Ruben Espinosa sustained severe injuries to his face before he was killed, said Dario Ramirez, director of the Article 19 group.

Espinosa was found dead late on Friday in an apartment in Mexico City. Three women who lived in the apartment and their housekeeper also were killed. They appeared to have been tortured and sexually assaulted before being shot, Ramirez said.

All the victims were shot in the head with a 9mm weapon.

But Ramirez was angered when Mexico City prosecutor Rodolfo Rios Garza said on Sunday he was pursuing all lines of investigation into the killings, including crimes against women and a possible robbery.

Ramirez said Espinosa’s work and the threats that drove him out of his home state of Veracruz should be the main line of investigation. He had worked in the state for eight years, including for prominent newsmagazine Proceso, before fleeing to Mexico City.

Rios never acknowledged that Espinosa was seeking refuge in Mexico City, saying he came to the capital for “professional opportunities”.

When dealing with journalists’ killings, authorities in Mexico are often quick to discard their work as a motive, even though the country is the most dangerous in Latin America for reporters. In large swaths of the country, crime and corruption are never reported, as the media has been bought or intimidated into silence.

“I feel there is a disdain toward investigating the journalistic motives or even motives that had to do with his displacement,” said Dario Ramirez, director of the Article 19 free press advocacy group. “The issue is that he was at risk and after a month he was assassinated. These are coincidences that can’t be discarded by saying he was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Article 19 said it published an alert about Espinosa on 15 June after he reported unknown people following him in Veracruz, taking his photograph and harassing him outside his home in Xalapa, the state capital.

Veracruz has been a dangerous state for reporters. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, 11 journalists have been killed there since 2010, all during the administration of Governor Javier Duarte – the most recent just a month ago. Espinosa is the second Veracruz journalist to be found dead outside of the state.

Espinosa’s killing has raised tension among reporters who long have considered Mexico’s capital to be a refuge from media intimidation and violence elsewhere in Mexico.

Article and image reposted from TheGuardian.com

This weekend artist Tania Bruguera was arrested once again in Cuba, along with dozens of other activists, and was manhandled by the police. As with most information about Bruguera over the past few months, the news — which Hyperallergic has not been able to independently verify — comes via the Facebook page for her project #YoTambienExijo (“I also demand”), which was a planned participatory performance on New Year’s Eve in Havana’s Revolution Square that led to Bruguera being arrested multiple times. Cuban authorities also confiscated her passport and are allegedly pressing charges against her.

On Sunday, June 7, Bruguera was visiting and observing a weekly silent protest by the Ladies in White, a group of female relatives of imprisoned dissidents who attend mass every Sunday at the St. Rita of Cascia Church in Havana wearing white, then march through the streets with photos of their missing loved ones. Bruguera attended in part because she’d heard that the Ladies in White had been attacked and arrested by police for the last eight Sundays, and this one was no different: according to a Facebook post, police descended in a raid “which included 3 buses, several patrol cars, 2 motorcycle police and more than a hundred agents of the National Revolutionary Police.” Bruguera was not beaten — the Facebook post says she received “special treatment,” and in an interview with PanAm Post, she clarified that an officer specifically said, “not her, not her, she’s Tania.” Still, she says she was pulled by the hair, thrown into a bus, and handcuffed. The Facebook post claims that she has “several hematomas” on her arms due to her handling by police, and another one shows photos of the severe bruising.

Bruguera had also been attending the Ladies in White protest as research for a new project she’s working on, “to present a law which will penalize violence due to political hate and which would propitiate freedom of expression in public spaces,” according to a Facebook post. The legal research is one of two branches of her current work in Cuba; the other is the establishment of the Hannah Arendt International Institute for Artivism, which she inaugurated with a 100-hour reading of the philosopher’s landmark book The Origins of Totalitarianism in her home beginning on May 20, Cuban Independence Day. The Havana Biennial opened two days later, and two days after that, when she finished reading, Bruguera was arrested again. (On May 23 she was also denied entry to the Museum of Fine Arts for an opening to which she’d been personally invited.)

Those in charge of the #YoTambienExijo Facebook page have been stressing the importance of framing Bruguera’s actions as art, not politics: they’ve posted a 2010 “Political Art Statement” by Bruguera that outlines her thoughts on political art — “It is intervening in the process that is created after people think the art experience is over” — and a clarification about her current position (translated by Hyperallergic):

The only group Tania Bruguera belongs to is the platform #IAlsoDemand, which is the structure of her work. Tania does not belong to any group of opposition, nor of dissidence, nor of activism in Cuba. Tania is an artist who works in an independent manner with EVERYONE … Tania is not an opposition, nor a dissident, but an artist who works with political art and who believes that art can help transform the social and political reality we live in.

Bruguera was released around 4pm on Sunday after her arrest. Forty-seven Ladies in White and other activists were detained along with her, according to PanAm Post.

Article and image reposted from Hyperallergic.com

Photo credit: Charles Platiau/Reuters. Re-posted from NyDailyNews.com

We call on artists, arts venues, protestors and the police to work together as a matter of urgency, to stand up for artistic free expression and to ensure that the right to protest does not override the right to free expression. This means that every possible step is taken to ensure that the art work remains open for all to see, while protesters voices are heard.

We must prevent the repetition of recent ‘successful protests’ in which the artist is silenced by threats of violence towards the institution, the work or the artist him or herself, as we saw with Exhibit B in London, and The City, the hip-hop opera by the Jerusalem-based Incubator Theatre company, which was disrupted and consequently cancelled earlier this year in Edinburgh.

Greater clarity around policing of controversial arts events is an essential first step. In the United Kingdom there is nothing at present in Association of Chief Police Officers guidance relating to the particulars of policing cultural events, except in reference to football matches and music festivals.

Controversial art triggers debate – and in the case of Exhibit B there was a huge outpouring of feeling in opposition to the work. A contemporary institution should anticipate and provide for this. Detailed planning such as this is important if the arts venue is to cater for both the artwork and the debate it generates.

We are concerned that unless arts institutions prepare procedures to manage controversy, including to develop strategies for working with the police to control violence, our culture will suffer as a result and become less dynamic, relevant and responsive.

Article 19, freeDimensional, Freemuse, Index on Censorship, National Coalition Against Censorship (US), Vivarta

For further information, please call 0207 260 2660

About Artsfex

ARTSFEX is an international civil society network actively concerned with the right of artists to freedom of expression as well as with issues relating to human rights and freedoms. ARTSFEX aims to promote, protect and defend artistic freedom of expression, and freedom of assembly, thought, and opinion in and across all art disciplines, globally. http://artsfex.org/

– keep messages short with simple message wishing El Haqed well and that he will soon be free.
– no political or religious comment or images ( tourist cards are appreciated….)
– Give return address/email.

Send to:

 Mouad Belghouate

Prison local Oukacha 

Quartier Oukacha 

20 580 Casablanca, Morocco 

Senegal exhibition, part of the Dak’Art Biennale, closed due to pressure from extremist Islamic groups.

By: Anny Shaw

The Senegalese government has shut down one of the first exhibitions in Africa to focus on homosexuality on the continent. The move comes several weeks after an attack on the Dakar gallery by Muslim fundamentalists, says the French-Algerian artist Kader Attia. “Precarious Imaging: Visibility and Media Surrounding African Queerness” opened at Raw Material Company on 11 May, but a day later, the non-profit art centre was vandalised and the building damaged, according to Attia, whose video about the lives of transsexuals in Algiers and Mumbai was included in the show. No one was hurt in the attack.

Following pressure from extremist Islamic organisations, the exhibition, which was part of the informal programme for Dak’Art 2014, the 11th Biennale of Contemporary African Art (9 May-8 June), was cancelled on 31 May. According to the news service Times24.info, the Senegalese government also ordered the suspension of all exhibitions in the biennial that refer to homosexuality. Raw Material Space remains closed, according to a spokeswoman for the biennial, who could not confirm if any further exhibitions had been shut down.

“Senegal is well-known for its peaceful and moderated Islam. Such an aggressive attack is absolutely unexpected, as is the government’s decision to shut down all the exhibitions in the biennial that deal with homosexuality,” Attia says. “It is highly concerning that a country that has always been protected from fundamentalism is now opening the door through an official path.”

The aim of the “Precarious Imaging” exhibition, which was co-organsied by Koyo Kouoh, the artistic director at Raw Material Company, and the independent curator Ato Malinda, was to shed light on a persecuted African minority. Homosexuality is illegal in Senegal, as it is in 37 other African countries, according to Amnesty International. Malinda told The Art Newspaper in April that a leading academic had advised the gallery against holding the exhibition. “The show will cause controversy, but we will not censor ourselves,” Malinda said at the time.

Alongside Attia’s video, the exhibition featured photographs of gay men from Lagos by the Nigerian artist Andrew Esiebo; a photographic series of black lesbian and transgender women by the South African activist and photographer Zanele Muholi; a video of Egyptian women smoking by the Egyptian-American artist Amanda Kerdahi M.; and works from Jim Chuchu’s “Pagan” series. Raw Material Company could not be reached for comment at the time of publication.

Text and image reposted from TheArtNewspaper.com

Photo credit: Nigerian photographer Andrew Esiebo’s ongoing series “Who We Are” portrays gay men from Lagos

Víctor “Crack” Rodríguez is facing up to six years in prison for a performance piece.   After the general election in El Salvador that split the winning left party from the right by a margin of less than 1% percent, tensions in the country are high, especially amongst the nation’s community of artists, who are rallying to defend Rodríguez, one of San Salvador’s celebrated contemporary artists.

On March 9th, 2014 Rodriguez walked in to a ballot station and announced, “this is an artist action,” then proceeded to eat half of his ballot in front of polling station onlookers before casting the remaining half.  A video of the artist’s performance went viral.  But the situation quickly turned ugly as the Salvadoran legal system reacted, accusing the artist of electoral fraud — a criminal offence punishable by up to six years in prison.

Renowned Salvadoran artist Simon Vega is appalled by the charges:

The fact that many of us feel there is not one political party or candidate in which we can believe or respect yet having the authorities tell us that the vote is “the people’s most powerful weapon,” makes many of us identify with his action. According to the law, “Crack” could be facing from 2 to 6 years in prison for expressing himself in this way, how senseless! We won’t allow it. I think the action is one of the most important, consequent and effective works of contemporary art in Central America’s history, no doubt.

The artists’s collaborators Ernesto Bautista, Mauricio Kabistan, and Melissa Guevara, fellow members of the collective The Fire Theory, have created a petition in order for the art community at large to show their appreciation for the artist’s intention. The artists are hoping to use this petition as evidence to show that Rodríguez is a seasoned artist and that this “call to action” forms part of his practice and is not a crime.

see the whole article here: http://hyperallergic.com/116387/salvadoran-artist-faces-prison-after-eating-voting-ballot/

Just a few days after all the works by Saudi publisher 

Numerous news sources were reporting the removal of the books, while images and videos circulating on Twitter purported to show the protests against Darwish’s ouevre as well as the packing-up of Darwish’s books.

The order was reportedly given Wednesday to remove Darwish’s books from the fair after protestors objected to alleged blasphemy found in his works. A large crowd gathered, and security reportedly had to be called in. After that, the PVPV ordered the books removed.

This came not long after the Arab Network for Research and Publishing (ANRP) stall was removed from the fair and all the house’s books confiscated. In response to the ANRP seizure, Saudi Minister of Culture and Information Dr. Abdulaziz Khoja released a statement that said, in part, “the Kingdom’s security is more important than anything, and trying to destabilize our unity can not be tolerated.”

BY MLYNXQUALEY on MARCH 13, 2014

Text and image reposted from arablit.wordpress.com

Sushmita Banerjee, the writer of a popular book about her dramatic escape from the Taliban in the 1990s, was shot dead on Wednesday night, police announced on Thursday.

“We found her bullet-riddled body near [a religious school] on the outskirts of Sharan city [Paktika’s provincial capital] this morning,” provincial police chief Dawlat Khan Zadran told the AFP news agency.

Banerjee, 49, was a fairly well-known writer whose book Kabuliwala’s Bengali Wife, about her escape from the Taliban was made into a Bollywood film in 2003.

Police on Thursday said that the book may have been the reason she was targeted, saying they had spoken with her husband.

“Our investigation […] indicates that the militants had grievances against her for something she had written or told in the past, which was then turned into a film,” the provincial police chief said.

“She had been shot 20 times and some of her hair had been ripped off by the militants,” Zadran said.

She was married to Afghan businessman Jaanbaz Khan and had recently moved back to live with him in Paktika province, reportedly to run a health clinic there.

Text and image reposted from Aljazeera.com