Azerbaijan’s government locks up its online critics on trumped-up charges. It’s an odd choice to host a giant international forum on internet freedom and Rebecca Vincent asks international visitors to look below the country’s modern veneer
(more…)
Greek Journalist Kostas Vaxevani after his arrest for exposing alleged tax cheats – Athens – Stathis Kalligeris | Demotix
The European Union has a duty to speak out against increasing censorship, writes Rohan Jayasekera (more…)
Nov 5, 2012 (Index) The United States two-party system leaves little room for third party candidates in the presidential race. Green Party nominee Jill Stein has faced numerous obstacles throughout her run — including being arrested outside of one of the presidential debate between President Obama and Mitt Romney.
Index’s Sara Yasin spoke to the candidate about free speech in America, and the challenges she’s faced as a third party candidate in the Presidential race
Index: What are the biggest barriers faced by alternative candidates in the Presidential race?
Jill Stein: Its almost as if third parties have been outlawed. There is not a specific law, but they have just made it incredibly difficult and complicated to get on the ballot, to be heard, it is as if [third parties] have been virtually outlawed.
To start with we don’t have ballot status, the big parties are “grandfathered” in. Other parties have to collect anywhere from ten to twenty to thirty to forty times as many signatures to get on the ballot. We spend 80 per cent of the campaign jumping through hoops in order to get on the ballot. It really makes it almost impossible to run.
It takes money in this country. You have to buy your way onto TV. The press will not cover third parties, challengers, alternatives. The press is consolidated into the hands of a few corporate media conglomerates, and they’re not interested and they also don’t have the time because their staff has been cut. So they’re basically, you know, covering the horse race. Not looking at new voices, new choices, the kinds of things that the American public is really clamouring for, and also not looking not the issues. And so you get this really dumbed down coverage that excludes third party candidates.
And then you have the debates, which are a mockery of democracy. Which are really sham debates held and organised by the Commission on the Presidential Debates, which is a private corporation led by Democratic and Republican parties. They sound like a public interest organisation; they’re not. They’re simply a front group to censor the debate. And to fool the American voter into thinking that is the only choice that Americans have. And in fact, by locking out third party candidates, we’ve effectively locked out voters.
According to a study in USA Today a couple weeks ago, roughly one out of every two eligible voters was predicted to be staying home in this election. That is an incredible indictment of the candidates.
Index: What are your thoughts on how multinational companies are using lobbying, lawsuits and advertisements to chill free speech around environmental issues?
This is certainly being challenged. Fossil fuels are an example. The fossil fuel industry has bought itself scientists — pseudo scientists I must say — and think tanks to churn out climate denial. That whole area of climate denial has been sufficiently disproven now, to the point where they don’t rear their ugly head anymore. Now there’s just climate silence, which Obama and Romney really share. Romney is not denying the reality of climate change, he’s just not acting on it. Unfortunately, Obama has seized that agenda as well in competing for money.
I think we are seeing enormous pushback against this, in the climate movement, in the healthy food movement, in the effort to pass the referendum in California (37) that would require the labeling of food which the GMO industry is deathly afraid of, because people are rightly skeptical. So for them, free speech, informed consumers, informed voters, are anthema, it’s deadly for them. They require the supression of democracy and the suppression of free speech. And the buying of the political parties is all about silencing voices like our campaign. which stands up on all of these issues.
There are huge social movements on the ground now for sustainable, healthy organic agriculture. For really concerted climate action, for green energy, for public transportation. These are thriving movements right now. Our campaign represents the political voice of those movements. There is also a strong movement now to amend the constitution to stop these abuses, to stop this suppression of free speech.
Index: Do you think that the two-party system allows for topics viewed as inconvenient to both Republicans and Democrats to remain untouched?
JS: That’s their agreement really. And the commission on presidential debates makes it so very clear. They have a written agreement that was leaked a couple of weeks ago. That agreement includes very carefully selected moderators who agree about what kinds of questions they will ask and they will go through…until they find the candidate for a moderator that will agree basically not to rock the boat. The moderators have to agree to not only exclude third parties, but not to participate in any other format with candidates whose issues can’t be controlled. This has everything to do with why they make the agreements that they do and why they will only talk to each other, because they’re both bought and paid for by the same industries responsible for the parties.
When I got arrested protesting the censorship of the debate, my running mate and I were both tightly handcuffed with these painful plastic restraints, and taken to a secret, dark site. Run by some combination of secret service, and police, and homeland security. Who knows who it really belongs to, but it was supposed to be top secret and no one was supposed to know and we were then handcuffed to metal chairs and sat there for almost eight hours. And there were sixteen cops watching the two of us, and we were in a facility decked out for 100 people to be arrested, but it was only the two of us and one other person brought in towards the end of the evening who was actually a Bradley Manning supporter who had been arrested just for taking photographs of someone who was photographing the protesters.
Index: What does freedom of expression mean to you?
JS: It means having a democracy, having a political system that actually allows the voices of everyday people to be heard. Not just, you know, the economic elite which has bought out our establishment political parties. So free expression, for me, is the life blood of a political system. I was not a political animal until rather late in life. I was shocked to learn we don’t have a political system based on free expression. We have a political system based on campaign contributions and the biggest spender, and they buy out the policies that they want, so to me, that is where free expression goes. And if we don’t have it we don’t have politics based on free expression —- it’s not just our health that is being thrown under the bus, it’s our economy, it is our climate, it is our environment. We don’t have a future if we don’t have free expression. If we don’t get our first amendment and free speech back, and that means liberating it from money.
Sara Yasin is an editorial assistant at Index on Censorship. She tweets at @missyasin
In South Africa, the singing of “struggle songs” remains a bone of contention. Some South Africans contend, along with the courts, that songs should be banned when their lyrics incite violence. Other South Africans regard the songs as a way to remember the anti-apartheid struggle.
On 31 October, South Africa’s ruling African National Congress (ANC), along with former ANC Youth League leader Julius Malema, reached an agreement with the white “minority rights” lobby group AfriForum and the Transvaal Agricultural Union (TAU) to avert the banning of the anti-apartheid struggle song Dubula iBhunu. “Dubula iBhunu” is a vernacular Zulu phrase that translates as “Shoot the Boer”.
AfriForum, along with TAU, and Malema and the ANC in its capacity as political party agreed that:
In the interest of promoting reconciliation and to avoid community friction, and recognising that the lyrics of certain songs are often inspired by circumstances of a particular historical period of struggle which in certain instances may no longer be applicable, the ANC and Malema commit to counselling and encouraging their respective leadership and supporters to act with restraint to avoid the experience of such hurt.
Their agreement has been made an order of the court. The ANC abandoned its appeal against the banning of the song while AfriForum agreed not to pursue the banning of the song. The parties committed themselves to further dialogue to deepen mutual understanding. In practice, ANC leaders will discourage their followers from singing songs deemed “hurtful” to “minority groups”.
Malema “rediscovered” the anti-apartheid song in 2010
ANC Youth League leader Julius Malema “rediscovered” the anti-apartheid song in March 2010 in the process of bolstering his appeal to young black people who feel excluded from the material benefits of the country’s transition to democracy.
The South African Bill of Rights enshrines freedom of expression but explicitly excludes incitement of violence or advocacy of hatred to incite harm on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender or religion.
AfriForum obtained an order from the High Court last year banning Dubula iBhunu. The judgment found that the song referred to white Afrikaans people as rapists and robbers and dehumanised them by calling them “dogs”. “The process of dehumanisation is recognised … as one of the steps leading to genocide.” Malema was found guilty of hate speech.
The judgment included a reminder that South Africa’s jurisprudence regards
the right to dignity as “at least as worthy of protection as the right to freedom of expression… freedom of expression does not enjoy superior status in our law.”
The ANC appealed against the finding. It also lodged an appeal against another case involving the song: a member of the public, Willem Harmse, had taken another, Mohammed Vawda, to court in 2010 as the latter wanted to use “Dubula iBhunu” during a march against crime. Vawda argued that the song’s lyrics indicated “shooting apartheid” while Harmse, a white farmer, argued that the words could cause him personal harm. The high court had found the song to be an incitement to violence.
The appeal in the Harmse case was postponed in September this year in anticipation of the appeal in the case involving AfriForum, which would have come before the Supreme Court of Appeal this week.
The Mail and Guardian, a leading opinion-making newspaper, questioned the ANC’s decision to withdraw its appeal:
The settlement forestalls the testing of a questionable judgment with far-reaching implications. South Africans should be able to understand that what is legally permissible and what is wise or constructive are not the same. The law must leave wider parameters than political morality.
Nevertheless, South Africa has over the past few years witnessed the rise of a public discourse of intolerance that increasingly invokes violence, including Malema’s public declaration that he would “kill for Zuma” in the run-up to the 2009 election. Jacob Zuma subsequently became ANC leader and South Africa’s president. Rather than it being merely about legality or wisdom, the threat of violence has been used for specific political ends: to intimidate detractors and mobilise support.
In resurrecting Dubula iBhunu, Malema was following the example of Zuma, who had revived another “struggle song”, Awuleth’ Umshini Wami (“Bring My Machine Gun”). Zuma used the song as a war cry when his financial advisor faced a corruption trial in 2005, which implicated him, and when he (Zuma) faced rape charges in 2006.
Christi van der Westhuizen is Index on Censorship’s new South African correspondent
