24 Sep 2010 | Uncategorized
“Dear Sun Readers” begins Atwood’s pithy response to the recent controversy surrounding her signing a stop Fox News North petition that’s aiming to try and keep the right-wing television station off the air in Canada. Atwood is objecting to the way the channel will be funded and the government’s involvement. Her involvement sparked a debate on Twitter with conservative blogger Stephen Taylor and Toronto Sun Media’s Ottawa bureau chief, David Akin. During the Twitter spat, the men accused Atwood of calling the Sun an advocate of hate speech since the right-wing news channel is proposed by Sun Media. Akin tweeted:
So disappointing you would put your name to what is an anti-free speech movement. You’re smarter than that.
However, Atwood was quick to reply with:
“Free speech does not mean under-the-carpet deals that would force people to pay for Fox out of cable fees.”
After clearing any confusion and allegations made by the Sun about the Avaaz petition with spiffy ‘Allegation’ and ‘Fact’ statements, Atwood reiterates what the petition is about.
“As concerned Canadians who deeply oppose American-style hate media on our airwaves, we applaud CRTC’s refusal to allow a new ‘Fox News North’ channel to be funded from our cable fees. We urge Mr. Von Finckenstein to stay in his job and continue to stand up for Canada’s democratic traditions, and call on Prime Minister Harper to immediately stop all pressure on the CRTC on this matter.”
And she adds in subtle caps lock:
“THE VERBS ARE “APPLAUD”, “URGE” AND “CALL ON” NOT “BAN”, “SUPPRESS” AND “CENSOR.”
She mentions her views on censorship, underscoring the use of Twitter as a mode of free expression while name-dropped us too:
“AM I A PROPONENT OF “CENSORSHIP”?
Nope. Read the petition again.
Now Konrad von Finckenstein has said he isn’t under pressure (unlike his fired CRTC deputy), and will judge Application # 2 on its merits. Good!
REAL CENSORSHIP INCLUDES
Book burning, murdering, jailing and exiling writers, and shutting down newspapers, publishers, and TV stations. If you are against this, support PEN International and Index on Censorship.
Calling the Avaaz petition “censorship” is beyond cheap.
IS IT “CENSORSHIP” TO BLOCK TROLLS ON TWITTER?
No, and it’s not “censorship” to send back hate mail unopened and refuse material for your own blog, either.
Anyone can vent on their own Twitter or blog. And anyone can sign a petition to express their views.”
The latest update on the Avaaz petition states that over 80,000 people have signed it, over $110,000 has been donated to meet legal threats and Kory Teneycke, PM Harper’s former chief spokesman resigned on 15 September.
The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission hearing is on Sun TV News will begin on 19 November in Gatineau, Quebec.
Margaret Atwood features in the next issue of Index on Censorship magazine.
24 Sep 2010 | Uncategorized
Mexico continues to be an important destination for press freedom organisations. The Inter American Press Association and the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists visited Mexico this week to promote legal changes on the prosecution of crimes against journalists, and a protection plan for journalists under threat, similar to the one implemented in Colombia in early 2000. Under current law, murder cases are presided over by provincial authorities, and international groups have been pushing for crimes against journalists to be brought under the federal government´s control. President Felipe Calderon told both groups he will put in place a government sanctioned plan to protect journalists, which will include early warning alerts, extension of the statute of limitations for crimes against journalists, a programme to transfer threatened journalists to other residences, police protection for threatened reporters, and establishment of a government-media group that would identify motives behind attacks on the press.
IAPA, meanwhile, gave a vote of confidence to Calderón’s protection plan, but warned about a lack of resources for putting the plan into action.”There aren’t necessary resources to cover the magnitude of the problem,” the IAPA Vice President, Gonzalo Marroquín.
The group held a public meeting at Casa Lamm, a grand old house located in the Colonia Roma of Mexico City, where editors from Ciudad Juarez, Coahuila, Sinaloa, Tijuana and Zacatecas told the meeting that they practiced self censorship. Some of the editors were told the group that they would not accept government protection. “How can we ask the government to protect us if they cant protect themselves” Ismael Bojorquez, editor of Rio Doce, Sinaloa asked rethorically .”They can’t protect themselves,” he added, mentioning that a number of state government officials have been killed in Sinaloa.
The debate over protection measures for journalists in Mexico will continue, especially because journalists in the provincial cities, called states in Mexico, need to understand how these measures will work.
Ana Arana is Director of the Fundación Mexicana de Periodismo de Investigación
24 Sep 2010 | Americas, Mexico
Mexico continues to be an important destination for press freedom organisations. The Inter American Press Association and the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists visited Mexico this week to promote legal changes on the prosecution of crimes against journalists, and a protection plan for journalists under threat, similar to the one implemented in Colombia in early 2000. Under current law, murder cases are presided over by provincial authorities, and international groups have been pushing for crimes against journalists to be brought under the federal government´s control. President Felipe Calderon told both groups he will put in place a government sanctioned plan to protect journalists, which will include early warning alerts, extension of the statute of limitations for crimes against journalists, a programme to transfer threatened journalists to other residences, police protection for threatened reporters, and establishment of a government-media group that would identify motives behind attacks on the press.
IAPA, meanwhile, gave a vote of confidence to Calderón’s protection plan, but warned about a lack of resources for putting the plan into action.”There aren’t necessary resources to cover the magnitude of the problem,” the IAPA Vice President, Gonzalo Marroquín.
The group held a public meeting at Casa Lamm, a grand old house located in the Colonia Roma of Mexico City, where editors from Ciudad Juarez, Coahuila, Sinaloa, Tijuana and Zacatecas told the meeting that they practiced self censorship. Some of the editors were told the group that they would not accept government protection. “How can we ask the government to protect us if they cant protect themselves” Ismael Bojorquez, editor of Rio Doce, Sinaloa asked rethorically .”They can’t protect themselves,” he added, mentioning that a number of state government officials have been killed in Sinaloa.
The debate over protection measures for journalists in Mexico will continue, especially because journalists in the provincial cities, called states in Mexico, need to understand how these measures will work.
23 Sep 2010 | Uncategorized
The alarming letter sent last week by a global coalition of 20 groups affiliated with the International Freedom of Expression Exchange (IFEX) to the International Association of Judges about the “unabated persecution” of independent judges in Tunisia came as a reminder of the unprecedented deterioration of the country’s judiciary since its independence from France in 1956.
The circle of victims among independent judges has been widening since Judge Mokhtar Yahyaoui was fired in 2001 for writing to President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali to denounce “the catastrophic state the Tunisian judiciary has reached” and to urge him to use his constitutional prerogatives to end “all interference with justice and the institutions of the State”.
To this day, Yahyaoui and his family remain harassed by one of the world’s most vengeful police states. Among the retaliatory measures, he is denied the right to earn a living and travel or play any role in the tightly controlled civil society. His daughter, a student in France, had to wait more than two years before she could receive her passport from the Tunisian Embassy in Paris last weekend. His son had to leave a Tunis public school to escape politically motivated persecution.
The Tunisian authorities’ “primitive and thuggish repression”, as the critical judge calls it, only strengthened his determination to resist oppression and to continuously warn against the dangerous consequences of Ben Ali’s policy of humiliating Tunisian judges and turning them into “obedient and fearful government employees.”
It also enhanced his faith in the importance of international pressure and solidarity to help “alleviate the threats and suffering of all those who are today in the crosshair of dictatorship in Tunisia.”
The IFEX Tunisia Monitoring Group letter to the Rome-based International Association of Judges echoes the findings of a report released in Beirut in June entitled “Behind the Façade: How a Politicized Judiciary and Administrative Sanctions Undermine Tunisian Human Rights” .
Unlike his predecessor, Habib Bourguiba, who “was a lawyer and a cultivated man,” before leading the country to independence and implementing significant educational, judicial and social reforms, Ben Ali “is a man of the barracks and an army general” inclined, since his 1987 coup, to keep the country’s institutions under his thumb, explains Yahyaoui. “How can you have an independent judiciary when you are deprived of the right to freedom of expression?”
The heavy price paid by Yahyaoui and other brave human rights defenders, such as Mohammad Nouri, Nejib Hosni, Moncef Marzouki, Radhia Nasraoui and Mohammad Abbou, for opposing the use of Tunisian courts to issue unfair rulings and settle scores with dissidents and critical journalists helped raise awareness about the urgent need to reform the decaying judiciary and the rest of the political system. So did the rising and voracious influence of Ben Ali’s family over the country’s political and economic life and its alleged plan to restore hereditary rule, 53 years after the proclamation of the Tunisian Republic.
Attacks on independent judges intensified after the 2002 Soviet-style referendum allowing the amendment of the 1959 Constitution to lift the restrictions which prevented Ben Ali from running for more than three terms as president and granted him immunity from prosecution for life. His advisers are currently paving the way for a new Orwellian campaign to lift the constitutional age limit which precludes the so-called “Architect of Change” from running for president again in 2014.
The eviction in 2005 of the democratically elected board of the Association of Tunisian Judges and its replacement by a puppet board came as no surprise, given the strong commitment of its leading figures to protect their colleagues from political interference and arbitrariness.
It was immediately followed by an unrelenting wave of persecution that saw over the past five years President Ahmad Rahmouni, Secretary General Kalthoum Kennou and other brave judges, including Wassila Kaabi, Raoudha Karafi and Leila Bahria, assigned hundreds of kilometres away from Tunis and their families, denied promotion or deprived of large portions of their salaries, without explanation.
“Why do you think we are subject to such mistreatment? It is simply because our association wanted to ensure certain protection and guarantees to the judge regarding his or her independence, assignment and promotion,” said Kennou.
The lengthy and ruthless persecution of these brave judges apparently does not seem to bother the friends of President Ben Ali in the West, nor has it captured the attention of the UN Special Rapporteur on the Independence of Judges and Lawyers Gabriela Carina Knaul de Albuquerque e Silva.
In a report issued earlier this year, she stressed “the need for continuing education in international human rights law for magistrates, judges, prosecutors, public defenders and lawyers,” as if highly educated judges or lawyers in human rights law could effectively do their job without efficient international pressure on dictators restricting them.
Kamel Labidi is a freelance journalist and leading human rights advocate currently living in Arlington, Virginia. This article originally appeared in the Beirut Daily Star and is republished with permission.
