That journalism may thrive (II)

When the group attempted to get registered as a non-governmental organization, its efforts were thwarted by a government that is, according to Darwish, insensitive and hostile to NGOs and other civil organizations. It considered engagement in rights organizations as committing a huge crime.
State authorities were alleged to have carried out serial hostile steps against SCM’s activities with the aim of disrupting its functions. Darwish and his co-travelers in freedom-seeking for the press were serially bullied by the state through multiple imprisonments, denial of travel permits and so on but he never relented. Apparently, political activism was in his blood, having grown up in a politically engaged family.   His father suffered persecution for political activism while his mother was actively engaged with pro-Palestinian organizations. He had himself gained experience of ‘civil society and democratic thinking’ through his travels to France and the Gulf States.
Darwish was a victim of torture and incarceration, an ordeal which heightened ever since the rebellion against President Bashar Assad’s dictatorship which took off in 2011 when Syrian journalists and human rights activists lived in serious danger and numerous  journalists have been killed, with hundreds more arrested. At the peak of their repressive ordeals, SCM’s office in Damascus was stormed on February 16, 2012 arresting Darwish and fellow activists. This is one example of how the attempt to reward valiant efforts to attain freedom for the press and its practitioners have been subverted and trampled by a dictatorship that has plunged the country into a grave war with its citizens fuelling the refugee world interminably.
Nonetheless, and in an elevating manner, Mazen and two other activists were honoured in 2011 by Roland Berger, a Munich-based Foundation with its Human Dignity Award. Reason? Dawish’s ‘tireless efforts in support of press freedom and free speech’.
On account of courage in the promotion of free speech in the old democracy in France, a satire-bent newspaper, Charlie Hebdo, was set to receive an award organized for it by Pen America. This Gala dinner was meant to be in honour of the paper’s staunch defense of free speech. But the reception was a mixture of applause and denunciation; praise and outcry; mirth and violence, depending on which angle of the impact you fall. In defiance of terror and an embrace of free speech, millions of French citizens took to the streets solidarizing with Charlie Hebdo, chanting ‘Je suis Charlie’ amidst a torrent of gunshots fired by Islamic protesters against the award which they consider as a justification of cultural intolerance by a newspaper that they have found to be perennially supportive of further marginalization of the minority community in France who happen, in the main, to be Muslims. Hebdo has a tendency for provocative publication, including its cartoon of the Prophet in a rather obscene frame. The protesters against the award felt this was a furtherance of their humiliation, alienation and suffering in the country. Their revulsion of Charlie Hebdo received the support of numerous groups of authors and writers who have demonstrated their disapproval of the Award.  Hebdo’s free art of satire is not limited to a particular sect. Years back, The London Review carried a blog post denouncing the paper for its anti-Catholic publications in a predominantly Catholic institution thus; ‘A bunch of white guys in a Catholic country, making fun of the pope’ and such other ‘defiant spirit of irreverent provocations’ founded  on a politically pro-Left savage French satiric tradition which dated back to pre-revolutionary anti-royalism. This was a point when cartoons were drawn to mock Queen Marie Antoinette and King Louis X1V-a history of satiric audacity which extends to the present President of France.
It has been argued that Hebdo’s free satire has, over the years, been more political than religious or sectarian. Many more of their religious outings were targeted at Christianity than at Islam. A particularly lampooning cartoon was of the image of the Virgin Mary with thighs apart delivering the baby Jesus! But the insensitivity of mocking Islam and Muslims, a largely unemployed and impoverished minority community, albeit in an artistic mould, was exacerbated by the endorsement through an award.
Here then, in the midst of reflections over the Press Freedom Day, and the defense of journalism and journalists, is the essence of the credibility and integrity of the press, cultural sensitivity and political correctness.
(Concluded)