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.

Submitters on Auckland City Council’s billboard ban should be congratulated for their overwhelming rejection of the city’s plans to regulate commercial speech. It remains to be seen whether the council will take any notice or whether the consultation process is as much of a farce as any of us suspect.

Meanwhile, in those parts of the third world that Auckland is trying to emulate, similar bans have already gone into effect. The city of São Paulo banned outdoor advertising from January 1st this year. Tony de Marco has posted a set of images on Flickr documenting the change and it feels slightly creepy - like some 1950s film where you wake up one morning and everyone’s disappeared.

Hat tip: Boing Boing.

UPDATE 20/4/07: Compare this to Shanghai, where they know how to advertise. Jakob Montrasio posted this picture on Flickr showing a 420 metre high Windows Vista advertisement. Sadly, not something that would be possible in the People’s Republic of Auckland.

Hat tip: Passport.

Following Turkey’s lead, Thailand blocked access to YouTube over the weekend although it’s not clear why. It’s also not clear that the authorities knew what they were doing - access to “www.youtube.com” was blocked but just typing the address “youtube.com”, without the “www” part, got you through fine.

Hat tip: Boing Boing.

No Right Turn has the story of Ahmet Turk, co-leader of the Kurdish Democratic Society Party, who has been sent to prison for six months for referring to Kurdistan Workers Party leader Abdullah Öcalan as Mr Öcalan. Apparently “Mr” imples respect and hence Turk was found guilty of “supporting a criminal”.

But don’t think that you can stay out of jail just by disrespecting people out of habit. Oh no. Failing to respect the right people can get you into trouble as well.

Business Week reported yesterday that a Turkish court has ordered YouTube banned after a Greek YouTuber posted a video describing Kemal Atatürk and the Turkish people as homosexuals. Turk Telecom implemented the ban immediately. Boing Boing reports that somehow the ban only affected Internet Explorer users, Firefox could see the site without difficulty.

Boing Boing suggests that Tourism Turkey change their slogan. Perhaps, “Turkey welcomes you - as long as you keep your mouth shut.” They also provide a handy guide to getting round web censorship.

No Right Turn also reminds us that Turkey’s free speech record isn’t that hot in other areas either; for example, it’s illegal to mention the Armenian Genocide. If Turkey ever joins the EU they could have a tricky time working out which holocausts you must deny and which you must never.

UPDATE 10/03/07: The YouTube ban has been lifted.

Hat tips: No Right Turn and 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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.