Mohammed Cartoons controversy still making headlines

[HatTip: LimbicNutrition]

B92 reports:

DUBLIN — Irish police arrested seven Muslims for planning to kill a Swedish cartoonist who drew a caricature of the Prophet Muhammad with a dog’s body.

In response, several Swedish papers reprinted the cartoons on Wednesday.

Several Swedish newspapers on Wednesday reprinted a controversial caricature of the Prophet Mohammed as a dog, the day after an alleged plot to murder the cartoonist was disclosed.

Stockholm tabloid Expressen said it decided to reprint the caricature “in support of freedom of speech.”

An editorial in the Dagens Nyheter daily said a “threat against (the cartoonist) is ultimately a threat against all Swedes.”

Irish police on Tuesday arrested four men and three women who they say planned to kill Lars Vilks. The Swedish cartoonist in 2007 drew a caricature of Prophet Muhammad’s head attached to the body of a dog to illustrate a newspaper editorial about freedom of expression and religion.

Trafigura gags the BBC

Richard Wilson writes:

Late last week the BBC chose to delete from its website a damning Newsnight investigation into the Trafigura scandal, following legal threats from the company and its controversial lawyers, Carter-Ruck.

Previously, other media outlets including the Times and the Independent, had withdrawn stories about the case, amid concerns that the UK press is choosing to engage in self-censorship, rather than risk a confrontation with such a powerful company in the UK’s archaic and one-sided libel courts.

The BBC is a dominant player within the UK media, and its independence – supposedly guaranteed by the millions it receives from licence-payers each year – is vital both to its public service function and its global reputation.

Freedom of speech means very little without an effective and independent media – if it’s true that the BBC’s independence can so easily be compromised by legal threats, then this sets a very dangerous precedent for the future.

The mainstream UK media has so far assiduously avoided reporting on the BBC’s climbdown. Yet it’s an issue that raises serious questions about the state of press freedom in Britain, at a time of unprecedented attacks on the media.

To help subvert this latest attempt to muzzle the press, please embed this video on your blog, and link to this PDF of the original story.

Libel reform campaign petition

The Libel Reform Campaign has launched a petition. England’s libel laws are quite draconian and I urge anyone concerned with freedom of speech to sign this.

Wolfgang Werle was convicted of murdering Walter Sedlmayer

Why am I publicising this fact? Because the convicted murderer in question (his name, remember, is Wolfgang Werle) is trying to sue Wikipedia to get references to his murder of Walter Sedlmeyer removed:

Wikipedia is under a censorship attack by a convicted murderer who is invoking Germany’s privacy laws in a bid to remove references to his killing of a Bavarian actor in 1990.

Lawyers for Wolfgang Werle, of Erding, Germany, sent a cease-and-desist letter demanding removal of Werle’s name from the Wikipedia entry on actor Walter Sedlmayr. The lawyers cite German court rulings that “have held that our client’s name and likeness cannot be used anymore in publication regarding Mr. Sedlmayr’s death.”

German media have already ceased using Werle’s full name regarding the attack. Jennifer Granick, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, says German publications must also alter their online archives in a bid to comport with laws designed to provide offenders an avenue to “reintegrate back into society.”

“It’s not just censorship going forward. It’s asking outlets to go back and change what is already being written,” Granick said in a telephone interview.

It seems to me the appropriate response to such insanity is to publicise the offending material as widely as possible.

NO2ID Nine cleared of charges

We’ve all been cleared. Several of us, myself included, have received letters from the procurator fiscal telling us our court appearance tomorrow is cancelled and no criminal proceedings will be taken with regards to the charges.

Geraint also phoned the procurator fiscal and was told that the case has been closed and all charges dropped. More details here.

Nine NO2ID protestors arrested in Edinburgh

On Monday, 9 protestors, including me, all involved with the NO2ID campaign, were arrested in Edinburgh and charged with breach of the peace.

You can see some reports and discussion about this at the following links:

This STV report
This report in the Herald
This BBC Scotland report
A thread on NO2ID’s forums
Guy Herbert’s Samizdata article
Another thread on NO2ID’s forums

At this time, I’ll make the following points:

• we were all peaceful at all times during the protest
• only 1 protestor sneaked into the meeting. Geraint Bevan, the coordinator of NO2ID Scotland got into the meeting at the start under the cunning ruse of walking up to the registration desk and claiming to be one of the people named on the badges on display.
• prior to entering the hotel, we were protesting peacefully outside, causing curiosity, amusement and the occasional message of support from the passing public.
• when the hotel manager approached us and asked us to leave, Geraint (by this time physically thrown out of the meeting) asked if it were OK for us to leave after STV had conducted an interview with him. The manager agreed.
• when the interview was over, we made to leave immediately, only to find the police had been called. At no point prior to this were we given any intimation the police were called or were going to be called. Prior to the hotel manager asking us to leave, we were not told by any member of staff that we should leave.
• when we entered, we entered peacefully, quietly, carrying placards, with an STV camera crew in tow. The people at the head of our procession did not wear masks.
• we were officially arrested at 12.30 (after a considerable length of time when the police took our details).
• we regard this charge as a ridiculous jumped up charge.
• we will be fighting this charge.
• Geraint faces a separate charge related to events in the meeting. This will also be fought.

More on the anti-Scientology protesters fined in Birmingham

Regarding my previous article, this thread on the Enturbulation forums is well worth reading in full. The main points I draw from it are as follows:

• The protesters had been warned twice that they were not allowed to leaflet in the area concerned and were issued £50 fixed penalty notices under the Clean Neighbourhood and Environment Act 2005. This Act has a clear exemption for material handed out for political purposes or for a religion or belief. It seems to me that protesting against Scientology counts as a political purpose.
• The protesters were warned that if they used the word “cult” on a sign or a flyer they will be arrested for religious hatred! Note that the Religious and Racial Hatred Act also has a protection for freedom of speech (see Section 29J of the amendment to the Public Order Act) that reads:
  

  Nothing in this Part shall be read or given effect in a way which prohibits or restricts discussion, criticism or expressions of antipathy, dislike, ridicule, insult or abuse of particular religions or the beliefs or practices of their adherents, or of any other belief system or the beliefs or practices of its adherents, or proselytising or urging adherents of a different religion or belief system to cease practising their religion or belief system.

If the facts of the case are as described in that forum, then it seems to me that the police’s actions in this case do not accord with the law.

West Midlands police fine anti-Scientology protesters for handing out leaflets?

[Hat Tip: The Pub Philosopher]

I’d be grateful if anyone can confirm/corroborate this story…

According to a post on enturbulation.org:

A mini raid on the “org” in Birmingham today ended with four demonstrators handing out leaflets being issued with £50 fixed penalty tickets by Police and a Birmingham city warden under the Clean Neighbourhoods and Environment Act.

On two previous ocassions Police had warned them they were breaking the law for handing out leaflets.

Another interesting interpretation or perhaps (mis) interpretation of the law given the Act was designed to stop people handing out commercial flyers, and Section 8.8 of the act allows for the “distribution of leaflets where the distribution is charitable or religious purposes so as not to inhibit right to freedom of expression and freedom of thought and conscience and religion enshrined in the European Convention of Human Rights and the Human Rights Act 1998″..

A PCSO from the same police force recently told a couple of Christians that they could not hand out leaflets in a Muslim area.

Sunday Herald article on Glasgow police banning "cult" placards last weekend

The Sunday Herald have a report on the events I witnessed last weekend. Apparently they got this comment from Strathclyde Police:

Strathclyde Police admitted officers had stopped activists using the word “cult” after receiving a complaint.

A spokeswoman said: “The word is not a breach of the peace in itself. However, in this case it was exacerbating the situation and our stance was that we had to remove that.

“From a policing point of view, a balance has to be struck between the right to assemble and hold a meeting and other persons’ rights to go about their business or demonstrate without being obstructed or hindered.”

I’ve seen the protesters out several times in recent weeks. As far as I can tell they have not hindered the public using Buchanan Street nor have they prevented the Scientologists from organising their “free stress tests”. They have simply held up placards and worn masks. They may have used some chants but if so I’ve not witnessed that. To me, it seems they have done nothing wrong and the police have failed to justify their action.

If someone you’re protesting against can get the police to remove your placards simply because they (claim to) find a word on the placard offensive, then it seems to me the right to peaceful protest is dead.

Glasgow anti-Scientology protestors told to bin "cult" signs

Today I was helping out at the Glasgow NO2ID’s stall in Buchanan Street. As we were packing up, Geraint, the Glasgow No2ID group coordinator mentioned that the police had been called to an anti-Scientology protest taking place further up the street.

I’d noticed the “free stress test” stalls run by the Scientologists earlier in the day, and we were both curious as to what was happening so we went to chat to the protestors. The police were still talking to them when we got there. I was told by one protestor that a “May Day” flag had been confiscated, and that they were being told that the word “cult” was offensive and, if I recall correctly, if they continued to use it it would constitute a “breach of the peace”.

Also, I personally witnessed one of the protestors taking some signs to the bin at the direction of one of the officers. The signs being binned apparently used the word “cult”. Geraint later told me he’d seen a the protestors holding a sign saying “Cult” with an arrow on it which was held so as to point at the scientologists. This was presumably one of the binned signs. The protestors were however allowed to continue their protest, though the were told to make sure they were well over the other side of the street from the Scientologists. I’ll add that the police were perfectly civil towards the protestors as far as I could tell.

However apparently Glasgow police think it is “offensive” to describe Scientology as a cult, or at least were willing to act on the basis of offence caused to whoever phoned them up to complain (most probably one of the Scientologists).

And this episode, along with the recent episode in London (which has had a happy ending thankfully), illustrates why “causing offense” should not be considered a valid restriction on freedom of speech or the right to peaceful protest. People can (claim to) take offence at ANYTHING, including purely factual statements. Not causing offense may be good manners, but you should not be required by law to do so since that allows people to silence those whose message they simply don’t like and to silence those exposing awkward truths.

The Church of Scientology would love to have the power to silence its critics and it seems the idea that causing offence is sufficient grounds to curb someone’s speech or protests is beginning to give them that power here in Britain.