27 Nov 2015 | Campaigns, Middle East and North Africa, mobile, Palestine, Statements
We, the undersigned organisations, all dedicated to the value of creative freedom, are writing to express our grave concern that Ashraf Fayadh has been sentenced to death for apostasy.
Ashraf Fayadh, a poet, artist, curator, and member of British-Saudi art organisation Edge of Arabia, was first detained in August 2013 in relation to his collection of poems Instructions Within following the submission of a complaint to the Saudi Committee for the Promotion of Virtue. He was released on bail but rearrested in January 2014.
According to court documents, in May 2014 the General Court of Abha found proof that Fayadh had committed apostasy (ridda) but had repented for it. The charge of apostasy was dropped, but he was nevertheless sentenced to four years in prison and 800 lashes in relation to numerous charges related to blasphemy.
At Ashraf Fayadh’s retrial in November 2015 the judge reversed the previous ruling, declaring that repentance was not enough to avoid the death penalty. We believe that all charges against him should have been dropped entirely, and are appalled that Fayadh has instead been sentenced to death for apostasy, simply for exercising his rights to freedom of expression and freedom of belief.
As a member of the UN Human Rights Council (HRC), the pre-eminent intergovernmental body tasked with protecting and promoting human rights, and the Chair of the HRC’s Consultative Group, Saudi Arabia purports to uphold and respect the highest standards of human rights. However, the decision of the court is a clear violation of the internationally recognised rights to freedom of conscience and expression. Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) states that, “[e]veryone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief”. Furthermore, under Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, “everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers”. Saudi Arabia is therefore in absolute contravention of the rights that as a member of the UN HRC it has committed to protect.
There are also widespread concerns over an apparent lack of due process in the trial: Fayadh was denied legal representation, reportedly as a result of his ID having been confiscated following his arrest in January 2014. It is our understanding that Fayadh has 30 days to appeal this latest ruling, and we urge the authorities to allow him access to the lawyer of his choice.
We call on the Saudi authorities to release Ashraf Fayadh and others detained in Saudi Arabia in violation of their right to freedom of expression immediately and unconditionally.
List of signatories:
AICA (International Association of Art Critics)
Algerian PEN
All-India PEN
Amnesty International UK
Arterial Network
ARTICLE 19
Artists for Palestine UK
Austrian PEN
Banipal
Bangladesh PEN
Bread and Roses TV
British Humanist Association
Bulgarian PEN
Centre for Secular Space
CIMAM (International Committee for Museums and Collections of Modern Art)
Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain
Croatian PEN
Crossway Foundation
Danish PEN
English PEN
Ethiopian PEN-in-Exile
FIDH (International Federation for Human Rights)
Five Leaves Publications
Freemuse
German PEN
Haitian PEN
Human Rights Watch
Index on Censorship
International Humanist and Ethical Union
Iranian PEN in Exile
Jimmy Wales Foundation
Lebanese PEN
Ledbury Poetry Festival
Lithuanian PEN
Modern Poetry in Translation
National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC)
Norwegian PEN
One Darnley Road
One Law for All
Palestinian PEN
PEN American Center
PEN Canada
PEN International
PEN South Africa
Peruvian PEN
Peter Tatchell Foundation
Portuguese PEN
Québec PEN
Russian PEN
San Miguel PEN
Scottish PEN
Slovene PEN
Society of Authors
South African PEN
Split This Rock
Suisse Romand PEN
School of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing, University of East Anglia
The Voice Project
Trieste PEN
Turkish PEN
Wales PEN Cymru
23 Oct 2015 | Events
‘Light Behind Bars’ is an interactive art installation recognising the sacrifice made by people locked up for their thoughts, writings, art or politics.
Remembering past dissidents – like Richard Carlile, imprisoned in 1819 for publishing Thomas Paine’s ‘The Rights of Man’. Spotlighting present prisoners – from Raif Badawi, the Saudi blogger sentenced to 1,000 lashes, to the Iranian cartoonist Atena Farghadani, sentenced to 12 years imprisonment in a trial lasting just half an hour.
This durational installation incorporates live performers, runs from 12 noon and culminates with a speech from Hannah Machlin of Index on Censorship.
What would you go to prison for?
WHEN: Sunday 25 October, 12pm – 5.30pm (Hannah Machlin at 5pm)
WHERE: Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square, London WC1R 4RL (Holborn tube)
TICKETS: Free
Produced in partnership with Conway Hall and Bloomsbury Festival
30 Sep 2015 | mobile, News, United Kingdom
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Battle of Ideas 2015
A weekend of thought-provoking public debate taking place on 17 & 18 October at the Barbican Centre. Join the main debates or satellite events.
5 Oct
Does free expression have its limits?
Join Index on Censorship magazine editor Rachael Jolley for a Battle of Ideas satellite event to debate the limits of free expression. With Dr Wendy Earle, Anshuman Mondal, Kunle Olulode and Tom Slater.
When: Monday 5th October, 7-8:30pm
Where: Nunnery Gallery, Bow Arts Trust, 181 Bow Rd, London E3 2SJ
Tickets: £4.89 through Eventbrite
• Full details
17 Oct
Artistic expression: where should we draw the line?
Join Manick Govinda, Index on Censorship CEO Jodie Ginsberg, Cressida Brown, Nadia Latif, Nikola Matisic with chair Claire Fox at the Battle of Ideas festival.
When: 17 October, 4-5:15pm
Where: Cinema 2, Barbican, London
Tickets: Available from the Battle of Ideas
• Full details |
It’s just over a year ago since a mob of anti-racist activists closed down South African theatre director Brett Bailey’s tableaux vivants work Exhibit B in London. The work had actors depicting the horrors of historical slavery, and colonial racism as museum exhibits, echoing the human zoo exhibits of 19th century, which still took place right up until the 1950s.
The work was powerful, visceral, steeped in humanity and stirred a powerful emotional response in the spectator. Yet, it seemed that this physical artistic expression was a step too far for many on the left and Britain’s black community. Most of them, and the 23,000 who signed the petition calling for the Barbican to shut down the work, hadn’t seen the performance. Instead, they felt triggered by a series of publicity photographs of actors performing actions of enslavement and of human bondage.
An image of a semi-naked black woman, sitting, waiting on a bed with her back to the camera, and the reflection of her face and eyes looking back at the viewer, composed and calm was uncomfortable viewing. The living tableau, entitled A Place in the Sun, colonial exhibit, Paris, 1920s was based on a factual account of a French colonial officer who kept a black woman chained to his bed, exchanging food for sexual services. This took place during the French, Belgian and Portuguese scramble for rubber in the Congo. It is a difficult image, the performance brought home the tenderness and active being of the captive woman and stirred emotions of both anger and sadness, as did all the tableaux which took us right to the present day, depicting deported refugee individuals who were killed by the hands hired immigration border security forces. It is hard to disagree with the Brett Bailey’s sincerity that the work is a hard-hitting indictment against racism.
Yet, for the protesters Exhibit B was “an exhibition by a privileged white man who benefited from the oppression of African people in the country [South Africa] in which he grew up, which objectifies black people for a white audience.”
At the opening night in London, 200 angry protesters, with the assistance of the British police force, successfully censored the work. Exhibit B will probably never be performed in England for the foreseeable future.
In the past, artistic, particularly literary works such as DH Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, James Joyce’s Ulysses to name a few were banned by state officials and enforced by draconian laws such as the Obscene Publications Act 1959. However, recent censorship of artistic expression is no longer the domain of the state and its officials. It is now curbed by radical activists and also by curators and arts professionals who feel too morally weak to defend and stand by controversial works of art. The police are now called in for their advice on artistic expression and inevitably, in the name of ‘public safety’ works of art are censored from the public.
Only recently we witnessed the censorship of a witty series of satirical photographs by an anonymous artist called Mimsy (sorry Banksy, you’ve been up-staged) depicting the popular children models of Sylvanians (cute furry creatures that akin to those in Beatrix Potter’s tales) innocently enjoying leisurely pursuits such as family picnics, sun-bathing on a beach, having a few pints or just simply watching TV where they are threatened by masked, armed creatures in black uniform called MICE-IS “a fundamentalist terror group [threatening] to annihilate every species that does not submit to their hardline version of sharia law”. However, this wasn’t taken down due to any law being contravened. The work, pulled from an exhibition at the Mall Galleries in London entitled Passion for Freedom (oh the irony) was a result of the gallery managers asking advice from the police as they felt uncomfortable with the “potentially inflammatory content of Mimsy’s work”. The police agreed that the work was inflammatory and couldn’t guarantee the safety of the gallery or visitors, therefore £36,000 would have to be paid to the police force for security cover.
Censorship by fear of terror, by mob-rule, by “triggering’ traumatic feelings, the growing self-censorship of artistic works and the British state’s lily-livered position in defending free expression come into arbitrary play, leading to a worrying situation where potentially any work of art can be censored.
It’s easy to morally grandstand and point the finger at the horrific killings of cartoonists and bloggers in Bangladesh and Iran and criticise the Chinese authorities for their ‘house imprisonment’of Ai Weiwei, but if we cannot defend all forms of artistic expression from the high arts to popular culture, we are seriously compromising artistic freedom for fear of upsetting various communities of interests, be they Muslims, feminists or anti-racists.
I am currently reading Azar Nafisi’s brilliant latest book, Republic of Imagination (2014) where she writes a chapter on the US writer Mark Twain’s 1884 novel Huckleberry Finn as a major inspiration in her life and moral outlook. The novel is currently triggering some US literary students and professors into a state of apoplectic trauma as the word ‘nigger’ is used 219 times in the novel. The decision to re-publish the novel and replace the word ‘nigger’ with ‘slave’ is a dangerous re-writing of history and art. Nafisi defends artistic expression unreservedly and quotes from one of Twain’s notebooks as follows:
“Expression – expression is the thing – in art. I do not care what it expresses, and I cannot tell, generally, but expression is what I worship, it is what I glory in, with all my impetuous nature.” (Republic of Imagination, p.88)
Art should be dangerous, unsettling, funny, an emotional journey, beautiful, entertaining and yes, obscene. Artistic expression, in all its manifestations, is a value that must be defended in our Western democracies. We should heed Mark Twain’s wise words.
Manick Govinda is head of artists’ advisory services for ArtsAdmin
Govinda is participating in the 17 Oct Artistic expression: where should we draw the line?Battle of Ideas session with Index on Censorship CEO Jodie Ginsberg, Cressida Brown, Nadia Latif, Nikola Matisic with chair Claire Fox at the Battle of Ideas festival.
Index on Censorship magazine editor Rachael Jolley is speaking at Does artistic expression have its limits? at the Bow Arts Trust on Monday 05 October
28 Sep 2015 | About Index, Art and the Law Commentary, Artistic Freedom Commentary and Reports, Campaigns, Statements
Index condemns a decision to remove an artwork by the artist Mimsy showing Sylvanian Families toys being terrorised by Isis.
According to reports, Isis Threaten Sylvania, a series of seven satirical light box tableaux, was removed from the Passion for Freedom exhibition at the Mall galleries after police raised concerns about the “potentially inflammatory content” of the work.
The removal highlights a worrying trend in which artistic or other work that addresses extremism has been shut down. Over the summer, the National Youth Theatre pulled a planned production of Homegrown, a play that examined Isis recruitment of young Britons just weeks before its scheduled start. Last week, Maryam Namazie, an Iranian-born campaigner against religious laws, was blocked from visiting Warwick University after the student union said she violated its external speaker policy. That decision has since been overturned.
“Concerns over terror are being inflated to such an extent that perfectly legitimate, non-criminal expression, is being shut down across Britain: from university campuses, to theatre stages, to art galleries,” said Index on Censorship CEO Jodie Ginsberg. “The upcoming extremism bill could worsen the situation further. In the case of the Sylvanian Families exhibit, we need to do more to ensure that police work with venues to promote freedom of expression, not stifle it.”
Index has produced a series of booklets on the UK’s legal framework and its impact on artistic freedom of expression for artists and arts organisations mounting challenging and controversial works.
