Global Media Watchdog Names Enemies of Internet

PARIS (AP) — The Arab Spring is changing the face of Internet freedom, according to Reporters Without Borders, which released its latest “Enemies of the Internet” list Monday. The annual report classifies as “enemies” countries that severely curtail freedom of expression on and access to the Web. It also draws up a list of states “under surveillance. The group added Bahrain to its enemies list, citing a news blackout and harassment of bloggers in an attempt to quell a yearlong Shiite-led rebellion against the Sunni monarchy. The country had previously been under surveillance.

“Bahrain offers a perfect example of successful crackdowns, with an information blackout achieved through an impressive arsenal of repressive measures: exclusion of the foreign media, harassment of human rights defenders, arrests of bloggers and netizens (one of whom died behind bars), prosecutions and defamation campaigns against free expression activists, disruption of communications,” the Paris-based group’s report said.

But the Arab Spring – the name given to a cascade of revolts across the Arab world – has also led to the opening up of some regimes. Libya, where the repressive rule of Moammar Gadhafi was thrown off in a violent revolt, was removed from the list of countries under surveillance.

“In Libya, many challenges remain but the overthrow of the Gadhafi regime has ended an era of censorship,” the report said.

The group said that the Arab Spring had also highlighted the importance of the Internet – and therefore the importance of protecting access to and expression on it.

“The Internet and social networks have been conclusively established as tools for protest, campaigning and circulating information, and as vehicles for freedom,” the group said. “More than ever before, online freedom of expression is now a major foreign and domestic policy issue.”

The enemies list contains countries that are well known for blocking Internet content, like China, Myanmar and North Korea. But the list of those under surveillance contains some surprises like Australia and France.

Reporters Without Borders criticized Australia for persuading Internet service providers to create a national content-filtering system, which blocks access to child pornography sites and others deemed inappropriate. The group is concerned that the government is still also pursuing a system of mandatory content-filtering whose criteria are “very broad.”

France landed on the surveillance list last year for a series of criminal indictments of journalists for stories they wrote. It remains on the list this year because of a law that could punish people who repeatedly illegally download content by cutting off their Internet access.

Source: Time

Art Exhibit Stirs Up the Ghosts of Zimbabwe’s Past

BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe — The exhibit at the National Gallery is now a crime scene, the artwork banned and the artist charged with insulting President Robert Mugabe. The picture windows that showcased graphic depictions of atrocities committed in the early years of Mr. Mugabe’s 30-year-long rule are now papered over with the yellowing pages of a state-controlled newspaper.

But the government’s efforts to bury history have instead provoked slumbering memories of the Gukurahundi, Zimbabwe’s name for the slaying and torture of thousands of civilians here in the Matabeleland region a quarter century ago. “You can suppress art exhibits, plays and books, but you cannot remove the Gukurahundi from people’s hearts,” said Pathisa Nyathi, a historian here. “It is indelible.”

As Zimbabwe heads anxiously toward another election season, a recent survey by Afrobarometer has found that 70 percent of Zimbabweans are afraid they will be victims of political violence or intimidation, as thousands were in the 2008 elections. But an equal proportion want the voting to go forward this year nonetheless, evidence of their deep desire for democracy and the willingness of many to vote against Mr. Mugabe at great personal risk, analysts say. In few places do such sentiments about violence in public life run as deep as here, and in recent months the government — whether through missteps or deliberate provocation — has rubbed them ever more raw.

Before the World Cup in South Africa in June, a minister in Mr. Mugabe’s party, ZANU-PF, invited the North Korean soccer team, on behalf of Zimbabwe’s tourism authority, to base itself in Bulawayo before the games began, a gesture that roused a ferocious outcry. After all, it was North Korea that trained and equipped the infamous Fifth Brigade, which historians estimate killed at least 10,000 civilians in the Ndebele minority between 1983 and 1987. “To us it opened very old wounds,” Thabitha Khumalo, a member of Parliament, said of the attempt to bring the North Korean team to the Ndebele heartland. “We’re being reminded of the most horrible pain. How dare they? Our loved ones are still buried in pit latrines, mine shafts and shallow graves.”

Ms. Khumalo, interviewed while the invitation was still pending last year, wept as she summoned memories of the day that destroyed her family — Feb. 12, 1983. She was 12 years old. She said soldiers from the Fifth Brigade, wearing jaunty red berets, came to her village and lined up her family. One soldier slit open her pregnant aunt’s belly with a bayonet and yanked out the baby. She said her grandmother was forced to pound the fetus to a pulp in a mortar and pestle. Her father was made to rape his mother. Her uncles were shot point blank.  Such searing memories stoked protests, and in the end the North Korean team did not come to Zimbabwe.

But feelings were further inflamed months later when the government erected a larger-than-life bronze statue of Joshua Nkomo — a liberation hero, an Ndebele and a rival to Mr. Mugabe — that, incredibly, was made in North Korea. Last September, bowing to public outcry over the statue’s origin (and protests from Mr. Nkomo’s family that its plinth was too small), the statue was removed from a major intersection in Bulawayo. It now stands neglected in a weedy lot behind the Natural History Museum here. Inside the museum hangs a portrait of a vigorous and dapper Mr. Mugabe in oversize glasses. He turns 87 next month. A massive stuffed crocodile, his family’s clan totem, dominates one gallery, its teeth long and sharp, its mouth agape. The signboard notes the crocodile’s lifespan exceeds 80 years.

Mr. Mugabe signed a pact with North Korea’s founder, Kim Il-sung, to train the infamous army brigade just months after Zimbabwe gained independence from white minority rule in 1980. Mr. Mugabe declared the brigade would be named “Gukurahundi” (pronounced guh-kura-HUN-di), which means “the rain that washes away the chaff before the spring rains.” He said it was needed to quell violent internal dissent, but historians say he used it to attack Mr. Nkomo’s political base and to impose one-party rule.

Mr. Mugabe’s press secretary, George Charamba, said the president had called the Gukurahundi “a moment of madness,” but asked whether Mr. Mugabe had apologized for the campaign, Mr. Charamba bristled. “You can’t call it a moment of madness without critiquing your own past,” he said. “I hope people are not looking to humiliate the president. I hope they’re just looking at allowing him to get by healing this nation. For us, that is uppermost. Our sense of embitterment, our sense of recompense may not be exactly what you saw at Nuremburg.”

Downtown Bulawayo has the sleepy rhythms of a farm town, but the psychic wounds of the Gukurahundi fester beneath its placid surface. At the National Gallery here, the stately staircase leading to the shuttered Gukurahundi exhibit is now blocked by a sign that says “No Entry.” But the paintings, on walls saturated with blood-red paint, can still be glimpsed from the gallery above, through the bars of balconies. The paintings themselves seem to be jailed.

Voti Thebe, who heads the National Gallery, said the artist, Owen Maseko, created the Gukurahundi exhibit to contribute to reconciliation. There was no money, so Mr. Maseko, 35, did it on his own time. He was just a boy at the time of the Gukurahundi, but he recalls the sounds of hovering helicopters and sirens. “The memories are still there,” he said. “The victims are still alive. It’s not something we can just forget.” In a large painting, a row of faces are shown with mouths open in wordless screams. In another, women and children weep what seem to be tears of blood. Three papier-mâché corpses, one hanging upside down, fill a picture window. Throughout the galleries are recurrent, menacing images of a man in oversize glasses — Mr. Mugabe.

The day after the exhibit opened last year, it was closed down. Mr. Maseko was detained, then transferred to prison in leg irons before being released on bail. Mr. Maseko’s case awaits the Supreme Court’s attention. He is charged with insulting the president and communicating falsehoods prejudicial to the state, a charge punishable by up to 20 years in prison.

David Coltart, a politician from Bulawayo who is arts minister in the power-sharing government of ZANU-PF and its political rivals, said he warned cabinet ministers that prosecuting Mr. Maseko could turn the case into a cause célèbre and inflame divisions. Mr. Coltart, who has long fought the Mugabe government, said he also appealed directly to Defense Minister Emmerson Mnangagwa, who was security minister during the Gukurahundi. “It is only when nations grapple with their past, in its reality, not as a biased fiction, that they can start to deal with that past,” Mr. Coltart said in a lecture delivered above Mr. Maseko’s show. He called the Gukurahundi “a politicide, if not a genocide.”

The Bulawayo playwright Cont Mhlanga knows the costs of free expression. His play “The Good President” was shut down on opening night here in 2007 when baton-wielding riot police officers stormed the theater. The lead character is a grandmother who lies to her two grandsons about the death of their father. He had been buried alive in the Gukurahundi. But the boys, ignorant of the truth, become beneficiaries of the Mugabe government, one of them an abusive policeman, the other a recipient of seized farmland. The play’s title refers, Mr. Mhlanga said, to African leaders who call Mr. Mugabe a good president, “this man who has blood on his hands.”

Mr. Mhlanga says he feels “like someone has put huge pieces of tape over my mouth,” but insists that artists must express what people are terrified of saying. “We live in a society where we’re so afraid, even of our own shadows,” he said. “To create democratic space in a society like ours, we have to deal with fear.”

Source: New York Times

Row Looms Over Closed Briefing On Dodgy Arms Sales

A confrontation is on the cards tomorrow if Parliament's defence committee proceeds with a "closed" meeting to discuss alleged "dodgy" arms deals approved by the National Conventional Arms Control Committee (NCACC). This follows the publication in parliamentary papers of a notice announcing that committee chairman Jeff Radebe , who is also justice minister, would brief the committee on arms sales behind closed doors. His attendance at the committee follows the publication last month by the Democratic Alliance (DA) of details of arms sales to repressive regimes.

The weekend press quoted African National Congress chairman of the defence committee Nyamezeli Booi as saying the decision to make the meeting closed was taken after consultation with committee members. DA defence spokesman David Maynier denied this, saying he was never canvassed on the issue. Maynier said the decision to let Radebe appear before the portfolio committee on defence and military veterans "in secret is a deliberate attempt to cover up the truth about dodgy arms deals with some of the most repressive regimes in the world. The public have a right to know how it was that we sold, attempted to sell or demonstrated and exhibited conventional arms in states such as Iran, Libya, Syria, North Korea and Zimbabwe, despite legislation aimed at ensuring that we do not trade in conventional arms with states engaged in repression, aggression and terrorism. The NCACC should therefore be held to account in an open and transparent meeting by members of the portfolio committee on defence and military veterans."

Support for the DA's position came independently from the Institute for Democracy (Idasa).The head of Idasa's political monitoring service, Judith February, wrote to Booi, pointing out that the constitution required the National Assembly to facilitate public involvement in the legislative and other processes of Parliament, and hold sittings of committees in public. The public and media could be excluded only when reasonable and justifiable. February noted that the NCACC was required by law to report quarterly to Parliament and to the public on the types of weapons sold and to whom, and, asked Booi, why it had been decided to close the meeting. She copied the letter to National Assembly speaker Max Sisulu.

Maynier said he too had written to Booi, asking who had decided that the meeting should be closed. "The facts about the trade in conventional arms and the dodgy arms deals must not be swept under the parliamentary carpet."

Source: All Africa

The Enigma of South Africa’s Arms Trade

On Sunday, 2 August, the defence and veterans’ affairs spokesperson of the Democratic Alliance (DA), held a media conference in Cape Town in which he suggested that South Africa’s arms export control regime was in a state of crisis. He also accused the South African government of approving and/or considering the approval of permits to export arms and military equipment to “dodgy” destinations. Iran, Libya, North Korea, Syria, Venezuela and Zimbabwe were mentioned during the DA media conference.

Ironically, South Africa has one of the most advanced and progressive arms export laws and processes in Africa, cornerstones of which, on paper at least, are transparency and human rights considerations. The National Conventional Arms Control Act (as amended) requires the South African government to publish annual reports on its arms exports, and to take human rights considerations of the recipient government (amongst other criteria) into account before approving arms exports. However, in recent years, the South African government appears to have not consistently adhered to these two principles. The reasons for this state of affairs remains a mystery.

As there is no treaty or convention to govern the international arms trade, this sector is primarily regulated by means of national controls and trust. In terms of the latter, the established practice is that exporting governments require importing governments to sign an end-user certificate indicating that they will not re-sell or re-export the arms or military equipment. Evidence suggests that the South African government has approved the export of arms and military equipment to Venezuela and is considering the approval of arms exports to Zimbabwe. Both countries have been implicated in inconsistently adhering to end-user certificates and re-exporting arms to controversial destinations. In addition, Zimbabwe is subject to EU and US arms embargos.

Should South Africa be selling arms to countries that cannot be trusted?

Source: Institute of Security Studies

N. Korea: No longer bound by 1953 truce

North Korea threatened military action Wednesday after South Korea joined a U.S.-led effort to limit the trafficking of weapons of mass destruction, the official Korean Central News Agency said.

South Korea said Monday that it was joining the 6-year-old Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) because of "the grave threat WMD and missile proliferation is posing to global peace," said Foreign Ministry spokesman Moon Tae-young.

The effort is aimed at halting shipments of weapons technology, a rare source of hard currency for North Korea, but Moon said the south would continue to uphold a shipping agreement with the North. "Our revolutionary armed forces ... will regard" South Korea's participation "in the PSI as a declaration of war ..." the North's official news agency said.

Pyongyang also announced it was no longer bound by the 1953 armistice that ended the Korean War. "The Korean Peninsula is bound to immediately return to a state of war from a legal point of view, and so our revolutionary armed forces will go over to corresponding military actions," North Korea said through its news agency.

Since its April rocket launch, Pyongyang has considered almost any opposition a "declaration of war," including U.N. Security Council sanctions and participation in the Proliferation Security Initiative.

Source: CNN

Chinese resolutely oppose DPRK's nuclear test

China was resolutely opposed to the nuclear test by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), the Foreign Ministry said here in a statement Monday.

According to a report by the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), the DPRK announced it successfully conducted an underground nuclear test on Monday. "The DPRK ignored universal opposition of the international community and once more conducted the nuclear test. The Chinese government is resolutely opposed to it," the statement said. It has been the firm and consistent stance of the Chinese government to achieve non-nuclearization on the Korean Peninsula and oppose proliferation of nuclear weapons in an effort to maintain peace and stability in northeast Asia, the statement stressed.

The statement voiced a strong demand that the DPRK live up to its commitment to non-nuclearization on the Korean Peninsula, stop any activity that might worsen the situation and return to the track of the six-party talks.

According to a statement released by the KCNA, the DPRK government said the test was "part of [its] measures to bolster its nuclear deterrent for self-defense in every way, as requested by its scientists and technicians."

Source: China View

North Korea Rocket Launch on Track

Determined to demonstrate its latest missile technology both to its adversaries and perhaps to potential buyers in the Middle East, North Korea pressed ahead with final preparations on Friday to launch a multistage rocket.

North Korea is banned from ballistic missile tests under two United Nations Security Council resolutions, which were adopted in 2006 after it launched a ballistic missile and conducted its first nuclear test.

Prime Minister Taro Aso of Japan told China’s president, Hu Jintao, during the Group of 20 summit meeting that if the launching went ahead, there should be a new United Nations resolution, the Yomiuri newspaper reported. Mr. Hu showed “some understanding” but did not made a clear commitment, the newspaper said.

For the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il, who reportedly suffered a stroke in August, a successful launching would demonstrate his country’s mastery of crucial missile technologies.

Source: New York Times