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	Writing the Revolution by The Frontline Club - News   May 29, 2013   Writing Revolution: The Voices from Tunis to Damascus, by Helena Williams.   On Tuesday 29 May, the Frontline Club showcased ‘Writing Revolution: the Voices from Tunis to Damascus’, a book which celebrates some of the best new writing to emerge from the Arab Spring.   The collection of articles and essays focusses on what the revolutions, which have rumbled across North Africa and the Middle East over the past three years, mean to journalists, bloggers and activists in the region.   http://www.frontlineclub.com/writing-revolution-the-voices-from-tunis-to-damascus-2/   May 2013   Russia"s surveillance state, by Anna Reitman.   Cold war politics have never seemed more relevant in the 21st century. Relations between the US and Russia are reaching new lows over geopolitical hot spots while the White House dodges questions about the detainment in Moscow of an alleged CIA recruiting agent.   These might seem like old stories, but a decidedly hi-tech twist is emerging as Russia’s surveillance state comes into the spotlight. On 14 May, panelists at the Frontline Club discussed the advancement of internet censorship, monitoring technologies and potential impacts on individual freedoms in Russia.   Chair Misha Glenny, investigative journalist, author, broadcaster and leading expert on cybercrime and global mafia networks, noted the “potentially truly Orwellian” implications:   “It is unbelievable what Russian technologists are now developing . . . in terms of digital surveillance capacity. . . [And] this is not happening in isolation. It links up with what is happening in states around the world, including in the European Union and in North America, and the implications of this are truly frightening.”   Over the last few years, the Kremlin has launched several programmes – under the aegis of such agencies as the FSB (formerly KGB), interior ministry and the customs & foreign intelligence service – to monitor and control what goes on, and off, the internet.   One of the more recent programmes, said Andrei Soldatov, investigative journalist and editor and co-founder of Agentura.Ru - an information hub on intelligence agencies - includes software development to track social networks and influence public opinion on the internet. But it isn’t just about the internet, he added, as an “ambitious” RUB400 billion (£8.3bn) programme to acquire unmanned drones was announced, in addition to the state’s interest in voice and face recognition technologies.   Meanwhile, said Irina Borogan, also an investigative journalist, deputy editor and co-founder of Argenta.Ru, “intrusive and dangerous” measures are being implemented in the form of deep packet inspection, which is becoming the norm under the pretext of fighting terrorism. This technology can peer into people’s online traffic and can read, copy as well as modify emails and web pages in real time.   http://www.frontlineclub.com/russias-surveillance-state-2/#more-31835   March 27, 2013   Fixing a broken food system: why food is not the problem, by Holly Young.   “Hunger is the most heartbreaking and the most unnecessary crisis in the world” stated David Bull, executive director of UNICEF UK as he opened the session on Tuesday 26 March.   While the issue of food and hunger has long been on the development agenda, the session ‘Can we fix a broken food system?’, chaired by Paul Vallely, leading writer on development and associate editor of The Independent, is timely. This year the issue has received particular attention through the recent horse meat scandal and the launch of the The Enough Food For Everyone IF campaign. However, panelist Paul McMahon, author and advisor on sustainable food systems, highlighted that media coverage has been “full of myths, half truths and some dodgy statistics about our global food system”. The evening’s rich discussion picked apart the problems at the core of the issue and highlighted key solutions.   The first myth to unravel was the connection between food crisis and a growing population:   “The simple answer to ‘can we feed 9 billion people in 2050’ is yes. We could do that now, there is enough food. It is a question of how it is shared and how it is priced, so it is a socio-economic problem more than a bio-physical problem.” McMahon explained.   Bull and McMahon were joined on the panel by Mike Lewis, ActionAid UK’s lead for policy work on tax in the developing world and Mary Creagh, Labour MP for Wakefield and Shadow Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. There was broad consensus on the panel about what was at the heart of the problem:   “When we look at food systems there are two basic problems”, Creagh argued. “The first is inequality and the second is poverty”.   Creagh also highlighted the importance of including both the social inequality of women and inequality embedded in our food supply chain within our framing of the problem.   Some direct solutions came from Lewis:   “In terms of the IF campaign, if we are realistic about being able to pay for the publicly funded parts of what we want then we have to do two things. Firstly, we have to make sure that developing countries are raising their own revenues for public investment, and that tax has to be raised equitably. Secondly, we must make sure that those revenues are spent transparently, and that is about budget transparency as much as it is about corporate transparency.”   McMahon was similarly prescriptive about the centrality of national governments in developing countries:   “I think it all comes down to national governance in developing countries, particularly in Africa. Those governments need to take the actions to put in place integrated rural development plans. That involves advancing infrastructure, investing in research, investing in markets, and supporting smallholders and farmers to grow more food.”   The evening finished on a powerful note of optimism from Bull for the year ahead:   “This year change is possible. We can help to increase aid flows, we can get commitments of aid to helping small farmers and to address the issue of stunting, we could get that commitment to that 10 billion a year and we could end chronic under nutrition of children. This is why the IF campaign is so important…we could be the generation that ends chronic under nutrition of children.”   http://www.frontlineclub.com/fixing-a-broken-food-system-why-food-is-not-the-problem/   *The Frontline Club is the London hub for a diverse group of people united by their passion for the best quality journalism. The Club holds lively discussions, debates, screenings and workshops, below is a link to a blog documenting some these activities. Visit the related web page
	The Turkish Spring: Lawyers Rounded Up by Marjorie Cohn Jurist.org & news agencies   June 18, 2013   The Turkish government has launched violent raids, mass arrests, and used tear gas and water cannons across the country Tuesday in an effort to quell the widespread uprisings against the ruling AKP party, now well into their third week.   Police are shooting water cannons filled with damaging chemicals, say Turkish protesters, showing photographs of demonstrators with burns on their legs and backs.   Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced Tuesday that the crackdown will only grow from here, and his administration has declared the uprisings illegal.   The New York Times reports that the government is not just going after people in the streets, but also targeting users of social media:   On Monday, the interior minister, Muammer Guler, said that new regulations were being prepared to police social media outlets, aimed at people who use Twitter or Facebook, for “inciting people or coordinating and directing events that would cause social incidents or endanger material and physical public safety through manipulative, false news.”   "Standing man" protests are going viral across Turkey in a silent show of resistance amidst violent government raids on the country"s expanding uprising.   It started with one man who stood silently in Turkey"s embattled Taksim Square Monday, facing the Ataturk Cultural Center.   Performance artist Erdem Gunduz stood with his hands in his pockets in the ground zero of clashes, defying government orders to clear the park of protesters, part of the violent crackdowns led by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan that have left four dead and over 7,500 injured.   When reporters asked him why he stood, Gunduz responded, "It"s evident. The people are not being allowed into Taksim."   Soon Gunduz was joined by others, who took up post around him. The crowd swelled to hundreds as the hours past, and the silent protesters slowly filled the square. After eight hours, over 300 stood motionlessly in the night darkness. At two in the morning police broke up the show of resistance. But the silent protests did not stop there.   News of the silent protest spread across the internet, with a deluge of photos and updates posted to Twitter hashtag #duranadam, which means "standing man" in Turkish. People stood silently in cities across the country Tuesday, including Taksim Square where the peaceful protesters had been forced out the day before.   A woman in Ankara stood Tuesday in the place where a protester had been killed by police, ABC reports.   Hundreds of photographs posted online showed similar vigils throughout Turkey. Hürriyet Daily News reports:   In the western province of Ýzmir, a group of around 100 people blocked the traffic at Gündoðan Square around 2:30 a.m. in the morning, shortly after a ‘standing woman’ started standing in the middle of Kýzýlay Square in the Turkish capital of Ankara.   A small group of people, including lawyers, also “stood” for more than one hour June 18 in the Istanbul courthouse in support of the “standing man.”   One photo showed people standing still in the Central Anatolian province of Sivas, in front of the Madýmak Hotel where 33 intellectuals and two hotel workers died when radical Islamists attacked the hotel on July 2, 1993.   Another photo showed people standing in front of the offices of weekly Agos, where Armenian-Turkish journalist Hrant Dink was shot and killed on Jan. 19, 2007.   The protests were sparked by a May 31 violent police eviction of protesters occupying Gezi Park in opposition to government plans to redevelop the green space, and have since broadened to include sweeping indictment of a government that many charge is spiraling into authoritarian rule.   Five Turkish trade unions, representing 800,000 workers, kicked off a general strike Monday after revelations of police brutality.   Police violence against the protesters, at the orders of PM Erdogan, has garnered global criticism as demonstrators face a barrage of tear gas, pepper spray, and water cannon fire, as well as raids and mass arrests.   June 2013   The Turkish Spring: Lawyers Rounded Up, by Marjorie Cohn. (Jurist.org)   For nearly three weeks, thousands of protestors have gathered peacefully at Occupy Gezi in Taksim Square in Istanbul. Turkish police have unleashed a brutal crackdown, resulting in three confirmed deaths and nearly 5,000 injured. According to Turkish lawyer Kerem Gulay, a Fulbright Scholar and doctoral student at Cornell Law School, police tactics include excessive beatings with police batons and rifle handles, and the use of pepper spray and other chemicals, rubber bullets, and, allegedly, real bullets.   In order to provide a pretext for police aggression against peaceful protestors, undercover police officers, acting as agents provocateurs, threw Molotov cocktails Tuesday at police, after which police launched a vicious attack on protestors.   A broad coalition of groups courageously gathered in Taksim Square is protesting neoliberal governmental policies, including economic, agricultural and environmental policies, human rights abuses, mass detentions, privatization of water resources, attacks on freedom of the press and on freedom of religion, and the treatment of Kurdish citizens of Turkey. The protestors politics range from moderate to center right to nationalist to left liberal to extreme leftist. "All these people have in common," Gulay told me, "is they are critical of government policies."   When lawyers were issuing a press statement decrying the mass detentions of their clients, some 50 lawyers were arrested and dragged on the ground by riot police. Many lawyers were injured before they were released 10 hours later. Nearly 3,000 lawyers gathered at the courthouse Tuesday to protest these detentions.   There is an ongoing and dangerous process of criminalization of lawyers in Turkey. Nine of fifteen lawyers arrested on January 18, 2013, for representing unpopular clients, remain in custody without charges or access to legal papers about their cases. On that date, police raided the Istanbul and Ankara offices of the Progressive Lawyers Association (CHD), a member organization of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers (IADL). Twelve CHD officers or members were violently detained under vague terrorism-related allegations. They were interrogated about their representation of clients. They were denied water and the use of a bathroom.   These arrests, detentions, and seizure of property—including confidential client files—violate the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The cases are pending in the Special Heavy Penal Courts, which have jurisdiction over "terrorism" proceedings. Their use of secret evidence and repressive procedures have been condemned by several international and regional human rights monitoring bodies and mechanisms.   The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Independence of Judges and Lawyers, Gabriela Knaul, who recently visited Turkey, strongly criticized [PDF] the Special Heavy Penal Courts, saying their "special authority" does not comply with human rights standards on fair trial, and they should therefore be abolished.   A group of 500 lawyers who went to the courthouse to protest the lawyers detention in January were assaulted by police. The Istanbul Bar Association lambasted the unlawful raids as an "explicit attack towards the legal profession and its honor, as well as the people"s right to legal remedies."   When I visited Istanbul as a representative of IADL in April, I met with officers of the Istanbul Bar Association, and I spoke with lawyers who had been arrested and released after the January raid. Some are members of CHD. Many specialize in defending victims of torture, arbitrary detention, extrajudicial executions, police brutality and other human rights violations. They also provide free legal assistance in terrorism-related cases, and those involving freedom of expression or protection of the environment. Because of their work in defending clients who challenge government policies, CHD lawyers have been targeted by the government and the police.   Knual also reaffirmed the principle that a government should not identify lawyers with the causes of their clients. The United Nations Basic Principles on the Role of Lawyers mandate that governments ensure lawyers are able to perform their professional functions without intimidation, hindrance, harassment or improper interference. They also provide that lawyers shall not be identified with their clients or their clients causes as a result of discharging their functions.   The president of the Istanbul Bar Association has been accused of contempt of court for protesting the January detentions of lawyers. According to the 2010 US State Department country report on Turkey, there are more than 10,000 people suspected of "terrorism" in Turkey (one-third of the world"s terrorism suspects). Several hundred students, as well as army officials, journalists, lawyers, academics, Kurdish activists, nationalist activists, soldiers and members of the Turkish parliament are in prison, Gulay said.   Frequent and systematic repression against political and human rights activists in Turkey, particularly lawyers and journalists, has been well documented. This year alone, representatives of IADL witnessed evidence of the Turkish state"s enforcement of broad and oppressive laws to suppress political dissent from journalists, lawyers, trade unionists and citizens.   The Turkish government must immediately halt all police repression against Turkey"s protestors, including police beatings, the use of tear gas and other chemicals; release all detained protesters who were expressing their fundamental right to freedom of expression; and launch an immediate investigation into the human rights abuses committed against the Turkish people since the beginning of the protests, including an investigation into the unlawful use of tear gas and other chemicals.   IADL calls upon people throughout the world to join us in demanding an end to the violence against Turkish protestors and accountability.   * Marjorie Cohn, a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and past President of the National Lawyers Guild, is the deputy secretary general of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers. 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