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Mada Masr is an Egyptian online news site formed just before the military coup in July 2013 by 24 friends and journalists. Published in both English and Arabic, the site aims to offer an alternative to newspapers censored by state-owned printing and distribution facilities and media owned by industrial conglomerates. Wanting to represent in practice what Egypt was trying to achieve, Mada aims to be entirely democratic and is owned and run by its original founders and the journalists who write for it.
Editor-in-chief, Lina Attalah is well-known Egyptian media figure and former editor of Egypt Independent, which was shut down in April 2013 by the management of Al-Masry Media Corporation. When the editorial team tried to release a final edition explaining why, it was also pulled just before going to print.Attalah published it anyway,with the promisethat “In keeping with our practice of critical journalism, we use our final issue to reflect on the political and economic challenges facing Egyptian media, including in our own institution.” Many of the founders of Mada Masr are former employees of Egypt Independent.
Since its formation, Mada Masr has seen Egypt go throughthe popular uprising against Islamist President Mohammed Morsi, the military’s overthrow of Morsi and the subsequent violent crackdown on Muslim Brotherhood protesters, and the spread of terrorist violence in the country. Mada’s reporters work in a country with 186 laws restricting freedom of the press and expression.
In November 2015, Mada journalist Hossam Bahgat was summoned by Egypt’s military intelligencedetained for two days, after he wrote a story about the prosecution of about two dozen military officers for allegedly plotting a coup. The arrest was condemned globally, and Bahgat was eventually released, after which Mada published hisstatement describing the detention.
With many investors are politically aligned with the military regime, and those that weren’t facing huge pressure, funding has been a problem for Mada Masr. Valuing its independence above all else, Mada has come up with some innovative fundraising ideas, including, apop-up marketplace launched in April which sells designer clothes and urban crafts.
One of Mada’s new editorial initiatives is to create networks of citizen journalists to bring in more local reporting — and readers — throughout Egypt’s governorates.
“We have established a cooperative media organisation independently, at a time when media are controlled and only made possible through either the state or wealthy businessmen,” said Lina Attalah. “We are experiencing some deal of fear while doing our jobs every day.”
But Mada Masr has not allowed this to guide them towards self-censorship, she says. “With our minds and hearts grappling with being progressive and practical, we build our institution with an ambition to respond to that which we critique in our coverage.”
“I want us, down the line, many, many years to come, to be a reference of what happened.”
Violence and lies, Alexander Solzhenitsyn said, always stand side-by-side. Violence can only be concealed by a lie, and the lie can only be maintained by violence.
Violence doesn’t just mean terrorism, which is now happening at unprecedented levels, making us worry for our lives and the fate of our loved ones. It is no less terrifying when it is sneaking into our consciousness, perverting the heart, killing the faith of the good and making us defenceless against ignorance and bigotry. Mercilessly, good is muddled with evil.
A huge amount of people who hold nothing in their soul, or possess something sinister within, hide behind so-called national views and get away with sowing seeds of hatred between peoples and nations who not long ago lived together in peace.
Nationalism is the terrible character of the heartless optimist who rejects tragedy in life, as this completely contradicts his reality. This is a revolt against reason and humanity. It is a blatant lie, told by a fiendish and fierce people who have the audacity to proclaim themselves the sole bearers of truth and as veritable champions of national happiness. Consequently, patriotism imposed from above provides a great opportunity for fascist bastards to transform a people into a mindless mass. But we know those standing closest to the masses to be the most corrupt. Addressing the masses as people is to push them towards evil bigotry.
When you live in sin among sinners, it catches on. But the writer is able, even in the most extreme circumstances, to remain calm and conscious before absolute truth.
“Truth is above Nekrasov, above Pushkin, above the people, above Russia,” wrote Dostoevsky in his time.
“Beware of writers declaring themselves the voice of a nation,” warns a contemporary literary great, Andrey Bitov.
In order to become the darling of the masses, you can write whatever you like in any way. However, becoming kindred to the reader happens for few writers.
All true literature is paved with honesty about the thoughts and feelings of the writer. A writer is not a writer for mass adoration by those who read. He is an authentic expression of indelible moral value to which people entrust pain. And when people start to lose face, the writer suffers most.
A writer is a teacher from the hearts of people and is in no way at fault for politicians’ inability to comprehend such a magical quality.
The mind of the regime does not tolerate the individual views of writers who take on landmark events arising in society. Writers with individual views are horribly and cruelly punished by the regime. In my case the punishment was brutal and unmerciful.
But I shall not let this spread: I do not want to disgrace my little country before a foreign audience. Even after what the current rulers have done to me, I love my country.
My story has plenty of sorrow, but there was also much worth and insight.
It seems with my little essay, now published in Italian as well, I accomplished my main goal: I saved many Armenians from hatred of my people.
I have understood that in this bloody conflict, neither the Armenians or we are to blame – people would never wage war without the interference of politics.
And I have again ascertained that while our nations are good on their own, together they are magnificent.
I always knew going from invisible to visible required suffering. Having taken my own way on this path, I tried not to trip or fall. Evidently, my soul needed definitive torturing to awaken and know itself in the midst of others, those disposed to immediate corruption and seasonal treason.
There are moments in life that last many lifetimes. I was a hero for some and a traitor for others. I never for a moment felt I was a hero or traitor, just a regular writer and humanitarian who is able to feel the pain of others.
I found myself in the same position as Galileo, who never doubted the truth he knew and yet could not use this indisputable truth to break through the rusted hearts of the keepers of dogma.
I was deprived of peace and prosperity for taking a small step in bringing people closer, people who are already related and bound not only by geography, but by the fate of a centuries-old history.
And I have no greater dream than to see them together again.
And I’d like to live to see the light of this day.
This is an extract of the speech Akram Aylisli was due to give at the Italian literary festival Incroci di Civilta last week, before he was prevented from travelling by Baku airport authorities. Aylisi sent the speech to Index and gave it permission to translate and publish it.
In the late 1980s, US author and activist Mary Elizabeth “Tipper” Gore claimed, in an interview with the Los Angeles Times, that she was not a “raunchy, inflexible prude”. Rappers and hair-metal rockers in the same era may have felt otherwise. What’s more, they may not have utilised such wholesome language.
Gore, then the wife of politician and future vice-president Al Gore, helped found the Parents Music Resource Center in April 1985, with the goal of increasing parental control over children’s access to music deemed too violent, sexual or even loud. Some of PMRC’s suggestions on how to purify the airwaves included developing a rating system, forcing record stores to hide albums with explicit covers under the counters, and pressuring television stations into censoring performances.
Such an act of censorship received aggressive retaliation by musicians, including Frank Zappa, John Denver and Dee Snider of Twisted Sister.
On the anniversary of the creation of the PMRC, here are five tracks so foul in the group’s eyes they were included in the “Fifteen Filthy” list from a hearing in 1985.
Twisted Sister – We’re Not Gonna Take It Lyrical content: Violence
Prince – Darling Nikki Lyrical content: Sex/Masturbation
Cyndi Lauper – She Bop Lyrical content: Sex/Masturbation
Judas Priest – Eat Me Alive Lyrical content: Sex
Black Sabbath – Trashed Lyrical content: Drug and alcohol use
Index on Censorship has teamed up with the producers of an award-winning documentary about Mali’s musicians, They Will Have To Kill Us First, to create the Music in Exile Fund to support musicians facing censorship globally. You can donate here, or give £10 by texting “BAND61 £10” to 70070.
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 reports from between 25 March and 1 April that give us cause for concern.
A prominent journalist, Dmitry Tsilikin, was found stabbed to death in his apartment in St Petersburg on 31 March. Tsilikin was a well-known art critic and worked for outlets such as Vogue and Elle.
Hartmann was held under suicide watch conditions, with her cell lights on 24 hours a day. She reported being able to watch Ratko Mladic – the accused Bosnian Serb military leader – exercising in the prison yard from her cell window.
Azerbaijan: Writer banned from leaving the country and accused of hooliganism
Azerbaijani writer Akram Aylisli was banned from leaving the country and detained at the airport outside Baku on 30 March. Orkhan Mansurzadeh, a representative for the Ministry of Internal Affairs, claimed Aylisli caused a scuffle at the airport while going through customs. Aylisli, who was on his way to Venice for a book festival, was then informed that he was subject to a travel ban.
In a statement to Index on Censorship, he said: “Absurdly and illogically, this alleged incident of punching a border guard happened well after the plane departed and was later used by the border service as an explanation for denying the border crossing before the plane had left!”
Poland: 117 journalists lose jobs at public broadcasters
— Index on Censorship (@IndexCensorship) April 1, 2016
Since December 2015, 117 public sector journalists have lost their jobs in Poland. Eighty journalists were dismissed, had their contracts invalidated or were forced to transfer onto less significant post in different programmes or departments. Many others resigned or left “in mutual agreement”.
Positions were affected across multiple programmes on national channels TVP1, TVP2, TVP Info, TVP Kultura, and Polskie Radio; 15 journalists have left the TV channel’s major news show Wiadomosci.
The Latvian language website for the Russia-based Sputniknews.lv was taken down by Latvia’s national internet domain registry, the Network Information Center on 29 March. The NIC, which controls .lv domains, cited EU sanctions against Dmitry Kiselyov, the head of Sputnik’s parent company, Rossiya Segodnya, as to why the site was taken down.
An article on sputniknews.com highlights that “Latvia is the latest among Baltic nations to ban the work of or deport journalists based in Russia”.
A Syrian-native who was studying journalism in London when war broke out in Syria in 2013, Zaina Erhaim decided to return permanently to report and train citizen journalists in the war-ravaged country. Between the violence and deadly misogyny of IS and the bombing raids of Russian allies of Assad the danger of living in the region as a female reporter is immense. However, Erhaim has trained hundreds of journalists, including many women.
In this photo essay, Erhaim explains her work and her life in Syria.
After the revolution in 2011, many Syrians became citizen journalists to report the regime’s crackdown on the demonstrations. Without any background in journalism or reporting, hundreds of activists became the main source of news and information for the rest of the world. I felt a responsibility to pass the knowledge and skills I had in journalism to them, and this is the first training I did in the suburbs of Edlib. Two of the trainees passed these skills to 40 other activists, some of whom are now publishing features and reports for the Syrian media.
There were only a couple of female citizen journalists living in the rebel-held areas in the northern Syria, so I decided to offer the training to those interested in learning (unlike the men who, who were mostly already citizen journalists). I was surprised how many women were actually interested. Some are now making a living from writing for our website Damascus Bureau and other websites, which turned their conservative, closed-minded husbands from opposing to supporting their work.
Writing was the easier choice for the women interested in being citizen journalists as it could be done anonymously with no need to grab attention holding a camera in the street, but some wanted to learn.
The woman in this picture – a schoolteacher – told me: “I want to report myself for the school instead of asking for a male citizen journalist to come whenever we have an activity, and I know the women teachers would speak to me much more comfortably in an interview.”
Besides journalism, through the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, we’ve established women-only internet cafes where women can come and learn how to use social media, surf the internet and use the computer. All means of communication have been cut by the regime for years, and the satellite internet cafes existed are male dominated. This means women are disconnected, so providing these centres is like giving them a window into the world.
Some might consider me biased because I stand with the freedom revolution in my home. On my blog, my slogan is: “I am biased to humanity and I am proud to be so.” I don’t think any journalist can be impartial when reporting about IS or Kim Jong-un’s crimes, so why with Assad? I was interrogated by his military security forces in 2008 because of an article I wrote and because I was active in a civil society organisation. I am forbidden from going home to Damascus, because I am a journalist and not a propagandist.
To document the human side of our war I started filming people, streets, life behind the frontline, death and horror. I chose to document the heroines who are facing extra difficulties because they are women, so I made five short films and named them Syria’s Rebellious Women.
“You pass the Kalaase massacre mark then turn right you will find me waiting for you there… .” Somehow destroyed buildings and massacres become part of the daily view and even marks to guide people to places. At this particular spot, I got engaged. Someone wrote “Heaven” on the wreckage with an arrow directed to the sky. There we exchanged our vows to keep loving life and to not forget the sacrifices of those who have gone in order for us to live free in a democratic country.
This is my husband Mahmoud, doing what he does every day: running toward bombed areas to rescue victims and provide first aid to those who need it. He has been injured many, most recently two weeks ago in a Russian air attack in Kallaseh grocery market. Three bits of shrapnel are still in his leg. Despite being a pioneer activist, a giving person who is ready to give his life for to protect and help people he doesn’t even know, and in spite of his work for international organisations, his visa to the UK has been rejected fearing that he “won’t leave the UK”.
Index on Censorship magazine editor Rachael Jolley introduces our Shakespeare special issue, which, as the 400th anniversary of his death approaches, explores how his plays have been used to circumvent censorship and tackle difficult issues around the world, from Bollywood adaptions to Othello in apartheid-era South Africa and a ground-breaking recent performance of Romeo and Juliet between Kosovan and Serbian theatres
Theatre, in whatever form it takes, tells us something about society. Sometimes the stories are uncomfortable, but they need to be explored.
Telling stories that challenge societal realities requires performers to negotiate their way around obstacles. In authoritarian countries performing works of “established” or “historic” playwrights can give actors the chance to tackle significant themes that would otherwise never be allowed.
Poet Robert Frost said writing free verse was like playing tennis with the net down. But where nets are still up, performances of Chekhov, Shakespeare, and Cicero may squeeze over a few shots, where a new and unknown writer’s work would face far more rigorous opposition from the authorities. On the occasion of the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, in this issue we take a look at the words of the son of Stratford and why they are still performed around the world.
One of theatre’s challenges is that it must continue to make sense to all audiences, the young, the old and everyone in between. Shakespeare’s plays can be ballsy, straightforward and about the ordinary. This is no doubt why his words have had influence for so long, while other playwrights have been forgotten.
This appeal, and relevance, remains a challenge for writers and directors. After university, I worked for a few months in the legendary Hull Truck theatre in the north-east of England, led by artistic director and playwright John Godber. What Godber did in a working-class city where few people would think, “Hey, let’s go see a play tonight”, was to write and stage plays that sounded like they were about normal people and normal things.
The most famous, Bouncers, is about the people who do door security in nightclubs. A tale of ordinary life, it was funny, and lots of people came to see it in the little theatre in the untarted-up bit of Hull, around the corner from where millions of milk floats loaded up. And people who didn’t normally go to the theatre thought it was alright for them and told their families and their friends it was a laugh, and so more and more of them came to see more Godber plays. I re-read Bouncers a month ago, and I realised (I guess, I had forgotten), it was more than just funny. There’s real stuff in there about how people live and what they dream and how they find a compromise with life, and what needs to change. Hard stuff. Important stuff. Social comment. Hidden in there among the jokes.
That’s how theatre informs us of lives beyond our own. And that’s why, sometimes, governments fear it. And that’s why in another place, and under another type of government, a play like Bouncers might slip its social messages by those hard-line censors who might not think it’s about anything but some fat bald guys who work on the door at a dodgy nightclub having a chat.
But the other role of stories, plays and art is that they also have the power to goad, protest and say stuff that normally can’t be said. Sometimes stories make what had been outrageous or out-of-the-ordinary feel more acceptable. Sometimes fiction can go places where newspapers can’t, but still deal with the real.
Arthur Miller’s 1952 play The Crucible used the Salem Witch Trials to take a poke at the power of accusation and public panic happening in McCarthyite trials, with their accusations of “communism” which left thousands of people blacklisted and unemployed. People from postmen to Hollywood producers were called to give evidence to the House of Un-American Activities Committee, which aimed to “out” those with left wing or pro-Communist views as dangerous. Despite the horrifically charged climate of the “reds under the bed” era, which meant former stars such as Charlie Chaplin and Orson Welles were forced into exile, Miller was still able to get his play produced. It remains a classic, still relevant after all these years.
The similarities between Salem and the McCarthy trials were obvious to those that thought about it. But sometimes those who are appointed as censors are not the thinking types. So ideas slip by them. And that can be useful.
Shakespeare, of course, has plenty of controversy, inspiration and power within his plays. It’s just less obvious to those who aren’t paying attention. There’s nothing mousy and out-of-date about the speech of roaring rhetoric of Henry V to his rag-taggle followers, to raise spirits and to go forth against a much larger army: “We few, we happy few, we band of brothers, for he today that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother.”
Henry V’s speech could still be used to rally the troops. They still feel pointed, and relevant. Yet because Shakespeare is Shakespeare, his words and ideas escape the red pen of the brutal censor more than others do. “Centuries out of date”, the censors and government red-penners must think. “Can’t do any harm.”
So in some countries, Zimbabwe among them, Shakespeare is used to smuggle ideas of protest past those who veto that kind of thing. Playwright Elizabeth Zaza Muchemwa says in her country, where there are so many restrictions on theatre companies, Shakespeare appears to slip through the net, raising storylines of senility of a king (King Lear) and of overthrowing of a leader (Julius Caesar), which feel important to Zimbabwean citizens dealing with the long last days of an elderly ruler. Shakespeare’s writing continues to inspire, she says, in her piece.
But the badge of Shakespeare doesn’t always mean productions will escape the long reach of the law. In 1981, a Turkish production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream came to the stage as a military government stepped up its power. As Index’s Turkey editor Kaya Genç outlines in the magazine any public event, newspaper article, poem or artistic production carrying even the slightest trace of dissent against the military authority was certain to be punished. This production was felt to have highlighted the relationship between the elite and the rest (the rude mechanicals) and how status was used for power. Eight members of the cast ended up shaven-headed in prison in the next few months. The play did not squeeze by. It was noticed.
Leading Turkish theatre director Kemal Aydoğan, who produced the latest version of the play in Turkey, tells Index magazine that the Dream has a strong relevance to troubles in his nation today. He sees a parallel between the struggle between desire and the law, and the dream of the forest, a place where desire and equality dominates.
Don’t miss another gem in the latest magazine, Jan Fox’s long-form essay on the love/hate relationship the USA has, and has had, with Shakespeare (page 12). The Puritan founders felt all theatre was beyond the pale, and looked frowningly on its ribaldry. So this is a nation with a core of censorship at odds with its commitment to its First Amendment freedom of expression. LA-based Fox covers why Shakespeare still upsets parents because of its drama around everything from teenage suicide to under-age sex. “Shakespeare is telling us about our secret self and that’s what people are afraid of,” Gail Kern Paster, editor of the US-based journal Shakespeare Quarterly tells Fox.
While plays by established writers can smuggle through dissent and protest in countries with strict reins of performance exist, as nations move towards greater democracy then the public must expect and demand far more provocative, outrageous and openly challenging material from its theatre as well as welcoming the established gems. We should all look forward to the signs of those times.
Order your full-colour print copy of our Shakespeare magazine special here, or take out a digital subscription from anywhere in the world via Exact Editions (just £18* for the year). Each magazine sale helps Index on Censorship fight for free expression worldwide.
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Magazines are also on sale in bookshops, including at the BFI and MagCulture in London as well as on Amazon and iTunes. MagCulture will ship to anywhere in the world.
Méxicoleaks was launched in 2015 as a platform for people to anonymously share information leaks about anything in the public interest, including corruption, government spending and abuse. The nine organisations that make up Méxicoleaks have already run numerous corruption investigations based on leaks and broken a number of high-profile scandals.
Since President Enrique Peña Nieto came into power in 2012 intimidation, assaults and killings of journalists in Mexico have increased by 80%, with statistics saying a journalist is attacked every 26 hours in the country. Between fear of corrupt authorities and retribution from cartels, self-censorship in parts of Mexico is almost absolute.
Méxicoleaks’ aim is to bring a new kind of watchdog journalism to the country, allowing people to submit information to them anonymously.
The eight news organisations that make up Méxicoleaks areAristegui News, PODER,Animal Politico, Emeequis,MásDe 131,Pie de Página, Proceso and R3D . Méxicoleaks makes use of open source software made available by GlobalLeaks, and all eight members of Méxicoleaks have access to the platform where they can anonymously read and verify whistleblowers’ information.
Two days after the Méxicoleaks launch, popular radio station MVSfired high-profile talk show hostCarmen Aristegui, and her assistants Daniel Lizarraga and Irving Huertafor their connection with Mexicoleaks. The reporting team had recently uncovered a huge scandal involving Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto. Thecasa blanca (white house) scandal investigated the purchase of a multi-million dollar home from a contractor connected to a billion dollar infrastructure project.
Many noted the events acted as evidence of the need for Méxicoleaks, given the daily challenges facing even the country’s most high-profile journalists – “She has become an emblem of press freedom under siege” reported theNew York Times.
Another Méxicoleaks story which broke in 2015 led to Peña Nieto admitting that the Mexican government had spent nearly a million pesos (around $60,000) on 37 hotel rooms in Brussels for a summit of the European Union and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States.
Méxicoleaks have continued to receive submissions, breaking a number of high-profile corruption scandals.
Hebib Müntezir is an Azerbaijani blogger andsocial media manager of the non-profit Meydan TV. Müntezir is one of Azerbaijan’s most famous online activists, and in a country where social media is the final platform on which journalists are able to report, his influence has made him a significant annoyance to the Azerbaijani authorities. His YouTube videos have now been watched upwards of 27 million times, and his Facebook page is followed by over 22,000 people.
The organisation Müntezir has aligned forces with, Meydan TV, launched in 2013, and is one of the few news sites critical of the Azerbaijani government and its policies. The site is published in Azerbaijani, English, and Russian.
2015 saw a huge media crackdown in Azerbaijan, with government critics sentenced to long prison terms, and journalists facing harassment and prosecution. The crackdown intensified when Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, hosted the first European Games – at a significant economic cost to a country already suffering from plummeting oil prices. The clampdown by the ruling New Azerbaijan party, re-elected in 2015 to serve another five years on their 20-year-run, showed their nervousness about the Games, and the international scrutiny that came with them.
With little coverage by traditional media, Azerbaijanis looked online for information, says Müntezir. “During the European Games in Baku in June 2015, our social media content reached over 1.5 million people in a population of less than 10 million,” Müntezir told Index.
Meydan TV’s powerful online presence and outspoken journalists have made them repeated targets during the authorities’ crackdown.
On 16 September 2015, freelance Meydan TV reporter Aytaj Ahmadova and a Meydan TV intern were stopped by police and taken to the organised crime unit. They were released after several hours in which Ahmadova says she was threatened and told to stop doing “opposition work”.
The same day a former Meydan employee Aysel Umudova was summoned by the prosecution service and questioned about her past work.
Then a couple of days later, Shirin Abbasov, a reporter for Meydan, was imprisoned, and authorities searched the home of another Meydan reporter.
The following day three Meydan journalists were detained after flying into Baku airport and questioned for several hours about Meydan. They were summoned by police again on 22 September and told off for speaking to the press after their earlier detention.
Emin Milli, Meydan’s director who is living in exile,told the media that Azerbaijani authorities had also threatened to punish him. According Milli, a threatening note allegedly sent by Azerbaijan’s sports minister read: “We will get you wherever you are and the state will punish you for this smear-campaign against the state that you have organized. You will get punished for this. You will not be able to walk freely in Berlin or anywhere else.”
During this crackdown, social media has been hailed as the only way journalists can freely report on otherwise censored issues in Azerbaijan. “Our social media strategy has been the driving force of our success in terms of audience outreach and engagement,” said Milli.
“Many people in Azerbaijan are afraid to talk to independent media,” said Müntezir. “But citizens still reach out to me to share content and offer support.”
Azerbaijani writer Akram Aylisli, who has had his books burned by authorities, sent the following statement to Index on Censorship regarding his detention on 30 March 2016:
On 30 March, I, accompanied by my son, planned to travel to Venice via Frankfurt to participate in the Incroci di Civilta literature festival as a guest speaker.
When I arrived at Baku’s Heydar Aliyev International Airport, around 4am local time, the border service said I could not travel, but provided no reason for the denial and detained me for five hours, well after the plane departed at 5.11am.
My bags, which had already been checked in, were taken off the plane and searched. At around 9:30am I was transferred into the custody of airport police and falsely accused of creating a public disturbance, hindering the work of border guards and harassing other passengers. I was held in police custody for over 10 hours and interrogated.
Later in the evening, the head of shift of the border service, an athletically built young man, made a new absurd accusation that I, a 78-year-old writer in poor health and suffering from a heart condition, punched him in the chest with such great strength that it caused a hematoma. This supposedly happened in a small room with no surveillance cameras during a personal search while my son was briefly outside.
I have been told that a criminal case against me was opened by the airport police under Criminal Code Article 222.1 “hooliganism”.
Absurdly and illogically, this alleged incident of punching a border guard happened well after the plane departed and was later used by the border service as an explanation for denying the border crossing before the plane had left!
I was released from police custody at around 8pm local time. My foreign passport was retained by police and only returned on the next day.
Recently-released Azerbaijani journalist Khadija Ismayilova was due to mark her 40th birthday in prison on Friday 27 May 2016, but she was released two days prior during her appeal. However, several charges against her remain.
Arrested in December 2014, Khadija was serving a seven-and-a-half year prison sentence in Azerbaijan on politically motivated charges of tax evasion, illegal entrepreneurship and abuse of power.
The real reason for Ismayilova’s imprisonment, however, was her investigative journalism. For many years, Ismayilova has been one of very few journalists in Azerbaijan willing to explore risky topics like human rights abuses and corruption among Azerbaijan’s ruling elite. Her reporting shed light on many truths the Azerbaijani authorities would prefer to keep hidden, and she is paying a high price for her courageous work.
To mark Ismayilova’s birthday, call for all charges against her to be quashed and for the immediate release of all political prisoners in Azerbaijan, the Sport for Rights campaign is collaborating with other networks to coordinate a series of parallel protests in cities around the world. The campaign is aiming for the symbolic number of 40 protests but will need your help.
If you are concerned by Ismayilova’s case and want to take a stand for human rights in Azerbaijan, please consider organising a peaceful protest in your city. The action can be large or small, traditional or creative, in any legally permissible spot you choose. Please get in touch through the event page or email info@sportforrights.org to discuss details. Sport for Rights will share details on the various actions by city closer to the date.
Four hundred years after the death of the bard, Shakespeare’s sonnets and plays continue to influence not only the arts and theatre but dissent and defiance around the world. Index on Censorship magazine marks the anniversary with a special issue looking at how his work has been used to combat censorship and kick against the powers that be everywhere from Turkey and Hungary to the USA and China.
Here’s the award-winning cartoonist Ben Jennings discussing his illustrations in the latest issue with editor Rachael Jolley.
Peter Kellner speaks at the Winter 2015 Index on Censorship magazine launch event at the British Library in February 2015. The panel discussion coincided with the publication of Drafting freedom to last: The Magna Carta’s past and present influences to mark the 800th anniversary of the document’s drafting.
Peter Kellner is president of YouGov and a contributor to Index on Censorship magazine. Kellner discusses the results of a YouGov survey about rights across seven European democracies and the United States. Full results are available here.
As far as I know, North Korea is the only significant country whose citizens have never been polled. Everywhere else, it is possible to discover what people think on at least some issues; and in the world’s democracies we can ask about the most sensitive social and political topics and obtain candid answers. In less than a century, and in many countries less than half a century, opinion polls have given people a voice of a kind they never had before.
It is against this backdrop that I chose the topic for my final blog for YouGov, before stepping down as president. The rise of polling in different countries has accompanied the spreading of democracy and human rights. We can do something that our grandparents never could: find out which human rights matter most to people – and to do it, simultaneously, in a number of countries. In this case we have surveyed attitudes in seven European democracies and the United States.
This is what we did. We identified thirty rights that appear in United Nations and European Council declarations, in the British and American Bills of Rights and, in some cases, are the subject of more recent debate in one or more countries. To prevent the list being even longer, we have been selective. For example, we have omitted “the right of subjects to petition the king”, and the right of people not to be punished prior to conviction, which were promised by Britain’s Bill of Rights. Matters requiring urgent attention in one era are taken for granted in another.
Even so, thirty is a large number. So we divided the list into two, and asked people to look at each list in turn, selecting up to five of the 15 rights from each list that “you think are the most important”. This means that respondents could select, in all, up to ten rights from the thirty. This does not mean that people necessarily oppose the remaining rights, simply that they consider them less important than the ones they do select.
This is what we found:
The right to vote comes top in five of the eight countries (Britain, France, Sweden, Finland and Norway), and second in two (Denmark and the United States – in both cases behind free speech). Only in Germany does it come lower, behind free speech, privacy, free school education, low-cost health care and the right to a fair trial.
In all eight countries more than 50% select free speech as one of the most important rights. It is the only right to which this applies.
Views vary about the importance of habeas corpus – the right to remain free unless charged with a criminal offence and brought swiftly towards the courts. It is valued most in Denmark (by 49%) and the United States (40%). In Britain, where habeas corpus originated in the seventeenth century, the figure is just 27%.
Rights to free school education and low-cost health care are selected by majorities in six of the eight countries. The exceptions are France and the United States. In the US, this reflects a different history and culture of public service provision. In France, unlike the other six European countries we surveyed, financial rights (to a minimum wage and a basic pension) come higher than the rights to health and education.
France is out of line in three other respects. It has by some margin the lowest figure for the right to live free from discrimination – and the highest figures for the right to a job and the “right to take part with others in anti-government demonstrations”
Few will be surprised that far more Americans than Europeans value the right to own a gun (selected by 46% of Americans, but by no more than 6% in any European country) and “the right of an unborn child to life” (30%, compared with 13% in Germany and no more than 8% in any of the other six countries).
The French and Americans are also keener than anyone else on “the right to keep as much of one’s own income as possible with the lowest possible taxes”. In the case of the United States, this is consistent with limited expectations of public-sector provision of health, education and pensions. With France it’s more complex: public services do not rank as high as in the six other European countries, but jobs, pay and pensions matter a lot. In their quest for security, income AND low taxes, many French voters appear to make demands on the state that seem likely to lead to disappointment. Perhaps this, as well as the lingering memory of France’s revolutionary past, explains the enthusiasm of so many French voters on both Left and Right to mount anti-government demonstrations.
In Europe, property rights matter less than social rights. In Germany only 6% regard ‘the right to own property, either alone or in association with others’ as one of their most valued human rights. The figures are slightly higher for France (14%) and Britain (16%) and higher still in the four Scandinavian countries (20-29%). Only in the United States (37%) is it on a par with the rights to free school and low-cost health care.
There are striking differences in views to rights that are matters of more recent controversy. In most of the eight countries, significant numbers of people value “the right to communicate freely with others” (e.g. by letter, phone or email) without government agencies being able to access what is being said). Four in ten Germans and Scandinavians regard this as one of their most important rights, as do 35% of Americans. But it is valued by rather fewer French (29%) and British (21%) adults.
Much lower numbers choose the right of gay couples to a same-sex marriage: the numbers range from 10% (Finland) to 19% (US). This is a clear example of a reform that, separate YouGov research has found, is now popular, or at least widely accepted – but not considered by most people to be as vital a human right as the others in our list.
In six of the eight countries, many more people value “the right of women to have an abortion” than “the right of an unborn child to life”. The exceptions are France, where both rights score just 13%, and the United States, where as many as 30% choose the right of an unborn child to life as a key human right, compared with 21% who value a woman’s right to an abortion. The countries with the strongest support for abortion rights are Denmark and Sweden.
Those are the main facts. Each of them deserves a blog, even a book, to themselves. It’s not just the similarities and differences between countries that are significant, but the variations between different demographic groups within each country. (For example, British men value free speech more than women, while women place a higher priority on the rights to free schooling and low-cost health care. Discuss…)
Nor does this analysis tell us about direct trade-offs. How far are people willing to defend free speech in the face of social media trolls – and habeas corpus when the police and security services seek greater powers to fight terrorism? (Past YouGov surveys have generally found that, when push comes to shove, most people give security a higher priority than human rights.)
The results reported here, then, do not provide a complete map of how human rights are regarded in the eight countries we surveyed. But they do give us a baseline. They tell us what matters most when people are invited to consider a wide range of rights that have been promoted over recent decades and, in some cases, centuries. It is, I believe, the first survey of its kind that has been conducted.
It won’t be the last. Understanding public attitudes to human rights, like promoting and defending those rights, is a never-ending task. It is also a vital one, just like giving voters, customers, workers, patients, passengers, parents – indeed all of us in our different guises – a voice in the institutions that affect our lives. Which has been the purpose of YouGov for the past fifteen years and will continue to be so.
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