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WORLD PRESS FREEDOM DAY-US: A Chill in the Air

Felipe Seligman

UNITED NATIONS, May 2 2006 (IPS) - As the world reflects on the best and worst places to practice journalism on Press Freedom Day Wednesday, independent writers’ groups and civil liberties advocates warn that Washington’s “war on terror” is putting a growing chill on the basic democratic right of free expression.

As the world reflects on the best and worst places to practice journalism on Press Freedom Day Wednesday, independent writers’ groups and civil liberties advocates warn that Washington’s “war on terror” is putting a growing chill on the basic democratic right of free expression.

“Thanks in large part to the Patriot Act, our government is once again excluding foreign writers and scholars from the country simply because of their political beliefs,” said Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)..

Romero was speaking at an event last week in New York titled “An Evening Without…”, organised with PEN’s American Centre, the oldest group in the world dedicated to defending free expression and fighting censorship.

Intended to highlight the problem of ideological exclusion, it featured famous authors and actors reading from the works of writers and scholars who have been banned from the United States because of their political opinions.

These included writers who were excluded during the Cold War, such as Colombian novelist and Nobel laureate Gabriel García Márquez, Italian playwright and Nobel laureate Dario Fo, Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, English writer Graham Greene, Chilean poet and Nobel laureate Pablo Neruda, and Mexican author Carlos Fuentes.

“Events like these help raise public awareness both of what is going on now and how these current struggles relate to similar struggles in the past,” Larry Siems, director of PEN’s Freedom to Write programme, told IPS.

“The U.S. has a history of excluding those whose political beliefs are deemed unacceptable. We believe this has been done to try to limit the scope of criticism and debate of controversial policies and issues,” he said.

One recent example is Tariq Ramadan, a Swiss native and visiting fellow at St. Antony’s College at Oxford University in England. Ramadan is considered a leading scholar of the Muslim world, who has published 20 books, more than 700 articles and approximately 170 audio tapes on Muslim issues.

Some of Ramadan’s most recent lectures include a discussion on “Why Islam Needs a Feminist Movement” and “Muslim Democrats in the West and Democratisation in the Muslim World: Prospects for Engagement”.

Named one of the most influential people of the 21st century by Time magazine, Ramadan is strongly opposed to all forms of terrorism. He deplored the 9/11 attacks, saying to Muslims “now more than ever we need to criticise some of our brothers… You are unjustified if you use the Koran to justify murder.”

In the beginning of 2004, the professor was offered a tenured position as the Henry R. Luce Professor of Religion, Conflict and Peacebuilding at the University of Notre Dame’s Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies in the U.S. state of Indiana.

Ramadan was granted a special non-immigrant visa in May 2004. However, in July, only nine days before he and his family were to move to Indiana, he was informed by the U.S. embassy in Switzerland that his visa had been revoked.

The reason emerged a month later. Russ Knocke, a spokesman for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement division of the Department of Homeland Security, cited the ideological exclusion provision as the basis for the revocation.

“We believe that Section 411 of the Patriot Act and subsequent laws threaten free expression because they can be used to exclude foreigners from the United States on the basis of their opinions and speech rather than on their actions,” Siems told IPS.

The USA Patriot Act was hurriedly enacted by Congress, at the behest of the George W. Bush administration, shortly after the Sep. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. It gave federal law enforcement agencies sweeping new surveillance and detention powers.

“We have launched a major advocacy campaign focusing exactly on the impact of post-9/11 laws and policies on freedom of expression,” Siems said.

Called the Campaign for Core Freedoms, it calls on U.S. lawmakers to protect the personal privacy necessary for the free exploration of information and ideas; protect public access to both governmental information and a full range of voices from the United States and around the world; and promote U.S. policies that reflect a core commitment to individual rights, preserve these rights at home, and expand them internationally.

Ramadan’s is not an isolated case. Recently, Fernando Rodriguez, a Bolivian human rights lawyer, and Dora Maria Telles, a scholar and Former Nicaraguan health minister, had their visas denied based on the Patriot Act’s terrorism provision.

Undeniably, the press in the United States enjoys more democratic freedoms than many other countries. A new report by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) released at U.N. headquarters Wednesday listed the 10 most censored countries in the world. North Korea topped the list, followed by Burma, Turkmenistan, Equatorial Guinea, Libya, Eritrea, Cuba, Uzbekistan, Syria and Belarus.

“People in these countries are virtually isolated from the rest of the world by authoritarian rules which muzzle the media and keep a chokehold on information trough restrictive laws, fear, and intimidation,” said CPJ Executive Director Ann Cooper. “Journalism should not be a criminal act,” she added.

However, as Siems notes, “many of the countries that act similarly are ones that the United States would not normally want to emulate in questions of freedom of expression and human rights”.

The administration has also been criticised for attempts to compel reporters to reveal their confidential sources in the name of national security. In its 2005 press freedom index, Reporters Without Borders noted that “the United States (44th) fell more than 20 places, mainly because of the imprisonment of New York Times reporter Judith Miller and legal moves undermining the privacy of journalistic sources.”

After the revocation of his visa, Ramadan sent a message to Muslims around the world: “Know who you are, who you want to be, and start talking and working with whom you are not. Find common values and build with your fellow citizens a society based on diversity and equality.”

“Western Muslims can make a critical difference in the Muslim majority world. However, that can only happen if their governments and other citizens do not cast doubt on their loyalty every time they criticise government policies.”

“Is this a threatening contribution? Is it not a needed and urgent message in America in the post-Sep. 11 world?” the professor concluded.