22 Oct 2009 | Uncategorized
More freedom of expression and human rights groups have voiced concern at a bid by the Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC) and the African Group to write new conditions into an international convention that will add a requirement to ban defamation of religion to a convention intended to eliminate racism.
The OIC, represented by Pakistan, and the African Group, represented by Egypt, have approached the UN Ad Hoc Committee mandated to ‘elaborate’ on the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination.
The OIC proposes new and binding standards on issues such as ‘defamation of religions, religious personalities, holy books, scriptures and symbols’. Twenty four groups, including ten Arab organisations, have put their name to an appeal to the Ad Hoc committee not to accept the OIC proposals.
With an eye to the Danish cartoons saga, the OIC calls for protection against ‘provocative portrayals of objects of religious veneration as a malicious violation of the spirit of tolerance,’ and prohibition of the publication of ‘…gratuitously offensive attacks on matters regarded as sacred by the followers of any religion’.
The OIC submission would also provide for action against ‘abuse of the right to freedom of expression in the context of racio-religious profiling’.
The letter, originated by free expression campaigners Article 19, The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies and Human Rights Watch Legal Resource Consortium in South Africa, maintains that the concept of ‘defamation of religions’ is contrary to freedom of expression but also general principles of international human rights law.
The focus, the signatories argue, should be on protecting the rights of individual believers, rather than belief systems.
‘Tolerance and understanding can only be properly addressed through open debate and intercultural dialogue involving state actors, politicians and public figures, the media and civil society organisations,’ say the groups.
‘Furthermore, the concept of defamation of religions has been abusively relied upon to stifle religious dissent and criticism of religious adherents and non-believers in a number of countries around the world.’
The African Group proposes that the Ad Hoc Committee defines ‘Islamophobia,’ ‘Anti-Semitism’ and ‘Christianophobia’ without offering up any definitions of these concepts itself. The protesting groups argue that these categories of phobias relating to Islam, Judaism and Christianity ‘clearly discriminate against believers of other religions and non-believers’.
A similar letter of concern by 23 members of the IFEX network of free expression groups and other organisations this week also called on the Ad Hoc committee to ensure that attempts to address racial or religious hatred should conform to standards of international law.
Open Letter to the UN Ad Hoc Committee for the Elaboration of Complementary Standards.
22 Oct 2009 | News and features
Cartooning in India is starting to move beyond the constraints that have long imprisoned it, reports Sarnath Banerjee.
Sarnath Bannerjee
As India enters late capitalism after two decades of soft socialism, cartoonists find themselves needing to deal with an entirely new set of concerns. They are grappling with an ever-changing urban mythology, a fairly conservative middle-class, and a self-congratulatory media which has very little space for oblique commentary.
(more…)
22 Oct 2009 | Uncategorized
Was this a great day for democracy, I was asked this morning as I sought for the umpteenth time on television and radio to justify the BBC’s decision to invite the BNP onto its Question Time programme. Of course it is not a great day when a party that is avowedly hostile to ethnic minorities is given a platform on the broadcaster’s most prestigious discussion programme. This is not a day that will be remembered with fondness by anyone except supporters of the far-right party.
And yet the alternative for democracy and for free speech – the most basic of civil liberties – would have been worse. The most important free expression is the right of an individual or organisation, whose views one finds most obnoxious, to have its say. One works from the assumption that Nick Griffin, the BNP leader, will be subjected to robust, passionate and forensic cross-examination. The rest is up to the good sense of the public.
The only realistic and practical criteria for curbing free speech reside in the law. If Griffin or any of his followers break the law – as they have done in the past – then they should be subjected to the full might of the law. Until or unless they do, they are entitled to be heard no matter how uncomfortable that leaves mainstream society.
It is not for governments, less still public service broadcasters, to determine the acceptability of opinion. When in February Jacqui Smith, the then Home Secretary, announced a list of 16 undesirable foreigners who would be denied access to the UK – from the Dutch far-right politician Geert Wilders to radical Islamist preachers to an American shock-jock radio host – she was setting a worrying precedent. One is either a free individual or guilty of a crime. That is surely one of the most important lessons of our, imperfect, democratic system.
22 Oct 2009 | Middle East and North Africa, Uncategorized
President Ben Ali
He’s back. Tunisia’s president, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, will be seeking election for a fifth term on 25 October and there’s no doubt that he will win the day. Ben Ali’s party, the Rally for Constitutional Democracy (RCD), has a reported 3.8 million members in a country with just 5.2 million voters.
But to ensure victory his supporters in government and beyond have put together a package of repression that undercuts his few challengers and silences any independent media coverage of the campaign.
The media were softened up before the vote with a hostile takeover of the country’s journalists’ union (SNJT) by Ben Ali loyalists. Individual reporters opposed to the leadership coup have been singled out for intimidation and assault. The coup followed publication of a press freedom report critical of the government and the elected SNTJ leadership’s refusal to endorse any candidate, including the incumbent Ben Ali.
According to International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), a series of recent attacks and incidents of harassment suggest deliberate targeting of independent journalism in Tunisia.
Hanane Belaifam, was barred from entering her workplace at Radio-Jeunes, apparently in for her outspoken support of the ousted SNTJ leadership. Asahafa reporter Zied El Heni was beaten up on 15 October and his blog was forcibly closed.
“The attack on El Heni is an intolerable attack on a prominent journalist and leading advocate for independent journalism,” said Aidan White, IFJ General Secretary. “The simultaneous closure of his blog is clear evidence of political pressure and suggests that this unknown assailant was not acting alone.”
Sihem Bensedrine, founder of online magazine Kalima Tunisie and 2006 Index Free Expression award winner, on 20 October was prevented by police from participating in a workshop organized by the Tunisian Association of Democratic Women. Online journalist Lotfi Hidouri had been similarly barred from the event the day before. The conference had planned to discuss state controls over the media in the run-up to the election.
The foreign press has also been subjected to pre-election repression. Le Monde correspondent Florence Beaugé was barred from entering the country on 20 October when she arrived at Tunis airport to cover the elections. The government claimed that Beaugé “had always shown blatant malevolence to Tunisia and had systematically taken a hostile position.”
“One of the goals of this campaign is to silence all dissenting voices at a time when Tunisian media is brazenly being used to campaign for a fifth five-year term for President Ben Ali, ” said Mohamed Abdel Dayem of the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). CPJ said the Tunisian government should end its unrelenting war on independent journalism at home and abroad.
Hamma Hammami, the former editor of the banned newspaper Alternatives was also badly beaten by police on arrival at Tunis airport on 29 September after criticizing the government in an interview for Al-Jazeera.
“We no longer have the right to express our views in Tunisia,” said Hammami’s wife, Radhia Nasraoui, who is a lawyer and human rights activist. “When we dare to criticise the regime in the foreign media, we are punished by being physically attacked. This is now standard practice. They no longer need to throw people in prison.”
CPJ adds that pro-state media – including papers owned by the ruling party, Ben Ali’s son-in-law and rising businessman and politician Sakhr Al-Materi, and the pro-government satellite TV station Hannibal – have supported a smear campaign against Al-Jazeera. The Qatar-based network’s critical coverage led Tunis to close its embassy in Doha for months in 2006 and continuously deny accreditation to Al-Jazeera’s Tunis correspondent, Lotfi Hajji.
From Paris the vice-president of the banned Congress for Democracy Abdelraouf El Ayadi told al-Jazeera that the international community is failing Tunisian pro-democrats: “As far as I know, western countries are backing the dictatorship in Tunisia and giving it financial and media support. Tunisia is being presented by the west as a model of a free society.”
The Tunisian authorities work hard to support this image by supporting the development of pro-state NGOs – the so-called GONGOs or Governmental Non-Governmental Organisations, directing state advertising to media that promote the picture and refusing licenses to independent publications and rights organisations.
To make doubly sure of the image of democracy, the government reserves a small number of seats in parliament for carefully selected members of what El Ayadi and others deride as a “palace opposition,’ some of whom formerly belonged to the ruling RCD.
As commentator Bassam Bounenni points out while this keeps up an appearance of democracy, the regime is still unchallenged since it has ample votes in parliament to pass laws unilaterally.
Bounenni adds that amendments to the constitution and the election act have cut the ground from under the feet of his most critical opponents. Presidential candidates are now required to have served as elected leader of a recognised party a couple of years preceding the elections – thereby ruling out, as intended, presidential bids by both Mustapha Ben Jaafar, of the Democratic Forum for Labour and Liberties (FTDL), and Ahmed Nejib Chebbi of the Progressive Democratic Party (PDP).
Al Tariq Al Jadid, the paper of the former Tunisian communist party, now known as Ettajdid (Renewal) had its entire print run for the start of the campaign on 11 October seized on a manipulated technicality – because by printing the day before they supposedly breached election media rules.
Presidential candidate Ahmed Ibrahim of Ettajdid has had his manifesto censored and his supporters prevented from holding meetings or displaying posters. Parliamentary elections, to be held on the same day have been stripped of opposition candidates by the constitutional council, whose members are appointed by Ben Ali and parliament chairman, Foued Mbazaa.
