31 Jul 2018 | Artistic Freedom, News and features, United Kingdom
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_gallery interval=”3″ images=”101853,101849″ img_size=”large”][vc_column_text]Dressed in t-shirts and sneakers, a group of teens files into a large, white-walled room reminiscent of a school gymnasium. A stage looms over a motley audience of chairs, its walls plastered with handmade collages of redacted newspaper headlines. It could be any summer programme, but when professional opera singer Abigail Kelly begins leading the students in a song on political dissent and dictatorship, it’s clear that they’ve come together to create something novel, provocative and, above all, youth-led.
This is the English National Opera’s (ENO) Baylis Summer Youth Project, which invites students ages 13-18 from around London to create and perform a new piece of music theatre with the support of professional directors, composers and performers. This summer’s programme challenges participants to think critically about issues of censorship, both modern and historical.
The programme responds to Effigies of Wickedness, a collaboration between ENO and the Gate Theatre. Effigies presented songs censored and banned by the Nazis in the 1930s. The youth project features these songs which were, as assistant composer Kelly rehearsed in one scene, “degenerate music […] especially music written by Jewish composers.”
Previous projects have included Other Voices and Speak Some Truth. Like this year’s project, they responded to ENO productions, helping students break down complex topics related to expression and connect them to their own experiences and the present day. Brainstormed by participants and revised by professionals, the script reflects their discussions on censorship. Participants then split into performance and set design groups to put the performance together in late July.
Three performance group members outlined the creative process:
“First we got quotes on censorship and drew a mind map of our ideas” said Alanis.
“We talked a lot about censorship and self-censorship” said Hugo, adding that he hadn’t really thought about self-censorship and how it affects his own interpersonal interactions before the program.
Another participant, Elizabeth, noted “We were also given a poem explaining the fine line of free speech.”
Kelly mentioned that when students came together in mid-July, programme leaders stimulated their thinking about the intersection of free expression and the arts with poetry from persecuted artists like Palestinian poet Darine Tatour. Index CEO Jodie Ginsberg also spoke to the youth company on the programme’s opening day to stimulate discussion on free expression in the arts.
Diversity and teamwork are at the centre of the programme. Choreography is crowd-sourced from the performance group members and all the costumes and stage decorations were built by the set design team. Across the stage, newspaper collages bear hand-painted slogans like “Answer bad ideas with ideas, not censorship” and “Censorship reflects society’s lack of confidence.” Kelly said “We try to give the participants a sense of ownership over what they’ve created.”
Assistant producer Poppy Harrison sees the program as “An opportunity to discuss things in a different way, […] to show every side of the argument. We’ve been careful not to push [the participants] in any direction.”
ENO Baylis’ outreach began during the school year in communities with limited access to the arts. Students in ENO programmes like Opera Squad were especially encouraged to apply to the summer session. Culminating in a performance in front of friends and family, the programme is an extension of ENO’s mission to inspire students to engage with the opera and pressing issues like censorship in the arts.
With participants like Hugo observing that the programme helped him realise that “Creators are people still censored even in our democratic society,” it would seem that ENO is succeeding.
Index on Censorship works extensively on issues of artistic freedom. Find more information here.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_basic_grid post_type=”post” max_items=”4″ element_width=”6″ grid_id=”vc_gid:1533049608412-e4e98e79-eb23-5″ taxonomies=”1856, 25039, 13149, 1167″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
8 May 2018 | Campaigns -- Featured, Media Freedom, Statements
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Index on Censorship is pleased to hear the amendments to the Data Protection Bill are likely not going ahead. One of the amendments, which was not voted on, would have left many newspapers having to pay both sides’ costs in a legal dispute – even if the media outlet won. This amendment had serious consequences for a free press, a cornerstone of democracy[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]On Wednesday, the UK’s House of Commons will vote on the Data Protection Bill: a bill to regulate the way in which personal information is processed.
It is of course critical that we have robust protections over our personal data. Yet, as is so often the case with new laws, Index on Censorship believes we are in grave danger of ushering in one protection only to eliminate another: in this case, the protections afforded to and by a free press.
This is because members of both the House of Lords and Commons have sought to introduce amendments to this bill that would reintroduce into law restrictions on the press that the current government has rightly said it will not implement, namely forcing any publisher who refuses to sign up to a state-approved regulator to pay the legal costs of any data protection case brought against them, even if they win.
Such a measure would, in effect, invite anyone seeking to prevent exposure in the press – including those cases in which exposure, such as the Windrush scandal or MPs expenses, is in the public interest – to threaten legal action to silence a potential publisher. We urge MPs to reject these amendments.
In earlier proposed amendments, any organisation – including non-profit organisations like Index on Censorship – which refused to sign up to a state-approved regulator would have been liable to pay both sides’ costs. The latest amendments on the question of cost-shifting attempts to close that loophole by exempting small publishers but this just makes a mockery of the entire endeavour: either the rules apply to everyone or no one. The ability to hold power to account and expose the corrupt should not be left to one kind of media organisation.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/4″][vc_icon icon_fontawesome=”fa fa-times” color=”black” background_style=”rounded” size=”xl” align=”right”][/vc_column][vc_column width=”3/4″][vc_column_text]
Index does not believe any media organisation should be forced to sign up to a regulator – especially one that has state approval, no matter how arm’s length.
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Of course, there should be protections for those wronged by the press: but the threat of financial penalties on potential public interest journalism is not the way to do it. Far better is to encourage low-cost, easily accessible and swift redress for all.
Index does not believe any media organisation should be forced to sign up to a regulator – especially one that has state approval, no matter how arm’s length.
For the past five decades, we have monitored state interference in news reporting, from authoritarian Chile in the 1970s to North Korea today. With a history of scrutinising government pressure on media, we were never going to join Impress (currently the only state-approved regulator).
A free press is fundamental to democracy. Investigative and campaigning journalists have exposed scandals that have helped save lives: such as the work done by Index on Censorship’s patron, Sir Harold Evans, on the Thalidomide scandal while editor of the Sunday Times.
More recently, work by journalist Carole Cadwalladr at The Observer broke the Cambridge Analytica story wide open, while Amelia Gentleman’s reporting at The Guardian has driven the story on Windrush.
Without an environment in which such journalists are encouraged to report – without the fear that they might face costly court cases even for reporting stories that are true – who will hold the corrupt to account?
“It is easy to dismiss such concerns as the hysterical whinging of the mainstream media,” said Index on Censorship chief executive Jodie Ginsberg. “That would be a huge mistake. A genuinely free press – one in which both independent investigative journalist outfits and mainstream media organisations can operate – benefits everyone.”
We crush media freedom at our peril. The democratic gains being eroded in Turkey, Russia, Poland and Hungary and elsewhere have all been accompanied by a loss of press freedom: a freedom that is hard won but easily lost.
A version of this statement was first published on the Independent website.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_basic_grid post_type=”post” max_items=”12″ style=”load-more” items_per_page=”4″ element_width=”6″ grid_id=”vc_gid:1526037891828-b7251ca2-5483-4″ taxonomies=”6534″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
29 Mar 2018 | Global Journalist, News and features, Uzbekistan
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Journalist and author Hamid Ismailov
Hamid Ismailov deserves an apology. Or at the very least, an explanation.
It has been 26 years since the events that led Uzbek journalist Hamid Ismailov to leave his home country of Uzbekistan and flee to the United Kingdom. In the 1990s, Ismailov was working with a BBC television crew to make a film about Uzbekistan. The repressive regime in power under Islam Karimov opened a criminal case against Ismailov. The authorities said Ismailov was trying to overthrow the government.
Friends advised Ismailov to flee Uzbekistan after threats against his family and attacks on his home. So he did. Twenty-four years later, he still hasn’t been back.
That’s not for lack of trying. Ismailov attempted to go back as recently as last year after the death of Karimov in 2016. He was denied entry.
One of the most widely published Uzbek writers in the world, Ismailov’s books are banned in his home country. Mentions of Ismailov are not tolerated. His existence has essentially been erased from the daily cultural life of his homeland. However, in the age of the internet, Ismailov has found ways to reach the Uzbek audience through social media sites like Facebook. He posts his novels to Facebook where Uzbeks can read them.
According to Reporters Without Borders’s press freedom index, Uzbekistan is ranked 169th out of 180 countries. With traditional media tightly controlled, the government’s attention has more recently begun cracking down on the independent news websites and instant messaging apps.
After Karimov’s death in 2016, Prime Minister Shavkat Mirziyoyev assumed power. On 2 March 2018, Uzbekistan released the world’s longest-imprisoned journalist Yusuf Ruzimuradov, who had been imprisoned for over 19 years. Ismailov expressed joy at the news of Ruzimuradov’s release but remains doubtful saying, “as much as I am hopeful, I am skeptical as well”.
In his time in exile in the United Kingdom, Ismailov has worked for the BBC World Services. In May 2010, Ismailov was appointed the BBC Writer-in-Residence, a position he held until the end of 2014. Ismailov is currently the editor for Central Asian Services at the BBC.
Hamid Ismailov spoke with Index on Censorship’s Sydney Kalich about the state of human rights in Uzbekistan, his time in exile and his newly translated book, The Devil’s Dance. Below is an edited version of their interview:
Index: What was the human rights situation like in Uzbekistan before you left and how has the situation changed over the last 23 years?
Ismailov: Unfortunately it has worsened over the years because of the autocratic regime of president Karimov, who was in power at that time and died in 2016. So all this time the situation with human rights was quite dire in Uzbekistan. Uzbekistan was always in the lower, in the bottom part of the human rights records in the world. So, nowadays with the new president, the way Shavkat Mirziyoyev acts makes us hopeful that the situation with human rights is improving because several political prisoners were freed from prison. Some activities and press have started to be more active and more open. There’s a glimmer of hope that things will improve. But at the same time — looking around at other countries with new leaders who pretended first to be reformers but then revert to the policies of previous rulers — I am also a bit skeptical. As much as I am hopeful, I am skeptical as well.
Index: You tried to go back to Uzbekistan last year and were turned away, do you think you’ll see your country again?
Ismailov: Yes, it was quite unfortunate because even under the previous authorities I attempted twice to enter Uzbekistan after the Andijan events of 2005, but the new administration did not allow me to enter the country. That was quite a shock. I think that they owe me an apology for why they didn’t allow me into my own country. I am one of the writers that is quite well known in the west and all over the world who promotes Uzbek literature, maybe most of all. So why haven’t I been allowed into the country? I need an explanation and at least an apology before I decide what to do next.
Index: And you’ve felt that way each time you’ve been refused entry, you just feel like you need an apology?
Ismailov: I think so. I didn’t commit any crimes against Uzbekistan. I didn’t do anything or any harm to Uzbekistan. All I am doing is promoting the literature and the culture of Uzbekistan all over the world. Therefore, I am a bit shocked and perplexed why I haven’t been allowed into Uzbekistan. It is where all my relatives live, I was planning on going to the grave of my mother to pay tribute. But when I planned everything, all of a sudden, I was kicked out of the airport.
Index: You haven’t lived in the country since 1992, but you still publish in Uzbek. Does this mean you still write with an Uzbek audience in mind, rather than a western audience?
Ismailov: I write in different languages. I write in Uzbek. I write in Russian. I write in English as well. So different languages for different audiences. If I write in Uzbek, it’s probably for Uzbeks, not many English people or Russians are reading in Uzbek. The translations serve me well because of the ban on my books in Uzbekistan. But in the age of the internet, the bans don’t matter too much because I can still publish my work on the net. Another thing is that people are afraid to name me or discuss me because they know the consequences of that. Nonetheless, the internet makes my life much easier.
Index: Your new book, The Devil’s Dance, is about to be released to the UK market in English, what is it about?
Ismailov: In fact The Devil’s Dance is not a new book. I finished it in 2012 and then published it in Uzbek on Facebook. It was quite viral at the time. It seems new because it’s been translated to English. In fact, I wrote three novels after that one and I just finished an English novel. The Devil’s Dance is the story of the iconic writer, Abdulla Qodiriy, the most revered 20th Century Uzbek author, who wanted to write a novel which would supersede all he had written before. We know what this novel was meant to be about but while he begun to draft this novel he was arrested. Ten months later, in 1938, he was shot dead in the Stalinien prisons. My novel is about Qodiriy’s days in prison when he thinks about his famous unwritten novel. There are two novels in one. I dared to write a novel for him. It happens in his mind so it’s not 100 per cent written but there are rough drafts, there are stories, there are intentions and ideas. It’s a written but — at the same time — an unwritten novel.
Index: How did your time as writer-in-residence at the BBC influence you as a journalist?
Ismailov: It was fun but at the same time I felt a great responsibility because I was representing this great cohort of writers like George Orwell, V. S. Naipaul and others. I was feeling like an embodiment of those people. I was trying to show what the writership means for the organisation, what the creativity means for this organisation.
Index: What do you think the most difficult part about being a journalist in exile has been?
Ismailov: The most difficult part is not being with your people on a daily basis. Though virtually you are with them on a daily basis but you don’t see them face to face, that’s the biggest part. There are bonuses to being in exile though. When you start to look at your part of the world or your country with a bird’s eye view in a way. You can see the perspective of your country within the world. You can compare the experiences of your country to other parts of the world and you can bring experiences or similar experiences of other countries into your world. So there are pluses and minuses.
Index: How do you think your reporting has changed since you’ve been in exile?
Ismailov: I think journalism in the former Soviet Union was a very conceptual one. It was about the concepts and big schemes rather than human stories. BBC Journalism is more about human stories, you approach the reality through human stories and human experiences. So that was the most striking difference and striking experience for me. As a writer, I always treat my stories through the experiences of my characters so that was a very similar in western journalism as well. So therefore, it was a harmony for me working in journalism here. As a writer, you approach through the characters, as a journalist here you do the same.
Index: You once mentioned that some people feel more connected to their home country’s culture and more pride in their culture after leaving their country, do you feel that way about Uzbekistan culture?
Ismailov: Yes, I do. Yes, I feel responsible for my culture because when I think about my forefathers, about my grannies and about my aunties, about all people whose input in my culture was so great – I have to return something to this culture which made me what I am today. But at the same time, I feel part of different cultures, of the Russian culture, of the English culture as well, now that I have been living in the London for the past 24 years. I have never lived in one place for so long. So therefore, I pay tribute to this country and I am in debt to this country. I am writing several novels in English as well to pay my tribute to this country and to this culture.
Maybe Uzbekistan even owes Ismailov a thank you.
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_video link=”https://youtu.be/tOxGaGKy6fo”][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]Index on Censorship partner Global Journalist is a website that features global press freedom and international news stories as well as a weekly radio program that airs on KBIA, mid-Missouri’s NPR affiliate, and partner stations in six other states. The website and radio show are produced jointly by professional staff and student journalists at the University of Missouri’s School of Journalism, the oldest school of journalism in the United States. [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”Don’t lose your voice. Stay informed.” use_theme_fonts=”yes”][vc_separator color=”black”][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]Index on Censorship is a nonprofit that campaigns for and defends free expression worldwide. We publish work by censored writers and artists, promote debate, and monitor threats to free speech. We believe that everyone should be free to express themselves without fear of harm or persecution – no matter what their views.
Join our mailing list (or follow us on Twitter or Facebook). We’ll send you our weekly newsletter, our monthly events update and periodic updates about our activities defending free speech. We won’t share, sell or transfer your personal information to anyone outside Index.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/2″][gravityform id=”20″ title=”false” description=”false” ajax=”false”][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row full_width=”stretch_row_content”][vc_column][three_column_post title=”Global Journalist / Project Exile” full_width_heading=”true” category_id=”22142″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
20 Dec 2017 | Artistic Freedom, News and features, Risks, Rights and Reputations
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Playwright Javaad Alipoor told The Guardian that “the response to radicalism is to shut down debate for young people”. His play The Believers Are But Brothers will be performed at the Bush Theatre beginning 24 January 2018.
It’s easy to dismiss the importance of arts in a democracy; its social value is disregarded when it is seen as the province of the rich and privileged. Yet when we look to more authoritarian regimes across the globe Index is reminded constantly of the importance of the role of arts as a voice of dissent and the extraordinary amount of time that repressive states spend suppressing it. If the spoken or written word, if performance or image did not have power, then dictators wouldn’t spend so much time actively silencing and persecuting artists.
But let’s not just look to repressive regimes when we want to talk about censorship. Artists are often the canaries in the mine, a leading barometer of freedom in any country, with the ability to powerfully capture uncomfortable truths. The consequences are different here in the UK, we don’t imprison artists or worse, but ensuring the creation of work by artists who are by law, free to speak, means creating the environment in which risks can be taken.
Yet, in the UK in 2017, when arts have a critically, crucially important role to express and process the diverse and often divergent opinion and experience that coexist in our society, we have created a risk-averse culture. A raft of social, legal and political pressures threaten to limit the space available for expression. New legislation, lack of clarity around policing roles and responsibilities, fear of media backlash or social media storm, loss of funding, means that arts organisations are not always confident about taking the kinds of risks they would like – or indeed need – to make the best art. If only a few groups feel able to explore the most difficult subjects or give voice to underrepresented communities, then, when something goes wrong, it gets harder for the entire arts community to address sensitive issues.
In 2010, when I started in this work, freedom of expression was not a priority for the arts sector; it was assumed safe and left to fend for itself. This never works, as Michael Scammell, the first editor of Index reminds us: “Freedom of expression is not self-perpetuating…”.
When we asked a conference of theatre directors at the time which was more important: audience development or freedom of expression, 100% said the former. Audience development, as I understand it, is about bringing in new audiences, reaching out to find fresh creative voices and breaking the homogenous mould of arts audiences. Yet the call for inclusivity and equality of access has tended to be resolved around a desire to please and a fear of offending, leading to a loss of appetite for the unpopular expression and risk-taking, as identified in Index’s 2013 conference Taking the Offensive and numerous case studies as part of Index’s Art and the Law guides. And still the arts remain obstinately homogenous.
Playwright, director Javaad Alipoor said in a recent interview with Index: “There is a whole discourse about risk [in the theatre industry] that we need to shift. We take risks all the time, but the way we are willing to do it is mega-racialised. Some people are a risk and some people aren’t a risk. I overheard some relatively sensible liberal people describing the appointment of Kwame Kwei-Armah [ newly appointed director of the Young Vic] as a bold move. I thought – it’s a good move. Here is an internationally successful guy, running an internationally successful theatre.”
Look at the two 2015 plays about radicalisation: Homegrown, commissioned by the National Youth Theatre (NYT) written and directed by Nadia Latif and Omar El Khairy, was cancelled; Another World – Losing our Children to Islamic State – by Gillian Slovo and developed by Nicolas Kent, commissioned by the National Theatre, was produced. Whatever else might have happened at NYT, the fact remains that Latif and El Khairy, two creatives from a Muslim background, and the 115 young people they were working with, were not allowed to speak, while two establishment figures were free to express their view of the same issue. This illustrates Alipoor’s point perfectly.
Add to this the role of the police in cancelling work, going all the way back to Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti’s play Behzti in Birmingham in 2004; more recently the removal of ISIS Threaten Sylvania on the advice of the police in 2015; the policing of the Boycott the Human Zoo picket that led to the cancellation of the Barbican production of Exhibit B in London; the banning of music performances by police in Leicester and Bristol at the behest of local Islamic leaders. All point to the uneasy relations between state, the arts sector and artistic expression about issues of race and religion. A policing pattern has emerged, in which it is easier to remove what is deemed to be provocative and so dispel or prevent protest, than manage the situation and allow the artwork to go ahead. The arts sector has been caught out each time.
This pattern of policing interferes with the fundamental right to freedom of expression, something Index has taken up with National Police Lead on Public Order. Index is now working with a Senior Police Trainer to develop better support for the arts sector. His team will contribute to our training programme next year, which will also feature an introduction to our guidance on the legal and rights framework for artists and arts organisations – see below.
We are living in a society and at a time, when the lived experience of hundreds of thousands of people is becoming unspeakable. Although it doesn’t appear to be the case that Prevent officers are checking out what is going on in our theatres and galleries, the impact of Prevent as a force for pervasive self-censorship across Muslim communities is massive and one of the main free speech issues of the day. This will of course influence what makes its way into our arts venues. Add to that other invasive state surveillance powers, the rolling back of human rights generally, the arts has an ever more important role to play to tackle these issues, to ask the most important questions, to challenge growing authoritarian tendencies; playing safe is not an option.
The sector plays a vital role in providing space for open debate, but as Svetlana Mintcheva, an international arts and censorship experts writes: “That role is threatened if those institutions fail to take on real controversies around difficult and emotionally charged subject matter because some of that subject matter may be offensive or even traumatic. Unless they are prepared to welcome genuine conflict and disagreement, cultural institutions will operate as echo chambers under the pall of a fearful consensus, rather than leaders in a vibrant and agonistic public sphere.”
These are some of the issues that we are grappling with in our training: Rights, Risks & Reputations – Challenging a Risk Averse Culture, aiming to give arts leaders the information they need to take difficult, risky decisions more confidently. They will complement the efforts that many organisations are making, and have been making for decades in some cases, to diversify, by reinforcing the importance of risk and controversy in achieving these aims. To this end, we will be taking a close look at the social importance of risk and controversy and the steps needed to reinforce appetite and capacity for risk-taking; how the powerful complementarity of the rights to freedom of expression and equality gives a useful framework for this work. Looking at issues that could lead to self-censorship – fear of causing offence and/or protest and confusion around new counter-terrorism legislation, we will dig into Index’s legal guides for arts on three legally protected areas of society: Counter-Terrorism, Race and Religion and Public Order; Public Order police trainers will present their perspective on how and when to work with the police around artwork that might generate protest in the public space; and there will be a module on ethical fundraising.
The second part of the Michael Scammells statement quoted above is “freedom of expression...has to be actively maintained by the vigilance of those that care about it”. Freedom of expression is an active stance full of challenges, just like equality – both need to be enacted, not left on the shelf in a policy document. Freedom of expression where everyone agrees is not worth the paper it is written on; it will always include the right to shock, insult and offend. And, coupled with equality, it changes whose stories, imagination, revelations and visions shock, insult and offend even as they inspire, inform and transform.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]
