15 Dec 2011 | China
Is China’s foreign policy shaped by national public opinion or is the government shaping public opinion to justify its foreign policy?
An interesting new analysis by the Brookings Institute has it that the government is manipulating nationalist sentiment to justify its own foreign policy decisions.
“On foreign policy issues, the Chinese public relies overwhelmingly on the official media for daily information, and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the government plays a central role in determining what information will be available to the public. The Propaganda Department of the CCP is the political center for ideological control and news censorship. It has almost absolute authority over what the public will read and see through its control of the sources of information.”
On key foreign news stories, such as the Egyptian riots, media must use Xinhua wire reports. When the story is even more sensitive, such as disputes in the South China Sea even Xinhua is not to be trusted, it says. All media must use reports straight from the State Council itself.
The angle is carefully chosen to garner the desired response, according to the Institute.
“For example, Chinese media reports on the domestic turbulence in Libya and Syria in 2011 rarely focuses on the governments’ authoritarian records, human rights violations, or corruption. Instead, following China’s foreign policy principles, Chinese media spent most volume on the negative aspects of domestic instability and the danger of foreign intervention.”
The web, while having a little more leeway, is also heavily screened.
“Most discussion on the internet in China is carefully screened, and much of it is pre-approved, by the government―including inflammatory comments and nationalistic criticisms about foreign policy issues. If it wished to, therefore, the government could shape and influence the direction of the internet content and netizens’ discussions to tone down nationalistic sentiment. The fact that it does not in many cases raises the question not about its ability, but its intentions.”
As examples of how it has manipulated foreign news in the past, it picks out the Dalai Lama’s visit to the US in 2010 and American arms sales to Taiwan in the same year. The government knew about the visit and the sales months before, “yet when they were officially announced, Beijing responded in a ferocious manner. Harsh official statements were applauded and echoed by an even more agitated public, which in its more extreme examples called for sanctions on American companies and even a military confrontation with the United States.”
It could have handled the issues in a much more conciliatory way, it argues.
“The fact that it did not revealed several things,” it says. Firstly, it was enjoying its bigger role on the international stage due to its economic growth. And, “it saw public opinion as a useful tool to show Washington how angry the Chinese people are and how severe the consequences could be. Beijing might have a point when saying it had to answer to the public sentiment at home, but such a sentiment was at least in part its own creation to begin with. Public opinion was more instrumental than original in this case.”
The Chinese government appeals to nationalism as a way to “reaffirm its legitimacy in the eyes of the people,” given there are no free and fair elections in the country. It’s also a tool to bargain “concessions from foreign governments.”
Don’t jump too quickly to say Beijing is listening to its people, it warns. It’s much more likely that the people have been manipulated into saying what Beijing wants them to say.
2 Nov 2011 | News
The Charlie Hebdo bombing exposes a gulf in understanding between the secular French establishments and Muslim immigrants, says Myriam Francois-Cerrah
The firebombing of Charlie Hebdo offices following its decision to run an edition featuring the prophet Mohammed as “guest editor”, is a sad reflection of France’s uneasy relationship to Islam and religion more generally.Sadly, there are some who do not believe that Charlie Hebdo should have the right to publish a satirical issue, in which it presents Prophet Mohamed as the inspiration of the Arab revolutions and subsequent rise of islamist parties in the region (regardless of the accuracy of this link!). They are no doubt in a minority, just as those who committed this crime will no doubt be revealed to be a fringe group or renegade individuals.
But there is no denying the fact many Muslims are offended by the decision to run an issue entitled “Charia Hebdo”, with reference to “100 lashings if you don’t die of laughter” (chuckle) and a “halal aperitif” (ha!) and perhaps more pertinently, to run images of Prophet Mohammed.
Charlie Hebdo is renowned for being a highly satirical outlet which pushes the limits of public discourse on any given issue through its provocative illustrations and irreverent style. It has in its time, been accused of being anti-Semitic, anti-Catholic and now Islamophobic to boot and would no doubt parade these accusations as badges of honour.
However the recent issue comes at a complex time in France’s political life. The far right has made large advances, gaining 15 per cent of the vote in recent regional elections and they have maintained the “immigration question” near the top of the political agenda, drawing parallels between Muslims praying in the street and the Nazi occupation. Meanwhile, recent stats suggest that amongst the descendants of immigrants, 70 per cent, compared with 35 per cent amongst recent immigrants, consider that the French government does not respect them, including amongst those possessing university degrees and thus in theory, more “integrated” into the social fabric.
French Arabs face unemployment at a rate of 14 per cent compared with 9.2 per cent amongst people of French origin — even after adjusting for educational qualifications and are poorly represented at every level. Charlie Hebdo’s decision to poke fun at Islam, although completely inline with its treatment of other issues, comes at a time of intense polemics over the place of Islam within France, as debates over “laicite” galvanise the political spectrum.
Many Muslims appear to feel under siege in a political climate which continues to view Islam as an impediment to full adhesion to French national identity and where religious practise is associated with a social malaise. Indeed, a recent report by the French academic Gilles Kepel has reignited debate over the role Islam plays in the perpetuation of disenfranchisement in the suburbs, where Muslims are over-represented.
Some in France have sought to blame Islam for the high levels of unemployment, underachievement, violence and marginalisation in France’s ghettoised suburbs, while others have protested the Islamification of the discourse on the suburbs, decrying the use of confused and loaded terminology to overlook substantial economic and social problems in these areas. In France, with or without the caricatures, Islam is a sore topic with many recent polemics related to Islamic practises, whether the face veil debate, street prayers or the building of new mosques.
French Muslims are regularly told — even by the President — that you either “love France or you leave her”, reinforcing their status as outsiders, and a right-wing discourse which promotes ridiculous predictions of a Muslim take over of Europe through high birth rates and proselytising, is gaining ground. Christopher Caldwell, a contributor to the Financial Times recently published an inflammatory book Reflections on the Revolution In Europe: Immigration, Islam, and the West which has gained widespread media coverage, including on mainstream French TV, with its thesis that Europe is doomed in the face of a Islamic cultural invasion. In this context, marked by fear of Islam’s alleged resurgence, intractability and incompatibility with “French culture”, as well as the inability of many French Muslims to present an alternative perspective on an equal platform, are the seeds of profound social malaise.
Satire of religion has a long history in France and Christians are not exempt from what some groups have deemed insensitive and injurious portrayals of sacred persons or ideas. Since its launch on 20 October, Christian groups have regularly interrupted the Paris based theatrical production of “On the concept of the face of the son of God” (Sur le concept du visage du fils de Dieu) for its perceived blasphemy and “Christianophobia”.
The play features an elderly man defecating on stage and his son coming to clean his back side, using the portrait of Jesus. The excrement collected is then used at the end of the play by children as missiles to be thrown at the portrait of Christ, whilst at the end of the production, a black veil of excrement glides down the portrait of Jesus. In April this year, an art exhibit entitled Piss Christ, featuring a crucifix immersed in a glass containing blood and urine was vandalised by Christians outraged by the piece. Some religious groups have accused the arts and the media to resorting to crass provocations to raise the profile of otherwise mediocre artistic endeavours which might not have garnered public attention without the controversy.
Charlie Hebdo’s current confrontation with Islamic polemics is not its first. In 2008, it won a legal case against accusations of incitement to racial hatred when it chose to reprint the Danish cartoons, launched by the French Muslim Council (CFCM) and the Grand Mosque of Paris. Interviewed on recent events, Mohammed Moussaoui, president of the CFCM has both condemned the attack on Charlie Hebdo and the printing of the irreverent images.
Describing the decision to print images known to be offensive to Muslims as “hurtful” and questioning the association of the caricatures of Prophet Mohamed with events in Tunisia or Libya, he defended the right of those who opposed the decision to protest as well as the freedom of the press to print the said images and explained that in a plural society, people’s relationship to the sacred will necessarily vary.
The attack on the press outlet, Charlie Hebdo is symptomatic of the broader unease French society is facing in light of a growing visible Muslim minority. While successive generations of “French” origin are getting more secular in their outlook, with around 60 per cent of youths saying in 2008 that they had no religious belief, the pattern among the children of immigrants from north Africa, Sahel and Turkey is the opposite, as religion gains in importance, particularly among the young.
How France negotiates an inclusive public sphere in which the views of all its citizens, including those who abide by a religious tradition, are reflected remains a stark challenge. It is telling that Charlie Hebdo chose Mohammed as “guest editor”, rather than a contemporary figure who could express an accurate reflection of French Muslim opinion on current affairs — instead, it chose the route of ease, ascribing archaic and reactionary ideas to a sacred figure, his ideas rigidified and frozen in a literalist caricature, which although undoubtedly humorous in parts, is completely out of sync with how most Muslims understand Islam’s relationship to the modern context. This issue might be its best-selling; the real question though ought to be, is it its best?
Myram Francois-Cerrah is a writer, journalist and budding academic
2 Nov 2011 | Uncategorized
This September, a firestorm erupted when WikiLeaks put the entire unredacted cache of leaked US embassy cables up on its website. Vulnerable individuals named in the cables panicked, the media and civil society expressed confusion and outrage, and WikiLeaks was widely blamed for irresponsibility and indifference to the harm its leaks could cause, suffering more defections from its ranks. Just prior, Julian Assange squarely blamed David Leigh of The Guardian for publishing in a book the secret passcode to the encrypted file, which WikiLeaks had transmitted through a secure server. Leigh responded that he had been told the code was temporary and would expire. However, shortly before Assange was arrested on 7 December 2010, the encrypted material was also posted on BitTorrent. In August, 2011, WikLleaks defector Daniel Domscheit-Berg tipped off a German magazine where the file could be found on the internet, and the news began to circulate. But responsibility for the revelations was even more tangled and diffuse.
Wikileaks long had serious leaks within its ranks. More news organizations than the initial four obtained and ran stories on the cables. Israel Shamir, a one-time WikiLeaks insider, appears to have given the cache to Belarus dicator Lukashenko in 2010, prompting allegations that Belarusian activists then suffered retaliation. Wikileaks also distributed the cables to many more media outlets, saying it had roughly ninety media partners by mid-2011. Further leaks sprang from the ranks of the media partners. By April, WikiLeaks staff believed that most major intelligence agencies likely had obtained the entire unredacted cache. In late August, as the connection between the passcode and the location of the encrypted cache was about to go viral, it seemed the only audiences that might still not have access were the general public and the very individuals who might be at risk of serious human rights abuse due to their exposure. WikiLeaks sent out a few quiet warnings, and then posted the unredacted material itself.
The WikiLeaks publication of the unredacted cables did alert vulnerable sources, several of whom left their countries to protect themselves. It also ensured that no party intent on retaliating against US sources would have difficulty identifying prey. We can recognise this without vilifying Wikileaks; like any publisher, they faced difficult decisions with limited knowledge, and under a great deal more pressure than most.
Even so, WikiLeaks’ acts in relation to the cables give the free speech community whiplash. On the one hand, there is no doubt that the vast majority of this information was of public interest — to many publics and in many ways, including the quintessential rationale for journalistic leaks, whistleblowing. If Julian Assange could be prosecuted in the US under the Espionage Act for mere publication, so could any major media enterprise or human rights group, a tremendous blow to freedom of expression and the right to information in a jurisdiction that often leads in protecting these rights. On the other, many human rights activists are disturbed at the willingness of WikiLeaks to further expose individuals to reprisal in the name of freedom of information. A bright line in values had been crossed.
WikiLeaks had taken a different approach with the US diplomatic cables than it had with the Afghanistan war logs, pacing its releases, redacting more carefully, and soliciting input on risks, even from the US government. This made its unredacted dump the more surprising. The publication of the raw cables by others did not absolve Wikileaks of responsibility in its own publication. By providing additional publicity and an implicit authentication, it may have added to tangible risks, but just as important, it undercut its own claim to concern for protection of individuals from abuse. The function of alerting persons who might be named in the cables could have been performed much earlier, and in ways that publicly acknowledged the wide dissemination of the cables by early 2011. And by the time Wikileaks published, the more debatable function of providing unredacted access to the global public was underway at other websites.
What lessons should publishers draw? The first is that it is hard to keep confidential information secret, and this is as much a human as a technical problem. Information not only “wants to be free,” as Stewart Brand noted it also has value, and people want to trade it. Digital information is especially easy to amass and pass in the internet age, and large data leaks are likely to proliferate.
Next, large data sets are hard to handle responsibly. They require large resources to review, analyze and redact, as my organisation, Human Rights Watch, has discovered when it secured troves in Kurdistan, Chad and Libya. WikiLeaks appropriately went to major newspapers that could muster the resources to handle it well. Yet it is governments and intelligence services that have the most resources to analyze and mine large data sets (and correlate information to other intelligence), making it all the more important for those who publish whistleblowing to try to protect individuals at risk.
Not everything is worth the effort of publishing in a responsible way. Newspapers know this, because they have to pay for newsprint. But there is a moral economy as well, where the more attenuated the public’s interest, the more other values and goals might weigh against exposure. Most researching professions, to ensure their moral legitimacy, aim not only to increase knowledge but to protect human security, privacy, and dignity. Sometimes preserving rather than uploading can be a reasonable alternative.
Finally, we should strive to create a culture of ethical transparency, because without an ethical underpinning, it will be difficult to resist growing efforts to tighten up laws that punish leaks. Part of that is cultivating some modesty about our ability to fortell the full consequences of either exposure or concealment, and a willingness to be responsible for decisions either way.
Dinah Pokempner is General Counsel of Human Rights Watch.
