Tuesday, September 28, 2004















Monday, September 27, 2004


By William Fisher

The US press paid little attention to last week’s agreement by officials of the eight major industrial powers and the Arab world endorsing expansion of democratic institutions and a push for political reforms in the Middle East. It gave even less space to an arguably more important development: a seven-point plan submitted not by governments but by some forty civil society groups throughout the Middle East and North Africa.

The private organizations declared: “While the participation of concerned governments in the region would be welcome, we cannot wait… most governments turn a deaf ear to internal calls for reforms.” It called on the G-8 nations for “a more solid commitment “ to “three imperatives - freedom, democracy and justice.”

The group said it did “not claim to represent our societies: only a free vote will…We are here, as individuals, simple members of the so-called Arab-Middle Eastern civil society, women and men who believe in the rule of law, an independent judiciary to protect it, an active and freely elected parliament to enact laws, an accountable, freely elected government to carry them through, meaningful human rights, including foremost the freedom of expression.”

It urged the industrialized nations to begin by creating a “multilateral organization or a special G-8 agency and an emergency fund” committed to “releasing prisoners of conscience, supporting their families and rehabilitating them once freed”. It called this action “the freedom imperative”.

The group also called for help in what it called “the democratic imperative”. It noted: “While most of our countries have parliaments, and occasionally courageous and outspoken members within them, their power is curtailed by executive power, as indeed is the power of our judges which is constantly undermined by executive interference. What we can confidently claim to represent is a different, pressing voice that calls for ballot-based, nonviolent change at all levels of our societies and states, starting from the top.”

The group’s seven-point plan includes:

1) Protecting citizenship equality and participation, especially gender equality, with special attention to the victimization of women.

2) Strengthening of the rule of law by enhancing the independence and role of the judiciary, and monitoring and removing laws that violate human rights and international standards. Emergency laws, special and military courts, undue police detentions and regular reliance on torture…must be abolished.

3) Protecting and enlarging freedom of expression, freedom of the press, and freedom of organization.

4) Encouraging critical inquisitive thinking in education generally, and in religious education, where intolerance is actively advocated in its name.

5) Creating jobs for the 5-7 million entrants into the job market, especially the poor and those left behind, by promoting investment in quality services and value-added products, small and micro enterprises, competitiveness and quality, innovation, environmental sustainability and social services.

6) Combating corruption at all levels to ensure the accountability of bureaucracies and the transparency of organizations, both private and public, and financial institutions.

7) Promoting creative arts and culture, and the qualitative enlargement of public space.

The group added: “While the belated rallying of some Western leaders to the central importance of democracy in our states is welcome, Middle Eastern democrats need a more solid commitment…Dictatorship must now be declared a crime against humanity. (Middle Eastern society) now suffocates under the joint pressures of authoritarian governments and extremists…Both continue to remain unpunished for grave abuse of our freedoms, (and) suppression of intellectual and political movements and leaders.”

The plan grew out of a meeting in Beirut in early September attended by 40 leading Middle Eastern and North African civil society groups. It was presented to foreign ministers from the G-8 and Arab countries meeting in New York. The proposals are intended to feed into the Forum for the Future set up at the G-8 summit in Sea Island, Georgia, last June. The Beirut event was organized by the Lebanese Transparency Association, the UN Development Program, the Program on Governance in the Arab Region, and the Economic Research Forum and the Lebanese Center for Policy Studies.

When the US led the G-8 countries in proposing a “Greater Middle East Initiative” last year, the idea was greeted with hostility by many Arab governments who felt that the West, and particularly the US, was trying to “impose democratic reforms from outside”.

Most of the reforms adopted in the Greater Middle East to date are baby steps or patently cosmetic. This remarkable appeal for help from private citizens to the world’s most powerful nations is a measure of the enormity of the task facing them. The G-8 should respond accordingly.

Friday, September 24, 2004


By William Fisher



It is worth repeating.













Thursday, September 23, 2004

Journalism Under Fire

September 17, 2004



Thank you for inviting me to share this occasion with you.


































































































You can link to Tom Paine at www.tompaine.com


By William Fisher


















Wednesday, September 22, 2004


By William Fisher

Those of us who believe in the American Bill of Rights are about to have our commitment challenged yet again – big time. No, not by the Taliban, but by something very close.

The challenger is Reverend Jerry Falwell, arguably America’s most hysterical televangelist. It was the Falwell who blamed 9/11 on “traitors within the Chosen People…federal court decisions, abortionists, pagans, feminists, many gays and lesbians, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), and other liberal organizations”. These groups, he said, “made God mad at us.” He added: “"I think Muhammad was a terrorist."

Now Falwell has founded his very own law school. Its objective is to train attorneys to “infiltrate” the legal field and “fight causes of marriage equality and women’s rights.” He hopes to train a generation of attorneys to take up conservative causes -- to outlaw abortion, gay marriage and other issues that he believes the legal establishment has forced on the public. . “We’ll be as far to the right as Harvard is to the left.”

The law school -- part of Falwell's Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia – began classes last week. Its dean, Bruce Green, says it will “fuse the teachings of the Bible with the US Constitution, stressing the connections between faith, law and morality.”

Others see a far more sinister outcome. For example, Americans United for Separation of Church and State warned, “when Falwell talks about using the legal system to advance his personal religious beliefs, I get a whiff of the Taliban.”

And Howard Dean weighs in with: “In the days after September 11th Falwell said that America deserved to be attacked for, "throwing God out successfully with the help of the federal court system, throwing God out of the public square, out of the schools…the purpose of Falwell's law school is to roll back the progress of the last hundred years. The people of this country have spent a century unraveling hate and prejudice from our legal system. Falwell wants to bring all that back. I am committed to stopping him.”

Falwell, an ardent supporter of President Bush, believes that “homosexuality is Satan's diabolical attack upon the family” and that the AIDS crisis is "God's punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals."

In his weblog journal, the dean of the new Law School, Bruce W. Green, wrote, “…we are a Christian law school with… an emphatically historic vision of the triune God, creation, fall, redemption, renewal, and their relation. This vision derives from Scripture and centers on the person and work of Jesus Christ… This is the historic foundation that led to the founding of our country and the American legal system.” In another posting, he said: “Unfortunately, having been trained according to rationalist tradition, many modern legal thinkers make themselves at home in a landscape in which the absence of God is taken for granted and then declare they cannot find any trace of God anywhere — including in the study of law.”

The only Jewish law student at Falwell's Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia, told the National Law Journal he has no reservations about the quality of the legal education, nor does he have qualms about being exposed to Christian principles. "I'm not being compelled to change my faith or anything like that," he said. "Their goal is to really prepare us to hit the ground running. And they want us to be really good lawyers."

Nonetheless, applications for faculty positions at the new school contain its “Doctrinal Statement”. The statement includes affirmations of “God the father, God the son, and God the holy spirit”, the concept of original sin, and a decidedly ‘creationist’ approach to the origins of life.

Many legal scholars and practitioners are skeptical of the blending of law and theology.

Barry W. Lynn, a lawyer and executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, told Tresa Baldas of The National Law Journal he compares Falwell's mix of religion and law to that of Muslim fundamentalists. "I think that the Taliban-like character of this is present because Jerry Falwell seems to believe that religion must trump any other considerations.”

John Sebert, a consultant on legal education to the American Bar Association, who oversees the law school accreditation process, has cautioned law schools about the danger of teaching views that are "so slanted" that they produce lawyers ill-equipped to tackle various legal issues. "You can get to a point where in any type of legal education that focuses solely in one area that's so unidimensional that it has the risk of not being able to adequately prepare its graduates for passing the bar or for effective participation in the profession," he said.

Other legal scholars echo that concern. A.E. Dick Howard, a constitutional law scholar at the University of Virginia School of Law, said his concern is whether Liberty will be tightly controlled by a church or religious affiliation, or whether it will have the institutional independence that promotes academic freedom.

"They don't just plan to talk about the relationship between law and religion. They plan to show how law flows from Christian principles," Howard said. "That's kind of blending law and theology and I don't know of any law school that's quite that explicit."

Emily Whitfield, national spokeswoman of the ACLU, believes Falwell is wrong in "demonizing" judges. Unlike the pastor, she added, "We ultimately have faith in our system of justice."

What is disturbing about Falwell’s latest adventure is not simply that he is going to train right-wing lawyers. The American justice system has survived this kind of movement before. What is truly scary is his vision of where he wants it all to lead –his vision of America.

Here his affinity with the Taliban is inescapable. He would create a country based on a "Christian order" that equates democracy with "mob rule"; a country without freedom of speech; a country that will not tolerate diversity and pluralism, a country that will not permit anybody the right to sin; a country that asks no questions; where church and state are one, and where Christians rule by "Divine mandate". In short, a theocratic police state.

But, as one observer points out, “a police state is great -- if you happen to be the police.”

Monday, September 20, 2004


By William Fisher

Last week, President Bush talked with one of his staunchest supporters, the Manchester (NH) Union-Leader, about the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) he received in July containing a classified warning predicting that the best case for Iraq was "tenuous stability" and the worst case was civil war.

"The Iraqis are defying the dire predictions of a lot of people by moving toward democracy," Bush told the paper, adding: “I'm pleased with the progress. Don't get me wrong. It's hard because there are some in Iraq who want to disrupt the election and disrupt the march to democracy, which should speak to their fear of freedom."

Thus we voters are presented with yet another dilemma. Should we believe the authors of the NIE – the same people who produced the slam-dunk intelligence on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction? Or should we believe the president, whose Administration told us our troops would be greeted as ‘liberators’, and that flowers would fill the barrels of our guns?

Both would seem to have serious credibility problems.

Except that the NIE has some powerful evidence the president chooses to ignore: what is actually happening on the ground.

The most reliable evidence coming out of Iraq is that what’s happening on the ground is that the country is sliding toward anarchy.

Reconstruction money can’t be spent because contractors can’t work while they’re being shot at. Volunteers for the Iraqi police and the Iraqi National Guard are unable to join up because they are being blown to bits by suicide car bombers. As a result, Joint Chiefs Chairman Richard Myers and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld have had to significantly scale back their original optimistic estimates of progress -- now they say 95,000 Iraqi forces are equipped and trained -- less than half the 200,000 US officials previously said they had already trained. But not a single recruit has completed the full 24 weeks of training, and their performance under fire has been less than spectacular.

Entire parts of the country are no-go areas for both Iraqi and US-Coalition forces. The perilous situation in Najaf and Kufa was resolved not by Iraqi or US or Coalition forces, but by the country’s leading Shia cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani (though Prime Minister Allawi did his best to spin this as his own personal victory).

Falluja remains off-limits to both Iraqi and US forces, and there is little evidence that repeated air strikes on that city have produced results other than the ‘collateral damage’ of innocent people getting killed.

It is unlikely that Iraq will be able to establish enough security for elections to go forward in January. Those mandated to monitor those elections – the United Nations – have made it clear they will not return to have their headquarters or staffers blown up a second time.

Meanwhile, more than a thousand US troops have lost their lives, and more than 7,000 have been wounded. And counting.

The president’s response to all this reminds us of Lyndon Johnson during the worst of the Vietnam war. Johnson insisted on ‘whistling past the graveyard’ as US forces sank ever-deeper into that quagmire. He insisted we were winning, when every rational shred of evidence told us we were losing.

Senator Kerry does not offer us much more of a plan. He still talks about ‘internationalizing’ the forces in Iraq, when there is zero chance any of the great powers of the world are prepared put bulls-eyes on the backs of their young men and women. On Thursday, candidate Kerry told members of the National Guard Association of the United States meeting in Las Vegas, Nevada, that Bush knows "the mission in Iraq is in serious trouble."

"That is the truth, as hard as it is to bear," Kerry said. "I believe you deserve a president who isn't going to gild that truth or gild our national security with politics, who is not going to ignore his own intelligence, who isn't going to live in a different world of spin, who will give the American people the truth, not a fantasy world of spin." Kerry said he would bring in more allies to help train Iraqi forces so that US troops could come home.

Both Kerry and Bush continue to tell us it’s not too late to turn things around. But neither has told us of a plan, an idea, a strategy, to do that.

The American people deserve better.


By William Fisher

Western women who are frustrated by the ‘glass ceiling’ – listen up: In Saudi Arabia, the ceiling is made of steel!

In February, if not postponed yet again, Saudi Arabia will have its first-ever municipal elections. But in this first tiny step toward more representative governance, women won’t be allowed to run for office.

Although they played a significant role in pressing for these elections, Saudi writer Maha Al-Hujailan says women in the Kingdom are considered “mere appendages of men without an independent identity.“

She adds: “The exclusion of women from political activities amounts to legitimizing a dangerous mentality founded on the notion that women have only a marginal, or no, role in nation building…The absence of women’s voices in the municipal election will undoubtedly have a negative impact on social development…By supporting an ideology based on sexist concepts, the whole society stands to lose an opportunity for a great social transformation with far-reaching consequences.”

Dr. Suhaila Zein-Al Abedeen of the Kingdom’s National Committee for Human Rights says that voting and running for office is a right of all women in Islam. She points out, “women are directly involved in municipal affairs and sometimes suffer more than men from bad service. For example, lack of water, sewage problems and electricity cuts impact women more than men since they are at home and have to deal with the resulting problems.”

Women, she says, “are perfectly capable of public work. If not, why do we waste millions of riyals on women’s education? Saudi women are as aware and capable of participating in the elections as men are.”

The first Saudi woman to announce her intention to run in the elections, Nadia Bakhurji, says her agenda is ready. An engineer, she says that since her announcement to run, she has received many expressions of support.

“I was optimistic about my decision, but now I am disappointed to hear that women will be excluded. It is a huge mistake to exclude us from this process; women can add value and they have a great deal to contribute.”

At the same time, she concedes that breaking barriers takes time. She says she will offer her agenda to any candidate who is willing to adopt it, and suggests that if women cannot be involved directly in the elections, they could form a think-tank to supply other candidates.

Abeer Mishkhas and Somayya Jabarti, writing in Jeddah’s Arab News, quote “an anonymous Shoura (Advisory) Council member” as saying: ‘What do women want with voting and municipality elections? Why would they want to trouble themselves with things that are new and unfamiliar? These issues are against their nature so why ask for trouble?’

A mother of four takes a very different view, the writers say. “I don’t understand. What is the basis for excluding women? If her vote isn’t against Shariah (Islamic law) and doesn’t trespass any red lines, then what’s the harm? A woman is a citizen just as men are. She is the other half unless the authorities intend to have all-men districts and all-women districts.”

Saudi Arabia’s decision to hold municipal elections was hailed as ‘proof’ that the Kingdom was serious about democratic reform. The exclusion of women candidates makes a farce of this baby step.


Saturday, September 18, 2004


By William Fisher





So what should the US do?




Which leaves us with the more central question: How?









Friday, September 17, 2004


By William Fisher

It isn’t often I find myself agreeing with Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. But the Secretary is to be commended for his spirited defense of an Indonesian journalist convicted of criminal defamation and sentenced to a year in prison “under laws dating to the Dutch colonial period and the early years of independence” – in what should never have been a criminal case in the first place.

The case involves his friend, Bambang Harymurti, the chief editor of Tempo, Indonesia's leading newsmagazine, and two of his colleagues. Charges stem from an article in Tempo that linked a wealthy Indonesian businessman to a suspicious fire in a Jakarta market where the businessman planned to build a fancy commercial shopping center. The businessman sued for civil defamation and, according the Wolfowitz, “unusually, the government charged Mr. Bambang and two of his colleagues with criminal defamation. Prosecutors,” he added, “asked for two-year sentences and - even more unusually - asked that Mr. Bambang be detained immediately, treating him like a dangerous criminal who should not be allowed to remain at large.”

Mr. Bambang, Secretary Wolfowitz wrote in the New York Times (September 16), is “a journalist of enormous integrity, someone who takes seriously his responsibility not only to publish the truth but also not to publish falsehoods. He is also a Muslim who has courageously denounced terrorism and extremism on the editorial pages of his magazine.”

One of Mr. Bambang’s acquitted co-defendants was Ahmad Taufik, a founding member of the Indonesian journalists’ organization, the Aliansi Jurnalis Independen (AJI), who was previously jailed under the criminal code during an attempt by the Suharto regime to clamp down on press freedom. In 1995, he was jailed for three years for reportedly "hate-sowing articles." In 1997, Taufik was awarded the 1995 CPJ International Press Freedom Award, but could not accept the award because he was in jail.

”The mere fact that this case has been brought, “ Wolfowitz writes, “is a threat to the freedom and democracy that Indonesia has enjoyed since the collapse of the Suharto government six years ago.”

President Christopher Warren of the International Federation of Journalists, agrees. "The rise of repressive regimes in Indonesia has historically been heralded by a restriction of press freedom, including an over-zealous use of spurious legal avenues to lock up defenders of free speech," says Warren. "The journalists of the world are today calling on your government to act in the interests of genuine freedom of the press in Indonesia and repeal these regressive laws.".

While praising Indonesia for making “remarkable progress in developing democratic institutions”, Secretary Wolfowitz says his “concerns about this case extend far beyond my worry about the fate of a friend. I believe that the whole world has a stake in the success of democracy in Indonesia…One of the worst possible ways that power can be abused is to take away the freedom of the press and thereby remove one of the most important mechanisms for ensuring that government respects the rights of its citizens.”

The collapse of Indonesia's first brief experience with democracy in the 1950's began with "an attempt to undermine freedom of the domestic press through the criminalization of journalists." Under President Sukarno, 60 press cases were brought before the Special State Court in September 1957 alone, Mr. Wolfowitz notes.

Indonesia, with a population of almost 240 million, is 90 per cent Muslim and home to more Muslims than any other country in the world -- 15 percent of the world's Muslim population. That, says Wolfowitz, “makes it an important role model in the post-September 11th world. It is no accident that the terrorist fanatics associated with Al Qaeda have been attacking Indonesia, even before the horrendous bombings in Bali in October 2002. And the attacks continue, with one just last week.”

But press freedom in Indonesia presents a mixed picture. "I'm worried," says Leo Batubara, executive director of the Indonesian Newspaper Publishers Association. "The people around (President) Megawati have learned two things from our history: If you want to hold on to power, you have to be close to the military, and you have to control the press."

He cites the agreement of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) to revive the Ministry of Information, which, under President Suharto, was used to muzzle the nation's media. Publications were licensed by the ministry and could be shut down on a moment's notice if deemed to transgress their vague guidelines. Nongovernment radio news was illegal, and all television stations were either government-run or owned by Suharto's associates.

Hinca Panjaitan, a lawyer who runs the Indonesian Media Law and Policy Institute, says members of Megawati's party have been in the forefront of efforts to water down legislation that would guarantee press freedom, particularly for the broadcast media. "Her party doesn't really care about open media,” he says. , Panjaitan, who lobbies for more liberal media laws and teaches media outlets about their rights, says a creeping backlash against the media has begun, with regional bureaucrats and soldiers taking the lead.

Much of the anti-Government sentiment is based on the use of defamation laws against journalists like Secretary Wolfowitz’s friend. The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), an organization representing over 500,000 journalists worldwide, has launched a global campaign -- including a protest march in India -- urging Indonesia to refrain from jailing three journalists under the country's draconian defamation laws. IFJ member organizations worldwide are participating in a campaign calling on the government of Indonesia to remove defamation as a criminal offense and restrict financial damages in civil defamation to sensible and rational amounts. They are also urging it to remove the crime of "insulting the President or Vice-President" from the criminal code.

"'Don't jail journalists' is the message that we are sending to the Government of Indonesia…” says IFJ president Warren. "Indonesia needs to recognize that it is completely inappropriate to send journalists to jail for defamation; defamation should be tried only in the civil, not criminal, jurisdiction."

Over the past year, a number of defamation cases have been brought against journalists and media organizations.

In September 2003, the news editor of the newspaper Rakyat Merdeka, Karim Paputungan, received a suspended sentence from a Jakarta court for publishing a satirical cartoon of parliamentary speaker Akbar Tandjung. The cartoon satirized the speaker after he was found guilty of corruption. Tandjung is appealing the decision and remains speaker.

In October 2003, editor Supratman of Rakyat Merdeka was given a suspended six-month jail sentence and a year’s probation after being found guilty by a Jakarta court for "spreading hatred" after publishing headlines critical of the Indonesian government and particularly the president. The case was brought under article 134 of the criminal code, which outlaws insults to the president or vice-president and is punishable by up to six years in jail.

Says Amnesty International: “Legal cases recently brought against media professionals highlight continuing flaws in the Indonesian legal system and indicate disturbing attempts to restrict fundamental rights to freedom of expression and opinion and the public’s right to access to information. Amnesty International believes that these cases represent the most serious threat to press freedom in Indonesia for almost a decade and is urging the Indonesian government to take the steps necessary to uphold fundamental rights and avert a backsliding into a more restrictive environment”.

Another source of concern has been treatment of the press trying to cover the violence in the breakaway prince of Aceh last year. According to Human Right Watch, the Indonesian government “has blocked Indonesian and foreign correspondents from covering the military campaign in Aceh, where gross human rights violations are taking place…Indonesia’s security forces and separatist guerrillas have intimidated journalists…”, says Saman Zia-Zarifi, deputy director of the HRW’s Asia Division.

HRW says that reports from Aceh highlighted several instances of executions of civilians by the Indonesian military, widespread displacement of civilians, and a lack of basic necessities such as food, healthcare and access to education. Since martial law began, Indonesian security forces have verbally and physically intimidated journalists in Aceh. Military officials have also arbitrarily detained correspondents in the field. In one widely reported case, members of Indonesia´s elite special forces, Kopassus, beat an Indonesian radio journalist who was reporting on the plight of Acehnese civilians fleeing the military campaign.

It adds: "Whenever the press has pulled away the shroud of secrecy around Aceh, it has exposed serious abuses. As the government intensifies its military campaign, press access to Aceh becomes even more crucial for providing information on how civilians are surviving the war."

Reporters without Borders, a Paris-based organization that speaks for journalists, says the Indonesian army “did everything possible to keep the news media away from Aceh…Two reporters were killed in the rebel zone and dozens of others were physically attacked or threatened.”

Nevertheless, despite generations of widespread corruption, many observers believe Indonesia is serious about wanting to build democratic institutions. How it approaches the issue of press freedom will be a major measure of the depth of its commitment.