[vc_row full_width=”stretch_row_content_no_spaces” css_animation=”fadeIn” css=”.vc_custom_1485788783247{padding-top: 250px !important;padding-bottom: 250px !important;background-image: url(https://www.indexoncensorship.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/awards2012_1460x490.jpg?id=81042) !important;background-position: center !important;background-repeat: no-repeat !important;background-size: cover !important;}”][vc_column][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row css=”.vc_custom_1472525914065{margin-top: -150px !important;}”][vc_column][vc_row_inner equal_height=”yes” content_placement=”middle”][vc_column_inner el_class=”awards-inside-desc” width=”1/2″][vc_custom_heading text=”FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION AWARDS 2012″ use_theme_fonts=”yes”][vc_column_text]Index on Censorship’s Freedom of Expression Awards exist to celebrate individuals or groups who have had a significant impact fighting censorship anywhere in the world.
Awards were offered in four categories: Arts, Campaigning, Journalism and Innovation
There was a special award to mark Index’s 40th anniversary
Winners were honoured at a gala celebration in London at the St. Pancras Renaissance London Hotel
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/2″][vc_video link=”https://www.youtube.com/v/-dL6eCTwUi4″][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row css=”.vc_custom_1472608310682{margin-top: 0px !important;margin-bottom: 20px !important;}”][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”WINNERS” font_container=”tag:h1|text_align:center” use_theme_fonts=”yes” css=”.vc_custom_1477036676595{margin-top: 0px !important;}”][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][staff name=”Idrak Abbasov” title=”The Guardian Journalism Award” color=”#28a7cc” profile_image=”81047″]Idrak Abbasov is an Azerbaijani journalist whose investigative work has put his life in danger. Abbasov reports for the newspaper Ayna-Zerkalo and for the Institute for War & Peace Reporting, which aims to give voice to people at the front line of conflict and crisis. On 9 September 2011, after Abbasov investigated the activities of a local oil company, the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan (SOCAR) sent bulldozers to his family’s home. SOCAR claimed ownership of the site as part of a project to develop local oil resources with Global Energy Azerbaijan Ltd. His parents and brother were hospitalised after being attacked by the company’s security service during the incident. No eviction notice had been lodged in a court, as is required by law, and no neighbouring residences (including that of the parliamentary speaker) were disturbed. It is believed that bulldozers targeted the journalist’s home because of his work monitoring human rights. The violence, threats, and harassment of Abbasov and his family continues. Later that month, his parents were again attacked at their home. The perpetrators arrived in a car bearing government licence plates. One reportedly said: “Tell Idrak to get smarter, or we will cut off his ears.” The Azerbaijanii government is notorious for using legal loopholes to threaten its opponents. Last year the home of human rights activist Leyla Yunus, the founder of the Institute for Peace and Democracy, was bulldozed on 11 August 2011 on a similar pretext. As attention focuses on Azerbaijan in 2012, with the country hosting the Eurovision Song Contest and the Internet
Goverance Forum, human rights violations show no sign of stopping.[/staff][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][staff name=”Nabeel Rajab, Bahrain Center for Human Rights” title=”Advocacy” color=”#28a7cc” profile_image=”81050″]The Bahrain Centre for Human Rights (BCHR) has played a crucial role in documenting human rights violations, political repression and torture in the gulf kingdom. Despite efforts to silence and discredit it, the BCHR has kept international attention on the brutal government crackdown that began last February. It has prevented the Bahrain government from whitewashing its international image, and at times when news media were severely restricted and foreign journalists barred, it acted as a crucial source of alternative news. Former BCHR president Abdulhady Al Khawaja is one of eight activists serving life sentences for peacefully protesting at the now-demolished Pearl Roundabout. Like many other activists he claims he has been tortured in prison. It is widely reported that BCHR employees regularly experience threats, violence and harassment. In January 2012, BCHR president Nabeel Rajab was severely beaten by security forces while peacefully protesting.[/staff][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][staff name=”Ali Ferzat” title=”Arts Award” color=”#28a7cc” profile_image=”81049″]Syrian cartoonist Ali Ferzat has been called “an icon of freedom in the Arab world”. He has spent decades ridiculing dictators in more than 15,000 caricatures. His depictions of President Assad and the police state have helped galvanise revolt in Syria. In August 2011, Ferzat was wrenched from his vehicle in central Damascus by pro-Assad masked gunmen who beat him badly and broke his hands. Passers-by found Ferzat dumped at the side of a road; his briefcase and the drawings inside it had been confiscated by his attackers. The BBC’s Sebastian Usher described the attack as a sign of Syria’s “zero tolerance” for dissent; a month earlier the dissident composer Ibrahim Al Qashoush was found dead, his vocal chords removed. Ferzat earned regional and international recognition in the 1980s with stinging cartoons of officials, autocrats and dictators including Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi. Hussein called for Ferzat’s death in 1989 after an unfavourable portrait of him was exhibited in Paris, and Ferzat’s cartoons are banned in Libya and Jordan. In 2000, he launched the publication Al Domari; Syrian authorities forced its closure three years later. Ferzat is undergoing rehabiliation in Kuwait in order to regain the use of his fingers.[/staff][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][staff name=”Freedom Fone” title=”The Google Innovation Award” color=”#28a7cc” profile_image=”81048″]Kubatana is an NGO based in Harare, set up by Brenda Burrell, Bev Clark and Amanda Atwood. It encourages ordinary Zimbabweans to use information communication technology (ICT) to advocate, mobilise and lobby. One of their main focuses has been the development of local technologies on the principle that development work should strengthen the potential application of pre-existent resources, rather than innovating solely in high-tech gadgetry for a Western audience. For this reason, Kubatana developed Freedom Fone. A free software, Freedom Fone is a basic, easy to use interactive voice response system that can deliver audio information in any language over mobile phones and landlines. All you need is a telephone (landline, mobile, Skype or similar) and Freedom Fone software on a computer. The software is aimed at organisations or individuals wishing to set up interactive news services for users where the free flow of information may be being denied for political, technological or other reasons. Freedom Fone is designed help bridge the digital divide, to reach out to the 90% of Zimbabweans who do not have internet access. On top of giving people access to information, Freedom Fone can be a tool for circumventing censorship. This is because automated telephone information systems do not require a broadcasting licence. In addition, this type of digital content is not currently subject to censorship.[/staff][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][staff name=”Memorial Archive of St Petersburg” title=”40th Anniversary Award” color=”#28a7cc” profile_image=”81051″]Index singles out The Research and Information Centre Memorial, which logs the brutal repression suffered by millions in former Soviet countries, for their continued dedication to guaranteeing freedom of information. The centre has demonstrated a fierce commitment to protecting human rights. It not only chronicles the crimes of the Stalinist period, but monitors current threats against those who speak out against injustice. Memorial’s remarkable archive includes letters, diaries, transcripts, photographs, and sound files. Individuals with first-hand experience of Stalin’s terror and the Soviet gulag have donated documentation they had hidden during this brutal period.
The centre is a living tribute to the survivors of Soviet Russia, preserving documentation that many have tried to bury, and continue to conduct their work despite constant threats. In December 2009, a group of men from the Investigative Committee of the Russian General Prosecutor’s Office raided Memorial’s offices, confiscating hard drives and CDs containing its entire archive. The attack was condemned by activists and historians across the globe, and eventually all of the material was returned after a battle in local courts. Memorial’s work is a vivid reminder of the vital and very real risk taken by those who speak out against repression. The award is particularly pertinent in Index’s 40th year. As we explore our own archive and its role in exposing international human rights violations, we are conscious of the often undervalued work of historians and archivists in keeping the memory of these violations alive.[/staff][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”JUDGING” font_container=”tag:h1|text_align:center” use_theme_fonts=”yes”][vc_row_inner el_class=”mw700″][vc_column_inner][vc_column_text]
Criteria – Anyone involved in tackling free expression threats – either through journalism, campaigning, the arts or using digital techniques – is eligible for nomination.
Any individual, group or NGO can nominate or self-nominate. There is no cost to apply.
Judges look for courage, creativity and resilience. We shortlist on the basis of those who are deemed to be making the greatest impact in tackling censorship in their chosen area, with a particular focus on topics that are little covered or tackled by others.
Nominees must have had a recognisable impact in the past 12 months.
Where a judge comes from a nominee’s country, or where there is any other potential conflict of interest, the judge will abstain from voting in that category.
Panel – Each year Index recruits an independent panel of judges – leading world voices with diverse expertise across campaigning, journalism, the arts and human rights.
The judges for 2012 were:
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][staff name=”Mishal Husain” title=”Broadcaster and journalist” color=”#28a7cc” profile_image=”80218″]Mishal Husain is a British news presenter for the BBC, who appears on Today, BBC World News and BBC Weekend News. She was previously a presenter on HARDtalk and BBC Breakfast.[/staff][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][staff name=”Peter Oborne” title=”Chief political commentator” color=”#28a7cc” profile_image=”80219″]Peter Alan Oborne is a British journalist. He is the associate editor of the Spectator and former chief political commentator of the Daily Telegraph, from which he resigned in early 2015. He is author of The Rise of Political Lying and The Triumph of the Political Class, and, with Frances Weaver, the pamphlet Guilty Men.[/staff][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][staff name=”Sami Ben Gharbia” title=”Advocacy director” color=”#28a7cc” profile_image=”80217″]Sami Ben Gharbia is a Tunisian human rights campaigner, blogger, writer and freedom of expression advocate. He was a political refugee living in the Netherlands between 1998 and 2011. Sami is the author of the e-book Borj Erroumi XL.[/staff][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][staff name=”Jeremy Browne MP” title=”Minister for State” color=”#28a7cc” profile_image=”80216″]Jeremy Richard Browne is a British Liberal Democrat politician who was the Member of Parliament for Taunton Deane from 2005 to 2015. He was previously a Foreign Office and Home Office Minister.[/staff][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][staff name=”Sigrid Rausing” title=”Publisher” color=”#28a7cc” profile_image=”80220″]Sigrid Maria Elisabet Rausing is a Swedish philanthropist, anthropologist and publisher. She is the founder of the Sigrid Rausing Trust, one of the United Kingdom’s largest philanthropic foundations, and owner of Granta magazine and Granta Books.[/staff][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row css=”.vc_custom_1473325552363{margin-top: 0px !important;margin-bottom: 20px !important;padding-top: 0px !important;padding-right: 15px !important;padding-bottom: 0px !important;padding-left: 15px !important;}”][vc_column css=”.vc_custom_1473325567468{margin-top: 0px !important;margin-bottom: 0px !important;padding-top: 0px !important;padding-bottom: 0px !important;}”][awards_gallery_slider name=”GALLERY” images_url=”80387,80412,80411,80410,80409,80408,80407,80406,80405,80404,80403,80402,80401,80400,80399,80398,80397,80396,80395,80394,80393,80392,80391,80390,80389,80388,81051,81050,81049,81048,81047″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
Picture the scenario: Sir Paul McCartney criticises a British prime minister. And in a couple of days, he’s banned from all concert halls and every other live venue across the country. His songs are barred from all radio stations, and he cannot even arrange a gig in a small club. When journalists call the venues and radio stations that refuse to put on the former Beatle, they get no quotes but are told off-the-record by the venue and station controllers that they’ve had phone calls from local-government bigwigs suggesting a choice: Drop Paul McCartney or the business closes…
Implausible? Yes. But it’s not far off what happens in Belarus, a country that is just outside the European Union and, geographically at least, in the centre of Europe.
The Belarus Free Theatre has a burgeoning international reputation, including in Britain, as one of the bastions of the country’s uncensored culture. It has consistently raised contemporary political and social issues through its creative work: political prisoners, disappearances of opposition leaders, oppression of dissent. Its supporters include Tom Stoppard, Kevin Spacey and Jude Law, and it is has been critically acclaimed for performances in Britain, the US, Australia and elsewhere. But in Belarus it’s almost impossible to see Free Theatre productions unless you’re one of the lucky few who knows and is trusted by one of its organisers and is invited to an almost-clandestine performance in a private home in the outskirts of Minsk (see their play Numbers below).
It is effectively banned, and the main reason is political, says its art director, Nicolai Khalezin.
“We have told the world about the fate of Belarus political prisoners, who have been put in jail after being framed-up. We gave the British news media a way into looking at Belarus and focusing on the links between British business and the Lukashenko regime.”
The Free Theatre is not alone in the Belarus cultural opposition. Rock music has always been a focus for protest. It started in the Soviet era, when the first rock bands of the perestroika period made their stand against communist rule. When independence came to Belarus in the early 90s, musicians turned from protesting to putting forward new ideas to inspire change and the building of a new country. Many emphasised themes of Belarusian national culture and history which had been long suppressed under the Russian empire and later the Soviet Union.
But under the rule of Alexander Lukashenko a new wave of Russification began. The first Belarus president changed the national symbols of the newly independent republic to the old Soviet coat-of-arms and flag, and the Belarusian language declined again, its proponents labelled “oppositional” by the regime.
Under Lukashenko, society and culture became increasingly polarised. In 2001 a rock concert took place in Minsk at which musicians protested against changes to the Belarus constitution to allow the president to stay in office for an unlimited number of terms. That was the last uncensored open-air concert in Minsk; the musicians who played found themselves denied radio airplay and started having difficulties organising concerts.
Aleh Khamenka, a leader of the folk-rock group Palac, says that the spirit of 2001 lives on.
“What we are doing is asserting a Belarusian, non-Soviet identity. We sing in Belarusian. We sing about what is ours, about what we love that is ours — our country, history and people. This approach contradicts the Soviet ideology that is based on total collectivism and neglecting the importance of individuality. We attract modern Belarusian youth and influence them. But the authorities are almost entirely people from the Soviet era. They see us as a threat, because they’re losing their leadership of public opinion to us.”
The authorities have maintained unofficial blacklists of musicians who are effectively banned form broadcasting and whose concerts are discouraged. There have been numerous occasions when a band’s gig in a club has been cancelled five minutes before it is scheduled to start after a phone call from local authorities. Among the acts that have been targeted are NRM, Krambambula, NeuroDubel, Palac and Krama, but at least two dozen bands have faced restrictions of one kind or another in the past ten years.
Liavon Volski, frontman of NRM and Krambambula, says he was really depressed when he first realised he was blacklisted. He stopped writing songs for almost three years.
“I got over it. My concerts are still cancelled in Belarus. It’s annoying, but the state’s interest in our work is a fact of life and part of the work. If you complain all the time and get desperate, you only harm your own health. What keeps me going in Belarus is the power of irony.”
The internet remains a critical free media platform in Belarus, not least because the state authorities have failed to find any means of controlling it — but otherwise Belarusian performing artists have to do their work abroad or in small clubs or private apartments, where small improvised concerts called kvaternik (kvaterameans “a flat” in Belarusian) are held.
The same problem applies to other creative activities. Authors that are at odds with Lukashenko’s policy soon fall out of favour — whether or not they have expressed political disagreements with the regime. One of Belarus’s most prominent national historians, Uladzimir Arlou, no longer gets mentioned in school textbooks after he argued for an independent European orientation for the country’s politics.
Visual artists too find themselves up against the authorities time and again. One group of artists, Pahonia, which takes its name from the traditional national coat-of-arms of Belarus that was dropped by Lukashenko, has faced repeated obstacles to mounting exhibitions that include paintings making allusions to past communist crimes or the authoritarianism of the current regime.
And if you’re blocked by the state, you don’t have a lot of independent outlets available. There are only a couple of private book publishing companies in Belarus, just a couple of private art galleries and no private theatres. Overall, about 80 per cent of the economy is state-run.
The last time blacklisting hit hard was during the 2010 presidential elections, when the rock band Liapis Trubetskoy released a song, “Don’t be a Beast”, that became an anthem for oppositionists whose protests against the authorities’ fixing of the elections was brutally suppressed. The band got no airplay on FM stations, but the video of the song on YouTube was viewed more than a million times.
And the lyrics … well, they’re a poem by Janka Kupala, a classic of the Belarusian literature, written 100 years ago, when Belarus was a part of the Russian empire. But its message is bang up-to-date for everyone in Belarus. The struggle for freedom continues.
Sieviaryn Kviatkouski is a Belarusian journalist, writer and blogger
In Tunisia, politicians and the people are abandoning freedom of expression. In a conservative society, Islamists’ obsession with blasphemy and the opposition’s passivity in defying an illiberal constitutional clause are placing free speech and Tunisia’s democratic transition under threat.
After years of being deprived of it, the Tunisian public agrees that freedom of expression is a fundamental right which needs to be guaranteed by the country’s new constitution. Six assembly committees which were elected last February have separately drafted different sections of the text which is yet to be presented for debate and voted in the 217-member constituent assembly. An absolute majority is required for the adoption of each article. MPs will then have to approve the entire draft by a two-thirds majority.
“Freedom of expression, opinion, media and creativity is guaranteed,” states article 26 of Tunisia’s draft constitution written by the rights and liberties assembly committee. Article 3 contradicts it saying: “The state guarantees freedom of religious belief and practice and criminalises all attacks on that which is sacred.”
But in August the Islamist Ennahdha party filed an anti-blasphemy bill which criminalises“curses, insults mockery, and desecration” of Allah, the Prophets, the three Abrahamic books, the Sunnah (the practices of the Prophet Muhammad), churches, synagogues and the Kaaba (the most sacred building in Islam). The bill also forbids pictorial representation of God and Prophet Muhammad.
Sadly, secular politicians are not pushing back against these new threats to free expression. When Islamists portray themselves as the guardians of the “sacred” in order to score points against their rivals, secular politicians face a dilemma. Should they stand up for their secular values and oppose blasphemy laws — and so risk losing popular support among the populace — or stay silent?
Groups that would typically be expected to oppose Article 3, like the Tunisian League of Human Rights, journalists’ associations, and secularly oriented political parties, have kept silent — likely for fear of losing legitimacy with Tunisian society, which tends to view offences against Abrahamic faiths in general, and Islam in particular, as unacceptable.
Free speech advocate and journalist Henda Hendoud shares the Marks’ view and argues that the opposition is not strong enough to tackle the issue of religion and freedom of expression at the National Constituent Assembly.
“I think that if there is going to be pressure and controversy regarding article three, it will come from the civil society, which is somewhat more independent and distant from political calculations,” she says.
The view that freedom of expression must be regulated to protect “sacred religious symbols” is widely held in Tunisian society. It is a Sunni Muslim-dominated country and religion still plays a major role in the people’s daily lives despite 56 years of secular dictatorship under the presidency of Habib Bourguiba and his successor Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. It is likely that Tunisia’s new constitution will criminalise blasphemy, and the public will not protest because “protection of the sacred” and the “sacred” are important to them.
A sculpture by Nadia Jelassi depicting the stoning of women at this summer’s Tunis Spring Arts Fair
Only a small group of free speech advocates, journalists and activists regard blasphemy laws as a curb on free expression. They are worried new blasphemy legislation will see similar incidents to that which took place at the Spring of Arts fair between 1 and 10 June this year, when ultra-conservative protesters clashed with police over an exhibition which they claimed included “blasphemous” artworks. The government and, surprisingly, the Minister of Culture blamed the fair for attacking Tunisians’ sacred religious symbols.
The “blasphemy” pretext was enough to bring “public disorder” charges against two artists, Mohamed Ben Slama and Nadia Jelassi. Ben Slama exhibited an artwork illustrating the “Praise God” phrase inscribed by ants, while Jelassi displayed sculptures depicting the stoning of women.
In late June, Hendoud helped set up a support committee for Ghazi Beji and Jabeur Mejri, two young men sentenced to seven and a half years in prison for publishing cartoons of the prophet on the internet. “The political parties are still not talking about the case of Ghazi and Jabeur,” she says. “However, the two young men are supported by Tunisian and international civil society.”
Blasphemy can be used as a pretext to stifle freedom of expression and pave the way for the comeback of dictatorship. Former dictator Ben Ali exiled, jailed and tortured his Islamist political opponents, who today rule the country, under the pretexts of “national security” and “extremism”.
Criminalising blasphemy is only going to deepen divisions in a country which endured decades of oppression and abuse.
Tunisia’s ruling party, the Islamist Ennahdha movement, seek to criminalise blasphemy.
The Ennahdha party filed a blasphemy bill on 1 August in response to what their leaders describe as “a continuous increase in number of offences against the Sacred”. The bill aims to “providing legal protection to the Sacred”.
Ennahdha also complained about the absence of “a blasphemy legal basis” during the trial of Nessma TV boss Nabil Karoui, who in May was fined for “transgressing morality”, and “disturbing public order after broadcast the animated film Persepolis which shows depictions of God. Ennahdha believe he should have been convicted of “offending” religion.
The bill lists Allah, Prophets, the three Abrahamic books (the Quran, Bible, and Torah), Sunnah (the sayings and teachings of Prophet Muhammad), churches, synagogues, and the Kaaba (Muslims’ holiest shrine) as sacred.
“Cursing, insulting, mocking, undermining, and desecrating” any of these symbols could lead to a two-year jail term and a 2,000 TND fine (794 GBP). The proposed bill would also forbid the pictorial representation of God, and Prophets.
Hichem Snoussi, the Tunisian representative of the freedom of speech NGO Article 19, told Index:
In France, and Germany there is a law which prohibits the denial of the Holocaust. Such a law [a blasphemy act] could be passed … But, the “sacred” has to be defined in a very specific and detailed way. This definition should not be expanded, so that it would not stand in the way of art and creativity.
The move comes amid a fierce local debate about freedom of expression and religion, which culminated in the Tunis-based Printemps des Arts fair in June. The fair was accused by Islamists and the government of displaying artworks “offensive” to Islam. On 12 June, the Tunisian Ministry of Culture decided to temporarily close a gallery after ultra-conservative Islamists broke into the exhibition and destroyed three artworks.
“Today the debate on the “sacred” is part of electoral propaganda, and aims at diverting the public debate from its right direction,” Snoussi added. “We do not need chains. We need freedom to heal our past wounds.”
