14 Feb 2008 | Comment
The banning of a “preacher of hate” raises far more problems than it solves, writes Abdul-Rehman Malik
The recent denial of a visa to Yusuf al Qaradawi, the influential Qatar-based scholar accused of preaching hatred against homosexuals and encouraging terrorism amongst Palestinians living under Israeli occupation, is unsettling. The reasons for the rebuff are based on ad hoc, inconsistent policy and more importantly on a fear that a certain segment of our population is so particularly gullible and immature that they cannot be trusted to filter good ideas from bad ones.
The truth is that the UK welcomes all kinds of nefarious characters to its shores, whether they are retired despots (like Augusto Pinochet) or leaders of autocratic regimes (the list is rather long).
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6 Dec 2007
Bridging the gap between the monitoring of abuse and effective advocacy for change through facilitation, research, publication, advocacy and new commissioned works.
Index on Censorship is internationally renowned for bringing leading thinkers from the creative communities to tackle the key issues of free expression, as the practitioners most often affected by censorship and most often least protected.
At the same time Index is respected for its rigorous documentation of free expression rights abuses, in partnership with free speech groups in some of the world’s most complex and dangerous regions. This unique combination of research skill and literary intelligence underpins 36 years of effective, timely and valued contributions to the free expression debate. It makes Index simply more accessible, relevant and authoritative on the issues than most media and think tanks.
- Facilitation: Index is an invaluable international partner when it comes to bridging the gap between human rights monitoring and effective advocacy for peaceful change. We give practical support for project development, fundraising, publication, advocacy and local capacity building. This year we are taking a key role in the development of the World Forum for Free Expression, to be held in Oslo and the Amsterdam World Book Capital events in 2009, in particular facilitating the involvement of international experts and advocacy groups; developing project concepts to support Burmese artists, writers and performers as well as media workers.
- Research: Index analyses how and why free speech is filtered and mediated, how the perceptions and positions of opposing communities are represented. This way the positive results of the process can be encouraged, and the negative ones contextualised and challenged – not censored. This year we are researching the links between public politics and the generation of hatred for short term political gain in countries like Turkey, Sri Lanka, Russia, Kenya and Zimbabwe; the cultivation of fear and hate in times of conflict through the spoken and published word, especially in the Middle East; how societies in conflict such as Ireland, Israel, Palestine and South Africa can be dividing or united by open debate on history and heritage; and a study of censorship of creative communities that challenge dissent, in countries like Burma, Iran, Zimbabwe and China.
- Publication: Index plays a key role in the formulation of balanced cases to underpin local campaigns for change, as a respected multi-lingual publisher in print and online and by organizing events to raise awareness or gather key actors and practitioners in free debate. We plan the publication of an updated edition of an Arabic language training guide to election coverage for reporters in the Middle East; publication of a special report on Censorship in the Maghreb; an extensive research, publication and related events programme to inform media industry debate surrounding the national regulation of the Iraqi media; continuing a three year programme to develop an Arabic language edition of Index on Censorship.
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17 Nov 2007 | Comment, News
It was the most iconic image of the second intifada: the killing, on camera, of a Palestinian child caught up in the violence of September 2000. But a French libel case has raised questions about what happened that day in Gaza.
Natasha Lehrer reports
In a packed courtroom in Paris’s Palais de Justice last Wednesday, Charles Enderlin, veteran Jerusalem correspondent for the state-owned television channel France 2, presented 18 minutes of raw footage filmed at the Netzarim Junction in Gaza on 30 September 2000. The footage included 68 seconds of the final moments of Mohammed al Dura, the 12-year-old boy whose death in a barrage of Israeli gunfire was caught on film that day and broadcast around the world. The image became an iconic image of Israeli brutality and was the trigger for some of the worst violence ever seen in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. These 68 seconds of footage form the pivotal evidence in the latest stage in a libel case brought by Enderlin and his employer against Philippe Karsenty, head of a small Internet current affairs watchdog called Media Ratings, who accuses Enderlin of having perpetrated a hoax and demands that he and Arlette Chabot, head of news at France 2, resign.
Karsenty bases his allegations on the work of a small, dedicated—some would say obsessive—group of Israeli, French and American bloggers and journalists who have been voicing serious doubts about the footage filmed that day by Talal Abu Rahma, a freelance Palestinian cameraman who has often worked for France 2. Enderlin himself was not in Gaza that day.
The principal objections to the footage focus on the fact that although Abu Rahma claimed under oath that the boy and his father were subjected to a 45-minute sustained attack from the Israeli position, there are only seven bullet holes in the wall. These bullet holes are perfectly round. According to ballistics experts, this is consistent with having been fired from straight ahead, whereas the Israeli position is to the extreme right of the father and son. Even if the Israelis had managed to hit them directly with bullets fired at an angle from a position over 100 metres away, the holes they would have made in the wall would have been noticeably distended.
The difficulty with unravelling this story is that it has, in the main, preoccupied people whose obsessions are at least in part political, leading to extravagant claims that serve only to undermine their arguments. Much of the evidence on both sides is little more than conjecture. But if one thing can be said about what was viewed in court last week, it is that it is impossible to verify the claim that al Dura was killed by an Israeli bullet from watching the footage alone. The only corroboration of the attack was made by the cameraman himself, whose sworn affidavit at the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights furnishes further essential details of what took place that day.
Enderlin and Abu Rahma have always claimed that what was broadcast on the evening of 30 September 2000 was significantly shorter than what was filmed earlier in the day. In his sworn affidavit, Abu Rahma said that he filmed 27 minutes of footage that day. He told Esther Schapira, the German filmmaker who made the 2002 documentary Three Bullets and a Dead Child: Who Shot Muhammad al Dura, that he filmed six consecutive minutes of the attack. In an interview in the French magazine Telerama in October 2000 Enderlin explained his decision not to include the footage of the actual death throes—“agonies”—of the child because they were so unbearable.
Why then, when the court ordered France 2 to release the raw footage to be shown in court (on a DVD made in the presence of a bailiff in the offices of France 2 from the original tape) did we see footage that was only 18 minutes long? Why, in the course of that 18 minutes did we see only 68 seconds of non-consecutive footage rather than six consecutive minutes of Jamal and Mohammed al Dura? Where are the death throes that Enderlin described so eloquently? In fact, there is nothing in the tape that definitively shows that the child is dead. The first 17 minutes of the video are taken up with scenes of young Palestinian children and youths apparently staging riots, playing at being shot, getting up again and smoking cigarettes nonchalantly. For 16 minutes (Enderlin told the courtroom) only rubber bullets were fired; the real bullets that are fired in the 16th minute were, according to Enderlin’s commentary in court, from the Palestinian position. At no point in the footage do we see gunfire coming from the Israeli position.
Enderlin’s commentary in court contradicted earlier claims he has made about the raw footage. Last Tuesday, he told the BBC that “nothing is staged. Footage of the same events filmed by other news organisations confirms this”. In court he explained why there is in fact no other footage of Mohammed’s death: “All the other cameramen ran away in fear”. In a galvanising moment in court, Guillaume Weill-Raynal, a lawyer (though not working on the case) and friend of Enderlin, gestured to the judge to pause the playing of the footage to show how Mohammed’s foot in one of the penultimate frames is positioned in such a way that shows that he must be dead. Experts, explained Weill-Raynal, have verified that it is impossible for a living person to lie with his foot in such a position; the child is clearly dead at that point in the footage. The judge gestured for the showing of the footage to continue. Within a couple of frames everyone in the courtroom saw the “dead” child raise his arm and leg to peer out in the direction of the gunfire. The irony of his resurrection at that point was lost on nobody.
Does it matter if the child did or did not die that day from an Israeli bullet? For Enderlin, in the end, it clearly doesn’t; in a January 2005 article in the Figaro written by two veteran French journalists who expressed severe reservations about the veracity of the footage, Enderlin responded that “the image corresponded to the reality of the situation, not only in Gaza but also in the West Bank”. In other words, its symbolic importance is much more important than its factual truth. This is undeniably true, given the uses to which the image of al Dura has been put over the last seven years. With his death Mohammed became “the first child martyr of the Intifada”. He was eulogised by the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish. All over the Arab world streets were renamed in Mohammed’s honour and stamps with his picture were issued. Appalling acts of violence were perpetrated in his name. Less than a fortnight after his murder two Israeli soldiers were lynched in Ramallah. Osama bin Laden name-checked the child after 9/11. His picture can be seen in the videotape of Daniel Pearl’s beheading. Both in the west and in the Arab world there are many who even go so far as to claim that Mohammed’s death changed the course of 21st century history.
Given the significance of the footage it is striking that the case hasn’t exactly galvanised the French media. Though it has been reported in the American and Israeli press, and last week appeared on the websites of both the BBC and al Jazeera, the French media have all but ignored it, with the exception of the 2005 article in the Figaro, a brief mention on France 24’s website and some coverage in the Jewish press. Enderlin’s close relationship to former President Chirac was underlined when during the first round of the libel case last year—which he won—the journalist’s lawyer produced a letter from the then president attesting to Enderlin’s integrity. It is perhaps no coincidence that it is only now with Sarkozy in power that the appeal court finally ordered France 2 to release the footage for it to be shown in open court.
It is undoubtedly true that l’affaire Enderlin raises uncomfortable questions regarding the independence of the French media from its government. Questions must inevitably be asked about the ethical standards, transparency and self-regulation of France 2 in particular and the French media in general, which has shown next to no interest in an affair that not only exposes a rotten core at the heart of the country’s public information network but is a salutary reminder that we ignore the importance of maintaining the highest level of journalistic integrity at our peril. Lives depend on it.
12 Nov 2007 | Magazine, Middle East and North Africa
Iranian intelligence is using new interrogation tactics on journalists reports Maziar Bahari who received an invitation to tea at an upmarket hotel
I’m not supposed to tell you this but I met Mr Mohammadi. In fact I met three Mr Mohammadis in four days.
Mohammadi is the nickname of choice for the agents of Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence — Iran’s equivalent of the CIA. They have other nicknames as well, most of which are variations of the names of Shia imams such as Alavi, Hassani and Hosseini. I guess the names don’t indicate a rank or anything (I have to guess because Mr Mohammadi doesn’t tell you much. He asks the questions).
Mr Mohammadi is responsible for the security of Iran. That includes protecting the values of its government. It’s a tough job. It’s like being in charge of Britney Spears’s public image. Well, not exactly, but you get my point. The values change so often that the officials who put former colleagues on trial today are careful not to be incarcerated by the same people tomorrow (who may very well have jailed them in the past). Mr Mohammadi’s job description is to keep the integrity of the regime intact and to stop those who plan to undermine the holy system of the Islamic Republic. But what does undermining mean? And what if it is actually the government of Iran that is doing the under- mining (as it does constantly)? These questions seem to puzzle Mr Mohammadi. So he is more than a little bit paranoid and edgy these days. When he calls you for questioning, you don’t know if he’s going to charge you with something or if he’s seeking advice.
These days, Mr Mohammadi’s main concern is that the American fifth column, disguised as civil rights activists, as well as scholars and journalists, is destabilising the Islamic Republic. The American government has, after all, allocated US$75m to promote ‘democracy’ in Iran. To put it in layman’s terms, it means undermining the Islamic government through the media and civil society groups. The American government is also giving US$63 billion in military aid to Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Israel to ‘counter Iran’. The US would love to have agents in the country to take the money and spend it wisely. There are so many social and economic problems in Iran, that if someone wanted to exploit them to create dissent it wouldn’t be difficult to do so. But most activists I know inside Iran wouldn’t touch the money with a bargepole and resent the American government much more than their own. In the meantime, the Iranian government tries to find foreign perpetrators and domestic accomplices instead of solving the root causes of dissent, such as mismanagement of the country’s economy, poverty, internal migration and drug addiction.
In the 1980s and 1990s, intelligence agents were rough and scary. You were guilty until proven otherwise. But nowadays, they politely call you for tea at some fancy hotel or other to question you. I never understood their fascination with hotels. Why can’t you just meet them in their offices? Or why don’t they come to your office? Why not a restaurant, a park or a cinema? Anyway, when you enter the hotel room you are offered a range of non-alcoholic drinks. Mr Mohammadi is very generous with his beverages. As soon as you finish your tea you are offered Nescafe , then some kind of juice, then Fanta, Pepsi etc. But he never offers anything solid. Why can you drink tea while being asked about plots against the government but not have a biscuit? Does an interrogation over a kebab lunch make it less trustworthy?
These questions of course pop into your head while you’re enjoying the comfort of not being in Mr Mohammadi’s presence. He has killed many people in the past. And you know that he is well capable of violence again if he thinks it necessary Mr Mohammadi’s counterparts in numerous parallel security apparatuses (intelligence units of the judiciary, Revolutionary Guards and the police) still have not caught up with his methods. Recently a number of students and labour activists were arrested and instead of being offered tea or Nescafe in an upscale hotel they spent days in solitary confinement and were beaten up with electric cables and batons. I met the three different Mr Mohammadis while on assignment for Newsweek magazine. I was writing an article about the suppression of civil society and civil rights activists in Iran.
Day one: I’ve set up an appointment with a teachers’ union leader at a cafe . I am supposed to meet him after an exam at the high school where he teaches. The teacher doesn’t show up on time. I wait for an hour. Even by Iranian standards he is late. I call him on his mobile but it is off. Strange. He was so keen to talk the day before, so what has happened? I then get a call from his mobile.
‘Who is that?’ the caller asks. It is not the teacher. ‘I’m Bahari from Newsweek.’ ‘News what?’ ‘Week.’
‘So you’re a journalist. Will call later.’ I learn that the teacher was arrested during the exam and sent to prison. An hour later I get a call from a ‘private number’. It is a new voice. He is much more pleasant. There are several intelligence apparatuses in Iran. The judiciary, Revolutionary Guards and the police – each has its own intelligence arm. But Mr Mohammadi’s Ministry of Intelligence is supposed to be the main one.
It certainly is the most professional, and polite, one. ‘Could you come to … Hotel at three this afternoon’ asks Mr Mohammadi. It’s been a while since I’ve been summoned. Naturally I oblige.
Mr Mohammadi has become more polite, cordial and strangely reassuring. He sneaks a smile when I ask him, ‘Why am I summoned here?’ He used to give me an angry look that would mean he is the one in charge, not me. He begins by asking really simple questions about me and my work: who am I? How long have I worked for Newsweek? Why did I want to meet the teacher? Have I ever met him before? What is the angle of my story? Easy questions to answer. Mr Mohammadi is quite relaxed. He scribbles in his notebook while I talk and every now and then exchanges a smile with me. There’s nothing remotely amusing about what I’m saying, but Mr Mohammadi keeps on smiling. That makes me think: what is so interesting about the banality I’m spewing here? Is he really taking notes or is he doodling a fish? Is it a dead fish? Maybe it’s a fish in the belly of another one. When is he going to let me out of here? Is he going to let me out of here?
I get tired of talking after a while. Then, like Mohammad Ali in the seventh round of his fight with George Foreman, Mr Mohammadi snaps and starts to challenge me. He keeps on smiling. I wish he wouldn’t. Why do I think an American publication is interested in talking to Iranian dissidents? Was I given a list of questions by American paymasters to ask the dissidents? Have I ever been to any conferences in the US or in Europe? Have I ever met any dissidents in Europe or the US? How did I come to be chosen as Newsweek’s correspondent in Iran and not someone else? Mr Mohammadi is now targeting my integrity as a journalist, explicitly trying to make a connection between me and a dissident, suggesting that we both work as agents of the Great Satan and that we are part of a bigger plot to topple the Islamic government.
If this session had been with previous Mr Mohammadis a few years ago, I would be scared of a pending trial and imprisonment for something I had never done – a destiny that befell many of my friends and colleagues. But what makes this Mr Mohammadi tolerable, is his half-hearted approach to the whole thing. His expression is not a grin or a smirk. You can see that he’s been down this road before and really doesn’t think that it works. He almost feels sorry for himself and asks for your sympathy. He looks genuinely confused and somehow out of his depth. His bosses have come up with a conspiracy theory and asked Mr Mohammadi to validate it. He is a smart man and has been down this road many times since the 1979 Islamic revolution. It’s never worked in the past and it doesn’t work now. Mr Mohammadi knows that he’s wasting his time and mine. He knows that his government should reform itself if it wants to survive. As former Minister of Intelligence Ali Yunessi (who was removed from office
Mr Mohammadi says that he is sorry for the trouble. He then gives me a modified farewell spiel in the style of the other Mr Mohammadi and the others before him. The conclusion remains the same: we know where you live.
Day four: I’ve been meeting feminist activists to find out why 15 of them were sent to jail and how they were treated in Tehran’s Evin prison. Apparently, their Mr Mohammadi was not that different from mine. He smiled and tried to find a connection between them and the government of the United States. Less than an hour after I leave the house of my last interviewee, I’m invited to have tea at a hotel. This time it’s a different, more upscale one.
I decide that if Mr Mohammadi’s job is to scare people like me into censoring ourselves or leaving Iran then my job is to tell him and his bosses to wake up and change. You can’t lead a country by scaring people all the time. The Islamic Republic of Iran is at the height of its power. The US has gotten rid of your two great enemies, Saddam in Iraq and the Taliban in Afghanistan. For you, there is no viable opposition to your government and you’re selling oil at 70 dollars a barrel. But with power comes responsibility. Isn’t it time to grow up and feel confident? Why does the government spend its time and money on people like me while the country is being gnawed at from the inside by pollution, unemployment, drug addiction and prostitution? Doesn’t Mr Mohammadi see all the drug addicts in the parks and on the street corners all over Iran? Doesn’t he find it strange that in a country that calls itself the motherland of all Muslims of the world, the average age of the prostitutes is 16?
Finally, Mr Mohammadi’s smile is gone. ‘There is one thing that you forget in your mature government theory.’ I feel that he is finally coming out of his bureaucratic intelligence shell. ‘I’ve heard that you’ve studied in Canada.’
‘Yes.’
‘Good. Now imagine if Iran has 250,000 soldiers in Canada and Mexico [about the same number of American soldiers in Iran’s neighbours Iraq and Afghanistan] and then allocates a budget to help civil rights movements in the United States, let’s say to the Black Panthers or a native Indian movement, wouldn’t Americans be paranoid? We know our internal problems much better than anyone and we definitely do our best to tell those who are responsible about the social maladies you just talked about. But this is Iran. It takes ages for anything to happen. In the meantime we have a vicious enemy to deal with: the United States. It’s determined to topple our government by any means necessary. As Tom Clancy says, the United States is [Mr Mohammadi’s exact words]: A Clear and Present Danger.’
I don’t know how Mr Mohammadi will react to my writing about these encounters. Not too happily, I guess. He strongly advised me not to talk about these meetings with anyone. But it’s important to know that Mr Mohammadi has changed. And if he can change, the Islamic regime can change. I’m still not too convinced about his point about the American threat. Throughout its history, the Islamic Republic has looked for foreign enemies and has usually found them around the world in abundance. Yet on many occasions it has undermined its own legitimacy by linking the genuine domestic opposition to its foreign ene- mies. It’s time for the international community, especially the United States, to accept that the Islamic Republic is a force to be reckoned with and deserves respect as much any other sovereign nation. But it is equally important for the Islamic Republic to realise its own maturity and act responsibly. Maybe instead of a conference on the myth of the Holocaust, our president could organise a conference entitled ‘Islamic Republic of Iran: 28 Years of Trials and Tribulations’.
On a more personal note, the change can start with the government treating its citizens with respect. I know Mr Mohammadi knows where I live. He doesn’t have to brag about it.
Maziar Bahari is a journalist and documentary filmmaker, he was imprisoned in Tehran from June to October 2009.
This article first appeared in Index on Censorship magazine, Volume 36 Number 3. Click here to subscribe.
