Islamo-fascist leftists show their TRUE colours
EnemyOfTheLeft
By Chris Hastings and Elizabeth Day
The Telegraph
telegraph.co.uk
Monday, December 20, 2004
International human rights publication apologises for describing Theo
van
Gogh's death as 'marvellous piece of street theatre'
A senior editor at the international human rights magazine, Index on
Censorship, has apologised for publishing an article poking fun at the
murder of a Dutch film-maker by Islamic extremists, and admitted that
it
should never have been published.
Ursula Owen, the editor-in-chief, said that she was sorry for the
widespread outrage sparked by the piece and said that she would not
have
written it herself.
This follows intense criticism of the liberal quarterly, which ran a
website article last month describing the killing of Theo van Gogh, a
critic of Islam who was stabbed and shot on an Amsterdam street by a
Muslim
fanatic on November 2, as a "marvellous piece of street theatre".
The piece, written by Rohan Jayasekera, the magazine's associate
editor,
lampooned van Gogh's films, and his "exploitative" relationship with
Ayann
Hirsi Ali, a Somali-born Dutch MP, who co-produced his most recent
work.
Jayasekera called the murder of van Gogh, a father of three and a
descendant of the artist Vincent van Gogh, a "sensational climax to a
lifetime's public performance".
He went on to describe van Gogh's most recent critique of Islam, a film
entitled Submission that featured a veiled Muslim woman with verses of
the
Koran apparently justifying domestic abuse written over her naked body,
as
"juvenile shock-horror art".
The article described the film-maker's anti-Islamic tirades as
"obscenities," and "an abuse of his right to free speech".
Miss Owen admitted last night that the article had provoked uproar
within
Index on Censorship, with complaints from both subscribers and
contributors. She said that the internet article would not have been
put in
the print edition of the magazine, but she said that editors and board
members had decided that the offending article would not be removed and
nor
would Jayasekera lose his job.
"There has been a lot of criticism and some support," she said. "I am
sorry
that it has outraged people. I don't think the tone is right and I do
not
agree with it.
"It would not have got in the magazine because it would have been
edited
before. This is not something I would have written myself. We have had
people who write for us saying they disapprove of that piece but no one
has
said they are never going to write for us again."
Miss Owen said that just because she had printed the piece did not mean
that she endorsed the views in it.
"I do not agree with everything the magazine prints," she said. "We
recently published a piece saying there was not a link between HIV and
Aids. I don't agree with that view but I think it is important that it
should be aired."
Index on Censorship, which is funded by the charity Writers & Scholars
International Ltd, was founded in 1972 by Sir Stephen Spender to fight
for
the right of free expression for Soviet dissidents and has a long list
of
illustrious contributors.
Past writers include the award-winning authors Doris Lessing, Margaret
Atwood and A S Byatt, Vaclav Havel, the former president of the Czech
Republic, and the playwrights Arthur Miller and Harold Pinter.
Past board members of the charity include Sir Louis Blom-Cooper, QC, a
former deputy High Court judge, Michael Grade, the chairman of the BBC,
Lord Palumbo, the chairman of the Arts Council from 1989-1994, Lady
Susan
Hollick, who served as the chairman of the Index on Censorship for
seven
years from 1993 and Anthony Smith, the president of Magdalen College,
Oxford.
Lord Palumbo said yesterday: "This is not the sort of article that
would
have appeared when I was involved with the charity. Back then, it was
concerned with strictly factual and straight reports about abuses and
torture, wherever they occurred."
One donor, who asked to remain anonymous, said: "They've committed
organisational hara-kiri. They have become something they once were
not."
Peter Tatchell, the homosexual rights activist who has written for the
magazine in the past, said: "I found it to be a tragic betrayal of the
magazine's traditional support for libertarian values. In this current
epoch of post-modernism and live-and-let-live multiculturalism, moral
relativism is gaining ground. This article was one more instance of
this
relativism. Liberal humanitarian values are under threat. Much of this
threat comes not from the far Right, but from the Left's moral
equivocation
and compromises."
Mr Tatchell insisted, however, that although he did not agree with the
article itself, he defended the magazine's right to carry it.
"For the most part, the Index on Censorship performs a valuable
function in
defending freedom of speech and promoting individual liberties. This
was a
maverick article and out of character. The article was an insult to all
progressive Muslims."
Mr Tatchell's comments were echoed by Germaine Greer, the feminist
academic
and author, who subscribes to the magazine and described the piece as
"vile
vomit".
She said: "The problem with Index on Censorship's position is that, by
its
nature, they have to publish things that they don't agree with in order
to
prove their own point. I would hope that by giving a fanatic a platform
and
listening to what he says, that people would be able to see how crazy
that
person is and refute his arguments.
"On the other hand, no one ever went broke underestimating the
intelligence
of the public."
The magazine has a readership of just over 5,000 and Writers & Scholars
International recently received funding from the Foreign Office. The
money
was awarded to help with the training of journalists in Iraq.
Mr van Gogh was shot eight times and stabbed while cycling to work in
Amsterdam last month. A five-page letter containing Islamic quotations
and
addressed to Ms Ali, the MP who had helped with his last film, was
stuck to
his body with a dagger.
Mohammed Bouyeri, a 26-year-old Dutch Moroccan, has been charged with
his
murder.
The brutal nature of the crime provoked a storm of protest throughout
Holland with an outbreak of more than 20 firebomb attacks on mosques
and
Islamic schools in Amsterdam, The Hague and Rotterdam.
Mr Jayasekera, who has been working for Index on Censorship since 2000
and
is half Sri Lankan, would not speak to The Telegraph yesterday, but put
a
statement on the website. It said: "To deliberately provoke a debate on
the
internet, I wanted to be as hard on van Gogh as he had been on his
critics
in life. I realised that I was sailing close to the edge to make that
point, but I believed that my article fell short of actually blaming
van
Gogh for his own murder.
"No one deserves to die for their views, no matter how reprehensible.
Murder is the most abhorrent of means of censorship. Does that mean van
Gogh's words were beyond accountability? No. Not in the real world
anyway."