Monthly Archives: August 2008

China releases most SFT activists, documentarians

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I’ve just received the good news that my friend Brian Conley, and most of the other independent media makers and the activists they were documenting, have been released and are heading home.

The so-called “Beijing 6″ were ultimately sentenced, through an extrajudicial proceeding (they did not get to go to court), to 10 days of detainment. As some of us guessed, it turned out to be shorter, with the end of the Olympics.

I received a message via Facebook that one of Brian’s colleagues, Jeffrey Rae, called his father to say he and others were being put aboard an Air China flight to Los Angeles.

I haven’t had the time to summarize and annotate my thoughts on the media coverage of the detainments. I’ve been trying to help make some connections between Brian’s family and the media, and hold down the day job as well.

I suppose the short version of such thoughts would be this:

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Activist ships being jammed by Israel in international waters?

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Two ships, the Free Gaza and the Liberty, are sailing against the Israeli blockage of the Gaza Strip as a form of human rights protest.

I’ve received an email blast from The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD). Apparently early this morning they were in contact with the sea-going activists for a brief period and they said that their various electronic systems (it is vague) are being scrambled, despite flying a friendly flag and still being in international waters.

Here’s the email:

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Angela Godfrey-Goldstein <snipped />@icahd.org
Date: Sat, Aug 23, 2008 at 5:03 AM
Subject: FW: Statement from the SS Free Gaza & SS Liberty
To: <snipped />@icahd.org

***please forward freely***

10am, 23 August, 2008
A Statement from the International Human Rights Workers Aboard the SS Free Gaza and SS Liberty, Sailing to Gaza

*At 10am this morning, the Cyprus team of the Free Gaza Movement was able to briefly speak with our people on board the SS Free Gaza and SS Liberty. They are all fine, and they asked us to release the following statement:

“The electronic systems which guarantee our safety aboard the SS Free Gaza and SS Liberty have been jammed and scrambled. Both ships are flying Greek flags, and are in international waters. We are the victims of electronic piracy. We are currently in GMS P area A2 and we are relying on our satellite communications equipment to make a distress call, if needed.

We are civilians from 17 nations and are on this project to break the siege of Gaza. We are not experienced sailors. As a result, there is concern about the health and safety of the people on board such an emergency develop.

We are currently experiencing rough sea conditions, and we call on the Greek government and the international community to meet their responsibilities and protect the civilians on board our two ships in international waters.”

Because they are not “experienced sailors,” perhaps there is room for some misdiagnosis of the problem — I have no reason to come to that conclusion and don’t have the knowledge required to vet. Perhaps the period in which they could clearly communicate was too brief to add detail.

This is unsettling news. One does think, for a moment, back to what the Israeli state did to another ship called Liberty.

Citizen Journalism / Brian Conley held by Chinese Authorities

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What is a non-citizen journalist? A correspondent from abroad?

I think “citizen journalism” has become a bogus term. (The synonyms that Wikipedia currently suggests are mostly better.)

To me, one can reduce it to either you’re doing journalism or you are not. Journalism does not have to mean professionalized, dispassionate, (allegedly) neutral stuff that one hears about from the lofty offices of the broadcast networks (paid for with what, anything less than socially acceptable hush money from sponsors?). It does have to mean getting your facts straight, it does mean independent thinking, and challenging unsupported assertions before you endorse them as fact. Some of the most revered journalists in American history were often also called activists. They had credibility because they were still independent, and the facts they reported held-up.

Before the term citizen journalist was born, members of the DC Indymedia center (such as it was at the time), were accredited by the Washington Metropolitan Police Department with press credentials. I point this out only as a way to say that I think since then, “citizen journalist” has only served to make it easier for people actively trying to contribute to community media to be marginalized further than they already naturally were (by way of not having thousands or millions of dollars to back them). There is now what is seen as lesser category to cage people in, regardless of their work product, before getting to “real journalist.”

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