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 five recent reports that give us cause for concern.
5 August, 2016 – Twelve journalists were arrested on terror charges following a court order, independent press agency Bianet reported.
According to Bianet: “The court on duty has ruled to arrest Alaattin Güner, Şeref Yılmaz, Ahmet Metin Sekizkardeş, Faruk Akkan, Mehmet Özdemir, Fevzi Yazıcı, Zafer Özsoy, Cuma Kaya and Hakan Taşdelen on charges of “being a member of an armed terrorist organisation” and Mümtazer Türköne, columnist of the now closed Zaman Daily on charges of “serving the purposes of FETÖ (Fethullahist Terrorist Organisation)” and Hüseyin Turan and Murat Avcıoğlu on charges of “aiding a [terrorist] organization as non-member”.
Warrants for the detainment of all 13 Zaman newspaper journalists were issued on 27 July 2016 by Turkish authorities.
4 August, 2016 – Monica Gubernat, a member and chairperson of the National Audiovisual Council of Romania, cut off the live transmission of a council debate, news agency Mediafax reported.
An ordinance says that all meetings of the council must be broadcasted live on its website.
The institution has recently purchased equipment to broadcast debates, which was set to go live on 4 August, 2016. A member of the council, Valentin Jucan, even issued a press statement about the live broadcast.
The chairperson, Monica Gubernat was opposed to it, saying that she was not informed about the broadcast, and asked for a written notification about the transmission.
ActiveWatch and the Centre for Independent Journalism announced they would inform the supervisory bodies of the National Audiovisual Council of Romania and the culture committees of the Parliament about the “abusive behavior of a member of the council” and asked for increased transparency within this institution.
The National Audiovisual Council of Romania is the only regulator of the audiovisual sector in Romania. Their job is to ensure that Romania’s TV channels and radio stations operate in an environment of free speech, responsibility and competitiveness. In practice, the council’s activity is often criticised for its lack of transparency and their politicised rulings.
2 August, 2016 – British blogger Graham Phillips and freelance journalist Billy Six, forcibly entered the offices of non-profit investigative journalism outlet Correctiv, filmed without permission and accused staff of spreading lies, the outlet reported on its Facebook page on Wednesday 3 August.
According to Correctiv’s statement, Phillips had been seeking to confront Marcus Bensmann, the author of a Correctiv article which claimed that Russian officers had shot down the passenger airplane crossing over Ukraine in July 2014.
Phillips maintains the Ukrainian military is responsible for the crash.
2 August, 2016 – Police officers prevented freelance journalist Dzmitry Karenka from filming near the Central Election Commission office located in the Belarusian Government House in Minsk, the Belarusian Association of Journalists reported.
The journalist reported intended to film a video on the last day when candidates for the House of Representatives, Belarusian lower chamber, could register.
At 6am he was approached by police officers who told him that administrative buildings in Belarus can be filmed “only for the news” and asked him to show his press credentials which he didn’t have as he is a freelance journalist.
Karenka told the Belarusian Association of Journalists that he spoke with the police for over an hour before he was released and advised not to film administrative buildings.
Despite repeated calls by international organisations for reform, Belarus’ regime for press accreditation continues to help the government maintain its monopoly on information in one of the world’s most restrictive environments for media freedom.
The government of president Aleksandr Lukashenko uses the Law on Mass Media to control who reports and on what in an arbitrary procedure that is open to manipulation. While Article 35 sets out journalists’ rights to accreditation, Article 1 of the law defines the process as: “The confirmation of the right of a mass medium’s journalists to cover events organised by state bodies, political parties, other public associations, other legal persons as well as other events taking place in the territory of the Republic of Belarus and outside it.”
By outlining credentialing as a system providing privileges for journalists, Belarus’ accreditation structure is contrary to international standards. The law allows public authorities to choose who covers them by approving or refusing accreditation. It also denies accreditation to journalists who do not work for recognised media outlets. Even journalists who report for foreign outlets must be full-time employees to be able to be accredited by the Belarusian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
In practice, the law blocks freelance journalists or independent media outlets from covering the activities of the government and makes accreditation a requisite for a career in journalism. Only journalists who work for state-run outlets are accredited to report on state ministries, parliament or local governments.
Though refusing accreditation does not mean a total ban on a journalist’s professional activities, it creates obstacles to access to information. This discriminatory structure is especially acute for freelance journalists and those who work for independent media outlets.
In May 2016, the local government of Baranavichy district, in the Brest region, refused to accredit Julia Ivashka, a reporter for independent newspaper Intex-press. An official letter said the local government does not intend to expand the list of media outlets which are permitted to cover its sessions. The three currently accredited are state-run.
Under the mass media law, freelance journalists who do not have a contract with an outlet have no legal right to ask for accreditation. At the same time these independent reporters do not enjoy the same rights as journalists who work for accredited media outlets, they can also be targeted by the police, who use the lack of accreditation as a pretext to block freelancers from exercising their professional duties.
On 24 June 2016, police officers prevented independent journalists Yuliya Labanava and Ales Lyubyanchuk from filming a public discussion on the planned construction of a new Minsk shopping mall. Police officers then threatened to remove them from the room altogether if they asked any questions.
On 13 May 2016, the ministry of information refused to accredit а correspondent and cameraperson working for BelaPAN – the main independent news agency in the country – at the XI Belarusian International Media Forum in Minsk. This decision prevented BelaPAN from covering the event. The Ministry of Information did not comment on the reasons for the rejection.
Since April 2015, when Index on Censorship’s Mapping Media Freedom project began monitoring threats to media freedom in the country, there have been 28 verified incidents involving blocked access that took place in Belarus. Most of these reports involved freelance or full-time journalists working for independent news outlets, who lack accreditation.
“Belarus’ strictly controlled media environment is part of the government’s overall control of the press and information. The number of reported incidents seems low until you consider that Belarus is one of the most restricted countries in Europe, as it’s considered the continent’s ‘last dictatorship’. This arbitrary and capricious accreditation system must be reformed,” Hannah Machlin, Mapping Media Freedom project officer at Index, said.
In 2014 OSCE representative on Freedom of the Media Dunja Mijatović called on Belarusian authorities to repeal accreditation requirements for foreign and national journalists. “Accreditation should not be a license to work and the lack of it should not restrict journalists in their ability to work and express themselves freely,” Mijatović said.
In the same year the UN Human Rights Committee considered the case of Maryna Koktysh, a journalist working for the independent newspaper Narodnaya Volya. Koktysh was denied accreditation to the House of Representatives of the National Assembly, the lower chamber of the Belarusian parliament. The UN concluded that by creating obstacles to obtaining information, the government violated Koktysh’s right to free expression and recommended a review of Belarusian legislation to prevent similar violations in the future.
Click on the dots for more information on the incidents.
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 five recent reports that give us cause for concern.
21 June, 2016 – Freelance journalist Kastus Zhukouski and cameraperson Alyaksei Atroshchankau who work for Poland-based Belsat TV, were detained in the town of Loyeu, in Homel region, Belsat channel reported.
The two media workers were filming a local brick factory for a story about poor economic conditions in Belarus.
“The police came, and brutally detained me and my colleague Alyaksei. We were taken to the police department, to the control room. They seized the equipment from our hands, broke it. I was knocked down to the floor, handcuffed, a man pressed a knee against my head. He called himself Deputy Chief Henadz Madzharski”, Kastus Zhukouski told BelaPAN.
The journalist also said he had high blood pressure. An ambulance was called and he was given an injection.
Zhukouski and Atroshchankau spent six hours at the police station. No police documents were drawn up despite threats to do so, the channel reported. It is unclear if the journalists have been charged with anything.
Szukouski and Atroshchankau filed requests to the Investigative Committee of the Republic of Belarus asking them to investigate actions of the police.
20 June, 2016 – Belgian justice minister Koen Geens announced his intention to double the length of a prison sentencing for divulging confidential information, in cases where professional confidentially is breached, newspaper La Libre Belgique reported.
According to the Belgium General Association of Journalists, the move is meant to include it amongst the category of offenses which allow specific investigative methods such as phone-tapping or electronic tracing.
A second proposed law is also worrying journalists, which would enable the intelligence service to scrape the protection of a professional journalist if he/she is not considered a real journalist.
Gaspard Glanz, from independent website Taranis News, which covers clashes that take place during protests closely, and Alexis Kraland, were detained by police forces.
Ganz tweeted about the conditions, writing: “There’s 12 of us in total in the van. It’s 40 degrees. No water, no air”.
On Periscope, the people in the truck can be seen saying why they were arrested, generally because they were wearing protective material meant to protect them against tear gas.
22 June, 2016 – A new anti-terrorism law has come into effect on 22 June after it was ratified by the Polish President Andrzej Duda, wiadomosci.gazeta.pl. The law was successfully passed by two parliamentary chambers of the Sejm earlier this month.
The law gives Poland’s intelligence agency, the ABW (Agencja Bezpieczeństwa Wewnętrznego), the right to “order the blocking or demand that the electronic open source service administrator block access to information data”, thereby giving the agency the right to shut down online media outlets, including websites and television programmes, Kulisy24 reported.
Websites can be blocked for up to five days prior to obtaining permission by higher prosecution authorities, and up to 30 days if permission is granted, with the option to renew it for up to three months.
Authorisation for a temporary access ban can also now be granted by the minister of justice. The legislation does not grant power to the source administrator to appeal against such a decision.
Lawyer and expert on surveillance legislation, Prior Waglowski, told the website money.pl: “Blocking…has to occur under judicial supervision… which is not given here. These propositions are taken out of the blue”. He underlined that the definition of terrorism provided is very loose and is up to the discretion by effectively two persons.
Watchdog website Kulisy24criticised the legislation, writing that it is not known how blocking will be executed and that the ABW is not obliged to publish its blocking order.
The Polish NGO Fundacja Panoptykon started a petition against the law in late April and collected just short of 8,690 signatures by 20 June. Together with the NGO e-Państwo, it also published a protest letter addressed to the Polish president, which was shared by a number of media and NGOs, including the Helsinki Foundation of Human Rights.
In a developing incident reported to Mapping Media Freedom on 18 May 2016 Turkish judicial authorities have opened an investigation against five journalists and trade unionists for participating in a solidarity campaign with the Kurdish daily newspaper Özgür Gündem.
The journalists include Ertugrul Mavioglu, Faruk Eren, Ayse Düzkan, Mustafa Sönmez and Melda Onur.
The Co-Editorship-in-Chief campaign was launched by Özgür Gündem daily on 3 May, 2016 for World Press Freedom Day (#WPFD) where up to 16 journalists participated.
Requests have been filed for the journalists and trade unionists to testify for articles that are being considered “terrorist propaganda” and an “incitement to crime” which were published whilst they participated in the solidarity campaign.
“This is another dark day for media freedom in Turkey,” said Johann Bihr, the head of RSF’s Eastern Europe and Central Asia desk. “Erol Önderoglu has fought tirelessly to defend persecuted journalists for the past 20 years. He is a leader in this field because of his honesty and integrity, which are recognised the world over. It says a lot about the decline in media freedom in Turkey that he is now also being targeted.”
UPDATE: On 25 May, 2016 – Journalist Erol Önderoglu has been added to list of journalists being investigated for “terrorist propaganda” for participating in the solidarity campaign with Özgür Gündem, The European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) reports. EFJ demands that all criminal charges be dropped against him and the other journalists involved in this campaign.
UPDATE: 20 June, 2016 – A prosecutor has issued a warrant for the pre-trial arrest of ad interim editor-in-chief Özgür Gündem Şebnem Korur Fincancı, Bianet journalist and RSF representative Erol Önderoğlu and author Ahmet Nesin.
Belarus Free Theatre have been using their creative and subversive art to protest the dictatorial rule of Aleksandr Lukashenko for over a decade.
Facing pressure from authorities since their inception, the theatre company nonetheless thrived underground, performing in apartments, basements and forests despite continued arrests and brutal interrogations. In 2011, while on tour, they were told they were unable to return home. Refusing to be silenced, the group set up headquarters in London and continued to direct projects in Belarus. In 2016 the group was shortlisted for Index on Censorship’s Freedom of Expression Arts Award.
Why is it important to mount Burning Doors at this time?
Koliada: Freedom of expression in that geopolitical knot where we come from and where more than 200 million people live under severe pressures of authoritarian and dictatorial regimes. If we do not talk and alert people living in western, democratic countries to our stories, their countries will be infiltrated in different forms, initially unnoticeably, by people manipulating the authorities who say it’s all in the name of the law.
Where did the idea come from?
Koliada: The idea behind Burning Doors is at the heart of Belarus Free Theatre. Close your eyes, just for a moment, and imagine that a theatre company based here in the UK could be prohibited to perform shows by Mark Ravenhill and Sarah Kane, and needs to perform underground. Even operating underground, the actors and managers could be arrested by MI5, riot police or the Met, and audience members threatened and told that they could lose their jobs and education.
(Our audience is a very young one and, of course, they are not scared of the secret services, so what would happen in those cases is that their parents would be threatened with professional retribution.)
I’ll continue and ask you to imagine that all of it has happened and continues to happen to a UK based-theatre company, one that is known and performs across the world, and yet can only exist because its founding members are exiled from their homeland and they now have political asylum in the UK. This has been our story for the past 11 years.
It’s in our blood to feel all the symptoms of dictatorship. Last year when we mounted Staging A Revolution: I’m with Banned which brought international attention to banned artists in Belarus, Ukraine (Ukrainian artists who spoke out against the Russian military invasion of Ukraine and are now prohibited in Russia), and Russia, it was the first time anyone had mounted an artistic solidarity event with Eastern Europe since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Around the same time that the Festival took place, filmmaker Oleg Sentsov and contemporary artist Petr Pavlensky were arrested. Masha Alekhina, a member of Pussy Riot who served two years in jail, got in contact with us and suggested we work together. We knew we had to do it. We were intrigued by the artistic possibilities of working with a real witness talking about her own personal experiences and bringing her into our Minsk-based ensemble of actors, the most talented and bravest in the world. We wanted to connect Masha’s story to those of other persecuted contemporary actors and through a prism of their personal stories to speak openly about the hypocrisy of politicians and to inspire our audiences to reflect on the reality that we as human beings need to stand up together against repressive regimes. It’s important for us to reemphasise that we are not heroes, we are not victims, we are contemporary artists.
Does BFT think that building cross-border alliances with artists will have an impact on the threats to freedom of expression?
Koliada: Any cross-borders alliances of artists expands audiences. It transforms all of us into a movement. Why do dictators put contemporary artists into jails? Because they want to show with a single example that it’s dangerous to resist systems through the arts. They become scared when we stand up together against them. It’s very simple in thought and action but this is what makes them go into panic mode. Ai Wei Wei was under a house arrest when he created the visual icon for our campaign, Staging A Revolution: I’m with Banned. More than 600,000 people across the world saw it online, and people from more than 37 countries supported our campaign. This kind of collective action makes dictators feel sick and it’s then that they start to make the mistakes that lead to their collapse.
It’s unprecedented for us as a theatre company making work for more than eleven years under dictatorship to collaborate with a woman who served a two-year term in a Russian jail. Within days of announcing this collaboration to the media in the UK, it spread across the world. Even this level of coverage is terrifying to people like Putin or Lukashenko because it demonstrates the tidal wave of support for non-violent resistance by creating art. Art is more powerful than political rhetoric. When Mick Jagger, Tom Stoppard and Vaclav Havel made a video supporting the people of Belarus, we were arrested by the KGB. They knew that it was instigated and created by members of BFT. We understood then that the support of artists across the world was more terrifying to them than statements from politicians.
I think it’s time for all of us to make steps forward and to start to act together with artists, human rights defenders, politicians and journalists, because dictators are scared of a strong mutual position.
How has BFT’s mission evolved since being founded a decade ago?
Koliada: From the very beginning we were only interested in people. Human life is the most interesting subject matter for us. We started with our own personal taboos, then society’s taboos, then moved onto a global dimension. The only thing that is unchanging is our fundamental interest in people. When we perform in different continents across the world, people tell us that they find our work so powerful because they always find themselves within us. And likewise, we find ourselves in our audiences.
How else can people support BFT and Burning Doors?
Koliada: Information is the key. If people know what we do, why and how, we have the chance to continue to exist. People knowing of our existence and our work helps on many different levels including our financial sustainability. Last week, President Obama extended sanctions in Belarus stating that Belarus is “an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security of the United States of America and its foreign affairs”. Yet at the same time, the EU is playing a badly orchestrated geopolitical rebranding game to try to convince people that “Belarus is normal”. It’s not. It has been a dictatorship in Europe for 22 years, political opponents have been murdered and their bodies never found. Those who perpetrated those crimes are still in power. Even this week, there is a trial underway against Eduard Palchis, who is a blogger and journalist. It seems that Belarus might have seized another political prisoner if human rights organisations across the world do not intervene.
And for BFT more specifically, this month we launched our first-ever Kickstarter campaign. We need to raise £20,000 in the month of June to bring our tireless, extraordinarily brave troupe of actors to the UK to work with them on our new work, Burning Doors. Every pound will help us get there. Please consider finding out more and supporting us today.
