RSF Reports 2
From 19th December 2017 CLICK HERE FOR REPORTS BEFORE 19th December 2017
06.12.18
ITALY
UN agency tries to silence Rome-based editor
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) condemns the disproportionate nature of the defamation proceedings that the director general of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and other FAO officials have brought against John Phillips, the British editor of Italian Insider, an English-language monthly based in Rome.
Phillips, who is due to appear in court in Rome on 14 June, could be sentenced to at least three years in prison and ordered to pay more than 100,000 euros in damages under Italy’s criminal libel law in connection with his coverage of alleged corruption and nepotism within the FAO, which has its headquarters in Rome.
The FAO’s Brazilian director general, José Graziano da Silva, brought a libel action as the agency’s representative, seeking a sum in damages that has not been revealed. Four other FAO officials, including Graziano’s chief of a staff, are also suing Phillips for around 100,000 euros, an exorbitant sum that neither he nor the newspaper would be able to pay.
Italian Insider was founded in 2009 by Phillips and a handful of other Rome-based foreign reporters who wanted an outlet for longer investigative pieces. Their stories have been picked up in recent years by some of the biggest international media outlets including the Economist, Guardian, AFP and RAI.
“We deplore the fact that the FAO and its director general have brought criminal proceedings against the journalist John Phillips and are seeking an outrageous sum in damages with the clear aim of getting his newspaper shut down,” said Pauline Adès-Mével, the head of RSF’s EU-Balkans desk.
“As the mandate of the United Nations includes promoting and defending press freedom, it is highly regrettable that one of its agencies is suing a media outlet and its journalists in this manner.”
An Italian Insider legal defence fund drive was launched on the crowdfunding platform Gofundme on 1 June in a bid to help Phillips cover his legal costs.
Under Italy’s criminal code, defaming politicians, judges or civil servants is punishable by at least three years in prison. Italy is ranked 46th out of 180 countries in RSF's 2018 World Press Freedom Index.
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REPORTERS SANS FRONTIÈRES/ REPORTERS WITHOUT BORDERS
Pauline ADES-MEVEL
Responsable du bureau UE/Balkans
Head of EU-Balkans desk
Who persecutes journalists in Afghanistan?
Published 18.05.2018
After journalists were endangered by this week’s heavy fighting between the Taliban and Afghan army in Farah, capital of the western province of Farah, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) reiterates its concern about the decline in the security situation for journalists and media outlets throughout Afghanistan and lists the country’s press freedom predators.
Taliban forces attacked and entered part of the city of Farah shortly after midnight on 15 May after an offensive outside the city that had intensified over a period of several days. The Taliban attack put many local journalists and media outlets in direct danger.
At least 30 journalists are based in the city, working for two TV channels (one commercial, one public), five radio stations, two newspapers and for national media. Farah province was already regarded as one of the most dangerous in Afghanistan.
RSF has tried to help find a solution for the safety of Farah’s journalists, working with local journalists’ associations and the authorities. “Until now, no attack on media outlets and journalists has been reported,” a journalist inside the city told RSF. “Most have found a refuge, while waiting for the city to be secured.”
The Afghan authorities meanwhile report that army reinforcements have been sent to the city and claim that the situation is under control.
Mounting death toll
According to RSF’s tally, a total of 36 journalists and media workers have been killed since the start of 2016 in Afghanistan in bombings and other forms of violence by the country’s two main press freedom predators, the Taliban and Islamic State (Daesh).
Other journalists have been the victims of violence by the police and security services in various parts of the country. Militias working for provincial strongmen and governors also threaten and harass media outlets and journalists.
“We call on the authorities to do their duty to ensure the safety of journalists and respect for the right to inform,” said Reza Moini, the head of RSF’s Iran-Afghanistan desk. “The government must regulate the militias, which nowadays play a major role in harassment of the media. We also deplore the mistrust and accusatory attitude that the police and military display towards the media and journalists, endangering the freedom to inform. The authorities must end the threats to the media and the impunity for those who attack journalists.”
At least 11 dead in a single week
Last month, ten journalists were killed in a single day – 30 April. Nine of them were killed in a double suicide bombing in Kabul, the second of which deliberately targeted the media. It was the deadliest single attack on the media since the fall of the Taliban regime in December 2001 and was claimed shortly afterwards by Islamic State.
The tenth journalist to be killed on 30 April was Ahmad Shah, a journalist with the BBC’s Pashto section, who was shot dead by unidentified gunmen in eastern Khost province. The police investigated the murder and the province’s governor, Hokam Khan Habibi, announced on 10 May that the killers had been arrested and would soon be brought to trial. He also called Shah’s murder a “terrorist act” but did not elaborate.
Abdulmanan Arghand, a journalist with the Kabul News commercial TV channel, was gunned down on 25 April in the southern province of Kandahar. RSF learned that the Kandahar police had warned him on 5 March of an imminent Taliban threat against him and his father because of their anti-Taliban activities. Arghand met on 13 and 15 March with the Kandahar police chief (the provincial head of the National Directorate of Security), who confirmed the threat. In a phone message afterwards, Arghand expressed his concern and his dissatisfaction with these meetings.
The Kandahar police chief announced on 26 April that a “Taliban member” had been arrested for murdering Arghand, and the police released a video in which he made a full confession. Taliban spokesman Zbiollah Mojahed nonetheless insisted that the detainee was not a Taliban member and that the Taliban were conducting their own investigation into the Arghand murder. He also denied any Taliban role in the Shah murder.
Threat from unofficial militias
The past year has seen a major increase in attacks on journalists, who are targeted not only by the Taliban and Islamic State, which seek to enforce their hatred of press freedom, but also by the police and army and by the unofficial militias.
These militias act as enforcers for warlords and strongmen in various parts of the countries. They are armed by the government or by ruling politicians and their main job is to resist and combat armed opposition groups, above all, the Taliban. But many journalists say that most of these militias have also become one of the main sources of danger to the media.
Where the forces of the state are either powerless or absent, these militias are the new masters, confiscating land, taxing cars on the main highways and pressuring the media to say nothing. Covering the criminal activities of these groups is out of the question, even for the national media.
In several regions, they even collaborate with those they are supposed to combat, namely the Taliban, especially in Ghor province, where two radio stations were recently destroyed, and in Najrab, a village in Kapisa province, where the head of one of these militias is also a senior member of the parliamentary committee on national security. In some provinces, such as Balkh, it is not uncommon for influential individuals, including the former governor, to have their own private armies.
Ghazni is a good example of the situation now prevailing for journalists. In Ghazni, journalists are harassed by the Taliban, whose presence in the province is growing, by the security forces, which want to control media coverage for security reasons, and by the unofficial militias, which suppress any independent reporting.
“The threat from these armed groups has compounded the threats already imposed by influential politicians, the mullahs, the police and the governor, although they have no official power, legally,” a Ghazni province journalist told RSF on condition of anonymity. “It is irresponsible of the government to tolerate the illegal actions of these groups.”
The level of impunity is high in the regions controlled by these militias. There has been little progress in the investigation into the attacks on two radio stations in Firuzkoh, the capital of Ghor province – Sedai Edelat (Voice of Justice) on 21 January 2018 and Radio Sarhad (Frontier) on 23 December 2017. Abdlvodod Samim, the journalist who was at Sedai Edelat when it was attacked, was arrested by the police as the main suspect although the station’s director and many other journalists insist that he was not involved. The police do not as yet have any other leads.
Harassed by governors, police and army
Three National Directorate of Security agents used force to prevent four journalists – 1TV’s Farhad Joya, the news agency Khohandej’s Nazir Ayoubi, and Firouz Mashouf and Yahya Fouladi from the commercial TV channel Tamadon – from covering an Islamic State attack on a mosque in the western city of Herat on 25 March. Although an official communiqué condemned the action of these three agents, no measures were taken against them, the journalists say.
When Radio Salam Watandar reporter Erfan Barzegar went to police headquarters in the northeastern province of Takhar on 29 March to do a report on terrorism, he resisted the provincial counter-terrorism chief’s attempts to intimidate him, with the result that he was threatened with arrest and imprisonment. It was only thanks to the presence of other officials that he avoided being jailed.
Farhad Tuhidi was beaten by police in Herat on 15 March for trying to cover a road accident for which the military were to blame. After filming a brawl between policemen during the Nowruz (Persian New Year) festivities in Ghor province on 23 March, Radio Salam Watandar’s Marouf Seiedi was himself beaten by police officers, with police chief Ziaedin Sagheb’s support after Sagheb had arrived at the scene. Ghotbedin Khohi was insulted and hit by special security forces in Meymaneh, Faryab province, on 25 March just for filming a street.
The Coordinating Committee for the Safety of Journalists and Media reported in a statement on 7 April that, of the 1,072 cases of violence against journalists registered during the past 15 years, only 172 had been investigated and, of these, 68 were closed without any action being taken. The investigation into three murders of journalists – in Balkh in 2005, Nangarhar in 2008 and Helmand in 2009 – are still open.
Afghanistan is ranked 118th out of 180 countries in RSF's 2018 World Press Freedom Index.
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REPORTERS WITHOUT BORDERS (RSF)
Rebecca Vincent
UK Bureau Director
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) calls on the Egyptian authorities not to confuse disrespect with terrorism after they arrested three bloggers with a reputation for irreverence in the past month.
The latest victim is Shadi Abu Zeid, who has made popular satirical videos viewed by thousands on social networks, including a famous joke at the expense of the Egyptian police in January 2016, and was part of the team of Abla Fahita, a successful TV comedy show recently suspended by the authorities for being too daring.
Two days after state security officials arrested Zeid at his home on 6 May, his worried family learned that he has been placed in provisional detention for at least 15 days on suspicion of “publishing lies” and “membership of a banned group.”
The second of these charges is particularly astonishing as Zeid has little in common with the suspected supporters of the banned Muslim Brotherhood to whom the charge is usually applied.
Sherif Gaber, who recently started a blog after expressing his views for years on social networks, was arrested at Cairo airport at he was about to take an international flight on 2 May and has been charged with advocating atheism, the charge on which he was previously detained in 2013. Egyptian law penalises insulting or disrespecting any of the three monotheistic religions.
Mohamed Radwan Mohamed, a blogger better known as “Mohamed Oxygen,” has meanwhile been held ever since his arrest last month, on 9 April. His sidewalk interviews with members of the public and his interviews with well-known figures, addressing political and social issues in a relaxed style, have won him hundreds of thousands of followers on Facebook and YouTube.
Paying tribute to him on the Deutsche Welle website, the Egyptian novelist Alaa al Aswany wrote: “He knew he could never get a satisfying job in the traditional newspapers or TV channels but, instead of despairing, he decided to become an independent journalist and blogger.”
“Blogs, interviews with people in the street, humour and irreverence are not terrorist acts, so how can the Egyptian authorities explain the arrests of these bloggers unless they were driven by a desire to control not only news and information but also opinions?” RSF said.
All-out crackdown
By reining in the traditional media and blocking access to independent online media, the Egyptian authorities have reduced the country to almost complete silence. Social networks have not as yet been blocked but the authorities are currently using other means in an attempt to control social network content.
lf they are not arrested – like Alaa Abdel Fattah, a blogger who has been serving a five-year jail term since 2015 – journalists and social network users are subjected to harassment and intimidation. Some are defamed, which makes them fear arrest. Others, such as Wael Abbas, are the targets of online attacks by troll armies, who managed to get his account suspended.
At least 35 journalists, citizen journalists and bloggers are currently detained in Egypt, which is ranked 161st out of 180 countries in RSF's 2018 World Press Freedom Index. Most of the detainees are being held pending trial.
UZBEKISTAN: In historic move, Uzbek court frees journalist and blogger
Published 08.05.2018
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REPORTERS WITHOUT BORDERS (RSF)
Rebecca Vincent
UK Bureau Director
Credit: Timur Karpov / Ferghana
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) regards yesterday’s Uzbek court decision to free journalist Bobomurod Abdullaev, blogger Hayot Nasriddinov and two fellow defendants as “historic,” but regrets that Abdullaev was not acquitted and calls for a full and impartial investigation into the acts of torture to which he was subjected.
After being held for seven months, Abdullaev was released at the end of a two-month trial but was convicted of “public calls for the government’s overthrow” and was sentenced to having 20 percent of his salary deducted for just over a year. The Tashkent court acquitted his three co-defendants including Nasriddinov, who had been detained since October 2017.
Noting in its verdict that members of the SGB (State Security Service) – formerly known as the SNB – repeatedly violated the criminal code in the initial stages of the case, the court called on the SGB to conduct an internal investigation and to ensure that its staff adhere to the criminal code in future.
“We regret that Bobomurod Abdullaev was not acquitted but his release and the fact that he was able to publicly defend himself during the trial would have unimaginable just a short while ago,” said Johann Bihr, the head of RSF’s Eastern Europe and Central Asia desk.
“We urge the authorities to continue on this course by conducting a full and impartial investigation into the manipulation and acts of torture on which this case was based. The verdict sends a strong signal, but in-depth reforms are now needed to put an end to the censorship and to ensure that no more journalists are subjected to an ordeal of this kind.”
After his arrest on 27 September 2017, Abdullaev was initially accused of plotting a coup attempt and of writing a series of articles under the pseudonym of “Usman Khaknazarov” that incited the government’s overthrow. He acknowledged using this pseudonym in the past but denied writing the offending articles.
While detained, Abdullaev was insulted, tortured and threatened with being killed. In an open letter to President Shavkat Mirziyoyev at the end of last month, he said he had been subjected to physical violence by SNB investigators to force him to testify against himself and opposition leaders.
He repeated these claims during the trial, which observers were allowed to attend for the first time. Many journalists, diplomats and human rights defenders observed the trial.
Since taking over as president in 2016, Mirziyoyev has promised to end the oppressive and arbitrary practices that marked the rule of his predecessor, Islam Karimov. After releasing a number of political prisoners, including journalists held for nearly 20 years, he fired the SNB’s all-powerful boss and announced an overhaul of the agency.
But, despite the many signs of a thaw, the media are still largely under the government’s control and the leading independent news websites cannot be accessed from within the country.
Uzbekistan is ranked 165th out of 180 countries in RSF's 2018 World Press Freedom Index, four places higher than in the 2017 Index.
Published 01.05.2018
The double suicide-bombing yesterday (30 April) in Kabul was the latest in an already long list of bloody attacks on media outlets and journalists, who have been deliberately killed in cold blood in many countries because their reporting caused annoyance. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has compiled a list of the deadliest attacks on the media of the past 10 years.
AFGHANISTAN: Double suicide-bombing kills 9 journalists in Kabul
30 April 2018
At least nine journalists were killed and six others badly injured in a double suicide bombing in Kabul on 30 April that was the deadliest attack on the Afghan media since the fall of the Taliban regime in December 2001. Claimed by Islamic State, it consisted of an initial explosion near the headquarters of Afghanistan’s biggest intelligence agency followed by a second blast 30 minutes later in the middle of the reporters who had arrived to cover the first one. The second explosion clearly targeted the journalists, who were all aged less than 30 and worked for AFP, Tolo News, TV1, Mashal and Radio Azadi. Double-bombings of this kind are often used by militant groups.
ECUADOR: Dissident FARC group abducts and murders two reporters, driver
12 April 2018
Two reporters for the Ecuadorean newspaper El Comercio, Javier Ortega and Paul Rivas, and their driver, Efraín Segarra, were kidnapped near the border between Ecuador and Colombia on 26 March 2018 by a dissident faction of Colombia’s FARC guerrilla group. They had gone there to cover the clashes between government forces and armed groups that had begun in Ecuador’s northern province of Esmeraldas in January. Photos of the bodies of the three kidnap victims were posted online on 12 April and Ecuadorean President Lenin Moreno confirmed their authenticity the next day.
AFGHANISTAN: Suicide bomber kills 7 Tolo News employees
20 January 2016
TV technicians employed by the Moby Group, which comprises Tolo TV and Tolo News, were being driven to their homes in Kabul on 20 January 2016 when their minibus was rammed in the city centre by a suicide bomber in another vehicle carrying explosives. Seven employees, including three women, were killed in the attack, which was claimed by the Taliban. Tolo and TV1, another Afghan commercial TV channel, had been named as “military targets” – and therefore liable to be attacked – in a Taliban communiqué the previous October.
FRANCE: Gunmen shoot 8 Charlie Hebdo journalists
7 January 2015
Two men armed with Kalashnikovs stormed into an editorial meeting at the Paris headquarters of the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo on 7 January 2015, gunned down eight of its journalists and killed four other people, including police officers, in the course of their getaway. Ever since Charlie Hebdo published cartoons of the Prophet Mohamed in 2006, its journalists had been target of frequent threats and some of them had been getting police protection. Its offices were the target of an arson attack in 2011.
PAKISTAN: 3 journalists killed, 3 wounded in Quetta double-bombing
10 January 2013
Around 80 people were killed in a double-bombing in Quetta, the capital of the southwestern province of Balochistan, on the night of 10 January 2013. As well as causing destruction and loss of life, the first bomb severed as a lure to draw journalists and police to the scene, where they were targeted by a second explosion that killed three reporters and injured three other journalists. According to bomb disposal crews, around 100 kilos of explosives were used in the attack.
NIGERIA: ThisDay targeted by Boko Haram double-bombing
26 April 2012
A suicide bomber drove a jeep carrying explosives into the building housing the printing press of the influential, privately-owned newspaper ThisDay in the capital, Abuja, on 26 April 2012, killing himself and four others, and wounding dozens. ThisDay nonetheless claimed that it had reinforced security around its premises in response to the violence that had killed at least 400 people since the start of 2012. At almost the same time the same day, a car laden with explosives was detonated near a building in the northern city of Kaduna that housed the regional offices of ThisDay, The Moment and The Daily Sun, killing at least four people and wounding around 20 others. Boko Haram claimed both attacks, saying it wanted to send a clear message to other media that were “not objective and fair” and had chosen to side with the government instead the Jihadi group.
IRAQ: Deadly attack on Al-Arabiya’s Baghdad bureau
26 July 2010
Dubai-based satellite TV news channel Al-Arabiya’s bureau in the central Baghdad district of Harithya was targeted by a car bomb on 26 July 2010 that killed four employees. Opened in 2003, the TV channel’s Baghdad bureau has been hit by terrorist attacks in the past. Bureau chief Jawad Hattab narrowly escaped a bomb that was set off underneath his car in September 2008. A car bomb targeting the bureau killed seven people and wounded 20 others in October 2006.
PHILIPPINES: Biggest-ever media massacre in Maguindanao
23 November 2009
It was the biggest bloodbath of journalists in the media’s history. A private militia operated by the governor of Maguindanao province (on the southern island of Mindanao) massacred a total of 57 people, including 32 journalists, on 23 November 2009. The journalists were covering the campaign of a politician who wanted to run against the governor’s son to be the next governor. When the massacre took place, they were accompanying a convoy of the politician’s supporters who were on their way to an electoral office to register him as a candidate. Ten years later, the trial of the accused perpetrators and instigators has yet to reach a conclusion. One of the massacre’s survivors was killed in November 2014 while she was on her way to a meeting with prosecutors to make a statement.
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REPORTERS WITHOUT BORDERS (RSF)
Published 30.04.2018
According to the information obtained by Reporters Without Borders (RSF), at least nine journalists were killed and six others were badly injured in a double suicide bombing this morning in Kabul, in which the second explosion deliberately targeted reporters. It was the deadliest attack on the media since the fall of the Taliban regime in 2001.
In all, at least 25 people were killed by the two explosions in the central Kabul district of Shash Darak. All the journalists were less than 30 years old. Islamic State issued a statement shortly afterwards claiming responsibility.
“We know that the Afghan government is involved in protecting journalists but it must continue its efforts to provide security and training,” RSF secretary-general Christophe Deloire said. “We have formally referred this case to the United Nations secretary-general. It is high time that the UN sent a strong signal to the international community and to local protagonists by appointed a Special Representative for the protection of journalists.”
The two bombs were set off at a street checkpoint near the headquarters of the National Directorate of Security (NDS), Afghanistan’s main intelligence agency. The victims of the first of the two explosions, at around 8:30 a.m., were mostly ordinary civilians. The second bomb was set off half an hour later, after reporters had arrived at the scene.
The second blast killed ToloNews cameraman Yar Mohammad Tokhi, three Radio Azadai (Radio Free Europe) journalists (Ebadollah Hananzi, Sabvon Kakeker and Maharam Darani), two TV1cameramen (Ghazi Rasoli and Norozali Rajabi, aka Khamoush), AFP photographer Shah Marai Fezi, Mashal TV reporter Salim Talash and Mashal TV cameraman Ali Salimi.
The journalists who were badly injured included Naser Hashemi of Al Jazeera, Omar Soltani of Reuters, Ahmadshah Azimi of Nedai Aghah, Ayar Amar of the weekly Vahdat Mili and Davod Ghisanai of the privately-owned TV channel Mivand.
Today’s bombing killed more journalists than any other single attack since the fall of the Taliban government in December 2001. A suicide car bombing in January 2016 targeting a Tolo TV minibus killed seven of the privately-owned TV channel’s employees.
According to RSF’s tally, a total of 34 journalists and media workers have been killed since the start of 2016 in attacks by Islamic State and the Taliban, which are both on RSF’s list of press freedom predators.
RSF offers its condolences to the families and colleagues of the victims of today’s double-bombing.
RSF has published Pashto and Persian-language versions of the new edition of its Safety Guide for Journalists,Safety Guide for Journalists, which is intended for reporters operating in troubled regions. The guide was produced in partnership with UNESCO.
Afghanistan is ranked 118th out of 180 countries in RSF's 2018 World Press Freedom Index.
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REPORTERS WITHOUT BORDERS (RSF)
Rebecca Vincent
UK Bureau Director
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REPORTERS WITHOUT BORDERS (RSF)
Rebecca Vincent
UK Bureau Director
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REPORTERS WITHOUT BORDERS (RSF)
Rebecca Vincent
UK Bureau Director
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REPORTERS WITHOUT BORDERS (RSF)
Journalists discredited, censored and jailed under Egypt’s Sisi
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REPORTERS WITHOUT BORDERS (RSF)
Rebecca Vincent
UK Bureau Director
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) calls for the immediate withdrawal of the “terrorist propaganda” charges against its Turkey representative, Erol Önderoğlu, and two other human rights defenders, whose trial was adjourned for another six months at a hearing today in Istanbul.
Postponing the trial, whose sole aim is to intimidate Turkish civil society, means that the defendants will have to spend another six months with the threat of a long prison sentence hanging over them.
Today’s hearing, attended by Önderoğlu and one of his two fellow defendants, Şebnem Korur Fincancı, last just ten minutes before being adjourned until 9 October. The court said it still needed to hear the testimony of the third defendant, Ahmet Nesin, who left the country.
This was the sixth postponement since the trial began in November 2016. The three defendants are accused of “propaganda for a terrorist organisation,” “condoning crime” and “inciting crime” for taking part in a campaign of solidarity with the pro-Kurdish newspaper Özgür Gündem.
“This trial, which criminalises solidarity and press freedom and is solely designed to intimidate Turkish civil society, has gone on for too long,”said Johann Bihr, the head of RSF’s Eastern Europe and Central Asia desk. “It is high time to drop the absurd charges against Erol Önderoğlu and his colleagues. We also call on the courts to overturn the convictions of those who have already been tried for participating in this campaign.”
In all, a total of 41 people have been or are being prosecuted for taking part in this solidarity campaign, in which they symbolically took turns at being Özgür Gündem’s “editor for a day” in mid-2016 because it had been the victim of judicial persecution. It ended up being forcibly closed in August 2016.
Özgür Gündem’s successor, Özgürlükçü Demokrasi, was placed under judicial control last month.
Önderoğlu and his two co-defendants, who are facing up to 14 years in prison, were the only participants in this campaign to be arrested. They spent ten days in provisional detention in June 2016.
Turkey is ranked 155th out of 180 countries in RSF’s 2017 World Press Freedom Index. The already worrying media situation has become critical under the state of emergency proclaimed after a coup attempt in July 2016. Around 150 media outlets have been closed, mass trials are being held and the country now holds the world record for the number of professional journalists detained.
Six Vietnamese bloggers get exceptionally long jail terms
Published 05.04.2018
At least 10 citizen journalists could die in China’s jails
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REPORTERS WITHOUT BORDERS (RSF)
Rebecca VincentPress release22.03.2018
TURKEY
Doğan media group sale completes government control of Turkish media
Yesterday’s announced sale of Turkey’s biggest media group, Doğan Media Company, to a pro-government conglomerate, Demirören Holding, signifies the death of media pluralism in Turkey, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said.
Doğan was the only remaining media group not to have been brought under the Turkish government’s control and its sale to Demirören marks the end of an era.
Its leading media outlets include the daily Hürriyet, the 24-hour news channel CNN Türk (a joint venture with CNN), the news agency DHA, the English-language Hürriyet Daily News, the TV channel Kanal D and the tabloid Posta. Many of the group’s journalists are expected to be laid off.
“This sale means the death of pluralism and independent journalism in Turkey’s mainstream media,” said Erol Önderoğlu, RSF’s Turkey representative. “The government now has complete control of the media in the run-up to general elections in 2019. Amid an unprecedented crackdown on civil society and the political opposition, only a handful of low-circulation newspapers still offer an alternative to the government’s propaganda.”
As shown in a survey carried out in recent years by RSF and the news website Bianet, 80% of the Turkish media landscape was already affiliated, politically or financially, to the government. After the sale of the Doğan group’s outlets, nine of the ten most-watched TV channels and nine of the ten most-read national dailies will be owned by pro-government businessmen.
Under pressure, the Doğan group already sold the prestigious daily Milliyet to Demirören in 2011. Once seen as one of the pillars of independent journalism, Milliyet has since then undergone a complete transformation and is now an integral part of the government propaganda apparatus. The Doğan group’s other outlets had meanwhile significantly toned down their criticism of the government.
Demirören Holding’s owner, Erdoğan Demirören, is well known for his links with President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. In 2003, when he was prime minister, Erdoğan was a witness at the marriage of one of the industrialist’s sons and fellow shareholders.
In a telephone conversation recording leaked in 2014, Prime Minister Erdoğan was heard scolding Demirören for allowing Milliyet to publish revelations about peace talks between the government and Kurdish rebels led by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). Amid sobs, Demirören begged for forgiveness and promised to deal ruthlessly with those responsible.
Turkey is ranked 155th out of 180 countries in RSF’s 2017 World Press Freedom Index. The already worrying media situation has become critical under the state of emergency proclaimed after the July 2016 coup attempt. Around 150 media outlets have been closed, mass trials are being held and the country now holds the world record for the number of professional journalists detained.
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REPORTERS WITHOUT BORDERS (RSF)
Rebecca Vincent
UK Bureau Director
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20.03.2018
Credit: Jenny Vaughan / AFP
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) urges Vietnam’s partners to press for an end to the government’s intolerable current crackdown after a Hanoi people’s court passed sentences of fifteen, nine and seven years in prison on six bloggers at the end of a summary trial on 5 April.
In the seemingly endless series of trials of citizen-journalists in Vietnam, this one was exceptional because of the unprecedented severity of the sentences.
Although bordering on farce, today’s proceedings ended with six bloggers who are members of Brotherhood for Democracy – a group that posts reports about human rights violations online – being sentenced to a total of 66 years in prison and 17 years under house arrest.
The trial was supposed to have lasted two days but was dispatched in few hours. Diplomats and foreign journalists were barred from the court room, which was packed with policemen. An AFP journalist was questioned by police. Many dissidents were temporarily placed under house arrest ahead of the trial, while several demonstrators were arrested outside the court house.
One of the group’s co-founders, Nguyen Van Dai, was sentenced to 15 years in prison and five years of house arrest. The journalist Truong Minh Duc and the blogger Nguyen Trung Ton were sentenced to 12 years in prison and three years of house arrest.
Nguyen Bac Truyen, another co-founder, got 11 years in prison and three years of house arrest. Le Thu Ha, a woman blogger, was sentenced to nine years in prison and two years of probation. The sixth defendant, Pham Van Troi, got seven years in prison and one year of house arrest.
“These sentences are utterly grotesque,” said Daniel Bastard, the head of RSF’s Asia-Pacific desk. “The only crime committed by these Brotherhood for Democracy members was posting articles calling for respect for human rights in Vietnam. The severity of the sentences has only one explanation – it was meant to intimidate those who dare to raise issues in the public interest.”
Bastard added: “As a result of this unprecedented crackdown, General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong’s Vietnam has lost all credibility on the international stage and its partners must draw the unavoidable conclusions.”
RSF urges European Union member countries to veto the free trade agreement with Vietnam that was supposed to be approved in 2018. After the European Parliament’s emergency resolution on Vietnam last December, it would be a disgrace if European countries were to go ahead with such an accord with a country that in recent months has become one of the world’s worse enemies of the freedom to inform.
Similarly, the United States must condition its trade talks in the coming weeks on concrete measures by the Vietnamese authorities to ensure respect for press freedom.
Vietnam is ranked 175th out of 180 countries in RSF's 2017 World Press Freedom Index.
TURKEY
European Court issues first rulings on journalists detained in Turkey
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) calls for the immediate release of all journalists wrongfully imprisoned in Turkey after the European Court of Human Rights ruled against Turkey in its first two decisions on the detention of journalists after the July 2016 coup attempt.
RSF has long been pressing the European Court to take a position on the imprisonment of Turkish journalists, who are denied any effective recourse in Turkey, and the court finally began to do this today, issuing decisions on the provisional detention of Mehmet Altan and Şahin Alpay for more than a year and a half.
Finding that the detention of these two famous journalists was neither “necessary” nor “proportionate” and that it violated their “right to liberty and security of person” and their “right to freedom of expression,” the court ordered Turkey to pay both of them 21,500 euros in damages.
“We have waited a long time for these rulings, which force the Turkish authorities to confront their obligations,” said Erol Önderoğlu, RSF’s Turkey representative. “The authorities must now draw the appropriate conclusions, ending Şahin Alpay’s house arrest and freeing Mehmet Altan and all other unjustly detained journalists.”
Önderoğlu added: “The Turkish government must stop criminalising journalism and trampling on the rule of law, or else it will suffer the political and financial consequences.”
Alpay was arrested in July 2016, and Altan the following September. Turkey’s highest court, the constitutional court, ruled in January of this year that their provisional detention was illegal and ordered their immediate release, but the lower courts refused to carry out this order. This refusal by the lower courts “runs counter to the fundamental principles of the rule of law and legal certainty,” the European Court said.
Altan was finally sentenced to life imprisonment last month on a charge of trying to overthrow state institutions. As a result of a second decision by the constitutional court (just days before today’s European Court rulings), Alpay was let out of prison on 16 March but remains under house arrest on charges of “trying to overthrow the government” and links with “terrorist organisations.”
Today’s European Court rulings only address the issue of the provisional detention of these two journalists. RSF regrets that the European Court waited until after Altan’s conviction to issue a ruling on his case, because its effect could have been much greater.
RSF nonetheless thinks that today’s two rulings confirm that the violations that have taken place are serious enough to justify a complete reexamination of all the cases of journalists imprisoned in Turkey, especially as the European Court said Alpay and Altan were arrested because of their “criticism” of the government and their “publication of information regarded (...) as endangering national interests.”
Turkey is ranked 155th out of 180 countries in RSF’s 2017 World Press Freedom Index. The already worrying media situation has become critical under the state of emergency proclaimed after the July 2016 coup attempt. Around 150 media outlets have been closed, mass trials are being held and the country now holds the world record for the number of professional journalists detained.
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Credit: Rudnikov.com
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) condemns the Russian government’s unacceptable persecution of Novye Kolesa, the leading independent newspaper in Russia’s western enclave of Kaliningrad, which finally resulted in the weekly announcing that today’s issue is the last.
Novye Kolesa endured all kinds of pressure during its 23 years of existence but the past five months of intense harassment were unprecedented. Its editor was arrested, part of its equipment was seized, it lost its advertisers, it was repeatedly prosecuted, and warnings from the regulatory authority opened the way to the future withdrawal of its license.
The final blows were the ousting of Novye Kolesa from the print media distribution networks and a sudden decision by the company that printed the weekly that it was terminating the contract. It was acting editor Yuri Grozmani who announced yesterday that today’s issue would be the last.
The previous issue was withdrawn from sale shortly after its publication on 29 March. Witnesses told the newspaper that unidentified individuals went to newsstands, seized all the copies on sale, and threatened vendors. Then distribution network representatives gave orders to hide all the remaining copies.
That issue’s front-page story was about the death of a Kaliningrad resident in detention. The story suggested that he had been tortured to death by the Federal Security Service (FSB) and it included photos of the FSB agents allegedly involved.
The distribution networks now claim that it was not profitable to sell Novye Kolesa although every issue usually sold out within a few days. The printing company gave the same grounds for its sudden decision yesterday to terminate its contract. Grozmani said Kaliningrad governor Anton Alikhanov “put pressure on the commercial circuits.”
Novye Kolesa editor Igor Rudnikov has not been able to defend his newspaper because he has been in prison since the start of November. A Moscow court extended his pre-trial detention for another two months on 29 March. Known for determined investigative reporting into corruption and local politics, he is being held on a clearly trumped-up charge of extortion.
“The authorities did everything possible to silence Novye Kolesa and its editor,” said Johann Bihr, the head of RSF’s Eastern Europe and Central Asia desk. “Their fate speaks volumes about the tight control now being imposed on the media in a region that until recently was regarded as among the least hostile to journalism."
“We firmly call on the authorities to end this harassment, which constitutes a clear act of censorship. They must allow Novye Kolesa to resume its activities, release Igor Rudnikov without delay and drop all judicial proceedings against him and his colleagues.”
Rudnikov is facing up to 15 years in prison on a charge of trying to blackmail Gen. Victor Ledenev, the head of the local branch of the Investigative Committee, which is responsible for investigating the most serious crimes in Russia.
Rudnikov’s lawyers say there is no hard evidence against him and that the case is riddled with procedural flaws. Colleagues point out that Gen. Ledenev was targeted in a Novye Kolesa story in June 2017 about undeclared real estate properties, and that he therefore had every reason to want Rudnikov out of the way.
The situation of Kaliningrad’s media has worsened dramatically since Alikhanov, a young man reportedly close to the circles around Vladimir Putin, became its governor in September 2017. Amid mounting threats and prosecution, the state-owned public broadcaster has been taking a more aggressive editorial line towards the independent media.
Several media outlets have decided to close, while others have become less critical of the local authorities. Kaliningrad is one of the 11 Russian cities that will host FIFA World Cup matches this summer.
Russia is ranked 148th out of 180 countries in RSF's 2017 World Press Freedom Index
TURKEY
Prosecutor requests long jail terms for 13 defendants in Cumhuriyet trial
Published 22.03.2018
After President Xi Jinping last week gave himself the constitutional power to rule indefinitely, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) points out that more than 50 journalists and bloggers are currently jailed in China – some serving life sentences – and that ten of them could die prematurely as a result of the conditions in which they are held.
The Chinese authorities no longer sentence press freedom defenders to death, but they deliberately mistreat them and deprive them of the medical attention they need while in prison.
The Nobel peace laureate Liu Xiaobo and the dissident blogger Yang Tongyan both died last year from cancer that was left untreated in detention. Liu Xiaobo’s widow Liu Xia, who is suffering from depression and a heart condition, has been denied contact with the outside world for eight years although no charge has been brought against her.
To draw the international community’s attention to the fate of journalists and bloggers imprisoned in China, RSF is publishing a list of ten leading detainees who are in danger of dying as a result of mistreatment and a lack of medical care.
Ilham Tohti, 48, journalist, awarded the Sakharov Prize in 2016
Lu Jianhua (Wen Yu), 57, political commentator
Zhang Haitao, 46, political commentator
Yiu Mantin (Yao Wentian), 73, publisher
Wu Gan, 44, blogger
Lu Yuyu, 38, citizen journalist
Huang Qi, 54, journalist, recipient of the 2004 RSF Press Freedom Prize
Gui Minhai (Michael Gui), 53, Chinese-born Swedish publisher
Liu Feiyue, 47 , journalist
Zhen Jianghua (Guests Zhen), 32, journalist
The Cumhuriyet newspaper trial’s prosecutor requested sentences of up to 15 years in prison on 16 March for 13 of the newspaper’s journalists and managers. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) condemns the trial as a “sinister farce” and urges as many people as possible to come and support the defendants at the next hearing, at which the court is expected to issue verdicts.
At Friday's hearing, the prosecutor asked the court to convict 13 of the 18 defendants of “assisting a terrorist organisation,” a charge that carries a maximum jail term of 15 years. They include well-known investigative reporter Ahmet Şık, editorial writer Kadri Gürsel, editor-in-chief Murat Sabuncu and managing director Akın Atalay.
Atalay’s provisional detention was extended today until the next hearing, to be held from 24 to 27 April. The only defendant not to have been released provisionally, he has already spent more than 500 days in prison. The court mentioned the possibility that he might try to flee although he returned to Turkey of his own volition and made himself available to judges when he learned that his colleagues had been arrested in October 2016.
“Like the rest of the trial that we have been attending for the past eight months, today’s summing-up by the prosecutor criminalises journalism,” said Erol Önderoğlu, RSF’s Turkey representative.
“The prosecutor’s dramatic claims are based on a politicised and conspiracy-theorist interpretation of media work. More than ever, we demand the acquittal of Cumhuriyet’s journalists and managers, and we urge the broadest possible public attendance at the next hearing to express solidarity with them.”
The prosecutor also called for Cumhuriyet accountant Emre İper to be convicted of “terrorist propaganda” on the basis of his tweets, for the acquittal of three of the defendants (Turhan Günay, Günseli Özaltay and Bülent Yener), for the withdrawal of the “abuse of authority” charges against the newspaper’s managers, and for the cases against Can Dündar and İlhan Tanır, who are now living abroad, to be handled separately.
In recent years Cumhuriyet has published many stories that have embarrassed the authorities and it has become one of the spearheads of Turkey’s independent media, which are being subjected to more harassment than ever. Because of its role, it was awarded the RSF Press Freedom Prize in 2015.
The judicial authorities accuse Cumhuriyet’s journalists and managers of carrying out a “radical change of editorial line” in order to support the goals of what are regarded in Turkey as three “terrorist organisations”: the movement led by the Muslim preacher Fethullah Gülen, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), and a small far-left group known as the DHKP/C.
In fact, the ideologies of these three organisations could not be more disparate and all three were constantly criticised by the newspaper.
Turkey is ranked 155th out of 180 countries in RSF’s 2017 World Press Freedom Index. The already worrying media situation has become critical under the state of emergency proclaimed after a coup attempt in July 2016. Around 150 media outlets have been closed, mass trials are being held and the country now holds the world record for the number of professional journalists detained.
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REPORTERS WITHOUT BORDERS (RSF)
Rebecca Vincent
UK Bureau Director
Russia: Vladimir Putin’s damning record on press freedom
Published 16.03.2018
On the eve of the 18 March presidential election in Russia, in which Vladimir Putin is running for another term, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has written an open letter to him summarising the disastrous effects of his 18 years in power on the freedom to inform and urging him to lift all the curbs he has placed on this freedom.
Dear President Putin,
You started gagging your media critics when you were first elected president 18 years ago but your efforts have intensified considerably during your latest term. Your country is now ranked 148th out of 180 countries in our World Press Freedom Index and the situation has not been as bad as it is now since the Soviet Union’s fall.
You have had a tight hold on national TV broadcasting since 2001, when the ORT and NTV channels were brought under control. The television channels with the most viewers are now majority-owned by the state or by the state-owned company Gazprom. As harassment of media critics is stepped up, these channels pump out propaganda that fuels a climate of hate and paranoia towards civil society and drags down journalistic standards.
Independent media outlets are confined to an ever-smaller niche and the pressure on them is stepped up whenever they manage to acquire a significant number of readers or viewers. The only independent national TV broadcaster, Dozhd TV, was dropped by the satellite and cable services in 2014. The editor of Russia’s most widely-read news website, Lenta.ru, was fired the same year, along with most of her staff. The editorial staff of the RBC media group suffered the same fate in 2016.
All of these media outlets distinguished themselves by their coverage of the most sensitive stories, from the Ukrainian conflict to high-level corruption. The purge has not spared leading regional outlets such as the Siberian TV broadcaster TV2.
The Internet continued until recently to be space for freedom of expression but it too has been reined in over the past few years. The criteria used as grounds for blocking access to a website without reference to the courts have grown steadily since the first blacklist was drawn up in 2012. The opposition information websites Grani.ru, Kasparov.ru, EJ.ru and more recently OpenRussia have been among the victims. What with monitoring bloggers, censoring search enginesand news aggregators, regulating VPNs and forcing social networks and messaging services to cooperate with the FSB, legislation has become steadily more draconian. More and more Internet users are being jailed for the comments they post on social networks and even for their “likes.”
Laws promulgated by you since 2012 have curtailed media freedom in general, not just on the Internet. They have re-penalised defamation, penalised “offending the feelings of religious believers,” penalised “inciting separatism,” expanded the definition of “high treason” and toughened “anti-extremism” legislation, which has long been used against critics. The broad and vague wording of these laws allows them to be used selectively and arbitrarily.
Other reforms such as the drastic restriction on foreign investment in the media have accentuated the vulnerability of independent media outlets. The criminalisation of civil society has not spared NGOs that support the media and defend press freedom, and now even threatens foreign media.
Misuse of legislation to persecute critics has helped to fill prisons. We calculate that at least five journalists (Alexander Sokolov, Igor Rudnikov, Zhalaudi Geriyev, Alexei Nazimov and Alexander Tolmachev) and two bloggers (Alexander Valov and Alexei Kungurov) are currently detained in connection with their reporting. The total is greater than it has been at any time since 2000.
The impunity enjoyed by those who physically attack and murder journalist is unchanging. At least 34 media professionals have been killed in connection with their work in Russia since 2000. In the overwhelming majority of these cases, the investigations have gone nowhere and the masterminds have not been identified. With five journalists killed, the independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta has paid a particularly high price and continues to receive threats.
You have allowed no-go zones to develop in which no pluralism survives. Chechnya and Crimea, which was annexed in 2014, are the leading “news black holes.” The effects of this situation are not just local. Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov no longer hesitates to target media beyond his borders. Do you plan to turn these regional dictatorships into the laboratories of tomorrow’s Russia? Are they the model you offer for your fourth term?
To avoid going down in history as gravedigger of the freedoms guaranteed in Russia’s young constitution, you must change course. We ask you to ensure the repeal of all the draconian laws adopted during your latest term, to release the national TV channels from state control, to allow independent media outlets to operate without being harassed, and to end the climate of hatred and impunity to which government critics are exposed. And we ask you to promote judicial independence so that the courts stop acting arbitrarily and instead free all the journalists and bloggers who have been wrongfully imprisoned.
We thank you in advance for the attention you give to this letter.
Sincerely,
Christophe Deloire
RSF Secretary General
Security forces abduct two journalists in Pakistan’s Sindh province
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REPORTERS WITHOUT BORDERS (RSF)
Rebecca Vincent
UK Bureau Director
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Istanbul trial ends with jail sentences for 25 Turkish journalists
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REPORTERS WITHOUT BORDERS (RSF)
Rebecca Vincent
UK Bureau Director
Press release
Published 07.03.2018
Egyptian prosecutors seek death sentence for photographer
Prosecutors have requested a death sentence for Mahmoud Abou Zeid, an Egyptian photojournalist known as Shawkan who has been held for four and a half years. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) condemns the complete disproportionality of the proposed sentence and reiterates its call for his immediate and unconditional release.
The photojournalist Mahmoud Abou Zeid, alias Shawkan is one of the more than 700 defendants in a political mass trial in Cairo for whom the “maximum penalty” – death by hanging – was requested by the prosecution on 3 March.
Arrested in connection with an anti-government protest in Cairo’s Rabaa al-Adawiya Square in August 2013, they are all accused indiscriminately of charges that include murder, attempted murder and membership of a banned organisation (the Muslim Brotherhood).
“Seeking the death penalty for a photographer who simply covered an opposition demonstration is a political punishment, not an act of justice,” RSF said. “Shawkan’s only crime was trying to do his job as a photographer. He must be freed at once.”
Shawkan was arrested on 14 August 2013 while on assignment for the British photo agency Demotix, covering the use of force by the security forces to break up the Rabaa al-Adawiya Square protest by supporters of deposed President Mohamed Morsi. His detention is regarded as arbitrary by the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention.
Egypt is ranked 161st out of 180 countries in RSF's World Press Freedom Index.
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REPORTERS WITHOUT BORDERS (RSF)
Rebecca Vincent
UK Bureau Director
Published 05.03.2018
UZBEKISTAN
Uzbek journalist freed after 19 years in prison
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) is relieved to learn that Yusuf Ruzimuradov, an Uzbek journalist who had been held for 19 years, was finally released on 22 February. RSF calls on the Uzbek authorities to free the nine other journalists still held in Uzbekistan.
Now aged 64, Ruzimuradov was one of the world’s longest held journalists. A reporter for Erk, then Uzbekistan’s leading opposition newspaper, he was arrested in 1999, tortured and convicted on a charge of conspiracy against the state, receiving a 15-year jail sentence that was extended at least twice.
“We are greatly relieved by Yusuf Ruzimuradov’s release, even if he should never have been imprisoned, and we urge the authorities to immediately free the nine other journalists and media workers who are wrongfully imprisoned in Uzbekistan,” RSF said.
Ruzimuradov is the latest in a series of journalists and human rights defenders to have been freed since President Islam Karimov’s death in August 2016.
The journalists include former Erk editor Muhammad Bekjanov, freed in February 2017 after being held for 18 years, Jamshid Karimov, released a month later after nearly 10 years in a psychiatric clinic, and Solidzhon Abdurakhmanov, freed in October 2017 after nine years in prison.
The journalists Bobomurod Abdullayev, Barno Khudoyorova and Gayrat Mikhliboyev and the blogger Hayot Nasriddinov continue to be jailed in connection with their reporting. Five other journalists who worked for the newspaper Irmok are also still held although their release was announced several months ago.
Uzbekistan is ranked 169th out of 180 countries in RSF's 2017 World Press Freedom Index.
Egyptian regime turns its sights on foreign media
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REPORTERS WITHOUT BORDERS (RSF)
Rebecca Vincent
UK Bureau Director
Published 26.02.2018
SLOVAKIA
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) condemns well-known Slovak investigative reporter Ján Kuciak’s murder during the weekend and calls on the authorities to ensure that those responsible are punished. He is the second journalist to be murdered in a European Union country in the past five months.
The bodies of Kuciak and his partner were found last night at Veľká Mača, 50 km east of the Slovak capital, Bratislava. Both had reportedly been shot several times. The interior ministry confirmed their deaths this morning to the newspaper Dennik N.
Aged 27, Kuciak specialised in covering large-scale tax fraud for the Aktuality.sk news website. His last article was about the activities of Marián Kočner, a Slovak businessman with controversial links to several politicians.
“An investigative reporter has yet again been murdered in a European Union country,” said Adès-Mével, the head of RSF’s EU-Balkans desk. “We call for an investigation in order to establish the exact circumstances of Ján Kuciak’s death and we demand that the authorities shed all possible light on this case, especially as he and those close to him had been threatened in recent months.”
This is the fifth case of a journalist or journalists being murdered in an EU country in the past ten years. Investigative reporter and blogger Daphne Caruana Galizia was murdered in Malta on 16 October 2017. Seven Charlie Hebdo journalists were massacred in Paris on 7 January 2017. Greek radio station manager Socratis Guiolias was gunned down with an automatic weapon outside his home in 2010. And Croat newspaper editor Ivo Pukanic was killed outside his newspaper by a bomb planted next to his car in 2008.
Slovakia is ranked 17th out of 180 countries in RSF's 2017 World Press Freedom Index, five places lower than in 2016.
Published 26.02.2018
KYRGYZSTAN
Hour of truth for media freedom in Kyrgyzstan
What with prosecutions, astronomic damages awards and travel bans, there is mounting concern about the threats to media freedom in Kyrgyzstan. The need to end the abuses and to respect press freedom is urgent, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) says.
The harassment of independent journalists grows by the week. On 22 February, the supreme court upheld a damages award of 5 million soms (60,000 euros) against well-known journalist Kabai Karabekov for “offending” the new president, Sooronbay Jeenbekov.
Karabekov has been banned from travelling abroad and is facing the possibility of a two-year jail term if he does not pay the entire amount quickly, because the courts have refused to let him pay in instalments.
A precedent was set last November when the supreme court confirmed a decision ordering the Zanoza news website, its founders, a human rights defender and two lawyers to pay 40 million soms (500,000 euros) in damages for allegedly insulting former President Almazbek Atambayev.
Not only have Zanoza’s representatives been banned from travelling abroad but their bank accounts have also been frozen. On 7 February, a court rejected a request by the journalists for the damage payments to be staggered. Atambayev is even demanding that Zanoza editor Dina Maslova’s real estate assets be auctioned in order to cover part of the damages. RSF calls for the broadest possible public response to the crowdfunding appeal to raise the money they need.
“Kyrgyzstan is on a slippery slope, and we appeal to President Sooronbay Jeenbekov to stop the persecution and to ensure full respect for press freedom during his term of office,” said Johann Bihr, the head of RSF’s Eastern Europe and Central Asia desk.
“In particular, we call for an end to the astronomic damages awards against critical media outlets and for an amendment to the press law that limits damages and abolishes special protection for the president. The courts must play their democratic role by protecting journalists from harassment instead of exposing them to it.”
Media freedom on a slippery slope
The pluralism of the Kyrgyz media is still exceptional in comparison with the rest of Central Asia, but concern is mounting.
Investigative journalist Elnura Alkanova was charged on 13 February with “obtaining and divulging information subject to banking or commercial confidentiality” in connection with her coverage of a controversial privatisation for Ferghana, a news website that has been blocked in Kyrgyzstan since June 2017. Banned from travelling abroad since the start of January, she reports that the police have questioned her repeatedly about her sources and her fellow journalists.
Broadcasters have not been spared. The closure of Sentyabr, a TV channel that supports the opposition party Ata-Meken, was confirmed by the supreme court on 27 December. It was closed without warning last August by a Bishkek court on the grounds of allegedly “extremist” comments by a former senior official although the prosecution produced no expert evidence to support the “extremist” claim and the comments were made during a live interview by someone over whom the channel had no control.
To cap it all, the interview was not broadcast by the current Sentyabrbut by a TV channel with the same name that was closed in 2016.
The headquarters of NTS, another TV channel was the subject of a raid on the evening of 19 December by police and court bailiffs that temporarily paralysed its activities. One of Kyrgyzstan’s most popular channels, it is linked to opposition leader Omurbek Babanov, the runner-up to Jeenbekov in last October’s presidential election.
A Bishkek court ordered the freezing of NTS’s assets in response to a complaint by an obscure offshore company. The measure was carried out the same day with a speed that was all the more exceptional given that a third party, not NTS, was the complaint’s direct target. A temporary agreement was eventually reached under which NTS could continue broadcast after an inventory of all its equipment had been carried out
Meanwhile, Agence France-Presse correspondent Christopher Rickleton, a British journalist based in Kyrgyzstan since 2010 who has a Kyrgyz wife and daughter, was expelled without explanation on 9 December in a case recalling that of Grigory Mikhailov, a Russian journalist expelled in March 2017 in unclear circumstances.
Kyrgyzstan is ranked 89th out of 180 countries in RSF’s 2017 World Press Freedom Index.
For more information:
- See RSF’s previous press releases on this subject.
- Read the opinion piece (in Russian) that RSF and 42 Kyrgyz NGOs wrote after the supreme court ruling on the Zanoza case
Two Iranian journalists arrested, beaten, now reportedly in a coma
Published 22.02.2018
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) is extremely concerned about the fate of two journalists who were arrested during violent clashes between police and members of a Sufi religious order called the Gonabadi Dervishes. The journalists were beaten and, according to some sources, are now in a coma.
At least seven people, including three police officers, were killed, around 100 people were injured and more than 300 arrests were made during the three days of clashes, from 19 to 21 February, in the north Tehran district of Pasdaran.
Those arrested included Reza Entesari and Kasra Nouri, two reporters for the Sufi news website Majzooban Nor, and several other Majzooban Nor employees including Faezeh Abdipour. The only independent source of information about the the Gonabadi Dervishes, Majzooban Nor has been posting reports and video footage of the violence by police and plainclothes militiamen.
Witnesses say the two journalists were badly beaten and arrested on the night of 19 February. The authorities have not as yet issued any statement about their arrest and have yet to tell the families where they are being held or what their present condition is.
According to several detainees who were freed in the past 48 hours, the journalists were taken to Imam Sajad police hospital in Tehran shortly after their arrest because their physical condition was worsening. Some of the sources said they are now in coma.
“We are extremely concerned about the physical condition of these two journalists,” said Reza Moini, the head of RSF’s Iran desk. “The lack of transparency and denial of justice surrounding their arrest and hospitalisation is unacceptable. We remind the regime’s highest officials of their duty. They have undertaken to respect international human rights conventions. They are the ones who are responsible for these journalists’ lives.”
Entesari and Nouri have already been arrested and jailed several times in the past, while the Gonabadi Dervishes have been persecuted by the regime’s fundamentalists for the past decade.
One of world’s most authoritarian regimes, Iran is ranked 165th out of 180 countries in RSF's 2017 World Press Freedom Index.
TURKEY
Verdict imminent in trial of 29 journalists and media workers
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) reiterates its condemnation of the politically-motivated trial of 29 journalists and media workers that resumed today in Istanbul and is expected to end tomorrow. Many of them could get long jail terms. Twenty-one of them have already been held for the past 18 months.
The trial’s imminent conclusion comes in the wake of the life sentences that three well known journalists, Ahmet Altan, Mehmet Altan and Nazlı Ilıcak, received last week for allegedly abetting the July 2016 coup attempt that the government blames on the once influential Gülen movement.
Because the defendants in this trial worked for media outlets that supposedly supported the Gülen movement, they are alleged to have constituted its “media wing.”
On 6 February, the prosecutor requested 15-year jail terms for 23 of the defendants* for “membership of a terrorist organisation.” He also requested prison for Murat Aksoy, Gökçe Fırat Çulhaoğlu and Muhterem Tanık for “supporting a terrorist organisation,” the withdrawal of the proceedings against Hüseyin Aydın and a separate trial for two defendants who are on the run, Said Sefa and Bülent Ceyhan.
The prosecution’s case has focused on the defendants’ journalistic activities and political views, and above all on the fact that they worked for media outlets such as Zaman, Meydan, Nokta, Bugün TV and Haberdar, which it has portrayed as Gülen mouthpieces.
Although the prosecutor recognised that Aksoy and Çulhaoğlu have “no link with the illegal organisation and its ideology,” he nonetheless accused them of “legitimising the actions of the organisation,” of “presenting it as a victim” and of “discrediting the justice system” by criticising police raids on Zaman and other pro-Gülen entities since 2014.
At the same time, the prosecutor requested the withdrawal of the charge of “trying to overthrow the government and constitutional order” against 13 of these journalists – an extremely serious charge that was added in March 2017 solely to ensure that they remained in detention after a court ordered their conditional release. The three judges who ordered their release were suspended a few days later.
“The Turkish courts are again being used to execute an act of political revenge,” said Johann Bihr, the head of RSF’s Eastern Europe and Central Asia desk. “We again demand the immediate release of all journalists held without proof of direct and individual involvement in violent acts. This trial highlights the urgent need to reform Turkey’s terrorism law and to lift the state of emergency, which are being used to silence critics.”
Turkey is ranked 155th out of 180 countries in RSF’s 2017 World Press Freedom Index. The already worrying media situation has become critical under the state of emergency proclaimed after the July 2016 coup attempt. Around 150 media outlets have been closed, mass trials are being held and the country now holds the world record for the number of professional journalists detained.
* Ali Akkuş, Abdullah Kılıç, Bayram Kaya, Bünyamin Köseli, Cemal Azmi Kalyoncu, Cihan Acar, Emre Soncan, Habip Güler, Halil İbrahim Balta, Hanım Büşra Erdal, Hüseyin Aydın, Mustafa Erkan Acar, Seyid Kılıç, Ufuk Şanlı, Yakup Çetin, Cuma Uluş, Mutlu Çölgeçen, Ahmet Memiş, Davut Aydın, Muhammet Sait Kuloğlu, Oğuz Usluer, Atilla Taş et Yetkin Yıldız.
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REPORTERS WITHOUT BORDERS (RSF)
Rebecca Vincent
UK Bureau Director
Additional five-year jail term for Bahraini blogger Nabeel Rajab
Published 21.02.2018
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) denounces the persecution of Bahraini blogger and human rights defender Nabeel Rajab, who has been sentenced to five years in jail for tweets.
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) is appalled by the Bahraini regime’s continuing persecution of Nabeel Rajab, an imprisoned blogger and human rights defender who received an additional five-year jail sentence today for tweets in 2015 criticising torture in Bahrain and the Saudi-led coalition’s military intervention in Yemen.
Bahrain’s high court convicted Rajab of offending Saudi Arabia, which has been fighting Yemen’s Houthis since 2015 with the support of Bahrain and other allies, and of insulting the Bahraini interior ministry by reporting criticism of cases of torture in Bahrain’s Jaw prison.
Rajab, who is also president of the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights, is already serving a two-year jail sentence, which he received last July on a charge of “spreading rumours and false information” for criticising the Bahraini authorities in TV interviews.
“We condemn this unjustified sentence and call for Nabeel Rajab’s immediate release,” RSF said. “We are appalled by the way the Bahraini authorities are persecuting a man whose only crime has been to use his right to free speech to draw attention to human rights violations.”
Rajab has been arrested a total of six times since 2011. His health has suffered and he has been hospitalized several times during his many spells in prison. He was released under a royal pardon for “health reasons” in July 2015 but was arrested again in June 2016 and has been held ever since.
According to RSF’s “barometer,” a total of 15 journalists and citizen-journalists are currently detained in Bahrain in connection with the provision of news and information.
A small Gulf state that hosts the US Fifth Fleet, Bahrain saw a wave of protests in 2011 that prompted allegations that Iran was backing an attempt to topple the government. This led to a crackdown on dissent and an increase in censorship, which has been reinforced this year in the run-up to elections.
Bahrain is ranked 164th out of 180 countries in RSF's 2017 World Press Freedom Index.
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REPORTERS WITHOUT BORDERS (RSF)
Rebecca Vincent
UK Bureau Director
Taliban impose taxes on independent Afghan media
Published 19.02.2018
As well as often threatening Afghanistan’s news media, the Taliban have in recent months been forcing media outlets in several provinces to pay arbitrary taxes that are tantamount to a ransom to be allowed to continue operating.
The targets have included Ghaznavian, a privately-owned TV station based in the southeastern province of Ghazni.
Ghaznavian CEO Ahmad Farid Omari said on 19 December 2017: “The Taliban contacted us by telephone at the start of the spring and demanded 400,000 afghanis (25,000 euros), saying it was the tax they are now imposing on media throughout the country. After several reminders and threats, we paid.”
Mohammad Aref Noori, the head of the Ghazni Union of Journalists and Media, said: “For the past three months, the Taliban have been asking media outlets for their turnover figures in order to assess the new taxes they must pay, and then send them threatening letters and warnings to make them pay up.”
The victims of these Taliban ransom demands have included two radio stations, Radio Killid and Radio Sama, both of which were asked to provide their turnover figures so that their tax could be calculated.
The representatives of these radio stations said they immediately alerted the local and national authorities but the authorities claim that the media outlets refused to provide all the evidence of these threats that they needed in order to locate and prosecute those responsible.
At the same time, the authorities nonetheless claim that they have the situation under control and that they can guarantee the safety of these media outlets.
“In the light of this situation, protecting media and journalists must be a priority for the Afghan authorities,” said Reza Moini, the head of the Iran/Afghanistan desk at Reporters Without Borders (RSF). “The Taliban are the media’s enemies and their goal is to create news and information black holes. The media and the authorities must together find a solution to prevent the Taliban from taking the media hostage and demanding ransoms.”
The security situation is worsening by the day. The authorities have proposed reinforcing protection for media premises. This may be effective but it has the drawback of cutting off media from their community. Experience also shows that this kind of protection is not effective in small towns. It is not just the media outlet itself that is targeted, but also its journalists and other employees.
Omari, who is very critical of the lack of action by the authorities, says he paid the ransom in order to protect his own life and the lives of his 18 employees and because he did not think the security forces could guarantee their safety. After speaking out, Omari is now under threat not only from the Taliban but also from the authorities, who accuse him of “collaborating with the enemy.”
After nine months of these threats, Radio Killid had to slash the number of its employees and Radio Sama is financial difficulty.
“We decided not to pay these ransoms and we told the authorities about these threats against the radio station and our employees on site, but they have done nothing,” Killid media group CEO Najiba Ayubi told RSF. “We are now broadcasting by satellite but with only two technicians. Sixteen employees have been laid off. And we cannot cover local news.”
According to the information obtained by RSF, other media outlets have paid ransoms. Taliban spokesman Zabiollah Mojaeh has also confirmed that the Taliban have received these taxes. In reality, the government does not have complete control over provincial towns and villages.
Afghanistan is ranked 120th out of 180 countries in
As the Maldives authorities extend a 15-day-old state of emergency, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) urges them to respect the right to report the news and condemns the latest violence against journalists, in which around 20 journalists were attacked and two were arrested while trying to cover an opposition protest on 16 February.
As the country sank deeper into an unprecedented political crisis amid mounting press freedom violations, Raajje TV’s Hussain Hassan and VTV’s Leevan Ali Nasir were both the victims of police violence when arrested during the demonstration on the evening of 16 February in Malé, the capital.
Badly injured and unconscious, Hassan was rushed to Malé’s ADK hospital and was flown to Sri Lanka on Sunday night to receive additional treatment, narrowly avoiding the police officers who pursued him to the barrier of the international departures area in Malé airport.
“The violence by the security forces against journalists trying to do their job is completely unacceptable,” said Daniel Bastard, the head of RSF’s Asia-Pacific desk. “The authorities must cease their intimidation attempts and must respect the Maldives constitution, which guarantees media freedom even during a state of emergency. And it is completely intolerable for the government to hold journalists responsible for this political crisis.”
The vice-president of the ruling Progressive Party of Maldives (PPM), Abdul Raheem Abdulla, accused Raajje TV and VTV of “spreading discord” while, in a tweet, the PPM’s parliamentary leader went so far as to accuse the two TV channels of organizing the demonstration without producing any evidence to support this claim.
A police communiqué accused the journalists of “spreading false information” and behaving like demonstrators, and denied any use of violence against them, although in fact the police did not hesitate to beat reporters covering the demonstration and to use teargas against them.
In all, about 20 journalists working for various media outlets were treated in hospital for the injuries they sustained during the protest.
President Abdulla Yameen’s government has been stepping up its harassment of the media and its press freedom violations ever since proclaiming a state of emergency on 5 February, which has just been extended for another 15 days. Last week, RSF and other NGOs issued a joint appeal to the authorities to let journalists work without risk of reprisals.
Maldives is ranked 117th out of 180 countries in RSF's 2017 World Press Freedom Index.
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REPORTERS WITHOUT BORDERS (RSF)
Rebecca Vincent
UK Bureau Director
TURKEY: German-Turkish journalist finally freed after a year in prison
Published 16.02.2018
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) is relieved that Deniz Yücel, a journalist with German and Turkish dual nationality, was finally freed today but stresses that he should never have had to spend a year in prison and calls for the withdrawal of the judicial proceedings against him.
Ending 367 days of provisional detention without charge, Die Welt’s Istanbul correspondent walked out of Silivri high security prison today shortly after an Istanbul court accepted the charges finally presented by the prosecutor’s office and ordered his conditional release pending trial.
Although free, he is now facing the possibility of an 18-year jail sentence on a terrorist propaganda charge.
“We are delighted that Deniz Yücel has finally recovered the freedom that should never have been taken from him,” said Johann Bihr, the head of RSF’s Eastern Europe and Central Asia desk. “It is absolutely outrageous that he had to spend a year in prison before finding out what he is charged with. We call for the immediate withdrawal of these proceedings, which are entirely political in nature."
Get more information from RSF’s most recent press release on this subject (14.02.2018)
TURKEY
Turkish court sentences three journalists to life imprisonment
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) is appalled by the sentences of life imprisonment with no possibility of a pardon that an Istanbul court passed on three well-known journalists today, in what has been a terrible day for press freedom in Turkey.
Ahmet Altan, Mehmet Altan and Nazli Ilicak received the heaviest possible sentences after being convicted on various charges including “trying to overthrow constitutional order” for criticizing the government during a TV broadcast on the eve of an abortive coup d’état in July 2016.
“By passing sentences of this severity on the basis of such a weak case, the Turkish judicial system has made a fool of itself in the eyes of the world,” RSF secretary-general Christophe Deloire said. “These sentences are a political reprisal of incredible violence and confirm that the most absolute despotism now reigns in Turkey. They also set a terrible precedent for all the other journalists who are wrongfully accused of involvement in the 2016 coup attempt.”
Despite their advanced age, the three journalists spent more than a year and half in provisional detention before receiving today’s sentences. A constitutional court decision in January ordering Mehmet Altan’s release was never carried out, in a major blow to the rule of the law. The rights of the defence were repeatedly violated during trial, which RSF observed.
Turkey is ranked 155th out of 180 countries in RSF’s 2017 World Press Freedom Index. The already worrying media situation has become critical under the state of emergency proclaimed after the July 2016 coup attempt. Around 150 media outlets have been closed, mass trials are being held and the country now holds the world record for the number of professional journalists detained.
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REPORTERS WITHOUT BORDERS (RSF)
Rebecca Vincent
UK Bureau Director
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Oligarch uses “right to privacy” to censor Russian media
Published 14.02.2018
Credit: Olga Maltseva / AFP
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) condemns a Russian court decision ordering websites to immediately remove photos and videos of a meeting between leading Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska and Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Prikhodko on the grounds that they constitute a “violation of privacy.” RSF regards the order as blatant act of censorship.
Moving quickly on 9 February, the day after the court’s decision, Russia’s telecommunication surveillance agency, Roskomnadzor, ordered no fewer than seven online media outlets to take down the photos and videos illustrating articles about the supposedly “informal negotiations” between Prikhodko and Deripaska.
Opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who was responsible for drawing attention to the photos and videos when he reposted them as part of an online video report, said their publication was in the public interest but the two influential public figures involved insisted that they invaded their privacy.
The media outlets had to respond to a court decision that had not yet been published and to which they could not get access. They complied because they were under threat of being blocked. But some, such as Mediazona, filed a court appeal against the censorship.
On 10 February, Roskomnadzor said it had complied with an order issued by a court in Ust-Labinsk, the district in the far south of Russia that is Deripaska’s base. The independent news website The Bell said it was the first time that such urgent measures have been taken in Russia to defend privacy.
Going to the source of the content, the court also ordered the blocking of 14 Instagram posts and seven YouTube videos. As Russian Internet service providers still lack the technical ability to restrict access to specific web pages, Instagram and YouTube risk being blocked in their entirety within Russia if the offending content is not removed by this evening.
“We urge the Russian authorities to lift these disproportionate measures, which prevent information from circulating freely,” said Johann Bihr, the head of RSF’s Eastern Europe and Central Asia desk. “The European Convention on Human Rights and related court rulings clearly establish that public figures cannot claim the same privacy rights as ordinary citizens.”
The scandal erupted on 8 February when Navalny, who is well known for his anti-corruption investigations, reported that Prikhodko was seen on Deripaska’s yacht off the Norwegian coast in August 2016.
His claim was based on publicly availably content including the photos and videos posted on Instagram by a female escort who was with them on the yacht and who has related her experiences in a book. Reposted on YouTube the same day, Navalny’s video account has already been viewed more than 4 million times.
Russia is ranked 148th out of 180 countries in RSF's 2017 World Press Freedom Index.
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REPORTERS WITHOUT BORDERS (RSF)
Rebecca Vincent
Seven Bahraini journalists rendered stateless since 2011
Published 14.02.2018
Credit: AFP
Stripping its citizens of their nationality is a penalty to which the Bahraini regime increasingly resorts. A total of seven journalists and citizen-journalists have been rendered stateless in retaliation for their reporting since a wave of anti-government protests began exactly seven years ago today, on 14 February 2011.
Statelessness has become a common penalty in Bahrain, in some cases with the aim of putting pressure on media outlets that might otherwise be tempted not to toe the government line.
Of the seven journalists and citizen-journalists who have been the victims of this punishment, three are currently serving jail terms, and the other four are living in exile.
Three stateless journalists in prison
The photographer Ahmed Al Mousawi was arrested in 2014, mainly for taking photos of anti-government protests, and was sentenced on 23 November 2015 to ten years in prison and the loss of his citizenship.
The journalist Mahmoud Al Jaziri and the blogger Ali Al Maaraj were stripped of their nationality on 30 October 2017 in a political trial in which they and five others were convicted of having links with an alleged terrorist cell. Some of the defendants said they were tortured during interrogation.
Employed by Al Wasat, a newspaper closed by the authorities in 2017, Al Jaziri was sentenced to 15 years in prison. Al Maaraj, who had already spent 27 months in prison for “insulting the king” and “abusing information technology,” was given a life sentence.
“Punishing those who do their job as journalists with either imprisonment or deprivation of nationality is grotesque,” RSF said. “Bahrain has not signed the 1961 UN Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness but it has signed the Arab Charter on Human Rights, which says: ‘Everyone has the right to nationality; no one shall be arbitrarily or unlawfully deprived of their nationality.’ Covering opposition protests or reporting what government opponents say constitutes neither terrorism nor a threat to state security.”
Four stateless journalists in exile
Fearing imprisonment, the other four journalists were already in self-imposed exile when they were deprived of their citizenship.
Ali Abdel Imam, the founder of the BahrainOnline news website, Ali Aldairy, the founder and editor of the Bahrain Mirror newspaper, Al Nabaa TV TV presenter Abbas Busafwan and Hussein Yousef, a blogger, were all stripped of their nationality by the interior ministry on 31 January 2015.
No court ruling was required because, under a 2014 amendment to Bahrain’s citizenship law, the interior ministry alone can withdraw Bahraini nationality from anyone who is deemed to have helped an enemy state or whose loyalty to Bahrain is questionable.
The children of those penalised in this way are also stripped of their nationality. Ali Abdel Imam has a son who was born stateless in the United Kingdom.
A total of 579 Bahrainis have been stripped of their nationality since 2012. Fifteen journalists and citizen-journalists are currently imprisoned in Bahrain in connection with their work. They include Nabeel Rajab, who is facing the possibility of an additional 15-year jail term on 21 February.
Bahrain is ranked 164th out of 180 countries in RSF's 2017 World Press Freedom Index.
CHINA: From Snake to Dog, five dark years for journalism
Published 14.02.2018
As China prepares to celebrate its New Year, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) points out that more than 50 journalists and bloggers are currently imprisoned and that, from the Year of the Snake (2013) to the Year of the Dog (2018), President Xi Jinping has built his authority on the ruins of the freedom to inform.
Once again, dozens of journalists and bloggers will spend the Lunar New Year festivities in prison while Xi – China’s president since late 2012 and recently confirmed for another five years – continues to impose his vision of a society based on censorship and surveillance, a society from which journalistic ethics and the citizen’s right to information are barred.
“We urge the international community to put more pressure on the Chinese government to release imprisoned journalists and bloggers,” said Cédric Alviani, the head of RSF’s East Asia desk. “Independent journalism is essential for human and civil rights and, contrary to what the government says, is entirely compatible with Chinese culture, as we can see in Hong Kong and Taiwan.”
Anti-rumour campaign
In early 2013, at the start of the Year of the Snake, many hoped that the new president would fan the winds of openness and reform but, although his family was a victim of the Cultural Revolution, Xi set about restoring a media culture worthy of the Maoist era.
With his “anti-rumour campaign,” President Xi quickly reined in media that, under his predecessor, had cautiously begun to reflect the variety of opinions being expressed in Chinese society, and he now insists that journalists act as relays of “the Party’s propaganda.”
The Chinese Communist Party Publicity Department (CCPPD), which oversees the actions of 14 government ministries, provides the media with a daily list of topics to be highlighted and topics that are banned, on pain of sanction. Even China-based foreign correspondents complain of the harassment to which they are subjected by the authorities.
Setting an example
The journalist Wang Jing was sentenced to four and a half years in prison in April 2016 because she had covered a politically-motivated suicide attempt in Tiananmen Square. After being arrested in 2014 for allegedly providing a foreign media outlet with confidential documents and being forced to “confess her crimes” on TV, former Deutsche Welle correspondent Gao Yu was given a five-year jail sentence. It was subsequently commuted to house arrest but she has not been allowed to travel abroad for the medical treatment she needs.
Citizen-journalists and bloggers who have tried to pick up the torch of independent journalism are nowadays the favourite targets of what is called “residential surveillance at a designated place,” a label that officializes the abduction, incommunicado detention and torture of activists by the state.
The blogger Wu Gan, 44, was sentenced to eight years in prison for drawing attention to government corruption. Lu Yuyu, 38, a citizen-journalist who documented protests, was sentenced to four years in prison. Zhen Jianghua, 32, a journalist who founded an anti-censorship website called Across the Great FireWall, is still being held incommunicado.
Mistreatment
The regime does not sentence free speech defenders to death, but mistreatment of detainees is extremely common and last year Liu Xiaobo, a Nobel peace laureate, and Yang Tongyan, a blogger, both died from cancers left untreated while they were in prison.
Yiu Mantin, a Hong Kong-based book publisher also known as Yao Wentian, was sentenced to ten years in prison in 2014 despite his poor health and advanced age (he is now 75) because he had planned to publish a book critical of President Xi. Gui Minhai, 53, a Chinese-born Swedish publisher who had been preparing revelations about Xi’s mistresses, was kidnapped in Thailand the same year and has been kept ever since in China, where he is being prevented from getting treatment for a serious neurological ailment.
Observers are also concerned for the survival of other detainees. They include Huang Qi, 54, the recipient of an RSF prize in 2004 whose website, 64 Tianwang, was awarded an RSF prize in 2016. He has been held provisionally for more than a year. They also include citizen-journalist Ilham Tohti, 48, recipient of the Sakharov Prize in 2016, who is serving a life sentence; Liu Feiyue, 47, the founder of the human rights NGO Civil Rights and Livelihood Watch; and Liu Xia, 56, Liu Xiaobo’s widow, who has been isolated from the outside world for the past eight years.
Internet under surveillance
With journalists and bloggers reined in, President Xi is now targeting the only spaces left for freely reported news and information – social networks and messaging apps. In 2017, the Internet regulatory authority banned journalists from quoting any information from social networks and any information that had not been previously “confirmed” by the government.
The regime is also gradually shutting down foreign VPN services, which allow users to circumvent the “Great Firewall,” and is banning anonymous online comments. Internet surveillance now targets each of China’s 770 million Internet users, many of whom have already been given prison sentences for nothing more than privately-expressed comments.
In an opinion piece published in seven languages, RSF secretary-general Christophe Deloire recently urged the world’s parliamentary democracies to take action to resist the “new world media order” that China is trying to impose beyond its borders. China is one of the last five countries, 176th out of 180 countries, in RSF's 2017 World Press Freedom Index.
Three months to the day after the arbitrary arrest of two journalists in Phnom Penh, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) is publishing a report about the tragic decline in the freedom to inform in Cambodia, where the independent media are now in ruins as a result of constant depredation by Prime Minister Hun Sen's regime.
Imprisoned since 14 November on espionage charges, former Radio Free Asia reporters Oun Chhin and Yeang Sothearin are above all the collateral victims of the offensive that Hun Sen has waged against the independent media for the past six months in order to pave the way for general elections in July.
The aim of the report published today is to detail this tragic reversal for the media in Cambodia. It is based on research carried out by Daniel Bastard, the head of RSF’s Asia-Pacific desk, during a visit to Cambodia in October 2017 (see attached).
Watch the video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BvG5k73qMxY
Cambodia Daily, the country’s oldest English-language newspaper, suddenly learned on 4 August that the tax department was demanding 6.3 million US dollars (5.3 million euros) in supposed back taxes. If the newspaper couldn’t pay, it would just have to “pack up and go,” Hun Sen said. No audit had been carried out and no document was produced to support the government’s claim. In the absence of any possibility of appeal, Cambodia Daily published its last issue on 4 September.
Harassing independent media
The Cambodian authorities brazenly tried to play innocent by repeatedly insisting that Cambodia Daily’s closure was the result of nothing more than a tax problem. However, it emerged a few days ago that they told Internet service providers on 28 September to block access to Cambodia Daily’s still functioning website and to its Facebook and Twitter pages although they are based outside the country.
This clearly shows, if any proof were needed, that Hun Sen’s government persecutes independent media. A total of 32 radio stations, including Radio Free Asia’s Phnom Penh bureau, were shut down at the end of August. Their common feature was a lack of subservience towards the government. The closures have been accompanied by persecution of journalists. In fact, anything goes in order intimidate the media. This is why RSF has joined other international and Cambodian NGOs in issuing a statement (see attached) demanding the immediate release of Oun Chhin and Yeang Sothearin, who are facing up to 15 years in prison.
Mass media control
The war against independent media has left the field free for media outlets that take their orders from the ruling party. This is clear from the Cambodian Media Ownership Monitor (MOM) carried out jointly by RSF and the Cambodian Centre for Independent Media (CCIM), an updated version of which is published today. It shows that media ownership is largely concentrated in the hands of a small number of leading businessmen linked to the ruling party. This is particularly so with the broadcast media. The four main TV channels, which have 80% of Cambodia’s viewers, are all run by government members or associates.
An independent regulator should be in charge of issuing licences to broadcast media and press cards to journalists but the information ministry is responsible for these functions in Cambodia, executing them in a completely opaque manner.
New information vehicles
When the traditional media are so closely controlled, the only hope lies with the Internet and citizen-journalists. Internet and social media use is exploding within Cambodia’s young and connected population. In 2017, 40% of Cambodians got their news primarily from Facebook. However, Facebook included Cambodia in the six countries where it began trialling a new set-up in October in which the independent news content is hived off to a secondary location called the Explore feed. The effect has been drastic. In a matter of days, the Phnom Penh Post’s Khmer-language Facebook page lost 45% of its readers and traffic fell 35%.
Meanwhile, a survey showed that the prime minister’s Facebook page received 58 million clicks in 2017, putting him third in the click ranking of the world’s politicians, just behind Donald Trump and India’s Narendra Modi. But many are sceptical, to the point that a former opposition leader recently filed a legal suit against Facebook in a US federal court in San Francisco, demanding that it hand over any information indicating that Hun Sen bought millions of “likes” from foreign “click farms” in order to boost the appearance of invincibility ahead of July’s parliamentary elections.
Pursuing the fight
There can be no democracy without independent media but media independence is in greater danger now in Cambodia than at any other time in its recent history, which still bears the deep scars of the Khmer Rouge era. The fight for the freedom to inform in Cambodia must therefore be pursued at all costs.
Ranked 132nd out of 180 countries in RSF's 2017 World Press Freedom Index, Cambodia is likely to fall in the 2018 index.
Published 13.02.2018
On the 39th anniversary of the Iranian revolution, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) reiterates its condemnation of the regime’s harassment of journalists and citizen-journalists. Thirty-nine years after the revolution, as young men and women protest in the streets, the Islamic Republic is trying to reinforce its news control both at home and internationally.
For the past 39 years, the regime’s control of news and information has been implacable and its persecution of media independence has been unparalleled. The exact number of journalists arrested and convicted during this dark period in Iran’s history – especially during the purge years – is still not officially known.
RSF has tallied abuses since Mohammad Khatami became president in 1997. At least 350 media outlets have been closed, more than 800 journalists and citizen-journalists have been detained and interrogated and around 500 of them have been given prison sentences ranging from three months to 19 years. All have been denied their rights. Millions of Internet pages of freely and independently reported news and information have been censored. Citizen-journalists active on social networks are nowadays at the heart of the fight for freedom of news and information and political change in Iran.
In what Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei calls “the freest country in the world,” no independent media has survived the past 39 years of police and judicial harassment. Since 2000, Khamenei has waged a merciless war against the emergent reformist press, calling it the “operational base of foreign enemies within the country.”
Despite having resisted, the pro-reform media have been losing the resources they need to cover developments freely and independently. And to tighten control and censorship even more, a newly proposed law will turn journalists into civil servants who will get their press cards directly from the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance.
The regime’s persecution of the freedom to inform does not just target domestic media. it also targets the international media, even if the regime has always tried to keep up certain appearances.
Toeing the official line
According to a list on the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Orientation’s official website, a total of 155 media outlets from 32 countries have bureaux in Iran that are staffed by a total of 305 foreign journalists.
Officially, they include 75 radio and TV outlets but the real number is smaller because each of the different language services of media outlets such as France 24 or Al Jazeera are counted separately. Fifteen of them are Lebanese or Iraqi outlets such as Al-Manar and Al-Mayadin (Hezbollah’s two TV channels) and Al-Tajah and Al-Fart (Iraq’s Shiite TV channels). The latter four outlets are wholly funded by the Iranian regime.
There are 14 foreign news agencies. Aside from AP, AFP and Itar Tass, most are from pro-Iranian Muslim countries. The Islamic Radio and Television Union, created and funded by the Islamic Republic, consists of 210 Muslim media outlets from 35 countries, its website says. Most of these outlets are officially regarded as foreign media, although funded by the regime. As well as relaying propaganda, they constitute a fake news world network that helps to suppress the freedom to inform. They mainly carry the same news reports as the Iranian state media.
Other foreign news agencies in Iran are closely watched and harassed. A former Tehran-based AFP reporter said: “The regime exercises its control by placing journalists within the agency who can tell the authorities what’s going on there, or by threatening the foreign journalists who don’t accept the censor’s rules. There have been several cases of journalists who have even been accused of indecent behaviour and have been threatened with imprisonment.”
Since 28 March 2012, when the Iranian authorities withdrew the accreditation of the Reuters journalists in Tehran for “propaganda against the government,” Reuters has had no bureau in Iran. As a result, Reuters nowadays often covers Iranian news more freely than the agencies that still have a bureau there, which have to censor themselves to avoid losing their accreditation or to avoid harassment or even prosecution in Iran.
Choosing “good” journalists
Aside from the Muslim countries with a media presence, the foreign journalists in Iran are either correspondents who are based there or visiting reporters. In both cases, the regime prefers them to be of Iranian origin and to have dual nationality (one of them Iranian). Dual nationals can be accused of spying at any time, so it is easier to control them and make them accept that certain subjects are off limits.
It must be pointed out that Iranian law does not permit dual nationality. Dual nationals are regarded as Iranians, and as Iranians alone. Several dual national journalists have been jailed in recent years for “collaborating with foreigners” or “espionage.” They include Roxana Saberi and Jason Rezaian.
On condition of anonymity, a dual national journalist with an international media outlet told RSF: “Two days after I applied to the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance for accreditation, I received a call to discuss my situation. They asked me to go to a hotel. I asked who I was talking to, knowing full well it was the brothers from intelligence. Two men were waiting for me there. Very politely, they made it clear that I should not cross the red lines, which are covering Khamenei or the opposition and, in general, showing ‘the decline in the situation.’ Sometimes they sent me phrases to insert in my articles. For them, neutrality and balance meant censorship. I cooperated during the two years I was in Iran.”
A committee consisting of representatives of three ministries – Culture and Islamic Guidance, Foreign Affaires and Intelligence – has a file on each foreign journalist and media outlet. The attitude of the journalists and their media determines whether they get the visas they need. Reporting critical of the regime leads to negative points in the file. But the committee takes account not only of coverage of Iran but also of international coverage, especially of countries regarded as Iran’s enemies, such as Israel and the United States.
According the information obtained by RSF, several journalists who received visas and are currently in Iran have been prevented for moving about freely in the capital. In particular, they have been prevented from covering protests and from contacting government opponents or the families of political prisoners.
One of world’s most authoritarian regimes, Iran is ranked 165th out of 180 countries in RSF's 2017 World Press Freedom Index.
Inaction by Mexican authorities in 21 disappearances of journalists since 2000
Published 12.02.2018
On the tenth anniversary today of Mexican journalist Mauricio Estrada Zamora’s disappearance, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) condemns the appalling level of impunity in Mexico, where there have been at least 21 unsolved disappearances of journalists since 2000.
Aged 38, Estrada lived in Apatzingán, in the western state of Michoacán, where he was a crime reporter for a local daily, La Opinión de Apatzingán. He left the newspaper on the evening of 12 February 2008 and was never seen again. His car with found later that night with the lights on and the doors open in the nearby town of Buenavista, colleagues told RSF at the time.
Two days later, the newspaper’s management accused a Federal Investigation Agency police officer known as “El Diablo” (The Devil) of kidnapping Estrada. Three weeks before his disappearance, Estrada had written a story that reflected badly on this police officer, creating a conflict between the two. El Diablo was subsequently transferred to Mexico City.
Ten years later, Estrada’s disappearance is no longer being actively investigated. The failure to identify those responsible has been unbearable for Estrada’s wife, María Dolores Barajas. “I don’t understand,” she said. “How is it possible that no leads have been pursued? My life is full of questions without answers.”
Barajas complains of a lack of support, including judicial support, from the Executive Commission for Attention to Victims (CEAV), from which she has been seeking assistance since 2011. She is now threatened with eviction from her home for failing to make payments on the mortgage contracted by her husband.
Of the at least 21 journalists who have disappeared in the past 18 years, at least eight have missing for more than ten years, according to Mexico’s National Commission for Human Rights (CNDH).
“With 12 journalists murdered since the start of 2017, the Mexican authorities are clearly already failing in their duty to protect media personnel,” said Emmanuel Colombié, the head of RSF’s Latin America bureau.
“At the same time, they don’t assume their responsibility to conduct thorough investigations into the many cases of missing journalists or to ensure that the families of the victims get adequate compensation. The federal prosecutor’s office must redouble its efforts to provide concrete responses to the disappearance of Mauricio Estrada Zamora and all the other cases of journalists missing in Mexico.”
The involvement of state agents has been suspected in most of these cases, because the missing journalists were covering stories linked to local politics, corruption or public security. This is unbearable for the families, because the perpetrators are often able to pressure witnesses and investigators, and even get investigations closed.
The most recent case of a journalist disappearing is that of Agustín Silva Vázquez, 22, a resident of Matías Romero, in the southern state of Oaxaca. This young crime reporter for El Sol del Istmo, a regional daily, was last seen on 21 January.
A few days before he disappeared, he covered a military operation resulting in the seizure of firearms and the arrests of three persons. Silva’s father said an individual identifying himself as the lawyer of the three detainees had asked Silva to testify in their defence, and Silva had refused.
Mexico is ranked 147th out of 180 countries in RSF's 2017 World Press Freedom Index.
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) calls for the release of around 15 Saudi journalists and citizen-journalists who have gone “missing” in a wave of arrests that began last September. They include Saleh Al-Shehi, a journalist who was sentenced yesterday to five years in prison on a charge of insulting the royal court.
Al-Shehi’s arrest was not official until the 8 February announcement of his sentence, which includes a five-year ban on leaving the country on completion of the jail term. His disappearance was reported on social networks in January but he stopped writing his column in the Al-Watan newspaper in mid-December. He accused the royal court of involvement in corruption and nepotism during an appearance on a Dubai-based Saudi TV channel on 8 December after making similar allegations in an article in November.
According to RSF’s information, he is one of at least 15 journalists and citizen-journalists to have been detained in a wave of arrests that began in September although none of these arrests or the existence of charges had been officially confirmed until yesterday’s announcement of Al-Shehi’s sentence.
The information obtained by RSF from various sources indicates that these “missing” journalists are being held arbitrarily by the Saudi regime. But it is still very difficult to say exactly how many are being held because of the secrecy with which the authorities have acted and because some of the families refuse to talk for fear of reprisals. For security reasons, RSF cannot reveal all the names it has obtained. But we can report that the victims are mainly being questioned about what they have written in the press and on social networks (Twitter and Snapchat) and about their TV appearances. The authorities reportedly accuse them of disloyalty towards current Saudi policy.
“We are concerned about this wave of secret arrests,” RSF said. “Nothing in Saudi Arabia’s geopolitical situation justifies treating either professional or non-professional journalists as dangers to state security and arresting them without clear grounds. We regret that, despite the openness and modernity of his discourse, Mohammad bin Salman’s appointment as Crown Prince last June has led to additional persecution of journalists. We all for the immediate release of all these journalists, who are being held arbitrarily.”
Wave of arrests
Those detained include Essam Al Zamil, an economist and businessman who is well known as a citizen-journalist on social networks. He was reportedly arrested in September on his return from an official visit to the United States with a Saudi delegation.
According to the information obtained by RSF, he is being held in the eastern city of Dammam and has been interrogated about tweets since 2011, in particular, his tweets about the future sale of the Saudi company Aramco, which he has opposed. He has reportedly been charge with incitement against the state and inciting sedition in these tweets.
Those detained also include Jamal Farsi – a citizen-journalist and journalist with several Saudi media outlets as well as a liberal, pro-reform businessman – who was reportedly also arrested in September. According to some sources, it was his tweets and videos cautioning against VAT and the sale of state companies that got him into trouble.
Mustafa Al-Hassan, a blogger who is well known on Twitter and as the founder of a pan-Gulf forum that encourages civil society development, went “missing” in September. He is also a journalist with the daily Sahifat al YoumSahifat al Youm, and a university academic and researcher.Two years ago, he began writing about literature and taking less interest in politics because of the political climate and health problems.
A satirical and critical blogger known by the blog name of Al Banakhi has reportedly been detained since December.
Repressive arsenal reinforced
Imprisoning journalists is not new in Saudi Arabia. At least three journalists and eight citizen-journalists are currently serving jail sentences in connecting with their reporting. Turad Al Amri, a famous journalist and commentator, is said to have been arrested in November 2016 although the authorities have never confirmed this.
Harassment of journalists has increased since last June. Some journalists who were abroad have preferred to stay there. Some have been forced to resign from what are regarded as “enemy” media. Others, according to our information, have chosen to censor themselves or to withdraw altogether from what was the only space left for free speech – social networks.
Many journalists and citizen-journalists have been the targets of campaigns of insults and intimidation on Twitter, carried out at the behest of the crown prince’s advisers. The deployment of these troll armies recalls the operations by “King Salman’s electronic army” in 2015 and 2016.
In December 2017, the Saudi media were urged to display more patriotism, although the regime has tolerated no media freedom for years and has always taken great care of its international image. Activists and journalists can easily be prosecuted under a new terrorism law adopted in November, which has been criticised by the United Nations and international human rights NGOs.
Writing prohibitions are common. One was imposed on Ahmed Adnan, a Saudi journalist in Lebanon, at the end of last month. The journalist Jamal Al Khashoggi was banned in late 2016 and was banned again in 2017, after which he opted for self-imposed exile in the United States.
Saudi Arabia is ranked 168th out of 180 countries in RSF's 2017 World Press Freedom Index.
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REPORTERS WITHOUT BORDERS (RSF)
Rebecca Vincent
UK Bureau Director
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REPORTERS WITHOUT BORDERS (RSF)
Rebecca Vincent
UK Bureau Director
Russia: Kaliningrad editor held for past 100 days on trumped-up charge__________________________________________________
REPORTERS WITHOUT BORDERS (RSF)
Rebecca Vincent
UK Bureau Director
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REPORTERS WITHOUT BORDERS (RSF)
Rebecca Vincent
UK Bureau Director
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REPORTERS WITHOUT BORDERS (RSF)
Rebecca Vincent
UK Bureau Director
Two journalists found murdered in southwestern Guatemala
Published 02.02.2018
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) calls on the Guatemalan authorities to lose no time in investigating the murders of two journalists, Laurent Castillo and Luis Alfredo de León, whose bodies were found yesterday, three days after they were reported missing.
Both journalists were based in Coatepeque, in the southwestern department of Quetzaltenango, where Castillo was a reporter for the Nuestro Diario newspaper and De León worked for Radio Coatepeque.
They were reported missing on 29 January, after leaving the previous day to cover a carnival event in Mazatenango, the capital of the nearby department of Suchitepéquez, according to local press reports.
Farmers found their bodies yesterday in a sugarcane field near Santo Domingo, a small town 8 km south of Mazatenango. Their hands were tied and both had been shot in the head. The motive for this double murder is not yet known.
The Prensa Libre newspaper quoted a source close to the Castillo family as saying he had recently changed his phone number after receiving many calls trying to extort money from him. He covered mainly sports and cultural events.
“We urge the authorities to conduct an exhaustive investigation and to not rule out the possibility that the motive was linked to the victims’ work as journalists,” said Emmanuel Colombié, the head of RSF’s Latin America bureau.
“Guatemala is a country marked by violence and its media are particularly vulnerable. The creation of a national mechanism for protecting journalists, which we have been requesting for several years, should be a priority for the government.”
Two journalists, Danilo Lopez and Federico Salazar, were murdered in the same region in 2015. A parliamentarian, Julio Juárez, is currently being held on suspicion of instigating their murders.
Guatemala is ranked 118th out of 180 countries in RSF's 2017 World Press Freedom Index.
RSF urges China to free New York-based journalist’s wife
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REPORTERS WITHOUT BORDERS (RSF)
Rebecca Vincent
UK Bureau Director
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Two Brazilian journalists murdered in two days
REPORTERS WITHOUT BORDERS (RSF)
Rebecca Vincent
UK Bureau Director
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REPORTERS WITHOUT BORDERS (RSF)
Rebecca Vincent
UK Bureau Director
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REPORTERS WITHOUT BORDERS (RSF)
Rebecca Vincent
UK Bureau Director
REPORTERS WITHOUT BORDERS (RSF)
Rebecca Vincent
UK Bureau Director
Turkey’s constitutional court orders release of two journalists
REPORTERS WITHOUT BORDERS (RSF)
Rebecca Vincent
UK Bureau Director
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REPORTERS WITHOUT BORDERS (RSF)
Rebecca Vincent
UK Bureau Director
Published 10.01.2018
Reporters Without Borders - known internationally as Reporters sans frontières (RSF) - and English PEN have written to UK Prime Minister Theresa May, urging her to fulfil the Conservative Party's manifesto pledge to repeal the punitive Section 40 of the Crime and Courts Act 2013. A full year after the consultation on Section 40 closed, there has still been no response to the more than 140,000 submissions received.
The full text of the letter is below.
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Rt Hon Theresa May MP
10 January 2018
Dear Prime Minister,
We are writing to register our concern over the government’s failure to respond to the consultation on Section 40 of the Crime and Courts Act 2013, which closed one year ago today on 10 January 2017. Further, the Conservative Party Manifesto of May 2017 pledged to repeal Section 40, and yet eight months on, no action has been taken to honour that commitment.
Our organisations, English PEN and Reporters Without Borders, drafted a joint submission to the consultation, calling for the repeal of Section 40, which we believe poses a serious threat to press freedom. In our submission, we noted:
“Section 40 would introduce an unprecedented chilling effect for publishers and journalists in the UK, leading to self-censorship and a reduction in public interest reporting. The essential role of the press in our democracy would therefore be undermined, as well as the scope for any writer to investigate matters of concern and national interest for the public”.
We note that the continued presence of Section 40 is one of many current threats to press freedom in the UK. It is part of a worrying trend that resulted in the UK dropping to 40th out of 180 countries in Reporters Without Borders’ 2017 World Press Freedom Index, published in April 2017, and there has been further deterioration since then.
We urge you to take immediate action to fulfil the Conservative Party’s pledge to repeal Section 40, and to ensure a timely response to the more than 140,000 stakeholders who engaged in good faith in the consultation of last year. Eliminating the threat posed by Section 40 would be a step in the right direction towards improving the UK’s worrying press freedom record.
Sincerely yours,
Antonia Byatt, Interim Director, English PEN
Rebecca Vincent, UK Bureau Director, Reporters Without Borders
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REPORTERS WITHOUT BORDERS (RSF)
Rebecca Vincent
UK Bureau Director
RSF urges Myanmar to free two Reuters reporters
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REPORTERS WITHOUT BORDERS (RSF)
Rebecca Vincent
UK Bureau Director
Chinese regime’s true face – one of the worst free speech predators
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REPORTERS WITHOUT BORDERS (RSF)
Rebecca Vincent
UK Bureau Director
Iran tries to censor coverage of protests by media based abroad
REPORTERS WITHOUT BORDERS (RSF)
Rebecca Vincent
UK Bureau Director
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REPORTERS WITHOUT BORDERS (RSF)
Rebecca Vincent
UK Bureau Director
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REPORTERS WITHOUT BORDERS (RSF)
Rebecca Vincent
UK Bureau Director
Press release
TURKEY
Unfair trials illustrate continuing onslaught on free speech in Turkey
On 25 and 26 December 2017, the Aachen Peace Award organisation, PEN Belgium/Flanders, PEN International, PEN Turkey and Reporters without Borders (RSF) observed several hearings in the cases of Cumhuriyet daily, the Academics for Peace and the Özgür Gündem solidarity campaign, which took place in Çağlayan court house in Istanbul.
‘These cases, individually and together, illustrate the onslaught on the right to freedom of expression in Turkey,’ said RSF Secretary-General Christophe Deloire. ‘We continue to call for the release of all journalists who are in prison for their journalistic activities and for the restoration of pluralism in Turkey.’
On 25 December the Cumhuriyet hearing, scheduled to take place over two days and turn on hearing expert and witness testimonies, was cut short after the judge interrupted Ahmet Şık’s defence statement and expelled him from the courtroom for allegedly disrupting the proceedings, after which defence counsel requested the recusal of the judges.
‘The trial has been characterised by procedural violations throughout. The lack of respect for the right of defence in yesterday’s hearing once again clearly shows the lack of independence and impartiality of the judiciary in the case’, said Laurens Hueting, Europe Programme Coordinator for PEN International.
Cumhuriyet staff are facing criminal charges for allegedly supporting terrorist organisations. The prosecution is based primarily on a misreading of articles that appeared in the newspaper and insignificant contacts between journalists and sources. Murat Sabuncu, investigative reporter Ahmet Şık, executive board president Akın Atalay and accountant Emre İper remain in pre-trial detention, as the case is adjourned to 9 March.
‘Critical journalism is not a crime and is in fact essential in a democracy’, said Vice-President of PEN Belgium/Flanders Isabelle Rossaert. ‘We call for the immediate and unconditional release of Sabuncu, Şık, Atalay and İper and a dismissal of the charges.’
On 26 December, hearings were held in several cases of the Academics for Peace, who are part of a group of more than 1100 academics on trial. They are facing criminal charges for allegedly propagandising for and supporting a terrorist organisation, based on their undersigning of a declaration that calls for peace in the South-East of Turkey. It remains unclear whether also charges based on article 301 of the criminal code, ‘insulting Turkishness’, will be pursued. All cases were adjourned until April in light of the lack of clarity concerning the charges.
‘The state should not hate people for peacefully expressing their opinion. These trials, instituted for calling for peace and dialogue, go against the most basic of democratic and human values,’ said Denis Dion Dreisbusch of the Aachen Peace Award.
Also on 26 December, the case against RSF’s representative in Turkey Erol Önderoğlu, prominent human rights defender Şebnem Korur Fincancı and writer Ahmet Nesin continued. They are being tried on charges of propagandising for a terrorist organisation, condoning crime and inciting crime for their participation in a solidarity campaign in mid-2016 with Kurdish daily Özgür Gündem, which was facing judicial persecution and was eventually forcibly closed in August 2016. In total, 41 people have been or are being prosecuted for their participation in the solidarity campaign with the newspaper. The case was adjourned in light of the absence of Nesin, who lives in exile in France.
‘We call for all on-going prosecutions to be dismissed and for the reversal of convictions in the cases related to Özgür Gündem,’ said Deloire. ‘The censorship of Özgür Gündem and the persecution of their supporters are an unacceptable attack on free media and those who stand up in its support.’
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REPORTERS WITHOUT BORDERS (RSF)
Rebecca Vincent
UK Bureau Director
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REPORTERS WITHOUT BORDERS (RSF)
Rebecca Vincent
UK Bureau Director
19.12.17
RSF round-up: these figures are alarming
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) is releasing its annual round-up of violence and abuses against journalists throughout the world. A total of 65 journalists were killed in 2017, 326 are currently in prison, and 54 are held hostage.
The 65 journalists who were killed were either fatally injured in the course of their work (for example, in an artillery bombardment) or were murdered because their reporting angered someone. The murdered reporters were the majority – 60% of the total figure.
Although these figures are alarming, 2017 has been the least deadly year for professional journalists (50 killed) in 14 years. Journalists are of course fleeing countries such as Syria, Yemen and Libya that have become too dangerous, but RSF has also observed a growing awareness of the need to protect journalists. The UN has passed several resolutions on the safety of journalists since 2006 and many news organizations have adopted safety procedures.
The fall does not apply to deaths of women journalists, which have doubled. Ten have been killed in 2017, as against five in 2016. Most of these victims were experienced and combative investigative reporters. Despite threats, they continued to investigate and expose cases of corruption. The victims include Daphne Caruana Galizia in Malta, Gauri Lankesh in India and Miroslava Breach Velducea in Mexico.
In another noteworthy trend in 2017, some countries that are not at war have become almost as dangerous for journalists as war zones: 46% of the deaths occurred in countries where no overt war is taking place, as against 30% in 2016. There were almost as many deaths (11) in Mexico as in Syria, which was the deadliest country for journalists in 2017, with 12 killed.
"Investigative journalists working on major stories such as corruption and environmental scandals play a fundamental watchdog role and have become targets for those who are angered by their reporting," RSF secretary-general Christophe Deloire said. "This alarming situation underlines the need to provide journalists with more protection at a time when both the challenges of news reporting and the dangers are becoming increasingly internationalized."
Like the death toll, the number of journalists in detention has also fallen. The total of 326 journalists in prison on 1 December 2017 was 6% fewer than on the same date in 2016. Despite the overall downward trend, there is an unusually high number of detained journalists in certain countries, such as Russia and Morocco, that did not previously number among notable jailers of journalists. Nonetheless, around half of the total number of imprisoned journalists are being held in just five countries. China and Turkey are still the world's two biggest prisons for journalists. They are followed by Syria, Iran, and Vietnam.
Finally, 54 journalists are currently held by armed non-state groups such as Islamic State and the Houthis in Yemen. Almost three quarters of these hostages come from the ranks of local journalists, who are usually paid little and often have to take enormous risks. The foreign journalists currently held hostage were all kidnapped in Syria but little is known about their present location.
* These figures include professional journalists, non-professional journalists and media workers.
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REPORTERS SANS FRONTIÈRES/ REPORTERS WITHOUT BORDERS
Pauline ADES-MEVEL
Responsable du bureau UE/Balkans
Head of EU-Balkans desk