Monday, February 06, 2006



Another embassy burns

This time in Beirut. Embassies are traditionally extraterritorial, and considered the sovereign territory of the sending state. That means that technically, Lebanon just invaded Denmark. It also means that yesterday, Syria technically invaded Denmark and Norway. Are we frightened yet?

Needless to say, I think this is a Bad Thing. But I also can't help but notice this little piece of hypocrisy:

Norway and Denmark criticised Syria for allowing Saturday's demonstration to go ahead.

Note that that's not "failing to protect the embassy when the demonstration turned violent" (as is their duty under Article 22 (2) of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations) but "allowing [the] demonstration to go ahead". Freedom of speech, it seems, is fine for Danes but not for Syrians.

11 comments:

Where does this quote come from?

"Norway and Denmark criticised Syria for allowing Saturday's demonstration to go ahead"

It's not in the linked article. A search on Google News only turned up the phrase on IndyMedia, which isn't strong on fact-checking. The IndyMedia writeup does however point at the same story you linked to.

Did you see the quote in an earlier version of the story at the link you gave, or are you pulling it from another source? I'd like very much to see the quote in context, or to know why they'd edit it out.

Posted by Anonymous : 2/06/2006 05:35:00 AM

The current phrasing is "...for failing to stop Saturday's attacks".

I presume the wording given is simply an earlier [possibly inexact, but certainly ambiguous -- hence later edited for clarification] version of the same quote.

Note that "... allowing ... to go ahead" can mean 'allowing to develop to the point of violence', rather than 'allowing any protest at all' as NRT seems to assume in labelling this as hypocrisy.

Posted by Anonymous : 2/06/2006 09:35:00 AM

Anon: the story has been updated substantially since last night. Indymedia has a large chunk of the old one, including the quote and a condemnation of the attacks (what is missing is the US calling Syria's failure to protect the embassies "inexcusable" - which they're entirely right on, BTW).

The news last night (not sure if it was One or Three; I was flicking back and forth) also had a Danish official muttering darkly about how (IIRC) "Syria is of course a police state". Yes, they are - but it is grossly hypocritical to condemn that one day, then demand it to oppress people on your behalf the next.

Posted by Idiot/Savant : 2/06/2006 10:26:00 AM

With reference to the "danish official's" "police state" comment..

It wasn't actually a danish official at all who made the comment, it was Flemming Rose, the editor of Jyllands-Posten, the paper that originally published the cartoons. The exact quote was:

"Let me also sat that Syria is a police state, and this could not have happened if not the authorities in some way had allowed it"

...which you could say is a point of view not without merit, especially considering that the protesters tried to do the same thing to the french embassy, but were stopped by police eg see bottom of this article.

You can get the audio by going to the bbc and searching for "flemming rose".

Posted by Anonymous : 2/06/2006 01:20:00 PM

Trevva: thanks. And he's right. And yet at the same time, to stand on your freedom of speech and then effectively endorse the lack of it in another country is fairly disgusting.

Posted by Idiot/Savant : 2/06/2006 01:38:00 PM

Frankly, the whole media discussion of rights and responsibilities is just as farcical as the back and forth nonsense that passes for discussion on Israel/Palestine.

In a climate of minimal trust (Iraq a festering pile of cr*p, Iran under threat, Syria being regularly invaded, the West being periodically bombed, and politicans of both sides ruthlessly exploiting the situation for personal political gain), what idiot with rocks in their head pretends that a deliberately inflamatory action on their part is going to lead somewhere useful?
Do you see cops trying to conduct anger management classes in the middle of a domestic fight? Or breaking the thing up, waitying till the participants simmer down, and *then* trying to have a dialogue.
It's just freaking farcical.

Well fantastic, now we can all enjoy the ratcheting up of the social tension and of course that's bound to lead to greater mutual understanding and peace. And of course everything will be better when the *other* side backs down.
Why are so many addicted to this idiotic brinksmanship?

Posted by Anonymous : 2/06/2006 06:37:00 PM

I/S: I still think you're off on a tangent here - at no point has anyone in Denmark (either the press, or the govt) endorsed the lack of freedom in Syria. In the original instance, the BBC article was simply poorly written, and was subsequently corrected. In the second instance, you've taken a small part of Flemming Rose's comments and used them out of context. Neither of these standup as an endorsement of the syrian police-state - rather, the Danish are fucked off about having their embassy burnt down, and the subsequent handing of it (e.g. compare and contrast the response of the Lebanese and Syrian government).

..which is not to say that I am defending anybody in this case. I'm a subscriber to the "shame on all your houses" theory. Jyllands-Posten, a relatively conservative centre-right paper from the more conservative part of Denmark, were clearly being provocative when it came to commissioning and publishing the cartoons. The Danish government (a centre right party propped up by far-right wing nationalists - think of Pia Kaersgaard as the philosophical love child of Pauline Hanson and Winston Peters) has been extremely passive-aggressive in this, choosing not to referee in what is clearly a sensitive situation, but rather, take sides. The Danish imam's, including Abu Laban, who were responsible for "spreading the word" (and for the mysterious appearance of three addition cartoons that can only be described as vile), are guilty of incitement for their own political purposes. The decision of other western papers, NZ included, to reprint them "in the interests of freedom of speech" are yet further incitement.

I think Tze Ming Mok put it best: Must all you people be such cunts?

Posted by Anonymous : 2/07/2006 04:22:00 AM

Trevva:

It's a question I'm inclined to ask Mok myself, but whatever...

I/S:
Um, so you're absolutely sure that protest was entirely spontaneous? I can understand some scepticism where Damascus is involved.

Posted by Craig Ranapia : 2/07/2006 06:54:00 AM

A fine point I know, but failing to prevent a mob from torching an embassy isn't tantamount to invasion. The former is an illegal act by individuals - the latter is an act by a state.

Posted by Rich : 2/07/2006 09:41:00 AM

I/S: I think you should correct this post. After all, I think its been fairly well shown that the original quote its based on was actually a case of poor writing by the BBC, rather than the alleged hyprocracy, and thus the accusations are a bit off skew....

Rich: Re: invasion of an embassy by individuals. There is a clear parallel here with the take-over of the US Embassy in Iran in 1979 by "students" (although there is probably stronger evidence of incitement than in this case). Was that (technically) an act of war? I don't know. I/S, you're good at these sorts of qns...

Posted by Anonymous : 2/07/2006 12:54:00 PM

Craig: I don't for a moment think the mob was spontaneous - see here.

Posted by Idiot/Savant : 2/07/2006 01:54:00 PM