26 Jun 2018 | Artistic Freedom, India, News and features
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”101140″ img_size=”full”][vc_column_text]Indians took to Twitter to express their frustration after the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) pushed the release of the film Love, Simon back indefinitely.
Originally slated to be released on 1 June, Love, Simon was eagerly awaited by some Indian moviegoers, who attempted to purchase advance tickets only to be denied. Soon after the hashtag #ReleaseLoveSimoninIndia began trending.
Love, Simon is a film based on the book Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda written by Becky Albertalli in 2015. Simon is a 17-year old boy in high school who despite having close, loving and supportive relationships with his friends and family keeps his homosexual identity a secret from them. This is the first major gay romantic comedy film to be released by a major US studio. Fox 2000 rolled it out in the US, where the movie had a favourable response from both critics and movie-goers.
According to an anonymous source cited by The Free Press India, the CBFC decided against allowing the film to be shown because there is “no audience” for it. This assertion flies in the face of the film’s worldwide success and vocal supporters within India.
“I doubt that it can be said that the film has “no interest” but rather it has less popularity than other mainstream foreign movies, the reason being India is deeply homophobic but I don’t think that justifies not releasing it,” Ruth Chawngthu, the digital editor at Feminism in India and co-founder of Nazariya LGBT, told Index on Censorship via email. “I could be wrong but to my knowledge the film creators decided to not release it so perhaps the concerned persons should petition them instead? I personally don’t have strong feelings regarding the issue because it’s mostly the privileged upper class who are concerned about it. They were focused on the movie while ignoring the fact that members of the LGBT community were facing violence in different parts of the country at the same time.”
The CBFC states that it stands in the way of “[moral] corruption [as social depravity] has been one of the major obstacles to economic, political and social progress of [India].” This is in relation to Penal Code 377, a leftover from the Victorian era when India was a part of the British empire, and has yet to be changed due to social anxiety around the LBGT+ community. While India is in the process of reconsidering its 377 Penal Code which criminalizes “unnatural relations with man, women, and animal”, the diverse traditional religious communities within India and social stigma hold back public opinion.
Indians took to Twitter to express their opinions on the indefinite delay on Love, Simon’s release: [/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]
[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]Politicians such as Rajya Sabha MP and BJP leader Subramanian Swamy feel justified in delaying the release of the film to “protect the culture of India”. Twitter users raved that Love, Simon would have been a landmark film that would humanize the LBGT+ community in India. However, at the tail end of International Pride Month, the film has still yet to be released. [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]
19 Jun 2018 | Artistic Freedom, Music, News and features
The right to freedom of expression is considered by many to be a cornerstone of a modern democratic society. Countries that fail to adequately protect this hallowed right – routinely censoring journalists, writers and musicians whose speech challenges and offends those in power – are rightly regarded by the West to be the worst examples of dictatorial, autocratic regimes.
But right here in the UK, artists are fighting the censorship of their work by global corporations bowing to pressure from and, arguably, colluding with the state and its organs. In May of this year YouTube, the video streaming platform owned by Google, succumbed to pressure from the Metropolitan Police and took down 30 music videos made by drill artists. The Met had been trying to persuade YouTube for almost two years to take down between 50 and 60 videos, alleging the material was contributing to the increase in violent crime on London streets.
This attack on the freedom of expression of musicians who make drill music does not stop at the removal of their videos from YouTube. Defendants convicted in criminal cases may in the future be banned from making music for a period up to three years if the offender is under 18 and indefinitely for adult offenders under criminal behaviour orders[1]. Crucially, the prosecution can use evidence to support the making of an order that would not have met the strict rules of admissibility as in a criminal trial[2]. The threat to freedom of expression goes further. The Met have expressed publicly their intention to push for new legislation, similar to anti-terrorism laws, that will criminalise the making of drill videos.
Drill is not for everyone. The lyrics are violent. There is liberal use of expletives. Descriptions of acts of violence using knives and guns are common themes. The images portrayed in the accompanying videos are similarly hard-hitting. Large groups of mainly young, mainly black men can be seen inhabiting the screen wearing hoodies and tracksuit bottoms – the uniform of the young in some sections of society.
Drill DJs are not, however, pioneers of explicit lyrics and violent images in music. The genesis of what is known as drill in the UK today sprang from a trap-style rap that originated in Chicago in the early 2010s. The hip hop of the 1980s and the gangsta rap of the 1990s are all part of the same family tree of poetic verse poured over a thumping beat. Drill is a close relative.
Nor is it new to blame this type of music for inciting violence. In the 1990s C. Delores Tucker campaigned against violent lyrics aimed at women in rap music. Then, as now, there was little direct evidence of a causal link between rap music and particular acts of violence. What the critics of this music fail to grasp is that the lyrics of this genre of music are inspired by, and not the cause of, the violence that infects the lives of many of these young men.
Censorship of a form of music which affords an already marginalised minority a rare opportunity to express themselves publicly is an attack against their fundamental rights as human beings.
Looked at in its true context then, drill is less about inspiring violence and more about providing a narrative of lives defined by violence. They are telling the stories of their lives, minus the sugar-coating, just as other writers, poets and musicians have done before them.
The courtroom has often been the battleground of the clash between the values of the young minority against those of the old majority. In 1960 Penguin Books was prosecuted under the Obscenity Act 1959[3] for the publication of a book entitled Lady Chatterley’s Lover. The prosecution’s case was that the book had a tendency “to deprave and corrupt” those who read it in daring to portray the affair of a married woman with the family’s gamekeeper. Penguin Books was acquitted[4].
In 1971, the publishers of a satirical magazine were prosecuted when an issue of the magazine featured a sexualised cartoon of the children’s literary character Rupert the Bear. Known as the Oz trial, the three defendants were convicted by the Crown Court but were then acquitted on appeal[5].
Today, UK common law has arguably been strengthened by the enactment of the Human Rights Act 2000 by enshrining in law article 10 of the European Convention of Human Rights[6]. One former Court of Appeal judge said this of the importance of freedom of expression: “Free speech includes not only the inoffensive but the irritating, the contentious, the eccentric, the heretical, the unwelcome and the provocative provided it does not tend to provoke violence. Freedom only to speak inoffensively is not worth having.”[7]
You or I may not wish to stream drill music videos on our mobile device. Many people may find the content offensive. The videos may even be performed by individuals who are suspected of a crime or have criminal convictions[8]. None of this should confer on the state, aided and abetted by global corporations, a wide-ranging power that ultimately infringes the right of musicians to express themselves freely.
This censorship of a form of music which affords an already marginalised minority a rare opportunity to express themselves publicly is an attack against their fundamental rights as human beings.
We all need to sit up and take notice.
1. Under Part 2 of the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014. Such an order may contain requirements for the defendant to inform the police of any activity that may be in breach of the order. The order may be varied, reviewed or discharged. Breach of the order is in itself a criminal offence.
2. An CBO was made recently against 1011 members Micah Bedeau, Jordean Bedeau, Yonas Girma, Isaac Marshall and Rhys Herbert. They are required under the CBO to inform the police 24 hours in advance of their intention to publish any videos online and are required to give a 48 hours warning of the date and locations any live performance.
3. The 1959 Act is still on the statute books.
4. R v Penguin Books Ltd. [1961] Crim LR 176.
5. R v Neville, Dennis & Anderson, The Times, 24 June 1971.
6. Article 10 (1) ECHR states: “Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers. This article shall not prevent states from requiring the licensing of broadcasting, television or cinema enterprises.” Article 10 (2) sets out limitations to this right.
7. Sir Stephen Sedley in Redmond-Bate v Director of Public Prosecutions [1999] Crim LR 998.
8. A number of successful high-profile rap artists have criminal convictions.
18 Jun 2018 | Campaigns -- Featured, Egypt, Statements
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”100868″ img_size=”full”][vc_column_text]Monday 18 June 2018 — Human rights groups expressed growing concern about Egyptian campaigner Amal Fathy and urged authorities to release her immediately.
Ms Fathy was seized by police on 11 May after posting a video about sexual harassment. Ms Fathy and her husband Mohamed Lotfy, co-founder of award-winning human rights group the Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms, had their Cairo home raided by armed police in the early hours of the morning, and she, Mr Lotfy and their two year-old son were taken to a police station.
Mr Lotfy and his son were released several hours later but Ms Fathy remains in custody, where her health is deteriorating. Her lawyer has reported that Ms Fathy, a communications student, is suffering panic attacks in detention. Initially detained for 15 days, Ms Fathy’s detention has twice been extended, with no date yet set for a hearing.
The trigger for the arrest was a 12-minute Facebook video in which Ms Fathy complained about having been sexually harassed at a bank and the difficulties of being a woman in Egypt. Ms Fathy has since been charged with membership of a terrorist organisation.
Mr Lotfy is one of the leaders of the Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms, which coordinates campaigns for those who have been tortured or disappeared. Between August 2016 and August 2017, the ECRF documented 378 cases of enforced disappearance, many of them concerning students. In April 2018, ECRF was awarded an Index on Censorship Freedom of Expression Award.
Index on Censorship, together with international lawyers Doughty Street Chambers and ECRF, last month submitted a complaint on the treatment of Mr Lotfy and his son, and the continued detention of Ms Fathy, to the UN rapporteurs on freedom of expression and human rights defenders.
“We are seriously worried about Ms Fathy and the lack of due process in her case. This continued detention is already having a terrible impact on her own health not to mention that of her young son, for whom Ms Fathy is the primary carer,” said Index on Censorship CEO Jodie Ginsberg.
Egypt has seen an escalation in violence against women and prominent women human rights defenders and activists are routinely harassed and silenced by the authorities. A 2017 poll named Cairo as the most dangerous major city for women.
The organisations ask Egypt to release Ms Fathy immediately.
For more information, please contact Sean Gallagher at Index on Censorship: [email protected].
Signatories:
Article 19
The Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI)
Civicus
Doughty Street Chambers
Front Line Defenders
Index on Censorship
PEN International[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_basic_grid post_type=”post” max_items=”12″ style=”load-more” items_per_page=”4″ element_width=”6″ grid_id=”vc_gid:1571391767658-84d8abc6-2e8d-7″ taxonomies=”25926″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
14 Jun 2018 | Magazine, Magazine Contents, Volume 47.02 Summer 2018
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”With contributions from Mai Khoi, Jon Savage and Jonathan Tel, as well as interviews with Ian Rankin, Victoria Hislop and Maria Ressa”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]
The summer 2018 issue of Index on Censorship magazine takes a special look at the free speech issues that affect the world’s most popular tourist destinations.
We examine the journalists who are trying to expose the darker sides of paradise and the issues they encounter in doing so, including an article from a Maltese journalist, Caroline Muscat, on corruption in the country, a look at journalists living under protection due to their reporting of the drug wars in Baja California Sur and an interview with Federica Angeli, a journalist who lives under 24-hour police protection following her exposé of the mafia in the pretty Italian seaside resort of Ostia.
The issue features interviews with bestselling novelists Ian Rankin and Victoria Hislop about how they went about creating a more real depiction of the idyllic places their books are set in.
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The special report also features new data on the relationship between free speech issues and tourism from Mark Frary.
Outside the special report, Samira Shackle discusses the current state of media freedom in Pakistan ahead of elections in the country, and music journalist and author Jon Savage writes about how current attacks on drill rap music are nothing new – the censors have been trying to suppress music trends for over a century.
Finally, we have two short stories written exclusively for the magazine, one by Turkish contributing editor Kaya Genç about a man’s musings on paradise and another by award-winning writer Jonathan Tel on the dangerous end point of facial recognition technology.
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”Special report: Trouble in paradise”][vc_column_text]
Spraying bullets not sunscreen, by Stephen Woodman: Baja California Sur is at the forefront of Mexico’s drug wars. Journalists are at a great risk. The government hopes tourists don’t notice
The other side of paradise, by Meera Selva: A post civil war Sri Lanka attracts tourists, but locals were hoping for greater freedoms
Speaking out of turn, by Jan Fox: Hawaiian is an official language in this state and yet those who speak it face restrictions.
Women left out in the cold, by Johannes Nugroho: When a Balinese woman was mutilated by her husband, it created a media storm within Indonesia and shed light on domestic abuse there. And yet it barely dented its international reputation
Rocking the nation, by Marco Ferrarese: Malaysia has pitched itself as an Asian melting pot paradise. The reality is different. Just listen to the nation’s punk rockers
Stripsearch, by Martin Rowson: Carry on filtering those pictures darling. Your Instagram followers only want to see the most perfect holiday pics
Two sides of every story, by Alison Flood and Jemimah Steinfeld: Two top novelists, Victoria Hislop and Ian Rankin, talk about showing darker sides of tourist destinations in their books, and upsetting Greek Cypriots
Double vision, by Caroline Muscat: Malta’s Valletta is this year’s Europe’s Capital of Culture. The label conceals darker truths
Taking on the untouchables, by Irene Caselli: Italian journalist Federica Angeli’s life has been on the line since she reported on the mafia. She talks about how 24-hour protection affects her family life
Freedom to travel v travel towards freedom, by Mark Frary: Exclusive new data analysis for the magazine on whether tourists worry about a holiday resort’s reputation for media freedom
Fears that rain on their parades, by Silvia Nortes: Sunbathe all you like, just try to avoid offending religious sensibilities in the Spanish Canary Islands
“We’re not scared of these things”, by Miriam Grace A Go: Rappler news editor on how the newsroom continues despite the increasing threats, alongside words from their CEO Maria Ressa
Slouching away from Eden, by Kaya Genç: Turkey was once hot on the tourist trail, with major city Istanbul hailed as one of the world’s hippest. A look at its fall from grace, and why
White sands, dark deeds, by Zaheena Rasheed: The ultimate honeymoon destination is not so idyllic for the nation’s journalists, who battle corruption, fines and risk their lives as they get their stories
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”In focus”][vc_column_text]
After Isis lost, by Laura Silvia Battaglia: It’s becoming more dangerous, rather than less, to be a reporter in Iraq as two generations of Iraqi journalists explain. Translation by Sue Copeland
Sunshine capital, by Davion Smith: The British Virgin Islands desperately need freedom of information. One journalist reports on finding the truth against the odds
Demonising those teenage dirtbags, by Jon Savage: The current moral outcry over drill music is so last century. Adults have been scared about what the kids are singing for decades
Under the watchful eye of the army, by Samira Shackle: Elections are approaching in Pakistan, and the army has the nation’s journalists and bloggers in its sights
Liberté, egalité… autorité, by Jean-Paul Marthoz: Considered by many as the cradle of modern democracy and free speech, France isn’t practising what it has historically preached
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”Culture”][vc_column_text]
A walk in the park, by Kaya Genç: In this new short story for the magazine, an old man contemplates life and his shifting views of paradise
Georgian plain speaking, by Lasha Bugadze: The Georgian playwright and author on the censorious nature of the church in the country. Plus an extract of his new novel, translated into English for the first time by Donald Rayfield
Little big voice, by Mai Khoi: Vietnam’s “Lady Gaga” discusses always looking over her shoulder. Plus a song of hers translated and published in English for the first time
Facing the future, by Jonathan Tel: The award-winning short story writer on how much control the Chinese government actually has and a new short story about facial recognition, written exclusively for the magazine
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”Column”][vc_column_text]
Index around the world, by Danyaal Yasin: The unprecedented levels of Turkish journalists being imprisoned are being tracked by Index’s Mapping Media Freedom. Read about this and other countries of concern, plus an update on the fellowships
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”Endnote”][vc_column_text]
Game on, by Jemimah Steinfeld: Trump has jumped on the ban video games bandwagon. He called for a ban on games, rather than guns
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row content_placement=”top”][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_custom_heading text=”Trouble in paradise” font_container=”tag:p|font_size:24|text_align:left” link=”url:https%3A%2F%2Fwww.indexoncensorship.org%2F2018%2F06%2Ftrouble-in-paradise%2F|||”][vc_column_text]The summer 2018 issue of Index on Censorship magazine takes a special look at how holidaymakers’ images of palm-fringed beaches and crystal clear waters contrast with the reality of freedoms under threat
With: Ian Rankin, Victoria Hislop, Maria Ressa [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”100776″ img_size=”medium” alignment=”center” onclick=”custom_link” link=”https://www.indexoncensorship.org/2018/06/trouble-in-paradise/”][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″ css=”.vc_custom_1481888488328{padding-bottom: 50px !important;}”][vc_custom_heading text=”Subscribe” font_container=”tag:p|font_size:24|text_align:left” link=”url:https%3A%2F%2Fwww.indexoncensorship.org%2Fsubscribe%2F|||”][vc_column_text]In print, online. In your mailbox, on your iPad.
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