27 Jan 2014 | Egypt, News, Politics and Society
Thousands of Egyptians celebrated the 25th of January 2011 revolution anniversary at Al Etihadia Palace Square. Demonstrators chanted for the army and police and raised flags and banners bearing images of Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. (Photo: Adham Khorshed / Demotix)
As thousands of Egyptians demonstrated in support of the country’s military, journalists were attacked, 49 people were killed and 247 others were injured in anti-government marches across Egypt on Saturday on the third anniversary of the uprising that led to the overthrow of autocrat Hosni Mubarak.
The figures were announced by Egypt’s Health Ministry but Al Nadeem Center, a Cairo-based rights organization, gave an even higher death toll, adding that more than 1,000 people had been arrested in a day of violent clashes between protesters and security forces.
Still, a significant number of Egyptians refused to let the violence dampen their celebratory mood. Thousands of flag-bearing revellers flocked to Cairo’s iconic Tahrir Square on Saturday to rally in support of the army. Raising pictures of Defense Minister General Abdel Fattah El Sisi , they called on him to run for the presidency, chanting “El Sisi is our president” and “the people, the army and the police are one hand”.
Three years after the mass protests demanding an end to Mubarak’s police state system, the revelry and nationalistic fervour demonstrated a reversal in public sentiment towards the military and the police, which were perceived in a negative light during the transitional period that followed the ouster of Mubarak. It also underlined the bitter polarisation in the country.
“The people want the execution of the Muslim Brotherhood!”, the Tahrir crowd chanted over and over.
Security was intensified after a series of bombings rocked Cairo the previous day — the largest of them a remote-controlled car bombing targeting the security directorate near the centre of the city. At least six people were killed in the bomb attacks and scores of others were injured. Ansar Beit al Maqdis — an al Qaeda-affiliated jihadi group — claimed responsibility for the bombings. The group threatened more violence and warned people to stay off the streets. Many Egyptians dismiss the persistent denials by the Muslim Brotherhood — recently designated by Egypt’s military-backed authorities as a terrorist organization — that the Brotherhood was behind the violence. The Brotherhood insists its struggle is peaceful and has issued a statement on its official website condemning the terrorist attacks. Tens of thousands of riot police and armoured personnel carriers were deployed to try to maintain order and Tahrir Square was ringed by barbed wire to prevent pro-Muslim Brotherhood marchers entering the square.
Supporters of toppled Islamist President Mohamed Morsi staged marches in 34 Cairo neighbourhoods , protesting his overthrow. In a statement published on their website Ikhwanweb the previous day, they vowed to continue their protests until they topple “the fascist coup regime”. Security forces fired volleys of tear gas and gunshots in the air to disperse the protesters. Scores were killed or injured in ensuing clashes with riot police and pro-military residents who hurled stones and bottles at the protesters. Hundreds of demonstrators were arrested.
Pro-democracy activists meanwhile, staged a protest rally outside the Journalists Syndicate in downtown Cairo to express their opposition to authoritarian rule. “Down with military rule and down with the Muslim Brotherhood,” they chanted before being violently attacked by security forces and pro-military residents. The protesters ran for cover amid thick clouds of choking tear gas.
In the mayhem that followed, leftist activist Tarek Shalaby who was among the opposition protesters, sent a message on Twitter advising his comrades to “grab posters of El Sisi to avoid being targeted by riot police.” He also warned others to steer clear of the downtown area, describing it as “extremely dangerous.” For Sayed Elwez, a young member of the April Six group that played a key role in mobilising protesters ahead of the January 2011 uprising, the warnings were too little, too late. He was shot in the neck and chest by security forces while trying to escape. Ironically, Elwez had been among the thousands of secular volunteers in the Tamarod campaign, collecting signatures for a petition calling for Islamist President Mohamed Morsi’s resignation.
In recent weeks, the military-backed government’s brutal crackdown on Muslim Brotherhood supporters has widened, targeting dissenters of all stripes including liberal activists, journalists and prominent academics. Paradoxically, many of those targeted had previously opposed the Muslim Brotherhood president, aligning themselves with the country’s notorious security apparatus to remove him from office.
Two prominent Egyptian political scientists are the latest targets of the crackdown which rights activists say, is aimed at silencing all critics of the military-led authorities. Emad Shahin, an internationally-acclaimed and widely respected academic who has taught at Harvard and Notre Dame has been charged with “espionage and conspiring with foreign organizations to undermine Egypt’s national security”. His name has been added to a list of majority-Brotherhood defendants (which also includes the former President Mohamed Morsi) facing trial on similar charges that some rights activists believe are “politically motivated”. Shahin has denied the charges , insisting that his true offence “was criticism of the political events in Egypt since Morsi’s ouster”.
Amr Hamzawy, another political scientist and former lawmaker has meanwhile, been accused of “insulting the judiciary”. The legal complaint against him stems from a message he posted on his Twitter account in June, in which he criticized a court verdict sentencing 43 NGO workers to one to five year jail terms. The NGO staffers were accused of “working for unlicensed institutions and receiving illegal foreign funding”. Hamzawy described the verdict as “shocking and lacking in evidence and transparency”. The highly-publicised NGO case, also widely criticised by international rights activists, was seen by many as symbolising “a severe crackdown on civil society in Egypt”.
Amnesty International has criticized the widening crackdown on rights activists in Egypt, expressing concern that the Egyptian authorities were “tightening the noose on freedom of expression and assembly”. In a statement released soon after the charges were levelled against Shahin and Hamzawy, Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui, Middle East and North Africa Deputy Director at Amnesty International said “repressive legislation” was “making it easier for the government to silence its critics”. She warned that “with such measures in place” Egypt was “headed firmly down the path toward further repression and confrontation”.
Several prominent pro-democracy activists languish in jail for taking part in ”illegal protests”. Rights advocates say their imprisonment signals the return of Mubarak’s police state and that counter- revolutionary forces are back with a vengeance. In letters of despair leaked from their solitary prison cells, Ahmed Maher and Alaa Abdel Fattah (two symbols of the uprising against Mubarak) speak of a “failed revolution” that has been hijacked first by a religious group, then by the military.
In a letter to his two sisters written earlier this month, activist Alaa Abdel Fattah also wrote: “What adds to my feeling of oppression is that I feel this particular lock up has no value. This is not struggle, and there is no revolution.”
Journalists too have not been spared; in recent months they have continued to face physical assaults, intimidation and detentions. At least five journalists are currently behind bars for reporting on the ongoing political crisis. Three members of an Al Jazeera English TV crew have been in custody for nearly a month pending investigations on charges of “spreading lies harmful to Egypt’s national security and and joining a terrorist group”. In a letter recently smuggled out of his Torah prison cell, Al Jazeera correspondent Peter Greste recounts the ordeal of his two Egyptian colleagues who are being accused of belonging to a terrorist organisation and are held in a high security prison.
“Fahmy has been denied the hospital treatment he badly needs for a shoulder injury he sustained shortly before our arrest. Both he and Baher spend 24 hours a day in their mosquito-infested cells, sleeping on the floor with no books or writing materials to break the soul- destroying tedium,” Greste lamented in his note published on the Al Jazeera English website.
Several journalists covering Saturday’s pro-military Tahrir rallies meanwhile, reported coming under attack from mobs who suspected them of working for Al Jazeera. The Qatari-based network is highly unpopular in Egypt because of what many Egyptians perceive as a pro- Muslim Brotherhood bias in its coverage of the political crisis in Egypt. Meanwhile , the state-run and state-influenced media alike are awash with conspiracy theories and talk of foreign plots to divide and destroy Egypt. This has fuelled the xenophobia in Egypt, posing a serious security challenge for foreign journalists covering the protest rallies. Journalist Nadine Maroushi who was attacked in Tahrir Square on Saturday has shared her traumatic experience on her blog:
“In Tahrir Square yesterday a man suggested we worked for Al Jazeera. An angry crowd quickly formed around us. ‘You traitor, you pig,’ a veiled woman shouted at me. She pulled my hair and grabbed at my scarf, choking me. The police intervened; I showed my press pass. They took us away to a building just off the square and told us to hide there for an hour until the crowd calmed down.”
A message posted by freelance journalist Bel Trew on Twitter on Saturday also warned that Tahrir was not safe for journalists. Trew’s tweet was retweeted more than a hundred times within minutes, triggering a frenzied exchange of telephone numbers to report assault and harassment of journalists. Egyptian photojournalist Mosa’ab El Shamy, meanwhile described it as “horrible day for journalists in Cairo. At least 5 (including a foreigner) were arrested, 2 are in hospital and 7 cameras have been seized by the police and confiscated,” he tweeted.
Three years on, the revolutionary activists’ hopes for dramatic change have all but faded. With the demands for freedom of speech, equality , dignity and an end to police brutality and corruption unfulfilled, the political turmoil and instability of the past three years have forced many Egyptians to drastically lower their expectations. Forsaking their ambitions for freedom and democracy — at least for now — many in Egypt have settled instead for the lesser hope of restoring stability in the country gripped by violence. Stability can only be guaranteed with a return to military rule , they say. But not all Egyptians have given up their revolutionary dream of a free and democratic society. A small but resilient group of young activists that refuses to bow under repression is keeping the dream alive. They are the country’s hope for change. “Today was a harsh defeat on a long and bumpy road,” Tarek Shalaby wrote on Twitter, but there is no going back.
This article was posted on 27 January 2014 at indexoncensorship.org
24 Jan 2014 | Digital Freedom, News, United Kingdom
(Image: Velvet/Demotix)
It wasn’t meant to be like this.
Connoisseurs of a good political bust-up may have noticed a subtle change in tempo to the online filtering debate over the Christmas period. For the argument, so long owned — in public at least — by the pro-blocking “think of the children” lobby took a sudden and unexpected twist. For a moment, the villains were not selfish libertarians, determined to place personal freedom of expression above child protection — but the incompetents in government, who had demanded a solution that was untested without first ensuring they weren’t doing more harm than good.
What went wrong?
As German military strategist Helmuth von Moltke, in the news during this World War anniversary year, once put it: “no plan of operations extends with any certainty beyond the first contact with the main hostile force”.
It was always going to be an easy win, banging on about the need to protect children and threatening internet service providers with legislation if they didn’t comply with prime ministerial demands over filtering: easy, too, to dismiss the assorted nerds and geeks who warned it wouldn’t work. As a prime ministerial adviser on this topic, Claire Perry, MP put it: “We should not allow the perfect to drive out the good”.
But since November, filters have arrived with a vengeance and even the technologically naive can see that they don’t exactly work as claimed. A BBC expose in December revealed what was always expected: They over blocked some quite useful sites, including sites dealing with LGBTI issues, sex education and even domestic violence and rape, while simultaneously under blocking a lot of porn.
Ooops!
“Not us, guv,” explained a spokesperson for Number 10. Back in July 2013, David Cameron had very presciently blocked all possible blame by requesting the UK Council for Child Internet Safety (UKCCIS) make sure this sort of thing didn’t happen. UKCCIS, a body composed approximately 50% from those with a commercial interest in this area, set up a sub-committee which met in December 2013, some weeks after the first of the new filter solutions hit parental laptops. No minutes, though: open government has been filtered!
Meanwhile, much wordage was being unleashed in the minority and progressive press. Rather like stories about government losing databases a few years back: No sooner had the press happened on one instance of ridiculous blocking, then another even more ridiculous case joined the queue.
In the circumstances, to list the legion legitimate sites that were in one way or another blocked would be tedious. So let’s stick with some of the most serious. BT, it transpired, was offering parents the opportunity to bar access to LGBT material — almost certainly direct discrimination — as well as access to social support.
In other words, if you are a child abuser or perpetrator of domestic violence, just go BT — and you can shut off one avenue to support for your victims. The filter is still available — though BT have tactfully amended the marketing description.
Two firms — Trend Micro and Dell — were also found to be selling a tool that permitted explicit blocking of LGBTI content: both, following exposure by GayStarNews, have subsequently amended their product.
It is unlikely that opinion swung irretrievably against blocking and filtering, but it is clear that the public, now aware of what those techniques mean in practice are suddenly a lot less impressed by political demands for UK providers to censor their net habits.
Along the way came something of an own goal. The latest initiative relates only to filtering and blocking of internet access through pc portals. Mobile phones have been subject to a filtering regime — largely unnoticed — since 2004, while filtering of wifi in public spaces is up for debate in 2014. The bad news, for the former, was that suddenly their activities were up for the same level of criticism as internet service providers, while discussion of the latter may no longer be quite the slam dunk that government had hoped.
So much for the panic: What about solutions? At a parliamentary meeting last week, sponsored by Julian Huppert, MP and organised by the author of this article, Jane Fae, a wide range of groups came together to discuss the issues raised. That included the usual suspects — the minorities on the sharp end of blocking — as well as representatives from industry and members from other parliamentary parties.
The problems raised here were rehashed, but the real focus was on the future, and there was little comfort for advocates of filtering. Speakers talked about taking legal action against filter companies, both in respect to discrimination and, for compensation when, as happened to one businesswoman, they find their business website blocked for no other reason than that she is transgender.
The difficulty is that government ministers have continually harped on about the Internet Watch Foundation as model solution, while blithely ignoring the fact that they also happen to be a Rolls Royce solution: Sites are individually evaluated by individual moderators. This costs serious money.
However, while this is an issue so important that government has threatened legislation if service providers don’t play ball, government — and the public — seem remarkably unwilling to stump up the many millions that would be required to come close to even a partial fix. So service providers have done what they can, reaching out to solution providers such as Nominum, Symantec and Huawei — all non-UK companies — operating a range of different filtering systems behind the veil of “commercial confidentiality” and not subject to UK law.
There is no single central service to check if a website has been wrongly filtered — even by the government’s own criteria — no central process for removing a potentially ruinous misblock. It’s the cheap option: A bit like the government deciding child protection in the UK was so important, it should be sub-contracted to a bunch of unregulated freelance social work providers.
Is regulation the answer? That was suggested, along with licensing of filter solutions and an independent audit of same. That, however, attracted little support in the meeting, being rejected both by those opposed to all filtering, and by those who felt it would create a costly and bureaucratic quango.
At the same time there was somewhat more appetite for central reporting facilities and a central appeals process. Because, how is any legitimate business supposed to conduct itself if it needs to keep a constant eye on upwards of 80 different filtering companies?
What of future debate? Ironically, the day of the meeting, Ofcom was also publishing a report that suggested parents were mostly happy with matters as they were. Government, on the other hand, intends forcing all net users to decide whether to opt out of filtering later this year. Ofcom also pointed out — as experts already did — that children, the objects of all this protection, were becoming increasingly net savvy, with significant numbers knowing how to evade filtering and cover their browsing tracks.
That is a serious issue. It is likely that children in war zones such as Syria or central Africa will have significantly more knowledge of how to use guns than the average British child. Its all about exposure. Whereas Britain, by imposing all these controls, is growing a generation that knows how to evade internet control. From there, it is but a short step to the darknet, where lurks precisely the sort of criminality that government — again — says it wants to eradicate.
We are likely to hear more about the commercial interests involved in all this. For there is a growing realisation that many of the more startling statistics and internet horror stories are produced and disseminated by companies offering filtering solutions and American evangelist organisations: Sometimes one and the same.
It is to be hoped, too, that the media and politicians will be more critical of some of the wilder statistics being tossed around in debate. Take for instance, the incidence of children viewing porn on the internet. “The average child sees their first porn by the age of just 11. Between 60 and 90 per cent of under-16s have viewed hardcore online pornography” — according to a survey carried out in 2010 by Psychologies magazine, based on the views (no numbers cited) of 14 to 16-year-olds at a north London secondary school.
As opposed to the EU Kids Online survey of over 25,000 children in 25 countries that found just 11% of UK children had viewed any form of porn online in the previous 12 months.
Which would you believe? Which do you expect to be cited approvingly — and frequently — in the tabloid press?
So where are we now? Battle has at last been joined, and finally the public can see that there are major practical problems associated with online filtering. That hasn’t, yet, diminished the appetite of the Conservative party for more of the same. Nor has it dissuaded the Labour party from jumping aboard the same bandwagon.
Meanwhile, in an act that smacks of the politics of masochism, Labour appears to have pledged that if voluntary filtering fails, then, if elected in 2015, it will legislate to introduce mandatory filters
This one, it seems, will run and run.
This article was published on 24 January 2014 at indexoncensorship.org
24 Jan 2014 | News, Pakistan, Religion and Culture
Hindu women protest in favour of Rinkle Kumari who was forced to convert to Islam in 2012 (Image: Rajput Yasir/Demotix)
December 21 will forever be etched on the memory of Sapna and her family. Belonging to a poor Hindu family, Sapna and her older sister Sabita were teachers in a neighbourhood school in Paharipura, Peshawar, the capital city of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. They were the sole breadwinners for the family after their father, who worked for Radio Pakistan, retired four years ago.
On that cold wintry day Sabita stayed after school to give extra tutoring while Sapna walked home alone. During her walk a car suddenly pulled up alongside her- out jumped a man who placed a cloth doused in an unknown chemical over her face. Sapna passed out.
When she regained consciousness she found herself in unfamiliar surroundings. A man, whom she had never seen before, asked her to marry him. But first Sapna would have to convert to Islam.
On her refusal, the man placed the intoxicant-doused cloth over her nose and she fainted once again. This routine carried on for 16 days.
Sapna narrated her account of the kidnapping to the judicial magistrate earlier this month after she was rescued.
“The police traced her through a phone call she made to us asking us to rescue her,” Ramesh Kumar, her brother-in-law told Index on Censorship during a phone interview. He, along with his wife, Sapna’s older sister, had accompanied the police and found her in a village in Bahawalpur, in Punjab province some 680 km from Peshawar.
“Unfortunately, the person who kidnapped her, Zahid Nawaz, got a tip-off and escaped,” said Kumar. Nawaz wasn’t a complete stranger to Sapna. Kumar believes that his sister’s kidnapper had managed to ensnare Sapna by calling her a few times before the snatching took place.
“When he learnt that she was a Hindu, he told her that he didn’t have a sister and looked on her as one,” he added.
Despite being the first case of its kind in the area Sapna’s kidnapping has spread fear among the Hindu community in Peshawar- since the day her sister was abducted Sabita has not been allowed to step out of her house.
However, the kidnapping of Hindu girls is nothing new in other parts of the country. According to Ramesh Kumar Vankwani, head of the Pakistan Hindu Council and a legislator: “We hear of three to four such cases every month from Sindh [province].”
More worrisome to the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) is the forced coercion of these Hindu girls to Islam before marriage takes place. The majority of these cases have been reported in the Sindh area with the HRCP calling it one of the “most outrageous human rights violations one has to deal with.”
I.A. Rehman, of the HRCP, blamed both the state and society for the escalation: “Both are getting more and more caught in the frenzy of religiosity, a process accelerated by the increase in Al-Qaeda/Taliban/Salafi influence on Pakistan’s Muslims.
“Hard-line Islam is supposed to liquidate non-Muslims and Shias and people belonging to other sects, such as Barelvis who enjoy music and visit shrines,” referring to the recent killings of devotees at a sufi shrine in Karachi earlier this month.
At the same time, he pointed out, the “zealots” among the society hoped to secure a “place in paradise” by converting non-Muslims to Islam. Hindus account for just over one per cent of the Pakistan’s population of 180 million.
Rehman deplored how the judiciary had been unable to intervene in such cases, noting how such lack of action reassures the culprits and depresses the communities of the victim.
Most religious minority members sitting in the assemblies are selected, as opposed to elected, and are therefore not the true representatives of their communities. Instead, they often toe the party line that has given them the ticket to their seat.
For their part, people like Vankwani say: “The main political parties pay lip service to our problems but have consistently failed to protect our lives or our rights,” arguing that until fair representation of minorities occurs in the assemblies their issues will never be resolved.
Amar Guriro, a journalist from a Hindu community, had a different take on the issue of coerced conversion. “There are cases where girls have converted of their own will or have eloped because, unless their parents can pay the heavy dowry that is demanded by the groom’s side, they cannot be married off,” he said.
Muslims have often been accused of preying on Hindu girls of marriageable age, forcing families to marry off their daughters at an earlier than desired time. “If they don’t there is a danger they may be kidnapped and asked to renounce their religion,” Guriro reported.
According to Amarnath Motumal, a lawyer with the HRCP, young Hindu girls may easily get “influenced” by their Muslim paramour: “In a country where even in schools Islam is the only religion taught and where religious freedom is negligible, young minds can easily be moulded.
“In Pakistan a Muslim woman cannot be married without the consent of the waali (her guardian — a father, uncle, or brother). Why didn’t the same hold true for the Hindu girl who had converted?”
Motumal has appeared in several cases of forced conversions. He told Index that during these hearings there is immense pressure on not just the young girls but also the judge as hundreds of protesting clergy can gather outside the courtroom. “The girls often do not have the courage to speak how or what they feel about the predicament they are in. And if the woman converted of her free will, why is she not allowed to meet with her parents?” he asked.
In 2012, the cases of Rinkle Kumari from Ghotki and Dr Lata Kumar in Karachi were taken up by the court after concerns arose in the media that they were forcefully converted to Islam.
Today, Motumal said, both women live with their respective Muslim husbands, but, he added: “They may be apparently happily married, but who knows what is going on in their hearts. They know what their fate will be if they have a change of heart and mind — they may be shunned by their own community and never find a match!
“Most believe themselves to have been polluted beyond redemption and prefer to stay with their abductors to returning home.”
This article was posted on 22 January 2014 at indexoncensorship.org
22 Jan 2014 | News, Politics and Society, Religion and Culture, Turkey
Thousands of protesters took to the streets of Istanbul on 1 June in the capital’s Taksim Square during demonstrations over plans to turn Gezi Park into a shopping mall. (Photo: Akin Aydinli / Demotix)
Author and playwright Meltem Arikan was amongst a small group of people who was accused by senior Turkish politicians and government sponsored media of being the architects of the May-June 2013 Gezi Park demonstrations. This was no idle threat, but a TV, newspaper and Twitter campaign designed to convince the Turkish people that the accused were responsible for the largest anti-government protest ever witnessed in Turkey. Forced to leave Turkey, she, and those closest to her, have come to live in UK and only now is she beginning to feel safe enough to tell her story.
What follows is Arikan’s personal account of the events.
For me everything starts on 27 May 2013.
Together with Memet Ali Alabora the director of my play Mi Minor, Pinar Ogun the lead actress and the play’s graphic designer Melin Edomwonyi, I went to KARVAK Awards Ceremony to receive our award for Best Play 2013 given by the Black Sea education, culture and environment protection foundation. As we made our way there, it didn’t seem possible that our lives were about to change completely. The ceremony started and the first award to be announced was a lifetime achievement award for the governor of Istanbul. The moment we heard this we stood up and left the venue, refusing to receive our award.
In Turkey, the governor is the highest state representative in the city, and has responsibility for and control over the police. At the time in Istanbul the frequent and excessive use of tear gas and heavy-handed police tactics to even the smallest gatherings — especially around Taksim — were causing real concern for us and many people. For example on 7 April, a peaceful demonstration of artists and cinema goers — including Greek film director Costa-Gavras — against the demolition of the Emek Theatre was dispersed with water cannons and tear gas.
We could not have accepted an award from an organisation that honoured the governor after all that was happening in the heart of our city.
We went straight home and read on Twitter that the trees at the Gezi Park, the only park in the area of the city called Taksim, were being destroyed to make way for a shopping mall. We started tweeting to make people aware of what was going on, that the trees needed protection. A small group of around 50 people went to the park to keep watch over the trees and stop them from being uprooted in the middle of the night. When the workmen drove into the park during the night ready to destroy the trees, the protesters asked if they had an official permit. They had no papers, so the workmen left the park. I followed everything on Twitter, retweeting the tweets and pictures that were coming out of the park. Looking at those pictures I was worried that, as with so many demonstrations, only a handful of people would turn up. So I kept retweeting moment by moment what was happening there all night.
Next Morning – 28 May
The digger came back in the morning at 8 am. By then there were 200 people in the park and, because of the growing numbers, the riot police used pepper spray and tear gas to clear it. At noon, pictures from Gezi Park were being shared on Twitter again, but this time they showed riot police using tear gas against peaceful protestors. The picture of the pepper-gassed woman in a red dress, that would later become an icon, was taken during this first police attack.
The attack had triggered more people to come to the park. We decided to join the protesters, to give our support to the trees and say “enough!” to the crazy number of shopping malls, which are poisoning our cities.
After the pepper gas attack the works in the park were restarted. This time the Istanbul MP, Sırrı Süreyya Önder, who is also a screenwriter and film director, stood with his arms wide open in front of a digger and asked for their permit. This stalled the destruction for the time being and the workmen left.
When we got to the park we could still smell the gas even though it was hours after the attack. Despite the stench, the joy and determination of the young protesters remained. By sunset nearly a thousand people had gathered. There were tents everywhere. It was clear that people living around Gezi Park supported the protests and they, too, wanted to save the trees, the treasured heart and lungs of Taksim Square. People were treating the damaged trees, and planting saplings in the holes left by the diggers. Women, men, strangers to one another, straight, gay, transsexual, young, old, little kids with their parents came together for the sake of the trees. Regardless of their differences they shared their feelings with one another. A table became a simple stage for people to speak from, prejudice gave way to the attempt to understand each other, music and dance took over from frustration. We wrote our thoughts on pieces of paper and hung them on the branches of the trees. Perhaps, in our country, where everyone had become “the other” to one another, for the first time, in that park, no one was “the other” anymore.
As the writer of the novel Hope is a Curse, it was wonderful for me to feel hope for the first time in years. Hope that, helped by new ways to exchange and share information, women and men can come together to lay claim to public space and freedom of speech, leaving the barriers of race, religion, sexual choices, language, ethnic roots and ideologies behind. Although we only planned to go to the park for an hour, after feeling the atmosphere there, I couldn’t leave. We all tweeted to spread the word that night. We chanted, danced, protested. It was as if something I had written years ago, was actually beginning to happen in front of me…
“Women!
We do not have to surrender to the beliefs that are imposed upon us.
The time has come for us to reclaim our stolen spirit.
We can sing the song of another culture without knowing its language.
Without knowing the steps, we can keep up with the rhythm.
The time has come for us to tune in to the music and the rhythm within ourselves.
Patriarchy will be scared, Patriarchy will resist. Patriarchy will accuse…
The time has come for us to reclaim our stolen spirit…
We will cover our ears and will burst out laughing at the accusations,
Women will dance and sing songs and laugh aloud.
In spite of everything, we will rise up in protest, propelled by our irrepressible laughter.
The new digital world will be shaped WITH women, not IN SPITE OF us”
29 May
The next day Prime Minister Recep Erdogan gave a speech and said that they will build a shopping mall no matter what the people say. After the prime minister’s speech more people came to Gezi Park.
I was there around 4 pm. This time there were thousands of people present, including supporter groups, political activists, environmentalists and even Turkish Airlines staff who were out on strike. People were coming to the park to give voice to the issues they were concerned about as well as to protect the trees.
It was like a festival. Even though it was much more crowded than the previous night, the atmosphere generated by such a large and diverse group of people was absolutely amazing. Could things change for real? This time, could we change things by singing songs, by dancing, by freely expressing ourselves all together? Could we actually protect this precious corner of nature from mad-made destruction? The leader of the opposition party visited the park that night. He promised to have two MPs stay there at all times. I left the park after midnight.
30 May
In the morning we heard that, at dawn around 5 am, the police had attacked people and the tents had been set on fire.
I was following everything on Twitter. Again, police had surrounded the park. Again, the Istanbul MP, Sırrı Süreyya, went to the park and again he stood up against the digger to stop the demolition. Again the police left the park. Once more, the protestors occupied the park. The tree watch went on.
Pinar and I didn’t get to the park until that night, because we had been in the studio all day shooting our TV programme Witch’s Cauldron. The early morning police raid had prompted crowds of people to come to the park. By the time we got there, there were more than 10,000 people gathered.
Some young people were tying pieces of colourful cloth to the branches of the trees to make wish trees just like in the old Shaman tradition. I was very moved to see young people picking up on this old tradition. More young trees were planted, more people were trying to heal the wounded trees. People were holding up banners and they were not just about Gezi Park. There were a lot of different issues addressed: protecting the environment, the demolition of the Emek Theatre, recent bombing and deaths in Antakya.
Speeches were made, poems were read and songs were sung on the small stage in the middle of the park. Yet again we chanted and danced until dawn.
31 May
We saw the riot police getting ready just as we were heading out of the square at 4 am. There were two MPs on duty from opposition party. We spoke to them. They said they could do nothing to stop the police attack.
As the sun rose, pressure in the park was rising. Protesters who were already awake warned those still sleeping in tents.
At 4:30 am, as we were on our way to a café down the road, the riot police moved in. At this point there were about 3,000 people in the park. Police used massive quantities of gas against the peaceful protestors. Trying to escape the storm of tear gas people got trapped on an old stone staircase in the park, which collapsed crushing dozens of protestors. Many people were badly affected by the excessive amount of gas, and many others were injured by tear gas capsules thrown directly at them.
It was, and still is, very difficult for me to tell the story of what happened that morning. Inside a café, on the first floor, even though the doors were shut, none of us was able to breathe without choking. I couldn’t make sense of the scene I was witnessing. What was this place? Where was I? What had happened to the songs, tents, banners and dances? The hope I had seen in the eyes of the young people, the wish notes on the trees, the voices of people united? What had triggered the violence? What had happened to turn all this into a war zone?
By 7 am Gezi Park was empty; everybody had fled. The police closed the park. Small numbers of people started to regroup in neighbourhoods around Taksim. We walked to Cihangir Street nearby. Sitting in a café it was hard to breathe and hard to believe how we had been abused. During the gas attack we had been separated from our friends, and now we were trying to get news about them. Had they been injured, arrested? Everyone was following the Twitter feeds, reading them out loud so that all of us could hear as reports coming out of Taksim Square told of the growing number of injured. The roads were closed, the police were everywhere and we were not able to leave the café. There was no media coverage of this brutality. Twitter was the only source of information and I was trying to follow every second of the feeds. I was furious and also felt completely disillusioned. A voice inside me was screaming “HOPE IS A CURSE! I TOLD YOU!”
At 10 am protesters who had now gathered outside Gezi Park made a statement to the press condemning the police brutality. After the press statement people tried to enter the park, and police once again fired tear gas. A couple of protestors, including the well-known journalist Ahmet Şık, were shot in the head with tear gas capsules. The police started to chase people in the streets but they were met with passive resistance – protesters stood still, some with their arms held up, some sitting on the ground. At 1 pm another statement was made — this time at Taksim Square. Then we heard that police once again had attacked.
We ran to help, but people had already dispersed. On the way back police were firing tear gas everywhere. A gas capsule fell next to my feet, I felt like I would never be able to breathe again. We washed our faces immediately with a mixture of water and Rennie tablets to neutralise the burning of the gas, and hid in an apartment building. I tried to come to grips with the reality of what was happening in front of my burning eyes. I could hear the sirens from outside and the screams of the people running. The same words going around in my head: Why all this violence and brutality? Why this hatred – who was it for? Once again I was witnessing how brutal male domination can be when people come together and say NO!
A young woman was hit by a capsule on her head, which left her in a coma for 30 days. She is still fighting for her life.
That day “Taksim Dayanışması” (Taksim Solidarity) the platform of nearly a hundred NGOs, political parties, and trade unions, that started the campaign against the planned shopping mall in Gezi Park called people to come together at Gezi Park at 7 pm. That day millions of tweets called for a gathering at Gezi Park.
All the time that Taksim was in chaos, there was nothing about what was happening in the mainstream media. Even more absurdly, one of the main news channels was showing a documentary about penguins while thousands of people were being attacked in the centre of Istanbul. This inspired a wave of satirical graffiti around the city – penguins in gas masks with slogans of defiance. We couldn’t go home because all the roads were closed and every minute more and more people appeared on the streets with goggles, helmets and plastic bottles filled with Rennie and water to protect each other from the effects of the gas.
Hearing the sounds of helicopters mixing with the sirens of the ambulances I felt completely disorientated. I closed my eyes and opened them… People falling on the ground in pain barely visible through the gas… I closed my eyes and opened them again to look for the helicopters I could only hear… I closed my eyes and opened them… A street dog lying on the ground… I closed my eyes and tears flowed in to my mouth tasting of pepper. My lips formed the word ENOUGH!
“I have seen how violence was created, when Patriarchy became merciless.
It was so cruel that I was frightened…
When the lives of those given by women were slaughtered by Patriarchy …
I saw nothingness…
The lives of those given by women were turning into fear and violence…
When we silently screamed ‘enough’, the cruelty of violence is so dense…
Enough, I feel shame.
Enough, I am a woman, violence was not born of me…”
On the night of 31st of May hundreds of thousands of people tried to reach Taksim Square on foot. We spent an hour on the street and then went to our friend’s home nearby. We could smell the gas inside the house and hear the ambulances, helicopters and people banging pots and pans in support of the protests from the windows of their houses. Then the first clashes between police and the protestors started; they carried on all night. We didn’t sleep at all.
1 June
In the morning Taksim was like a battlefield. The square was still surrounded by the police, and the protestors were still in the streets. Any one attempting to enter the square was forced back by the police.
Around 5:20 am, thousands of people started to march from the Asian side of Istanbul and crossed the Bosporus Bridge on foot to reach Taksim. They were joined by a big rally which had been planned months before to take place on 1 June on the Asian side. The government gave them permission and the police blockade was lifted. Hundreds of thousands of people entered Taksim Square. It was peaceful there but we heard about outbreaks of violence elsewhere because protests had spread to many parts of Istanbul and all around Turkey.
A group of high-profile artists, actors, directors, writers came together to appeal directly to the governor to stop the excessive use of police force, which they felt was responsible for the escalating violence. They couldn’t contact him so they sent out a call to fellow artists to join them in Cihangir Park to make a filmed appeal from the demonstration. I was there, too. When we entered the square there were nearly a million people and it was almost impossible to move through the crowds. Memet Ali Alabora, president of the actors union, spoke for the artists, addressing the governor and calling for peace; his speech was filmed and broadcast live as part of the first TV coverage of the demonstration.
Soon after the statement was made, I managed to get back to my house. I had no idea that I was to become a prisoner in my own home. From that moment until the day, two months later, when I decided to leave the country for good, I would only go outside once, for an hour, to the local shops.
At night clashes between police and protestors became increasingly brutal. That was when everything started to be broadcast internationally.
After the broadcasts went out all around the world the government, in an attempt to explain away what was happening, claimed that it was a conspiracy, a plot sponsored by foreign countries designed to bring us down. The only way the government could make sense of it was to find to someone to blame it on and to punish those responsible.
4 June
As the police violence increased more and more people left their houses and went out onto the streets. The more police brutality there was, the more people gathered in solidarity. The more thuggish the behavior of the police the more protestors responded with humour and satire – graffiti started to appear on the walls.
During the demonstrations the government had tried to control the flow of information, but they had failed to understand the significance of social media. They learned a valuable lesson — censoring the media had not prevented the people from finding out what was going on. In fact it had the opposite effect. It spawned thousands of new social media users, who understood — some for the first time — what young people have known all their lives, that new media has transformed the way we share and access information and ideas.
This change in perception was more threatening to the authorities than any weapon and signals the transition from the analogue to digital world order. In Gezi Park there was no leader, everything started and developed spontaneously. The majority of the protesters were from the new digital generation, who connect with the world, using technological tools to access the free flow of information and to express themselves freely.
As the Turkish prime minister said: Twitter has become a troublemaker.
Instead of listening to us — to the citizens — the prime minister, like an authoritarian father, tried to silence us, gave orders to the police to attack and harm us — seven young people and a police officer died, 4,329 people were injured some lost their eyes, others their arms, a few still in hospital — all because of the excessive police violence.
Instead of trying to understand what we were feeling, he told us he didn’t care. For thousands of years patriarchy has perpetrated violence by ignoring its conscience. Our prime minister said Obey Me. Arrogant, ignorant, oppressive, persistent and irreconcilable as always. Here were the age-old violent tactics of male domination used against men and women whose crime was to come together to protect nature from needless destruction.
The world thinks Turkey is a third world country, but in Gezi Park the demonstrators supported modern secular universal values. They didn’t say we are hungry or we want a job. Instead they said, “We respect nature and defend the lives of the trees. We want to exist as who we are, we want religious, sexual and cultural freedom. We don’t want racial, ethnic or political discrimination. We want free flow of information, we want free expression.”
Read Index’s interview with Arikan: A conversation with Meltem Arikan, Turkish playwright and author (7 January 2014)
This article was posted on 22 January 2014 at indexoncensorship.org
