Showing posts with label government. Show all posts
Showing posts with label government. Show all posts

UEL PEN 2015 - Setting The Tone

Posted: Friday, 16 October 2015 by Unknown in Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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Hello and welcome to a new year of UEL English PEN, the final straw that broke the back of student apathy on campus. At our first official meeting (and chance to swap summer stories) we opened the floor to our members, new and old, to have a discussion about the direction that UEL PEN will take this year. In between some incredible poetry from our feature act Spike Zepheniah Stevenson and host of talented open mic’ers, we concluded that through its social media and regular poetry readings, UEL PEN will be a hub for engaged students to organise, learn, and rejuvenate, providing an online and offline space for blistering poetry, challenging debate, and active organising and campaigning.

In the face of increased pressures on students from our overtly financially driven university, to the genuinely Orwellian on-campus thought-policing and physical policing sanctioned by Conservative governmental policy, UEL PEN aims to battle back against the creeping attacks on fundamental freedoms students are supposed to have at university. We believe that our students should feel free to exercise their freedoms to write and read without university officials looming overhead who will be forced to report students who are “vocally or actively opposing fundamental British values” under the government’s new Prevent programme. Apart from the obvious reasons of being unimplementable, lamentable and widely accepted by education professionals to be a threat to independent thought, Prevent presumes that “British values” are anything but subjective, and formed in the public consciousness, which as any student will tell you, is not one codified viewpoint.    
 
Students should even feel safe in their right to offend with free speech, while wilfully misattributing the well-known aphorism “I disagree with what you say, but I defend to the death your right to say it” to Voltaire, and thus offending humanities lectures the world over. Freedom of speech is not a political or legislative game to be played out by politicians, vice-chancellors and assorted middle-management others, it is the bedrock of a worthwhile education and fulfilling university experience. When the Home Secretary proudly proclaims at a gathering of the party of government, “Students, yes, overstayers, no, and the universities must make this happen”, it implies that these institutions, apparently grounded in the pursuit of knowledge and self-betterment, may be forced to act upon this government’s worst political scapegoating tactics. Apart from being clearly detrimental to students, the xenophobic positions of Tory party policy (in reference to migration and counter-extremism especially) will disproportionately affect international students in a number of ways, and unless Theresa May clarifies the vague wording of her speech, international students (who can be categorised as economic migrants) may face effective deportation at the end of their degrees. UEL PEN will fight for cohesion and community on campus, where a diverse group of students is essential to any real university experience.

Right, now that my anti-governmental rant is out of the way, back to UEL PEN updates! On September 25th we held our first open mic event of the year, “UEL PEN: Set The Tone” at the UELSU, with over 40 dedicated listeners who may or may not have been there primarily for free pizza, but definitely reaped the benefits of experiencing our feature act, poet and illustrator Spike Zepheniah Stevenson who read and sung a selection of poems dealing with everything from our reliance on ever-atomising technology, and the never-ending stream of iPhones (“Technophobe”), to “Drawing A Crowd” where Spike sketched our wonderful audience while introducing himself in flawlessly uptempo rap, with ad-libbed lines for added effect. As always, our open mic'ers surprised, inspired and brought their best. Alongside original pieces, we had a reading of Sarah Kay’s legendary spoken word piece “If I Had A Daughter” that brought some screw-faces and odd noises of approval from the crowd, in between the tears of course. 

Lastly, since this is being posted on Blog Action Day 2015, we’d like to take this opportunity to vocalise our support for Raif Badawi, joint recipient of the PEN Pinter Prize 2015, and imprisoned blogger in Saudi Arabia. First arrested in June 2012, Raif Badawi has been fined £175,000, sentenced to 10 years in prison and 1000 public lashings, for insulting Islam and founding a liberal website, Free Saudi Liberals. He is currently still in prison, his second bout of public flogging has been repeatedly postponed after his health has seriously deteriorated. As part of English PEN, we continue to call for Badawi's sentence of flogging to be overturned immediately, as well as for his conviction to be quashed and for him to be released unconditionally.

Onwards and upwards,
Peace,

UEL PEN

 


  

Journalistic integrity: a thing of the past?

Posted: Thursday, 20 March 2014 by Unknown in Labels: , , , , , , , , , , ,
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In a society where journalists and their sources are scrutinized for going against the current of propaganda and government control, how can we know there will be any truth left for us down the road? Free speech and freedom of the press. These are two things that may very well be fictional in the future. With the influential and life changing actions of Edward Snowden, Britain and the U.S have banded together to make the line between “terrorism” and “journalism” almost indistinguishable. The UK Terrorism Act of 2000, originally implemented to protect our country from radicals has now got the public and it’s governments guessing between journalists and terrorists. This act defines terrorism as an act or threat “designed to influence the government”, that “is made for the purpose of advancing a political, religious, racial or ideological cause” and "that would pose a “serious risk” to the health or safety of a section of the public." The UK government have persisted with the line that this risk is present with the disclosure of any “classified” documents. The act also states “the government” can mean a government of any country; in this incidence, namely the US. Subsequently, the British government has opened investigations into anyone who previously worked with Snowden, and used this as a pretext to enter the Guardian’s offices and demand the destruction of their Snowden-related hard drives. David Miranda, assisting journalist Glenn Greenwald (former Guardian worker), was travelling through Heathrow airport, and detained for nine hours under the Terrorism Act under schedule 7, back in August 2013. This compels all those who fall under it to tell all information they know and to pass on any documents they possess. Snowden passed on “thousands of files” to Miranda v(who since wrote many stories concerning the UK and US authorities and their surveillance systems.) These were systems that gave the UK and US full monitoring of it’s citizens through the company GCHQ), and he has since attempted to speak out against this gross misconduct through the UK legal system. However, he was rewarded with a blatant ignorance to any freedom of expression in the European convention on human rights. What does this mean for us?
If the UK legal system is now flexing it’s muscles to take away our information, force us to give up passwords, and destroy our documents, what does this mean for our sources? What does this mean for our “permitted” content? If those with truthful information are being stopped at our front door and 'frisked,' how do we know any information we do manage to receive hasn't already been tainted in order to protect the government’s view of “truth”? Many associates of Edward Snowden have been advised by their legal aids not to return to the United Kingdom, for fear of being stripped of all viable sources in a similar manner to David Miranda. Several of these people work for The Guardian. Even Jesselyn Radack, Snowden’s US legal advisor, was recently detained concerning Snowden and Julian Assange (another famed “whistle blower”). These detainments under schedule 7 are risking the people, their sources and their integrity. “Terrorism” is the conviction these truth-seekers must live with, now restricting their free movement across international borders. Guardian reporter Sarah Harrison lives in fear of this particular schedule, as it constricts her movements, her voice, and her ability to travel home. She states: “Schedule 7 is not really about catching terrorists, even in its own terms. The Miranda judgment states that it has, in this case, “constituted an indirect interference with press freedom” and is admittedly “capable, depending on the facts, of being deployed so as to interfere with journalistic freedom.” Officers can detain someone not because they suspect them of being involved in terrorist activities, but to see “if someone appears” to – even indirectly – be facilitating the bizarre definition of terrorism used in the act.” No longer are we protected, no longer do we receive these acts such as the Terrorism Act of 2000 for “national security”, no longer are the people the priority. These acts are being created and even twisted, among legal officials, to protect the government and their preaching laced with hypocrisy. Illegal activity is OK, as long as you’re a government with enough manpower to dehumanize those who will speak against you. We expect our governments to work for the best interest of their countries, but what country puts the distribution of the truth and hard facts into the same definitions that they consider to be “terrorist activity”? The most harm caused in connection to both Snowden and Assange has been caused by the UK and US governments trying to cover up the blatant violations of human rights they have been so easily committing. In a day and age that we believe freedom of speech and information to be at it’s best, we live shrouded in falsified fear of those who actually uphold their integrity as journalists, rather than their devotion to a botched system.

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 By Catherine Watson, contributing writer, as part of our Year 2 Creative & Professional Writing degree Work Experience module.