29 Jan 2021 | Greece, Opinion, Poland, Ruth's blog, Turkey
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”116129″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes”][vc_column_text]The last 12 months have been difficult for everyone. Whilst many of us have lost loved ones and tried to cope with the impact of lockdowns, social restrictions, closed businesses, redundancies, reduced wages, home schooling and the fear of illness, others have sought to exploit the situation – hoping that the world wouldn’t notice.
Our theme for the winter edition of Index on Censorship magazine was Masked by Covid – the underreported stories of 2020 which had been drowned out by the global public health emergency. There were simply too many for one edition of the magazine.
The news cycle has been dominated by Covid, Trump and Brexit with little else being able to break through. This in itself provided the ideal opportunity for leaders of repressive regimes to move against their citizens with impunity; after all the world wasn’t watching. But when you add the ‘legitimacy’ of emergency regulations to the mix under the guise of protecting the population against Covid, the perfect storm for repression and tyranny has been created.
When the virus spread last spring, Index started covering how it was affecting free speech around the world through a project called Disease Control. Documenting new legislation which closed local newspapers, new regulations which restricted or delayed access to government information, limitations on the free press, the end of the right to protest in numerous countries and arrests of political activists in dozens of countries.
As we all now await to be vaccinated and long for a return to normal, you would hope that maybe the dictators and authoritarian leaders, around the globe, would mitigate their actions knowing that the world might start to pay attention. Unsurprisingly that isn’t proving to be the case.
Only this week we have seen the Polish Government ban abortion, the Greek government propose a new university police force to deal with ‘trouble makers’ on campus and, in Russia, the coronavirus restrictions have been used as a cover to arrest Alexei Navalny’s allies – in the wake of his detention and the subsequent protests.
And it hasn’t just been Covid that has provided cover for oppression. In Turkey, on 27 December – when many of us were more focused on Netflix then the news – the government passed a new piece of anti-terrorism legislation, Preventing Financing of Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction. I think most of us would welcome legislation that sought to stop the proliferation of WMDs.
Whilst this legislation has ostensibly been introduced to meet a United Nations Security Council counterterrorism resolution, unfortunately this new law actually goes well beyond that. It is an unfettered attack on civil society organisations across Turkey – with a clear emphasis on undermining those organisations which seek to protect minorities, especially the Kurdish population.
The legislation enables the Interior Ministry to replace board members of NGOs with state-appointed trustees. They can also suspend all operations and activities of an NGO if members are being prosecuted on terrorism charges – this would seem completely reasonable in many nation states, but as over 300,000 people are arrested for being a member of a terrorist group in Turkey every year, the definition of terrorist isn’t quite the global standard.
The legislation also gives the Governor’s office the right to undertake annual inspections of NGOs adding a new admin burden, international NGOs are also covered by new provisions and unsurprisingly financial assets and online donations to individual campaigns can be blocked by the government to “prevent terrorist financing and money laundering”.
Erdogan has just doubled down as an authoritarian leader and did so without global condemnation or even notice. It simply isn’t good enough…
All of these actions, and the many others from Hong Kong to Uganda, seek to cause division, undermine hope in the domestic population and entrench control. The world is getting smaller, technology means that we can know what is happening, as it happens, in every corner of the world. But too many people have stopped paying attention.
For Index it means that we have to double down and keep finding new ways to tell people’s stories so no one can claim ignorance.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][three_column_post title=”You may also want to read” category_id=”41669″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
15 Jan 2021 | Belarus, News
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”116010″ img_size=”full”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Dedicated and principled. Brave and committed. Optimistic and humorous. A fan of Liverpool FC and of pubs.
This is Andrei Aliaksandrau, a journalist who has been detained this week in Belarus on charges of “organisation and preparation of actions that grossly violate public order, or active participation in them”. A video of him making a “confession” of paying the fines of those who have been protesting at the rigged re-election of President Alexander Lukashenko has been released by the authorities in Belarus.
His arrest and forced confession have hit home hard at Index on Censorship, where he was on the staff for a number of years, leading a project looking at freedom of the media across the Caucasus, and writing regularly about Belarus and Ukraine. After he returned to Belarus, he also continued working for Index as a freelance contributor from the region.
Former Index on Censorship editor-in-chief Rachael Jolley says he is the sort of person who puts his life and soul into the cause of making people realise what is going on in Belarus.
“He feels really strongly about media freedom and feels the world doesn’t pay enough attention to what is going on there,” she says.
“He worked so hard to bring stories out of Belarus when most journalists would be too worried to cover them. He keeps covering stories when others have given up.”
Natasha Schmidt, editor of IranWire and who worked at Index for 13 years, most recently as deputy editor, says, “He is such an amazing journalist and a great colleague.”
She says, “Andrei is so knowledgeable about Belarus and the wider region, including Ukraine from where he produced a lot of reports in recent years.”
That Aliaksandrau is in Belarus at this time of huge popular protest comes as no surprise.
Jolley added, “A lot of people have come onto the streets of Belarus feeling there was a moment of hope that there might be change. Andrei would have been on the front line of this.”
Schmidt says, “Given what has been going on in Belarus, he would have thought if he wasn’t already there then it was time for him to go back and join in this important movement.”
She adds, “Andrei is one of those people who is brave without trying to be. He is very committed to his work and freedom of expression in the region.”
Sean Gallagher, who also worked alongside Aliaksandrau at Index, says his arrest is of great concern but not entirely unexpected.
“I hate to be fatalistic but it was only a matter of time before he was detained, given the nature of the regime,” he says.
“I remember clearly talking to him about how we should communicate and whether he should continue to use Gmail or whether we should move to an encrypted platform. His response was ‘Gmail is fine because using encryption raises a flag’”.
“He was well aware he was being watched,” says Gallagher, “but knowing that he has been detained just for telling the truth, that pisses me off.”
Aliaksandrau is devoted to his work but he also has a life outside work. All of his former colleagues mention his love of British pubs. He was a regular at the Betsey Trotwood pub in Farringdon in London when Index was based at the Free Word Centre and has a particular passion for a good malt whisky, taking trips to various distilleries in Scotland during his time in the country.
They also reflected on his easy-going nature.
“As a colleague, he was very easy to spend time with and has a great sense of humour. He was a good person to have around, he was so relaxed and would have a laugh and ease any tension in office politics,” said Schmidt.
Andrei is also a keen supporter of Liverpool FC and has a love of nature.
Despite his detention and enforced confession, former editor Jolley says Aliaksandrau is an “optimist”.
“He always felt there would be change and would do everything he could to make it change. He strongly believes Belarus will one day have a free society,” says Jolley.
That time cannot come soon enough. Aliaksandrau – no Andrei – must be released.
Schmidt speaks for us all when she says: “We all hope we can see him soon and hear he is safe.”
Index has sent letters to the foreign secretary Dominic Raab and Belarussian ambassador to the UK Maxim Yermalovich calling for Andrei’s release.
Please sign this petition to call on the Belarusian authorities to release Andrei and his girlfriend Irina. [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][three_column_post title=”You may also want to read” category_id=”172″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
24 Dec 2020 | Opinion, Ruth's blog
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”115942″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes”][vc_column_text]2020 will undoubtedly be a year studied for generations, a year dominated by Covid-19.
A year in which 1.77 million people have died (as of this week) from a virus none of us had heard 12 months ago.
We have all lived in various stages of lockdown, some of our core human rights restricted, even in the most liberal of societies, in order to save lives.
A global recession, levels of government debt which have never been seen in peacetime in any nation.
Our lives lived more online than in the real world. If we’ve been lucky a year dominated by Netflix and boredom; if we weren’t so lucky a year dominated by the death of loved ones and the impact of long Covid.
Rather than being a year of hope this has been a year of fear. Fear of the unknown and of an illness, not an enemy.
Understandably little else has broken through the news agenda as we have followed every scientific briefing on the illness, its spread, the impact on our health services, the treatments, the vaccines, the new virus variants and the competence of our governments as they try to keep us safe.
But behind the headlines, there have been the stories of people’s actual lives. How Covid-19 changed them in every conceivable way. How some governments have used the pandemic as an opportunity to bring in new repressive measures to undermine the basic freedoms of their citizens. Of the closure of local newspapers – due to public health concerns as well as mass redundancies of journalists due to a sharp fall in revenue.
2020 wasn’t just about the pandemic though.
We saw worldwide protests as people responded under the universal banner of Black Lives Matter to the egregious murder of George Floyd.
In Hong Kong, the CCP enacted the National Security Law as a death knell to democracy and we saw protestors arrested and books removed from the public libraries – all under the guise of “security”.
The world witnessed more evidence of genocidal acts in Xinjiang province as the CCP Government continues to target the Muslim Uighur community.
In France, the world looked on in horror as Samuel Party was brutally murdered for teaching free speech to his students.
Genuine election fraud in Belarus led to mass protests, on many occasions led by women – as they sought free and fair elections rather than the sham they experienced this year.
In America, we lived and breathed the Presidential Election and witnessed the decisive victory of a new President – as Donald Trump continued to undermine the First Amendment, the free press and free and fair democracy.
In Thailand, we saw mass protests and the launch of the Milk Tea Alliance against the governments of Hong Kong, Thailand and Taiwan, seeking democracy in Southeast Asia.
In Egypt, the world witnessed the arrest of the staff of the EIPR for daring to brief international diplomats on the number of political prisoners currently held in Egyptian jails.
Ruhollah Zam was executed by his government for being a journalist and a human rights activist in Iran.
This is by no means an exhaustive list. From Kashmir to Tanzania to the Philippines we’ve heard report after report of horrendous attacks on our collective basic human rights. 72 years after United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights we still face daily breaches in every corner of the planet.
While Index cannot support every victim or target, we can highlight those who embody the current scale of the attacks on our basic right to free expression.
Nearly everybody has experienced some form of loneliness or isolation this year. But even so we cannot imagine what it must be like to be incarcerated by your government for daring to be different, for being brave enough to use your voice, for investigating the actions of ruling party or even for studying history.
So, as we come to the end of this fateful year I urge you to send a message to one of our free speech heroes:
- Aasif Sultan, who was arrested in Kashmir after writing about the death of Buhran Waniand has been under illegal detention without charge for more than 800 days;
- Golrokh Emrahimi Iraee, jailed for writing about the practice of stoning in Iran;
- Hatice Duman, the former editor of the banned socialist newspaper Atılım, who has been in jail in Turkey since 2002;
- Khaled Drareni, the founder of the Casbah Tribune, jailed in Algeria for two years in September for ‘incitement to unarmed gathering’ simply for covering the weekly Hirak protests calling for political reform in the country;
- Loujain al-Hathloul, a women’s rights activist known for her attempts to raise awareness of the ban on women driving in Saudi Arabia;
- Yuri Dmitriev, a historian being silenced by Putin in Russia for creating a memorial to the victims of Stalinist terror and facing fabricated sexual assault charges.
Visit http://www.indexoncensorship.org/JailedNotForgotten to leave them a message.
Happy Christmas to you and yours and here’s to a more positive 2021.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][three_column_post title=”You may also want to read” category_id=”41669″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
14 Dec 2020 | Magazine, Magazine Contents, Volume 49.04 Winter 2020
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”Special report “][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Another explosion for Lebanon by Zahra Hankir and Kareem Chehayeb: The blast in Beirut made international headlines. Even before that the nation was in turmoil and it has only worsened the mental health crisis
Who will report on Nicaragua? by Jemimah Steinfeld: Bianca Jagger tells Index a clampdown on dissent and independent media is reaching new heights
Remembering Rex Cornelio by Ryan Macasero: Months on from the murder of Philippines radio host Rex Cornelio we speak to those who knew him about his bravery and his awful death
Royally silenced by Pavin Chachavalpongpun: As students campaign against lèse-majesté laws, the Thai exile and royal critic with a Facebook group of two million followers considers their fate
Another black day for Poland by Katarzyna Kasia: The attack on women’s reproductive rights caused mass protests. Duda’s re-election gave it legitimacy
Tearing down the ivory tower by Kaya Genç: Amidst the noise of the pandemic, a thriving Istanbul university was shut down with litle outcry
Ganging up against the truth by Chris Havler-Barrett: El Salvador’s government do not want you to hear about a potential deal they’ve made with the country’s biggest gang
Mexico’s deadliest state by Stephen Woodman: The government’s promise to protect journalists from harm is failing. Just look at the state of Veracruz
Europe’s new Orban by Anuška Delić: Janez Janša, Slovenia’s new prime minister, is mirroring the extreme policies of his Hungarian counterpart
Democracy vs the people by Andy Morgan: Mali has seen a government coup following escalating protests. What has caused the unrest?
“The state won’t protest you” by Natasha Joseph: The death of Robert Mugabe brought so much hope, but improvements to daily life have not come for Zimbabweans. Far from it
Dying for the mother tongue by Uradyn E Bulag: Why have people in Inner Mongolia recently taken their lives?[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”Global view “][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Hey, big brother – we’re watching you by Ruth Smeeth: We will fight louder and harder for those whose governments have taken away their freedoms[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”In focus”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Long march towards cultural genocide by Nick Holdstock: As news emerges of the present horrors happening in Xinjiang, an expert on the region looks at its recent history
How to challenge China by Tom Tugendhat, Lokman Tsui, Rushan Abbas & Anne-Marie Brady: How do we make a global power sit up and take notice? These experts offer advice
Abuse not part of journalists’ day job by Fréderike Geerdink: A reporter in the Netherlands has won a landmark case against her online harassers
Two faces of On Liberty by John Gray: Liberal institutions are becoming more censorial. Is the philosopher John Stuart Mill to blame?
Out with the old? by Robert Speel: Donald Trump’s conduct during and after the election appeared extraordinary, but a look at US history challenges that
The Sudanese revolution will be illustrated by Abraham Zere: A profile of Khalid Albaih, the political cartoonist dubbed “an enemy of the state”
Social media platforms have a moral duty to ban misinformation about vaccines by Julie Leask and Jonathan Kennedy: Two leading thinkers on vaccine hesitancy and misinformation debate this crucial question[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”Culture “][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Fighting the propaganda tsars by Sergey Khazov-Cassia: The Russian writer speaks to Index about why his books are sold wrapped in plastic and shares an extract from The Gospel According To
Banning those who ban by Bothayna al-Essa: Jemimah Steinfeld talks to the Kuwaiti author about a landmark case in the country that saw a ban on books overturned. Plus an exclusive extract from al-Essa’s book Guardian of Superficialities
“Your limitless grief is a tale with no ending” by Joshua L Freeman: We publish the poetry of three Uighur poets – Abuqadir Jüme Tunyuquq, Idris Nurillah and Shahip Abdusalam Nurbeg – who have disappeared in China
Page turners or slow burners? by Leah Cross, Jessica Ní Mhainín & Marc Nash: New books reviewed on the murder of a Honduran activist, stories from a Tibetan town and a semi-autobiographical account of an artist in the USA[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”Index around the world”][vc_column_text]World loses titans of free speech by Benjamin Lynch: A look at the free speech advocates that recently passed away including Sir Harold Evans[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”Endnote”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Fighting for Covid information by Lauren Brown: Meet the people who are ensuring that even those in the most censored environments receive accurate information on the pandemic[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]
