{"id":52341,"date":"2013-11-07T10:09:53","date_gmt":"2013-11-07T10:09:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/?p=52341"},"modified":"2017-03-27T17:26:38","modified_gmt":"2017-03-27T16:26:38","slug":"nine-t-shirts-gotten-people-arrested","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/?p=52341","title":{"rendered":"Nine “criminal” t-shirts"},"content":{"rendered":"

1) Angola<\/h2>\n
\"nito-alves-800x600\"

Manuel Chivonde Nito Alves was held in solitary confinement for printing t-shirts. Image from his Facebook page.<\/p><\/div>\n

Angolan 17-year-old Manuel Chivonde Nito Alves went on hunger strike<\/a>\u00a0on Tuesday, following his\u00a0arrest on 12 September for printing t-shirts with the slogan \u201cOut Disgusting Dictator\u201d<\/a>. The message was aimed at the country\u2019s President Jose Eduardo dos Santos, who has held power in since 1979. The shirts were to be worn at a demonstration in the capital Luanda<\/a>, highlighting corruption, forced evictions, police violence and lack of social justice under dos Santos’ regime.\u00a0Nito Alves has been charged with \u201cinsulting the president\u201d, and has now spent almost two months in detention – parts of it in solitary confinement. His family were barred from seeing him, and three weeks went by before he was allowed to speak to a lawyer. The hunger strike is in protest at his \u201cunjust and inhumane treatment\u201d.<\/p>\n

2) Belarus<\/h2>\n
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Yury Rubstow wearing the t-shirt that landed him in prison. (Image Viasna Human
Rights Centre)<\/p><\/div>\n

On Monday, Belarusian opposition activist Yury Rubstow<\/a> was sentenced to three days in jail for wearing a t-shirt with the slogan \u201cLukashenko, go away\u201d on the front, and “A four-time president? No. This is not a president but an impostor tsar” on the back.\u201d The message was aimed at the country\u2019s dictator Alexander Lukashenko, during an opposition protest march. He was found guilty of disobedience to police officers under Article 23.4 of the Civil Offenses Code.<\/p>\n

3) Swaziland<\/h2>\n

In 2010, Sipho Jele<\/a>, a member of Swaziland\u2019s People\u2019s United Democratic Movement, was arrested for wearing a t-shirt supporting the party during a May Day parade. He was arrested under the country\u2019s Suppression of Terrorism Act, and died in custody. The police said he had hanged himself, while the party say the police of killed him.<\/p>\n

4) Egypt<\/h2>\n
\"Anti-coup

The Rabaa symbol displayed at a protest in Turkey (Image B\u00fcnyamin Salman\/Demotix)<\/p><\/div>\n

In September, three Egyptian men<\/a> were arrested for wearing t-shirts emblazoned with the Rabaa symbol. A hand holding up four fingers, it is widely used by those opposing Egypt\u2019s interim military-backed government, and the coup that ushered in in. Mohamed Youssef, the country\u2019s kung fu champion, was also suspended by the national federation for wearing a similar t-shirt during a medal ceremony.<\/p>\n

5) Hong Kong<\/h2>\n
\"931249_635523313143215_2126131413_n\"

Avery Ng wearing the t-shirt he threw at Hu Jintao. Image from his Facebook page.<\/p><\/div>\n

An activist from Hong Kong<\/a>\u00a0was arrested last December for throwing a t-shirt at former Chinese president Hu Jintao during an official visit almost six month earlier, on 1 July. League of Social Democrats Vice Chairman Avery Ng threw a t-shirt with a drawing of the late Chinese dissident Li Wangyang<\/a>, a Tiananmen Square activist who died under suspicious circumstances only weeks before the visit. Ng was charged \u201cwith nuisance crimes committed in a public place\u201d.<\/p>\n

6) Malaysia<\/h2>\n
\"BERSIH

Malaysian protester wearing a Bersih shirt. (Image Syahrin Abdul Aziz\/Demotix)<\/p><\/div>\n

In June 2011, Malaysian police arrested 14 opposition activists<\/a> for wearing t-shirts promoting a rally in Kuala Lumpur calling for election reform. The shirts carried the slogan “bersih” which means “clean”, and is the name of one of the groups behind the protest. Authorities claimed the demonstration was an \u201cattempt to create chaos on the streets and undermine the government\u201d, and they were therefore within their rights to arrest the protesters. They also confiscated t-shirts from the group\u2019s headquarters.<\/p>\n

7 & 8) The US<\/h2>\n
\"Screen

Jared Marcum wearing his NRA t-shirt in a TV report. (Image Youtube)<\/p><\/div>\n

A 14-year-old student<\/a> from West Virginia was in April suspended from school and subsequently arrested for refusing to remove a t-shirt supporting the pro-gun National Rifle Association. Jared Marcum\u00a0was charged with \u201cobstructing an officer\u201d and faced a $500 fine and up to one year in prison.<\/p>\n

On the flip side, a\u00a0Tennessee man<\/a> was arrested for wearing a t-shirt in support of stricter gun control laws. Stanley Bryce Myszka was wearing a shirt that read “Has your gun killed a kindergartener today?” at a shopping centre, following the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School. He was approached by security guards, who called the police when he when he refused to remove the shirt. He was also banned from the shopping centre for life.<\/p>\n

9) United Kingdom<\/h2>\n
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The front of Barry Thew’s t-shirt. (Image Greater Manchester Police)<\/p><\/div>\n

A Manchester man<\/a> was in October 2012 sentenced to eight months in prison in part for wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with offensive comments referencing the murders of two policewomen. Barry Thew had written \u201c\u0093One less pig; perfect justice\u0094\u201d on the front of his t-shirt and \u201ckillacopforfun.com haha\u201d on the back. While four months of the sentence was handed down for breach of a previous suspended sentence, he was charged on a Section 4A Public Order Offence for the t-shirt incident.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An Angolan teen has been detained for almost two months for “insulting the President” via t-shirts. This is not the only time and place tees have landed someone in serious trouble <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":259,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[540,581],"tags":[2238,7379,7364,7376,5914,7420,5913,2469,7403],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52341"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/259"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=52341"}],"version-history":[{"count":27,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52341\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":88276,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52341\/revisions\/88276"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=52341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=52341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=52341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}