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Appeal against book confiscation order denied by Turkish court

A Turkish court has denied an appeal of a court order for the confiscation of the unpublished book “İmamın Ordusu” or The Imams Army, written by politically outspoken (and arrested) journalist Ahmet Şık. The court claimed that the unpublished draft had been edited by Ergenekon, the alleged coup-plotting organization, and declared the manuscript to be an “illegal organizational document.” Last week the police were ordered to seize multiple copies of the document by the court. Anyone who has refused to hand over copies of the draft is to be charged with ”aiding and abetting a criminal organization.”

Pot and kettle, Mr Mugabe

Robert Mugabe: Guardian of electoral integrity. You heard it here first.

Sadly, this new found democratic fervour does not extend itself to Zimbabwe’s next election — just last week the president branded the current power-sharing agreement “foolish and stupid”. Instead, Mugabe’s allies are outraged by the African version of Big Brother. Following the Zimbabwean contestant’s fall at the final hurdle, Mugabe’s office demanded recordings of the show. Mugabe’s nephew, Phillip Chiyangwa, and other loyalists have declared that the voting was not “free and fair” and the Africa-wide voting system by mobile phone was blasted as a “disgrace”.

Fortunately, the injustice done by the Nigerian winner to 24-year-old Munyaradzi Chidzonga, who often appeared draped in the Zimbabwean flag and regularly expressed a desire to meet Mugabe, has been redressed. On his return to Harare and a hero’s welcome, Chidzonga received a high profile meeting with his supportive president and $300,000 raised in donations.

Mugabe and his Zanu-PF party have never been short of audacity, crushing expressions of dissent in everything from elections to cricket. We should not be surprised at this profession of respect for a fair franchise though. Slapstick hypocrisy appears the norm for Mugabe and his party.

The Big Brother incident mirrors Zanu-PF’s pathological aversion to the choices of the populace, especially when the outcome proves inexpedient. It will take quite a shift before we witness a magnanimous departure and hear the words, “Robert, you have been evicted. Please leave the building.”

Femi Kuti on Beng Beng Beng

My song Beng Beng Beng was a simple, light-hearted love song coming from an African man’s perspective. I believe it was banned [in 1999] because there were other very political songs [on the album] that they didn’t want the radio stations to play. So banning Beng Beng Beng was like telling the journalists and radio stations, “Don’t touch this album”.

It was very popular in general, and everybody knew about it, but the radio stations never gave it airplay. I don’t think the lyrics were even offensive; it was less offensive than Let’s Talk about Sex, [by Salt N Pepa], but they played that for a long time on the radio stations. When they banned ‘Beng Beng Beng’ the stations were forced to stop playing anything sexual for a while.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKpTYLQ5K9w

I was becoming too popular, too political, everybody was listening to me. People who didn’t even know about my father [Fela Kuti] were getting to know about me, then getting to know the whole story about my father. So I was getting to be a very big story.

My next album was angrier, more direct. The Shrine, my club in Lagos, was open and we played it live there, where it’s always full — we always have about 2,000 people. And they always try to close the club. The last time they tried there was so much international talk about it that they opened it after a week and a half. Everyone was outraged — and not just in Nigeria. There is more pressure coming from outside than inside. Now the government is trying to be accepted by the international community, they are trying to pretend they’re not corrupt, they pretend that everything is OK. Now, if somebody like me is shouting, “No, that’s wrong!” and they then ban my club, stop my music, then they are wrong, they are lying.

To listen to contributors’ playlists go to indexoncensorship/music