A censorship chronicle incorporating academic freedom stories from Agence France Presse (AFP), BBC, Chronicle of Higher Education, Guardian, Index on Censorship, Knight Center for Journalism, Network for Education & Academic Rights (Near), Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), Reporters sans frontières (RSF), Southeast Asian Press Alliance (Seapa), Times of India, Voice of America and other organisations affiliated with the International Freedom of Expression Exchange (IFEX)
Azerbaijan
Professor Rafiq Aliyev was demoted on 7 November 2011 after speaking out about the case of imprisoned activist and blogger Bakhtiyar Hajiyev. Aliyev, who gave an interview on 1 November about the unjust imprisonment of the activist, was stripped of his chairmanship of a robotics research group at the Oil Academy. (RFE/RL)
Bahrain
In May 2012, a letter from human rights activist and teacher Mahdi Abu Deeb to the king of Bahrain was smuggled out of Abu Deeb’s prison cell. The president of the Bahrain Teachers’ Association was arrested in April 2011 for taking part in pro-democracy protests. Charged with 10 years’ imprisonment for ‘halting the education process’ and ‘attempting to overthrow the regime by force’, his letter called for the king to honour human rights. There were reports that Abu Deeb had been tortured while in prison. (Human Rights First)
Jaleela al Salman was released on 1 November 2011. The vice president of the Bahrain Teachers’ Association was arrested on 18 October 2011 without a warrant. On 25 September, a military court sentenced her to three years in prison on charges of ‘inciting hatred towards the regime’, ‘calling for a teachers’ strike’, and ‘attempting to overthrow the ruling system by force’. Al Salman was initially detained from 29 March to 21 August after going on hunger strike and has been outspoken about the state of human rights in the country. (Bahrain Center for Human Rights, Index on Censorship)
About 63 students who actively supported the protest movement in 2011 were notified that they had been expelled at the beginning of the autumn academic term. Despite a statement from the king saying many of them should be reinstated, officials at Bahrain Polytechnic refused to reinstate many of the dismissed students. Several were penalised for posting comments on social network sites. Some students reported that when they returned to university, they were asked to sign new code of conduct forms, agreeing to not take part in political activities. (Chronicle of Higher Education, Index on Censorship, Voice of America)
Chad
Two students were detained for organising protests in May 2011. Bebkika Passoua Alexis and Nedoumbayel Nekaou were accused of possessing documents urging Chadians to take part in pro-democracy protests inspired by events in Tunisia and Egypt. There were allegations that the students had been tortured while in prison. Their trial had been postponed three times because security officials failed to appear in court. (Amnesty International)
China
Authorities instructed the Beijing Institute of Technology to cancel inter-university debates scheduled to take place on 9 April 2011. The event was planned to coincide with the anniversary of the 1911 revolution, which marked the beginning of the demise of the Manchu dynasty. Sixteen universities were due to take part in the debates, which were organised by the Communist Youth League of Beijing. The move followed a spate of arrests in the wake of calls for Arab spring-inspired protests. (Near)
Cyprus
A former university rector accused authorities from the city of Famagusta of censorship after his lecture about an explosion at a naval facility was cancelled. Stavros Zenios, who was informed of the cancellation on 13 October 2011, spoke on the same subject in Larnaca on 12 October. (About Larnaca)
Dominican Republic
In February 2012, the Dominican Journalism Guild proposed a law that would require mandatory membership for all journalists. Under the law, those working without accreditation from an approved journalism course or relevant undergraduate degree would face penalties and possible prison sentences. The Inter American Press Association declared the move unconstitutional, stating that all citizens have the right to disseminate information. (Knight Center for Journalism)
Egypt
The screening of award-winning Iranian film A Separation was cancelled on 8 March 2012. The board of administration at Cairo University’s Faculty of Pharmacy revoked the screening licence after fundamentalist groups at the university complained that the film promotes secularism, Shiism and supports Bashar al Assad’s regime in Syria. (Arabic Network for Human Rights Information)
India
The government announced in May 2012 that plans were under way to create an academic council or institute that would rule on textbook content. The move followed uproar over a cartoon published in a politics studies textbook, depicting iconic Dalit leader BR Ambekdar in a negative light. On 15 May 2012, education minister Kapil Sibal called for the cartoon to be removed and questioned the validity of including cartoons in textbooks. (BBC, Times of India)
Jadavpur University professor Ambikesh Mahapatra was arrested on 13 April 2012, accused of circulating cartoons that mocked West Bengal’s chief minister. (Hindustan Times, Times of India)
Iran
Graduate student Omid Kokabee was sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment on 13 May 2012. The physics student was found guilty of conspiring with Israel against Iran. He had studied in Spain and the United States but frequently travelled back to Iran, particularly over the course of 2010. Kokabee had been detained without trial since February 2011. (Nature)
Setareh Elyasi was expelled from the University of Cultural Heritage in December 2011. University authorities accused Elyasi of causing disorder and had warned her to discontinue any student activism. She had been waiting for her diploma to be issued for two years. (International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran)
Seven Baha’i lecturers were found guilty of membership to a ‘deviant sect’ and of ‘taking action against the security of the country’ in November 2011. Vahid Mahmoud and Kamran Mortezaie were given sentences of five years’ imprisonment and four-year terms were handed down to Mahmoud Badavam, Nooshin Khadem, Farhad Sedghi, Riaz Sobhani and Ramin Zibaie. The academics, who are affiliated with the Baha’i Institute for Higher Education, were originally detained in June 2011. (Iran Press Watch)
Political science student Peyman Aref was punished with 74 lashes for insulting President Ahmadinejad on 9 October 2011. Aref was arrested in the aftermath of the 2009 disputed election and sentenced in March 2010. He was also charged with insulting the president after he wrote a letter to Ahmadinejad, criticising the government’s treatment of student protesters during the elections. (Guardian)
In September 2011, a judge ruled that prominent student activist Majid Tavakoli will be banned from studying at any of the country’s universities upon his release from prison. Tavakoli is serving an eight-and-a-half year jail sentence for a range of convictions, including insulting the country’s establishment. He was arrested at a student gathering at Amir Kabir University in 2009. (RFE/RL)
The spokesman for an Iranian reformist student organisation Abdollah Momeni was refused medical leave from Evin Prison on 12 July 2011. Momeni was arrested in 2009 following the contested presidential election. Medical care was thought to have been denied because Momeni wrote an open letter to Aytollah Khamenei about his treatment in prison. (Near)
Israel
Tel Aviv University asked lecturers to report on students who organised a demonstration in December 2011. The university requested faculty members in the philosophy, literature and history departments to view a YouTube video showing students encouraging their peers to take part in protests and identify students with whom they were familiar. The university stated that protest was illegal on campus if not authorised. (Ha’aretz)
Malaysia
Demonstrators at a university in Kuala Lumpur were attacked and detained on 1 January 2012. Students from Sultan Idris University were calling for academic freedom and demonstrating in support of Adam Adli, a student who was criticised and threatened with violence for removing a flag bearing a photograph of the prime minister from the headquarters of the United Malays National Organisation, one of the country’s major political parties. (Malaysian Insider)
Student Adam Adli received threats and was repeatedly harassed after he replaced a flag bearing the president’s face with a flag calling for academic freedom on 17 December 2011. Adam Adli lowered the flag during a demonstration against the government’s proposed amendments to the country’s Universities and University Colleges Act, which students say impacts on their free expression. Adli’s family were also thought to have been harassed. The Universiti Pendidikan Sultran Idris student issued a statement to the press, claiming that a plainclothes policeman had been among those who had intimidated him. (Free Malaysia Today)
An appeal court ruled on 30 October 2011 that it was unconstitutional to prohibit students from political activities. University students launched a campaign calling for the 1971 Universities and University Colleges Act to be repealed and filed a lawsuit against the International University of Malaysia in 2010 after being threatened with legal action for political campaigning. Charges against them were dropped. (AFP)
Mauritius
The ministry of education announced that it was considering cancelling some courses at the University of Mauritius. Anthropology, history, international affairs and political sciences were among the areas of research affected by the proposals. Ministry officials claimed the subjects did not offer students enough job prospects. (University World News)
Palestine
On 2 April 2012, Israeli security forces raided Quds Net News Agency, a newly-launched media centre in East Jerusalem, set up by al Quds University. The raid took place on the same day the community radio, television and online network organised a ceremony to launch the services. (RSF)
South Africa
University professors criticised the Protection of Information Act on 18 December 2011, arguing that the legislation threatens academic freedom. It will particularly affect research focusing on security issues, legal research into classified documents and government transparency, according to academics. The act was passed on 22 November 2011. (University World News, World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers)
South Korea
The Ministry of Education, Science and Technology issued a list of educational institutions banned from admitting foreign students at the beginning of January 2012. The move followed a four-month investigation into hundreds of educational facilities, 200 of them universities, conducted by a committee tasked with restructuring higher education. The committee was set up after students protested in June 2012, demanding lower tuition fees. The government stated that the restructuring was part of plans to improve higher education ahead of the next presidential election. (CS Monitor, University World News)
Syria
Nuclear physics professor Ous Abdel Karim Khalil was shot and killed in Homs on 28 September 2011. In the same week, the deputy rector in the architecture department at al-Ba’ath University, Mohamed Ali Aqil, and Nael Dakhi, who taught at a petrochemical institute, were killed. Activists regarded the murders as a renewed attack against the scientific community in Syria, which had been targeted in the 1980s. Opposition politicians claimed that up to 10 academics had been killed in September, most of them in Homs. There were also reports that more than 70 students from universities in Damascus, Homs and Aleppo had been arrested for taking part in protests. (Ahram Online, BBC, University World News)
Thailand
Blogger Norawase Yospiyasathien was arrested on lèse majesté charges on 5 August 2011. The arrest came after the deputy rector at Kasetsart University filed a suit against the graduate, whose blogposts were published during the last year of his degree and were deemed to be insulting to the monarchy. The rector said he had been pressured by the university council to press charges against him in order to protect the university’s reputation. Yospiyasathien was released on bail on 10 August. He was thought to have been the youngest person arrested on lèse majesté charges. A campaign group highlighted the role of the rector in the arrest. (Seapa)
Togo
The government announced the temporary closure of two universities on 9 December 2011 following student protests over amendments to financial aid policies. Students reported that security forces used teargas to disperse crowds in Lome and Kara. (AFP)
Turkey
On 2 January 2012, police arrested 23 people during a confrontation between nationalist and left-wing students at the Byazit campus of Istanbul University. Most of those arrested were members of the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party and the rest were members of other left-leaning parties. At least one journalist, who was covering the incident, was also arrested. (Bianet, Hurriyet Daily News)
A hundred members of an international network supporting academic freedom staged a demonstration on the opening day of the trial of Büşra Ersanlı, a political scientist at Marmara University in Istanbul. Ersanlı was arrested in October 2011 on terrorism charges. She is accused of supporting the Kurdistan Workers’ Party. If convicted she faces up to 20 years in jail. Other academics, including epidemiologist Onur Hamzaoğlu, have also been targeted. (Nature, Voice of America)
United Kingdom
On 25 June 2012, as the trial was due to begin, London primary school Durand Academy dropped defamation charges against Lambeth Council. The academy had claimed the council’s chief auditor had made a ‘serious allegation of financial impropriety’ when it requested information about Durand’s management. Despite the case being dropped, taxpayers incurred substantial costs because both the claimant and defendant are state-funded bodies, a fact that libel reform campaigners said clearly illustrated the need for urgent change. (Index on Censorship)
Trinity School in Leamington banned a pupil from displaying a dress made of condoms as part of an art exhibition on 17 February 2012. The teenager, Meg Todd, created the dress for an exam project based on the theme ‘contagion’, but was told, along with another student who had incorporated condoms into her artwork, that it was not consistent with the Catholic school’s ethos. (Leamington Courier)
On 16 November 2011, a tribunal ruled that universities must release information about controversial research, including animal testing. The ruling, which followed a lawsuit filed by the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection against Newcastle University, will mean that exemptions from freedom of information requests will become more difficult. The university claimed the decision could put scientists carrying out the research in danger. The president of the Royal Society called for the Freedom of Information Act to be reviewed, insisting that the legislation was being used to intimidate researchers. Newcastle University announced plans to appeal the decision. (Independent, University World News)
Counter-terrorism expert Dr Rod Thornton was suspended on 4 May 2011 after he published a critical report on academic freedom at Nottingham University, particularly looking at the treatment of one of its students and a former employee. The report, which was published on the British International Studies Association website, was taken down after alleged pressure from the university. It focused on the 2008 case of MA student Rizwaan Sabir and Nottingham University staff member Hicham Yezza, who were arrested and detained for six days under the Terrorism Act 2000 after they downloaded and printed three documents, among them ‘The al Qaeda Training Manual’, a publication that was in the public domain and is now stocked by Nottingham University’s library. Thornton’s report criticises the university for not carrying out a risk assessment before consulting police and accuses the university of stifling debate on the matter and silencing anyone who challenges the university’s version of events. (Guardian, Index on Censorship)
United States
On 7 July 2012, a United States federal court ruled that recorded interviews forming part of a research project on the Irish Troubles should be handed over to the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI). In May 2011, the PSNI took legal steps to seize parts of the Boston College Research Project’s archive, material it argued would assist in an investigation into a 1972 murder. Boston College’s oral history project ran from 2001 to 2006, with the aim of collecting material that would build knowledge and understanding around the long-running violent and political conflict in Northern Ireland. It included interviews with both republican and loyalist activists, who were promised that their narratives would remain confidential. Researchers on the project have also appealed part of the lower court’s decision, challenging its ruling that the oral histories genuinely cast enough light on the killing of Ms McConville to outweigh the threat posed to academic freedom. (BBC, Index on Censorship, Times Higher Education)
In May 2012, Tennessee became the second US state to protect the academic freedom of teachers in public schools. The new laws also stipulate that schools have a responsibility to respect opinions, encourage critical thinking and foster debate. Under the legislation, individual teachers are able to discuss the merits of creationism and question aspects of evolution, though changes to the curriculum cannot be instated. (Huffington Post)
In January 2012, an Arizona schools authority ordered the suspension of Mexican-American Studies programmes in a Tucson school district. The decision followed claims that the courses violated a controversial state law and resulted in the banning of several books, including Critical Race Theory by Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic and 500 Years of Chicano History in Pictures edited by Elizabeth Martinez. The ethnic studies courses were accused of promoting the ‘overthrow of the United States government’ and ‘promoting resentment towards a race or class of people’. First Amendment campaigners and some of the authors of the banned books responded by launching the ‘Librotraficante’ movement, smuggling banned books and other books taught as part of the course into Tucson from neighbouring states. (Daily Beast, Guardian, Huffington Post)
Funding was withdrawn from school newspaper the
Beacon
following the publication of an article about pre-marital sex on 8 December 2011. The Student Council at Yeshiva University, an Orthodox Jewish college in New York, took the decision, sparking a campus-wide debate on censorship. (Wall Street Journal)
An advisory panel on biosecurity recommended that research papers on how to create a form of the H5N1 avian-influenza virus be partially censored in December 2011. Though the National Science Advisory was alerted to the dangers of the information being in the public domain by a disease expert and the move was largely supported by the authors of the research, the decision raised concerns among some professionals about the ethics of withholding information that might be used to save lives. (Chronicle of Higher Education)
On 19 September 2011, ten students were prosecuted on charges of ‘conspiring to disturb a meeting’ and ‘disturbing a meeting’. The ‘Irvine 11’ were found guilty after they disrupted a speech delivered by Israeli ambassador Michael Oren at the University of California campus at Irvine. Charges against an 11th student involved in the February 2010 incident were dropped after the student agreed to community service as compensation. (Index on Censorship, LA Times)
An exhibition at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, was first postponed and then cancelled on 14 September 2011 after college administrators claimed the artist used ‘illegally obtained materials’ in his work. Artist Poster Boy’s exhibition ‘Street Alchemy’ included two altered billboards; the guerilla artist admitted that he had stolen raw materials to create his art. (Harvard Courant)
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit against a Missouri school district after it blocked student access to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) content on 16 August 2011. The ACLU filed the complaint on behalf of the Campus Pride organisation and other organisations that discovered their content had been blocked. The Camdentown school district used a filtering system that blocks hundreds of sites containing LGBT-related information, a move that the ACLU identified as unconstitutional. (QNotes)
A US district court heard the case of evangelical Christian James Deferio on 10 August 2011. He had attempted to preach on the campus of the State University of New York at Albany but was told he had to apply for a permit 30 days in advance and pay processing and facility rental fees, leading him to file a First Amendment lawsuit. The university rejected Deferio’s application and announced that it was revising its policy for assessing applications the day before the hearing. Deferio has spoken on a number of US campuses, often displaying signs. The First Amendment provides for open debate in public places. The judge adjourned the hearing, requesting more thorough information from both sides. (Huffington Post)
Edited by Natasha Schmidt
