population, and many supporters use the word as a self-identifier. Fans of other clubs, however, have been known the use the word in antisemitic chants.
The debate was reignited yesterday, when David Cameron weighed in. “There’s a difference between Spurs fans self describing themselves as yids and someone calling someone a yid as an insult,” he told the Jewish Chronicle. “You have to be motivated by hate. Hate speech should be prosecuted – but only when it’s motivated by hate.”
Speaking on Radio 4’s World Tonight, Baddiel, who has campaigned to kick the word out of football, argued that it is a race hate word and should be treated as such. “It’s not just about Tottenham. That particular word is said all over London by Chelsea fans, by Arsenal fans, by Millwall fans, by West Ham fans, with menaces, with associated antisemitic abuse.”
Aaronovitch argued that the problem is people using the word in a negative way , and that is what should be tackled. “[It is offensive] If used by someone as an insult against a Jewish person, yes. If used by a spurs fan as a self identifier, no.”
Josh Stearns argues that the US shield law sets a dangerous precedent by allowing the government to decide who is a journalist. (Photo: Wikipedia)
The Free Flow of Information Act – also known as the “Shield Law” – is meant to protect journalists from having to reveal their sources during investigations by the U.S. government. The bill comes amidst news organizations’ growing concern about the impact of surveillance of the press by the Justice Department and the National Security Agency.
Last week a Senate committee approved the bill. The next step would be a vote by the full Senate. However, as currently written, the bill creates two classes of journalists and sets a dangerous precedent for press freedom.
The first class is protected by default. It includes people who have been employed by newsrooms for at least one year in the last 20 years, or for three months in the last five years. This is actually an improvement over an earlier version, but still excludes many freelancers, bloggers and citizen journalists.
For those not in that class, the bill allows a judge to decide if “such protections would be in the interest of justice and necessary to protect lawful and legitimate newsgathering.” This “judicial discretion” catchall means a broad range of acts of journalism could be protected, but raises questions about the necessity of the first definition of journalist.
The judicial discretion inclusion is significant because the case law in this area strongly asserts protection for all acts of journalism, not just some pre-defined set of “legitimate” journalists. For example, in a 2006 decision a California state appellate court wrote:
We decline the implicit invitation to embroil ourselves in questions of what constitutes “legitimate journalis[m].” The shield law is intended to protect the gathering and dissemination of news, and that is what petitioners did here. We can think of no workable test or principle that would distinguish “legitimate” from “illegitimate” news. Any attempt by courts to draw such a distinction would imperil a fundamental purpose of the First Amendment.
This point is echoed in decisions by the Second, Third and Ninth Circuit federal courts of appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court. And there is a growing consensus amongst leaders inside traditional journalism institutions that we should protect all people engaged in the journalism process regardless of their occupation or affiliation. The Society for Professional Journalists recently passed a resolution that “rejects any attempts to define a journalist in any way other than as someone who commits acts of journalism” and even considered changing its name to reflect this.
Which raises the question, why did some Senators work so hard to create two tiers of journalists and spill so much ink trying to limit those who can be covered?
One answer might be to send a message about who they see as “real” journalists and to further chill sources who might talk to independent reporters. This bill has to be seen in the context of Washington’s ongoing war on leaks and some elected officials’ efforts to criminalize journalism.
The debate over this bill exposed a deep and troubling thread of concern about the shifting media landscape and the nature of a truly participatory fourth estate. During the Senate committee meeting, Sen. Feinstein made it clear that she wanted to limit the bill so it wouldn’t protect people like “the 17 year old who drops out of high school, buys a website for five dollars, and starts a blog.” Other Senators made even more troubling statements, speculating and wringing their hands about spies hiding in newsrooms, foreign journalists at Al Jazeera, and protections for Edward Snowden and Wikileaks.
Most such concerns are baseless because the bill includes a huge “national security” loophole that would let prosecutors force journalists to testify about their sources, or face jail time. This exception makes the bill useless for a huge number of journalists who are most often in possession of leaked material. Yet it’s widely believed that this provision was critical to getting White House support of the bill.
What’s at stake here is not just the narrow purview of this bill, but the precedent of allowing government to define who is and is not a journalist. It is a sad irony that a bill meant to expand press freedom could in fact erode First Amendment rights of non-traditional media makers.
This could all be avoided, and the bill could be greatly strengthened and simplified by defining journalism as an act, a process that anyone can participate in, instead of a profession limited to a few practitioners. As the bill moves forward, making that change should be our top priority.
Sexual harassment has been widespread in Egypt for decades but since the January 2011 uprising that toppled former President Hosni Mubarak, the problem has taken on epic proportions becoming what rights activists now describe as “an epidemic”. Not only has there been a dramatic increase in the number of harassment cases reported , but the level of violence too, is unprecedented with mob sexual assaults becoming rampant during street protests.
No fewer than 91 girls and women were reportedly gang raped and sexually assaulted in just four days during mass protests demanding the ouster of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi last July. Rights activists say the number of assault cases could be even higher as there is the possibility that some cases had gone unreported. Most of the attacks occurred in or near Tahrir Square in downtown Cairo where hundreds of thousands of opposition protesters had gathered to demonstrate against the Muslim Brotherhood president and later, to celebrate his downfall. Vicious mobs used metal chains, sticks , blades and knives to attack female protesters despite the presence of volunteer vigilante groups keeping an eye out for harassers.
In response to the surge in harassment, several civil society organisations have sprung up in recent months with the aim of curbing sexual assaults and protecting victims of harassment. One such organisation is the Anti-Sexual Harassment Campaign , an outreach movement set up in November 2012 to keep track of harassment cases and send teams of volunteers to protest sites to intervene in mob assaults. The organisation is just one of several movements monitoring protest sites and offering ‘safety advice’ to women. The emergence of such movements is evidence of the growing unwillingness to tolerate street harassment as public awareness about the problem increases .
Police in Egypt have meanwhile, formed a special unit of female police officers to combat street harassment in particular, and violence against women in general. While the unit is still small in size –consisting only of ten women—rights campaigners believe it is “a step in the right direction.”
“Often women victims of harassment are too ashamed to report incidents of harassment and sexual assault. In some cases , they are afraid of getting blamed”, Azza Kamel , founder and director of women’s rights organisation Appropriate Communication Techniques (ACT), said in an interview. “They may feel more at ease talking to another woman about the issue,” she added. Her organisation has run a hotline for eyewitnesses and women victims to report sexual harassment or assault cases which are known to increase and get more violent during public holidays and religious festivals.
Fatma Khafagy, chairperson of the National Women’s Council ‘s Ombudsman Office meanwhile, lamented that male security officers do not take sexual harassment seriously enough and at times, themselves harass women who come forward to report such incidents.
With a background in psychology, the women police officers have undergone training in communicating, listening and helping to rehabilitate victims of harassment and assault. “We encourage women to speak up and report harassment. They should not blame themselves for causing the harassment and must not hesitate in seeking justice”, said Colonel Manar Mokhtar, one of the officers at the new police unit for combating violence against women. “We also urge them to seek professional counselling that can help them recover from their traumatic experience.”
Victims of harassment often complain of a “culture of impunity” at the state level, saying that perpetrators often go unpunished for their crime. “But that is slowly changing with the growing awareness about the problem,” Khafagy noted.
She acknowledged the pressing and urgent need for legislation to counter the problem, given the surge in violence against women in Egypt, post revolution. A study conducted in April by the Egyptian Center for Women’s Rights revealed that 99.3 percent of Egyptian women have experienced some form of sexual harassment.
“In the absence of laws against sexual violence, we can only expect street harassment and sexual assaults to continue unchecked”, argued Khafagy.
A bill on violence against women that was recently drafted by the National Council for Women and was under discussion in the now-disbanded Shura Council, the upper house of parliament has been shelved due to the political instability.
Khafagy and other rights activists however, believe that legislation won’t be enough to tackle what they described as “a social scourge.”
“The answer lies in changing people’s attitudes. Educating women about their rights and getting men to realize the extent of the harm they inflict on the women is the only way that we can change existing behavioural patterns,” insisted Kamel. “But change cannot happen overnight; it takes time.”
For Egypt’s women victims of harassment, it cannot happen fast enough.
In a move that may have left a few people slightly confused, the Daily Mail has published an editorial in support of the BBC.
The Mail’s traditional antipathy to the BBC notwithstanding (“its monstrous bureaucracy, its unthinking profligacy with licence fees, its manifold editorial misjudgements or its all-pervading soft-Left bias”), the paper is critical of suggestions that the corporation’s oversight body, the BBC Trust, should have its functions transferred to communications regulator OfCom and the National Audit Office. The Trust has faced criticism as excessive remuneration and severance packages have led to accusations of waste and cronyism.
So why on Earth would the Daily Mail defend this?
For very obvious reasons actually. The Leveson report of 2012 suggested that, should a self-regulatory body established by the press fail to meet the criteria set out by the Lord Justice, OfCom could step in as a “backstop” regulator.
If as the Mail’s editorial suggests in regard to BBC budgeting, “It is simply not safe to entrust such power to a quango answerable to MPs, with their vanity, partisan agendas and propensity to bear grudges.”, then surely the self same proprietors of all that vanity, partisanship and grudgery should not be allowed even the slightest control over the free press.
So what’s the Mail’s solution for the BBC?
Surely it cannot be beyond the wit of man to devise a genuinely independent regulator, with the authority to ensure value for money and true impartiality.
We’re not necessarily just talking about the BBC here, are we?
Meanwhile last week David Cameron, resplendent in new reading glasses, told the Commons Liaison Committee he feared an “impasse” in progress on press regulation. While voicing support for a cross-party Royal Charter regulatory proposal rather than the alternative suggested by the majority of the newspapers, Cameron suggested that the leaders of the other main parties, as well as the press, may need to give some leeway in negotiations:
“To be clear I am committed to the cross-party charter. We all signed it, we agreed it. We should progress it but it would be good if we could find some way for everyone to see that it would be better if you ended up with a cross-party charter that the press seek recognition with. But it is a cross-party issue so this is something all party leaders have to address.”
Professor Brian Cathcart of Hacked Off, the group campaigning for the imposition of the Royal Charter, claimed in an article for Huffington Post that the idea of an “impasse” had been planted in the prime minister’s head by newspaper editors, declaring “There is no impasse; there is a process.”
But in which direction we are to proceed may still be up for grabs.
A recently released film in South Korea set out to spark a discussion on free speech in the country, and amid opposition and cancelled viewings, it has done just that.
Project Cheonan Ship is a film on the aftermath of the 2010 sinking of the Cheonan warship, a South Korean navy submersible that went down in waters near North Korea. South Korea concluded that a North Korean torpedo was the cause of the sinking, though North Korea denied any involvement. The film features experts in a range of fields offering possible alternative causes of the ship’s sinking.
In August, members of the South Korean navy and relatives of a few of the 46 sailors who died in the sinking sought a court injunction to prevent the film’s release. “There is freedom of expression, but no freedom of distortion…If the movie is released, it could defame the reputations of the 46 fallen soldiers and their bereaved families”, the group’s lawyer said in a statement.
The injunction was denied in court and the film opened according to schedule on Sept. 5 at 30 theaters across South Korea, mostly in independent film houses but in a few major theaters as well. It did well on its opening weekend, ranked first among independent films and eleventh overall at the box office.
After two days, the film was pulled by Megabox, a major theater chain. This is believed to be the first time in Korean history that a film has been pulled in this way. Megabox said that they had received warning from conservative civic groups who planned to picket the theaters showing the film. The theater company said they didn’t want to put viewers’ safety at risk, and therefore stopped showing the film to avoid trouble.
A big part of the reason why the issue of the Cheonan sinking is still prickly is that there was a long debate over the cause of the sinking and though the evidence strongly points to North Korea, there still isn’t a uniform consensus on what happened. An international investigation commissioned by the South Korean government eventually concluded that indeed, a North Korean torpedo had sunk the Cheonan. Skeptics continued to argue that the ship could have come in contact with a mine leftover from the Korean War.
The debate over the sinking has been split along the lines of South Korea’s political divide: conservatives who support the South’s military alliance with the US and are bitterly opposed to North Korea, and those on the left who don’t approve of the large US military presence in South Korea and see it as the main obstacle to peaceful reunification with North Korea.
People in South Korea who voice either explicit or implied support or sympathy for North Korea are often shouted down. There is even a law banning expressions ofsupport for the North: Article 7 of the National Security Law (NSL) stipulates up to seven years in prison for anyone who “praises, incites or propagates the activities of an anti-government organization”. Under the law, North Korea counts as just such an anti-government organization.
While supporters say the NSL is necessary to protect a fragile peace against the North Korean threat, critics say it is a vaguely worded prohibition that is really meant to stifle dissent within the country.
The makers of Project Cheonan Ship intended not to take a position on the cause of the Cheonan sinking, but to start a conversation about the importance of unimpeded expression of differing views. “Our primary motivation was not telling a story about the Cheonan sinking case itself, but about the intolerant attitude seen in our society after the incident,” Director Baek Seung-woo said in an interview on Sept. 13.
Baek said he and the other filmmakers wanted to reiterate the importance of free speech in South Korea. “We made this movie because we believe most people in our society have an understanding of what free speech means, but don’t yet fully appreciate its value,” he said.
Even after making the film, they still don’t attempt to make definite claims on how and why the Cheonan went down. Baek explained, “While making the movie, I realized how extremely difficult the case was. I am not expert on marine science or military equipment or explosives. I’m not scientist either. I don’t know what the cause is, but I think the real experts in our society need a more open climate of free speech to really figure out what happened.”
Copyright is simple to understand, except when those who want to get rid of it start complicating the explanation.
If I write a book, the right to make money from it belongs to me, and I make an agreement with a publisher who will print it and distribute it, collect the money it sells for, and pass on a small proportion to me. Anyone who wants to read it either has to buy it, in which case I get that small proportion of the money it sells for, or borrow it from a library, in which case the librarian counts the number of times that title is borrowed, passes on the details to the Public Lending Right administrators, and I’m paid a small sum for each borrowing.
Quite a number of people make money in the course of these processes. The editor, the jacket designer, the publicist, the printer, the library assistant, the bookshop manager, the PLR administrator, and others, all earn a living on the back of the fact that I and my fellow authors have written books that people want to read. And so do I, and that’s as it should be: we all contribute to the process of bringing my book to the public. Our rewards vary, of course: if my book sells a lot of copies I might make more money in a year than the bookshop manager, whereas if it sells very few I’ll make a great deal less. But that’s the risk I take, and on the whole this system is fair, and most authors see the justice of it.
What happens when someone buys my book and lends it to a friend? Well, I don’t get a penny for that, of course. Nor do I get a penny when they decide they would rather get rid of the book and give it to Oxfam, who sells it second-hand. But those transactions are pretty few, and I can put up with the anguish of making no money from them by thinking that, after all, they increase the number of my readers, who might buy my next book themselves.
Now suppose that someone sees there’s money to be made from books, and decides to print and distribute my book themselves, without any agreement with me, and keep all the money they get from it. They’d be fairly stupid to do that, because this is where the law of copyright comes in. They’re not allowed to do it. It’s against the law. That’s why it very rarely happens now, although it used to happen a great deal before international copyright agreements came into existence. Charles Dickens, for example, made no money at all from the vast sale of his books in the United States, and he was justly angered about it.
But nowadays that sort of thing doesn’t happen. Except … Someone invented the internet. And instead of going to the great difficulty and trouble of printing, binding, distributing, and so forth, in order to steal someone else’s literary or musical work, all the thief has to do is press a few keys, and they can make our work available to anyone in the world, and take all the money for themselves. This is most familiar to us in the field of music, of course. The ease and swiftness with which music can be acquired in the form of MP3 downloads is still astonishing even to those of us who have been building up our iTunes list for some time.
Some of us take the moral route, and pay for it, but many don’t. I had a long argument with a young man a year or two ago, a bright, decent student who was going to work in the field of the arts himself, who maintained that he had a right to download anything he wanted without paying for it, because it was there and he could do it. What about the money you’re stealing from the artist? I asked. Well, first of all it wasn’t stealing, he said, it was more like breathing the air that was available to everyone; and secondly, making music was something the musician would do anyway, as a hobby, and downloading it wouldn’t stop them from doing it; and thirdly, if they wanted to make money they should do as other musicians did, and perform live gigs, and go on tour, and sell merchandise at the door.
Then there’s YouTube. The pianist Krystian Zimerman was recently playing at a festival in Essen, Germany, when he spotted a member of the audience filming him on a phone. He stopped playing and left the stage, and “explained on his return that he had lost recording contracts in the past because his playing of the works in question had already been uploaded onto the internet where people could see it for free,” according to BBC Music Magazine.
Books are slightly different, but the principle is the same. The internet only shows up in stark terms how like a cobweb the law of copyright is when confronted with the sheer force wielded by large corporations. As Richard Morrison wrote in BBC Music Magazine: “Google has been adept at fostering the impression that it is merely an altruistic and democratic ‘platform’ – a digital version of Speaker’s Corner – rather than a commercial publisher that is as accountable to the laws of copyright, libel and theft as any old-fashioned ‘print’ publisher would be. That Google has managed to sustain this illusion of being something like a charity or public service is astonishing, since it is a massively profitable global corporation with ways of minimising its tax bill that many would consider to be the opposite of public-spirited.” At the end of his article Morrison said: “If you quote me, I promise not to sue.”
The technical brilliance is so dazzling that people can’t see the moral squalor of what they’re doing. It is outrageous that anyone can steal an artist’s else’s work and get away with it. It is theft, as surely as reaching into someone’s pocket and taking their wallet is theft. Writers and musicians work in poverty and obscurity for years in order to bring their work to a pitch of skill and imaginative depth that gives delight to their audiences, and as soon as they achieve that, the possibility of making a living from it is taken away from them. There are some who are lucky enough to do well despite the theft and the piracy that goes on all around them; there are many more who are not. The principle is simple, and unaltered by technology, science, or magic: if we want to enjoy the work that someone does, we should pay for it.
Cathy Casserly
CATHY CASSERLY
The world is changing. Being a creator means something different today from what it meant a few years ago. And, let’s be honest, the change hasn’t been all good. The seemingly endless parade of newspapers shutting their doors or slashing their budgets is a stark reminder that it’s hard to make a living as a content creator. Today’s writers, photographers, and musicians must think very creatively about how to distribute and monetize their work, and the solutions they arrive at may look very different from the ways previous generations of artists made money.
In the past few weeks, there has been a lot of discussion about Spotify and similar music streaming services, and whether they pay artists fairly. The debate underscores the larger issue, that traditional distribution models are quickly becoming obsolete. The new generation of artists must be as cutting-edge with its business models as it is with its art.
According to world-renowned science fiction author Cory Doctorow, “My problem is not piracy, it’s obscurity.” Years ago, Cory decided that making it easy for people to download his books would do more for his career than trying to make it hard would. In other words, Cory doesn’t see people accessing and sharing his work online as a threat; he sees it as his livelihood. In a lot of ways, Cory represents the new possibilities for creators in the digital age. The creators who are thriving today are the ones who use Internet distribution most innovatively; in fact, the ones who are most generous with their work often reap the most reward.
But copyright was created in an analog age. By default, copyright closes the door on countless ways that people can share, build upon, and remix each other’s work, possibilities that were unimaginable when those laws were established. For Cory and artists like him, people sharing and creatively reusing their work literally translates into new fans and new revenue streams. That’s the problem with the all-or-nothing approach to copyright. The All Rights Reserved default doesn’t just restrict the kinds of reuse that eat into your sales; it also restricts the kinds of reuse that can help you build a following in the first place.
I work for Creative Commons, a global nonprofit organization that offers a set of open content licenses which lets creators take copyright into their own hands. By licensing her works under a Creative Commons license, a creator can turn All Rights Reserved into Some Rights Reserved, permitting others to reuse her works as long as they properly attribute her and, if she chooses, comply with one or two additional conditions. We’re not anti-copyright; in fact, our tools go hand-in-hand with copyright. Without the strength of copyright protection behind them, the conditions of a Creative Commons license would be unenforceable. Creative Commons licenses are written by expert copyright lawyers and have been upheld in court numerous times.
What’s more exciting than the licenses’ track record in court is their impact on the world. Writers, musicians, and filmmakers are using our tools to build new creative communities and redefine how artists share, collaborate, and monetize. Scientists and other researchers are publishing their papers and data openly, letting others carry their work forward more swiftly. Governments are starting to require open licensing on resources and research that they fund, ensuring that the public has full access to what it paid for. Educators are building textbooks and other educational resources that anyone can use and customize at no cost, helping to bring higher quality education to communities with limited resources.
Of course, open licensing alone isn’t what makes a creator successful. Cory is successful because he’s a gifted and hard-working writer. Amanda Palmer is famous thanks to her songwriting talent and charisma. Jonathan Worth wouldn’t be a sought-after photographer if he didn’t have a knack for taking perfect shots. These people aren’t successful because of Creative Commons. But they are successful, in part, because they found ways to let the power of the Internet carry their careers to new heights. And for each of them, that strategy included sharing their work widely under an open license.
It’s impossible to imagine how new technologies will redefine the next generation of creative professionals, but I believe that the most innovative creators won’t try to go back in time. Instead, they’ll use new technologies to their own benefit and that of their peers. They’ll carry technology forward rather than trying to fight it back. I can’t wait to see what’s next.
Philip Pullman is the president of the Society of Authors @Soc_of_Authors
Cathy Casserly is chief executive of Creative Commons @cathycasserly
A UK court has today ruled that a Muslim woman may not wear niqab (the face covering veil) while giving evidence in a trial. The judgment does, however, suggest that the woman may be allowed to give evidence behind screens, or on a video livelink.
The case had sparked calls for a “national debate” on niqab in the UK, led by Home Office minister Jeremy Browne.
We’ve been here before, of course. As far back as 2006, I took part in a discussion on the issue on the BBC radio’s philosophical bear pit, the Moral Maze.
I pointed out then my personal objection to niqab, and indeed other strictly interpreted religious dress codes: in my view they are the product of an obsession with female sexuality that is just creepy.
This is not a new idea, but I still think it’s true. There are, however, other parts of this argument.
Pointing out the “male gaze” argument carries a danger of simplifying the issue of niqab in the UK to a straightforward view of the face veil as a patriarchal imposition. This makes the debate easier, as it becomes simply about liberating women from portable prisons.
While male pressure may certainly be a factor, it’s far from the whole story.
Veiling (as opposed to hijab) among older Muslim women in the UK is really quite rare. The majority of those taking up niqab are teenage girls and young women choosing to do so whether due to devoutness, fashion or peer pressure. I have heard the argument put forward that the more attractive a girl is, the more it is religiously sanctioned that she should wear a veil. Thus covering your face is in fact sending a signal that you are very beautiful indeed. One can see why some teenage girls would sign up for that.
There is a debate to be had over parts of social interaction where identification is more than merely desirable: courts being the most often cited example. But too often the discussion about niqab is about what “we” are comfortable or uncomfortable with, rather than what is necessary for a functioning society.
And consistently, the voices of niqabis are not sought out. In the Independent, Yasmin Alibhai Brown blithely dismisses niqabis as “unquestioning women” following “manmade injunctions”.
On Newsnight in 2010, when asked whether women in, say, the legal profession should be allowed wear niqab, Tariq Ramadan shrugged off the notion saying the type of woman who wears niqab would never enter that profession in the first place. Niqabis are not just veiled, they are silenced.
It’s worth watching this clip below (from the same Newsnight segment as the one where Tariq Ramadan dismissed the future of niqabis), one of the rare instances where girls and women are actually asked about niqab.
Speaking to veiled young women in Whitechapel, Conservative MP Philip Hollobone encounters some interesting views, but the emphasis is on personal choice. One Niqabi implies that veiling, like goth or punk, is a subculture rather than necessarily an imposition of piety. A liberal society should not be comfortable with discussions about proscribing modes of dress, for whatever reason they are adopted.
A shot from the video Amira Osman recorded urging Sudanese people to stand up to Public Order Laws.
Sudan’s Public Order Law (POL) is making headlines after female activist and engineer Amira Osman was arrested on August 27 in Jebel Awliya, a suburb of Khartoum, for refusing to pull up her head-scarf. Amira is now facing trial for “indecent conduct” under Article 152 of the Sudanese penal code, and risks being punished with flogging and/or bail. Her next trial is scheduled for September 19.
In a calculated act of defiance against one of Africa’s most oppressive regimes, Ms. Osman recorded a video where she described the demeaning manner in which she was treated by Public Order Police (POP) and invited Sudanese citizens (men and women) to attend her trial, saying: “if you think that the Public Order Law is against you, come to Jabel Awliya’s Court…and let’s put the Public Order Law on trial”.
The first session of her trial was on September 1. It was attended by almost 100 regular citizens, civil society members and women’s rights activists. The trial was postponed when the judge did not show up due to sickness.
Osman’s trial is reminiscent of the POL case of Sudanese journalist Lubna Hussien, who captivated national and international attention in July 2009 when she and 12 other women were arrested in a restaurant in Khartoum for wearing trousers.
Public order laws or social control laws?
Sudan’s POLs date back to 1983. They were referred to back then as the September Laws, imposed by the authoritarian regime of President Jafaar Numeiri. He introduced Sharia corporal punishments (hudood) for acts such as consuming alcohol, stealing, gambling or mixing between the sexes. These laws fueled the national discontent that led to the uprising that toppled Numeiri in April 1985.
When the current regime took power in 1989 following a military coup, it introduced an extensive array of Public Order Laws. With the intention of creating an Islamic State, the National Islamic Front (as it was called back then) initiated a detailed “Civilization Project” that reached into every aspect of Sudanese social life, and placed restrictions on long entrenched traditional norms such as private parties with music, mixing between the sexes and the making and consumption of alcohol.
However, no other aspect of the Public Order Regime has altered the daily lives of Sudanese women like Article 152 of the Criminal Act of 1991 that says: “(1) Whoever commits, in a public place, an act, or conducts himself in an indecent manner, or a manner contrary to public morality, or wears an indecent, or immoral dress, which causes annoyance to public feelings, shall be punished, with whipping, not exceeding forty lashes, or with fine, or with both; (2) The act shall be deemed contrary to public morality, if it is so considered in the religion of the doer, or the custom of the country where the act occurs.”
Human rights lawyers have consistently pointed out that Article 152 is vague and does not define what is meant precisely by indecent clothing or indecent behaviour. It thus leaves a lot to be interpreted by POP and the judges in the Public Order Courts.
Prominent human rights lawyer Nabeel Adeeb recently commented in an op-ed that,”what is seen by me as indecent attire may be seen by someone else as decent”. He adds that from a religious perspective it’s hard to impose one uniform on women because it depends on their personal understanding of their faith. “Judges should not be god’s representatives on earth.” he says. Society’s understanding of “decent” attire is a constantly shifting concept, and Sudan’s diversity makes this even more complex and a matter that should not be decided in the courts. “It is an issue left to families and religious leaders, because it is linked to education and upbringing and not the law,” he concludes.
Poor and fleeing women targeted
No national statistics are available to shed light on how many women or men around Sudan are impacted by the Public Order Regime, however in 2008 the head of the Public Order Police in Khartoum said that in that year 41,000 persons were stopped under Article 152 and signed promissory documents “not to wear indecent clothing”.
Most POL cases are processed quickly in Public Order Courts without the presence of lawyers, with no due process and with judges who lack proper legal training.
Women’s rights activists who have been fighting this law for years point out that the stigma associated with being arrested by POP drive many women, who are less knowledgeable about their rights and more concerned about their reputation, into accepting summary trials in Public Order Courts where they are often flogged and/or have to pay a bail .
The women most impacted by the POL are not the urban educated women like Amira and Lubna, but rather the thousands of women fleeing conflicts and hard conditions in other regions such as the Nuba Mountains and Darfur, and who have to support their families by working in Khartoum’s informal sector selling tea, food or making a local millet-based beer called marisa.
Monim Adam, a human rights lawyer, says: “in most cases these women cannot afford the bail that can go up to $200, and they end up serving prison terms of up to one month. Many of them also endure sexual harassment that goes as far as rape, from the Public Order Police officers who have limited oversight”.
A prominent case that’s also running in the courts right now is that of Nuba Mountains woman Awadiya Ajabna. She was shot dead in March 2012 when she interfered as the POP were harassing her brother outside their family home, accusing him of being drunk. Ajabna died hours after POP fired shots that also injured her mother and sister.
This is not the first documented case of death at the hands of POP, as in 2010 a tea lady, Nadia Saboon was fleeing what is referred to as a Kashaa (a raid or sweep) by the POP. Saboon fell on a piece of metal and died due to the injury sustained. Raids and confiscations of the equipment of tea ladies by POP are a common practice in Khartoum, and it is done under the premise of “preserving the appearance of the public domain”.
A protester holds a portrait of General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi during protests in July. (Shawkan / Demotix)
While the situation in Egypt is complex and unpredictable, there can be little doubt that General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and his men are in charge of a country in deep crisis. On several occasions, they have handled this crisis with violent crackdowns that have attracted widespread, international condemnation. It appears they are now looking for some outside help to polish up their image as protectors of the state.
Industry publication AdAge reported last week that Egypt’s interim military government is seeking support from western public relations companies.
“The government (…) is in talks with a handful of firms that have strong public-affairs capabilities in the U.S. and Europe, and has issued at least one global RFP out of London, according to people familiar with the matter”, the publication said.
But with PR being a quickly growing industry, and a sea of options out there, it can be difficult to even know where to start browsing. Egypt, however, is not the first country to seek the help and guidance of western PR.
We have put together a list of companies that are not strangers to working for regimes with questionable human rights records.
London-based Bell Pottinger, once described as a ‘firm synonymous with this international spin’ has worked with everyone from Bahrain to Belarus, Sri Lanka and Yemen. But a word of advice, their services don’t come cheap. In 2012 it was reported that Bahrain’s royal family have spent £7.5 million on contracts with the firm. On the other hand, whereas American PR firms have to declare their dealings with foreign governments to American authorities, such regulations do not exist in the UK.
Where is the first place people go for information on a country, if not the world’s favourite user-generated encyclopedia? With Egypt’s current Wikipedia page not necessarily painting the military government in the best light, it’s helpful to know that Washington-based company Qorvis have reportedly helped clients like Saudi Arabia polish up theirs. For people seeking more in-depth knowledge, the firm has also been known to place favorable reports regarding their clients.
Mainstream media is one of the best ways to advertise your country as the new it-holiday destination or a booming business hotspot, or even get a policy point across. A PR firm can help you do that. London-based Ketchum was credited with placing Vladimir Putin’s much read recent New York Times op-ed on Syria. Could they make a ‘23 Ways You Know You Definitely Haven’t Staged A Coup’ Buzzfeed piece a reality?
Sometimes, it can be equally important to get stories removed from the media. In that case, Dragon Associates could be an alternative. They were credited with having a critical comment piece about their clients Bahrain removed from the Guardian website, ahead of the country’s controversial Formula One Grand Prix race.
There are also options outside the US and the UK – Azerbaijan’s government has worked with Berlin-based Consultum Communications. In 2011, a prestigious gala event in celebration of the 20th anniversary of Azerbaijan’s independence was held in the German capital. Attendees included former Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher and former Economics Minister Michael Glos – both board members of Consultum.
Then again, it might be nice to go for someone with historical ties to Egypt, like the PLM Group. The joint venture between the Podesta Group and Livingston Group in 2007 signed a deal with then-president Hosni Mubarak’s government to “provide general, high-level strategic advice relative to the Egyptian image among American decision-makers.”
And if that’s not familiar enough, how about hiring a company that will come to you? British Grayling took over an office in Belarus, the country regularly labelled ‘Europe’s last dictatorship’, and in the face of public pressure refused to close it down.
A publicity shot from Lucien Bourjeily’s latest play, Would It Pass Or Not?
Lucien Bourjeily retains a sense of humour. It’s an important attribute for a playwright taking on Lebanon’s censors.
Earlier this year, Bourjeily, an internationally acclaimed writer and director who dazzled the London International Festival of Theatre 2012 with his immersive work 66 Minutes In Damascus, wrote a play about Lebanese censorship. “Would It Pass Or Not?”, produced by anti-censorship group March, addresses the question every Lebanese writer and artists asks themselves before sitting down to begin a work.
Lebanon is a country battling to keep a lid on sectarian tensions, and eternally caught up in other people’s wars. Censorship is seen as a national security issue, and overseen by the army.
Like so many modern blue-pencillers, the Lebanese Censorship Bureau insist that it is only protecting citizens. There is, says Bourjeily, quite a bit of sympathy for this argument in the country.
So Bourjeily decided to tackle the topic head on and write not about the many sensitive issues in Lebanon but about the censors themselves.
Suspecting that the answer to “Would it pass or not?” would be an emphatic “not”, he and his company sought to exploit a loophole, performing their play on university campuses to invited audiences rather than in public theatres. The censors still pursued him. Two officers from the bureau turned up at a university show and broke up the performance. Bourjeily decided he would try to test the censor’s decision.
In conversation with Index, Bourjeily told of his bizarre encounters with the censor board’s general. He was summoned to the bureau in Beirut on 28 August.
The play cannot go ahead, he was told, because it was not realistic. It was exaggerated.
True, Bourjeily says. It’s fiction. Of course it’s unrealistic and exaggerated. Otherwise it would be a documentary.
The general turns to his subaltern and describes scenes from the play, asking “would such a thing happen here?”, unintentionally and ironically echoing a scene in the play itself. When censors are censoring a play about censorship, things are bound to turn to farce sooner or later.
Normally, Lebanon’s censors will suggest changes to works that will allow them to pass – a joke removed here, a political remark erased there. But with Bourjeily’s play, this was apparently not going to happen.
The censors’ next move was interesting: they would show, they said, that Boujeily’s play had no artistic merit. On 3 September, General Mounir Akiki appeared on television bearing testimony from four “critics”, each of whom said the same thing; that there was no artistic value in “Would it pass or not?”. Curiously, none of these critics were named, but their views were taken very seriously indeed. One said that Bourjeily’s play were “with a defamatory hallucination indicating the absence of his artistic level”, another that the play “was not related to the theatre, but rather with prosaic words and it does not meet the conditions regarding the structure.”
It’s a familiar ruse; if it’s not art, it’s not artistic censorship; if it’s rubbish, who would want to see it anyway?
In this, the censors echoed the notorious, and in hindsight ridiculous, court hearings over Lady Chatterley’s Lover in Britain in 1960 , the crux of the argument being whether the book was actually literature or mere obscene pornography. Great lengths were gone to by intellectuals such as Richard Hoggart to prove that Lady Chatterley’s Lover was literature, and thus, perhaps something one might wish your wife or your servants to read, at least if you were an enlightened sort of chap.
This is always what censorship of works of art comes down to: someone, be it the colonels, the Lord Chamberlain or whoever else, is to decide what you can read, what you can write, what ideas you can process. As the late Christopher Hitchens observed in a speech at the University of Toronto in 2006, if given the choice, would you nominate someone for that role? Or would you think you’d take your chances with your own intellect?
Lebanese writers and theatregoers are deprived of that option every day.
In the aftermath of a murder of a delivery driver and discovery of explosive devices in his van, a small underground group took responsibility, but news editors refused to carry the group’s statement, leading to a print blackout in Manipur.
Newspapers in the state reported on 19 Aug that the cold-blooded killing of Okram Gyanendro had led to a road blockade of the Imphal-Moreh highway in protest. The Imphal-Moreh Road Transporters’ Union and the All Manipur Road Transport Drivers and Motor Workers’ Union strongly condemned the murder and called for a 13 hour general strike across the state as the story gained more attention.
As reported by the Indian Express, in the aftermath of the murder, a small underground group took responsibility for the attack. However, senior editors refused to publish the group’s statement, as they believed this small group could not have carried off the attack and only sought to gain legitimacy through media attention. By August 28th, a letter from the group had been issued to hawkers who distribute newspapers in Manipur, to halt distribution, which was ignored. On September 1st, the All Manipur Newspaper Sales and Distributors Association received a phone call saying that if the hawkers did not stop distributing newspapers, they would be shot dead.
Caught between the ongoing violent rivalry between insurgent groups in Manipur, newspaper distribution was stopped. The All Manipur Journalists’ Union (AMWJU) staged a protest along with the Editors’ Forum and the All Manipur Newspaper Sales and Distribution Association to protest the threats issued to media workers and the freedom of the press in Manipur. Some of the complaints that were made were that insurgent groups force newspapers to carry news, whether it is true or not, and even force them to carry press releases without any changes. The chief minister of Manipur was approached, and asked to put in safety measures for media persons.
However, with the backdrop of the newspaper distribution ban, the editors of major newspapers decided to distribute their papers on their own. On September 7, it was reported that “editors of the leading newspapers published from Imphal created history on Saturday morning by selling their newspaper copies in the streets of Imphal city.”
In the meantime, the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has issued a statement of support, stating that, “we call on the state government in Manipur and the security agencies of the Indian government deployed in the state, to respond to the urgent calls from All Manipur Working Journalists Union (AWMJU) that conditions be secured for safeguarding journalists, rights and the public right to know.” And the chairman of India’s Press Council of India also requested the Chief Minister of Manipur to ensure that newspapers can function normally.
By 8th September, hawkers had decided to resume work in Manipur, in light of appeals from various civil society organizations and also for the sake of their livelihood.
I’m on holiday. I didn’t mean to be, but I am. I did mean to be here, in this tiny village, on a mountain in Spain. I did mean to be sitting on this hillside, gazing out at olive groves, and pine trees and a blue, blue sky. But what I meant to be doing was write. I was meant, now that I’m freelance, to be doing the kind of writing that means you can actually eat some food and pay some bills. I was meant, in fact, to be writing a little e-book. The trouble is, I didn’t have time to do the research. There are some things that still need research. Proper research, that is, which means meeting people, and talking to people, and looking at things in real life, and not just on Google. The trouble is that to do proper research, you need time. And time is very, very, very hard to find when you’re freelance.
I didn’t actually plan to be freelance. Like all journalists, I knew I probably would be one day. Like all journalists, I knew that newspapers were, and are, and unfortunately soon will be, going down the pan. This makes me more sad than I can say. I believe in journalism. I believe in the kind of journalism I was able to do at The Independent for 10 years, and the kind I did last year looking into the state of nursing, and which got me (though it seems immodest to say it) on the shortlist for a prize that bears a great writer, and journalist’s, name. I think that to look at things, as clearly as you can, and write about them, as clearly as you can, and think about them, as clearly as you can, as Orwell did, and as all good journalists should aim to do, is a good, and proper, and maybe even a noble thing to do. Doing this, or trying to do this, felt to me like a vocation. But a vocation isn’t a hobby. Someone has to pay the rent.
We all know that the clock is ticking. Even Rupert Murdoch knows that the clock is ticking. During the Leveson report, he gave newspapers five to ten years. When I was asked, last autumn, to speak about Leveson at the Battle of Ideas, I tried to think about what newspapers should and shouldn’t do, and what readers should and shouldn’t want, but actually all I could think was this: we are fiddling while Rome burns.
When I saw the play Enquirer, in an office block in the City, it felt like an elegy to an industry that was dying. It probably felt like that because it was. Some of the conversations in it, which were real conversations put into a kind of collage that made up a script, were between people I had worked with, and knew. Some of them, for example, were between Roger Alton, who was one of the nicest editors I ever worked for, and who sent me flowers when I was diagnosed with cancer, and Deborah Orr, who also used to be a colleague, and who is clever, and fierce, and kind. The play talked about Leveson. Of course it talked about Leveson. But most of all it talked about how newspapers were, or soon would be, a relict of the past. The play made me cry, but I think it made a lot of journalists cry. Deborah told me that in Glasgow, where it was first performed, in a building overlooking what used to be the shipyards, almost everyone cried. At the end, she said, the sunset they could see from the window was like a message to a dying industry from one that was already dead.
When I saw Chimerica, a couple of weeks ago, I nearly cried again. The play, which is very, very good, and talks about things plays ought to talk about, like the balance of power between East and West, and between human rights and money, and between the old world and the new, is also, in a way, an elegy to an industry that will soon be lost. It’s set largely in the US, where budgets for newspapers are still much bigger, and more lavish, than they are here. (No wonder the Washington Post needed Amazon profits to keep it going, though the irony of the man who used the internet to kill the high street bailing out the other big industry that’s being killed by the internet can hardly have been lost.) The photographer in the play, who’s trying to revive his career with a story about the “tank man” hero of Tiananmen Square, seems to be shocked that the editor isn’t all that keen to pick up the very, very big costs the story will incur. He’s even more shocked when the editor tells him he has to drop the story, for reasons to do with (Chinese) money, and power. The photographer seemed to think, as many journalists have thought, that it was his right to write the story he wanted to write. I’ve been lucky, over 10 years at The Independent, to write, at least most of the time, the stories (and columns and interviews and features) I’ve wanted to write. But you can only write them for as long as the owner wants to pay.
Newspapers are a rich man’s hobby. They’re a very good way of getting a bit of kudos, and a bit of power. They’ll get you invitations to Downing Street, and opportunities to mix with the great, and what passes for the good. What they won’t do, or hardly ever do, is make you money. The Guardian loses about £40m a year (though last year, apparently, it cut its losses by nearly a third). The Times loses about £40m a year. The Independent loses between £10m and £20m a year. Forty, twenty or even ten million is a lot of money to burn. When people bought newspapers, or, to put it in a more modern way, were happy to “pay for content”, it was bad enough. But how do you try to limit your losses when people expect their “content” – their words, their arguments, their virtual encounters with the great, the good and the reasonably talented – to be as free as the air they breathe?
The answer, it seems, is you don’t. So what you do is cut your costs. You might, for example, want to get rid of all your expensive staff writers. You might decide that “content” is something you can get from a college leaver, for 18, or 19, or 20 grand. You might even decide that the important thing isn’t to get the right words in the right order, but just to get some words – any words – down.
So, we’re losing our jobs. We journalists always knew we’d lose our jobs. We knew it in the way smokers know that sucking a little stick of tobacco gives you cancer. We knew it, but when it happens, it’s still a shock. For me, the week before it all blew up – and I think we can probably say that shouting at the editor so that he threatens to call security does count as things “blowing up” – I had been asked to address a seminar at the House of Commons and present a film for The One Show to coincide with the release of The Francis Report. One moment, I was being asked, by politicians, and TV presenters, and radio presenters, for my opinion on whatever I’d written about that morning. The next moment, I didn’t have a job. The next moment – the next day, to be a little bit more precise – I was telling Harriet Harman, on the phone, while pacing round my study, that I’d been looking forward to doing the interview we’d fixed, for a series on “women and power”, but that it didn’t seem all that appropriate any more, since I didn’t seem to have any power – and that my career as a journalist on a national newspaper seemed to have come to a sudden end.
Since then, I’ve done what freelancers do. I’ve sent a lot of emails. I’ve had a lot of meetings. I’ve discovered, as freelancers apparently often do, that most of your working hours, at least for the first few months of being freelance, are spent trying to get work. You can only do the work – or start to do the work – when the working day ends. Which means, or seems to mean, you end up working pretty much all the time.
It has been an interesting time. I don’t just mean that it’s been interesting in the way the Chinese mean interesting. All journalists know we live in “interesting times”, and most think some boring times would make a nice change. But it really has been interesting. I’ve started reviewing regularly again – fiction, and non-fiction – for the Sunday Times. I’ve been able to do some long-form journalism for the Sunday Times magazine. I’ve written the odd column, for the Guardian, and for the Guardian’s comment website, Comment is Free, but I haven’t had to have an opinion about one of the big issues of the day, once or twice week, as I have done for the past seven years. I’ve worked with some exceptionally nice editors, and I always have what you don’t always have when you’re a staff journalist on a daily paper: the right to say no. But when I’ve looked at the next day’s front pages, for the Sky and BBC News press previews, I haven’t quite been able to decide whether it’s still my world, or not. I know it’s where my heart is. But the body also has to be fed.
Like most journalists, I want to think, and I want to write. Like most journalists, I’ve been lucky to do this for so long. Sure, we can write books, but most writers can’t earn a living any more by writing books. Or at least they can’t unless what they write about is secret codes or sadistic sex. When you’ve worked on a newspaper, and had to deal with some bullying bosses, you’re quite likely to find yourself wanting the home, and the bedroom, to be a sadism-free zone.
We’re meant to be blogging. We’re meant, in other words, to be giving the thing we used to be paid for away, in the ether, for free. Plumbers haven’t yet been told they should mend toilets for free. Builders aren’t yet expected to put in new kitchens for the thrill of being asked. But we’re all meant to be building our “brand”. I don’t know about writers as brands. I suppose a writer can be a brand. But I’d rather think writing was less about brand, and much, much more about “voice”.
So, here I am, freelance and free, on a mountain in Spain. I’m at a writers’ retreat. It’s a very lovely writers’ retreat. It has, as you’ll see from the website, if you look at it (www.oldolivepress.com), a lovely view, a lovely terrace, and a lovely pool. It also has a lovely library. When I looked at the library, and at the 3000 books I was suddenly dying to read, I thought I could be locked in that library and not be too upset if I never had to leave. It also has poets. There’s a poet, Christopher North, who runs the place with his wife, Marisa, and there’s a poet, Tamar Yoseloff, who’s running a course here now. I’m not doing it. I couldn’t, I think, write poetry, even if I tried. I used to run the Poetry Society, and I’ve worked with some of the best poets in the world. I only like good poems, and I’m pretty damn sure that any I wrote would be bad.
I’m not here to write poems. I can’t write the little e-book I was going to write, because I haven’t done the research. What I can do is write a little bit on my blog every day (or almost every day) and gaze at the mountains, and the clouds, and wander round the village, and look at the little houses, painted blue, and green, and pink, and red, and listen to the silence, and remember that sometimes what a recovering journalist needs, more than work, or money, or even a plan for the future, is sunshine, and peace.
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A recently released film in South Korea set out to spark a discussion on free speech in the country, and amid opposition and cancelled viewings, it has done just that.
