06 Jun 12 | Americas, Mexico
A youth revolution has been brewing in Mexico in the last month.
Known as the Yo Soy 132 movement (I am 132), the phenomenon is made up of university students who until a few months ago were a sleeping giant: most planned to vote in blank, or to stay away from the ballot boxes on 1 July elections.
It all changed on 11 May — the day candidate Enrique Peña Nieto of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI), and the favourite to win in July, visited the campus of Universidad Iberoamericana, an upper-class university in Mexico City. At that rally Peña Nieto answered questions and spoke to students allowed to enter a meeting hall. But at he exited at the end of his presentation, he was pinned against a wall by a large group of student protesters who challenged him.
The candidate’s handlers were so rattled they issued a statement saying the students were “brought in” as professional protesters hired by forces that dislike the PRI. Enraged by the remarks, the students created a video titled “YoSoy131”, which launched the political movement. In it each of the 131 individual students who had taken part in the protest identified themselves with their university cards, proving they existed and were not fake. Since then, 74 universities around the country including private and public campuses have joined the movement, which has remained non-partisan, although it has allowed other more politicised citizen movements to join their group. The name change to Yo Soy 132 reflects the addition of the later activists.
The youth movement has injected doubts into the certainty the PRI will win the presidential elections next July. Recent polls showed the two other contenders closing in on the PRI candidate.
Since 2000, Mexico has been governed by a centre rightist party, the Partido de Accion Nacional. In 2006, Felipe Calderon took office under heavy dissent, as he beat left of centre candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador with a single digit percentage. Obrador and his party refused to accept defeat, holding work stoppages that threaten the country’s stability. Eventually, Obrador went quiet but continued to call himself the legitimate president.
The drug war launched by President Calderon since he took office in 2006 and bad economic times have depleted any support for PAN, sinking the possibility that they could return to power.
The PRI ruled Mexico for 70 years in a one-party system that was wrought with corruption and cronyism. The youth movement has energised an otherwise stilted political process. Nobody know what will happen, but the youth have responded.
30 May 12 | Russia
Holding rallies and demonstrations is a right, specified in article 31 of the Russian constitution and one which is regularly abused by Russian authorities.
Since 31 July 2009 the opposition has held protests in support of peaceful assembly on the 31 day of each month that has 31 days. Three years of such protests have brought no luck to the group which suffers from the violation of article 31 most — the Russian gay community. For the seventh time Moscow authorities have blocked their attempts to hold a gay-pride parade. Police arrested forty people who came out to the unsanctioned demonstration: both LGBT activists and radical nationalists, who tried to confront them.
Last year the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Russia’s gay-pride ban was illegal, but the country’s authorities don’t seem to have considered the court’s decision. As Pride organiser and gay rights advocate Nikolay Alekseev told Index on Censorship, “Russian authorities cannot abandon ECHR’s decision forever, at least because of the fact that the Russian gay community has 15 more appeals waiting to be won there”. According to Alekseev’s plan, at some point the court will confirm the systematic violation of gay rights in Russia, and the issue will be brought up by the European Committee of Ministers, which is likely to influence Russian policy on gay community.
“We were ready to hold our demonstration any place in Moscow this time, but the authorities said that in any place we would violate the standards of morality,” said Alekseev, adding that “Russian authorities ignore the gay community and European Convention on Human Rights because they go unpunished and don’t receive tough ultimatums on the issue from their European counterparts”.
In March “United Russia” deputies in Saint-Petersburg successfully passed a scandalous law “against promotion of homosexuality”, which forbids LGBT activities and bans any information about LGBT promotion among minors. This means any LGBT activist can be fined up to 500 thousand roubles (10,782 GBP).
That is why gay rights activists have to take precautions and self-censor, says Gulnara Sultanova, director of “Side by Side”, a Lesbian and Gay International Film Festival, which has been held every autumn in Saint-Petersburg since 2008. The festival’s core idea is fighting discrimination and supporting congenial relationship between LGBT representatives and heterosexuals. Sultanova told Index this year her colleagues have to set an age limit to avoid fines, despite the fact some “films about gender identity and equal rights are useful to teenagers”.
Homosexuality was only decriminalised in Russia in 1993. Before that, gay men were put in prisons and lesbians were sent to mental hospitals. Most of the active part of Russian society were raised in that time, when it was inappropriate to even discuss LGBT issues. This, according to Sultanova, resulted in a vicious circle, where “a lot of gays and lesbians are afraid to come out and participate in civil protests under rainbow flags, and many people consider gay groups too closed to express solidarity towards them”. It will take years to break this circle, but the tendency, according to Sultanova, is positive.
Her optimism is shared by LGBT activist and Novaya Gazeta journalist Elena Kostuchenko. Last year during an unsanctioned gay pride march in Moscow she was beaten by ultranationalist youth group activist. This year, she says, protests against Vladimir Putin united polar groups: nationalists, antinationalts and LGBT activists. Together they had to run from the police, spend time in detention centres for wearing white ribbons (symbol of protest) and demand new fair elections.
“Since December people have realised that lawlessnessness concerns everyone, and if the state systematically violates the rights of one group (LGBT, for instance), it could any time violate the rights of any other, which is exactly what happens now,” Kostuchenko concludes.
23 May 12 | Uncategorized
Index on Censorship has learned that the Twitter account of protest group Space Hijackers has been suspended following a complaint by the organisers of the London Olympics.
The anti-capitalists, who have styled themselves as the Official Protesters of the London 2012 Olympic Games, received notification from Twitter in an email this morning, which stated:
Hello,
We have received reports from the trademark holder, London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games Ltd, that your account, @spacehijackers, is using a trademark in a way that could be confusing or misleading with regard to a brand affiliation. Your account has been temporarily suspended due to violation of our trademark policy.
(click image for full email)
The Space Hijackers had been using an altered version of the 2012 logo on their site and their Twitter page 
The Olympic organisers are notoriously prickly about branding, but also about protest, and laws introduced after London won the right to host this years games could potentially place restrictions on protest for the duration of the Olympics and Paralympics.
It could be argued that the logo in itself was a justifiable reason for the suspension: but you have to seriously ask: is anyone actually going to confuse the Space Hijackers account for an official Olympic account? This should surely be the basis of a claim for trademark infringement.
It is doubtful that Space Hijackers are actually going to bring down the International Olympic Committee and capitalism along with it (not through Twitter at least). One can only conclude that this is an act of petty, vindictive censorship, hardly in the spirit of plurality and inclusiveness the Olympics is supposed to promote.
18 May 12 | Russia
Vladimir Putin’s inauguration on 7 May was marked with mass protest actions, arrests and clashes with police, which have continued for the last two weeks and seem unlikely to stop.
Since the inaguration ceremony, protesters have been holding an anti-Kremlin action in Moscow’s Chistye Prudy boulevard, in defiance of authorities. Opposition figures Alexey Navalny and Sergei Udaltsov were sentenced to 15 days of administrative arrest for allegedly not following orders from police. Eventually, protesters convinced police they had the right to camp in their home city. The police forbade them from using tents, sound-amplifying equipment and told them to keep off the lawns.
The camp was attended by several hundred people: different political groups, representatives, and politically active citizens, who don’t support a particular party or movement. They rejected opposition leaders, such as Sergei Udaltsov, Alexey Navalny, Ilya Yashin and Ilya Ponomarev as authorities and established a people’s assembly — a collective self-government institution where all the protesters decide organisational issues.
The camp on Chistie Prudy has become known as Occupy Abai, after Kazakh poet Abai Kunanbaev, whose monument stands in the centre of protest camp. It has became a masterpiece of self-organisation, to the pride of Moscow anarchists, who were widely represented in opposition camp. Special work groups made sandwiches and tea, cleaned the camp territory and scheduled lectures, mainly about protest movements.
Notable Russian writers and poets gathered thousands of people to march through Moscow boulevard ring against mass detentions during Putin’s inauguration and his presidency, in support of OccupyAbai.
But this week the situation changed. Basmanny court ruled that the camp must be removed from Chistye Prudy by Moscow central district prefecture within less than 24 hours. The police broke up the camp at 6 am, when no journalists were around and protesters were asleep. Tens of people were arrested when they said they didn’t want to leave the camp. According to them, policemen took away protesters’ food, water and the box with the cash donated by their supporters, which contained up to 250 000 roubles (around £5000 GBP).
The protesters roamed to another central square, Kudrinskaya, where they again were attacked by the police, who claimed protesters didn’t have special permission to share food and water with each other. Tens of people were arrested, including Khimki forest defence leader Evgeniya Chirikova. Opposition activist Ilya Yashin was sentenced to 10 days of administrative arrest. The others stayed, fearing riot police can arrest them any time.
The district’s municipal deputies from United Russia and the Communist party blocked attempts from local opposition deputies to legalise the protesters’ camp at Barrikadnaya by granting it the status of a festival.
Meanwhile United Russia deputies in State Duma prepared a bill, which will toughen the fines for those who break rules of holding rallies. Such charges are often brought against Putin’s protesters in Moscow courts. Hundreds of people protested against the bill in front of State Duma building, but didn’t seem to convince United Russia deputies.
Alexei Navalny and Sergei Udaltsov, who were arrested during peaceful protest actions on 9 May, are considered prisoners of conscience by Amnesty International. “These people were persecuted for having realised their right to express themselves,” – the organisation head in Russia Sergei Nikitin said to Interfax news agency. The other protesters are persecuted for the same reason, but they are not famous enough to be considered political prisoners by world human rights organisations.
