Editorials
Saturday, October 31, 1998

Falsifying letters is
cheap campaign trick

THE Star-Bulletin receives thousands of letters to the editor in every election campaign. This year is no different. Although many of the letters received by our editors favoring either Ben Cayetano or Linda Lingle are the product of individuals, many are obviously not. They are turned out by a cadre of writers in the campaign headquarters and mailed or faxed with the signatures of the candidate's supporters.

Attempts are made to disguise this mass production, but the fact is evident when dozens of letters are received with the same postmark, and only slight variations on the same themes, on the same day. Generally we reject letters that seem to have been mass-produced, but a few are accepted for publication.

We try to verify the authenticity of each letter we intend to print, by reaching the author by telephone. Twenty-five times we telephoned the persons whose names were signed to a letter supporting Cayetano and were told that they did not write the letter and had not given permission for their name to be used. In some cases the telephone numbers provided on the letters were not those of the supposed authors. There were no such instances involving letters favoring Lingle.

We do not know how many of the letters that were rejected for publication had similarly falsified signatures because we did not attempt to verify them, but the number may be considerable.

This newspaper publishes letters about the political campaign in the interest of full discussion of the issues and freedom of expression. A campaign that tries to get us to print mass-produced letters using people's names without their permission is polluting the waters.

South Africa’s pain

IT was supposed to reveal the truth about crimes committed in South Africa's era of apartheid and promote reconciliation between blacks and whites. It succeeded in presenting both the horror of the white supremacist government's cruel oppression and the terrorist tactics of the black resistance.

But reconciliation of the races may have been set back temporarily, not advanced, by the commission's report. Black resistance fighters and the ruling party during apartheid both denounced it.

Former President F.W. de Klerk, whose efforts to dismantle apartheid won him the Nobel Peace Prize along with President Nelson Mandela, said the report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission "holds the seeds of future conflict."

Mandela's African National Congress, which led the struggle to abolish apartheid, went to court in an unsuccessful attempt to block release of the report. Deputy President Thabo Mbeki criticized the commission for failing to include in its report the ANC's response to condemnation of its abuses, including the torture of dissidents and killing of civilians.

The report, compiled after 21/2 years of hearings, urges the people to "reach out to fellow South Africans in a spirit of tolerance and understanding." The commission had the power to grant amnesty -- but only to those who confessed fully to politically motivated crimes.

The report lays the heaviest burden of guilt on white governments. But to its credit the commission refused to overlook the crimes of the black resistance. Its leader, Mandela, was committed to nonviolence, but could not prevent some of his followers from resorting to terrorist tactics.

Mandela, who spent 27 years in prison for fighting apartheid, conceded that the report would not produce instant reconciliation. "Its release is bound to reawaken many of the difficult and troubling emotions that the hearings themselves brought," he said.

South Africa has far to go before achieving the hoped-for reconciliation. But the first step is acknowledgement by both sides of the crimes that were committed, painful as that may be.

Film festival’s loss

THE long arm of Chinese Communist repression has reached out to Honolulu and snatched a movie from the Hawaii International Film Festival. The film "Windhorse," which tells the story of three young Tibetans amid the brutal Chinese occupation of Tibet, has been withdrawn from the festival after it was removed from the award competition.

The producer, Paul Wagner, said he was not willing to participate in the festival unless his film was nominated for its top prize, as previously agreed. Officials dropped the film from the competition because they feared reprisals from Beijing.

The executive director of the festival, Christopher Gaines, said he had heard rumors that Beijing knew the festival was showing "sensitive films about China" and was deciding whether to take retaliatory action. Gaines said he feared that six Chinese films would be pulled out by the government if "Windhorse" was shown or received a major award, and that he was trying to satisfy both sides. That's pretty hard to do when you're dealing with a dictatorship.

The Chinese Communists have given no indication of willingness to stop their violations of human rights despite their recent signing of an international covenant calling for freedom of speech and assembly. Just this week the government closed an independent think tank in Beijing that had sponsored research and seminars on democracy and current affairs. In addition, censors barred the further distribution of a book of essays on political change.

The Beijing regime pays lip service to human rights, but little more than that. President Clinton's appeals to Chinese officials during his recent visit to Beijing to accept democracy were ignored. Now even the Hawaii film festival has felt the blight of repression.

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Published by Liberty Newspapers Limited Partnership

Rupert E. Phillips, CEO

John M. Flanagan, Editor & Publisher

David Shapiro, Managing Editor

Diane Yukihiro Chang, Senior Editor & Editorial Page Editor

Frank Bridgewater & Michael Rovner, Assistant Managing Editors

A.A. Smyser, Contributing Editor