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Siyah Bant (Black Bar) is a platform established in 2011 to research and document cases of censorship in the arts in Turkey and to defend artistic freedom of expression.
The Siyah Bant initiative, which carries out research on censorship of the arts in Turkey, has given much coverage to obstacles to freedom of expression in the cinematic field in research published in recent years. Cases of censorship at film festivals in Turkey have become increasingly common, more visible and have brought about devastating changes, creating a need for research focusing particularly on restrictions of freedom of expression at festivals. In this report, we aim to lay out the strategies followed by film festivals in response to pressures to censor cinematic works and to develop the groundwork for increasing the possibility of resistance to censorship.
Recent censorship cases
Film festivals in Turkey have been the stage for two widely-publicised cases of censorship in 2014 and 2015.
Firstly, Reyan Tuvi’s documentary about the Gezi Park demonstrations entitled Yeryüzü Aşkın Yüzü Oluncaya Dek (Until the Face of the Earth Becomes a Face of Love) (2014) was removed from the programme of the 51st International Antalya Film Festival in 2014 by festival organisers after a warning that showing the film may commit the crime of insulting Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan under the 125th (insulting) and 299th clauses (insulting the president) of Turkish Criminal Law. However, the film had been found by the festival’s National Documentary Film Competition preliminary jury as being worthy of inclusion in the competition. The preliminary jury — Ayşe Çetinbaş, Berke Baş and Seray Genç — revealed the situation to the public in a statement in which they announced their resignations, saying they “would not be any part of such censorship”. In reaction to the film’s censorship, first National Documentary Film Competition Main Jury President Can Candan, and later ten other jury members due to judge various competitions, also announced their withdrawal from the festival. Directors of 13 of the 15 films in the National Documentary Film Competition category also withdrew their films in protest. As a result, the festival organisers announced the cancellation of competition in that category. This case of censorship in Antalya, as Siyah Bant’s Banu Karaca has highlighted, can be seen as “an example of a situation in which the state itself did not act, and actors in the artistic community took on this role”. In Siyah Bant’s statement on the Antalya censorship case, it emphasised that the legal clauses that make insult a crime and which were given as the reason for the removal of Yeryüzü Aşkın Yüzü Oluncaya Dek from the festival programme constituted a serious obstacle to freedom of expression, and for this reason should be completely revoked.
The second case of censorship was the last-minute cancellation of the showing of the documentary Bakur (North) (2015) at the 34th Istanbul Film Festival on 12 April 2015. The film, directed by Çayan Demirel and Ertuğrul Mavioğlu, took the everyday lives of PKK guerrillas as its subject. The festival organisers stated that the showing of Bakur had been cancelled after a notice received from the Culture and Tourism Ministry “reminding them that all films created in Turkey to be shown at the festival must have obtained a registration document”. But it was clear that the prevention of the film showing was not merely about the lack of a registration document.
Mavioğlu, one of the film’s directors, had been targeted in Vahdet newspaper with a subheading “Here is the director of that traitorous PKK film” on 10 April 2015. Even though the reminder sent by the Ministry did not specifically state that Bakur was not to be shown, it did highlight that the film had been banned once before. Moreover, it emerged that the General Manager of Cinema of the time, Cem Erkul, had called the Istanbul Culture and Art Foundation (IKSV) in relation to the showing of Bakur. Police officers came to check whether the film was being shown on 11 and 12 April and warned festival staff not to put it on as it would be difficult to assure the safety of viewers if they did. The reaction to the case of censorship in Antalya the previous year had been mostly limited to documentary filmmakers. In contrast, following the censorship of Bakur, all the films in the national feature-length film categories were temporarily withdrawn. Filmmakers came together after the film’s banning to announce they had withdrawn 22 films from the festival. Next, the jury members at the festival let it be known that they were withdrawing. The festival organisers announced that they had cancelled the National and International Golden Tulip Competitions and the National Documentary Competition. In addition, filmmakers and cinematic organisations made a joint statement calling for “the laws and regulations that make censorship possible to be urgently changed”. Bakur, which could not be shown at the Istanbul Film Festival, was shown simultaneously on 3 May, World Press Freedom Day, in Istanbul and Diyarbakır, on 5 May as part of the Itinerant Film Days in Mardin, on 12 May for the Kurdish Culture and Art Days in Istanbul, on 15 June as part of the Censored Documentaries selection as part of the Documentarist 8th Istanbul Film Days, and also on various occasions in Izmir, Van, Mersin, Siirt and Batman.
The prevention of the screening of Bakur at the Istanbul Film Festival can be said to have marked the beginning of a new era for film festivals in Turkey. While before the censorship of Bakur, very few festivals asked for films’ registration documents, we have now come to the point where a significant number require these documents before they will add films to their programmes. In addition to the Istanbul Film Festival, at which last year’s case occurred, the Ankara International Film Festival, the !f Istanbul Independent Film Festival and the Ankara Accessible Film Festival are now among those that have begun to require films’ registration documents before putting them on their programmes.
The Ankara International Film Festival, which did not require registration documents for films before 2015, in 2016 requested this document from all the producers of films that passed the pre-screening to be added to the programme. Two directors who said that registration documents were being used as a form of censorship and, for this reason, they would not get them, had their films removed from the programme announced for the 27th Ankara International Film Festival.
These two films were Selim Yıldız’s documentary Bîra Mi’têtin (I Remember) (2016) about the Roboski massacre and smuggling activities, and Gökalp Gönen’s Altın Vuruş (Golden Shot) (2015), a short animation about machines living in small houses and searching for the sun. Necati Sönmez, one of Documentarist’s directors, announced his withdrawal from the documentary competition jury on Hatırlıyorum being taken off the programme for “acquiescing to censorship”. After the issue came to public attention, the festival organisers made a statement calling the condition that films to be shown have registration documents a “technical and legal necessity”. Sönmez responded to this announcement, saying “When a document licensing a work becomes a requirement for it to enter a festival, it doesn’t stop being a censorship document; on the contrary, it (censorship) is institutionalised.”
The Legal Dimension of Registration Documentation
The basic function of a registration document is to allow the owners of a cinematic or musical work “to not have their rights violated, to easily prove their ownership rights and to keep track of their authority to benefit in relation to their financial rights”. The ambiguities in regulations concerning for which screenings these registration documents are required have laid the groundwork for them to be used for purposes other than their function, which is to prove that those screening a film for commercial purposes have the right to do so. Another problem is the requirement for those applying for registration to first have a “document showing the outcomes of the evaluation and classification processes”. Ulaş Karan emphasises that this evaluation and classification “sometimes forms a pre-inspection and opens the way for a cinema film to be censored”.
Another problem regarding the registration documents is that some films17 shown at film festivals are not given them due to decisions that they “cannot enter commercial circulation and screening”. The subjection of films by these rules to a pre-inspection according to unclear criteria such as conforming to the Constitution and the protection of general morality and public order makes it possible for some films to be banned regardless of whether they are for commercial purposes or not. In order to solve this problem, we recommend that the registration procedure is separated from the evaluation and classification procedures. Every completed film must be given a registration document without condition, and in addition, the age limits for commercial films should be assigned according to universal criteria. If a film showing is believed to represent a crime, this can be subjected to a trial afterwards. At this point, we can add that the debate on registration documents is wider than simply providing an exemption for showings at festivals. The real issue is that registration documents should only prove rights ownership, and should not have the features that presently allow it to be used for the pre-inspection and banning of films.
In short, the registration documents are not a problem for as long as they are used in the way directed by the Ideas and Artistic Works Law, that is, for the functions of proving rights ownership for commercial distribution and ensuring that people enjoy their property rights. As Ulaş Karan has explained, this document has an essential function for the commercial distribution and showing of films.18 However, when no distinctions are made between commercial and non-commercial showings and the evaluation and classification of films is made a prerequisite for registration, the way is opened up for registration documents to be used as a vehicle for censorship. Hence, steps need to be taken to remove the requirement for a registration document at non-commercial showings at which there is no need to prove property rights. In addition, we must emphasise that the evaluation and classification carried out for commercial screenings should be kept separate from the registration process and be reorganised in line with international standards in a way that does not infringe on freedom of expression.
The Registration Document as a Tool of Censorship
Up until the 2015 Istanbul Film Festival intervention, most films shown at film festivals were in practice exempted from the requirement of a registration document by the ministry “turning a blind eye”. However, we do know of other films prevented from being shown at festivals due to not having registration documents or having had their applications for the documents rejected. The main cases over this time period can be listed as follows: in 2007, police requested to pre-vet the film Dersim 38, planned to be screened at the 1st Munzur Peace and Culture Days as it had no registration document. When the organisers rejected this request, the screening did not take place. Moreover, the film was banned in 2007, and the legal appeals still continue to the present day. The application for a registration document for Aydın Orak’s documentary Bêrîvan: Bir Başkaldırı Destanı (Berivan: The Saga of an Uprising) about the 1992 Newroz festival in Cizre was rejected in 2011 with the allegations that it “made PKK propaganda” and “twisted history”. The film was blocked from being shown at the 2nd Yılmaz Güney Film Festival in December 2011 by the Governor of Batman. Caner Alper and Mehmet Binay, who directed the film Zenne (2011), which focuses on hate crimes against LGBTI individuals, have stated that there were attempts in 2011 to prevent their film being shown at a national competition it had qualified for in prescreening two weeks before the festival began on the basis of it not having a registration document. In the end, Zenne’s producers could not get all the documents it required to get a registration document in that short of a timeframe, and along with Unutma Beni İstanbul (Don’t Forget Me, Istanbul) (2011), which also had no registration document, it was not shown at Malatya. The films Hayatboyu (Lifelong) (2013), Köksüz (Rootless) (2013) and Daire (Circle) (2013) were taken off the programme at the 4th Malatya International Film Festival in 2013 for the same reason.
In January 2014, the Culture and Tourism Ministry General Directorate of Cinema sent a circular to many different festivals reminding them of the condition that they require registration documents from domestic films. In fact, from 2011 onwards, the ministry had sent this circular to film festivals it had financially supported, but as mentioned above, this condition had not been imposed by the majority of festivals. Moreover, neither did the ministry follow-up on this. An open letter to the Culture and Tourism Ministry on 7 March 2014, prepared by Siyah Bant together with filmmakers, film institutions and film festivals, explained how requiring registration documents for artistic events other than commercial screenings represented an obstacle to artistic freedom of expression and requested that regulations be changed to remove this requirement. Mustafa Ünlü, the director of the 1001 Documentary Film Festival, said that they had received similar circulars in the past, but after meeting with the ministry this regulation was not put into practice. Ünlü related that after the 2014 circular, they had met with the ministry to request that the responsibility to require registration documents be lifted, while ministry representatives had highlighted a new cinema law as the solution to the problem. This draft law would be regularly used as an excuse by ministry officials in their responses to the requests of filmmakers and festivals. This planned law, named the Turkey Cinema Law, came onto the agenda in 2012. As explained by lawyer Burhan Gün, this draft law removed the criminal penalties for non-commercial screenings. But despite all the efforts of cinematic professional associations in this period, they were unable to establish healthy communications with the Cinema General Directorate. From the beginning of the period, the associations made proposals in relation to the development of the sector to those working on the draft law, but none were included in the law drafting process. It is unknown what the latest situation is with the draft law, which has now been off the agenda for a while.
As can be seen from the examples of Bakur, Bêrîvan, Dersim 38 and Zenne, registration documents appear to be a useful means of preventing the screening of films, mostly those relating to the struggle for Kurdish rights, that the state does not want to be screened. In other words, it forms an inspection mechanism allowing committees connected to the Culture and Tourism Ministry to intervene on the basis of the content of films. The festivals where films have been removed due to not having registration documents have generally not mentioned the content of these films in their statements on the matter. A good example of this is the situation at this year’s Ankara International Film Festival. The festival organisers gave the reason for Hatırlıyorum being taken off the program not as related to the film’s content, but due to “technical and legal necessities”. Therefore, the festival organisers, in referring to “technical and legal necessities”, left any film that had its registration document application rejected out of their program for reasons unrelated to its content; Hatırlıyorum and Altın Vuruş being removed are examples of these.
Short Films and Documentaries
As was seen at the 27th Ankara International Film Festival, the registration document requirement has disproportionately affected short films and documentaries. These films, which rarely have commercial showings, are generally seen by viewers during the course of film festivals. Before the censorship at Istanbul Film Festival, almost no festival required registration documents from short films and documentaries. However, with the changes that occured at many festivals following Bakur, short films and documentaries were also required to provide registration documents. These films now need to get registration documents — and, consequently, go through evaluation and classification procedures — in order to be shown at certain festivals. For documentaries, which generally do not see commercial release and tend to have much lower budgets in comparison with fictional films, to comply with these administrative regulations, which involve establishing a production company and paying the fees for these procedures, will be very difficult.
The Main Problems Film Festivals Experience
It needs to be made clear that the censorship at the Istanbul Film Festival has serious consequences for film festivals in Turkey that go beyond debates surrounding registration documents. The Istanbul Film Festival’s inability to stand against the ministry’s intervention with the intention of censoring one particular film and the cancellation of film showings at later festivals where the films did not have registration documents have weakened the hand of film festivals in Turkey and made it easier for various further interventions to take place more openly.
Film festivals have also had their share of the stifling atmosphere created in the wake of war restarting between the PKK and state forces in July 2015 and consequent massacres. The 18th 1001 Documentary Film Festival, which was to take place in October 2015, was postponed until further notice. The decision to postpone it, as announced on 19 September 2015, was taken in “an environment of bloody clashes, loss of life, curfews, mob and organised violence” and “uncertainties that have multiplied in the tensions created by the electoral atmosphere”.
Following the censorship of Reyan Tuvi’s documentary in 2014, a question mark hung over whether or not the International Antalya Altın Portakal Film Festival would go ahead in 2015 or not. Later, it was announced that due to the 1 November 2015 elections and the G-20 summit in Antalya, the festival would be postponed to December 2015 and renamed the “International Antalya Film Festival”. Even more importantly, the National Short Film Contest, which had been held in previous years, and the National Documentary Film Contest, which was hit by the censorship crisis in 2014, were permanently removed from the festival.
As the programme director of the Adana Altın Koza Film Festival, Kadir Beycioğlu, has expressed, the opening and closing ceremonies, as well as all events other than the screenings and the participation of guest filmmakers, were cancelled due to the losses of life at Dağlıca and Iğdır. Beycioğlu stated that the Adana Metropolitan Municipal Assembly had debated cancelling the entire festival and allocating its budget to the families of fallen security forces. He added that, after talks with municipal officials and sector representatives, they had decided to only go ahead with the competitions, and to allow both Adana cinema-lovers and the people’s jury to watch the competition films. Beycioğlu said that from 1992, when he had taken on the management of the festival, to the present day, the municipality had never interfered with the programme, but said that for almost every municipality-organised film festival, many matters outside the programme were decided in conjunction with the mayor or went ahead with his or her approval, and that some decisions might be made by the mayor alone. Beycioğlu said that these situations often revealed how mayors and their teams felt about festivals and what they expected from them.
Bureaucratic Difficulties
The approval document provided by the Artistic Events Commission (SEK), which is responsible for giving approval for films created overseas to be shown at festivals and similar events held in Turkey, also makes customs procedures for films sent from overseas easier. International logistics firms such as DHL and FedEx request the approval document from SEK for customs procedures for the Digital Cinema Package (DCP) copies of films brought from overseas for festivals. Bilge Taş, Gizem Bayıksel and Esra Özban of the Pink Life QueerFest team explain that their application for an approval document for the films at their festival in 2015 did not receive a response in time, so some of the DCP copies did not go through customs and some showings had to be carried out from BluRay copies. For the fifth festival, held this year, this was not the only problem relating to customs procedures. They say that at the start of this year the Atatürk Airport Customs Directorate asked them to provide anew their customs documents for the 35 mm copies of the five films that they had had to show on BluRay at the first QueerFest held in 2012. The festival administration explained that there had been no missing documents for the customs procedures in 2012, but the directorate did not respond in any way. We can say that these prohibitive practices that QueerFest have met with in terms of customs procedures are carried out as a form of censorship.
But customs procedures are not the only problems that QueerFest, who have not had any form of communication with the Culture and Tourism Ministry for five years. The festival team, who describe their goal as “creating areas of expression for the LGBTI rights struggle through art” believe that the ministry is following a policy of ignoring them and that this policy represents a “form of censorship that cannot be fought”. They say that there has been no response to their applications for ministry support in 2012 when the festival was set up. Moreover, they complain that for five years, they have not been able to access any film they have requested from the ministry archives. The festival, which shows an extremely limited number of local films, does not request registration documents for those they show.
Repression Directed at Festival Venues
In our discussions with festivals, we came to understand that the increasing repression was directed as much against festival venues as against festivals themselves. The QueerFest team state that the Beyoğlu Pera Cinema and Moda Stage had asked for registration documents for films they were showing in Istanbul in 2015, showing that the ministry had directly required the documents from them. Therefore, at QueerFest 2015, no domestic films were shown, and as mentioned above, there is an exemption for these documents for foreign films at festival showings. We must also add that the Istanbul Modern rejected QueerFest’s request to be a venue for 2016, albeit saying they had decided only to host the events of another group, İKSV.
The chancellorship of Ege University refused permission for the 8th Aegean Documentary Film Days, which were to be held in Izmir between 14-17 May 2015, to be held on the university’s main campus, giving the declaration of a state of emergency at the university as a reason. The festival, which had taken place for the past seven years at Ege University, was held at the Izmir French Cultural Center in 2015. Necati Sönmez, one of Documentarist’s directors, remarked that this year they had found it difficult to find a venue for the Documentarist 9th Istanbul Documentary Days, to be hosted between 28 May and 2 June, and, for this reason, they had mostly applied to venues in foreign consulates.
Another example of how the spaces where festival screenings are held are under pressure was seen at the March 2015 13th International Travelling Filmmor Women’s Films Festival. Municipal police raided the Rampa Theatre in Beyoğlu during a screening of Piçler (Bastards) (2014) with the participation of director Nassima Guessoum, on the basis that there was no licence for the film showing. Municipal police officers’ attempt to prevent the screening met resistance from the festival team and the audience. The festival coordinators met with the Beyoğlu Municipality and members of parliament and stopped the municipal police action. Most recently, a screening of Sara: Hep Kavgaydı Yaşamım (Sara: My Life Was Always A Struggle) (2015), a documentary about the life of Sakine Cansız, one of the founders of the PKK who was murdered in Paris in 2013, at the Beyoğlu Atlas Cinema on 19 January 2016 was cancelled by police. Artists from the Mesopotamian Cultural Center (MKM), which organised the event, were called to the Beyoğlu Police Station before the screening and told “we cannot guarantee your lives, you cannot show the film”. On 21 January 2016 a second screening at the Aksaray Su Performance Center was prevented for the same reason. International Worker’s Film Festival co-ordinator Önder Özdemir says that since the censorship of Bakur, the repression of festivals had increased and that the raiding of festival venues during film screenings was no longer an unlikely prospect.
One of the situations faced by festivals we talked to was people arriving in plain clothes to “visit” film showings and asking organisers specific questions about the content and technical specifications of the films. Documentarist director Necati Sönmez and coordinator Öykü Aytulum told us about plain-clothes individuals directing questions about the film’s content to them during showings of Kadınlar Cizre ve Silopi’yi Anlatıyor (Women Explain Cizre and Silopi) (2015) and Dengbej (Minstrel) (2014) at SALT Beyoğlu at the 7th What Human Rights? Film Festival in December 2015. Similarly, Flying Broom International Women’s Film Festival co-ordinator Onur Çimen said that plain-clothed individuals they assumed were police or ministry employees asked whether they had registration documents for the films they were showing during the screenings of films at the 18th Flying Broom festival in 2015.
In Place of a Conclusion
The developments and cases of censorship we have touched upon in this report are symptomatic of an increasing narrowing of the spaces for expression provided by film festivals over recent years. Today, the primary goal of the fight against censorship at film festivals in Turkey must be the removal of the inspection and censorship mechanism carried out by the state using registration documents. However, as we have mentioned above, uncertainties relating to the implementation of the registration document make this struggle extremely difficult. These arbitrary measures may be taken to court by filmmakers and directors. In addition, during the court cases, institutions and individuals may come together to organise in powerful solidarity. The common demands they develop may be shared with the public through these “strategic legal cases”.
The use of registration documents as a mode of censorship is not only limited to film festivals. The existing regulations on documentaries function as a pre-vetting mechanism for screenings, meaning that it is almost impossible for Bakur and similar films to get registration documents. Thus, it would be best for actors in the field of cinema not to limit the debate to a specific exemption for registration documents for documentaries at festivals, but to begin an integrated struggle against all regulations that censor films.
Another point that should not be forgotten is that the registration documents we have recently seen intensively used as a method of censorship is only one such method. As discussed in this report, freedom of expression is also limited at film festivals by methods such as difficulties created at customs, repressive measures directed at festival venues, and direct targeting and threats. Besides these, there are many indirect ways in which festivals are put under new types of inspection, such as the agreements prepared for those receiving support from the Culture and Tourism Ministry and statements made by the Artistic Events Commission. The alternative methods that these film festivals have developed to resist these censorious measures form an important example. However, these alternative methods are sometimes temporary solutions aimed merely at “saving the day”. This situation may form an obstacle to a joint struggle between festivals and film manufacturers. As we find ourselves in a period in which “the grip is tightening” in a way that will affect every actor in the cinematic field in the long term, a solidarity platform must be formed of a wide array of actors in response to repressive measures that affect freedom of expression. However, we generally see a sudden increase in solidarity in the cinema world after censorship cases, but this solidarity not being continued over the following period. The truth is that film festivals and other actors in the cinematic field need to bring their demands that the necessary regulations be made and its implementation become a standard and transparent to the fore at every opportunity. Moreover, just as in other areas of freedom of expression governed by the Culture and Tourism Ministry, film festivals should be protected on a constitutional basis and the ministry should be responsible for giving its support.
For an overview of developments in this case and a statement from the World Mass Media Research Foundation, which organized the 2nd Malatya International Film Festival, see: http://www.siyahbant.org/zenne-malatyaya-giremeyecek-mi/
The truth is in danger. Working with reporters and writers around the world, Index continually hears first-hand stories of the pressures of reporting, and of how journalists are too afraid to write or broadcast because of what might happen next.
In 2016 journalists are high-profile targets. They are no longer the gatekeepers to media coverage and the consequences have been terrible. Their security has been stripped away. Factions such as the Taliban and IS have found their own ways to push out their news, creating and publishing their own “stories” on blogs, YouTube and other social media. They no longer have to speak to journalists to tell their stories to a wider public. This has weakened journalists’ “value”, and the need to protect them. In this our 250th issue, we remember the threats writers faced when our magazine was set up in 1972 and hear from our reporters around the world who have some incredible and frightened stories to tell about pressures on them today.
Around 2,241 journalists were killed between 1996 and 2015, according to statistics compiled by Cardiff University and the International News Safety Institute. And in Colombia during 2015 104 journalists were receiving state protection, after being threatened.
In Yemen, considered by the Committee to Protect Journalists to be one of the deadliest countries to report from, only the extremely brave dare to report. And that number is dwindling fast. Our contacts tell us that the pressure on local journalists not to do their job is incredible. Journalists are kidnapped and released at will. Reporters for independent media are monitored. Printed publications have closed down. And most recently 10 journalists were arrested by Houthi militias. In that environment what price the news? The price that many journalists pay is their lives or their freedom. And not just in Yemen.
Syria, Mexico, Colombia, Afghanistan and Iraq, all appear in the top 10 of league tables for danger to journalists. In just the last few weeks National Public Radio’s photojournalist David Gilkey and colleague Zabihullah Tamanna were killed in Afghanistan as they went about their work in collecting information, and researching stories to tell the public what is happening in that war-blasted nation. One of our writers for this issue was a foreign correspondent in Afghanistan in 1990s and remembers how different it was then. Reporters could walk down the street and meet with the Taliban without fearing for their lives. Those days have gone. Christina Lamb, from London’s Sunday Times, tells Index, that it can even be difficult to be seen in a public place now. She was recently asked to move on from a coffee shop because the owners were worried she was drawing attention to the premises just by being there.
Physical violence is not the only way the news is being suppressed. In Eritrea, journalists are being silenced by pressure from one of the most secretive governments in the world. Those that work for state media do so with the knowledge that if they take a step wrong, and write a story that the government doesn’t like, they could be arrested or tortured.
In many countries around the world, journalists have lost their status as observers and now come under direct attack. In the not-too-distant past journalists would be on frontlines, able to report on what was happening, without being directly targeted.
So despite what others have described as “the blizzard of news media” in the world, it is becoming frighteningly difficult to find out what is happening in places where those in power would rather you didn’t know. Governments and armed groups are becoming more sophisticated at manipulating public attitudes, using all the modern conveniences of a connected world. Governments not only try to control journalists, but sometimes do everything to discredit them.
As George Orwell said: “In times of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” Telling the truth is now being viewed by the powerful as a form of protest and rebellion against their strength.
We are living in a historical moment where leaders and their followers see the freedom to report as something that should be smothered, and asphyxiated, held down until it dies.
What we have seen in Syria is a deliberate stifling of news, making conditions impossibly dangerous for international media to cover, making local news media fear for their lives if they cover stories that make some powerful people uncomfortable. The bravest of the brave carry on against all the odds. But the forces against them are ruthless.
As Simon Cottle, Richard Sambrook and Nick Mosdell write in their upcoming book, Reporting Dangerously: Journalist Killings, Intimidation and Security: “The killing of journalists is clearly not only to shock but also to intimidate. As such it has become an effective way for groups and even governments to reduce scrutiny and accountability, and establish the space to pursue non-democratic means.”
In Turkey we are seeing the systematic crushing of the press by a government which appears to hate anyone who says anything it disagrees with, or reports on issues that it would rather were ignored. Journalists are under pressure, and so is the truth.
As our Turkey contributing editor Kaya Genç reports on page 64, many of Turkey’s most respected news outlets are closing down or being forced out of business. Secrets are no longer being aired and criticism is out of fashion. But mobs attacking newspaper buildings is not. Genç also believes that society is shifting and the public is being persuaded that they must pick sides, and that somehow media that publish stories they disagree with should not have a future.
That is not a future we would wish upon the world.
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[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”From the Archives”][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”94291″ img_size=”213×289″ alignment=”center” onclick=”custom_link” link=”http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/03064228208533353″][vc_custom_heading text=”Afghanistan in 1978-81″ font_container=”tag:p|font_size:24|text_align:left” link=”url:http%3A%2F%2Fjournals.sagepub.com%2Fdoi%2Fpdf%2F10.1080%2F03064228208533353|||”][vc_column_text]April 1982
Anthony Hyman looks at the changing fortunes of Afghan intellectuals over the past four or five years.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”94251″ img_size=”213×289″ alignment=”center” onclick=”custom_link” link=”http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/03064228208533410″][vc_custom_heading text=”Colombia: a new beginning?” font_container=”tag:p|font_size:24|text_align:left” link=”url:http%3A%2F%2Fjournals.sagepub.com%2Fdoi%2Fpdf%2F10.1080%2F03064228208533410|||”][vc_column_text]August 1982
Gabriel García Márquez and others who faced brutal government repression following the 1982 election.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”93979″ img_size=”213×289″ alignment=”center” onclick=”custom_link” link=”http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/03064228408533703″][vc_custom_heading text=”Repression in Iraq and Syria” font_container=”tag:p|font_size:24|text_align:left” link=”url:http%3A%2F%2Fjournals.sagepub.com%2Fdoi%2Fpdf%2F10.1080%2F03064228408533703|||”][vc_column_text]April 1983
An anonymous report from Amnesty point to torture, special courts and hundreds of executions in Iraq and Syria. [/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][vc_separator][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_custom_heading text=”Danger in truth: truth in danger” font_container=”tag:p|font_size:24|text_align:left” link=”url:https%3A%2F%2Fwww.indexoncensorship.org%2Fnewsite02may%2F2016%2F05%2Fdanger-in-truth-truth-in-danger%2F|||”][vc_column_text]The summer 2016 issue of Index on Censorship magazine looks at why journalists around the world face increasing threats.
In the issue: articles by journalists Lindsey Hilsum and Jean-Paul Marthoz plus Stephen Grey. Special report on dangerous journalism, China’s most famous political cartoonist and the late Henning Mankell on colonialism in Africa.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”76282″ img_size=”medium” alignment=”center” onclick=”custom_link” link=”https://www.indexoncensorship.org/newsite02may/2016/05/danger-in-truth-truth-in-danger/”][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_custom_heading text=”Subscribe” font_container=”tag:p|font_size:24|text_align:left” link=”url:https%3A%2F%2Fwww.indexoncensorship.org%2Fnewsite02may%2Fsubscribe%2F|||”][vc_column_text]In print, online. In your mailbox, on your iPad.
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Poetic Pilgrimage formed in 2002 when Muneera Williams and Sukina Owen-Douglas met at secondary school in Bristol, where they were part of a choir. Their love of music brought them together, but it was Williams, who was a DJ at a pirate radio station, who started Owen-Douglas on the path of hip hop by introducing her to artists such as Mos Def, Talib Kweli, Nas and Slum Village.
Following their conversion to Islam 11 years ago, Poetic Pilgrimage continued to make music despite facing criticism by those who considered their music to be haram, or forbidden by Islamic law. The pair now use their music as a tool to tackle all kinds of prejudices.
Poetic Pilgrimage will be performing at The Power of Hip Hop on 9 July. The event, co-organised by Index on Censorship, will explore the influence of hip-hop culture on social change in a global context. Performers include the inaugural Music in Exile Fellow Smockey, plus Zambezi News, Shhorai and Jason Nichols.
Index caught up with Poetic Pilgrimage ahead of the event to find out what it is like to be female and Muslim in the UK hip-hop scene.
Bahraini human rights defender Nabeel Rajab (Photo: The Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy)
Index on Censorship is deeply concerned by news that Bahraini human rights activist Nabeel Rajab has been hospitalised while in prison. The former Index Freedom of Expression Award-winner and a member of the judging panel at the 2016 Awards was suffering heart problems, his family said, after spending over two weeks in solitary confinement.
Rajab has been in prison since 13 June and subjected to ongoing judicial harassment to silence his human rights work. Index renews calls for his immediate release and for all charges against him to be dropped.
Human rights defender Nabeel Rajab has been rushed to Bahrain’s military hospital after suffering unprecedented heart problems after 15 days of solitary confinement. The UN’s top expert on torture, Juan Mendez, has previously said that solitary confinement for long durations “can amount to torture.”
According to his family, Nabeel Rajab is suffering an irregular heartbeat. He is currently at the Coronary Care Unit at the Bahrain Defence Force Hospital.
Sumaya Rajab, Nabeel Rajab’s wife: “We raised our extreme worries about the effects isolated detention would have on Nabeel’s health and we were ignored. Nabeel never suffered heart problems before. My husband is a human rights defender and does not deserve this treatment.”
Sayed Ahmed Alwadaei, Director of Advocacy, Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy: “The Government of Bahrain arrested Nabeel Rajab and jeopardised his mental and physical health solely because he expressed his opinions, documented torture in prison and criticised the human cost of the war in Yemen. Bahrain has criminalised compassion and human decency.”
On 13 June, police arrested Nabeel Rajab, the President of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, at his home in Bani Jamra in the north west of Bahrain. Following his arrest, Nabeel Rajab was held in solitary confinement in the East Riffa Police Station. According to his lawyer, his cell was extremely dirty, with many insects, and contributed to a deterioration in Rajab’s health. Police refused to give him a radio which his family had brought for him. On 26 June, police transferred him to the West Riffa Police Station, where the poor conditions continue, including the solitary confinement.
Also on 26 June, Rajab’s lawyers were informed that old charges related to his free expression have been referred to court, with a first hearing set for 12 July for “spreading rumours during wartime” and “insulting a statutory body”. The charges were first brought against him in April 2015 and are being pursued in addition to his latest charge of “spreading false news” on social media, which is still under investigation. The Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy condemns the government’s reprisals against Bahraini civil society and call for the government to immediately release Rajab and drop all charges.
On 2 April 2015, police detained Rajab and charged him with insulting the Central Jau Prison administration and undermining the war in Yemen, after he spoke out against widespread torture occurring in prison and criticised the humanitarian costs of the war.
Rajab has been prosecuted multiple times since the 2011 Arab Spring. Rajab was arrested repeatedly in 2012, and served two years in prison between 2012 and 2014 on charges of organising unauthorised protests. Following his release in 2014, Rajab conducted an advocacy tour of Europe. In September of that year he visited the UNHRC in Geneva, the European Parliament in Brussels, and European capitals. On his return to Bahrain in October 2014 following his participation in the 27th Session of the UNHRC, police arrested Rajab and charged him with insulting the army in a tweet. He received a six-month sentence and a travel ban. He was released on bail during the appeal of the sentence.
Following his April 2015, Rajab was held in police custody until July 2015, when he received a royal pardon during Ramadan for his six-month sentence. However, his travel ban remained in place, and his charges were not dropped. The threat of prosecution on these charges has significantly hampered Rajab’s ability to work.
The first charge of allegedly “insulting a statutory body” comes under article 216 of Bahrain’s Penal Code, based on his social media comments about allegations of severe and systematic ill-treatment and torture of detainees in Jau Prison in March 2015. The second charge accuses him of “disseminating false rumours in times of war,” under article 133 of the Penal Code, based on social media posts criticising Saudi-led coalition air strikes in Yemen. Violations of articles 133 and 216 carry maximum sentences of 10 and three years in prison, respectively. Neither of the alleged acts upon which these charges are based were in any way recognisable criminal offences under international human rights law, and both involved the peaceful exercise of internationally protected rights to freedom of expression and to promote and protect human rights.
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”Index on Censorship has dedicated its milestone 250th issue to exploring the increasing threats to reporters worldwide. Its special report, Truth in Danger, Danger in Truth: Journalists Under Fire and Under Pressure, is out now.”][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]
Highlights include Lindsey Hilsum, writing about her friend and colleague, the murdered war reporter Marie Colvin, and asking whether journalists should still be covering war zones. Stephen Grey looks at the difficulties of protecting sources in an era of mass surveillance. Valeria Costa-Kostritsky shows how Europe’s journalists are being silenced by accusations that their work threatens national security.
Kaya Genç interviews Turkey’s threatened investigative journalists, and Steven Borowiec lifts the lid on the cosy relationships inside Japan’s press clubs. Plus, the inside track on what it is really like to be a local reporter in Syria and Eritrea. Also in this issue: the late Swedish crime writer Henning Mankell explores colonialism in Africa in an exclusive play extract; Jemimah Steinfeld interviews China’s most famous political cartoonist; Irene Caselli writes about the controversies and censorship of Latin America’s soap operas; and Norwegian musician Moddi tells how hate mail sparked an album of music that had been silenced.
The 250th cover is by Ben Jennings. Plus there are cartoons and illustrations by Martin Rowson, Brian John Spencer, Sam Darlow and Chinese cartoonist Rebel Pepper.
You can order your copy here, or take out a digital subscription via Exact Editions. Copies are also available at the BFI, the Serpentine Gallery, MagCulture, (London), News from Nowhere (Liverpool), Home (Manchester) and on Amazon. Each magazine sale helps Index on Censorship continue its fight for free expression worldwide.
Index on Censorship magazine was started in 1972 and remains the only global magazine dedicated to free expression. It has produced 250 issues, with contributors including Samuel Beckett, Gabriel García Marquéz, Nadine Gordimer, Arthur Miller, Salman Rushdie, Margaret Atwood, and many more.
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”SPECIAL REPORT: DANGER IN TRUTH, TRUTH IN DANGER” css=”.vc_custom_1483444455583{margin-right: 0px !important;margin-left: 0px !important;border-bottom-width: 1px !important;padding-top: 15px !important;padding-bottom: 15px !important;border-bottom-color: #455560 !important;border-bottom-style: solid !important;}”][vc_column_text]
Journalists under fire and under pressure
Editorial: Risky business – Rachael Jolley on why journalists around the world face increasing threats
Behind the lines – Lindsey Hilsum asks if reporters should still be heading into war zones
We are journalists, not terrorists – Valeria Costa-Kostritsky looks at how reporters around Europe are being silenced by accusations that their work threatens national security
Code of silence – Cristina Marconi shows how Italy’s press treads carefully between threats from the mafia and defamation laws from fascist times
Facing the front line – Laura Silvia Battaglia gives the inside track on safety training for Iraqi journalists
Giving up on the graft and the grind – Jean-Paul Marthoz says journalists are failing to cover difficult stories
Risking reputations – Fred Searle on how young UK writers fear “churnalism” will cost their jobs
Inside Syria’s war – Hazza Al-Adnan shows the extreme dangers faced by local reporters
Living in fear for reporting on terror – Ismail Einashe interviews a Kenyan journalist who has gone into hiding
The life of a state journalist in Eritrea – Abraham T. Zere on what it’s really like to work at a highly censored government newspaper
Smothering South African reporting – Carien Du Plessis asks if racism accusations and Twitter mobs are being used to stop truthful coverage at election time
Writing with a bodyguard – Catalina Lobo-Guerrero explores Colombia’s state protection unit, which has supported journalists in danger for 16 years
Taliban warning ramps up risk to Kabul’s reporters – Caroline Lees recalls safer days working in Afghanistan and looks at journalists’ challenges today
Writers of wrongs – Steven Borowiec lifts the lid on cosy relationships inside Japan’s press clubs
The Arab Spring snaps back – Rohan Jayasekera assesses the state of the media after the revolution
Shooting the messengers – Duncan Tucker reports on the women investigating sex-trafficking in Mexico
Is your secret safe with me? – Stephen Grey looks at the difficulties of protecting sources in an age of mass surveillance
Stripsearch cartoon – Martin Rowson depicts a fat-cat politician quashing questions
Scoops and troops – Kaya Genç interviews Turkey’s struggling investigative reporters
A world away from Wallander – An exclusive extract of a play by late Swedish crime writer Henning Mankell
“I’m not prepared to give up my words” – Norman Manea introduces Matei Visniec, a surreal Romanian play where rats rule and humans are forced to relinquish language
Posting into the future – An extract from Oleh Shynkarenko’s futuristic new novel, inspired by Facebook updates during Ukraine’s Maidan Square protests
The lost art of letters – Vicky Baker looks at the power of written correspondence and asks if email can ever be the same
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”SUBSCRIBE” css=”.vc_custom_1481736449684{margin-right: 0px !important;margin-left: 0px !important;border-bottom-width: 1px !important;padding-bottom: 15px !important;border-bottom-color: #455560 !important;border-bottom-style: solid !important;}”][vc_column_text]Index on Censorship magazine was started in 1972 and remains the only global magazine dedicated to free expression. Past contributors include Samuel Beckett, Gabriel García Marquéz, Nadine Gordimer, Arthur Miller, Salman Rushdie, Margaret Atwood, and many more.[/vc_column_text][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/2″][vc_single_image image=”76572″ img_size=”full”][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]In print or online. Order a print edition here or take out a digital subscription via Exact Editions.
Copies are also available at the BFI, the Serpentine Gallery, MagCulture, (London), News from Nowhere (Liverpool), Home (Manchester), Calton Books (Glasgow) and on Amazon. Each magazine sale helps Index on Censorship continue its fight for free expression worldwide.
Rahim Haciyev, editor-in-chief of Azerbaijani newspaper Azadliq, accepts the 2014 Index Freedom of Expression Journalism Award. (Photo: Alex Brenner for Index on Censorship)
Rahim Haciyev, acting editor-in-chief of Azadliq, told Index why it’s important to keep the paper’s journalists reporting.
Why is it important for Azadliq to continue its mission?
Rahim Haciyev: Azadliq is an independent newspaper that fights for freedom of speech in Azerbaijan. In fact, the main job of the press is to provide readers with objective information. Freedom of speech is under severe pressure from the government. We at the newspaper fight for freedom as well as provide readers with objective information. Our activity is of great importance because we are the only remaining press agency inside Azerbaijan that challenges the government.
Why is the government trying to shut down the paper?
Rahim Haciyev: Azadliq always follows the “golden rule of journalism”, which is to only serve the truth. In a country with wide-scale corruption and sharp limitations to human rights and freedom, it should not be surprising that the only newspaper that publishes articles about all of these issues is under intense pressure. It is common for authoritarian regimes to restrict the freedom of speech and expression in order to silence press outlets which provide citizens with objective information. This is what the Azerbaijani government attempts to do. The newspaper pays great attention to the problem of political prisoners and continues to do so right now. Each issue of the newspaper contains photos of political prisoners that the government would rather people forget.
How many people are still contributing to the paper’s coverage?
Rahim Haciyev: Azadliq, as a daily newspaper, is facing severe financial constraints. Our small staff of 20 journalists are working under the dual threat of government harassment and financial insecurity. We can’t hire more journalists because the state-owned news distributor, Qasid, refuses to pay the paper for sales. Right now it owes us approximately $50,000, but is demanding we pay them $12,000. At the same time, a lot of journalists don’t want to work with us because of the real personal and professional risk of being associated with an opposition newspaper.
Monument to Veronica Guerin in Dublin Castle gardens. Credit: William Murphy / Flickr
This weekend marks 20 years since the murder of Irish award-winning crime and investigative journalist Veronica Guerin. On 26 June 1996, two masked men on a motorbike pulled up alongside her car at traffic lights on the outskirts of Dublin, opened fire and killed her instantly. Three men were subsequently convicted for their involvement in the murder.
Guerin, who had been working as a freelance journalist for Ireland’s Sunday Independent, made a name for herself investigating and exposing the crimes of senior members of Dublin’s criminal underworld. But such a reputation can be a dangerous thing for an investigative reporter to have. Guerin was subject to a number of attacks and threats, including against the life of her young son Cathal. In 1995 she was shot in her home but survived. Refusing to yield, she continued her work.
“Veronica was a late entrant to journalism; she trained and worked initially in accountancy so she had an instinct for business and understood money,” says Séamus Dooley, Irish Secretary, National Union of Journalists. “That was very useful in studying records and following the money.”
Her death prompted a wave of public anger culminating in the establishment of the Criminal Assets Bureau, followed by more than 150 arrests and a major hunt for organised criminal gangs. “The idea of a designated bureau with sweeping powers to target those with suspicious wealth was a direct response to her murder and caused havoc among those heading criminal gangs,” says Dooley.
Guerin’s death was described by then-Taoiseach John Bruton as a “an attack on democracy”. Unfortunately, this sentiment was echoed earlier this year when current Taoiseach Enda Kenny said: “Journalists and media organisations will not be intimidated by such threats, which have no place in a democratic society.”
The threats he was referring to were made in February 2016 by criminal gangs in Dublin against a number of crime journalists in the city who were reporting on a gangland feud that saw two audacious murders in the space of four days. Police informed Independent News and Media, which owns the Irish Independent newspaper, that the safety of two reporters — a man and a woman — was at risk.
Jimmy Guerin, the brother of Veronica, said at the time: “Successive governments have let down the memory of Veronica … by failing to provide the resources required to beat the gangs.”
So are we back to the way things were two decades ago?
“The situation has been simmering beneath the surface for a while, but the turf wars between the Kinahan and the Hutch families, along with the nature of the violence, is new,” says Dooley. “Gerry Hutch is someone Veronica would have covered in her time, so there is a direct connection with what came before.”
“However, there was this perception that Dublin was a city on lockdown following the killings and journalists are operating under fear,” adds Dooley. “This isn’t bandit country, and there aren’t large numbers of journalists fearful for their lives.”
This shouldn’t mean complacency, adds Dooley, who states that the NUJ has supported a number of journalists at risk in Ireland in recent years.
“One of the problems is that Dublin is a small city, so, naturally, the number of people covering crime is very small,” says Dooley. “Veronica was very well-known to the people she was writing about and so are today’s reporters.”
With crime reporting being such a small part of the market, there is great pressure to deliver stories quicker, which brings problems in itself.
“Today’s journalists are expected to take more risks, and freelancers — as Veronica was — take even greater risks than those in staff jobs,” says Dooley. “While I understand that there is also the commercial element of selling newspapers in order to survive, sensationalising crime coverage in such a high profile way and being overly provocative in the process of selling comes at a price.”
His murder remains an isolated case, but recent years have seen a spate of attacks and threats against journalists in the country. In 2014, Irish News reporter Allison Morris was called a “Fenian bastard” and a “Fenian cunt” as she left court by a gang who threatened to cut her throat.
These are not isolated incidents in either the north or south of Ireland.
If we are to learn anything from the death of Veronica Guerin all these years later, says Dooley, it is that “there needs to be greater recognition of the rights of journalists.”
Click on the dots for more information on the incidents.
Each week, Index on Censorship’s Mapping 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.
21 June, 2016 – Freelance journalist Kastus Zhukouski and cameraperson Alyaksei Atroshchankau who work for Poland-based Belsat TV, were detained in the town of Loyeu, in Homel region, Belsat channel reported.
The two media workers were filming a local brick factory for a story about poor economic conditions in Belarus.
“The police came, and brutally detained me and my colleague Alyaksei. We were taken to the police department, to the control room. They seized the equipment from our hands, broke it. I was knocked down to the floor, handcuffed, a man pressed a knee against my head. He called himself Deputy Chief Henadz Madzharski”, Kastus Zhukouski told BelaPAN.
The journalist also said he had high blood pressure. An ambulance was called and he was given an injection.
Zhukouski and Atroshchankau spent six hours at the police station. No police documents were drawn up despite threats to do so, the channel reported. It is unclear if the journalists have been charged with anything.
Szukouski and Atroshchankau filed requests to the Investigative Committee of the Republic of Belarus asking them to investigate actions of the police.
20 June, 2016 – Belgian justice minister Koen Geens announced his intention to double the length of a prison sentencing for divulging confidential information, in cases where professional confidentially is breached, newspaper La Libre Belgique reported.
According to the Belgium General Association of Journalists, the move is meant to include it amongst the category of offenses which allow specific investigative methods such as phone-tapping or electronic tracing.
A second proposed law is also worrying journalists, which would enable the intelligence service to scrape the protection of a professional journalist if he/she is not considered a real journalist.
Gaspard Glanz, from independent website Taranis News, which covers clashes that take place during protests closely, and Alexis Kraland, were detained by police forces.
Ganz tweeted about the conditions, writing: “There’s 12 of us in total in the van. It’s 40 degrees. No water, no air”.
On Periscope, the people in the truck can be seen saying why they were arrested, generally because they were wearing protective material meant to protect them against tear gas.
22 June, 2016 – A new anti-terrorism law has come into effect on 22 June after it was ratified by the Polish President Andrzej Duda, wiadomosci.gazeta.pl. The law was successfully passed by two parliamentary chambers of the Sejm earlier this month.
The law gives Poland’s intelligence agency, the ABW (Agencja Bezpieczeństwa Wewnętrznego), the right to “order the blocking or demand that the electronic open source service administrator block access to information data”, thereby giving the agency the right to shut down online media outlets, including websites and television programmes, Kulisy24 reported.
Websites can be blocked for up to five days prior to obtaining permission by higher prosecution authorities, and up to 30 days if permission is granted, with the option to renew it for up to three months.
Authorisation for a temporary access ban can also now be granted by the minister of justice. The legislation does not grant power to the source administrator to appeal against such a decision.
Lawyer and expert on surveillance legislation, Prior Waglowski, told the website money.pl: “Blocking…has to occur under judicial supervision… which is not given here. These propositions are taken out of the blue”. He underlined that the definition of terrorism provided is very loose and is up to the discretion by effectively two persons.
Watchdog website Kulisy24criticised the legislation, writing that it is not known how blocking will be executed and that the ABW is not obliged to publish its blocking order.
The Polish NGO Fundacja Panoptykon started a petition against the law in late April and collected just short of 8,690 signatures by 20 June. Together with the NGO e-Państwo, it also published a protest letter addressed to the Polish president, which was shared by a number of media and NGOs, including the Helsinki Foundation of Human Rights.
In a developing incident reported to Mapping Media Freedom on 18 May 2016 Turkish judicial authorities have opened an investigation against five journalists and trade unionists for participating in a solidarity campaign with the Kurdish daily newspaper Özgür Gündem.
The journalists include Ertugrul Mavioglu, Faruk Eren, Ayse Düzkan, Mustafa Sönmez and Melda Onur.
The Co-Editorship-in-Chief campaign was launched by Özgür Gündem daily on 3 May, 2016 for World Press Freedom Day (#WPFD) where up to 16 journalists participated.
Requests have been filed for the journalists and trade unionists to testify for articles that are being considered “terrorist propaganda” and an “incitement to crime” which were published whilst they participated in the solidarity campaign.
“This is another dark day for media freedom in Turkey,” said Johann Bihr, the head of RSF’s Eastern Europe and Central Asia desk. “Erol Önderoglu has fought tirelessly to defend persecuted journalists for the past 20 years. He is a leader in this field because of his honesty and integrity, which are recognised the world over. It says a lot about the decline in media freedom in Turkey that he is now also being targeted.”
UPDATE: On 25 May, 2016 – Journalist Erol Önderoglu has been added to list of journalists being investigated for “terrorist propaganda” for participating in the solidarity campaign with Özgür Gündem, The European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) reports. EFJ demands that all criminal charges be dropped against him and the other journalists involved in this campaign.
UPDATE: 20 June, 2016 – A prosecutor has issued a warrant for the pre-trial arrest of ad interim editor-in-chief Özgür Gündem Şebnem Korur Fincancı, Bianet journalist and RSF representative Erol Önderoğlu and author Ahmet Nesin.
Some say you can trace the origins of hip hop to a single room in New York City on 11 August 1973. At 1520 Sedgwick Avenue in the Bronx, the Jamaican-American DJ Kool Herc threw a party and, playing percussive funk on his speakers, noticed that the crowd danced most vigorously during the instrumental break. He then used two turntables and copies of the same song to keep the break going, while talking — or MCing — over it to engage the crowd.
By that time in the early 1970s, the historically middle-class Bronx was transforming. For decades it had been home to upwardly mobile black and latino families, and the borough was the most integrated community in the United States. That was until the accelerated post-war flight of white residents for the suburbs, falling house prices and the loss of so many manufacturing jobs, coupled with tens of thousands of mostly poor immigrants moving in.
Coming out of these conditions, hip hop has always been about inspiring the disenfranchised to overcome their obstacles.
Jason Nichols, aka Haysoos, is a hip-hop artist, professor and editor-in-chief of Words, Beats and Life, the first peer-reviewed academic journal of global hip-hop culture. He has been rapping since he was a pre-teen in the early 1990s when he first heard My Philosophy by Boogie Down Productions, a hip-hop group from the South Bronx.
“I remember seeing the video and hearing that acapella part, and deciding I want to try it,” Nichols tells Index on Censorship. “It really showed me that rap music and MCing was a platform to be heard, and everything in my life since has revolved around that, from expressing your opinions about the world and thinking ‘how can we make things better?’”
When people think of hip-hop culture, rapping, DJing, graffiti and breakdancing are all things that come to mind. “However, I always say that hip-hop academics is another element of the movement,” says Nichols, who is a lecturer at the African American Studies Department of the University of Maryland, where his interests include black masculinity, hip hop and dance, and black and latino identities and relations.
Media attention and commercial rap music have given hip hop an image problem. The genre is heavily associated with guns, gangs and prison culture. As many poor neighbourhoods of colour became further devastated in the 1980s or 1990s, hyper-masculinity became, for many, entangled with race or class. As Nichols explains: “It was, and still is, a matter of control and mastery of your environment.”
One of the main reason young black men identify so much with their neighbourhood, their block or the building they come from is because they are saying “this is mine”, Nichols explains. “They know their spatial freedom is contained and confined and that they world isn’t theirs, but this particular space is,” he adds.
In his lectures on masculinity, Nichols looks as people like Moms Mabley, the lesbian comedian who employed masculine forms of black humour and Amiri Baraka, the poet, author, essayist and critic, who wrote about masculinity and heterosexuality as representative of black nationalism in the United States. Nichols brings his analysis up to the modern day by looking at artists like Kehinde Wiley, whose paintings explore black images of masculinity.
“Whether male or female, every person expresses several different masculinities throughout the day, and in my class, we talk a lot about those being expressed through art,” explains Nichols. “And, of course, all these directions led to hip hop.”
However, he believes we need a deeper understanding of hip hop because the idea of “hyper-masculinity” in itself is “problematic”. “It goes back to the old tropes about black men, in general, being supposedly violent or hyper-sexual,” he adds.
As long as certain expectations of race persist, the perception of masculinity will always be more of a problem for black or latino men. “Look at a white rapper like Eminem, who, as Greg Tate wrote, had everything but the burden,” explains Nichol.
“Eminem can be angry, masculine and all that, while also being allowed to be vulnerable in a way black men are not. He has the freedom to talk about his mother and his troubled family life in a way men of colour don’t have room to do.”
Taking the example of Tyler the Creator, the black American rapper who was banned from entering the UK based on his lyrical content, we have to ask, would this have happened to someone like Eminem, who is just as offensive but happens to be white? “We have to recognise the privileges white artists have over black artists,” explains Nichols. “The thing we always hear about when Eminem says something is his right to free speech.”
Looking at Washington DC, where Nichols spends much of his time, hip hop – while deeply entrenched in the mainstream — still makes up one of the last truly underground music movements in the United States. A hardcore punk scene sprang up in the capital in 1979 and continued to grow a following into the 1980s and 1990s. DC’s rap scene came along a little while later, but the difference between both movements is that hip hop is still around.
“This is because black kids still face hardship in a way white kids don’t, and all of those punk guys, while still legendary, could much more easily be co-opted into the system,” says Nichols. “They can put on a suit and go to work, but for hip-hop artists, it’s been a little different.”
The DC metro area has seen a boom in development over the last decade, but that prosperity never made it across the river and one-quarter of the city’s black population is still living in poverty. While these conditions continue to exist, hip hop will be the outlet of choice for so many men of colour who feel they don’t have a voice.
“There’s also been a real concerted effort by the system to shut the city’s underground culture down,” explains Nichols, referring to the shutting how of venues. “But the strength of hip hop is that it is so broad that it’s almost impossible to do that.”
Honduran journalist Cesario Padilla is facing immediate detention and a possible five-year jail term after being present at student protests at the National Autonomous University of Honduras in Tegucigalpa.
A warrant was issued for his arrest on 7 June. He and five others have been charged with “usurpation” of university property during protests, which saw buildings occupied and classes shutdown at UNAH’s two campuses in Tegucigalpa and in San Pedro Sula. The students were protesting against the introduction of higher pass grades and rising fees, as well as calling for the student body to play more of a role in the university’s governance.
Padilla said he was at the protests to observe as a reporter. The other accused students – Moisés David Cáceres, Sergio Luis Ulloa, Josué Armando Velásquez, Dayanara Elizabeth Castillo and Izhar Asael Alonzo Matamoros – were reportedly not present at the protests, but it is thought they are being accused of playing an organisational role.
Padilla works alongside former Index on Censorship awards nominee Dina Meza on the news website she launched in April 2015, Pasos de Animal Grande (Steps of a Big Animal).
Padilla was also interviewed in a 2014 piece Meza wrote for Index on Censorship magazine about the struggles young journalists in Honduras face when entering a profession where fear and corruption have become the driving forces.
In 2014, Padilla and five UNAH students, including Cáceres, Castillo and Ulloa, were suspended from the university after taking part in similar protests. They were subsequently re-admitted after a ruling by the Honduran Supreme Court of Justice in February 2015.
I have known Erol Önderoğlu for ages. This gentle soul has been monitoring the ever-volatile state of Turkish journalism more regularly than anybody else. His memory, as the national representative of the Reporters Without Borders, has been a prime source of reference for what we ought to know about the state of media freedom and independence.
On 20 June, perhaps not so surprisingly, we all witnessed Erol being sent to pre-trial detention, taken out of the courtroom in Istanbul in handcuffs.
Charge? “Terrorist propaganda.” Why? Erol was subjected to a legal investigation together with two prominent intellectuals, author Ahmet Nesin, and Prof Şebnem Korur Fincanci – who is the chairwoman of the Turkish Human Rights Foundation – because they had joined a so-called solidarity vigil, as an “editor for a day”, at the pro-Kurdish Özgür Gündem daily, which has has been under immense pressure lately.
This vigil had assembled, since 3 May, more than 40 intellectuals, 37 of whom have now been probed for the same charges. One can now only imagine the magnitude of a crackdown underway if the courts copy-paste detention decisions to all of them, which is not that unlikely.
Journalism has, without the slightest doubt, become the most risky and endangered profession in Turkey. Journalism is essential to any democracy. It’s demise will mean the end of democracy.
Turkey is now a country — paradoxically a negotiating partner with the EU on membership — where journalism is criminalised, where its exercise equates to taking a walk on a legal, political and social minefield.
“May God bless the hands of all those who beat these so-called journalists” tweeted Sait Turgut, a top local figure of AKP in Midyat, where a bomb attack on 8 June by the PKK had claimed 5 lives and left more than 50 people wounded.
Most recently, Can Erzincan TV, a liberal-independent channel with tiny financial resources but a strong critical content, was told by the board of TurkSat that it will be dropped from the service due to “terrorist propaganda”. Why? Because some of the commentators, who are allowed to express their opinions, are perceived as affiliated with the Gülen Movement, which has been declared a terrorist organisation by president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
It is commonplace for AKP officials from top down demonise journalists this way. Harrassment, censorship, criminal charges and arrests are now routine.
Detention of the three top human rights figures, the event in Midyat or the case of Can Erzincan TV are only snapshots of an ongoing oppression mainly aimed at exterminating the fourth estate as we know it. According to Mapping Media Freedom, there have been over 60 verified violations of press freedom since 1 January 2016.
The lethal cycle to our profession approaches its completion.
While journalists in Turkey – be they Turkish, Kurdish or foreign – feel less and less secure, the absence of truthful, accurate, critical reporting has become a norm. Covering stories such as the ”Panama Papers” leak — which includes hundreds of Turkish business people, many of whom have ties with the AKP government — or the emerging corruption case of Reza Zarrab — an Iranian businessman who was closely connected with the top echelons of the AKP — seems unthinkable due to dense self-censorship.
Demonisation of the Kurdish Political Movement and the restrictions in the south eastern region has made it an extreme challenge to report objectively on the tragic events unfolding in the mainly Kurdish provinces which have forced, according to Amnesty International, around 500,000 to leave their homes.
Journalism in Turkey now means being compromised in the newsrooms, facing jail sentences for reportage or commentary, living under constant threat of being fired, operating under threats and harassment. A noble profession has turned into a curse.
In the case of Turkey, fewer and fewer people are left with any doubt about the concentration of power. It’s in the hands of a single person who claims supremacy before all state institutions. The state of its media is now one without any editorial independence and diversity of thought.
President Erdoğan, copying like-minded leaders such as Fujimori, Chavez, Maduro, Aliyev and, especially, Putin, did actually much better than those.
His dismay with critical journalism surfaced fully from 2010 on, when he was left unchecked at the top of his party, alienating other founding fathers like Abdullah Gül, Ali Babacan and others who did not have an issue with a diverse press.
Soon it turned into contempt, hatred, grudge and revenge.
He obviously thought that a series of election victories gave him legitimacy to launch a full-scale power grab that necessitated capturing control of the large-scale media outlets.
His multi-layered media strategy began with Gezi Park protests in 2013 and fully exposed his autocratic intentions.
While his loyal media groups helped polarise the society, Erdoğan stiffly micro-managed the media moguls with a non-AKP background — whose existence depended on lucrative public contracts — to exert constant self-censorship in their news outlets, which due to their greed they willingly did.
This pattern proved to be successful. Newsrooms abandoned all critical content. What’s more, sackings and removals of dignified journalists peaked en masse, amounting now to approximately 4,000.
By the end of 2014, Erdoğan had conquered the bulk of the critical media.
Since 2015 there has been more drama. The attacks against the remaining part of the critical media escalated in three ways: intimidation, seizure and pressure of pro-Kurdish outlets.
Doğan group, the largest in the sector, was intimidated by pro-AKP vandalism last summer and brought to its knees by legal processes on alleged “organized crime” charges involving its boss.
As a result the journalism sector has had its teeth pulled out.
Meanwhile, police raided and seized the critical and influential Koza-Ipek and Zaman media groups, within the last 8 months, terminating some of its outlets, turning some others pro-government overnight and, after appointing trustees, firing more than 1,500 journalists.
Kurdish media, at the same time, became a prime target as the conflict grew and more and more Kurdish journalists found themselves in jail.
With up to 90% of a genetically modified media directly or indirectly under the control Erdoğan and in service of his drive for more power, decent journalism is left to a couple of minor TV channels and a handful newspapers with extremely low circulations.
With 32 journalists in prison and its fall in international press freedom indexes continuing to new all-time lows, Turkey’s public has been stripped of its right to know and cut off from its right to debate.
Journalism gagged means not only an end to the country’s democratic transition, but also all bridges of communication with its allies collapsing into darkness.
Nabeel Rajab during a protest in London in September 2015 (Photo: Milana Knezevic)
Index on Censorship remains deeply concerned about the treatment of human rights activist Nabeel Rajab, whose detention was extended on Tuesday 21 June by another eight days. He has been held since 13 June.
“Bahrain’s treatment of Nabeel is reprehensible. It must end its harassment. Bahraini authorities must immediately release and drop all charges against Nabeel. We call on the UK and US to press for his release,” Jodie Ginsberg, CEO, Index on Censorship said.
A former Index Freedom of Expression Award-winner and a member of the judging panel at the 2016 Awards, Rajab has been subjected to ongoing judicial harassment to silence his human rights work.
Arrested at his home, Rajab was charged the next day on Tuesday 14 June with “publishing and broadcasting false news that undermines the prestige of the state” and detained for seven days.
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