Picture the scenario: Sir Paul McCartney criticises a British prime minister. And in a couple of days, he’s banned from all concert halls and every other live venue across the country. His songs are barred from all radio stations, and he cannot even arrange a gig in a small club. When journalists call the venues and radio stations that refuse to put on the former Beatle, they get no quotes but are told off-the-record by the venue and station controllers that they’ve had phone calls from local-government bigwigs suggesting a choice: Drop Paul McCartney or the business closes…
Implausible? Yes. But it’s not far off what happens in Belarus, a country that is just outside the European Union and, geographically at least, in the centre of Europe.
The Belarus Free Theatre has a burgeoning international reputation, including in Britain, as one of the bastions of the country’s uncensored culture. It has consistently raised contemporary political and social issues through its creative work: political prisoners, disappearances of opposition leaders, oppression of dissent. Its supporters include Tom Stoppard, Kevin Spacey and Jude Law, and it is has been critically acclaimed for performances in Britain, the US, Australia and elsewhere. But in Belarus it’s almost impossible to see Free Theatre productions unless you’re one of the lucky few who knows and is trusted by one of its organisers and is invited to an almost-clandestine performance in a private home in the outskirts of Minsk (see their play Numbers below).
It is effectively banned, and the main reason is political, says its art director, Nicolai Khalezin.
“We have told the world about the fate of Belarus political prisoners, who have been put in jail after being framed-up. We gave the British news media a way into looking at Belarus and focusing on the links between British business and the Lukashenko regime.”
The Free Theatre is not alone in the Belarus cultural opposition. Rock music has always been a focus for protest. It started in the Soviet era, when the first rock bands of the perestroika period made their stand against communist rule. When independence came to Belarus in the early 90s, musicians turned from protesting to putting forward new ideas to inspire change and the building of a new country. Many emphasised themes of Belarusian national culture and history which had been long suppressed under the Russian empire and later the Soviet Union.
But under the rule of Alexander Lukashenko a new wave of Russification began. The first Belarus president changed the national symbols of the newly independent republic to the old Soviet coat-of-arms and flag, and the Belarusian language declined again, its proponents labelled “oppositional” by the regime.
Under Lukashenko, society and culture became increasingly polarised. In 2001 a rock concert took place in Minsk at which musicians protested against changes to the Belarus constitution to allow the president to stay in office for an unlimited number of terms. That was the last uncensored open-air concert in Minsk; the musicians who played found themselves denied radio airplay and started having difficulties organising concerts.
Aleh Khamenka, a leader of the folk-rock group Palac, says that the spirit of 2001 lives on.
“What we are doing is asserting a Belarusian, non-Soviet identity. We sing in Belarusian. We sing about what is ours, about what we love that is ours — our country, history and people. This approach contradicts the Soviet ideology that is based on total collectivism and neglecting the importance of individuality. We attract modern Belarusian youth and influence them. But the authorities are almost entirely people from the Soviet era. They see us as a threat, because they’re losing their leadership of public opinion to us.”
The authorities have maintained unofficial blacklists of musicians who are effectively banned form broadcasting and whose concerts are discouraged. There have been numerous occasions when a band’s gig in a club has been cancelled five minutes before it is scheduled to start after a phone call from local authorities. Among the acts that have been targeted are NRM, Krambambula, NeuroDubel, Palac and Krama, but at least two dozen bands have faced restrictions of one kind or another in the past ten years.
Liavon Volski, frontman of NRM and Krambambula, says he was really depressed when he first realised he was blacklisted. He stopped writing songs for almost three years.
“I got over it. My concerts are still cancelled in Belarus. It’s annoying, but the state’s interest in our work is a fact of life and part of the work. If you complain all the time and get desperate, you only harm your own health. What keeps me going in Belarus is the power of irony.”
The internet remains a critical free media platform in Belarus, not least because the state authorities have failed to find any means of controlling it — but otherwise Belarusian performing artists have to do their work abroad or in small clubs or private apartments, where small improvised concerts called kvaternik (kvaterameans “a flat” in Belarusian) are held.
The same problem applies to other creative activities. Authors that are at odds with Lukashenko’s policy soon fall out of favour — whether or not they have expressed political disagreements with the regime. One of Belarus’s most prominent national historians, Uladzimir Arlou, no longer gets mentioned in school textbooks after he argued for an independent European orientation for the country’s politics.
Visual artists too find themselves up against the authorities time and again. One group of artists, Pahonia, which takes its name from the traditional national coat-of-arms of Belarus that was dropped by Lukashenko, has faced repeated obstacles to mounting exhibitions that include paintings making allusions to past communist crimes or the authoritarianism of the current regime.
And if you’re blocked by the state, you don’t have a lot of independent outlets available. There are only a couple of private book publishing companies in Belarus, just a couple of private art galleries and no private theatres. Overall, about 80 per cent of the economy is state-run.
The last time blacklisting hit hard was during the 2010 presidential elections, when the rock band Liapis Trubetskoy released a song, “Don’t be a Beast”, that became an anthem for oppositionists whose protests against the authorities’ fixing of the elections was brutally suppressed. The band got no airplay on FM stations, but the video of the song on YouTube was viewed more than a million times.
And the lyrics … well, they’re a poem by Janka Kupala, a classic of the Belarusian literature, written 100 years ago, when Belarus was a part of the Russian empire. But its message is bang up-to-date for everyone in Belarus. The struggle for freedom continues.
Sieviaryn Kviatkouski is a Belarusian journalist, writer and blogger
A peaceful protest against the Innocence of Muslims in London – Brian Minkoff/Demotix
The Innocence of Muslims controversy put a spotlight on whether offensive online content should be censored or criminalised, as violence in Egypt, Libya and beyond meant many were tempted to argue for the removal of the video from the web.
Most states have laws to control clear and direct incitements to violence; but causing offence is neither an incitement to violence nor a reason to respond with violence. Yet since the initial protests, many countries have queued up to ask Google to block the offending video. Google initially blocked it in Egypt and Libya without even a government request, and then unblocked it.
Should companies, rather than governments, ever be the censors — arbiters of acceptability? Is it more palatable if companies are served with court orders to block access to Internet content? Or that, in keeping with its policy to abide by local laws, Google blocked the video in India and Indonesia because it was ruled illegal?
But more importantly, has a clear line been drawn between the direct incitement to violence (which should absolutely not be protected as free speech) and whether people choose to respond with violence to something they find offensive?
Rwanda is often cited as a case where the balance between safeguarding free speech and preventing violence is particularly relevant, given the severe ethnic conflicts resulting in the 1994 genocide following callings for violence. Local officials and government-sponsored radio incited ordinary citizens to kill their neighbours, and those who refused to kill were often murdered on the spot. The genocide-inciting radio broadcasts shouldn’t have been allowed. There is a clear dividing line.
But The Innocence of Muslims is not in the same category. And if Internet censorship is used because there is crowd violence — and in anticipation of violence, where does it end?
“The big story here is the crack-down on the Internet” William Echikson told me in a telephone interview from Brussels. “The pressures have grown dramatically. And we are doing our best to protect free expression. ”
Echikson is Head of Free Expression Policy and PR, Europe, Middle East & Africa at Google.
According to different reports, Innocence of Muslims was also blocked in India, Indonesia and Saudi Arabia as a result of court orders. Google also blocked the video in Malaysia after receiving an official complaint from the Communications and Multimedia Commission, according to AFP. Reporters without Borders said the video was also blocked in Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Russia via court orders on grounds of being “extremist”. And in Pakistan, it was blocked by the Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf, who issued a directive to the Ministry of Information Technology.
The key, original censors here seem to be violent demonstrators and restrictive governments. Of the 150 countries where Google operates, in about 30 its service has been “affected one way or the other”, adds Echikson.
Governments are indeed cracking-down on the web, either because they already censor blasphemous and other offensive material (even without any likelihood of violence) or because they are giving in to actual or threatened violence. But if governments continue doing that, couldn’t it become an incentive for any fanatical group to threaten or act violently, and get censorship as a result? Isn’t this very similar to the mechanisms of terror: you terrorise or hurt one to scare a thousand?
That is why it is so vital that everyone understands the difference between incitement to violence, and violence in response to offense, an idea that, weeks after the video furore, has vanished from the agenda.
A country such as China may shed some light on where we are heading.
After a series of huge protests and ethnic riots (many of which were organised using instant messaging services, chat rooms, and text messages), China is reported to have intensified its efforts to neutralise online criticism. According to Amnesty, China has the largest number of imprisoned journalists and cyber-dissidents in the world, while the number of “Internet police” is rumoured to be higher than 30,000.
The reason for all this political censorship.
Many of the violent reactions to The Innocence of Muslims were for political reasons, using offence as an excuse. In fact, some analysts and US officials have reported that Benghazi attack of 11 September, which killed the US ambassador to Libya, appeared to have been planned in advance, and had nothing to do whatsoever with the video.
So for the Internet, where does all this end? With the annihilation of McLuhan’s global village and the beginning of a new era of of separate, isolated, over-scrutinised, parochial Internets.
Miren Guitierrez is editorial director of Index on Censorship
In July the Russian parliament approved a bill designed to increase the Kremlin’s control of the internet. The new laws grant the government sweeping powers to block access to internet resources.
Russian Wikipedia blacked out to protest the law claiming that it would “lead to the creation of a Russian analogue to China’s great firewall”. Campaigners fear the new rules will lead to widespread censorship. Even though the law doesn’t come into effect until November, Russian internet service providers are already coming under pressure to block internet resources and services.
Here, Andrei Soldatov tells us what Russia censored in September
Click here to find out what Russia censored in October
A letter from Hanover police informed Twitter of this ban, and requested that they block the site: the platform complied, and since 25 September, the account has been unavailable.
It’s important to note the “in Germany” part. Besseres Hanover’s twitter account is still available in the rest of the world, though until today it had not been updated since the ban.
Back in January, Twitter announced that it would be introducing a system where it would comply with national blocking orders while keeping content available outside the relevant jurisdiction.
Interestingly, the blog post announcing this policy specifically mentioned Germany’s anti-Nazi laws:
As we continue to grow internationally, we will enter countries that have different ideas about the contours of freedom of expression. Some differ so much from our ideas that we will not be able to exist there. Others are similar but, for historical or cultural reasons, restrict certain types of content, such as France or Germany, which ban pro-Nazi content.
Until now, the only way we could take account of those countries’ limits was to remove content globally. Starting today, we give ourselves the ability to reactively withhold content from users in a specific country — while keeping it available in the rest of the world. We have also built in a way to communicate transparently to users when content is withheld, and why.
The reaction to this announcement was mixed: some initially screamed “CENSORSHIP!”, but probably the fairest analysis came from EFF’s Jillian C York, who wrote:
Let’s be clear: This is censorship. There’s no way around that. But alas, Twitter is not above the law. Just about every company hosting user-generated content has, at one point or another, gotten an order or government request to take down content. Google lays out its orders in its Transparency Report. Other companies are less forthright. In any case, Twitter has two options in the event of a request: Fail to comply, and risk being blocked by the government in question, or comply (read: censor).
… I understand why people are angry, but this does not, in my view, represent a sea change in Twitter’s policies. Twitter has previously taken down content — for DMCA requests, at least — and will no doubt continue to face requests in the future. I believe that the company is doing its best in a tough situation… and I’ll be the first to raise hell if they screw up.
It’s a realistic view, and I’d be very surprised if Jillian raised hell about today’s case. Twitter is a private company, and while it has a decent record on free speech, it cannot be expected to go to the barricades for every issue. Moreover, Germany is a huge and wealthy market.
Twitter has complied with the law, and been open about it. The German law itself is the problem. Banning far-right views and Nazi-inspired historical revisionism is anachronistic for a modern liberal democracy. And these laws are pointed to as an example when the EU attempts to lecture the world on free speech.
In this case, Germany is censoring a tiny organisation whose main spokesman is a man in a furry outfit called Abschiebär, who appears in videos making Hitler salutes and mocking kebab shop workers. Interestingly, Abschiebär’s videos are still available on YouTube.
Nonetheless, it’s worth keeping an eye on this development: In our enthusiasm for social media, we often forget that we are communicating on platforms run by private companies. In order to function, private companies must obey the law of the land. The privatisation of social space is going to be a crucial factor in free speech debates.
