Belarusian journalists draw sentences for covering opposition rally

30 Apr 13 | News and features

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.

Guatemalan newspaper faces cyber attacks after exposing corruption

26 Apr 13 | Americas, Politics and Society

The Guatemalan daily El Periódico and Fundación MEPI have published an exposé of corruption in the current Guatemalan government. The story, with information and documents gathered during the first year in office of president Otto Perez Molina and vice president Roxana Baldetti, detailed a multi-million dollar web of corruption in a country where 50 per cent of the population lives on less than two dollars a day.

After the story was published on 8 April, the newspaper was immediately the hit with a cyber attack, according to El Periodico’s publisher, José Rubén Zamora. The website went dead and nobody could read the story for a few days. Readers who did manage to access the website had their computers infected with a virus. The attack was the latest salvo against the daily, which focuses on exposing government corruption. Zamora said it was the sixth attack against its website in the last year. He said each attack had occurred after the newspaper published investigations into corruption in Molina’s government. Zamora said that they have been investigating the attacks — which have been coming from a neighbourhood in Guatemala City. “We will pinpoint the exact area soon”, he said. The Inter American Press Association wrote a letter to Guatemala’s government expressing their concern over the attacks.

According to Zamora, officials have pulled government advertising from the newspaper, and constantly harass independent advertisers who work with the daily. In the last two decades, Zamora has been at the helm of two newspapers. His first paper was Siglo Veintuno, which he left after disagreeing with his co-owners over the paper’s robust coverage of corruption and government abuses. He has been target of kidnappings and death threats, and even had his home invaded by armed men in 2003, who held his wife and three sons hostage for several hours at gunpoint. Zamora won the Committee to Protect Journalists Freedom of the Press award in 1995, and in 2000 was named World Press Freedom Hero by the International Press Institute.

I asked Zamora why he continues to put his life in danger with government exposés:

Ana Arana: You knew the danger with this story, why did you want to publish it?

José Rubén Zamora: It is indispensable to stop the corruption and self-enrichment by the Guatemalan political class. They forget that our country is overwhelmed by misery, malnourished children, and racism. Guatemala is a country without counterweights or institutional balances to protect it from abuses. That is why to write about these stories is our obligation. If we did not focus on these issues, why should we exist?

Our stories are written so Guatemalans get strong and do not accept abuses of those in power. We also do it to get information on corrupt practices and human rights violations in Guatemala out in the international community.

AA: What is the real problem in Guatemala?

JRZ: I think there is an excessive concentration of power and money, and a serious penetration of organised crime, especially drug trafficking organisations, in  spheres of power.

AA: Do you fear any further attacks against the newspaper?

JRZ: Yes, I expect them to harass us through taxes, and to engage in defamation campaigns to discredit the newspaper. Sources close to the Presidency have said that the government is trying to organised a commercial boycott that could take the newspaper towards bankruptcy.

Index welcomes press industry rejection of government Royal Charter

25 Apr 13 | Leveson Inquiry

Index welcomes newspapers’ rejection of cross-party approach to press regulation.

Index CEO Kirsty Hughes said:
“The Royal Charter introduces unwarranted government interference into the process of press regulation. Index welcomes the industry’s rejection of this approach. All those who refuse to sign up to the regulator will now risk facing exemplary damages, which means there will be a continuing chill on press freedom in the UK.

A truly independent and voluntary system is needed and must be one that offer tough standards and complaints procedures.

Index is concerned, however, that the industry appear to want to use the vehicle of a Royal Charter, which we believe would still allow an undesirable political influence.”

Read more about Index’s positions on press regulation:

Index on Censorship: Leveson, the Royal Charter and press regulation