19 Dec 17 | Journalism Toolbox Arabic
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عناصر من الشرطة المسلّحة يحاصرون المتظاهرين في مينسك، عاصمة روسيا البيضاء (بيلاروس) عقب اعلان نتائج انتخابات عام ٢٠١٠ التي تم التشكيك في نزاهتها, Isabel Sommerfeld/Flickr
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ان فبركة وتزييف الأخبار في روسيا البيضاء (بيلاروسيا) ليس بظاهرة طارئة ظهرت فقط مؤخّرا. في نيسان / أبريل الماضي، قامت قنوات التلفزيون والصحف الحكومية بعرض صور مخيفة لمتظاهرين يحملون زجاجات المولوتوف الحارقة وغيرها من الأسلحة. وزعمت التقارير ان هؤلاء المتظاهرين هم أعضاء في “الفيلق الأبيض” وبأنهم يسعون لإشعال انتفاضة في مينسك على غرار الاحتجاجات المسّماة بـ “يورو ميدان” والتي انتشرت في أوكرانيا في عامي 2013 و 2014، مساهمة بشكل كبير في تفجير أزمة شبه جزيرة القرم فيما بعد.
ما يلفت النظر هنا هو أن المنتجين والمراسلين الذين أعدّوا هذه التقارير المصوّرة ظلّوا مجهولي الهوية. فلم تذكر أية عناوين أو أسماء فيها على الإطلاق. ولا يوجد هناك أي دليل على أن الفيلق الأبيض المزعوم، وان كان لديه سابقا وجود فعليا على أرض الواقع ، كان قد عاد الى العمل على أي مستوى في السنوات القليلة الماضية. ومن المثير للاهتمام أيضا أن الشرطة وقوات الأمن لم تجب على أي استفسارات من قبل الصحفيين أو من الجمهور حول هذه القضية.
اتضح فيما بعد أن القصة كان قد تم اختلاقها بأكملها، ثم تقديمها وبثّها على أنها قصة إخبارية حقيقية عن واقع مفترض، لنشر الخوف والذعر داخل المجتمع. وكانت الرسالة وراءها هي: لا تخرج الى الشارع ولا تشارك في التظاهرات، فأولئك الذين يفعلون ذلك يقوّضون السلام والاستقرار!
هذا تكتيك معتاد ولقد اتّبع في بيلاروسيا لسنوات عديدة مضت، حيث يتم إخفاء الأخبار الحقيقية لمصلحة الأخبار الزائفة المزدهرة في هذه البلاد. ويتم استخدام هذا التكتيك كثيرا في الوقت الراهن، حيث شهد عام 2017 احد أكبر الاحتجاجات في البلاد منذ سنوات عديدة، مما قوبل بردّ فعل عنيف من قبل الحكومة.
في ظل الحكم السوفيتي، كانت بيلاروس بلدا مزدهرا. ولكن عندما انهار الاتحاد السوفياتي، مرّت البلاد بفترة تدهور اقتصادي طويل. صعد الكسندر لوكاشينكو إلى السلطة في خضم هذا الاضطراب الاقتصادي والسياسي، ولا يزال اليوم في الحكم على الرغم من مرور 23 على توّليه الحكم. ويرجع ذلك إلى حد كبير إلى سيطرته على وسائل الإعلام، حيث استمرت الهجمات ضد الصحافة الحرة، والمدوّنين، والكتاب والصحفيين المستقلين جنبا إلى جنب مع أنشطة آلة الدعاية الرسمية الضخمة.
تتبّع برامج الأخبار على القنوات التلفزيونية المملوكة للدولة، التي تحتكر الأثير حيث لا توجد قنوات محلية خاصة، تتبّع نمطا بسيطا ولكن مقنعا، فتبثّ بدءا أخبارا عن الرئيس: ها هو يأتي ليحيّي سفير أجنبي ويلقي كلمة عن الدور الخاص الذي تقوم به بيلاروسيا في الاستقرار والسلام في العالم؛ أو ها هو يجتمع مع وزير الداخلية ليدلي ببيان حول أهمية الحفاظ على الاستقرار والسلام داخل المجتمع، أو يصرخ في مجلس الوزراء بأن عليهم أن يفعلوا كل ما يلزم لمتابعة أفكاره “الحكيمة” لخدمة مصالح الشعب (ناهيك عن السلام والاستقرار)،أو هو يقوم بزيارة مصنع في مدينة صغيرة ليتحدث إلى العمال وكأنّه والدهم الحنون ويقول لهم انه سوف يوفر لهم كل سبل الدعم والاهتمام.
بعد أن تبث القنوات الرسمية زهاء نصف ساعة من هذا النوع من الأخبار الرئاسية، تقوم بعدها بعرض مشاهد سريعة من بقية العالم: قذائف تسقط على أوكرانيا؛ قنابل تدمر مستشفى في سوريا، تصريحات غريبة من رئيس دولة تقع بعيدا عبر المحيطات. إرهابي يفجر نفسه في مدينة أخرى في أوروبا؛ لاجئون يتدفقون، وفيضانات، وركود اقتصادي، وحكومات تنهار. ثم يتبع هذه الأخبار المريعة تقرير حول أطفال سعيدين في رياض الأطفال البيلاروسية ثم بعض المشاهد الأخرى لبلد مسالم يقوده زعيم حكيم يبقى الملاذ الأخير لرفاه وخير البلاد التي تصوّر على أنّها واحة من الاستقرار في عالم عنيف جدا.
ولكن هناك أنواع أخرى من البرامج يتم بثها على تلفزيون الدولة عندما تشعر السلطات أن صورة “السلام والاستقرار” التي تبثها القنوات الحكومية تتناقض مع الواقع الآخر، أي ذلك الذي يراه الناس في الشوارع وفي أماكن عملهم، وفي محلات البقالة، وفي وسائل النقل العام، وفي المستشفيات والمدارس، وهو واقع يشذ عن العالم الوهمي التي تحيكه الدعاية الحكومية.
في بداية عام 2017، نزل الآلاف في جميع أنحاء بيلاروس إلى الشوارع للاحتجاج. شرارة تلك الاحتجاجات كان المرسوم الرئاسي الجديد رقم 3 الذي فرض غرامات على الأشخاص الذين لا يتمكنون من اثبات وجود أي عمل أو دخل لديهم. وقد أطلق عليه اسم “مرسوم الطفيلي الاجتماعي”. هناك مصطلح سوفيتي قديم،” تونيجادسي”، وهو يعني حرفيا الطفيليات، و “التطفل” كان يعتبر جريمة في العصر السوفياتي، حيث كان من المتوقع أن يعمل الجميع لبناء “المجتمع الشيوعي المثالي”. لكن “الاختراع” البيلاروسي ذهب خطوة أبعد في هذا المجال
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مجترحا المعادلة التالية: عوضا عن دفع تعويضات للعاطلين عن العمل، قرّرت الحكومة بأن…تغرّمهم!
هذا المرسوم كان الشرارة. لكن السبب الحقيقي للاحتجاجات يكمن في الأزمة الاقتصادية العميقة التي لا زالت تجتاح البلاد، ممّا أظهر حقيقة ما يسمّى بـ”الاستقرار” البيلاروسي على أنه ليس أكثر من غيبوبة طويلة. فقد ورثت بيلاروسيا نموذجها الاقتصادي المرتكز على الصناعة من العصر السوفيتي، لكنه لم يجر إصلاحه قط. قد تعني هذه الإصلاحات، مثلا، التحول إلى القطاع الخاص، وتغيير القوانين لإعطاء ضمانات للاستثمارات الرأسمالية، وضمان استقلال السلطة القضائية، واجراء انتخابات برلمانية حقيقية، بدلا من أن يتم تعيين أعضاء البرلمان من قبل الرئيس كما يجري حاليا. كل هذه الخطوات، لو اتخذت، كانت ستقوض جوهر النظام الاستبدادي.
وهكذا، مضى اقتصاد البلد دون ادخال أي تغيير يذكر اليه. على مدى عقدين تقريبا، قامت روسيا بدعم دعم اقتصاد بيلاروسيا من خلال النفط والغاز والقروض الميّسرة، التي كان الكرملين قادرا على تحمّل كلفتها بفضل ارتفاع أسعار النفط وحاجة موسكو إلى حليف قريب منها. ولكن اليوم فقد بردت هذه العلاقة، ويرجع ذلك جزئيا إلى أن بيلاروسيا كانت قد عارضت ضم روسيا لشبه جزيرة القرم بعد أزمة أوكرانيا.
أصبحت الصعوبات الاقتصادية من جرّاء هذا الوضع محسوس بها في عرض البلاد، خاصة لدى سكّان المدن الصغيرة. ثم جاءت ضريبة “الطفيلي الاجتماعي”، فكانت بمثابة الشرارة التي أطلقت الاحتجاجات. نزل المتظاهرون بالآلاف إلى الشوارع للمرة الأولى منذ عام 2011، وفي بعض المدن الصغيرة، للمرة الأولى منذ عقد التسعينيات.
أتى رد فعل السلطات قاسيا. احتجزت الشرطة مئات الأشخاص على الرغم من سلمية احتجاجاتهم. وخلال أحداث مينسك في آذار / مارس 2017، استخدمت شرطة مكافحة الشغب القوة المفرطة لتفريق المتظاهرين، فاعتقلت حوالي ألف شخص. حتى أن العديد منهم كانوا من المارة العاديين ولم يكونوا جزءا من المظاهرات. وكان بعضهم أيضا صحفيين يحملون بطاقات تعريف صحفية صالحة.
من هؤلاء، ألقي القبض على أليكساندر بارازينكا، وهو مصور يعمل لقناة بيلسات الفضائية، خلال الاحتجاجات التي وقعت في 25 آذار/مارس 2017 في مينسك. يوجد فيديو له يصرخ “أنا صحفي!” بوجه بلطجيين يلبسون زيا رسمّيا، ثم يمسكونه ويجرونه إلى سيارة الشرطة. في وقت لاحق خلال محاكمته ادّعى ضبّاط شرطة مكافحة الشغب بأن بارازينكا كان قد تفوّه بعبارات بذيئة في مكان عام. ولم يولي القاضي أي اهتمام للتناقضات الصريحة في رواياتهم للأحداث وحكم على بارازينكا ب 15 يوما من الاعتقال الإداري، أمضاهم المصوّر مضربا عن الطعام في مكان احتجازه.
هناك العديد من الأمثلة المماثلة لقضية بارازينكا خلال ربيع 2017. ولكن هذه القصص لا تظهر أبدا على التلفزيون الحكومي.
لا تخلو بيلاروسيا تماما من وسائل الإعلام المستقلة. لا تزال هناك صحف غير حكومية ومنشورات إلكترونية تبيّن حقيقة ما يجري. كما ينشط المدوّنون والناشطون على شبكات التواصل الاجتماعية. في الواقع، عندما قامت وسائل الإعلام الحكومية ببثّ ذلك المشهد المزيّف للمحتجين المزعومين وهم يحملون الزجاجات الحارقة، ظهر على الانترنت فيديو آخر يبيّن أنه لم تكن هناك أي قوات للشرطة أو أي مجرمين مزعومين في مكان التصوير، ولكن فقط شاحنة ومجموعة صغيرة من مصوري تلفزيون الدولة.
قصّة الصحافي بارازينكا وغيره من المتظاهرين المحتجزين لا زالت تجد من يرويها، ولكن، للأسف، فإن صوت التلفزيون الحكومي المصحوب بالهذيان والعدائية لا يزال أعلى.
“لقد تم تبخيس قيمة كلمة وسائل الإعلام. إن السلطة لم تعد تكترث بما نعرفه عنها وآرائنا فيها”، كتب فيكتار مارتينوفيتش، الكاتب البيلاروسي المشهور، في بيلاروس جورنال. “لا يحتاجون إلى جمهور بعد الآن. هم لوحدهم. انهم يعتقدون انهم أقوياء بما فيه الكفاية وبأنهم خالدون. ونحن نفتقر إلى الكلمات لبرهنة خطأهم لهم”.
شخصيا، أعتقد بأننا سوف نجد هذه الكلمات عاجلا أم آجلا.
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أندريه أليكساندراو هو صحفي مقيم في مينسك، بيلاروسيا. وهو محرر “بيلاروس جورنال”
*ظهر هذا المقال أولا في مجلّة “اندكس أون سنسورشيب” بتاريخ ١٩ يونيو/حزيران ٢٠١٧
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row content_placement=”top”][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_custom_heading text=”100 years on” font_container=”tag:p|font_size:24|text_align:left” link=”url:https%3A%2F%2Fwww.indexoncensorship.org%2F2017%2F12%2Fwhat-price-protest%2F|||”][vc_column_text]Through a range of in-depth reporting, interviews and illustrations, the summer 2017 issue of Index on Censorship magazine explores how the consequences of the 1917 Russian Revolution still affect freedoms today, in Russia and around the world.
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08 Aug 17 | Artistic Freedom, Magazine, News and features, Russia, Volume 46.02 Summer 2017
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”Influential Soviet director Sergei Eisenstein is often portrayed as the godfather of propaganda in film. David Aaronovitch argues in the summer 2017 issue of Index on Censorship magazine that historical drama can also be manipulative when it ignores details of the past”][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner][vc_column_text]
A still from Sergei Eisenstein’s 1925 film, Battleship Potemkin, portraying a massacre that never happened. Credit: Wikimedia
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My friend, a writer, reminded me of the English romantic poet John Keats’s axiom that “we hate poetry that has a palpable design upon us”. You could say, though, that Lenin and Mussolini – at least when it came to the poetry of film – knew differently. “Of all the arts, for us,” said Lenin, “the cinema is the most important”. “For us” meaning, of course, for the ruling Bolsheviks in the aftermath of the October 1917 revolution. When the Italian dictator Mussolini’s new super studios were opened in 1936 a sign was erected over the gate reading “Il cinema è l’arma più forte”, “cinema is the strongest weapon”.
It was George Orwell, not a dictator (though they doubtless would smilingly have agreed with him) who wrote that, “he who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.” It is pretty obvious that the way the powerful medium of film depicts the “then” has important implications for what people can be brought to believe about the “now”.
I was brought up partly on films made in the Soviet Union and saw some of the most celebrated early movies when I was young. The director Sergei Eisenstein was the most famous name and before I was 12 I’d seen almost all his films, from the silent Strike made in 1924 to the extraordinarily ambivalent and terrifying two-part classic Ivan the Terrible. Every single one of them can be said to have had some kind of agenda that dovetailed – sometimes perfectly, sometimes awkwardly – with that of the Soviet state.
[/vc_column_text][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/4″][vc_icon icon_fontawesome=”fa fa-quote-left” color=”custom” align=”right” custom_color=”#dd3333″][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”3/4″][vc_custom_heading text=”The massacre on the Odessa steps (once seen, never forgotten) from the movie Potemkin didn’t actually happen” google_fonts=”font_family:Libre%20Baskerville%3Aregular%2Citalic%2C700|font_style:400%20italic%3A400%3Aitalic”][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][vc_column_text]
The two that were most obviously about Bolshevism and Russia were The Battleship Potemkin, dealing with events in the city of Odessa in 1905, and October, an account of the “ten days that shook the world” – the Bolshevik seizure of power – in Petrograd (St Petersburg) in 1917.
Both deploy Eisenstein’s famous techniques of intercutting, juxtaposition and montage to create mood and drama. Sometimes cutaways of objects or expressions are inserted to refer obliquely to what the viewer is supposed to think of the person or the moment being depicted.
And in both films the actual history is bent for the purposes of the filmmaker. The massacre on the Odessa steps (once seen, never forgotten) from the movie Potemkin didn’t actually happen. The film version of the storming of the Winter Palace in October involved many more actors than the actual event itself. And October was criticised in Keatsian terms by no less a luminary than Lenin’s widow, Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya.
The full article by David Aaronovitch is available with a print or online subscription.
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Sidebar by Margaret Flynn Sapia
[/vc_column_text][vc_video link=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UQMg3saU4Q&t=1s” title=”Strike (1925)”][vc_column_text]The Soviet version of Russian history had two goals: to legitimise the rise and rule of the current government, and to instil its values into future generations. Strike, the first film directed by Sergei Eisenstein, undoubtedly does both. The film, set before the revolution, tells the story of a group of factory workers as they rise up against their abusive management. It begins with a quote by Lenin – “The strength of the working class is organisation” – and ends with a violent strike cross cut with the slaughter of animals. From the first frame to the last, the message is clear.[/vc_column_text][vc_video link=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcJkHCihTmE” title=”Ivan the Terrible (1944)”][vc_column_text]It is fitting that Joseph Stalin regarded Tsar Ivan IV as his role model, given that the two men men are renowned as two of Russia’s cruelest and most feared leaders. Directed by Eisenstein and commissioned by Stalin himself, Ivan the Terrible takes a stab at telling Ivan’s story in a way that flatters the Stalin regime. The plot portrays the boyars, the highest of bourgeois aristocracy, as internal enemies seeking to undermine the singular strength of Ivan’s leadership, a less-than-subtle parallel for the one-party Soviet state of the 1940’s.[/vc_column_text][vc_video link=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kS5kzTbNKjs” title=”Battleship Potemkin (1925)”][vc_column_text]Like a dozen other Soviet films, The Battleship Potemkin depicts the horrors of the tsarist regime and a subsequent popular revolt. It dramatises the true story of a 1905 mutiny by the crew on a Russian battleship, but its most famous and enduring scene, the massacre on the Odessa steps, was entirely invented. However, unlike many of its comrades, this movie was internationally celebrated for its technical excellence, and was ranked as the 11th best film of all time in a 2017 BFI critics poll. Through the film’s five acts, Eisenstein demonstrates that propaganda and art are not mutually exclusive, and that the confines of oppression can sometimes breed incredible creativity.[/vc_column_text][vc_video link=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=riOLSslKvxU” title=”October: 10 Days That Shook the World (1928)”][vc_column_text]A retelling of Russia’s 1917 Revolution, this film creates a fascinatingly skewed representation of the Soviet Union’s rise. While the series of major events in the film is historically accurate, the depictions of Soviet leaders and opposition give the film’s biases away, as key facets of character and decisions are highlighted and hidden. When watching the film, pay special attention to the portrayals of Lenin and the Bolsheviks. [/vc_column_text][vc_video link=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-QBqT9RQAM” title=”Panfilov’s 28 Men (2016)”][vc_column_text]Panfilov’s 28 Men demonstrates how Russian manipulation of history did not end with the Soviet Union. Released in 2016, this film is based on a famous but disputed incident in World War II wherein a small group of Russian soldiers purportedly warded off a wave of Nazi tanks and soldiers, all dying in the process. The events were heavily embellished by Soviet propagandists and later debunked, but the film based on them was partially funded by the Russian Ministry of Culture and is widely advertised as an accurate depiction of historical events. Times change, but the Russian regime continues to use cinema to its benefit.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]
This article is published in full in the Summer 2017 issue of Index on Censorship magazine. Print copies of the magazine are available on Amazon, or you can find information about print or digital subscriptions here. Copies are also available at the BFI, the Serpentine Gallery, MagCulture, (London), News from Nowhere (Liverpool), and Home (Manchester). Each magazine sale helps Index on Censorship continue its fight for free expression worldwide
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”From the Archives”][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”80560″ img_size=”213×289″ alignment=”center” onclick=”custom_link” link=”http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0306422014523227″][vc_custom_heading text=”Reel Drama: WWII propaganda” font_container=”tag:p|font_size:24|text_align:left” link=”url:http%3A%2F%2Fjournals.sagepub.com%2Fdoi%2Fpdf%2F10.1177%2F0306422014523227|||”][vc_column_text]March 2014
David Aaronovitch argues that all’s fair in war against fascist dictatorship, including seducing the United States into war with pretty faces and British accents.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”89184″ img_size=”213×289″ alignment=”center” onclick=”custom_link” link=”http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/03064220512331339706″][vc_custom_heading text=”The ferghana canal” font_container=”tag:p|font_size:24|text_align:left” link=”url:http%3A%2F%2Fjournals.sagepub.com%2Fdoi%2Fpdf%2F10.1080%2F03064220512331339706|||”][vc_column_text]February 2005
The first 145 shots of a shooting-script by Sergei Eistenstein, a prologue to the modern drama of Uzbekistan’s reclamation of its desert wastes.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”98486″ img_size=”213×289″ alignment=”center” onclick=”custom_link” link=”http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/03064229108535073″][vc_custom_heading text=”Iron fist, silver screen” font_container=”tag:p|font_size:24|text_align:left” link=”url:http%3A%2F%2Fjournals.sagepub.com%2Fdoi%2Fpdf%2F10.1080%2F03064229108535073|||”][vc_column_text]March 1991
An examination of how film is an arm of party propaganda in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, highlighting the 1973 Law on Censorship of Foreign Films.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][vc_separator][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][vc_custom_heading text=”100 Years On” font_container=”tag:p|font_size:24|text_align:left” link=”url:https%3A%2F%2Fwww.indexoncensorship.org%2F2017%2F06%2F100-years-on%2F|||”][vc_column_text]Through a range of in-depth reporting, interviews and illustrations, the summer 2017 issue of Index on Censorship magazine explores how the consequences of the 1917 Russian Revolution still affect freedoms today, in Russia and around the world.
With: Andrei Arkhangelsky, BG Muhn, Nina Khrushcheva[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”91220″ img_size=”medium” alignment=”center” onclick=”custom_link” link=”https://www.indexoncensorship.org/2017/06/100-years-on/”][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][vc_custom_heading text=”Subscribe” font_container=”tag:p|font_size:24|text_align:left” link=”url:https%3A%2F%2Fwww.indexoncensorship.org%2Fsubscribe%2F|||”][vc_column_text]In print, online. In your mailbox, on your iPad.
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14 Jun 16 | Asia and Pacific, Europe and Central Asia, India, Italy, mobile, News and features, Poland, United Kingdom
Timothy Garton Ash is no stranger to censorship. On the toilet wall of his Oxford home, there is a Polish censor’s verdict from early 1989 which cut a great chunk of text from an article of his on the bankruptcy of Soviet socialism.
Six months later socialism was indeed bankrupt, although the formative experiences of travelling behind the Iron Curtain in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s — seeing friends such as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn interrogated and locked up for what they published — never left him.
Now, in Free Speech: Ten Principles for a Connected World, the professor of European Studies at Oxford University provides an argument for “why we need more and better free speech” and a blueprint for how we should go about it.
“The future of free speech is a decisive question for how we live together in a mixed up world where conventionally — because of mass migration and the internet — we are all becoming neighbours,” Garton Ash explains to Index on Censorship. “The book reflects a lot of the debates we’ve already been having on the Free Speech Debate website [the precursor to the book] as well as physically in places like India China, Egypt, Burma, Thailand, where I’ve personally gone to take forward these debates.”
Garton Ash began writing the book 10 years ago, shortly after the murder of Theo van Gough and the publication of the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons. In the second of the 10 principles of free speech — ranked in order of importance — he writes: “We neither make threats of violence nor accept violent intimidation.” What he calls the “assassin’s veto” — violence or the threat of violence as a response to expression — is, he tells Index, “one of the greatest threats to free speech in our time because it undoubtedly has a very wide chilling effect”.
While the veto may bring to mind the January 2015 killings at Charlie Hebdo, Garton Ash is quick to point out that “while a lot of these threats do come from violent Islamists, they also come from the Italian mafia, Hindu nationalists in India and many other groups”.
Europe, in particular, has “had far too much yielding, or often pre-emptively, to the threat of violence and intimidation”, explains Garton Ash, including the 2014 shutting down of Exhibit B, an art exhibition which featured black performers in chains, after protesters deemed it racist. “My view is that this is extremely worrying and we really have to hold the line,” he adds.
Similarly, in the sixth principle from the book — “one of the most controversial” — Garton Ash states: “We respect the believer but not necessarily the content of the belief.”
This principle makes the same point the philosopher Stephen Darwall made between “recognition respect” and “appraisal respect”. “Recognition respect is ‘I unconditionally respect your full dignity, equal human dignity and rights as an individual, as a believer including your right to hold that belief’,” explains Garton Ash. “But that doesn’t necessarily mean I have to give ‘appraisal respect’ to the content of your belief, which I may find to be, with some reason, incoherent nonsense.”
The best and many times only weapon we have against “incoherent nonsense” is knowledge (principle three: We allow no taboos against and seize every chance for the spread of knowledge). In Garton Ash’s view, there are two worrying developments in the field of knowledge in which taboos result in free speech being edged away.
“On the one hand, the government, with its extremely problematic counter-terror legislation, is trying to impose a prevent duty to disallow even non-violent extremism,” he says. “Non-violent extremists, in my view, include Karl Marx and Jesus Christ; some of the greatest thinkers in the history of mankind were non-violent extremists.”
“On the other hand, you have student-led demands of no platforming, safe spaces, trigger warnings and so on,” Garton Ash adds, referring to the rising trend on campuses of shutting down speech deemed offensive. “Universities should be places of maximum free speech because one of the core arguments for free speech is it helps you to seek out the truth.”
The title of the books mentions the “connected world”, or what is also referred to in the text as “cosmopolis”, a global space that is both geographic and virtual. In the ninth principle, “We defend the internet and other systems of communication against illegitimate encroachments by both public and private powers”, Garton Ash aims to protect free expression in this online realm.
“We’ve never been in a world like this before, where if something dreadful happens in Iceland it ends up causing harm in Singapore, or vice-versa,” he says. “With regards to the internet, you have to distinguish online governance from regulation and keep the basic architecture of the internet free, and that means — where possible — net neutrality.”
A book authored by a westerner in an “increasingly post-western” world clearly has its work cut out for it to convince people in non-western or partially-western countries, Garton Ash admits. “What we can’t do and shouldn’t do is what the West tended to do in the 1990s, and say ‘hey world, we’ve worked it out — we have all the answers’ and simply get out the kit of liberal democracy and free speech like something from Ikea,” he says. “If you go in there just preaching and lecturing, immediately the barriers go up and out comes postcolonial resistance.”
“But what we can do — and I try to do in the book — is to move forward a conversation about how it should be, and having looked at their own traditions, you will find people are quite keen to have the conversation because they’re trying to work it out themselves.”
31 Mar 14 | News and features, Russia
Punitive psychiatric treatment is returning to Russia. This is a throw back to Soviet times, with opposition activists condemned by a kangaroo court to bogus psychiatric treatment courses, with no chance of release until a doctor says so.
Mikhail Kosenko, 39, last week became the highest profile case when he lost his appeal case against enforced psychiatric treatment. As such he will be interned immediately at a state-owned medical facility in Moscow. At worst, his sentence could be for life, with no chance of parole, as his release depends on vaguely described criteria. His assessment will also be made by doctors whose political neutrality is not guaranteed.
In 2012, Kosenko was arrested by Moscow police after taking part in a peaceful protest against Putin in Bolotnoya Square. Charged with rioting, he spent much of the next twenty two months behind bars. When his sentence was read out in court last October, his sister Kseniya, told the BBC : “I have an awful feeling. There are really frightening stories about what goes on in these places.”
Kseniya describes her brother as “a very quiet, homely type of guy.” She confirms various inspecting doctors reporting that he’s very shy – “shunning any kind of violence.”
Kosenko did have a pre-existing psychiatric condition when he was arrested – slow on-set schizophrenia diagnosed in 2001. But after medication and good advice, the condition was very much under control. Kosenko had never shown any tendency to be violent, according to his doctors.
Tanya Lokshina, Russia Program Director and Senior Researcher at Human Rights Watch, opposes the ruling.
“Mikhail’s case simply reminds me of the Soviet Union,” Lokshina warns. She tells how punitive psychiatry was a tool that was rarely used, but always with devastating effect. “Back then the medications used were really heavy, they were designed to slow down movements and just keep you out of the way.”
It’s impossible know exactly what treatments are now in store for Kosenko. But whatever is to come, it will only end if Kosenko dies, renounces his politics, or wins a final case of appeal at the Supreme Court. This is his last chance, but it could be some time. Lokshina remembers that when Pussy Riot took an appeal case to the Supreme Court, they had to wait a year before their case was heard. In the meantime, Kosenko’s treatment will continue.
The only medical evaluation the court heard was conducted by the Serbsky Institute in Moscow. Their crebility was disputed by medical experts, including the head of Russia’s Independent Psychiatric Association, when they noted that the assessment had completely omitted any reference to Kosenko’s successful ten years of self-medication, with no history of violence. Serbsky Insitute is also owned and operated by the state. The judge threw out a petition to have a second medical assessment.
Lokshina tells me there have been a few cases recently – but this is by far the worst. Amnesty International call it “an abhorrent return to Soviet-era practices.” The weeping sister of Kosenko told the BBC she felt “physically sick” when she heard that her brother had been found guilty.
Putin is turning to medieval, desperate measures as he balances himself on a rattling economy, a tonne of debt and a country that is too big to govern. Those with the bitterest memories, like Ukraine, Poland and the Baltic states, fear a renewed bid to expand borders permanently, especially looking at adventures into Crimea.
But Putin is smarter. He must distract the population from a certain amount of oligarch asset-stripping and poor management, which has become epidemic under his reign. But he also must not overstretch or overspend. Enter the Roman strategy of “bread and circuses,” minus the bread.
Putin’s inaugural circus took place during the Georgia invasion in 2008, and according to Mark Adomanis remembering the war in Forbes magazine “bathed Russia in a warm patriotic glow.” Putin’s ratings took a generous bump as a result.
But Admonanis predicted, just two months ago, that Putin’s ratings would have dipped by the end of this year. The economy was weak and Sochi had been a slightly uncomfortable experience for anyone even remotely Russian.
Sadly Adomanis, nor anyone outside Putin’s inner circle, could not reasonably have predicted Putin’s subsequent gamble in Crimea.
The incursion has seen approval ratings leap from sixty five to eighty percent almost over-night. That is an extraordinary success.
Yet while Crimea has been a successful though highly irritating move, Putin’s political future is still at risk. The balance of world media commentary has been unapproving. The lies he is telling about dangerous neo-Nazi gangs have been proved as untruths, journalists have exposed the role of vicious nationalist thugs (on the Russian side), and Putin’s cheeky disregard for international law condemned. His domestic woes also go on regardless – senior officials within the Kremlin admit that the capital outflows and fall in the stockmarket are far greater than they had forecast. There certainly isn’t any capacity for “bread.”
Facing criticism at home and abroad – Putin turns to censorship and propaganda to secure himself domestically and reap political reward out of Crimea. Any oppositionist media has been bloodily censored. Reports of self-censorship are leaking out from the remaining clutch of titles.
There are three varieties of public criticism which particularly irk Putin. First, a human rights group can get hold of and successfully publicise a story (Kosenko). Second, a one-off event focuses the world on Russia (Sochi). The third is that Russian activists go out onto the streets (again Kosenko’s case, see also Pussy Riot).
In each scenario, Putin potentially loses. But he’s developed mitigation strategies. The first is to denounce foreign criticism as biased and baseless. The second is to claim it’s-a-great-big-Western-plot-we’re-the-victims-don’t-worry-Putin-here-will-rescue-you. The third is to allow some freedom of speech, but only as an opposition release valve. The fourth is to treat protesters like animals.
Street-marches are targeted by violent thugs, who act with suspicious impunity. But it’s the judiciary, and their shoddy self-discipline, who play the more important role. There were serious judicial errors in Kosenko’s case. Other victims have seen key witnesses prevented from giving testimony. Or biased “expert opinions.” Or paid goons threatening the families of the accused.
Putin’s actions abroad might bring back memories of Communist Russia, but Putin probably doesn’t see it this way. Putin needs the circuses of Georgia and Crimea, even if he can’t afford bread back home. He has also applied a blanket of censorship on the media.
Now Putin is turning to psychiatric institutions in a bid to remain in power.
This article was published on March 31, 2014 at indexoncensorship.org
