EDITORIAL: AGAINST BANS/FOR GOOD JUDGMENT

EDITORIAL: ON SPEECH BANS AND THEIR CONSEQUENCES

Helen Fein

Many people of good will, organizations and states have proposed bans against genocide denial, hate speech, defamation of ethnic, national or religious groups, and using images of sacred religious or national symbols that offend groups among their population. Some states have instituted bans, such as Germany, to redress the past.

In my judgment, this is the wrong model for the future. I do not base my objection on favoring the American tradition of free speech, the First Amendment and the argument from J. S. Mill (about the free marketplace of ideas weeding out bad ideas) in the international arena. One can not deny the right of different states with different legal traditions and specific historical problems to ban such speech. However, this does not make this a useful model either for older or newer nations.

Genocide scholars should be wary of relying on the state for protection. Bans can lead to endless litigation over what is a genocide and what is legitimate controversy about genocide. They can also impede recognition of genocides. Roger Smith, speaking as Chairman of the International Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies of the Zoryan Institute, argued against the draft French legislation criminalizing denial of the Armenian genocide. Smith observed that limiting discourse on historical events is not the role of the state in a free society and that this recent amendment to the 2001 law (which recognized the Armenian genocide) contradicts the stated objective of the legislation, which was to facilitate dialogue between the Armenians and the Turks.

Bans on hate speech, group defamation, and speech giving offense to particular ethnic groups can lead to limitations on public discourse, films and fiction, and the intrusion of the state against free speech and scholarship.

Many of the better known cases of this involve Turkey. PEN, the international organization monitoring the freedom of the press and of writers, is currently concerned about 80 cases in Turkey, of which 21 are for alleged violation of Article 301, ��insulting Turkishness��there are ��14 articles in the new penal code that can be used to put severe curbs on freedom of expression. ��Since the summer of 2005, more than a hundred other writers [besides Orhan Pamuk], scholars, cartoonists, musicians, students, and activists have been prosecuted for insulting some aspect of the Turkish state or its history��.these are show trials��.they target writers, publishers, scholars, and activists who challenge Turkey��s state ideology, question its official history, make claims against its army or judiciary, or suggest a move away from monoculturalism�� (Maureen Feeney, ��Background Report on the Insult Trials in Turkey,�� November 2006. International PEN).

The case against Nobel prize winner Orhan Pamuk was brought ��after he remarked to a Swiss journalist [in February 2005] that ��a million Armenians and thirty thousand Kurds were killed in these lands��the Armenians in 1915 and the Kurds during the 1990��s�� (Feeney, PEN). He was indicted in 2005 in Turkey for ��insulting Turkish identity,�� a charge later dropped. The trials of Rajip Zarakolu, the Turkish publisher of Peter Balakian��s memoir with whom Balakian shared the Lemkin award of the ISG in 2005, continue. Even an academic who studies ancient history, such as Muazzez Ilmiye Cig--a 92-year old woman who specializes in Sumerian culture��can be indicted. Ms. Cig was put on trial on charges that she ��insulted the people�� in a book reporting her research on the origin of the head scarf��in Sumerian sexual rites in temples--and faces a prison sentence of up to three years if convicted on all charges (Reuters, The New York Times, Nov. 1, 2006).

Organized groups, local authorities and mobs can also limit free speech. Some of the latter can abuse the right of free speech by trying to prevent scheduled speakers from talking. It was reported that spectators (believed to be organized deniers of the Armenian genocide) disrupted a recent speech by Orhan Pamuk at the City University of New York. Some groups (also in the U.S.) and ��hawkish Israel supporters�� are alleged to have tried to cancel public speeches (by a historian) and the showing of films, plays, and artwork viewed by them as anti-Israel (Alisa Solomon, ��The Big Chill,�� Forward, Nov. 17, 2006, B1).

Serious violence has resulted from the response of religious authorities and masses inflamed by them to perceived defamation. We recall the fatwa (death sentence) against Salmon Rushdie for his book, The Satanic Verses, in 1988 by Ayatollah Khomeini which fomented mobs and forced Rushdie to go into hiding for a decade. Sometimes the response of the state��whether to defend or suppress speech deemed provocative��is inadequate to protect the perceived offender. The assassinations of a politician and film-maker in the Netherlands and threats against a Muslim feminist who made a movie showing words from the Koran on a woman��s body (forcing her to go into hiding and then flee) have effectively changed the context of free speech there.

Just as we expect speakers, filmmakers and publishers to consider their obligations to defend the truth and broadcast dissenting views, I think that we should expect discriminating judgment by writers and publishers. The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution prohibits Congress from making a law ��abridging the freedom of speech or of the press.�� It does not oblige publishers to publish any manuscript submitted to them. Neither book publishers nor editors of college newspapers are obligated to publish books, articles, or advertisements that they know are based on falsehoods; e.g., the claim by Holocaust deniers that the murder of European Jews during World War II because they were Jews is a myth. Would we expect that a book publisher consider publication of a manuscript claiming that slavery never existed in the US?

Publishers can and should evaluate the gains in public discourse against offense to specific groups in using sacred symbols (or symbols associated with one ethnic group) in cartoons and the consequent threat to lives because such perceived insults may provoke violence by or against that group. However, to categorically ban cartoons, satire and comedy because speech (including pictures) may give offense to a minority could diminish the vitality of public life. If we outlaw or impose a code of political correctness against speech which is believed to defame religious minorities, ethnic/national groups, and women, we will not eliminate prejudice but drive it underground. Also, we will inhibit frank talk which may deter conflict. Liberty in western liberal democracies (in which the concept emerged) means not only tolerance for the minority but that minorities must tolerate the expression of utterances which would not be heard in a monolithic culture dominated by that minority.

EDITOR��S NOTE: This is not a position of the ISG or any other organization. Readers are invited to send in letters (not over 250 words please) to helenfein@comcast.net.

They will be published in a future newsletter as space permits.