23 Jan 18 | Azerbaijan, Cyprus, Europe and Central Asia, Latvia, Mapping Media Freedom, Media Freedom, media freedom featured, News and features, Serbia, United Kingdom
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Index on Censorship’s Mapping Media Freedom project verifies threats, violations and limitations faced by the media throughout the European Union and neighbouring countries. Serious threats verified by the platform in January indicate that pressure has not let up in 2018. Here are five recent reports that give us cause for concern.
A Serbian minister announced on 12 January that he is suing the Crime and Corruption Reporting Network (KRIK), nominees for the 2017 Index on Censorship Freedom of Expression Awards, over the publications reporting on offshore companies and assets outlined in the Paradise Papers, a set of 13.4 million confidential documents relating to offshore investments leaked in November 2017.
Nenad Popovic, a minister without portfolio, was the main Serbian official mentioned in the leaked documents that exposed the secret assets of politicians and celebrities around the world. Popovic was shown to have offshore assets and companies worth $100 million.
“Serbian and Cypriot authorities have already launched lawsuits against various media workers so we’re particularly concerned that investigative outlets like KRIK are being sued for uncovering corruption of government officials,” Hannah Machlin, project manager, Mapping Media Freedom said. “Journalists reporting on corruption were repeatedly harassed, and in some cases murdered, in 2017, so going into the new year, we need to ensure that their safety is prioritised in order to preserve vital investigative reporting.”
KRIK was one of the 96 media organisations from over 60 countries that analysed the papers.
In December 2017 suspended senior state attorney Eleni Loizidou sued the daily newspaper Politis, seeking damages of between €500,000-2 million on the grounds that the media outlet breached her right to privacy and personal data protection. The newspaper had published a number of emails Loizidous had sent from her personal email account that implied Loizidou may have assisted the Russian government in the extradition cases of Russian nationals.
On 10 January the District Court of Nicosia approved a ban which forbids Politis from publishing emails from Loizidou’s account which she claims have been intercepted.
The ban will be in effect until the lawsuit against the paper is heard or another court order overrules it.
On 4 January, the Iranian embassy in London asked the United Kingdom Office of Communications to censor Persian language media based in the UK. The letter said the media’s coverage of the protests had been inciting people to “armed revolt”.
The letter primarily focused on BBC Persian and Manoto. BBC Persian has previously been criticised by Iranian intellectuals and activists for not distancing itself sufficiently from the Iranian government.
A journalist who works for the All-Russia State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company (VGTRK) was branded a threat to national security on 4 January and ordered to leave the country within 24 hours after being detained.
Olga Kurlaeva went to Latvia planning to make a film about former Latvian president Vaira Vike-Freiberga. Kurlaeva had interviewed activists critical of Latvia’s policies towards ethnic Russians and was planning on interviewing other politicians critical of Latvian policies.
Two days earlier, her husband, Anatoly Kurlajev, a producer for Russian TV channel TVC, was detained by Latvian police and reportedly later deported to Russia.
Elchin Mammad, the editor-in-chief of the online news platform Yukselis Namine, wrote in a public Facebook post on 4 January that he is being investigated for threatening and beating a newspaper employee.
Mammad wrote that the alleged victim, Aygun Amiraslanova, was never employed by Yukselis Namine and potentially does not exist. Mammad believes this is another attempt to silence his newspaper and staff.
Mammad was previously questioned by Sumgayit police in November about his work at the newspaper. The police told him that he was preventing the development of the country and national economic growth. [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_basic_grid post_type=”post” max_items=”4″ element_width=”6″ grid_id=”vc_gid:1516702060574-c4ac0556-7cf7-1″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
19 Jan 18 | Campaigns -- Featured, Malta, Statements
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]On 19 January, Index on Censorship joined a letter calling on the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe to appoint a Special Rapporteur to monitor the investigation into the murder of Maltese investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, killed by a car bomb on 16 October 2017.
Joint open letter to the members of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe: Call for a PACE Special Rapporteur on Daphne Caruana Galizia’s assassination and the crimes she exposed
Dear Members of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe,
Daphne Caruana Galizia was by all accounts Malta’s most widely read and influential journalist. She had an immeasurable impact on Malta’s politics over the course of her thirty-year career and single-handedly uncovered some of the country’s biggest corruption scandals, exposing Maltese institutions for their unwillingness to pursue powerful and well-connected members of the country’s business and political class.
Known by her hundreds of thousands of readers in Malta and elsewhere simply as ‘Daphne’, she was assassinated on 16 October 2017 in broad daylight by a remote-controlled car bomb as she left her home in Malta.
Only months before, Daphne Caruana Galizia had uncovered systemic government corruption implicating senior members of her country’s government, showing how offshore structures exposed in the Panama Papers were used to receive and launder kickbacks on the sale of Maltese passports and process unexplained payments from members of Azerbaijan’s ruling family.
In a January 2018 report of a European Parliament fact-finding mission to Malta, the country’s Commissioner of Police confirmed on record that no police investigations took place into any of Daphne Caruana Galizia’s Panama Papers revelations. The senior government figures implicated in her investigative reporting remain in public office.
In a context of complete impunity for the high-level corruption Daphne Caruana Galizia exposed and the legal, financial and other threats she faced from figures in or close to government before her assassination, her killing has underlined in shocking fashion the extent of corruption and rule of law failings in Malta. The threat to the country’s liberal democracy and press freedom is a real one: Malta has slipped sixteen places in a single year in Freedom House’s latest global ranking.
Daphne Caruana Galizia’s violent death and the impunity for the crimes she revealed have serious consequences in the most fundamental areas of the work of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.
At the winter session in Strasbourg, Daphne Caruana Galizia’s three sons will be calling for a special rapporteur to be appointed whose mandate will involve monitoring the ongoing murder investigation in Malta, investigating the broader circumstances surrounding Daphne Caruana Galizia’s death, and ensuring there is no impunity for the perpetrators of the crimes Daphne Caruana Galizia exposed.
We ask you to heed their call and to support their efforts in every possible way in the interests of all of us who work to see justice and bring an end to impunity.
Yours sincerely,
- Ricardo Gutiérrez, General Secretary, European Federation of Journalists (EFJ)
- Antoine Bernard, Deputy Director General of Reporters Without Borders (RSF)
- Patricia Moreira, Managing Director, Transparency International
- Barbara Trionfi, Executive Director, International Press Institute (IPI)
- Carles Torner, Executive Director, PEN International
- Tom Gibson, EU Representative, Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)
- Anna Bevan, Assistant Director, International News Safety Institute (INSI)
- Ernest Sagaga, Head of Human Rights and Safety, International Federation of Journalists (IFJ)
- Joy Hyvarinen, Head of Advocacy, Index on Censorship
- Natalia Yerashevich, Director of the Secretariat, Eastern Partnership Civil Society Forum
- Katie Morris, Head of Europe and Central Asia, ARTICLE 19
- Antonia Byatt, Interim Director, English PEN
- Dr Lutz Kinkel, European Centre for Press and Media Freedom (ECPMF)
- William Horsley, VP and Media Freedom Representative, Association of European Journalists (AEJ)
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17 Jan 18 | Mapping Media Freedom, Media Freedom, media freedom featured, News and features
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Yesterday marked three months since the murder of Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia.
Gathering outside the Maltese embassy in Malta House, London, members from Index on Censorship stood with seven other free speech and criminal justice organisations to mark the anniversary and call on the Maltese government to ensure justice is served. I spoke with Hannah Machlin, project manager for Index on Censorship’s Mapping Media Freedom platform, Cat Lucas, programme manager for English Pen’s Writers at Risk programme, and Rebecca Vincent, UK bureau director for Reporters Without Borders for this special podcast.
During the vigil, participants left bay leaves — which in Greek mythology are a sign of bravery and strength — outside the embassy in a sign of solidarity with supporters in Malta, while a statement from Caruana Galizia’s family was read out.
Caruana Galizia was killed on 16 October 2017 when a bomb placed under her car exploded as she was leaving her home in Bidnija, Malta. Sixteen days prior to the fatal attack, Caruana Galizia filed a police report saying she was being threatened.
Through her investigative journalism career, Caruana Galizia exposed corrupt politicians and other officials, uncovering a number of corruption scandals in the Panama Papers. Caruana Galizia also investigated links between Maltese Prime Minister Joseph Muscat to secret offshore bank accounts, to allegedly hide payments from Azerbaijan’s ruling family. Her work on government corruption also led to early elections in Malta in June 2017.
At the time of her death, Caruana Galizia was subject to several libel suits and counts of harassment. Her assets were frozen in February 2017 following a request filed by Economic Minister Chris Cardona and his EU presidency policy officer Joseph Gerada.
Her murder was condemned by many from the international community, with a previous vigil held on the International Day to End Impunity for Crimes Against Journalists, where nearly 60 free expression advocates gathered, calling for justice and an open and transparent investigation into her death.
Malta is currently ranked 47th out of 180 countries in Reporters Without Borders’ 2017 World Press Freedom Index, and 47th out of 176 countries in Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index 2016.
Seven reports of violations of press freedom were verified in Malta in 2017, according to Index on Censorship’s Mapping Media Freedom project. Five of those are linked to Caruana Galizia and her family.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_basic_grid post_type=”post” max_items=”4″ element_width=”6″ grid_id=”vc_gid:1516205516926-5b43be63-70a3-7″ taxonomies=”18782″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
11 Jan 18 | Campaigns -- Featured, Russia, Statements
Oyub Titiev
We, members of the Civic Solidarity Platform (CSP), are deeply concerned at reports of the arrest of Oyub Titiev, head of Human Rights Center Memorial’s Grozny office in Chechnya on highly dubious narcotics charges. We call for his immediate and unconditional release and dropping of all charges.
Titiev is highly respected in the international human rights community, as well as in the North Caucasus, where he is part of a small group of brave human rights defenders still working to uncover and document grave ongoing human rights violations. Titiev has led Memorial’s work in Chechnya since the horrific murder of his colleague Natalia Estemirova in 2009. In recent years, he received numerous threats aimed at making him quit human rights work. Now, his life and safety are in jeopardy.
According to reports, Oyub Titiev was brought to the Kurchaloi district police department shortly after his car was stopped and searched near the Khymuk bridge around 10:30 am on Tuesday 9 January. Titiev’s lawyer has been informed that he is being charged with the illegal possession of drugs, reportedly a large amount (180 grams) of marijuana.
Similar trumped-up charges have previously led to several years’ imprisonment for activists and independent journalists in Chechnya. Framing people for drug crimes has become an increasingly frequent tactic used by Chechnya’s authorities to punish and discredit their critics in the eyes of Chechen society.
The Civic Solidarity Platform is a network of more than 90 human rights organizations working across the OSCE region. We consider the suggestion that a highly experienced human rights defender such as 60 year-old Oyub Titiev would travel around Chechnya with any amount of drugs in his car to be absurd, and to be evidence only of the tactics employed by Chechen authorities against principled and hard-working human rights defenders. We believe Chechen authorities are seeking to frame Titiev and close down the extremely important work of Human Rights Center Memorial in the region by means of threats and harassment.
Russia is under an obligation to respect and enable the work of human rights defenders. An important resolution in the UN General Assembly – adopted by consensus on 24 December 2017 – “Calls upon States to take concrete steps to prevent and put an end to arbitrary arrest and detention, including of human rights defenders, and in this regard strongly urges the release of persons detained or imprisoned, in violation of the obligations and commitments of States under international human rights law, for exercising their human rights and fundamental freedoms, such as the rights to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly and association, including in relation to cooperation with the United Nations or other international mechanisms in the area of human rights”.
The undersigned members of the Civic Solidarity Platform call on Chechen authorities as well as central Russian authorities to immediately release Oyub Titiev and stop his persecution as we believe that he is being punished solely in retaliation for his legitimate and peaceful human rights work. Furthermore, we call on authorities to ensure the safety of Memorial staff in Chechnya. Furthermore, we call on authorities not to hinder but to assist brave individuals such as Titiev in their work to uncover grave human rights violations in the North Caucasus region.
We call on international organizations and foreign governments to follow Titiev’s case closely and to bring our concerns to the attention of the authorities in the Russian Federation. Russia must abide by its international human rights obligations and OSCE commitments.
Signed:
- Advisory Centre on contemporary international practices and their implementation in law ”Human Constanta” (Belarus)
- Albanian Helsinki Committee (Albania)
- Article 19 (United Kingdom)
- Association UMPDL (Ukraine)
- Barys Zvozskau Belarusian Human Rights House (Lithuania)
- Belarusian Helsinki Committee (Belarus)
- Bir Duino (Kyrgyzstan)
- Bulgarian Helsinki Committee (Bulgaria)
- Center for Civil Liberties (Ukraine)
- Center for Participation and Development (Georgia)
- Center for the Development of Democracy and Human Rights (Russia)
- Centre de la Protection Internationale (France)
- Citizens’ Watch (Russia)
- Committee Against Torture (Russia)
- Crude Accountability (USA)
- Freedom Files (Poland/Russia)
- Georgian Centre for Psychosocial and Medical Rehabilitation of Torture Victims-GCRT (Georgia)
- German-Russian Exchange (Germany)
- Helsinki Association Armenia (Armenia)
- Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly-Vanadzor (Armenia)
- Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia (Serbia)
- Helsinki Committee of Armenia (Armenia)
- Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights (Poland)
- Human Rights Center of Azerbaijan (Azerbaijan)
- Human Rights Center “Viasna” (Belarus)
- Human Rights Club (Azerbaijan)
- Human Rights Matter (Germany)
- Human Rights Monitoring Institute (Lithuania)
- IDP Women Association Consent (Georgia)
- Index on Censorship (United Kingdom)
- Institute for Reporters’ Freedom and Safety (Azerbaijan)
- International Partnership for Human Rights (Belgium)
- International Protection Center (Russia)
- Kazakhstan International Bureau for Human Rights and Rule of Law (Kazakhstan)
- Kharkiv Regional Foundation Public Alternative (Ukraine)
- Legal Transformation Center (Belarus)
- Macedonian Helsinki Committee (Macedonia)
- Moscow Helsinki Group (Russia)
- Netherlands Helsinki Committee (Netherlands)
- Norwegian Helsinki Committee (Norway)
- Notabene (Tajikistan)
- OMCT – World Organisation Against Torture (Switzerland)
- Office of Civil Freedoms (Tajikistan)
- Promo LEX Association (Moldova)
- Protection of Rights Without Borders (Armenia)
- Public Association Dignity (Kazakhstan)
- Public Verdict (Russia)
- Regional Center for Strategic Studies (Azerbaijan/Georgia)
- Solidarus (Germany)
- Truth Hounds (Ukraine)
- Women of the Don (Russia)
