In the wake of the murders of staff from the French satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo, it’s imperative to re-assert the indispensable function of a humour which contributes so much to civility in societies. Sydney Morning Herald cartoonist Sally Wilcox made the same point when she wrote, “I believe satire is where sanity is found”.

A couple of years ago, in ABC televised interviews with prominent Arab women, I asked about the nature of humour in their respective countries. These were intellectually critical, high achieving women from fields of literature, business, drama, government and medicine. They gave engaging illustrations of social and economic developments in their countries. They appeared optimistic about the future. They had been confounding stereotypes about patriarchal authoritarianism in the Arab world until. Until I asked, ‘Let’s turn for a minute to the function of satire in your cultures ? What and who do you laugh at ?’

Silence followed. The interviewees looked bemused. No doubt aware that their answers might be broadcast around the world, they admitted that they could not even laugh at bigotry, at authoritarianism, at the down right sadists – in particular regarding the rights of women. Somewhat ironically, they did laugh when acknowledging that in their cultures, in public at least, there was little to laugh at.

Praising satire and saluting the slaughtered Parisian satirists, does not mean to say that any topic is fit target for such humour, or that any alleged humour could be labelled satirical. Laughter at absurdity is great medicine but attempting to make fun of the powerless is usually cruel and therefore out of bounds. Exposure of radio shock jocks’ bullying and derision of opponents could be and has been fit focus for satire. Even if they like to laugh at their own jokes, such radio men seem intent on promoting views which are seldom funny. For example, Alan Jones’ pillorying of Bob Brown and Julia Gillard was humourless, cruel, contained no irony but did verge on encouraging violence.

The assassinations in France remind us that those journalists were continuing centuries of struggle to show that satire is salutary, that non-violence is crucial, that freedom of expression is not only part of French notions of liberty but is also an international torch to be held aloft.

Following Charlie Hebdo’s example means not being half hearted about freedom of speech. No holds barred irreverence may be problematic but self censorship can mean a blind eye to intolerance. The ink of satire must continue to flow. Nous sommes tous Charlie.

By Stuart Rees, Founder of the Sydney Peace Foundation. First published on Online Opinion 14 January 2015

The post Nous Sommes Tous Charlie: the Value of Satire appeared first on Sydney Peace Foundation.

Nous Sommes Charlie

We are seeing the killers

whose balaclava eyes

stared like bad breath

shared with collaborators,

each masturbating anger

sufficient only to hear  

the notes of their Kalashnikovs

which they played

in defence of their deities,

their dogma and themselves.

We are mourning cartoonists

murdered for laughter,

their freedom stifled

on the steps of satire,

their drawings extravagant

with messages rude enough

to craft memorials

in honour of the indispensable

value of undressing

the pompous and the powerful.

In response to the murder of staff and a defending Muslim policeman in the Paris office of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo on 8^th January, a poem by Professpr Stuart Rees. Hyams Beach January 11^th 2015.

More information about the poetry for peace of Stuart Rees, founder of the Sydney Peace Foundation, can be found here: https://sydneypeacefoundation.org.au/resources/peace-and-poetry/

The post Nous Sommes Charlie appeared first on Sydney Peace Foundation.

The death of a 23 year old asylum seeker and injuries to over sixty others on Manus Island are the inevitable consequences of a policy of violence based on bullying and brute force to arrest, detain and humiliate vulnerable and weak people.

The present government’s policy runs counter to the UN Refugee Convention and our international legal obligations, is an abuse of human rights and an affront to ideals of a common humanity. No asylum seekers are illegals. All merit a nonviolent response to their efforts to escape persecution and oppression.

A nonviolent policy initiative would include on shore processing of applications and the management of the special needs of traumatised asylum seekers by experienced, professionally trained and carefully chosen caseworkers.  The goal would be to assist those found to be refugees to become productive members of the community as quickly and efficiently as possible.  That policy should include a human rights education programme to explain to the public the world wide dimensions of the refugee tragedy, plus explanations as to where people seeking asylum in Australia have come from and why they are fleeing.

Yet instead of nonviolence, the major political parties have engaged in a race to the bottom to demonstrate who is the toughest, who the most intolerant. The present government has opted for a policy aimed at frightening asylum seekers who contemplate turning to Australia for help and punishing those who still try by sending them to one of the most dangerous countries on the planet.  Our pugilistic Prime Minister would have it that anyone who objects to this institutional mistreatment of others is a ‘wimp’.

Further, these policies have been sustained by extraordinary secrecy.  They are being justified on the basis that, as the provocatively named Operation Sovereign Borders suggests, we are under attack and on a war footing.  That proposition is both shameful and ridiculous.

The events on Manus Island should make all of us think again about principles of human rights and the philosophy of nonviolence. Those principles and that philosophy should underpin our response to asylum seekers from wherever they come and by whatever means they come.

If arguments based on the rule of law and common decency can be dismissed as “moral blackmail”, another angle should be considered:  Given this government’s commitment to fiscal responsibility and budget reduction, why not deploy its battalions of productivity analysts to compare the billions of dollars spent on the current asylum seeker policy with costs of a nonviolent alternative?

For further information or interviews please contact Professor Stuart Rees: stuart.rees@sydney.edu.au

The post Manus and Asylum Seekers: The Case for a Nonviolent Response appeared first on Sydney Peace Foundation.

One evening in Doha, in December: Sydney University’s Professor Stuart Rees is standing in the middle of a packed room, deep in conversation with the veteran Palestinian negotiator, Dr Saeb Erekat.

Famous figures in the Palestinian political landscape mill around them. Hamas chief Khalid Mish’al is there, along with Hamas’s head of international relations, Osama Hamdan. Rees is completely engrossed in his discussion with Erekat, a key figure in the latest round of peace talks brokered by the US secretary of state, John Kerry. But later on he’ll meet Mish’al, and will become part of a conversation between the Hamas chief and the UN’s special rapporteur on Palestinian human rights, Richard Falk. “He insists that the soft power of international public opinion is strategically far superior to any further use of violence,” says Rees of Falk. Meanwhile, Mish’al tells the two men that establishing common ground with Palestinians in the West Bank and in the diaspora is one of his key goals.

It was an extraordinary gathering in the Qatari capital, which went largely unreported in the western media. The Qatar-based Arab Centre for Research and Policy Studies had organised a three-day conference titled “the Palestinian cause and the future of the Palestinian national movement”.

Little did anyone there know that just over a month later, on 11 January 2014, the world would learn that the former Israeli general and prime minister Ariel Sharon was dead. The man known as “the sleeping giant”, who had been in a coma for eight years after suffering a stroke, was 85 when he died: still hated by most Palestinians.

Rees, the founder of Sydney University’s Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies and the Sydney Peace Foundation – he set up the annual Sydney Peace Prize, Australia’s only international peace award – and who was one of the speakers at the Doha conference, says the former Israeli PM should be regarded as “a military thug”.

“The fact that he died eight years ago but has officially only just died, indicates to me that his image as a military warrior was synonymous with the identity of Israel, and that they couldn’t afford to let him appear to die. It’s almost Kafkaesque that this should now be headline news with the mainstream media paying their respects to him,” he adds.

One can only speculate about the tenor of the speeches at the Doha conference if Sharon had died while it was still being held. More than 200 Palestinians attended the three days of talks, and the Palestinian journalist, Mohammed Daraghmeh, reported in Salon.com there was “an overwhelming sense of a national movement in crisis” – writing as well that it was a sign of the Palestinians’ political and territorial fragmentation that top decision-makers and thinkers had to travel to Doha to be in the same room.

However Rees believes the Doha conference could prove valuable in the long term, even while commenting that the Palestinians “have no cards to play” in the peace talks. “Saeb Erekat wouldn’t admit they’re powerless, but everyone knows they are because of the absurd claim that the Americans could be considered the honest broker,” he says, before adding that Erekat does believe Kerry is completely sincere in wanting to make the peace talks work.

“I said in Doha that the peace process over 20 years has been an appalling piece of game-playing on both sides. The Israelis didn’t take it seriously, ever, and the Palestinians were poorly represented by the Palestinian Authority which did not defend the human rights of its own people,’ he says

“But one of the things that may come out of [Doha] is a new force that will establish a coherence in the Palestinian point of view. The conversations I had with the Hamas people were really for that end. The rhetoric is division [between Hamas and Fatah], but when you see them together as I did: you had Saeb Erekat and Osama Hamdan embracing each other as blood brothers when they met informally.”

For Rees, who has visited the Gaza strip twice, in 2006 and 2012, ending the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians is “the moral political priority because the failure to address justice for the Palestinians is the catalyst for so much other violence. All the time, extremists can say ‘Well, look how you behave towards the Palestinians.’ My formula is simple,” he adds. “Justice for the Palestinians equals security for the Israelis.”

Asked whether there was a single, startling moment during the three days in Doha, he replies, “The startling moment is something in a way that we know but should be constantly reminded of, which is that the lives of Palestinians are a catastrophe – and that there is a well developed cruelty as a policy, which governments like Australia’s collude with.”

Rees is a bluntly spoken, impassioned man whose life almost totally revolves around human rights and conflict resolution. The Palestinian issue has become bigger and bigger for him personally, he tells the Guardian, “even though it’s much further away from West Papua or Sri Lanka where I’ve also been and worked. Palestine is a priority for me emotionally, ideologically, because [of] the cruelty that is witnessed, for example, in the paddling of Gaza schoolchildren at this moment through sewerage to get to school because more than half of the power systems are down, which also means that intensive care units, dialysis machines, incubators, and operating theatres don’t work.”

The awarding of the 2003 Sydney peace prize to the prominent Palestinian academic and nationalist Dr Hanan Ashrawi generated considerable hostility towards Rees, who believes he was invited to the Doha conference because he’s regarded in the Arab academic world as someone who “sticks up for the Palestinians in general”.

The hostility came from some members of the Australian Jewish community – though not exclusively from them. And yet several international figures, including the former US secretary of state Madeleine Albright, praised the decision to give Ashwari the award.

The Israeli politician and peace activist Yael Dayan, daughter of the Israeli general Moshe Dayan, spoke favourably about the Palestinian winner (and on the day she left for Australia to collect her award, as Rees himself pointed out at the time, Ashrawi travelled from Ramallah through checkpoints to Jerusalem and on to Tel Aviv airport in the middle of an Israel-wide transport strike).

At the Doha conference, the Australian academic also talked about the controversial boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel, which Rees supports. Inevitably, he has been labelled as anti-Semitic for this stance, although he may have confounded his critics last year when he revealed the 2013 Sydney peace prize was to have been awarded to Stéphane Hessel – a concentration camp survivor, resistance fighter and diplomat who helped draft the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and author of the 2009 bestseller, Time for Outrage – who died aged 95, shortly before the announcement could be made. (The Peace Foundation awarded Hessel a posthumous gold medal for human rights instead, which was presented to Hessel’s widow, Christiane Hessel-Chabry at a reception hosted in Paris by the Australian ambassador to France, Ric Wells).

Rees says most of the Doha conference delegates, “Arab and non-Arab, European and African,” knew about the landmark lawsuit launched recently by the Israeli legal group Shurat HaDin against fellow Sydney University academic Professor Jake Lynch, for supporting the BDS campaign. Lynch, the current director of the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, declined an application by the Israeli Professor Don Avnon for a fellowship to visit Sydney University, explaining that he could not support his request even though his research sounded interesting and worthwhile. Rees, in an On Line Opinion piece published last year, wrote that “however meritorious certain individual academics might be, the non-co-operation policy makes for no exceptions and some Israeli academics fully understand and accept that principle.”

The Israeli historian Professor Ilan Pappé, author of The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, who lives in self-imposed exile in the UK (“I have lost the right to work in Israel, not to live in it,” he tells the Guardian), also attended the Doha conference and met Rees. In his opinion, the lawsuit against Lynch hasn’t received enough international attention.

“I think the whole issue is tackled from the wrong angle,” he says. “Jake is like many decent persons around the world that for years look for ways of ‘doing’ something for the oppressed Palestinians. He engaged in what most of us, many among us Jews, found as the most moral, non-violent and affective way – the BDS option. He made the distinction between institutional BDS and a personal boycott and acted in the particular case under review, as most of us would. But the question [should be] different. Why do Jewish bodies, who are supposed to represent the affairs of the Jewish community and not that of Israel, become embassies of a state that in 2014 practises apartheid laws and policies and is engaged in the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians?”

In Doha, Pappé goes on, he had “uneasy conversations with some of the more dogmatic representatives of the competing ideologies in the Arab world”. But like Rees, he’s optimistic about what the conference achieved. “There was a wide basis for consensus and cooperation for the future,” he says.

Rees, meanwhile, recounts a tale Pappé told him.

The historian recently returned to Israel with a Palestinian refugee living in Denmark, who wanted to speak to Israeli students about his right to return. When they met him, the Israeli students had insisted, “You only want to kick us out.” The Palestinian replied, “I simply want to live with you.”

The Israeli students had not expected this response, and were stunned.

As so often happens, says Rees simply, such anecdotes – told privately – reveal more than any conference paper.

Nikki Barrowclough is a New Zealand-born journalist who worked full time as a writer with Good Weekend magazine and the Sydney Morning Herald from 1990 until 2012. She was nominated for a Walkley award in 2010 for an exclusive interview with Julian Assange. Her last story for Good Weekend was from Zimbabwe, where she profiled the politician Sekai Holland. She has spent time in France, Russia and Africa.

The post Middle East peace: combative Sydney academic speaks up for Palestine appeared first on Sydney Peace Foundation.

As the leader for a democratic South Africa and as an inspiration for civil rights activists around the globe, Nelson Mandela possessed the stamina and courage needed to overcome numerous adversities. These included escape from an arranged marriage, being outlawed and going underground, several trials, 27 years in prison, the isolation from his family and, on release, the responsibility to rectify the economic and social consequences of decades of apartheid.

Like any chieftain at ease with himself, he did not need to be assertive to convey authority. His human touch shone through humility and a self-deprecating humour. His charisma came from a certain majesty, as if showing that he had no need to remind anyone, himself included, of his status. In 2000, when he came to Sydney University’s Centre for Peace & Conflict Studies and honoured two of Australia’s most significant human rights campaigners, Indigenous leader Faith Bandler and Conflict Resolution founder Stella Cornelius, he explained, with a twinkle in his eye, that he had been Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s assistant, not the other way around.

Nelson Mandela was born in July 1918 in rural Transkei. At the age of nine, on the death of his father, he moved to the royal Thembu household to be groomed for high office, probably as counsellor to a chief. In that context he developed his interest in African history, realised the white man’s injustices and confronted, as he did throughout his life, the contradiction between respect for traditions and the realisation that black Africans needed power to govern themselves.

On leaving his rural home for Johannesburg he enrolled in a law degree at the largely white University of Witwatersrand. With his brilliant friend Oliver Tambo he set up a legal practice to provide free or low cost counsel to black Africans. In 1942 he joined the anti-apartheid movement.

Three particular sources convey the essence of Mandela’s values and vision: the speeches at his various trials, the solidarity cemented with fellow prisoners on Robben Island and his role in South Africa’s non-violent transition to democracy.

Attorney in the Courts

On reading the record of his speeches at his various trials in the early 1960s I witnessed a leader’s qualities:  courtesy combined with combativeness, dignity with defiance.

When Mandela and his co-defendants were charged with treason – for which he was eventually sentenced to life imprisonment – he explained his objective to campaign for a democratic society in which all people lived in harmony and enjoyed equal opportunities. “That”, he said, “is an ideal I hope to live for and to achieve. But if need be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.”

In an earlier trial, when he was charged with organising a strike, Mandela was asked what he meant by equality before the law. He explained: “In its proper meaning, equality before the law means the right to participate in the making of laws by which one is governed.” He added, “I consider myself neither morally nor legally obliged to obey laws made by a parliament in which I am not represented.”

The Prison Years

In prison on Robben Island Mandela and his fellow political prisoners practiced their Gandhi-like non-violence, self-discipline, civility to warders and to one another. In his autobiography, Long Walk To Freedom, he recalls, “We believed that hostility was self-defeating, that all men, even warders were capable of change.”  In my conversation with him he explained that, “In prison we realised we had two options. We could argue only with our emotions, but that way lay bitterness and recrimination. Or we could argue with our head with a view to working out ways to seek justice for everyone.”

In prison his courageous stand on principle contributed to his reputation as a leader and friend. When, in 1985, he refused President F W Botha’s offer of release from prison on the condition that he would give up his advocacy of armed struggle against apartheid, he replied, “Prisoners cannot enter into contracts. Only free men can negotiate.”

In the Bantu language, the term ubuntu refers to the interconnectedness of human beings, the notion that no human being exists in isolation, that qualities of humour and generosity derive from reciprocity in relationships and not from individuality. In this ubuntu spirit, Nelson Mandela would have considered it incorrect if any tribute was paid to him without reference to the key roles played in struggles against apartheid and for justice by his close comrades, such as Oliver Tambo, Winnie Mandela, his children, Archbishop Tutu and his third wife Graca Machel.

The First Democratic President

In 1993 Nelson Mandela and South African President F W de Klerk were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts to dismantle the country’s apartheid system. In 1994, Mandela was inaugurated as South Africa’s first black President.

His activities since becoming President were characterised by efforts to heal the wrongs of the past – ensuring the right to vote, striving for social and economic equality, insisting that Aids was a normal illness, that sufferers, such as his son Makgatho, should not be discriminated against.

In spite of the enormous difficulties of post-Mandela South Africa in dealing with poverty, unemployment and housing, this giant figure of history, known affectionately by his clan name Madiba, remains an inimitable political leader, the adored father of a nation, the symbol of civility, a source of hope.

When Mandela fell seriously ill last year, the manager of the Mandela Family Restaurant in Soweto spoke for her community when she said, “He means everything to us.” Interviewed on the same television program, a nine-year-old boy replied with Mandela-like thoughtfulness and gentility, “He is a leader. He is beautiful. I love him.”

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Emeritus Professor Stuart Rees is the Chair of the Sydney Peace Foundation.

This article was first published in New Matilda on 6 December 2013.

– See more at: https://newmatilda.com/2013/12/06/prisoner-who-freed-nation

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Photo: Stuart Rees greets Nelson Mandela on Arundel St in 2000.
Photo credit: Rose Tracey.

The post The Prisoner Who Freed A Nation appeared first on Sydney Peace Foundation.

Sydney Uni academic Jake Lynch has publicly backed the BDS movement – and copped a class action complaint. This is a politically motivated attempt to stifle criticism, writes Stuart Rees

– See more at: http://newmatilda.com/print/24428#sthash.QY5SeaAB.dpuf

The post Defending The Right To Dissent appeared first on Sydney Peace Foundation.

In spite of the Rudd resurrection, the refugee debate in Australia is still framed in the odious game of gaining political mileage by demonstrating a certain chauvinist pride in protecting borders.

To that end, to convey that the assessment of refugee status is not tough enough, that too many unworthy people may gain entry to this boat-people-besieged-country, the Foreign Minister Bob Carr claims that as many as 100 per cent of Iranian asylum seekers may only be “economic migrants”.

Yet, in crowded camps on the Thai Burma border, the values of refugees and their supporters suggest that if Australia wants to build a fairer society, much can be learned from refugees – people so easily stigmatised as unwanted and unworthy.

Evidence from Jim Chalmers’ recently published book Glory Daze shows Australians bemoaning their financial lot even when most enjoy the benefits from an affluent economy. On this issue there is a chasm between the values of refugees and their supporters and the priorities deemed important by politicians.

Different attitudes towards entitlement to health and education services are an indication of the width of this chasm.

Kachana, the director of the Burma Children’s Medical Fund, describes her work:

Of course we provide medical services as a right, not just because our patients are poor. We do depend on donors to finance our services but how could you talk to sick people about costs when our responsibility is to meet their needs?

In the Thai border town of Mae Sot, the Mae Tao clinic provides medical services for hundreds of thousands of refugees and migrant workers. The director of the clinic, Dr Cynthia Maung, gives me her interpretation of a common good:

During the funding crisis of last year, we were $650,000 short, but we could not afford to charge patients. To combat that crisis, all the staff agreed to take a 20 per cent cut in their meager wages.

A supporting Australian doctor, Kate Bruck, explains:

That reduction was uniform because of an equity in pay policy: same wages for surgeon, nurse, social worker, fund raiser, accountant, librarian or manager of sanitation.

My interpreter and guide in the Ma Lae refugee camp was a 41-year-old Karen named Law La Say, whose salary for his job to train camp residents to be therapists for drug addicts is $250 per annum. To the question, “How do you mange to be so optimistic?”, he answered:

I survived 17 years in the jungle, always on the move from the Burmese army. There was no time to cry. Laughing expresses my feelings. This camp may seem like a prison, but we know one another, we can support one another.

Law La Say’s thoughts are echoed by Naw Nweh, a member of the camp’s Women’s Support Group:

I also lived in the jungle. This camp is better because it is our family home. We know we are refugees but we have hopes for our children, even for repatriation to Burma.

With a shy smile she adds:

But don’t believe what they tell you about the reforms in Burma. The people in charge are the same people who drove us here.

In Australia, in the controversy over the Gonski report, state premiers still calculate the difference between their political fortunes and a commitment to children’s future education. The pugnacious Premier Newman of Queensland seems to favour his short-term political interests over any long-term vision about the quality of education for all children irrespective of their parents’ means.

Karen children also want the opportunities provided by education in good schools. The Bangkok Post journalist Phil Thornton records:

On the Karen side of the border, the schools have no buildings and no desks. In small groups children cluster under the shade of a large teak tree. Their teacher explains, ‘Time is precious for our children. They are desperate to learn but our biggest problem is malaria.’   

A final contrast in values concerns food. While Australian television is saturated with programs on how to cook, how to extend knowledge of nutritious dishes, and even how to lose weight because you have eaten too much, UN reports about Burma identify problems of hunger and food security. In their report Chronic Emergency, the Back Packer Workers Team from Mae Sot concluded that hunger and malnutrition has drastic effects in eastern Burma where one in 10 children will die before age one and more than one in five before their fifth birthday.

A refugee, Naw Doo, explains that she and her two teenage children are used to going without food:

Many times we only have rice and chilli. We eat twice a day. We get sick but that’s normal for people here. Look how thin I am.

In Australia’s election campaign, reference to a common good is unlikely. We are likely to hear derision about asylum seekers, probably talk about the benefits of privatising public hospitals to make them more efficient, and attacks against trade unions for eroding individual freedom.

Ironically, several significant projects on the Thai Burma border are financed by the humanitarian arm of Australia’s trade union movement, Apheda, whose staff value the ideals of a common good. To achieve such a goal, economist Jeffrey Sachs writes that perhaps the best we can do is to appeal to enlightened self-interest because it is everyone’s interest to care for the vulnerable and for the planet.

If the impressive Dr Maung became the campaign manager for Kevin Rudd or for Tony Abbott, she would emphasise why refugees who are thankful for small mercies have so much to teach those in a lucky country who might regard refugees as a threat to their well being.

On the hustings for either party, Dr Maung might start by explaining why health care should be given according to need and not according to an ability to pay:

If you want a healthy society, all people have to be treated as equals. If people are to live and work as equals, the barriers that divide them have to be removed.

Professor Stuart Rees travelled to the Thai Burma border in mid-June on an exploratory mission for the Sydney Peace Foundation. Stuart Rees is Chair of the Sydney Peace Foundation and Professor Emeritus at the University of Sydney. View his full profile here.

This article was first published by ABC’s The Drum on 3 July 2013

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“ANTI-SEMITE!” “Racist!” “Despicable values!” “Should be sacked!”

I received these comments and accusations following an article by Christian Kerr in The Australian on May 14. He correctly quoted me saying Liberal MP Christopher Pyne’s support for the London Declaration against anti-Semitism was “populist”.

Kerr may not have expected the subsequent vendetta against me, let alone the demands last Friday by former Speaker of the federal parliament Peter Slipper that, as an anti-Semite on a public payroll, I should be sacked.

My point was that the London Declaration against anti-Semitism is a consensus document. Politicians are applauded and often applaud themselves for signing it and take no risk in doing so. Pyne’s press release was a “pat myself on the back eulogy” and a gratuitous attack on the Palestinian-initiated Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions supporters whose campaign is seldom explained in mainstream media and easily depicted as controversial.

You can support both the London Declaration and the BDS campaign. However, that distinction is easily lost when individuals are demonised and Israel’s constant flouting of international law is deliberately diverted by discussion of other countries’ human rights abuses.

If attitudes to Israel and the BDS campaign are distorted, it can have serious repercussions. For that reason I’ll detail the events that prompted Kerr’s article, the accompanying editorial in The Australian and the subsequent abusive emails.

First, a woman I’d never heard of asked me to comment on Pyne’s support for the London Declaration and his manifestly nonsensical claim that university activists who support BDS undermine the right of Jewish people to live in their Jewish homeland. I naively assumed that a quick response was the end of the matter. It wasn’t. She wrote back saying the Prime Minister had also signed the declaration and asked if I had the same sentiments about her as about Pyne.

Somewhat impulsively I replied “of course”, meaning that signing the London Declaration as a sign of moral virtue was an easy decision. By contrast, Stephen Hawking’s support for the BDS campaign is a much more politically and intellectually demanding decision.

My exchange with this lady finished up on Kerr’s desk and led to a heading next day saying I had lashed out at the Prime Minister. Really?

Kerr’s article was accompanied by an editorial headed “Strange way to promote peace” with the subheading, “Critics of Israel should turn their attention to Iran”. This implied that by criticising Israeli policies I was siding with Iran’s supreme leader, who was quoted as saying “any deal that accepted the Jewish state’s existence would leave a `cancerous tumour forever”‘.

This technique of deflecting attention from the cruel and illegal policies of Israel depends on misinformation. It is implied that if you support BDS you must be anti-Semitic and are therefore no different from Israel’s religious fanatic opponents. Guilty by association. Positions polarised.

Projects run by the Sydney Peace Foundation and the University of Sydney’s Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies include support for the struggle of indigenous West Papuans, advocacy for the vulnerable Tamils in Sri Lanka and criticism of capital punishment in Iran and Saudi Arabia. The centre also provides English classes for refugees on temporary protection visas.

It is false to suggest, as in The Australian’s editorial subheading, that we pay attention only to Israel. I have just returned from Paris, where the Sydney Peace Foundation honoured the widow of the late Stephane Hessel, a Jew, a survivor of the Holocaust, an architect of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, author of the bestseller Time for Outrage, a hero of the French Republic and an enthusiastic supporter of the BDS campaign.

Hessel wrote: “When governments cannot be relied upon to defend humanity it is the role of us, the people, to lead the struggle for justice.”

The BDS campaign is grounded in international law and has nothing to do with anti-Semitism or delegitimising Israel. Israeli professor Ilan Pappe contends that it is a sacred duty to end Israel’s oppressive occupation as soon as we can and that the best means for this is a sustained BDS campaign.

There are other reasons for turning to BDS. Negotiation and diplomacy have produced nothing but the enlargement of settlements, the continued siege of Gaza and the absurd claim that a two-state solution is possible when the two sides are so imbalanced, economically, militarily and politically.

The peace process is a sham. Politicians play a cruel game if they do not recognise this but it requires vision and courage to say so.

As for Slipper’s demand that it was outrageous that I was paid public money to explain and support BDS and that I should therefore be sacked, for the past 13 years I have been a volunteer at the centre and foundation.

I have not been paid any salary, nor claimed any expenses. I have worked in diverse campaigns, often in dangerous places, and have been committed to raising funds for students from the poorest countries.

Such activities are fuelled by the values that The Australian said, albeit delicately, were strangely skewed but that Slipper described as despicable.

This article was first published in The Australian, on 21 May 2013. 

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John Howard’s reflections on the war in Iraq have made news lately, with objections dismissed as anti-democratic. We need an inquiry into why Australia supported a disastrous and illegal invasion, writes Stuart Rees

The post John Howard’s Iraq War Fantasy appeared first on Sydney Peace Foundation.

Stéphane Hessel

On 2 May, at the Australian Embassy in Paris, the Sydney Peace Foundation will award a posthumous Gold Medal for Human Rights to Stéphane Hessel for his life-long contribution to building a more peaceful and just society.

Stéphane Hessel, a German born Jew whose family fled to France, became a fighter in the French Resistance where he was captured, tortured and escaped execution by the Nazis. On returning to Paris, Hessel became a diplomat and was a one of twelve members of the committee who drafted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. As the French Ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, Hessel promoted non-violent responses to conflict and made many stands against human rights abuses. In 2009 he published the Book “Time For Outrage” which sold 4.5 million copies in 35 countries and is credited with being the catalyst for Occupy Movements around the world.

Stéphane Hessel was originally selected by the Sydney Peace Prize Jury to be the 16^th recipient of the Prize. Sadly, on 6 March 2013, at 95-years old, Hessel passed away quietly in his sleep.

Following an address by Chair Stuart Rees, and a reception hosted by Australian Ambassador to France Ric Wells, the Gold Medal will be presented to Hessel’s widowed wife Madame Christane Hessel-Chabry.

The post In Honour of Outrage appeared first on Sydney Peace Foundation.

The man who was to be awarded this year’s Sydney Peace Prize died last week. Stephane Hessel inspired the Occupy movement and lived an exceptional life. Stuart Rees on what Hessel might have told Australians

On the day that Shadow Minister Scott Morrison was falsely portraying asylum seekers as criminals and advocating imposed “behaviour protocols”, an inspirational Frenchman lay dying.

In the early hours of Wednesday 27 February, the life of 95-year old Stephane Hessel ended.  Tributes poured in from around the world. Parisians gathered in the Bastille to honour him. Francois Hollande, President of France said, “Hessel was a huge figure. His was an exceptional life devoted to the defence of human dignity”.

France mourns. In Australia we have reason to be both saddened and disappointed.

Stephane was to have been the recipient of this year’s Sydney Peace Prize. On learning of his choice he said, he was “deeply honoured to join the company of previous Peace Prize recipients”, such as Professor Muhammad Yunus, Archbishop Tutu, Mary Robinson, Hanan Ashrawi and Patrick Dodson.

Hessel’s 2009 book Time For Outrage has sold 4.5 million copies in 35 countries. In that work he challenged youth to resist “the international dictatorship of financial markets,” which he saw as a threat to peace and democracy. He motivated and supported the worldwide Occupy movement and attacked government policies which imposed hardship on the vulnerable majority as solutions to the financial excesses of the elite few.

Stephane Hessel was born in 1917, in Berlin, to a Jewish family who moved to France when he was eight. He became a French citizen in the late 1930’s and in the early years of the war he fled to London and joined the free French forces under General De Gaulle. On return to France he was captured by the Nazis, imprisoned in Buchenwald and sentenced to death. He escaped, met up with relief forces of American troops and at the end of the war entered France’s diplomatic service.

At the end of 1947 he became the youngest member of a committee empowered to craft the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a document which Hessel said reflected the aspirations of members of the French Resistance.

If Stephane Hessel had come to Australia what would he have told us ?

In the run up to the federal election, he would have insisted that the essence of being human is the capacity to pursue a common good and to be outraged by the gap between rich and poor.

He would have championed that key function of a welfare state to give opportunity to every citizen. He wrote that the Resistance called for “A comprehensive social security plan to guarantee all citizens a means of livelihood in every case where they are unable to get it by working”. He would have been dismayed by cuts of payments to single mothers because of politicians’ preoccupation with balancing budgets.

Hessel was highly critical of France’s treatment of illegal migrants. He deplored the racism, violence and deportations experienced by these vulnerable people. In Australia he would have been deeply offended by the macho swaggering and fear-mongering attitudes towards asylum seekers and refugees.

Hessel was also passionate about all citizens’ responsibility to protect a fragile and precious environment. He was incredulous about the destruction caused by economic policies which were preoccupied with productivity whatever the cost.

He knew the importance of having a media which could report uninfluenced by fear or favour.

In the French Resistance, Hessel and his colleagues had demanded “the freedom and honour of the press and its independence from the state and the forces of money and foreign influence”. In Australia he would have been disappointed by the derision which often passes for journalism and he would have been appalled by the bullying techniques of shock jocks.

Hessel reserved his strongest outrage for Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.

As a Jew, a Holocaust survivor and as an observer of life on the West Bank and in Gaza, he was mindful of the traditions of Judaism regarding tolerance and the joys to be found in celebrating difference.

He and his wife were dismayed by the brutality towards Palestinians but they were also impressed by people’s response to adversity. In writing about the 2009 Operation Cast Lead and the destruction of Gaza’s Red Cross Hospital, he noted the behaviour of the Gazans — “their patriotism, their constant preoccupation with the wellbeing of their countless laughing children — that haunts our memories”.

In all his campaigns for justice, Hessel displayed many of the qualities of Mahatma Gandhi: to be inclusive, to encourage diversity, to advocate tolerance and to make non-violence a key strategy to achieve such goals. He wrote, “I am convinced that the future belongs to non-violence, to the reconciliation of different cultures. It is along this path that humanity will clear its next hurdle”.

Hessel was a significant humanitarian, a cosmopolitan citizen and a great lover — of his family, of philosophy, of human rights, humour, laughter and justice.  He lived for almost a century but he remained deeply concerned about the future, for the vulnerable and powerless, for the planet and for courage and principles in politics.

In my last conversation with him he said, “Before I come to Sydney, you must come to Paris and we’ll drink some fine French wine”. “And sing the Marseillaise?” I asked. “Of course.” He paused, then chuckled, “What song do you sing down there, it’s not still God Save the Queen is it?”

On the day before his death his publisher recalls that Stephane said, “We are all looking forward to coming to Australia, to receive the Peace Prize.”

It could have been the last journey for the last tribute and he would have galvanised the public.

First published on New Matilda 6 March 2013

Stuart Rees is the Chair of the Sydney Peace Foundation

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Publicity surrounding the mystery of Australian Ben Zygier – Prisoner X – and the death on Sunday of the allegedly tortured prisoner Arafat Jaradat has provoked Palestinians to protest the treatment of thousands of other prisoners in Israeli jails, including men on a hunger strike who are near to death.

Although the treatment of prisoners by Israel denies them their civil rights and breaches international humanitarian law, the essence of Israel’s behaviour is best described as the use of cruelty as policy.

Cruelty means ‘disposed to inflict suffering’, or ‘taking pleasure in inflicting pain’. A culture of revenge drives the operation of Israeli military law, I believe. Palestinians detained under administrative detention are not charged, do not know what they are supposed to argue against, or when they will be released.

A recent editorial in Haaretz said, “Even if the arrests (of those in administrative detention) are legal according to military decree, they are draconian and reek of cruelty and abuse.”

About 180 Palestinian children are in custody, most for the offence of throwing stones at military vehicles, with less than half of them sentenced, and most of them detained until the end of legal proceedings.

Last year’s investigation by Harriet Sherwood of The Guardian showed that arrested Palestinian children were locked in solitary confinement for days or even weeks, released only when they appeared in an interrogation room, where they were shackled by hands and feet to a chair while being questioned.

The non-government organisation Defence For Children International – Palestine Section (DCI-Palestine) identified practices of blindfolding, physical abuse and threats, and confirmed that imprisoned Palestinian children were rarely questioned in front of a parent and rarely saw a lawyer.

Although The Guardian had seen audio visual recordings of such interrogations, the Israeli military maintained that it “acted in accordance with the law and the unequivocal guidelines which forbid such practices”.

Israeli human rights campaigners insist that effective pressure to end cruel practices and to advance Palestinians’ rights to self-determination cannot come from within Israel.

Only outside influence – such as that effected by the worldwide Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign – will chip away at the Israeli government’s indifference to the rules of international law, let alone to UN resolutions.

At first sight, the international community’s response to the abuse of Palestinian prisoners and to the near death plight of the hunger strikers seems encouraging. European Union policy chief Catherine Ashton and Quartet on the Middle East envoy Tony Blair have called on Israel to respect the human rights of Palestinian prisoners.

But given Israel’s indifference to outsiders’ appeals, Aston’s and Blair’s words will hurt like a slap with a feather.

Israel’s military acts with impunity. Israel’s leaders remain unaccountable and in the name of security, take any action they wish.

Besides, Israel’s critics will be told, ‘Iran is the threat’, ‘Look at Syria’, ‘Australia, put your own house in order’, ‘We are defending our very existence’, ‘You are talking about Palestinians, so who cares?’

Is it possible that other evidence of cruelty could prompt even hardline Zionists to reflect and find sufficient humility to think about the notion of a common humanity?

They might consider the issue of pregnant Palestinian women forced to give birth at Israeli checkpoints because they have been barred from travelling. The UN has reported that between 2000 and 2007, of the 67 Palestinian mothers who gave birth at Israeli checkpoints, 36 of the babies and five of the mothers died.

In 2009, Israeli soldiers commissioned t-shirts depicting a pregnant Palestinian with a target over her belly and the caption, One shot, two kills.

Those examples may be ignored because they occurred years ago. Yet today, even the seriously ill are prevented from obtaining the necessary medical attention.

Gaza resident Sabreen Okal, a 27-year-old mother of five has a malignant tumour on her arm and needs radiation treatment in a Jerusalem hospital. Israeli authorities refused her entry on December 20 and again on January 21. They say they are still looking into her file.

Prima facie, the examples of the treatment of prisoners, children, women in labour and the seriously ill confirm the notion of cruelty as policy.

My contentions may be discussed by individuals who have had a privileged upbringing, an encouraging education, perhaps fulfilling employment and who return each evening to comfortable homes. It is also likely that they have never been to Gaza, seldom to the West Bank, and have never seen life in the refugee camps of Lebanon, have never witnessed Israeli justice or visited Israeli prisons.

Such citizens could at least ponder whether a proportion of the attention given to Prisoner X should be diverted to insist on the human rights of all Palestinian prisoners. Instead of modest pleas of the Ashton/Blair variety, a few politicians could say they are outraged by cruelty and will immediately insist that unless prisoners in administrative detention are convicted of terrorist offences, they should be released immediately.

In the run-up to an election in Australia, there’s a huge opportunity for policy change. Who wants to outlaw cruelty? Who really cares about the human rights of Palestinians?

This article was first published by ABC The Drum ONLINE on 27 February 2013: http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/4541018.html

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By Professor Stuart Rees

In answer to the comment ‘Stand up for Human Rights in Sri Lanka’, a young man wearing a sombrero and an Australian flag draped around his shoulders, responded, ‘Fuck human rights.’

It was 10:05 am on Thursday January 3rd, a hot blue sky day, perfect for the start of the Australia v. Sri Lanka Test Match. In the company of about thirty others, on a pathway some distance from the Sydney Cricket Ground (SCG), I was attempting to hand out leaflets which said, ‘Don’t Let Cricket Hide Genocide, Boycott Sri Lanka.’

The “fuck human rights” man was followed by other expletives from a few others, so several of the boycott protesters changed tack and tried to be informative, ‘40,000 Tamils slaughtered, do you care ?’ A middle aged couple hurried by, looked straight ahead but answered ‘No we don’t care, we’re going to the cricket.’

Others strode along stony faced, some apparently dismayed by the sight of the protest, some obviously embarrassed at the thought that if they took our pamphlets they might be filmed by the accompanying television cameramen.

To add to the ‘40,000 slaughtered’ plea, I tried, ‘Journalists have disappeared and others have been killed for criticizing the Sri Lankan Government.’ Most people stared ahead and kept on walking but a large, swarthy man in short shorts responded ,’That’s bullshit’ and a few meters behind a smaller man said, ‘Don’t support you mate.’

A more understandable response came from groups of young men daubed in green and yellow, some wearing wigs of curled hair in the same colours. They seemed to think the protesters were supporters of the Sri Lankan team, a perception which provoked their patriotic ‘Ossie, Ossie Ossie, Oi, Oi, Oi.’

With a few exceptions most cricket followers did not seem to want to know about the lives of Sri Lankan Tamils, let alone about any past slaughter.

The task of informing the public had been made more difficult when security guards representing the Moore Park Trust forbade the erection of placards outside a main entrance to the ground which they said was SCG Trust Land. The leaders of the protest were directed to move to a pathway 400 metres distant.

This official Sydney reaction, ‘ Don’t let human rights interfere with cricket’ contrasted with the response of officialdom at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) on the opening of the Boxing Day Test when a similar Boycott Sri Lanka protest was permitted at a prominent entrance to the hallowed MCG. There are no regulations about political demonstrations outside the MCG.

That Melbournites might be more sympathetic than Sydneysiders towards protests against the appearance of the Sri Lanka team, could be implied from an Age poll taken on the day after the Boxing Day test . A sample of 650 readers of that newspaper were asked ‘ Should Sri Lanka be banned from world cricket?’ 66 per cent said yes. 34 per cent said no.

The case for boycotting Sri Lanka was listed on pamphlets taken by only a handful of people streaming towards the SCG. At least that small number could have read that the UN has called for a war crimes investigation of the Sri Lankan government over the murder of 40,000 innocent Tamil civilians, that the persecution of Tamils continues and largely explains the numbers of Tamils seeking asylum in Australia.

Former Sydney Morning Herald cricket writer, the late Peter Roebuck, wrote that a TV exposé of the execution, rape and abuse of Tamils had ‘provoked deep consternation’ among Australian cricketers. A heading in the London Guardian said, ‘A Sri Lankan Scandal; Cricket and the Killing Fields.’

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We make this statement in terms of our commitment to the needs of a common humanity, in particular regarding the suffering of citizens within Syria and regarding those who have become refugees.

In terms of the Syrian people’s legitimate demands for democratic reform, we encourage everyone to aim at celebrating those differences which would nurture a flourishing democracy. Those differences would include religious beliefs and loyalties, ethnic origin and culture. But they might also be differences in terms of traditions of hospitality, dress, food, music, great art and poetry.

We also encourage celebration of a common ground in terms of universal human rights, the sovereignty of a nation and responsibilities for the preservation of Syria’s unique heritage and for stewardship of the environment.

Our thoughts are dominated by a commitment to non violence, ‘ the law for Life’ as defined by Mahatma Gandhi. Such non violence includes not only a cease fire in the present conflict but also an end to the smuggling of arms inside and outside the country.

Non violence also means an end to authoritarianism of any kind, whether in dictatorship, hatred for minority groups or domestic violence. Only dialogue and commitment to non violence can start a process of peacebuilding and healing within Syria.

The plight of Syrian refugees must be high on the agenda of any peace proposals. Turkey’s welcoming and caring for refugees illustrates the commitment to a common humanity which prompts this statement. We urge affluent developed countries to consult and support Turkey and any other host countries for Syrian refugees as to the short term resources required to make the numerous tent cities livable.

As for the long term prospects for refugees, that depends on an end to the violence and persecution within Syria; and a commitment by all parties not only to peace but also to peace with justice?

December 6th, 2012

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The far larger governments, of the UK, Sweden and the USA should be castigated for their refusal to guarantee any safe passage for Julian Assange if he was extradited to Sweden.

At this point I’ll give the government of Australia the benefit of the doubt over their attitude to the Ecuadorian decision but we should ask whether they will find the courage to insist that the human rights of vulnerable people should override the potentially bullying power of large governments? Here is a chance to break with years of unquestioning alliance with mother and father.

It is actually a mistake to say ‘potentially’ because large governments have a tradition of doing what they like irrespective of the rules of international law. US politicians’ violent reactions to the Wikileaks / Assange revelations about the US military’s murder of civilians in Iraq, show how great is a powerful country’s desire for revenge when their secrecy and illegalities are challenged. The bullying behaviour of the UK government in threatening to invade the Ecuadorian Embassy to arrest Mr. Assange is merely the latest example of a powerful country believing that it can do what it likes despite it’s associated pious utterances about respect for the law. To add insult to injury, the government of Sweden then calls in the Ecuadorian Ambassador to reprimand his government for being such an outspoken defender of human rights.

Bullying as a form of diplomacy? When will they ever learn?

For centuries, governments have behaved as though they needed to maintain secrecy and should prosecute anyone – Daniel Defoe, Tom Paine, Daniel Ellsberg, Bradley Manning,Julian Assange – who challenges their use of force to get their way. For centuries governments have insisted that the practice of government was so mysterious that members of the general public could not possibly understand.

The government of Ecuador has shared their understanding.The elegant, philsosophically and legally sophisticated arguments of the Ecuadorian Foreign Minister have shown a world wide public which range of statutes and treaties in international law helped his government to decide to give asylum to Assange. The world does understand, even if politicians do not or continue to wish that decisions had been kept secret, that the Ecuadorians had not shared their beliefs and their values with the rest of us.

Cowardice as well as courage has entered the Assange/UK/Sweden equation. Three powerful governments -UK, Sweden and the USA refused to give assurances about Assange’s safety if he was extradited to Sweden to be interviewed (not charged) with alleged sexual offense. The smell of collusion between such governments wafts across the oceans and through the Internet.

In the above comments, it should be obvious that the notion of Justice depends on a combination of historical, social and political precedents and calculations. Such precedents – such as a love of secrecy and brute force to ‘solve’ problems merit as much consideration as the views of those lawyers who love to have 50 cents each way on the question of justice: ‘yes the UK and the USA could ignore sovereign territory, no perhaps they should not.’ Please, no more quibbling from lawyers who in the last few hours have suggested that the UK’s threats to invade could be legitimate despite the protests of the ‘fanatics’ who are Assange supporters.

The issue of justice is the property of everyone. Every citizen has a right to stand up for universal human rights and to support the years of ground breaking revelations by WikiLeaks. Such commentary and advocacy is not the preserve of politicians and their legal advisers. If we allow that secret, privileged and often destructive preserve and practice to be maintained, nothing will have been learned from the Ecuadorians’ brave and principled stand.

First published on Monday, 20 August 2012: ON LINE  opinion  – Australia’s e-journal of social and political debate.

P.S. Julian Assange first public statement since entering Ecuador’s London embassy on 19th August followed by statements of support from around the world:

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