Academic, Media & Religious Freedom ~ Not ~ in Fiji

by Dr Mark Hayes

Update, September 4, 2011 ~ This Post started out as something else, but, over the last week of August, 2011, it morphed into a major, running, UpDate on developments in Fiji, several currents of which seemed to coalesce with very worrying speed and intensity. Most of it was written over August 27 – 31, with some tweaking and a few extra links added, until September 4.

I also know this Post has been read in Fiji, as well as more widely.

I won’t update this Post again, but will link to it as relevant in any future Posts on the general topic of Fiji, of which there will be more when events there suggest it and I decide I have something useful to contribute.

Of course, the Comments section remains active and I welcome any comments, which will not be censored (aside from normal, journalistic, editing as to clarity, legals, and taste).

Original Post continues -

I started to compile a more comprehensive wrap on recent developments in Fiji – more attacks on unions, the media, the Methodist Church – but then things started moving so fast on several fronts that I gave up, and will get to the bits and pieces, with much more context, in due course.

Scroll down for material on More Fantasy and Nastiness in Fiji, traversing the latest round on the Fiji regime throttling the Methodist Church, more on how media freedom is also throttled in Fiji, how the University of the South Pacific throttles academic freedom, continuing raids on the Fiji National Provident Fund, and insights into Fiji’s justice system under the military dictatorship.

Why Civil Resistance Works

A long anticipated and exceptionally valuable study, Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict, by American scholars, Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan, has landed on my desk. This is formidable and very thorough scholarship of the very first order which assembles and analyses a vast amount of historical and contemporary data to show, about as conclusively as this kind of research can do, that nonviolent direct action is much more effective at removing dictators, supporting democracies, and challenging domination than armed resistance or terrorism. That’s a huge claim, to be sure, and their work deserves a very close read, which I’m doing now.

You can get a feel for the book from this article, published in Foreign Affairs by Erica Chenoweth on August 24, 2011, and this earlier article, by Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan, “Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict.” International Security 33, no. 1 (Summer 2008): 7-44 (172 k PDF).

As well, I’ve been watching an excellent documentary on the impacts of global warming on Kiribati, The Hungry Tide, which has added to my collection of material on this crucial issue, has been doing the rounds of Australia’s film festivals recently, and brought back acute memories of my trips to Tuvalu where I’ve seen, and reported upon, the same kinds of effects.

More recently, Australia Network Television’s Pacific correspondent, Sean Dorney, has been to Kiribati to report on frustrations experienced from global warming’s front lines as they try to access mitigation funding and assistance pledged after the Copenhagen conference. His reports, including one on Radio National’s Correspondent’s Report for August 20, 2011, have been outstanding.

Sean Dorney’s Australia Network Television News Kiribati story ~ August 8, 2011

But, Memo to the always terrifying ABC Standing Committee on Spoken English (SCOSE) – Please come for Correspondent’s Report presenter, Elizabeth Jackson, for two broadcasting sins. Firstly, she mispronounced the name of the place ~ Kiri-bas ~ and not Kiri-bati. Secondly, she did so twice, in the introduction to the story, and again in the backannounce, clearly demonstrating she didn’t listen to the story she was presenting, in which the reporter pronounced the name correctly. Back in my days at the ABC, we’d be flogged in the car park for such gross violations of SCOSE directives!

Free Peter Bethune – stop whaling too

OK, John Key: What are you going to do about Peter Bethune?

The Australian Green Party leader Bob Brown has called your government “spineless” for not doing anything to secure Peter Bethune’s release from a Japanese jail.

And it’s true Mr Key, spineless is only half of it. Your government is also caving in to pressure from the whaling nations to tone down global demands to stop the barbaric practice.

As the Sea Shepherd organisation says, Peter Bethune is a political prisoner. If he was being held by the North Koreans, or Chinese perhaps you might have been a little braver in your response.

The charges against Peter Bethune are ridiculous and so too is the fact that the Japanese government has not properly investigated the sinking of Bethune’s ship the Ady Gil, which was deliberately rammed by a whaling vessel.

[NZ Herald 2/4/10]

Peter Bethune could face up to 15 years in jail if convicted of assault and “business obstruction”. That’s almost as disgusting as the harpooning of whales for “research” purposes.

Peter Bethune was entitled to serve citizen’s arrest papers on the captain of the Japanese vessel that sank the Ady Gil. This is what he was doing when he was detained and transported back to Japan. [Sea Shepherd]

Sign the online petition calling for Peter Bethune to be released.

Olympic obsenities – rolling updates #3

I’ve had a great Olympics so far. I’ve managed to avoid all but the most incidental coverage of the actual “games”; though it hasn’t been easy.  I’ve refrained from getting into arguments with patriotic and even downright chauvinist Kiwis about the “funtastic” effort from “our” chaps and chapettes. I’ve even managed to catch up on some classic Star Trek thanks to Moac’s buddy who’s kindly loaned us his prize collector’s edition DVD boxed set.

But it hasn’t been so much fun for the blessed Chinese who thought they were going to get an opportunity to have their complaints heard by a sympathetic and “modernizing” regime. I read today of two grandmothers who’ve been sentenced to “re-education through labour” just for even daring to take the dictators at their word and apply for a protest permit.

The isolent cheek of these two old ladies; don’t they know what’s best for the nation is also best for them.

To top off my week of hilarity, the story of the underage Chinese gymnast is finally getting some well-deserved attention. He Kexin is a plucky young lass who serves as an object lesson to the gruntled grannies. She knows what’s best for everyone is to shut up and play along with the charade.

Ah, the scandal. Gotta love these games.

Solidarity with Peter McGregor

I reproduce here a news piece written by my friend Antonio about another friend Peter.
Civil liberties in Australia are under threat and the right to protest is very limited indeed.

This story will be published on Saturday in City Hub. As Dr. Maria Angel (UWS) said: “Peter may not do things the way that each one of us might choose to, but what has happened to him is a breach of civil liberty and the principle of free speech.”

A group of UWS academics have written to Hilmer, Dr. Williams and Dr. Lynch requesting to drop the charges against Peter McGregor – a former UWS academic.

Too much law and liberty
By Antonio Castillo
Arresting academics for speaking out is usually associated
with dictatorships and governments unable to deal with
dissent.
When former academic Peter McGregor was arrested and charged
last July while attending the Gilbert & Tobin Symposium on
“Law & Liberty in the War on Terror” at the University of New
South Wales, the irony of the situation was quickly replaced
by outrage.
A group of academics from the University of Western Sydney
where Mr McGregor was a well-respected lecturer wrote: “To
prosecute Mr Macgregor for exercising the rights the Gilbert
& Tobin Centre and its staff have been on public record
supporting and advocating would seem to be contradictory and
hypocritical. We believe that Universities need to be places
where robust debate and differences of opinion can be
expressed without fear of reprisal.”
The arrest of the former academic followed his attempt after
the symposium proceedings to peacefully protest against the
presence of Attorney-General Phillip Ruddock, the keynote
speaker. He was removed by police from the event and informed
that his permit to attend the event had been revoked by the
organisers. He was then charged.
“When I registered to attend the Gilbert & Tobin Symposium on
“Law & Liberty in the War on Terror” I was appalled to see
that Attorney-General Philip Ruddock was a ‘keynote’
speaker,” Mr McGregor said. “And that there were two other
speakers from the Attorney-General’s Department and one from
the Australian Defence Association but no speakers from the
anti-war movement, or even the Council for Civil Liberties.”
In a letter to the event organisers Dr George Williams and Dr
Andrew Lynch, University of Western Sydney Law School
Associate Professor Michael Head requested the charge be
dropped. “I call on you to immediately contact the police and
request that the charge be dropped. It would be entirely
hypocritical of you not to do so, while at the same time
writing publicly in defence of the civil liberties of Mohamed
Haneef. McGregor, a retired academic, was wrongly evicted
from the symposium for seeking to make a peaceful and
legitimate protest against the presence of the Attorney-
General,” he said.
Associate Professor Head said many participants had objected
to the false report given to the symposium that McGregor had
“rushed at” Mr Ruddock. “McGregor, who is a well-known
political figure, simply rose to address the audience before
he was frog-marched out by police. Unless you intervene with
the police, you will be involved in using similar methods of
slander and smear as those being used in the attempt to
convict Dr Haneef,” he said.
Mr McGgregor – a member of NSW Council for Civil Liberties –
has pleaded not guilty and the trial will begin on Wednesday
September 5 at Waverley Court.

Addendum: this is going to make some recent visitors Ethical Martini salivate, for others it’s a sad indictment of the current poor state of democracy.

media ethics, journalism