02 May 13 | Middle East and North Africa
“Tunisians are clearly aware of the heavy responsibility they hold with regard to the future of democracy in the region. They do know that the entire world is watching carefully, that their success, or failure, will have a significant impact in the Arab world. It is here, indeed, that the democratic renewal of the Arab world is unfolding.”
— Journalist and human rights activist Sihem Bensedrine From the anthology, Fleeting Words, edited by Naziha Rjiba, published in cooperation with PEN Tunisia and Atlas Publications, with the support of Index on Censorship and IFEX.
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02 May 13 | Middle East and North Africa
More than two years after mass protests in Egypt demanding “freedom” among other things, the media in Egypt, post revolution, is a lot more vibrant and freer than it was under toppled President Hosni Mubarak. But it is a sensational, tabloid and segmented media, reflecting the deep polarization in the country, Shahira Amin reports.
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02 May 13 | Europe and Central Asia
The European Union on World Press Freedom Day should be celebrating continuing press freedom across its member states and championing press freedom abroad. But instead today there is less to celebrate and more cause for deep concern that the EU is failing to protect this core element of its democracies, Index on Censorship CEO Kirsty Hughes writes.
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30 Apr 13 | Newswire
Reporters of Radio Racyja, Henadz Barbarych and Aliaksandr Yarashevich, spent three days of administrative arrest after they had been detained in Minsk on 26 April.
The independent journalists covered an annual street action of the Belarusian opposition, The Chernobyl Way, that commemorates the anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster of 1986.
The journalists were detained by plain-clothed police officers on Friday evening on their way to editorial office. The police claimed the journalists “behaved in a suspicious way” and allegedly forcibly resisted detention. Barbarych and Yarashevich spent the weekend in a detention centre and stood an administrative trial on Monday. Judge Kiryl Paluleh sentenced them to three days of arrest each for “unlawful resistance to legitimate claims of police officers”, despite the fact accusations against the reporters were only based on contradictory evidence from the police.
The journalists denied the charges, saying the plain-clothed officers failed to present valid police IDs and they did not resist their detention.
Both reporters were released on Monday evening.
“I think the reason for our detention were pictures we made. Our cameras were confiscated, and given back to us with all the photos deleted,” Henadz Barbarych told Radio Liberty.
Detentions and physical violence of the police against journalists during street rallies have become quite common in Belarus.
Several civil activists were also detained on 26 April. Short-term detentions were aimed at preventing activists of a Belarusian ecological and anti-nuclear movement from participating in the rally. Three more activists were detained after The Chernobyl Way; one of them, Ihar Truhanovich, was beaten by the police. Iryna Arahouskaya and Aksana Rudovich, journalists of the Nasha Niva newspaper, who were filming the beating of Truhanovich, were also detained for about an hour, but later released.
“The authorities of Belarus keep demonstrating its brutality. They act with impunity for citizens of Belarus to keep living in fear. Such illogical and unnecessary violence serves as a signal to the society that even if the government sanctions events, they don’t endorse them, and people should be afraid to participate in any oppositional street actions,” says Uladzimir Matskevich, the Chair of the Coordination Committee of the Belarus National Civil Society Platform.
