Singapore in company with Rwanda and Cambodia

I just read this post on www.pressrun.net which described how Singapore’s Home Affairs Minister and Law Minister K Shanmugam, speaking at Columbia University, said that the Singapore media is more trusted by Singaporeans than the US media is by Americans.

He mentioned this in response to the 2010 Press Freedom Index by Reporters without Borders which ranked Singapore 136th out of 178 countries.

If you look at the Gallup Poll , the one quoted by Mr Shanmugam, Singapore is in good company. Other top-ranking countries whose people believe the media include Rwanda (86% of the people trusts the media - or so they said and/or so it was reported), Philippines (75%), Cambodia (72%), Niger (72%), Botswana and Tanzania (69%, the same as Singapore). Who wouldn't want to be in this elite group?

Cambodia: Trade Union leaders at risk

Please support Amnesty International's call for action for safety for Cambodia's trade unionists (you can click here to send the email via Amnesty UK:

"Dear Sirs

I am writing to express my concern for the safety of several union leaders and activists, including Ath Thorn, Morn Nhim and Tola Moeun, who face possible arrest and legal action as a result of their legitimate work in protecting workers rights in Cambodia.

I call on the authorities to ensure that union leaders, activists and strikers are not subject to harassment, intimidation or threat of arrest and legal action for exercising their right to freedom of expression, association and peaceful assembly.

I call on the authorities to guarantee the rights of all human rights defenders, including union members and activists, in accordance with international human rights treaties.

In particular, I remind you of Cambodia’s obligations under the International Labour Organisation core conventions 87 and 98, which Cambodia ratified in 1999, which guarantees the right to strike, to organise and to collectively bargain.

I would appreciate a response to my appeal.

Please select a recipient(s)

Sar Kheng - Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Interior
Ministry of Interior
No 75 Norodom Blvd
Khan Chamkamon, Phnom Penh
Kingdom of Cambodia
Fax: 00855 23 212 708 / 00855 23 726 052

Ith Sam Heng - Minister of Social Affairs, Labour, Vocational Training and Youth Rehabilitation
No 788B Preah Monivong Blvd Phnom Penh, Cambodia
Fax: 00855 23 726 086

His Excellency Mr. Nambora Hor - Ambassador
The Royal Embassy of Cambodia,
64 Brondesbury Park,
Willesden Green,
London

NW6 7AT
Fax: 020 8451 7594

Reporters without Borders' open letter to Singapore Prime Minister

People do not believe me when I tell them "first world" Singapore ranks lower than third world Cambodia in the Press Freedom Index, an annual ranking of countries compiled and published by Reporters without Borders. For 2009, Cambodia ranks 117 and Singapore, 133. It is an improvement for both countries from 2008's ranking, when Cambodia was 126 and Singapore, 144, out of 175 countries. In my blog post last year, I tried to explain Singapore's repression is more subtle than Cambodia's, but no less effective. Unlike Cambodia, you don't get shot in broad daylight in Singapore for expressing dissenting views in the media. Rather, it is the fear of lawsuits and losing lots of money (possibly even made bankrupt in the case of Singaporeans) that silences foreign media and local critics.

Anyway, following is the letter from RSF which explains the state of press freedom in Singapore (original is here).

Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong
Prime Minister’s Office
Orchard Road
Istana
Singapore 238823

Paris, 25 March 2010

Dear Prime Minister,

A foreign news organisation has yet again been forced to apologise to you and your father and pay you a large sum of money for publishing an article you did not like. This time it is the New York Times Co. that is a victim of this double punishment because of a compliant judicial system that always rules in favour of you and your family in all the lawsuits you bring against foreign news media.

Before the New York Times Co., you succeeded in punishing the Far Eastern Economic Review (FEER), FinanceAsia.com, The Economist, International Herald Tribune and Asian Wall Street Journal for their coverage of the political and economic situation in your country.

Threatened by a trial, the New York Times Co. apologised to you and your father, Lee Kuan Yew, for the article “All in the Family,” written by Philip Bowring and published in the 15 February issue of the International Herald Tribune. As well as an apology, this US media company had to pay 114,000 US dollars in damages.

Your lawyer, Davinder Singh, said Bowring’s article violated an “agreement” between your family and the International Herald Tribune, which was sentenced in 1994 to pay a large sum in damages for an article entitled “The claims about Asian values don’t usually bear scrutiny.”

The now defunct Far Eastern Economic Review agreed last November, after a long legal wrangle, to pay you and your father 290,000 US dollars in damages. Despite a lack of evidence, Singaporean judges ruled in favour of your family both in the original trial and on appeal without a thought for media freedom.

Reporters Without Borders condemns the judicial harassment which you and your father have practiced for years in order to prevent foreign news media from taking too close an interest in how you run your country. It does serious and lasting harm to press freedom in Singapore.

Your government has repeatedly displayed a disturbing inability to tolerate foreign journalists. Last October, for example, Benjamin Bland, a British freelancer who strings for The Economist and The Daily Telegraph, was denied a visa and permission to cover an APEC summit in Singapore. “I was forced to leave Singapore after the government refused to renew my work visa without any explanation,” Bland told Reporters Without Borders.

But the censorship has above all affected local media and local artistic production. In October 2009, for example, the ministry of information, communication and arts upheld a ban on a documentary by Singaporean filmmaker Martyn See about government opponent Said Zahari.

In response to the publication of the Reporters Without Borders 2009 press freedom index, in which Singapore was ranked 133rd out of 175 countries, your law minister, K. Shanmugam, described it as “absurd” and “disconnected from reality.”

Unfortunately, the facts show that we are right.

In the six years since you became prime minister and said you favoured an “open” society, we have seen very few improvements in the situation of free speech.

We therefore think your government should take the following measures as a matter of urgency:

1. Put a stop to the libel actions which you and your relatives have been bringing against Singaporean and foreign media that cover Singaporean developments in an independent manner. As the UN special rapporteur for freedom of expression recently said, the prime minister, his minister and high officials must refrain from suing journalists over their articles and comments.

2. Amend the criminal code so as to abolish prison sentences for press offences.

3. Amend the press law, especially the articles concerning the granting of publication licences. The current restrictions are preventing the emergence of independent media. The film law should also be relaxed.

4. Reform the national security law so as to abolish administrative detention, which allows the authorities to imprison people because of what they think.

5. Reform the Media Development Authority so that it is no longer able to censor and can solely make recommendations about TV programmes and films.

6. Allow government opponents and civil society representatives unrestricted access to the public media.

7. Guarantee the editorial independence of all the media owned by Singapore Press Holdings (SPH) and Media Corporation of Singapore (Mediacorp).

8. Transfer the money that your family has obtained in damages from foreign and Singaporean news media to a support fund for imprisoned journalists that Reporters Without Borders proposes to set up.

We regret that you, the members of your government and your father keep citing the need to guarantee Singapore’s stability as grounds for controlling the media and maintaining its draconian laws. Countries that show the most respect for press freedom, such as Finland and Norway, are peaceful and prosperous democracies. Freedom of expression is not a source of political unrest. Quite the contrary.

You have perpetuated your father’s legacy by continuing to harass and intimidate news media. As a result, aside from a few websites specialising in Singapore, no news outlet can publish independent news and information about issues affecting the political situation in your country.

We would be very honoured to be able to meet with you in order to talk about our observations and our proposals for guaranteeing press freedom in Singapore in person.

Respectfully,
Jean-François Julliard
Secretary-General

Interrogating a Torturer

I just watched this powerful documentary on Al Jazeera. "Interrogating a Torturer" follows Uruguayan journalist, Gerardo Brusezzi, who was tortured almost 30 years ago in Argentina. He returns to the country to confront one of his torturers in a filmed meeting. He meets Julio Simon, the first torturer to be convicted for crimes against humanity in Argentina. I found this interesting also in light of Cambodia's Khmer Rouge trial.

For 27 years Brusezzi nurtured a fantasy of what he would do to his torturers, who pissed and spat in the drinking water given to prisoners, who raped the men with sticks and who practised karate on them. Brusezzi learnt karate and lifted weights in preparation of doing to his torturers what they did to him before killing the men. Upon meeting Simon, Brsezzi realised that vengeance was not what he was after - that it would not solve anything. Just like the Count of Monte Cristo.

"It's confronting those who tried to destroy me physically and psychologically," said Brusezzi. "And my only intention is to show you that you didn't destroy me, that you made me stronger."

This is the background to these two men's tragic stories:

In March 1976, a military junta headed by General Rafael Videla overthrew Argentina's democratically elected government and launched a campaign of terror against all who opposed the coup. In the following seven years, Argentina's "dirty war" saw 15,000 people executed and 30,000 'disappeared'. Two-hundred and fifty concentration camps - where so-called 'terrorists' were routinely and systematically tortured while being interrogated - were set up throughout the country. Read more and watch the full video on Al Jazeera's People and Power.

Labour Start: where trade unionists start their day on the Net

Photo from The Hankyoreh showing a Korean woman holding a copy of a 1,000 Won note to campaign for an 1,000 Won (80 cents US) increase in the minimum wage in Seoul.

I am one of 60,000 email subscribers of LabourStart.org because I support trade unions, also known as labour unions, in principle. (There are practical issues with unions of course and I will go into that later).

LabourStart.org is a great resource for people interested in workers' rights. Below are some of the articles for Cambodia 2009:

- Retrial in unionist's killing set for Aug 17 2009-08-11 [The Phnom Penh Post]
- Angry Workers: Drawn-out fight over Naga hotel layoffs 2009-07-29 [The Post]
- Garment employees back on the job as protests end 2009-07-19 [The Phonm Penh Post]
- Xing Tai garment workers protest factory conditions 2009-07-16 [The Phnom Penh Post]
- Govt rejects union data on jobless workers 2009-07-14 [Phnom Penh Post]
- Parliament OKs deal to send migrant labourers to Kuwait 2009-07-14 [Phnom Penh Post]
- 600 workers at Camko City protest over pay 2009-05-14 [The Post]
- Did the ILO really help Cambodia's garment industry? 2009-03-30 [CSR Asia]
- Union critical of Gov't silence on payouts to gambling industry 2009-03-26 [The Phnom Penh Post]
- Teachers Union says PM's claims about pay increases dubious 2009-03-24 [Phnom Penh Post]

A trade union is simply an organization of workers who group together to achieve common goals, usually better pay and working conditions. The union representatives negotiate terms with company owners which are binding on members. You can see how trade unions have an important role to play especially in countries with weak labour laws to protect citizens. If you think about it, if the law is not on their side, strength in numbers and collective action is often the only way many workers can demand fair treatment from their factory owners, if these owners are exploitative, as many are.

But this is also why corporations have always sought to limit the existence of labour unions (and tolerate them if they can't get rid of them). This is also why many governments have sought to eradicate labour unions, in the pursuit of making their country's labour cheaper and thus more competitive.

History is full of examples of brave men and women who try to demand justice, in the form of fairer pay and working conditions, for their fellow workers. Cambodian trade union leader Chea Vichea who was murdered in 2004 in broad daylight is the most famous of these brave Cambodians.

I remember watching a documentary a long time ago on the incredibly brave and tenacious South Korean women labour activists who were beaten, had feaces thrown at them etc.

In one incident

"In August 1979, 200 young women employees of the Y.H. Textile and Wig factory staged a peaceful vigil and fast to protest the company's closure of their plant. On the fifth day of the vigil, more than 1,000 riot police, armed with clubs and steel shields, broke into the building and forcibly dragged the women out. One 21-year-old worker was killed during the incident. It was her death that touched off widespread rioting throughout South Korea and crystallized the opposition that eventually forced President Park Chung Hee out."

Source: "Women in the Fray"

The struggles of the women activist have been documented as facilitating (1) the rise of the opposition consciousness, (2) the growth of radical ideology, (3) the mobilization and consolidation of opposition groups, and (4) the expansion of the concept of human rights and democracy.

These mainly blue-collared women protestors transformed how labour issues are viewed in South Korea: now as political problems to be taken seriously by the government. Some of these women also became labour full-time activists. They laid the foundation for the waves of protests in June 1987 in South Korea, when white-collared workers such as journalists and teachers demanded democracy. The nationwide protests put an end to the tyrannical rule of Chun Du-hwan's regime and opened a new chapter in South Korea's contemporary history.

So you can see, if true to its cause or raison d'être (reason for being), trade unions can be a very powerful tool for democracy.

But trade unions can also be subverted for personal gain. I had the opportunity to speak with a senior member of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) in Phnom Penh who explained to me that things are not always what they seem. In garment factories in Cambodia, for example, there are fake labour unions that are really mafia gangs who try to extort money from company owners.

Some men (it's always the men; i think because women don't have the courage. I think this is one of the reasons why many factories choose not to employ men, seeing them as potential trouble-makers) see a trade union achieve small wins in the factory and decide to form their own gang. Of course this undermines the real trade union and now, there is internal fighting as well as the fight with the company owners. At stake is money.

There is much to say about trade unions, and I'll have to pick up on the topic another day.

I had only wanted to tell readers about Labour Start and the contest for the Labour Photo of the Year but as usual I get distracted. So far, 97 photos have been submitted. (You can see them on Flickr) and the deadline is 1 Oct. You can send any questions about this competition to Derek Blackadder - canada@labourstart.org

Americans more tolerant of torture than the Chinese

Chart from The Economist. This is very interesting. Democracies are not necessarily against torture compared with non-democratic nation-states.

The US, for instance, is more tolerant of the use of torture, compared with Indonesia, Egypt, Poland and China. Most against the use of torture are the Western European democracies such as Britain, France and Spain.

Namibia disappears for the Chinese

See what you can do when you are head of a country, even if that country has more than a billion people?

From opennet.net:

According to the Chinese government, Namibia — a southern African country with a population of 2 million — does not exist.

Government censors ordered Chinese search engines to show no search results for the country's name this week, following a corruption scandal involving a Chinese tech company's dealings with Namibia's government.

The company, Nutech, was formerly run by the son of Chinese president Hu Jintao. It is under two separate investigations by Namibian and European Union officials for allegedly using illegal methods, including bribery and unfair trade practices, to secure a USD55.3 million contract to sell cargo scanners to the Namibian government.

Though Jintao's son is not a suspect in the case, government censors have reacted swiftly to the investigation, shutting down two Chinese tech news sites and blocking a list of keywords including "Hu Haifeng, Namibia, Namibia bribery investigation, Yang Fan bribery investigation, Nuctech bribery investigation, [and] southern Africa bribery investigation." Searching for these words on Chinese search engine Baidu.com produces an error message [ZH] that can be translated as, "Search results may not be in line with the relevant laws and regulations and policies, not shown."

The past two months have been busy ones for Chinese censors. In early June the government blocked access to Twitter, Hotmail and Flickr in preparation for the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. Less than a week later, the news broke that the government would begin requiring all PCs sold in the country to come equipped with Internet filtering software. And in July, Internet access was completely shut down in the capital of the Xinjiang region after ethnic riots that left nearly 200 people dead.

My Heroes: The Yes Men

I've been following The Yes Men for a few years now, ever since I saw the 2003 movie "The Yes Men". If you view my Blogger profile you will see a link to their site and I just added their link to this blog. If you haven't already checked them out, do so now on theyesmen.org.

Basically the Yes Men--Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno--pose as top executives of corporations in order to draw attention to these exploitative companies. Incredibly, the imposters have managed to fool many people, and have gotten spots on BBC, CNBC and others, to speak on behalf of the companies they are really slamming.

In one instance, posing as Dow Chemical representatives, the Yes Men claimed Dow will liquidate Union Carbide and use the resulting USD12 billion to pay for medical care for victims of the Bhopal disaster and clean up the site, as well as fund research into the hazards of other Dow products. After two hours of wide coverage, Dow issued a press release denying the statement, ensuring even greater coverage of the phony news of a cleanup. By the time the original story was discredited, Dow's stock had declined in value by $2 billion [!].

The Yes Men also use reductio ad absurdum or reduction to the absurd, leading to outrageous conclusions, such as the poor should eat recycled human waste or be turned into candles after death. The amazing thing when watching their presentations, often to men and women in suits, is how long it takes for people realise its all a hoax.

The Yes Men are hilarious. I wish I could do satire as well as these guys.

Anyway, my heroes were featured in Al Jazeera's The Fabulous Picture show this week:

Natalia Estemirova

I feel I have to write about Natalia Estemirova, Chechnya's voice of conscience, because I do not want her death to be in vain and this is all I can do. I would also like Cambodians to take courage in the fact that there are people everywhere who are trying to do their bit (some more than their bit) for justice.

[Some background on Chechnya: When the Soviet Union broke up in 1991, Chechnya tried to gain independence from Russia. There are four phases to date: the "Chechen revolution" and Dzhokhar Dudaev's rule (1991-1994); the first Chechen war (1994-1996); Chechenya's quasi-independence (1996-1999); and finally the second Chechen war that began in 1999 and continues until now. Despite the fact that the Kremlin has taken certain measures to put an end to the conflict in the republic, the war is growing increasingly violent.]

On 15 July, Natalia Estemirova was was dragged into an unmarked white Lada, screaming vainly for help, as she walked out of her house. She was later found with a bruised face and four bullet holes, two in the chest and two in the head.

Ever since 2000, amidst the second Chechen war, the single mother has worked for the Russian human rights group Memorial. She worked tirelessly to uncover the brutal repression of Chechens under Ramzan Kadyrov, the region's thuggish young president. Kadyrov is the son of Chechnya's former leader, who was handpicked by the Kremlim.

She was such a force to be reckoned with, at one time, the Chechen president offered Estemirova a position as the head of a civil society advisory commission for the city of Grozny. She accepted but did not stop speaking out for her people, and did not stop writing reports for Memorial either. She wrote reports documenting about 50 abducted civilians this year, which many locals blamed on forces loyal to Kadyrov. According to Oleg Orlov, head of Memorial, Kadyrov told Estemirova: "Yes, my hands are up to the elbows in blood. And I am not ashamed of that. I will kill and kill bad people."

Memorial was so worried for her safety they wanted her away from Chechnya, but Estemirova called every day to say: "Something has to be done."

Sadly, her killers will most likely never be brought to justice. Estemirova was just the latest human-rights campaigner to be gunned down in Putin's Russia. Others include the journalist Anna Politkovskaya and lawyer Stanislav Markelov who was gunned down with journalist Anastasia Baburova.

Read more on Natalia Estemirova on Foreign Policy's "And then there were none" and Amnesty International's campaign.

Statistics show Iran's elections very likely rigged

Photos from cryptome.org.

The Washington Post uses statistics to show Iran's elections were rigged.

"Each of these two tests provides strong evidence that the numbers released by Iran's Ministry of the Interior were manipulated. But taken together, they leave very little room for reasonable doubt. The probability that a fair election would produce both too few non-adjacent digits and the suspicious deviations in last-digit frequencies described earlier is less than .005. In other words, a bet that the numbers are clean is a one in two-hundred long shot."

I have been watching the Iranian protests on TV. My first thought was Iran is more democratic than Singapore. But that's not true. What it is, is that Iranians are braver. Singaporeans care too much about their property prices to take to the street in large numbers to protest anything, even on government policies that many disagree about.

This is why some people think we deserve the government we get.

I once met a Greek visitor to Cambodia who said while he admired what I was doing, he would never do the same because he does not feel responsible for the Cambodians. They have to fight for what they want, he said. Greece has had a turbulent history, too, fighting the Turks, then civil war, military dictatorship (1967-1974). The country's peace and prosperity only started in the Dec of 1974 when, with a national referendum, monarchy was abolished and parliamentary republic established. His point is the Greek people have had to fight to get what they wanted, and so should the Cambodians.

That may very well be true, but it will take time in Cambodia, since the usual instigators of revolution - the intellectuals - were all but killed off in the Khmer Rouge rule (1974-1979). As for why I, a foreigner, am in Cambodia doing what I do, I have written a lot about it elsewhere so won't go into it here.

Anyway, you can watch this youtube video to see how Iranians are standing up for what they believe in and what it means to take on the state, with all the police, weapons, etc available to it. You can see the courage required to do something like this.

Iranian women are not shying away either. "For days now, I’ve seen them [Iranian women] urging less courageous men on. I’ve seen them get beaten and return to the fray. “Why are you sitting there?” one shouted at a couple of men perched on the sidewalk on Saturday. “Get up! Get up!” New York Times.

This graphic video shows a young Iranian woman who died on the street. I was quite shaken watching this one, and quite shocked at how much blood a human being has. I know it's about 8 pints, enough to fill a bucket, but it's still shocking watching it.

Moussavi may not be any better than Ahmadinejad but that is irrelevant. The point is the people are demanding to be taken seriously. As someone who once had as the tagline for this blog: "People should not be afraid of their government; the government should be afraid of the People" (from the movie "V for Vendetta"), Iranians have my respect right now.

Twitter has a place in society

I slammed Twitter a few days ago, for spamming my friends. While I'm still not interested in Tweets, I recognise its value in letting the world know what is going on when governments try to restrict access to information.

In case you live under a rock, I am talking about Iran.

"Attention Twittering Redditors! Help the Iranian bloggers: change your twitter settings so that your location is TEHRAN and your time zone is GMT +3.30. Security forces hunting for bloggers using location and timezone searches. If we are all 'Iranians' it's much harder to find them. (self.worldnews) submitted 9 hours ago by dopesomniac to worldnews [on reddit]."

Also, on Iran: On Friday, Google started translating Persian, also known as Farsi, in a move that could dramatically help spread information on the Iranian election crisis.

On another twitter note: Twitter bath death:

A teenage girl was electrocuted after dropping her laptop into the bath as she twittered in the tub.

Police said they believed Maria Barbu, 17, had tried to plug in her laptop with wet hands after the battery died during a long session on social networking site Twitter as she took a soak at her home in Brasov, central Romania.

She was found dead by her parents with the laptop lying next to her.