04 Aug 17 | Germany, Mapping Media Freedom, Media Freedom, media freedom featured, News and features
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Journalists covering the G20 Summit in Hamburg in July were subject to assaults, intimidation and some lost their accreditation, according to verified incidents documented by Index on Censorship’s project Mapping Media Freedom.
Several journalists reported that they were assaulted by police while covering protests against the meeting, which included leaders of the 19 largest industrial nations in the world plus the EU. Leading up to the summit, freelance journalist Martin Eimermacher was assaulted while police were clearing a protest camp in Hamburg on 2 July, according to Netzpolitik and Jetzt.
Police had demolished protesters’ tents when Eimermacher tried to leave the area, telling police he felt unwell. He said that officers pushed him and several other journalists to the centre of a field. He showed his press card, which was slapped out of his hand by a police officer who then pepper sprayed him.
“In my opinion the most dangerous thing is that this sets an example within Germany and beyond, that such treatment of journalists is acceptable,” Mapping Media Freedom Germany correspondent Pascale Müller said. “There seemed to have been, on an individual level of police officers, a severe lack of understanding of the rights of the press and their role as an observer and part of a healthy democracy.”
On 7 July, ITN News journalist Flo Smith, his producer and cameraperson were all pepper sprayed by police. Photojournalist Henry Langston of Vice UK was struck by a police water cannon. RT UK published a video in which police assaulted and injured photojournalist Zino Peterk, who later had to go to the hospital for his injuries.
On 8 July, Spiegel Online photographer Chris Grodotzki said police assaulted him with pepper spray while he was covering protests in Schulterblatt. Taz reporter Martin Kaul sustained minor injuries when he was hit by protesters while live-streaming the demonstration, according to Deutschlandfunk. Müller noted that some attacks by protesters targeted journalists they perceived as right-wing, “but in some cases it seems that people were already so ‘high on violence’ that they hurt journalists regardless of their political affiliation.”[/vc_column_text][vc_separator][vc_custom_heading text=”Media freedom is under threat worldwide. Journalists are threatened, jailed and even killed simply for doing their job.” font_container=”tag:h3|text_align:left” use_theme_fonts=”yes” link=”url:https%3A%2F%2Fwww.indexoncensorship.org%2Fcampaigns%2Fpress-regulation%2F|||”][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]
Index on Censorship monitors press freedom in Germany and 41 other European area nations.
As of 4/8/2017, there were 101 verified incidents associated with Germany in the Mapping Media Freedom database.
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]Index on Censorship campaigns against laws that stifle journalists’ work. We also publish an award-winning magazine featuring work by and about censored journalists. Support our work today.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][vc_separator][vc_column_text]“Many journalists who covered the protest directly and that I have spoken to were emotionally and physically affected even a week after” Müller said. The press freedom violations were widely condemned, but according to Müller “The most shocking revelation came after the protests, when Sueddeutsche Zeitung revealed that the BKA had monitored selected journalists during their summit coverage over the past 10 years. This was very disturbing and lead to a certain level of insecurity within the profession. “
Other journalists reported the use of intimidation tactics by police. In the Schanze neighbourhood, Frank Schneider, a reporter for Bild, tweeted that police told journalists to “leave or you’ll go to the hospital”. F-Mag journalist Wiebke Harms reported on Twitter that police in Schanze told her: “Your press card is worth nothing.” Freelance journalist Reuben Neugebauer was told “now press freedom is over”.
Thirty-two journalists had their accreditation revoked by federal police on 7 and 8 July. German government spokesperson Steffen Seibert cited ‘security concerns’ as the rationale for the loss of access to the summit.
Journalists who lost accreditation include the photographer Björn Kietzmann, Rafael Heygster (Weser Kurier), photographer for Junge Welt, Willi Effenberger Alfred Denzinger (Beobachter News), photographer Chris Grodotzki (Spiegel Online), Adil Yigit (Avrupa Postasi), editor Elsa Koester (Neues Deutschland) and freelance photographer Po Ming Cheung.
When trying to enter a press area, Grodotzki and Yigit were told by police that their accreditation was no longer valid. Photographers Björn Kietzmann for Weser Kurier and Rafael Heygster were also not allowed to enter the press area.
Müller does not think that this treatment will intimidate journalists into stepping back from events like this in the future. “Quite the opposite, I think that many journalists and their outlets are quite resilient against such types of violence or blocked access. G20 brought press freedom issues to the forefront in Germany and made journalists even more aware of their role as critical observers, even in the middle of such violent tension and intimidation attempts.”[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_basic_grid post_type=”post” max_items=”12″ style=”load-more” items_per_page=”4″ element_width=”6″ grid_id=”vc_gid:1501833910854-5bf94268-20d1-5″ taxonomies=”77″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
15 Jun 17 | Statements
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Increasingly, governments are devolving responsibility for determining what constitutes unacceptable content to private companies.
Legislation approved by the German cabinet in April 2017 threatens fines on companies that fail to take down content that might contravene some 24 current provisions of the German Criminal Code, including offences as varied as “defamation of the state and its symbols”, “anti-constitutional defamation of constitutional organs” and “defamation of religions, religious and ideological associations.”
The measure effectively outsources decisions on the balance between freedom of expression and other legally protected rights to private companies and so threatens open and democratic discourse at the heart of the one of the world’s largest, most stable democracies.
The idea that the threats we face are in some way more acute than those that have gone before — and therefore necessitate a restriction of hard-won freedoms — is not new.
“Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety,” argued US founding father Benjamin Franklin, showing the conflict goes back centuries.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”Don’t lose your voice. Stay informed.” use_theme_fonts=”yes”][vc_separator color=”black”][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]Index on Censorship is a nonprofit that campaigns for and defends free expression worldwide. We publish work by censored writers and artists, promote debate, and monitor threats to free speech. We believe that everyone should be free to express themselves without fear of harm or persecution – no matter what their views.
Join our mailing list (or follow us on Twitter or Facebook) and we’ll send you our weekly newsletter about our activities defending free speech. We won’t share your personal information with anyone outside Index.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/2″][gravityform id=”20″ title=”false” description=”false” ajax=”false”][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][vc_separator color=”black”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_basic_grid post_type=”post” max_items=”12″ style=”load-more” items_per_page=”4″ element_width=”6″ grid_id=”vc_gid:1513167493075-fe4186d8-a3f4-4″ taxonomies=”16928″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
07 Nov 16 | Europe and Central Asia, Germany, Mapping Media Freedom, News and features
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What is worse: intelligence services gathering data without any legal basis or secret services operating within a legal framework that allows them to obtain vast amounts of personal information? This is the key question regarding Germany’s surveillance apparatus, as a new law regarding its foreign intelligence agency, the Federal Intelligence Service (BND), was passed through parliament on Friday 21 October.
Following the 2013 uncovering of the mass-scale surveillance by America’s National Security Agency, including details of the tapping of German chancellor Angela Merkel’s phone, there was a sense in German public debate that secret services were out of control. In early 2014, a parliamentary committee was established in the national chamber of the Bundestag to investigate the scale of surveillance activities of foreign intelligence in Germany. Attention soon shifted to the role of the BND, after former NSA employee Thomas Drake called the agency “an addendum appendix of the NSA” in his testimony to the committee in July of that year.
While the German government began the process to reform the legal framework of the BND, the governmentally-appointed officer for data protection and freedom of information took a closer look at the work of the service’s telecommunications unit in the southern town of Bad Aiblingen.
What it found was remarkable: across 60 pages, the expert report from March 2016 listed legal breaches by the BND. Although the intelligence service had been “repeatedly and heavily obstructing my work”, the officer was able to gain a picture full enough to pinpoint 18 “serious transgressions” and submit 12 official complaints, which, according to the investigative tech-blog Netzpolitik.org, is a record unrivalled by any governmental office in Germany to receive at one point in time.
Netzpolitik.org also made public the “top secret” labelled report in September.
Surveillance-critical civil society in the country may have been hopeful to see the intelligence service face consequences for past transgressions and future limitations for its activities. They were in for a surprise, though, as the BND law put forward in June this year proposed to legalise all surveillance activities that had thus far been taking place and further expand their scope additionally. The new law allows the foreign secret service thus-far illicit in-country surveillance.
In theory, any German-to-German communication would have to be excluded from surveillance, but two independent reports by experts, including one by Chaos Computer Club, found that online traffic does not carry a clearly discernible nationality. The constitutionally stipulated freedom of privacy of communication suddenly appears less convincing. It also follows that any non-EU national is not considered bearer of fundamental rights enjoyed, on paper, by anyone living in Germany, as all electronic communication including at least one foreign-based party can now be analysed and stored for up to six months, including all metadata. This will include foreign journalists and the sources they are in contact with. The previous 20%-rule, whereby the BND was limited to only intercept and analyse so much of the traffic available, was lifted altogether. The extended competencies were not left without a new and grand mission: surveillance can now take place to reap “insights into foreign and security policy [which] may be of relevance”.
Senior investigative journalist David Crawford spoke to Index on Censorship about an opportunity missed in the sense that the “legislative process had not been used as a forum what intelligence services should do but…to legalise practices that were already going on”. A “silent consensus” across the grand coalition seemed to exist and it appears that policy-makers close to the intelligence services had successfully dominated the reform process and delivered a law tailor-made for the BND.
Although the result may be unsatisfactory Crawford said that, in the German context, it was generally “positive to write down the rules of behaviour” for a practice that have been ongoing for decades and employed by more resourceful intelligence services worldwide. While especially the aspect of information sharing between foreign secret services appears worrying to Crawford, the investigative journalist points out that this professional group never had any “real protection, they are treated like any citizen” under German law. Thus, he emphasised that no journalist should pass the responsibility for safeguarding his or her sources to the state law or EU regulations: “It is up to the person to get the training they need, to put a lot of thought into how they can do this without somebody getting hurt”.
While extensive electronic surveillance by multiple states has to be reckoned with, regardless of a legal basis for the practices, the journalist should employ the right kinds of “tricks of the trade” to make sure that any whistleblower who helped uncover a story will, under no circumstances, suffer: “a lot of the time it is just going out meeting people, not using the phone, not even using the mail…I figure out a way to meet them, knocking on people’s doors or meeting them in a supermarket or somewhere, where you are unlikely to be monitored and they would feel a lot more comfortable talking…Use less technology, use a pencil, cite documents rather than announcing you have a whistleblower.”
According to Crawford, the lack of investigative journalism in general and the unawareness of some journalists engaging in serious investigative projects may be at the root of a sloppiness with the more time-consuming methods that the job requires in a reality of surveillance.
However, civil society activists maintained a responsibility of ethics reflected in legislation and protested with petitions and a solemn vigil on the evening prior to the final vote. As the law was being passed on the morning of Friday 21 October, the former liberal justice minister Sabine Leutheuser-Schnarrenberger announced constitutional charges against it. Meanwhile, the German intelligence service has other legal cases pending against it: the worldwide largest data transmission exchange business based in Frankfurt, DE-CIX, is seeking to get a “judicial review for the practices of telecommunication surveillance” for its customers. Another lawsuit filed by the German branch of Reporters Without Borders in June last year is based on the office for data’s annual report for 2014 and is seeking to defend all journalists and their sources against the transgression of the privacy of communication as an attack on press freedom.
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24 Aug 16 | mobile, News and features, Youth Board
Index recently appointed a new youth advisory board cohort. The eight young students and professionals, from countries including Hungary, Germany, India and the US, will hold their seats on the board until December.
Each month, board members meet online to discuss freedom of expression issues occurring around the world and complete an assignment that grows from that discussion. For their first task the board were asked to write a short bio and take a photo of themselves holding a quote that reflects their belief in free speech.
Sophia Smith-Galer 
I’m half English, half Italian, and was born and raised in London. I have just graduated from Durham University with a degree in Spanish and Arabic and will be studying for a Master’s in broadcast journalism at City University next year.
I have just returned from a trip to New York after winning a multilingual world essay prize which included speaking at the United Nations’ General Assembly. I was in the group of Arabic language winners and our speeches were about tackling climate change, which is one of the UN’s sustainable development goals for 2030. Now that I am embarking on a career in journalism I’m looking forward to continue supporting these goals in my work.
Freedom of expression is particularly important to me as several countries that speak both of the languages I have dedicated years of study to continue to be plagued by tyrants and censors. I’m particularly interested addressing censorship in Latin America and the Middle East, especially with regard to the arts, as I’m also a classical singer and keen art historian.
Shruti Venkatraman
Originally from Mumbai, I am currently a first year undergraduate studying law at the University of Edinburgh. As a law student, I am interested in advocacy in general, but I am particularly interested in advocating for fundamental human rights.
In today’s socio-political context, the phrase “freedom of expression” has gained importance and expanded in its meaning from it’s original intent to prevent minority persecution. Having lived in India and South Africa, I was able to grasp the importance of free speech in the context of regional history, and I learnt how human rights appeals have had local and global impacts and are inherently tied with social development. Index on Censorship’s admirable work to promote and defend freedom of expression highlights how important this cause is in our quest for social progress, justice and equality and how repression of these rights result in societal backwardness.
Niharika Pandit 
I am currently a master’s candidate at the Centre for Gender Studies at SOAS, University of London with South Asia as my focus area of gender research. I became interested in issues of censorship during my undergraduate studies in mass media with a specialisation in journalism from Bombay.
As a journalist and an active social media user in India, I was witness to numerous instances of online abuse, trolling and silencing of women politicians, journalists and activists who voiced opinions on political and social issues. As a response to the barrage of abuse in the online space, otherwise a liberating space to hear diversified opinions, I wrote a piece on Twitter trolls in India and the use of sexist abuse as a tool to muzzle women for Index on Censorship’s Young Writers’ Programme.
Within censorship, I am particularly interested in working on the intersections of social media, gender along with looking at censorship in militarised zones and its growing legitimacy in contemporary political ethos as part of my research.
Layli Foroudi
It was studying literary works from the Soviet period during my undergraduate degree that highlighted the issue of censorship for me initially. Clearly this issue has outlived (and predates) the Soviet Union and is still of pressing concern in Russia today and globally. After graduating, I worked as a journalist on issues of freedom of expression and belief in Iran, and then in Russia at the Moscow Times. By pushing a state-sponsored version of the truth and punishing those at variance with it, these countries and others marginalise people and stifle innovation and creativity.
Freedom of expression and public debate underpin what society consists of and being denied this freedom is being denied the right to participation in society, as Hannah Arendt wrote: the polis is “the organisation of people as it arises out of acting and speaking together”. Historically, many have been denied the right to “act and speak”, based on ethnicity, gender, belief, immigration status, etc, and continue to be. I am interested in encouraging a diversity voices in the public sphere, something I have enjoyed exploring more this past year while undertaking an MPhil in race, ethnicity, and conflict at Trinity College Dublin and as a member of the youth advisory board since January.
Ian Morse 
I’m a student and journalist at Lafayette College in the US, but I have studied in Germany, Turkey and the UK. I really started studying news media when I lived in Turkey 18 months ago, because even then (much more so now) journalists and bloggers had a very tough time gathering and publishing good information. Since then, I’ve been a journalist in Turkey, the UK and Greece. I study history and mathematics-economics, but almost every project I do is focused on news media.
I’ve encountered freedom of expression violations in many fashions, from student pressures against speakers to petty government retaliation to Twitter blocking. There is quite a bit of nuance that is overlooked in many cases, but that nuance is needed to understand where the line needs to be drawn. Words have a lot of power in society – but it is often difficult to get the truth out when lies are louder or gags are stronger. I hope with Index that we can find ways to fix this.
Anna Gumbau
I am a journalist living between Barcelona and Brussels. I am passionate about youth work, having volunteered for five years as member of AEGEE-Europe / European Students’ Forum, including a year as member of its international board. I have taken part in, and often led projects, run by students for other students all over Europe, on topics such as pluralism of media, election observation and media literacy. I am also involved in the field of internet governance, participating in the last two editions of the EuroDIG and joining the Youth Observatory of the Internet Society.
As a young media-maker who grew up listening to the stories of censorship in the times of the Spanish dictatorship, I believe strongly in free speech, a free press and media pluralism as essential pillars for democracy. I am fascinated by the power of words and freedom of expression to empower citizens and stand up to what they believe in. I also envision free media as a crucial element for better informed societies and, in extension, for more responsible individual citizens to participate in the public space.
Constantin Eckner 
I am originally from Germany. I graduated from University of St Andrews with a master’s degree in modern history. Currently, I am a Ph.D. candidate specialising in human rights, asylum policy and the history of migration. Moreover, I have worked as a writer and journalist since I was 17 years old, covering a variety of topics over the years. Longer stays in cities like Budapest and Istanbul have raised my awareness for pressures exerted upon freedom of expression.
In a perfect world journalists, as well as every citizen, would live without fear of state censorship and potentially facing repercussions for the words they write or speak, for the pictures they draw, for the photos they shoot or for music they play.
Freedom of expression and access to information are cornerstones of an enlightened society. Unfortunately, in 2016 the world is still challenged by undemocratic regimes and powers that intend to quash people, which is an oppressive situation that has to change. It is up to us to help those who cannot raise their voice fearlessly.
Fruzsina Katona
I was born and raised in Hungary, although I spent my pre-university years in a small town in eastern Hungary. Today I am a freelance journalist.
I always knew I wanted to be a journalist, since I was always interested in literally everything that surrounded me. The urge to publish became stronger at the age of 17, after I returned from Japan, where I spent a school year. That one year made me realise, that my home country is really far from the image I had of it. And the only way I can fight against corruption, abuses and narrow-mindedness – apart from voting – is to educate and inform the public. I took an internship at Hungary’s leading investigative journalism center, and 2015 Index on Censorship Freedom of Expression award-winner, Atlatszo.hu. I have worked for them as a freelancer ever since, and I enjoy my work pretty much.
I recently received a graduate degree in communication and media studies, and supplemented my “official” studies with training, workshops and conferences across Europe.
In the future I would like to be a post-conflict reporter or a human rights journalist, specialising in freedom of expression and the press.
