Laugh and the World Laughs with Me is an intimate short story of a young woman who has a schizophrenic brother, set against the backdrop of the Tahrir Square demonstrations, from Egyptian writer Eman Abdelrahim. An extract of this new short story was first published in the summer issue of Index on Censorship magazine. Many of her tales often touch upon taboo subjects like mental health and presents women’s dilemmas in surreal ways. Her main influences when writing stems from Russian greats like Anton Chekhov, Nikolai Gogol and Fyodor Dostoevsky. She says she sees parallels between Egyptian society today and 19th century Tsarist Russia.
Laugh and the World Laughs with Me
By Eman Abdelrahim
The three of them are sitting now watching Al Jazeera on the TV. New events are occurring incessantly. No one trusts what is being said. The father asks Shadi to take his medicine, as the time for that has come round. Shadi goes to his desk. He keeps the strip of tablets in the drawer. Fadwa creeps up behind him surreptitiously. She watches him from behind the curtain at the window. She checks that he is putting the tablets into his mouth now, then swallowing them with water from the tumbler. She hurries back to the sofa, in front of the TV, before Shadi comes back too.
Now Shadi sits down on the sofa next to her. The father gets up to prepare dinner for them. Fadwa talks to Shadi in amazement. She tells him that today is the third since this uprising broke out, and the President has still not appeared. Shadi presses his lips together and looks as if he is thinking deeply, shakes his head with a knowing air and tells Fadwa that he will appear, he’s just got some things to do that he, Shadi, knows all about, and then he will appear. Fadwa gives him a long, thoughtful look, then goes back to watching the TV.
The father calls Fadwa to help him carry the plates of food from the kitchen to the dining table. Fadwa hurries in to him. She knows very well that in reality he doesn’t need her help except to keep any eye on the atmosphere, to make it easier for him to sneak an extra dose of Shadi’s medicine into his food.
After they have eaten dinner, the three of them sit in front of the TV again. The channel is showing a breaking news item on the titles that run along the bottom of the screen. It says that the President will appear in a speech shortly. Shadi springs up and says, “Didn’t I tell you?” to them several times over.
Neither the father nor Fadwa know that Shadi alone knows where the President has been until this moment. Shadi knows that during the past three days the President has been meeting with Rim’s family, he’s been beseeching them to give him his job back, to return the situation back to how it was before and send the people back to their dens.
When the President makes his speech, in which he seems unconcerned about what he is saying, Shadi asserts that Rim’s family has almost succeeded or has actually succeeded in doing it. After the speech, Shadi informs his father and Fadwa knowingly that things will return to normal within the next two days at most.
When the riots, which break out immediately after the speech, begin, the father decides that Fadwa will not go to work the next day. She objects and yells at her father, trying to persuade him that her work is not just a job but is a mission that it is her duty to perform. Shadi, who has slept through the two of them yelling, wakes up. He knows the reason for their quarrel and he screams hysterically into Fadwa’s face. He calls her filthy names. He threatens her, saying “You daughter of a whore, you fucking bitch, you’re not going out or I’ll beat the crap out of you!” Fadwa looks at her father, who is standing there in silence, then tells them both that she will not go out. Shadi asks her to pass him her handbag. So she passes it to him obediently then tells them that she is heading off to bed.
Lying on her bed, Fadwa cries bitterly. It would be possible for her to go out despite their wishes, but she will not do it, not from fear of Shadi, but from fear for him.
Fadwa sees her work as a presenter on BBC Arabic as an important revolutionary mission. It is no less important than what the demonstrators are doing now in Tahrir Square. She sees herself as conveying the truth. She is conveying their voice to the whole world. To tell the truth, she would dearly love to be with the demonstrators now, but she will not do it. She is afraid, not of getting killed in the demonstrations, but of the fear and the anxiety it would inflict on her father and brother.
On the Saturday following the Friday of Rage Fadwa stands at night on the balcony with Shadi. They hear the sound of fighting in the street, followed by firing and women screaming. Shadi is terrified and drags Fadwa inside by her arm. Fadwa cries, she avoids looking into Shadi’s eyes. Against her will, their glances meet and she sees in his eyes the terror that she was afraid of seeing. She will not forgive. That is what she decides at this moment. She will not forgive the President and his regime that have caused her to see such a look in her brother’s eyes, even if the people and the families of the martyrs forgive them for shedding the blood of their sons. She is crying at this moment not from fear of the state of terror and the insecurity, for she has known ever since she saw yesterday’s speech that the President is definitely making people choose between safety with him or chaos without him. But she is crying from fear for Shadi.
Somebody knocks at the door of the flat and their father runs to open it. Karim, the neighbours’ son, is asking the father to come out with them to protect the building from what the thugs are doing. The father closes the door and goes to change his clothes, but Shadi stops him and says that he will go down himself. The father quickly gives in to his wish because in his condition he cannot withstand any fighting. Shadi does indeed go down, after picking up a club to carry with him. Fadwa wants to go with him, she doesn’t know what sort of panic attack he might suffer out there all by himself. Shadi knows what is going on in his sister’s head, so he locks the door behind him with the key. He comes up about every half an hour and asks Fadwa to make him a cup of tea, then goes back down again.
The call to dawn prayers comes. Fadwa feels compassion for her father, who has fallen asleep on the sofa in the living room. She wakes him up so that he can pray, and asks him to go bed afterwards. She tells him that she will not go to bed until Shadi comes back up and she is sure that he is asleep.
At nine a.m. Shadi finally decides that he will not go back down again. He talks to Fadwa about the events of the horrific night. He says that Rim’s family have given the President the job of terrorising the people. He says that they are making use of devils and demons to assist him with that. He says that he himself saw two yellow-coloured devils in an ambulance down there. Fadwa observes that he is trembling violently as he talks. She tries to calm him and asks him to go to bed.
Fadwa watches the TV for about an hour after Shadi has gone to bed. She tiptoes into his room, and tries to check in the dim light that he is finally asleep. She is unable to see his eyes but she can hear his regular breathing, or that is how it seems to her. She leaves his room. She gets dressed. She fetches her handbag from the kitchen cupboard. She opens the door of the flat and slips out quietly, heading for work.
Fadwa doesn’t know that Shadi was not asleep. He is now trembling on his bed. He feels intense fear and he sobs. He heard all Fadwa’s movements outside and he knew she was determined to go out but he was incapable of moving to prevent her. Fear has completely paralysed his limbs.
Fadwa returns home two days later, at midday on Tuesday. (The father) welcomes her without any reproach. He just tells her, appearing on the verge of collapse, that Shadi is in a very bad state and is not sleeping. She tries to appear strong as she tells her father that he must take him to the doctor tomorrow without his knowledge. She suggests that her father should pretend to be ill while she is at work and should ask Shadi to take him to the heart specialist.
Fadwa goes in to Shadi’s office. She finds him sitting with his eyes wide open, clutching a copy of the Qur’an and reading it aloud, repeating verses like a shaykh exorcising a devil. He is trembling incessantly, his lips are blue and the muscles on the left side of his jaw are twitching erratically, involuntarily. She hugs him and he stands there, unable to believe that she is still in the land of the living. He asks her about the rest of the hostages. She informs him that they are fine, and that everything is fine, God willing.
Fadwa doesn’t know that the latest events reminded Shadi of that terrorist incident that he was involved in two years ago. When he was sitting with Rim at sunset on one of the marble seats at the university, everyone around them suddenly fled in a panic. Everyone was screaming and running while Shadi and Rim sat in their place not understanding what was going on or knowing the reason for it. Within minutes the university and its campus was completely empty except for them. Rim felt afraid. Shadi reassured her and he got up to cautiously check the empty campus around them. Shadi saw an indistinct yellow glow that darted past quickly and disappeared, with a hissing sound, behind the trunks of the enormous ancient trees. Sometimes it approached Shadi and at others it moved away. Shadi knew that it was the devil, so he returned quickly to where Rim was sitting, hugged her, closed his eyes and started reciting verses that he remembered from the Qur’an. Until Allah finally saved them.
At that moment the President sent a battalion of the Republican Guard to save Rim and Shadi. The incident was written about in the newspapers the following day, but they did not mention that the Presidential Guard had intervened to exterminate the devil, but said it was to pursue a dragon which had escaped from the zoo and was attacking students on the university campus.
After that, the way Rim treated Shadi would change and their relationship crumbled away. Shadi would follow her surreptitiously to discover the reason, and the day came when he discovered the whole truth. Rim’s family were evil sorcerers. They worshipped the devil, who had chosen their beautiful daughter Rim for himself. And thus the family became bound up with him in a blind allegiance. They used black magic to split Shadi and Rim up, and Rim was the one most affected, bearing in mind that she was living in their den, so she fell totally under their control.
Shadi also knew that the President’s intervention was thus not for the sake of Allah. The President was afraid that Shadi would destroy the devil and burn him. The President made use of Rim’s family in the Country’s Affairs Department. The President could not rule without the assistance of the devil and using black magic against his whole people.
Once Shadi knew all that, he tried to expose it all. The President would unleash one of the dogs of State Security on him, to rape him in the university toilets. After that, Rim’s family would threaten him with raping his sister and setting fire to his father. Only then would Shadi back down and decide to forget about Rim and give her up forever.
On the Wednesday night, the President delivers his second speech. Afterwards, Shadi comments that they must not trust him or sympathise with him. He asks Fadwa to contact her friends in the square and ask them to return to their homes immediately. Shadi is convinced that the President will gather the greatest number of people possible together and will seize them in order to offer them as a sacrifice to the devil. There is indeed a large number of hostages with him now, and the people should all stay in their homes so that Shadi himself can find a means to save them. Fadwa, who notices her father surreptitiously wiping tears from his eyes, indulges him.
On the morning of the following day, Shadi has not slept, as is normal for him these days, he is crying hard, and begs Fadwa not to leave the house. He kneels down to kiss her feet. Fadwa sits on a chair in the living room and tells him that she will not go out, in compliance with his wishes. She takes advantage of his going to the bathroom and leaves quickly and closes the door behind her.
After midday, the events of The Battle of the Camels begin. Fadwa follows them from her workplace and she receives calls and pleas for help from the square. She moves around, she comes and goes, and through all that tears keep pouring down her face until in time she forgets that she is crying.
At sunset, she replies to her father who has called her on her mobile. She hears him start to cry, she takes a breath and says “Have you seen, Dad, what have the heathen sons of dogs done?!… Never mind, Dad, the blood of those people will not be wasted.” Her father’s voice on the other end is chopped. He tells her that he is crying for the sake of her brother who ran away from him when he was trying to take him to the doctor in accordance with the plan that he had agreed with her. Her father tells her that her brother is now missing altogether, he does not have an ID card on him nor a mobile, not even any small change in his pocket. Her father begs her for help, saying that he doesn’t know what he should do. Fadwa takes her handbag and leaves Maspero [the headquarters of the Egyptian Radio and Television Union] in a hurry without even asking permission. She gets in her car and drives around the streets searching for Shadi. She calls her father – who is also out searching – from time to time.
She drives around the main roads and narrow side-streets of Ayn Shams where Rim, his ex-girlfriend, lives. At three in the morning she is driving her car along Rameses Street when a friend of hers calls to tell her about a sniper and countless numbers of deaths and injuries. Fadwa gets out close to the Ghamra metro station and sits on the pavement. She slaps her face several times. Fadwa smacks herself and screams, her tears mingle with her snot in the pitch-dark of the completely empty street. Her mobile rings again. Her father asks her to come back home and tells her that Shadi is now with him and that they are on their way to the hospital.
Fadwa will learn from her father when he returns that the army contacted him to ask him if he knew anyone called Shadi and requested that he head for the airport immediately to take him back. When Shadi arrives, the father finds him barefoot. His clothes are ripped and he has multiple wounds. He will learn from the captain that he was beaten up by people in the Sheraton compound who thought that he was tripping and the army only managed to rescue him from their hands by the skin of their teeth, realising belatedly that he was not fully in his right mind, and were able by some miracle to find out his name and the mobile number that they called him on.
The father gets in the car after helping the exhausted Shadi to stretch out on the back seat. The captain, speaking only to him, says, “Take good care of him, Hajj, it would be a shame to let someone in that state out on his own in these troubled times.” The father wipes away a tear that he can’t fight back and takes Shadi to the hospital.
Neither the father nor Fadwa know that Shadi fled from his father in the morning in order to rescue Fadwa who had been detained with the hostages when she went out that morning. The hostages were all together in the Al-Fateh mosque and the President’s men kept smuggling them from mosque to mosque to prevent Shadi, their saviour, from arriving to rescue them. They finally came to a stop in a mosque in the Sheraton compound and Shadi managed to trick his way into it before it was evacuated at the time of evening prayer. The hostages were praying at the time, pleading with Allah to rescue them from the situation they were in. Shadi interrupted their prayers and freed them all.
He punched some of them, but that didn’t matter because it was all for their benefit at the end of the day. When Shadi was sure they had all left the mosque and were safe, he finally left the mosque himself and was met outside by the dogs of State Security wearing plain clothes. They showered blows down on him, then handed him over to the Republican Guard who in their turn gave him a good beating. When Rim learnt from her family what was happening to him, she asked the devil to call his soldiers off him and threatened that otherwise she would desert him. The devil acquiesced to her command, and requested that the President let Shadi go, so the President immediately gave an order to the Republican Guard to phone his father so that he could come and take charge of him.
A week later, on the Thursday, Fadwa would receive leaked information, in the course of her work, of a report that the President had stepped down that night. She hurriedly finishes her work and decides to go home to listen to the speech with her father so that they can share in the joy together.
At twenty minutes to ten at night, she is downloading a set of the most famous patriotic songs onto her computer at home. She connects a speaker to the computer, and decides that the celebration will be loud and last until dawn.
After the speech Fadwa was trying to stand up, but she just couldn’t. She thought of calling out for her father, then gave up the idea, out of pity for his state of health. She told herself that that was the last thing he needed. She kept quiet, and after several minutes she tried again to stand up, but she still couldn’t do it. She burst into silent tears, after which she fell asleep where she was, sitting on the chair. She felt her father waking her up and leading her to her bed. She wanted to know what the time was but she could not see the clock, she was just focused on the fact that she was actually walking now with her father.
The following day she sees a brilliant video on the computer telling the story of the events of the revolution from the very beginning. She feels deeply moved and tears run down her face. She prays “Oh, Lord, we did what we had to do, now you must play your part, oh Lord.” Her father is sitting in the living room watching terrestrial TV, when she hears a collective roar from the street and the neighbours, like the one you hear when the national team scores a goal in an African Nations Cup match. She runs out to the living room and finds her father prostrate, crying, on the floor. She follows with unbelieving eyes the breaking news titles on the TV reporting the news of the resignation. She starts to jump up and down like a crazy woman. She is yelling, believing that she is trilling cries of joy, but she doesn’t know how to do that so she just keeps on yelling. Her father watches her, sitting on the floor, and laughs amid his tears.
She prances back to the computer and starts playing the patriotic songs that she downloaded yesterday at top volume. She dances, she jumps and carries on shouting, her father comes into her room, smiling at her, dancing with her, then hugs her and cries.
The following day, in the afternoon, when Fadwa has finished getting dressed, she goes out, accompanied by her father, to bring Shadi back from the hospital, where he has spent ten days receiving intensive treatment. Shadi is calm now. His face is bloated from so much sleep and he has almost zero ability to concentrate because of the high dosage of strong medication that he has been on there.
Once home, Shadi sits in front of the TV. He watches for himself the resignation speech, which all the channels are broadcasting on continuous repeat. Fadwa sits at his side. He laughs and points at the man10 standing behind Omar Suleiman and says to Fadwa “Why is that man there doing that?” Fadwa notices for the first time the man with his scowling face and suspicious penetrating glances, and she laughs too.
Shadi asks her about dinner and she tells him that they will get a Kentucky Fried Chicken takeaway tonight. He asks her to order the 68-piece meal for him and she laughs and tells him that she’s ordered the 116-piece one for him, then he laughs too.
After a few minutes they watch the speech which is being shown again. Shadi looks contemplatively at Omar Suleiman then turns to Fadwa saying “Can you believe it? – that Suleiman was using black magic too?” Fadwa looks aghast and the delight drains from her face, indeed her right eye flickers in a nervous movement that she can’t control. Shadi observes her reaction and bursts out laughing and says, “I’m kidding you, you idiot.” She smiles slowly and cautiously, and his giggles grow louder and he repeats it to her, struggling to breathe from his laughter, “I swear to God, and even on the life of our father.” She contemplates his non-stop laughter, then she laughs too, until tears fill her eyes, and the sound of their intermingled laughter fills the space of the living room.
Eman Abdelrahim is an Egyptian short-story writer best known for her collection Rooms and Other Stories. One of her stories appears in The Book of Cairo, published by Comma Press
An extract of Laugh and the World Laughs with Me was first published in the summer 2019 issue of Index on Censorship.
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On 26 July 2019, Turkey’s highest court brought new hope to Turkish academics when it ruled that ten educators who had signed the petition “We will not be a Party to This Crime!” (Bu Suça Ortak Olmayacağız) had been tried unfairly and in violation of their rights.
The petition, created by the Kurdish rights group Academics for Peace, called on the Turkish government to “prepare the conditions for negotiations and create a road map that would lead to a lasting peace which includes the demands of the Kurdish political movement”. It was signed by over two thousand academics, all of whom were then individually charged with “conducting propaganda for a terrorist organisation”. The news that the resulting trials might violate the signatories rights sparked a firestorm of controversy in Turkey, where academia is tightly controlledand public discussion of the trials has been constrained.
Noémi Lévy-Aksu is an historian of the late Ottoman Empire and modern Turkey and an aspiring lawyer. She has French and Turkish citizenship and was working as an assistant professor at Boğaziçi University until 2017, when she was dismissed for signing the Academics for Peace petition, an experience about which she previously spoke to Index in 2018. Lévy-Aksu is currently a teaching fellow at the London School of Economics and she is involved in human rights advocacy and volunteer legal work. She still speaks out about her experience and she spoke with Index’s Sophia Paley about the latest developments in the challenges facing Turkish academics and their students.
Index: Thousands of academics have been dismissed for political reasons since the coup in 2016, most of them were not signatories of the Academics for Peace petition. Why do you think the Academics for Peace cases have gotten so much more international attention than these other cases?
Noémi Lévy-Aksu:The case of the Academics for Peace has become emblematic of the attacks on academic freedom and freedom of expression in today’s Turkey. The sole ground on which academics have been threatened, dismissed and prosecuted is their endorsement of a declaration demanding the end of state violence against civilians and the resumption of the peace process. In this respect, it is one of the multiple cases of criminalisation of critical thought and expression, which target journalists, political actors, human rights defenders as well. The degree of international attention is also due to the efforts of the Academics for Peace themselves, who have established solidarity networks in Turkey and abroad to support the signatories and raise awareness about their cases among academics, human rights defenders and policy-makers.
Index: What do you think will happen to the petition signatories who have already been sentenced, including those who legally forfeited their right to an appeal?
Lévy-Aksu: Turkey’s constitutional court has ruled that the conviction of the signatories of the Academics for Peace declaration was a violation of their rights and considered that the declaration was within the scope of academic freedom. The court also ordered that a copy of the decision be sent to the lower courts involved in the process. Accordingly, those still under prosecution should be acquitted, re-trials should be held for the ones who have received a final sentence and the regional courts of appeal should reverse the conviction for the cases that are pending on appeal.
Index: Do you think that the high court’s verdict represents a genuine turning point for academic freedom in Turkey, or is that a false hope? What is the verdict’s significance?
Lévy-Aksu: The decision of the constitutional court is an important landmark, following a few other positive decisions acknowledging the wide scope of freedom of expression in international law and Turkish legislation. In this respect, it brings hope not only to academics, but also to all those who are currently prosecuted for their opinions and statements in Turkey, as well as to the national and national human rights defenders. However, the decision was adopted with a one-vote majority and triggered harsh criticism in the pro-governmental media. Legally, the decisions of the constitutional court are binding on inferior courts, but in the last few years some inferior court judges have proved reluctant to apply those decisions, so the next few months will be crucial to evaluate the legal impact of this judgment.
Finally, one should not forget that the criminal prosecution of the Academics for Peace is just one aspect of the multiple attacks against academic freedom in today’s Turkey. Arbitrary dismissals and obstacles to critical research remain burning issues, which cannot be solved without a strong political will.
Index: According to pro-state media, 1,071 academics have signed a manifesto condemning the high court’s verdict. Why do you think they would do such a thing? Do they truly believe their fellow academics are promoting terrorism? What is their motivation?
Lévy-Aksu:The “1071” declaration was initiated by a few university rectors, who did not hesitate to stand against the highest court of the country to show their loyalty to the political power. The number “1071” was chosen as a reference the Malazgirt battle in 1071, but it soon appeared that the list was not accurate: some signatories appeared twice, while a few declared that their names had been included without their consent. One lecturer from Istanbul Aydın University even resigned to protest against her name being used without her consent. As for the more than a thousand academics who chose to endorse such a declaration, some are active supporters to the government, while others probably feared sanctions if they answered negatively to their rectors’ requests. In any case, this declaration gives an idea of the atmosphere in these universities, where administrations are completely beholden to political power and the academic staff have little choice but active or passive consent.
Index: How familiar is the Turkish public with the government’s tightening restrictions on academic freedom? What do you believe is their reaction?
Lévy-Aksu: Turkey’s public sphere is so divided that it is impossible to talk about the “Turkish public”. The case of the Academics for Peace petition has received attention both in pro-governmental and in independent media, from very different perspectives. In the pro-governmental discourse, purges in academia are presented as part of the fight against terror and its supporters, either Gulenists or pro-Kurdish. In that view, state security and the interests of the nation are involved, so academic freedom is not important. On the other hand, restrictions on academic freedom are increasingly criticised in the public sphere, as part of the broader violations of human rights and freedoms in Turkey, but also because of their negative impact on the quality of teaching and research in the Turkish academia.
Index: Speaking of the quality of Turkish higher education, how do solidarity academies differ from other private educational institutions, and what is their role in providing space for open inquiry and critical thought?
Lévy-Aksu: Solidarity academies are alternative structures created by academics who believe that new spaces are needed to resist attacks against academic freedom and critical thought. Many of them, though not all, are signatories to the Academics for Peace petition who were dismissed from their academic positions. Solidarity academies started as local, informal initiatives in various cities of Turkey, such as Eskişehir, Kocaeli, Dersim, Mersin, Izmir, Ankara and Istanbul. Several have now become more organised and obtained a legal status as associations. Contrary to private educational institutions, they are non-profit organisations and they aim to develop innovative approaches to research and teaching, with special emphasis on freedom and critical thinking. While they do not seek to reproduce the conventional academic system, these academies have connections with international research networks and scholars and they make an important contribution to knowledge production in Turkey. As an increasing number of countries witness attacks on academic freedom, such initiatives are vital to develop transnational networks of solidarity and support academics and students affected by these developments.
Index: The Turkish government is increasingly relying on anti-terrorism legislation to attack its political enemies. Why was this specific justification chosen, and how does it change the legal process?
Lévy-Aksu: Using anti-terror legislation to attack political enemies is a strategy that has been used by the Turkish successive governments for decades. As in other countries, anti-terrorism legislation enables the state to limit the rights of the suspects, as illustrated by the anti-terror law adopted after the state of emergency was lifted in July 2018. Inter alia, it allows longer custody periods and defenders and lawyers can be prevented from accessing the case file. Beyond these legal aspects, labelling critical voices as terrorist is a political strategy that aims to shape public opinion and increase support of the government. It presents the prosecution and imprisonment of opponents as legitimate and necessary for the interests of the nation.
Index: The Turkish Constitution includes provisions forbidding “[u]niversities, members of the teaching staff and their assistants” from engaging “in activities directed against the existence and independence of the State, and against the integrity and indivisibility of the Nation and the Country”. This unity of the nation includes linguistic and cultural unity, as shown in the mandate that “No language other than Turkish shall be taught as a mother tongue to Turkish citizens at any institutions of training or education”. Do these guarantees of a unitary ethnostate for Turks influence how the Academics for Peace petition signatories and others were treated?
Lévy-Aksu: This question raises several important issues which it is impossible to fully answer here. The first issue is related to the tension between academic freedom and national security. This is not specific to Turkey (see for instance the much debated Prevent legislation in the UK), but since the beginning of the republic, regardless of the political orientation of the government (and with a few exceptions), the state’s approach to academic freedom has been particularly restrictive in Turkey.
The second issue has to do with Turkish nationalism and its negative perception of cultural and linguistic diversity, which has constituted an important aspect of the Kurdish issue in the last decades. Education in their mother tongue is a recurrent demand of the Kurdish rights movement. While the government seemed willing to develop a more conciliatory approach to the question during the peace negotiations, since the process collapsed, a rigid version of Turkish nationalism has been on the rise again. As an urgent call to stop state violence against civilians, the declaration of the Academics for Peace was not directly related to the question of cultural rights, but it emphasised the need for a peaceful resolution to a conflict that has lasted for decades. The attacks against the signatories illustrate how, under the current government, human rights and democratic values are treated as subversive when they are used to articulate a critique of the state. Meanwhile, countless citizens have been imprisoned or prosecuted for their political and cultural activities on behalf of Kurdish rights and democracy.
Index: Some observers emphasise the worsening situation for academics after the failed coup of 2016. Do you agree that 2016 was the turning point, or if not, when did these problems begin?
Lévy-Aksu: Attacks on academic freedom did not start with the failed coup of 2016, nor actually with the AKP government. With respect to the Academics for Peace signatories, the repression started right after the petition was released in January 2016. The signatories were immediately the targets of hate speech, the first dismissals occurred, and four signatories were imprisoned. However, after a state of emergency was proclaimed in July 2016, the process dramatically accelerated and the purges targeting Gulenists, the Academics for Peace signatories and other opponents became massive in higher education, as in other sectors. The civil servants dismissed by the emergency decrees did not only lose their jobs: their passports were revoked, and they received a life-long ban on public service. In addition, they continue to face informal practices of black listing and discrimination. This process has been described as “civil death” by some signatories and continue to have dramatic moral and material consequences.
Index: Are you worried or hopeful for the future of Turkey’s education system, and why?
Lévy-Aksu: The current situation of Turkey’s education system is extremely worrying. Successive reforms implemented in primary and secondary education have further disorganised the system, and all levels of education have experienced purges. Higher education has been decimated by these purges. Even though not all critical academics have been dismissed, the space for academic freedom has dramatically shrunk in all universities and many choose self-censorship to avoid possible sanctions. Both the Turkish Higher Education Council and the Scientific and Technological Research Council (TUBITAK) have been discredited by their prominent role in the dismissal and marginalisation of critical scholars. The students are the main victims of this process, both because they have lost many dedicated and inspiring teachers, but also because they are themselves targeted by repression, both at the disciplinary and criminal levels. There are tens of thousands students imprisoned today in Turkey.
Yet, the resilience of civil society in Turkey is remarkable, and international solidarity has enabled a number of critical scholars to continue their research away from Turkish academia. It is my hope that the experience academics have gained of alternative structures such as the solidarity academies and the international networks developed during these years will contribute to transforming the education system for the better when there is a political opening. [/vc_column_text][vc_basic_grid post_type=”post” max_items=”4″ element_width=”6″ grid_id=”vc_gid:1566481960332-5be62801-2970-10″ taxonomies=”8843″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”We report on the border region’s long-term crackdown on communications well before the latest news blackout. Rituparna Chatterjee, talked to academics and journalists about what it has been like to live there” google_fonts=”font_family:Libre%20Baskerville%3Aregular%2Citalic%2C700|font_style:400%20italic%3A400%3Aitalic”][vc_column_text]
When the Indian government revoked Article 370 of the constitution, which had guaranteed Jammu and Kashmir autonomy, in early August 2019 there began a news blackout in the region.
Television, telephone and internet links were cut, opposition leaders arrested and no one knew what was happening. Many local journalists became uncontactable.
However even before the current crisis, it was difficult to get news out of Jammu and Kashmir. For many years, stringent restrictions on freedom of expression had become a way of life in this troubled border state.
Mobile phone signals were often blocked, and the internet was regularly turned off.
This had affected journalists’ ability to cover the region properly and meant that it was hard to get any impartial news out of the area.
Index spoke to academics and residents in July 2019 about what happened before the current crisis imposed.
For those living and working in this border state, forced co-existence with the army had become a way of life. Generations of Kashmir’s children have grown up in the shadow of the gun. The normalisation of the cheek-by-jowl existence with the armed forces, posted in the state to maintain peace, has been bitterly criticised time and again by human rights activists. In December 2018, Amnesty International observed: “A worrying pattern is emerging in Kashmir where security forces are increasingly using indiscriminate and excessive force against civilians.”
A recent report, that India rejected as “false and motivated”, by the UN Human Rights Council stated that the suppression of human rights continued unabated in the region following the Pulwama attack. (A militant attack on a police convoy on the Jammu–Srinagar highway in February 2019 in Kashmir’s Pulwama district had led to the deaths of 40 people.)
“In no other state will you see more faujis [soldiers] than residents,” said Asif Iqbal (name changed for his safety), a hotel manager in the town of Kangan, in the Ganderbal district. Even peaceful protests by locals result in disproportionate violence, he claims.
He says to live in “constant fear” of the ever-present military, wary of phones being tapped, is also censorship.
In Jammu and Kashmir, local journalists say there are particular challenges they face while reporting conflict.
“It’s like walking on the edge of a sharp sword,” one of them, Bilal Hussain, told Index. This is a sentiment that resonates with others reporting from there. Hussain is referring to the balance commentators from Kashmir have to strike to appear neutral while highlighting problems faced by locals in this border state with one of the world’s largest military presences and a regimented way of life.
Repeated attempts by Index to contact Hussain after the revocation of Article 370 have failed. His phone remains out of reach as of 23 August.
Journalists say they are quick to be labelled as working against the nation’s interest and harassed if the state perceives there to be even the slightest hint of sympathy in what they write towards those resisting Indian rule. Meanwhile, they run the risk of being labelled as statists by separatists if they hold up the state’s established position on the territorial sovereignty of Kashmir.
It’s a conflict that has widowed women, radicalised young men, killed children caught in the crossfire between armed forces and protesters, and blinded youths due to the use of pellet guns. Cross-border terrorism has taken the lives of hundreds of soldiers posted to the region, drawn from villages and towns in other parts of the country. India blames neighbouring state Pakistan of harbouring militants — a claim Pakistan denies — who routinely launch attacks on Indian forces after crossing the border.
Iqbal said: “People just want their rights. Even for peaceful protests, tear gas and pellet guns are used, whereas in every other state police only use lathis [wooden sticks]. We’re afraid to [go] out alone after 8.30pm or 9pm without a security escort for fear of being detained by the police.” Pellet guns were introduced in 2010 to subdue mass street protests.
A recent study by the Jammu Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society (JKCCS), a human rights organisation, found that between January and June this year a total of 271 people were killed – 108 from the Indian armed forces, 43 civilians and 120 militants – in an escalation of violence following the Pulwama attack.
Kashmiri scholar Sheikh Showkat Hussain, who teaches international law and human rights at the Central University of Kashmir, says censorship of the press has affected the people’s right to self-determination. “In order to crush the resistance, [the government] restricts the media, they restrict the information, social media and the internet. Local dailies are denied advertisements,” he said. In 2010, he says, there was censoring of electronic press in the state followed by a freeze on government advertising – the same year some local daily titles refused to publish some of his columns, “possibly fearing backlash from the government” for giving his views a platform.
In the absence of a private sector in Kashmir, newspaper ads become a tool for those in power to control the narrative. Newspapers are mainly dependent on government advertisements and are incapacitated when the establishment puts a freeze on them.
“Indian media remains indifferent to the plight of Kashmiris,” Hussain said. “The root of alienation is denial of rights.” In recent months, as a precursor to the takeover, two of Kashmir’s newspapers had stopped getting government ads and there was a crackdown on local press following the re-election of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s right-wing government.
Ghulam Jeelani Qadri, the publisher of the Urdu-language newspaper Daily Afaaq, was arrested in June over a case dating back to 1990, when Qadri published a statement by a militant group.
[/vc_column_text][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/4″][vc_icon icon_fontawesome=”fa fa-quote-left” color=”custom” size=”xl” align=”right” custom_color=”#dd3333″][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”3/4″][vc_custom_heading text=”Living in a militarised area is oppressive. Nobody wants to live like that.” font_container=”tag:h3|text_align:left” google_fonts=”font_family:Libre%20Baskerville%3Aregular%2Citalic%2C700|font_style:400%20italic%3A400%3Aitalic”][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]
Journalist Aasif Sultan was arrested last year and is still in custody. Sultan had written a story commemorating the second anniversary of the death of Buhran Wani, a commander of the pro-Pakistan militant group Hizbul Mujahideen. His death had triggered protests in the Kashmir Valley.
But the situation is worse for women in Kashmir, who fight several layers of discrimination.
An independent female journalist in Pulwama district, said: “As a Kashmiri, you cannot not be neutral, but … you will be attacked by one side or the other – considered either a separatist or a statist. You are balancing a thin line.” She speaks of friends incarcerated by the police under the controversial Public Safety Act – a law that has been condemned by rights organisations as a political tool to curb dissent.
“Being a Kashmiri woman, there is a layered and structural institutionalisation of patriarchy – first we are women, then Muslim, then we are in a conflict zone… when you go out you don’t know if you will come back or not,” she said.
Kashmir is a largely conservative society with a majority-Muslim population, and women still face many curbs. Although the trend is slowly shifting, they are not encouraged to take up careers in journalism, for example. “Even now, a girl with a camera is still a shock for many people in the suburbs,” said the woman journalist. (One of the justifications given by the government for revoking Article 370 has been the restitution of the rights enjoyed by women elsewhere in India.) “We are now often prone to censoring ourselves — How is this going to impact me? Is any story worth my life?”
She says that in a recent election to the Kashmir Press Council, not a single woman was encouraged to contest.
After every violent incident in Kashmir, the government shuts down the internet to stop the spread of rumours and propaganda. A report by the Software Freedom Law Centre, which tracks internet shutdowns in India, found that the authorities were disconnecting the internet at a rate of 10 times a month in Jammu and Kashmir.
“After the Amarnath row [when protests broke out over the transfer of land to the cave shrine of Amarnath], for a year our pre-paid sim cards did not work, and SMS services were blocked for six or seven months. Even now, three or four days a week the internet remains suspended,” she said.
As with Hussain, Index has not been able to contact the female journalist following the lockdown in Kashmir and is concerned about naming her.
After the communication blockade, people were reported to be queuing outside government offices for hours for just two-minute phone conversations with family members outside Kashmir.
However, not all journalists conversant with Kashmir’s politics hold the same view on the militarisation of the region. Some consider it necessary to keep at bay arch-rival Pakistan and militants that allegedly train across the border to launch covert operations against India.
“Kashmir isn’t just another border with free access or marked boundaries at all locations,” said Aditya Raj Kaul, a Srinagar-born editor who covers strategic affairs and internal security for a business media network. “For the last few decades, state-sponsored terrorism from Pakistan has led to violence and chaos in the state which has further resulted in killings of several journalists, writers and activists. For instance, in recent times several political activists actively campaigning for democratic polls have been gunned down by terrorists.
Referring to the founding editor of Srinagar-based newspaper Rising Kashmir, who was gunned down outside his office, Kaul added: “Shujaat Bukhari was killed by terrorists last year just after he returned from Dubai, where he was participating in a peace summit. Similarly, several journalists and writers face pressure from radical elements to tow a particular line against the state or face consequences.
“There is a fear [and] psychosis created by local politicians for their vested interests. Local media in Kashmir that have been found critical of the state and the establishment haven’t faced any hurdles or threats to their livelihoods or professional lives.”
Senior journalist and author Shiv Aroor said: “The intention is to demilitarise as much as possible, but you have to remember that we are dealing with an unpredictable, insidious country on the other side – a country that has proven not to care about civilian life and continues a proxy war through militant groups which are frequently harming the local population and which has taken locals psychologically hostage. They are not allowing things to normalise, and eventually it becomes a vicious circle in which all incentive for economic progress of the region is not being allowed to take hold.”
There are pockets in Kashmir’s tentative border where commercial interests have defied the terrorists, but trade is disrupted every time there’s an incident or a border skirmish.
“You are facing an international threat here. It’s a question of sovereignty …When there are visible attempts to take control of [Indian] territory, you need the army to have boots on the ground because Kashmir is unlike any other border,” said Aroor, who has covered the Indian military for more than a decade.
“Living in a militarised area is oppressive. Nobody wants to live like that,” he added, but in the face of stone-pelting by youths, the army and the police often have to make split-second decisions to protect not just themselves but the lives of civilians and stop the possibility of an escalation of violence.
As Kashmir remains tense, civil rights activists are keeping up their pressure on the government to open up communication lines — a goodwill measure that they say will help gain back the trust of the Kashmiri people.
Rituparna Chatterjee is a freelance journalist based in New Delhi
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_custom_heading text=”How governments use power to undermine justice and freedom” font_container=”tag:h3|text_align:left” link=”url:https%3A%2F%2Fwww.indexoncensorship.org%2F2019%2F06%2Fmagazine-judged-how-governments-use-power-to-undermine-justice-and-freedom%2F|||”][vc_column_text]The summer 2019 Index on Censorship magazine looks at the narrowing gap between a nation’s leader and its judges and lawyers.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner][vc_single_image image=”107686″ img_size=”full” onclick=”custom_link” link=”https://www.indexoncensorship.org/2019/06/magazine-judged-how-governments-use-power-to-undermine-justice-and-freedom/”][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_custom_heading text=”Subscribe” font_container=”tag:h3|text_align:left”][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner][vc_column_text]In print, online. In your mailbox, on your iPad.
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[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”108512″ img_size=”full”][vc_column_text]”[I] contemplate with dread the erasure of other voices, of unwritten novels, poems whispered or swallowed for fear of being overheard by the wrong people… that thought is a nightmare. As though a whole universe is being described in invisible ink,” Toni Morrison wrote of the prospect of censorship.
Morrison — a revered author, critic, professor, and editor of literature focussed on the African-American experience — died on the evening of 6 August, due to complications from pneumonia. She was 88.
Morrison was no stranger to the insidious effects of censorship. Long a vocal advocate against censorship, she once argued that “The same sensibilities that informed those people to make it a criminal act for black people to read are the ancestors of the same people who are making it a criminal act for their own children to read.” A favorite of many high school teachers and college professors, Morrison’s books are frequently challenged or banned for graphic violence, rape, overt sexuality, and horrific racism. As recently as 2017, Fairfax County in Virginia drafted legislation that would prohibit the teaching of books with sexual themes in public schools, legislation that was spurred by the decision to include Morrison’s Beloved in a high school curriculum (the bill is popularly known as the “Beloved Bill”). Beloved, published in 1987, is Morrison’s best-known work, which earned her the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction.
Morrison often invoked her upbringing in advocating against censorship, speaking about how early exposure to a diversity of literary narratives inspired her to speak out. “If you can read, they can’t cheat you; if you can’t read, they can defeat you,” she said. Morrison was born Chloe Wofford in Lorain, Ohio in 1931. Her father, George Wofford, was born and raised in Georgia, before moving north to the racially integrated suburb of Lorain after witnessing the lynching of two black businessmen in his hometown. She frequently spoke about the love of books that her family instilled in her from an early age, immersing her in traditional African folktales and encouraging her to read Leo Tolstoy and Jane Austen.
After graduating high school, she went on to earn a BA in English from the historically black Howard University, and a master’s of arts from Cornell University. She taught at Texas Southern University for two years, then returned to Howard. She taught at Howard for seven years, where she met Harold Morrison, who she eventually married and with whom she had two children, Ford and Slade. She and Harold divorced in 1964.
While raising two young children, she left Howard for a job as an editor at Random House Publishers. While at Random House, she worked to promote narratives of the black experience in America, a literary genre she saw as woefully underdeveloped in the predominantly white publishing world — she was the first black woman to hold the position of senior editor at Random House. She helped to give a generation of black writers a platform.
While at Howard, she had begun work on The Bluest Eye, which was published in 1970 to critical acclaim despite initially low sales. The Bluest Eye was followed by Sula (1973), Song of Solomon (1977), Tar Baby (1981), and Beloved, all of which brought her national renown, and several nominations for prestigious book awards. She continued publishing novels, eleven in total, for the rest of her life — her last novel, God Help the Child, was published in 2015. In addition to novels, Morrison wrote several short stories, two plays, the libretto to an opera performed by the New York City Opera, and several children’s books (some of which were co-written with her late son, Slade, who died of pancreatic cancer at 45). In addition to Howard University and Texas Southern University, she taught at the State University of New York, Rutgers University, Bard College, Cornell University, and finally Princeton University, to which she donated her papers.
Morrison once spoke about efforts to ban Song of Solomon in prisons, out of fear that her writing might incite the incarcerated to riot. Paraphrasing Morrison in an article for the National Coalition on Censorship, Marilyn Dahl wrote that a problem with a recording device caused some confusion over the word “riot” — the motivation for the ban may have instead been the fear that her work would incite prisoners to “write.” “But ‘riot’ or ‘write,’” Dahl mused, “which would ultimately be the most dangerous?”
To give voice to the powerless was Morrison’s lifelong mission, a mission she fulfilled by telling stories about the experience of the powerless in America. To deny prisoners access to stories that speak to their experiences — America’s prison population is disproportionately men of color — is to achieve the aim of censorship many times over: it not only restricts access to ideas, but also restricts the ability of the powerless to develop their own, and to be heard.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”Banned Books Week / 22-28 Sept 2019″ use_theme_fonts=”yes” link=”url:https%3A%2F%2Fwww.bannedbooksweek.org.uk%2F|||”][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/4″][vc_single_image image=”103109″ img_size=”full” onclick=”custom_link” link=”https://www.bannedbooksweek.org.uk/”][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”3/4″][vc_column_text]
Banned Books Week UK is a nationwide campaign for radical readers and rebellious readers of all ages celebrate the freedom to read. Between 22 – 28 September 2019, bookshops, libraries, schools, literary festivals and publishers will be hosting events and making noise about some of the most sordid, subversive, sensational and taboo-busting books around.
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