The Voice of
America’s (VOA) Journalist Standards & Practices (document 11-023 and
11-024), under the section captioned “WHAT DO VOA’S AUDIENCES HAVE A RIGHT TO
EXPECT? Audiences ‘ Bill of Journalism Rights” provides that VOA’s audiences
have the:
right to expect that journalists will
monitor power and give voice to the voiceless. The press should use its watchdog
power to uncover things that are important and new and that change community
thinking… The press should monitor all the key centers of power in the
community – including but not limited to government.
Last week, a
visiting delegation of the VOA Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) in
Ethiopia was served an ultimatum by dictatorMelesZenawi: If the VOA wants
the electronic jamming of its broadcasts to Ethiopia stopped, it must silence
and banish from its microphones the voices of specific individuals in the
Ethiopian Diaspora and some within Ethiopia. The delegation told Zenawi that the VOA is voice of the voiceless, not the
silencer of the already voiceless.
It was an
amazing display of nerve, hubris and insolence. In what amounts to a black list
of enemies, Zenawi handed the VOA delegation a roster
of well-known Ethiopian opposition leaders, activists and advocates who have
long championed the causes of democracy, freedom and human rights in Ethiopia.
Among the individuals Zenawi wanted blackballed by
the VOA include PaulosMilkias, BeyenePetros, GetachewMetaferia, SeeyeAbraha, Merera Gudina and BerhanuNega. But the black “list goes on” with the names of
numerous other individuals. This author is reportedly among the individuals the
VOA was asked to ban.
My hat’s off
to the VOA’s BBG for upholding its “Audiences ‘ Bill of Journalism Rights” and
legal mandates against such a brazen assault on its journalistic integrity and
professionalism.
The Irony
of Defending a Dictator
It is ironic
that Zenawi is now trying to take away my right to
speak freely in America sitting in his palace in Ethiopia. Last September, I
stood up to defend his right to speak freely in America, at Columbia
University’s World Leaders Forum. I was perhaps the only individual in
the Ethiopian pro-democracy opposition who stepped forward and publicly and
vigorously defended Zenawi’s right to speak at that
Forum. I faced withering criticism and censure in public and private for
defending Zenawi’s right. So many were disappointed
in me for taking such a public stand. Some openly questioned my sanity
suggesting that I was living in my “academic fantasyland” to defend such a
“ruthless dictator”. Others pitied me for being “hopelessly naïve”. Some even
doubted my integrity by suggesting that I had “sold out” to Zenawi
by defending his right to speak in America.
But as a
university professor and constitutional lawyer steadfastly dedicated to free
speech, I have adopted one yardstick for all issues concerning free speech,
Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: ‘Everyone has the
right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold
opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and
ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.’ I underscore the words
‘everyone’ and ‘regardless of frontiers…’
Though I
condemn Zenawi for his abuse, mistreatment and
cruelty against Serkalem and Eskinder
and other journalists, I disagree with him on his repeated theft of elections,
trashing of the human rights of Ethiopian citizens, boldfaced lies about
economic growth… unjust incarceration of BirtukanMidekssa… crackdown on the press and civil society
organizations, subversion of the legislative process to mill out repressive
laws… I shall vigorously defend his right to speak not just at Columbia but at
any other public venue in the United States of America.
Now, Zenawi tries to strong-arm the VOA into taking my right of
free speech in America by having me and others blackballed. Zenawi
has sealed the mouths, plugged the ears and poked out the eyes of 80 million
Ethiopians. Now he has the temerity, the sheer audacity to demand the VOA to do
his dirty job in America!?!
I am not sure
whether to laugh out loud, take offense or express
outrage at such a brazenly impudent attempt to interfere with the right of free
speech and of the press in America. But this is not the first time Zenawi has tried to jerk the VOA or other international
broadcasters. In 2005, he charged five Ethiopian-born VOA journalists in his
kangaroo court on trumped up “genocide” and other charges. Last year, he
likened the VOA to Rwanda’s genocide-Radio Mille Collines. Zenawi has managed to intimidate Deutche Welle (DV) (German Radio Ethiopia Broadcast) editors
into keeping his critics off the air by orchestrating a campaign of fear and
smear. The fact of the matter is that Zenawi can
intimidate and threaten Deutsche Welle and the independent
press in Ethiopia. But he will never be able to do the same to the VOA!
One is left
wondering if Zenawi has a clue about speech and press
freedoms in America. Does he really believe the VOA or any other individual or
institution in America has the power to muzzle, censor, blackball
or otherwise prevent any person in America from exercising their freedom of
expression? Does he really believe he can intimidate the VOA into abandoning
its legal duties and mandates and journalistic standards to accommodate his
paranoid need for a complete and total news and information blackout in
Ethiopia? How does one respond to the ignorantly arrogant and arrogantly
ignorant?
Educating
a Dictator: Freedom of Speech in America 101
The German
literary figure Johann Wolfgang von Goethe observed, “There is nothing more
frightful than ignorance in action.” There is nothing more frightful to the
system of American liberties than the insidious demand by Zenawi
to gag, muzzle and blackball his critics in America and forever ban them from
appearing on VOA programs and broadcasts. By making such an insolent
and criminal demand, Zenawi showed not only his
abysmal ignorance of the American Constitution and law but also struck a blow
at the very heart of the most precious of all American liberties: freedom of
speech and of the press. Zenawi’s blacklist for the
suppression of the free speech rights of American citizens and others is no
less threatening than an attack by Al-Qaeda on the American homeland. The only
difference is that Al-Qaeda schemes to take American lives, Zenawi
American liberties.
Free speech
and the free press are the bedrock and cornerstones of American society. Free
speech and the free press are what make America, America, and not prison nation
Ethiopia. Without free speech and the free press, there is no America!
What makes America different from any other nation in the world is her Bill of
Rights of which the First Amendment – the right to expressive freedoms — is
foremost, her fiercely independent judiciary and the American people’s
unyielding commitment to individual freedom. Zenawi
has the gall to demand an agency of the U.S. Government blacklist American
citizens and others!
It is obvious
that Zenawi needs a basic lesson in the First
Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
The First
Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is unquestionably the paramount element of
the U.S. Constitution. It guarantees freedoms of religion, speech, writing and
publishing, peaceful assembly, and the freedom to raise grievances with the
Government. The constitutional language used in securing these rights is
crystal-clear, sweeping, uncompromising and unambiguous: “Congress shall make
no law… abridging the freedom of speech, or of the
press…” “No law” means no government official or institution has the power to
restrict, censor, suppress, restrain, muzzle or blackball any American citizen
or inhabitant of the U.S. from exercising their right to free speech or
restrain the independent press from performing its institutional functions.
Political
speech in America is sacred and given the highest level of constitutional
protection. Any person in America has the right to publicly criticize,
denounce, condemn and berate any government institution or leader with
impunity. The right of Americans to criticize their government evolved over
centuries of struggle for individual rights. Like Zenawi
today, in 1735, long before the American Republic was established, the greedy
and arrogant British Governor of New York, William Cosby, tried to prosecute
newspaper publisher John Peter Zenger for badmouthing him (seditious libel).
Cosby lost as Zenger was acquitted by a jury. Zenger’s case laid the foundation
for press freedom in America.
In 1798, the
Federalist Congress passed the Alien and Sedition Acts with the aim of
punishing influential Republican newspaper editors and opposition leaders for
badmouthing the president, Congress, or the government. Under the Act, a
Congressman was convicted and imprisoned for calling President Adams a man who
had “a continual grasp for power.” The Act expired in 1801 and President
Jefferson pardoned the two dozen people convicted under that Act.
At the onset
of the American Civil War in 1861, President Lincoln tried to silence his
critics by suspending the right of citizens to challenge their detention (writ
of habeas corpus) by military authorities. The Supreme Court struck down
Lincoln’s order, and in a passionate defense of American liberties wrote:
By the
protection of the law human rights are secured; withdraw that protection, and
they are at the mercy of wicked rulers, or the clamor of an excited people… The nation…has no right to expect that
it will always have wise and humane rulers, sincerely attached to the
principles of the Constitution. Wicked men, ambitious of power, with hatred of
liberty and contempt of law, may fill the place once occupied by Washington and
Lincoln; and if this [broad power of martial law] be conceded, the dangers to
human liberty are frightful to contemplate.
Towards the
end of WW I, Congress enacted the Sedition Act of 1918 with the aim of
punishing communists, socialists, anarchists and anti-war protesters who
criticized the United States government. The U.S. Supreme Court established the
so-called “clear and present danger” test as an evidentiary standard in
criminal prosecutions to determine if the speech in question presented a real
and immediate danger to the public. That test proved useless and was abandoned.
For the last
50 years, the powers of the U.S. federal and state governments to regulate and
interfere in freedom of speech and of press have been severely curtailed. Just
in the past couple of months, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down laws that
interfered with the free speech rights of those on the outer fringes on
American society. In one case, it ruled in favor of the right of a church group
that protests at the funerals of soldiers and Marines killed in the wars in
Afghanistan and Iraq. The First Amendment protects even the rights of members
of such a lunatic fringe determined to dishonor the memories of American heroes
who gave up their lives to defend the free speech and protest rights of such a
group.
In another
case, the Court struck down a California law that sought to prohibit
distastefully violent video games: “The First Amendment itself reflects a
judgment by the American people that the benefits of its restrictions on the
Government outweigh the costs. Our Constitution forecloses any attempt to
revise that judgment simply on the basis that some speech is not worth it.”
Last year the Court ruled that corporations have the same free speech rights as
natural persons holding: “If the First Amendment has any force, it prohibits
Congress from fining or jailing citizens, or associations of citizens, for simply
engaging in political speech.”
The
jurisprudence of free speech and press and protection for dissenters and
government critics has a long and honored tradition in America. In 1971, in the
“Pentagon Papers” case, the U.S. government attempted and failed to prevent the
New York Times and the Washington Post from publishing classified documents
packed with damaging revelations about America’s conduct of the Vietnam War. In
1967, the State of New York attempted and failed to require state employees to
declare their loyalty to the state or face dismissal from their jobs. In 1973,
the Court upheld the right of individuals who have an interest in obscene
material.
In 1989, the
state of Texas attempted and failed in its efforts to criminalize the burning
of the American flag in political protest. In 1992, the Supreme Court affirmed
the free speech rights of hate-mongering Neo-Nazis and racist Klansmen. The
government does not even have the power to discriminate against the viewpoints
of this lunatic fringe. In 1997, the Supreme Court struck down indecency laws
applying to the Internet keeping Congress out of regulation of the great
equalizer: The Internet.
Zenawi may have been inspired by the short
and sordid history of blacklisting in America. In the early 1950s, Senator
Eugene McCarthy began a communist witch hunt by creating a blacklist of
Americans suspected of communist ties and disloyalty. After falsely and
recklessly accusing numerous individuals, McCarthy was censured by the Senate
in 1954. He died no better than a skid row drunk in 1957.
President
Nixon drew up a list of his critics in his “Political Enemies Project” in 1971.
Nixon and his crew discussed “how we can use the available federal machinery to
screw our political enemies.” Two years later, Nixon screwed himself and his
crew out of a job when he resigned in total disgrace, and forty members of his
administration were either indicted or jailed.
American
presidents have been criticized, vilified and insulted not just by ordinary
individuals but also the members of the press, opposition political leaders and
the press. When Jimmy Carter talked about “ethnic purity”, Jesse Jackson
slammed him for resorting to “Hitlerian racism.”
The unions depicted and lashed out against President Ronald Reagan as the
“enemy of working people”. The Libertarians reviled Reagan for being a “war
monger.” Newsweek tagged President George Bush, Sr. a “wimp”. Bush felt so hurt
by that label he commented on June 16, 1991: “You’re talking to the guy that
had a cover of a national magazine, that I’ll never
forgive, put that label on me.”
President
George W. Bush, Jr. has been criticized, humiliated, vilified, ridiculed and
everything else for his policies, personality, performance, mispronunciation of
English words and for inventing his own “language” of “Bushism”.
Members of the “Tea Party” have compared President Obama to Adolf Hitler and
caricatured him in the image of all sorts of wild animals. A popular radio show
host accused Obama of “planning a terrorist attack against the U.S.” Sara Palin
accused Obama of “palling around with terrorists who would target their own
country.”
The point is
that there is not a damn thing American presidents can do to stop citizens from
criticizing them, denouncing their policies, ridiculing their lifestyles or
discrediting their ideas. That is the American way. If Zenawi
thinks he can have the VOA blacklist and gag his critics in America, I would
like to know on what planet he spends most of his time.
Blacklisting
Ethiopians and Ethiopian Americans in America: Potential Violations of American
Law?
If the demand
for blacklisting had been done by any branch of the U.S. government, state
governments or any subdivision or agency of any government in the U.S. or any
private individual, legal action could lie under 18 U.S.C. sections
241(conspiracy against rights) and 242 (deprivation of rights under color of
law) and other federal criminal statutes prohibiting solicitation to commit a
crime. There are also avenues for a private right of action in Federal Court
for violation or attempted violation of a constitutional/civil right.
Solicitation and attempt by a foreign government to deprive American citizens
or inhabitants of the U.S. of constitutional/civil rights in the United States
presents legal issues of the utmost seriousness.
Truth: The
Dictators’ Nightmare
One of the
great justices of the U.S. Supreme Court wrote: “Censorship reflects society’s
lack of confidence in itself. It is a hallmark of an authoritarian regime.” I
say censorship reflects the lack of confidence of a leader who cannot defend
his ideas or vision, if he ever had one. If Zenawi
should take one lesson from everything that is written here, it is simply this:
In America, everyone has the absolute right to express his/her political views
on whatever issue they desire. Neither Congress, the President of the United
States nor a dictator from Africa has the power to take that right away.
We live in
the United States of America, not the Benighted States of America. Zenawi has silenced the voices of 80 million people in the
Dystopia of Ethiopia he has created over the past 20 years. He will never be
able to do what he has doone in Ethiopia in the
United States of America. Let all “wicked men, ambitious of power, with hatred
of liberty and contempt of law” take a lesson from history: “No dictator, no
invader, can hold an imprisoned population by force of arms forever. There is
no greater power in the universe than the need for freedom. Against that power,
governments and tyrants and armies cannot stand.”
July 4,
2011
Today is July
4, 2011. Exactly 235 years ago, America declared its independence from colonial
tyranny that flagrantly dispossessed Americans of their basic liberties:
Freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, the right to a
fair and speedy trial and more. It is the irony of ironies that 235 years
later, another generation must rise up to defend these scared liberties against
an African tyrant.
Long live
freedom of speech and of the press in America and in Ethiopia!
