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Chechnya bans fast or slow music
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| 8th April
2024
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| See article from themoscowtimes.com
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Authorities in Russia's republic of Chechnya have imposed limits on music tempos to abide by strict cultural norms in the Muslim-majority region. From now on all musical, vocal and choreographic works should correspond to a tempo of 80 to 116 beats
per minute, Chechnya's Culture Ministry said in a statement earlier this week. The new tempo standard, which is relatively slow in the context of popular music, was announced following Chechen Culture Minister Musa Dadayev's meeting with local
state and municipal artists. Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov had instructed Dadayev to make Chechen music conform to the Chechen mentality, according to the statement. Local artists were ordered to rewrite their music by June 1 to accommodate
the changes. Otherwise, they would not be allowed for public performance, the Culture Ministry wrote on the messaging app Telegram. |
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Ukraine introduces an internet censorship bill
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| 4th May 2023
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| See article from wsws.org |
Members of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's party have introduced a bill to criminalize the spread of information deemed false on the internet and through social media that violates Ukraine's national security. Ostensibly, the bill is
targeted at bot accounts coordinated by Russian special services who, as the authors of the bill claim, are conducting informational influence actions against the state interests of Ukraine. But in reality, the language of the bill is so encompassing
that anyone could be arrested for posting information that the right-wing nationalist government in Kiev deems misinformation. Under the proposed bill, lawmakers would have broad powers to arrest anyone who participates in the creation, acquisition,
use or sale of accounts, including those containing knowingly false information, as well as the posting and distribution of inaccurate information. Anyone who spreads so called misinformation with the intention to damage to the sovereignty,
territorial integrity and inviolability, defense capability, national, state, economic or informational security of Ukraine, or to exert influence on decision-making or taking or not taking actions by state bodies or local self-government bodies,
officials of these bodies, would likewise face arrest and imprisonment of 5 to 7 years and the confiscation of personal property. |
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Study finds internet censorship in Turkmenistan reaches over 122,000 domains
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| 12th April 2023
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| See article from
globalvoices.org by Nurbek Bekmurzaev |
The dictatorship in Turkmenistan does not get a lot of media and scholarly attention, although it is more than worthy of it. In the 2023 Freedom in the World Index, the country ranked in the bottom three, behind only war-torn Syria and ahead of North
Korea. The issue of internet censorship is particularly acute in Turkmenistan. In 2016, the media freedom organization Reporters without Borders listed the country as one of the enemies of the internet due to its heavy censorship and information control
policies. The internet speed in Turkmenistan is the slowest in the world. The authorities arrest citizens who use VPN apps to access censored content. Between 2021 and 2022, a team of computer scientists conducted the first and only large-scale
research on internet censorship in Turkmenistan, in which they tested 15.5 million domains for censorship and found out that over 122,000 domains are blocked. Full research results are available
here . |
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Russian censors inflict extensive TV cuts on western programming with significant gay content
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| 28th February 2023
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| See article from xtramagazine.com |
Russian viewers watched the HBO's hit series The White Lotus in the only officially available format via streaming platform Amediateka. The platform severely censored the second season of The White Lotus to comply with repressive Russian law
banning gay content. Scenes were removed, lines of dialogues were purposefully mistranslated in dubbing and Russian subtitles (eg We're all gays here ,became We're all men here ) and the bare buttocks of actor Leo Woodall were covered
with a poorly photoshopped blanket, even though featuring in a straight scene. HBO's Euphoria was also edited in similar ways by Amediateka with nearly two hours' worth of content cut out of the series' second season. Viewers also
discovered that the translation of Sex and the City was tweaked, replacing the word gay with boy , while several scenes were completely cut out. An amended anti-gay law was signed into law by President Vladimir Putin at the end
of last year. It is a more severe version of 2013's law that saw the country outlawing 'LGBT propaganda' and depictins of LGBT behaviour among children under 18 (i.e., holding hands in public, men wearing colourful nail polish, kissing). After
December 2022 all kinds of LGBT propaganda are considered illegal. The list includes untraditional sexual relationships and gender reassignment. Lawmakers are still working on the list of further criteria for proclaiming a work illegal,' and it will come
into effect in September. Russia's internet censor Roskomnadzor has also issued its own list of movies and TV shows that were to be removed from all the legal streaming platforms including Call Me By Your Name , Brokeback Mountain ,
the first season of The Sex Lives of College Girls and several episodes of This Is Going to Hurt . |
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