<http://www.portal.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/12/19/wneth19.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/12/19/ixworld.html>
The Telegraph Charity grovels for lampooning murdered film-maker By Chris Hastings and Elizabeth Day (Filed: 19/12/2004) International human rights publication apologises for describing Theo van Gogh's death as 'marvellous piece of street theatre' A senior editor at the international human rights magazine, Index on Censorship, has apologised for publishing an article poking fun at the murder of a Dutch film-maker by Islamic extremists, and admitted that it should never have been published. Theo van Gogh was stabbed and shot by a Muslim fanatic Ursula Owen, the editor-in-chief, said that she was sorry for the widespread outrage sparked by the piece and said that she would not have written it herself. This follows intense criticism of the liberal quarterly, which ran a website article last month describing the killing of Theo van Gogh, a critic of Islam who was stabbed and shot on an Amsterdam street by a Muslim fanatic on November 2, as a "marvellous piece of street theatre". The piece, written by Rohan Jayasekera, the magazine's associate editor, lampooned van Gogh's films, and his "exploitative" relationship with Ayann Hirsi Ali, a Somali-born Dutch MP, who co-produced his most recent work. Jayasekera called the murder of van Gogh, a father of three and a descendant of the artist Vincent van Gogh, a "sensational climax to a lifetime's public performance". He went on to describe van Gogh's most recent critique of Islam, a film entitled Submission that featured a veiled Muslim woman with verses of the Koran apparently justifying domestic abuse written over her naked body, as "juvenile shock-horror art". The article described the film-maker's anti-Islamic tirades as "obscenities," and "an abuse of his right to free speech". Miss Owen admitted last night that the article had provoked uproar within Index on Censorship, with complaints from both subscribers and contributors. She said that the internet article would not have been put in the print edition of the magazine, but she said that editors and board members had decided that the offending article would not be removed and nor would Jayasekera lose his job. "There has been a lot of criticism and some support," she said. "I am sorry that it has outraged people. I don't think the tone is right and I do not agree with it. "It would not have got in the magazine because it would have been edited before. This is not something I would have written myself. We have had people who write for us saying they disapprove of that piece but no one has said they are never going to write for us again." Miss Owen said that just because she had printed the piece did not mean that she endorsed the views in it. "I do not agree with everything the magazine prints," she said. "We recently published a piece saying there was not a link between HIV and Aids. I don't agree with that view but I think it is important that it should be aired." Index on Censorship, which is funded by the charity Writers & Scholars International Ltd, was founded in 1972 by Sir Stephen Spender to fight for the right of free expression for Soviet dissidents and has a long list of illustrious contributors. Past writers include the award-winning authors Doris Lessing, Margaret Atwood and A S Byatt, Vaclav Havel, the former president of the Czech Republic, and the playwrights Arthur Miller and Harold Pinter. Past board members of the charity include Sir Louis Blom-Cooper, QC, a former deputy High Court judge, Michael Grade, the chairman of the BBC, Lord Palumbo, the chairman of the Arts Council from 1989-1994, Lady Susan Hollick, who served as the chairman of the Index on Censorship for seven years from 1993 and Anthony Smith, the president of Magdalen College, Oxford. Lord Palumbo said yesterday: "This is not the sort of article that would have appeared when I was involved with the charity. Back then, it was concerned with strictly factual and straight reports about abuses and torture, wherever they occurred." One donor, who asked to remain anonymous, said: "They've committed organisational hara-kiri. They have become something they once were not." Peter Tatchell, the homosexual rights activist who has written for the magazine in the past, said: "I found it to be a tragic betrayal of the magazine's traditional support for libertarian values. In this current epoch of post-modernism and live-and-let-live multiculturalism, moral relativism is gaining ground. This article was one more instance of this relativism. Liberal humanitarian values are under threat. Much of this threat comes not from the far Right, but from the Left's moral equivocation and compromises." Mr Tatchell insisted, however, that although he did not agree with the article itself, he defended the magazine's right to carry it. "For the most part, the Index on Censorship performs a valuable function in defending freedom of speech and promoting individual liberties. This was a maverick article and out of character. The article was an insult to all progressive Muslims." Mr Tatchell's comments were echoed by Germaine Greer, the feminist academic and author, who subscribes to the magazine and described the piece as "vile vomit". She said: "The problem with Index on Censorship's position is that, by its nature, they have to publish things that they don't agree with in order to prove their own point. I would hope that by giving a fanatic a platform and listening to what he says, that people would be able to see how crazy that person is and refute his arguments. "On the other hand, no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the public." The magazine has a readership of just over 5,000 and Writers & Scholars International recently received funding from the Foreign Office. The money was awarded to help with the training of journalists in Iraq. Mr van Gogh was shot eight times and stabbed while cycling to work in Amsterdam last month. A five-page letter containing Islamic quotations and addressed to Ms Ali, the MP who had helped with his last film, was stuck to his body with a dagger. Mohammed Bouyeri, a 26-year-old Dutch Moroccan, has been charged with his murder. The brutal nature of the crime provoked a storm of protest throughout Holland with an outbreak of more than 20 firebomb attacks on mosques and Islamic schools in Amsterdam, The Hague and Rotterdam. Mr Jayasekera, who has been working for Index on Censorship since 2000 and is half Sri Lankan, would not speak to The Telegraph yesterday, but put a statement on the website. It said: "To deliberately provoke a debate on the internet, I wanted to be as hard on van Gogh as he had been on his critics in life. I realised that I was sailing close to the edge to make that point, but I believed that my article fell short of actually blaming van Gogh for his own murder. "No one deserves to die for their views, no matter how reprehensible. Murder is the most abhorrent of means of censorship. Does that mean van Gogh's words were beyond accountability? No. Not in the real world anyway." -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> $4.98 domain names from Yahoo!. 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