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.
Flag burning, like neo-Nazi propaganda, is one of those topics that strains the edges of tolerance for free expression. It has to be repeated over and over: Free speech without the freedom to offend is not free speech.
Idiot/Savant, of No Right Turn, has noted that the Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police has called for a ban on flag burning in the UK.
Even in New Zealand, our half-hearted NZ Bill of Rights has been used to protect flag burning as political expression. In 2003 Paul Hopkinson burnt a flag on the steps of Parliament. He was charged under the Flags, Emblems, and Names Protection Act 1981 and aquitted on appeal by a judge who reread the Act in concert with the NZ BORA.
The argument is bitterly contested in the United States, where the 1989 Flag Protection Act was struck down by the Supreme Court in United States v. Eichman. In the majority decision upholding flag burning as a protected form of expression, Justice Brennan said, “Punishing desecration of the flag dilutes the very freedom that makes this emblem so revered, and worth revering.”
Reporters Sans Frontières (Reporters Without Borders) has released its 2006 Worldwide Press Freedom Index.
New Zealand has been ranked a creditable 19th behind a number of Scandinavian and Central European countries and ahead of the likes of the UK, the USA, and Australia. (The previously mentioned Turkmenistan came second-to-last with only North Korea worse.)
New Zealand’s ranking has dropped this year and, more importantly, our absolute score has got worse. My guess is that this is due to the handling of the Mohammed cartoons brouhaha and I have written to RSF to ask for the details.
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