18 Jan 2013
Pussy Riot – Russian Punk Group
Feminist punk collective Pussy Riot made international headlines in 2012 when they were arrested for their anti-Putin performance in Christ the Saviour Cathedral, Moscow. Maria Alyokhina, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Yekaterina Samutsevich performed the so-called punk prayer in February 2012, imploring the Virgin Mary to “throw Putin out”. International media followed the consequent court case closely, many denouncing it as no different from a Communist show trial.
In August 2012, the three were sentenced to two years in jail for hooliganism motivated by religious hatred, although Samutsevich was later freed on appeal. Despite Putin’s attempt to make an example of the trio, they have come to represent the struggle for free speech and justice in Russia and garnered support worldwide including from fellow musicians, among them Madonna, Sting and Yoko Ono.
The verdict was a bitter blow for freedom of expression in Russia, which has been under increasing attack since Putin’s re-election to the presidency in March 2012. But Pussy Riot members remained defiant, and delivered clear, pointed and excoriating attacks on the Putin regime in their closing statements from the dock. Yekaterina Samutsevich explained the setting for their protest:
“That Christ the Saviour Cathedral had become a significant symbol in the political strategy of the authorities was clear to many thinking people when Vladimir Putin’s former [KGB] colleague Kirill Gundyayev took over as leader of the Russian Orthodox Church”.
Maria Alyokhina spoke more generally about her country: “Russia, as a state, has long resembled an organism sick to the core. And the sickness explodes out into the open when you rub up against its inflamed abscesses. At first and for a long time this sickness gets hushed up in public, but eventually it always finds resolution through dialogue.”
As punk musician John Robb said “the 40 seconds performance in Christ the Saviour Cathedral was like the sound check for their performance in the dock”.
Photo: Demotix / Maria Pleshkova
Zanele Muholi – South African Photographer
Zanele Muholi is an award-winning photographer and LGBT activist whose work focuses on gender and sexual identity in post-Apartheid South Africa. The Open Society Initiative for South Africa has described her as “one of the country’s foremost artists”. Through her work, Muholi has documented the lives of the South Africa’s black lesbians in a manner that questions traditional perceptions of the black female body.
“In the face of all the challenges our community encounters daily, I embarked on a journey of visual activism to ensure that there is black queer visibility,” she told the New Yorker. Her images are both a statement and an archive, “marking, mapping and preserving an often invisible community for posterity”.
Although South Africa bans discrimination on the basis of sexuality, hostility towards sexual difference is pervasive and extremely violent. Homosexuality is still taboo and lesbians have been the targets of horrendous hate crimes including murders and “corrective rape”. Zanele told Index “Between March and September 2011, four lesbians had been murdered and between June and Nov. 2012, eight black lesbians have been killed. The political climate does nothing for the rights of those in danger right now.”
In 2009, Lulama Xingwana, the then minister for arts and culture, walked out of one of Muholi’s exhibitions. Xingwana later told press that she found the images of nude, lesbian couples “immoral” and against “nation-building”. As Zanele: “Many who have come out in the black community have been ostracised, disowned and others harmed. The social climate is that of fear. The townships are gripped by unthinkable violence and fear. “
Zanele has continued to work in spite of this hostility. However she suffered the greatest attack possible on an artist last year when more than 20 external hard drives representing more than five years’ work were stolen from her flat. One contained images of the funerals of three lesbians killed in hate crimes. “It was devastating, I got depressed and I went into mourning, but it also sparked a fierce desire in me, to continue to create and document. It temporarily set me back, but I am back on my grind.”
Photo: Flickr / museedesconfluences
Haifaa al Mansour– Saudi-Arabian film maker
In October 2012, filmmaker Haifaa al Mansour broke new ground in Saudi Arabia. Not only did she create the first film to be shot entirely in Saudi Arabia, but she is also the country’s first female filmmaker. No small feat in a country where women cannot drive, vote or work with men. Under the Saudi guardianship system, women are treated like minors. Regardless of their age, they are forbidden from travelling, studying or working without consent from their male guardians.
Against this backdrop, Al Mansour pressed ahead with her film Wadjda, which was shot entirely in Saudi Arabia using local actors, including two women in leading roles. The film follows a 10-year-old girl in the capital Riyadh who longs for a bike even though it is forbidden for women to cycle. But instead of being frustrated by the country’s strict laws, Al Mansour looked for innovative solutions to the challenges she faced. The film has received critical acclaim in the West. E Nina Rothe, for instance, described her as a ‘talented, ground-breaking film maker’ in the Huffington Post.
In a society where starring in films is frowned upon, finding female cast members was just one of these challenges. Another was the fact that Saudi Arabian women are not allowed to walk the streets alone. As a result, Al Mansour was forced to rely on location scouts to find the perfect spots to film. Filming also proved tricky and when in conservative neighbourhoods, she hid in a van and directed the cast from a phone or walkie-talkies.
Even though Al Mansour’s first feature film has received widespread critical acclaim, the chances are it won’t be shown in her home country, where there are no cinemas. She hopes however that people will watch it on satellite television or on DVD. Like other countries in the region, Saudi Arabia was hit by a wave of popular discontent in early 2011. In the wake of the Arab Spring, the authorities have clamped down on public criticism of officials or government policies.
Photo: Shutterstock.com / andersphoto
Aseem Trivedi – Indian Cartoonist
25-year-old Indian cartoonist Aseem Trivedi has emerged as one of India’s most controversial satirical artists. In September 2012, he was taken into custody and charged with sedition for allegedly ‘insulting the constitution’. The complainant against him claimed ‘there is nothing bigger than the Indian constitution’.
Trivedi’s cartoons are often scatological critiques of the authorities, showing politicians as animals urinating on the constitution. Other cartoons depict schoolchildren being taught ‘How To Be Corrupt’, and government officials making a drink from the blood of countrymen.
Trivedi has shown great courage in standing up to various attempts to silence him. In January 2012, his website Cartoons Against Corruption was suspended by the Mumbai Crime Branch for its supposedly offensive content – but shortly afterwards he reacted by establishing a blog hosting content in a similar vein. Speaking to the Wall Street Journal, he said his intention was to depict the ‘ailing truth’ of the nation and send a strong message to the population. His consistent claim that it is foolish to enshrine respect of national symbols in law has been crucial in forcing the Indian public to consider their own views on some of India’s more archaic laws around blasphemy and sedition. He also challenges Section 66a of the Indian government’s Information Technology Act, which curtails free expression online. During December 2012, Trivedi fasted for eight days in protest.
India’s record on free expression is far from exemplary. Kunal Majumber, principal correspondent for the Indian daily Tehelha, told Index, ‘“Here we are laughing at Pakistan for trying to prosecute an 11-year-old girl for blasphemy, but in our country we’re trying to prosecute someone for sedition. Sometimes it’s funny we call ourselves the largest democracy on earth.”
31 Dec 2012 | Russia
It became apparent in November that internet filtering introduced in Russia under the pretext of protecting children is actually for a different reason. Six videos of feminist punk group Pussy Riot were banned by the Moscow court in November, and now Google is required to remove the clips from YouTube.
At the same time, regional authorities were busy demanding that local Internet Service Providers(ISPs) to block access to online casinos, gaming sites and sites advertising fake diplomas — obviously the result of November’s new development.
As in October, many websites were deemed to be extremist, and local ISPs were requested to block access to them. Libraries were criticised for having computers with unrestricted access to banned websites, and it was requested that they install internet filtering systems. The authorities started a campaign to check how effective schools are protecting children from improper content. As a result, schools were obliged to install content-filtering systems.
And, inevitably, only a month after the national register of banned websites was launched numerous errors were reported: by mistake the whole of Google’s blogging service Blogger (blogspot.com) was included in the register, along with anonymiser service and even YouTube, which was on the register for a few hours.
On 29 November, a Moscow district court demanded the removal of six videos of Pussy Riot from the web, for being “extremists”, including a video of three members performing a “punk prayer” on the altar of Moscow’s Christ the Saviour Cathedral in February 2012, in protest of Vladimir Putin. Three Pussy Riot members, Nadia Tolokonnikova, Yekaterina Samutsevich and Maria Alyokhina were sentenced to two years in prison for hooliganism motivated by religious hatred. Samutsevich was released from prison after she appealed her case.
The court decision lists the IP addresses which should be added to the national register — including YouTube, Pussy Riot’s blog, and their page on LiveJournal.
Here is a list of what was filtered in November:
Commerce and Gambling
On 14 November the Prosecutor’s Office of Karbardino-Balkaria reported that it had carried out an audit of compliance with legislation on higher professional education, and in the process prosecutors found publicly available websites offering educational documents for sale, including diplomas, certificates, authorisations and verifications letters. The prosecutors filed claims in court, requesting that access to the website be restricted.
On 21 November, the General Prosecutor’s Office of the Russian Federation announced that the Ust-Ilimsk Interdistrict Prosecutor’s office found sites advertising Sergei Mavrodi’s “MMM-2012” project. Prosecutors called for ISPs to block websites promoting the project, on the grounds that it “possesses attributes of a pyramid scheme”. The court approved the request.
On 27 November it was reported that the Prosecutor’s office in the Lahdenpohja district of Karelia conducted an audit to ensure compliance with a ban on online gambling, and found publicly accessible online gambling sites, with electronic payment systems. The Prosecutor’s Office filed a claim with the Lahdenpohja District court against the local ISP aiming to limit access to the sites.
Also on 27 November, the prosecutor’s office in the Ardon district of North Ossetia reportedly carried out an audit to ensure compliance with the ban on online gambling, and found that users were still able to access such sites. The prosecutor’s office then filed 15 court claims against the Internet provider Rostelecom, demanding that it restrict access to these sites. The lawsuit is pending.
Schools
On 12 November The Kostroma Regional Prosecutor Office announced that the Pyschugskii District Prosecutor’s Office had conducted an inspection to verify compliance with the anti-extremist legislation in educational institutions. The audit found that in several district schools the content filters failed to block students’ access to extremist materials.
Following the audit, five motions were sent out to the school directors regarding the impermissibility of violating the law. Based on the results of the subsequent review, seven people faced disciplinary charges.
In November the Kaluga Regional Prosecutor’s Office, in the course of an audit of compliance with legislation on countering extremism, identified several educational institutions that used no content filtering software. In particular, the students of Obninsk Industrial Technical School had access to materials that contained propaganda of racial and ethnic intolerance.
Similar violations were identified in Kaluga, and Ferzikovskii, Baryatinskii, Medynskii, Yukhnovskii, Zhukovskii, Peremyshlskii, Suhinichskii, Kirovskii and Lyudinovskii Districts.
Based on the results of the audit, 27 protests and 31 court claims have been filed this year, and 23 officials have faced disciplinary liability. All of the violations have been addressed.
On 30 November it was reported that the Elets District Prosecutor’s Office had conducted an inspection of educational institutions in order to verify their compliance with the legislation aimed at protecting children from harmful information. Violations were found at several schools, including schools in the village of Talitsa, towns of Yeletskii, Sokolie and Solidarnost’, and the village of Ekaterinovka. The Internet filtering software in those schools had failed to block dangerous materials. As a result, students had been able to access web sites that contained incitement to extremist activities, instructions on smoking implements, and information on methods to commit suicide.
The school directors received requests to cease violations. Those responsible have faced disciplinary charges.
Extremism
In early November, Lipetsk Regional Prosecutor’s Office reported that the Soviet District Prosecutor’s Office of Lipetsk had conducted an audit of compliance with the legislation on countering extremist activity and identified some schools that provided access to extremist materials.
In particular, it was found that Lipetsk State Technical University students had access to the writings by Adolf Hitler. The items, featured on the Federal List of Extremist Materials were also available to students of Vocational School № 2.
The Prosecutor’s office asked the court that the Lipetsk branch of Rostelecom restrict access to these materials. The court granted the request of the Prosecutor’s Office.
On 6 November the ruling by the Tver Court of Moscow came into effect that recognized The Innocence of Muslims Video as extremist. There were no appeals, and now the movie is to be included on the Federal List of Extremist Materials.
Errors and others
The “blacklist” of illegal materials also came to include the 4chan.org imageboard – a popular resource for anonymous publication and discussion of images. The reasons for its inclusion on the register are unknown.
During the first two weeks of its existence, 180 web pages were added to the Register of prohibited sites, 41 of which were to be blocked. Among other resources, the list of prohibited materials came to include Russia’s largest torrent tracker Rutracker.org, the lib.rus.ec digital library, the online encyclopedia Lurkmore.to, and one of the pages from the VKontakte social network. Rutracker.org was added to the list for distributing the Suicide Encyclopedia; Vkontakte for a page by the “Russian Breivik”; lib.rus.ec – for publishing The Anarchist Cookbook; and Lurkmore.to for allegedly promoting drugs.
On 12 November through 14 November, 21 items were deleted from the Register, including the above-named sites.
On 21 November, YouTube temporarily appeared on the list, but was removed after only a few hours. Roskomnadzor reported that the website had removed objectionable content in a timely manner, but still ended up on the list due to a technical failure.
In addition, the anonymizer service hangonet.dyndns.org/proxy and its IP-address 199.187.177.134 were added to the Register. This service allows the user to hide his or her IP-address in order to gain access to blocked sites. Notably, the “black list” contains the URL of the service, which leads to a different resource instead of the principal address of the service.
In late November, the IP address of the Blogspot.com blogging service was included on the register of sites that contain information, distribution of which is prohibited in the Russian Federation. Roskomnadzor included it on the register on November 24 at the initiative of the Federal Service for Drug Control. This address also holds Google fonts, Chrome browser plug-ins, and Gmail file attachments.
Google management reported that it had received no notification regarding inappropriate information and was unable to remove it in a timely manner, since the Roskomnadzor’s notification had been mistakenly sent to a different address.
The IP-address for Blogspot.com has since been taken off the register, but during its time on the list Google users complained about the loss of some Gmail, Google Drive, and Google Play functionality.
Source: Agentura.Ru
Andrei Soldatov is a Russian journalist, and together with Irina Borogan, co-founder of the Agentura.Ru website. Last year, Soldatov and Borogan co-authored The New Nobility: The Restoration of Russia’s Security State and the Enduring Legacy of the KGB (PublicAffairs)
7 Dec 2012 | Index Index, minipost, News and features
An exhibition by British artists Jake and Dinos Chapman is being investigated by St Petersburg prosecutors after visitors complained that it was “blasphemous” and “extremist”.
The exhibition, at the world-famous Hermitage museum, features a crucified Ronald McDonald as well as the duo’s trademark Nazi figurines.
The museum’s director Mikhail Piotrovsky slammed the complaints and investigation as “culturally degrading to [Russian] society”.
Russia’s extremism laws have been criticised for being used to shut down free speech. Last week, a video of feminist art collective Pussy Riot’s protest in a Moscow Cathedral was categorised as extremist, and blocked on the web.
6 Dec 2012 | Russia, Uncategorized
The gay community is one of the most vulnerable minorities in Russia, and homophobia is one of the country’s most rampant prejudices. According to Levada centre research, around 74 per cent of Russian citizens consider members of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transsexual (LGBT) community to be “dissolute” and “mentally retarded”.
Russian lawmakers seem to agree with this prejudice and plan to pass a federal law “against the promotion of homosexuality”.
The law forbids exposing underage Russians to information about homosexuality and, moreover, about the fact that “traditional and non-traditional relationship(s) are socially equal” (sic). Anyone exposing children under 18 to “homosexual propaganda” should expect to pay the price: LGBT NGOs can be fined up to 500 thousand roubles (10, 782 GBP) and activists up to 50 thousand roubles (1007 GBP).
The law already exists in the cities of Ryazan, Archangelsk and Kostroma. In March it was passed in St Petersburg by United Russia deputy Vitaly Milonov, prompting a furious response from human rights activists and the civil society. The European Parliament says the law “violates freedom of expression regarding sexual orientation”, and the US State Department has called for respect towards LGBT activists in the country.
But the only response they received from Russian authorities was announcing plans to pass the law nationwide; forbidding another gay pride in Moscow and triggering several bizarre examples of the law’s misuse. Here are just a few:
United Russia v Madonna
Vitaly Milonov came after pop star Madonna, after she used a 9 August concert in the city to speak out against St Petersburg’s anti-gay law. During her performance, Madonna yelled out her message of support to the crowd:
“I am here to say that the gay community and gay people here and all around the world have the same rights — to be treated with dignity, with respect, with tolerance, with compassion, with love,”
The pop star was not only outspoken about gay rights during her trip, she also donned a balaclava and called for the release of Pussy Riot during a 7 August show in Moscow. Milonov’s Ultranationalist associates from the Narodny Sobor organisation filed a civil law suit against Madonna demanding 333 million roubles (about £6.5m ) to compensate for “moral damage” caused by “promoting homosexuality”, arguing that this would cause lower birthrates and subsequently destroy Russia through eroding its military. Milonov’s case was thrown out by Moscow’s district court in St Petersburg on 22 November.
Meanwhile, Milonov is keeping alive the fight against LGBT-friendly pop stars: He has made it clear that minors won’t be making it to Lady Gaga’s 9 December performance in St Petersburg, having warned concert organisers that no one under 18 should be allowed into the concert.
Homosexuality v Field Hockey
The first implementation of the law in St Petersburg happened in May 2012, when gay pride organiser and rights advocate Nikolay Alexeev staged a single picket holding a placard with a quote from iconic Russian actress Faina Ranevskaya:
“Homosexuality is not a perversion. A perversion is field hockey and ballet on ice”.
Alexeev, a professional lawyer, was fined five thousand roubles (approximately £100) for “promoting homosexuality”. The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) slammed the ban on gay-prides in Moscow, but Russia’s courts have ignored the ECHR’s decision. ECHR is yet to rule its decision on the controversial law.
Nationalists v milk
Lead by Milonov’s assistant Anatoly Artyukh, the local chapter of Narodny Sobor filed a complaint against a dairy company with the prosecutor’s office in St Petersburg, alleging that its packaging began to feature a rainbow after the city passed the ban in March. The group claims that Vimm-Bill-Dann dairy company promotes homosexuality by producing dairy products with a rainbow — a symbol of the LGBT community — on the packaging. “That’s an open propaganda of vice,” — Artyukh told Interfax news agency, adding that he, together with his fellow activists, will be preventing St Petersburg citizens from buying the company’s products. However, the dairy company denies the allegations, saying that the rainbow is nothing more than a rainbow.
Braces v rallies
Pavel Samburov, one of Moscow’s leading LGBT activists and deputy head of Rainbow Association NGO told Index that it’s unlikely that St Petersburg’s anti-LGBT laws would be passed nation wide by the State Duma. Samburov claims the law aims to “to frighten and discriminate” against members of the LGBT community “rather than focusing on implementing them heavily. “St Petersburg authorities claim 73 people have been fined for promoting homosexuality” but Samburov doubts these statistics, adding “[the] gay community is very united in Russia and is likely to know at least something about each case, but none of us know about the [other] 72 cases, only Nikolai Alexeyev‘s prosecution”.
One of Samburov’s friends was threatened by St Petersburg police after participating in demonstrations for human rights in the city on 1 May — for wearing rainbow coloured braces. He was fined 500 roubles (£10) in the end, not for breaking the gay propaganda law, but for “breaking [the] rules of participating in rallies”. While the application of anti-gay laws has brought about some ridiculous cases, Samburov explained why the law is no laughing matter:
“The law might seem funny in its misuse with Madonna, dairies or others targets, but after it was passed LGBT people in St Petersburg faced more pressure, especially in schools and medical institutions — people were told day by day they were not welcome at work and finally had to quit because they couldn’t deal with such psychological pressure. The other consequence has been that assaults against LGBT people in streets and near gay clubs became more frequent.”
