{"id":55397,"date":"2014-02-26T12:55:10","date_gmt":"2014-02-26T12:55:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/?p=55397"},"modified":"2017-03-27T16:05:04","modified_gmt":"2017-03-27T15:05:04","slug":"five-parts-sochi-2014-russians-didnt-want-citizens-see","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/?p=55397","title":{"rendered":"Four parts of Sochi 2014 the Russians didn’t want their citizens to see"},"content":{"rendered":"

1. The fifth ring malfunction<\/h2>\n
\"(Image:

(Image: Jaroslav Francisko\/Demotix)<\/p><\/div>\n

The lighting rig which proudly illuminated one less Olympic ring<\/a>\u00a0than it should have caused considerable embarrassment for the Russian organisers of the opening ceremony, as Sochi 2014 opened its gates to the athletes. Known as the \u201cstubborn snowflake\u201d Russian viewers at home were greeted with footage from the Opening Ceremony rehearsal<\/a>, so they were none the wiser. The Russians later showed their funny side by<\/a>\u00a0 only featuring four rings in the Closing Ceremony performance.<\/p>\n

2. Pussy Riot getting whipped in the face<\/h2>\n
\"(Image:

(Image: Sky News\/YouTube)<\/p><\/div>\n

While pre-emptive arrests<\/a> meant many activists were unable to protest at all, five members of the punk group Pussy Riot and their cameraman were attacked by Cossack security patrols<\/a> as they performed under a sign advertising the Winter Olympics.<\/p>\n

Footage showed<\/a>\u00a0Cossack security staff whipping band members, pulling off their ski masks, and throwing them to the ground.<\/p>\n

Russian deputy prime minister Dmitry Kozak dismissed the attacks<\/a>: “The girls came here specifically to provoke this conflict,” he explained. “They had been searching for it for some time and finally they had this conflict with local inhabitants.”<\/p>\n

While the international media covered the face-whipping incident in fairly minute detail, Russian press clippings about the arrest are hard to come by. Pussy Riot’s previous stunt in Moscow’s main cathedral, which landed them with a jail sentences and heavy fines, have already been scrubbed from the internet<\/a>.<\/p>\n

3. Justin Kripps’ website<\/h2>\n
\"(Image:

(Image: @justinkripps\/Twitter)<\/p><\/div>\n

Russian fans hoping to keep updated by the Canadian bobsleigher’s website were disappointed<\/a>,\u00a0as Russian censorship authorities blocked access to it. It’s still unclear why, but it may be linked to a risque photo<\/a>\u00a0Kripps tweeted a month prior to the Games. The snap featured his burly four-man bobsled team in their underwear at a weigh in. The photo went viral,\u00a0 in particular within the gay\u00a0community.<\/p>\n

4. Almost every story about corruption, gay-bashing, forcible evictions and the environment<\/h2>\n
\"(Image:

(Image: Heather Blockey\/Demotix)<\/p><\/div>\n

While the run-up to Sochi might have been dominated by negative stories in the Western media, with tales of \u00a0homophobia,<\/a>\u00a0 corruption<\/a> and\u00a0environmental destruction<\/a>,\u00a0local journalists had to be a lot more cautious when reporting the \u201ctrue\u201d face of Sochi. Strict surveillance measures were imposed on all journalists’ emails, social media and internet use \u2013 to keep any negative stories from breaking.<\/p>\n

“It seems to me that some of these surveillance measures were conscientiously made public … to send a message,” commented investigative journalist and security services expert\u00a0Andrei Soldatov<\/a>\u00a0while at the Games.<\/p>\n

Self-censorship, he says, has become a “big problem” among local reporters and investigative journalists \u2013 who often felt scared to report on the wider political context of Putin’s games<\/a>.\u00a0“There are some fears that Sochi was a test ground … these kind of measures may be made commonplace in other parts of Russia,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

BONUS: And…Russians accuse US of censorship and malicious media bias<\/h2>\n
\"(Image:

(Image: Screenshot)<\/p><\/div>\n

Censorship during NBC’s coverage of the Opening Ceremony included missing out a live performance by girlband t.A.T.u, omitting a Russian police choir performing Daft Punk’s “Get Lucky,\u201d deleting Communist-themed vignettes, and failing to air a congratulatory speech by IOC chief Thomas Bach, praising the Russians.\u00a0Russian media whooped with glee<\/a>\u00a0when the hashtag #NBCFail started trending on Twitter in response to the censorship.<\/p>\n

American magazine The Nation published\u00a0 a rare honest analysis<\/a> of the American media’s vitriol against Russia, noting that even before the Games began, the Washington Times had written off the venues as a \u201cSoviet-style dystopia\u201d and warned in a headline, \u201cTERRORISM AND TENSION, NOT SPORTS AND JOY.\u201d<\/p>\n

Provocative BuzzFeed headlines like\u00a0\u201cPhotographic Proof That Sochi Is A Godforsaken Hellscape Right\u00a0Now\u201d<\/a>\u00a0and the Twitter account @SochiProblems, provoked outrage in Russia.\u00a0One Russian netizen took such offence with @SochiProblems that he travelled to London and created his own photo tour of the city \u201cin Sochi style\u201d. \u201cThe Other Side of London, where the guided tours don’t go\u201d is a depressing trip through some of London’s worst outer districts.\u00a0The results<\/a> (translated from Russian) make for sombre viewing, tinged with humour.<\/p>\n

The infamous double toilet in Sochi also has a doppelganger in London, as one Russian Instagram user, living in the capital, proved<\/a>. The side-by-side facilities, identical to the toilets which athletes had endlessly mocked in the Olympic village, were installed in a typical upmarket hipster cocktail bar<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This article was posted on 25 February 2014 at indexoncensorship.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some of the biggest talking points from the Winter Olympics were muted in the host country. Alastair Sloan reports<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":218,"featured_media":55439,"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":[4059,581,15],"tags":[158,4390,7349,2212],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55397"}],"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\/218"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=55397"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55397\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":88006,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55397\/revisions\/88006"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/55439"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=55397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=55397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=55397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}