Index on Censorship weekly round-up
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Friday, 02 February 2024
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Jack Wilkinson as Edgar and John Branwell as Gloucester in the 2015 Northern Broadsides production of King Lear.
Photo: The Lowry
A line from Shakespeare’s King Lear has been spinning around my head like a bad record this week. “And worse I may be yet: the worst is not so long as we can say, 'This is the worst’.” The line is delivered by Edgar, who thought he had it rough when he was falsely accused of plotting to kill his father, driven from his home, a bounty placed on his head and forced to disguise himself as a beggar. Then he encountered his brutally blinded, bewildered and downtrodden father and realised that while he is still alive things can actually get a whole lot worse.
It felt like Vladimir Putin was reminding us of Edgar when he moved Vladimir Kara-Murza, the activist and journalist, from a presumably very grim prison to an even worse one in Russia. Kara-Murza's wife tweeted: “Vladimir @vkaramurza was found in a “special regime” Omsk colony, the harshest grade in Russia’s prison system. If I’m not stark mad by now, it’s only thanks to Vladimir’s incredible strength of spirit and his sense of humor.“ We've reported on Kara-Murza before and spoken to his lawyer, who said ([link removed]) he is "a brilliant, intelligent, thoughtful and brave man". But for being brave and brilliant his life has gone from bad to worse.
It felt like John Lee, the chief executive of Hong Kong, was also reminding us of Edgar when he announced new legislation under Article 23, which essentially seeks to fill the minuscule gaps left for freedom by the 2020 National Security Law. Upon reading the details of the proposed legislation, which is under consultation (albeit for a short period of time by a carefully pruned crew aka it'll get passed), the Hong Kong journalist Kris Cheng called it "the worst version that people have imagined" while Matthew Brooker, another journalist, said: "Hong Kongers always knew Article 23 was the Trojan horse that would end their way of life. That's why they resisted it so fiercely [back in 2003 when it was first proposed]. Their resistance was not evidence of disloyalty but of their love of freedom and justice."
It felt like a federal court in Texas was reminding us of Edgar when it ruled against* freelance journalist Priscilla Villarreal, who was arrested in 2017 for violating an obscure Texas law that prohibits soliciting "nonpublic information" if done "with intent to obtain a benefit". The police got off in a case that "magnifies the troubling trend of police and prosecutors abusing their power to silence speech and punish speakers they dislike," said her lawyer JT Morris. Another kick in the teeth for Priscilla and knock to media freedom in the country.
And it felt like Prime Minister Narendra Modi was reminding us of Edgar when the website of the hate crime tracker Hindutva Watch was blocked ([link removed]) in India a couple of weeks after its X account was taken down. Since the site was launched in 2021 by a Kashmiri journalist, Hindutva Watch has become an incredibly important resource documenting hate speech and violence against India's religious minorities. But critics of the site have accused it of bias against the ruling BJP and in India the BJP increasingly win.
So it's been a rough news week across the globe when it comes to free expression. Of course you could flip reverse Edgar's line and say it's just as true that things can get better while we're all still alive and breathing (or argue that it was only through his blinding that Gloucester could actually see). The greater point remains though; we must always be alert and, crucially, we must speak up against injustice while we all still can.
Jemimah Steinfeld, editor-in-chief
*Technically last week, just the news only emerged this week
** Sport faces growing censorship problem over the Israel-Gaza war
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Antalyaspor fans watch their team face Trabzonspor in 2021. In the same fixture this month, Sagiv Yehezkel's commemoration of the October 7 attack led to his arrest. Photo: Antalyaspor A.Ş. via Flickr (CC BY 2.0 DEED)
When Turkish football team Antalyaspor faced Trabzonspor in a Super Lig match earlier this month, few could have predicted the fall-out that would follow off the pitch, writes Daisy Ruddock ([link removed]) . Israeli winger Sagiv Jehezkel scored the equaliser for Antalyaspor in the second half, and in celebration he revealed a message written on his wristband that said: “100 days, 7-10”. The words referenced the length of time that Israeli hostages had been held by Hamas since the group launched an attack on Israel on the 7 October, killing an estimated 1,200 people. Read more on what happened next ([link removed]) .
** Why a manipulated image of a politician is the tip of the AI-ceberg
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The doctored image used on Nine News and the original. Photo: x.com/georgievpurcell
The recent controversy surrounding Australian news channel Nine, which came under intense scrutiny for doctoring an image of Georgie Purcell, a Victoria state MP ([link removed]) , by enlarging her breasts and exposing her midriff, is a glaring example of the dangers of traditional media chasing clickbait rather than focusing on substance, writes our CEO Ruth Anderson ([link removed]) .
** The Scottish Anti-SLAPP Summit
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After an anti-SLAPP amendment to the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act and Wayne David's Anti-SLAPP Private Members' Bill, progress to stop legal threats being used to stifle public interest reporting may be on the horizon. But all this progress stops at the border and currently Scotland remains exposed to SLAPPs, without any commitment to stamp them out. This is why we are partnering with the University of Glasgow Law School to host the Scottish Anti-SLAPP Summit on 26 February. This event will bring together SLAPP targets, lawyers, journalists and experts, such as Paul Radu of OCCRP, Susan Coughtrie of thinktank FPC, Christine O'Neill KC and Francesca Farrington of the University of Aberdeen, as well as many others. This important event will look at what needs to change to ensure free expression in Scotland is protected. Register for tickets here ([link removed]) .
** From the Index archives
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** Borderland: Iranian Kurdistan
by Omid Salehi
January 2003
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Earlier this week, Iran executed four Kurdish political prisoners, claiming they were involved in an Israeli plot to bomb a defence facility in the country. Their confessions were allegedly obtained under torture, their executions adding to the growing list of death sentences in the country. Twenty years ago, Iranian Kurdistan was a very different place as this photo essay illustrated by photographer Omid Salehi shows ([link removed]) .
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