US must immediately release detained journalist Manuel Duran Ortega

08 May 18 | Campaigns -- Featured, Statements

On Monday, 26 press-freedom, civil-rights, labour and civil-liberties groups submitted a letter urging a regional U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office to release unjustly detained journalist Manuel Duran Ortega.

The Memphis police arrested Duran on April 3 while he was covering a local protest over the targeting of undocumented immigrants by local and federal law-enforcement agencies. The local police arrested Duran and charged him with disorderly conduct and obstruction of a highway or passageway, even though he was wearing a press badge around his neck and was identified by others as a member of the media.

Memphis authorities dropped the charges against Duran on April 5, but then turned him over to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which has detained Duran in Jena, Louisiana, with plans to deport him to El Salvador, where he has faced death threats for past reporting as the manager of a local TV station.

“As organizations advocating for press freedom, immigrant rights and racial justice, we are outraged by Duran’s arrest and detainment, which are in direct violation of the First Amendment,” reads the  letter, which Free Press organized. Signers include the American Civil Liberties Union, the Center for Media Justice, Color Of Change, Index on Censorship, the National Hispanic Media Coalition, PEN America, Reporters Without Borders North America and WITNESS, among other groups. (The full letter is online here and below.)

“Duran’s arrest and subsequent detention are an attack on the First Amendment and press freedoms in our country,” said Free Press Senior Director of Strategy and Engagement Joseph Torres. “It also silences an essential journalistic voice in Memphis who has provided the Spanish-language community with the news and information they need to stay engaged with what’s happening in their city.”

The Southern Poverty Law Center, which is representing Duran, and the Latino community in Memphis believe Duran is being targeted because of his critical coverage of the city’s police department and the Department of Homeland Security. Duran has written stories about police abuse and misconduct, immigration detention centers and coordination between Memphis police and ICE. According to his lawyers, Duran faces an immediate threat of deportation.

The text of the ICE letter follows below:

Mr. David D. Rivera
Director of the New Orleans Field Office
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
1250 Poydras, Suite 325
New Orleans, LA 70113

cc: Scott L. Sutterfield: Assistant New Orleans Field Office Director, ICE

Director Rivera:

We, the undersigned organizations, are calling for the immediate release of unjustly detained journalist Manuel Duran Ortega.

As organizations advocating for press freedom, immigrant rights and racial justice, we are outraged by Duran’s arrest and detainment, which are in direct violation of the First Amendment.

Duran is a well-known and respected journalist in Memphis. He is also an undocumented immigrant who fled El Salvador over a decade ago — where he worked as a TV station manager — after his life was threatened.

The Memphis police arrested Duran on April 3 while he was covering a local protest over the targeting of undocumented immigrants by local and federal law enforcement agencies. Duran was livestreaming the protest that took place during the city’s commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

The police claim they arrested Duran for refusing orders to get off the street. Two women held onto Duran while he was being arrested and told the police several times that he was a journalist. Duran also wore a press badge around his neck. But the police arrested Duran anyway and charged him with disorderly conduct and obstruction of a highway or passageway.

The Memphis police dropped the charges against Duran on April 5. But instead of releasing him, they turned him over to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Duran is now being detained in Jena, Louisiana.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, which is representing Duran, and the Latino community in Memphis believe Duran is being targeted because of his critical coverage of the city’s police department and Department of Homeland Security. He wrote stories about police abuse and misconduct, immigration detention centers and coordination between Memphis police and ICE.

Newspapers such as The Nashville Tennessean and The Memphis Commercial Appeal have also denounced his arrest and detention.

We do as well. The First Amendment guarantees a free press. That means that reporters like Duran can’t be subject to censorship by the government, nor can government use any measures to prevent the expression of ideas before they are published, or to punish reporters for doing their job. Prior restraint by any official means is clearly unconstitutional.

We are calling on ICE to release Manuel Duran Ortega immediately. The unlawful arrest of Duran violates his First Amendment rights and is an attack on press freedom in our country.

Sincerely,

Joseph Torres
Free Press

Faiz Shakir
American Civil Liberties Union

Chris Faraone    
Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism

Mike Katz-Lacabe    
Center for Human Rights and Privacy

Steven​ ​Renderos    
Center for Media Justice

Brandi​ ​Collins-Dexter    
Color Of Change

Sue Udry    
Defending Rights and Dissent

Shannon Soper    
Dignity and Power Now

Colin Kinniburgh    
Dissent Magazine

Janine Jackson    
Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting

Joy Hyvarinen    
Index on Censorship

Matt DeRienzo    
Local Independent Online News Publishers (LION)

Tracy Rosenberg    
Media Alliance

George​ ​Freeman    
Media Law Resource Center

Bryan​ ​Mercer    
Media Mobilizing Project

Monika Bauerlein    
Mother Jones

Christopher Finan    
National Coalition Against Censorship

Carmen Scurato    
National Hispanic Media Coalition

Suzanne​ ​Nossel    
PEN America

Lark Corbeil    
Public News Service

Margaux Ewen    
Reporters Without Borders North America

Rebecca Baker    
Society for Professional Journalists

Julie Winokur    
Talking Eyes Media

Brian Dolinar    
Urbana-Champaign Independent Media Center

Pali Makam    
WITNESS

David A. Goodman    
Writers Guild of America, West

Ariel Dorfman interview: Writer unveils new short story lost after Chilean coup

17 Dec 15 | Magazine, Volume 44.04 Winter 2015 Extras

Chilean writer Ariel Dorfman

Chilean writer Ariel Dorfman

Fifty years ago, Chilean author Ariel Dorfman wrote down the seed of a story, which he then lost in his years of exile during General Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship. Recently he revisited the idea and realised how to develop it into his new short story, All I Ever Have, which is published for the first time in the latest Index on Censorship magazine. Vicky Baker speaks to him about its key theme of music as resistance

Writer Ariel Dorfman remembers the exact moment the idea first came to him for his latest short story, All I Ever Have. It was 7 January 1966, his wedding day. As dawn broke over Chile, an image came into his mind of a man in a military band, playing a defiant, rebellious song on his trumpet. Just seven years later General Augusto Pinochet would seize power.

Winter 2015: What’s the taboo?

• Editorial: Talk does not cost lives, silence does
• Ariel Dorfman interview: Writer unveils new short story lost after Chilean coup
• The Music as Resistance playlist
• Full contents of the winter issue
• Subscribe to the magazine

“Perhaps because I was so full of the music of the day, the positive songs of betrothal, that counter-image visited me that morning,” Dorfman said from his current home in the USA, where he is soon to celebrate his golden wedding anniversary with his wife, Angelica. The words he hastily scribbled down that morning were lost in Chile’s 1973 coup, when he was forced into exile, having supported the ousted president Salvador Allende and worked as his cultural adviser.

But the image of the lone musician never went away. “Only recently, I understood how to write it,” he said. “It was not only about the man who plays the trumpet but about what stays behind him, how the singer may die but not the song.”

Dorfman has always been interested in music as a form of resistance. He remembers Ode to Joy, from Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, being sung in the streets of Santiago as a protest against Pinochet. Groups would assemble outside prisons to sing over the walls, and inmates who survived the torture there later spoke of the strength it gave them. Dorfman’s 1990 play Death and the Maiden, which was first published in English in Index on Censorship magazine, tells of a sadistic doctor who rapes a political prisoner to the sound of Schubert’s String Quartet No. 14 in D Minor, known as Death and the Maiden.

“Death and the Maiden echoes the horror that the commanders of Nazi concentration camps adored Beethoven,” he said. “I have been reflecting for a long time on music as a meeting place with those who are our adversaries and even enemies. That music is a territory that we share with many whose views we disagree with.”

In All I Ever Have, one of the most powerful moments comes when the soldier quietly whispers “You are not alone” to the dissenting trumpeter, just out of earshot of the anonymous general. Dorfman said the moment was informed by his years writing about human rights and talking with victims of torture. “I am always moved by a moment – an almost invariable moment – when each of them [the victims] says that, in jail, or after having been tormented, they realise they are not alone, not only because there are other prisoners nearby, but because the guards suddenly change their attitude, the guards become wary, as if they know they are being watched. This solidarity is almost like a physical wave that can be felt by those in need. It’s as if we were sending songs to the injured and insulted of the world, and they hear the songs, they really do.”

You can read the Ariel Dorfman’s new short story, All I Ever Have, in the latest Index on Censorship magazine. Each magazine sale helps Index on Censorship fight for free expression worldwide. Order your copy here, or take out a digital subscription via Exact Editions (just £18 for the year).

You can also find Index on Censorships Music as Resistance playlist here. 

Ariel Dorfman’s latest novel in Spanish, Allegro, is narrated by Mozart in three crucial moments of his life (Editorial Stella Maris, November 2015)

Mexico: Slander and libel decreminalised

02 Dec 11 | Americas, Index Index, minipost

Slander and libel have been decriminalised by the Mexican Senate. The senate approved the repeal of Articles 1 and 31 of the Crimes Act, with a unanimous decision. Mexico have joined El Salvador as the second Latin American country to decriminalise honour crimes. The decision follows the end of a seven-year defamation trial where the newspaper La Jornada accused magazine Letras Libres of damaging its reputation. The court determined that freedom of expression supersedes the right to honour.