The scandal caused by the banning of the documentary Presunto Culpable Presumed Guilty has given a shot of life to Mexicans. On Wednesday, after a legal battle of several days, the film was again allowed to be shown to the public. The Sixth Collegiate Tribunal for Administrative Matters dictated that to stop showing the film caused “serious offence to society” and went against the public order. The legal demand was also used by the film producers to suggest to Mexico City that it open tribunals to cameras. The challenge was taken up by media conscious Mexico City Mayor Marcelo Ebrard, who said his government is studying ways in which cameras can be installed in Mexico City tribunals. Mexico City is [...]

China’s phantom Jasmine pro-democracy protests have turned into a news story about news journalists. The heavy-handed treatment of foreign reporters — detained in an underground bunker, shadowed, beaten, harassed and threatened — has now become the headline news. China plays a disingenuous game. In recent days new rules which restrict reporting have suddenly materialised while the roughing up of some reporters by security was blankly denied by the government despite both video and camera proof by other journalists. Last week the Foreign Ministry summoned some foreign journalists to warm them that they risked having their visas revoked if they did not comply with new rules. UNCUT talked to one journalist who did not wish to be named for fear of [...]

A sense of a time that slipped between our fingers, or a consciousness, of a strength retained and a power that it is still within our grasp…one feeling evolved into the other watching this historic clip (Facebook) from 1979 on the first day of a five-day demonstration by women in Iran against the imposition of the veil and the reversal of their rights. Women gained the right to vote in 1963 as part of the Shah’s White Revolution. Ten years later posters like this (left) campaigned for the mobilisation of women and encouraged their multi-dimensional role in society. The story of the egalitarian and populist approach of the Women’s Organisation of Iran with Mahnaz Afkhami as Secretary General and the [...]

A Mexican judge has ordered a temporary ban of Presunto Culpable, Presumed Guilty, an independent documentary that depicts the faults in public justice procurement in Mexico. The film (view trailer here)had been released to considerable acclaim and was one of the most viewed films last week in Mexico. The story line focuses on an innocent man arrested by Mexican police for a murder he did not commit, and shows how the system is set up to beef up fake cases against innocent people. The reasons for the temporary ban is that Victor Daniel Reyes Bravo, one of the persons included in scenes in the documentary, said he never gave his permission to the filmmakers. The documentary producers say that according [...]

What would you do if the music you wanted to make were forbidden ? What if someone in power didn’t want it heard? Would you be silent? Or would you play it louder ? I first heard the voice of Mahsa Vahdat at the height of the people’s uprising in 2009. A friend sent me a video of her singing with Mighty Sam McClain. In it her voice was exquisite in its clarity. A year later, in September 2010, I had the opportunity to hear her perform live when Index invited Mahsa to come to from Tehran to sing at the launch of Smashed Hits 2.0 (buy here) –– an issue of the quarterly magazine devoted to the issue of [...]