Norwegian musician Moddi has collated an album of songs from around the world that had been banned, censored or silenced. Unsongs includes cover versions of songs from countries including China, Russia, Mexico and Vietnam, on topics such as drugs, war and religion. Index has put together a playlist of some of these songs to coincide with the release of the 250th issue of Index on Censorship magazine, which includes a feature by Moddi about the inspiration behind the album.
1. Izhar Ashdot – A Matter of Habit
Israeli singer Izhar Ashdot was preparing to sing A Matter of Habit on army radio station Galatz in 2012 when he received a message saying it wasn’t welcome. The station stating “We should avoid celebrating a song that demonises our soldiers.” The song describes the fear and confusion of Israeli soldiers, until “killing is a matter of habit”.
2. Pussy Riot – Punk Prayer
Punk Prayer became internationally known after Russian feminist punk band Pussy Riot staged a performance of the song at Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. The group said it was a protest against the Orthodox church’s support for Russia’s President Vladimir Putin. Three members of the group were sentenced to two years in prison for “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred”.
3. Kate Bush – Army Dreamers
Kate Bush’s 1980 hit Army Dreamers tells the story of a mother’s grief after her son is killed in battle, and reflects the brutality and emotional effects of military conflict. During the Gulf War the BBC were wary of playing songs with an anti-war sentiment and told to think carefully before playing them.
4. Victor Jara – Prayer for a Worker
Chilean folk singer Victor Jara was killed in the 1973 military coup that overthrew socialist president Salvador Allende. His songs followed a theme of peace and social justice. A Prayer for a Worker highlights the failed attempts of the Christian Democratic Party and the Socialist Party to reconcile before the coup.
5. Los Tucanes di Tijuana – My Three Animals
In their 1990s narco-corrido (drugs ballad) Mis Tres Animals, Mexican group Los Tucanes di Tijuana sing of drug-trafficking but disguise cocaine, marijuana and heroin with the names of animals: a parrot, a goat and a rooster. The song made it on to the radio thanks to this word play, but narco-corridos are often censored as they are blamed for encouraging drug use and trafficking.
6. Richard Burgess – Eli Geva
Eli Geva was an soldier who refused to lead his forces into Beirut during the 1982 Lebanon war. His act caused a great deal of controversy in Israel, and Geva became an icon for the peace movement. This ode to the Israeli commander was written by Richard Burgess and performed by Norwegian singer Birgitte Grimstad, but Grimstad was warned against singing the song during a tour in Israel. The above video is Moddi’s cover version.
7. Billie Holiday – Strange Fruit
Strange Fruit, originally recorded by Billie Holiday in 1939, was a protest against the brutality and racism in the United States, particularly the lynching of African Americans. Holiday approached both her record label and producer about recording the song but they turned it down, fearing a negative reaction. Instead a friend, Milt Gabler, helped her to record and distribute the song after her a cappella version of it bought him to tears.
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I wrote this letter during my time in prison. I don’t remember the exact date but it was in the middle of the Ukrainian crisis and the so-called “trial” of Dilgam Askerov and Shahbaz Guliyev. The prison management had learned that I was writing something and sent officers in search of it. All my writings were taken including this letter. It was returned to me two months later when it was outdated no longer made sense to send. I am sharing it with you now:
There is an attempt to obscure human rights discourse with “mind your own business” arguments. As if human rights problems of, let’s say, the United States somehow justify the violation of human rights in Azerbaijan. This is another attempt to obscure the discourse by bringing up non-relevant “patriotic-sensitive” topics.
When the US Department of State or international organisations bring up the issue of political prisoners in Azerbaijan, or the corruption of government officials in Baku, they may ask something like: “Why did you keep silent about two internally displaced Azerbaijanis who attempted to visit their homeland under Armenian occupation despite the ongoing war and were taken hostage and are being ‘tried’ by mock trial of separatists?”
The question is surely legitimate but has nothing to do with the issue of human rights violations and political oppression in Azerbaijan.
Of course the lives of Dilgam and Shahbaz matter and the world’s ignorance with regard to criminal actions of Armenia and a separatist regime in occupied Karabakh has been an issue for a long time.
I do admire the courage of Askerov and Guliyev, who ignored the “de-facto” results of the occupation and paid continuous visits to the graves of their siblings and their homes under occupation. They have been doing it for the past ten years, using mountain paths, bypassing Azerbaijani troops and occupants, right up until they were captured.
The occupation of their homeland of Kalbajar, which has never been an Armenian settlement and has never been disputed, was a crime. Their custody in occupied Shusha by a criminal regime of the separatists is also a crime. Azerbaijani society is right in expecting the world to react adequately. Separatists in Karabakh are no different from those in Ukraine’s seized regions and it is fair enough to expect that the world would react to the ongoing occupation of Nagorny Karabakh as strongly as it did react to the occupation of Ukraine’s seized regions.
However, another fair question is: what does this to do with the crimes of president Ilham Aliyev’s regime? How can it be used as justification? This lame attempt by Azerbaijan’s ruling regime to obscure the human rights discourse is a very dangerous one. Is the Azerbaijani government trying to tell the world that they must have the same expectations of the criminal regime in Nagorny Karabakh as they have from the government of Azerbaijan, a sovereign state, a member of the Council of Europe, OSCE, UN etc?
My problem is not the law self-esteem of Aliyev’s regime. I am rather troubled with what role they give to the statehood of Azerbaijan in this lame argument. No matter how low my expectations are of Aliyev and his clique, I have never ever thought of comparing the state of Azerbaijan with the criminal separatist regime.
I don’t think the officials in Baku have paid due attention to this side of the story. In the tit-for-tat business of politics, the argument put on the scale must not be the state’s dignity. The Azerbaijani government had put too much into the game of securing power for Aliyevs. As dictatorships rarely have solid arguments, I do understand that justification of oppression is not an easy task. I don’t know if leading schools of the world teach it or not. The Soviet-era schooling system of partshkola exhausted its limits long ago and its remnants are only good for addressing uneducated masses inside the country. It is for those who are oppressed so much they cannot demand their government stop using the conflict as justification for all mismanagement, corruption and crime.
The people of Azerbaijan deserve better than what they have. The world and the organisations Azerbaijan is a member of deserve better representation from the country so it would be possible to carry out civilised discussion. And more than that, the 21st century deserves better than remnants of old Soviet partshkola in diplomacy.
Index on Censorship is part of the Defend Free Speech campaign against the introduction of new freedom of speech laws. The following is a letter by Defend Free Speech’s campaign director Simon Calvert.
It was with considerable alarm that we watched the recent evidence session of counter-extremism minister, Karen Bradley, before Parliament’s Joint Committee on Human Rights.
In a little over an hour, Mrs Bradley put forward no fewer than ten possible definitions of ‘extremism’, including: “The public promotion of an ideology that can lead to greater harms”; and “publicly promoting an ideology where the activity they are undertaking is not criminal and does not go beyond reasonable doubt but we know that that activity leads to a hate crime, a terrorist activity, or maybe FGM”.
We wrote to the minister to set out our fears. Here’s what we said:
The Defend Free Speech campaign, and many of the groups associated with it, are greatly concerned that the proposed ‘civil orders regime’ will damage both security and civil liberties. They risk distracting the authorities away from terrorism and violence and into monitoring and punishing legitimate expressions of opinion.
Finding terrorists and their enablers is like finding a needle in a haystack. Forcing the police and security services to operate at the much lower threshold of ‘non-violent extremism’ will massively increase the range of people and ideas under investigation, thereby making the haystack considerably bigger. Placing millions more people under suspicion is more likely to mask the activities of terrorists than to highlight them.
Your difficulty in articulating a clear, consistent definition of the kind of activity the Government aims to punish via civil orders was very concerning. The Home Office has been working on the issue for well over a year and yet the impression was given that the Government still has no clear idea how to legislate for what it wants to achieve.
Harriet Harman summed up the situation accurately when she told the committee:
Still we don’t know what civil orders are being talked about, we don’t know what the sanctions are likely to be, we don’t know what the definitions are, we have no specificity about the timetable in terms of when the consultation will start, how long it will be. We know there won’t be a draft Bill, but we really are none the wiser about anything else’.
We were grateful that you confirmed that there would be a public consultation. But for the consultation to have any value, and for stakeholders to have a meaningful opportunity to influence the outcome, it must include precise statutory definitions that can then be subjected to scrutiny.
As members of the Committee pointed out, a consultation will be worthless if it does not give the actual wording with which the Government intends to resolve the tension between security and liberty. As it is, the planned consultation looks more a fishing expedition, carried out in the hope that somebody somewhere has a good idea of how this legislation could be drafted.
We concluded by requesting an urgent meeting with the minister, and reassurances of a further consultation when the Home Office can tell the public how it actually plans to legislate in this incredibly sensitive and important area.
As we said quite clearly to the minister, when the matters at stake include terrorism and the fundamental civil liberties of millions, the Home Office cannot simply shrug its shoulders and say ‘we’re not sure what we’re doing’.
The groups backing Defend Free speech wrote to the Home Office back in January requesting a consultation on Extremism Disruption Orders. Having failed to respond for five months, the Government finally conceded the need for such a consultation in the Queen’s Speech in May.
Thank you for standing with us to Defend Free Speech.
Best wishes,
Simon Calvert
Campaign Director Defend Free Speech
Bahraini human rights defender Nabeel Rajab (Photo: The Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy)
Index strongly protests the continued judicial harassment of Nabeel Rajab, a respected Bahraini human rights defender, and calls for his immediate and unconditional release.
Rajab was arrested on 13 June 2016 and later charged with “spreading false news and rumors about the internal situation in a bid to discredit Bahrain.” This charge was in response to statements he gave during past television interviews in early 2015 and 2016.
On Tuesday, 12 July 2016, Rajab’s trial was set to begin but the Court adjourned the hearing and postponed the case until 2 August 2016, ordering the continued detention of the human rights defender.
“The Bahraini authorities are drawing out deliberately the process in a way that extends the punishment of a man who has not been found – and is not – guilty of any crime other than that of desiring to speak freely, and for others to be able to do the same,” said Index’s chief executive Jodie Ginsberg.
In addition, Index calls on Bahrain’s authorities to release Rajab to attend the mourning of his uncle who passed away yesterday, Tuesday, 12 July 2016.
A former Index Freedom of Expression Award-winner and a member of the judging panel at the 2016 Awards, Rajab has been subjected to ongoing judicial harassment to silence his human rights work.
