16 Jan 20 | Index in the Press
Index on Censorship, Reporters Without Borders UK, and Transparency International UK are asking Azerbaijani authorities to reconsider a travel ban on prominent journalist Khadija Ismayilova so she can give evidence in the trial of a Romanian journalist, a press release said. Index on Censorship chief executive Jodie Ginsberg said the travel ban on Ismayilova was “a means to punish her and stifle the spread of her reporting.”
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16 Jan 20 | Index in the Press
Three nongovernmental organizations are urging Azerbaijan to lift a travel ban against investigative reporter Khadija Ismayilova and allow her to travel to Britain to give evidence in the trial of a journalist who is being sued for defamation by an Azerbaijani lawmaker…
In a joint statement on January 15, Index on Censorship, Reporters Without Borders U.K., and Transparency International U.K. said lawyers will be seeking permission for Ismayilova to travel to London, where the case against Romanian journalist Paul Radu is set to start next week.
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15 Jan 20 | About Index, Azerbaijan, Media Freedom, media freedom featured, News and features, Press Releases
Azerbaijan authorities should lift a travel ban against award-winning investigative journalist Khadija Ismayilova, UK-based rights groups urged on 15 January.
Ismayilova was detained in December 2014 and sentenced in September 2015 to seven-and-a-half years in prison on trumped-up charges. She was conditionally released in May 2016, but three-and-a-half years later, still remains subject to a travel ban and has been unable to leave the country despite numerous applications to do so.
Lawyers will be seeking permission for Ismayilova to travel to the UK to give evidence in the trial of Paul Radu, a Romanian journalist who is co-founder and executive director of investigative reporting group OCCRP (the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project). Radu is being sued for defamation in London by Azerbaijani MP, Javanshir Feyziyev, over two articles in OCCRP’s award-winning Azerbaijan Laundromat series about money laundering out of Azerbaijan.
Ismayilova, OCCRP’s lead reporter in Azerbaijan, is a key witness in the case.
“Azerbaijan is unjustly and unfairly preventing Khadija Ismayilova from travelling internationally as a means to punish her and stifle the spread of her reporting,” said Index on Censorship chief executive Jodie Ginsberg. “Given the UK’s stated commitment to speak out more publicly on threats to media freedom, we urge Britain to join our calls for Ms Ismayilova to be released from her travel ban.”
As UN special rapporteur David Kaye wrote in 2017, travel bans “deny the spread of information about the state of repression and corruption” in countries and act as a form of censorship. In 2017, Ms Ismayilova was prevented from travelling to receive the Right Livelihood Award, the alternative Nobel Prize, for her reporting in Azerbaijan.
“This travel ban is one of many examples of the Azerbaijani authorities’ longstanding persecution of Khadija Ismayilova for her courageous investigative reporting, and she is one of dozens of journalists and activists currently subjected to such measures in Azerbaijan. The ban should be immediately lifted, she should be acquitted of the bogus charges it stemmed from, and she should be allowed to travel to give testimony in this alarming case against another investigative journalist,” said Rebecca Vincent, UK Bureau Director for Reporters Without Borders.
The case against Paul Radu will commence on 20 January.
“Thanks to reporting by Khadija Ismayilova and her colleagues, we know more about how money stolen from the people of Azerbaijan has found its way into luxury London property,” said Daniel Bruce, Chief Executive of Transparency International UK. “Preventing her from giving evidence is a clear attempt to bully and silence those who dare expose the truth. As a defender of free speech and the rule of law, the UK Government should call for her freedom to travel to Britain to provide evidence in this important libel case.”
03 Jan 20 | Azerbaijan, Europe and Central Asia, Media Freedom, media freedom featured, News and features, Press Releases, Romania, United Kingdom
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]The UK should make it harder for powerful individuals and companies to bring libel actions or use other vexatious legal threats designed to stifle investigative journalism, Index on Censorship said on Friday.
Launching a new project that aims to expose the extent to which those with wealth and influence use legal threats to shut down investigations into their practices, Index said that – despite recent changes to UK law – more needs to be done both in Britain and abroad to tackle spurious lawsuits.
“Defamation law was reformed in 2013 to make it harder for people who had little or no connection to the UK to bring lawsuits here,” said Index on Censorship chief executive Jodie Ginsberg. “However, we are still seeing people and organisations with almost no UK links bringing expensive and spurious defamation cases. In addition, increasingly people are turning to privacy and data protection laws in an attempt to prevent journalists reporting on corrupt, illegal or poor practice.”
Ginsberg said UK law firms were also among the most heavily involved in legal threats to journalists outside the UK. “This needs to stop,” she said.
Later this month, the UK courts will hear the case of Paul Radu, investigative journalist and founder of the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP). Radu, a Romanian citizen, is being sued by Azerbaijani MP Javanshir Feyziyev, who was named in an award-winning OCCRP report exposing money-laundering. Feyziyev is a sitting MP in Azerbaijan, though says he lives in London, and most of the readers of the stories about Azerbaijan are not from the UK.
Index on Censorship, which campaigns on freedom of expression issues globally and publishes Index on Censorship magazine, has become increasingly worried about the growing use of vexatious lawsuits since it first launched a project monitoring threats to media freedom in Europe in 2013.
“News outlets find themselves receiving a letter threatening expensive proceedings unless online articles are rewritten or removed altogether, and demanding an agreement not to publish anything similar in the future. The letters often tell the recipient that they cannot even report the fact that they have received the letter,” said Ginsberg.
Such suits are a particular problem for independent media outlets and other small organisations. They are financially draining and can take years to process. Faced with the threat of a lengthy litigation battle and expensive legal fees, many who receive such threats are simply forced into silence.
Daphne Caruana Galizia, the Maltese investigative journalist who was assassinated in October 2017, had numerous lawsuits pending at the time of her murder, with some of the lawsuits brought by UK firms.
Index will launch its research project into the use of vexatious legal threats against journalists later this month and aims to interview journalists and media organisations across Europe about the extent of these threats before a final report containing recommendations for action later in the year.
For more information please contact: Jodie Ginsberg
[email protected]
About Index on Censorship
Index on Censorship is a London-based non-profit organisation that publishes work by censored writers and artists and campaigns against censorship worldwide. Since its founding in 1972, Index on Censorship has published some of the greatest names in literature in its award-winning quarterly magazine, including Samuel Beckett, Nadine Gordimer, Mario Vargas Llosa, Arthur Miller and Kurt Vonnegut. It also has published some of the world’s best campaigning writers from Vaclav Havel to Elif Shafak.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_basic_grid post_type=”post” max_items=”3″ grid_id=”vc_gid:1578045297237-8e308956-998b-5″ taxonomies=”5692″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
