22 Sep 15 | Austria, mobile, News and features, United Kingdom
Panelists at the OSCE meet on online attacks against journalists: writer Arzu Geybulla; Gavin Rees, Europe director of the Dart Center for journalism and trauma; Becky Gardiner, from Goldsmiths, University of London; journalist Caroline Criado Perez
“This is not something that only ‘ladies’ can fix,” emphasised Dunja Mijatovic, the OSCE’s Representative on Freedom of the Media at an expert meeting on the safety of female journalists in Vienna on 17 September 2015, which Index on Censorship attended.
The importance of collectively tackling the growing problem became an overarching theme of the conference. “There is a new and alarming trend for women journalists and bloggers to be singled out for online harassment,” said Mijatovic, while highlighting the importance of media, state and NGO voices coming together to address the abuse.
Arzu Geybulla and Caroline Criado Perez, journalists from Azerbaijan and the UK respectively, started the meeting with moving testaments of their own experiences. Despite covering very different topics, they have received shockingly similar threats – sexual, violent and personal. “Shut your mouth or I’ll shut it for you and choke you with my dick” was one of the messages received by Perez after she campaigned for a woman to feature on British banknotes.
Although male journalists also receive abuse, women experience a two-fold attack, including the gendered threats. Think tank Demos has estimated that female journalists experience roughly three times as many abusive comments as their male counterparts on Twitter.
The problem, said Perez, was not just the threats but how the women who receive them are then treated. “Women are accused of being mad or attention seeking, which are all ways of delegitimising women’s speech,” she said. “People told me to stop, close my Twitter account, go offline. But why is the solution to shut up?” She added: “This is a societal problem, not an internet problem.”
“Labelling a person, and making that person an object, is particularly common in Azerbaijan,” said Geybulla, an Azeri journalist and Index on Censorship magazine contributor who was labelled a traitor and viciously targeted online after writing for a Turkish-Armenian newspaper. “Our society is not ready to speak out. You can’t go to the police. The police think it must be your fault.”
The intention of the meeting was to highlight the problem, while also proposing courses of actions. Suggestions included calls for more education in digital literacy; more training for police; more support from editors and media organisations, and from male colleagues. There was some disagreement on whether the laws were robust enough as they stand, or needed an update for the internet age.
Becky Gardiner, formerly editor of Guardian’s Comment is Free section, spoke about how her own views on dealing with online abuse had changed, having initially told writers they should develop a thicker skin. “It is not enough to tell people to get tough. Disarming the comments is not a solution either. That genie is out of the bottle.” Gardiner, who is now a lecturer at Goldsmiths, University of London, is working on research into the issue, as commissioned by the Guardian’s new editor, Kath Viner.
It was suggested that small but crucial steps could be taken by media organisations to avoid inflammatory and misleading headlines (which are not written by the journalist, but put them in the firing line) and to be careful of exposing inexperienced writers without preparation or support. Sarah Jeong from Vice’s Motherboard plaform said, in her experience, freelancers often came the most under attack because they don’t have institutional backing.
The OSCE said this will be the first in a series of meetings, with the aim of getting more organisations to take it serious and to produce more concrete courses of action.
Read more about the online abuse of women in the latest issue of Index on Censorship magazine, with a personal account by Gamergate target Brianna Wu and a legal overview by Greg Lukianoff, president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (Fire).
Tweets from OSCE’s #FemJournoSafe conference:
https://twitter.com/julieposetti/status/644456066432937984
06 Aug 15 | Azerbaijan, Azerbaijan News, mobile
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Prosecutors in the case against Leyla Yunus and Arif Yunus have asked the court to sentence the couple to 11 and 9 years respectively, Radio Free Europe reported. It is the latest in a series of moves by the government of Azerbaijan to silence those who have been calling for more freedom and democracy in the country.
The couple face spurious charges of treason, fraud and forgery.
“The world must not turn a blind eye to the ongoing persecution of civil society activists and investigative journalists at the hands of President Ilham Aliyev’s government. The international community must pressure the government to end its attack on civil society and respect international human rights standards,” Melody Patry, senior advocacy officer at Index on Censorship said.
Azerbaijan: Silencing human rights
Ongoing coverage of the crackdown on civil society by the government of President Ilham Aliyev
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In her role as director of the Peace and Democracy Institute, Leyla Yunus sought to build bridges with Armenian human rights organisation in an attempt to defuse tensions between Azerbaijan and Armenia. Her husband Arif is a historian and researcher who focused on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict with Armenia.
The Yunus’ trial began on 27 July 2015, nearly a year after they were taken into custody days apart from each other. The couple are set to return to court on 10 August. Today marks a year and a day since the arrest of Arif Yunus on 5 August 2014. Leyla Yunus was arrested on 30 July 2014.
Earlier this week, an appeals court confirmed the six year and three month sentence that was slapped on pro-democracy activist Rasul Jafarov in April 2015.
Investigative journalist Khadija Ismayilova, who exposed corruption associated with the family of Ilham Aliyev, faces a continuation of her trial on 7 Aug. Journalists and observers were barred from the last court session on 24 July. Ismayilova won the US National Press Club‘s highest award on 29 July.
This article was posted on 6 August 2015 at indexoncensorship.org
09 Jul 15 | Campaigns, mobile, Statements
“Impunity is a great threat to press freedom in Russia,” said Melody Patry, Index on Censorship’s Senior Advocacy Officer. “Failing to use appropriate measures to investigate the murder of Akhmednabi Akhmednabiyev is not only a denial of justice, it sends the tacit message that you can get away with killing journalists. When perpetrators are not held to account, it encourages further violence towards media professionals.”
Statement
On the 2nd anniversary of the murder of independent Russian journalist, Akhmednabi Akhmednabiyev, we, the undersigned organisations, call for the investigation into his case to be urgently raised to the federal level.
Akhmednabiyev, deputy editor of independent newspaper Novoye Delo, and a reporter for online news portal Caucasian Knot, was shot dead on 9 July 2013 as he left for work in Makhachkala, Dagestan. He had actively reported on human rights violations against Muslims by the police and Russian army.
Two years after his killing, neither the perpetrators nor instigators have been brought to justice. The investigation, led by the local Dagestani Investigative Committee, has been repeatedly suspended for long periods over the last year and half, with little apparent progress being made.
Prior to his murder, Akhmednabiyev was subject to numerous death threats including an assassination attempt in January 2013, the circumstances of which mirrored his eventual murder. Dagestani police wrongly logged the assassination attempt as property damage, and only reclassified it after the journalist’s death, demonstrating a shameful failure to investigate the motive behind the attack and prevent further attacks, despite a request from Akhmednabiyev for protection.
Russia’s failure to address these threats is a breach of the state’s “positive obligation” to protect an individual’s freedom of expression against attacks, as defined by European Court of Human Rights case law (Dink v. Turkey). Furthermore, at a United Nations Human Rights Council (HRC) session in September 2014, member States, including Russia, adopted a resolution (A/HRC/27/L.7) on safety of journalists and ending impunity. States are now required to take a number of measures aimed at ending impunity for violence against journalists, including “ensuring impartial, speedy, thorough, independent and effective investigations, which seek to bring to justice the masterminds behind attacks”.
Russia must act on its human rights commitments and address the lack of progress in Akhmednabiyev’s case by removing it from the hands of local investigators, and prioritising it at a federal level. More needs to be done in order to ensure impartial, independent and effective investigation.
On 2 November 2014, 31 non-governmental organisations from Russia, across Europe as well as international, wrote to Aleksandr Bastrykin calling upon him as the Head of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation, to raise Akhmednabiyev’s case from the regional level to the federal level, in order to ensure an impartial, independent and effective investigation. Specifically, the letter requested that he appoint the Office for the investigation of particularly important cases involving crimes against persons and public safety, under the Central Investigative Department of the Russian Federation’s Investigative Committee to continue the investigation.
To date, there has been no official response to this appeal. The Federal Investigative Committee’s public inactivity on this case contradicts a promise made by President Putin in October 2014, to draw investigators’ attention to the cases of murdered journalists in Dagestan.
As well as ensuring impunity for his murder, such inaction sets a terrible precedent for future investigations into attacks on journalists in Russia, and poses a serious threat to freedom of expression.
We urge the Federal Investigation Committee to remedy this situation by expediting Akhmednabiyev’s case to the Federal level as a matter of urgency. This would demonstrate a clear willingness, by the Russian authorities, to investigate this crime in a thorough, impartial and effective manner.
Supported by
ARTICLE 19
Albanian Media Institute
Analytical Center for Interethnic Cooperation and Consultations (Georgia)
Association of Independent Electronic Media (Serbia)
The Barys Zvozskau Belarusian Human Rights House
Belorussian Helsinki Committee
Center for Civil Liberties (Ukraine)
Civil Society and Freedom of Speech Initiative Center for the Caucasus
Crude Accountability
Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly – Vanadzor (Armenia)
Helsinki Committee of Armenia
Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia
Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights
The Human Rights Center of Azerbaijan
Human Rights House Foundation
Human Rights Monitoring Institute
Human Rights Movement “Bir Duino-Kyrgyzstan”
Index on Censorship
International Partnership for Human Rights
International Press Institute
Kharkiv Regional Foundation -Public Alternative (Ukraine)
Kazakhstan International Bureau for Human Rights and Rule of Law
Moscow Helsinki Group
Norwegian Helsinki Committee
PEN International
Promo LEX Moldova
Public Verdict (Russia)
Reporters without Borders
Заявление по-русски
11 Jun 15 | Azerbaijan, Azerbaijan News, Europe and Central Asia, mobile, News and features
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev (Photo: Demotix)
Critical Azerbaijani journalists may have been jailed, beaten, killed, and forced into hiding and exile. Foreign journalists may have been banned from entering the country for the inaugural European Games in the capital Baku. But don’t worry: Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev sure loves press freedom — at least according to his tweets.
1) HUNDREDS, you hear!
2) For those who can get in for the European Games, anyway.
3) All of the freedoms are available.
4) No, seriously, ALL OF THEM.
5) I really can’t stress this enough.
6) Free media = democracy. Azerbaijan definitely has both of those things. Definitely.
7) And the best way to forge active relationships is by banning them from entering the country. Obviously.
8) Again, activity is key.
9) Strengthening, targeting. Potato, potato.
10) …to jail.
This article was posted on 11 June, 2015 at indexoncensorship.org
