24 Feb 21 | Lebanon, Media Freedom, News and features
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”116296″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes”][vc_column_text]On 4 February, the Lebanese activist, political commentator and publisher Lokman Slim was shot dead in his car.
Before his murder, Slim already suspected that his days were numbered and told family members that should anything happen to him, the Shia militant group Hezbollah – of which he had been an outspoken critic – would likely be behind it.
“For the first time in years, after verbal and many physical attacks on people who oppose the politics of Hezbollah, a well-known personality [Slim] was assassinated in their areas with many leads that allow many to boldly question their involvement in his murder,” said Lebanese journalist Luna Safwan.
Safwan said that his assassination followed years of threats and attempts to drive him away from his house which is located inside the Hezbollah stronghold in Dahiye.
“[There were] continuous campaigns against him, trying to somehow shape his view as a sympathiser with violence against Hezbollah supporters or the Shia community in Lebanon,” she said. “The way I see it, the aim was not only to assassinate him physically, but to also tarnish his reputation even after his death.”
Safwan herself has also been targeted. She tweeted criticism of Hezbollah in October and received a high volume of online abuse, including several death threats, after the tweet was featured on an Israeli news channel.
Safwan believes attacks on journalists and other critics of Hezbollah have increased in recent years.
“Journalists, activists and even protestors and people from inside the Shia community have started questioning Hezbollah’s politics in the region, and how much Hezbollah is prioritising Lebanon.”
Last December, the family of Maryam Seif Eddine, a strong critic of Hezbollah, was attacked and issued with death threats.
The same month, Sawt Beirut International reporter Rabih Chantaf and cameraman Mahmoud Al-Sayyed were attacked while covering a fire in the Lebanese capital.
Arab News reported that as the pair were filming firemen attending the blaze, they were approached by people in plain clothes and forcibly stopped from filming. They were beaten as they fled down the building’s stairs. Sawt Beirut blamed the incident on Hezbollah.
In January, Layal Alekthiar, a journalist for US-backed Alhurra News channel, was threatened after a Twitter post that questioned the unveiling of a statue to the late Iranian general Qasem Soleimani, killed by US forces last year. Iran is a backer of Hezbollah.
Another journalist working in Lebanon – who wished to remain anonymous due to the current attitude towards reporters – told Index that journalists in the country “all feel at risk”.
“The assassination of Slim was a reminder of that,” they said.
Journalists are increasingly self-censoring as a result.
The journalist said, “I have been covering [Lebanon’s] economic crisis, so I don’t feel personally at risk, even though I noticed that my sources are getting increasingly scared,” they said. “If I were to be given a topic related to Hezbollah I would be extra careful. You just have to see the number of threats my colleagues receive when they express an anti-Hezbollah opinion on social media.”
Independent Lebanese journalist Zahra Hankir, who wrote in the winter issue of Index on Censorship magazine and is based between London and Lebanon, said reporters are reeling from recent events and are “galvanised” by the state in which Lebanon finds itself in, particularly following the deadly explosion in August that killed more than 200 people and injured thousands.
“Despite Lebanon being hailed for decades as more free for journalists than its regional counterparts, reporters, political analysts and commentators in the country are increasingly facing threats and harassment in their work, particularly women,” she said.
“Lebanon’s media landscape has always had ‘red lines’ that journalists inherently understood could not be crossed without reprisals – among them, criticism of Hezbollah.”
“Reporters and commentators have been galvanized by recent events, given the dire state of the country, and as such have often been more brazen in their reporting. In some cases, they have paid dearly for their bravery.”
The explosion exposed, among other things, wide-scale corruption in the country. But the lack of accountability in Lebanon means people are still at risk and not just from Hezbollah.
With Hezbollah increasingly criticised for its position in Lebanon and the government unwilling to truly crack down on corruptive practices, journalists are constantly looking over their shoulders.
Safwan said: “Laws in Lebanon have flaws and don’t offer any real protection to journalists, especially when we are subjected to online hate campaigns. There should be a clear process that allows us to immediately pursue legal action even if against ‘unknown entities’.
She said, “In my opinion the ministry of information and syndicate of journalism are not paying attention to what journalists really need.”
Additional reporting by Mark Frary[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][three_column_post title=”You may also like to read” category_id=”581″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
15 Jan 21 | India, News and features, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Turkey
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”116016″ img_size=”full”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]In December, Index appealed to the public to send messages of support to six people who have been unjustly incarcerated for their activities in support of freedom of expression around the world.
Six activists were chosen, each of them currently in prison for their activism or simply doing their jobs as journalists.
The situation for each of the campaigners is dire and for some, seems to have worsened over the turn of the new year.
Golrokh Emrahimi Iraee, who was jailed for writing an unpublished story critical of the practice of stoning in Iran in 2016, has experienced yet another downturn in fortunes in her time in prison.
A spokesperson for her legal team told Index: “She was jailed in Ward 8 of Qarchak prison until 13 December. On that day, prison guards used stun guns and beat inmates in that ward and dragged Ms Iraee by her hair out of the prison. She was transferred to ward 2 of Evin Prison, which is run by the intelligence arm of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
“We are concerned that this may be an indication Iran intends to extend her July 2019 prison sentence of three years and seven months for “propaganda against the state” and “insulting the Supreme Leader”.
Women’s rights campaigner Loujain al-Hathloul opposed the so-called male guardianship system in Saudi Arabia and is known for her activism in regard to the women to drive movement in the country. She was kidnapped in 2018 from the United Arab Emirates and reportedly tortured by Saudi authorities.
On 28 December last year, she was sentenced to nearly six years in prison. The campaign for her release put out the following statement.
“The sentence includes a suspension of 2 years and 10 months in addition to the time already served (since May 2018) which would see Loujain’s release in approximately two months,” they said.
“Loujain Al-Hathloul was charged with terrorism and labelled a traitor after her and other Saudi Activists were forcibly imprisoned after the driving ban was lifted by the Saudi Kingdom in May 2018.”
“The Saudi authorities instead of recognising Loujain and other activists for their efforts in pushing for reforms labelled them as traitors in a public campaign without any evidence in May 2018. During her time in prison Loujain has been subjected to multiple forms of torture to include waterboarding, flogging, electrocution and sexual assault”.
Aasif Sultan, who was arrested in Kashmir after writing about the death of Buhran Wani has been under illegal detention without charge for more than 800 days.
A spokesperson for the campaign for his release told Index: “Currently, because of the pandemic, no family member has been allowed to meet Aasif since March. The prison authorities allow the inmates to make telephone calls twice a month.”
“His family continues to be worried about his health and well-being amidst a raging pandemic. Srinagar Central Jail was once a Covid hotspot.”
The actions of the state in Turkish prisons remains alarming. Former newspaper editor Hatice Duman has been in jail since 2002 and is now serving a life sentence for being a member of the Marxist Leninist Communist Party. Duman and fellow prisoners have experienced violent raids and beatings from prison guards.
Duman’s brother gave the newspaper Alınteri an update on Hatice’s condition. In it, he said: “After the raid, I could only talk on the phone. Hatice said she was well and worried about her other battered friends.”
“According to the information I received from other families who visited, some detainees had serious health problems after the raid. We, families, are concerned that these raids will continue and violations of rights against our relatives will increase.”
Yury Dmitriev, the historian who sought to unearth mass graves from the killings of Stalin, continues to serve a 13-year sentence.
Dmitriev was found guilty of sexually abusing his adopted daughter, a charge his supporters claim was fabricated. Of his most recent status, little is known, except for a letter written to MBC Media in late September in which Dmitriev said he has “no intention of folding his hands”.
Algerian journalist Khaled Drareni appealed to his supporters in a strong message to “keep morale up”. He has been in prison since March 2020 for simply covering the Hirak protest movement.
Drareni, held in Koléa Prison, Tipaza and serving a two-year sentence told the Casbah Tribune (of which he is a founder) said: “From a young age, I have always had a foolproof mind and neither the prison of El-Harrach, in which I spent one night, nor that of Koléa, where I have been imprisoned for nine months, can damage my morale.”
His family says he is morally strong despite the verdict but says he has lost weight because of the meagre rations offered in prison which the family cannot supplement because of Covid. However, he has no health problems and is being treated well by all accounts.
There are rumours that Drareni’s name is on a list of people Algeria’s President Tebboune may pardon but nothing is certain, not least Tebboune’s health.
We are now calling for your final messages of support for these six activists and journalists who are #JailedNotForgotten. Please join us in this campaign today.
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]
15 Jan 21 | Belarus, News and features
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”116010″ img_size=”full”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Dedicated and principled. Brave and committed. Optimistic and humorous. A fan of Liverpool FC and of pubs.
This is Andrei Aliaksandrau, a journalist who has been detained this week in Belarus on charges of “organisation and preparation of actions that grossly violate public order, or active participation in them”. A video of him making a “confession” of paying the fines of those who have been protesting at the rigged re-election of President Alexander Lukashenko has been released by the authorities in Belarus.
His arrest and forced confession have hit home hard at Index on Censorship, where he was on the staff for a number of years, leading a project looking at freedom of the media across the Caucasus, and writing regularly about Belarus and Ukraine. After he returned to Belarus, he also continued working for Index as a freelance contributor from the region.
Former Index on Censorship editor-in-chief Rachael Jolley says he is the sort of person who puts his life and soul into the cause of making people realise what is going on in Belarus.
“He feels really strongly about media freedom and feels the world doesn’t pay enough attention to what is going on there,” she says.
“He worked so hard to bring stories out of Belarus when most journalists would be too worried to cover them. He keeps covering stories when others have given up.”
Natasha Schmidt, editor of IranWire and who worked at Index for 13 years, most recently as deputy editor, says, “He is such an amazing journalist and a great colleague.”
She says, “Andrei is so knowledgeable about Belarus and the wider region, including Ukraine from where he produced a lot of reports in recent years.”
That Aliaksandrau is in Belarus at this time of huge popular protest comes as no surprise.
Jolley added, “A lot of people have come onto the streets of Belarus feeling there was a moment of hope that there might be change. Andrei would have been on the front line of this.”
Schmidt says, “Given what has been going on in Belarus, he would have thought if he wasn’t already there then it was time for him to go back and join in this important movement.”
She adds, “Andrei is one of those people who is brave without trying to be. He is very committed to his work and freedom of expression in the region.”
Sean Gallagher, who also worked alongside Aliaksandrau at Index, says his arrest is of great concern but not entirely unexpected.
“I hate to be fatalistic but it was only a matter of time before he was detained, given the nature of the regime,” he says.
“I remember clearly talking to him about how we should communicate and whether he should continue to use Gmail or whether we should move to an encrypted platform. His response was ‘Gmail is fine because using encryption raises a flag’”.
“He was well aware he was being watched,” says Gallagher, “but knowing that he has been detained just for telling the truth, that pisses me off.”
Aliaksandrau is devoted to his work but he also has a life outside work. All of his former colleagues mention his love of British pubs. He was a regular at the Betsey Trotwood pub in Farringdon in London when Index was based at the Free Word Centre and has a particular passion for a good malt whisky, taking trips to various distilleries in Scotland during his time in the country.
They also reflected on his easy-going nature.
“As a colleague, he was very easy to spend time with and has a great sense of humour. He was a good person to have around, he was so relaxed and would have a laugh and ease any tension in office politics,” said Schmidt.
Andrei is also a keen supporter of Liverpool FC and has a love of nature.
Despite his detention and enforced confession, former editor Jolley says Aliaksandrau is an “optimist”.
“He always felt there would be change and would do everything he could to make it change. He strongly believes Belarus will one day have a free society,” says Jolley.
That time cannot come soon enough. Aliaksandrau – no Andrei – must be released.
Schmidt speaks for us all when she says: “We all hope we can see him soon and hear he is safe.”
Index has sent letters to the foreign secretary Dominic Raab and Belarussian ambassador to the UK Maxim Yermalovich calling for Andrei’s release.
Please sign this petition to call on the Belarusian authorities to release Andrei and his girlfriend Irina. [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][three_column_post title=”You may also want to read” category_id=”172″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
14 Jan 21 | News and features, Politics and Society, United States
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]
Biden and Obama/The White House/WikiCommons
On top of being the only US president impeached twice, Donald Trump leaves a legacy of attacks on the very foundations of free speech and specifically on journalists and the media.
President-elect Joe Biden has offered people hope of returning to normal politics, rather than another term of a president with a severe distaste for free speech. But are notions of a saviour cometh and confirmed on Inauguration Day on 20 January misguided?
Biden has an extensive record in politics from which he can be judged, as well as eight years in high office as vice president under Barack Obama that could give an indication of how he plans to proceed. But the picture that emerges is not one that identifies Biden clearly as a champion of free spech or otherwise.
Going back to the start of Biden’s career as a senator, the signals were already mixed on issues of free speech. In 1989, Index reported on then Senate Judiciary Committee chair Biden introducing a bill to make it illegal to desecrate a flag. Nan Levinson reported at the time: “Biden’s bill and a similar one introduced in the House are intended to sidestep free speech issues by outlawing actions without mentioning motivation, the part of flag desecration that the Court determined is protected by the First Amendment.” But in his favour, some 13 years later Biden helped propose the creation of a “Radio Free Afghanistan”.
In more recent years, there is the way in which the Obama Administration handled whistleblowers. Biden can set an early example with the case of Julian Assange by pardoning him. The question is, will he?
Such an action may have been considered by the Obama administration, but was not pursued. The whistleblower involved in the case, Chelsea Manning, eventually had her sentence commuted by Obama in January 2017.
Assange faces charges under the US Espionage Act, a first for a journalist or publisher. The onus is therefore on Biden to ensure there is no legal precedent stopping a journalist from publishing sensitive information again. Pardoning the WikiLeaks founder would go some way to achieving this.
Rumours of an immediate pardon once Biden takes office have arisen and many believe the election of Biden to be a positive thing for Assange. His lawyer Edward Fitzgerald went as far as telling Associated Press “Much of what we say about the fate which awaits Mr. Assange remains good because it’s about systemic faults in the prisons and his underlying conditions,” he said.
But as yet there has not been any indication either Trump or the president-elect will move to do this and any speculation has shaky foundations. There is a contradiction in that – though Obama may have commuted Manning’s sentence – in 2010, Biden described Assange’s work with former US intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning as “closer to a high-tech terrorist than to the [actions of revealing the] Pentagon Papers.”
“The Obama administration went after other whistleblowers whose cases remain active. Edward Snowden for example. These track records and trends started before President Trump,” said Rebecca Vincent from RSF in an earlier interview with Index.
In fact, eight of the 13 people charged under the Espionage Act since its inception in 1917 were during the eight years of the Obama presidency.
Jeffrey Sterling was convicted and sentenced to three and a half years in prison in 2015 for violations of the Espionage Act. Through correspondence with US journalist James Risen, Sterling brought to light covert plans to frame Iran by providing a flawed design for a component of a nuclear weapon, also known as Operation Merlin.
In an interview with Index, Sterling spoke of the importance of whistleblowers and said: “A vital part of free speech is the ability of citizens to hold those in power accountable by speaking out about wrongdoing and misuse of power.
“Whistleblowers are essential to free speech because their courage exposes what the unfettered power of government would prefer not to be known.
“Without whistleblowers, the wrongdoing and abuses of government will remain hidden to the detriment of the people. Without whistleblowers, free speech can be rendered ineffectual and of no concern to those in power.”
In short, misuse of the Espionage Act stops those working for US intelligence agencies and government offices from speaking out against wrongdoing.
“Targeting whistleblowers with the severe penalties and implications of being prosecuted under the Espionage Act has a chilling effect on anyone who might choose to exercise their free speech by being critical of or exposing the wrongful acts and abuses of government,” Sterling noted. “In my opinion, the Obama presidency did all it could to characterise whistleblowers as anti-patriotic and criminals and offered absolutely no protection.”
“When those who are the subject of a whistleblower’s complaint control the dialogue, there are no whistleblowers, just leakers. The Obama administration set the tone by essentially eliminating the very idea of a whistleblower and instead characterised them as leakers, or criminals.”
The contrast between Obama and Trump’s outward attitudes towards the press, however, is significant. While Trump chose to claim most of the criticism against him as “fake news”, Obama often spoke of the importance of journalism, a free media and free speech, such as after the 2015 attacks on Charlie Hebdo in Paris.
At the same time though the 44th president came under repeated fire for his actions towards media freedom and freedom of information in particular. Access to public information during his presidency was limited. The USA’s Freedom of Information Act allows US citizens, like many across the world, to question local and federal authorities. The Obama administration apparently spent a record $36.2 million in legal costs in the final year alone to preserve its right to turn over redacted information.
A lack of transparency and targeting of those revealing information in the public interest does not cast a positive light on Obama’s then right-hand man.
It is perhaps unfair to negatively predict the future of the Biden presidency and its role of free speech solely on the president he served under as second in command. The role of vice president offers no true indication of support of a particular policy; many doubt the power the role has. John Adams once described the role as “the most insignificant Office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived”. It could reasonably be said that whether or not Biden was supportive of Obama’s free speech policy, there would have been little he could have done about it either way.
Yet it is no secret that Obama is a man Biden greatly admires and – while the former Delaware senator did not exercise as much power as some vice presidents – the relationship between the two was famously good. Perhaps a certain level of emulation can be expected.
The Committee to Protect Journalists has put forward a white paper to set out how Biden can go about restoring freedom of speech in the USA. Among their suggestions were calls to “set an example for the world” by ensuring the independence of US government-funded media, appointing a special presidential envoy for press freedom and ensuring previous administrations’ attacks on publishers and whistleblowers were not repeated.
“President Biden should commit to an open and transparent administration that supports Freedom of Information requests, back Justice Department guidelines that protect confidential sources, and pledges never to use the Espionage Act to prosecute journalists or whistleblowers,” they said. “These long-standing concerns of CPJ and the press freedom community were also raised during the Obama administration. “
They said: “President Biden has the opportunity to restore American influence in a critical area.”
“However, this can only be achieved if defence of press freedom is a matter of principle, and not expediency. America must confront its adversaries, but also challenge its friends.”
Adopting such policies would go a long way to allay fears of a Biden presidency that departs from recent ones.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][three_column_post title=”You may also like to read” category_id=”579″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
