Contents – Unsung heroes: How musicians are raising their voices against oppression
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Human Rights Day 2024: A tribute to human rights defenders
Human Rights Day was formed on the anniversary of the founding of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a landmark document created at the UN General Assembly in Paris on 10 December 1948. The declaration enshrines in international law the human rights that all people are entitled to.
Despite the declaration, all around the world human rights are being challenged, degraded and attacked. That is why this year, on Human Rights Day, we pay tribute to five human rights defenders who have worked tirelessly to defend people’s rights and have been persecuted as a result.
Jemimah Steinfeld, CEO at Index on Censorship said:
“In this increasingly polarised and authoritarian world these people stand out as beacons of hope and light. It’s depressing to think that over 75 years since the Declaration, we still need a day like this but that should not detract from the bravery and fortitude of these people. May their example show us all how we can all better fight injustice.”
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Marfa Rabkova (Belarus)Marfa Rabkova is a human rights defender who has been behind bars since 17 September 2020. She has long been targeted by the Belarusian authorities as a result of her civic activism. Marfa became head of the volunteer service at the Human Rights Centre Viasna in 2019. During the 2020 presidential election, she joined the “Human Rights Defenders for Free Elections” campaign, which registered over 1,500 election observers. When peaceful protests began to take place after the election, she helped document evidence of torture and violence against demonstrators. Marfa was indicted on a long list of charges, including inciting social hostility to the government and leading a criminal organisation. She was sentenced to 14 years and 9 months in prison in September 2022, after nearly two years of pre-trial detention. Index on Censorship calls for her immediate and unconditional release.
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Mohammed Zubair (India)After co-founding the leading Indian fact-checking platform Alt News, Mohammed Zubair has faced significant threats for challenging misinformation and disinformation propagated by influential members of the ruling party. Zubair and others decided to found AltNews.in, a website dedicated to busting fake news and addressing flaws in the Indian media ecosystem, such as overt political pressure on media outlets and the opaque methods by which government funding is awarded to media outlets. After facing years of persecution, Zubair now faces further charges for a post he made on social media, including sedition. Today, Index on Censorship released a statement signed by 11 organisations including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Committee to Protect Journalists, calling for all charges to be dropped. In 2023, Zubair won the Index on Censorship Freedom of Expression Award for Journalism.
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Diala Ayesh (Palestinian Territories)Diala Ayesh is a Palestinian human rights defender and lawyer, who has advocated for the freedom and fair treatment of political prisoners. She has faced arrest, threats and harassment from both the Israeli occupation forces and the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. On 17 January 2024, Israeli military forces arrested Ayesh as she passed through a military checkpoint in the West Bank. On 25 January, she was issued with a four-month administrative detention order by the Israeli military’s Central Command for the occupied West Bank. The military court upheld this order, extending it for another four months until 17 May. It was subsequently renewed for an additional four months. According to her lawyers, she was subjected to assault, threats, and insults by Israeli soldiers during her arrest. During the first week of her arrest, Ayesh was denied access to her lawyer and any phone calls. Her lawyer could only see her once on 23 January 2024. Since her arrest, her family has not heard from her, and they are not allowed to call or visit her. Last month, Diala was awarded the Index on Censorship Freedom of Expression Award for Campaigning.
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Matiullah Wesa (Afghanistan)In 2009, Matiullah Wesa and Attaullah Wesa established Pen Path, an Afghan civil society organisation (CSO) working across Afghanistan to campaign for greater access to education for boys and girls in Afghanistan. In this role, they visited 34 provinces of the country and almost all districts. Pen Path’s first step was to re-open closed schools, after the Taliban had previously shut them down in remote villages of Afghanistan. Prior to the Taliban’s takeover in 2021, Pen Path acted as mediator between the government and the Taliban, while also encouraging local elders to collaborate with them to re-open those schools. Pen Path estimates that their team has re-opened more than 100 schools to date, and has established a number of new schools across the country. On 27 March 2023, Matiullah Wesa was arbitrarily arrested by the Taliban’s General Directorate of Intelligence (GDI) while returning from evening prayer. The day after his arrest, the GDI raided his house and confiscated his personal mobile phone and laptop. On 29 March that year, the Taliban spokesperson confirmed his arrest, accusing him of illegal activities. His family were not allowed to visit him and there has been no avenue to challenge the legality of his detention.He was later released on 26 October 2023. Wesa remains in Afghanistan today, continuing Pen Path’s work in secret. In 2023, Wesa won the Index on Censorship Freedom of Expression Award for Campaigning. |
Science in Iran: A catalyst for corruption
Iran, a country that in its distant past played a significant role in the development of knowledge and laid the foundations upon which modern science now stands, has experienced a tremendous urge for scientific rebirth over the past century.
But Iranian scientists are facing a government that considers itself the manifestation of God’s will on Earth, that has no qualms about intimidation and oppression, and whose daily rhetoric revolves around the word “enemy”.
It wants its ideological model to be seen as the path to success and is terrified of criticism, quickly making everything from nuclear energy and the space industry to vaccination and public medical services into a security issue.
It may be no surprise that Iran’s nuclear programme is now securitised, and that the Supreme National Security Council demands silence or compliance from science and media institutions. The tool of national security has now become a pressure point in Iran for any thought that does not align with the government’s ideology.
I have covered science and technology news in Iran for more than 10 years. Although I’ve dealt with issues that were considered red lines on multiple occasions, the only time my colleagues and I received a death threat was when I published a story about the importance of blood transfusion and rejected the unscientific and dangerous practice of hijamat (cupping therapy – a form of Islamic traditional medicine). But that incident is in no way comparable to the deadly consequences of censorship that occurred during the Covid-19 pandemic.
When the pandemic was claiming lives, the supreme leader of the Islamic Republic, Ali Khamenei, banned the entry of vaccines from the USA and the UK into Iran. This was a decision that cost many lives.
The reaction of domestic media to this decision was silence under censorship, and when foreign media reacted they were accused of being agents of the enemy.
“You won’t find even one media outlet asking what the consequences of the leader’s decision were in this regard,” said one doctor and medical science activist, who asked to remain anonymous.
“Even Dr [Masoud] Pezeshkian, who is himself a physician, at that time – before his presidential election – when asked about the vaccine, said we didn’t want to import vaccines from certain countries based on our policy, although he was surely aware of the effects of this decision.”
While Iranian-made vaccines had not yet received their controversial approval, and parts of the Food and Drug Agency in the Ministry of Health were trying to enforce minimal oversight, the Ministry of Intelligence accused three scientists and managers of co-operating with the enemy and obstructing the approval of the vaccine.
It requested that the judiciary prosecute them.
Correspondence showing this was revealed only in a set of documents published by a hacker group called Ali’s Justice after it gained access to Iran’s judiciary.
In this correspondence, it was mentioned that, due to the matter’s sensitivity, the case should be investigated without informing the public or arresting the individuals. A few days later, the Barakat vaccine was approved in Iran.
Pressuring individuals active in scientific fields has a long history in Iran.
After the protests following the 2009 presidential election results, known as the Green Movement, several professors who supported them were expelled from universities. There were similar incidents after the events of the Woman, Life, Freedom movement.
In late January 2018, the intelligence agency of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps arrested several environmental activists involved in a project to save the endangered Asiatic cheetah. The Tehran prosecutor accused them of espionage.
But a panel including ministers of justice and lawyers announced that they had found no evidence of espionage. Even the Ministry of Intelligence stated that it had no evidence to support the charges.
One of those arrested was conservationist Kavous Seyed-Emami, a Canadian citizen. Two weeks after his arrest, prison authorities informed his family that he had killed himself.
However, his family believe that his death was due to physical injuries resulting from torture in prison, and signs of beating were visible on his body.
Another detainee was forced to confess on state television, and others served their sentences in full. Finally, after enduring six years of imprisonment without any evidence of the reasons for their arrest, the remaining detainees were released in April as part of a pardon.
Blocking the flow of information
One of the methods researchers used during the pandemic to estimate the actual mortality rate from Covid-19 and expose the discrepancies in official statistics was to refer to the monthly birth and death statistics published by the National Organisation for Civil Registration.
Mahan Ghafari, a virology specialist at the University of Oxford who followed this issue, told Index how, after the reports were published, the organisation restricted and stopped publishing this data. Eventually, access to the organisation’s website was blocked for those outside Iran.
Another part of this pressure involves halting international collaborations. Ghafari recalls how, after a paper was published with an Israeli co-author, the Iranian regime accused all the scientific findings of being a plan against Iran by Israel.
Scientists working on Iran-related issues from outside the country face the risk of harassment. Even their travel to Iran and visiting their families is affected, so many prefer to stay silent.
In the wave of arrests of environmental activists, Kaveh Madani, who at the time was the deputy for education and research at the Department of Environment, was also arrested. He repeatedly spoke about security interrogations and the review of his communications by security agencies.
Although the official reason for his arrest was not announced, his explicit warnings about Iran’s water bankruptcy and the impending water crisis were widely considered to be a driving factor.
Madani later left Iran and was appointed as the director of the UN think-tank on water.
The story of Madani’s arrest is often cited as a cautionary tale. When globally recognised Iranian experts return to help improve the situation in Iran, they not only have to battle the complex bureaucracy of the political structure but also face unaccountable political entities. They risk interrogation, arrest, imprisonment and even death. This situation only exacerbates the self-censorship among Iranian scientists living abroad.
An Iranian-American researcher currently working in cosmology, who asked not to be named, told Index about another aspect of structural censorship and the pressures it creates.
“I would love to do things alongside my professional work that bring science into people’s homes – lectures, talks with the media, sharing my experiences. However, due to the fear of being targeted by political groups inside the country and the limitation on my ability to travel to Iran, I have completely stopped these activities. This fear halted great opportunities that could have been used to promote science and help Iran’s scientific development,” they said.
They also pointed out how Iranian scientists outside the country faced dual pressures. While the security environment and censorship prevent them from criticising a scientific project in Iran, they are deprived of many research opportunities elsewhere because of their Iranian background.
Their funding is sometimes denied if they have dual nationality, and they face more difficulties in advancing in the scientific community of their host country.
Powerful but chaotic censorship
When protests over the killing of Mahsa (Jina) Amini sparked the flames of the Woman, Life, Freedom movement in Iran, students and academic institutions were not spared from the assault. Not only were students attacked and suppressed, professors who raised their voices in support of them were also repressed.
Encieh Erfani, an assistant professor of physics at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Basic Sciences in Iran, resigned in 2022 in protest against the regime’s treatment of students and is now continuing her scientific activities outside the country. She told Index about the wider issues.
“The problem here is that the censorship structure has red lines that you know exist and, from experience, you know you should not even come close to them,” she said.
What Erfani points to is one of the most significant reasons for the intensification of self-censorship in Iran. The fear of unknowingly crossing red lines leads to conservatism in the scientific community – a community that can grow only by pushing existing boundaries.
Kiarash Aramesh, director of the Pennsylvania Western University’s James F Drane Bioethics Institute, which focuses on biomedical sciences and the humane treatment of patients, agrees. He recently published a book on pseudoscience in medicine in Iran.
“As long as you don’t oppose the principles of Islamic traditional medicine, you can publish your articles. But the scientific institution in Iran is so influenced by politics that even within the scientific community there will be opposition to you,” he said.
Beyond slowing down the process of scientific development, censorship in Iran is creating a corrupt environment from which anti-scientific and pseudoscientific trends emerge and thrive.
“When there is corruption in society, there is also corruption within the scientific community. Contrary to popular belief that scientists are always pure and honest people, they, too, are subject to this corruption. Under the conditions of a totalitarian regime, in the absence of transparency and freedom of criticism, even scientists may engage in unethical behaviours and participate in corruption for personal gain. Just as we have seen in history, this story repeats itself,” Erfani said.
Censorship in science in Iran is a many-faced monster that, on the one hand, forces scientists within the country into conservatism and, on the other hand, tries to ideologise the structure of science through threats and intimidation.
It has discouraged and prevented many Iranian scientists abroad from participating in scientific discourse and contributing to its development in Iran. It restricts international collaboration between Iranian and non-Iranian scientists and it creates a dark space for the growth of corruption – a situation exacerbated by the repression and threats against science media and free scientific journalism.
The dangers of boycotting Russian science
Mikhail Viktorovich Feigelman started working at the Landau Institute for Theoretical Physics in Moscow in 1980. Eleven years later, when the Soviet Union collapsed, funding and decent modern equipment were rare for Russian scientists but there was suddenly intellectual freedom.
“This is why I stayed in Russia at this time, despite the hardships,” the 70-year-old physicist told Index. “This freedom during the 1990s was very important, but it didn’t last long.”
In May 2022, just months after Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Feigelman fled to western Europe.
“I left exclusively because of the war,” he said. “I could no longer live in Russia anymore, where I see many parallels with Nazi Germany. I will not return home until the death of Putin.”
Initially, Feigelman took up a position at a research laboratory in Grenoble, France, where he stayed for a year and a half. Today, he is employed as a researcher at Nanocenter in Ljubljana, Slovenia.
“I have not experienced any prejudice or discrimination in either France or Slovenia,” he said.
“But in Germany – at least in some institutions – there is a [ban] on Russian scientists, and it is forbidden to invite them for official scientific visits.”
These measures stem from a decision taken by the European Commission in April 2022 to suspend all co-operation with Russian entities in research, science and innovation.
That included the cutting of all funding that was previously supplied to Russian science organisations under the EU’s €95.5 billon research and innovation funding programme, Horizon Europe.
The boycotting had already begun elsewhere. In late February 2022, the Journal of Molecular Structure, a Netherlands-based peer-reviewed journal that specialises in chemistry, decided not to consider any manuscripts authored by scientists working at Russian Federation institutions.
One former employee at the journal, who wished to remain anonymous, said Russian scientists were always welcomed to publish in the journal. “A decision had been taken, for humanitarian reasons, after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, not to accept any submission authored by scientists (whatever their nationality) working for Russian institutions,” they said.
Last January, Christian Jelsch became the journal’s editor. “This policy to ban Russian manuscripts was implemented by the previous editor,” he said. “But it was terminated when I started as editor.”
Feigelman believes all steps taken “to prevent institutional co-operation between Europe and Russia are completely correct and necessary.”
But he added: “Contact from European scientists with individual scientists must be continued, as long as those scientists in question are not supporters of Putin.”
Alexandra Borissova Saleh does not share that view.
“Boycotts in science don’t work,” she said. “There is a vast literature out there on this topic.”
She was previously head of communication at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology and head of the science desk at Tass News Agency in Moscow.
Today, Borissova Saleh lives in Italy, where she works as a freelance science journalist and media marketing consultant. She has not returned to Russia since 2019, mainly because of how scientists are now treated there.
“If you are a top researcher in Russia who has presented your work abroad, you could likely face a long-term prison sentence, which ultimately could cost you your life,” she said.
“But the main reason I have not returned to Russia in five years is because of the country’s ‘undesirable organisations’ law.”
First passed in 2015 – and recently updated with even harsher measures – the law states that any organisations in Russia whose activities “pose a threat to the foundations of the constitutional order, defence or security of the state” are liable to be fined or their members can face up to six years in prison. This past July,
The Moscow Times, an independent English-language and Russian-language online newspaper, was declared undesirable by the authorities in Moscow.
“I’m now classed as a criminal because of science articles I published in Russia and in other media outlets,” Borissova Saleh explained.
Shortly after Putin invaded Ukraine, an estimated 7,000 Russian scientists, mathematicians and academics signed an open letter to the Russian president, voicing their public opposition to the war.
According to analysis carried out by the Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta, since February 2022 at least 2,500 Russian scientists have left and severed ties with Russia.
Lyubov Borusyak, a professor and leading researcher of the Laboratory of Socio-Cultural Educational Practices at Moscow City University, carried out a detailed study of Russian academics included in that mass exodus.
Most people she interviewed worked in liberal arts, humanities and mathematics. A large bulk of them fled to the USA and others took up academic positions in countries including Germany, France, Israel, the Netherlands and Lithuania. A common obstacle many faced was their Russian passport.
It’s a bureaucratic nightmare for receiving a working and living visa, Borusyak explained.
“Most of these Russian exiles abroad have taken up positions in universities that are at a lower level than they would have had in Russia, and quite a few of them have been denied the right to participate in scientific conferences and publish in international scientific journals.”
She said personal safety for academics, especially those with liberal views, is a definite concern in Russia today, where even moderate, reasonable behaviour can be deemed as extremist and a threat to national security.
“I feel anxious,” she said. “There are risks and I’m afraid they are serious.”
Hannes Jung, a retired German physicist believes it’s imperative scientists do not detach themselves from matters of politics, but that scientists should stay neutral when they are doing science.
Jung is a prominent activist and co-ordinator for Science4Peace – a cohort of scientists working in particle physics at institutions across Europe. He said their aim was “to create a forum that promotes scientific collaboration across the world as a driver for peace”.
He helped form Science4Peace shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, as he felt the West’s decision to completely sever ties with Russian scientists was counterproductive and unnecessary.
“At [German science research centre] Desy, where I previously worked, all communication channels were cut, and we were not allowed to send emails from Desy accounts to Russian colleagues,” said Jung. “Common publications and common conferences with Russian scientists were strictly forbidden, too.”
He cited various examples of scientists working together, even when their respective governments had ongoing political tensions, and, in some instances, military conflicts. Among them is the Synchrotron-light for Experimental Science and Applications in the Middle East (Sesame) in Jordan: an inter-governmental research centre that brings together many countries in the Middle East.
“The Sesame project gets people from Palestine, Israel and Iran working together,” Jung said.
The German physicist learned about the benefits of international co-operation among scientists during the hot years of the Cold War.
In 1983, when still a West German citizen, he started working for Cern, the European Organization for Nuclear Research. Based on the Franco-Swiss border near Geneva, the inter-governmental organisation, which was founded in 1954, operates the largest particle physics laboratory in the world. At Cern, Jung was introduced to scientists from the German Democratic Republic, Poland and the Soviet Union. “[In] the Soviet Union the method for studying and researching physics was done in a very different way from in the West, so there was much you could learn about by interacting with Soviet scientists,” he said.
In December 2023, the council of Cern, which currently has 22 member states, officially announced that it was ending co-operation with Russia and Belarus as a response to the “continuing illegal military invasion of Ukraine”.
Jung believes Cern’s co-operation with Russian and Belarussian scientists should have continued, saying there was no security risk for Cern members working with scientists from Belarus and Russia.
“There is a very clear statement in Cern’s constitution, explaining how every piece of scientific research carried out at the organisation has no connection for science that can be used for military [purposes],” he said.
In June, the Cern council announced it would, however, keep its ongoing co-operation with the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR), located in Dubna, near Moscow.
“I hope Cern will continue to keep these channels open to reduce the risk for nuclear war happening,” said Jung.
Can cultural and academic boycotts work to influence social and political change? Sometimes.
They seemed to play a role, for example, in the breakup of apartheid South Africa (1948 to 1994). This topic was addressed in a paper published in science journal Nature in June 2022, by Michael D Gordin.
The American historian of science argued that for science sanctions to work – or to help produce a change of mindset in the regime – the political leadership of the country being sanctioned has to care about scientists and science. “And Russia does not seem to care,” Gordin wrote.
His article pointed to the limited investments in scientific research in Russia over the past decade; the chasing after status and rankings rather than improving fundamentals; the lacklustre response to Covid-19; and the designation of various scientific collaborations and NGOs as “foreign agents”, which have almost all been kicked off Russian soil.
Indeed, Putin’s contempt and suspicion of international scientific standards fits with his strongman theory of politics. But such nationalist propaganda will ultimately weaken Russia’s position in the ranking of world science.
Borissova Saleh said trying to create science in isolation was next to impossible.
“Science that is not international cannot and will not work. Soviet science was international and Soviet scientists were going to international scientific conferences, even if they were accompanied by the KGB,” she said.
Sanctioning Russian scientists will undoubtedly damage Russian science in the long term, but it’s unlikely to alter Russia’s present political reality.
Authoritarian regimes, after all, care about only their own personal survival.