18 Dec 14 | Campaigns, Statements
Sony’s decision to pull U.S. film The Interview from distribution after threats underlines the continuing trend of failure to protect artistic freedom of expression.
“Clearly this sets an example for other anonymous groups to put a curb on artistic expression through threats. This opens the door for anyone to level a threat against artistic works that they don’t agree with or find distasteful,” Rachael Jolley, editor of Index on Censorship magazine said.
Sony’s decision to postpone the film on the basis of public safety follows what the company calls an “unprecedented” assault by hackers on its business and employees. The film’s derailing comes as the main North American theatre chains halted plans to show the release amid hackers’ warnings to the public to stay away.
“Sony should take steps to stand up for the free expression of its filmmakers by reconsidering its decision or releasing the film online,” Jolley said.
12 May 14 | Azerbaijan, Azerbaijan News, Campaigns
As Azerbaijan is about to assume the Chairmanship of the Council of Europe Committee of Ministers, a new report details cases of violations of the right to artistic freedom of expression over the past three years in the country.
According to the report, the Azerbaijani authorities have used a range of tactics to silence critical artistic expression, including harassment, intimidation, threats, interference, legal pressure, arrest, imprisonment, and torture.
The report, Creativity Under Pressure: Artistic Freedom of Expression in Azerbaijan, is published by the Baku-based Art for Democracy campaign. Art for Democracy is a campaign that uses art to promote democracy and human rights in Azerbaijan. The group has faced significant pressure since its launch in December 2012, including the attempted launch event for this very report, which has been cancelled by three hotels in Baku.
Index on Censorship is posting the report on its website as Art for Democracy’s new website, www.artfordemocracy.net, has faced a hack attack shortly after being live and is not currently functioning.
Executive Summary
Creativity Under Pressure: Artistic Freedom of Expression in Azerbaijan (PDF) is a report of the Art for Democracy campaign, which uses all forms of artistic expression to promote democracy and human rights in Azerbaijan. The report examines the situation of artistic freedom of expression in Azerbaijan from 2011 to the time of publication, April 2014.
Despite the fact that Azerbaijan has committed to respect and protect the right to artistic freedom of expression, in practice, the Azerbaijani authorities restrict this right, particularly with regard to alternative artists and artists considered to be critical of the government. The ability of these artists to perform, display, or disseminate their work is limited through direct and indirect means. As a result, few artists remain willing to publicly express critical views or use their work to explore controversial themes, and those who do face serious consequences.
The report is divided into three chapters. The first chapter sets out international standards for artistic freedom of expression, which Azerbaijan has committed to protect and respect through its membership in a number of international organizations and its ratification of or accession to international treaties.
The second chapter covers the domestic legal framework for artistic freedom of expression. Azerbaijani legislation largely conforms to international standards for artistic freedom of expression; however, many of these laws allow for state interference, which could be used as means of censoring artistic expression. Further, the continued presence of criminal defamation provisions in Azerbaijani legislation contradicts international standards and has a chilling effect on freedom of expression, contributing to widespread practices of self-censorship in the country, including in the arts.
The third chapter examines freedom of artistic expression in practice in Azerbaijan, detailing cases of pressure on musicians; film, television, and theater workers; writers, poets, and publishers; human rights defenders who campaign for the right to artistic freedom of expression or who use artistic forms of expression to draw attention to the human rights situation in Azerbaijan; and political activists who use creative means of expressing critical political views.
In publishing this report, the Art for Democracy campaign hopes to draw greater awareness, both within Azerbaijan and at the international level, to ongoing restrictions of the right to artistic freedom of expression in Azerbaijan, and in that regard, to improve the situation in the country.
To that end, the report contains a number of recommendations to the Azerbaijani authorities for concrete steps needed to improve the situation of artistic freedom of expression in the country. Among these are the need to cease politically motivated arrests of persons in connection with their exercise of the right to artistic freedom of expression; to conduct serious and independent investigations into reports of torture and calls for violence against artists; to cease practices of censorship and dismissal of artists working for state bodies; to cease practices of discriminatory treatment of critical and alternative artists; and to decriminalize defamation.
Read the full report here (PDF)
This article was published on May 12, 2014 at indexoncensorship.org
16 Apr 14 | India, News and features, Politics and Society
(Image: GeorgeMPhotography/Shutterstock)
The Hindu Janajagruti Samiti’s (HJS) unmistakable glee knew no bounds. It had scored a hat trick of getting Ali J, a play centred around the partition of India and communal riots, and seeking to demolish every argument advanced by Hindu fundamentalists, off the stage.
First it was Mumbai, when on 6 February the organisers of the prestigious Kala Ghoda Festival, fearing violence from HJS and political party Shiv Sena, were cowed into calling it off. On March 9, the Chennai Police, citing “law and order problems” asked the troupe to cancel the show. And on 12 March, an hour before the play was about to start, Bangalore cops barged into the theatre and told the performers to clear off from the premises.
The memorandum submitted by the HJS, a revanchist organisation dedicated to “rekindling righteousness” and reawakening (Janajagruti means “mass awakening” in Sanskrit) Indians’ pride in their ancient culture, reads like a study in jingoism laced with vicious communalism. Evam, the Chennai-based theatre group producing the play, is accused of hurting religious sentiments and assaulting nationalistic pride because, among other things it shows an inter-faith love affair, depicts the persecution of Muslims, advocates jihad, depicts Jinnah as being a taller personality than Gandhi, and overall militates “against the established moral principles of Indian society”. These bellicose claims must be greeted with incredulity because as Karthik Kumar, the director and lead actor asserts in an interview to a national daily, none of these purveyors of “Indian morality” had even watched the play. Moreover, as Kumar categorically says, the crux of Ali J’s message was to recall the horrors of partition and caution against the purveyors of hate who indulge in polarising people on the grounds of religion.
This spate of censorious incidents leads one to a number of questions. What is the provenance of organisations like the HJS and the Shiv Sena? What motivates them to claim a sole monopoly on the interpretation of history? And, does the state bear no responsibility in thwarting their efforts?
The systematic rewriting of history and imposing myths upon established facts is a critical component of the Hindu nationalist ideology, for, the doctrine of Hindutva mandates not an India of cultural and ethnic syncretism, but a “Hindustan” in which rabid Islamophobia runs riot. It isn’t the first time that the depiction of partition — the goriest and most viciously communal episode in South Asian history — has been attacked by Hindu supremacists.
In April 1974, M.S. Sathyu’s film Garam Hawa (Hot Wind) — the heartrending tale of the “scorching, simmering and debilitating winds of communalism, political bigotry and intolerance” incurred the Shiv Sena’s wrath. Salim Mirza, the protagonist, was a study in resilience and religious tolerance. Even when everything around him is charred in the communal inferno, he refused to leave India. Bal Thackeray, the Shiv Sena supremo, was so enraged at this humanistic portrayal of a Muslim that he threatened to raze to ashes every single theatre and screen which showed the film. The premiere at Bombay’s Regal Cinema was stalled because the police played mute bystanders. Only after a special screening was hastily arranged for Thackeray and he was satisfied that a Muslim had to stay back and join the Indian (read “Hindu”) mainstream was the film allowed to go on.
Tamas, a television serial carrying pretty much the same message as Garam Hawa, encountered similar opposition in 1988. It didn’t help that the government of Maharashtra, citing possible law and order problems, effectively played tango with the champions of censorship. It could go on air only after the Supreme Court rejected the government’s apprehensions as unfounded.
It would indeed be short-sighted to reserve trenchant criticism only for the bullies who squelch freedom of expression, for more often than not, the government is equally complicit. This is because India’s constitution is unequivocal — that restrictions on speech can be imposed only if “public order” and not the “law and order situation” is in jeopardy. Last year, the Tamil Nadu government took this specious and patently illegal plea while stalling Vishwaroopam, a film which some Muslim organisations found offensive. The courts have clearly stated that “law and order” was narrower in scope than “public order”, and these two should not be interpreted interchangeably, and it is incumbent upon the state to protect the fundamental right to speech in the face of onslaughts.
As long as the government pussyfoots or plays a charade for purposes of political expediency, the HJS and others of its ilk will be thirsting for more glory.
This article was published on April 16, 2014 at indexoncensorship.org
21 Mar 14 | Egypt, News and features, Politics and Society, Religion and Culture
Singer Nancy Ajram is among those whose videos have been banned by Egypt’s censorship committee.
In a move that has sparked concern among Egyptian secularists, the country’s censorship committee this week banned 20 music videos allegedly containing “heavy sexual connotations” and featuring “scantily-dressed female singers and models.”
The decision to ban the video clips deemed “inappropriate” and “indecent” by members of the state censorship committee, comes two months after a new constitution guaranteeing freedom of expression and opinion was approved by 98 per cent of voters in a national referendum. The new charter replaced the 2012 constitution, widely criticized by rights organizations and revolutionary activists as an “Islamist-tinged” document.
The majority of Egypt’s secularists who celebrated the ouster of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in Tahrir Square in July had feared that the Muslim Brotherhood –the Islamist group from which he hails –was seeking to alter Egypt’s ‘moderate’ identity. The Islamist group has since been outlawed and designated a terrorist organization by the military-backed authorities that replaced the toppled president.
The banning of the video clips comes amid heated debate on “raunchy” music videos broadcast on some of the Arab satellite channels. In recent years, an increasing number of popular Arab female singing-stars have challenged social norms and broken cultural taboos by revealing more flesh in their video clips. The trend has stirred controversy in Egypt’s deeply conservative Muslim society with many Egyptians rejecting what they describe as “the pornification of pop music”. They insist that the “graphic, semi-porn sexual scenes featured in some of the music videos are not in line with Islamic tradition and culture”.
“Some of these video clips are more porn than music. We can hardly understand the lyrics; They are an insult to Arabic music and culture,” said Amina Mansour , a Western educated 30 year- old Egyptian freelance photographer.
It is no surprise that some liberal, westernised Egyptians agree with ultra-conservative Muslims in their society that the videos should be banned. Egyptian society–once a melting pot of different cultures has grown more conservative in the last 30 years. In his book Whatever Happened to the Egyptians, Economist Galal Amin blames the growing conservatism in the country on the introduction of Wahhabism –a more rigid form of Islam practised in Saudi Arabia and adopted by the millions of Egyptian migrants who travelled to Gulf countries after the oil boom in the seventies, seeking higher-paid jobs. The gradual transformation from a diverse, open and tolerant society into today’s conservative and far less tolerant Egypt is evident in the style of dress, behaviour and speech of many Egyptians. An estimated 90 per cent of women wear the hijab-the head covering worn by Muslim women -while the niqab, a veil covering the face , has become more prevalent in recent years.
Some analysts believe the trend of conservatism, which had steadily grown in Egypt recent decades, now appears to be regressing. A growing number of women and girls are removing their Islamic headscarf —once adopted as a political statement against the authoritarian regime of Hosni Mubarak and against Western-style values imposed on the society. Leila el Shentenawy, a 31 year old lawyer told Index she removed her veil after Morsi’s ouster to express her disappointment with Islamist rule.
“Morsi failed to deliver on promised reforms,” she said, adding that she and other liberal Egyptians were alarmed by the calls made by some hardline Islamists to bring back female genital mutilation and lower the age of marriage for girls.
“We were becoming a backward society instead of moving forward,” she said.
Shentenawi however, supports the ban on the video clips, arguing that such videos are “commercialization of women’s bodies and a downright insult to women.”
Other Egyptians have meanwhile expressed disappointment over the banning of the video clips, perceiving the move as “a reversal of the democratic gains of the January 25, 2011 Revolution” that toppled autocratic president Hosni Mubarak and the subsequent uprising against Islamist rule in June 2013.
“We had two uprisings for freedom and a modern, democratic society,” lamented 26 year-old graphic designer Amr El Sherif. “The video clips are popular with young Egyptians and the latest ban can only be considered as a means of stifling free artistic expression.”
In January, Egyptian TV imposed a ban on several video clips reportedly containing “seductive scenes”, deciding they were”inappropriate for viewers”. The ban on the music videos featuring Middle Eastern pop idols Haifa Wahby, Alissa, Nancy Agram and Ruby among others, came in response to complaints by some viewers that the “hot scenes” depicted in the videos were “provocative” and “went against the morals of Muslim society.”
While modest by Western standards, “the gyrations and revealing costumes featured in the videos were too sexy for Arab audiences”, the censors decided. The ban is a continuation of the ultra-conservative trend started by Islamists during their one year rule when some of their lawmakers had complained to Parliament (then dominated by Islamists) that “Egyptian performer Ruby’s pelvic thrust dance moves and bare midriff were too much,” warning that the “obscene scenes” depicted in the music videos would “trash the taste of Egyptians.”
The ban of the videos meanwhile, coincided with the sexual assault of a female student by a mob on Cairo University’s main campus on Monday–the first violence of its kind on an Egyptian university campus. While condemning the assault incident in a telephone interview broadcast on the private ONTV channel later that evening, University President Gaber Nassar implied the victim was to blame, saying her “immodest attire” had invited the assault. He urged students to dress modestly, adding that those who do not follow the university’s regulation would be barred from entering the university campus by security guards.
Some Egyptians believe that the “suggestive” and “explicit” music videos are partly to blame for a surge in incidents of sexual harassment and violence against women in the country since the January 2011 uprising.
“Sexual frustrations of youth –many of whom are unemployed and unable to afford the cost of marriage– are being fuelled in part by sexy music videos and other pornograhic material on the internet, causing unruly behaviour by some youth,” Said Sadek, a Cairo-based Political Sociologist and activist, told Index.
The recent ban on the video clips also comes hot on the heels of an International Women’s Day protest-rally staged by nude Arab and Iranian women in the Louvre Art Museum’s Square in Paris, calling for “equal rights” and “secularism” in their respective countries. Egyptian internet activist Alia Al Mahdi was among the participants in the Paris nudist rally which organizers said, was held to “highlight the many legal and cultural restrictions imposed on women in the Arab World”. El Mahdi had also protested naked outside the Egyptian Embassy in the Swedish capital Stockholm in December 2012 to express her opposition to what she called Morsi’s “Sharia Constitution.” Raising the Egyptian flag, she had the words ” No to Sharia” written in bold print on her naked body.
Many of the revolutionary youth-activists who led the uprisings in Tahrir Square in January 2011 and June 2013 had hoped the downfall of two authoritarian regimes would usher in a new era of greater freedoms including freedom of expression and opinion.But their hopes are fading fast amid increased restrictions and a climate of growing repression.Despite the challenges, they vow to continue to push for “reforms” and “a more liberal Egypt”. While many of the revolutionaries say they oppose Alia Al Mahdi’s method of protest, perceiving it as ” extreme”, they insist ” there is no going back to repression and censorship by the authorities.”
“We’ve had our first taste of freedom with the revolution three years ago and once you’ve had that, you can only move forward and never look back, ” said Mohamed Fawaz, an activist and member of the April 6 Movement, one of the two main groups that mobilized protesters for the January 11 mass uprising. Meanwhile, the battle between secularists and conservatives for the soul of the “new Egypt” continues.
This article was posted on 21 March 2014 at indexoncensorship.org
