Australia’s 18C: Offence no defence for silencing disagreeable opinion, by Bill Leak, cartoonist. First the Islamists:
A cartoon I drew in response to the Charlie Hebdo massacre in January last year, featuring an image of Mohammed, so “offended” the delicate sensitivities of certain terrorists fighting for Islamic State in Syria that they issued a fatwa against me, calling on fellow Mujaheddin in Australia to hunt me down and kill me. I had to move house and start getting used to living within the constraints of extreme security measures. …
At first I found it difficult to believe it possible that I could find myself in such a predicament. That abruptly changed when I was provided with access to Islamic State websites and chat rooms that featured exhortations from Middle East-based jihadists to their Australian counterparts to kill me, clues to my whereabouts for those trying to find me, and photos that would enable them to recognise me if they did. …
Then the PC mob:
Eighteen months later, I found it just as difficult to believe a complaint under 18C had been filed against me and I was subject to an investigation by the AHRC because a cartoon I had drawn was deemed likely to “offend” on the basis of race. …
Someone, somewhere, claimed to have been “offended” by my cartoon and submitted a complaint to the Australian Human Rights Commission. The AHRC proceeded to put in train a process, the intention of which was not only to punish me for having made an entirely valid contribution to an extremely important public debate but to serve as a warning to anyone else naive enough to believe they lived in a free society in which they had the same right to express their opinions as anyone else. …
Almost all of the complaints are investigated behind closed doors and, as happened in the case of three Queensland University of Technology students, the investigations can go on for months (or years) without the accused ever being told. In my case, I was put through two months of incredible stress by the AHRC’s investigation. The first complainant had never met me and didn’t have to justify anything she did. No one asked her any questions and it didn’t cost her a cent. While the AHRC eventually dropped the investigation after the complainant withdrew her complaint, the tortuous process had thrown my life into a state of utter chaos. (Two other complaints have been dropped.)
hat-tip Stephen Neil
