Friday, October 23rd, 2009
On 20 October, two Al-Jazeera journalists were assaulted and briefly detained in Zimbabwe while covering a cabinet meeting which Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s had boycotted.
Cameraman Austin Gundani and his reporter colleague Haru Mutasa were physically assaulted and detained at a small police post located at Munhumutapa Building and before being transferred to Harare Central Police Station. They were released three hours later.
In past years Zimbabwe has imposed harsh media laws that saw local newspapers shut down and journalists and editors jailed. The new government has promised to relax the laws and invite the international media back in. (RSF)
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Friday, October 23rd, 2009
On 19 October, more than a hundred cooperative miners attacked the headquarters of La Razón, a newspaper based in the Bolivian administrative capital La Paz.
The attack took place during a protest march over the ownership of a site in the Murillo province of the La Paz department. According to local media, the demonstrators exploded dynamite cartridges outside the offices of the newspaper. Nobody was injured in the attack.
“Next time it could be worse, so a clear message must be sent that violence against the media will not be tolerated”, said Alison Bethel McKenzie, Deputy Director of the International Press Institute (IPI), in a statement condemning the attacks. (La Razón)
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Friday, October 23rd, 2009
John Kampfner
British National Party (BNP) leader Nick Griffin received the oxygen of publicity he craved by winning his spot on Question Time, Britain’s premier TV debate show, but at the end of a nation’s ordeal, democracy emerged intact, says John Kampfner.
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Thursday, October 22nd, 2009
Cartooning in India is starting to move beyond the constraints that have long imprisoned it, reports Sarnath Banerjee.
Sarnath Bannerjee
As India enters late capitalism after two decades of soft socialism, cartoonists find themselves needing to deal with an entirely new set of concerns. They are grappling with an ever-changing urban mythology, a fairly conservative middle-class, and a self-congratulatory media which has very little space for oblique commentary.
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Thursday, October 22nd, 2009
President Ben Ali
He’s back. Tunisia’s president, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, will be seeking election for a fifth term on 25 October and there’s no doubt that he will win the day. Ben Ali’s party, the Rally for Constitutional Democracy (RCD), has a reported 3.8 million members in a country with just 5.2 million voters.
But to ensure victory his supporters in government and beyond have put together a package of repression that undercuts his few challengers and silences any independent media coverage of the campaign.
The media were softened up before the vote with a hostile takeover of the country’s journalists’ union (SNJT) by Ben Ali loyalists. Individual reporters opposed to the leadership coup have been singled out for intimidation and assault. The coup followed publication of a press freedom report critical of the government and the elected SNTJ leadership’s refusal to endorse any candidate, including the incumbent Ben Ali.
According to International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), a series of recent attacks and incidents of harassment suggest deliberate targeting of independent journalism in Tunisia.
Hanane Belaifam, was barred from entering her workplace at Radio-Jeunes, apparently in for her outspoken support of the ousted SNTJ leadership. Asahafa reporter Zied El Heni was beaten up on 15 October and his blog was forcibly closed.
“The attack on El Heni is an intolerable attack on a prominent journalist and leading advocate for independent journalism,” said Aidan White, IFJ General Secretary. “The simultaneous closure of his blog is clear evidence of political pressure and suggests that this unknown assailant was not acting alone.”
Sihem Bensedrine, founder of online magazine Kalima Tunisie and 2006 Index Free Expression award winner, on 20 October was prevented by police from participating in a workshop organized by the Tunisian Association of Democratic Women. Online journalist Lotfi Hidouri had been similarly barred from the event the day before. The conference had planned to discuss state controls over the media in the run-up to the election.
The foreign press has also been subjected to pre-election repression. Le Monde correspondent Florence Beaugé was barred from entering the country on 20 October when she arrived at Tunis airport to cover the elections. The government claimed that Beaugé “had always shown blatant malevolence to Tunisia and had systematically taken a hostile position.”
“One of the goals of this campaign is to silence all dissenting voices at a time when Tunisian media is brazenly being used to campaign for a fifth five-year term for President Ben Ali, ” said Mohamed Abdel Dayem of the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). CPJ said the Tunisian government should end its unrelenting war on independent journalism at home and abroad.
Hamma Hammami, the former editor of the banned newspaper Alternatives was also badly beaten by police on arrival at Tunis airport on 29 September after criticizing the government in an interview for Al-Jazeera.
“We no longer have the right to express our views in Tunisia,” said Hammami’s wife, Radhia Nasraoui, who is a lawyer and human rights activist. “When we dare to criticise the regime in the foreign media, we are punished by being physically attacked. This is now standard practice. They no longer need to throw people in prison.”
CPJ adds that pro-state media – including papers owned by the ruling party, Ben Ali’s son-in-law and rising businessman and politician Sakhr Al-Materi, and the pro-government satellite TV station Hannibal – have supported a smear campaign against Al-Jazeera. The Qatar-based network’s critical coverage led Tunis to close its embassy in Doha for months in 2006 and continuously deny accreditation to Al-Jazeera’s Tunis correspondent, Lotfi Hajji.
From Paris the vice-president of the banned Congress for Democracy Abdelraouf El Ayadi told al-Jazeera that the international community is failing Tunisian pro-democrats: “As far as I know, western countries are backing the dictatorship in Tunisia and giving it financial and media support. Tunisia is being presented by the west as a model of a free society.”
The Tunisian authorities work hard to support this image by supporting the development of pro-state NGOs – the so-called GONGOs or Governmental Non-Governmental Organisations, directing state advertising to media that promote the picture and refusing licenses to independent publications and rights organisations.
To make doubly sure of the image of democracy, the government reserves a small number of seats in parliament for carefully selected members of what El Ayadi and others deride as a “palace opposition,’ some of whom formerly belonged to the ruling RCD.
As commentator Bassam Bounenni points out while this keeps up an appearance of democracy, the regime is still unchallenged since it has ample votes in parliament to pass laws unilaterally.
Bounenni adds that amendments to the constitution and the election act have cut the ground from under the feet of his most critical opponents. Presidential candidates are now required to have served as elected leader of a recognised party a couple of years preceding the elections – thereby ruling out, as intended, presidential bids by both Mustapha Ben Jaafar, of the Democratic Forum for Labour and Liberties (FTDL), and Ahmed Nejib Chebbi of the Progressive Democratic Party (PDP).
Al Tariq Al Jadid, the paper of the former Tunisian communist party, now known as Ettajdid (Renewal) had its entire print run for the start of the campaign on 11 October seized on a manipulated technicality – because by printing the day before they supposedly breached election media rules.
Presidential candidate Ahmed Ibrahim of Ettajdid has had his manifesto censored and his supporters prevented from holding meetings or displaying posters. Parliamentary elections, to be held on the same day have been stripped of opposition candidates by the constitutional council, whose members are appointed by Ben Ali and parliament chairman, Foued Mbazaa.
Wednesday, October 21st, 2009
Index on Censorship and English PEN today welcomed MPs’ robust response in this afternoon’s adjournment debate to law firm Carter-Ruck’s challenge to Parliamentary reporting, and called on them to strengthen the public’s right to information by banning the use of so-called “super injunctions” except in extreme circumstances.
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Wednesday, October 21st, 2009
Kian Tajbakhsh, an American-Iranian academic, was sentenced to at least 12 years in prison on 20 October for his alleged role in anti-government protests following President Ahmadinejad’s disputed re-election. He was arrested on 9 July, and was the only US citizen detained in the government’s post-election crackdown. Despite appeals for his release, notably from US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Tajbakhsh received the longest prison sentence yet handed down in the mass trial of more than 100 opposition individuals. Tajbakhsh’s lawyer plans to appeal the conviction. (
Guardian,
BBC)
Tuesday, October 20th, 2009
With John Kampfner, Chief Executive, Index on Censorship
1:00pm-2:30pm
At the Bhattacharyya Seminar Room, ippr, 30- 32 Southampton Street, London WC2E 7RA
Established as the two most fundamental principles of the Western socio-economic model for almost 60 years, liberal democracy and capitalism are being questioned in a fashion that is unheard of in recent memory. In his new book Freedom for Sale, Author and Journalist John Kampfner visits countries as diverse as China, the United Arab Emirates, Russia and the UK finding evidence of a new pact between citizens and their governments exchanging personal freedoms in return for material prosperity.
Places at this event are limited. To reserve a place please email events
ippr
org.
