2 Dec 2010 | Americas, Mexico
The fact that the governor of the ultra conservative state of Jalisco used public funds to bring Richard Cohen, an author and conversion therapist who believes gays can be turned straight hit the news recently in Mexico causing a political uproar.
In a public event co-funded by the government of Jalisco and the Guadalajara Catholic Archdiocese, Cohen told parents that a cure for their children existed and they could turn straight because there were no genetic reasons for being gay.
News of the event, called “On the Road to Chastity”, resonated throughout Mexico after a complaint by Raúl Vargas, a state congressman for Jalisco for the leftist Partido de la Revolución Democrática, who learned about this use of public funds when he found a poster advertising the meeting with the logotype of the general administrative office for the state government. The three day public event held in late November was co funded by the state Catholic Archdiocese.
The Jalisco State Commission on Human Rights said they would investigate the charges, as there was information that at the meeting the organisers “tried to picture homosexuality as an illness.”
Cohen of the International Healing Foundation, a nonprofit and tax-exempt organisation founded by him in 1990 to treat same-sex attraction told participants that he was raped as a child and became gay but later turned straight and is now married and has three children.
The issue of gay rights is a sensitive one in Jalisco. Emilio González Márquez, the Governor of Jalisco, and Cardinal Juan Sandoval Iñiguez, the Archbishop of Guadalajara, have both been outspokenly opposed to gay weddings in Mexico. González Márquez said he felt a little nauseous thinking about gay weddings, while the Archbishop engaged in a spat with Mexico City Mayor Marcelo Ebrard.
State-Church relations are tender in Mexico. Although the country has the world’s second largest Roman Catholic population, and the Church has a strong following in all social and family issues, there is resistance to the church becoming involved in politics. In fact the 1917 Constitution stripped the Church of many powers and forbade Church members from delving into politics—through the famous Article 130. A bloody war erupted in the 1920s because of Church-State differences which caused the deaths of . The worst persecution of the church took place under President Plutarco Elias Calles, under whom the Cristero, or Christian war, erupted, raging from 1926 and 1934. By the end of the war, there were no priests in 17 states. It wasn’t until 1991 that President Salinas proposed the removal of most of the anticlerical provisions from the constitution, a move which passed the legislature in 1992.
Most of the progressive agenda favoring gay marriages, abortion and the adoption of children by gays has been promoted in Mexico City, which has been ruled by the leftists Partido Revolucionario Democratico (PRD).
But in Jalisco and other states located in the area known as El Bajio, religious fervour remains the same as three decades ago. They even have a tequila called Cristeros, in memory of the Christian fighters to upheld the rights of the church in the 1930s.
26 Nov 2010 | News
Governments, organisations and media across the world have been put on alert as whistleblowing site Wikileaks looks set to release millions of diplomantic communications. Emily Butselaar reports
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26 Nov 2010 | Iran, Middle East and North Africa
Index on Censorship today launches Iran Uncut, a special initiative to unearth and revitalise the plethora of archives of literary, artistic, photographic and other creative works by Iranians denied publication and expression in their homeland.
Pen names or pseudonyms have long been a facet of political and social identity, enabling and empowering otherwise forbidden expression.
Now millions of Iranians have created aliases in order to have a voice and actively engage in social and political online dialogue. An extraordinary community has developed of people inside and outside the country sharing thoughts and ideas, posting opinion on Facebook and Twitter and personal blogs. Many Iranians boldly go by their own names, risking intimidation and arrest. To the foreign eye the assumed names are no different, their pseudonyms not immediately recognisable as such in their phonetic Persian incarnations. But looking through activist pages on the net, they are there…along with Thunder Heart and Liss Nup are Tire Akhar, Irani Vatanparast, Mikrobe Siasi, Zibatarin Moosighi, Sokooto Dard, Gole Green, Na Mous, Zane Irani, Baghlava Rashti. To the non-Persian speaker these names blend in with the others as first and family names, but their verve is apparent to Iranians who instead read: Freedom-of Expression, The-final Bullet, Iranian Patriot, Political Bacteria, The-most-beautiful Music, Silence and Pain, Green Flower, Hon Our [honour], Iranian Woman, and the humourous Baghlava Rashti, after the syrupy pastry.
Less humourous is the reality that necessitates this precaution. The regime’s cyber army is busy monitoring all these sites and Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security last year expanded its activities to incorporate demanding Facebook passwords upon entry to the country, revealing individual’s profiles and most significantly the online company they keep. Other Iranians interrogated in detention report having to reveal email and Twitter account passwords. Outside the country “dissident” activity is under equal surveillance, with messages sent by intelligence agents that warn against posting “anti-government” discussion, and reported threats involving family still living in Iran.
Against this backdrop is the continued censorship of non-political writing, art, film, theatre, music, photography and other works deemed socially and culturally “inappropriate”. Some of these have already been seen at international festivals and through online networks. Index on Censorship wants to maximize this effort, with Iran Uncut presenting a forum for the open exhibition of creative talent from Iran to a wider audience. We welcome all your work and I look forward to communicating with you and sharing your ideas.
I shall go by the name of mahi siah-e kuchulu (the little black fish), in homage to the children’s story of that title and its author, the eloquent school teacher Samad Behrangi. The story, about a little black fish determined to discover the world beyond the little stream of her habitat, is a political allegory that sealed Behrangi’s fate and resonates today more than ever. You can read it here:
Please email me at: littleblackfish[at]indexoncensorship.org
21 Nov 2010 | News
Wangyi09’s twitter feed stops abruptly at 7:45AM on October 28. According to human rights groups, the Chinese rights activist, whose real name is Cheng Jianping, was detained later that day for a satirical tweet she had posted on October 17 which mocked anti-Japanese protesters by urging them to destroy the Japanese pavilion at the Shanghai Expo. Her husband-to-be, Hua Chunhui, also a rights activist, said the day she was grabbed by police was to have been their wedding day.
Hua had posted the original tweet which read: “”Anti-Japanese demonstrations, smashing Japanese products, that was all done years ago by Guo Quan [an activist and expert on the Nanjing Massacre]. It’s no new trick. If you really wanted to kick it up a notch, you’d immediately fly to Shanghai to smash the Japanese Expo pavilion.” Cheng re-tweeted it, adding the comment: “Angry youth! Charge!”
According to Radio Free Asia (RFA), who spoke to Chen Lei, a deputy chief of police in Xinxiang town, Henan province, Cheng was sentenced to a year of re-education through labour (RTL) on 15 November for “disturbing social order.” Cheng’s age is unclear. Some reports cite her as 46, others as in her twenties. The BBC reports that she is now being held in Shibali River women’s labour camp in Zhengzhou city in Henan.
Two days later, Amnesty came out with a statement calling for her release. “Sentencing someone to a year in a labour camp, without trial, for simply repeating another person’s clearly satirical observation on Twitter demonstrates the level of China’s repression of online expression,” said Sam Zarifi, the organization’s Asia-Pacific director.
Amnesty adds that the police may have been watching Cheng because she had been working as an online activist for several years, including showing support for imprisoned dissident and this year’s Nobel Peace Prize winner, Liu Xiaobo. Cheng’s twitter account shows her as following the Dalai Lama’s and Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei’s twitter feeds among others.
