A woman chips away at the Berlin Wall, November 1989. Credit: Justin Leighton / Alamy
Our latest issue of Index on Censorship magazine includes a look at “Generation Wall” – the young people who grew up in a free eastern Europe. Tymoteusz Chajdas, 23, from Poland, is one of our contributors. Here, he looks back at what has changed and remembers his family’s excitement when packages arrived from an uncle in the West
The delivery of a package, the size of a small fridge, from abroad was rare in 1980s Poland. My family was fortunate enough to have this privilege. Every month, my two-year-old sister, Joanna, sat on the rubber flooring in the hallway of our two-bedroom apartment. She waited for a package from Jerzy, my uncle who lived in Cologne, West Germany.
The unpacking was always an occasion. But my parents have a particularly strong memory of the first time a package was delivered. When the postman arrived, Joanna opened the box and immediately started playing with the contents. “Balls. I’ve got so many! Come play with me!” It was the first time my sister had seen oranges.
This was the reality of that time. Poland became isolated from the rest of Europe when the Soviets erected the Berlin Wall in 1961. The ideals of liberty, freedom and democracy remained unattainable for an average Pole for the next 28 years. Some only experienced these ideals remotely by having family in the West, and occasionally receiving “samples” of what Western life was like.
Over on the eastern side of the wall, Poles couldn’t buy basic material goods easily, such as food or hygiene products. Large chunks of everyday life consisted of tedious searches and hours standing in long lines to buy essentials. Store shelves were frequently empty, and it seemed the only item always in stock was vinegar. Even if a product was available, it could only be purchased upon presentation of a ration card.
“Jerzy was devastated by this,” says my mother, Jadwiga, talking about her brother. In 1979, my uncle was invited by a friend for a three-week holiday in the Netherlands. After two weeks, Jerzy decided to stay on the other side of the wall. He applied for political asylum and never came back.
“He could stay there under one condition: he had to reject Polish citizenship,” she tells me. “So he did. Within two years he started sending us food and clothing.”
A few years later, another relative of ours emigrated to the United States. While the Berlin Wall divided Europe into two worlds,
Poles could not reveal any connections they had with the West. It was around this time my father started his career at the Silesian Police Department.
“We started to fear our own shadows,” says my mother, remembering that having family in the West was both a blessing and curse. Any association with capitalist Europe posed a threat to the authorities of communist Poland and was seen as political espionage and violation of the communist ideology. “[Your father] had to renounce family mem- bers living in the West if he wanted to stay employed,” says my mother. “Our phone was tapped so we had little contact with them.”
Despite this, my family still received packages. Only those who worked two jobs or were communist party members could afford to live comfortably, so my mother had to lie about her income to cover up for the extra goods we received from relatives abroad.
Less privileged Poles had little or no un- derstanding of what life looked like on the other side of the Iron Curtain. Jolanta Sudy, a high school teacher and family friend, re- members those times very well. She says the majority of Poles were victims of communist propaganda and were unaware of what was happening in their own country.
“As far as censorship is concerned, the Soviets presented the Eastern Bloc as an El Dorado where everything was perfect and no problems existed,” she says. The government spread its ideology through newspapers, magazines, books, films and theatre productions. Popular radio and tel- evision broadcasts were also censored and reinforced the views of the communist party.
Every year on 1 May, all Polish citizens were obliged to attend a street parade celebrating the International Worker’s Day. A register of attendance was kept.“It looked like a country fair or circus,” recalls Sudy. “Everyone was dressed up to show how joy- ful it was to live in Poland, how happy we were because of the socialist system. But the party stood above us with a whip.”
The elections worked similarly and at- tendance was also mandatory. Many saw them as an ironic spectacle organised by the authorities. The ballot paper featured only one name. “I always signed the register but I never put the card in the box,” says Sudy. “This was my battle with communism.”
Such oppression, constant fear and invigilation had a strong influence on the Poles. Some listened to Radio Free Europe, which broadcast unbiased news from Western countries.
In 1989 the situation changed drastically: the Berlin Wall was torn down.
“The store shelves filled up again with foreign goods,” says my mum. “Travel agents started organising vacations to other coun- tries. This was very difficult before then.”
Some Poles found the change shocking. Sudy says that, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the amount of uncensored news was overwhelming. “It was hard to believe that we could have lived differently since the end of World War II.”
The overturn of the uniform culture of communist Poland gave birth to a cul- tural explosion which had skillfully been repressed by the Soviets. Free expression in the arts in Poland did not exist during the communist period, according to Kasia Gasinska, a 24-year-old graphic designer. Some Polish citizens listened to music from non-authorised radio stations but it was only “after the wall fell down that [Polish] art became liberated,” recalls Gasinska.
Gasinska says that Western music suddenly became available in Poland, and Poles set up new bands. “New music genres were introduced, such as rave or techno, which embodied the feeling of freedom shared by many at the time.”
The collapse of communism also brought with it one of the most powerful artistic forms – street art, says Gasinska. Many Poles made the journey to the remnants of the Berlin Wall where they could freely express themselves through graffiti.
This expanded as an artistic movement to major cities in Poland. Lodz, the third largest city and a post-industrial centre, became one of many hubs for street art, famous for its colourful murals and playful graffiti that covered many bleak estates.
olish cinema was liberated from communist propaganda as well. There were new movies that referred to the Polish romantic ideals of the previous epoch, as well as comedies and films that dealt with everyday life in the wake of the political transformation.
Today, the events that led to the dismantling of the Berlin Wall seem like a distant memory for many young Poles, myself included. I was born in 1990 and I only learnt about those times by listening to the stories my parents told. Some were scary, some funny. But mostly, they feel unreal, as does the idea of getting shot at for attempting to cross the western border.
Although the Berlin Wall was torn down 25 years ago, divisions can still be felt. An in- visible wall divides us into those who are too young to remember and those who suddenly woke up in a capitalist country. Some made up for the lost time and found themselves in the new system. Others still tend to talk about the good old communist times when the pace of life was less hectic.
But even these Poles wouldn’t deny that the Berlin Wall has become a symbol of an unrealistic system, gradual economic decline and political oppression. Today, its ruins remind me of the adversities many eastern Europeans had to go through to experience living in a free, democratic country. Few remember that, at the time, only hope kept the Poles dreaming of a better life.
My mother told me that when she was a child, she received a present from her friend who was leaving for West Germany. “It was a pair of knee-high socks with blue and red stripes at the top. Today, I would say they were unsightly,” she says. “But back then, I wore them every day. Every time I looked at them, I promised myself that it was going to be better one day.”
In a recent op-ed for The New York Times, American journalist Evan Osnos said that he turned down the opportunity to publish a copy of his new book Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China because an initial report from the censors came back asking for almost a quarter to be struck out.
The only surprising thing about this is that they were only planning to cut about 25%. Osnos’ book follows the lives of a cast of characters as they pursue their dreams – whether that be for money, for love, for dignity for freedom or justice. He does not hold back listing the faults of China’s authoritarian system – the corruption, the hypocrisy, the lies, the control, and the censorship itself. Among the cast of characters that Osnos follows a fair few are clearly a no-go – among them imprisoned dissident writer Liu Xiaobo, blind activist lawyer Chen Guangcheng and outspoken artist Ai Weiwei among them.
Osnos declined to publish because: “to produce a ‘special version’ that plays down dissent, trims the Great Leap Forward, and recites the official history of [former official] Bo Xilai’s corruption would not help Chinese readers. On the contrary, it would endorse a false image of the past and present. As a writer, my side of the bargain is to give the truest story I can.”
For Osnos it wasn’t just a matter of how much of the book would have to go — a lie is a lie whether it is a big one or a small one. He told Index on Censorship: “It’s a slippery slope. If you agree to cut five paragraphs or 10% of the text or 25%, where do you stop?”
Osnos’ op-ed has highlighted the dilemma writers face publishing in China. The mainland is now hungry for western works. A publisher approached Osnos and not the other way around. American journalist Peter Hessler, who was the Beijing correspondent for The New Yorker before Osnos, published two of his China books on the mainland, County Driving and River Town. He said that they both sold more than 150,000 copies in China. Country Driving actually sold more copies in China than they did in the US. In the first 10 months of last year, 650,000 censored copies of Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China by Ezra F. Vogel, professor emeritus at Harvard University, were bought in China. Around 10% of the book was excised.
Osnos wouldn’t compromise, but Hessler and Vogel did, for different reasons.
Hessler says he felt that he owed it to the people he was writing about to give them access to what he was saying about them. “The longer that I wrote about China, the less comfortable I was with the fact that readers in these places could not read what I was writing about them,” Hessler told Index on Censorship. “It’s an unhealthy dynamic that is common all over the developing world – the foreign correspondent often feels like he’s exporting stories. He doesn’t receive local feedback, and there’s a risk that he isn’t fully accountable to his subjects.”
Hessler’s books tend to follow communities and as such are less sensitive. “The general pattern is to cut references to national leaders or events, while leaving detailed descriptions of local events,” notes Hessler. Just a few pages were cut from both books out of more than 400 pages – changes, he thought, that did not “strike at the core of either book.” He did not try to publish another of his China books, Oracle Bones, because it was much more sensitive and would have faced significant cuts.
Vogel argued that his work opened the door to a more open discussion. “Many Chinese academics were appreciative that my book had expanded the range of freedom, allowing them to discuss more topics than had been possible before the book was published,” he wrote on The Harvard University Press website.
The danger is of course, even if the book does spark discussion, even if the censor does let some “sensitive” details slip through, readers are largely unaware of what was changed and thus the version they read ends up perpetuating the official line.
“If the censorship would change the point or substance of the book, then readers will come away with a, not just limited, but actually incorrect understanding of what the author was trying to say,” notes Eric Abrahamsen, an American publishing consultant and literary translator based in Beijing. “In the case of Evan Osnos’ book, losing 25% would mean that readers would believe that he thinks differently than he actually does. That would be incredibly pernicious, and isn’t remotely worth it.”
Vogel’s decision has earned him scathing criticism from Perry Link, Professor Emeritus of East Asian Studies at Princeton University. Link, who is famous for describing Chinese censorship as “the anaconda in the chandelier”, says that rather than opening the doors to discussion, Vogel’s censored book props up the Party’s line.
“The 10% that is omitted from Ezra’s book is not a random 10%,” he said. “It is a 10% that distorts the reader’s overall impression of the whole — i.e., the other 90% as well. Ezra’s book is very favourable to the regime. If 10% is omitted, it reads like a flat-out, all-out endorsement by a Harvard professor of Chinese Communist Party authoritarian rule.”
It is still hot in the shade of the palm trees and stuccoed buildings on the American University in Cairo’s (AUC) downtown campus. Groups of refugees sit around on wicker chairs.
Everyone is here to learn about journalism. Munzalak is a new organization that aims to get refugees living in Egypt involved in the media and in command of their own voice. The name translates to “your comfortable place,” like a home from home – the one you were forced to leave.
Every weekend Munzalak hires out a room at AUC. Refugees are invited to come along and learn the basics of journalism for free. Aurora Ellis, a news editor for an international news agency, runs the workshops with aim of producing “articles that deal with refugee issues and with the refugee experience.”
The ultimate aim is to give refugees a space to voice their experiences. A blog on Munzalak’s website publishes pieces written by refugees (with the option of writing under a pseudonym) while training goes on and – organizers hope – more people join.
Similar initiatives have existed. The Refugee Voice was a newspaper based in Tel Aviv run by African asylum seekers and Israelis inside Israel and founded in April 2011, but is no longer published. Radar, a London-based NGO, also trains local populations in areas around the world (including Sierra Leone, Kenya and India) with the aim of connecting isolated communities.
“We’re being given the opportunity to write about our experiences…I can write about my experiences, and interview other refugees about theirs,” says Edward, a Sudanese refugee who arrived in Cairo earlier this year.
“We have several basic problems – in housing, security, education and health.” He quietly tells stories of life in Egypt; harassment and assault in the streets and pervasive racism (even, he says, from some people who are there to help). “We live a separated life. We are here by force only.”
Ultimately, Edward wants to write a history of the Nuba Mountains, the war-torn area straddling the border between Sudan and South Sudan, where he was born in over 25 years ago. Edward carries a notebook with ideas for this book – scribbled notes of a people and culture disappearing; histories of war and exodus. Edward sees his journalism as self-preservation, telling stories that other people don’t want to be told. He most admires Nuba Reports, a non-profit news source staffed by Sudanese reporters, which aims to break reporting black-spots while humanitarian crises and fighting continues on the ground.
Some activists working alongside refugees see initiatives like this as an important way to break the silence.
“Before June 30, refugees were always neglected in the national media. They were only included [the media] if they were being used as scapegoats,” says Saleh Mohamed from the Refugee Solidarity Movement (RSM) in Cairo. Famous examples include right-wing TV host Tawfik Okasha calling for Egyptians to arrest and attack Syrian and Palestinian refugees on sight. Syrians and Palestinians arrested by security forces have been routinely referred to as “terrorists” by the authorities, a narrative often repeated verbatim by pro-regime newspapers. “Now I think the media wants to keep refugees in the shadows and not talk with them,” Mohamed adds. “You never hear about refugees.”
But Munzalak is not without its risks and challenges. Staying independent but still being able to attract funding and support is one thing. Another is security.
Last Sunday 13 Syrians were sentenced to five years in prison after protesting in March 2012 against Bashar al-Assad. They were charged with illegal assembly and “threatening…security [forces] with danger,” something the defendants all denied, according to state-run newspaper Al-Ahram. A UNHCR official last year had told Syrian refugees to stay away from domestic politics – a warning that could feasibly include journalism as well.
Although historically repressive towards journalists during the rule of Hosni Mubarak, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) and the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Morsi, Egypt’s media landscape has taken a significant nosedive since the July coup. Several journalists have been killed in the violence; Mayada Ashraf, a young reporter for Al-Dostour became the latest casualty after she was shot in the head during a protest, allegedly by a police sniper; while reporters remain behind bars and on trial for doing their job.
So is it a good idea to get refugees involved?
Mohamed says that street reporting and visibly working as journalists could put refugees – like Edward – “in danger.” Their legal ability to work also depends on what refugee status they have.
“But otherwise they can talk about themselves rather than waiting for journalists to approach them instead…They definitely need a voice.” But for some refugees, other priorities come first.
Jomana is a 20-year-old Syrian refugee and media studies undergraduate, originally from Aleppo. She visited Munzalak once and liked the idea, but is more concerned about getting a job and paying her way than talking about her experiences – which, like so many Syrian refugees in Egypt nowadays, are harsh. Of almost 184,000 refugees living in Egypt, according to mid-2013 figures from the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR), around 130,000 of that number are Syrians.
“I don’t have enough money to continue my studies so I will have to leave,” she explains plainly. Jomana’s home was bombed out during the war and they fled the country with just their passports, arriving in Cairo over two years ago. Eventually her father went back to Aleppo to try and restart his old factory, but returned to find rubble. He came back to Cairo to economic uncertainty, incitement and political instability. “Other people are going back to Syria and dying there. Those that stay [here] aren’t dying from bombing or from fighting…but from hunger.”
Munzalak might help, but for some refugees, not in the most crucial of ways.
“It means I can express my opinion freely,” Jomana says, “but will I get paid for my opinion?”
Two years ago this Council affirmed by consensus that “the same rights that people have offline must also be protected online, in particular freedom of expression”.
In 2014, the outcome document of Net-Mundial in Brazil recognised the vital role of the internet to achieve the full realisation of sustainable development goals. 31 UN Special Rapporteurs recently affirmed that guaranteeing the free-flow of information online ensures transparency and participation in decision-making, enhancing accountability and the effectiveness of development outcomes.
Development and social inclusion relies on the internet remaining a global resource, managed in the public interest as a democratic, free and pluralistic platform. States must promote and facilitate universal, equitable, affordable and high-quality Internet access for all people on the basis of human rights and net-neutrality, including during times of unrest.
The blocking of communications, such as the shutdown of social media in Malaysia, Turkey, and Venezuela is a violation of freedom of expression and must be condemned. Dissent online must be protected. We deplore the detention of Sombat Boonngamanong in Thailand, who faces up to 14 years imprisonment for using social media to urge peaceful resistance to the recent military coup in the form of a three-finger salute.
One year after the Snowden revelations, this Council must recognise that trust in the internet is conditional on respect for the rights to freedom of expression and privacy online, regardless of users’ nationality or location. Any mass (or dragnet) surveillance, which comprises collection, processing and interception of all forms of communication, is inherently disproportionate and a violation of fundamental human rights.
The targeted interception and collection of personal data must be conducted in accordance with international human rights law, as set out in the necessary and proportionate principles. Critical and intermediate infrastructure must not be tampered with for this end, nor should any system, protocol or standard be weakened to facilitate interception or decryption of data.
ARTICLE 19 urges the Human Rights Council to take action to comprehensively address these challenges.
China’s censors have a hard time stamping out memes.
Memes are proving one of the most powerful weapons Chinese netizens can use to fight online censorship. In the weeks on either side of this year’s 25th anniversary of Tiananmen Square, Chinese censors blocked a variety of terms on social media, including “blood”, “May 35” and even “today”, but references to the event kept on emerging in memes. Images alluding to the infamous “Tank Man” took on a variety of forms, using heads of Mao, tractors, lego and the iconic Hong Kong rubber duck in lieu of circulating the actual iconic photo.
The concept of the meme was coined by Richard Dawkins in 1976 to explain certain ideas, catchphrases, trends and other pieces of cultural information that replicate through a population. In its current usage, memes are defined as cultural items in the form of an image, video or phrase that spreads via the internet and are often altered in a creative or humorous way.
They’ve been part of the Chinese blogosphere for years and in many ways are ideally suited to the Chinese context. In part this is because Mandarin as a language allows for a playful form of double entrendre. Due to its many tones even the slightest shift in pronunciation can change a word’s meaning, while still sounding similar enough to invoke comparisons. The most famous Chinese meme, which parodies censorship itself, is that of the grass mud horse — caonima. In certain tones caonima means an alpaca; in other tones it’s a famous Chinese profanity. A few years back a video depicting a grass mud horse defeating a river crab, hexie, which is a homonym for the propaganda catchword “harmony”, went viral. To this day memes relating to this still emerge to poke fun at Chinese authorities.
Herein lies the strength of memes; their ability to evolve quickly and to imply rather than state makes them very difficult to detect and delete. After all, it’s hard enough for Chinese censors to keep track of and block all search terms directly referencing taboo topics. It’s harder still to block the infinite variations of words and images that might allude to controversy.
“Due to advanced and pervasive censorship, Chinese netizens are often forced to use coded language and images to talk about the social and political issues they find important,” says Ben Valentine, strategist and contributing writer for The Civic Beat, which examines social change memes and viral media.
“Images are much harder to algorithmically block because machines have trouble understanding visual content. While online writing directly talking about anything to do with Tiananmen Square in 1989 is extremely difficult, some of these memes make it past the censors. This is partially why, despite pervasive censorship, the Chinese web still remains a quite lively and active online space,” he adds.
For David Bandhurs, a researcher at the University of Hong Kong’s China Media Project, anyone who engages on a regular basis with others in the Chinese internet space “understands that irony, parody and other forms of expressive subterfuge are absolutely essential”. Memes “are the very substance of self-expression, of which social and political expression are a part, in a repressive space”.
Ahead of the 4th June anniversary, Bandhurs posted a photo of his milk carton to Weibo (China’s Twitter). The expiration date was “04/06/14” and he wrote: “It’s not yet expired. We have to remember.”
“This was a very casual post, its point being to share a momentary thought with my community, a thought which for some might prompt a moment of esprit de corps, or a moment of reflection,” he tells Index.
“A lot of memes emerge, and they emerge constantly, in exactly this way. They encapsulate a thought or a feeling — often with a strong social or political dimension — that cannot be openly expressed. For example, the meme ‘My father is Li Gang’ quickly became emblematic of the injustice and inequality resulting from unchecked power. It was like a key that could open a box of thoughts no one could make very explicit.”
Just how effective are these memes? When shared instantly and abundantly across platforms like Weibo, they can be very powerful. In some instances Chinese memes have spurred a call to action, as was the case with those that knocked Beijing’s poor air quality. Until recently, the government denied the extent of the pollution. Conversation on the topic was silenced. Then photos of blue sky days and other related memes emerged. Now the government is approaching the topic with more transparency.
As for those topics which still remain off limits, memes provide an alternative form of political discourse. The China Digital Times sees caonima specifically as the “the icon of online resistance to censorship”.
Memes represent a way in which Chinese people momentarily seize control of conversations. For example, when blind activist and lawyer Chen Guangcheng was arrested, thousands of people posted photos of themselves wearing sunglasses in protest. While it might not seem like the biggest act of defiance, it’s still something in a nation where free speech and collective action are strictly controlled.
“These memes allow for more expression, a political conversation to start, for humor around a taboo subject; this is an incredibly empowering feeling. The ability to connect, talk, laugh, and touch on politics feels good,” explains Valentine.
Speaking of memes more generally, Cole Stryker, author of Epic Win for Anonymous: How 4chan’s Army Conquered the Web, tells Index:
“The power of politically-oriented memes is that they can be used in a playful way that isn’t necessarily directly confrontational to a regime. In some cases, the regime doesn’t even realize they’re being undermined. This allows activists to openly protest with impunity or even anonymity.”
At the same time, it’s important not to overstate the power of memes in China. Most vanish in the cyberspace vortex. Bandhurs’ milk carton post, for example, had more than 3,000 views, but could not be shared or commented upon, taking the sting out of it.
Memes are also predominantly harmless and politically apathetic. An office worker in Beijing, Wang Meimei, 28, said she and her friends constantly share memes. These solely relate to entertainment, not politics, because “we’re not interested in that”.
Meanwhile, 35-year-old Huang Yeping, who works in news media in Beijing, says none of the recent memes he has seen capture any form of zeitgeist.
“Is it me or have Chinese become even more subdued in terms of political expression, so much so that they haven’t been able to create anything as infectious as grass mud horse or a derivative of the tankman?” he asks, then adds:
“There has been this chill spreading across the cyber world.”
And as this indicates, taken alone memes cannot supersede collective action, nor do most have that in mind. They can spark a discussion, yes, yet remain as entertainment without the other key elements that bring about concrete action. What memes can do is allow for everyday Chinese to seize control of conversations — whether they be of a social, political or cultural nature — even if only for a few hours or days before the army of censors step in. And as Valentine says, that “feels good”.
Patrick Hamilton, the English author and playwright, has now reached the curious position within the literary world of being best known for being overlooked. Hamilton wrote sad, cruel and intensely funny novels of what I’ve taken to calling the Oh-God-The-War-Is-Coming (OGTWIC) genre — a genre of rented rooms, gin and lonely, quietly failing people, usually based in London and the South East, striving grimly, dimly aware that something is going drastically wrong on the continent and their inconsequential existence is unsustainable in its current form (see also Nigel Collins, Julian McClaren-Ross, and George Orwell, to an extent).
Put simply, there are Nazis, and sooner or later there will be a war. In Hamilton’s Hangover Square, George Harvey Bone’s drinking cronies display fascist sympathies, the bullying Peter having actual served time in jail for Blackshirt streetfighting. Orwell’s George Bowling, in 1939’s Coming Up For Air, bemoans the machine world in the perfect line: “Everything’s streamlined now, even the bullet Hitler’s saving for you.”
Perhaps alone among the OGTWIC novelists, Hamilton found fame in Britain before Hitler. His thrilling play Rope debuted on the West End in April 1929, shortly after his 25th birthday, and was an immediate sensation. Rope, later filmed by Alfred Hitchcock, concerned a pair of students who decide to kill a friend, just for the hell of it. But, after the murder, as suspicion grows, their nerve dissolves.
The play was apparently based on the 1924 “Leopold and Loeb” case, in which two wealthy Chicago students, convinced by Nietzsche’s idea of the the Übermensch who live beyond humanity’s moral codes, decide to murder a young friend, Bobby Franks. In the lead up to the murder, Nathan Leopold had written to Richard Loeb that: “A superman … is, on account of certain superior qualities inherent in him, exempted from the ordinary laws which govern men He is not liable for anything he may do.”
The courts felt differently: Leopold and Loeb did kill poor young Franks, but far from committing the perfect crime, they made several clumsy mistakes and were easily caught and convicted. Only the brilliance of their defence lawyer, the famed Clarence Darrow, helped them avoid execution.
Hamilton was almost embarrassed by Rope’s success, perhaps irritated that his fame had come from a popular West End thriller rather than his novels. But, according to Hamilton biographer Nigel Jones, others gave it more credit. An article in the Times Literary Supplement after the war credited Hamilton with picking up on the Zeitgeist of 1920s and 1930s masculinity, specifically the “young men with the highest social pretensions and an almost mystical pursuit of violence” who would fill the ranks of Europe’s fascist movements. The TLS went on to praise the Rope writer, saying “[W]hether the author was conscious of it or not, his social sensitiveness had invested the thriller form with more than its usual significance. And he has shown himself at least concerned for human values and able to feel passionate indignation at their denial.”
Rope roared on to Broadway and round the world, providing Hamilton with a steady income for the rest of his too-short, drink-sodden life.
But, given its prescience, it encountered a particularly ironic moral panic when it was scheduled for broadcast by the BBC in January 1932.
The radio had been commissioned by BBC HEad of Productions Val Gielgud — brother of Sir John and of an equally theatrical leaning. Eagerly hyping his commission, Gielgud put himself forward to issue a statement on air, warning that the play was shocking indeed and that BBC listeners should “send the children to bed and lock granny in her room” before settling down to listen to the thriller.
Gielgud’s music-hall instincts worked a dream, and the newspapers and defenders of the nation flew into a fury. The Morning Post quoted a concerned correspondent who allegedly wrote: “The play had a successful run — there is, of course, a section of the British public which enjoys the degenerate; no one wishes to interfere with their pleasure. It is, however, quite another thing to broadcast this stuff into millions of homes.”
The aggrieved Morning Post reader went on to bemoan the “outrages and murders of little girls” that filled the pages of the newspapers, and suggested that the broadcast of Rope would only encourage “the morbid tendency which leads to these crimes. I submit that the BBC is making a gross misuse of its powers.”
The British Empire Union, a xenophobic, ultra-conservative organisation, picked up on the “morbid tendency” theme, protesting to the BBC that: “While not questioning the ‘cleverness’ of the play, or the undoubted dramatic ability of the author, we consider the broadcasting of a play of this description cannot but encourage in unbalanced and degenerate minds that morbid tendency which leads to the crimes depicted.”
Gielgud, by this point trolling the entire country, told the Evening Standard: “There is nothing disgusting or gruesome about this play, [but] it would have been unfair to broadcast it without letting people know in advance what they were going to hear. For example it might not be the most suitable thing to hear in a hospital.”
The broadcast was, of course, a roaring success, with millions listening in and critics (the Morning Post and the Daily Mail aside) wooed utterly.
The mechanisms of so many public outrages are tied up neatly in Rope: the tease of the promoter; the wilful misunderstanding of a work which explores a controversial issue rather than condoning it; the head in the sand refusal to look at the context of the work; the censorious impulse of those who, while not themselves affected by such things, fear for those lesser beings who may be; the intervention of the Daily Mail; and, ultimately, the fleeting, soon-forgotten nature of the controversy. Over 80 years later, in the age of the iPhone and the Twitter mob, how little we have changed.
Volunteers put on a puppet show to teach rural people about the CGNet Swara project (Image: Purushottam Thakur)
Three months after winning the Index Digital Activism Award for his work with CGNet Swara, Shubhranshu Choudhary spoke to Index about his most recent project, teaching rural villagers through performing arts how their mobile phones can be used to report incidents and issues that may otherwise be given the cold-shoulder by the authorities.
CGNet Swara (Voice of Chhattisgarh) is a mobile phone service that allows citizens to upload and listen to reports in their local language without the need for a smartphone or an internet connection.
The new experiment, as Choudhary referred to it, ran for a month, from 15 May to 15 June, and included volunteer artists performing in market places and villages in six of India’s 29 states. During this time the average number of daily reports jumped from 500 to 800, although, as Choudhary pointed out, it is too early tell if this was just an anomaly.
The team involved flipped their conventional method of teaching on its head. Previously, rural people were brought to the cities where they sat in classrooms and lectured about how to use the service. By physically going to the villagers instead, CGNet Swara has “reversed the order”, now teaching people in a way that makes them feel comfortable.
“We have made dance, we have written songs about our work, we have made a small drama, and there are characters that are puppets,” Choudhary told Index. “So in an entertaining way we try to tell them the problems with current mainstream media, which everyone should have equal access to, but unfortunately is owned and controlled by a small number of rich people.” This has resulted in a media full of information about the rich, according to Choudhary, with 80% of the population only receiving about 20% news coverage.
Between five and six million people speak Gondi in the six states CGNet Swara has visited, but they lack their own communication platform, with no radio station, newspaper or TV channel available in the Gondi language. CGNet Swara allows people to report incidents and get their voices heard when they might otherwise have been shunned.
Choudary was clear to point out that the people for whom this service is most vital are not uneducated, but rather a huge number of them live in rural areas and “feel more comfortable listening and speaking rather than reading and writing”. In a country where most Indians don’t have access to the internet but over 70% have access to a mobile phone, services like CGNet Swara play a pivotal part in giving the majority of the population a voice.
“By improving your communication platform, by improving the structure of communication within a community, by improving it from a top-down, one-way communication method to a bottom-up dialogue model of communication we are able to solve many smaller problems,” Choudhary told Index. “And maybe we will be contributing towards solving bigger problems as well.”
So how does CGNet Swara work? The programme allows people to phone in reports in their native language to the service, where they are then verified, translated and made available for playback online as well as over the phone. This is where urban activists come in to play. As Choudhary told Index, these are the people with the connections to the authorities, who speak the right language and can help getting these issues and problems solved. They complete the circle.
After the apparent success of last month’s trial period Choudhary is keen to continue with the project. “From what I gather from everyone, everyone’s pretty excited, but we will need some funding to continue it.” He told Index the project is not cheap to implement but “we are pretty convinced this is the way to reach these people.
“We feel convinced that this is the way to reach that last person of our community, because they are the ones who are left out. They are the ones whose voices are not coming out.”
Listen to the full interview with Shubhranshu Choudhary below.
An international coalition of more than 200 organisations welcomes the inclusion of targets for capable institutions, media freedom, and access to information by the United Nations member states now participating in the post-2015 development agenda dialogue.
The inclusion of targets on freedom of expression and access to information will help build stronger media and civil society institutions to closely and independently monitor all post-2015 development commitments.
The Open Working Group proposed on June 2, 2014, that the Sustainable Development Goal No. 16 to “achieve peaceful and inclusive societies, rule of law, effective and capable institutions” include sub-goals to “improve public access to information and government data” and “promote freedom of media, association and speech.”
UNESCO and the Global Forum for Media Development convened representatives of this coalition to consider how to strengthen these welcome initiatives and submit for the consideration of member states proposed language and indicators for the text now being discussed by the Open Working Group.
Our proposal is consistent with the criteria that are guiding the efforts to reach consensus on the post-2015 global development agenda, including the Sustainable Development Goals. We urge the continued inclusion of sub-goals 16.14 and 16.17, and we propose below several specific, measurable indicators to achieve these objectives by 2030.
UN Precedents:
Even before the signing of the 1948 Universal Declaration on Human Rights, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution declaring freedom of expression “a fundamental human right…and the touchstone of all the freedoms to which the United Nations is consecrated.”
In 1976, after a sufficient number of nations had ratified these instruments and associated covenants, these global commitments took on the force of international law, as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
Measured and Measurable:
UNESCO has been formally vested with the mandate for monitoring international commitments in this field. Many countries have adopted the UNESCO Media Development Indicators as a tool for measuring progress towards effective media systems at the country level.
ITU provides data on Internet use and access.
IPU tracks legislative and constitutional guarantees of public access to public information.
UNHCHR reports on violations of media freedom.
The assembled coalition proposes that UNESCO, as the UN agency mandated to promote free, independent, and pluralistic media, take the lead role in monitoring progress toward the achievement of these goals. The UNESCO Institute of Statistics should play an advisory role in the collection of relevant data. A UN process should help build national capacities to gather data and promote dialogue on freedom of expression and public access to information.
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”In the summer issue of Index on Censorship magazine, we include a special report: Brick by brick, freedom 25 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall.”][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]
As Europe prepares for the anniversary of the wall’s demolition in November, Index on Censorship looks at how the continent has changed. Author Irena Maryniak explores the idea of a new divide that has formed further east. Polish journalist Konstanty Gebert looks at how Poland’s media came out from the underground and lost its voice.
Award-winning German writer Regula Venske shows how Germany has tackled its identity issues through crime fiction; and Helen Womack reports from Moscow on the fears of a new Cold War. We also give voice to “Generation Wall” – the young people who have grown up in a free eastern Europe.
When the wall came down in 1989, there were discussions in the Index office about whether our battles were over. Sadly, we all know there was no universal end to censorship on that day. This issue also shares stories of the continuing fight for free expression worldwide, from a scheme to fund investigative journalism in Tanzania to an ambitious crowdsourcing project in Syria.
Also in this issue:
• Dame Janet Suzman looks at censorship of South African theatre on the 20th anniversary of South African democracy
• Jim Al-Khalili shares his thoughts on threats to science research and debate
• Ex BBC World Service boss Richard Sambrook goes head-to-head with Bruno Torturra, from Brazil’s Mídia Ninja, to debate the future of big media
Plus:
• Two new short stories – exclusive to Index – from Costa first novel winner Christie Watson and Turkish novelist Kaya Genç
[/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.
Former President of Poland Lech Walesa talks to the media at the Fallen Shipyard Workers Monument in Gdansk. (Photo: Michal Fludra/Alamy)
Poland had the largest alternative press on the eastern side of the Iron Curtain – and journalists couldn’t wait for the arrival of democracy. But after its heyday in the early 90s, the Polish media have lost their willingness to take on the powerful, argues Konstanty Gebert, who has kept a printing press, just in case. This an abridged version of an article from the latest issue of Index on Censorship magazine – an “after the wall” special. For more, subscribe here
Twenty five years ago, as the round-table talks in Warsaw between the communist government and the opposition moved forward in the transition to democracy, the courtyard of Warsaw university became a print-lovers’ paradise. All kinds of underground publications, from books to newspapers, previously distributed only under the cover of secrecy, circulated in the open, provoking delight, outrage, concern and shock from passers-by. Watching vendors hawking my own publication, the fortnightly KOS, I grappled with the idea that we might actually become a normal newspaper, sold at newsstands and not in trusted private apartments, competing for newsprint, stories and readers in a free market of commodities and ideas. My only concern was that the promise of liberty would again prove a false dawn. I decided that, if we were to go “overground”, we should stash all our printing equipment and supplies somewhere, ready to pick up our clandestine work again if the political situation soured. This, to my eyes, was the greatest threat. Little did I know.
The alternative press had been both the backbone of the underground and one of its most distinctive features: no other communist country had an output that matched Poland’s. The Polish National Library has collected almost 6,000 different titles for the years 1976 to 1989 and the estimated number of readers is assessed at anything from 250,000 upwards. In 1987, KOS published a circular, issued by the regional prosecutor in the provincial industrial town of Płock. It informed his staff that if, during a house search (in a routine criminal investigation, not a political case), no underground publications were found, they needed to assume the inhabitants had been forewarned and had the time to clean up. In other words, the communist state assumed that the absence, not the presence, of underground publications in a typical Polish household was an anomaly that demanded an explanation.
This meant that, when the transition initiated by the round-table talks rushed forward at an unexpectedly speedy pace, we actually had trained journalists ready to take over hitherto state-controlled publications and, more importantly, set up new ones from scratch. The daily Gazeta Wyborcza (the Electoral Gazette was set up to promote Solidarity candidates in the first, semi-free elections of June 1989, but continued beyond that), which proudly advertised itself as the first free newspaper between the Elbe and Vladivostok, became an instant hit. Many formerly underground journalists, including myself, joined the paper, making it, for a while, a collective successor of the entire underground press. Its print run, initially limited by state newsprint allocations to 150,000 copies, soared to 500,000 once the remains of the communist state had been dismantled, and then dropped to under 300,000, as print media lost readers.
The newspaper’s unparalleled success (also financial: its publisher Agora went public in 1999 and shares initially did well) was due both to the extraordinary importance attributed under communism to the printed word and to the belief that the paper expressed “the truth” as opposed to “the lie” of the communist media. Under the government’s tightly controlled system of public expression (everything, down to matchbox labels, had to clear censorship), reality was defined by what was written, not by what was witnessed.
The underground press described a reality totally at odds with the image presented in the official media, yet validated by everyday experience: it was therefore “true”, and this exposed the communists as liars, who, moreover, were powerless to do anything about being exposed, since underground media continued to flourish, police repression notwithstanding. At the same time, the underground press was if not a propaganda venture at least an advocacy one, devoted not to the objective and non-partisan discussion of reality but to the promotion of a political current: the anti-communist opposition. Then we saw no contradiction in considering ourselves independent while supporting Solidarity candidates.
This contradiction was to explode shortly after. In 1990, barely a year after the transformation began, the first democratic presidential elections pitted Solidarity leader Lech Wałesa against his more politically liberal former chief adviser and first non-communist prime minister, Tadeusz Mazowiecki. The unity of the anti-communist movement did not survive the defeat of its adversary – and rightly so. Gazeta Wyborcza endorsed Mazowiecki, to the outrage of many of its readers, even if they, too, voted mainly for the former PM. “Your job,” one reader wrote, “is not to tell me how to vote. Your job is to give me information so I can make up my mind myself.” The newspaper could no longer count on the uncritical trust of its readers, yet it kept the position of market leader, a rarity for a quality newspaper, until it was dethroned in 2003 by tabloid Fakt.
Gazeta Wyborcza has also become the most reviled paper, at least to its adversaries in the right-wing press. The Wałesa-Mazowiecki split exposed a deep structural fissure inside the anti-communist camp, between the conservative-nationalist Catholics, who endorsed the eventual winner, and the liberal-cosmopolitan secularists, who supported the former PM. As this fissure grew (deep internal divisions within both camps notwithstanding, and regardless of their shared hostility to the former communists), Gazeta Wyborcza became, in the eyes of the right, the embodiment of an alleged “anti-Polish” project – the fact that editor- in-chief and former political prisoner Adam Michnik is Jewish was sometimes proof enough – that had to be destroyed at all costs. The declining fortunes of the newspaper in recent years have been taken by the right as proof that Poland is now “finally becoming truly independent”.
An unexpected challenge came from the former spokesman of the communist government, Jerzy Urban, who in 1990 launched his weekly publication Nie (“no” in Polish). As Urban had been easily the most hated man in Poland, his enterprise was considered doomed in advance by most – and yet Nie proved vastly successful, claiming print runs of 300,000 to 600,000 (no independent audit was available, but these estimates are credible). The weekly publication – a mixture of Private Eye-style satire, hard porn, vulgar language and excellent investigative reporting – became an instant hit, because it concentrated on a major area neglected in the anti-communist media: the anti-communists themselves. Gazeta Wyborcza and other new or restructured media had been derelict in their duty of investigating their friends in power with the same determination and mis-trust we had previously applied against the communist authorities. This was true of our coverage not only of government, but also of the Catholic church. Remembered as a victim of communist persecution and as an ally and protector of the underground (even if the reality had been more complex), trusted and revered by the overwhelming majority of the nation, the church was really beyond public criticism. Urban rightly saw in that a potential killing.
And he went after anti-communist ministers and Catholic bishops with a vengeance that struck a chord, not only among the (substantial) former-communist readership, but also among many ordinary readers, who saw in the new authorities more of a continuation of the powers-that-be of old than we would care to admit. Even if uniformly vulgar and occasionally misinformed, his criticisms were painful and to the point. The mainstream media eventually caught up, investigating the secular and ecclesiastical authorities as they should, and, eventually, pushed Urban into a niche of spiteful readers, who appreciate his vulgarity more than his incisiveness; his weekly has a current print run of around 75,000. But it took the twin lessons of the internal political split in Solidarity and the unexpected success of a seemingly compromised propagandist to force mainstream media to understand the basic obligations of their job.
In broadcasting, changes were less dramatic, as there were no trained cadre of independent radio or TV journalists to replace the old hacks: there were hardly any underground broadcast media. More importantly, the new governments, left and right, proved just as reluctant as their predecessors to give up on controlling TV, in the unfounded belief that this helps one win elections. In fact, only one government has been re-elected in the past 25 years, even though all have had as much control over state TV as they wanted and private TV has generally been politically timid. Pressure on radio was much less obvious, and private radio stations have flourished. The most successful one is perhaps Radio Maryja, a Catholic fundamentalist broadcaster, sharply critical of democracy and European integration, and long accused of producing anti-semitic content. From being the object of criticism of the church establishment for its independently extremist line, it has become its de facto mouthpiece: it can get dozens of people out on the street and get MPs elected.
Overall, however, the underground era and the first few years after 1989 were probably the heyday of Polish journalism. But from a high point of newspapers being the visible incarnation of collective political triumph, we have come to a situation when readers read little, trust even less, and believe that media have mainly entertainment value at best, and represent a hostile power run amuck at worst. New media, though immensely popular due to high internet access (53.5 per cent), still run into the problems of bias and low credibility. The printing equipment I had stashed away a quarter-century ago still gathers dust in a Warsaw cellar, its technology as remote from today’s electronic potential as the medium it produced is from today’s media.
Konstanty Gebertis a Polish journalist. He has worked at Gazeta Wyborcza since 1992 and is the founder of Jewish magazine Midrasz. He was a leading Solidarity journalist, and co-founder of the Jewish Flying University in 1979.
With the adoption of a progressive legislation on internet rights, Brazil is taking the lead in digital freedom. Digital technologies have provided new opportunities for freedom of expression in the country, but have also come with new attempts to regulate content and strong inequalities between those with and without access to the internet. Old problems like violence against journalists, media concentration and the influence of local political leaders over judges and other public agents persist.
As internet penetration and access to the internet via mobile phone is increasing in the country, it is interesting to see how digital inclusion has created a new space for the exchange of ideas and reshaped the wider debate on freedom of expression. The emergence of independent media such as the collective Midia Ninja demonstrates the impact of digital on the offline free speech environment.
Brazil must now build on Marco Civil to ensure the respect of the right to freedom of expression online and offline, and promote internet rights in the international sphere.
In order for Brazil to provide a safe space for digital freedom and ensure the promise of Marco Civil is met in reality, Index on Censorship offers the following recommendations:
At the international level, Brazil should:
Use its leadership to further promote a free and fair internet by continuing to publicly advocate for fundamental internet principles such as net neutrality, user privacy and freedom of expression in international forums
Ensure that civil society organisations are deeply involved in the discussions and decision-making process on global internet governance, and that the outcome of international debates adequately reflect their recommendations
Resist intervention by powerful lobby groups and governments to skew the outcome of multistakeholder gatherings
Refuse to adopt or sign up to repressive measures and/or international agreements favouring internet censorship, top-down approach of internet governance and tighter government control of the internet
At the domestic level, Brazil should:
Reform defamation and privacy laws to ensure they are not used to prosecute journalists and citizens who express legitimate opinions in online debates, posts and discussions
Provide proper training to the judiciary and law enforcement agencies on defamation and other freedom of expression-related issues
Introduce clear guidelines regarding civil defamation lawsuits, especially in regard to the use of content takedown and the setting of indemnification amounts
Ensure that all cases of killings and other forms of violence against media professionals and human rights defenders are effectively, promptly and independently investigated, and those responsible are held accountable
Be more transparent about the ongoing work around privacy legislation, including the Data Protection Bill
Pursue their efforts in promoting digital access and inclusion to all Brazilians by expanding the Digital Cities programme and stick to the target of ensuring 40 million households or 68% of the population are able to access broadband by the end of 2014 as part of the National Broadband Plan
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It is still hot in the shade of the palm trees and stuccoed buildings on the American University in Cairo’s (AUC) downtown campus. Groups of refugees sit around on wicker chairs.
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