Opinion by Martin Scott – Kate Wright – Mel Bunce (norwich / edinburgh / london)
Inter Press Service
We argue that these humanitarian journalists show us that another kind of crises reporting is possible.
But who exactly are humanitarian journalists? What motivates them? Who do they work for? And how is their coverage of humanitarian affairs different to mainstream journalism?
In this article, we answer these questions though an account of ‘Sophia’ a fictional journalist whose story helps illustrate the key themes of our research.
Sophia: A humanitarian journalist
Sophia is a humanitarian journalist. She works for a small non-profit news outlet that covers international aid and global affairs. She regularly reports on under-reported crises, with a focus on in-depth, explanatory, and solutions-oriented journalism.
She is particularly keen to highlight the perspective, not only of affected citizens, but of a range of other local actors including rebels, aid workers, politicians, and think-tanks. She has significant freedom to choose which stories to cover and how to report them and regularly commissions local stringers living in affected countries.
Sophia used to work for a large international news broadcaster. Despite having a permanent position and a significantly higher salary, she left after just eighteen months because she was frustrated by what she felt was their rigid and formulaic approach to covering global affairs. She thought that much of their coverage of recent humanitarian crises was superficial and fleeting.
Although she was proud that she helped break a news story revealing corruption within an international NGO, she worries that it unfairly damaged the reputation of the humanitarian sector as a whole, because some of the subtleties of international humanitarian response got lost in the reporting.
The news organisation Sophia works for now generates very little advertising or reader revenue and relies almost exclusively on short term grant funding from a very small number of private foundations. Although she has never felt under any pressure to cover stories in ways that might please their current, or potential donors, she does resent the amount of time it takes to meet their reporting requirements.
If their funding is cut, and she loses her job, she intends to work either as a freelance journalist, or as an aid agency press officer. The only other news outlet she is aware of that covers similar stories has recently closed due to a lack of funding.
Sophia has never actually met any of her current colleagues in person as they all work remotely, in different countries. During their daily online editorial meetings they frequently disagree about which stories fall within their remit.
There is no consensus about what makes a story ‘humanitarian’, as opposed to a human rights or global development issue, for example. For this reason, some of the stories she pitches still get rejected – and she doesn’t fully understand why.
Although Sophia was recently nominated for a One World Media award, in general, she is frustrated by the lack of recognition and reach of her work. She also worries about being able to pay the bills – she knows her job is precarious.
But despite this lack of external recognition and the financial risks, Sophia is glad she took this job – because it allows her the freedom to do the kind of work she has always wanted to do.
Sophia is one of a small group of ‘humanitarian journalists’ whose work bridges the worlds of international news production and humanitarianism. She is motivated by both the traditional journalistic desire to document, witness and explain events, and the desire to help alleviate suffering and save lives.
There are a small number of non-profit news outlets employing humanitarian journalists like Sophia, who play a valuable role in the global media system.
Dr Martin Scott is Associate Professor in Media and Global Development at the University of East Anglia; Dr Kate Wright is Senior Lecturer in Media and Communications, Politics, and International Relations at the University of Edinburgh; Prof Mel Bunce is Professor of International Journalism and Head of the Journalism Department at City, University of London.
NAIROBI, Jan 31 (IPS) – The new year brought bad news for press freedom on the African continent with the brutal murder of one journalist and the suspicious death of another.
Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) Africa program head Angela Quintal said that to start the year with the death of at least two top journalists in one week was very bad news and is hopefully not an ominous sign for the year ahead.
“The brutal murder of Cameroonian journalist Martinez Zogo who was abducted, tortured, and killed in the capital, Yaounde, and the suspicious death in a road accident of John Williams Ntwali, the independent and outspoken Rwandan journalist in Kigali, has left the media community reeling, I feel punch-drunk, and it’s only the start of the year,” said Quintal.
The CPJ has asked for a full investigation of journalist John Williams Ntwali’s death in Kigali. Ntwali was an outspoken journalist who exposed human rights abuses in Rwanda and spoke out about threats to his life. Credit: CPJ/Screenshot: YouTube/Al-Jazeera
The African Editors Forum (TAEF) also expressed shock, anger, and outrage over these deaths and planned to make representations to the governments of Rwanda and Cameroon to “demand full public reports on the circumstances leading to their deaths.”
Unfortunately, these are not isolated incidents. In 2022 alone, CPJ documented at least six journalists killed in sub-Saharan Africa and confirmed that four of them, Ahmed Mohamed Shukur and Mohamed Isse Hassan in Somalia and Evariste Djailoramdji and Narcisse Oredje in Chad, were killed in connection to their work.
“In these four cases, the journalists were killed either on dangerous assignments or crossfire in relation to their work. We continue to investigate the death in Kenya of Pakistani journalist Arshad Sharif and Jean Saint-Clair Maka Gbossokotto in the Central African Republic to determine whether their deaths are in connection to their journalism,” Quintal said.
Quintal said Somalia continues to top CPJ’s Global Impunity Index as the worst country where “the killers of journalists invariably walk free, and there is no accountability or justice for their deaths.”
In 2022, six journalists were killed in connection to their work: Abdiaziz Mohamud Guled and Jamal Farah Adan in Somalia, David Beriain and Roberto Fraile in Burkina Faso, Joel Mumbere Musavuli in DRC, and Sisay Fida in Ethiopia. This is the same number of journalists killed in 2021.
Quintal said Sisay’s death was the first confirmed case since 1998 that a journalist was killed in Ethiopia. CPJ continues to investigate the death of Dawit Kebede Araya in Ethiopia in 2021 to determine whether it was related to journalism.
“By far, most journalists who have been killed are local reporters. Of the six in 2021, two Russian journalists were murdered in Burkina Faso, and we continue to investigate the killing last year in Kenya of Pakistani journalist Arshad Sha to determine whether the motive was related to journalism,” Quintal added.
“The years 2022 and 2021 saw the most journalists killed annually since 2015 when CPJ documented at least 11 killed, and I pray that we not going to see a return to the dark days of double-digit killings. One journalist killed is one journalist too many.”
The levels of impunity and the failure of governments to ensure justice for the majority of killed journalists and their families is a trend mirrored elsewhere in the world, says the CPJ. Credit: Joyce Chimbi/IPS
Quintal decries the levels of impunity and the failure of governments to ensure justice for the majority of killed journalists and their families—a trend mirrored elsewhere in the world.”
Globally, according to CPJ’s 2022 annual report, the killings of journalists rose nearly 50 percent amid lawlessness and war, and in 80 percent of these, there has been complete impunity.
“This illustrates a steep decline in press freedom globally, something that we also see in terms of record figures in the number of jailed journalists globally. The year 2022 saw the highest number of jailed journalists around the world in 30 years. With a record-breaking 363 journalists behind bars as of December 1, 2022,” Quintal stresses.
CPJ’s editorial director Arlene Getz notes, “in a year marked by conflict and repression, authoritarian leaders double down on their criminalization of independent reporting, deploying increasing cruelty to stifle dissenting voices and undermine press freedom.”
Against this chilling backdrop, Quintal tells IPS that short-term solutions include the political will from governments, matched by the necessary financial and human resources, to arrest, prosecute and convict those guilty of crimes against journalists.
“It is time governments walk the talk … This would send a clear signal that there will be consequences for harming a journalist.”
There is also an urgent need to invest in safety training for both physical and digital journalists and emergency visas for journalists in distress.
“This is where the international community can play an important role. Diplomatic missions in countries where journalists are threatened by those in power, for example, can assist local journalists who need to relocate in an emergency,” she said.
“Governments must carry out thorough, independent investigations to stem violence against journalists, and there must be political and economic consequences for those who fail to carry out proper investigations that meet international standards.”
Long-term solutions, she adds, include countries establishing and investing resources in special mechanisms to protect journalists, such as those in places like Mexico. But she warns that they have not lived up to their promise, largely because of a lack of resources, capacity, and political will.
Governments must also prioritize protection, credible investigations, and justice. Where local governments fail, “foreign states should also look at universal jurisdiction to pursue those accused of murdering journalists — in the same way Germany is prosecuting a member of former Gambian president Yahya Jammeh’s hit squad responsible for the assassination of The Point editor Dedya Hydara.”
TAEF continues to mourn these deaths, mount pressure on relevant governments to answer the growing list of journalists killed, and deliver justice for the affected in promoting press freedom.
TVET students from Tech Terrain College in Malaysia visited as part of The Asia Foundation’s research work on improving technical and vocational education in the country . Credit: The Asia Foundation/ Whitney Legge
Opinion by Nadya Subramaniam, Fauwaz Abdul Aziz (kuala lumpur, malaysia)
Inter Press Service
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Jan 20 (IPS) – Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) in Malaysia originated from the colonial and early post-colonial governments’ need for trained and skilled manpower to run state agencies and projects.
Over the last few decades, the TVET system has shifted notably towards efforts to collaborate with industry players. The Ministries of Education, Higher Education and Human Resources have been the more recognised public faces in matters of TVET.
Up to 10 other ministries (Youth and Sports, Women, Family and Community Development, Agriculture and Food industries, Defence, Works, and Rural and Regional Development, among others) and as many as 20 government bodies have had their own TVET programmes operating independently and with different standards (for capacity planning, recruitment and training and curriculum development).
There are also sub-ministry bodies, such as the Rubber Industry Smallholders Development Authority (RISDA) and MARA. Hundreds of private TVET providers with little-known operations, performance and standards exist.
Although the National Occupational Skills Standard (NOSS) serves as the national curriculum for the recruitment and training of TVET instructors and trainees, some ministries operate independently and keep to their own standards. Some bodies operate in silos, while others compete with each other.
Masterplan lacking
Here, we see the entanglement of parallel, overlapping or even competing jurisdictions and standards, and the lack of one lead agency to champion and coordinate the national TVET agenda.
This results in a duplication of offerings, especially apparent in situations where public and private TVET institutes in close geographical proximity to each other compete for students.
In one particular district in northern Malaysia that we visited, for example, one local TVET institution providing automotive courses complained of having to compete fiercely with several other local TVET training providers in close proximity to one another for students interested in acquiring the same skills certification.
The divergence caused by the multiplicity of stakeholders has led to differing preferences in employers. Some employers will hire based on the reputation of the TVET training provider (such as the Penang Skills Development Corporation, PSDC), while others prefer to hire skilled workers based on the accrediting body of the certification.
Other employers prefer TVET graduates with certificates accredited by the Malaysian Qualifications Agency (MQA), which is under the Ministry of Higher Education, over those accredited by the Human Resources Ministry’s DSD. An institute chairman reported to us that his institute saw a decrease in applicants after the Department of Public Services in charge of civil service employment withdrew recognition of a particular DSD certification.
Currently, important political actors – state governments, district and municipal/town councils and economic programmes such as the five Regional Economic Corridors, have yet to clearly and systematically integrate and engage in projects to develop national TVET.
Clearly, too many organisations involved in the management of TVET have led to confusion, lack of clarity, weak enforcement and needless duplications, thereby exacerbating the already poor image of TVET among the key stakeholders (namely, industry, parents, students and the community at large).
The Human Resources Ministry’s Department of Skills Development (DSD) regularly engages with the industry to gain their input. The Sistem Latihan Dual Nasional (National Dual Training System, SLDN) was established to increase collaboration with industry and provide work-ready TVET graduates.
In fact, several small, private TVET institutes – often with an industry parent or partner organisations – do provide skilled workers who meet industry needs, thus ensuring their students’ employability.
Large-scale collaborations with industry have shown some success; the Malaysian Plastics Manufacturers Association (MPMA) collaborated with the Economic Planning Unit (EPU) in 2012 and 2017 for talent development in the plastics industry, using both local and international expertise. Based on a recent Auditor General’s Report, current employer satisfaction with TVET graduates’ outcomes is at 88.5%.
Solving the Conundrum
However, a common point raised by our interlocutors is that industry players are seldom, inadequately and unsystematically engaged in the development of TVET programmes. Industry players, on the other hand, say they do not see clear returns on their investment when they collaborate with ministries and other stakeholders on TVET. They are especially wary about the complicated bureaucracy involved.
A survey found that more than one-fifth of 507 locally based companies said they either would not allow trainees from the SLDN programme to perform on-site operations side-by-side with their employees (17.8%) or were not sure if they would allow the trainees to do so (10.2%).
An overwhelming majority of the companies (82.2%) said they would not participate in the SLDN programme, while 13.4% said they were not sure. Only 4.4% said they would.
The lack of adequate collaboration has led to a mismatch of skills for the needs of the industry. Now, employers have to spend time and resources retraining their fresh hires, leading to their unwillingness to offer high salaries to fresh TVET graduates. It frustrates existing trainees and deters many others from joining TVET programmes because, at the end of the day, they might not even be hired.
Despite the positive commitment and various initiatives and developments, TVET in Malaysia is still plagued by the lack of synergies, efficiencies and shared aspirations among its key players and stakeholders. However, we believe there is a way out of the woods.
Most generally, an overall improved audit of the TVET system, covering all ministries and the governance system, needs to be done. The institutional framework should then be rationalised to focus on skills development efforts that align with national socio-economic priorities. That said, strategic collaboration across ministries and industry support must be improved.
There is also a need for shared responsibility and more autonomy among states and district and local authorities, as well as for greater engagement with the regional economic corridors. A whole-of-government as well as a whole-of-society approach should be adopted for forging partnerships and strengthening the TVET system. To this end, increased inter-ministry data sharing would be important to support effective decision-making.
As for the role of industry in TVET, it is a consensus among many observers and stakeholders that TVET needs to become industry-driven. The industry should be accorded a prominent role in steering the national TVET agenda, instead of merely being invited to collaborate.
TVET institutions, meanwhile, should be empowered and incentivised to engage with their stakeholders, especially industry partners, expand partnerships with the industry beyond student internships and curriculum development, and inculcate innovative learning through student mentorship, project-based learning and guest lectures.
To improve the quality assurance of TVET, a single quality assurance system (as recommended in the mid-term review of the 11th Malaysian Plan) should be implemented to make TVET pathways comparable to academic ones.
A rating exercise, however, should also be undertaken on all TVET providers to enhance the overall management of TVET and to publicly ascertain the quality of these providers. A review of all approved TVET courses based on established protocols and end-user (industry) participation is planned, although the question of how this review would be carried out (e.g. balanced scorecard) has not yet been answered.
Audit reviews at the appropriate frequency should be carried out on selected TVET providers in order to assess, for example, course alignment with industry requirements.
All efforts to revamp the TVET system as the preferred education pathway will have to be accompanied by focused, coherent, national-level, branding initiatives targeted at specific groups; from students and parents to the community and industry. TVET should be highlighted as a potential incubator for entrepreneurs in order to attract more high-quality students.
Finally, the marketing of TVET through new and traditional media is crucial. The public image of TVET needs to be raised to motivate the next generation.
Nadya Subramaniam is a Program Manager at The Asia Foundation, leading the initiative to support the growth and development of Malaysia’s TVET Ecosystem. She is also involved in digital upskilling efforts aimed at women microentrepreneurs and youth living below the poverty line.
Fauwaz Abdul Aziz is a Projects Researcher at Penang Institute, and is currently completing his PhD dissertation in anthropology at the Friedrich-Alexander University (FAU) Erlangen–Nürnberg in Bayern, Germany.
Note: The authors have been involved in a research partnership formed in early 2021 between The Asia Foundation (TAF) and the International Institute of Public Policy and Management (INPUMA), University of Malaya, to understand the critical constraints and challenges facing TVET in Malaysia, in order to support the growth and improvement of the system. Funded by the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, the research involved engaging with diverse stakeholders in the national TVET system in interviews, focus group discussions, a policy lab, and site visits.
The stakeholders ranged from TVET students, instructors and administrators to government officials, institutional representatives and industry players. The outcome was the publication, in January 2022, of Recommendations Towards Improving Technical and Vocational Education and Training in Malaysia, which assessed the national TVET ecosystem and proposed ways to improve that system. The complete report can be downloaded here.
This article was first published by Penang Institute on 6th January 2023 and is republished with permission.
Pablo González during a previous trip to Ukraine. Credit: Juan Teixeira/IPS
by Karlos Zurutuza (nabarniz, spain)
Inter Press Service
NABARNIZ, Spain, Jan 19 (IPS) – It’s 23 hours a day in a cell without natural light and just one to walk around in a 7×4-metre courtyard. For Pablo González, an independent Spanish-Russian journalist, it’s been almost a year spent in solitary confinement in Poland.
González was arrested on the night of February 27th in Przemysl, a Polish city bordering Ukraine. A journalist specializing in the post-Soviet space, the reporter had worked in Ukraine several times and he was planning to cross the border to cover the Russian invasion of the country launched a few days before.
Three days after his arrest, the Polish government released a statement that the Internal Security Agency (ABW) had arrested González “on suspicion of having carried out operations for the benefit of Russia, taking advantage of his status as a journalist.”
“They said they had ‘irrefutable proof’ that he is a spy, but no one has yet seen it. The secrecy around it is overwhelming,” Oihana Goiriena, González’s partner, told IPS from her residence in Nabarniz, in Spain’s Basque Country.
Following the latest three-month extension granted by the court handling the case, Polish authorities still have not made public the evidence they claim to have against the journalist. His lawyers in Poland are not allowed to speak publicly about the case, there is no date for the trial and not even a formal accusation against González.
“He has lost a lot of weight, but the worst thing for him is being in solitary confinement, not being able to talk to anyone all day,” explains 47-year-old Goiriena. She was able to visit him on November 21 of last year. A Polish security agent supervised the reunion, for which Goiriena travelled to Poland.
González is prevented from making telephone calls and has to rely on letters to communicate with the outside world. The letters need to be translated and filtered by Polish security first, however, and replies can take four months. “Two for the letters to reach him and another two to receive his,” says Goiriena. As for her three children, “they have not seen their father in all this time.”
Goiriena describes the Spanish Government’s response to the case as “tepid.”
“So far we have only had contact with the Spanish consul in Warsaw, no one else has reassured us or shared any hints,” she says.
The reason González has been dragged to the Polish cell remains vague, she says. Goiriena believes her partner’s two passports, Russian and Spanish, set off alarm bells in Warsaw.
The son of a Russian and the grandson of an exile from the Spanish Civil War, Pablo González was born in Moscow in 1982 as Pavel Rubtsov. When his parents split eight years later, the child was left in the custody of his mother -the granddaughter of another Spanish exile- who returned to Spain and registered her school-age son as Pablo, the Spanish translation of Pavel, and under her last name, González.
“He is an ‘uncomfortable’ journalist,” for Polish officials, she says. “I think they went too far and now they don’t know how to get out of this.”
The reporter during the siege of Nagorno Karabakh, in 2020 (Courtesy González family)
Administrative silence
A Polish lawyer was hired in April 2022, and Goiriena sought advice from a criminal justice panel in the country last October. González’s primary lawyer since he was arrested, though, has been Gonzalo Boye.
A Chilean based in Spain for over three decades, Boye is an expert in European International Law who has been involved in several high-profile cases including the March 11, 2004 jihadist bombing of Madrid’s Atocha train station, and Edward Snowden´s whistleblower case, among others.
Speaking to IPS by phone from Madrid, he said González’s arrest is “unprecedented” within the European Union. “It is an unsustainable case, one of those in which someone is arrested and later investigated.” Boye has not yet been allowed to visit his client.
“Neither Brussels nor Madrid have lifted a finger, their only answer so far has been silence,” says Boye. Claiming institutional indifference to what he describes as “a kind of Guantánamo within the European Union,” he has already forwarded a protection request to the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detentions.
“Europe has sided squarely with Ukraine, and Poland is key in the conflict. Pablo González is just another victim of that war,” argues Boye, in an attempt to find a logic to González´s arrest in Poland.
Alongside a platform that struggles to make the case visible, several personalities and professionals in communication and law have requested Spain’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Spain for greater involvement in its resolution.
In a reply to repeated efforts at contact from IPS, Spain’s Ministry of External Affairs stated by email that Spain’s embassy in Warsaw “is up to date on the case and following it closely.”
The statement says González has been offered an opportunity for consular assistance, and received seven visits, with “the next expected soon.”
“At all times, the need to respect their rights has been stressed to Polish authorities. In addition, efforts have been made at different levels in relation to his case, conveying the same message,” the ministry said, in its statement.
The Damages
The war in Ukraine has turned Poland into a main hub for supplies of all sorts in Ukraine – from basic food items to hit-tech weaponry -, as well as the main exit point for millions of refugees fleeing the war. It is the focal country in a conflict whose consequences are felt globally.
Poland’s role in the conflict, however, has not prevented the progressive deterioration of its democracy.
In its 2022 report, the US NGO Freedom House claimed that Poland had the fastest decline in democracy among the 29 countries in Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia monitored by the organization.
“I don’t recall a case similar to that of Pablo González in the European Union,” Alfonso Bauluz, the president of Reporters Without Borders in Spain told IPS over the phone from Madrid.
While he pointed to the “complicated scenario” posed by the war in Ukraine, he also highlighted that Poland is “one of those EU countries that have toughened measures against plurality of information.”
“For Poland, it´s already been eight years of consecutive decline in the World’s Press Freedom Index we release at RSF,” stresses Bauluz. The eastern European country ranks 66th (just behind Cyprus, Mauritius and Montenegro) on a list of 180 countries.
On January 10, RSF Spain called again for the “end of the prison cruelty inflicted on Pablo González,” that his presumption of innocence be respected and that “all the guarantees for a fair trial” are met.
“All I want is a trial as soon as possible, either public or private, but as soon as possible,” says Oihana Goiriena. Although the journalist’s partner is confident that his innocence will finally be proven and he will be released, she also stresses that the damage has already been done:
“In a few weeks, he will have served a year in prison. In addition, paying lawyers and costs has put us in debt for a long time, not to mention the professional damage it entails for a journalist specializing in the post-Soviet space”.
India’s new Chief Justice, Dhananjaya Y Chandrachud has significant challenges ahead as activists hope he will continue with his legacy. Credit: Subhashish Panigrahi and Charmanderrulez
by Mehru Jaffer
Inter Press Service
Dec 14 (IPS) – India’s new Chief Justice, Dhananjaya Y Chandrachud, has a significant challenge ahead – as activists and minorities remain hopeful that he will remain true to his legacy of delivering judgments that enshrined the Constitution, especially on personal liberty.
Sanjay Kapoor, founder editor of Hardnews Magazine and political analyst told the IPS that many of the rulings by Indian courts in recent times have been deeply disturbing.
“In the name of national security, draconian laws are evoked to curb personal liberty. Journalists and activists have been arrested and locked away under anti-terror law without evidence,” said Kapoor.
He gave the example of Siddique Kappan, who has remained in jail for more than two years for unknown reasons. Kappan got bail from the Supreme Court, but anti-money laundering laws were immediately slapped upon him to ensure that he remained in prison.
Kapoor’s main concern is the undermining of courts by the government, which is sure to weaken institutions and harm democracy in India.
Meanwhile, the CJI also warned that he was not here to do miracles.
“I know that challenges are high; perhaps the expectations are also high, and I am deeply grateful for your sense of faith, but I am not here to do miracles,” Chandrachud said after his appointment.
The challenges facing the judiciary include a backlog of cases, delays in appointing Supreme Court judges, and significant inconsistencies in judicial approaches.
Soon after Chandrachud took oath on November 9, Chandrachud expressed concern over the long list of requests before the Supreme Court for bail. He said that district judges are reluctant to grant bail in a fair manner out of fear of being targeted.
Activists say that this is the same reason that media personnel, political opponents, and social activists are languishing behind bars without bail today.
Activist Teesta Setalvad was arrested in June 2021, and her bail plea was only accepted three months later when she was finally released. There are others, like student leader Umar Khalid, who has languished in jail for more than two years.
The judicial system in India is under tremendous pressure. Until last May, countless cases were pending in courts across different levels of the judiciary. Many of the cases were pending in subordinate courts, a large percent in High Courts, while a hundred thousand cases have been pending for over 30 years. Amid the rising trend of litigation, more and more people and organisations seek justice from courts today. However, there are not enough judges to hear the cases. The courts are overburdened, and the backlog of cases is intimidating.
The reluctance to grant bail to especially political opponents has only aggravated the matter. Most recently, Sanjay Raut, senior opposition party leader, said that he had lost 10 kgs while in prison. The legislature was accused of money laundering. He was in jail for 100 days before bail was granted to him in November. He was kept in a dark cell where he did not see sunlight for 15 days.
Raut said that he would not have been arrested if he had surrendered to the will of the ruling party and remained a mute spectator to the politics of the day. He wondered if only those who oppose the politics of the ruling party would continue to be arrested.
The use of the justice system as a political tool and reluctance to grant bail at the district level has clogged the higher judiciary with far too many cases.
“The reason why the higher judiciary is being flooded with bail applications is because of the reluctance of the grassroots to grant bail, and why are judges reluctant to grant bail not because they do not have the ability to understand the crime. They probably understand the crime better than many of the higher court judges because they know what crime is there at the grassroots in the districts, but there is a sense of fear that if I grant bail, will someone target me tomorrow on the ground that I granted bail in a heinous case. This sense of fear nobody talks about but, which we must confront because unless we do, we are going to render our district courts toothless and our higher courts dysfunctional,” Chandrachud said at an event hosted by the Bar Council of India last week to felicitate his appointment as the country’s 50th CJI.
The Supreme Court of India is perhaps the most powerful Court in the world. However, in recent times the judiciary has been criticised for its uneven handling of cases. It is under scrutiny over contradictions found in its functioning. The fact that a former CJI accepted a seat in the upper house of parliament soon after his retirement two years ago had raised eyebrows.
The judiciary’s perceived deference to the present government is a major concern, including the ongoing arrest of political opponents, and refusal to grant bail to those arrested is becoming the norm. On the other hand, ‘friends’ of the ruling party are allowed to get away with murder and rape.
The nation was shocked after a document was made public last October as proof that the premature release of 11 men convicted for the gang rape of Bilkis Bano and the killing of her family during the 2002 Gujarat riots was approved by the home ministry despite opposition by a special court. A Communist Party of India (Marxist) member Subhashini Ali, journalist Revati Laul and Professor Roop Rekha Verma together filed a public interest litigation (PIL) against a remission granted to 11 convicts who were released on August 15, India’s 75th Independence Day celebrations this year on account of good behaviour.
Bano was gang-raped along with 14 members of her family. Her 3-year-old daughter Saleha was killed by a mob in a village in the province of Gujarat as they fled communal violence in 2002. Bano was 19 years old and five months pregnant at that time. Shobha Gupta, the lawyer for Bano has battled for years for the rape survivor to get justice. Gupta told Barkha Dutt, a senior journalist, that she is shattered and unable to face Bano. That after the release of her rapists from custody, Bano is silent and feels alone.
Dutt had interviewed Bano 20 years ago. Today she wrote in her column that an unspeakable injustice is unfolding with brazen impunity. Its legality is dodgy. Dutt said, “Let’s raise hell”.
After the men who raped Bano and killed her child were freed, they were greeted outside the prison with sweets and garlands. This is the story of a very seriously ill nation, columnist Jawed Naqvi said.
“The nation that was baying for the execution of men who raped a young woman in a bus in Delhi in 2012 seemed deaf to Bilkis’s trauma,” Naqvi wrote. The executive has turned its back on Bano. The media is disinterested and civil society has been bullied into silence at a time when principles are passe for most politicians.”
So who will give justice to citizens like Bano?
The Supreme Court?
In a plea filed by Azam Khan last July, the opposition party leader pointed out a new trend amongst the high courts to impose unnecessary bail conditions. Khan said that a high court had ordered the politician to hand over allegedly encroached land as a condition for bail. The ruling was overturned.
Seeking justice these days is tough within the courts and outside.
The 74-year-old Khan has been behind bars since early 2020. Multiple charges have been slapped on him, including corruption, theft, and land grab, in an effort to make sure that he remains behind bars on some charge or the other. However, Khan was granted interim bail last May. A few months later, he was fined and has been sentenced to three more years in prison for a hate speech made in 2019. At that time, Khan was accused of blaming the Prime Minister for creating an atmosphere in the country in which it was difficult for Muslims, the largest minority community in India, to live.
A new report published by the USA-based NGO Council on Minority Rights in India (CMRI) and released on November 20 at New Delhi’s Press Club found that by helping offenders, detaining victims, and failing to register first information reports (FIR) in some cases, law enforcement agencies play a role in furthering hate crimes.
Discussing the legal aspects of persecution, lawyer Kawalpreet Kaur said that minorities are facing the brunt of the state to varying degrees. Cases of the pogrom against Muslims during the Delhi riots have been lying in the high court for the last two years.
“Indian courts need to keep their eyes and ears open; it is not a one-off case of Afree Fatima’s house bulldozed or when the stalls of working-class Muslims were razed in Delhi despite a stay from the court,” she said.
The lawyer called it an attack by the Indian state against its minorities and a campaign of misinformation and Islamophobia witnessed every day.
The release of the CMRI report comes at a time when numerous countries and organisations are calling upon India to take stock of the plight of its religious minorities.
Six international rights groups – the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT), Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW), International Dalit Solidarity Network, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch have reminded New Delhi in a joint statement that it is yet to implement recommendations of a recent UN report on India which cover topics which include the protection of minorities and human rights defenders, upholding civil liberties, and more.
“The Indian government should promptly adopt and act on the recommendations that United Nations member states made at the UN Human Rights Council’s Universal Periodic Review process on November 10,” the joint statement read.
Police use water cannons to disperse anti-government protesters during a demonstration in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Sept. 24, 2022. Credit: Voice of America
by Thalif Deen (united nations)
Inter Press Service
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 10 (IPS) – The United Nations has singled out 42 countries (out of 193 member states) for condemnation– virtually blacklisting them– for retaliating against human rights activists and journalists
If you cooperate with the United Nations and complain about human rights abuses in your home country, chances are you will find yourself either jailed, persecuted, tortured or under government surveillance.
The 42 countries include some of the world’s worst authoritarian regimes with a notoriety for extensive human rights abuses.
Highlighting a number of “disturbing trends” over the past year, the annual report by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres details how people — mainly victims of human rights violations, human rights defenders and journalists – suffered reprisals and intimidation by States and non-State actors.
This included people being detained, targeted by restrictive legislation and surveilled both online and offline. People who tried to cooperate with the UN, or were perceived as doing so, were also affected.
In a third of the countries named in the report, individuals and groups, including civil society organizations (CSOs), either refrained from cooperating or only agreed to report their cases anonymously out of fear of reprisals.
“Despite positive developments, including pledges and shared commitments by Member States against reprisals, this report shows the extent to which people are pursued and persecuted for raising human rights concerns with the UN”.
“And we know that, shocking though this number is, many cases of reprisals are not even reported,” says Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights Ilze Brands Kehris.
The 42 States referred to in the report (which covers the period from 1 May 2021 to 30 April 2022) include Afghanistan, Andorra, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Belarus, Brazil, Burundi, Cameroon, China, Cuba, Cyprus, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Djibouti, Egypt, Guatemala, India, Indonesia, the Islamic Republic of Iran, Israel, Kazakhstan, Laos People’s Democratic Republic, Libya, Maldives, Mali, Mexico, Morocco, Myanmar, Nicaragua, Philippines, Russian Federation, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, South Sudan, Sri Lanka, Sudan, State of Palestine, Thailand, Turkmenistan, United Arab Emirates, the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Viet Nam, and Yemen.
Police use water cannons to disperse anti-government protesters during a demonstration in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Sept. 24, 2022. Credit: Voice of America
Dr. Simon Adams, President and CEO of the Center for Victims of Torture, the largest international organization that treats survivors and advocates for an end to torture worldwide, told IPS the UN is an impartial humanitarian organization dedicated to the advancement of humanity.
“When some states or armed groups perceive civil society activists or journalists speaking to the United Nations as constituting a threat to their interests, they are violating the ‘faith in fundamental human rights’ that the UN Charter proudly encapsulates,” he said.
‘We the peoples,’ where ever we may be in the world, have a right to speak directly to UN representatives without some malevolent authority leaning over our shoulders, tapping our phone, or threatening us with detention or disappearance,” he said.
Human rights defenders in the countries mentioned in the UN Secretary-General’s report not only deserve our respect and solidarity, they need protection, declared Dr Adams.
When Secretary-General Antonio Guterres last week congratulated Ales Bialiatski and the organizations Memorial and the Centre for Civil Liberties on being awarded the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize, he said this year’s recognition shines a spotlight on the power of civil society in advance of peace.?
“Civil society groups (CSOs) are the oxygen of democracy, and catalysts for peace, social progress and economic growth. They help keep governments accountable and carry the voices of the vulnerable into the halls of power”. ?
Yet today, civic space is narrowing across the world, the Secretary-General warned. ?
“Human rights defenders, women’s rights advocates, environmental activists, journalists and others face arbitrary arrest, harsh prison sentences, smear campaigns, crippling fines and violent attacks,” he declared.
“As we congratulate this year’s winners, let us pledge to defend the brave defenders of universal values of peace, hope and dignity,” Guterres said.
Meanwhile, responding to a decision by the UN Human Rights Council’s (UNHRC), to establish an independent monitoring mechanism on the human rights situation in Russia, Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International’s Secretary General, said her organization welcomes the decision to finally bring Russia’s human rights record under scrutiny.
Under Vladimir Putin’s leadership, she pointed out, “the country has seen its political opposition crushed, grassroots NGOs and activists outlawed, independent media shuttered, and civil society as a whole scorched to the ground”.
“Russia’s unlawful aggression in Ukraine could not be a clearer demonstration of Vladimir Putin’s longstanding disregard for life and human rights.”
Callamard said the establishment of this important mechanism will be a long overdue lifeline to civil society in Russia, independent media and many others standing up to repression.
“We call on all states to support the swift establishment of this monitoring and reporting mandate, and to fully support victims of human rights and humanitarian law violations committed by the national authorities”.
“We call on the Russian authorities to heed the clear message that the Human Rights Council sends with the establishment of this mechanism, and to fundamentally change course to cease its violations at home and abroad,” she declared.
Providing an update on the military regime in Myanmar, UN Spokesperson Stephane Dujarric told reporters October 6, that according to UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization), at least 170 journalists have been arrested since the military takeover in Myanmar in February last year.
Nearly 70 journalists, including 12 women, remain under detention. UNESCO has also recorded over 200 incidents of media repression, including killings, arrests, detention, criminal cases, imprisonments, and raids of editorial offices.
Forty-four journalists, which include seven women, have been sentenced for criminal offences by local courts, he said. Also, media workers report that they experience digital surveillance of mobile phones and social media platforms. UNESCO remains committed to protecting and defending their press freedom.
Meanwhile, the UN report said the surveillance of individuals and groups who cooperate with the UN continued to be reported in all regions with growing evidence of online surveillance and cyberattacks. The massive digital shift accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic also increased challenges relating to cyber-security, privacy, and access to online spaces.
Another concerning global trend is the use and impact of restrictive legislation that prevents and punishes cooperation with the UN, resulting in some cases of people being sentenced to long prison terms or placed under house arrest. There were recurring and similar allegations of intimidation reported in a number of countries, which could indicate a pattern.
Another global trend is self-censorship, choosing not to cooperate with the UN or doing so anonymously amid concerns for their safety. Increased surveillance and monitoring, as well as the fear of criminal liability, have created what the report terms a “chilling effect” of silence, stopping people from cooperating further with the UN and deterring others from doing so, according to the report.
As in previous years, the report shows that intimidation and reprisals disproportionally affect certain populations and groups, including representatives of indigenous peoples, minorities or those who work on environment and climate change issues, as well as people who may suffer discrimination based on age, sexual orientation and gender.
“The risks affecting women victims, as well as women human rights defenders and peace builders, who share testimony and cooperate with the UN remain daunting. We will continue to work to ensure that all can safely engage with the UN,” Brands Kehris stressed, as she presented the report to the Human Rights Council in Geneva.
The report, entitled ‘Cooperation with the United Nations, its representatives and mechanisms in the field of human rights’ (A/HRC/51/47), including extensive annexes detailing cases country by country, can be accessed online.
NEW YORK, Oct 04 (IPS) – “This woman sitting next to me, Maria Ressa, is a Nobel laureate and a convicted criminal,” said barrister Amal Clooney, who co-leads the international legal team representing Ressa. The founder of news website Rappler, Ressa has been targeted with a barrage of legal charges intended to stop her journalism in the Philippines.
During a conversation hosted by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly high-level week, which concluded September 26, Clooney revealed that Ressa faces the possibility of imminent imprisonment in the Philippines.
“The only thing standing between her and a prison cell is one decision from the Philippines Supreme Court that could come as soon as in 21 days’ time,” said Clooney to an audience of news leaders, diplomats, and advocates.
She then appealed for prosecutors to drop the baseless charges and for newly elected President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to issue a pardon. In May, CPJ wrote to Marcos requesting that he urgently take concrete steps to undo former President Rodrigo Duterte’s long campaign of intimidation and harassment of the press.
The conversation, led by CPJ President Jodie Ginsberg, also explored the broader misuse of laws increasingly deployed to silence the press across the world. Clooney and Ressa are both past recipients of CPJ’s Gwen Ifill Press Freedom award for their extraordinary and sustained achievement in the cause of press freedom.
UNGA week also served to gather legal experts, diplomats, and activists to discuss the plight of journalists forced to flee their homes and the responsibility of governments to provide safe refuge through special emergency visas.
During a high-level side-event hosted by the Czech Republic, CPJ’s Ginsberg joined Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavsky and deputy chairs of the High Level Panel of Legal Experts on Media Freedom to make the case for these visas.
CPJ has advocated for such visas in the past in line with recommendations by members of the Media Freedom Coalition, a group of 52 governments that support press freedom.
Ginsberg’s message: Governments must create special emergency visas for journalists to allow them to quickly evacuate and relocate to safety. The visas should be granted to individuals who are at risk due to their work keeping the public informed.
As Ginsberg noted, across the world, from Afghanistan to Nicaragua and Belarus to Myanmar, CPJ has worked on hundreds of cases of such journalists seeking safe refuge. There is no time to waste.
Journalists forced to flee often try to continue reporting in exile. Panelist Roman Anin, an exiled investigative journalist who runs news website iStories, shared his story of moving his newsroom out of Russia.
“When the war started, we had a choice between three options, either stay in Russia and stop our work, stay in Russia, continue our work and end up in jail, or relocate the newsroom,” he said. Anin said that in spite of the hardship of the relocation, his newsroom has been able to reach Russian audiences with stories on alleged war crimes committed in Ukraine.
Anin’s experience, and CPJ’s own work helping many other displaced journalists, demonstrate how critical it is for governments to prioritize emergency visas for swift relocation and safety. Refusing to do so not only impacts the lives of individual journalists, it is a blow to free expression and access to information globally.
In solidarity,
Gypsy Guillén Kaiser is CPJ Advocacy and Communications Director.
Journalists, writers, both local and international, have called on the authorities in India to respect human rights and release imprisoned writes and dissident and critical voices. Protests about media freedom have become more urgent in recent years since this protest by the Mumbai Press Club. Credit: Facebook
by Mehru Jaffer (lucknow)
Inter Press Service
Lucknow, Aug 17 (IPS) – On the eve of India’s 76th Independence Day, the president of the country, Droupadi Murmu, received a letter signed by 102 international writers, including authors from India and the Indian diaspora expressing “grave concerns about the rapidly worsening situation for human rights” and calling for the release of imprisoned writers and “dissident and critical voices”.
Salman Rushdie signed the letter before the attack on him on August 12, 2022. Rushdie joined PEN America and PEN International, two worldwide associations of writers, to convey his anguish to the highest office in India.
Dated August 14, 2022, the letter urged the President of India to support the democratic ideals promoting and protecting free expression in the spirit of India’s independence and to restore India’s reputation as an inclusive, secular, multi-ethnic and -religious democracy where writers can express dissenting or critical views without threat of detention, investigation, physical attacks, or retaliation.
“Free expression is the cornerstone of a robust democracy. By weakening this core right, all other rights are at risk and the promises made at India’s birth as an independent republic are severely compromised,” the writers emphasised.
In its Freedom to Write Index 2021, PEN America considered India the only “nominally democratic country” among the “top 10 jailers” of writers and public intellectuals worldwide. The letter highlighted the arrest of writers, including poet Varavara Rao who was recently granted bail.
The “grave concern” regarding threats to free expression and other core rights has grown steadily in recent years.
The signatories underlined that writers and public intellectuals were “subject to arrest, prosecution, and travel bans intended to restrain their free speech”.
Well-known authors Amitav Ghosh, Perumal Murugan, Orhan Pamuk, Jerry Pinto, Salil Tripathi, Aatish Taseer and Shobhaa De, have signed the letter that said, “Online trolling and harassment is rife, hate speech is expressed loudly”, and criticised frequent internet shutdowns “centred on Kashmir” limit the access to news and information.
The letter registered a strong protest over the “persecution” of writers, columnists, editors, journalists, and artists, including Mohammed Zubair, Siddique Kappan, Teesta Setalvad, Avinash Das, and Fahad Shah.
In yet another PEN America initiative, 113 authors from India and the Indian diaspora have contributed to a collection reflecting on the state of free expression and democratic ideals. Titled India at 75, the collection includes original writings by Salman Rushdie, Jhumpa Lahiri, Geetanjali Shree, Rajmohan Gandhi and Romila Thapar, among others.
Rushdie writes that India’s “dream of fellowship and liberty is dead, or close to death”.
“Then, in the First Age of Hindustan Hamara, our India, we celebrated one another’s festivals, and believed, or almost believed, that all of the land’s multifariousness belonged to all of us. Now that dream of fellowship and liberty is dead, or close to death. A shadow lies upon the country we loved so deeply. Hindustan isn’t hamara anymore. The Ruling Ring—one might say—has been forged in the fire of an Indian Mount Doom. Can any new fellowship be created to stand against it?”
On August 15, India celebrated 75 years of independence from colonial rule. The country has yet to conquer poverty, but the largest democracy in the world did enjoy an excellent track record of encouraging free and fair media.
However, press freedom, as well as the unity of the country, is threatened by communal politics. A large section of mainstream media has turned pro-government, especially after the general elections in the spring of 2019. Ever since pressure has increased on the media to toe the line of the Hindu nationalist government. For the same reason, it is often difficult to distinguish between a ruling party spokesperson and a journalist in India today.
“At centre stage of media are views of political parties, their respective spokespersons making more noise than saying anything substantive on the electronic media,” Anand Vardhan Singh, Lucknow-based senior journalist and founder of YouTube channel The Public, told the IPS.
Singh regrets that the people in power have fragmented the national media between English versus regional languages, print versus electronic versus social media.
Investigative journalism is a thing of the past. The reporting aspect of media has taken a backseat.
This year’s independence day celebration will be remembered for what 9-year-old Mehnaz Kappan said.
“I am Mehnaz Kappan, daughter of journalist Siddique Kappan, a citizen who has been forced into a dark room by breaking all freedom of a citizen”.
Siddique Kappan is a Delhi-based journalist from Kerala. He was arrested in October 2020 on his way to Hathras, a poverty-stricken village in north India in Uttar Pradesh, to report on the rape and murder of a 19-year-old Dalit woman.
“Attempts to demean, belittle, and outlaw dissent and protest and the problem of growing communalisation are the principal challenges the country faces today. A journalist needs nerves of steel and tremendous courage to continue to ask questions,” senior journalist and founding editor of The Wire, Siddharth Varadarajan, said.
Siddharth Varadarajan, foundering editor of The Wire has also been targeted. Credit: The Wire
Like many others, Varadarajan, too, was punished for speaking out, and court cases are filed against him. Many journalists are booked for sedition to intimidate those scribes who refuse to toe the line of people in power.
The problem is that mainstream media has stopped questioning the government. Public interest is no longer on the mind of the media. The purpose of mainstream journalists, nicknamed ‘godi’ media or ‘cozy’ journalism, is only to praise those in power.
The media has abrogated its responsibility of asking questions, and those journalists who question, like Mohammad Zubair (33), are put into jail. The arrest of journalist Zubair marks a new low for press freedom in India, where the government has created a hostile and unsafe environment for members of the press. Zubair was arrested because AltNews, a fact-checking website he co-founded, frequently exposed claims made by the government, making him an obstacle to false propaganda. Zubair was arrested last June. He spent 23 days in prisons and police custody in Delhi and Uttar Pradesh and was released on July 23, 2022, after the Supreme Court granted interim bail to him.
Soon after he had walked out of prison, Zubair told the national daily The Hindu that he thinks his arrest was made an example for others.
Zubair said that multiple First Information Reports (FIR) filed against him were a message from the government that it could book 10-15 random FIRs in different states to keep one in jail for years. Zubair was released after a Supreme Court ruling to grant him bail. The FIRs filed against Zubair are random and bizarre, like two FIRs in Uttar Pradesh are for fact-checking a media channel-which is his job. There is another FIR for calling an accused in a hate speech case a hate monger in a tweet!
Zubair happens to be a Muslim. Another Muslim journalist Sana Mattoo was prevented from flying abroad for a book release. To intimidate Zubair, money-laundering charges were filed against him. Maria Ressa, the Nobel Prize-winning journalist from the Philippines, said that she was shocked at the arrest of Zubair and human rights activist Teesta Setalvad. Ressa told a digital media reporter in India that all journalists should unite to oppose what has happened.
“Everyone should be talking about it; everyone should be writing about this,” said Ressa.
In a population of 1.4 billion people, 14 percent are Muslim, but the practice of majoritarian politics in recent times has made the ruling party increasingly intolerant of Muslim voices in the country. Kappan, a Muslim, was denied bail.
Millions of tweets are directed at journalist Rana Ayyub, another Muslim, making her one of the most brutally targeted journalists in the world.
Ayyub, an independent journalist and a Washington Post columnist, has used her social media heft and the global attention she receives to highlight the plight of Indian Muslims and the arrest of journalists in India. She was accused of money laundering and tax fraud related to her crowdfunding campaign to help those affected by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
Ayyub has denied any wrongdoing, calling the allegations baseless. Early this year, the United Nations appointed independent rights experts issued a statement calling Indian authorities to stop the systematic harassment against Ayyub.
“Relentless misogynistic and sectarian attacks online against journalist Rana Ayyub must be promptly and thoroughly investigated by the Indian authorities, and the judicial harassment against her brought to an end at once,” the statement said.
For the same reason, India ranks as one of the most dangerous and restrictive countries for journalists today. Despite its secular and democratic status, India is ranked 142nd in the Reporters Without Borders 2021 World Press Freedom Index.
There are other ways to make journalists feel uncomfortable. Notices were sent to the Indian Women Press Corps (IWPC) to vacate the accommodation allotted to them as their lease will soon end. A similar notice was also sent to South Asia’s Foreign Correspondents’ Club. Both organisations are Delhi based.
Shobhna Jain, President of IWPC, said, “It’s a routine procedural thing. The government is giving us renewals, and we are quite hopeful that this year too, we will get the lease renewed for a longer period”.
The IWPC is the country’s first association of women journalists, founded in 1994 as a support group to help women meet challenges unique to women. It was to ensure that women’s by-lines were respected and heard. Today more than 800 women are members of the IWPC who use the premises to network, access news sources, exchange information and share experiences to advance the profession. Located in the heart of New Delhi and equipped with a library and computer centre, the premises are a boon for journalists wanting to save time from commuting in the city.
Often children accompany the women journalist as she works while they play on the premises. Here press conferences are organised and exclusive interactions with newsmakers.
July this year was a terrible month for journalists around Asia.
On July 3, journalist Hasibur Rehman Rubel left his office in the Kushtia district in western Bangladesh, never to return. On July 7, his decomposed body was found in a river.
On July 7, Peer Muhammad Khan Kakar, a Pakistani journalist, was arrested in the Loralai district of southwest Balochistan on complaints related to his Facebook posts.
On the same day in July, Ressa’s prison sentence was increased by several months. A court in the Philippines affirmed the libel conviction of Ressa, Rappler’s head and co-founder.
Two days later, on July 9, members of a television team were attacked in Sri Lanka. The paramilitary police Special Task Force assaulted journalists reporting a protest in the capital city of Colombo.
The BBC reported that a video journalist in Colombo was allegedly punched by a member of the Sri Lankan army, his phone snatched, and footage deleted.
What is the solution to the vicious attack on journalists today? According to Varadrajan, it is unity amongst all media persons that can together fight the assault on the media and freedom of speech in the country.
Despite differences in political beliefs, scribes need to stand by each other today like never before. Varadrajan suggests building a team of lawyers to defend media persons in court.
Reporters and photojournalists cover an Aug. 11 press conference at the Supreme Electoral Tribunal in San Salvador. Independent media outlets in El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua suffer constant persecution and harassment by state entities and government officials in an attempt to silence them and discredit investigations into corruption and mismanagement of public funds. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS
by Edgardo Ayala (san salvador)
Inter Press Service
SAN SALVADOR, Aug 15 (IPS) – Practicing journalism in Guatemala, Nicaragua and El Salvador is becoming increasingly difficult in the face of the persecution of independent media outlets by neo-populist rulers of different stripes, intolerant of criticism.
The most recent high-profile case was the Jul. 29 arrest of José Rubén Zamora, founder and director of elPeriódico, one of the Guatemalan media outlets that has been most critical of the government of right-wing President Alejandro Giammattei, who has been in office since January 2020.
The union of Guatemalan journalists and the reporter’s family say the arrest is a clear example of political persecution as a result of the investigations into corruption and mismanagement in the Giammattei administration published by the newspaper, which was founded in 1996.
“I definitely believe it is a case of political persecution and harassment, and of violence against free expression and the expression of thought,” Ramón Zamora, son of the editor of elPeriódico who has been imprisoned since his arrest, told IPS from Guatemala City.
A case out of the blue
The 66-year-old journalist is one of the most recognized in Guatemala and in the Central American region, and has been awarded several times for elPeriódico’s investigative reporting.
Zamora is being charged with money laundering, influence peddling and racketeering, although the evidence shown at the initial hearing by prosecutors “are poor quality voice messages that show nothing,” according to Ramón.
The preliminary hearing ended on Aug. 9 with the judge’s decision to continue with the case and keep Zamora in pre-trial detention. Prosecutors now have three months to present more robust evidence before taking him to trial, while the defense will seek to gather evidence in order to secure his release.
“We are going to clearly demonstrate as many times as necessary that this case was staged, that the evidence, or rather the evidence they have, cannot be stretched as far as they are stretching it,” said Ramón, 32, an anthropologist by profession.
He added that from the beginning President Giammattei showed signs of intolerance towards criticism of his administration.
“We knew he was an angry person, authoritarian in the way he acted, but we never thought he would go this far,” he said.
Since the arrest, Ramón said that his father is in good spirits, upbeat, although he has had problems sleeping, while the newspaper continues to be published in the midst of serious difficulties due to the temporary seizure of its bank accounts and liquidity problems to pay the staff and other costs.
On Friday Aug. 12, elPeriódico gave key coverage to a decree approved by the Guatemalan legislature that gives life to a Cybercrime Law, which could become another governmental tool to silence critics.
The newspaper quoted the organization Acción Ciudadana, according to which article 9 of this law “contravenes free access to sources of information – a right stipulated in the constitution; furthermore, it violates the Law of Broadcasting of Thought, restricting freedom of information.”
Zamora Jr. regretted that in Central America journalistic work is restricted and persecuted by governments and other de facto powers, as is happening in Guatemala with Giammattei, in El Salvador with the government of Nayib Bukele, and in Nicaragua, with that of Daniel Ortega.
“Ortega, in Nicaragua, is a mirror that we all have in front of us in the region, it is worrisome,” he said.
Journalist José Rubén Zamora, editor of elPériódico, one of the newspapers most critical of the government of Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei, leaves the courtroom on Aug. 9 after a judge ordered pretrial detention, on accusations of money laundering. But his family, the journalists’ union and civil society organizations maintain that the case is part of political persecution promoted by the government. CREDIT: Courtesy of elPériódico
Press freedom in free fall
In these three countries there is an openly hostile policy against the independent media, whose journalists suffer harassment, persecution, blackmail, intimidation and restrictions of all kinds in the line of duty.
Central America, a region of 38 million people, faces serious economic and social challenges after leaving behind decades of political strife and civil wars in the 1970s and 1980s, specifically in Nicaragua, Guatemala and El Salvador.
Further progress towards democracy is undermined by attacks on or harassment of media outlets that criticize corrupt governments, according to reports by national and international organizations.
In this regard, the World Press Freedom Index 2022 report by Reporters Without Borders (RSF) points out the decline suffered by Nicaragua, which dropped 39 positions in the ranking to 160th place out of 180, and El Salvador, which lost 30 positions, dropping to 112th place.
“For the second year in a row El Salvador had one of the steepest falls in Latin America,” the report states.
And it adds that since he took office in 2019, Bukele, described as a “millennial” leader with a vague ideology and an “authoritarian tendency…is exerting particularly strong pressure on journalists and is using the extremely dangerous tactic of portraying the media as the enemy of the people.”
According to the Association of Journalists of El Salvador (Apes), from January to July 2022, 51 incidents have been reported against the press, related to digital attacks and obstruction of journalistic work by state institutions, officials and even supporters of the ruling party.
Bukele himself, in press conferences, often accuses the media and even specific journalists, who he names, of being part of an opposition plan to discredit the work of the government.
A number of reporters have left the country to avoid problems.
Of those who have left the country, at least three have done so almost obligatorily because government agencies or officials have pressured them to reveal their sources of information, Apes Freedom of Expression Rapporteur Serafín Valencia told IPS.
“Bukele decided to undertake a wave of attacks against the press, although not against the entire press, but against those media outlets and journalists who have a critical editorial line and try to do their work in an independent fashion,” said Valencia.
With regard to Ortega in Nicaragua, the RSF report states: “Nicaragua (160th) recorded the biggest drop in rankings (- 39 places) and entered the Index’s red zone.”
It adds: ” A farcical election in November 2021 that carried Daniel Ortega into a fourth consecutive term as president was accompanied by a ferocious crackdown on dissenting voices.
“The last bastions of the independent press came under fire, and the vast majority of independent journalists, threatened with abusive prosecution, were forced to leave the country,” says the report.
“You can’t kill the truth by killing journalists” reads a banner set out by press workers following the death of a colleague in Nicaragua, where the government of Daniel Ortega has shut down critical media outlets and forced many independent reporters into exile. CREDIT: Jader Flores/IPS
Guerrilla leader accused of being a dictator
One of the reporters who had to leave Nicaragua was Sergio Marín, who for more than 12 years hosted a radio program called La Mesa Redonda.
“There were very strong indications that my arrest was imminent,” Marín told IPS from San José, the capital of Costa Rica, the country he fled to on Jun. 21, 2021.
Marín said that the situation in Nicaragua was, and continues to be, untenable for independent media outlets and reporters since Ortega returned to power in January 2007, after a first stint as president between 1985 and 1990.
Ortega was a leader of the leftist guerrilla Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) that in July 1979 overthrew the Somoza dynasty’s dictatorship, which directly or through puppet rulers had been in power since the 1930s.
But the FSLN’s progressive ideas of justice and freedom were soon buried by Ortega’s new power dynamics: he forged obscure pacts with the country’s political and economic elites to set himself up as Nicaragua’s strongman, with actions typical of a dictator.
“With Ortega’s return to power in 2007, he began a process of isolation of journalists who ask questions that question power,” said Marín, 60.
Then, according to Marín, the government threw up a “financial wall”: denying state advertising to media outlets that were critical, or even advertising from private businesses allied with the Ortega administration.
That is when the first media closures began to be seen, he said.
The situation worsened with the popular uprising against the government in April 2018, massive protests that were stopped with bullets by the police, military and pro-Ortega paramilitary forces.
Around 300 people died in the repression unleashed by Ortega, said Marín.
These events were a turning point for journalism because, in the face of the crackdown, the media in general, except for pro-government outlets, came together in a united front.
“So the regime identified us as a key enemy, which must be silenced,” Marin added.
Since then, the Ortega government has maneuvered to close down independent media outlets and critical news spaces, such as those directed by veteran journalist Carlos Fernando Chamorro, who is now also in exile in Costa Rica.
“Now, the newspaper El Nuevo Diario is closed, and La Prensa was taken over by the government and the entire editorial staff is in exile, and in total there are more than 70 journalists who have left the country,” he added.
In the first week of August Ortega stepped up harassment against dissenting voices, and began targeting Catholic priests. Since Aug. 4 police forces have been holding Bishop Rolando Alvarez, of the Diocese of Matagalpa, in the north of the country, in the Episcopal Palace.
Alpha Media Holdings editor-in-chief and editor of NewsDay, Wisdom Mdzungairi (pictured), senior reporter, Desmond Chingarande and with company’s legal officer, Tatenda Chikohora were arrested on allegations of violating the Data Protection Act. Credit: NewsDay
by Ignatius Banda (bulawayo)
Inter Press Service
Bulawayo, Aug 10 (IPS) – Zimbabwe’s press freedom credentials suffered further criticism with the arrest of two journalists from a privately-owned newspaper charged with transmitting “false data messages.”
The pair were charged on August 3 under the contentious Criminal Law (Codification and Reform) Act, as amended through the Cyber and Data Protection Act, which became law in December last year despite spirited opposition from press freedom lobbyists and civic society groups.
The act has been criticised for giving too many powers to law enforcement authorities and the information ministry, allowing the monitoring of private electronic communication in violation of the country’s constitution.
What is significant, however, about the latest arrests of journalists is that while the crackdown on press freedom has for years been driven by the ruling Zanu-PF party against its critics, the two journalists, together with the paper’s attorney, were held for reporting on a private business enterprise believed to be run by politically connected individuals.
Senior reporter Desmond Chingarande who wrote the story, and Wisdom Mdzungairi, the Newsday editor-in-chief, were charged under a Cyber and Data Protection Act section which critics say vaguely criminalises the communication or spread of “false data messages.”
The two now have the dubious distinction of being the first journalists to be charged under the cybersecurity law.
The arrests have been condemned by rights groups. The Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA) reiterated that journalists have a Constitutional right to right to seek, receive and impart information. Credit: Twitter
Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA) quickly condemned the arrests.
“MISA Zimbabwe reiterates its long-standing position that when journalists are undertaking their professional duties, they will be exercising their constitutional rights as stipulated in Section 61 of the Constitution and that they have a right to seek, receive and impart information,” the press freedom watchdog said in a statement.
“Any limitation to this right should qualify under the three-pronged test, which requires legality, proportionality and necessity. It is also our position that criminal sanctions on false news are disproportionate and not necessary,” the statement added.
These concerns come as Zimbabwe’s record as one of the places where journalism is considered a dangerous profession worsens.
“On paper, the arrest of the journalists has been instigated by private businesspeople. But the truth is that charging the senior journalists is ominous,” said Tawanda Majoni, an investigative journalist and national coordinator of the Information for Development Trust, an NGO supporting local investigative journalism projects.
“It represents a serious threat to freedom of the media and expression as well as access to information of public interest as provided under respective sections of the Zimbabwean constitution,” Majoni told IPS.
What began with the promise of wide-ranging reforms after the rise of Emmerson Mnangagwa as president on the back of the ouster of Robert Mugabe morphed into an escalation of the crackdown on government critics, with media practitioners being especially targeted.
Opposition politicians and rights activists have found themselves in police detention, with press freedom advocates not being spared despite calls by countries that include the European Union and the US raising concerns about what are seen as arbitrary arrests.
In May, on the occasion of World Press Freedom Day, Reporters Without Borders noted that Zimbabwe had declined further on the Press Freedom Index, from 130 in 2021 to 137 in 2022.
The country has witnessed a steady increase in journalist arrests, which have failed to result in custodial sentences despite the routine arrests and weeks behind bars awaiting trial.
“These arrests are a worrying trend as it is technically criminal law provisions that are being invoked to criminalise journalism,” said Otto Saki, a Zimbabwean human rights lawyer.
“These provisions are patently unconstitutional and are likely to be struck down by the constitutional court,” Saki told IPS.
Several journalists have been arrested in the past few months, and there are concerns that the crackdown on journalists is being escalated in the run-up to crucial elections next year with electioneering already in full swing.
“It’s always the case that during power contestations in the run-up to major political events, we see governments invoking such laws,” Saki said.
Despite numerous court challenges regarding the unconstitutionality of the arrests of journalists, government spokesperson Ndavaningi Mangwana is on record saying journalists are not above the law and “must have their day in court.”
Regarding the arrest of the two Newsday journalists, Majoni noted that “those that instigated the arrest of the three, clearly, had more decent options to use, that they tellingly ignored as a suggestion of the difficult times ahead for journalists.”
“They could have simply appealed to the Data Protection Authority to intervene and would have appealed to either the Voluntary Media Council of Zimbabwe or the Zimbabwe Media Commission. So, this is like some people are being used to test the new law,” Majoni told IPS.
However, ahead of the 2023 polls, journalists are not the only sector being targeted by the government, as nongovernmental organisations are also being threatened with stringent monitoring under the proposed Private Voluntary Organisations Amendment Bill.
If passed into law, it will see NGOs being required to furnish the government with itineraries and accounting that show the source of their funding as authorities claim external funds are being used to undermine the ruling party.
The bill has already been criticised for its ambitions to curtail freedom of association at a time NGOs are carrying out voter education programs ahead of the 2023 elections while millions in the country require food assistance.
For now, it is not clear what fate awaits the Newsday journalists as they are expected to appear in court by way of summons.
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