(WPFC/IFEX) – The following is a 25 April 2001 WPFC letter to United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson expressing concern over a joint statement recently submitted by three international rapporteurs on freedom of expression in anticipation of the forthcoming “World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance”: April 25, 2001 […]
(WPFC/IFEX) – The following is a 25 April 2001 WPFC letter to United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson expressing concern over a joint statement recently submitted by three international rapporteurs on freedom of expression in anticipation of the forthcoming “World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance”:
April 25, 2001
Mary Robinson
High Commissioner for Human Rights
United Nations
Palais des Nations
CH-1211 Geneva 10
Switzerland
Your Excellency,
The World Press Freedom Committee, which brings together 44 journalistic organizations on six continents, is writing you to express distress and deep concern over a joint statement recently submitted to you by three international rapporteurs on freedom of expression in anticipation of the forthcoming “World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance” that you are convening in Durban, South Africa.
The rapporteurs, named by the United Nations Human Rights Commission, OSCE and OAS, spoke of “a moral and social obligation” by the news media “to make a positive contribution to the fight against racism, discrimination, xenophobia and intolerance.” They also alleged that there is a need for a “balance” between efforts to combat intolerance and “protection of the right to freedom of expression.”
We note that these are very dangerous notions that echo a number of declarations and laws that have been used and often still are being used to stifle free speech and press freedom in many countries. Freedom of speech cannot be forced into “balance” without being restricted.
We call upon you to do everything in your power to see to it that no such views or approaches are contained in any final declarations or other normative texts adopted at the Durban conference.
While we recognize that the joint statement of the three international freedom of expression rapporteurs was well-intentioned, we recall how similar statements of obligations or roles assigned to the written and broadcast press by others have been exploited to curb free speech. This was notably the case in the former Soviet Union and the Soviet bloc and continues to be the case in a number of their successor states. There was a major struggle centered upon UNESCO to combat the adoption of a similarly worded 1978 binding international Declaration that was an obvious cover to justify international press controls.
The press must not be assigned roles or obligations by outside forces. Of course, the press in democratic countries has indeed contributed in very large measure and in many forms to the struggle against intolerance. This is, as it should be, a source of justifiable pride, but this endeavor has been and should continue to be one that is freely and voluntarily assumed by news media outlets, and not imposed upon them by anybody else. A free press should have no externally dictated obligations beyond those contained in such generally applicable legislation as civil defamation.
If others can mandate good causes for the press to undertake, then the principle is set that they can also mandate bad causes. Or, as is more commonly the case, they can and have demanded that the press serve bad causes masquerading as good ones. This is normally accomplished by using Orwellian language shifts to redefine the bad in the terminology of the good.
We do not for an instant question the legitimacy of a struggle against “hate speech,” discrimination and intolerance. Quite the contrary, we subscribe on a personal level to the need for governments and international agencies, NGOs and individuals to conduct that combat in the interests of democratic societies. But we know through bitter experience the damages inflicted by authoritarians against free speech and press freedom in the name of noble-sounding causes.
Furthermore, we hold the fundamental position that driving “hate speech” underground only makes it harder to identify and counteract. To fight intolerance, it must be readily identifiable. There is truth in the saying, “The best disinfectant is sunlight.”
While in Thomas Jefferson’s words in the U.S. Declaration of Independence, “We hold these truths to be self-evident,” the libertarian free speech position is not, by far, a merely American one. It is an essential feature of political philosophy expressed by such intellectual founders of the modern democratic age as Voltaire, Montesquieu, John Locke, John Milton, and John Stuart Mill. Their tenets have universal application and lead directly to the principles embodied in Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Contrary to assertions by some contemporary authoritarians, this position is not at all in contradiction with regional or family values or social cohesion. Free reporting and debate can serve in the long and even the short run to strengthen such values.
Nor is it true, as is often asserted, that the United States — where free speech/free press approaches have been most vigorously applied — is a country free of social tensions and conflicts, and even widespread violence, in very recent times. Yet, despite those extreme circumstances, freedom of speech was not abridged (except, of course, in the limited cases described by an eminent U.S. Supreme Court justice as barring the right to “cry ‘Fire!’ in a crowded theater.”)
The Durban conference must not reinvent the same misguided theories that were defeated in the debate over the “New World Information and Communication Order.”
We acknowledge and welcome the view of the three freedom of expression rapporteurs that there must be no prior censorship and that “hate speech” and some defamation legislation has frequently been used to silence those it was meant to support. The logical conclusion is that such pretexts to cut off free speech should not be provided.
Since the three rapporteurs have made public their joint statement, we are also making public this letter to you and we request that it be distributed to the participants at the Durban conference for their careful consideration.
Most respectfully,
James H. Ottaway, Jr.
Chairman
Marilyn J. Greene
Executive Director
Ronald Koven
European Representative
cc: Ambassador Abid Hussain, U.N. Human Rights Commission Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Opinion and Expression
Freimut Duve, OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media
Santiago Canton, OAS Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression
Andrew Puddephatt, Executive Director, the Article 19 organization, as convenor of the meeting of the three rapporteurs
Recommended Action
Similar appeals can be sent to:Mary Robinson
High Commissioner for Human Rights
United Nations
Palais des Nations
CH-1211 Geneva 10
Switzerland
Fax: +41 22 917 9016
E-mail: webadmin.hchr@unog.chPlease copy appeals to the source if possible.
