Index on Censorship weekly news round-up
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Friday, 23 June 2023
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The Chinese-Australian artist Badiucao and one of the works which has enraged Xi and the CCP
I'd like to invite Index readers to do an exercise. Go onto Twitter and type in the name Badiucao. There you will likely find at least three accounts with the same name, the same bio and the same profile picture. Of course only one is the real Badiucao, so which one is it? Have a guess. You'd be forgiven for not knowing the answer, which, fyi, is @badiucao. And so we start this newsletter with a non-hypothetical example of how Elon Musk's removal of verified blue ticks on Twitter has harmed dissidents.
The accounts impersonating Badi, as he is widely known, flourished on the platform this week. For the unacquainted, Badi is a Chinese-Australian political artist. Born in Shanghai in the '80s, he uses art to explore censorship and human rights abuses in China. Like all great satirists, his work is bold and unapologetic (think Tiananmen's tank man and grotesque images of Xi). The Chinese government hate him. But the lengths they are going to in order to silence him is really out there, even spreading to Twitter, a platform which is banned in China. It's not the first time Badi has been impersonated there but, as he told me yesterday, this time the "impersonation is out of control" and without his blue tick there is "basically no exit for this nightmare".
The timing is obvious. Last week an exhibition of his work opened in Poland, despite attempts by the Chinese embassy there to stop it, and next week he is due to speak in London at Index's Banned by Beijing event (which will be fantastic by the way - find out more and get your free ticket here ([link removed]) ). As for what this nasty tactic intends to do, Badi believes it's multi-pronged: to stop people following the real Badi and see what he is actually saying; to have fake Badis say things that would discredit him; to use phishing links to trick his supporters into revealing private information and jeopardise their own safety; and to directly damage his income through sending people to a fake online store of his work, or "even worse", he says, "scam people for money" at these fake stores and further damage his name.
Badi, who has done several bespoke illustrations for our magazine, spoke at an event organised by Index back in 2019. I asked him how much less safe he feels today compared to four years ago. Depressingly, albeit unsurprisingly, he told me it's much worse now. In recent years he has been followed in Melbourne, receives death threats online almost daily and has to be careful when deciding which airline to fly with.
Badi's is a story of what happens when tech frailty meets transnational repression. But it's not just dissidents who are struggling with the new Twitter. In an Index exclusive ([link removed]) US-based journalist Noah Berlatsky spoke to sex workers who said Twitter is one of the best platforms for them to share essential information, advocate or simply post on anything they want. “Most of my Twitter’s just talking about books I like to read and things that I’m thinking about,” Jessie Sage told Index. “But there’s something very political about that, because I’m saying that I am a sex worker, and I’m also all of these other things. And when we get shoved off of social media, we lose that and we become dehumanised.” For Sage and other sex workers, Twitter Blue offered hope - to boost engagement and visibility for an otherwise sidelined and silenced group. Alas it has fallen far short of that,
and like with Badi that translates into a whole lot of abuse.
Jemimah Steinfeld
Editor-in-chief
** Afghan journalist speaks out on the UK’s “shameful silence”
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A rallying shout for people to write to their MPs and raise awareness of the plight of women and journalists in Afghanistan, and to pressure the government to improve the current conditions of Afghan refugees in the UK, were part of a panel discussion held by Index on Censorship last week. Read more about the session here ([link removed]) .
** The dangers in Europe’s proposals for political advertising
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Photo: Will Francis/Unsplash
"In recent years, the way we engage with voters has changed – dramatically. Long gone are the days when town hall meetings, articulate speakers and well-designed printed materials were the best mechanisms for getting your message out," writes our CEO Ruth Anderson ([link removed]) . "Now a huge amount of the activity is digital, undertaken from a computer screen with complex and sophisticated targeting of bespoke policy offers to the exact voters needed to build a winning coalition. The advancement of technology has greatly outpaced existing political regulations and opened new opportunities for bad faith actors and unfriendly foreign governments to interfere in domestic elections."
** Banned by Beijing | 27 June, London
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The Chinese Communist Party’s repression of human rights has been widely documented, from the Tiananmen Square Massacre to the Uyghur genocide in Xinjiang. But few realise that the CCP's repression extends far beyond its borders, including into Europe.
Banned by Beijing will highlight the CCP's transnational repression in Europe through an evening of art and performance. The event, which takes place on 27 June at St John's Church in Waterloo, London, will provide an opportunity for attendees to see and hear what the CCP have tried to repress.
Contributors to the event include Rahima Mahmut, director of the World Uyghur Congress (UK) and the lead vocalist of the London Silk Road Collective. Badiucao, the Chinese political cartoonist and human rights activist, Lumli Lumlong, a husband and wife painting duo, whose artwork focuses on social issues, particularly human rights and authoritarianism and vawongsir, a cartoonist and former secondary school visual arts teacher in Hong Kong.
Find out more and book your free tickets now. ([link removed])
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** From the archive
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** In limbo in world’s oldest refugee camps
Tim Finch
Spring 2015
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As Refugee Week draws to a close, read about ([link removed]) one of the oldest camps in the world - Cooper’s Camp in West Bengal, India - which was created in 1947 and at the time of this article in 2015 still housed 7,000 people.
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