18 Nov 2011 | Europe and Central Asia, Russia
Vladimir Osechkin, 30, has become one of Russia‘s most successful freedom of expression advocates.
The former businessman fell foul of Moscow’s regional authorities in 2007, Osechkin claims he was asked to pay numerous bribes after he began building one of the biggest automobile sales centres in the area. He reported these extortion attempts to the prosecutors office. Controversially Osechkin was then charged with fraud, a claim he believes was trumped up to punish him for refusing to pay bribes. He was detained for almost four years in Mozhaysk pre-trial prison. It is worth noting that since Osechkin’s 2007 arrest, many of his accusers have faced criminal suits and corruption accusations.
When Osechkin was released on parole in June 2011 he had two goals: exoneration and to fight for prisoners’ rights, namely their freedom of expression.
He began by creating Gulagu.net (“no to GULAG”), where prisoners’ relatives, attorneys and penal system workers could register and post details of violence in prisons and suggest ways to confront abuse. The information provided can then be investigated by Russian prosecutors.
It is common that prisoners’ voices cannot be heard outside prison, Osechkin explains. Prison authorities often tear up prisoners’ written complaints in front of them and resort to beating those who dare complain. In August 2011 inmates in Mozhaysk were beaten and refused appropriate medical care. Records of their complaints of cruel treatment were allegedly destroyed by prison authorities so that no investigation would be launched.
This led to Osechkin’s first major campaign. Alongside inmates’ relatives, a whistleblowing prison staffer called Alexey Ivanov, turned to Osechkin for legal assistance and help publicising their plight. Osechkin published their evidence on gulagu.net and convinced other prison staff and former inmates to come forward. He sheltered Ivanov, who was threatened by his bosses after he gave evidence to prosecturos, and sent the statements detailing other allegations of abuse he had received to the Moscow region’s Prosecutor’s Office and Investigative Committee.
The result was outstanding. An investigation was launched, prison head Vyacheslav Melnik was removed from his position, the beating and physical abuse of prisoners ended and inmates were given a chance to complain to prosecutors, who began prison inspections.
Osechkin says that, while Russian non-governmental supervisory committees also conduct prison checks and are required to report on and investigate prisoners’ rights abuses, they frequently turn into circus shows. Supervisors are told how perfect the prison is and inmates are often threatened physical violence for expressing their concerns. Once supervisors accepted two iPhones from one of Russian big prison’s deputies, Osechkin recalls. Having been caught on the prison’s video cameras, the supervisors would likely face a bribery accusation if they were to report inmates’ rights abuses.
The Mozhaysk Investigative Committee is due to make a decision about filing a criminal case against the prison head and his deputies. If it files the case, Osechkin’s struggle for prisoners’ freedom of expression may well trigger real change in the Russian penal system.
If not, there is one thing he has achieved permanently: he has created an online space where all Russian prisoners’ complaints about brutal treatment can be documented without fear of censorship.
14 Nov 2011 | Asia and Pacific, China
The long arm of Chinese soft power has reached Bollywood.
Indian censors have ordered the makers of Rockstar to cut or blur scenes showing images of the Tibetan national flag, which features in one of the film’s song and dance numbers. The movie opened last Friday with the required cuts.
The controversial sequence was a crowd scene filmed at Mcleod Ganj, a hill station town in northern India and home of the Dalai Lama since he fled Lhasa in exile in 1959.
Tibetans in exile naturally are incensed and have been staging rallies. It is not clear why the flag has been banned from the romantic musical, but Indian media speculated that India is bowing to pressure from China.
Kunsang Kelden, New-York based Tibetan activist and former board member of Students for a Free Tibet, told us: “It is outrageous that a vibrant democracy such as India, with an equally vibrant film industry, should bow down to Chinese pressure, violate free speech and censor the Tibetan flag.”
Rockstar’s director Imtiaz Ali may have the last laugh though.
According to Indian media his next film will be about the Tibetan independence movement.
“Reliable sources say that the movie will have political turmoil as one of the aspects along with love brewing between a Tibetan and a multi-millionaire Indian boy,” reports The Times of India.
It will be interesting to see how the censors deal with that.
10 Nov 2011 | Asia and Pacific, China, Uncategorized
This has been cross-posted from the New York Times with permission.
Word Crimes from Jonah Kessel on Vimeo.
“The worst effect of the censorship is the psychological impact on writers,” Murong said. “When I was working on my first book, I didn’t care whether it would be published, so I wrote whatever I wanted. Now, after I have published a few books, I can clearly feel the impact of censorship when I write. For example, I’ll think of a sentence, and then realize that it will for sure get deleted. Then I won’t even write it down. This self-censoring is the worst.”
10 Nov 2011 | Uncategorized
Insanity, as someone once said (Einstein, or Orwell, or Benjamin Franklin, or Oscar Wilde, or Dorothy Parker. One of those people that gets quoted), is doing the same thing over again and expecting different results.
By this criterion (and, let me be clear, by this criterion alone), the UK Home Office’s ban on Muslims Against Crusades marks it as quite clearly more insane than Al Muhajiroun, the band of Islamist ne’er-do-wells that formed around “Tottenham Ayatollah” Omar Bakri Mohamed in the 1980s.
Al Muhajiroun has gone through a series of names since it was originally proscribed in 2006, either being banned or disbanding before being banned. And it keeps cropping up again. (See here, par example)
Today saw the latest in this silly cat and mouse game. Current Muslims Against Crusades leader Anjem Choudary announced that the group would burn poppies on Rememberance Day (11 November) tomorrow in “protest” against UK soldiers operating in “Muslim lands”. The Home Secretary, Theresa May, said the group would be proscribed as of 00.00 on 11 November. Choudary responded by saying the organisation was to be stood down.
But is there something slightly different happening today? Theresa May’s statement said:
“‘I am satisfied Muslims Against Crusades is simply another name for an organisation already proscribed under a number of names including Al Ghurabaa, The Saved Sect, Al Muhajiroun and Islam4UK. The organisation was proscribed in 2006 for glorifying terrorism and we are clear it should not be able to continue these activities by simply changing its name.'”
This seems a partial acknowledgment that the previous tactic hasn’t worked. But what happens next is interesting. What usually happens is that after a few weeks, a bit of a brainstorming session about a new name and the purchase of a new domain name, the group re-emerges. Should this happen, how can May guarantee that it does not continue its activities “simply by changing its name”?
