From an artist who had barely used Facebook to the face of #YoTambienExijo, the international online movement for free speech – Tania Bruguera describes how the perfect coalescence of art, social media and politics allowed the world to see the real Cuba at a crucial time in the country’s history.
The beginnings of the #YoTambienExijo movement were born on 17 December 2014, when President Obama announcement a landmark warming of the 53-year chill between the United States and Cuba.
“When I first heard about the Cuba-US reconciliation it had a great impact on me as an artist, but also as a Cuban citizen,” Tania Bruguera told Index. “I was glad about the decision, but at the same time a lot of questions came to my head. Who is going to define that different Cuba? Who is going to be in charge of creating that different Cuba?”
Writing an open letter addressed to Obama, the Pope and Cuban president Raúl Castro, Bruguera demanded for Cubans “the right to know what is being planned with our lives”, also demanding that Cuban citizens gain more from his political change than a place at the table of North American trade.
“Yo Tambien Exijo was one of the phrases in the letter – I also demand. I also demand to know. I demand as a Cuban.”
The sentiment resonated with many Cubans around the world, and after her sister Deborah Bruguera created the Facebook page, #YoTambienExijo, the site quickly attracted thousands of followers.
In the final part of her letter, Bruguera called for Castro to hand over the microphone to the people of Cuba – a reference to a performance piece of Bruguera’s which gives any audience member one minute of unhindered free speech. The idea captured the imagination of #YoTambienExijo’s online audience, who asked Bruguera to stage the performance at the Havana Biennial, an art fair taking place in Cuba’s capital that month.
But arriving in the country days later, Bruguera found her words had not been met with the same level of support by the Cuba government. “I was pretty naïve,” says Bruguera. “When I entered the country, I start behaving as if human rights were being respected. And that clashed with reality.”
A smear campaign was launched against Bruguera, with government-sponsored blogs characterizing the artist as a provocateur acting under the influence of foreign pressure, and even labeling her as a drug smuggler. It’s not uncommon for the Cuban government to attempt to undermine dissenting voices as CIA or right wing, the artist says: “I think one good thing is I’ve worked for 20 years. So people know who I am. Sometime when you are dissident or you are an activist just starting working, in Cuba they are very good at putting in people’s mind the image of that person they want for the rest of the people.”
But in spite of continued pressure from government officials to cancel the performance, Bruguera refused. “I always say I have no money, I have nothing. I have only my word. So I have to defend that. In this case I gave my word to the 12,000 people who were waiting for this.”
Organising collective action is difficult in Cuba, where low internet connectivity and high levels of state security tend to impede any political protest. So the #YoTambienExijo team put out an online plea for Cubans around the world to call their families and tell them about the performance – which many did.
On the day of the performance Bruguera was arrested, along with several dissidents who had expressed solidarity with Bruguera’s project. But the attempt to stop the performance failed; news of the #YoTambienExijo page and the performance had already spread to Cuban people.
Imprisoned for the whole performance (she was subsequently released and then rearrested twice), Bruguera only learnt later of the arrests of several audience members. As these events unfolded, reporting from the #YoTambienExijo team spread online, gathering international support for Bruguera, and after 14 prominent artists wrote a letter to The Guardian condemning Bruguera’s arrest, the hashtag #FreeTaniaBruguera soon began trending, and another online letter began circulating. “In 24 hours, more than 3,000 people from the international art world signed, including directors from MoMa and the Tate.” Bruguera refused to allow her own release until all audience members were freed along with her. The mounting pressure from the global community meant that, eventually, the every person arrested in connection with the performance was released.
These events were an important wake-up call, Bruguera believes. “Cuba was trying to sell itself to the world as the next opportunity for business, and as a good person, as a victim for 50 years. This unveiled the truth.” In reality, Cuban government’s control over media public discussion and the arts has been absolute for over five decades.
But what happened also showed Bruguera a way forward for Cuba. “It was for me a very difficult experience – the most difficult I have ever had in my life. But it really put us in a way that we are all together, and we understood that we can make a change in Cuba. Because we were able to mobilize not only that many Cubans, but we were able to mobilize also a big group of international artists.”
The international reaction to Bruguera’s story turned #YoTambienExijo into a movement capturing more than just the Cuban experience. Around the world performances were staged in solidarity, with arts organisations including Creative Time in New York, the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, Netherlands’ Van Abbe Museum, and the Tate Modern, all giving audiences one minute of free speech. It also became a form of protest in countries around the world where citizens and artists face censorship.
“It became Cuba focused and then it became more about totalitarianism in the world in general,” said Bruguera. “And it became also about the role of an artist who wants to deal with political issues in contemporary art.”
Last year Bruguera was shortlisted for the Hugo Boss prize and named one of Foreign Policy’s Global thinkers of 2015. She is now planning to return to Cuba to set up a space in Havana, the Hannah Arendt International Institute of Art and Artivism, a place for the Cuban people to advance their freedom of expression.
Freedom of the press has always been a pretty reliable litmus test for the state of any democracy. However, as Index on Censorship’s Mapping Media Freedom project shows, countries that are seen as traditionally open, with constitutions protecting freedom of expression, are currently rife with violations against the media.
“It is extremely troubling that media workers have been physically and sexually assaulted, arrested and denied access to key reporting areas in countries with strong democratic institutions,” Hannah Machlin, Index’s Mapping Media Freedom project officer, said. “We hope governments take action to prevent these types of violations from occurring at such a frightening rate.”
So far this year, Mapping Media Freedom has verified 61 media violations. Here are just five examples from the last fortnight that highlight some of the failures of these democracies to live up to their own standards.
1. Germany: Belgian TV reporter assaulted live on air
Just weeks after hundreds of women were sexually assaulted on the streets of Cologne, a journalist, Esmeralda Labye, was sexually assaulted while reporting from the Cologne carnival for Belgian TV station RTBF on 4 February. One man grabbed her breast and another kissed her neck while she was live on air.
“Two or three men gathered behind me and attempted to make themselves the centre of my attention,” Labye told The Guardian. “I was focusing on the broadcast, and then I felt a kiss on my neck.”
Writing for RTBF online, Labye condemned the “wretched and cowardly men” who assaulted her and complained of the increasing difficulty for female journalists to do their job without being harassed.
2. France: Proposed law will increase role of government’s media watchdog
On 4 February, plans to increase the role of the CSA — the French broadcast watchdog whose members are chosen by the government — as a guarantor of the independence of the media were discussed in the French National Assembly.
The French journalists’ union SNJ criticized the planned bill, written by a Parti Socialiste MP, stressing that the CSA is not independent from political influence. They wrote: “The CSA has no responsibility and legitimacy on matters related to the control of information or journalists. It should have none!”
3. Greece: Violent attack against journalist during anti-austerity demonstration
Protests against the Greek government’s plan to change its pension policy as part of the country’s third international bailout brought an estimated 40,000 people onto the streets of Athens and other cities, including journalists. On 4 February, Dimitris Perros, a journalist from the local radio station Athens 9,84, was violently attacked by unknown assailants while covering the demonstration. He was transported to the hospital with major injuries.
Newspapers reported that the attack was denounced in statements from across the political spectrum including Syriza,PASOK and the Greek Communist Party and the Journalist’s Union of the Athens Daily Newspapers. “The strangers who approached him asked him first if he is a journalist and when he answered affirmatively they started beating him with planks, while the police looked on,” the union stressed in an announcement.
4. The Netherlands: Journalists denied access to meeting on housing asylum seekers under “extremist” ban
On 28 January, several journalists were denied access to a citizens’ meeting about the possible creation of a new asylum seeker centre in the village of Luttelgeest, according to newspaper reports. An emergency regulation was issued to refuse journalists access to the meeting. The mayor also banned journalists from travelling within a radius of five kilometres of the village.
The Dutch Association of Journalists, the NVJ, condemned the measure saying that it was not the first time journalists have been banned. “It has happened many times now,” NVJ secretary Thomas Bruning said. “If journalists are denied access, they are obstructed from doing their job. This is alarming and should not happen in a democracy.”
5. Poland: Government uses defamation law to stop media critics
Even Europe’s youngest democracies are fighting off attacks on media freedom.
As Index on Censorship has previously reported, there is a growing trend in Poland of the government using defamation actions to stop criticism in the media. The most recent example, on 3 February, saw Poland’s ruling Law and Justice party, PiS, file a libel suit against the largest daily newspaper in the country, Gazeta Wyborcza about an opinion piece it disliked.
The article argued that PiS and Poland’s president Andrej Duda have behaved like a “mafia state” for pardoning former anti-corruption official Mariusz Kaminski, for abuse of power. Duda issued the pardon before Kaminski had exhausted the appeals process, a point that the author of the piece, Wojciech Czuchnowski, criticised in his opinion piece.
In response to the attacks on Tolo TV on 20 January, in which eight people have been killed and 30 others injured, we stand in solidarity with the Afghan media community. We condemn this and all other attacks on Afghanistan’s journalists unreservedly and applaud their courage to stand together undeterred by those who seek to silence them. We want to tell our colleagues throughout Afghanistan they are not alone; the international community is behind them. The journalists and media workers of Afghanistan are playing a leading role in working fearlessly to ensure that the voices of violent extremists do not dominate the news agenda. We remain ready to help them in this perilous endeavour.
Signed by (and including links to additional statements on the Tolo attack from these organizations),
Article 19, UK
Committee to Protect Journalists, USA
Free Press Unlimited, Netherlands
Index on Censorship, UK
Institute for War and Peace Reporting, UK
International Freedom of Expression Exchange (IFEX), Canada
International News Safety Institute UK
International Media Support, Denmark
International Press Institute, Austria
World Association of Newspapers, France
Open Society Foundations, Program on Independent Journalism, UK
Reporters Without Borders, France
Rory Peck Trust, UK
NGOs from the around the world call for the immediate release of prisoner of conscience Dr. Abduljalil al-Singace on his 300th day of hunger strike. Dr. al-Singace began his hunger strike in March 2015 as a response to police subjecting inmates at the Central Jau Prison to collective punishment, humiliation and torture.
Since 21 March 2015, Dr. al-Singace has foregone food and subsisted on water and IV fluid injections for sustenance. Days later, Jau prison authorities transferred him to the Qalaa hospital, where he is still being kept in a form of solitary confinement.
Dr. al-Singace’s family, who visited him on 7 January, state that the prison administration is controlling his treatment at Qalaa hospital, and has for five months continuously, denied his need for a physical checkup by his hematologist at Salmaniya Medical Complex.
According to Dr. al-Singace’s family, he is not allowed to walk outside. He remains isolated in the Qalaa hospital, and is provided only irregular contact with his family. He is frequently denied basic hygienic items including soap, and is not allowed to interact with other patients in the hospital.
Dr. al-Singace is a member of the Bahrain 13, a group of thirteen peaceful political activists and human rights defenders, including Ebrahim Sharif and Abdulhadi al-Khawaja, sentenced to prison terms for their peaceful role in Bahrain’s Arab Spring protests in 2011.
Dr. al-Singace was first arrested in August 2010 at Bahrain airport. He had just returned from a conference at the British House of Lords regarding human rights in Bahrain. Security forces detained Dr. al-Singace for six months, during which he was tortured, and released him in February 2011 during the height of protests. However, Dr. al-Singace was rearrested on 17 March 2011, after his participation in peaceful pro-democracy protests. In detention, officers blindfolded, handcuffed, and beat Dr. al-Singace in the head with their fists and batons. Officers threatened him and his family with reprisals.
On 22 June 2011, a military court sentenced Dr. al-Singace to life for attempted overthrow of the regime. Since then, he has been imprisoned in the Central Jau Prison, and has only recently received treatment for a nose injury sustained during torture. He has been denied treatment for a similar ear injury also sustained during torture since his incarceration.
In 2015, Dr. al-Singace was awarded the Liu Xiaobo Courage to Write Award by the Independent Chinese PEN Centre, and was named one of Index on Censorship’s 100 “free expression heroes” in 2016. He has long campaigned for an end to torture and political reform, writing on these and other subjects on his blog, Al-Faseela, which remains banned by Bahraini Internet Service Providers. Bahrain has become a dangerous place for those who speak out, with peaceful dissidents at risk of arbitrary arrests, systematic torture and unfair trial.
We, the undersigned NGOs, call on the government of Bahrain to immediately secure the release of Dr. al-Singace and all prisoners of conscience, and to provide all appropriate and necessary medical treatment for Dr. al-Singace.
Signatories:
Americans for Democracy and Human Rights in Bahrain (ADHRB)
ARTICLE 19
Bahrain Center for Human Rights (BCHR)
Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy (BIRD)
Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)
Croatian PEN
Danish PEN
English PEN
European Center for Democracy and Human Rights (ECDHR)
FIDH, within the framework of the Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders
Ghanaian PEN
Gulf Centre for Human Rights (GCHR)
Icelandic PEN
Index on Censorship
Italian PEN
Norwegian PEN
PEN America
PEN Bangladesh
PEN Bolivia
PEN Canada
PEN Català
PEN Center Argentina
PEN Center USA
PEN Centre of German Speaking Writers Abroad
PEN Eritrea in Exile
PEN Flander
PEN Germany
PEN International
PEN Netherlands
PEN New Zealand
PEN Québéc
PEN Romania
PEN South Africa
PEN Suisse Romand
Peruvian PEN
Reporters Sans Frontiers (RSF)
San Miguel PEN
Scholars at Risk
Scottish PEN
Serbian PEN
Trieste PEN
Wales PEN Cymru
World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT), within the framework of the Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders
Zambian PEN
