19 Oct 2018 | Global Journalist (Spanish), Journalism Toolbox Spanish, Spain
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Poco después de que la policía turca antidisturbios irrumpiera en la redacción de Zaman Media Group en marzo de 2016, Sevgi Akarçeşme se dio cuenta de que solo tenía dos opciones.
Akarçeşme, editora jefe de Today’s Zaman, el principal diario en lengua inglesa del país, podía convertirse en periodista favorable al Gobierno y pasarse los días publicando artículos que alabaran al régimen cada vez más autoritario del presidente Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
O podía huir del país y tratar de denunciar la situación desde el exilio. En menos de 48 horas, Akarçeşme embarcaba en un avión a Bruselas para librarse de un encarcelamiento inminente.
«No quería convertirme en una periodista progobierno y perder mi integridad», dice en una entrevista con Global Journalist. «Todo lo demás lo perdí, pero mi integridad, no».
La toma por parte del Gobierno de Zaman Group, una compañía de comunicación favorable a Hizmet —movimiento de oposición liderado por el clérigo exiliado Fetullah Gülen—, presagiaba la dura ofensiva de gran alcance contra los medios de comunicación y la sociedad civil, entre otros, que siguió al golpe fallido contra Erdogan dos meses después. En 2016, Turquía detuvo a más de 140 periodistas y cientos más perdieron sus empleos, según un informe sobre derechos humanos del Departamento de Estado de EE. UU. Hubo casi 4.000 personas acusadas de insultar al presidente, al Primer Ministro o a las instituciones del Estado. Según el Comité por la Protección de los Periodistas, Turquía tenía 73 periodistas en prisión en diciembre de 2017: más que cualquier otro país en el mundo.
De hecho, Akarçeşme no había abandonado aún el país y la administración de Erdogan ya había convertido la edición turca de Zaman en un altavoz progobierno.
Ya antes de la redada en la oficina de Zaman, Akarçeşme se había enfrentado a presiones legales por parte del Gobierno. A principios de 2015 la llevaron a juicio por «insultar» al entonces Primer Ministro, Ahmet Davutoğlu, en un tuit en el que lo acusaba de encubrir un escándalo de corrupción que involucraba a familiares de altos cargos.
Pero no fue hasta la clausura de Zaman en 2016 cuando quedó claro que el Gobierno de Erdogan no iba a tolerar más medios independientes. Incluso después de que Akarçeşme se marchase a Bélgica, el gobierno turco continuó tomando medidas punitivas contra ella: allanaron su apartamento de Estambul y le anularon el pasaporte. Akarçeşme, ahora de 39 años de edad, pasó más de un año en Bélgica antes de llegar a EE. UU. en mayo de 2017.
Ahora vive en Estados Unidos, donde trabaja como periodista independiente y está buscando un trabajo a tiempo completo. Habló con Lily Cusack, de Global Journalist, sobre su exilio.
Global Journalist: ¿Por qué decidiste marcharte de Turquía?
Akarçeşme: Como podrás imaginar, es una larga historia, porque Turquía no se convirtió en una dictadura de la noche a la mañana. Así que, como todo, fue un proceso. Un proceso rápido, pero un proceso igualmente.
Fue el 6 de marzo de 2016 [cuando] abandoné Estambul de improviso. Dos días antes de mi marcha, el gobierno de Erdogan nos confiscó el periódico acusándonos de cosas ridículas, por supuesto, como terrorismo y apoyo al terrorismo. Y yo, al ser la líder ejecutiva del diario en inglés, Today’s Zamam, sabía que era cuestión de tiempo que me persiguieran también.
Cuatro meses antes, en diciembre de 2015, me condenaron a prisión con suspensión de la pena por mis tuits. De hecho, ni siquiera fueron mis propios tuits. Fue por unos comentarios que pusieron debajo de mi tuit. El Primer Ministro de entonces me puso una demanda y a mí me cayó prisión con suspensión de la pena.
Así que ya había opresión, y sabía que Turquía nunca ha tenido una trayectoria de la que enorgullecerse en lo que a libertad de prensa se refiere. Pero cada vez iba a peor, y el Gobierno se centró principalmente en nuestro grupo mediático. Era casi evidente que sería cuestión de tiempo.
Fue una decisión difícil, dejar tu país con solo dos maletas… de repente, sin notificárselo a nadie, porque entonces igual te detenían en la frontera. Hay muchísima gente que tiene prohibido viajar al extranjero. Así que estaba nerviosa por si me impedían viajar, pero, por suerte, pude irme. Echando la vista atrás, me doy cuenta de que fue la mejor decisión de mi vida, porque de lo contrario ahora mismo estaría en la cárcel, como mis colegas.
GJ: ¿Recibiste amenazas a título personal?
A: Por redes sociales, sí. Igual que mis colegas, dejé de tuitear en turco. Ahora solo tuiteo en inglés de vez en cuando. Cualquier crítico te puede hablar del ejército de trolls que se dedica a identificar y acosar a gente.
GJ: ¿Cómo llegaste a la conclusión de que tenías que marcharte?
A: Fue una decisión súbita. En los dos días desde el asalto de la policía [4 de marzo de 2016] hasta que me marché, solo hablé con [Abdulhamit Bilici], editor jefe del grupo mediático al completo. A él también lo habían despedido, y también corría peligro. Pero no quería irse inmediatamente. Él creía que tenía que quedarse para apoyar a la gente que estaba en puestos de menos experiencia. Pero yo pensé que, en caso de arresto, no podría soportar las condiciones de las prisiones turcas. Así que me dije que tenía que marcharme.
Me puse bastante nerviosa en el aeropuerto, porque no sabía si me habían anulado el pasaporte. Fue un momento memorable. Solo recuerdo pasar aduanas y la revisión de pasaportes y sentirme extremadamente nerviosa. Fue gracioso, porque soy una simple periodista. Sabía que no había hecho nada malo, pero también que eso no bastaba para librarme de una posible persecución o de que evitaran mi marcha. Fue un alivio [cuando] aterrizamos en Bruselas.
En julio, cuando me fui de Bruselas y estaba de camino a EE. UU., me sacaron del avión porque me dijeron que mi pasaporte no era válido. Así que al final sí que ocurrió, pero por suerte fue después de irme de Turquía.
GJ: ¿Qué sentiste al tener que abandonar Turquía tan de repente?
A: Era una sensación terriblemente inquietante. En cierto modo cortas vínculos con tu propio país. El día que decidí marcharme, ya sentía que Turquía era un caso perdido y que allí no había futuro para mí.
Estos últimos dos años me he sentido extremadamente desilusionada [con] mi tierra natal y mi sociedad, porque [la gente] en su mayoría ha callado frente a la opresión. Incluso están a favor de Erdogan.
Así que siento que ya no es mi casa, aunque aún tenga seres queridos [allí]. Mi corazón y mis pensamientos están con todos estos prisioneros, especialmente las víctimas de purgas, decenas de miles de personas, no solo periodistas, personas de toda clase y condición.
GJ: ¿Albergas alguna esperanza de volver?
A: No tengo esperanzas. No va a mejorar. Cada día el Gobierno se hace con más y más medios de difusión. Ya no hay medios libres… Salvo por un par de [canales] de televisión web y los periódicos en el exilio, no queda ningún medio con alcance para el periodismo independiente. El discurso está totalmente controlado por el Gobierno. Así que, por desgracia, soy muy pesimista. No le veo ninguna salida a corto plazo.
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16 Oct 2018 | Fellowship, Fellowship 2017, Maldives, News and features
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”89549″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes”][vc_column_text]After five years the president of the Maldives may be on his way out — but no one is celebrating yet.
The Indian Ocean island nation voted on Sept. 23, 2018 to oust sitting president Abdulla Yameen in favor of challenger Ibrahim Mohamed Solih, who won 58 percent of the vote. The message? They were done with Yameen’s increasingly authoritarian rule.
Yameen came into power in 2013 and has jailed or forced many of his political opponents into exile. He’s restricted protests and reduced media freedom, all while boosting corruption in the government with bribes, embezzlement and human rights abuses.
The Maldives Independent, winner of the 2017 Index on Censorship Freedom of Expression Journalism Award, is one of the few independent news organisations left in the country. In 2014, Maldives Independent journalist Ahmed Rilwan, known for criticising the government, went missing. He has still not been found. Many believe Yameen’s hand played a role in his disappearance and the subsequent lack of investigation.
Two years later, Yameen signed a criminal defamation law that created fines and jail sentences for slander or defamatory speech, speech threatening “social norms” or national security, and remarks against Islam. The law was criticised by the United Nations and the United States, both calling it a move against freedom of expression.
Yameen’s biggest accomplishments have been in development, building an extension to a public hospital in the capital, new airports, and the country’s first overwater bridge. But behind these projects was even more corruption, critics say.
In 2016, Al Jazeera exposed a major scandal in which Yameen and then vice-president Ahmed Adeeb leased islands to tourism companies and embezzled the money for themselves. Zaheena Rasheed, then editor-in-chief of the Maldives Independent, appeared in Al Jazeera’s investigative documentary. Hours after the documentary went online, police raided the news organisation’s offices. Rasheed has since fled the country.
Addressing the embezzlement at a debate a week before the election, Yameen pointed his finger at the former vice president and “the system” as the cause behind the corruption, denying any wrongdoing.
With a platform based on restoring democracy and freeing Yameen’s political prisoners, Solih represents a new leaf for the nation.
Riazat Butt, current editor of the Maldives Independent, called the two candidates “night and day.” And though Solih may want to make significant changes in the government, Butt said three out of four of the parties in the coalition backing Solih have shown little interest in democracy.
“The opposition alliance has not said what will happen if the coalition falls apart,” Butt said. “There is an agreement they have to sign about steps to be taken in such an event, but the agreement has not been made public and the president-elect’s spokeswoman is refusing to answer questions on it.”
On top of the issues Solih may face within his coalition, Yameen is not going down without a fight.
The leader of Yameen’s party, the Progressive Party of the Maldives, launched an investigation into complaints regarding the authenticity of the ballots cast, citing “systematic irregularities.” The party has asked the Elections Commission to delay publishing the final results and has reportedly told their supporters to submit electoral complaints to the commission.
The move has been denounced by the opposition party and the Human Rights Watch, who say it is an attempt to annul the election.
“Yameen has too much to lose to just step aside,” Butt said. “He may find a non-violent way to steal the election after all….he just needs to do it in a way that avoids sanctions and military action against him.”
On Oct. 10, Yameen challenged the election results in the Supreme Court. If the Court finds proof of irregularities, the election could be annulled.
Meanwhile, members of the Elections Commission have received anonymous threats due to their dismissal of the ruling party’s claims of fraud.
If Solih is able to secure the presidency and move his coalition government into power, it may not result in much change regarding journalism in the country. Butts called the coalition manifesto “fantastically vague” about press freedom. Though journalists have asked for specifics, like if the anti-defamation law will be repealed or if background checks for foreign journalists will end, they have not received answers.
“There is no detail, and that’s not good enough,” she said. “I honestly think it is too soon for anyone to relax or believe that their job will become easier or safer.”
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15 Oct 2018 | Malta, Mapping Media Freedom, Media Freedom, media freedom featured, News and features
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”103210″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes”][vc_column_text]“The murder,” says journalist Caroline Muscat, “was a message to the country that whoever investigates those in power and makes corruption visible, has to fear for his life. So we had to send a message back.”
Muscat seems to be in an adrenaline rush while talking in her apartment in a small town in the north of Malta. The interview was postponed twice for an hour because she had to convene with her colleagues about new stories for The Shift, the journalistic website that she and a colleague launched early November 2017. It was just weeks after the shock of the assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia. The Shift is the message Caroline Muscat sent back to the perpetrators.
Malta doesn’t have a lot of independent journalism. Even media outlets that are not tied to a political party, have opaque ties with the political and entrepreneurial establishment. It is because of such ties that Caroline Muscat quit her job at the widely read Times of Malta in 2016: in publications about the leaked documents known as the Panama Papers, Caruana Galizia revealed that the managing director of the Times’ publisher was implicated too.
“I could not continue to work for the Times,” she says. She freelanced and made plans to start an investigative online paper, to be launched in the spring of 2018. Caruana Galizia’s murder accelerated the launch.
“Our goal is to hold those in power to account,” Muscat says.
That’s not a spectacular goal for a journalistic project. It does lead to remarkable choices though. Muscat tells about the arrest, in December 2017, of three men suspected of placing the bomb in Caruana Galizia’s car and detonating it. “We didn’t publish that news,” Muscat says. “We were immediately criticised about that. A government official even attacked me on Twitter, asking why The Shift didn’t publish about this breakthrough in the investigation.”
She explains – and still gets furious: “The men were detained with a grand show of force. In Malta, there are only a few people who know how to make bombs. Why weren’t they taken earlier? The arrested men have no motive for the murder. We want to know who is behind Daphne’s death. The arrests were a way to conceal that no serious investigation is carried out into the murder. As a journalist, I refuse to contribute to such a scheme.”
By performing journalism that way, The Shift works in the spirit of Running Commentary, the blog of Caruana Galizia. Also, Caruana Galizia didn’t care a bit about good contacts with powerful key figures in politics and business but investigated and scrutinised them, to attack if necessary. Muscat, however, resists the idea that she is following in Caruana Galizia’s footsteps: “Nobody can replace Daphne. She has been the target of hate campaigns and threats for years. Her dogs were murdered, her house was set ablaze. We often ran into each other because we worked on the same kind of stories, but she worked alone, I worked for an established paper. I was protected. She wasn’t.”
After resigning from the Times of Malta, Muscat also lost her protection, which became all the clearer when she started The Shift. An intense disinformation and hate campaign was launched against her, especially on social media, just as had happened to Caruana Galizia. Muscat and her family are, without any grounds, being connected to alcoholism, arms trade and prostitution. In secret Facebook groups linked to the governing Labour Party – where contributors to The Shift went undercover for half a year – pictures of Caruana Galizia and Muscat surfaced, accompanied by hateful comments (“She got what she deserved,” and “She deserves some bombs too”), generously supplied with likes by sometimes highly placed government figures.
Muscat immediately notices when a picture of hers has been doing the rounds again in such online networks. “This week the owner of a grocery shop asked me if I was the woman who publishes articles online. I am starting to get an idea now of the pressure under which Daphne has lived for years. Every aspect of my life has become difficult,” Muscat says.
The Shift welcomes some hundred thousand visitors per month and lives from donations. Muscat does other freelance journalistic work if necessary to earn enough income. Maybe, when the visitor stats rise, they will try to get revenues from advertisements. They usually publish several stories per day, both backgrounds and investigative work and analyses and columns. Muscat: “The Shift is journalism, but it is a movement too. Yes, I have an agenda. My agenda is press freedom, democracy, rule of law. We don’t have the luxury anymore to demand anything else. No, I don’t think The Shift will find the final piece of the puzzle that will solve Daphne’s murder. Such an expectation is unrealistic. All we can do is continue to investigate and contribute to adding pieces of the puzzle.”
Does she fear for her life? She circles around the question. She seems unable to ponder the issue. She does, however, point to an important difference between The Shift and Caruana Galizia’s blog: “The Shift doesn’t depend on me. We have a team. If one of us falls away, The Shift will continue.” [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_basic_grid post_type=”post” max_items=”4″ element_width=”6″ grid_id=”vc_gid:1539599196129-2228dcb5-22a8-7″ taxonomies=”18781″][vc_raw_html]JTNDaWZyYW1lJTIwd2lkdGglM0QlMjI3MDAlMjIlMjBoZWlnaHQlM0QlMjIzMTUlMjIlMjBzcmMlM0QlMjJodHRwcyUzQSUyRiUyRm1hcHBpbmdtZWRpYWZyZWVkb20udXNoYWhpZGkuaW8lMkZzYXZlZHNlYXJjaGVzJTJGOTMlMkZtYXAlMjIlMjBmcmFtZWJvcmRlciUzRCUyMjAlMjIlMjBhbGxvd2Z1bGxzY3JlZW4lM0UlM0MlMkZpZnJhbWUlM0U=[/vc_raw_html][/vc_column][/vc_row]
11 Oct 2018 | Artistic Freedom, News and features, Risks, Rights and Reputations
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”97076″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes”][vc_column_text]Agnieszka Kolek is curator and co-founder of Passion for Freedom, an annual competition exhibition of by artists facing censorship worldwide. In February 2015, Kolek survived the terrorist attack in Copenhagen, targeting the panel discussion she appeared in alongside Swedish artist Lars Vilks. Later that year in London, the Passion for Freedom 2015 exhibition at Mall Galleries, London, hit the headlines when a work Isis Threaten Sylvania by Mimsy was removed by the curators on the advice of the police. They had no choice because they couldn’t pay the £36,000 demanded by the police to guarantee security of the exhibition.
JF: How does your experience of the Danish police compare to the British police?
AK: The panel discussion — Art, Blasphemy and Freedom of Speech — was organised by the Lars Vilks Committee with the full support of the police. This was only a month after the Charlie Hebdo attack, but there was no question that the discussion should go ahead. There were two plain-clothed police officers, two uniformed police and then two special service officers responsible for Lars, who has 24-hour police protection. Police checked bags as the audience came in. When the attack happened — the Danish filmmaker Finn Nørgaard, one of the guests, was shot outside the venue and died on the pavement — the two special service officers took Lars to safety. We know that after an attack on freedom of speech the next target is Jews – it happened with Charlie Hebdo and it happened in Copenhagen when the same gunman attacked a bat mitzvah party in the evening, killing the security guard. Danes feel very bad that they didn’t anticipate this pattern and there was a lot of blaming of the police for this, but they did their best considering the circumstances. I think there has to be more legal power give to the police to extinguish the sources of the extremism, and its results. When you already have flames it is harder to put it, instead you have to prevent the fire from starting.
In London in 2015 it was very different. The police wanted to determine what artworks could go on show, and even the artistic value of exhibited works, showing an indirect form of censorship claiming it was “for your own good – security”. Police intelligence identified “serious concerns” regarding the “potentially inflammatory content” of Mimsy’s work and for this reason “advised” us to remove the work or pay protection money at £6,000 a day. We were completely shocked. Out of all the works in the exhibition, we would never have thought that they would pick this one out. We asked for more information about the “serious concerns”, especially because we wanted to know if there was a threat to Mimsy herself. They didn’t give us any more information. They wanted to place blame on the festival or its artists for causing problems, rather than protecting the space for art to show the suffering of people around the world and the lack of freedom to openly discuss it. While we tried to fundraise for our own protection, we were threatened with more works being withdrawn. Art cannot be controlled by the police – not in London, which for hundreds of years is a symbol of democracy and freedom. Not in the creative capital of Europe where artists flock from all over the world.
JF: But in Copenhagen two people lost their lives – you could have lost yours. How do you reconcile the loss of life with the pursuit of freedom?
AK: It is not easy to answer as I am not treating others’ and my own life lightly. Behind each individual there is a unique person, unique life story and to cut it short for the supposedly abstract ideal of free speech and expression might seem reckless. It is not. Again and again we learn how giving concessions to those who want to restrict freedoms of speech allows the darkness not only to enter our home but also our hearts. Not resisting it at early stages causes our societies to change beyond recognition.
I was invited to the Copenhagen event way ahead, so after the Charlie Hebdo attack, the chair got in touch with me to say she would understand in view of the heightened security risk, if I chose not to come. So I thought long and hard about it and said I will have to die someday, and I know I will look back at that this moment and I will remember the choice I made and it will be important.
Passion for Freedom is a very effective tool for assessing how much freedom there is in society. Artists cannot be easily controlled. In their inner core they are idealists. We stand with them giving them space and time to express themselves. Freedom will prevail despite political and corporate pressure to censor and restrict open debate. We are its guardians.
JF: How have the experiences of 2015 impacted on how you approach this year’s exhibition?
AK: The commitment and the conviction are still there. But we are not clear where we stand, because there is no clear definition of what is appropriate or what is inflammatory. It is a shifting ground. In the past, we created the space to fully exhibit work that had been censored elsewhere by a curator or a gallery owner. Now we are in the situation where the state, through the arm of the police, imposes this pre-emptive self-censorship on you. Since the censorship incident, we cannot guarantee artists that they will be able to exhibit/perform during a festival talking about freedom. Over the years there has been a number of artists who requested to be exhibited under pseudonyms (as often their lives are threatened in the UK or back in their home countries). Can we guarantee that the police will not arrest them? Until now, we could guarantee it to them. Since 2015 we are not sure that is the case. My approach is not to have any preconceived idea of how it will go with the police this time. We will still try to be open and have a dialogue in the belief that the police are still there to protect us and it is still a democratic country. I will be honest – we are also treating it as a kind of testing ground. Let’s see if this is still a democratic country or is it just on paper?
The artistic community in the United States and Australia is shocked by the police’s censorious attitude to arts in London. There are groups of people who decided to open Passion for Freedom branch offices in New York and Sydney to ensure that British censorship is being exposed. And in case freedom is completely extinguished in the UK they can continue the important work to give artists the platform to exhibit their works and debate important issues in our societies. And if we discover that there is even less freedom than in 2015, we are considering moving this exhibition to Poland because there is more freedom there. This is on the cards, we are already discussing it.
JF: Do you think Passion for Freedom exhibition represents a security risk?
AK: The way it is being framed in the media it looks like we are troublemakers and we are asking for it. I see it another way – we are representing the majority of society that wants to ask questions, to solve problems and to move forward together. Instead of giving in to a minority that wants to use violence and threats as a way to push forward their own agenda. I think it is in the interests of any society to make sure there is the space for difficult conversations because it moves away from creating the situation where the only way to solve problems is violence. You need to allow people to have this space and art is a wonderful tool to do that, without falling for propaganda, or just favouring one way of looking at things over another. Here you can have different voices, at different volumes, and different issues at play.
JF: The 2015 terror attack in Copenhagen targeted Swedish artist Lars Vilks and those who support him. Why do you think it is important for an artist to be free to deliberately insult and offend people’s religious beliefs?
AK: The world is a much more complex place than the newspaper headlines would like us to believe. Lars Vilks was invited to participate in an art exhibition on the theme “The Dog in Art” that was to be held in the small town of Tällerud in Värmland. Vilks submitted three pen and ink drawings on A4 paper depicting Muhammad as a roundabout dog. At this time, Vilks was already participating with drawings of Muhammad in another exhibition in Vestfossen, Norway, on the theme “Oh, My God”. Vilks has stated that his original intention with the drawings was to “examine the political correctness within the boundaries of the art community”. It is not a secret that Sweden is known for vehemently criticising the United States and Israel, whereas political Islam and its influence on non-Muslim communities are rarely questioned.
Artists practising various forms of art, whether poetry, drama, drawing or film, have been challenging those who hold power for millennia.
Few kings, warlords or dictators allowed criticism or satire of themselves. The blasphemy laws were in place not to protect God but those who claimed to be his only representatives on earth. Nowadays, the same seems to be disguised in the cloak of hurt feelings and delicate egos. Artists are idealistic visionaries. They cannot hold themselves back pretending that they are blind to what is in front of their eyes. Lack of open discussion stifles our development as societies. Fear of reprisal and death cripples the human spirit. Those who cower under the whip hoping to appease and remove the threat are actually risking the fate of a slave and subordinating to dehumanised serfdom their true nature – that of a free man.
JF: Why do you have this passion for freedom?
AK: Behind the Iron Curtain we naively believed that not only was the West this Land of Milk and Honey of material goods, we were also certain that there was freedom here, that people would value and protect it. So moving here, first you discover that everything is not so perfect materially, but then the bigger eye-opener is that there is always someone who wants to take freedom away and if you don’t stand up tall in society this threat is always present. I don’t think you can continue just exercising freedom of speech without appreciating what it has brought to us over the long years when previous generations were fighting for it, and though it is not ideal, the state we are in is much better than it used to be.[/vc_column_text][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/4″][vc_single_image image=”103159″ img_size=”full”][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”3/4″][vc_column_text]
Passion for Freedom Art Festival
10th-anniversary edition, 1 – 12 October 2018, London
The Royal Opera Arcade Gallery & La Galleria Pall Mall
Royal Opera Arcade, 5b Pall Mall, London SW1Y 4UY
The 10th-anniversary edition of internationally renowned Passion for Freedom Art Festival will open in London on 1 – 12 October 2018 at its new location – the Royal Opera Arcade Gallery & La Galleria Pall Mall. The exhibition showcases uncensored art from around the world, promoting human rights, highlighting injustice and celebrating artistic freedom.
Passion for Freedom was founded in 2008 and over the past ten years grew into an international network of artists, journalists, filmmakers and activists striving to celebrate and protect freedom of expression. We have displayed more than 600 artworks from 55 countries, including China, Iran and Venezuela.
The competition attracts much worldwide attention. This year, we received more than 200 submissions out of which we will exhibit over 50 shortlisted artists. From Venezuela to Turkey to the United Kingdom, those artists ceaselessly expose the restraints on freedom of speech, expression, and information in their countries. Altogether, we will display 100 such artworks during the festival. Passion for Freedom covers painting, photography, sculpture, performance, video, as well as authors, filmmakers and journalists.
Competitors will be judged by a prestigious selection panel. Winners will be announced on the 6th of October at the Gala Award Night.
This year’s judges are:
Andrew Stahl (United Kingdom)
Francisco Laranjo (Portugal)
Gary Hill (USA)
Lee Weinberg, PhD (Israel)
Mehdi-Georges Lahlou (Belgium)
Miriam Elia (United Kingdom)
Mychael Barratt PRE (Canada/United Kingdom)
This year we are thrilled to announce a Special Theo Van Gogh Award awarded in honour of his courage and contributions to freedom of expression.
Furthermore, we have invited a select group of special guest artists to display their latest works.
Passion for Freedom 2018 Guest Artists are:
Agata Strzalka (Poland)
Andreea Medar (Romania)
Emma Elliott (United Kingdom)
Jana Zimova (Czech Republic/Germany)
Mimsy (United Kingdom)
Öncü Hrant Gültekin (Turkey/Germany)
Oscar Olivares (Venezuela)
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