Section 14

Reporters Without Borders’ cyber-freedom prize for 2006 has gone to Cuba’s Guillermo Fariñas Hernández, head of the independent news agency Cubanacán Press. Hernández went on hunger strike from February to August this year to campaign for the right of all Cubans to have unrestricted Internet access.

In Cuba, private Internet connections are effectively banned and all computers in Internet cafes have software installed to track “subversive” activity. Penalties are so severe - 5 years prison for unauthorised Internet access, 20 years for “counter-revolutionary” activity - that there’s a large measure of self-censorship in effect.

Hernández is one of Cuba’s leading opposition journalists. None of Cubanacán’s journalists are allowed to use the Internet or fax machines.

Trey Park and Matt Stone feature in this month’s Reason magazine talking about South Park with a big emphasis on religion, free speech and censorship.

The interview was held as part of a conference Reason held in Amsterdam to explore the future of free expression and free markets in Europe. Amsterdam was specifically chosen because it was “the site of one of the most brutal crimes related to free speech in recent memory: the 2004 murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh.”

On religion:

Reason: What’s more terrifying, crossing Islam or crossing Scientology?

Trey Parker: They’re really the same people. This is what happened. I was on my honeymoon in Disney World. I turned on the television, and there were thousands of rioting Muslims, and the caption said, “Muslims enraged over cartoon.” And I said, “Oh, shit. What did we do?”

On free expression:

Reason: This is a bizarre time to be alive. You have places like YouTube, where you can createwhatever you want and disseminate it. At the same time you have lawsuits, and you have people literally being killed. So what’s the state of free expression?

Matt Stone: Basically all we’ve ever done is said what we wanted to say, and people have thrown money at us. […] It’s pretty good, you know? We can say whatever we want. […] It doesn’t mean that we don’t have battles like we did this year, where you get really frustrated with the fact that Mission Impossible: 3’s bigger than South Park and they can shut you down.

A few days late - the shouting happened on Thursday - but still worth a mention. (Hat tip: Lyndon Hood, offline prodding.)

Gerry Brownlee demanded to know why TVNZ turned up to Commodore Bainimarama’s press conference on Tuesday night at which he announced that the military had taken control of Fiji.

“This is not a question about whether the Commodore’s threats were news. They were. This is a question about whether, without TVNZ’s satellite assistance, the Commodore would have been as effective in his campaign of fear.”

Almost all political activity happens today with half an eye on the television camera. To suggest that a news organisation shouldn’t cover the news because the subjects of the news story might be trying to promote themselves is ridiculous. If we’re going to play that game we should start by not showing anyone grandstanding during Parliamentary question time.

How far do you take this argument? The most spectacular television event of the last few years was the attack on the World Trade Center. It was an attack perfectly devised to take advantage of the 24-hour live network news world. Would Brownlee suggest that a news network refuse to report the event because showing that gripping horror live was part of al-Qaeda’s propaganda?

Andrew Little, national secretary of the EPMU (which represents journalists) got it spot on:

“Television New Zealand news is run by professional journalists and has a duty to cover news of major significance,” he said.

“They and they alone should decide what should be covered. The day that a politician decides what the state broadcaster covers will be a sad day for the integrity of New Zealand democracy.

“The union is seeking an assurance from the National Party that media censorship is not National Party policy.”

Where I’m sure I would part company with Little is in thinking that there should be no such thing as a “state broadcaster”. Political interference is far more likely when the state owns a major news broadcaster. If TV3 had made the broadcast, it couldn’t have been used by Brownlee to try and score points in his role as State Owned Enterprises spokesman. The state has no role either owning a television station or telling it what to broadcast.

Not PC has an article well worth reading on censorship by privilege.

The government has two main ways it can direct expression. The first is by breaching our rights - by direct censorship; the second is by controlling our privileges - withholding its largesse unless we toe the party line. This second form of influence is most often felt where the government funds intellectual (or anti-intellectual) activity, in the arts, education, and science.

Go and read it: “The establishing of an establishment” - a different kind of censorship.

Censorship of the Internet by oppressive governments sprang another leak this weekend with the release of Psiphon, a “censorship circumvention solution” created by the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto.

Psiphon works by turning any regular personal computer outside a censorship firewall into an encrypted proxy web server that can then be used to connect to forbidden sites. People subject to censorship then connect to the proxy server instead of the blocked site, supply a username and password, and then read whatever it is that their government doesn’t want them to see. Presumably, you can also use it to connect to Trade Me from work.

If you have friends or family in China, Iran or some other communist or Islamic slave-pen, you can provide them with access to the outside world. Just tell them not to get caught.

Hat tip: Boing Boing.

UPDATE 6/12/06: Far Eastern Economic Review has an essay in their December 2006 edition, The Geopolitics of Asian Cyberspace, by Ronald Diebert of the Open Network Initiative - one of the organisations behind Psiphon.

In the previous post I talked about today’s Dominion Post editorial Chipping away at freedom of speech, which explored the contrast between Nicky Hager’s book, whose publication was prevented by legal injunction, and O.J. Simpson’s book If I Did It, whose publication was prevented because the publisher belatedly and after public badgering grew a sense of good taste.

A third example that should be added to this comparison is Scholastic Australia’s decision not to publish Army of the Pure, a children’s thriller about Afghan terrorists plotting to blow up Sydney’s Lucas Heights nuclear reactor. (Hat Tip: Pacific Empire)

Scholastic’s general manager, publishing, Andrew Berkhut, said the company had canvassed “a broad range of booksellers and library suppliers”, who expressed concern that the book featured a Muslim terrorist.

“They all said they would not stock it,” he said, “and the reality is if the gatekeepers won’t support it, it can’t be published.”

In the cases of both If I Did It and Army of the Pure the publishers voluntarily halted publication. In both cases the decision was a commercial decision. In neither case (as far as I know) were threats of violence made against anyone. I think the decision not to publish If I Did It was sound, although I don’t feel strongly either way, but the decision not to publish Army of the Pure is spineless, and bodes ill for the future. So what’s the difference?

If I Did It is simply in poor taste. It looks like an attempt by O.J. Simpson to make money out of murders that many people still believe that he committed and got away with. People are rightly revulsed and have said they won’t buy it.

Army of the Pure is a victim of the chilling effect - the self-censorship that occurs when people fear harm from others’ reactions to what they say. While no violence has specifically been threated against shops or libraries that stock this book, clearly that fear is there. Muslims have, in the very recent past, reacted with violent self-righteous fervour whenever anyone has dared criticise or mock Islam or Mohammed. Witness the extreme reaction to the Danish Mohammed cartoons, in which embassies were burnt down and perhaps 150 people were killed in riots.

The pulling of Army of the Pure is not because of concerns about poor taste, or the quality of the story-telling. It is because booksellers and librarians feel intimidated by previous acts of violence from volatile Muslim protesters and would rather voluntarily silence themselves than have rioters attempt to silence them by force. The appeasers are doing the oppressors’ work for them.

We must not be cowed by these protestors’ hyperbolic reactions and their exaggeratedly thin skins. Jihadists demand that everyone submit to Allah or face the sword. We must defend our freedom to think for ourselves and to voice our thoughts. We must not willingly surrender our freedoms in the hope of avoiding a fight.

The Dominion Post’s editorial this morning is entitled Chipping away at freedom of speech.

Last week was an intriguing one for advocates of free speech.

It first notes two instances of news censorship around the world - the failure of the Russian state media to report that former KGB colonel Alexander Litvinenko may have been poisoned by Vladimir Putin’s hired thugs and the cutting in the Tongan re-broadcast of One News of a segment about the aftermath of Nuku’alofa riots.

The editorial spends most of its words on Don Brash’s injunction that prevented the publication of Nicky Hager’s new book and muses on how the court might have handled the case in the U.S. with its much stronger First Amendment culture. It also constrasts the halt in publishing Hager’s book with the halt in publishing O.J. Simpson’s pseudo-confessional.

The Simpson case is perhaps the most far-reaching because it showed that, even in a country where the right to free speech is enshrined in the constitution, public opinion can make even the planet’s most influential media magnate reconsider a profitable proposal that offended not only the families of the late Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman but ordinary Americans, too.

And that’s fine. The First Amendment begins “Congress shall make no law…”

If a media organisation makes a commercial decision not to publish a book because people have expressed disgust at its contents, that shows common sense an eventual succumbing to good taste. It cannot really be spun as censorship; It’s simply a case of the market setting standards without any legislative interference.

Auckland City Council has joined Wellington in kicking Falun Gong out of their Santa Parade. Last week, this site reported (Importing Chinese Repression?) that Wellington City Council had excluded the Falun Gong float from the Christmas parade because it was being ’streamlined’. This week, Falun Gong reports (Falun Gong discriminated against in New Zealand) that the same thing has happened in Auckland.

Their 2006 application was initially welcomed as Parade organisers said a 60-piece brass band would be a great addition to the parade. There was also an offer of $250 to help band members as they are all volunteers.

When organisers were subsequently told the band members comprised Falun Gong members, the application was withdrawn on the grounds that the “organization does not ‘fit’ with the Santa Parade,” and would not, “turn children’s fantasies into reality, to delight families staging an annual fantasy Santa Parade to herald the start of the festive season in Auckland.”

As I said in my post on the Wellington decision:

The biggest concern is that city officials have been pressured (either explicitly or implicitly) by China to exclude Falun Gong from council-sponsored events. As a public entity, the city council must ensure that it doesn’t use its sponsorship of cultural events as a way to censor political or religious expression.

I asked Wellington City last week about concerns that they were keeping Falun Gong out of the parade because of pressure from China. I asked for assurance that we weren’t importing Chinese repression into New Zealand. I haven’t had a reply.

Auckland City has a sister city relationship with Guangzhou in China. Presumably Auckland councillors are also willing to censor religious expression to protect their ratepayer funded holidays.

The Dominion Post reports today (p A5) that Wellington City Council has kicked the Falun Gong out of this year’s Christmas Parade. In previous years the religious group has taken part in the parade and won awards for their float featuring Chinese drummers and dancers.

Falun Gong spokesman Chris Thomas said he had tried to register the group in the Wellington Christmas parade but was told by organisers that, as the parade was being “streamlined”, they would not be included.

“When we asked what we could do to make the parade criteria, we were only told that we were not going to be in it. We feel that was an inadequate answer.”

The biggest concern is that city officials have been pressured (either explicitly or implicitly) by China to exclude Falun Gong from council-sponsored events. As a public entity, the city council must ensure that it doesn’t use its sponsorship of cultural events as a way to censor political or religious expression.

Wellington mayor Kerry Prendergast is currently in China on a sister-city jolly and presumably doesn’t want to put the free trips at risk. Others on the trip have said they have no intention of bringing up human rights questions because things aren’t perfect here. This is a disgraceful moral equivalence. In New Zealand when the ruling socialist elite want to vilify a dissident religious group they call them “chinless scarf-wearers” - they don’t shoot them and then cut out their internal organs.

One of the biggest upsides of globalisation is that as well as Coca-Cola and Versace, people in dictatorships also get a taste for other Western goods like freedom of expression. It would be a travesty if the reverse were to occur and we imported this dictatorship’s repressive policies into New Zealand.

UPDATE 22/11/06: Wellington City Council has replied to my enquiry:

(more…)

The BBC has reported (Hat tip: Boing Boing) Microsoft’s senior policy counsel Fred Tipson as saying that Microsoft might have to consider pulling out of repressive countries like China.

“Things are getting bad… and perhaps we have to look again at our presence there,” he told a conference in Athens.

“We have to decide if the persecuting of bloggers reaches a point that it’s unacceptable to do business there.”

Google was recently criticised because they were seen to be helping the Chinese government censor search results. (Compare the searches for “Tiananmen Square massacre” on google.co.nz and google.cn.) Google argued that having any presence in China was better than having none if freedom of information was the goal. Critics suggested that helping China censor the web didn’t sit very well with Google’s “Don’t be evil” motto.

Microsoft may be responding to criticism from Amnesty International, which last week highlighted the circumstances of several jailed bloggers (Hat tip: NZ Herald). Along with Yahoo, Microsoft has been attacked for shutting down blogs run by people the Chinese government wants silenced.

The Internet has tremendous potential to bring information from the outside world to people living under repressive regimes and it’s very encouraging to see companies with muscle, like Microsoft, using their position to encourage change in places like China. Meanwhile, Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft need to decide how much persecution makes it unacceptable to do business there. Is the goal of free speech in China better served by providing a censored service, in the hopes that people demand more of their own government, or by refusing to provide any service at all?