Book Review – The Silence and the Roar

Free expression is the first casualty under any dictatorship. The work of dissident writers and intellectuals is banned and, when this doesn’t have the desired effect, they are imprisoned, tortured or simply “disappear”. Nihad Sirees’s own experiences in Syria inform his profound and topical 2004 novella, which has now been translated into English by Max Weiss.

The Silence and the Roar follows a day in the life of Fathi Sheen, a once popular writer condemned to obscurity for being “unpatriotic”. As he makes his way across town to visit his mother and girlfriend, an unnamed leader is celebrating his 20th anniversary in power, and people pour onto the streets to express their devotion. Fathi encounters characters who, like him, are struggling to make sense of the marches, military music and speeches – all the “noise of the regime”. An unlikely hero, he intervenes to stop government thugs beating a student, and attempts to rescue a woman from being trampled.

Although effectively silenced, Fathi is still respected. A government employee is desperate to describe the torture he endured after a photocopier malfunction caused an ink blot to deface the Leader’s portraits. A doctor, struggling to treat the numerous casualties from the marches, begs Fathi to “name” the loss of respect for human life – he settles on Surrealism. Weaving together their stories with Fathi’s own experiences, Sirees creates a chilling portrait of a people whose lives are dominated by fear.

Denied the opportunity to write, Fathi’s “two weapons of survival” are sex and laughter. However, on reporting to party headquarters, he finds his ability to resist the regime severely tested. He is offered a stark choice: to join the “noise” by writing state propaganda or face “the silence of prison”, or worse, “the grave”.

Today, Sirees lives in self-imposed exile in Egypt. The unnamed dictator in his Orwellian tale could be any number of those in power today, but the parallels with his homeland are obvious. In an afterword to this timely translation, Sirees refers with disbelief to “the roar of artillery, tanks and fighter jets that have already opened fire on Syrian cities”.

Nihad Sirees is at Southbank Centre, London, as part of Syria Speaks, on 29 January (0844 875 0073)

Originally published in the Independent on Sunday.

Book Review – Slavery Inc. The Untold Story of International Sex Trafficking

Lydia Cacho, the Mexican writer and women’s rights activist, has endured intimidation, abduction and imprisonment because of her investigative journalism. Following the publication of Los demonios del Edén (The demons of Eden), an exposé of a Mexican child pornography ring in Cancún in 2005, she was tortured, judicially harassed and suffered numerous death threats.

This has not deterred her from continuing to write about the complicity of business men and other powerful people in criminal activities. Her latest book focuses on global sex trafficking. Such are the dangers of investigating this appalling trade in human beings that Cacho was forced undercover. She carried fake ID and dressed as a prostitute in order to infiltrate various nightclubs; on one occasion, she adopted a nun’s habit to enter La Merced, one of Mexico City’s most dangerous neighbourhoods.

Cacho’s research took her to Burma, Cambodia, Japan, Thailand and Turkey as well as Latin America. She concludes that it is the “inequality of cultures, economies and legal systems” that has helped this modern slavery to thrive. Cacho argues that the exploitation of women and children occurs because of their vulnerability – whether because of poverty or their subservient role in a male-dominated society – and because of weak sanctions against their mistreatment. Victims are often “enslaved by the cultural values of violence against women” or conditioned to believe that they have no alternatives.

Importantly, Cacho focuses on the clients who not only fuel demand but also contribute towards the normalisation of sexual slavery. Time and again she is told by men that they like Latin American women because they are “docile” and “obedient.” It is the clients who create the markets, Cacho argues, and men’s increasing willingness to pay for sex with trafficked victims is part of the backlash against women’s liberation. Even more devastating is the burgeoning trade in children and virgins. Cacho sees this as a means for men to exert control emotionally and mentally as well as physically; the younger the victim, the more compliant he or she is likely to be.

Cacho says that those who defend prostitution as “part of a liberal philosophy” ignore “the connection between trafficking and prostitution”, and that those who are enslaved, either through poverty or coercion, are not willing participants.

This courageous book comes with an introduction by Roberto Saviano who wrote a best-selling exposé of the Camorra Mafia in Naples. Both writers have faced terrible consequences for daring to point the finger at powerful men. Cacho has named names and further death threats have caused her to flee Mexico. She’s risked her life in order to report the truth.

Originally published in The Tablet.

 

Sri Lanka – Ethical Tourism Campaign

Last week, the Sri Lanka Campaign for Peace and Justice (of which I am a co-director) launched a campaign aimed at promoting ethical tourism in Sri Lanka. The lobby group has recently uncovered evidence that a range of British tour operators are offering holiday packages that commercially benefit alleged perpetrators of human rights abuses.

The campaign is timely. Wednesday was Responsible Tourism Day at the London World Travel Market 2012 and, astonishingly, Lonely Planet recently listed Sri Lanka as its number one holiday destination in 2013.

A tropical island off the coast of India, Sri Lanka is a popular tourist destination with its stunning beaches, lush forests, tea-growing hills and many sites of historic and cultural interest. It was wracked by a bloody civil war for almost three decades. During the final stages of the conflict in 2009 an estimated 40,000 civilians were killed.

What many tourists do not know is that the new peace in Sri Lanka has come at a high cost to freedom of expression and the human rights of its citizens. The country is now rated the fourth most dangerous place in the world for journalists, higher even than Afghanistan. More than fifteen journalists are believed to have been killed since 2006.

At the end of the war 300,000 civilians were illegally detained in inhumane conditions likened to concentration camps. There were credible reports of coercive interrogation, torture, rape and extra-judicial killings. According to a United Nations panel: “The Government subjected victims and survivors of the conflict to further deprivation… some of those who were separated were summarily executed, and some of the women may have been raped… Some persons in the camps were interrogated and subjected to torture”

In the rush to smooth the way for tourism, the government started to bulldoze various Tamil Tiger landmark sites including cemeteries and the homes of Velupillai Prabhakaran and other LTTE leaders. The Thileepan memorial near the Nallur temple was also defaced apparently with the collusion of the Sri Lankan army. Enflaming local tensions, the authorities have proposed replacing the homes of LTTE leaders with hotels and resorts.

The presence of troops in the north and east, once Tamil dominated regions, has increased, with the military monitoring civilians and controlling many aspects of their lives. Non Sinhala communities are treated with distrust and civilians have to seek permission even to hold gatherings, including traditional religious events, sometimes resulting in the military attending private functions and taking pictures. Many of those released from camps have not been allowed to return home because land remains under military control.

The government has initiated land registration in the north and east, while prohibiting many Tamils from returning to their homes and thus making a legitimate claim. The Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre’s most recent estimate is that around 125,000 civilians are still living in temporary accommodation. They live in tents surrounded by landmines and without access to basic services, food, jobs and money. Meanwhile, the military continue to confiscate private land and designate it part of a High Security Zone (HSZ) in order to build their own houses, farms and facilities – including tourist hotels – with impunity.

Last year, Tourism Concern reported that the government and large tourism developers had forcibly displaced fishermen from the waters around the 14 islands of Kalpitiya, destroying livelihoods, threatening food security, and wreaking havoc on the environment. Some were even forced off their land, and had to go to court to get it back. The fishing community, as well as farmers, small-scale tourism enterprises and traders, claim they were not sufficiently consulted about the Kalpitiya Integrated Tourism Resort Project – Sri Lanka’s largest tourism development to date.

Many tourists never leave their hotel and most Sri Lankans are too frightened to speak about what is going on in the country. So visitors are unaware of a very different world outside the resorts where ordinary people continue to have their basic human rights trampled upon, sometimes involving violence and torture.

To find out more about Sri Lanka and how you can help go to: http://www.srilankacampaign.org/tourismdilemma.htm

Originally published by Huffingtonpost.co.uk

Writing against impunity – Latin America

In Mexico, El Día de Muertos (the Day of the Dead), is celebrated from 31 October – 2 November. Although a mortuary ritual, the fiesta’s light-heartedness is expressed through the sale of sugar skulls, sweet breads and skeletal figurines. A table of ofrendas (offerings) is prepared with various objects, sweets, and drinks that were once enjoyed by the departed. To tempt them to return, their favourite food is lovingly prepared and laid out each night. Aromatic copal is burned, candles are lit, and the vibrant marigold flowers, known as cempasúchil, decorate and brighten their way. Religious images are placed alongside tequila and sugared skulls. A poem or hymn may be composed and left for them. Mexicans do not believe that the departed souls will consume what they have prepared, merely that the aroma will attract their spiritual presence and serve to remind them that they are not forgotten.

Mexico’s cemeteries also take on a carnivaleseque quality at this time. Mexicans visit their relatives’ graves for a nightly vigil, bringing with them food and drink and decorating them with flowers. They may even be accompanied by a mariachi band.

Newspapers join in the fun by printing satirical images of politicians and celebrities, drawn as skeletons, carrying on a tradition begun in the 1890s by Jose Guadalupe Posada. An engraver, based in the old heart of Mexico City, Posada started his career as a political cartoonist before becoming a commercial illustrator, drawing sensational events for broadsheets as well as depicting the daily horrors, murders, and tragedies of city life.

Today, journalists who attempt to investigate or draw attention to corruption in Mexico – whether engineered by state officials or the notorious drug cartels – are more likely to find themselves threatened for their work or even killed.

In 2011, PEN, the international association of writers, marked the Day of the Dead by remembering those journalists and writers who had been murdered in Mexico. Since 2000, over 80 writers, journalists and bloggers have been killed and another 15 have disappeared. Most of these crimes have not been properly investigated and there have only ever been a handful of convictions.

This year alone, nine print journalists and writers have been murdered in Mexico. Drug-trafficking is blamed for many of Mexico’s ills and while it is true that much of the violence against those journalists who attempt to investigate their crimes comes from these quarters, there is also corruption amongst state officials and powerful businessmen who have the money to buy complicity or silence. Another inherent failure of Mexico’s justice system is the apparent inability to punish and prosecute those in positions of power who abuse their office.

This year, PEN International and its centres have extended their campaign against impunity by launching a literary protest aimed at highlighting the escalating violence against journalists, writers and bloggers in Latin America. Self-censorship is a growing trend in Mexico, Honduras and Brazil.

According to PEN, in the first six months of 2012, more reporters were murdered in Latin America than in any other region worldwide. Mexico was the second most dangerous country in the world in which to be a writer or journalist, with Honduras and Brazil coming close behind.

Over 50 writers, journalists, students and PEN members from across Latin America and the Caribbean sent in poetry and prose in support of the campaign and to commemorate their murdered colleagues in the region. James Tennant, PEN International’s Literary Manager, said ‘the huge interest in and support for this campaign, and the fact that writers the calibre of Luisa Valenzuela, Sergio Ramírez, Gioconda Belli and Ariel Dorfman have contributed new texts, only serves to highlight the seriousness of the situation of impunity in today’s Latin America – a region that has become a vast burial ground for writers and journalists’.

You can support the campaign by reading the contributions to Write Against Impunity and spreading the word. PEN is publishing texts on their website every day until the anthology’s official launch on 23 November, the International Day to End Impunity.

Originally published by the Huffingonpost.co.uk  on 6 November 2012

Impunity in Mexico – Lydia Cacho

Mexico is one of the most dangerous countries in the world to work as a journalist – since 2006, 67 journalists have been killed and 14 have disappeared in the country.

Lydia Cacho, an author and women’s rights activist, has faced intimidation, abduction and imprisonment because of her investigative journalism. In 2005, she published Los demonios del Eden: El poder que protege a la pornografía infantil (‘The demons of Eden: the power that protects child pornography’), exposing a Mexican child pornography ring in the popular resort of Cancún. A businessman, José Kamel Nacif Borge, known as the King of Denim, because of his jeans factories in Puebla, accused Cacho of libel. He is cited in the book as having ties with Jean Succar Kuri, the owner of a hotel in Cancún who, at the time, had already been detained and charged with heading the child pornography and prostitution network. Kamel Nacif did not deny that he knew him but denied any involvementand claimed that his reputation had suffered as a result of Cacho’s book.

On 16 December 2005, Cacho was arrested at gunpoint by Puebla state officials. She endured a twenty-hour car journey from her home in Cancún to Puebla, where she was physically threatened. Upon arrival she was charged with defamation and faced up to four years in prison if found guilty.

In February 2006, taped telephone conversations between Kamel Nacif and the governor of Puebal, Mario Marín, were released to the local media. They revealed the extent to which Marín had been involved in Cacho’s arrest and detention. Kamel Nacif offered “two beautiful bottles of cognac” as a token of appreciation for the governor’s part in the arrest of Cacho. Following a year-long battle, during which she suffered repeated death threats, the defamation charges were dismissed. However, her acquittal was only the result of her case being transferred to another state where defamation is no longer considered a criminal offence.

After the tapes came to light, Cacho filed a countersuit for corruption and violation of her human rights. Disappointingly, the court in Cacho’s home state of Quintana Roo ruled that although there was evidence of arbitrary detention and torture it could not accept her case for jurisdictional reasons (it recommended that she take the case to Puebla) and closed the investigation.

In 2010, Cacho published Esclavas del poder, in which she revealed the names of people in Mexico she alleges are involved in the trafficking of women and girls. The English translation, Slavery Inc. The Untold Story of International Sex Trafficking, is published at the beginning of September by Portobello Books.

In June last year, shortly after taking part in an event in Chihuahua, northern Mexico, Cacho received further death threats by phone and email which made direct reference to her journalism. She believes that they were issued in retaliation for her having revealed the names of alleged traffickers.

More worryingly, on 29 July of this year, Cacho received a call on her handheld transceiver, used only for emergencies. An unknown a male voice referred to her by name and said: “We have already warned you, bitch, don’t mess with us. It is clear you didn’t learn with the small trip you were given. What is coming next for you will be in pieces, that is how we will send you home, you idiot.”  Concerned by this breach of her security system, Cacho has since fled Mexico. Article 19 reported that she will remain out of the country while its Protection Programme for Journalists develops a strategy to provide her with adequate protection.

This courageous author will be in conversation with Helen Bamber OBE, who works with victims of trafficking, in London on 29 August

You can also send messages of support c/o: Fundación Lydia Cacho. Email: info@fundacionlydiacacho.org

Originaly published by the Independent online

Pussy Riot sentenced

Pussy Riot members Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Yekaterina Samutsevich and Maria Alyokhina join a long line of courageous women in Russia who, in recent years, have been imprisoned, threatened, intimidated and killed for speaking out against the authorities. Many believe that state repression has worsened under Vladimir Putin with a return to Soviet-era tactics, such as psychiatric detention, to silence dissident voices.

Award-winning journalist Anna Politkovskaya was shot dead on 7 October 2006, her body found slumped in an elevator outside her apartment in Moscow. Her murder had all the hallmarks of a contract killing, down to the kontrolnyi vystrel – the control shot, a final bullet into the head at close range – and there is no doubt that her death was in retribution for her fearless reporting, particularly on human rights abuses in Chechnya.

At the time of her death, she had been working on an article about torture in the region that implicated Ramzan Kadyrov, then the Chechen Prime Minister.

On 5 July 2007, Larisa Arap was forcibly detained in a psychiatric clinic near the Arctic city of Murmansk. It was believed that the move was in retaliation for an article by Arap in which she exposed abusive practices in a local children’s psychiatric ward and noted the use of violence and electric shock treatment. Arap was also a member of one of the few opposition groups left operating in Russia, the United Civil Front, led by chess champion turned dissident Garry Kasparov. Some believe that this association was another reason behind her incarceration. (Kasparov was among several people arrested outside the court in Moscow, where members of Pussy Riot were standing trial.)

According to Arap, the ‘hospital personnel tied her to her bed, beat her, tried to smother her with a pillow, and injected her with undisclosed drugs’. Yelena Vasilyeva, head of the United Civil Front in Murmansk, said that when Arap’s husband and daughter arrived at the clinic, the doctor on duty threw a copy of the newspaper containing the critical article in their faces, yelling at them that “no one has a right to write on what is going on in the hospital”. Following a concerted international campaign, Arap was finally released after forty-six days. Yevgeny Zenin, the hospital’s chief doctor, denied the allegations of abuse and said: “We are representatives of a state medical institution; they are libeling Russia.”

On 15 July 2009 another award-winning human rights activist and freelance journalist, Natalia Estemirova, was brutally murdered. Estemirova worked with Memorial, one of Russia’s best known and oldest human rights group. She was a close friend and colleague of Politkovskaya and they investigated some of the same cases together for the independent Moscow-based paper Novaya Gazeta and other local papers.

On the morning of 15 July, Estemirova was reportedly seized by four unknown men as she left for work and was bundled into the back of a white car. Neighbours at her house in Grozny, Chechnya’s capital, heard her shout: “I’m being kidnapped.” Later her body was found dumped on the main road of a village in Chechnya’s neighbouring republic, Ingushetia. She had been shot in the head and the chest. At the time of her death, Estemirova was documenting the rise in kidnappings and extrajudicial executions in Chechnya.

Last week, three members of Pussy Riot were sentenced to two years in a labour camp. But their provocative act of resistance and subsequent trial has drawn global attention to the level of repression in Russia today and the Russian Orthodox Church’s close ties to the Kremlin. Their plight has not been restricted to human rights lobby groups advocating for their release, but has evidently struck a chord with thousands of ordinary people around the world.

Their action did not cause physical damage to any person, building or property and would normally have resulted in a lesser punishment, caution or financial penalty. Many are now sending appeals to President Putin via the Kremlin website calling for the release of the three women whose harsh sentence is clearly in retaliation for their lyrics, containing language that is strongly critical of the Church and of President Putin. As such, it is in breach of Article 19 of the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights, to which Russia is a signatory. Messages of solidarity can be sent via the FreePussyRiot website.

Originally published by the Independent online

Free expression in Burma

Zargana in Rex Bloomstein’s documentary, This Prison Where I Live

This week members of the Free Zargana Campaign meet the Burmese comedian and performance poet at the Free Word Centre in London.  The consortium of human rights and freedom of expression advocates, including PEN, Index on Censorship and Article 19, had campaigned for the Zargana’s release since 2008 when he was imprisoned on a series of trumped-up charges following his outspoken criticism of the government’s response to Cyclone Nargis.

Zargana has been relentlessly persecuted by Burma’s ruling generals. He was first arrested in October 1988 and held for six months after making fun of the government. Two years later he was detained again after impersonating General Saw Maung, former head of the military government, in front of a crowd of thousands at a Teacher’s Training College in Rangoon. This time he was sentenced to five years in prison. Held in solitary confinement in a tiny cell, Zargana began to write poetry. Forbidden to read and write in prison, he was forced to scratch his poems on the floor of his cell using a piece of pottery before committing them to memory.  Following his release in March 1994, Zargana was banned from performing in public, but continued to make tapes and videos which were strictly censored by the authorities.

In 1996, after speaking out against censorship to a foreign journalist, he was banned from performing his work altogether, and denied the freedom to write and publish. Undeterred, Zargana continued to spread his jokes and poetry by word of mouth, until his re-arrest on 25 September 2007 for his support of the monks demonstrating in Rangoon. This time, Zargana’s notoriety and a mass of international appeals helped to secure his release a month later.

In May 2008, Cyclone Nargis, caused tens of thousands of deaths and left hundreds of thousands more homeless in the Irrawaddy Delta. The regime was slow to react and refused offers of help from certain quarters, apparently indulging paranoid fears that the West might somehow engender a revolt whilst administering aid.

After Zargana led a private effort to deliver aid to cyclone victims, police raided his home in Yangon on 4 June 2008 and he was arrested once again.  Initially no reason was given for his detention but it was widely believed that he was held as a punishment for ridiculing state media reports in the cyclone’s aftermath and his criticism of the regime’s response to the disaster. It wasn’t until 14 August 2008 that Zargana was charged with ‘defiling a place of worship with intent to insult the religion’. During the hearing, the prosecutor submitted photographs of Zargana which, it was claimed, demonstrated his disaffection towards the state and government. The prosecution also submitted transcripts of interviews he had given to the BBC and Voice of America. In November the same year and he was sentenced to forty-five years in prison.

Zargana was the subject of Rex Bloomstein’s documentary, This Prison Where I Live, which helped to raise his profile abroad. On 12 October last year, the Burmese government finally released Zargana, together with approximately 120 other political prisoners. His first visit to Britain follows Aung San Suu Kyi’s first trip abroad in twenty-four years.

Despite these hopeful signs that the new civilian government are receptive to change, hundreds of political prisoners remain in prison in Burma. Lobby groups, like Human Rights Watch, point out that the government continues to persecute the various ethnic and religious minorities in Kachin and other states – human rights abuses include rape, torture, forced labour and the destruction of villages and homes. Suu Kyi has also advised caution against what she called “reckless optimism” in Burma’s reform process, claiming that the military is still a force “to be reckoned with.” Only by continuing to press for widespread reforms, including the release of political prisoners and an independent judiciary, can the international community support Burma on the road to democracy.

Originally published by the Independent arts blog 5 June 2012

Eurovision: Azerbaijan and human rights

Tonight, Azerbaijan’s capital city, Baku, will host the Eurovision Song Contest. Few of the international contestants are probably aware of Azerbaijan’s appalling human rights record, particularly in regard to free expression.

President Ilham Aliyev succeeded his father, Heydar, a former Soviet Communist, in 2003 and has sustained his father’s hardline approach. There is growing alarm amongst human rights organisations at the prosecutions and violent harassment of members of the media in Azerbaijan, attacks on other dissenting voices and the authorities’ brutal response to peaceful protests. Although violations of freedom of expression are nothing new in the South Caucasus state, attacks and imprisonment of journalists, bloggers and human rights activists have risen sharply in the last two years. They face continuous harassment and interference from the authorities and many dissidents find themselves imprisoned or otherwise targeted for speaking out.

A coalition of lobby groups, coordinated by Article 19, has joined forces to campaign for free expression in Azerbaijan in the run up to Eurovision. Known as the International Partnership Group for Azerbaijan (IPGA), they have released a report, RUNNING SCARED Azerbaijan’s Silenced Voices and launched a petition addressed to the international contestants.  

According to IPGA, on 26 March 2011, Seymour Khaziyev, a journalist with the opposition newspaper Azadliq, was abducted by six masked men as he was returning to his home on the outskirts of Baku. Taken in a minibus to an unknown location with a sack over his head, he was then tortured for two hours. The two telephones he was carrying were confiscated and the contents of his laptop were examined. He was warned against writing articles critical of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev. One of his attackers asked him to be as “intelligent and quiet as the others”. He was finally released, with his hands still tied, a few miles from where he was captured.

Musicians are also subject to attack. Human Rights Watch reported that on 17 March 2012, two young musicians were detained during a protest in Baku. Members of the popular band Bulistan, they were playing at a peaceful demonstration. Unidentified men attacked the performers causing a brawl. Uniformed police quickly detained the band’s lead singer Jamal Ali and bassist Natig Kamilov.

Ali and Kamilov allege that they were badly beaten by police during their detention. Bulistan is known for its political protest songs and had previously participated in opposition demonstrations. They were later sentenced in closed trials to administrative detention on charges of petty hooliganism.

More recently, on 18 April 2012, Idrak Abbasov, a reporter for newspaper Zerkalo and the Institute for Reporters Freedom and Safety (IRFS) was among several journalists attacked by security guards working for the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan Republic in the Binagady district of Baku. They were reporting on and filming the demolition of houses by the company.  The guards seized Abbasov’s camera and repeatedly kicked him. The journalist was left with severe trauma to his right eye and concussion. He was unconscious for several hours after the incident and had to be hospitalised.

IPGA is calling on the organiser of the Eurovision Song Contest, the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), to hold the authorities accountable for their actions. Its petition urges the singers attending the contest to show support for the protection of human rights and civil liberties in Azerbaijan. Index on Censorship has also launched an online petition urging President Aliyev to protect Azerbaijani citizens’ right to free speech.

Originally published in the Independent

Free expression – Pussy Riot

Vladimir Putin recently claimed that democracy is the fundamental right of the people to elect their government as well as to continuously influence it and the decision-making process. Yet the recent detention of three members of an all-female punk band for a protest performance suggests that state censorship and violations against free expression remain as strong as ever in Russia.

An authoritarian regime inevitably forces dissidents to create new, often artistic, forms of resistance. In late 2011 a group of Russian feminists formed a punk rock band, Pussy Riot, in order to protest against Vladimir Putin’s decision to return as president. They staged unannounced “flash” performances in outdoor spaces and on public transport. Their imaginative interventions gained wider attention in January 2012, when they held a brief performance outside the Kremlin. Their lyrics included the lines “Revolt in Russia – the charisma of protest! Revolt in Russia, Putin’s got scared!” They were arrested and fined.

On 21 February 2012, four members of the band entered the Christ the Saviour Cathedral in Moscow, wearing colourful outfits and balaclavas to hide their faces. They danced in front of the altar, singing a “punk prayer” before being escorted from the building. The song was critical of Putin and the Russian Orthodox church’s close ties to the Kremlin. The action lasted only a few minutes, there was no violence and the activists caused no damage.

Three members of the band, Maria Alyokhina, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Ekaterina Samusevich were later arrested and charged with “hooliganism” under Article 213 of the Russian Criminal Code. If convicted, they face up to seven years in prison. The women claim that they were not among the masked performers at the Cathedral. Both Alyokhina and Tolonnikova have young children and Tolonnikova claims that her four-year-old-daughter is traumatised by her imprisonment.

On 19 April, the Tagansky Court in Moscow extended their pre-trial detention to 24 June arguing that further time is needed to find witnesses and participants at the event. More than 100 demonstrators and journalists gathered outside the court, some of whom were detained. Police reportedly arrested anyone with signs or slogans related to the group. The women have also received support from mainstream pop artists calling for their release, among them Russian popstar, Alla Pugachyova, who described the arrests as “shooting sparrows with a cannon”.

Lobby groups such as Amnesty International, Freemuse and PEN have denounced the charges, believing the women have been targeted for the peaceful expression of their political beliefs. Amnesty has declared them “prisoners of conscience”.

Many are now sending appeals to President Putin via the Kremlin website calling for the release of the three women who are detained for their protest songs as this in direct violation of their right to freedom of expression as guaranteed by Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, ratified by Russia.

Originally pulished in the Independent

Book Review – The Lady and the Peacock: The Life of Aung San Suu Kyi

In Freedom from Fear, first published in 1990, Aung San Suu Kyi wrote: “It is not power that corrupts but fear… in any society where fear is rife, corruption in all forms becomes deeply entrenched.” Sadly, Burma’s military junta retains its grip on power through fraudulent means and intimidation.

In his accessible and impeccably researched biography of the Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Peter Popham gives a clear-sighted appraisal of how the regime’s brutal methods have produced this crippling state of fear. Key events include the 1988 violent crackdown on student-led protests and the equally bloody suppression of the monks’ 2007 “Saffron Revolution”.

Suu Kyi’s party, the National League for Democracy, won a landslide victory in the 1990 election but the military refused to recognise their right to rule, and responded by imprisoning party members and supporters. Suu Kyi was herself under house arrest at the time. During this unimaginably painful period of isolation, she fell back on her Buddhist faith and meditation. But there were also physical consequences – she had to sell her furniture to pay for food, becoming so weak from malnutrition that her hair started to fall out, and she developed spondylosis.

Her father, Aung San, the independence hero of Burma, was assassinated in 1947 when she was two years old. Suu Kyi has remained steadfastly loyal to his memory. Before she married the Oxford academic Michael Aris, Suu Kyi sent him a letter in which she famously wrote: “I only ask one thing, that should my people need me, you would help me to do my duty by them.”

Popham tackles early on the controversy surrounding Suu Kyi’s decision to sacrifice her husband and family for her political commitment to a nation. “Suu was acutely aware of the suffering of her people long before she returned to live there: of the poverty forced on the inhabitants of this naturally rich land by the idiocy of its rulers, on the stunting of bodies and minds by criminal economic and social policies.”

He suggests that her decision to remain in Burma and forfeit a comfortable life with her husband and children was moral, rather than political. Choosing to stay earned Suu Kyi “an unwavering place in the hearts of tens of millions of Burmese”. This came at a terrible cost. In 1999 she was unable to bid farewell to Aris, who was dying of prostate cancer. The regime callously refused to grant him a visa and Suu Kyi knew that, if she left Burma, she would be unable to protect her colleagues and would never be allowed to return.

As well as exploring her formative years, from her childhood in Rangoon, schooling in Delhi and her time in Oxford as a student and later housewife, Popham offers a coherent analysis of Burma’s history. He highlights Suu Kyi’s many qualities but is never overawed. He suggests that the NLD failed to capitalise on their victory and that some decisions were ill-advised – the vehemence with which she condemned General Ne Win led to her detention.

Throughout, he underlines Suu Kyi’s moral authority and suggests that her non-violent approach has not only influenced Burmese society but has also helped to shape non-violent resistance globally. Suu Kyi is now free but her release was timed to deflect attention from the sham elections in November 2010. Popham’s stance is admirably compassionate. This is a poignant account of Suu Kyi’s life and her efforts to establish democracy in Burma. It also serves as a powerful indictment of the corruption and fear that has paralysed a once-prosperous nation.

Originally published in the Independent on Friday 18 November