Published in the Christchurch Star newspaper yesterday — this was the advert rejected last week by Stuff, New Zealand’s major news website, by an editorial management which apparently thinks pro-Israel sympathies are more important than the industrial-scale slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza and Lebanon.

Stuff told the Palestinian Solidarity Movement Aotearoa (PSNA) on Thursday last week it would not print this full-page “genocide in their own words” advertisement which had been booked and paid to go in all Stuff newspapers this week.

Stuff gave no “official” reason for banning the advert about Israel’s war in Gaza aside from saying they would not do so “while the ongoing conflict is developing”.

It seems that for Stuff, pro-Israel sympathies are more important that Palestinian realities.

It’s worth pointing out that Stuff has, over many years, printed full page advertisements from a Christian Zionist, Pastor Nigel Woodley, from Hastings.

Woodley’s advertisements have been full of the most egregious, fanciful, misinformation and anti-Palestinian racism.

Our advertisement on the other hand is 100 percent factual and speaks truth to power – demanding the New Zealand government hold Israel to account for its war crimes and 76-years of brutal military occupation of Palestine.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Those born after 2001 have only known a world “at war on terror”.

This means a generation growing up under under fears and moral panics about Muslims and unparalleled security measures around their bodies and lives.

In my new book, Coming of Age in the War on Terror, I look at what this has meant for young Muslims in Australia as they navigate their political identities at school.

In 2018 and 2019, I interviewed and held writing workshops with more than 60 Muslim and non-Muslim high school students across Sydney who were born around the time of the September 11 terror attacks.

We explored their fears, their levels of trust with peers and teachers and political expression in a post 9/11 world.

No matter how many Muslim students spoke to me about their typically adolescent hobbies and interests, almost every student spoke about the impact of political and media discourse in their everyday lives.

Abdul-Rahman, a 17-year-old Muslim boy at an Islamic school in western Sydney, put it this way:

I’m not afraid of terrorism. I’m afraid of being accused of being a terrorist.

Another student, Laila, told me:

I’ve always had this almost preconceived guilt attached to me […] [It’s] the million messages in the media, politicians, popular culture, all these little things that add up and add up.

‘Countering violent extremism’
For teenagers to talk about themselves as potentially “accused” is devastating, but not particularly surprising.

For two decades, millions of federal and state dollars have been poured into “countering violent extremism” programmes targeting Muslim youth. There has been no subtlety here.

Counter-terrorism policies have been announced by politicians on the steps of mosques, with a focus on geographic and demographic populations deemed “at risk” (in other words, suburbs with large Muslim populations).

Consultations and round tables with government over “national security” have been highly publicised. Meanwhile, Islamophobic attacks have been condemned by politicians and the police because of how they might “undermine” relationships of cooperation between intelligence and law enforcement and the Muslim community.

The public has been routinely reassured the government is tackling the “problem” of young Muslim Australians, “with strong, deradicalisation programmes, working with Muslim communities”.

The figure of the vulnerable but also dangerous Muslim youth pops up time and time again, from moral panics around young “homegrown” terrorists, to attempts to introduce “jihadi watch” schemes in schools.

The pressure to self-censor
This landscape trickles down into young people’s everyday lives, including their schools.

The pressure to self-censor and manage your political and religious expression at school was a common theme among many students, resonating with what academics in the United Kingdom describe in their research.

Anticipating how their tone, words and emotion would be interpreted by teachers and peers restricted students’ political expression.

This included a young Palestinian girl who had to push back against teachers, who reprimanded her for wearing a “Free Palestine” t-shirt at school, to students who refrained from writing about Iraq or Afghanistan as part of assignments because they had been cautioned not to “bring overseas conflicts into the classroom”.

Other students talked of staying quiet if controversial topics came up in class, such as news of a terrorist attack involving Muslims, or media headlines about Islam.

I also met students who tried to appear as “good” or “moderate” Muslims (which inevitably meant apolitical) and erased all traces of their Muslimness to “fit in”.

Feeling targeted, isolated
In 2015, there was a media frenzy about youth radicalisation in prayer rooms in Sydney’s state schools. I interviewed students at a school in north-west Sydney three years later and they spoke about how that controversy had been felt in their school life.

Most of the students from suburbs and schools who came under media and political scrutiny as “problematic” had felt targeted and isolated. One student withdrew from his Muslim peers, abandoned his prayers at school, took different routes to school to avoid being hassled by the media, and “shut down” in class.

I got dragged into an argument with other kids in class about me following the same religion as these terrorists […] but my tone […] I came off very aggressive […] then I was scared, because that’s what people think of as radical extremists […] I felt like I’d be taken straight to the principal and you would have to deal with that. So I shut up.

We need a new approach
After two decades of seeing young Muslims as “problems” to be contained and managed, it is time we approached them in a different way.

Adolescence is a time to encourage critical thinking and support young people navigating their political identities and agency. Young people need to be empowered to work through their political and religious ideas and identities in safe, supportive environments. They need to be seen as individuals in their own right, not members of a demonised, racialised collective.

The vast majority of the young Muslims I spoke to were matter-of-fact about the global rise of Islamophobia and racism. They knew about certain jokes and assumptions in the popular vernacular (for example, “Allahu Akbar and bomb jokes” or “terrorist” equals “Muslim”).

Many were concerned about what this meant as they grew up and left school. They worried about facing discrimination at work and being able to practise their faith openly. They also knew how this suspicion and dehumanisation had been triggered by wider discourses and policies over which they had no power.

It is not up to the 9/11 generation to change this. We need teachers, politicians and the media to create a culture where young Muslims feel accepted and secure in their right to express their religious and political identities.

• This article was produced as part of Social Sciences Week, running 6-12 September. A full list of 70 events can be found here. Randa Abdel-Fattah will appear in a webinar on the “Implications of 9/11: 20 years” at 6pm on Thursday September 9.

Dr Randa Abdel Fattah is a DECRA research fellow, Macquarie University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

By RNZ Pacific

Democracies across Asia and the Pacific are struggling to resist disinformation and protect press freedoms, according to a new report.

Reporters Without Borders released its 2019 index last Thursday showing an increase in self-censorship of journalists in parts of the Pacific last year.

Although Pacific Island countries generally rose in press freedom rankings, Reporters Without Borders was also concerned about an absence of editorial independence.

READ MORE: Pacific ‘bright spots’ amid World Press Freedom Index Asian warnings

In Papua New Guinea, it said journalists faced intimidation, direct threats, censorship, prosecution and bribery attempts.

“All this was particularly visible during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in the capital, Port Moresby, in November 2018, when journalists who wanted to raise sensitive issues were censored by their bosses and the government was accused of accommodating the Chinese delegation’s demands for certain journalists to be excluded although they had obtained accreditation,” the RSF 2019 index said.

-Partners-

The group said self-censorship was also on the rise in Tonga, where politicians have sued media outlets and keeps tight controls over state media.

“This was particularly so at the state radio and TV broadcaster, the Tonga Broadcasting Commission (TBC), where two senior editors were sidelined under pressure from the government.

Suppressing editorial independence
“In 2018, the government gained full control over the TBC, suppressing all vestiges of editorial independence.”

Elsewhere, Reporters Without Borders said balanced election coverage in Fiji and the acquittal of Fiji Times journalists on sedition charges was an “encouraging victory”.

“The relatively pluralist and balanced coverage of the 2018 parliamentary elections – the second since the 2006 coup d’état – confirmed the Fiji media’s liveliness and spirit of resistance.”

In Samoa, the group said the country was “in the process of losing its status as a regional press freedom model”.

RSF said defamation laws had given Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi a licence to attack critical journalists.

In Solomon Islands, similar defamation laws were criticised by RSF as intimidating journalists and encouraging media self-censorship

“Indonesian diplomatic pressure for an end to any form of support for West Papuan separatism could pose a threat to the public debate.”

It also praised public broadcaster Solomon Islands Broadcasting Corporation (SIBC) as playing a “vital role in keeping the population informed by radio” in a country with low literacy rates.

This article is republished under the Pacific Media Centre’s content partnership with Radio New Zealand.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Fiji, New Zealand and Timor-Leste have made significant gains in the latest annual Reporters Without Borders World Press Freedom Index while the Paris-based global watchdog has warned that totalitarian propaganda, censorship, intimidation and cyber-harassment have been on the rise in the Asia-Pacific region.

“A lot of courage is needed nowadays to work independently as a journalist in the Asia-Pacific countries, where democracies are struggling to resist various forms of disinformation,” the RSF report said.

Fiji gained five places to rise to 52nd in the world due to a “relatively pluralist and balanced” coverage of the 2018 parliamentary elections and the acquittal of three of The Fiji Times journalists and executives and a letter writer on sedition charges last May in what was seen as an “encouraging victory for press freedom”.

READ MORE: The RSF World Press Freedom Index

The RSF World Press Freedom Index – Asia-Pacific Report

Timor-Leste jumped 11 places to 84th because of the way the media covered the 2018 elections and showed how news organisations could “play a role in the construction of democracy”.

New Zealand rose one place to seventh among the world’s top 10 countries because the business regulator Commerce Commission had blocked a merger between the country’s two major news groups, Stuff and the NZ Media and Entertainment (NZME), in a victory for media plurality.

Malaysian ‘fresh air’
Two significant rises in the RSF Index – both of 22 places – highlighted the degree to which a country’s political ecosystem impacts on the freedom to inform.

In Malaysia, the ruling coalition was ousted in an election for the first time in the country’s 62 years of independence.

This blew fresh air through the ossified media and transformed the environment for journalists, propelling Malaysia to 123rd place.

In Maldives, the election of a new president who had given firm – and partially kept – promises to improve press freedom enabled this Indian Ocean archipelago to jump to 98th place.

News ‘black holes’ sink further
Conversely, two countries already festering near the bottom of the Index – China and Vietnam – both managed to fall another place, to 177th and 176th respectively, because of the monopoly of power exercised by their presidents, Xi Jinping and Nguyen Phu Trong.

The first amended the constitution in order to be “president for life” in March 2018. The second now heads both the Communist Party and the state.

In each country, the ruling elite suppresses all debate in the state-owned media while cracking down relentlessly on citizen-journalists who try to make a dissenting voice heard.

Around 30 professional and non-professional journalists are detained in Vietnam, and nearly twice as many are detained in China.

China’s anti-democratic model, based on Orwellian high-tech information surveillance and manipulation, is all the more alarming because Beijing is now promoting its adoption internationally.

As well as obstructing the work of foreign correspondents within its borders, China is now trying to establish a “new world media order” under its control, as RSF showed in its latest report on China.

Laos also fell one place to 171st, above all for preventing journalists from covering the dramatic collapse of a dam in July 2018.

These one-party states are inexorably drawing closer to their North Korean “brother”, which managed a miniscule one-place rise to 179th thanks to the semblance of an opening as a result of the summits that brought Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un and President Trump together.

Growing censorship, self-censorship
While the islands of press independence are under attack, the Chinese system of total news control is increasingly serving as a model for other anti-democratic regimes such as Singapore (151st), which has established self-censorship as the norm, Brunei (152nd, -1) and Thailand (136th).

Similarly, censorship has become the norm in Cambodia (143rd), where the government has eliminated all independent media, and Hong Kong (73rd), where the leading traditional media now receive pressure to comply with Beijing’s dictates.

In the absence of editorial independence vis-à-vis the authorities, Papua New Guinea (38th) and Tonga (45th) also saw an increase in self-censorship in 2018.

In Pakistan (142nd, -3), the military establishment’s harassment of the media in the run-up to the general election in July 2018 resulted in an increase in censorship comparable to the worst moments during Pakistan’s military dictatorships.

Deadly field reporting
Reporters are also exposed in the field in Pakistan, where the environment is extremely unsafe. At least three were killed in connection with their work in 2018.

The security situation is even more worrying in Afghanistan (121st, -3), where – despite the government’s efforts – 16 media professionals were killed in connection with their reporting, nine of them in a double bombing that explicitly targeted the press.

Much courage is now needed to be a field reporter in Afghanistan. Although less dramatic, the situation was also worrying in Bangladesh (150th), where reporters covering protests and the election were the targets of unprecedented violence.

Physical violence against journalists is encouraged by the fact that the perpetrators usually enjoy complete impunity, as is still the case, for example, in Sri Lanka (126th). In India (140th, -2), at least six journalists were also killed while trying to work in 2018. This tragic toll was accompanied by an increase in violence coming from all quarters, including the security forces, organized crime and political activists.

Cyber-harassment, disinformation
India’s journalists are being attacked online as well as in the field. All those who dare to criticize Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist ideology online are branded as “anti-Indian” scum who must be purged.

This results in appalling cyber-harassment campaigns in which journalists are threatened not only with death but also rape (as the troll armies like harassing women journalists, in particular).

The same phenomenon is found in the Philippines (134th, -1), where attacks against the independent press by President Rodrigo Duterte’s government are accompanied by coordinated cyber-attacks.

The most emblematic case is undoubtedly that of the news website Rappler and its editor, Maria Ressa, who is the target of both recurring online harassment campaigns and a series of prosecutions orchestrated by different government agencies.

The use of social networks is also worrying in Myanmar (138th, -1), where disinformation and anti-Rohingya hate messages spread on Facebook without being moderated, benefitting the government led by Aung San Suu Kyi, who reacted with a deafening silence to the seven-year jail sentences imposed on Reuters journalists Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo in September 2018 for trying to investigate the Rohingya genocide.

Democracies swamped
These waves of disinformation are helping to erode democracy throughout the region, and press freedom with it. Democratic countries are having more and more difficulty in resisting this toxic groundswell, with the result that many are failing to improve their ranking in the RSF Index.

On the grounds of regulating social networks, some countries such as Nepal (106h) and Samoa (22nd) have, for example, adopted repressive laws that hamper investigative journalism.

The absence of structural reforms that foster greater press freedom is also preventing countries such as South Korea (41st) and Indonesia (124th) from progressing. And independent journalism is rendered extremely difficult when the media environment becomes too polarized, as in Taiwan (42nd) and Mongolia (70th).

Pluralism in danger
Finally, it is becoming increasingly difficult for media pluralism to resist the imperatives of media ownership concentration and business interests, as in Japan (67th) and Australia (21st, -2).

New Zealand (7th, +1) is exposed to similar phenomena, but has a regulator that was able to prevent too much media concentration. It therefore rose one place, in a sign that institutional guarantees pay off.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Cambodia’s last independent newspaper has had its editorial team gutted after its managing editor, web editor and two senior journalists resigned following a demand from the Phnom Penh Post’s new owner to take down an article reporting on the sale of the paper over the weekend.

The Post’s editor-in-chief Kay Kimsong was then sacked for his role in the article’s publication.

“I got fired by the new owner…because I’m the editor-in-chief and I allowed the printing of the independent story based on journalistic integrity,” Kimsong told Southeast Asia Globe shortly after he was dismissed.

“I trust my reporters and my editors and I think that being journalists, we made the right decision. But it’s their business and they said, ‘Kimsong, you’re the editor-in-chief – and you made a big mistake.’”

The article, which was published on Sunday evening, confirmed that Sivakumar S. Ganapathy, chief executive and managing director of Malaysia-based public relations firm Asia PR, was the new owner of the newspaper, which has been the nation’s paper of record since 1992.

Outgoing publisher Bill Clough announced the sale in a press release on Saturday, welcoming Sivakumar – also known as Siva – to the role and praising his credentials.

“Siva is a well respected newspaper man, with a [sic] experienced journalist background, and represents a strong investment group from Malaysia,” said Clough, an Australian mining magnate who has be in charge of the paper since 2008.

Doubts over future independence
But journalists and media watchdogs across the region have raised doubts about the paper’s future independence due to a number of concerning links between the Post’s new owner and the Cambodian and Malaysian governments.

Asia PR’s website lists “Cambodia and [Prime Minister] Hun Sen’s entry into the government seat” as one of its previous clients. More worryingly, Sivakumar’s personal description maintains that he currently “leads the Asia PR team in managing ‘covert operations’ for our clients.”

Phil Robertson, the deputy Asia director of Human Rights Watch, described the deal as “a staggering blow to press freedom in Cambodia”.

The Phnom Penh Post had been the subject of a US$3.9 million tax bill, which drew widespread parallels with the circumstances surrounding the shuttering of former English-language publication the Cambodia Daily.

The newspaper, which frequently published stories criticising the government, was shut down last September after being hit with a $6.3 million tax bill widely believed to be politically motivated.

The Post has also been dogged by an ongoing legal action launched by former chief executive Chris Dawe for wrongful dismissal during his tenure at the paper. Clough stated that the Post’s tax bill had been settled as part of the sale.

Post office plunged into chaos
Emotions ran high in the hallways and offices of the Post on Monday afternoon after the new ownership tussled with editors over the story.

Managing editor Stuart White, who has worked for the Post for six years, was the first staff member to refuse to remove the article.

“I was asked to take down the story about the sale by a colleague, who characterised it as a direct order from the new management,” White said. “I didn’t feel like I could do that in good conscience, so I resigned immediately.”

The order was passed through the ranks, with each editor refusing to take down the story.

Web editor Jenni Reid then refused and resigned, followed by the co-authors of the piece, business editor Brendan O’Byrne and senior journalist Ananth Baliga. Chief ececutive Marcus Holmes was the last to tender his resignation.

A senior Cambodian staffer who requested anonymity said that local reporters had pleaded with the new management not to put the paper’s long-running record of independent journalism at risk.

“The rest of the Khmer staff just stayed in the meeting to say, ‘Can you run a second story?’ ‘Do not pull [the original] down…run a second article, correction, make a clarification,’” the staffer said. Management refused, and Kimsong was fired shortly after.

Editors targeted by Sivakumar
Kimsong, O’Byrne and Baliga were all targeted by Sivakumar in an internal memo savaging the Post’s coverage of the newspaper’s sale, with the new owner calling on all three staff members to be “terminated”.

Although a press release from the paper’s new owners announcing the sale maintained that Sivakumar was “fully committed to upholding the paper’s 26-year-old legacy and editorial principles/independence without infringing any relevant laws and regulations of the Kingdom of Cambodia,” the memo – which was published earlier today by local news site AEC News – served up a stinging rebuke to the article, claiming that the piece did not meet the “high caliber” [sic] that the new owners expected from the paper.

Sivakumar called the piece “a disgrace and an insult to the independence claim of the newspaper” and said it “borders on internal sabotage”.

Today it is clear that the editorial independence of Cambodia’s last true independent media is at threat

Among Sivakumar’s complaints against the article were that the reporters forgot to publish his middle initial and that they identified him as “an executive”and “executive director” of Asia PRrather than CEO and managing director.

In the past year, Cambodia’s shrinking independent press has come under fire as the country gears up for a national election in July, with former Khmer Rouge commander Hun Sen the clear favourite to continue his 33-year reign.

The last gasp of the free press
Daniel Bastard, head of the Asia-Pacific desk of Reporters Without Borders, expressed his solidarity with the Post’s journalists.

“Rumours about pressures from Hun Sen’s government to try and muzzle the Phnom Penh Post have spread for a few months,” he said. “Today it is clear that the editorial independence of Cambodia’s last true independent media is at threat.

“The removal of the Post’s editor and the censorship on articles detailing the journal’s sale are dreadful signs that journalists will no longer be able to do their work freely.”

More than 30 radio stations known to be critical of Hun Sen’s rule were silenced by the government last year, including Radio Free Asia and Voice of America.

Cambodia plunged ten places in the 2018 Reporters Without Borders’ press freedom index to number 142 out of 180 countries.

Since launching in January 2007, the Cambodia-based Southeast Asia Globe has sought to “engage our readers through reports that dig deeper and stories that inspire”.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz