Can (or Should) We Limit Freedom of Speech?

Freedom of Speech Can't be Unlimited

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, The Independent

We must define the boundaries of what is acceptable on the internet

Monday, 6 July 2009

Libertarians and free expression campaigners were jubilant last week. An obscenity case was due to be heard against Darryn Walker, a 35-year-old civil servant who had posted an essay on a website, titled Girls (scream) Aloud, imagining the sexual torture and mutilation of the each of the women who make up the pop group.

In his fantasy, they are slashed and dismembered and, according to Don Grubin a consultant psychiatrist, the singers "are sexually aroused in spite of and, indeed, because of the humiliation, pain and domination". This apparently modern erotica known as "popslash". Cool, man.

The case was dropped and is celebrated as another important knock-back for censorship. Sadly I felt unable to join in with the good cheer. Something is deeply troubling about the validation given to Walker and those who think they have the right to say whatever they wish and excitedly share with others the thrills of extreme violence against women.

The formidable Geoffrey Robertson QC (who rose to fame fighting the case brought against Oz) is very pleased indeed. Jo Glanville, editor of Index Against Censorship (an organisation I support but not blindly) righteously asserts: "The prosecution should not have been brought in the first place. Since the landmark obscenity cases of the 1960s and 1970s, writers have been protected so they can explore the extremes of human behaviour. This case posed a serious threat to that freedom."

Hmmm. Is that so? So If Walker had written, say, the same fantasy but on the sexual torture of Anne Frank, would Index have backed him? Or if a wannabe Muslim fiction writer had done the same, would he have the right to "explore the extremes of human behaviour"? I hope the answer to both these hypothetical questions is No.

Freedom of speech is a precious right, fought for in Europe over many centuries, and still denied to billions of humans – as we have just witnessed in Iran and know to be true of China, African and Arab nations, Burma, and so on. Granted that in countries where the state oppresses and totally controls its populations, the people must find ways to subvert the controllers and criticise their oppressors.

Whistleblowers in institutions must also grab that freedom, so too family members thwarted by their own. But it is never an absolute entitlement, not unless you believe it is worth the resulting social discord and terrible individual wreckage.

We all exercise judgements on what we say or don't say in public. You stop yourself because you don't want to hurt people, or to instigate a street brawl. There are laws that sacrifice freedom of speech for a greater good- harmony between races, public safety, social gentility and so on. We accept libel and defamation laws (hated by hacks of course), national security injunctions and establishment secrets (loved by politicians) and underpinning all that is a general understanding of what would be inappropriate and hateful if expressed in public.

Not everybody agrees on where the lines should be, but most know there are lines. These restraints belong to a pre-internet era and cannot contain or temper the limitlessness of the web. And yet we must, over the next few years, define the boundaries of what is acceptable in this brazen new world.

It is all very well for Mr Walker to feel like a champion of human rights but what about the women in Girls Aloud, who are real, not imagined, and whose slow death can be enjoyed by pervs and killers? They have families, mums, perhaps, lovers, who too will be feeling caught in a web of horrors. The legal state is unsettled. Meanwhile the internet is exploding and explosive, having a real impact on real lives.

Last week I found myself being tailed through town by a weird bloke, who kept stopping me, once or twice seizing my elbow. Why, he demanded, did I want, British soldiers killed and hurt? This question has been coming at me via email for a few months. I couldn't understand why.

Someone told me my Wikipedia entry had quoted the NeoCon Doug Murray, who had attacked me in a book for writing: "There have been times when I have wanted more chaos, more shocks, more disorder to teach our side a lesson". To put this in context, what I actually wrote was: "The past months have been disquieting and challenging for many of us in the antiwar camp. I know and am ashamed to admit this that there have been times when I have wanted more chaos, more shocks, more disorder to teach our side a lesson ... The decent people of Iraq need optimism now not my distasteful ill-wishes for the only hope they have for the future." If this attack has stayed in Murray's book it would have passed but bloggers recently picked it up and it has been hell since.

Peter Tatchell tells me that lies are circulated about him and he receives constant threats. Polly Toynbee and others are subjected to mob fury for no good reason. Are we just supposed to put up with this behaviour because the web must be free?

Internet libel law is building up and internet service providers are put under pressure to remove sites where material is defamatory. Chatrooms and blogs are increasingly expected to be moderated. The defence of "innocent dissemination" may not survive.

In 2006, Ukip's Michael Keith won damages after joining a chatroom where anonymous postings smeared his character and in 2008 a CEO of a housing business got a large payout after a rival company carried out a malicious personal smear campaign against him. As the internet is transnational, awareness is growing that extraordinary care is needed to prevent legal action. Corporate liability, third party culpability are encouraging mechanisms for self-regulation. In my view some of this is necessary.

We don't yet have a really effective way of restraining material promoting racism, sexism, violence (except against children), homophobia, and other group hatreds. It must come if we are to make the best use of this amazing technology and not let it pull us down to a barbarism posing as freedom. That, I fear, is what has happened with Mr Walker and his spurious victory.

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Those of us who live with substantially less freedom of speech than in the UK may chafe at some arguments to limit this freedom. But we need to agree on some values that go along with these freedoms. Racist or sexist speech should not be OK for anyone in whatever medium. There cannot be double standards where some people are let off and others not. Advocating violence is also a no-no, and that should not be limited to blowing up buildings or people but also things like rape or just beating up women. Unfortunately people differentiate between these, as if violence against women is OK but not against public figures.

The thing is if we have freedom of speech in every day life, society will find a way of regulating it by itself. We can all decide what is acceptable and what is not. But if we restrict this freedom, people will find anonymous ways of venting the hate where they will not be held unaccountable. And the Internet unfortunately provides that avenue. So in fact curtailing freedom of speech as we do today is what breeds the type of hate speech that we often see online.

An Impassioned Patriot

There are some people who believe that if you fight for your rights, somehow you aren't patriotic or love your country. That if you have a dissenting view, then you must be disloyal. Marjane Satrapi, who did that wonderful graphic novel 'Persepolis', captures here the passion of someone who truly loves her country even when she is forced to be in exile.

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July 4, 2009

Op-Ed Contributor


I MUST GO HOME TO IRAN AGAIN

By MARJANE SATRAPI

PARIS — Six years ago, I went to listen to a man, whom I will not name, in a café in Paris.

He said it had been 24 years since he had been back to Iran, that he had had to leave right after the revolution of 1979 for political reasons.

He talked of many things, and he ended by saying: “Once you leave your homeland, you can live anywhere, but I refuse to die anywhere other than Iran — or else my life will have had no meaning.”

His statement touched me very deeply. I’ve thought about what he said, not just understanding him intellectually but feeling his meaning with all my heart. I, too, was convinced that I must die nowhere other than in my country, Iran, or else my life will also be meaningless.

At the time I heard this man speak, it had already been four years since I had been home.

Yes, I call Iran home because no matter how long I live in France, and despite the fact that I feel also French after all these years, to me the word “home” has only one meaning: Iran.

I suppose it’s that way for everyone: Home is the place where one is born and raised.

No matter how much I am in love with Paris and its indescribable beauty, Tehran with all its ugliness will in my eyes forever be the “bride” of all cities around the world.

It’s a question of geography, of the smell of the rain, of the things we know without ever having to think why we know them.

It’s a question of the Alborz Mountains protecting my town. Where are they? Who will protect me now?

It’s a question of the unbearable smell of pollution, a smell I know so well.

It’s a question of wanting to walk under my own blue sky, of wanting my own sunshine to caress my back.

At the time I heard that man speak it had already been four years since I had been home. Today it has been more than 10 years. To be precise, 10 years, six months and three days.

During all that time, I believed I would live a few more decades without ever being able to walk in my mountains. But 18 days ago, June 12, 2009, something happened, something I never believed I would see in my lifetime: Iranians, crowding into an extremely tiny space of democracy, usually left just large enough for them to vote for a president whom the Guardian Council had already approved, truly voted.

The question much of the media asked before the election was: “Are Iranians ready for democracy?”

“YES!” came the answer, loud and oh, so clear.

With a voter turnout of 85 percent, they started to dream that change was possible.

They started to believe “Yes they can,” too.

It was not the first time Iranians showed how much they love freedom. Look only at the 20th century: They launched the Constitutional Revolution of 1906 (the first in Asia); nationalized the oil industry in 1951 (the first Middle Eastern country to do so); mounted the revolution of 1979; and engineered the student revolt of 1999. Which brings us to now, and that deafening cry for democracy.

Almost 20 years ago, when I started studying art in Tehran, the very idea of “politics” was so frightening that we didn’t even dare think about it.

To talk about it? Beyond belief!

To demonstrate in the streets against the president? Surreal!

Criticize the supreme leader? Apocalyptic!

Shouting “Down with Khamenei”? Death!

Death, torture and prison are part of daily life for the youth of Iran. They are not like us, my friends and I at their age; they are not scared. They are not what we were.

They hold hands and scream: “Don’t be afraid! Don’t be afraid! We are together!”

They understand that no one will give them their rights; they must go get them.

They understand that unlike the generation before them — my generation, for whom the dream was to leave Iran — the real dream is not to leave Iran but to fight for it, to free it, to love it and to reconstruct it.

They hold hands and scream: “We will fight! We will die! But we won’t be humiliated!”

They went out knowing that going to each demonstration meant signing their death warrants.

Today I read somewhere that “the velvet revolution” of Iran became the “velvet coup,” with a little note of irony, but let me tell you something: This generation, with its hopes, dreams, anger and revolt, has forever changed the course of history. Nothing is going to be the same.

From now on, nobody will judge Iranians by their so-called elected president.

From now on, Iranians are fearless. They have regained their self-confidence.

Despite all the dangers they said NO!

And I’m convinced this is just the beginning.

From now on, I will always say: Once you leave your homeland, you can live anywhere. But I refuse to only die in Iran. I will one day live in Iran...or else my life will have had no meaning.

MARJANE SATRAPI is a writer and filmmaker whose works include the book and film “Persepolis.” Her most recent graphic novel is “Chicken With Plums.”

You Know When...

...we have all really become dumb when The Star reports stuff like this...

The Star Online > Nation

Tuesday June 30, 2009

‘Floating mat’ a sign to people

By SHAHRIL CHE WAN

KUALA TERENGGANU: The Terengganu chief imam has attributed the unusual occurrences at the Crystal Mosque here as a sign of the people distancing themselves from the religion.

Ustaz Azizi Saidi Abdul Aziz described claims that a visitor had seen and photographed prayer mats floating in the mosque as “hardly phenomenal” and people should stop thinking that it was due to genies or ghosts. (so mats float a lot in Terengganu?)

Mystifying: This ‘floating mat’ phenomenon occurred at the Crystal Mosque in Kuala Terengganu. The imam says such occurrences have been reported in Saudi Arabia.

“Such mystifying occurrences have been reported in Saudi Arabia,” he said yesterday. (So it must be normal...)

A woman from Negri Sembilan who visited the mosque had photographed the phenomenon with a mobile phone camera early this month, triggering fear among locals.

Azizi Saidi said the phenomenon could be linked to the lackadaisical attitude of Muslims in the state in performing congregational prayers. (thought the mosques are always full in Terengganu, unlike in the sinful valley of Klang...)

“There is nothing to panic. This is a call to Muslims not to overlook their obligation towards performing prayers together.

“There are umpteen mosques in Terengganu but there is a lack of mosque-goers.

“Some of our mosques lack people even during Friday prayers,” he added. (Why?)

He said the occurrence was not “bizarre” but should be seen as a miracle that could be considered a sign from the Al-Mighty. (I would have thought the Al-Mighty would have used something a bit more dramatic than flying mats...)

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© 1995-2009 Star Publications (Malaysia) Bhd (Co No 10894-D)

A Week of Anger and Sadness

Hi folks, been another of those weeks where I don't get enough time in front of the computer to blog about anything worthwhile. But I have to say that I've been so appalled by the stuff being said about Indonesian domestic workers just because our Government finally wants to treat them like any other workers by giving them a day off. Honestly, why do so many people make it seem as if we are doing them a favour by giving them a job, when we just can't cope without them? It's mutual need and dependency.

And what is this business about taking off from the domestic worker's salary whatever payments people make to the agent? If you employ a headhunter to find an employee for you, their fees can be up to six times the salary of the employee you take on! You don't take it off the employee because that's the fee you pay for the service. Getting the domestic worker to work for free is known as slavery, that's all. And yet there are all these people who actually think that's OK.

If the Indonesians are incensed, even if it's just for their elections, we should understand. What if it were our people who were being treated like that overseas? Wouldn't we care? We're now trying to appease the Indonesians by saying that not all of us treat our domestics badly. But anyone would get the opposite impression just by reading the papers every day, especially when we have so-called leaders spouting off in the most vile way about foreigners in our midst.

There are some people who are suggesting that domestic workers should only be allowed to work for families of the same religion as them. As if this necessarily makes them less vulnerable to abuse! I have met any number of domestic workers who have had the misfortune to work for so-called 'religious' people who simply 'forget' to pay their salaries, sometimes up to two years at a time, or just ignore requests by their worker to send money home to their families for them. Or who promise to get them all the permits to work here but then don't, leaving their worker totally dependent on them, afraid to go anywhere and unable to complain to anyone. No physical abuse no doubt, but still slavery.

The answer is not to look at other countries for domestic workers either. We will eventually have to reduce our dependency on domestic workers while at the same time improving working conditions for all women, including better childcare facilities and flexible hours.
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The shocker of the week was of course the deaths of Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson. The passing of the former was overwhelmingly overshadowed by the latter's but here's one tribute worth reading.

I'm sure you've read every single tribute to Michael Jackson there is out there. For me, what was most special about him was his dancing, which I rank alongside Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly and the great tap dancer Gregory Hines. Here's my favourite music video by Michael which I like better than Thriller. Nobody makes videos like this anymore with a storyline, a lot of detail, great costumes and of course, just spectacular dancing. Enjoy!



RIP Farrah and Michael!

What Israeli Settlements Really Mean

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June 22, 2009

Op-Ed Contributor

FICTIONS ON THE GROUND

By TONY JUDT

I am old enough to remember when Israeli kibbutzim looked like settlements (“a small village or collection of houses” or “the act of peopling or colonizing a new country,” Oxford English Dictionary).

In the early 1960s, I spent time on Kibbutz Hakuk, a small community founded by the Palmah unit of the Haganah, the pre-state Jewish militia. Begun in 1945, Hakuk was just 18 years old when I first saw it, and was still raw at the edges. The few dozen families living there had built themselves a dining hall, farm sheds, homes and a “baby house” where the children were cared for during the workday. But where the residential buildings ended there were nothing but rock-covered hillsides and half-cleared fields.

The community’s members still dressed in blue work shirts, khaki shorts and triangular hats, consciously cultivating a pioneering image and ethos already at odds with the hectic urban atmosphere of Tel Aviv. Ours, they seemed to say to bright-eyed visitors and volunteers, is the real Israel; come and help us clear the boulders and grow bananas — and tell your friends in Europe and America to do likewise.

Hakuk is still there. But today it relies on a plastics factory and the tourists who flock to the nearby Sea of Galilee. The original farm, built around a fort, has been turned into a tourist attraction. To speak of this kibbutz as a settlement would be bizarre.

However, Israel needs “settlements.” They are intrinsic to the image it has long sought to convey to overseas admirers and fund-raisers: a struggling little country securing its rightful place in a hostile environment by the hard moral work of land clearance, irrigation, agrarian self-sufficiency, industrious productivity, legitimate self-defense and the building of Jewish communities. But this neo-collectivist frontier narrative rings false in modern, high-tech Israel. And so the settler myth has been transposed somewhere else — to the Palestinian lands seized in war in 1967 and occupied illegally ever since.

It is thus not by chance that the international press is encouraged to speak and write of Jewish “settlers” and “settlements” in the West Bank. But this image is profoundly misleading. The largest of these controversial communities in geographic terms is Maale Adumim. It has a population in excess of 35,000, demographically comparable to Montclair, N.J., or Winchester, England. What is most striking, however, about Maale Adumim is its territorial extent. This “settlement” comprises more than 30 square miles — making it one and a half times the size of Manhattan and nearly half as big as the borough and city of Manchester, England. Some “settlement.”

There are about 120 official Israeli settlements in the occupied territories of the West Bank. In addition, there are “unofficial” settlements whose number is estimated variously from 80 to 100. Under international law, there is no difference between these two categories; both are contraventions of Article 47 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which explicitly prohibits the annexation of land consequent to the use of force, a principle re-stated in Article 2(4) of the United Nations Charter.

Thus the distinction so often made in Israeli pronouncements between “authorized” and “unauthorized” settlements is specious — all are illegal, whether or not they have been officially approved and whether or not their expansion has been “frozen” or continues apace. (It is a matter of note that Israel’s new foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, belongs to the West Bank settlement of Nokdim, established in 1982 and illegally expanded since.)

The blatant cynicism of the present Israeli government should not blind us to the responsibility of its more respectable-looking predecessors. The settler population has grown consistently at a rate of 5 percent annually over the past two decades, three times the rate of increase of the Israeli population as a whole. Together with the Jewish population of East Jerusalem (itself illegally annexed to Israel), the settlers today number more than half a million people: just over 10 percent of the Jewish population of so-called Greater Israel. This is one reason why settlers count for so much in Israeli elections, where proportional representation gives undue political leverage to even the smallest constituency.

But the settlers are no mere marginal interest group. To appreciate their significance, spread as they are over a dispersed archipelago of urban installations protected from Arab intrusion by 600 checkpoints and barriers, consider the following: taken together, East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Golan Heights constitute a homogenous demographic bloc nearly the size of the District of Columbia. It exceeds the population of Tel Aviv itself by almost one third. Some “settlement.”

If Israel is drunk on settlements, the United States has long been its enabler. Were Israel not the leading beneficiary of American foreign aid — averaging $2.8 billion a year from 2003 to 2007, and scheduled to reach $3.1 billion by 2013 — houses in West Bank settlements would not be so cheap: often less than half the price of equivalent homes in Israel proper.

Many of the people who move to these houses don’t even think of themselves as settlers. Newly arrived from Russia and elsewhere, they simply take up the offer of subsidized accommodation, move into the occupied areas and become — like peasants in southern Italy freshly supplied with roads and electricity — the grateful clients of their political patrons. Like American settlers heading west, Israeli colonists in the West Bank are the beneficiaries of their very own Homestead Act, and they will be equally difficult to uproot.

Despite all the diplomatic talk of disbanding the settlements as a condition for peace, no one seriously believes that these communities — with their half a million residents, their urban installations, their privileged access to fertile land and water — will ever be removed. The Israeli authorities, whether left, right or center, have no intention of removing them, and neither Palestinians nor informed Americans harbor illusions on this score.

To be sure, it suits almost everyone to pretend otherwise — to point to the 2003 “road map” and speak of a final accord based on the 1967 frontiers. But such feigned obliviousness is the small change of political hypocrisy, the lubricant of diplomatic exchange that facilitates communication and compromise.

There are occasions, however, when political hypocrisy is its own nemesis, and this is one of them. Because the settlements will never go, and yet almost everyone likes to pretend otherwise, we have resolutely ignored the implications of what Israelis have long been proud to call “the facts on the ground.”

Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, knows this better than most. On June 14 he gave a much-anticipated speech in which he artfully blew smoke in the eyes of his American interlocutors. While offering to acknowledge the hypothetical existence of an eventual Palestinian state — on the explicit understanding that it exercise no control over its airspace and have no means of defending itself against aggression — he reiterated the only Israeli position that really matters: we won’t build illegal settlements but we reserve the right to expand “legal” ones according to their natural rate of growth. (It is not by chance that he chose to deliver this speech at Bar-Ilan University, the heartland of rabbinical intransigence where Yigal Amir learned to hate Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin before heading off to assassinate him in 2005.)

THE reassurances Mr. Netanyahu offered the settlers and their political constituency were as well received as ever, despite being couched in honeyed clichés directed at nervous American listeners. And the American news media, predictably, took the bait — uniformly emphasizing Mr. Netanyahu’s “support” for a Palestinian state and playing down everything else.

However, the real question now is whether President Obama will respond in a similar vein. He surely wants to. Nothing could better please the American president and his advisors than to be able to assert that, in the wake of his Cairo speech, even Mr. Netanyahu had shifted ground and was open to compromise. Thus Washington avoids a confrontation, for now, with its closest ally. But the uncomfortable reality is that the prime minister restated the unvarnished truth: His government has no intention of recognizing international law or opinion with respect to Israel’s land-grab in “Judea and Samaria.”

Thus President Obama faces a choice. He can play along with the Israelis, pretending to believe their promises of good intentions and the significance of the distinctions they offer him. Such a pretense would buy him time and favor with Congress. But the Israelis would be playing him for a fool, and he would be seen as one in the Mideast and beyond.

Alternatively, the president could break with two decades of American compliance, acknowledge publicly that the emperor is indeed naked, dismiss Mr. Netanyahu for the cynic he is and remind Israelis that all their settlements are hostage to American goodwill. He could also remind Israelis that the illegal communities have nothing to do with Israel’s defense, much less its founding ideals of agrarian self-sufficiency and Jewish autonomy. They are nothing but a colonial takeover that the United States has no business subsidizing.

But if I am right, and there is no realistic prospect of removing Israel’s settlements, then for the American government to agree that the mere nonexpansion of “authorized” settlements is a genuine step toward peace would be the worst possible outcome of the present diplomatic dance. No one else in the world believes this fairy tale; why should we? Israel’s political elite would breathe an unmerited sigh of relief, having once again pulled the wool over the eyes of its paymaster. The United States would be humiliated in the eyes of its friends, not to speak of its foes. If America cannot stand up for its own interests in the region, at least let it not be played yet again for a patsy.

Tony Judt is the director of the Remarque Institute at New York University and the author of “Postwar” and “Reappraisals: Reflections on the Forgotten Twentieth Century.”

Diversity and Equality: The Only Way Forward

Me and Prof Aneez onstage at the public forum last Tuesday.

If there was a theme to my week last week, I would call it 'Diversity and Equality' week. I've had busy weeks before but rarely does everything on my schedule synchronise quite so well.

Last Tuesday I had the honour of moderating the public forum entitled Race Relations:The British Experience hosted by the Institute of Ethnic Studies (KITA), UKM. It was held at the Malaysian Institute of Integrity at Jalan Duta to make it more accessible to the public and I think that's why there were more than 300 people in attendance. It also proved that people are interested in the subject because they came despite it being a weekday afternoon.

I found that I knew lots of people in the audience. Many of my NGO colleagues were there, as well as many from academia and individuals who just were curious about it. I forgot to ask who in the audience had heard about it from this blog.

A section of the crowd at the public forum.

Anyway after the formalities, which included an opening speech from Minister from the PM's Department in charge of national unity and KPIs, Tan Sri Koh Tsu Koon and who then had to leave, the forum was underway.

Prof Dr Aneez Esmail spoke about his experience of having his life changed by racism. He was born in Uganda but in 1972 all Asian Ugandans were given two months to get out of the country with only two suitcases, under orders from then President Idi Amin. Some 16,000 of these Asians went to the UK which took them in despite some opposition from locals.

He then went on to study medicine at university and then upon graduation started looking for a job. He soon realised that he had to send off many many more applications than any of his white colleagues.This was at a time when Britain was short of doctors in its National Health Service and was bringing in lots of doctors from the Indian Subcontinent.

Curious about why this was, he finally met one of the people in charge of recruitment and asked him how they selected who to employ. And the man said, "I put all the applications with white names in this pile and all the ones with the foreign names in another pile. Then I select from the first pile and only if I can't find anyone there, do I look at the second pile."

Prof Aneez realised that this man was not a malicious man but like many Brits at the time, they took these attitudes as normal. After all, there were many job ads in the British Medical Journal which actually said "British doctors only" (meaning white ones only) and where you could see signs outside boarding houses which said "No blacks, no Irish, no Asians, no dogs.".

He then set about to try and prove that these racist attitudes existed through empirical means. With a white colleague, he set up a simple study. They both sent out job application forms to many hospitals with identical qualifications. The only difference was that some had white names and some had 'foreign' names. And the results were astonishing:the white candidates were ten times more likely to be shortlisted for jobs than the non-white candidates, despite having the same qualifications. (A similar study recently in Australia showed the same thing.)

The results of this study was published in the British Medical Journal and uproar ensued. Prof Aneez was almost arrested for making 'fraudulent applications' while the British Medical Council wanted to censure him for bringing the medical profession into disrepute. But the study proved that although the British Parliament already had a Race Relations Act in 1976, racism still existed. Still, as Prof Aneez asserted, they needed the Act "to provide the mechanism to challenge whether the Constitution worked".

The RRA provided the framework but obviously did not solve the problem. It was not the solution but "the beginning of the journey." And the journey was tested again in 1993.

In that year a young black boy Steven Lawrence, waiting at a bus stop, was set upon by a bunch of white thugs and was beaten to death. When the police came, they assumed that it was Steven Lawrence who was the criminal and took their time calling the ambulance, ignored clues, didn't interview witnesses, etc. Lawrence's parents took the matter to court, accusing the police of racism, and the result was the MacPherson report which for the first time recognised 'institutional racism'. This resulted in an amendment of the Race Relations Act which stated that public bodies ' have a duty to promote racial equality'. Since then, all public institutions have to make concerted efforts to ensure diversity within their workforce. Or else they will be censured by the Government.

Today Prof Aneez is Vice-President of Diversity and Equality at the University of Manchester. This means that he has to not only ensure that there is racial diversity among the students , faculty and staff but also gender and socio-economic diversity. As an example, while there are many female lecturers, there are very few female professors. When the heads of faculties are asked why, they said that many women lecturers don't seem to be ready for professorships. Prof Aneez has the power to tell them that this was not good enough and that they had to go back and ensure that the women lecturers were made ready for professorships by the following year, or else nobody would be made professors at all! It works a treat!

He also spoke about how the University has tried to ensure that its students come from more diverse backgrounds. He explained how, with the standard offer of 2As and a B to get into the university, they had no trouble getting many students who were mostly from private schools or the elite state schools. So they decided to look at the schools around the Manchester area and realised that the students there found it hard to match their private school counterparts because their schools lacked facilities and they often came from families who could not afford books, computers or tuition for their kids. Hence their A Level results weren't that great.

Manchester U then decided to take a proactive step and invited the kids from these poorer backgrounds to summer camps where they were given tuition and help to improve their A Level grades. Also their entry requirements were lowered slightly to take into account their less advantaged backgrounds. As a result more students from these backgrounds were successful in entering degree courses at Manchester. And what's more, once in, they tended to do better than the students from the more privileged backgrounds!

So the main points that Prof Aneez wanted to stress from the British experience, were that:

Legislation is necessary but it must be more focussed on outcomes, rather than processes. We have to look at whether it works or not and then take steps to ensure that it does. Some of these steps are affirmative action, quotas and other needs-based affirmative action. (There are a lot of people here who are opposed to a Race Relations Act, not all for the same reasons. Some argue that we don't need it because we already have other Acts while others feel that we should really get rid of all these Acts because they don't help race relations at all, so another one is not really going to help.)

Many people may not agree with affirmative action but it can bring benefits. Prof Aneez gave the example of affirmative action in the US. To truly appreciate what an achievement for Barack Obama to become President, we have to realise that it was only in 1964 with the Civil Rights Act that African-Americans could even vote. After that, in order to bring African-Americans up to speed quickly, they instituted affirmative action specifically to get them in education and into public offices etc. Without this, it is highly unlikely that Barack Obama would get where he is today.

However, as succesful as that action was, it doesn't mean that it needs to continue always in the same form. As Barack Obama himself says, while he benefited from affirmative action, it doesn't mean that his daughters should also benefit from it. Obviously they are growing up in a very different environment from their parents so they can make it on their own. While the need for affirmative action remains in the US, it now needs to be a needs-based one, that is, one that is aimed at anyone from poor backgrounds, regardless of race. This would still mostly benefit African-Americans because they are still the poorest but would also cover Hispanics, Asian-Americans and also poor whites. (And if anyone is making comparisons with our situation here, it might be useful to remember that the NEP started off as a needs-based affirmative action programme meant for anyone who was poor.)

Prof Aneez also spoke about quotas, another controversial measure which he doesn't normally favour unless it is for a specific purpose and is time-limited. He gave two examples of quotas for women that have been successful in redressing particular imbalances.

Many years ago, frustrated with the low numbers of female election candidates, the British Labour Party imposed a quota where a number of safe seats had to be given to women candidates for the general elections. Today there are about 100 women Labour MPs, compared to only 8 Conservative ones, and the quotas are no longer in place because the women are quite capable of flying on their own. (It also means that ironically, the party that has had a woman leader has a far smaller pool of women to choose leaders from than its opposition.) This would not be something too difficult for any party here to do either.

Another example was Norway which several years ago told all companies that 40% of the composition of their Boards of Directors had to be women within two years or else they would not get any contracts. The Government extended that period by another two years and today, most of Norway's companies have women filling at least half of their Board seats. So sometimes, wielding the big stick works when nothing else does. And by the way, none of these companies have suffered from having women in high positions either.

These were some of the practical examples that Prof Aneez cited has been done to redress imbalances within society, as far as race , gender and class are concerned. How did our audiences respond to this?

Q&A time at the forum

At both the public forum and the closed roundtable a few days later, Malaysians showed that they are very capable of discussing these issues with great maturity and rationality. (Perhaps because there weren't any politicians there?) They asked intelligent questions and they pondered how these lessons can be applied here in our country. Of course, our situation is not the same as in Britain. But it is clear that change is needed in order for us to move forward.

Perhaps the most important lesson is really that change has to come from below, not from the politicians. Nothing would have changed in the medical profession in Britain if Prof Aneez, a simple doctor, had not done his little study on recruitment. Perhaps, for example, what we need is something like a Macpherson report on the police to galvanise them into dealing with the possible institutionalising of prejudice within the ranks? Perhaps we need quotas and special incentives to bring in non-Malays into the civil service within a certain time frame, and not take "nobody wants to apply" as an excuse? The important thing to remember is not that we have quotas for unqualified people but for people with equal qualifications who may not even apply because of various reasons.

I personally don't think that we can deal with racial equality isolated from gender equality. In between the two forums on race relations, I went to Penang to speak at an in-house Intel conference on women in the workplace. Like many multinationals, Intel has a policy of ensuring diversity in their workplaces and actively works to make sure this happens in all their sites in the US and around the world. According to their Vice-President in charge of diversity, as a global company dealing with employees in so many countries and cultures, diversity is good for business. They recognise that a one-size-fits-all approach will not work and so they ensure that their staff have input in how their operations are run.

Judging by the types of people, especially women, I met working at Intel, it seems to me that a diversity policy attracts very good people. When people know that they are valued for their skills and knowledge, rather than things they can't do anything about such as race or gender, than they tend to be happier, and therefore more productive, employees. But there has to be special provisions to recognise structural impediments to lack of diversity, such as educational opportunities, gender barriers etc.

It was really instructive listening to the female (and male) staff at Intel talking about workplaces issues affecting their different genders. For example, despite the company offering flexible and part-time jobs that they thought might help some staff cope with balancing home and work better, few take them up largely because of fear that this would be seen as 'slacking'. Whereas in the US and Europe, flexitime is very popular. So these cultural issues need to be considered when trying to implement these policies.

Intel is not the only company I'm familiar with that has a diversity policy. But I don't know of any local company that has any sort of diversity policy where they seek to ensure not only racial diversity but also gender diversity. After all some workplaces could be said to have too many women!

All in all, it was a very interesting and stimulating week for me. There will be a CD of the public forum and reports done which I will inform you about when they are out. I think for me, I get the feeling that while we have innumerable problems, most people are keen to try and resolve them in a way that would benefit everyone. There was really a lot less blaming perhaps because without practical measures to overcome problems, nothing will be achieved.

By the way, the police were there at the public forum. Apparently the IGP sent 70 of his officers to attend and someone pointed out several CPOs to me. At one point, one member of the audience took the mike to complain about some incident he experienced where the police took no action and the Selangor CPO stood up and gave him his card. I just hope the police listened to the story of Steven Lawrence and reflected on themselves ( though actually I doubt self-reflection is big among the police).

People Power in Iran

Folks, I hope you're following what's happening in Iran. Things are moving so fast and I haven't been able to find the time to write anything about it because I've been caught up with so many things this week including the public forum yesterday (will post something on that later).

But here are some links you might be interested in:

Photos of the demos in Tehran here. And in Esfahan here.

An eyewitness account of what is happening in Iran can be read via the blog MyAsylum here.

The Iranians are really relying on Twitter to get the news out so if any of you are on Twitter, do follow IranElection and do retweet the news. The Iranians are relying on you to get the news out on what is happening there because the Iranian government has cut off access to Facebook and even smses.

If you'd like to show your support, wear green which is the colour of the Moussavi side.

There are many allegations that the elections were rigged to favour Ahmedinajad. Even Grand Ayatollah Montazeri, one of Iran’s leading religious figures, has slammed the results of recent elections and addressed an open letter to the Iranian people, referring to them as “oppressed.”

Montazeri is one of the leaders of the Islamic Revolution in Iran and is best known as the one-time designated successor to Ayatollah Khomeini.

In 1989 he fell out with Khomeini over the government’s repressive policies and the lack of freedom and human rights and has been a harsh critic of the ruling regime ever since.

The Council of Guardians, the most powerful body in Iran, is now agreeing to a recount because you can't ignore the millions of Iranians protesting the results and also the protests abroad.

And talking of which...when you see how young people and women are supporting Moussavi and are being beaten and teargassed there, you have to wonder why should we do the same to them here? How do we support them by revoking their visas? Do we want to send them back to danger at home? How would we feel if we were abroad and all this turmoil was going on in our own country? There is nothing in this story that suggests to me that teargas was warranted. And nothing starts chaos quite like unprovoked use of teargas. Imagine...if Moussavi did finally come into power, what would he say to us knowing we had teargassed his people? And what would the Iranian students here tell their folks back home about the way we behaved towards them?