Abigail Hernández (left) appears at a press conference with journalist Wendy Quintero, a member of Independent Journalists and Communicators of Nicaragua at the headquarters of the Nicaragua Nunca Más Rights Collective. CREDIT: José Mendieta / IPS

By José Mendieta
MANAGUA, Mar 5 2024 (IPS)

Almost six years after the outbreak of the April 2018 protests, there are no signs left in Nicaragua of the violence that reigned in those days. There is no graffiti on walls or banners with demands or opinions against the leftist regime that has ruled the country since 2007.

Nor are there newspapers or opinion programs or debates on radio and television, let alone press conferences or public rallies."The Ortega and Murillo regime's repressive mechanisms have escalated to dramatic and unimaginable levels. A simple opinion issued on social networks or a criticism of the regime could land you in jail or exile." -- Martha Irene Sánchez

The city of Managua, the capital, is always bustling and active, with markets and shopping malls open at all hours; traffic is usually disorderly and police patrols roam the streets and avenues at all times.

At noon every day, on all radio and television stations, the tired, quiet voice of Vice President Rosario Murillo is heard giving the government’s news, social achievements and propaganda messages such as phrases of love and praise to God.

The program, which has no specific name, is broadcast from Channel 4, the historical property of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), the ruling party, to which the other state media are linked. The private media outlets controlled by the presidential family are also connected, together with dozens of radio stations and portals on social networks.

It first emerged in 2007 as “a message from comrade Rosario, from the Communication and Citizenship Council of the People’s President.”

“Here we are, on Valentine’s Day, with love, friendship, and for us, love and peace, because it is with love and in peace that we can walk ahead, move forward, building the future of all, a fraternal future,” she said on Feb. 13.

Murillo has been Nicaragua’s vice president since she was appointed in 2016 by her husband, President Daniel Ortega, the veteran former guerrilla who has been in office since November 2006.

Murillo is also the regime’s spokesperson and the only authorized voice, among the population of 6.7 million inhabitants of this Central American country, who can speak publicly and freely about anything. No one else can do so.

Freedom of expression in Nicaragua is one of the most repressed and abused rights, said journalist Abigail Hernández, director of the Galería News platform.

Journalist and former political prisoner Lucía Pineda Úbau, together with Martha Sánchez, take part in a protest by Nicaraguan journalists exiled in Costa Rica. CREDIT: José Mendieta / IPS

Her opinion, tellingly sent via an encrypted messaging application, is based on experience: three years’ exile.

“The media and journalists are a good thermometer for measuring the quality of freedom of expression,” Hernández told IPS.

“When we have less and less access to sources of information, when they limit us from reporting from the streets, when we can’t take photos or videos freely, when we can’t do our work inside the country, it reveals that there is no freedom of expression,” she said.

She is part of a generation of 242 journalists who have had to go into exile since the 2018 protests, which began against Social Security reforms and ended in a bloodbath provoked by military and police forces, with more than 355 civilian deaths, according to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR).

Journalist Martha Irene Sánchez, director of the República 18 platform, holds similar views, also expressed from exile.

“The scenarios for exercising freedom of the press and freedom of expression in Nicaragua have not improved since 2018; on the contrary, we are encountering more and more hostility,” she told IPS.

She is also a member of Independent Journalists and Communicators of Nicaragua (PCIN), a union organization that emerged after the protests and all of whose members went into exile.

“The Ortega and Murillo regime’s repressive mechanisms have escalated to dramatic and unimaginable levels. A simple opinion issued on social networks or a criticism of the regime could land you in jail or exile,” Sánchez said.

A forum for the presentation of the report on freedom of expression and press freedom in Nicaragua, released in September 2023 in San José, Costa Rica. The panel included journalists from Nicaragua from the Connectas platform, including FLED director Guillermo Medrano, (second-right). CREDIT: José Mendieta / IPS

She cited the example of Victor Ticay, a local journalist in Nandaime, a municipality in the northwestern department of Granada, who went out one day to cover a procession during the Catholic Holy Week of 2023.

The event had not been authorized by the police, whose agents interrupted the religious ceremony and Ticay filmed the parishioners running away from the patrol cars through the streets of the town.

He was arrested, charged with treason and spreading false news and sentenced to eight years in prison.

Guillermo Medrano, director of the Foundation for Freedom of Expression and Democracy (FLED), explained to IPS that between 2020 and 2021, the Nicaraguan regime passed a series of laws criminalizing the practice of journalism and freedom of expression.

A study that FLED released in September 2023 in San José, Costa Rica, a country bordering Nicaragua and the center of the country’s exile community, documented 1329 press freedom violations, mostly perpetrated by state agents in the 2018-2023 five-year period.

The actions were taken against 338 Nicaraguan journalists and 78 media outlets, between April 2018 and April 2023.

They included the police intervention of several media outlets such as 100% Noticias, Confidencial, Trinchera de la Noticia, Radio Darío and La Prensa, the last newspaper circulating in Nicaragua until August 2022.

According to Medrano, the Special Law on Cybercrime, passed in October 2020, provides for prison sentences for the use of information “which in normal democracies should be freely accessible to citizens and the public.”

In theory, the main objective of this legislation is the prevention, investigation, prosecution and punishment of crimes committed by means of information and communication technologies to the detriment of natural or legal persons.

The press freedom advocate also pointed out that the Ortega-Murillo administration, which controls all state institutions and branches of power, as well as the security forces, established the Law for the Defense of the Rights of the People to Independence, Sovereignty and Self-Determination for Peace, effective since Dec. 22, 2020.

This law gives discretion to judges and prosecutors in terms of the crime of “treason”, which orders the banishment and denationalization of the accused, as well as life imprisonment through a reform of the penal system.

More than 180 people have already been prosecuted under these laws and at least 22 journalists were stripped of their citizenship and banished in 2023.

“Under these laws, freedom of speech and the press has become a high-risk constitutional right for those who exercise it within Nicaragua,” Medrano denounced.

A report by the regional organization Voces del Sur says that Nicaragua ended 2023 with new forms of repression and threats to press freedom applied through banishment, confiscations, illegal detentions and harassment and surveillance of the families of journalists working in exile.

The outlook, the report warns, is of greater silence about social issues.

Nicaraguan journalists conduct interviews under risk of persecution or criminalization, denounced several reporters in San José, Costa Rica, in August 2023. CREDIT: José Mendieta / IPS

According to the report, between 2018 and the end of 2022, 54 media outlets disappeared, including 31 radio stations, 15 television channels and eight print media outlets. Of that total, 16 media outlets were confiscated, including La Prensa, the country’s main daily newspaper.

“Sources, even under conditions of anonymity, are harder and harder to find, and the saddest thing is that the State, through its officials, continues to be the main victimizer of citizens’ rights of expression and journalists’ press rights,” Medrano complained.

The non-governmental Human Rights Collective Nicaragua Nunca Más, made up of human rights defenders and activists in exile, states that the Ortega-Murillo administration “has carried out an unprecedented attack on freedom of expression in this country.”

The organization reports that of 28 resolutions of precautionary measures for journalists in Latin America, which have been issued since 2018 by the IACHR on freedom of expression, 15 have been issued for Nicaragua.

However, it says that “none of the precautionary measures” have been complied with by the State and, on the contrary, harassment against the targets has increased.

“And that reveals to us the seriousness of the problem of a small country with disproportionate and unacceptable restrictions on fundamental freedoms,” said one of the agency’s advocates, on condition of anonymity for security reasons.

These complaints find no responses within Nicaragua, because with the exception of Murillo, no one is authorized to answer, but can simply repeat the official discourse: “Nicaragua lives in peace and security.”

Elena Pasquini filming somewhere in the AKIgonze IDPs camp in the outskirts of Bunia in Ituri. Credit: Elena Pasquini

By Sania Farooqui
NEW DELHI, India, Jul 29 2021 (IPS)

The Democratic Republic of Congo is one of the most hostile and dangerous regions for journalists. A complex conflict, deeply rooted in the country’s past, allows very little freedom, both movement and the press.

“There are multiple actors involved, and as a journalist, we have the duty of admitting this complexity,” says Elena Pasquini, founder and editor in chief of Degrees of Latitude, in an interview with IPS. “Be aware of the difficulties when it comes to understanding the issues, and be careful of every single word we use to portray this conflict.”

Pasquini, who reported from the DRC earlier this year, says the risk of reporting from such a conflict zone is not just physical, not just a question of safety, but also highlights the responsibility journalists have in their work and how they cover a story.

“For a journalist and a foreigner, it’s really important to understand when a situation is potentially risky and identify the threats at an early stage. I was worried while travelling along roads that I knew were home to armed groups. I was scared each time I was stopped at a checkpoint and while interacting with the police or even walking in areas where kidnappings occur frequently,” Pasquini says. “It’s important to learn from the local colleagues and adapt our behaviour according to the local environments.”

Elena Pasquini travelling with the UN peacekeeping mission, somewhere in Irumu territory, Ituri. Credit: Elena Pasquini

According to Journalists in Danger (JED), Reporters Without Borders (RSF) partner organisation in the DRC, at least 115 press freedom violations were logged in 2020. This report by RSF tells of how several journalists had been detained in response to complaints by provincial governors. A former minister sued one of RSF’s correspondents. Armed groups prevalent in the east of the country have attacked, threatened, or forced journalists into hiding. One journalist was killed.

“A journalist who has gone missing, his family members were informed by an armed group that he had been executed three days after abducting him,” the report says. “Journalists with many online followers have been the victims of smear campaigns.”

Women are often victims of abuse and violence, and in the DRC, rape is a weapon of war, says Pasquini. Crowded areas in the DRC are often chaotic and hotspots for fights, protests, and gatherings, which can turn deadly.

While covering a protest against an alleged extrajudicial execution, Pasquini had no choice but to trust the instinct of her local driver, who asked her to immediately stop filming, roll up the car windows and not make eye contact with anyone outside.

“At that point, I didn’t think about the weapons or the machetes the people surrounding our car could have had. I don’t know if I would have been a target or not, but I simply followed my driver’s instructions and got out safely. It’s truly the fixers, producers and the drivers who make the difference and can save your life in such situations,” Pasquini says.

Earlier in February this year, the Italian Ambassador to the Democratic Republic of Congo, Luca Attanasio, was killed. According to this report, the United Nations convoy he was travelling in came under fire near Goma, killing him, an Italian military police officer and a Congolese driver.

Pasquini was amongst the few international journalists present in the DRC at the time and had travelled along the same route and with the same convoy just a few days before the attack on the Italian Ambassador.

“That road connects Goma to Uganda, and it’s as dangerous as any area would be in a conflict zone. It is very difficult to have an idea of what really happened, but from my experience, I can say kidnapping to get ransom is very common on that side.”

“I hope the investigation will lead to the discovery of who is behind the attack of the Ambassador, it is hard, and impunity is common. Every day such crimes are committed, and it is very rare that someone is convicted for those crimes, or even just identified,” says Pasquini.

Over the years, multiple conflicts which escalated in the eastern part of the DRC forced almost 6000 people to flee their homes, making this crisis “the largest number of new displacements due to conflict in the world”.

“DR Congo is one of the worst humanitarian crises of the 21st century. A lethal combination of spiralling violence, record hunger levels and total neglect has ignited a mega-crisis that warrants a mega-response. But instead, millions of families on the brink of the abyss seem to be forgotten by the outside world and are left shut off from any support lifeline,” the Secretary-General of Norwegian Refugee Council, Jan Egeland, said in a statement.

A residential area in Goma, North Kivu. Volcano Nyragongo seen in the background. Credit: Elena Pasquini

Human Rights Watch (HRW) estimates that there are 5.5 million internally displaced people in the country. Nearly 930,000 people from Congo were registered as refugees and asylum seekers in at least 20 countries worldwide. Numerous armed groups and, in some cases, government security forces attack civilians, killing and wounding many.

“Several thousand fighters from various armed groups surrendered throughout the year, but many have returned to armed groups as the authorities failed to take them through an effective Disarmament, Demobilization, and Reintegration (DDR) program. In many instances, armed assailants were also responsible for sexual violence against women and girls, HRW said.

In May, DRC President Felix Tshisekedi proclaimed a “state of siege” in North Kivu and neighbouring Ituri province to counter growing attacks and fights against armed groups.

Despite efforts by the government, violence and insecurity continue to threaten the safety of journalists in this region. JED & RSF have called out the DRC’s government to prioritise two major reforms to keep its promise to improve press freedom and create mechanisms designed to ensure rapid response to violations and follow up at the highest level. It also asked the government to establish a communication channel with press freedom groups and step up its protection for journalists, and combat impunity.

“The lack of legislation that can protect freedom of the press remains a challenge in the DRC. The level of violence is very high, so you have to put in place a lot of safety measures and do what you can to protect yourself,” says Pasquini.

“We need to keep the spotlight on the DRC and keep the attention on what’s happening in that country. Due to the ongoing conflict, it is already very dangerous to travel, to go to those places where stories are happening. It’s also very tough to verify information,” Pasquini says. “There are multiple threats from various armed groups, various checkpoints all over the region, institutional threats of defamation, they all make it very tough to tell the story, and that’s why we need to tell those stories even more.”

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Participants taking part in the colloquium "The role of communication in the challenge of South-South cooperation", organised in Buenos Aires by Inter Press Service (IPS) Latin America, within the framework of the Second High-Level United Nations Conference on South-South Cooperation. Credit: Daniel Gutman/IPS

By Daniel Gutman
BUENOS AIRES, Mar 24 2019 (IPS)

Communication can be a key tool for the development of cooperation among the countries of the global South, but the ever closer relations between them do not receive the attention they deserve from the media.

This conclusion arose from the meeting organised by Inter Press Service (IPS) Latin America in Buenos Aires on Mar. 22, during the third and final day of the Second High-Level United Nations Conference on South-South Cooperation, which brought together representatives of almost 200 countries in the Argentine capital.

“The role of communication in the challenge of South-South cooperation” was the colloquium that brought together journalists, political analysts and officials from international organisations in Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean and Asia."There is little coverage on what progress has been made in trade, technology or health cooperation among the countries of the South, which may seem very different among themselves but are quite similar in terms of their needs." -- Mario Lubetkin

The colloquium, organised by the regional branch of the international news agency IPS, was one of the parallel meetings to the conference and the only one dedicated to communication.

“Forty years ago, when the first conference, also held in Buenos Aires, approved the Plan of Action that forms the basis of South-South Ccoperation, there was awareness that communication was key,” said Mario Lubetkin, assistant director-general of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).

“However, that notion has been lost and communication has not kept up with the changes that have taken place since then. This creates a vacuum for our societies,” said Lubetkin, the moderator of the meeting.

“There is little coverage on what progress has been made in trade, technology or health cooperation among the countries of the South, which may seem very different among themselves but are quite similar in terms of their needs,” concluded Lubetkin, a former director general of IPS, an international news agency that prioritises information from the global South.

In front of an audience made up mainly of journalists and other media workers, the debate was oriented towards the most appropriate tools for developing countries to better disseminate news from the global South, the latest term coined to define the group of nations in Africa, Latin America and Asia.

The president of IPS Latin America, Sergio Berensztein, stressed that “today there is an opportunity for nations like ours, thanks to the fact that there is no longer the biloparity of the Cold War era, nor the unipolarity of the years that followed. Today we are in a time of what we call apolarity.”

Berensztein stressed that at a time when there is a renaissance of protectionism and nationalism in the world, it is necessary for journalists to reinforce the idea of cooperation and ensure that a plurality of voices is heard on the international stage.

“We are living in a moment of crisis in which the old has not fully died yet and the new has not yet been fully born. That is why it is a time of uncertainty and accurate information is an element that favors the peaceful resolution of conflicts,” said Berensztein.

View of the room where the meeting on the role of communication in promoting South-South cooperation was held in Buenos Aires, organised by Inter Press Service (IPS) Latin America. The participants agreed that media outlets in the global South must generate attractive content that will allow them to combat a news agenda imposed by the countries of the industrialised North. Credit: Daniel Gutman/IPS

The power of the large media based in countries of the industrialised North, which tend to impose their journalistic agenda on a global level, was present in the debate as a worrying factor and as evidence of the failure of initiatives aimed at bringing about a new and more balanced information and communication order.

“What is the best way to foment the mass circulation of information about the global South, in order to escape this problem?” was one of the main questions that arose during the two-hour debate, held at a hotel in the Argentine capital.

From the city of Lagos, in a videoconference, the news director of the Nigerian Television Authority, Aliyu Baba Barau, called for strengthened cooperation between media outlets and journalists from developing countries, through the organisation of trips and mechanisms that favour the sharing of resources.

“Nigerian TV permanently shares its resources with other countries,” he said as an example of what can be done in terms of cooperation in media projects in the South.

“The mechanism of South-South cooperation and its advantages need to be understood not only by those who lead our nations, but also by the global community,” said Baba Barau.

Media representatives from China played a prominent role in the exchange of ideas and reflected the strong interest in Asia’s giant in achieving closer ties with Africa and Latin America.

Participants included Zhang Lu, deputy editor of China Daily, the country’s largest English-language news portal; Cui Yuanlei, Mexico correspondent for the Xinhua news agency, which distributes information in several languages (including Spanish); and Li Weilin, team leader of the CCTV television network in São Paulo, Brazil.

Li said the media in emerging countries should not depend on the information distributed by the news networks of industrialised countries, and said journalism should be a way to share experiences.

He said, for example, that during the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, CCTV produced coverage for people in Kenya to see how Jamaica’s star runners were trained, and for Jamaica to meet the Kenyan runners who perform so well in the long-distance and medium-distance races.

Roberto Ridolfi, Assistant-Director General of FAO’s Programme Support and Technical Cooperation Department, stressed that the countries of the South “do not have a shared past, but they do have the same future.”

Ridolfi said communication has a key role to play in the arduous path towards Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which seek to improve the quality of life of the world’s population and bring the South into line with the level of development in the North.

“The media and journalists have the mission of attracting audiences with news linked to sustainability. The proliferation of plastics in the oceans, the devastation of forests or the problems plaguing food production are issues that should be on the agenda,” he said.

Like the other panelists, Ridolfi lamented that societies are unaware of the South-South cooperation mechanisms that have emerged in recent years and said journalists have a lot of work to do in that regard.

“We have yet to demonstrate to the world the real value and benefits of South-South cooperation,” the FAO official said.

The need for African, Asian, Latin American and Arab media to get to know each other better was recognised as a necessity.

The local participants were particularly emphatic about this, since Argentina is a country with deep cultural ties with Europe, where little is known about what happens in the countries of the regions of the South, beyond catastrophes and conflicts.

The challenge, now that new technologies have democratised communication but have also put it at risk, is to generate information from the South in attractive formats that allow a better understanding of the realities and opportunities in developing countries and between the countries and regions of the South.

Mass protests in Slovakia in the wake of the killing of investigative journalist Jan Kuciak and his fiancee Martina Kusnirova led to the resignation of the country's Prime Minister, Interior Minister and head of police. Credit: Ed Holt/IPS

By Ed Holt
BRATISLAVA, May 22 2018 (IPS)

International media watchdogs, EU politicians, journalists and publishers have condemned Slovak police investigating the murder of a local journalist after one of his colleagues claimed she was interrogated for eight hours before being forced to hand over her telephone – potentially putting sources at risk.

Czech investigative journalist Pavla Holcova had travelled from Prague to Bratislava on May 15th believing she was going to help Slovak police with their investigation into the murder of her former colleague, Jan Kuciak, and his fiancée, Martina Kusnirova, in February this year."It starts with a phone, then a laptop, then interview notes and what is next?...Journalism is the canary in the coal mine. If it dies in these countries, then ‘European-ness’ will have died." --Drew Sullivan

But she said after she arrived she was questioned for eight hours by officers from the Slovak National Crime Agency (NAKA) repeatedly asking about the investigative reporting network she works with, her past work and links between Slovak business people and senior politicians.

They also demanded she hand over her mobile phone so they could access data on it.

When she refused she says she was threatened with a 1,650 Euro fine and police produced a warrant to confiscate the phone. She said she agreed to give them the phone but having failed to retrieve data from it when Holcova refused to give them passwords, they took it saying they would use Europol forensic resources to get past its passwords and access the information inside.

News of the interrogation and requisition of Holcova’s phone brought widespread condemnation from groups like Reporters Without Borders, the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), which Holcova, and previously Kuciak, has worked with, MEPs and other groups.

Meanwhile, in Slovakia, publishing houses and dozens of editors from local newspapers and media outlets put out a joint statement demanding Holcova’s phone be returned to her immediately, reiterating the legal right to protection of journalists’ sources and calling on Slovak police to explain their conduct.

However, they say it is not just Holcova they are defending.

Beata Balogova, Editor in Chief of the Slovak daily newspaper ‘Sme’, told IPS: “This isn’t just about Pavla, it goes further than that. We need to know whether they [the police and prosecutor] think what they have done is in line with the laws of this country.”

As in some other countries in Central Europe, media watchdogs have pointed to an alarming erosion in press freedom in Slovakia in recent years with journalists facing denigration and abuse from the government and intimidation by local businessmen.

Meanwhile, many local media outlets have been bought up by oligarchs and there are serious doubts about the political independence of the country’s public broadcaster. Criminal libel prosecutions are also a permanent threat to journalists’ work.

Kuciak was shot dead by a single bullet to his chest and his fiancée by a single bullet to the head in his home east of the capital Bratislava in late February.

At the time of his death, Kuciak and Holcova had been working on a story about the links between the ‘Ndrangheta mafia and people in Smer, the senior party in the Slovak governing coalition.

In the days after the killing, there was feverish speculation about mafia or political involvement in the murder and that it had been carried out as a clear warning to other journalists.

Balogova and other Slovak journalists believe that by taking Holcova’s phone, police may have been sending a signal to journalists.

“It could have been to tell journalists that they are being watched or to try and frighten them,” she said.

There has also been speculation that the police may have been trying to get information so they can move to try and cover up links between failings in the investigation and senior figures in the Slovak police and judicial system.

In their statement, Slovak publishers and editors said: “Taking into account that many suspicions which arose after the murder of Jan Kuciak and his fiancee Martina Kusnirova point directly to representatives of criminal justice institutions, the rigorous protection of sources is more important than ever, especially when there is a risk this information could be abused.”

Drew Sullivan, Editor at the OCCRP, told IPS that the police may have been acting on orders from politicians.

“Justice is still political in Slovakia,” he said. “It is possible the ruling political party, which is more concerned about the news stories which created the protests [after Kuciak’s murder and which forced the Prime Minister’s resignation] than they are with Jan’s murder, is dictating the police‘s approach.”

And Marek Vagovic, editor in chief at Slovak news site Aktuality.sk, Kuciak‘s former employer, told the Slovak daily ‘Novy cas’: “Looking at the nature and links between those in power who control the criminal justice institutions, I don’t believe this is about investigating a double pre-meditated murder.

“I fear that in taking Pavla Holcova’s mobile phone they have a different aim: tracking down her informants so they can find out what she was working on and can warn politicians, oligarchs and members of organised crime under suspicion.”

In a statement, the Special Prosecutor’s Office, which issued the warrant to take Holcova’s phone, said that Holcova had willingly given up her phone to police and that the device had been taken solely to try and find Kuciak’s killers.

It stressed that the warrant was issued to help the investigation and not to impinge on any of Holcova’s rights as a journalist.

But Slovak lawyers and constitutional experts have questioned the police’s approach, arguing that any information relating to Kuciak’s murder found on the phone would probably not be admissible as evidence if it was accessed without Holcova giving them the password to it.

Following media attention, the Special Prosecutor’s Office said on May 18th it would send the phone back to Holcova as soon as possible and that after it was taken no attempt was made to bypass its security and access its data. But it defended the police’s conduct, saying that looking to obtain data in the phone was “a necessary and logical” step in the investigation.

It also said that Holcova would be asked to attend further questioning in the future as a witness in the investigation. Holcova, though, has said she will “consider very carefully” any future meetings with Slovak investigators.

Whatever the intentions of the Slovak police were, their actions will have had an effect, although perhaps not the one they would have been expecting if they were attempting to frighten journalists.

“It may affect how sources interact with us,” explained Balogova. “Sources speak to journalists because they believe that we can and will protect their identities. But now they may be worried that journalists cannot protect their sources. So, will they still talk to us?

“But [the police’s actions] may also have the opposite effect – journalists will just be more careful now in how they communicate with people and go about their work.”

The incident made headlines abroad and was noted in the European Parliament which has been closely following the Slovak media environment since Kuciak’s murder and the subsequent mass protests which forced the Slovak Prime Minister, Interior Minister and, eventually, the head of the police force to resign.

MEPs suggested it would have further damaged the reputation of the Slovak police, which is widely perceived as endemically corrupt and at senior level linked to powerful local business figures suspected of criminal activity.

Manfred Weber, leader of the European People’s Party in the European Parliament, said in a statement: “We thought that after the murders of Jan Kuciak and Martina Kusnirova that the Slovak government would do all it could to allow journalists to carry out their daily work and that we would see them as partners in the common fight against corruption and crime.

“Unfortunately, today we can see that, despite the Slovak government’s assurances, the opposite is happening.”

But perhaps just as importantly, the treatment of Holcova could have ramifications beyond Slovakia, potentially emboldening neighbouring governments which, critics say, are leading their own crackdowns on critical media.

Press freedom in Poland and Hungary has receded dramatically over the last few years, according to local and international media groups, with both countries’ rankings in Reporters Without Borders’ Press Freedom Index plummeting.

Governments seen as populist, increasingly authoritarian and corrupt have used legislation, taxes on independent media, takeovers, forced closures and, some believe, security service surveillance, to try and silence critical news outlets, they claim.

When asked whether he thought other governments in the region could start using similar methods following what happened to Holcova, OCCRP’s Sullivan told IPS: “Absolutely. It starts with a phone, then a laptop, then interview notes and what is next?

“There is an increasing erosion of journalism rights in the East of Europe. Hungary, Slovakia and Poland have become problematic states where independent journalism is dying.”

He added: “We’ve seen this [Slovak police treatment of Holcova] and worse in Eastern Europe, Russia and the CIS states. It is something we kind of expect from drug states, captured states and the autocracies in those regions. But we haven’t seen it with a European Union member.”

And he called on the EU to act to uphold its core values. “This is a growing splinter in the eye of Europe and the European Union needs to act decisively if it doesn’t want to lose its European values. It can’t have members denying basic values.

“If this is allowed to continue, it will lead to …. further repression of journalism. Journalism is the canary in the coal mine. If it dies in these countries, then ‘European-ness’ will have died. These are states that are fundamentally becoming undemocratic. We need media there chronicling this.”

Local and foreign journalists cover a church function at Dedan Kimathi University, Kenya, in May 2015. Advocates of press freedom see an alarming decline in recent years. Credit: Miriam Gathigah/IPS

By Sam Otieno
NAIROBI, Mar 13 2018 (IPS)

Freedom of the press in Kenya is facing its biggest challenge since independence, with government censorship on the rise both during and since last year’s general election.

Kenya’s media landscape includes five major television stations and well over 90 FM radio stations, two national leading newspapers (the Daily Nation and Standard), with a few more in circulation and several topical magazines."At the end of the day, the civic space is shrinking and democracy is suffering.” --George Nyabuga

English and Kiswahili are the preferred modes of communication, although vernacular languages feature in some of the media, especially those under the flagship of Royal Media services. Most of these outlets have an online presence.

Kenya’s hugely popular 2010 constitution has a robust Bill of Rights and a comprehensive Media Council Act (2013). The provisions seek to protect and regulate the media fraternity in the collection and dissemination of information. Just a few years ago, the UN recognized Kenya’s media vibrancy, but this scenario has gradually been eroded under the current administration.

For instance, the government orchestrated changes to the laws governing the sector by demanding the revelation of sources and forcing media houses to publish a weekly pullout containing the state’s development agenda as a precondition to earning advertising revenues from public institutions.

Gilbert Nakweya, a well-known freelance journalist based in Nairobi, noted that African election campaigns often feature bids to muzzle the media when the spotlight turns to government failures such as corruption, excessive use of force and other abuses. Kenya is not an exception.

“The recent 2017 protracted election in Kenya was filled with uncertainty, unleashing of propaganda and a characteristic media clampdown. For example, editors were summoned to the State House prior to crucial political events and ordered to skew their reporting in favor of the current government administration,” explained Nakweya.

Even if most editors ignored the command, this kind of pressure has a chilling effect on the media’ independence and integrity, he said.

George Nyabuga, associate director of the school of journalism and mass communication at the University of Nairobi, agrees that the Kenyan government is increasingly becoming intolerant of divergent views and criticism.

Earlier this year, it used the broadcasting of a mock oath of office by Raila Odinga, a former prime minister and the leader of the opposition, as an excuse to shut down four privately owned television stations for 10 days, which the government viewed as anti-Jubilee (the current ruling party).

Other journalists have expressed fears of being arrested. Kenya’s Minister of Interior confirmed at a press conference on Jan. 31 that authorities were investigating individuals and organizations, including media houses, in relation to the Nairobi event.

“Moreover, civil society organisations and individuals thought to be anti-government are also targeted,” Nyabuga told IPS. “There are also fears that the government is even targeting social media platforms. This is a serious affront to both media/press freedom and freedom of expression. And at the end of the day, the civic space is shrinking and democracy is suffering.”

Nyabuga worries about self-censorship in this climate of fear. Stories are killed because editors and journalists think they might offend the government and advertisers.

Nyabuga noted that academics can strengthen freedom of expression in Kenya through the creation of a platform for a discussion of important issues. Even the most critical voices must be given the space and opportunity to air their views.

“Media freedom is suffering and must be protected. The media is pandering to officialdom and commercialism. But commercialism and sustainability are critical to good and caring journalism. The safety and security of journalists must be guaranteed. The journalists and editors must be able to withstand government and advertisers’ pressure if it’s to remain relevant and especially as far as protecting the public interest.”

He added that even as the spaces for freedom of expression shrink, people have an opportunity to challenge commercial and established media hegemony and power.

“People can utilize social media to enhance their own freedoms. Of course, that freedom should come with responsibility. So that must be tempered with tolerance for difference and not be used for extreme views, terrorism, hate speech, etc,” he said.

By a show of hands, Venezuela’s National Constituent Assembly passed on Nov. 8 the new law against hate, which represents a threat to freedom of expression according to organisations that work to defend free speech. Credit: Zurimar Campos / AVN

By Humberto Márquez
CARACAS, Dec 6 2017 (IPS)

Hate speech in the media or social networks in Venezuela is now punishable with prison sentences of up to 20 years, according to a new law issued by the government-controlled National Constituent Assembly (ANC).

“A laudable objective, such as preventing hate speech that can lead to crimes and other damages, creates new crimes of opinion and is aimed at controlling content and freedom of expression,” Marianela Balbi, executive director of the Venezuelan chapter of the Lima-based Press and Society Institute (IPyS), told IPS.

The “Constitutional Law against hatred, for peaceful coexistence and tolerance” was approved by the ANC, which is made up exclusively of supporters of the government of Nicolás Maduro. The ANC was elected on Jul. 30, in elections boycotted by the opposition. It is not recognised by many governments, while the single-chamber National Assembly, where the opposition is in the majority, rejects it as unconstitutional.

“We do not call it a law because laws, in accordance with domestic and international human rights law, are made by parliaments – in this country, the National Assembly – to allow debate and participation, which in this case did not happen,” Carlos Correa, of the non-governmental organisation Espacio Público, dedicated to freedom of expression and information, told IPS.

It was President Maduro, in power since 2013 and political heir of the late leader of the Bolivarian revolution, Hugo Chávez (1999-2013), who requested the approval of the law against hatred.

“The time has come, through a broad political process of awareness-raising, to punish the crimes of hate and intolerance, in all their forms of expression, and to put an end to them definitively,” Maduro said when presenting the bill in August.

Former minister of Foreign Affairs and president of the ANC, Delcy Rodríguez, said that a comparative study was carried out with similar laws in Germany and Ecuador, and that in addition to establishing penalties, the Venezuelan law incorporated provisions to promote education in favour of tolerance.

In July, Germany passed a law that orders service providers such as YouTube or Twitter to remove content considered criminal within 24 hours.

In Ecuador, former president Rafael Correa (2007-2017) proposed a “law that regulates acts of hatred and discrimination in social networks,” with possible sanctions against service providers, but the legislature shelved the bill after Lenin Moreno became president in May.

The 25-article law passed by the ANC does not define what it means by “hate”. According to the Royal Academy of the Spanish Language hatred is “antipathy and aversion to something or a person to whom one wishes ill.”

“It is serious that this law puts in the hands of a few officials the assessment of what is or is not a hate crime, because the legal instrument lacks a definition,” Alberto Arteaga, former dean of the Central University of Venezuela’s law school, told IPS.

The rapporteur for freedom of expression in the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), Uruguayan Edison Lanza, warned that “the law against hatred in Venezuela could severely hinder the exercise of the right to freedom of expression and generate a strong intimidation effect incompatible with a democratic society.”

Lanza lamented the establishment of “exorbitant criminal sanctions and powers to censor traditional media and the Internet, that run counter to international standards on freedom of expression.” In his opinion, “the last free space in Venezuela, the social networks, will be censored.”

The law aims to prevent and repress all expressions that “promote war or incite hatred of national, racial, ethnic, religious, political, social, ideological, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression and any other nature that constitutes incitement to discrimination, intolerance or violence. ”

Political organisations will have to reform their statutes to expel any members who spread expressions of hatred. The penalty for not following this rule will be the cancellation of the registration of the party considered to have infringed the law.

Any print or audiovisual media outlets that emit messages punishable by law will be subject to fines, closure or termination of their concession, independently of the penalties that may fall individually on those responsible.

Administrators of social networks and online media outlets must withdraw messages that contravene the law within a maximum period of six hours, or they will be sanctioned.

The penalty for spreading messages that instigate hatred, war, discrimination or intolerance can range from 10 to 20 years in prison.

The sanctions will be imposed by courts and by the state National Telecommunications Commission.

In addition, the law creates a Commission for the Promotion and Guarantee of Peaceful Coexistence, which will dictate the measures that the authorities and official agencies and citizens must follow to fulfill the objectives of the law and avoid impunity.

The new 15-member Commission, appointed by the ANC itself, will be made up of representatives of that body, the executive branch, the other branches of government, excluding parliament, and three social organisations that promote coexistence.

Balbi argued that the new law “establishes a very dangerous discretionality, which is unnecessary to protect aspects such as security or the good repute of people, because they already are covered by the Constitution, other laws and international treaties that Venezuela has signed.”

The National Assembly rejected “the supposed law”, because it was produced by a body that it sees as not having the authority to create laws, and because “it constitutes a gross attempt to criminalise and sanction political dissidence, putting at risk plurality, freedom of expression and the right to information.”

But the decisions by the parliament elected in December 2015 are systematically blocked and ignored by the Supreme Court of Justice, the executive branch and other Venezuelan authorities.

Correa said the new law “is aimed towards building a logic of fear. It seeks censorship and self-censorship. It tries to get into people’s feelings, something characteristic of not only authoritarian but of totalitarian regimes.”
The new law, which entered into force on Nov. 8, has not yet been applied to any institution or person.

The director of the new Agency for Access to Public Information in Argentina, Eduardo Bertoni – a former IACHR special rapporteur for Freedom of Expression - presented his plans at the Aug. 17 public hearing where his appointment was discussed. Credit: Chief of the Cabinet of Ministers

By Daniel Gutman
BUENOS AIRES, Sep 28 2017 (IPS)

After 15 long years of public campaigns and debates in which different political, social and business sectors held marches and counter-protests, Argentina finally has a new law that guarantees access to public information.

This step forward must now be reflected in reality, in this South American country where one of the main social demands is greater transparency on the part of the authorities.

The Law on the Right of Access to Public Information, which considers “all government-held information” to be public, was approved by Congress in September last year and enters into force Friday Sept. 29.

Eduardo Bertoni stressed the importance of the new law. He is the academic appointed by the government of President Mauricio Macri to lead the new Agency for Access to Public Information, which will operate within the executive branch, although “with operational autonomy,” according to the law.

“There are already 113 countries that have right of access to information laws and 90 countries have incorporated it into their constitutions,” Bertoni said during the public hearing where his appointment was discussed.

Bertoni, a lawyer with a great deal of experience regarding the right to information, served as Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (CIADH) between 2002 and 2005.

“We must now encourage society to demand more information from the authorities. And it is essential to push for better organisation of the public archives, because if we do not find the information people seek, we will fail,” he added.

The text is broad in terms of the list of institutions legally bound to respond to requests for access to information: besides the various branches of the state, it includes companies, political parties, trade unions, universities and any private entity to which public funds have been allocated, including public service concessionaires.

The Agency was created to ensure compliance with the law. Its functions include advising people who seek public information and assisting them with their request.

“This was clearly a pending issue for Argentina. It is incomprehensible that the governments of Néstor Kirchner (2003-2007) and Cristina Fernández (2007-2015) did not push for approval of this law, which should be an incentive for provinces and municipalities to do the same, since very few have regulations on access to public information,” Guillermo Mastrini, an expert on this question, told IPS.

For Mastrini, a former director of Communication Sciences at the University of Buenos Aires, “this does not change the worrying scenario with respect to the right to information, since the government is regulating by decree issues related to audiovisual communication services in a way that does not favor plurality and transparency.”

The bill was sent to Congress by the government a few months after Macri took office in December 2015, and passed with large majorities in both legislative chambers.

Until now, at the national level, there was only decree 1172, signed in 2003 by Kirchner with the aim of “improving the quality of democracy”, which was not only below the status of a law, but only covered the executive branch with regard to the obligation to provide information.

José Crettaz, a journalist and the coordinator of the Center for Studies on the Convergence of Communications, told IPS that “Néstor Kirchner’s decree, which applied to the executive branch, worked very well at first, but then public officials began to leave most requests for information unanswered.”

“Now we are seeing a huge step forward, since the law encompasses all branches of the state, and I see a government with a different attitude. The decisive thing will be how the law is implemented. The only valid criterion should be: if there is public money involved, it is public information,” he said.

The law was passed after dozens of bills on access to information were introduced in Congress in recent years. The first was presented under the government of Fernando de la Rua (1999-2001), with the support of a network of civil society organisations, but with little backing from journalists.

The initiative obtained preliminary approval from the lower house of Congress in 2003, passed to the Senate and then the main Argentine media outlets joined the public campaign demanding that it be approved. However, they later distanced themselves from the bill.

They did so, Bertoni recalled in a paper written in 2011 for the World Bank, when a senator warned that the media should also respond to requests for information submitted by any member of the public, as they receive state advertising, which is considered a subsidy.

In 2004, the Senate approved the bill, but with modifications that included private entities among the subjects obligated to provide information, and sent it back to the lower house, where it was shelved. Another bill was passed by the Senate in 2010, but it also failed to prosper.

Now one thing that stood out is that just two days before the law went into effect, the government modified it through a questioned channel: based on “a decree of necessity and urgency”, putting the new Agency in the orbit of the chief of the cabinet of ministers.

“The government thus gave a lower status to the Agency, which according to law was to depend directly on the Presidency of the Nation; the decision, moreover, cannot be taken by decree when Congress is in session,” said Damián Loreti, professor of Right to Information at the University of Buenos Aires.

“That the law is in force is good. But I am concerned about a number of things, such as not including among its objectives a guarantee for the exercise of other rights, such as housing or sexual and reproductive rights. The model law of the Organisation of American States was not followed,” he told IPS.

For Sebastián Lacunza, the last director of the Buenos Aires Herald, a well-respected English-language newspaper that closed this year, “in a country that does not have a culture of transparency, there is a risk that the law will fail.”

“This government promised a regeneration of the country’s institutions, but in some aspects it ended up aggravating the shortcomings of the previous administration, which was not prone to being open with information,” he told IPS.

In his view, “in a context of global crisis in the media industry and a shrinking of plurality of information, the most important thing is that there is an active state that combats the concentration of the media in a few hands.”

Police block rioters in front of the Divisional Officers building in Kumba, Southwest Region, Cameroon, amid an ongoing political crisis in the country’s Anglophone region. Credit: Mbom Sixtus/IPS

By Mbom Sixtus
YAOUNDE, Sep 26 2017 (IPS)

“For too long we have been afraid to speak out against injustices and all sorts of atrocities happening in Cameroon, thinking it [the silence] will protect us. If I were to repeat what I have done on Canal 2 English [television], I will do it again. I now stand ready for any eventuality,” says Cameroonian journalist Elie Smith.

The outspoken journalist told IPS he was forced to resign from Cameroon’s leading private media house following intense pressure from government. The CEO of the station had suspended a talk show, Tough Talk, Smith co-hosted with Divine Ntaryike and Henry Kejang. He said Prime Minister Philemon Yang and Justice Minister Laurent Esso wanted him fired.Journalist Tim Finian Njua was brutally attacked and taken away by unknown men in Bamenda. He only realised they were security officers when he was brought to Yaounde.

The trio were accused of being too critical of government, especially during reporting and analysis of an ongoing 11-month-long protest in English-speaking Cameroon. Protesters had adopted civil disobedience as their trump card, keeping schools and courts in the region closed since Nov. 21, 2016.

Smith, who had refused to travel from the financial capital, the port city of Douala, to Yaounde, the country’s political capital, to apologise to the prime minister for being too critical of government, was later told to stick to a program called World Views and refrain from any discussion of domestic politics.

“On Sep. 4 when schools were expected to resume in Cameroon, protests marred the resumption in English-speaking Cameroon. Yet, the CEO asked me to lie on air that resumption was effective in order to please government. I refused. That is when we both realised we can no longer work together,” he told IPS.

Despite losing his job, Smith is among the few journalists who have avoided prison in a government clampdown on reporters since the crisis erupted in English-speaking Cameroon. Others have been jailed and tortured, while some are currently in exile. For the most part, security forces target English-speaking journalists whom government accuses of supporting or sympathising with “terrorists”.

Journalists or terrorists?

Cameroon was first colonised by the Germans in 1884. After the defeat of Germany in World War I, France and Britain shared the territory under a mandate from the League of Nations, with Britain keeping one-fifth of it.  A federation of two states with equal status was declared in 1961, but was abolished in 1972 following a referendum – its conduct remains contested to this day.

Citizens of the former trust territory of British Southern Cameroons who have over the years, complained of marginalisation and lack of control over their assets, rose up in October 2016 in two ranks- some demanding a return to federation while others demand total independence. Both camps however agree on the same complaints; insignificant placements of English-speaking Cameroonians in administration, and inequality which they say led to impoverishment of their region and its population and subjugation of their educational and cultural heritage. At least 13 people have been shot dead since the crisis erupted.

A controversial law on the suppression of acts of terrorism in Cameroon enacted in December 2014 is being used to try citizens arrested in relation to the protests. Journalists arrested for reporting on the crisis are equally tried at the military tribunal under the same law which forbids public meetings, street protests or any action that the government deems to be disturbing the peace.

Tim Finian Njua, one of eight journalists arrested in relation to the ongoing crisis, says he is finding it difficult readjusting after spending over six months in jail. The editor of Life Time newspaper, Njua was freed from the Kondengui Prison in Yaounde alongside Atia Tilarious and two other journalists, and close to 50 protesters, following a presidential clemency in August.

Njua told IPS he was brutally attacked and taken away by unknown men in Bamenda. He only realised they were security officers when he was brought to Yaounde. “They said our newspaper reported an incident that may provoke or aggravate rebellion. I was charged with acts of terrorism, insurrection, secession and propagation of false information.”

Atia Tilarious, who had earlier been arrested and released for hosting a TV debate on the uprising, had gone to Kondengui after his first arrest, this time in the company of Amos Fofung, a reporter for The Guardian Post newspaper.

Fofung told IPS “I was let out of prison six months later. I was told the state attorney sent apologies for keeping me in jail without charge or evidence. I walked out and later travelled back to Buea. It made me bolder. I am still objective in my reporting.”

Meanwhile Fonjah Hanson Muki, proprietor of Cameroon Report, was arrested alongside five of his staff in the town of Bamenda, which is regarded as the epicentre of the uprising. They were accused by a military tribunal of propagatng false information. They were also accused of receiving money from secessionists abroad to push a separatist agenda through their reporting. The last of them, arrested on July 25, was released on Sept. 18. The media owner was ordered never to report on the ongoing crisis.

Skewed regulator

Before the clampdown on journalists reporting the crisis, the national communication council had issued a warning to journalists in the country, tacitly outlawing all media debates on the return to federation. Though the council’s decision preceded a speech by President Paul Biya making the topic taboo, French-language media organs continued the debate, while English-language tabloids piped down.

“You know we are not the same. There are things Le Messager or Le Jour can report and go free but The Guardian Post or The Sun will be sanctioned for doing same. The public does not understand, that is why you find citizens criticising us on social media, saying we are chicken-hearted,” a newspaper publisher who asked for anonymity told IPS.

The council has been criticised for siding with state officials and influential citizens. It meted out sanctions on Sep. 22, suspending some 20 media organs, publishers and journalists for periods ranging from one to six months. Most of the decisions were verdicts on complaints filed by government officials like the Minister of Forestry and influential citizens like Cameroonian football star and billionaire, Samuel Eto’o Fils.

Ten-year jail sentence for reporting on terrorism

Ahmed Aba, Cameroon correspondent for the Hausa service of the French international radio, RFI, is currently serving a ten-year jail term. He was found guilty of “laundering of proceeds of terrorism” and “non-denunciation of terrorism” by the military tribunal in Yaounde.

The verdict, handed down this year after two years of pre-trial detention, was appealed by his lawyer, Clement Nakong. Aba told IPS at the prison yard in Yaounde that he is innocent and hopes to be set free after the appeal. He said he was accused of working for the Nigeria-based Boko Haram terror group.

But the outcome of an appeal is uncertain as a government spokesman bluntly declared at a press conference that RFI supports terrorists. The appeal hearing was expected to begin among others in mid-August this year, but Aba’s name was taken off the list.

International and local institutions and activists have been advocating for his release. He was recently named one of the winners of the 2017 International Press Freedom Award by the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).

Another journalist, Gubai Gatama, was placed under investigation and interrogated at the police headquarters for reporting on Boko Haram.

“Cameroon is clearly using anti-state legislation to silence criticism in the press,” said CPJ Africa Program Director Angela Quintal in a statement. “When you equate journalism with terrorism, you create an environment where fewer journalists are willing to report on hard news for fear of reprisal. Cameroon must amend its laws and stop subjecting journalists–who are civilians–to military trial.”

On Sep. 20, CPJ issued a report, written by Quintal, warning that in addition to detaining journalists, authorities have banned news outlets deemed sympathetic to the Anglophone protesters, shut down internet in regions experiencing unrest, and prevented outside observers, including CPJ, from accessing the country by delaying the visa process.

A protest in Karachi over the lynching of Mashal Khan. Credit: Abida Ali/IPS

By Zofeen Ebrahim
KARACHI, May 5 2017 (IPS)

Aimal Khan, 27, an airman in Pakistan’s Air Force, warns the country will end up in the throes of mayhem if the state does not do something about the abuse of the blasphemy laws. “People will use it to settle personal scores,” he said.

He should know. His younger brother, Mashal Khan, 25, was brutally killed by a mob roused to a frenzy by allegations he had committed blasphemy. “They became the judge, the jury and the executioner,” Aimal said. "It's pretty obvious that religious passions are easily ignited because day in and day out all we hear about is religious sermonizing in one form or the other." --Dr. Pervez Hoodbhoy

Studying at the Abdul Wali Khan University in Mardan, in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province (KPK), Khan was known for speaking out against corruption and injustices prevalent in society. On April 13, he was shot, stripped and not satisfied with that, the mob then beat up his corpse as shown in the graphic video footage.

The police investigation following his killing, however, found no evidence he had committed blasphemy. The government has since arrested 47 of the 49 accused.

Political activist and lawyer Jibran Nasir told IPS that the country’s blasphemy laws are not just used by the land mafia to evict people, but often for raising funds and recruiting members by rogue organisations. “The social media has become a more potent tool where one fake account with just one blasphemous tweet can kill someone,” he said alluding to the fake account created in the name of Mashal Khan to falsely establish he’d committed blasphemy.

According to opposition leader Syed Khursheed Shah, since 1990, 65 people have been killed on allegations of committing blasphemy and no one was executed for the crimes.

A month later, Aimal says the family continues to receive phone calls expressing condolences from all across Pakistan. Ordinary people to celebrities and even politicians have visited their home to offer comfort.

“After my brother’s murder, we thought humanity had fled from this country, but I tell you, it’s quite the opposite. We have been given unconditional support,” Aimal said, his voice filled with emotion, over the phone from his village Zaida in Swabi district, KPK.

He hopes his family’s loss can open the door to a meaningful debate on reviewing the infamous laws.

Muhammad Iqbal Khan (left), the father of Mashal Khan, who was murdered by a religious mob in Pakistan. The men offer prayers. Credit: Abdul Hameed Goraya/IPS

Aimal’s sentiments are echoed by Reema Omer of the International Commission of Jurists. “If Mashal’s most tragic killing could revive the debate and lead to blasphemy reform, that would be a fitting tribute to his bravery and courage,” she told IPS.

“The law should have been reviewed and reformed a long time ago. These incidents are latest but not the first,” pointed out Nasir. While exploitation of these laws can be corrected through procedural reforms, he said what was innately wrong was that they are in violation of Hanafi jurisprudence [followed in Pakistan] which gives no death penalty to non-Muslims for blasphemy but Pakistani law does.

Asia Bibi, a Christian, has been on death row for the last seven years. International Christian Concern  has termed her case one of the most “controversial” and best examples of the abuse of blasphemy laws.

While a complete scrapping of the law is unlikely, many see this as an opportunity to revive a debate. In 1986, to ‘Islamise’ the country, Pakistan’s then leader General Mohammad Zia ul Haq enacted these laws.

But anyone who has tried to even tried to open debate has either been censured or silenced.

In 2011, Salmaan Taseer, the then governor of Punjab, was assassinated for supporting Asia Bibi, accused of blasphemy. His murder was followed by that of Shahbaz Bhatti, a minister who had talked of misuse of the laws.

Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (Fazal) chief Maulana Fazalur Rehman, enjoying a huge following in the KPK, while condemning Khan’s lynching, said he was well aware that liberal forces would use this incident and call for amendment in the laws, but warned that no one would be allowed to touch it.

“For a few days when there was such an outcry it was felt the time for a critical review of the blasphemy laws had arrived,” said I.A. Rehman, noted rights activist, speaking to IPS. “The clerics were on the defensive.”

This euphoria was short-lived.

Rehman said the lawmakers belonging to religious parties disowned the resolution in the assembly which they had earlier backed.

In fact, soon after Mashal’s lynching, the legislative assembly of Pakistan-administered Pakistan passed two resolutions regarding the finality of Prophet Mohammad (Peace Be Upon Him) and respect of his family and companions.

A protest in Karachi over the lynching of Mashal Khan. Credit: Abida Ali/IPS

The resolution also stated that if Ahmadis (declared non-Muslims by the constitution of Pakistan) claim themselves to be Muslims, they should be charged with blasphemy.

He has little hope in Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who himself narrowly survived ouster and was saved by a supreme court verdict last month, after the opposition had taken him to court on charges of corruption.

“It [ruling Pakistan Muslim League — PML-N] will not take on the clerics at this stage,” Rehman said, lamenting: “The chance of doing something about blasphemy will again be missed.” But then he never had much hope attached to Sharif in the first place. “The PML-N is an accomplice to orthodoxy therefore there is no hope of a change for the better.”

However, there are others who say the laws have nothing to do with the recent episodes of lynching. The laws were not even invoked once.

Following the killing of Khan, in another part of Pakistan, a man was shot dead by his three sisters. He was accused of blasphemy in 2004 and the sisters in their confessional statement said they were incited by the imam of their neighbourhood mosque.

The same day a mob attacked a man after Friday prayers in northern Pakistan town of Chitral, and was saved in time by the mosque imam and the police officers who intervened and rescued him. The man was mentally ill and was on his way to Islamabad for treatment.

“It’s not the law, it’s the people, a people that have gone berserk,” said eminent educationist, Dr Pervez Hoodbhoy, who teaches physics at universities in Islamabad and Lahore.

That is why he insists on teaching Occam’s Razor in his classes. “It’s a metaphor for parsimony of assumptions. Start with the obvious, if that doesn’t work then assume that something more complicated is involved,” he explained, adding: “In this [lynching] particular case, it’s pretty obvious that religious passions are easily ignited because day in and day out all we hear about is religious sermonizing in one form or the other.”

But Omer thinks otherwise. “Killings in the name of blasphemy and mob violence after blasphemy allegations cannot be separated from the law and its mandatory death punishment; the impunity – even patronage – enjoyed by perpetrators in the past; and the state’s use of blasphemy to clamp down on dissenting/critical voices,” she said.

Recalling the climate just before Khan’s killing, she said there was renewed movement by various state institutions condemning ‘blasphemers; calling blasphemy ‘an act of terrorism; and urging people to report blasphemy so strict action could be taken against them.

Nasir, too, believed that when the parliament associates the death penalty with a crime it “does trickle down into society, socially and politically”. He gave the example of the arrest of three people for desecrating a Hindu temple and tried under section 295A (of blasphemy laws) which does not carry death penalty but shows clearly that blasphemy against other religions does not create a “huge social or political uproar”.

In addition, Omer said, the existence of the blasphemy laws in their current form gives a certain “cloak of legality” to such calls. “Which is why we shouldn’t lose sight of the connection between the existence of the blasphemy laws and the kind of violence we saw in Mardan, in Chitral, and before that in Kot Radha Kishan and other cases,” she said.

A large number of people accused of blasphemy, or even convicted of blasphemy by trial courts for defiling the Holy Quran, suffer from mental illnesses, said Omer. “This too is a common thread in how blasphemy laws play out in practice,” she said.”This is a damning indictment of the prosecution and police, who allow these cases to continue despite the fact that the accused do not have the requisite capacity to commit a crime.”

Journalists in Peshawar protest an attack on Dawn News near the Peshawar Press Club in November 2016. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS

By Ashfaq Yusufzai
PESHAWAR, Jan 30 2017 (IPS)

The Federally Administered Tribal Areas located on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border remain one of the most perilous places in the world to be a reporter, with journalists walking a razor’s edge of violence and censorship.

FATA has been a bastion of Taliban militants since they crossed over to Pakistan and took refuge when their government was toppled in neighbouring Afghanistan by the U.S.-led Coalition forces towards the end of 2001.“Most of the 200 reporters from FATA have migrated outside their districts and do their work from safer places. We are unsafe. There’s no protection at all.” --Muhammad Ghaffar

Militants have used the area as a base to target security forces as well as journalists whom they perceive as pro-government.

Muhammad Anwar, who represents FATA-based Tribal Union of Journalists (TUJ), said that excessive violence, threats and intimidation remain a fact of life.

“There are two options with FATA’s journalists: either to face death or stay silent over what is going on there,” he said.

Hayatullah Khan was the first journalist killed, in June 2006 after being kidnapped in December 2005 in Waziristan. Since then more than 20 journalists have been killed in the seven agencies of FATA, allegedly by Taliban militants who were unhappy over their reporting.

“Taliban militants set on fire a newspaper stall when they saw news highlighting their activities. They also warned the reporters to stay away from coverage of the Taliban’s punishments of local people,” Muhammad Shakoor, a journalist from North Waziristan, told IPS.

Shakoor, who now lives in Peshawar, the capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), one of Pakistan’s four provinces, recalls how militants’ threats have prompted many journalists to flee to other parts of the country.

The situation in Swat district in KP also turned sour for journalists during the unlawful rule of the Taliban from 2007 to 2009. “Taliban militants intimidated local journalists. At least three of them were killed because they were disliked by the Taliban militants or the Pakistan Army,” Muhammad Rafiq, a local journalist, told IPS.

Reporters fear for their lives and take extreme caution while filing their stories. “We are stuck between militants and the army. We don’t know about the killers of our colleagues who have fallen in the line of their duties,” Rafiq said.

The Taliban may have disappeared as a result of military operations, but they still have the capability to target journalists, he said.

“Most of the 200 reporters from FATA have migrated outside their districts and do their work from safer places. We are unsafe. There’s no protection at all,” Muhammad Ghaffar said.

Ghaffar, who works with an Urdu newspaper in Mohmand Agency, said that it’s not only insurgents. They also face threats from the local political administration who wants them to toe the line.

“It is almost impossible to do independent reporting due to lack of protection. Journalists are surrounded by a host of problems, due to which they have to remain careful,” he said.

Journalists in Pakistan are targeted from “all sides” even as the conditions for media in the country improved slightly.

“Journalists are targeted by extremist groups, militant organisations and state organisations,” says a new report on press freedom by Reporters Without Borders (RSF). The report, released early in January, showed that Pakistan had jumped 12 spots to 147 in RSF’s in 2016 World Press Freedom Index, up from 159 in 2015 and 158 in 2014.

Pakistan stands at number two in the international index of the most dangerous places for journalists, who face harassment, kidnappings and assassinations, RSF said. During the last 10 years, more than 100 journalists have been killed in Pakistan, with almost 98 per cent belonging to FATA, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Baluchistan province.

The Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists has demanded that the government file cases or reopen old investigations into dozens of murdered journalists but there has so far been no action.

Last year, the International Federation of Journalists reported that Pakistan was amongst the most dangerous countries in the world for journalists, with 102 journalists and media workers having lost their lives since 2005.

The IFJ’s report said that since 2010 alone, 73 journalists and media workers have been killed — almost one journalist every month. It termed Balochistan province a ‘Cemetery for Journalists’, where 31 journalists were killed since 2007.

“The armed insurgency and sectarian violence account for a number of these killings but many of them raise suspicions of the involvement of the state’s institutions,” it said.

The killers of journalists mostly walk free, as Pakistan has so far recorded only three convictions.

Mar. 16, 2016 marked a rare occasion for journalists in Pakistan to celebrate the third verdict convicting a murderer of journalist when a district court in KP sentenced a man named Aminullah to life imprisonment for the killing of journalist Ayub Khattak on Oct. 11, 2013 for his reporting on the drug trade, in which Aminullah was involved.

In March 2016, senior journalist Hamid Mir was targeted by unknown assailants who inflicted grievous injuries. The attackers were never found.

Mir, who later received the “Most Resilient Journalist” award by International Free Press in Holland in November, said he escaped the assassination attempt but wouldn’t leave Pakistan because people stood behind him. He dedicated his award to the people of Pakistan for showing bravery against militancy and terrorism.

“The award is recognition of my sacrifices for advancement of journalism, which encourages me,” he said.

Journalists from the weekly Sunday Mail as they were arrested on Nov. 4, 2015 on charges of reporting falsehoods. Pictured from left to right in handcuffs are the journalists, who included the Sunday Mail reporter Tinashe Farawo, the paper's investigations editor Brian Chitemba and The Sunday Mail editor Mabasa Sasa. Credit: Jeffrey Moyo/IPS

By Busani Bafana
HARARE, Nov 9 2016 (IPS)

Four years ago, a faceless writer using the nom de guerre Baba Jukwa set Facebook agog with detailed exposes of machinations within the ruling Zimbabwe National People’s Union Patriotic Front (ZANU PF).

Garnering over 400,000 followers on Facebook, Jukwa pierced the veil over freedom of expression in a conservative Zimbabwe. The enigmatic character, thought to be a mole within ZANU PF, remains unknown and has never been caught."The government is afraid the social media might be used the same manner it was used during the Arab Spring revolutions.” -- Njabulo Ncube, chair of the Zimbabwe National Editors Forum

Now the government – with a history of intolerance to dissent – is not taking chances with social media ‘dissidents’ in the ilk of Baba Jukwa. It is crafting a bill to clamp down on cybercrime and terrorism, but journalists fear the bill will trample the fragile freedoms of the press and expression in the country.

Should it become law, the Computer and Cyber Crime Bill will ensure that ‘abusers of social media’ are stopped dead in their tracks if statements by the government, the police and the army are anything to go by.

Commander of the Zimbabwe National Army, Lieutenant General Valerio Sibanda, recently told the government-run Herald newspaper that the army was training its officers to deal with “cyber warfare where weapons – not necessarily guns but basic information and communication technology – are being used to mobilise people to do wrong things.”

The country’s Information Media and Broadcasting Services Minister, Chris Mushowe, has dismissed fears that the Computer and Cyber Crime Bill will be a death knell for press freedom, but his threats reflect the opposite.

“This Bill is not intended to kill freedom of expression, it is not intended to silence people…If anything, this is intended to ensure we join other nations in fighting the threat of terrorism,” Mushowe told the local media following a briefing with the British Ambassador to Zimbabwe Catriona Laing in August. “We do not want information to be transited through Zimbabwe or information here that threatens the national security of other countries.”

Despite guaranteeing freedoms of expression and of the press under its new Constitution, Zimbabwe is not the most conducive of places for journalists to do their jobs freely, especially those working for the independent press.

The Washington-based media advocacy organisation Freedom House named Zimbabwe, alongside Bangladesh, Turkey, Burundi, France, Serbia, Yemen, Egypt and Macedonia, as countries which suffered the largest declines in press freedom in 2015 in its Freedom of the Press report for 2016.

Already burdened by a raft of laws that restrict access to information, journalists have reason to worry. The Computer and Cyber Crime Bill could be the biggest and meanest strategic weapon the government has yet unleashed on free expression and press freedom.

Information has become the political currency for self-expression. Social media, especially Facebook and WhatsApp, has given Zimbabweans an affordable platform to gather and share information, vent about their daily grind and even organise public actions against a deteriorating economic and political situation at home.
Crippled by a severe drought, Zimbabwe has made a global appeal for 1.6 billion dollars for food and other humanitarian aid as more than four million people will need food until the next harvest season in March 2017. Fears abound about a worsening economic situation when government introduces its own bond notes later this month as a measure to ease the current shortage of cash since dumping the Zimbabwe dollar and introducing a multi-currency regime in September 2009.

Editor of the privately owned Zimbabwe Independent weekly Dumisani Muleya says life in the globalised and technology-driven 21st century presents two great challenges to governments across the world: thwarting terrorism and protecting national liberties. Technology, Muleya says, has played a part in making these challenges tougher, necessitating governments to balance security and liberty.

“The Zimbabwe government, which has a history of stifling political and civil liberties, particularly media freedom, must do the same,” Muleya told IPS. “The current Computer and Cyber Crime Bill must thus not be used as tool to snoop on citizens unduly and reinforce Zimbabwe’s image as a police state, but mainly protect people’s rights.”

Making a joke about President Mugabe, who is now 92, is no laughing matter in Zimbabwe and can land you in court or jail. Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights has represented more than 150 defendants since 2010 charged with insulting President Mugabe. In most cases the charges were dropped. Videos pocking fun at President Mugabe have gone viral, prompting the government to denounce ‘the gutter journalism’ on social media it says should not be allowed in the mainstream media.

“Government is aware of activists in the country collaborating with the diaspora cyber terrorists. They must be warned that the long arm of the law is encircling them,” Mushowe told the Zimbabwean press.

Acting chairman Zimbabwe National Editors Forum and past Chairman of the Media Institute for Southern Africa- Zimbabwe Njabulo Ncube describes the Computer and Cyber Crime Bill as a nullification of press freedom.

“The future looks bleak with the seemingly proliferation of harsh media laws that seek to criminalise the practice of the journalism profession in Zimbabwe,” Ncube told IPS. “The government is afraid the social media might be used the same manner it was used during the Arab Spring revolutions.”

Ncube believes government has muddied the waters by creating the impression that cyber terrorism is the production of subversive, inflammatory and inciting messages shared through the social media, which was in fact misconduct online or abuse of social media in breach of the country’s contentious laws such as the Criminal Law (Codification and Reform Act), the Interception of Communications Act and Postal and Telecommunications Act (PTA).

“This continuous misleading of the citizenry on what constitutes cyber terrorism is aimed at instilling fear and self-censorship among citizens when exercising their rights to free expression, access to information and freedom of conscience,” Ncube said.

Despite government underplaying its effectiveness, social media has given Zimbabweans a loud voice to amplify their struggles. The crackdown on the social media is meant to deal with activists calling for reforms within the government, Executive Director of the Voluntary Media Council of Zimbabwe and Secretary-General of the World Association of Press Councils, Loughty Dube, argued.

“If the government intends to use the law to curb internet crimes there should be a clear demarcation that should show that there are no sinister intentions by the state to snoop on citizen communications and to criminalise those that are using internet platforms to seek reforms and expose government excesses.”

Last August and two months after the online campaign led by Pastor Evans Mawawire using the #This Flag successfully mobilized Zimbabweans to stay away from work, Zimbabwe passed the National Information Communication Technology (ICT) policy. The policy which allows government to snoop on its citizens and control cyberspace by putting all internet gateways and infrastructure under a single company it controls.

It is the cohesive power of social media that the Zimbabwe government seeks to weaken through a carte blanche law to snoop on and even shut down social media. While it may raise the cost of accessing social media, block its operation and resort to threats, government cannot control social media, argues, lawyer and political strategist, Alex Magaisa.

“In physical spaces, the state can always deploy anti-riot police and use physical force to drive away demonstrators expressing their view,” Magaisa wrote on his blog, The Big Saturday Read. “However, on social media, the state is not well equipped to handle users…Social media presents a new terrain over which the state has no control.

Magaisa said the Computer Crime and Cybercrime Bill would create very wide, vague and indeterminate offences in respect of social media activity, while giving police extensive search and seizure powers. Measured against the Constitution, which protects freedoms of communication and the right to privacy, Magaisa said the Bill falls woefully short and a number of its provisions in the present form could be stuck down by the Constitutional Court if challenged.

“While some of the purported reasons for introducing the Bill, such as protecting children, preventing racial and ethnic hatred sound noble, most critics believe the real motive which has promoted the rapid response is political. This is the cause of the citizen’s mistrust, suspicion and resistance in respect of the Bill,” wrote Magaisa.

Eritrean journalist Estifo displaying Tsilal, the magazine he edits, which deals with the risks of migration and difficult reality of being in Europe. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

By James Jeffrey
ADDIS ABABA, Oct 6 2016 (IPS)

It took Eritrean journalist Estifo* seven years to save up enough money to pay a fixer to get him and his family from the capital, Asmara, to the shared border with Ethiopia. After they crossed the border by foot, they turned themselves in to the Ethiopian authorities and claimed asylum as refugees.

Now Estifo is one of thousands of Eritreans living in Addis Ababa, where he edits a magazine that aims to dissuade other Eritreans in the Ethiopian capital and dotted around the country in refugee camps from attempting to make the risky journey north through Libya and across the Mediterranean toward Europe.“You had no rights as a journalist and it was risky even if you were working for the State TV. If you did something they didn’t like, they would call the police.” -- Beyene, an Eritrean journalist

“The magazine deals with the risks of migration and difficult reality of being in Europe,” says Estifo, the magazine’s editor. “Also once you are in Europe you can’t come back—things change too much. Whereas in Addis there’s more in common, and it’s easier to one day go back to Eritrea.”

Ever since Ethiopia’s late long-term ruler Meles Zenawi established an open-door policy toward refugees, the country’s refugee population has grown to about 700,000, the largest in Africa.

And that open door policy even extends to accepting refugees from a country viewed by Ethiopia as its arch nemesis since a catastrophic two-year war between the two that ended in 2000 but left matters unresolved and mutual antipathy only stronger.

It’s hardly surprising that among those going south over the shared border are journalists. A list compiled in 2015 by the Committee to Protect Journalists of the 10 countries where the press is most restricted ranks Eritrea as the most censored country in the world and Africa’s worst jailer of journalists.

The crackdown on media in Eritrea began in earnest in 2001, reportedly taking advantage of when the world was distracted by the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.

“In September they shut down private news channels and most of my colleagues were arrested,” says Estifo, who as a sports writer avoided arrest (a friend had previously advised him to take the position to avoid undue attention).

Still fearing for his safety, however, he joined the military media operating at Sawa, the desert base where Eritrean Defence Forces recruits and national service conscripts are sent for basic military training.

Living conditions were bad, Estifo says, and he was paid only 600 Eritrean nakfa (38 dollars) a month, leaving little after his 500 nakfa rent.

Then in 2007 he managed to get paternity leave with his wife pregnant, and afterwards rather than him returning to Sawa, they went into hiding. For two years Estifo never left his home, he says.

Once he deemed it safe enough, he started to venture out and began selling shoes with the help of his wife, slowly saving money for the escape to the border. Eventually it was time.

“We didn’t sell any of our possessions before we left in case people got suspicious,” he says. “We reached the border around 2 a.m. but we waited until dawn to cross otherwise we might have been shot by patrols.”

Eritrean journalists Estifo and Beyene discussing the contents of their magazine Tsilal, the Tigrayan word for umbrella. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

Beyene is another refugee journalist working with Estifo on the magazine who recalls the arrest of 40 journalists in 2009, accused of leaking news about Eritrea to foreign media.

“You had no rights as a journalist and it was risky even if you were working for the State TV,” Beyene says. “If you did something they didn’t like, they would call the police.”

Arrests sometimes happened as journalists were relaxing in the communal tea room.

“They wanted you to see it so you became afraid,” Estifo says.

Repression of media and its means is all-consuming in Eritrean society. Fearing the spread of an Arab Spring-type uprising, Eritrea scrapped plans in 2011 to provide mobile Internet for its citizens, making it even harder to access independent information.

Internet is available but only through slow dial-up connections, and fewer than 1 percent of the population goes online, according to U.N. International Telecommunication Union figures. Eritrea also has the lowest figure globally of cell phone users, with just 5.6 percent of the population owning one.

“For the young there’s no chance to do your own thing, you can’t do anything for your family, everything pushes you to leave,” says Yonathon, 31, who left Eritrea in 2011 and spent a year in an Ethiopia-based refugee camp before relocation to Addis Ababa. “No one can stand for justice there—before you start they will capture you; such efforts are good for nothing.”

Eritrea’s authoritarian government employs a vast spying and detention network. Yonathon, while clearly not sympathetic to those involved, appreciates the realities: “It’s a matter of survival, to feed their families—the situation forces them to spy.”

Yonathon and 29-year-old Teklu sitting next to him have Eritrean friends who attempted the Mediterranean crossing from Libya. Fortunately, no one they know died. But thousands have.

And a 20-year-old niece of Yonathon died in Libya waiting to make the crossing; he doesn’t know the cause. Teklu has relatives who were kidnapped during their northward overland travels and released after ransoms were paid.

“Of course it has come to my mind,” Yonathon says of trying to make the crossing. “I’ve been here four years: what is my future going to be if I stay here?”

Such frustrations are addressed in the magazine, called Tsilal, the Tigrayan word for umbrella, and chosen because refugees are under the umbrella of another country’s protection, Estifo says.

Its production is funded by the Norwegian Refugee Council, and it comes out once every two months with a circulation of about 3,000 free copies, of which about 600 go to refugee camps. Each of the seven journalists working on the magazine is paid 750 birr (31 dollars) per month.

“The money’s not enough but we have to do it or we won’t be heard,” Estifo says, adding it’s important to illustrate how the reality of living in Europe is often a far cry from the more glamourous version seen on social media by young Eritreans.

The magazine also features more encouraging articles about Eritrean artists and entrepreneurial activities, while it avoids contentious issues such as politics and religion so as not to put itself and the Norwegian Refugee Council in an awkward position. Ethiopia also has its own struggles with press freedom—the same CJR survey of restricted press placed Ethiopia at number four.

“Currently we just cover soft issues but we want to go beyond to those issues we feel are more important,” Estifo says. “But we’re restrained by our funding. If we got other funding we could write independently about more topics.”

Another problem is not having enough resources to enable reporters to visit camps and talk to Eritreans there. The three largest camps—May Aini, Adi Harush and Hitsats refugee camps—are all the way in the northwest of Ethiopia’s Tigray region, close to the borders with Eritrea and Sudan, hundreds of kilometers away from Addis Ababa.

And the magazine has no office, rather it is put together on laptops in cafes with notably Italian-sounding names that have been opened by Eritreans—Eritrea used to be an Italian colony.

“Sometimes I spend the whole day in a café working on the laptop, drinking tea and eating some shiro at lunch,” Yonathon says.

But despite the Tigrayan voices amid cafes with Italian names, Addis Ababa can never replace being back in Eritrea.

“Life is difficult here, you can’t replicate home, and people’s behaviour changes here,” Yonathon says.

Hence the importance of never forgetting about Eritrea’s ongoing troubles and those left behind. Estifo harbours ambitions of one day starting a radio station that could be picked up by those in Eritrea.

“Getting out of Eritrea is one way of demonstrating against the government,” Estifo says. “But while in places like Ethiopia, Eritreans must ask themselves how they can bring about freedom with our own resources.”

*Only first names are used in this article due to the sensitive nature of the subject matter. 

Kashmiri journalists at a rare protest against a government clampdown on freedom of expression in 2012. Credit: Athar Parvaiz/IPS

By Tharanga Yakupitiyage
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 30 2016 (IPS)

The UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) advanced its commitment to the safety of journalists after adopting a groundbreaking resolution with measures for states to ensure journalist protection. But this is only the first step, many note.

Though the UNHRC has adopted resolutions on the safety of journalists in the past, some note that this year’s resolution is more comprehensive in protecting the rights of freedom of expression and the press.For the first time, UNHRC called for states to release arbitrarily detained journalists and to reform laws that are misused to hinder their work.

“[The resolution] brings up these issues more explicitly than it has been brought up in other resolutions,” Committee to Protect Journalists’ (CPJ) Advocacy Director Courtney Radsch told IPS.

She stressed that the resolution acknowledges the role that states play in committing violence against journalists and in creating a permissive environment for the safety of journalists.

“It is not simply enough to talk about the safety of journalist without also addressing the need to create an environment in which freedom of expression and press freedom can flourish,” she stated.

Reporters Without Borders’ (RSF) Advocacy and Communications Officer Margaux Ewen echoed similar sentiments to IPS, noting that the resolution is a “wonderful reiteration” which calls on member states to implement their international obligations.

For the first time, UNHRC called for states to release arbitrarily detained journalists and to reform laws that are misused to hinder their work.

According to CPJ, approximately 200 journalists were imprisoned worldwide in 2015. The organisation recorded the highest number of such arrests in China, where 49 journalists were imprisoned. Most recently, Chinese journalists Lu Yuyu and Li Tingyu were detained in June 2016 on suspicion of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble.” They had been documenting and reporting on protests across the East Asian nation since 2012.

China is among the members of UNHRC.

The newly adopted resolution also affirms the right of journalists to use encryption and anonymity tools. Journalists often rely on such mechanisms to safely impart information anonymously online. They are also used to encrypt their communications in order to protect their contacts and sources.

Radsch noted that these tools are essential for journalists “to do their job in the 21^st century.”

The resolution also addresses the specific risks that women journalists face in their work, condemning all gender-based attacks.

Earlier in September, freelance journalist Gretchen Malalad and Al Jazeera Correspondent Jamela Alindogan-Caudron were subject to severe social media attacks, receiving threats of rape and death due to their coverage of the Philippine government’s controversial anti-drug war.

The National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NJUP) Ryan Rosauro expressed his dismay of the state of journalism in the country, stating: “We will never take any threats, whether of physical harm or to silence us, lightly for we have lost far too many of our colleagues and hardly seen justice for them,” he said.

In a joint statement with NJUP, the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) stated that the government must take social media threats to journalists seriously and should penalise perpetrators to ensure the safety of journalists.

In their 2016 World Press Freedom Index, RSF ranked the Philippines 138th out of 180 countries in press freedom making it one of the most dangerous countries for practicing journalists.

As in previous years, the UNHRC also highlighted the need to end violence against journalists and to combat impunity for attacks.

CPJ found that over 1,200 journalists have been killed since 1992, the majority of whom were murdered with complete impunity. Other organisations speculate that the numbers are higher, with IFJ reporting that at least 2,300 journalists and media staff have been killed since 1990.

In 2009, prominent Sri Lankan journalist and editor Lasantha Wickramatunga was beaten to death after his car was pulled over by eight helmeted men on motorcycles. Often critical of the government and its conduct in the country’s civil war, the editor had been attacked before and received death threats for months prior to his death. He even anticipated his own fate, writing an essay shortly before his death about free media in the South Asian nation.

“In the course of the past few years, the independent media have increasingly come under attack. Electronic and print-media institutions have been burnt, bombed, sealed and coerced. Countless journalists have been harassed, threatened and killed. It has been my honour to belong to all those categories and now especially the last,” Wickramatunga wrote.

Most recently, Jordanian journalist Nahed Hattar was shot dead while on his way to face charges for sharing a cartoon deemed offensive to Islam.

“The killing of Mr. Hattar is appalling, and it is unacceptable that no protection measures had been put in place to ensure his safety, particularly when the threats against him were well known to the authorities,” said UN special rapporteur on freedom of opinion and expression David Kaye.

Kaye urged authorities to bring the perpetrator to justice and to ensure legislation that allows a culture of diverse expression.

However, both Radsch and Ewen noted that the resolution is only the first step as it must be translated to action on the ground.

“We continue to see the failure of states to adequate investigate the murders of journalists…so while resolutions are important, we need to see actual concrete actions to accompany these normative statements,” Radsch told IPS.

Ewen stated that UN resolutions are “strong and strongly worded” but it still remains to be seen for states to implement measures to protect journalists and the right of freedom of expression. She pointed to RSF’s campaign to create a Special Representative to the UN Secretary-General for the safety of journalists as a way to ensure states comply with their international obligations.

Led by RSF, the Protect Journalists campaign has brought together over a 100 media organisations and human rights organisations including CPJ, the Guardian and the United Nations Correspondents Association to push for the establishment of a special representative.

During a press conference, RSF Secretary General Christophe Deloire noted that a special representative could act as an early warning and rapid response mechanism to give journalists, when threatened, access to authorities and protective measures as laid out in the resolution. He also added that a special representative with political weight can make sure the safety of journalists is integrated in all UN programs and operations.

“Every week, there are new names on new graves in journalist cemeteries…we cannot let anymore journalists be killed because of this lack of political will,” Deloire told press.

The 47-member state council adopted the resolution on the safety of journalists by consensus, expressing a deep concern for the increased number of journalists and media workers who have been killed, tortured and detained. Nations beyond the UNHRC including Austria and the United States also joined the initiative as cosponsors.

Maruf Rosul, a Bangladeshi writer and activist who has received death threats from Islamic militants for his blog posts. Credit: Amy Fallon/IPS

By Amy Fallon
DHAKA, Sep 29 2016 (IPS)

Like the living room of any proud family, the one in Ajoy Roy’s house boasts photos of the eldest son, Avijit.

A large framed portrait which has a powerful presence in the room hangs on the mint-coloured wall as Ajoy, a retired physics professor who at the age of 80 is frail but still very mentally alert, sits in a chair below it, sipping tea.

It is the image of a popular Bangladeshi writer and bio-engineer, tragically murdered for his beliefs along with scores of other atheist writers, bloggers, publishers, gay activists and religious figures by suspected Islamist militants in the predominantly Muslim country over the past few years.

“Avijit wasn’t an activist on the streets, but he used his pen to protest against social injustice, religious fanaticism and propagate the idea of secularism, the main theme of his writing,” Ajoy, wearing a traditional lungi around his waist, told IPS. “It’s a terrible loss. It cannot be compensated for.”

Ajoy Roy, the father of Bangladeshi writer Avijit Roy, who was murdered in 2015. Credit: Amy Fallon/IPS

More than 50 writers, activists and others have been killed in Bangladesh since 2013, according to Human Rights Watch (HRW).

Avijit, 42, a U.S. citizen who lived in America with his wife Rafida Ahmed, was hacked to death after the pair went to the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka for a book festival in February 2015.

There have been many more killings since then.

This July, 23 people, including 17 foreigners, were killed at a bakery in the diplomatic zone of Dhaka, in one of the worst terror attacks ever in Bangladesh.

Five of the involved suspects were killed in a police operation at the eatery, while one survivor was arrested and remanded, and another jailed, the Dhaka Tribune later reported.

The suspected ringleader of the attacks and his two affiliates died in a police raid in August, but the search is still on for a coordinator, the arms suppliers and funders of the attacks.

After the murders of two other activists, LGBT campaigners Xulhaz Mannan and Mahbub Rabbi Tonoy, in April, the government, under international pressure over the spate of killings, arrested about 14,000 people.

Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia director at HRW, said despite no further attacks since the brutal bakery murders, there were “concerns” that the crackdown was leading to “an arbitrary rounding up of usual suspects”.

The drop in incidents meanwhile “suggest that the state could have acted effectively earlier” to prevent the killings, she said.

There was still a “climate of fear” in Bangladesh among writers and members of minority groups, said Ganguly.

“Some have been able to leave the country, but many more, still in Bangladesh, fear that the government will not do enough to protect them,” she said.

Maruf Rosul, 29, a secular writer, photographer, filmmaker and activist who pens for various outlets, including freethinking site Mukto-Mona, set up by Avijit and now being run by his successors, said Islamic extremists in the country had been silenced.

“But the government has not taken the proper action to uproot these evil forces,” Rosul, who said he was on an extremist group’s hit list, but as a “frontier activist” couldn’t go into hiding, told IPS. “I am worried about the future.”

His anxiety was growing ahead of the Durga Puja, the biggest religious festival for south Asia’s Hindu community, which will begin next week, on Oct. 7.

Rosul said “every year” during the festival there were attacks by Islamic extremist groups in Bangladesh, yet officials did nothing but issue “sympathetic statements”.

“As there is no strong law enforcement, we are worried about our Hindu friends,” he told IPS. A Hindu tailor, hacked to death in April, is among those who have been killed in the country.

The sixth edition of Dhaka Literary Festival (DLF) is also due to take place in mid-November. Director Ahsan Akbar told IPS that preparations were in “full-swing”.

“We have had only a couple of cancellations so far, citing security fears, but the encouraging news is our speakers are really looking forward to the event and we expect no more cancellations,” he said.

Given the recent wave of murders though, Akbar said “writers in the country today are unfortunately self-censoring and thinking twice about what they write and publish”.

“Bangladeshi writers outside of the country are deeply sympathetic and doing many things to raise the awareness amongst the international community, such as engaging with PEN International,” he said.

“It is astonishing how we sometimes forget the interconnectivity in of all this: an attack on a writer in Bangladesh is – in a way – an attack on a writer in the West or anywhere else for that matter.”

Olof Blomqvist of Amnesty International told IPS that “the investigations into the targeted killings are ongoing, and there have been arrests made in some of the cases. Genuine justice will of course take time, but it is worrying that the perpetrators have so far only been held to account in one case, the killing of Rajib Haider in 2013.

“The authorities must ensure that those responsible are held to account, but also do more to protect those people at risk,” he said, adding that, “We still get desperate pleas on a weekly basis from people who have received threats and are afraid for their lives if they stay in Bangladesh.”

“Police must create a climate where activists who have been threatened feel safe to approach police and not fear further harassment,” Blomqvist said.

Ganguly also said in order to prevent more attacks, the Bangladeshi authorities needed to deliver a message that they believe in “peaceful free expression”.

“They should not recommend to those at risk that they self-censor to avoid hurting religious sentiment and becoming targets for retribution,” she said.

In 2015, after the killing of writer Niladri Chatterjee Niloy, Bangladesh’s police chief warned bloggers that “hurting religious sentiments is a crime”.

Police killed one of the key suspects involved in Avijit’s murder in June, but two others escaped, they said, and are still at large.

Following his son’s death, Ajoy, who said Avijit had been targeted by extremists in the few weeks before his death, and that he had warned him not to return to Bangladesh, could be forgiven for going into hiding.

But he said he was continuing “my activism” against fundamentalist groups, and had been invited to speak at various institutions.

“I’m not scared,” said Ajoy. “I have lost my son, after that I have nothing to care about.”

Ajoy said he wanted Avijit to be remembered as a “courageous young man who would face any hard situation for democracy, for secularism, for free-thinking”.

It was his wish that “the younger generation follow in his footsteps”.

“I would not discourage these courageous young people to quit blogging, speaking your mind, because Bangladesh is constitutionally a secular, democratic country so we must uphold the constitution,” said Ajoy.

“We have to make the common people understand that this is not an anti-Muslim country, it is liberal,” he said. “Although a large number of Muslims are here, they’re also liberal.”

IPS made several attempts to contact the Bangladeshi police and government for comment, but they did not respond.

By David Kode
JOHANNESBURG, Apr 24 2015 (IPS)

Pierre Claver Mbonimpa is not permitted to get close to an airport, train station or port without authorisation from a judge.  He cannot travel outside of the capital of his native Burundi, Bujumbura. Whenever called upon, he must present himself before judicial authorities.

These are some of the onerous restrictions underlying the bail conditions of one of Burundi’s most prominent human rights activists since he was provisionally released on medical grounds in September last year, after spending more than four months in prison for his human rights work.

David Kode

Mbonimpa was arrested and detained on May 15, 2014, and charged with endangering state security and inciting public disobedience. The charges stemmed from views he expressed during an interview with an independent radio station, Radio Public Africaine, in which he stated that members of the Imbonerakure, the youth wing of the ruling CNDD-FDD party, were being armed and sent to the Democratic Republic of Congo for military training.

The arrest and detention of Pierre Claver is symptomatic of a pattern of repression and intimidation of human rights defenders, journalists, dissenters and members of the political opposition in Burundi as it heads towards its much anticipated elections in May and June 2015.

The forthcoming polls will be the third democratic elections organised since the end of the brutal civil war in 2005.  The antagonism of the CNDD-FDD government and its crackdown on civil society and members of opposition formations has increased, particularly as the incumbent, President Pierre Nkurunziza, silences critics and opponents in his bid to run for a third term even after the National Assembly rejected his proposals to extend his term in office.“The international community and Burundi’s donors cannot afford to stand by idly and witness a distortion of the decade-long relative peace that Burundi has enjoyed, which represents the most peaceful decade since independence from Belgium in 1962”

Tensions continue to mount ahead of the polls and even though the president has not publicly stated that he will contest the next elections, the actions of his government and the ruling party clearly suggest he will run for another term.  Members of his party argue that he has technically run the country for one term only as he was not “elected” by the people when he took to power in 2005.

Civil society organisations and religious leaders recently pointed out that Constitution and the Arusha Peace and Reconciliation Agreement – which brought an end to the civil war – clearly limit presidential terms to two years.

As the 2015 polls draw closer, state repression has increased, some political parties have been suspended and their members arrested and jailed. The Imbonerakure has embarked on campaigns to intimidate, physically assault and threaten members of the opposition with impunity. They have prevented some political gatherings from taking place under the pretext that they are guaranteeing security at the local level.

Civil society organisations and rival political movements have on several occasions been denied the right to hold public meetings and assemblies, while journalists and activists have been arrested and held under fictitious charges in an attempt to silence them and force them to resort to self-censorship.

Legislation has been used to stifle freedom of expression and restrict the activities of journalists and the independent media.  In June 2013, the government passed a new law which forces journalists to reveal their sources.

The law provides wide-ranging powers to the authorities and sets requirements for journalists to attain certain levels of education and professional expertise, limits issues journalists can cover and imposes fines on those who violate this law.  It prohibits the publication of news items on security issues, defence, public safety and the economy.

The law has been used to target media agencies and journalists, including prominent journalist Bob Rugurika, director of Radio Public Africaine.

The government does not see any major difference between opposition political parties and human rights activists and journalists and has often accused civil society and the media of being mouth pieces for the political opposition, describing them as “enemies of the state”.

In the lead-up to the last elections in 2010, most of the opposition parties decided to boycott the elections and the ruling party won almost unopposed. However, the post-elections period was characterised by political violence and conflict.

Ideally, the upcoming elections could present the perfect opportunity to “jump start” Burundi’s democracy.  For this to happen, the media and civil society need to operate without fear or intimidation from state and non-state actors.  On the contrary, state repression is bound to trigger a violent response from some of the opposition parties and ignite violence similar to that which happened in 2010.

The international community and Burundi’s donors cannot afford to stand by idly and witness a distortion of the decade-long relative peace that Burundi has enjoyed, which represents the most peaceful decade since independence from Belgium in 1962.

It is increasingly clear that the people of Burundi need the support of the international community at this critical juncture. The African Union (AU), with its public commitment to democracy and good governance, must act now by putting pressure on the government of Burundi to respect its democratic ideals to prevent more abuses and further restrictions on fundamental freedoms ahead of the elections.

The African Union should demand that the government stops extra-judicial killings and conducts independent investigations into members of the security forces and Imbonerakure who have committed human rights violations and hold them accountable.

Further, Burundi’s close development partners, particularly Belgium, France and the Netherlands, should condemn the attacks on civil liberties and urge the government to instil an enabling environment in which a free and fair political process can take place while journalists and civil society activists can perform their responsibilities without fear.  (END/IPS COLUMNIST SERVICE)

Edited by Phil Harris    

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

Excerpt:

The Southern Africa Litigation Centre, Amnesty International and over a dozen other human rights organisations including the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights have signed an open letter demanding justice for crusading Angolan journalist Rafael Marques de Morais, whose exposés have offended several military officials and other higher-ups.

In their letter, published this week in a Malawian newspaper, the group praised Marques for “his long history of holding the Angolan government to account for human rights abuses and corruption through his insightful, thoughtful and well regarded journalistic investigations” and noted that “for his efforts, he has been arrested and detained multiple times in Angola.”

In the latest effort to silence Marques, legal action was launched by a group of generals over his book ‘Blood Diamonds: Corruption and Torture in Angola’, first published in Portugal in 2011.

The book cites a litany of human rights violations – including killings, torture and forced evictions – that took place in Lunda Norte in northeastern Angola where diamond excavations were taking place. Military officials, diamond miners and private security contractors – named in the book – first attempted to sue Marques for defamation in Portugal but their case was dismissed.

After the book appeared, the author filed a charge with the Angolan Attorney General on Nov. 14, 2011. He called on the authorities to investigate the moral responsibility of the generals for serious abuses. After hearing victims’ testimonies in 2012, the Attorney General set the case aside. New charges were then filed against Marques.

If convicted, he faces up to nine years in prison and damages of 1.2 million dollars on the charge.

“Mr Marques is the recipient of numerous prestigious international awards for his work. He is an equal opportunity human rights defender, working to expose violations no matter who is the accused or accuser,” the open letter writers noted.

Angola, the fourth-biggest diamond producing country by value, has been relaxing restrictions on exploration and development after producers, including South African giant De Beers, cut back operations during the global financial crisis. The move is worrying environmentalists as well as local people and the rise in numbers of anti-government protests is an irritant to the authorities who are keen to make an example of Marques with a successful prosecution.

In his speech as joint winner of the 2015 Index on Censorship Freedom of Expressions in Journalism award last week, one of several international honours he has received, Marques said that the trial would make him stronger.

“It will show Angolans there is nothing to fear and challenge them to hold the authorities to account,” he said in a press interview.

Seven journalists have been murdered in Angola since 1992 and many others intimidated or imprisoned, according to The Guardian newspaper. This month, two activists, Marcos Mavungo and Arao Bula Tempo, were arrested in Angola’s northern oil-producing province Cabinda, hours before an anti-government protest was due to take place. They have been jailed on charges of sedition.

Previous demonstrations have been broken up using what Human Rights Watch call “excessive force” and last year a female student was hospitalised after a beating by police for taking part in a march.

Other signers to the open letter include Reporters Without Borders, Human Rights Watch, the Committee to Protect Journalists and the UK-based Media Legal Defence Initiative.

Edited by Phil Harris    

*The book – Blood Diamonds: Corruption and Torture in Angola – is not yet available in English.

By Johan Galtung
KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 20 2015 (IPS)

What happened in Paris on Jan. 7 – known all over the world – is totally unacceptable and inexcusable.

As inexcusable as 9/11, the coming Western attack and the Islamist retaliation, wherever. As inexcusable as the Western coups and mega-violence on Muslim lands since Iran 1953, massacring people as endowed with personality and identity as the French cartoonists.

But to the West they are not even statistics, they are “military secrets”.

However, the unacceptable is not unexplainable.

Johan Galtung

In this tragic saga of West-Islam violence, the way out is to identify the conflict and search for solutions. I wonder how many now pontificating on Paris – a city so deep in our hearts – have taken the trouble to sit down with someone identified with Al Qaeda, and simply ask: “What does the world look like where you would like to live?”

I always get the same answer: “A world where Islam is not trampled upon but respected.”

“Trampled upon” sounds physically violent – but there are two types of direct violence intended to harm, to hurt: physical violence with arm-arms-armies; and verbal violence with words, with symbols, with, for example, cartoons.

The naiveté in blaming the secret police for not having uncovered the brothers on time is crying to the heavens. What happened to Charlie Hebdo was as predictable as the reaction to the 2005 cartoon in Jyllands-Posten, whose cultural editor thought he should save Danish media from the self-censorship he had found in Soviet journalists.

But one thing is political criticism of and in the former USSR, quite another is existential stabbing right in the heart of the basis of existence.“There are two types of direct violence intended to harm, to hurt: physical violence with arm-arms-armies; and verbal violence with words, with symbols, with, for example, cartoons”

Undermine the spiritual existence of others – as Charlie Hebdo did all over the spiritual world – but there may be reactions to that verbal violence. Some of the others deeply hurt by Charlie Hebdo and its cultural autism, sitting in some office and sending poisoned arrows anywhere, may celebrate the atrocity – but inside themselves, not publicly.

The West has one presumably killing argument in favour of verbal violence for spiritual killing: freedom of expression – a wonderful freedom, deeply appreciated by those who have something to express.

And very easily undermined, not by censorship by self or some Other, but by freedom of non-impression, the freedom not to be impressed: let expression happen, let them talk and write, but do not listen and read, make them non-persons. Nevertheless, a major achievement of, by and for the West more than elsewhere.

How simple life would be if that freedom were the only norm governing expression! Say or write anything about others as if they were stones, inanimate objects, unimpressed by oral and written expression. But human beings are not.

Of course, the targets of verbal violence can opt for the freedom of non-impression, shutting themselves off from the perpetrators, neither reading nor listening. Do we really want that, a
society now polarised by cartoons – into those who laugh and enjoy, and those who are hurt, suffering deeply?

We do not, and that is why there are others value, other norms, in the land of expression: consideration, decency, respect for life. We have libel laws asking not only “is it true?” but “is it relevant?” to cut out nastiness in, for example, political “debate”.

We rule out hate speech, propaganda for torture, genocide, war, child pornography. Some people unable to argue about issues insult persons instead; that is why they are often – perhaps not often enough – called to order: stick to the issue!

Many, unable to understand or argue with converts to Islam in France, overstep norms of decency instead.

Islam retaliated, and in Paris overstepped its own rule about doing so mercifully. No Muslim can retaliate with spiritual killing of Judaism-Christianity because both are believed to be the “incomplete message”. Bodies were killed in return for spiritual killing instead.

Incidentally, there is somebody else doing the same: the United States, very attentive to critical words as indicative not only of somebody being anti-American, but even a threat to America, to be eliminated. Could “freedom of expression” also be a tool to lure, smoke them out into the open, make them available for killing by snipers?

How should the Islamic side have handled the issue? The way they tried, and to some extent managed, in Denmark: through dialogue. They should have invited the Charlies to private and public dialogue, explaining their side of the cartoon issue, appealing to a common core of humanity in us all.

There is no argument against humour and satire as such, but there is against verbal violence hitting, hurting, harming others.

The Islamic side should also control better its own recourse to self-defence by violence: only legitimate if declared by appropriate Muslim authority. That the West fails to do so – just look at the enormities of violence unleashed upon Islam since 1953 – is no excuse for Islam to sink down to Western governmental levels, using democracy as a blanket cheque for war.

The two sides have millions, maybe billions, of common people who can easily agree that the key problem is violence by extremist governments and others. The task is to let such voices come forward with concrete ideas. Like the next Charlie online, hiring a Muslim consultant to draw a border between freedom and inconsideration?

This could have saved many lives, in Paris and where the West retaliates. (END/IPS COLUMNIST SERVICE)

Edited by Phil Harris   

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

Excerpt:

Raif Badawi.

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 15 2015 (IPS)

Flogging a dead horse, as the old idiom goes, is far removed from flogging a live Saudi blogger.

But the latest cruel punishment meted out by the rigidly conservative and authoritarian regime in Saudi Arabia has triggered widespread condemnation.“His flogging and 10-year sentence are testament to the extreme lengths to which the Saudi Arabian authorities will go in order to crush dissent.” -- Sevag Kechichian of Amnesty International

The strongest criticism came Thursday from the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, a former permanent representative of Jordan to the United Nations, who said: “Flogging is, in my view, at the very least, a form of cruel and inhuman punishment.

“Such punishment,” he said, “is prohibited under international human rights law, in particular the Convention against Torture, which Saudi Arabia has ratified.”

The Saudi decision makes a mockery of the international convention, as do other violations, including torture of terrorist suspects by U.S. intelligence agencies.

But the United Nations remains helpless and is unable to hold these countries accountable for violations or punish them for infractions because member states reign supreme in the world body – except when penalised by the Security Council.

The Saudi punishment was meted out to Raif Badawi, who was publicly flogged 50 times last Friday and is reportedly due to be flogged every Friday, the holy Sabbath for Muslims, until his sentence of 1,000 lashes has been fully carried out.

Sevag Kechichian, Amnesty International’s (AI) Saudi Arabia researcher on the case, told IPS, “Raif Badawi is a prisoner of conscience, and he was simply trying to uphold his right to freedom of expression and he is being punished for it in a horrifying manner.

“His flogging and 10-year sentence are testament to the extreme lengths to which the Saudi Arabian authorities will go in order to crush dissent.”

Instead of announcing a second round of brutal floggings, the Saudi Arabian authorities must heed the international outcry over his case and order his immediate and unconditional release, he added.

Amnesty also noted that Saudi Arabia had condemned last week’s attack on Charlie Hebdo in Paris as ‘cowardly’.

“The next day, they flogged Raif Badawi for exercising his right to free expression. We need to expose this hypocrisy. We need to embarrass them into action, now.”

Adam Coogle, Middle East Researcher at Human Rights Watch, told IPS the statement by the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) correctly labels the flogging punishment as torture and calls on Saudi Arabia to abolish the practice.

“We welcome OHCHR’s press statement but call on him [Zeid] and the United Nations to continue to monitor and publicly criticise Saudi Arabia when they impose harsh and draconian punishments on peaceful activists and dissidents,” he added.

In what was described as an “unusual diplomatic rebuke,” the United States last week lashed out at Saudi Arabia, one of its closest allies in the Middle East, and urged the government to rescind its sentencing and review the case.

The United States strongly opposes laws, including apostasy laws, that restrict the exercise of freedom of expression and religion, and urges all countries to uphold these rights in practice, State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki, told reporters.

Javier El-Hage, general counsel of the Human Rights Foundation (HRF), told IPS the government of Saudi Arabia is making a mockery of that country’s obligations under the U.N. Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.

He said “the U.N. Committee against Torture should call on Saudi Arabia’s government to immediately cease flogging Mr. Badawi, as that type of punishment constitutes a clear violation of Saudi Arabia’s obligations under the Convention against Torture.”

According to Article 20 of this Convention, he said, the U.N. Committee Against Torture has the power to carry out “ex officio investigations if it receives reliable information that appears to contain well-founded indications that torture is being systematically practiced in the territory of a State Party.”

While they don’t have the coercive power to force Saudi Arabia to stop the flogging, as is the case with most international law obligations, the committee can certainly report on the topic, condemn Saudi Arabia and issue recommendations, he noted.

In a statement released Thursday, Zeid appealed to the King of Saudi Arabia to exercise his power to halt the public flogging by pardoning Badawi, and also to urgently review this type of extraordinarily harsh penalty.

Badawi, an online blogger and activist, was convicted for exercising his right to freedom of opinion and expression on a website he founded called Free Saudi Liberals. He was sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment, 1,000 lashes and a fine of one million riyals (266,000 dollars).

Badawi’s case was just one of a succession of prosecutions of civil society activists, said the statement.

On Monday, an appeals court upheld the conviction of Badawi’s lawyer and brother-in-law Waleed Abu Al-Khair on charges that include offending the judiciary and founding an unlicensed organisation. Al-Khair’s sentence was extended from 10 to 15 years on appeal.

The U.N. Committee against Torture has repeatedly voiced concerns about states’ use of flogging and have called for its abolition.

Saudi Arabia’s report on its implementation of the Convention is up for review by the Committee against Torture next year.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@aol.com

In the wake of last week’s attack on French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo that left 12 people dead, a heated battle of opinion is being waged in France and several other countries on the issue of freedom of expression and the rights of both media and the public.

On one side are those who say that freedom of expression is an inherent human right and a pillar of democracy, and on the other are representatives of a range of views, including the belief that liberty comes with responsibility for all sectors of society.

“I’m worried when one talks about our being in a state of war,” said John Ralston Saul, the president of the writers group PEN International, who participated in a conference here Jan. 14 on “Journalism after Charlie”, organised by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

“The war against fundamentalists isn’t going to work,” he said, arguing that education about freedom of expression has to start at a young age so that people know that “you have to have a thick skin” to live in a democracy.“Ignorance is the biggest weapon of mass destruction, and if ignorance is the problem, then education is the answer” – Nasser David Khalili, Iranian-born scholar and philanthropist

PEN International, which promotes literature, freedom of expression and speaks out for “writers silenced in their own countries”, has strongly condemned the attacks on Charlie Hebdo, but the organisation is also worried about how politicians are reacting in the aftermath.

It called on governments to “implement their commitments to free expression and to desist from further curtailing free expression through the expansion of surveillance.”

In the Jan. 7 assault, two hooded gunmen gained access to the offices of Charlie Hebdo during an editorial meeting and opened fire, killing cartoonists, other media workers, a visitor and two policemen. The attackers were in turn killed by police two days later, after a huge manhunt in the French capital, where related attacks took place Jan. 8 and 9.

In the other acts, a gunman killed a young female police officer and later held hostages at a kosher supermarket, where police said he murdered four people before he was killed by the security forces.

Charlie Hebdo had been under threat since 2006 when it republished controversial Danish cartoons of the prophet Muhammad originally published in 2005, and in 2011 its offices were firebombed after an edition that some groups considered offensive and inflammatory.

Several critics accused the magazine of Islamophobia and racism, while the cartoonists defended their right to lampoon subjects that included religious leaders and politicians.

Before the attacks, the magazine’s circulation had been in decline, with readers apparently turned off by the crudeness of the drawings, but the publication is now being given wide moral and financial backing.

More than three million people of different ethnicities and faiths marched in Paris and other cities last Sunday in support of freedom of expression, including some 40 world leaders who joined French government representatives.

Among those marching, however, were officials from many countries active in “restricting freedom of expression”, according to PEN International and other groups. “This includes murders, violence and imprisoned writers on PEN’s Case List. These leaders, when at home, are part of administrations which are serious offenders,” said the organisation.

Saul told IPS that in the last 14 years, PEN International has noted a “shrinking in freedom of expression” in Western countries, “not only of writers and journalists but of citizens”. He said that the main problem for the organisation was impunity.

While everyone condemned the Charlie Hebdo attacks, some participants at the UNESCO conference argued that the media need to act more responsibly, especially as regards the portrayal of minority or marginalised communities.

As the debates took place, the latest edition of the magazine was being distributed, with another cover portraying Muhammad, this time holding a placard saying “Je Suis Charlie” and with the caption “All is forgiven”.

“The media must mediate and refrain from the promoting of stereotypes,” said French senator Bariza Khiari, in a segment of the conference debate titled “Intercultural Dialogue and Fragmented Societies”.

She said that most adherents of Islam were “quietly Muslim”, keeping their religion to themselves while respecting the secular values of the countries where they live. “But we have to recognise the existence and importance of religion as long as religion does not dictate the law,” she argued.

Khiari told IPS that the radicalisation of some French youth was taking place because of their hardships in France and the humiliation they faced on a daily basis. These include Islamophobia, joblessness and stops by the police.

The senator said she hoped that young people as well as the media would reflect on what had happened and draw some lessons that would result in positive advances in the future.

Annick Girardin, the French Secretary of State for Development and Francophonie, said that democracy meant that all newspapers of whatever belief or political learning could publish in France and that people have access to legal avenues. But she acknowledged that there was a failure of integration of everyone into society.

Regarding the protection of journalists, UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova told IPS that “now was the time” for the United Nations and particularly UNESCO “not just to reaffirm our commitment to freedom of expression” but to consider other initiatives.

“Something that is probably not so well known to the general public is that we are constantly in contact with governments where these cases (attacks on journalists) have happened in order to remind them of their responsibilities and asking for information on the follow-up measures, and I would say that even if they are not spectacular, we’ve still seen more and more governments who are taking this seriously.”

Alongside journalists and cartoonists, the UNESCO conference included Jewish, Muslim and Christian representatives who called on the state to do more to educate young people about the co-existence of secular and religious values and ways to live together in increasingly diverse societies.

“Ignorance is the biggest weapon of mass destruction, and if ignorance is the problem, then education is the answer,” said Nasser David Khalili, an Iranian-born scholar and philanthropist who lives in London.

One topic overlooked however was the less discernible attacks on journalists, in the form of press conglomeration, cuts in income and a general lack of commitment to quality journalism.

“Freedom of expression has no meaning when you can’t find a job and when media is controlled by big groups,” said a former journalist who left the conference early.

Edited by Phil Harris

Drawing for peace - a signature cartoon by Plantu

By A. D. McKenzie
PARIS, Jan 8 2015 (IPS)

“They are cowards who react to satire by going for their Kalashnikovs.” That was how renowned French cartoonist Plantu described the killers of 10 media workers and two policemen in Paris Wednesday.

One of the murdered journalists, cartoonist Bernard Verlhac who went by the pen name of Tignous, was a member of Cartooning for Peace, the organisation that Plantu founded with former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan in 2006, following the protests sparked by the controversial Danish cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad.

Tignous worked for Charlie Hebdo, the satirical French magazine that the murderers targeted.

According to police and eyewitness reports, two hooded gunmen entered the premises of the magazine and opened fire in the late morning. After they fled the scene, in a car driven by a third participant, 12 people were confirmed dead and at least 11 injured, some critically.“Cartoonists – Christian, Muslim, Jewish cartoonists – are scandalised and angry. And to express ourselves, we take up a marker and we draw” – Plantu, co-founder of Cartooning for Peace

Video footage, filmed from neighbouring buildings, showed the attackers killing an injured policeman as he lay in the road. On Wednesday night, the police presence in France’s capital city was huge as security officials tried to track down the attackers who reportedly had been identified.

French President François Hollande said in a public address that the killers would be brought to justice and “severely punished” for their actions. Appealing for unity, he said the attack was an assault on national ideals and freedoms, including freedom of expression.

Meanwhile, many French residents took to social media to express solidarity with the magazine’s staff, posting images with the words “Je suis Charlie” (I am Charlie), and thousands gathered on the historic Place de la Republique in Paris, and in several other cities in France.

The magazine had been a target for several years, since it published cartoons of the prophet Muhammad. In 2011, assailants firebombed its offices in the city’s 11th district, and its cartoons have been considered offensive by various groups over the past two years. Its cover this week featured the controversial French writer Michel Houellebecq, whose newly published novel “Soumission” portrays a future France living under an Islamic regime.

But condemnation of the murders came from all sides of the religious and political spectrum on Wednesday. The French Muslim Council said the “barbaric action” was also an attack “against democracy and the freedom of the press,” while the Protestant Federation of France expressed “revulsion” and said the “hateful” acts could have no justification in any religion.

Irina Bokova, the director-general of Paris-based UNESCO, the United Nations cultural agency, said she was “horrified” by the attack. “This is more than a personal tragedy,” she stated.  “It is an attack on the media and freedom of expression.  The world community cannot allow extremists to silence the free flow of opinions and ideas.  We must work together to bring the perpetrators to justice and stand together for a free and independent press.”

Rights group Amnesty International said the attack was a “black day” for freedom of expression and a free press, while the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) called the assault a “barbaric act of violence against journalists and media freedom.”

EFJ president Mogens Blicher Bjerregaard stressed that journalists today face a greater range of dangers and threats than ever before.

Last year, 118 journalists and media workers died for doing their jobs, according to the EFJ and other organisations, bringing the total to more than 700 deaths over the past decade.

On Nov. 2, the United Nations marked the first international Day to End Impunity for Crimes against Journalists. The organisation said that the majority of the killings “were deliberate murders committed in connection with journalists’ denunciation of crime and corruption.”

Charlie Hebdo’s recent cartoons had poked fun at the head of IS, or the Islamic State, and had even seemed to forecast an attack, saying that fighters had until the end of January to “present their wishes” – a reference to the French tradition of government ministers presenting their “voeux” to the press each new year.

From around the world, condemnation of the acts and condolences for the victims’ families were transmitted to France by heads of state and foreign ministers. But perhaps the most profound messages came from colleagues in the media world – cartoonists.

Plantu said that Cartooning for Peace, where staffers worked late into the evening, had received thousands of messages and drawings.

“We are angry,” he said on French television. “Cartoonists – Christian, Muslim, Jewish cartoonists – are scandalised and angry. And to express ourselves, we take up a marker and we draw.”

He said that Cartooning for Peace had been created for the very purpose of creating bridges between people, religions and regions and that cartoonists’ work was “stronger” than the “barbaric acts” committed by the “cowards” on Wednesday.

Plantu told IPS at a conference last year in the southern French city of Montpellier that the work of the non-profit organisation was important in promoting dialogue, understanding and mutual respect by using cartoons as a universal language.

At that conference, one of the featured participants was Tignous, who showed himself to be funny in both speech and drawing. As he and a journalist got lost trying to make it to the conference centre, he cracked jokes about his legs being too short to jump fences, but he ended up being the one to find the right direction.

Later at the conference, he produced cartoons that had the audience laughing out loud. For him, and other cartoonists, the work was about freedom to poke fun at extremists and political hypocrites.

At the creation of Cartooning for Peace, the founders said the initiative was meant to highlight the notion that cartoonist’s influence comes with a “responsibility to encourage debate rather than inflame passions, to educate rather than divide.”

According to commentators, Charlie Hebdo may have inflamed passions with its satire, but the killings on Wednesday seemed an attempt to end all debate, and to foster further division in France, where the extreme-right National Front party has been rising in popularity.

“The targeted assassinations were staged in order to establish terror and muzzle journalists, cartoonists but also every citizen,” Cartooning for Peace said in a statement. It added that the attackers would not have the last word because “art and freedom will be stronger than any intolerance.”

(Edited by Phil Harris)

The government of Tajik President Emomali Rahmon, seen here addressing the UN General Assembly in September 2010, is considering legislation that could affect NGOs accepting funding from foreign sources. Credit: UN/Rick Bajornas

By Konstantin Parshin
DUSHANBE, Dec 3 2014 (EurasiaNet)

It looks like Tajikistan is following a regional trend by drafting legislation that may sharply restrict the activities of foreign-funded non-governmental organisations. Activists say the bill threatens to hinder the operations of hundreds of organisations working on everything from human rights to public health.

The leaders of several prominent NGOs told EurasiaNet.org they were caught off guard when the bill was introduced earlier in November. They added that they were not involved in the drafting of the legislation, as had been customary for NGO-related bills, and have not been able to obtain details about the specific wording of the draft.“In reality, it implies that the government will be dictating to NGOs which projects they should implement.” -- Nargis Zokirova

The government has said nothing publicly yet about the bill, which comes as state agencies have increased unscheduled inspections and other bureaucratic measures concerning non-profits, the NGO leaders say.

Under current regulations, all NGOs operating in Tajikistan must regularly present detailed reports on their activities to the Justice Ministry, where they are obliged to register; they also must present financial statements to tax inspectors.

The draft law is believed to require local non-profit organisations to obtain the government’s approval before accepting funds from a foreign donor. For now, it is unclear from whom the local organisations would seek permission or who would appoint and manage that body.

“There are reasons to fear that it [the bill], in practice, would amount to a system of pre-authorization for the use of foreign funds that would involve direct government interference into the activities of NGOs, and could result in arbitrary delays and denials to register grants,” according to a forthcoming letter to the Tajik government that has already been signed by at least 70 organisations.

“If adopted, the draft legislation would further worsen the climate for NGOs, and is also likely to contribute to public mistrust and suspicion of foreign-funded NGOs by singling them out for a specific registration regime,” the letter added.

The public first heard about the draft legislation during a November 18 conference on freedom of speech in Tajikistan, during which NGO leaders noted a generally deteriorating climate for basic freedoms.

“In reality, it implies that the government will be dictating to NGOs which projects they should implement,” Nargis Zokirova, director of the Bureau on Human Rights and Rule of Law, told EurasiaNet.org. “Authorities demand maximum transparency from us. However, the draft law, which directly concerns our activities, was developed without the [input of] civil society organisations. None of us was aware of it.”

It is unclear why a government that frequently touts its commitment to battling corruption would create an additional layer of the kind of bureaucracy that can breed sleaze. Tajikistan already ranks 154 out of 177 countries on Transparency International’s most recent Corruption Perceptions Index.

Several activists said they feel Tajikistan’s authoritarian-minded government is simply following the regional trend of tightening regulations in order to silence critics. Many are pessimistic and expect the government will have the country’s rubberstamp parliament approve the bill before the end of the year.

“It is quite obvious that many domestic organisations will have to terminate their activities,” said Nuriddin Karshiboev, director of the National Association of Independent Media (NANSMIT).

Conditions for civil society organisations have deteriorated in all Central Asian countries over the last few years. Russian President Vladimir Putin established a precedent in 2012 by signing a law that requires local organisations receiving foreign funding to self-identify as “foreign agents” – Soviet-era slang for spies.

Legislators in neighbouring Kyrgyzstan are currently pushing an almost word-for-word copy of that 2012 law. If enacted in Kyrgyzstan, NGOs there would have to cope with burdensome reporting regulations.

“In countries where similar laws have been adopted – Azerbaijan, Belarus, Russia, Uzbekistan – the state authorities keep civil society under tough control and punish human rights activists,” said Karshiboev of NANSMIT.

Long-serving President Emomali Rahmon appears to have a strong grip on power in Dushanbe. Even so, authorities have moved steadily in recent years to limit the space for any form of dissent.

A court shut down the human rights watchdog organisation Amparo in the northern city of Khujand in 2012 for alleged technical violations shortly after an Amparo representative accused the government of failing to address widespread reports of detainees being tortured.

In October, Tajik security forces mustered a massive display of strength at the mere rumor of a demonstration, which never came to pass. This month, the lower house of parliament quickly approved a draft law restricting demonstrations, again without public consultation.

The Asia-Plus news agency quoted political scientist Abdugani Mamadazimov as saying that the law shows that authorities have “opted for stability to the determent of democratic traditions.”

Editor’s note:  Konstantin Parshin is a freelance writer based in Tajikistan.

This story originally appeared on EurasiaNet.org.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

LGBT activists, human rights observers and police officers wait outside a courtroom in Uganda's constitutional court on Jun 25, 2012. Four activists had brought a case against Minister of State for Ethics and Integrity Simon Lokodo. Credit: Will Boase/IPS

By Julia Hotz
WASHINGTON, Jul 31 2014 (IPS)

As the White House prepares to host more than 40 African heads of state for the upcoming U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit, civil society actors from the U.S., Africa and the international community are urging the Barack Obama administration to use the summit as an opportunity to more thoroughly address some of Africa’s most pressing human rights violations.

“While President Obama has unveiled specific initiatives to strengthen U.S. development work on the continent and connect it to core national security objectives, he has not done the same for human rights and the rule of law,” Sarah Margon, Washington director of Human Rights Watch,  said in the group’s 2014 Human Rights in Africa report.“Evangelical extremists from the U.S. have contributed to making society more dangerous than it ever was before." -- Richard Lusimbo

Although the policy agenda for next week’s summit has received praise for its proactive stance on energy, security and economic development, human rights advocates from both Africa and the U.S. are specifically condemning the agenda’s lack of concern over two critical humanitarian issues: freedom of expression and rights for the LGBT community.

“On the two issues we’re discussing today, the administration should be more straightforward, open and critical about these issues occurring in many countries in Africa,” Santiago A. Canton, director of the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice & Human Rights, an advocacy group here, told IPS.

Canton spoke Wednesday about these issues alongside fellow human rights advocates, as well as African journalists and LGBT activists, who collectively agreed that the current state of both press freedom and LGBT equality across Africa is “unacceptable.”

“Right that leads to other rights”

Citing terrorism laws, access to funding, and discrimination against independent media  as some of Africa’s  main obstacles to free expression, Wednesday’s panel spoke first and foremost about the need for press freedom to be recognised as not only a human right, but also as a key factor in development.

“This is a right that leads to other rights,” Frank La Rue, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of the Right to Freedom of Opinion and Expression, said Wednesday.

Within his plea for governments to take a more active stance on freedom of expression and provide for more internet access, La Rue stated that 90 percent of young men in rural Africa already know how to use the internet, while 90 percent of rural women, who tend to be forbidden from the cyber cafes where such knowledge circulates, do not.

“If not everyone is convinced that freedom of expression and access to technologies are important development goals, then we cannot talk about things like education and access to health, especially women’s health…we need to first allow access to information,” he said.

In addition to urging that such freedoms be integrated into the next set of Sustainable Development Goals, La Rue has requested that the U.N. hire more legal and communications personnel to defend freedom of expression, adding that the understaffed office receives up to 25 cases per day.

Yet for Wael Abbas, a prominent Egyptian journalist, blogger and human rights activist, the blame rests primarily on the U.S. government alone.

“Egypt is the biggest country that receives U.S. aid – some in military, some in development – but if Egypt is  a dictatorship, and there is no regulation of how this money is being spent, than the U.S. is just bribing a corrupt regime and dumping huge amounts of money into the ocean,” Abbas told IPS.

Explaining how the Egyptian state is “waging a war against [independent journalists] and trying to destroy [their] credibility and presence,” Abbas argues that independent journalists like himself, who show “what is really going on in Egypt,” need assistance and attention paid to the fact that most media outlets are owned by corrupt businessmen.

Arthur Gwagwa, a Zimbabwean human rights defender and freedom of expression advocate, agrees that the U.S. should take more initiative in protecting freedom of expression and ensuring governmental compliance in Africa, informing IPS of a set of policy recommendations to address at next week’s summit.

A fundamental, not special, human right

Related to this call for a greater focus on freedom of expression in the press is the need for a more active U.S. role in protecting Africans’ freedom of sexual expression and identity.

“This is a time that we have to think about how we’re addressing sexual minorities’ rights overseas,” Kerry Kennedy, president of the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights, said in Wednesday’s discussion.

Citing Africa’s passage of an anti-gay law and the recent comment by Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni that “gays are disgusting,” Kennedy expressed disappointment that there has been “no real pushback” from the U.S. on LGBT rights in Africa. She said a concerted U.S. effort “could have helped a lot,” and that there are now many LGBT individuals in Africa who are afraid to attend HIV clinics for treatment.

Tom Malinowski, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labour, considers such discrimination to be ironic on a continent that is diverse as Africa.

He spoke of the challenges posed by authoritarian leaders, both in Africa and around the world, who have called LGBT equality part of a “Western sexual agenda,” and believes it is extremely important for not only governments, but also artists, celebrities and business leaders, to challenge such a characterisation.

“This is a fundamental human right, not a special human right…everyone has the right to not be persecuted for who we are as human beings,” Malinowski said.

Lip service?

In addition to Kennedy’s suggestion that the U.S. pass legislation to create a special envoy for LGBT rights, Malinowski is calling on his government to provide “direct assistance” to people, such as doctors and lawyers, who serve on “the front line of the struggle,” and to continue to put LGBT equality “front and centre” in its diplomatic engagements.

Yet HRW’s Sarah Margon warns that the U.S. has sent “mixed signals” on this issue, and suggests that that the U.S. government is “simply paying lip service to human rights.”

Indeed, Richard Lusimbo, representative of Sexual Minorities Uganda, has similarly urged the U.S. to speak out more strongly, calling on Washington to “hold homophobic people responsible” for the subsequent discrimination in Africa.

“Evangelical extremists from the U.S. have contributed to making society more dangerous than it ever was before…and because we have no opportunities to go to radio and TV to show our side of the story, it makes things very difficult,” he noted.

Edited by: Kitty Stapp

The writer can be contacted at hotzj@union.edu

Hopes are high that the 10^th Asia-Europe Meeting – or ASEM summit – to be held in Milan on October 16-17 will confirm the credibility and relevance of Asia-Europe relations in the 21^st century.

ASEM has certainly survived many storms and upheavals since it was initiated in Bangkok in 1996 and now, with ASEM’s 20^th anniversary in 2016 approaching rapidly, the challenge is not only to guarantee ASEM’s survival but also to ensure that the Asia-Europe partnership flourishes and thrives.

Talk about renewal and revival is encouraging as Asians and Europeans seek to inject fresh dynamism into ASEM through changed formats and a stronger focus on content to bring it into the 21^st century.

ASEM’s future hinges not only on whether governments are ready to pay as much attention to ASEM and devote as much time and energy to their partnership as they did in the early years but also on closer engagement between Asian and European business leaders, civil society representatives and enhanced people-to-people contacts.  An ASEM business summit and peoples’ forum will be held in parallel with the leaders’ meeting.

Shada Islam. Courtesy of Twitter

Significantly, the theme of the Milan summit – “Responsible Partnership for Sustainable Growth and Security” – allows for a discussion not only of ongoing political strains and tensions in Asia and in Europe’s eastern neighbourhood, but also of crucial questions linked to food, water and energy security.

Engagement between the two regions has been increasing over the years, both within and outside ASEM. Five of the 51 (set to rise to 52 with Croatia joining in October) ASEM partners – China, Japan, India, South Korea and Russia – are the European Union’s strategic partners. Turkey and Kazakhstan have formally voiced interest in joining ASEM, although approval of their applications will take time.  There is now a stronger E.U.-Asian conversation on trade, business, security and culture.

Exports to Asia and investments in the region are pivotal in ensuring a sustainable European economic recovery while the European Union single market attracts goods, investments and people from across the globe, helping Asian governments to maintain growth and development.  European technology is in much demand across the region.

Not surprisingly, Asia-Europe economic interdependence has grown.  With total Asia-Europe trade in 2012 estimated at 1.37 trillion euros, Asia has become the European Union’s main trading partner, accounting for one-third of total trade.  More than one-quarter of European outward investments head for Asia while Asia’s emerging global champions are seeking out business deals in Europe.  The increased connectivity is reflected in the mutual Asia-Europe quest to negotiate free trade agreements and investment accords. For many in Asia, the European Union is the prime partner for dealing with non-traditional security dilemmas, including food, water and energy security as well as climate change. Europeans, too, are becoming more aware of the global implications of instability in Asia.

ASEM’s connectivity credentials go beyond trade and economics.  In addition to the strategic partnerships mentioned above, Asia and Europe are linked through an array of cooperation accords. Discussions on climate change, pandemics, illegal immigration, maritime security, urbanisation and green growth, among others, are frequent between multiple government ministries and agencies in both regions, reflecting a growing recognition that 21^st century challenges can only be tackled through improved global governance and, failing that, through “patchwork governance” involving cross-border and cross-regional alliances.

Discussions on security issues are an important part of the political pillar in ASEM, with leaders exchanging views on regional and global flashpoints.  Given current tensions over conflicting territorial claims in the East and South China Seas, this year’s debate should be particularly important.

Asian views of Europe’s security role are changing. Unease about the dangerous political and security fault lines that run across the region and the lack of a strong security architecture has prompted many in Asia to take a closer look at Europe’s experience in ensuring peace, easing tensions and handling conflicts.  As Asia grapples with historical animosities and unresolved conflicts, earlier scepticism about Europe’s security credentials are giving way to recognition of Europe’s “soft power” in peace-making and reconciliation, crisis management, conflict resolution and preventive diplomacy, human rights, the promotion of democracy and the rule of law.

In addition, for many in Asia, the European Union is the prime partner for dealing with non-traditional security dilemmas, including food, water and energy security as well as climate change. Europeans too are becoming more aware of the global implications of instability in Asia, not least as regards maritime security.

Meanwhile, over the years, ASEM meetings have become more formal, ritualistic and long drawn-out, with endless preparatory discussions and the negotiation of long texts by “senior officials” or bureaucrats. Instead of engaging in direct conversation, ministers and leaders read out well-prepared statements.  Having embarked on a search to bring back the informality and excitement of the first few ASEM meetings, Asian and European foreign ministers successfully tested out new working methods at their meeting in Delhi last November.

The new formula, to be tried out in Milan, includes the organisation of a “retreat” session during which leaders will be able to have a free-flowing discussion on regional and international issues with less structure and fewer people in the room.  Instead of spending endless hours negotiating texts, leaders will focus on a substantive discussion of issues.  The final statement will be drafted and issued in the name of the “chair” who will consult partners but will be responsible for the final wording.  There are indications that the chair’s statements and other documents issued at the end of ASEM meetings will be short, simple and to-the-point.

ASEM also needs a content update.  True, ASEM summits which are held every two years, deal with many worthy issues, including economic growth, regional and global tensions, climate change and the like. It is also true that Asian and European ministers meet even more frequently to discuss questions like education, labour reform, inter-faith relations and river management.

This is worthy and significant – but also too much.  ASEM needs a sharper focus on growth and jobs, combating extremism and tackling hard and soft security issues. Women in both Asia and Europe face many societal and economic challenges.  Freedom of expression is under attack in both regions.

ASEM partners also face the uphill task of securing stronger public understanding, awareness and support for the Asia-Europe partnership, especially in the run up to the 20^th anniversary summit in 2016.

The 21^st century requires countries and peoples – whether they are like-minded or not – to work together in order to ensure better global governance in a still-chaotic multipolar world.

As they grapple with their economic, political and security dilemmas – and despite their many disagreements – Asia and Europe are drawing closer together.  If ASEM reform is implemented as planned, 2016 could become an important milestone in a reinvigorated Asia-Europe partnership, a compelling necessity in the 21^st century.

Shada Islam is responsible for policy oversight of Friends of Europe’s initiatives, activities and publications. She has special responsibility for the Asia Programme and for the Development Policy Forum. She is the former Europe correspondent for the Far Eastern Economic Review and has previously worked on Asian issues at the European Policy Centre. 

The social role of journalists in Honduras is restricted under the official secrets law because they will not be able to report information that the state regards as “classified,” under the controversial new regulations. Credit: Thelma Mejía/IPS

By Thelma Mejía
TEGUCIGALPA, Jul 9 2014 (IPS)

The new official secrets law in Honduras clamps down on freedom of expression, strengthens corruption and enables public information on defence and security affairs to be kept secret for up to 25 years, according to a confidential report seen by IPS.

The Law on Classification of Public Documents related to Security and National Defence, better known as the official secrets law, was approved on the eve of the conclusion of the last parliamentary term, on Jan. 24.

“It [information about corruption] would be classified for 25 years, by which time the statute of limitations for prosecuting public servants for corruption would have expired, and no one would be held accountable,” says the IAIP
In a marathon two-day session, Congress approved a hundred decrees and laws to smooth the path of the new government of President Juan Orlando Hernández, who took office Jan. 27 and belongs to the right-wing National Party, like his predecessor Porfirio Lobo.

“This law lets the government behave like a cat that covers its own dirt,” shopkeeper Eduardo Tinoco told IPS wryly. He pays 20 dollars a week extortion money to one of the gangs that control El Sitio, a neighbourhood in the northeast of the capital.

“I pay taxes here for everything, even to be allowed to live, and that secrecy law will only be used to cover up the diversion of funds used for security and other government business. There are no two ways about it,” said Tinoco, who owns a small grocery store.

The law was blocked in October 2013 because of opposition from the Honduran Community Media Association (AMCH) and international groups, which regard it as a violation of the right to information and freedom of expression.

But it was reconsidered in January. How this occurred is not really known, because there are no audio records in the parliament archives that indicate when the bill was reintroduced, legislature officials told IPS on condition of anonymity.

A report by a team of experts for the Institute for Access to Public Information (IAIP) says that the official secrets law lacks a clear definition of “national security” and this ambiguity opens the way to discretionality, so that anything considered sensitive may be classified as secret.

The IAIP is the autonomous state body responsible for ensuring transparency in Honduras, according to the Law on Transparency and Access to Public Information. IPS obtained the report, which is due to be made public in a few weeks.

Article 3 of the official secrets law indicates that the following can be classified as confidential, in the interests of “national security”: “matters, actions, contracts, documents, information, data and objects whose knowledge by unauthorised persons may harm or endanger national security and/or defence and the fulfilment of its goals in these areas.”

The law sets four classification levels: private, confidential, secret and ultra secret, with periods of secrecy of five, 10, 15 and 25 years respectively, which may be extended as determined by the National Security and Defence Council which is responsible for classifying and declassifying material.

This Council is made up of the three branches of state, the Attorney General’s Office, the ministers of Defence and Security, the national Information and Intelligence Office and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the armed forces.

Information classified as “private” is lower level information, documentation or strategic internal material within state bodies that could cause “undesired institutional effects” if they came to light.

“Confidential” is the term attributed to intermediate level information, which could cause “imminent risk” or a direct threat to security, national defence or public order if it were made public, the law says.

Materials classified as “secret” are high level information at the national level, in the strategic internal and external spheres of the state, revelation of which poses an imminent danger to “constitutional order, security, national defence, international relations and the fulfilment of national goals.”

Finally, “ultra secret” is the highest level classification and is described as material which, if in the realm of public knowledge, would provoke “exceptionally serious” internal and external harm, threatening security, defence, sovereignty and territorial integrity, and the achievement of national goals.

Omar Rivera, of the Civil Society Group (GSC), an association of political advocacy and human rights organisations, told IPS that the “broad discretionality provided by the law is very worrying, because it provides a cloak of secrecy that can cover everything.”

His main concern is related to the security tax that has been levied on businesses and individuals for the past two years, as a contribution to the fight against insecurity and violence. This law “will make it impossible to get factual information on how the millions of dollars the state collects are spent,” he said.

The IAIP report highlights the same discretionalities, pointing out that any information about a public official being implicated in corruption can be classified as “ultra secret”.

In this case it would be classified for 25 years, by which time the statute of limitations for prosecuting public servants for corruption would have expired, and no one would be held accountable, the report analysing the law says.

Meanwhile, human rights expert Roberto Velásquez told IPS that the law directly targets journalism and freedom of expression, by putting a stranglehold on investigating or disseminating information.

He was referring to Article 10 of the law, which establishes that “when it can be foreseen that classified material may come to the knowledge of the media, these shall be notified of the nature of the material, and shall respect its classified nature.”

Also, any person having knowledge of classified information is obliged to “keep it secret” and report it to the nearest civil, police or military authority.

The new law directly contradicts the Transparency Law, in force for the past five years, by removing the IAIP’s powers to classify information regarded as secret, and overriding guarantees for freedom of expression and investigative journalism.

Doris Madrid, the head of IAIP, told IPS that it is hoping that the official secrets law will be reformed, on the grounds that it is unconstitutional and violates international treaties, but a proposal to revise or repeal it was turned down in Congress in March.

IPS learned that Transparency International made the signing of an agreement with the government on Open Budgets conditional on a revision of the law.

Honduras is regarded as one of the Latin American countries with the highest perception of corruption and insecurity. In April, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) indicated that this country of 8.4 million people has the highest murder rate in the world.

The Observatory on Violence at the National Autonomous University of Honduras reported this rate as 79.7 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants. But now the authorities have refused to give any more figures on violent deaths to the Observatory, its members have complained.

Western tech companies are often confused as to what type of digital products they are actually allowed to unblock in sanctioned countries. Credit: Zofeen Ebrahim/IPS

By Ramy Srour
WASHINGTON, Dec 6 2013 (IPS)

Aliakbar Mousavi is a former member of the Iranian parliament and an internet freedom and human rights advocate now living in Washington, DC. In 2006, he was arrested and jailed by the Iranian government for urging human rights reforms.

But the authorities are not the only ones to shoulder blame for quelling dissent, he says. Mousavi told IPS that the U.S. sanctions imposed on Tehran over its nuclear programme are also stifling freedom of expression in his country. “There is really no reason why U.S. sanctions should be inadvertently doing the work of oppressive governments.” -- Danielle Kehl

“People in Iran are suffering because of technology-related sanctions. After the 2009 revolution, Iranians were being arrested and had their private e-mails and information exposed,” he said.

The problem, activists say, is that even though the U.S. government has recently created some exceptions to protect the flow of information in sanctioned countries, regulations are still unclear.

This has led to a situation in which U.S. and other Western tech companies are confused as to what type of digital products they are actually allowed to unblock in sanctioned countries.

“One of my friends, who is also an influential person in Iran, was jailed and accused of conspiring against the regime,” Mousavi said. “After they arrested him, they got hold of his e-mails and showed them to him. He simply couldn’t deny their accusations, even though his e-mails were private.”

Mousavi said that those e-mails came from a Yahoo account. After these incidents, together with a group of Iranian activists, he tried to convince Yahoo to protect their personal information from the Iranian government at the time.

After nearly three years of exhortations, he said, Yahoo’s new president took charge and the company agreed to put in place new protections. At the same time, he noted, Iranians are still finding it difficult to open e-mail accounts because of sanctions still in place.

Last month, Iran and a group of six world powers that includes the U.S. struck an interim nuclear deal to ease sanctions on the Iranian government in return for a partial freeze of nuclear activities.

However, looking at the broader picture, experts here are urging the U.S. government to better protect internet freedoms when it imposes sanctions on countries with questionable human rights records, such as Iran.

“There is really no reason why U.S. sanctions should be inadvertently doing the work of oppressive governments,” Danielle Kehl, a researcher at the New America Foundation (NAF), a non-partisan think tank here, said Thursday at the launch of a new report that criticises some aspects of the U.S. sanctions approach in Iran and beyond.

Kehl points to how unclear sanctions regulations have curtailed the ability of ordinary citizens to share and access information over the internet in countries where U.S. sanctions are in place.

“Expression that seems most threatening to the state is not political manifestos on democracy, but exposés on the foibles and corruption of leaders,” Suzanne Nossel, the executive director of the PEN American Centre, an advocacy group advancing free expression, told IPS.

“This reality is much more troubling under repressive regimes like those in Syria, Iran and North Korea, where people can be killed or jailed for speaking out.”

Chilling effect

“We’re still seeing a chilling effect caused by these sanctions,” Jamal Abdi, policy director at the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), an advocacy group here, told IPS. And the recent exemptions the U.S. government has put forward to protect internet freedom in sanctioned Iran haven’t been enough, he said.

“Companies that could be taking advantage [of the exemptions] aren’t doing so, because they see it as too perilous because of all the risks, and as generally not being in their economic interest,” he said.

According to the report, the problem is that “the lack of legal clarity and fear of political or economic repercussions often discourage American companies from attempting to export their products to sanctioned countries.”

“Some specific examples include Google apps, mobile apps, Skype credit, or antivirus programmes such as McAfee and AVG,” the NAF’s Kehl told IPS.

Although the U.S. government currently imposes comprehensive sanctions on a set of different countries, including Cuba, North Korea, Sudan and Syria, much of the discussion has focused on Iran, partially because of the recent nuclear deal and the country’s history of stifling freedom of expression.

“Sanctions regulations in some cases effectively aid repressive regimes that seek to control access to information within their borders,” the report argues.

Lack of clarity

In recent years, the U.S. government and Congress have enacted some legislation and regulations that would facilitate the provision of technology in sanctioned countries.

In May 2013, the U.S. Treasury Department published a new license that allows companies to export software and services to Iran that are “incident to the exchange of personal communications over the internet, such as instant messaging, chat and e-mail … sharing of photos and movies, web browsing, and blogging.”

Although the license (known as General License D) does grant greater internet freedoms for Iranians, experts note a continued lack of clarity, especially when it comes to the difference between an exemption and an authorisation.

“Congress needs to show more flexibility in the way it issues exemptions, because that will leave more room for executive agencies … to issue adequate safeguard regulations such as General License D,” Kehl told IPS.

And this flexibility, activists say, should leave more room for ordinary citizens to conduct basic financial transactions.

“Remember that simply authorising a product doesn’t mean that people can actually use it,” Mousavi told IPS.

“So far, Iranians have been able to use free software but can’t use most of the important ones – like antivirus and security programmes – that come with a payment, because these companies are still not allowed to process payments coming from Iranian accounts.”

“What we need,” he continued, “are more clarifications and executive orders coming from the U.S.” that would allow ordinary Iranians to express themselves freely.

By Daniela Pastrana
MEXICO CITY, Jun 13 2013 (IPS)

“We have to understand that information, above all else, is a social service. If we lose sight of that dimension we begin to regulate it as merchandise, but the state has many other obligations, such as to guarantee freedom,” said Frank La Rue.

“In Latin America we made a historical mistake when we allowed the commercial vision of information to prevail,” said La Rue, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression.

In this interview with IPS, La Rue, a legal scholar from Guatemala, said: “Freedom of expression must be understood as the collective right of society to be informed, to associate freely and to express itself, but also as the right of peoples to their culture, language and values, and to transmit them to the world through their own communications media.”

The special rapporteur referred to other challenges to freedom of expression in the region. They include “censorship laws” that punish, for instance, defamation of civil servants and inhibit criticism of those in power, or penalise the unauthorised use of radio frequencies.

Another “very important” challenge is the case of the telecommunications laws being debated in countries like Honduras and Mexico.

Q: What basic conditions should be met by the new telecommunications laws?

A: Part of freedom of expression is defending cultural diversity. I have maintained that there should be four categories of media using the broadcast frequencies.

One is commercial radio stations, that should be regulated by a law on concessions; another is community radio stations, which should have the same rights as the former in spite of having low power and short range; a third category is for clearly identifiable ethnic groups; and finally, public telecommunications, which belong to the state rather than to the government of the day.

In the last case, we are not talking about media controlled by those who wield political power, but about the use of public resources for public media.

And the public aspect of social life needs to be recovered. The concept has been lost in Latin America, in contrast to Europe, where several countries have maintained their vision of the public sphere.

But the frequency spectrum is a public good; the airwaves exist all around us, and the state regulates their administration for the benefit of all, like other natural resources.

Q: Is it necessary to divide the spectrum into equal parts?

A: The state does not need one-third of the frequencies, as in Argentina, because it is unlikely to have the administrative capacity or the resources to use them. What is needed is a segment reserved for community stations.

There is a human rights principle which calls for diversity of the media and pluralism of positions. Above the individual rights of journalists is the human right of society to be informed.

The idea is that people should be able to develop their own thinking. In that sense, the concentration of media in very few hands is an attack on democracy, not just on human rights.

Where’s the catch? It’s in the concession mechanisms. Auctions of licences for frequencies are not an appropriate method because they favour economic wealth. There should be transparent, public competitions, with clear rules.

Q: What kind of rules?

A: As frequencies are state property, they are neither a gift nor a lifetime concession. Concessions should be issued for a limited, defined time period.

There is a basic principle: if a frequency is not used as soon as a concession is granted, the rights should be lost, because sometimes people accumulate frequencies without using them, just to avoid competition.

So rules are needed for withdrawing a concession, and there should be a limit on how many frequencies one person can own or operate, because too much accumulation leads to manipulation of public opinion, which is a bad thing.

Q: This leads us to another issue being discussed in Mexico, for instance, about financing methods, because it is understood that only commercial media can sell advertising.

A: An organisation that is not-for-profit can generate income, but no one can make a personal profit from sales.

The state should have regulations for distributing official advertising, with clear criteria. And it should put its house in order, without criminalising community radio stations. Having an unlicensed radio station cannot be seen as a crime, because if we look at the origins of the big media consortia, their concessions were not granted legitimately. They were all granted by dictatorships or corrupt governments.

Q: In Honduras, the inclusion of content regulations in the telecommunications bill has been very controversial.

A: The state should not interfere with content in any way whatsoever. There are legitimate limits to free expression, based on human rights rules and principles, but in my view only one aspect of content should be regulated, and that is regulation of watersheds for adult broadcasting, for the protection of children.

Children and adolescents should be protected from live, graphic scenes of direct violence and sexual acts, not of sexuality but of sexual acts, pornography and the malevolent misuse of sexuality.

But nothing else. Freedom of expression means the prevalence of openness and broad-mindedness. Limitations are the exception, and should not be over-generalised as this gives rise to censorship. There is always the temptation, when legislating, for everyone to impose his or her opinion.

Q: What about the internet?

A: Even less regulation is appropriate. The internet is an open space where there is room for everyone. By its nature, it is impossible to regulate. It can be monitored, but that is an attack on privacy.

The issue here is self-regulation. There is a new challenge of professionalism and ethics which is up to the press itself to define. It is not for the state to determine this, but journalists and the media themselves.

Excerpt:

But for democracy like Mozambique’s to be robust, it needs artists and critics. Credit: Thembi Mutch/IPS

By Thembi Mutch
MAPUTO, May 27 2013 (IPS)

Mozambique is proud home to not one, but two female rappers who are both qualified lawyers. Yveth “Vauvita” Matunza is striking. She is tall, wearing shoes with enormous stilettos. She has on full make up and a smart, tailored dress suit. She is doing her masters part time while working full time at the Mozambican Human Rights League offices – and rapping on her off time.

There is no contradiction in this for her. And she is keen to move away from the heterogeneous “plastic” sound of American hip hop and rap, and create a sound that is distinctly Mozambican.

The other of Mozambique’s female rappers is Dama Do Bling “Lady of Bling”, who recently appeared on a glossy magazine cover, holding her baby daughter.

Mozambique’s constitution, which is in the process of being revised, is exemplary in many things. It recognises that all citizens have the right to an education, that men and women are equal in all spheres of life, and that all people have the right to freedom of expression and of the press.

But for democracy to be robust, it needs artists and critics, as the late, prominent female musician Lidia Sthembile Udenga Mate, from the all-female band Likute, told IPS in an interview in March, just before her death.

“The artists, the musicians are the most important voices in society. We mock, we hold a mirror, we criticise, we are honest, we celebrate… our role is vital,” she had said.

In 2010 the vibrant Mozambican rapper Azagaia directly named corrupt politicians during the bread riots that shook the country after prices of bread soared. He was harassed and arrested for one night before being released. But his case did not go unnoticed by the international media.

There are others, for example, who in their music also name the people involved in corrupt land deals. Like Matunza, it seems they are part of a new breed of savvy young Mozambicans who are openly “globalised”, who are not afraid, and who use social media and publicity, negative or not, to get people to pay attention to the issues galvanising this southern African country.

Matunza says she was obsessed with music as a kid.“Here there’s so much opportunity to play all kinds of music, a vortex that has opened up… Creatively, anything is possible.” -- Chude Mondlane

“And later issues of justice dominated. I was never even aware that there was a conflict between working as a lawyer in the day, and an MC and rapper at weekends. I am 100 percent Mozambican and proud – critical of our failures, proud of our successes, and I know I can reach the public.

“I rap about things that affect us, men who don’t stick around to look after their kids, human rights abuses and our leaders… I am indirect, I talk in riddles, my concerts are a complete sell out, and, yes, I am famous.”

At only 28 she is focused and sure. Her father, who was a miner in South Africa, brought home the music of Madonna and South African female singers Brenda Fassie and Yvonne Chaka Chaka, which influenced her.

“There’s huge domestic violence here – our culture is one of submission for women. I speak from personal experience. I come from a violent family, a violent community.

Mozambican rapper Yveth “Vauvita” Matunza is a qualified lawyer who works full time at the Mozambican Human Rights League offices and raps about rights issues and gender violence. Credit: Solange dos Santos/IPS

“What people do and teach and show, is that women must obey their husbands … the number of domestic abuse cases are increasing since September 2009, despite a new act (being passed in) parliament,” she says. In 2009 parliament passed the act on domestic violence, which became operational in March 2010.

She says rap is important to changing attitudes and bringing understanding to the issue.

The enthusiasm in Maputo is palpable. Paulo Chibanga, a music producer and musician who performed in bands, including the South African 340 mill, and Tumi and the Volume, has returned to Mozambique after 15 years in South Africa.

He is working with the Ministry of Women’s Affairs and Social Welfare to raise money, through music performances, for nursery schools in the Mozambican province of Gaza. A war baby, born in 1979 – the country’s civil war began in 1977 and ended in 1992 – Chibanga feels his generation is relatively un-encumbered.

“We are connected to our pasts without being dragged back … we have no resentments, we know our heroes, our culture. We are free, we are positive,” he tells IPS.

But, like Matunza and Mate, Chibanga is politicised, clear and determined to work to an African agenda.

“I think the Western world affects Africa drastically, we are forced to listened to Western music. In Mozambique we don’t have our own record labels, or the option to record. I am more interested in exporting Mozambican culture and musicians, through Bushfire (Swaziland’s pan-African and international music festival) and the AZGO music festival here in Mozambique,” Chibanga says.

Chude Mondlane is the daughter of the revolutionary president of the Front for Liberation of Mozambique or FRELIMO, Eduardo Mondlane. She is a musician, a performer and a big personality. Visibly radiant, she laughs and plays her music on a laptop in the five-star Polana hotel, oblivious to the turned heads.

She has also returned to Mozambique after years of international travel and playing with music greats such as Marcus Miller, Roberta Flack and South African pianist and composer, Abdullah Ibrahim.

“Here there’s so much opportunity to play all kinds of music, a vortex that has opened up…it’s all happening – the worst of the worst, the best of the best. It’s all mixed up. Creatively, anything is possible.”

She is, however, critical of the lack of funding for arts and culture, and the growing dependency on donors and foreign aid.

“We present this face to the donors … We need to be clear about which bits of tradition we want to keep, and which to jettison. Some of our traditions, like female submission, or women being second-class, are actually awful and we need to say this. We can’t only say what donors want.”

Solange Dos Santos is a dynamic female photographer with a degree from the New York Institute of Photography who has just opened up the first photography studio space in Maputo. Dos Santos, like many Mozambicans returning from years abroad, is excited about the future.

“I left in 1996, so coming back now is amazing. So much has changed. It’s buzzing, alive, more liberal, accepting. I love this about Mozambique. It’s very tolerant, very forward looking.

“The infrastructure is way more developed, the nightlife is buzzing, there are films, art (exhibitions), concerts in the park, dancing, theatre, live music every night – it’s so friendly!  There’s something in the air that makes you want to experiment, give it your best. Here you’re allowed to – completely.”

Dos Santos’s pioneering photographic project done with the United Nations Development Programme, which shows albinos in completely new ways, has toured Africa and New York.

“I want people to see the humanity and beauty in each other … We’re so globalised. I can wear a capulana (a traditional wrap), or high heels and still be a feminist.”

Radio Totopo was founded in February 2006 in the Pescadores neighbourhood, the oldest and poorest part of the city of Juchitán in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca. But the authorities closed it down in late March, even though Congress is debating a constitutional reform that would recognise community radio stations.

Residents of Pescadores say the radio station belongs to all the people. Totopo, like most community radio stations in Mexico, has no official licence, and 90 percent of its programming is transmitted in Diidxazá, the language of the Zapotec indigenous people.

In recent years, Radio Totopo has supported campesinos (peasants) and fisherfolk of the local Zapotec people, who call themselves Binnizá, in resisting a wind park that the Spanish company Gas Natural Fenosa is planning to install on communal lands on the Isthmus of Tehuantepec.

Community radio stations in Mexico continue to fight for legal recognition. Credit: Zadie Neufville/IPS

The indigenous Assembly of Peoples of the Isthmus in Defence of Land and Territory denounced that deception was used in the presentation of the project to the campesinos, some of whom, unable to speak Spanish and not provided with a translation, signed contracts to rent out their plots at a complete disadvantage, violating the right of native peoples to information and prior consultation.

For six months, Radio Totopo translated contracts into the Zapotec language, broadcast them and ran campaigns on the project – until Mar. 26, when state police dismantled the radio station, removed power and audio cables and took away the transmitter and a computer as part of an eviction action in the disputed area.

One of the radio station coordinators, Carlos Sánchez, sustained a broken arm during the operation and he is now in hiding to avoid detention. Mariano López Gómez, the leader of the movement opposing the wind parks, was held for several days, accused of extorting government officials.

This happened while Congress debates a complex constitutional reform on telecommunications, promised by President Enrique Peña Nieto as part of the multi-party Pact for Mexico, a response to longstanding demands from civil society groups fighting for the right to information.

“This initiative reflects many demands that society as a whole has made for three decades, especially to change the current model of concentration of broadcasting and telecommunications ownership, and its contents are largely a product of expert studies and social mobilisation,” said the Mexican Association for the Right to Information (AMEDI) after its presentation to parliament on Mar. 11.

Among other issues, AMEDI highlighted the need for constitutional recognition of community radio stations, which under the reform would be entitled to concessions for social purposes, and the state’s obligation to guarantee the right to freedom of expression for all existing broadcasters.

“Constitutional recognition is very important, it is not a minor point,” lawyer Gisela Martínez, of the Mexican chapter of the World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters (AMARC), told IPS. “If (community radio broadcasters) are not named (in the constitution) it is as if they did not exist; that is why we are fighting for recognition under the law, because they say we are illegal.”

Martínez said the telecommunications bill was only the first step in the ongoing construction of people’s effective right to have their own broadcasting media.

On Apr. 30 the senate passed the telecommunications reform bill, designed to boost competition. It has now gone to the 32 state parliaments. Since it is a constitutional amendment, it will have to be approved by a majority of 17 of the states in order to become law.

If this majority approval is not achieved, an extraordinary congressional period will be required, or the bill will be on hold until September, when regular parliamentary sessions are due to resume.

In any case, “the mother of all battles will be over the secondary regulations,” said Martínez, as there has already been a negative precedent with indigenous community radio stations.

“In 2006, a constitutional amendment allowed indigenous communities to have their own radio stations, but seven years later there are still no secondary regulations permitting native people to exercise that right,” she said.

In AMARC’s view, if the law is finally approved, the next battle will be to ensure that the radio stations are not subject to power restrictions; can sell advertising; and are not confined to a specific geographical area; and that 33 percent of the radio spectrum is reserved for community and indigenous broadcasters.

Other major issues will include transparency in the permitting process, as well as the definition of effective mechanisms to guarantee the economic survival of the radio stations, without jeopardising their autonomy and independence.

Not everyone is optimistic. In Oaxaca and many other places in the country, community radio stations have played an essential role in the struggle for territories and culture and against large development projects.

“That law is useless to us,” Óscar Ledima Santiago, another of the coordinators of Radio Totopo, told IPS by telephone.

“That whole debate is a lie, because the radio stations are being subjected to repression for defending people’s rights, and by the time the secondary regulations are passed, there won’t be any land left to fight for,” he said.

Radio Totopo has already been off the air since Mar. 26, nearly six weeks, and the confiscated equipment is valued at over 5,000 dollars. Local people have mounted roadblocks and barricades around the area where the wind park is planned to be built.

And this is not an isolated case. Two journalists from Radio Voces de los Pueblos (Voices of the Peoples) were detained for several hours together with two reporters from the national newspaper La Jornada on Mar. 21.

A few days later Filiberto Vicente of Radio Xadani reported he had received death threats, and finally Radio Huave, a pioneer among community radio stations on the Isthmus, had its transmission equipment stolen.

Each of these cases involved radio stations that supported indigenous people’s resistance to the construction of energy or mining megaprojects.

“We demand a thorough investigation of these attacks, and punishment of the officials and company owners linked to the violation of our right to information,” the Assembly of Peoples of the Isthmus in Defence of Land and Territory said in a communiqué.

Authorities at Kyrgyzstan’s Ministry of Culture want to ban a play that discusses domestic abuse and sexual violence because it “promotes scenes that destroy moral and ethical standards and national traditions of the peoples of Kyrgyzstan.”

The effort points to creeping conservatism in the thinking of Kyrgyzstan’s leaders.

“The Vagina Monologues” is an episodic play where woman address how they relate to their bodies, discuss their sexual experiences, and confront the topic of sexual violence. Since American Eve Ensler wrote the play in 1996, it has been performed in over 140 countries and translated into 48 languages. A performance is scheduled for Apr. 12 in Bishkek.

The Culture Ministry sent a letter to local media outlets on Apr. 1 saying the Vagina Monologues advocates “unnatural, perverted sex under the slogan of feminism”. The letter warned that Kyrgyz law prohibits the distribution of materials that “promote pornography and offend human dignity”.

Organisers say authorities are rushing to judgment. “The play is aimed at stopping violence against women, a very important thing for our society where there is a lot of violence against women,” Aikanysh Jeenbaeva, one of the organizers and a co-founder of the Bishkek Feminist Collective SQ, told EurasiaNet.org.

“The ministry did not say which parts of the Vagina Monologues are supposedly offensive or promote pornography. I think none of them have actually seen the play and they’re just judging it by its name.”

A ministry representative, Ermek Jolochuev, admitted he had not seen the play, but said it “contradicts our mentality. You know that nationalities living on the territory of Kyrgyzstan, and Eastern people in general, are not used to talking about such topics openly or to speaking publicly the names of women’s body parts.”

He confirmed that “prominent” cultural figures stood against the play, but would not name them over the phone. He also did not follow through with a promise to email EurasiaNet.org their names.

Jolochuev said the ministry has no legal recourse to ban the performance. Nevertheless, organisers fear the ministry’s recommendation will engender hostility toward the production. The Russian-language version of the play is scheduled for 7 pm Friday at the Metro Pub theater; 100 percent of proceeds will benefit Chance, a local women’s shelter. If it goes ahead uninterrupted, it will be the Vagina Monologues’ third season in Bishkek, after debuting in 2009 and returning in 2011.

Bishkek was the first location in Central Asia to host the Vagina Monologues; Almaty hosted a sold-out performance this past February.

Organisers have received threats in the past, but have never experienced such interference from authorities.

Kyrgyzstan remains an entrenched patriarchal society where, despite Soviet attempts to extend equal opportunities to women, today women’s rights appear to be backsliding. There is little quantitative data available, but a 2008 U.N. study found one in four Kyrgyz women had suffered from domestic violence.

Stigma is widespread: women who speak out about sexual and domestic abuse are often shamed both as something sullied and as backstabbers betraying their families. Moreover, bride kidnapping, though illegal, has become more common since the Soviet era, activists say.

Given the seriousness of the issue, when the Culture Ministry statement appeared on Apr. 1, “We thought it was an April Fools’ joke,” Jeenbaeva said. Cancelling the play would send a message, members of her group said, that domestic violence is not a serious problem.

The dispute underscores a trend in which the Kyrgyz government is shunning Western liberalism. Last fall, for example, the State Committee on Religious Affairs successfully blocked, with a court order, the screening of a documentary film about gay men in the Muslim world.

In recent weeks, parliament has discussed a bill that would ban young women from traveling abroad, supposedly to protect them from sexual abuse and, in the words of the bill’s author, Irgal Kadyralieva, “increase morality and preserve the gene pool”.

Prominent human rights activist and lawyer Cholpon Djakupova is worried by the trend and feels Kyrgyz society is lashing out at perceived foreign ideas with growing cynicism. She added that, despite years of promises, Western liberalism has done little to improve living standards or confront widespread corruption.

The Culture Ministry’s attempted ban “is the reaction of people who do not like [what has turned out to be a] false and empty democracy. In NGOs and even the term freedom, people see the failed realization of foreign promises,” Djakupova told EurasiaNet.org.

“This concept of freedom is only important for creative people and self-reliant people. Poor people have no access to education or justice. For them, all these liberal concepts are estranged from their difficult lives.”

*Editor’s note: David Trilling is EurasiaNet’s Central Asia editor.

This story originally appeared on EurasiaNet.org.

A protest rally in Tunis in support of free expression. Credit: Lassad Ben Achour/IPS.

By Justin Hyatt
TUNIS, Feb 28 2013 (IPS)

The extent to which Tunisians are able to express themselves freely is an ever-changing phenomenon. While the country is still in the grips of turmoil after the recent killing of left-wing politician Chokri Belaid, which sparked some of the largest protests since the initial revolution in 2011 that toppled Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, the airing of dissent has become second nature for many.

It is widely agreed that freedom of speech is the most significant achievement in the wake of the collapse of the former regime. Veteran Tunisian journalist Sofiane Ben Hamida says fear of speaking one’s mind too loudly was once the order of the day. “In the former regime, someone sitting at a café would be afraid to just voice their political opinions too loudly. This is now ancient history.”

This positive development notwithstanding, it is still sometimes a rough transition. A number of incidents have been recorded where journalists have had their camera stolen or even been beaten up. Some journalists have also received death threats for being too outspoken.

Tawfik Ben Brick, a well-known public figure, has faced repeated harassment over his journal ‘Dhed Assolta’ (‘Against the Power’). He had been accused of assault on a woman during the Ben Ali era and has more recently had issues of his magazine confiscated in bulk by the police.

“Better protection of journalists is needed,” says Fathi Zabaar, an independent consultant and formerly with Freedom House Tunisia. “While there are significant advances being made towards a freer society, journalists and the public should be spared all harassment, and when needed, the government should be there to protect its citizens.”

According to Hichem Snoussi from the international NGO Article 19, which is dedicated to safeguarding freedom of expression, Tunisian media is free, yet these freedoms do not have full legal bearing in Tunisian law.

A number of decrees are currently being drafted and debated, and are intended to provide legal structures for the media and for access to information.

Article 19 has also provided a thorough legal analysis of the draft constitution, and is putting pressure on the National Constituent Assembly (ANC) to go further than the initial draft to make sure that international standards are considered.

Much of the national debate is on the Internet. In a country where roughly one out of three persons has a Facebook account, the realm of social media is exploited to the hilt. According to Zabaar, something akin to an Internet militia is also spreading rumours and hate speech, especially on Facebook.

“There is a given pattern to the choice of language employed as well,” says Zabaar. “The right-wing groups tend voice their opinions in Arabic, while those representing the left side of the spectrum frequently use the French language.”

The range of new media is quite fully explored in Tunisia. Adherents of data journalism can plug into fhimt.com, which takes an approach to interpreting events that is based on graphical data analysis and comparison charts.

At the same time, those concerned with privacy and surveillance issues attend meetings dedicated to cryptography, and the ‘hacktivist’ group Anonymous is also alive and well in Tunisia.

Or consider the Tunisian version of Telecomix, which describes itself as a ” sociocyphernetic telecommunist cluster of internet and data loving bots and people” and sees its role as one of defending the free flow of information.

Nader Yamoun, a Tunis-based entrepreneur and open data activist, set up an anti-corruption portal, which promotes open data in Tunisian society. “In this regard, Tunisia can boast of real progress. The first open data platform was created in the U.S. in 2009. France followed in 2011, and we got one in Tunisia in 2012.”

While much work in this area has clearly still to be done, Zabaar sees the current stage of Tunisia’s transition towards a free society as one of growing up and joining the ranks of other functioning, albeit flawed democracies.

“Whatever they say, we do now have a strong base for a sound democracy.” (End)

A poster of the film Vishwaroopam.

By Sujoy Dhar
NEW DELHI, Feb 21 2013 (IPS)

“I am godless. I am an artist. I will find another country that is secular and will take me…” These are the emotional words of one of India’s most famous and critically acclaimed actors, Kamal Haasan, who ran from one court to another to get his 17 million dollar trilingual film Vishwaroopam (Universe) released in his home state Tamil Nadu in south India last month.

Kamal Haasan, who is not just an actor but an iconic star with a huge fan following, faced the ire of fringe Muslim groups.

The screening of the film on terrorism — called Vishwaroopam in Tamil and Vishwaroop in Hindi — which is set in Afghanistan and the U.S, was stopped.

As the 58-year-old thespian spoke, in capital New Delhi sociologist Asish Nandy awaited police interrogation for remarking that corruption as the great social leveller in a caste-ridden society. Nandy spoke at the Jaipur Literature Festival Jan. 26.

Last year India-born British writer Salman Rushdie was barred from the festival on grounds of security for him.

This year Asish Nandy entered new controversy after some Indian groups and politicians representing the ‘lower’ castes – who are mentioned in the Indian Constitution as the Schedule Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Castes asked for jail for Nandy. They said his remarks suggested they were more corrupt than others.

Nandy, who has been charged under a law that protects the rights of the ‘lower’ castes, faced up to ten years if convicted.

Nandy says he never called the lower castes corrupt but had defended their rights by suggesting that the corruption of the rich now finds a match in the ‘lower’ caste groups indulging in similar practices.

A police complaint was filed against Nandy in Jaipur. Festival producer Sanjoy Roy could leave town only after police questioning.

India’s free speech advocates say they are appalled that his words at a literary festival could land him in jail.

“There is an Olympics of intolerance going on in India now,” Javed Akhtar, one of the foremost Bollywood scriptwriters who wrote the lyrics for the songs in the Hindi version of Haasan’s film told IPS.

“There is a competition to be intolerant where every group is going for the gold medal. The moment you express your mind you are branded unpatriotic, communal, pro-Pakistan, a Kafir and what not.

“The whole issue over Vishwaroopam is ridiculous since the film was first passed by the Censor Board,” said Akhtar.

“There is now a premium on advocating intolerance and many are also spreading it from the anonymity of social media.”

Kamal Haasan, who only managed to have his film released in Tamil Nadu after several edits, says he is a victim of cultural terrorism.

“I believe that along with my Muslim friends I have been an instrument in a political game. I do not know who is playing it and I am not even hazarding a guess.”

Civil liberty groups say there is a growing tendency in India to criminalise disagreement.

“I would appeal to the authorities to not criminalise disagreement. It is terrible the way politics follows each such incident,” Kavita Srivastava of the People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) told IPS.

Dancer Leela Samson, chair of the Censor Board, says the new curbs on freedom are scary.

“I feel very badly about it, both as an artist and as CBFC (Central Board of Film Certification]) chairperson,” she told IPS. She said the protests and the legal charades undermined the authority of a body like the Censor Board.

“The controversies distract from the main issue and that is the creativity of artists and the freedom required to be creative.”

But as Indian intellectuals speak out, more incidents follow.

On Jan. 30, Salman Rushdie had to cancel his visit to eastern city Kolkata for promotion of the film Midnight’s Children adapted from his book, and to attend a literary meet at the city’s iconic annual book fair.

Some Muslim groups in Kolkata decided to stop Salman Rushdie, who had angered the Muslims decades ago with his controversial book The Satanic Verses.

A Muslim leader said they were happy the state government did not provide Rushdie security, and that their wish to stop him prevailed.

“We led a protest at the airport and later found that he is not coming. We will not allow a person here who had written blasphemous words,” said Idris Ali who heads the All India Minority Forum.

V.Kumaresan, general secretary of The Rationalists’ Forum in Tamil Nadu says the Indian state must remain neutral and non-aligned. “But the prevailing position is not like that. The State suffocates due to rise of intolerance.”

Ordinary netizens – from bloggers to Facebook users – could be persecuted under the Philippines’ new Cybercrime Prevention Act. Credit: Kara Santos/IPS

By Kara Santos
MANILA, Sep 29 2012 (IPS)

A newly enacted cybercrime law in the Philippines has raised fears that not only online media but also ordinary netizens could be persecuted for exercising their freedom of expression.

Media groups have expressed concern that the law poses a threat to press freedom and limits freedom of expression in the country. Bloggers and social media practitioners also point out that the new law allows the government to shut down websites without due process, and makes Internet users liable for simply clicking the ‘like’ button on Facebook or re-tweeting something on Twitter.

Republic Act (RA) No. 10175, also known as the Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012, was signed into law by Philippine President Benigno Aquino III on Sept. 12. Actions now punishable as ‘cybercrimes’ include illegal access and interception of any part of a computer system without right, computer-related identity-theft, cybersex and child pornography, among others.

However, the law also broadens the coverage of libel as a content-related offense that can be committed by just about anybody using a computer.

Section 4 (4) of the Cybercrime Act deems as illegal any “unlawful and prohibited act of libel as defined in Article 355 of the Revised Penal Code, as amended, committed through a computer system or any other similar means which may be devised in the future”.

Libel is defined in Article 353 of the Revised Penal Code (RPC) as a “public imputation and malicious imputation of a crime, or of a vice or defect, real or imaginary, or any act, omission, condition, status, or circumstances tending to cause the dishonor, discredit, or contempt of a natural or juridical person, or to blacken the memory of one who is dead.”

Professor Luis Teodoro, who serves as deputy director of the Centre for Media Freedom and Responsibility (CMFR), says the new law actually strengthens an 82-year-old libel law that has been described by the United Nations Human Rights Council as “draconian” and “excessive”.

“At a time when the global trend is to decriminalise libel, the new cybercrime law is very regressive and takes us several steps backward,” Teodoro told IPS.

“In the age of new media, where ordinary citizens take to Facebook and Twitter as a venue for free expression, here is this absolutely objectionable law that gives agencies so much power to limit free speech,” he said.

He added that certain provisions of the law empower government agencies to take down or prevent people from seeing Tweets that have been deemed libelous, or even monitor activity on cyberspace, including private Facebook accounts.

The National Union of Journalists in the Philippines (NUJP) said that the enactment of the Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012 betrayed Aquino’s commitment to transparency and freedom of expression.

In an interview with IPS, Secretary General of the NUJP, Rowena Paraan, called the law “sneaky”.

“Certain provisions in the law were not part of versions approved by the Senate and just suddenly appeared in the version that the president signed. These were not subject to consultations,” Paraan told IPS.

Many Filipinos are disturbed by the fact that the man allegedly responsible for this last-minute change, which lumps online libel with cybersex and child pornography, is notorious for plagiarising blogs, and recently elicited a spate of criticism from active netizens.

Citing Senate journals and interviews, investigative journalist and blogger Raissa Robles claims that Senator Vicente Sotto III pushed for the insertion into the law at the eleventh hour; an ironic twist, given various allegations that he copied parts of blog articles in previous speeches without crediting the bloggers.

Robles goes on to list some of the flaws in the law, including the difficulty of identifying the origin of libelous material, and extending the offending parties to those who “share” or “like” a post on Facebook or comment on articles agreeing with alleged libelous material.

“Historically, in the Philippines, it is the rich and the powerful who use libel as a weapon to suppress criticisms about them,” she added.

“Before the Internet came along, it was easier for the rich and the powerful to control criticisms. All they needed to do was buy a stake in newspapers, TV and radio. Or sue them. Now they have realised that the Web is beyond their control,” she wrote in a blogpost.

According to NUJP’s Paraan, anyone who uses the internet to express their opinions is now liable for what they post. Online statements posted on blogs and social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, that can be interpreted as an attack on the reputation of an individual or an entity, may give rise to libel suits.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) released a statement Friday criticising the law, which, they say, “drastically increases punishments for criminal libel and gives authorities excessive and unchecked powers to shut down websites and monitor online information”.

“The cybercrime law needs to be repealed or replaced,” said Brad Adams, Asia director for HRW. “It violates Filipinos’ rights to free expression and it is wholly incompatible with the Philippine government’s obligations under international law.”

Various civil society groups have resorted to legal measures to stop government agencies from implementing provisions in the law.

“I’m quite happy that a lot of different groups have been questioning the threat to the rights of freedom of speech and due process and different provisions in the law,” Paraan told IPS, citing various civil society and blogger-led initiatives.

At the time of writing, at least five separate petitions have been filed with the Supreme Court, questioning the law’s constitutionality.

On Sept. 27 several bloggers and technology law experts hosted an online roundtable discussion on the Act using Google+ Hangouts. Netizens were able to view the live webcast via YouTube and send questions to speakers and lawyers through live chat and by using the #cybercrimelaw hashtag on Twitter.

(END)