15 Mar 24 | Iran, Israel, News and features, Newsletters, Palestine, Russia
A great privilege of working at Index is, and always has been, the amazing people we get to encounter, those who look tyranny in the face and don’t cower. Iranian musician Toomaj Salehi is one such person. This week, the 2023 Index Freedom of Expression arts award winner donated the £2500 cash prize to relief funds for those affected by the floods in Iran’s Sistan and Baluchistan province in an act of extreme generosity. We were informed of the donation by his family.
Salehi, whose music rails against corruption, state executions, poverty and the killing of protesters in Iran, has spent years in and out of jail. Today he is still not free – indeed he faces a court hearing on another new charge tomorrow. Our work with him doesn’t end with the award. But what solace to know that the money will make a tangible difference to the lives of many and that jail cannot stop Salehi from his mission to make Iran a more just country.
While Salehi, and others, confront the brutal face of censorship, those in the USA and the UK are this week dealing with the finer print – who owns what. The US House of Representatives passed a bill on Wednesday that will require TikTok owner ByteDance to sell the popular video-sharing app or face a total ban. This is challenging territory. TikTok is guilty of its charges, shaping content to suit the interests of Beijing and data harvesting being the most prominent. So too are other social media platforms. If it is sold (which is still an if) we could see a further concentration of influential apps in the hands of a few tech giants. Is that a positive outcome? And how does this match up against the treatment of USA-based X? The social media platform, formerly Twitter, has Saudi Arabia’s Kingdom Holding, the investment vehicle of Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, as its second largest investor. Is the US Government holding X to the same standards?
Meanwhile, the UK government (which has expanded the definition of extremism this week in a concerning way) plans to ban foreign governments from owning British media, effectively saying no to an Abu Dhabi-led takeover of the Telegraph. We have expressed our concerns about the buyout before and these concerns remain. Still, we’d like to see the final proposal before deciding whether it’s good news.
We’ve also spoken a lot this week about the decision by literary magazine Guernica to pull an article written by an Israeli (still available via the Wayback machine here) following a staff-walk out. We stand by everyone’s right to protest peacefully, of which walking out of your office is just that. But we are troubled by other aspects, specifically redacting an article post-publication and the seemingly low bar for such a redaction (and protest), which hinged on the identity of the author and a few sentences. We can argue about whether these sentences were inflammatory – I personally struggle to see them as such – and indeed we should, because if we can’t have these debates within the pages of a thoughtful magazine aimed at the erudite we’re in a bad place.
Speaking of a bad place, Russia goes to the “polls” today.
22 Feb 24 | News and features, United Kingdom, United States
After passing the Public Order Bill last year in the UK, which increased the powers of the police to restrict people’s fundamental rights to peaceful protest, the government is looking to restrict protest rights further. The new Criminal Justice Bill is currently being considered by parliament and contains measures designed to clamp down on protesters climbing on national monuments, hiding their face or carrying flares.
In their announcement of the new measures, the Home Office declared that the right to protest is “no longer an excuse for certain public order offences”. Additionally, attorney general Victoria Prentis KC is leading an attempt to outlaw the ‘consent’ defence for climate protesters, which argues that defendants have a lawful excuse for their actions due to their honest belief that those affected by their actions would consent to the damage had they understood the dangers of the climate emergency. This attack on what is one of the last remaining lawful defences available to climate activists has been described by environmental protest group Extinction Rebellion as “concerning”.
“The government would rather curtail our right to protest, and waste valuable court time and public money, than do what everyone agrees is necessary to protect us from the worst climate impacts and cut people’s energy bills,” a spokesperson for the group told Index.
“When political parties keep prioritising narrow private interests ahead of the lives, homes and security of its citizens the solution is to put people in charge through an emergency citizens’ assembly on the climate and nature emergencies.”
This is particularly alarming given the rise in environmental activists facing potential legal action. Hundreds of such campaigners in the UK have received legal threats, leading to claims that states and private companies are using the threat of costly legal action to silence critics.
Michel Forst, the UN special rapporteur on environmental defenders, has previously expressed concerns over the UK’s increasing intolerance of environmental protests, calling the new laws “regressive” and warning of the “chilling effect” they will have on free expression. This statement came in the aftermath of the infamous case of Just Stop Oil campaigners Morgan Trowland and Marcus Decker, who made history last year when they were handed the longest sentences for a peaceful climate protest in living memory. Both have been jailed for more than two and a half years after scaling a bridge on the Dartford Crossing, forcing its closure and causing gridlock for the traffic below.
The current ongoing conflict in the Middle East has increased concerns over protester safety. Since the outbreak of the Israel-Gaza war, weekly marches have taken place in the UK and have become a source of contention in the free expression world. Suella Braverman, for example, stated that waving a Palestinian flag “may not be legitimate” and encouraged a “strong police presence” in response. There have been hundreds of arrests during pro-Palestine protests since the conflict broke out, raising questions over the line between incitement and free speech. In December, nine people were arrested in London after displaying a pro-Palestine banner. Five people were arrested the month before for taking part in a peaceful sit-in at King’s Cross station after refusing to comply with an order to disperse.
This pattern of increasing police powers to clamp down on peaceful protest demonstrates a worrying break from usual democratic principles, which could have serious consequences for free expression in the state.
Anti-protest laws are not just gaining traction in the UK. Similar incidents have occurred in the USA, marking a worrying trend. Earlier this month, freelance journalist Reed Dunlea was arrested while covering pro-Palestine protests in New York. He was officially charged, confusingly, with resisting arrest, but no reason has been given as to why he was being arrested in the first place, particularly as his press pass and media equipment was on full display.
Freelance photographer Stephanie Keith told Index that she saw Dunlea’s arrest in progress as she was covering the protests, but that it wasn’t clear what he was arrested for.
“I was across the street documenting an earlier arrest when I saw a number of NYPD [officers] slamming a fairly large man onto the ground,” she said.
Keith has been covering the recent pro-Palestine protests in the USA and said she has noticed attitudes towards protesters changing in the last few months.
“The NYPD have been much more intolerant of the Palestinian protest in the last two months,” she said. “Protesters used to be able to march in the streets and now if anyone sets foot in the streets, they are arrested.
“The police have a very different attitude towards the protesters now than they did at the end of last year.”
This incident was one of many to have occurred under New York Mayor Eric Adams, a pro-police candidate. During his term, misconduct complaints against the NYPD have risen to their highest levels in more than a decade.
Outside of New York, the police forces of other US cities have also displayed an increasingly hostile attitude towards protesters. Following the racial justice protests of 2020 that broke out after the murder of George Floyd, at least 19 US cities were made to pay settlements totalling more than $80m to protesters who sustained injuries as a result of law enforcement action.
If such a trend continues, the UK and US will have serious questions to answer over their treatment of protesters. One of the most fundamental concepts of any functioning democracy is the right to peacefully protest. The charge sheet of both the UK and the US is not looking good and we must make sure we don’t look the other way.
29 Jan 24 | Israel, Middle East and North Africa, News and features, Palestine
When Turkish football team Antalyaspor faced Trabzonspor in a Super Lig match earlier this month, few could have predicted the fall-out that would follow off the pitch. Israeli winger Sagiv Jehezkel scored the equaliser for Antalyaspor in the second half, and in celebration he revealed a message written on his wristband that said: “100 days, 7-10”. The words referenced the length of time that Israeli hostages had been held by Hamas since the group launched an attack on Israel on the 7 October, killing an estimated 1,200 people.
In Turkey, the backlash was fierce. Jehezkel was arrested and detained in Antalya on the charge of “incitement to hate”. After being released, he was sacked by Antalyaspor and returned home to Israel, landing in Tel Aviv the next day.
According to local media, Jehezkel has stated that he did not mean to provoke such a storm. He said: “I am not a pro-war person. I want the war to end. That’s why I showed the sign.” Antalyaspor did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
He is not the only footballer to lose his club for voicing an opinion on the conflict. When Israel began their retaliatory bombardment of Gaza, which has so far reportedly killed more than 26,000 people, Dutch international Anwar El Ghazi posted a message of support for Palestine on his Instagram story. After a back and forth with his club – German side FSV Mainz 05 – El Ghazi made a further statement on social media announcing that he had no regrets over the now-deleted post and reiterating his argument that he stands “for humanity and the oppressed” and against “the killing of all innocent civilians in Palestine and Israel”. Mainz were unhappy with El Ghazi’s stance, calling his position on the conflict “unacceptable”. A few days later, his contract was terminated.
Upon losing his club, El Ghazi posted once more. “Stand for what is right, even if it means standing alone. The loss of my livelihood is nothing when compared to the hell being unleashed on the innocent and vulnerable in Gaza,” he said.
The player is now suing Mainz for wrongful termination of his contract, while the club is making a counter claim as they seek financial compensation to help fund his replacement. The final hearing is set to be held in June.
Mainz told Index they were unable to comment on the incident as legal proceedings are ongoing.
These two cases sum up the uncomfortable relationship sport has with politics and free speech, and how this has been exacerbated by the Israel-Gaza war. Due to the divisive nature of the conflict, sporting bodies are struggling to navigate the line between freedom of expression and the potential to incite hatred and in doing so have fallen into a worrying trend of censorship.
The reluctance or inability of those involved to comment on the incidents may also show the difficulties people have when talking about this topic, as they can’t, or won’t, speak up due to the potential backlash and further repercussions. This is fairly unsurprising given the experiences of those who have expressed an opinion on the conflict. In another case, footballer Karim Benzema was accused of having “notorious” links to Islamist group the Muslim Brotherhood by France’s Interior Minister, Gerald Darmanin. His crime? Posting a message of support for the inhabitants of Gaza on X (formerly Twitter). Benzema has filed for defamation against Darmanin; his lawyer Hugues Vigier told French news outlet RTL that the claims were “false” and accused the Interior Minister of “sowing division in France”.
It is not just players who are facing the threat of censorship. Many of football’s national governing bodies, including England’s Premier League and EFL, have also banned supporters from displaying Palestine or Israel flags during games. As a result, there have been a number of accusations levelled at English clubs such as Liverpool and Manchester United of censoring fans who display any show of support for the Palestinian cause by removing them from stadiums.
Other sports have also been caught up in the censorship storm. Former athlete Emilie Gomis, who clinched a silver medal in basketball for France at the London 2012 Olympics, recently stepped down from her role as an ambassador for the Paris 2024 Games after posting an anti-Israel video to her Instagram story. Elsewhere, in South Africa, cricketer David Teeger was stripped of his captaincy of the country’s under-19s side after dedicating an award he won at a Jewish community event to “the state of Israel and every single soldier fighting so that we can live and thrive in the diaspora”, in a decision described as a “sinister” and “discriminatory” by the South African Jewish Board of Deputies.
Another cricketer, Australia’s Usman Khawaja, was charged by the International Cricket Council (ICC) for wearing a black armband during a test match against Pakistan in support of those in Gaza. ICC regulations do not allow players to display “messages of political, religious or racial causes”, and the player had previously been warned by the governing body after wearing shoes with the messages “all lives are equal” and “freedom is a human right” written on them. Khawaja argues that it is not a political statement but a “humanitarian appeal”.
Further debate over the right to free expression in regard to the conflict is inevitable with the growing calls to ban Israel from competing in sporting events. One post on X by The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel called for “pressure” to be put on sporting bodies to ban Israel from international tournaments and games “until Israel ends its grave violations of international law”. The statement was reposted by the BBC’s Gary Lineker, who later deleted it.
Despite cries to keep politics out of sport, it is not possible to separate the two. Sport does not exist in an apolitical vacuum, and is impacted even on the front lines; the Palestinian Football Association says 88 top-tier athletes have been killed by Israeli forces during their military bombardment, 67 of whom are footballers. Just this month it was reported that the coach of Palestine’s Olympic football team Hani Al-Masdar was killed in an Israeli airstrike.
The attempts by governing bodies in sport to prevent athletes and fans from expressing a view on the conflict, while not necessarily malicious, pose a serious risk to free speech. While the cases of Sagiv Jehezkel and Anwar El Ghazi are extreme, they are the product of sport’s increasingly heavy-handed approach to political censorship, which makes having an opinion on the war in Gaza increasingly difficult. For people to feel unable to wade into the issue in fear of backlash is cause for concern in itself. Despite a long history of athletes being involved in political activism, sport still hasn’t found a way to ensure free expression for all is upheld.
17 Jan 24 | Israel, News and features, Palestine
Wael al-Dahdouh, the al-Jazeera bureau chief in Gaza, has become the symbol of the suffering of Palestinian journalists. Footage of him continuing to work after an Israeli airstrike killed his wife, two of his children and a grandson gained global attention in October. His suffering was compounded this month when his son, Hamza, also a journalist, was killed in a targeted drone attack. This week 53-year-old Wael left Gaza for treatment on an injury sustained during a strike last month that left an al-Jazeera cameraman dead.
Youmna el-Sayed, the al-Jazeera English correspondent in Gaza, was very close to both Wael and his son Hamza. Speaking from Cairo, where she and her family were evacuated this month, she told Index: “I consider Wael as an older brother while Hamza is, or was, younger than me. He was a very nice and kind person. He was loved by everyone. If you go to the Gaza Strip and speak about Hamza, no one will tell you anything bad about him… And Hamza was always there. With us at all times. I saw him every day.”
The Israeli Defence Force (IDF) has produced documentation to show that Hamza al-Dahdouh took money from the terrorist group Islamic Jihad and that his colleague, Mustafa Thuraya, also killed in the airstrike, was a member of Hamas’s Gaza City Brigade.
El-Sayed said she did not accept the IDF’s version of events: “Israel has made so many claims before but has produced no strong and solid proof or evidence other than just claims that it has given out to the public.”
She said she didn’t know Thuraya but could vouch for Hamza. “I know him very well. I was at his wedding last winter so I know the whole family very well. I know who Hamza is, and I know he’s not associated with any of the Palestinian factions or fighters. Hamza was a journalist.”
As for Wael al-Dahdouh himself, el-Sayed said the veteran correspondent was driven by his faith to continue reporting despite his personal grief. “Despite the killing of his family, he went back on air to pursue his message because, for him, it’s a duty. He’s not just doing it because he’s al-Jazeera correspondent. He’s doing it because it has so many other meanings deeper than that. He tells me this is a duty I will be asked upon from God before anyone else.”
El-Sayed said she spoke to al-Dahdouh after the death of his son: “I gave him my condolences. And I know Wael is a very strong person. But that day, he cried when he spoke to me, and I was already crying. I told him, ‘I don’t even know what to tell you. Hamza wasn’t just your son. He was my brother’. He told me, ‘Hamza loved you very much, you know. He always spoke about you even after you evacuated’. That really pricked my heart because Hamza was like a younger brother to me. We always joked and we always spoke together and we discussed everything that was going on.”
Since the war began more than 83 journalists have been killed, the majority killed in Gaza, according to the CPJ. Of these, 76 are Palestinian, four Israeli, and three Lebanese. The CPJ have called it the deadliest conflict for journalists on record. The IDF insists that it is targeting terrorists and that many of those victims identified as journalists are in fact militant fighters. But Youmna el-Sayed does not believe this. “Many of the journalists in the Gaza Strip were targeted in their homes. Hamza was targeted along with Mustafa in their car directly — after three months of this war. How can people associated with Hamas and Islamic Jihad… be left freely to move around and work as journalists in every targeted area for over three months?”
With experienced journalists such as Youmna el-Sayed and Wael al-Dahdauh forced to leave Gaza, it is difficult to imagine how the world will ever find out what is really happening on the ground.
“I’m a mother with four children. I’m married. Like any other war, of course, any escalation that breaks out in the Gaza Strip, it’s our first mission to cover what’s happening,” said el-Sayed. But this war was different. “Everything was happening so quickly. The war wasn’t just in limited areas or on a certain sector or against a certain group. Our families, like any other person in the Gaza Strip, were in constant danger all the time. It was the constant worry about my family and my kids and are they safe or not. It’s very challenging. It was a struggle I had never lived before.”
As a reporter in Gaza, el-Sayed had to negotiate not just the Israeli bombardment but working in territory ruled by Hamas. “If you have watched my reporting, I will tell you that every single thing that happens in the Gaza Strip from Hamas I report it as neural, as I had seen it. I tried to be as objective as I can because it’s a moral duty.”
She added: “My first reporting on 7 October was about the barrages of rockets that were fired from the Gaza Strip and from different areas and the unprecedented attack that we have witnessed from Gaza and from the Palestinian fighting groups in the Gaza Strip against the Israeli towns. So, I’m not going to shut my eyes about what is happening in the Gaza Strip from the Palestinian fighters or Palestinian factions simply because I’m a Palestinian journalist reporting from Gaza. Then I’m not a journalist.”
At the same time, she said the actions of Hamas should not prevent her from reporting what the Israeli army is doing in Gaza. “I’m not supposed to be only reporting what is happening from or within Gaza, from Hamas against Israel, and totally turning a blind eye towards what’s happening in the Gaza Strip from the Israeli army. That’s not being impartial. That’s just giving one side of the story against the other.”
El-Sayed finally decided to make the difficult decision to leave Gaza because she no longer felt her family was safe. She had already been displaced five times before she finally evacuated to Egypt. “But I’m only here with my body,” she said. “My heart and my mind are totally in the Gaza Strip. I’m just in front of the news every single hour. I’m always looking at my phone, checking the news websites on a minute-by-minute basis to see what is happening there. And at the same time, I’m very much heartbroken and worried about the people, my friends that are there, my colleagues, everyone that I have left there. But at the end, I had to choose between being a journalist and continuing to pursue my job and being a mother with four children, who I need to look out for their lives. And this is the only reason why I had to leave.”
