THE ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION TIME WARP
Turning on the TV news or opening a newspapers in the last few weeks feels like being sent back in time to when the Howard Government was in power. I am of course talking about asylum seekers. First note that they are, in fact, asylum seekers, and not illegal immigrants. Any person who is willing to get in a rusty old boat and travel thousands of miles across an ocean is not looking to have a picnic. They’re desperately seeking refuge from (in the case of Sri Lanka) a Government that holds a callous disregard for human rights, and is responsible for the deaths of thousands of civilians. And that is only in the last 8 months. For decades, Tamils, an ethnic minority to the majority Singalese government, have been systematically stripped of their rights.
And what is the most pressing concern for the Australian press? Apparently the fact that there may be Tamil Tigers on these boats. And even if there were Tamil Tigers on these boats, shouldn’t that be even more of a reason to provide them with asylum? Former Tamil Tigers soldiers would almost certainly be persecuted if they were forced to return to Sri Lanka. Perhaps these are the very people that we should be granting asylum to, lost soldiers on the losing side of a brutal 30 year war. This is the overriding humanitarian imperative of the UN convention on Refugees, to provide safety for individuals that may be persecuted in their country of origin. But despite this the debate remains firmly entrenched in one-dimensional political puff pieces.
Then we also have the Afghan asylum seekers. Let’s all just take a moment and breathe in the sweet scent of irony here; Refugees coming from a country where troops from our country have been fighting and killing and being killed in for the last eight years. This what the Rudd Government describes as a ‘push factor’, although you would never hear him utter that Australia is in fact central to this push factor. For the purposes of a 15 second sound byte, a push factor is a mysterious and positively alien thing, of which we bear utterly no responsibility for.
But there is plenty of blame to go around in how this debate has been framed. The Australian press have been integral in ensuring that discussion is shaped not from a humanitarian perspectives, but from two callous and indifferent political groups struggling to define themselves on an issue that they themselves are not quite sure where they stand. Thanks to these groups, we’ve seen a return to a debate that should have been left in the dust with the Howard Government.
This has brought to light one of the enduring problems of public debate in Australia; an inability to go beyond institutional norms and the petty political dogfighting between the labor and liberal party. It’s terrifying that one of the few political voices aired in the past several weeks strongly in favour of allowing more asylum seekers and migrants into the country is Christian Democrat Fred Nile.
But its ok. Its all happening on places like Christmas Island, and in Indonesia. Out of sight, out of mind.
WHAT SORT OF SYMBOL HAS NEDA BECOME?
Watching the death of Neda Agha-Soltan on Youtube is a terrifying experience. Knowing from the tagline of the video what is about to happen, nothing can prepare you for the sudden pool of blood that seeps from her nose and mouth. The image has helped paint a picture of the callous brutality of the current regime in Iran, as well as being a focal point for dissenters in repressive regimes across the world.
But the danger of enshrining Neda in martyrdom (or twitterdom, as may be the case) became clear the moment that politicians across the world began citing the graphic video. Rather than this woman’s death becoming a hub for Iranian opinions, it has become an object of politicking in the western world.
On 23 June, when President Barack Obama delivered a grave sermon over the crisis in Iran, he spoke about the image of Nera: ‘[we] have seen courageous women stand up to brutality and threats, and we have experienced the searing image of a woman bleeding to death on the streets.’
Senator John McCain, in a similarly solemn address on 22 June, exalted the woman and the heartbreaking footage of her death: ‘She (Agha-Soltan) had already become a kind of Joan of Arc.’
‘Today, I and all America pays tribute to a brave young woman who was trying to exercise her fundamental human rights and was killed in the streets of Tehran.’
Following these releases, most media outlets ran with stories about this woman accompanied with these statements. But what was strangely absent from many of these reports was the opinions of Iranians themselves.
An article appearing in the Telegraph by Cassandra Jardine highlights the problem with the discussion of Neda’s death: ‘What her fate does not do is shed any light on the nuances of the conflict. For that, words and thoughts are more reliable than pictures and emotions.’
Unfortunately though, the words that are provided to us by many mainstream news outlets have been lacking in cultural variation and scope, and the views of Iranians themselves have remained in relative isolation from Western interpretations of events.
Browsing through the Australian or the Sydney Morning Herald in the past two weeks, you would be hard pressed to find an article on Iran that didn’t rely heavily on press releases from Mousavi, Ahmedinejad, President Obama and other politicians. Opinions pieces written by Iranians simply weren’t published, and there is a frustrating assumption by some of the ‘old media’ that using a blog as a source is in some way unprofessional.
But there is a wealth of Iranian blogs that mainstream media outlets could be sourcing or publishing for insightful analysis of the conflict. Global Voices is a collection of blogs from across the world, and has provided some incredible accounts from Iranians purporting to be witnesses of attacks on protesters, as well as poignant analysis on the events as they unfold.
Global Voices also presents views from across the region, such as Layla Anwar, an Iraqi blogger, who wrote: ‘All the media outlets have been talking about Neda. That is fine with me. But how come no media outlet has spoken of the thousands of Nedas in Iraq that have been brutally murdered by the Iraqi Shiite Militias trained, armed and funded by Iran?’
These are the voices that should be heard in reporting on this conflict, because ultimately they are the ones that are going to be affected most directly by it’s outcome.
But because of this unwillingness to engage with the Arab blogosphere, many of the nuances of the post election turmoil are escaping us. What is being presented to us as a period of unrest synonymous with the Islamic Revolution is in fact a considerably more complex issue.
Take for instance this interview with Hasan, a pro government cleric in Qom, who presented a challenging view of what Iranians are feeling now: ‘I can tell you the impression of the people here… they believe that it is the people who are damaging and vandalizing, these planted forces from outside, that are committing these murders. This is what people believe in Iran.’
Or this analysis by American Iranian Hamid Dabashi, the Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University: ‘I don’t think this is another revolution. This is a civil rights movement. They’re demanding their civil rights that are being denied, even within the Constitution of the Islamic Republic.’
The sad reality is though that these views are hard to come by unless you know where to look, and are not easily accessible through the western media. All we are left with is haunting images of a painful death, without the words to explain why such a tragedy occurred, or what is means for the future of Iran.
THE SILVIO BERLUSCONI SHOW
When a headline news article in The Times refers to someone being attacked by the Pope and Bob Geldof, you know it’s big news.
So big, in fact, that The Silvio Berlusconi Show has been moved to prime time news and television in recent weeks, even in Australia, as allegations of his scandalous private life continue to surface.
For weeks now, images and allegations of the married Prime Minister with consorts and concubine have been grabbing headlines around the world.
The embattled Prime Minister has tried to draw attention away from his private life, and as the The Times reported: “With a week to go before he hosts the G8 summit of world leaders, the Prime Minister batted away questions about his connection to young women and instead tried to concentrate on the big issues facing the world today.”
But the irony is that this thinly veiled effort at statesmanship has a strangely distorted glimmer of truth to it.
Much of the coverage of Berlusconi over the past several months has been the sensationalism of his extra marital adventures. But amusing as they may be, they are also detracting from some of the more serious issues that are confronting Italy today.
This year Italy has faced considerable challenges to the rule of law and press freedom, many of them relating directly to the lacklustre presidency of Mr Berlusconi.
Earlier this year, David Mills was found guilty of accepting a bribe and distorting justice at a trial that Mr Berlusconi was a defendant at.
It is believed to be the first time in Italy that somebody has been found guilty of taking a bribe without revealing the person who provided the money, and the judge’s reasons for her verdict have still not been released.
Whilst it is serious enough for a head of state to be accused of a criminal offence in a court of law, what is more remarkable is the attempts made to try to prevent his prosecution.
The Italian Parliament moved to pass a bill to reform the judiciary earlier this year, and make Italian politicians and officials immune from court proceedings. This was strongly critiqued in the international community for what appears to be an attempt to suspend the rule of law for some politicians.
The issue of Berlusconi’s immunity in the case is now being considered by Italy’s constitutional court, but even this has been shrouded in controversy, as Mr Berlusconi was recently seen dining with a number of these judges at one of their houses.
Italian comedian, activist and blogger Beppe Grillo offered his thoughts the significance of this event, and wrote:
“Sitting at that table at the Mazzella Restaurant are Berlusconi, who stands to benefit from the Alfano Bill, judges Mazzella and Napolitano, who are required to rule on the constitutionality of the Alfano Bill, Angelino Alfano, the Minister of Justice that drafted the Alfano Bill, Gianni Letta, undersecretary in the Office of the Prime Minister and Vizzini, Chairman of the Constitutional Affairs Committee. They spent the evening “exchanging friendly conversation”. They chatted about many things, but not the Alfano Bill.
That night at the Mazzella Restaurant, the dinner guests ate the Last Supper of Democracy. If the public begins to mistrust even the Constitutional Court, then all that remains is the abyss.”
In February, Italy also faced a major constitutional crisis over the fate of Eluana Englaro, a woman who had been in a coma for 17 years. In a landmark decision in the Italian High Court, doctors were allowed to reduce her nutritional supplements and remove her feed tubes to end her life.
But Mr Berlusconi, on advice from the Vatican, issued an emergency decree stating that the food and water could not be suspended.
“This is murder. I would be failing to rescue her. I’m not a Pontius Pilate,” he said.
He also went on to justify his campaign by saying that Ms Englaro was “in the condition to have babies”.
Aside from his archaic attitude towards women, this also shows a serious breach of the separation of powers, as well as the independence of church and state.
The state of press freedom in Italy is also a concern, and Reporters Without Borders ranked the country 44 out of 173 this year, releasing a report on worrying trends of media complicity and censorship:
“The state of press freedom in Italy, caught between draconian draft reforms and threats from the mafia, is more and more worrying to its European neighbours. The grip of mafia gangs on the media sector is strengthening and forcing a large number of journalists to tread warily. Silvio Berlusconi’s return to power brings back into focus the question of broadcast media concentration and government control. Legislative reform that would ban publication of some legal steps is incompatible with EU democratic standards.”
The report also noted that Mr Berlusconi controls the three channels of public RAI television as well as the leading privately owned radio and television group Mediaset, giving him an unprecedented level of control over what information the public is exposed to.
So watching this eccentric man and his antics on the television, who even the Queen purportedly became irritated with, it’s easy to just sit back and let the political soap opera unfold in front of you. But what must also be remembered is that this Denny Crane of Italian politics also commands an enormous amount of power that he still needs to be held accountable for.
THE WAR ON THE WAR
Waging a war on everything can easily lead to shooting yourself in the foot. But the Chaser team are not the victims of friendly fire, rather their own popularity and the increasingly political role they play in Australia.
The Chaser had been winning the war. Ratings were high, and last year the ABC signed them up for a third season lampooning Australian society and politics. But suddenly a blitzkrieg was launched upon them, and now they’re on the defensive.
Following the ‘make a wish foundation’ skit, which depicted sick and dying children having their wishes refused and substituted with ‘realistic’ wishes like pencil cases, the show was pulled from the air for two weeks and faced a storm of public outrage.
The critics of the war have reveled in the opportunity to seize upon the skit, and for over a week the opinion columns and online forums of the Australian media were filled with damning rhetoric.
But these critics should also be careful that they haven’t been guilty of war crimes themselves.
Miranda Devine has been a vocal critic of the Chaser team, and in an article on June 6 wrote: “The Make A Wish skit was in a different class. It was cold, heartless misanthropy, designed to win ratings through shock appeal.”
“It was ultimately soul destroying, for its viewers and makers”.
Ms Devine found that using an institution like the Make a Wish foundation and sick children as a form of social commentary and criticism was too much for her.
But Ms Devine is not without her own satirical indiscretions.
In a blog entry on 3 September 2007, Ms Devine managed to categorically offend Arabs, the political left, homosexuals and Peter Garrett.
“naysayers, civil rights barristers, leftist bananabending cyclists and queer communist sympathisers.”
“For too long you have gorged yourselves at the table of the naive bleeding-hearts.”
And to be critical of a war, it would also help if you had actually been a witness of it. When Prime Minister Kevin Rudd as interviewed on ABC radio and damned the show, he also said: “I didn’t see that but it’s been described to me.”
Censorship is never applauded in a war, as the recent conflict in Sri Lanka has shown. The removal of the skit from the Chaser’s online stream of the episode has led to snap judgements being made from many people, including the Prime Minister.
This can often lead to inaccurate accounts of events, and means that people’s perceptions of it is often on the basis of others interpretations, rather than their own.
But perhaps parallels to other wars and the treatment of the combatants in those need to be considered.
Channel Nine’s sketch show ‘Raw’ released a similar sketch about the ‘Reasonable Wish Foundation’, where sick children were granted mundane wishes rather than grandiose ones, with the tagline: “you can say no to a request”
“You can almost see the smile on their face…almost”, taunted the compere of the show.
It is curious that this sketch slipped past unnoticed, even though it bears remarkable similarities to the Chaser’s.
When looking at the mechanisms behind a war, there is also often another form of analysis; the chaser have become in themselves become a political force in Australia, with stunts like APEC generating a massive audience. They have entered into a similar arena that Colbert and Jon Stewart have, where they are no longer seen as merely comedians, but as entities that the public listen to and admire.
But what these critics have not considered is that just as in war, in satire there are always casualties. The difference is that satire aims to highlight the absurdity of our society, and to criticize institutions and make them accountable to the public. This is what comedians like Sascha Baron Cohen, John Saffron and the Chaser seek to do.
In war, often the dark underbelly of humanity is revealed, and in satire the same rules apply. Satire does not aim to please the masses but rather to parody them, and The Chasers War on Everything is not a show catering to the whims and fancies of Australian society.
SRI LANKA’S WAR OF PROPAGANDA
The following article appeared in EurekaStreet on May 26:
It is the soldier, not the reporter, who has given us freedom of press.
‘It is the soldier, not the poet, who has given us freedom of speech.
‘It is the soldier, not the politician, that ensures our rights to life, freedom and the pursuit of happiness.’
This statement can be found on a military map in a media briefing room in Colombo, Sri Lanka. The words taunt the news crews that wish to penetrate deeper into the heart of what is becoming one of the most censored humanitarian crises ever reported, and reminds them all who holds the power in Sri Lanka.
As the dust begins to clear from the scorched battlefields after the Sri Lankan Government’s final push against the Tamil Tigers, accusations and counter accusations of human rights abuses remain as vociferous as ever.
The Sri Lankan Government has been accused of endangering and killing civilians by using heavy weaponry in the conflict area. The Tamil Tigers have also been accused of using civilians as human shields.
But while the fog of war may be dissipating, the fog of propaganda and distortion continues to wreak havoc. Independent journalists who attempt to balance contrasting claims are continually denied access to the conflict area by the Sri Lankan military.
Most recently Nick Paton Walsh, the Channel 4 correspondent to Asia, was deported from the country on 9 May, following a report he released into military run Tamil internment camps.
The report was the first independently filmed video from a camp in Vavuniya, and contained claims from aid workers that there was a dramatic shortage of food and water and women were being sexually abused and abducted.
Mr Walsh, in his account of the expulsion, said: ‘The Defence Secretary, Mr Gotabaya Rajapaksa, expressed his upset at the piece we ran. He was angry and said we would be deported as a result of that piece.
‘He said we could say what we liked about what’s happening in this country, but we would have to do it in our own country.’
The Sri Lankan Defence Ministry has also condemned media organisations that have remained sceptical of the Government’s conduct in the war. The Human Rights Watch released a report on May 8 containing claims of over 30 hospital shellings since December by the Sri Lankan Military.
In response to these claims, on 15 May the Defence Ministry said ‘the media sympathetic to the terrorists once again have misinformed the international community with another fabricated story’.
These attacks on dissenting publications have raised the concern of many free press groups. In 2009 Reporters Without Borders ranked Sri Lanka 165 out of 173 countries in terms of press freedom.
‘Murders, physical assaults, kidnappings, threats and censorship are the lot of Sri Lanka’s journalists. Top government officials, including the defence minister, are directly implicated in the serious press freedom violations,’ said the report.
The Sri Lankan military reports on the conflict have repeatedly had their credibility thrown into doubt. Satellite images leaked from the United Nations indicates that the Sri Lankan Government may have bombed the civilian safe zone, a claim the Government has adamantly refuted.
‘Within the northern and southern sections of the civilian safe zone, there are new indications of building destruction and damages resulting from shelling and possible air strikes,’ said the UNOSAT report.
In what has now become a war of propaganda, the Sri Lankan Ministry of Defence has also inaccurately criticised many peaceful protests in other countries.
Following a protest in London, a statue of Jawaharlal Nehru was damaged. While local press reported that no arrests had been made and that police could only speculate who the perpetrators were, the Sri Lankan Government responded with its own report, and wrote: ‘Violent LTTE protesters behead Jawaharlal Nehru Statue’.
A similar report emerged following a protest in Melbourne when a conflict occurred between Singalese and Tamil protesters. Video footage of the event posted on YouTube clearly shows a car of Tamil protesters having their windows and car smashed.
The Sri Lankan government’s statement about the protest used the headline: ‘LTTE supporters attack Lankan student in Melbourne’. There was no specific reference to the initial attack on the Tamil vehicle.
This war of propaganda is having widespread impacts on communities abroad. The clash between Singalese and Tamil protesters in Melbourne highlights the growing unrest of these groups. More recently in Westmead, Sydney, attacks and counter attacks led to two men being subjected to harmful acid burns. YouTube videos and reports on the conflict are being inundated with comments that foster racial hatred.
In light of this, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to deny that something sinister has happened in the north of Sri Lanka. Not only has there been untold suffering in Sri Lanka, but also in Tamil and Singalese communities throughout the world.
And if the soldier is indeed more important than the press, then the situation is unlikely to change.
