Nominees for the 2022 Freedom of Expression Awards – Arts
Yemeni artist Thiyazen Al-Alawi uses his craft to shed light on the destructive situation in Yemen through street art campaigns. He hopes to inform the public of what the war has done to his homeland.
First inspired by the Arab Spring in 2011 as a teenager, Thiyazen turned to art as a form of self expression, launching his first street art campaign in 2012 as the war began. As conflict invaded every aspect of Yemeni life, he decided “every artwork is proof of their existence and continuity in life…something that gives people hope.” Thiyazen’s work aims to reflect the ugliest and truest forms of war, and its effect on real people.
Thiyazen’s latest project is a collaboration with British artist Luc Waring titled “Letters from Yemen”, a series of drawings and letters from conversations between the two about art, peace, war, and the horrors Thiyazen has witnessed himself. Inspired by a saying Thiyazen heard in his youth, the walls must do the talking when the newspapers are silent; the compiled writings and portraits raise awareness about the war in Yemen with a sensitivity and humanity only an artist and their medium can produce, eventually gaining traction and attention by the public. Due to the ongoing occupation by the Houthi militia, Thiyazen is risking his own safety as he continues to produce art.
Thiyazen continues his work on long-term projects with the Swiss Arts Council to spread awareness about the conditions in Yemen. He also contributes to the “Yemen Peace Forum” with the Sana’a Center for Strategic Studies, writing articles and studies like “Art and Youth in Yemen” in the Journal of Transitional Justice of the University of Oxford. “I feel that I must tell the truth no matter what,” Thiyazen explains,” I could sacrifice my life for the truth. And nothing will stop me.”
Moe Moussa is a journalist, podcaster, poet, and the founder of the Gaza Poet Society. He uses various forums and mediums to amplify the voices of Palestinians.
Moe began his career as a translator for international journalists in 2014. He was soon inspired to speak about the situation from his own perspective. Studying English literature in college and growing up around poetry, it was only fitting that Moe decided to use his art to bring the individual lives of people in Gaza to the international audience.
Delving into Palestinian poetry led Moe to connect online with poets all over the world. He was interested in using his skills as a poet and a journalist to share the stories of individual lives with a global audience. After realising the lack of opportunities for poets to share their work in Arabic and English, he created a space to offer an opportunity for young people to speak and find their own voice in 2018 – the Gaza Poet Society. The organisation is supported solely by donations from international poets who believe in Moe’s cause. He is at constant risk of Hamas censorship and at the will of the Gazan government to approve of civilian movement out of the country.
Watching his family go days without water, power, and freedom of movement, Moe temporarily left Gaza for Istanbul in 2021 to continue his work more effectively. He was awarded the Times Richard Beeston Bursary in 2019 and has plans to complete his fellowship in London in 2022 following delays due to the pandemic. As the creator and host of the podcast “Gaza Guy”, he is focused on amplifying the voices of young Palestinians through poetry and fights for access to education in Gaza. Additionally, Moe has contributed to We Are Not Numbers, a site publishing stories of Palestiniain youth experiencing war. Moe recently released his debut poetry collection titled “Flamingo” and is working freelance to support the Gaza Poet Society from abroad.
Fatoş İrwen is a Kurdish artist and teacher from Diyarbakır, Turkey working with a variety of materials and techniques.
İrwen regularly uses her art to document her experiences as a Kurdish woman living in Turkey. The performance piece Füg [Fugue, 2012] documented her first experiences in police custody where she was physically and sexually abused. In 2016 İrwen was again taken into custody while boarding a domestic flight. She was charged with “resisting the police, opposition to the law against demonstrations and assemblies, propaganda for a terrorist organisation, belonging to a terrorist organisation” and sentenced to 3 years, 1 month and 15 days in prison. The charges related to a peaceful protest in 2013.
During her imprisonment, İrwen made 1,500 works of art using materials accessible to her, including hair, tea, food, shoe polish, old textbooks and newspapers, bed sheets, laundry pegs, scarves, and mould and cigarette ashes. Among other projects, the 2019 piece titled “Gülleler” (Cannonballs) features balls crafted from the hair of inmates participating in a hunger strike. “The hunger strike was like firing a shot to the outside world,” İrwen says. After being released, İrwen collected her art pieces in her first solo exhibition titled Exceptional times which was featured at Depo in Istanbul in 2021.
Discussing censorship by the Turkish authorities, İrwen says “this issue still continues to be the most painful issue of our lives and for which we pay a heavy price.” She is deeply committed to fighting for freedom of expression and artistic freedom.
Due to her challenges with Turkish authorities and her identity as a Kurdish woman, İrwen has found that galleries and art spaces are sometimes reluctant to feature her work. Still, she has found success, and her work has been exhibited in Iran, Germany, Austria, Hong Kong, Iceland, France, Mexico, Iran, Morocco, Sweden, and Turkey.
Hamlet Lavastida has been described as a political activist by way of art. Lavastida uses his art to document human rights abuses in Cuba and to criticise Cuban authorities.
Lavastida pushes boundaries of censorship in Cuba and highlights the distinctly Cuban spirit of cultural resistance. His work reconstructs old Cuban political and military propaganda.
Throughout his career, Lavastida has sought to use his art to fight for transparency and freedom of speech in order to fight against the Cuban government. He sees his art as a non-violent tool to fight against the current regime. Lavastida has been involved in various protest movements in Cuba, including the 27N movement which grew out of the protests held on 27 November 2020. The movement works to bring attention to the censorship of artistic expressions in Cuba.
In June 2021, Lavastida was arrested after returning from a residency at the Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin. He was accused of ‘incitement to commit a crime’ because he suggested that other artists stamp images related to the San Isidro and 27N movements on local currency. Following his arrest, Amnesty International named him as a ‘prisoner of conscience’. Lavastida stayed in prison for 87 days. He was finally released without charges.
Lavastida has been living in exile in Europe since September 2021. He has been warned that he will be arrested immediately if he ever tries to return to Cuba. Lavastida is deeply concerned by the situation. While has experienced threats and censorship targeting his art throughout his career, he is now experiencing threats against him as an individual. He believes this is part of a greater trend of censorship in Cuba.
Lavastida plans to continue creating art and speaking up about the situation in Cuba.
One year after murder of Khashoggi, NGOs renew call for justice
Saudi journalist, Global Opinions columnist for the Washington Post, and former editor-in-chief of Al-Arab News Channel Jamal Khashoggi offers remarks during POMED’s “Mohammed bin Salman’s Saudi Arabia: A Deeper Look”. March 21, 2018, Project on Middle East Democracy (POMED), Washington, DC.
Jamal Khashoggi entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on 2 October, 2018, to obtain official documents in order to get married, but he did not make it out alive. He was brutally killed inside the consulate in what the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, Agnes Callamard, called a “premeditated extrajudicial killing” for which the state of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is responsible.
Khashoggi was a well-known Saudi journalist and intellectual who, due to safety concerns and the inability to continue his work inside Saudi Arabia, decided to live in self-imposed exile in the United States. He was a firm promoter of freedom of speech and press freedom in the Arab world.
While he was no outright opponent of the Saudi royal family and did not call for regime change in the country, he criticised the arrest of human rights defenders and the reform plans of the crown prince. This alone may have been enough to seal his fate.
After more than two weeks of deception and denial about his death, on 19 October 2018 the Saudi authorities admitted that Khashoggi had been killed inside the consulate by a group of men connected to the authorities, but continued to deny any direct knowledge or responsibility for the crime. One year after his murder, the remains of Khashoggi’s body are still missing and have not been returned to his family.
The Saudi authorities implicated 11 individuals responsible for Khashoggi’s killing, some of whom face the death penalty. They are currently being tried in the Specialised Criminal Court, a jurisdiction notorious for violations of fair trial guarantees. The trial proceedings remain in large part secret, and criminal responsibility in the chain of command has not yet been established.
Khashoggi’s death sparked outrage and was widely condemned. In the days and weeks following his killing, the international community began to ask questions and to demand clarity. The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights issued several press releases, while the UN Special Procedures on enforced disappearance, summary executions and freedom of expression issued a joint Urgent Appeal. Moreover, the UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, stressed the need for a prompt, thorough and transparent investigation into the circumstances of Khashoggi’s death and full accountability for those responsible.
On 24 October 2018, the EU Parliament issued a resolution urging the Saudi authorities to disclose the whereabouts of Khashoggi’s remains. In addition to demanding an independent and impartial international investigation into the journalist’s death, the resolution also classified it as being part of a pattern of a widespread crackdown against prominent human rights defenders, women activists, lawyers, journalists, writers and bloggers, which has intensified since Mohammad bin Salman began consolidating control over the country’s security institutions.
It stated that the systematic practice of enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings could amount to a crime against humanity. Lastly, it requested that the perpetrators of Khashoggi’s murder be identified and brought to justice, following a fair trial held in accordance with international standards before an impartial court and with international observers present.
On 5 November 2018, Saudi Arabia’s human rights record was examined by UN Member States as part of the third cycle of the Universal Periodic Review. The killing of Khashoggi was raised extensively during the review and featured heavily among the 258 recommendations the Saudi authorities received to improve the human rights situation in the country. At least 27 states raised concerns about Khashoggi’s extrajudicial killing, with many reiterating the need for a transparent, impartial, independent and effective investigation.
In January 2019, Callamard decided on her own initiative and under the terms of her mandate as UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial executions to open a special human rights investigation into Khashoggi’s killing.
On 7 March 2019, in a landmark initiative, a group of 36 UN Member States led by Iceland delivered a joint statement during the 40th session of the Human Rights Council expressing serious concern over the human rights situation in Saudi Arabia and condemning in the strongest possible terms the killing of Khashoggi. The statement reiterated the call for a prompt, independent, impartial and transparent investigation into his murder and stressed the need to protect journalists and to uphold the right to freedom of expression.
During the 41st session of the HRC, on 19 June 2019, Callamard presented her report, which concluded that the murder of Khashoggi was “overseen, planned and endorsed by high-level state officials of Saudi Arabia”. The Special Rapporteur found that both the investigations conducted by Saudi Arabia and Turkey failed to meet international standards and that the ongoing trial in Saudi Arabia of 11 suspects, while seemingly an important step towards accountability, also fails to meet international fair trial standards.
Callamard believes that the killing of Khashoggi constitutes an international crime over which states should claim universal jurisdiction. Asserting that her human rights inquiry is not a substitute for a criminal investigation or a court of law, the UN Special Rapporteur called on the Human Rights Council, the Security Council or the UN Secretary-General to demand a follow-up criminal investigation.
Most recently, on 23 September 2019, during the 42nd session of the HRC, Australia delivered a joint statement on behalf of 23 UN member states raising concerns over the persecution and intimidation of activists, the practice of enforced disappearance and arbitrary detention, and reports of torture and unfair trials as well as extrajudicial executions.
Furthermore, the statement called for an end to impunity over the murder of Khashoggi and highlighted the need for the truth to be established and accountability achieved. We deeply regret that a number of states that had joined the March 2019 statement have now decided to no longer support this immediate call for action. We would like to highlight that states still have the possibility to become co-signatories until 11 October 2019.
Additionally, during the course of the past year and as a response to Khashoggi’s murder as well as the war in Yemen, some governments have suspended weapon sales to Saudi Arabia.
While we welcome the appeals, pledges and measures taken by some states over the past year and consider them as steps in the right direction towards accountability for the murder of Khashoggi, more tangible actions must follow. There is an undeniable risk that with big events scheduled to take place in Saudi Arabia in 2020, such as the G20 summit and the famous Dakar Rally, state-to-state relations could normalise. We cannot stand by and allow the return of business as usual as this would mean that Khashoggi died in vain and that there is little hope for hundreds of other unlawfully disappeared, detained, tortured or executed activists whose cases failed to attract similar levels of international attention.
As Callamard rightly said during a side event at the 42nd session of the HRC: “While one year must feel like a lifetime to Khashoggi’s family and friends, in human justice time and the search for truth it is very brief. Thus we should not lose sight of what we are trying to achieve; we should not lose hope and courage that justice can be attained.”
In that spirit, the undersigned organisations renew their call for action, demanding the following:
We call on the international community, and in particular the UN, to:
- Take action to ensure that a further impartial, prompt, thorough, independent and effective criminal investigation into the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi is opened;
- Ensure that all perpetrators of the crime, including those at the head of the chain of command, are identified and prosecuted in a fair and transparent trial without recourse to the death penalty;
- Establish an immediate moratorium on all arms sales and exports of surveillance technology to Saudi Arabia;
- Co-sign the joint statement led by Australia on behalf of 23 UN Member States by 11 October;
- Introduce and endorse a UN resolution establishing a monitoring mechanism over the human rights situation in Saudi Arabia; and
- Urge the authorities in Saudi Arabia to implement the recommendations below.
We call on the authorities in Saudi Arabia to:
- Return the remains of Khashoggi’s body to his family;
- Invite independent international experts to oversee investigations into his murder; cooperate in good faith with all UN mechanisms; and ensure that those responsible for his death are brought to justice;
- Immediately and unconditionally release all human rights defenders, writers, journalists and prisoners of conscience in Saudi Arabia whose detention is a result of their peaceful and legitimate work in the promotion and protection of fundamental human rights;
- Establish a moratorium on the death penalty, including as punishment for crimes related to the exercise of the rights to freedom of opinion and expression, and peaceful assembly;
- Guarantee in all circumstances that all human rights defenders and journalists in Saudi Arabia are able to carry out their legitimate human rights activities and public reporting without fear of reprisals; and
- Ratify the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and bring all national laws limiting the rights to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly and association into compliance with international human rights standards.
List of signatories:
Americans for Democracy and Human Rights in Bahrain
Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy
European Center for Democracy and Human Rights
European Saudi Organisation for Human Rights
International Service for Human Rights
Forest Folktales explore grisly tales of love and adventure
Its towering pine trees illuminated in green and purple, fairy lights twinkling in the treetops, the Faraway Forest teemed with groups of storytellers who had congregated to share grisly tales of love and adventure. Though it may have seemed so to attendees, Index on Censorship’s Forest Folktales: Uncensored did not take place in a mystical fairyland, but rather at this year’s Latitude Festival, an annual event that brings together visual artists, musicians, dancers, poets, comedians, and chefs in the picturesque woods of Henham Park, in Suffolk.
Since 2006, Latitude festival has hosted some of the world’s most famous musicians and artists, along with obscure and up-and-coming creatives. Its stages have boasted names ranging from the Killers to alt-J to Mumford and Sons. This year, Latitude was held from 18 to 21 July. It comprised nine music venues of different sizes; nine different performance arenas for a variety of theatrical, comedic, and artistic performances (including the Faraway Forest); and a multitude of diverse food and drink options.
Forest Folktales: Uncensored, Index’s contribution to the festival, was staged over three days. Folktales, folk music, and other oral history traditions are essential for passing cultural heritage onto future generations. Yet over the years, many folktales have been censored or revised to be age appropriate for younger audiences. The original folktales — which are often gory and sexual — erode over time. In staging performances of uncensored folk tales in all their subversive glory, Index hopes to resist centuries of editorial censorship and honour the cultures that live on in the performance of folktales and folk songs.
On Friday, 19 July, Index hosted Jade Cuttle, Scarlett Curtis, and Jemima Foxtrot. Cuttle is a poet, writer, and singer songwriter, and is currently deputy editor of poetry at Ambit magazine. She read aloud two folktales: The Dauntless girl, an English folktale about a fearless young girl’s inadvertent murder of a gravedigger, and Tailypo, a North American folktale about an old man’s demise at the hands of a demonic creature whose tail he has eaten.
Curtis is a writer and blogger, most known for editing the award-winning collection of essays, Feminists Don’t Wear Pink and other lies. She read exerpts of two stories from The Bloody Chamber by the English feminist author Angela Carter, the Snow Child and Bluebeard, which deal with gender violence and sexuality in a classic folktale style. The Snow Child tells of a girl who is magically conjured in the image of a Count’s ideal woman, who is then tricked by the Count’s wife into pricking her finger on a rosebush. Bluebeard tells of young wife who, upon being forbidden by her absent husband from exploring one room in his castle, finds that the room contains torture instruments and the embalmed corpse of his previous wife.
Foxtrot, a writer and performance artist, is also director of the theater group Unruly Mess. She closed out the evening with a folktale and folk song: the Irish song Weila Weila, popularised by the Dubliners, which tells the story of a mother who is hanged for murdering her baby with a penknife; and the Welsh story the Erl-King, which tells of a father whose young son is killed by a supernatural being only his son can see.
The second night of Forest Folktales: Uncensored, Saturday, 20 July, saw the return of Foxtrot, again performing Weila Weila, as well as Angela Carter’s story The Werewolf, about a child who, upon being attacked by a wolf, slices off the wolf’s paw — only to discover that the paw has transformed into the hand of her beloved grandmother. She was joined by Max Porter, a novelist and the former editorial director of Granta and Portobello Books, and the poet Zaffar Kunial. Porter performed the Dauntless Girl and Tailypo, and Kunial performed Carter’s the Snow Child.
On the final evening, Sunday, 21 July, Index’s own Helen Galliano and Anna Millward performed various uncensored folk tales, including a special Icelandic fairy tale translated by Millward, concluding the weekend.