The organisation Index on Censorship is a leading British organisation promoting freedom of expression worldwide. Every year it holds its Index awards to reward courageous individuals fighting for our right to express ourselves. They come from all corners of this planet, often with the support of British embassies, the British council, and other official bodies.
However, this year, some of its nominees have had to face truly saddening and absurd situations, even more so given the nature of their work and of their reason to travel to the UK. Three of them have only been able to secure visas to come for the ceremony following much pressure in high places, much time wasted, and nerves wrecked. In one case, the office in Teheran would only give the Iranian nominee an appointment after the event, although the application had been due well in advance. The insistance of a close contact of Index within the Foreign and Commonwealth office managed to speed up the process.
The second individual, from Azerbaidjan, was refused a visa as he was deemed not to have the required points quota, though the British embassy in Baku is a strong supporter, and sponsor, of his work. Again, contacts in high places did the trick.
The third nominee is Bielorussian, and was assured by visa officers in Minsk that his situation would be unproblematic, given the support of the embassy.However, his file was then transferred to Moscow, where none of this factors were taken into account, and his application got rejected. The decision was reviewed after much embarassing communication between the Moscow visa office and the Minsk embassy and visa office.
Though all nominees were lucky enough to have contacts able to put the pressure, their relentless work and fight for the freedom of expression could have been silenced in the UK by the stubborn application of a system which works in a void, oblivious to human realities and other governmental initiatives.
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http://www.indexoncensorship.org/
