13 Nov 20 | Europe and Central Asia, France, Opinion, Ruth's blog
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”115559″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes”][vc_column_text]In the last month, as the world has been preoccupied with the US elections and the ongoing ravages of the global pandemic, the people of France have turned on the news to learn of deadly terror attacks on their soil. Seemingly designed not just to murder and incite fear but as a direct attack on the core values of the French state.
In a Parisian suburb, Samuel Paty was beheaded by an extremist for teaching his students about the principle of free speech. In Nice, three people – Vincent Loques, Simone Barreto Silva and Nadine Devillers – were brutally murdered inside the ultimate sanctuary: a place of worship, the Notre-Dame basilica. Their ‘crime’? Attending church.
As ever in our interconnected world, a terror attack in one country has repercussions across the world and this has never been truer. Our choice of language and vocabulary when discussing such emotive issues can have untold consequences and when you combine the issues of national security, religion, extremism and politics, people rarely look beyond the headlines.
But it is unforgivable for national leaders to exploit the pain and anguish of others to promote their own world view and to shore up their own political standing. And beyond the pandemic that’s what we’ve seen. Rather than acknowledging the pain felt by the people of France and the fear that now lurks in many communities, not least French Muslims who now face a wave of hate for acts that had nothing to do with them, some national leaders are exploiting these horrendous events for their own benefit.
The actions of the presidents of Turkey and Pakistan to sow division and attack the French state have done little more than incite even more hate and anger. I’m choosing not to repeat their claims – as I don’t believe any good comes from dissecting their words – although others have.
There is not nor ever can be any excuse for murdering innocent people. This is all the more true in a democracy, such as France, where people have the legal right to protest, to challenge their politicians in court, to campaign against them and to write daily in national newspapers. We have legal ways to challenge the status-quo – violence is never a legitimate tool of protest and there can be no excuses made for its use.
Index’s raison d’etre is to defend our collective rights to free speech and free expression. That doesn’t mean that we don’t appreciate the tensions that exist between all of our basic human rights as outlined by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
There can be a tension for some between the right to free speech and the right of freedom of thought, conscience and religion. These tensions should be considered and discussed in every home, school and institution in every country. There should be a national conversation about how we find a balance as a society, we should use more words and have more debate about the type of world we want to leave in. And we should do all of this without the threat of violence.
We stand with the people of France, as they mourn the loss of Samuel Paty, Vincent Loques, Simone Barreto Silva and Nadine Devillers – may they rest in peace.
And we stand for the values that they represented.
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21 Jan 19 | Global Journalist, Media Freedom, media freedom featured, News and features, Vietnam
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]This article is part of Index on Censorship partner Global Journalist’s Project Exile series, which has published interviews with exiled journalists from around the world.[/vc_column_text][vc_single_image image=”104715″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes”][vc_column_text]Dang Xuan Dieu has paid a heavy price for resisting the Vietnamese government.
A community activist, blogger and frequent contributor to the Catholic news outlet Vietnam Redemptorist News, a site that often reports on human rights violations, Dieu was arrested in July 2011 and charged with attempting to overthrow the Southeast Asian nation’s Communist government. He was held without trial until January 2013, when he and 13 other writers and human rights activists were convicted after a two-day trial in the central city of Vinh.
Dieu was sentenced to 13 years in prison and five years of house arrest under Article 79 of the country’s penal code, which criminalises activities aimed at overthrowing the government. He was also accused of being a member being of Viet Tan, an exile-run political party banned in the country.
Such trials aren’t unusual in Vietnam. The Communist Party maintains near-total control over Vietnam’s judiciary, media and civil society. Internet in the country is heavily censored, and nearly 100 political prisoners are behind bars, according to Amnesty International.
Expressing dissent in Vietnamese prisons is even harder. The country’s Communist government often seeks to pressure inmates into confessing to alleged crimes in prison, and if they refuse, they can be beaten or tortured.
Yet resist is what Dieu did. He refused to confess, refused to wear a prison uniform and periodically went on hunger strikes to protest his detention and the treatment of prisoners.
“In Vietnam, a lot of people are arrested where they are harassed and tortured, which forces many people to confess their crimes,” says Dieu, 39, in an interview with Global Journalist. “I never accepted the charges and chose to not admit to any guilt. Because of this, I was unable to see my lawyer or my family.”
In his six years in prison, Dieu endured extensive torture and harassment. He was severely beaten for refusing to wear the prison uniform, and was held in solitary confinement for extensive periods in what he described as a “tiny room with no room to breathe.” According to Amnesty International, he was also shackled in a cell with another prisoner who beat him, forced to drink unclean water, denied access to water for bathing and was forced to live in unsanitary conditions without a toilet.
In early January 2017, as U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry travelled to Vietnam, Dieu was granted early release on the condition that he immediately leave the country. Now living in France, Dieu is a student and continues to blog about Vietnam. Through a translator, he spoke with Global Journalist’s Shirley Tay about the abuse he faced in prison and the country’s media climate. Below, an edited version of their interview:
Global Journalist: How did you get into journalism?
Dang Xuan Dieu: I was a student and contributor to the Vietnam Redemptorist News, and I would write about social justice issues. I created my own blog, Tâm và Tầm [Mind and Games] and also worked with a news website Dang Luon.
[Vietnam] restricts independent media and control all media outlets to maintain power. All media is monitored by the Communist Party of Vietnam, so state bodies end up creating their own media or newspapers. There are probably 600 media outlets in Vietnam at the moment, but all are currently controlled by the government. When I was active in 2011, writing blogs and independent news articles was actually quite dangerous.
GJ: What were some of the work that got you into trouble?
Dieu: While I am Catholic, I also work on other forms of activism. The Vietnamese government often tries to control the information that people are able to have. So I created a small, independent organisation to promote education on things like safe sex, pregnancy, and other issues that youth face. Because it was an independent group, we were often targeted. We were asked to go to the police station several times when we were organising in various parishes.
During this time, I started connecting with civil rights activists from overseas who taught me how to manage and organise independent civil society organisations. After that, I travelled overseas to attend some of these classes. On the way back to Vietnam, I was charged for attending a class on leadership training and nonviolent struggle.
GJ: Can you tell me about your time in prison?
Dieu: In prisons, they have their own systems to punish prisoners. There are areas that allow for people to move freely and do normal, day-to-day activities, but there are also areas within the normal prison that are like a prison within a prison within a prison. So I was in what you would call a third-degree prison area, where people are primarily shackled and kept in solitary confinement.
The problems started when I did not confess to any crimes and when I refused to wear the prison uniform because I believed I wasn’t guilty. I was placed in a cell with someone who was charged for murder and who tried to [beat me] to force me to wear the prison uniform and confess to crimes. He may have been doing this on orders from various prison officials.
After that person was transferred, I started advocating for the rights of prisoners, such as writing petitions to officers regarding mistreatment. As a Catholic, I wasn’t allowed to practice my faith or read the Bible. There were several other injustices which led me to begin a hunger strike.
As punishment, they placed me in solitary confinement. The majority of my six years in prison was in solitary confinement or in cells with very dangerous people as cellmates. During my time in prison, they saw me as a resister and so they didn’t allow me to see my family at any time.
What was worse was that they actually told my family that I refused to see them, rather than that I wasn’t allowed to see them. Because of this, I held an extended hunger strike where I ate only one meal a day for nearly a year, and this led to a transfer of prison locations.
GJ: How did you manage to get out of prison?
Dieu: There was another prison inmate who lived close to my cell, where I had been tortured and mistreated. When he was released, he actually told the wider community about what was going on in prison. At that time, the prison wasn’t able to block information going in and out of the prison.
So the community started organising campaigns calling for my release, and there were diplomats from the European Union, France, the U.S., Australia and Sweden who visited me. At that time, the EU diplomat asked if I wanted to be exiled to a country in Europe. I refused because I wanted to advocate for the release of other people, not my own release.
After the diplomat’s visit, they took me to a different cell and then never allowed me to leave that area for about six months. The situation started becoming dangerous to my life and luckily, another inmate who was not a political prisoner, but just a regular prisoner, was released and contacted my family to inform them of my prison conditions.
So the EU and a French diplomat visited me again, this was during the time of French President [François] Hollande’s visit to Vietnam in September 2016. My family was able to pass me a letter asking me to go into exile. Upon receiving that letter, I agreed. After that, it took another three months for them to arrange it.
GJ: At that point, were you ready to go in to exile?
It was only the letter from my mother which pushed me to choose to be exiled. It was because my mother is fairly old now, and she wanted to see me released before she died. I was determined, I was willing to die in prison rather than be exiled. The Vietnamese government tries to push activists outside of Vietnam, because they see that it’s not a win for activism. And obviously, for humanitarian reasons, a lot of the community advocates for the release of these prisoners.
GJ: Do you have plans to return?
Dieu: I want to return to Vietnam, but it depends on there being changes through international pressure. If I were to return now, I would definitely be arrested. I will just have to wait.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_video link=”https://youtu.be/6BIZ7b0m-08″][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]Index on Censorship partner Global Journalist is a website that features global press freedom and international news stories as well as a weekly radio program that airs on KBIA, mid-Missouri’s NPR affiliate, and partner stations in six other states. The website and radio show are produced jointly by professional staff and student journalists at the University of Missouri’s School of Journalism, the oldest school of journalism in the United States. [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”Don’t lose your voice. Stay informed.” use_theme_fonts=”yes”][vc_separator color=”black”][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]Index on Censorship is a nonprofit that campaigns for and defends free expression worldwide. We publish work by censored writers and artists, promote debate, and monitor threats to free speech. We believe that everyone should be free to express themselves without fear of harm or persecution – no matter what their views.
Join our mailing list (or follow us on Twitter or Facebook). We’ll send you our weekly newsletter, our monthly events update and periodic updates about our activities defending free speech. We won’t share, sell or transfer your personal information to anyone outside Index.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/2″][gravityform id=”20″ title=”false” description=”false” ajax=”false”][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row full_width=”stretch_row_content”][vc_column][three_column_post title=”Global Journalist / Project Exile” full_width_heading=”true” category_id=”22142″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
25 Jun 18 | Global Journalist, Media Freedom, News and features, Pakistan
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]This article is part of Index on Censorship partner Global Journalist’s Project Exile series, which has published interviews with exiled journalists from around the world.[/vc_column_text][vc_single_image image=”101034″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes”][vc_column_text]
Jumping out of a car to escape being abducted at gunpoint by the Pakistani military isn’t exactly how journalist Taha Siddiqui planned to start his trip to London.
Siddiqui, then a Pakistan correspondent for the network France 24 and the Indian news site WION, had angered the South Asian nation’s military with his reporting on national security issues and critical posts on social media.
On 10 January the problems caught up with him as he rode to the airport in a Careem, a popular ride-hailing service in the capital Islamabad. A car with armed men in it forced Siddiqui’s driver to stop. He was beaten by the side of the highway and the men forced him into the back of a vehicle and started to drive off with him.
Pakistani media is noted for its lively and diverse news coverage. Yet reporters in the country face threats not just from extremist groups like the Taliban but from the military and intelligence agencies.
The country ranks 139th out of 180 countries on Reporters Without Borders’ World Press Freedom Index, and in recent months independent media like Geo TV and Dawn newspaper have been blocked from distribution. Earlier this month two reporters were attacked in Lahore shortly after a military spokesman condemned “anti-state” remarks made by journalists on social media.
As Siddiqui told Global Journalist, he was able to escape from his captors and report the attack to the police. The kidnapping attempt wasn’t the first time Siddiqui had problems with Pakistan’s military. In 2015, he was threatened after he co-wrote a lengthy New York Times article detailing how the military had disappeared dozens of suspected Pakistani Taliban members. The article included allegations that some of those disappeared were starved, tortured and killed.
He was also threatened after helping produce a France 24 report critical of the Pakistani army’s handling of a 2014 school massacre in Peshawar that left over 150 dead. Siddiqui had also faced pressure last year after posting tweets critical of the military’s “glorifying” of past dictators and its whitewashing of its role in fomenting a 1965 war with India.
In May 2017 he was summoned for questioning by the federal police’s counter-terrorism department despite a court order banning them from harassing him. In September, Siddiqui was called to meet with the military’s spokesman, Gen. Asif Ghafoor. In an interview, Siddiqui says Ghafoor told him that if he didn’t stop his criticism, “I would get myself into trouble.”
Ghafoor did not respond to messages seeking comment from Global Journalist. Yet trouble didn’t come until the January attack, and Siddiqui can’t point to one specific incident as a cause.
“I don’t know what specific story, article or video triggered it,” he says in an interview with Global Journalist. “Or was it just my social media activity?”
Weeks after the attack, Siddiqui, decided to leave Pakistan for France for security reasons. Before he left, he says he met with Pakistan’s then interior minister, Ahsan Iqbal. Iqbal, Siddiqui says, told the journalist he should write a letter to Gen. Qamar Bajwa, Pakistan’s army chief, and beg for forgiveness. Neither Iqbal nor Bajwa responded to requests for comment.
Now 34, Siddiqui lives with his wife and 4-year-old son in Paris, where he is working part-time with the media company Babel Press and looking for a full-time job. He spoke with Global Journalist’s Rosemary Belson about his attack and flight from his homeland.
Global Journalist: Can you tell us about the reporting that landed you in hot water?
Siddiqui: The military is politically-involved in Pakistan. They have businesses, they are involved in human rights abuses, education.
When reporting in Pakistan about any particular issue, usually you end up tracking it back to the military in some way or another. It’s impossible to report without talking about the military and its involvement in a wide range of issues in Pakistan.
I refer to a story that I did for the New York Times. It came out on the front page of the International New York Times in 2015. It was a story about military secret prisons where they were killing suspected militants. They were extrajudicially killing them inside the jails. I uncovered about 100 to 250 cases across Pakistan, especially in the Tribal Belt [in northwest Pakistan].
Even at that time, the New York Times thought it was quite risky for my name to go on it. But I wanted my byline on it and that was the first time I started receiving direct threats.
There were always indirect messages coming in through friends in the journalism business or friends in the government saying that I should be careful… Constantly on and off these threats would come. Even to the extent where my friends and people I socialized with were told to stay away from me.
GJ: Walk us through the attempted abduction.
Siddiqui: On 10 January I was headed to the airport to catch a flight to London for work. The week before that I was working on a story about missing persons. I was supposed to file the story from the airport because I didn’t have [time] to file it before, so I took [my] hard drive and laptop.
My Careem came around 8 a.m. for my flight at noon. Halfway to the airport on the main Islamabad highway, a car swerved in front of me and stopped. Armed men got out of the vehicle with pistols and AK-47s.
At first, I thought it was a case of road rage or robbery, but one of them approached from my side and pointed his gun towards me and said something along the lines of: “Who do you think you are?”
I got out and assumed that this had something to do with the threats I had been receiving. I tried to run away but they pinned me down on the road. That’s when I noticed there was another car behind me with people coming out of it as well. They made a barricade around me, and this was [on] the main highway at 8:30 in the morning, with traffic…they started beating me and wanted to take me away.
I was resisting and they kept hitting me with the butts of their guns…and kicking me. Finally, one of them said, “Shoot him in the leg if he doesn’t stop resisting because we have to take him.”
That’s when I realized they were serious about shooting me. Earlier, [when] they didn’t shoot me right away, I thought perhaps it means they want to take me alive. In my mind I was thinking that resistance would give me some lifeline. I saw a military vehicle passing by. I called out for help but it didn’t stop.
After being threatened by being shot in the leg, they put me in the taxi, and took out the driver. One person drove while two people sat with me in the back and one in the front. They were holding me in a headlock with a gun pointing to the left side of my body on my stomach.
I told him, “I’m going with you. Can you relax for a little bit and let me relax also, [and] sit up straight?”
The guy relaxed his arm and gun. That’s when I realized the right back door of the car was unlocked. I went for it, opened it. I jumped out, ran to the other side of the road with oncoming traffic. I tried to look for a taxi. I could hear behind me they were shouting and saying, “Shoot him!”
But I just ran and finally I found a taxi. I got into it while it was moving. I opened the door, jumped into it. The taxi took me 700 or 800 meters before realizing there was something wrong and [the driver] didn’t want to help me anymore. So they asked me to get out because it was already occupied by some women.
I got out of the taxi. On the side of the road, there were some ditches and a marsh area, so I jumped into that and hid there for a bit. I took off my red sweater because I was worried they’d see me…we later recovered the sweater with the police.
I found another taxi. I asked to use [the driver’s] phone. I called a journalist friend and asked him what to do. He suggested I go to the nearest police station and the taxi driver took me. I filed a report where I named the Pakistan military as a suspect. I also tweeted about it from a friend’s account because they had taken my phone, passport, suitcase, laptop, bag. I only had my wallet left on me.
GJ: How did you make the decision to leave Pakistan?
Siddiqui: The police investigation found that the [surveillance] cameras in the area weren’t working. They found one of the cars that stopped me was following me from my house but they couldn’t identify any of the faces inside the car because [the windows] were tinted and the license plate was fake.
I was invited [to a meeting] by the Interior Minister of Pakistan [Ahsan Iqbal]. He suggested that I should write a letter to the Pakistan Army Chief [Gen. Qamar Bajwa]. That’s when I realized the government was totally helpless.
People suggested that I go away for awhile because they didn’t finish the job and they might come again. Especially since I wasn’t going silent, as was suggested by some senior journalist friends who later turned their back to me during this ordeal.
It was really disappointing and depressing seeing my own journalist community not supporting me. The international media supported me, some local journalists supported me, but some people that I knew personally thought I was going the wrong way by being vocal about the attack.
Me, my wife…we sat down together and discussed. We didn’t tell my kid at the time but now I’ve gently told him how there’s a safety issue for me and we had to move.
We decided that we should get out. If we are getting out, it wasn’t going to be a three or six-month thing, because I’m fighting invisible forces in my country. I will not know if I’ve won or lost or whether they’re still after me or not.
We decided on Paris because I had been working with the French media for the last seven or eight years as a journalist for France 24. I also received the French equivalent of the Pulitzer prize [the Albert Londres prize] in 2014, so I have strong journalistic support and community here.
GJ: How has media freedom changed over time in Pakistan?
Siddiqui: Press freedom has always been under attack. We’ve gone through military dictatorships in Pakistan…through the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s.
Two things have changed in recent years. One, we as journalists don’t know what the red lines are. In my case, I don’t know what specific story, article or video triggered it. Or was it just my social media activity?
Secondly, non-state actors are now being activated against journalists so [the military] can hide behind those non-state actors and get the job done.
The military has ensured that unity among journalists is not as it used to be. They have done that through financial coercion or financial rewards…it’s further shrunk the space for journalists. The military is becoming more intolerant and its tactics to control the media are becoming more violent. I see the situation becoming worse in the coming days.
This all needs to be put in context. It’s an election year in Pakistan. The Pakistani military wants all of this room to manipulate elections for strategic gains. They don’t want the ruling party [Pakistan Muslim League – Nawaz] to come into power again with a similar majority to what they enjoy right now. So to make sure they can easily manipulate the elections, they are trying to develop an environment of fear where independent reporting can’t happen.
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_video link=”https://youtu.be/6BIZ7b0m-08″][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]Index on Censorship partner Global Journalist is a website that features global press freedom and international news stories as well as a weekly radio program that airs on KBIA, mid-Missouri’s NPR affiliate, and partner stations in six other states. The website and radio show are produced jointly by professional staff and student journalists at the University of Missouri’s School of Journalism, the oldest school of journalism in the United States. [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”Don’t lose your voice. Stay informed.” use_theme_fonts=”yes”][vc_separator color=”black”][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]Index on Censorship is a nonprofit that campaigns for and defends free expression worldwide. We publish work by censored writers and artists, promote debate, and monitor threats to free speech. We believe that everyone should be free to express themselves without fear of harm or persecution – no matter what their views.
Join our mailing list (or follow us on Twitter or Facebook). We’ll send you our weekly newsletter, our monthly events update and periodic updates about our activities defending free speech. We won’t share, sell or transfer your personal information to anyone outside Index.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/2″][gravityform id=”20″ title=”false” description=”false” ajax=”false”][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row full_width=”stretch_row_content”][vc_column][three_column_post title=”Global Journalist / Project Exile” full_width_heading=”true” category_id=”22142″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
