A photo of journalists dedicated to covering the agendas of nearby communities, like these ones in a town in Colombia, is uncommon in poor areas of Latin American countries, where millions of people have no access to information of local interest. CREDIT: Chasquis Foundation

By Humberto Márquez
CARACAS, Jun 14 2023 (IPS)

Without the means to receive information about what is happening around them, millions of Latin Americans who live in poor remote rural or impoverished urban areas inhabit veritable news deserts, according to an increasing number of studies conducted by journalistic organizations in the region.

There are, for example, 29 million people in Brazil, 10 million in Colombia, seven million in Venezuela and up to three-quarters of the Argentine territory without access to journalism due to the absence of media outlets, or because the few existing local outlets are dedicated to entertainment, rather than news.“When we talk about information deserts, we are also talking about what a robust media ecosystem implies: that there are not only enough media outlets, but also pluralism.” -- Jonathan Bock

“When we talk about information deserts, we are also talking about what a robust media ecosystem implies: that there are not only enough media outlets, but also pluralism,” said Jonathan Bock, director of the Colombian Foundation for Press Freedom (FLIP).

This plurality must encompass “the topics that are covered, diversity of formats, media that address different audiences. A healthy ecosystem,” Bock added in a conversation with IPS from the Colombian capital.

A Jun. 7 forum organized by the Venezuelan branch of the Press and Society Institute (IPYS) displayed atlases and maps on news deserts in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia and Venezuela, based on research by organizations of journalists and academics from those countries.

Even without extrapolating from the results of these assessments, it is possible to estimate that news deserts affect a good part of the region, judging by the structural deficiencies of the population, and by conflictive situations in the media and journalism in nations such as those of Central America and the Andes.

“The social and geographical marginalization found in parts of our countries means that important segments of the population are in these news deserts. For example, indigenous populations lacking media outlets in their languages,” Andrés Cañizález, founder and director of the Venezuelan observatory Medianálisis, told IPS.

Journalistic organizations from Argentina, Brazil, Colombia and Venezuela show maps or atlases that indicate, using colors, the most and least deserted areas in terms of access to news in their respective countries. CREDIT: IPS

Atlases and statistics

A study by the Argentine Journalism Forum (FOPEA), coordinated by Irene Benito, took a census of 560 areas in that country and considered 47.9 percent of them news deserts, 25.2 percent in “semi-desert” conditions, 17.1 percent as “semi-forests”, and 9.8 percent as “forests”, or areas with an abundance of media outlets and news.

“As in other Latin American nations, in many areas there are media outlets and journalists, but there is no quality coverage. They deal with other things, not the interests of their communities, while the propaganda apparatus of the powers-that-be is in overly robust health,” Benito said in the IPYS forum.

In Brazil, the most recent News Atlas, released in March, recorded the existence of 13,734 media outlets in that country of 208 million inhabitants, but not a single one in 312 of its 5,568 municipalities. These 312 municipalities are home to 29.3 million people with no access to local news.

Although hundreds of online media outlets emerge every year “and now more municipalities have at least one or two media outlets, many are not independent or are biased, because they depend on the city government or religious movements,” said Cristina Zahar, from the Brazilian Association of Investigative Journalism (ARAJI).

In a third of Colombia, where 10 of the country’s 50 million inhabitants live – many areas far from the big cities – there are no mass media, and in another third, home to 16 million people, the existing media outlets are dedicated to entertainment, according to FLIP’s Cartography of Information.

In Venezuela, seven million people live in municipalities where there are no media outlets, and that figure rises to 15 million – in a country of 28 million people – if municipalities with only one or two media outlets, considered “semi-deserts”, are included, according to IPYS.

Unlike other countries, “the situation has worsened, with the massive closure of radio stations ordered by the government – at least 81 in 2022 alone, and 285 since 2003 – with radio being the medium that has the greatest penetration in remote areas,” Daniela Alvarado, head of freedom of information at IPYS, told IPS.

Remote rural areas far from the main cities and often in border regions are among the most affected by deficient infrastructure and lack of media outlets that enable local residents access to general information about their local environment and possibilities of participation in decisions that concern them. CREDIT: ECLAC

Exclusion, once again

In the case of Colombia, one cause for the breadth of news deserts is violence, “war, one of whose strategic aims is to pressure or close down news, journalism that can reveal, report, warn and monitor what happens in areas of conflict,” said Bock.

In 45 years of armed conflict in Colombia, 165 journalists were murdered, “strategic killings, because they reported on things, and became symbols,” Bock stressed.

“But it also has to do with a different kind of exclusion, of weak economies and little interest on the part of politics and government institutions in promoting independent and plural journalism, seen in some contexts as the enemy, and with society getting used to it and not demanding” independent reporting, the Colombian analyst said.

Another thing that has happened in countries in the region is that “traditional media, and many new digital outlets, emerged and are concentrated where there was already an audience and sources of advertising, which is combined with pre-existing inequalities to create an abyss between big cities and small towns and the countryside,” said Cañizález.

In news deserts, infrastructure failures abound and there are absences or deficiencies in internet services, with providers that do not access these territories, aggravating the situation of local inhabitants who often only have simple mobile phones and cannot obtain news and information through digital or social networks.

However, news deserts are not exclusive to rural, remote or border areas; in cities themselves there is a dearth of local media outlets, or the outlets have their own agendas on issues in poor urban communities, which are also impacted by the crises that face journalism in general.

This is the case of Venezuela, which “is caught up in a complex and continuous economic, political and social crisis that has led to the deterioration of its media ecosystem,” Alvarado said, adding that it also faces “a communicational hegemony (on the part of the State) that is manifested in censorship and self-censorship.”

Newspapers and television stations were driven to shut down, by government decision or suffocated due to lack of paper and advertising, or their sale paved the way for their closure; or, as in the case of many radio stations, closure is a constant looming threat. Online media suffer from internet cuts and harassment of their journalists.

Even in urban areas, such as this one in Caracas, the adverse climate of news deserts has an impact, for example with the closure of print media outlets caused by political decisions or economic crises, which forces traditional kiosks to subsist by replacing newspapers, which are no longer available, with candy and snacks. CREDIT: Public domain

What can be done?

“The challenge seems immeasurable, but we are not sitting quietly by, we must not give up on what is our right as a community public service,” said Benito.

The State “should promote, at least in the area of ​​its competence, which is radio, television and internet, inclusive policies throughout the nation’s territory, guaranteeing basic rights, including the right to communication and information for all citizens,” stated Cañizález.

Zahar said that “sustainability is the challenge,” due to the difficulties many new media outlets, local or not, face in supporting themselves, and the advantages of digital media “that have fewer barriers to entry, can experiment with formats and financing mechanisms, and make quick changes.”

Bock said “we must think about the financing of journalism where there are fragile economies, see it as a public service but an independent one, to address the training of people practicing journalism in those places.”

Together with the support of the government and the international community, “models could be developed in which the big media sponsor local media in very small places or where there is clearly a news desert,” Cañizález said.

“But that’s still not even discussed in a number of our countries,” he said. “It is an issue that concerns journalism but has not drawn public attention. The debate is still very much confined to reporters.”

Équinoxe TV is running a YouTube campaign for justice for Martinez Zogo counting the hours since his brutal murder. Credit: YouTube

By Joyce Chimbi
NAIROBI, Jan 31 2023 (IPS)

The new year brought bad news for press freedom on the African continent with the brutal murder of one journalist and the suspicious death of another.

Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) Africa program head Angela Quintal said that to start the year with the death of at least two top journalists in one week was very bad news and is hopefully not an ominous sign for the year ahead.

“The brutal murder of Cameroonian journalist Martinez Zogo who was abducted, tortured, and killed in the capital, Yaounde, and the suspicious death in a road accident of John Williams Ntwali, the independent and outspoken Rwandan journalist in Kigali, has left the media community reeling, I feel punch-drunk, and it’s only the start of the year,” said Quintal.

The CPJ has asked for a full investigation of journalist John Williams Ntwali’s death in Kigali. Ntwali was an outspoken journalist who exposed human rights abuses in Rwanda and spoke out about threats to his life. Credit: CPJ/Screenshot: YouTube/Al-Jazeera

The African Editors Forum (TAEF) also expressed shock, anger, and outrage over these deaths and planned to make representations to the governments of Rwanda and Cameroon to “demand full public reports on the circumstances leading to their deaths.”

Unfortunately, these are not isolated incidents. In 2022 alone, CPJ documented at least six journalists killed in sub-Saharan Africa and confirmed that four of them, Ahmed Mohamed Shukur and Mohamed Isse Hassan in Somalia and Evariste Djailoramdji and Narcisse Oredje in Chad, were killed in connection to their work.

“In these four cases, the journalists were killed either on dangerous assignments or crossfire in relation to their work. We continue to investigate the death in Kenya of Pakistani journalist Arshad Sharif and Jean Saint-Clair Maka Gbossokotto in the Central African Republic to determine whether their deaths are in connection to their journalism,” Quintal said.

Quintal said Somalia continues to top CPJ’s Global Impunity Index as the worst country where “the killers of journalists invariably walk free, and there is no accountability or justice for their deaths.”

In 2022, six journalists were killed in connection to their work: Abdiaziz Mohamud Guled and Jamal Farah Adan in Somalia, David Beriain and Roberto Fraile in Burkina Faso, Joel Mumbere Musavuli in DRC, and Sisay Fida in Ethiopia. This is the same number of journalists killed in 2021.

Quintal said Sisay’s death was the first confirmed case since 1998 that a journalist was killed in Ethiopia. CPJ continues to investigate the death of Dawit Kebede Araya in Ethiopia in 2021 to determine whether it was related to journalism.

“By far, most journalists who have been killed are local reporters. Of the six in 2021, two Russian journalists were murdered in Burkina Faso, and we continue to investigate the killing last year in Kenya of Pakistani journalist Arshad Sharif to determine whether the motive was related to journalism,” Quintal added.

“The years 2022 and 2021 saw the most journalists killed annually since 2015 when CPJ documented at least 11 killed, and I pray that we not going to see a return to the dark days of double-digit killings. One journalist killed is one journalist too many.”

The levels of impunity and the failure of governments to ensure justice for the majority of killed journalists and their families is a trend mirrored elsewhere in the world, says the CPJ. Credit: Joyce Chimbi/IPS

Quintal decries the levels of impunity and the failure of governments to ensure justice for the majority of killed journalists and their families—a trend mirrored elsewhere in the world.”

Globally, according to CPJ’s 2022 annual report, the killings of journalists rose nearly 50 percent amid lawlessness and war, and in 80 percent of these, there has been complete impunity.

“This illustrates a steep decline in press freedom globally, something that we also see in terms of record figures in the number of jailed journalists globally. The year 2022 saw the highest number of jailed journalists around the world in 30 years. With a record-breaking 363 journalists behind bars as of December 1, 2022,” Quintal stresses.

CPJ’s editorial director Arlene Getz notes, “in a year marked by conflict and repression, authoritarian leaders double down on their criminalization of independent reporting, deploying increasing cruelty to stifle dissenting voices and undermine press freedom.”

Against this chilling backdrop, Quintal tells IPS that short-term solutions include the political will from governments, matched by the necessary financial and human resources, to arrest, prosecute and convict those guilty of crimes against journalists.

“It is time governments walk the talk … This would send a clear signal that there will be consequences for harming a journalist.”

There is also an urgent need to invest in digital and physical safety training for journalists and emergency visas for journalists in distress.

“This is where the international community can play an important role. Diplomatic missions in countries where journalists are threatened by those in power, for example, can assist local journalists who need to relocate in an emergency,” she said.

“Governments must carry out thorough, independent investigations to stem violence against journalists, and there must be political and economic consequences for those who fail to carry out proper investigations that meet international standards.”

Long-term solutions, she adds, include countries establishing and investing resources in special mechanisms to protect journalists, such as those in places like Mexico. But she warns that they have not lived up to their promise, largely because of a lack of resources, capacity, and political will.

Governments must also prioritize protection, credible investigations, and justice. Where local governments fail, “foreign states should also look at universal jurisdiction to pursue those accused of murdering journalists — in the same way Germany is prosecuting a member of former Gambian president Yahya Jammeh’s hit squad responsible for the assassination of The Point editor Dedya Hydara.”

TAEF continues to mourn these deaths, mount pressure on relevant governments to answer the growing list of journalists killed, and deliver justice for the affected in promoting press freedom.

IPS UN Bureau Report

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Reporters and photojournalists cover an Aug. 11 press conference at the Supreme Electoral Tribunal in San Salvador. Independent media outlets in El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua suffer constant persecution and harassment by state entities and government officials in an attempt to silence them and discredit investigations into corruption and mismanagement of public funds. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

By Edgardo Ayala
SAN SALVADOR, Aug 15 2022 (IPS)

Practicing journalism in Guatemala, Nicaragua and El Salvador is becoming increasingly difficult in the face of the persecution of independent media outlets by neo-populist rulers of different stripes, intolerant of criticism.

The most recent high-profile case was the Jul. 29 arrest of José Rubén Zamora, founder and director of elPeriódico, one of the Guatemalan media outlets that has been most critical of the government of right-wing President Alejandro Giammattei, who has been in office since January 2020.

The union of Guatemalan journalists and the reporter’s family say the arrest is a clear example of political persecution as a result of the investigations into corruption and mismanagement in the Giammattei administration published by the newspaper, which was founded in 1996."The last bastions of the independent press (in Nicaragua) are under siege and the vast majority of independent journalists, threatened by abusive legal actions, have had to flee the country" -- Reporters Without Borders

“I definitely believe it is a case of political persecution and harassment, and of violence against free expression and the expression of thought,” Ramón Zamora, son of the editor of elPeriódico who has been imprisoned since his arrest, told IPS from Guatemala City.

A case out of the blue

The 66-year-old journalist is one of the most recognized in Guatemala and in the Central American region, and has been awarded several times for elPeriódico’s investigative reporting.

Zamora is being charged with money laundering, influence peddling and racketeering, although the evidence shown at the initial hearing by prosecutors “are poor quality voice messages that show nothing,” according to Ramón.

The preliminary hearing ended on Aug. 9 with the judge’s decision to continue with the case and keep Zamora in pre-trial detention. Prosecutors now have three months to present more robust evidence before taking him to trial, while the defense will seek to gather evidence in order to secure his release.

“We are going to clearly demonstrate as many times as necessary that this case was staged, that the evidence, or rather the evidence they have, cannot be stretched as far as they are stretching it,” said Ramón, 32, an anthropologist by profession.

He added that from the beginning President Giammattei showed signs of intolerance towards criticism of his administration.

“We knew he was an angry person, authoritarian in the way he acted, but we never thought he would go this far,” he said.

Since the arrest, Ramón said that his father is in good spirits, upbeat, although he has had problems sleeping, while the newspaper continues to be published in the midst of serious difficulties due to the temporary seizure of its bank accounts and liquidity problems to pay the staff and other costs.

On Friday Aug. 12, elPeriódico gave key coverage to a decree approved by the Guatemalan legislature that gives life to a Cybercrime Law, which could become another governmental tool to silence critics.

The newspaper quoted the organization Acción Ciudadana, according to which article 9 of this law “contravenes free access to sources of information – a right stipulated in the constitution; furthermore, it violates the Law of Broadcasting of Thought, restricting freedom of information.”

Zamora Jr. regretted that in Central America journalistic work is restricted and persecuted by governments and other de facto powers, as is happening in Guatemala with Giammattei, in El Salvador with the government of Nayib Bukele, and in Nicaragua, with that of Daniel Ortega.

“Ortega, in Nicaragua, is a mirror that we all have in front of us in the region, it is worrisome,” he said.

Journalist José Rubén Zamora, editor of elPériódico, one of the newspapers most critical of the government of Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei, leaves the courtroom on Aug. 9 after a judge ordered pretrial detention, on accusations of money laundering. But his family, the journalists’ union and civil society organizations maintain that the case is part of political persecution promoted by the government. CREDIT: Courtesy of elPériódico

Press freedom in free fall

In these three countries there is an openly hostile policy against the independent media, whose journalists suffer harassment, persecution, blackmail, intimidation and restrictions of all kinds in the line of duty.

Central America, a region of 38 million people, faces serious economic and social challenges after leaving behind decades of political strife and civil wars in the 1970s and 1980s, specifically in Nicaragua, Guatemala and El Salvador.

Further progress towards democracy is undermined by attacks on or harassment of media outlets that criticize corrupt governments, according to reports by national and international organizations.

In this regard, the World Press Freedom Index 2022 report by Reporters Without Borders (RSF) points out the decline suffered by Nicaragua, which dropped 39 positions in the ranking to 160th place out of 180, and El Salvador, which lost 30 positions, dropping to 112th place.

“For the second year in a row El Salvador had one of the steepest falls in Latin America,” the report states.

And it adds that since he took office in 2019, Bukele, described as a “millennial” leader with a vague ideology and an “authoritarian tendency…is exerting particularly strong pressure on journalists and is using the extremely dangerous tactic of portraying the media as the enemy of the people.”

According to the Association of Journalists of El Salvador (Apes), from January to July 2022, 51 incidents have been reported against the press, related to digital attacks and obstruction of journalistic work by state institutions, officials and even supporters of the ruling party.

Bukele himself, in press conferences, often accuses the media and even specific journalists, who he names, of being part of an opposition plan to discredit the work of the government.

A number of reporters have left the country to avoid problems.

Of those who have left the country, at least three have done so almost obligatorily because government agencies or officials have pressured them to reveal their sources of information, Apes Freedom of Expression Rapporteur Serafín Valencia told IPS.

“Bukele decided to undertake a wave of attacks against the press, although not against the entire press, but against those media outlets and journalists who have a critical editorial line and try to do their work in an independent fashion,” said Valencia.

With regard to Ortega in Nicaragua, the RSF report states: “Nicaragua (160th) recorded the biggest drop in rankings (- 39 places) and entered the Index’s red zone.”

It adds: ” A farcical election in November 2021 that carried Daniel Ortega into a fourth consecutive term as president was accompanied by a ferocious crackdown on dissenting voices.

“The last bastions of the independent press came under fire, and the vast majority of independent journalists, threatened with abusive prosecution, were forced to leave the country,” says the report.

“You can’t kill the truth by killing journalists” reads a banner set out by press workers following the death of a colleague in Nicaragua, where the government of Daniel Ortega has shut down critical media outlets and forced many independent reporters into exile. CREDIT: Jader Flores/IPS

Guerrilla leader accused of being a dictator

One of the reporters who had to leave Nicaragua was Sergio Marín, who for more than 12 years hosted a radio program called La Mesa Redonda.

“There were very strong indications that my arrest was imminent,” Marín told IPS from San José, the capital of Costa Rica, the country he fled to on Jun. 21, 2021.

Marín said that the situation in Nicaragua was, and continues to be, untenable for independent media outlets and reporters since Ortega returned to power in January 2007, after a first stint as president between 1985 and 1990.

Ortega was a leader of the leftist guerrilla Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) that in July 1979 overthrew the Somoza dynasty’s dictatorship, which directly or through puppet rulers had been in power since the 1930s.

But the FSLN’s progressive ideas of justice and freedom were soon buried by Ortega’s new power dynamics: he forged obscure pacts with the country’s political and economic elites to set himself up as Nicaragua’s strongman, with actions typical of a dictator.

“With Ortega’s return to power in 2007, he began a process of isolation of journalists who ask questions that question power,” said Marín, 60.

Then, according to Marín, the government threw up a “financial wall”: denying state advertising to media outlets that were critical, or even advertising from private businesses allied with the Ortega administration.

That is when the first media closures began to be seen, he said.

The situation worsened with the popular uprising against the government in April 2018, massive protests that were stopped with bullets by the police, military and pro-Ortega paramilitary forces.

Around 300 people died in the repression unleashed by Ortega, said Marín.

These events were a turning point for journalism because, in the face of the crackdown, the media in general, except for pro-government outlets, came together in a united front.

“So the regime identified us as a key enemy, which must be silenced,” Marin added.

Since then, the Ortega government has maneuvered to close down independent media outlets and critical news spaces, such as those directed by veteran journalist Carlos Fernando Chamorro, who is now also in exile in Costa Rica.

“Now, the newspaper El Nuevo Diario is closed, and La Prensa was taken over by the government and the entire editorial staff is in exile, and in total there are more than 70 journalists who have left the country,” he added.

In the first week of August Ortega stepped up harassment against dissenting voices, and began targeting Catholic priests. Since Aug. 4 police forces have been holding Bishop Rolando Alvarez, of the Diocese of Matagalpa, in the north of the country, in the Episcopal Palace.

By Naureen Hossain
New York, Dec 13 2021 (IPS)

Governments are determined to control information and are prepared to imprison journalists to achieve this mission, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said following the release of their annual global census tracking journalists who were imprisoned and killed in 2021.

For the sixth year in a row, the census reported record numbers of incarcerated journalists. The census accounts for journalists held in government custody and remain imprisoned because of their work.

This year set a new global record with 293 journalists imprisoned as of December 1, 2021. Twenty-four journalists were killed during dangerous assignments, like reporting from conflict zones, in protests turned deadly, or in retaliation for their work.

What these numbers suggest, said CPJ Executive Director Joel Simon is that “governments are determined to control and manage information, and they are increasingly brazen in their efforts to do so.”

Along with the census, a special report from CPJ Editorial Director Arlene Getz, explained the trends.

Across different regions, many factors contributed to the common and “increasing intolerance of independent journalism”.

Government authorities, particularly in autocratic leaderships, have bolstered their efforts to silence dissent and criticism, which in turn has stifled press freedom in those regions.

Through the implementation of legal rulings and policies, journalists not only face the threat of imprisonment with alarming alacrity, but authorities manipulate legislation to extend their sentences or keep them in police custody.

Technological and legal policies to increase online surveillance impacted journalists’ ability to share stories online because they face the increasing risk of censorship and retaliation.

The report also says journalists now face diverse tactics to censor them through increased surveillance, internet shutdowns and legal rulings.

The special report reveals that at least 17 journalists were charged with cybercrimes, which could result in criminal prosecution for news reported and distributed online.

The CPJ census lists the countries with confirmed cases of jailed journalists.

This year, China topped the census list, with 50 journalists imprisoned.
This year marks the first time Hong Kong has been included in the census. Eleven journalists from Hong Kong-based news agencies were detained under mounting tensions from the pro-democracy protests and the implementation of the National Security Law in 2020.

Following China, Myanmar has risen in this year’s census in the wake of the military coup on February 2021 and the crackdown on media outlets with 26 jailed journalists.

However, the report suggests that this number may be much higher, and the situation is graver than reported. Several journalists have either fled the country in exile or gone into hiding. The deeper concern is that this crackdown on independent reporting will return to the harsh media censorship of previous military regimes.

Ethiopia has become the second-worst jailor of journalists in 2021 after Eritrea in sub-Saharan Africa. Many journalists have been arrested in the wake of the civil war in Ethiopia, between the federal government and armed forces from the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, with nine journalists still in custody.

Though they ranked lower than the top ten countries in the census list, the rapid decline in media freedom still comes as a shock because past reports indicated greater freedom than under the current government.

The report says that further investigations into these cases and those in other countries with confirmed imprisonments and deaths show a startling and disturbing attitude toward press freedom.

What the CPJ report reveals, that for all the international community’s calls for action to improve press freedom and protection for journalists, for all the public outcry when cases are made public, the countries which are most demonstrably guilty of suppressing press freedom have done little to address impunity or to change their tactics.

They are resorting to increasingly violent, intrusive, and invasive tactics to impede freedom of expression with a greater frequency. Even in the United States, 56 journalists were arrested or detained this year, primarily during protests.

The findings in the CPJ report reflects the continued tensions between governing authorities and the media. Without the media to hold them accountable, some governments will continue to act with impunity, sending the message of the lack of regard for freedom of expression if it threatens their power.

There is little hope that the number of jailed journalists will not be topped in the next year as long as countries act with impunity.

The CPJ will not give up its efforts to safeguard journalists.

In 2021, their advocacy contributed to the early release of over 100 journalists worldwide. In addition, they have recently launched a People’s tribunal to address impunity in journalist killings, which will rely on investigations and legal analysis to provide a framework for justice and accountability.

The CPJ’s Annual Report can be read here.

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Flashback: Women journalists in Kabul June 2019. Now they are calling for assistance after the Taliban takeover. Credit: UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA)/Fardin Waezi

By Zofeen Ebrahim
KARACHI, Pakistan, Sep 3 2021 (IPS)

“If I fall into the hands of the Taliban, not only me but my family will be killed,” said AB, 23*, who worked as a broadcast journalist for the past seven years and is a well-known face on the television screen.

Speaking on WhatsApp from her hideout in a city close to the capital Kabul, she said the Taliban came looking for her and were asking about her whereabouts from her neighbours, who, in turn, warned her family.

“The Taliban have started house-to-house search and when they could not find me, left a warning with our neighbours to inform us that they will find me and deal with me accordingly,” said AB. Her life is in double jeopardy – firstly, being a woman writing against the Taliban. Secondly, she belongs to the ethnic Hazara community, whom the new rulers believe are infidels and need to be persecuted.

Her circumstances were confirmed by Kiran Nazish, founder and director of the New York-based Coalition for Women In Journalism (CFWIJ), a worldwide support organisation for female journalists.

“Our sources in Afghanistan have informed the Taliban are carrying out house-to-house searches for people on their hit list,” she said, adding: “Imagine the fear these women are living under in their own country.”

“The Taliban must cease searching the homes of journalists, commit to ending the use of violence against them, and allow them to operate freely and without interference,” said Steven Butler, Asia programme coordinator for the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Because of the grave danger, AB and her family have been in hiding now for the last several weeks.

Like AB, CD*, 26, editor of a weekly publication and a journalist working for a news agency for the past four years, is hiding with her family after her office was ransacked by the Taliban three weeks ago.
If found, she is sure she “will be stoned to death”.

“The world must help me,” she pleaded. “Please email one of the embassies, such as Canada or the United States, and tell them to get me out.”

Her fear of the Taliban was palpable, and she said she could not talk over the phone as they were monitoring the “telecommunications networks”.

Headlines tell of the targeting of women journalists in Afghanistan following the Taliban takeover.

If this continues and they cannot leave their hideouts soon, CD said they might die of “poverty and hunger” even before the Taliban locate them.

“We have no bread to eat at all, and we cannot go out to earn for fear of being discovered,” she said.
The Taliban leadership have said women will have the right to work, seek education and be mobile, but on the condition that it will have to be under Sharia [Islamic law] but have not elaborated what this would entail.

However, they have requested women to stay home as some from the Taliban have not been trained on how to behave with women.

“It’s a very temporary procedure,” defended the Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid.

Their proclamation of going soft on women has been met with scepticism by many Afghan women.

“I do not believe them, nor do I trust the Taliban, because they have a bad past,” said CD, adding: “They do not keep their word; women are not safe, and if they go outside, they will be flogged.”

She said she had heard reports of violence on women in other provinces.

“No Afghan woman believes their living condition will be good under the Taliban rule,” CD said. “By silencing the female journalists, the Taliban want to silence the voice of Afghan women.”

She said the Taliban had continued targeting and killing journalists and human rights activists for the last 20 years, even during Ashraf Ghani’s regime. “That is why we are afraid and feel so unsafe,” she emphasised.

“Their [Taliban] interviews are in complete contrast with what they are doing on the ground,” said Kiran.

“Shocking to see the huge effort being put into tracking down people when they [Taliban] should be spending the same in rebuilding the country, putting a government together and finding ways to reassure people that they are safe, especially the Afghan women,” she said in a WhatsApp interview from Vancouver, Canada, where she is currently based. She is working non-stop to help the women journalists find safety.

As soon as Kabul fell into the hands of the Taliban, the media outlets had asked all their women employees to stay home and not report for work. “I was told to stay home till further notice,” said AB.

CD said she could not work as her equipment had been looted when her office was ransacked.

According to a 2020 survey by the Centre for the Protection of Afghan Women Journalists (CPAWJ) and Reporters Without Borders (RSF), more than 1 700 women were working for media outlets in the three provinces of Kabul, Herat, and Balkh.

Kabul had 108 media outlets with a total of 4 940 employees in 2020. They included 1 080 female employees, of whom 700 were journalists. Of these 700 females, only 100 continue work and just a handful work from home in the other two provinces. Of the 510 women who worked for eight of the biggest media outlets and press groups, only 76 (including 39 journalists) are still working.

“…women journalists are in the process of disappearing from the capital,” states the RSF website.

AB said most of the journalists who are still working belong to the international media and are supported by their organisations.

“Local journalists are denied these privileges,” she pointed out. “As a journalist, I cannot continue to report if there are restrictions placed on me.”

“My dreams and aspirations and wishes have been destroyed. The Taliban not only took my city, but they also took my life too.”

Until recently, the young journalist did not have to cover her head at the office, “loved wearing fashionable clothes and wore make-up,” being born and educated in the “era of democracy”.

Today, she feared she might be resigned to shroud herself in the chadri [blue burqa] when venturing out of her home under the new Taliban regime.

“Stripping public media of prominent women news presenters is an ominous sign that Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers have no intention of living up their promise of respecting women’s rights, in the media or elsewhere,” The Guardian quoted CPJ’s Butler. “The Taliban should let women news anchors return to work and allow all journalists to work safely and without interference.”

But even before Afghanistan fell to the Taliban, it was not easy being a female journalist there, said Kiran.

The CFWIJ has been researching 92-countries documenting the threats women journalists face.
“Of the 92 countries we are documenting, Afghanistan has been among the top three where women journalists (among other vulnerable groups) have continued to face serious attacks and harassment from non-state actors, including the Taliban,” said Kiran talking about the findings of the past three years.

Over the last year and a half, the coalition has relocated many female journalists from different parts of Afghanistan and even out of Afghanistan.

It has doubled its efforts in drumming up support to get several hundred women evacuated out of Afghanistan.

“We have evacuated 90 for now from the several hundred women [including journalists, sportswomen, activists and academics] who requested our support. Still, there are 100 super-urgent ones who we fear are on Taliban’s hit lists and are being hunted.”

*Names withheld for their protection.

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Flowers, candles and tributes to Daphne Caruana Galizia left at the foot of the Great Siege Monument, opposite the Law Courts in Valletta. Caruana Galizia, Malta’s most prominent investigative journalist, was killed by a car bomb in October 2017 outside her home in the village of Bidnija. Courtesy: Continentaleurope/CC BY-SA 4.0

By Ed Holt
BRATISLAVA, Aug 3 2021 (IPS)

The family of slain journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia has called for “lessons to be learnt” after an independent inquiry found that the Maltese state bore responsibility for her death.

Caruana Galizia, Malta’s most prominent investigative journalist, was killed by a car bomb in October 2017 outside her home in the village of Bidnija. Her investigations had exposed high-level government corruption linked to businesses.

The inquiry findings into the killing released last week delivered a damning verdict of the state’s role in her murder.

In a 457-page report, the inquiry panel of one serving and two retired judges, said that her death had been preventable, and that responsibility lay with the state for creating “an atmosphere of impunity… which led to the collapse of the rule of law”.

Summing up their findings, they said: “….acts, certainly illicit if not illegal, were committed by persons within State entities that created an environment that facilitated the assassination. This even by failing to do their duty to act promptly and effectively to give proper protection to the journalist.”

Andrew Caruana Galizia, Daphne’s son, told IPS: “The findings of the report are an enormous vindication for us, although it is painful to see it recognised that my mother’s death could have been prevented.

“But what is most important is that lessons be learnt from these findings and to make sure that no journalist in Malta will suffer the same fate as my mother.”

Daphne Caruana Galizia Credit: https://daphnecaruanagalizia.com/dsc_8970bw/

Caruana Galizia’s murder made headlines worldwide, focusing attention on the rule of law in Malta and journalist safety and highlighting the murky links between Maltese politicians and big business, which she was investigating.

Prosecutors claim local businessman Yorgen Fenech, who had close links to senior government officials, masterminded the murder. Fenech, one of two men awaiting trial on charges of involvement in the murder, denies responsibility.

The Prime Minister at the time of her killing, Josef Muscat, was also eventually forced to resign after investigations implicated close contacts of his in the killing.

The inquiry highlighted alleged links between the Maltese government and criminals and how that encouraged the killers. The inquiry’s report stated that: “What is impressive in this case is the severity and extent of this impunity at the highest levels which made those who committed the crime feel safe in doing so.

“Another shocking factor was the fact that all the institutions in the country failed to react appropriately and effectively to counteract this impunity as they were duty-bound to do, a shortcoming which can be attributed precisely to the ties which were exploited between those in power and those who advanced their dubious interests.”

And it called for steps to be taken immediately to bring in checks on ties between politicians and big business.

It also recommended a series of measures be implemented to increase journalism safety.

Press freedom watchdogs, who, along with Caruana Galizia’s family and international groups, had campaigned for years for an independent investigation into the killing, said it was vital action was taken to create a safer environment for journalists to work.

Jamie Wiseman, Europe Advocacy Officer at the International Press Institute (IPI), told IPS: “It is crucial that steps are taken to improve the environment for the safety of journalists, including the introduction of legislation criminalising violence against journalists, condemnation by state officials of all attacks against media workers, and the establishment of a journalist safety committee composed of government officials, media representatives, civil society and the security services.

“Serious implementation of these changes would go a long way to ensuring the tragic killing of a journalist never occurs again in Malta.”

But groups like IPI are hoping the inquiry and its findings will also have an effect beyond just journalists and journalism in Malta.

Caruana Galizia’s assassination drew almost unprecedented international attention in part because it took place in an EU country.

At the time, Europe was seen as one of the safest places for journalists to work in the world.

Since then, there have been other prominent killings of journalists in the EU, including that of Jan Kuciak in Slovakia just a few months after Caruana Galizia was murdered, and in the last few months Giorgos Karaivaz in Greece, and Peter de Vries in the Netherlands.

Fears have been raised about growing violence against journalists in Europe, stoked by aggressive rhetoric and clampdowns on media freedom by populist leaders in many countries, including Hungary, Poland, and Serbia.

In the case of Kuciak’s murder specifically, press freedom and rights organisations said repeated verbal attacks and denigration of journalists may have emboldened the killers.

Rob Mahoney, Deputy Executive Director at the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), said the inquiry’s findings would send out a message to those who believe they can kill, threaten, and attempt to silence journalists with impunity.

“It is a very important first step on the road to ending a poisonous culture of impunity, particularly in the European Union. Journalists need the rule of law and an independent judiciary to fulfil their function of providing information to citizens in a democracy. This inquiry underscores that.

“I hope it will show the public how without brave investigative journalists, crime and corruption at the highest levels of government and business will run rampant.”

Andrew Caruana Galizia added: “One tragic finding from the inquiry was that it confirmed that at the time of my mother’s death, Malta was in the process of being taken over by mafia organisations, and that the only thing that stopped that happening was the death of my mother and the people demanding change after that.

“There is similar corruption and state capture by criminal groups in other parts of Europe, so what is happening here could send a message to other countries [where a similar process might be underway].”

Meanwhile, press freedom groups point out that while the inquiry’s findings have confirmed much of what they have said for years was linked to Daphne’s death, such as issues around the rule of law and the creation of an environment that allowed a journalist to be killed, they, and her family, are still waiting for full justice for her murder to be served.

So far, only one person has been sentenced in connection with the killing – earlier this year, a man pleaded guilty to taking part and was sentenced to 15 years in prison.

Rebecca Vincent, Director of International Campaigns at Reporters Without Borders, told IPS: “What must be remembered is that this is separate from the criminal investigation and the people behind Daphne’s killing need to be brought to full justice. The inquiry is a crucial step towards justice – but it is just a step.”

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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Jeffery Moyo was reunited with his wife, Purity, and young son, after his release today, Jun. 16, from prison in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. He said his incarceration would not deter him from doing his job as a journalist. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

By Busani Bafana
BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, Jun 16 2021 (IPS)

International correspondent Jeffrey Moyo, who was a released from detention today after being arrested for breaching Zimbabwe’s Immigration Act by helping two foreign journalists work in the country, says press freedom is undermined when journalists cannot work undeterred.

“I feel relieved as it was so horrible inside for 21 days without my freedom,” Moyo told IPS upon his release from Bulawayo Prison today, Jun. 16. “The detention is a complete infringement of press freedom in Zimbabwe.”

Moyo (37), a correspondent for Inter Press Service (IPS), the New York Times and other media, was arrested in Harare on May 26 and detained at Bulawayo Prison. He was released after 21 days when he was granted ZWL5000 bail unopposed by the state, which admitted to erring in finding him a threat to national security.

In May, Bulawayo Magistrate, Rachel Mkanga denied Moyo bail on the grounds that the journalist was a threat to national security and the county’s sovereignty. Moyo has been charged with violating Section 36 of the Immigration Act, based on an allegation that he made a false representation to immigration officials. This pertains to the accreditation of two of his colleagues, Christina Goldbaum and Joao Silva from the New York Times.

Fight for press freedom

The accreditation of journalists should not offend anyone or any authority in the country, Moyo said, arguing that the accreditation of journalists in Zimbabwe should be a right and not a difficulty.

“Journalists are not dangerous and do not cause any harm to any particular individual or government,” said Moyo, who was welcomed by his wife, Purity, and son outside Bulawayo Prison. “I am scared about what happened but I will not stop my work. …I am committed to doing my job as journalist no matter what the authorities say to me as long as I tow the line in terms of the law. I will continue to do my job.”

Moyo was granted bail on Jun. 14 and was set to be released on Jun. 15 but an error with his release papers at the Bulawayo prison resulted in him spending another night in jail.

“I am just happy that he has been released, I am relieved,” Purity Moyo, Jeffery’s wife, told IPS. She was prevented from seeing her journalist husband in prison and had communicated with him via letters.

“I thank my wife who brought me something to eat every day,” Moyo told IPS. “The letters my wife communicated to me gave me hope as did visits from colleagues from the media. I thank God that I am out and united with my family.”

Jeffery Moyo was overcome with emotion after his release from Bulawayo Prison today, Jun. 16. The international correspondent, who works for IPS and the New York Times, among others, was detained for 21 days when the state refused to grant him bail, calling him a threat to national security. Moyo was arrested on May 26 on charges relating to the accreditation of his New York Times colleagues. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

Horrible prison

Moyo was arrested in May 26 and detained in Central Police Station in Harare. He was later moved to the city of Bulawayo, 400km from Harare, and detained at the Bulawayo Central Police Station under conditions he described as horrible and traumatising.

“I was detained overnight at the Bulawayo Central Police Station under horrible conditions; no bedding, no blankets and I was sleeping on the concrete floor and there was no food at the police station.”

It was only to get worse. 

Moyo said conditions at the Bulawayo Prison were inhumane. He said he was placed in a crowded prison cell with 18 other people. The food was bad.

“Health wise I am okay but the food in prison is horrible,” he said explaining that he was served porridge with no sugar or salt, plain sadza (a type of maize or cassava porridge) and dried vegetables and beans without cooking oil.

Violated rights

Moyo’s lawyer Doug Coltart told IPS that his client’s detention was a series of appalling violations of his human rights. The state, after three weeks of opposing bail, made a turn around to say it had no case against Moyo and that the grounds it cited for opposing his bail were baseless.

This demonstrates precisely how the denial of bail at the magistrate’s court is being used to punish innocent people, Coltart said. He also noted that in being denied the right to see his wife and relatives as well as his extended detention, despite being granted bail, were all violations of Moyo’s rights.

“The prison officials continue to refuse to show us the purported error in the warrant of liberation and this raises our strong suspicion that it was all a lie and an abuse of the detention process to keep him for an extra night,” Coltart told IPS.

Moyo is set to appear in court on Jun. 24 in preparation for trial. If convicted he could face 10 years in jail. Media rights organisations have welcomed Moyo’s release.

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On May 28, Zimbabwean and IPS journalist Jeffrey Moyo was arrested for allegedly violating Section 36 of the Zimbabwe’s Immigration Act.

By Busani Bafana
BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, Jun 1 2021 (IPS)

As international correspondent Jeffrey Moyo was denied bail for allegedly breaching a section of the Zimbabwe Immigration Act by helping two foreign journalists work in the country without proper media accreditation, local organisations have called for his release and for him to be accorded a fair trial.

Moyo (37), a correspondent for Inter Press Service (IPS), the New York Times and other media, was arrested in Harare on May 27 and is being detained at Bulawayo Prison.

Bulawayo Magistrate Rachel Mkanga denied Moyo’s bail application yesterday, May 31, stating that Moyo was deemed a threat to national security and that the sovereignty of Zimbabwe was at stake.

Moyo has been charged with violating Section 36 of the Immigration Act, which is essentially based on an allegation that he made a false representation to immigration officials. This pertains to the accreditation of two of his colleagues, Christina Goldbaum and Joao Silva from the New York Times.

Goldbaum and Silva arrived in Zimbabwe on May 5 and were subsequently deported on May 8 for not having proper accreditation with the Zimbabwe Media Commission (ZMC), the media regulatory body in the country.

“The state’s case is weak and they know it, that is why they deported the key witnesses and want to deal with the locals and set him as an example [for others] not to compromise security-related issues,” Tabani Moyo, the Executive Director of the Media Institute of Southern Africa –Zimbabwe, told IPS.

“Jeff must be given a fair trial so that we do not have a situation where the law is used a weapon against the media,” Tabani Moyo said, adding “we are not surprised with the turn of events as the state uses multiple strategies to intimidate depending on how it is irritated not with the media but with its international relations.”

In a statement released on Friday, May 28, the ZMC said it learnt of the deportation from Zimbabwe of “a man and a woman claiming to be New York Times reporters and carrying forged accreditation cards and receipts which they reportedly said had been obtained on their behalf by Jeffrey Moyo, at the time a properly accredited local reporter for the same New York Times”.

The ZMC said the New York Times journalists had not visited the ZMC offices though they had written to the relevant authorities to seek the prior clearance papers required before one can work locally as a journalist on temporary assignment. The relevant authorities had denied Goldbaum and Silva prior clearance.

The state media body also alleged that Moyo had recognised irregularities in the accreditation and reportedly “privately approached a ZMC staffer who also allegedly agreed to collude with Moyo and his now deported colleagues.” The ZMC staffer was also arrested.

The Media Institute of Southern Africa –Zimbabwe said Jeffrey Moyo must be given a fair trial and that his case should not be an instance where the law is used “as a weapon against the media”. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

Award-wining, internationally acclaimed journalist and documentary film maker Hopewell Chin’ono told IPS via What’s app that Moyo’s arrest was an abuse of state institutions.

“The arrest of Jeffery is again an abuse of state institutions because the person who committed the crime is person working for the ZMC and not Jeffrey, who was a recipient of something that had been done incorrectly and at the very least he should be  a state witness but he is the one being incarcerated,” Chin’ono told IPS. He was referring to a ZMC staffer.

Over the course of 2020 and early this year, Chin’ono, a critic of the current government, was arrested three times by Zimbabwe police. His arrest made international headlines.

“There is no freedom of speech to practise journalism in Zimbabwe as long as you report against the political elite and Zanu PF is in power….Zanu PF as long as it is in power will continue to use state institutions to persecute journalists and  other citizens for simply doing what is constitutional.”

Meanwhile, Moyo’s lawyer said they would appeal the bail hearing.

“We strongly disagree with those and all the grounds on which the court relied for denying him bail and we are currently preparing an appeal which will be filed as soon as we are able to obtain the record of proceedings from the Magistrate’s court,” Moyo’s lawyer Doug Coltart told IPS by telephone yesterday.

“The main grounds the court relied on was that he was a flight risk and likely to abscond trial and this funny ground that does not have any basis in law that he is a threat to national security and that the sovereignty of Zimbabwe is at stake because the international journalists interviewed Zimbabwean people without the Ministry of Information knowing about it,” Coltart said.

Coltart further said Moyo’s wife wasn’t allowed to visit him and that his prison conditions were deplorable.

“He is ok any and still mentally strong [but] the conditions in prison are still bad,” Coltart said, emphasising that Moyo had to share a blanket with one of the other inmates and was prevented to accessing reading materials.

“They have denied him access to his wife and most concerning of all he was actually slapped, I believe by one of the medical staff at the prison. We intend to make a complaint on that,” said Coltart.

“We are focusing on getting him out with the bail appeal but certainly intend to make a complaint about the inhumane conditions in the prison.”

If convicted, Moyo could face up to 10 years in jail.

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Social distancing in a Macau Hospital waiting room. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said censorship of the Chinese media made the COVID-19 situation worse. Photo by Macau Photo Agency on Unsplash

By Ed Holt
BRATISLAVA, May 26 2021 (IPS)

China is one of the worst places in the world for media freedom, according to the global media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) which ranked the country 177 out of 180 in its latest World Press Freedom Index. In the report, the group warned that Beijing is taking “internet censorship,  surveillance and propaganda to unprecedented level,” and had “taken advantage of the Covid-19 pandemic to enhance its control over online information even more”. China is also the world’s biggest jailers of journalists with more than 120 journalists and what the group calls “defenders of press freedom” currently detained.

IPS spoke to Cedric Alviani, East Asia Bureau Head at RSF, about what effect China’s media restrictions had in the early days of the country’s Covid-19 outbreak over a year ago, how foreign journalists are facing unprecedented pressures in the country, and what Beijing is doing to try and create a New World Media Order to spread its propaganda around the globe.

Interpress Service (IPS): Media freedom watchdogs, and many doctors, have pointed to how restrictions on media during the Covid-19 pandemic may have cost lives. Some members of RSF have even gone as far as to say that had China had a freer press, the Covid-19 pandemic may not have needed to happen. Would you agree with that?

Cedric Alviani (CA): What we are saying is that had there been a freer press in China, information about the first infections would have been made public much sooner, and authorities in China, and elsewhere, may have been able to better control the spread. The pandemic may not have been so severe. But we are not in any way blaming China for the pandemic as there are so many other factors involved in any pandemic.

However, censorship made the situation worse. Viruses do not recognise borders, nor censorship. Compare what happened in China with regard to open reporting on the virus, and Taiwan, where the authorities were very open right from the start with information about Covid and disseminating it to the public. That way the public were fully informed and could make decisions to protect themselves.

We still do not have the information to fully see the current situation with Covid in China because of censorship. Have there been any outbreaks? Would we know, be told about them? We cannot have a clear picture.

What this pandemic has shown is the very reason we need a free press and independent journalism so that the facts and full information can be got out. This is not just in the case of a pandemic, but in any situation in which getting full information out to people can help save lives.

In a world where media is completely controlled by the state, can you imagine how many epidemics there would be? You cannot censor, or hide, a virus. They could spread overnight. There would be no full information, doctors would be afraid to speak.

IPS: In RSF’s latest press freedom index, China is ranked the fourth worst country in the world for media freedom and the report accompanying the index said that China continues to take internet censorship, surveillance, and propaganda to “unprecedented levels”. What kind of media restrictions do Chinese journalists face and what happens to journalists who defy those restrictions and report freely, or critically of the government?

CA: China is the world’s worst enemy of free press. Our fear is that in 20 years there will be no journalism, only state propaganda. The censorship authorities in the country are providing lists to media of what they can and cannot talk about. The lists are getting longer all the time.

IPS: Is this the same in Hong Kong, where there have been increasing curbs on general freedoms in the last few years?

CA: In Hong Kong, the Chinese government has entered ownership of most Chinese language media and through economic pressure has also managed to deprive other media of funds. The situation is getting worse with direct attacks being used to impose Beijing’s media rules and censorship on local media.

IPS: Last year, at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, news about the situation in China leaked out to the rest of the world through many so-called ‘citizen-journalists’. Some of these people later reportedly disappeared or there were claims they had been forced into silence by the authorities and were living in fear of arrest, or worse. Has the regime essentially shutdown any and all citizen journalism now, and what does this mean for freedom of information in the country?

CA: We use the term ‘non-professional journalist’ rather than citizen journalist as these are people who are imparting facts, as professional journalists do – to their readers or audience. What has happened to these non-professional journalists is that since Chinese leader Xi Jinping came to power, professional journalists have been increasingly under pressure, and some people in society have stepped in to replace them and do the role professional journalists have found increasingly difficult to perform by getting information out there that is not being seen by people, for instance information about various social movements in China, which is not being disseminated. Obviously, non-professional journalists have also come under pressure in recent times – some bloggers have been jailed for years for writing about subjects such as corruption of officials – but there will always be people out there who will want to get hold of, and spread, information about what is going on.

IPS: What is the situation like for foreign journalists in China?

CA: Unlike local journalists, their families can’t be threatened so they can do freer reporting than domestic journalists. But now they are coming under pressure from the regime. A lot are moving to Taiwan, which is a safe haven for journalists, but it makes it more difficult to report on mainland China and get an accurate picture of events there. The world needs foreign correspondents in mainland China so we know what is happening there.

In the last year, the Chinese government has expelled 18 foreign correspondents. So many being expelled is unheard of here. Foreign journalists are starting to worry they may be taken hostage in political disputes between China and other countries. They have also complained of pressure being put on their sources, so they are left with no one to speak to for their stories as those sources are too scared to speak on record or too scared to speak at all.

IPS: Can you see a time in the future where foreign journalists will not be able to work at all in China, or not without their work being censored or approved in some way by authorities in Beijing?

CA: Unfortunately, it is looking more and more likely that this could happen. Twenty years ago, China needed foreign correspondents to promote the country and its story to the world. In recent years though it has developed a system of propaganda so the regime can reach the people it wants to directly, and therefore no longer needs foreign correspondents. There may come a time when foreign correspondents do not want to work in China.

IPS: RSF has previously spoken about what it claims is China’s pursuit of a New World Media Order to expand its ideological influence beyond its borders, which poses a threat to free journalism and democracy. Could you explain what this New World Media Order is and how exactly China is pursuing it?

CA: The New World Media Order is simple to explain – China’s aim is to make journalism a synonym for propaganda. It wants to remove any counterforce or opposition to the regime in power. Investigative journalism is necessary for democracy and accountability, and what China wants is to have ‘journalists’ who are patriotic people who present propaganda. The regime is trying to change and control the narrative of itself and China. It is using international TV broadcasting, as well as buying up advertising space in international media and even working its way into foreign media, as part of its aim to create this new order.

IPS: Do you think the countries in which China is trying to infiltrate foreign media and gain influence are aware that this is what Beijing is doing?

CA: Everyone is aware of what China is doing with this New World Media Order and trying to infiltrate media, but they have closed their eyes to it because countries want to do trade with China. There has been this engagement and stated aims of trying to change and improve the human rights situation in China, but it has been shown that nothing has changed. What is going to happen is that citizens in these other countries, in democracies, are going to soon realise that their governments have been selling their countries’ souls for decades.

IPS: Beijing could argue that by setting up Chinese language TV stations and media outlets in other countries it is doing nothing different to what the BBC, CNN, or other similar foreign broadcasters do, or have done, in China. What would your counter argument be for that?

CA: There is a huge difference between public media, i.e. media which is essentially owned by the public, and state media. It is important for any public to have access to information which is independent, and which acts as a reference media for the public. For example, the BBC is a public media, it is now owned or run by the state authorities, it has its own board, and is responsible for its own decisions, and it is impossible for the government to make it publish or broadcast something which it does not want to. It is independent. But something like China’s CCTV has to promote the Chinese communist party’s propaganda. The two entities are entirely different in their nature and it is incorrect to even compare them in any way.

IPS: Are other regimes copying China’s example of gaining influence and peddling propaganda in foreign media to pursue their own ideological and political aims?

CA: China’s model of media turning into state propaganda is being exported all over the world. Dictators now know that if they can control the media, they can keep getting re-elected because there is only one message getting to the people – that they have a glorious leader.

IPS: What can, or should, countries which claim to support freedom of information and free media, such as many Western democracies, be doing to counter China’s pursuit of a New World Media Order?

What they have to do is to remain democracies and open and not arbitrarily get rid or ban any media. But they also have to have a system in place which protects free, independent media and makes sure competition is fair, and that any media operating on that market do so by adhering to free and open journalism and not to propaganda.

IPS: What are the prospects for media freedom in China in the medium and long-term future?

CA: As long as Xi Jinping is in power it is hard to see any positive change in the state of media freedom in China any time soon, and in fact it is more likely to just get worse. The only hope is that political forces eventually emerge within China which will open up the possibility of a freer media and give the Chinese people what they want, which is freedom of information. We saw how angry Chinese people were online when they realised that the authorities had lied to them over Covid-19. The government has powerful technological tools at their disposal and have been successful in stopping people accessing information, but the demand from the people for real and accurate information will win out in the end, even though that does not appear to be something likely to happen any time very soon.

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By Jan Lundius
STOCKHOLM / ROME, Apr 27 2021 (IPS)

The World Press Freedom Day on the 3rd of May is an occasion for celebrating humanity. Language enables us to transmit our thoughts in sound – a means of communication developed through our unique brain, combined with our capacity to control lips, tongue and other components of the vocal apparatus. Over time, humans have also acquired skills to commit our language to writing.

Since language is the basis for human existence, it is particularly painful when we are denied expressions of thoughts and feelings. Not being listened to, abused and told to: “Shut up!”, make us suffer from being denied equal access to human fellowship. We are herd animals, a sense of belonging and freedom to express ourselves is essential for us all. This is probably the reason to why words in so many cultures are considered to be sacred – worthy of respect and even veneration. Several societies condemn verbal abuse and most religions consider lying to be a grave sin.

Generally, it is written words which are considered to be particularly sacred. However, these sacred words have often a spoken tradition behind them. Several sacred scriptures have been recited long before they were written down. In 1960, the Malian author Amadou Hampâté Bâ stated in a speech at UNESCO’s headquarters in Paris:

“It is our duty to safeguard our inherited oral tradition, to try to transmit whatever we can of it before time and oblivion cause it to disappear from human memory. […] I concede that several of the world’s human inhabitants are illiterate, but I do not concede to you that they are ignorant. […] I remind you that in my country, every time an old man dies, a library has burned down.”

This respect for the spoken word, particularly in the form of recitation, is reflected in many of the world’s sacred texts. For many Muslims the sound of Qur’anic chant is an immediate means of contact with the Word of God. The sound itself is considered to have a divine source. Participation in Qur’anic recitation as reciter, or as listener, becomes an act of worship. This respect for the spoken and written word may be one reason to why so many religions condemn lying. The Lebanese scholar Al-Ḥurr Al-cĀmili (1624-1693 CE) accurately stated “All the evils have been locked in a room and its key is lying.” In the Christian Bible, Jesus is quoted as saying: “But let your ‘Yes’ be ‘Yes’ and your ‘No’ be ‘No.’ Whatever is more than these is of the Evil One,” while Buddhist scriptures proclaim that the path to bliss and righteousness contain:

“Correct speech: Refrain from lying. Do not engage in gossip, misleading, hurtful, or loose speech.
Right intention: Your intentions should be based on kindness and compassion. Proper action: Refrain from harming living things. Do not take any statement for granted.”

Honest and exquisitely expressed words might slightly open the gates to an otherwise incomprehensible core of existence. Like art and music, words may enable us to glimpse the greatness of the Universe and perhaps even grasp some of its inner meaning.

In the Bible, God creates the world with words:

“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.”

Most of us have a quite laid back attitude when it comes to expressing ourselves. After having used our words we tend to forget what made us utter them, that is if we do not consider them to be so significant that we decide to write them down. When such writings become “sacred” it means that they have gained an existence far beyond what one single person happened to say to another at a given moment. Such words often become Law, a solid foundation for a society’s existence and thus they obtain a decisive significance for an individual’s perceptions, thoughts and actions.

Apparently did writing develop independently in at least four ancient civilizations. Sometime in 3400 BCE in Mesopotamia, in Egypt 3200 BCE, in China 1200 BCE, and in the present Southern Mexico and Guatemala 500 BCE.

Written words were extremely important to ancient Egyptians. The Greeks called Egyptian characters hieroglyphs, sacred signs. Scribes were considered to convey the language of the gods and Thoth, the god of wisdom and maintainer of the Universe, was believed to possess a book that included the entire set of rules governing Cosmos. Written and carefully recited words empowered objects and sacred actions. Words were believed to enable the deceased to awaken to a new existence beyond death. Every sacrificed object – water, necessities of life, incense, and ornaments – was through sacred words charged with power. It was not only objects that through words were filled to the brim by force, the words themselves were also loaded with power, meaning that so called “word plays” endowed words and sentences with a wide range of meanings and allusions. A single word could thereby allude to objects, the deceased, gods and demons, forces and a large variety of powerful concepts and ways of thinking.

Mastering all this knowledge made the art of writing extremely difficult. Becoming a scribe required a long, tough education, which not only meant mastering the complex depiction/writing of words, the difficult grammar and underlying allusions, it also included learning rituals by heart, mythology, accounting, mathematics and geometry. All that was required not only to master religious obligations, but also administrative tasks. However, the reward was worth it. An Egyptian scribe escaped hard work under a scorching sun, did not pay taxes and reached high positions. Sometime 3,200 years ago, someone wrote on a papyrus a text he called The Happy Scribe:

“Is there anyone here like Hardedef? Is here another one similar to Imhotep? There is not in our time a Noferti, or a Cheti, foremost of them all. I ask you to remember a man like Pathemdjehuti, a Chacheperrasonb. Is there perhaps another one like Ptahhotep or Kaires? The gates and halls that were built for them have fallen into disrepair. Their mortuary priests do no longer exist. Their resting places are forgotten. But their names are still mentioned due to the books they wrote, because they were so beautiful. Those who wrote them, their memory lives on forever. Become a scribe! Put this into your mind, so that your name might become like theirs. A book is better than a burial chamber covered with writing, than a burial chapel never so well built. Become a scribe and live forever.”

For many later authors writing became a life-absorbing vocation, while several of them spent a lifetime searching for the right word. One of them, Gustave Flaubert, wrote:

”Whatever we want to convey, there is only one word to express it, one verb to animate it, one adjective to qualify it. We must therefore go on seeking that word, verb or adjective, until we have discovered it and never be satisfied with approximations, never fall back on tricks, even inspired ones. Or tomfoolery of language to dodge the difficulty.”

The right words have been found by vociferous writers and speakers, enabling them to inspire and empower people. You might think of Martin Luther King’s rousing speech:

”I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal.”

Bold journalists have with beautiful and adequate expressions dared to pinpoint injustices. Like Émile Zola when he in 1898 accused the French establishment of punishing the innocent Alfred Dreyfus:

”What they have dared, so shall I dare. Dare to tell the truth, as I have pledged to tell it, in full, since the normal channels of justice have failed to do so. My duty is to speak out, not to become an accomplice in this travesty. My nights would otherwise be haunted by the spectre of an innocent man, far away, suffering the most horrible of tortures for a crime he did not commit.”

However, many of these outspoken heroes of well-written and just words have had to pay for their honesty with their lives. Like the poet Osip Mandelstam, who under the bloody tyranny of Josef Stalin with a great poem dared to break the fearful silence of many of his fellow citizens:

Dictators hate to be disclosed in all their nakedness; their stupidity, fears, disdain for others and raving violence. However, it is not only in dictatorships that unsung heroes of free speech are silenced, and even killed. In 2020, nearly seven out of every ten journalists killed lost their lives in countries “at peace” and an unaccounted number were threatened and abused, often due to investigations into cases of local corruption, organised crime, misuse of public funds and environmental misdemeanour. In 2020, Reporters Without Borders revealed that to their knowledge 50 journalists had been killed, 387 had been detained, 54 held hostage and four were missing. So, not only on the 3rd May let us pay homage to the guardians and heroes of the sacred word and express our disdain for all those who do not respect words; who cheat, lie, abuse, maim and kill to keep us all in ignorance and fear.

Jan Lundius holds a PhD. on History of Religion from Lund University and has served as a development expert, researcher and advisor at SIDA, UNESCO, FAO and other international organisations.

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Excerpt:

Reporters Without Borders said press freedom was restricted either partly or completely in two thirds of the globe. It warned that authoritarian regimes had used the pandemic to “perfect their methods of totalitarian control of information”, and as a pretext for imposing “especially repressive legislation with provisions combining propaganda with suppression of dissent”. (file photo) Credit: Miriam Gathigah/IPS

By Ed Holt
BRATISLAVA, Apr 22 2021 (IPS)

Independent journalism is facing a growing crackdown one year into the COVID-19 pandemic as governments around the world restrict access to information and muzzle critical reporting, media and rights watchdogs have warned.

Authoritarian regimes have used existing and new legislation to attack, intimidate, and jail reporters under the guise of acting to protect public health, they say, and fear the situation is unlikely to improve in many states if and when the pandemic ends.

“Dictators and authoritarian leaders exploited the cover of COVID to crackdown on independent reporting and criticism. Some, instead of battling the virus, turned their attention to fighting the media.

“Countries from Cambodia to Russia, Egypt and Brazil all sought to divert attention from their failures to deal with the health crisis by intimidating or jailing journalists,” Rob Mahoney, Deputy Executive Director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, told IPS.

Recent months have seen a slew of reports highlighting how media freedom in many places has been curbed during the pandemic.

In February, Human Rights Watch released a report COVID-19 Triggers Wave of Free Speech Abuse showing how more than 80 governments had used the COVID-19 pandemic to justify violations of rights to free speech and peaceful assembly with journalists among those affected as authorities attacked, detained, prosecuted, and in some cases killed critics, and closed media outlets, while enacting vague laws criminalising speech that they claim threatens public health.

In April, global press freedom campaigners the International Press Institute (IPI), released a report painting a similarly grim picture and detailing the physical and verbal abuse of journalists reporting on COVID-19 across the world.

And just this week, Reporters Without Borders said journalism was restricted either partly or completely in two thirds of the globe.

It warned that authoritarian regimes had used the pandemic to “perfect their methods of totalitarian control of information”, and as a pretext for imposing “especially repressive legislation with provisions combining propaganda with suppression of dissent”.

It also highlighted how some had developed legislation to criminalise publishing of ‘fake news’ relating to coronavirus reporting, and used COVID-19 as a pretence to deepen existing internet censorship and surveillance.

In some states authorities had banned publication of non-government pandemic numbers and arrested people for disseminating other figures. In others, such as Tanzania, they even went as far as imposing a complete information blackout on the pandemic, the group said.

The problems are not confined to any single area of the world, according to the groups’ reports. However, some of the most severe restrictions have been seen in the Asia-Pacific region and Africa.

Journalists on the ground in these regions have said they have seen a deterioration in press freedom over the last year.

IPS’ own correspondent and an award-winning journalist in Uganda, Michael Wambi, said that the government had used pandemic restrictions introduced for the entire population to deliberately restrict journalists’ reporting.

Presidential elections were held in the country in January and, Wambi told IPS, there were “targeted attacks on journalists in an effort to curtail them from giving coverage to leading opposition candidates” in the run up to them.

Journalists were violently attacked by police at the events, and police later accused reporters of violating COVID-19 restrictions by attending them.

Wambi said Uganda’s Police Chief, Martin Okoth Ochola, made a joke of the situation.

“He joked to journalists that ‘security forces would continue beating them to keep them out of any danger [to their own health]’,” said Wambi.

Stella Paul, IPS’ award-winning journalist in India — which RSF describes as one of the world’s most dangerous countries for journalists — told IPS: “In India, COVID restrictions were basically used as an excuse to intimidate journalists.”

Press freedom groups say the Indian government has taken advantage of the coronavirus crisis to increase its control of news coverage, using legal action against journalists who have reported information about the pandemic which differs from the official position.

Early in the pandemic, the government launched a number of legal cases against journalists for reports about the effects of the government-enforced lockdown on migrant workers while an editor of a local news portal was arrested and charged with sedition for writing about a possible change of state leadership following a rise in coronavirus cases.

“The last year has seen a lot of journalists detained while trying to report the truth about the pandemic, to get to accurate information and find things out,” said Paul.

Paul, who also writes for IPS, co-operates with a number of other journalists across Asia and says the situation for independent media in most other parts of the region is equally perilous.

“It is the same thing in many other countries. What we have seen during COVID is a lot of journalists, not just in India, asking themselves what will happen if I report on something? Will I end up in jail? They are scared of getting arrested,” she said.

One country where media freedom is seen as particularly restricted is Bangladesh. It came in at 152 out of 182 in RSF’s 2021 Press Freedom Index. The group said there had been “an alarming increase in police and civilian violence against reporters” during the pandemic with many journalists arrested and prosecuted for their reporting on it.

This has been made easier by the Digital Security Act (DSA) passed in 2018 under which “negative propaganda” can lead to a 14-year jail sentence, local journalists say.

The DSA was at the centre of the controversial death in police custody of a Bangladeshi writer and commentator earlier this year.

Mushtaq Ahmed, who was detained under the DSA in May last year for allegedly posting criticism of the government’s response to the COVID-19 on Facebook, died in police custody in February. An official investigation found he died of natural causes but others in prison with him at the time claimed he was tortured and some suspect he died of injuries sustained during his incarceration. 

Few local journalists were willing to talk about their experiences of working in the country, but one, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Ahmed’s arrest and death had had a profound effect on the media.

“After what happened to Mushtaq Ahmed, many journalists were immediately less willing to challenge anything the government said about the coronavirus pandemic,” the journalist told IPS.

“The DSA is being used to harass journalists – many have been arrested under the act after publishing news critical of the authorities.

“Doing reporting under the DSA is the main challenge for journalists in Bangladesh right now. News outlets use self-censorship to avoid harassment under the DSA. If anyone sees a single item of news that is negative about them, they can use the DSA to bring legal action against the reporter and the editor,” the journalist added.

But while the COVID-19 pandemic has undoubtedly allowed governments to crack down on critical media, there is no guarantee the situation will improve once the pandemic ends, press freedom watchdogs say.

Scott Griffen, Deputy Director at IPI, told IPS: “Who will decide when the pandemic is over? Governments for whom the pandemic is a useful tool to suppress civil liberties may be tempted to maintain a state of emergency in some form, even after the immediate health threat is ended.”

He added that there were also fears that measures introduced during the pandemic may not be rescinded at all.

“The aftermath of the September 11 attacks in the US brought with it new anti-terrorism measures including unprecedented civil liberties rollbacks. Countries around the world have used anti-terror laws to crack down on critical speech. Similarly, we fear that emergency laws introduced during the coronavirus pandemic may become part of the permanent legal framework in some states, not to mention a culture of tracking and surveillance of citizens that is very unlikely to be rolled back. This has profound implications for journalists’ privacy and their ability to protect their sources,” he said.

However, despite the bleak outlook for press freedom in many states as the pandemic drags on, there is hope that independent media will continue no matter how severely they might be restricted.

“Journalists will still produce independent reporting even in the most hostile of circumstances. That’s their mission. You can have independent journalism without democracy. But you can’t have democracy without independent journalism,” said Mahoney.

Excerpt:

Protests against military coup in Kayin State, Myanmar on Feb. 9. Protestors have taken to the streets of Myanmar since a Feb. 1 coup by the military. Journalists covering the anti-junta protests have been particularly at risk of being detained, after the military amended Section 505(a) of the country’s penal code to include offences that include knowingly spreading ‘fake news’. Courtesy: Ninjastrikers/(CC BY-SA 4.0)

By Alison Kentish
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 22 2021 (IPS)

Two human rights groups have called on the military in Myanmar to release journalists arbitrarily jailed and allow them to work without harassment and prosecution.

Amnesty International and the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) told IPS that they will double down on those demands until all journalists are released and the operating licenses of newsgroups are restored.

“From revoking media licenses and raiding newsrooms to arbitrarily arresting and prosecuting media workers covering the current human rights crisis in the country, the Myanmar military is desperately trying to hide from the world the appalling crimes it is committing against its own people every day,” Emerlynne Gil, Deputy Regional Director at Amnesty International, told IPS.

The calls follow a briefing by the spokesperson for the United Nations High Commissioner on Human Rights Ravina Shamdasani who said that ‘deeply distressing reports of torture in custody’ were adding to the crisis unfolding in the country.

Protestors have taken to the streets of Myanmar since a Feb. 1 coup by the military. Journalists covering the anti-junta protests have been particularly at risk of being detained, after the military amended Section 505(a) of the country’s penal code to include offences that include knowingly spreading ‘fake news’. The amendments give the military increased latitude to arrest journalists.

“The death toll has soared over the past week in Myanmar, where security forces have been using lethal force increasingly aggressively against peaceful protesters, and continue to arbitrarily arrest and detain people throughout the country,” Shamdasani said last week.

Shamdasani told the press that hundreds of illegally detained people are unaccounted for and ‘this amounts to enforced disappearances’.

Representatives of press rights group CPJ told IPS that journalists in Myanmar are living in fear.

“They are scared that the crackdown will become more targeted against media and that the junta intends to establish a new censorship regime, similar to the harsh measures imposed on the media by previous military governments,” CPJ’s Southeast Asia Representative Shawn Crispin told IPS, adding that “at least 5 independent news organisations have already had their operating licenses revoked for arbitrary and vague reasons. Other groups fear they could be next.”

Reports of press censorship by authorities in Myanmar are not new. In 2018, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights assessed press freedom and high-profile journalist prosecutions through 5 individual cases. The ensuing report, ‘The Invisible Boundary – Criminal prosecutions of journalism in Myanmar’, cited harrowing experiences by the targeted journalists and stated that the unlawful arrests and prosecutions created ‘an invisible boundary for media personnel, that they cross at their peril’. It concluded that freedom of expression and press freedom were under attack.

Earlier this month, the UN Security Council said it was deeply concerned about developments in Myanmar. According to the UN, at least 37 journalists have been arrested in Myanmar since Feb. 1, with 19 still unlawfully detained.

“The Security Council strongly condemns the violence against peaceful protestors, including against women, youth and children. It expresses deep concern at restrictions on medical personnel, civil society, labor union members, journalists and media workers, and calls for the immediate release of all those detained arbitrarily,” a statement from the President said.

Amnesty International says a free press in Myanmar is more important than ever.

“It is all the more urgent now to ensure access to information in Myanmar amid escalating violent repression of peaceful protesters and severe internet restrictions, and all attempts to hamper the right to seek, receive and impart information must cease immediately,” Gil told IPS.

Six journalists have been charged under Article 505(a) of Myanmar’s penal code.

“We are also calling on the regime to refrain from imposing any new laws or measures that would restrict media freedoms,” Crispin told IPS.

A Human Rights Council Resolution of Mar. 12  consists of 9 recommendations of the Government of Myanmar, meant to protect journalists, freedom of expression and freedom of the press.

Among other measures, the Council wants the authorities to decriminalise defamation and amend the country’s media law to ensure that the Myanmar Press Council can mediate in disputes with media outlets and journalists.

The Council also wants the immediate and unconditional release of all journalists in detention, an end to all current cases against journalists for exercising their right to freedom of expression and ensure access to restitution for the journalists who have been arrested and persecuted. 

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Excerpt:

While technology has opened up opportunities for women journalists to communicate, they now reproduce and amplify harassment and abuse of the professionals across platforms. Credit: Erick Kabendera/IPS

By Alison Kentish
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 19 2021 (IPS)

“Email and social media access attempts, extremely aggressive comments, photo montages, massive defamation and intimidation campaigns on WhatsApp. This is what women journalists are facing for doing our job,” said Brazilian journalist Bianca Santana.

Santana addressed a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO)-led virtual event to tackle online harassment and abuse against women journalists on Thursday, Mar. 19.

She told the forum that the online and ICT worlds can be dangerous places for women journalists.

The UN Human Rights Council Special Rapporteur for freedom of opinion and expression Irene Khan said during the forum that perpetrators of online abuse of women journalists use the internet to launch vicious and amplified attacks.

She reminded the gathering that she has experienced online abuse firsthand. A former consulting newspaper editor and human rights activist in Bangladesh, she has been a target of gender-based violence, sexual violence and harassment.

“On one hand, the victims – the women – are much more vulnerable in this virtual world because of the amplification of the attacks. At the same time, the perpetrators are much more protected because of their anonymity and the impunity they enjoy,” she said.

According to a 2020 report by the UN Human Rights Council titled ‘Combating violence against women journalists,’ not only are women attacked online at a rate far exceeding men, but they also face increasing sexualised content and stalking.

UNESCO partnered with the permanent missions of Austria, Canada, Costa Rica, and the United Kingdom to the United Nations to host the virtual event.

Canada’s representative Robert Oliphant said his country is contributing to programmes that support women journalists, through the non-profit Article 19. That organisation states that while technology has opened up opportunities for women journalists to communicate, they now reproduce and amplify harassment and abuse of the professionals across platforms.

“In today’s world attacks take place both on and offline. Women journalists face sexual harassment, intimidation, violence and in the worst cases, they’re killed,” said Oliphant. “Too often authorities do little to bring those responsible to justice.”

Quoting figures from a UNESCO-International Centre for Journalists study on online attacks on women journalists, UNESCO’s Chief of Freedom of Expression and Safety of Journalists Guilherme Canela said the attacks are widespread.

“Different platforms and different forms of online violence against those women journalists and very concerning is that of 20 percent of them reported suffering some sort of offline violence connected to the online threats that they have received. This is very scary,” he said.

Over 900 women journalists from 125 countries took part in the study.

• 73 percent of respondents in the study said that they had experienced online violence in the course of their work,
• 25 percent had received threats of physical violence, and
• 18 percent were threatened with sexual violence.

“The violence and threats are gender-based. When the violence is against women journalists there is an extra component. The tone of the violence, the language is related to sexual images, sexual comments,” Canela said.

The partners say these crimes are geared at undermining and silencing women journalists, which in turn are attacks on democratic freedoms, including the right to free and open expression.”

“We cannot preserve and protect freedom of expression for half of society if we do not take action against this kind of harassment. The attacks also have a direct impact on the right of society to access a plurality of information and perspectives,” said Teres Ribeiro, Representative on Freedom of the Media at the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

Article 19’s Senior Legal Officer Paulina Gutierrez said online attacks against women journalists deny women their right to privacy, freedom of expression, participation in public debates.

“We can see women limiting their journalistic reporting, we can see them self-censoring; deciding not to publish anymore their public views or opinions on very important topics for public discussion,” she said.

“We need to remember that the right to freedom of expression is an essential means to tackle discrimination and gender-based violence.”

Working as a journalist in Zimbabwe has been particularly hazardous for investigative journalists in a country that makes regular appearances in global top rankings of corruption. Zimbabwe’s press freedom remains fragile. Credit: Jeffrey Moyo/IPS

By Ignatius Banda
BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, Jan 19 2021 (IPS)

A long-running gag says “in Zimbabwe there is freedom of speech, but no freedom after the speech”. But for journalists and activists who have been forced to endure nights in the country’s overcrowded and filthy holding cells, this is no laughing matter as prison inmates have no personal protective equipment to guard against COVID-19.

And when government spokesperson Nick Mangwana warned ominously last year that, “No one is above the law,” it only confirmed what many here have always feared: that the ruling Zanu PF party will not hesitate to arbitrary apply the law to silence critics.

Mangwana’s comments had come after the arrest of journalist Hopewell Chin’ono, who was accused of using social media to foment public violence.

Chin’ono was back behind bars on Jan. 8 on charges of posting “fake news” on Twitter.

Soon after Chin’ono’s arrest, opposition Movement for Democratic Change – Alliance (MDC-A) spokesperson Fadzayi Mahere and Job Sikhala, an opposition legislator who also serves as a MDC-A vice chairperson, were also detained by the police for posting the same story Chin’ono had shared on social media.

The widely-shared story alleged that a police officer attempting to enforce COVID-19 restrictions had aimed his baton stick at a woman carrying a child, but fatally struck the child instead.

According to reports, the child died on the spot. Police, however, dismissed the story as fake news despite video footage of the mother wailing that the police officer had killed her child. 

The arrests were immediately condemned by rights defenders with Amnesty International, which demanded their release.

“The latest arrests are part of a growing crackdown on opposition leaders, human rights defenders, activists, journalists and other critical voices,” said Muleya Mwananyanda, Amnesty International’s deputy director for southern Africa said in a statement dated Jan. 13.

“Zimbabwean authorities must immediately and unconditionally release and drop the malicious charges against them,” Mwananyanda said.

However, it is the arrest of Chin’ono – for the third time in six months – that has placed the spotlight back on Zimbabwe’s fragile press freedom, where critics say journalism has for years remained a dangerous occupation for a country not in a warzone.

It has been particularly hazardous for investigative journalists in a country that makes regular appearances in global top rankings of corruption.

“I was jailed after exposing corruption,” Chin’ono wrote last year after his first arrest, which came after the authorities criticised the media for allegedly reporting falsehoods about members of President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s family being involved in shady COVID-19 equipment procurement deals which prejudiced the country of millions of United States dollars.

Chin’ono’s exposé reportedly led to the firing of Zimbabwe’s health minister, yet it was to prove to be just the beginning of the investigative journalist’s brushes with the law for his work reporting corruption in high places.

“The onslaught on investigative journalists is part of the administration’s hostile campaign against human rights defenders,” Tawanda Majoni, an investigative journalist and National Coordinator of the Information for Development Trust, a local media NGO, told IPS.

“Media freedom campaigners have done a spirited job, but what they can achieve will always be severely limited in a repressive regime,” he told IPS.

According to Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index of 2019, Zimbabwe ranked 158 out of 180 countries making it one of the most corrupt in the world.

“In Southern Africa, journalists and others working to expose corruption face an unacceptable level of risk,” Transparency International said in a statement last year.

The international press freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders ranked Zimbabwe number 126 out of 180 countries in the 2020 World Press Freedom Index, making the southern African country one of the worst places to work as a journalist.

“Zimbabwe’s serious abuses of press freedom, free expression and the rights of government critics are worsening as the year begins,” Dewa Mavhinga, Human Rights Watch southern Africa director, told IPS.

“It seems there are some within government who wish to undermine Zimbabwe’s re-engagement efforts through their reckless abuses that entrench the pariah state image,” Dewa told IPS.

The European Union in Zimbabwe also added its condemnation of the arrest of Chin’ono, Sikhala and Mahere, posting on Twitter on Jan. 13 that “the current pre-trial detentions, delays of proceeding without serious charges are questionable”, while the Dutch Embassy in Harare reminded the country’s minister of foreign affairs Sibusiso Moyo the commitments Zimbabwe made on Dec. 9 at the World Press Freedom Conference to increase the safety of journalists.

The crackdown continues almost six years after the disappearance of journalist and activist Itai Dzamara whose whereabouts remain unknown but is widely feared dead. 

“We have a government that is driven by paranoia and doesn’t want to be held accountable,” Nqaba Matshazi, of the Media Institute for Southern African (MISA) – Zimbabwe chapter, told IPS.

While police say Chin’ono faces up to 20 years in prison, his lawyers are challenging the constitutionality of the charges and the journalist remains defiant in a country where media activists say journalists are shying away from probing investigative journalism for fear of arrests. 

“The persecution of investigative and other journalists routinely face has several retrogressive effects, among them fear, self-censorship and capture. When you see a journalist being brought to court in leg irons for posting a Tweet, you naturally wonder whether if your next story is worth dying for,” said Majoni.

Human rights attorneys say it has been particularly frustrating defending journalists.

“Journalists are being arrested for doing their job and our real challenge is that the arrests show an increase in the monitoring of journalists’ social media activity,” Roselyn Hanzi, executive director of the Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights, who are representing Chin’ono and other journalists and citizens arrested under questionable charges, told IPS.

“Despite constitutional provisions, what is required are administrative reforms to weed out bad apples in the system and also human rights training for institutions that have become very partisan,” Hanzi told IPS.

There are concerns however that there still are no critical voices emerging from regional bodies, which analysts say could be emboldening impunity and continued human rights violations in Zimbabwe.

“The silence and indifference of Zimbabwe’s neighbours like South Africa, SADC and the African Union has emboldened rogue elements with the Zimbabwe regime to go for broke,” Mavhinga told IPS. 

“But tyranny has a witness and one day there will be justice and accountability for all the abuses,” Mavhinga said.

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There is currently a grave pattern of detention or unsubstantiated allegations against journalists in Mozambique. Last month unknown attackers set on fire the office of a weekly newspaper Canal de Moçambique that had recently published investigations exposing corruption in the government. Courtesy: CC by 2.0/The Commonwealth

By Samira Sadeque
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 4 2020 (IPS)

While Mozambique was recently rattled by an arson attack on a local media organisation, experts say that it’s only a part of a worrying pattern of continuous attacks on the media in the country.

• On Aug. 23, unknown attackers set on fire the office of a weekly newspaper Canal de Moçambique that had recently published investigations exposing corruption in the government. 
• The attack not only destroyed equipment and furniture, but also the files at the office.

Angela Quintal, the Africa programme coordinator at the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), told IPS that while they had never before witnessed an attack of this magnitude or nature, there is currently a grave pattern of detention or unsubstantiated allegations against journalists in the country. CPJ, a non-profit focused on press freedom, also monitors such attacks on the media around the world.

Quintal pointed some of the recent cases: arbitrary arrest and detention of radio journalist Amade Abubacar; the arrest of investigative journalist Estacio Valoi; the detention of Amnesty International researcher David Matsinhe, and driver, Girafe Saide Tufane, who were held for two days before being released without charge; and the repeated harassment of Canal’s executive editor Matias Guente.

Then there are the other cases, such as the enforced disappearance of Ibraimo Mbaruco, a community radio journalist and newscaster in Palma district in Cabo Delgado province.

On the same day as the arson attack, journalist Armando Nenane was arrested for not fully complying with regulations surrounding COVID-19, according to Quintal. Nenane published a story about how he managed to deposit funds in a former Defence Minister’s bank account in order to verify an exposé that Canal had published.

These arbitrary arrests are part of a pattern, says Matsinhe, the Mozambique researcher for Amnesty International. He told IPS that under the pandemic, there’s been an increase in harassment, intimidation, arbitrary arrests and detentions of journalists often under the guise of allegations that they were “violating COVID-19 regulations”.

“The police have used COVID-19 state of emergency to practice extortion on people,” he told IPS. “Some journalists have been exposing this practice and the police have taken a retaliatory approach against the journalists.”

The country’s increasingly deteriorating press freedom is also an attack on human rights, he said.  

“People’s right to information depends on the journalists’ ability to do their work, which in turn depends on respect, protection, promotion and fulfilment of press freedom by the government,” Matsinhe said. But in taking that away, the government of Mozambique “relies on people’s ignorance, lack of information, to exercise its power and practice corruption unchecked.”

“Under the current economic, social and political conditions in Mozambique, access to information – which is only possible where press freedom is guaranteed – enables Mozambicans to participate in their country’s political life, to hold their government accountable, to exercise their civil and political rights,” he added.

While the lack of this right is worrisome, Quintal said the reaction by Canal’s staff members – by continuing to work and publish – shows they’re not bowing to this pressure. Staff had set up a makeshift office and published a front-page editorial vowing not to back down from their investigative journalism. “Obviously such an attack might have a chilling effect on the media and could well result in some self-censorship by journalists. However, it has been heartening to see how Canal de Moçambique and its online daily publication continued to publish,” she said.

“In terms of solidarity, the fact that a rival media group and its journalists rallied to assist and even offered their premises so that Canal journalists could produce that week’s edition of the newspaper, was also great to see,” Quintal added.

Still, a lot of work remains to be done. 

“In my opinion [the government] has simply ignored the attempts to reach out and to engage,” Quintal said.

Matsinhe said the government can take some “concrete steps” to improve and ensure freedom of press in the country.

“The government must refrain from seeing the press as the state enemy and investigate the cases of injustices committed against various journalists and bring those found responsible to justice.”

Echoing similar demands, Quintal acknowledged the positive efforts by the Media Institute of South Africa-Mozambique, “to form a reference group with the government to review and consolidate the legal framework for cybersecurity and digital rights, and to ensure that it does not undermine access to information”.

The government must also conduct a review of legislation that is hostile towards press freedom, such as “overly broad” sections of the Penal Code that are often used to crack down on journalists.

Experts say that the not guilty verdict in the trial of the murder of investigative journalist Jan Kuciak sends a chilling message to Slovak journalists that they cannot be protected or work in safety. In this dated photo, a protester in the Slovak capital, Bratislava holds up a picture of murdered journalist Kuciak and his fiancée Martina Kusnirova. Credit: Ed Holt/IPS

By Ed Holt
BRATISLAVA, Sep 4 2020 (IPS)

A Slovak businessman with alleged links to organised crime has been found not guilty of ordering the murder of journalist Jan Kuciak in a ruling that has left press freedom campaigners and politicians shocked.

Marian Kocner had been accused of ordering the killing of Kuciak, an investigative reporter with the Slovak news website Aktuality.sk.

Kuciak and his fiancée Martina Kusnirova, both 27, were shot dead at Kuciak’s home in Velka Maca, 40 miles east of the capital Bratislava in February 2018. Self-confessed hired killer Miroslav Marcek, 37, had earlier this year pleaded guilty to murdering the couple and was sentenced to 23 years in jail.

But a court in Pezinok, north of the capital, ruled yesterday, Sept. 3, that there was not enough evidence to prove Kocner had ordered the murder. A woman also on trial for helping Kocner facilitate the murder, Alena Zsuszova, was acquitted, but a third person, Tomas Szabo, was found guilty of taking part in the killings.

“We are surprised and disappointed that after a long investigation and legal process that it has ended in this verdict. This is a sad day for press freedom in Slovakia and internationally,” Tom Gibson, EU Representative for the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), told IPS.

“This has sent out a potentially very chilling signal to other journalists that they cannot be protected and cannot do their work safely,” he told IPS.

The murders of Kuciak and Kusnirova shocked Slovakia and led to the largest mass protests in the country since the fall of communism.

Prime Minister Robert Fico and Interior Minister Robert Kalinak were forced to resign, and the head of the police service later stepped down.

Police said that the murders were related to Kuciak’s work as an investigative journalist – Kuciak’s last story had exposed alleged links between Italian mafia and Fico’s Smer party – and the subsequent investigation uncovered alleged links between politicians, prosecutors, judges, and police officers and the people allegedly involved in the killings.

At the heart of these was Kocner, a controversial figure frequently linked to alleged serious criminals and who in a separate case was earlier this year sentenced to 19 years in jail for forging promissory notes.

Prosecutors argued in court that Kocner had ordered the killing in revenge for articles he had written about the multimillionaire’s business dealings.

Although not accused of pulling the trigger himself, for many Kocner was the central figure in the trial and a symbol of deep-rooted corruption at the highest levels of state.

And ahead of the verdict, journalists had said the outcome of the trial would be a watershed in Slovak history, in terms of both restoring public trust in a judiciary which the Kuciak murder investigation has shown to apparently be riddled with corruption, and in showing that same judiciary can clearly punish crimes designed to silence journalists.

But soon after the ruling, many local journalists said they had been left shocked and disappointed, while others said they were angry and could not understand how the court had reached its verdict.

But many said they simply felt the justice system had failed the victims and their families, as the people who ordered the murder had still not been brought to justice.

Christophe Deloire, Secretary General of press freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF), describe the acquittals as “a huge failure of the investigation bodies and the judiciary”.

“We expected Slovakia to set a positive example regarding the prosecution and condemnation of crimes against journalists. Instead, we remain in a situation of impunity. Who ordered the killing of Jan Kuciak? Why was he killed? We should have a clear answer,” he said.

Regardless of what judicial failures may or may not have led to the decision, it is expected to have serious repercussions in Slovakia and other countries with some arguing it is a serious setback in battling impunity and ensuring justice.

Pavol Szalai, Head of European Union and Balkans Desk at Reporters Without Borders, told IPS: “This [verdict] is the biggest setback for freedom of the press in Europe since the murder itself. During this investigation and the court process Slovakia had been seen as an island of hope in Europe and today a strong signal of hope could have been sent out to other countries.

“But now, with the Slovak justice system unable to identify and bring to justice the person, or persons who ordered these murders despite massive public and political pressure to do so, how can other countries, like Serbia for example, be expected to do so?”

CPJ’s Gibson added: “This case was closely followed internationally and for European institutions especially this was an important case in terms of strengthening press freedom in Europe.

“One of the important things about Jan Kuciak’s murder was that he was a journalist working on investigative stories involving sensitive information and there are journalists in lots of other countries doing similar kind of work. This case was kind of symbol in terms of [highlighting] the need to protect journalists in other countries doing similar work.”

Prosecutors have appealed the court’s verdict and it will now go to the Supreme Court, which will either confirm the verdict or could send the case back to court to be heard again.

However, it is expected it will be months before the Supreme Court delivers any ruling and if the case is sent back to court, it could be years before another verdict is reached, which could again be appealed.

Some observers fear this could lead to a complete erosion of trust in the Slovak judiciary which has already been severely weakened by the court’s ruling.

Zuzana Petkova, a former journalist who worked on stories with Kuciak, told IPS: “This is not the end of the case, but if the people who ordered the murders are not put behind bars, Slovakia will drag this case around like a trauma, and there will be no trust left in the Slovak justice system. Already after today’s verdict there is far less trust in the system.”

Anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International Slovakia, wrote in a Facebook post: “It must be a top priority for the Supreme Court and law enforcement bodies to prevent this case becoming the last nail in the coffin of the trust of the public in the judiciary and justice in Slovakia.”

Slovak politicians, many of whom openly admitted they had been shocked by the court’s ruling, urged people to believe that those behind the killings would eventually be brought to justice.

But some who have followed the trial are taking a more pessimistic view.

Drew Sullivan, Editor at the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, told IPS he had little hope that the people who ordered the killings would ever be convicted.

He told IPS: “The ruling was a huge disappointment although not completely unexpected. Experienced crime figures know how to isolate themselves from their crimes and there was no direct forensic evidence of [Kocner’s] involvement.

“However, there was testimony and clear circumstantial evidence of his involvement. If he had been a regular person, he’d have been found guilty based on witness testimony, but courts don’t accept the testimony of commoners against the ruling class. He is rich, powerful and murderous, and will cause problems for some time now in Slovakia.”

Jerald Aruldas, a journalist from the southern state of Tamil Nadu, and his colleague, were held by city police for 9 hours for reporting on stories around alleged government corruption around the food aid distribution system and how doctors in Coimbatore faced food shortages while working during the COVID-19 lockdown. Courtesy: Jerald Aruldas

By Samira Sadeque
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 5 2020 (IPS)

Governments have made the media “a scapegoat” across Asia, targeting journalists who are simply reporting on the failures or shortcomings of their leadership during the coronavirus pandemic, press freedom experts have warned.

“Governments have said that the real emergency caused by the pandemic has made it necessary for them to prevent the spread of false information that might, for example, cause panic,” Steven Butler, Asia programme coordinator at the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), told IPS. “Of course, in at least some cases it’s the government decisions themselves that have led to confusion and panic, and the media has simply become the scapegoat.”

Butler spoke to IPS following an appeal by United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet who on Wednesday warned that censorship has become more severe in countries across Asia under the pandemic. She requested governments around the world to take “proportionate” actions in case someone is spreading false information, and that those actions must comply with requirements of “legality, necessity, proportionality, [and serving] a legitimate public health objective”.

“When you have a police official defining necessity of a person’s arrest and detention on the basis that a ruling party politician came to the police station to file a case against the person, there is much to be concerned about how authorities interpret necessity, proportion and legality,” Saad Hammadi, Regional Campaigner of the South Asia division at Amnesty International, told IPS.

He was speaking about the plight of Bangladeshi journalist Shafiqul Islam Kajol who had disappeared for almost two months before he was “found” and taken to police custody — just in time for World Press Freedom Day.

Before Kajol’s disappearance and subsequent arrest, he was already facing charges under Bangladesh’s highly controversial Digital Security Act.

There are similar cases across Asia. 

In May, IPS reported on a number of cases in India where journalists were also arrested or detained for criticising the government.

In India’s southern state of Tamil Nadu, journalist Jerald Aruldas and photographer M Balaji had been detained for 9 hours after a series of pieces that exposed corruption in the government food aid distribution system, and the food issues that doctors in Coimbatore city faced. Their editor, Andrew Sam Raja Pandian, was subsequently arrested and released but was charged under several sections of criminal laws as well as The Disaster Management Act, 2005 for publishing the stories.

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) records show governments in 12 countries across Asia are targeting journalists or anyone expressing their criticism about the pandemic response: Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Nepal, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Vietnam.

For people in all 12 countries where the arrests have taken place, the stifling of press freedom is not new. According to Reporters Without Borders’ Press Freedom 2020 Index, all 12 countries ranked quite low, with Malaysia and Nepal being the least restrictive among the group, and China and Vietnam being some of the most restrictive.

‘Fake news’ used as an excuse to restrict press freedom

In all these countries, the charges are some variation of the trope that any criticism is “false news”. Governments are making arrests or detaining those speaking up with the excuse that their so-called “fake news” incites panic among communities. In Cambodia, a child as young as 14 was arrested, along with 30 other individuals, for sharing commentary on social media. 

In Bangladesh, China, and India, health personnel, journalists and ordinary citizens have been detained or arrested for voicing similar concerns about their respective government’s response, or lack thereof. In Nepal, a bureaucrat was arrested for criticising the government’s response to the COVID-19 crisis.

“It’s unacceptable that even one person is persecuted for legitimately exercising their right to freedom of expression but since March this year, at least 16 journalists have been detained or sued on charges that are in contravention of the rights protected under international law on freedom of expression,” Hammadi of Amnesty International told IPS.

Bachelet said it’s crucial to remain alert and vigilant about misinformation at this time. During the first few weeks of the coronavirus crisis — even before it was termed a “pandemic” — misinformation surrounding the disease had become a crucial concern. In response to this, the World Health Organisation launched the EPI-WIN, which would provide users information in a timely manner, filtering out an overload of information without solutions.

An already existing problem

While the OHCHR statement came almost six months into the coronavirus crisis, experts have been ringing alarm bells about the issue for some time now.

In May, while observing World Press Freedom Day, Hammadi wrote that it’s important to be vigilant against those who are “exploiting” this moment to spread misinformation, but warned that “some governments are themselves exploiting this moment – to suppress relevant information uncomfortable for the government or use the situation as a pretext to crack down on critical voices”.

Butler of the CPJ told IPS that these are countries that were already armed with the trope of “false news” to charge journalists. And the pandemic only exacerbated that.

“Additional emergency legislation and decrees have increased pressure on journalists as governments boost efforts to control the flow of information,” Butler said. “In many cases, they have used these powers to go after journalists who report shortcomings in the government response to the pandemic. In some cases, the charges against journalists have been incredibly petty.”

In her appeal, Bachelet warned that heads of state must not use the crisis “to restrict dissent or the free flow of information and debate.”

“A diversity of viewpoints will foster greater understanding of the challenges we face and help us better overcome them,” she said. “It will also help countries to have a vibrant debate on the root causes and good practices needed to overcome the longer-term socio-economic and other impacts. This debate is crucial for countries to build back better after the crisis.”

By Jan Lundius
STOCKHOLM / ROME, May 1 2020 (IPS)

United Nations has designated at least 170 specific days of the year as occasions to mark particular events or topics to promote the objectives of the Organization. ² This might be considered as yet another sign of a supersaturation caused by the internet revolution. However, it cannot be denied that certain issues need to be globally recognized and amended. UNESCO has declared that the 3rd of May will be a day to remind us that media are in several parts of the world under attack, their independence are denied, critical thinking is considered as a threat and journalists seeking the truth are harassed, threatened, roughed up, or even killed. I would like to add that it is also an opportunity to acknowledge that communication, critical thinking, and imagination are essential parts of human existence and culture, if this is suppressed the entire humanity will suffer.

Journalists are essential contributors to the well-being of our communities. They are communicators and we currently live within an Age of Information, which we definitely entered in the late 20th Century when our civilization underwent a shift from traditional industry to an economy primarily based upon information technology. Even if the transformation has been brusque, its is nevertheless a result of a development which finds its origin more than 500 years back in time.

During the 1450s, Johannes Gutenberg devised a method for printing books with movable, reusable types. In three years he completed an edition of nearly 200 bibles, the same amount of time it previously had taken to print a single book of the same size as Gutenberg´s Bible. Soon there were printing presses in all of Europe’s major cities. The printed book became the most useful, versatile and most enduring technology in world history.

For the first time in human existence written texts reached large segments of the population, giving rise to ideas that turned the world upside down. Everything changed and time could not be reversed. Old regimes crumbled and disappeared, science advanced, people exchanged information across borders, across seas and continents. The world opened up, new technologies developed, people demanded rights and justice, supported by the rapid spread of the written world. Priviliged decision makers tried to stop this development; wars were waged, heretics tortured and excecuted, printing presses smashed, newspaper offices burned to the ground, but the unchained word continued to expand, sowing its seeds of transformation. People came to realize that freedom of the press was the linchpin for a just and equal society. In 1823, the German author Heinrich Heine famously wrote “Where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings.” ³

What happened in the 16th century may be compared to the recent decades’ electronic information explosion, with its avalanche of social media, which just like the invention of printing with movable types is a result of technological innovation. The Canadian philosopher Marshall McLuhan called the global era of the printed book the Gutenberg Galaxy. However, already in 1962 McLuhan saw where humanity was heading, that the time of the Gutenberg Galaxy had begun to be replaced by computer technology: “Instead of tending towards a vast Alexandrinian library the world has become a computer, an electronic brain, exactly as an infantile piece of science fiction. And as our senses have gone outside us, Big Brother goes inside. So, unless aware of this dynamic, we shall at once move into a phase of panic terrors, exactly befitting a small world of tribal drums, total interdependence, and superimposed co-existence.” ⁴

The advent of the Internet and related social changes has during recent years affected the entire political discourse, making mis-information and deception more prevalent than ever before. Our political culture is increasingly framed by emotional appeals, neglecting and even resisting factual, complicated and multidimensional realities. Influential media outlets depend on their ability to attract viewers to their websites, so they thus might generate lucrative advertising revenues. With the sole purpose of attracting users and advertisers, startling and/or apealling stories are published without any foundations whatsoever. Easy access to online advertisment, increased political polarization and the enormous popularity of social media have all been implicated in the spread of ”fake news”, competing with well researched, responsable, and legitimate journalism. Commercialization of reporting has been an issue ever since the invention of the printing press. In 2014, the German journalist Udo Ulfkotte paid attention to the problem in his book Gekaufte Journalisten, in which he stated that secret services pay journalists to report stories in a certain light, something which also is true when it comes to politicians and decision makers in several nations around the world. ⁵

Fake news and an unrestrained internet are currently undermining serious media coverage, making it increasingly difficult for serious journalists to cover significant news – newspapers are shut down, journalists lose their jobs and income while reporting become ever more superficial and sensational. Parallell to this development, decision makers are incresingly trying to benefit from the marginalization of critical, professional and investigative journalism. Some, most notably the current president of the United States, have broadened the meaning of ”fake news” to include any reporting negative of their behaviour and leadership.

Totalitarian leadership tries to bask in on notions about the press spreading ”fake news”, i.e. criticism of its politics and is trying to control all media outlets, even appropriating as much reporting as possible. In its annual global survey, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) found that in 2019 at least 250 journalists had been imprisioned in relation to their work. After China, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt, the worst jailers were Eritrea, Vietnam, and Iran. There has in recent years been a rising trend to harass and imprison regime critical journalists, while using numerous pretexts to silence the free press, depicting censorship and concerns of holding on to power as an antidote to terrorism and social unrest. Turkey, China and Egypt accounted for more than half of all journalists jailed globally. ⁶

Chinese leaders were utterly displeased to learn that their nation by Reporters sans frontières (RSF) had been evaluated as a nation that did not favour any freedom of expression. China was actually at the 177th place out of 180 countries within RSF´s 2020 World Press Freedom Index, barley ahead of Eritrea, Turkmenistan and North Korea. China´s deplorable position was according to RSF due to the fact that its leadership to a high degree was ignoring Article 35 of their nation´s own consitution, which intended to guarantee freedom of the press. I was also pointed out that President Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party in recent years had tightened their control of China’s state and privately-owned media, increased surveillance of social media, and were actively trying to export their oppressive model of media control. It was furthermore stressed that in 2020, China remains ”the worlds biggest jailer of journalists” with more than 109 of them officially behind bars. ⁷ It is interesting to note that the Chinese Foreign Minstry spokesman, Geng Shuang, accused RSF of spreading ”fake news”.

Egypt´s low ranking in the 2020 World Press Freedom Index is due to the fact that over the past six years, Egyptian media have come to be almost entirely dominated by the State – including its intelligence services and security agencies. The Egyptian state is now in direct or indirect control of most of the newspapers, television and radio stations and can thus directly, or indirectly, censor all reporting. It has furthermore become dangerous to ”provoke” the regime. Not only journalists, but any media producer, run the risk of being put on trial for diffuse crimes, like insulting the judiciary and/or the president. When asked if the wievs of a world leader like Donald Trump had any influence on the freedom of the press in Egypt a journalist answered: ”It sets a tone. I would say it must matter on some level that the president of the United States expresses admiration for repressive governments that crack down on journalists and violate human rights.” ⁸

President Trump has called Egypt´s leader Abdel Fatah al-Sisis a ”great leader” and even my ”favorite dictator”. Much like Donald Trump and his supporters, Egypt’s leaders have responded to reports about the estimated number of coronavirus infections as though they were a personal attack, rather than a health crisis the entire world is struggling to contain. Opinions mirrored by another regime finding itself among the culprits when it comes to limiting freedom of speech – the Turkish president Recep Erdoğan, who has described journalists as ”throwing up” false information and untruths and thus being more dangerous than the virus itself. He accused media critical of his regime as ”waging a war against their own country” and working ”night and day to break the nation’s morale,” warning them that they would ”drown in their own pools of hatred and intrigues along with terrorist organisations.” ⁹

Freedom of speech is part of human culture, a tool to confront power abuse, corruption, injustice and violence. To preserve and defend human dignity and well-being we must protect the freedom of the press, if not – the people of the world will follow a road to self-extinction.

¹ Hikmet, Nazim ”A Sad State of Freedoom” in Bold, Alan (ed.) (1970) The Penguin Book of Socialist Verse. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books, p. 263.
² https://www.un.org/en/sections/observances/international-days/
³ From Heinrich Heine´s Almansor, A Tragedy, quoted in Ward, Graham (2003), True religion. Hoboken NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, p. 142.
⁴ McLuhan, Marshall (1962) The Gutenberg Galaxy; The making of typographic man. University of Toronto Press, p. 32.
⁵ Ulfkotte, Udo (2019) Presstitutes Embedded in the Pay of the CIA: A Confession from the Profession. San Diego CA: Progressive Press.
⁶ https://cpj.org/reports/2019/12/journalists-jailed-china-turkey-saudi-arabia-egypt.php
⁷ https://rsf.org/en/news/china-ranking-near-bottom-rsfs-index-claims-it-welcomes-foreign-journalists-despite-all-evidence
⁸ https://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/trend-lines/27870/simply-put-there-s-no-freedom-of-the-press-in-sisi-s-egypt
⁹ https://en.qantara.de/content/coronavirus-and-press-freedom-in-turkey-erdogans-crusade-against-all-media-and-political

Jan Lundius holds a PhD. on History of Religion from Lund University and has served as a development expert, researcher and advisor at SIDA, UNESCO, FAO and other international organisations.

Excerpt:

By Namrata Sharma
KATHMANDU, May 1 2020 (IPS)

This year’s World Press Freedom Day on 3 May falls during COVID-19 lockdowns in many of our countries. Restriction on movement means journalists all over the world are facing obstacles in getting interviews and data, and verifying stories before publishing.

In addition, the global pandemic has been used by many governments to control not just the people’s movement but also their right to information. Journalists have been intimidated or attacked, and photojournalists and videographers on the frontlines often risk getting infected while documenting stories.

Two recent webinars conducted by Global Investigative Journalism Network (GIJN) and Finance Uncovered (FU) showed that recent government moves to restrict the press in Nepal are not unique – they are happening in many countries around the world.

The global pandemic has been used by many governments to control not just the people’s movement but also their right to information. Journalists have been intimidated or attacked, and photojournalists and videographers on the frontlines often risk getting infected while documenting stories

There have been efforts by authorities to criminalise journalism, and this is putting journalists reporting on the pandemic at risk, noted Courtney Radsch of the Center to Protect Journalists at the GIJN webinar. In Nepal, too, there have been attempts by various government agencies to censor information. 

Last month, the portal Kathmandu Press posted a story about alleged corruption during the purchase of medical equipment involving people in high places. This story was deleted from the site by a software company maintaining the portal’s homepage which had links to individuals in the Prime Minister’s Office involved in the deal.

On 27 April, Radio Nepal aired a live interview of former prime minister Baburam Bhattarai that was sharply critical of Prime Minister K P Oli. The government asked the head of the state-owned radio station and its news editor for an explanation, and got the interview deleted from Radio Nepal’s site.

On 18 April, Press Council Nepal (PCN) sent a letter to Nepal Telecommunication Authority to shut down certain web-based portals and ban them from publishing false news. In all these recent cases, the government appears to be using the cover of the COVID-19 crisis and the excuse of protecting privacy and shielding the public from fake news and character assassination to crackdown on the free press.

“Many supposedly democratic countries like the United States, India and Nepal are censoring the press and making it very difficult for press freedom to prevail while covering COVID 19,” said Kosmos Biswokarma editor of Kathmandu Press. Tampering with the website without permission raised grave questions of freedom of press in this country, he added.

The mission of journalism is to use the citizens’ right to freedom of expression to keep them informed. Journalists go to great lengths, and put themselves at considerable risk, to gather and investigate factual information to alert the public and authorities about wrong-doing and malpractice.

However, citizens today get their information not just from the mass media but also from the Internet. The dissemination of fake news, rumours, defamation, violation of privacy on social media is not journalism. Governments should make that distinction.

The authorities should not mistake misinformation for journalism, and not use objectionable social media content for blanket suppression of journalistic information. There has to be a mechanism to track such content and take action against perpetrators. It is the Press Council Nepal’s job to trace these sources, and not issue directives to ban portals. In fact it is not the PCN’s job to close down the media at all.

During emergencies like the COVID-19 pandemic, due diligence rules are relaxed and there is a lack of transparency in big deals. Because it is the journalist’s job to speak truth to power, this often gets them into trouble, as happened in Nepal with the coverage of the Omni Business Corporate International in the direct purchase of test kits and medical equipment from China at inflated cost.

Shiva Gaunle of the Centre for Investigative Journalism Nepal (CIJ-N) says the biggest problem journalists are facing during the present crisis is getting data and verifying them. “It is not just the lockdown and restrictions on mobility, news items are taken off home pages or shut down, how can Nepal claim to have right to information and rule of law?” he asks.

Journalism is not a crime, and fake news is not journalism. Governments should be able to separate the two, especially during emergencies like this global pandemic.

Namrata Sharma is the former chair of the Centre for Investigative Journalism Nepal

Twitter: NamrataSharmaP

namrata1964@yahoo.com

Jerald Aruldas, a journalist from the southern state of Tamil Nadu, and his colleague, were held by city police for 9 hours for reporting on stories around alleged government corruption around the food aid distribution system and how doctors in Coimbatore faced food shortages while working during the COVID-19 lockdown. Courtesy: Jerald Aruldas

By Stella Paul
HYDERABAD, India , May 1 2020 (IPS)

Andrew Sam Raja Pandian, a digital journalist and founder of a news portal in the southern state of Tamil Nadu, was arrested for running two news articles related to COVID-19.

One of the articles exposed corruption in the government food aid distribution system, while the other highlighted doctors in Coimbatore city facing food issues. The city police first detained the journalist and photographer who had reported on the stories, Jerald Aruldas and M Balaji, for 9 hours before arresting Pandian for publishing the pieces.

Yesterday morning, Apr. 30, Aruldas told me about how his detainment and the arrest of his editor have shaken him: “The police did not hurt me or Balaji. We were not interrogated, just made to sit there for long hours. But it was still a very intimidating experience. There is an air of fear in the local media. Every media person is now scared of covering news related to COVID-19.”

The worries are not unjustified: Pandian, released on bail on Apr. 28, has been charged under several sections of criminal laws as well as the The Disaster Management Act, 2005. He faces several years in jail if proven guilty.

The arrest of Pandian and detention of Aruldas and Balaji are not isolated cases. Across India, media personnel have been facing violence, including intimidation, detention and arrests.

While some like Pandian have been arrested for reporting in the media on government inaction or its inability to combat COVID-19 crisis, some have been arrested for social media posts.

Zubair Ahmad, a senior freelance journalist based in India’s Andamans and Nicobor Islands, was arrested on Apr. 27 for sending a tweet that questioned the alleged quarantining of locals for speaking to COVID-19 patients over the phone.

Can someone explain why families are placed under home quarantine for speaking over phone with Covid patients? @MediaRN_ANI @Andaman_Admin

— Zubair Ahmed (@zubairpbl) April 26, 2020

Ahmad’s tweet was based on an article published by a local newspaper where a woman claimed she was put under quarantine following a phone call to a relative who tested positive for the coronavirus.

The same day, Ahmad was arrested by police for “posting inciting, false and instigating tweet to disrupt public harmony, violating government order and to create panic among the public”.

Currently out on conditional bail, Ahmad has also been charged for several offences under the The Disaster Management Act, 2005.

“I am safe, at home and under conditional bail,” he told me when I called him. But he sounded tired and particularly disturbed by the fact that the police have been carrying out a smear campaign against him.

For example, the police chief of Andamans and Nicobar Deependra Pathak called Ahmad a “self-proclaimed journalist” in his address to the media after his arrest.

“I have written for India Today, EPW  (Economic and Political Weekly – a well-known media publication), Down to Earth, IE (Indian Express), TOI (Times of India) etc. Now, they are trying to discredit me by calling me a self proclaimed and self styled journalist,” he told me.

The anguish is easy to understand and also relatable. It takes years for a journalist to build a career and reputation and earn the trust of readers/viewers. 

Questioning the credibility is an attempt to end the reader’s trust or destroy the very foundation of a journalist’s reputation.

IPS award-winning journalist and senior correspondent Stella Paul.

A disturbing global trend

This is not something happening only in India. Like the pandemic itself, assaults against working journalists and media outlets, especially those often criticising government policies and actions, have been on the rise worldwide.

One of the biggest such actions took place in Myanmar on Apr. 1 when the government ordered blockade of 230 local websites using local IP addresses.

Many of them were news portals like the Rakhine-based Narinjara News – a known critic of Myanmar army’s action against the minority Rohingyas. Other news sites that were blocked included the Development Media Group (DMG), Mandalay-based Mandalay In-Depth News, Voice of Myanmar and Tachileik-based Mekong News. All of which are officially registered with the Ministry of Information, which gives them permission to publish locally.

A number of organisations have appealed to the government to lift the ban, and my friend Ni Ni Aye, a political and internet access activist, says that there may have been a partial lifting of NGO-owned websites. But there is no clear picture yet.

As a journalist who has covered the Rohingya issues both within and outside of Myanmar, I can both understand and relate to the difficulties the media personnel associated with these websites. When your portal is blocked, your connections are blocked and you are cut off from the rest of the world, including your audience, which is your main support system.

The result of this could not only mean financial difficulties but also a very dangerous level of isolation, which makes you completely vulnerable.

In the winter of 2018, I visited Myanmar and connected to a public internet network. Immediately, all of my devices stopped working. They started working again the moment I left Myanmar airspace – no repairs or virus cleaning needed.

But during those six days when I could not send or receive a single message to anyone anywhere, I spent each moment in anxiety, fearing a knock on my door at any minute. The worst of all fears is to vanish without anyone in my family or any of my friends knowing about it.

Personal fears aside, the intimidation and suppression of media is also a big loss for the people who can no longer access the news they want. And when there is a pandemic with no available cure, lack of information is a threat to public safety. On Mar. 31, in a last editorial before it was blocked, the DMG wrote this: “the deprivation of the internet as a means of receiving information is especially problematic at a time when timely communication of coronavirus preventive measures could literally be life-saving”.

Rakhine state, for example, is now a black spot as hyperlocal news is no longer accessible. 

Nyi Khine Thwee, an artist in Myanmar, has long been drawing cartoons to show the human rights violations and the plight of people in Rakhine state. But since the COVID-19 pandemic, he has been using his art to express the current situation of media and freedom of speech in the country. Courtesy: Nyi Khine Thwee

Nyi Khine Thwee – an artist I know – has been describing the human rights violations and the plight of people in Rakhine through illustrations for a while. Thwee has now taken up drawing cartoons to express the current situation of media and freedom of speech in the country.

Thwee’s work seems to be a perfect response to an ongoing United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) campaign called Cartoons for Freedom of Expression, launched to commemorate the Press Freedom Day on May 3.  The campaign has been publishing series of cartoons that show the state of press freedom during the ongoing COVID-19 crisis.

Exposing fake news

Meanwhile, there is a bombardment of misinformation related to COVID-19 on social media. In India, the fake news first began to appear in February and I remember receiving Whatsapp texts that said chopping onions would kill the disease. Then, as the virus spread further, the volume of misinformation also increased.

Some news outlets did play a part in this by sharing news of cow urine being a possible cure for COVID-19. Yet there was no official body or strategy to counter the fake news until Mar. 31 when the Supreme Court of India, instructed the government to share daily updates on the coronavirus.

However, despite the government efforts, fake news and false information, especially laced with communal hatred have continued, especially on social media platforms.

I just noticed one such post on Twitter which calls upon Hindus to celebrate because a Muslim parliamentarian from Hyderabad died because of COVID-19. I can only imagine the kind of responses and public anger such a hateful and fake news post will result in when it goes viral.

I read a brief just released by UNESCO about the role of free and independent media in countering COVID-19.

Titled ‘Journalism, press freedom and COVID-19’, the brief quotes Director-General Audrey Azoulay as saying: “At this crucial moment and for our future, we need a free press, and journalists need to be able to count on all of us.”

I think the UNESCO brief hits the nail hard: if we are to win this battle against the pandemic, we need the right information and this cannot be accessed only by wielding the baton, but also by freeing and strengthening the pen of journalists.

Excerpt:

By Farhana Haque Rahman
ROME, Apr 30 2020 (IPS)

Wearing an orange jacket and face mask, Li Zehua, a Chinese freelance journalist, can be seen filming himself in a car. He is sure that state security agents have been pursuing him since he began documenting events in Hubei’s capital Wuhan, the first epicentre of the COVID-19 pandemic. A second YouTube video, circulating widely since he launched his appeal, ends abruptly when two men knock at his apartment. He has just reappeared online after two months, saying police interrogated him and put him in quarantine and that he was well looked after during this period.

Other ‘citizen journalists’ like Li have also seemingly vanished after reporting and sharing images of the Coronavirus outbreak in China – inside hospital wards, in the crematorium, on the street. “The censorship is very strict and people’s accounts are being closed down if they share my content,” lawyer-journalist Chen Qiushi told the BBC in February. He is still missing.

Human Rights Watch says Chinese authorities are putting the same effort into trying to contain the virus as in suppressing criticism. In March, the Chinese government expelled 13 journalists working for three US publications.

Farhana Haque Rahman

The index, RSF says, shows a “clear correlation between suppression of media freedom in response to the coronavirus pandemic, and a country’s ranking in the Index” of 180 countries and territories. China (177) and Iran (down 3 at 173) censored their coronavirus outbreaks extensively. Iraq (down 6 at 162) punished Reuters for an article that questioned official coronavirus figures, and Hungary (down 2 at 89) has passed a coercive ‘coronavirus’ law.

The danger and long-term risks of suppressing press freedoms have been strikingly exposed by the pandemic. As the global death toll mounts amidst an economic crisis of unprecedented proportions, China stands accused of acting too late in warning the world about the timing and extent of the threat.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chungying followed up by questioning about the speed of the U.S.’s response to the virus after banning arrivals from China on February 2. Promoting transparent and free reporting in an interconnected world is a global necessity.

This is indeed not the problem of just one country. The World Press Freedom Index illustrates the oppression of journalists from the North to the South in what appears like a pandemic in its own right, regardless of the causes and of the political system.

Even the president of the world’s most powerful democracy, Donald Trump, has described the press as “the enemy of the American people.”

Yet it’s where institutions are more fragile or conflict is rife that the dislike of governments to be held accountable takes shape in typically authoritarian ways.

In Myanmar, eNay Myo Lin was arrested on March 31 charged with terrorism for interviewing a representative of the Arakan Army, a rebel group fighting for autonomy in Rakhine state. Bangladesh, on the other side of the border is seeing increasing violence against journalists.

Democracy is not enough to guarantee media freedom either. In India under Prime Minister Narendra Modi the press “is not so free, writes the New York Times. According to non-profit Pen America, “harassing critical writers and journalists not just in India but globally is a disturbing new low for Modi’s government that’s already put Indian democracy on its heels”.

But it’s not just governments making threats. Organised crime, corrupted officials and terrorism are also constant dangers. April 18 marked the anniversary of the killing of journalist Lyra McKee by a republican paramilitary activist during rioting in Northern Ireland.

So how do we challenge this kind of oppression and abuse in a world where, as Thomas Jefferson said, “the only security of all is in a free press”?

Ultimately, just as in a pandemic, the freedom of the press can only be guaranteed by a coordinated global effort and a focus on the long-term advantages of a more critical world. This means pressure to reinforce legal frameworks, including prosecuting harassers and killers, perhaps just as the international community would persecute war criminals, while offering a global protection for journalists. Finding and promoting innovative ways of subsidizing independent media, as well as getting big tech companies to pay for the content they share, is also crucial to help a free press to thrive.

Albert Camus, writer and author of The Plague, was also a journalist. As he once noted: “A free press can, of course, be good or bad, but, most certainly without freedom, the press will never be anything but bad.”

Excerpt:

By Josef Benedict
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Apr 29 2020 (IPS)

May 3rd marks World Press Freedom Day around the world. During this COVID-19 pandemic, a robust media environment is critical: access to life-saving information is key in the fight against the virus. As governments impose a range of restrictions in attempts to curb the pandemic, journalists help hold authorities to account by providing analysis, engaging in debate about government actions, and creating a space for dialogue about the future we all hope to see.

However, civic freedoms are under assault across the world. Data released by the CIVICUS Monitor in its People Power Under Attack report — which rates and tracks respect for fundamental freedoms in 196 countries — shows that compared to the previous year, twice as many people are living in countries where the freedoms of association, peaceful assembly, and expression are being violated.

In Asia, the percentage of people living in countries with closed, repressed or obstructed civic space is now at 95 percent. There has been growing intolerance for dissent in this region and states are increasingly using restrictive laws or intimidation tactics to muzzle activists and critics. In the past year, numerous Asian governments – from Pakistan to Hong Kong – used excessive force to disrupt protests, while civil society organisations critical of the authorities faced smear campaigns or were forced to shut down.

This has made the Asian region an extremely repressive and dangerous place for journalists and media outlets to operate. Many seeking to expose human rights violations and corruption by those in power, or who try to amplify voices critical of the state, often put themselves in harm’s way.

Journalists are also being criminalised in many countries in Asia for their reporting. In the Philippines, Maria Ressa, executive editor of news website Rappler, which has published extensively on abuses in President Duterte’s ‘war on drugs,’ has faced baseless cases of tax evasion and libel. In Myanmar, authorities have repeatedly targeted journalists, while in Cambodia, Prime Minister Hun Sen has attempted to silence the few remaining independent journalists and media outlets in the country. Cambodian Radio Free Asia journalists, Yeang Sothearin and Uon Chhin, continue to face fabricated espionage charges since 2017 for their reporting, despite the lack of any credible evidence against them.

Even in a country like India, where the press has played a crucial role in protecting the country’s democracy since its independence, journalists now feel under attack. Kishorechandra Wangkhem, a journalist from Manipur, spent a year in prison under the draconian National Security Act for posting a video on social media criticising the ruling party.

Governments are also increasing the use of censorship to block the flow of news in the Asian region.

The Chinese Communist Party is the main perpetrator as it continues to expand its censorship regime, blocking critical media outlets and social media sites. In Bangladesh, the authorities have blocked Al Jazeera and numerous other news portals and websites critical of the state. While in countries like Singapore, the authorities have targeted independent news websites such as The Online Citizen, to suppress its critical reporting. States also have used internet shutdowns to block reporting, for example, in places like Indian-administered Kashmir, in Chin and Rakhine states in Myanmar, and in West Papua in Indonesia.

Across Asia, journalists are also facing physical attacks, threats and intimidation from the authorities and other non-state actors. Afghanistan remains one of the most dangerous countries for journalists. Dozens of journalists have been attacked by security forces and members of armed groups. Ten journalists were shot dead in 2019 by unknown gunmen and some were abducted by armed groups.

In the Philippines there is a culture of impunity around attacks and killing of journalists, with perpetrators rarely held to account. In 2019, radio journalist Eduardo Dizon, who often reported on corruption, was shot dead while on his way home in Kidapawan City after hosting a daily news commentary show. He sustained five gunshot wounds when two gunmen on a motorcycle stopped beside his car at a corner and shot him.

Journalists are also going missing. Shafiqul Islam Kajol, a leading Bangladeshi photojournalist and newspaper editor, is believed to have been forcibly disappeared on 10 March, a day after defamation charges were filed against him by an influential ruling party lawmaker.

These threats to press freedom are being exacerbated as we combat the COVID-19 pandemic. As governments attempt to control the narrative, combat misinformation and silence criticism, journalists are in the firing line.

In February, Chinese freelance journalist Li Zehua went missing. He had traveled to Wuhan from Beijing to report on the COVID-19 outbreak and had posted a video saying that a local neighbourhood committee had not carried out the basic countermeasures promised by authorities and had also tried to cover up information about infected cases in the community.

In the Philippines, two journalists were charged in early April for spreading “false information” about the country’s COVID-19 crisis. While in Cambodia, police arrested a journalist, Sovann Rithy, for quoting the country’s prime minister who spoke about the economic consequences of COVID-19. The authorities also revoked the license for Rithy’s news site.

Most recently, in a blatant attempt to use the pandemic to intimidate a leading media outlet in India, Siddharth Varadarajan, founding editor of The Wire, was charged for reporting on a government minister violating the country’s coronavirus lockdown. These cases highlight a worrying trend that must be checked before it deteriorates further.

Therefore, it is crucial now more than ever for us to push back on these attacks and restrictions to press freedom. Individuals and their communities cannot protect themselves against disease when information is denied to them. The protection of the media is a protection of the public’s right to information. As we mark this important day for press freedom, we must ensure that journalism thrives and plays its essential role of informing the public and holding officials accountable.

• Josef Benedict is a Civic Space Researcher with CIVICUS, the global civil society alliance. He covers Asia-Pacific.

By External Source
Apr 29 2020 (IPS)

MEDIA WORLDWIDE is facing crises on multiple fronts, exacerbated by the COVID19 pandemic. Reporters without Borders released its 2020 World Press Freedom Index on April 21st, noting that the Coronavirus is being used by authoritarian governments to implement “shock doctrine” measures that would be impossible in normal times.

The index shows a “clear correlation between suppression of media freedom in response to the Coronavirus pandemic, and a country’s ranking in the Index.” Of the 180 countries and territories in the index, Iran (ranked at 173) censored their Coronavirus outbreaks extensively. Iraq, at 162, punished Reuters for an article that questioned official pandemic figures, and Hungary (ranked at 89) has just passed a coercive Coronavirus Law.

The long-term risks of suppressing press freedoms have been exposed by the pandemic. As the death toll mounts amidst an economic crisis of unprecedented proportions, promoting transparent reporting is a global necessity. Yet, several countries stand accused of acting too late in warning the world about the timing and extent of the threat.

The World Press Freedom Index illustrates the oppression of journalists from North to South and a pandemic in its own right seems to have fomented.

In Myanmar, Voice of Myanmar’s editor was arrested recently and charged with terrorism for interviewing a representative of the Arakan Army, a rebel group fighting for regional autonomy.

Even the president of the world’s most powerful democracy has described the press as “the enemy of the people.”

Ultimately, the freedom of the press can only be guaranteed by a coordinated global effort, public awareness and a focus on the long-term advantages of a more critical world.

This year’s World Press Freedom Day aims to do just that, under the theme of “Journalism Without Fear or Favour.” It calls for awareness on specific issues about the safety of journalists, their independence from political or commercial influence, and gender equality in all aspects of the media.

In the words of Albert Camus, “…without freedom, the press will never be anything but bad.”

By Yeganeh Rezaian
WASHINGTON DC, Apr 28 2020 (IPS)

In 2014 my husband and I were arrested in my native country, Iran, for the crime of working as journalists. I spent 72 days in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison, all of them in solitary confinement.

What I lived through during that time, years ago, compels me to speak out now in support of journalists who are behind bars at a moment when their communities need them most, during a public health pandemic where access to information is essential to combating the deadly virus.

Journalists will not provide the cure for coronavirus, but explaining the destructive rampage it’s on and ways to reduce the disease’s ability to spread, is an essential service that would be in the national security interests of every country that instead has journalists languishing in jail.

After our home was raided by security agents and we were taken, blindfolded and handcuffed, I was immediately placed in a tiny cell that was infested with cockroaches. I was given a set of prison clothes that had not been washed after the previous owner finished with them; I could smell her, whoever she was, the moment I put them on.

My cell had no toilet or sink, and I only had access to them when my guards felt like giving it to me. I was not allowed to shower for the first twelve days of my captivity.

Obviously, there is no good prison in the world. Short of execution, long term imprisonment is the most severe form of punishment, and in most parts of the world it’s intended, at least in part, to demean the people being held.

For political prisoners, which jailed journalists almost unanimously qualify as, a stripping of dignity is invariably a key part of the process.

In prison I had no way of maintaining good hygiene or avoiding malnutrition. There was no access to vitamins, clean water or fresh air. Psychological pressure leads to stress levels that are unimaginably higher than the ones we experience in our normal lives.

Credit: CPJ

In such an environment, rest doesn’t come easy. Attempting to sleep on the ground, with only filthy blankets as cover and the lights that were turned on 24 hours a day made it nearly impossible.

Imagine the increased risks posed by such circumstances with a fast moving and lethal virus on the loose in confined spaces. One becomes immuno-compromised by default the moment they are imprisoned.

In prison there are no adequate medical supplies or doctors to administer them. If a country is being decimated by the coronavirus right now, as Iran, China and Turkey are for example, the risks for prisoners increase exponentially. Especially in overpopulated public wards.

It is a disheartening irony that those prisoners currently being held in solitary confinement, as I once was, may actually be safer than those in general prison populations.

In the confined spaces of prison, one’s mind works over time. You are constantly worried about your loved ones in the outside world and they for you. With a pandemic spreading day by day, the sense of hopelessness imprisoned journalists are experiencing today for me is palpable.

Adding to that strain is the decision, however wise it may be, by most prisons to indefinitely suspend in person visits to inmates.

At a time when journalists could be helping to slow the spread of the virus by educating the public, too many are languishing behind bars, at least 250 according to the latest figures from the Committee to Protect Journalists where I work.

Many of them are ill and are not provided adequate access to healthcare. All of them are colleagues unjustly imprisoned for their work.

The imperative to ensure the safety of fellow journalists no matter where they are or what they cover drives my work at CPJ. In the current circumstances that means protecting their health, too.

This is why I join with colleagues from around the world in asking leaders to release journalists they are holding in prison. Doing so would be good for the world at a time when cooperation at all levels of society is desperately needed.

Excerpt:

By Aarti Narsee
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa, Apr 27 2020 (IPS)

Censorship, smear campaigns and harassment. These are just some of the daily struggles that media professionals are facing in Hungary. And now the threat of jail time may be looming. In the context of World Press Freedom Day, there is little to celebrate in the Eastern Bloc region.

The government, under the leadership of Prime Minister Victor Orban and his Fidesz Party, has ramped up its efforts to destroy any remaining media independence with its ‘Bill on the Protection against the Coronavirus’. The new legislation gives government the power to rule by decree, allowing it to prolong emergency measures and evade parliamentary scrutiny. In addition, independent journalists in Hungary covering the pandemic may face prison time of up to five years for publishing any content about the virus which is considered ‘fake news’ by the government.

Arguably, what is considered ‘conveying false information’ is open to the government’s interpretation and may be anything that paints a negative picture of its response to the pandemic. A case in point – the week before the bill was submitted, Orban’s party and pro-government media accused the independent press of spreading ‘fake news’ for reporting that Hungarian doctors and nurses lack proper protective gear.

Ironically, criticism of the new coronavirus bill has been labelled ‘fake’ by Orban’s political allies, who deny that it gives the government unlimited power.

Hungary’s response to COVID-19 has been flagged as a cause for concern by the CIVICUS Monitor, an online platform that records violations to civic freedoms, such as freedom of expression. In a recently published report documenting civic space restrictions during the pandemic, the Monitor cites “overly broad emergency laws and new restrictive legislation” implemented in Hungary.

However, this latest move by Orban’s government, which will negatively impact the working life of journalists, shouldn’t come as a surprise. Censorship is the number one violation documented in Europe and Central Asia by the CIVICUS Monitor, and the most common violation globally, occurring across 178 countries.

Freedom of expression has been in decline for several years in Hungary. In 2013 Hungary was ranked 56 out of 180 countries in the World Press Freedom Index but it slid down to 89th place this year.

In January 2020, the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union (HCLU) reported that several online independent media platforms were barred from covering the prime minister’s annual press conference (‘Orbáninfo’) without a legitimate reason.

While in February, an investigation by Politico reported that, according to internal emails obtained, Hungarian public media (MTVA) employees require special approval from their editors to cover some topics, such as climate activist Greta Thunberg and migration. Coverage of reports from leading human rights organisations, like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch (HRW), is prohibited.

In addition, journalists face continuous attacks and intimidation, such as smear campaigns which brand them ‘Hungary-haters’ or ‘foreign agents’, and female journalists are also under attack.

Examples of harassment faced by female journalists are documented in a recent report by the International Press Institute (IPI). It describes the case of Rebeka Kulcsár, a journalist with 444.hu, who was subjected to bullying (“you stupid b***h”), sexual violence (“I’m going to rape you”) and public shaming when her picture was posted online.

Index.hu’s photo editor, Tímea Karip, explains that some female journalists choose to leave their bylines off their stories because of harassment. “Politics and being a woman are both risk factors for harassment,” she says. Acts such as these, which aim to suppress freedom of expression, have had a chilling effect on journalists.

The recent developments in Hungary are a huge concern for democracy, freedom of expression and the rule of law. Despite this, the European Union has failed to take any concrete action against its member state.

The EU has shied away from directly criticising Hungary. In March, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said, “Democracy cannot work without free and independent media. Respect for freedom of expression and legal certainty are essential in these uncertain times.” Although she was referring directly to Hungary, she failed to mention the EU state by name. Von der Leyen finally broke her silence in April by openly condemning Hungary’s new coronavirus bill. However, the EU’s response can barely be considered a slap on the wrist – Hungary is yet to feel any real pressure from its big brother supervisor.

The EU needs to act more decisively: silence and prevarication may have a ripple effect on media freedom for other countries in the Eastern bloc.

Media freedom is already under threat in neighboring states, such as Poland. According to the International Press Institute (IPI), around 50 criminal and civil cases have been brought against the Polish newspaper, Gazeta Wyborcza, by various state or state-controlled institutions. Also, the ruling Law and Justice party (PiS) has used several successful methods to stifle critical reporting, and PiS politicians repeatedly invoke criminal libel laws against journalists.

If Hungary is to be held accountable for its recent actions, then a more direct approach is needed from the EU in order to prevent freedom of expression from deteriorating any further.

In the meantime, another way to protect media freedom in Hungary is through the judicial system. This was recently demonstrated when the Budapest-Capital Regional Court ruled that the decision of the Hungarian Competition Authority to allow for the creation of a pro-government media empire (KESMA) was unlawful. In late 2018, 476 pro-government media outlets were swept into KESMA, with many affiliated to allies of Prime Minister Viktor Orban.

Although there are no reported cases of journalists being arrested under the new coronavirus law, the bill has created a hostile environment for media professionals, and many Hungarian journalists are now facing threats and demands to censor their work.

The EU should take note: while we wait for it to act decisively, on World Press Freedom Day journalists continue to remain under threat, as the little media freedom that does remain in Hungary is slowly eroded.

Hungary is rated ‘obstructed’ by the CIVICUS Monitor.

* Aarti Narsee is a Civic Space Research officer at CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation

Hundreds of thousands of people took part in protests across Slovakia in the weeks after journalist Jan Kuciak and his fiancée Martina Kusnirova were killed, eventually forcing the resignation of the Prime Minister and Interior Minister. Credit: Ed Holt/IPS

By Ed Holt
BRATISLAVA, Apr 8 2020 (IPS)

Journalists and rights activists have welcomed the jailing of a man for the murders of Slovak investigative reporter Jan Kuciak and his fiancée Martina Kusnirova, but say others involved in the killings must be convicted too if justice is to be fully served.

Self-confessed hired killer Miroslav Marcek, 37, was sentenced to 23 years in jail by a Slovak court this week.

At a hearing in January he had pleaded guilty to murdering the couple, both 27, in February 2018. He shot the pair at Kuciak’s home in Velka Maca, 40 miles east of the Slovak capital Bratislava.

But three other people – Tomas Szabo, Alena Zsuszova, and Marian Kocner – are also on trial over the murders and groups including the Slovak anti-corruption and rights movement Za slusne Slovensko (For a Decent Slovakia), which was formed in response to the killings, said it wanted to see everyone involved brought to justice.

“It is extremely important that the intermediaries and those who ordered the murder of Jan Kuciak are tried and punished….we await further convictions,” the group said in a Facebook post after Marcek’s sentencing.

The killings of Kuciak and Kusnirova shocked the nation and prompted the largest mass protests in the country since the fall of communism.

Prime Minister Robert Fico and Interior Minister Robert Kalinak were forced to resign, and the head of the police service later stepped down.

Police said that the murders were related to Kuciak’s work as an investigative journalist – Kuciak’s last story had exposed alleged links between Italian mafia and Fico’s Social Democracy party – and the subsequent investigation uncovered alleged links between politicians, prosecutors, judges, and police officers and the people allegedly involved in the killings.

At the centre of this was Kocner, a powerful local businessman with alleged links to organised crime, whom Kuciak had written about.

Charged with ordering Kuciak’s murder, for many he has become the central figure in the trial and a symbol of deep-rooted corruption at the highest levels of the state.

Following Marcek’s sentencing, attention has already turned to what sentence Kocner, if he is found guilty, will receive.

While some, including relatives of the murdered couple, said Marcek should have been jailed for even longer, others said that it was key that Kocner is seen to be given an even harsher sentence.

Pavol Szalai, head of European Union and Balkans Desk at press freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF), told IPS: “I would not want to comment on whether Marcek’s sentence is long enough or not. What is important though is that if Kocner is found guilty he is given an exemplary sentence – a whole life sentence meaning he will stay in prison until the end of his natural life.

“For the mastermind of the murder, Marcek was dispensable, he was someone who was hired to kill. What is important is that if Kocner – who is allegedly the mastermind – had not ordered the killing, there would have been no murder of Jan Kuciak and Martina Kusnirova.”

Writing on the Slovak news website Aktuality.sk, where Kuciak was employed, comment writer Dag Danis, made a similar call.

He said after Marcek was sentenced: “The court should save the harshest punishment for Marian Kocner, who, according to prosecutors, ordered the ‘disappearance’ of Jan Kuciak in the naïve belief that it would silence other journalists.”

Kocner has denied the charges against him, as have Zsuzsova, who is accused of arranging Kuciak’s killing, and Szabo, who is charged with helping Marcek carry out the murder.

The court hearings are in their early stages and those following them are so far reluctant to speculate on the outcome.

In an editorial just before the start of the trial the Sme daily suggested that Kocner would probably not be found guilty. But some journalists who spoke to IPS said that the proceedings over the initial few days of hearings had led them to believe he may actually be convicted.

Whatever happens, local journalists have said the outcome of the trial will be a watershed in Slovak history, in terms of both restoring public trust in a judiciary which the Kuciak murder investigation has shown to apparently be riddled with corruption, and in showing that same judiciary can clearly punish crimes designed to silence journalists.

For some, Marcek’s conviction has gone some way to doing that.

Drew Sullivan, editor at the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, told IPS: “Impunity is the norm with the killing of journalists. Usually, less than 10 percent of these cases are solved and many of those don’t ultimately get to the person who ordered it. So far this case looks like a pleasant outlier.”

However, others point out that Marcek’s conviction alone is not enough.

Gulnoza Said, Europe and Central Asia programme co-ordinator at the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), told IPS: “The sentencing of confessed hitman Miroslav Marcek is an important step towards justice. We hope to see full justice through fair trial and punishment of all those involved in the assassination, including the masterminds.

“Unfortunately, we see way too often how killers get away with the murder of journalists. Ending impunity is crucial for the safety of all journalists.”

In Iran, which has seen some of the highest COVID-19 infection and death rates in the world, a number of reporters are now facing jail after being detained earlier this month for challenging official statistics about the outbreak of the disease in the country. People in Rasht, Gilan Province, Iran, taking precautions to prevent infection by wearing masks in public. mojtaba mosayebzadeh

By Ed Holt
BRATISLAVA, Mar 20 2020 (IPS)

Growing intimidation and repression of journalists reporting on the coronavirus is threatening public health in some countries, press freedom monitors have warned.

Repressive regimes desperate to control the narrative around the disease’s spread have stepped up their harassment of journalists challenging official information on cases and their handling of the outbreak, they say.

And by cracking down on those trying to report accurately on the disease, these regimes are jeopardising the dissemination of essential facts the population may need to keep themselves safe, the groups argue.

“When the truth is repressed, everyone’s lives are put in danger, not just journalists,’” Robert Mahoney, deputy executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), told IPS.

Since the emergence of the disease at the end of last year in China and its subsequent transformation into a global pandemic, there have been growing concerns over the treatment of reporters covering virus outbreaks in some states.

In China, there have been reports of local journalists who criticised the government’s response to the virus being harassed by security forces. Some have even vanished, presumed taken by police and detained in an unknown location.

Meanwhile, last month, three Wall Street Journal reporters were expelled from China over an article about the impact of the virus on the Chinese economy. And just this week 13 journalists working for The Wall Street Journal, New York Times and Washington Post had their credentials revoked by Chinese authorities.

Beijing said this followed United States authorities’ tightening of rules for Chinese media outlets operating in the country, but the editors of the three newspapers all condemned the decision. Dean Baquet, the executive editor of the New York Times, said it was “especially irresponsible at a time when the world needs the free and open flow of credible information about the coronavirus pandemic”.

But it is not just China where journalists are facing problems for not toeing the government line.

In Iran, which has seen some of the highest COVID-19 infection and death rates in the world, a number of reporters are now facing jail after being detained earlier this month for challenging official statistics about the outbreak of the disease in the country.

Fardin Moustafai, the editor of a news channel on the Telegram instant messaging app, was this month formally charged with publishing figures contradicting official information about the epidemic’s progress, according to press freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF).

It says two journalists were detained for questioning in Rasht, one of the Iranian cities worst hit by the disease, after publishing information about the situation in the city and the number of victims while four journalists were questioned over official information about the epidemic.

Reza Moisi, head of the Afghanistan-Iran Desk at RSF, told IPS that some journalists who had been brought in for questioning over their reporting will now stand trial and could face jail sentences.

He said though that the regime’s approach to such journalists would “do nothing to help combat the coronavirus epidemic, quite the contrary.”

“The repression of press freedom in Iran is systematic and therefore the control of information there is implacable. This repression targets journalists, of course, but also the public’s right to be informed. Researchers and journalists themselves have said this is one reason why situations, especially in a crisis, worsen.

“In the current crisis, the concealment of information and lack of complete and independent information has clearly put the population in danger,” he said.

The crackdown on journalists in Iran, and in other places such as China, is little surprise, said Mahoney.

“We have seen journalists face repression in places like China and Iran in the past. There are governments which want to control the narrative when something embarrassing, something they appear to be dealing badly with, or has got out of their control, like a pandemic, happens,” he said.

“The apparatus of censorship is already in place, this is just another time that it has been turned on to control the flow of information,” he added.

But concerns over the press’s ability to report accurately on the crisis are not confined solely to countries seen to have repressive regimes.

In the U.S., for instance, there has been criticism about the way the White House has informed about the disease. Critics say there has been a litany of scientifically baseless, false, misleading or confusing statements from President Donald Trump and other officials for months.

U.S. media also reported that Trump tried to have at least one health expert, Dr. Nancy Messonnier, director of the National Centre for Immunisation and Respiratory Diseases, muzzled after she publicly contradicted the President’s statements and that the White House tried to gag health officials who wanted to warn elderly people to avoid air travel.

Officials have also openly attacked media for their reporting on COVID-19. At the end of last month, acting White House chief of staff David Mulvaney said the media was overplaying the dangers of the disease as a way to “bring down the president”.

Mahoney said that in situations where governments effectively bypass the press and speak directly to the people, or do not give them proper access to relevant officials and experts, incorrect or misleading information can end up being passed out to the population unchecked.

“Look at the US where the White House was telling people for weeks that the coronavirus was just like seasonal flu, and then suddenly it’s an emergency,” he said.

“The work journalists do in uncovering things, such as corruption or political scandals, is important but often does not have an immediate impact on normal people’s lives. But their work now has real-time consequences – it could be a matter of life and death. This is why journalists need to have, and be able to disseminate, correct information. If the truth is repressed, the correct information is not getting out,” he explained.

The importance of ensuring accurate information is relayed to not just the public but healthcare workers and scientists has recently been pointed out by health professionals.

Last month, dozens of public health scientists wrote in The Lancet medical journal of their concerns that misinformation about COVID-19 could be hindering efforts to contain the disease.

Previous studies, including on recent Ebola outbreaks on Africa, have shown that misinformation can worsen infectious disease outbreaks.

To this end, governments around the world have taken action to stop the spread of hoaxes and fake news about the disease. Some of this has been drastic, including criminalisation and long jail terms for people found guilty of posting or sharing misinformation about the virus and its spread.

This has led to fears that in some countries these measures are being used to silence critical voices, including journalists.

In China alone, as of February 21, China’s Ministry of Public Security had registered more than 5,500 cases of people “fabricating and deliberately disseminating false and harmful information”.

In Malaysia, for example, dozens of people, including a journalist, have been arrested for allegedly spreading false information about the virus via social media. There have been similar arrests across Asia, including in India, Thailand and Indonesia, in recent weeks.

Moiri told IPS that in Iran, more than 130 people have been arrested since the end of February for publishing false information. “Not all these people are journalists, but many of them are probably citizen journalists who have published something that contradicts official information,” he said.

Journalism experts have cast doubt over the effectiveness and motivations behind such measures.

Lynette Leonard, Associate Professor at the Journalism and Mass Communication Department of the American University in Bulgaria, told IPS: “Censorship is always a concern even with ‘fake news’. There is rarely a clear way of distinguishing the political goals of criminalising information dissemination from public health goals.

“Fake news, the intentional spread of false information to gain influence or power, is a real problem but the term has been manipulated so much that any legislation that is enacted quickly will likely lack the precise definitions needed to be useful in the fight [against it].”

With no end expected to the pandemic anytime soon, it is unclear what further threats journalists in some countries will face for challenging their governments’ handling of the crisis.

But in at least one country they are unlikely to be effective in completely suppressing critical reporting.

During a string of crises over the last year, including floods in March 2019, popular protests last November, the shooting down of a Ukrainian airliner in in February, and now the coronavirus outbreak, the regime has made increasing use of censorship and repression, particularly to control the population, according to Moisi.

“But the question is, will the Islamic Republic of Iran win this war on information? The country’s recent history shows that repression and imprisonment have not kept journalists quiet,” he said.

Igor Matovic, Slovakia’s prime minister-elect, wants to fund investigative journalists to act as corruption watchdogs on government and state bodies. Credit: Ed Holt/IPS

By Ed Holt
BRATISLAVA, Mar 9 2020 (IPS)

Plans announced by Slovakia’s prime minister-elect to fund investigative journalists to act as corruption watchdogs on government and state bodies have been dismissed as “a road to hell” by local journalists.

Igor Matovic, whose OLaNO party won Slovakia’s elections at the end of last month on the back of a strongly anti-corruption campaign, last week said investigative journalists were the best people to keep a check on the use of public funds by ministers and state officials.

But the idea, which comes just two years after Slovak investigative reporter Jan Kuciak and his fiancée Martina Kusnirova were shot dead, has been met with almost universal antipathy by the country’s journalistic community.

They say it could compromise journalists’ independence and fear it could be a way for political leaders to absolve themselves of responsibility for rooting out corruption.

Instead, they say, the incoming prime minister would be better off concentrating on introducing legislation to ensure they can do their work more efficiently and safely.

“It’s nice that Mr Matovic is thinking of us, and this idea may be well-meant, but it’s is a road to hell,” Arpad Soltesz, head of the Jan Kuciak Centre for Investigative Journalism, told IPS.

Matovic said just hours after he won the elections that he wanted a special unit set up to root out public sector corruption.

He suggested the unit be made up of investigative journalists working across the country who could investigate corruption in central government and ministries as well as regional authorities and state bodies.

The fund would receive 10 million EUR per year from the state – Matovic has suggested legislation could be brought in to guarantee the funding – and that a yet to be established journalists’ organisation would decide on allocating the financing from the fund.

Slovakia has seen a slew of corruption scandals, some involving people at the highest levels of government, in recent years. The story Kuciak was working on when he and his fiancée were shot in his home east of the capital Bratislava, exposed links between the Smer party and the Italian mafia.

Matovic told Slovak media the work of the fund “would [act as] the best independent arbitrator on the transparency of the use of public funds.”

However, journalists said it could raise serious questions over media independence.

Marek Vagovic, head of investigative reporting at the Aktuality.sk online news outlet which Kuciak was working for when he was killed, said in a Facebook post: “As one of the key pillars of respectable media is its independence, it is not appropriate to take any financial support from the government/state. Not now, not in the past, nor in the future…. It could lower public trust in us.”

The work investigative reporters do is widely recognised as a vital part of any free democracy in many states. But it is often expensive and not all newspapers can afford to do such reporting.

Because of this, funds are available in many countries, some with state financing, for investigative journalists.

However, many are clearly independent from governments which finance them, such as the Dutch Journalism Fund and the Dutch Fund for Journalism which receive millions of euro per year in funding from the Dutch Education Ministry, but which are also funded from other sources and which decide on grant applications using independent experts.

Matovic’s plans so far suggest money for the Slovak fund would come solely from the state – something which worries local journalists who point to neighbouring Hungary as an example of what can go wrong when government funds the media.

Populist Hungarian PM Viktor Orban and his Fidesz party are estimated to be in control of up to 90 percent of the country’s media, having used policy and public funding to essentially wipe out critical and independent news outlets.

In 2018, 467 media outlets alone, some of which had been created using public funds, were ‘given’ to the Central European Press and Media Foundation (KESMA) – run by people close to Orban – by their pro-government owners. This effectively brought them under the control of the regime.

Beata Balogova, editor in chief of the Slovak daily Sme, was quoted in Slovak media as saying: “Forgive me if, in a region where Viktor Orban created KESMA, I’m a bit concerned about similar initiatives.”

Balogova and others have also questioned journalists’ powers to deal with corruption.

Matus Kostolny, editor in chief of the Dennik N daily, wrote in his paper: “Investigative journalists can uncover dozens of scandals, but they have no chance of uncovering everything and, unlike the state, they do not have the options to investigate, follow, and use documents that the police, prosecutors and secret service do.”

He added: “It is tempting to leave it to journalists to do, but, in reality it is the prime minister and his coalition partners who must be responsible for the government’s performance.”

Senior figures at Slovak newspapers have urged the incoming Prime Minister to instead focus efforts on making it easier and safer for journalists to investigate corruption.

Before his death Kuciak had told police he had been threatened by prominent local businessman Marian Kocner, whom Kuciak had written about. Kocner was later arrested and is currently on trial for ordering Kuciak’s murder.

“The government should not be paying investigative journalists. It should let them do their work freely and protect them if someone attacks them, or, wants to kill them. And then the government should act on what they uncover,” said Balogova.

In recent years journalists have also faced public denigration and personal attacks by politicians, especially from the Smer party and its leader Robert Fico.

Local journalists have said these repeated attacks by Fico – he called reporters ‘anti-Slovak prostitutes’ and ‘idiots’, among other things – and others helped create a hostile atmosphere towards society which emboldened Kuciak’s killers to carry out his murder.

They say Matovic must ensure politicians in his government do not do the same.

Peter Bardy, editor in chief at Aktuality.sk, said in a Facebook post: “We thank Igor Matovic for his well-meant [idea], but rather than a fund we would welcome the creation of an environment in which we are able to do our work without attacks from politicians turning us into targets for hate attacks.”

But they also want concrete legislative action on key issues which they say makes their work sometimes impossible.

Current libel laws allow for massive fines to be meted out to media for stories about individuals and organisations. Critics say that for some publications these fines would essentially put them out of business, which can deter them from running stories containing corruption allegations.

Meanwhile, journalists often complain they are unable to investigate misuse of public funds properly.

“Ministries hide information about their business activities, using legislative exemptions or claiming business confidentiality. This needs to be changed,” Zuzana Petkova of the Zastavme Korupciu (Stop Corruption) NGO, wrote in a blog in the Dennik N daily about the fund proposals.

Soltesz said he also wanted to see legislation ensuring the effective protection of sources.

“I would like to see legislation introduced whereby any journalist revealing their source against their will would face a legal sanction, in the same way that a doctor or a lawyer is required to adhere to rules of patient/client confidentiality,” he told IPS.

Matovic has defended his plans, saying he sees no reason why the fund would necessarily affect journalists’ independence, pointing out public broadcaster RTVS is financed by the state.

However, in the run up to the elections Matovic’s party attacked the very same broadcaster for a lack of independence, claiming it was censoring negative reports connected to the outgoing ruling coalition.

It is unclear whether Matovic will be able to implement his plans. While there appears to be tentative support among politicians in the four-party coalition government he is set to lead, it is hard to see how it could function given the clear lack of support among the wider Slovak journalism community.

“No one in any serious media is positive about this plan. We say thanks but no thanks. Journalism should remain independent,” said Soltesz.

Tanzanian investigative journalist, Erick Kabendera has finally been released from jail after seven months in prison. Courtesy: Amnesty International

By Isaiah Esipisu
KAMPALA, Feb 25 2020 (IPS)

After six months in prison, Tanzanian investigative journalist Erick Kabendera has finally been released at a cost of $118,000.

Kabendera was arrested in July 2019 after police claimed that his citizenship was in question.

“We are holding him (Erick Kabendera) for questioning because authorities are doubting his citizenship. We are communicating with the immigration department for further measures,” Regional police commissioner Lazaro Mambosasa told journalists soon after the arrest.

However, when he appeared in court a week later he was charged with leading an organised criminal gang, money laundering and failure to pay taxes.

According to the charge sheet, the journalist “knowingly furnished assistance in the conduct of affairs of a criminal racket, with intent either to reap profit or other benefit”.

In a twist of events, the charge against his citizenship was dropped, and he was later cleared of charges for leading a criminal gang. This left him with the charges of economic crimes which included money laundering and tax evasion.

After postponing his case a number of times, the Director of Public Prosecution on Monday Feb. 24 accepted Kabendera’s plea bargain application, which paved the way for the Kisutu Magistrate’s Court to begin hearing his case.

He pleaded guilty to the charge of money laundering and was fined TZS100 million ($43,000), which he paid, thereby securing his freedom.

However, according to reports, the court slapped him with another fine of 250,000 shillings ($108) for evading tax, and a further 173 million shillings ($75,000) in compensation for the tax evasion, bringing the total fine to about $118,000.

“We welcome his release, but we are deeply concerned about the hefty fines levied against him,” Muthoki Mumo, the sub-Saharan Africa representative to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) told IPS in an interview.

Amid speculations that Kabendera pleaded guilty to the crimes due to frustrations of being held indefinitely, Mumo said that she would leave that for the accused to say. “I am hesitant to speak on his behalf because I do not know the circumstances under which he pleaded guilty,” she told IPS.

Amnesty International also welcomed the news of Kabendera’s release, also criticising the fines levied against him.

“It is outrageous that he had to pay such a hefty fine to gain his freedom after having been unjustly jailed for exercising his right to freedom of expression.

“Kabendera’s mother died while he was in custody shortly after she was filmed pleading with President John Magufuli to let her son free. He has already suffered so much simply for doing his job and should have been released unconditionally. There is absolutely no justice in what transpired in the Dar es Salaam court today,” Amnesty International Director for East and Southern Africa Deprose Muchena said in a statement.

Kabendera also reportedly suffered illness while in jail.

His detention became a concern for many individuals and organisations, including the United States Embassy and the British High Commission in Tanzania.

In a joint statement, they said, “The U.S. Embassy and the British High Commission are deeply concerned about the steady erosion of due process in Tanzania, as evidenced by the ever more frequent resort to lengthy pre-trial detentions and shifting charges by its justice system.”

“We are particularly concerned about a recent case — the irregular handling of the arrest, detention, and indictment of investigative journalist Erick Kabendera, including the fact that he was denied access to a lawyer in the early stages of his detention, contrary to the Criminal Procedures Act.”

Attempts to reach Kabendera’s family by IPS went unanswered today. But Kabendera reportedly said after the release, “Finally I’ve got my freedom, it’s quite unexpected that I would be out this soon. I’m really grateful to everybody who played their role.”

According to Reporters Without Borders, since Magufuli became president of Tanzania in 2015 the country has suffered an unprecedented decline in press freedom, as the president refuses to tolerate criticism of himself or his policies.

Kabendera has been one of his critics. Prior to his arrest, Kabendera, who also wrote for international news agencies such as the Guardian, the Independent and the local East African, had published an article in The Economist Intelligence Unit about the nation’s president entitled: ‘John Magufuli is bulldozing Tanzania’s freedom’. 

It will be remembered that during Magufuli’s second year in office, the Media Services Act was passed. The law allows for harsh penalties for content deemed defamatory, seditious or illegal.

According to a recent report by Amnesty International, the Media Services Act, 2016, enhances censorship, violates the right to information and limits scrutiny of government policies and programmes.

“From 2016, the Tanzania government has used the Media Service Act to close, fine and suspend at least six media outlets for publishing reports on allegations of corruption and human rights violations and the state of Tanzania’s economy,” reads part of the report.

In 2018, the government approved another law to regulate content posted online. According to the new rule, Tanzanians operating online radio stations and video (TV) websites, including bloggers are required to apply for a licence, pay a licence fee upon registration as well as annual fees, totalling about $900 a year.

Meanwhile, Amnesty International is urging Tanzania’s regional and international partners and human rights mechanisms to put pressure on the authorities to ensure that the human rights situation in the country does not deteriorate further, including by strongly and publicly condemning the growing human rights violations and abuses and raising individual cases with government officials.

Last year Amnesty International reported that Tanzania had “withdrawn the right of individuals and NGOs to directly file cases against it at the Arusha-based African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights” in a move said to block the ability for individuals and NGOs to seek redress for human rights violations.  

The arrest of Kabendera, according to analysts, could be a strategy by the government to instil fear in journalists who are critiques of the government and its policies.

Flowers, candles and tributes to Daphne Caruana Galizia left at the foot of the Great Siege Monument, opposite the Law Courts in Valletta. Caruana Galizia, Malta’s most prominent investigative journalist, was killed by a car bomb in October 2017 outside her home in the village of Bidnija. Courtesy: Continentaleurope/CC BY-SA 4.0

By Ed Holt
BRATISLAVA, Nov 29 2019 (IPS)

Press freedom campaigners and journalists in Malta are hoping they could soon see justice for murdered Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia – and that a powerful message will be sent across Europe that a free press can deny corrupt officials the power to act with impunity.

Caruana Galizia, Malta’s most prominent investigative journalist, was killed by a car bomb in October 2017 outside her home in the village of Bidnija. Her investigations had exposed high-level government corruption linked to businesses.

Until just a few weeks ago investigators had made what critics attacked as scant progress in bringing her killers to justice. But since then there has been a flurry of arrests and ministerial resignations and the Prime Minister, Joseph Muscat, is under pressure to resign.

And with a key figure in the case now reportedly giving investigators vital information on who was involved in the killing, many are hoping that the person who ordered the murder could soon be identified, paving the way for prosecutions and opening up a new chapter in press freedom in Malta and sending a message to other countries.

“Things are moving fast in Malta, so we are hopeful that there may be a resolution to this soon,” said Pauline Ades-Mevel, Head of the European Union and Balkan Desk at global press freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF).

“If the mastermind and hitman and middleman were to be prosecuted, if the case were to be solved, it would have an enormous impact on press freedom in Malta.

“But it would also send an equally powerful signal to countries across Europe because it would show that journalists and organisations like ours are the stone in the shoe of people who think they can act with impunity. They cannot get rid of us,” she told IPS.

Caruana Galizia’s murder made headlines across the world not only because it focused attention on the rule of law in Malta but because it took place in an EU country.

Groups like RSF have warned in recent reports that Europe is “no longer a sanctuary” for journalists and there has been a documented rise in attacks on journalists and an erosion of press freedom across the continent in recent years.

Just months after Caruana Galizia’s death, Slovak journalist Jan Kuciak and his fiancée Martina Kusnirova were shot dead at their home in Velka Maca in Western Slovakia.

Like Caruana Galizia, Kuciak had investigated alleged corruption at the highest levels of government and had been working on a story about ties between the Italian mafia and Slovak politicians at the time of his death.

Protests in the wake of the killing led to the resignation of the then Prime Minister, Robert Fico, while a subsequent police investigation has led to a prominent local businessman, Marian Kocner, being charged with ordering Kuciak’s assassination.

A few months after Caruana Galizia’s killing, three men were arrested and charged with planting the bomb that killed her. But two years after her murder they had not faced trial, nor had anyone else been arrested in connection with the murder.

The authorities’ handling of the case and efforts to bring her killers to justice had been criticised, not least by her family, with questions raised over the arrest of the three men.

The Maltese government agreed to launch a public inquiry in October under pressure from the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE).

But local journalists questioned the independence of the enquiry, citing potential conflicts of interest among its senior board members.

Meanwhile, on the two-year anniversary of her death, RSF released a report saying the situation for journalists in Malta was ‘dire’ – a claim the Maltese government publicly dismissed at the time – and noted that Malta had dropped 30 places in its World Press Freedom Index since 2017.

“It is very difficult to do investigative journalism in Malta, the journalists who are doing it are working under pressure, conditions are difficult,” Ades-Mevel told IPS.

But this month has seen dramatic and rapid developments in the case with the arrest of Yorgen Fenech, a powerful local businessman, and the subsequent resignation of the head of the Prime Minister’s Office, Keith Schembri, in the murder.

Tourism Minister Konrad Mizzi and Economy Minister Chris Cardona have also stepped down since Fenech’s arrest. Following the release of the Panama Papers in 2016 Caruana Galizia had accused Mizzi and Fenech of corruption linked to ownership of secret shell companies in Panama.

Muscat and Schembri are close friends and the Prime Minister, who is still pursuing libel claims against the dead journalist and her family after she accused him of corruption, had repeatedly rejected calls to sack Schembri when allegations of corruption first emerged years ago.

Schembri was arrested earlier this week amid suggestions Fenech had provided evidence implicating in the murder. But he was released – to the fury of opposition politicians and protestors who claimed he was being protected by the Prime Minister – soon after without charge.

Protests in the capital Valletta in recent days have drawn tens of thousands calling for the Prime Minister to step down.

Muscat has said that he will not leave office until the people who ordered the killing have been identified.

He has also, in stark contrast to police officials or the attorney general, made daily statements on the latest developments in the Caruana Galizia case, including about possible pardons.

This has raised concerns about political interference in the investigation and in a joint statement, ten international press freedom organisations, including the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), RSF, and the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom (ECPMF), echoed demands made by PACE that Muscat step away from the investigation.

“Malta has clear legal obligations to ensure an independent, impartial investigation into the assassination of its leading journalist, Daphne Caruana Galizia. There must be no executive interference in the investigation,” the groups wrote.

“What is worrying is that for the last week the only person who has been commenting on what is going on is the Prime Minister. By putting himself at the centre of the investigation, there is a risk of political interference in the investigation,” Ades-Mevel told IPS.

It is unclear at the moment whether the Prime Minister will clearly step back from the investigation or whether any further arrests are imminent. Further public protests are already planned, however.

In the meantime, some local journalists are cautiously optimistic over the path of current events in Malta.

“There is hope that there could finally be justice for Daphne. Protestors are demanding the Prime Minister step down, and they are also demanding that justice is done and seen to be done,” said Nigel Mifsud, General Secretary of the Institute of Maltese Journalists.

“But this is all in the early stages of the investigation,” he told IPS.

What is clear though is that many people now believe the claims, made by journalists like Caruana Galizia, of corruption at the highest levels.

In a statement earlier this week Malta’s Chamber of Commerce said that “the extent to which criminal activity had infiltrated the circles of power and operated unperturbed for years” was now clear.

“What Daphne wrote about and alleged is being proved now to be true,” said Mifsud. “It has been proved that the work she was doing and the claims she made were correct.”

He added: “One thing I believe all this will do is that that journalists will gain in credibility and social standing here. If this is hopefully resolved, people will see that what journalists do is useful, it brings results. It will also show that people cannot act with impunity and that there will be journalists there to keep a check on them.”

He also said that if the investigation continues and the person who ordered the killing is brought to trial and convicted, it could help press freedom in other countries.

“I hope that what is happening here could be a positive example for other countries.

“Some people said that we would never even get to this stage, that the murder would never be solved. The fact that we have even got to this stage now is something and journalists in other countries can look and see that what they are doing is worthwhile, that their work and investigations can bring results.”

Freedom House president Mike Abramowitz warned of online propaganda and disinformation spreading ahead of elections in 24 countries this past year. Credit: Erick Kabendera/IPS

By James Reinl
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 5 2019 (IPS)

Using armies of online fans, trolls and, automated ‘bots’, the world’s authoritarians and populists are increasingly using the web to drown out opponents and swing public opinion and elections their way, a new study says.

The Freedom on the Net report, compiled annually by Freedom House, a United States government-funded research group, confirms the fears of many online activists and paints a bleak portrait of how the internet is straining democracies.

The 32-page document, released Tuesday and titled “The Crisis of Social Media” found that more than half of the world’s 3.8 billion web users live in countries that censor the internet and use pro-government trolls to manipulate the online realm.

Freedom House president Mike Abramowitz warned of online propaganda and disinformation spreading ahead of elections in 24 countries this past year. The group assesses web freedom in 65 countries that host 87 percent of the world’s web-users.

“Governments are finding that on social media, propaganda works better than censorship,” Abramowitz said in a statement. 

“Authoritarians and populists around the globe are exploiting both human nature and computer algorithms to conquer the ballot box, running roughshod over rules designed to ensure free and fair elections.”

Researchers found that officials had worked with celebrity yes-men, business titans and semi-autonomous “online mobs” to spread clickbait, conspiracy theories and misleading memes from “marginal echo chambers to the political mainstream”.

The report spotlights Brazil, where Jair Bolsonaro’s presidential election win in October 2018 was preceded by misleading news, anti-gay rumours and doctored images being spread by the right-winger’s fans via YouTube and WhatsApp, researchers said.

In Egypt, the government of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi blocked some 34,000 websites to stifle debates about whether el-Sisi should be allowed to hold power until the end of 2030 ahead of an April referendum, the report said.

Hundreds of thousands of online trolls spread fake news to swing voters behind two main parties in April-May elections in India this year, it added. Meanwhile, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “NaMo” app was reportedly relaying users’ data to a private analytics firm.

The world’s two biggest economies — the United States and China — come in for special scrutiny.

In the U.S., much like in the 2016 presidential election that brought Donald Trump to power, online trolls spread “disinformation” during the November 2018 mid-term vote and during the confirmation process for Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. 

Meanwhile, U.S. immigration officials are increasingly demanding access to the mobile phones and laptops of visitors and snooping on immigrants’ social media feeds, operating with “little oversight or transparency”, the report says.

China remains the “world’s worst abuser of internet freedom” — a title it has held for four consecutive years, and where a phalanx of online commentators known as the 50 Cent Army pushes government messages online.

Beijing clamped down harder on web users ahead of the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre on Apr. 15 and got tighter still in the face of ongoing anti-government protests in Hong Kong, the report says.

Adrian Shahbaz, the group’s research director for technology and democracy, warned that even governments of smaller economies can now afford large-scale “advanced social media surveillance programs”.

Last month, Facebook sued NSO Group, an Israeli surveillance firm, for using the WhatsApp messaging service to hack the phones of some 1,400 dissidents, journalists, diplomats, officials and others for their clients, understood to be governments and spy agencies.

“Once reserved for the world’s most powerful intelligence agencies, big-data spying tools are making their way around the world,” said Shahbaz. “Even in countries with considerable safeguards for fundamental freedoms, there are already reports of abuse.”

Researchers noted that officials in 47 countries, armed with such sophisticated web-snooping tools, had arrested web users between June 2018 and May 2019 for posting political, social or religious messages online.

“The future of internet freedom rests on our ability to fix social media,” said Shahbaz. 

“Since these are mainly American platforms, the U.S. must be a leader in promoting transparency and accountability in the digital age. This is the only way to stop the internet from becoming a Trojan horse for tyranny and oppression.”

By Maged Srour
ROME, Nov 2 2019 (IPS)

Each year 100 journalists are killed in the course of their work. Nine out of 10 cases remain unresolved.
On Nov. 2 the United Nations recognises the International Day to End Impunity for Crimes against Journalists.

The U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is concerned that impunity damages societies by covering up serious human rights abuses, corruption, and crime.

Pauline Ades-Mevel, Head of European Union and Balkan desk at Reporters Without Borders, warns that press freedom in Europe is declining. Courtesy: Reporters Without Borders

By Ed Holt
VIENNA, Oct 21 2019 (IPS)

Rising populism, anti-media rhetoric from politicians, cyber-harassment of journalists and physical attacks are among the reasons why press freedom in Europe is on the decline, according to the global media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF).

As it released its annual Press Freedom Index earlier this year, the group warned that Europe was “no longer a sanctuary for journalists”, pointing to the murders of three journalists in Malta, Slovakia and Bulgaria in the space of a few months  and warning that “hatred of journalists has degenerated into violence, contributing to an increase in fear… the decline in press freedom in Europe… has gone hand in hand with an erosion of the region’s institutions by increasingly authoritarian governments”.

IPS spoke to Pauline Ades-Mevel, Head of European Union & Balkan desk at RSF about why press freedom was deteriorating across the continent and how, while threats to press freedom in Central and Eastern Europe often make headlines, the situation is far from trouble free in Western Europe. Excerpts of the interview follow. 

Europe is “no longer a sanctuary for journalists”, says Reporters Without Borders, pointing to the murders of three journalists in Malta, Slovakia and Bulgaria in the space of a few months  and warning that “hatred of journalists has degenerated into violence, contributing to an increase in fear”. Pictured here is a 2018 mass protest 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

Inter Press Service (IPS): RSF’s most recent surveys and reports suggest that media freedom is on the decline generally in Europe. Is this decline specific for Europe or part of a global trend?

Pauline Ades-Meve (PAM): When working on our most recent Global Press Freedom Index, we looked to see if there was a trend of deterioration of press freedom just in Europe or elsewhere. We found that it was actually a global trend, that we could see that trend in many regions. We looked at why this was the case and, while there are some different reasons in different countries, what we saw in general was that there was a climate of fear in which many journalists were working in. This is why there is this general deteriorating trend. Fear has been causing the most problems for journalists.

In Europe specifically a number of countries have fallen down the Index. This is for a number of reasons and comes with rising populism, anti-media rhetoric from politicians, cyber-harassment of journalists, physical attacks.

IPS: Threats to media freedom in central and eastern Europe and the Balkans have made a lot of headlines in recent years, perhaps understandably due to the nature of those threats, but RSF has made clear that media freedom in western Europe is also declining. What kind of threats are media facing in western Europe today?

PAM: We have seen threats to journalists emerge in recent years in Western Europe. For instance, in Spain, during the Catalan independence protests, leaders of the movement delivered rhetoric which undermined trust in journalists. They did not think journalists were covering the situation properly, or at least not in the way they wanted, and they viewed journalists who were not supporting their cause as people who were working against it and trying to prevent independence.

We recently published a report on the pressures faced by journalists in Spain and people don’t realise that, at the moment, Spain is no longer a heaven to be a journalist when you cover politics.

And then another example is Italy where there are 20 journalists who have around the clock police protection because they are facing threats from criminal networks.

Journalists in Europe are facing cyber-harassment – journalists covering protests in Spain and in France have been attacked online.

There is also a trend we are seeing in Western Europe of journalists being attacked when covering protests themselves. This is because part of the population no longer trusts the media anymore – protest leaders have portrayed them negatively, as untrustworthy, because they are not happy with the coverage. Journalists sometimes face violence and terrible threats from protestors. We have had cases of female journalists being threatened with rape. And sometimes, when they cover demonstrations, journalists are sometimes targeted by both the protestors and the police, which makes their mission even harder. 

Press freedom is declining in Europe with editorial independence and the safety of journalists under threat in many parts of the continent. Credit: Ed Holt/IPS

IPS: Are these threats growing or changing in nature?

PAM: They are growing and new threats are emerging. One of these is growing legal harassment of journalists. Governments and businessmen are chasing journalists legally, through lawyers and courts, trying to stop them reporting and doing their jobs. This is extremely worrying.

IPS: How do they differ, if at all, from the threats faced by media in central and eastern Europe and the Balkans?

PAM: In some ways the threats are the same. There is a lot of legal harassment of journalists in central and eastern Europe and the Balkans. There is also physical intimidation of journalists and cyber-harassment too, while in some countries the independence of public media is under threat as well with governments trying to interfere in editorial independence, to influence them. We tend not to see this in Western Europe.

IPS: Physical intimidation of journalists is not a new phenomenon, especially in some countries in Europe, e.g. Russia or Ukraine. Is it becoming more common in western Europe, though, and if so, who is doing the intimidation?

PAM: Western Europe is certainly not free of this. Journalists in Western European states do face physical intimidation. Places like France, Spain, Italy, fascist groups in Greece. And it is only a few months ago that a journalist, Lyra McKee, was killed in Northern Ireland. Western Europe is not without this problem, even today.

IPS: There have been cases of journalists being attacked by protestors, and sometimes police, at demonstrations in parts of Western Europe in recent years e.g. in France. While this is not a problem specific to just western Europe, or Europe as a whole, in the past press were generally seen as neutral observers at such events and as such, left alone. Is that changing, are journalists now being seen as ‘fair game’ by certain groups?

PAM: One thing we have noticed in recent years is that due to social media and some ‘media’ which frankly should not be labelled as media, people are losing trust in media in general and this has galvanised certain people in certain movements and groups to attack journalists. As an example, when asked many of the Gilets Jaunes protestors in France said that their favourite TV station for news was the Russian state-sponsored channel RT, or people’s Facebook pages where they could read stories. We could then see at protests that protestors were attacking journalists with rocks because they were not happy with them, they did not trust them, did not think they were portraying the protests the way they wanted them to. So they just attacked them and destroyed their things, like cameras.

IPS: Online hatred towards journalists, including incitement to violence against them, appears to have become more of a problem in recent years. Is this the case in Europe and if so, what do you think is driving this rise?

PAM: This is a problem across Europe, but not just Europe. It is worldwide. Being online means that the attacked can remain anonymous and that anonymity emboldens them, makes them feel stronger. Their hatred also makes them feel powerful. Cyber-harassment is one of the major problems facing journalists in a lot of countries in Europe, both in Western Europe and the rest of the continent.

Much has been reported about authoritarian governments in parts of central and Eastern Europe and the Balkans trying to crack down on critical media so they can cement their power e.g. Hungary, Poland, Serbia. Do you think public perception of western Europe with its historical traditions of democracy and freedoms, particularly freedom of speech, means that people can sometimes mistakenly assume that this could never happen in western Europe?

I am often reminded of conversations between journalists in France who remind themselves of how they work in an environment where they are protected by legislation, by institutions, and have the freedom to do their jobs. But while the West is seen as having traditionally good, strong democracies to protect journalists, the situation with press freedom is not as good as it has been. Populist movements have spread across Europe, including Western Europe. We have seen problems with, for example, independence of public media in Spain.

IPS: Would you say there are greater legal or constitutional safeguards against an erosion of media freedom in western European states than in other parts of Europe?

PAM: I think that Western European states may have a greater sense of European values and respecting those values. This includes respecting the freedom of the media and some governments in Western Europe have moved to specifically protect journalists, even giving them a special status – in Portugal, there is a legal statute protecting journalists so that if someone attacks a journalists it is actually more serious a charge than attacking a normal member of the public.

Overall the situation in Western Europe with regard for respect of the institution of press freedom is better than in other parts of the Europe. This is why we have seen an erosion of press freedom in places such as Hungary, or Bulgaria, because in those countries there is not the same tradition, or sense of, European values.

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