In Eritrea, many of the journalists who were jailed in the 2001 media crackdown remain behind bars, the Committee to Protect Journalists says. Courtesy: UN Photo

By James Reinl
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 10 2019 (IPS)

Eritrea has the world’s highest levels of censorship and the most active government in jailing reporters and stifling newspapers, radio and television, a study by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) watchdog says.

The authoritarian Horn of Africa nation, which shuttered all independent media in 2001 and currently has some 16 journalists behind bars, is followed by North Korea and Turkmenistan as the world’s worst places to work as a reporter, the CPJ says.

“The internet was supposed to make censorship obsolete, but that hasn’t happened,” the group’s executive director Joel Simon said in a statement upon releasing the annual report Tuesday.

“Many of the world’s most censored countries are highly wired, with active online communities. These governments combine old-style brutality with new technology, often purchased from Western companies, to stifle dissent and control the media.”

The top 10 watchlist of countries that “flout international freedom of expression norms and guarantees” also includes Saudi Arabia, China, Vietnam, Iran, Equatorial Guinea, Belarus, and the Caribbean island of Cuba. 

In Eritrea, many of the journalists who were jailed in the 2001 media crackdown remain behind bars, the CPJ says. The government controls most broadcast outlets; internet connections are hard to find, and foreign radio signals are jammed.

Eritrean law says reporters must promote “national objectives”. Journalists at the country’s state-run media outlets “toe the government’s editorial line for fear of retaliation”, the CPJ said in a nine-page report.

Eritrea’s mission to the United Nations did not answer an interview request from IPS.

In North Korea, the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) runs nearly all the country’s newspapers and broadcasters and sticks to reporting on the latest comments and activities of the reclusive nation’s leader Kim Jong Un.

KCNA has typically been “highly restrictive in its coverage of foreign news”, but that changed in recent months, allowing for reporting on talks between Kim and United States President Donald Trump over Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons program.

Free media also remains largely absent in Turkmenistan, where President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov “enjoys absolute control” over newspapers and broadcasters and wields this power to “promote his cult of personality”, the CPS says.

“A handful of independent Turkmenistan-focused media outlets, such as Khronika Turkmenistana, operate in exile, and anyone who attempts to access the website can be questioned by the authorities,” the report says.

The group also names Saudi Arabia as an offender, spotlighting the murder and dismemberment of Saudi journalist and government critic Jamal Khashoggi in the country’s consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, in October 2018.

The oil-rich kingdom has witnessed a “sharp deterioration” in media freedoms during the ascendancy of the country’s crown prince and de facto ruler Mohammed bin Salman, with new anti-terror and cybercrime laws helping to silence journalists, the CPJ says. 

The CPJ report was released only days after the hardline religious militant Taliban group kidnapped six local journalists in Afghanistan last week, as they were travelling to a media workshop in Paktika province. 

CPJ researchers noted that journalists struggled with war and instability in such countries as Afghanistan, Syria and Somalia, but said that these issues were “not necessarily attributable solely to government censorship”.

The CPJ media freedom ranking is similar to the list compiled by Reporters Without Borders, another watchdog, which also shames Eritrea, North Korea and Turkmenistan as the world’s worst three countries for independent journalism.

"Criança viada", by Bia Leite, attracted a wave of moralistic attacks on the grounds that it promotes pedophilia. But the author explains that it is a denouncement of violence against children, humiliated as "queers" (viada) if they do not behave as required by the dominant machista culture. Credit: Courtesy of QueerMuseu

By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, Jan 2 2018 (IPS)

It is not yet an official policy because censorship is not openly accepted by the current authorities, but de facto vetoes on artistic expressions are increasing due to moralistic pressures in Brazil.

The offensive affects the artistic world in general, not just the shows or exhibitions that have been directly canceled in recent months.

“This affects all our work, because it dissuades us from fear of reactions and the sponsors will now think ten thousand times before supporting a work of art,” said Nadia Bambirra, an actress, theater director and acting coach.

This exacerbates the problems facing the cultural sector, at a time that is already fraught with difficulties due to declining public funds and an economic crisis causing a decrease in spectators and audience as well as in private financial support, she told IPS."So, what lies ahead is devastating, rather than worrying," because "the world is facing a surge of conservatism, and Latin America is not immune to that phenomenon, as seen in Argentina and Brazil, which are confirming the return of winds that seemed to have faded in the past." -- Eric Nepomuceno

The wave of repression became dramatic since September, when the Santander Cultural Centre canceled the exhibition “QueerMuseu, Cartographies of Difference in Brazilian Art”, a month before it was to end, after accusations of promoting pedophilia and zoophilia and of blasphemy.

The exhibition, made up of 264 paintings, drawings, sculptures and other works by 85 Brazilian artists, was inaugurated on Aug.15 and was scheduled to close on Oct. 8 in Porto Alegre, capital of the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul.

A campaign on the social networks was driven mainly by the Free Brazil Movement (MBL), which takes radical positions against social rights, such as housing, even though they are enshrined in the constitution, while supporting extreme right candidates in politics.

The Santander Bank decided to cancel the show at its cultural centre because “it was considered offensive by some people and groups” who thought it was “disrespectful toward symbols and beliefs,” according to the bank’s “message to clients” to explain the measure.

Protests by artists, intellectuals and sexual diversity movements accused the Spanish bank of exercising censorship, by yielding to accusations against some works that have already been well-known for decades.

But the protests failed to prevent the exhibition from also being canceled in Rio de Janeiro, where it was set to open in October.

Mayor Marcelo Crivella, bishop of an evangelical Christian church, banned its exhibition at the Museum of Art, a municipal institution that partners with a private foundation, in response to the accusations aimed at the QueerMuseu in Porto Alegre.

“No more censorship!” protested filmmakers and actors at the Festival do Rio, an international film festival held Oct. 5-15. The mobilisation of artistic and cultural media failed to reverse the decision or, so far, to attain a new venue for the exhibition.

The work of art “Crossing Jesus Christ with the goddess Shiva”, by Fernando Baril, aroused the ire of people who considered it blasphemous and disrespectful to religions, while the artist explained that it was a mixture of religious figures and objects that represent Western consumerism. Credit: Courtesy of QueerMuseu

The moralistic outbreak was fueled in the southern metropolis of São Paulo, where the Museum of Modern Art inaugurated its 35th Panorama of Brazilian Art with a performance by a naked artist.

A video showing a girl touching the hand and leg of a man who was lying down triggered a flood of protests, and allegations of pornography and pedophilia.

The Public Prosecutor’s Office is investigating whether there was a violation of Brazil’s Statute on Children and Adolescents by those who disseminated the video, exposing the girl and her mother who took her to the presentation allegedly inappropriate for children.

Actions of intolerance against freedom of artistic expression have proliferated in Brazil this year.

Dancer Maikon Kempinski was arrested for a few hours on Jul. 15 by the police in São Paulo for presenting a performance in which he removed his clothes. Two months later, a play was banned by the judicial authorities in Jundiaí, 60 kilometers from São Paulo, because Jesus Christ was played by a transsexual actress.

The theatre group was able to perform in nearby cities in the following days, drawing a large audience and intense applause, which shows that censorship is from isolated groups. But in late October the play was again banned in Salvador, capital of the northeastern state of Bahía.

The Rio de Janeiro city government, imbued with the evangelical bias of its mayor, continues to obstruct cultural activities, taking care not to fall into widespread, official bans.

“My boyfriend had his painting censored in the ‘short circuit’ visual arts exhibit on sexual diversity,” which could not be held on the scheduled dates in October, said Bruna Belém, a dancer and body arts researcher who is earning a Master’s Degree in Contemporary Art Studies.

The city government secretariat of culture prevented the exhibition in a municipal cultural centre, alleging

Besides, “eight works disappeared and were only returned two weeks later,” Belém told IPS, referring to suspicions of sabotage of the “October for Diversity” programme, which also included plays that were suspended.

“Scenes from the Interior II”, painted 23 years ago by Adriana Varejão, one of Brazil’s most respected and award-winning artists, only now drew accusations of inciting zoophilia by critics who only divulged the part containing two people with a goat. The artist explained that she mixed different sexual practices associated withBrazil’s colonisation and slavery. Credit: Courtesy of QueerMuseu

“The manipulative capacity” of the government, in this case the municipal government, “has been turned against freedom of expression,” lamented the dancer and activist. “The first ones attacked were the artists who work with their body, performances, photographic displays, theatre, dance,” she said.

To illustrate, she mentioned her dance instructor, who presented a performance that includes nudity in an event after the closure in the Rio de Janeiro Museum of Art. The audience was limited to their peers, excluding the outside spectators they had hoped to reach.

These subterfuges show that the current conservative authorities, especially in the municipalities of Brazil’s largest cities, São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, do not dare to directly ban artistic expressions after three decades of re-democratisation of the country, affirming freedom of expression.

“There is resistance,” Belém said.

In light of the “moral patrol”, the tendency is to limit the arts to musical shows and innocuous works of art, abandoning uncomfortable avant-garde pieces of art, Bambirra fears. “But in the midst of that neo-Nazi wave, something surprising, transformative, can emerge in the search for new spaces,” she said hopefully to IPS.

With the current government, headed by Michel Temer as president since May 2016, “the conservative wave was consolidated and extended to all institutions, especially the National Congress and sectors of the Judicial branch,” according to Eric Nepomuceno, a writer and former Secretary of Exchange and Special Projects of the Ministry of Culture.

Temer belongs to the centrist Brazilian Democratic Movement party, but is considered a conservative in religious, social and gender issues. The 77-year-old politician is surviving corruption scandals with just three percent popular support, according to the latest polls.

His government depends on the parliamentary support of right-wing parties and specific alliances, such as that of ruralists (landowners) and evangelists who demand conservative measures and laws, such as flexibilisation of labour and environmental regulations, as well as the fight against slave-like labour.

To the episodes of censorship and extremist movements such as the MBL is added “Temer’s government’s contempt for culture, a kind of revenge on the fact that almost all artists and intellectuals reject him,” Nepomuceno told IPS.

“So, what lies ahead is devastating, rather than worrying,” because “the world is facing a surge of conservatism, and Latin America is not immune to that phenomenon, as seen in Argentina and Brazil, which are confirming the return of winds that seemed to have faded in the past,” he concluded.

Gauri Lankesh. Credit: Wikipedia

By Manipadma Jena
BHUBANESWAR, India, Sep 7 2017 (IPS)

Dauntlessly crusading against curbs on freedom of speech, fifty-five-year-old Indian journalist Gauri Lankesh was gunned down at her very doorstep in Bengaluru city on the evening of Sep. 5, taking three bullets of the seven fired in her lungs and heart. She was shot from just three feet away.

Known for her vocal stand against India’s growing right-wing ideology, communal politics and majoritian policies, Lankesh ran bold and forthright anti-establishment reports on the eponymous Gauri Lankesh Patrike, a regional language tabloid published, owned and edited by her since 2005."Gauri Lankesh’s death is another stark reminder of how violence is the new normal (in India)." --A senior journalist

She ran the paper only on subscriptions from loyal readers from across remote villages of Karnataka State. The paper carried no advertisements, following in the tradition of her socialist poet, playwright and journalist father who started the original tabloid.

Gauri Lankesh described herself on her Twitter handle as a journalist-activist. Fluent in both English and the regional Kannada language, she fearlessly broadcast her far-left of centre and pro-Dalit ideologies against religious fundamentalism and the caste system, reaching a huge mass grassroots population.

Speaking at her funeral, Karnataka’s chief minister M Siddaramaiah said, “Gauri brokered deals with Naxalites (Left-wing extremists) in Karnataka. She helped them enter the mainstream and played a vital role of a negotiator between the State and the extremists.” An activity which extremists cadres may have wanted to halt, Lankesh’s brother Indrajit Lankesh said today.

Known as a sympathizer of left-wing extremists, Lankesh was among the few who could empathise with the poverty, oppression and injustices that had pushed these people to pick up arms against the government.

In November, Lankesh was convicted in two libel suits filed by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) parliamentarians for her 2008 article alleging that they had criminal dealings. She was, however, granted bail and was planning to appeal to a higher court.

Majority of journalists killed wrote on politics and corruption

Lankesh’s voice being silenced once again highlights that journalists covering politics and corruption in India are most at risk of being silenced by killing.

Over half of the 27 journalists murdered in the country since 1992 were covering politics and corruption – the two beats most likely to provoke violent repercussions, finds the Committee to Protect Journalist (CPJ). The threat from these seems to be rising.

India continues to languish in the bottom third of the 2017 World Press Freedom Index, ranking 136th of 180 countries. Among India’s neighbours, most fare better, including conflict-torn Afghanistan at 120, Pakistan at 139, Sri Lanka at 141, , Bangladesh at 146, Nepal at 100, Bhutan at 84 and China at 176. Norway leads while North Korea is at the bottom.

The Index ranks countries according to the level of freedom available to journalists. It is a snapshot of the media freedom situation based on an evaluation of pluralism, independence of the media, quality of legislative framework and safety of journalists in each country.

Source: RSF

‘It is not what you said, but why you said it’

A friend of the slain journalist who was also from the media fraternity is quoted as saying that Lankesh was very “in your face” in her brand of progressive activism against radical Hinduism.

“In my frequent interactions with her, I would tell her that her whole rhetoric should be more subtle,” her friend says. “She was very naive and she was politically incorrect. She was very bold, but indulged in sloganeering of a certain kind which I said would not achieve anything. She needed to strategize.”

“Our right to dissent is being threatened,” the intrepid journalist said instead.

Bold red placards at her funeral read, “It is not what you said, but why you said it.”

“Given the ways in which speech is being stifled, dire days lie ahead,” Lankesh told an online portal a few months before her death, in an intuitive foretelling of her violent end.

She installed two closed circuit surveillance systems a fortnight before the fatal attack.

No link has yet been established between her death and her ideology or writing by police investigations, but because she so fiercely fought for freedom of speech and freedom of thought, large sections of Indian media protesting her killing are expressing concern over what they described as a growing intolerance of dissenting political voices.

A senior journalist sums up the current sentiment saying, “Gauri Lankesh’s death is another stark reminder of how violence is the new normal (in India). Alternate opinion is no longer debated, it is silenced.”

The Reporters without Borders (RSF) 2017 index report too blames the rise of Hindu nationalism for India’s drop in ranking.

“The three-year-old (federal) administration has been trying to banish all “anti-nationalist” discourse from the Indian press. Journalists who refuse to censor themselves are the targets of defamation suits or are prosecuted under section 124A of the penal code, under which “sedition” is punishable by life imprisonment, the organization reiterated today.”

Getting away with murder

Hundreds of journalists are murdered, but in nine out of 10 cases their killers go free.

India’s unsolved journalist murders rose by 24 percent within just one year, finds CPJ’s latest Global Impunity Index 2016 which documents the top countries where the killers of journalists go unpunished and where cases of journalists killed remain unsolved. In comparison, Syria is up 85 percent and Brazil 36

CPJ finds it is most often criminal and political groups, government officials in India who get away with journalist murders. Rural and small-town journalists reporting on local corruption, crime, and politics are targeted most. Worse, in addition to failing to solve any journalist murder, India has never responded to UNESCO’s requests for the judicial status of journalist killings in the country.

Impunity is widely recognized as one of the greatest threats to press freedom. The Impunity Index finds globally, 95 percent of victims were local reporters. More of them covered politics and corruption than any other beat. Also in 40 percent of cases, the victims reported receiving threats before they were killed. Threats however are rarely investigated by authorities and in only a handful of cases is adequate protection provided. Of serious concern is CPJ’s finding that only 3 percent of total murder cases over the 2006 – 2016 decade have been brought to justice, including the prosecution of the masterminds.

No data on the murder of journalists is maintained separately, according to India’s home ministry, which administers law and crime. Since 2014 the national crime records bureau (NCRB) has however started collecting data only on grievously injurious attacks on media persons.

The federal or any of the State governments is yet to act on RSF’s 2015 call to the Indian government to launch a national safety plan for journalists, or at least establish alert and rescue mechanisms that would also send a strong message of support for media freedom.

India’s information and broadcasting ministry rejected RSF’s index ranking earlier this year, saying it found the sampling random in nature and it does not portray a proper and comprehensive picture of freedom of the press in India.

Earlier in February U.N. Secretary General António Guterres agreed to take steps to address the safety of journalists, at a meeting where RSF and CPJ called for the appointment of a special representative to the UNSG to end impunity, ensure safety.

Attacks on Asia Pacific’s free press escalates: Cambodia’s clampdown via huge back tax

With 34 countries and more than half the world’s population, the Asia-Pacific region holds all the records including the biggest number of “Predators of Press Freedom,” according to RSF.

Earlier this week, the English-language Cambodia Daily newspaper published its last issue on Sep. 4 after fighting for the right to report the news freely and independently for 24 years. It was forced to close by an unprecedented form of government pressure – a sudden demand to pay 6.3 million dollars in alleged back taxes, according to RSF.

The newspaper’s editor, Jodie DeJonge regards it as arbitrary and politically motivated, pointing out that no tax audit had been carried out, according to RSF, which also says that the Cambodia Daily has been one of the relatively few independent media outlets to cover corruption, deforestation and other stories that are embarrassing for the government. This clampdown on independent media outlets has come as Cambodia prepares to hold elections next year.

“But this is not a tax issue, it is a free press issue,” DeJonge told RSF.

Journalists working for the Brazilian newspaper Gazeta do Povo, harassed by a series of lawsuits after reporting the high remunerations of judges and prosecutors in the southern state of Paraná, during a meeting at the newspaper’s offices with Governor Carlos Alberto Richa. Credit: PSDB

By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, Oct 20 2016 (IPS)

The same justice that exists to ensure rights can become a tool to violate them and restrict freedom of the press, as seen with the recent wave of lawsuits against journalists and the media in Brazil.

The latest high-profile case involves the Gazeta do Povo, the main daily newspaper in Curitiba, the capital of the southern state of Paraná, which is facing 48 lawsuits from judges and public prosecutors who are suing the paper and several of its employees for reporting their incomes in February.

“There were weeks when four workdays out of five were spent running from one town to another in Paraná, to appear at hearings. I think overall we traveled more than 10,000 kilometres,” Rogerio Galindo, one of the three reporters facing legal action, told IPS.“This happened precisely in the midst of political upheaval in the country, jeopardising the sustainability of the newspaper and revealing a great potential (for a wave of lawsuits) to cause irreversible damage, when the press already faces serious economic difficulties.” -- Mendes Junior

Elvira Lobato, a journalist who writes for the Folha de São Paulo newspaper, went through a similar ordeal after publishing a Dec. 15, 2007 article titled “Universal celebrates its 30th birthday, with a business empire”, about the obscure dealings of the evangelical Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, which owns television and radio networks and newspapers.

Lucio Flavio Pinto, an award-winning journalist who has published the independent newsletter Jornal Pessoal since 1988 in Belém, the capital of the northern state of Pará, has faced 33 legal actions brought by the local media empire “O Liberal” since 1992, after he uncovered illegal activities allegedly engaged in by its owners, the Maiorana family.

In Gazeta do Povo, three journalists, a computer graphics artist, a systems analyst, and the newspaper publishing company face legal action, accused of causing damage to the plaintiffs, who are demanding monetary compensation.

These legal proceedings have been brought in small courts scattered through dozens of towns – civil lawsuits that do not exceed 40 legal minimum monthly wages (about 11,000 dollars).

“Counting the lawyer and the driver, seven of us had our family and professional lives disturbed” from April to June, said Galindo, who underscored the case of Euclides García, who was not able to be with his wife in the last months of her pregnancy.

Fortunately, the Federal Supreme Court ordered a suspension of all proceedings, in a preliminary ruling by Judge Rosa Weber on Jun. 30, on the eve of the birth of Garcia’s son.

The lawsuits were filed in response to a Feb. 15 Gazeta do Povo article which revealed that judges in Paraná received in 2015 remuneration averaging 527,500 Brazilian reals (165,000 dollars at the current exchange rate) – 28 per cent above the ceiling set by the constitution, which stipulates that judges cannot earn more than 90.25 per cent of what Supreme Court justices are paid.

In the case of the Paraná public prosecutors, their pay was 23 per cent above the constitutional limit.

This distortion was created by payments for different expenses, compensations, retroactive payments and subsidies, which were added to salaries.

“At no time was it stated that they were illegal remunerations, but that legal accumulations resulted in amounts that exceeded the constitutional limit,” Leonardo Mendes Junior, the newspaper’s editor-in-chief, told IPS.

The information disclosed is publicly available on the government’s Transparency web site. What the newspaper articles did was put it in a legal context and point out that the judicial branch cost Brazil 1.8 per cent of GDP, compared to an average of 0.4 per cent in Europe.

Lucio Flavio Pinto has won a number of international awards for his investigative reporting on corruption in the northern state of Pará, which has led to a number of lawsuits against him. Credit: Garapa.org

But the Association of Paraná Judges said in a statement that the “offensive content” in the articles suggested the presence of illegalities in the judicial branch and led to criticism of judges. They also denied having agreed on a number of individual lawsuits by its members, and that these actions threatened the freedom of press.

However, by forcing the accused to travel from town to town, some of them up to 500 kilometres away from the newspaper office in Curitiba, Gazeta do Povo’s reporting was undermined, as three of its seven political reporters were kept away from their jobs for many days.

“This happened precisely in the midst of political upheaval in the country, jeopardising the sustainability of the newspaper and revealing a great potential (for a wave of lawsuits) to cause irreversible damage, when the press already faces serious economic difficulties,” said Mendes Junior.

“It is interesting to note the concept of ‘judicial censorship’ mentioned by Carmen Lucia Rocha, the new president of the Federal Supreme Court, to describe the sequence of actions that keep away from their jobs a significant part of (a newspaper’s) journalists,” he said.

Each trip made by the defendants around the state to appear in hearings cost the newspaper about 25,000 reals (7,800 dollars), estimated Galindo, adding up costs of transport, hotels, meals and attorney’s fees, let alone the lost hours of journalistic work.

With the suspension of the legal proceedings, the journalists expect a final decision from the Federal Supreme Court, which is to take up the case as requested by Gazeta do Povo, arguing that judges in Paraná cannot try these cases since they are interested parties.

“Some of the judges have acknowledged that they cannot decide these cases, but most have not,” said Mendes.

This is an extreme case, in which justice system officials hand down rulings in their own interest, while punishing their alleged attackers with forced trips and proceedings that limit their freedom.

But the abuse of the right to sue journalists who report on awkward issues has become a common practice in Brazil.

In 2007 and 2008, the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God brought a total of 107 legal actions, filed by its followers around the country, to smother Elvira Lobato and Folha de São Paulo, Brazil’s most widely circulated newspaper. It does not really matter that the journalist and the paper won every case; the punishment preceded the judgment.

Lucio Flavio Pinto had to study law to defend himself, which took time away from his one-man publication, the Jornal Pessoal. The sales of the bimonthly newsletter, with a print run of 2,000 copies, is his source of income, since he accepts no advertising.

The legal proceedings against him lasted four to five years on average. But four lawsuits, filed 11 years ago, are still pending. Having been convicted twice, he counted on the solidarity of people all over the country to pay the monetary penalties.

In many cases, those suing him are not seeking the implementation of the sentences, he said. “They prefer to keep the sword hanging over my head, by dragging out the proceedings,” the journalist, whose investigative reporting prevented illegal appropriations of vast extensions of land in Pará, while costing him several physical assaults, told IPS.

“Recurrent legal actions are the most efficient form of censorship,” said Pinto, recognised as an “information hero” by the Paris-based Reporters without Borders.

In his case he did not receive solidarity from business organisations such as the National Association of Newspapers, which granted the 2016 Freedom of the Press award to Gazeta do Povo, reinforcing the general reaction from the journalism sector to the harassment from judges and prosecutors in Paraná.

There have been other “attempts to curtail freedom of the press that in turn help to prevent new cases” with their strong repercussions, Ángela Pimienta, head of the Institute for Journalistic Development that maintains the internet portal Press Observatory, told IPS.

By Jan Lundius
Helsinki, Jan 11 2016 (IPS)

The year 2015 was a sad one for journalists around the world, with approximately 60 journalists killed, more than 200 imprisoned and more than 400 exiled.

In many countries, people speaking up against abuse and violations have a rational fear for their lives and wellbeing. To address this issue, UNESCO and the Government of Finland will co-host a conference on journalists´ safety the week of International Press Freedom Day, 3 May 2016.

The choice of Finland to organize such an event is no mere coincidence. When Reporters Without Borders presented its World Press Freedom Index for 2015, Finland topped the list for the fifth year in a row. And Finland´s government has taken its commitment further by making transparency and information an institutional concern, for example by making broadband access a legal right and easing the way for citizens to participate in the legislative process through online means.

Is freedom of speech determined by culture? And, if so, did cultural forces help mold the Finnish government´s liberal attitude toward press freedom?
Often when rulers silence the media they do it in the name of security or preserving national culture or unity. So is freedom of speech determined by culture? And, if so, did cultural forces help mold the Finnish government´s liberal attitude toward press freedom?

Until 1809, Finland was part of Sweden, a country that in 1766 was the first nation in the world to abolish censorship and guarantee freedom of the press. But after subsequent conquest by the Russian Empire, growing Russian patriotism demanded a closer integration of Finland and, by the end of the 19th century, harsh censorship of the press was introduced. This and other measures, including Russian promotion of the Finnish language as a way to sever the country’s longstanding cultural ties with Sweden, fueled an already growing Finnish nationalism.

When the Russian tsar abdicated in 1917, the Finnish legislature declared independence, leading to a civil war between the country’s “Reds”, led by Social Democrats, and “Whites”, led by the conservatives in the Senate. Thirty-six thousand out of a population of 3 million died. The Reds executed 1,650 civilians, while the triumphant Whites executed approximately 9,000. The war resulted in an official ban on Communism, censorship of the socialist press and an increasing integration to the Western world economy. The new constitution established that the country would be bi-lingual, with both Finnish and Swedish taught in schools and at universities.

During World War II, harsh press censorship was introduced – this time by the Finnish government itself – as the country fought two wars against the Soviet Union and the subsequently fought to drive out its former German allies in those conflicts.

The development of the current Finnish freedom of speech probably has to be considered in relation to this arduous history, particularly the difficult aftermath of the wars with the Soviet Union and, through all of it, the Finnish people´s struggle to maintain their freedom and unique character as a nation.

Today, Finland has a lively press and a thriving culture production in both languages, even if Finnish people with Swedish as a mother tongue constitute only about 5 per cent of a population of 5.4 million. Even in the Internet Age, Finns remain avid newspaper readers, ranking first in the EU with almost 500 copies sold per day per 1, 000 inhabitants, surpassed only by Japan and Norway.

During the Cold War years, Finland’s efforts to cope with is proximity to Soviet Russia had grave repercussions on freedom of speech in the country. Due to Soviet pressure, some books were withdrawn from public libraries and Finnish publishers avoided literature that could cause Soviet displeasure. For example, the Finnish translation of Solzhenitsyn´s The Gulag Archipelago was published in Sweden. On several occasions, Moscow restricted Finnish politics and vetoed its participation in the Marshall Plan.

The dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 led to Finland’s expanded participation in Western political and economic structures. Finland joined the EU in 1994 and the euro was introduced in 1999. Restrictions on the media were relaxed and today, probably in reaction to its previous experiences with censorship, Finland is widely recognized having the most extensive press freedom of any country.

However, the rise of anti-immigrant political sentiment, as evidenced by the rise of the Finns´ Party, has cast a pall over popular media. Now the country’s second largest party after success in this year’s elections, the Finns´ Party combines left-wing economic policies with conservative social values, as well as a heavy dose of xenophobia, euro scepticism and Islamophobia, leading it to attract nationalistic fringe groups that are vociferous in public media.

One example is the group Suomen Sisu, which has an openly crude racial approach, disguised as “ethnopluralism,” an ideology stating that ethnic groups have to be kept separated and that Swedish speaking Finns’ influence on politics and culture has to be limited and that immigration has to be radically restricted, or even halted completely.

Finland´s most popular web site Homma is spreading this message, which also accuses Finnish media of being left-leaning and eroding Finnish national pride. The Finns’ Party´s leader, Timo Soini, is currently the country´s foreign minister and vice prime minister. While the party occasionally reacts harshly to criticism in media it states that it honors freedom of the press. Even when Soini was recently was attacked by the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, he stated that it was quite OK since it was an expression of the press freedom.

Nevertheless, with Finland now scheduled to host an international conference on press freedom, we should be watchful of the dangers to free expression that lurk in uninhibited nationalism and xenophobia. Nordic people often take their excellent record in human rights for granted and, in so doing, dismiss these dangers. Let’s hope that the May conference will serve as a reminder to us all that freedom of the press and of expression is something that has to be jealously guarded and vigorously protected through thick and thin.

(End)

Excerpt:

By Kitty Stapp
NEW YORK, Jun 25 2015 (IPS)

The Egyptian government is holding a record number of journalists in jail, a press freedom group said Thursday, despite promises to improve media freedoms in the country.

A prison census conducted by the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) at the start of this month found that Egyptian authorities were currently detaining at least 18 journalists in connection with their work. This is the highest number since CPJ began recording data on imprisoned journalists in 1990."The al-Sisi government is acting as though to restore stability Egypt needs a dose of repression the likes of which it hasn't seen for decades, but its treatment is killing the patient." -- Joe Stork of HRW

The group says that the government led by President Abdelfattah el-Sisi, who won nearly uncontested elections in May 2014, has used the pretext of national security to crack down on human rights, including press freedom.

The United States remains the country’s largest benefactor. Although the Barack Obama administration sent a critical report on Egypt to Congress last month, it still recommended that Washington continue sending 1.3 billion dollars in mostly military aid.

Asked whether the U.S. should use this aid as leverage to demand reforms, Sherif Mansour, CPJ’s programme coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa, told IPS, “We would like international policy makers and institutions to insist on respect for press freedom and the complete end to ongoing censorship as conditions for bilateral and multilateral support.

“They also should speak out against ongoing press violations in both public statements and private communications with the Egyptian government.”

In an ominous sign that authorities are increasingly focusing on the internet to quash dissent, more than half of the jailed journalists worked online.

Six of the journalists in CPJ’s census were sentenced to life in prison in a mass trial of 51 defendants.

Several others are being held in pretrial detention, and have not had a date set for a court hearing. One of those is Mahmoud Abou-Zeid, who was arrested in August 2013 while taking photographs of the violent dispersal of a sit-in in support of deposed president Mohamed Morsi, in which hundreds of Islamists were killed. He has been in pre-trial detention since then and has not been formally charged.

According to Human Rights Watch (HRW), a primary weapon in the crackdown is the “terrorist entities” decree issued on Nov. 26. It defines “terrorist” in extraordinarily broad terms: in addition to language about violence and threats of violence, the law covers any offence that in the view of authorities “harms national unity” or the environment or natural resources, or impedes work of public officials or application of the constitution or laws.

A “terrorist” is anyone who supports such an entity – support that can include “providing information.”

Foreign reporters have also been targeted. A year ago, on June 23, 2014, an Egyptian court convicted three Al Jazeera journalists and 15 others for their alleged association with the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood.

While the White House complained at the time that the verdict “flouts the most basic standards of media freedom and represents a blow to democratic progress in Egypt,” it did not cut off aid.

The three Al-Jazeera journalists, all of whom had previously worked for mainstream international news media, were Egyptian-Canadian Mohamed Fahmy, Australian Peter Greste, and Egyptian Baher Mohamed.

They were detained after a raid on their studio in the Marriott Hotel in Cairo and charged with membership in the Muslim Brotherhood and fabricating video footage to “give the appearance Egypt is in a civil war.” The three were initially sentenced to seven years in a maximum-security prison, with an additional three years for Mohamed for possessing a spent shell he kept as a souvenir.

Other defendants, mostly students, were accused of aiding the reporters in allegedly fabricating the footage. While two were acquitted, most were sentenced to seven years in prison; those tried in absentia were sentenced to 10 years.

Fahmy, Greste and Mohamed are finally out of prison, though Fahmy and Mohamed still face a new trial on the same charges of supporting the “terrorist” Muslim Brotherhood.

“The trial was a complete sham,” according to Philip Luther, director of the Middle East and North Africa at Amnesty International.

In a scathing report issued on March 6, HRW marked al-Sisi’s first year in power by noting that arbitrary and politically motivated arrests have soared since al-Sisi, then defence minister, seized power in July 2013 from Egypt’s first democratically elected president, Mohamed al-Morsi.

“The al-Sisi government is acting as though to restore stability Egypt needs a dose of repression the likes of which it hasn’t seen for decades, but its treatment is killing the patient,” wrote Joe Stork, HRW’s deputy Middle East and North Africa director.

According to CPJ, the president is soon expected to sign into law a draft cybercrime bill, framed as anti-terrorism legislation, which allows law enforcement agencies to block websites and pursue heavy prison sentences against Internet users for vaguely defined crimes such as “harming social peace” and “threatening national unity.”

“The potential implications for bloggers and journalists are dire,” the group says.

The bill has been endorsed by the cabinet, and is awaiting el-Sisi’s approval to come into law.

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

U.S. police arrest May Day protester in Oakland, California. Credit: Judith Scherr/IPS

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 22 2015 (IPS)

Democracy is on the retreat and authoritarianism is on the rise in more than 96 of the U.N.’s 193 member states, according to a new report released here.

The two regions of “highest concern” for defenders of civic space are Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East and North Africa, which between them account for over half of the countries counted."Legitimate civil society activities are worryingly under threat in a huge number of countries in the global North and South, democratic and authoritarian, on all continents." -- Dr. Dhananjayan Sriskandarajah

These violations are increasing not only in countries perceived to be democratic but also in countries with blatantly repressive regimes.

“The widespread systematic attack on these core civil society liberties has taken many forms, including assault, torture, kidnapping and assassination,” says the CIVICUS Civil Society Watch Report.

“We have known for some time that encroachments on civic space and persecution of peaceful activists were on the rise but it’s more pervasive than many may think,” said Dr. Dhananjayan Sriskandarajah, Secretary-General of CIVICUS, a South Africa-based international alliance dedicated to strengthening citizen action and civil society worldwide.

“Our monitoring in 2014 shows that legitimate civil society activities are worryingly under threat in a huge number of countries in the global North and South, democratic and authoritarian, on all continents,” he added.

The report says while activists engaged in political reform, uncovering corruption and human rights violations continue to be targeted, those defending local communities from land grabs and environmental degradation, as well as those promoting minority group rights, have been subjected to various forms of persecution.

“The link between unethical business practices and closing civic space is becoming clearer as global inequality and capture of power and resources by a handful of political and economic elite rises. “

Advocacy for equitable sharing of natural resources and workers’ rights is becoming increasingly fraught with danger, says the report.

The examples cited range from the killings of environmental activists in Brazil to the intimidation of organisations challenging the economic discourse in India, to arbitrary detention of activists opposing oil exploration in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

Jenni Williams (in white cap) addresses Women of Zimbabwe Arise members at Zimbabwe’s parliament building in Harare with the police looking on. Zimbabwe is one of the African countries where repression of civic freedoms appears to have intensified. Credit: Misheck Rusere/IPS

Asked to identify some of the worst offenders, Mandeep Tiwana, Head of Policy and Research at CIVICUS, told IPS : “We don’t provide a ranking of the countries’ violations, but we are able to categorise limitations on civil society activities into completely closed countries and active violators of civic freedoms.”

He said “closed countries” are where virtually no civic activity can take place due to an extremely repressive environment. These include Eritrea, North Korea, Syria, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.

There is a second list of countries that are active violators of civil society rights – meaning they imprison, intimidate and attack civil society members and put in place all kinds of regulations to limit the activities of civil society organisations (CSOs), particularly those working to uncover corruption and human rights violations, Tiwana said.

These include Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Belarus, China, Cuba, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Vietnam.

The report also points out some of the tactics deployed to close civic space include passing restrictive laws and targeting individual civil society organisations (CSOs) by raiding their offices, freezing their bank accounts or deregistering them.

A number of democracies are also engaging in illicit surveillance of civil society activists, further weakening respect for human rights.

Stigmatisation and demonisation of civil society activists by powerful political figures and right-wing elements remains an area of concern.

“When citizens’ most basic democratic rights are being violated in more than half the world’s countries, alarm bells must start ringing for the international community and leaders everywhere,” said Sriskandarajah.

Tiwana told IPS governments in Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Oman, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have stepped up their efforts to prevent public demonstrations and the activities of human rights groups.

“There appears to be no let-up in official censorship and repression of active citizens in authoritarian states like China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, and Vietnam.”

In sub-Saharan Africa, he said, the repression of civic freedoms appears to have intensified in countries such as Angola, Burundi, Ethiopia, Gambia, Rwanda, Sudan, Swaziland and Zimbabwe.

And activists and civil society groups in many countries in Central Asia and Eastern Europe — where democracy remains fragile or non-existent such as Azerbaijan, Belarus, Hungary, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Turkey, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan — are also feeling the heat following governments’ reactions to scuttle demands for political reform.

In South-East Asia, Tiwana pointed out, countries such as Cambodia and Malaysia have a history of repressive governance and in Thailand, where the military seized power through a recent coup, new ‘security’ measures continue to be implemented to restrict civic freedoms.

Asked what role the United Nations can play in naming and shaming these countries, Tiwana said the U.N. Human Rights Council has emerged as a key international forum for the protection of civic freedoms particularly through the Universal Periodic Review process where each country gets its human rights record reviewed every four years.

The Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) is currently collating best practices to create a safe and enabling environment for civil society.

The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Raad Al-Hussein has been an active supporter of civil society’s ability to operate freely, as was his predecessor, Navi Pillay, who was ardent advocate of civic freedoms, Tiwana said.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@aol.com

The collapse of autocratic regimes in Tunisia and Egypt broke the state's stranglehold on the local press, but journalists and bloggers must still be careful what they say. Credit: Cam McGrath/IPS

By Valentina Ieri
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 24 2015 (IPS)

While technology has given millions greater freedom to express themselves, in the world’s 10 most censored countries, this basic right exists only on paper, if at all.

According to a report by the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), which will be officially released at U.N. headquarters on Apr. 27, the worst offenders are Eritrea and North Korea, followed by Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia, Azerbaijan, Vietnam, Iran, China, Myanmar and Cuba."Countries that were on our list in previous years continue to be on the list. But the forms of censorship have changed." -- CPJ's Courtney Radsch

Courtney Radsch, the advocacy director of CPJ, told IPS, “These countries use a wide range of traditional tactics of censorship, including jailing of journalists, harassment of journalists, prosecuting local press and independent press.”

According to CPJ’s 2014 prison census, Eritrea is Africa’s leading jailer of journalists, with at least 23 behind bars – none of whom has been tried in court or even charged with a crime. Among the other most censored countries on the list is China with 44, Iran with 30, and 17 jailed journalists in Ethiopia.

In countries where governments jail reporters regularly for critical coverage, many journalists are forced to flee rather than risk arrest, said the report.

Africa researcher at Human Rights Watch (HRW), Felix Horne, told IPS, “If you are a journalist in Ethiopia, you are faced with a stark choice: either you self-censor your writings, you end up in prison, or you are exiled from your country.”

According to the report Journalism is not a Crime, released by HRW in January 2015, over 30 journalists fled Ethiopia in 2014. Six of the last independent publications have shut down and there are at least 19 journalists and bloggers in prison for exercising their right to freedom of expression.

In both Ethiopia and Eritrea, anti-terrorism laws have been used to effectively silence dissenting voices and to target opposition politicians, journalists, and activists, Horne said.

“This law is the ultimate threat for Ethiopian journalists and its use against bloggers and journalists has led to increased rates of self-censorship amongst what is left of Ethiopia’s independent media scene.”

Traditional forms of censorship are going hand in hand with new subtle, modern, and faster strategies such as internet restrictions, regulation of media and press laws, and the limitation of mobile devices.

Radsch underlined, “The situation has gotten worse. We have seen a historical level of imprisonment of journalists and an increasing expansion of censorship (which) developed more sophisticated forms, including pre-publications censorship, restricted access to info content, and content regulations.”

The CPJ report says that in order to avoid an “Arab Spring” in Eritrea, the authorities have strongly limited internet access, with no possibility of gathering independent information.

Radsch highlighted that gathering public information through local internet access – the right to broadband – is recognised by the U.N., as a fundamental human right. But, in Eritrea and North Korea, as well as Cuba, the internet is essentially not permitted.

Access to mobile phones is also restricted.

“There are virtually no phones in Eritrea and there are limited phones in North Korea, where they can get in through smuggling networks from China,” she said, adding that these kind of restrictions are applied not only to reporters, but to the general public more broadly.

According to CPJ, globally, Eritrea has the lowest rate of cell phone users, with just 5.6 percent of the population owning one. In North Korea, only 9.7 percent of the population has cell phones, excluding phones smuggled in from China.

Other countries, including Saudi Arabia, China, Vietnam and Azerbaijan, have internet, but its access is strongly limited through the blocking of web content, restrictive access regulations, and persecuting those who violates the rules, added Radsch.

Censorship in the 10 listed countries affect mainly local journalists, apart from the case of Egypt where foreign reporters have been imprisoned, said Radsch. But censorship is also applied to foreign correspondents in other ways, such as denying entry visas to those countries or by deporting them.

The previous two lists of most censored countries compiled by CPJ date back to 2006 and 2012.

Radsch said, “One of the reasons why we cannot publish these lists every year is because censorship tactics have not changed much from year to year. In general, countries that were on our list in previous years continue to be on the list. But the forms of censorship have changed.”

To keep track of government data is difficult due to their lack of transparency, explained Radsch.

Although the international community is aware of human rights violations in repressive countries, concrete action to protect freedom of expression is still lacking.

Horne underlined that in Ethiopia, for instance, despite its dismal human rights record, the country continues to enjoy significant support from Western governments, both in relation to Ethiopia’s progress towards the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and its role as a regional peacekeeper.

“But ignoring Ethiopia’s horrendous human rights situation and the internal tensions this is causing may have long-term implications for Western interests in the Horn of Africa,” Horne concluded.

CPJ is also calling on the international community to ensure that anti-terrorist laws are not used illegitimately by states to strengthen censorship even further against the press.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Iranian-American Jason Rezaian, the Washington Post's Tehran Bureau Chief, has been detained in Iran since July 22, 2014. Credit: http://freejasonandyegi.com/

By Jasmin Ramsey
WASHINGTON, Mar 12 2015 (IPS)

The lawyer for Jason Rezaian, the Iranian-American Washington Post reporter detained in Tehran since Jul. 22, 2014, has officially requested temporary bail for her client during Nowruz, the beginning of the Persian calendar year when some prisoners have customarily been granted furlough requests.

“This time of year, with his birthday and Nowruz [Mar. 21] coming up, we are certainly hopeful that the folks in government will see that there is really no justifiable reason for Jason to be in prison,” said Jason’s brother, Ali, in an interview here Wednesday with IPS.“[The Rouhani government] would like to see him free, but they have shown to be completely unwilling to spend any of their political capital on this case or any of the other horrendous violations going on in the country." -- Hadi Ghaemi

Rezaian, who spoke at the National Press Club’s event today naming Jason as a recipient of its John Abuchon press freedom award, said his family has not been officially informed of the charge his brother is facing.

The Iranian judiciary, which does not recognise dual citizenship, hasn’t publicly announced charges. But Foreign Minister Javad Zarif said Sept. 17 that Rezaian, whom he described as a “fair reporter,” is aware of the charge during an interview with National Public Radio (NPR).

Mohammad Larijani, a top advisor to Iran’s supreme leader and the head of the judiciary’s human rights council, was also unspecific but told Euronews Nov. 11 that Rezaian was “involved in activities beyond journalism.”

The influential politician added that he expected Rezaian to be released soon: “My hope is that before going to the court process, the prosecutor could be content to drop the case to see that maybe the accusations are not quite substantial.”

Four months later, Rezaian is facing trial in the Islamic Republic’s revolutionary court, which operates separately from criminal and civil courts and handles cases categorized by the judiciary as pertaining to national security issues.

Human rights groups say the court tries people for ideological and political reasons and that case outcomes are often predetermined with harsh sentences.

“Jason is not only a credentialed journalist engaging in journalist activities, he’s also a reporter for the Washington Post and it should be understood that his job requires him to speak to people and understand what is going on in Iran and portray the life and the activities of the people there,” Ali Rezaian told IPS. “He has done this fairly for more than a decade.”

Longest-held Western journalist

Born to an Iranian father and American mother, Jason Rezaian, who covered Iran for IPS until 2012, will likely spend his 39th birthday in Iran’s notorious Evin prison on Mar. 15.

Rezaian moved to Iran, where press freedom is severely limited, in 2008, and became the Washington Post’s Tehran bureau chief in 2012.

No other journalist working with a Western news outlet has been held as long as Rezaian, who has been detained for more than 230 days.

Ali Rezaian told IPS that his brother loved his life in Iran and would often encourage foreigners to see the country for themselves.

“He always said: ‘You should come and see it; it’s a wonderful place.’ And if people would say things that were not right about Iran he would say: ‘You don’t understand; come and see it.'”

Extending beyond the common Western news themes of the nuclear programme and political infighting, Rezaian’s journalistic portfolio is heavily focused on the social and cultural aspects of life in Iran.

“You know, you look at the work that he did with the Post and he spent a lot of time showing people a different side of Iran than we are regularly exposed to here in America,” said Rezaian.

“It’s just his nature to communicate with all sorts of people and its part of being a journalist, to ask questions, to try and reach out to people on both sides of the discussion to promote understanding,” he said.

Since being detained, Rezaian reportedly struggled to get several health conditions treated in a timely manner and has lost 50 pounds. But he may be suffering most from the isolation and lack of human contact, according to his brother, who said Jason spent five months in solitary confinement before being moved to a cell with another prisoner.

Initially seeking to personally request her son’s release from Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, Rezaian’s Istanbul-based mother Mary was only allowed to see her son in Evin prison twice in December.

“I need a head doctor, because this is going on way too long,” Jason Rezaian told his mother after showing her he had not been tortured during a videotaped meeting, according to the Christian Science Monitor.

Since then, his family abroad has been unable to speak to Jason and the frequency and amount of contact with his wife, reporter Yeganeh Salehi who was detained with Rezaian and released on bail in October, has dramatically decreased.

Campaign

The National Press Club released a letter today signed by prominent American journalists addressed to Iranian judicial chief Sadegh Larijani expressing “grave concern” over Rezaian’s detention and what it called “the ongoing disregard for the legal protections assured its citizens by the Iranian constitution.”

Boxing star Muhammad Ali also issued a statement through the club. “To my knowledge Jason is a man of peace and great faith, a man whose dedication and respect for the Iranian people is evident in his work. I support his family, friends and colleagues in their efforts to obtain his release,” he said

In addition to his family’s stepped up efforts and calls by the U.S. government, his editors, and journalistic institutions for Rezaian’s release, an online support petition has received more than 235,000 signatures from around the world.

The hashtag “#FreeJason” continues to be circulated on social media including Twitter and Facebook.

But while some of the conditions of Rezaian’s custody have improved, he remains incarcerated while he and his family agonise over his fate.

His story is meanwhile competing for media coverage with the intensive talks over Iran’s nuclear programme aimed at reaching a final agreement by the end of June.

“This case has been a headache in the Iranian government’s foreign policy dealings with the outside world,” said Hadi Ghaemi, the executive director of the New York-based International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran. “But due to the sensitive time of the negotiations its probably not getting the attention it should.

“[The Rouhani government] would like to see him free but they have shown to be completely unwilling to spend any of their political capital on this case or any of the other horrendous violations going on in the country,” he said.

“Iran needs to feel more heat to release him,” added Ghaemi.

A State Department official told IPS, “We are doing everything we can to secure the release of Jason Rezaian and the other U.S. citizens detained and missing in Iran.”

The cases of American citizens were being kept separate from the ongoing negotiations over Iran’s nuclear programme, added the official.

“Nowruz is a wonderful time for the higher-ups in government to take a hard look at the evidence that some people say they have to decide if that’s really deserving of time in prison, let alone nearly eight months, and if not make it clear to those in power that Jason should be acquitted,” said Ali Rezaian.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Mexican journalists silently march in Mexico City in 2010, protesting violence and intimidation against the press. Credit: Knight Foundation / CC BY-SA 2.0

By Lyndal Rowlands
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 27 2015 (IPS)

Organised criminals in Mexico are forcing the media to stop reporting on crime, by turning their violence against journalists.

With the Mexican state offering journalists little protection, the resultant drop in freedom of information has contributed to a heightened sense of insecurity in the country."People are saying 'we are not going to cover certain areas', fearing revenge and not trusting that the state is going to be able to protect them.” -- Claire San Filippo

Claire San Filippo, head of Reporters Without Borders’ Americas desk, told IPS that journalists in Mexico are self-censoring due to threats and violence, but also because violence against journalists is rarely punished by the state.

“It is of tremendous concern for information freedom because people are saying ‘we are not going to cover certain areas’, fearing revenge and not trusting that the state is going to be able to protect them.”

San Filippo says that the state bears the primary duty under international law to protect journalists.

“The state obviously has a responsibility to protect the journalist, and to make sure that they can guarantee their security,” she said.

“There is a mechanism to actually protect human rights defenders and journalists and unfortunately, the mechanism hasn’t been working in a very efficient manner and hasn’t really helped the situation overall.”

The first two months of 2015 have already seen marked violence and intimidation towards journalists, including kidnappings and threats.

Reporting for Journalism in the Americas Mariana Muñoz wrote last week, “An increase in organized crime-related violence has terrorized the Mexican border state of Tamaulipas over the past week. Conflicts between rival cartel factions in the neighboring border cities of Reynosa and Matamoros have left dozens dead, escalating the present danger for journalists practicing in the region.​”

The newspaper El Mañana reported on a gunfight that killed nine people. Although they did not name any cartel individuals involved, their editor, Juárez Torres, was kidnapped and warned “We are going to kill you.”

Torres later “fled the country, half of the staff did not return to work the following day, and at least four journalists at the publication immediately announced their resignation,” Muñoz reported.

El Mañana has since avoided reporting on violent crime in Tamaulipas.

Speaking about Torres’ kidnapping and other similar incidents, San Filippo said, “When you look at the beginning of this year, it’s obviously dramatic and extremely preoccupying because we have journalists who say ‘we are not going to cover the issues of insecurity, violence and it’s consequences on people’ or we’re actually going to leave the country to go to the United States because we feel so unsecure.”

She says that Reporters Without Borders calls on the Mexican government to take the threats against journalists seriously and “not try to either diminish them or try to discredit the journalists by saying that they are actually not journalists and saying they are not related.”

She said the state should also provide timely and effective protection to journalists and their families when the journalists request it and importantly, must hold perpetrators of violence against journalists accountable.

San Filippo said this was important so that “journalists can feel secure and feel that they can carry out their job without risking their lives or lives and physical integrity of their loved ones.”

“This is the only way that you can make sure that you can ensure that there is no self-censorship and journalists don’t feel that they have to go to another country to feel safe.”

Home of organised crime

According to In Sight Crime, a foundation that studies organised crime in the Americas, “Mexico is home to the (Western) hemisphere’s largest, most sophisticated and violent organized criminal gangs.”

“They traffic in illegal drugs, contraband, arms and humans, and launder their proceeds through regional moneychangers, banks and local economic projects. They have penetrated the police and border patrols on nearly every level, in some cases starting with recruits for these units. They play political and social roles in some areas, operating as the de facto security forces.”

Steve Killelea, executive chair of the Institute for Economics and Peace, wrote last year that since “the start of the calamitous drug war in 2007” Mexico has dropped 45 places on the International Peace Index – down to 133 of 162 countries on the most recent (2013) index.

Killelea says that although Mexico does well in terms of development indicators such as life expectancy and youth empowerment, its poor overall rating in peace is partly due to the consequences of violence against journalists and poor freedom of information.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Source: Reporters Without Borders

By Leila Lemghalef
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 13 2015 (IPS)

A leading advocacy group warns of a “worldwide deterioration in freedom of information” last year.

Out of the 180 countries being surveyed, two-thirds have slipped in standards compared to last year, according to the Reporters Without Borders’  World Press Freedom Index 2015. The best have become less near-perfect, and the worst have gotten even worse.“We live in a world where there is much more data available. But how we can trust that data, the source of that data, and how we might understand that data, is subject to all kinds of forces." -- Charlie Beckett

Finland and Eritrea remain at first and last place, respectively. Norway and Denmark are in 2^nd and 3^rd place, while Turkmenistan and North Korea are second runner-up and runner-up to Eritrea, respectively.

In an interview with IPS, the U.S. Director of Reporters Without Borders, Delphine Halgand, brought up several cases, including China “the world’s biggest prison for journalists”, and Azerbaijan, which has “managed to eliminate almost all traces of pluralism”.

Since 2002, Reporters Without Borders has been publishing the Index to measure the degree of press freedom. The Index is not a measure of the quality of media.

“It’s a way for anybody to be aware of how press freedom, journalists, are attacked, in many countries. Sometimes they don’t have any idea. Like, ‘we love to go to Turkey, we love to go to Vietnam, but we don’t have the idea that there’re so many news providers that are targeted in these beautiful countries.’ So it’s a way to highlight this very important issue,” said Halgand.

She said that this year, for the first time, a lot of the data has been made public in order to improve the transparency and methodology used in the Index, which uses qualitative and quantitative criteria.

The 2015 Index trends are grouped into seven causes:

• Total control – “Regimes seeking ever more information control” – in Eastern Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East.
• Conflict – “News control – the powerful weapon of war” – such as in Ukraine, Syria, and Iraq.
• Lawless entities – “Non-state groups: tyrants of information” – such as Boko Haram, Islamic State, the Italian mafia and Latin American drug lords.
• Sacrilege – “Blasphemy: political use of religious censorship” – or the criminalisation of blasphemy, which the index says endangers freedom of information in approximately half of the world’s countries.
• Demonstration dangers – “The growing difficulty of covering demonstrations” – seeing an increase in violence against reporters and ‘netizens’ covering demonstrations.
• Gaps in the European Union – “European model’s erosion” – EU countries rank from 1^st to 106^th in the index.
• Laws – “‘National security’ – spurious grounds” – among authoritarian and democratic governments alike, to control independent speech.

Measuring up

Press freedom and how to measure it is a very complex question today, said Halgand.

“Press freedom in Sudan isn’t the same thing as press freedom in Italy. So that’s why we try to work around these seven criteria of pluralism, media independence, self-censorship, legislative frameworks, transparency, infrastructure, abuses.

“It’s a complex issue definitely and that’s why we need to use many criteria to try to be as precise as possible. But even if we try to put this complicated issue into criteria, of course the situation is always unique in each country,” she told IPS.

Charlie Beckett is professor at the London School of Economics (LSE) in the department of media and communications, and is also the director of Polis, which is the LSE’s journalism think tank.

“Whilst at some levels it’s very complicated,” he told IPS, “at some levels it’s very simple.

“If you look at journalists that have been put in jail, if you look at journalists who have been hurt physically, then it’s quite crude but that’s quite a good measure of basic journalistic freedom. And I know personally, I’ll start to worry about the more subtle things, such as disinformation, I’ll worry about them, but my life isn’t being threatened if I’m a journalist.

“So first give me my basic freedoms and you know, then we can talk about the more sophisticated problems.”

The more sophisticated problems include surges in data.

“I think it’s increasingly difficult to measure media freedom because increasingly media has become so complex,” Beckett told IPS.

“We live in a world where there is much more data available. But how we can trust that data, the source of that data, and how we might understand that data, is subject to all kinds of forces.

He explained that it is no longer straightforwardly about censorship, or laws, or even about the physical manifestation of violence against journalists.

There’s also the “chilling climate” wherein if one journalist gets killed, the other 99 are much more likely to do as they’re told, he said.

“Even where the press is publishing something, you don’t know under what circumstances. Are they being intimidated, are they being bribed, are they being pressurized?”

Another point is that “there’s no point in having free journalists if people aren’t free to share the information, for example, themselves”, as Beckett said.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Credit: Public Domain

By Vesna Peric Zimonjic
BELGRADE, Jun 2 2014 (IPS)

Waters have receded in Serbia after the worst flooding the country has seen in 120 years, and something new has surfaced, apart from devastated fields and property – censorship of the internet.

A number of sites and blogs that criticised the government’s behaviour at the peak of the floods two weeks ago – in which over 50 people died – were hacked, unavailable or removed, showing the “error 404” message whenever an attempt was made to access them.

Some 30 people have been detained in the past two weeks for “dissemination of false news and panic”, in the words of the Public Prosecutor’s Office.

Three young men spent nine days in custody for their Facebook posts, which cited hundreds of casualties in the worst hit town of Obrenovac, 33 kms south west from Belgrade. The three were released but will soon face trial. If guilty, they face six months to five years in prison."There is an obvious effort by the state to narrow the social dialogue … It's also an effort to introduce one-mindedness in the country" – head of the Independent Journalists' Association of Serbia (NUNS)

Sources at the Prosecutor’s Office, who insisted on anonymity, told IPS that “such comments and posts could have caused panic or grave disturbance of public order”, denying that the process represented any type of crawling censorship. Censorship is banned by the Constitution of Serbia.

However, hacking and downing of the Teleprompter.rs and Drugastrana.rs sites that carried highly critical items on Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic and his government’s behaviour under titles “People are desperate”, “Vucic to stop with pathos and self pity”, “State, we’d won’t keep you any longer” were described as clear censorship by professionals and the Ombudsman of the Republic of Serbia, Sasa Jankovic.

A blog on the most popular site which said “I’ AV (Aleksandar Vucic), resign”, was removed without any explanation from the web site of “Blic” newspaper. Axel Springer Media, the owner of the paper, would not comment on the case.

“There is an obvious effort by the state to narrow the social dialogue,” said the head of the Independent Journalists’ Association of Serbia (NUNS). “It’s also an effort to introduce one-mindedness in the country.”

Ombudsman Jankovic said in a statement that it is becoming harder to hide censorship because “we see more often that some information or critics are being withdrawn from publicly available media and information space.”

One clear case of censorship was the removal of the appeal by Belgrade Mayor Sinisa Mali to citizens of Obrenovac not to leave their homes on Friday, May 16. It was posted on the official site of the Serbian capital of Belgrade, because Obrenovac is one of its city municipalities.

It disappeared from the site after the town was completely flooded the same day, when 23,000 people were hastily evacuated. It remained at cache, only to be re-distributed over Facebook and Twitter en masse.

Mali is one of the top officials of Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) of Prime Minister Vucic. The SNS won last early general elections in May and run the nation together with Socialists of late strongman Slobodan Milosevic. The coalition has run the country since 2012, when Democrats, who toppled Milosevic in 2000, lost elections due to widespread corruption and inability to save the country from the effects of the global downturn.

However, the Prime Minister denied existence of censorship in his recent appearance at state-run Radio-television of Serbia (RTS).

“It is absolutely untrue that there was censorship or that there were demands for certain texts or posts to be withdrawn,” Vucic said.

He was reacting fiercely to a statement by Dunja Mijatovic, media freedom official of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). At last week’s OSCE meeting in Stockholm, she expressed deep concern over allegations that websites and online content are being blocked in Serbia.

“This is a clear violation of the right to free expression. The Internet provides unparalleled opportunities to support these rights and is essential for the free flow and access to information,” she said.

For professionals in Serbia, the behaviour of Vucic does not come as a surprise. In 1999, at the time of NATO bombing, he was part of the Milosevic’s government, the youngest-ever Information Minister. Strict media censorship, together with repressive laws with fines amounting to hundreds of thousands of dollars for independent media marked his time in that position.

“It’s the same as in Milosevic’s era, maybe worse” said veteran journalist Jasminka Kocijan.

She experienced first-hand the consequences of meddling into state affairs earlier this year.

After a widely propagated footage showed Vucic saving a child from snow in the northern town of Feketic, she posted on her Facebook page an item from the Red Cross which described how volunteers really saved people stuck in high snow. She was immediately removed from her editorial post at the state-run Tanjug news agency.

Since coming to power in 2012, Vucic and his team have been diligent in efforts to remove all the satirical or even factual online contents dealing with Progressives. A blog on internal issues within the party was removed back then, while online photos or items on Vucic’s second marriage last November were immediately removed.

The last incident of the online censorship happened on Sunday evening, when the Pescanik.net web site went down. It carried an analysis of three university professors on the doctor’s thesis by Vucic’s right hand and Minister of Interior Nebojsa Stefanovic. The analysis showed that the thesis was a plagiarism.

Graffiti in Cairo showing police brutality. Credit: Cam McGrath/IPS

By Jonathan Rozen
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 24 2014 (IPS)

On Dec. 29, 2013, just over a month before the third anniversary of the start of the Egyptian revolution that ended the 30-year rule of Hosni Mubarak, three high-profile journalists for Al Jazeera English were arrested in their hotel suite in Cairo.

Despite international condemnation, the Egyptian government has moved ahead with a trial, now set to resume Mar. 5. Altogether, nine Al Jazeera journalists and 11 others have been charged with conspiring with terrorists, undermining national unity and social peace and broadcasting false information, for their coverage of the Muslim Brotherhood.“They are basically trying to go after high-profile people and use that as a way to intimidate others." -- Joe Stork

A history of control

Media censorship in Egypt is not new, but advocates say the political transitions of the past three years have brought additional challenges for free expression.

“A combination of legal and illegal ways are used by the government to punish, intimidate and threaten independent and critical voices, including journalists,” Sherif Mansour, director of the Committee to Protect Journalists’ (CPJ) Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Division, told IPS.

Source: CPJ

Since 2011, when the political turmoil in Egypt began, advocates say there have not been large differences in media censorship between each of the political transitions. While the targets of silencing efforts have shifted depending on who is in power, the legal apparatus that is used to censor undesirable voices has remained the same.

“The press law or penal code form the Mubarak era has not been replaced,” Soazig Drollet, head of the MENA division at Reporters Without Borders (RSF), told IPS.

“All the regimes since the uprising in 2011 have used their power to repress media for their own sake…we saw it with the supreme council of Armed Forces in 2011, we saw it with the Muslim Brotherhood in 2012, and now we see it with [Field Marshall Abdul Fattah al-] Sisi,” she said. “There is the same will to control the media and not respect the principles of pluralism.”

Under the current military government, a combination of legal and extra-legal methods are used to pressure and censor the media. Presently, the primary focus of these efforts has been directed against any discussion of the former ruling party, the Muslim Brotherhood.

Since their fall from power in 2013, the Muslim Brotherhood has been labelled a terrorist organisation by the current leadership and their existence completely discredited.

“If you support the Muslim Brothers…you are in trouble,” Nader Gohar, chairman of the Cairo News Company (CNC), an Egyptian news station with a main office in Tahrir Square, told IPS.

While the Al Jazeera case represents just a fraction of the journalists imprisoned by the military regime, it also indicates a new logic behind its repressive tactics.

“They are basically trying to go after high-profile people and use that as a way to intimidate others who might have some critical thoughts,” Joe Stork, deputy director for MENA at Human Rights Watch, told IPS. “The Al Jazeera journalists fall into this category.”

Many governments have increasingly used “anti-terror” charges, like the ones against the Al Jazeera journalists, as a justification for censorship, something that has contributed to the degradation of global press freedom, said Joel Simon, executive director of CPJ.

In January 2014, a new provisional constitution was passed in Egypt.

“Parts of the constitution look a little bit better [for media freedom] than the one by the Muslim Brotherhood,” Drollet told IPS. But “if you really look at the text carefully, they say many things that are really concerning…mainly when it comes to this possibility of censorship when there is wartime and a state of emergency.”

But the constitution is not the only factor in assessing the legal apparatus surrounding Egyptian media freedom.

“The problem isn’t so much the constitution, the problem is the actual laws that are used,” said Stork. “We’re talking now not about the constitution, but about the penal code.”

In 2013, for the first time, CPJ ranked Egypt among the top 10 jailers of journalists in the world, while RSF ranked Egypt in the lowest section of its press freedom index, at 158th out of 179 countries.

Self-censorship

For Gohar and the Cairo News Company, the current military regime has not been as bad as the conditions under the Muslim Brotherhood. That is, as long as they avoid covering the Muslim Brothers in a positive light.

“When we started to have the Muslim Brothers’ [government], they were a threat, they have a kind of militia who bothered us,” he said. “They were like a censorship beside the regular government censorship.”

Nevertheless, the current regime has also affected the way the CNC operates. Since the fall of President Mohamed Morsi, the military government and the Ministry of Communication have not permitted the renewal of the CNC’s press certification.

“It’s kind of like a precaution, like, lets wait and see,” said Gohar. “The officials don’t want to give permission, in case we do something wrong.”

Media licences have been heavily restricted for almost three years, since the revolution in 2011, essentially forcing many media outlets to break the law to continue operations.

The authorities want to see what is going to be published, explained Gohar. “If someone is not behaving, they can stop them easily.”

Self-censorship is “always the first consequence when you have a crackdown on news media and journalists,” Delphine Halgand, U.S. director for RSF, told IPS. “Arrests, imprisonment, charges and an increase in prosecution are having a major deterrent effect on journalists.”

A polarised population

The increasingly polarised and politicised population has also had an impact on media freedom in Egypt. Currently, a vast majority strongly supports the military government and al-Sisi, who is expected to win the presidency by a landslide.

For Egyptian journalists, this means that repercussions for criticism of the government will just as likely come from the people as from the government.

“You will be treated like a traitor,” said Gohar. “This is new, that there is harassment from the public toward the media.”

While the United Nations has expressed its concern over the “increasingly severe clampdown and physical attacks” on media in Egypt, human rights organisation say that publicising the lack of media freedom is likely the best way to apply pressure on the Egyptian government to relax censorship and release imprisoned journalists.

“They really have gone too far,” said Drollet, referring to the military government’s policy. “They have lost any credibility. They are not even hiding that they just want to have one kind of media exist in Egypt.”

The hashtag FreeAJStaff (#FreeAJStaff), often accompanied with a picture of the tweet’s author with a piece of tape over their mouth, is just one of these efforts to increase awareness about the situation, specifically pertaining to the Al Jazeera journalists, in Egypt.

“I would say the situation today is worse that it was,” declared Stork, “this is pretty serious.”

“The media should just tell the facts, to say what is going on the ground with factual events, with objectivity and independence,” said Drollet. “How can a democracy emerge and exist in such a situation?”

Last July, authorities in Tajikistan confiscated the only manuscript of a little-known novelist’s latest book. In what can only be described as an Orwellian sequence, after the manuscript was seized at a Dushanbe printing house, the author was hauled in for interrogation and asked questions like, “who ordered you to write this book?”

The author, Pulod Abuev, 69, later appealed to representatives of the feared State Committee for National Security (GKNB) to have his work returned to him. After some time, Abuev was told that a special committee at the state-run Academy of Sciences had reviewed his writings, including stories critical of Tajikistan’s widespread corruption, and decided it “offends the Tajik people.” The manuscript, thus, was not returned.“Take any classical play by Shakespeare or Chekhov, and the bureaucrats will immediately detect ‘a national security threat.’ " -- Barzu Abdurazzakov

At a Jan. 17 news conference, Abdulvokhid Shamolov of the Academy of Sciences, who conducted the review of Abuev’s work, said the author had expressed support for the theories of an unnamed “Uzbek scientist” who has denied the existence of the Tajik nation.

“The Academy of Sciences and the National Security Committee [GKNB] have performed their duties – to ensure security in the country,” Shamolov said in comments carried by the Asia Plus news agency.

Abuev’s case has heightened fears among some in Dushanbe’s creative class that Tajik authorities are trying to stamp out any form of freethinking under the vague pretext of patriotism. Already self-censorship is widespread among journalists who face libel charges and death threats when tackling tricky subjects. Local observers say the chief enforcer of the government’s perceived “group-think” campaign is the GKNB, which is the recipient of training assistance from the American military.

Abuev believes he was labeled an agent of rival Uzbekistan simply for expressing forthright views about the present state of Tajik society. One of the short stories in the manuscript is a thinly disguised tale about a new toll road that profits relatives of the president’s family.

“I write about life, about labour migrants, about corruption and the hypocrisy of bureaucrats. Somebody has seen a threat to national security in my work. This is ridiculous,” Abuev told EurasiaNet.org.

The space for intellectual discourse is vanishing, according to celebrated playwright Barzu Abdurazzakov. He went on to assert that authorities are gagging literature that even the most zealous Soviet censor would have found unproblematic.

“Take any classical play by Shakespeare or Chekhov, and the bureaucrats will immediately detect ‘a national security threat.’ If it keeps going this way, they will ban all of ancient literature and classical dramaturgy – since all those plays tell us about the tragedy of kings and their children,” Abdurazzakov told EurasiaNet.org. (Many of President Imomali Rakhmon’s relatives occupy senior government posts and other prominent positions).

Abdurazzakov, perhaps unsurprisingly in this atmosphere, says he is unable to find work these days in Tajikistan.

When a social critic happens to be a member of an ethnic minority, the personal attacks can get ugly, noted Temur Varky, a Tajik citizen from a minority background who operates an independent television station in Moscow that broadcasts to audiences in Tajikistan.

In several Facebook messages since June, one “Tamara Obidova” has called Varky “a traitor and liar with a family name alien to Tajiks.” Obidova wrote that Varky “is trying to split” Tajikistan, “the crowned nation of Asia.” She went on to compare Varky to Tamerlane, a folk villain in Tajikistan who is revered as a conquering hero in neighbouring Uzbekistan.

In Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, as in many of the states that gained independence after the Soviet Union’s demise, attempts to define national identity often resort to “us versus them” tropes. Such unsophisticated nationalism enables officials to blame mysterious outside forces, dodge criticism and dilute responsibility for their own missteps. In the pro-government media, arguments about resources or borders often degenerate into disputes about historical rivalries dating back centuries.

Varky and several newspaper editors in Dushanbe who spoke on condition of anonymity believe “Tamara Obidova” and other, similar Internet trolls are working on behalf of the GKNB. (Similar allegations are common in Uzbekistan and Russia, too).

Varky says his troubles with Obidova began soon after he announced his support for Zaid Saidov, an opposition politician arrested a few months before presidential elections last year. (Most independent observers believe the arrest was politically motivated — designed to silence a reformist and potential rival to President Rakhmon, who ended up securing reelection).

Human Rights Watch noted that the November vote “lacked meaningful political competition.” Last month, Saidov was sentenced to 26 years in prison on a variety of charges after a closed trial that few believe was fair.

“Authorities are hounding his [Saidov’s] supporters and those expressing alternative views,” Varky told EurasiaNet.org.

Ironically, Rakhmon scolded officials less than two years ago for not responding to criticism: He called criticism “a constructive phenomenon,” adding that it was “an important factor for development in society.”

That was then; these days those viewing the rich and the powerful with a critical eye often face a backlash. For example, Olga Tutubalina, the editor of the Asia Plus weekly, is being sued for an article she wrote last year criticising members of government-funded creative and artistic unions as government sycophants. Tutubalina – a non-Tajik minority who was born in Dushanbe – has received racist hate mail charging she is trying to destroy the Tajik nation.

Meanwhile, authorities are working to define what is Tajik and what is not. Earlier this month, for instance, the Dushanbe mayor’s office announced it would begin monitoring music in taxis and on public buses to prevent passengers from listening to tunes that are “alien to national and universal human values.”

Editor’s note: Konstantin Parshin is a freelance writer based in Tajikistan. This story originally appeared on EurasiaNet.org.

Owen Maseko. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

By Busani Bafana
BULAWAYO, Dec 27 2013 (IPS)

That citizens cannot enjoy democracy if they are ruled by an undemocratic party is the warning that got Cont Mhlanga’s play “Members” banned from theatre stages in Zimbabwe in 1985.

Owen Maseko’s art is provocative and political. A 2012 painting of a bespectacled man emerging from a television set with long outstretched arms is a depiction of the bad news of the killings in Matabeleland and Midlands by government forces in 1983, which President Robert Mugabe has described as  a “moment of madness”."We are dealing with people who only understand their political positions and not the laws, especially under our new Constitution." -- Playwright Cont Mhlanga

Daring and bold define the works of Mhlanga and Maseko,  whose liberal yet dissenting artistic voices have made them personae non gratae in Zimbabwe’s art circles.

Mhlanga and Maseko have been harassed, arrested and detained for criticising the government – but they have not stopped doing what they love.

Zimbabwe is widely perceived as having repressive laws on freedom of expression, association and the media. According to Amnesty International, Zimbabwe is not walking the talk in practising human rights, guaranteed under its new constitution, launched in August 2013.

The Criminal Law (Codification and Reform) Act of 2005 has been used to silence critics. The law was put to test in October 2013 when the country’s Constitutional Court ruled that sections were unconstitutional and should be scrapped.

In his ruling, Deputy Chief Justice Luke Malaba criticised government prosecutors for abusing the law, saying the country’s National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) should not be “prosecuting matters in which statements were uttered in drinking halls and other social places, as the pursuit of such frivolous matters only served to bring disrespect on the Office of the President.”

While civil society organisations and lawyers commend the Constitutional Court for taking a big step in securing freedom of expression and the rule of law, Mhlanga and Maseko have suffered persecution, humiliation and isolation.

“Once you have a government that bans you as an individual and people do not see your work but see you as a controversial and problematic figure, you do not get far,” Mhlanga, the founder and artistic director of the Amakhosi Cultural Centre and performing arts academy, told IPS.

“It is not wrong to be critical because it helps everyone but there is a misconception that when you talk about rule of law in Zimbabwe you are referring to regime change. That is the biggest misconception there is because we are dealing with people who only understand their political positions and not the laws, especially under our new Constitution.”

Mhlanga describes his work as one story of governance and transparency, and his plays offer a social commentary on politics, corruption, human rights abuses, dictatorship and dispossession. A number have been banned from the stage, earning him a reputation for not shying away from controversy.

The 1983 satirical play “Members” was prophetic of  Zimbabwe’s current politics. Infighting has rocked the ruling Zanu-PF as separate camps jockey for a candidate to succeed Mugabe, who has indicated that he will serve his current five-year term of office to 2018. Opposition parties who fared badly in the July 2013 elections are now more divided than they were in the 2008 elections.

Mhlanga’s play “Nansi Le Ndoda”, which toured Botswana in 1985, introduced him to the national and international stage with its didactic message about corruption. “Stitsha” mirrored the controversial land policies that have divided Zimbabweans today, with claims that  reforms have led to poor agricultural productivity and food insecurity.

“Workshop Negative” highlighted the conflict between rich and poor as a result of political patronage. It was banned.

“I write plays because I am stubborn about issues, not because the plays are appreciated,” said Mhlanga, lamenting that because of his work the government was not comfortable supporting any projects and graduates from his academy.

“I am affected because this persecution slows down new thoughts I would like to bring to society because society is developed by thoughts. Thought leadership does not come from a group of people but it can come from simple individuals as I write to advise and help correct what I find wrong in our society.”

Maseko has suffered personally and professionally since his Gukurahundi Exhibition held at the National Gallery in Bulawayo in 2009 was shut down by the police after it premiered. Today the section of the gallery housing the exhibition is a crime scene despite the Constitutional Court ruling that Maseko’s arrest was unconstitutional.

“The freedom to express oneself does not come free because I have paid for it with my work,” Maseko told IPS at his home studio in Bulawayo. “While I have been able to do international exhibitions, I have not been able to function in Zimbabwe as no one wants to work with me or be associated with me.”

Maseko laments that his family lives in worry that he might be arrested again to suffer a worse fate. The minister of defence, who in November 2013 was summoned by the Constitutional Court to justify Maseko’s prosecution, has since appealed the ruling.

“My celebration of being a free man has been short-lived and I do not know when this matter will be heard. It could be next year or never,” said Maseko. “Art appreciation is important and critical. If a lot of people start appreciating art then all the laws about the freedom of expression might possibly be challenged and changed.”

The Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe (MMPZ) has urged the government to immediately repeal the remaining laws that affect the right to freedom of expression, association and assembly, arguing they violate regional and international norms.

Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR) said banning Maseko’s work has very troubling implications for national healing, reconciliation and integration in Zimbabwe.

“It is too early for us to say that the government has embraced democratic principles as they will have by now aligned the laws in line with the provisions in the new constitution, ” ZLHR spokesperson Kumbirai Mafunda told IPS. “We expect this government to adopt modern laws and model standards that inform modern democratic societies. Zimbabweans must not be persecuted and prosecuted for free expression.”

Citing the Criminal Law (Codification and Reform) Act and the Public Order and Security Act as some of the laws used in the past to deny people their rights to freedom expression, association and peaceful assembly, Amnesty International says in its November 2013 report, Human Rights Agenda for the New Government – 2013 to 2018, that Zimbabwe should improve its poor human rights record.

“The new constitution offers a golden opportunity for the government to begin to right the wrongs of the past, to deliver justice for its people and to allow freedom of expression,” said Noel Kututwa, Amnesty International’s deputy director for Southern Africa.

One year after the government officially struck down laws obstructing free press in Myanmar, a parliamentary bill could allow previous censorship practices to re-surge.

When Thein Sein’s Union Solidarity and Development party government ended the last of the censorship laws in August last year, many hailed a new era of free expression and an end to the pressures placed on journalists over the previous half century.

Still, many journalists are concerned by the state of media reform in the country. Currently, a publishing bill that critics say gives the Ministry of Information (MOI) overly broad powers to issue and revoke publication licenses has been passed by the lower house of parliament and is set for consideration by the upper house.

Myint Kyaw is secretary for the Myanmar Journalist Network (MJN), which has been protesting the proposed bill, known as the Printing and Publishing Enterprise Bill. He told IPS that the MJN’s main criticism of the bill was in its conception of a printer and publisher registry system, which would essentially allow a ministry-appointed registrar to issue or deny publication licences and thus leave control over these licences in the hands of the government.“[Previously], all publications, private journals and magazines, arts, music, films and TV programmes were heavily censored by the government.”
-- Aye Chan Naing, chief editor of Democratic Voice of Burma

This situation is reminiscent of when the ministry used to control journalists and editors through the threat of license revocation, Myint Kyaw described. Such a possibility, combined with the threat of imprisonment and aggression, would lead to self-censorship, particularly when speaking critically of the military or when investigating corruption, notably that of former dictators and their family businesses.

Myint Kyaw also spoke of the need for a law guaranteeing access to information and ensuring safety for journalists in conflict areas. Earlier in August, MJN also collected thousands of signatures from around Yangon, the country’s former capital city, for a petition that demonstrated the public’s discontent with the state of media reform.

The current parliamentary bill comes at a time when many human rights groups remain critical of Myanmar’s attitude towards the media. In June, the government banned Time magazine after it featured a piece on the radical Buddhist 969 movement.

“It’s a disgraceful decision to ban the issue and indicates recidivism in official censorship in Burma [also known as Myanmar],” David Mathieson, a senior Asia researcher with Human Rights Watch, told IPS.

Benjamin Ismaïl, head of Reporters Without Borders’ Asia-Pacific desk, expressed a similar viewpoint. “The reflex of censoring news has not disappeared, but this is not a surprise since the government is composed in majority by the same persons who were already in power before 2011.”

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), however, did not denounce this case of censorship, telling IPS that the organisation aims to help develop an independent media, but that “[we] usually confine our advocacy to issues around the protection of journalists.”

Myanmar’s Interim Press Council, which is a body appointed by the government, has submitted its own, separate press bill to parliament. However, 17 of the recommendations in the bill have been contested by the Ministry of Information.

Despite possessing the constitutional right to a free press, in practice the media in Myanmar were tightly controlled by the establishment, from Ne Win’s coup of 1962 until August 2012. Censorship reached such levels in those fifty years that many publications were not able to effectively report from inside the country and were forced to relocate outside its borders.

One such organisation is Democratic Voice of Burma, which was set up in Norway in 1992. Its chief editor, Aye Chan Naing, told IPS that DVB was established “to counter one-sided propaganda by the Burmese military government.”

“All publications, private journals and magazines, arts, music, films and TV programmes were heavily censored by the government,” he said. “We were to counter them by airing unbiased and independent news programmes.”

“We could not do our job independently without getting arrested,” Aye Chan added. “There are a lot of difficulties [in reporting on] a country where our journalists can’t be present or work as undercover reporters. As in any closed country, it is hard to verify what is fact and what is rumour while the government refuses to answer any kind of questions or verification.”

Seventeen of DVB’s reporters were put in prison from 2007 to early 2012 for their work for DVB, Aye Chan said, although DVB has made moves to return to Myanmar since the opening up of the media. The organisation has an official office there now and has registered as a media production house.

Many media organisations and their employees are hoping for a positive resolution to the argument over media reform in the country – ideally, a law that would guarantee both protection for journalists and the ability to report without fear of retaliation by the authorities.

“Now that the government has removed the censorship board and allowed our journalists to work freely and independently…we decided to move back to Burma,” Aye Chan said. “As a media organisation, we need to be on the ground where we are reporting and get the firsthand news.”

An authoritative Central Asia-focused news website has defeated attempts to silence it in Kyrgyzstan: authorities have unblocked it. Yet under the prevailing interpretation of a parliamentary resolution, the website, Fergana News, still appears to be banned in the Central Asian nation.

The nationalist-leaning parliament voted unanimously to block Fergana News (Fergananews.com, formerly Ferghana.ru) back in June 2011 after some MPs expressed dissatisfaction with the website’s critical coverage of the interethnic violence in southern Kyrgyzstan the previous summer.

Though lawyers for several respected civil society organisations argued that only a court could order a website blocked, the State Communications Agency bowed to parliamentary pressure and ordered internet service providers to block access to the site in February 2012.

In November 2012, Fergana News began legal proceedings in a Bishkek court to get the ban lifted.

For five months, Fergana tried to fight its case in court, arguing that the Communications Agency should not have followed the dubious order in the first place. But the proceedings were regularly delayed when officials failed to show and became bogged down in Byzantine legal maneuvering.

For example, when Internet service providers supported Fergana’s case, the judge blamed them for following what they called an illegal order, though they risked losing their operating licenses if they did not comply. Eventually, the judge said a statute of limitations had expired – that by waiting nine months to sue the government, Fergana had missed its chance – and threw out the case.

But Fergana’s persistence, and the embarrassment the trial caused the government, appeared to succeed: in early April, Bishkek backed down. All local Internet service providers, including state-owned Kyrgyz Telecom, opened access to the site following a letter from the State Communications Agency on Apr. 5.

Dunja Mijatovic, the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media, called the lifting of the blockade “a positive sign for Internet freedom in Kyrgyzstan” and emphasised that “by giving readers access to the site again, Kyrgyzstan has honoured its constitutional values prohibiting censorship.”

Mijatovic had previously slammed the ban. The watchdog group Reporters Without Borders had called the blockade “a major step backwards” for Kyrgyzstan.

Yet despite the success getting the block lifted, Fergana News is still trying to get parliament’s resolution overturned, and is wondering what legal force it contains: Could the block be implemented again at any time, representatives of the news website wonder.

Fergana’s lawyers submitted an appeal to the Bishkek city court on Apr. 5 to protest the lower court’s decision to throw out the original case. Thus far, the agency has not received a response, according to Daniil Kislov, editor of Fergana News.

“We believe Parliament’s decision about our website was illegal as there was no court decision,” Kislov told EurasiaNet.org. “We’ve submitted an appeal as we believe that somebody should bear responsibility for illegally blocking access to our website for over 12 months.”

Officials at the State Communications Agency say they were just obeying a legislative directive.

“We had to comply with this decision, so we sent the decree for execution to Internet providers, and they followed it,” Olga Serova, a senior lawyer at the State Communication Agency, told EurasiaNet.org. “The agency did not make any order or decision in this regard. We notified the providers that there was a parliamentary resolution, which must be executed. That’s all.”

There is still confusion about the legal weight of a parliamentary resolution.

“The blockage took place without a court decision on the basis of a request from the State [Communications] Agency. Internet service providers believed that it was inadvisable to escalate the situation into conflict with the government [by disobeying the request],” Aibek Bakanov, the executive director of the Association of Telecom Operators, a lobbying group, explained to EurasiaNet.org.

“Now that the block is removed, the most important thing for us is that in the future any request from the government about blocking [Internet] sites is confirmed by a court decision.”

Journalists say blocking websites is ineffective as Internet users can easily enough gain access to blocked sites through proxy servers. Fergana News editor Kislov says the number of visitors from Kyrgyzstan increased by about five percent after the website became accessible again in Kyrgyzstan. During the ban, he said, most readers simply used proxy servers.

Press freedom advocates are pressing for closure in the case, specifically by seeking a determination on the legality of the original parliamentary resolution confirming that the legislature lacks the authority to act in such cases without a court order.

Marat Tokoev, chairperson of Journalists, a Bishkek-based media watchdog, cheers the unblocking of Fergana News, but fears that parliament still does not understand its legal limitations.

*This story originally appeared on EurasiaNet.org.

Mahfuza, a mother of three in a small town in the Ferghana Valley, has better things to do than spend her afternoons at crowded, smoke-filled Internet clubs. But as a high-school algebra teacher, she has an extracurricular assignment from her bosses: she must monitor the clubs’ clientele – many of them her students – while they play computer games, surf social networking websites, and watch music videos.

A decree from Uzbekistan’s government last spring obliged teachers like Mahfuza (she asked her last name be withheld to protect her from possible reprisals) to frequent Internet clubs to ensure students do not fall prey to supposedly subversive ideas. She’s not thrilled about the task.

“Students spend so much time playing games featuring violence, such as a (first-person shoot-‘em-up) game called Counter-Strike, and chatting with complete strangers online. Parents don’t seem to care, and the burden falls on us, poor teachers,” Mahfuza told EurasiaNet.org.

But Mahfuza has no choice. “The state pays our salaries, so we must comply with their rules even if we find them distasteful,” said a vice principal at the secondary school where Mahfuza teaches. He also spoke on condition of anonymity, fearing retaliation for criticizing authorities.

President Islam Karimov’s administration has long relied on educators to shield Uzbekistan’s youth from what it considers dangerous outside influences, including religious radicalism and independent political ideas. (The government keeps a tight lid on all forms of political expression, and even mainstream opposition groups are banned and operate in exile).

A series of popular uprisings in the Arab world in 2011, which were partly fuelled by social media, have heightened Tashkent’s concerns, prompting authorities to view pop culture and social networking as major potential threats to the Uzbek status quo.

Official rhetoric can sound paranoid and archaic to those unfamiliar with the Uzbek government’s modus operandi.

For example, a Nov. 12 statement on how to raise a “spiritually rich generation”, posted on parliament’s official website, contained the following: “Today we observe efforts to undermine (Uzbekistan’s) national interests, ideology, and spiritual moral principles through subversive ideas distributed on the Internet, by mobile phones, computer games, and video products, which are camouflaged as pop culture…The task of creating a favorable information environment for youth is one of our top priorities.”

Inside classrooms, the SNB, the successor to the Soviet-era KGB, relies on a far-reaching network of informants to ensure conformity, according to students and teachers. A course required in secondary schools, “The Idea of National Independence and Moral Development,” seeks to instill students with patriotism, the vice principal said, by forcing them to memorise Karimov’s speeches.

Bahodir Choriev, leader of the exiled opposition group Birdamlik (Solidarity), told EurasiaNet.org that thanks to such courses, “many young Uzbeks have little idea what political opposition is about.” Choriev fled to the United States in 2004 when Uzbek prosecutors charged him with fraud. He says the charges were designed to silence him.

With classroom discussions observed and controlled, authorities have turned their attention to other areas they deem vulnerable to infiltration by pop culture. Hundreds of webpages are blocked and video games are regularly lambasted on state television as “poison.”

Last January, the Ministry of Higher and Specialized Secondary Education – responsible for students aged 16 and above, and not to be confused with the Ministry of Public Education – introduced a 23-page behaviour code obliging students to abstain from criticising school authorities, eschew flashy clothes, and avoid cultural events (including rock concerts) that are deemed alien to Uzbek national values. The code also encourages students to report unsanctioned religious activity.

Fund Forum, a charity run by Karimov’s jet-setting daughter Gulnara Karimova, is reportedly spearheading the efforts. According to its website, the organisation is funding activities “promoting development of national online content and expanding use of the Uzbek language on the Internet.” Several Tashkent-based observers, including some government officials, believe the Ministry of Culture is following Karimova’s directions.

Critics scoff at the idea that Karimova can serve as an effective publicist for Uzbek values. In recent years, Karimova has adopted a bewildering variety of personas, including that of fashionista and music diva (using her stage name Googoosha). To her critics, these various identities are associated with Western decadence, not modesty.

“Gulnara has complete disregard for Uzbek cultural values; she is all over Uzbek media with her gaudy music videos, she shows up in mosques in skimpy dresses,” said Shahida Tulaganova, an Uzbek journalist based in London, referring to a provocative music video Karimova released in September.

“How can she be a role model for millions of Uzbek youngsters when she has little regard for things (many) Uzbeks view as sacred?”

Education officials, tasked with implementing the new rules in small towns and villages, have quickly discovered how unpopular the ideological directives are. Internet café owners complain the “teacher raids” are bad for business. And parents have reportedly been angered by punishments imposed on students for wearing clothing deemed inappropriate.

Given the level of popular distaste for the government directives on youth behaviour, teachers in many cases are quietly looking the other way when it comes to enforcement, said Dilnoza, a student of Uzbek literature in Tashkent.

“They often delegate the task of monitoring students to Internet café employees,” Dilnoza said.

The vice principal in Ferghana said few, if any, students report suspicious activities. He added that forcing poorly paid teachers to police student behavior outside of classrooms is having unintended consequences.

“Teachers’ salaries are very low. As a result, there are many cases of teachers extorting bribes … for better grades,” he said. Teachers have also been accused of seeking payoffs for not inventing moral infractions. “Students’ moral upbringing is something parents must deal with,” the vice principal added.

Authorities in Tashkent are aware their ideological injunctions are routinely flouted. Parliament is now preparing a new law – “On protection of youth from subversive ideologies and aggressive information” – that is expected to stiffen punishment for non-compliance with ideological directives.

For the vice principal, this just shows how out-of-touch central authorities are. He complains that rather than ensure compliance, state inspectors spend much of their time extorting bribes from school directors and teachers.

“Tashkent needs to get input from various segments of society before devising new policies. Otherwise, they will not be implemented,” he said.

*This story originally appeared on Eurasianet.org.

More than 200 of Sudan’s journalists are now unemployed after the government forced the closure of a number of newspapers in the country amid increasing press censorship. Credit: Zeinab Mohammed Salih/IPS

By Zeinab Mohammed Salih
KHARTOUM, Sep 15 2012 (IPS)

In Sudan’s newspaper district in Khartoum East, dozens of people sit beneath the trees sipping tea or reading newspapers. Most are journalists who once worked for the 10 newspapers that were either forced closed by the country’s security services or because of economic constraints that resulted after the government raised printing taxes in an attempt to prevent the media from reporting on anti-government demonstrations. 

Mohamed Ahmed, a former journalist for the Ajrass Elhuriya newspaper, which was closed in July 2011, is one of them.

“I have been sitting under the trees for a year and a half because the government closed my newspaper and other newspapers, that consider me to be opposed to the government, are afraid to hire me.”

The Sudanese Network of Journalists, a union for reporters, estimates that about 200 journalists are currently unemployed by the closures, which, it says, is the highest unemployment rate the profession has seen. The crackdown against the press began more than a year ago, soon after Sudan and South Sudan separated in July 2011.

More than 10 journalists were reportedly arrested and tortured by the police before and during nationwide anti-government demonstrations in June after the implementation of a government austerity plan that scrapped fuel and commodity subsidies.

In addition, security services have been accused of preventing 15 reporters from publishing stories on the demonstrations.

On Sep. 9, the general court in Khartoum north upheld the closure of a local newspaper, the Rai Elshab, and fined it for breaching the “duties of the press” and for “starting sectarian strife” after it published a story about rebel forces fighting the government in the country’s volatile western region of Dafur.

The war between the rebel forces in Dafur and the Sudanese government has raged since 2003 when the Sudan Liberation Army and Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) began attacking government, accusing it of oppressing black Africans in favour of Arabs. Since 2010, the warring factions have been in peace talks. However, fighting has continued in the region, with the most recent incident occurring on Sep. 6, which resulted in the death of 10 government soldiers.

The country’s National Intelligence Security Services (NISS) had closed the Rai Elshab newspaper in January, and owners had gone to court in an attempt to have the publication reopened. However, the judge ruled that the paper would not be allowed to publish again without NISS approval.

Ashraf Abdul-Aziz, the head of the political department at Rai Elshab, told IPS: “The NISS complained against us in a court and closed our newspaper because we published a story about JEM, which has been fighting against the government in Darfur. That the NISS has the right to allow us to publish or not is a very strange situation.”

The Sudanese Network of Journalists told IPS that in the coming weeks the organisation would lay a complaint against the Sudanese government with the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva. According to one of the organisation’s leaders, Khalid Ahmed, the complaint will be made once all national and regional mechanisms to put pressure on the government for a free and fair media had been completed.

In July reporters protested against the censorship at Sudan’s Human Rights Commission to no avail.

Khalid Ahmed said that the network’s last memorandum to the Human Rights Commission in Sudan had been submitted on Jul. 4 and called for the cessation of censorship and the release of journalists in police custody.

“They didn’t reply to our memorandum as we’d expected, but we will continue on our mission to complain to the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva to set the media here free,” he said.

Faisal Mahmed Salih, the former chief editor of the now-closed Eladwaa newspaper, and the head of Teebba Press Center, told IPS that the censorship had negatively affected the media’s role in disseminating information.

“Due to censorship, readers don’t buy newspapers because all of them are the same. People only buy one newspaper or two now.”

Political analyst Hafiz Mohamed told IPS that the crackdown against the press would have a negative effect upon democracy and any possible political reform.

“Freedom of expression is a basic part of the democratic process, included with other freedoms such as freedom of assembly and association. If the government forbids journalists and the media from doing their jobs, there will be no democracy in Sudan,” he said.

He added that the government’s current censorship “shows that the government is afraid of the freedoms of the press.”

However, Rabei Abdallatee, consultant to the Information and Communication Minster, told IPS that censorship had been imposed on the media because there were “public and special circumstances in the country.”

He said that the censorship would only end if the circumstances changed. “Our country has special circumstances, because we are in a war with rebel groups and the media has to be careful,” Abdallatee said.

He said that the newspapers closed by the NISS, which are yet to be charged, “published negative articles, and threatened our national security” and were being investigated.

Osman Shinger, the chief editor of Eljareeda newspaper, told IPS that his publication had been to court 15 times during the last two months because of an arrest warrant against him. Shinger was charged after the publication of an opinion article criticising the governor of Sudan’s Al Jazirah state.

“I think that all the Sudanese problems are relevant to freedom of expression and access to information,” Shinger said.

“We tried to talk to the Centre of Media and Information, but it is seen as an NGO that favours the government. They didn’t reply to our phone calls and they didn’t allow to us to enter their building.”

Meanwhile, some journalists who were arrested and subsequently released now face ostracism from other publications practising self-censorship.

Mohamed Alasbst, the former managing editor of the Al-Ahram daily newspaper, spent two months in prison because he aided the now-deported Egyptian journalist, Shymaa Adil, who was covering Sudan’s nationwide protests for the Egyptian Elwatin newspaper. She spent two weeks in prison. He told IPS that because of his stint in prison, newspapers will not hire him for fear of being targeted by the government.

Alasbst added that his own newspaper fired him after he was released from prison.

“They expelled me from my job and the other newspapers also don’t want me to work with them, because I was in prison and they are afraid for the government. They fear if they hired someone like me who is considered to oppose the government, the government might fight them or close them down.”

The difficult situation has resulted in some choosing to quit the profession altogether.

Mohamed Ahmed told IPS that he has decided to leave Sudan to find work in one of the Gulf states.

“I was just a professional in my career and the government didn’t accept the professionalism, they want all the journalists to be in with the government or not to be journalists at all.”

Imported television shows watched by millions will be canned during the country’s prime “golden time” hours, the government announced last week. Last month, popular prime time entertainment programmes were slashed by two-thirds. This was after programmes featuring time travel were all but banned last year.

In the latest signs of an escalating clampdown on entertainment in China, the television broadcast regulator has declared that “vulgar” foreign television shows – which mostly hail from Asia – will be barred 7-10pm.

The newest rules aim to boost China’s domestic television industry, forcing audiences away from Asian competition towards local shows. Many feel that the move is also an attempt to protect state-run China Central Television (CCTV), known for its stiff evening news and stale dramas.

The incapacitating series of regulations were felt most keenly in October when the industry watchdog, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT), announced a cap on mass-watched “entertainment” shows, which were declared pure “poison” by one official.

By the end of last year, China’s 34 satellite channels had cut the number of entertainment shows – largely spin-offs of Western hits such as American Idol and Top Gear – from 126 to just 38 during the prime-time hours, marking a 69 percent decrease. The ban came into effect officially on Jan. 1.

In the place of the rags to riches singing competitions and sassy dating shows which have proliferated under China’s enterprising provincial television channels, SARFT stated that each channel must air “morality building” programmes weekly. Talent contents will be limited to just 10 nationwide per year.

“SARFT does not want provincial TV to pose a threat to the national influence of CCTV. So they have stopped many programmes,” says Dr. Grace Leung, a visiting scholar at Beijing’s Tsinghua University who specialises in television regulation.

In the latest rules, announced last Monday, all foreign shows – which are mainly sourced from Hong Kong, Taiwan, Thailand and South Korea – must pass state approval.

“TV series that contain vulgar and violent scenes should not be imported,” stated China Daily, adding that “severe punishments” will be handed out to channels who violate the new rules.

According to the state-run newspaper, the regulations will help create a “favourable environment for TV shows made by companies on the Chinese mainland.”

Propaganda over profit remains a crucial concern for SARFT, which functions under the propaganda arm of the Communist Party. Pushing the Party creed over the competitiveness of the television industry as a whole remains paramount.

“With more than 96 or 97 percent of the total population (tuning in), TV is still the most influential vehicle for propaganda. One of SARFT’s major tasks is ideological control,” says Dr Leung.

“There is concern whether (satellite stations) are doing the correct job to educate their audience rather than provide entertainment alone. So profit making is not a primary concern for them – they would prefer to stick to their original task of educating and propaganda to prevent controversial issues arising,” she adds.

Programmes that have felt the full force of the state truncheon over the past year include the highly marketable “time-travel” genre, in which characters travel back in time to different dynasties.

In September, SARFT suspended Super Girl, a Pop Idol spin-off. At its peak it generated 400 million messages. Further victims include the dating show If You Are The One, which, although still running, has curtailed its more salacious elements in favour of heavy-handed moral messages.

“The cycle of tightening and loosening up is nothing new in China,” says Ying Zhu, author of Two Billion Eyes: The Story of China Central Television. “Obviously the tightening up cannot last long when the issue of bread and butter is at stake. The real clash is between the mandate of a Chinese cultural tradition dictated by morality and the demand of a market system dictated by profit.”

The newest regulations, however, might backfire. Internet users in China now number over 500 million and many people are switching off their television sets in favour of finding entertainment on their smart phones and laptops, where censorship is less pervasive and the state has less hold.

“Only people like my mother-in-law would watch (programmes) on TV and now even she has switched to the Internet,” says Raymond Zhou, 49, a Beijing-based newspaper columnist and social critic. “These regulations are going to drive more and more young people away from television, because they are leaving anyway. You are giving them the extra push – now they leave happily.” (END/IPS/AP/IP/AE/CR/HD/CN/CM/SS/12)