24 Apr 12 | Events
Date: Tues 19 June
Time: 6pm for a 6.30pm start
Venue: Free Word Centre, EC1R 3GA
Tickets: Free, register here
‘In a league of its own: is sports above human rights?
A discussion followed by a screening of England vs Ukraine. To celebrate the launch of the latest issue of Index on Censorship, ‘Sport on Trial’, award-winning sports journalist Mihir Bose, Olympics historian Martin Polley and footballer Clarke Carlisle will discuss sport and ethics with editor Jo Glanville.
Refreshments and pub snacks will be available during the screening courtesy of SAGE Publications.
Mihir Bose is an award-winning sports journalist and author. He writes the weekly ‘Big Interview’ for the London Evening Standard, and also writes and broadcasts on social and historical issues for a range of outlets including the BBC, the Financial Times and Sunday Times. His books include ‘The Spirit of the Game’.
Martin Polley is one of the UK’s leading sports historians. Author of numerous books and articles, including The British Olympics: Britain’s Olympic Heritage 1612-2012, he is also consultant historian on the Free Word Centre’s Politics and Olympics exhibition, and Senior Lecturer in Sport at the University of Southampton.
Clarke Carlisle is a professional footballer, an ambassador for the Kick It Out campaign and is Chairman of the Management Committee of the Professional Footballers’ Association.
07 Mar 12 | Mexico
The author and publisher of a bestselling book on Mexican drug trafficking were sued in Mexico City this week for defamation. Anabel Hernandez, and the publisher Random House Mondadori were sued following remarks contained in Los Señores del Narco, The Lords of Drug Trafficking, a book that takes to task Mexican politicians and businessmen and traces a system of corruption and collusion back to the 1970s.
Former Attorney General Jorge Carpizo said the book damaged his reputation by insinuating he kept $400 thousand dollars of the reward money earmarked for the 1993 capture of drug kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman Loera. Carpizo believes Hernandez attacked him without valid sources, and without presenting any official evidence of her charges. “Having access to various public documents and books, the journalist made a number of affirmations that lack truth and context”, said the lawsuit, which was filed on the heels of an announcement by the World Association of Newspapers (WAN), that Anabel Hernandez had won their Golden Pen for Freedom award for 2012.
Hernandez, a reporter for online magazine Reporte Indigo, said in an interview that Carpizo’s charges were baseless. “I adhere to the principles of the Constitution and Mexico’s Press Law,” she said, arguing that the lawsuit from Carpizo’s is in retaliation for details included in the book which mentioned the names of powerful Mexicans. “In a book of 600 pages, I mention Carpizo three times,” she explained. Carpizo was one of five attorney generals who served under former President Carlos Salinas de Gortari.
The book was published in Spanish in December 2010 and has remained on the bestseller list in Mexico, having also sold a record number of copies in the United States. The book makes several assertions that have caused Hernandez trouble. In it she claims that the governments of Vicente Fox, who served in office from 2000 to 2006, and Felipe Calderon, who will leave office in December this year, made a pact to protect the Sinaloa Cartel, led by El Chapo Guzman, the same kingpin who was captured by Carpizo in 1993. Guzman escaped from a high security prison in 2001, a few months after Fox took office. According to the book, Calderon’s war on drugs is only against enemies of the Sinaloa Cartel.
Hernandez has lived with fulltime bodyguards since publishing the book. “I knew I was touching a lot of important and powerful people, so I accept my fate,” she said. According to the journalist, the lawsuit against her is just one of several that have been lodged against Mexican journalists to silence them. “This is the latest technique to attack freedom of the press,” she insisted. “They keep us going from tribunal to tribunal, and stop us from doing our work.” Last year Hernandez publicly accused Secretary of Public Security, Genaro Garcia Luna, who is accused of protecting drug traffickers in the book, of planning to assassinate her.
Hernandez took 5 years to write the book. She will receive the WAN´s Golden Pen of Freedom award in September 2012 in Ukraine. She is the first Latin American reporter to receive the award since 1990, when the late Luis Gabriel Cano won the award. Cano was brother of Guillermo Cano, who was killed by Colombin drug kingpin Pablo Escobar.
04 Feb 12 | Russia
One month ahead of presidential polls, tens of thousands of people marched through the centre of Moscow today to protest Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s expected return to the Kremlin for a third presidential term.
The stop-Putin movement staged its third major rally since disputed 4 December parliamentary polls. Protesters rallied together and accepted a set of demands read aloud by organisers during the rally. Opposition leaders demanded new parliamentary elections, the release of political prisoners, the dismissal of the head of the Central Election Committee, as well as the registration of Grigory Yavlinsky as a presidential candidate. Yavlinksy, the founder of the Yabloko opposition party, was recently refused registration in the race by the Central Election Committee.
Despite the freezing temperatures turnout was higher than expected. Organisers estimated 120,000 attended, but police put that number at 36,000. The march and rally from Kaluzhskaya to Bolotnaya Square today was the largest protest to date, organisers vowed to hold another demonstration on 26 February if the Kremlin fails to meet their demands.
Today’s protest brought together the diverse elements of the ant-government movement, four big columns were formed by protesters representing the leftists, liberals, nationalists and civil activists. Smaller columns were formed to represent smaller groups, including religious and sexual minority groups. Protesters seeking peaceful change held white balloons to signify unity. Bright and creative posters were held up during the protest, with messages like “Russia without Putin,” “Putin you’re fired,” “Put in out” and “We’re ruled by vegetables.”
Putin’s supporters have dismissed the historically large rallies, claiming that participants are “financed by the West to destabilise the situation in Russia.” Vladimir Markin, member of Putin’s United People’s Front and spokesperson for the Russian Investigative Committee dismissed video evidence of fraud during the 4 December election, claiming that it was falsified, financed, and spread by the United States.
Anti-Putin rallies spread outside of the capital city, with similar rallies held across Russia and even in cities in 17 other countries, including London, Madrid, Sydney, and New York. Smaller anti-Putin rallies were held by individuals who felt that they could not march under the same banner as communists and nationalists.
A parallel rally in support of Putin was held at Poklonnaya Hill in Moscow, it attempted to link the loose stop-Putin coalition to the anti-government Orange Revolution that took place in Ukraine seven years ago, attendees were warned of an “orange threat from USA.” There have been allegations that participation in the rally was not voluntary, claims that many participants were employees of government-funded institutions, such as post offices and city councils, and that they were told that they would lose their jobs if they did not take part. Police estimated 138,000 participants, eyewitnesses put the figure much lower.
Putin speaking at a press conference in the Ural Mountains region said that the number of Muscovites who turned out in support was a reflection of his popularity not just the product of “administrative resources“. Although he did acknowledge that such resources may have been used to mobilise his supporters.
Meanwhile bloggers, rights activists, opposition members and journalists are gearing up to monitor the upcoming presidential elections as fears of vote-rigging rise.
03 May 11 | Uncategorized
Freedom House’s annual Freedom of the Press Index, released Monday at World Press Freedom Day events in Washington, show that press freedoms are on the decline throughout the world as authoritarian regimes tighten their control over new media forms of communication and as worsening violence in countries like Mexico has pushed more journalists into self-censorship. (more…)
