Strange pilgrim

As I am researching about immigrants in the UK, I found one thing that was rather difficult to comprehend: Everyone is willing to talk to me, except the Chinese groups. The EU high commissioner was on holiday but quick to reply to ask me to schedule an slot with his PA, a professor at the university was really helpful, a Chinese researcher told me his phone number, another Chinese writer did the same.

Trying to reach the Chinese support groups, I found out that it was almost so much tougher. They either missed the appointment time, said they were very busy or just told me a plain “No. I cant help you.” Even the free legal helpline for Chinese migrant, during phone-in time, was too busy to accept my request for a 10-minute chat on how they are helping the migrants. The officer told me, “Just send in your questions and let’s see who will reply you.” My plea for a possible name I can contact was plainly declined as well. It has been a week and I don’t think there is much hope for any reply.

My resentment has been building up in me because I think they have been so silly. They should have talked to people about what they are actually doing because what they are doing is actually good - nothing to be covered up or ashamed of.

But I thought probably they just did not appreciate student.
So when I read this article (here) published in the Independent about how silent Chinese communities are when there were illegal migrants accidents, I understood that it was not about me, but about them.

As an Asian and an ethnic Chinese myself, I understand the mindset of living behind the show-curtain. We are not very active, we play down our problems and our achievements, we are more acceptance to our situation and, most time, more passive. But living here for a year and see how people here behave, I do see the virtue of standing up for yourself (not bragging but just telling the truth of what you are capable), of human right, and of (yes, you read it correctly) public relations.

As much as, I think, there are things beyond Shaolin Kungfu that the West can learn from the East; there are more that the East can learn from the West, beyond McDonald’s, Gucci and Mercedes.

The article (here) highlights the question I as a Chinese ethnic myself can’t understand.

“If you want to complain about Indonesia, the list will go and on,” my friend told me, signalling me to stop. I was telling her the new light into our own history and why things work as what they are now, that there are few rich and powerful people determining how millions of people should live. She was bored and annoyed.

“What’s the use of knowing. Nothing will ever change,” she said.

Indonesians are famous for its acceptance of fate. When people have an accident and break their leg, they said, “Thank goodness it’s only my leg. I still have my life.”

I read a story by a Western journalist who covered the story from a post-earthquake city in middle Java in May 2006. Instead of seeing devastated faces, as what he saw in New Orleans after Katrina, he saw cheerful people. “Thank goodness I am still alive,” they say.

They did not get the support people in New Orleans got but he recalled that they were very friendly. One family offered him meal, cooked with little ration of rice they got from charity. He said, “I saw strong-willed people here. Content and happy people.”

It’s a nation of self-contentful, which is good in time of peace and prosperity because people will feel happy with what they have.

However, is it right to keep mum and accept whatever that come your way as fate, when there are factors, created by other humans, control the rule of the game; the control that works almost invisibly as if it is by hand of god.

The earthquake, scaled only at 5.9 richter scale, killed more than 6,000 people, many of whom should not have died. Most are buried under the ruin of their own home, improperly built because of lack of knowledge about good building and limited fund they have. Few towns were flattened, leaving only houses built with brick and cement standing.

Indonesia, located on Pacific Ring of Fire seismic belt, is still far from ready to face this familiar natural phenomena and let it turn into natural disaster. People should have been given education about the earthquake-resistance house and should earn enough money to build it instead of letting their house kills them. This is an unnecesary catasthrope.

Instead, people accept it as the will of god, that death is in the hand of god.

Is it wrong to see wrong as wrong, to complain and wish for better system, where people can stay alive and have hope for better life? Isn’t recognising and analysing what went wrong part of determining the remedial action? Without proper action, thousands more may die in the coming earthquakes and we will again claim it as fate.

Is a nation of contentful - or perhaps lost of hope - limiting the progress that is so much needed?

A boy lost his arm in the earthquake waiting for his faux arm

I wonder if Winnie the pooh is really story for children.
The intended meaning seems to target the mind of adults.

In this example, Winnie the pooh story is an example of fallacy in argument - begging the question.

Begging the question means the premisses presuppose the truth of the conclusion. 
In this case, Winnie the pooh draws a map based on his own imagination and then claims that the treasure is buried when he thinks it is buried. He presuppose that his imagination will lead to the truth. Even if he does find the treasure, it will be based on pure good luck. There is no logical strength in the argument.

 It’s a widely used fallacious argument.

The new rulers of the world is written by John Pilger, a very good journalist with very good investigative skills. It is published in 2002. It tells the human’s stories and what, why and by who the real stories are written. The stories that we should know but often being denied from knowing, especially for people who come from countries with less freedom of speech.

I can personally relate to the book because of the particular chapter on Indonesia. It is about why Indonesia is what it is now and about the 1965 revolution. I somewhat know what is happening but not completely understand it. The chapter made me shiver. I learned more about the powers that are working in the country and understand why things have gone the way they are - the motivation. It also made me see how much power and money can do.

Only now I understand why people say that we need to know the history to understand the present. And history can repeat itself - again and again and again - until something is done. The story of Indonesia is being repeated in many other countries and now even in Iraq. The greatest prize of south east Asia set a precedence for more bloody occurances in other countries.

Pilger really knows his stuff before each interview and churn out data off his head, rebuked his interviewees’ attempts to misinformed him, at times using their own data.

I think this book is a must read and very reasonably priced.

Christos made a clip using some of our pictures. I found it on youtube.
We are so cute. Thanks Chris….

http://youtube.com/watch?v=rp9WVez0_no

The picnic was fun….So sorry for those who couldn’t come.
Perhaps we can have another one in August or Sept when more people are back in Cardiff????

Feature: Cardiff Tribune May 3, 2007 edition

[A rather patchy overnight work for Cardiff Tribune]

Almost 60 years on since the United Nations’ declaration of human right to freedom of opinion and expression in 1948, the press freedom is still in appalling state. Various intimidations, ranging from killing threat to more subtle threat about how the media organisations are run, are preventing public from knowing what they need to know. Different country faces different challenges.

The most tragic way to silent the journalists who are doing investigation on difficult matters are through killing them. The International Press Institute calls 2006 as “the most savage and brutal year in the modern media history.” The murders of famous journalists such as Anna Politkovskaya from Russia and Hrant Dink from Turkey have shocked the public and made the headlines of major publications.

Yet, more deaths have got very little coverage. Forty six journalists died in Iraq last year, making the total to more than 130 journalists to have died there since the war started. The murder of journalists in Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Philippines, Mexico, and Sri Lanka are largely unheard. The escalation of violence against journalists and other media professionals have made them only part of statistics.

Director-General of UNESCO, Koichiro Matsuura, dedicating his World Press Freedom Day speech to theme of journalist safety, said: “World Press Freedom Day is an occasion to remind the world of the importance of protecting the fundamental human right of freedom of expression… violence against media professionals constituting today one of the greatest threats to freedom of expression…”

However, more subtle restrictions in less violence countries are not to be overlooked.

Censorship, for many different reasons, is a wide-spread phenomenon everywhere.

It ranges from government censorship, self censorship, and diversion of the media objective from their social responsibility of the media to the public.

In Asia, censorship is a common and carries the message of “nation building”. In China and Vietnam, the press is largely used to deliver governments’ message and agenda to the public rather than scrutinising the government’s performance.

Chinese media are closely monitored by the propaganda office. Yang Ing Jie, a reporter for a major TV station, said: “The propaganda office looks through the news daily and will tell you what not to report. So we have to make judgement if the news we write will pass the inspection.”

But she said that media does work around the control. She said: “Sometimes we are racing with the office to get the news out before the propaganda office can tell us not to report something. Once we are told not to, we stop. But, before (being told), we just report as much as possible.”

Similar but more subtle challenges are faced by Hai Van Nguyen, from Vietnam. She said that self-censorship is the biggest problem in her country.

She said: “The government try to instil to people about the role of reporters for national development. So before we report, we try to think what will be the effect to the country.”

“One clause in the law said that you can report whatever you want to as long as not harmful to the country. But it is an ambiguous term. What is harmful to a country and what is not?” she added.

The challenge in Nigeria is rather different. The control is exerted to the media through financial control and the lack of legal law on freedom of information. Ike Amaechi, a reporter for a Nigerian national daily newspaper remarked: “The most subtle way of intimidating is by threatening the source of income for the media.”

He said that most of media’s adverts are directly and indirectly connected to the government. He said: “The economy in Nigeria is run by government. Everyone one way or the other depends on the government. They can just deny you the advert or they could also blackmail the big businesses not to give you advert. It is the most effective instrument of blackmail. But other than that, they don’t arrest anyone like they did in the past.”

That was the reason that the voices that go against the government or mainstream do not last long. “If they (the adverts) don’t come, sooner or later, the alternative voices will go out of circulation. The alternative voices sprang up from time to time, but they are not in the mainstream,” he added.

The United Kingdom, the financing model of media companies also seems to cause censorships. Gary Merrill, a lecturer, freelance writer and founder of an alternative news website, cautioned that the idea that media as part of corporation has eroded the quality of journalism.

He argued that the nature of corporations is to have high advertising revenue, high viewing figures and, for newspapers, high circulations. As the result, the media tends to give the viewers the accessible type of information and serious issue do not get enough coverage.

He said: “The biggest threat is the powerful organisations. They kind of have monopoly on our consciousness… People have to go out of their way to find an alternative point of view.”

However, the situation is not all bad. In China, in 2006, no journalists arrested in 2006 were still held in custody. In Vietnam, Ms Nguyen said that the safety of journalists is well-protected. There also has been movement to relax the ownership of the media to allow private ownership. Indonesia scraped the offence of insulting the head state, which was often used against journalists in the past. Mauritania, an African country, has freed state-owned press from government control. South Africa has enjoyed high level of freedom of speech since the abolishment of Apartheid in 1994.

There are still threats looming though. Howard Barrell, ex-editor of South Africa’s Mail & Guardian and a lecturer, he warned against the danger of complacency. He said: “There are potential dangers to press freedom in South Africa. The danger is two sided. On one hand, some of the government leaders now don’t enjoy being criticised. But the way in which they respond to not enjoying being criticised has caused people become quite afraid that they may come to restrict press freedom.”

He argued that other side of that danger is that there are some people who want to be seen to only write nice things about the rulers because they want to be given political respectability and perhaps to ingratiate themselves with new political leadership.

He said: “They will tend to self censor out any unpleasant news. They want to please the new political leadership by giving them the news that the political leadership is going to like – to read or to hear.”

“If that sort of thinking about what media is or should be really takes root, it can cause terrible problem because South Africans then not being told what they need to know and it become a very insidious and treacherous kind of self censorship,” he added.   

Internet has also opened a new cheap avenue for independent journalists who disagree with mainstream media’s practices. Online journalism is cheaper to run and can transfer the information worldwide.

Mr Merrill said that online journalism allows more freedom of expression. He said: So there is not restriction from advertiser, government or editor, which is the purest form of journalism.”

However, the online journalism still faces many challenges. Mr Merrill said: “The accessibility to the media has been increased but the downside is there are so many alternative news website that it becomes diluted. If event happens, people will still go to mainstream media website to find out about it. To try to build a brand name is not easy.”

The challenge in Nigeria is rather different. As the internet is not widely used, online journalism is not as developed as it is in the West and the news still spread through conventional print or broadcast media. Mr Amaechi said: “We have very limited options.”

Whatever the outlets, the essence of journalism is still to hold the powerful to account, to inform the public and to encourage transparency of decision making. Mr Barrell said: “It is important for journalists to be difficult. We have to be a watch dog, not a lap dog.” 

For those who are interested, there is a UK national demo in support of the International Global Day for Darfur in London.
When: 12:00 noon to 1:30 pm, Sunday 29 April
Where: Whitehall, opposite Downing Street, London

The Aegis Trust, Amnesty International UK, National Union of Students, the Darfur Union, Aegis Trust Student Society, Union of Jewish Students.

Thousands of people from across the UK will be coming to central London to demonstrate about the continuing crisis in Darfur and calling on British Government to get an effective peace keeping force into the region.

With the crisis now well into its fourth year and at least 200,000 people killed, the British Government is a key player to get protection for the over two million people living in make shift refugee camps and the hundreds-of-thousands of other civilians who also need international help.

Make your voice heard - Time Is Up for the international community - the people of Darfur need our support today.

For more information please contact:

Hratche Koundarjian, Tel: 07905 911 039, hratche.koundarjian@aegistrust.org http://www.globefordarfur.org/index.php?content=event_detail&include=yes&location=London%20-%20Whitehall

The neighbour from hell, a 82 year-old woman, has been sentenced to six months jail term for making her neighbour life miserable, BBC reported (see: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/south_east/6560537.stm).

It’s utterly shocking. Even though it is correct by law that the woman has to be sentenced, but judging from the age, it is rather ridiculous. It is a 82 year-old we are talking about, who has to walk using a walking stick.  It must be an absolute misery for her and to be carried into her grave with her. Despite the fairness in the judgement, I can’t help feeling sorry for the old lady. I think the matter can actually be settled better out of the court system, through mediation and talks whereby both parties can reach some agreeable terms to live side by side.

I am not sure if this ending is what Casa family wished to see to happen to their neighbour; there is no report about it. I suspect that they actually wanted to put a stop to the harassment they were getting and not to punish the old lady.

In my country, people negotiate a lot to solve problems - too much that sometimes the matter that should have gone to court is settled privately. But here is the other extreme where most of the things seemed to be settled in court.