10 Mar 2023 | Ruth's blog
Wednesday marked International Women’s Day, an opportunity to reflect upon the role of women in society. In the midst of a war in Europe and global economic crisis it is easy to focus on the immediate, on the current existential crisis, but there is an onus on us to remember what is happening further afield.
On Wednesday for International Women’s Day I addressed students on behalf of the Anne Frank Trust. I highlighted the importance of not only telling women’s stories but also the power of amplifying their lived experiences, wherever they may be. Collectively we all made a promise that this week – and I hope in future weeks – we would seek to tell the stories of the women who have made a mark and ensure that the world knows their names.
I seek to deliver on that promise.
I am proud to be the Chief Executive of Index on Censorship, a charity which endeavours to provide a voice to the persecuted, which campaigns for freedom of expression around the world. I work daily with dissidents who risk everything to change their societies and their communities for the better. Men and women. But today I would like to highlight the names of some of those women who have paid the ultimate sacrifice in the last year for the supposed “crime” of doing something we take for granted every day – using the human right of freedom of expression.
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Deborah Samuel – a student brutally murdered in Nigeria after being accused of blasphemy on an academic social media platform.
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Nokuthula Mabaso – a leading woman human rights defender in South Africa and leader of the eKhenana Commune. She was assassinated outside of her home, in front of her children.
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Shireen Abu Akleh – a veteran Palestinian-American correspondent for Al Jazeera who was killed while reporting on an Israeli raid in the West Bank.
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Jhannah Villegas – a local journalist in the Philippines was killed at her home. The police believe this was linked to her work.
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Francisca Sandoval – a local Chilean journalist was murdered, and several others hurt when gunmen opened fire on a Workers’ Day demonstration.
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Mahsa Amini – a name all too familiar to us, as her murder inspired a peaceful revolution which continues to this day. Murdered by the Iranian morality police for “inappropriate attire”.
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Oksana Baulina – a Russian journalist killed during shelling by Russian forces in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv.
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Oksana Haidar – a 54-year-old Ukrainian journalist and blogger better known under the pseudonym “Ruda Pani”, killed by Russian artillery, northeast of Kyiv.
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Oleksandra Kuvshynova – a Ukrainian producer who was killed outside of Kyiv, while working with Fox News.
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Petronella Baloyi – a South African land and women human rights defender gunned down while in her home.
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Yessenia Mollinedo Falconi, a Mexican journalist who was the founder and editor of El Veraz. A crime and security correspondent, she received a death threat a fortnight before she was shot. She was killed alongside her colleague Sheila Johana García Olivera
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Vira Hyrych – a journalist for Radio Free Europe’s Ukrainian service, killed by Russian shelling.
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Yeimi Chocué Camayo – an Indigenous women’s rights activist, killed in Columbia when returning to her house.
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Cielo Rujeles – wife of social leader Sócrates Sevillano, shot and killed alongside her husband in Colombia.
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Luz Angelina Quijano Poveda – a delegate of the Community Action Board in Punta Betín, Colombia, murdered at her home.
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Sandra Patricia Montenegro – a PE teacher and social leader was shot and killed in front of her students in Colombia.
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Melissa Núñez – a transgender activist shot dead by armed men in Honduras.
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María del Carmen Vázquez – a Mexican activist and member of the Missing Persons of Pénjamo, murdered by two men at her home in. She was looking for her son who disappeared last summer.
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Blanca Esmeralda Gallardo – activist and member of the Collective Voice of the Missing in Puebla, who was assassinated on the side of the highway in Mexico as she waited for a bus to take her to work. She was searching for her 22-year-old daughter who vanished in 2021.
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Yermy Chocue Camayo – treasurer of the Chimborazo indigenous reservation in Colombia, and human rights defender, killed as she headed home.
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Dilia Contreras – an experienced presenter for RCN Radio in Columbia, shot dead in a car alongside her colleague Leiner Montero after covering a festival in a local village.
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Edilsan Andrade – a Colombian social leader and local politician, shot and killed in the presence of one of her children.
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Jesusita Moreno, aka Doña Tuta – a human rights activist who defended Afro-Colombian community rights. Facing threats against her life, she was assassinated whilst at her son’s birthday party.
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Maria Piedad Aguirre – a Colombian social leader who was a defender of black communities, violently murdered with a machete; she was found at home by one of her grandchildren.
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Elizabeth Mendoza – social leader, was shot and killed in her home in Colombia. Her husband, son and nephew were also murdered.
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María José Arciniegas Salinas – a Colombian indigenous human rights defender, assassinated by armed men who said they belonged to the Comandos de la Frontera group.
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Shaina Vanessa Pretel Gómez – who was known among the LGBTIQ+ community for her activism, including work to establish safe spaces for homeless people and a passion for the arts, was shot dead early in the morning by a suspect on a motorbike.
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Rosa Elena Celix Guañarita – a Colombian human rights defender was shot while socialising with friends.
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Mariela Reyes Montenegro – a leader of the Union of Workers and Employees of Public Services was murdered in Colombia.
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Alba Bermeo Puin – an indigenous leader and environmental defender in Ecuador was murdered when five months pregnant.
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Mursal Nabizada – a former female member of Afghanistan’s parliament and women’s rights campaigner murdered at her home.
This is not an exhaustive list by any stretch of the imagination. Compiling the names and profiles of women who have been killed as a result of their right to exercise freedom of expression is almost impossible, not least because of the nature of the repressive regimes which too many people live under. But every name represents thousands of others who day in, day out put their lives at risk to speak truth to power. They were mothers, grandmothers, daughters, nieces, granddaughters, sisters, aunts, friends, partners, wives.
To their families, they were the centre of the world. To us, today, their stories bring fear and inspiration in equal measure. They are heroes whose bravery we should all seek to emulate.
24 Feb 2023 | Belarus, FEATURED: Jessica Ní Mhainín, News, Ukraine
The people in Belarus are not willing to fight against Ukraine. It won’t be easy to convince them,” Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky told the Munich Security Conference last week amid threats from Belarus that it could join the Russian offensive. The Belarusian regime has supported Russia since the invasion, but their armed forces have not (yet) been directly involved in the conflict.
Like in Russia, anti-war rhetoric has been heavily repressed in Belarus. Last March mothers of Belarusian soldiers were arrested after they gathered in the church to pray for peace. And only last week a 65-year-old garage owner was fined, and his business closed for having called Russian military personnel “occupiers” and refusing to sell them goods.
Nonetheless, some political prisoners have managed to communicate their feelings about the war. “We are one, we used to be at peace […] Hide your pride and shake hands,” Siarhei Sakavets wrote in his poem “22.02.2022” on the eve of the invasion. “There are so many rumours about everything that is happening, and the news on TV. God help me. I am very worried about you,” Larysa Kuzmenka wrote to her daughter and grandson last November.
Reading these letters from Belarusian political prisoners published by Index on Censorship, Pasha Bystrova – a Ukrainian woman who now lives in the Netherlands – says she felt a sense of “extreme injustice”. In different ways, Ukrainians and Belarusians are being deprived of their fundamental rights. They are suffering the consequences of tyranny.
Bystrova, who now works with refugees – including Ukrainian refugees – told Index that she feels that political prisoners and refugees are alike in that they are often perceived as being ‘the other’ by wider society. They are misunderstood because many people have preconceived ideas of who a ‘political prisoner’ or ‘refugee’ is. Having read political prisoners’ letters, Bystrova said: “I felt this could be me, any of us or our loved ones.”
Bystrova feels that the fates of Ukraine and Belarus are intertwined. “I believe the result of this war will greatly influence the situation in Belarus,” Bystrova told Index. “The collapse of the Lukashenka regime is inevitable.” That’s why defending Ukraine is “for our freedom and yours”.
Index on Censorship has so far published letters from 29 of the 1450 political prisoners in Belarus. Read their letters here
21 Feb 2023 | FEATURED: Jemimah Steinfield, Index Arts, News, United Kingdom
As a child I used to dream about the day I would go to Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. I’d watch the movie on repeat, always captivated by the moment when Charlie enters that room, the one with the marshmallow trees and the chocolate river. In other words, the room of childhood dreams. Flash forward to a year ago. My son was having a tantrum, refusing to leave the house (he was three, it happens). I was trying the normal tricks to calm and cajole him. Nothing was working. Eventually I told him about the Willy Wonka room. As if by magic he calmed instantly, put on his coat and we left.
I didn’t mention Augustus Gloop in my retelling. If I had I might have missed out the fact he was “fat” because, well, I try to avoid that word in my house. I don’t want my son to grow up body conscious or to fat shame others. That is my prerogative as a parent; I can filter and rewrite as I see fit. It is not, though, the prerogative of the publishing house, or a streaming service. But that’s exactly the role they have given themselves. As was recently announced in The Daily Telegraph, Roald Dahl’s children’s books are being rewritten to remove language deemed offensive by the publisher Puffin. Sensitivity readers have been hired, their job to bring the books up to the 21st Century. So Augustus Gloop is now “enormous” not “fat” and, amongst other issues that I’ll get to shortly, I’m curious as to whether that is even any better?
Ditto references to “female” characters like Miss Trunchbull in Matilda, who has gone from a “most formidable female” to a now “most formidable woman”. Shouldn’t that be “person”? Or do we have to wait for the 2024 edition?
This sets a really bad precedent. I hate to be the cliché – work at Index on Censorship, talk about slippery slopes – but this really is a slippery slope. The library shelf that Dahl’s books sit on is full of works that teeter on the edge of PC. Take just one example, Judith Kerr’s beloved The Tiger Who Came to Tea. In this it’s Sophie’s mother who is at home looking after Sophie while it’s Sophie’s father who is at work, and it’s Sophie’s father who has the great idea to go out for sausages and chips (and presumably has all the capital to pay for it). Of course Daddy bloody saves the day! Shall we rewrite that?
I don’t like the traditional gender roles of Kerr’s book, nor do I like some of the language and descriptions in Dahl’s. But these books are products of our uncomfortable past and no amount of editing can change that past. Editing can, however, gloss over it as if it never happened, which is far more concerning. How are we supposed to understand who we are today if we don’t have the context of where we’ve come from? It even denies us our victories. “Look! Mummy and Daddy both work today!” I can tell my kids proudly if they question the dynamics in Kerr’s Tiger.
Another troubling aspect concerns author consent. In the journalism industry, once something has been published it’s considered bad practise to make any changes, certainly without the permission of the author. With Dahl, not only have words been changed, passages have been added. According to the Roald Dahl Story Company “it’s not unusual to review the language” during a new print run and any changes were “small and carefully considered”. Are these small? In The Witches, when it first introduces the witches as bald beneath their wigs a new line follows: “There are plenty of other reasons why women might wear wigs and there is certainly nothing wrong with that.” That’s very well-meaning, it’s just that Dahl didn’t write that. I fear the power we are giving to publishers and estates to reword as they see fit. Ultimately in the wrong hands good intentions easily turn bad.
My final irritation is more personal. My son’s bookshelf is spilling over with stories, a glorious catalogue of old and new. I’m amazed by the number of fantastic children’s writers out there today and a little overwhelmed. Justification for the Dahl modifications seems to be along the lines of a commitment to diversity and inclusivity, something we can all get behind. If Puffin and Netflix are so committed to these values why don’t they instead invest in and support authors from other backgrounds? After all, Roald Dahl was a white male with an anti-Semitic track record. He’s hardly the poster boy of 2023.
As much as they have their problems, I like some of Dahl’s characters and plots both from a place of nostalgia and from a place of good story-telling. I look forward to the day when my son progresses from tales of golden tickets to giants outside windows (way too scary for now). But he shouldn’t need to watch Charlie and the Chocolate Factory on repeat like me because there are many other brilliant books out there, waiting to be turned into film. What we need is money channelled to new stories, not new, redacted versions of Matilda.
This article originally appeared in The Bookseller here.
21 Feb 2023 | News, Russia, Ukraine
Immediately after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov loudly announced the active involvement of Chechen security forces in it. Units of the Russian army and the Interior Ministry for Chechnya, which de facto report to Kadyrov personally, lined the grounds of his residence in the centre of the Chechen capital. Kadyrov said at the time that 12,000 Chechen volunteers were ready to leave for any special operation in the interests of Russia.
Since then, various sources have claimed that about 200 Chechens have been killed. The figure for the number of Chechens fighting for Russia is about 10,000 according to Kadyrov. Russian human rights activists put the number at around 3,000.
In September 2022 several women decided to organise a demonstration against sending Chechens to join Russia’s war. In a voice message that circulated on social media at the time, the organisers called on people to come to the central square of the city of Grozny: “They killed us in two wars, aren’t there enough dead, mutilated and crippled?” the woman in the message asks. On the same day, Kadyrov said on his Telegram channel that the women had been detained, a preventive conversation was held with them, and he promised to send their sons to fight in Ukraine.
This was something of an understatement. The human rights group Memorial has since confirmed that the women were taken to Grozny’s City Hall and their husbands forced to beat them. The son of at least one of the women was sent to Ukraine and her husband died a few days later, seemingly of “a broken heart”.
This kind of harsh reaction had an effect: people became afraid to express their opinions, even in front of their long-time friends. Umar from Grozny says that recently a friend of his sent a meme about the war in Ukraine into a group chat room, and five minutes later deleted it. “This has never happened before, everyone knows everyone in this chat room and before the war everyone trusted each other,” said Umar.
That said, one activist of a Russian human rights organisation believes that the situation of free speech in Chechnya has changed, but not necessarily for the worse. She confirms that people are less likely to express their discontent with the authorities in public, but among trusted circles, criticism of the Chechen authorities has become harsher. She says that even those who used to be apolitical are now speaking out against the actions of the authorities. She believes that the people who fear that their sons who survived the Chechen wars or were born later will die in a new, “alien war”.
According to Marina, a 33-year-old who works at a public institution in Chechnya, “not a single lunch with friends goes by without talking about Ukraine”. She follows all the news from the front and cheers for Ukraine’s victory. Most of Marina’s friends also support Ukraine and want Russia to lose. When she and her friends discuss Ukraine in a café, everyone keeps asking each other to keep their voices down.
“Ukraine is going through the same thing we went through. The same rhetoric, only we were accused of being a nation of terrorists, while the Ukrainians are ‘Nazis’,” Marina said. She is sure that among Chechens there is no patriotism toward Russia. “Where does it come from?” she asked rhetorically.
“The Chechens we see on social networks and state channels talking about love for Russia are people who need something from the authorities. They pursue purely material goals.”
Marina personally knows Chechens who went to Ukraine for money but that was at the very beginning of the war (the minimum amount paid by the Russian government for participation in the war is 195,000 rubles monthly, about $2615),
Umar, 43, a courier from Grozny, tells of his neighbour who was sent to Ukraine recently. “He liked to drink and make noise. He was taken to prison and stayed there for several months. Then he was offered: either you go to Ukraine or we put you in jail for a long time. He agreed to Ukraine. I recently saw a picture of him standing somewhere in the Luhansk region of Ukraine, in a Russian military uniform, with a submachine gun in his hands”. According to Umar, there are many such cases.
There are also those in Chechnya who think differently and support Kadyrov’s army. These are mostly families of Chechens who are fighting on the side of Russia. “They are not rooting for Russia’s victory, but for their family members,” said Tamara, a 49-year-old housewife from a Chechen village. Those whose children have gone to fight in Ukraine sincerely want them to return home and support them. These parents need to explain to themselves that their sons are not risking their lives for nothing, and they speak “the language of television” Tamara said. Most of their rhetoric boils down to a line they’ve been told that Russia was forced to attack and that “the (Russian) government isn’t stupid”.
For the residents of Grozny, which was rebuilt after almost total destruction in the early 2000s, today they live ordinary, peaceful lives. As in other Russian cities, there is almost no indication that the country is waging an aggressive war against its neighbour. It is almost the same war Russia waged against Chechnya in the 1990s and 2000s when it fought for independence. The graffiti on the walls that used to say “Welcome to hell”, left for the Russian soldiers by Chechen fighters for independence, has been replaced by murals depicting Kadyrov and his men. But there is little faith in the sincerity of Kadyrov’s love for the Russian leadership. Marina says:
“Kadyrov has no patriotism for Russia. All he protects is his position and his stability.”
This article is written by a journalist from Chechnya. For their safety they wished to remain anonymous and excluded identifying features of those they spoke to as well
