15 Jun 18 | Azerbaijan, Azerbaijan Statements, Campaigns -- Featured, Statements
Representatives of 42 international and national non-governmental organizations issue the appeal to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) to request the appointment of a Rapporteur to examine the situation of political prisoners in Azerbaijan.
Below is a short version of the document. Read the full statement here: 
csp_letter_to_pace_on_az_political_prisoners_12_june.pdf
Civil society groups report that today there are at least 100 prisoners held on politically motivated charges in Azerbaijan. Among them are dozens of religious activists, at least nine journalists, editors and bloggers as well as members of the political opposition, human rights defenders and several persons who have been imprisoned in retaliation for the actions of their relatives who have fled the country. The most notable cases include the continued imprisonment of former opposition Presidential candidate Ilgar Mammadov, investigative journalist Afghan Mukhtarli, the leader of Muslim Unity Movement Tale Baghirzade, and Mehman Huseynov, young blogger and journalist who documented corruption among high-ranking government officials through his YouTube posts.
It is time for PACE to take decisive action to tackle the issue of political prisoners in Azerbaijan in order to hold the authorities accountable for implementing the commitments undertaken upon the country’s accession to the Council of Europe in 2001.
Resuming the work started by Christopher Strässer will send a first strong signal to the Azerbaijani authorities to demonstrate that the Assembly will not tolerate a continuation of this systematic repressive practice which has no place in a Council of Europe Member State. As politically motivated imprisonment violates the underlying principles of the Council of Europe, appointing a Rapporteur with the mandate to investigate the issue and make recommendations is consistent with the mandate of the organisation.
Reiterating our concerns about the widespread use of politically motivated imprisonment in Azerbaijan we, the undersigned civil society organizations call upon the members of the Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights the PACE, which has been mandated to make a decision on this matter, to:
- Appoint a Rapporteur to examine the issue of political prisoners in Azerbaijan;
- Ensure that the Rapporteur is appointed through a fully transparent process and in close consultation with civil society.
Signatures:
- ARTICLE 19 (United Kingdom)
- Association UMDPL (Ukraine)
- Austrian Helsinki Association (Austria)
- Bir Duino (Kyrgyzstan)
- Center for Civil Liberties (Ukraine)
- Center for Participation and Development (Georgia)
- Centre de la protection internationale (France)
- Centre for the Development of Democracy and Human Rights (Russia)
- Citizens’ Watch (Russia)
- Crude Accountability (USA)
- Freedom Files (Russia/Poland)
- Freedom Now (United States)
- German Russian Exchange – DRA (Germany)
- Helsinki Association (Armenia)
- Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights (Poland)
- Human Rights Club (Azerbaijan)
- Human Rights House Foundation (Norway)
- Human Rights Information Center (Ukraine)
- Human Rights Monitoring Institute (Lithuania)
- humanrights.ch (Switzerland)
- Index on Censorship (United Kingdom)
- International Partnership for Human Rights (Belgium)
- Italian Coalition for Civil Liberties – CILD (Italy)
- Kazakhstan International Bureau for Human Rights and the Rule of Law (Kazakhstan)
- Legal Policy Research Center (Kazakhstan)
- Macedonian Helsinki Committee (Macedonia)
- Moscow Helsinki Group (Russia)
- Netherlands Helsinki Committee (The Netherlands)
- Norwegian Helsinki Committee (Norway)
- OMCT (Switzerland)
- Promo LEX (Moldova)
- Protection of rights without borders (Armenia)
- Public Alternative (Ukraine)
- Public Association “Dignity” (Kazakhstan)
- Public Verdict Foundation (Russia)
- Regional Center for Strategic Studies (Azerbaijan/Georgia)
- SOLIDARUS (Germany)
- The Barys Zvozskau Belarusian Human Rights House (Belarus)
- The Kosova Rehabilitation Centre for Torture Victims (Kosovo)
- The Swedish OSSE Network (Sweden)
- Truth Hounds (Ukraine/Georgia)
- Women of the Don (Russia)
Individual signatories from Azerbaijan
- Zohrab Ismayil, Open Azerbaijan Initiative
- Khalid Baghirov, lawyer
- Khadija Ismayilova, investigative journalist
- Akif Gurbanli, Democratic Initiatives Institute
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)
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_basic_grid post_type=”post” max_items=”6″ style=”load-more” items_per_page=”2″ element_width=”12″ grid_id=”vc_gid:1516623064760-9c9f608a-54cc-1″ taxonomies=”18782″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
08 Jun 17 | Azerbaijan, Digital Freedom, Europe and Central Asia, France, Mapping Media Freedom, News and features, Russia, Spain
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]
Over the last seven days, violence, intimidation, harassment and assault have been used to stop journalists from doing their job in the countries covered by Index on Censorship’s project Mapping Media Freedom.
Project manager Hannah Machlin explained why incidents in Azerbaijan and Ukraine are particularly alarming. She called the Azerbaijani incident “the most serious violation to press freedom in the past few days and it shows the situation in the region continues to be disturbing”.
The violation, which took place in late May, was against exiled Azerbaijani journalist Afgan Mukhtarli, who was abducted and allegedly tortured before being taken across the border and put in pre-trial detention in Azerbaijan.
“This shows that Georgia can’t be considered a safe haven for opposition journalists and activists as well as reiterates the continued crackdown on press freedom in Azerbaijan,” Machlin said. The incident has been reported to the Council of Europe’s platform on the protection of journalism to enable that organisation to pursue discussions with the country’s representatives. Index on Censorship joined other press freedom organisations to request the Georgian government take action on the incident.
Machlin said the situation in Ukraine “indicates a complex issue in a war-torn area”. She said the “the report shows that there’s still renewed violent intimidation tactics perpetrated by the separatists against Ukrainian public broadcasters in Donbas”. She explains this is interesting because it shows that the separatists are targeting channels of free information set up by Kyiv and that Ukraine is even trying to install public broadcasters in the eastern region controlled by self-proclaimed authorities because the country “is trying to put a press presence back in there”.
29 May 2017 – Azerbaijani journalist Afgan Mukhtarli was on his way home but never made it.
Mukhtarli was reportedly kidnapped from his neighbourhood after being forced into a car with his hands tied together. He was also beaten with a broken nose and bruises all over his head and face.
He then was transported back to Azerbaijan without a passport.
Mukhtarli was charged for illegally crossing the border, smuggling and resisting law enforcement and was also accused of being in possession of 10,000 EUR during the police search at the border.
One day later on 30 May, he was sentenced to three months in pretrial detention.
Mukihtarli’s wife and child in still in Tbilsi where they fled after escaping Azerbaijan in 2015 when Mukhtarli was threatened over his investigative reporting on corruption in the Azerbaijan.
26 May 2017 – Do TeBe, a new TV channel, endured a smashing of their front door by two unidentified assailants.
Police came to the channel, located in Donetsk oblast and are now investigating the incident.
Do TeBe’s deputy director Ilya Suzdalyev said “We are in the front line region, even what looks like hooliganism must be thoroughly investigated and perpetrators should be punished. Especially when it is, in fact, an attack on the public broadcaster, which was just created in Ukraine.”
Do TeBe TV channel is a regional branch of the National Public Broadcasting Company of Ukraine.
31 May 2017 – Outside the parliament building where the 2017 presidential inauguration took place journalists were assaulted by supporters of the new president.
Lidija Valtner, a journalist for daily Danas, was filming and interviewing an anti-government protester when she was assaulted by a group of supporters. Not only did they shove her around and try to take her mobile phone, but they also assaulted the protester she was interviewing.
Another journalist on the scene was reporting for Radio Belgrade when she was pushed and her equipment thrown to the ground.
Journalists for Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN) and Vice Serbia were also harassed with violence from the crowd whilst they were taking photos of the clashes. The police asked for their IDs after they witnessed a few men ripping a protest banner.
The assailants are still on the loose.
31 May 2017 – An unknown person called the editor-in-chief of the local news website Kurier.Sreda.Berdsk and threatened her and the editorial staff. Galina Komornikova’s outlet is located in the Novosibirsk region in Berdsk.
On the call, the individual said that “the Syrian theme is not one for journalists”.
The call may have been in response to a story published by the outlet the day before about the secret funeral of a Berdsk resident and Russian military officer. Yevgeni Tretyakov, who was killed in Syria on 15 May, may have belonged to private Russian military troops as he was not an official Russian army contractor.
The outlet then commented on the article saying “An unknown individual called us and promised to ‘come and handle us on behalf of law enforcement agencies’ following the article.”
Para-military private troops are not a new concept. Both Russian and international civil investigative groups and media outlets have been reporting evidence for these groups in the Syrian conflict.
A comment was also left by user “The Animal” stating “Actually, data on military casualties is classified, therefore, I would not be surprised if special people came to visit you to shake a bit, you and your sources.”
29 May 2017 – After elimination while being interviewed, tennis player Maxime Hamou tried to kiss channel Eurosport journalist Maly Thomas several times.
It was at the Rolland Garros tournament where Hamou grabbed Thomas and tired kiss her on the neck and cheek.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]
Mapping Media Freedom
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/[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]
14 Oct 15 | About Index, Campaigns, Mapping Media Freedom, Press Releases
Strasbourg, 13.10.2015 – The Committee to Protect Journalists and Index on Censorship became partners to the Platform to promote the protection of journalism and safety of journalists, which will allow them to alert the Council of Europe on violations to media freedom in Europe.
“Joining the Council of Europe platform is part of our continued efforts to increase visibility of media freedom violations in the region. We look forward to working with the Council and engage in a constructive dialogue with governments to address the too many threats journalists face for simply doing their job,” Melody Patry, senior advocacy officer Index on Censorship, said.
Chief Executive of Index on Censorship Jodie Ginsberg, and European Union correspondent of the Committee to Protect Journalists Jean-Paul Marthoz signed the agreement on behalf of their organisations during a meeting with Council of Europe Secretary General Thorbjørn Jagland.
Secretary General Jagland said: “Visibility for threats against journalists is crucial and cannot be underestimated. The fact that we have this platform means that we can also take concrete threats against journalists to governments in question and discuss with them to take joint actions. We already have good examples of how this works in a positive way”.
Since its launch in April 2015, the platform has recorded 84 alerts concerning 21 states. Twenty-five alerts concern physical attacks on journalists, 21 alerts the detention and imprisonment of journalists, 8 impunity of attacks, 8 harassment or intimidation, and other 22 acts that may have a chilling effect on media freedom. Eleven alerts concerned cases in which journalists were killed, eight of them in the Charlie Hebdo attack.
The platform was launched with the participation of five partner organisations with which the Council of Europe signed a Memorandum of understanding: Article 19, the Association of European Journalists, the European Federation of Journalists, the International Federation of Journalists and Reporters Without Borders.
The platform allows these partners to issue alerts concerning media freedom threats and to bring them to the attention of the Council of Europe institutions. Once the alerts are published, the Council of Europe sends them to the authorities of the country concerned. The Council of Europe institutions may react publicly or start a dialogue on the issue with the authorities. Subsequently, responses of the member states and follow-up action taken by the competent bodies are also posted on the platform. The governments of the states concerned by the 84 alerts received have so far replied to 26 cases.
Contact: Jaime Rodriguez, Spokesperson/Media officer, tel. +33 3 90 21 47 04
——
Le Comité pour la protection des journalistes et Index on Censorship se joignent à la Plateforme du Conseil de l’Europe pour la protection des journalistes
Strasbourg, 13.10.2015 – Le Comité pour la protection des journalistes et Index on Censorship se joignent aujourd’hui aux organisations partenaires de la Plateforme pour renforcer la protection du journalisme et la sécurité des journalistes, ce qui leur permettra d’alerter le Conseil de l’Europe sur les cas de violation de la liberté des médias en Europe.
“Rejoindre la plateforme du Conseil de l’Europe fait partie de nos efforts continus pour accroître la visibilité des violations de la liberté des médias dans la région. Nous avons hâte de travailler avec le Conseil et d’engager un dialogue constructif avec les gouvernements pour confronter les menaces trop nombreuses qui pèsent sur les journalistes,” dit Melody Patry, chargé de plaidoyer principal Index on Censorship.
Jodie Ginsberg, directrice d’Index on Censorship, et Jean-Paul Marthoz, correspondant pour l’Union européenne du Comité pour la protection des journalistes, ont signé l’accord de partenariat au nom de leur organisation lors d’une réunion avec Thorbjørn Jagland, Secrétaire Général du Conseil de l’Europe.
M. Jagland déclaré : « faire connaître les menaces qui pèsent sur les journalistes revêt une importance cruciale, c’est un levier qu’on ne saurait sous-estimer. En outre, grâce à cette plate-forme, nous pouvons approcher les gouvernements concernés au sujet des menaces concrètes qui pèsent sur les journalistes, en vue de prendre des mesures conjointes. Nous avons d’ores et déjà obtenu des résultats positifs avec cette méthode. »
Depuis son lancement en avril 2015, la plate-forme a enregistré 84 alertes concernant 21 Etats. Vingt-cinq alertes portent sur des agressions physiques contre des journalistes, 21 sur la détention et l’emprisonnement de journalistes, 8 sur l’impunité des agressions, 8 sur le harcèlement ou l’intimidation, et 22 sur des actes pouvant avoir un effet dissuasif sur la liberté des médias. Onze alertes concernent des cas dans lesquels des journalistes ont été tués ; parmi ceux-ci figurent notamment huit victimes de l’attentat contre Charlie Hebdo.
La plate-forme a été lancée avec la participation de cinq organisations partenaires, qui ont signé un mémorandum d’accord avec le Conseil de l’Europe : Article 19, l’Association des journalistes européens, la Fédération européenne des journalistes, la Fédération internationale des journalistes et Reporters sans frontières.
La plate-forme permet à ces organisations de publier des alertes concernant des menaces qui pèsent sur la liberté des médias, et de les porter à l’attention des institutions du Conseil de l’Europe. Lorsqu’une alerte est publiée, le Conseil de l’Europe la transmet aux autorités du pays concerné. Les institutions du Conseil de l’Europe peuvent réagir publiquement aux alertes ou entamer un dialogue à ce sujet avec les autorités. Par la suite, les réponses des Etats membres et les suites données par les organes compétents sont également publiées sur la plate-forme. A ce jour, 84 alertes ont été reçues, qui ont donné lieu à 26 réponses de la part des gouvernements concernés.
Contact: Jaime Rodriguez, Porte-parole/Attaché de presse, tél. +33 3 90 21 47 04
