Several conversations have recently started in the Forum regarding personal freedoms and rights. This is a frequent topic of discussion amongst many groups in the United States specifically with our legislators passing through bills that significantly grant sweeping authority to government agencies in the name of national, no wait, let me use a key buzzword,
homeland security.
I will get back to that in a minute. What I wanted to do here was show that despite the backwards steps the United States is taking in terms of personal freedom of expression and other non-universal immunities from subjugation, other countries in the world are still fighting for the most basic of rights United States and other progressive countries' citizens enjoy.
In two recent examples in the news, it is illustrated how easy it is to slip back into less reformist times. In the case of these stories, antiquated laws and views are actively blocking the people of Malaysia and Iran from enjoying certain civil liberties many other parts of the world presently embrace.
In Malaysia, it is standard practice for their country's Film Censorship Board to review all films prior to public release. The Film Censorship Board is a division of Malaysia's
Ministry of Home Affairs whose self-proclaimed mission is to "ensure peace and harmony in the nation." Films, videos and television programmes are scrutinised, then edited or banned to meet their standards for language, violence, sex and religious content.
Recently films such as
The Hours (lesbian kissing),
Daredevil (anti-religious role model),
The Prince of Egypt (blasphemy),
Zoolander (featured the Malaysian President as target to assassination) and
Shindler's List (Zionist propaganda) along with television's
Friends,
Ally McBeal and Kylie Minogue's
Live in Sydney have been edited or banned completely from theatres, broadcast television and video distribution. Pertaining specifically to the editing of same-sex kissing in
The Hours, the leader of the Film Censorship Board said their actions were made to protect "the interests of the country and people from bad influences and negative elements shown in films." Even as opposition to these practices is getting a larger voice with the help of the outspoken Lim Kit Siang, Malaysian Parliamentary Opposition Leader and officer with the Democratic Action Party, they are still far away from being able to enjoy such a simple thing as an unedited film. Now, while one could argue the United States has similar regulations (
see FCC Rules on Obscene Content and
MPAA Ratings), the access to content is still generally available, even if an edited version is released as the primary product (
Showgirls, for example, was released nationally as the watered down "R" rated version of the originally NC-17 rated original, widely available for
purchase).
Meanwhile in Iran, sixty-eight (68) people were arrested for using a dating website to chat with and meet people. The operators of this site were also detained. The Basij militia, who enforce Iran's strict morality laws, have been regularly known to conduct raids on parties and social gatherings where both men and women attended together, but this was the first known instance of an operation against people who utilised the internet to meet. According to
BBC News, General Ahmad Rouzbehani told Iran's official Islamic Republic News Agency, "Some people were using an internet site to allow girls and boys to talk and arrange meetings in a place in north Tehran where they had illegal relations." The arrests came after some tips were supplied to the authorities who made the move to curb these "unlawful actions."
While these acts of oppression may seem severe in contrast to what is going on in the United States, it must not make us too complacent as to not take action against our own forms of oppression such as racism, sexism and post-11 September governmentally sanctioned reduction of civil rights. As a prime example, in addition to the new offensive Patriot Act II, there has been word that the
Transportation Safety Administration was going to begin tests on a new system, the Computer Assisted Passenger Pre-screening System II (CAPPS II), that rates a potential airline passenger's estimated security risk using data-mined information including personal financial and transactional information. This system would allow the government to unilaterally monitor, collect and use this information in any manner it saw fit and creates yet another dangerous precedent toward United States authoritarianism. You can read more about this system and its inherent dangers in
this article.
