Section 14

Thousands of Venezuelans filled the streets of Caracas on Saturday to protest President Hugo Chávez’s plans to shut down Radio Caracas Television (reported here in January).

RCTV is being closed down in revenge for its alleged support of a coup attempt against Chávez in 2002.

Speaking to Cuban news agency Prensa Latina, General Alberto Muller claimed that Venezuela has “as much freedom of expression as anywhere in the world”, although he later confirmed that he was using the authoritarian definition of freedom of expression - the freedom to say whatever you like as long as you don’t disagree.

The general also condemned those who confuse freedom of speech with political insults, which does not allow respectful dialogue and debate.

When you’re talking to a man holding a gun, you’d better make sure that your dialogue is respectful.

Hat tip: FP Passport.

The Greens reported on Friday that Falun Gong had been kicked out of the Cuba Carnival and Chinese New Year celebrations in Wellington.

[Green Party Wellington City spokesperson Iona] Pannett said “this issue once again raises serious questions about the Council’s commitment to freedom of speech in the city. This decision infringes on Falun Gong’s right to free speech guaranteed by the Bill of Rights and to any other group or individual who wants to speak on issues that the Council does not agree with.”

Greens co-leader Russel Norman, writing on FrogBlog, says

The word is that the Council told them that the Chinese Embassy had paid for the big Chinese New Year celebration and the Chinese Embassy did not want Falun Gong in the parade, so they had to go.

“The word” presumably comes from Falun Gong. Wellington City Council would deny any connection.

Norman rightly continues:

If the story is accurate then the City Council is bending to the will of a foreign government to suppress freedom of expression in return for money.

Regular Section 14 readers will remember that Falun Gong were also excluded from Wellington’s Christmas parade.

One of the biggest upsides of globalisation is that as well as Coca-Cola and Versace, people in dictatorships like China 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.

Here’s a Walt Disney propaganda cartoon explaining how children are turned into fascist soldiers, complete with Teutonic knights sweeping in to Ride of the Valkyries and Voltaire’s books going up in flames.

If you’re going to watch this at work, you might want to turn the volume down lest your colleagues wonder what all the Heil Hitlers are about.

Hat tip: Boing Boing.

December last year saw the welcome death of Turkmenistan’s comic tyrant Saparmurat Niyazov. In typical tinpot style the incoming president, Gurbanguly Berdimuhammedow, was elected with a massive majority against no opposition party candidates. So far, so bad.

The new president is, surprisingly, off to an excellent start. Within a week of formally taking power, Berdimuhammedow has legalised Internet access in Turkmenistan and the capital, Ashkabat, has its first Internet cafes. Internet cafe owners report that there are no restrictions on sites that may be visited.

This is huge. Despite the fact that Internet access costs NZ$6 an hour, which is way out of the reach of ordinary Turkmen, the fact that the world’s information is now allowed into the country unrestricted is an enormous change for the better. If information is genuinely unrestricted then, in this respect, Turkmenistan may now be freer than China, France, or New Zealand.

Hat tip: Liberty Scott.

Cuba, one of the least connected countries in the world, where less than 2% of people have access to the Internet, on Monday blamed the United States embargo for its restrictive laws.

[Cuban Communications Minister Ramiro Valdes] defended Cuba’s “rational and efficient” use of the Internet, which puts computers in schools and government computer clubs while prohibiting home connections for most citizens and blocking many sites with anti-government material.

Valdes, clearly in two minds about the Internet, described it as “one of the tools for global extermination” but then said it was necessary to “advance down the path of development”.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) countered:

It would anyway have been astonishing if a country that has no independent radio or TV station or newspaper did allow unrestricted access to the Internet. We await the creation of a better Internet connection via Venezuela, as the minister announced, and we will then see if the government finally allows its citizens access to an uncensored Internet.

In its October report on the Internet in Cuba, RSF noted that

[The U.S. embargo] may indeed explain the slowness of the Cuban Internet and the endless lines outside Internet cafes. But in no way does it justify the system of control and surveillance that has been put in place by the authorities. In a country where the media are under the government’s thumb, preventing independent reports and information from circulating online has naturally become a priority.

The regime also ensures that there is no Internet access for its political opponents and independent journalists, for whom reaching news media abroad is an ordeal. The government also counts on self-censorship. In Cuba, you can get a 20-year prison sentence for writing a few “counter-revolutionary” articles for foreign websites, and a five-year one just for connecting with the Internet in an illegal manner. Few people dare to defy the state censorship and take such a risk.

Given that it’s the excuse that’s used for everything that’s wrong with Cuba, I would love to see the U.S. lift the embargo and accelerate the Cuban dictatorship’s collision with the open world.

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President Hugo Chávez has taken a further step towards turning Venezuela into a Soviet-style socialist republic with his decision not to renew Radio Caracas Television’s licence.

Much to the bane of the government, [RCTV] also features Miguel Angel Rodriguez, whose three-year-old program, “The Interview,” makes mincemeat of Chavez’s government every weekday morning. Sitting before a giant screen where Chavez’s speeches are replayed, Rodriguez and his guests, usually staunch foes of Chavez, dissect the president’s statements and declare his government anti-democratic and incompetent.

“Could we say to Venezuelans that a person of this sort, Hugo Chavez, is rising up against the liberty of Venezuelans?” Rodriguez asked a guest on a recent morning. “Is this constitutional reform, the enabling law and this giant step to consolidate 21st-century socialism a method of finding a legal way to install totalitarianism?”

Chávez is certainly leading Venezuela down the path to Cuban- or Soviet-style socialism and his closing down of media that disagree with him illustrates his totalitarian leanings. Chávez’s cheerleaders will often point out that he was democratically elected. They would do well to remember that democracy is there to support human freedom, not the other way round.

UPDATE 31/1/07: Chavez’ power is about to become total. The National Assembly is ready to pass a law allowing Chavez to rule by decree.

Former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra is still having an influence on the country’s politics despite not having been back to Thailand since the coup that removed him in September.

The military government is unhappy about this and has attempted to block interviews with him from being shown. This week an interview he did while visiting Singapore was broadcast on CNN, which was blocked both on-air and online.

Thanks to YouTube you can see both sides (and with the speed that technology moves, the people of Thailand should be able to see both sides as well, no matter how many web-sites the government blocks).

Here’s what the rest of the world saw:

And here’s what was broadcast in Thailand:

Ironically, one of the original complaints that the military made against Shinawatra when deposing him was that he used his position to compromise freedom of the press. Plus ça change…

Hat tip: Boing Boing.

No sooner had I expressed my pre-holiday wish, that “those who know better than us and would like to tell us how to think and what to say would do the same” (i.e. go on holiday), than the outrageous “Turkmenbashi”, Saparmurat Niyazov, president of Turkmenistan, went one better and had a heart attack. Liberty Scott has the low-down on this thankfully unique dictator.

Also famously failing to make the end of 2006 was Saddam Hussein, who, regardless of anyone’s views on the death penalty or the brouhaha that followed the execution, should certainly not be mourned.

Less famous, and still not to be mourned, was Iranian Justice Minister Jamal Karimi-Rad, killed in a car crash on December 28th. Karimi-Rad used his religious police to persecute fornicators and women who didn’t wear their veils and cracked down on the media, blocking websites and arresting journalists for ‘acting against national security, disturbing public mind and insulting sanctities’.

Frankly, there are some sanctities that deserve insulting. With this thug out of the way, I hope the insulters will gather strength.

Managing Director of the Fiji Times, Tony Yianni, suspended publication of his newspaper last night rather than publish a censored version of the news. An article on the paper’s website explains:

The Fiji Times Limited has suspended publication after the Fiji military ordered the paper not to publish any “propaganda” against the new political leadership.

Armed soldiers came to the Victoria Parade officers at 7.30pm last night, and asked for “assistance”. After a brief discussion outside, the soldiers entered the building for a discussion in the papers newsroom.

My Yianni then explains his decision:

“We were ordered to breach the Constitution and not publish any dissenting views that may be sent to us by free citizens, as well as the views of legally elected members of the Qarase government.

“If we do not have the freedom to publish with responsibility, then we do not publish.”

Reporters Without Borders reports that the newspaper Fiji Daily Post has also suspended publication and Fiji Television has cut its news service saying that, “Fiji Television’s news service will not resume until it can be independent and free of censorship.”

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…)

For decades, communism kept 300 million Europeans in slavery and silence. Between 1989 and 1991 these people freed themselves, most symbolically by tearing down the Berlin Wall, whose checkpoints were opened in the face of overwhelming popular force on 9th November 1989.

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?

This blog is dedicated to promoting freedom of expression in New Zealand. Often that will involve pointing out what’s wrong with the situation in New Zealand.

To get things in perspective, though, it’s worth noting that things are far, far worse in other parts of the world. Like in Turkmenistan.

Earlier this week, President ‘Turkmenbashi’ Saparmurat Niyazov, the man who puts the ‘menace’ in ‘Turkmenistan’, opened the House of Free Creativity (pictured right) and dedicated it to a free media. This is in a country where the government completely controls the media, where contact with foreigners is illegal, where libraries have been ordered closed, and where the only readily available books are those written by the Turkmenbashi himself, such as his gripping sequel to the Koran.

No doubt many people will be accused of having dictatorial tendencies in future posts on this blog but they are all mere amateurs compared to the relentlessly grandiose Turkmenbashi.

Hat tip: Boing Boing.