Rita Panahi: Right also has the right to free speech
AS someone who escaped an Islamist country where blasphemy and apostasy are crimes punishable by jail, beatings, or even death, I shudder to see quasi-blasphemy laws being created under the guise of “human rights”, writes Rita Panahi.
Rita Panahi
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VICTIMHOOD is not only being glorified but weaponised to silence those who challenge the Leftist orthodoxy that dominates our public and increasingly private institutions.
It’s all too easy to make a racial vilification complaint, no matter how nonsensical, that will tie up the accused in costly legal proceedings for months or years.
The process is the punishment.
There are no consequences for vexatious, hypersensitive, permanently aggrieved people who not only waste taxpayer funds but cause enormous stress, and often financial hardship, to those unfairly accused.
State and federal bodies, staffed by well-paid public servants, facilitate this taxpayer-funded “lawfare”, in which “wrong speech” is punished by lengthy and often costly legal proceedings.
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The Australian Human Rights Commission, civil and administrative tribunals, and a number of other state-based human rights bodies are being used to censor free speech.
Nowadays, it seems stating an opinion that is held by half the country is a potential hate crime that could lead to years of costly legal proceedings, not to mention the corresponding anxiety.
A number of polls in recent years, including a 2016 Essential poll and a 2017 survey commissioned by the Australian Population Research Institute, show that one in two Australians have major reservations about Muslim immigration and would support full or partial bans.
But when TV host Sonia Kruger expressed that view during a discussion in July 2016, it attracted the vilest abuse imaginable and resulted in a racial vilification complaint.
Last week, Channel 9 failed in its bid to have the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal dismiss the case. Nine had argued that the discussion at the heart of the complaint was about Islam and immigration, and was therefore not race-related. Almost two years after the discussion — which took place days after a radicalised jihadi committed mass murder in Nice by ploughing a truck through crowds, killing 86 people and injuring a further 458 — the case will proceed to a directions hearing.
For the record, I don’t support bans on Muslim immigration. But Kruger is entitled to her opinion without being subjected to vitriol, including misogynistic abuse and threats of violence.
It speaks volumes about the way open discourse about Islam is frowned upon in the West that a personality who states a widely held opinion is embroiled in a storm of controversy and a formal complaint. No wonder those in the entertainment world who deviate from Leftist groupthink are reluctant to publicly share their views. The climate of censorship and the use of racial vilification laws to silence criticism of religion is a worrying trend.
As someone who escaped an Islamist country where blasphemy and apostasy are crimes punishable by jail, beatings, or even death, I shudder to see quasi-blasphemy laws being created under the guise of “human rights”.
No one who values free speech and critical thinking should characterise criticism of religion as hate speech or bigotry. It’s self-evident that Islam isn’t a race. How can people as diverse as Indonesians, Sudanese, Bosnians and Afghanis be considered a single race? It is absurd to argue blond, blue-eyed Sunni Muslims from Chechnya are the same race as sub-Saharan African Sunni Muslims of Niger.
Islam is not race, it is a doctrine, a set of ideas that should be freely discussed and criticised without hyperbolic cries of Islamophobia.
Of course, anti-Muslim bigotry is real, but false cries of Islamophobia often accompany any criticism of Islam, even when it is militant, radical Islam that is at the heart of sectarian violence and terrorist attacks around the world.
One of the most fundamental human rights, as recognised by the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights, is freedom of expression — the very principle that AHRC and other government bodies are inhibiting.
It’s not only those with high profiles, like the late and great cartoonist Bill Leak, who are subjected to tribunal and commission complaints.
Consider what three Queensland University of Technology students endured for more than three years for harmless Facebook posts about being thrown out of a computer room reserved for indigenous students. One, Calum Thwaites, gave up his ambition of becoming a teacher, fearing that students and parents would google his name and learn he’d been accused of racism.
It’s easy to understand why at least two QUT students paid $5000 to the complainant, Cindy Prior, even though they had solid legal grounds to defend the case. It was a small price to be saved from years of costly legal proceedings.
The emotional and financial hardship and reputational damage caused by such complaints cannot be overstated.
Barely a week goes by when I’m not subjected to racial slurs from supposedly tolerant Lefties. Some are even columnists. I could keep the AHRC and state-based human rights bodies busy with racial vilification complaints — but I’m not a fan of victimhood or silencing my opponents. However, I do sometimes wonder if conservatives should adopt the progressive playbook and hold commentators of the Left accountable for their words. Perhaps if the Left-leaning commentariat feared AHRC action, they’d be greater supporters of free speech.
As it stands, it is a one-way street. Such bodies, and laws like Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, are used by one side of politics to punish the other.
Rita Panahi is a Herald Sun columnist
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