Специально к выходу в прокат фильма АЙ ВЭЙВЭЙ: НИКОГДА НЕ ИЗВИНЯЙСЯ известный китайский художник записал видеообращение для российских зрителей.
One dissident to another, Ai Weiwei sends a message of support to Pussy Riot.
Since the first Poets for Pussy Riot event, held on 29 August 2012, Nadezha Tokolonnikova and Maria Alyokhina remain in prison, serving out sentences in notorious penal colonies. The community of poets that came together then, as an act of solidarity and commitment that this injustice should not be forgotten, came together once more on 21 November 2012, in the Free Word centre in Farringdon, in London, in association with English PEN, to mark the nine-month anniversary of Pussy Riot’s protest Punk Prayer performance, which took place on 21 February 2012 in Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. Nearly 40 poets contributed to an evening of original poetry.
A court in Moscow has designated four videos made by the feminist punk protest group Pussy Riot as extremist. The Zamoskvorechye District Court in the Russian capital ruled that access to all websites hosting the videos must be limited. According to the court’s decision, websites that do not remove the Pussy Riot videos will face administrative penalties, including fines up to 100,000 rubles ($3,000).
Performance of the Punk Prayer in Moscow led to the arrest of three members of the group. Two of them — Maria Alyokhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova — are now serving two-year prison sentences for “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred.” A third member, Yekaterina Samutsevich, was freed last month after a court suspended her sentence on appeal.
Bristol’s Christian Union have banned women from speaking
Just when you thought Christians couldn’t do anything more stupid …. — Giles Fraser, former Canon-Chancellor at St Paul’s
I do hope the Bristol University Student’s Union is going to look into this. — Giles Fraser, former Canon-Chancellor at St Paul’s
A couple of weeks ago, General Synod of the Church of English voted no to women bishops. In doing so, a fairly discredited institution lost all credibility.
Just when you thought Christians couldn’t do anything more stupid, they proved you wrong. The Christian Union at Bristol University has banned women from speaking, but if it is a husband and wife, then maybe the wife will be allowed to speak.
You could not make it up if you tried.
Not surprisingly, this has caused outrage amongst female students at Bristol University.
It also begs the question what is the Students Union and the university authorities doing about it?
If it was the First of April, I would have dismissed this as an April Fool’s hoax.
It wasn’t easy time for us. Amazed council still believes it has done nothing wrong. — David Payne
Growing increasingly annoyed reading NeverSeconds by stance of council trying to blame Martha. Poor show. — Bryan Gregg
The bullying of nine-year-old Martha Payne by a worthless jobsworth at Argyll and Bute Council and trying to silence her blog NeverSeconds, then compounding the wrong by lying and then when it could not get worse, defaming the family by accusing them of bad parenting, it totally and completely unacceptable.
The council has yet to formally apologise, or even accept they did anything wrong.
The editor of the Oban Times, is giving you the chance to have your say and via the paper question Argyll and Bute Council chief executive Sally Loudon who was responsible for this disgraceful behaviour by her officials.
I would though dispute the view of the editor that Argyll and Bute Council chief executive Sally Loudon is a person of influence, she is an overpaid public servant accountable to the public. Nor does she have overall responsibility for running the local authority, that is down to the councillors who exercise that role on behalf of their constituents. Though I accept like all overpaid public servants, she has an overinflated view of her own worth.
A few questions I would like to see answered:
If it is not acceptable for a playground bully to bully and intimidate a nine-year-old school girl, why is it deemed acceptable for a worthless jobsworth to bully a nine-year-old schoolgirl?
Bullying is not acceptable in the playground, bullying is not acceptable in the workplace.
What disciplinary action has been taken, not only for the bullying, but the subsequent treatment meted out to the family?
What made you think you could get away with it and brazen it out?
Why did the council lie? Why were the lies then covered up?
Why was it claimed this was an example of bad parenting?
Why have you yet to issue a formal apology to Martha Payne and her family?
Freedom of expression is a basic right enshrined in the Human Rights Act. For each decision taken by a public body, it has to be shown that the Human Rights Act was complied with, failure to do so is in itself an offence under the legislation. What steps were taken when bullying a nine-year-old school girl? In trying to silence a nine-year-old school girl was you not aware a breach of the Human Rights Act was taking place, namely denying freedom of expression?
What steps have you taken to improve the school meals your local authority serves? Was you not aware of the minimum standards recommended by Jamie Oliver? If not why not? And if you were, why were they not acted upon?
I have looked at the school meals your local authority serves and I find them disgusting. Should you not hang your head in shame?
Have you not looked at the blog NeverSeconds and seen how poorly the meals you serve compare with school meals around the world?
I wish to see published all internal memos, notes of meetings, e-mails that took place within your local authority surrounding this issue, the initial bullying of Martha Payne, treatment of her family, how media was to be dealt with and that surrounding the fall out. Please regard this as a formal Freedom of Information request.
Have you ordered copies of NeverSeconds such that every school library, every public library in Argyll and Bute has copies?
What compensation will you be paying Martha and her family, for bullying, defamation, and the stress you have caused?
I look forward to a prompt response to all my questions.
In the meantime you may care to note:
NeverSeconds has now recorded over 8.8 million hits. Through NeverSeconds Martha went on to raise over £120,000 for a school kitchen in Malawi called Friends of NeverSeconds, and was invited to Malawi to inaugurate the kitchen.
With the help of her father David, Martha has co-written a book NeverSeconds, which tells the story of her blog, standing firm against the bully-boys at her local council, the trip to Malawi.
In their greed to get into a Wal-Mart store, not panic to get out of a burning building, shoppers trampled to death a Wal-Mart employee.
How debased have human beings become?
In Bangladesh, a sweatshop factory has caught fire killing over 100 workers. It was making clothes for Wal-Mart.
Only a few weeks ago, a sweatshop in Bangladesh or Pakistan caught fire. Who were they producing for?
Fatal fires are commonplace in sweatshops in Bangladesh.
Gap, Wal-Mart they know the conditions of sweatshops, but they choose to turn a blind eye.
Since 2006, more than 500 Bangladeshi workers have died in sweatshop fires.
Tensions have been running high between workers, who have been demanding an increase in minimum wages, and the factory owners and government. A union organizer, Aminul Islam, who campaigned for better working conditions and higher wages, was found tortured and killed outside Dhaka this year.
Martha putting finishing touches to Friends of NeverSeconds
If you wondered why a ten-year-old schoolgirl was honoured by Liberty as Human Rights Young Person of the Year or why in the same week the Scottish Herald named her Campaigner of the Year, this TED talk recorded at TED Global in Edinburgh June 2012 and the TED interview with Martha Payne will give you an inkling.
What made them think they could get away from this? — Clay Shirky
Martha Payne may only be 9-years-old, but she is already a world-renowned food blogger.
In a preamble to his fascinating TEDTalk about what governments can learn from open-source programming, Clay Shirky told Payne’s inspirational story.
In April of 2012, Scottish schoolgirl Payne started the blog NeverSeconds.blogspot.co.uk, which documents her school dinners (otherwise known as school lunches in the United States) with ratings like “number of mouthfuls” and “pieces of hair” found in food. The idea was to raise money for the charity Mary’s Meals, while at the same time showing the world the low nutritional value of school meals.
The blog quickly picked up fans. But on June 14, readers of NeverSeconds were greeted with a distressing post.
“This morning in maths I got taken out of class by my head teacher and taken to her office. I was told that I could not take any more photos of my school dinners because of a headline in a newspaper today,” wrote Payne. “I am sad I am no longer allowed to take photos. I will miss sharing and rating my school dinners.”
While Payne’s school supported the blog, it was reportedly the local Argyll and Bute Council that had decided its fate. Fans of the blog swung into action, flooding the council with angry messages. The outpouring was so extreme that the council quickly reversed its decision. By June 15, Payne’s blog was back.
Today, NeverSeconds has been read by 8 million people across the globe. Payne has raised £114,840 for Mary’s Meals, and the charity has set up the Friends of NeverSeconds kitchen at a school in Malawi, which Payne herself will soon visit. Meanwhile, Payne is also inspiring students in other countries, like 13-year-old Isadora Faber of Brazil, who documented her school’s poor facilities, leading to many swift improvements.
We caught up with Payne to ask her a few questions.
What inspired you to start your blog?
I want to be a journalist and I asked my dad if I could write everyday. Dad suggested a blog and we looked at some. I like the fact there is a publish button because it’s like I’m a real newspaper writer.
Why do you think your blog posts resonate so deeply with people?
Everyone knows about school dinners. I love seeing what school dinners are like around the world. Children are sharing their photos and ratings. It’s brilliant and I have cooked some of their lunches.
How did you feel in June when you were told you couldn’t photograph your lunches anymore?
I was upset and cried because I had done nothing wrong. Some adults had got embarrassed and thought stopping me would stop them being embarrassed.
What reactions did you get after you posted your goodbye message?
There were so many messages — I couldn’t read them all. Dad said it trended on Twitter and lots of people contacted Argyll and Bute Council.
Were you surprised by the level of public support you received?
It was awesome. Although I was sad because it was unfair, I was also happy that other people thought it was unfair as well.
What does that tell you about the type of world we live in?
It says even a big Council can’t be a bully. They ignored me when I said it was unfair but they couldn’t ignore the world.
How has your blog changed since you were able to resume posting?
There are guest bloggers writing each week because I’m off school, so no school dinners yet. I am going to Malawi to visit the Mary’s Meals charity because the friends of NeverSeconds raised over £114,000 to feed children a school dinner in Malawi. I will blog everyday from Malawi if I can.
What have you learned from your blogging experience?
I don’t know why adults teach us to write and think then get embarrassed when we do it outside class. I love kids sharing their meals with me and I like sharing back. The internet isn’t just for adults — we can use it too. When everyone chips in, you can help children around the world like with Mary’s Meals.
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During her day in London, Martha visited Parliament, before the Liberty Award Ceremony in the evening. She later reflected: why do we need Liberty if we have Parliament?
We need Liberty, we need people like Martha, because there are always those who will seek to silence critical voices.We need people who will fight for what is right.
The Taliban thought they could silence Malawa with a bullet to to the brain. They were wrong, she survived, more determined than ever to fight for education for girls. Her cause was taken up by former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. So far he has collected over 2 million signatures in support of Malawa, Pakistan has been forced to introduce compulsory free education for girls and boys, has doubled the education budget.
Vladimire Putin thought he could silence Pussy Riot. He was wrong. Only last week he was given a public dressing down by German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
President Morsi thought he could grant himself executive powers. Those who have filled Tahrir Square in protest think otherwise.
A pathetic jobsworth in a local council thought he could bully a nine-year-old schoolgirl, close down her food blog NeverSeconds. With the help and support of her family and friends around the world including chef Jamie Oliver, Martha stood her ground. The council were forced into a humiliating climbdown, with the leader of the council issuing a public apology on BBC Radio 4 lunchtime news World at One (only that morning on the Today programme the council had tried to justify their action). The council even blatantly lied!
NeverSeconds has now recorded over 8.7 million hits. Through NeverSeconds Martha went on to raise over £120,000 for a school kitchen in Malawi called Friends of NeverSeconds, and was invited to Malawi to inaugurate the kitchen.
With the help of her father David, Martha has co-written a book NeverSeconds, which tells the story of her blog, standing firm against the bully-boys at her local council, the trip to Malawi.
For whatever perverse reason Waterstone’s in England is not stocking NeverSeconds, does not have it on display. Once again her friends are coming to her rescue, walking into Waterstone’s bookshops and demanding to know why NeverSeconds is not in stock, not on display.
Too young to watch Sherlock but not too young for a photo at Liberty Awards!
Martha Payne wins for standing up for free expression with her NeverSeconds blog-she also raised £100,000 for Mary’s Meals. — Liberty
Martha was awarded the Human Rights Young Person of the Year Award by Rowan Atkinson, or to her, Mr Bean! Martha starstruck on stage. — David Payne, father of Martha
Brilliant Liberty Awards at South Bank Centre Martha Payne NeverSeconds justly carried off award for Human Rights Young Person of the Year. — Diane Abbott MP
I asked Martha why she thought she had won and she said everyone should have won. Can’t argue with that! — David Payne, father of Martha
Shared a few copies of our book with like minded folk and Martha collected some lovely comments in her copy. — David Payne, father of Martha
Inspiring and moving evening at the Liberty Awards 2012. Back on sleeper homeward bound trying to take it all in. — David Payne, father of Martha
This evening, at an award ceremony in London, Martha Payne was awarded by Liberty Human Rights Young Person of the Year for defending free expression when she stood up to her local council after they banned her publishing pictures of school meals on her blog NeverSeconds.
The citation read:
For defending free expression when she stood up to her local council after they banned her publishing pictures of school meals on her blog, NeverSeconds. Reports of the ban caused widespread national and international outcry and, as a result, the council backed down. Since then, her website has been visited by over 6 million people and has raised over £100,000 for Mary’s Meals, a charity which helps feed children in the developing world.
Martha writes a food blog NeverSeconds. Bullyboys at her local council tried to close her down. But with worldwide support, she stood her ground and refused to be intimidated.
NeverSeconds is her and her father David’s account of her blog, how it came to be written, a trip to Malawi to inaugurate a kitchen to feed schoolchildren for which Martha raised over £120,000.
NeverSeconds was published last week. Shame on Waterstone’s who not only do not have NeverSeconds on display, it is not in stock, not on order and when asked, the staff have not a clue what you are talking about.
Madonna speaks at her Madison Square Garden MDNA Tour show two nights ago on Pussy Riot and Malawa.
Vladimir Putin cannot now go anywhere without the issue of Pussy Riot being raised. Russians involved with human rights abuses now risk their assets being seized.
Three members of Pussy Riot sentenced in a Stalin-era show trial for a protest in Christ the Saviour Cathedral in Moscow, what was at worst a misdemeanour. One has been released on appeal, the remaining two sent to penal colonies, the modern-day equivalent of Gulags.
A conventional demonstration, a march, is very easy to put down. What is far, far harder to deal with is creative protest. We have seen this in the UK with UK Uncut. Had they held a protest outside Vodafone HQ it would have had zero impact. Instead they occupied Vodafone shops and connected with consumers who were none too happy on learning of their tax dodging and many asked to join in the occupation.
Trade Unions having a mass demo, a local Amnesty group standing in the street and collecting a handful of signatures on a petition, no longer works.
That is why Pussy Riot have been so successful. The reaction of the system was to put them in prison, even though the worst that should have happened was a slap on the wrist or a token fine, has spectacular backfired, not a day goes by without some event taking place in support of Pussy Riot. Vladimir Putin cannot appear anywhere on the world stage without being questioned about Pussy Riot.
Yes, we need to worry about the two girls held in penal colonies, but what we need to be even more concerned with is the crackdown on opposition, the assassination of critics, the arrest of opposition leaders, the blocking of internet sites.
This video has arisen out of a ‘Pussy Riot in Parliament‘ event held in the Houses of Parliament, organised by MP Kerry McCarthy (15 October 2012).
The proceedings focused on readings of the three defendants’ closing statements & was followed by a panel discussion on the Pussy Riot case and, more broadly, the role of the arts in political protest.
The panel discussion was chaired by Louder Than War boss John Robb & featured Joan Smith (novelist, journalist, and human rights campaigner); Dorian Lynskey, (author of 33 Revolutions Per Minute: A History of Protest Songs); and Chris Bryant, (MP for Rhondda).
During the evening a film crew started making a film about Pussy Riot. The film has now been completed & features the Pussy Riot women themselves (and, of course, their music) interspersed with input from all the panelists & especially Kerry McCarthy herself as she has a unique insight into the case as she not only attended part of the trial but also met some of the members of Pussy Riot.
The video, made by Max Vegliois & Moe Ahmed, has just been completed & Louder Than War, who were one of the first places in the UK to cover Pussy Riot’s case, have been granted an exclusive on it.
Accompanying the video come these notes:
Maria Alyokhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, two members of the punk collective Pussy Riot have been sent to remote prison camps to serve their sentences.
Both were convicted of hooliganism motivated by religious hatred for performing a punk prayer at Christ the Saviour Cathedral in Moscow.
They will now serve the rest of their terms in the camps where conditions are reportedly terrible.
Kerry McCarthy MP, Dorian Lynskey, Joan Smith and John Robb recount Pussy Riot’s remarkable rise.
With thanks to:
Kerry McCarthy, Labour Member of Parliament – @KerryMP
Dorian Lynskey, Guardian Music Writer – @Dorianlynskey
Joan Smith, Author and Columnist – @polblonde
John Robb, Musician and Writer – @johnrobb77
Producer/ Director: Mohammed Ahmed – @mohammedahmed41
Producer/Director: Max Veglio – @maxveglio
Editor: Nick Lewis
Graphics Designer: Robin Littlewood
A new Ha’aretz poll indicates a majority of Jewish Israelis favour apartheid – but that’s nothing new.
Israel arpatheid state
A poll of Jewish Israelis published last week in Ha’aretz newspaper created headlines round the world with its findings of support among the public for discriminatory policies. Some greeted the survey’s results as vindication of claims made by critics of the Jewish state; others pointed to what they said were flaws in the methodology and how the statistics were being presented.
There is, however, no need for such a poll in order to reach the conclusion that Israel is guilty of apartheid: The facts speak for themselves.
Firstly, a clarification about terminology. To talk about Israeli apartheid is not to suggest a precise equivalence with the policies of the historic regime in South Africa. Rather, apartheid is a crime under international law independent of any comparison (see here, here, here, and here). As former UN Special Rapporteur John Dugard put it in the foreword to my first book: “It is Israel’s own version of a system that has been universally condemned.”
It is impossible to understand this “system” without remembering that its foundations were laid by the ethnic cleansing that took place in the Nakba. With the establishment of Israel in 1948, up to 90 per cent of the Palestinians who would have been inside the new state were expelled, their properties confiscated, and their return prevented. As these refugees were denied citizenship and their right to return ignored, Israel passed legislation to open up the new borders to Jews everywhere.
Thus the only reason why Israel, a so-called “liberal democracy”, has a Jewish majority at all is because of the forced – and ongoing – physical exclusion of Palestinians from their homes. From 1948 to 1953, 95 per cent of new Jewish communities were established on expelled Palestinians’ property. The amount of land belonging to Palestinian refugees expropriated by Israel’s “Absentee Property Law” amounts to around 20 per cent of the country’s total pre-1967 territory.
Rearranging demographics
Today, around one in four Palestinians with Israeli citizenship are “present absentees”, their homes and land confiscated. By the mid-1970s, the average Arab community inside Israel had lost around 65 to 75 per cent of its land. Since 1948, over 700 Jewish communities have been established inside Israel’s pre-67 borders – but only seven for Palestinian citizens (and those in order to concentrate the Bedouin population in the Negev).
Over the decades, the Israeli state has sought to “Judaise” areas of the country deemed to have “too high” a number of Palestinian citizens compared to Jews, particularly the Negev and Galilee regions. One strategy in the Galilee was to establish mitzpim (Hebrew: “look out”) communities whose goal, according to a Jewish Agency planner, was to “keep Arab villages from attaining territorial continuity and attract a ‘strong’ population to the Galilee’.”
Meanwhile, tens of thousands of Bedouin citizens live in dozens of “unrecognised villages”, mainly in the Negev (though “non recognition” is not restricted to the south). They suffer from home demolitions and a lack of basic infrastructure. A serious new threat is the Prawer Plan, with planned mass evictions threatening up to 70,000 with forced relocation and the destruction of their villages.
This planned ethnic cleansing is driven by the sort of anxiety Shimon Peres expressed to US officials in 2005, when he worried that Israel had “lost” land in the Negev “to the Bedouin” and would need to take steps to “relieve” the “demographic threat”. A senior official in the Jewish Agency in 2003 explained a new Judaisation initiative on the grounds that “the birthrate of the Bedouins and Arabs in the Galilee is much faster than the Jewish” and thus “we are quickly losing our majority there”.
Another element in this regime of ethnic privilege is admissions committees, which operate in around 70 per cent of Israeli towns and permit (or deny) residency on the basis of social “suitability”. By “rejecting applications” from Palestinian citizens, the committees “have notoriously been used to exclude Arabs from living in rural Jewish communities” (Human Rights Watch).
Their role is now legislated for in around 42 per cent of communities, and those supporting the law were not shy to express their motivations. MK Israel Hasson (from the “centrist” Kadima party) said the law’s purpose is to “preserve the ability to realise the Zionist dream in practice”, while MK David Rotem (from FM Lieberman’s party Yisrael Beiteinu), said Jews and Palestinians should be “separate but equal”, affirming that “Israel is a Jewish and democratic state, not a state of all its citizens”.
Separate but separate
Israel’s institutionalised racism has serious consequences even for Palestinians’ choices about who to marry. In January, the High Court – a forum praised by “liberal” defenders of Israeli apartheid – upheld a law severely restricting Israeli citizens’ ability to live with spouses from the West Bank and Gaza. In the majority opinion, Justice Asher Grunis wrote that “human rights are not a prescription for national suicide” – referring to the “demographic” spectre that haunts apartheid regimes.
Kadima MK Otniel Schneller praised the decision for “articulat[ing] the rationale of separation between the peoples and the need to maintain a Jewish majority and the [Jewish] character of the state”, linking this to the formulation “two states for two peoples”. Ironically, this slogan of Zionist “moderates” (yes, it’s all relative) echoes the rhetoric of Apartheid South Africa’s politicians, who warned that “either we must follow the course of equality, which must eventually mean national suicide for the white race, or we must take the course of separation”.
The room for dissent is limited. In 2007, Israel’s internal security agency the Shin Bet stated it would “thwart the activity of any group or individual seeking to harm the Jewish and democratic character of the state of Israel, even if such activity is sanctioned by the law”. In 2008, the agency’s then-chief told US officials that many of the “Arab-Israeli population” are taking their rights “too far”. Israeli law provides for the banning of electoral candidates who deny “the existence of the State of Israel as the state of the Jewish people”, and proposed bills can be rejected on the grounds that they undermine “Israel’s existence as the state of the Jewish people”.
While the Ha’aretz survey shocked some, it should not come as a surprise: Such views often emerge in similar polls. Examples in recent years include over half of Jewish Israelis saying marriage to an Arab is “equal to national treason”, 78 per cent of Jewish Israelis opposing Arabs joining the government, 62 per cent of Jewish Israelis encouraging the emigration of Palestinian citizens, and 36 per cent of Jewish Israelis being in favour of revoking the voting rights of non-Jews.
Such results are entirely expected when you look at the discourse propagated by Israel’s leaders. PM Netanyahu, as finance minister in 2003, described Palestinian citizens as a “demographic problem”, while in 2009, the current Housing Minister declared it a “national duty” to “prevent the spread” of Palestinian citizens. In 2010, the chair of the Knesset’s “Lobby for Housing Solutions for Young Couples” stated that “it is a national interest to encourage Jews to move to” places where “the Arab population is on the rise”. When Ehud Olmert was mayor of Jerusalem, he considered it “a matter of concern when the non-Jewish population rises a lot faster than the Jewish population”.
The same racist logic is behind the kinds of warnings issued by PM Netanyahu that “illegal infiltrators” – non-Jewish African refugees and migrants – could threaten the country’s existence “as a Jewish and democratic state”. In other countries, this is the language of the fringe far-Right; In Israel, to discuss the “threat” posted by Palestinian citizens and other non-Jews is routine.
Race-based policies
And what of Israeli policies in the Occupied Territories, under military rule for 45 years? In Jerusalem, constantly touted by Israel’s leaders as the country’s “eternal” capital, Palestinian residents in the illegally annexed East face planning restrictions, home demolitions, discrimination in municipal services, and the community-shattering Apartheid Wall. Speaking to BBC’s Hardtalk in July 2011, Mayor Barkat openly confirmed that he seeks to maintain a Jewish majority in the city – imagine if the mayors of London, New York or Paris stated that Jewish residents must not rise above a certain proportion.
There are over 300,000 Israeli citizens living in West Bank settlements (plus 200,000 in East Jerusalem), a network of colonies among a Palestinian population without citizenship. Palestinians’ freedom of movement is controlled by a bureaucratic “permit” system, enforced by some 500 checkpoints and obstacles. The vast majority of the Apartheid Wall, 700km in length and 70 per cent completed or under construction, lies inside the occupied West Bank. The illegality of this de facto annexation was confirmed by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in their 2004 advisory opinion.
In 60 per cent of the West Bank (“Area C”), Palestinians must apply for building permits from Israeli occupation forces; yet according to a 2008 UN report, 94 per cent of applications are denied. Building illegally means demolition. In 2011, Israel demolished 620 Palestinian-owned structures in the West Bank, part of what the EU has called a “forced transfer of the native population”. Meanwhile, cranes and diggers are put to work in thriving, illegal, Israeli settlements.
Israel also exploits the West Bank’s natural resources, such as its “discriminatory” control of water access and usage: Palestinians, over 80 per cent of the population in the West Bank, are restricted to 20 per cent of the water from the main underground aquifer. Human Rights Watch have called Israel’s regime in the West Bank a “two-tier system” where Palestinians face “systematic discrimination” (the same terminology they have used to describe policies inside the pre-67 borders as well).
The Gaza Strip, home to some 1.7 million Palestinians a majority of whom are refugees, is blockaded by the Israeli military behind perimeter fences and “buffer zones” (including at sea). Restrictions on movement began in the early 1990s, with an intensified siege being implemented in 2006-’07. Until today, Israel blocks almost all exports from the territory, and pursues what it calls a “separation” policy for the purpose of cutting off Gaza from the West Bank.
In March, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) described Israel’s violations of the right to equality in unprecedented terms. Noting “segregation between Jewish and non-Jewish communities” and a lack of “equal access to land and property” inside Israel’s pre-67 borders, CERD found a regime of “de facto segregation” in the West Bank severe enough to prompt a reminder of the “prohibition” of “apartheid”.
Across the whole of historic Palestine – Israel, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip – the State of Israel rules over around 12 million people whose rights and privileges are determined on a discriminatory basis. Millions more are excluded from the country all together (because they are Palestinian). It is a regime intended to maintain the domination of one group at the expense of another. It is apartheid.
The International Literature Festival Berlin has launched a worldwide reading for Pussy Riot to take place on 12 December 2012.
In the past weeks the Russian judiciary has missed the chance to end the infamous prosecution of Pussy Riot. The sentence in the first instance as such, and the fact that there was a trial at all, is a disgrace! It is another example of how Putin’s system is trying to shut up a whole generation of artists and keep them from expressing themselves in art, culture and civil society.
The international literature festival berlin, writers and intellectuals from the whole world pay reverence to Nadeshda Tolokonnikova, Jekatarina Samuzewicz, and Maria Alechina, whose artistic initiative in the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour has shown that there is another Russia, a country that does not tolerate bans on freedom of opinion and the ways these manifest themselves in and are imposed by the church or the ruling classes. In view of the dictatorial traits of Putin’s regime, evidenced by Russia’s permanent veto in the UN Security Council in association with China, which shows the country’s particular understanding of democracy and humanity, we need to express our solidarity with the punk band and the civil society institutions, who are being criminalized by a new law. This is a European and an international necessity!
In August 2012 the ilb launched an appeal and invited artists and intellectuals, schools and universities, radio and TV stations, theatres and other cultural institutions to join us for a worldwide reading in solidarity with Pussy Riot and the democratic groups in Russia on 12th December 2012. It was the 12th of December when, in 1993, in a general referendum, the constitution of the Russian Federation was adopted by the DUMA. It is not Pussy Riot who is undermining Russian democracy, but those who are trying to kill the achievements made by the soft revolution at the end of the last century.
We will read parts of the statements of Pussy Riot at court. The ilb will publish the texts in English, German, Russian, and other languages on its website http://www.literaturfestival.com from 15 November 2012.
All those who want to join us for the reading, please send your proposal for a performance until 30/11/2012 to:
Hector Abad, Zsuzsa Bánk, Jeanne Benameur, Mirko Bonné, James Byrne, Amir Hassan Cheheltan, Bora Cosic, Marie Darrieussecq, Dorothea Dieckmann, Arnd, Gretel & Beatrice Dossi, Reimer Eilers, Peter Faecke, Dieter M. Gräf, Gintaras Grajauskas, Lars Gustafsson, Alban Nikolai Herbst, Uwe Herms, Hendrik Jackson, Willi Jasper, Elfriede Jelinek, Lidija Klasic, Peter Kleiß, Mario Vargas Llosa, Ekke Maaß, Norman Manea, Alberto Manguel, Sonja Margolina, Amanda Michalopoulou, Bart Moeyaert, Melinda Nadj Abonji, Tim Parks, Elisabeth Plessen, Martin Pollack, Santiago Roncagliolo, Annika Scheffel, Robert Schindel, Jenny Schon, Raoul Schrott, Sjón, Rebecca Solnit, C.K. Stead, Antje Rávic Strubel, Hans Thill, Ted van Lieshout, Vladimir Vertlib, Herbert Wiesner, Oksana Zabuzhko and Jenni Zylka.
Призыв ко всемирным чтениям в поддержку «Pussy Riot» 12-го декабря 2012
Aufruf zu einer weltweiten Lesung für Pussy Riot am 12. Dezember 2012!
Please ensure this worldwide appeal is widely circulated.
Last week, the two members of Pussy Riot still in prison were sent to penal colonies, the modern-day Gulags, leading to fears for their safety.
