8 Sep 2016 | Counter Terrorism, Digital Freedom, Europe and Central Asia, News and features
(Illustration: Shutterstock)
The appalling scene on the strand in Nice on Bastille Day. The dead at the airport and in the Metro in Brussels in March. Terrorist attacks, designed to inflict the highest possible level of fear and apprehension among ordinary citizens, is now ordinary in Europe.
The stakes were raised in earnest in January 2015 with the carnage at the editorial offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris, where 10 staffers were brutally murdered by terrorists.
How can such atrocities be avoided or squelched? That is the question.
We know Europeans want something to be done. Living in a perpetual state of fear is not the natural consequence of living in 21st century liberal democracies.
But neither is living in a police state, where personal privacy gives way to the exigencies of war, however unlike this war compares to ones of the past; where mere idle chatter can be misconstrued to the point that it becomes the criminal offense of glorifying terrorism.
Simply put, do our rights to personal privacy and free expression and free association vanish in order to provide a safer physical environment for our residents?
The answer, or answers are not easily arrived at; the debates are nuanced and people of good will and good character can find themselves on opposite sides of issues while both hoping for a similar outcome: peace, security and an open society that respects the inherent rights of individuals to live freely.
Under these difficult circumstances, I think it is important to make the case, once again, to protect individual rights in times of civil turmoil. To do so, I issued a statement earlier this month, as the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media setting out the arguments in favour of protection.
First and foremost, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, the world’s largest regional security body, appears fully on board with the notion of protection of these individual rights. The participating States, in the Astana Declaration of 2010, reiterated the commitment to comprehensive security and related the maintenance of peace to respect for human rights.
And in a Ministerial Council Decisions on Preventing and Countering Violent Radicalization that Lead to Terrorism and on Counter-terrorism that was adopted in 2015, the States confirmed the notion “..that respect for human rights, fundamental freedoms and the rule of law are complementary and mutually reinforcing with effective counter-terrorism measures, and are an essential part of a successful counter-terrorism effort.”
Furthermore, any counter-terrorism measures restricting the right to free expression and free media must be in compliance with international standards, most notably Article 19 of the UN Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and strictly adhere to the principles of legality, necessity and proportionality and implemented in accordance with the rule of law.
Read alone, these pronouncements ought to put an end to any notion that the rights and values inherent in an open society should not survive the fight against terrorism. But it has not. Across the OSCE region, which comprises 57 countries from North America to Mongolia, governments are considering laws that chip away at those fundamental rights.
As a result, I have suggested that lawmakers of OSCE participating States give ample weight and consideration to the following when addressing any legislation that would affect, in law or in practice, the right of people to exercise their human rights:
- Ensure journalists’ freedom and safety at all times, including while reporting on terrorism.
- Recognize that free expression and the use of new technologies are also tools to fight terrorism by creating social cohesion and expressing alternative narratives.
- Clearly and appropriately define, in line with international human rights law, the notions of violent extremism, terrorism, radicalisation and other terms used in legislation, programs and initiatives aimed to prevent and counter terrorism.
- Acknowledge that the media has a right to report on terrorism. Requests for media blackouts of terrorist activities must be avoided and media should be free to consider, based on ethical standards and editorial guidelines, available information to publish in the public interest.
- Fully respect the right of journalists to protect sources and provide a legal framework securing adequate judicial scrutiny before law enforcement and intelligence agencies can access journalists’ material in terror investigations.
- Refrain from indiscriminate mass surveillance because of its chilling effect on free expression and journalism. Targeted surveillance should be used only when strictly necessary, with judicial authorization and independent control mechanisms in place.
- Acknowledge that anonymity and encryption technologies may be the only guarantee for safe and secure communications for journalists and therefore are a prerequisite for the right to exercise freedom of expression. Blanket prohibitions are disproportionate and therefore unacceptable, and encryption regulation introducing “backdoors” and “key escrows” to give law enforcement and intelligence access to “the dark web” should not be adopted.
- Only restrict content that is considered a threat to national security if it can be demonstrated that it is intended to incite imminent violence, likely to incite such violence and there is a direct and immediate connection between the expression and the likelihood of occurrence of such violence.
- Review applicable laws and policies on counter-terrorism and bring them in line with the above principles.
Adherence to these simple rules is necessary because limiting the space for free expression and civic space advances the goals of those promoting, threatening and using terrorism and violence.
If we give up on our fundamental freedoms we will erode the very substance of democracy and the rule of law.
Recent columns by Dunja Mijatović
Dunja Mijatović : Turkey must treat media freedom for what it really is – a test of democracy
Dunja Mijatović: Why quality public service media has not caught on in transition societies
Dunja Mijatović: Chronicling infringements on internet freedom is a necessary task
14 Jun 2016 | Asia and Pacific, Europe and Central Asia, India, Italy, mobile, News and features, Poland, United Kingdom
Timothy Garton Ash is no stranger to censorship. On the toilet wall of his Oxford home, there is a Polish censor’s verdict from early 1989 which cut a great chunk of text from an article of his on the bankruptcy of Soviet socialism.
Six months later socialism was indeed bankrupt, although the formative experiences of travelling behind the Iron Curtain in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s — seeing friends such as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn interrogated and locked up for what they published — never left him.
Now, in Free Speech: Ten Principles for a Connected World, the professor of European Studies at Oxford University provides an argument for “why we need more and better free speech” and a blueprint for how we should go about it.
“The future of free speech is a decisive question for how we live together in a mixed up world where conventionally — because of mass migration and the internet — we are all becoming neighbours,” Garton Ash explains to Index on Censorship. “The book reflects a lot of the debates we’ve already been having on the Free Speech Debate website [the precursor to the book] as well as physically in places like India China, Egypt, Burma, Thailand, where I’ve personally gone to take forward these debates.”
Garton Ash began writing the book 10 years ago, shortly after the murder of Theo van Gough and the publication of the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons. In the second of the 10 principles of free speech — ranked in order of importance — he writes: “We neither make threats of violence nor accept violent intimidation.” What he calls the “assassin’s veto” — violence or the threat of violence as a response to expression — is, he tells Index, “one of the greatest threats to free speech in our time because it undoubtedly has a very wide chilling effect”.
While the veto may bring to mind the January 2015 killings at Charlie Hebdo, Garton Ash is quick to point out that “while a lot of these threats do come from violent Islamists, they also come from the Italian mafia, Hindu nationalists in India and many other groups”.
Europe, in particular, has “had far too much yielding, or often pre-emptively, to the threat of violence and intimidation”, explains Garton Ash, including the 2014 shutting down of Exhibit B, an art exhibition which featured black performers in chains, after protesters deemed it racist. “My view is that this is extremely worrying and we really have to hold the line,” he adds.
Similarly, in the sixth principle from the book — “one of the most controversial” — Garton Ash states: “We respect the believer but not necessarily the content of the belief.”
This principle makes the same point the philosopher Stephen Darwall made between “recognition respect” and “appraisal respect”. “Recognition respect is ‘I unconditionally respect your full dignity, equal human dignity and rights as an individual, as a believer including your right to hold that belief’,” explains Garton Ash. “But that doesn’t necessarily mean I have to give ‘appraisal respect’ to the content of your belief, which I may find to be, with some reason, incoherent nonsense.”
The best and many times only weapon we have against “incoherent nonsense” is knowledge (principle three: We allow no taboos against and seize every chance for the spread of knowledge). In Garton Ash’s view, there are two worrying developments in the field of knowledge in which taboos result in free speech being edged away.
“On the one hand, the government, with its extremely problematic counter-terror legislation, is trying to impose a prevent duty to disallow even non-violent extremism,” he says. “Non-violent extremists, in my view, include Karl Marx and Jesus Christ; some of the greatest thinkers in the history of mankind were non-violent extremists.”
“On the other hand, you have student-led demands of no platforming, safe spaces, trigger warnings and so on,” Garton Ash adds, referring to the rising trend on campuses of shutting down speech deemed offensive. “Universities should be places of maximum free speech because one of the core arguments for free speech is it helps you to seek out the truth.”
The title of the books mentions the “connected world”, or what is also referred to in the text as “cosmopolis”, a global space that is both geographic and virtual. In the ninth principle, “We defend the internet and other systems of communication against illegitimate encroachments by both public and private powers”, Garton Ash aims to protect free expression in this online realm.
“We’ve never been in a world like this before, where if something dreadful happens in Iceland it ends up causing harm in Singapore, or vice-versa,” he says. “With regards to the internet, you have to distinguish online governance from regulation and keep the basic architecture of the internet free, and that means — where possible — net neutrality.”
A book authored by a westerner in an “increasingly post-western” world clearly has its work cut out for it to convince people in non-western or partially-western countries, Garton Ash admits. “What we can’t do and shouldn’t do is what the West tended to do in the 1990s, and say ‘hey world, we’ve worked it out — we have all the answers’ and simply get out the kit of liberal democracy and free speech like something from Ikea,” he says. “If you go in there just preaching and lecturing, immediately the barriers go up and out comes postcolonial resistance.”
“But what we can do — and I try to do in the book — is to move forward a conversation about how it should be, and having looked at their own traditions, you will find people are quite keen to have the conversation because they’re trying to work it out themselves.”
6 May 2016 | Belarus, Europe and Central Asia, Macedonia, Mapping Media Freedom, News and features, Russia, Turkey, Ukraine
April 2016 was the busiest month for Index on Censorship’s Mapping Media Freedom since the project began in May 2014, with a total of 87 violations against the media recorded. While MMF records violations from over 40 countries, the majority (55%) of last month’s violations came from just five countries.
These hotspots for attacks on the media will come as no surprise to anyone following the project in recent months.
Turkey continues to be the worst offender
With 16 violations recorded within its borders in April, Turkey is again the location with the most offences.
One of the most worrying occurrences last month was on 28 April when journalists Ceyda Karan and Hikment Chetinkaya, who work for Turkish daily Cumhuriyet, were sentenced to two years in prison for publishing the cover of Charlie Hebdo magazine featuring an image of prophet Muhammad. The pair were convicted of inciting “hatred and enmity”.
In another instance, on 30 April, Hamza Aktan, news director of private Istanbul-based IMC TV, was arrested by anti-terror police. Aktan was escorted to the police station where he was interrogated for 12 hours and then released. The editor is being accused of spreading propaganda for a terrorist organisation and trying to build public opinion abroad against interests of Turkey for four public tweets.
UPDATE: Government-seized Zaman and Cihan forced to close
Index on Censorship’s latest quarterly report includes a case study on an Istanbul court appointing a group of trustees to take over the management of Zaman newspaper. Since the report, it has been announced that Zaman and Cihan News Agency, also government-seized,
are to be permanently closed on 15 May. The decision comes the day after the European Commission recommendation of granting Turkey visa-free travel to the EU.
Russia: Big business throws its weight around
As the Panama Papers showed in April, investigative journalism is essential if misconduct and abuse by big business are to come to light. This makes a recent trend in Russia all the more worrying.
A total of 12 reports were filed in Russia last month, three of which related to journalists investigating business. On 12 April, when covering truckers protesting against the “illegal” actions of Omega, journalist Anton Siliverstov’s phone was stolen by Evgeni Rutkovski the director of the transport company. When he asked Rutkovski to comment on the protest, Siliverstov was forced from the office. The journalist said he would record the incident on his phone, at which point Rutkovski snatched the journalist’s device, refused to give it back and called security. Siliverstov hasn’t seen the phone since.
Two days later, reporter Igor Dovidovich was assaulted by the head of Gaz-Service, a gas company he was investigating. His TV crew was also attacked by the firm’s employees.
The month ened with state oil company Rosneft filing a judicial complaint against BiznessPress for an article which, the firm said, is “false and represents baseless fantasies of journalists or their so-called sources”.
Ukraine: TV journalists in the firing line
Ukraine continues to be unsafe for many media workers, with nine reports submitted to the project in April. Violations included five cases of intimidation, two attacks to property and several physical assaults. On 1 April, unidentified assailants set a local TV studio on fire with molotov cocktails. Studio equipment and furniture were destroyed. No one was injured.
Three days later, claims emerged that journalists working for TV channel 1+1 were under surveillance, have received death threats and have been assaulted. Later in the month, journalists from the station were attacked on 19 and 20 April.
Belarus: Journalism as a crime
Journalism is not a crime, but you’d be excused for thinking otherwise when observing recent events in Belarus. Seven reports were filed for Belarus last month, including two criminal charges resulting in fines, three arrests, and one journalist interrogated for doing his job.
On 15 April, freelance journalists were fined approximately €330 each for contributing to Polish TV channel. Kastus Zhukousky and Larysa Schyrakova were found guilty of illegal production and distribution of media products and for contributing to a foreign media outlet without accreditation.
Zhukouski has been fined seven times this year alone.
Macedonia: Anti-government protests turn sour
Six reports were submitted from Macedonia during April. The most worrying instances involved attacks to property (2) and a physical assault, leading to an injury.
April saw a wave of anti-government protests with thousands marching, mainly peacefully, through the capital city of Skopje. On 13 April four photographers and one journalist were injured by police during the anti-government demonstration. Two TV journalists were also injured by demonstrators on the day. On 14 April the offices of the Slobodna Makedonija radio station were pelted with stones by some anti-government demonstrators, causing the windows to break and other material damages.
Mapping Media Freedom Quarterly Report
Index on Censorship has released its report for the first quarter of 2016 covering 1 January and 31 March 2016. During this time: Four journalists were killed; 43 incidents of physical assault were confirmed; and there were 87 verified reports of intimidation, which includes psychological abuse, sexual harassment, trolling/cyberbullying and defamation. Media professionals were detained in 27 incidents; 37 criminal charges and civil lawsuits were filed; and media professionals were blocked from covering a story in 62 verified incidents.
“Conflict in Turkey and eastern Ukraine along with the misuse of a broad range of legislation — from limiting public broadcasters to prosecuting journalists as terrorists — have had a negative effect on press freedom across the continent,” Hannah Machlin, Mapping Media Freedom project officer, said.
3 May 2016 | Mapping Media Freedom, mobile, News and features, Turkey, Turkey Uncensored
February 4, 2013. Recep Tayyip Erdogan during a press conference in Prague.
With conditions worsening on a daily basis, Turkey now risks total blackout on public debate.
Punitive measures and harsh restrictions have diminished the domain for free and independent journalism, and media pluralism is showing strong signs of total collapse.
As Index on Censorship’s Mapping Media Freedom project highlights in its latest quarterly report, the country experienced a large number of media freedom violations.
“Over half of the arrests [in the first quarter of 2016] occurred in Turkey when journalists were reporting on violence or protests in the country,” the report said. “The data indicates a pattern where arrests are launched on terror charges or taking place during anti-terror operations.”
In its latest World Press Freedom Index, scrutinising media in 180 countries, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) ranked Turkey as #151, marking yet another fall, this time by two positions.
“President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has embarked on an offensive against Turkey’s media. Journalists are harassed, many have been accused of ‘insulting the president’ and the internet is systematically censored,” RSF said in its findings.
The decline was even more dramatic in the annual Freedom of the Press 2016 survey by Freedom House. Its survey over the past year marked a fall by six points, placing Turkey as 156th among 199 countries, again among those as “not free”.
“The government, controlled by Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP), aggressively used the penal code, criminal defamation legislation, and the country’s antiterrorism law to punish critical reporting, and journalists faced growing violence, harassment, and intimidation from both state and non-state actors during the year. The authorities continued to use financial and administrative leverage over media owners to influence coverage and silence dissent,” it concluded.
This downfall is unprecedented in intensity. The country’s remnant core of brave, free and independent journalists, regardless of their political views, now agree that free journalism will soon cease to exist in Turkey. With full-frontal attacks on the media, the sector may become subservient to the political and bureaucratic power, with content rife with stenography and propaganda.
Legal inquiries and charges against journalists are continually on the rise. According to the ministry of justice, the number of “insulting the president” cases passed 1,800 since mid-2014.
In other cases, such as the charges brought against Cumhuriyet daily, its editors Can Dündar and Erdem Gül are accused of spying and treason, for printing news stories about lorries carrying weapons, allegedly to Syrian jihadist groups, by the government’s orders.
In another notorious case, investigative journalist Mehmet Baransu has been detained for over 13 months over his inquiries into the alleged abuses of power within the military.
In a fresh case, two senior journalists from Cumhuriyet, Ceyda Karan and Hikmet Çetinkaya, were sentenced to two years each in prison for “inciting hatred”. Their “crime” was to reprint the Charlie Hebdo front page cartoon in their column, which they said was an act of professional solidarity.
According to Bianet, a monitoring site, there are now 28 journalists in Turkish prisons, many of whom are affiliated with the Kurdish media, based on charges brought under anti-terror laws.
The draconian nature of charges and prison sentences leave little doubt about AKP government’s intent to criminalise journalism as a whole.
Punitive measures against journalism go far beyond court cases. The most efficient method has proven to be firing journalists who insist on exercising basic standards of the profession.
Since mid-2013, following Gezi Park protests, 3,500 journalists have lost their jobs. Media moguls have come under increasing pressure from the government, which demands action or threatens to cancel lucrative public contracts. Taking advantage of the low influence of trade unions (fewer than 4% of journalists are members), employers axe staff arbitrarily.
As a result of this widespread exercise in conglomerate-dominated “mainstream media”, with newsrooms turned into “open-air prisons”, self-censorship in Turkey has become a deeply rooted culture. Blacklists have been drawn up of TV pundits and columnists in the press, who are known for critical stands, no matter their political leaning.
What apparently weighed heavy in the gloomy figures by Index on Censorship, RSF and FH is the fact that, from early last year, authorities started also targeting large, private media institutions, known for critical journalism.
Hürriyet, an influential newspaper belonging to Doğan Media was attacked by a mob two nights in a row last summer, after which its owners felt they had to “tone down” critical content.
In even more dramatic cases, Koza-Ipek Media outlets were raided by the police last autumn, followed some months later by a similar large-scale operation against Zaman Media, second largest group in the sector, and the largest independent news agency, CHA.
These seizures, along with some other critical channels yanked off satellite and digital platforms in recent months, left a huge vacuum, threatening to terminate the diversity of the media.
Now, with around 90% of the sector under direct or indirect editorial control of the AKP government, including the state broadcaster TRT, there are only three critical TV channels and no more than five small-scale independent newspapers left.
As a result of these assaults, two things are apparent: firstly, investigative journalism is blocked and news is severely filtered; secondly, with diversity fading out, public debate, a key aspect of any democracy, is severely limited.
Along with routine bans on reporting on specific events such as terror attacks, severe accreditation restrictions and a newly emerging pattern of deporting international media correspondents, the conclusion is inevitable.
A profession faces extinction and along with its exit, and a thick wall between the truth and the public, both domestic and international, is emerging. This total collapse will have far deeper consequences than anyone can imagine.
Turkey Uncensored is an Index on Censorship project to publish a series of articles from censored Turkish writers, artists and translators.
