8 Jan 2013 | Awards
Hillsborough Family Support Group: UK lobbying group
For more than 20 years, the Hillsborough Family Support Group lobbied the UK government for a second investigation into the Hillsborough disaster, the human crush at the Sheffield Wednesday stadium, which claimed 96 lives in 1989.
The group, set up by families who had lost loved ones in the disaster, worked tirelessly to keep the case open and to make public information that had been suppressed by the authorities following the disaster. This included the alteration of 164 police statements, 116 of them to delete or change reports, as police sought to shift the blame on to the victims. Their years of effort won the group an Amnesty ‘Long Walk’ award.
Families were integral to a process that focused on finding and publishing documents, rather than a judicial inquiry-style cross-examination of witnesses.
James Jones, the Anglican bishop of Liverpool, who chaired an independent investigation panel into the case, told the Financial Times: “The documents speak for themselves.”
Their work has promoted freedom of expression in the UK by challenging the police cover up and persevering in their campaign for the truth behind the disaster. Following the publication of the independent panel’s report in September 2012, the HFSG has called for fresh inquests to be held and for criminal prosecutions to be brought against those responsible both for the deaths and for perverting the course of justice.
As a result of their combined efforts, the Independent Police Complaints Commission has launched an investigation into police action following the disaster. In December, a high court accepted the attorney general’s application to quash the verdict of a disputed 1990 enquiry, opening the way for new inquests to take place.
Malala Yousafzai, Pakistani education campaigner
15 year old Pakistani schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai has received global attention for her courage in standing up to the Taliban and her defence of girls’ education. Yousafzai first came to attention when, at the age of 11, she wrote a pseudonymous diary for BBC Urdu, describing the Taliban’s closure of her school in the city of Mingora.
The closure followed the destruction of more than 100 schools in the district. Later in 2009, a journalist and filmmaker from the New York Times made a film about Yousafzai and her struggle to keep up her education. The same year, she began to make public appearances including on television, to advocate for girls’ education.
In October 2012, a Taliban gunman shot Yousafzai in the head and chest for her activism, as she was returning home from school in Pakistan’s Swat district. After receiving life-saving surgery in Pakistan, she was flown to a Birmingham hospital for specialist medical care. She was released in January but will return to undergo cranial reconstruction surgery.
Yousafzai’s rise in prominence has been rapid. In 2011, she chaired a session of the Unicef-supported Child Assembly in Pakistan’s Swat district, was nominated for the International Children’s Peace Prize by Bishop Desmond Tutu and won Pakistan’s National Youth Peace Prize. Following the attempt on her life, in November 2012, more than 60,000 people called for her to be awarded the Nobel peace prize.
In 2012, Yousafzai was named by Foreign Policy magazine on its 2012 list of top global thinkers and nominated for Time magazine’s Person of the Year.
Ales Bialiatski, Belarusian human rights defender
Ales Bialiatski is a prominent human rights defender in Belarus. As chairman of the Viasna Human Rights Centre and vice president of the International Federation for Human Rights, he dedicated his life to helping victims of human rights until his imprisonment in August 2011. Bialiatski was sentenced to four and a half years for alleged tax evasion.
A defender of freedom of expression and human rights since Soviet days, when he led efforts to memorialise Belarusian victims of Stalin’s purges, Bialiatski founded the human rights NGO Viasna in Minsk in 1996 to provide financial and legal aid to prisoners of conscience and their families.
The vice president of the International Federation for Human Rights, his work was honoured internationally several times before his arrest. Bialiatski was jailed for using money in personal bank accounts in Lithuania and Poland to support Viasna’s human rights work in Belarus. The organisation was unable to register in Belarus, and therefore unable to open a bank account there.
The Minsk authorities claimed he had been tried and jailed lawfully. In December 2012 a UN Working Group rejected this position and ruled that Bialiatski was in fact being arbitrarily detained by the government in contravention of UN Human Rights conventions and that he should be immediately released and awarded compensation.
Bialiatski’s arrest was part of an on-going crackdown against critics of President Alexander Lukashenko, known as Europe’s last dictator. Following his disputed re-election in December 2010, seven opposition candidates were arrested.
Meanwhile freedom of expression continues to be severely restricted in Belarus. Lukashenko’s regime has passed several laws to muzzle critics, including one to ban silent protests and even clapping in the streets.
Girifna, Sudanese youth movement
Girifna, a Sudanese youth movement calling for non-violent resistance, has been taking the country by storm. The group, whose name comes from the Arabic for “We are fed up”, was set up by university students in October 2009 to encourage their peers to vote in the 2010 election.
Combining demands for freedom of association with monitoring and information campaigns, members distribute information about human rights violations and organise peaceful protests.
Girifna stands apart not just because of the age of its members but also its ethnic diversity.
Though women’s voices are widely suppressed in Sudan, they play an important role in Girifina’s campaign and information work. In July 2012, mothers, daughters and sisters marched alongside each other as part of the Kandake Protest (the Protest of Strong Women). As well as traditional methods of campaigning such as leafleting and organising youth forums on issues of social justice, Girifna uses the power of the internet to spread its message.
One of the group’s most successful campaigns involved posting the testimony of a woman who was kidnapped and gang-raped by members of the security forces on YouTube – an unprecedented move in a country where speaking out about rape is considered shameful. But Girifna’s actions have not been without repercussions. Around 2,000 people were arrested following the June protests with detainees held incommunicado and without access to lawyers. Many members of the group have been arrested, detained, tortured and sexually assaulted.
Girifna has been targeted by the Sudanese authorities following a wave of demonstrations that began in June 2012. Several members of Girifna have been detained without being able to speak to their families or lawyers. Some say they were tortured in detention. Despite this attempt to silence them, Girifna continue to distribute information and organise activities, including peaceful protests calling for the respect and protection of human rights in Sudan.
1 Aug 2012 | Magazine, News and features
Gore Vidal, who died this week, was often scathing in his attacks on US foreign policy. In April 2002, Index on Censorship magazine was the first English-language publication to feature this essay, written after 9/11
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26 Mar 2012 | Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa
Suddenly, bad African leaders are under the torch of public scrutiny: George Clooney is arrested while trying to draw attention to Sudan’s president Bashir. Former Kenyan ministers Uhuru Kenyatta and Willam Ruto are on trial at the International Criminal Courts in the Hague. Blogs and websites are teeming with criticisms of Museveni in Uganda, who is being slated for many reasons: massacres against the Bunyara and Achioli people, and generally letting his country slide into “Big Man” rule. The king of Swaziland has faced renewed criticism for siphoning off the sugar taxes for his own use, (after lobbyists demanded Coca-cola revisited their activities there, since they were effectively propping up a dictatorship). Piracy and despotic warlords in the Indian Ocean are big news. The EU is upping the resources and naval might to counter piracy in the East Coast of Africa and now considering land strikes too.
Perhaps most visible Joseph Kony. The leader of the Lord´s Resistance Army (LRA). The short web film Kony2012 was been watched more than 100 million times in a week, (presumably mainly in the Western world, given the pathetic internet connections for most of us here). After Osama Bin Laden, Kony’s probably now the best known baddie in the world.
Millions responded to the call earlier this month to share the video, upload a personal response, or buy an “action kit”. A clear marketing success, apparently. At the same time, a Kony2012 screening in Lira in northern Uganda provoked outrage among thousands of spectators. The victims of Kony in Northern Uganda dismiss the project as humiliating and incorrect – a campaign at the expense of the people it claims to help.
This is not good. There is a real, and serious, grievance with ‘Western Paternalism’. Why were the makers of Kony 2012 not able to show it to the people it was supposed to help, before it went out on You Tube? Dialogue is wonderful, criticism, and the method of “shaming” leaders into change a valuable strategy, but there must be more equality. The conversation must be more two –way.
There’s nothing new about Kony, or the Lord’s Resistance Army, (LRA) or child soldiers. Though he’s left now, he was in Uganda for 26 years. International NGO’s (responding to work with their sister organisations locally) have been talking about these issues for over fifteen years. Today, eight years after abandoning northern Uganda, the LRA’s depleted band of a couple of hundred barefoot fighters is now somewhere in the borderlands between the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan and Central African Republic. According to the “LRA Crisis Tracker” they have killed 98 civilians in the last 12 months and abducted 477.
The reason why Kony, and other crap African leaders are suddenly interesting for media in the Global North, is frankly a bit of a mystery for those of us who live here in Africa. Do issues only become important when the Global North decides so? Or when ‘White Messiahs’ living away from the messy complexities and loyalties of African life decide they can save us? As the Kony debate shows there are already many people and organisations established, connected, familiar and good at what they do here on the ground. Support them. Don’t start up new ones.
Frank, fierce and honest debate is needed, power-crazed maniacal leaders need challenging, bad democracies and weak civil societies do need changing and improving. If we don’t know how, or are too scared to complain, monitor, or just check on our leaders, or the legal structures and public media don’t exist, we can’t do it. A well-funded independent media, and constant discussion between Africa and Europe/USA is needed, but how about responding to what we are already doing, supporting existing efforts, and not barging in with all the ‘answers?’
Listen to what the people who live here are saying, and let the Global South, Africans, steer the debate. Women’s Civil Society Groups in Uganda have launched the “Kony2012 campaign, Blurring Realities”, and issued this statement :
” We have watched the campaign video and we believe that at the present time, it is out of context regarding the real issues of the conflict in Uganda. We therefore want to draw the world’s attention to the issues that we believe are of importance to the sufferers and survivors of this conflict.
For the last twenty six years, a lot has been done by different stakeholders in Uganda including the women’s movement, human rights organisations, academics, international development partners and bilateral agencies, in response to the atrocities of the Lord’s Resistance Army. The government of Uganda made an effort to end this war through the Juba peace process. …It is therefore not correct to say that nothing has been done in the last 26 years.
Some of the work by the civil society movement includes supporting the reconstruction efforts for the victims, and advocating to hold the government of Uganda accountable while working towards ending the conflict. …. While the idea of this campaign against the LRA leader Joseph Kony is welcome, the steam it has created overshadows the real concerns of the sufferers and survivors of this conflict in Uganda. Many former child soldiers and former abductees, women and girls, are now struggling with so many challenges such as reproductive health problems, post traumatic stress disorders, food insecurity and livelihood support among others. Due to war, there are many infrastructural challenges facing the entire population, and health problems like the nodding disease now affecting children in North and North Eastern Uganda. Capturing or killing Kony however does not put an end to the suffering of these survivors immediately.
We do realise that a lot of money has been/may be raised through this campaign dubbed Kony 2012. As the women’s movement, we believe that the biggest percentage of this fundraising should be used to support the various recovery efforts mentioned above.”
What kind of success is a film whose intended “beneficiaries” would rather do without?
3 Feb 2012 | Uncategorized
Last month the Secretary-General of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) expressed alarm at the escalating intensity and popular appeal of anti-Islamic rhetoric from politicians in the USA and Europe. This critical issue has long acted as an animus for the OIC and, in December, the General Assembly of the United Nations passed a resolution titled, “Combating intolerance, negative stereotyping, stigmatisation, discrimination, incitement to violence, and violence against, persons based on religion or belief”.
This resolution, which was similarly accepted by the United Nations Human Rights Council last March, was sponsored by the OIC, the second largest inter-governmental organisation after the United Nations with a membership of 57 states spread over four continents. For more than a decade the OIC’s push for such an outcome has met with resistance from western states – in particular, the USA. These members of the General Assembly objected to the inclusion in the previous drafts of a provision that States should commit themselves to “combat the defamation of religion” (p. 355). It was, they argued, an affront to free speech. They reasoned that ideas and beliefs, such as religion, should not be afforded the same protection and rights as individuals.
The amended text put forward by the OIC, which urges efforts to face down prejudice and incitement to violence against religious believers, has been deemed acceptable by the Obama administration — mindful of the second amendment — and is perceived as a sign of progress by a number of human rights and secularist advocacy groups. The influential Human Rights First declared that the UN “tackle[d] religious intolerance without limiting free speech” and praised the resolution’s omission of the ‘the harmful concept of ‘defamation of religions'”.
The Center For Inquiry similarly congratulated the General Assembly for approving measures that both opposed incitement to violence and protected our right to “defame” (i.e. disagree with) religions, whilst worrying that the opacity of the language employed could be used to justify the persecution of dissidents and religious minorities.
The hopeful reactions of these organisations dwelt little on the resolution’s sponsor. In the words of UN Watch, the NGO which exists “to monitor the performance of the United Nations by the yardstick of its own charter”, “the problem is not with the document per se, but with its sponsor“.
It is often stated that the OIC has pushed this resolution so zealously in order to combat anti-Muslim and anti-Islamic feeling in the West since 9/11. Indeed, a quick glance through the OIC’s most recent “Observatory Report on Islamophobia” will reveal the focus is entirely upon the USA and Europe. It appropriately points to the radicalisation hearings of Congressman Peter King, the pointless torching of the Koran by Terry Jones, and countless acts of vandalism against Mosques. No doubt next year’s report will justifiably express grievances at the treatment and suspicion of New York’s Muslims at the hands of the NYPD, the Islamophobic statements of a Republican Presidential candidate, the thuggery of the English Defence League and, perhaps, the state-sponsored murder of Iranian scienticists.
But the important part of the resolution, which encourages the USA to make efforts to fight “incitement to violence, and violence against, persons based on religion or belief”, is much more likely to be adhered to in the US and Europe than in most of the OIC nations. There are scores of enforced laws and policies in western countries that prohibit multiple forms of discrimination against people based on numerous protected characteristics, including choice of religion. It is self-evident that an Ahmadi Muslim is safer and freer in Pennsylvania than Pakistan, and an Assyrian Christian in Italy than Iraq.
But it seems that the assorted countries of OIC do not prevent the persecution of religious believers or protect the right of an individual to practise their chosen religion very well.
In December, the House of Lords discussed the situation of Christians in the Middle East. The Archbishop of Canterbury described the “flow of Christian refugees from Iraq”. Lord Parekh noted that “there are 14 million Christians in the Middle East, which is roughly equal to the number of Muslims in the European Union. In recent years, they have been subjected to discrimination, harassment and violent attacks. We know all this.” Lord Turnberg quoted Andrew White, the Anglican “Vicar of Baghdad”, who said “the only place in the Middle East that Christians are really safe is Israel”.
A similar tale emerges from the pages of the most recent “World Watch List” compiled by Open Doors, a charity that works for and with the world’s persecuted Christians. The organisation asserts that the “focus is on persecution for their faith, not persecution for political, economic, social, ethnic or accidental reasons” and it has determined that this year nine of the top 10, and 38 of the top 50, countries where Christians face the “most severe” persecution are OIC members.
Last January, Indian migrant workers in Saudi Arabia (number three on the list) were accused of converting Muslims to Christianity and were subsequently arrested, interrogated and beaten. In the UAE (number 37), to convert from Islam is — speaking legally — to risk the death penalty and expatriate Christians who openly proselytise face arrest and deportation.
When Colonel Gaddafi’s tyrannical rule collapsed, David Gerbi, a Libyan Jew who went into exile in 1967, returned home full of optimism and ready to restore the Dar al-Bishi synagogue in Tripoli. A rabble of bigots, however, lacked his nonpartisan solidarity, turning up at his hotel and protesting that “there is no place for Jews in Libya”. The National Transitional Council, which now represent Libya at the OIC and which Gerbi joined at the start of the uprising, has shown no sign yet that it will “recognise the valuable contribution of people of all religions” (as instructed by the UN resolution) in post-Gaddafi Libya.
The situation of Ahmadi Muslims, often considered heretics and non-Muslims, further demonstrates the problems that a number of OIC members have with enshrining the freedom to practise religion. Ahmadis are subjected to regular persecution in multiple forms, including murder, banning of publications, prohibited proselytising and vandalism of mosques, in countries including Indonesia, Pakistan and Egypt.
The picture is not much prettier with regards to other basic freedoms. According to Freedom House’s newest annual report on global political rights (participation in the political process, freedom to stand for office and to join parties etc) and civil liberties (freedom of expression, belief and association etc), only five OIC members and only one of any global significance —Indonesia — can be described as “free”. And even Indonesia has Suharto-era blasphemy laws.
So, what about freedom of the press? According to the most recent Press Freedom Index published annually by Reporters Without Borders, the OIC’s big players, Saudi Arabia (157th); Egypt (127th); UAE (87th) and Turkey (138th) are pretty tough environments for journalists.
What vision for entrenching religious freedom does the OIC leadership have? If, by defending “freedom of religion”, we mean protecting the individual’s right to practise a chosen religion, then many OIC states seemingly lack either the resources or the political will to apply this principle universally beyond the majority. It is more likely that the conservative governments of the OIC mean by “freedom of religion” the right to have their versions of state-sanctioned religion, namely Islam, unoffended and uncontested by impudent dissenters.
This is especially probable given that, although the “defamation” clause may have fallen out of the UN drafts early last year, the OIC’s “Ten-Year Programme of Action” from 2005 emphasises “the responsibility of the international community, including all governments, to ensure respect for all religions and combat their defamation”. Moreover, during the 2010 meeting of the Council of Foreign Ministers, the OIC adopted a strategy to broaden support for its Resolution on “Combating Defamation of religions”. This illiberal cause, it appears, is still explicitly on the agenda and, right on cue, the nasty implications of this attitude are made flesh in the latest phase of the Rushdie affair. Yet again zealots feel entitled and empowered to unilaterally declare ideas off limits — and, worse, to respond to “offence” with a punch, bomb or lawsuit, rather than debate.
This is not a sinister appeal for European and American Muslims to stop whining and to thank God for relative mercies. The whole matter should be quite simple, in principle. As long as the individual is protected and permitted to participate fully in society, every single idea is up for endorsement and desecration. It does not take an atheist to say it and to think it is right.
But, then again, perhaps the OIC and the UN are well suited. A Human Rights Council that counts Mauritania and Saudi Arabia amongst its members finds a natural bedfellow in a group that displays no shame as the representatives of Sudan and Iran scold the world for its religious intolerance.
William Clowes was an intern at Index on Censorship before he became a researcher in the Security Unit at Policy Exchange. He is currently writing in a personal capacity and writes sometimes for Think Africa Press
