Torture

Jordan puts its money where its mouth is. As the first Arab country Jordan decided to co-sponsor the annual Anti-torture resolution in the UN last night.

During the last 10 years my country has led the often very difficult negotiations on torture. Torture is – as you would imagine – a very sensitive issue for many countries. It has been difficult to engage some parts of the world in signing up to a co-sponsorship, whereas no country the last number of years has voted against the resolution. But this year Jordan together with Morocco showed the way for the region.

This resolution reminds the world that freedom from torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment is a fundamental right, that has to be protected under all circumstances and without exception.

Mabrook Jordan…

The Ombudsman and journalism in Jordan

The other day Al Ghad ran a story  (for English read this part) about the Jordanian Ombudsman institution and my country’s involvement in its establishment. Basically, the journalist had found an anonymous source claiming that Denmark was supposed to fund the institution for the next three years but because of disagreement about the structure of the ombudsman we had withdrawn from the commitment and Jordan had lost “millions”.

To my knowledge the paper had not tried to get a comment from the Embassy or me – which I understand since that would have deprived them this front-page. Like everyone else I am frustrated by the widespread self censorship but a bit more self-criticism and professionalism wouldn’t be bad at all.

Anyway, another Jordanian daily called me the same morning and asked me to comment on the story, which I did as follows (questions omitted).

“The article is apparently based on some misunderstandings that could have been clarified if the newspaper had asked the Danish embassy for comments before printing the story. Denmark has been supporting the establishment of the Jordanian ombudsman institution since 2004 and it has always been the intention to end financial support with the formal establishment of the institution. Originally it was foreseen to end the financial support in 2007 but the grants were extended until end 2008 when the institution was established. The ombudsman institution is one among many other projects that we support in Jordan through the Danish-Jordanian Partnership Program.”

“Denmark has been supporting the technical unit for the establishment of the ombudsman and a number of seminars and visits to other ombudsman institutions in preparation of the Jordanian law and technical regulations establishing the institution. There has been neither pledge nor intention on the Danish side to fund an up and running working institution. Such an important national institution needs to draw its main funding from the national budget voted by parliament and not from foreign countries. An ombudsman dependent on funds outside the national budget could raise questions as regards the independence of the institution which would be damaging to its credibility. To my knowledge the Jordanian ombudsman institution is today funded from the national budget for the financial year 2009 – as it should be.”

“No […Denmark is not obliged to financially support the ombudsman…], not after this grant expired end last year. What we hope is that the Jordanian ombudsman – when he once again has been appointed – seeks partners among other European ombudsman institutions including the Danish ombudsman for technical cooperation and exchange of best practices. We will try to help facilitate such exchanges between different ombudsman institutions and their Jordanian counterpart.”

“The ombudsman setup that was chosen in Jordan is not in all aspects similar to the Danish counterpart. One reason for this is the difference in our constitutions. Our ombudsman is attached to the parliament only, where in Jordan he is primarily attached to the executive – the government. It is not an unknown model in some countries but it might raise questions as to his independence of the executive branch. None the less it is important that the new ombudsman quickly seeks to establish relations to the International Ombudsman Institution in Vienna in order to be internationally acknowledged as an ombudsman institution. But what is also very important is to understand that any ombudsman institution has to take into account the local and national context in which he functions. That is why Denmark never has sought to impose a specific model on Jordan.”

“Since 2004 we have been supporting the Jordanian ombudsman project with a total amount of around 1 million USD.”

Ad Dustour and Al Rai have run stories about the ombudsman today – both touching on this issue.

Update 7.5.09: Minister of State for Legal Affairs (and former ombudsman) Salem Khazaleh corrects Al Ghad on Petra News Agency. And a long story on Ammonnews.net with contradicting statements. I tried to post a comment but I don’t think it was accepted.

Beyond Stereotypes – follow-ups

Thank you very much for your participation in the “Beyond Stereotype” event last night. It got nicely crowded and a little bit to warm in the theatre. The feedback I got in the lounge afterwards was very positive.

Some would have liked to have had more time for discussion – and so would I – but after 2½ hours of sitting down (not counting Nabils exercises) on Thursday night I think it was the right decision to break up. After all it was 21.30 in the evening and the music was waiting outside.

The discussion can continue – either on this site, on 7iber.com or on some of the other bloggers site as on Roba’s which have drawn a large number of comments (some agressive) on Arab stereotyping. Unfortunately I didn’t notice this until today.

A couple of follow-ups from last night:

While some would have preferred more and more political discussion another person suggested to me, that the theme was too sensitive in this part of the world for a political discussion and that we instead should focus on the more sociological aspects of stereotyping like blogger Miriam did very nicely. In some ways I agree to this, since I believe it is important to understand stereotyping not only as a negative phenomenon but also as a sometimes positive and very useful way of dealing with people. Everybody is stereotyping – not because we want to – but because our brain can only process so much information at a given moment. The trick is to move from stereotyping (generalising) into individualisation. And that is what we do, whenever we get in personal contact with somebody. I know it is a cliché but that is one of the reasons that tourism – in particular individual tourism – is very important to fight negative stereotyping.

One the other hand as a principle I do not agree that some issues are too sensitive to be discussed – quite the opposite – those issues in particular need to be discussed. That being said, my 18 months in Jordan has taught me, that the reaction to discussing some topics is so aggressive and negative that it is – today – futile to even engage in such a discussion. But stereotyping is not one of those issues.

Will Omar Marzouk be back in Jordan? Most probably – we at the Embassy will try to do our best to get him back to do a complete stand-up show – hopefully this year. If we succeed we will let you know right away.

I didn’t get the possibility to comment on a sceptical remark from the audience about the lack of Danish negative stereotypes on the net. I do not claim scientific value to my research but I actually didn’t manage to find some really negative Danish stereotypes through Wiki or Google (only in English). Maybe it is because we are just a very small population of 5.5 million (like Jordan) or simply not interesting enough as an ethnic group. Even searching for Scandinavian negative stereotypes didn’t yield much. Didn’t look for specific Jordanian stereotypes – but I guess it will be difficult as well. These three links were the best I could find for Danish stereotypes.

What are Danes like?    Yahoo Answers     Yahoo Answers 2

If you can come up with links to “better” (negative) stereotypes of Danes please do.

Where can you watch the full version of “An Arab comes to Town”? I was told that it will be released on DVD soon – in the meantime the Embassy together with the Royal Film Commission are planning an open-air screening at the Film Commission late May early June – probably in connection with a workshop with the participation of the Directors Georg Larsen and Ahmad Ghosien. We will announce the screening in the same way as we did with the “Beyond Stereotype” – through the Royal Film Commission and 7iber.com

UPDATE: An article from Jordan Times about the event.

Beyond Stereotypes

As per request my speech from yesterday evening.

 

Check against delivery

Welcome

Thanks to Municipality and Mayor Omar for use of this hall – I know he has a weak spot for stand-up so he really had no other option than to accept.

Thanks to the Royal Film Commission for all their assistance and for use of their Facebook group. We look forward to do more with you in the future.

One the Danish side this event has been created by the Danish Center for Culture and Development – with humble financial assistance from the Foreign Ministry – so to them all the credit.

I think we have a good program for tonight and with Nabil’s gentle but firm guidance we will be in good hands.

Stereotypes – you know what – I happen to belong to a somewhat exclusive stereotype – the diplomat. 80 years ago a diplomat was stereotyped by his “good temper, good health and good looks”. That was a diplomat. Little later things became less rosy – then a diplomat was a “cookie pusher” – a guy doing nothing but attending tea parties. 

Today – in my country – a diplomat – for not speaking about an ambassador – is a person always wearing tuxedo, moving around in “elevated circles” and attending cocktail parties to no good. And thanks to an often repeated TV-commercial the diplomat favours a specific type of Swiss chocolate. This is the image that is regularly being portrayed in movies, news paper articles and on TV.

I don’t deny or shy away from the fact that I belong to the diplomat category – but I find the stereotyping a bit unfair. I didn’t bring my black tie; most of my working hours are spend on political, security or trade issues and meeting with people from all walks of life in all kinds of places; and I don’t like the chocolate. I am pretty sure that my fellow colleagues feel the same way.

But it is hard to fight a well grown stereotype. In the Foreign Service we have tried for years and years – without success. It doesn’t matter how many times we are seen publicly working under extreme, dangerous or unhealthy conditions. It doesn’t matter how much we try to be of assistance to Danish companies and Danish citizens in trouble or how successful we are in doing that. It actually doesn’t matter what we do in real life – the stereotype sticks like glue.

Luckily – it is one of the more benign stereotypes – we are only hurt on our egos and we can joke about our stereotyped selves:

My experience tells me very clearly that moving beyond stereotypes takes a lot of effort and a lot of time. 

While preparing for tonight I used Wikipedia to look-up stereotypes. Couldn’t find any Danish ones. A wider search gave a few hits – one person was asking where you could find negative Danish stereotypes – he had only found a few positive ones. I searched also in vain for the negative ones – the only thing that came up a couple of times was that Danes are not very open towards strangers. The only really negative one was one that I had found earlier here in Jordan – it is made by my favourite cartoonist Emad Hajjad. He takes the Danish symbol – the national flag and twists the cross in the flag to make a nazi swastika cross – equalizing all Danes with Nazis. Serious stuff.

Arab stereotypes you find in tons on the net. On Wiki It has its own article. The Arab American community talks about the “three B’s syndrome”.  Arabs in TV or movies are Bombers, Belly Dancers or Billionaires. I think I know which one is the dominant one today.

That brings me to touch on a very well known Arab/Muslim stereotyping of Danish origin – the Cartoon. I don’t want to recall the whole story about this – just to emphasise that for many reasons this probably got a lot more media exposure than it deserved from the outset.

But it did illustrate one thing very clearly. What we do and say in our own little back yard is picked-up and reacted to in ways that was not originally intended and that can get totally out of control. It reminded all of us in my country that we are living in a global village and that we are faced with a new challenge.

How do we find the right way between behaving as we are used to do and then taking into consideration that other people in the global village may have different norms and standards?  What if the others are seriously offended? Should we care?

Many people are worried and most do care. Let me give you some numbers from a recent poll from Gallup Institute for the Danish Youth Council: They asked a large sample of Danish youth: Do you agree that Denmark is hated in the Middle East because of the Cartoons: 65% did agree and only 10% did disagree. I wasn’t asked – but I would definitely disagree with that statement.

Anyway – a follow-up question was: Do you agree that it is particularly important to have a dialogue with youth in the Middle East to improve the perception of Denmark? 67% did agree, 7% did disagree. Others questions gave answers along the same line.

Most Danes also want to live peacefully with their neighbours in the global village. So we have to discuss how we are able to protect our own society as a society that develops through un-censored free speech and open exchange of views and leaves space for different political views and religious beliefs.

Can we in the future avoid all kind of speech that could lead to a new crisis? No. It is in the nature of a free open society that we cannot – and that we will not – control all things. Any individual or group has the possibility to say and do things that might be considered provocative or offensive somewhere. But what we can do is to discuss ways to avoid that such incidents – in particular if made with bad intentions – become crises between whole populations. We all have to work to ensure strength in our relations to avoid that small incidents can become and be used for major crises. We should work together to find ways. There are three keywords: dialogue, dialogue and dialogue. Maybe we should add a fourth – humour.

And dialogue and fun is what we hopefully will have in this hall tonight. I look forward to our discussion and I thank you for participating tonight.

Stand-up stereotypes…!

Please join me at the Al Hussein Cultural Center this Thursday the 16th at 7.00 PM for an evening with stand-up comedy, film, debate and hopefully animated and heated discussion about Arab and Danish stereotypes. DJ Shadi will entertain in the Lounge after the event. More on 7iber.com 

UPDATE: My good friend Ambassador Hasan Abu Nimeh has an interesting article in Jordan Times today. In the article he discuss integration, in particular integration of muslims living in Europe: “The key words are integration, respect for the rule of law on the part of the Muslim immigrant communities, and adequate consideration for the Muslims’ religious and cultural commitments, on the part of their hosts.”