Sri Lanka's Killing Fields highlighted tragic human suffering
Last night, Channel 4 aired its eagerly anticipated follow-up documentary to 2011’s Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields. It focused on four cases of war crimes committed during the final stages of the conflict in 2009 between Sri Lankan Government forces and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The evidence it drew upon varied from video footage shot by soldiers and combatants, to Wikileaks cables and witness accounts. It served to build a strong case for international scrutiny of Government and LTTE actions, and particularly demonstrated the potential impact of investigative journalism. Jon Snow, who presented both ‘Killing Fields’ films, has said, “Once or twice in a reporting lifetime, a journalist is allowed by events to participate in a project that can affect history“. The original documentary won a RTS television journalism award for its forensic investigation into the conflict, and drawing international attention to the suffering.
The original documentary was screened to UN diplomats, the UK Parliament and other high-profile officials, where the evidence was used in a UN report on the lack of accountability for the apparent war crimes committed. However, it also came up against fierce criticism from the Government of Sri Lanka, who denied the credibility of the video evidence. This was countered, as a UN forensics expert concluded the evidence used was credible.
Civilians were trapped in the 'no fire' zone, with inadequate supplies the follow-up documentary reveals
Journalism and reporting are essential to highlight any abuses in Sri Lanka, and fortunately, the anonymity of the internet is helping to give those who wish to speak out a voice. The Sri Lanka Campaign for Peace and Justice is running a series of personal stories entitled: What happened in Mullaittivu? The series gives a voice to people who were trapped in the ‘no fire’ zone during the final stages of the conflict, where it is believed that tens of thousands of people died. It has been compiled by The Social Architects (TSA), a group of writers, intellectuals and working professionals from Sri Lanka who wish to educate, inform and to provide thoughtful analysis on a range of topics. Although writing under pseudonyms, they are helping to bring the stories of those who suffered the most in the conflict to the forefront.
It is believed that many civilians lost their lives in the tiny town of Mullaitivu - the thin blue line across the lagoon
Both ‘Killing Fields’ documentaries have sparked intense debate from all sides. The Twitter hashtag #killingfields trended in the UK as it aired late last night, which saw a heated exchange between Sri Lankan rapper M.I.A. and CNN journalist, Anderson Cooper. With a UN resolution scheduled on Sri Lanka in the final days of the UN Human Rights Council next week, Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields is well-placed for the international community to call for an independent investigation into war crimes committed. Organisation such as Human Rights Watch have begun to put pressure on the Council and its member to use the opportunity to take action. The documentary will hopefully help to remind the Council that forgetting is not an option.
What do you think of the Kony 2012 video? In the second of Article 27′s new series of Comment pieces, Campaigner Lucy Greenwood digs deeper into the online phenomon.
Yesterday afternoon, the mysterious words ‘Kony 2012’ suddenly appeared everywhere, in my Facebook newsfeed, things about invisible children in my Twitter feed. What is this? Has there been another Republican candidate announced for the US 2012 election, one that is being enthusiastically championed by P Diddy, Oprah AND Justin Bieber? It was also mentioned by my Dad who had heard Kony discussed on Radio 4, and later my friends were talking about Kony in the pub. I received an invitation to join an event in Bristol in the name of setting a precedent for international justice, evoking images of attractively dressed hipsters, conspicuously wanting to appear inconspicuous, like ‘Invisible Children’, even. “Join us to poster up Bristol on the 20th of April, when we cover the night. We will blanket every street until the sun comes up. We will be smart, and we will be thorough.” Wow I thought, this is big. And then I watched the long 30 minute video; the end could not come soon enough.
At the start of the video, you are told that the next 27 minutes is an experiment where you have to pay attention for it to work. This request of 27 minutes of my time I thought was a bad start. It quickly went from bad to feeling like an emotional assault on the senses. Babies were being born, images of dead children, images of Hitler, images of stern teenagers dressed in American Apparel, images of the nauseatingly smug Jason Russell and his child who is about to tell it like it is, all to the sound of, erm, Mumford and Sons.
Jason announces evangelically that he is here to do a job because of “the course of his life.” That job is to stop Joseph Kony, because he made a promise to his friend Jacob Acaye, a young African man who tragically lost his brother to the LRA. Jason Russell then wheels out his 4 year old son and explains that Joseph Kony is a “bad guy” who kidnaps children and forces them to “do bad things.” The child nods sagely and says “it is sad”. He then tells us that 300,000 children have been taken to be in Kony’s army that forces the boys to be soldiers that kill their parents and the girls to be sex slaves.
This must be stopped, is the message, and the only way to solve the problem is by finding and stopping Kony. This will be done by making him famous, as famous as George Clooney. Thirty ‘culture makers’ including Bono, Angelina Jolie and twelve policy makers are identified as targets by the campaign. Finally, an unknown American teenager is telling us all to “go out there and rock it” while dubstep plays in the background. By this point, I really wished I had watched it while playing the KONY 2012 drinking game.
The video was created by the charity Invisible Children and since yesterday, so much has been written about Kony 2012, with not all of it being very sensible. Invisible Children’s Kony video has become a perfect example of internet mass hysteria, and it is important to call it that because in the short life of the internet, we are still discovering what the consequences are when things go viral. In an attempt to gain some perspective, here are some of the more useful things I’ve read on the internet about the Kony 2012 campaign that lets us look at the issue in its full picture:
2) Invisible Children has been described as ‘misleading,’ ‘naive,’ and ‘dangerous’ and “manipulating facts for strategic purposes.” Additionally, Invisible Children has a low two-star rating in accountability from Charity Navigator because they won’t let their finances be independently audited. The Daily What: KONY 2012
3) “Stopping Kony won’t change any of these things, and if more hardware and money flow to Museveni’s military, Invisible Children’s campaign may even worsen some problems.” Michael Wilkerson on ForeignPolicy.com
4) This damningly vitriolic and powerfully written post on Reddit Politics argues that actually, the current President of Uganda, Museveni, has killed just as many – if not more people in Uganda than Kony and his army, and relates the feeling in Uganda that Invisible Children are working with the Ugandan Government. The post by Amber Ha goes on to assert that Invisible Children are doing more harm than good with their campaign video, described as ‘propaganda’, by bringing the LRA back into Uganda and violence along with it.
There are many NGOs, and most are very small and rely on modest donations in order to operate. Social networking has been a well deserved gift to the not-for-profit sector because it is a practically free means of galvanising support for campaigns. Suddenly, you can create your own media instead of depending on the fickle whims of established journalism. The internet is instant, people can see support for campaigns growing and it can create positive feelings of solidarity in the online community, that has come to exist over the last few years.
With this in mind, there are many effective online campaigning groups that think very carefully about being responsible for providing correct and accurate information about their campaigns. They take seriously their responsibility to tell the whole, accurate picture: I believe that Kony 2012 has failed with that task. Instead when watching the video, we lose track of the story and we are overwhelmed with sensationalism and guilt. After watching the video, it is disappointing to learn (from other more reliable sources than celebrities’ twitter feeds) many of the facts of the video are misleading or inaccurate. What is also disappointing is that Jacob’s harrowing testimony seems to only be briefly touched upon, which is a shame as it is his emotive story that is one of the few parts within the video that is truly powerful.
Whether the style of the video awoke an activist passion you didn’t know you had, or turned your stomach, it cannot be denied that it did really well to engage people who perhaps hadn’t previously expressed an interest in human rights. But is all that’s needed to solve the problem of the LRA is for enough of the Western world to ‘know’ and ‘care’ about Kony? And how effective can the campaign be if we can’t see through the internet hype? The answer will be on the morning of the 21st April, when we see if after the world goes to bed on Friday night, we “wake up to hundreds of posters, demanding justice on every corner”.
Invisible Children were part of a collaborative effort to implement the LRA Crisis Tracker, which we’ve written about before here.
On 4th March in Russia, Vladimir Putin was confirmed to continue in his position as President, having been Prime Minister since 2008. A mass protest movement has developed following disputed legislative election results at the beginning of December last year, where there were reports of election fraud. The protesters are calling for a more open, democratic politics, and are objecting to Putin’s expected return to rule.
Creativity is commonly seen in Russian protests. Often prevented from carrying out the more familiar marches, campaigners are forced to come up with other methods to challenge the rules. In January, police in Barnaul in Siberia called for the investigation of the legality of a protest in which a large number of small dolls were arranged to represent a protest. This was considered by police to be an “unsanctioned public event”. Activists set up the mock protest following repeated rejections by the authorities to allow them to hold a sanctioned demonstration. The dolls held signs reading: “I’m for clean elections” and “A thief should sit in jail, not in the Kremlin”. The authorities’ response to this small demonstration shows the absurdity of the lengths that are gone to to prevent the expression of opinion.
This protest is one of many. In Moscow, the all-girl punk band Pussy Riot has become a common occurrence in opposition stunts. Based on the Riot Grrrl movement that began in America in the early 90s, they are singing out against Putin’s decision to return to the presidency. Concealing their identities with balaclavas and carrying out flash gigs, they are part of an increasingly vocal young generation in Russia, using imaginative forms of protest against political corruption and the state’s monopoly of the media. The Blue Buckets are yet another group, running over official cars while wearing buckets on their heads to protest officials’ flouting of traffic rules (the blue bucket representing the blue cone used by “VIPs” on their cars); whilst the art collective Voina painted a 65-metre phallus on a drawbridge that, when erected, faced the Federal Security Service headquarters in St Petersburg. Its members have been repeatedly detained but have received much support from artists and protesters around the world, including Banksy.
Artistic methods have long been used to attract attention to human rights issues in Russia, such as gay rights – limited by law they are forced to use creativity. Based on Banksy’s Two Policemen Kissing, An Epoch of Clemency (2004) by the Blue Noses depicts two Russian policemen kissing in Siberian forest. It was banned from travelling to a Russian art exhibition in Paris by Culture Minister, Alexander Sokolov, in 2007 as it was thought to bring shame on country.
In the aftermath of the countless human rights abuses of the Soviet Union, Russia today is still struggling to find its human rights feet. But nevertheless, these examples show us that the fight is growing, adapting, and becoming more creative: this is one movement that won’t silenced by Putin.
“A pamphlet, no matter how good, is never read more than once. But a song is learned by heart and repeated over and over.” - Joe Hill, an American songwriter
“Irhal, Irhal” became the soundtrack to protests in Tahrir Square just over a year ago. The crowd’s message to President Mubarak was explicit, “Leave, leave”. The incendiary chants had been penned by Ramy Essam, aka ‘the singer of the Egyptian revolution’. Musicians have emerged from across the Middle East and North Africa during the recent uprisings, creating a humming strand of revolt. Spread effortlessly via the internet, revolutionary songs have united dissidents within the region and internationally, and further amplified cries for democracy, human rights and an end to repressive regimes.
Ramy Essam singing in Cairo. He stayed in Tahrir Square’s tent village for the entire revolution, playing songs he’d composed from popular protest chants on impromptu stages
Revolutionary sounds
The Arabic music scene is a patchwork of genres and dialects, and traditional folk through to hip-hop and rap has played a role in the Arab awakenings. Arabic hip-hop in particular has appealed to Arab youth and attracted international attention. The genre’s greatest strength has been it’s uncommodified and underground nature, resulting in an accurate depiction of the realities faced. The mainstream Arab entertainment industry is intimately connected to Arab state politics, leaving revolutionary music unsigned and unfiltered. ‘Revolutionary Arabic Rap’, is an insightful blog written by Ulysses, who likens the stark realities portrayed in Arabic rap to how HBO’s ‘The Wire’ offers an unabashed picture of how the world really works.
Hip-hop is a fundamentally subversive genre, explains Ulysses. However, over the past 15 years the music industry has neutralised most of mainstream American hip-hop’s political radicalism. In contrast, underground Arabic rappers fiercely battle the status quo and shame elites for the inequality and lack of human rights in their countries. El Général raps against corruption in Tunisia, “But the people’s money fills their fat bellies./ They rob and plunder and refuse to leave power”. Reacting to the situation in Morocco, rapper El Haked (The Indignant) spits, “We have no choice but to fight for our rights./ Silence won’t benefit us. I am the child of the people and I’m not scared!”.
Digital advantage
Music has long been heard during civil unrest and protest, such as the Civil Rights and anti-Vietnam War movements. Revolutionary Arabic songs have had a distinct digital advantage, enabling musical memes to spread rapidly. Recruiting social media, modern technology and online tools, amateur singers have been able to record and upload their lyrical indignation, demonstrating a ‘do-it-yourself’ attitude. The internet has acted as the primary means of music distribution, and almost any revolutionary Arabic song can be legally downloaded for free.
Tellingly, in 2008 when fewer than 30,000 Tunisians were Facebook users, massive protests in the Tunisian town of Redeyef failed to spread. In January 2011, 1.97 million Tunisians had Facebook accounts. Increased internet access and the accompanying established online social networks has meant that testimonies could be shared effortlessly, across borders, and with no government filter.
Youtube, Skype, Facebook and ReverbNation have been used as music sharing platforms, as well as newer and specifically developed apps such as ‘Mideast Tunes: Music for Social Change’. This Bahraini-founded site gathers the work of underground artists, whose music can now be distributed online. “Music is incredibly personal and emotional”, says ‘Mideast Tunes’. “Everyone can relate to it. For that reason it is very influential when a musician uses it as a way to express a powerful or controversial message or a personal experience. It’s a medium which a lot of people are responsive to”.
The dangers of singing out
Repeatedly Arab elites have responded to revolutionary music by violently targeting defiant singers. However, attempts to mute musicians often led to their message of resistance being further amplified. Ibrahim Qashoush was a young Syrian folk singer, who sang at night-time protests in the traditional ‘arada style that encourages the audience to chant back refrains to the lead singer’s lyrics. In July 2011, he was silenced by security forces who brutally killed him and left his body floating in a river with his vocal chords cut out. Ibrahim’s death ignited widespread anger and further impassioned pro-democracy activists. Infuriatingly for the Assad regime, the song that Ibrahim had sung to crowds in Hama, ‘Yalla Irhal Ya Bashar (Go On, Leave, Bashar)’, became the most popular protest song in Syria.
Singer Ramy Essam after being beaten with an electric rod by the Egyptian army.
The dangers of singing out were widespread. Libya’s leading rapper, Ibn Thabit, remained anonymous over the past four years to protect himself and his family. His lyrical obsession with toppling Gaddafi meant that he faced certain arrest and torture, a fate he consistently dodged by moving between Libya and living abroad. Other musicians weren’t as fortunate. In March 2011, Egyptian folk singer Ramy Essam was arrested and severely beaten with an electronic rod by the army. Rapper El-Haked who challenged the power of the Moroccan monarchy, was unlawfully detained on fabricated charges in September last year, and only recently released. In ‘No More Silence!’ he raps, “We have no choice but to fight for our rights./ Silence won’t benefit us. I am the child of the people and I’m not scared!”. While the targeting that they received was similar to many other dissidents, the modest fame of the singers caused their maltreatment to attract fervent public outrage and greater support for the uprisings.
Social and political reverberations
Tunisia may be the only country where music played a pivotal role in the course of a revolution. At the end of 2010 El Général released a rapped tirade against Ben Ali “Mr. President, your people are dead/ So many people are eating from the garbage/There, you see what’s happening in the country!”. Released at the end of 2010, the song quickly went viral as music journalist Andy Morgan writes, “within hours the song had lit up the bleak and fearful horizon like an incendiary bomb.” In early January 2011, plain clothed policemen came to his house and arrested the 21 year-old rapper. His three day detention attracted nationwide indignation and more international attention than any other prior event in the Tunisian uprising. El Général’s ‘Rais lebled’ (Head of State), and the impassioned sentiment it contains, has since been echoed by crowds in Egypt to Bahrain.
Tunisian rapper El Général, whose arrest in January 2011 attracted more international attention to the pro-democracy protests than any other prior event.
Incendiary songs of resistance from the Middle East and North Africa have had a piercing social impact, moreover than playing a political role. Music did not by itself overthrow any governments – it’s power lay in eroding long held fear and silence amongst embittered citizens. Revolutionary music continues to pour from the region as singers express how reform should progress in their countries. Libya’s MC Swat in ‘Freedom of Speech’ concludes, “no more fear, no more limits, no more walls. There’s nothing called silence anymore”.
Mohamed ElDeeb: Egyptian rapper and poet Mohamed El Deeb is in the vanguard of resuscitating rap as a viable means of expression, working to channel the political and cultural power of the hip-hop generation into mainstream socio-political activities.
The Narcicyst: The Narcicyst (or Narcy) is an Iraqi journalist and Hip Hop MC. His work focuses on the experiences of Arabs in North America. He uses hip-hop as a way to explore a range of issues, including race, colonialism, ghettos, religion, the history of art and personal identity.
Ibn Thabit: Although Ibn Thabit is largely unknown by the Western media, he’s almost universally known among the Libyan diaspora. Since 2008, he has wage an underground rap struggle to overthrow Muammar al-Gaddafi; and when Gaddafi finally fell, Ibn Thabit abruptly announced his retirement.
Blurb:
In the midst of the millions of Arab voices calling for change are the poignant melodies of a group of increasingly vocal young Arab rappers. Their music appeals to the sense of dignity and hope the Arab Spring inspired, but they also continue to demand further change.
This event will explore the questions: What ways did rap inspire the revolutionaries and how are the revolutions inspiring Arab rappers? With no real Arabic hip hop industry to speak of, how do we account for the genre’s popularity and influence? Has Arab rap transcended its regional boundaries and mad a global impact?
As we enter the awards season, with the arts celebrating success over the past twelve months, the Oscars will be honouring a variety of films which detail the lives of those less often seen, but no less inspiring. Hollywood has nominated Saving Face for Best Documentary Short.
Saving Face follows the work of Mohammed Jawad, a British-based plastic surgeon who travels to his homeland Pakistan, in order to carry out life changing treatment on acid burns victims. Often in cases of domestic conflict or rejected marriage proposals, young womens lives are ruined with brief acts of violence, which have devastating long term effects. However, the violence is not only limited to women, as men and children can also be targeted, according to the Acid Survivors Foundation.
After helping Katie Piper reconstruct her face in England, Jawad learned about similar acid burns victims in Pakistan, a problem Jawed admits he was unfamiliar with four years ago. He now regularly returns to Pakistan and holds free practices, funded by charities. The documentary also follows Zakia’s fight against her husband attack. Zakia’s burns were so great she lost her left eye. Jawad’s intervention means she can increase her previously limited mobility. The film also sees Pakistan introduce legislation increasing the criminal convition of acid burning. The minimum sentence for acid throwers is now 14 years, and fines up to one million rupees. For the practice of plastic surgery, Jawad hopes that it will also help to restore faith in the field, which has seen recent criticism in the form of the PIP scandal.
Saving Face will premier at the 2012 Human Rights Watch Film Festival, which Article 27 will also be attending and reporting on.
Introducing our new series of Comment pieces that will explore human rights issues. Daniel Marshall is editor of The Gay Stage and has written our first Comment piece about LGBTQ theatre, with a particular focus on the UK.
Politically challenging gay theatre may just be one of the greatest areas of achievement for the Western gay community, foregrounding the untold stories of homophobia and gay relationships to diverse audiences. Take a look around the London theatre scene of the 1970′s through to the 1990′s and you’ll witness a vast array of popular gay plays, the high standard of which was recognized by heterosexual audiences alike, with playwrights including Jackie Kay, Patrick Wilde and Noel Greig. As life for gay men and women in Britain became more equal, we can see that gay practitioners had understood the potential for theatre to be used as a means for social change. With this in mind, why has political gay theatre become a thing of the past? Is the gay community still political? And will we see a revival of progressive LGBTQ theatre in years to come?
Let’s begin by understanding the value of producing theatre for, by and about a globally persecuted community. In approximately 70 countries of the world consensual homosexual intercouse (never mind relationships) remains illegal, says International Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association (ILGA), and is punishable by death in 7 countries. To this extent we can appreciate that the ability to platform gay theatre in the UK is an opportunity – earned by those who fought courageously for our rights in the face of stigmatization and violence – that is nothing short of a privilege.
Since the turn of the millennium, gay theatre has received a number of blows, ranging from poor financial backing to low rates of contributions by theatre makers, and a quick google search of current shows playing in London will reveal that the genre is now extremely limited. The reasons behind such a drop in interest are unclear and varied; whilst some suggest that the gay community have become de-politicized since enjoying greater freedoms, others owe the blame to the reduction of theatre venues that exclusively show gay-themed plays. However, theatres have hit back at criticisms from rights activists, suggesting that London’s gay community no longer need an exclusive platform due to fewer cases of employment and funding discrimination. With a frankly pathetic count of gay work available, and recurrent headlines about gay hate crime and LGBT teen suicides, reality would suggest the need for gay voices in theatre are as essential as ever.
For decades theatre has been used by the gay community as a tool for connecting with straight audiences to increase tolerance and understanding, and has also provided a strong support network for LGBT practitioners in the creative industry. As Matt Ian Kelly, a current gay playwright notes in my recent interview, his early involved in gay theatre “shaped how I understand my own sexuality today and where I stand on gay rights”. Perhaps a decline in interest could be linked to the gay community’s great successes of the ‘noughties’, such as lowering the age of consent for same sex intercourse and the introduction of gay civil partnerships – perhaps we even felt we no longer needed to fight as hard since we were witnessing reduced opposition.
With a debate on legalizing same sex marriage due to take place in Westminster next year, however, it is more important than ever for gay practitioners and companies to create work to encourage social change. The theatre makers I have personally spoken to whilst developing The Gay Stage have shown immense support for a revival of political gay theatre, calling for for more discussion and more representation from within the community. For any LGBTQ readers with a creative streak, consider this a call to arms. As it stands, there is a clear gap in the theatrical market. All that gay practitioners can be sure of is that there are members of our own community suffering around the world and that inequality in Britain is still enforced by linguistics and marriage laws. Reason enough, surely, to assume that gay theatre remains a critical means of staging discrimination and injustice to spread acceptance and social equality.
Visit The Gay Stage website and find them on Twitter @TheGayStage
Photo of Tahir Square on the one year anniversary of the#Jan25 revolution in Egypt.
2012 has started, and along with it there have been numerous projects and events that have caught the eye of Article 27. We decided to compile a few of our favourite finds that shed light on human rights and share them with you below.
Arts
> How do you raise awareness of sex trafficking? Opera may not be your first thought, but a new Opera production sets out to shed light on the issue of sex trafficking.Anya17 is a new production that will interweave the stories of young women and girls who have been trafficked into the European Union. To make this difficult subject accessible to a new audience through an art form that is not typically associated with human rights could pave the way for further unique projects. To read more about the project, have a look at the official Anya17 website here.
> Earlier this month, the Lebanese Non-Profit Organisation Insan Association held a fashion event titled “Celebrating Colours” in order to highlight the challenges facing the estimated 200,000 migrant domestic workers in Lebanon. It featured creations by up and coming Lebanese designers, modeled by women from backgrounds representing Lebanese and immigrant communities in Beirut. The participants wore masquerade masks in the opening walk to represent other immigrant and migrant domestic workers who do not have the same level of independence that they do. “Migrant workers are not treated as human beings here. I wanted to raise awareness that beauty comes in all shapes and sizes” said a supporter Julie Davidson.
> Yahoo! hosted “Change Your World! Cairo” 2012 Summit on the 18th of January as part of their Business & Human Rights Program. The Summit hoped to shed a spotlight on women across the Middle East and North Africa who are using social and digital media platforms, technology and the internet, to shape and change the world in a positive way. The Business & Human Rights Program at Yahoo! was launched in 2008 to encourage the integration of human rights decision-making into their business operation. You can have a look at the Business & Human Rights program here and read more about the 2012 Summit.
> In the world of web, the Stop Online Privacy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA) caused a controversial stir, with Google, Wikipedia, Reddit and numerous other high profile websites protesting against the two acts which they believed would censor the internet, stifle innovation and hit web businesses hard as opposed to protecting content or solving the problem of piracy. The popular websites went offline for 24 hours in protest with their homepage being replaced by creative that shed more light on the dangers of the acts.
Movements
> In world news, Occupy Nigeria (#OccupyNigeria) hit 2012 off with a bang. On the 2nd of January, an outburst of protests sparked across Nigeria in response to the fuel subsidy removal inforced by President Goodluck Jonathan. But the movement was also described by protesters as being against the corruption that is rife in Nigerian politics.
Afrobeat musician Femi Kuti, son of the legendary musician and human rights activist Fela Kuti, spurred on the Occupy Nigeria crowds when he spoke and performed at a protest concert in Lagos. Femi Kuti has spoken of the importance of music in uniting people before, and in Nigeria, Afrobeat music is though to be the music of the revolution. ”Revolution has come to Nigeria and the youth will spearhead it. Until our demands are met, we are ready to protest everyday and make sacrifices.” Watch Femi Kuti speak below.
Occupy Design
> To continue our previous post on the powerful design emerging from the Occupy movement, we found that they have their own design group called Occupy Design. You can see the crowdcourced, bold designs on their website here. The graphic designer Jonathan Barnbrook designed their new logo, explaining in this Guardian blog that he wanted to be involved with Occupy London because he felt that designers were often bracketed with the worst of the capitalist system, and he wanted to show that that did not have to be the case.
As part of a new series, Article 27 will be interviewing individuals who have contributed to human rights through creative means. Article 27 began by looking to North London, UK at the Tricycle Theatre. The Guardian described The Tricycle Theatre as having “a matchless record in exposing injustice”, and the theatre was awarded a Human Rights award from Liberty in 2010, saying that The Tricycle Theatre is an “inspirational example of how art with a social conscience need not require creative compromise.” But what ground does theatre hold in exposing or highlighting human rights issues? We decided to speak to the Tricycle Theatre artistic director Nicolas Kent on his thoughts, with a focus on the Tricycles own past and what he sees the future of British theatre to be.
Tribunal & Inquiry Plays
The Tricycle’s tribunal plays and docu-dramas have been hailed as some of the most important theatre productions staged in the UK, with the Daily Telegraph having said “the Tricycle Theatre (verbatim plays) has consistently exposed significant fault-lines in British society and the way we are governed.” What provoked Nicolas to begin staging verbatim reconstructions of public inquiries? “When i first came to The Tricycle in 1984, we were trying to do work that reflected the Black and Irish community. The remit of the theatre was to reflect the cultural minorities in our area in our programming, and so we were doing quite a political agenda. In the early 90s when Mandela had been released and there was a move towards the rainbow coalition in South Africa, and also the Friday agreement in Ireland and the Berlin wall came down and the Cold War ended.. we suddenly found ourselves without a political role, and I was thinking what should we move towards? It felt important that instead of tackling big geo-political issues, that maybe we would look more at single issues.”
During this time, Nicolas was good friends with Richard Norton Taylor from The Guardian. He explained that Richard would often regale him with stories of the Scott Inquiry/Arms Iraq Inquiry, and that he had read newspaper editorials saying that they thought the Scott Inquiry, when it was to be reported, “was the most important constitutional document of the latter half of the 20th century with its effect on government”. Kent explained that “this made me think at the time that this was a public Inquiry being seen by very few people and being reported sporadically in the press, so I thought maybe it was a good to get an overview.” He then staged ‘Half The Picture’ as a response to this Inquiry. Why did he think it turned out to be such a huge box office success? “It was maybe because Alan Clarke and Margaret Thatcher… people wanted to see those people on stage, I suppose, and it gave people the chance to see the Inquiry”. The Tricycles Tribunal plays continue to be very popular. Nicolas will not, however, be staging a play about the recent phone-tapping News International Inquiry, but he hopes it will be televised. “The reason they call it a public inquiry is because it should obviously be seen by the public”.
Stephen Lawrence and the Police
In 1999, The Tricycle staged ‘The Stephen Lawrence Inquiry- the Colour of Justice’, a play about the tragic murder of Stephen Lawrence. Nicolas said that “there are an enormous amount of lessons about racial awareness amongst the police and society in general, about the way we treat victims, and generally, I think, about the way society is policed and how we’re going to live together in this most multicultural city in the world.” The play was shown on BBC television, toured nationally and it’s used as a manual by police forces about victims rights and institutional racism. Kent said that “For an awful lot of black people we spoke to, it raised huge issues about the way young black men were seen and treated by police. It allowed people to feel that the spotlight was long last put onto them and that they could discuss those issues. We held a lot of forums after the play that were very useful and it was a learning experience for many audience members, myself included. Neville Laurence, Stephens father, said that he thought that the play had told people a huge amount that they didn’t know.”
Does it hold relation to today? ”if you look at what’s happening recently, with outer city riots.. I think police relations with the black community on the whole has been pretty good, I think the anger on the streets is not directed at the police, whereas in previous riots it was directed towards the police. I’ve not heard anyone say very much about the police except obviously the killing of Mark Duggan which sparked it all off. But even then, you haven’t heard much articulation from the young people that have spoken to the media about the police. There’s more a feeling of alienation from society and an alienation that this is an underclass.” The Tricycle have recently staged their own Inquiry into the London summer riots, titled The Riots, made up from real life testimony.
Guantanamo and America
The widespread outrage of the prison camp Guantanamo led the The Tricycle to stage GUANTANAMO- Honor Bound to Defend Freedom, written by Gillian Slovo and Victoria Brittain. It transferred from the Tricycle to the West End and then New York. Archbishop Tutu even appeared in the production, which Nicolas says created 12,000 media hits throughout the world, thus “generating huge awareness raising about Guantanamo”. In 2006 the Tricycle presented a performance of the play at the Houses of Parliament and on Washington’s Capitol Hill. Nicolas said that he felt the play was “part of the campaign to get people in Guantanamo either released or put on trial and not to be held definitely without trial.”
Does Nicolas think the creative arts has any advantage over other platforms, in championing social change? “I think it does in a couple of ways. It’s very easy to watch television and turn it off when it becomes too difficult or to look at a newspaper article and read the first four lines and then turn the page. I think theatre, because you buy a ticket and make a commitment, even if you are somewhat converted to the issue, it may reinforce your feelings about it or give you increased knowledge. But the mere fact that you make a commitment to stay with that issue for two hours or so means that you have made a commitment to become involved with that issue, accept the challenges that you might be offered”.
In February 2011, the production of The Great Game (a series of short plays on the history of Afghanistan and its foreign intervention) went on to play two command performances for Pentagon staff, the military, policy-makers, aid-workers and guests in Washington. Kent explained that “as for the Great Game as well as Honour Bound, both plays were needed to be seen by an American audience, because American was involved deeply in both subject matters. It was important to us for them to be seen in America. But, in the end, the work we create is about issues here for here, and if they go on to be seen elsewhere then that’s great, but it isn’t the primary reason in doing them.” What other advantages does Nicolas think theatre has in shedding light on the issue? “I think the other huge advantage is if you sit down and watch something for a sizable period of time with a group of people, you tend to emphasise with the characters on stage, and by that I mean you put yourself in their shoes. And the mere fact that you put yourself in their shoes means you start to think out the problems from their point of view.”
In the UK, the arts industries have been subject to severe funding cuts. What does Nicolas see the future of British theatre to be, and how deep rooted does he feel the cuts will have to the artisitc growth of the UK? “Well I’m very pessimistic about what these cuts will do, because I think whats happening is that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Large arts institutions who can survive greatly through philanthropy because they already attract quite a large support, people want to be seen to be attached to something in richer districts… so they’ll go on as it is and they also haven’t suffered the cuts from local authorities that the smaller and medium sized institutions have. And I think that the audiences that we’ve built up in the community, over the years under the Labour government who gave proper subsidiaries to the arts, have been really very valuable and had a real affect on our local community. I think all of that’s very valuable and I’m very sad that might be thrown away for what is, in the end, not very much money.”
Does he feel the arts should be exempt from cuts? “I’m not saying the arts shouldn’t be cuts like other things. If you’re going to get rid of a deficit, then you are going to have to cut everything. But I think the cuts are being exercised in completely the wrong way. I think the richer instutitions and the bigger state institutions should probably bear the brunt of it because I do think they’re going to get access to money in other ways, and it’s the community organisations which the Arts Council should really be focusing on.”
Nicolas has since stood down after 27 years as the Tricycle Theatre Artistic director, blaming the £350,000 funding cuts the playhouse is to face over the next year. He, however, stirred the British political theatre scene by creating inquiries when the Government refused and asking important questions when politician didn’t. The Tricycle Theatre is a shining example of where the arts have played an important role in supporting the fight for a fairer and more democratic world.
“Matternet will alleviate poverty and accelerate economic growth for the rising billion through a roadless transportation network.”
We are increasingly connected via technology – approximately 75% of the world has mobile phones (that’s 5.2 billion handsets), creating an extensive and global information network. The rapid growth of cellular technology has allowed people living in remote areas to connect and communicate in ways that support their livelihoods.
However, in many parts of the world this information infrastructure has accelerated far beyond the existing transportation infrastructure. So while a farmer in an isolated community can now access local market prices and transfer money via his mobile phone, he may be unable to transport his produce owing to poorly maintained or non-existent roads. Road transportation lacks funding, causing development to be incremental in many countries, and sometimes even regressive. While initiatives have been introduced in Africa, there are fewer roads in the continent today than 30 years ago because of poor maintenance. Similarly, in Myanmar only 11.8% of the roads are paved and in Cambodia, only 20% of the roads are paved and in passable condition.
Due to a lack of roads, ports, bridges and trains, it is estimated that one billion people have inadequate access to food, water, medicine, and other supplies. This exclusion extends to the exchange economies, in which those from geographically isolated communities are unable to connect to. Without access to social and economic systems, potential paths out of poverty remain blocked.
Matternet, designed by an international team of business, design and engineering experts, is an ingenious solution to the problem of unequal access. Spawned from The Singularity University, it aims to create a roadless transportation network. Justine Lam, the Matternet project manager, explains, “we want to use a network of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) connected by robotic ground stations and an AI driven software system. We want to do what the Internet did for information but do that for physical things”.
With Matternet, a rural villager can order medicine required using their mobile phone. Next, the medicine is loaded onto a UAV, also known as a “grasshopper”. The grasshopper is sent to the villager and navigates the precise drop-off point – aided by a beacon transmitted from a landing pad at the destination. This ambitious idea will be rolled out in three phases:
I: Capable of transporting 1-2 kilograms of cargo will be “aircraft kits” including plug-in charges and a quadracopter drone, or grasshopper.
II: Solar-powered stations recharge autonomous aircraft capable of transporting 50 – 100 kilograms of cargo.
III: Networks of grasshoppers expand and overlap. This AI driven infrastructure will integrate city and village and be able to transport 500 – 1000 kilograms of cargo.
This novel approach to equal resource distribution is still in its early stages, so some questions are yet to be answered. How will abuse and misuse of the grasshoppers be avoided? Will users of the technology need to be trained, and how will this be done? Who will manage and fund the implementation and maintenance of Matternet? How much will local governments be involved in the project, and might Matternet be seen as an alternative or excuse not to provide much needed investment in basic infrastructure?
It is clear however, that if successful, the potential of Matternet is far-reaching, with reliable transportation delivering health, social and economic benefits. It is expected that economic growth will accelerate in developing countries that are currently stunted by poor infrastructure, and the rising billion will be able to find sustainable paths out of poverty. By gaining access to resources and local and global markets, people in remote and rural communities might be able to develop solutions to specific challenges that they face. Further, this technology will enable the mapping of the supply and demand of resources – facilitating distribution systems. Regarding human rights, Matternet will support the rights to equal access to public services, to a standard of living adequate for health and well-being, and ultimately, the right to life.
There are currently over 43 million displaced people on our small planet. Often these people are running in fear from political persecution, war or ethnic conflict. Routinely, they end up living as undocumented refugees. Transit is an exhibition at the Nobel Peace Center in Oslo that takes a stark look at the experiences of the displaced and their families in 9 countries; Afghanistan, Chad, Colombia, DR Congo, Georgia, Yemen, Norway, Serbia and Syria. Through photography, film and interviews, photographer Espen Rasmussen explores the experiences of displaced individuals and families.
The exhibition draws a comparison between Nansen, a Norwegian philanthropist from the late 1800’s and contemporary photographer Espen Rasmussen. The first part of the exhibition describes the influence of Nansen’s travels and the shocking photographs he carried back with him from his world wide explorations. The pictures showed the immense suffering he experienced of the worlds most impoverished. Most famously, Nansen is associated with a form of passport he created as an identification document for displaced peoples after World War I, in order to provide some rights to those in need. Rasmussen reflects on this idea of documented identification and consequential associated rights with great humanistic insight in both the main part of the exhibit and also when considering Rahman, a young undocumented Iranian Kurd living in Norway.
Rasmussen has been following Rahman for many years, recording his experiences in Norway. Simultaneously, Rahman also describes his experience of being an undocumented refugee, the struggle to gain recognition and many common teenage problems in his displayed diary entries. Accompanied by a bed, photography, film and a post it board on which visitors are asked to write a message to Rahman (messages ranged from “hello Rahman!” to “don’t give up hope”), we get a sense of how Rahman lives in fear of rejection by the Norwegian authorities.
The content of many photographs is extremely shocking. One depicts a young mother tying her 3 small children to a bed whilst she leaves for work. However, Rasmussen also captures the spirit of humanity. In many pictures we see families, children, friends, laughter, stillness and shared moments. These pictures are not just stark reminders of the disparity and unfairness of the world we live in, but they are also reminders of our connectedness. Of how, despite extremely different situations we may find ourselves in, we still live our lives each day to the best of our capabilities – documents, or no documents.
The accompanying website for the exhibition gives the audience the option to view the photographs, information on a particular country in question and hear the ‘story’ of that country. If you can’t make it to Oslo before the exhibition closes, this website is an excellent portal for Rasmussens exhibition.
Article 27 report on projects that shed light on human rights issues in a new,creative or interesting way, in areas such as music, film, arts, design, digital, technology and new media.
Kony 2012 – What Does Justin Bieber Know About International Justice That I Don’t?
What do you think of the Kony 2012 video? In the second of Article 27′s new series of Comment pieces, Campaigner Lucy Greenwood digs deeper into the online phenomon.
Yesterday afternoon, the mysterious words ‘Kony 2012’ suddenly appeared everywhere, in my Facebook newsfeed, things about invisible children in my Twitter feed. What is this? Has there been another Republican candidate announced for the US 2012 election, one that is being enthusiastically championed by P Diddy, Oprah AND Justin Bieber? It was also mentioned by my Dad who had heard Kony discussed on Radio 4, and later my friends were talking about Kony in the pub. I received an invitation to join an event in Bristol in the name of setting a precedent for international justice, evoking images of attractively dressed hipsters, conspicuously wanting to appear inconspicuous, like ‘Invisible Children’, even. “Join us to poster up Bristol on the 20th of April, when we cover the night. We will blanket every street until the sun comes up. We will be smart, and we will be thorough.” Wow I thought, this is big. And then I watched the long 30 minute video; the end could not come soon enough.
At the start of the video, you are told that the next 27 minutes is an experiment where you have to pay attention for it to work. This request of 27 minutes of my time I thought was a bad start. It quickly went from bad to feeling like an emotional assault on the senses. Babies were being born, images of dead children, images of Hitler, images of stern teenagers dressed in American Apparel, images of the nauseatingly smug Jason Russell and his child who is about to tell it like it is, all to the sound of, erm, Mumford and Sons.
Jason announces evangelically that he is here to do a job because of “the course of his life.” That job is to stop Joseph Kony, because he made a promise to his friend Jacob Acaye, a young African man who tragically lost his brother to the LRA. Jason Russell then wheels out his 4 year old son and explains that Joseph Kony is a “bad guy” who kidnaps children and forces them to “do bad things.” The child nods sagely and says “it is sad”. He then tells us that 300,000 children have been taken to be in Kony’s army that forces the boys to be soldiers that kill their parents and the girls to be sex slaves.
This must be stopped, is the message, and the only way to solve the problem is by finding and stopping Kony. This will be done by making him famous, as famous as George Clooney. Thirty ‘culture makers’ including Bono, Angelina Jolie and twelve policy makers are identified as targets by the campaign. Finally, an unknown American teenager is telling us all to “go out there and rock it” while dubstep plays in the background. By this point, I really wished I had watched it while playing the KONY 2012 drinking game.
The video was created by the charity Invisible Children and since yesterday, so much has been written about Kony 2012, with not all of it being very sensible. Invisible Children’s Kony video has become a perfect example of internet mass hysteria, and it is important to call it that because in the short life of the internet, we are still discovering what the consequences are when things go viral. In an attempt to gain some perspective, here are some of the more useful things I’ve read on the internet about the Kony 2012 campaign that lets us look at the issue in its full picture:
1) “Joseph Kony is not in Uganda and hasn’t been for 6 years, and at only 15:01 in the video is the fact briefly mentioned that the Lord’s Resistance Army are no longer operating in Uganda. ForeignPolicy.com Guest post: Joseph Kony is not in Uganda (and other complicated things)
2) Invisible Children has been described as ‘misleading,’ ‘naive,’ and ‘dangerous’ and “manipulating facts for strategic purposes.” Additionally, Invisible Children has a low two-star rating in accountability from Charity Navigator because they won’t let their finances be independently audited. The Daily What: KONY 2012
3) “Stopping Kony won’t change any of these things, and if more hardware and money flow to Museveni’s military, Invisible Children’s campaign may even worsen some problems.” Michael Wilkerson on ForeignPolicy.com
4) This damningly vitriolic and powerfully written post on Reddit Politics argues that actually, the current President of Uganda, Museveni, has killed just as many – if not more people in Uganda than Kony and his army, and relates the feeling in Uganda that Invisible Children are working with the Ugandan Government. The post by Amber Ha goes on to assert that Invisible Children are doing more harm than good with their campaign video, described as ‘propaganda’, by bringing the LRA back into Uganda and violence along with it.
There are many NGOs, and most are very small and rely on modest donations in order to operate. Social networking has been a well deserved gift to the not-for-profit sector because it is a practically free means of galvanising support for campaigns. Suddenly, you can create your own media instead of depending on the fickle whims of established journalism. The internet is instant, people can see support for campaigns growing and it can create positive feelings of solidarity in the online community, that has come to exist over the last few years.
With this in mind, there are many effective online campaigning groups that think very carefully about being responsible for providing correct and accurate information about their campaigns. They take seriously their responsibility to tell the whole, accurate picture: I believe that Kony 2012 has failed with that task. Instead when watching the video, we lose track of the story and we are overwhelmed with sensationalism and guilt. After watching the video, it is disappointing to learn (from other more reliable sources than celebrities’ twitter feeds) many of the facts of the video are misleading or inaccurate. What is also disappointing is that Jacob’s harrowing testimony seems to only be briefly touched upon, which is a shame as it is his emotive story that is one of the few parts within the video that is truly powerful.
Whether the style of the video awoke an activist passion you didn’t know you had, or turned your stomach, it cannot be denied that it did really well to engage people who perhaps hadn’t previously expressed an interest in human rights. But is all that’s needed to solve the problem of the LRA is for enough of the Western world to ‘know’ and ‘care’ about Kony? And how effective can the campaign be if we can’t see through the internet hype? The answer will be on the morning of the 21st April, when we see if after the world goes to bed on Friday night, we “wake up to hundreds of posters, demanding justice on every corner”.
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