16 Jan 2014 | Africa, Kenya
Leonardo DiCaprio at the recent British premiere of The Wolf of Wall Street in London
Hollywood film The Wolf of Wall Street, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, has been banned in Kenya. The Kenya Film Classification Board announced their decision in a post on their Facebook page.
“There is a LIMIT to everything and we believe the Kenyan public deserves better. WOLF OF WALLSTREET has been RESTRICTED. The film is NOT for sale, exhibition or distribution in KENYA. Violators shall be PROSECUTED,” the message reads. No reason beyond this was given for the ban.
This article was posted on 16 Jan 2014 at indexoncensorship.org
9 Aug 2013 | Kenya, News, Religion and Culture
(Photo: Courtesy Boniface Mwangi)
Boniface Mwangi is an award winning Kenyan photographer and activist. During the 2007 post-election skirmishes he took thousands of photos. His coverage of those attacks entailed great danger as, more often than not, he had to falsify his ethnic identity. In 2009 he founded Picha Mtaani, the first-ever street exhibition in Kenya which was held in towns across the country, showcasing the post election violence photographs to a wider audience beyond Nairobi.
Mwangi has been recognized as a Magnum Photography Fellow, Acumen Fund East Africa Fellow, TED Fellow, and twice as the CNN Multichoice Africa Photojournalist of the Year, among other awards. He currently runs Pawa 254, a collaborative hub for creatives in Kenya. Mwangi recently received the Prince Claus Award 2012 and is now a senior TED fellow.
Mwangi was interviewed by Index on Censorship Head of Arts Julia Farrington at an arts event in Ethiopia in July.
Index: How would you describe Kenyan government’s position on freedom of expression?
Mwangi: Recently the president and deputy president had a media breakfast and invited all the top editors and bloggers, writers at the state house to a meeting. This is unheard of, it has never happened before. The new government is being advised by a British firm advising – it was actually the same firm that advised the US government on how to deal with insurgency in Afghanistan. They are a very smart PR company, they know how to package lies and make it look like the truth, they know how to package crap and sell it to the electorate. At the moment there is a communication bill that is going through parliament which goes against freedom of speech and when they met, the media said they want self-regulation, they don’t want to be regulated by the state.
But beyond this censorship in Kenya is by choice – it is because of the owner’s business interest; they don’t upset the system because they are going to lose business, lose money. The biggest advertisers in the country are the government and the bigger corporations. Editors know as long as they go on the path of truth, they won’t sell advertising space. They spend so much money on advertising – so it is more self-censorship than anything else.
Kenyan journalists are poorly paid. They are paid by story and the money is very little which makes them easy to be bribed, corruptible. If you work in the rural area you have no transport and to get around you rely on the local police to give you a ride or the local politician or drug lord and you get compromised in the process. I worked for five years I know how it works there is a lot of brown envelopes exchanging hands, depending on who is who. And sadly no-one talks about corruption in the media.
Index: You are saying media is compromised but it is essentially independent?
Mwangi: It is independent – there is very little government interference. It’s almost non-existent – they know the media is controlled by interest. Not a single journalist is in jail at the moment. In the previous government there were a lot of libel suits that were awarded to politicians, actually a ridiculous amount of money was involved, but that has stopped.
The other thing is the emergence of bloggers and citizen journalists who can write about anything, which is actually a good and a bad thing because they can write about rumours and attack people’s lives. But sometimes they can become an alternative channel for communication. I have seen a lot of stories that have not made it into the mainstream media, but if you go on line or if you buy the tabloids, it may be exaggerated but there may be some truth in it.
Index: How would you describe the Kenyan’s people’s appetite for freedom of expression?
Mwangi: Kenyan people do not want to fight for their freedoms, they want activists to do it for them, so it is only a minority who are fighting for these rights. There is this wait and see approach on these issues, and it hurts the whole country. Kenyans have all grown up with parents who told them, don’t protest you are going to get arrested, and that fear has been carried out to this generation. There is the lock in the mind of Kenyan people that says we can’t do this, it isn’t possible it is too scary, too daring and dangerous to do it. If you don’t overcome that fear it is going to be passed on to my kids and my kids’ kids so that is what we are trying to do, to give people courage. Our acts of courage are trying to get the people to protest and resist injustices with confidence that nothing bad will happen to them.
Index: You believe doing very extreme, provocative actions is the right way?
Mwangi: We are always going for the shock effect. The shock effect says that if they can do that then other people can do some smaller than that. It has an influence – if I can do it you can do it.
Index: You don’t think it alienates? People could say those guys are crazy?
Mwangi: I don’t think many people think we are crazy – maybe some upper class people and some politicians. But the people understand where we are coming from and they understand our anger and given the chance they would also do extreme things, but they are actually afraid.
Index: Do you think that part of what you need to do is to test the boundaries of the law especially in the context of the new constitution?
Mwangi: We need to do that for Kenyans because we have some over-zealous police officers who arrest and charging people using non-existent laws . So it is important that people understand their rights. And the police should be educated on the bill of rights so that they don’t infringe on Kenyan’s rights.
Index: Some say freedom is a luxury, let’s get people housed and educated first and then let’s turn our minds to freedom of expression. What do you think?
Mwangi: Education is a term that is used very loosely. Many Kenyans are very full of wisdom and they have never been to school. So when you are talking about education you are talking about western standards of how people get educated – more education in what they call the ‘good life’ that isn’t going to change anything.
Freedom is good – it gives human beings dignity, with freedom you can do what you want – it means you can challenge authority, you can give feedback to the government about how you feel. So if you look at a dictatorship most of them stagnate because there is only one thinker amongst a population of many people. That one thinker cannot be omnipresent then you find that there is a shortage of ideas and a want of thinking. So freedom of expression is key to life and to democracy. It has to be there at the start – it is like life.
Index: This space which you have created – is it for a planning space for activists? Or it’s a public space? Or it’s both.
Mwangi: It is a space for creatives where we people share plan events, protest, a place where people discuss. So it’s a place where you can come in any time and discuss, read a book, come in anytime and do a grafitti or just chill or read a book. It’s called PAWA 254. Creatives, activists, journalists and film-makers, guys and women who are like minded who have a real job or a real career but they want a place where they can come and meet like-minded people and discuss.
It is open every day, we plan for it to be open 24 hours per day. And the debate nights are every Tuesday and other days we have different activities where we train activists, photographers, animators or cartoonists – different trainings going on at any given time.
Index: The authorities know you are there. Do they let you get on with it?
Mwangi: The thing is we have a very progressive constitution if you come to my property they need to have a search warrant or a warrant for my arrest. They can’t just come and ask questions. They have to read me my rights. That is actually something that doesn’t happen in this continent but Kenya has a very progressive constitution, which if everything was working could make it a beacon of democracy and human rights.
14 May 2013 | Uncategorized
A lot has been said about the impact of social media on the dissemination of news and the future of journalism. Opinions seem to span from believing Twitter and Facebook hold the power to bring down dictatorships, to despairing at the space it gives to armchair analysis and knee jerk reactions. One thing can be agreed upon: readers, listeners and viewers now have access to a platform to express themselves and challenge the mainstream narrative of events, Milana Knezevic writes.
Take Newsweek’s #MuslimRage debacle from last September. The magazine’s main article about protests over the controversial film Innocence of Muslims, featured a front page with angry men in traditional clothing, under the headline “MUSLIM RAGE.” Newsweek posted a link on their official twitter feed, encouraging their followers to voice their opinions under the hashtag #MuslimRage. And voice them they did:
On the surface, this shows how a carefully planned “social media strategy” can go wrong in an instant. More importantly, it shows that traditional media outlets no longer have as much control over the conversations around their coverage.
Social media and other online platforms give readers the ability to speak out and take part in setting the agenda. The age of user generated content has also ushered in a kind of crowdsourced fact-checking on a massive scale. If a story is being misreported, readers, listeners and viewers can and will let the authors know. Other examples include the huge social media backlash CNN faced over their article on hormonal female voters ahead of the US elections. On a lighter note, viewers lambasted NBC’s shambolic Olympics coverage through hashtags like #NBCfail and #ShutUpMattLauer.
From the Magazine: Don’t feed the trolls
An anti-Muslim video demonstrated how the politics of fear dominate the online environment. It’s time we took action, argue Rebecca MacKinnon and Ethan Zuckerman.
International in outlook, outspoken in comment, Index on Censorship‘s award-winning magazine is the only publication dedicated to free speech. The latest issue explores the impact the 2008 economic crisis has had on free expression. Subscribe.
Perhaps the most encouraging aspect of this development is the platform it has provided for people outside of the western world to speak back against the often simplistic and incorrect way in which their nations and cultures are reported on in international media.
For instance, some journalists are still likely to present African countries as one, exclusively impoverished and backward entity, which is constantly balancing on the brink of war. Alternatively, there is the increasingly popular, but almost equally tedious and one-dimensional “Africa rising” narrative.
In the past, people had few possibilities to respond to such coverage — if it even reached them. But this has changed with the dawn of the internet. As foreign reporters parachuted in to cover the Kenyan elections in March, an easy go-to story following the crisis of the 2007-2008 vote was that of ethnic tensions and the potential for violence. However, this narrative was undermined the fact that most Kenyans went to the polls peacefully. Foreign media promptly experienced the full wrath of a well-informed and snarky Kenyan social media population.
The below are only a few examples of the hashtag #PicturesForStuart, aimed at France 24 anchor Stuart Norval, who trailed their Kenya report with a tweet promising “dramatic pictures”:
Then there was #SomeoneTellCNN, aimed at a particularly sensationalist CNN report titled “Armed as Kenyan vote nears”, featuring an unknown militia, seemingly consisting of a group of men rolling around in the grass with homemade weapons. The piece was widely mocked.
There was also the more general #TweetLikeAForeignJournalist:
The hashtags trended worldwide. This was picked up by Al Jazeera and the Washington Post among others, and prompted CNN to release a statement defending their coverage. Kenyans had successfully turned the lazy journalism into the dominant story. As Africa is the fastest growing smartphone market in the world, over the coming years millions more will get the opportunity to challenge one-dimensional international reporting.
It’s important not to overstate the power of social media. Traditional media still commands the biggest platforms and audiences, and many sensationalist, ignorant or incorrect reports do remain unchallenged. Twitter in itself is not a solution, it is simply a tool. Used correctly, it provides a legitimate possibility for people to collectively raise their voice and be heard. It provides the platform for those on the ground, those in the know and everyone in between to help bring balance and nuance to big news stories. And that is certainly a positive development for freedom of expression.
15 Mar 2012 | Sub-Saharan Africa
As Elmi Mohammed Waare ambled through an outdoor market in the central Somali town of Beledweyne in December 2007, two casually-dressed, non-descript members of the Al-Shabaab militia group abruptly blocked his path. He had been threatened twice before in anonymous phone calls. The face-to-face confrontation was forthcoming.
“They said ‘you know what you have done. You have insulted us. We are giving you the last warning. You must leave the city in seven days or be killed’,” Waare recalled.
As a radio journalist in his hometown of Beledweyne, Waare, now 26 years old, reported on the policy initiatives of the former provincial governor at the time that Al-Shabaab was gaining momentum. Now notorious for the brutality afflicted on central and southern Somalis for the past five years, the militant group violently muzzled dissent and objective media coverage as it accumulated power.
“Three days later I left. I did not tell many people I was leaving because I could be intercepted,” said Waare, from his temporary home in the Eastleigh district of Nairobi, Kenya. “Even when I was leaving, I left the city hiding.”
Waare’s story epitomises the experiences of dozens of Somali and regional journalists forced into exile by government and militia repression and threats posed by conflict. Kenya is the preferred destination for journalists in East Africa and the Horn of Africa region facing adverse conditions. “Compared to its neighbors, Kenya is relatively welcoming. There are fewer security issues here,” said Neela Ghoshal, Human Rights Watch Africa researcher based in Nairobi. “People also don’t have a great fear that Kenyan security is in league with security forces from neighbouring countries.”
According to US based Committee to Protect Journalists, Kenya ranks second to the United States among global destinations for exiled journalists, harbouring at least 66 members of the media. Those forced to flee are overwhelmingly from neighbouring countries such as Somalia, Ethiopia, Uganda and Rwanda. In those countries, state and militia suppression of independent and objective media is endemic.
“Kenya has a robust media. We really have to appreciate the change in media landscape since [current President Mwai] Kibaki came to power,” said CPJ Africa consultant Tom Rhodes, while conceding some press freedom issues remain in the country, mostly relating to media monopoly, political influence and isolated incidents of intimidation and violence against journalists.
Kenya represents a beacon of regional press freedom, and the majority of regional journalists are able to continue to work in the media field without harassment. Independent press, according to Rhodes, is only one of many reasons journalists flock to Kenya. “Like in any country, refugees look for their own kind. This is especially true for Somalis here.”
There is also a strong, if overburdened, United Nations presence in Kenya. They lend critical assistance to refugees throughout the region.
There are many exiled journalists currently residing here, and Somali journalists in particular have networks to vent frustration and design a path forward.
But life in Nairobi is by no means glamorous. Waare and other exiled journalists face cultural adversity and minimal employment opportunities. The overwhelming Somali Eastleigh district where Waare resides is plagued by government neglect. Roads are derelict, property is vulnerable to intrusion and subject to skyrocketing inflation. For Waare, however, the most distressing aspect of life here is the time he wastes unemployed and inactive, and unable to provide for his wife and children back in Somalia.
“I haven’t paid any bills for my family. I sleep and I wake up. Then I go to mosque and I go home,” said Waare. “I do nothing else. Life now is very difficult. I’m fed up with this situation.”
After spending more than three years in Kenya illegally, Waare currently holds a UNHCR refugee mandate and a Kenyan refugee status certificate. He now shares a miniscule room with two other Somalis in a concrete slab building. His sister provides food and his $35 monthly rent from money her Somali-American husband sends her.
In Somalia, Waare was employed with Voice of America and other local media outlets. After arriving in Kenya, he had a brief stint with Frontier FM, a Somali language station that broadcasts in Nairobi and throughout Kenya’s Northeast province. Now, with no means of income, he is constantly plotting his return to Beledweyne.
That prospect is arguably more attainable now than it has been at any point since Waare’s departure. Suffering from a concerted international military and diplomatic offensive, Al-Shabaab is now at its most debilitated state in years. After an initial foray into Somalia in January, Ethiopian troops ousted the militant group from several major urban centers near the border and now occupy Beledweyne. Although the Ethiopians have imposed strict curfews and local economies are in shambles, life may be on the path towards peace.
“The Ethiopian presence there is a good thing. But the menace is still there. They are hiding,” said Waare.
Ethiopia is ostensibly fighting alongside Kenyan and African Union peacekeepers that support Somalia’s Transitional Federal Government (TFG). Tom Rhodes says stronger TFG control in southern and central Somalia may lead to enhanced media freedom.
“There was zero independent reporting under Al-Shabaab. Potentially there will be more press freedom if the TFG takes greater control,” said Rhodes. “The TFG on the surface seems more sympathetic to the press. We see signs it is investigating murder cases of journalists that took place last year.”
Nonetheless, Somalia remains the most oppressive media environment across the globe. According to the CPJ, four of the 13 journalists killed internationally in 2012 have been Somali. Fortunately Waare escaped the war-torn country unscathed and his flight was less traumatic than some. One colleague of his tried to reach South Africa overland but was detained in a Tanzanian jail for seven months for illegal entry. His health, according to Waare, was in an abysmal state upon his release.
Other colleagues tried to begin new lives in Ethiopia but failed due to the harsh conditions. As difficult as life appears to be for Waare, Kenya has provided him the best opportunity available.
“There is no freedom of expression in Ethiopia. Some of my friends have gone to Ethiopia and they say you can’t live as a journalist there. Its not allowed,” he said. “That’s not the case in Kenya.”
Brian Dabbs is a journalist based in Nairobi, Kenya. He writes for The Atlantic, World Politics Review and Think Africa Press, among other publications.
