The politics of fear

“Through short sighted, fear-mongering and divisive policies, governments are undermining the rule of law and human rights, feeding racism and xenophobia, dividing communities, intensifying inequalities and sowing the seeds for more violence and conflict. The politics of fear is fuelling a downward spiral of human rights abuse in which no right is sacrosanct and no person safe.”

Irene Khan, Secretary General of Amnesty International, introdcuing the organisation’s Annual report which reviews the threats to human rights around the world.
You can read the media release here and the full report here.
Amnesty identifies bloggers as in the front-line of the battle for human rights in many repressive countries such as Belarus, China, Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Tunisia – see this comment.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 24th, 2007 at 10:48 am and is filed under World current affairs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.

One Comment

  • Nick
    May 24th, 2007 at 9:54 pm

    Bloggers are also in the front-line of the battle for free expression in France. From Reporters sans frontières, March 2007:

    Reporters Without Borders voiced concern today about a new French law on the prevention of criminality following its approval by the constitutional council on 3 March. “The sections of this law supposedly dealing with ’happy slapping’ in fact have a much broader scope, and posting videos online showing violence against people could now be banned, even if it were the police who were carrying out the violence,” the organisation said.
    “We make no assumptions about the government’s intentions and we recognise the need to prevent the spread of ’happy slapping,’ but this law introduces a dangerous distinction between professional journalists, allowed to disseminate images of violence, and ordinary citizens, who could be jailed for the same thing,” Reporters Without Borders continued.
    “It is particularly regrettable that the law would forbid the online distribution of images showing acts of violence by the security forces,” the press freedom organisation added.
    The law on the prevention of criminality, which was adopted on 13 February, was referred to the constitutional council by the socialist group in parliament. The referral did not specifically concern the section dealing with ’happy slapping.’
    The law provides for sentences of up to five years in prison and fines of 75,000 euros for disseminating images concerning the offences listed in 222-1 to 222-14-1 and 222-23 to 222-31 of the criminal code. These offences range from acts of serious violence (“torture” and “acts of barbarity”) to ordinary physical attacks. Article 222-13 concerns violence “committed by an agent of the state in the exercise of his duties.”
    The law specifies that the ban “is not applicable when the recording or dissemination is the result of the normal exercise of a profession whose purpose is to inform the public or if it is carried out with the aim of serving as judicial evidence.”

    So official disseminators of information (i.e., journalists) are able to post videos online showing violence, but bloggers may well not be. Is that Orwellian enough for you?
    This is not as serious as the situation in countries such as Belarus and Saudi Arabia, but it is a step in the wrong direction. See New prevention of criminality law poses threat to citizen reporting for the full story.