On the 2nd February 2011 our friend Víctor Leiva, known as “el Mono”, left the cultural center where he was taking dance classes. Moments later a firearm cut his life short.

Víctor was 24 years old when he was murdered. He was an artist and human rights defender, focusing particularly on the rights of young people, with whom he also worked.

This deplorable act of violence was condemned by civil society and national and international human rights organizations.
A letter sent to Guatemala’s Public Prosecutor on the 2nd August 2011, marking six months since his death and requesting the prompt investigation of his murder, was signed by 44 organizations and over 400 individuals from 26 countries. 

Nevertheless, nearly a year after his murder, the circumstances surrounding his death have yet to be fully investigated. For this reason, institutional and individual signatures are currently being collected for the attached letter, which will be published in the Guatemalan media on the 2nd February 2012. It is hoped that even more signatures will be received than in the previous action, to show that the murder of young human rights defenders like Víctor cannot remain in a state of impunity.

You can sign by emailing quevivavictor@yahoo.com  or by signing online athttp://www.thepetitionsite.com/2/que-viva-victor/ before the 28th January 2012. (Please indicate your country!)

In solidarity,

Friends of Víctor Leiva

Image taken from http://nisgua.blogspot.com/

The controversial author was due to speak about his early work Midnight’s Children at India’s biggest literary festival, which began on Friday, though influential Muslim clerics had protested his participation, BBC News reported.

“I have now been informed by intelligence sources in Maharashtra and Rajasthan that paid assassins from the Mumbai underworld may be on their way to Jaipur to ‘eliminate’ me,” Rushdie said in a statement that was read out at the festival.

The author’s controversial 1988 book The Satanic Verses is still banned in India, and it incited Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruohollah Khomeini to issue a fatwa calling for his execution, according to The Guardian. The threat caused the author — who was born in India but has lived in Britain for most of his life — to remain in hiding for many years.

Rushdie has visited India privately several times, and attended the Jaipur literary festival in 2007.

Author and festival organizer William Dalrymple called Rushdie’s decision to stay away from the festival “a great tragedy,” BBC reported. Rushdie will speak via video conference instead, according to reports.

On Jan. 10, Darul Uloom Deoband, a leading Islamic seminary in India, called on the government to block Rushdie’s visa as he “had annoyed the religious sentiments of Muslims in the past,” according to the BBC.

The literary festival, in which over 250 authors will be participating, began as scheduled on Friday, according to the BBC. Participants include Michael Ondaatje and Ben Okri, playwright Tom Stoppard, journalists David Remnick and Philip Gourevitch and TV host Oprah Winfrey.

Tens of thousands of people are expected to attend the festival.

The festival’s producer, Sanjoy Roy, said there was a need in India “to question … why we continue as a nation to succumb to one pressure or another.”

“This is a huge problem for Indian democracy,” he told The Guardian.

Text reposted from Globalpost.com. Image taken from Vanityfair.com

Represented by the group Lawyers for Liberty, Zunar is seeking the return of confiscated property as well as aggravated losses and damages incurred in the incident which took place on 24 September 2010. That night, hours before the launch of Zunar’s latest compilation of political cartoons titled ‘Cartoon-O-Phobia’, the police raided the artist’s office in Kuala Lumpur, seized all copies of the book and arrested him for sedition.

In a career spanning two decades, Zunar has produced popular political cartoons which dare to lampoon public figures and institutions in Malaysia, with the aim of exposing the abuse of power by the police, judiciary, election commission and government officials. His work is considered sensitive, even radical, in Malaysia.

freeDimensional joins ARTICLE 19 in urging the Malaysian government to hasten progress on a raft of reforms, including an immediate review of regressive media and censorship legislation such as the Sedition Act 1948 and the Printing Presses and Publication Act 1984, both of which exert a serious chilling effect on freedom of speech and of the media.

Text reposted from www.Article19.org. Image taken from cartoonistsrights.org

In recent days, Palestinian security services informed Zbeidi that upon Israel’s request, he must remain in the Palestinian Authority’s detention facilities during all hours of the day and night, otherwise Israel will arrest him.

Zbeidi confirmed the report to Haaretz, yet said he did not know why the pardon was rescinded. Last week, Palestinian security forces arrested one of Zbeidi’s brothers, along with one of the workers at Jenin’s Freedom Theater, which Zbeidi directs.

In the summer of 2007, Zbeidi was among 200 wanted Fatah militants in the West Bank who turned in their weapons, under an arrangement in which Israel granted them effective amnesty as a gesture to PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas.

In 2009, actor Juliano Mer Khamis founded the Freedom Theater and appointed Zbeidi as its director. Zbeidi also began working as an official in the Palestinian Authority’s prisoners division. The theater’s founder, Mer-Khamis, was shot and killed last April. The case has not yet been solved.

For more information and updates on the case visit:  www.thefreedomtheatre.org

Text reposted from Haaretz.com. Image reposted from LinkTV.org

A shy yet resilient, unfailingly polite but dogged man who articulated the power of the powerless, Mr. Havel spent five years in and out of Communist prisons, lived for two decades under close secret-police surveillance and endured the suppression of his plays and essays. He served 14 years as president, wrote 19 plays, inspired a film and a rap song and remained one of his generation’s most seductively nonconformist writers.

All the while, he came to personify the soul of the Czech nation. His moral authority and his moving use of the Czech language cast him as the dominant figure during Prague street demonstrations in 1989 and as the chief behind-the-scenes negotiator who brought about the peaceful transfer of power known as the Velvet Revolution, a revolt so smooth that it took just weeks to complete, without a single bullet fired.

(Excerpted article reprinted from www.truth-out.org)

When the international community places emphasis on the protection of freedom of speech, it generally focuses on the freedom of media and literature. International human rights organisations include repression of media and media professionals in their annual and country reports on freedom of expression. However they rarely document repression of artists or cultural workers.

Artistic expression is under pressure from many sides and it is frequently in the centre of conflicts between different interest groups.

By bringing together a wide range of stakeholders who have an interest in protecting art and artists’ rights, the Copenhagen summit will explore options for establishing a global network for the protection and advocacy of artistic freedom of expression.

For more information visit: http://artsfex.org/

Image taken from The New York Times online &  text taken from  http://artsfex.org/

Several weeks ago we submitted a letter in support of Bahraini culture workers to the Ministry of Culture, to which we have received no response. In our letter, we expressed concern “that some artists and intellectuals in Bahrain may be in danger of losing their capacity to foster healthy and productive international exchange between Bahrain and other countries, due to recent infringement of human and cultural rights in Bahrain.” We further admonished that in light of Manama being named 2012 Arab Capital of Culture, continued persecution of artists and intellectuals would garner significant, negative international attention.

According to Ahmed Ali Al Ghanem, former Head of Music & Folklore at the Ministry of Culture and the Director of the Bahrain Orchestra, since the government crackdown began on February 14, nearly 2800 people have been targeted by the government and removed from their positions, himself included. Many of those unfairly dismissed have families and no means of supporting them. Further, despite an order from the King to reverse these dismissals, no action has been taken.

In recent years, Bahrain has experienced severe cultural conflicts between modernists and traditionalists. The tiny, but rich kingdom has invited several international artists to perform in the country, but several initiatives have emerged advocating a cultural boycott against artistic visits to the country, when they are hosted by the brutal regime. In response, a group of Bahraini artists and intellectuals published an open letter to UNESCO Artist for Peace Missa Johnouchi from Japan who performed at the 20th Bahrain International Music Festival on October 15.

View the letter at http://freemuse.org/sw44782.asp

If you’d like to support Bahraini artists and intellectuals, you can send a letter to the General Secretary of the League of Arab States, Dr. Nabil Al Araby urging that Manama have its 2012 Arab Capital of Culture title revoked if the persecution of artists and intellectuals does not stop. http://www.arableagueonline.org

For up-to-date information on the situation in Bahrain visit: http://www.bahrainrights.org/en

Image taken from http://www.fao.org

Organized by the Triangle Network, the conference featured representatives of arts and cultural networks and organizations from around the world. Topics covered include: the principles and ethics that guide cultural networks, the use of network practices in developing programs, why artists use and create networks, the environments in which networks develop and operate, support systems and challenges faced by networks, and approaches to supporting artists and grassroots initiatives.

fD founder Todd Lester presented on his experiences and insights into the role of networks in connecting artists and organizations:

‘When considering the network as institutional form, it is freeing to understand that contemporary notions of sustainability are often bound by the more rigid institutional form of non-profit (or NGO) against which the horizontal network is already an evolving juxtaposition. We must look at networks both as larger, formal structures as well as horizontal, ad hoc set-ups, such as collectives and community projects that artists create and join intuitively, and how each learn from the other.’

For more information and highlights from the conference, visit:

http://www.thetriangleconference.org/

BILBAO, Spain. November 10, 2011 - 

ZUNAR a.k.a. Zulkiflee Anwar Haque, who has been drawing  editorial cartoons for the past 20 years in Malaysia, was awarded the “Courage To Fight Censorship” Award at the VI. Festival Against Censorship.

ZUNAR uses his drawing pen as a weapon to fight state  corruption and abuse of power. He has turned the spotlight on     local public-interest issues such as the politically explosive  (literally!) and unsolved murder of a Mongolian woman, the  political conspiracy against the former-deputy-prime-minister-  turned-Opposition-Leader Anwar Ibrahim, the domineering  wife of the present prime minister, and the shady Scorpene submarine purchases that are now being investigated in France.

He started acquiring a reputation as a critical, no-holds-barred cartoonist during the “Reformation” period in Malaysia. Sparked by the sacking of the then deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim, which shocked and arrested the nation, the people’s uprising provided him much fodder for ‘comment’ through his cartoons.

Unsurprisingly, the government-controlled national newspapers have blacked-out his cartoons since and he has to resort to publishing them online. On the bright side, no less than the country’s leading source of independent news and views, Malaysiakini.com, is publishing them on a regular basis.

To see video of ZUNAR’s latest exhibition at the VI. Festival Against Censorship visit: http://bit.ly/tYP1Wa

fD program coordinator Sidd Joag joins a roundtable discussion at the VI. Festival Against Censorship in Bilbao, Spain.  Now in its 6^th year, the Festival is organized by the Basque production company Serrano in collaboration with FREEMUSE and in 2010 honored fD with its annual No Censorship award.

Highlights of this year’s Festival program include fD stakeholders:  Malaysian cartoonist ZUNAR, and Zimbabwean artist Owen Maseko.

“Zunar has been drawing editorial cartoons for the past 20 years in malaysia. Zunar uses his drawing pen as a weapon to fight state corruption and abuse of power. seven of his books are banned by the malaysian government.”

“Zimbabwean visual artist and installation artist, described as “one of Zimbabwe’s most prominent artists”. His works referred to the massacres of Ndebele civilians during the Gukurahundi in the 1980s, carried out by forces loyal to Robert Mugabe. uses his exhibit to break the silence surrounding the conflict and give people a chance to tell the stories that are part of the ‘hidden history’ of Zimbabwe.”