25 November: The Finnish prime minister, Juha Sipilä, pressured the national broadcasting company Yle by claiming they had published false information about him and acted unprofessionally.
Three journalists as Yle, who have chosen to remain anonymous, told Suomen Kuvalehti that at least two Sipilä stories were censored after receiving the emails. The Office of Parliamentary Ombudsman is investigating complaints that the prime minister has limited press freedom.
29 November: A motion to stop the sale of the Daily Mail, the Sun and the Daily Express at a Plymouth University shop was passed by the Plymouth University Student Union Executive Council.
The University of Plymouth Students’ Union-run shop will no longer carry these news outlets. “Whilst we believe that freedom of expression and speech are inalienable human rights… a number of British tabloids are known to express hateful views,” the union stated.
According to the union, the publications “demonise certain groups in society, such as immigrants, refugees, asylum seekers, disabled people, the LGBTIQA+ community, Muslims, Black and Asian communities.”
The union further explained: “UPSU is a safe space in which any abusive language or behaviour is not tolerated. UPSU opposes hatred, discrimination…Because of these very values that we hold and we are proud of, we believe that it is unethical for us to profit out of the sale of hateful, non-factual and anti-scientific media platforms.”
These newspapers will not be banned from Plymouth University, students will still be able to access them online or from alternative stores.
30 November: A former presenter for the now closed pro-Kurdish outlet Özgür Gün TV, Müjgan Ekin, was abducted on 24 October, and there is still no news of her whereabouts.
While on her way to a friend’s house, Ekin was dragged into a police car by individuals who posed as police officers. There were multiple eyewitness accounts of the incident. The police officers told Ekin’s family that she was detained for being a suspected suicide bomber.
According the the Human Rights Association there doesn’t seem to be any official report of Ekin’s suspected detention.
There is a history of disappearances in Turkey’s Kurdish provinces: these disappearances peaked in the 1990s when Turkey’s security forces allegedly carried out extrajudicial executions.
1 December: István Tiborcz, the son-in-law for the Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, has requested through his lawyer that news outlet 444.hu takes down a video of him and to issue him a written apology because they used the footage without his consent.
Hír TV originally aired the video on 28 November. It was filmed from a distance and shows a Hír TV reporter speaking to Tiborcz on the street, asking him questions about his role in a company involved in real estate. Tiborcz responds with: “Why do you care?” He then proceeds to tell the reporter she is beautiful, and asks if she is married.
2 December: Dozhd cameraperson, Sergey Petrov, was detained on 2 December while investigating property illegally built on a nature preserve in the northern Caucasus.
Yevgeny Prigozhin, Putin’s personal chef, allegedly owns the property. While working on a report covering the property, Petrov and several environmental activists were detained in Kabardinka village by private security guards in a wooded area. According to Petrov’s wife, Irina Kovalenko, they were not trespassing on Prigozhin’s property.
The security guards deleted the information Petrov had gathered on his flash drive. Afterwards, Petrov and the activists were taken to the police station to give an explanation. They were later released.
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]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.
Hatice Kamer, also known as Khajijan Farqin, is a freelance journalist for BBC Turk and Voice of America. She was detained in Diyarbakir on 26 November while reporting on a landslide that killed at least ten workers in a copper mine.
Kamer was taken into custody in Siirt province at a police checkpoint; reasons for her detention remain unclear. Due to the state of emergency declared in Turkey, even the journalist’s attorney was unable to contact her.
On 27 November Kamer was released after spending a night in jail. She was told she would face charges of supporting the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) through her reporting. The journalist states there is no evidence of supporting the outlawed party through her work.
Dutch-American journalist Kevin Roberson, owner of the online news portal Roberson Report, was attacked at an anti-Black Pete demonstration in Utrecht.
Black Pete is a character in Dutch folklore said to be a servant to Saint Nicholas. The character is often portrayed by a white person in blackface and has become subject to controversy in the Netherlands, many claiming the inclusion of the character in Sinterklaas traditions is racist.
At the event, a group of Black Pete defenders emerged, identifying themselves as members of the alt-right movement Nederlandese Volks-Unie (NVU).
One of the members attacked Roberson from behind, hitting him on the head and neck then running away. Roberson posted the video online. The journalist told Mapping Media Freedom that he is fearing for his safety. “My home address is circulating in right-wing social media groups,” Roberson stated, “I don’t feel safe anymore.”
Roberson is pressing charges against the attacker.
On 25 November, Russian TV channel Dozhd reported that two of its correspondents, Sergei Polonsky and Vasiliy Yerzhenkov, were detained by intelligence agencies in the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic.
Dozhd reported that, “Three employees of the Ministry of State Security were involved in the interrogation. They watched videos and deleted them. They also blocked Polonsky’s phone, broke Yerzhenkov’s phone and destroyed his notebook.”
Polonsky stated that they did not receive physical abuse, only psychological. The reporters were told that the reason for their detention was “false information” in their accreditation, but Polonsky proved that the information was correct.
Yerzhenkov and Polonsky were in the region to interview Alexey Khodakovsky after receiving permission from the Security Service of Ukraine and the ministry of the Donetsk People’s Republic.
The two reporters are now banned from entering the area after giving “biased” and “provocative” reports on Donetsk.
At a rally for the main Macedonian opposition party, the Social Democratic Union of Macedonia (SDSM), a TV journalist and cameraperson for the Macedonian TV channel MTV 1 were insulted by party supporters.
In Tetovo, this was not the first time an incident like this occurred. “We would like to emphasise that this is not the first time our journalists have been insulted during an SDSM rally,” an MTV 1 report stated, “Our journalists are being blocked from fulfilling their professional duties.”
The reporters were harassed, insulted and spat on as they attempted to report from the rally. The SDSM condemned the incident, saying they were against any negative treatment of the media regardless of its beliefs.
A film crew for REN TV in Moscow was assaulted after investigating fraud at a candle company. According to the clients, the company was offering candle-making lessons which clients would pay for, but the company would take the money and leave the clients without lessons.
While speaking to the director of the company, the crew was attacked by him after he blocked one of the cameramen and pushed reporter Dariya Ermakova to the ground. The incident was caught on video by one of the other cameramen.
Ermakova filed a report to the police who are currently investigating. [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]
An unprecedented series of crackdowns on media professionals and news outlets took place in Europe and neighbouring countries during the third quarter of 2016, recorded by Index on Censorship’s Mapping Media Freedom project.
Between 1 July and 30 September MMF’s network of correspondents, partners and other sources submitted a total of 406 verified reports of threats to press freedom, a 19% rise from the second quarter of 2016.
An important factor in the rise in media violations was the attack on Turkey’s democratically-elected government on 15 July. Following the failed coup attempt, Turkish authorities forced more than 2,500 journalists out of their jobs, arrested and prosecuted 98 under trumped-up criminal charges, detained 133 and seized or shut down 133 media outlets. The post-coup environment in the country is explored in an extensive case study.
“The post-coup situation for media freedom in Turkey is dire. The sheer number of journalists arrested, detained and charged is without precedent in Europe. At the same time the reports collected by the map are pointing to other areas of concern in Russia and Ukraine,” Hannah Machlin, Mapping Media Freedom project officer, said.
Key findings from the third quarter 2016 report:
Four journalists were killed: Two in Ukraine, one in Russia and one in Turkey
“With nine out of every 10 murders of journalists never solved, the vicious cycle of impunity still prevails. It has to be broken. There can be no exception to the very basic rule that all attacks on journalists must be investigated quickly and thoroughly. We should never give up the fight for journalists’ safety and the struggle to end impunity for crimes committed against journalists,” Dunja Mijatović, OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media, said.
54 incidents of physical assault were reported
107 media professionals were arrested; 150 were detained and released
112 reports of intimidation, which includes psychological abuse, sexual harassment, trolling/cyberbullying and defamation, were made
“Reporters Without Borders is deeply concerned by the many cases of the use of violent intimidation tactics to silence journalists over the past few months. Acts of violence, and impunity for these acts, has a serious chilling effect on freedom of expression and freedom of information. The increasing use of violence to silence critical voices is part of a global trend of deteriorating press freedom, which must be addressed as a matter of urgent priority”, said Rebecca Vincent, UK Bureau Director for Reporters Without Borders (RSF)
Journalistic work was censored or altered 29 times
Media professionals were blocked from covering a story in 89 cases.
For more information, please contact Hannah Machlin, Mapping Media Freedom project officer at [email protected]
About Mapping Media Freedom
Mapping Media Freedom – a joint undertaking with the European Federation of Journalists and Reporters Without Borders, partially funded by the European Commission – covers 42 countries, including all EU member states, plus Bosnia, Iceland, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, Norway, Serbia, Turkey, Albania along with Ukraine, Belarus and Russia in (added in April 2015), and Azerbaijan (added in February 2016). The platform was launched in May 2014 and has recorded over 2,500 incidents threatening media freedom.
The morning after the airing of the last episode of the presenter and journalist Leonard Kërquki’s three-part documentary, Hunting The KLA, a photo-montage of his face riddled with bullet holes was posted to a 70,000 member Facebook group named Kosovo Liberation Army. Within minutes hundreds of death threats appeared in the comments section, many calling for him to be killed. Meanwhile, Kërquki’s private inbox filled up with similar threats on his life.
The commentators were not happy with the contents of the documentary produced by the tabloid newspaper Gazeta Express, of which Kërquki is editor-in-chief, and broadcast by TV-channel RTV Dukagjini. The documentary showed an investigation into crimes committed against the Kosovo Serb population by members of the KLA during the Kosovo war in the late 1990s.
The KLA was an ethnic-Albanian paramilitary organisation that fought for independence from the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (which consisted of Serbia and Montenegro at the time) during the Kosovo War in 1998-99. The KLA fought against the Yugoslav army, which was led by strongman Slobodan Milosevic. The organisation received air cover from NATO jets and ground support from the Albanian military against Serbian forces for crimes Milosevic had committed against Kosovo Albanians in Kosovo. After the war the KLA was disbanded.
“The topic of our documentary is very sensitive in Kosovo,” Kërquki told Mapping Media Freedom, Index on Censorship’s project monitoring press freedom in 42 European nations. Many former KLA-members now hold high-profile positions in government, he explained.
Crimes committed by the KLA against Kosovo Serbs have often met with controversy since the war ended. But a newly established special court for Kosovo war crimes by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia is now set to try crimes committed by the KLA against ethnic minorities and political opponents during the Kosovo war. The launch of the special court was the motive for Kërquki and his colleagues to produce Hunting the KLA.
“Any one of the people who will be investigated by this new court could be behind the hate campaign against me”, he said. It is not the first time Kërquki has been threatened for his reporting, but this time it was worse, he added.
The Journalist Association of Kosovo (AJK) stated the “hundreds of death threats” towards Kërquki and other crew members are unacceptable.
The Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) mission in Kosovo have also condemned the threats, calling for Kërquki’s protection and a thorough investigation into and prosecution of those behind the threats. Reporters Without Borders urged the Kosovo authorities to act against the “public lynching” of Kërquki.
The Kërquki case is the latest in a series of intimidations, threats and physical attacks on Kosovo journalists. Two months earlier the national broadcaster Radio Television Kosovo (RTK) was attacked twice with explosives.
A week later, a hand grenade was thrown at the house of RTK’s director, Mentor Shala. The bomb exploded behind the house while he and his family were inside. No casualties were reported but Shala told local media that the explosion was so strong that it could be felt throughout the entire neighbourhood.
Responsibility for both attacks was claimed by an organisation called Rugovasit, a group of people from the Rugova mountains close to the border with Montenegro. Kosovo’s parliament was voting on a demarcation deal with Montenegro at the time of the attacks.
Rugovasit claimed that Kosovo would lose thousands of hectares of land to Montenegro if the deal went through. They blamed RTK for only reporting the government’s perspective on the case and claimed in a written statement that the attack was “only a warning”, stating “if he does not resign from RTK, his life is in danger”. In early September Kosovo’s parliament decided to indefinitely postpone the controversial border deal.
These recent events have seriously worried AJK. “This year is really bad for journalists in Kosovo,” AJK’s president Shkelqim Hysenaj told MMF.
AJK has documented 18 cases of threats and violations against media in 2016 so far. In 2015, the association reported 21 cases. “Last year we had a lot of threats, too, but this year we were shocked by the two bomb attacks,” Hysenaj said. “That worries us the most, and makes us conclude that the situation regarding press freedom is getting worse.”
AJK is concerned about the lack of action by the police and prosecution in all three of the cases. Two months after the bomb attacks on the public broadcaster no perpetrator has been arrested or prosecuted. According to the AJK, the death threats to Kërquki are not being investigated by the police.
“If the police and courts are not doing their jobs, the situation will not change,” Hysenaj said. “If nobody is held accountable for throwing a bomb at the house of a journalist or sending death threats to an editor-in-chief, people will keep intimidating journalists because they know they can get away with it.”
Kosovo is ranked 90 out of 180 countries in the World Press Freedom Index by Reporters Without Borders. Political interference is still one of the biggest problems Kosovo’s media landscape is dealing with, Hysenaj explained. “The government and political parties have a huge influence on the media in this country,” he said.
RTK and its general director were the subjects of a controversy back in 2015 when employees openly accused director Mentor Shala of censorship and mismanagement after he fired a newsroom editor and a union president.
RTK is directly and fully financed by the state budget, Hysenaj added. “It makes them inevitably not independent.” Privately-owned media are also subject to biased reporting. “A big concern for us is that political parties are sponsoring online media platforms and the public is not aware who is paying for it.”
Meanwhile, Kërquki has continued working on documentaries with his team of reporters. The picture of his face riddled with bullet holes has been taken down from Facebook, but he is still receiving threats in his private inbox. He said he will not back down and continue work as normal. “The rest is the job of the police and the prosecutor’s office,” he concluded.
The commentators were not happy with the contents of the documentary produced by the tabloid newspaper Gazeta Express, of which Kërquki is editor-in-chief, and broadcast by TV-channel RTV Dukagjini. The documentary showed an investigation into crimes committed against the Kosovo Serb population by members of the KLA during the Kosovo war in the late 1990s.