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In the midst of the presidential elections, and with feelings running high, Romanias historical community has been rocked by a bitter debate over the involvement of fascist prisoners in the regime of torture that took place at Piteti prison between 1949 and 1951. Historians at the centre of the controversy have received death threats from their critics on the far right and the discussions have revealed deep cleavages around the memory of fascism and communism.

The Piteti Experiment, in which roughly 1,000 prisoners were forced to torture each other into insanity and sometimes to death, has become the quintessential example of the evil of Romanian communism. Led by Alexandru Bogdanovici and Eugen urcanu, who had been imprisoned for their involvement in the fascist Legion of the Archangel Michael, prisoners incarcerated at Suceava apparently volunteered to run a reeducation program for themselves and other prisoners. They formed the Organization of Prisoners with Communist Convictions (ODCC), confessed their past crimes and beliefs, studied communist literature, and persuaded other prisoners to do the same.

urcanu was transferred to Piteti prison in December 1949 and given use of Hospital Room No. 4. Here he and other members of the ODCC began an experiment on other legionary prisoners. Torture would begin suddenly and brutally, lasting day and night for weeks on end. They would regularly beat the victims with clubs and whips, force them to eat and drink their own feces, crucify them, sodomize them while screaming blasphemies and jump on victims until they died. When prisoners begged to join the ODCC, urcanu made them confess their anti-communist thoughts and actions before others, accuse themselves of immorality and then join him in torturing other prisoners.

The victims of Piteti are seen today as anti-communist martyrs. Individuals tortured in other communist prisons, including people incarcerated as fascists, are even widely regarded as saints because of the unique spiritual experiences they had in prison.

The details of the Piteti Experiment are well known and have been the subject of a number of books and research articles. The vast majority of studies are based on survivor testimonies and the public trials of the perpetrators. The files of the Securitate, the secret police who ran the prisons, are now available for researchers but need to be treated with caution because they often deliberately misrepresent evidence and include testimonies produced under torture.

Mihai Demetriade, a researcher at the National Council for the Study of the Securitate Archives (CNSAS), is an expert on these files. He has authored a number of detailed studies on reeducation within communist prisons, making extensive use of Securitate records. Demetriade reevaluated the Piteti experiment in a long and detailed journal article published in 2017 but his research went unnoticed until he gave an interview about it on Radio France Internationale (RFI) on 29 October 2019.

Demetriade pointed out that the Securitates primary goal was to extract information from prisoners, not to brainwash them, that the repertoires of torture used at Piteti had been used by legionaries against other legionaries in the Nazi concentration camp at Rostok during the Second World War and that the survivor testimonies were written by people who were themselves former fascists. Moreover, he showed that factionalism within the Legion during the late 1940s had been heavily influenced by the mass incarceration and torture of legionaries by the Securitate. Legionary internal politics, that is, was in part a product of Securitate violence.

By arguing that the victims of Piteti might not have been entirely innocent and that legionaries had their own reasons for attacking other legionaries, Demetriade questioned the sacred cow of the public memory of state socialism that the Piteti Experiment was a uniquely evil example of communist atrocities perpetrated against innocent victims.

Demetriades interview was widely denounced. Comments on the radios website insisted that he be sent to prison for his opinions and he received anonymous online threats calling him a Bolshevik, trash, and making obscene comments about what they will do to his mother. The interviewer, William Totok, received a death threat signed by the sons of Avram Iancu, a nationalist organization created by the Securitate during the Cold War to intimidate Romanians in exile who they thought besmirched the countrys honour.

Radu Preda, a nationalist theologian and the director of the Institute for the Investigation of Communist Crimes in Romania (IICCMER), condemned Demetriades claims in a press release as an act of intellectual vandalism, stating that it is sad and revolting to realize that people who have researched the archives of the dictatorship of the proletariat have not understood anything from the drama that took place in the prison system. Radu himself has never published research on the history of fascism or on communist prisons.

Two other senior figures in IICCMER have condemned Predas press release, claiming that they were not consulted before it was issued. As Alexandru Florian, the director of the Elie Wiesel National Institute for the Study of the Holocaust in Romania, points out this is not the first time [Radu Preda] has publicly supported the memory of the interwar extreme right. In 2015 five leading scholars including William Totok resigned from the IICCMERs scientific board in protest against Predas appointment because of his pro-fascist statements.

Constantin Buchet, the president of CNSAS and Demetriades employer, immediately announced that the claims of Demetriade and his colleague, Mdlin Hodor, are offensive to those who suffered in communist prisons and they severely harm the reputation of CNSAS by their association with it. CNSAS is run by a council of experts, however, three of whom have said that Buchets announcement was never discussed with the council and does not represent the opinion of the organization. Documents from the Councils archive should support authentic scientific debate, they write, and not hagiographies or propagandistic mythologies.

Passionate debates about what can and cannot be said about the Piteti Experiment continue on social media and in the press. They are increasingly divided along political lines, exposing raw wounds exacerbated by the presidential elections. The discussion shows how deeply memories about fascism and communism shape Romanian identity and party politics. Sadly, despite the amount of ink that has been spilt on this topic it is still not clear whether anyone has actually read the 173-page study that sits at the centre of the controversy.

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Romania's history wars: on the sufferings of fascist saints - Open Democracy

Hungary celebrated as one when Marina Gera, a 35-year-old actress, became the first ever Hungarian to receive an International Emmy Award the Oscar of television films. The Emmy Awards jury named Ms Gera the Best Actress of the Year, awarding her outstanding performance in Eternal Winter, a 2018 Hungarian drama about the suffering of Hungarian prisoners in Soviet Gulags,

The film tells the heart-breaking story of a Hungarian-Swabian family, in Hungarys Tolna county, at the end of World War II. Irn, a young woman, played by Ms Gera, is waiting for her husband to return from the Eastern Front, when she and other women from her village are summoned by the then-occupying Soviet soldiers to work in the corn fields. Instead, the women are put on trains and taken to the middle of the Soviet Union, thousands of kilometres away from their homeland. They were sent there for malenky robot, which what the Hungarians called the forced labour they had to suffer in the freezing Soviet internment camps of Siberia.

Eternal Winter is one of the most important Hungarian films of the past years. It is a commemoration of the sins of communism and a recompense for the victims, said Lilla Gyngysi, a Hungarian movie critic.

Directed by Attila Szsz, the film is indeed a tribute to the more than 600,000 Hungarians who were forcefully taken to the USSRs labour camps, but that is not all. It is also a story of compassion and love. During the time she is forced to work in a dark Soviet coal mine, Irn gets to know Rajmund, a Hungarian man, who is also imprisoned and who teaches her how to survive. The two pursue an unlikely, but unfulfilled relationship, given that both of them have families back in Hungary who they believe are waiting for them.

Mr Szszs drama brilliantly reminds us that although one persons struggle in such a camp is to save oneself day-by-day, it is also about how the oppressed can help each other, when they see no hope of escaping the cruel Soviet reality.

Eternal Winter is by far not the only Hungarian film about the gulags, as several documentaries have been made about them; however, it is the first ever feature film to show this dark side of the Soviet Union, which unsurprisingly was also the films mission. It wanted to tell the story of those who had been there and what they had had to face. Accordingly, during some of the discussions and music and you can hear is a terrifying background noise: of prisoners suffering from hunger, diseases, exhaustion, freezing temperatures and beatings from Soviet guards.

It was a difficult film to make, since we had to show circumstances in it, which we have never imagined before. We havent really had much opportunity to bring [the full reality] back, Mr Szsz said, noting that he had his doubts about whether such a reality could really be displayed. However, he was relieved when he heard the reaction of the audience.

I am very proud to be a Hungarian, at this moment, Ms Gera said, after the film was named the Best European TV film by Prix Europa in 2018. We are from different countries, but we have the same problems. Every country has an untold story. she went on to say, referring to the countries of Central and Eastern Europe which were the states that suffered the most under Soviet rule.

Today we are commemorating all the Hungarian victims who suffered in the Soviet Union. So, I would like to dedicate this prize to their memory, she said, pointing not just to the hundreds of thousands of Hungarians, but the many millions who were abused, beaten, tortured or murdered by communism.

She also offered to share her prize with Mr Szsz, who is the first Hungarian director to portray the fate of Hungarians in Soviet internment camps in a drama.

A real tragedy cannot be shown its fullness; only the people in it, the films creators said when Eternal Winter was announced.

Eternal Winter was released on February 25, 2018, the Day of Commemoration about the Victims of Communism in Hungary.

Photo: official website of the movie

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Hungary's First Emmy Award Dedicated to the Victims of Soviet Gulags - Emerging Europe

An exhibition of feminist art at the National Museum of Fine Arts in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, has been censored by the government and resulted in the departure of the institutions director.

Dubbed the first Feminnale of contemporary art, the show featured 56 artists from 22 countries. It opened November 25 and was slated to run for 17 daysa nod to the 17 women who died in a warehouse fire in Moscow in 2016, many of whom were Kyrgyzstani migrants.

But shortly after the opening, the Kyrgyzstan government removed several works from the exhibition, including a sculpture by Kazakh artist Zoya Falkova of a punching bag reconfigured as a female torso. Officials also forbid Danish artist Julie Savery from re-performing a work that involved disrobing in front of audiences.

The countrys minister of culture called the event a campaign with naked women under the flag of feminism, explaining that a special commission would be formed to review the scandalous exhibition, according to Kyrgyzstan news agency 24.kg. The minister also declared that Mira Dzhangaracheva, the director of the museum, had been relieved of her duties.

Dzhangaracheva took to Facebook to provide her side of the events. They didnt fire me, she said, adding that she resigned after receiving death threats. She alsoresponded with a letter calling out the government and the right-wing nationalist group Kyrk Choro, who she believes advocated for the shows censorship.It is a pity that it was initiated by people who never came to the museum, she wrote. Apparently someone wanted to distract attention and they did it.

Zoya Falkova, Evermust (2017). Courtesy of the artist.

The former president of Kyrgyzstan, Roza Otunbayeva, was outraged by the censorship and wrote a letter castigating the government for its response.

Stop, gentlemen! she wrote. You may have administrative power, but there is a public voice and female solidarity. The exhibition is dedicated to all the problems of women, and is dedicated to the fight against violence against women. What have you, the Ministry of Culture or the entire government, done to solve this problem?

This is violence against women, said one of the curators of the exhibition, Altyn Kapalova. This is pain. This is fear. Artists from all over the world express their feelings, but we are forbidden. As always they try to shut us up but it wont work. Art is uncensored.

Read the rest here:
Kyrgyzstan Censored a Feminist Art Show at the National Museum of Fine Arts. Now Its Director Has Resigned - artnet News

(Photo: Getty Images)

Nicki Minaj may have made the term anaconda anatomically infamous, but Jason Derulos anaconda is breaking the internetor at least Instagram. The Talk Dirty singer shared a serious thirst trap with his fans on November 21, posting a #TBT photo of himself on a 2018 vacay in Bali. In the now-infamous image, Derulo walks through a stream in nothing but his little undies, with his *ahem* admiral *ahem* on full display. Theres no smooth way to describe it. Folks, Jason Derulo is carrying a Costco-sized eggplant in his briefs.

The snap was super steamy and left many fans seriously parched. Someone who wasnt parched though? Instagram. On December 4, the social media app removed Derulos post, stating that it went against community guidelines the app has around nudity or sexual activity. And folks, Derulo is *pissed.* Like, anaconda-sized pissed. The singer took to Insta to share the tragic news, sharing a screenshot of the message alongside the offensive photo in question, writing: Fuk u mean? I have underwear onI cant help my size..

A follow-up comment from the Cats star said #bringbackAnaconda. Which, similar to Kanye calling himself the greatest artist of all time, if youre giving your own D a nickname, you need to stop. While Derulos tantrum over the censorship of his bulge is almost as cringey as Drakes court-side antics during the Raptors play-off series, we do feel for the singerbecause censorship, especially bodily censorship over something you legit cant control, is never good. But also, we have to laugh. Because women have been dealing with this issue for a long timeand it seriously has to stop.

While Derulo may be new to this whole censorship thing, chances are that a majority of women and transgender folks arent.

Since the dawn of time (or at least the last decade), women have been dealing with the repercussions of pretty much just existing online; in a time when the female body is super offensive (unless its serving someones desires sexually, that is). Over the past few years, women online have been chastised for posting everything from bikini photos to natural hair selfies to gorge images of childbirth and even editorial photo shoots. In 2014, singer Rihanna was in a months-long spat with Insta when they removed a topless photo of her shot for the cover of Lui magazine. Insta obvi didnt disable her account (its Rihanna, after all), but the Barbadian songstress offish left the app for six months after the tiff.

Read this next: Women Are Calling Out Instagram for Censoring Photos of Fat Bodies

Just a year later, in March 2015, Insta poet Rupi Kaurhad her photo, depicting herself lying in bed with a period stain on her clothing and sheets,deleted twiceby Instagram.

And more recently, women have been censored for posting images of themselves breastfeeding their children.

The big offender in those photos? Nipples.

Because God forbid a woman actually try and feed her child and think its a beautiful thing.

But not only do women often have to deal with having their literal life-giving organs monitored, but essentially their existence as well. Because the app doesnt just censor nipples and boobs, but entire bodies. Several plus-size people have reported having their bikini photos (or even fully-clothed) pictures removed by Instagram for violating community guidelines a.k.a being plus-sized. Which is horrific.

While Instagram currently says that they censor images deemed sexually suggestive, the thing is, they leave a lot of room for interpretation. Examples of images that are sexually suggestive obtained by TechCrunch show a varied and unequal interpretation of what the term means when applied to men and women. One image showed a woman sitting in her underwear while the other featured a close-up of a faceless man clutching his cross. As USA Today writerErika Hallqvist pointed out in a June article, this suggests thatmen are deemed sexually suggestive by their actions, whereas women are deemed to be by just showing their body.

Read this next: I Tried It: Free Bleeding

Because of this, images that *could* be viewed as empowering or body positive (like the aforementioned images of natural body hair or plus-size women) can instead be seen as suggestive when viewed from a male perspective, and means that what *is* considered censorship-worthy is pretty subjective.

Which is infuriating AF. But the idea of censorship guidelines being informed by the way in which people and their bodies are viewed by others rather than their actual behaviour or the images themselves, isnt all that surprising. Because weve been dealing with that backwards thinking forever.

At the heart of the issue is the fact that, typically, womens bodies have long been over-sexualizedand seen purely as objects of desire by those who really should have no say in them *ahem* men *ahem.* This is especially pertinent to Black women and a horrendous history of ownership over their bodies. According to author Amy Bentley, with the introduction of processed baby food in the 19th century, womens bodies began toseem less and less functional and more like objects of desire, and its a mentality thats never really stopped.

Its the reason Janet Jackson was skewered for (accidentally) baring her breast onstage at the Super Bowl in 2004 while Adam Levine was considered a hunk for doing the samein 2019. And its the same reason we tell young women not to wear tank tops in elementary school. Its not the spaghetti straps themselves that are offensive, but how the presence of any skin on a womanno matter their ageis interpreted as provocative or sexual by others. Seriously, its a collar bone Tommy, settle down. But this type of thinking is seriously limiting; it means that almost anything women do: eating, exercising, sunbathing, attending school in a tank top, can be seen as suggestive. And in many cases, it affects the women themselves; with young women being sent home from school to change, ultimately impacting their education.

And one of the most infuriating aspects of this sexualization is the fact that it honestly makes no sense. In an August 2015 interview with Jimmy Kimmel, singer Miley Cyrus highlighted the seriously murky waters around what *exactly* makes the female breast so titillating and offensive. Humans arent afraid of the human breast, Cyrus said, referring to her own outfit in which she donned heart-shaped pasties that showed the skin of her boob, its the nipple thats the issue.

Which begs the question, why wasnt Derulo (or let alone any mans shirtless photo) removed for very blatantly showing nips? What does a little bit of fat behind said nip do to make a breast sexual?

Read this next: Dana Suchow on Learning to Love Her Leg Hair

While Instagram may think that their censorship doesnt have repercussions, it does. With so much disinformation and shame surrounding womens bodies, censorship online can convey censorship IRL as the norm, and lead young women to believe that they should be ashamed of their bodies and the natural way they function. As Hallqvist notes, online censorship reflects a societal fear of the female body and, in turn, promotes the power dynamics that keep the female body sexualized and commodified by men, rather than understood or celebrated by women.

And all together, its just not coolin either gender. Sure, Derulo is being pretty extra with his initial thirst trap; but regardless of whether or not his post was sexual in nature (as is any thirst trap, tbh), censoring anyones body is never OK.

So while we may not be thirsty for Derulos anaconda, we are thirsty for his freedom to post his body how he wants and when he wants. So yeah, #bringbackAnaconda

Visit link:
Hey Jason Derulo, Welcome to Being a Woman on the Internet - FLARE

To the TikTok, ya don't stop...

TIKTOK is having one of those "worst weeks" we quite often see in the tech industry.

Fresh from being revealed as a potential security risk by the FBI, after a Senate-led investigation, there's now double-trouble for the Chinese-based social-network-come-reality-show.

First up, there's the small matter of a lawsuit which claims that TikTok has been collecting data on child users, back when it was called Musical.ly. It had different owners then, but hey - you buy the company, you buy the lawsuit.

Under the US COPPA laws, social media companies are explicitly barred from storing data of children under the age of 13, without express parental consent.

Whilst TikTok's owner, Bytedance, isn't the only company to have been found wanting in the COPPA department, the fact that it's Chinese just adds to that slightly cringing-through-your-cupped-hands element to the story.

Meanwhile, a German website has uncovered a policy that has seen TikTok taking down videos posted by disabled people. It said the measures were introduced to reduce cyberbullying but has since acknowledged that its process was flawed.

The leaked internal documents show that staff were instructed to suppress videos from minorities including those with facial disfigurements or features such as birthmarks, users with autism, downs syndrome or the more generalised "disabled people".

Critics, including the leakers at Netzpolitik, have remarked that these users can be left feeling "victimised", and that the responsible thing to do is to go after the bullies, rather than further marginalise the victims.

TikTok says it now uses more "nuanced" policies.

Earlier this Summer, TikTok was criticised after it was revealed that young users were paying workshy fops or influencers' for vague promises of shout-outs or personal access to them, in a completely unregulated and often fraudulent environment.

Link:
TikTok clocked for child data collection and censoring the disabled - The INQUIRER