14 Mar 17 | Digital Freedom, Mapping Media Freedom, News and features
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Each week, Index on Censorship’s Mapping Media Freedom project verifies threats, violations and limitations faced by the media throughout the European Union and neighbouring countries. Here are recent reports that give us cause for concern.
The Madrid Journalists Association (APM) received a petition from a group of journalists they had experienced a “systemised campaign of personal and network harassment” from the left-wing Podemos party.
According to a press release from APM, the reporters said they had been harassed and pressured by the Podemos, led by Pablo Iglesias, for over a year. The press release also said that the harassment came in the form of threatening phone calls, emails, and messages or comments on social media such as Twitter. APM believes that the harassment is an attempt by Podemos officials to improve their reputation and image by eliminating any media criticism of the party.
Elvi Fundo, the news editor for the online publication Citynews.al and Radio Best, was attacked in Tirana on the morning of 8 March. The reporter was on his way to his office in the city when he was violently assaulted by two unknown assailants and suffered from injuries which landed him in the hospital.
Fundo, who is known for publishing investigations into corruption and conflict of interests, told the Balkan Insight that he does not believe the attacks had political connotations. Instead, Fundo said, he believes the attack was “the work of criminals financed by corrupt media clans tied to drug-trafficking.” Both journalists and politicians, including the Albanian Union of Journalists and Prime Minister Edi Rama, have condemned the attack as a threat to media and press freedom.
Journalists and politicians, including the Albanian Union of Journalists and Prime Minister Edi Rama, have condemned the attack as a threat to media and press freedom. Although the police have launched an investigation into the assault, the identity and motive of the assailants are still unknown.
Reporter Igor Zalyubovin and photographer Vladimir Yarotsky were arrested and detained by officers of the Russian Security Service (FSB) in Svetogorsk on 7 March. The journalists, who work for Snob, a Moscow-based independent news magazine, were taken to a detention centre and charged with crossing into a border zone without permission.
Zalyubovin and Yarotsky had rented an apartment in Svetogorsk, a town of about 15,000 outside the border of Finald, to use while reporting on Mayor Sergey Davydov’s claim that it is a “city without sin” because there are no homosexual residents. A 2014 law requires journalists to have specific permission from the FSB to work in the border zone, however, according to Snob’s editor-in-chief, they did not apply for a permit due to time constraints.
The Committee to Protect Journalists denounced the incident and said that this is the second time that journalists were detained and forced to leave Svetogorsk for border zone violations while doing follow-up reporting on the Mayor’s comments. [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row equal_height=”yes” content_placement=”middle” css=”.vc_custom_1489421829923{background-color: #d5473c !important;background-position: center !important;background-repeat: no-repeat !important;background-size: cover !important;}” el_class=”text_white”][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]
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Nu Ener, a news editor for the Yeni Asya daily, said was arrested by police on charges of association and membership to the FETO/PDY terrorist organisation.
According to a report published in Yeni Asya, Ener was originally detained following a police raid on her home on 3 March. Three days later, the 4th Criminal Judicature of Peace found that she was guilty of membership to the terrorist organisation which has ties to Fethullah Gulen, the Muslim preacher whom the Turkish government blames for the failed coup this past July. Ener was specifically accused of using Bylock, a mobile communications application, to help organise the coup attempt.
Ener, who remains incarcerated in the Bakirkoy Prison for women, is one out of 155 journalists currently imprisoned in Turkey.
The circulation of Pras Press, a new satirical newspaper by Bulgaria’s “Society of Rude Cartoonists,” was blocked by the State Distribution Company on 5 March. The newspaper, which is known as the Bulgarian version of ‘Charlie Hebdo,’ first went on sale on 1 March, but since distribution ceased, only one tenth of the printed copies has been sold.
Journalist Ivan Bakalov said that he believes MP Delyan Peevski is behind the incident although he is not one of the listed owners of the State Distribution Company. Bakalov and his colleagues believe that the mocking of political elites in Pras Press likely contributed to the circulation block.
Despite Bulgaria’s low ranking of 113 in the 2016 Press Freedom Ranking of Reporters without Borders, the journalists of Pras Press have pledged to bring their case to the Commission for Protection of Competition, the state prosecution, caretaker government, and President Rumen Radev in hopes to resume circulation.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]
Click on the bubbles to view reports or double-click to zoom in on specific regions. The full site can be accessed at https://mappingmediafreedom.org/
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25 Jan 17 | Magazine, News and features, Volume 45.04 Winter 2016
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”Dealing with mutilated bodies, an attempted acid attack and speakers arresting each other. All part of his job organising Hay literature festivals around the world, explains Peter Florence in the winter 2016 issue of Index on Censorship magazine” google_fonts=”font_family:Libre%20Baskerville%3Aregular%2Citalic%2C700|font_style:400%20italic%3A400%3Aitalic”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”85033″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes”][vc_column_text]
Running a literature festival in a context where freedom of speech is not a given is like playing chess on a plain grey board. Sometimes you are just not able to imagine where to move, and sometimes you just keep playing on grey. But as US President Barack Obama said so eloquently after November’s election: “You say, OK, where are the places where I can push to keep it moving forward?”
Bringing people together around a table or a picnic rug or a campfire is a specific challenge. There is no mediated distance of print or broadcast. The whole point is that you’re face to face, that you’re making it personal. And the offence and the risk are as personal as the joy and the discovery. This makes it a fascinating challenge when the practicalities of running a big public event run into conflict with the authorities who license you to put up your stages.
Sometimes it comes like this: a week after a successful festival, a man you’ve been working with for a couple of years suggests a meeting in a café to review the year’s work. He’s a good man, an enabler; a man who has the careworn look of a bureaucrat who’s survived in an undemocratic regime by knowing which battles to fight.
You like him, because he’s helped navigate the public licences and public funding avenues. He orders cake. He enthuses about the opportunity to meet Hanif Kureishi at the screening of My Beautiful Launderette, and the honour of hearing Carl Bernstein speak about the First Amendment. His funder is thrilled. They love the Hay Festival in the city. We’re in a coffee shop, not his office. They are so thrilled they’d like to double the grant they give us. Alarm bells. Could we help them? Here it comes: could we programme the next festival just the same way, but without the homosexuals or the Jews?
Sometimes it’s harder. Our first festival in volatile, thrilling Mexico comes to a world heritage site in Zacatecas, because the state’s visionary governor has visited our festival in Cartagena, Colombia, and she wants to bring a similar experience to her home. The festival is a huge success. Her term ends and she is succeeded by a new governor who cancels all his predecessor’s funded projects.
But across the country a dynamic new governor in Veracruz, Javier Duarte, picks up the baton and invites us to Xalapa. A fortnight before we start, a drug cartel dumps 35 mutilated bodies onto a busy road nearby. “It’s a gang thing, an inter-narco incident,” we’re told.
We hold the festival. Tens of thousands of students come and listen and talk and wonder.
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/4″][vc_icon icon_fontawesome=”fa fa-quote-left” color=”custom” align=”right” custom_color=”#dd3333″][/vc_column][vc_column width=”3/4″][vc_custom_heading text=”Could we programme the next festival just the same way, but without the homosexuals or the Jews?” google_fonts=”font_family:Libre%20Baskerville%3Aregular%2Citalic%2C700|font_style:400%20italic%3A400%3Aitalic”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]
During the third year the talk about the Governor Duarte’s probity starts. Journalists investigating the cartels are disappeared. We bring in Salman Rushdie, Jody Williams and Carl Bernstein again to speak up alongside Mexican writers. The students embrace the festival as a beacon of freedom of speech.
Year four, we receive a petition demanding that we cancel the festival and denounce the governor for failing to stem the constant steam of killings of journalists in Veracruz. The petition is signed by more than 300 journalists and some writers from across Latin America who have attended the festival. We listen. A rival, and much bigger petition is started by the students and teachers in Xalapa begging us not to leave, saying the festival is their bulwark against silence. But we cannot operate against the wishes of writers and journalists. We broadcast the festival digitally on BBC Mundo, and move to Mexico City and then to Querétaro. Many of the students from Xalapa come too. Duarte is currently on the run from the police and the cartels.
Sometimes it’s just farcical. In 2008, at our festival in Wales we invite George W Bush’s confidant and former US Ambassador to the UN John Bolton to discuss Abu Ghraib and the “war on terror”. Many supporters of Hay are appalled. Our good friend and neighbour George Monbiot, also a speaker, is so appalled he decides that he will attempt a citizen’s arrest at the festival. I assume he’s joking. Monbiot announces this is what he’s going to do in The Guardian. The Dyfed-Powys Police inform me of the legal procedure for citizen’s arrest and step away.
My mother reads me Voltaire. I brief our security team. The day comes. Bolton turns up. His interviewer is called to the BBC at lunchtime, so I have to go onstage with him. I ask him under what circumstances it would be OK for me, if I didn’t believe his answers, to tip him backwards, bag him, and pour water over his face. He doesn’t answer. He cannot say “under no circumstances”, though I’m not sure he understands that’s the issue. It’s on YouTube; it’s compelling.
Bolton knows that Monbiot is going to try to make a citizen’s arrest, and George knows I cannot allow him to do that and still hold Hay as a platform for free speech. So that’s what happens. We restrain a liberal hero from silencing an illiberal neo-con. A guy who throws a bottle of acid hits me, not Bolton. George writes a brilliant and widely shared account of why Bolton should be charged.
Hay Festival is 30 in 2017. We’ll be celebrating by arguing for freedoms of speaking and reading. The festival continues to run around the world in Mexico, Colombia, Ireland and Spain.
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Peter Florence is the director and co-founder of the Hay Festival
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”From the Archives”][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”89102″ img_size=”213×289″ alignment=”center” onclick=”custom_link” link=”http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0306422012448150″][vc_custom_heading text=”Taking a stand: lit fair challenges” font_container=”tag:p|font_size:24|text_align:left” link=”url:http%3A%2F%2Fjournals.sagepub.com%2Fdoi%2Fpdf%2F10.1177%2F0306422012448150|||”][vc_column_text]June 2012
As literary festivals and fairs become forums of censorship and protest, Salil Tripathi considers the challenges facing writers and their readers.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”91337″ img_size=”213×289″ alignment=”center” onclick=”custom_link” link=”http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/03064229008534852″][vc_custom_heading text=”Soviet lit in Glasgow” font_container=”tag:p|font_size:24|text_align:left” link=”url:http%3A%2F%2Fjournals.sagepub.com%2Fdoi%2Fpdf%2F10.1080%2F03064229008534852|||”][vc_column_text]June 1990
Soviet writers attend literary forum, ‘New Beginnings’ Soviet Arts Festival in Glasgow, where selections from their work were read and discussed.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”94377″ img_size=”213×289″ alignment=”center” onclick=”custom_link” link=”http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/03064228008533066″][vc_custom_heading text=”The prisoner: an excerpt” font_container=”tag:p|font_size:24|text_align:left” link=”url:http%3A%2F%2Fjournals.sagepub.com%2Fdoi%2Fpdf%2F10.1080%2F03064228008533066|||”][vc_column_text]June 1980
Imprisoned for a paper on education to be delivered at a festival, Yves-Emmanuel Dogbé was imprisoned without trial for five months.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][vc_separator][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_custom_heading text=”Fashion Rules” font_container=”tag:p|font_size:24|text_align:left” link=”url:https%3A%2F%2Fwww.indexoncensorship.org%2F2016%2F12%2Ffashion-rules%2F|||”][vc_column_text]The winter 2016 issue of Index on Censorship magazine looks at fashion and how people both express freedom through what they wear.
In the issue: interviews with Lily Cole, Paulo Scott and Daphne Selfe, articles by novelists Linda Grant and Maggie Alderson plus Eliza Vitri Handayani on why punks are persecuted in Indonesia.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”82377″ img_size=”medium” alignment=”center” onclick=”custom_link” link=”https://www.indexoncensorship.org/2016/12/fashion-rules/”][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_custom_heading text=”Subscribe” font_container=”tag:p|font_size:24|text_align:left” link=”url:https%3A%2F%2Fwww.indexoncensorship.org%2Fsubscribe%2F|||”][vc_column_text]In print, online. In your mailbox, on your iPad.
Subscription options from £18 or just £1.49 in the App Store for a digital issue.
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02 Aug 16 | Croatia, Europe and Central Asia, Mapping Media Freedom, mobile, News and features
Sasa Lekovic, seen here at a Mediacentar Sarajevo event in 2013, spoke to Mapping Media Freedom about the changes at Croatia’s public broadcaster, HRT. (Photo: Mediacentar Sarajevo)
The cancellation of three radio programmes on 4 July by Croatia’s public broadcaster marks the latest in a line of sweeping changes the network has undergone since January 2016.
Two of the three shows — Audio.doc and Hidden Side of the Day — were produced by award-winning radio journalist Ljubica Letinic, while the third — Morning at Third — was considered to the Croatian Radio-Television’s (HRT) most popular. N1, a regional broadcaster, reported that the programmes will be replaced with new shows that are more appropriate to the ruling elite’s ideology, including one on Christian spirituality.
The changes at HRT have gathered momentum since Croatia’s new conservative government came to power in January 2016. More than 70 media workers at HRT have been demoted or fired and more than 10 TV and radio shows have been terminated, according to the Croatian Journalists’ Association, which has strongly condemned what it calls the deliberate destruction of HRT.
In a written response to the cancellations, CJA president Sasa Lekovic said Croatia’s minister of culture Zlatko Hasanbegovic is the force behind the “culturecide” at HRT and that the changes are motivated by the ideological differences between the conservative government and the liberal subdivisions at the public broadcaster.
In an interview with Mapping Media Freedom, Lekovic said that the purges at HRT were pre-announced, even before the conservative coalition government came to power.
“The latest developments were already announced,” Lekovic said, referring to two interviews. The first with the former Prime Minister Tomislav Karamarko from 2015, and the second with Hasanbegovic from 2013.
“Karamarko in his last year’s interview for weekly Globus announced how citizens, and especially journalist, will need to behave once he comes in power,” Lekovic said. After this it was reasonable to expect that Hasanbegovic will be in charge for media, especially after his statement that the public broadcaster’s channels are being used to enact a “post-modern, neo-Yugoslav deconstruction of Croatian national and cultural identity”.
The Croatian Writers’ Society (HDP) have also condemned the recent trend of deep and substantial changes in the public broadcaster accusing the actual government of “silencing critical voices”. Lekovic told Index on Censorship that the public broadcaster was totally devastated during Karamarko and Hasanbegovic’s brief tenure.
The coalition government between conservative center-right Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) and the center party Most, a political platform comprised of independent local majors, was formed after more than two months of hard and erratic negotiations. By its nature it was an unstable and shaky coalition. Hasanbegovic as a high-ranking member of HDZ shortly after seated in the chair of the minister of culture. Immediately he became publicly known for series of scandals related to ideological and historical revisionism. One of the biggest scandals was revealed by the Croatian daily Novosti. They published an article that was written by Hasanbegovic during his student days in which he expressed sympathy for the fascist Ustasha regime in World War II Croatia.
After months of turbulence and scandals Karamarko resigned from the leader position at HDZ in June amid a corruption scandal that involved his wife. But briefly before his resignation, as a part of the intergovernmental power games, Karamarko and his party HDZ, which was the main party in the coalition, opted for a no-confidence vote for the government. The end result was Karamarko’s resignation from his position as the leader of the main ruling party, the failure of the coalition between HDZ and Most and snap elections were called for 11 September.
Despite the fact that the government lost the confidence vote, the changes at HRT continue as the broadcaster is under HDZ influence. In March, while still in power, the centre-right government installed Sinisa Kovacic, then-head of the parallel journalist association HNIP, as an acting head of HRT. Since then he has continued to implement Hasanbegovic’s vison for HRT and to reshape the broadcaster’s programmes. Since Kovacic was supposed to be in that position for maximum six months, a period that is long overdue, negotiations on his successor are underway.
Letinic said she is skeptical about the future of Croatian journalism. “It doesn’t look good, both for journalism and journalists. The paradox is that even such journalism serves this country. It was the weekly Nacional that provoked the fall of HDZ-MOST government.”
21 Jul 16 | Europe and Central Asia, Mapping Media Freedom, mobile, News and features, Turkey, Turkey Uncensored
The failed 15 July coup, bloody and despicable, delivered a lethal blow to the already crippled democratic order in Turkey. The cabal behind the putsch has become a midwife to Turkey’s “autogolpe” or self-coup. With every step, President Reccep Tayyip Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) backers have introduced further restrictive sanctions.
This creeping self-coup is a prospect I raised in early 2014 with a long analysis for the German edition of Le Monde Diplomatique entitled Putsch im Zeitlupe. In that article I pointed out the parallels between the career of Alberto Fujimori, the former Peruvian president who is in prison for his corruption, and the increasingly autocratic methods employed by Erdogan.
The reaction to the totally unacceptable coup so far sadly has endorsed my theory. The reformatting of the Turkish state is now in fast-forward mode with a massive purge underway.
Tension has spilled over into academia. The head of the Supreme Board of High Education (YÖK), which itself is the product of the 1980 military coup d’état, called all the presidents of universities to an emergency meeting. It was followed by two drastic steps: YÖK issued a directive demanding the resignations of 1,577 deans across the country and, on Wednesday morning, blocked travel for all academics who were travelling abroad. YÖK also ordered all Turkish academics resident in universities in other countries to return home.
The media has been strangled even further. Within the past 48 hours, around 20 news sites were blocked by the Telecommunications Authority (TIB). On Tuesday night, the High Board of Radio and TV (RTUK) cancelled the licences of 24 TV and radio channels. The office of the press directorate announced that the press cards of 34 editors and reporters were cancelled. Officials cited “linkage with FETO structures” when explaining the bans. According to Turkish authorities, FETO is the terrorist organisation headed by the US-based cleric Fetullah Gulen, who has created a parallel state and is behind the failed coup.
The daily Özgür Düşünce, now accused of being an extension of “FETO terror organisation”, announced on Wednesday it was shutting down. The irony is that the daily that had assembled the finest core of liberal columnists who for many years struggled for a democratic order.
Also on Wednesday the editor of Meydan daily Levent Kenez and managing editor Gülizar Baki were arrested during a police raid without any explanation. Both are first class journalists.
Another drama has been developing around Wikileaks, which has published nearly 300,000 emails along with thousands of attached files from 762 mailboxes that allegedly belong to email domain of the AKP. The e-mails span between 2010 and June 2016.
Wikileaks was banned after some hours. “Turks will likely be censored to prevent them reading our pending release of 100k+ docs on politics leading up to the coup,” an earlier statement by Wikileaks read. It was later reported that ”WikiLeaks’ infrastrucutre was under sustained attack” following its announcement.
Concerns are at the alert level internationally. The International Federations of Journalists and the European Federations of Journalists contacted the Council of Europe about a series of new press freedom violations. Mapping Media Freedom has logged 18 violations of press freedom aimed at news outlets or professionals since the night of the coup attempt.
All journalists affiliated with the independent outlets know they have to work on the realistic presumption that conditions will worsen for them. If the Erdogan-led government has decided to deepen the path towards a self-coup and to utilise the extraordinary circumstances to ruthlessly settle scores with all dissent and opposition, the presumption is legitimate. All segments of civil society may soon be unable to avoid feeling they have been “taken hostage” as a result of the coup attempt that has pushed Turkey back decades.
A version of this article was originally posted to Suddeutsche Zeitung. It is published here with permission of the author.
Turkey Uncensored is an Index on Censorship project to publish a series of articles from censored Turkish writers, artists and translators.
