Donald Trump, who controversially called for a temporary ban on Muslims entering the USA, will not be banned from entering the UK after a debate over whether he should be allowed to enter the UK. In September 2015, Tyler, the Creator, an American hip-hop artist known for his controversial lyrics, did not fare so well.
On 26 August 2015, the musician was banned from entering the UK because of words he had penned for songs released in 2009. That day, Tyler explained the situation on Twitter, saying: “BASED ON LYRICS FROM 2009 I AM NOT ALLOWED IN THE UK FOR 3-5 YEARS (although I was there 8 weeks ago) THAT IS WHY THE SHOWS WERE CANCELLED.”
Speaking to Vice at the time, Index on Censorship’s chief executive Jodie Ginsberg said: “The British government has talked repeatedly in recent months about the importance of free expression and yet shown again and again through its actions that this commitment is half-hearted. Free expression includes allowing those whose speech others find offensive to express themselves. Tyler, the Creator, should be allowed to perform.”
Tyler’s lyrics have a tendency to push buttons, with his adopted alter ego Wolf Haley spitting rhymes about raping pregnant women and using a hefty variety of slurs. However, he stands firm on the fact that his lyrical content in no way a represents him as an individual and what he believes. In an interview with the Guardian, he said: “The thing that irks me about it is that the paper saying I am denied entry to UK clearly states that these songs were written from [the perspective of] an alter ego — which means they obviously did some research on these songs that they’re detaining me for.”
Additionally, in one of his most popular tracks, Radicals, he opens the song saying: “Hey, don’t do anything I say in this song, okay? It’s fuckin’ fiction. If anything happens, don’t fuckin’ blame me, white America, fuck Bill O’Reilly.” Seconds after the disclaimer, the MC launches into a tornado of aggressive bass and lines about defying what others think of him.
Tyler wasn’t the first rapper to be banned from the UK; both Busta Rhymes and Snoop Dogg have been denied entry because of convictions for criminal offences in the US. However, he is the first to be denied due to the content of his art.
Index on Censorship has teamed up with the producers of the award-winning They Will Have To Kill Us First to create the Music in Exile Fund to support musicians facing censorship globally. You can donate here, or by texting “BAND61 £10” to 70070 to give £10.
What’s the difference between “offensive” and “grossly offensive”? Is it, as is said of the erotica versus pornography, the difference between using a feather and using a whole chicken?
Last week in Belfast, it was left to District Judge Liam McNally to decide whether a solitary quill or an entire bird had been deployed by an Evangelical preacher who, in May 2014, told his congregation that Islam was a “Satanic” doctrine and that he did not trust Muslims.
Pastor James McConnell’s sermon caused considerable controversy, which escalated when he appeared on the BBC’s Stephen Nolan show and refused to back down. Then-first-minister Peter Robinson, of the Democratic Unionist Party, attempted to pour oil on troubled water by saying he wouldn’t trust a Muslim on the big issues, but he’d happily send one down to the shops for him.
Anyway, more than a year later, in June 2015, prosecutors charged McConnell not, as one might imagine, with incitement to religious hatred, but with causing the sending “by means of a public electronic communications network a message or other matter that is grossly offensive or of an indecent, obscene or menacing character”.
That is Section 127 of the Communications Act, a law which, as has been pointed out here and elsewhere many times before, was designed to prosecute heavy breathers harassing telephone operators in the 1930s. It was not ever supposed to be used against fire and brimstone preachers in Northern Irish megachurches. At the time, this column questioned the Public Prosecution Service’s use of this instrument. The PPS must have thought this was the best means of securing a conviction, but it is odd that an online stream of a sermon should be singled out as a grossly offensive message, and a rather dangerous precedent for broadcasters, news publications, bloggers and, as we have seen many times before, social media users. If a recording of a sermon available on the web is liable to prosecution under the Communications Act, why not, say, a newspaper column, or even a documentary in which “offensive” views are aired?
As it turned out, McConnell was found not guilty by Judge McNally last week, on the basis that the judge was unwilling to attach the “grossly” description that turns being offensive into an offence. In a judgment, which hinted at irritation with all parties, McNally made it clear that yes, the pastor’s statements were offensive, and that offence could have been avoided:
“He is a man with strong, passionate and sincerely held beliefs,” the judge found. “In my view, Pastor McConnell’s mindset was that he was preaching to the converted in the form of his own congregation and like-minded people who were listening to his service rather than preaching to the worldwide internet. His passion and enthusiasm for his subject caused him to, so to speak, “lose the run of himself”. Having said that, I am satisfied that … he must have realised that there was a risk of offence being caused and, unfortunately, ignored it.”
He also hinted that McConnell was ignorant about Islam — that he did not demonstrate any theological justifications for his views on the religion.
But McNally’s conclusion raised a question over why the case had come up: “The courts need to be very careful not to criminalise speech which, however contemptible, is no more than offensive. It is not the task of the criminal law to censor offensive utterances. Accordingly I find Pastor McConnell not guilty of both charges.”
This is a fine and cheering judgment in an age when we could reasonably have expected it to have gone the other way. McNally has grasped, one can see, that the state has no place interfering in free expression of thought and belief, barring perhaps the prevention of imminent violence.
In the same week as this little triumph for free speech, we marked the first anniversary of the Paris attacks on Charlie Hebdo and a kosher supermarket.
One braced for repeats of the equivocation that followed the murders last year, and sure enough, Professor Nigel Biggar of Oxford University obliged, writing of the slain Charlie staff in the Times that: “Even if we have a legal right to spit on other people’s sacred cows for the sheer, malicious fun of it, we have no moral permission.”
What’s fascinating about Biggar’s vicarish utterances (he does at least concede “Charlie’s journalists certainly didn’t deserve to die”, which is good of him) is the idea that someone is, or should be, in a position to grant permission to others regarding what they can or cannot say, write, or draw. The men who carried out the slaughter at Charlie Hebdo certainly believed they should decide who is allowed say what: one suspects in their own way, the likes of Nigel Biggar’s do too.
It’s this authoritarian impulse, whether carried out with weapons, secular laws or smug religious entitlement, that should be confronted. A recent Irish Times editorial addressing the issue of offence and the McConnell case, expressed this sentiment well, stating that ultimately it is the reader who decides “how civilised debate will be conducted. Not the courts, regulators, overzealous prosecutors, politically-correct civil society groups, or even over-prescriptive press councils”.
It is to his credit Judge McNally understood this as he let the unpleasant Pastor McConnell walk free. We should carry his lesson with us into 2016.
August 2015: opening of the Cuban Film Posters exhibition Soy Cuba as part of World Cinema Amsterdam. Credit: Shutterstock / Cloud Mine Amsterdam
“[T]he fault of many of our intellectuals and artists is to be found in their ‘original sin’: they are not authentically revolutionary.”
— Che Guevara, Man and Socialism in Cuba, 1965
Last year was a good one for Cuban artists. With renewed diplomatic relations with the US, a boom in Latin American art and Cuba’s exceptional artistic talent — fostered through institutions such as the Instituto Superior de Arte in Havana — works by prominent Cuban artists fetched top dollar at international auctions, and the Cuban film industry was firmly in the international spotlight.
While the end of the embargo brought with it hope for political liberalisation on the island, as with previous periods of promise in Cuban history cases of repression and censorship of dissident artists were rife in 2015.
So let’s begin again: Last year was a good one for Cuban artists who adhere to the country’s long-established revolutionary narrative and don’t embarrass the regime.
The fear of censorship for art that is critical of the government has been fostered through decades of laws and repression that limit freedom of expression. This can mean stigmatisation, the loss of employment and even imprisonment. Charges such as “social dangerousness” and insulting national symbols are so vague they make convictions very easy.
“Artists are among the most privileged people in Cuban society — they make money in hard currency, travel, have frequent interaction with foreigners and they don’t have boring jobs,” explains Coco Fusco, a Cuban-American artist, 2016 Index Freedom of Expression Awards nominee and author of Dangerous Moves: Performance and Politics in Cuba. “Artists function as a window display in Cuba; proof of the success of the system.”
But if an artist engages in political confrontations, they can draw unwanted attention, says Fusco.
One artist accused of doing just that is critically-acclaimed Cuban director and fellow nominee for this year’s Index Awards Juan Carlos Cremata. In 2015, he staged a production of Eugene Ionesco’s Exit the King, about an ageing ruler who refuses to give up power. The play lasted two performances before being shut down by the National Council of Theatre Arts and the Centre for Theatre in Havana.
“Exit the King was banned because according to the minister of culture and the secret police we were mocking Fidel Castro,” Cremata told Index on Censorship. “This wasn’t really true; what they fear is real revolutionary speech in theatre.”
When he spoke out against the move, Cuban authorities terminated his theatre contract, effectively dissolving his company, El Ingenio.
Cremata, whose career spans three decades, confesses the shutting down of Exit the King took him by surprise. “We are living in the 21st century, and according to the official propaganda, Cuba is changing and people can talk about anything,” he says. “This, as it turns out, is a big lie by people who are still dreaming of the revolution.”
“With their censorship, they show how stupid, retrograde and archaic their politics are,” he says.
As so much funding for artists comes from the state, non-conformist artists often find themselves in difficult financial situations. “I’ve had to reinvent my life,” Cremata says. “I’m trying to receive some help from friends who offer to work with me for free, but this will not be eternal, as they have families.”
Cremata himself has an adopted daughter and has her future to think about. “I truly believe life will change and better times will come with or without their approval, but it is very, very hard.”
Art has always been at the centre of Cuban culture, but under Fidel Castro it became a tool for spreading socialist ideas and censorship a tool for tackling dissent. Evidently, Cuba isn’t entirely post-Fidel, explains Fusco. “Fidel is still alive, his brother is in charge and his dynasty is firmly ensconced in the power, with sons, nieces and nephews in key positions,” she says. “Although I don’t think anyone over the age of 10 in Cuba believes the rhetoric anymore.”
Very few may believe the rhetoric, but going against it can still land you in prison, as was the case with Index Awards nominee Danilo Maldonado, the graffiti artist also known as El Sexto. Maldonado organised a performance called Animal Farm for Christmas 2014, where he intended to release two pigs with the names of Raúl and Fidel Castro painted on them. He was arrested on his way to carry out the performance and spent 10 months in prison without trial.
International human rights organisations condemned his imprisonment — during which he was on a month-long hunger strike — as an attack on freedom of expression.
The prospect for improving political freedoms doesn’t look good, and anyone who expected any different due to Cuba’s normalisation of relations with the US is naive, says Fusco.
“Washington is not promoting policy changes to improve human rights,” she says. “Washington is promoting policy changes to 1. develop better ways to exert political influence in Cuba; 2. to revise immigration policies and control the steep increase in Cuban illegal migration to the US; 3. to give US businesses and investment opportunity that they need (particularly agribusiness); 4. to avoid a tumultuous transition at the end of Raul Castro’s term in power that would produce more regional instability (i.e. the US does not want another Iraq, Libya or Syria).”
Even within Cuba there is an absence of discussion about civil liberties, strong voices of criticism of state controls and collective artist-based efforts to promote liberalisation.
“Artists are generally afraid to mingle with dissidents,” says Fusco. “There are a few bloggers who post stories about confrontations with police and political prisoners, a few older human rights activists who collect information about detentions and prison conditions, a handful of opposition groups who advocate for political reforms, but they have virtually no influence on the government.”
In the past, Cuban authorities used the US embargo as an excuse to justify restrictions on freedom of expression. Now that the excuses are running out, it is time for the Cuban government allow its dissidents the same freedoms as its conformists.
Ryan McChrystal is the assistant editor, online at Index on Censorship
On the anniversary of the brutal attack on the offices of Charlie Hebdo we, the undersigned, reaffirm our commitment to the defence of the right to freedom of expression, even when that right is being used to express views that some may consider offensive.
The Charlie Hebdo attack, which left 11 dead and 12 wounded, was a horrific reminder of the violence to which journalists, artists and other critical voices are subjected in a global atmosphere marked by increasing intolerance of dissent. The killings inaugurated a year that has proved especially challenging for proponents of freedom of opinion.
Non-state actors perpetrated violence against their critics largely with impunity, including the brutal murders of four secular bloggers in Bangladesh by Islamist extremists, and the killing of an academic, M M Kalburgi, who wrote critically against Hindu fundamentalism in India.
Despite the turnout of world leaders on the streets of Paris in an unprecedented display of solidarity with free expression following the Charlie Hebdo murders, artists and writers faced intense repression from governments throughout the year. In Malaysia, cartoonist Zunar is facing a possible 43-year prison sentence for alleged ‘sedition’; in Iran, cartoonist Atena Fardaghani is serving a 12-year sentence for a political cartoon; and in Saudi Arabia, Palestinian poet Ashraf Fayadh was sentenced to death for the views he expressed in his poetry.
Perhaps the most far-reaching threats to freedom of expression in 2015 came from governments ostensibly motivated by security concerns. Following the attack on Charlie Hebdo, 11 interior ministers from European Union countries including France, Britain and Germany issued a statement in which they called on Internet service providers to identify and remove online content ‘that aims to incite hatred and terror.’ In July, the French Senate passed a controversial law giving sweeping new powers to the intelligence agencies to spy on citizens, which the UN Human Rights Committee categorised as “excessively broad”.
This kind of governmental response is chilling because a particularly insidious threat to our right to free expression is self-censorship. In order to fully exercise the right to freedom of expression, individuals must be able to communicate without fear of intrusion by the State. Under international law, the right to freedom of expression also protects speech that some may find shocking, offensive or disturbing. Importantly, the right to freedom of expression means that those who feel offended also have the right to challenge others through free debate and open discussion, or through peaceful protest.
On the anniversary of the Charlie Hebdo attacks, we, the undersigned, call on all Governments to:
Uphold their international obligations to protect the rights of freedom of expression and information for all, and especially for journalists, writers, artists and human rights defenders to publish, write and speak freely;
Promote a safe and enabling environment for those who exercise their right to freedom of expression, and ensure that journalists, artists and human rights defenders may perform their work without interference;
Combat impunity for threats and violations aimed at journalists and others exercising their right to freedom of expression, and ensure impartial, timely and thorough investigations that bring the executors and masterminds behind such crimes to justice. Also ensure victims and their families have expedient access to appropriate remedies;
Repeal legislation which restricts the right to legitimate freedom of expression, especially vague and overbroad national security, sedition, obscenity, blasphemy and criminal defamation laws, and other legislation used to imprison, harass and silence critical voices, including on social media and online;
Ensure that respect for human rights is at the heart of communication surveillance policy. Laws and legal standards governing communication surveillance must therefore be updated, strengthened and brought under legislative and judicial control. Any interference can only be justified if it is clearly defined by law, pursues a legitimate aim and is strictly necessary to the aim pursued.
PEN International
ActiveWatch – Media Monitoring Agency
Adil Soz – International Foundation for Protection of Freedom of Speech
Africa Freedom of Information Centre
ARTICLE 19
Bahrain Center for Human Rights
Belarusian Association of Journalists
Brazilian Association for Investigative Journalism
Bytes for All
Cambodian Center for Human Rights
Canadian Journalists for Free Expression
Center for Independent Journalism – Romania
Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility
Comité por la Libre Expresión – C-Libre
Committee to Protect Journalists
Electronic Frontier Foundation
Foundation for Press Freedom – FLIP
Freedom Forum
Fundamedios – Andean Foundation for Media Observation and Study
Globe International Center
Independent Journalism Center – Moldova
Index on Censorship
Initiative for Freedom of Expression – Turkey
Institute for the Studies on Free Flow of Information
Instituto de Prensa y Libertad de Expresión – IPLEX
Instituto Prensa y Sociedad de Venezuela
International Federation of Journalists
International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions
International Press Institute
International Publishers Association
Journaliste en danger
Maharat Foundation
MARCH
Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance
Media Foundation for West Africa
National Union of Somali Journalists
Observatorio Latinoamericano para la Libertad de Expresión – OLA
Pacific Islands News Association
Palestinian Center for Development and Media Freedoms – MADA
PEN American Center
PEN Canada
Reporters Without Borders
South East European Network for Professionalization of Media
Vigilance pour la Démocratie et l’État Civique
World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters – AMARC
PEN Mali
PEN Kenya
PEN Nigeria
PEN South Africa
PEN Eritrea in Exile
PEN Zambia
PEN Afrikaans
PEN Ethiopia
PEN Lebanon
Palestinian PEN
Turkish PEN
PEN Quebec
PEN Colombia
PEN Peru
PEN Bolivia
PEN San Miguel
PEN USA
English PEN
Icelandic PEN
PEN Norway
Portuguese PEN
PEN Bosnia
PEN Croatia
Danish PEN
PEN Netherlands
German PEN
Finnish PEN
Wales PEN Cymru
Slovenian PEN
PEN Suisse Romand
Flanders PEN
PEN Trieste
Russian PEN
PEN Japan
