Enemies of free speech
As four men go on trial in Denmark accused of planning an attack against newspaper Jyllands-Posten, Kenan Malik argues that since the Danish cartoon controversy free expression is now seen as an enemy of liberty
Worried about girls marrying for love? Just ban them from using mobile phones
A village council in Northern India last week banned women from using mobile phones. The leaders of Sunderbari village, population 8000, hope that fining unmarried women (Rs 10,000, or 114 GBP) and married women (Rs 2000, or 23 GBP) will stop premarital and extramarital affairs.
The men’s logic is simple: these affairs that have led to elopements — at least six in the past year — and humiliate the village. Manuwar Alam, council member, explains: “We had to hide our faces out of shame.” Local government officials took a serious view of this “unlawful diktat” and questioned the village council. In an about turn, the council now denies it announced fines.
While India has made efforts to work towards gender equality, ridiculous restrictions placed on women in the name of curbing chances of shame are still a problem. National debate focuses on how to empower women, be it through reserving 33 per cent of seats for women in parliament or the use of mobile phones. Yet on the ground in much of India, men are clearly threatened by any move toward’s increasing women’s independence.
This isn’t the first time a village council has tried to ban women from using mobile phones. In July, a village in Uttar Pradesh banned women from using them on the streets, mainly to stem the tide of “love marriages” in a culture that believes marriages should be arranged between families. The next month, a similar diktat in a village in Rajasthan ordered all girls below the age of 18 to stop using mobile phones, so that they would not get “distracted”.
This repressive instinct travels beyond village councils and right up to members of Parliament. In October, a former minister from Uttar Pradesh, Rajpal Singh Saini, cautioned his audience against giving girls mobile phones, saying: “What are the girls missing without mobiles? Did our mothers, sisters, did they die without mobiles during their time?”
The problem goes well beyond mobiles. Local khap panchayats (village councils) in India’s north regularly indulge in honour killings to send a message to young lovers who elope that inter-caste marriages are not allowed. So regressive is the thinking that a former chief minister of Haryana went as far as to suggest that the marriage age of girls be lowered to prevent the rising number of rapes in his state.
Beyond the joy of simple conversation, the mobile phone has become a powerful instrument to empower women in India. In Bihar itself, health workers have been given mobile phones so that they can connect with the local public health officers while out on their field, and also to facilitate mobile money transfers. In Uttar Pradesh, women have used them to learn the alphabet through the use of mobile phones. UN Women Singapore recently gave a grant to a Rajasthan-based project that helps women sell feminine hygiene products to others via mobile.
Even the government of India is moving forward to connect all 250,000 village councils with broadband connections to bridge the digital divide. Osama Manzar, director of the Digital Empowerment Foundation which is helping the government train village officials to become digitally proficient, told Index that for a village council to ban mobile usage is uncalled for. “I see this more as an issue of cultural change which the older generation is not used to and not aware of much and does not know how to comprehend. The sooner we make our society digitally literate, such issues will be a non-happening.”
Yet it seems that the by-product of having a phone — that women’s personal choices and confidence are increasing — is what has threatened the chauvinist Indian man. Manuwar Alam, of Bihar’s Sunderbari village has said:
[The] mobile phone is the cause of all evils in our society, including increasing love affairs and the incidents of elopement.
But mobiles do not cause these problems. Repression does.
Maria Miller Leveson threat raises fears of politicians interfering in press regulation
Worrying news from Buckingham Palace Road this morning: the Telegraph is reporting that Culture Secretary Maria Miller’s special adviser Joanna Hindley warned its reporters of Miller’s connection to the Leveson report before the newspaper published details of her expenses, notably that Miller’s parents lived in her taxpayer-funded second home.
The paper took the rare step of choosing to disclose details of the conversation in light of concerns over “the potential dangers of politicians being given a role in overseeing the regulation of the press.”
The key passage from their story:
When a reporter approached Mrs Miller’s office last Thursday, her special adviser, Joanna Hindley, pointed out that the Editor of The Telegraph was involved in meetings with the Prime Minister and the Culture Secretary over implementing the recommendations made by Lord Justice Leveson.
“Maria has obviously been having quite a lot of editors’ meetings around Leveson at the moment. So I am just going to kind of flag up that connection for you to think about,” said Miss Hindley.
Miss Hindley also said the reporter should discuss the issue with “people a little higher up your organisation”.
In an email statement, a DCMS spokesperson said:
Mrs Miller’s special adviser raised concerns with a journalist about the nature of an approach to Mrs Miller’s elderly father. Her advisor noted that Mrs Miller was in regular contact with the paper’s editor and would raise her concerns directly with him, which Mrs Miller did subsequently.
However, this is a separate issue to on-going discussions about press regulation. Mrs Miller has made the Government’s position on this clear.
This “flagging up” is worrying, but it’s not the first instance of those in power feeling that they already have right to tell reporters what to print. Remember the Spectator’s Fraser Nelson’s revelation last month, pre-Leveson?
In the last few weeks, I have had an MP and a government minister call asking me to (respectively) discipline a Spectator writer who had annoyed him on Twitter and take down a blog that was ‘over-the-top’.
Meanwhile, Evan Harris of the Hacked Off campaign, which pushes for tougher regulation of the press, has apparently suggested Miller should “recuse herself” from Leveson issues.
Those of us concerned about a post-Leveson environment in which emboldened MPs are able to intimidate the press have been told we’re overreacting. But today’s report proves our point: it is precisely the sort of thing that could prevent journalists from doing their jobs and endangers press freedom and the role of the fourth estate in holding politicians to account. And it does little favours to the argument that the state should have a role in regulating our papers.
Marta Cooper is an editorial researcher at Index. Follow her on Twitter: @martaruco
After court appeal ANC decides to allow Zuma no confidence vote — but in February
South Africa’s highest court, the Constitutional Court, last week agreed to hear an application about a motion of no confidence in President Jacob Zuma. A High Court judge’s findings suggested that “the public are entitled to hear the debate” as the Constitution enjoins South Africans to prevent the suppression of “the dignity of even a single voice expressing a different perspective”.
The ruling African National Congress (ANC) in November used its parliamentary majority to shut down a no confidence debate assessing ANC leader Jacob Zuma’s continued suitability for the job of president of South Africa. Section 102 of South Africa’s Constitution allows for a vote on a motion of no confidence in parliament’s National Assembly. If, after debate, the motion is passed, the president, cabinet and deputy ministers have to resign.
No confidence debate will discuss Zuma’s suitability as president (Jordi Matas – Demotix)
In its rejection of opposition parties’ proposal, the ANC argued that the motion would be “frivolous” as its aim was “to try the President in a court of public opinion and tarnish his image and that of the ANC in the media”.
Eight of the eleven opposition parties in parliament, led by the official opposition Democratic Alliance, brought an urgent application in the Western Cape High Court to instruct the speaker of parliament to allow the motion. Judge Dennis Davis could not find in the applicants’ favour, as the rules of parliament do not make provision for no confidence motions.
However, he added that “when political parties, who represent approximately a third of the electorate, decide to initiate a motion, and to seek wider support for the motion on matters of such importance, that too is their right.
“The […] people are entitled, as citizens of South Africa, to hear what our national representatives have to say about a matter of such pressing importance. Of course, once the debate takes place and reasoned voices across the floor are heard, the majority may well vote the matter down and that would be the end of it. But what cannot be justified is that the debate should not be allowed to take place.”
Meanwhile, the ANC changed its position and “welcomed” the debate, but proposed that it only takes place during the next parliamentary session in February 2013.
The party is currently engaged in a bruising jockeying for positions in the run-up to its elective conference in December, where Zuma’s deputy, Kgalema Motlanthe, may challenge him. The opposition to the debate suggested that Zuma’s hold on the party may be more tenuous than his allies want others to believe. His parliamentary lieutenants seem to have realised this, prompting their volte-face on the debate. Their insistence on scheduling the debate next year nevertheless still suggests fear that it may worsen intra-party divisions.
Opposition parties’ application to the Constitutional Court will be heard in March next year.