A digital flyer promoting a “genocide hotline” launched by the Palestinian Solidarity Network Aotearoa generated more than 100 complaints to the Human Rights Commission.
The post invited New Zealanders to report sightings of Israeli soldiers holidaying here to help “track them down so we can let them know they are not welcome here”. Police confirmed they were investigating and Human Rights Commissioner Stephen Rainbow asked the network to take the hotline down. Rainbow commented: “Unfortunately, these kinds of posts or this kind of online radicalisation can really lead to some concrete consequences with devastating effect, and we think … we need to find other ways of resolving our differences than that which this post promotes.”
The Network chair, veteran activist John Minto, doubled down saying, “The Human Rights Commissioner has got it round the wrong way. He should be joining us to condemn what’s happening overseas.”
And he denied an anti-semitic inference could be drawn from the campaign.
The network’s website – now minus the G word – says the intentions behind the hotline have been misunderstood – it is intended to “empower communities to take non-violent action and apply pressure on our government to impose sanctions on Israeli soldiers involved in war crimes in Gaza … Please do not physically engage with individuals you suspect may be Israeli soldiers.”
The objective of Minto’s campaigns has been to inform, but at the same time to shame. That was behind a protest when an Israeli played at an ASB Classic tennis tournament, and the current campaign is designed to shame members of the Israeli Defence Forces.
Public shaming can be very powerful and the internet increases this power, and the humiliation and the hostility that these campaigns can bring. Jon Ronson, in his 2015 book, So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, explores the re-emergence of public shaming with the internet. He recounts the case of Justine Sacco, a New York PR executive who lost her job when a racist tweet she posted before flying to Africa inspired a Twitter pile-on.
One must be very careful in mounting an online shaming campaign or exposé. A Hamilton case involving a man who, in 2021, launched a Facebook campaign against a local doggy daycare centre ended up in the High Court on appeal last year. Samuel Tucker’s posts and a website alleging animal abuse generated enormous hostility towards the owner of the centre. The SPCA investigated but found insufficient evidence for a prosecution, leading Tucker to intensify his online campaign.
The centre’s owner suffered very serious emotional distress and sought help via the Harmful Digital Communications Act (HDCA) to have the material taken down and to prevent Tucker doing it again or encouraging others to do so.
Orders were made in the district court, but Tucker appealed to the High Court, and lost. Although he did not intend to cause the level of distress that the campaign did, he was responsible not only for what he posted but what others posted by way of comments.
He argued his campaign had a public interest element to it but there is not a specific public interest defence under the act and that argument was not upheld.
The High Court concluded the posts breached several communication principles, caused serious emotional distress and that the district court orders did not unreasonably curtail Tucker’s freedom of expression.
Would Minto’s shaming campaign fall foul of the HDCA? Probably not, because that act provides remedies only for individuals and not for groups. What is important to remember is that communications do not breach the principles of the act. Those principles are no more and no less than well-understood rules for polite conversation.
David Harvey is a retired district court judge.
