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Nominees for the 2022 Freedom of Expression Awards – Arts
Yemeni artist Thiyazen Al-Alawi uses his craft to shed light on the destructive situation in Yemen through street art campaigns. He hopes to inform the public of what the war has done to his homeland.
First inspired by the Arab Spring in 2011 as a teenager, Thiyazen turned to art as a form of self expression, launching his first street art campaign in 2012 as the war began. As conflict invaded every aspect of Yemeni life, he decided “every artwork is proof of their existence and continuity in life…something that gives people hope.” Thiyazen’s work aims to reflect the ugliest and truest forms of war, and its effect on real people.
Thiyazen’s latest project is a collaboration with British artist Luc Waring titled “Letters from Yemen”, a series of drawings and letters from conversations between the two about art, peace, war, and the horrors Thiyazen has witnessed himself. Inspired by a saying Thiyazen heard in his youth, the walls must do the talking when the newspapers are silent; the compiled writings and portraits raise awareness about the war in Yemen with a sensitivity and humanity only an artist and their medium can produce, eventually gaining traction and attention by the public. Due to the ongoing occupation by the Houthi militia, Thiyazen is risking his own safety as he continues to produce art.
Thiyazen continues his work on long-term projects with the Swiss Arts Council to spread awareness about the conditions in Yemen. He also contributes to the “Yemen Peace Forum” with the Sana’a Center for Strategic Studies, writing articles and studies like “Art and Youth in Yemen” in the Journal of Transitional Justice of the University of Oxford. “I feel that I must tell the truth no matter what,” Thiyazen explains,” I could sacrifice my life for the truth. And nothing will stop me.”
Moe Moussa is a journalist, podcaster, poet, and the founder of the Gaza Poet Society. He uses various forums and mediums to amplify the voices of Palestinians.
Moe began his career as a translator for international journalists in 2014. He was soon inspired to speak about the situation from his own perspective. Studying English literature in college and growing up around poetry, it was only fitting that Moe decided to use his art to bring the individual lives of people in Gaza to the international audience.
Delving into Palestinian poetry led Moe to connect online with poets all over the world. He was interested in using his skills as a poet and a journalist to share the stories of individual lives with a global audience. After realising the lack of opportunities for poets to share their work in Arabic and English, he created a space to offer an opportunity for young people to speak and find their own voice in 2018 – the Gaza Poet Society. The organisation is supported solely by donations from international poets who believe in Moe’s cause. He is at constant risk of Hamas censorship and at the will of the Gazan government to approve of civilian movement out of the country.
Watching his family go days without water, power, and freedom of movement, Moe temporarily left Gaza for Istanbul in 2021 to continue his work more effectively. He was awarded the Times Richard Beeston Bursary in 2019 and has plans to complete his fellowship in London in 2022 following delays due to the pandemic. As the creator and host of the podcast “Gaza Guy”, he is focused on amplifying the voices of young Palestinians through poetry and fights for access to education in Gaza. Additionally, Moe has contributed to We Are Not Numbers, a site publishing stories of Palestiniain youth experiencing war. Moe recently released his debut poetry collection titled “Flamingo” and is working freelance to support the Gaza Poet Society from abroad.
Fatoş İrwen is a Kurdish artist and teacher from Diyarbakır, Turkey working with a variety of materials and techniques.
İrwen regularly uses her art to document her experiences as a Kurdish woman living in Turkey. The performance piece Füg [Fugue, 2012] documented her first experiences in police custody where she was physically and sexually abused. In 2016 İrwen was again taken into custody while boarding a domestic flight. She was charged with “resisting the police, opposition to the law against demonstrations and assemblies, propaganda for a terrorist organisation, belonging to a terrorist organisation” and sentenced to 3 years, 1 month and 15 days in prison. The charges related to a peaceful protest in 2013.
During her imprisonment, İrwen made 1,500 works of art using materials accessible to her, including hair, tea, food, shoe polish, old textbooks and newspapers, bed sheets, laundry pegs, scarves, and mould and cigarette ashes. Among other projects, the 2019 piece titled “Gülleler” (Cannonballs) features balls crafted from the hair of inmates participating in a hunger strike. “The hunger strike was like firing a shot to the outside world,” İrwen says. After being released, İrwen collected her art pieces in her first solo exhibition titled Exceptional times which was featured at Depo in Istanbul in 2021.
Discussing censorship by the Turkish authorities, İrwen says “this issue still continues to be the most painful issue of our lives and for which we pay a heavy price.” She is deeply committed to fighting for freedom of expression and artistic freedom.
Due to her challenges with Turkish authorities and her identity as a Kurdish woman, İrwen has found that galleries and art spaces are sometimes reluctant to feature her work. Still, she has found success, and her work has been exhibited in Iran, Germany, Austria, Hong Kong, Iceland, France, Mexico, Iran, Morocco, Sweden, and Turkey.
Hamlet Lavastida has been described as a political activist by way of art. Lavastida uses his art to document human rights abuses in Cuba and to criticise Cuban authorities.
Lavastida pushes boundaries of censorship in Cuba and highlights the distinctly Cuban spirit of cultural resistance. His work reconstructs old Cuban political and military propaganda.
Throughout his career, Lavastida has sought to use his art to fight for transparency and freedom of speech in order to fight against the Cuban government. He sees his art as a non-violent tool to fight against the current regime. Lavastida has been involved in various protest movements in Cuba, including the 27N movement which grew out of the protests held on 27 November 2020. The movement works to bring attention to the censorship of artistic expressions in Cuba.
In June 2021, Lavastida was arrested after returning from a residency at the Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin. He was accused of ‘incitement to commit a crime’ because he suggested that other artists stamp images related to the San Isidro and 27N movements on local currency. Following his arrest, Amnesty International named him as a ‘prisoner of conscience’. Lavastida stayed in prison for 87 days. He was finally released without charges.
Lavastida has been living in exile in Europe since September 2021. He has been warned that he will be arrested immediately if he ever tries to return to Cuba. Lavastida is deeply concerned by the situation. While has experienced threats and censorship targeting his art throughout his career, he is now experiencing threats against him as an individual. He believes this is part of a greater trend of censorship in Cuba.
Lavastida plans to continue creating art and speaking up about the situation in Cuba.
Index on Censorship and Reporters Without Borders welcome High Court’s decision in Realtid case
Reporters without Borders and Index on Censorship welcome the High Court’s decision to throw out large parts of the libel case against the Swedish business and finance publication Realtid, its editor-in-chief, and two of its investigative journalists.
The High Court’s decision comes fifteen months after a jurisdiction hearing aimed at deciding whether England and Wales is the appropriate jurisdiction for the defamation case to be heard. On 11 May 2022, the judge ruled that the courts of England and Wales do not have jurisdiction over ten of the thirteen defamation claims. One of the claimants, Eco Energy World (EEW) has been precluded from bringing its claim over five different articles on the basis that it has not shown it suffered serious financial loss stemming from Realtid’s publications. The second claimant, EEW’s founder Svante Kumlin, may proceed with the case as an individual on only three of the eight articles he sued over, but these actions have been restricted to claiming for any harm he suffered in England and Wales.
Jessica Ní Mhainín, policy and campaigns manager for Index on Censorship, said: “While we welcome the High Court’s decision, we remain concerned that Realtid may nonetheless have to continue defending themselves in London’s courts. This case one again underlines the urgent need for the UK to adopt anti-SLAPP legislation, particularly a filter mechanism capable of rooting out SLAPPs at the earliest possible stage of proceedings”.
Erik Halkjaer, president of Reporters Without Borders Sweden said: “The fact that Swedish reporters in Sweden, which currently ranks third out of 180 countries on the RSF World Press Freedom Index, with its own set of solid media laws and regulations concerning publications, needs to take into account that they can be sued in another countries courts is a threat not only against the journalists, but the Swedish media laws. The Swedish government should find ways of blocking these kinds of SLAPP cases against Swedish journalists”.
Realtid’s editor-in-chief Camilla Jonsson said: “We are glad that the court listened to our arguments about the company’s claims being unfounded and therefore not suited for a trial in London. We also note that five of the eight articles in the case have been ruled as not being libelous even before we have filed our full defence on this. However we feel it is problematic that a Swedish magazine and Swedish journalists still might have to continue defending ourselves in a British court. But we are confident that our reporting will prove to be factually substantiated and in the public interest which in the end will lead to a successful outcome of the case”.
For press inquiries contact:
Erik Halkjaer, [email protected]
Jessica Ní Mhainín, [email protected]
In trying to protect us online, legislators risk silencing us
Photo by Muhammad Raufan Yusup on Unsplash
I regularly start my weekly blog with the exclamation “there is just too much news!” Too much horror and heartbreak and this week the assertion is all too true.
Russia has invaded a sovereign country and daily we are seeing evidence of war crimes on the continent of Europe; China is arresting yet more democracy activists on the flimsiest of excuses; there have been bombings targeting schools in Afghanistan; a neo-fascist is, yet again, in the final run-off in the French Presidential elections; there are riots in Sweden against the far-right with dozens hurt; people are starving in Shanghai under Covid-19 restrictions; there is active conflict again in Jerusalem, with over 150 Palestinians hurt in clashes after a series of terror attacks targeting Israelis in recent weeks; another video of a black man being fatally shot by the police has emerged in the US – Patrick Lyoya was killed, while being held on the ground, defenceless, on 14 April and riots have followed in Michigan.
Our team at Index is working on every one of these news stories. We work with people on the ground, and we commission dissidents and writers, in country, to give us a first-hand account. In the twenty-first century we can speak to people in every corner of the globe, as events are happening, because of the internet and the social media platforms which afford us all a level of protection because of end-to-end encryption. We work with people on the ground who would be arrested, tortured, or even killed because they want to share their experiences with the world. They want the world to know what is happening to them and to their communities. They are on the frontline in the perpetual fight for our democratic right to freedom of expression. They are vulnerable because of who they are and what they want to share with us, whether that’s their writings, their opinions or their art.
They are brave and inspirational and determined to stand up for what is right. For as long as they want to tell their stories there is a moral onus for us to listen to them.
Which brings me to the current proposals to regulate our online lives currently being progressed in the European Union and in the United Kingdom. In Europe, today (Friday) the final negotiations on the substance of the Digital Services Act are underway and, in the UK, the Online Safety Bill began its parliamentary journey on Tuesday. Index is working actively with partners to try and mitigate the worst aspects of both pieces of legislation and we were in Brussels this week to make the case for additional protections for freedom of speech. Our overriding goal is to make sure that our access to those brave dissidents is protected and that our rights to discuss the detail of these horrors are protected. To make sure that while legislators are trying to ‘protect’ us online they don’t end up inadvertently silencing us.
Index advocates for free expression within the protections afforded to us by the European Convention on Human Rights. There is no right not be offended. There is no right not to see things online, or in real life, that will upset you. Of course, we all want to protect each other from seeing the worst aspects of human life – that’s an admirable aspiration but it isn’t the grounds for making new law. In fact, it’s the exact opposite – legally we have protected freedom of expression, it’s a fundamental right. I have written before about our concerns regarding online regulation and in the coming months I’ll be writing extensively on it – but we start with the basic principle – what is legal to say should be legal to type. And that should be the case whatever any new legislation seeks to amend.