11 Jun 2018 | Awards, Fellowship, Fellowship 2018, Honduras, News and features
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”100749″ img_size=”full”][vc_column_text]Two days after the publication of an investigation into alleged inappropriate behaviour by a member of a Honduran military unit involving young female students, digital newspaper Reportero de Investigacion was targeted with a misleading story that purported to be from the outlet.
The news outlet, which was founded by 2018 Freedom of Expression Awards Fellowship winner Wendy Funes, had posted an 8 June 2018 article which exposed how members of a military unit were going into schools, teaching children without parental consent or notification, collecting personal information and, in at least one case, texting sexually harassing messages under the guise of the “No Drugs, Live Better” programme. The Reportero de Investigacion article included screenshots of a text conversation between a mother and a military officer. The officer thought they were texting the woman’s daughter.
The publication drew a large amount of the attention in Honduras, which is one of the world’s most dangerous places to be a journalist.
Two days later, a faked article began appearing that used the Reportero de Investigacion logo and included screenshots from gang members who discussed the difficulties of distributing drugs, claiming they had less access after the military had begun its in-school training programme. The false article is being shared on WhatsApp groups among members of the law enforcement community in Honduras, Funes told Index on Censorship.
This is not the first time that fake news stories have been circulated in Honduras to discredit the work of investigative journalists and human rights activists and undermine their personal security.
For Funes, it is vital that the appropriate government agencies investigate these false publications. She said she will be addressing a complaint to the new Honduran Special Prosecutor for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders, Journalists, Social Communicators and Justice Operators, (FEPRODDHH), which has the responsibility for determining where the faked article purporting to be from reporterosdeinvestigación.com came from.
“For us it is necessary to carry out an investigation, although we do not have the certainty that it is a smear campaign against our newspaper, we believe that an investigation is urgent to determine the origin of the messages and the State has the tools necessary to do it.” Funes said.
Perla Hinojosa, fellowships and advocacy officer at Index on Censorship said: “It’s important to call out efforts to discredit the investigative work of journalists like Wendy. Even though this was not a direct physical threat, the spread of false information undermines Wendy’s news organisation, which seeks justice and identifies human rights abuses.”[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_basic_grid post_type=”post” max_items=”12″ style=”load-more” items_per_page=”4″ element_width=”6″ grid_id=”vc_gid:1528734389898-5507b00f-068d-2″ taxonomies=”23255″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
19 Apr 2018 | Awards, Fellowship, Fellowship 2018
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2018 Freedom of Expression Journalism Award-winning Honduran investigative journalist Wendy Funes. (Photo: Index on Censorship)
Wendy Funes is an investigative journalist from Honduras who regularly risks her life for her right to report on what is going on in the country. She is a courageous female voice, writing in a violent and corrupt society where two journalists have been killed this year and where women are regularly subjected to severe domestic violence and often killed. Funes is an inventive and passionate human rights reporter. For one article she got her own death certificate issued so that she could show up with the corruption in the civil registration office. For another one, they will be forced to fight for an investigation into children being forced to take to the streets of the country’s capital.
Looking out of one of the windows of my house a few days ago, while thinking about what to say this afternoon, I remembered the paradise tree in the garden which my childhood swing used to hang from. When it withered and died, I felt devastated. But now, forty years later, there are four big trees growing in its place and are all fruit-bearing.
For me, this award is so immense and significant that I can only explain it and express my thanks for it with a story that I have never told until now.
It is a story about a small fatherless child, yet another child left fatherless by the armed violence in Honduras. It is a story about a childhood filled with sadness. But the child learnt that whatever the circumstances, courage and strength are necessary to achieve one’s dreams: and the first step is always to dream.
In 2002 she began her first investigations as a journalist and it gave meaning to her life. But in 2008, censorship forced her to leave her dream job at the newspaper and by 2011 her constant fight for free expression and to tell the truth meant that all the doors to the media monopoly was closed to her.
But once again journalism saved her. She discovered that frustration with censorship is not the way. Rather, the way to overcome censorship is with the word, and although some doors were closed to her, doors to a more humane, less commercial, more rigorous kind of journalism were opened. The kind of journalism that investigates and pauses on each word, that does not proclaim impartiality but seeks the truth. The kind of journalism that is capable of showing her people that their society is being governed by drug trafficking and ruthless groups who since the 2009 coup have sacrificed lawyers, doctors, women, 70 journalists and executed young people in an almost invisible genocide.
The kind of journalism that can identify with a nation governed by someone who was rejected at the polls. Someone who controls the press that, in turn, covers up military assassinations, the corruption of officials and the everyday cruel realities for the Honduran people. Realities such as the 14-year-old girl sold by her father for a litre of alcohol whilst already pregnant, or the new-born baby who died of malnutrition and weighed more when he was born than when he died. In short, so many stories to tell. So many stories that the press is censored from telling.
But the young girl with whom this story began has been so fortunate that by refusing to remain silent and refusing to become part of this cruel system, by telling stories that a journalist should tell, she is being shown once again that the courage to dream is well-rewarded. That there is always someone willing to extend their hand and say “Come on, it’s worth resisting, it’s worth dreaming and fighting to transform all of this pain into a reward.” A reward which gives me hope.
I dedicate this prize to my fellow people of Honduras who demonstrate every day that they wish to move forward and overcome the violence, impunity and corruption which have been afflicting us for more than three decades.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row disable_element=”yes”][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_single_image image=”84882″ img_size=”full” alignment=”center”][vc_column_text]
For his one-man protests, Ildar Dadin was sent to prison in December 2015 where he was tortured, before his conviction was quashed in February 2017. Read the full profile.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_single_image image=”84888″ img_size=”full” alignment=”center”][vc_column_text]
Despite the persecution he faces for his work, Rebel Pepper continues to satirise the Chinese state from a life in exile in Japan. Read the full profile
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Established in 2015, Turkey Blocks is an independent digital research organisation that monitors internet access restrictions in Turkey. Read the full profile.
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Maldives Independent, the Maldives’ premiere English publication and one of the few remaining independent media outlets, was formed in exile in Sri Lanka in 2004. Read the full profile.
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Mirando por una de las ventanas de mi casa, un par de días atrás, mientras pensaba en qué decir esta tarde, me acordé del árbol de Paraíso del jardín, desde el cual colgaba el columpio de mi niñez. Cuando se marchitó y se murió, me sentí desconsolada. Sin embargo ahora, unos treinta años después, ahí hay cuatro árboles grandes creciendo en su lugar y todos rinden fruta.
Para mí, este premio es tan inmenso e importante que solo puedo explicar y expresar mi agradecimiento con un cuento que, hasta ahora, nunca he relatado.
Es un cuento de una niña chiquita sin padre. Otro niño más dejado sin padre por la violencia armada en Honduras. Es un cuento de una niñez llena de tristeza. Pero la niña aprendió que en toda circunstancia, la alegría, el coraje y la fuerza son necesarios para lograr sus sueños: y el primer paso siempre es soñar.
En 2002 ella empezó sus primeras investigaciones como periodista y eso le dió un significado a su vida. Pero en 2008, la censura la obligó a dejar el trabajo de sus sueños en el periódico y en 2011, su constante lucha por la libertad de expresión y de exponer la verdad, significó que todas las puertas del monopolio le fueron cerradas.
Pero una vez más, el periodismo la salvó. Ella descubrió que luchar contra la censura, no era el mejor método. Más bien, el mejor método de combatir la censura era a través de la palabra, y a pesar de que algunas puertas le fueron cerradas, se le abrieron otras a otro tipo de periodismo más humano, menos comercial y más riguroso. El tipo de periodismo que investigaba y que hacía una pausa en cada palabra, el que no proclamaba la imparcialidad pero que buscaba la verdad. El tipo de periodismo capaz de enseñar a su pueblo que la sociedad está siendo gobernada por el tráfico de drogas y grupos despiadados, quienes, desde el golpe de Estado del 2009, han sacrificado a abogados, médicos, mujeres, unos setenta periodistas y han ejecutado a jóvenes en un casi invisible genocidio.
El tipo de periodismo que puede identificarse con una nación gobernada por una persona que fue rechazada en las elecciones. Una persona que controla la prensa, y que por ende encubre asesinatos, la corrupción de los oficiales y las crueles realidades cotidianas que sufre el pueblo de Honduras. Realidades tales como la muchacha de catorce años vendida por su padre por un litro de alcohol y mientras estaba embarazada, o el infante recién nacido que murió por la malnutrición y cuyo cuerpo pesaba más cuando nació que cuando murió.
Pero la jóven muchacha con quien empezó este cuento, ha sido tan afortunada que, por negarse a mantenerse callada y por negarse a ser parte de este cruel sistema, por contar cuentos que un periodista debería contar, está comprobando una vez más que el coraje de soñar está bien recompensado. En resumidas cuentas, hay tantos cuentos que contar. Tantos cuentos que la prensa está censurada de contar. Que siempre haya alguien que esté dispuesto a extender la mano y decir, Vamos, vale la pena resistir, vale la pena soñar y luchar para transformar todo este dolor en una recompensa>. Una recompensa que me da esperanza.
Dedico este premio a mis compatriotas de Honduras porque ellos demuestran todos los días, el deseo de salir adelante y vencer la violencia, impunidad y corrupción que nos han estado afligiendo con mayor calamidad en las últimas tres décadas.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_basic_grid post_type=”post” max_items=”12″ style=”load-more” items_per_page=”4″ element_width=”6″ grid_id=”vc_gid:1524235559634-0014c057-81cc-3″ taxonomies=”8935″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
18 Apr 2018 | Honduras, Media Freedom, News and features
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“The noose is tightening around the Honduran people more than ever,” says Dana Frank, professor at UC Santa Cruz, specialising in human rights and US policy in post-coup Honduras, adding that with this comes increased repression of the media.
With political turmoil and protests following the 2017 re-election of president Juan Orlando Hernández, repression of information has become commonplace in Honduras. According to Amnesty International, at least 31 people were killed in the aftermath of the election, with hundreds more arrested or detained. Reporters Without Borders ranked Honduras 140th in the 2017 World Press Freedom Index.
Journalists reporting on corruption and violence in Honduras regularly deal with violence and the risk of death for their work — including investigative journalist Wendy Funes, a nominee for Index on Censorship’s 2018 Freedom of Expression Award for Journalism — while perpetrators often go unpunished.
“What’s amazing is that corruption is highly documented. For example, the government itself and the attorney general have confirmed the evidence that as much $90 million was stolen by the ruling party and the Juan Orlando campaign in 2013 from the national health service. They siphoned it into their campaigns,” says Frank. “The evidence of corruption is out there. The problem is that the attorney general and the government don’t act on the evidence.”
According to Honduras National Commission for Human Rights, over 70 journalists and other media workers were killed in Honduras between 2001 and August of 2017. PEN International reports that violence against journalists continued despite the Honduran government’s pledge at the United Nations in May 2015 to improve its human rights record. Journalists have begun to silence themselves out of fear for their lives.
“Over the years, the situation has been deteriorating and getting worse in regards to freedom of expression,” Honduran journalist Dina Meza told Index on Censorship in February 2018. “Therefore, what journalists and social communicators have started to do is self-censor.”
As recently as 13 February 2018, one Honduran television reporter, César Omar Silva, was the victim of an attempted on-air stabbing. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, Silva said that a nearby police officer and hospital worker told the man to stop but did not try to detain him or take his weapon. The attacker escaped.
This wasn’t the first time Silva was attacked for his work. He was kidnapped and tortured after he covered human rights violations around the 2009 coup.
Censorship by the government goes beyond attempting to silence journalists; it also restricts the information government agencies are allowed to release to the media and the public. A 2014 law assigned responsibility for releasing information to individual government agencies, instead of the more independent Institute for Public Access to Information. As a result, government transparency and the public’s right to information suffered.
“It really is a reign of terror. The government used live bullets against a labour strike on 9 March, and that’s new,” says Frank. “What’s amazing is that people are reclaiming democracy and going to the streets even though they know they could get killed.”
Frank echoed sentiments written by Dina Meza in a September 2013 article for Index on Censorship magazine. “In a democracy, criminal investigations would be the appropriate means to bring these culprits to justice,” said Meza, “but in what is an essentially failed state with a collapsed infrastructure, anyone who is determined to speak out risks their life.”
As journalists in Honduras face harsh censorship, those who continue to work and speak out must be supported and defended. Without this the corruption and repression in post-coup Honduras would go undocumented. [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_basic_grid post_type=”post” max_items=”12″ style=”load-more” items_per_page=”4″ element_width=”6″ grid_id=”vc_gid:1524040544190-383fec9d-ea6d-2″ taxonomies=”8996″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
9 Apr 2018 | Awards, Fellowship, Fellowship 2018, News and features
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Wendy Funes is an investigative journalist from Honduras who regularly risks her life for her right to report on what is going on in the country.
She is a courageous female voice, writing in a violent and corrupt society where two journalists have been killed this year and where women are regularly subjected to severe domestic violence and often killed.
Funes is an inventive and passionate human rights reporter. For one article she got her own death certificate issued so that she could show up the corruption in the civil registration office. For another she dressed as a beggar for an investigation into children being forced to beg on the streets of the country’s capital.
She writes about violence against women, a huge problem in Honduras where one woman is killed every 16 hours, and the number of women killed has increased by more than 260% between 2005 and 2013.
But Funes is also an activist for her profession, which led to her being expelled from the journalism trade union where she had been fighting for labour rights and freedom of expression.
“I have overcome many traumas, including the violent deaths of my father and several friends and fellow journalists, for which no one has been brought to justice,” said Funes. “I will not succumb to despair – every blow has made me a warrior, and every obstacle is a chance to prove that adversity must never stop us. Only those who has suffered dark will search for the light. My way to achieve my life’s purpose is the journalism I love, which quickens my heart in moments of greatest expectation, which brings joy and sorrow. Through independent, self-critical, methodical journalism – the kind that comes from the streets – combined with an academic grounding, I am convinced I can bring change to my country.”
Working for C-Libre, a freedom of expression organisation in Honduras, she highlighted the continued murder of journalists by organising a march which she called the Demonstration of Silence to protest the death of journalists. Protesters carried white cardboard coffins with the faces of each of the journalists on them to the prosecutors’ office in the capital Tegucigalpa.
In 2017 Wendy Funes was helped by PressStart, a global crowdfunding platform for reporters in countries where the press cannot report freely, to write an expose of gang rapes of indigenous Lenca women in the La Paz area of Honduras.
On May 31, 2017 Funes retired from C-Libre to found her own research newspaper and promote investigative journalism in her country, using data with a gendered approach and promoting transparency and access to public information.
“This nomination is like an embrace of trust in the darkness of death and risk implied by the asphyxiating level of censorship that the press experiences in Honduras,” said Funes. “It’s like a hand reaching out to me to tell me it’s worth resisting this corrupt and unfair system.”
See the full shortlist for Index on Censorship’s Freedom of Expression Awards 2018 here.
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Wendy Funes y su valiente defensa del periodismo de investigación en Honduras
Wendy Funes es una periodista de investigación hondureña que pone su vida en peligro con regularidad: es el precio que paga a cambio de su derecho a informar sobre lo que está pasando en el país.
Es la valerosa voz de una mujer escribiendo en una sociedad violenta y corrupta, en la que dos periodistas han sido asesinados en lo que va de año. Un país en el que las mujeres sufren violencia doméstica extrema a diario y son a menudo asesinadas.
Funes es una reportera pro derechos humanos ingeniosa y apasionada. Hizo que expidieran su propio certificado de defunción para desvelar en un artículo la corrupción del registro civil. Para otro reportaje, se disfrazó de pordiosera para investigar sobre los niños forzados a mendigar en las calles de la capital del país.
Escribe sobre la violencia contra las mujeres, un problema gravísimo en Honduras, donde matan a una mujer cada 16 horas y la cifra de asesinadas se incrementó más de un 260% entre 2005 y 2013.
Funes también es una activista dentro de su profesión, razón por la cual fue expulsada del sindicato de periodismo desde el que había estado luchando por los derechos laborales y la libertad de expresión.
«He superado muchos traumas, entre ellos, las muertes violentas de mi padre y de varios amigos y compañeros periodistas, por las cuales nadie ha sido llevado ante la justicia», declaró Funes. «No sucumbiré a la desesperación: cada golpe me ha hecho una guerrera, y cada obstáculo no es más que una oportunidad de demostrar que la adversidad nunca debe detenernos. Solo quienes han sufrido la oscuridad buscarán la luz. El modo que tengo para cumplir mi propósito en la vida es el periodismo al que amo, el que hace que se me acelere el corazón en momentos de inmensa esperanza, el que me trae alegrías y tristezas. Con periodismo independiente, autocrítico, metódico —el tipo de periodismo que viene de las calles—, combinado con conocimientos académicos, estoy convencida de que puedo traer el cambio a mi país».
Cuando trabajaba para C-Libre, una organización por la libertad de expresión en Honduras, organizó una marcha a la que llamó la Manifestación del Silencio en protesta contra los continuos asesinatos de periodistas. Los manifestantes cargaron con ataúdes de cartón blanco con retratos de cada uno de los periodistas asesinados hasta la fiscalía de la capital, Tegucigalpa.
En 2017 Wendy Funes recibió apoyo de PressStart, una plataforma de crowdfunding global para reporteros en países donde la prensa no puede informar libremente, con el cual escribió un reportaje destapando las violaciones grupales de mujeres indígenas lencas en la zona hondureña de La Paz.
El 31 de mayo de 2017, Funes se retiró de C-Libre para fundar su propio periódico de investigación y promover este tipo de periodismo en su país, promoviendo la utilización de los datos desde una perspectiva de género, la transparencia y el acceso a información pública.
«Esta nominación es como un abrazo de confianza en la oscuridad de la muerte y el peligro implícitos en el asfixiante nivel de censura que vive la prensa en Honduras», declaró Funes. «Es como si me hubieran extendido una mano para decirme que merece la pena resistir a este sistema corrupto e injusto».
Traducción de Arrate Hidalgo
Accede a la lista completa de nominados a los Index on Censorship’s Freedom of Expression Awards 2018 aquí.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row full_width=”stretch_row_content” equal_height=”yes” el_class=”text_white” css=”.vc_custom_1490258749071{background-color: #cb3000 !important;}”][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_custom_heading text=”Support the Index Fellowship.” font_container=”tag:p|font_size:28|text_align:center” use_theme_fonts=”yes” link=”url:https%3A%2F%2Fwww.indexoncensorship.org%2Fsupport-the-freedom-of-expression-awards%2F|||”][vc_column_text]
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