You searched for charlie hebdo - Page 21 of 27

Spring 2015: Across the wires – how refugee stories get told

16 Mar 2015 | Magazine, mobile, Volume 44.01 Spring 2015

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”How can more refugees get their voices heard? The latest issue of Index on Censorship magazine is out now and features a special focus on the threats to free expression within refugee camps.”][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]

We follow the steps of Italian journalist Fabrizio Gatti, who spent four years undercover investigating migrant routes from Africa to Europe. We look at how social media has become a blessing and a curse – offering a connection back home and a means of surveillance. We have pieces by refugees, written from inside camps about persisting myths; by those struggling to claim rights as workers; and by those who have set up innovative, creative projects to share their stories.

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/2″][vc_empty_space height=”50px”][vc_single_image image=”64776″ img_size=”full”][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][vc_column_text]

The issue also features a thoughtful analysis of the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris, with contributions from Chilean writer Ariel Dorfman; Irish co-creator of Father Ted, Arthur Mathews; Turkish novelist Elif Shafak; British playwright David Edgar; former head of BBC news Richard Sambrook; and Hong Kong-based journalist Hannah Leung. Taking the long view, this group of writers looks at the worldwide picture, and how terror is used to silence.

Also, Martha Lane Fox and retired Major General Tim Cross go head-to-head, debating if privacy is more vital than national security. We have stories about attacks on journalists covering the drug trade in South America; a cover-up of abortion figures in Nicaragua; and the lessons to be learnt from attempts to downplay epidemics, from Aids to ebola. Plus an extract from Lucien Bourjeily’s new play, which has skirted the Lebanese censors’ ban, and poetry from Turkish writers Ömer Erdem and Nilay Özer – all translated into English for the first time.

The issue’s cover artwork is by cartoonist Ben Jennings, and the magazine also features work from our regular collaborator Martin Rowson; and extracts from a graphic reportage set in an Iraqi camp, by Olivier Kugler.

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”SPECIAL REPORT: ACROSS THE WIRES” css=”.vc_custom_1483457468599{margin-right: 0px !important;margin-left: 0px !important;border-bottom-width: 1px !important;padding-top: 15px !important;padding-bottom: 15px !important;border-bottom-color: #455560 !important;border-bottom-style: solid !important;}”][vc_column_text]

How refugee stories get told

Undercover immigrant – Italian journalist Fabrizio Gatti spent four years undercover investigating refugee routes from Africa to Europe

Taking control of the camera – Almir Koldzic and Aine O’Brien on refugee camp projects – from soap operas to photography classes – that help refugees tell their own stories. Also: Valentino Achak Deng on life after fleeing Sudan’s civil war; Kate Maltby visits the Syrian Trojan Women’s acting project; and Preti Taneja on bringing Shakespeare to the children of Zaatari

The way I see it – Refugees Rana Moneim and Mohammed Maarouf share their viewpoints from inside a camp, plus a camp visitor shatters his preconceptions

Clear connections – Jason DaPonte on how social media’s power is being harnessed by refugees

Who tells the stories? – Mary Mitchell and Mohammed Al Assad on a storytelling project in a Lebanon camp

Realities of the promised land – Iara Beekma looks at life for Haitian immigrants in Brazil and their rights as workers

The whole picture – Photojournalist Chris Steele-Perkins’ honest account of decades spent capturing refugees’ stories, from Rwandans to the Rohingha

Stripsearch – Our regular cartoonist, Martin Rowson, imagines the Democratic Republic of Cyberspace

Escape from Eritrea – Ismail Einashe explores the dangers of fleeing one of the world’s harshest regimes

A very human picture – Artist Olivier Kugler illustrates life within Iraq’s Domiz refugee camp

In limbo in world’s oldest refugee camps – Tim Finch looks at the places where 10 million people can spend years, or even decades

Sound and fury – Rachael Jolley interviews musician Martyn Ware, from Heaven 17 and the Human League, on the power of soundscape storytelling

Sheltering against resentment – Natasha Joseph reports from Johannesburg on the end of the line for a sanctuary for those fleeing xenophobia

Understanding how language matters – Kao Kalia Yang recalls her childhood as a Hmong refugee in Thailand and the USA

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”IN FOCUS” css=”.vc_custom_1481731813613{margin-right: 0px !important;margin-left: 0px !important;border-bottom-width: 1px !important;padding-top: 15px !important;padding-bottom: 15px !important;border-bottom-color: #455560 !important;border-bottom-style: solid !important;}”][vc_column_text]

Outbreaks under wraps – Alan Maryon-Davis looks at how denials and cover-ups spread ebola, Sars and Aids

Trade secrets – César Muñoz Acebes investigates Paraguay’s drug war and the dangers for journalists, plus Duncan Tucker on Mexico’s courageous bloggers and social media users, who are filling the gaps where Mexico’s press fears to tread

Lies and statistics – Nina Lakhani reports from Nicaragua on the cover-up of abortion figures and domestic abuse

Charlie Hebdo: taking the long view – After the Paris murders, seven writers from around the world look at how offence and terror are used to silence, featuring Arthur Mathews, Ariel Dorfman, David Edgar, Elif Shafak, Hannah Leung, Raymond Louw, Richard Sambrook

Screened shots – Jemimah Steinfeld on the Chinese film industry’s obsession with portraying Japan’s invasion during World War II

Finland of the free – Risto Uimonen explains why the Finns always top media freedom indexes, and the Belfast Telegraph’s readers’ editor, Paul Connolly, shares his thoughts on the future of press regulation

Head to head: Is privacy more vital than national security? Martha Lane Fox and Tim Cross debate how far governments should go when balancing individual rights and safeguarding the nation

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”CULTURE” css=”.vc_custom_1481731777861{margin-right: 0px !important;margin-left: 0px !important;border-bottom-width: 1px !important;padding-top: 15px !important;padding-bottom: 15px !important;border-bottom-color: #455560 !important;border-bottom-style: solid !important;}”][vc_column_text]

The state v the poets – Kaya Genç introduces works by Turkish poets Ömer Erdem and Nilay Özer

Knife edge – Lebanese playwright Lucien Bourjeily presents an exclusive extract from his latest play as it escapes the censors’ ban

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”COLUMNS” css=”.vc_custom_1481732124093{margin-right: 0px !important;margin-left: 0px !important;border-bottom-width: 1px !important;padding-top: 15px !important;padding-bottom: 15px !important;border-bottom-color: #455560 !important;border-bottom-style: solid !important;}”][vc_column_text]

Global view – Index’s CEO Jodie Ginsberg says universities must not fear offence and controversy

Index around the world – Aimée Hamilton provides an update on Index on Censorship’s work

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”END NOTE” css=”.vc_custom_1481880278935{margin-right: 0px !important;margin-left: 0px !important;border-bottom-width: 1px !important;padding-top: 15px !important;padding-bottom: 15px !important;border-bottom-color: #455560 !important;border-bottom-style: solid !important;}”][vc_column_text]

Social disturbance – Vicky Baker looks at how user-generated content lost its innocence, from digital jihadis to hoaxes and propaganda

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”SUBSCRIBE” css=”.vc_custom_1481736449684{margin-right: 0px !important;margin-left: 0px !important;border-bottom-width: 1px !important;padding-bottom: 15px !important;border-bottom-color: #455560 !important;border-bottom-style: solid !important;}”][vc_column_text]Index on Censorship magazine was started in 1972 and remains the only global magazine dedicated to free expression. Past contributors include Samuel Beckett, Gabriel García Marquéz, Nadine Gordimer, Arthur Miller, Salman Rushdie, Margaret Atwood, and many more.[/vc_column_text][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/2″][vc_single_image image=”76572″ img_size=”full”][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]In print or online. Order a print edition here or take out a digital subscription via Exact Editions.

Copies are also available at the BFI, the Serpentine Gallery, MagCulture, (London), News from Nowhere (Liverpool), Home (Manchester), Calton Books (Glasgow) and on Amazon. Each magazine sale helps Index on Censorship continue its fight for free expression worldwide.

SUBSCRIBE NOW[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Jodie Ginsberg: The right to free speech means nothing without the right to offend

16 Feb 2015 | Campaigns, Denmark, News and features, Statements, United Kingdom

(Photo: Kim Bach / Flickr)

Free speech is under attack. We need to defend it.

On Friday night, I moderated a public debate to discuss hate speech in the wake of Charlie Hebdo. The panellists were free speech experts and academics. The London audience was the largely familiar bunch of interested activists and writers, plus a handful of individuals newly interested in questions of free speech following the Paris attacks.

I left the debate feeling energised and upbeat: if one good thing had come out of the horrors of Paris, it was a renewed interest in debating the value of free speech, I thought. People might not always agree with our position – that incitement to violence should be the only legal limits placed on free speech – but at least there were more people interested in hearing the debate. That willingness to listen, to hear the views of others, as well as the ability to express them is – after all – what lies at the heart of free expression.

Less than 24 hours later, came news that at a similar event – a seminar discussing art and blasphemy in Copenhagen – a gunman had shot at the audience, killing a 55-year old filmmaker. This was an event just like ours. One of the speakers was controversial in a way none of ours had been – a Swedish cartoonist who had lampooned the Prophet Mohammed – but otherwise there was little difference: a small-scale event, with a small audience seeking to understand the benefits of free speech, and its challenges, one of many such events that have been held since the Charlie Hebdo attacks.

That incident generated intense debate about what constitutes offence, about whom we should be allowed to insult and how, even about the quality of satire. And it spurred a host of declarations that began “I support free speech” and which then almost always came with a qualification: “I support free speech, but I don’t think it’s right to offend anyone…” or “I support free speech, but if you insult my mother then it’s OK for me to punch you…” or “I support satire, but only when it’s good art…”.

If you were one of those people, try thinking about this: I find it offensive that in many parts of the world people are regularly beaten, jailed and murdered for daring to follow a different belief system or for daring to suggest they want a democratic government. I find it offensive that the majority of decisions in the UK parliament, in the judiciary, in the arts, are made by a small group of people who can shut out the views of large swathes of the population. I find the portrayal of women by much of the British media offensive. These things make me angry. But the fact that I find them offensive or anger-inducing cannot, and should never, be used as an excuse for shutting down their speech. Because that is exactly how millions of people are silenced the world over, how repressive regimes thrive through law, or through violence, or both. And what protects people’s rights to say things I find objectionable is precisely what protects my right to object.

Index on Censorship statement on blasphemy debate attack in Copenhagen

This article was originally posted at Comment Is Free on February 16 2015

Jacob Mchangama: A dangerous evolution of the assassin’s veto

16 Feb 2015 | Denmark, News and features

Site of the 14th February 2015 terrorist attack on a debate discussing blasphemy and artistic expression at Krudttønden in Copenhagen, Denmark. (Photo: Benno Hansen / Flickr)

While Saturday’s deadly attack in Copenhagen has many similarities to the one on French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, one aspect sets it apart and marks a dangerous evolution in the assassin’s veto.

The attack on Charlie Hebdo targeted the magazine and its editors and journalists. So was the attack against Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard who in 2010 escaped an axe wielding Islamist by fleeing into a panic room. Other foiled attacks against Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten have been spectacular — one involved decapitating all journalists present and throwing their severed heads onto the street below — but also “limited” to the perceived offenders.

But when 22 year old Omar Abdel Hamid El-Hussein opened fire on café Krudttønden (in an area of Copenhagen where I was born and raised) he was attacking not only controversial Swedish cartoonist Lars Vilks. He was in fact targeting all the participants at a debate on free speech and Islam. Neither the film director who was killed nor any other participants (apart from Vilks) had anything to do with the cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed drawn by Vilks. For all we know some of the participants may have been offended by the cartoon and other material mocking Islam and would have expressed such feelings had they been given the chance.

That is after all the whole purpose of debate — differing viewpoints meeting and testing and probing each other’s strengths and weaknesses and thereby enlightening the public at large. By attacking such a public debate Abdel Hamid El Hussein and his enablers sent out a most disturbing message: to earn a death sentence for offending Islam, it is no longer necessary to actually make “offensive” expressions. Participating in a public debate on free speech and Islam will suffice.

That message is likely to have profound consequences for public debate on the very issues that are now more important for free societies to discuss than ever. For who can be expected to stage a debate on Islam and free speech, when it involves risking your life? Who would want to be part of the next panel involving Flemming Rose or Salman Rushdie, and who would be willing to act like sitting ducks in the audience? The few people brave enough to actually cross the red lines of the assassin’s veto will then have to think of the considerable costs involved in providing adequate security, and those participants willing to attend would then have to pay through the nose to risk their own lives.

One can only hope that these pernicious effects of the Copenhagen attack will cause what Salman Rushdie has labelled the “but-brigade” to reconsider the half baked defense of free speech that has become so characteristic since the Danish cartoon affair unleashed a global battle of values between free speech and religion. It should be clear that a free society cannot accommodate with special protection feelings of insult and offense that encompass the mere staging of a public debate on subjects of religion and politics. One also hopes that the victims of the Copenhagen shooting will be spared the shameful accusations of “racism” and “islamophobia” that were soon charged at Charlie Hebdo after the attack in Paris.

Despite the grim realities that confront free speech in contemporary Europe, I’m afraid that we must summon our courage and insist that no topics are off the table in public discourse and that murderers cannot be allowed to decide when, where and what we choose to discuss. The responsibility for crossing those red lines falls heavily on those of us who like to think of ourselves as the guardians of free speech.

Living in liberal democracies most of us will not have had much reason to fear for our safety as part of our free speech advocacy. But if we are serious about defending the right to offend, those of us heeding that call will have to stick our necks out too and get up on the podium next to the Flemming Roses, Salman Rushdies and Yahya Hassans of the world, armed with nothing more than the courage of our convictions.

Jodie Ginsberg: The right to free speech means nothing without the right to offend

Index on Censorship statement on blasphemy debate attack in Copenhagen

This guest post was published on 16 February 2015 at indexoncensorship.org

#IndexDrawtheLine: Without the freedom to offend, free speech ceases to exist

16 Feb 2015 | Draw the Line, mobile

Growth can only happen when old obsolete ideas are replaced with newer, relevant ones. If we don’t challenge the established system of thought, we can’t move forward. If ideas that don’t work anymore aren’t rejected, new ones won’t find space. Without new and better ideas there is no movement in any field. Freedom of speech and expression is fundamental to that forward movement and as Salman Rushdie said, “What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist”

We opened up the debate with Charlie Hebdo on our minds. The Hebdo massacre changed the world. Now there is an actual discourse on free expression across the globe. The world is coming together and expressing themselves collectively. Our twitter feed is proof of that. While a lot of people believe that the right to offend comes with the right to free expression, there are people who say that anything that leads to violence is wrong, and there is a fine line there which needs to be observed.

This is where we draw the line: somewhere in the ever-changing grey area between absolutism and stagnancy.

Below, are some young people from across India, who used photographs to join the #IndexDrawtheLine discussion. If you’d like to join the debate, tweet your photos or answers to #IndexDrawtheLine.

This article was posted on 16 February 2015 at indexoncensorship.org

« Older Entries

Next Entries »