(FXI/IFEX) – The following is a 5 September 2001 FXI press statement: The Freedom of Expression Institute, FXI, condemns the way the World Conference Against Racism (WCAR) has given a platform to the voices of the elite and tried to suppress any alternative voice. The denial of access to the conference of IndyMedia-South Africa and […]
(FXI/IFEX) – The following is a 5 September 2001 FXI press statement:
The Freedom of Expression Institute, FXI, condemns the way the World Conference Against Racism (WCAR) has given a platform to the voices of the elite and tried to suppress any alternative voice. The denial of access to the conference of IndyMedia-South Africa and other community media on the basis that they are not profit-making organisations is completely outrageous.
IndyMedia Centre South Africa (IMC) has had their application to cover the World Conference in Durban denied by the United Nations’ media accreditation department. Not for reasons of exceeding the IMC’s allocated access permits or an existing over-representation of community media activists, the IMC was instead told that the benchmark for objectivity is a profit motive. “How can [the IMC] verify that [it] is not telling just one side of the story?” said Sonja Lecca of the UN unit. “The IMC must show that the information is disseminated to people.” It would seem that if you don’t have to pay for it you’re just not going to read it!
Measuring the quality of news reportage by the money it generates for the media owners is an outrage against any notion of democracy as allowing freedom of expression. The market as guarantor of democracy only belies the charade of “Big Brother” hype and “Italian WCAR delegate found dead with four prostitutes”. The scope of news has been summarily censored in one bureaucratic swoop, excluding perspectives from outside the narrow worldview of Tony O’Reilly and Rupert Murdoch Inc. and privileging the glib pronouncements of mainstream press and
broadcasters. However much South Africa has constitutionally enshrined freedom of expression and facilitated its achievement through the Open Democracy Act with its provisos for access to information, it appears the United Nations declares the law. Domestic protections are dumped at the gates of the International Convention Centre in Durban and the disciplines of institutional control of information takes effect.
The exclusion of alternative perspectives or voices from the World Conference should confirm fears about the United Nations’ obedience to the will of corporate hegemony. Dressed in ethno-chic and cosmopolitan costume, the UN presents itself as a transnational ideal that promotes peaceful co-existence, peace, goodwill, etc. The iron will the UN masks is sharply apparent in who it permits to speak and how people are permitted to hear. If the organisers of a WCAR would even pretend to offer the mere possibility of a solution to racism, they have affirmed at the outset that the elusive solution can only be sought by people’s representatives and the only adequate reporters of that process are a selective and compromised few.
IndyMedia-South Africa has emerged in the run-up to the WCAR to protest the exclusion of the already marginalised from processes which seek to legitimise the interests of the rich and powerful and to provide a space for independent, alternative and critical voices.
Internationally, IndyMedia centres have played a significant role in breaking through the silencing of protesters in Seattle, Washington DC, Melbourne and Genoa, where tens of thousands of anti-globalisation protesters took the streets at gatherings of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank (WB), and the G8.
By providing alternative images, stories and approaches at these events, IndyMedia centres have exploded the myth that racism, gender inequalities, homophobia and other forms of discrimination can be eradicated while capitalism extends its global reach. IndyMedia-SA, in giving space to/for the struggles of local communities, offers us the opportunity to link local and global struggles at the level of resistance, critique and the forging of alternative narratives for futures free from poverty, greed and injustice. As the silencing forces of the WCAR meet in Durban, IndyMedia-SA attempts to make space for the voices of the marginalised resisting the local effects of capitalist globalisation to assert our alternatives.
