Roman Protasevich is a dissident and an activist, but above all a journalist

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There has rightly been international condemnation of the arrest of Roman Protasevich after his Ryanair flight from Greece to Lithuania was diverted to Belarusian capital Minsk. It is of particular concern that the state hijacking of Flight FR4978 was carried out on the personal orders of President Alexander Lukashenko. His disgraceful “confession” on state TV comes straight from the authoritarian playbook.

The 26-year-old has been described in a single report on the BBC as a “Belarusian opposition journalist”, a “dissident” and an “activist”. This extraordinary young man is all these things and more. But it is important that the western media does not let the Belarus regime define the narrative.

Protasevich is an independent journalist, but to be so in Belarus is to immediately become an activist. And, meanwhile, the regime is in the process of defining all activists as terrorists. Index has been reporting for months on the systematic crackdown on independent journalism by the Lukashenko regime. Hijacking is just the latest method to control free expression in Belarus.

British MP Tom Tugendhat (chair of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee) has described the arrest as a “warlike act”, and this is no understatement. He has emphasised that a hijacking is an escalation of the situation. But we should not lose sight of why Protasevich represented such a threat. It is because he was a journalist the regime has not been able to control since he fled the country for Poland in 2019.

Protasevich is the former editor of Nexta, a media organisation that works via the social media platfrom Telegram, which circumvents censorship in Belarus. Nexta was instrumental in reporting on the opposition to Lukashenko during the elections of 2020. Until this week Protasevich had been working for another Telegram channel Belamova. Like the underground “samizdat” publications of the Soviet era, these Telegram channels provided much-needed hope to civil society in Belarus.

Parallels have been drawn between Russian dissident Alexei Navalny and Roman Protasevich and it is true that he provides a similar focus for the Belarusian opposition. However, he has been targeted not as a political leader, but as a journalist. It is as a journalist that we should defend him.

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Urgent action is needed to defend our media

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”116630″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes”][vc_column_text]“We call on governments to translate their public commitments on the protection of journalism and safety of journalists into working realities backed up by effective safeguards,” Index on Censorship and thirteen other organisations say in the newly launched Annual Report of the Council of Europe Platform.

According to the report, a total of 201 media freedom alerts were published on the Platform in 2020, the highest annual total recorded in any year since the platform was launched in 2015. Online harassment, physical attacks, surveillance, and strategic lawsuits against public participation (SLAPPs) are among the themes covered in the report, which draws on the media freedom alerts that were submitted to the platform over the course of 2020.

Although the United Kingdom’s National Action Plan is cited as an example of good practice, the UK is primarily mentioned in less favourable contexts in the report. The UK is mentioned, alongside Russia and Italy, as having one of the highest numbers of reported attacks on the physical integrity of journalists. Northern Ireland is mentioned as a particular area of concern, as journalists continue to face violent threats there on a recurring basis.

The UK was also mentioned in the context of SLAPPs. In May and June 2020, five Maltese media outlets received letters from a UK-based law firm demanding the removal of articles under threat of legal action, and in November 2020 legal action was filed in London against Swedish outlet Realtid as a result of their investigative work. “The UK has been identified as the foremost country of origin of such vexatious actions, and this practice threatens to bring the UK and its legal profession into disrepute in the eyes of the world,” the report says.

“SLAPPs are just one of the issues that demand immediate attention from the UK and other Council of Europe member states, from the Council of Europe itself, and from the European Union,” said Jessica Ní Mhainín, Index’s Policy and Campaigns Manager, who was involved in the creation of the report. “We need to stand behind our independent journalists and to ensure that they can carry out their work without interference. We will not be able to protect our democracies, our rule of law, and our human rights if we cannot protect our free press.”[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Russia: Index expresses concern over the arrest of Doxa journalists

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Student journalists at Doxa

Index on Censorship has expressed concern over four student journalists charged with allegedly inciting minors to take part in criminal activity.

Armen Aramyan, Alla Gutnikova, Vladimir Metelkin, and Natalia Tyshkevich, journalists at online magazine Doxa – an independent student magazine about the realities of modern university life – were arrested on 14 April. The arrest of the students – from the Higher School of Economics and Moscow State University of Civil Engineering – came after they reported on protests in support of opposition leader Alexei Navalny and publishing a video in which they argue that the expulsion of students from university for participating in actions in support of Navalny is illegal.

The video, published by Doxa on 22 January, prompted the Russian media watchdog Roskomnadzor to order its removal, a decision which Doxa subsequently challenged.

Roskomnadzor claimed the video was “persuading or otherwise involving minors in committing illegal actions that pose a threat to their life and health.”

The charges against the four are under 151.2 of the Russian criminal code, which carries a sentence of up to three years in prison for “involving a minor in committing acts that pose a danger to the life of a minor”.

Doxa’s offices were searched along with the homes of each of the four on trial, with their equipment seized.

The journalists are now under heavy pre-trial restrictions, which prevents them from leaving their homes, using the internet, or speaking to anyone except their close relatives and lawyers.

Since the arrests, more than 270 academics around the world have expressed their support for the four in an open letter, calling the charges “preposterous”.

Doxa said in a statement that the targeting of the student journalists is indicative of Russian authorities’ clamping down on free thought within universities.

They said: “In early 2021, we learned about the unprecedented pressure on students in Russian educational institutions. Schoolchildren, their parents, college and university students were threatened with possible problems, legal prosecution and expulsion due to participation in actions in support of Alexei Navalny, who was detained upon arrival in Russia.”

Protests in support of Navalny began in January, with over 5,000 people estimated to have been arrested across the country at the time amid some of the largest protests seen in opposition to President Vladimir Putin. In response, Russian authorities have since attempted to crack down on journalism and protests.

Index CEO Ruth Smeeth defended the rights of the Doxa four and described student journalism as “a building block of media freedom”.

“Repressive regimes silence opposition when they are scared of their populations and when they fear losing power. The Kremlin’s behaviour towards student journalists shows how fearful, yet again, they have become of their own people,” she said.

“Student journalism is a building block of media freedom, it educates and informs as well as ensuring the lifeblood that feeds the next generation of journalists. We are horrified at the targeting of the Doxa magazine and their student editors and we stand united in solidarity with them.”

Director of Global Youth & News Media, an organisation that aims to amplify youth journalism, Dr Aralynn Abare McMane said: “It shows just how desperate the Russian authorities are becoming that they persecute these student journalists, and we are gratified to see that the international press freedom community is taking this case very, very seriously.”[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][three_column_post title=”You may also want to read” category_id=”8996″][/vc_column][/vc_row]

What price press freedom in Northern Ireland?

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”116557″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes”][vc_column_text]As images of serious violence in Northern Ireland beamed around the world last week, many outside the post-conflict society wondered what had gone wrong.

The province, long hailed as one of the best examples of peacebuilding, was for the first time in recent years seeing petrol bombs, vehicle hijackings and masked figures back on the streets on an almost nightly basis.

There is no simple or straightforward explanation for the unrest, which started off in loyalist areas under the guise of peaceful protests.

Those demonstrations surrounded the ‘Irish Sea border’ or Northern Ireland Protocol, part of the Brexit deal that keeps NI aligned with EU rules and treated differently to the rest of the UK.

Controversy over the state prosecutor’s move not to prosecute alleged coronavirus breaches by senior Sinn Fein members at the 2020 funeral of republican and former IRA man Bobby Storey, has also inflamed tensions. The belief in unionist and loyalist circles is that political favouritism played a part in that decision.

Add into the melting pot the recent disruption to loyalist paramilitary crime networks by the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI), you now have a dangerous mix in a place where anger and frustration has long played out through street violence.

As rioting broke out and escalated across towns and cities, it didn’t take long to spread to interface areas – adding a dangerous sectarian element to the violence.

On 7 April, three days before the 23rd anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement, a bus travelling close to a peace divide in the capital of Belfast was hijacked and petrol bombed by loyalist youths.

It sparked scenes not seen on the streets of the loyalist Shankill Road and the Irish Republican stronghold of Lanark Way for some time.

As masonry, fireworks and Molotov cocktails were fired back and forth between hundreds of rival youths, a car rammed into the so-called peace gate that was locked to separate the two communities.

Ironically painted with the words, ‘There Was Never A Good War Or A Bad Peace’, the padlocked steel doors were eventually prised open allowing disorder and destruction to continue into the night, and years of priceless cross-community work put at risk.

News agencies around the world reported on the danger to Northern Ireland’s fragile peace, and the fear that escalating sectarian violence could spiral it back to the dark days of the Troubles, when more than 3,000 people lost their lives.

Sporadic violence, unfortunately, has long been a part of Ulster’s journey from war to peace; a peace that is not perfect but that has achieved the goal of convincing most people that a return to those days cannot, and will not, happen.

Rightfully, international political leaders took notice, expressing concern and calls for calm.

US President Joe Biden said he remained “steadfast” in his support “for a secure and prosperous Northern Ireland in which all communities have a voice and enjoy the gains of the hard-won peace”.

What many do not realise is that the voices he refers to have been under threat for quite some time.

Over the last two years, dozens of journalists in Northern Ireland have been threatened by both loyalist and republican paramilitary groups for their work in exposing criminality and the grip these gangs still have on communities.

Those threats, mainly from loyalists, have escalated in recent times and are having a detrimental impact on press freedom in Northern Ireland.

In May 2020, reporters at both the Sunday World and Sunday Life newspapers received a blanket threat from South East Antrim Ulster Defence Association (UDA), a loyalist criminal cartel that was recently the subject of a high-profile drugs bust.

The gang threatened to take violent action against the journalists, with police informing each of them that intelligence suggests the gangsters may also intimidate their families.

The threats were condemned by major politicians, who in turn then each received death threats from the gang for speaking out in support of the media workers.

In November, the same criminals threatened a journalist with the Belfast Telegraph.

The same month, further loyalist death threats were delivered to the homes of two reporters working for the Sunday World newspaper.

They were informed by police that West Belfast UDA planned to carry out some form of attack on them.
Both had been covering intimidation and threats to those living in a loyalist area and had been named in threatening social media posts prior to being informed of the death threats.

Senior police told one journalist she would be shot, and that the PSNI had received information that the crime gang may try to entrap her.

Since the Northern Ireland Protocol was put in place on 1 January, threats have continued.

Two journalists had their names spray-painted on walls with gun cross hairs in February.

At least one of those was targeted by a paramilitary gang involved in talks with other loyalist groups over discontent over the Irish Sea Border.

Hours before the interface violence broke out in west Belfast last week, press photographer Kevin Scott was attacked as he covered the disorder for the Belfast Telegraph newspaper.

He was pulled to the ground by two masked men who smashed his cameras and threatened, before being told to: “fuck off back to your own area you fenian cunt”.

At the same time 70 miles away, billboards were being erected in Derry by the family of murdered journalist Lyra McKee, appealing for information over her killing.

The 29-year-old was shot dead two years ago by a New IRA gunman as she observed a riot in the city’s Creggan estate. No-one has been convicted over her murder.

As the anniversary of her murder approaches, threats to the safety of journalists have escalated to levels many have not seen in recent times, or even in their entire careers.

The distress and trauma of such threats is compounded by the fact those responsible are continually treated with impunity by the police.

Twenty years ago, Sunday World journalist Martin O’Hagan was assassinated by members of the violent Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF).

The killing gang – who have never been convicted – later released a statement saying the reporter had been murdered for “crimes against the loyalist people”.

Two decades on the same type of language is not only bedecking lampposts across Northern Ireland in the form of anti-Irish Sea Border placards, but is also being used by those with influence in unionism and loyalism.

It is this type of hard rhetoric that has fed into the hostility to media workers here, who have been murdered and attacked as they go about their jobs.

Northern Ireland has paid a very high price for its peace; but what price must it pay to protect press freedom?[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][three_column_post title=”You may also want to read” category_id=”42671″][/vc_column][/vc_row]