Another week, another social media ban in Turkey. I email a friend. to ask what are people making of this latest gross violation of free speech. “Nothing much,” comes the reply. “Lots of jokes though.”
Such is life these days in Erdoganistan, where every day brings a new censorship story, greeted now with what my Turkish friend calls “the humour of desperation”.
The latest ban on social media came, perhaps, with slightly more justification than previous attempts. Pictures of a state prosecutor, Mehmet Selim Kiraz, were circulated by the hard-left Revolutionary People’s Liberation Front (DHKP-C), which had taken him hostage. Hours after the pictures were released, Kiraz was dead. A court ordered that the picture of the dead man in perhaps his final moments be removed from certain sites, but the image proliferated. Hence the blocking of social media on Monday.
It was a case, as Kaya Genc wrote, of “burning the quilt to get rid of the flea”.
This is not unusual in Turkey. Last spring, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan vowed to put a stop to social media after leaked wiretap recordings circulated on Twitter. Back in 2007, the whole of YouTube was blocked because of a video that insulted Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey. That ban lasted three years, and even then-president Abdullah Gul raised his objections. During his presidency, in fact. Gul was never the most reliable friend of the authorities when it came to online censorship. Even during the 2014 ban, he tweeted “”The shutdown of an entire social platform is unacceptable. Besides, as I have said many times before, it is technically impossible to close down communication technologies like Twitter entirely. I hope this measure will not last long.”
In 2008, in one of my personal favourite incidents of online censorship, Richard Dawkins’ website was blocked because of a dispute with ridiculous, but powerful Turkish creationist Harun Yahya.
One has to admire Turks’ sanguinity in the face of such idiocy. It is not as if the web and social media are marginal in Turkish everyday life. As with any other country where half-decent smartphones are available, Turkish billboards and TV adverts are festooned with the familiar logos urging us to like, share, follow and the rest.
But Erdogan and the authorities appear convinced that the web is something that can be harnessed and controlled and without any detrimental effect.
Not that the Turkish president is alone in this belief. During the 2011 London riots, David Cameron famously suggested shutting down social media, to the delirious whooping of the likes of Iran’s Press TV and China’s Xinhua news agency: “Look,” they gleefully pointed out. “The British go on about free speech, and at the first sign of trouble, they want to shut down the internet.” It was rumoured that the Foreign Office had to intervene to point out how bad Cameron was making its diplomats’ human rights lectures look.
But there is a special kind of madness at play in Turkey’s multiple bans, a particular persistence. Ban it! Ban it again! Harder!
The Turkish state at times seems too much like a cranky uncle to be taken seriously, staring confusedly at the Face-book and worrying that somehow it’s a scam because they once heard about an email scam on the radio and now the computer is plotting against them.
But the problem is that Turkey isn’t your confused uncle. Turkey is a hugely important country. The attitude toward web censorship tells us a lot about Erdogan’s regime: it’s erratic, volatile, prone to paranoia, and increasingly suspicious of new things and the outside world. The president is prone to talking about his and Turkeys enemies, internal and external. The recent moves against the Gulen movement (including its newspaper Zaman) and refreshed hostility towards the PKK suggest Erdogan is up for a fight. Last month, he lumped the two movements together declaring that they were “engaged in a systematic campaign to attack Turkey’s resources and interests for years.” – sounding for all the world like Stanley Kubrick’s Brigadier General Jack D Ripper obsessing over plots to taint our precious bodily fluids.
Invoking the age-old Turkish paranoia of hidden power bases, Erdogan said: “We see that there are some groups who turn their backs on this people […] Two different structures that use similar resources have been attacking Turkey’s gains for the past 12 years. One uses arms while the other uses sneaky ways to infiltrate the state and exploit people’s emotions. Their aim is to stop Turkey from reaching its goals.”
Endless obsession over threats does not make for healthy government, let alone democracy. Some suggest that in his outspokeness and utter partiality, Erdogan is already overstepping the mark and creating a defacto US-style presidency – a stated aim.
Men with enemies lists are best avoided, and probably shouldn’t be allowed to be in charge of anything. Erdogan has all the appearance of being one of those men, and he’s been quite clear that the internet is on the list, saying after the 2013 Gezi protests that “Social media is the worst menace to society.”
This attitude is not a rational, but paranoia never is. For all that Turks can laugh at the president and the system, deep down they must worry.
George Orwell’s novel 1984 portrays a violent dystopian society surviving through the continuous suppression and falsification of information. We know first-hand that this is how oppression works throughout the world. One of us (Struckman-Johnson) spent decades piecing together difficult-to-find video clips, news articles, and photos in order to successfully teach about the patriarchal oppression of women around the world. One of us (Sternadori) was cautioned at the age of six by her parents (members of the Bulgarian Communist Party) never to repeat their political jokes, lest something horrible happened just by uttering some words.
We have come to embrace the idea that transparency is crucial to ending any form of violence. This is why we were shocked by the recent fervent attempts — in 2015, in the United States of America — to ban the screening of a documentary, Honor Diaries, which tackles the problem of worldwide honor killings and other violence against women, often embedded in state laws, tradition and political indifference.
Honor Diaries is set to be screened on Friday, 10 April, at 1:45 p.m., in the Muenster University Center Grand Ballroom at the University of South Dakota during the upcoming Women and Gender conference. In addition, Muslim women’s rights activist Raheel Raza, one of the nine women featured in the film, is attending the conference and will participate in a post-screening discussion.
But not all is well just because it ends well. The road to this screening has been fraught with obstacles. The film has been accused of Islamophobia, even though it is supported by groups such as Muslims Facing Tomorrow, the Alliance of Iranian Women and other organizations, most of which are women’s rights groups. The brave women shown in the documentary — like Raheel Raza — are either Muslim or were born in Muslim families, and they speak of making the film as an almost-religious duty to humanity.
The film, however, has faced backlash from other Muslims. According to an opinion piece appearing in The Boston Globe, the attempts to censor the film can be traced to an organization called the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). Indeed, the organization has campaigned to cancel at least one of the film’s screenings, as indicated by its 2014 letter to the United Nations Foundation.
What is curious is that, as one can see from the letter, CAIR appears to have no issues with the film’s content. The organization does not say that the film’s content is Islamophobic, and does not point to any specific elements in the film it finds questionable. CAIR’s problem seems to be not with the film, but with the two executive producers (who in the film business tend to have limited power over the production content) and one of the film’s 42 partner organizations, the Clarion Project, which is said to have funded the documentary. CAIR denies the female filmmakers any agency by shifting the focus of attention away from their work and away from the issues they raise. This is a textbook example of the so-called “ad hominem” logical fallacy, which entails damning the source while saying nothing about the actual content of the message.
How did this controversy play out at USD? It was more dramatic than we were used to seeing. At first, however, the conversation about screening Honor Diaries occurred in a very peaceful and ordinary manner. The film’s promotional team sent emails to faculty and staff members affiliated with the Women and Gender Studies program at USD, inviting them to host a screening. Some of these faculty and staff members forwarded the emails to one of us (Sternadori), suggesting that the film be included in the program of the Women and Gender conference in April. Then, once the film became part of the conference program in January, a student group, the Association for Advancement of Women’s Rights (AAWR), insistently asked to sponsor the film because “it tells an important story about women’s rights in the global community”.
All seemed well until a faculty member from USD’s College of Health Sciences emailed one of us (Sternadori) to say that she “truly believe[d] that showing this movie goes against ‘Inclusive Excellence’ that this University is working hard to achieve”. She followed up by meeting with other members of the university community and voicing her concerns to them. The tide shifted, and a film that is truly heartbreaking — in ways that should never be politicised — became the centre of a massive controversy.
On 20 March, AAWR sent an email to rescind its sponsorship of Honor Diaries because, according to the message, “we are concerned about disrespecting or presenting biased portrayals of the Muslim community.” At a planning meeting for the Women and Gender conference later that day, members of this women’s student group said they did not want to be involved with the film because their office in the Diversity Center is next to the office of the Muslim Student Association, and it is very important for them to maintain a good working relationship. Then, two USD faculty members insisted on removing the film from the conference program. (In addition, a screening of Honor Diaries scheduled for Sunday, 22 March, by the Campus Activities Board mysteriously disappeared from USD’s program of events).
In the end, to ban or not to ban Honor Diaries from the Women and Gender conference was fought over on two occasions by a group of people (including Sternadori and Struckman-Johnson) raised in communities with Christian roots. On both occasions, a mythical Muslim “community” was present like the elephant in the room. Some people very much wanted to defend it.
But they never considered some important questions: who are we to judge which Muslim community or group is more equal than others? Who are we to agree with CAIR’s condemnation of the film over the support from the Council of Muslims Facing Tomorrow and the Alliance of Iranian Women? And who is afraid of screening a film that exposes truly horrific human rights violations?
Even though Honor Diaries remained on the conference program as planned, some faculty still expressed concerns about how we should “frame” the post-screening discussion, given that no members of the Muslim Student Association and not even the faculty member who initially challenged the film are planning to attend. This raises yet another question: who are we to “frame” anything at a public university, where the free flow of ideas is supposed to be encouraged and not restricted?
This has also been very upsetting because it is not the first time in the history of USD’s Women and Gender conference when certain content has created discomfort and resistance — but it is the first time anyone has tried to ban such content. One of us (Struckman-Johnson) remembers the time in the 1980s when USD’s women faculty won a class action suit challenging the gender wage gap and then-President Joe McFadden set in motion the first women’s conference on campus. Since then, the conference has presented many controversial issues generating much “discomfort” — including abortion rights panels, exposes by Native women challenging tribal corruption (to the great displeasure of their Native communities), and even a presentation by a group of midwives who could have been arrested for participating in the conference.
And in the past few weeks, we have been fighting over which slivers of a community (or a perceived community) are more authentic and more deserving of our attention than others. The misguided effort to ban Honor Diaries has shaken our confidence in USD women’s ability to stand up to the oppression that so conveniently profits others. We cannot imagine that anyone who cares about the misery, suffering, mutilation and murder of women would consider banning this film.
It is encouraging, however, that, since the controversy began, we have seen an incredible outpouring of support. One of us (Sternadori) received approximately 1,270 emails from people thanking her for opposing the attempt to cancel the film screening. Colleagues from other universities expressed support as well. For example, Lyombe (Leo) Eko at the University of Iowa, wrote to say: “Banning this movie from the USD would be a naked act of censorship that is incompatible with everything universities stand for. The USD needs to teach its students that under the First Amendment, the rights of the speaker (the movie makers and Miglena Sternadori) trump the feelings of the viewers (the censors) on matters of public concern.”
We encourage the readers of Index on Censorship to watch Honor Diaries, which streams on Netflix and Amazon, and to carefully consider its content and the grounds on which it has been so vehemently criticised. We also hope that Orwell’s work will continue to be widely read. In 2015, he is as relevant as ever because — contrary to what the Party says in 1984 — ignorance is not strength.
As women, we have been socialized to play well with others. But we should not regard this as a categorical imperative. We know from the unending history of genocide and from experiments like those of Stanley Milgram and Philip Zimbardo that there are times when getting along with some people at the expense of others is the wrong choice that leads to loss of life and indescribable suffering on a large scale.
In the mid-80s, advertising firm Saatchi and Saatchi made a short film for Index on Censorship. Starring Anthony Hopkins in the title role, The Censor, written by Ivan Kraus, depicted a dancer being ordered about by a commissar who repeatedly tells her what movements she is forbidden from making. When she finally comes to a standstill the censor demands of her: “Why aren’t you dancing? You call that a dance?”
In a pleasing irony, the film, intended as a cinema advert, never made it to screens as it was deemed “too political”.
I was reminded of this earlier in the week when I read about activist Maryam Namazie’s clash with Trinity College Dublin’s Society For International Affairs (SoFIA). Namazie claims that conditions were placed on her speaking at an event, in particular the imposition of a “moderator” in the form of Dr Andrew Pierce, an assistant professor in Ecumenics at TCD.
I don’t know Dr Pierce, or his work, so have no reason to doubt that he would be a perfectly fine moderator.
I do know Maryam Namazie, having moved in roughly the same atheist/secular/free speechy circles, and I’m not sure that she is very much into the idea of Ecumenics or being moderated.
Maryam Namazie is a refugee from the Islamic Republic of Iran. Her political education came in the Worker-communist Party of Iran, a group that does not spend a lot of time on “interfaith dialogue”. She retains a deep-seated anti-clericalism which has not so much gone missing from the British hard left, as never really existed (with the exception of libertarian communist/anarchist circles). She’s not into “interfaith”.
You can see why, as SoFIA speakers are normally not moderated, Namazie would not tolerate this exception. Like the dancer in the film, she felt so constrained by conditions that she could not continue. You can also see why SoFIA would imagine this as unreasonable, and cast it as so.
So has Maryam been prevented from speaking at TCD or not? Is this, as people like to ask “a free speech issue”?
The answers are: yes and no, and yes.
To the first question: yes and no. Yes, as she has been prevented from speaking under the terms she originally agreed to. Namazie clearly feels that the imposition of “moderation” will by its nature stifle her. And no, because, technically, the only person to actually prevent her from speaking was herself. It was she who pulled the plug.
Is this a “free speech issue”? Well yes. There are few more irritating arguments than “it’s not a free speech issue”.
This statement is usually backed up by the following arguments:
“X is against the law.” And? Resorting to the fact that something is illegal is to run away from an argument, not to win it. There are all sorts of bad laws, as anyone who has ever so much as signed a petition to change one has acknowledged. If you cannot form an argument as to whether someone should or should not do something without recourse to existing laws, you probably need to work a bit harder on it.
“Not compatible with Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights/Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.” See above. Legalistic arguments are for lawyers.
“This is an abuse of free speech”. Because you can only use your rights for the purposes I wish them to be used for. That’s how rights work.
“No one has a right to a platform.” This is absolutely true. However, the flip side of that is that clubs, societies etc have a right to invite the speakers and guests they choose. Every so often, the Oxford Union, or a university debating or philosophy society, will invite a fascist or a Holocaust revisionist to discuss “free speech” and its limits. It’s a dull trick, made even duller by the reaction of United Against Fascism/Socialist Workers Party student activists who will attempt to shut the talk down. (And, yes, before there are letters, you have every right to try to get something shut down. Yes, that is exercising your free speech, until you storm the hall. Then you’re using force).
“We’re not saying she can’t speak: just that she can’t speak here.” See above.
“You wouldn’t get away with that in X country (usually Saudi Arabia, Russia or China).” No, you wouldn’t. Why you want to compare the free world with regimes like that, I’ve no idea, but we should be glad that people “get away with” saying more in democracies than they do in autocracies.
“Free speech does not mean the ability to say X.” Nah, sorry. It definitely does.
And on it goes. The problem is that these caveats always apply to things that are, obviously so, free speech issues. But — and this is probably a good thing — nobody wants to be seen as against free speech (though it was amusing to see the format of the various censorious motions brought at the National Union of Students’ Women’s Conference this week: “Motion to Condemn XXXXphobia on campus. Speech for: NUS XXXX Society. Speech Against: Free”).
One wishes sometimes we could be more honest. Don’t say “this isn’t a free speech issue”, rather “this is a free speech issue, and I’m OK with this amount of censorship, for this reason.” Then we can talk.
International Women’s Day 2015 should have been a positive occasion in China. The day is a big deal in the country; women are awarded time off work and given gifts by their employers. This year also marks 20 years since 189 countries adopted the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, a roadmap for women’s rights and empowerment. And in the lead-up to the day, a Chinese official hinted at the country’s first domestic violence law becoming a reality in August.
But events quickly took an ugly turn: on Friday 6 March the Chinese government detained a number of high-profile feminist activists. Demonstrations were cancelled. Debate was effectively silenced. Several weeks later five of the women are still in custody. Two have been denied treatment for serious medical conditions.
Superficially at least, these incidents represent a major blow to China’s feminist movement, which desperately relies on a small, but increasingly vocal cohort.
Chinese women suffer from a catalogue of discrimination in the workforce, in the home, and in most other aspects of their lives. Clear indication of the need for change came in 2013, when China only managed to reach position 91 out of the 187 countries listed in the United Nations Development Programme’s Gender Inequality Index (Iran came ahead at 75).
The injustices Chinese women face largely go unchallenged. The upper echelons of the Communist Party, where policy is made, is a man’s affair. Only two women belong to the current 25-member politburo, and none made it through to the seven member politburo standing committee.
The government plays an active role in skewing gender relations, as is demonstrated through the emergence of the idea of “leftover women”. The term first entered common parlance around 2007, when newspapers became filled with cautionary tales of unmarried women over the age of 27. Its roots can be traced back to the Chinese government, as Leta Hong Fincher explained in her groundbreaking book Leftover Women: The Resurgence of Gender Inequality in China. It has had a very negative impact on women’s property and employment rights.
It is the Communist Party’s ability to control conversations that makes the feminist struggle particularly pronounced in China. Civil society is tightly controlled. Certain groups do exist to campaign for female rights, but they are limited in size and reach.
In spite of these barriers, Chinese women have in recent years shown amazing strength to stand up to injustice. Activists have paraded around in blood coated wedding dresses, occupied men’s toilets, shaved their heads to raise awareness — to name just a few examples.
Some of these measures have proven highly effective. Cao Ju, a 21-year old university graduate, raised the profile of workforce quotas when she successfully sued a company that did not employ her on the grounds of her sex. Meanwhile, Kim Lee, who was abused for years by her famous husband Li Yang, shed a spotlight on how prolific domestic abuse is in China when she uploaded photos of her bloody face to microblogging platform Weibo.
For these reasons, the detentions are incredibly significant. Chinese women can’t rely on the government to come to their aid. But when it does the exact opposite, and actually arrests them, the situation gets a whole lot worse. China’s current leader Xi Jinping has intensified a crackdown on dissent. While they have not had an easy ride, feminist activists had until this month largely been spared. These arrests send out a warning to anyone who might follow suit and are a blatant attempt to squash the country’s nascent feminist movement.
On the other hand, some prominent commentators have argued that the detentions will instead cement the feminist movement in China. In a conversation published by ChinaFile, Leta Hong Fincher argues it could be “the spark” needed, while writer Eric Fish says the government “risks planting seeds that could sprout into even greater opposition later”. Sixteen activists have already gone to a Beijing detention centre where one of the women, Wu Rongrong, is being held to demand she be given medical treatment. A petition is also calling for the release of the activists.
China watchers wait with bated breathe to see how the story will unfold, pinning their hopes on a positive outcome. After all, China desperately needs figures such as these. Without them, no one is fighting in the corner of Chinese feminism.
