2 May 2013 | Newswire, Religion and Culture
An arm of the US government named 15 nations as the “worst violators of religious freedom”.
The Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), an independent advisory body created by the International Religious Freedom Act to monitor religious freedom abuses internationally, released its 2013 report, which idenitifes “governments that are the most egregious violators.”
The 15 countries are Burma, China, Eritrea, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Uzbekistan, Egypt, Iraq, Nigeria, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Vietnam, all of which severely restrict independent religious activity and harass individuals and groups for religious activity or beliefs. These nations are classified as Tier 1 “countries of particular concern” (CPCs) in the report.
Despite its recent opening and political reforms, change in Burma have “yet to significantly improve the situation for freedom of religion and belief.” The report states that most violations occurred against minority Christian and Muslim adherents. China’s government is also cited for its ongoing severe abuses against its citizens’ freedom of thought.
The report said that Egypt’s transitional and elected governments have made progress toward religious freedom, it further highlighted the attacks that Coptic Christians have sustained in the period after the Arab Spring that brought down the Mubarak regime. “In many cases, the government failed or was slow to protect religious minorities from violence.”
The former Soviet states of Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan were included for pursuing state control over religion, targeting Muslims and minorities alike. Iraq was cited for, among other things, tolerating “violent religiously motivated attacks” and Iran for “prolonged detention, torture, and executions based primarily or entirely on the religion of the accused.”
Saudi Arabia continues to suppress religious practices outside of the officially-sanctioned Wahhabi interpretation of Islam, interferes with the faith of guest workers and prosecutes individuals for “apostasy, blasphemy and sorcery”, according to the report. Pakistan has a strict blasphemy law and failure to prosecute acts of religious violence, the report said.
The situation in Sudan has deteriorated since South Sudan gained its independence. Criminalization of apostasy, the imposition of the government’s strict interpretation of Shari’ah on both Muslims and non-Muslims and attacks against Christians, were cited in the report for the decline.
The report also identified Nigeria for continuing religious violence between Muslims and Christians compounded by the government’s toleration of the sectarian attacks. North Korea’s totalitarian regime was also included for its ongoing harassment and torture of citizens based on religious beliefs.
A second tier includes Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Cuba, India, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Laos and Russia, where abuses of religious freedom are tolerated by the government and meet the threshold for CPC designation by the US Department of State, but don’t meet all of the standards for “systemic, ongoing, egregious” measurements.
Other countries regions being monitored included Bahrain, Bangladesh, Belarus, Ethiopia, Turkey, Venezuela and Western Europe.
2 May 2013 | religion & culture
An arm of the US government named 15 nations as the “worst violators of religious freedom”.
The Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), an independent advisory body created by the International Religious Freedom Act to monitor religious freedom abuses internationally, released its 2013 report, which idenitifes “governments that are the most egregious violators.”
The 15 countries are Burma, China, Eritrea, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Uzbekistan, Egypt, Iraq, Nigeria, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Vietnam, all of which severely restrict independent religious activity and harass individuals and groups for religious activity or beliefs. These nations are classified as Tier 1 “countries of particular concern” (CPCs) in the report.
Despite its recent opening and political reforms, change in Burma have “yet to significantly improve the situation for freedom of religion and belief.” The report states that most violations occurred against minority Christian and Muslim adherents. China’s government is also cited for its ongoing severe abuses against its citizens’ freedom of thought.
The report said that Egypt’s transitional and elected governments have made progress toward religious freedom, it further highlighted the attacks that Coptic Christians have sustained in the period after the Arab Spring that brought down the Mubarak regime. “In many cases, the government failed or was slow to protect religious minorities from violence.”
The former Soviet states of Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan were included for pursuing state control over religion, targeting Muslims and minorities alike. Iraq was cited for, among other things, tolerating “violent religiously motivated attacks” and Iran for “prolonged detention, torture, and executions based primarily or entirely on the religion of the accused.”
Saudi Arabia continues to suppress religious practices outside of the officially-sanctioned Wahhabi interpretation of Islam, interferes with the faith of guest workers and prosecutes individuals for “apostasy, blasphemy and sorcery”, according to the report. Pakistan has a strict blasphemy law and failure to prosecute acts of religious violence, the report said.
The situation in Sudan has deteriorated since South Sudan gained its independence. Criminalization of apostasy, the imposition of the government’s strict interpretation of Shari’ah on both Muslims and non-Muslims and attacks against Christians, were cited in the report for the decline.
The report also identified Nigeria for continuing religious violence between Muslims and Christians compounded by the government’s toleration of the sectarian attacks. North Korea’s totalitarian regime was also included for its ongoing harassment and torture of citizens based on religious beliefs.
A second tier includes Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Cuba, India, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Laos and Russia, where abuses of religious freedom are tolerated by the government and meet the threshold for CPC designation by the US Department of State, but don’t meet all of the standards for “systemic, ongoing, egregious” measurements.
Other countries regions being monitored included Bahrain, Bangladesh, Belarus, Ethiopia, Turkey, Venezuela and Western Europe.
26 Mar 2013 | Volume 42.01 Spring 2013
In our increasingly digital times, freedom of expression may look like one of the positive beneficiaries of our ever more interconnected world. Countries like China or Iran build firewalls and employ small armies of censors and snoopers in determined attempts to keep their bit of the internet controlled and uncritical of their ruling elites. But with social media, blogs, citizen journalism, and ever greater amounts of news on a diverse and expanding range of sites, information is shared across borders and goes around censors with greater ease than ever before.
Yet online and off, free speech still needs defending from those in power who would like to control information, limit criticism or snoop widely across people and populations. And it would be a mistake to think the free speech attackers are only the obvious bad guys like China, Iran or North Korea.
While Putin’s Russia jails members of Pussy Riot, passes new laws to block websites and journalists continue to face risks of violent attack, it is Turkey, in 2013, that has more journalists in jail than even Iran or China. In 2004, the European Union assessed Turkey as democratic enough to be a candidate for EU membership. Today, Turkey’s government puts pressure on media companies and editors to rein in critical journalists and self-censorship is rife.
Meanwhile, in the UK, a fully paid-up member of the democracy club, the government and opposition argue over whether Parliament should regulate the print media (“statutory underpinning”, to use the jargon introduced by the Leveson Report into the phone-hacking scandal). On 18 March, the UK’s three main political parties agreed on a new press regulation system whereby an independent regulator would be set up by royal charter. And in this debate over media standards and regulation, the most basic principle, that politicians should not in any way control the press (given their interests in positive, uncritical press coverage), has been too easily abandoned by many. Yet the press faces big questions: what has happened to its standards, how can individuals fairly complain? Similar debates are under way in India, with corruption and the phenomenon of ‘“paid news” among concerns there. Falling standards provide easy targets for those who would control press freedom for other reasons.
Plenty of governments of all shades are showing themselves only too ready to compromise on civil liberties in the face of the large amounts of easily accessible data our digital world produces. Shining a light on requests for information — as Google and Twitter do in their respective transparency reports — is one vital part of the campaigns and democraticdebate needed if the internet is not to become a partially censored, and highly monitored, world.
Google’s recent update of its figures for requests for user data by law enforcement agencies shows the US way ahead of other countries — accounting for over a third of requests with 8,438 demands, with India coming in at 2,431 and the UK, Germany and France not so far behind India.
Both India and the UK have also used too widely drawn laws that criminalise “grossly offensive” comments, leading to the arrest and prosecution of individuals for innocuous social media comments. Public outcry and ensuing debate in both countries is one sign that people will stand up for free speech. But such laws must change.
A new digital revolution is coming, as millions more people move online via their mobiles. As smart phone prices fall, and take-up expands, the opportunities for free expression and accessto information across borders are set to grow. But unless we are all vigilant, whether we face democratic or authoritarian regimes, in demanding our right to that free expression, our digital world risks being a partially censored, monitored and fragmented one. This is the global free speech challenge of our times.
7 Feb 2013 | News, Uncategorized
It’s not easy for cinema goers in China. Film censorship is hardly a new phenomenon under the communist regime, but following the heavy editing of two new films — Skyfall and Cloud Atlas — audiences have called for a reform to China’s censorship standards.
The latest James Bond film opened on 21 January after a two-month delay. 007 directors were keen to appease China’s strict censors, with arial shots of Shanghai filling the screens, but the film was still left with several significant and slightly awkward cuts.
Scenes involving prostitution and the shooting of a Chinese security guard have been removed, and subtitles were changed to hide references to torture by Chinese security forces. It’s not the first time the James Bond creators have felt the wrath of China’s film board — a reference to the Cold War was removed from Casino Royale in 2006. But German-produced film Cloud Atlas fared far worse at the hands of China’s censors when it was released on 31 January. Thirty eight minutes of the films total running time was slashed — comprising mostly of homosexual and heterosexual love scenes, but also including scenes the censors felt confused the plot.
— Skyfall is one of the many films to fall foul to film censorship in China
It takes a lot to win over China’s heavy handed censors. In a deal with Hollywood in February 2012, Chinese film censors agreed to approve 34 foreign films a year — rather than the previous 20. It symbolised a promising development for directors, who are increasingly motivated to break into China’s lucrative film market following a slump in box office sales in recent years.
But film makers are often willing to sacrifice free speech in favour of breaking into China’s market. Last year, Red Dawn directors replaced a Chinese army attack on the UK with North Korean soldiers just before its release, a move typical of Hollywood directors — who are often keen to include positive references to China to win over authorities. DreamWorks Animation had a similar idea, joining forces with Chinese producers to develop Kung Fu Panda 3 in time for its 2016 release.
All imported films have to go through China’s State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT), and few remain unscathed. Movies dealing with obscenity, religion, gambling, the supernatural and drinking, to name a few — are addressed with scrutiny by SARFT, meaning that many blockbusters are altered or refused entirely.
China has no motion picture rating system, meaning that all films must be suitable for family viewing. It doesn’t always explain some of the decisions for cinematic alteration though.
In 2010, James Cameron’s Avatar was pulled from some cinemas in its 2D form, amidst speculation that the film’s displacement and land eviction references would cause political unrest, or make people think about forced removal.
Following the 3D relaunch of another Cameron classic — Titanic — in April 2012, censors were quick to edit the film. The famous scene where Leonardo Di Caprio sketches a nude Kate Winslet is edited to show Winslet from the neck up alone. SARFT said in a statement that the measure was taken to avoid cinema goers attempting to reach out and caress Winslet’s three dimensional breasts.
China overtook Japan to become the world’s second largest film market last year, with a box office valued at $2 billion (£1.3 billion) in 2011 — and is expected to surpass the US’s by 2020. Hollywood has become entrapped in the hope of success in China, and the expansion hasn’t come without controversy. The Securities & Exchange Commission opened an investigation last year into allegations that US film studios newly established in China were secured through illegal payments to Chinese officials.
Much of the Chinese public are anti-propaganda and express their frustration at missing the whole truth — movie piracy is common and means objectors can usually find an illegal, uncensored copy of a desired film. Free speech and film go hand in hand and Hollywood has always been a staunch defender of the First Amendment. So It’s worrying that economic interests are increasingly foregoing freedom of expression.
