18 Jul 2024 | Americas, News and features, Venezuela
Venezuelans will cast their vote for the country’s next leader next Sunday, choosing between a president who is dominating the public space but has not answered a reporter’s question since last year, and an opposition candidate who is all but barred from TV and radio and is relying on social media to spread his message.
The election on 28 July sees authoritarian president Nicolas Maduro squaring off against opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez, who is leading in the polls despite receiving almost no exposure on traditional media.
Instead, Gonzalez and his main backer, opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, have relied on Instagram and TikTok videos, as well as WhatsApp viral messages, to galvanise the democratic opposition ahead of the vote.
This week, Caracas is plastered with election banners showing a smiling Maduro projecting confidence for Venezuela’s future, but journalists hoping to travel to Venezuela to interview him are set for a letdown, as the authoritarian leader has not conceded an interview since December and several international media have seen their visa requests denied in recent days.
The country’s Ministry of Communication closed applications to cover the election on 19 April. Everyone entering the country to report without proper accreditation, or outside the dates granted by the ministry, is at risk of being deported.
Maduro’s weekly agenda is top secret for security reasons, which means most reporters who are already in Venezuela are not informed when the candidate is holding a rally and are kept away from the campaign.
Earlier this month, Reporters Without Borders called on Venezuelan authorities to allow local and international journalists to cover the election, especially since the government withdrew an invitation for EU electoral observers in June.
Yet, in the first week of the campaign Maduro has racked up over 1,400 minutes of airtime on Venezuela’s public television station, while none of the other candidates were covered for more than 15 minutes, the Spanish news agency EFE reported.
None of this is new for Venezuela, a country where almost 300 radio stations were shut down by the National Telecommunications Commission (CONATEL) in the last two decades on charges of operating clandestinely, according to the local NGO Espacio Público — it has been reported today that their site has been geoblocked.
Radio stations are particularly censored, critics claim, because in a country with chronic electricity and internet problems, they often represent the only information channel available to the most vulnerable sectors of the country, where government support is stronger.
“When Gonzalez announced his candidature a couple months ago, all international media started interviewing him, but did we? We can’t do that,” a radio journalist in Caracas told Index this week, asking for their identity to remain anonymous for fears of being fired if they denounced censorship in the workplace.
Government censors from CONATEL constantly monitor the airwaves searching for dissident content and send warnings to the radio station’s management if any programme is deemed too leaning against the government, the reporter told Index.
The current tension in the newsroom is reminiscent of another recent episode of political tension, when opposition leader Juan Guaidó mounted a constitutional challenge against Maduro by swearing himself in as interim president.
“Our programme was taken off the air back then when two guests, political analysts, both referred to the government as ‘the dictatorship of Nicolas Maduro,’” the reporter told Index.
“I remember it was a Friday, I left the office and went home. The following Sunday I was doing calls to plan the week ahead when our executive producer told me the programme was being cancelled. Management decided to take the show off the air because CONATEL had called in, complaining that nobody corrected the guests. I spent the following four months doing nothing before a new programme came around,” they said.
From that moment, all radio studios in this reporter’s organisation have installed an instruction document next to the main console, advising the programme’s director to correct any guest suggesting Maduro’s government is not legitimate.
In recent years, radio stations have diversified their coverage by allowing reporters to write more freely when posting online, where the government’s censors have a harder time controlling who’s behind problematic content.
This double standard, however, only makes the self-censorship on radio programmes even more evident.
“Online we made a profile of each candidate running in the election, we also did other opposition leaders… But on air? That’s not going to happen,” the reporter said.
Luz Mely Reyes, who co-founded online media Efecto Cocuyo in 2015 after decades working in print, told Index that none of this is new, saying: “Censorship in Venezuela is systemic, it runs deeper than the yoke on radio and TV stations.”
Despite escaping the jurisdiction of CONATEL’s censors, Venezuelans need a VPN to access Efecto Cocuyo’s URL, which is geoblocked by the government. Venezuelan companies are also wary of purchasing adverts on the website, fearful they might incur trouble with the government.
“Sometimes, security becomes a factor too. You end up asking yourself: is it worth it to send one of my reporters to cover this, or that? It’s not like they give you an order, they want to force you to self-censor your coverage,” Reyes told Index.
Still, both traditional and new media are finding new strategies to keep the lights on for free information in Venezuela.
“Silence in radio speaks volumes, sometimes, I just leave blanks in the radio report,” the anonymous radio reporter told Index. “I can’t say that this is an authoritarian regime, but I can give the latest malnutrition figures an organisation has shared, and in the end the audience can make up their mind.”
After a moment of pause, they sighed: “Being a journalist in Venezuela is frustrating: there are no opportunities, the pay is shit, and journalism itself is at risk… but what fuels me is the hope that, one day, things change.”
12 Jun 2024 | Asia and Pacific, India, News and features
As Prime Minister Narendra Modi readies for his third term, he formally took the oath of office on Sunday, casting a shadow over the nation’s landscape of free speech and press freedom. With each successive term, Modi’s administration has faced criticism for tightening control over the media and curbing dissenting voices, with instances of journalists and activists facing harassment, intimidation, and even legal action for criticisng the government or expressing views contrary to the official narrative.
India’s extensive six-week election period concluded with a tally of 640 million votes on 4 June. In the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP-led NDA (National Democratic Alliance) secured an outright majority by winning 292 seats out of the 543 seats, surpassing the 272 seats required for a clear majority in India’s lower house of Parliament.
Meer Faisal, a 23-year-old journalist and the founder of The Observer Post, an online news portal based in Delhi, holds little optimism regarding Modi’s government when it comes to censorship and freedom of expression in India. He has faced significant censorship in the past during Modi’s tenure for his coverage on atrocities against Muslims in India. In October last year, his Twitter account faced restrictions in India due to his reporting.
“As a journalist, especially being a Muslim, it invites more censorship and trouble. The Modi government aims to silence every voice that speaks against them. They want to build a narrative in the country and label everyone who criticises government policies as anti-national,” said Faisal.
Faisal is among many in India who express fear concerning Modi’s third term, citing concerns beyond censorship to include threats to freedom of speech.
Since August 2019, the Modi government has also barred many Kashmiri journalists from travelling abroad, offering no explanation for restricting their fundamental rights.
“In Modi’s third term, I fear that there will be more harsh policies against journalists and more tactics will be employed to intimidate us. This will directly impact our reporting abilities and help authorities in curbing the voice of people,” said Faisal.
In the 2024 edition of the Press Freedom Index published by Reporters Without Borders, India is ranked 159th out of the 180 nations considered. “With violence against journalists, highly concentrated media ownership, and political alignment, press freedom is in crisis in “the world’s largest democracy”, ruled since 2014 by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and embodiment of the Hindu nationalist right,” RSF stated while releasing the data.
Asif Mujtaba, 34, an advocate for people’s rights and director of the Miles2smile Foundation—which works with survivors of mob lynching, communal violence, and selective communal demolition—believes that the space for dissent has significantly decreased since Modi came to power, and public participation in protests has also diminished.
“It’s become a tough task for social and political activists, regardless of any religion, to work for people’s rights under Modi’s regime. The government can use any stringent law to frame you and silence your voice,” saidMujtaba.
According to Mujtaba, many people in India are apprehensive about openly criticising Modi because they are aware of the potential repercussions. A significant number of individuals who were once vocal against the regime have now become quiet..
“Modi’s administration is aware of the escalating dissent and the potential for increased protests against their policies in the third term. The growing public dissent will force Modi to resort to heavy-handed tactics to silence the people,” said Mujtaba.
In the first four months of 2024, India has experienced at least 134 instances of free speech violation, impacting journalists, academics, YouTubers, and students, according to a report published by the Free Speech Collective in early May. The organisation tracks and categorises free speech violations and offers support to those affected.
Niranjan K S, 22, a fourth-year law student at Jamia Millia Islamia, Delhi, and a member of the All India Revolutionary Students Organisation (AIRSO), argues that the suppression of dissent is driven by the corporate-Hindutva fascist nexus, which aims to transform the country into a fascist dictatorship. As a result, free speech will be stifled, and only those who support the ruling forces will retain their right to free expression.
“The surge in the enforcement of the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) and the uptick in political detentions, particularly aimed at students and activists like Sharjeel Imam and Umar Khalid, who were involved in the anti-CAA protests of 2019, demonstrate a systematic use of these draconian laws to quash all forms of dissent,” said Niranjan.
During the protests, students played an active role in amplifying the voices of the oppressed within the country. However, the BJP regime labeled these students as “anti-national” and “terrorists,” attempting to delegitimise their activism and dissent.
Niranjan emphasised that secularism and communal harmony are already under significant threat due to the Hindutva ideology of the current regime, which could further hinder free speech. “In this third term of the Modi government, the non-state elements of fascism will be more utilised to advance their offensive than the state elements,” said Niranjan.
Index on Censorship sought a response from a BJP spokesperson regarding censorship as Modi embarks on his historic third term. Answer came there none.
3 Jun 2024 | Israel, News and features, Palestine
Israel’s decision to seize video equipment from AP journalists last week may have been swiftly reversed but the overall direction of travel for media freedom in Israel is negative.
Journalists inside Gaza are of course paying the highest price (yesterday preliminary investigations by CPJ showed at least 107 journalists and media workers were among the more than 37,000 killed since the Israel-Gaza war began) and it feels odd to speak of equipment seizures when so many of those covering the war in the Strip have paid with their lives. But this is not to compare, merely to illuminate.
The past few days have provided ample evidence of what many within Israel have long feared – that the offensive in Gaza is not being reported on fully in Israel itself. On Tuesday a video went viral of an Israeli woman responding with outrage at the wide gulf between news on Sunday’s bombing of a refugee camp in Rafah within Israeli media compared to major international news outlets. Yesterday, in an interview with Canadian broadcaster CBC, press freedom director for the Union of Journalists in Israel, Anat Saragusti, spoke more broadly of the reporting discrepancies since 7 October:
“The world sees a completely different war from the Israeli audience. This is very disturbing.”
Saragusti added that part of this is because the population is still processing the horrors of 7 October and with that comes a degree of self-censorship from those within the media. The other reason, she said, is that the IDF provides much of the material that appears in Israeli media and this is subject to review by military censors. While the military has always exerted control (Israeli law requires journalists to submit any article dealing with “security issues” to the military censor for review prior to publication), this pressure has intensified since the war, as the magazine +972 showed. Since 2011 +972 have released an annual report looking at the scale of bans by the military censor. In their latest report, released last week and published on our site with permission, they highlighted how in 2023 more than 600 articles by Israeli media outlets were barred, which was the most since their tracking began.
In a visually arresting move, Israeli paper Haaretz published an article on Wednesday with blacked out words and sentences. Highlighting such redactions is incidentally against the law and will no doubt add to the government’s wrath at Haaretz (late last year they threatened the left-leaning outlet with sanctions over their Gaza war coverage).
The government’s attempts to control the media landscape was already a problem prior to 7 October. Benjamin Netanyahu is known for his fractious relationship with the press and has made some very personal attacks throughout his career, such as this one from 2016, while Shlomo Kahri, the current communications minister, last year expressed a desire to shut down the country’s public broadcaster Kan. This week it was also revealed by Haaretz that two years ago investigative reporter Gur Megiddo was blocked from reporting on how then chief of Mossad had allegedly threatened then ICC prosecutor (the story finally saw daylight on Tuesday). Megiddo said he’d been summoned to meet two officials and threatened. It was “explained that if I published the story I would suffer the consequences and get to know the interrogation rooms of the Israeli security authorities from the inside,” said Megiddo.
Switching to the present, it feels unconscionable that Israelis, for whom the war is a lived reality not just a news story, are being served a light version of its conduct.
In the case of AP, their equipment was confiscated on the premise that it violated a new media law, passed by Israeli parliament in April, which allows the state to shut down foreign media outlets it deems a security threat. It was under this law that Israel also raided and closed Al Jazeera’s offices earlier this month and banned the company’s websites and broadcasts in the country.
Countries have a habit of passing censorious legislation in wartime, the justification being that some media control is important to protect the military. The issue is that such legislation is typically vague, open to abuse by those in power, and doesn’t always come with an expiry date to protect peacetime rights.
“A country like Israel, used to living through intense periods of crisis, is particularly vulnerable to calls for legislation that claims to protect national security by limiting free expression. Populist politicians are often happy to exploit the “rally around the flag” effect,” Daniella Peled, managing editor at the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, told Index.
We voiced our concerns here in terms of Ukraine, which passed a media law within the first year of Russia’s full-scale invasion with very broad implications, and we have concerns with Israel too. But as these examples show, our concerns are far wider than just one law and one incidence of confiscated equipment.
9 Apr 2024 | Afghanistan, Asia and Pacific, News and features
“The situation has not changed, the Taliban didn’t change. They are not allowing journalists, especially women journalists, to work, and any output is censored by the Taliban.” These were the words of Afghan journalist Ali Bezhad, who spoke to Index for our Spring 2023 magazine issue after escaping the country and relocating to Germany. Since then a year has passed, but Bezhad’s words still ring true. Journalists in Afghanistan remain under constant threat of persecution by the Taliban, a situation which has been ongoing since the group regained power in 2021.
This has not gone unnoticed at Index. In February this year, we received an email from another Afghan journalist who feared for their life and safety (and in March, a similar one via Signal). M. Yousufi told Index of her experience of being targeted by the Taliban for her work and having to regularly change location. She said that in recent years, several of her family and friends have been “arrested, tortured or killed”.
“I have continuously been active against the ideas of the Taliban and other extremist groups, and therefore my activities are considered to promote prostitution and blasphemy,” she explained. “My work and activities have been completely censored.”
Yousufi describes her journalism as being focussed on women’s and minority rights, freedom of speech, social justice and the crimes of the Taliban.
“I have dedicated my whole life to freedom of speech to be the voice of the people of society, especially the oppressed women of Afghanistan,” she said.
Having previously been arrested and detained overnight by the Taliban, as well as being subjected to violence and harassment, she said it is no longer possible for her to continue working in the media.
“The increasing restrictions and threats from the Taliban and other extremist groups and Islamic fundamentalists stopped my activity,” she said.
This is not an isolated incident. Over the past year, calls for action have been routinely made to address the situation facing media workers in Afghanistan. In June 2023, an expert panel hosted by Index’s Editor-at-large Martin Bright saw Zahra Joya, an exiled Afghan journalist and founder of Rukhshana Media, and Zehra Zaidi, a lawyer and advocate for Action for Afghanistan, discussing the plight of journalists in the state and urging the UK to do more.
In October 2023, freelance journalist Mortaza Behboudi spoke out for the first time about his experience of spending nine months in an Afghan prison after being charged with spying and assisting border crossings.
“I felt as though I’d been kidnapped,” he told Reporters Without Borders (RSF). “There was no trial, nothing, no future. I was harassed all the time. They used to hit me.”
The Afghanistan Journalists Centre (AFJC) has documented the alarming rise in attacks on journalists since the Taliban took over power. In their 2023 Annual Report on Media Freedom in Afghanistan, the organisation found that over the last year, media workers in Afghanistan have encountered significant obstacles and infringements on their rights, limiting their capacity to function effectively, and recorded 75 incidents of journalists being detained or threatened in this time. Press freedom under the Taliban is clearly heavily restricted across the board, but although all journalists face threats to their safety, women are at much greater risk. In April 2023, we spoke to the editor-in-chief of the Zan Times, Zahra Nader, who explained that the laws preventing women from reporting effectively are not always specific to female journalists, but are a result of the intersection of being both female and a journalist.
This was further demonstrated in February this year with the Taliban’s warning that if women did not adhere to certain guidelines regarding their appearance while working in media then they may issue a complete ban on women working in the industry. RSF responded to this by detailing their alarm at the “worrying increase in the restrictions imposed on journalists, with authoritarian directives on women journalists’ dress, restrictions on women’s access to the audiovisual media and a ban on filming or photographing Taliban officials”.
Cries for help continue to be made. Last month, during the 68th Session of the Commission on the Status of Women – an annual meeting for UN states to discuss gender equality – four Afghan women journalists were interviewed by International Media Support (IMS). One of the interviewees, who remained anonymous for safety reasons, said: “After three difficult and unjust years [under the Taliban], I have become a fighting girl, a photographer trying to showcase the beauty of Afghan girls, and a journalist trying to be the voice of thousands of girls.”
Afghan journalist and women’s rights activist Faranaz Forotan also spoke at the event. “In Afghanistan, being a female journalist is an endless act of bravery,” she told the committee.
“Women journalists have changed the narrative of journalism in Afghanistan and today, with the least resources, they strive to preserve and nurture freedom of expression in Afghanistan.”
These examples all point to a situation which is growing steadily more precarious, as journalists in Afghanistan are targeted and brutally silenced for their work. A year on from Index’s call for action, the only change we’ve seen is for the worse.
