Robert Fisk: Caught in the deadly web of the internet
Any political filth or personal libel can be hurled at the innocent
Published: 21 April 2007
Could it possibly be that the security men who guard the frontiers of
North America are supporting Holocaust denial? Alas, it’s true. Here’s
the story.
Taner Akcam is the distinguished Turkish scholar at the University of
Minnesota who, with immense courage, proved the facts of the Armenian
genocide – the deliberate mass murder of up to a million and a half
Armenians by the Ottoman Turkish authorities in 1915 – from Turkish
documents and archives. His book A Shameful Act was published to great
critical acclaim in Britain and the United States.
He is now, needless to say, being threatened with legal action in Turkey
under the infamous Law 301 – which makes a crime of insulting
"Turkishness" – but it’s probably par for the course for a man who was
granted political asylum in Germany after receiving an eight-year prison
sentence in his own country for articles he had written in a student
journal; Amnesty International had already named him a prisoner of
conscience.
But Mr Akcam has now become a different kind of prisoner: an inmate of
the internet hate machine, the circle of hell in which any political
filth or personal libel can be hurled at the innocent without any
recourse to the law, to libel lawyers or to common decency. The
Armenian-Turkish journalist Hrant Dink was misquoted on the internet for
allegedly claiming that Turkish blood was "poisonous"; this total lie –
Dink never said such a thing – prompted a young man to murder him in an
Istanbul street.
But Taner Akcam’s experience is potentially far more serious for all of
us. As he wrote in a letter to me this month, "Additional to the
criminal investigation (law 301) in Turkey, there is a hate campaign
going on here in the USA, as a result of which I cannot travel
internationally any more… My recent detention at the Montreal airport
– apparently on the basis of anonymous insertions in my Wikipedia
biography – signals a disturbing new phase in a Turkish campaign of
intimidation that has intensified since the November 2006 publication of
my book."
Akcam was travelling to lecture in Montreal and took the Northwest
Airlines flight from Minneapolis on 16 February this year. The Canadian
immigration officer, Akcam says, was "courteous" – but promptly detained
him at Montreal’s Trudeau airport. Even odder, the Canadian immigration
officer asked him why he needed to be detained. Akcam tells me he gave
the man a brief history of the genocide and of the campaign of hatred
against him in the US by Turkish groups "controlled by … Turkish
diplomats" who "spread propaganda stating that I am a member of a
terrorist organisation".
All this went on for four hours while the immigration officer took notes
and made phone calls to his bosses. Akcam was given a one-week visa and
the Canadian officer showed him – at Akcam’s insistence – a piece of
paper which was the obvious reason for his temporary detention.
"I recognised the page at once," Akcam says. "The photo was a still from
a 2005 documentary on the Armenian genocide… The still photo and the
text beneath it comprised my biography in the English language edition
of Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia which anyone in the world can
modify at any time. For the last year … my Wikipedia biography has
been persistently vandalised by anonymous ‘contributors’ intent on
labelling me as a terrorist. The same allegations has been repeatedly
scrawled, like gangland graffiti, as ‘customer reviews’ of my books at
Amazon."
Akcam was released, but his reflections on this very disturbing incident
are worth recording. "It was unlikely, to say the least, that a Canadian
immigration officer found out that I was coming to Montreal, took the
sole initiative to research my identity on the internet, discovered the
archived version of my Wikipedia biography, printed it out on 16
February, and showed it to me – voilà! – as a result."
But this was not the end. Prior to his Canadian visit, two
Turkish-American websites had been hinting that Akcam’s "terrorist
activities" should be of interest to American immigration authorities.
And sure enough, Akcam was detained yet again – for another hour – by US
Homeland Security officers at Montreal airport before boarding his
flight at Montreal for Minnesota two days later.
On this occasion, he says that the American officer – US Homeland
Security operates at the Canadian airport – gave him a warning: "Mr
Akcam, if you don’t retain an attorney and correct this issue, every
entry and exit from the country is going to be problematic. We recommend
that you do not travel in the meantime and that you try to get this
information removed from your customs dossier."
So let’s get this clear. US and Canadian officials now appear to be
detaining the innocent on the grounds of hate postings on the internet.
And it is the innocent – guilty until proved otherwise, I suppose – who
must now pay lawyers to protect them from Homeland Security and the
internet. But as Akcam says, there is nothing he can do.
"Allegations against me, posted by the Assembly of Turkish American
Associations, Turkish Forum and ‘Tall Armenian Tale’ (a Holocaust denial
website) have been copy-pasted and recycled through innumerable websites
and e-groups ever since I arrived in America. By now, my name in close
proximity to the English word ‘terrorist’ turns up in well over 10,000
web pages."
I’m not surprised. There is no end to the internet’s circle of hate.
What does shock me, however, is that the men and women chosen to guard
their nations against Osama bin Laden and al-Qa’ida are reading this
dirt and are prepared to detain an honourable scholar such as Taner
Akcam on the basis of it.
I don’t think the immigration lads are to blame. I once remember
listening to a Canadian official at Toronto airport carefully explaining
to a Palestinian visitor that he was not required to tell any police
officer about his religion or personal beliefs, that he should feel safe
in Canada.
No, it’s their bosses in Ottawa and Washington I wonder about. Put very
simply, how much smut are the US and Canadian immigration authorities
taking off the internet? And how much of it is now going to be flung at
us when we queue at airports to go about our lawful business?
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