In a time where rights being lost and the concepts of responsibility and professionalism have been betrayed, The Scandinavian Institution for Human Rights SIHR has organised a heavy-weight forum about journalism (Rights and responsibilities). The forum was held in SIHR new H.Q in Geneva.
With the rise of satellites channels and the internet, the traditional means of pressure and censorship became disabled. We benefited of the transitional period where the satellites channels were freer and the virtual world was more welcoming, until the new censorship means on internet were invented to block and destroy the websites, or to intervene in course of preventing sites under slogan of ethics, ideological or security purposes.
Many companies accepted the logic of the market against the freedom, and accepted the populist against rationalism. There are huge cases of prevention which totally are irrational; therefore we can now talk about preventive censorship.
The counter-attack was organized by the prevailing system in purpose of production an alienated human, that means demolition the innovative and free humanitarian by two words: Closure: means an expansion of the prohibited areas and dumping across the cancerous expansion of the spaces of the metaphysical slavery, i do not call it worship, because worship is upscale emotional state, but slavery is a situation that enslaved humans by human beings like them in the name of Occult , medieval Fatwas , speeches of sectarianism and others forms of intellectual plague misc.
There are multiple forms of censorship on satellite channels
The first is the legal administrative censorship. Such censorship is legitimate for law and illegitimate for human rights activists and freedom of the press and expression. For example, “Al-Manar” channel was banned in France, and recently EUtelSat withdrew the license of Al Aqsa T.V on the ground of an accusation by the Independent Commission for visual and audio against the two above mentioned channel of being anti-Semitism.
The second form is a political decision. therefore any state can take a political decision affects the owners of the satellite, as happened with the Syria Drama T.V on the Nilesat, and as happened with “Al-Alam” TV on Arabsat, and Roj TV on EutelSat. Here there is an acceptance to remove the Iranian channel from the Arabic-speaking satellite, and another one to minimize the Kurdish voice on the European satellite space, for an example. Iran do the same thing in agreement with the EutelSat for blocking several Persian-language broadcasts on the Hot Bird in purpose of trade cooperation with it, and the French company has accepted this condition.
In third place comes the issue of the closure of the office and attacks on journalists, Satellite channels compelled today to take the decisions of the Arab and interior ministers into consideration, in addition to governments’ pressures and new means of pressure and censorship. With the decline in audience this channels are looking for stimuli instinctual enthusiasm like the way of Souk Okaz (ancient Arab competition between poets) and shallow minded debates. Invoke sectarianism and incitement the violence, are dangerous cancerous scourges that distance dozens of Arab-speaking satellite channels in away from professionalism and moral commitment to human rights.
Margins have declined in most Arab satellite channels, and we estimate thirty percent decline in talking about human rights in the Arabic-language satellite channels. Unfortunately, when we talk about a channel, the criticism of human rights violations is only about other violation and not about the violation made by the country which the channel is broadcasting from.
Promotion the idea of journalist protection as an independent institution and a public issue as today it is defined by the international law, and the criminalization of piracy means and confusion, and, above all, the practice of television criticism by intellectuals, in additional to the need for non-silence about the ongoing daily desecration of consciousness.
What is the reason for the absence of the culture of the Renaissance and the advancement and the repeat the same theses that failed to provide effective answers to the deep structural problems in the community?
Task, and duty, of the Scandinavian Institution for Human Rights is to get involved into the concept of a new renaissance as basic collateral for Human and Peoples.
Notes on freedom of expression and the modern means (of censorship)
21-04-2014 Geneva
