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.

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.

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.

Excerpt:

United Nations Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions Agnes Callamard determined that Saudi Arabia is “responsible” for the “extrajudicial” murder of Washington Post writer Jamal Khashoggi. Courtesy: United Nations Photo/Manuel Elias

By Tharanga Yakupitiyage
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 27 2019 (IPS)

Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi was deliberately killed at the hands of state actors and journalists around the world are increasingly seeing the same fate, said a United Nations expert.

After a six-month investigation, U.N. Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions Agnes Callamard determined that Saudi Arabia is “responsible” for the “extrajudicial” murder of Washington Post writer Khashoggi.

“This killing was a result of an elaborate mission involving extensive coordination and significant human and financial resources. It was overseen, planned, and endorsed by high level officials and it was premeditated,” she said to the Human Rights Council.

“The right to life is a right at the core of international human rights protection. If the international community ignores targeted killing designed to silence peaceful expression, it puts at risk the protection on which all human rights depend,” Callamard added.

Since it occurred at a consulate in Turkey, the killing cannot be considered a “domestic matter” and violates the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations as well as the prohibition against extraterritorial use of force in times of peace, making it an international crime.

Callamard pointed to the need to establish a U.N. criminal investigation to ensure the delivery of justice, noting that the inquiry undertaken by the Saudi authorities was woefully inadequate.

“The investigation carried out by the Saudi authorities has failed to address the chain of command. It is not only a question of who ordered the killing—criminal responsibility can be derived from direct or indirect incitement or from the failure to prevent and protect,” she said.

The government of Saudi Arabia continues to deny its involvement and rejected the new report, stating that it is based on “prejudice and pre-fabricated ideas.”

While the killing of Khashoggi was brutal, his story is just one of many cases of targeting journalists around the world.

“This execution is emblematic of a global pattern of targeted killings of journalists, human rights defenders, and political activists,” Callamard said.

According to Reporters Without Borders (RSF), 80 journalists were killed, 348 imprisoned, and 60 held hostage in 2018, reflecting an unprecedented level of violence against journalists.

Javier Valdez Cárdenas, a Mexican journalist who investigated cartels, was killed in May 2017.

Just days after, Valdez’s colleagues and widow began receiving messages infected with a spyware known as Pegasus, which was bought by the Mexican government from Israeli cyber warfare company NSO Group.

According to the NSO Group, Pegasus is only sold to governments for the purposes of fighting terror and investigating crime. However, digital watchdog Citizen Lab found 24 questionable targets, including some of Mexico’s most prominent journalists.

The programme has also been used elsewhere by repressive governments such as the United Arab Emirates which targeted and imprisoned human rights defender Ahmed Manor for his social media posts. In Canada, critic of the Saudi regime and friend of Khashoggi, Omar Abdulaziz, was also infected with the spyware by a Saudi Arabia-linked operator.

While a suspect was arrested in 2018 for the murder of Valdez, it is unclear if they are the main culprit.

“The arrest of a suspect in the murder of Javier Valdez Cárdenas is a welcome step, but we urge the Mexican authorities to identify all those responsible for the killing, including the mastermind,” said Committee to Protect Journalists’ (CPJ) Mexico Representative Jan-Albert Hootsen.

“Too often, investigations into the murders of Mexican journalists stall after low-level suspects have been arrested, which allows impunity to thrive,” he added.

The Mexican government also launched an investigation into the misuse of such surveillance technology, but as yet no one has been punished.

Callamard urged Saudi Arabia to release those imprisoned for their opinion or belief and to undertake an in-depth assessment of the institutions “that made the crime against Mr. Khashoggi possible.”

She also stressed the need to strengthen laws to protect individuals against targeted killings, including the sharing of information if an individual is at risk.

“There are clear signs of increasingly aggressive tactics by States and non-State actors to permanently silence those who criticise them. The international community must take stock of these hostile environments, it must take stock of the findings of my investigation into the killing of Mr. Khashoggi,” Callamard told the Human Rights Council.

“Denunciations are important, but they are no longer sufficient. The international community must demand accountability and non repetition. It must strengthen protections and prevention urgently. Silence and inaction will only cause further injustice and global instability,” she added.

The state of journalism and press freedom around the world is declining according to a new press index by Reporters Without Borders (RSF). Credit: Miriam Gathigah/IPS

By Tharanga Yakupitiyage
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 19 2019 (IPS)

Journalists around the world are increasingly seeing threats of violence, detention, and even death simply for doing their job, a new press index found.

In the 2019 World Press Freedom Index, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has found a worrisome decline in media freedoms as toxic anti-press rhetoric have devolved into violence, triggering a climate of fear.

“The scene this year is fear. And the state of journalism and press freedom around the world is
declining… but also in the traditional press freedom allies—countries in Europe and here in the
United States,” said RSF’s Executive Director Sabine Dolan during the launch of the index.

RSF Secretary-General Christophe Deloire echoed similar sentiments about the dangers of declining press freedom, stating: “If the political debate slides surreptitiously or openly towards a civil war-style atmosphere, in which journalists are treated as scapegoats, then democracy is in great danger…Halting this cycle of fear and intimidation is a matter of the utmost urgency for all people of good will who value the freedoms acquired in the course of history.”

Of 180 countries evaluated in RSF’s index, only 24 percent were classified as “good” or “fairly good” compared to 26 percent in 2018.

The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region continues to be the most dangerous area for journalists as they face violence due to ongoing conflicts while also being deliberately targeted, imprisoned, and killed.

For example, Emirati blogger Ahmed Mansoor was sentenced to 10 years in prison after criticising the United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) government on social media.

He was accused of “publishing false information, rumours and lies” which would “damage the UAE’s social harmony and unity.”

The persecution of MENA’s journalists has even extended past its own borders as seen through the brutal murder of Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi Consulate in Turkey.

Such a chilling level of violence has provoked fear among the region’s journalists, causing many to censor themselves.

But of all the world’s regions, it is the Americas that has seen the largest dip in its press freedom score.

Nicaragua for instance fell 24 places to 114th, making it one of the steepest declines worldwide—and with good reason.

What started as protests against controversial social security reforms has turned into one of the biggest crackdowns on dissent and media in the Central American nation.
Nicaraguans covering demonstrations have been treated as protestors or members of the opposition and have been subject to harassment, arbitrary arrest, and death threats.

Some have been charged with terrorism including Miguel Mora and Lucia Pineda Ubau, journalists for the news agency 100% Noticias.

Further north, the United States’ media climate is now classified as “problematic” as a result of an increasingly toxic anti-media rhetoric.

Over the last year, media organisations across the country received bomb threats and suspicious packages including CNN, forcing evacuations.

In June 2018, after expressing his hatred for the Capital Gazette newspaper on social media, Jarrod Ramos walked into the newsroom and killed four journalists and a staff member.

Most recently, Coast Guard lieutenant Christopher Paul Hasson was arrested for planning a terrorist attack targeting journalists and politicians.

Such anti-media sentiment is partially fuelled by U.S. President Donald Trump who has called journalists “enemy of the people.”

“When this becomes constant, it’s almost normalised and it percolates to large segments of the
population. And this is how it has contributed to create this climate of fear for journalists,” Dolan said.

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), over 11 percent of the president’s tweets have insulted or criticised journalists and news media.

In reference to a particular tweet by Trump which states that it is “disgusting” that the press can write whatever they want, former White House Correspondent Bill Plante noted that the U.S. is in a very “dangerous place” now.

“It is one thing to steer news coverage, by putting things out there or leaking certain stories or trying to avoid coverage of other things—it’s entirely another to threaten reporters and to say that news coverage shouldn’t be allowed,” he said.

This rhetoric has not only impacted journalists in the U.S., but has also spilled over abroad as world leaders from Venezuela to the Philippines use terms like “fake news” to justify human rights violations and crackdowns on press freedom.

But it is not all bad news.

Ethiopia made an unprecedented 40-place jump in the Index after new Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed took swift steps to improve press freedom including the release of all detained journalists.

While such progress is promising, there is a long way to go to secure press freedom globally, especially as it seemingly regresses.

“The only weapon we have is truth. The problem is that in today’s media environment along with social media, we can be overwhelmed. So we have to come out there with more effort than ever to get the truth out,” Plante said.

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

By Ed Holt
BRATISLAVA, May 22 2018 (IPS)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gauri Lankesh. Credit: Wikipedia

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Majority of journalists killed wrote on politics and corruption

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

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

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

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

Source: RSF

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Getting away with murder

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mexican photographer Rubén Espinosa places a plaque in honour of Regina Martínez, on Apr. 28, 2015, in the central square of Xalapa, the capital of the southern state of Veracruz, to commemorate the third anniversary of the journalist’s murder. On July 2015, Espinosa was also killed. Credit: Roger López/IPS

By Daniela Pastrana
MEXICO CITY, Apr 29 2017 (IPS)

Mexican journalist Cecilio Pineda Brito covered drug trafficking issues in a region of the southern state of Guerrero where criminal groups are extremely powerful.

In September 2015 he survived an attempt on his life, and because he was deemed at “very high risk” he became a beneficiary of the federal mechanism for protection for human right defenders and journalists created in December 2012.

The protection measures he was assigned consisted basically of police patrols. They offered him a place in a shelter in Mexico City, but he refused.

In October 2016, the protection measures were cancelled; five months later, Pineda Brito became the first journalist murdered in 2017 in the most dangerous country for reporters in Latin America.“In addition to Mexico, Honduras, Brazil and Colombia, the situation in Paraguay and Venezuela, in particular, reflects the deterioration of freedom of expression in the region.” -- Ricardo González

Pineda Brito’s Mar. 2 murder was followed by six weeks of terror in which three more journalists were killed and two others survived after being shot, in different parts of this country of 127 million people.

The highest-profile murder was that of Miroslava Breach, on Mar. 26, a veteran journalist who covered political news for the La Jornada newspaper in the northern state of Chihuahua along the U.S. border.

But Pineda Brito’s killing reflected the inefficacy of institutional mechanisms for protecting journalists in the region.

“Last year it became clear that the state’s protection model exported from Colombia to Mexico and recently to Honduras had failed,” said Ricardo González, Security and Protection Officer of the London-based international organisation Article 19, which defends freedom of expression.

“The cases of journalists murdered in Mexico, who were under the protection of different state mechanisms, as well as the Freedom of the Press Foundation’s refusal to take part in the assessment of cases under the Colombian mechanism are things that should be of concern,” he told IPS.

For González, the lack of a functioning justice system and redress makes the model “ineffective, apart from financially unsustainable.”

The numbers in Mexico prove him right: according to Article 19’s latest report, of the 427 assaults on the media and journalists registered in 2016, 99.7 per cent went unpunished.

Meanwhile, the Special Prosecutor’s Office for Crimes Against Freedom of Expression has only managed to secure a conviction in three cases.

Most of the attacks were against journalists who work for small media outlets outside the country’s capital, and at least half of them were committed by state agents.

The federal protection mechanism currently protects 509 people – 244 journalists and 265 human right defenders).

But even though the dangers are growing rather than decreasing, the government and the legislature cancelled the funds available for protection, and since January the mechanism has been operating with the remnants of a trust fund whose 9.5 million dollars in reserves will run out in September.

According to Article 19, violence against the press is still one of the main challenges faced in Latin America, and something to be reflected on when World Press Freedom Day is celebrated on May 3.

“In addition to Mexico, Honduras, Brazil and Colombia, the situation in Paraguay and Venezuela, in particular, reflects the deterioration of freedom of expression in the region,” said González.

Map of the World Press Freedom Index, released Apr. 26 by Reporters Without Borders, where Cuba (173rd of 180 countries) and Mexico (147th) are the worst positioned in Latin America, while Uruguay (25th) and Chile (33rd) top the regional ranking. Credit: RWB

In the same vein, the 2017 World Press Freedom Index published by Reporters Without Borders on Wednesday Apr. 26 warns about the political and economic instability seen in several countries of Latin America, where journalists who investigate questions that affect the interests of political leaders or organised crime are attacked, persecuted and murdered.

“RWB regrets the pernicious and continuous deterioration of the situation of freedom of expression in Latin America,” said Emmanuel Colombié, the head of the RWB Latin America desk, presenting the Index.

“In the face of a multifaceted threat, journalists often have to practice self-censorship, and even go into exile, to survive. This is absolutely unacceptable in democratic countries,” he added.

The RWB report underscores the case of Nicaragua, the country that experienced the largest drop in the index because since the controversial re-election of President Daniel Ortega, the independent and opposition press has suffered numerous cases of censorship, intimidation, harassment and arbitrary arrests. The country fell 17 spots, to 92nd among the 180 countries studied.

The report also describes Mexico as another worrisome case: in 15 years it dropped from 75th to 147th on the Index, putting it next to Syria and Afghanistan. Mexico is still torn apart by corruption and the violence of organised crime, says RWB.

In fact, it is the second worst ranked Latin American country, after Cuba, which is 173rd, after dropping two spots.

At a regional level, the countries best-positioned in the ranking are Uruguay (25th, after falling five), Chile (33rd, after dropping two) and Argentina (50th, after going up four).

Increasingly sophisticated means of control

Despite the threats and risks, independent journalism is making progress in the region. In 2016, the organisation Sembramedia created the first directory of native digital media in Latin America which has listed more than 500 independent platforms.

But at the same time, the means of control of the independent press are getting more sophisticated, said González.

Legal, labour and online harassment, as well as indirect censorship through the control of state advertising are tools that governments and political and economic groups use ever more frequently around the region.

In Mexico, the most emblematic case is that of journalist Carmen Aristegui, who was fired together with her investigative journalism team from the MVS radio station after publishing an investigation about corruption implicating President Enrique Peña Nieto.

But there are even more unbelievable cases, such as a judge’s order for psychological tests for political scientist Sergio Aguayo, after he published well-substantiated information about massacres in the Mexican state of Coahuila, connected to former governor Humberto Moreira.

The organisation FUNDAR Centre for Analysis and Research has documented that this country’s central government and 32 state governments spend an average of 800 million dollars a year on official advertising and announcements in the media.

Another Mexican organisation committed to the defence of digital rights, R3D, reported that various regional governments have bought programmes from Hacking Team, an Italian cybersecurity firm that sells intrusion and surveillance capabilities to governments and companies on websites, social networks and email services.

According to R3D, online intimidation and monitoring have increased in Mexico during the Peña Nieto administration.

This pattern repeats itself in other Latin American countries, where attacks are increasing and presenting new challenges.

“In the last year, we have seen how the risks of violence which in the past were limited to questions such as drug trafficking are now faced by those who cover issues related to migration and human trafficking, the environment or community defense of lands against the extractive industries,” said González.

Another flashpoint is the coverage of border issues. “Donald Trump’s election as president of the United States has had quite a negative effect in terms of freedom of the press, both domestically and internationally, in the entire region,” he said.

Excerpt:

By Jan Lundius
Helsinki, Jan 11 2016 (IPS)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(End)

Excerpt:

The last week of November marked another phase of an ongoing shift in the Turkish Government´s approach to human rights issues – Two important events highlighted the ongoing attack freedom of press is suffering in Turkey. First two prominent Turkish journalists were arrested after publishing a story claiming that members of the state intelligence agency had provided weapons to Syrian rebels; second, lawyer and leading human rights defender and Tahir Elçi, President of the Diyarbakir Bar Association in south eastern Turkey, was killed in crossfire while making a press statement on Saturday 28th of November.

The Government´s reaction has fueled concerns about a sweeping media crackdown, which escalated just before the country´s national elections in November 1st. Since the Justice Development Party (AKP) was re-elected, under the leadership of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, conditions for media freedom have gradually deteriorated even further.

The present government has enacted laws expanding the state´s capacity to control independent media. The government has now an increased authority to block websites and the surveillance capacity of the National Intelligence Organization (MIT) has been strengthened. Journalists are currently facing unprecedented legal obstacles, while courts´ capacity to persecute corruption is circumscribed by references to “national security.” To regulate various media outlets, authorities are making use of the Penal Code, criminal defamation laws and an antiterrorism law.

As a direct result of mass protests in the summer of 2013, the Turkish government tightened its control over media and the internet even further. Followed by corruption allegations in December the same year, the government intensified its control over the criminal justice system and reassigned judges, prosecutors, and police in order to exercise a greater control over the country´s already politicized freedom of the press.

In 2013, during a corruption scandal revealed through leaks to social media of phone calls implicating ministers and their family members, the Turkish government reacted by shutting down Twitter and YouTube for several weeks and introducing an even more restrictive Internet Law than the one already in existence. However, the internet sites were reopened after the Constitutional Court had ruled against the Government measures.

Cumhuriyet, “The Republic”, is Turkey´s oldest up-market daily newspaper. Since AKP´s rise to power it has distinguished itself for an impartial and occasionally courageous journalism. In 2015 the newspaper was awarded the Freedom of Press Prize by the international NGO Reporters Without Borders for its stand against the Government’s mounting pressure on free speech. Shortly after that, Cumhuriyet’s editor-in-chief, Can Dündar, and the newspaper’s Ankara Bureau Chief Erdem Gül, were arrested and may face life imprisonment for a story claiming that Turkey´s secret services through convoys of trucks across the border were sending arms to Islamist rebels in Syria. Detailed footage depicted trucks allegedly delivering weapons and ammunition to rebels fighting the Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.

Despite its opposition to the Assad government the Turkish government has denied assisting Syrian rebels and by extension contributing to a consolidation of IS. Cumhuriyet’s accusation created a political storm in Turkey, enraging President Erdogan, who declared that the newspaper´s editor-in chief, would “pay a high price” for his “espionage.”

Dündar defended his paper´s action by stating: “We are journalists, not civil servants. Our duty is not to hide the dirty secrets of the state but to hold it accountable on behalf of the people.”
According to the Turkish Interior Ministry, the convoys were actually carrying humanitarian aid to the Turkmen community of neighboring Syria and the Cumhuriyet articles were accordingly politically motivated defamation. Right before appearing in court Dündar declared: “We come here to defend journalism. We come here to defend the right of the public to obtain news and their right to know whether their government is feeding them lies. We come here to demonstrate and to prove that governments cannot engage in illegal activities and defend such acts.”

The Secretary General of Reporters without Borders, Christophe Deloire, stated that “if these two journalists are imprisoned, it will be further evidence that Turkish authorities are ready to use methods worthy of a bygone age in order to suppress independent journalism in Turkey.”

Reporters without Borders, ranks Turkey as the 149th nation out of 180 when it comes to freedom of press, denouncing that there is a “dangerous surge in censorship” in the country. Reporters without Borders has urged the judge hearing the case to dismiss the charges against the two journalists as a case of “political persecution.”

The arrest of the two journalists has caused distress within the European Union. Europe is currently struggling with social problems and political crises due the influx of Syrian refugees and needs Ankara´s help to solve the crisis. Nevertheless, Turkish journalists have urged the EU to avoid making any compromises and in the name of freedom of speech, and as part of the efforts to combat the threat of IS totalitarianism, EU has to react to the Turkish Government´s intentions to control and manage independent information and reporting.

In the case of the lawyer, Tahir Elçi, was speaking to the press, pleading for an end of the violence between nationalist Kurds and the Turkish security forces. His death, considered an assassination by many, has f escalated tensions in Turkey´s Kurd dominated regions, where curfews have been imposed in several communities.

While Elçi, and other lawyers in the south eastern province of Diyarbakır were denouncing the damage caused to the historical patrimony during combat between the YDG-H Militants—a group related to the armed Kurdish group PKK—and the police. The incident was confusing. Video footage shows Elçi, hiding behind a man holding a pistol, as the sound of gunfire rings out from both ends of the street, a moment later the lawyer is seen lying face down on the ground. Officially it was claimed that Kurdish militants opened fire, which was returned by security men. Elçi´s last words before the attack had been: “We do not want guns, clashes or operations here.”

The HDP (People´s Democratic Party), an opposition party with Kurdish origins, declared that Elçi´s death was a planned attack and blamed the ruling AKP party. “This planned assassination targeted law and justice through Tahir Elci. … Tahir Elci was targeted by the AKP rule and its media and a lynching campaign was launched against him.” The HDP did not hesitate to remind that on October 19th, a warrant was issued against Elçi charging him with “propaganda for a terror organization.” The reason was that he during a CNN television program had stated that “PKK is not a terrorist organization… Although some of its actions have the nature of terror, the PKK is an armed political movement.”

Turkey´s Prime Minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, declared that it was unclear whether Elci was caught in a crossfire, or was assassinated, though he stated that: “The target is Turkey. It’s an attack on peace and harmony in Turkey.” On the same note Erdogan said the shooting was a clear indication that Turkey was right in “its determination to fight terrorism.”

(End)

Moroccan security forces charge against a group of Sahrawi women in Laayoune, occupied Western Sahara. Credit: Courtesy of Equipe Media

By Karlos Zurutuza
LAAYOUNE, Occupied Western Sahara, Aug 23 2015 (IPS)

Ahmed Ettanji is looking for a flat in downtown Laayoune, a city 1,100 km south of Rabat. He only wants it for one day but it must have a rooftop terrace overlooking the square that will host the next pro-Sahrawi demonstration.

“Rooftop terraces are essential for us as they are the only places from which we can get a graphic testimony of the brutality we suffer from the Moroccan police,” Ettanji told IPS. This 26-year-old is one the leaders of the Equipe Media, a group of Sahrawi volunteers struggling to break the media blackout enforced by Rabat over the territory.

Ahmed Ettanji and a fellow Equipe Media activist edit video taken at a pro-independence demonstration in Laayoune, occupied Western Sahara. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza/IPS

“There are no news agencies based here and foreign journalists are denied access, and even deported if caught inside,” stressed Ettanji.

Spanish journalist Luís de Vega is one of several foreign journalists who can confirm the activist´s claim – he was expelled in 2010 after spending eight years based in Rabat and declared persona non grata by the Moroccan authorities.

“The Western Sahara issue is among the most sensitive issues for journalists in Morocco. Those of us who dare to tackle it inevitably face the consequences,” de Vega told IPS over the phone, adding that he was “fully convinced” that his was an exemplary punishment because he was the foreign correspondent who had spent more time in Morocco.

“The Western Sahara issue is among the most sensitive issues for journalists in Morocco. Those of us who dare to tackle it inevitably face the consequences” – Spanish journalist Luís de Vega
This year will mark four decades since this territory the size of Britain was annexed by Morocco after Spain pulled out from its last colony of Western Sahara.

Since the ceasefire signed in 1991 between Morocco and the Polisario Front – the authority that the United Nations recognises as a legitimate representative of the Sahrawi people – Rabat has controlled almost the whole territory, including the entire Atlantic coast. The United Nations still labels Western Sahara as a “territory under an unfinished process of decolonisation”.

Mohamed Mayara, also a member of Equipe Media, is helping Ettanji to find the rooftop terrace. Like most his colleagues, he acknowledges having been arrested and tortured several times. The constant harassment, however, has not prevented him from working enthusiastically, although he admits that there are other limitations than those dealing with any underground activity:

“We set up the first group in 2009 but a majority of us are working on pure instinct. We have no training in media so we are learning journalism on the spot,” said Mayara, a Sahrawi born in the year of the invasion who writes reports and press releases in English and French. His father disappeared in the hands of the Moroccan army two months after he was born, and he says he has known nothing about him ever since.

Sustained crackdown

Today the majority of the Sahrawis live in the refugee camps in Tindouf, in Western Algeria. The members of Equipe Media say they have a “fluid communication” with the Polisario authorities based there. Other than sharing all the material they gather, they also work side by side with Hayat Khatari, the only reporter currently working openly for SADR TV. SADR stands for ‘Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic’.

Hayat Khatari, the only reporter currently working openly for SADR TV in Laayoune. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza/IPS

Khatari, a 24-year-old journalist, recalls that she started working in 2010, after the Gdeim Izzik protest camp incidents in Laayoune. Originally a peaceful protest camp, Gdeim Izzik resulted in riots that spread to other Sahrawi cities when it was forcefully dismantled after 28 days on Nov. 8.

Western analysts such as Noam Chomsky have argued that the so-called “Arab Spring” did not start in Tunisia as is commonly argued, but rather in Laayoune.

“We have to work really hard and risk a lot to be able to counterbalance the propaganda spread by Rabat about everything happening here,” Khatari told IPS. The young activist added that she was last arrested in December 2014 for covering a pro-independence demonstration in June 2014. Unlike Mahmood al Lhaissan, her predecessor in SADR TV, Khatari was released after a few days in prison.

In a report released in March, Reporters Without Borders records al Lhaissan´s case. The activist was released provisionally on Feb. 25, eight months after his arrest in Laayoune, but he is still facing trial on charges of participating in an “armed gathering,” obstructing a public thoroughfare, attacking officials while they were on duty, and damaging public property.

In the same report, Reporters Without Borders also denounces the deportation in February of French journalists Jean-Louis Perez and Pierre Chautard, who were reporting for France 3 on the economic and social situation in Morocco.

Before seizing their video recordings and putting them on a flight to Paris, the authorities arrested them at the headquarters of Moroccan Association of Human Rights (AMDH), one of the country’s leading human rights NGOs, which the interior ministry has accused of “undermining the actions of the security forces”.

Likewise, other major organisations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have repeatedly denounced human rights abuses suffered by the Sahrawi people at the hands of Morocco over the last decades.

Despite several phone calls and e-mails, the Moroccan authorities did not respond to IPS’s requests for comments on these and other human rights violations allegedly committed in Western Sahara.

Back in downtown Laayoune, Equipe Media activists seemed to have found what they were looking for. The owner of the central apartment is a Sahrawi family. It could have not been otherwise.

“We would never ask a Moroccan such a thing,” said Ettanji from the rooftop terrace overlooking the spot where the upcoming protest would take place.

Edited by Phil Harris   

Israeli commander who blocked the writer’s entrance to the village of Kafr Qaddoum – as clashes were taking place – for over two hours. Credit: Mel Frykberg/IPS

By Mel Frykberg
KAFR QADDOUM, West Bank, Apr 7 2015 (IPS)

It is becoming increasingly risky to cover clashes and protests between Israeli security forces and Palestinian protesters in the West Bank as the number of journalists injured, in what appears to be deliberate targeting by Israeli security forces, continues to rise.

During the last 12 months, Israel’s Foreign Press Association (FPA) has issued numerous protests at the manhandling, harassment and shooting of both members of the foreign media and Palestinian journalists.

“The Foreign Press calls on the Israeli border police (a paramilitary unit) to put an immediate end to a wave of attacks on journalists. In just over a week, border police officers have carried out at least four attacks on journalists working for international media organisations, injuring reporters and damaging expensive equipment. These attacks all appear to have been unprovoked,” was one of many statements released by the FPA last year.The rising trend of Israeli security forces using live ammunition against Palestinian protesters has expanded to include journalists as well.

“A change in policy appears to be the reason for unprecedented aggressive behaviour by the authorities against journalists covering demonstrations in Jerusalem,” read another FPA statement.

The assaults have included shooting rubber-coated metal bullets directly at journalists on a regular basis.

Tear gas canisters, which under Israeli law are meant to be shot from a safe distance in an upward arch so as not to endanger life, have also been shot directly at journalists from close range even when the journalists were out of the line of fire.

The rising trend of Israeli security forces using live ammunition against Palestinian protesters has expanded to include journalists as well.

Palestinian journalists and cameramen working for foreign agencies and local media appear to be bearing the brunt of these attacks, because assaulting and abusing Palestinians, males in particular, is an integral part of Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land.

A colleague of IPS, a cameraman from Palestine TV, was shot in the leg several months ago with a 0.22 inch calibre bullet fired from a Ruger rifle by an Israeli sniper as he filmed a clash in the northern West Bank village of Kafr Qaddoum.

Palestinian journalists in the line of fire. Credit: Mel Frykberg/IPS

On a previous occasion, as he left the village, Israeli soldiers pulled his vehicle over, dragged him out and assaulted him.

Another IPS colleague, a cameraman from Reuters, was shot twice in both legs with a metal bullet with a 0.5 mm rubber coating at one Friday protest. The previous week he had been targeted directly with a tear gas canister.

“We are very concerned about the marked increase in the number of Palestinian journalists being deliberately targeted by the Israeli security forces,” said Reporters Without Borders in a statement  on the increase in violence by Israeli security forces against Palestinian journalists released last year.

“We reiterate our call to the Israeli authorities, especially the military, to respect the physical integrity of journalists covering demonstrations and we remind them that the United Nations Human Rights Council adopted a resolution on 28 March recognising the importance of media coverage of protests and condemning any attacks or violence against the journalists covering them.”

The situation was even worse during the Gaza war from July to August last year, when 17 Palestinian journalists were killed by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) even when they were not in the proximity of the fighting.

IPS has witnessed numerous attacks on journalists over the years and has also been harassed by Israeli soldiers when trying to cover clashes.

Last Friday, I was held up for over two hours in the sun by Israeli soldiers as I tried to enter Kafr Qaddoum where major clashes were taking place.

During this time other members of the media, ambulances and other protesters were refused entrance.

With Israeli government press accreditation, an accreditation denied to most Palestinian journalists, I was able to contact the IDF spokesman who coordinated my entrance, but only after several hours of standing in the sun.

I was neither assaulted nor was any of my equipment confiscated from me, another privilege of being white and Western.

Another Palestinian colleague and cameraman came in for very different treatment a month ago when he had had his camera confiscated by an Israeli soldier outside the Jelazon refugee camp, near Ramallah.

When he tried to retrieve his expensive piece of equipment he was warned to back off and knew better than to pursue the issue.

However, when I took the matter up with the commanding officer the camera was returned to its owner after the officer had taken me aside on a charm offensive while ordering the Palestinian journalists to stand back.

On another occasion, I was accompanying a Palestinian ambulance which was trying to reach Jelazon camp to help Palestinian youths injured during clashes with the IDF.

Several military jeeps blocked the roads leading to the camp and refused to move when asked by the ambulance driver.

After I got out and spoke to the soldiers, showing them my credentials yet again, the jeep moved to the side and allowed the ambulance to continue.

The Israelis still appear to be sensitive to a certain degree to how they are portrayed in the Western media.

This has become apparent to me when covering violent clashes. As soon as it has been established that I am Australian, white and a woman, the aggression of the Israeli soldiers has abated and they have tried to get me on side by asking me if I am alright and warning me to take care,

However, I know that I too could easily fall prey to Israeli ammunition if I am not exceedingly careful so, on this basis, I choose to stay well away from the frontlines of clashes.

Edited by Phil Harris  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Edited by Phil Harris    

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Home of organised crime

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

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

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

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

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Source: Reporters Without Borders

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The 2015 Index trends are grouped into seven causes:

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

Measuring up

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The more sophisticated problems include surges in data.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Two young girls look on as a veiled woman passes by in Aleppo, August 2014. Syrian magazine Saiedet Souria wants to provide women with the information they need to have a wider view on the world and a voice in a revolution that has largely left their views unheard. Credit: Shelly Kittleson/IPS

By Shelly Kittleson
GAZIANTEP, Turkey, Nov 15 2014 (IPS)

For most Syrian women, the war has been a disaster. For some, it has also been liberating.

For Yasmine Merei, managing editor of the Syrian women’s magazine Saiedet Souria, the upset of traditional family roles and the shaking off of a culture of fear have wrought positive effects.

Many Syrian women have unfortunately been forced to become the breadwinners of their families, with their husbands missing, in jail, injured or killed, she told IPS, but while fending for themselves can be a terrifying experience, it can also free women from the traditional bonds placed on them.

Although it [Syrian women’s magazine Saiedet Souria] does not shy away from stories of women who have suffered greatly … [it] wants mainly to provide women with the information they need to have a wider view on the world and a voice in a revolution that has largely left their views unheard
‘’If he [the husband] isn’t the one who pays for everything and has that specific role in society, he no longer has the right to tell you what to do’’, added Mohammad Mallak, the founder and editor-in-chief of the magazine, which translates as ‘Syrian Women’, and was founded early this year.

Mallak also runs a partner magazine, Dawda (‘Noise’), from the same office in the southern Turkish city of Gaziantep.

Few of the women in the magazine’s photos have their heads covered, and Merei took off her headscarf earlier this year, after wearing it ‘’for about twenty years’’ as part of her upbringing in a poor, conservative Sunni family.

Merei said that she started taking part in the 2011 protests due to the unjustness of Syrian law, especially as concerns women. As examples, she noted a longstanding law against Syrian women giving citizenship to their children and widespread, unpunished honour killings.

A former Master’s student in linguistics, Merei – like many Syrian women – has become responsible for providing for her immediate family, sending money to her mother and her brothers, both of whom were jailed for protesting and released only after large bribes were paid.

Her elderly father died shortly after he, too, had been imprisoned and the family forced to flee their home.

Telling women’s stories does not simply mean female victims recounting the horrors and hardships of their lives, however.

Although it does not shy away from stories of women who have suffered greatly, Merei wants mainly to provide women with the information they need to have a wider view on the world and a voice in a revolution that has largely left their views unheard.

A first-hand account from a woman who was tortured in Syrian regime prisons sits alongside a review of Germaine Greer’s ‘The Female Eunuch’ and an interview with a female police officer in opposition-held areas in the pages of the magazine and on its Facebook page.

Articles on how forced economic dependence negatively affects both women and national economies overall, others discussing potential health problems found in refugee camps such as tuberculosis, a regular column by a female lawyer still in regime areas who previously spent 13 years in prison for political reasons and two translated articles from international media give breadth to the magazine’s roughly 50 pages per issue.

Saiedet Souria publishes sections of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) – the ‘’international bill of rights for women’’ adopted by the U.N. General Assembly in 1979 – in every issue, and will publish it in its entirety in the next, she said.

The magazine itself only has a print run of between 4,500 and 5,000 copies per issue (with roughly 3,500 distributed inside Syria through one of its four offices), bit its Facebook page where the articles are regularly posted is followed by over 40,000.

For a country where Facebook and Youtube were banned from 2007 until early February 2011, and where internet and electricity are scarce, this is a significant number. Syria has been on Reporters Without Borders’ Internet enemies list since the list was established in 2006.

In addition to offices in Daraa, Damascus, Suweida and Qamishli, another will soon be opened in Aleppo, Merei said.

‘’All of the ten women who work for us inside get a regular salary of 200 dollars,’’ she explained, ‘’and are responsible for distributing the copies as well as bringing women together for meetings and similar initiatives.’’

The copies are given out at markets and local councils, and in at least one location, noted Merei, the women have a system to recirculate the limited copies once they have finished with them.

Reporters Without Borders has held two workshops for the magazine, in April and September of this year, and offered to donate equipment to the magazine, but ‘’ we had basic equipment – regular printers, computers’’ from an initial investment made by Mallak,  she said.

‘’But what we really needed was paper and ink, to get the magazine to as many women as possible. And so RSF made an exception and offered us that, instead.’’

The goal, she said, is to ‘’help Syrian women regain confidence in themselves.’’

A confidence undermined by the war and by the use of ‘religion’ to control women in Islamist areas which, when she last went to them earlier this year, ‘’seemed like the country had gone back to the Stone Ages.”

‘’I am a Sunni Muslim but the Islam there is not like any I know.’’

‘’One of the major problems is that Syria’s intelligentsia are all either in jail, abroad or dead,’’ one Syrian, who has lived most of his life abroad but came back recently to help try to set up university classes in opposition-held Aleppo, told IPS. ‘’There is almost no one to structure anything, no one to put forward ideas.’’

This is what the magazine and it correlated activities are trying to address, as well, Merei said. ‘’We are trying to give Syrians the knowledge they are going to need in the future,’’ she said.

(Edited by Phil Harris)

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

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

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

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

A history of control

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

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

Source: CPJ

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Self-censorship

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A polarised population

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cartoon by Ann Telnaes in The New York Times.

By A. D. McKenzie
PARIS, Dec 23 2013 (IPS)

A woman and her husband are seated at a table. As she talks, he seems to be ignoring her, his head hidden behind a newspaper.

“At least Obama is listening to me,” she says.

This is just one satirical reference to the ongoing international surveillance scandal, in a book published earlier this month by the French-based group Reporters Without Borders, which works to protect freedom of expression and of information.

Titled ‘100 Cartoons by Cartooning for Peace for Press Freedom’, the book aims to raise awareness of the many assaults on freedom of expression that have taken place over the past year. It contains cartoons by more than 50 cartoonists from all over the world who have produced some laugh-out-loud work, even when one is aware that the subject isn’t fundamentally funny.

The book looks at freedom of speech, American surveillance tactics, and the state of the world. The section subtitled ‘Spying on the World’ contains some of the most satirical cartoons, but some drawings may offend individual readers.

One troubling aspect of the book, for instance, is the way certain cartoonists tend to depict characters of African origin, whether they are presidents or the poor. Some of the usual stereotypical representations can be found here in a few instances, and they smack of insensitivity, even for readers who try not to be like the person who says in one cartoon: “I’m all for free speech … unless I find it personally offensive.”“We can’t talk about political correctness and say cartoonists must draw certain groups only in a certain way."

Nicolas Vadot, a Belgium-based cartoonist featured in the book, told IPS that the cartoons involved reflect the style of the individual cartoonist, who draws everyone as “ugly”.

“We can’t talk about political correctness and say cartoonists must draw certain groups only in a certain way,” Vadot says. “You’ll find someone offended by anything.”

Patrick Chapatte, a popular cartoonist whose work appears in international newspapers, said in an interview published in the book that “it’s all a question of temperament.

“Some cartoonists will do anything for a laugh and to try to stretch the limits. I just try to get it right. To know how to be provocative when necessary and to be serious when necessary,” he said.

His understated humour and unfussy drawings make for incisive commentary in the book, as when he shows a commuter in a packed train screeching on his cell phone: “Outrageous! The government is listening to all our conversations!”

For former United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan, “cartoonists must provoke discussion with sensitivity for the considerations and feelings of others.” But even when they try to do this, cartoons can still offend.

“It may even be required of them,” Annan says in a foreword to the book. “But we cannot forget that the freedom to communicate through images is an important right which must be defended and upheld.

“In no context is this more important than when cartoonists use their images to resist oppression, hold leaders to account, and speak truth to power on behalf of those with no voice,” he adds.

Annan and the renowned French cartoonist Plantu founded Cartooning For Peace in 2006 in the wake of protests and riots around the world sparked by the controversial Danish cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad. The organisation now comprises more than 100 cartoonists representing 40 nationalities and all the world’s major religions.

The initiative was meant to highlight the notion that cartoonists’ influence comes with a “responsibility to encourage debate rather than inflame passions, to educate rather than divide,” Annan says.

The new book, a joint project between Reporters Without Borders and Cartooning for Peace, is a “reminder of the challenges that reporters continue to face in many parts of the world, and also of the importance” of organisations such as Reporters Without Borders that work to safeguard freedom of information and to protect and support journalists, Annan says.

If anyone doubted the importance of such efforts, a recent report makes for sobering reflection. Reporters Without Borders says that in 2013, 71 journalists were killed in connection with their work, and 87 were kidnapped.

The number of deaths was lower than in 2012, but abductions are a 129 percent rise from last year. Reporters Without Borders says that “Syria, Somalia and Pakistan retained their position among the world’s five deadliest countries for the media.”

The organisation added that “threats and violence forced a growing number of journalists to flee abroad,” while at least 178 journalists are in prison right now.

Cartoonists themselves have been the victims of harassment and even physical harm in a number of countries. The book profiles Syrian cartoonist Ali Ferzat, a critic of President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, who in 2011 was abducted and tortured by assailants. They also broke his left hand – the one he uses to draw. Cartooning for Peace managed to get him out of the country and he now lives in Kuwait, where he still gets threats through the Internet, he says.

Against this backdrop, the drawings in ‘100 cartoons’ take on an added dimension. This is the first time that Reporters Without Borders has brought out a book of cartoons instead of photographs since it began publishing its press freedom books in 1992. The group says that the proceeds from the sales will be used to help fund Reporters Without Borders’ activities in the field in support of journalists and bloggers.

Syrian government troops are targeting media centres and news providers, Reporters Without Borders has warned after the killing of a citizen journalist and the destruction of premises belonging to two media centres within a week.

The journalism advocacy group on Wednesday also said there has been an increase in abductions of news providers by armed groups in and around the city of Aleppo since the start of November.

At least five Syrian citizen journalists have been kidnapped in the past three weeks, Reporters Without Borders said.

On Tuesday, Mohamed Ahmed Taysir Bellou, the editor of the opposition Al-Shahba TV and a reporter for Shahba Press Agency, was shot dead by a sniper while covering clashes between President Bashar al-Assad’s troops and rebels in Aleppo’s Lairmoon district.

The army also bombarded the premises of the Aleppo News Network and the Aleppo Media Centre “within the space of 48 hours,” Reporters Without Borders said.
In addition, the organisation reported that more than 20 Syrian news providers were being held hostage by armed groups, while a total of 16 foreign journalists were detained, held hostage or missing.

“The increased pace of abductions is extremely disturbing,” Reporters Without Borders said.

In Damascus, independent journalist Omar Al-Shaar was kidnapped from his home in the southwestern suburb of Jaramana two weeks ago by government intelligence officials, the organisation said.

Al-Qaeda threat

Shaar is a professional journalist and the editor of the English-language section of the independent DP-Press News website since 2011.

Reporters Without Borders also noted that Syrian news providers were fleeing the country “in large numbers” due to the threat posed by the al-Qaeda-affiliated Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, a group operating in rebel-held areas.

The organisation said more than ten media workers had sought refuge in neighbouring Turkey since the beginning of November.

“The only media that the [Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant] tolerates are those that publish or broadcast the information or communiques approved by their emirs [commanders]. In its view, all other media must be silenced and their employees must be killed,” the organisation said.

Syria has become the most dangerous place for journalists, photographers and video journalists to work, with at least 50 reporters killed since the start of the war, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

In 2011, Syria was ranked the eighth most dangerous country in the world for journalists, with two reporters killed.

In 2012, conditions deteriorated and Syria became easily the most hazardous country for the media, with 31 journalists killed in combat, or targeted by either government or opposition forces.

This year, 17 journalists have been killed so far.

Published under an agreement with Al Jazeera.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Iran, Syria, Sudan, Belarus and Zimbabwe - all widely condemned for human right abuses - are members of Interpol. Yemen is also a member and known for its human rights abuses. Pictured here are protestors in Yemen. Credit: Yazeed Kamaldien/IPS

By Ida Karlsson
BRUSSELS, Aug 6 2013 (IPS)

The world’s largest international policing organisation Interpol is being used by governments to track down political opponents and human rights campaigners, an IPS investigation reveals.

The number of Interpol’s “wanted person” alerts have more than tripled over recent years, and those “wanted” are not just suspected criminals.

Interpol issues thousands of “wanted person” alerts, so-called red notices, every year. Criminal justice experts say that even though some of Interpol’s member states are nations with poor human rights records and corrupt legal systems, the organisation has no effective mechanisms to prevent countries, or even individual prosecutors, abusing its system.

Iran, Syria, Sudan, Belarus and Zimbabwe – all widely condemned for human right abuses – are members of Interpol, and each country has red notices listed on its website. A red notice is not an arrest warrant. National governments decide how to act on a red notice, and many consider it a sufficient legal basis for arrest.

“Interpol’s ‘wanted person’ alerts can have a catalogue of devastating effects,” Alex Mik at Fair Trials International told IPS. “People have had visas refused, separating them from family for months or years and causing them to lose their jobs and livelihoods. Businessmen can lose clients, and journalists their credibility. People hesitate to travel for fear of arrest.”

Fair Trials International assists individuals facing trial in a country other than their own. The organisation has worked on several cases, and raised questions over Interpol’s red notices.

“For example, the Russian activist and journalist Petr Silaev was arrested in a youth hostel, handcuffed for five hours in a police car and imprisoned for over a week at the request of an investigator in Moscow after a red notice,” Mik said. “Indonesia used Interpol’s systems to publicly brand Benny Wenda, a key figure in the West Papuan independence movement, a wanted terrorist and discredited his political campaign.”

People in this situation have no independent court they can turn to for redress; they can only request a review by a commission funded by Interpol. Those on the Interpol commission are government officials and not experts in human rights.

Protestors inside the Friends of Syria meeting, demanding an end to the bloody violence in their country. Iran, Syria, Sudan, Belarus and Zimbabwe – all widely condemned for human right abuses – are members of Interpol. Credit: Jake Lippincott/IPS

Fair Trials International has called for Interpol to protect itself against political abuse to ensure that genuine fugitives are targeted, and not those whose only “crime” is political opposition.

In 2011, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, a non-profit investigative journalism project, analysed a snapshot of all public red notices on Interpol’s website, as on Dec. 10, 2010. More than 2,200 of the 7,622 red notices were from countries that provide no political rights or civil liberties, according to the organisation Freedom House. Nearly half the red notices studied, 3,600, were from countries Transparency International ranks among the most corrupt."Interpol's 'wanted person' alerts can have a catalogue of devastating effects.” -- Alex Mik at Fair Trials International

Interpol reports that it issued 2,343 red notices in 2005, 6,344 in 2010, and 7,678 in 2011. Until 2008 police agencies had to apply directly to Interpol for a red notice. Today, to save time and money, every red notice request is entered into the system directly by the police agencies themselves. Police around the world see those notices before Interpol reviews them.

In February 2013 the organisation Reporters Without Borders called for withdrawal of Interpol’s red notice against the French journalist Daniel Lainé. The red notice prevented Lainé from working as a reporter outside France. The organisation said the case had “all the signs of a frame-up, with charges based on written evidence from someone who had never appeared in court.”

On Jul. 1, 2012, a new resolution governing Interpol’s red notice system came into effect aiming to ensure that publication and circulation of red notices conform to high standards. But according to Fair Trials International, the reform does not go far enough.

Interpol is an organisation with 190 member states and an annual budget of almost 60 million euros. According to its constitution Interpol is required to comply with “the spirit of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.”

In the journal the International Enforcement Law Reporter, Interpol wrote in 2012 that its “comprehensive legal framework ensures that the processing of information via Interpol’s channels (including notices) conforms to Interpol’s rules.”

IPS requests to Interpol for a comment brought no response.

The Hasht-e Sobh newspaper is now offering cheap SMS news-alerts to over 15,000 subscribers across Afghanistan. Credit: Shelly Kittleson/IPS

By Shelly Kittleson
KABUL, May 31 2013 (IPS)

As Afghanistan prepares for the 2014 withdrawal of foreign forces that have occupied this country for over a decade, investors are already beginning to bid a hasty retreat amid rumours that “chaos” and civil war will replace NATO’s boots on the ground late next year.

Among those most fearful of this approaching financial drought are journalists and media organisations who have long relied on international support to stay afloat.

Najiba Ayubi, director of the independent Afghan media group known as The Killid Group (TKG), described the last 10 years as the “golden decade for Afghan media”, which saw the establishment of 175 FM radio stations, 75 television stations and hundreds of print publications that have taken up the cudgels on everything from rural girls’ right to education to the public’s right to information.

The radio stations in particular have been very effective in developing a strong civil society and there is “a serious danger of losing all that if funding dries up,” Ayubi told IPS.

But fear breeds innovation, and as the drawdown approaches, media practitioners are finding creative solutions to the post-NATO quandary, including the creation of a new journalists’ federation, efforts to build a culture of investigative journalism and the drafting of a “code of conduct” for the press.

Media practitioners close ranks

One of the first responses to the threat of a funding shortage has been a heightened sense of solidarity in times of distress.

When the independent daily Hasht-e Sobh decided to take the Afghan ministry of mines to task in a special edition in late March for “irregular tender procedures” and the squandering of resources on so-called advisors who were paid as much as 107,000 dollars per month, the paper’s editor-in-chief Parwiz Kawa was promptly summoned to the attorney general’s office.

This raised fears that he might be fated to a similar end as the many Afghan journalists who have been killed on the job in the last decade, including two in the past few weeks.

But local media organisations just as promptly issued statements denouncing the violation of the right to free speech. Hasht-e Sobh, winner of Reporters Without Borders (RSF)’s 2012 Press Freedom Award, says the matter is currently on hold.

This spontaneous reaction came partly in response to the paper’s daily struggle for survival: while in 2011 it was able to employ some 125 staff across the country, its bureau has since dwindled to 70, axing crucial correspondents in the eastern city of Jalalabad and the southern Kandahar province.

“We had to let them go when donors cut the funding,” Kawa told IPS, adding that 50 percent of Hasht-e Sobh’s budget comes from international donors, with less than 30 percent coming in from advertising, sales and subscriptions.

The group is now scrambling to secure loans from supporters and began offering a low-cost SMS news alert service through an agreement with telecommunications provider Etisalat two months ago.

The service has already attracted 15,000 subscribers and hopes to eventually reach at least 100,000 of Afghanistan’s estimated 30 million inhabitants, according to Kawa.

Ayubi is similarly concerned about the future of TKG, which achieved full self-sufficiency in 2005 but took a hit after the announcement of the 2014 military pullout. With advertisers’ pockets growing shallower, Killid has once again resorted to seeking grants in order to maintain its operations.

According to Ayubi, it is particularly important for media organisations to remain functional in the lead up to the April 2014 presidential elections so that the population can make informed decisions.

Nader Nadery, former human rights commissioner of Afghanistan and current executive chairman of the Free and Fair Elections Foundation, highlighted the crucial role the media plays in nurturing a vital society, pointing out that news sources have become much more critical of the government’s failure to deliver on its promises.

This initially caused the government to dig in its heels and adamantly refuse to release even the most innocuous information on the grounds that it is classified and that releasing it would pose a “national security risk.”

But after extensive lobbying by media and civil society groups, the government published a draft Access to Information law earlier this year.

Though the Centre for Law and Democracy has criticised the draft on a number of points – such as the restricting of access to “information that serves a right or brings ease to performing of the relevant duties’’ – Nadery believes the government’s overture to civil society represents an “important step forward” for press freedom and the right to information.

With these newly won rights come responsibilities, Afghan National Journalists’ Union (ANJU) Chief Fahim Dashti noted, drawing attention to the recent collaboration between more than 30 media organisations over a seven-month period that resulted in a draft Code of Practice, designed to ensure media quality.

The code calls for journalists to pay greater attention to the psychological and social impact of news reports, especially those covering delicate issues like child abuse and rape, and aims to “sensitise” the public by, for example, refraining from using the word “criminal” for those not yet convicted of crimes. Dashti believes this will also strengthen the public’s trust in media outlets.

Though his own widely respected publication ‘Kabul Weekly’ folded in 2011 due to financial difficulties, Dashti is hopeful about the overall future of journalism.

Meanwhile, the newly established Afghan Journalists’ Safety Committee has embarked on efforts to alleviate some of the risks journalists incur in their work, offering first aid training, medical treatment, and legal advice. A 24-hour hotline offers a lifeline to distressed journalists by connecting media practitioners with a vast network of civil society activists, as well as local and international media.

In a country where the literacy rate is estimated to be hovering close to 28 percent, though, print publications will find it the hardest to survive.

Saddled with a long list of woes brought on by an economic crisis, debt-stricken Greece now finds itself tackling a different kind of austerity than the one implemented by its European creditors: this time it is press freedom, not public budgets, on the chopping block.

Journalists claim their working environment is deteriorating so rapidly that Greece will soon top the list of European countries with the worst press freedom indicators.

Already the country meets all the negative criteria included in a resolution on media freedom passed by the Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs Committee of the European Parliament last Thursday.

The resolution focuses heavily on the protection of independent journalists and media outlets, both of which have watched their freedom wane rapidly over the last five years.

According to the 2013 Press Freedom Index, issued by the media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (known by its French acronym RSF), Greece dropped 14 places – down to 84^th – on a list of 179 countries, which the organisation termed “a disturbingly dramatic fall”.

At the beginning of the economic crisis in 2009 Greece was ranked 35^th on the index – its plunge represents the most dramatic deterioration among European countries.

In addition to frequent intimidation of reporters, the rights group noted, “The social and professional environment for journalists, who are exposed to public condemnation and violence from both extremist groups and the police, is disastrous.”

The New Year opened on a bad note for reporters here: the night of Jan. 10 saw home-made bombs lobbed into the residences of five journalists working for mainstream private TV channels and public media.

The attacks were allegedly the work of left-wing radicals who regarded the journalists as “pawns” in the corrupt relationship between media moguls and corporate interests that unquestioningly support the ruling authorities as well as the actions of the Troika, the three European institutions responsible for implementing what many Greeks see as a devastating austerity plan.

But though such incidents represent a worsening of the environment for journalists, the issue of press freedom here is not a new one.

Even before the financial crash hit Greece, capitulation of the majority of mainstream media to elite interests had become a thorn in the sides of citizens and independent media practitioners.

As a 2006 U.S. Embassy cable, made public last year by the whistleblower website Wikileaks, explained, “The private media outlets in Athens are owned by a small group of people who have made or inherited fortunes in shipping, banking, telecommunications, sports, oil, insurance, etc. and who are or have been related by blood, marriage, or adultery to political and government officials and/or other media and business magnates”.

All major private TV channels in the country are corporate-owned. Most major publications and radio stations also have direct links to private corporations.

Reports indicate that 500 to 600 journalists are currently, or have been, on government payrolls.

Independent journalists hounded

For the past year the few existing independent investigative journalists in the country have experienced severe aggression from government authorities, as well as a host of other difficulties including death threats, stalking and defamation and denouncement by a domestic media that experts say is increasingly submissive to corporate agendas.

Just one example of the hostile environment journalists are forced to operate in came earlier this year, when UNFOLLOW magazine published a cover story on oil smuggling involving Aegean Oil, a major private multinational company, and Hellenic Petroleum, a private-public energy conglomerate.

The story explained how the companies buy oil at reduced tax rates and channel it back into the market at the normal price; the exposé also contained two reports by the 7^th Piraeus Customs Authority, detailing the practice.

The day after the story’s publication, Lefteris Charalabopoulos, the reporter in charge of the investigation, received a phone call at the magazine’s office from a person going by the name of Dimitris Melissanidis, head of Aegean Oil.

The reporter told IPS the entrepreneur initially threatened legal measures against the magazine, then went on to issue a stream of invective, shouting, “Screw you and the authorities. You will not be able to sleep. You will not be able to go out, I’ll be your nightmare. Fear of me will haunt you. They will come to your house and blow you up in your sleep.”

When Charalabopoulos answered back, the caller warned, “I want you to tell me that with a gun to your head.”

Though a spokesperson for the company subsequently denied that such a phone call had taken place, Charalabopoulos told IPS, “When the number of the call was traced back it was easily identified as a number registered with the central offices of Aegean Oil.”

“I have no doubts about the identity of the person I spoke with on the phone,” he said, adding that almost all mainstream media ignored this incident of blatant intimidation.

When the centre-left opposition group, Syriza, brought the issue to the Greek parliament, Makis Voridis – a popular MP with the ruling New Democracy Party – made dismissive remarks about a “superfluous opposition that annoys parliamentary proceedings with legally insignificant issues like an intimidation case between two private entities.”

In another example of the government’s unfriendly stance towards independent media, Kwstas Vaxevanis, a popular investigative journalist, was brought to trial last November when his magazine ‘Hot Doc’ published a copy of the hitherto unseen Lagarde List.

The document contained over 2,000 accounts of possible tax evasion by individuals or mirror companies, amounting to hundreds of millions of euros.

The argument that Vaxevanis had violated the “privacy” of those on the list fell apart, but when the acquitted journalist walked out of the courthouse, he was greeted only by a flock of major international media – the domestic mainstream stayed far away from the case.

Despite international denunciation of the whole issue, Vaxevanis is now pending re-trial.

“In Greece the law is abused by politicians and media practitioners who try to protect their tycoon patrons against anyone who dares to speak up against them,” Vaxevanis told IPS. “During the …dictatorship in Greece (1967-1974), press freedom was targeted in the name of national interests.

“Today, press freedom is (jeopardised) by manipulation of the law. Unfortunately this country is governed today by a closed group of professional politicians, businessmen and celebrity journalists,” he added.

Meanwhile, experts say intimidation is also spreading.

Nikolas Leodopoulos, a Thomson Reuters reporter involved in investigating major banking scandals, is regularly pictured by news outlets with ties to elite and corporate agendas as a “fake reporter” or as a suspect of “criminal deeds”.

The last four years have witnessed at least three attacks on journalists by security and police personnel that caused serious harm.

Many less serious attacks, as well as widespread intimidation by radical leftists or neo-Nazis, are regularly reported during strikes and riots.

(END)

Dilrukshi Handunnetti holds the wallet containing the media accreditation card of slain journalist and editor Lasantha Wickrematunge. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

By Amantha Perera
COLOMBO, Feb 14 2013 (IPS)

The year was 1998 and porters at the wholesale vegetable market in the Sri Lankan capital Colombo had gone on strike, virtually suspending vegetable distribution in the city and its suburbs.

A national news channel, Sri Lanka Maharaja Television, had dispatched a crew of reporters to cover the porters’ union general meeting; the atmosphere was charged and tension was palpable.

“Suddenly,” recalled a female journalist who was just a young cub reporter at the time, “I was surrounded by hundreds of bare bodied men, some holding metal hooks and sweating profusely, all wondering what the hell this young woman was doing there”.

She told IPS that she soon realised the throng of men “wanted only one thing: they wanted the attention of my team, all of them wanted to tell the story.”

The incident, memories of which have stayed with her throughout her entire career, is just one example of how even a relatively mundane assignment can turn out to be a dangerous encounter for a female journalist, she said.

A decade and a half later, women continue to tread on eggshells as they navigate an incendiary media landscape in this South Asian country of 20 million people.

The island’s overall press freedom indicators are not glowing. A recent compilation of global statistics by the Paris-based media rights watchdog Reporters Without Borders (which goes by its French acronym RSF) ranked Sri Lanka 162^nd out of 179 countries on its press freedom index, sandwiched between Rwanda and Saudi Arabia.

According to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), 19 journalists have been killed in the past two decades, nine of them in the last eight years. To date no one has been convicted for the crimes.

On Jan. 28 over 100 journalists gathered in Colombo to protest against assaults on the media. The ‘Black January’ commemorations have become an annual event to remember assassinations, attacks and intimidations of colleagues.

Though attacks against the press have been on the decline, the bleak forecast for the future is that those responsible for violence, disappearances and even murder will continue to roam free.

“A Black January 2014 seems almost inevitable,” according to a blog post by CPJ’s Asia Coordinator, Bob Dietz.

Within the general climate of fear and repression of the media, women face a unique set of challenges. The latest protests were a grim reminder to female reporters that they are walking on thin ice.

“Sometimes the threat levels become more severe because you are a woman,” a female foreign correspondent with over two decades of working experience in Sri Lanka told IPS.

Mandana Ismail Abeywickrema, associate editor of the weekend newspaper ‘The Sunday Leader’ shares this view.

The mother of a young daughter, Abeywickrema feels that female journalists face even more pressure when they have families to consider.

“I am a mother and a wife — what will happen to my family if something happens to me?” she asked.

“Many female journalists walk down the safe path, and may not touch sensitive stories that they would have done in the past,” she said, because of concerns for their families’ safety.

Dilrukshi Handunnetti, senior deputy editor at the daily ‘Ceylon Today’ believes the intimidating environment has led to “a change in our newsrooms over the past few years, a collective (decision) to practice self-censorship”.

Abeywickrema and Handunnetti are intimately familiar with the fatal consequences of disregarding personal safety. Both were senior journalists at ‘The Sunday Leader’ when its founding editor, Lasantha Wickrematunge, was killed in broad daylight, just five minutes from their office, on Jan. 8, 2009.

Abeywickrema drove past the site of the attack – which involved four armed men on motorcycles – minutes after it had taken place.

No one has been charged so far for the gruesome murder. Wickrematunge’s widow, journalist Sonali Samarasinghe, and his successor at the newspaper, Frederica Jansz, both now live in exile due to threats on their lives.

Jansz in particular received several death threats after she took over the paper in mid-2009.

She complained that unidentified motorcyclists followed her home just a few days before her flight out of the country. In exile, she told media that she valued her role as a mother to her two sons more than that of a “hero journalist”, which prompted her decision to leave.

The current editor of the newspaper, Sakunthala Perera, is also a woman.

It is not uncommon for women to hold senior positions in newsrooms. Many female journalists agree that women have gained ground in the Sri Lankan media scene, especially in English-language and electronic formats.

“One positive indication that women are breaking ground in Sri Lanka is the (presence) of female sports reporters in our news team,” Ceylon Today’s Handunnetti told IPS. “That is something that was unheard of when we joined newspapers.”

But she sounded a cautionary tone about gender equality in the field, explaining that while women have made huge advances as professional news-gatherers, they continue to be largely excluded from some niche areas.

She stressed that women rarely receive training on reporting from hazardous areas such as post-disaster sites or conflict zones, adding that few newsrooms take precautions against the specific dangers women face in the field.

Abeyawickrema recalled that when she covered the aftermath of the 2004 Asian tsunami in Sri Lanka, she did so without any formal training, entering potential high-risk zones without any knowledge on how to ensure her personal security.

Another female reporter who worked at ‘The Sunday Leader’ in 2004, but has since left, told IPS that she once spent the night in a camp set up for tsunami victims where she could “feel men moving near my tent all through the night”.

“I was completely vulnerable,” she said, adding that neither her colleagues nor her editors at the time understood the trauma of that experience.

According to Abeyawickrema, female journalists are constantly reminded of their vulnerability to attacks, especially of a sexual nature, during field assignments.

“I am experienced enough to know when to stop pushing the envelope,” she said. “But I don’t think many juniors are aware of the risk.”

A female journalist working in the eastern city of Batticaloa told IPS that she has now limited her work to stories involving women and development, because she felt unsafe reporting on incidents of a more political nature.

“Once (in 2011) members of an armed political group crowded around me when I went to report on an incident involving one of their members and a village woman who rejected his advances. Some of them were so close that I could feel their breath — the silent message was: ‘You know what could happen, right?’”

One positive development, Abeywickrema said, has been an outburst of peer support in response to the murky media environment for women.

She said female journalists are diligent about looking out for each other and offering advice to juniors. “I think we are a lot more conscious about the environment we operate in than we were in the past,” Handunnetti concluded.