Turkish journalist Ferit Tunç quit his advertising job in 2013 to found the newspaper Yön Gazetesi, covering the Kurdish Batman province of Turkey. Since its inception, the newspaper has been the subject of nearly 40 lawsuits, and Tunç has been taken close to bankruptcy.
“Being a journalist in Turkey is very difficult,” he told Index. “But being a journalist in the Eastern provinces of Turkey is more difficult, especially these days.”
However he has refused to give up fighting for press freedom in Turkey. In protest to the crippling lawsuits – all of which had been eventually dropped – Tunç began to devote his front pages to recipes for traditional Turkish dishes.
The recipes contained references to government corruption and media censorship, with readers were informed about the best way to prepare “governor kebab” and a sherbet treat the paper satirically-titled “deputy’s finger.”
“They [the authorities] love to eat so we give them recipes. After they understood our protest, they appropriated the newspaper more than before. We will continue our protest until there is a free local media,” Tunç said.
The protest gained local and international attention, and Tunç eventually won a three-month sponsorship from a group of local businessmen, allowing Yön Gazetesi to stay open.
In 2015 Tunç also ran as an independent parliamentary candidate in Batman in the June general election.
“In reality, my reason for being a candidate was not to be elected, it was completely a reaction towards those in authority and against the political parties,” he said. “During our campaigning our main slogan was “No to Corruption”.
Even his campaign van was emblazoned with the demand: “Stop Corruption!”.
Tunç believes politics and the media need to be reformed in Turkey: “People feel they’re being denied the right to know and discuss local issues, but first, you have to have a form of media that can focus on them without being destroyed.”
“Freedom of speech is essential for me and I am of those that believe that there will not be development, happiness and peace in a place without freedom of speech.”
Recipe: Governor Kebap
The name of the food that I have given in the recipe is “Governor’s Kebap.” The Governor’s Kebap is one of the most expensive foods we have and the poor have not had much of a chance to eat it. And the small message we are giving through this is that while the poor are unable to eat this food, the rich are only thinking about their stomachs while abusing the rights of the poor and dealing corruptly.
Ingredients:
– 1 kg boneless leg of lamb
– half kg green beans
– 4-5 tablespoons vegetable oil
– 3 potatoes
– 3 tomatoes
– 2 bell peppers
– a red bell pepper
– 15 pearl onions
– 3 garlic cloves
– 1.5 cups water
– Salt, black pepper, thyme
Preparation:
Peel the garlic cloves. Rub the inside of a stew dish (güveç) with one clove of garlic and then grease it with 1-2 tablespoons of vegetable oil. Peel and wash the vegetables. Cut the beans in half. Slice the potatoes, tomatoes, and peppers. Peel the onions.
Coat the meat with thyme and put it in the stew dish (güveç). In order, add onions, beans, peppers, potatoes, and tomatoes. Add the salt, black pepper, water and remaining oil, and then cover the stew dish (güveç) with aluminum foil. Serve hot after cooking it for one hour in an oven set to 160 degrees.
Since becoming a journalist almost 30 years ago, Pakistani journalist Hamid Mir has had to choose between his life and his career. Mir is now one of Pakistan’s best-known journalists, the host of Geo Television’s flagship political show Capital Talk. He also now lives under armed guard, recovering from yet another assassination attempt, with his family sent abroad for their safety.
“My family is not happy with me,” he told Index. “They think that my life is more important than the profession.” Mir does not agree.
“I think that if I leave Pakistan, it’s like I surrender, and I don’t want to surrender to the Taliban, I don’t want to surrender to the rogue elements in our intelligence agencies and the security agencies. I don’t want to surrender to the enemies of democracy.”
Mir became a journalist after his father, who himself taught journalism at the University of the Punjab, died in mysterious circumstances in 1987. Mir saw his career as a continuation of his father’s fight for democracy, human rights and minorities’ rights in Pakistan.
“When I decided to become a journalist, Pakistan was ruled by a military dictator,” Mir told Index. It was not long after he started at a small paper in Lahore that Mir first met the violent opposition to his reporting that would characterise his career and life.
“When I started facing trouble, I was not aware that I was touching some controversial subject,” he said. “I was only doing my job as a reporter.”
In 1990, Mir broke a story about the military establishment and the then-president trying to remove the democratically elected Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.
“I was kidnapped by the intelligence agency and they tortured me and asked me to tell them who is my source.” Bhutto’s government was removed days later.
Fast forward 30 years and Mir is still reporting on issues many Pakistani journalists won’t touch.
His tireless and outspoken reporting has earned him enemies in Pakistan’s intelligence agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence, the Pakistani Taliban and local terrorist groups, and Pakistan’s political parties.
It has also earned him a lifetime of assassination attempts – the latest a near-fatal attack in 2014 which saw him shot six times as he drove to work – has left Mir living under constant protection. He is driven to and from work in a bulletproof vehicle, alternating between cell phones and residences, and away from his two children, who were sent abroad after a car they were riding in was attacked.
But, for Mir, reporting on these untouchable-topics is not a question. “Maybe it’s controversial for the others but it’s not controversial for me,” he says.
“If a military dictator is suspending the constitution of Pakistan which was approved by the elected parliament, and I, being a journalist and a TV anchor, am opposing that, for me it’s not controversial,” he says.
“And again, if some intelligence agency is trying to dictate me – you should report this and you should not report that – and if the religious extremists, the Taliban, they are issuing threats to women, they are bombing the girls’ schools, and I am criticising the Taliban. I don’t think that it’s controversial.”
Threats to his life intensified in late 2015, and under pressure from his family, Mir planned to take three months off-air.
“After one month, I realised that it’s too much, I have to come back.”
For Mir, if not for his family, his duty to Pakistan and to his colleagues, will always outweigh his own safety. The guilt he feels for those journalists who have died for their work is too great to ever allow him to stop, he says.
“There were some colleagues who used to come to me and take advice about what should we do because we are facing pressures. Should we continue our job as a journalist? I used to advise them, yes you must continue your job as a journalist, nothing bad will happen. But they were killed, they were kidnapped.”
“If I leave Pakistan today, on the pressure of my family, maybe I will leave a very safe life in London or in Berlin or in Paris or in any other country. But it will be very difficult for me to live a normal life, because the ghosts of my martyred friends, they will not allow me to have a comfortable sleep.”
Mir believes he is one of the lucky ones in Pakistan – he has survived. And life in Lahore is a lot easier for journalists than for those living outside the city, he says.
Although he sees media freedom in Pakistan getting worse, with pressures from the extremist forces and state agencies intensifying, his long-view is an uplifting one.
“The good thing is that the people, the majority of the people of Pakistan, the civil society, is the main source of our strength. If I am living in Pakistan, if I am surviving in Pakistan, it’s only because the common man is supporting me,” he said. “The common man believes in democracy, they don’t like extremist ideology, they don’t like dictatorship, they want rule of law. There is a ray of hope for me in Pakistan.”
Love Matters is an international multimedia platform that encourages young people to discuss love, sex and relationships. Launched first in India, Love Matters focuses on regions where discussions about sexual and reproductive health is censored or taboo, and their content is available in English, Hindi, Arabic, Spanish and Mandarin Chinese. Their aim is to offer young people a space to learn and ask questions they can’t ask elsewhere.
“There are a lot of myths and misconceptions based on religious or cultural perceptions that make it very difficult to speak openly about love, sex and relationships,” Stephanie Hasse, coordinator of Love Matters Africa, told Index.
The idea was first piloted in India in 2011. Love Matters India has now had more than 12 million visits and they have over 700,000 followers on their Facebook page.
“Talking about sex and anything related to sex continues to be a taboo in India,” said Vitikha Yadav, coordinator at Love Matters India. “People continue to live in shame and silence with respect to sexual health issues.”
Last year Love Matters India launched a campaign called BearNoMore targeting intimate partner violence among young unmarried couples. The campaign was run online, through their website and social media channels, and offline through film screenings in three villages of Rajasthan, each attended by over 1000 people.
“The response was amazing,” said Yadav. “We reached about two million people in two months.”
“That really encouraged discussions about intimate partner violence. It was a different kind of campaign, had huge engagement and was something that was not looked at by any organisation before, so it was hugely empowering for us as well.”
Love Matters Arabic covers the Middle East and north African region, with a specific focus on Egypt. To mark their first anniversary, the group held a stand-up comedy event in Cairo on love, sex and relationships. “We created a new space to talk about this sensitive subject in public,” Michele Ernsting, head of the Love Matters Global Project, explained to Index.
“Love Matters Arabic is actually the only dedicated platform in the Arabic language that discusses sexual health and sexual health of young people, in their own language. That’s why it’s unique,” Abir Serras, coordinator of Love Matters Arabic told Index.
Love Matters Africa launched the Love Matters Music Awards: the first music awards in Kenya dedicated to providing young people the chance to produce songs on themes related to pleasure and sexuality.
“In the region that Love Matters Africa works in, topics around love, sex and relationships aren’t easily discussable,” said Hasse.
“Young people often don’t have the information they need when it comes to making choices about their sex lives. That has to do with the fact that sexual health education is missing at schools, or it’s focused on abstinence only,” she said.
“Last year in May we ran a special campaign for International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia, trying to make the topic more discussable.”
Across all their platforms, Love Matters now has over 100 million page views. “We now have persuasive data to show how to improve the effectiveness of sexual health education by directly addressing the uncensored needs of young people,” said Ernsting.
“It has been wonderful to see Love Matters to scale up to all these countries and in really challenging settings where the need of this work is immense,” Vitikha Yadav said of the impact that Love Matters has had on young people. “We are hoping to reach out to many more millions in the country and many more across the world.”
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”This year brings the 400th anniversary of William Shakespeare’s death and Index on Censorship is marking it with a special issue of our award-winning magazine, looking at how his plays have been used around the world to sneak past censors or take on the authorities – often without them realising.”][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]
Our special report explores how different countries use different plays to tackle difficult themes. Hungarian author György Spiró writes about how Richard III was used to taunt eastern European dictators during the 1980s. Dame Janet Suzman remembers how staging Othello with a black lead during apartheid in South Africa caused people to walk out of the theatre.
Kaya Genç tells of a 1981 production of A Midsummer’s Night Dream in Turkey that landed most of the cast in jail. And Brazilian director Roberto Alvim recountshis recent staging of Julius Caesar, which was inspired by the country’s current political tumult. The issue also includes contributions from Simon Callow, Tom Holland, Preti Taneja and Kathleen E McLuskie. Plus we explore Shakespeare’s ability to provoke and protest in India, Zimbabwe and the USA. Currently Shakespeare is very much in favour in China and our contributing editor Jemimah Steinfeld explores why.
Shakespeare aside, we have Hollywood screenwriter John McNamara on why his film on blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo nearly didn’t make it to the big screen. There are interviews with US academic Steven Salaita and Syrian playwright Liwaa Yazji. We look at how one man from New Zealand has been hacking North Korea for years. And we explore Index’s archives on Argentina’s dictatorship, 40 years after the coup, with interviews from former prisoners and descendants of the disappeared.
The issue also includes new fiction from Akram Aylisli, one of Azerbaijan’s leading, and persecuted, writers. Plus lyrics from Egyptian musician Ramy Essam, famed for his performances in the Tahrir Square revolution, and Basque protest singer Fermin Muguruza. And there are illustrations and cartoons by Martin Rowson, Ben Jennings,Eva Bee and Brian John Spencer.
Order your copy here, or take out a digital subscription via Exact Editions (just £18 for the year, with a free trial). Copies are also available in excellent bookshops including at the BFI and Serpentine Gallery (London), News from Nowhere (Liverpool), Home (Manchester) and on Amazon. Each magazine sale helps Index on Censorship fight for free expression worldwide.
Rising star – Jemimah Steinfeld on how China has embraced Shakespeare, with performances spanning from brash pro-government productions to a Tibetan Hamlet
When the show doesn’t go on – Jan Fox reports on why school and community theatre productions in the US are under increasing pressure to curb “controversial” themes
The Bard meets Bollywood – Suhrith Pathasarathy looks at how India’s films use Shakespeare to tackle controversy
Lifting the curtain on Zimbabwe – While Shakespeare’s tales of power play and ageing rulers get the go-ahead, local playwrights struggle to be heard, says playwright Elizabeth Zaza Muchemwa
Lend me your ears – Claire Rigby interviews leading Brazilian director Roberto Alvim about tackling his country’s current political turmoil through Julius Caesar
Theatre of war – Charlotte Bailey interviews Syrian playwright Liwaa Yazji
Beyond belief – Ryan McChrystal looks at whether Ireland’s new government will finally phase out the country’s blasphemy law
Exposing history’s faultlines – Vicky Baker explores the Index archives for stories of Argentina’s dictatorship 40 years on, and talks to those who were affected
Rainbow warriors – Duncan Tucker reports on the attacks and killings of LGBT activists in Honduras
Hack job – Sybil Jones interviews Frank Feinstein, who monitors the North Korean propaganda machine
“They worried I’m dangerous. I’m absolutely harmless” – Nan Levinson speaks to US academic Steven Salaita who lost his job after posting controversial tweets
Tools and tricks for truthseekers – Alastair Reid and Peter Sands on why people need to learn verification techniques to combat hoaxes and misinformation on social media
Your television is watching you – Jason DaPonte explains how information stored by internet-connected home devices could be used against us
Tackling Trumbo – Hollywood screenwriter John McNamara on how his story about blacklisted writer Dalton Trumbo almost didn’t make it to screens
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”SUBSCRIBE” css=”.vc_custom_1481736449684{margin-right: 0px !important;margin-left: 0px !important;border-bottom-width: 1px !important;padding-bottom: 15px !important;border-bottom-color: #455560 !important;border-bottom-style: solid !important;}”][vc_column_text]Index on Censorship magazine was started in 1972 and remains the only global magazine dedicated to free expression. Past contributors include Samuel Beckett, Gabriel García Marquéz, Nadine Gordimer, Arthur Miller, Salman Rushdie, Margaret Atwood, and many more.[/vc_column_text][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/2″][vc_single_image image=”76572″ img_size=”full”][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]In print or online. Order a print edition here or take out a digital subscription via Exact Editions.
Copies are also available at the BFI, the Serpentine Gallery, MagCulture, (London), News from Nowhere (Liverpool), Home (Manchester), Calton Books (Glasgow) and on Amazon. Each magazine sale helps Index on Censorship continue its fight for free expression worldwide.
Ingredients: