Japanese ‘comfort women’s’ memorial in 18C complaint (absolute PC madness in Australia)

The Australian ^ | 15th December 2016 | Rhian Deutrom

[naturalman1975]

A Sydney monument commemorating the suffering of women forced into sexual slavery during World War II is the subject of a complaint by a Japanese advocacy group under section 18C of Radical Discrimination Act.

The statue — unveiled at the Ashfield Uniting Church in ­August — remembers more than 200,000 women and girls who were forced by the Imperial Japanese Army into prostitution.

The decision to erect the “comfort women” monument raised tension between Japanese and Korean communities, and this week the Australia-Japan Community Network lodged an 18C complaint against the church with the Australian Human Rights Commission.

AJCN claims the memorial evokes hatred against Japanese people. It said in an earlier statement: “We … have a very serious reason to oppose the statue but it appears that neither the Korean group nor (Ashfield priest) Rev (Bill) Crews is prepared for a ­rational discussion.”

[naturalman1975]

'18C' has become a shorthand in Australia for a fight concerning freedom of speech and freedom of the press. In my opinion - and in the opinion of a great many Australian conservatives, I think - this is the single most important current ideological battleground concerning fundamental rights in Australia.

It refers to section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act of 1975. Let me be clear on this - very few conservatives have any great problem with most of the Racial Discrimination Act. We utterly condemn genuine racism and support the idea that you need laws to protect people from genuinely discriminatory behaviour. But Section 18C which was added to the Act in the 1990s goes far further than is reasonable in a society that supposedly values freedom of speech.

It states that it is unlawful to say or do anything in public that might offend, insult, humiliate, or intimidate a person or group of people, on the basis of race, colour or national or ethnic origin.

The big problem with this is the 'offend' or 'insult' clauses. These mean that even totally trivial matters can come under the scope of this law. Some people want 18C repealed altogether, but a lot of people accept that amending it just to remove those two words would be a reasonable compromise - so only serious matters would be a matter for the courts - things that might actually be classified as genuine 'hate speech'.

There are three main cases that show the problems with 18C in my opinion.

The first of these is the case of Andrew Bolt. Bolt is probably Australia's most prominent conservative newspaper columnist. He is a regular writer for the (Melbourne) Herald Sun, and he often writes for other papers with the same owner (News Limited), notably The Australian and the (Sydney) Daily Telegraph. He also has a regular TV show on Sky News Australia. A few years ago, he wrote a couple of articles where he raised the issue of people claiming 'Aboriginal' heritage in Australia. I don't even dare describe the articles in detail - they are now banned in Australia. Censored out of existence in what I regard as the most shocking example of censorship of the press in recent history.

Besides this case, there have been too more recent cases. A number of university students faced legal penalty under the Act recently for complaining they had been asked to leave an 'Indigenous only' computer lab at their university. These young people have now been, finally, more or less cleared but only after spending tens of thousands of dollars on legal fees in order to fight to protect themselves (some, in fact, settled out of court for a few thousand dollars because they couldn't afford to defend themselves). Even though, in the end they 'won', the chilling effect of being publically accused of racism, and having to find a large amount of money to defend against those accusations, is a very real block on freedom of speech.

The final case is that of a newspaper cartoonist, Bill Leak, who does cartoons for The Australian. Earlier this year, he did what I would regard as a fairly perceptive cartoon concerning why we have high youth crime rates and other serious social problems in some Aboriginal communities, especially some isolated ones. It drew attention to the fact that many of the kids who are getting in trouble are inadequately parented, especially suffering from not having an active father in their lives.

When this cartoon was published, the Human Rights Commission deliberately set out to encourage people to complain about it, to try and provoke action against Bill Leak under Section 18C. And they got the complaints they needed - they were subsequently dropped, but the very fact that they were made in the first place has a chilling effect on freedom of the press.

(One thing I noticed about the complaints from the left about the Bill Leak cartoon is they all seemed to be focused on the idea that they showed the father on the right in a negative light, supposedly because of his race. Virtually none of these race warriors, as far as I saw, noticed or acknowledged that the police officer depicted in the cartoon - the authority figure who was acting responsibly - was also presented as indigenous. Quite literally, these people only seemed to notice the negative depiction, not the positive).

Prior to the 2013 Australian election, the then leader of the opposition (and subsequently Prime Minister before he was replaced by the current incumbent), Tony Abbott specifically campaigned on the issue of 18C saying he'd repeal it or amend it if elected. Once elected, in the face of a hostile Senate he dropped that policy - politically, I understand why - he would have probably failed and he didn't want to waste time or capital on a lost cause, but I wish he'd tried anyway (especially as his party dumped him in the end in any event - he might as well have fought). The conservative wing of the Liberal Party still wants to try and fix this law - either by repeal or at least amendment of the two words that allow it to be used for trivial matters.

Maybe this new complaint will galvanise some action. Modern Japanese should feel no guilt for what was done over seventy years ago - but we damned well should be allowed to talk about it and ascribe claim to the bastards who did commit the atrocities.

[PIF]

One might remind the Aussie Japs that the solution to the comfort women problem was Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Else the Chinese would have sterilized all the women over 12 and killed all Japanese males over 10, using the remainder as slaves until they died of starvation.

[yarddog]

I was going to read the article but they wanted me to pay a $4.00 fee to subscribe.

Are they talking about the Korean Comfort Women only or were there other victims of the Japanese fanaticism? Is that the right word?

Hard for me to recognize a cartoon Aboriginal as I have not seen enough for their features to immediately click in my mind.

[naturalman1975]

Try this link.

I would have shared this story rather than the one I did - it's more detailed, and free to access - but it didn't come up in an earlier search.

[yarddog]

Thanks, I recall a story on the news maybe 30 years ago about WWII history.

They said the Germans, Italians, Austrians etc. were told the truth about their nations involvement in World War II. The Japanese school children, in contrast were taught outright lies about their military.

Of course there is some truth to the old saying about history being written by the winners.

[NorthMountain]

One could draw that same cartoon about blacks or Indians in America or Canada, and it would be just as true. It would draw squawking and caterwauling from the same politically correct social justice types.

[Oztrich Boy]

I would actually encourage the Australia-Japan Community Network to pursue this to the full extent of the Law.

While the cases you mention are outrageous and would not succeed in any rational court, that's not the issue. Kommisars Dr Gillian Triggs and Dr Thinethavone Soutphommasane have no shame and are not embarrassed by advancing frivolous cases in their cause. It's not to get a "win" in court, it's to supress free speech by in-Tim-idate 'crime-thinkers'. As Morgan Begg notes in the November IPA Review "the process is the punishment"

Gilly has no problems about evading questions about actions she is proud of. She might have problems explaining why she won't use 18C to ease the butthurt of groups she can't morally defend.

[Ethan Clive Osgoode]

Modern Japanese should feel no guilt for what was done over seventy years ago

Actually they should, but they don't. At their national shrine, modern day Japs installed a monument to honor some idiot Indian judge who claimed Imperial Japanese were innocent of all war crimes. Shinzo Abe visited this guy's relatives, to pay his respects. The remains of war criminals were put in the national shrine too. So, no, modern day japs are not innocent.