08 Jul 16 | Azerbaijan, Azerbaijan News, Europe and Central Asia, Mapping Media Freedom, News and features, Russia, Turkey, United Kingdom
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.
Turkey: DIHA reporter arrested in Batman
4 July 2016: Dicle News Agency reporter Serife Oruc was sent to court on the charges of being “member of an illegal organisation”, news website Bianet reported. Oruc was arrested with two other men who were in the same car with Oruc, Emrullah Oruc and Muzaffar Tunc.
All three were transferred to a prison in Batman.
UK: Journalist claims Telegraph censored article critical of Theresa May
2 July 2016: The Daily Telegraph pulled a comment piece critical of Theresa May as May fought to become the leader of the Conservatives.
The piece was published on 1 July in the news section of the Telegraph but was subsequently taken down from the website. It was entitled “Theresa May is a great self-promoter but a terrible Home Secretary”.
“Daily Telegraph pulled my comment piece on Theresa May ministerial record after contact from her people #censorship”, journalist Jonathan Foreman tweeted on 2 July.
The journalist authorised Media Guido to republish the piece and it can be read on their website.
Russia: Free Word NGO declared a “foreign agent”
1 July 2016: The Pskov office of the Russian justice ministry declared Svobodnoye Slovo (Free Word), an NGO which publishes the independent newspaper Pskovskaya gubernia, a “foreign agent”.
The decision was made after an assessment of the organisation was conducted by the Pskov regional justice ministry department. It established that the organisation “receives money and property from another NGO which receives money and property from foreign sources”.
In addition, the statement said the NGO is running “political activities” because the newspaper is covering political issues.
Independent regional Pskovskaya Gubernia became well-known after a series of articles revealing Russian casualties in eastern Ukraine in the beginning of the Donbass conflict in the summer of 2014.
Azerbaijan: Editor sentenced to three months in jail for extortion
1 July 2016: Fikrat Faramazoglu, editor-in-chief of jam.az, a website that documents cases and arrests related to the ministry of national security, was arrested last Friday. He has been given a three-month sentence after being accused of extorting money by threats.
Faramazoglu’s wife said a group of three unidentified men showed up at their home, confiscating his laptop. Documents and even CDs from his children’s weddings were confiscated without any warrant. The three men informed Faramazoglu’s wife that her husband had been arrested.
Russia: Police detains Meduza freelancer covering death of children in Karelia
30 June 2016: Police detained Danil Alexandrov, a freelance journalist for Meduza news website working in Republic of Karelia reporting on the death of 14 children in a boating accident on Syamozero Lake. He was accused of working “without a license“.
Alexandrov was detained on his way out of the Essoilsky village administration building, where he spoke to the head of the town. The police reportedly approached Alexandrov and threatened to confiscate all his equipment unless he signed aan administrative offence report. He signed the document.
“They hinted that it might be necessary to confiscate ‘evidence of my journalistic activities’,” Alexandrov told Meduza, adding that the police insisted the publication was a foreign media outlet and had to be accredited by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The Foreign Ministry’s rules on accreditation discuss full-time staff members of foreign media outlets but do not comment on freelancers. Alexandrov’s court case is scheduled for 6 July. He faces a maximum penalty of 1,000 rubles (€14) for working “without a license”.
05 Jul 16 | Europe and Central Asia, France, Mapping Media Freedom, mobile, News and features
In almost four months covering protests against France’s labour reform bill, a number of journalists in the country have faced intimidation, detention and injury. Others have had their equipment broken or been physically prevented from doing their job.
On 9 April, a group of protesters threatened journalists in Rennes. The following month, a journalist working for Le Figaro newspaper was hurt by a projectile, likely to have been thrown by a protester and aimed at the police.
However, there have been more reports of violence against journalists being perpetrated by police forces. On 5 April, a Mediapart journalist reported that a member of the police force tried to break his phone while he was filming a violent arrest at a protest in Paris. On 10 May, a journalist who works for Les Inrockuptibles was hurt by a grenade launched by riot police during a protest in Paris. Six days later, it was alleged that an Agence France Presse journalist had their camera broken by a police officer while filming an arrest.
Journalists have also been attacked with batons and one as hurt by a Flash-Ball gun. On 23 June, two independent journalists, including Gaspard Glanz from Teranis News, were detained for hours in a police van while on their way to cover a protest in Paris.
“I didn’t think this could happen in France,” Julie Lallouet-Geffroy, an administrator for Club de la Presse de Rennes et de Bretagne and journalist for Reporterre, told Index on Censorship.
Club de la Presse de Rennes et de Bretagne, a press club based in the city of Rennes, Brittany, has been particularly active in denouncing violence against journalists covering the local protests. After journalists were attacked in Rennes on 2 June, the group took the case to France’s constitutional ombudsman for citizens’ rights and met with the interior minister.
Lallouet-Geffroy told Index what happened when journalists were caught in the middle of the clash between police and protesters. “Police forces first hit an independent photographer, then they hit Vincent Feuray [a contributor to Libération],” she said. “He fell to the ground unconscious and remained unconscious for a few seconds.”
Lallouet-Geffroy said she was also shoved by police.
She told Index that meetings with journalists at the club resemble “group psychotherapy”: “Journalists often won’t talk about this type of incidents – they consider it’s just behind-the-scenes stuff. But soon you realise that journalists working for very established media outlets, such as AFP or France 3, who have a 12kg camera on the shoulder, are teargassed at point-blank range. What really struck me is the banalisation of such violence.”
Reporterre recently published a report on police violence against protesters, which includes a few pages on cases where journalists were targeted. “What’s disconcerting is this litany of violence in all French cities, with the same words and the same incidents reappearing while police forces are supposed to protect citizens,” said Lallouet-Geffroy.
The emergence of new journalists and new media outlets that occupy a grey zone between journalism and activism has been seen as disconcerting for some.
“There are young journalists who will go on the hotspots, taking risks that journalists who have a steady job won’t take,” Lallouet-Geffroy said. “Sometimes it feels like they are cannon fodder, particularly isolated, with no outlet to have their back if they get in trouble or if they are sued for libel. Some of the images they get are really valuable, though.”
Teranis News recently published an “encyclopaedia of police violence”, to show force being used against protesters.
The deteriorating relationships between French police and young people continues to be a problem. It was announced on 29 June in the National Assembly that a plan to issue written receipts to people stopped by police, which organisations fighting police violence have long campaigned for, would not be implemented. A popular chant among French protesters remains: “Tout le monde déteste la police” (“Everybody hates the police”).
Mapping Media Freedom
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01 Jul 16 | Mapping Media Freedom, mobile, News and features, Serbia, Spain, Turkey, United Kingdom
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.
June 28: Shortly after an attack that saw three suicide bombers target Istanbul airport, killing 41 people and injuring more than 200, the government imposed a gag order to Turkish media outlets. This was followed by social media users reporteing problems with access and switching to VPN services.
Gag orders are frequently used by the Turkish authorities. But this time, shortly after the attack, RTUK, Turkey’s Radio and Television Supreme Council, expanded the ban to include all media.
According to Vocativ, the office of the Turkish Prime Minister instituted the ban on any photos or videos of the explosion for national security reasons.
According to Mashable, the media ban has been an issue as Turkey has been the victim of a spate of terror attacks in the last year, including a suicide bombing in Suruc in July 2015, a double suicide bombing in Ankara in October 2015, a suicide bombing in Istanbul in January and a deadly bombing in Ankara in February.
25 June: A Guardian reporter was denied access to a golf course resort in Aberdeen owned by Donald Trump, where US presidential candidate was on the second day of a two-day UK visit.
Two Guardian journalists were denied entry to the golf club by staff who said they weren’t on the list and did not have credentials.
At a press conference on Friday at his Turnberry golf course in Ayrshire, Trump took offence when a Guardian journalist asked him why UK and Scottish senior politicians had not come to meet him, suggesting it might be because he was toxic.
He replied by saying the questioner was a “nasty guy”.
Trump has banned several newspapers and media organisations from campaign events, including Buzzfeed in 2015 and The Washington Post in June 2016.
24 June: Two days before the general elections, two police officers entered the newsroom of website Público in Madrid asking for the recording of a conversation between the Spanish interior minister and a regional anti-fraud office chief, the newspaper reported.
Público executives refused to hand over the material because the agents didn’t have a court order, according to Público.
On Tuesday 21 June, left-leaning Público website published the secret conversation between centre-right interior minister Jorge Fernández Díaz and Daniel de Alfonso, director of Catalan anti-corruption office.
The conversation took place in October 2014, when the officials discussed the investigation directed at members of the two regional political parties which had been organizing a referendum on independence. They were planning to fabricate scandals related to separatists, informed Público, calling it a “conspiracy”.
In November 2012, the local centre-right Democratic Convergence of Catalonia party and left-wing party Republican Left of Catalonia organised a non-official referendum in Catalonia, north-eastern region, where a majority of citizens voted in favour of independence from Spain.
The Spanish Constitutional Court prohibited the referendum, claiming it was not legal according to the constitution.
Center-right Partido Popular has been in power since 2011 and both interior minister Fernández Díaz and prime minister Mariano Rajoy said the case, [in the run-up to the general elections], is a “campaign maneuver” produced by their political rivals.
24 June: Turkish businessman Mehmet Cengiz threatened newspaper Cumhuriyet with death threats over the phone, Turkish Minute reported.
Cengiz whose name was mentioned during the corruption scandal in December of 2013, called the newspaper headquarters telling them “I will fight you. Don’t make this man a killer”, reported Ozgur Dusunce news website.
The threat came shortly after Cumhuriyet newspaper announced it was set to publish a series of documents leaked through the Panama Papers, which would include Mehmet Cengiz, and other well-known businessmen with ties to the ruling government of Justice and Development Party.
24 June: A local politician for the Democratic Party of Sandzak, Behri Beganovi, menaced and tried to stop Alem Rovcanin, a cameraperson for TV Novi Pazar, from filming during a session of the local parliament in Prijepolje, news agency Tanjug reported.
According to Rovcanin, Beganovic cursed at him multiple times, and then reached for his camera, telling him he should not film him.
Due to the interference of other parliament members, the camera remained untouched.
Beganovic, the founder of the party DPS, was reportedly unhappy that cameraperson Alem Rovcanin was filming him during a parliamentary session.
Regional TV Novi Pazar has condemned the incident and asked journalist associations to react.
24 Jun 16 | Belarus, Belgium, France, Mapping Media Freedom, News and features, Poland, Turkey
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.
Journalists working for Belstat have been repeatedly detained and fined in the Homel region.
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.
“Journalistic sources have to be protected“, the Association stated, reminding of the 7 April 2015 law protection journalistic sources.
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.
23 June, 2016 – Two independent journalists were arrested while on their way to a large protest against the proposed labour law in Paris, Liberation reported.
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.
According to a Taranis News tweet, journalists were arrested for “forming a gathering with the intention of committing an offense“.
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 Kulisy24 criticised 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.
UPDATE: 20 June, 2016 – Following a court decision, Şebnem Korur Fincancı, Erol Önderoğlu and Ahmet Nesin were arrested around 17.00.
