PEN Melbourne Essay 2015: ‘Terror At Home’, by Ben Eltham

Over the past year, PEN Melbourne has produced two essays that examine deep concerns around recent legislative challenges to freedom of expression in Australia. In the first essay, Freedom of speech and Australia’s Racial Discrimination Act, Dr Tim Soutphommasane, Race Discrimination Commissioner, explored the issues around the proposed changes to Australia’s Racial Discrimination Act in 2014. These amendments were later dropped by the government.

In this second essay, Dr Ben Eltham interrogates and responds to the Australian government’s recently introduced ‘anti-terror legislation’ and the ‘metadata bill’.

These two important contributions to the wider discussion about freedom of expression and press freedoms in Australia have been commissioned with the generous support of the Copyright Agency Cultural Fund. 


‘Terror at Home’, by Ben Eltham

‘I think it would also be fair to say that we should have made more of a fuss at the time.’

It was April 2015. In a brightly lit Australian National University lecture theatre, Seven West Media’s Bridget Fair was lamenting the passage of a terrorism law. Depending on how you count such things, it was either the sixty-fifth or sixty-sixth anti-terror law passed by Australia’s parliament since 2001. This one had far-reaching implications. Among other things, it criminalised the conduct of journalism.

Fair was speaking at public hearings held by the Independent National Security Legislation Monitor, the public officer charged with ‘monitoring’ Australia’s increasingly restrictive and punitive counter-terror laws.

The inquiry is ongoing. Officially, it is charged with probing ‘section 35P of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation Act 1979, concerning offences for the disclosure of information relating to a “special intelligence operation”.’ The bureaucratic tone of the inquiry’s job description is par for the course in the Kakfaesque domain of Australian national security law, where it is now illegal to report on the activities of Australia’s spy agencies.

Under Section 35P, recently amended by the National Security Legislation Amendment Act (No. 1) 2014, anyone who discloses information about a special intelligence operation can go to jail for five years. There are no protections for journalists, and the law applies even to someone who inadvertently discloses information about something they hadn’t realised was a special intelligence operation. Don’t stumble upon a spy mission, or you could go to jail.

What is a ‘special intelligence operation’? It’s quite an important question. If you happened to know enough about an operation to realise it was special, you might well find yourself in a lot of trouble.

A special intelligence operation is defined by Australian law as:

an operation:

(a) in relation to which a special intelligence operation authority has been granted; and
(b) that is carried out for a purpose relevant to the performance of one or more special intelligence functions; and
(c) that may involve an ASIO employee or an ASIO affiliate in special intelligence conduct.

Does that clear everything up? In the Helleresque jargon of the Act, a special intelligence operation is just about anything involved with intelligence. There is no further definition of what’s so ‘special’ about a special operation. There is no limit on the number of special intelligence operations ASIO can declare. ASIO agents on a special operation are immune from essentially all civil and criminal liability. ‘Special intelligence’ is pretty well anything ASIO says it is.

What would a journalist who suspects she might have stumbled onto a special intelligence operation do? According to the government, the answer is to call ASIO’s media department. Almost unbelievably, the onus is now on investigative journalists to ask the spooks whether the thing they’re investigating might be special spy business. Actually, the onus is on anyonewho encounters an unfolding event: journalist, blogger, or simply your mate with a Twitter account. As Griffith University’s Mark Pearson notes wryly, ‘one can imagine that ASIO media hotline getting considerable traffic in coming months and years.’

According to News Corporation’s veteran managing editor Campbell Reid, the laws are now so restrictive that it may be that journalists simply can’t report on an intelligence operation, even one that was completely successful in apprehending terrorists. Reid was also giving evidence to the independent monitor’s inquiry in April. ‘The fear that I have is that important information that could help parents understand the threat that their children could be placed under is now shut down, and potentially shut down for ever,’ he told the inquiry. ‘So this extraordinarily dangerous episode in Australian society could effectively be censored for all time.’

The media executives were particularly worried about the future for whistleblowers, the rare and courageous people inside the military and government who disclose information to journalists about wrongdoing. ‘If you are a whistleblower or a member of the public,’ Reid continued, ‘or, as in most stories of any kind of an investigative nature, a series of people with pieces of information, the situation we’re in now is that every piece of this information simply makes it too dangerous to talk to a journalist.’

How has it come to this?

For much of the last decade, George Williams has been one of Australia’s leading legal scholars. His specialty is Australia’s growing thicket of laws dealing with counter-terrorism and surveillance. Needless to say, he’s been a busy fellow.

In 2012, Williams wrote a review of the counter-terror laws enacted in the decade after the September 11 attacks. He concluded that ‘powers and sanctions once thought to lie outside the rules of a liberal democracy except during wartime have now become part of the Australian legal system.’ Williams’ latest book, co-written with Andrew Lynch and Nicola McGarrity, is entitled Inside Australia’s Anti-Terrorism Laws and Trials. For those of us who care about basic freedoms of speech and association, it makes for uncomfortable reading.

For instance, let us examine the Counter-Terrorism Amendment (Foreign Fighters) Act 2014. This omnibus amendment to many existing terror and security laws included an amendment to the criminal code that created a new offence: advocating terrorism. As Williams and his co-authors write, ‘advocacy, for the purposes of the offence, means counselling, promoting, encouraging or urging terrorism.’

It shouldn’t take more than a moment’s consideration to envisage the rather significant restrictions this new law places on certain types of speech. Unlike existing definitions of ‘incitement’ in the Criminal Code, the new offence does not require the prosecutors to prove that a defendant intended for his or her speech to incite a specific terrorist act. Instead, the ‘advocacy’ provision now applies to a much broader range of speech, requiring prosecutors to prove simply that the defendant was reckless in their urging of a terrorist act or offence. Considering the perennially controversial definition of what constitutes ‘terrorism’, and the blurred and confused nature of irregular warfare in conflict zones such as Syria, it is obvious that the new law could be very restrictive indeed. Williams, Lynch and McGarrity argue that it could apply to those writing in favour of rebel groups opposing the brutal Assad regime. The new offence, they observe, inevitably spirals uncontrollably outwards to a ‘larger, unresolvable debate about the legitimate use of violence.’

For those not intimately acquainted with the legal details, one of the mot remarkable aspects of Australia’s new terror laws is the before-the-fact criminality they establish. Williams, Lynch and McGarrity call it ‘pre-inchoate liability.’ Such liability extends well beyond the existing definitions of conspiracy, into the realms of vague premeditation. You could also, if you were uncharitable, call it ‘thought crime.’

Take, for instance, Faheem Lodhi. In 2006, Lodhi became the first Australian convicted of a terrorist offence. He had made the grievous mistake of associating with Willy Brigitte, a French national who had trained with Lashkar-e-Taiba in Pakistan. He had also gathered some highly suspicious documents together, such as maps of electricity grids, aerial photographs of Holsworthy Barracks, handwritten notes on how to make home-made explosives, and a CD-ROM of jihadist material. He had then made some injudicious attempts to acquire some chemicals, particularly nitrates, which could have been used to make a fertiliser bomb.

While a jury found Lodhi guilty, the conduct of Lodhi’s trial was hardly open and transparent. Much of the evidence was given in secret – a full six days of closed testimony. As the Sydney Morning Herald’s Natasha Wallace reported in 2006, ‘of the first day of the transcript provided yesterday, the first eight pages and the last eight are entirely blacked out. It is not possible to tell who all the witnesses are and what parts are just legal argument in between evidence.’ The judge in the trial, Anthony Whealy, admitted in his judgment that ‘there is no evidence to indicate precisely what Brigitte’s role was to be in relation to any terrorist activity.’ However, he quickly added, ‘I am satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that the relationship was not an innocent one.’

As Jeff Sparrow pointed out in a fine essay on the topic this year, Lodhi had no bomb, no target and no concrete plan. He had some maps, some recipes, and he’d tried to acquire some chemicals. The judge freely admitted that ‘it is clear that the planning was at a very preliminary stage.’ Indeed, he added that ‘I am not satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that the offender intended that he himself would necessarily assemble the bomb or that he would be the bomb carrier when it came time to place it at or near the ultimate target.’ Nonetheless, Justice Whealy decided that ‘I am satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that the offender’s intentions in obtaining the list of chemicals was in contemplation for an action that he intended would be carried out to advance the cause of violent jihad.’

‘Contemplation for an action’ – those were the judge’s own words. And the appeal made clear that this was guilt enough: as no lesser legal mind than Chief Justice Spigelman of the New South Wales Supreme Court wrote in his appeal judgment, ‘what has been made an offence includes conduct where an offender has not decided precisely what he or she intends to do.’

In 2014, in one of his few substantive attempts to justify the raft of new terror laws his government was enacting, Prime Minister Tony Abbott told parliament that ‘regrettably, for some time to come, the delicate balance between freedom and security may have to shift.’

He continued:

There may be more restrictions on some so that there can be more protections for others. After all, the most basic freedom of all is the freedom to walk the streets unharmed and to sleep safe in our beds at night. Creating new offences that are harder to beat on a technicality may be a small price to pay for saving lives and for maintaining the social fabric of an open, free and multicultural nation.

The problem with this argument, as Williams, McGarrity and Lynch point out, is that is it by no means certain that less freedom adds up to more security. It may well be, as they write, that ‘a dimunition of liberty may even be counterproductive.’ The authors argue that while Australia needs counter-terror laws, the ones we’ve ended up enacting are poorly drafted, poorly monitored, lack checks and balances, and are disproportionate to the threat they counter. ‘Elements of the national security legislative framework require urgent repair or even repeal,’ they conclude.

Of course, no such redress is on offer. The major parties are busy passing new laws, rather than curbing the overreach of old ones.

The fate of the immediate past independent monitor, Bret Walker SC, is instructive. Walker spent three years in the role and authored four fat reports on Australia’s terror laws. They were given short shift by both the Labor and Coalition governments. Almost all of his recommendations were ignored – even those that would have strengthened some aspects of the legislative framework. In the end, Walker was left to lament that ‘when there is no apparent response to recommendations that would increase powers and authority to counter terrorism, some skepticism may start to take root about the political imperative to have the most effective and appropriate counter-terrorism laws.’

Walker left his post as independent monitor in April 2014. It took the Abbott government a full eight months to appoint his replacement, Roger Gyles QC. In that time, the government drafted and passed two new counter-terror bills, including the one that outlawed reporting on special intelligence operations.

Consider some of the following facts.

The United States government’s National Security Agency has a program called XKeyscore. This program ‘collects nearly anything a user does on the internet’, according to top secret documents leaked by Edward Snowden. Back in 2008, XKeyscore had over 500 dedicated data centres globally, networked in a ‘massive distributed Linux cluster.’ By 2012, the NSA was aiming at 10 million HTTP intercepts a day. The NSA’s overarching objective, as directed by General Keith Alexander, the Strangelovian eminence at the top of the NSA hierarchy, is simply to ‘collect it all.’ A multi-billion dollar operation with tens of thousands of employees (how many is still classified, along with the agency’s budget) the NSA may be the most far-reaching internal security body in world history, putting such notorious historical rivals as the Stasi, the Gestapo and the Okhrana to shame. In his famous interview with Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras in a Hong Kong hotel room, Snowden claimed that ‘I, sitting at my desk, could wiretap anyone, from you or your accountant, to a federal judge or even the president, if I had a personal email.’

You can see why the spooks love such tools. One of the presentations leaked by Snowden shows a hypothetical search enquiry by an NSA operative. ‘For this example, I’m looking for everyone in Sweden that visits a particular extremist web forum,’ the slide helpfully explains. XKeyscore can provide the answers. A separate program called DNI Presenter can watch Facebook chats in real-time.

In 2013, the Guardian published details of a presentation Snowden leaked that discussed PRISM – the NSA’s program for accessing the messages, emails and phone calls of some of the largest tech companies in the world. Subtitled ‘The SIGAD used most in NSA reporting’, the document has the logos of Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, Facebook and Skype arrayed jauntily across the top of every page. It’s hard not to spot the resemblance to a set of lab notes. There are case studies and methodology primers. In one slide, showing a diagram of ‘upstream’ and ‘downstream’ intelligence sources, the slide annotates: ‘you should use both.’

The NSA has some able allies, too, including the domestic spy agencies of the four English-speaking democracies that together make up the ‘Five Eyes’ network of international surveillance. The other four chords of this pentagonal web are the United Kingdom, Canada, New Zealand and Australia. Originally formed in the Second World War to listen into enemy radio transmissions, the agreement is still in operation and is the legal basis underlying the vast intelligence flows shared between the various spy agencies of the five countries. It’s a revealing quirk of twenty-first century geopolitics that the five democracies with the worst records for spying on their citizens are all settler nations that have explicit commitments to individual liberties enshrined in their constitutions and laws. The trouble is, all these nations also have wide-ranging legislative approval of spying. Indeed, laws might even be said to be a significant part the problem.

The widespread imposition of routine, total surveillance by these five democracies is not the result of a powerful military acting without sanction, or a rogue network of spies. It is entirely legal, and is the formal policy of the various national governments. The spy system has been set up at the behest of the legislatures of those nation-states. The USA has its PATRIOT Act, passed in the fevered days after the September 11 terrorist attacks. Canada has a range of laws pertaining to surveillance. And so, of course, does Australia.

Australia’s Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Amendment (Data Retention) Bill 2015, recently passed with the overwhelming support of both the major parties, certainly gives one pause to consider the relevance of the adjective ‘Orwellian.’ Here is a law that requirestelecommunications providers to collect and store vast amounts of data about their customers – that is to say, you and I – for a period of at least two years. No fewer than 19 separate law enforcement agencies can access the data without a warrant, or judicial oversight of any kind, and the Attorney-General can give other agencies access with the stroke of a pen. Section 187AA, which sets out bluntly the ‘information to be kept’, runs to two and a half closely typed pages, and looks like this:

 Kinds of information to be kept

TopicThe subscriber of, and accounts, services, telecommunications devices and other relevant services relating to, the relevant serviceDescription of informationThe following:(a) any information that is one or both of the following:

 

(i) any name or address information;

(ii) any other information for identification purposes; relating to the relevant service, being information used by the service provider for the purposes of identifying the subscriber of the relevant service;

(b) any information relating to any contract, agreement or arrangement relating to the relevant service, or to any related account, service or device;

(c) any information that is one or both of the following:

(i) billing or payment information;

(ii) contact information; relating to the relevant service, being information used by the service provider in relation to the relevant service;

(d) any identifiers relating to the relevant service or any related account, service or device, being information used by the service provider in relation to the relevant service or any related account, service or device;

(e) the status of the relevant service, or any related account, service or device.

That’s just one sub-clause of the law; other ‘topics’ include the date, time and location of a communication, its source and destination, and what type of message it was (‘Examples: Voice, SMS, email, chat, forum, social media.’) When faced with such newly legislated state powers of control and surveillance, it’s understandable that civil libertarians, journalists and ordinary citizens get concerned.

How bad is it? It’s pretty bad, actually. The level of surveillance that the Australian state can now legally conduct on its citizens is certainly as total as anything that pertained in the first and second world wars, or at the height of the Cold War in the 1950s. What this means for the future of individual liberty within our democracy is anyone’s guess, but it’s hard to find an informed observer who is comforted. The ill-informed, on the other hand, remain blissfully ignorant.

And that’s perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the Australian debate. In what is either a reassuring indicator of the stability of Australian society, or a remarkable demonstration of the way surveillance organisations can hoodwink legislatures and the general public, the metadata debate has been characterised by a surprising lack of interest from the mainstream media and the general public, most of whom did not find out about the laws until they had been passed. The Liberal-National Coalition has shown itself to be an enthusiastic supporter of tougher terrorism laws, notwithstanding their occasional homilies to freedom in front of party faithful. But so has the Australian Labor Party. While the metadata bill clearly worried many on the left of the ALP, in the end it was too complex, too technical and too abstruse to incite a backbench uprising. That left only the Greens and other minor parties and independents to oppose the bill, which they did, to negligible effect. It’s interesting that the only committed opposition to the bill came from the far left and far right of the political spectrum, a development which might be taken for broad consensus, but may also represent the narrowing of the electoral base of the major parties.

Early in his remarkable book, The File, Timothy Garton-Ash describes an uncanny moment examining the file kept about him by the Stasi:

Person-description of connection ‘Beret’
SEX: female
AGE: 30-35 years
HEIGHT: 1.75m-1.78m
BUILD: slim
HAIR: medium-blonde, curly
DRESS: dark blue cloth coat, red beret, blue jeans, black boots
ACCESSORIES: dark brown handbag

Garton-Ash is transfixed: suddenly he is transported back to East Berlin in 1979.

I remember the slovenly gilt-and-red Ganymed, the plush Operncafe and the blue-shirted, pimpled youths in the thirtieth anniversary march-past, their paraffin-soaked torches trailing sparks in the misty night air. I smell again that East Berlin smell, a compound of the smoke from old-fashioned domestic boilers burning compressed coal-dust briquettes, exhaust fumes from the two-stroke engines of the little Trabant cars, cheap East European cigarettes, damp boots and sweat. But on thing I simply can’t remember: who was she, my little red riding-hood?

After re-reading his diaries, Garton-Ash realises he has forgotten a love affair. There is even a letter, enclosing a photograph. ‘Touseled hair, high cheekbones, a rather tense smile. How could I have forgotten?’ Years later, in our own country, readers of ASIO’s files from the 1950s and 1960s have described similar reactions: the realisation that the state knew their past lives better than they did. The bittersweet play of forgetfulness, overlaid with the uncanny discomfort of the state-sponsored aid to memory, asks us difficult questions about the relationship of the citizen to the state.

Any discussion of mass state surveillance inevitably defaults to the example of the Stasi. The scale of the Ministry for State Security’s operations remains astounding. At the fall of the German Democratic Republic in 1989, the Stasi was East Germany’s largest employer. An estimated 173,000 informants were on the Ministry’s books: one for every fifty adults. Thousands of officers were devoted just to monitoring phones; thousands of letters a day were routinely opened; 20,000 phone calls were logged in East Berlin alone in 1989. When the Gauck Agency released the Stasi files it had seized, the archive was said to feature 180 kilometres of files. Several politicians were forced to resign, including Josef Duchac, Premier of the state of Thuringia.

Such power certainly allowed for savage repression of individuals, including the execution of many innocent people after their denunciation of informants. The intrusiveness of the Stasi was legendary. Surveillance teams would regularly break into suspects’ houses to plant bugs and photograph files, and would often leave subtle markers of their presence in a deliberate attempt to intimidate their targets. Stasi agents operated with essentially no legal checks, and with complete freedom to monitor all aspects of the their subjects’ lives. The Stasi also interfered, ending careers and ruining lives with a secret file and a discreet chat. A close reading of the Stasi’s actions in the 1970s and 80s suggests that it played a sophisticated game, trying to calibrate its repression so as to maintain party control, but without provoking greater resistance Even where charges were laid for crimes such as ‘illicit contact’ and ‘public degradation of state officials’, two of the favourite charges against dissidents and would-be emigrants, sentences were often light.

The irony is, of course, that the Stasi was utterly ineffective at its primary task: preventing the fall of the German Democratic Republic. Like the edifice of Communism itself, the Ministry disintegrated in just a few weeks in late 1989. Not only did it not predict the collapse, it made no meaningful effort to arrest the revolution when the critical moment arrived.

No-one quite knows why. As even the Stasi’s best-known historian, Jens Gieske admits, ‘it almost seems a mystery that the GDR’s internal armed forces gave in to defeat without a fight, a reaction that fundamentally contradicted their interests in the narrow sense.’ The Stasi, the most feared and effective internal surveillance agency of the Eastern Bloc, crumbled away in the general confusion of the 1989 revolution. In the end, the Stasi’s fatal weakness may have been exactly its faultless loyalty: as East Germany’s rulers lost their nerve, the Stasi followed orders and stood down. No counter-coup was mounted. By the time state prosecutors and even police moved against the Stasi to stop it from burning files, it was clear that the revolution would sweep the agency away. The occupation of the Stasi headquarters on 15 January 1990 was both inevitable and, like so much that is miraculous about the fall of Communism, remarkably peaceful.

Ultimately, though, perhaps the real effect of the new surveillance regime may be what it does to online culture, and how it effects public discourse. If East Germany has taught us anything, it is that the sustained and total surveillance of an entire population is not without consequences: political, cultural and especially moral. What will the consequences be in our own society? We are just at the beginning of the new surveillance era, and it is impossible to determine just how it may play out.

There is a sense in which broad surveillance powers are a potential harm, rather than an actual one. If the state merely monitors but doesn’t detain, limit or repress, are our liberties truly at threat? After all, as the saying goes, the innocent have nothing to fear. At this moment the nation-states of the Five Eyes have not jailed large numbers of internal dissidents, moved to break up political associations, or repressed large swathes of civil society. No media organisations have been shut down, even if certain websites have been proscribed and mosques and chatrooms are routinely monitored.

So the question becomes: would governments and their domestic intelligence agencies use such powers for repression? Even if collectively the answer is no, in a disconcerting number of individual instances, the answer is yes. The US, the UK and Australia have all seen journalists and whistle-blowers prosecuted and even jailed after falling into the tentacles of the security state. Edward Snowden would certainly be prosecuted were he to return to the United States; Chelsea Manning languishes in a military jail in Fort Leavenworth. It is true that such outrages are nothing compared to what goes on in Russia, in Sri Lanka or in Iran. Nonetheless, it cannot be denied that power is being abused, and that liberties are being limited.

There have already been plenty of individual abuses of terror laws here in Australia, from Mohammed Haneef to Izhar ul-Haque. Haneef was detained without charge for twelve days. His legal rights were denied. But his eventual charge – of providing resources to a terrorist organisation – was without substance. He had given his SIM card to a second cousin, later implicated in the 2007 Glasgow airport attack. That SIM card was said to have been found at the scene of the attack. In fact, it wasn’t. Haneef was found to have done nothing wrong. A subsequent inquiry found that ‘it appears that Dr Haneef spent three weeks in custody as a consequence of very ordinary, unremarkable familial interaction.’

Perhaps the more concerning cases are those where there is no obvious miscarriage of justice, and yet individual liberties have been trampled on. The case of Alan Kessing, a whistleblower in Customs, is instructive. In 2005, The Australian published a secret report about airport security obtained from Kessing. He was charged and convicted under section 70 of the Crimes Act and received a nine-month suspended sentence. According to the ABC’s Media Watch, metadata showed he had called The Australian from a payphone near his house. It’s hard to see how prosecutions such as this are a good thing for Australian democracy. Whistle-blowers remain critical to exposing corruption and malfeasance in public life.

In the First and Second World Wars, the belligerent powers all censored, repressed and jailed internal critics and enemies. The justification at the time was war, and it remains war. That tells us something about the way our rulers approach the world, because there is no resemblance between the diffuse and largely proxy wars now being fought against Islamic terrorists, and the total wars of the first half of the twentieth century. Terrorists have the ability to strike lethally and without warning in western democracies. But the uncomfortable truth is that they kill very few western citizens, and pose precisely zero ability to defeat or depose a modern state.

Whether you think the US and Australia are substantially unfree might therefore depend on your view of power. If, like Michel Foucault, you see power as more than merely the application of force to achieve political and social compulsion, then you might be inclined to question just how free our much-prized modern democracies really are. Could it be that the vast apparatus of surveillance constructed at such expense could also be exerting subtle effects on our everyday political activities? Or is it rather more metaphysical? Is surveillance helping to construct power itself through the constituent action of its moving parts? In other words, is surveillance a ‘microphysics of power,’ in Foucault’s muscular phrase?

The nagging concern must therefore be that, in contrast to the terrorism they are meant to combat, society-wide surveillance networks may well pose a greater threat to the contemporary conditions for liberty and democracy. By surveilling the private sphere, they also harm the public sphere – assisting the corrupt and hollowing out the basis for trust in communication. The slow erosion of such freedoms thus assists broader inequalities in our polity, insidiously crimping long-established freedoms of speech, association and assembly, and callously ruining innocent lives.


Ben Eltham is a Melbourne-based writer and journalist. He writes about Australian culture and politics. He is national affairs correspondent for New Matilda, a research fellow at Deakin University and an industry columnist for artsHub. 

 

 

 

 

PEN Melbourne joins coalition calling for restored internet services in Nauru

  Nauru. Torsten Blackwood/AFP/Getty Images
Nauru. Torsten Blackwood/AFP/Getty Images

The tiny island of Nauru has shut down services on the internet.

The island nation of Nauru may be tiny — it’s only 21 square kilometers (8.5 square miles) — but what is happening there matters to people around the world. This month, the Nauru government officially announced it would block Facebook and internet services until it could pass measures to protect its residents from “abusive” content online.

But here’s the thing: Governments should NEVER shut off any part of the internet. Period.

The Nauru government has made it a criminal offense for anyone to make a statement that “coerces, intimidates, harasses, or causes emotional distress to a person” if the statement is “likely to threaten national defence, public safety, public order, public morality or public health.” This wide standard could send people to jail for what they say on- or offline. It’s bad for journalism, for free expression, and for the ability to enjoy basic rights.

Nauru operates an immigration detention center (funded by the Australian government) for people seeking asylum in Australia. Men, women, and children are held there — often in abusive conditions — while authorities decide whether to grant them full refugee protection and resettlement on Nauru, Papua New Guinea, or Cambodia, but not Australia, the country they are seeking asylum in. The detention center is located in the steaming hot center of the island, as far from other people as it is possible to get in Nauru. Without the internet, asylum seekers in Nauru are losing vital connections to loved ones, colleagues, and family that internet services can provide, something that could make a difference in their efforts to get asylum. This needs to stop.

TAKE ACTION

Sign the petition to tell the government of Nauru to turn the internet back on!

Read the coalition’s letter to His Excellency President Baron Waqa here.

 

Writers Victoria: Q&A with Arnold Zable

Advocacy is very often about telling stories that struggle to be heard. An experienced advocate and storyteller both, Arnold Zable will be giving a workshop as part of the Wheeler Centre Anniversary Series this month. He spoke to Deanne Sheldon-Collins about some of the issues he will cover in this workshop, including the importance and complications of writing for social justice.

Your ‘Story and Advocacy’ workshop will look at story, commentary, and advocacy across genres, from investigative features to fiction. Do you think that particular genres are more suited to advocacy than others?

Very difficult to say. In the short term, in responding to immediate human rights abuses and social justice concerns, I would say that opinion pieces and features in the mainstream press and social media are the most effective. In the longer term, all the genres can come into play. What unites across the genres is the humanising power of story. George Orwell’s ‘1984’ and ‘Animal Farm’ and Kafka’s ‘The Trial’ are at the other end of the spectrum that runs from social commentary through to fiction. Novels such as these are as relevant today as they were when they were written and they address, in subtle ways, ongoing universal concerns with social justice.

Writers throughout history have often addressed social issues subtextually rather than explicitly, especially in cultures where censorship is a constant threat. Do you think that this approach is as effective as writing openly about social justice?

Sometimes, as you suggest, addressing issues subtextually can, to put it bluntly, enable a writer to avoid harassment and even imprisonment. Whether issues of social justice are addressed subtextually or directly, it requires courage to write in repressive societies. There have been some wonderful examples of writers developing a subtle literature of protest as, for example, in Eastern Europe during the Cold War period, and in all too many other countries today where censorship is at play. Stories and novels circulating underground create a subculture of dissidents who keep the flame of freedom alive. More contemporary tactics include the use of Facebook aliases to get across dissident views.

As for effectiveness: it is not an issue of what is most effective, as a matter of what is possible in given circumstances. PEN International deals with up to 1000 cases at any given time of writers who are imprisoned, harassed, persecuted and, in some cases, murdered for pursuing their craft.

Freedom of expression is still an enormously topical issue, and one that you must come across often in your work with PEN Melbourne. Are there any situations in which you think censorship can be justifiable?

This is not a question that can be answered easily, and in just a few sentences. There are race hate laws in place that attempt to deal with the margins, to define the outer boundaries, in order to protect those individuals and segments of society subject to bullying and to inaccurate, false, and divisive claims and assertions, designed to stir up hatred and division. Defining the boundaries is extremely difficult. PEN International, which has been defending freedom of expression for almost a century, has its own qualifications, stated within its charter, which I include below:

‘PEN stands for the principle of unhampered transmission of thought within each nation and between all nations, and members pledge themselves to oppose any form of suppression of freedom of expression in the country and community to which they belong, as well as throughout the world wherever this is possible. PEN declares for a free press and opposes arbitrary censorship in time of peace. It believes that the necessary advance of the world towards a more highly organised political and economic order renders a free criticism of governments, administrations and institutions imperative. And since freedom implies voluntary restraint, members pledge themselves to oppose such evils of a free press as mendacious publication, deliberate falsehood and distortion of facts for political and personal ends.’

Your workshop will explore storytelling as a craft that unites genres and purposes. Do you think that a story is ever ‘just’ a story, or does it always have a deeper meaning?

A story does not always necessarily have a deeper meaning. I love many aspects of the craft: the playing with language, the release of the imagination that comes with the art of story and the challenge to keep a reader with you. Having said that, many stories which may have been written without any intention to push a cause or to be imbued with meaning, still convey meaning. So many stories takes the reader into worlds they do not know or have never imagined. Just the choice of subject matter can have deep meaning – the choice, for instance, to write stories set in the immigrant communities in Melbourne’s western suburbs brings new voices and perspectives into the public domain and conveys the dignity and humanity to their subjects. One of the exciting aspects of current Australian literature is the emergence of new writers from many communities, including what I would call a renaissance in Indigenous writing with writers such as Kim Scott, Alexis Wright, Bruce Pascoe, and Melissa Lukashenko.

Which works have left the greatest impression on you, as pieces of advocacy or as stories?

The works of Kafka come to mind immediately. His novella ‘Metamorphosis’ is, in my view, the most powerful, moving, darkly comic story that I know of. It speaks to the bullied, the neglected, the disabled, to those who do not fit in, and to human neglect and cruelty, yet does so subtly, metaphorically and with dark humour. His novel ‘The Trial’ speaks to countless universal instances of bureaucratic and political cruelty. As I write, the impending execution of Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran come to mind – as victims of a Kafka nightmare of the worst kind. I am also an admirer of the deep humanism that writer, novelist, and social advocate John Berger brings to his work across genres ranging from essay to fiction. Vassily Grossman’s extraordinary novel ‘Life and Fate’ and his final work ‘Everything Flows’ expose countless injustices of Stalinism, and the horrors of war, and his novels explore what it means to be human.

It strikes me that most of the works I have chosen here are works of fiction. Many examples of fiction that explore issues of social injustice come to mind, the works of Afro-American novelist James Baldwin for instance. Yet I can readily think of many powerful works of creative non-fiction, such as the books of Henry Reynolds, and W.E.H. Stanner’s ‘The Great Australian Silence’, focusing on the history of social injustice against Indigenous people, and Rachel Carson’s seminal ‘Silent Spring’, on the devastating impact of unregulated chemical pollution. Note the use of silence in the titles. The most powerful stories that address social injustices often break long-held silences and bring to light the darker aspects of our collective past and present.

As for short, startling opinion pieces, Emile Zola’s ‘J’accuse’ (‘I accuse’), published in the daily press in 1898, as an open letter to the president of the Republic, is an extraordinary model of impassioned, powerful, effective writing in exposing a gross injustice. There have been times, recently, when I have been moved to follow that model – for instance, in writing an ‘I accuse’ in relation to the brutal human rights abuses now being perpetrated in the Manus Island detention against asylum seekers whose only crime has been to do what many of our own forbears did, seek a new life free of oppression and injustice.

ABOUT ARNOLD ZABLE

Arnold Zable is an acclaimed writer, novelist and human rights advocate. His books include ‘Jewels and Ashes’, ‘The Fig Tree’, ‘Café Scheherazade’, ‘Scraps of Heaven’, ‘Sea of Many Returns’ and ‘Violin Lessons’. He is the author of numerous essays, columns, features and co-author of ‘Kan Yama Kan’, a play in which asylum seekers tell their stories. Long active in the Melbourne Centre of PEN International, and on a range of social justice issues, Arnold recently received the Voltaire prize for human rights advocacy and the advancement of freedom of expression.

ABOUT DEANNE SHELDON-COLLINS

Deanne is Program Assistant at Writers Victoria.

Thanks to our friends at Writers Victoria for this post. 

Journalist Peter Greste freed from Egyptian prison

Via freepetergreste.com

NEWS 2/2/15: The family confirm that Peter has been released.
Very grateful to all supporters and we will update again soon.

Award-winning foreign correspondent Peter Greste was arrested in Cairo on December 29, 2013. He had been in Egypt only weeks, working on a short relief posting as a journalist for an international TV news network.

After a trial which attracted worldwide attention, on June 23, 2014, Peter was convicted of reporting false news and endangering Egypt’s national security. He was sentenced to seven years jail. He remains in Cairo’s Tora Prison.

This website is the official platform, built and approved by Peter’s family. It endeavors to share our public appeal and provide information relating to the campaign FREE PETER GRESTE.

We maintain Peter’s innocence and are working tirelessly to secure his release and clear his name.

Peter is a dual Australian-Latvian citizen. There has never been a criminal conviction in his extended family. In many cultures, great importance is placed on the honour of a family and its good name. This is also true for the Latvian heritage of Peter’s father Juris and all fair-minded Australians.

The Greste family bears no malice against the people of Egypt. May they have peace, security and prosperity.

Journalist Peter Greste freed from Egyptian prison

Via freepetergreste.com

NEWS 2/2/15: The family confirm that Peter has been released.
Very grateful to all supporters and we will update again soon.

Award-winning foreign correspondent Peter Greste was arrested in Cairo on December 29, 2013. He had been in Egypt only weeks, working on a short relief posting as a journalist for an international TV news network.

After a trial which attracted worldwide attention, on June 23, 2014, Peter was convicted of reporting false news and endangering Egypt’s national security. He was sentenced to seven years jail. He remains in Cairo’s Tora Prison.

This website is the official platform, built and approved by Peter’s family. It endeavors to share our public appeal and provide information relating to the campaign FREE PETER GRESTE.

We maintain Peter’s innocence and are working tirelessly to secure his release and clear his name.

Peter is a dual Australian-Latvian citizen. There has never been a criminal conviction in his extended family. In many cultures, great importance is placed on the honour of a family and its good name. This is also true for the Latvian heritage of Peter’s father Juris and all fair-minded Australians.

The Greste family bears no malice against the people of Egypt. May they have peace, security and prosperity.

Saudi Arabia: Imprisoned editor Raef Badawi’s case referred to Supreme Court; second round of flogging delayed on health grounds

According to unconfirmed reports, the case against imprisoned editor has been referred to the supreme court amidst international condemnation of his flogging. Raef (or Raif) Badawi, who was sentenced by a Saudi Arabian court to 10 years in prison, 1,000 lashes , a fine, a 10-year travel ban and 10-year media participation ban for “insulting Islam” and “founding a liberal website”, received the first 50 lashes of his flogging sentence on 9 January 2015. PEN is calling for his sentence of flogging to be overturned immediately as it violates the absolute prohibition in international law against torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. PEN International reiterates its calls for Badawi’s conviction to be quashed and for his immediate and unconditional release, as well as that of his lawyer Waleed Abu al-Khair, who is serving a 15-year prison sentence.

For extracts of Raif Badawi’s writings in English and Arabic click here

Please send appeals:

  • Condemning the Jeddah Criminal Court’s sentencing of editor Raef Badawi’s to 10 years in prison, 1,000 lashes and a fine of 1 million Saudi riyals, a 10-year travel ban and 10-year media participation ban on charges of “insulting Islam” and “founding a liberal website” on 7 May 2014;
  • Calling for his sentence of flogging to be overturned immediately as it violates the absolute prohibition in international law against torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
  • Urging the Saudi Arabian authorities to release Raef Badawi and his lawyer Walid Abu al-Khair immediately and unconditionally as they are being held solely for their peaceful exercise of their rights to freedom of expression;
  • In the meantime, calling for both men to be granted all necessary medical treatment and access to their families and lawyers of their choice;
  • Calling on Saudi Arabia to ratify, without reservation, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

Appeals to be sent to:

His Majesty
King Abdullah Bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud
The Custodian of the two Holy Mosques
Office of His Majesty the King
Royal Court, Riyadh
Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
Fax: (via Ministry of the Interior) +966 1 403 3125

Salutation: Your Majesty Crown Prince and Minister of the Interior
His Royal Highness Prince Naif bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud
Ministry of the Interior
P.O.Box 2933, Airport Road,
Riyadh 11134
Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
Fax: +966 1 403 3125

Salutation: Your Excellency Minister of Justice
His Excellency Shaykh Dr Mohammed bin Abdulkareem Al-Issa
Ministry of Justice,
University Street
Riyadh 11137 Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
Fax: + 966 1 401 1741 + 966 11 402 0311
Salutation: Your Excellency 

 

BACKGROUND

Raef Badawi was arrested on 17 June 2012 in Jeddah after organising a conference to mark a “day of liberalism”. The conference, which was to have taken place in Jeddah on 7 May, was banned by the authorities. On 29 July 2013, a court in Jeddah sentenced Badawi to seven years and three months in prison and 600 lashes after he was convicted under the information technology law of “founding a liberal website,” “adopting liberal thought” and for “insulting Islam”. The online forum, Liberal Saudi Network – created to foster political and social debate in Saudi Arabia – was ordered closed by the judge.

According to reports, the appeal, submitted by Badawi’s lawyer, Walid Abu al-Khair, cited procedural and evidential reasons why the conviction should be overturned and Badawi should be freed. In December 2013, it was reported that the Court of Appeal had reversed the ruling of the District Court in Jeddah, ordering that Badawi’s case be sent for review by another court. Badawi, who suffers from diabetes, is reported to be in poor health.

On 7 May 2014, Jeddah’s Criminal Court sentenced Badawi to 10 years in prison, 1,000 lashes and a fine of 1 million Saudi riyals (approx. US$266,631) on charges of ‘insulting Islam’ and ‘founding a liberal website.’ According to PEN’s information, when Badawi appeared in court to collect a written account of the verdict on 28 May 2014 he discovered the insertion of two additional penalties: a 10-year travel ban and 10-year ban from participating in visual, electronic and written media, both to be applied following his release. For more information about his case, please read PEN’s interview with his wife Ensaf Haidar here.

According to the Centre For Inquiry (CFI), in a post dated 17 September 2014, the Saudi appeals court in Mecca confirmed the sentence against Badawi, and states that the lashes will be administered 50 at the time, in public, every week after Friday Prayers. The first 50 lashes were given outside al-Jafali mosque in the port city of Jeddah on 9 January 2015. The following week, the authorities postponed Badawi’s flogging on medical grounds after a doctor said wounds from the previous lashing had not healed. On 16 January 2015 his wife Ensaf Haider, who lives in Canada with the couple’s three young children, said that King Abdullah had referred the case to the supreme court, although there has been no official confirmation of this from the Saudi authorities.

PEN International is also protesting the arrest of Badawi’s lawyer, Waleed Abu Al-Khair, on 15 April 2014. Waleed Abu Al-Khair is a lawyer, human rights activist and founding member of the Monitor of Human Rights in Saudi Arabia (MHRSA) who has also written many articles. On 4 February 2014, the Court of Appeal confirmed a three-month sentence against Abu Al-Khair imposed after he had been convicted of contempt of the judiciary. According to PEN’s information, Abu Al-Khair was arrested at the Specialised Criminal Court in Riyadh while he attended the fifth session of his trial for other charges made against him in 2013, which include: “breaking allegiance to and disobeying the ruler and disrespecting the authorities”, “offending the judiciary”, “inciting international organisations against the Kingdom” and “founding an unlicensed organization” (Monitor of Human Rights in Saudi Arabia), and supervising it and contributing to the establishment of another (the Saudi Civil and Political Rights Association – ACPRA); and “preparing, storing and sending material harmful to public order”.

Initially held in Al Hair prison, where there were concerns that he may have been subjected to ill-treatment, Abu al-Khair was transferred on 27 May 2014 to Briman prison in Jeddah. On 6 July 2014, the Specialized Criminal Court, Saudi Arabia’s terrorism tribunal, sentenced him to 10 years’ actual imprisonment, with another five years’ imprisonment which were suspended, a 15-year ban on travel abroad, and a fine of 200,000 Saudi Riyals (equivalent to approximately US$53,000) on a number of broad and vaguely worded charges that are believed to stem solely from his peaceful activism, including comments to news outlets and on Twitter criticizing Saudi human rights violations. On 11 August 2014 he was moved again to al-Malaz prison in Riyadh, over 960 kilometers from his family in Jeddah.

The Public Prosecutor appealed the sentence at the Court of Appeal in Riyadh, which on 15 January 2015 ruled that he should serve the entire 15-year sentence in prison, on the grounds that he had not shown any contrition for his “offence”.

According to MHRSA, Abu al-Khair refused to recognize the legitimacy of the court or defend himself against the charges. He also refused to sign a copy of the trial judgment or to appeal the conviction or his sentence. MHRSA stated on 12 August 2014 that it believes his prison transfers are a punitive measure for Abu al-Khair’s refusal to recognize the court. Abu Al-Khair is the recipient of the 2012 Olof Palme Prize.

Under Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, “everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers”. Criminalisation of the peaceful criticism of public officials and institutions violates international human rights law. Corporal punishment such as flogging also violates the absolute prohibition under international law of all forms of torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

From our friends at PEN International

PEN condemns GCHQ spying on journalists’ communications

(Monday 19 January 2015) Today’s revelations that a GCHQ programme ‘harvested’ correspondence between journalists and editors at news organisations such as the BBC, the Guardian, the New York Times and the Washington Post, is a clear threat to free speech and journalism in the public interest, PEN International, English PEN and PEN American Center said today.

In 2013, the NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden revealed that the GCHQ TEMPORA programme had accessed undersea fibre-optic cables, gaining access to vast amounts of private communications data.  Recent analysis of the Snowden documents has revealed that thousands of pieces of journalists’ correspondence were swept up when the data was processed. Spies designated investigative journalists as ‘a potential threat to security’.

The protection of journalistic sources has long been recognised as one of the basic necessities for a free press. Without a guaranteed protection, whistle-blowers will be deterred from coming forward, the press cannot report facts accurately, and citizens are denied an informed discussion on matters of public interest.

This invasion of private e-mail correspondence is just the latest example of the British security services’ abuse of surveillances laws to undermine the principles of press freedom.  Last year it was revealed that the police had used the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) to access the communications of the Sun political editor Tom Newton-Dunn, and reporters from the Mail on Sunday.

Carles Torner, Executive Director of PEN International said:

The work of investigative journalists – be it in uncovering corruption or abuse – is central to a free society, not a threat to national security. By designating journalists as ‘threats’ alongside terrorists it is governments which are threatening free expression.

Jo Glanville, Executive Director of English PEN said:

It’s now 18 months since Snowden’s revelations and still the shocks keep coming. Over the past two weeks, world leaders, including David Cameron, have recognised the cardinal importance of freedom of expression. Yet in practice, they undermine it on a regular basis. Spying on journalists is the most serious possible assault on that freedom. Without confidentiality, without protection of sources, journalists cannot do their job and democracy is in danger.

Suzanne Nossel, Executive Director of the PEN American Center said:

The spectre of governments nosing into journalists’ private emails evokes all that is worst and most dangerous about the surveillance state. Reports that GCHQ has collected journalists’ emails, and considers investigative journalists a ‘threat’, underscore how urgently we need to rein in these programmes with stronger oversight, greater transparency, and better protection for freedom of expression.

Jean-Luc Despax, President of French PEN Centre said:

Free press guarantees democracy because it defends values through journalistic investigations. Investigation is not a threat. Informing citizens neither. French PEN is against all governmental intrusion into the work of  a democratic press.

-PEN American Center’s recent report on the impact of surveillance on writers revealed that concerns about surveillance is now nearly as high among writers living in liberal democracies (75%) as among those living in non-democracies (80%). The levels of self-censorship reported by writers living in liberal democratic countries (34%) is substantial, even when compared to the levels reported by writers living in authoritarian or semi-democratic countries (61% and 44%, respectively).

-Protection of journalistic sources has long been acknowledged as an essential component of a free press.  This principle has been affirmed by the European Parliament (Resolution on the Confidentiality of Journalists’ Sources, 18 January 1994); the Council of Europe (Resolution on Journalistic Freedoms and Human Rights, 7-8 December 1994); and by the European Court of Human Rights (Goodwin v UK, 1996).

Via our friends at English PEN

Turkey: Journalists face religious defamation investigation over Charlie Hebdo cover

PEN International is deeply concerned by the news that two columnists from the daily Cumhuriyet are under investigation for ‘religious defamation’ for featuring the first, post-shooting cover of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, which depicts the Prophet Muhammad, in their respective columns. Hikmet Çetinkaya and Ceyda Karan, who have received many threats on social media in recent days, could face up to a year in prison if convicted. Access to web pages featuring the Charlie Hebdo cover has been banned from within Turkey following a court order from the Diyarbakır Magistrates’ Court on 14 January 2015. PEN calls on the Turkish authorities to drop the investigation into Çetinkaya and Karan, to ensure their protection from attack and to lift bans on any URLs of web pages featuring the cover which are not in accordance with the law and also are both necessary for demonstrable reasons of public order or other legitimate reasons and proportionate to the perceived risk.

TAKE ACTION:

Please send appeals:

  • Calling for the investigation and any charges that journalists or news outlets may face for publishing the cover of Charlie Hebdo  to be immediately and unconditionally dropped;
  • Demanding that journalists or news outlets that have published the Charlie Hebdo cover are afforded protection by Turkish security forces;
  • Calling for bans on access to web pages featuring the Charlie Hebdo cover to be lifted unless they are both necessary and proportionate according to international law and are imposed in accordance with Turkish legislation;
  • Calling on Turkey to fulfil its international obligations to respect the right to freedom of expression under the European Convention on Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights to which it is a state party.

Please send appeals reiterating PEN’s calls (listed above) to:

Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu
Başbakanlık Halkla İlişkiler Daire Başkanlığı
Merkez Bina B. Blok
06640, Kızılay
Ankara, Turkey
Fax: +90 312 422 2667
Email: ozelkalem@basbakanlik.gov.tr
Twitter: @Ahmet_Davutoglu

Minister of Justice Bekir Bozdağ
Milli Müdafaa Caddesi No: 22
Bakanlıklar
06659, Kızılay
Ankara, Turkey
Fax: +90 312 419 33 70
Email: bekir.bozdag@tbmm.gov.trozelkalem@adalet.gov.tr
Twitter: @bybekirbozdag

Background

A criminal investigation was launched against columnists Hikmet Çetinkaya, Ceyda Karan and Turkish newspaper Cumhuriyet under Article 216 of the Turkish Penal Code on 15 January 2015, a day after the publication of the front cover of Charlie Hebdo in the newspaper. .The news that an investigation had been launched against Çetinkaya and Karan came amid heightened tensions in Turkey surrounding the Charlie Hebdo cover. Violent clashes have been reported in front of the offices of Cumhuriyet, which is being guarded by armed police, and Yeni Akit, an Islamist newspaper that published a caricature of the secularist founder of the republic of Turkey, Atatürk, in response to Cumhuriyet’s show of solidarity with Charlie Hebdo. Turkish satirical magazines Penguen and Leman have also reportedly been subjected to threats on social media since the Charlie Hebdo shooting.

Turkish news outlets T24, BirGün, Sözcü and Yurt could face similar religious defamation charges, having also published the Charlie Hebdo cover.

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu, who joined a march in Paris with other world leaders in solidarity with Charlie Hebdo, has criticised Cumhuriyet for publishing the cover:

“Freedom of press does not cover insulting the prophet,” Davutoğlu said on 15 January 2015, “People who may tolerate insulting an individual will clearly not respond in the same way when it is against the prophet. Since Turkey has such a sensitivity, publishing a cartoon that aims to insult the prophet is a clear act of incitement.”

Speaking on 16 January 2015, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan made the following comments on Charlie Hebdo and Cumhuriyet:

“Our religion does not permit terrorism; there is no place for terrorism within it. And no-one has the right to get up and hold Muslims to account for acts of terror committed in abuse of our religion. A magazine that has gained notoriety with its provocative publications; a magazine that the Pope also condemns, is familiar with their provocative practices. Whether it is about Muslims or Christians; this cannot be called freedom. Violating the limits of another’s freedoms means unleashing terror there. There is a limit to freedom of thought: as far as my freedoms…”

“Certain publications from our country are insulting our prophet by taking extracts from them. What country are you in? 99% of this country is Muslim. Not only Muslims, you cannot insult what anyone considers sacred in this way. And they say security forces came and conducted searches. Citizens came and engaged in sedition. As long as you do things like this, you invite sedition. You open the door to this. Unfortunately, steps that are taken, like these, are aimed at disrupting the nation’s unity and togetherness. When the sensitivities of Muslims on the subject of their prophet are so clearly in the open, persistently going after them is absolutely unrelated to freedom of thought.”

– Via our friends at PEN International

Jailed journalist Peter Greste writes about annus horribilis (via SMH)

  Grim news: Australian Al Jazeera journalist Peter Greste hears the verdict from inside the defendents' cage.  Via: Sydney Morning Herald.
Grim news: Australian Al Jazeera journalist Peter Greste hears the verdict from inside the defendents’ cage. Via: Sydney Morning Herald.

Article via: Sydney Morning Herald

“As jailed journalist Peter Greste describes it, 2014 was his annus horribilus.

But in a New Year message the Al Jazeera correspondent wrote to NSW MP Shaoquette Moselmane, he said although it had been a tough year, he and his colleagues had found “extraordinary support from unexpected quarters” and wanted to thank the NSW Parliament for passing a motion expressing support for the freedom of the press, human rights and the rule of law.

“This experience has, of course, been extraordinarily difficult for the three of us Al Jazeera journalists and our families, but we also understand that our case has come to stand for so much more than our freedom alone,” he wrote from his cell in Mazraa Prison.

Greste was jailed for seven years in June when an Egyptian court found he and his Al Jazeera colleagues guilty of spreading false news to support the Muslim Brotherhood.

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Greste was writing to Mr Moselmane after learning that Egypt’s Court of Cassation (equivalent to the Australian High Court) had ordered a retrial.

“This is a significant step towards the vindication that we seek, and that we know must come if a credible judicial system is involved,” Greste said in the letter.

“Although we will probably never be able to draw a direct line between the actions of our supporters and the authorities’ handling of our case here, I’m convinced that steps like your motion send a very clear message that the world is paying attention.”

Mr Moselmane told Fairfax Media the Australian government needed to step up its representations to Egypt about bringing Greste back home.

Greste’s family have formally applied for the Al Jazeera journalist’s deportation under new Egyptian laws brought in late last year that grant the president the power to deport foreign defendants convicted or accused of crimes.

Lawyer Rick Mitry, speaking on behalf of the family, said nothing seemed to have moved in recent weeks and it appeared that Greste would face a retrial rather than being deported.”