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12 April 2016
HM Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa
King of Bahrain
Riffa Palace
Manama, Bahrain
Dear King Hamad,
We, the undersigned Bahraini and international non-governmental organizations (NGOs), would like to unequivocally condemn your government’s arrest of human rights defender Zainab Al-Khawaja along with her infant son. The implementation of Ms. Al-Khawaja’s prison sentence for merely exercising her right to free expression and assembly amounts to arbitrary detention is wholly unacceptable. While Foreign Minister Sheikh Khaled bin Ahmed Al-Khalifa indicated an intention to release her, she has not yet been freed from prison and we are concerned that these arbitrary charges remain against her. We therefore call on the Government of Bahrain to secure her immediate and unconditional release.
On 14 March 2016, security forces raided the home of Ms. Al-Khawaja’s parents-in-law looking for her. When they did not find her there, they went to her apartment and arrested Ms. Al-Khawaja along with her 15-month-old son, Abdulhadi. After they temporarily detained her and her son at the Al-Hoora police station, the authorities informed Ms. Al-Khawaja that she would be taken for a medical examination at the Ministry of Interior before being transferred to the Isa Town Detention Center to serve out her prison term. From the time of her arrest at 3:45 pm until her midnight arrival at the detention facility, security services denied Ms. Al-Khawaja any food for her son, despite repeated requests. Isa Town Detention Center has recently suffered an outbreak of Hepatitis C which puts both mother and son at risk. The demeaning and dangerous conditions of the detention center where Ms. Al-Khawja and her infant son are kept indicate a gender specific attempt to destabilize and hinder her peaceful human rights advocacy.
Bahraini courts sentenced Ms. Al-Khawaja to a total of three years and one month in prison, as well as a BHD 3,000 fine, on several charges related to her peaceful dissent and free expression. In December 2014, a court sentenced Ms. Al-Khawaja to three years and three months in prison on charges related to allegedly insulting a police officer during a peaceful protest and insulting the king by tearing up a photograph. In October 2015, Bahrain’s appeals court confirmed her conviction for insulting the king but reduced her sentence to one year in prison. Additionally, on 2 February 2016, the appeals court upheld a 9-month prison sentence against Ms. Al-Khawaja after she tried to visit her father, human rights defender Abdulhadi Al-Khawaja, in Jau Prison when he was on a hunger strike in August 2014.
The international community has repeatedly expressed grave concern over your government’s decision to prosecute Ms. Al-Khawaja for exercising her right to free expression and assembly. In 2014, the UN Chair-Rapporteur of the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention and the UN Special Rapporteurs on freedom of opinion and expression, human rights defenders, and freedom of peaceful assembly and of association urged your government to drop all charges against Ms. Al-Khawaja, warning that her detention could be considered arbitrary. A year later, these same Special Procedures issued a joint communication to your government stating that Ms. Al-Khawaja’s sentencing appears to “indicate a prima facie violation of the rights to freedom of opinion and expression and to freedom of association, as set forth in articles 19 and 22 of the ICCPR [International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights].” The United States Government has previously expressed concern over the fairness of Ms. Al-Khawaja’s trial, and – most recently – the Government of Denmark has raised Ms. Al-Khawaja’s case at the 31st session of the Human Rights Council in Geneva, insisting that she and her son be released. Furthermore, Ms. Al-Khawaja’s arrest comes during a session of the UN Committee on the Status of Women, where your government is taking part in discussions on how to protect women rights globally, while targeting women human rights defenders locally.
On 7 April 2016, the Foreign Minister, Sheikh Khaled bin Ahmed Al-Khalifa, stated that the authorities intend to release Ms. Al-Khawaja on humanitarian grounds. Sheikh Khaled provided no timeline for her release and her family has received no further guarantee that the government will release Ms. Al-Khawaja from prison. However, the foreign minister did indicate that the government will not drop any of the charges against Ms. Al-Khawaja, leaving her vulnerable to her re-arrest at any time.
We would like to join this growing chorus of international voices in calling for the immediate and unconditional release of Zainab Al-Khawaja and her infant son. The broad criminalization of peaceful dissent and free expression in Bahrain, as well as the government’s continued harassment and detention of human rights defenders, contravenes your obligations under international law, and is wholly unacceptable.
Sincerely,
Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain (ADHRB)
Arab Center for the Promotion of Human Rights (ACPHR)
Association for Women’s Rights in Development (AWID)
Bahrain Center for Human Rights (BCHR)
Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy (BIRD)
Canadian Journalists for Free Expression (CJFE)
Cartoonists Rights Network International
CIVICUS World Alliance for Citizen Participation
Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)
European-Bahraini Organisation for Human Rights (EBOHR)
European Center for Democracy and Human Rights (ECDHR)
Freedom Forum
Gulf Centre for Human Rights (GCHR)
Human Rights Network for Journalists – Uganda
Human Rights Sentinel
Index on Censorship
Institute for the Studies on the Free Flow of Information (ISAI)
Institute of the Press and Freedom of Expression (IPLEX)
International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH)
International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) Asia Pacific
Justice Human Rights Organization (JHRO)
Khiam Rehabilitation Center for Victims of Torture
Lawyers Rights Watch Canada (LRWC)
Maharat Foundation-Lebanon
MARCH
National Union of Somali Journalists (NUSOJ)
Nazra for Feminist Studies (Egypt)
Observatorio Latinoamericano para la Libertad de Expresión (OLA)
Pacific Islands News Association
Pakistan Press Foundation (PFF)
PEN America
PEN Canada
Saudi Organization for Rights and Freedoms
Salam for Democracy and Human Rights
Social Media Exchange (SMEX)
Vigilance for Democracy and the Civic State
World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers
Indonesian comedian Sakdiyah Ma’ruf, a nominee for the 2016 Index on Censorship Freedom of Expression Award for arts, was born to conservative Muslim family in Java and went on to become one of very few female stand-up comedians in the country to appear on national TV.
British comedian Shazia Mirza, the host of this year’s awards, talks to her about tackling no-go subjects, trying to win family approval, and how the stand-up scene is growing for women in Indonesia.
Sakdiyah Ma’ruf (left) and Shazia Mirza (right)
SHAZIA: Have your parents come to watch you do stand-up?
SAKDIYAH: My parents came to one of my shows once. It was in 2012 in one of the biggest theatres in Jakarta. I invited them to the show because it was held in a “dignified” building. I wanted to help my parents, and especially my dad, see that I was doing a “dignified” job.
I was very nervous. It was a full house. But I didn’t care whether the audience liked me or not, as long as I could get at least silent approval from my dad.
Since the show, my dad has supported me in my career as a comedian – not fully perhaps – but from this moment on, he knew that stand-up was something I did and would continue to do – in addition to the other “real jobs” I have.
I remember my parents saying they were pretty nervous about how the audience would respond to me. Perhaps my dad thought he could accept what I was doing if I gained approval from at least half of the audience.
The truth is that it isn’t always easy to get out of the house to perform. In June 2015 I was invited to open for a good friend of mine who is one of the biggest stand-up comics in Indonesia. He called me in April for the gig and it took me almost a month just to craft the right sentence to ask for my dad’s permission to perform.
SHAZIA: Do you say exactly what you want to? Or do you think: “No I can’t say that, people might get upset”
SAKDIYAH: The truth is that I rarely say exactly what I want to. I mean, can you imagine expressing all those voices in your head to the audience?
I say what I believe in; what I have experienced; what I am concerned about; what I like; what I don’t like; what I’m angry about… For me, comedy is always about telling the truth. You can’t be genuinely funny without being completely honest with yourself and your audience.
But I do self-censor, I self-censor all the time! I’m not afraid to talk about taboo topics like religion, race relation, a bit of sex etc – but only if it helps me to be honest with myself and my audience to be honest with themselves. I make sure I craft my jokes on these topics in a way that is truly funny; otherwise I’ll just sound like another girl complaining about how unfair life is.
I also make sure I’m being fair. I fact-check before I talk about something, so that I don’t just make things worse.
SHAZIA: Are you the only woman in Indonesia doing stand-up?
SAKDIYAH: No, of course not. I was the first, but the number is now growing. Every year there are new female stand-up comics performing on TV or participating in competitions.
SHAZIA: Do you feel pressure to talk about “heavy” subjects, like Islamophobia and terrorism, in your comedy? Or do you prefer to talk about lighter things sometimes – like shopping, dating, going on holidays.
SAKDIYAH: I want to talk about the issues that matter to me, things I can relate to, things that are part of who I am and what I have experienced.
I love talking about Muslims and the way they practice and interpret their religion. I talk about Islamophobia, violence towards women, the idea and construction of femininity and masculinity, my ethnicity.
Yeah, sometimes I feel such pressure to talk about “heavy” topics, but for what it’s worth, I think there is no such thing as a “light” topic in comedy. With a great comedian, even jokes about a refrigerator can bring new insights on humanity.
And I guess this is what is so beautiful about comedy: it helps us get to know who we are who others are as well. Every individual has multiple identities. I have been perceived as this Muslim girl fighting against fundamentalism through her comedy. While this is true, I do not want to just be seen as some kind of a “comedy jihadist” fighting against fundamentalists. I have layers to my identity, just like everybody else.
SHAZIA: Do you receive letters and emails from people who have seen your performances? What kind of things do they say? What do women say?
SAKDIYAH: Yes, I do. A woman once asked me whether I am a “true” Muslim. Perhaps she considered my jokes too daring or inappropriate for a Muslim woman to tell. She asked me all these questions about whether I really wear the hijab every day and whether I pray five times a day.
I like getting these kinds of responses. I feel like these people genuinely care about me or at least about Muslim women in general.
Italy might soon introduce fines against vexatious defamation lawsuits against journalists, as part of a large-scale reform being discussed by the parliament.
On 10 March, the chamber of deputies passed a set of recommendations to reform civil proceedings, which would include penalties to discourage the use of libel suits to intimidate journalists.
The recommendations, called delegation to the government with instructions on the efficiency of civil proceeding and sponsored by ministry of justice Andrea Orlando (Democratic Party) and vice-president of the justice committee Franco Vazio, of the same party, would punish plaintiffs who are proved to be in mala fides, i.e. knowing their claims to be false, by making them reimburse journalists an amount between two and five times the trial’s expenses.
The recommendations are what Italian law calls a “delegated law”. With them, the parliament delegates the government to legislate in its place – but only following a set of restrictions and recommendations, which are what the chamber of deputies approved on 10 March.
Before the government turns them into law, the recommendations now need to be approved by the Italian senate, which has not yet released a timeline for debating the recommendations.
If the senate approves the recommendations, the government will have an 18-month window to enforce them. However, according to Italian law, no individual minister is in charge of the measure, and there won’t be a backlash against the government if it fails to take action.
Nevertheless, president of the National Federation of Italian Press Giuseppe Giulietti has expressed satisfaction about the recommendations, saying in a statement it is a “relevant first step in the right direction”.
Alberto Spampinato, director of Ossigeno per l’Informazione, an Italian organisation that monitors threats to journalists, also thinks that although the measures aren’t a major step forward, they are a good start.
“The fines would drive down the number of vexatious defamation lawsuits brought against journalists,” Spampinato told Index.
According to data by Ossigeno, defamation lawsuits have become the most used tool to silence journalists in the country.
Journalists have no access to insurance schemes to cover defamation trials expenses in Italy, and only 10% of them can rely on their organisations to cover the costs, making it hard for journalists to afford to be sued for libel.
Ossigeno argues that even the threat of legal action has a chilling effect on the media.
According to Spampinato, an older law had already established fines for these cases. However, as it failed to specify the amount of the fines, judges have been unable to impose any at all.
“It’s important that the parliament has begun to address the issue,” he says.
The vote came just after the chamber of deputies ratified a parliamentary report on the protection of journalists on 3 March.
The report recommends differentiating between malicious falsehood and defamation, and to make it “a criminal offence to punish any threat, pressure, and violent or damaging behaviour to limit the press’s freedom”.
Ossigeno’s Spampinato says both would be important measures.
“Just like when a patient dies, we don’t always blame the surgeon for it, we must be able to distinguish between a journalist’s mistakes and the cases in which he disseminates falsehood intentionally,” he said.
He also agreed with the report that in most cases it should be a criminal offence to limit press freedom. He argued that the right to be informed is the only fundamental human right not protected by criminal law – not just in Italy but also in other European countries.
The report was approved by the chamber unanimously but isn’t a binding resolution.
However, Ossigeno thinks it is an important milestone, calling it a “historic vote” on its website.
“The vote on the committee’s report paves the way for other proposals,” explained Spampinato. “MPs will introduce new measures to protect journalists.”
Kemel Aydogan’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Turkey. Credit: Mehmet Çakici
Hitler was a Shakespeare fan; Stalin feared Hamlet; Othello broke ground in apartheid-era South Africa; and Brazil’s current political crisis can be reflected by Julius Caesar. Across the world different Shakespearean plays have different significance and power. The latest issue of Index on Censorship magazine, a Shakespeare special to mark the 400th anniversary of his death, takes a global look at the playwright’s influence, explores how censors have dealt with his works and also how performances have been used to tackle subjects that might otherwise have been off limits. Below some of our writers talk about some of the most controversial performances and their consequences.
Kaya Genç on A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream in Turkey
“When Turkish poet Can Yücel translated A Midsummer’s Night Dream, he saw the potential to reflect Turkey’s authoritarian climate in a way that would pass under the radar of the military intelligence’s hardworking censors. Like lovers in Shakespeare’s comedy who are tricked by fairies into falling in love with characters they actually dislike, his adaptation [which was staged in 1981 and led to the arrests of many of the actors] drew on the idea that Turkey’s people were forced by the state to love the authority figures that oppressed them the most. They were subjugated by the military patriarchy, the same way the play’s female and artisan characters were subjugated by Athenian patriarchy.
Kemal Aydoğan, the director of the latest Turkish adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, described the work as ‘one of the most political plays ever written’. For Aydoğan, the scene in which the Amazonian queen Hippolyta is subjugated and taken hostage by the Theseus marks a turning point in the play. ‘That Hermia is not allowed to marry the man she loves but has to wed the man assigned to her by her father is another sign of women’s subjugation by men,’ he said. This, according to Aydoğan, is sadly familiar terrain for Turkey where women are frequently told by male politicians to know their place, keep silent and do as they are told.’ ”
Claire Rigby on Julius Caesar in Brazil
“In a Brazil seething with political intrigue, in which the impeachment proceedings currently facing President Dilma Rousseff are just the most visible tip of a profound turbulence which has gripped the country since her re-election in October 2014, director Roberto Alvim’s 2015 adaptation of Julius Caesar was inspired by a televised presidential debate he saw in the final days of the election campaign, in which centre-left Rousseff faced off against her centre-right opponent Aécio Neves. ‘I watched the debate as it became utterly polarised between Dilma and Aécio, and the famous clash between Mark Antony and Brutus instantly came to mind,’ he said. ‘It was the idea that the same facts can be drawn in such completely different ways by the power of speech: the power of the word to reframe the facts, and its central importance in the political game.’ ”
György Spiró on Richard III in Hungary
“Richard III was staged in Kaposvár, which had Hungary’s very best theatre at the time. This was 1982.
Charges were brought against the production, because the Earl of Richmond wore dark glasses. A few weeks earlier, on 13 December 1981, General Wojciech Jaruzelski declared a state of emergency in Poland. For health reasons he wore sunglasses every time he appeared in public.”
Simon Callow on Hamlet under Stalin and the Nazis
“In 1941, Joseph Stalin banned Hamlet. The historian Arthur Mendel wrote: ‘The very idea of showing on the stage a thoughtful, reflective hero who took nothing on faith, who intently scrutinized the life around him in an effort to discover for himself, without outside ‘prompting,’ the reasons for its defects, separating truth from falsehood, the very idea seemed almost ‘criminal’.’ Having Hamlet suppressed must have been a nasty shock for Russians: at least since the times of novelist and short story writer Ivan Turgenev, the Danish Prince had been identified with the Russian soul. Ten years earlier, Adolf Hitler had claimed the play as quintessentially Aryan, and described Nazi Germany as resembling Elizabethan England, in its youthfulness and vitality (unlike the allegedly decadent and moribund British Empire). In his Germany, Hamlet was reimagined as a proto-German warrior. Only weeks after Hitler took power in 1933 an official party publication appeared titled Shakespeare – A Germanic Writer.”
Natasha Joseph on Othello in South Africa
“In 1987, actress and director Janet Suzman decided to stage Othello in her native South Africa, bringing ‘the moor of Venice’ to life at Johannesburg’s iconic Market Theatre. It was just two years since Prime Minister PW Botha had repealed one of apartheid’s most reviled laws, the Immorality Act, which banned sexual relationships between people of different races. Even without the legislation, many white South Africans baulked at the idea of interracial desire. No wonder, then, that Suzman’s production attracted what she has described as ‘millions of bags full of hate letters from people who thought that this was an outrage’.
But in a country famous for sweeping censorship and restrictions on freedom of movement, speech and association, the play was not banned. Why? Because the apartheid government ‘would have been the laughing stock of the world if they had banned Shakespeare’, Suzman told Index on Censorship. ‘Any government would be really embarrassed to ban Shakespeare. The apartheid government was frightened of ridicule. Everyone is frightened of laughter.’ ”
For more articles on Shakespeare’s battle with power around the world, see our latest magazine. Order your copy here, or take out a digital subscription via Exact Editions (just £18 for the year, with a free trial). Copies are also available in excellent bookshops including at the BFI, Mag Culture and Serpentine Gallery (London), News from Nowhere (Liverpool), Home (Manchester) and on Amazon or a digital magazine on exacteditions.com. Each magazine sale helps Index on Censorship fight for free expression worldwide.
Turkish journalist Ferit Tunç quit his advertising job in 2013 to found the newspaper Yön Gazetesi, covering the Kurdish Batman province of Turkey. Since its inception, the newspaper has been the subject of nearly 40 lawsuits, and Tunç has been taken close to bankruptcy.
“Being a journalist in Turkey is very difficult,” he told Index. “But being a journalist in the Eastern provinces of Turkey is more difficult, especially these days.”
However he has refused to give up fighting for press freedom in Turkey. In protest to the crippling lawsuits – all of which had been eventually dropped – Tunç began to devote his front pages to recipes for traditional Turkish dishes.
The recipes contained references to government corruption and media censorship, with readers were informed about the best way to prepare “governor kebab” and a sherbet treat the paper satirically-titled “deputy’s finger.”
“They [the authorities] love to eat so we give them recipes. After they understood our protest, they appropriated the newspaper more than before. We will continue our protest until there is a free local media,” Tunç said.
The protest gained local and international attention, and Tunç eventually won a three-month sponsorship from a group of local businessmen, allowing Yön Gazetesi to stay open.
In 2015 Tunç also ran as an independent parliamentary candidate in Batman in the June general election.
“In reality, my reason for being a candidate was not to be elected, it was completely a reaction towards those in authority and against the political parties,” he said. “During our campaigning our main slogan was “No to Corruption”.
Even his campaign van was emblazoned with the demand: “Stop Corruption!”.
Tunç believes politics and the media need to be reformed in Turkey: “People feel they’re being denied the right to know and discuss local issues, but first, you have to have a form of media that can focus on them without being destroyed.”
“Freedom of speech is essential for me and I am of those that believe that there will not be development, happiness and peace in a place without freedom of speech.”
Recipe: Governor Kebap
The name of the food that I have given in the recipe is “Governor’s Kebap.” The Governor’s Kebap is one of the most expensive foods we have and the poor have not had much of a chance to eat it. And the small message we are giving through this is that while the poor are unable to eat this food, the rich are only thinking about their stomachs while abusing the rights of the poor and dealing corruptly.
Ingredients:
– 1 kg boneless leg of lamb
– half kg green beans
– 4-5 tablespoons vegetable oil
– 3 potatoes
– 3 tomatoes
– 2 bell peppers
– a red bell pepper
– 15 pearl onions
– 3 garlic cloves
– 1.5 cups water
– Salt, black pepper, thyme
Preparation:
Peel the garlic cloves. Rub the inside of a stew dish (güveç) with one clove of garlic and then grease it with 1-2 tablespoons of vegetable oil. Peel and wash the vegetables. Cut the beans in half. Slice the potatoes, tomatoes, and peppers. Peel the onions.
Coat the meat with thyme and put it in the stew dish (güveç). In order, add onions, beans, peppers, potatoes, and tomatoes. Add the salt, black pepper, water and remaining oil, and then cover the stew dish (güveç) with aluminum foil. Serve hot after cooking it for one hour in an oven set to 160 degrees.
To mark the release of the spring 2016 issue of Index on Censorship magazine Index has compiled a reading list of articles from the magazine archives covering the censorship of theatre. The latest issue, Staging Shakespearean Dissent, takes a look at how Shakespeare’s plays have allowed directors to tackle issues that would have otherwise been censored in countries around the world.
Performances of South African play Egoli, by writer Matsemela Manaka, went ahead at a Johannesburg theatre without being censored, yet the printed version – an extract of which is featured in this article – was banned. Egoli, which means “city of gold”, focuses on the plight of migrant mine workers in South Africa. Its two characters, John Moalusi Ledwaba and Hamilton Mahonga Silwane, were in prison at the same time: one for a political crime, the other for rape and murder. Now they work in the gold mines, while their families attempt to farm in the “homelands”.
Lucien Bourjeily’s 2013 play Will It Pass or Not? was banned by Lebanon’s censorship bureau, yet his 2015 play For Your Eyes Only, Sir was approved after some minor changes, despite the play including scenes from its banned prequel. Aimée Hamilton talks to Bourjeily about why his new play escaped the censors when his previous one didn’t, and what inspired it; and For Your Eyes Only, Sir is translated into English for the first time for Index on Censorship magazine.
Despite government assurances that it was lifting restrictions on Brazilian stage productions in April 1979, theatres were among the most censored over the next decade. Every play had to be submitted to the censor in Brasilia before it was staged, and a complete rehearsal had to take place in the presence of a censor of the town in which the play was being performed. In December 1978 one of Brazil’s best know playwrights Plínio Marcos, notorious for having 18 of his works suppressed without performance, wrote the play Oh! How I Miss the Termite to be read only, believing he could not get the play performed publicly.
In an interview with Czech exile Karel Hvizdala, for inclusion in a book of interviews he was working on, Czechoslovakian playwright Vaclav Havel, who was unable work in his profession in his own country – where nothing he had written had been published or performed since 1969 – speaks about his latest plays Largo Desolato and Temptation.
Karel Kyncl tells the story theatre and film actress Vlasta Chramostová, her Living Room Theatre, and how Shakespeare was used as a form of resistance. In the 1960s and 70s Czechoslovakian actors put on performances of Macbeth in houses, which they called Living Room Theatre. However, Shakespeare was seen as an enemy of socialism by Czechoslovakia police, who began to harass the actors. The actors continued to perform despite pressure from the police but eventually some of these actors were driven into exile.
Janet Steel discusses the censorship Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti faced when the British-Pakistani playwright attempted to put on her production Behzti at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre. The local Sikh community called for the play to be banned, stating it incited racial hatred, which led to Bhatti receiving threats because of her work.
Nan Levinson discusses censorship of Romeo and Juliet in textbooks in American schools. Artist Janet Zweig read an article written by a student about the discrepancies between the play in his school textbook and the version he saw on stage. Over 300 lines had been cut from the play, the majority of which contained sexual references. Zweig spoke to publishers and found the publishers that didn’t cut lines from the textbook didn’t sell as many as those who did. She went on to make a book from the 336 lines that were cut from the textbooks, part of which is featured in this article.
Dame Janet Suzman’s 1987 production of Othello in South Africa caused a huge amount controversy due the production showing a relationship between a black man and a white woman during the apartheid. Many people left the production in protest and sent threatening letters, however the play escaped being banned or censored because it was Shakespeare. In this article Suzman discusses why she chose to put on such a controversial production and how through Shakespeare they escaped the censors.
The long awaited revival of a 400-year-old classical opera, in rehearsal at Shanghai’s Kunju Theatre, was called off by the Shanghai Bureau of Culture. It accused the director of introducing “archaic, superstitious and pornographic” elements into his production and vetoed its export first to New York and subsequently to France, Australia and Hong Kong. Mu Dan Ting, (Peony Pavilion), had not been performed in its entire act since it was written by Tang Xianzu in 1598 during the Ming Dynasty, as it was written out of classical repertoire under the communists. However director Yang Lian believes this time round its banning has more to do with political manoeuvering than the nature of the opera itself.
“Censorship in the theatre has always been more petty and strict than censorship in general – that of literature, for instance. Sadly, it has often been the finest examples of Russian drama that have not reached the stage until several years – sometimes decades – after they were written.” Anna Tamarchenko discusses the censorship of Russian theatre throughout the years.
The 17 March 2016 cover of Informer featured a photograph of Stevan Dojcinovic, editor-in-chief of the Crime and Corruption Reporting Network (KRIK), with accusations that he was part of a “mafia” trying to bring down the Serbian government.
The front page of Serbian tabloid Informer stands out from the other newspapers displayed at Belgrade’s countless cigarette kiosks. Its red and yellow coloured headlines scream in block capitals at everyone who passes by.
It is the word “Mafija” that attracts most attention on the morning of 17 March 2016. It’s printed on the front page, as is a blurry photo of a journalist. The journalist, Stevan Dojcinovic, is editor-in-chief at Crime and Corruption Reporting Network (KRIK). The headline translates: “Mafia is planning attack on family Vucic.” According to Informer, Dojcinovic and his colleagues at KRIK are the mafia and want to bring down the government of Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic.
Psychological attacks on KRIK by the tabloid have happened so often that this was hardly surprising. KRIK has become well known throughout Serbia, not because of its investigative reporting, but because of the attention from Informer.
Informer was founded in 2012 and its editorial coverage has been called “pro-regime oriented” by Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, a German political foundation. The paper’s editor-in-chief, Dragan Vucicevic, is said to be a close friend of the prime minister’s.
Since its launch in July 2015, KRIK has published a series of revealing stories about corruption and misuse of office by several high-profile government officials. And ever since, KRIK has been targeted by Informer: KRIK journalists have been called foreign spies trying to bring down the government; they have been accused of spreading lies; they have been personally discredited on Informer’s front pages.
Exposing Mali, who is a political ally of Vucic’s, soon sparked a new round of allegations by Informer.
Early November 2015 Informer claimed that KRIK, as well as two other independent media organisations BIRN and CINS, were given foreign grants for publications of “false affairs against people close to the government”. Informer’s Vucicevic said on national broadcaster TV Pink, in a special 4-hour-long programme called “Bringing down Vucic”, that the media organisations were planning a step-by-step plot to bring down the government.
Serbia’s journalist unions condemned what they called a smear or lynch campaign. The chairman of the Independent Journalists Association of Serbia (NUNS), Vukasin Obradovic, said that Informer created “an atmosphere of fear and lynching in the society, which may have serious consequences for the personal safety of the journalists involved”.
But the investigative journalists from KRIK were not scared off. They were, in fact, working on their next investigation into another government official: the minister of health, Zdravko Loncar.
KRIK found out that Loncar had been involved with Serbia’s most notorious criminal gang known as the “Zemun clan” when he was still an unknown doctor working at an emergency ward back in 2002. He allegedly had received a free apartment as a reward for “finishing off” a severely wounded gang member by “injecting him with a fatal cocktail”.
KRIK published the full story on February 22. A day later Dojcinovic’s photo was featured on the Informer’s front page again. The article stated that KRIK’s editor-in-chief was “launching false scandals” and was “intentionally creating chaos in the country”. Health minister Loncar was invited to talk on TV Pink, where he did not respond to the allegations but instead accused KRIK of not paying taxes.
Up to that point KRIK had investigated cases of corruption involving high-profile state officials in Vucic’s inner circle. But what everybody was waiting for was an investigation into Vucic himself.
Then came March 18 2016. Informer once again published a photo of KRIK’s Dojcinovic on its front page. But this time it was different.
The tabloid revealed a story KRIK had not yet published about Vucic’s large real estate assets in Belgrade, which he is supposedly hiding under the names of family members.
Informer exposed details of an investigation by KRIK that they could not have obtained in an ordinary manner. According to KRIK, the Informer appears to have relied on information that could only have been gathered through secret service surveillance techniques including physically following journalists and phone tapping.
“For about a year Informer has been attacking us regularly,” Dojcinovic told Index on Censorship. “This is the first time we are being attacked before we even publish the story. Now they are using information from state intelligence agency to discredit us. I don’t care about a smear campaign, they can’t destroy my credibility with a smear campaign. But now the state is after us.”
Currently KRIK is still working on finishing their newest investigation, which is indeed about Vucic’s real estate assets. But meanwhile Dojcinovic fears for the fate of his sources.
“We’ve now seen that they know exactly who we are meeting with. There is pressure on our sources, most of them work in state institutions. Some have already been fired,” Dojcinovic said.
On social media Thai journalist Pravit Rojanaphruk’s amused disobedience to his military-assigned “attitude adjusters” serves to make them look outdated and slightly ridiculous. But in reality the ex-senior reporter of The Nation has faced a systematic harassment that would silence most others.
Rojanaphruk is an outspoken critic of Thailand’s lèse majesté law, which bans any criticism of the monarchy, and one of the few voices still speaking against the military rule which has presided over Thailand since 2014.
“In Thailand, most people think of the beach, mountain, sand, sea and smiles,” he said to Index. “But the reality is that for those who disagree with the military regime, they are being repressed. They are under a dictatorship and find it still ongoing.”
Humour is a powerful tool for him, as is social media, he says, since it’s a lot harder to silence than traditional media.
“Social media is vibrant, it’s instantaneous and it’s widespread. There is no single centre.”
This is a frightening prospect for a military government trying to retain control, and his popularity on social media has gained Rojanaphruk the repeated attention of the junta.
“People kept retweeting or sharing my Facebook and they find it very disturbing. Particularly the fact that I am doing it bilingually. So they feel that right away it’s not just the Thai but the world would also care about what’s happening in Thailand.”
After his second detention his employer of 23 years, the English-language paper The Nation, quietly asked him to leave his position as senior reporter. Rojanaphruk tweeted his resignation, saying: “Thanks to The Nation for everything. After discussing with management I agreed to resign to save the paper from further pressure.”
But this did not slow Rojanaphruk down. He is now writing for Bangkok-based news siteKhaosod English, and still getting in trouble with his attitude adjusters.
“They forced me to attend a meeting, but they gave me the choice of where. So I chose Starbucks. And I paid for them.”
He tweeted this incongruous meeting, the military junta dressed in cammo, drinking fruit smoothies.
“You don’t run away, you try to fight and do what you can to roll back repression, to roll back the trend against freedom of expression.”
His next self-appointed challenge is to take on the new junta-sponsored draft constitution.
When we spoke to Rojanaphruk, he had just posted three possible responses to the draft on Twitter and Facebook.
“I took three photographs. One with a thumbs up sign in front of the physical draft charter. Second one with a three finger, and the third one the middle finger,” he said.
“So they are very upset about my giving the middle finger.”
For this he would likely face further pressure, he said. But he refused to give in to censorship and to stop questioning the military rule that many others have now let slide.
“The battle is to defend this remaining freedom and as we speak, the physical freedom to assemble in public for any political gathering is already gone. Academic freedoms have been curbed,” he said.
“I think it’s an obligation to do something, to do whatever you can as a journalist to defend freedom of speech, freedom of expression. Not just for the media, for the society in general. And you think you, that by any chance well equipped to do something about it, you should give it a try.”
When I was at drama school in the early 1970s, there was a middle-aged Iranian on the directors’ course called Rokneddin. He’d been ejected from the Shah’s Iran for staging subversive productions. Rokneddin was no political firebrand: he had simply tried to put on Shakespeare’s history plays, which, like all plays in which a king died, were banned in Iran under the Pahlavi dynasty. The plays reminded people all too vividly that the divine right of kings had severe limits.
After the revolution Rokneddin went back, and tried to ply his trade again: this time he disappeared into prison never to be seen again. At the time the Shah’s proscription was seen as the act of an exotic tyrant. Not a bit of it. We can do just as well at home. During the period of George III’s madness in 18th century Britain, King Lear was banished from the stage because the parallels were too obvious.
Shakespeare has had this unique symbolic significance for a long time. From the end of the 17th century, initially in England, and then increasingly in translation across Europe, his stock began its inexorable rise, until he was acclaimed across the whole of the Western world, to a degree never before or since equalled by any other writer. His work was a mirror in which people of widely diverse cultures could see themselves – in Scandinavia, in the Near East, in Spain and the Americas.
He was fervently admired in France, despite his barbaric non-conformism to the laws of classical drama. In Germany and Russia, he was clasped to those nations’ bosoms, claimed by them as, respectively, German and Russian. Shakespeare’s perceived universality – which expanded in the 19th and 20th centuries to include Africa, India, China and Japan – inevitably meant that his work would be recruited to embody the positions of various political and philosophical groupings. And with this came, equally inevitably, censorship and suppression.
Not that Shakespeare was a stranger to censorship in his own time, living and working as he did in, first, the Elizabethan, then the Jacobean, police state where people’s actions and their very thoughts were under constant surveillance. The theatre in which he worked was heavily patrolled by the Master of the Revels, who was charged not only with providing entertainment for the monarch, but with averting controversy, particularly in the sphere of foreign relations. Sometimes this meant deleting matters offensive to allies, sometimes it meant suppressing criticism – or perceived criticism – of the crown, sometimes, more rarely, it meant eliminating morally or sexually offensive material. The theatre was a minefield of significance for dramatists and their companies. Even a simple dig at German and Spanish dress had to be cut from Much Ado About Nothing because of contemporary diplomatic sensitivities. But the reach of the censor went well beyond the explicit …
This is an abridged version of Simon Callow’s in-depth feature for Index on Censorship magazine’s special Shakespeare issue. To read the full piece, which also looks at the role of the Master of the Revels (who Callow portrayed in the Oscar-winning film Shakespeare in Love), buy a print copy or download a digital version via Exact Editions. Each magazine sale helps Index on Censorship fight for free expression worldwide.
Since becoming a journalist almost 30 years ago, Pakistani journalist Hamid Mir has had to choose between his life and his career. Mir is now one of Pakistan’s best-known journalists, the host of Geo Television’s flagship political show Capital Talk. He also now lives under armed guard, recovering from yet another assassination attempt, with his family sent abroad for their safety.
“My family is not happy with me,” he told Index. “They think that my life is more important than the profession.” Mir does not agree.
“I think that if I leave Pakistan, it’s like I surrender, and I don’t want to surrender to the Taliban, I don’t want to surrender to the rogue elements in our intelligence agencies and the security agencies. I don’t want to surrender to the enemies of democracy.”
Mir became a journalist after his father, who himself taught journalism at the University of the Punjab, died in mysterious circumstances in 1987. Mir saw his career as a continuation of his father’s fight for democracy, human rights and minorities’ rights in Pakistan.
“When I decided to become a journalist, Pakistan was ruled by a military dictator,” Mir told Index. It was not long after he started at a small paper in Lahore that Mir first met the violent opposition to his reporting that would characterise his career and life.
“When I started facing trouble, I was not aware that I was touching some controversial subject,” he said. “I was only doing my job as a reporter.”
In 1990, Mir broke a story about the military establishment and the then-president trying to remove the democratically elected Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.
“I was kidnapped by the intelligence agency and they tortured me and asked me to tell them who is my source.” Bhutto’s government was removed days later.
Fast forward 30 years and Mir is still reporting on issues many Pakistani journalists won’t touch.
His tireless and outspoken reporting has earned him enemies in Pakistan’s intelligence agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence, the Pakistani Taliban and local terrorist groups, and Pakistan’s political parties.
It has also earned him a lifetime of assassination attempts – the latest a near-fatal attack in 2014 which saw him shot six times as he drove to work – has left Mir living under constant protection. He is driven to and from work in a bulletproof vehicle, alternating between cell phones and residences, and away from his two children, who were sent abroad after a car they were riding in was attacked.
But, for Mir, reporting on these untouchable-topics is not a question. “Maybe it’s controversial for the others but it’s not controversial for me,” he says.
“If a military dictator is suspending the constitution of Pakistan which was approved by the elected parliament, and I, being a journalist and a TV anchor, am opposing that, for me it’s not controversial,” he says.
“And again, if some intelligence agency is trying to dictate me – you should report this and you should not report that – and if the religious extremists, the Taliban, they are issuing threats to women, they are bombing the girls’ schools, and I am criticising the Taliban. I don’t think that it’s controversial.”
Threats to his life intensified in late 2015, and under pressure from his family, Mir planned to take three months off-air.
“After one month, I realised that it’s too much, I have to come back.”
For Mir, if not for his family, his duty to Pakistan and to his colleagues, will always outweigh his own safety. The guilt he feels for those journalists who have died for their work is too great to ever allow him to stop, he says.
“There were some colleagues who used to come to me and take advice about what should we do because we are facing pressures. Should we continue our job as a journalist? I used to advise them, yes you must continue your job as a journalist, nothing bad will happen. But they were killed, they were kidnapped.”
“If I leave Pakistan today, on the pressure of my family, maybe I will leave a very safe life in London or in Berlin or in Paris or in any other country. But it will be very difficult for me to live a normal life, because the ghosts of my martyred friends, they will not allow me to have a comfortable sleep.”
Mir believes he is one of the lucky ones in Pakistan – he has survived. And life in Lahore is a lot easier for journalists than for those living outside the city, he says.
Although he sees media freedom in Pakistan getting worse, with pressures from the extremist forces and state agencies intensifying, his long-view is an uplifting one.
“The good thing is that the people, the majority of the people of Pakistan, the civil society, is the main source of our strength. If I am living in Pakistan, if I am surviving in Pakistan, it’s only because the common man is supporting me,” he said. “The common man believes in democracy, they don’t like extremist ideology, they don’t like dictatorship, they want rule of law. There is a ray of hope for me in Pakistan.”
Living and working in Aleppo, Syria, Erhaim directed the film series Syria’s Rebellious Women over a period of 18 months to offer a rare insight into the challenges facing women living and working in rebel-held parts of Syria.
Revealing a side of Syria that is often absent from the news, the films tell the individual stories of a diverse group of strong, resilient women. As well as facing the constant threat of bombing, the women must battle the conservative traditions of a male-dominated society and tackle restrictions on their movements, dress and behaviour. Despite disapproval from their families, the women continue undeterred along the paths they have chosen – documenting war, delivering supplies to civilians, and providing medical services.
Erhaim currently lives and works in Aleppo, Syria. Over the last two years, she has trained over 100 citizen reporters from inside Syria, approximately a third of them women, in print and TV journalism. Erhaim is also the Syria project coordinator for the Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR), an international organisation that support journalists in countries undergoing conflict, crisis, or transition. Many of Erhaim’s students, from all walks of life, have been published in major international news outlets.
When: Tuesday 12 April 2016, 7:00 PM Where: The Frontline Club (map) Tickets: Standard – £12.50, Concession – £10.00. Book here.
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