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US president Donald Trump’s executive order banning citizens of seven predominantly Muslim countries from travelling to the USA for has had devastating consequences for thousands of people. Among them is Index on Censorship Award winner Murad Subay. The Yemeni street artist is now unable to visit his wife, who is currently studying in the USA.
“It’s really frustrating to even start thinking that I won’t be able to see her for that long,” he told Index. “She was supposed to visit during summer break, however, it seems that she can’t do that now.”
With uncertainty surrounding how the Trump administration’s policy towards Yemen will play out, the couple are now facing the very real prospect of not seeing each other until she finishes her studies four years from now.
“It’s been a really difficult time for both of us because it’s the first time we’ve been away from each other for more than a month,” Subay said. “I can’t say that this doesn’t have its negative effects on my work, for it surely does.”
At home, the worries that have plagued Subay throughout the Obama administration remain, particularly Trump’s continuation – and possible escalation – of his predecessor’s drone strikes in Yemen, which by February 2016 had killed up to 729 Yemenis including 100 civilians. One rural counter-terrorism raid authorised by Trump has already left at least 10 women and children dead, according to Al-Jazeera.
Murad Subay is the 2016 Index on Censorship Freedom of Expression Arts Award-winner and fellow. His practice involves Yemenis in creating murals that protest the country’s civil war. Read more about Subay’s work.
“Trump has no right to make things even worse for Yemenis. Yemen is already suffering from US arms deals with Saudi Arabia that helped fuel this war. Barring Yemenis from entering the USA under his administration only adds to these troubles.”
The war has been hitting close to home for Subay in recent months. Two of his cousins were recruited by warring parties and killed on the battlefield. – Fuad Subay, aged 26, was a soldier killed in Albuka’a, and Yaser Subay, just 14, was recruited by Houthis and killed in Isilan.
On top of this, a close friend of his, the respected investigative journalist Mohammed Alabsi, was killed in an apparent assassination. According to the Yemen Times, Alabsi had gone out for dinner in Sana’a with a cousin on 20 December. A little while later both men were rushed to hospital, where Alabsi died.
“I was told that blood came out of his ears and eyes,” Subay said. “Mohammed was investigating the black markets trading in oil that were associated with high-ranking politicians. I do not know the exact details of this, but what I do know is that Yemen has lost one of its most important and noblest investigative journalists, and that I lost a dear friend.”
An investigation into Alabsi’s death is underway.
Subay addressed a recent wave of violence against civilians, including journalists and public figures, in a mural entitled Assassination’s Eye, painted on the Mathbah Bridge in Sana’a in late December. Part of the Ruins Campaign, the minimalist painting depicts a sniper’s crosshairs training in on a human target.
“It conveys the assassin’s point of view, where it first feels like it is only a part of training on how to hit a target, but then in the final square the bullet ends up in the head of a real person rather than a target board,” Subay explained. “These assassinations have spread vastly since 2012, where they were mostly carried out among the military ranks and politicians. Lately, however, these operations have been targeting civilians too. I was planning to address this issue some time ago after hearing about the assassinations of innocent civilians in different places of the country, and that was just two weeks before I was shocked by the death of my friend.”
Elsewhere, Subay has been asked to serve as a judge for the Italian arts award, Fax for Peace, which invites students and artists from around the world to send pictures, videos or animations on the themes of peace, tolerance, human rights and the fight against all forms of racism. He said of the role: “It is a great pleasure to be selected as a judge in this contest and it is a big responsibility, which I hope to be able to carry out effectively.”
However, with Yemen’s economic circumstances ever worsening, and many working people now into their fourth month without receiving salaries, he sees difficult times ahead.
“It’s very harsh to see people every day looking for anything to eat from garbage, waiting along with children in rows to get water from the public containers in the streets, or the ever increasing number of beggars in the streets. They are exhausted, as if it’s not enough that they had to go through all of the ugliness brought upon them by the war.”
Referring to the deaths of his cousins and his close friend, he added: “No one can live in this country and not be affected by the war. This all happened in the last three or four months. These events make a month in Yemen feel like a year.”[/vc_column_text][vc_basic_grid post_type=”post” max_items=”4″ element_width=”6″ grid_id=”vc_gid:1486138786513-e5ca059b-efd0-1″ taxonomies=”8196″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Boris Johnson
Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs
King Charles Street
London
SW1A 2AH
3 February 2017
Dear Mr Johnson,
In light of recent developments in Bahrain, we write to raise our deep concern over the punitive trials of prominent human rights defender Nabeel Rajab, who is being prosecuted in three separate cases for exercising his right to freedom of expression. As Foreign Secretary you have re-committed your Office to counter the shrinking of civil society space and promote the work of human rights defenders. We therefore urge you to give effect to this commitment by calling for the release of Nabeel Rajab.
Index on Censorship Award-winning Nabeel Rajab is the President of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, a member of Human Rights Watch’s Middle East Division advisory committee and a founding director of the Gulf Center for Human Rights. He faces up to 17 years in prison on several charges, all related to his free speech.
Nabeel Rajab, who has been in detention, largely in solitary confinement, since his arrest on 13 June 2016, currently faces two separate trials related to his right to free speech. In the first of these, he is charged with “spreading rumours in wartime”, “insulting a neighbouring country” (Saudi Arabia) and “insulting a statutory body”. The first two charges relate to Nabeel Rajab’s tweets published in March 2015 alleging torture in Jaw prison and criticising the killing of civilians in the Yemen conflict by the Saudi Arabia-led coalition. The verdict in his trial has been postponed several times suggesting that this is part of a deliberate strategy to harass him. His next hearing on this case is due to take place on 21 February.
On 28 December, during a hearing on the Twitter case, the high criminal court authorised Nabeel Rajab’s release on bail; he was then immediately rearrested for investigation into the charge of “spreading false news in media interviews”. According to the prosecution, Nabeel Rajab’s charge relate to comments given to media outlets in which he stated that foreign journalists and international NGOs cannot enter Bahrain and that the imprisonment of opposition actors was political and illegal. However, multiple international NGOs including Human Rights First, and Reporters Without Borders, as well as academics and journalists, have been denied access since 2012. Amnesty International has also not been granted access to Bahrain since January 2015. Meanwhile, political and unlawful imprisonments are common in Bahrain: Bahrain was the subject of six UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention rulings in 2014. Amnesty International has also documented many prisoners of conscience in Bahrain. Nabeel Rajab’s next hearing on this case is scheduled for 7 February.
In addition, Nabeel Rajab has a third charge against him for “spreading false news” after he an Op-Ed written in his name was published in the New York Times in September 2016.
We note the UK Government’s statements in recent years relating to Nabeel Rajab. In 2014 for example, at the UN Human Rights Council the UK together with 46 other states, urged Bahrain “to release all persons imprisoned solely for exercising human rights, including human rights defenders, some of whom have been identified as arbitrarily detained according to the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention.” Also, since your appointment as Foreign Secretary, the Government has, through Parliament and the UN Human Rights Council, expressed concern at the re-arrest of Nabeel Rajab and confirmed that UK officials continue to raise his case with the Government of Bahrain and attend each of his hearings. While such efforts are welcome, it appears that the UK Government has not yet called for his release.
Since your appointment, the human rights situation in Bahrain has further deteriorated. The recent resumption of executions and excessive use of force against protesters, contradict the Bahraini authorities’ rhetoric of progress being made.
We strongly believe that the UK, following your and the Prime Minister’s visit to Bahrain in December, and particularly now that the UK has regained a seat on the UN Human Rights Council, should review its current policy on the human rights situation in Bahrain, publicly condemn regressive measures and call for the release of Nabeel Rajab and others detained solely for peacefully exercising their right to freedom of expression such as Sheikh Ali Salman, the Secretary General of al-Wefaq National Islamic Society.
The UK’s significant historical, economic, security and political ties with Bahrain incur a responsibility to acknowledge and criticise negative human rights developments within the country. The UK’s voice is strongly heard in Bahrain, and we urge you to act publicly and promptly in support of Nabeel Rajab’s human rights work and call for his release.
We would like to request a meeting with the FCO to discuss our human rights concerns in Bahrain and Nabeel Rajab’s case and hear the FCO’s views on his case and what the UK government can do to uphold its commitment to reverse the shrinking civil society space in Bahrain.
Yours sincerely,
Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain (ADHRB)
Amnesty International UK
ARTICLE 19
Bahrain Center for Human Rights (BCHR)
Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy (BIRD)
Bahrain Youth Society for Human Rights
Canadian Journalists for Free Expression (CJFE)
English PEN
European Centre For Democracy and Human Rights (ECDHR)
FIDH, under the Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders
Gulf Centre for Human Rights (GCHR)
Index on Censorship
Lawyer’s Rights Watch Canada (LRWC)
No Peace Without Justice
PEN International
Rafto Foundation
Reporters Without Borders
The Bahrain Press Association
the World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT), under the Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders
Individuals
Clive Stafford Smith (OBE), director of Reprieve
Professor Damian McCormack[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_basic_grid post_type=”post” max_items=”4″ element_width=”6″ grid_id=”vc_gid:1486118018001-8efe7b55-8d69-7″ taxonomies=”3368″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
Evan Mawarire, a Zimbabwean Baptist pastor who criticised his country’s government, has been arrested.
On 1 February 2016 Mawarire, a nominee for the 2017 Index on Censorship Freedom of Expression Awards, who left Zimbabwe last year in fear for his life, was arrested at Harare International Airport on his return to the country from New York for “subverting the constitutionally elected government”.
“Index calls for the immediate and unconditional release of human rights activist and society leader Pastor Evan Mawarire in Zimbabwe. This arrest is a clear retaliation for Mawarire’s role in #ThisFlag movement and it shows the extent of the regime’s will to silence and deter peaceful dissent,” Melody Patry, Head of Advocacy, Index on Censorship said.
In May 2016 Mawarire sparked a protest movement in Zimbabwe when he posted a video of himself draped in the Zimbabwean flag, expressing his frustration at the endemic corruption in the nation. A subsequent series of YouTube videos and the hashtag Mawarire used, #ThisFlag, went viral, sparking protests and a boycott called by Mawarire, which he estimates was attended by over 8 million people.
Index spoke with Mawarire before his return to Zimbabwe. He recorded a message to be posted in the result of his arrest.
Update: On 8 February, Mawarire was granted bail. The high Court ruled that he must surrender his passport, report twice a week to the police and pay a $300 bond. He is next due in court on 17 February.
When Donald Trump approved the executive order on the travel ban for seven majority-Muslims countries, Zaina Erhaim couldn’t believe her ears. Read the full article
Each week, Index on Censorship’sMapping Media Freedom project verifies threats, violations and limitations faced by the media throughout the European Union and neighbouring countries. Here are five recent reports that give us cause for concern.
Police detained Aleksandra Ageyeva, a correspondent for the media outlet Sota Vision, at a mass demonstration near the Russian Constitutional Court building on 24 January.
According to Ageyeva, she was detained while filming the detainment of a demonstrator who was protesting against the imprisonment of opposition human rights activist Ildar Dadin.
Dadin is the first Russian citizen to be convicted for a “repeated violation” under a new law on mass rallies and meetings by peacefully protesters. He is currently serving a two-and-a-half year prison sentence and claims that his captors repeatedly abuses him.
A total of four protesters were detained along with Ageyeva at the scene. The police explained that the demonstrators were detained because they were supposedly jaywalking. Ageyeva spent around 11 hours in police custody.
On 15 December 2016 he was detained in Minsk on an extradition request from Azerbaijan, where he is wanted for visiting the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh and for criticising Azerbaijani policies.
A criminal case under two articles of the criminal code was filed in Azerbaijan which, if convicted, can lead to a prison sentence from five to eight years.
Lisa Giachino, editor-in-chief of the environmental magazine L’âge de faire, was arrested on 20 January at the border with Italy in the Roya valley, as she was following migrants for a story, news website Basta reported.
She is believed to have been kept in custody since 5am for “assisting migrants at the border,” and because she does not have a press card the police have refused to believe she is a journalist. According to Nice Matin newspaper, Giachino was following six migrants for the story.
Giachino was later freed. She told Libération: “[Police officers] told me: ‘If we see you again with migrants, careful!’ It’s not normal to tell this to a journalist.”
Oleksiy Bobrovnikov, an investigative journalist and special correspondent for TSN programme on 1+1 TV channel, publicly wrote on his Facebook on 10 January that he left Ukraine after receiving numerous threats.
Since 2015 Bobrovnikov has been investigating the fatal shooting of officers and volunteers who oppose smuggling along what is known as the “grey zone,” the dividing line between western Ukraine and the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics.
Bobrovnikov confirmed to Mapping Media Freedom that he left the country in mid-December because he feared his life was in danger. He said he had received five warnings connected with his investigation telling him his life was in danger.
“The threats ranged from a pat on the shoulder to threats coming from people with weapons in their hands. Other people investigating trade with occupied territories also received similar threats,” Bobrovnikov wrote.
According to Ukrayinska Pravda, two individuals working to fight against the smuggling were killed on 2 September 2015, near Schastye, a town in the Luhansk region.
St Helens Council passed a motion on 18 January calling on retailers in the borough to stop selling daily newspaper The Sun, The St Helens Star reported.
The motion is not enforceable by law, but recommends retailers do not distribute the publication.
At the council meeting on Wednesday evening, Parr councillor Terry Shields asked the authority to support the Total Eclipse of The Sun campaign, which the paper’s controversial coverage of the Hillsborough disaster as a reason to boycott.
The campaign describes itself as a peaceful campaign group with more than 50,000 members.
Councillors approved the motion at the town hall. The three Conservative councillors abstained from the vote.
A spokeswoman says: “We have enjoyed great success now having over 240 establishments not selling the paper. This includes small newsagents, major supermarkets and petrol stations. Cafes, pubs, hotels and local hospitals, have also joined in, showing their support to the campaign.”[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]
I’m always wary of referring to the west as “the free world”, and of proclaiming that we are therefore blessed with “press freedom” because, in both cases, that freedom is relative and often under pressure. Read the the full article
Azerbaijani opposition politician Ilgar Mammadov was jailed in 2013. The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled in May 2014 that Mammadov’s arrest and continued detention was in retaliation for criticising the country’s government.
Mammadov is a leader of the Republican Alternative Movement (REAL), which he launched in 2009, and is one of Azerbaijan’s rare dissenting political voices. He was sentenced to seven years in prison after participating in an anti-government protest rally in Ismayilli, a town 200 kilometers outside Baku. Authorities arrested him on trumped-up charges of inciting the protest with the use of violence. Mammadov had previously announced his intent to run for president. Mammadov remains in jail, despite the Council of Europe repeatedly calling for his release. Azerbaijan may be expelled from the council as the country repeatedly refuses to comply with the organization’s requests. John Kirby, spokesman of the US Department of State, also called on Azerbaijan to drop all charges against Mammadov. Reports in November 2015 emerged stating that Mammadov had been tortured by prison officials, which resulted in serious injuries including broken teeth. Mammadov has remained very vocal during his time in jail, writing on his blog about political developments in Azerbaijan and refusing to write a letter asking for pardon from President Ilham Aliyev.
The following is a letter written by Ilgar Mammadov:
International investment in fossil fuel extraction is making me and other Azerbaijani political prisoners hostages to the Aliyev regime.
A thirst for freedom.
Azerbaijan has seen a crackdown on any political dissent over the past few years, with dozens of activists and critics of the regime in Baku going behind bars. So far, there’s little sign of improvement.
Though respectful of the memory of Nelson Mandela, the mass media have occasionally shed light on the late South African leader’s warm relationship with scoundrels such as Muammar Qaddafi and Fidel Castro, as well as his refusal to defend Chinese dissidents. These events have been evoked to invite critical thinking about an iconic figure and balance his place in history.
Most readers of these articles judge a figure they previously held as an idol as hypocritical or tainted. They do not ask questions about the roots of a particular contradiction. In the case of Mandela, the dictators above had supported the anti-apartheid struggle of the African National Congress, while several established democracies indulged the inhuman system of apartheid because of the diamond, oil and other industries, and particularly because of the Cold War.
After only four years in prison, even on bogus charges and a politically motivated sentence, I am nowhere near Mandela in terms of symbolising a cause of global significance. Republicanism in my country, Azerbaijan — where the internationally promoted father-to-son succession of absolute power has disillusioned millions — is hardly comparable to the fight against racial segregation. Still, I can, better than many others, explain the flawed international attitudes that help keep democrats locked in the prisons of the “clever autocrats” who are, in turn, courted by retrograde forces within today’s democracies.
I will tell the story of how plans for a giant pipeline that would suck gas from Azerbaijan to Italy, the Southern Gas Corridor (SGC), impacts on Azerbaijan’s political prisoners.
In this letter I will focus only on one tension of the struggle we face here in Azerbaijan — between our democratic aspirations that enjoy only a nominal solidarity abroad, and the attempt to build a de facto monarchy which receives comprehensive support from foreign interest groups.
To be precise, I will tell the story of how plans for a giant pipeline that would suck gas from Azerbaijan to Italy, the Southern Gas Corridor (SGC), impacts on Azerbaijan’s political prisoners.
I will tell the story by discussing my own case. But before I tell it, you need to know what the Southern Gas Corridor is and why my release is crucial for the morale of our democratic forces. Indeed, Council of Europe officials say my freedom is essential for the entire architecture of protection under the European Convention of Human Rights, but there is still no punishment of my jailer.
What is the Southern Gas Corridor?
The Southern Gas Corridor is a multinational piece of gas infrastructure worth $43 billion US dollars. It is designed to extract and pump 16 billion cubic metres of natural gas every year from 2018, sucking hydrocarbons from Azerbaijan’s Shah Deniz gas field to European and Turkish markets. The EU, Turkey, and the US are all eager to connect the pipeline to Turkmenistan so that to an extra 20-30 billion cubic metres of Turkmen gas can be added to the scheme.
Hydrocarbon extraction is the mainstay of the country’s economy. Baku signed the “contract of the century” in 1994, and has attracted western oil and gas giants ever since.
The significance of the SGC is twofold. First, the project could provide up to 8-10% of EU’s gas imports, thus reducing the union’s dependence on Russia. Secondly, it will become another platform for geopolitical access (Russians would use a slightly ominous word “penetration”) of the west to Central Asia.
How did SGC encourage more repression?
Any rational democratic government in Baku would opt for the SGC without much debate and then turn its attention to issues truly important for Azerbaijan’s sustainable economic development. The revenue generated by the project would not be viewed as vital for the country when compared to the country’s economic potential in a less monopolised and more competition-based economy.
However, since the moment when a Russian government plane took Ilham Aliyev’s barely breathing father from a Turkish military hospital to the best clinic in America, in order to smooth the transition of power, the absolute ruler of Azerbaijan has been trained to deal with great powers first and then use such deals to repress domestic political dissent second. He has kept the country’s economy almost exclusively based on selling oil and gas and importing everything else.
Recently, Aliyev has been trying to present the SGC as his generous gift to the west so that governments will not talk about human rights and democracy in Azerbaijan. At one point Aliyev was even considering unilaterally funding the entire project.
In the middle of this tug of war, Azerbaijan suddenly found itself short of money due to falling oil prices. It could not fund its share in the parts of SGC that ran through Turkey (TANAP) and Greece, Albania and Italy (TAP) without backing from four leading international financial institutions — the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, European Investment Bank, World Bank and Asian Development Bank.
During 2016, these institutions said their backing was subject to Azerbaijan’s compliance with the Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (EITI). In September, Riccardo Puliti, director on energy and natural resources at the EBRD, cited the resumption of the EITI membership of Azerbaijan as “the main factor” for the prospect of approval of funds for TANAP/TAP.
Together with EIB, EBRD wants to cover US $2.16 billion out of the total US $8.6 billion cost of the TANAP. TAP will cost US $6.2 billion.
What is the Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative?
The EITI is a joint global initiative of governments, extractive industries, and local and international civil society organisations that aims, inter alia, to verify the amount of natural resources extracted by (mostly international) corporations and how much of the latters’ revenue is shared with host states. Its purpose, in that respect, is to safeguard transnational businesses from future claims that they have ransacked a developing nation — for instance, by sponsoring a political regime unfriendly to civil society and principle freedoms.
In April 2015, because of the unprecedented crackdown on civil society during 2013-2014, the EITI Board lowered the status of Azerbaijan in the initiative from “member” to “candidate”. This move, alongside falling oil prices, complicated funding for the Southern Gas Corridor. International backers were reluctant to be associated with the poor ethics of implementing energy projects in a country where already fragmented liberties were degenerating even further.
Hence, during 2016, several governments, especially the US, put strong political pressure on Azerbaijan. This resulted in a minor retreat by the dictatorship. Some interest groups claimed at the EITI board that this was “progress”.
The EITI board assembled on 25 October to review Azerbaijan’s situation. I appealed to the board ahead of its meeting.
Why did my appeal matter?
My appeal was heard primarily because, until I was arrested in March 2013, I was a member of the Advisory Board of what is now the Natural Resource Governance Institute (NRGI), a key international civil society segment of EITI.
In addition to my status within the EITI, the circumstances of my case — which was unusually embarrassing for the authorities — also played a role:
i) The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) had established that the true reason behind the 12 court decisions (by a total of 19 judges) for my arrest and continued detention was the wish of the authorities “to silence me” for criticising the government;
ii) The US embassy in Azerbaijan had spent an immense amount of man-hours observing all 30 sessions of my trial during five months in a remote town and concluded: “the verdict was not based on evidence, and was politically motivated”;
iii) The European Parliament’s June 2013 resolution, which carried my name in its title, had called for my immediate and unconditional release — a call reiterated in the next two EP resolutions of 2014 and 2015 on human rights situation in Azerbaijan;
iv) Since December 2014, the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe had adopted eight (now nine) resolutions and decisions specifically on my case whereby it insisted on urgent release in line with the ECHR judgment.
Due to an onslaught by civil society partners during the 25 October debate, the EITI Board refused to return Azerbaijan its “member” status.
Indecision in America
I am very much obliged to the US embassy for conducting the hard labour of trial observation, but the US government representative’s stance at the EITI board meeting in October was a surprising disappointment.
Mary Warlick, the representative of the US government, insisted that Azerbaijan has made progress worth of being rewarded by EITI membership. Obviously, she was speaking for that part of the US government that wants the SGC pipeline to be built at any cost to our freedom.
Samantha Power’s Facebook posting of my family photo on 10 December, the International day of Human Rights, was also touching. Power is US Permanent Representative at UN. Two years ago, she already mentioned my case in the EITI context at a conference.
Complementing her kindness, around the same time Christopher Smith, Chairman of the Helsinki Commission of the US Congress, in an interview about fresh draconian laws restricting free speech in Azerbaijan, repeated his one year old call for my release.
Yet, on 15 December, Amos Hochstein, US State Department’s Special Envoy on Energy, assured the authorities in Baku that “regardless of any political changes, the US will remain committed to its obligations under the SGC”.
Indecision in Europe
I could set out a similar pattern of European hesitation beginning with my first days in jail.
To be concise, though, let me recall only the fact that on 20 September (the same day that Rodrigo Duterte called the European Parliament “hypocritical” for its criticism of the extra-judicial executions in Philippines), a conciliatory delegation of the EP in Baku not only agreed to hear a lecture from Ilham Aliyev on “[EP] President Martin Schultz and his deputy Lubarek being enemies of the people of Azerbaijan”, but even praised the lecture as a “constructive one”, in the words of Sajjad Karim, the British MEP who had led the delegation.
Political prisoners of Azerbaijan are not worth the amount of money involved in the SGC, but European values probably are.
The aforementioned three resolutions of the European Parliament were thus crossed out as I observed from behind bars.
Two presidents of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council Of Europe (PACE) have visited me in prison, but this only highlighted the irrelevance of the body to the situation on the ground. They never stopped talking of how constructive or how ongoing their dialogue with the Azerbaijani authorities has been.
New threats
Our narrow win at the EITI Board exposes us to two new threats. (I do not discuss here the extraneous threats, which may originate from, for example, rising oil prices or collapse of the nuclear deal with Iran, i.e. anything adding confidence or bargaining power to the regime in Baku.)
One is that at the next EITI board meeting in March 2017, those driven by pressing commodity and geopolitical interests may outnumber or otherwise outpower the civil society party. If Ilham Aliyev proceeds with his cosmetic, fig leaf “reforms” or releases those political prisoners who have already pleaded for pardon or surrendered in any other way, the probability of my freedom being sacrificed will arise again.
The other threat is that instead of battling at the EITI, those interest groups may ask the international financial institutions to disconnect the SGC loans from Azerbaijan’s compliance with the EITI. These institutions are easier to convince as they are full of short-termist bank executives, rather than civil society activists concerned with the rule of law, transparency and public accountability.
The second scenario may already be in effect as rumours suggest that the World Bank has endorsed a US $800m loan to the TANAP. If so, then the postponed energy consultations between Baku and Brussels at the end of January may put the loans back on the EITI-friendly track. Political prisoners of Azerbaijan are not worth of the amount of money involved in the SGC, but European values probably are.
Deep jail horizon
Of 11 other members of the ruling body of my civic movement, REAL, three had to flee the country after my arrest, two were jailed (for 1.5 years and one month on charges not related to my case), two are not permitted to travel abroad (again on separate cases); one of them cannot even leave Baku.
From time to time, activists spend days under administrative detention designed to scare others. Nonetheless, we live in a world different from the one which tolerated and even fed apartheid.
Mandela’s fight promoted an agenda and international institutions where we can defend the values of freedom from encroachment by dictators and their business partners. This is why we should not consider the means of resisting oppression or seeking solidarity with other international arrangements any less conventional now. The problem is that when others see that our peaceful efforts are not fruitful, they turn to more radical means to end injustice.
*Mary Warlick is married to James Warlick, US co-chair of the OSCE Minsk Group mediating in the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh. Therefore, initially I guessed that by being nice to the regime she might have tried to make her husband’s relations with the official Baku easier. But in mid-November, James Warlick announced his resignation from the post, apparently as he had planned, and my guess turned out to be mistaken.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_basic_grid post_type=”post” max_items=”4″ element_width=”6″ grid_id=”vc_gid:1485781328870-cb0adaa0-0682-7″ taxonomies=”7145″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
Turkey Uncensored is an Index on Censorship project to publish a series of articles from censored Turkish writers, artists and translators.
[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]Turkey’s state of emergency, announced after July’s coup attempt, was extended for three months in January. While new executive orders continue to increase the repression of opposition journalists, academics, trade unionists, performers and institutions, parliament is discussing changes to the constitution that have been described as a “regime change”. As in the past, the state of emergency has hit Kurdish-populated regions hardest.
The Amed Film Festival was held jointly by the Diyarbakır Metropolitan Municipality Culture and Art Directorate and the Middle East Cinema Academy Association (OSAD) in 2012. The objective of the festival was to introduce viewers to films created in the Middle East in all languages of the peoples of the region, with a special emphasis on Kurdish filmmakers, and to contribute to film production. The festival also aimed to “provide the groundwork for filmmakers to be able to express themselves on a free platform”. The second festival, planned for November 2016 under the slogan “Unlimited Cinema”, could not be mounted due to the appointment of a trustee to run the Diyarbakır Metropolitan Municipality and the arrest of its co-mayors, who were members of the pro-Kurdish HDP. Or rather, the festival committee asserted that trustee mayoralties were illegitimate due to “intervention in the people’s will” and decided not to work with the trustee.
In any case, it was unlikely that the trustee mayoralty would have allowed the festival to use any of the venues under its administration. Festival organisers made a call for solidarity to local and international festivals, asking them to show their films between 22-25 December, as “the duty of art and artists under these conditions is not to shrink away, but to raise their voices to explain the reality of the times”.
The festival’s films were shown in Diyarbakır, Istanbul, Van, Batman, Cyprus and Italy. They were put on in trade associations, trade unions and other associations in Diyarbakır (Pir Sultan Abdul Cultural Association and Cemevi, TMMOB, and Eğitim Sen), at the Batman Culture and Art Association in Batman, at the Cyprus Üretim Sokağı Cultural Centre in Cyprus, and at the Mezopotamya Cinema and contemporary arts centre Depo in Istanbul. The Italian leg was organised by Gianluca Peciola from the Left Ecology Freedom Party.
Peciola had been behind the successful initiative to twin Rome’s mayoralty with Kobane in 2015, and he expressed his solidarity with the festival: “There is heavy repression in Turkey, especially in the cultural and artistic fields. We are in solidarity with Kurdish artists and the Kurdish people, whose cultural values and cultural works are being repressed in Kurdistan. We want to demonstrate this solidarity through this work.”
The festival had planned to screen 90 films but it was only able to show 45. However, the call for solidarity and the responses to that call created a positive atmosphere. In Diyarbakır alone, 2,000 people watched the films.
Director Zeynel Doğan, who sits on the festival committee, said that the festival had been stronger before, having been weakened when it lost its support. Despite this Doğan said its “energy had increased”.
Amed Theatre Festival, which had been organised by Diyarbakır Metropolitan Municipality City Theatre shortly before the film festival, experienced similar issues.
After the trustee was appointed to the mayoralty, the Amed Theatre Festival was cancelled. Subsequently, 10 theatre groups from Turkey and Europe that were going to be part of the festival performed on their own stages between 21 November and 5 December in support of the festival, under the slogan “We are the reality, you are playing with reality”.
MKM Teatra Jiyana Nû, a troupe who perform in Kurdish, explained its solidarity with the festival: “The issue here isn’t merely that a festival is not taking place, the issue is that the breath that society is able to take thanks to art is being allowed to be stifled. We do not want that breath to be stifled, and even if the Amed Festival cannot physically take place in Amed [Diyarbakır], we say ‘Amed Theatre Festival is everywhere’ in the belief that one day it will definitely once again be held there.”
It is worth also noting that no large festival in Istanbul has responded to the Amed Festival’s call for solidarity: from the perspective of the Istanbul festivals, it is becoming much more difficult for regional festivals to stand in solidarity with one another.
“Cutting off the breath of society” is a good description of the repression being carried out in the Kurdish region. Fifty-two of the 106 pro-Kurdish mayoralties have had trustees appointed to them, and 76 co-mayors are under arrest on the grounds of “supporting terror organisations”. The state of emergency Executive Order Regarding the Taking of Certain Precautions shut down dozens of associations in the region. The cultural and artistic divisions of municipalities in the region are being rendered non-functional.
All the actors in the Diyarbakır Metropolitan Municipality City Theatre, which creates and puts on plays in Kurdish, have been fired. From the time pro-Kurdish parties began to take over municipalities in 1999, there was a big revival in cultural and artistic life in Turkey’s Kurdish provinces. New venues opened, regular audiences began to attend events and workshops held by these venues integrated the young people of the region into the artistic environment. Even during the peace process, these institutions were under surveillance, but despite these conditions, they made an important contribution to the protection and development of Kurdish language and culture, its use as a language of artistic production and its institutionalisation.
The dismantlement of artistic groups working at venues such as theatres under municipality control, the Cegerxwin Cultural Centre and the Amed Art Gallery is a sign that from now on these spaces are only to be used in ways that suit the political and cultural agenda of the new municipal administration.
In a funny sense, the way in which the Amed film and theatre festivals were left without support or venues after refusing to work with the trustee has led actors in Diyarbakır’s cultural and artistic world to critically evaluate their own practices. Artistic institutions that had been able to create and prosper for years thanks to the opportunities provided by municipal administrations saw this as an opportunity for cooperation with local organisations and to form an independent model of production and circulation. This also opened the way for certain ideas which had been considered before, such as travelling festivals, to be put into practice. According to filmmaker and OSAD board member İlham Bakır, another example of a future intention now being put into practice thanks to the de facto predicament of the festival was an independent structure to show films over a wider geographical area in cooperation with other institutions.
Filmmakers from the region, as part of the work aiming to restructure the Kurdish movement along egalitarian and democratic lines in political and social life, have long considered the questions of how a democratic cinematic production and distribution model can be put into place and whether a cinematic fund could be established independently of the government. Indeed, they have even invited a group of filmmakers from Istanbul to discuss the idea of a cinematic commune.
Both festivals are preparing to open their own venues in order to continue working independently.
Meanwhile, as artistic groups are no longer be able to benefit from the political advantages the Kurdish movement provided in the region, the idea of a commune has gaining traction.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_basic_grid post_type=”post” max_items=”4″ element_width=”6″ grid_id=”vc_gid:1485772040601-4013dd52-0984-10″ taxonomies=”8607″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
Turkey Uncensored is an Index on Censorship project to publish a series of articles from censored Turkish writers, artists and translators.
[/vc_column_text][vc_video link=”https://youtu.be/LzWBgzJrQdo”][vc_column_text]As tens of thousands of women took to the streets around the world on 21 January, another woman, the Turkish MP Şafak Pavey was being treated in hospital for injuries sustained during a physical assault on the floor of the Grand National Assembly during debates on constitutional amendments.
Pavey had just delivered a moving speech in which she warned that the presidential system being considered would bring about unchallenged one-man rule. The “bandits”, as she called them, a group of women MPs belonging to the ruling AKP, attacked her and two other MPs, Aylin Nazlıaka, an independent, and Pervin Buldan from the Kurdish HDP. The AKP MPs were said to be acting under a male colleague’s orders.
The attack contrasted sharply with the pictures of enthusiastic women from around the United States and the world committed to sisterhood and equality. The distance between the two extremes might seem to be yawning but isn’t. In Turkey, the gap opened up in just four short years.
The empowered mood created by women marching for equal rights and uniting their voices in opposition reminded me of the heady days of 2013 when the anti-government Gezi Park protests rocked Turkey. Like the demonstrators in DC and London, people all over Turkey took to the streets to raise a chant against our own Trump: President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. In Gezi, the seeds of dissent spread through social media and bloomed across the country just as the women’s march did across the globe. It was just the beginning, or so we thought.
After a brutal suppression that left at least 10 dead and over 8,000 injured, the Gezi spirit, that united voice, faded away. The most significant political heritage was the “Vote and Beyond” organisation, which launched an incredibly effective election monitoring network during the June 2015 elections. Thanks to that group and the popular young Kurdish leader Selahattin Demirtaş’s energy, the outcome of the polls reflected the full and complete picture of Turkey’s population in parliament. The combined opposition parties were the majority in the assembly and to continue governing, the AKP would be forced to form a coalition. Then things happened.[/vc_column_text][vc_single_image image=”85130″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes”][vc_column_text]As the ceasefire with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) collapsed and armed conflict resumed, coalition negotiations ground into political deadlock as the summer wore on. Erdogan called a snap election for that November that lined up with his political ambitions. Less than a month before the election, a staggering terror attack rocked Ankara and ongoing deaths of security personnel in the country’s south-east added to a grim mood. At the polls, the AKP regained its majority in parliament. Though the governing party was nominally back in full control, it lacked political legitimacy and popular support, both of which would be delivered by the rogue military units that staged the failed July 15 coup and paved the way for Erdogan’s emergency rule.
Witch hunts are a strange thing. Even if you spot one when it’s getting underway, it’s always too late to stop it.
After the election, the political opposition was locked out of enacting change through parliament. It was further paralysed by Erdogan’s “shock and awe” tactics, which saw the leaders of the parties assaulted on the floor of the assembly or imprisoned on fabricated terror charges. Opposition voters are too depressed now to remember the confident and exhilarating days of the Gezi protests.
It would be a mistake to dismiss Turkey’s experience as a unique case. There are parallels with the unfolding situations in Russia, Poland, Hungary and now the USA. The bullies of our interesting times are singing from the same hymn sheet, using identical language and narratives — power to the right people, experts and intellectuals are overrated, overturn the establishment. The forces of resistance must now share strategies as well. Opposition to the growing threat of illiberal democracy needs to network and be vocal or else our initial responses to the horrors and human rights violations — including the purge of Turkey’s press under emergency rule — would be a waste of time.
Here’s a small taste of where we failed in Turkey — a warning to Europeans and Americans of what not to do.
“No” is an intoxicating word that gives emotional fuel to the masses. After swimming in the slack waters of identity politics or concerning yourself with whether or not your avocados are fair trade, taking to the streets en masse for a proper cause is like a fresh breeze. But as we learned in Turkey, “No” can also be a dead end. It exists in a dangerous dependency on the what those in power are up to. It shouldn’t be mistaken for action as it is only a reaction.
“No” is unable to create a new political choice. It is an anger game that sooner or later will exhaust all opposition by splitting itself into innumerable causes intent on becoming an individual obstacle to the ruling power.
Make no mistake: the bullies of the world are united in a truly global movement. It is sweeping all before it. And it’s not just Putin, Trump, Erdogan or even Orban, it’s their minions, millions of fabricated apparatchiks that invade the political, social and digital spheres like multiplying gremlins.
What the opposition must do — what Turkey’s protesters failed to do — is strengthen the infrastructure, harden networks and open strong lines of communication between disparate groups whether at home or abroad. All those lefty student movements, marginalised progressive newspapers or resisting communities that are labelled as naïve or passé until now must coalesce around core campaigns and goals.
Failure to move beyond “No”, in Turkey’s case, has made alternative and potential political movements all but invisible. There are just three leftist newspapers in Turkey, three ghosts to break news about women MPs being beaten up. And that’s because we can’t move past “No” when others were shut down or silenced.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_basic_grid post_type=”post” max_items=”4″ element_width=”6″ grid_id=”vc_gid:1485771885900-d32a2643-5934-8″ taxonomies=”8607″][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][/vc_column][/vc_row]
The United Kingdom might be seeing its own version of the infamous Gawker versus Hogan case play out in its own legal system, but with a twist. Section 40 is a new law that if enacted, will force publishers to pay for the legal expenses of the person suing them, regardless of whether the claimant wins or loses. This punitive measure has generated much controversy as media outlets could be unfairly subjected to bankruptcy. Read the full article
All media is, to some extent, biased. That’s the reality of the world: What people choose to report, how they report it, and what bits they leave in or out are all up for debate. However, there are some organizations whose focus on data collection and political reportage makes them a sturdy foundation for the next four years, if things remain relatively the same. The criteria for these sources is based on nonpartisan interpretation and framing of high-level reportage. Read the full article
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Turkey’s state of emergency, announced after July’s coup attempt, was extended for three months in January. While new executive orders continue to increase the repression of opposition journalists, academics, trade unionists, performers and institutions, parliament is discussing changes to the constitution that have been described as a “regime change”. As in the past, the state of emergency has hit Kurdish-populated regions hardest. 
