Action 253, October 2003

Sean Hawkey

“Thirty eight percent of the Swazi population is HIV positive!” exclaims Father Bonginkosi Malaza, of the Council of Swaziland Churches. And yet we still cannot agree on any strategy to reduce AIDS "except for promoting abstinence... and we don't really believe that will control it”. The Rev. Dr. Augustine Musupole, General Secretary of the Malawi Council of Churches adds: "how can it be that we are burying parishioners who die of Aids-related illnesses every day, lots of them, we are even burying our own families, but we are still not getting to grips with the issues surrounding HIV/Aids, theologically or practically?"

The Digital Divide and the Credibility Gap.
The issues of affordable access to the internet, telephony and other telecom services is greatly exercising the minds of many at the World Summit in the Information Society and other arenas.  There are many genuine efforts afoot to deploy ICTs more effectively for development, calling for us all to ‘think outside the box’.  The problem, however, is that mainstream thinking is still trapped inside the smallest of a Russian doll set. Several leaps are required before they can shake off the current orthodoxy – liberalisation, privatisation and the regulatory and IPR toolkit that goes along with it – which has simply reached its limits.  Those limits leave us stranded far short of addressing the requirements of those in most need of access; the world’s majority in poor communities and countries.  A brief history and current state of the sector offers compelling evidence of this.  Finding the right solution(s) to move forward, however, is not easy and demands the concentrated effort, especially, of civil society.

Statement from the workshop organized by the WACC and the Advanced Institute for the Study of Life (AISL) June 2003, Jirisan Plaza Hotel, Seoul, Korea:

There is a growing awareness that the convergence of technologies results in control over people and life in different regions of the world. People have begun to speak of empire and its impact on their lives as they observe the leading role of the USA in the construction of hegemony in the service of corporate and financial interests.

Pradip Thomas

Which on-line news service recently played an instrumental role in the election of a President? The South Korean on-line news service 'Ohmynews' is probably the only example to date of a Net-based initiative that has made a decisive difference in a presidential election. In December 2002, Roh Moo-hyun was elected as the president of South Korea. He did not belong to the traditional political structure and the conservative, mainline media, had ignored him. However, his non-establishment origins and his willingness to listen to the younger generation - appealed to a large swathe of South Korean 20-40 year olds. And they used the technology that they knew  best to make a difference.

Sean Hawkey

Addressing christian communicators Kristine Greenaway says that some messages about people living with HIV “kill people, others are life giving”.

The award –winning documentary ‘Choropampa- The Price of Gold’ had its US broadcast premiere in September on a television station that reaches a million households in the very region of Colorado where Newmont Mining, the corporation responsible for the mercury spill reported in the film, has its head offices.

Sean Hawkey

This is the first challenge for journalists, to make scepticism their profession, to question everything they are told, to probe, corroborate and verify everything, whoever the source. That's what journalists are meant to do, to reveal secrets, lies and deceptions, to expose the truths that hold the powerful to account and control corruption and exploitation. Scepticism is the basis of justice.

Sean Hawkey

The Christian Communicators Workshop organized by EDICISA and WACC in Lilongwe, Malawi in August ended with participants adopting a more positive and aggressive strategy in the fight against HIV/AIDS.