How the latest Tommy Robinson saga exposed the influence of foreign funding

August 2, 2018 Article

Tommy Robinson has been granted bail after a successful appeal quashed a contempt of court finding.

The Court of Appeal’s ruling highlighted various technical flaws by the judge who oversaw in the handling of the Leeds case which, did in part, relate to the speed of events that risked undermining procedural safeguards, noting a critical lack of adjournment in the case and the failure to contact the Attorney General.

The bail conditions placed upon Robinson prevent from going within 400 yards of Leeds Crown Court, and he will appear before the Old Bailey for a retrial for the contempt of court offence.

But as the Secret Barrister noted, the judgment was ‘a victory for the procedural rules, and a sharp reminder to the courts of the need to follow them.’

Robinson, charged under his real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, was jailed in May after he admitted to contempt of court after filming trial proceedings outside Leeds Crown Court and streaming it to over 800,000 people on Facebook Live.

His actions could have caused two major trials to collapse.

As Judge Geoffrey Marson told Robinson in May, “I am not sure you appreciate the potential consequence of what you have done.”

Indeed, had Robinson caused a re-trial, it would have meant that witnesses and potential victims would face the ordeal of giving evidence to a new jury. The cost of any such trial would have been in the hundreds of thousands, according to Judge Mason.

His appeal against the contempt of court conviction in Canterbury, however, was dismissed.

Robinson’s interest in the Canterbury trial related more to the ‘ethnicity or religion of the defendants by contrast with the alleged victims’ than actual journalism. As Judge Heather Norton stated in her sentencing remarks, a legitimate journalist would never refer to defendants as “Muslim paedophile rapists” under strict liability rules given how such pejorative language only serves to prejudge such cases.

This continues to demonstrate how the polarising and conspiratorial rhetoric of Robinson and some of his supporters (in the UK and abroad) risks eroding trust in public institutions.

One such supporter of Robinson, who travelled from Wales to support him, told the Guardian that, “They want to silence him because he challenges the status quo.”

But none of this is true.

Robinson admitted breaching reporting restricting in Leeds Crown Court and admitted that he was in contempt of court at Canterbury Crown Court.

And for some in the self-styled ‘#FreeTommy’ movement, such admission of guilt is ignored or downplayed against this drumbeat of conspiracism. The criminally convicted are lionised and held to the same moral standard as Nelson Mandela, a modern-day freedom fighter of sorts, exonerated by history if you follow this logic. This argument was also put forward by Gerard Batten, the leader of UKIP, a man who is no stranger to making inflammatory comments about Islam, which includes an unapologetic belief that the religion is a ‘death cult’ and that Muslims should sign his “proposed charter of Muslim understanding”, first published in 2006. Batten has also spoken at ‘counter-jihad’ event in 2007 which featured a keynote speech from Robert Spencer, a man who remains banned from entering the UK due to his Islamophobic views.

It is rather telling that following his release from Onley Prison, Robinson told reporters: “All the British media do is lie. I have a lot to say but nothing to you.”

The official Facebook page of Robinson doubled-down on such rhetoric in a post which has been shared almost ten-thousand times suggests that the ‘corrupt fake news mainstream media’ had “spent the best part of 2 months writing horrible lies, slander and fake news not only about Tommy but also hard working people who support him.”

Tellingly, this post ends “The establishment tried to break him mentally and physically!”. But the establishment also corrected procedural errors to ensure fairness in the legal system, which is part of the very establishment Robinson rallies against, expressed in the language of the far-right populist politicians who lent Robinson their support.

The concept of ‘entrepreneurial populism’ may help us understand how Robinson and parts of his support base will praise and chastise public institutions when it proves expedient to do so.

Academics used this framework to analyse the rise of political figures like Silvio Berlusconi in Italy. But the paradoxes this form of populism presents can, in some way, help to explain the rise in support for Robinson (more so in Europe, the United States, and Australia as evidence suggests from social media analysis of the ‘#FreeTommy’ hashtag).

A key paradox of ‘entrepreneurial populism’ is that the person does not need to be trustworthy or even have strong moral credentials because the establishment and politicians are viewed as corrupt.

Trust, is, therefore, placed in the untrustworthy in “order to play a system whose institutions one does not trust but whose ideals and intentions are still trusted.” Hence why Robinson is able to portray himself as a journalist.

We have also observed how sections of Robinson’s support base has descended into violence and criminality, as sections of the crowd at a ‘Free Tommy Robinson’ rally in London on June 9 had attacked police officers with bottles, metal barriers and other objects. Violent disorder followed the June 16 protest where supporters of Robinson harassed and intimidated a female Muslim bus driver.

Recent events have also exposed the growing influence of support for Robinson abroad and the use of foreign money to cover his legal costs. But this is nothing new, and merely a question of scale.

Daniel Pipes, the president of the US-based conservative thinktank, the Middle East Forum (MEF), met with Robinson in Luton last year, months before the MEF sponsored two ‘Free Tommy Robinson’ rallies in London in June.

The claim came from Pipes himself during an interview with the website the Savvy Street, which appeared online on June 5, 2017.

When asked about recent Robinson’s imprisonment, Pipes replied: “I spent much of a day with Tommy in December 2017 as he took me around his hometown of Luton,” adding that he considered him a knowledgeable ‘leader’.

The MEF also funded the successful legal defence of Geert Wilders in 2010 and 2011 against Dutch charges of inciting racial hatred.

Raheem Kassam, the one-time editor-in-chief of Breitbart London, failed Ukip leadership candidate, a former advisor to Nigel Farage, and Senior Fellow for the Gatestone Institute, an anti-Muslim think tank, told AFP last month that he was working to make Robinson’s case an international event. He said: “When the left see an injustice, it rallies an international caucus of people together… and we don’t do that enough on our side.”

Kassam characterised Islam as a “fascistic and totalitarian ideology” on the BBC’s flagship Radio 4’s Today programme when defending Robinson on August 2.

Steve Bannon, the former White House chief strategist, defended Robinson on LBC radio, describing him off-mic as “the backbone” of Britain.

Robinson had received upwards of £20,000 in Bitcoin donations following his short stint in prison from supporters abroad.  His official social media accounts also grew in popularity.

Nor is this the first time that American donors, named in multiple reports concerning the ‘Islamophobia network’ in the United States, have solicited donations from their supporters to aid Robinson’s multiple legal issues. In 2011, for example, the Gates of Vienna blog asked readers to donate money to Robinson through the EDL’s official bank account on September 8, 2011.

Following his arrest and subsequent conviction for entering the United States on a false passport in September 2012. Following his conviction and 10-month prison sentence, it emerged that Robinson had flown back to London under the name of Paul Harris – the legitimate name on his passport.

Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer used their blogs to encourage their supporters to donate to his legal funds. Donations to Robinson’s legal fund came from Stop the Islamization of America and the American Freedom Defense Initiative, both founded by Geller in 2010. Robinson had sat on the President’s Council of Stop Islamization of Nations (SION) in 2012, alongside Geller, Spencer, and others, following their event in Stockholm that year.

Support also came from the anti-Muslim ‘Bare Naked Islam’ blog.

This new-found support offered to Robinson, however,  by the MEF, appears larger in scale, and included fundraising for his legal fees (through the Legal Project), and political support, hence why Geert Wilders of the far-right Party for Freedom (PVV) in the Netherlands, and US Congressman Paul Gosar (Republican of Arizona), both spoke at the June 9 rally.

Gosar tweeted at Donald Trump to raise his concerns about the treatment of Robinson on June 13 and spoke at the ‘Free Tommy Robinson’ rally in London two days later.

Perhaps a larger curiosity, however, was the MEF’s promise of diplomatic support for Robinson, which may help to explain why Sam Brownback, the US Ambassador for International Religious Freedom, is said to have complained to the British ambassador in Washington D.C. following lobbying from Breitbart, according to Reuters, an accusation Brownback denies.

Donald Trump Jr also tweeted about Robinson’s apparent mistreatment in May – demonstrating how the conviction of Tommy Robinson has caused ripples in North America.

Before news of Robinson’s imprisonment had spread in May 2018, there was little to no reference to the ex-EDL leader, on the Twitter accounts of the MEF or Mr Pipes.

Pipes signed a petition calling for the release of Robinson and encouraged others to sign it on May 26 and tweeted a portion of the of the Savvy Street interview concerning his trip to Luton to meet with Robinson.

The MEF Twitter account had tweeted about Robinson on September 11, 2015, with an external link to a Breitbart article concerning Robinson’s departure from the EDL.

Pipes remains a controversial figure. In 1990, he wrote: “West European societies are unprepared for the massive immigration of brown-skinned peoples cooking strange foods and not exactly maintaining Germanic standards of hygiene.” Years later, he attempted to clarify this sentence, suggesting that he was trying to reflect the thinking of European leaders, not his own. A blog published in 1997 included the sentence, “Antisemitism, historically a Christian phenomenon, is now primarily a Muslim phenomenon — and not just in the Middle East, but right here in the United States.”

In 2002, Pipes’ Campus Watch came in for criticism after allegedly publishing ‘dossiers’ on US-based academics and their views on political Islam and Palestine, according to a New York Times article published that year.

Pipes has propagated falsehoods relating to so-called ‘no-go-zones’ and indulged the conspiracy theory that Barack Obama was a Muslim in his youth. He wrote in defence of various European far-right political parties in Europe, including Marine Le Pen’s National Front (now rebranded as the French Rassemblement).

The overtures from Steve Bannon towards Robinson may prove part of his wider strategy (however inflated or wishful), to launch a new far-right think tank in Europe.

From the political failures of British Freedom Party to the limited reach of Pegida UK, and his departure from Rebel Media earlier this year, puts Robinson at somewhat of a crossroads with an impending re-trial hanging over him, and the ‘#FreeTommy’ movement may mobilise again.

The post How the latest Tommy Robinson saga exposed the influence of foreign funding appeared first on TELL MAMA.

Categories: Daniel Pipes, Far Right groups, News, Steve Bannon, Tommy Robinson

How the latest Tommy Robinson saga exposed the influence of foreign funding

August 2, 2018 Article

Tommy Robinson has been granted bail after a successful appeal quashed a contempt of court finding.

The Court of Appeal’s ruling highlighted various technical flaws by the judge who oversaw in the handling of the Leeds case which, did in part, relate to the speed of events that risked undermining procedural safeguards, noting a critical lack of adjournment in the case and the failure to contact the Attorney General.

The bail conditions placed upon Robinson prevent from going within 400 yards of Leeds Crown Court, and he will appear before the Old Bailey for a retrial for the contempt of court offence.

But as the Secret Barrister noted, the judgment was ‘a victory for the procedural rules, and a sharp reminder to the courts of the need to follow them.’

Robinson, charged under his real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, was jailed in May after he admitted to contempt of court after filming trial proceedings outside Leeds Crown Court and streaming it to over 800,000 people on Facebook Live.

His actions could have caused two major trials to collapse.

As Judge Geoffrey Marson told Robinson in May, “I am not sure you appreciate the potential consequence of what you have done.”

Indeed, had Robinson caused a re-trial, it would have meant that witnesses and potential victims would face the ordeal of giving evidence to a new jury. The cost of any such trial would have been in the hundreds of thousands, according to Judge Mason.

His appeal against the contempt of court conviction in Canterbury, however, was dismissed.

Robinson’s interest in the Canterbury trial related more to the ‘ethnicity or religion of the defendants by contrast with the alleged victims’ than actual journalism. As Judge Heather Norton stated in her sentencing remarks, a legitimate journalist would never refer to defendants as “Muslim paedophile rapists” under strict liability rules given how such pejorative language only serves to prejudge such cases.

This continues to demonstrate how the polarising and conspiratorial rhetoric of Robinson and some of his supporters (in the UK and abroad) risks eroding trust in public institutions.

One such supporter of Robinson, who travelled from Wales to support him, told the Guardian that, “They want to silence him because he challenges the status quo.”

But none of this is true.

Robinson admitted breaching reporting restricting in Leeds Crown Court and admitted that he was in contempt of court at Canterbury Crown Court.

And for some in the self-styled ‘#FreeTommy’ movement, such admission of guilt is ignored or downplayed against this drumbeat of conspiracism. The criminally convicted are lionised and held to the same moral standard as Nelson Mandela, a modern-day freedom fighter of sorts, exonerated by history if you follow this logic. This argument was also put forward by Gerard Batten, the leader of UKIP, a man who is no stranger to making inflammatory comments about Islam, which includes an unapologetic belief that the religion is a ‘death cult’ and that Muslims should sign his “proposed charter of Muslim understanding”, first published in 2006. Batten has also spoken at ‘counter-jihad’ event in 2007 which featured a keynote speech from Robert Spencer, a man who remains banned from entering the UK due to his Islamophobic views.

It is rather telling that following his release from Onley Prison, Robinson told reporters: “All the British media do is lie. I have a lot to say but nothing to you.”

The official Facebook page of Robinson doubled-down on such rhetoric in a post which has been shared almost ten-thousand times suggests that the ‘corrupt fake news mainstream media’ had “spent the best part of 2 months writing horrible lies, slander and fake news not only about Tommy but also hard working people who support him.”

Tellingly, this post ends “The establishment tried to break him mentally and physically!”. But the establishment also corrected procedural errors to ensure fairness in the legal system, which is part of the very establishment Robinson rallies against, expressed in the language of the far-right populist politicians who lent Robinson their support.

The concept of ‘entrepreneurial populism’ may help us understand how Robinson and parts of his support base will praise and chastise public institutions when it proves expedient to do so.

Academics used this framework to analyse the rise of political figures like Silvio Berlusconi in Italy. But the paradoxes this form of populism presents can, in some way, help to explain the rise in support for Robinson (more so in Europe, the United States, and Australia as evidence suggests from social media analysis of the ‘#FreeTommy’ hashtag).

A key paradox of ‘entrepreneurial populism’ is that the person does not need to be trustworthy or even have strong moral credentials because the establishment and politicians are viewed as corrupt.

Trust, is, therefore, placed in the untrustworthy in “order to play a system whose institutions one does not trust but whose ideals and intentions are still trusted.” Hence why Robinson is able to portray himself as a journalist.

We have also observed how sections of Robinson’s support base has descended into violence and criminality, as sections of the crowd at a ‘Free Tommy Robinson’ rally in London on June 9 had attacked police officers with bottles, metal barriers and other objects. Violent disorder followed the June 16 protest where supporters of Robinson harassed and intimidated a female Muslim bus driver.

Recent events have also exposed the growing influence of support for Robinson abroad and the use of foreign money to cover his legal costs. But this is nothing new, and merely a question of scale.

Daniel Pipes, the president of the US-based conservative thinktank, the Middle East Forum (MEF), met with Robinson in Luton last year, months before the MEF sponsored two ‘Free Tommy Robinson’ rallies in London in June.

The claim came from Pipes himself during an interview with the website the Savvy Street, which appeared online on June 5, 2017.

When asked about recent Robinson’s imprisonment, Pipes replied: “I spent much of a day with Tommy in December 2017 as he took me around his hometown of Luton,” adding that he considered him a knowledgeable ‘leader’.

The MEF also funded the successful legal defence of Geert Wilders in 2010 and 2011 against Dutch charges of inciting racial hatred.

Raheem Kassam, the one-time editor-in-chief of Breitbart London, failed Ukip leadership candidate, a former advisor to Nigel Farage, and Senior Fellow for the Gatestone Institute, an anti-Muslim think tank, told AFP last month that he was working to make Robinson’s case an international event. He said: “When the left see an injustice, it rallies an international caucus of people together… and we don’t do that enough on our side.”

Kassam characterised Islam as a “fascistic and totalitarian ideology” on the BBC’s flagship Radio 4’s Today programme when defending Robinson on August 2.

Steve Bannon, the former White House chief strategist, defended Robinson on LBC radio, describing him off-mic as “the backbone” of Britain.

Robinson had received upwards of £20,000 in Bitcoin donations following his short stint in prison from supporters abroad.  His official social media accounts also grew in popularity.

Nor is this the first time that American donors, named in multiple reports concerning the ‘Islamophobia network’ in the United States, have solicited donations from their supporters to aid Robinson’s multiple legal issues. In 2011, for example, the Gates of Vienna blog asked readers to donate money to Robinson through the EDL’s official bank account on September 8, 2011.

Following his arrest and subsequent conviction for entering the United States on a false passport in September 2012. Following his conviction and 10-month prison sentence, it emerged that Robinson had flown back to London under the name of Paul Harris – the legitimate name on his passport.

Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer used their blogs to encourage their supporters to donate to his legal funds. Donations to Robinson’s legal fund came from Stop the Islamization of America and the American Freedom Defense Initiative, both founded by Geller in 2010. Robinson had sat on the President’s Council of Stop Islamization of Nations (SION) in 2012, alongside Geller, Spencer, and others, following their event in Stockholm that year.

Support also came from the anti-Muslim ‘Bare Naked Islam’ blog.

This new-found support offered to Robinson, however,  by the MEF, appears larger in scale, and included fundraising for his legal fees (through the Legal Project), and political support, hence why Geert Wilders of the far-right Party for Freedom (PVV) in the Netherlands, and US Congressman Paul Gosar (Republican of Arizona), both spoke at the June 9 rally.

Gosar tweeted at Donald Trump to raise his concerns about the treatment of Robinson on June 13 and spoke at the ‘Free Tommy Robinson’ rally in London two days later.

Perhaps a larger curiosity, however, was the MEF’s promise of diplomatic support for Robinson, which may help to explain why Sam Brownback, the US Ambassador for International Religious Freedom, is said to have complained to the British ambassador in Washington D.C. following lobbying from Breitbart, according to Reuters, an accusation Brownback denies.

Donald Trump Jr also tweeted about Robinson’s apparent mistreatment in May – demonstrating how the conviction of Tommy Robinson has caused ripples in North America.

Before news of Robinson’s imprisonment had spread in May 2018, there was little to no reference to the ex-EDL leader, on the Twitter accounts of the MEF or Mr Pipes.

Pipes signed a petition calling for the release of Robinson and encouraged others to sign it on May 26 and tweeted a portion of the of the Savvy Street interview concerning his trip to Luton to meet with Robinson.

The MEF Twitter account had tweeted about Robinson on September 11, 2015, with an external link to a Breitbart article concerning Robinson’s departure from the EDL.

Pipes remains a controversial figure. In 1990, he wrote: “West European societies are unprepared for the massive immigration of brown-skinned peoples cooking strange foods and not exactly maintaining Germanic standards of hygiene.” Years later, he attempted to clarify this sentence, suggesting that he was trying to reflect the thinking of European leaders, not his own. A blog published in 1997 included the sentence, “Antisemitism, historically a Christian phenomenon, is now primarily a Muslim phenomenon — and not just in the Middle East, but right here in the United States.”

In 2002, Pipes’ Campus Watch came in for criticism after allegedly publishing ‘dossiers’ on US-based academics and their views on political Islam and Palestine, according to a New York Times article published that year.

Pipes has propagated falsehoods relating to so-called ‘no-go-zones’ and indulged the conspiracy theory that Barack Obama was a Muslim in his youth. He wrote in defence of various European far-right political parties in Europe, including Marine Le Pen’s National Front (now rebranded as the French Rassemblement).

The overtures from Steve Bannon towards Robinson may prove part of his wider strategy (however inflated or wishful), to launch a new far-right think tank in Europe.

From the political failures of British Freedom Party to the limited reach of Pegida UK, and his departure from Rebel Media earlier this year, puts Robinson at somewhat of a crossroads with an impending re-trial hanging over him, and the ‘#FreeTommy’ movement may mobilise again.

The post How the latest Tommy Robinson saga exposed the influence of foreign funding appeared first on TELL MAMA.

Categories: Daniel Pipes, Far Right groups, News, Steve Bannon, Tommy Robinson

Bereaved Charlottesville mother keeps daughter’s cause alive

August 2, 2018 Article

Every few weeks, Susan Bro walks down 4th Street in downtown Charlottesville, Virginia, until she gets to a brick wall covered in chalked messages like “Love over hate” and “Gone but not forgotten.”

“I come just to absorb the energy of the place,” Bro, 61, said on Tuesday as she stood on the block now named for her daughter, Heather Heyer, who was killed a year ago while marching against a white supremacist rally.

Since August 12, 2017, when James Fields rammed his car into counter-protesters, killing 32-year-old Heyer and injuring several others, Bro has channelled her rage and grief into spreading the same message that drew her daughter downtown that day.

Bro said she made a promise to her daughter at her funeral, when she saw her bruised, broken body for the first time and broke down in tears.

“I held her hand and said, ‘I’m going to make this count.’”

Heyer’s death capped a day of clashes after hundreds of white supremacists, neo-Nazis and others descended upon the city, drawing national attention to the “alt right” movement that had grown bolder since President Donald Trump’s election.

Trump faced intense criticism after the protests when he seemed to equate the white nationalists with the counter-protesters, saying there were “very fine people on both sides.”

Bro said she chose not to return several phone calls from the White House after learning of the president’s remarks.

As the city prepares for the first anniversary of the so-called “Unite the Right” rally, Bro is readying herself for another difficult milestone in a year full of painful moments without Heather.

“The ‘firsts’ are always hardest,” she said, her voice cracking. “I got through the others: Mother’s Day, her birthday, Christmas. This will be the last one.”

Bro said she would bring flowers to Heather Heyer Way on August 12 before speaking at an event to mark the anniversary.

Law enforcement agencies have made extensive plans to combat any potential violence, though the leader of last year’s gathering, local white nationalist Jason Kessler, failed to secure a permit for a sequel this year. Instead, he has obtained a permit to hold a rally in Washington outside the White House.

Before last summer, Bro, a former elementary schoolteacher, led a relatively quiet life, doing secretarial work and living in a modest trailer home about 30 minutes north of Charlottesville.

At Heyer’s memorial service, which drew nearly 2,000 mourners and was broadcast live on large screens, Bro said the national response to the tragedy was “just the beginning of Heather’s legacy.”

“They tried to kill my child to shut her up. Well guess what? You just magnified her,” she said, drawing a standing ovation.

Within weeks of Heyer’s death, Bro created the Heather Heyer Foundation, in part to install a formal and legal structure to handle the hundreds of thousands of dollars in funds that poured in from sympathizers around the country.

Bro runs the foundation from her home and from an office at a Charlottesville law firm, filled with tributes to Heyer that she has received over the last year: a portrait painted by an artist, a humanitarian award given posthumously by the Muhammad Ali Center, notes written by Heyer’s friends at her memorial service.

The foundation has organised a scholarship programme and is planning to launch a social justice youth programme.

Bro found herself making appearances on Ellen DeGeneres’ talk show and at MTV’s Video Music Awards. She acknowledged that the intense media attention has caused resentment among some activists in Charlottesville who feel the focus on Heyer, a white woman, has distracted from the racial issues at the core of the clashes.

It has been a bit of a balancing act, she said, to amplify Heyer’s message without making it seem as though her daughter was the only victim who mattered. She noted that violence against black people often does not generate the same level of interest and warned against the “white-centred” narrative that portrayed Heyer as a leader rather than simply one of many people who decided to march.

“The issues have not changed,” Bro said. “We still have police shootings, over-policing, a lack of affordable housing, the prison pipeline.”

A year after burying her daughter, Bro reflected on the activism that brought Heyer to the protests.

“The point of Heather’s death is that we have a responsibility to rise up to address that hate,” Bro said. “Don’t sit by and wring your hands.”

The post Bereaved Charlottesville mother keeps daughter’s cause alive appeared first on Faith Matters.

Categories: America, Charlottesville, identity politics, killing, News, Trump, United States, US, Virginia, visibly Muslim

Danes march in Copenhagen to protest veil ban

August 2, 2018 Article

Around 1,300 Danes marched through Copenhagen on Wednesday in protest at a new ban on the wearing of face veils in public, accusing the government of infringing on women’s right to dress as they choose.

Denmark’s parliament enacted the ban in May, joining France and some other European Union countries to uphold what some politicians say are secular and democratic values.

The protesters, many wearing the niqab veil or the all-enveloping, body-length burqa, marched from the central, left-wing district of Norrebro to Bellahoj police station on the outskirts of the capital. They formed a human chain around the station and then marched back to Norrebro before dispersing.

Demonstrators, often with children in tow, chanted “no racists in our streets” and “my life, my choice” during the three-hour rally. No incidents were reported.

The marchers included non-niqab-wearing Muslim women and non-Muslim Danes with faces covered.

“We need to send a signal to the government that we will not bow to discrimination and a law that specifically targets a religious minority,” Sabina, 21, a niqab-garbed student, told Reuters, asking that her full name not be used.

She is one of about 150-200 Muslim women – 0.1 percent of those in the country – who daily wear either the niqab or burqa garments covering the face or the entire body. Muslims account for around 5 per cent of Denmark’s 5.7 million population.

Under the law, police will be able to instruct women to remove their veils or order them to leave public areas. Justice Minister Soren Pape Poulsen said officers would fine them and tell them to go home.

Fines will range from 1,000 Danish crowns (121.87 pounds) for a first offence to 10,000 crowns for a fourth.

DISCRIMINATORY, CRITICS SAY

Despite its generic wording, the legislation is being widely interpreted as discriminating against Denmark’s Muslims and violating women’s right to freedom of expression and religion.

Critics, noting the tiny number of Muslim women in Denmark who actually wear a niqab, regard the law as largely a sop to increased anti-immigrant sentiment in the Nordic country.

“If the intention of this law was to protect women’s rights, it fails abjectly,” said Fotis Filippou, deputy Europe director of human rights group Amnesty International. “Instead, the law criminalises women for their choice of clothing – making a mockery of the freedoms Denmark purports to uphold.”

Police said none of the veiled protesters would be penalised since certain uses of face veils, such as to exercise freedom of speech as part of a peaceful protest, are exempt from the law.

The justice ministry explained that the ban would focus on women forced by their families to wear veils, though it has been faulted for vagueness in stipulating who would fall foul of it.

Danish Police Union chief Claus Oxfeldt said he would have preferred more comprehensive guidance on how to enforce the ban.

“We need as thorough guidance as possible so we don’t end up in situations where (police officers) don’t 100 per cent know how to act,” he said.

As an example, he was unsure whether Asian tourists wearing anti-pollution masks would be covered by the ban.

France – with the largest Muslim community in the EU – as well as Belgium, the Netherlands, Bulgaria and the German state of Bavaria, have all imposed some curbs on face veils in public.

France’s controversial 2011 ban added to a broader sense of alienation felt by many Muslims and some evidence surfaced that it encouraged assaults in the street on women wearing still legal headscarves as well.

The post Danes march in Copenhagen to protest veil ban appeared first on Faith Matters.

Categories: ban, Copenhagen, Denmark, freedom of expression, head coverings, Islamic veils, Muslim women, News, veil, Women's rights

Google plans censored version of search engine in China

August 2, 2018 Article

Google plans to launch a version of its search engine in China that will block some websites and search terms, two sources said, in a move that could mark its return to a market it abandoned eight years ago on censorship concerns.

The plan comes even as China has stepped up scrutiny into business dealings involving U.S. tech firms including Facebook Inc., Apple Inc. and Qualcomm Inc. amid intensifying trade tensions between Beijing and Washington.

Google, which quit China’s search engine market in 2010, has been actively seeking ways to re-enter China where many of its products are blocked by regulators.

The Intercept earlier reported Google’s China plans on Wednesday, citing internal Google documents and people familiar with the plans.

The project is code named “Dragonfly” and has been underway since the spring of 2017, the news website said.

Progress on the project picked up after a December meeting between Google’s Chief Executive Sundar Pichai and a top Chinese government official, it added.

Search terms about human rights, democracy, religion and peaceful protests will be among the words blacklisted in the search engine app, which The Intercept said had already been demonstrated to the Chinese government.

The finalised version could be launched in the next six to nine months, pending approval from Chinese officials, it added.

Chinese state-owned Securities Times, however, said reports of the return of Google’s search engine to China were not true, citing information from “relevant departments”.

But a Google employee familiar with the censored version of the search engine confirmed to Reuters that the project was alive and genuine.

On an internal message board, the employee wrote: “In my opinion, it is just as bad as the leak article mentions.”

The worker, who declined to be named, said that he had seen slides on the effort and that many executives at the vice president level were aware of it. He said he had transferred out of his unit to avoid being involved.

Separately, a Chinese official with knowledge of the plans said that Google has been in contact with authorities at the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) about a modified search programme.

The official, who declined to be named, said the project does not currently have approval from authorities and that it is “very unlikely” such a project would be made available this year.

Google declined to comment on the accounts and the CAC did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Reuters on Thursday.

A day earlier, the search giant also declined to comment on specifics mentioned in The Intercept report, but noted that it has launched a number of mobile apps in China and works with local developers as part of maintaining its domestic presence.

But the report pummelled shares of U.S.-listed Baidu which dominates China’s search engine market. Baidu shares fell 7.7 percent on Wednesday, despite posting better than expected quarterly results.

Google’s main search platform is blocked in China along with its video platform YouTube, but it has been attempting to make new inroads into China.

In January, the search engine joined an investment in Chinese live-stream mobile game platform Chushou, and earlier this month, launched an artificial intelligence (AI) game on Tencent Holdings Ltd’s social media app WeChat.

Reports of its possible re-entry spurred a strong reaction on Chinese social media outlets on Wednesday evening, including debates over the merits of a censored search engine versus accessing the U.S. version through illegal virtual private networks.

“Let’s carry on jumping the Firewall,” said one anonymous poster. “I’d rather not have it than use a castrated version.”

The post Google plans censored version of search engine in China appeared first on Faith Matters.

Categories: censorship, China, Google, Internet, News, search engine

Southeast Asia seek cybersecurity deal with Russia

August 2, 2018 Article

Southeast Asian nations hope to strike a joint agreement on cybersecurity in coming days with Russia, accused by the United States of meddling in its elections, after a series of high-profile hacks in the region.

The draft of a document seen by Reuters discusses formalising an agreement with Russia. It is set to be issued by foreign ministers of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) at the close of meetings underway with other global lawmakers in Singapore.

“We welcome the further strengthening [of] our cooperation in cybersecurity with Russia through the issuance of the statement of ASEAN and Russian foreign ministers on cooperation in the field of cybersecurity,” the draft document said, adding the title would be updated depending on negotiations. It is due to be published on Saturday.

The host of the ASEAN meeting, Singapore, recently suffered its worst ever cyberattack when hackers stole the personal information of about 1.5 million people, including Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, from a government health database. Earlier this year, Malaysia said it had foiled an attempted cyber heist on its central bank.

Neither country has identified the hackers and neither suggested the involvement of Russia.

U.S. intelligence agencies have said a Russian propaganda arm tried to tamper with the 2016 presidential election by posting and buying ads on Facebook. Moscow has denied involvement.

Facebook said on Tuesday it had identified a new co-ordinated political influence campaign to mislead its users and sow dissension among voters ahead of November’s U.S. congressional elections.

Russia last year appointed a dedicated Ambassador to ASEAN based in Jakarta.

Senior officials from ASEAN and Russia met in March in Jakarta for wide-ranging talks on co-operation in political, security and economic fields among others.

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