Queensland's new Coercive Control laws challenge Debian Code of Conduct

Just in time for International Women's Day, the Australian state of Queensland has brought in a new law prohibiting coercive control.

News stories about the new law have emphasized the cases of men who engage in Code of Conduct gaslighting, demanding unreasonable obedience from wives and volunteers.

Nonetheless, it is worth looking back in time to the well-intentioned move by the State of Victoria to allow spouses to kill their partner in self-defence. We were told this would help female victims of domestic violence to avoid jail. In fact, the first person to avoid conviction with the plea of self-defence was a man.

Robert Clark, Victoria’s attorney general, said the law had been “hijacked” by violent men looking to avoid murder convictions.

The coercive control law in Queensland needs similar scrutiny.

The news reports describe four tests to determine if a relationship involves coerceive control and thereby violates the law:

They are in a domestic relationship with another person
They engage in a "course of conduct" that consists of domestic violence and it occurs more than once
They intend the conduct to coerce or control the other person
The conduct would be reasonably likely to cause the other person harm – meaning physical, emotional, financial, psychological or mental harm, whether temporary or permanent.

Domestic relationships

When people see the first point, they will initially think about couples who live together. In fact, this could be any situation, such as a landlord who has lodgers renting rooms in their own home.

There are many types of housemate situations.

One of the more extreme cases was the prosecution of James Davis for keeping multiple women as slaves in Armidale. Existing laws on modern slavery were used for this case. There are similar cult-like groups that fall below the threshold of modern slavery but lawyers may now try to shut them down using the coercive control laws.

Another notch down from these cults will be events like DebConf where Google told volunteers not to bring spouses because we have to share rooms with other unpaid volunteers.

After all, they keep telling us that Debian is a family. If Debian is a family then these laws may apply.

A "course of conduct" that consists of domestic violence and it occurs more than once

At first glance, people may be shocked at the thought of domestic violence in the Debian / DebConf world.

Look back to the violent expulsion of an election candidate from DebConf6 in Mexico.

People regularly try to brainwash us with the myth that Debian is a family. If Debian really is a family then the expulsion of Ted Walther was an example of domestic violence.

An intent to coerce or control the other person

This is really clear. We can see this the way Debianists tried to blackmail one of my female interns, Renata D'Avila.

Sadly, time is short, so we kindly request you to reply to this message as soon as possible, so the bursaries processing can be unblocked.

Dr Norbert Preining was blackmailed to write a self-deprecating public confession.

Then there were all those little manipulations from Chris Lamb during his term as Debian Project Leader. For example, the pressure to spend extra time looking for cheaper accommodation:

Subject: Re: travel request: FOSSASIA March 2018, Singapore
Date: Tue, 16 Jan 2018 05:59:49 +0530
From: Chris Lamb <lamby@debian.org>
To: Daniel Pocock <daniel@pocock.pro>, leader@debian.org

Hi Daniel,

> Accommodation:  EUR 500

Can you confirm this amount? It seems rather high for a short conference;
I stayed in .sg for about 3 weeks on this amount last year!


Regards,

-- 
      ,''`.
     : :'  :     Chris Lamb
     `. `'`      lamby@debian.org / chris-lamb.co.uk
       `-

while there seems to be no shortage of funds to give to lawyers attacking Debian volunteers.

The conduct would be reasonably likely to cause the other person harm – meaning physical, emotional, financial, psychological or mental harm, whether temporary or permanent.

We can see that too.

The most glaring example is the volunteer signalling his intention to commit suicide the night before the Debian Day anniversary. There is no greater example of physical harm than the loss of life.

In the lynchings of Dr Jacob Appelbaum, people expressed a desire to make him unemployable. Enrico Zini pretended to care with this email:

Enrico Zini: and a public announcement will potentially be googlable forever into the future, and although I feel like I can make a choice about someone's membership at this point in their and the project's life, I don't feel like I can make the choice of publishing something that could, in some faraway future, be a mark of shame haunting a healed person from their sick long gone past, showing up forever in recruiter searches.

and then shortly afterwards he wrote to a journalist begging them to make their report more harmful to Dr Appelbaum.

Have another look at the attempts to spread rumors about a relationship with my former intern, Elena Gjevukaj from Kosovo. They gave CHF 18,500 to a Swiss judge to try and rubber stamp their gossip.

Please see the detailed history of Debian harassment and abuse problems.