25 Mar 2019 | News and features, Press Releases
The Testaments by Margaret Atwood
Inspired by our friends Book-ish in Crickhowell, Index on Censorship and VINTAGE are coordinating a nationwide series of publication-day celebrations and midnight openings at independent bookshops across the UK as part of Banned Books Week UK to celebrate the publication of Margaret Atwood’s highly anticipated The Testaments (sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale) on 10 September.
Host a midnight opening on the evening of 9 September or publication-day event on 10 September in your bookshop
We would like to support all independent bookshops marking the publication of The Testaments. You could open your doors after hours to booklovers on publication night, and, as the clock strikes midnight, sell copies of The Testaments. Or perhaps you could host celebrations on publication day – you could ask a local author to take part in live readings or a discussion, run a feminist banned-book quiz, have a The Testaments themed party or stage an anti-Gilead protest. Index and VINTAGE will provide you with POS materials (promotional posters, badges and tote bags) for window and in-store displays.
Go BIG – win £750 from VINTAGE to host your event
Do you have an exciting event idea? An attention-grabbing PR stunt? Fancy running a handmaid procession through the streets or creating your own Mayday resistance squad? Go as BIG as you dare – send us a brief event pitch, no more than 1 side of A4, outlining what you want to do, how you want to do it and how much you think it will cost to: [email protected], with the subject line ‘The Testaments publication celebration’. The deadline to apply is 30 April and we will let you know if your application has been successful in May.
The Handmaid’s Tale (re)read
With just under 6 months still to go until The Testaments is published and Season 3 of The Handmaid’s Tale on the horizon, we’ll be celebrating the dystopian classic throughout the month of May, and we’d love you to join in. Run your own The Handmaid’s Tale book club, invite a local author to chair a discussion, or create a Handmaid-themed display. We will be providing reading-group packs to guide your events and posters to display.
How to get involved
To let us know that you are planning events for either The Testaments or The Handmaid’s Tale, to make sure your bookshop is listed on the Banned Books Week website and interactive map and to request POS materials and reading group packs, please contact: [email protected]
To enter to win £750 to fund your attention-grabbing activity, please contact: [email protected] by 30 April 2019 (see instuctions above)
Please order your copies of The Testaments (9781784742324), RRP £20.00, from your local PRH Territory Manager, your preferred wholesaler, or direct via TBS Sales on 01206 256161
[Please note, reading or opening the book before midnight (00.01 on 10 September) is STRICTLY UNDER EMBARGO. You will be asked to sign a strict non-disclosure agreement about the contents of the book before receiving deliveries. Thank you.]
About The Testaments
When the van door slammed on Offred’s future at the end of The Handmaid’s Tale, readers had no way of telling what lay ahead.
With The Testaments, the wait is over.
Margaret Atwood’s sequel picks up the story 15 years after Offred stepped into the unknown, with the explosive testaments of three female narrators from Gilead.
‘Dear Readers: Everything you’ve ever asked me about Gilead and its inner workings is the inspiration for this book. Well, almost everything! The other inspiration is the world we’ve been living in.’ Margaret Atwood
Sign up to The Atwood Diaries newsletter for breaking news about the book: https://www.penguin.co.uk/margaretatwood
About Margaret Atwood
Margaret Atwood is the author of more than fifty books of fiction, poetry and critical essays. Her novels include Cat’s Eye, The Robber Bride, Alias Grace, The Blind Assassin and the MaddAddam Trilogy. Her 1985 classic The Handmaid’s Tale went back into the bestseller charts with the election of Donald Trump, when the Handmaids became a symbol of resistance against him; and the 2017 release of the award-winning Channel 4 TV series. Sales of the English language edition have now topped 8 million copies worldwide.
Atwood has won numerous awards including the Booker Prize, the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Imagination in Service to Society, the Franz Kafka Prize, the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade and the PEN USA Lifetime Achievement Award. She has also worked as a cartoonist, illustrator, librettist, playwright and puppeteer. She lives in Toronto, Canada.
About VINTAGE
VINTAGE publishes some of the greatest writers and thinkers from around the world and across the ages – from Philip Roth, Yuval Harari, Haruki Murakami and Alice Munro to Ian McEwan, Jeanette Winterson and Salman Rushdie. Writers who have invented new worlds and explored our own; who have captured imaginations and won dozens of prizes, from the Nobel and the Booker to the Pulitzer and beyond.
Born in New York in 1974 and moving to London in 1990, VINTAGE is also famed for its beautiful, stylish design and brave innovation. The publisher comprises nine imprints, each one as distinctive as its own past: Jonathan Cape, Bodley Head, Harvill Secker, Chatto & Windus, Hogarth, Yellow Jersey, Square Peg, VINTAGE Paperbacks and VINTAGE Classics.
About Index on Censorship
Index on Censorship is a nonprofit organisation that fights for free expression and defends against censorship worldwide through an award-winning magazine, regular events and advocacy. Founded in 1972, Index has published work by censored writers and poets including Salman Rushdie, Kurt Vonnegut, Arthur Miller; Nobel Prize Winning authors Nadine Gordimer and Wole Soykinka; contemporary writers and campaigners including Ian Rankin, Lily Cole, Hilary Mantel and of course Index Patron Margaret Atwood.
More information: www.indexoncensorship.org
About Banned Books Week UK
Banned Books Week UK (22-28 September 2019) is a week-long celebration of the freedom to read co-ordinated by Index on Censorship in partnership with literary and freedom of expression organisations in the UK including the Booksellers Association. Banned Books Week was initiated by the American Library Association (ALA) in 1982 in response to an increasing number of challenges in the US to books in schools, libraries and bookshops. The ALA lists The Handmaid’s Tale as number 37 out of “100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 1990-2000.”
More information: www.bannedbooksweek.org.uk
20 Feb 2019 | Academic Freedom, News and features, Scholar at Risk
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Ethiopian blogger and academic, Zelalem Kibret, was raised in a country where living in silence or speaking your mind was often a choice between life and death.
“Political prisoners have been released but the academic conditions are getting worse and universities are shutting down” says Zelalem, a Scholar-in-Residence at the Centre of Human Rights and Legal Pluralism at Canada’s McGill University. “Students are being killed.”
In May 2005, the Ethiopian general election and its bloody aftermath resulted in the purging of hundreds of journalists and opposition leaders. It was this political phenomenon and its snowballing effect that led Zelalem and his colleagues to create Zone 9, a blogging network that campaigned for human rights, freedom of speech and shared ideas and hopes for Ethiopia that challenged the status quo, on May 2012.
But, in April 2014, Zelalem was arrested and charged with a crime of “outrage against the institution and the constitutional order”. He was detained, interrogated, and tortured for three months in the infamous Maekelawi Prison before being transferred to Qilinto Prison, where he was held until July 2015.
After his release, Zelalem was fortunate to participate in the African Leadership Initiative fellowship sponsored by then-US president Barack Obama, which allowed him to study at The University of Virginia. He then took part in a research fellow the Centre of Human Rights and Global Justice at New York University and became a visiting fellow at Harvard. Now at McGill, Zelalem is researching intergovernmental relationship, new social movements and liberation technologies, post-conflict Africa, and the role of individuals in international law.
Since the appointment of new prime minister Abiy Ahmed in April 2018 Ethiopia has undergone a series of reforms, including the release of some political prisoners, journalists and activists from custody. Not long after, the government announced Maekelawi Prison, where Zelalem and many others were tortured, would be closed. Abiy has made a dramatic effort to support the democratic transition for the African state by announcing plans to institute term limits for prime ministers, encouraging exiled opposition politicians to return home and proposing an end to government monopolies in key economic sectors.
Though the developments are promising, there are still causes for concern
“The political sphere is somehow liberalised and it’s somehow good but structurally and institutionally, laws that are used to suppress freedom of expression are still there.”
Zelalem spoke to Lauren Savage, an MA journalism student at the University of Sheffield, for Index on Censorship.
Index: What makes you such an avid supporter of freedom of expression?
Zelalem Kibret: Since 2005 I have been involved in several projects and in many journalistic areas. I personally cherish freedom of expression and freedom of speech because it directly involves me. While in Ethiopia I personally had many experiences of repression and suppression. So I am very interested to fight for my own personal rights.
Index: How did you go about setting up Zone 9 and what drove you to do this?
Zelalem: Zone 9 was a network of like-minded young Ethiopians who met on Facebook. One day in May 2012 one of our friends asked us to visit a political prisoner, a journalist actually. She has now been released and is living in the US. After we visited her, we discussed about collaborating with each other and making a collective. Each of us had our personal blogs and by creating Zone 9 we made our blogging capacity more approachable. It was something we made on Facebook, it was a very informal organisation, we didn’t talk about it before and then suddenly it happened.
Index: Why was zone 9 perceived as such a threat to the government?
Zelalem: When we created Zone 9 one of our main goals was to fill a gap—since the May 2005 election, many journalists in Ethiopia were killed and I am pretty sure there were no political journalists in Ethiopia that were actively criticising the Ethiopian government during the time of 2011 and 2012. We tried to fill that gap and the government was not happy with our decision. We were campaigning on human rights, we were writing critical articles, and writing many memos about the treatment of political prisoners. We were also writing memos on different types of rights—political, economic and social. I think it was very critical and that is why the government was upset about our group.
Index: What was your experience of being arrested and imprisoned? What were your charges and what led to your release?
Zelalem: For the first three months we were accused of “outrage against the institution and the constitutional order”. The government was accusing us of collaborating with western human rights and other types of powerful organisations to overthrow the Ethiopian government. That was the first and primary charge especially during early interrogations. After three months of interrogation we were also charged with terrorism.
For me it was a mixed experience, yes prison is bad and there was torture, especially in the first three months during the interrogations. It was very tough for all of us, but once they established the charge and the case against us, we were transferred to another remand centre. It was quite an experience for me to see and interact with other political prisoners. There were hundreds of them imprisoned with me and other colleagues. It was somehow a good experience to see what it looked like, to be inside the real Ethiopia. Prison is bad and very restrictive, as we know, especially Ethiopian prisons, which are highly overcrowded and dilapidated. The prison conditions are very terrible, there is a lack of service, water and electricity that made it difficult.
I was released in July 2015. We were waiting for another trial in 10 days when a police officer came to our compound and they called my name and the name of a friend of mine. Out of the nine, five of us got released on 8 July 2015 and they told us that the charges against us were dropped and withdrawn by the public prosecutor. They didn’t tell us why four of our friends remained in jail but five of us were released suddenly with no reason. Finally, we found out that president Barack Obama was to visit Ethiopia in ten days time and we heard that the US Embassy in Ethiopia and the US government was pushing the Ethiopian government against the charges on us. I believe it was like a kind of welcoming gift to the president.
Index: What were the challenges of adjusting to a new life in America?
Zelalem:I directly came from an academic background but it’s a very different academic curriculum and environment. So, acclimating to this new context was the first challenge that I faced. When you are a researcher and academic who focuses on topics like Ethiopia, being in Ethiopian is a major asset. However, I’m 15,000 kilometres away from Ethiopia and contextualising myself to what is happening there presently is another challenge that I face, as well as it being a very different environment generally. Otherwise, academics and many good friends have made my settlement and time in the US very easy.
Index: You have been studying liberation technology, why is technology so important for freedom of expression?
Zelalem: Last year I was at Harvard at the Hutchins Centre for African and American Research and my major research topic was liberation technology and new social movements in present day sub-Saharan Africa. I was focusing on a protest movement and how new tools such as social media are enabling young people and the general populace to organise protests and facing security and the government. Freedom of expression is an individual right but it also needs to be protected by groups, it needs campaigns and movement for security to protect it. Individually you can’t get what you want unless you fight with other like-minded citizens for rights like freedom of expression, so these tools are making this networking easier. I am a living witness for that, if it wasn’t for these new technologies I might not have known my friends at Zone 9 or many other activists all over the continent in Africa. To secure, as well as to protect these technologies is important and fundamental to enable us in the present day. At the same time governments are using these tools to spy on their on citizens, it’s a trade off, there are some pros and cons with technology, it’s a natural consequence. But it’s a very important thing too.
Index: Has your relationship to journalism changed since the Zone 9 blog?
Zelalem: Yes of course! I took some training and I try to make my work more formal and professional since we established Zone 9. I personally used to blog and write on many topics, but it was just a personal thing and I could write whatever I wanted. But since we started Zone 9, my work started becoming more professional. So I think it changed a lot.
Index: What are your thoughts of freedom of expression in Ethiopia now in 2018? Do you believe it has improved?
Zelalem: The political sphere is somehow liberalised and it’s somehow good but, still structurally and institutionally, those laws used to suppress freedom of expression, those institutions that are being controlled by the government to suppress freedom of expression and to jail journalists are still in place. So even if the spirit is good, the repressive tools are still there and at any time the government can back pedal to the past. I am cautiously optimistic, there have been some optimistic stories, there have been some new openings but especially institution wise we keep stepping back and we need to step forward I believe.
Index: What advice would you give to journalists in Ethiopia today?
Zelalem: There are a lot of things to give but mainly to be professional in their work is the most important thing. Journalism is currently used as an attacking tool, by one group against another maybe by the government against the opposition or some ethnic interests against another the interest of a perceived enemy ethnic group. If I have to offer some advice, first and foremost, it’s professionalism. I wish that Ethiopian journalists will adhere to this very important virtue. [/vc_column_text][vc_separator][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner][vc_single_image image=”105189″ img_size=”full” onclick=”custom_link” link=”https://www.scholarsatrisk.org/”][vc_column_text]This article was created in partnership with Scholars at Risk, an international network of institutions and individuals whose mission it is to protect scholars, promote academic freedom, and defend everyone’s right to think, question, and share ideas freely and safely. By arranging temporary academic positions at member universities and colleges, Scholars at Risk offers safety to scholars facing grave threats, so scholars’ ideas are not lost and they can keep working until conditions improve and they are able to return to their home countries. Scholars at Risk also provides advisory services for scholars and hosts, campaigns for scholars who are imprisoned or silenced in their home countries, monitoring of attacks on higher education communities worldwide, and leadership in deploying new tools and strategies for promoting academic freedom and improving respect for university values everywhere.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][vc_separator][vc_basic_grid post_type=”post” max_items=”4″ element_width=”6″ grid_id=”vc_gid:1550654103101-2d8c5cd7-c584-0″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
3 Dec 2018 | Campaigns -- Featured, Statements
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Index on Censorship is disappointed that Canada’s Supreme Court has upheld a decision by lower courts that requires a journalist with VICE Media to hand over materials related to communications with a journalistic source. A coalition of 12 press freedom and civil liberties groups from around the world, including Index, intervened in the case.
The journalist, Ben Mackuch, wrote articles based on interviews with a suspected terrorist, which led to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police requiring him to hand over all communications with the suspect.
The case raised important issues related to the confidentiality of journalists’ sources. The coalition argued that the protection of confidential journalistic material from compelled disclosure is a fundamental condition of freedom of the press. Without it the watchdog role journalists play in a democratic society is undermined, as sources risk being deterred from sharing information of public interest with members of the press.
Jodie Ginsberg, Index on Censorship CEO, said “The Supreme Court of Canada should have given greater weight to protection of journalistic sources, because it is essential for protecting press freedom. This is a disappointing outcome, which sends the wrong signal to other countries.”[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_basic_grid post_type=”post” max_items=”4″ element_width=”6″ grid_id=”vc_gid:1543840257753-4c278ff0-3cc9-4″ taxonomies=”6534″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
13 Nov 2018 | Campaigns -- Featured, Statements
Dear Mark Zuckerberg:
What do the Philadelphia Museum of Art, a Danish member of parliament, and a news anchor from the Philippines have in common? They have all been subject to a misapplication of Facebook’s Community Standards. But unlike the average user, each of these individuals and entities received media attention, were able to reach Facebook staff and, in some cases, receive an apology and have their content restored. For most users, content that Facebook removes is rarely restored and some users may be banned from the platform even in the event of an error.
When Facebook first came onto our screens, users who violated its rules and had their content removed or their account deactivated were sent a message telling them that the decision was final and could not be appealed. It was only in 2011, after years of advocacy from human rights organizations, that your company added a mechanism to appeal account deactivations, and only in 2018 that Facebook initiated a process for remedying wrongful takedowns of certain types of content. Those appeals are available for posts removed for nudity, sexual activity, hate speech or graphic violence.
This is a positive development, but it doesn’t go far enough.
Today, we the undersigned civil society organizations, call on Facebook to provide a mechanism for all of its users to appeal content restrictions, and, in every case, to have the appealed decision re-reviewed by a human moderator.
Facebook’s stated mission is to give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together. With more than two billion users and a wide variety of features, Facebook is the world’s premier communications platform. We know that you recognize the responsibility you have to prevent abuse and keep users safe. As you know, social media companies, including Facebook, have a responsibility to respect human rights, and international and regional human rights bodies have a number of specific recommendations for improvement, notably concerning the right to remedy.
Facebook remains far behind its competitors when it comes to affording its users due process. 1 We know from years of research and documentation that human content moderators, as well as machine learning algorithms, are prone to error, and that even low error rates can result in millions of silenced users when operating at massive scale. Yet Facebook users are only able to appeal content decisions in a limited set of circumstances, and it is impossible for users to know how pervasive erroneous content takedowns are without increased transparency on Facebook’s part. 2
While we acknowledge that Facebook can and does shape its Community Standards according to its values, the company nevertheless has a responsibility to respect its users’ expression to the best of its ability. Furthermore, civil society groups around the globe have criticized the way that Facebook’s Community Standards exhibit bias and are unevenly applied across different languages and cultural contexts. Offering a remedy mechanism, as well as more transparency, will go a long way toward supporting user expression.
Earlier this year, a group of advocates and academics put forward the Santa Clara Principles on Transparency and Accountability in Content Moderation, which recommend a set of minimum standards for transparency and meaningful appeal. This set of recommendations is consistent with the work of the UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion of the right to freedom of expression and opinion David Kaye, who recently called for a “framework for the moderation of user- generated online content that puts human rights at the very center.” It is also consistent with the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, which articulate the human rights responsibilities of companies.
Specifically, we ask Facebook to incorporate the Santa Clara Principles into their content moderation policies and practices and to provide:
Notice: Clearly explain to users why their content has been restricted.
- Notifications should include the specific clause from the Community Standards that the content was found to violate.
- Notice should be sufficiently detailed to allow the user to identify the specific content that was restricted and should include information about how the content was detected, evaluated, and removed.
- Individuals must have clear information about how to appeal the decision.
Appeals: Provide users with a chance to appeal content moderation decisions.
- Appeals mechanisms should be easily accessible and easy to use.
- Appeals should be subject to review by a person or panel of persons that was not involved in the initial decision.
- Users must have the right to propose new evidence or material to be considered in the review.
- Appeals should result in a prompt determination and reply to the user.
- Any exceptions to the principle of universal appeals should be clearly disclosed and compatible with international human rights principles.
- Facebook should collaborate with other stakeholders to develop new independent self-regulatory mechanisms for social media that will provide greater accountability3
Numbers: Issue regular transparency reports on Community Standards enforcement.
- Present complete data describing the categories of user content that are restricted (text, photo or video; violence, nudity, copyright violations, etc), as well as the number of pieces of content that were restricted or removed in each category.
- Incorporate data on how many content moderation actions were initiated by a user flag, a trusted flagger program, or by proactive Community Standards enforcement (such as through the use of a machine learning algorithm).
- Include data on the number of decisions that were effectively appealed or otherwise found to have been made in error.
- Include data reflecting whether the company performs any proactive audits of its unappealed moderation decisions, as well as the error rates the company found.
Article 19, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Center for Democracy and Technology, and Ranking Digital Rights
Fundación Ciudadano Inteligente
7amleh – Arab Center for Social Media Advancement
Access Now
ACLU Foundation of Northern California
Adil Soz – International Foundation for Protection of Freedom of Speech
Africa Freedom of Information Centre (AFIC)
Albanian Media Institute
American Civil Liberties Union
Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain (ADHRB)
Arab Digital Expression Foundation
Artículo 12
Asociación Mundial de Radios Comunitarias América Latina y el Caribe (AMARC ALC)
Association for Progressive Communications
Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law
Bytes for All (B4A)
CAIR San Francisco Bay Area
CALAM
Cartoonists Rights Network International (CRNI)
Cedar Rapids, Iowa Collaborators
Center for Independent Journalism – Romania
Center for Media Studies & Peace Building (CEMESP)
Child Rights International Network (CRIN)
Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)
Digital Rights Foundation
EFF Austin
El Instituto Panameño de Derecho y Nuevas Tecnologías (IPANDETEC)
Electronic Frontier Finland
Elektronisk Forpost Norge
Foro de Periodismo Argentino
Foundation for Press Freedom – FLIP
Freedom Forum
Fundación Acceso
Fundación Ciudadano Inteligente
Fundación Datos Protegidos
Fundación Internet Bolivia.org
Fundación Vía Libre
Fundamedios – Andean Foundation for Media Observation and Study
Garoa Hacker Club
Gulf Center for Human Rights
HERMES Center for Transparency and Digital Human Rights
Hiperderecho
Homo Digitalis
Human Rights Watch
Idec – Brazilian Institute of Consumer Defense
Independent Journalism Center (IJC)
Index on Censorship
Initiative for Freedom of Expression – Turkey
Instituto Nupef
International Press Centre (IPC)
Internet without borders
La Asociación para una Ciudadanía Participativa ACI Participa
MARCH
May First/People Link
Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA)
Media Rights Agenda (MRA)
Mediacentar Sarajevo
New America’s Open Technology Institute
NYC Privacy
Open MIC (Open Media and Information Companies Initiative)
OpenMedia
Pacific Islands News Association (PINA)
Panoptykon Foundation
PEN America
PEN Canada
Peninsula Peace and Justice Center
Portland TA3M
Privacy Watch
Raging Grannies
ReThink LinkNYC
Rhode Island Rights
SFLC.in
SHARE Foundation
SMEX
South East Europe Media Organisation
Southeast Asian Press Alliance (SEAPA)
SumOfUs
Syrian Archive
Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression (SCM)
t4tech
Techactivist.org
The Association for Freedom of Thought and Expression
Viet Tan
Vigilance for Democracy and the Civic State
Visualizing Impact
Witness
