Another Mickey Mouse Christ

Two men who organised an art exhibition in Moscow in 2007 have been found guilty by a Russian court of inciting hatred.

Andrei Yerofeyev and Yuri Samodurov had set up the Forbidden Art exhibition at the Sakharov Museum in Moscow.

Both curators were convicted of inciting religious hatred and fined, but escaped prison sentences. The two were ordered only to pay fines of up to 200,000 rubles ($6,500).

The show provoked condemnation from the Russian Orthodox Church, among others, for artworks that included a depiction of Jesus Christ with the head of Mickey Mouse.

There was also a spoof ad for Coca Cola with the slogan This is my blood that visitors looked at through peep holes.

Yerofeyev, an art expert, and Samodurov, the former director of the Sakharov Museum, said they organised the exhibition to fight censorship of art in Russia.

Update: Book of the Banned

19th July 2010. Based on article from freethinker.co.uk
See also article from readrussia.com

Art that a Russian court found blasphemous this week are about to get a much wider audience.

In the wake of the trial of art expert Andrei Yerofeyev and the Sakharov Museum's then-director Yuri Samodurov, a magazine called Russia! has announced its intention to publish a book, The Banned Art, containing the offensive exhibits in January, 2011.

The magazine has already posted pictures of some of the blasphemous pieces featured in Forbidden Art 2006?.

A Georgian television channel said it had lost a court battle accusing a French satellite operator of bowing to Russian pressure and blocking its broadcasts.

The Russian-language Perviy Kavkazky (First Caucasian) channel's editor-in-chief, Ekaterine Kotrikadze, said the French court had ruled against the channel's request to force Paris-based Eutelsat to restore its broadcasts, which were cut in January after a few weeks of test broadcasts.

We disagree with the court's decision and we believe it's wrong. We have not yet decided whether we will appeal the decision, she told AFP: Currently our channel is under re-organisation. We will be back on air by the end of the year via satellite. We do not know yet which satellite will be used, we will soon start holding talks with different satellite operators.

The channel charged that Eutelsat was a tool of Russian censorship because it had stopped transmitting Perviy Kavkazky from its W7 satellite after signing a lucrative contract with Russian satellite company Intersputnik.

Eutelsat denied that it came under any pressure from Moscow and insisted that no contract was in force between it and the state-funded Georgia Public Broadcasting company, which runs Perviy Kavkazky.

The channel provides news bulletins and information programmes focusing on events in Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan, as well as in Russia's North Caucasus region, challenging Moscow's influence in the strategic region.

A new Belarus Internet censorship law will be applied from September 1.

Access restrictions are as follows:

• The Belarusian State Telecommunication Inspection makes a list of forbidden websites on the ground of proposals of appropriate governmental bodies. Legal persons, individual entrepreneurs and concerned citizens have the right to help the governmental bodies to prepare the lists. An IP address, domain name, or an URL may serve as an identifier of a banned Internet resource. If a Belarusian site is included in the black list, the owner will receive a notice about putting the website on the blocklist.
   
• 4. Websites can also be removed from the blacklist. A decision on removal of the Internet resource identifiers from the restriction list must be taken by the governmental body that earlier put the website on the list.
   
• Information aimed at extremist activity, illicit circulation of weapons, ammunition, detonators, explosives, radioactive, contaminating, aggressive, poisonous, and toxic substances, drugs, psychotropic substances, and their precursors; assisting illegal migration and human trafficking; spreading pornography; promulgating violence, brutality, and other acts prohibited by law is banned

Britain's theatre community comes out against oppression and censorship in Belarus, the last dictatorship of Europe.

Sir Tom Stoppard and actor/director Sam West Has led a protest of high-profile theatre practitioners outside the Belarussian Embassy in London.

They presented an open letter to President Alyaksander Lukashenko of Belarus calling for greater democratic freedom and for an end to censorship of the Internet.

Other signatories include Mark Ravenhill, Howard Brenton, Alan Rickman, Laura Wade, Caryl Churchill, Henry Goodman, Henry Porter, Simon McBurney, Simon Stephens and Lyndsey Turner.

We urge you to allow the people of Belarus the right to express and share their opinions freely, whether this is on the internet or not. We urge you to use your powers to prevent any further repression of citizens who hold alternative, and oppositional, beliefs to you. We urge that the practice of physical abuse and intimidation against any citizen, including those who dare to hold alternative and oppositional points of view, be stopped. Finally, we urge you to protect the right to freedom of assembly in accordance with Article 21 of the International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights to which Belarus is a state party, – the letter says.

Sam West performed an extract of Generation Jeans, a play from the multi-award winning Belarus Free Theatre.

Generation Jeans charts one man's journey as an activist. It captures all of the courage, the humour and the foolhardy determination that you need to resist a totalitarian regime, which makes it perfect for our protest today, says director Clare Lizzimore, co-organiser of the protest.

On Thursday 1st July a new Presidential decree on the Internet comes into force. It gives the authorities greater powers to monitor usage and will enable the Government to restrict or block access to websites that offer independent and alternative sources of information. It has been described as a step in the wrong direction by the European Union. The decree is a clear attempt to curb the freedom of speech and the right to self-expression.

Playwright and co-organiser of the protest, Alexandra Wood says: The internet is a vital tool in communication and should be available to all. Lukashenko's law, imposing censorship on the Internet, particularly affects those in Belarus who oppose his regime, who want to offer the Belarusian people an alternative, which is of course, his intention.

Actor Sam West says: The purpose of theatre and the purpose of the internet is the same: to connect people, to bring them together as a collective entity, an audience, a world. Repressive regimes are rightly frightened of the internet for its ability to put free thinkers in touch with one another and give them inspiration and strength; it's not us and them out there, it's all us. We must oppose any withdrawal of these freedoms as anti-thought, anti-freedom, anti-human.

The protest was in support of the Belarus Free Theatre and is in conjunction with the Global Artistic Campaign in Solidarity with Belarus, founded by playwright, Sir Tom Stoppard.