By Johan Galtung
KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 20 2015 (IPS)

What happened in Paris on Jan. 7 – known all over the world – is totally unacceptable and inexcusable.

As inexcusable as 9/11, the coming Western attack and the Islamist retaliation, wherever. As inexcusable as the Western coups and mega-violence on Muslim lands since Iran 1953, massacring people as endowed with personality and identity as the French cartoonists.

But to the West they are not even statistics, they are “military secrets”.

However, the unacceptable is not unexplainable.

Johan Galtung

In this tragic saga of West-Islam violence, the way out is to identify the conflict and search for solutions. I wonder how many now pontificating on Paris – a city so deep in our hearts – have taken the trouble to sit down with someone identified with Al Qaeda, and simply ask: “What does the world look like where you would like to live?”

I always get the same answer: “A world where Islam is not trampled upon but respected.”

“Trampled upon” sounds physically violent – but there are two types of direct violence intended to harm, to hurt: physical violence with arm-arms-armies; and verbal violence with words, with symbols, with, for example, cartoons.

The naiveté in blaming the secret police for not having uncovered the brothers on time is crying to the heavens. What happened to Charlie Hebdo was as predictable as the reaction to the 2005 cartoon in Jyllands-Posten, whose cultural editor thought he should save Danish media from the self-censorship he had found in Soviet journalists.

But one thing is political criticism of and in the former USSR, quite another is existential stabbing right in the heart of the basis of existence.“There are two types of direct violence intended to harm, to hurt: physical violence with arm-arms-armies; and verbal violence with words, with symbols, with, for example, cartoons”

Undermine the spiritual existence of others – as Charlie Hebdo did all over the spiritual world – but there may be reactions to that verbal violence. Some of the others deeply hurt by Charlie Hebdo and its cultural autism, sitting in some office and sending poisoned arrows anywhere, may celebrate the atrocity – but inside themselves, not publicly.

The West has one presumably killing argument in favour of verbal violence for spiritual killing: freedom of expression – a wonderful freedom, deeply appreciated by those who have something to express.

And very easily undermined, not by censorship by self or some Other, but by freedom of non-impression, the freedom not to be impressed: let expression happen, let them talk and write, but do not listen and read, make them non-persons. Nevertheless, a major achievement of, by and for the West more than elsewhere.

How simple life would be if that freedom were the only norm governing expression! Say or write anything about others as if they were stones, inanimate objects, unimpressed by oral and written expression. But human beings are not.

Of course, the targets of verbal violence can opt for the freedom of non-impression, shutting themselves off from the perpetrators, neither reading nor listening. Do we really want that, a
society now polarised by cartoons – into those who laugh and enjoy, and those who are hurt, suffering deeply?

We do not, and that is why there are others value, other norms, in the land of expression: consideration, decency, respect for life. We have libel laws asking not only “is it true?” but “is it relevant?” to cut out nastiness in, for example, political “debate”.

We rule out hate speech, propaganda for torture, genocide, war, child pornography. Some people unable to argue about issues insult persons instead; that is why they are often – perhaps not often enough – called to order: stick to the issue!

Many, unable to understand or argue with converts to Islam in France, overstep norms of decency instead.

Islam retaliated, and in Paris overstepped its own rule about doing so mercifully. No Muslim can retaliate with spiritual killing of Judaism-Christianity because both are believed to be the “incomplete message”. Bodies were killed in return for spiritual killing instead.

Incidentally, there is somebody else doing the same: the United States, very attentive to critical words as indicative not only of somebody being anti-American, but even a threat to America, to be eliminated. Could “freedom of expression” also be a tool to lure, smoke them out into the open, make them available for killing by snipers?

How should the Islamic side have handled the issue? The way they tried, and to some extent managed, in Denmark: through dialogue. They should have invited the Charlies to private and public dialogue, explaining their side of the cartoon issue, appealing to a common core of humanity in us all.

There is no argument against humour and satire as such, but there is against verbal violence hitting, hurting, harming others.

The Islamic side should also control better its own recourse to self-defence by violence: only legitimate if declared by appropriate Muslim authority. That the West fails to do so – just look at the enormities of violence unleashed upon Islam since 1953 – is no excuse for Islam to sink down to Western governmental levels, using democracy as a blanket cheque for war.

The two sides have millions, maybe billions, of common people who can easily agree that the key problem is violence by extremist governments and others. The task is to let such voices come forward with concrete ideas. Like the next Charlie online, hiring a Muslim consultant to draw a border between freedom and inconsideration?

This could have saved many lives, in Paris and where the West retaliates. (END/IPS COLUMNIST SERVICE)

Edited by Phil Harris   

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

Excerpt:

Cartoon by Ann Telnaes in The New York Times.

By A. D. McKenzie
PARIS, Dec 23 2013 (IPS)

A woman and her husband are seated at a table. As she talks, he seems to be ignoring her, his head hidden behind a newspaper.

“At least Obama is listening to me,” she says.

This is just one satirical reference to the ongoing international surveillance scandal, in a book published earlier this month by the French-based group Reporters Without Borders, which works to protect freedom of expression and of information.

Titled ‘100 Cartoons by Cartooning for Peace for Press Freedom’, the book aims to raise awareness of the many assaults on freedom of expression that have taken place over the past year. It contains cartoons by more than 50 cartoonists from all over the world who have produced some laugh-out-loud work, even when one is aware that the subject isn’t fundamentally funny.

The book looks at freedom of speech, American surveillance tactics, and the state of the world. The section subtitled ‘Spying on the World’ contains some of the most satirical cartoons, but some drawings may offend individual readers.

One troubling aspect of the book, for instance, is the way certain cartoonists tend to depict characters of African origin, whether they are presidents or the poor. Some of the usual stereotypical representations can be found here in a few instances, and they smack of insensitivity, even for readers who try not to be like the person who says in one cartoon: “I’m all for free speech … unless I find it personally offensive.”“We can’t talk about political correctness and say cartoonists must draw certain groups only in a certain way."

Nicolas Vadot, a Belgium-based cartoonist featured in the book, told IPS that the cartoons involved reflect the style of the individual cartoonist, who draws everyone as “ugly”.

“We can’t talk about political correctness and say cartoonists must draw certain groups only in a certain way,” Vadot says. “You’ll find someone offended by anything.”

Patrick Chapatte, a popular cartoonist whose work appears in international newspapers, said in an interview published in the book that “it’s all a question of temperament.

“Some cartoonists will do anything for a laugh and to try to stretch the limits. I just try to get it right. To know how to be provocative when necessary and to be serious when necessary,” he said.

His understated humour and unfussy drawings make for incisive commentary in the book, as when he shows a commuter in a packed train screeching on his cell phone: “Outrageous! The government is listening to all our conversations!”

For former United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan, “cartoonists must provoke discussion with sensitivity for the considerations and feelings of others.” But even when they try to do this, cartoons can still offend.

“It may even be required of them,” Annan says in a foreword to the book. “But we cannot forget that the freedom to communicate through images is an important right which must be defended and upheld.

“In no context is this more important than when cartoonists use their images to resist oppression, hold leaders to account, and speak truth to power on behalf of those with no voice,” he adds.

Annan and the renowned French cartoonist Plantu founded Cartooning For Peace in 2006 in the wake of protests and riots around the world sparked by the controversial Danish cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad. The organisation now comprises more than 100 cartoonists representing 40 nationalities and all the world’s major religions.

The initiative was meant to highlight the notion that cartoonists’ influence comes with a “responsibility to encourage debate rather than inflame passions, to educate rather than divide,” Annan says.

The new book, a joint project between Reporters Without Borders and Cartooning for Peace, is a “reminder of the challenges that reporters continue to face in many parts of the world, and also of the importance” of organisations such as Reporters Without Borders that work to safeguard freedom of information and to protect and support journalists, Annan says.

If anyone doubted the importance of such efforts, a recent report makes for sobering reflection. Reporters Without Borders says that in 2013, 71 journalists were killed in connection with their work, and 87 were kidnapped.

The number of deaths was lower than in 2012, but abductions are a 129 percent rise from last year. Reporters Without Borders says that “Syria, Somalia and Pakistan retained their position among the world’s five deadliest countries for the media.”

The organisation added that “threats and violence forced a growing number of journalists to flee abroad,” while at least 178 journalists are in prison right now.

Cartoonists themselves have been the victims of harassment and even physical harm in a number of countries. The book profiles Syrian cartoonist Ali Ferzat, a critic of President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, who in 2011 was abducted and tortured by assailants. They also broke his left hand – the one he uses to draw. Cartooning for Peace managed to get him out of the country and he now lives in Kuwait, where he still gets threats through the Internet, he says.

Against this backdrop, the drawings in ‘100 cartoons’ take on an added dimension. This is the first time that Reporters Without Borders has brought out a book of cartoons instead of photographs since it began publishing its press freedom books in 1992. The group says that the proceeds from the sales will be used to help fund Reporters Without Borders’ activities in the field in support of journalists and bloggers.