Monthly Archives: July 2021

More than 200 nations are represented at the Tokyo 2021 Olympics. As ever, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) asserts the games are a means of unifying humanity through elite sport. At the same time, though, IOC president Thomas Bach concedes:

The Olympic Games cannot prevent wars and conflicts.

Instead, he says, the games are unifying by way of symbolism:

[] they can set an example for a world where everyone respects the same rules and one another.

The inference here is that the Olympics, with a rule-based platform for nations and athletes to come together respectfully and cohesively, provide an opportunity for dialogue and friendship that resonates beyond sport.

The confluence of nations at the Olympics also underscores the IOCs much-vaunted position that the games must be politically neutral. Indeed, as a practical demonstration of that aspiration, both the IOC and the United Nations promulgate the goal of an Olympic Truce for a period of seven days before the Olympics until seven days after the Paralympics.

Thus, there is an expectation that UN member states will cease hostilities, ostensibly to protect athletes competing at the Tokyo games.

However, that anti-political idealism is confounded by a sobering reality: nations and athletes come together to compete at the Olympics, but they can hardly leave behind a range of tensions and conflicts in global geopolitics.

Indeed, beneath the hubris of Olympic evangelism, the realpolitik of corruption, conflict, domination or genocide permeate numerous countries that are an integral part of the so-called Olympic family. Among them, Myanmar and Iran provide compelling examples.

The Facebook site of the Myanmar Olympic Committee highlights an invitation to athletes at Tokyo to sign the Olympic Truce Mural. However, this hardly seems a straightforward matter for the three qualified athletes from Myanmar.

Back home, the countrys military dictatorship has shown genocidal intent against the (largely) Muslim Rohingya community, while Myanmars armed forces, reacting against pro-democracy activists, have reportedly killed more than 900 people since the coup and detained thousands.

The IOC, meanwhile, will welcome to Tokyo 2021 Myanmars deputy minister for health and sports, U Myo Hlaing, thereby providing sanction to the countrys repressive regime.

Read more: Explainer: why the UN has found Myanmars military committed genocide against the Rohingya

For Win Htet Oo, an expatriate swimmer living in Melbourne with his family from Myanmar, the hypocrisy of representing a country that is wantonly killing its own people proved too much to bear. Win Htet initially wrote to the IOC with a request that he be allowed to swim as a neutral athlete, independent of any country.

But this was denied, presumably because he was not a refugee. The politically neutral IOC was not about to allow a citizen-athlete to claim neutrality from their country. Unable to disassociate himself from a murderous regime, Win Htet withdrew from selection for the Tokyo games, declaring: I shall not march in the parade of nations under a flag steeped in my peoples blood.

By contrast, Thet Htar Thuzar, a badminton player, is committed to representing Myanmar at the Tokyo Olympics. In a social media post, she wrote that her long-cherished dream has come true. Thet Htar was not merely self-absorbed: she hoped to make her compatriots smile even for just a moment amid the hardships they are facing.

However, many respondents on social media were unimpressed, seeing participation in the games by local athletes as a gesture of subservience to the Myanmar military.

Unlike Win Htet, though, Thet Htar and her family live in Myanmar under a dictatorship. With the military regime talking up her role in the Olympics, she may have been in no position to talk it down.

Wrestling is a sport in which Iranians have performed extremely well. The countrys official news agency reports that six wrestlers will represent the republic at Tokyo 2021.

However, champion Greco-Roman wrestler Navid Afkari cannot be among them. In September 2020, he was executed by the Iranian government. The execution was widely seen by critics as retribution for Navids high-profile participation in mass protests against an oppressively authoritarian regime.

The IOC was deeply disappointed that its diplomatic representations to the Iranian government, seeking clemency for Navid, were ignored. Capital punishment is, of course, part of state power in many countries that take part in the Olympics. But critics contended that Navids trial was a sham. For them, this punishment amounted to a political execution.

Navid had aspired to be at the Tokyo Olympics. Exiled Iranian activists argued that, in the wake of this athletes execution, the IOC should ban their country from the 2021 games.

Yet this did not happen. Discussing the case, the IOC vice president, John Coates, personified the IOCs navet when he noted:

The difficulty for us is this execution didnt relate to a sporting event.

However, he pointed out that when Iranian athletes refused to compete against Israeli athletes, a suspension ensued. In terms of Navid, though, Coates sat firmly on the IOCs neutrality fence:

Weve been getting two sides to the story as to whether he got a fair go or didnt get a fair go.

Although the Olympic Truce is a public relations metaphor rather than a declaration with practical salience, the games environment may inadvertently provide safe haven opportunities for athletes from countries with repressive political regimes.

The best-known example of this was the 1956 Melbourne Olympics, which featured the defection of some 55 Hungarian athletes to the West in the wake of the Soviet invasion of Hungary. However, political asylum at the Olympics is relatively uncommon and, in the context of the Tokyo games, unlikely. The Japanese government has no appetite for political refugees, with long-term detention the norm.

The IOC, meanwhile, has conceived its own safe haven for a small number of Olympic athletes who have fled conflict and assumed the status of refugees. The IOC Refugee Olympic Team, which began at the Rio Olympics of 2016, has now been selected for Tokyo. It features 29 athletes, of whom four are originally from Iran. The best known of the Iranians is taekwondo star Kimia Alizadeh, who absconded during athletic competition in Europe.

Read more: The Olympics have always been a platform for protest. Banning hand gestures and kneeling ignores their history

Notwithstanding the IOCs commitment to political neutrality, Kimias claims of oppression by the Iran regime are manifest in their profile of her as a refugee Olympian. So, in a decidedly political pivot, the IOC welcomes Iran to the Tokyo Olympics, along with four Iranian athletes who fled to seek political asylum.

Notwithstanding the Olympic ideals of friendly dialogue during the games, the schism between political refugees and their original countries is hardly going to evaporate.

More generally, the IOCs selectively applied position of political neutrality is certain to provide ongoing consternation given that the worlds most repressive regimes are welcomed into the Olympic family. Arguably, the IOCs apolitical position actually emboldens dictatorships and human rights abuses. It offers no consequences except in the case of athletes prevented from playing sport.

Read more from the original source:

The Olympic movement claims political neutrality. In reality, that ideal is often selectively applied - The Conversation AU

Wed, Jul 21, 2021

UkraineAlertbyDoug Klain

I dont ask [the United States] to back me, I ask [it] to back democratic values, said Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, leader of the democratic opposition in Belarus, during her first working visit to Washington, DC, to meet with high-level US government officials.

This is understandable for America. We are sharing common values like rule of law, human rights, democracy. The fight now is in Belarus locally, but its the problem of the whole world, she continued.

Tsikhanouskaya sat down in-person for an Atlantic Council Front Page event hosted by the Councils Eurasia Center, where she was interviewed by PBS NewsHour Chief Correspondent Amna Nawaz and was joined by US Ambassador to Belarus Julie Fisher and Eurasia Center Deputy Director Melinda Haring. The event came a day after Tsikhanouskayas meeting with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and other State Department officials, and hours before her meetings with National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and members of Congress.

Asked by Nawaz what she wants from the Biden administration, Tsikhanouskaya replied Maximum pressure, and maximum support to civil society in Belarus, especially to those Belarusians still working to document human rights abuses and crimes committed by Belarusian authorities.

Send a clear message that the independence for Belarus is the highest value and that Belarus is not [up for deals]. Nobody can sign any deals with Lukashenka at the moment because he is illegitimate.

watch the event

Tsikhanouskaya rose to prominence challenging Belaruss longtime dictator Alyaksandr Lukashenka during the lead up to the countrys 2020 presidential election. When her husband, political vlogger Siarhiy Tsikhanouski, was jailed by the government for trying to challenge Lukashenka for the presidency, Tsikhanouskayaan English teacher without political experiencestepped up and ran in her husbands place.

Lukashenka stole the election and forced Tsikhanouskaya to flee the country when she likely won. Belarusians took to the streets en masse in protests that ground the country to a halt for months and faced violent beatings and detentions from police, torture and assault in prisons, and one of the harshest authoritarian crackdowns seen in years.

Today, Tsikhanouskaya runs the Coordination Council for the Transfer of Power working to rally the international community to support the Belarusian people and hold Lukashenka accountable.

Our goal is holding new free and fair elections in Belarus, and observation of [the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe] or different organizations to retain peoples right to vote, said Tsikhanouskaya.

But as the face of the movement for democracy in Belarus and the biggest voice against Lukashenka, would Tsikhanouskaya run again for the presidency herself?

Im not going to participate in new elections, she told Nawaz. I have a mandate only tobring our country to new elections. But I never wanted to be in power.

Since fleeing Belarus and finding refuge in Lithuania, Tsikhanouskaya has managed a balancing act of using her newfound prominence to elevate the issues facing Belarusiansespecially the more than 550 political prisoners still locked up, including her husbandwhile maintaining that success will mean her stepping away from the leadership role she now occupies.

One of the biggest concerns Tsikhanouskaya is facing is the ability for the democratic movement to sustain itself. While Belarusians took to the streets in the hundreds of thousands last year, the combination of massive state violence and a brutally cold winter have limited wide-scale protests.

Is the enthusiasm gone? Has Lukashenka won? asked Nawaz.

Of course people went to fight on an underground level People are continuing to fight, even though we cant go out so massively, said Tsikhanouskaya. This is bravery. When you are under attack, under oppression, but you are continuing to fight. People understand that they can be detained at any moment, you can be kidnapped on the street just because of the color of your socks or because you participated in peaceful demonstrations [last year], but you are going out and doing something.

Thats why in my meetings, I urge countries, Dont lead a picture-based policy, lead a values-based policy. Dont think that if you dont see those huge demonstrations, people lost intention for changes. Of course not.

Subscribe for the latest from BelarusAlert

Another key issue is what a future Belarusian state will look like on the world stage. To stay in power, Lukashenka has relied heavily on support from Russian President Vladimir Putin as Western leaders have rebuked him. What does Moscow want in Belarus, and how critical is Putins support for Lukashenkas government?

Putin supported Lukashenka after fraudulent elections because the Kremlin also did not expect such an uprising of the Belarusian people, said Tsikhanouskaya. Its really a pity, because we have a wonderful relationship with the Russian people. Lukashenka is not the whole of Belarus, hes only one person.

I have a question, said Tsikhanouskaya. Why are we talking about Russia in this case? This is not a fight between West and East, our fight is between the past and the future. This is a fight inside our country for bringing people their right to choose whoever they want.

Our country is in crisis, and if Russia wants to play a constructive role, just dont interfere in the policy of our country.

When the conversation concluded, Tsikhanouskaya left for the White House to meet with National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, and then on to Capitol Hill where she met with the leadership of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and other members of Congress, and later with USAID Administrator Samantha Power.

While her appearance at the Atlantic Council occurred on day three of her trip, Tsikhanouskaya also plans to travel to New York City, San Francisco, and Los Angeles for further meetings.

Doug Klain is a program assistant at the Atlantic Councils Eurasia Center. Find him on Twitter @DougKlain.

Related content

Wed, Jul 7, 2021

The autocratic regime of Belarus dictator Alyaksandr Lukashenka is intensifying its ongoing cold war against Europe via a series of threats to block trade routes along with ongoing moves to flood the EU with illegal migrants.

UkraineAlertbyBrian Whitmore

Read the original:

Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya on Belarus' future and her place in it - Atlantic Council

In 1979, Assata Shakur of the Black Liberation Army achieved a near-impossible feat: She escaped from the Clinton Correctional Facility for Women, where she was serving a life sentence for the first-degree murder of New Jersey State Trooper Werner Foerster after a shootout on the state turnpike.

She has remained a free woman ever since, having been officially granted political asylum by Cuba in 1984, five years post-breakout.

Shakur's story serves as something of a symbol for the relationship between some American social justice movements and Cuba's authoritarian regime. Take the statement released last week by Black Lives Matter (BLM), addressing the ongoing protests in Cuba amid the government's inability to provide basic food and medicine: "Since 1962, the United States has forced pain and suffering on the people of Cuba by cutting off food, medicine and supplies," the group wrote, referring to the U.S. embargo on trade. "The people of Cuba are being punished by the U.S. government because the country has maintained its commitment to sovereignty and self-determination.Instead of international amity, respect, and goodwill, the U.S. has only instigated suffering for the country's 11 million peopleof which 4 million are Black and Brown." The statement also mentioned Cuba's protection of Shakur.

It's true that U.S. trade policies have exacerbated Cuba's woesinsomuch as the communist island has been unable to reap the rewards of American capitalism. Apart from that, the "sovereignty and self-determination" of the country's government has led to mass oppression of those 11 million people, who are only equal in that they are equally starving.

But don't take it from me. "[Black Lives Matter is] using the situation in Cuba to club their own government over the head," says a 35-year-old black Cuban activist, whose identity has been redacted as he participates in the nation's first protests in more than 60 years. "What's wrong with them?"

In a conversation recorded and sent via WhatsApp, an encrypted messaging service, two Cuban demonstrators, who are both black, responded to the claim that the 4 million black and brown people of Cuba are truly free. After I reached out via an intermediary and asked them to react to BLM's statement, the clip of the two speaking to each other was sent to DADE magazine's Nicols Jimnez, who translated and shared the transcription with Reason.

The correspondence was dispatched via encrypted messaging because Cubans cannot talk openly about the Cuban government. In fact, the conversation heavily features the two protesters going back and forth on whether it is safe to respond to my press request at all. "You have to respond in a way that doesn't screw you over," says the other activist, who is 25 years old. "They're arresting people at their homes."

"That's why I tell people not to screenshot my messages," responds the 35-year-old. "I've reviewed and I think I'm safe with all my Instagram content, but I'm not sure." He adds that he would have liked to respond with a video, but "I can't expose myself like that," he notes, "because it's true that they're rounding people up."

The Cuban Revolution sought to engineer forced equality via communism following the overthrow of the brutal military dictator President Fulgencio Batista. But that equality is a myth, say the activists, who argue that the Cuban government tries to hide the lingering effects of institutionalized and systemic racism.

At a recent university protest, the 35-year-old relays that special forces "went directly after black people." The 25-year-old agrees. "The idea is that only people on the margins protest against the government. Only delinquents," he says. "In fact, they used to call it a revolution for the poor, and now they use words like marginalized and delinquent to describe what's happening, which is a way of hiding all their racism and all their classism, right?"

Riquet Caballero, a black Cuban immigrant to the U.S., also takes issue with the assertion that the country is equal, a claim made by the Democratic Socialists of America and journalists like The New York Times' Nikole Hannah-Jones.

In an interview, Caballero describes his confusion after coming to the U.S. in the late 1990s and noticing various differences between the two nations. He no longer had to make his own kites out of reeds and newspapers, and, to his surprise, kids no longer played baseball with broomsticks and bottle caps. Other differences were more dramatic: When Caballero came to his Cuban public school in an American Olympic '96 basketball jersey, his teacher threatened him with reeducation unless his mother stole Coca-Cola from her factory job and turned it over for a school party.

"I also used to steal light bulbs and sell them for candy," he adds.

He was able to ditch that side hustle upon moving to the U.S. "I would say that what I have thanks to Cuba is to be grateful for having opportunities," he says, having mounted a Libertarian bid in 2018 for the Florida House of Representatives. "I realized that here in America, you could basically make anything of yourself.The pursuit of happiness is something that is really central to my core."

That mentality is not welcome in Cuba. On the contrary, it's actively discouraged, and punishable by law. "There was a man that was arrested who produced illegal cheese," notes Caballero. "He didn't report all the milk that the cows were producing, even though they were his cows.He only reported the milk production, started making cheese and selling cheese on the side.The government found out and they confiscated his cheesemaking operation." The man was then sent to jail, says Caballero.

Like the two activists in Havana, Caballero also altogether rejects the claim made by American leftists that Cuba has been able to construct racial equality. "They really made sure to control the black population because we have a history of being fighters."

BLM in particular has been criticized by the right for having Marxist roots. While it is certainly not true that every person involved with or sympathetic to BLM is also a Marxist, the group's support of the communist regime in Cuba has cost it support from people who otherwise identify with the broader civil liberties goals of the movement.

"When they killed George Floyd I remember that all of [the Cubans] in Miami were accusing BLM of being Marxist, of being communist. And I defended them, bro. I would say, 'Look, it's more than that,'" the 25-year-old Cuban activist says in the voice recording. "And now I see that no, it's actually less than that. It's like they have this ideological starting point from which they see the world instead of standing alongside allies and people who are going through the same things they are."

"You feel alone," he adds. "You feel likeI don't know. It's a letdown. It's horrible, really."

Excerpt from:

In Their Own Words, This Is What It's Actually Like for Black and Brown People in Cuba - Reason

I recently heard about a group that was praying for Alabama and the nation. Praying that governments will repent of their sins. That sinners will come to repentance.

But the sinners they have in mind arent trans youth or women entering abortion clinics. Not undocumented immigrants or same-sex couples.

The sinners they are targeting seek to undermine democracy by suppressing votes. These transgressors are indifferent to the needs of the poor. Some of them even profit from poverty.

This prayer group includes Christians, Jews and Muslims. Blacks, whites, females and males. They belong to the National Poor Peoples Campaign, launched several years ago by the Rev. Dr. William Barber and other clergy. Their prayer calls are open for the public to observe.

And according to the Rev. Carolyn Foster, one of the co-chairs of the Alabama faction of this movement, the stakes are high for many in our state.

About 45 percent of Alabamians are poor or low income, Foster told me recently. Poverty is not the fault of the poor. Poverty is a systemic problem.

That 45 percent figure may seem astronomically high, especially since other organizations such as Alabama Possible put the poverty rate at 16.9 percent. But Foster and the other movement leaders define poverty more broadly than the bureaucrats.

We define poverty as being one emergency away from a catastrophe or a disaster, she said. So that means one car accident. One hospital stay. The death of a breadwinner. Or a divorce that splits one modest, two-income family into two, poorer one-income families.

We are trying to work with the federal government to redefine poverty, Foster said.

And, as people of faith do, they are praying. I was on the line for the July 12 call earlier this month.

We say no, said the Rev. Dr. Beth Johnson of Palomar UU Fellowship in Vista, CA, to autocrats who make their money off the backs of the poor.

Rabbi Alana Suskin, co-chair of the Maryland Poor Peoples Campaign, spoke of the sin of Sodom, which she described as excess not homosexuality. Hoarding resources, wealth, is a theft from God. One who oppresses the poor blasphemes God.

Imam Khalid Griggs, vice president of the Islamic Circle of North America, challenged the institutionalization of poverty while referencing Islams Mecca pilgrimage, where the rich and poor are indistinguishable. It is our demand of this government to address the inequitable distribution of resources, he said.

140 million are crying out, said Rev. Kazimir Brown, deputy director of religious affairs for the Poor Peoples Campaign.

In the Christian context, this is a red-letter, least-of-these gospel. It stands with the historically disenfranchised as Jesus did when he championed widows, children, women and Samaritans.

This gospel comforts the powerless and makes the powerful uncomfortable. Powerful folks like elected officials. Business, civic and religious leaders. Media titans. Celebrities. Anyone with access and opportunity whos accruing power and wealth without concern for the least of these.

This gospel doesnt bully trans students. Doesnt see mass incarceration as a profit-making opportunity.

This gospel thinks the Jesus who healed the sick at practically every opportunity would want to see Medicaid expanded. Would promote wearing masks, social distancing and getting vaccinated.

Some wont recognize it. Or like it. Their gospel stars a Jesus who was a capitalist. A Jesus who didnt give a damn about the disenfranchised. A Jesus for whom oppression is synonymous with manifest destiny.

I almost dont blame them. When the Moral Majority hijacked Jesus in the 1970s, many of us who knew better watched quietly, as though we were powerless to reclaim him.

Its past time some of us started speaking up, so thanks to the National Poor Peoples Campaign. And Im glad they had the savvy to join with like-minded folks of the other two ancient Abrahamic faiths.

Jews, Christians, Muslims and everyone else, believers or not need to know that capitalist, bigoted Jesus aint our Jesus. His gospel aint our Gospel.

We are taking action, praying and becoming in the words of Dr. Martin Luther King an unsettling force.

Original post:

Opinion | And, as people of faith do, they are praying - alreporter.com

Canada relies on extractive industries and the colonial land-theft that sustains them. My relationship with extraction, as a Canadian, is complex. I believe Canada should respect the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and thus Indigenous law; I believe Canada should live up to our commitments to address global warming and thus not build new oil pipelines; we should fulfil the explicit and implicit treaty agreements that founded the nation; we should end military interventions in other nations (including within our borders); and much more.

As a Canadian, I pay into an unregulated pension plan that invests heavily in oil futures which promote global warming, as well as tobacco advertising, and migrant detention facilities on the US-Mexico border; I cannot change this investment. My taxes pay for military interventions and fund the politicians who ignore treaty relationships. I drive a car, turn on heat and lights, and fly to conferences. Im complicit in Canadas protection of resource extraction from pretty much any angle I think of, simply by virtue of the complex web of relations in which I live and breathe.

I benefit differentially as a white immigrant mortgage-owner from histories of and present social relations of land theft and colonial oppression. In complex situations like, well, simply being alive, we make all sorts of compromises and become complicit in all sorts of things we would like to wash our hands of. Its unsettling.

Want the best of Religion & Ethics delivered to your mailbox? Sign up for our weekly newsletter.

Your information is being handled in accordance with theABC Privacy Collection Statement.

I used to teach a class called Unsettling Canada. Students learned about the internment of Japanese Canadians, current indefinite migrant imprisonment, military action in 1990 at Kanehsat:ke, and Indian Residential Schools, among other things. After class one day, one of my non-Indigenous students said to me, I just dont know how to carry on, now that I know these things about Canada. Ive always been a proud Canadian, and I dont recognize myself in this history. I feel so ashamed. Another student, gathering her things after class, said, I often wonder what it is like learn about these things for the first time. To me, they have always been something I knew about. She was Indigenous, and most of her family either had kids taken away and put in genocidal institutions or had been forced to be in the institutions themselves. None of this was news to her.

When people charge someone with being complicit, frequently the result of that charge is a particular kind of immobility. When we are charged with complicity, we tend to turn inwards in shame, or be overwhelmed by a feeling of how impossible it would be to extract ourselves from currently ubiquitous relations of domination. Often, the feeling of being complicit means we give up on action. Indeed, frequently the charge of complicity is meant precisely to entail the claim that if you are complicit in something, you do not have standing to oppose that thing. This is worth investigating, because if calling out complicity is meant to prompt effective ethical or political action, but instead derails precisely that action, the charge of complicity may itself produce further complicity or, at least, it may not help to further the goal of reducing the relevant harm or wrong.

The question is, then: can identifying complicity produce collective solidarity instead of individual immobilisation?

This summer Indigenous communities in Canada have begun using ground-penetrating radar to locate hundreds of unmarked graves long known to be at the sites of former Indian Residential Schools. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau echoed my non-Indigenous students feeling of shame when he said that he is appalled by the shameful policy that stole Indigenous children from their communities. And Indigenous Services Minister Marc Miller characterised it as shameful that Pope Francis has declined to apologise for the Catholic Churchs role in running the schools on Canadas behalf.

Scholars make a distinction between guilt and shame. Guilt is the name for when I recognise that I have done something wrong. So, when Ive hurt someone, or broken a friends favourite mug because I was being careless, I might feel guilt. Shame, in contrast, is the name for a feeling of being wrong, or bad it is sticky, and it attaches to our sense of self rather than our actions. For the most part, shame is the kind of negative feeling about ourselves that we should reject, because it has been forced on us about things in which there is no inherent shame our bodies, our faith traditions, our sexuality, and so on. However, there is a place for naming the feeling of being implicated in collective wrongdoing as shame as long as we dont stop there.

I am a white settler immigrant; and like many non-Indigenous people in what is currently Canada, I am in an ongoing process of learning about Canadas genocidal practices. Gary Kinsman writes about the social organization of forgetting, through which ruling institutions attempt to make both oppression and the struggle against it un-remembered. But only non-Indigenous people are surprised to discover the realities of genocide; Indigenous people, such as my former student, have never forgotten being targeted for erasure. The Tkemlps te Secwpemc First Nation relatives of the children buried at the Kamloops Indian Residential School, where the first 215 bodies discovered this summer were found, always knew they were there and so did the people who ran that school, who buried them. So, what can an ordinary non-Indigenous person grappling with shame about colonialism do with these feelings?

The first thing is to recognise guilt and shame when they arise, rather than trying to deny them. My research has demonstrated that many white people started what became valuable contributions to collective anti-racist transformations when they felt shame about benefiting from racism or racist structures.

Shame is one feeling we white people might have when we look back at the past and recognise all the horror that has been done on behalf of whiteness and by white people to others. We didnt do those things ourselves, personally, so the feeling we have isnt really guilt. But we recognise that we inherit their legacy, that those things were done by our ancestors.

In the present, many white people see that white supremacists are organising and recruiting, and that they enact racism in our name, against our will. Many of us who want to refuse to benefit from structural and interpersonal racism may feel shame and anger about colonialism, police murdering racialised people, and more. This is a starting point for making a different future, changing what we inherit and what we benefit from into something else.

Shame is a common response to the feeling of being complicit in a situation we find ethically objectionable. Awareness of complicity can take the form of identifying the complexity and interrelatedness of our world, or of highlighting the inescapable embeddedness of our being in the world. This can freeze us. The vast and complex nature of the problems confronting moral agents today can make it seem that no one in particular is responsible for taking them on. Dispersed responsibility is one common response someone else will do it!

Alternatively, when there are actions we can take, for example, to oppose systemic racism, or to use less plastic, or to support libraries and education workers, or to reduce our carbon footprint, many of us succumb to a kind of moral fatigue there are so many things we know we would like to do or stop doing, so many ways we are connected to the suffering of the world, that we just get tired. Being overwhelmed can lead to a kind of counterphobic reaction to, for example, thinking about global warming, rising seas, climate catastrophe, and the extinctions of so many nonhuman beings: since I cannot solve all of these things, I may as well fly as much as I like, eat as many single-servings of high-fat yogurt as I want, and so on.

Conservatives and liberals alike particularly the subspecies whose primary political work is trolling people on the internet are fond of charging people with complicity. They cry hypocrite! at people who are now speaking out about something when they did not raise an objection in the past. They delight in pointing out inconsistencies, as when trolls tweeted at a friend that she could not both oppose human-fuelled global warming and drive her car. Or they say that if someone benefits from something, they cannot protest to it.

Each of these criticisms deploys what we can call purity politics: because the person expressing the desire for another world is complicit or compromised, they are supposed to give up. Conservatives and liberals alike use purity politics to try to close down critique and action.

Purity politics points to a problem with the way we normally think about complicity. Only an individual can aspire to be pure, to know everything that it might be important to know. Or perhaps it would be better to say: only the conceit of a delimited individual, sovereign in his skin, independent and unreliant on others, sufficiently potent to be able to make any needful changes in the world around him, capable of knowing in advance what the correct course of action might be and not deviating from it, capable of knowing everything relevant to any given situation, someone who does not make mistakes only such an individual would be invulnerable to charges of complicity.

No such individual exists. All of us are open to one another, offer one another the possibility of mutual regard and recognition, are interdependent and needy, relatively helpless to change things we care about, quite limited in our knowledge and understanding but educatable, changeable in light of new circumstances, and routinely err. Beyond that, of course, the scale and scope of problems we collectively face are laughably far beyond any individuals capacities to solve.

Not every horrible thing that happens in the world is a site of complicity. Perhaps we should be understood as complicit only in horrible things that could be prevented and to which we are in some way connected. When someone dies in a landslide or an avalanche, I may be sad for the people grieving their loss, but barring unusual responsibilities for avalanches I am likely not to be complicit. When a miner dies at work in a cave-in beneath my city which the mining company could have prevented with more investment in safety infrastructure, which they chose not to build because they calculated that the cost of life insurance for one miners death per year was cheaper than the infrastructure, and when my government provides that company with substantial tax-write-offs to keep them in the country, I likely am complicit in that death.

However, there are degrees of complicity and responsibility. I am less implicated than the person in the company who made the decision based on a profit-loss ledger that weighs peoples lives against insurance claims. Complicity is very much a matter of degree of connection, capacity to change the circumstances, and the distribution of power. Thus, when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau expresses shame, he has much more responsibility to address his complicity than an ordinary Canadian.

Recognising the shame-worthiness of complicity in genocide and racism can be an important starting place for non-Indigenous white people indeed, a much better approach than trying to claim innocence or non-involvement. And we can refuse to allow complicity to sap our will to change things. But what comes next?

Taking connection, complexity, and complicity as a starting point for action rather than a reason to give up opens possibilities for ethical decision-making. Complicity can produce solidarities oriented towards collective action. Although we may not be able individually to solve something, we may still be morally responsible to try solve it as best we can which, often, is going to mean making collective, social, or systemic change.

This kind of ethics is always political, in the sense that moral decisions in conditions of complicity depend on factors beyond the scope of the individual. Political decisions refer outside the individual to receive their weight. They do not depend on innocence for their decision-making. Rather, they depend on the understanding that we confront hard problems problems that always leave what Bernard Williams thought of as a moral remainder. Lisa Tessman characterises us as living a kind of moral trouble that comes from existing in a complicated world. Perhaps we can begin to truly confront moral trouble only once we give up on the idea of innocence and purity, only once we begin from complexity and complicity, only once we regard collective ethical decisions as inherently political.

In the case of addressing the Canadian states genocidal policies, many suggest that settlers educate themselves. They can read the reports of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), follow investigative initiatives, watch films and read books from the viewpoint of survivors. Self-education includes understanding the lines of continuity between past harms and current practice we can see connections between stealing Indigenous children and imprisoning them in residential schools and the Trudeaus government decision to fight Indigenous kids in court today, between starvation policies of the past and undrinkable on-reserve water in the present. A next step would be to demand accountability from the Canadian government by writing to elected representatives and lobbying for legislative change. And non-Indigenous people can donate money to support survivors or for reparation work.

Self-education, donating money, and lobbying can all be parts of building a genuinely transformative approach. However, white settlers in particular may have a tendency to focus on ourselves when confronted with racism and colonialism our self-education, our political self-expression. Feeling complicit, or ashamed, tends to turn people inwards, and self-abnegation is not actually helpful to political change.

So, we can consider what have been historically effective roles for white people in the struggle against racism: participating in collective work against racism. Non-Indigenous people who arent white might also find some traction in these approaches, but because racialised people have been and are themselves targeted by both the Canadian state and white racists, their collective work will be different.

Quite often, instances of shame such as an implication in genocide are points of connection in our lives. They might show us things we are genuinely moved to work on. If someone is deeply committed to their church community, for example, and discovers that it was directly involved in residential schools, educating their congregation and initiating its responses to the TRC Calls to Action might be a natural next step.

A person who cares about the environment might turn towards supporting Indigenous land defenders in places they care about, both in Canada and abroad. Someone who cares about teaching and education can support school-centred actions.

Non-Indigenous people have been involved in solidarity work for many years in ways that might be instructive for responding to the legacies of Indian Residential Schools. In the 1990s, there were examples like Settlers in Solidarity with Indigenous Sovereignty, Anti-Racist Action members in Toronto who fought against white supremacist fishing and hunting groups and Raction SIDA members who supported the Kanienkehka people as they defended their land from development during the Oka Crisis at Kanehsat:ke.

Today, we see some settlers protesting alongside Wetsuweten, Secwepemc and Pacheedaht, Ditidaht and Huu-ay-aht First Nations in their efforts to defend their land against logging, chemical spills from mining slag and the effects of petroleum pipelines. Showing solidarity and getting involved are connected to the work of actively responding to the TRC Calls to Action. We can be more effective working together than alone.

Many of us will never have been part of a collective response to something we have identified as requiring change. And since every aspect of settler Canadian life in some way connects to Canadas genocidal practices, we might feel not only ashamed but also overwhelmed. White people who have contributed to collective action against racism share some key practices that we can emulate.

The most effective non-Indigenous participants in antiracist work resist the impulse to act like individual heroes, martyrs or white saviours. They support and stand by Indigenous people instead of making it about themselves. For people getting involved in ongoing projects of which there are many key starting points include listening more than talking, not trying to introduce big new ideas, taking up the non-glamorous work, and not speaking for others.

People who dont burn out by trying to do everything, who are in it for the long haul, and who help build useful collective organisations those whom other people can count on for years of support and collaboration turn out to be the most effective contributors to social transformation at the scale needed for addressing Canadas treatment of Indigenous people.

I return to the work of social movement scholar Gary Kinsman, and his conception of a politics of responsibility which he defines this as involving those of us in oppressing positions recognizing our own implication within and responsibility to actively challenge relations of oppression. A politics of responsibility recognises our relative, shifting, and contingent position in social relations of harm and benefit; it enjoins us to look at how we are shaped by our place in history. We can take responsibility for creating futures that radically diverge from that history, seriously engaging that work based on where we are located, listening well to the people, beings, and ecosystems most vulnerable to devastation.

The question, then, is not: How can we be innocent of implication in complex and distributed harms? The question becomes: What forms of implication will we take up as points of connection for anchoring our activities? With whom will we become complicit? Whose side are we on?

Asking which side we are on raises the prospect of binary, purist thinking about politics, as though it was easy to delimit sides. If we take that approach, complicity would make it impossible for us to be on the side of justice. Its probably clear by now that I believe were complicit no matter what we do, that we cannot excuse ourselves from implication, that were always connected. It is precisely these political features of ethical decision making in complex and relational contexts that makes this ethically interesting terrain.

The good news when there are no easy answers is that we have the capacities to elaborate the stakes and reasons for our decisions; we have the capacities to make strategic decisions and to know when we are effectively fighting shameful situations.

Ive learned the most about how to approach this in training in activist strategy notably in the model of a spectrum of allies. Picture a rainbow, with yourself and the people with whom you thoroughly agree on one end; directly across from you, 180 degrees away, are the people with whom you disagree and who you oppose. Following the arc of the rainbow are people on a spectrum of agreement with you and your opponents. There is a tendency to think that we should direct our attention and work towards the people we most oppose, the people most directly responsible for the harm we have identified as the problem at hand. In the case of Canadas ongoing incursions into Indigenous land, I might address my moral and political work to the provincial government, the chief of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, or the Prime Minister of Canada. Or I could work on changing the heart and mind of the most racist fellow Canadians I can find (usually in the comments section of my national paper).

But the spectrum of allies approach is interested in what causes the people with decision-making power to make different decisions about the things in which we are mutually implicated. A key shift in the spectrum of allies is to stop addressing oneself to people who directly or ideologically oppose one, with the idea that they will reverse their position solely through moral suasion. Taking a spectrum approach, one aims to move people from where they are one or two positions over to move people who are passive allies to become active allies, or people who are passive opponents to be oblivious neutrals.

Crucially, the spectrum of allies approach assumes that we are all connected, that no one is essentially or fundamentally pure or evil, and that anyone can change their minds through changing their activities. Grounded in nonviolent communication, it also emphasises listening to others both those who are passive allies and those opposing us on an issue. Listening to people different than us, and especially listening to people we consider complicit in evil, is perhaps unpopular in our moment. But it is an ethically and politically interesting proposition. The kind of listening were interested in here remains political, however, in the sense that it is committed to certain worlds and not others.

Because we are complicit, we can act in solidarity and stand with some people and not others. As Katrina Shields puts it:

Although listening to the oppositions point of view is important it is equally important to put your position and be heard both by the opposition and by the public. This can be quite an anxiety-provoking experience when you are not used to doing it. Something I have found useful is imagining those I represent standing behind me whether they be environments, creatures, or humans, including those of the future. They require me not to betray them by giving up my power in these situations. This has been a source of strength enabling me to speak up and not compromise.

This approach is a kind of brave relation, building the capacity to stand in relation even to situations and evils with which we would like to cut off relation. We should cultivate such brave relations. Even when we are complicit or ashamed, and maybe because we are complicit and ashamed, we can still act to change things.

Alexis Shotwell is Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Carleton University, where she is cross-appointed with the Pauline Jewett Institute of Womens and Gender Studies and the Department of Philosophy. She is author of Knowing Otherwise: Race, Gender, and Implicit Understanding and Against Purity: Living Ethically in Compromised Times.

View original post here:

After complicity and shame: Effective political action for non-Indigenous people - ABC News

As U.S. troops draw down in Afghanistan, Chinese officials have stepped up contacts with the Taliban as it surges across the country and builds strategic footholds against Afghan government forces.

On paper, Beijing and the Taliban are strange bedfellows.

China is an atheistic, communist state that is running an internment camp system in its western Xinjiang Province that is believed to have detained more than 1 million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities. The Taliban, meanwhile, is a fundamentalist militant group that previously governed Afghanistan as an Islamic caliphate.

So whats driving the two sides together?

While there is little shared ideology, both sides are managing to forge a transactional relationship based on mutual self-interest.

China -- which is positioning itself to play a defining role in the region -- sees the group as an undeniable part of Afghanistans political future, while the Taliban views Beijing as crucial for its international legitimacy and a much-needed potential investor in the country.

In recent weeks, Taliban representatives have said China is a welcome friend in Afghanistan and gone out of their way to signal that they will not interfere in Beijing's domestic affairs, while promising that territory under the Islamist groups control would not be used against other countries.

This outreach may seem abrupt but is actually the product of a complicated, decades-old relationship that experts say is defined by pragmatism and an underlying distrust of the other. As the political reality in Afghanistan continues to shift quickly, both Beijing and the Taliban are looking to explore how closely they can cooperate.

Theres a lot of skepticism of one another in this dynamic, Raffaello Pantucci, a senior associate fellow at London's Royal United Services Institute, told RFE/RL. The foundation of it is that each side views the other as a means to an end.

Stability, specifically its own, is the top concern for China.

Central to Chinese worries in Afghanistan is the country once again becoming a haven for extremist groups with international ambitions like Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State. Beijing is particularly focused on Uyghur militants that have their sights set on China and could cross the country's 76-kilometer border with Afghanistan.

Ensuring that fighting or chaos from a potential power vacuum wont spill over is paramount to Chinese policymakers.

The existence of Uyghur extremist groups -- based in Afghanistan and elsewhere -- have been part of Beijings justification for its sweeping dragnet against Muslim minorities in neighboring Xinjiang.

The Talibans recent gains indicate it could well be part of Afghanistans political equation or perhaps topple the government in Kabul. With this in mind, Beijing has moved to engage the Taliban to ensure that its security interests will be protected.

The Chinese can see that the Taliban are likely to cement power and Beijing also doesnt want to get sucked in and overextended in Afghanistan, so that means they need to have a working relationship with the Taliban, Pantucci said.

The militant group has taken Chinese concerns to heart and tried to show goodwill, calling for talks on reconstruction and drawing in Chinese investment to begin as soon as possible.

The Taliban has also signaled that it has little current interest in getting involved with events in Xinjiang.

We care about the oppression of Muslims, be it in Palestine, in Myanmar, or in China, and we care about the oppression of non-Muslims anywhere in the world, a senior Taliban representative told The Wall Street Journal. But what we are not going to do is interfere in Chinas internal affairs.

This isnt the first time the two sides have been pushed together by events on the ground in Afghanistan.

In the late 1990s, China decided that the best way to manage a potential extremist threat from the country was to engage with the Taliban.

In 1999, a group of Chinese officials flew to Kabul and opened diplomatic and economic relations, with Chinas ambassador to Pakistan seeking a meeting with Taliban commander Mullah Omar.

That meeting took place in 2000, at which Beijing pressed Omar to stop harboring ethnic Uyghur militants allegedly operating in Afghanistan with a group called the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM). In exchange, the Taliban hoped China would provide diplomatic support at the United Nations and help roll back sanctions placed on the group.

While analysts say Mullah Omar did restrain ETIM in the country, he did not expel the group. No deal with Beijing on the matter was ever formalized, and the Taliban was pushed out of Kabul following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the invasion of Afghanistan.

Theres always been a level of mistrust that the Chinese have toward the Taliban, Andrew Small, a fellow with the German Marshall Fund, told RFE/RL. Regardless of what deals they strike and whether they are kept, [Beijing] is also concerned that the groups success could provide inspiration to other groups.

Following the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001, the Talibans top leadership relocated to Pakistan. According to Small, Islamabad -- the groups chief patron and a close Beijing ally -- helped facilitate Chinese-Taliban ties over the following years.

Those talks picked up steam in more recent years and once again centered on the Taliban denying Uyghur militants safe haven and curbing the activities of ETIM.

Starting in 2014, Taliban delegations began to publicly and regularly visit China, culminating in secret talks that China facilitated between Kabul and the Taliban in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang.

The Taliban have been dealing with the Chinese for decades now and [the militants understand] their concerns, said Small. Its an unusual relationship, but it's been one of the Talibans most consistent since it's been in exile in Pakistan.

Central to Beijings engagement with the Taliban are concerns over Uyghur militants -- specifically ETIM -- gaining a home base in Afghanistan.

But the group has a complex and disputed history. While Uyghur militants do operate in Afghanistan, their size and sophistication has been a source of disagreement among analysts and governments.

As George Washington Universitys Sean R. Roberts writes in his book, The War On The Uyghurs, no group ever used the name ETIM, but it became associated with a small band of Uyghur militants who relocated to Afghanistan in the late 1990s with the goal of launching attacks against Beijings rule in Xinjiang.

Beijing would go on to accuse the group of helping to orchestrate attacks inside China and, in 2002, as the U.S.-led war on terror was ramping up, the group was officially recognized by Washington as a terrorist organization.

Little was heard from the group throughout the 2000s, especially after its leader was killed in 2003, until a group calling itself the Turkestan Islamic Party (TIP) issued an online video in 2008 in which it threatened to attack China during that year's Summer Olympics. TIP said it was a successor to ETIM, although Beijing still refers to it by the older name.

TIP has since developed into a larger militant group based in Syria, but as Roberts wrote for The Guardian in 2020, there is no evidence that this group has ever orchestrated violence inside China itself.

This has led critics to accuse Beijing of exaggerating the connections between militant groups and developments in China in order to justify its repressive policies against Uyghurs and the ongoing crackdown on Muslims in Xinjiang.

As Beijing currently engages in talks with the Taliban with a focus on Uyghur militants, several hundred fighters are believed to be in Afghanistan, according to a 2020 United Nations Security Council report.

But the administration of President Donald Trump removed ETIM from its terrorist organization list in 2020, saying it believed there was no credible evidence the group still existed.

Despite its growing ties with the Taliban, Beijing still recognizes President Ashraf Ghanis government and has also engaged with Kabul in monitoring Uyghur militants in Afghanistan.

Beyond security, Beijing also has some longer-term economic hopes for the country, with Chinese firms involved in the massive Aynak copper mine and exploration in the Amu Darya oil field.

For the time being, however, China is looking to strengthen its relations with both sides and use that leverage to push for a political solution between Kabul and the Taliban. Beijing is also dangling future investment and deeper efforts to integrate Afghanistan into its Belt and Road Initiative as a way to bring both sides to the negotiating table.

Its one of the few levers that China has to push for a stable political settlement in the country, Small said.

Those strengthened ties give Beijing a special role to play in any future peace process, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, on July 13 during a tour of Central Asia.

China has also stepped up its security engagement and cooperation with Afghanistans neighbors in Central Asia, as well as with Pakistan, as part of what Pantucci calls a hedging strategy to prepare for any possible outcome from the current situation in the country.

The Chinese are negotiating with the Taliban, and the Taliban are being receptive so far, he said. "But the Chinese have actually built themselves an insurance policy by building a strong regional security presence [to cover]" for any outcome.

More here:

Explainer: Why Is China Talking To The Taliban? - Gandhara

Former Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger has argued reforms to the Official Secrets Act would mean a future Edward Snowden-style whistleblower would be forced to avoid mainstream UK publications to spill secrets.

Instead they would avoid fears of stricter sentences for publication in the public interest by sharing information with a foreign title or website or putting it online themselves, he said in his submission to Government.

His stance puts him in rare agreement with the likes of the The Sun as the industry unites against the proposed reforms in fear they could deter whistleblowers from coming forward and have a chilling effect on investigative journalism in the public interest.

[Read more:UK journalists could be jailed like spies under proposed Official Secrets Act changes]

Press Gazette drew attention on Tuesday to Home Office proposals to increase maximum jail sentences for journalists, potentially in line with foreign spies, for publishing leaked information.

The Government also dismissed pleas for a public interest defence and said it could remove the need for an unauthorised disclosure to have caused damage before any prosecution instead a journalist would only need to have realised publication could have been damaging.

The News Media Association, which represents the UKs news industry, said this could open the regime up to widespread abuse by those seeking to hide embarrassing truths from public view.

It urged the Government to reconsider all the factors that put press freedom at risk, including the replacement of fines with jail sentences as this could inadvertently worsen the already weak position of journalists and whistle-blowers through harsher sentencing.

It added that a public interest defence was absolutely essential.

The proposals are out for consultation until 11.45pm on Thursday (22 July).

The NMA said it understood the need to adjust the law around state threats as technology and behaviours evolve, but said this must not come at the expense of press freedom. The UK is signed up to the Global Media Freedom Coalition and hosted the first Global Media Freedom Conference in July 2019.

NMA legal policy and regulatory affairs director Sayra Tekin said: As part of any thriving democracy, the public and a responsible press must be free to shed light on the states injustices.

The proposed measures will deter whistleblowers from coming forward with vital information which the public have a right to know and place a chill on investigative journalism which holds power to account.

We strongly urge the Government to reconsider these measures and instead work with the industry to place appropriate protections for journalism at the heart of the Official Secrets Act so that freedom of speech is enhanced by the new regime rather than weakened further.

In his submission to the Government, Guardian editor of 20 years Rusbridger said the changes could have far-reaching consequences for public debate, open government, whistleblowing and journalism.

I agree that the present collection of laws is haphazard and out of date, but I would place a different emphasis on the protection of disclosure in the public interest.

Rusbridger said the prospect of serving a longer jail sentence over the Snowden material would not in the least have deterred him.

He went ahead with publication after taking advice and having read a large proportion of the information despite knowing then he could have faced prosecution.

Rusbridger said he was certain the material still would have been published if the British government had beforehand launched a prosecution against himself and the Guardian, and pointed out others around the world also had the information.

[Read more: Guardian agreed to symbolic destruction of Snowden hard drives after pressure from government]

But he warned that the proposed reforms would effectively give the state power to decide what is in the public interest, if no such defence is enshrined in law.

He said: The intelligences agencies would have had virtually no power (through conversations or contacts or the DA Notice system) to make representations about possible harm in publication.

And the next time a whistleblower emerged he/she would certainly avoid any mainstream British publication and either share the material with a foreign publication or website or else publish it themselves. Is this really the outcome the government or the Law Commission desires?

In its leader on Wednesday, The Sun warned such legislation could have prevented it from revealing the CCTV that showed Matt Hancocks office affair with an aide, leading to his resignation as Health Secretary.

It said the chilling proposals were a licence for a cover-up of disastrous failures, criminal negligence or career-ending hypocrisies like The Suns Matt Hancock revelations.

[Read more: Media law of Matt Hancock snog scoop which was sleazy, sensational and in the public interest]

It is sinister enough that the Information Commissioners Office carried out raids trying to uncover our source for that exclusive. This law change could outlaw such reporting entirely.

Some sensitive data must of course remain secret. But if journalists and whistleblowers are jailed over leaks unassailably in the public interest, we are in the grip of oppression.

Scoops that have changed the way the UK operates for the better, such as the expenses scandal exposed by The Telegraph, which highlighted some of the extraordinary claims made on the taxpayers purse by MPs, could have seen reporters jailed under the proposed changes.

Times chief reporter Sean ONeill warned that the changes would severely restrict the ability of journalists to report on misconduct and wrongdoing in the police, the military, the NHS, the intelligence services and Whitehall departments.

Other stories he warned would have been under threat as damaging, dangerous and criminal under these laws includedsubstandard military equipment for frontline troops and the recent Times scoop on alleged bullying in the royal household.

This is a precarious moment for press freedom in Britain, ONeill wrote. If Johnson really believes the media is the lifeblood of our democracy and must be able to report the facts without fear or favour then he has to rein in his home secretarys authoritarian instincts.

Mail columnist Mick Hume said the proposals, if implemented, mean Britain risks joining the unsavoury club of authoritarian regimes that treat journalists as if they are enemies of the state.

The idea of giving the whistleblower and journalists years in jail for the Suns Hancock scoop was an affront to democracy, he said.

BBC journalist John Simpson warned he probably would have been prosecuted if the reformed law was in place at the beginning of his career.

The Centre for Investigative Journalism said the plans show an overarching public interest defence for investigative reporting in law is long overdue.

New York Times UK investigative correspondent Jane Bradley described the proposal as an incredibly worrying authoritarian move from the UK government this isnt only about journalism, its about what they dont want the public to know, even when they have a right to.

Comparisons were made with Hong Kong, where the pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily was forced to close last month and eight senior staff members have been arrested in a month.

At the time Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab described the closure as a chilling blow to freedom of expression and national security laws were being used as a tool to curtail freedoms and punish dissent rather than keep public order.

In response to the Home Office proposals, City University journalism lecturer and Hongkonger Yuen Chan said: Let the plight of the press in Hong Kong today be a cautionary tale for the free press everywhere.

TheCampaign for Freedom of Information, which said it would submit a joint response with free expression group Article 19, said: These plans are disproportionate and oppressive. A whistleblower revealing information, or a journalist or blogger publishing it, would commit an offence even if there was only the remotest possibility of harm.

The worry spread across journalism specialisms. Harpers Bazaar royal editor Omid Scobie, who wrote the book Finding Freedom about Prince Harry and Meghan Markle last year, warned: This is how democracies die, as he encouraged others to respond to the consultation.

A Home Office spokesperson said:Freedom of press is an integral part of the UKs democratic processes and the government is committed to protecting the rights and values that we hold so dear.

It is wrong to claim the proposals will put journalists at risk of being treated like spies and they will, rightly, remain free to hold the government to account.

We will introduce new legislation so security services and law enforcement agencies can tackle evolving state threats and protect sensitive data. However, this will be balanced to protect press freedom and the ability for whistleblowers to hold organisations to account when there are serious allegations of wrongdoing.

Press Gazette's must-read weekly newsletter featuring interviews, data, insight and investigations.

Follow this link:

Sun: Hancock 'snog' would be covered up under Official Secrets Act reform - Press Gazette