12 Oct 2024 | News and features, Russia, Ukraine
This article was first published on 5 April 2022 and is being republished following confirmation of her death in Russian custody.
I was in Zaporizhzhia on the morning of 12 March. I wanted to get to Mariupol to write an article; I thought that I had to tell the truth from the blocked city. It was my initiative.
I found out that a humanitarian convoy was going to Mariupol. I went to the assembly point but the convoy had already left. I contacted the authorities and asked them if I could catch it up. They replied that I could try. I did not find a personal driver, so I left with another convoy heading to Polohy. We caught up the Mariupol convoy near Vasylivka, and I continued with them.
I came across the occupiers’ first checkpoint in Vasylivka. Russian soldiers thoroughly checked me. They made me unzip my coat and show the contents of my bag. They found a camera and asked if I was a journalist. I confirmed this. They told me that I had no business in Mariupol and that I should return to Zaporizhzhia. They inspected my phone and camera and found nothing. I asked permission to continue with the column. The occupiers did not mind. We stopped overnight in Berdyansk.
We continued our way in the morning but we were stopped near the city limits and we were told to wait for permission. We were waiting for two or three hours by a crossroads where the roads to Mangush, Energodar and Vasylivka go. Rumours started to spread that we wouldn’t be allowed to move.
Cars passed by and a woman from the convoy told us that she had found some local guys who were willing to drive us to Mariupol. When we arrived at the agreed place, the car was no longer there. The Russian military told us to wait and started talking with us.
I stepped aside. I was thinking of returning to the convoy but a Russian soldier approached me and asked me to show him my phone. He told me that he had instructions from above to check me.
He asked if I was a journalist. I did not lie as it could make things even worse. He asked to show him my WhatsApp account and he saw the contact of the security services of Zaporizhzhia. There was a message with a request to publish a video of a Russian soldier who had swapped sides to join Ukraine.
Some other soldiers began to interrogate me. Then they spoke with Metropolitan Luka [a priest of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church]. Luka and other clerics were leading the convoy. When they returned, they said I had to go with them. I was put into a prison van accompanied by four Chechen paramilitaries who took me to the Berdyansk district administration office.
I was met by people dressed in black and wearing balaclavas. They seemed to be very young, less than 30 years old. They started to interrogate me, searching me and inspecting my phone and documents. They told me that I was not a journalist but a spy and a propagandist which I denied. It lasted for an hour. Then, one of them said: “Everything is clear with you”. I realised later they were from the Russian security services, the FSB.
One of the men in balaclavas brought in his commander. When I asked him who he was, he replied: “I am the man. You have two options: you either go to a jail for women or to a Dagestani military base.” I asked them what that meant. They did not explain. Then two men grabbed me, put a blindfold over my eyes and took me out of the room. I was crying, explaining that I was a journalist, that people would be looking for me, and that they would not get away with it. They took me to the local office of the SBU, the Ukrainian Security Service.
I was met by Chechens and Dagestanis who put me in a tiny room with a chair, a table and a window which they closed and told me not to approach it. They brought a blanket on which I slept on the floor. It was light and warm there. I was taken out only to the bathroom. Almost all my stuff was taken. When I asked when they would let me go, they answered, “When Kyiv is taken”. They added “Luka is in charge of the convoy and he refused to take you”.
From time to time, I was interrogated by Russian occupiers.
“We have no conscience. The law does not exist for us,” the FSB guys said. “Ukraine does not exist anymore.”
They repeated this every day.
“If we bury you somewhere here, no one will ever find out. You will be lost forever,” they said.
I had no fear. I knew they were trying to break me. But I felt desperate because I knew nothing about the outside world, and I was not able to do my job.
“We do not fucking care that you are a woman and a journalist,” they shouted.
But I knew the fact that I was a journalist restrained them.
At some point Chechens joined in with the daily moral pressure of the FSB guys. They guarded me and tried to convince me to cooperate.
“They are serious. They won’t let you go for nothing. You’d better to cooperate with them because you are so young. Otherwise, you will stay here forever,” they said.
They added: “We are the power. They are the brains.”
They brought me some food, but I refused. The first days I ate my remaining supplies from Zaporizhzhia. When it was finished, I took nothing but sweet tea. I felt my energy leave me. It was difficult just to get on my feet. During the last visit of the FSB men, I was not able to stand. But I continued to demand my release. When I cried too loud, one of the Chechens hit me and told me that I wasn’t at home, and I should watch my tone.
There were a few empathetic men among them, nevertheless. They came to ask if I was OK, asked me to eat something and begged me not to kill myself.
I asked to be allowed to make a call. They refused. Afterwards, the FSB told me that there would be a neutral interview and then I would be released. I insisted that I wouldn’t lie. They agreed. They brought a camera after a while. They had a prepared text with them, and they demanded I read it. I did not agree with the wording “high probability of having saved her life”. Eventually I agreed to shoot the video and they dropped the previous demands regarding full support of Russian actions and accusations against Ukraine.
Once the video was completed, they took me to another place. It was the local jail in Berdyansk. They refused to return my phone and camera as they considered them “propaganda tools”.
I spent the night in a room with a Russian soldier, who was supposed to guard me. The electricity and heating were cut off during the night. It was very cold. With my flashlight I counted the hours until morning. The soldier told me that the people who had interrogated me were from FSB. He was afraid that I would kill him during the night. He asked me whether I considered them as occupiers. Then he put the Ukrainian flag and the national emblem near me and said: “This is to calm you down. You see, we did not destroy them.”
In the morning, they blindfolded me again. Then they took me out of the jail and showed me the direction to go. I reached the closest bus station and went to the location of an evacuation convoy. I left with them the next day to territory controlled by Ukraine.
I am sincerely grateful to everyone who put in their efforts to find me and release me.
This account was first published by independent Ukrainian news channel hromadske and is published here in English for the first time.
26 Sep 2024 | Europe and Central Asia, News and features, United Kingdom
On Monday 16 September, the United States imposed financial sanctions and visa restrictions on Georgians who they believed to be involved with violent crackdowns on peaceful protests that had occurred in the country’s capital Tbilisi in the spring. The protests were sparked in resistance to the passing of a “foreign agents law”, which shares similarities with an existing law in Russia – raising concerns that the Georgian government is aligning more closely with the Kremlin.
These demonstrations were led by young adults. University students organised and turned out in their thousands, and the majority of protesters on the streets were members of Gen Z. It is commonplace for young people to be vocal about what they believe in, but despite the US supporting the struggle of the youth against their government in Georgia, when it comes to home soil, their commitment to free speech isn’t so steadfast. The US drew condemnation from UN human rights experts regarding the aggressive and harsh measures used by authorities against pro-Palestine protesters on US university campuses – many peaceful demonstrations were met with surveillance and arrests across the country. Further measures are being taken to prevent protests ahead of the 2024/25 academic year, and these have been met with disdain from the American Association of University Professors in a statement made last month.
The USA is far from alone when it comes to recent crackdowns on the right to protest. As Index has previously covered, there have been multiple arrests at both climate protests and pro-Palestine protests in the UK in recent years, and the Conservative government led by Rishi Sunak introduced the much criticised Policing, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022, the Public Order Act 2023, and Serious Disruption Prevention Orders, all of which significantly inhibit people’s right to protest. This crushing of demonstrations even breached the realms of legality when Suella Braverman was ruled to have passed unlawful anti-protest legislation in 2023. In recent times, the sheer scale of punishment for non-violent protesters in the UK has been brought into the public eye with the sentencing in July of Roger Hallam of Just Stop Oil (JSO) to five years imprisonment, and four other JSO members to four years, for coordinating protests on the M25.
Lotte Leicht, a Danish human rights lawyer who holds the position of advocacy director at Climate Rights International – a monitoring and advocacy organisation that recently put out a statement outlining hypocrisy from western governments regarding climate protests – spoke to Index on this issue, and she believes that the UK is the worst offender.
“The crackdown, and particularly the use of law to sentence non-violent disruption by climate protesters in the UK has stood out as the most severe and most extraordinary measure [from any country]. And one thing that’s very disappointing from our point of view is not to see the new Labour government tackling these draconian laws from the previous government, and taking steps to revoke them,” Leicht said.
She added: “The prevention of UK activists from explaining their motivations for their actions in court, and judges actually preventing them from doing so… As a lawyer, I would say this prevents people from having a fair trial.”
This crackdown on protests has become prevalent in many democracies within ‘the Global North’ in recent years, and examples are not hard to come by. On 11 September, thousands of anti-war protesters in Melbourne, Australia gathered outside a weapons expo, protesting the government’s stance on arms, and the use of such weapons in Gaza. The protests quickly became the subject of great scrutiny when there were violent clashes between Melbourne police and demonstrators, with police allegedly using excessive “riot-type” force, resulting in multiple injuries.
In Germany, pro-Palestine protests have also repeatedly been met with harsh measures, such as bans. The country’s history of anti-Semitism has impacted its attitude towards protests and events that are critical of Israel, causing police to be more heavy handed than in other democracies.
Leicht, who is also the council chairwoman at the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR), a nonprofit dedicated to enforcing civil and human rights globally, told Index that this increasing anti-protest action from western democracies sets a very worrying precedent.
“This represents a massive deployment of double standards. Because these are the same governments that rightfully stand up for freedom of expression, association and assembly in different corners of the world when authoritarian governments are cracking down horrifically on dissent in their countries,” she said.
“These countries are usually there to say ‘Oh, that’s not good’, and we want them to do that! But by not practising what they preach and undermining these principles at home, they will lose that credibility. In a way, they will provide a green light to authoritarian governments to do the exact same for those that they don’t like. I mean, why not?”
Leicht does, however, believe that a continued struggle against these litigations will not be in vain.
“Protests in the past have also been disruptive, annoying and irritating for those in power — look at the Suffragettes. Now, is that something that we today would say ‘That’s just annoying and irritating’? Many felt so at the time. They were disruptive, they were irritating, they were strong, they were principled – and they were successful. And I think history will tell the same story about courageous climate protesters,” she said.
It is clear that countries positioning themselves as “champions of democracy” must truly allow freedom of expression within their own borders, especially when they set the tone globally. If they continue to infringe upon the rights of people to demonstrate their beliefs and advocate publicly for change, then the future will be silent.
24 Sep 2024 | News and features
This afternoon, the president of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Masoud Pezeshkian, will address world leaders at the United Nations General Assembly. He left Tehran for New York on Sunday, reportedly accompanied by a large delegation of 40 people, including close family members.
Pezeshkian’s trip to New York comes as renowned rapper and human rights activist Toomaj Salehi remains in prison in Iran despite widespread international condemnation. Salehi’s music and activism have supported the Woman, Life, Freedom movement in Iran, challenged corruption, and tackled human rights abuses by the Iranian authorities. In retaliation for his work, Salehi has been subjected to over three years of judicial harassment. He has been imprisoned, beaten, and tortured. In April 2024, he was sentenced to death by Branch 1 of the Isfahan Revolutionary Court for “corruption on earth,” punishable by death under the Islamic Penal Code. The death sentence was overturned by the Iranian Supreme Court in June 2024 and referred to the Revolutionary Court for sentencing. But months later, Salehi remains imprisoned — and now the authorities have charged him with fresh offences for his music and his work. The Iranian authorities continue to refuse to provide him with adequate healthcare, including treatment and pain relief for his torture-inflicted injuries.
Two Urgent Appeals have been filed with United Nations (UN) bodies. In May 2024, an Urgent Appeal was filed with two UN Special Rapporteurs by an international legal team at Doughty Street Chambers on behalf of the family of Toomaj Salehi and Index on Censorship. In July 2024, the Human Rights Foundation submitted an individual complaint to the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention in Salehi’s case, in conjunction with the counsel team at Doughty Street Chambers and Index on Censorship.
Today’s Call
In advance of Pezeshkian’s speech today, Salehi’s family, his international counsel team at Doughty Street Chambers, Index on Censorship, and the Human Rights Foundation call for Iran to immediately and unconditionally release Salehi.
Salehi’s friend and manager of his social media accounts, Negin Niknaam, said: “Toomaj remains unlawfully in Dastgerd prison despite the lack of an arrest order and being in need of urgent medical care to avoid permanent disability for injuries he endured in custody under torture, which in itself is forbidden as per Article 38 of the Iranian Constitution.
“I ask UN Member States to urgently raise these concerns, remind the Islamic Republic of Iran’s authorities of the legal obligations and demand a full commitment for the immediate release of Toomaj from President Masoud Pezeshkian before his address at the United Nations General Assembly in New York.”
Salehi’s cousin, Arezou Eghbali Babadi, added: “The international community’s solidarity and support have played a key role so far in ensuring the death penalty for my cousin Toomaj Salehi was overturned. Now the international community must speak out and press the Iranian president to release Toomaj, before it is too late.”
24 Sep 2024 | News and features
Banned Books Week is here once again. And so too are more stories of books being censored across the world. This week, Pen America reported that the number of book bans in public schools has nearly tripled in 2023-24 from the previous school year.
While the week-long Banned Books Week event, supported by a coalition including Index on Censorship, looks largely towards bans in the USA, we’re taking a moment to reflect on global censorship of literature. We asked the Index team to share what they think is the most ridiculous instance of book censorship, from the outright silly to the baffling but dangerous. Some of these examples verge on amusing — the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s aversion to talking animals, for example — but the bans that have ended in attempted murders just go to show that the practice of book banning itself is completely nonsensical, and can lead to real harm.
Banned Books (Photo by Aimée Hamilton)
Too many talking animals
You don’t have to have children to imagine what a clichéd kids book might look like. Yes, you’ve guessed right – animated animals. Tigers, mice, dogs – they’re all common in children’s literature. But the Chinese authorities have an uncomfortable relationship with our furry friends.
In 2022 a Hong Kong court sent five people to prison for publishing a series of books called Sheep Village (and of course they banned the books too). To be fair these illustrated books, aimed at kids aged four to seven, didn’t code their political messages well: a flock of sheep (stand-in for Hong Kongers) peacefully resist a savage wolf pack (the guys in Beijing). So this might not be the most absurd example, though it did feel like an absurdly low moment.
However, what was clearly absurd on all levels was the 1931 ban of Alice in Wonderland by the governor of Hunan Province. The book’s crime? Talking animals. Apparently they shouldn’t have used human language and putting humans and animals on the same level was “disastrous”. What unites the CCP with the Republic of China that came before it? Unease around anthropomorphised animals it would seem.
Too many banned books
Ban This Book by Alan Gatz, a book about book bans, has been banned by the state flying the banner for banning books. This is not a tongue twister, riddle or code. It is the crystallisation of the absurdity of banning books.
In January 2024, the book was banned in Indian River County in Florida after opposition from parents linked to Moms for Liberty. According to the Tallahassee Democrat, the school board disliked how the book “referenced other books that had been removed from schools” and accused it of “teaching rebellion of school board authority”. When you are trying to reshape the world in line with your own blinkered view it is probably best not to draw attention to it by calling out reading as an act of rebellion. Just a thought.
The book tells the story of Amy Anne Ollinger’s fight to overturn a book ban in her fictional school library. The book’s conclusion leads Amy Anne “to try to beat the book banners at their own game. Because after all, once you ban one book, you can ban them all”.
This tells us something – the self-harming absurdity of book bans is apparent to kids like Amy Anne but not to the prudish administrators and thuggish groups wielding their mob veto like a weapon. Groups like Moms for Liberty and their fellow censors obscure the darkness of our shared history by removing any reference to it and by pretending it did not happen — not by addressing the root causes or working to ensure it does not happen again.
- Nik Williams, policy and campaigns officer
Too Belarusian
In Belarus, numerous books in the Belarusian language by the country’s best classical and modern writers have been banned, especially following the 2020 presidential election and pro-democracy protests. Unbelievably, Lukashenka’s regime — often called the last dictatorship in Europe and backed by Russia — views Belarusian historical, cultural and national identity as a threat.
Many books in Belarusian have been labelled extremist and even destroyed from the National Library’s collection since the protests started in August 2020. This includes Dogs of Europe by Alhierd Baharevich, works by 19th century writer Vincent Dunin-Marcinkievich and 20th century poet Larysa Hienijush, among others.
- Jana Paliashchuk, researcher on Index’s Letters from Lukashenka’s Prisoners project
Too decadent and despairing
Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, possibly the greatest short story ever written, was banned by both the Nazis and the Soviets. Being a Jewish author, the Nazis burned Kafka’s books on their “sauberen” (cleansing) pyres. But in the Soviet Union, his books were banned as “decadent and despairing”. This was clearly a judgement made by officials without much knowledge of the history of the novel, where so many titles are filled with human despair. Without these, we would not get the contrasting light of decadent writers like Oscar Wilde and JK Huysmans.
- David Sewell, finance director
Too mermaidy
One of my favourite books to read with my son is Julian is a Mermaid by Jessica Love. It’s a beautiful picture book where a young boy dreams of becoming a mermaid after seeing a school / pod (collective noun to be determined) of merfolk on the way to the Coney Island Mermaid Parade, then rummages around his nana’s home for a costume.
In various parts of the USA, Julian has been banned. In a school district in Iowa, it was flagged for removal under a law that “bans books that depict or describe sex acts”, which apparently also covers gender identity — there are definitely no sex acts in this book. In other districts, it’s been fully banned due to representing the LGBTQ+ community.
If book banners in the USA are really worried about kids becoming mermaids, then I’d like to know on what grounds. Because, quite frankly, I always wanted to be a mermaid, and if it turns out it was a viable option, I have some regrets. Personally, I’d be more concerned about Julian ripping down his nana’s curtains to make a tail, à la Julie Andrews making costumes for the Von Trapp children.
- Katie Dancey-Downs, assistant editor
Too accurate
In Egypt, Metro, the country’s first graphic novel by Magdy El Shafee, was quickly banned after publication in 2008 for “offending public morals”. This was likely due to the novel’s depiction of a half-naked woman, inclusion of swear words and general portrayal of poverty and corruption in Egypt during the former president Hosni Mubarak’s 30-year rule. The author was charged under article 178 of the Egyptian penal code for infringing “upon public decency” and fined 5,000 LE. It was eventually republished in Arabic in 2012.
- Georgia Beeston, communications and events manager
Too dystopian
Aldous Huxley’s 1932 dystopian classic Brave New World explores an imagined future centred on productivity and enforced “happiness” at the expense of individual freedom. Set in 2540, society has been stripped of families, with babies manufactured synthetically with specific characteristics, then forced into a predetermined “caste” system. People are encouraged to prioritise short-term gratification through casual sex and taking a “happiness” drug called soma, making them blissfully unaware of their imprisonment within the system.
Since its publication nearly 100 years ago, the novel has caused controversy globally. It was initially banned in Ireland and Australia in 1932 for eschewing traditional familial and religious values, then later banned in India in 1967 for its sexual content, with Huxley even being referred to as a “pornographer” for depicting a society that encourages recreational sex. It is still banned in many classrooms and libraries across America for a range of wild reasons, from use of offensive language and sexual explicitness to racism and “conflict with a religious viewpoint”.
But Huxley’s imagined future is one of horror. He uses themes of enforced, unfettered pleasure and a twisted genetic-based class system to express how humans’ complex problems and moral quandaries cannot be solved by scientific advancement alone. The main point of dystopian fiction is to tell a cautionary tale of the levels of exploitation that society could sink to, in order to save the world at large. While it was undoubtedly shocking and crass for its time, the fact that Huxley’s novel still ruffles feathers reveals a complete misunderstanding of allegory.
Too many lesbians
I first read Radclyffe Hall’s legendary lesbian novel, The Well of Loneliness, published in 1928, with bated breath as a young, closeted queer person. Her portrayal of young woman ‘Stephen’ Gordon and her romance with Mary Llewellyn was wildly liberating and satisfying to read. Of course, as a product of its time it is in many ways outdated and of course laced with problematic values, for example biphobia and misogyny. But it was hugely important in terms of normalising queer relationships over a century ago.
Shortly after publication, the book went to trial in Britain on the grounds of “obscenity” and was subsequently banned — but this is no Lady Chatterley’s Lover. There are no real ‘hot under the collar moments’. The only ‘obscenity’ was the portrayal of two women in a romantic relationship, even though (unlike male homosexuality), lesbianism wasn’t actually illegal in 1928.
- Anna Millward, development officer
Too friendly
The award-winning writer and painter Leo Lionni’s first children’s book Little Blue and Little Yellow (1959) is a short story for young children about two best friends who, one day, can’t find each other. When they meet again, they give each other such a big hug that they turn green.
Despite its important message about the power of love and friendship, the mayor of Venice decided to ban it from all preschools in the province for “undermining traditional family values”. It was one of more than 50 children’s books to have been banned just days after he took up the post after his election in 2015.
- Jessica Ní Mhainín, head of policy and campaigns
Too uncensored
As ironies go, the banning of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 may be the strangest. The novel describes a dystopian future in which books are banned and “firemen” burn any that are found – its title comes from the ignition temperature of paper.
In 1967, a new edition of the book aimed at high schools, known as the Bal-Hi edition, was substantially altered to remove swear words and references to drug use, nudity and drunkenness. Somehow, the censored text came to be used for the mass-market edition in 1973 and “for the next six years no uncensored paperback copies were in print, and no one seemed to notice”, wrote Jonathan R. Eller in the introduction to the 60th anniversary edition of the book.
Readers eventually realised and alerted Bradbury. He demanded that the publisher retract the censored version, writing that he would “not tolerate the practice of manuscript ‘mutilation’”.
- Mark Stimpson, associate editor
Too unflattering
It’s not altogether surprising that UK authorities attempted to prevent the autobiography of former MI5 officer Peter Wright, Spycatcher (co-written by Paul Greengrass), from hitting the shelves. The book did not present British intelligence agencies in a flattering light, and the government’s claims that they were suppressing its publication in the interests of security — rather than to save face — were eventually dismissed by the courts.
However, the ridiculous part about this book banning was that it only applied to England and Wales and the book was freely accessible elsewhere — including Scotland. This led to an absurd situation where newspapers around the world were reporting on the book’s contents while the press in England was subject to a gagging order, despite the information having already been revealed and books being easily shipped into the country. The ban was eventually lifted after it was acknowledged that the book wasn’t exposing any secrets due to its overseas publication.
- Daisy Ruddock, CASE coordinator
Too blasphemous
The most absurd book banning is also, arguably, the most serious in recent history. The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie was published in 1988 to deserved critical acclaim. It is a playful and complex novel that examines, among other things, the origins of Islam. The death sentence imposed on the author by Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Khomeini was fuelled by, and in turn itself fuelled an ideology that believes that a novel can be blasphemous and its author should be killed. It would be laughable if the consequences weren’t so deadly.
- Martin Bright, editor at large
