Daily Archives: October 16, 2013

Unlimited Free Speech?
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Unlimited Free Speech? - Video

Cape Town The more freely Africans can speak their minds, the more confident they are in the performance of their governments, says a report published today.

The report, released in Nairobi by Afrobarometer, shows than half of Africans surveyed in 34 countries across the continent say they are "completely free" to say what they think, while another quarter say they are "somewhat free".

Top of the free speech log are Malawi, where 79 percent say they have freedom of speech, followed by Tanzania (77 percent), Liberia (75 percent), Ghana (74 percent) and Tunisia (73 percent).

In the countries where people feel least free, only about one in four feel they have unrestricted opportunities to speak their minds. Bottom of the log are Sudan (19 percent), Togo (21 percent), Cote d'Ivoire (21 percent), Zimbabwe (22 percent) and Swaziland (24 percent).

Most of Africa's biggest nations fall somewhere in the middle, with 34 percent of Nigerians, 52 percent of South Africans, 53 percent of Egyptians and 55 percent of Kenyans feeling completely free to speak.

The Afrobarometer report was written by Professor Winnie Mitullah, director of the Institute for Development Studies at the University of Nairobi, and Paul Kamau, senior research fellow at the same institute.

In a news release issued with the report, Afrobarometer said: "Where people feel that they are free to say what they want, they also report that their leaders are more trustworthy and less corrupt than do their peers, the survey shows.

"Freedom of expression is also consistently linked to better ratings of government performance, especially with respect to government effectiveness in fighting corruption, but also in other sectors such as maintaining roads and managing the economy."

Fifty-seven percent of Africans support "an unfettered right to publish", the report says. This support is highest in East Africa, where 72 percent want press freedom, and lowest in West Africa, where the figure is 52 percent.

Afrobarometer adds that citizens rank their media highly for exposing government mistakes and corruption: "An average of 71 percent say the media in their country is either 'somewhat' or 'very effective'.

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Africa: Free Speech Equals Better Governance, Says Report

MORGAN HILL -- As they pick at a few egg rolls at their favorite Chinese restaurant on the outskirts of town here, Kendall and Joy Jones and Dianna Dariano recall Cinco de Mayo in 2010 -- and it still makes them seethe red, white and blue.

Capturing the nation's attention and sparking a patriotic backlash, their sons were ordered by Live Oak High School administrators to turn their American flag-adorned shirts inside out to avoid any conflict with Mexican-American students celebrating Cinco de Mayo.

In many ways, everyone has moved on. The boys have gone off to college. The principal and assistant principal involved have left Live Oak. The Fox News trucks are long gone from the school's parking lot.

But the controversy simmers, reaching a crucial stage Thursday, when a federal appeals court considers the families' free speech lawsuit over the incident. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals will hear arguments in the parents' appeal of a ruling last year dismissing their case.

The parents still want the Morgan Hill Unified School District to be held accountable for what they consider an unpatriotic violation of the students' First Amendment right to wear an American flag on a T-shirt on any day of the year.

"It's the principle of the thing," Kendall Jones says. "We don't want anybody else to go through what these kids did."

Adds Dariano, a Latina, "Do not say to anyone in the United States you can't wear an American flag. That's an absolute outrage."

Despite striking a public chord over the episode three years ago, the families and their legal claims have encountered substantial resistance.

Morgan Hill school officials argue that the Live Oak administrators' actions were a necessary safety precaution because of a history of campus strife between Hispanic and Anglo students on Cinco de Mayo. They maintain that safeguarding students trumps free speech concerns.

"This is not a case about the flag, or the First Amendment rights of adults in a public forum," the district said in court papers. "This is a case about whether we allow school administrators, familiar with the circumstances in their schools, to take reasonable steps to protect student safety in the face of threats and a history of violence."

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Free speech and the American flag: Lawsuit over T-shirt incident at Morgan Hill school lives on