19 Apr 24 | Iran, News and features
While Iran and Israel continue to provoke each other in the aftermath of the 7 October attacks by Hamas, there are concerns that the fate of protesters in Iran, particularly those that started after the murder in custody of Jina ‘Mahsa’ Amini, are being forgotten as the Iranian leadership cracks down.
“Governments often utilise external conflicts to divert attention from domestic issues,” says exiled Iranian film-maker Vahid Zarezadeh. “In Iran, while the government addresses threats from abroad, it simultaneously intensifies its grip on civil liberties at home, particularly targeting women’s freedoms. This approach helps consolidate power internally by rallying nationalistic sentiments while suppressing dissent.”
Zarezadeh, who made the documentary White Torture in collaboration with the jailed 2023 Nobel Peace Prize winner Narges Mohammadi and Gelareh Kakavand, says, “Given the complexities of the current events in Iran and the ongoing regional tensions, it’s crucial to understand the multifaceted nature of the strife affecting the nation, particularly its impact on women and civil society. As Iran navigates its ongoing conflict with Israel, another critical issue persists domestically: the war against women in the streets of Tehran and other cities. This battle is intensifying with new legislative measures concerning the hijab, marking the beginning of a renewed phase of systematic suppression.”
Last September, Iran’s parliament passed a bill with a huge majority that meant that refusing to wear a hijab, either in person or even on video on social media, was considered as nudity. The bill allows for jail sentences of up to ten years for those who fail to adhere to the new measures. Iranian businesses that “promote or allow immoral behaviour”, including not wearing the hijab, are also targeted by the bill.
Zarezadeh says that pressure from the Iranian authorities on protest and dissent has increased markedly.
“A stringent crackdown on dissent has emerged, characterised by the systematic suppression of women and civil activists,” he says. “While the massive protests have lessened in visibility due to severe governmental crackdowns, underlying discontent remains. The fear of reprisal, particularly the death penalty, has tempered the public’s willingness to protest as openly as before.”
Even with the new stricter laws on dress code, he says that resistance against the compulsory hijab continues as a symbol of wider discontent with systemic gender-based restrictions.
“Despite the risks, including severe penalties such as the death penalty, the spirit of dissent still simmers, manifesting in smaller, yet persistent protests,” he says.
The resistance is still being kept alive through social media, and X in particular, where the hashtag #جنگ_علیه_زنان (“war against women”) has gained traction. Its widespread usage serves as a barometer for the internal sentiment against the current regime’s policies.
Videos showing women being violent attacked in broad daylight by the morality police and being thrown into the backs of vans are being widely shared using the hashtag, such as this:
Many women human rights defenders and activists have been thrown in prison, and face dire conditions with no adequate medical or sanitary provisions.
“A poignant example is Bahareh Hedayat, a prominent student activist who was temporarily released for medical treatment due to uterine cancer but has since been returned to prison,” says Zarezdeh. “Such cases underscore the severe and deteriorating conditions faced by women behind bars.”
One powerful symbol in the protests over the last two years were the actions of schoolgirls in protesting against the restrictions on women.
However, young protesters, including many schoolgirls, have since faced detention and other forms of intimidation. Detailed follow-ups on their situations are scant due to restrictions on information flow within the country.
The fate of the Iranian woman climber Elnaz Rekabi is also far from clear. Rekabi competed in a climbing tournament in South Korea in 2022 without a hijab.
“After her act of defiance by competing without a hijab, Elnaz Rekabi faced both support and significant pressure upon her return to Iran,” says Zarezdeh
When she flew home from South Korea, Rekabi said that her hijab had fallen off inadvertently. Her family’s villa in Iran was subsequently demolished, seemingly in punishment.
Zarezdeh says, “The full extent of Rekabi’s current situation remains unclear with concerns about her freedom and well-being continuing to linger.”
There continues to be a hunger for reform despite the crackdown. “The initial surge in hope for a potential regime change has been dampened by the forceful response from the authorities,” says Zarezadeh. “However, the desire for reform and change persists among various sectors of the society.”
04 Apr 24
Join Index on Censorship at the University of Exeter for an evening discussing the growing – and worrying – trend of transnational repression. Transnational repression takes many forms: from UK residents being poisoned by Russian agents, to a Saudi dissident being murdered in Turkey, to a Polish art gallery being subject to attempted acts of censorship by Chinese diplomats, to UK-based BBC Persian journalists being threatened and harassed by Iranian authorities. Expert panellists John Heathershaw (International Relations at the University of Exeter), Simon Cheng (a Hong Kong exiled pro-democracy activist and a founder of the UK-wide Hong Kong diasporic non-profit organisation, Hongkongers in Britain) and Belarusian poet and activist Hanna Komar will explore about the extent and impact of states silencing their critics abroad and the fundamental right to free expression.
This event celebrates the launch of Index’s latest magazine. Free copies available.
Book your free place here
This event is taking place in person at the University of Exeter. There is also the option of attending online via ZOOM (5-6pm). Click here to register to watch the event online.
Speakers
Hanna Komar is a Belarusian poet, translator, writer. Her poetic work lays bare the experience of being a girl, then a young woman, growing up in a strongly patriarchal authoritarian country. Her latest poems talk about the nationwide political resistance in Belarus of 2020. She’s published five poetry collections, is a member of PEN Belarus and an honorary member of English PEN. Website: hannakomar.com
Simon Cheng is a British Hong Kong exiled pro-democracy activist, and a founder of the UK-wide diaspora group, Hongkongers in Britain. He was detained in China in 2019 and later fled to the UK, where he was granted asylum in 2020. On 30 July last year, the Hong Kong police announced that they had issued arrest warrants to six exiled activists including Cheng for breaching the draconian national security law. Then in December, the Hong Kong government issued an arrest warrant against Cheng and put a bounty of HK$1 million on his capture.
John Heathershaw is a professor at Exeter University whose research addresses conflict, security and development in global politics, especially in post-Soviet Central Asia.
Jemimah Steinfeld is Index on Censorship’s editor-in-chief.
22 Mar 24 | News and features, North Korea, Opinion, Romania, Russia, Ruth's blog, Rwanda
By international comparison, Putin’s ‘win’ in the recent elections in Russia was practically marginal.
Forget the ruthless despots of yesteryear; Putin’s victory could put him in the running for the title of “Worst Dictator Ever” securing as he did, just 87% of the vote and struggling to convince a whole 13% of Russia’s population that he deserves their vote.
Putin’s efforts to reach the dizzying heights of previous autocratic excellence is not without precedent.
Nicolae Ceaușescu, the Romanian maestro of self-delusion, once claimed a staggering 98.8% approval rating from voters who seemingly found his continued leadership irresistible.
And, of course, the multiple successes of Saddam Hussein, who, not content with anything less than perfection, treated himself to not one, but two elections where he waltzed away with a cool 99% of the vote, leaving the remaining 1% presumably too busy planning their escape routes to bother casting a ballot.
Even by recent standards, Putin’s election efforts fall into the ‘must try harder’ category. Take Paul Kagame – head of state in the unquestionably safe state of Rwanda – secured an impressive 98.8% of the vote in 2017. By coincidence, his two challengers were deemed not to have met the nomination threshold by the Rwandan Electoral Commission.
And even by Russian standards, Putin is an under-achiever. The absolutely above board and beyond reproach referendum in 2014 that took place in Crimea saw the Ukranian peninsula experience a collective outbreak of Russiophilia, with a jaw-dropping 96.77% of voters deciding that annexation was their number one wish.
But of course, when it comes to precarious polls, poor Putin is but an enthusiastic amateur of electoral absurdity when compared to North Korea’s Kim Jong Un whose 2019 flawless victory saw him win 100% of the vote. Imagine that, Putin. A leader so popular that no-one felt the need to vote against you.
So, at Index on Censorship, we offer our commiserations to Putin on an election which will inevitably cause him to struggle to look his fellow dictators in the eye. But he should take heart, for in the grand tapestry of dictatorial hubris, he may have fallen short of the coveted triple-digit approval rating, but he’s certainly earned his place in the hall of shame. Bravo!
But in all seriousness, dictators yearn for legitimacy but equally cannot resist inflating their egos with absurd election results. Putin’s 87% victory is merely the latest in a long line of autocrats entangled in their own delusions. For them, the allure of unchecked power is intoxicating, and the illusion of overwhelming support is irresistible. So they manipulate, coerce, and fabricate, all in the name of bolstering their image and maintaining their iron grip on power.
Yet, in their desperate pursuit of approval, they only reveal the hollow emptiness of their rule and the farcical nature of their so-called “elections.”
In the grand theatre of autocracy, where dictators vie for the title of “Most Absurd Electoral Farce,” Vladimir Putin may have inadvertently claimed the crown as the reigning champion of underachievement.
His inability to secure a unanimous victory serves as a glaring reminder of the limitations of his power and the resilience of those who dare to defy his iron grip.
While we chuckle at his inflated ego and his desperate grasp for legitimacy, let us not forget the sobering reality faced by millions of Russians who lack the freedom to express dissent without fear of reprisal.
We can poke fun at Putin’s absurdity but we must also reaffirm our commitment to democracy and freedom of expression, values that remain elusive for too many in Putin’s Russia.
And we stand with the 13%.
19 Mar 24 | Asia and Pacific, News and features, Pakistan
The first time Gharidah Farooqi became a target of tech-facilitated gender-based violence (TFGBV) was in 2014. She was working as a reporter at Samaa, a private Pakistani television channel, and covering cricketer-turned politician Imran Khan’s anti-government protest that set off from the eastern city of Lahore in Punjab province to the country’s capital, Islamabad.
“I was there 24/7 on the ground and would go to the hotel just to take a few hours of rest,” she told Index.
“My morphed photos from the field coverage were posted on social media along with sexist and vulgar comments,” recalled Farooqi, who is currently working as a senior anchor at GTV, another private Pakistani TV channel.
“For the longest of time, I ignored it, but not in [my] wildest imagination had I foreseen a Frankenstein in the making,” said Farooqi, adding that people were not used to seeing a woman reporter in the field.
“For them it was just shughal [making fun] of me,” she said.
A decade later, the attacks have not stopped. In fact, they have taken on an even uglier and more dangerous shape through generative artificial intelligence (AI), which uses models to create new content.
“Generative AI is making TFGBV even more difficult to address,” explained Nighat Dad, a lawyer and internet activist who runs the not-for-profit organisation Digital Rights Foundation (DRF), which helps Pakistanis fight against online harassment.
She said that this technology gives the creator power to change the original image, text, audio or video very quickly, in a way that makes it hard to identify whether it is an original or a deepfake, terming it “photoshopping in a more sophisticated manner”.
For Farooqi, “the period between the calm and chaos” is so short, she barely gets any respite. Along with the organised campaign by political parties’ supporters, there is a daily barrage of abuse on her social media pages, she said, adding: “It is not mere trolling; trolling is a very harmless word compared to what I’m facing.”
She’s not the only one to have had a taste of this form of violence.
“The prime targets are of course women, although a few men have also been targeted,” said Farooqi. Many have reached out to her, “mostly for emotional support” and to ask her how to seek legal help.
In her experience, female colleagues have always supported each other, and supported her in particular, for which she says she’s “eternally grateful”.
“Gharidah faces [more] attacks than any other journalist,” said Dad, who is constantly being contacted for help by women journalists.
The DRF has a helpline and a resource kit that offers a list of places offering help. Between January and November 2023, 22 female and 14 male journalists reached out to DRF with complaints including blasphemy accusations, abusive messages, bullying, blackmailing, censorship, defamation, GBV, impersonation, online stalking, phishing, sexual harassment and threats of physical violence.
While Farooqi has learnt to navigate the legal mechanisms and lodge complaints, not everyone will be as astute in warding off cyber harassment.
The Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act 2016 “carves out certain offences such as morphing of pictures or videos etc., which is done using tech tools”, according to Farieha Aziz, a cybercrime expert and co-founder of Bolo Bhi, an advocacy forum for digital rights.
But the “manner in which online harassment cases are executed and dealt with, despite complaints being lodged and arrests being made, remains problematic due to a lack of priority by the Federal Investigation Agency [FIA]. Either these women do not hear back or there is no progress on complaints they’ve made, at various stages of the case,” Aziz said.
After filing complaints eight times, Farooqi said, it was only on her most recent complaint (made last month), that any action was taken by the FIA when her personal details – her home address and her telephone number – were made public.
“I started getting anonymous calls and messages threatening me with rape and even death warnings. It was the first time that the agency took swift action and got the posts deleted,” she said.
The Karachi-based Centre of Excellence in Journalism has produced a safety kit for women journalists “on how to protect themselves and where and how to report,” Aziz told Index, adding that they also provide counselling.
“There has been pervasive and persistent online harassment, sexualised and otherwise gendered disinformation faced by women journalists in Pakistan, with many being threatened with physical assault and offline violence. We’ve witnessed multiple incidents of female journalists’ private information being leaked online with what we can say are well-planned and directed efforts to silence them and [which] resulted in stalking and offline harassment,” said a statement by the Pakistan-based Network of Journalists for Digital Rights earlier this month, condemning the use of TFGBV and generative AI to attack female journalists.
Farooqi considers generative AI as yet another weapon to silence and subdue women journalists. Claiming to be a woman with “nerves of steel”, she said she has to be thick-skinned to be able to survive these attacks. To keep sane, she advises people to never engage with attackers.
