George Orwell’s novel 1984 portrays a violent dystopian society surviving through the continuous suppression and falsification of information. We know first-hand that this is how oppression works throughout the world. One of us (Struckman-Johnson) spent decades piecing together difficult-to-find video clips, news articles, and photos in order to successfully teach about the patriarchal oppression of women around the world. One of us (Sternadori) was cautioned at the age of six by her parents (members of the Bulgarian Communist Party) never to repeat their political jokes, lest something horrible happened just by uttering some words.
We have come to embrace the idea that transparency is crucial to ending any form of violence. This is why we were shocked by the recent fervent attempts — in 2015, in the United States of America — to ban the screening of a documentary, Honor Diaries, which tackles the problem of worldwide honor killings and other violence against women, often embedded in state laws, tradition and political indifference.
Honor Diaries is set to be screened on Friday, 10 April, at 1:45 p.m., in the Muenster University Center Grand Ballroom at the University of South Dakota during the upcoming Women and Gender conference. In addition, Muslim women’s rights activist Raheel Raza, one of the nine women featured in the film, is attending the conference and will participate in a post-screening discussion.
But not all is well just because it ends well. The road to this screening has been fraught with obstacles. The film has been accused of Islamophobia, even though it is supported by groups such as Muslims Facing Tomorrow, the Alliance of Iranian Women and other organizations, most of which are women’s rights groups. The brave women shown in the documentary — like Raheel Raza — are either Muslim or were born in Muslim families, and they speak of making the film as an almost-religious duty to humanity.
The film, however, has faced backlash from other Muslims. According to an opinion piece appearing in The Boston Globe, the attempts to censor the film can be traced to an organization called the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). Indeed, the organization has campaigned to cancel at least one of the film’s screenings, as indicated by its 2014 letter to the United Nations Foundation.
What is curious is that, as one can see from the letter, CAIR appears to have no issues with the film’s content. The organization does not say that the film’s content is Islamophobic, and does not point to any specific elements in the film it finds questionable. CAIR’s problem seems to be not with the film, but with the two executive producers (who in the film business tend to have limited power over the production content) and one of the film’s 42 partner organizations, the Clarion Project, which is said to have funded the documentary. CAIR denies the female filmmakers any agency by shifting the focus of attention away from their work and away from the issues they raise. This is a textbook example of the so-called “ad hominem” logical fallacy, which entails damning the source while saying nothing about the actual content of the message.
How did this controversy play out at USD? It was more dramatic than we were used to seeing. At first, however, the conversation about screening Honor Diaries occurred in a very peaceful and ordinary manner. The film’s promotional team sent emails to faculty and staff members affiliated with the Women and Gender Studies program at USD, inviting them to host a screening. Some of these faculty and staff members forwarded the emails to one of us (Sternadori), suggesting that the film be included in the program of the Women and Gender conference in April. Then, once the film became part of the conference program in January, a student group, the Association for Advancement of Women’s Rights (AAWR), insistently asked to sponsor the film because “it tells an important story about women’s rights in the global community”.
All seemed well until a faculty member from USD’s College of Health Sciences emailed one of us (Sternadori) to say that she “truly believe[d] that showing this movie goes against ‘Inclusive Excellence’ that this University is working hard to achieve”. She followed up by meeting with other members of the university community and voicing her concerns to them. The tide shifted, and a film that is truly heartbreaking — in ways that should never be politicised — became the centre of a massive controversy.
On 20 March, AAWR sent an email to rescind its sponsorship of Honor Diaries because, according to the message, “we are concerned about disrespecting or presenting biased portrayals of the Muslim community.” At a planning meeting for the Women and Gender conference later that day, members of this women’s student group said they did not want to be involved with the film because their office in the Diversity Center is next to the office of the Muslim Student Association, and it is very important for them to maintain a good working relationship. Then, two USD faculty members insisted on removing the film from the conference program. (In addition, a screening of Honor Diaries scheduled for Sunday, 22 March, by the Campus Activities Board mysteriously disappeared from USD’s program of events).
In the end, to ban or not to ban Honor Diaries from the Women and Gender conference was fought over on two occasions by a group of people (including Sternadori and Struckman-Johnson) raised in communities with Christian roots. On both occasions, a mythical Muslim “community” was present like the elephant in the room. Some people very much wanted to defend it.
But they never considered some important questions: who are we to judge which Muslim community or group is more equal than others? Who are we to agree with CAIR’s condemnation of the film over the support from the Council of Muslims Facing Tomorrow and the Alliance of Iranian Women? And who is afraid of screening a film that exposes truly horrific human rights violations?
Even though Honor Diaries remained on the conference program as planned, some faculty still expressed concerns about how we should “frame” the post-screening discussion, given that no members of the Muslim Student Association and not even the faculty member who initially challenged the film are planning to attend. This raises yet another question: who are we to “frame” anything at a public university, where the free flow of ideas is supposed to be encouraged and not restricted?
This has also been very upsetting because it is not the first time in the history of USD’s Women and Gender conference when certain content has created discomfort and resistance — but it is the first time anyone has tried to ban such content. One of us (Struckman-Johnson) remembers the time in the 1980s when USD’s women faculty won a class action suit challenging the gender wage gap and then-President Joe McFadden set in motion the first women’s conference on campus. Since then, the conference has presented many controversial issues generating much “discomfort” — including abortion rights panels, exposes by Native women challenging tribal corruption (to the great displeasure of their Native communities), and even a presentation by a group of midwives who could have been arrested for participating in the conference.
And in the past few weeks, we have been fighting over which slivers of a community (or a perceived community) are more authentic and more deserving of our attention than others. The misguided effort to ban Honor Diaries has shaken our confidence in USD women’s ability to stand up to the oppression that so conveniently profits others. We cannot imagine that anyone who cares about the misery, suffering, mutilation and murder of women would consider banning this film.
It is encouraging, however, that, since the controversy began, we have seen an incredible outpouring of support. One of us (Sternadori) received approximately 1,270 emails from people thanking her for opposing the attempt to cancel the film screening. Colleagues from other universities expressed support as well. For example, Lyombe (Leo) Eko at the University of Iowa, wrote to say: “Banning this movie from the USD would be a naked act of censorship that is incompatible with everything universities stand for. The USD needs to teach its students that under the First Amendment, the rights of the speaker (the movie makers and Miglena Sternadori) trump the feelings of the viewers (the censors) on matters of public concern.”
We encourage the readers of Index on Censorship to watch Honor Diaries, which streams on Netflix and Amazon, and to carefully consider its content and the grounds on which it has been so vehemently criticised. We also hope that Orwell’s work will continue to be widely read. In 2015, he is as relevant as ever because — contrary to what the Party says in 1984 — ignorance is not strength.
As women, we have been socialized to play well with others. But we should not regard this as a categorical imperative. We know from the unending history of genocide and from experiments like those of Stanley Milgram and Philip Zimbardo that there are times when getting along with some people at the expense of others is the wrong choice that leads to loss of life and indescribable suffering on a large scale.
In the mid-80s, advertising firm Saatchi and Saatchi made a short film for Index on Censorship. Starring Anthony Hopkins in the title role, The Censor, written by Ivan Kraus, depicted a dancer being ordered about by a commissar who repeatedly tells her what movements she is forbidden from making. When she finally comes to a standstill the censor demands of her: “Why aren’t you dancing? You call that a dance?”
In a pleasing irony, the film, intended as a cinema advert, never made it to screens as it was deemed “too political”.
I was reminded of this earlier in the week when I read about activist Maryam Namazie’s clash with Trinity College Dublin’s Society For International Affairs (SoFIA). Namazie claims that conditions were placed on her speaking at an event, in particular the imposition of a “moderator” in the form of Dr Andrew Pierce, an assistant professor in Ecumenics at TCD.
I don’t know Dr Pierce, or his work, so have no reason to doubt that he would be a perfectly fine moderator.
I do know Maryam Namazie, having moved in roughly the same atheist/secular/free speechy circles, and I’m not sure that she is very much into the idea of Ecumenics or being moderated.
Maryam Namazie is a refugee from the Islamic Republic of Iran. Her political education came in the Worker-communist Party of Iran, a group that does not spend a lot of time on “interfaith dialogue”. She retains a deep-seated anti-clericalism which has not so much gone missing from the British hard left, as never really existed (with the exception of libertarian communist/anarchist circles). She’s not into “interfaith”.
You can see why, as SoFIA speakers are normally not moderated, Namazie would not tolerate this exception. Like the dancer in the film, she felt so constrained by conditions that she could not continue. You can also see why SoFIA would imagine this as unreasonable, and cast it as so.
So has Maryam been prevented from speaking at TCD or not? Is this, as people like to ask “a free speech issue”?
The answers are: yes and no, and yes.
To the first question: yes and no. Yes, as she has been prevented from speaking under the terms she originally agreed to. Namazie clearly feels that the imposition of “moderation” will by its nature stifle her. And no, because, technically, the only person to actually prevent her from speaking was herself. It was she who pulled the plug.
Is this a “free speech issue”? Well yes. There are few more irritating arguments than “it’s not a free speech issue”.
This statement is usually backed up by the following arguments:
“X is against the law.” And? Resorting to the fact that something is illegal is to run away from an argument, not to win it. There are all sorts of bad laws, as anyone who has ever so much as signed a petition to change one has acknowledged. If you cannot form an argument as to whether someone should or should not do something without recourse to existing laws, you probably need to work a bit harder on it.
“Not compatible with Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights/Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.” See above. Legalistic arguments are for lawyers.
“This is an abuse of free speech”. Because you can only use your rights for the purposes I wish them to be used for. That’s how rights work.
“No one has a right to a platform.” This is absolutely true. However, the flip side of that is that clubs, societies etc have a right to invite the speakers and guests they choose. Every so often, the Oxford Union, or a university debating or philosophy society, will invite a fascist or a Holocaust revisionist to discuss “free speech” and its limits. It’s a dull trick, made even duller by the reaction of United Against Fascism/Socialist Workers Party student activists who will attempt to shut the talk down. (And, yes, before there are letters, you have every right to try to get something shut down. Yes, that is exercising your free speech, until you storm the hall. Then you’re using force).
“We’re not saying she can’t speak: just that she can’t speak here.” See above.
“You wouldn’t get away with that in X country (usually Saudi Arabia, Russia or China).” No, you wouldn’t. Why you want to compare the free world with regimes like that, I’ve no idea, but we should be glad that people “get away with” saying more in democracies than they do in autocracies.
“Free speech does not mean the ability to say X.” Nah, sorry. It definitely does.
And on it goes. The problem is that these caveats always apply to things that are, obviously so, free speech issues. But — and this is probably a good thing — nobody wants to be seen as against free speech (though it was amusing to see the format of the various censorious motions brought at the National Union of Students’ Women’s Conference this week: “Motion to Condemn XXXXphobia on campus. Speech for: NUS XXXX Society. Speech Against: Free”).
One wishes sometimes we could be more honest. Don’t say “this isn’t a free speech issue”, rather “this is a free speech issue, and I’m OK with this amount of censorship, for this reason.” Then we can talk.
International Women’s Day 2015 should have been a positive occasion in China. The day is a big deal in the country; women are awarded time off work and given gifts by their employers. This year also marks 20 years since 189 countries adopted the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, a roadmap for women’s rights and empowerment. And in the lead-up to the day, a Chinese official hinted at the country’s first domestic violence law becoming a reality in August.
But events quickly took an ugly turn: on Friday 6 March the Chinese government detained a number of high-profile feminist activists. Demonstrations were cancelled. Debate was effectively silenced. Several weeks later five of the women are still in custody. Two have been denied treatment for serious medical conditions.
Superficially at least, these incidents represent a major blow to China’s feminist movement, which desperately relies on a small, but increasingly vocal cohort.
Chinese women suffer from a catalogue of discrimination in the workforce, in the home, and in most other aspects of their lives. Clear indication of the need for change came in 2013, when China only managed to reach position 91 out of the 187 countries listed in the United Nations Development Programme’s Gender Inequality Index (Iran came ahead at 75).
The injustices Chinese women face largely go unchallenged. The upper echelons of the Communist Party, where policy is made, is a man’s affair. Only two women belong to the current 25-member politburo, and none made it through to the seven member politburo standing committee.
The government plays an active role in skewing gender relations, as is demonstrated through the emergence of the idea of “leftover women”. The term first entered common parlance around 2007, when newspapers became filled with cautionary tales of unmarried women over the age of 27. Its roots can be traced back to the Chinese government, as Leta Hong Fincher explained in her groundbreaking book Leftover Women: The Resurgence of Gender Inequality in China. It has had a very negative impact on women’s property and employment rights.
It is the Communist Party’s ability to control conversations that makes the feminist struggle particularly pronounced in China. Civil society is tightly controlled. Certain groups do exist to campaign for female rights, but they are limited in size and reach.
In spite of these barriers, Chinese women have in recent years shown amazing strength to stand up to injustice. Activists have paraded around in blood coated wedding dresses, occupied men’s toilets, shaved their heads to raise awareness — to name just a few examples.
Some of these measures have proven highly effective. Cao Ju, a 21-year old university graduate, raised the profile of workforce quotas when she successfully sued a company that did not employ her on the grounds of her sex. Meanwhile, Kim Lee, who was abused for years by her famous husband Li Yang, shed a spotlight on how prolific domestic abuse is in China when she uploaded photos of her bloody face to microblogging platform Weibo.
For these reasons, the detentions are incredibly significant. Chinese women can’t rely on the government to come to their aid. But when it does the exact opposite, and actually arrests them, the situation gets a whole lot worse. China’s current leader Xi Jinping has intensified a crackdown on dissent. While they have not had an easy ride, feminist activists had until this month largely been spared. These arrests send out a warning to anyone who might follow suit and are a blatant attempt to squash the country’s nascent feminist movement.
On the other hand, some prominent commentators have argued that the detentions will instead cement the feminist movement in China. In a conversation published by ChinaFile, Leta Hong Fincher argues it could be “the spark” needed, while writer Eric Fish says the government “risks planting seeds that could sprout into even greater opposition later”. Sixteen activists have already gone to a Beijing detention centre where one of the women, Wu Rongrong, is being held to demand she be given medical treatment. A petition is also calling for the release of the activists.
China watchers wait with bated breathe to see how the story will unfold, pinning their hopes on a positive outcome. After all, China desperately needs figures such as these. Without them, no one is fighting in the corner of Chinese feminism.
A picture from the Do You See What I See project which teaches photography skills to young refugees, Zaatari camp, Jordan (Credit: Mohamed Soleman/Do You See What I See)
In an article from the refugee voices special issue of Index on Censorship Magazine, Jason DaPonte looks at how migrants are using technology to keep in touch with distant relatives, and the security risks this can bring
“My wife changes her sim card every week,” said Omid, an Iranian refugee who hasn’t seen his wife in the seven years he has been awaiting a decision in his UK asylum case. The couple use Viber, a mobile app that allows free voice calls over the internet, but his wife remains in constant fear of surveillance. Omid is wanted by the Iranian state for political offences. He’s also a convert to Christianity and his wife fears discussing his new religion, as even members of his own family have branded him an infidel.
Refugees may be some of the most excluded people in society, but social media and new technology nevertheless play a crucial role in many of their lives. Across the globe, refugees are finding ways of using them to stay connected to families, homelands and political causes, in ways they couldn’t have a decade ago – even though it can have security implications. A number of refugees, particularly from Syria, suggested they use the free messaging mobile app, WhatsApp, because they believe the messages are secure. Whether WhatsApp messages can be hacked or intercepted is not clear, however.
Ismail Einashe, a British journalist and Africa expert, originally from Somaliland, explained another way social media is changing the refugee experience. He said how his teenage cousin, who fled Somaliland for Austria, uses Facebook for photo-sharing, to craft an image of success and happiness. But this can potentially hide the true difficulties of refugee life.
“My cousin is inspired by American hiphop. He wears baseball caps and baggy jeans – so his friends at home see the glamorous ‘other’ and they don’t see the high unemployment or poverty among refugees. It’s partly encouraging the young generation. Before, people didn’t see what life on the other side could be and now they can see it,” he told Index.
Nearly every refugee interviewed for this article said that free calls on Skype and the ability to connect with relatives for free using standard social platforms (like Facebook) is invaluable to them. But for some, sharing stories from exile goes beyond simple messaging and status updates. Some refugees use blogs and social media channels to publish content banned at home to try to fight the repression they escaped.
Moses Walusimbi fled Uganda’s anti-gay laws for The Netherlands and now runs Uganda Gay On Move – a blog, Facebook and Twitter movement that helps gay Ugandans and Africans who have fled persecution, as well as providing information for those who are left behind and remain under threat.
“When I came to Holland, I realised the more you keep quiet the more you suffer,” Walusimbi told Index. “I was very eager to know if there were any other Ugandans who are in Holland who are like me, in the same situation. And when I started these social media things, many Ugandans responded.”
His movement now has almost 9,000 followers on Facebook, which he says is the most popular platform for his content. He also has followers on Twitter and his blog. Uganda Gay On Move is providing a support network that goes beyond publishing, with many photos of meetings between its members for social and political reasons.
“Uganda Gay On Move is like a family to us now. It’s like a family because we come together, we discuss, we find solutions,” said Walusimbi. These solutions have included the group petitioning and lobbying the Dutch parliament to raise awareness about the denial of the human rights of gay Ugandans and other Africans. It also publishes information that helps asylum-seekers manage their cases and gather evidence. But Walusimbi still worries about those in Uganda who could face jail sentences simply for reading it.
“Ugandan LGBTI people – unless well-known human rights defenders – tend to use false names on Facebook. There is also a danger when people attend internet cafes and do not securely log off. There is also a danger – and I have had several direct reports of family or friends seeing the Facebook pages left open on computers in homes. Some people have been exposed this way,” Melanie Nathan, an LGBTI activist and publisher who has worked closely with African LGBTI movements, told Index. “Using Facebook could result in meetings or revealing real names through trust and then in entrapment.” Walusimbi corroborated that there are real cases where this has happened.
Blogs by and for refugees from various conflict zones are building audiences. The Medeshi Somaliland blog is one example. It was founded with a desire to keep in touch with a dispersed family and diaspora in 2007 by Mo Ali, who left Somaliland to seek asylum in the UK in 2004. His work of aggregating and creating new content quickly became more political.
“There are many websites about Somaliland and those who are publishing there have been harassed by the police. They’ve been ordered to shut down because of being critical of the government on freedom of speech and press,” Ali told Index, saying he knows of at least three websites that have been shut down and explaining why he has to publish from abroad.
Even publishing from the UK, he doesn’t feel totally safe, “I’ve received death threats via email but I published the threat online and nothing happened. I’m still alive. It was just intimidation.”
Like Uganda Gay On Move, Ali has used the blog’s following to campaign, and in 2010 and 2012 rallied more than 1,000 of his followers to lobby outside London’s Parliament for official recognition of Somaliland.
Refugees are working on their own and with professional content and software creators to find bespoke ways to tell their stories. Dadaab Stories and the related Refugee News are two of the most elegant projects that have used the power of free social media tools (particularly Tumblr and YouTube) to help refugees publish stories. In these cases, professional filmmakers and refugees worked together to create ongoing social media coverage of the refugee camp for Somalians in Kenya.
Globally available and free technology platforms are helpful, but tools, platforms and projects are now emerging that are specifically aimed at refugees to allow them to self-organise and connect digitally.
Refunite is a social network designed to connect dispersed families that have low access to technology following displacement. It allows refugees to remain anonymous to everyone other than their family members, which aids those who may not be able to register with formal institutions because they are awaiting asylum decisions or are stateless. The platform currently reaches more than 500,000 refugees and is aiming to connect 1 million during 2015. It is geared towards low-end mobile technology to ensure that nearly anyone can use it. It can even be accessed using an interactive voice response system or text-messaging for those who are illiterate or don’t have internet access.
Low-cost and low-barrier-to-entry technologies such as these are proving to be a key part of connecting refugees in crisis. The UNHCR is telling the world the story of Jordan’s Zaatari camp via Twitter (which has claimed to be the first refugee camp with an official Twitter account). Nasreddine Touaibia, a UNHCR communications associate at the camp described how WhatsApp, a free or low-cost mobile messaging system, is being used by Syrian refugees to self-organise. “Urgent messages are sent to these groups and they are reflected in the Facebook group later. It’s their own emergency broadcast network,” he told Index, describing how WhatsApp had been used to give warnings when flooding occurred at the camp.
South African technology startup Vumi is now trying to build on this trend of using low-cost messaging services to create technical products that can empower refugees to self-organise at scale. Its platform uses mass mobile messaging and low-fi browsing to enable access to civic information.
Building on its success in Libya of technically enabling Wikipedia Zero (a Wikipedia Foundation project which gives access to Wikipedia without data charges in 35 countries) and distributing voter information, the company is now in the planning stages for a project focussed on empowering refugees, in partnership with South Africa’s Lawyers for Human Rights, an NGO that deals largely with refugees in South Africa.
Various NGOs and other services are also using social media to provide platforms that help refugees re-settle. These are largely regionally based and aim to help refugees understand the legal and social contexts they are in. In the UK, the Refugee Council and Bail for Immigration Detainees provide online resources and tools that help refugees build and understand their legal cases. Migrant Voice, another UK-based organisation, provides training and tools to allow migrants (including refugees) to publish and communicate their stories.
Refugees and migrants certainly benefit from the uses of social media that everyone with internet access does; but the emerging platforms in the space are where the traditional model of solitary, isolated migrants can be disrupted. Tools specifically tailored to the needs of the excluded have the potential to create the most significant change in a networked world.
To read other articles from the issue, subscribe to the magazine in print, iPad, or phone find out more here or on iTunes, search for “Index on Censorship”.
