Howard Zinn remembered

Howard Zinn, the distinguished American historian and professor emeritus in the political science department at Boston University, died on January 27, 2010 in California. He was 87. Zinn went on to become an activist in the people’s movements for civil rights, civil liberties and peace, and he wrote extensively about all of those things, among which is the most celebrated A People’s History of the United States.

Below is a commencement address that Zinn delivered on May 15, 2005 to students of Spelman College in Atlanta, the very college that once expelled him in June 1963 for siding with the students in agitating for a change to the college’s traditional emphasis on producing ‘young ladies’ rather than fighters for black freedom.

Although meant for the graduating college students, the speech (below, which is reproduced in full) is equally applicable to ordinary folks who are concerned with issues of democracy, justice, peace, compassion, racism and nationalism, among other salient things in life.

May he rest in peace.

 

AGAINST DISCOURAGEMENT

Howard Zinn’s address to Spelman College, 2005

I am deeply honored to be invited back to Spelman after forty-two years. I would like to thank the faculty and trustees who voted to invite me, and especially your president, Dr. Beverly Tatum. And it is a special privilege to be here with Diahann Carroll and Virginia Davis Floyd.

But this is your day — the students graduating today. It’s a happy day for you and your families. I know you have your own hopes for the future, so it may be a little presumptuous for me to tell you what hopes I have for you, but they are exactly the same ones that I have for my grandchildren.

My first hope is that you will not be too discouraged by the way the world looks at this moment. It is easy to be discouraged, because our nation is at war — still another war, war after war — and our government seems determined to expand its empire even if it costs the lives of tens of thousands of human beings. There is poverty in this country, and homelessness, and people without health care, and crowded classrooms, but our government, which has trillions of dollars to spend, is spending its wealth on war. There are a billion people in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East who need clean water and medicine to deal with malaria and tuberculosis and AIDS, but our government, which has thousands of nuclear weapons, is experimenting with even more deadly nuclear weapons. Yes, it is easy to be discouraged by all that.

But let me tell you why, in spite of what I have just described, you must not be discouraged.

I want to remind you that, fifty years ago, racial segregation here in the South was entrenched as tightly as was apartheid in South Africa. The national government, even with liberal presidents like Kennedy and Johnson in office, was looking the other way while Black people were beaten and killed and denied the opportunity to vote. So Black people in the South decided they had to do something by themselves. They boycotted and sat in and picketed and demonstrated, and were beaten and jailed, and some were killed, but their cries for freedom were soon heard all over the nation and around the world, and the President and Congress finally did what they had previously failed to do — enforce the 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution. Many people had said: The South will never change. But it did change. It changed because ordinary people organized and took risks and challenged the system and would not give up. That’s when democracy came alive.

I want to remind you also that when the war in Vietnam was going on, and young Americans were dying and coming home paralyzed, and our government was bombing the villages of Vietnam — bombing schools and hospitals and killing ordinary people in huge numbers — it looked hopeless to try to stop the war. But just as in the Southern movement, people began to protest and soon it caught on. It was a national movement. Soldiers were coming back and denouncing the war, and young people were refusing to join the military, and the war had to end.

The lesson of that history is that you must not despair, that if you are right, and you persist, things will change. The government may try to deceive the people, and the newspapers and television may do the same, but the truth has a way of coming out. The truth has a power greater than a hundred lies. I know you have practical things to do — to get jobs and get married and have children. You may become prosperous and be considered a success in the way our society defines success, by wealth and standing and prestige. But that is not enough for a good life.

Remember Tolstoy’s story, “The Death of Ivan Illych.” A man on his deathbed reflects on his life, how he has done everything right, obeyed the rules, become a judge, married, had children, and is looked upon as a success. Yet, in his last hours, he wonders why he feels a failure. After becoming a famous novelist, Tolstoy himself had decided that this was not enough, that he must speak out against the treatment of the Russian peasants, that he must write against war and militarism.

My hope is that whatever you do to make a good life for yourself — whether you become a teacher, or social worker, or business person, or lawyer, or poet, or scientist — you will devote part of your life to making this a better world for your children, for all children. My hope is that your generation will demand an end to war, that your generation will do something that has not yet been done in history and wipe out the national boundaries that separate us from other human beings on this earth.

Recently I saw a photo on the front page of the New York Times which I cannot get out of my mind. It showed ordinary Americans sitting on chairs on the southern border of Arizona, facing Mexico. They were holding guns and they were looking for Mexicans who might be trying to cross the border into the United States. This was horrifying to me — the realization that, in this twenty-first century of what we call “civilization,” we have carved up what we claim is one world into two hundred artificially created entities we call “nations” and are ready to kill anyone who crosses a boundary.

Is not nationalism — that devotion to a flag, an anthem, a boundary, so fierce it leads to murder — one of the great evils of our time, along with racism, along with religious hatred? These ways of thinking, cultivated, nurtured, indoctrinated from childhood on, have been useful to those in power, deadly for those out of power.

Here in the United States, we are brought up to believe that our nation is different from others, an exception in the world, uniquely moral; that we expand into other lands in order to bring civilization, liberty, democracy. But if you know some history you know that’s not true. If you know some history, you know we massacred Indians on this continent, invaded Mexico, sent armies into Cuba, and the Philippines. We killed huge numbers of people, and we did not bring them democracy or liberty. We did not go into Vietnam to bring democracy; we did not invade Panama to stop the drug trade; we did not invade Afghanistan and Iraq to stop terrorism. Our aims were the aims of all the other empires of world history — more profit for corporations, more power for politicians.

The poets and artists among us seem to have a clearer understanding of the disease of nationalism. Perhaps the Black poets especially are less enthralled with the virtues of American “liberty” and “democracy,” their people having enjoyed so little of it. The great African-American poet Langston Hughes addressed his country as follows:

You really haven’t been a virgin for so long.
It’s ludicrous to keep up the pretext.

You’ve slept with all the big powers
In military uniforms,
And you’ve taken the sweet life
Of all the little brown fellows.

Being one of the world’s big vampires,
Why don’t you come on out and say so
Like Japan, and England, and France,
And all the other nymphomaniacs of power.

I am a veteran of the Second World War. That was considered a “good war,” but I have come to the conclusion that war solves no fundamental problems and only leads to more wars. War poisons the minds of soldiers, leads them to kill and torture, and poisons the soul of the nation.

My hope is that your generation will demand that your children be brought up in a world without war. It we want a world in which the people of all countries are brothers and sisters, if the children all over the world are considered as our children, then war — in which children are always the greatest casualties — cannot be accepted as a way of solving problems.

I was on the faculty of Spelman College for seven years, from 1956 to 1963. It was a heartwarming time, because the friends we made in those years have remained our friends all these years. My wife Roslyn and I and our two children lived on campus. Sometimes when we went into town, white people would ask: How is it to be living in the Black community? It was hard to explain. But we knew this — that in downtown Atlanta, we felt as if we were in alien territory, and when we came back to the Spelman campus, we felt that we were at home.

Those years at Spelman were the most exciting of my life, the most educational certainly. I learned more from my students than they learned from me. Those were the years of the great movement in the South against racial segregation, and I became involved in that in Atlanta, in Albany, Georgia, in Selma, Alabama, in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, and Greenwood and Itta Bena and Jackson.

I learned something about democracy: that it does not come from the government, from on high, it comes from people getting together and struggling for justice. I learned about race. I learned something that any intelligent person realizes at a certain point — that race is a manufactured thing, an artificial thing, and while race does matter (as Cornel West has written), it only matters because certain people want it to matter, just as nationalism is something artificial. I learned that what really matters is that all of us — of whatever so-called race and so-called nationality — are human beings and should cherish one another.

I was lucky to be at Spelman at a time when I could watch a marvelous transformation in my students, who were so polite, so quiet, and then suddenly they were leaving the campus and going into town, and sitting in, and being arrested, and then coming out of jail full of fire and rebellion. You can read all about that in Harry Lefever’s book Undaunted By The Fight: Spelman College and the Civil Rights Movement, 1957-1967.

One day Marian Wright (now Marian Wright Edelman), who was my student at Spelman, and was one of the first arrested in the Atlanta sit-ins, came to our house on campus to show us a petition she was about to put on the bulletin board of her dormitory. The heading on the petition epitomized the transformation taking place at Spelman College. Marian had written on top of the petition: “Young Ladies Who Can Picket, Please Sign Below.”

My hope is that you will not be content just to be successful in the way that our society measures success; that you will not obey the rules, when the rules are unjust; that you will act out the courage that I know is in you. There are wonderful people, Black and white, who are models. I don’t mean African-Americans like Condoleezza Rice, or Colin Powell, or Clarence Thomas, who have become servants of the rich and powerful. I mean W.E.B. DuBois and Martin Luther King and Malcolm X and Marian Wright Edelman, and James Baldwin and Josephine Baker and good white folk, too, who defied the Establishment to work for peace and justice.

Another of my students at Spelman, Alice Walker, who, like Marian, has remained our friend all these years, came from a tenant farmer’s family in Eatonton, Georgia, and became a famous writer. In one of her first published poems, she wrote:

It is true —
I’ve always loved
the daring
ones
Like the Black young
man
Who tried
to crash
All barriers
at once,
wanted to swim
At a white
beach (in Alabama)
Nude.

I am not suggesting you go that far, but you can help to break down barriers, of race certainly, but also of nationalism; that you do what you can — you don’t have to do something heroic, just something, to join with millions of others who will just do something, because all of those somethings, at certain points in history, come together, and make the world better.

That marvelous African-American writer Zora Neale Hurston, who wouldn’t do what white people wanted her to do, who wouldn’t do what Black people wanted her to do, who insisted on being herself, said that her mother advised her: Leap for the sun — you may not reach it, but at least you will get off the ground.

By being here today, you are already standing on your toes, ready to leap. My hope for you is a good life.

What will they think of next?

(Photo credit: thegrangehall.files.wordpress.com/…/shhh.jpg)

 As it is, Islam and Muslims in Malaysia have made headlines nationally and abroad for the wrong reasons in recent past.

And yet, in the wake of the unruly demonstration last Friday in Shah Alam where the protesters lost their heads (but instead gained notoriety for their sacrilegious act of parading the severed head of a cow, a sacred creature for the Hindus in particular) in their ironic attempt to supposedly defend Islam, we now have a group of Malay-Muslims attempting, without much difficulty, to sully the good image of Islam once again.

Perkasa (Pertubuhan Pribumi Perkasa Malaysia), headed by that irrepressible politician Ibrahim Ali, reportedly sent a memorandum to the Home Ministry urging it to employ the unjust Internal Security Act (ISA) against “anyone who questions or debates the role of Islam, the status of the Malay rulers, special position of Bumiputeras and Bahasa Malaysia as the national language.”

How could anyone even think of associating Islam that preaches peace, compassion and, above all, justice with a piece of legislation that is patently unjust, i.e. ISA?

Surely Islam encourages its adherents to engage confidently in discussions and debates in a manner that befits a civilised person who has the God-given mental faculty to do so.

Needless to say, thinking of this Perkasa suggestion makes me feel like I’m getting a frog in my throat.

Of Dr M, justice and the law

When commenting on the Syariah Court’s decision to sentence 32-year-old model Kartika Sari Dewi Shukarno to six strokes of the cane for having drunk beer, former premier Mahathir Mohamed rightly reminded Malaysians, particularly Muslims, that there are 43 verses in the Qur’an which stress on the importance of being just when meting out punishment.

He went on to say that “Islam propagates justness of the highest order”. So far so good.

But not far enough. Apart from showing due concern for cases like Kartika’s, Mahathir should also have wondered aloud whether the draconian ISA, which permits detention without trial, goes against the teachings of Islam that, to reiterate, “propagates justness of the highest order”.

For those who forget easily, Mahathir himself had used this very unjust law during his premiership against some people. We are reminded here in particular of the political crackdown codenamed ‘Operasi Lalang’ in 1987. 

This explains why to this day Malaysians have continuously called for the repeal of this obnoxious law, which, I am sure, is against the teachings of other religions as well.

JIM on Kugan

An Islamic NGO, Pertubuhan Jamaah Islah Malaysia (JIM), has expressed in a media statement its regret over the death of A. Kugan who was held in police custody, and also called for a thorough, independent and transparent investigation of his death.

Equally important is that JIM emphasises that it doesn’t view this issue as something ethnic (or racial) as it involves the vital principle of justice that should transcend the borders of ethnicity and religion.

Below is JIM’s full statement.

 

KENYATAAN MEDIA

Pertubuhan Jamaah Islah Malaysia

 

29 Januari 2009

 

 

Kes Kematian A. Kugan Dalam Tahanan Polis Mesti Disiasat Tanpa Selindung

 

Pertubuhan Jamaah Islah Malaysia (JIM) melahirkan rasa kesal dengan insiden seorang suspek bernama A. Kugan yang telah meninggal dunia semasa berada dalam tahanan polis pada 20 Januari 2009. Peguam Negara telah mengklasifikasikannya sebagai kes bunuh di bawah Seksyen 302 Kanun Keseksaan mungkin setelah mengambilkira kesan luka yang serius kepada badan mayat A Kugan yang didedahkan oleh keluarga mangsa.

 

JIM memandang serius insiden tersebut kerana ini bukanlah kali pertama tahanan yang ditahan dalam lokap polis didapati mati ketika dalam tahanan. Sekiranya benar apa yang didakwa, iaitu pihak polis sendiri telah bertindak menyeksa tahanan sehingga menyebabkan kematian tahanan, maka JIM melihat ini sebagai satu pelanggaran besar terhadap kepercayaan rakyat kepada institusi keselamatan negara, Polis DiRaja Malaysia (PDRM). Ia juga merupakan satu tindakan kejam dan tidak berperikemanusiaan walaupun terhadap individu yang disyaki sebagai penjenayah.

 

JIM menyanjung tinggi usaha dan peranan pihak polis dalam membanteras jenayah namun pelaksanaan penguatkuasaan undang-undang mestilah berpandukan kepada prinsip kedaulatan undang-undang atau rule of law dan keadilan. Selain daripada itu, pihak polis mestilah akur dengan prinsip hak asasi manusia sejagat mahupun apa yang digariskan dalam prinsip hak asasi manusia dalam Islam yang mengiktiraf bahawa seseorang itu tidak bersalah sehingga dibuktikan bersalah (innocent until proven guilty).

 

JIM mengetahui bahawa kes seksaan secara fizikal dan mental serta kes kematian ketika dalam jagaan polis telah banyak dilaporkan sebelum ini samada ketika direman atau ketika ditahan di bawah Akta Keselamatan Dalam Negeri (ISA). Namun kes-kes tersebut samada tiada tindakan lanjutan, siasatan masih berterusan atau masih dalam sesi perbicaraan mahkamah. Dewan Rakyat pada tahun 2008 telah dimaklumkan seramai 1,535 orang mati semasa dalam tahanan polis dalam tempoh antara 2003 hingga 2007. Pada masa yang sama, dua Suruhanjaya Diraja berhubung perkara ini telah ditubuhkan sebelum ini dengan pelbagai saranan namun keberkesanan saranannya masih dipersoalkan ramai khususnya berkenaan dengan kegagalan penubuhan Suruhanjaya Bebas Aduan dan Salahlaku Polis (Independent Polis Complaints and Misconduct Commission – IPCMC).

 

JIM menegaskan bahawa dalam konteks masyarakat berbilang bangsa dan agama seperti Malaysia, insiden seperti ini tidak seharusnya berlaku ke atas mana-mana individu, bangsa atau agama sekalipun. Oleh yang demikian, JIM tidak melihat ini sebagai isu perkauman dan menyarankan semua pihak untuk berpendirian sama kerana prinsip keadilan merentasi sempadan bangsa, kaum dan agama.

 

Sehubungan itu, JIM sebagai sebuah badan bukan kerajaan Islam yang amat prihatin dalam isu keadilan dan urustadbir yang baik menyarankan kepada Kerajaan untuk:-

 

1.      Mengambil langkah serius mengarahkan dan memastikan siasatan yang menyeluruh, adil dan telus dilakukan berikutan kematian A. Kugan dalam tahanan polis dengan kadar segera tanpa melindungi atau menyembunyikan mana-mana fakta dan pihak, demi menegakkan keadilan. Adalah sewajarnya siasatan tersebut dilakukan oleh sebuah Suruhanjaya Bebas DiRaja yang ditubuhkan oleh Kerajaan.

 

2.      Menyemak dan meneliti saranan yang telah dibuat oleh dua Suruhanjaya Diraja sebelum ini serta melaksanakan saranan-saranan mereka.

 

JIM bersimpati dengan keluarga A Kugan dan seterusnya  menyeru semua pihak untuk bertenang dan bertindak mengikut lunas undang-undang. Keadilan bukan sahaja terlaksana tetapi mesti dilihat dilaksanakan.

 

 

Hj Zaid Kamaruddin

Presiden

What curious Alison Weir found out about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict

Curious journalist Alison Weir from a small-town newspaper in the US was initially nagged by some pressing questions about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Her curiosity literally brought her to the combustible zone in West Asia, and subsequently found some disturbing facts about the conflict and US media coverage of it.

This video clip may especially interest curious and concerned Malaysians as well as students of journalism and politics. There are some lessons to be drawn from this critical examination of the US media, particularly in terms of journalistic fairness, slant, distortion and factual omission.

Gaza still inflamed

The lethal assault on Gaza rages on as the Israeli government defies calls for a ceasefire, leaving in its trail at least 780 Palestinians killed and 3,250 injured so far.

According to an Al Jazeera report,

Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, rejected the truce call following a security cabinet meeting on Friday.

Referring to continued rocket fire from Gaza into Israel, Olmert said: “The firing of rockets this morning only goes to show that the UN decision is unworkable and will not be adhered to by the murderous Palestinian organisations.”The Israeli army said six rockets were also fired into southern Israel on Friday morning, injuring one person and four rockets hit Beersheba, a town about 40km from the Israeli-Gaza border and the port of Ashdod.

A series of Israeli air raids and ground attacks on Friday killed dozens of Palestinians in northern Gaza, medical sources said.

Palestinian doctors said tanks shelled a house in Beit Lahiya in the north of the Strip, killing six Gazans from the same family.

The Israeli air force launched attacks overnight against what an army spokesman described as 50 targets, including launching pads for rockets fired from Gaza into Israel.

 

Incidentally, there’s another piece about the Gaza conflict from CounterPunch that makes an interesting and useful read.

Moving students into a rage

The Education Ministry plans to organise ‘a mass movement’ among school students as well as teachers and the ministry staff with the primary aim of cultivating ‘hatred against Israeli atrocities on Palestinians’, reports Bernama.

One can understand the importance of sensitizing the students to the Zionists’ protracted assault on the Palestinians over the years because it involves not only the destruction of the latter’s lives, properties and livelihood but also impacts upon their collective dignity as a people and their dream of nationhood.

Having said that, it would be more intellectually useful and challenging in the long run if the students are taught as part of the curriculum to value peace, freedom, compassion, human rights, human dignity, justice and democracy.

In this way, these students would be sensitive to acts that violate justice, compassion, freedom, human rights and dignity that not only occur in Palestine but also elsewhere in the world such as Sri Lanka and certain parts of Africa. Put another way, this approach would be more holistic to enable the students to see a much bigger picture of the world’s conflicts.

Of course, this would also necessarily mean that these conscientious students would also be attentive to any action taken or policy made by the authorities in Malaysia that could be deemed unjust, undemocratic and at that the same time breach human rights.

Such an approach would also go a long way towards building a huge group of students whose care and concern for justice, peace, democracy and human rights transcend ethnic, religious and ideological boundaries.

 

PUTRAJAYA, Jan 8 (Bernama) — School students nationwide will be galvanised into a mass movement aimed at instilling hatred against Israeli atrocities on Palestinians, said Education Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Tun Hussein.

Hishammuddin said the mass movement would involve those in the teaching profession and education ministry staff.

“Through the mass movement, the students will be exposed and reminded that the peace, justice and comfortable living environment can be easily robbed by people with greed,” he told reporters after presenting the ministry’s new year address here today.

The movement to be launched soon would involve all quarters including non-governmental organisations (NGO) and ministries to make the voice of young Malaysians heard globally.

Hishammuddin said the mass movement was approved at the Cabinet meeting chaired by Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi yesterday.

Palestinian-Israeli conflict 101

Leaders of the ‘international community’ are still running around the West Asian region ‘in search of cease-fire’ while the Palestinian casualties have reached more than 550 people, and about 2,500 have been wounded since the Israeli assault started 10 days ago.

For those of us who are curious to know more about this bloody conflict, the following, which are culled from the CounterPunch website, make an interesting and essential read (something that may be different from your normal reading diet):

1. Gaza and the World

2. May we no longer be silent

3. What is Hamas?

4. If Hamas did not exist

5. The Gaza Ghetto and Western Cant

6. The objective of the Gaza assault

7. Israel’s immunity

Gaza stripped

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(Source: AFP map cited in Malaysiakini)

 

The latest count of this deadly conflict is that more than 500 Palestinians were killed while three Israeli civilians and two soldiers perished.

This is when the UN is still mulling over what to do next as the war rages on, a war, according to Israeli writer Uri Avnery (see below),  that is waged as part of an election campaign in Israel. 

Have a look at the piece written by Avnery to get an insight into the origins of Hamas and also certain aspects of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. This was extracted from the CounterPunch website.

 

How Israel is multiplying Hamas by a Thousand

Molten Lead in Gaza

By URI AVNERY

JUST AFTER MIDNIGHT, Aljazeera’s Arabic channel was reporting on events in Gaza. Suddenly the camera was pointing upwards towards the dark sky. The screen was pitch black. Nothing could be seen, but there was a sound to be heard: the noise of airplanes, a frightening, a terrifying droning.

It was impossible not to think about the tens of thousands of Gazan children who were hearing that sound at that moment, cringing with fright, paralyzed by fear, waiting for the bombs to fall.

* * *

“ISRAEL MUST defend itself against the rockets that are terrorizing our Southern towns,” the Israeli spokesmen explained. “Palestinians must respond to the killing of their fighters inside the Gaza Strip,” the Hamas spokesmen declared.

As a matter of fact, the cease-fire did not collapse, because there was no real cease-fire to start with. The main requirement for any cease-fire in the Gaza Strip must be the opening of the border crossings. There can be no life in Gaza without a steady flow of supplies. But the crossings were not opened, except for a few hours now and again. The blockade on land, on sea and in the air against a million and a half human beings is an act of war, as much as any dropping of bombs or launching of rockets. It paralyzes life in the Gaza Strip: eliminating most sources of employment, pushing hundreds of thousands to the brink of starvation, stopping most hospitals from functioning, disrupting the supply of electricity and water.

Those who decided to close the crossings – under whatever pretext – knew that there is no real cease-fire under these conditions.

That is the main thing. Then there came the small provocations which were designed to get Hamas to react. After several months, in which hardly any Qassam rockets were launched, an army unit was sent into the Strip “in order to destroy a tunnel that came close to the border fence”. From a purely military point of view, it would have made more sense to lay an ambush on our side of the fence. But the aim was to find a pretext for the termination of the cease-fire, in a way that made it plausible to put the blame on the Palestinians. And indeed, after several such small actions, in which Hamas fighters were killed, Hamas retaliated with a massive launch of rockets, and – lo and behold – the cease-fire was at an end. Everybody blamed Hamas.

* * *

WHAT WAS THE AIM? Tzipi Livni announced it openly: to liquidate Hamas rule in Gaza. The Qassams served only as a pretext.

Liquidate Hamas rule? That sounds like a chapter out of “The March of Folly”. After all, it is no secret that it was the Israeli government which set up Hamas to start with. When I once asked a former Shin-Bet chief, Yaakov Peri, about it, he answered enigmatically: “We did not create it, but we did not hinder its creation.”   

The ISA, politically speaking

Foreign Minister Dr Rais Yatim reminded Malaysians to exercise caution when it comes to reviewing the draconian Internal Security Act (ISA).

He believes that ‘the ISA was not 100 per cent perfect and that the sections which did not allegedly meet humanitarian aspects could be reviewed’.

‘When the time is right, there should be a review and it will not be contrary to any law,’ he added.

It is obvious that his view, like that of his like-minded friends in the BN, comes into sharp conflict with the opinion of Malaysians who demand that the ISA be repealed — i.e. not to be reviewed at all.

But what’s noteworthy and interesting here is that Rais dismissed the demand for the abolition of the ISA as ‘merely a political opinion which should not be expressed’.

Pray tell, which opinions, especially those pertaining to controversial laws such as the ISA, that aren’t ‘political’? Besides, what’s wrong with having ‘political opinion’? Does calling for a mere review of the law constitute an apolitical view?

Moreover, to say that such a view is ‘merely a political opinion which should not be expressed’ does not really address the issue head-on. This only skirts it.