ODEE and Fishrot: Index signs letter in support of artistic freedom
We are writing to bring attention to the case of the visual and performance artist and master’s student, ODEE, who is being sued for damages (including legal fees likely upwards of £500,000) in the High Court in London on the 25 and 26 September 2024. The lawsuit has been brought against ODEE by Samherji, one of Europe’s largest fishing companies based in Iceland, for the unauthorised use of its website and brand.
ODEE’s art piece centres around the concept of corporate responsibility through a fictional apology – via a website he created and a mural at the Reykjavík Art Gallery – for the alleged corruption committed by Samherji to secure fishing quotas in Namibia revealed in 2019 by the whistleblower, Jóhannes Stefansson, and which quickly became known as the #Fishrot Scandal.
Samherji has exercised its rights to challenge ODEE by issuing an interim injunction to require him to take down the website with the spoof apology, and he did so in May 2023. The court will need to decide whether to vary or discharge the injunction, and whether the artist should be liable for Samerjhi’s legal costs and alleged damages. However, the question remains as to whether such action is proportionate, or an attempt to silence those who speak out against corruption.
The alleged corruption is currently the focus of a high-profile trial in Namibia in which 10 suspects have been charged including the former Ministers of Justice and Fisheries – the majority of whom have been held in custody since 2019, and who may face even longer jail terms if convicted. Investigations into Samherji’s activities are continuing in Iceland.
Ensuring that whistleblowers can disclose information about wrongdoing in the public interest is vital for democratic accountability – so that proper investigations can occur, and those responsible are held to account. Protecting whistleblowers safeguards the public’s right to know, an essential element of the right to freedom of expression.
Artistic freedom of expression – through film, theatre, literature, painting and conceptual art, among many other media – is also vital to a healthy democracy and to public discourse and the development of ideas. Artistic expression allows individuals, communities and societies to consider and examine moral and ethical choices, as well as how power works and affects us, whether it is political, social or economic.
Freedom of expression links whistleblowers and artists – individuals must be protected from the powerful who wish to stop them speaking up. Jóhannes Stefansson and ODEE deserve our support. In today’s world, where we face existential challenges to protect our natural resources, environment and climate systems, we can ill afford to let these voices be silenced.
We, the undersigned, therefore, urge Samherji to drop its disproportionate case against the artist, ODEE.
SIGNED BY:
African Centre for Media & Information Literacy (Nigeria)
Artistic Freedom Initiative (International)
Blueprint for Free Speech (International)
Daphne Caruana Galizia Foundation (Malta)
Disruption Network Lab e.V. (Germany)
Centre for Free Expression (Canada)
Civil Liberties Union for Europe
Citizens Network Watchdog Poland
Climate Whistleblowers (France)
GlobaLeaks (Italy)
Government Accountability Project (USA)
Index on Censorship (UK)
Institute for Public Policy Research (Namibia)
Justice and Environment (EU)
Oživení (Czech Republic)
Pištaljka (Serbia)
Platform to Protect Whistleblowers in Africa (PPLAAF)
Pro Publico (International)
Protect (UK)
Shadow World Investigations (UK)
Spotlight on Corruption (UK)
The Whistleblower House (South Africa)
Transparency International Ireland
Transparency International Italy
Whistleblowers-Netzwerk e.V. (Germany)
Whistleblower Chile
Whistleblowing International Network
* Protect is a registered Charity in England and Wales No.1025557
** WIN is a Scottish Charitable Incorporated Organisation No. SC048595
Russia: Index welcomes release of Vladimir Kara-Murza and Evan Gershkovich from jail
Index on Censorship welcomes the news that Vladimir Kara-Murza, a journalist, author, filmmaker and fierce Putin critic, and Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich have today been released as part of a multi-country prisoner exchange including Russia and the USA.
The prisoner swap, one of the largest ever, has taken place in Ankara under the auspices of the Turkish National Intelligence Agency and involves 26 people held in Russia, Belarus, the USA, Germany, Slovenia, Norway and Poland. The exchange follows private discussions between the intelligence services of Russia and the United States and is the largest such exchange in decades.
Index has long championed the causes of Kara-Murza and Gershkovich.
Kara-Murza, a British citizen and father of three, had been a tireless pro-democracy campaigner and a champion of legislation that has provided for human rights violators and corrupt officials around the world to be subject to asset freezes and visa bans (so-called Magnitsky Acts). Kara-Murza was sentenced to 25 years in prison in 2022; he was awarded the Václav Havel Human Rights Prize the same year.
In mid-July, WSJ reporter Gershkovich was sentenced to 16 years in a high-security penal colony on espionage charges. He was arrested in March 2023 while on a reporting trip in the city of Yekaterinburg 1,600 km east of Moscow with prosecutors arguing that he worked for the US Central Intelligence Agency, claims which the journalist, his employer and the US government denied.
Jessica Ní Mhainín, Head of Policy and Campaigns at Index on Censorship, said, “In most of Europe, Kara-Murza is rightly lauded for his work in defence of human rights and was awarded the Václav Havel Human Rights Prize in 2022. During his time in detention, he was held in solitary confinement and has had access to medical treatment restricted despite suffering from polyneuropathy, a condition affecting his central nervous system, brought on by two failed poisonings by FSB agents in 2015 and 2017.”
Index on Censorship CEO Jemimah Steinfeld said: “Evan Gershkovich’s trial was held in secret and his conviction is widely regarded as politically motivated. Index will continue to stand up for press freedom both in Russia and in other countries worldwide. His release has come not a moment too soon but we will continue to fight for the release of reporters unjustly held in countries around the globe for doing their jobs.”
Sasha Skochilenko, who was sentenced to a seven-year jail term for distributing anti-war leaflets in a Russian grocery store, and Alsu Kurmasheva, a Russian-American reporter for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty who was seized by Russian authorities on a trip to visit her mother and has been in prison since October, are among those have who also been released. Former US Marine Paul Whelan, who was sentenced to 16 years in prison in 2020 on espionage charges, has also been freed.
Vadim Krasikov, a colonel in Russia’s FSB intelligence service, who has been serving a life sentence in a German jail since 2019 for the murder in broad daylight in a Berlin park of dissident Zelimkhan Khangoshvili, is also part of the exchange.
For more information, please contact policy and campaigns manager Jessica Ní Mhainín on [email protected] or acting editor Sally Gimson on 07890 403338 or [email protected]
Vladimir Kara-Murza: The family man who has spent two years in prison
Vladimir Kara-Murza is a father to three children: two daughters and a son. He bears the exact same name as his father, who was one of the country’s most prominent journalists and a pioneer of independent post-Soviet television. As a child growing up in Russia the younger Vladimir made up stories constantly and loved to imitate politicians, a creative, energetic character who had his family constantly roaring with laughter. When he was 12 he set up a political party to defend the rights of children. He moved to London as a teenager and, at the age of 15 in 1997, stayed up all night to follow the results of the UK general election. He was a pallbearer at the funeral of the late US senator John McCain. He’s a “cat person” in contrast to his wife, Evgenia, who’s a “dog person”. He has a sweet tooth, especially when it comes to ice cream. He loves to cook.
These are just some facts about a man that the campaigner Bill Browder calls “incredible”, “the type of person that our world needs the most”. But these are not what he is known for. Instead it’s his incarceration in a Russia prison, which yesterday reached the grim milestone of two years, that has made him headline news. It’s his poisoning by Putin not once but twice. It’s also, more positively, his unrelenting pursuit of democracy and human rights, which has seen him being awarded the Václav Havel Human Rights Prize. It’s his role in the 2012 passage of the Magnitsky Act, which freezes the assets and bans the visas of Russian human rights violators.
Two years ago he was sentenced to 25 years for charges linked to his criticism of the war in Ukraine. His sentence is the lengthiest at present of any political prisoner in Russia (side note yesterday was also the two-year anniversary of the detention of Sasha Skochilenko, who was arrested for distributing anti-war leaflets in a grocery store. She is serving a seven-year sentence for that simple act). Fears for Vladimir’s life are large. His health alone is in a terrible place.
Last night at an event organised by Browder in London, spokespeople from the UK government said they’d be taking a more active role in pursuing Vladimir’s release. We hope they are true to their word and their efforts bear fruit. As we wrote yesterday up to this point the UK government’s response has been “woefully inadequate”.
At the end of yesterday’s event his mother, Elena, took to the stage. She bookended her speech with five simple words:
“Please help save my son.”
Vladimir was not in Russia when they launched their full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Just before returning there he had been in London, taking to the stage at Barbican and eating with friends at Cecconi’s, a popular Italian restaurant in Shoreditch. His life was good. He could have stayed and many begged him to do just that. But he felt compelled to return. In his words: “I’m a Russian politician. All Russians should stand up to Putin. But how can I ask others to do that if I’m too afraid to return to my own country? I must be there.”
Vladimir went back to Russia to fight for a greater cause because he felt duty-bound. We now have a duty to fight for him.