DEUTSCHE WELLE GLOBAL MEDIA FORUM BONN JUNE 2011
M A G A Z I N E
THE NEW FACE OF THE REVOLUTION SOCIAL MEDIA CHANGES HOW WE ADDRESS HUMAN RIGHTS ISSUES
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MAGAZINE
CONTENTS
8 4 | TIMES, THEY ARE A-CHANGIN’ Globalization and new media are creating an obvious paradigm shift in communication and politics
6 | IN THE EYE OF THE STORM New media has managed to outdo despots and censorship. Meet the winners of the Deutsche Welle Best of Blog awards.
7 | THE MONEY REVOLUTION
8 | LESS GLITZ, MORE GRIT Putting a stop to human trafficking will require more effort from the media
9 | W HO’S AFRAID OF THE NORTH AFRICAN MIGRANTS? The fear of illegal immigrants is based on misinformation
10 | TAXING HUMAN RIGHTS
Was the Egyptian revolution really borne out of an online effort?
Financial institutions have more impact on social welfare than people realize
EDITORIAL
THE MEDIA IS NOT A PROMOTER by Carmen Paun, Editor-in-chief
When urinating and defecating on the streets became a criminal offence in California, Tim decided to create his own enclosed toilet. He set out a tent on the street behind a Wal-Mart, cut out a hole on a chair, and attached to it some plastic containers
so homeless people like him (especially homeless women) could have some privacy when responding to the call of nature. They would also avoid breaching the law. He would then take the full plastic containers, empty them out in a public bathroom somewhere in the city, and then bring them back empty—ensuring the improvised toilet would in place again and again and again whenever needed. Tim lives on the streets in the United States. He is considered a
human rights hero because he tried to ensure sanitation for his fellow homeless citizens. The story was not reported by the media, but by Catarina de Albuquerque, the UN Special Rapporteur on the human right to safe drinking water and sanitation. She pointed out that often stories like these go unreported, especially because less people expect to encounter violations of human rights in developed countries. But they do happen, and the media should report about
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EUROPEAN YOUTH PRESS E u ro p e a n Yo u t h P re s s i s a n umbrella association of young journalists in Europe. It involves more than 50,000 journalists working for university magazines, I n te r n e t p ro j e c t s , ra d i o a n d video productions, or are interns in editor-rooms, freelance journalists, journalism students or trainees. With print magazines or Blogs, PodCasts and V-Casts, the association wants to give young media makers from all over Europe the opportunity to cooperate directly with each other. Above all, the aim of all member associations and the umbrella structure is to inspire young people to deal with media and take an active part in society by fostering objective and independent journalism. ORANGE MAGAZINE
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Fresh. Vibrant. Creative. Orange is a youth-driven magazine dedicated to tackling urgent international issues. Writers and photographers from different countries with diverse backgrounds make this magazine unique. They create multi-faced magazines with new and interesting contents. Creating it means having an exciting time in a quite unusual environment. Reading it means getting facts and opinions directly from young and innovative journalists.
POWERED BY
11 | S ECRETS AND HUMAN RIGHTS Orange talks to The New York Times’ Eric Schmitt on WikiLeaks
12 | MESSAGES INTO THE VOID Carceral states are slowly being penetrated by foreign media. Do they really want it?
13 | QUOTABLE QUOTES Some of the most memorable moments of the DW Global Media Forum
14 | ONLINE AT ORANGELOG.EU Get a glimpse of exclusive online-only content on our website
WITH SUPPORT OF
IMPRINT
OF HUMAN RIGHTS
Publishers line: Orange Magazine European Youth Press, Rue de la Tourelle 23, BE-1040, Brussels, Belgium Editor-in-chief: Carmen Păun, Belgium
them. Because the media should promote human rights. Or at least that is what many people, starting with human rights activists, expect from the journalists. But is the promotion of human rights really a role of the media? No. The media does not have the explicit role of promoting human rights. It only has to inform its target group of things not working in society, and of things not being respected as they should. Unfortunately, the international human rights treaties to which many countries have adhered
are very often the victims of violations. This is what the media reports about. This is what the media is there to tell. The media is responsible in reporting about human rights violations, but it is not the direct promoter of human rights. At the Deutsche Welle Global Media Forum, Catarina de Albuquerque advised journalists to get their stories right when it comes to human rights. In the same way, human rights activists and the public should get the role of the media right when it comes to promoting human rights.
Editorial staff: Bianca Consunji, Philippines Luzia Tschirky, Switzerland Katherine Dunn, Canada Christina Felschen, Germany Guilherme Correia da Silva, Portugal Photos by: Ryan Fernandez, Philippines Layout: Dumitru Iovu, Moldova Read more at: www.orangelog.eu All articles do not necessarily represent the opinions of the magazine.
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THE TIMES, THEY ARE A-CHANGIN’ THE INTERNET AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF SOCIAL MEDIA CREATED A DRAMATIC SHIFT IN JOURNALISM AS WELL AS POLICY-MAKING by Bianca Consunji, Philippines
It’s easy to underestimate the cultural and political significance of Facebook and Twitter if you mostly share updates of what you had for breakfast, or post photos of a booze-fueled night out with friends. But for the long-oppressed citizens of Tunisia, Iran and Egypt, among others, social networking sites helped provide the sparks needed to ignite a revolution. This sentiment was echoed all throughout the various plenary sessions and workshops of Deutsche Welle’s 2011 Global Media Forum, which gathered 1,500 delegates to discuss the challenges of working with new media and its impact on globalization and human rights. Recent events, particularly in the Middle East, have shown the potency of social networking’s effectiveness in mobilizing political action. “Media can be a powerful instrument for human rights,” says Eric Betterman, Director General of Deutsche Welle. “Social media has put a new impulse for protest movements.” The surge in Internet activism is undoubtedly one of the biggest developments in new media and journalism, but can also be questionable at times. Sites such as Facebook and Twitter are used in order to call attention to various causes ranging from
Globalization makes it increasingly easier for people from different nations to communicate with each other
the 2009 Iranian election to breast cancer to children’s rights, with mixed results. ‘Online slacktivism,’ a term coined to describe the passive demonstration of support for various causes, leaves observers on the fence. On one hand, a Facebook meme* that came out in 2009 prompted women to post their bra color on their status update. Why? To support the fight against breast
Even the young are getting involved in citizen journalism through social networking
cancer. Heavily mocked and criticized as faux activism (men posted colors on their updates as a joke), it nonetheless spawned a similar meme in the next year. A BASIC RIGHT
On the other hand, another meme—this time, people posted photos of their favorite
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childhood cartoons—supposedly in order to raise awareness for anti-child abuse organizations actually caused a spike in donations to children’s shelters. While the jury is still out on the usefulness of memes in Internet activism, there’s no doubt that around the world, bloggers and citizen journalists from non-democratic societies are using it to make themselves heard to the rest of the world, if not their own countries. Suddenly, the Internet made it possible for many people to exercise a human right denied to them until recently: the right to free speech. It is for this particular reason that the United Nations proposed that Internet access be made into a right on the same level as water, food and electricity. “The strongest force of globalization is a new freedom, and the Internet is key,” says Thorbjørn Jagland, Secretary General of the Council of Europe. “Access to the Internet should become a human right.” Although the world is far from being a united entity connected by the Internet, there is an obvious paradigm shift in communication and politics. Prior to social networking, it was more difficult for say, an American teenager in Ohio to understand the gravity of election-related violence in Iran. Or for a reporter from Brookyln, New York, to read about the everyday pains of a Tunisian woman living in a country ruled by dictators living in unabashed opulence. „The world had to move from nationalism to internationalism,” says Jagland. “This was the lesson learned [after the two world wars.]“ Despots have cowered and fled to other countries in fear of retribution from the people they once oppressed—because those people have finally found a way to make themselves heard to the rest of the world. This is a significant development in the pursuit of human rights, because people can use the Internet as an outlet to protest injustice from occasionally dubious governments. HansJürgen Beerfeltz, State Secretary of Federal Minister for Economic Cooperation and Development, feels this is a positive development. “With the help of new media, people could put more and more pressure on autocratic regimes.” THE NEED FOR GATEKEEPERS
Despite the general positive reaction to the way that the Internet has changed the way news is produced, experts warn journalists and the public to be cautious. The deluge of information available online— and not all of it true—can overwhelm gullible consumers. Without a gatekeeper to weed out inaccurate data, the Internet can be equally damaging to development and human rights. “Professional media has never been needed more than today,” notes Betterman. Beerfeltz shares his sentiment. “Free access to free media alone is not enough,” he says. “People need gatekeepers to help determine what is important or unimportant, what is untrue, what is unnecessary… The press is the artillery of freedom.” The idea that the public should rely on a profit-driven news organization to determine what is important or newsworthy can be unacceptable, but Beerfeltz feels that the issue can be addressed with further professionalization and training of the media. “A fundamental prerequisite is education,” he states. “There should be adequate training for journalists. With it, the quality of information is improved and safeguarded.” *What’s in a meme? An Internet meme is a concept or idea that spreads online. It could be a trend expressed through text (such as putting a preconceived idea on Facebook status updates or intentionally misspelled words like “more” to “moar”), images (like LOLcats), videos (like Rickrolling), hashtags, etc. Memes often evolve with time and use.
RIGHTS AND THE REPORTER MEDIA EXPERTS AND POLICY MAKERS SHARE THEIR THOUGHTS ON WHAT THE MEDIA COULD DO FOR DEVELOPMENT AND HUMAN RIGHTS 1. First of all, learn about the human rights beyond a fundamental level. After all, human rights are basic international law. “If the government or any other party breaches those rights, they breach the law,” says Catarina de Albuquerque, a UN Independent Expert. 2. “Respect human rights,” says Dr. Purna Sen, Head of Human Rights at the Commonwealth. “This is essential. These include not harassing subjects for stories or exposing them to harm.” 3. “Tell the stories. Tell the stories of people you have met, who are suffering violations,” says de Albuquerque. “Don’t forget the silent suffering of people who get a lot less attention. Bring these stories to the forefront.” 4. Dr. Sen asserts that practitioners should promote human rights by doing much more than providing information. “Let people know what their rights are: investigate shortfalls and fill the accountability gap that exists between commitments on a national level,” she says. 5. Get the story right. “Check facts, call— wrong information is also an injustice to human rights,” says de Albuquerque. 6. Enable an environment that allows media to be free—an editorial environment that fosters this will encourage both professional and citizen journalists to express themselves, thus making it easier to take action on human rights offenses. 7. Journalists and bloggers using social media should feel they are safe and protected, says Jānis Kārkliņs, Assistant Director General of Communication and Information of UNESCO. “They should be able to exercise their right to free speech without hindrance. It’s important that there should be adequate training for journalists as well as government, law information agencies, etc.” This will prepare journalists to produce ethical reportage. 8. “Train people to become media-literate consumers,” advises Jeffrey N. Trimble, Executive Director, of the US Broadcasting Board of Governors. Give media users tools so they can sort out the deluge of information on their own. Smarter consumers could lead to a better use of the Internet in addressing human rights issues.
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IN THE EYE OF THE STORM THE ARAB REVOLUTIONS THAT SWEPT NORTH AFRICA AND THE MIDDLE EAST WERE MOSTLY REPORTED BY BLOGGERS AND SOCIAL MEDIA ACTIVISTS. NEW MEDIA TOOLS PROVED MORE POWERFUL THAN GOVERNMENT CENSORSHIP, PROPAGANDA AND BLACKOUTS—AND THIS WAS CLEARLY DEMONSTRATED BY “THE TUNISIAN GIRL”
Governments in the region found out that they can control and use propaganda on TV, but that they cannot silence the voices of the regular people that were spreading across the internet like viruses.
by Carmen Paun, Belgium
June 20 was a momentous day for Tunisia. In Bonn, Lina Ben Mhenni received the Best of Blog prize from Deutsche Welle for her online reportage of the abuses committed by the Tunisian regime during the uprising that sparked the Arab Spring. Meanwhile in Tunis, former president Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali and his wife Leila were convicted in absence and sentenced 35 years in prison for theft and misappropriating public funds. It’s amazing to see how history can change in just six months. In December 201, Ben Ali was enjoying his 23rd year of ruling the Northern African country of Tunisia when suddenly, things started going wrong for him. A young university graduate working as a fruit vendor to support his family set himself on fire to protest police abuse. They had taken his cart and denied his right to sell fruit. People from his town took to the streets to protest against the police and the repressive regime. Police fired back, and people started dying. Lina Ben Mhenni had already been blogging for three years on http://atunisiangirl. blogspot.com when the events unfolded. When she saw people were dying, she knew there was no way back. She wanted to make sure she spread the word about the events, so the loss of life would not be in vain. And so she did. She drove to the remote towns where the uprising had just started and documented the deaths. She posted pictures of the victims on her blog to ensure their deaths would not go unnoticed. Her blog and Twitter account were banned in Tunisia, but she kept on going without fearing for her own life. In mid-January, President Ben Ali fled to Saudi Arabia with his family, and the Tunisian people celebrated the end of a corrupt regime. But six months later, Lina is still not sure that the change that they were yearning for had actually come. “Not much has changed,” she said during the awarding ceremony of DW’s blog awards. “The secret police still exist.” After the uprising, Lina became part of the committee to reform the media in
THE DEUTSCHE WELLE INTERNATIONAL BLOG AWARDS
Tunisia. But according to her, she recently resigned because things were not going in the right direction. Ben Ali’s departure in January was not the end, but merely the beginning of the path Tunisia has chosen to take on the perilous journey to becoming a democratic state. And Lina Ben Mhenni promised to be a close observer of this road trip.
The BOBs honor blogs that promote the exchange of ideas and freedom of expression. Submissions to the contest can be in the any of the following languages: Arabic, Bengali, Chinese, English, French, German, Indonesian, Persian, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish. This year’s big winners of the BOBs were: • Wael Ghonim for the Facebook Page “We are all Khaled Said” (www.facebook.com/ElShaheeed) in the category of Best Social Activism Campaign • The YouTube Channel “Stands with Fist” for the Best Video Channel (www.youtube.com/user/ standswithfist60 ) • Pavel Senko for the online community Rospil in the category of Best Use of Technology for Social Good (http://rospil.info ) • Judith Torrea for the blog “Ciudad Juarez, in the shadow of the drug trafficking” in the category of the Reporters Without Borders Award (http://juarezenlasombra.blogspot.com )
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THE MONEY REVOLUTION WAS THE EGYPTIAN REVOLUTION TWITTER’S BABY, OR JUST THE OFFSPRING OF DOLLARS AND SENSE? by Katherine Dunn, Canada
In February, media images of a jubilant Tahrir Square flashed across the world as news of President Hosni Mubarak’s resignation began to spread. The revolution had been fast, just 18 days of steady protests covered by flocks of journalists. For many, it signaled a sudden shift in perceptions of the Arab world. A pervasive story followed the arc of young, cool, Egyptian Twitterati getting together on social networking sites to throw a dictator out with the dishwater. But in a workshop on Monday, “Throwing A Spotlight: The Media’s Capacity for Facilitating Economic Development in Egypt,” the panelists said this was not the only story in Egypt’s revolution–and far from being the most important. The real reason had a lot less to do with the internet, and a lot more to do with money. THE (NO) INTERNET CONNECTION
DOING IT FOR THE MONEY
In 2010, the number of internet hosts in the country ranked Egypt at 67th in the world, according to statistics from the CIA World Factbook. Unemployment was at 9.7%, putting the country at 107th in the world. „ “It’s one thing to read international reports, and it’s another thing to talk to people about their frustrations,” says Magda Kandil, executive director and senior researcher at the Egyptian Centre for Economic Studies. She noted that though the economy had been growing, the public sector had slowed. Inflation was at 25%, she said, and bureaucratic inefficiencies slowed down businesses and made private sector borrowing difficult. Tourism was one of the main industries. For large numbers of college graduates, there were no jobs. Wael Gamal, the managing editor at the l Shorouk newspaper, noted that 64% of Egyptians joined the protests because of a lack of jobs and a poor economy, according to a poll released in April by the International Republican Institute. Only 19% said they joined because of a lack of democracy. REVOLUTION DEBT
“Mostly, these people do not have Facebook accounts,” says Yasser Alwan, a photographer and human rights activist from Cairo, as he showed pictures of the city’s working class. Yet they were part of the revolution, he said. What they do have, he said, is instability. Employed, but still living in undesirable working conditions, with poor health facilities and vulnerable to police, he said they were experiencing the economics of the country first hand. The protesters, he said, were coming from all backgrounds—and they were also protesting across the country, not just in Cairo. “If the demonstrations had not taken place nationwide, the revolution would not be possible.”
But if the economy was the problem, the question remains whether the revolution will solve it. “The only way to go forward is to create jobs and prevent inflation,” says Kandil. “And the only way to do this is to prioritize government spending.” But Gael says that there was not a trickledown of economic growth before the revolution, and corruption is still a problem. And when the media covers economics, the old regime is far from gone. “We have inherited after the revolution the old structures,” he says. He noted the country needs different journalism to step away from the old, state-owned press. The country may take its cues from other
Tahrir square is not over for Yasser Alwan.
former dictatorships, such as Indonesia. But it will be a challenge to jump-start an economy in a time of financial constraint. The work is far from done, said Alwan. For many of the people he photographs, their lives have become even more unstable since the revolution, he said. “For me, Tahrir Square is not over.”
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LESS GLITZ, MORE GRIT
by Bianca Consunji, Philippines
PUTTING A REAL STOP TO HUMAN TRAFFICKING WILL REQUIRE MORE ACTIVE PARTICIPATION FROM THE MEDIA
“Real men don’t buy girls,” proudly proclaims the tagline of the anti-sex trafficking campaigned run by Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore. Launched early this year, it was an attempt by the prolific Hollywood couple to turn the attention of the American public to the all-too-real problems of sex trafficking and child prostitution. Although the star-studded campaign (it featured Justin Timberlake, Jessica Biel, Sofia Vergara, Sean Penn, Jamie Foxx and other Tinseltown luminaries) was a hit on YouTube, it was heavily criticized for its watered-down, offbeat approach to an otherwise grim issue. The short videos depicted the celebrities doing various ‘manly’ activities such as shaving with a chainsaw, grilling a cheese sandwich with a flatiron, eating cereal and milk out of a box, and opening a bottle of beer with a remote control. Quirky and humorous, each of the videos produced by the Demi and Ashton Foundation garnered hundreds of thousands of views on YouTube. Glitzy, Hollywood-helmed productions to support various causes are a common sight nowadays. However, their ultimate
effectiveness—as gauged by an increase of actual support for the organizations involved—has yet to be determined. “This is what happens when celebrities do an issue divorced from the movement,” stated Norma Ramps, director of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women, in an interview with Fox News. “Once you chose an issue and don‘t do it in collaboration with people who have been doing this for a long time, this is what you end up with. There is a general dumbing down that is going on, and this is an example of dumbing down a social justice movement with the narrowest message possible.”
SENSATIONAL REPORTAGE In addition to watering down the message, Bärbel Uhl, Chairperson of the EU Commission’s Group of Experts to Combat Trafficking in Human Beings, claims that campaigns focusing on a single aspect of human trafficking could sometimes prove to be detrimental to the cause. “There are too many sex, crime and money stories,” she says. “People tend to
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miss the point that trafficking is a fight by democratic institutions as a whole. It should not always be treated as an emergency. Since 2000, there’s been a very broad concept of trafficking. It can be the sex industry, or exploitation in agriculture… there are so many violations conducted under the antitrafficking framework.” As of 2010, the United Nations Global Initiative to Fight Human Trafficking reports that there are an estimated 2.5 million people involved in forced labor, usually in the sex trade or sweat shops. Magazines or news shows frequently release exposes on drug busts or sex den raids, but the often-sensational nature of reportage related to the issue is at best a topical solution to a deep-rooted problem. “Build awareness, and to bring to mind the minds of the politicians the real issue and the information behind it,” Uhl adds. “Aim to educate the policy makers.” “Media organizations who report on human trafficking need to back up their words with actions,” says U. Roberto Romano, a human rights educator, filmmaker and photographer. “It’s our responsibility to show the world as it is, and how to take responsibility for our actions.”
As a filmmaker, Romano produced several documentaries on child laborers. One of these is ‘The Dark Side of Chocolate,’ where he and fellow journalist Miki Mistrati went undercover to expose the working conditions of children in the Ivory Coast’s cocoa plantations. “My policy is to do no harm,” he explains. “In a previous film about children in Pakistan, I didn’t release the film until the producers ensured their safety. While this wasn’t the case [with ‘The Dark Side of Chocolate’], we took action afterwards. We do not want to produce reportage at the expense of the innocents.” Also, the documentary espouses a call to action, so that viewers are not simply left
with a vague idea of the issue. ‘The Dark Side of Chocolate,’ for instance, encourages patronizing brands that practice fair trade with farmers (ensuring that they will be paid reasonably for their goods, and that child labor won’t be used in the process). Basically, conducting a successful commercial or media crusade against human trafficking is about taking action as opposed to simply throwing the occasional news blitzkrieg or two. Christopher Davis, Director of International Campaigns at The Body Shop, sums up the session’s sentiments: “Be empowering, but fundamentally get people involved and make them realize they can do things.”
WHO’S AFRAID OF THE NORTH AFRICAN MIGRANTS? CIVIL WAR IN LIBYA, REFUGEES TO ITALY, THE FRONTEX PROGRAM AND NATIONAL PARLIAMENTS. WHAT THEY ALL HAVE IN COMMON IS ONE OF THE CONTINENT’S LARGEST, AND MOST HEATED, DEBATES – SHOULD EUROPEANS BE AFRAID OF IMMIGRANTS?
by Katherine Dunn, Canada
In the past year, anti-immigration parties in Sweden and Finland entered national parliaments, joining the ranks of Pim Fortuyn in the Netherlands and France’s National Front. But while political statements warn of a flood of foreigners,
panelists at a workshop on Monday said the debate on immigrants is sometimes smoke and mirrors.
terrorist attacks, “[you] can’t even compare it to dangerous things like driving a car.” LEGAL ROOTS
IS EUROPE A MIGRANT MAGNET?
“We shouldn’t forget that the numbers are somewhere else,” said Professor Jochen Hippler, from the University of DuisbergEssen during “Transnational Migration, Price and Prejudices: Ways out of the dilemma.” He noted that Afghan refugees go in huge numbers to Pakistan, and Libran refugees go to Tunisia. They are fleeing to survive, he said, and they are not necessarily heading to Germany or Denmark first. And even when they do come, their threat is a small, “symbolically charged” issue, he said. And when it comes to actual
Illegal immigrants often whip up images of border stations at night and fishing boats ferrying people over the Mediterranean Sea. But most illegal immigrants enter the country legally, said Francesco Ragazzi, an assistant professor at Leiden University. Most often, they simply don’t return home when their visa expires. But the image of waves of immigration crashing over Europe persists, Hippler warned. A lack of information can create fertile ground for anti-immigration sentiment in Europe. “If you combine confusion with the threat of losing something… you get the precursors to moral panic.”
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MAGAZINE Safe havens don‘t necessarily look like heaven Credits: Geschichtenchronologie.ch
TAXING AGAINST HUMAN RIGHTS FINANCIAL MARKETS, AS THE MOST GLOBALIZED PART OF BUSINESS TODAY, SHOULD ASSUME SOME RESPONSIBILITY. TAX HAVENS ARE UNDERMINING HEAVILY ON SEVERAL HUMAN RIGHTS, BUT FEW REALIZE THE OVERALL EFFECTS. by Luzia Tschirky, Switzerland
Developing countries are suffering under the drain of money caused by worldwide tax competition. By setting taxes to a very low level, countries like Switzerland, Seychelles, Mauritius and many more deliberately attract global companies. The so-called letterbox offices are not producing notable administrative costs. These are incurred in countries where companies are really established. 194 COMPANIES UNDER THE SAME ROOF
Let us take the city of Zug in Switzerland as an example. Metaphorically speaking, how many companies can be under the roof of a medium-sized house with five floors? In Zug, there are about 194 registered companies. As every municipality in Switzerland can set its
own tax level, the competition between the several communities is rather high. Ironically, the local governments are afraid of losing important income from taxes by raising taxes, especially for enterprises or affluent individuals. “In the end, no one is profiting from this competition,” says Markus Henn of the NGO World Economy, Ecology and Development. ”No one except the leaders of big companies.” SHADY SYSTEM
An important way for companies to avoid taxes is by changing structure internally. By establishing subsidiaries, the companies make it possible to transfer earnings from one country to another. For this internal transaction, the companies pay a certain transfer price, which itself has an influence on the final balance sheet—and therefore on the amount of money a company needs to pay as taxes. The Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) has a certain policy regarding costs for transactions within the same company; they should pay a price which is close to those listed on the market. So a company should price an internal transaction as high as a transaction externally. Tracing transactions from parent organization to subsidiaries and back and forth is nearly impossible for tax authorities.
IT IS GETTING WORSE
The tax competition became stronger in the last decades. A study of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe came up that the average tax rate in 1982 among their member states was a little more than 50 percent. Until 2006, this rate had decreased up to percent. The tax justice network published the Financial Secrecy Index, where Switzerland was the third shadiest financial market, following the Delaware in the United States and Luxembourg. The bad performance of a country from the middle of Europe can be partly traced back to the fact that Switzerland has a special law which excludes certain companies from paying tax on earnings on a state level. While tax authorities are trying to find hidden money, the constant fight for the lowest taxes violates human rights. While developing countries are carrying costs for infrastructure, companies are not paying for them thorough taxes. The NGO Attac estimates that an amount between 641 USD up to 941 USD is going from to developing countries to the so-called tax havens. The local government in Switzerland is meanwhile still convinced that they are profiting out of the companies only present by letter boxes.
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THE MEDIA AND ITS ETHICAL LEAK WIKILEAKS’ DISCLOSURE OF CONFIDENTIAL DOCUMENTS ABOUT THE AFGHANISTAN AND IRAN WARS ELECTRIFIED THE WORLD, AND NEW AGE OF TRANSPARENCY WAS PROCLAIMED. BUT THIS TRANSPARENCY WAS SULLIED BY BLOOD, AS THE LIVES OF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN THE FILES WERE PLACED ON THE LINE. WAS THE DECISION OF INTERNATIONAL MEDIA OUTLETS TO PUBLISH INFORMATION FROM THE WIKILEAKS FILE AN UNETHICAL ONE? ORANGE MAGAZINE INTERVIEWS ERIC SCHMITT, SENIOR WRITER AND WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT OF THE NEW YORK TIMES.
by Carmen Paun, Belgium
“It’s the price to pay in this era of the new media,” WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange told journalists at The New York Times. They were asking him to delete the names of Afghan people who appeared on the files of the Afghanistan war. The database was huge and the deletion of each and every single name appeared to be an impossible task. But this task would have saved the life of the informants who had no clue their names had suddenly gone public on an international scale. They were in serious danger, had no clue, and were left without a way to protect themselves from repercussions from the people they had betrayed. Eric Schmitt had been working for The New York Times for almost 30 years. In his extensive career, he had covered issues related to terrorism, national security and international conflict. Prior to their release on The New York Times, Schmitt was sent to London to take a look at the confidential Afghanistan documents. After negotiations with Julian Assange and the American government, the paper published the documents. Although they contained classified information, Schmitt argues that the paper maintained an ethical stand on the matter. “We went to great lengths to make sure we stood by the same standards that we’ve had since I’ve been in journalism,” he says. “It’s just on a much bigger scale. If somebody comes to you with a classified document that is a great story, you have to apply the same ethical principles as before and ask yourself: is there anything in here that can hurt people, that can disclose troop movements, that can jeopardize operations? There are a lot of things that you have to think about.”
The journalists also did their best to convince Assange to delete the names in the files in order to save lives. The newspapers that first published the documents certainly did so, and these were The New York Times (US), The Guardian (UK), Der Spiegel (Germany), El Pais (Spain) and Le Monde (France). LEAKS AND LEAKS
In the months that passed from the publication of the last important batch of documents provided by WikiLeaks and the diplomatic cables, many copycat organizations have appeared all over the world. Some of them claim to have learned from the mistakes of WikiLeaks and of Assange, and to have taken measures to ensure that nobody’s life and freedom were jeopardized by leaked documents. OpenLeaks, for example, says it aims to provide an anonymous dropbox where whistleblowers can just drop the information they know, and let professional journalists verify it. Should journalists then wait in the newsroom hoping for a great whistleblower tip to eventually pursue? Schmitt doesn’t think so. “You still have to dig and get information and do a lot of leg work to get to the bottom of some stories,” he says. “What the WikiLeaks case shows is the broader use of computer-assisted reporting to do a broader range of investigative journalism that you couldn’t do before just because the sheer volume of documents.” He adds, “This applies not just to WikiLeaks, but it also healthcare records, to defense contracts, to everything where you just get gobs and gobs of data that you just couldn’t crunch before.” Now, people have the ability to go through these databases, look for trends and package the information in a way that makes it manageable to analyze it using the traditional tools.
No media ethic principles have been violated according to New York Times journalist Eric Schmitt. Credits: Deutsche Welle
AN UNEXPECTED OUTCOME OF THE LEAKS
If after the Watergate scandal, relationships between the press and the American government were rather chilly, this time around, the WikiLeaks issue has brought them closer together. Schmitt explains that the unexpected outcome was created by the responsibility with which the media dealt with the disclosed classified documents. “The Obama administration clearly didn’t like what was happening,” Schmitt says. “But I think they came away impressed with the ways The Times in particular handled the sensitive issue of the names mentioned in the documents, the sensitive programs, and so on. We went methodically over the files with them every night for almost two weeks. They appreciated that.”
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MAGAZINE How do people in North Korea live? One thing is for sure - not like this Pyongyang mural suggests! Credits: Christopher Schoenbohm, WanderingtheWorld
MESSAGES INTO THE VOID CARCERAL STATES LIKE NORTH KOREA REPRESENT SOME OF THE LAST INFORMATION VACUUMS ON EARTH AS FOREIGN ACTIVISTS RISK A LOT TO OFFER AN ALTERNATIVE VIEW TO STATE PROPAGANDA. BUT THE QUESTION IS, DO THEY REALLY WANT A DIFFERENT VIEW?
by Christina Felschen, Germany
”How could you criticize our Dear Leader?“ It was this sentence, spoken in a small restaurant in a Chinese town bordering North Korea, that changed Tae Keung Ha‘s life. The young man had just run into a group
of teenage refugees begging at a marketplace and had spontaneously invited them to eat a rich meat stew. But no matter how hungry they were, they couldn‘t eat it. “We have never had meat in our lives,“ they said. “We cannot digest it.“ When Ha started criticizing Kim Jong-il for depriving them and their fellow citizens of basic human needs, the teenagers put
THE KOREAS North Korea is a single-party state with an elaborate cult of personality around the Kim family. Korea was divided in 1945, after having been occupied by the Japanese since 1910. Border conflicts led to the Korean War from 1950 to 1953. The relative peace has since regularly been interrupted by assassination attempts on South Korean leaders and border skirmishes, most recently in 2010 when the Pyongyang regime attacked the South Korean island of Yeonpyeong.
down their spoons indignantly and said: “How could you?” Globalization, with its virtues and vices, has conquered nearly all parts of the world, allowing worldwide friendships as well as global drug and weapon trade. But a handful of countries still try to seal off their citizens from these tendencies. Undoubtedly the most shielded among those carceral states is the hereditary dictatorship of North Korea. But things are changing, even in the self-proclaimed “Juche” (self-reliant) State—and South Korean activists like the 43-year-old Ha play an important part in that. Upon his unforgettable encounter with the young North Koreans, Ha founded the Open Radio for North Korea in 2005, broadcasting from Seoul to North Korea. His programming is diverse, ranging from world news to South Korean soap operas and greetings from South Koreans to their family members in the North.
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DEUTSCHE WELLE GLOBAL MEDIA FORUM 20-22 JUNE 2011 · BONN, GERMANY
A DANGEROUS JOB After six years, Tae Keung Ha now has 20 full-time staff journalists working with him in Seoul as well as six correspondents in North Korea, all situated less than ten kilometres from the Chinese borders. That location is no coincidence: They use Chinese mobile phones for transmitting their reports to Ha‘s Open Radio, but these phones only work close to the border. Being a correspondent at Open Radio is a dangerous job: If they are caught, they will almost certainly be sent to one of the North Korean prison camps where approximately 200,000 people are kept. Chances for survival according to Amnesty International are estimated at 60 per cent. Even Tae Keung Ha is not entirely safe: He believes that the North Korean government could easily send its secret service to let him disappear. “But I don‘t think they will harm me,“ he says. ‘They would be associated with terrorism as a consequence, which would provoke international intervention. Kim Jong-il is aware of that. Unlike their inferiors, the regime is well-informed about world politics.” Tae Keung Ha smiles confidently, like a person who has seen enough in his life to no longer be afraid. Ha has already been imprisoned twice for two years in his early twenties, while fighting against the former South Korean despot Chun Doo-hwan. “I cannot shut up—I think I was born an activist!“ But given the dreadful sentences, who dares to listen to his radio? When talking about his audience, Ha looks into the void like a blind man, recalling numbers and abstracts: “According to our surveys, about one-fourth of the 2.4 million inhabitants have access to radio receivers, and four percent have already listened to foreign programs.“ Ha clings to these however uncertain facts about the most impenetrable country on earth. In dealing with North Korea, most people rely on speculations, and questioning one‘s own mythology has become essential: Are refugees sufficiently balanced sources? And how can NGO workers and journalists differ between true life and Potemkin villages? Even Ha, who has devoted his life to his neighbours behind the heavily militarized border, has never been to North Korea. Kim Jong-il would never let him in.
A DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE His situation is completely unlike that of Karen Janz, a rural development consul-
tant who is one of the few foreigners who can claim to actually know North Korea. From 2005 to 2010, she led the office of the German aid organisation Welthungerhilfe in Pyongyang. “Certainly, the leaders always knew where I was and what I was doing,” she says. “With only around 50 foreigners in the country, it’s easy.“ But once Janz and her organisation enjoyed the authorities‘ confidence, she was allowed to travel to the countryside on her own. And much of what she tells contradicts everything we believe to know about the country. “North Korean people are extremely well-educated, they have a great sense of humour and like to flirt,“ Janz shares. “And they are better informed than we think, even without access to the Internet.“ In a sauna in Pyongyang, Janz once met a 15 year-old girl who asked her if she preferred Keanu Reeves or Brad Pitt. In fact, North Koreans seem to know a lot more about the world than we can grasp about their country. Security measures for foreign journalists are rigid, whereas information technology no longer presents an insurmountable border for North Koreans as Tae Keung Ha‘s Open Radio shows. Unlike most of the ten other radios broadcasting into North Korea, many of which are run by the Seoul government, private or religious groups, Ho‘s radio is totally independent and free of ideology. “Personally, I would wish the Koreas to be reconciled one day, like Germany after the Cold War,“ he admits. “But this must be entirely up to the North Koreans. When their country becomes free, they will have to take
CLOSED SOCIETIES Not all societies that remain closed against the outdoors violate human rights. Societies isolate themselves for different reasons, to different extents and not necessarily enforce this upon their people: Carceral States like North Korea, Burma or Cuba obviously have few in common with voluntary forms of isolation practiced by Gated Communities or uncontacted tribes in the Amazon.
their own political decisions—probably for the first time in their lives.“ But when will this first time be? When Ha was reporting on the Arab revolutions in spring, his hopes were flying high. A correspondent told him that a similar uprising might also happen in North Korea; not right away, but possibly after the death of 70-yearold Kim Jong-il. In the meantime, hundreds of families hope to be reunited before their death. Recently a man in his sixties came into Ha‘s editorial office to produce a one-hour radio show all by himself. He dedicated it to his father in the North whom he hadn‘t seen for decades, hoping that the old man was still alive to draw hope from his greetings.
Where is North Korea going to? This traffic police guard will hardly know it. Credits: adaptorplug; flickr.com
“Human rights are a transformative part of history. When people lined up at the Berlin Wall, it was in a quest for freedom.” — Thorbjørn Jagland, Secretary General of the Council of Europe
“’Google before you Tweet’ is the new ‘think before you speak.’” — Mark Belinksy, Founder and Co-director of Digital Democracy
“In the last 20 years, human rights have become a truly global language. It speaks volumes. It makes a conference like this much more meaningful because we speak a common language—we have a common understanding.” — Morten Kjaerum, Director of the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights
“The existence of free media is essential to upholding human rights.” — Dr. Angelica Schwall-Düren, Minister for Federal Affairs, Europe and the Media, State of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany
“2011: it is the year of human rights!” — Eric Betterman, Director General of Deutsche Welle
“We should spread the names of courageous journalists. The more popular a journalist is, the less courage human rights violators have to harm him or her.” — Jürgen Nimptsch, Mayor of Bonn
“Social media is very important, but overstated. Internet access is still limited in some areas.” — Nabila Hamza, President of the Foundation for the Future
“There is no freedom without freedom of speech.” — Marc Koch, Editor-in-Chief, Deutsche Welle
“Human rights have become a truly global language. It speaks volumes. It makes a conference like this much more meaningful because we speak a common language.” —Morten Kjaerum, Director of the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights