The Dissident Blog - Issues

#25 2018

editor — Sat, 03 Mar 2018 20:19:18 +0000

Reports from the corners of the pantry

“... A year later I left an online publication because of pressures from business oligarchs, and I said to myself, okay, they can occupy the kitchen but we still can work in the pantry, it’s still free. So, I went to work for an NGO. And now we are working in the pantry, and they are knocking on our door, they are coming”

Journalist Attila Mong reports on how government politics dominate the media landscape in Hungary, while independent media has become increasingly marginalized.

The irony of being censored

The same old story, again

Writer Orsolya Karafiáth was fiercely attacked for her attempts to spotlight how Hungarian women are repressed and silenced in the wake of #MeToo. This is her story.

"Almost nobody seems to care"

In an interview, philosopher G. M. Tamás tells the Dissident Blog why freedom of speech and democracy are in decline in his home country.

Hungary's political culture of illiberalism

Eszter Babarczy sketches the background to the victory of illiberal politics in Hungary.

Starless Night

A piece of “flash fiction” by Hungarian writer Krisztina Tóth, presenting a haunting snap-shot of everyday life in Budapest today.

Standing up for poetry

Krisztina Tóth's second short story for the Dissident Blog - a multi-layered tale of hierarchy and inequality.

Padded Cells

Art journalist Gergely Nagy on the shrinking space for independent art in Hungary: “Nothing has been forbidden, no one has been jailed.” But …

What's at stake

Attila Mráz, expert on political liberties, writes about the challenges facing social and critical Hungarian NGOs at the time of the general election campaign.

Hungary’s soft authoritarianism

The Dissident Blog on EU's black sheep, one month ahead of the parliament elections

A new expression has cropped up – a new political term – because the old ones aren’t enough. It refers to countries that are not totalitarian, not dictatorships, but not democracies either. Instead, they are soft-authoritarian.

This term is used increasingly about Russia, and about Malaysia and Singapore, all countries with multiple parties and elections, but where the regime keeps the media and influential institutions on a short leash, exercising its power behind the ostensive freedom of choice. And this definition now includes Hungary.

Those who adamantly regard the glass to be half-full could interpret the analysis of Hungary’s form of government as an improvement. It all depends on what we compare it to. Not long ago, Hungary was a communist dictatorship, although it was wryly referred to as the “happiest barrack” in the East. The pálinka was abundant (a decision to prohibit serving this brandy in restaurants before 9 am sparked riotous disapproval), there were tomatoes, paprika powder, and sometimes even meat to make the family's pörkölt, what many of us call goulash. Poppy seeds could be bought for baking the moist Sunday cake. But this was a corrupt, heavily controlled society, with no liberty.

As in the former USSR, Poland and other communist dictatorships, the children learned Russian in school but not English, and they were commandeered to attend jolly marches on 1 May to demonstrate the right pioneer spirit. Religion was outlawed, dissidents were persecuted, imprisoned, sent to camps and blacklisted. Surveillance and informing was constant; people in Hungary could not speak, write, or meet freely. The repression ceased with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989. Not thirty years have passed since then.

The traces of this past remain under the surface, under the words, under the government structure. This issue of the Dissident Blog, commendably compiled by Daniel Gustafsson, who ordinarily translates Hungarian prose, poetry and drama into Swedish, clarifies the situation.

#24 2017

editor — Mon, 18 Dec 2017 09:27:20 +0000

The Neighborhood Mirror

>> This morning Angy is sitting in front of Mimi, her beautiful mirror. She hardly ever leaves the tiny room where she lives, down amongst the rubbish at the far end of the shantytown. She’s got a tube of foundation in one hand and an old makeup brush in the other. <<

LGBT and Free Expression

Sarah Clarke from PEN International on the global free expression threat against LGBT individuals, a growing area of PEN's work. Learn more about how writers in different countries are being silenced, attacked and…

The Worst Days of Our Lives

Award-winning filmmaker and screenwriter Anton Yarush on anti-gay propaganda and the alarming situation for LGBT-people in today's Russia.

My.Kali: Shereen Zoumot

My.Kali: Open Letter to Jordanian MP Dima Tahboub

Right now the site My.Kali is being blocked by Jordan authorities. My.Kali is a magazine and one of the most important LGBTQ+ platforms in the MENA-region.

My.Kali: 10 Years of a Public Fight

My.Kali was born from the need for expression, reflection and the demand of LGBT people to be acknowledged as human. This is the story of Khalid Abdel-Hadi, the founder of My.Kali, when he was singled out by Jordanian media…

My.Kali: A Novel To Remember

Antonia Kreissl meets the writer Saleem Haddad in a conversion on identity, gender, sexuality and on how the novel can be a part of forming a queer, cosmopolitan identity.

To be silent is to say we are not alive

Romeo Oriogun is a poet from Nigeria, a country where homosexuality is criminalised and can give up to fourteen years of prison. In Nigeria, the publishing of queer texts is restricted and even if voices such as Oriogun's makes the…

Lesbian Love in the Land of Fear

“Was is worth your while to go through all this when you could silently love women?”, Dr. Iman Al-Ghafari, ICORN guest writer, about the conditions for love in surveillance cultures.

Immortality

Yasaman R. Choube was born in Iran and now lives in exile. For the Dissent blog she has written a moving story about love, oppression and loss.

Homosexuals in Algeria: From Self-Hating to Sexual Apartheid

Anouar Rahmani is writer, activist and blog under the headline ‘Diary of an unusual Algerian’. He writes about the lives of LGBT-people in Algeria and how literature can break stereotypes.

The City of White Shadows

Anouar Rahmani risks jail time because of what he writes. The Dissident blog publish an extract from one of the texts that is currently being investigated by the authorities. The City of White Shadows is an historical novel…

Language and rights in Iranian Queer community

Sina Kiani is a documentary filmmaker and photographer from Iran, with human rights and LGBT perspectives as main topics. For the Dissident blog Kiani gives an analysis of the situation for LGBT organisations in Iran.

People who love

Some people want to organize the world according to their own longing for order and their own definition of purity, as if there is only one way of expressing love, one way to live, one single way of forming a family - just one way of being human. Some people assume it to be their right to be violent towards others, believing that only one right exists, only one thought is acceptable, only one opinion, one belief, and only one sexual identity. This is inhumane. It is cruel, it is unintelligent and it is also contrary to universal human rights. In this edition of the Dissident Blog, Swedish PEN touches upon this painful reality.

We are proud to present some of today’s courageous, angry and loving voices such as Max Lobe, a celebrated writer from Cameroon, living in Switzerland; Romeos Oriogun, a much loved award-winning poet from Nigeria; Dr Iman Al-Ghafari, from Syria but who sees her homeland in the heart of a woman. We have collaborated with the Jordanian online magazine “My.Kali”, which defines its profile as “LGTBQIA-inclusive”. A magazine that is constantly blocked by the Jordanian authorities. Through this collaboration we are gaining insight into what it's like to be queer and Arabic at the same time. And we publish texts by Algerian author Anouar Rahmani. He is threatened with imprisonment for insulting Islam in his novel Jibril's Hallucination - a crime that can incarcerate him for five years.

Earlier this year, the Russian filmmaker Anton Yarush´s film “Closeness” was selected to compete at the Cannes Film Festival. On November 15th, on Imprisoned Writer's Day, he came to Stockholm to speak in front of a large audience about his work and the situation for LGBT issues in Russia and in the former Soviet Union. He cried when he held the speech and so did we who listened to it.

#23 2017

editor — Thu, 21 Sep 2017 10:06:25 +0000

Milkman or the police

>> Churchill defines democracy as the regime that ‘when there’s a knock on the door at 3 am, it’s probably the milkman.’ In Turkey we know that it’s probably the police. <<

Resistance under a regime of rancor

>>The most valuable resistance of the Witness lies in his collection of pure fact.<<

Today girls are born into a more backward life standard than their mothers

>> During the last decade, religious conservatism found a large area to grow and have pushed regulations, trying to discipline women into a domestic sphere. <<

Art on trial

When President Erdoğan was officially accused of genocide.

>>Erdoğan is suspected of committing serious crimes, he may be responsible for massacres. He is accused of ordering the killing of civilians and people because of their membership in the Kurdish Workers’ Party. <…

Requiem

>>Some of those outside are within the country. In a sense, they are “inside” too. Their houses could be raided any moment, they or their families could be detained, their passports could be confiscated.<<

A slaughterhouse for the law

>> I am not threatening Erdoğan, I am warning him. I tell him not to wish for civil war. I am saying the same thing today. Civil war is terrifying. Is it a crime to say this?<<

What frightens tyrants the most is courage

>>This statement is neither a defense nor a deposition. On the contrary, it is an accusation.<<

Ahmet Şık

Freedom or sunshine

>> I removed the foil paper from the box of Akhtamar cigarettes that I had in my pocket and started writing my will on the scuffed paper. I was handcuffed and trembling with fear. <<

Action for truth

>> Nadire Mater, writer and journalist, one of the most important persons in the struggle for freedom of speech and human rights in Turkey, portrayed by Stefan Lindberg. <<

The Words Behind Bars

It was an obvious decision to devote this Dissident Blog to Turkey. Since July 2016 we have seen a steady stream of writers, publishers and journalists, as well as teachers, academics and others opposing the government, being arrested on unclear and false grounds and put in prison. The dismantling of free expression and free press is shocking, both to its extent and concerning the speed of events. The failed coup in 2016, in which more than 200 people lost their lives, gave president Erdoğan a pretext for declaring a state of emergency and thereby obtaining the authority to weed out remaining dissidents.

Swedish PEN is proud to publish texts of some who are at the focal point of persecution: poets, writers, journalists, people whose thoughts, words and experiences the Turkish state is actively trying to silence.

Here is a magnificent text on resistance by the writer Sema Kaygusuz.

Here is Ahmet Şık’s speech in court - the investigative journalist who wrote an sharp, critical book on the Gulen movement and now is accused of supporting it.

Here is publicist Can Dϋndar’s disillusioned analysis of Turkey, written from his exile in Berlin.

Here is lawyer Nazan Moroğlu’s account for how the legal position of women has deteriorated under Erdoğan’s government.

Here is the writer Tuba Ҁandar’s presentation of the Armenian journalist Hrant Dink, as well as her experience of the conditions of exile.

The artist Pinar Öğrenci testifies to what happened to her when she marched for peace, and the writer and journalist, Ahmet Altan, describes a legal system so perverted that Kafka would have laughed in tears.

#22 2017

editor — Tue, 18 Apr 2017 07:43:32 +0000

Fight for free speech finds new avenues

"In the middle of this political chaos Cambodia, with growing social and economic tensions where human rights are being questioned, is facing enormous challenges. Today twenty-seven people have been imprisoned on very obscure grounds."

The regime in Cambodia almost completely controls traditional media. Free radio stations and social media have instead become important arenas for opinion forming. Jens Rosbäck has long been engaged in democracy issues in Cambodia and here he writes about the status of free speech in Cambodia prior to the upcoming elections.

Balancing act

There is a widespread misunderstanding that Cambodia does not have any serious-minded literature. According to Teri Yamada, professor of Asian studies, it is instead the infrastructure of publication and distribution that is…

Pippi Longstocking in Cambodia

The Swedish writer Astrid Lindgren’s character Pippi Longstocking has in Cambodia become a feminist role model for women of all ages. The publisher Huot Socheta eagerly awaits the effects Pippi might have on the next…

Trees of Life

The indigenous people of Cambodia still live in close proximity to the tropical rainforests so vital for humanity at large, but which are now speedily being cut down. According to Alexandra Kent, docent of social…

A nation built on the rule of song

The great era of national anthems is over but anthems can still narrate a nation’s history. David Chandler, writer and professor emeritus at Monash University, allows the anthems of Cambodia to paint a picture of the…

Cambodia's social media war

Oh ... Howling Dog

Cycle of Life

Tararith Kho is one of Cambodia’s most influential young literary profiles. Full of initiative he started the magazine Nou Hach Literary Journal, which he later abandoned after experiences of threat. He is also one of the initiators of the Cambodian…

Morning glory

“They took men and women out to the killing fields in separate groups, at different times, to have them killed. She is the only survivor from one of these occasions. She says that she was part of a woman’s group of twenty-five and all were raped – the one after the…

A public literary sphere under construction

We all know that large parts of the world have poor international media coverage. We also know that history is always in the making and that incidents that in the future may be recognized as decisive can at first pass by unnoticed.

Parts of South East Asia have for some time been poorly covered in Western media. However, possibly because Thailand is a magnet for tourists, we can follow the political crises there, while the tragic development as concerns democracy and human rights in countries like Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia are very sparingly covered – if at all. This is paradoxical; forty to fifty years ago these countries were at the centre of world politics. Especially Cambodia had the sympathy of a whole world until this sympathy began to wane in the aftermath of the attempts to reconstruct a whole society that had first been ravished by U. S. bombings and then by the Khmer Rouge’s regime of terror in 1975-79 that killed two to three million people. The destruction of a society’s whole infrastructure and the terror regime’s deliberate extinction of academics and intellectuals left the question unanswered as to how it is possible to reconstruct a whole civic society – and a whole literary tradition.

Amnesty International has drawn attention to the Cambodian Government’s increasingly harsh treatment of those in opposition and of human rights workers; a treatment that has led to indiscriminate arrests and show-trials. Reporters Without Borders place Cambodia as number 132 in their freedom of press index (out of 180 countries in total) and they note that in the country important media are completely controlled by the state and that journalists’ attempts to report about corruption and environmentally hazardous industries (such as the exploitation of forests) are being hindered. Just as in many other parts of the world without a free press, blogging and Facebook have come to play an increasingly important role – and therefore the Government, according to RUG, are creating laws to regulate and control the Internet.

#21 2016

editor — Sun, 11 Sep 2016 14:27:33 +0000

The Truth the Flag Conceals

Those who know the history of democracy in Turkey know all too well how commonplace it is for military officials to lecture journalists on their profession. And, indeed, how common it is for journalists to interpret this as direct orders.

For his journalistic achievements Can Dündar has recently been awarded the Swedish National Press Club’s Freedom of Speech Award in memory of Anna Politkovskaya. After having been prosecuted for his revealing articles he now lives in exile. For the Dissident Blog Dündar has written a personal comment on the relationship between nationalism and the escalating oppression in Turkey.

The Hybrid War and the Poetics of Resistance

In Russia it is not merely the war that has a hybrid nature—similar contradictory and elusive characteristics may also describe the state of justice, freedom, and censorship within the country. In his essay on creativity,…

The Same Silence as Before

In Turkey on September 9 Ahmed Altan, writer, journalist and former chief editor, was detained along with his brother. In an interview by Alev Yaman made just before Altan’s detention Altan claims that there is a…

Media’s Role in Promoting Nationalism

The broadcasting from the European football championship this past summer provided Hungary’s President Viktor Orbán with yet another opportunity to reach out with his xenophobic and EU resistant message. Using a mixture of…

"The fight is a part of the Polish ethos"

In Poland nationalism has grown into a thriving official ideology. The regime is demanding that the citizens defend all internal affairs and both the state and the church remain silent on issues of hate crime and racism….

Nationalism and freedom of speech: Hungary

In Putin’s Russia the Public Sphere has Suffered the Biggest Damage

Political oppression in Russia has led to an eroded public arena and the country is being drained of well-educated innovative cosmopolitans. Alexander Etkind, history professor with a focus on Russian/European relations, paints the picture…

Indian Nationalism in a New Guise

A united India was envisaged at the time of Independence in 1947—an inclusive and pluralistic country that would respect all the religious denominations. These past years, however, have seen this vision transform into an…

A Frozen Soviet Fragment

Belarus is often called Europe’s last dictatorship. However, oppression within the country does not adhere to the more common nationalistic model—quite the opposite.

Why does Nationalism Seem to Exclude a Free Debate?

Nine years ago, in October 2007, Pen International presented a report called “Insult and Defamation” that deals with how people in power use laws about insult and defamation to restrict the freedom of speech in a country. In the report Rumania was mentioned as an example to follow since the country had then recently deleted any such treacherous phrasings in their laws. However, only six years later, something which both PEN and the publication Index on Censorship noted and gave warning about, Rumania suddenly over a night reinstated the laws about insult and defamation and this time in an even stricter version.

Since then there is a similar trend in ever more countries and regions. Strangely enough this development goes hand in hand with the growth of strong nationalist parties. One clear and frightening example is the reintroduction in 2005 of Article 301 in Turkey’s system of law, which makes it a criminal offence to “insult the Turkish nation.” This means that all critique of the state of Turkey and its leaders’ actions is possible to incriminate—something that we have seen often lately. Ten to twelve years ago it was easy to think of these laws as a remnant of a pre-democratic era due to their relationship to the archaic case of lese-majesty, and that they were doomed to wither away. Instead these kinds of laws have now returned and have become a growing threat to the freedom of speech in many parts of the world.

#20 2016

editor — Tue, 08 Mar 2016 14:16:19 +0000

I will go back to my country one day

“I can't describe the conflicting emotions inside me whenever I left my home carrying in my pocket a Syrian passport, a Swedish residence permit, and Turkish identification card. I can shout to the metro passengers in the rush-hour: ‘Listen, what you see before you now, is a three-dimensional citizen.’”

Syrian poet Housam Al-Mosilli was forced to flee Syria in 2012 after having been imprisoned and tortured three times. He lived in exile in Istanbul for four years while waiting to find a refuge. On February 25, he arrived in Linköping as the city’s first refuge writer. We asked him to write a diary during his last days in Istanbul.

Refuge writers due to sexual orientation

For Somali writer Ahmed Mohamed, being gay and writing about it in a strongly homophobic environment became more and more dangerous. Finally, through ICORN, he managed to leave and become Skellefteå’s first refuge writer. However, reality of life as an immigrant in Sweden…

Darkness over Mosul – about journalism and ISIS in Iraq

For Iraqi journalist and writer Nawzat Shamdin, the meaning of the word home has come to be redefined during the two years he has lived in Skien, Norway. For over a decade, through his work as a journalist, Shamdin has drawn attention to atrocities committed by militias in Iraq, and in particular by ISIS…

“I can still hear the bombs that fell in the background”

Sweden got its first refuge musician in 2013 – the controversial rapper Khaled Harara from Gaza. In his lyrics, he discusses the political situation in Palestine from a social and humanitarian perspective. Among other…

“My city, which is not mine”

The situation for an increasing number of Russian intellectuals became impossible following the murder of opposition politician Boris Nemtsov, who was gunned down in Moscow on February 27, 2015. This included Russian writer…

The impossibility and invincibility of ICORN

There are today 52 cities of refuge around the world. Helge Lunde, director of ICORN (International Cities of Refuge Network), the organization that coordinates the world’s cities of refuge for persecuted and threatened…

ICORN – world map

What does the work of a refuge coordinator look like?

According to the agreement with ICORN, each refuge city has to designate a coordinator responsible for the project. What does this role entail? Jasmina Rihar, coordinator for Ljubljana City of Refuge, here answers that…

From Havana to Reykjavik

Cuban poet Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo was forced to leave his home country in 2013 after having been denounced as a “traitor” to his country and accused of carrying out “counter-revolutionary” activities due to his poetry….

Casa Refugio Citlaltépetl – a Mexican home for writers living in exile

In the vibrant district of Condesa in Mexico City, you find Casa Refugio Citlaltépetl – a house that combines the work of housing persecuted and threatened writers, translating and publishing writers in exile as well as…

Peace songs for Sudan

Month after month, the Sudanese musician Abazar Hamid submitted his peace and love songs to the government’s music monitoring committee which mostly censored and rejected them. Songs dealing with social and political issues riding Sudan were…

Applying for an ICORN residency

Refuge in resistance to terror

Already in 1997 Jacques Derrida held a prophetic lecture. This was during the International Parliament of Writers’ conference in Strasbourg on the topic of creating shelters for writers. The IPW had been formed on the initiative of Vaclav Havel and it campaigned the issue of sanctuaries for threatened and persecuted writers—a movement that followed on the fatwa against Salman Rushdie in 1989. But as the IPW and PEN had claimed, the threat against Rushdie threw light also on the large group of writers who had either been killed or who were being persecuted but who had hitherto gone unnoticed—writers who were in need of protection to be able to continue to write and spread their or others’ ideas. Today in many places authors, journalists, and other cultural workers are being ever more harassed precisely because they put into words those things that totalitarian regimes and terrorist groups have forbidden in discourse.

The refuge network is a response to this silencing. Already in 1996 Stockholm provided a few refuges and two years later Gothenburg followed suit; in the entire world there are now approximately fifty such refuges—refuges that cooperate with ICORN in Stavanger, Norway. In 2006, when the IPW had monetary problems ICORN became the financial guarantor of the network. Besides ICORN there are also a few private shelters that offer protection and peace to work for those who are writing about controversial or forbidden topics.

But let us go back to Strasbourg in 1997. Derrida was also one of the initiators of the refuge network, and in his lecture he aimed to build a philosophical foundation for the enterprise and argue for its necessity. As witnesses to this necessity he lists several well-known persons who needed shelter such as Dante Alighieri, Immanuel Kant, and Hannah Arendt, but there are two strains in particular in Derrida’s reasoning that are important to highlight.

#19 2015

editor — Wed, 16 Dec 2015 12:35:03 +0000

Letter to my dear friend

“Boi Mela was where they hacked you down. It’s been nine months. I’ve never been one for anniversaries. Yet month after month now, I keep count.”

On February 26th the blogger Avijit Roy was murdered on his way home from a book fair together with his wife. The writer Shabnam Nadiya, who was a childhood friend of Roy, here writes an open letter to him, nine months after the fateful day.

The struggle for a progressive Bangladesh goes on – from Sweden

28-year old blogger and journalist Shamima Mitu left Bangladesh on November 5. She was receiving severe threats because of her writings on social issues. With the aid of The Palme Centre and Swedish PEN, she is now residing…

Infographic: Bangladesh

84 bloggers on the death list

Bangladesh was founded as a secular state – but the former regime established Islam as the state religion. This doesn’t tally, and the double ledger has resulted in a tug-of-war that leads ultimately to terror and political…

Avijit’s killers

Anisur Rahman, poet, critic and playwright, was guest writer in Uppsala from 2009 to 2011. This newly written poem was composed in response to the murder of the very well-known author and blogger Avijit Roy, who was hacked…

Extremist violence is trying to kill the finest part of our tradition

Freedom of expression has a long history in what is now Bangladesh – but nowadays, old power elites are using religiously motivated terrorism to crush it. And our elected politicians are wavering in their defence of democracy. This is a crime…

A feminist’s observations

What’s it like to write about feminism and women’s issues in Bangladesh? Author and blogger Marzia Prova has fought long and hard to get to write openly about sex, rape, equality, menstruation and religious attitudes…

The provoking cartoonist

Daring to know – the story of Mukto-Mona

The very popular blog Mukto-Mona (free thought) was the victim of an Islamist terrorist attack this year that left four of its writers dead. The blog was a successful experiment in freethinking and free debate, and can be…

When there’s no secular state, there’s only discrimination and oppression

How democratised a society is can be judged by how it treats its minorities. From day one, Bangladesh has endeavored to be a secular and pluralist state – but concessions to various extremist forces have created a volatile…

The crisis in Bangladesh — and what can be done

The situation for secular intellectuals in Bangladesh is worsening by the day. According to the American human rights defender Michael De Dora, hopes cannot be pinned on civil society and international organisations. If any…

Statement: Save free expression in Bangladesh

Terror attacks against Bangladesh bloggers murder the future

One after the other the names of writers and bloggers who have been murdered have appeared on the computer screen: Avijit Roy, Washiqur Rahman, Ananta Bijoy Dash, Niloy Chakrabarti, and Roy’s publisher Faisal Avefin Dipan. In the course of the year, these people have all been killed, often hacked to death, by religious fanatics who have aimed to silence them and to stop them from pursuing an open intellectual debate. The murders of Avijit Roy and Ananta Bijoy Dash made deadlines in world media, but many others have been assaulted and yet others are living under constant threat for their lives. Assassination lists of secular bloggers are circulating on the web—those who are still alive are meant to be intimidated by these killings, and thereby to be silenced.

This past year, a constant flow of similar horrendous news has been reaching us from Bangladesh. The list of names of murdered persons, however, must not become any longer. All these victims have been killed for the same reason: they have attempted to pursue a serious and intellectual debate about the relationship between scientific findings and social progress and, most importantly, about the role of religion in society. The killers attack these serious-minded debaters with their machetes—all in the name of religion. The guest writer Ratan Kumar Samadder describes in detail what this terror campaign looks like. Several of those killed were connected to the respected blog site Mukto-Mona (literally “freethinker”), which is a platform for critics of religion, agnostics, and secular humanists; the story behind the blog is here given narrative form by the contributor to the site Siddharta Dhar.

#18 2015

editor — Fri, 09 Oct 2015 10:48:55 +0000

Who can I turn to, my friends?

“While you were quiet, while you were indifferent, while they haven’t yet come after you, while “I’m not interested in politics,” while the opinion polls show ratings of 86 percent ‒ all ‒ ALL! ‒ of my acquaintances who could have helped you, have either emigrated, ended up in jail or been killed. I no longer have anywhere or anyone to send my writings to.”

Putin’s brutal reprisals against dissidents has had a devastating effect on opposition journalists and authors in the country – today, the democratic resistance movement is weak and fragmented, and many have chosen to flee the country. Russian journalist and author Arkady Babchenko writes about the consequences.

“I’m supposed to be thinking about god, not Putin” – the demise of Russian NGOs

The traditional task of Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) is to guarantee human rights, free elections and the freedom of speech, thereby fulfilling an important role in societies that struggle with censorship and oppression, such as Russia. A…

A cauliflower for Ida

Press and speech freedoms in Ukraine have seriously deteriorated as the conflicts besetting the country have intensified. Many newspapers have been forced to close after pressure from Russian separatists and self-appointed…

The 4 most censored countries in Europe – infographic

“There is no future for Turkey under these conditions we are in”

Turkey has in recent years set a new record in the number of journalists and writers imprisoned and brought to trial. Meanwhile, the escalation of violence inside Turkey and on its borders with Syria is being used by President Erdogan to obtain a…

A prisoner’s freedom, a society’s captivity

Writer and human rights lawyer Muharrem Erbey served almost four years in a Turkish prison without trial. Once released, he saw the world with new eyes – and noted how the limits of freedom of speech had shifted in Turkey…

Orbán with a Hitler moustache – on freedom of the press in Hungary

Hungary has received harsh international criticism for being a country where the government draconically restricts freedom of the press. The ruling party usually dismisses these accusations with indignation and points to…

Backing into the future – on the new Spanish ”gag law”

In the wake of the sharp protests against various “austerity politics”, the Spanish government has in recent years carved away at civil rights and freedoms, writes teacher in International Law at the University of the…

Which freedom of speech should we defend? On the confused debate following the Charlie Hebdo shooting

Freedom of speech has always been conditional and all societies have set limits to it. But after the killings in Paris, we were once again reminded of how the conditions of freedom of speech have changed in a global and digitalized world – we are…

Europe's last dictatorship

Belarus is described as Europe’s last dictatorship. The country has had the same president for twenty years and is the only one in Europe still employing capital punishment. The regime has also introduced a special license…

It is easy to sound apocalyptic when discussing the directions that the freedom of speech is taking in the world

Year after year the organizations that globally monitor the freedom of speech and of the press reach the same depressing result: in the last decades there has been a gradual erosion of free speech. Freedom House claim that on the web, globally, the freedom of expression and information has been curtailed for the fourth year consecutively. Concerning the free press in Europe the organisation drily points out that “press freedom faces threats in a number of states.”

In the Reporters Without Borders’ world press freedom index there is a similar assessment: 2014 was a dark year that saw an escalating number of assaults against journalists and bloggers around the world. They claim, furthermore, that compared to other regions, Europe’s ratings fell steeply, the reason being that some countries have encountered severe problems during the year—problems that the EU system has been unable to control.

In these surveys Europe has long been rated “best in class.” But something has happened. Even here it is harder to uphold a free debating climate and the hindrances can differ between countries from direct threats to semi-censorship to self-censorship.

#17 2015

editor — Wed, 08 Jul 2015 20:34:04 +0000

Rule of law and creative innovation are necessary to counter digital control

“Thirty-four percent of writers in free countries, 44 percent in partly-free countries, and 61 percent in not free countries are actively self-censoring, and they are avoiding certain topics on social media.”

Society’s use of digital surveillance is here to stay. But we are not wholly powerless in the face of it. If we are prepared to fight for our freedom of expression there are ways to secure our protection. Writer Deji Bryce Olukotun maps several paths to follow: defend the rule of law, learn encryption technology that is becoming ever easier to use, and be creatively inventive.

A murdered blogger’s last words

Writer and blogger Ananta Bijoy Dash wrote several entries on his Facebook page just hours before he was killed in the street in the town Sylhet in Northern Bangladesh on May 12. He contributed on a regular basis to the…

The battle over Turkey’s internet

The passing of law 5651 in Turkey has made it possible for the Turkish government to block access to web pages that contain ‘undesirable’ material. This is part of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğans attempt to suppress any…

Digital threats—infographic

Online publication in Iran—a new arena for censored writers

The use of the Internet is growing in Iran—the country has more than forty-six million Internet users and half of the population have access to smart phones. This opens up new channels for publishers to make banned or…

Mass surveillance and online censorship—the PEN International perspective

Since Snowden’s revelations PEN has scrutinized mass surveillance laws in several countries the world over. Sarah Clarke, International Policy and Advocacy Officer at PEN International, writes about how the introduction of…

Wrong values? No money: On China’s new “social credit system”

Today China is on the digital forefront. It has the most Internet users in the world and here new technology is being tested. The country, however, also has a sad record when it comes to controlling the digital habits of…

Speak to me—intelligence programmes can only read

In sci-fi literature ‘low tech’ is a way of evading control; simple technology is harder to trace than more advanced. Zeng Jinyan, blogger and human rights activist, writes about how Chinese dissidents often use a simple…

China’s great cannon and censorship

Ever more information; less and less freedom

At the end of the 1990s ECHELON popped up as a new acronym on the international debating scene. Journalists, also journalists in New Zeeland, published information concerning the gathering of signals intelligence during the Cold War saying that this had not diminished. Instead it had increased to ever more astronomic proportions and was also now being used to monitor for example the network traffic of European companies. The issue was at first regarded with scepticism almost as if it was one conspiracy theory among others, until no other than James Woolsey, the former director of the CIA, confirmed that the system existed and was being used in this way. Technology had made it possible.

At the time the world was in the decade’s calmest period of détente following the fall of the Iron Curtain and before 9/11. Notwithstanding, the digital surveillance systems spread quicker than ever and security services encroached ever more on the integrity of the citizens and on business secrets—simply because it was technically possible.

To reverse technological development is neither possible nor desirable. Nobody is surprised that non-democratic countries such as China and Iran use digital surveillance to keep their citizens in control—this is the very nature of totalitarian thinking. In the meantime though democratic countries’ intelligence services and monitoring activities, with reference to the security of their citizens, are becoming a threat to the freedom of speech. In order to protect you we need to spy on you, map your face, your shopping habits, and your manner of walking—or else you are in danger. This information is then used to curtail the rights of the populace. It is now possible to apprehend anyone anywhere and to move them any place for interrogation—all in the name of freedom. Also, we are prone to disregard the fact that the data information systems have gaps and inconsistencies that can result in very warped outcomes.

#16 2015

editor — Tue, 07 Apr 2015 12:28:04 +0000

Dogs and humans in Addis Ababa

“How can I talk about a hit-and-run incident involving a dog when I see on daily basis the suffering of fellow humans?”

Where does the idea of a just society begin? Perhaps in a sudden moment in the morning traffic. Author and chairman in Ethiopian PEN Solomon Hailemariam sees the biggest change in the smallest thing on the way to school with his son—and has hope for the coming generation. It happens in Addis Ababa, but could be anywhere in the world.

Diamonds form under high pressure

Swedish journalist Martin Schibbye and photographer Johan Persson were held for one and a half years in Kality prison. Martin is very familiar with the environment described in many of the texts in this issue. Here he…

Letter from Kality prison: Who’s guilty?

No one who has not been wrongly imprisoned can really understand how the system, bit by bit, erodes one’s dignity and self-respect. Prizewinning Ethiopian journalist Reeyot Alemu was sent down for what she had written to…

My country’s government will fall by its obsessive need for control

From afar, Ethiopia might seem like a success story—from the famine of the 1980s to a country in which the west and China are only too happy to invest. But the real threat to the country comes from the government’s fear of…

No one cares about women’s rights in Ethiopia

The problem is not just that advancements in women’s rights in Ethiopia seem to have come to a standstill—whoever calls to attention these grievances and the betrayal of the female half of the population runs a real risk of…

Under the Ethiopian state

Without investigative journalists, it is difficult to pinpoint exactly how a dictatorship abuses the legal system and courts. Here, the well-known Ethiopian journalist Temesgen Desalegn describes such a circumstance. Desalegn himself…

The culture is in the hands of those who toe the line

Biased and centrally controlled news reporting, poor professional knowledge, endemic resignation amongst journalists and misleading directives—this is how author and journalist Abraham T. Zere describes the media climate in…

“You can’t wake up someone who pretends to be asleep”—about Eritrea’s future

January saw the release on bail of six journalists from the radio station Bana in Eritrea. They had been behind bars since 2009, when the government launched a large-scale raid on journalists. Brendan de Caires from PEN…

Underground journalism in Eritrea

Eritrea has long languished at the bottom of Reporters Without Borders’ World Press Freedom Index. Despite this, many journalists risk their lives to report on what is happening in the country. One of them is Stefanos…

The struggle is between the power of politics and the power of information

In 2001, mass protests broke out in Eritrea after a number of top officials and members of President Isaias Afewerki’s party publicly criticised his autocratic rule and failure to implement democratic reform. What could…

The price of being a journalist in Eritrea

Being a journalist in Eritrea means risking your life every day. Here, the pseudonym Mussie Hadgu writes about what made him become a journalist. “The crimes I witnessed shook me to the core, and I felt I had to expose…

My Eritrea

Poet and journalist Haile Bizen is known in his native Eritrea by the epithet “the man who broke the silence”. He was forced to flee the country after repeated persecution and systematic interrogation in connection with the…

Soon five thousand days in prison

The third condition of freedom

Food or morals? This Brecht quote and dilemma underlies the discussion about the freedom of speech and other human rights: which comes first, the chicken or the egg? Will the respect for human rights increase automatically as a result of a flourishing economy? Or, do human rights such as education, rule of law, and a fair allocation of resources need to be in place first—and then the economic boom will follow suit? This may seem to be an academic question reserved for university seminars, but it isn’t. It is about which policy that paves the way for democratic rule.

The question is somewhat skewed, with regard to some parts of the world that are in and out of the media spotlight: the countries on the horn of Africa, specifically Ethiopia and Eritrea.

In 1993, after the war, when a referendum held by the UN showed that a majority of the people in Eritrea wanted independence, there were high hopes of a development towards democracy in the country. This inspired the writer Dawit Isaak, at that time living in Sweden, to return to his native country to take part in the establishment of a free press. This endeavour came to a tragic end in 2001 when the politicians clamped down on those who had demanded democratic reform and on the journalists who had reported about it. Those who are not yet deceased are still imprisoned—among them Dawit Isaak. Eritrea has, since then, become one of the world’s most isolated countries with a mass-emigration of educated citizens and an economy on the downfall. Reporters Without Borders rank the country as having the worst oppression of the press in the whole world—it has position 180 out of 180 in the Reporters Without Borders index.