LONDON: A leading Russian rights group says it has received a notice from YouTube threatening to block access in Russia to one of its video channels featuring news on the war in Ukraine.
OVD-Info, an independent protest monitoring network, said it had received an email from YouTube in early May saying that the Russian communications regulator Roskomnadzor had found content on the channel that violated a law on information technology.
“If you do not remove the content, Google may be required to block it,” Alphabet Inc’s YouTube wrote, according to screenshots of an email shared with Reuters. The email did not specify which part of the law OVD-Info was accused of violating.
The channel, Kak Teper (What’s Going On), has 100,000 subscribers and features interviews with Russian opposition figures and political news segments that often touch on the war.
“We are consulting with YouTube and Google and trying to explain that the demand to block our channel is an act of political censorship,” said OVD-Info spokesperson Dmitrii Anisimov. He said the group’s other YouTube channel was not affected.
Contacted by Reuters two times about Youtube’s discussions with OVD-Info, a spokesperson for YouTube did not respond. The spokesperson answered separate questions about three other opposition channels which had videos blocked.
Like many Western technology companies, Google quit Russia over its invasion of Ukraine, pulling its staff and suspending all advertising sales, including on YouTube.
Russia has blocked the vast majority of foreign social media platforms, but has stopped short of blocking YouTube despite fining the video-hosting platform repeatedly for failing to delete content Moscow deems illegal.
YouTube has tens of millions of monthly users in Russia and blocking the entire platform could prove highly unpopular.
Russian independent media reported on Monday that YouTube had deleted videos from three other channels that provided information on how to evade Russian military service.
Two of the groups told Reuters their content had been reinstated within a day after the media reports.
When contacted by Reuters about the videos, the YouTube spokesperson replied by email: “The content in question has been reinstated to YouTube,” without elaborating.
OVD-Info’s Kak Teper would be the first Russian human rights channel to be banned on YouTube, as opposed to just a few videos, according to Natalia Krapiva, tech legal counsel at global digital rights non-profit Access Now.
“We will not have any YouTube to fight for anymore if all the civil society is blocked there,” Krapiva said in a phone interview.
Russian rights group says YouTube threatens to block its anti-war channel
https://arab.news/8wrva
Russian rights group says YouTube threatens to block its anti-war channel
- OVD-Info said YouTube’s email followed a request by the Russian communications regulator Roskomnadzor
To infinity and beyond: Grendizer’s 50 years of inspiring Arabs
- 50 years after its creation, the Grendizer anime series continues to capture Arab imagination
- Arab News Japan speaks to creator Go Nagai, Middle Eastern fans and retells the story behind the UFO Robot tasked with protecting our planet
LONDON: Few cultural imports have crossed borders as unexpectedly, or as powerfully, as Grendizer, the Japanese giant robot that half a century ago became a childhood hero across the Arab world, nowhere more so than in Saudi Arabia.
Created in Japan in the mid-1970s by manga artist Go Nagai, Grendizer was part of the “mecha” tradition of giant robots. The genre was shaped by Japan’s experience during the Second World War, and explored themes of invasion, resistance and loss through the medium of science fiction.
But while the series enjoyed moderate success in Japan, its true legacy was established thousands of kilometers away in the Middle East.
The anime “UFO Robot Grendizer” arrived on television in the region in 1979, dubbed into Arabic and initially broadcast in Lebanon during the Lebanese civil war. The story it told of the heroic Duke Fleed, a displaced prince whose planet had been destroyed by alien invaders, struck a chord with children growing up amid regional conflict and occupation by Israel.
Its themes of defending one’s homeland, standing up to aggression and protecting the innocent were painfully relevant in the region, transforming the series from mere entertainment into a kind of emotional refuge.
Much of the show’s impact came from its successful Arabization. The powerful Arabic dubbing and emotionally charged voice-acting, especially by Lebanese actor Jihad El-Atrash as Duke Fleed, lent the show a moral gravity unmatched by other cartoons of the era.
The theme song for the series, performed by Sami Clark, became an anthem that the Lebanese singer continued to perform at concerts and festivals right up until his death in 2022.
By the early 1980s, “Grendizer” had spread across the Middle East, inspiring fandoms in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq and beyond. For many, it was not only their first exposure to anime, it also delivered lessons on values such as justice and honor.
Grendizer was so influential in the region that it became the subject of scholarly research, which in addition to recognizing the ways in which the plight of the show’s characters resonated with the audience in the Middle East, also linked the show’s popularity to generational memories of displacement, particularly the Palestinian Nakba.
Half a century later, “Grendizer” remains culturally alive and relevant in the region. In Saudi Arabia, which embraced the original version of the show wholeheartedly, Manga Productions is now introducing a new generation of fans to a modernized version of the character, through a video game, The Feast of The Wolves, which is available in Arabic and eight other languages on platforms including PlayStation, Xbox and Nintendo Switch, and a new Arabic-language anime series, “Grendizer U,” which was broadcast last year.
Fifty years after the debut of the show, “Grendizer” is back — although to a generation of fans of the original series, their shelves still full of merchandise and memorabilia, it never really went away.
