02 Dec 09 | Uncategorized
Crossposted from the National Coalition Against Censorship (US)
Free Expression at Risk, at Yale and Elsewhere
A number of recent incidents suggest that our long-standing commitment to the free exchange of ideas is in peril of falling victim to a spreading fear of violence. Not only have exhibitions been closed and performances canceled in response to real threats, but the mere possibility that someone, somewhere, might respond with violence has been advanced to justify suppressing words and images, as in the recent decision of Yale University to remove all images of Mohammed from Jytte Klausen’s book, The Cartoons that Shook the World.
Violence against those who create and disseminate controversial words and images is a staple of human history. But in the recent past, at least in liberal democracies, commitment to free speech has usually trumped fears of violence. Indeed, as late as 1989, Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses continued to be published, sold, and read in the face of a fatwa against its author and in the face of the murder and attempted murder of its translators and publishers. In 1998, the Manhattan Theater Club received threats protesting the production of Terrence McNally’s play, Corpus Christi, on the ground that it was offensive to Catholics. After initially canceling the play, MTC reversed its decision in response to widespread concerns about free speech, and the play was performed without incident.
There are signs, however, that the commitment to free speech has become eroded by fears of violence. Historical events, especially the attacks of September 2001 and subsequent bombings in Madrid and London, have contributed to this process by bringing terrorist violence to the heart of liberal democracies. Other events, like the 2004 murder of Dutch film director Theo Van Gogh in apparent protest against his film “Submission,” and the threats against Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who wrote the script and provided the voice-over for the film, demonstrated how vulnerable artists and intellectuals can be just for voicing controversial ideas. Under such threats, the resolve to uphold freedom of speech has proved to be lamentably weak: in the same year as Van Gogh’s murder, Behzti, a play written by a British Sikh playwright, was canceled days after violence erupted among protesters in Birmingham, England on opening night.
In response to rising concerns about fear-induced self-censorship, in 2005 the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published an article, “The face of Mohammed,” which included twelve cartoon images. The cartoons became the focus of a series of violent political rallies in the Middle East in February 2006 and a subject of worldwide debate pitting free speech against “cultural sensitivity.”
For all the prominence of religion in such debates, threats of violence against words and images are not the sole province of religious extremists. In 2005, a politically controversial professor’s scheduled speech at Hamilton College in Clinton, NY was canceled in response to threats of violence. In 2008, the San Francisco Art Institute closed a controversial video exhibition in response to threats of violence against faculty members by animal rights activists. Later that year, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln canceled a speech by former Weatherman and education theorist William Ayers citing security concerns.
The possibility of giving offense and provoking violence has entered the imagination of curators, publishers and the public at large, generating more and more incidents of preemptive self-censorship: in 2006, for instance, London’s Whitechapel gallery declared twelve works by Surrealist master Hans Bellmer too dangerous to exhibit because of fears that the sexual overtones would be offensive to the large Muslim population in the area; and publisher Random House canceled the 2008 publication of Sherry Jones’ The Jewel of Medina because “it could incite acts of violence.” The suppression of images in Jytte Klausen’s book is the latest, but not likely to be the last in the series of such incidents.
Words and images exist in complex socio-political contexts. Suppressing controversial expression cannot erase the underlying social tensions that create the conditions for violence to begin with, but it does create a climate that chills and eventually corrupts the fundamental values of liberal democracy.
A Call to Action
The incident at Yale provides an opportunity to re-examine our commitment to free expression. When an academic institution of such standing asserts the need to suppress scholarly work because of a theoretical possibility of violence “somewhere in the world,” it grants legitimacy to censorship and casts serious doubt on their, and our, commitment to freedom of expression in general, and academic freedom in particular.
The failure to stand up for free expression emboldens those who would attack and undermine it. It is time for colleges and universities in particular to exercise moral and intellectual leadership. It is incumbent on those responsible for the education of the next generation of leaders to stand up for certain basic principles: that the free exchange of ideas is essential to liberal democracy; that each person is entitled to hold and express his or her own views without fear of bodily harm; and that the suppression of ideas is a form of repression used by authoritarian regimes around the world to control and dehumanize their citizens and squelch opposition.
To paraphrase Ben Franklin, those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, will get neither liberty nor safety.
01 Jun 09 | Uncategorized
Every year Reporters without Borders (RSF) issues its World Report — a league table of 173 countries in relation to freedom of press.
In the 2008 report RSF says: “The post 9/11 world is clearly drawn. Destabilised and on the defensive, the leading democracies are gradually eroding the space for freedoms.”
This statement comes from the narrative that accompanies the table that last year places UK at tenth place coming equal with Hungary and Namibia.
On its website RSF also publishes a questionnaire, comprising 49 questions, that is used to find these results. This includes the all too easily quantifiable and gruesome data — how many journalists killed, how many imprisoned, tortured and so on. There is also a section on censorship.
I was interested in these questions, formulated to gauge the depth and degree of censorship of the press in any given country, and decided to adapt them to investigate the state of artistic freedom in the UK.
How many media outlets were censored, seized or ransacked with the state involved or had their operating licence withdrawn ?
Here I substitued the word media for cultural. In September 2007, police seized Thanksgiving, a photograph by Nan Goldin, from the Baltic Contemporary Art Gallery. Before the exhibition opened to the public, the gallery management, concerned that the photograph might appear pornographic, invited the police to view the image and to advise them on its suitability. The police removed it.
In October last year nude paintings by local artists were banned from Harrow Art Centre . Councillor Chris Mote, who has responsibility for the arts centre, backed the decision taken by his staff. He said: “I don’t want to take the risk of offending some groups. It may be artists feel I’m being unfair, but I’m not. I am trying to be fair and equal to everyone.”
A director of a public art gallery told me recently that as part of what he now sees to be due diligence, he invited the police in to have a look round the exhibition that had some sexually explicit material in it, just to make sure it was all OK. The policeman had nor problem with any of the artworks.
I should have asked: “What would you have done if the policeman said –– ‘I don’t like that one’?” Would the artistic director have had a long conversation with the policeman putting forward its artistic merits?
As for ransacking — I am not aware of the state ransacking any venues or galleries, they reserve these tactics for journalists, but there are cases when the state failed to effectively stop others ransacking. When in 2004, the Birmingham Repertory Theatre was attacked by angry protesters forcing the closure of the play Behzti by Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti, because it was offensive to their religious sensibilities, Fiona McTaggart, the then Home Office minister failed to condemn the intimidation and threats made against Bhatti’s life, saying “the free speech of the protesters is as important as the free speech of the artists.”
To some, it could be seen to be more important, given that the playright was forced into hiding, while no prosecutions were brought on public order offences against the rioters.
This is in contrast to 20 years ago when the Thatcher government supported, Salman Rushdie’s right to freedom of expression, and paid for costly police protection.
Was there an official prior censorship body systematically checking content ?
Until 1968, the Lord Chancellor was personally responsible for giving a license to each play to be performed in this country. Since this practice was stopped, we have enjoyed a great deal of freedom in the theatre. But how are theatres faring now?
Is the theatre still the safe space for “saying the things that are unsayable elsewhere” –– as David Edgar says or do other considerations prevail?
At a recent conference of Arts Council England funded organisations, one panel raised the question –– “Is there conflict between freedom of artistic expression and sensitivity towards audiences?” The answer from those attending was clear –– that for the vast majority, the audience took precedence over the artist’s freedom of expression. There were a range of reasons for this, a lot to do with funders, especially where local governments were involved, but also the audience development that theatres have built up over the last three decades, where building trust with culturally diverse audiences could not be compromised.
Was news (let’s substitute the word book here) suppressed or delayed because of political or business pressure ?
Let’s look quickly at the example of the Jewel of Mdina, the Sherry Jones’ novel about Aisha, a wife of Mohammed. Tjhe book that was suppressed because of a very particular form of censorship — as Jo Glanville , editor of Index on Censorship called it “an extraordinary instance of pre-emptive censorship”.
“It was disingenuous of Random House to suggest that the novel might incite violence. Certain members of the population might choose to commit an act of violence, but that is not the same as the book itself inciting violence. To pass responsibility in the way to the novel, was a betrayal of the author and of free speech.”
So it was left to a much smaller publisher, Gibson Square, to stand up for the principles and come under attack, because the row that ensued, once the story broke, served to escalate the very scenario that Random House was apparently seeking to avert. And this was without the book having being read by more than a handful of people.
Does the media report the negative side of government policies
Here I subsitute the word media with culture. I wanted to try gauge to what extent artistic freedom is able to speak truth to power — to authority, a cornerstone of the function of art in society.
A wonderful example of the cartoonist’s power is Martin Rowson’s cartoon “Preparing for the Big Day” from the Guardian: a worker from the Hygiene Department is hosing piles of shit formed into the grimacing faces of Cheney and Bush off the US flag. Blair’s part in the 8 year Bush administration is reduced to an obstinate smear on the stars and stripes. This seems to give a pretty clear bill of health as far as portraying the smelly underbelly of government through the arts in this country. And the government seems able to take on the chin when it is contained by cultural parameters.
Staying with cartoons, we come straight up against the massively controversial issue of the Danish Cartoons, which reverberated strongly in this country; Jerry Springer the Opera, Behzti and of course Satanic Verses. How willing is this society to support dissenting voices from inside religious communities or challenges from secularists outside? In an attempt to protect religious sensibilities, a degree of complicity has arisen amongst the cultural community that has tacitly agreed to avoid causing offence, even though, as Kenan Malik has pointed out, this is almost impossible as well as undesirable “In a plural society it is inevitable and important to cause offence.”
Does the media undertake investigative journalism ?
And here the floodgates open, as this question triggers a whole string of related questions about the role and function of art. Are the arts to be a tool of enquiry, investigation? Are they challenging to the status quo? Are they holding open the space for debate and dialogue? Do the arts say things people don’t want to hear, but do want to talk about, or shout about, or protest about? Do they help to tell us about the world we live in? Is the imagination one of the most important investigative tools we have?
This is an edited speech by Julia Farrington, Head of Arts and Events at Index on Censorship, from a panel discussion at London Book Fair
14 Feb 07 | Comment
On the Saturday before Christmas 2004, the Birmingham Repertory Theatre in Britain’s East Midlands was in a state of siege. Children who had come with their parents for a pantomime were bewildered at the sight of 400 enraged protestors threatening to storm the theatre.
Later that afternoon, the mob attacked the building, shattered glass, destroyed backstage equipment and injured several police officers.
The protesters were Sikhs, mainly men. Their ire was directed at the play Behzti (Dishonour) by Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti, who is herself a Sikh. And so we return to the ongoing saga of intolerance and free expression; censorship and multiculturalism.
Nearly two decades ago, in another UK city, Bradford, Muslim men burned copies of Salman Rushdie’s novel, The Satanic Verses. Iran’s spiritual leader Ayatollah Khomeini had declared a fatwa against Rushdie and British Muslims, many of them from India, Bangladesh and Pakistan, wanted the novel banned in the UK.
I was in Bombay at that time; on Mohammed Ali Road, I saw angry Muslim protesters trying to march towards the British Council a few miles away, which they wanted to burn down. They fought pitched battles with the city’s police, who wanted to stop them. They hurled glass bottles filled with acid; the police fired in response. By the end of the afternoon, nearly a dozen men lay dead. The Indian government had already banned the novel.
It was different in Britain. The Conservative Thatcher and Major governments, initially forcefully but later with decreasing enthusiasm, supported Rushdie’s right to free speech, even though Rushdie had often criticised Conservative rule. In the intervening years – which Rushdie called his plague years – and after many exhausting dialogues between communities, many in Britain thought they had mastered the art of multicultural management.
The British could afford to snigger at the French for imposing laws that ban Muslim schoolgirls from wearing the veil at state-funded schools. They could say, “Never in Britain” when in Amsterdam an irate Dutch Muslim murdered Theo Van Gogh, the film-maker who liked to outrage everybody; who had most recently made a film that criticised Islamic societies for condoning violence against women.
It was supposed to be different in Britain. But for how long?
Birmingham is Britain’s second-largest city with a population of two million, and it takes pride in its multicultural mix. Its Asian community is large and is an important part of the city’s mainstream. Sikhs are fully integrated here; their men have won the right to wear their turban instead of the helmets required in various uniforms. Many Sikhs proudly recount their community’s sterling contribution to the British Army during two world wars.
As with many immigrant communities, younger Sikhs are becoming more cosmopolitan. They are not committed to the outward symbols of their faith. Many marry outside their community, many men are clean-shaven. They question their elders and their practices, and it is this troubles the more orthodox elements. The elders complain about the disintegration of the community; the younger ones feel stifled by the previous generation, most of whom are first-generation immigrants.
Behzti raises uncomfortable questions about the moral corruption within the faith. In its most controversial scene, a young Sikh woman is taken to a gurdwara (Sikh temple) where she is raped by a man who claims he had a homosexual relationship with her father. When she emerges from the experience, confused, embarrassed and angry, she is beaten by other women, including her own mother, who don’t want to believe her.
Such things, devout Sikhs insist, simply do not happen in a gurdwara.
Sewa Singh Mandha, chairman of the Council of Sikh Gurdwaras in Birmingham told BBC radio: ‘In a Sikh temple, sexual abuse does not take place, kissing and dancing don’t take place, rape doesn’t take place, homosexual activity doesn’t take place, murders do not take place.’
Concerned about accurate portrayal of their faith and at the invitation of the theatre director Sikh elders, claiming to represent Britain’s 336,000 Sikhs, had long negotiations with the theatre before the play was staged, requesting that the setting be changed from a gurdwara to a community centre. But the Rep did not budge. With hindsight, the Rep’s fateful mistake perhaps lay precisely in encouraging the impression that it would change the script, by entering into such a dialogue in the first place.
The situation turned ugly and the play closed; Bhatti’s life was threatened and she was forced into hiding. Sikh organisations, to their credit, immediately condemned the threats, but nonetheless praised the play’s closure. Welcoming the cancellation, Mohan Singh, a community leader in Birmingham, asked: ‘Will it happen again when people think peaceful protest is not going to work?’
Gurdwara means the gate to the Guru, and Sikh temples are remarkably open. As a faith that does not profess to separate its laity from the clergy, anyone familiar with the scriptures can lead prayers there, but it also means controls may be lax. Bhatti’s question is: ‘What if the men and women who manage the gurdwara are not up to the task?’
In her foreword, she says: “Clearly the fallibility of human nature means that simple Sikh principles of equality, compassion and modesty are sometimes discarded in favour of outward appearance, wealth and the quest for power. I feel that distortion in practice must be confronted and our great ideals must be restored. I believe that drama should be provocative and relevant. I wrote Behzti because I passionately oppose injustice and hypocrisy.”
But by bringing these issues into the open, Bhatti was effectively washing the community’s dirty linen in public. In the eyes of the militants, Bhatti’s play Dishonour brought dishonour on the community; shamed it in public.
Ah, that word again: shame. In his novel, Shame Rushdie writes: “Sharam, that’s the word. For which this paltry shame is a wholly inadequate translation. A short word, but one containing encyclopaedias of nuance,” which include “embarrassment, discomfiture, decency, modesty, shyness, the sense of having an ordained place in the world, and other dialects of emotion for which English has no counterparts. No matter how determinedly one flees a country, one is obliged to take along some hand-luggage … (and) what’s the opposite of shame? That’s obvious: shamelessness.”
How do you define shamelessness? Picture a metro station in Paris. A purdah-clad immigrant woman stands waiting for her train. Behind her, the advertising billboard sells toothpaste, an obligatory naked woman draped around the toothbrush.
For the devout immigrant, that billboard personifies occidental shamelessness. But her seclusion behind the veil, if against her will, is also a matter of shame; all the more so if the naked model is a second-generation immigrant herself. Such are the nuances that platitudes on multiculturalism usually fail to address.
The defiant and deviant will inevitably face the community’s shame and dishonour. When someone from a close-knit community does not respect its sense of honour that’s an act of shamelessness; and shamelessness, as one goes East, implies losing face.
As Ian Buruma shows in Wages of Guilt, which explores German and Japanese responses to World War II, German guilt resulted in a response to the Holocaust through a dramatic gesture: its Chancellor, Willy Brandt fell to his knees in December 1970 in front of the Warsaw Ghetto. It allowed Germans the ability to apologise. In contrast, Japanese Prime Ministers, concerned about face, and unable to deal with shame, continue to bow to the Yasukuni Shrine, where World War II war criminals are venerated, causing much anger in East Asian countries that suffered from Japanese occupation during the war.
The Behzti controversy goes beyond the Sikh community. It raises questions about the kind of society modern Britain wants to be. Is it to be a liberal country where free speech is honoured? Or does it want to accommodate minorities and ensure their feelings are not offended by holding its tongue?
In early January this year, evangelical Christians sent 47,000 emails to the BBC protesting its decision to broadcast the West End hit Jerry Springer: The Opera because it offends their religious beliefs. Other Christians were similarly offended when Channel Four TV promoted its Shameless Christmas Special with billboards parodying The Last Supper, in which Jesus looked merrily drunk. In December, an irate Christian toppled the waxworks models of English soccer hero David Beckham and his glamorous pop star wife Victoria Beckham at Madam Tussaud’s waxworks in London, because the couple was dressed up as Joseph and Mary in a Nativity Scene. The secular also take offence: in 2002, an angry left-leaning activist beheaded a statue of former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in London’s Guildhall.
Coexistence isn’t just about noodle shops, disco bhangra and kebab houses in Europe, but also about the co-existence of different ideas, such as those on freedom of expression. Multiculturalism is based on the premise that all faiths and customs should be tolerated and respected. But that tolerance is the product of liberal enlightenment, an outcome of centuries of churning in the West, and it is not a quality valued highly by devout believers of some of the faiths now practiced in increasingly large numbers in Europe.
Multiculturalists have wanted it both ways: they want artistic freedom, and they want to respect the feelings and sensitivities of minorities. Julian Baggini, editor of the Philosophers’ Magazine, told the Guardian of the ‘unsustainability of the liberal multiculturalist orthodoxy that maintained tolerance and respect would be enough to allow people of different beliefs to live together. Europeans had forgotten or ignored the fact that their inclusive values were not universally shared.’
At some point, the Scylla and Charybdis of outrageous statements intended to provoke and ‘right-minded’ censorship have to be confronted. Voltaire may defend the right of people he disagrees with till his death; but will those who oppose Voltaire return the favour?
Politicians prefer what Benjamin Franklin called ‘temporary safety’ to ‘essential liberty’. The Behzti controversy has coincided with discussion about a proposed new law in the UK that would make incitement to religious hatred a crime.
Artists, atheists, secularists, politicians and Christian groups have formed an unusual alliance against the bill. Rowan Atkinson, the comedian who once showed a bunch of Muslims kneeling to pray with a voice-over saying, “And the Ayatollah seems to have lost his contact lens,” has led the campaign against the bill.
The legislation is a cynical ploy to placate Britain’s Muslims, who feel estranged from the party they have traditionally backed, because of Prime Minister Tony Blair’s sustained support to the United States in the war on terror. Liberal Democrats engineered the biggest turnaround in recent British electoral history last year when in a by-election they wrested the Brent East constituency, which has a sizable minority population, from Labour’s hands.
After Birmingham, Fiona Mactaggart, a Home Office minister, spoke like a safe, cultural relativist: “When people are moved by theatre to protest … it is a great thing… that is a sign of the free speech which is so much a part of the British tradition.”
She misses the point. As Rushdie says: “It looks like we are going to have to fight and win the Enlightenment thinkers’ battle for freedom of thought all over again. One must never forget that that battle was not against the state, but the Church. (As George Santayana said over a century ago) ‘Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it’.”
Equating violent protesters with a playwright is wrong. Such pusillanimity will only embolden the intolerant, who will increasingly dictate what the rest of us should read and watch, narrowing the discourse.
That wasn’t part of any British tradition.
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