I have rarely seen the Merill. It is a very rare visitor to northern and western Europe, but as far as I can see it’s pretty uncommon on our island too, despite being our national bird and despite its supposedly large population on the rock. Naturally, it all has to do with the fact that urbanisation has pushed the population to the edge, and is now mostly restricted to cliffy places like l-Aħrax and Dingli. Not that human interference stops there: any nesting young available for the taking are frequently and illegally appropriated to be caged as decoration.
Soon the Maltese will finally have their say on something they have always had something to say about. Unless you’re Maltese, you may find that sentence contradictory. In any case, the big day is soon approaching when the Maltese must make their big decision. They will have to choose between saving a life or saving a pastime.
That is not what I want to talk about today though. Nor do I want to talk about the famous Beatles’ song. The bird I want to trap in this article is not the national one, either. The bird in question is blue, but is not feathery. No, the bird I want to talk about is blue and two-dimensional.
Le Soir recently published a piece about the legality of extremist remarks in online fora and social-media messages. Contrary to what people believe, freedom of expression is not unlimited in the West, and the internet is not a repository for one’s racist alter-ego. In France – the place where all this clamouring for freedom of expression started, mostly by bashing the Islamic religion – in the land of liberté (God knows what happened to fraternité!) many people have learnt this the hard way by being called to appear before the court.
Yes, at the risk of flogging a dead bird, I will write about freedom of expression and lack thereof in the West, safe in the knowledge that I am flogging a new twittering bird.
The French situation is not too ironic: expressing a racist opinion is not, on its own, illegal. It has to incite discrimination for it to be prohibited and subject to the hate speech laws. The position is quite consistent.
That is not to say it is clear: the legal waters in l’Hexagone are murky at best when it comes to hate speech, and to what does and does not constitute an incitation to discriminate, hate or harm, and when it comes to deciding what is in fact prohibited and what is not. Just google “hate speech laws in France” and you’ll get the idea. Though considering the recent limelight, that’s probably unnecessary. In any case, that France is a strange land and the land of the strange is no news.
What is of news value is that some French magistrates opined that retweeting a message may end you in just as much trouble as the original author, meaning that one can neither hide behind social media nor behind the fact that one is only relaying information: the messenger is clearly shot in France.
This is interesting because, as the saying proves, it goes against the grain of how we do things in the West. So much so that according to the European Court of Justice, a journalist is not liable for reporting information unless he appropriates the content. There is clearly an implicit understanding in the French magistrate’s opinion that re-tweeting means appropriating a message – but does it?
What’s more, this does raise other similar questions. What about ‘liking’? Is liking a racist or homophobic comment or page enough to imply appropriation? Interviewed by Le Soir, Professor Jacques Englebert, a lawyer specialising in the rights of media, says it all boils down to whether we are appropriating the content, which, in the case of liking, we are not.
The same case may be put forward for retweets, only in this case we are also guilty of creating new publicity. Then again, most news teams are guilty of this for, as they say, there is no such thing as bad publicity.
When one sees the pitiful level of well-meaning intervention in Syria, one wonders whether the coverage helped more to incite and inspire the young would-be Western jihadists to travel east and fight for IS, than to actually stop a conflict which has now deteriorated beyond all hope, a fact confirmed by a recent satellite imagery analysis conducted by researchers at Wuhan University in China showing that Syria is now in total darkness with 83 per cent of its lights extinguished. Ninety-seven per cent of lights in Aleppo have gone out.
Of course, there is the issue of public interest, and I am by no means saying that the public should not be informed and kept abreast of situations (though there is a very interesting argument to the contrary to explore here, and one which I did explore in my article “The World Stage: A Tragicomedy in One (Very Long) Act” published on 31 August 2014). Knowing what is happening around us and farther afield beyond our shores, in distant lands, and in faraway places, in low Earth orbit and beyond, can be a good thing. Being informed of current affairs and gaining insight and knowledge about different subjects and realities, such as the despicable treatment of humans, or, say, birds, in certain parts of the world, is not only a privilege but a duty.
And in fact it is this need to be informed, and the necessity to let the information flow, which prompts Professor Englebert to conclude that, in the case of retweeting, the matter may in fact be solely decided on whether it was in the public’s interest to know, and whether the retweet was meant to inform or to incite hatred or introduce racist and xenophobic sentiments in the populace.
In any case, my initial point, and the one I desperately want to drive home, is that freedom of expression is not unlimited. Facebook has just updated its policy to make it clear that nudity, bullying, terrorist and criminal activities, as well as posts inciting hatred are not going to be tolerated. Monika Bickert, Head of Facebook’s Global Policy Management, and Chris Sonderby, Deputy General Counsel, expressed their intention to “create an environment where people feel motivated and empowered to treat each other with empathy and respect”. Let that be a warning to the vociferous Facebook posters who clearly do not merely report what others have said but publish their own strong – and mostly disgusting – opinions about migration and other matters concerning the Other, even when the latter is only another village.
Earlier this year, on 20th January, the Correctional Court of Paris found three people guilty of posting homophobic tweets. The question to ask before clamouring for more freedom and boasting about the virtues of Western freedom of speech and how the West “is prepared to defend it at all costs”, is how we achieve this without being absolute hypocrites. More specifically, were the Charlie Hebdo cartoons Islamophobic comments inciting hatred and discrimination or merely an “opinion”.
The French are in fact quite strict with regard to what one is free to express, and the legislation there is, in the words of Prof. Englebert, “beaucoup plus sévère”.
Il-Merill is known in English as the Blue Rock Thrush. Contrary to what its name suggests, it is not considered a thrush, but a species of chat. Chatting can be dangerous – if you chat about certain things in public there may well be repercussions. If you chat freely with a friend and share your extremist views in the village piazza, you may well end up in trouble. So why shouldn’t you face the same consequences online? Or, to put it differently, why should it matter which medium you use to expound your views?
Chatting about birds, and their right to freedom, has also been a dangerous activity in the past, though recently the public has become brave enough to shout out their opinions on the subject.
Oh, and as for the referendum, SHout has appealed to everyone to conserve nature and not kill it during its regeneration, adding that the countryside is there to be enjoyed by everyone during spring without the danger of shotguns and pellets looming on the green horizon. And I’m not merely reporting here: I’m also appropriating that comment.