31 Jul 2012 | News and features, United Kingdom
Chilling free speech in the name of brands, rights and commercialisation is not what promoting the Olympic spirit is about, says Kirsty Hughes
This piece was originally published on Huffington Post UK
Friday’s opening of the Olympic Games, with the extraordinary spectacle created by Danny Boyle, ranging from the industrial revolution to the digital age, from children’s literature to the National Health Service, has received plaudits and praise along with some bemusement and criticism. It may be just as well though that it didn’t celebrate another British icon, the BBC.
The impact of the commercialisation of the Games, with lucrative sponsorship and rights deals, means another British virtue — freedom of speech — is rather less free than normal for the duration of London 2012. A particularly disturbing example of this is the BBC — which has said that due to rights restrictions various radio programmes, ranging from the prestigious Radio 4 Today news programme to the lighter Radio 2 Chris Evans’ Breakfast Show and Radio 5 Live, whether live or on iPlayer, may not be available to audiences abroad for the duration of the Games.
While the BBC World Service has a proud history of broadcasting into authoritarian regimes, faced with its lucrative rights deal for UK broadcasting of the Games, the BBC is blocking its own output from being available internationally. It has a helpfully succinct explanation of this on its own news site where it says: “The BBC’s agreement with the International Olympic Committee means we are not allowed to broadcast anything online outside the UK from the Olympic Park or Olympic venues. As a result this programme may need to be blanked for International listeners due to rights issues surrounding Olympic content in programmes.”
Perhaps conscious of quite how ludicrous this is, and damaging to the BBC’s own image and values, by Sunday the BBC had apparently carried out some damage-limitation negotiations with the International Olympic Committee so at least the Today programme could be restored to international listeners — though the announcement of this appears to be confined to a small blog update which states:
After discussion, the IOC and the BBC have agreed that there is no need to block our international streams of Radio 4 programmes with a wide news agenda. Radio 5 Live (apart from the news programme Up All Night) and 5 Live Olympics Extra will remain available only in the UK.
We knew that the Olympic commercial brands deals had put money ahead of free speech — Locog published months ago two lists of words that must not be combined at risk of legal action for breaching the brand/copyright rules. These include not combining the words “games”, “2012” or “twenty twelve” with, for example, “gold”, “silver” “medals”, “sponsor” or “summer”. But more examples keep coming in of the censorship effects, and the chilling of the right to peaceful protest.
Unauthorised YouTube videos of the Games are reportedly being taken down with alacrity. Meanwhile, a group of cyclists has been banned from cycling in Newham for the duration of the Games.
The Olympic charter celebrates a number of human rights, declaring that: “The practice of sport is a human right… Any form of discrimination with regard to a country or a person on grounds of race, religion, politics, gender or otherwise is incompatible with belonging to the Olympic Movement.” The charter makes no commitment to that other key and universal human right — freedom of expression. But chilling and censoring free speech in the name of brands, rights and general commercialisation is surely not quite what promoting the Olympic spirit is all about.
Kirsty Hughes is Chief Executive of Index on Censorship
MORE ON LOCOG’S OLYMPIC CENSORSHIP AT INDEX’S FREE SPEECH BLOG
PLUS NATALIE HAYNES GETS TO GRIPS WITH THE RULES POLICING THE BRAND OF THE LONDON GAMES HERE
AND READ MORE ON SPORT AND HUMAN RIGHTS IN INDEX ON CENSORSHIP MAGAZINE’S SPORTS ISSUE
27 Jul 2012 | Americas, Mexico
A reporter and photographer from the south-eastern Mexican state of Veracruz is missing.
Miguel Morales Estrada has not been seen for a week in the embattled city of Poza Rica, a town largely controlled by the Zetas drug cartel. Estrada was a freelancer for three different news outlets in the southern city. He is the third journalist reported missing in the last few months in areas that have seen confrontation between the Zetas and other drug cartels. The other two, Federico Manuel Garcia Contreras and Zane Alejandro Plemmons Rosales, both disappeared in June in the cities of San Luis Potosi and Taumalipas, also cities where the Zetas are battling for control with other cartels.
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27 Jul 2012 | Uncategorized
In Belarus there are only two positions that are officially allowed to have a title of “President”. The first one is the head of the state, the other one is the head of the National Olympic Committee. Both posts are taken by the same person — Alexander Lukashenko. But he is not coming to London in either of his roles. He is banned from entering the European Union over the fraud during the presidential election in December 2010 and the subsequent crackdown on the country’s civil society.
“The entry ban will remain in force during the Olympics and the decision on the matter will not be changed,” the UK embassy in Minsk told BelaPAN Information Agency.
Jacques Rogge, the head of the International Olympic Committee, said today his organisation respects the decision of the British Home Office to deny London Games accreditation to Lukashenko.
The ban hardly came as a surprise, and Mr Lukashenko, often referred to in Western media as “Europe’s last dictator”, fired back with his ideological response. During the opening ceremony of the Slavic Bazaar festival in Vitsebsk, Belarus, he claimed that event was much better than the Olympic Games.
“The Olympics clearly lack behind our Slavic Bazaar,” the Belarusian dictator stated as he accused the London Games of being politicised, while calling the festival he hosts “an island of freethinking and independence.” Well, he forgot to mention that outside the stages of this “freethinking island” there are his political opponents that are still in prison.
The annual Slavic Bazaar festival is often said to be one of the main mass cultural events in Belarus, which brings together a lot of artists, mainly pop stars from the former Soviet countries. The Belarusian president always uses it for his ideological purposes, and sometimes for dancing with Russian pop stars. It all is meant to add to his image of the great and caring “father of the nation”, who is close to his people and brings entertainment to them.
This year, however, this ideological message from the Belarusian version of “an island of freethinking and independence” was damaged. The troublemaker was pop star Loreen. The Swedish singer, who was invited to Vitsebsk as the winner of this year Eurovision song contest, clearly spoilt the president’s party as she delivered a strong message in support of human rights in Belarus.
Loreen met a group of Belarusian activists and journalists in Minsk, including Natalia Pinchuk, the wife of Ales Bialiatski, one of the most prominent Belarusian human rights defenders, who serves a term in prison.
“Without freedom of expression I would never have been a singer. I wish that there were no political prisoners in Belarus and that human rights defenders like Ales Bialiatski could continue their important work. He and his colleagues are sacrificing everything in the struggle for human rights and they deserve support from the outside world,” Loreen said in a press statement.
After the statements like this Loreen risks to become persona non-grata to the authorities in Belarus — as Lukashenko himself is in the European Union.
The dictator will stay home inventing “Slavic bazaars” to entertain himself, while pretending they are better than the Olympics.
Andrei Aliaksandrau is Index on Censorship’s Belarus and OSCE Programme Officer
27 Jul 2012 | Uncategorized
Christopher Hitchens believed that the battle for free speech is “an all out confrontation between the ironic and the literal mind”. Today at the Royal Courts of Justice, a significant blow was struck for the forces of irony, humour and free speech against the dead, literal, bureaucratic mind.
Paul Chambers’ ordeal, which ended today when the Lord Chief Justice agreed that Chambers supposed “threat” to blow up an airport “did not constitute or include a message of menacing character”, is a grim reminder that what drives censorship can often be nothing more than an over-developed bureaucratic machine to which we feel obliged to adhere. At no point in this process, which has lasted over two years, did anyone genuinely believe that Chambers meant it when he tweeted “Crap! Robin Hood Airport is closed. You’ve got a week and a bit to get your shit together, otherwise I’m blowing the airport sky high!” Not the off-duty airport security worker who spotted the original tweet, nor his manager, nor the police, nor the Crown Prosecution Service – who shamefully decided to pursue the case anyway, pour encourager les autres – nor the presiding judges at the initial case and subsequent appeal. But there was a law, and a system, and it had to be followed, no matter that a young man would lose his job and be branded forever a menace as a result. Justice blind to reason.
Referencing Orwell in any article on free speech is dubious territory, but it really does pay to look at Nineteen Eighty-Four in this instance. The Party functions by creating a bureaucracy so enormous and all encompassing that it is actually impossible to escape. It thrives by narrowing language away to nothing – with the aim of not just obliterating language, but actually obliterating thought. There are no jokes — good or bad — on Airstrip One.
We do not, despite what our more dedicated conspiracists believe, live on Orwell’s Airstrip One. But we should nonetheless be wary of a system that, until today, placed process over principle. The Lord Chief Justice has today elevated the principle of free speech, humour and irony above process, small-mindedness and literalism.
