Nominees for the 2023 Freedom of Expression Awards – Campaigning

22 Sep 23 | Afghanistan, Africa, Awards, China, Fellowship 2023, Russia

Matiullah Wesa (Afghanistan)

Through Pen Path, Matiullah Wesa has worked to ensure all children have access to education, teaching materials and books. After the Taliban’s takeover, this focus turned to protecting education for girls and women.

Matiullah Wesa established Pen Path in 2009 to campaign for greater access to education for boys and girls in Afghanistan. In this role, Wesa visited 34 provinces of the country and almost all districts. Pen Path’s first step was to re-open closed schools, after The Taliban had previously shut them down in the remote villages of Afghanistan. Prior to The Taliban’s takeover, Pen Path acted as mediator between the government and the Taliban, while also encouraging local elders to collaborate with them to re-open those schools. It is estimated by Pen Path that their team, to date, has re-opened more than a hundred schools and established a number of new schools across the country.

To date, Pen Path has also provided stationery and children’s books to approximately 300,000 children. Pen Path also established 39 libraries in rural areas to provide access to books for the general public (especially women who could not go to school due to restrictions).

To further extend the reach of education across Afghanistan, Pen Path launched a programme of mobile classes delivered via a specially designed motorbike fitted with a computer screen and speakers, as well as a bookcase, teaching materials and a mobile library.

On 27 March 2023, Matiullah Wesa was arbitrarily arrested by the Taliban’s General Directorate of Intelligence (GDI), while returning from evening prayer. The day after his arrest, the GDI raided his house and confiscated his personal mobile and laptop. On 29 March, the Taliban spokesperson confirmed his arrest, accusing him of illegal activities. His family have not been allowed to visit him and there has been no avenue to challenge the legality of his detention.

Olesya Krivtsova (Russia)

Olesya Krivtsova is a Russian student, who was targeted by the Russian authorities for opposing the unlawful Russian invasion of Ukraine

Over the first year of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Olesya organised partisan anti-war actions in her small town of Arkhangelsk. This included posting anti-war leaflets and posting anti-war messages on her blog and the chat rooms set up for students based at her university. Olesya took the risks to do this to “counter Russian propaganda and promote alternative information about the war in Ukraine among students and other residents of my city.”

As a result of these acts, Krivtsova was placed under house arrest in January, and banned from using the internet on the charges of discrediting the Russian army and justifying terrorism. It has been reported that her classmates reported her to the authorities after taking screenshots of her anti-war messages. She was also added to the country’s official list of terrorists and extremists. Due to the severity of the charges, she faced up to 10 years in prison. In March 2023, Olesya uploaded  a video of her cutting off her monitoring tag and she fled Russia for Lithuania.

Xinjiang Victim’s Database (China)

The Xinjiang Victim’s Database attempts to overcome the secrecy and silence that defines the incarceration and persecution of the Uyghur population in Xinjiang by giving journalists and researchers resources and data to support their work. 

The Database aims to make Xinjiang and the mass-incarceration policies taking place there as transparent and accessible for the world at large as possible. This is done primarily by documenting the individual victims and their situations in as much detail as available data allow. In addition to this, they maintain a number of side databases, such as monitoring the facilities where victims are held, the villages/neighbourhoods they come from, the individuals in the government/police linked to their detentions, and the collection/translation of various primary-source materials, such as eyewitness accounts or government/police/court records.

The Database serves as a free-to-use tool for researchers, journalists, and advocates. Additionally, it provides several specific tools to the public: an ID search that allows 10,000s of internal and public documents held by the database to be searched for information about specific people, a name translator to convert Chinese pinyin versions to more appropriate Turkic versions (e.g. Memet instead of Maimaiti), and a translation bank that combines the Database’s 10 in-house dictionaries to assist with translation of Xinjiang-related texts.

Africa Human Rights Network (Africa-wide)

The AHRN works to support and protect human rights defenders (HRDs) across the Great Lakes region of Africa to ensure they can speak up and protect human rights and democracy across Africa.

The main goal of AHRN is to promote and protect the work of Human Rights Defenders, including activists, bloggers, journalists, feminists, environmental defenders and many others. This work includes advocating for and protecting HRD at risk. It does this through its protection programme and shelter city scheme, which started in 2017 with the launch of the Dar es Salaam Shelter City which is a regional temporary relocation program for at-risk HRDs operation in the African Great Lakes Region. In 2019, this scheme was expanded after the launch of the shelter city Benin to provide temporary relocation to at-risk human rights defenders from Central and west African countries especially those from Francophone countries. As well as direct support, AHRN also facilitates engagement between HRDs in Africa to share capacity building expertise, exchange experience and foster stronger relationships of support and solidarity.

The organisation also provides a platform to more than 175 grassroots civil society organisations that have proven capacity to implement human rights projects in Africa. As a result, AHRN has been able to establish a platform of local HRDs who have decided to organise themselves to improve their working environment and security. This networked approach has defined AHRN’s work. In 2021, they created the YADA Network (Young African Defenders in Action) following a workshop attended by young people from 18 African countries. While it is present in 18 countries, the AHRN’s goal is to extend the Network to 30 countries by the end of 2023. They also created Africanactivists.com, which is a specialised social media platform for HRDs to connect with others and share information in real time. 

The day the music died

15 Aug 23 | Afghanistan, News and features

Music has always occupied an important place in Afghan society, serving as a medium of expression, storytelling and a celebration of cultural identity. For decades, Afghan musicians have also played a vital role in providing solace to our war-torn nation. But the situation has completely changed since the return of the Taliban to power. Musicians are one of the most severely affected of the many sections of Afghan society by Taliban rule. A once vibrant community of artists is now facing repression. Like other art forms, the Taliban consider music un-Islamic as per their strict interpretation of Islam. The lives of musicians are endangered, their livelihoods and artistic freedom deprived.

Artists who survived and worked covertly during the previous stint of Taliban rule from 1996 to 2001 were aware of the dark future that awaited them and were haunted by old memories. When the Kabul fell on 15 August 2021 many musicians fled. Rashid Khan, one of the famous musicians based in Kabul, told us that on the second night after the fall of Kabul, he got a call from the security guard of his studio to tell him that people with guns had entered the office, broke all the instruments and set them on fire. They enquired about him before leaving and the incident terrified Khan. The next day he escaped to Pakistan with his family.

The Artistic Freedom Initiative, which helps with the resettlement of international artists who are persecuted or censored, in the past two years has received more than 3,000 requests from Afghan artists for relocation.

For those who remained the attacks started immediately and grew and grew. Just a couple of days into the Taliban’s regime they brutally killed a famous folklore singer. On 27 August 2021, Fawad Andarabi was murdered at home.

Restrictions were put in place surrounding live performances, public gatherings and entertainment venues. The music industry came to a halt. Many had to retrain, if they could. One of those is a singer named Abdul Qadir, who has started working as a motorcycle mechanic.

The ministry of vice and virtue banned music on the national broadcasting network. All entertainment channels on television and radio were no longer allowed to play any music. Today they are only allowed to play the Naghmas/Taranas (patriotic and nationalist songs) of the Taliban, which are “songs” with slogans and without any actual music. They’re designed to promote the ideology of the Taliban, glorify the leaders of the Taliban and romanticise their achievements.

The Afghanistan National Institute of Music was closed. The centre’s director, Ahmed Sarmast, says we are witnessing the end of great musical heritage and we agree.

Once a famous spot for music and entertainment in Kabul, Sar e chowk has now been turned into a regular market with no sign or remnants of music anywhere. The market used to be full of shops selling musical instruments. It had small studios where artists, musicians and singers would gather to make songs, create music and entertain people. That is now all gone and instead people sell fruit and vegetables.

In attempts to completely eradicate music from society, it is even banned during weddings. What happens to those who ignore the ban? In October 2021 people with guns entered a wedding ceremony in Nangahar where music was playing. They tried to break the loud speaker. When guests resisted, the armed people fired at them, killing two and injuring 10.

In a recent attack the Taliban confiscated musical instruments in the west province of Herat on 30 July 2023 and set them on fire.

These are just some examples in an endless list.

In these testing times, the international community must not forget Afghan musicians and artists. While providing humanitarian aid and evacuation to all vulnerable populations, there is a dire need to extend support to the artistic community as well. Collaborative efforts with international arts organisations, cultural exchanges and virtual platforms can offer a lifeline to Afghan musicians, allowing them to continue their craft and share their talent with the world.

Contents – Express yourself: Overcoming neurodiversity stereotypes

02 Aug 23 | Afghanistan, Brazil, China, France, Israel, Italy, Malaysia, Mexico, Pakistan, Russia, Turkey, Ukraine, United States, Vietnam, Zambia, Zimbabwe

Contents

The Summer 2023 issue of Index looks at neurodiversity, the term coined in the late 1990s to identify and promote the positives of variation in human thinking which has become more widely used in the past few years. Are old stereotypes still rife? Has the perception of neurodiversity improved? If not, was this because of censorship? Using neurodivergent voices, we wanted to know about this in a global context.

The majority of the articles are written by neurodivergent people, as we wanted to put their voices front and centre. Many said they did have more of a voice, awareness had shot up and the word “neurodiversity” empowered and welcomed a growth in onscreen representation. However, at the same time it was clear that conversations around neurodiversity were playing out along society’s current fault-lines and were far from immune.

Up Front

Mind matters, by Jemimah Seinfeld: The term neurodiversity has positively challenged how we approach our minds. Has it done enough?

The Index, by Mark Frary: The latest in free expression news, from an explainer on Sudan to a cha-cha-cha starring Meghan and King Charles.

Features

Bars can't stop a bestseller, by Kaya Genç: Fiction is finding its way out of a Turkish prison, says former presidential hopeful and bestselling writer
Selahattin Demirtaş.

Don't mention femicide, by Chris Havler-Barrett: Murdered women are an inconvenience for Mexico’s president.

This is no joke, by Qian Gong and Jian Xu: The treatment of China’s comedians is no laughing matter.

Silent Disco, by Andrew Mambondiyani: Politicians are purging playlists in Zimbabwe, and musicians are speaking out.

When the Russians came, by Alina Smutko, Taras Ibragimov and Aliona Savchuk: The view from inside occupied Crimea, through the cameras of photographers banned by the Kremlin.

The language of war and peace, by JP O’Malley: Kremlin-declared “Russophobe foreign agent and traitor” Mikhail Shishkin lays out the impossible choices for Russians.

Writer's block, by Stacey Tsui: Hong Kong’s journalists are making themselves heard, thanks to blockchain technology.

The Russians risking it all, by Katie Dancey-Downs: Forced to sing songs and labelled as extremists, anti-war Russians are finding creative ways to take a stand.

The 'truth' is in the tea, by Jemimah Steinfeld: Spilling the tea on a London venue, which found itself in hot water due to a far-right speaker.

Waiting for China's tap on the shoulder, by Chu Yang: However far they travel, there’s no safe haven for journalists and academics who criticise China.

When the old fox walks the tightrope, by Danson Kahyana: An interview with Stella Nyanzi on Uganda’s latest anti-LGBTQ+ law.

Would the media lie to you?, by Ali Latifi: Fake news is flourishing in Afghanistan, in ways people might not expect.

Britain's Holocaust island, by Martin Bright: Confronting Britain’s painful secret, and why we must acknowledge what happened on Nazi-occupied Alderney.

The thorn in Vietnam's civil society side, by Thiện Việt: Thiện Việt: Responding to mass suppression with well-organised disruption.

Special Report: Express yoruself: Overcoming neurodiversity stereotypes

Not a slur, by Nick Ransom: What’s in a word? Exploring representation, and the power of the term “neurodiversity” to divide or unite.

Sit down, shut up, by Katharine P Beals: The speech of autistic non-speakers is being hijacked.

Fake it till you break it, by Morgan Barbour: Social media influencers are putting dissociative identity disorder in the spotlight, but some are accused of faking it.

Weaponising difference, by Simone Dias Marques: Ableist slurs in Brazil are equating neurodivergence with criminality.

Autism on screen is gonna be okay, by Katie Dancey-Downs: The Rain Man days are over. Everything’s Gonna Be Okay star Lillian Carrier digs into autism on screen.

Raising Malaysia's roof, by Francis Clarke: In a comedy club in Malaysia’s capital stand up is where people open up, says comedian Juliana Heng.

Living in the Shadows, by Ashley Gjøvik: When successful camouflage has a lasting impact.

Nigeria's crucible, by Ugonna-Ora Owoh: Between silence and lack of understanding, Nigeria’s neurodiverse are being mistreated.

My autism is not a lie, by Meltem Arikan: An autism diagnosis at 52 liberated a dissident playwright, but there’s no space for her truth in Turkey.

Comment

Lived experience, to a point, by Julian Baggini: When it comes to cultural debates, whose expertise carries the most weight?

France: On the road to illiberalism? by Jean-Paul Marthoz: Waving au revoir to the right to criticise.

Monitoring terrorists, gangs - and historians, by Andrew Lownie: The researcher topping the watchlist on his majesty’s secret service.

We are all dissidents, by Ruth Anderson: Calls to disassociate from certain dissidents due to their country of birth are toxic and must be challenged.

Culture

Manuscripts don't burn, by Rebecca Ruth Gould: Honouring the writers silenced by execution in Georgia, and unmuzzling their voices.

Obscenely familiar, by Marc Nash: A book arguing for legalised homosexuality is the spark for a fiction rooted in true events.

A truly graphic tale, by Taha Siddiqui and Zofeen T Ebrahim: A new graphic novel lays bare life on Pakistan’s kill list, finding atheism and a blasphemous tattoo.

A censored day? by Kaya Genç: Unravelling the questions that plague the censor, in a new short story from the Turkish author.

Poetry's peacebuilding tentacles, by Natasha Tripney: Literature has proven its powers of peace over the last decade in Kosovo.

Palestine: I still have hope, by Bassem Eid: Turning to Israel and Palestine, where an activist believes the international community is complicit in the conflict.

Afghans who supported the British government’s mission now face death

17 Jul 23 | Afghanistan, News and features

The words could not have been starker. “My money is finished. I don’t have food to eat at home. I am exiled to a country worse than Afghanistan. I have no other choice than to sell my kidney.” But these words, which came from an Afghan journalist living in Pakistan, were not unusual. For a growing number of Afghans selling a kidney has, perversely, become an essential way to survive.

Afghanistan has been gutted. At the start of 2022 the UN reported that the country was on the brink of “a humanitarian crisis and economic collapse” and the situation has only worsened. It’s hard to keep track of the increasingly grim reality there, from stories of schoolgirls being poisoned, news of a spiralling mental health crisis, images of people starving and, for that matter, images of people’s post kidney-removal scars.

Among the worst affected are Afghan journalists. The fall of Kabul meant the fall of independent media. An industry that took years to nurture and grow vanished overnight, leaving most without a job and a stable source of income. At the same time the Taliban’s relentless attack on dissent has made these people a primary target. Those who are left behind find themselves faced with both starvation and assassination.

One journalist wrote to me last month. He said he scours the backstreets of Kabul looking for scraps to sell. He sent me pictures of himself before August 2021. He looks relaxed and is wearing a sharp suit and jeans. Some of the images are of him behind a camera. Others show him speaking at a conference for women’s education, something he tells me was one of his proudest moments – championing the rights of girls and women which today are null and void. We communicate on an encrypted messaging app, and even then we delete everything in case his phone falls into the wrong hands. The journalist is trapped, his options limited. He ends the message asking for help.

Those who have escaped are not necessarily faring better, as the man considering selling his kidney attests. The Taliban’s reach spreads to neighbouring countries. Afghan journalists must constantly look over their shoulder, and contend with the added stress of visas, which are not always guaranteed despite the threats they face at home. Threats to be sent back to Afghanistan or imprisoned are commonplace and bribery is rife.

A couple of months ago I was messaging with an Afghan journalist in Pakistan. “It’s more than one year that I’m without job and any income with 6 months baby boy. My economical situation is too bad, I really need to your help and kindness,” she told me. Attached to the message were scans of her press credentials and passport photo, information to help verify that she is in fact who she says she is because in the middle of all this people are being impersonated. Goodwill runs low. The woman made the trip over the border while pregnant. Her baby is unwell. It’s not serious if treated quickly, only she doesn’t have the cash for the surgery. She can’t work on her visa. Besides, she’s looking after a poorly baby. Can I help?

I could list endless conversations like these. Since August 2021 the Index inbox has been flooded with people asking for assistance. Back in September 2021 we set up a messaging group for Afghan journalists. What started off as small today has over 40 people in it. Sometimes positive news is shared – an award won, for example, to a chorus of congratulations. Other times it’s the worst kind of information - news of an Afghan journalist who died in a boat off the coast of Italy and who many in the group knew. Most of the time though it’s information on how people can get funding and get out.

The worst thing is that none of the journalists in the group see the UK as a viable option right now. It’s a ridiculous situation given that in August 2021 then prime minister Boris Johnson announced the creation of the Afghan citizens resettlement scheme (ACRS), with the aim to help resettle 20,000 Afghans in the UK. ACRS was meant to give priority to those who stood up for democracy and specifically mentioned journalists.

Almost two years on and the number of Afghan journalists we’ve helped is negligible. This despite the fact that immigration to our country has increased. Granted we might not feel the threat of proximity or sense of commonality that has driven our policy with Ukrainian refugees. And granted we might not feel the weight of history, as we did when we successfully opened up the BN(O) scheme for those from Hong Kong. But Afghanistan is still part of our story. British troops were involved in Afghanistan from the US-led invasion in 2001 right through to the Taliban takeover. We encouraged the transformation of the country along democratic lines.

The UK government has been called out on its poor record. Last December eight Afghan journalists who worked for the BBC and other British media organisations challenged the government’s refusal to relocate them in a High Court hearing. They said they had “worked alongside and in support of the British government's mission” in Afghanistan and as a result put their lives at risk. Their lawyer, Adam Straw, said the British government had “betrayed the debt of gratitude” owed to his clients by refusing to relocate them. Since this hearing their visa applications have been reopened – a positive step – only it shouldn’t take a court case to get here.

Index wrote to home secretary Suella Braverman in March to ask about progress on ACRS. Months on and again no response or progress. Meanwhile France has just issued visas to two people in our network. They arrived in Paris this month. It’s a relief to know they are now safe, only these cases should be the norm, not the exception, and the UK should be welcoming such individuals too.

Ultimately we’ve turned our back on Afghan journalists in their darkest hour. There is still time to change course, but we must act – now.

Click here for more information on Index’s upcoming event Those Left Behind: A Night for Afghan Journalists