Global Free Speech Update

Venezuela: Regulators continue to investigate Globovision for inciting a "panic and anxiety" in reports that criticized the government's emergency response record.  Two years ago, regulators pulled the license of a Radio Caracas Television, leaving Globovision the only remaining anti-Chavez station on the public airwaves.

Netherlands: With elections to the European Parliament coming up next week, Dutch politician Geert Wilders' Freedom Party is gaining in the polls.  In 2008, the release of Wilders' radically anti-Islamic film Fitna set off an international controversy, and has since led to charges of incitement being filed in Amsterdam and Jordan.  In February, the UK banned him from entering the country. 

Africa: All Africa.com posts a  summary of Amnesty International's regional report on human rights in Africa.  Read it and weep. 

 

Belarus: Amnesty cites continued concern over detentions and the use of force against demonstrators, the harassment of journalists, and restrictions on a free media.

 

United States: The ACLU is calling for an end to "ideological exclusions" that bar foreign scholars from entering or remaining in the US without adequate cause.  Lawyers for the organization appeared in court this week in the case of South African scholar Adam Habib whose visa application was denied on account of unspecified national security concerns.  The Habib case is part of a larger pattern of ideological exclusions undertaken against outspoken critic of US foreign policy and the war in Iraq.  A coalition of free speech advocates expressed concern in a letter delivered to the government in March.

Europe:  A study by the Center for Intellectual Property and Information Law found that copyright laws adversely affect access to digital material by beneficiaries (libraries, educators and the like) normally excepted from copyright restrictions.  The report calls for a revision of Article 6(4) of the Information Society Directive.

-Kathleen Bergin

Comments

[Michael Alexander]

I know very little about this, but how is it that a foreign scholar has any free speech rights? I wouldn't begrudge him the opportunity to come and criticize us, that sort of thing is always useful, but I wonder does he have a right to do so? Or just the hope of getting an invitation to do so?

[Kathy Bergin]

These cases are typicaly asserted by individuals and associations inside the US who are claiming a "right to receive" information from the person denied a non-immigrant visa.

It's often a college or university that's lost the opportunity to have a prominent scholar teach on campus for a period of time.

-Kathleen Bergin

[Michael Alexander]

Interesting. I didn't know that we had a right to receive information, or that we had a right to receive information inside the US as opposed to having to go outside the country to get it. Other than that, how is it still a free speech case, when the issue is not speech? What is the leading case on this?

[Kathy Bergin]

Here's the ACLU website on ideological exclusions with links to court documents.

http://www.aclu.org/safefree/exclusion/index.html

[Matt]

On ideological exclusion and the first amendment, the controlling case is still Kleindienst v. Mandel, 408 U.S. 753 (1972). The arguments made in the current case are very similar to those put forward by Justice Marshall in his dissent. Since the Mandel case (He was a Marxist philosopher refused a visa to come lecture in the US), the court has shown very little interest in readdressing the issue. I'm at least somewhat sympathetic to Marshall's view, at least insofar as the rights of US citizens are implicated I think the government has a duty to at least make a clear showing of justification, one that's not been met here and probably can't be met. (I address some arguments along this line of thought, though on a completely different issue, in my paper here:
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=979225 )

[Economic Crisis]

interesting event