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Monday, September 28
Global Free Speech

Andrei Aliaksandrau on trial in Belarus in June 2022. Photo: Belta.by It will be no revelation when I say Belarus prisons are bleak. The conditions are dirty, the routines mind-numbing and the guards brutal. But perhaps this detail will surprise you: in the middle of some prisons are books. Beautiful, transportive books. Even politically risqué books. “This atmosphere was complemented by an unexpectedly rich library, where prisoners could even find Orwell or Machiavelli,” one former detainee told the human rights organisation Viasna this week. “Books became a lifeline. From the prison library and bookshop, I managed to access literature that helped me endure,” said Larysa Shchyrakova in an article she wrote for us last month. For her, one book in particular, Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning, which details the Viennese neurologist’s experience in a Nazi concentration camp, became essential reading. A library in jail cuts both ways though. In some penal colonies the way to punish political prisoners is not to allow them access, so they have to risk further punishment by borrowing books from fellow inmates. Today, 21 May, is the International Day of Solidarity with Political Prisoners in Belarus. We’re thinking of all the 1,000-plus prisoners wrongfully detained and we’re especially thinking of our colleague Andrei Aliaksandraŭ. We don’t know exactly what his daily life is like – we haven’t been able to directly contact him in years – but we do hope that erudite and curious Andrei will not be one of the unlucky ones forbidden the solace of reading. By January this year, Andrei had spent five of his birthdays in prison. A journalist by training, who once worked for Index in our London office and later became a regular contributor from Belarus, Andrei was sentenced to 14 years on a charge of high treason several years ago. To mark the grim anniversary and to keep his case in the spotlight, we wrote this about him. We feel we have failed Andrei. Others have been released ahead of their full sentence. Andrei has not. That’s not through lack of trying. While our dreams to have his name flash up in his favourite Liverpool FC stadium have yet to materialise, we’ve managed to get Margaret Atwood, Nadya from Pussy Riot, Index chair Sir Trevor Phillips and Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore to read lines from a poem he wrote from prison. We’ve sent letters to him and to politicians. We’ve published a letter of his too, written on the day of his trial. If anything gives a sense of his character – kind, generous, optimistic – it is this. But still, he is in prison. For doing nothing. No, for doing something heroic – helping protesters following the fraudulent election back in 2020. That’s not to say what we’ve done has been in vain. For Andrei and his family, there has been comfort in knowing he has not been forgotten, and comfort in the knowledge that one day he will walk free. We hope that day comes soon. READ MORE

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Andrei Aliaksandrau on trial in Belarus in June 2022. Photo: Belta.by It will be no revelation when I say Belarus prisons are bleak. The conditions are dirty, the routines mind-numbing and the guards brutal. But perhaps this detail will surprise you: in the middle of some prisons are books. Beautiful, transportive books. Even politically risqué books. “This atmosphere was complemented by an unexpectedly rich library, where prisoners could even find Orwell or Machiavelli,” one former detainee told the human rights organisation Viasna this week. “Books became a lifeline. From the prison library and bookshop, I managed to access literature that helped me endure,” said Larysa Shchyrakova in an article she wrote for us last month. For her, one book in particular, Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning, which details the Viennese neurologist’s experience in a Nazi concentration camp, became essential reading. A library in jail cuts both ways though. In some penal colonies the way to punish political prisoners is not to allow them access, so they have to risk further punishment by borrowing books from fellow inmates. Today, 21 May, is the International Day of Solidarity with Political Prisoners in Belarus. We’re thinking of all the 1,000-plus prisoners wrongfully detained and we’re especially thinking of our colleague Andrei Aliaksandraŭ. We don’t know exactly what his daily life is like – we haven’t been able to directly contact him in years – but we do hope that erudite and curious Andrei will not be one of the unlucky ones forbidden the solace of reading. By January this year, Andrei had spent five of his birthdays in prison. A journalist by training, who once worked for Index in our London office and later became a regular contributor from Belarus, Andrei was sentenced to 14 years on a charge of high treason several years ago. To mark the grim anniversary and to keep his case in the spotlight, we wrote this about him. We feel we have failed Andrei. Others have been released ahead of their full sentence. Andrei has not. That’s not through lack of trying. While our dreams to have his name flash up in his favourite Liverpool FC stadium have yet to materialise, we’ve managed to get Margaret Atwood, Nadya from Pussy Riot, Index chair Sir Trevor Phillips and Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore to read lines from a poem he wrote from prison. We’ve sent letters to him and to politicians. We’ve published a letter of his too, written on the day of his trial. If anything gives a sense of his character – kind, generous, optimistic – it is this. But still, he is in prison. For doing nothing. No, for doing something heroic – helping protesters following the fraudulent election back in 2020. That’s not to say what we’ve done has been in vain. For Andrei and his family, there has been comfort in knowing he has not been forgotten, and comfort in the knowledge that one day he will walk free. We hope that day comes soon. READ MORE

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It will be no revelation when I say Belarus prisons are bleak. The conditions are dirty, the routines mind-numbing and the guards brutal. But perhaps this detail will surprise you: in the middle of some prisons are books. Beautiful, transportive books. Even politically risqué books. “This atmosphere was complemented by an unexpectedly rich library, where prisoners could even find Orwell or Machiavelli,” one former detainee told the human rights organisation Viasna this week. “Books became a lifeline. From the prison library and bookshop, I managed to access literature that helped me endure,” said Larysa Shchyrakova in an article she wrote for us last month. For her, one book in particular, Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning, which details the Viennese neurologist’s experience in a Nazi concentration camp, became essential reading.

A library in jail cuts both ways though. In some penal colonies the way to punish political prisoners is not to allow them access, so they have to risk further punishment by borrowing books from fellow inmates.

Today, 21 May, is the International Day of Solidarity with Political Prisoners in Belarus. We’re thinking of all the 1,000-plus prisoners wrongfully detained and we’re especially thinking of our colleague Andrei Aliaksandraŭ. We don’t know exactly what his daily life is like – we haven’t been able to directly contact him in years – but we do hope that erudite and curious Andrei will not be one of the unlucky ones forbidden the solace of reading.

By January this year, Andrei had spent five of his birthdays in prison. A journalist by training, who once worked for Index in our London office and later became a regular contributor from Belarus, Andrei was sentenced to 14 years on a charge of high treason several years ago. To mark the grim anniversary and to keep his case in the spotlight, we wrote this about him.

We feel we have failed Andrei. Others have been released ahead of their full sentence. Andrei has not. That’s not through lack of trying. While our dreams to have his name flash up in his favourite Liverpool FC stadium have yet to materialise, we’ve managed to get Margaret Atwood, Nadya from Pussy Riot, Index chair Sir Trevor Phillips and Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore to read lines from a poem he wrote from prison. We’ve sent letters to him and to politicians. We’ve published a letter of his too, written on the day of his trial. If anything gives a sense of his character – kind, generous, optimistic – it is this.

But still, he is in prison. For doing nothing. No, for doing something heroic – helping protesters following the fraudulent election back in 2020.

That’s not to say what we’ve done has been in vain. For Andrei and his family, there has been comfort in knowing he has not been forgotten, and comfort in the knowledge that one day he will walk free. We hope that day comes soon.

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Global Free Speech

The BBC clearly sees the value of television series That Mitchell and Webb Look. Marking the 20th anniversary of its original screening, the Beeb has re-released the series on iPlayer. But – and there is very often a “but” with these things – they’ve removed around 11 sketches from the BAFTA award-winning show. The official word is that these sketches don’t “work today”, which is polite speak for “they may cause offence”. The episodes singled out include scenes featuring a battle reenactment with characters in blackface, a contestant on a show wearing a burka and a lost tribe” in a garden centre. These sketches set out to challenge stereotypes, not to reinforce them; but 20 years on, this distinction seems to have been lost along the way. I’m a bit uncomfortable about this. I find it infantilising, to say the least. Can’t we trust audiences to make up their own minds, to switch off if they find the sketches in question unpalatable? Does the BBC think that we are just passive consumers, unable to disaggregate the mocking of racism from racism itself? These sketches set out to challenge stereotypes, not to reinforce them This act of censorship is distorting – of the shows, whose narratives and rhythms were built to include these sketches, and more broadly too. Conversations we were having 20 years ago have been erased, as if to suggest that they never happened. But they did! And with this erasure, the opportunity for thoughtful engagement and learning from our past is gone. “Let’s just pretend we were all lovely 20 years ago. It’s better that way” seems to be the message. Speaking as a minority myself, I find that knowing the nasty stuff that people said before – and indeed, still say today – is much more useful than pretending it never happened. This approach, I think, is also inconsistent. What it reveals is a cherry-picking (intended or not) of the groups that we can mock, and those that we can’t. Let’s face it, gender stereotypes are rarely deemed to have aged beyond the pale – if that were the case, we would have to wave goodbye to half the television made before the mid-2010s. Suppression like this sends a bad message to artists, namely that what they’re creating today may hold less value tomorrow. Or, even worse, that future audiences may deem them bigots – that Sword of Damocles hovering over the heads of any creative paying attention to the discourse of the moment. Suppression like this sends a bad message to artists The BBC’s decision reaffirms a broader trend. In 2020, Little Britain was removed from the iPlayer platform for similar reasons. It has since been reinstated – minus some sketches. Meanwhile, the UK’s arts space more broadly is seeing a retreat to the land of “safe”, as Index recently revealed in a year-long investigation into self-censorship in UK theatre. The BBC, it must be said, does remarkable stuff. The ongoing podcast investigation into the disappearance of US journalist Austin Tice is just one example. But this does not mean, however, that they don’t sometimes get it wrong. Chopping at That Mitchell and Webb Look is one example. Sure, the removal of the material isn’t the life-or-death story that Index often works on. Sure, Mitchell and Webb aren’t the faces of persecuted artists – they have huge platforms and agreed to the changes themselves. Still, one can’t help but think that the decision came from a place of conservatism, perhaps even fear. This is weak and dispiriting, indeed the very opposite of what enables creativity in the arts. We shouldn’t be encouraging this cultural timidity. Rather, we should harness culture and creativity as the starting points of a conversation about our here and now. That’s what the arts are for, after all. READ MORE

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