Bali musician Jerinx gets 14 months in jail for hate speech against doctors association
"ASEAN, China, other partners set world's biggest trade pact"
Nina A. Loasana The Jakarta Post Jakarta / Thu, November 19, 2020 / 07:59 pm
Superman Is Dead drummer I Gede Ari Astina (center), who goes by the stage name Jerinx, arrives on Aug. 12 at the Bali Police Detention Center in Denpasar, Bali. (Tribun Bali/I Wayan Erwin Widyaswara)
[...]
The IDI's Bali chapter reported Jerinx to the police on June 16 after the musician accused the association of being “flunkeys” of the World Health Organization in relation to requirements mandating COVID-19 test requirements for expectant mothers who were about to give birth, through a post on his Instagram account.
Legal campaign group Institute for Criminal Justice Reform (ICJR) questioned the court's decision that found Jerinx guilty of violating Article 28 of the Electronic Information and Transactions (ITE) Law, which bans the spread of information aimed at fueling hatred based on ethnicity, religion or race.
"It's too much to include the IDI, which is a professional association, as a 'societal group' protected under Article 28," said ICJR executive director Erasmus Napitupulu in a statement.
"Besides, [Jerinx] criticized the IDI as an organization and not doctors in general. This verdict poses a threat to democracy in Indonesia as the judges have raised a specific profession to the same position as a race, tribal group or religion, which would allow every professional association to report someone for committing a hate crime against their professions," he said.
Critics have long argued that the ITE law is draconian in nature as it is often used to criminalize people and undermines the right to freedom of expression.
Southeast Asia Freedom of Expression Network (SAFEnet) data revealed that 24 people were charged under the law in 2019, and 25 in the previous year, with journalists and media workers being the most common victims of criminalization.
"One media company and seven journalists became victims [of the ITE Law] in 2019,” SAFEnet executive director Damar Juniarto said, adding that the people were charged using "elastic clauses" in the law that could lead to multiple interpretations and was regularly used to silence critics.
Australia's trade clash with China is a lesson in what Beijing's power really means
Juggling: One one hand Australia and China are involved in "ASEAN, China, other partners set world's biggest trade pact" [...] Simon Birmingham urges China to respect 'spirit' of new Asian trade pact while on the other hand there is a real trade stoush going on. See reply.
By International Affairs Analyst Stan Grant Posted Yesterday at 5:00am, updated Yesterday at 9:10am
Right now, Australia is in China's crosshairs.
Imagine for a moment the view from Beijing. It looks something like this.
The Chinese Communist Party has overseen an economic miracle. In three decades it has taken a country that once could not feed itself and turned it into an economic powerhouse.
More than half a billion people have been lifted out of the poverty. The world has never seen anything like it.
And the Party says China has been good for the world.
It is now the biggest engine of global economic growth. By the end of the decade it most likely will eclipse the United States as the world's largest economy.
China's rise has been peaceful. It has joined in a global rules based order: a member of the World Trade Organisation, the World Health Organisation, a permanent five member of the United Nation's Security Council.
It is a signatory to global compacts like the Paris Climate Accords and engages in peacekeeping and humanitarian operations.
China is by any measure a global power. It now rivals the United States. The Communist Party asks, why should it be lectured to by the likes of Australia, a country whose prosperity is tied to China?
It is Australia's biggest trading partner. China's economic might, hungry for our resources, underwrote Australia's 30 years of uninterrupted economic growth.
Chinese President Xi Jinping hears foreigners belittling China again.(AP: Andy Wong)
Why wouldn't Beijing be annoyed?
When Australia calls for an inquiry into the origins of coronavirus without first liaising with China, why wouldn't Beijing be annoyed? Of course it would retaliate. Australia's exporters were always going to be in the firing line.
When Australia announces it has signed a new military pact with Japan, Beijing is insulted. We should have expected that.
Beijing wonders: are we utterly ignorant of the deep enmity between China and Japan? The Japanese invasion and occupation of China during the 1930s and '40s is a scar on the soul of Chinese people. Millions were killed. China still demands a full apology from Japan.
A defence pact between Australia and Japan, agreed to by the prime ministers, upset China.(ABC News: Yumi Asada)
Chinese schoolchildren are raised on the history of humiliation: how China was exploited by foreign powers from the mid-18th century. They are told it was the Communist Party that restored the nation's honour when Mao Zedong declared the Communist revolution.
Xi Jinping — the most powerful Chinese leader since Mao — vows to complete the great rejuvenation of China, to restore it to the apex of global power.
The Chinese have a saying: "If you wish to know the mind of a man, listen to his words."
Rory Medcalf @Rory_Medcalf
Unfortunate. If the Chinese government deliberately leaked this list of supposed Australian transgressions, and called for corresponding policy changes, it further reduces any scope for adjustment. Face matters in this country too.
China, he told the Party, should prepare for long periods of conflict.
Right now, Australia is in Xi's crosshairs. When the Federal Government criticises China's detention of Uighur Muslims or the crackdown on pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, it hears the echo of the "hundred years of national humiliation".
China's economy is recovering with some forecasts of nine per cent growth in 2021.
Global management company McKinsey says clients often ask "where is the next China?" There is no next China. It says: "China's economy is unique and is set to retain its pre-eminent role as the engine of global consumption growth post-pandemic".
And Australia is looking again to ride Beijing's coat tails. In this year's Federal Budget, Treasurer Josh Frydenberg based some of his growth projections on China's rapid post-COVID recovery.
The Chinese Communist Party looks at America — ravaged by the virus and deeply politically divided — and claims China's model of authoritarian capitalism is superior.
The view from Beijing is that China is a big power and demands respect.
Australia is in China's sphere of influence and it is always going to feel the heat, perhaps more than other countries. We are the canary in the coal mine. Other nations are looking to us to see how we navigate these dangerous diplomatic straits.
The view from Beijing is that we are a white Western country, clinging to a world of Western dominance that China does not believe in.
This is the world we live in. China sees itself as the "Middle Kingdom" — the centre of the world — and it expects other nations to pay tribute.
This is not just about diplomacy
Beijing sees this moment as deeply ideological and historical. It is not simply about diplomacy and the stakes are only going to get higher. Surely no one still believes the old shibboleth that we don't have to choose between our American alliance and our China trade dependence?
Beijing has shown it will make those choices for us.
Scott Morrison is right to say that Australia will "act in our interests and in accordance with our values".
But we will pay a price. Morrison says China is singling us out for "Australia being Australia".
China Mounts Aggressive Defense to Calls for Coronavirus Compensation Morrison's support of Trump at times borders on the sycophantic. [...] At a news briefing on Monday, Mr. Trump put forth the idea that China could have prevented the coronavirus from spreading beyond its borders. “We believe it could have been stopped at the source,” he said, without offering an explanation of the steps the country could have taken. P - He added that the administration was conducting “serious investigations” into the origins of the pandemic and that “there are a lot of ways you can hold them accountable,” referring to China. “We are not happy with China.” P - The Chinese government fired right back. P - “We advise American politicians to reflect on their own problems and try their best to control the epidemic as soon as possible, instead of continuing to play tricks to deflect blame,” Mr. Geng said on Tuesday. P - China is also defending itself in Australia. China’s ambassador to Australia warned on Monday that the government’s call for an independent international inquiry into the origins of the pandemic could lead to a Chinese consumer boycott of Australian products and services. https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=155343836
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