Censorship in South Asia: Cultural Regulation from Sedition to Seduction
"I can assure you that we are not people who can take any (arbitrary) action, the public is there to judge us. We are not North Korea.
The government weighs in: Keller writes that the Times' Washington bureau chief Dean Baquet told the White House on Nov. 19 that the paper would be publishing the secret cables. The next Tuesday, he says, "Baquet and two colleagues were invited to a windowless room at the State Department, where they encountered an unsmiling crowd. Representatives from the White House, the State Department, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the C.I.A., the Defense Intelligence Agency, the F.B.I. and the Pentagon gathered around a conference table. Others, who never identified themselves, lined the walls. A solitary note-taker tapped away on a computer."
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The ruling coalition is gearing up for elections tipped to be held this year, and hopes to shrug off a reputation for being out-of-touch and corrupt which contributed to unprecedented losses in the last national polls.
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Nazri Aziz, the minister overseeing legal affairs, said the project would explain such as like a licensing system governing newspapers which allows the government to close media outlets at will.Dissent in America, Concise Edition
"Many people don't understand the acts and they question why the government charges people under the various laws, so the guidelines will make it easier to understand," he told reporters.
"We will go to the ground in the various states to explain to the people using the guidelines on what can or cannot be written or said so as not to violate the various laws.
New York Times editor Bill Keller details his paper's rocky relationship with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, as well as the backstory of the Times' publication of the secret documents that WikiLeaks provided, in a new essay for the New York Times magazine.
An enquiry whether the act of Congress "in addition to the act, entitled An act, for the punishment of certain crimes against the United States," generally ... sedition bill, is unconstitutional or not.
The essay is excerpted from Keller's introduction to a special Times e-book about WikiLeaks called "Open Secrets." The book will be published on Jan. 31st. Below, read some of the highlights from Keller's essay, and be sure to read the whole essay at the Times website.
How the Times first got involved: Keller writes that, last June, Alan Rusbridger, editor of The Guardian, called and told him that WikiLeaks had offered his paper the secret documents that came to be known as the Iraq and Afghan "war logs." Rusbridger had convinced Assange to let the Times share the exclusive story. "Was I interested?" Keller writes. "I was interested."
What Keller and the Times thought of Assange: Keller makes clear that he and his paper "regarded Assange throughout as a source, not as a partner or collaborator, but he was a man who clearly had his own agenda." Eric Schmitt, the reporter who Keller sent to London to look at the war logs in the offices of The Guardian, wrote him after he met Assange for the first time:Jericho - The Second Season
"He was alert but disheveled, like a bag lady walking in off the street, wearing a dingy, light-colored sport coat and cargo pants, dirty white shirt, beat-up sneakers and filthy white socks that collapsed around his ankles. He smelled as if he hadn't bathed in days."
Keller said that the reporters from the various newspapers who were working on the WikiLeaks material came to see Assange as "smart and well educated, extremely adept technologically but arrogant, thin-skinned, conspiratorial and oddly credulous." He was also "certain that he was a hunted man." However, he placed no constraints on the news outlets as to what they wrote using the documents.
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Keeping quiet: Keller details some of the methods the Times team working on the WikiLeaks project used to keep such an explosive story under wraps:
"We used encrypted Web sites. Reporters exchanged notes via Skype, believing it to be somewhat less vulnerable to eavesdropping. On conference calls, we spoke in amateurish code. Assange was always "the source." The latest data drop was 'the package.'"
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Keller also came to suspect that people inside WikiLeaks were hacking into the email of Times staffers after at least three of them reported suspicious activity in their accounts.
The relationship deteriorates: Assange, Keller writes, became angry that the Times refused to link to the WikiLeaks site. "Where's the respect?" he said in a phone call. "Where's the respect?" He also complained about the paper's profile of Bradley Manning, the suspected leaker of the secret documents, and was outraged at an unflattering profile of himself.
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After The Guardian went behind Assange's back and shared the diplomatic cables he had barred them from giving the Times, a deputy Times editor met with Assange in London. At the end of their uncommonly calm meeting, Assange asked the editor, "tell me, are you in contact with your legal counsel?" The editor said that he was. "You had better be," Assange said.
Malaysian authorities often justify the strict laws as necessary to curb comments or actions that could stoke racial conflict in the multicultural nation.
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"When it affects the security of the country, we cannot give in to whatever bill of rights exist, as they become secondary. The security of the country is paramount," Nazri said.
"I can assure you that we are not people who can take any (arbitrary) action, the public is there to judge us. We are not North Korea."
Malaysia was ranked 131st out of 175 countries in the 2009 Reporters Without Borders (RSF) press freedom index, because of its tight controls on print and broadcast media.
Last September, the government arrested political cartoonist Zulkifli Anwar Ulhaque on sedition charges over a caricature of premier Najib Razak's wife and cartoons that touched on controversial issues.
Malaysia's major newspapers and broadcasters are closely linked with the ruling coalition, but online news portals and blogs have become a lively forum for dissent and debate.
Sedition
Human Rights Watch said this week that although Najib pledged to promote civil liberties when he came to power in April 2009, his government's repressive practices showed it was an empty promise.
It said the government "does not hesitate to use draconian laws to harass or gag journalists critical of the authorities, human rights defenders, civil society activists, or members of the political opposition."
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"The Malaysian government is all talk and no action when it comes to human rights," said Phil Robertson, the Washington-based organisation's deputy Asia director.
The lack of outrage at the conclusion by Delhi police that there is "a fit case" to charge Kashmiri separatist leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani and author Arundhati Roy with sedition for what the two said in a seminar at Delhi is appalling. Only a few civil liberties advocates spoke out against the move. The opposition Bharatiya Janata Party openly bayed for their blood. Congress maintained a studied silence. The minor parties were just not bothered. Union law minister Veerappa Moily didn't come out to well when he suggested that freedom of expression couldn't' be used to violate "patriotic sentiments", whatever that means.
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The incident isn't the best advertisement of either our democracy or our famed culture of tolerance. Sedition involves an attempt to overthrow legally constituted government. As far as I know, neither Geelani nor Roy did anything remotely in that direction. What they said was definitely against the government line on Kashmir. It was also against the popular opinion. Mercifully, there is no law that obligates us to toe the government or popular line. Going against it is dissent, not sedition; and democracies thrive on dissent. They do not shun it.
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Geelani's views about Kashmir are well known. He has made no secret of them. Most other Indians do not agree with him and even find his views offensive. Yet, he is an Indian citizen and entitled to his individual liberties as much as any other. Freedom in a society is tested by its tolerance of what most of its members consider offensive. Freedom to say goody-goody thing is actually no freedom. If we assert before the world that Kashmiris in India are living in freedom, it means even those Kashmiris who would rather not be part of India. They have as much right to air their opinion as the rest of us have to assert Kashmir is an integral part of India. If we find Geelani's ideas offensive then let us come up with better ideas to counter them.
I am never tired of recalling the historic 1989 ruling by the US Supreme Court upholding the right of American citizens to burn the national flag. Justice Anthony M Kennedy, who wrote a concurring opinion with the majority, put it so memorably, "It is poignant but fundamental that the flag protect those who hold it in contempt." By so doing, the court added to the majesty of the American flag and the constitution, it did not imperil them.
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The same goes for Roy too. She holds strong views and expresses them forcefully. Too forcefully for many people's comfort. Yet, her presence lends balance and a provocative edge to the discourse that would otherwise have been too one-sided. She raises uncomfortable, often troubling, questions. Of course, she does not provide all the answers. Sometimes her stance is contradictory and confusing. For instance, she herself uses airlines and railways but the development model she recommends would deny these to most others. If we are to build more airports, planes, and railways then land, steel, and aluminium for them have to come from somewhere. That would require some people to be displaced. One cannot be totally against displacement and still enjoy these facilities for oneself.
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However, her views are not the point. The point is her ability to say it in the manner she chooses. Of course, the moment she picks up a gun or begins to organize an army to overthrow the constitutional authority, she can be booked and restrained. But if she merely argues-much to the discomfiture many, of course - that Indian state tramples upon its own citizens, that it is sold out to corporate interests, that each new mine is a huge conspiracy to dispossess the poor and the defenceless, then she has to be countered with better arguments that it is not so. Threatening her with court cases actually proves her point.
In any case, presence of people like her or Medha Patkar ensures that the debate is well rounded and all voices are heard. It may not stop the development but it at least would ensure better compensation and rehabilitation package for the displaced. That way, she is also being patriotic. When she challenges our ideas on Kashmir, does she not force a thought about where things have gone wrong and how we may right them? That also is a patriotic act. Now, should Mr Moily be booked because he violates this sentiment?
In the end, it is not about Geelani or Roy. It is about our own idea of India. It is sad that police even in national capital cannot differentiate between an act of rebellion and a contrary opinion. It is sadder that the entire political establishment remains silent when citizens are threatened with criminal charges for voicing opinions-howsoever unpopular or offensive. This is only to be expected at a time when books are withdrawn from universities because some goon decides it is written in bad taste. It is time for us to rise and take the matter of our freedoms into our own hands. If we won't use our liberties, sure as hell we would lose them.
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