Tunisian elections: media reform key to democracy

October 24th, 2011

Tunisians flocked to voting stations yesterday in the country’s first-ever free elections, but only the cultivation of an independent media will safeguard democracy and free expression, writes Rohan Jayasekera 

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Making a courtroom drama out of a media crisis

July 10th, 2011

News International’s Hackergate scandal does not justify state press regulation, argues Rohan Jayasekera
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Open politics will stretch Tunisian Islamists

January 25th, 2011

Will the return of Tunisia’s Islamists help or hinder the national democratic project?  An-Nahda’s return will  test its leader’s commitment to free expression and free association. Rohan Jayasekera reports
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Tunisians will not be easily unplugged again

January 16th, 2011

Discreet coup or “Jasmine Revolution”, the departure of Tunisia’s despot Zine el Abidene Ben Ali will not end his networked citizens’ calls for reform. Rohan Jayasekera comments.
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Tunisia: The Middle East’s first cyberwar

January 5th, 2011

Conventional wisdom suggests that the web’s power to drive social revolution is over-rated, but the Tunisian government still isn’t taking any chances. Its agents are hacking its opponents’ networks and sabotaging them, even as foreign hackers retaliate by doing the same to the state’s own sites. Rohan Jayasekera reports
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Fresh eyes needed on WikiLeaks’ treasure trove of secrets

December 31st, 2010

With maybe hundreds of human rights activists named in the WikiLeaks files, and frontman Julian Assange threatening to throw them open to the world if  “forced” to do so, it’s time for fair assessment of the potential threat to whistleblowers and free expression advocates argues Rohan Jayasekera

When WikiLeaks turned from publishing battlefield reports to secret US State Department cables, the initial effect of seeing state-to-state relations shorn of traditional diplomatic obfuscation was electric. The lasting effect was more like reading your teenager’s Facebook page, initially shocking but ultimately predictable, and for those with the right experience, actually pretty familiar.

Again, there were fears about exposure and endangerment. The Atlantic magazine even alleged that WikiLeaks had exposed Zimbabwean opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai to treason charges by revealing his views on sanctions, as if Robert Mugabe had ever felt that he needed “evidence” to jail someone.

Some regimes are passing laws to extend the meaning of treason to cover economic “attacks” as well as military or political ones. In that particular hall of mirrors simply voicing sympathy for a tourism boycott can get you bundled into the back of a van.

And any association with the US looks bad to a lot of people in some parts of the world, especially when done in private. WikiLeaks frontman Julian Assange hardly helped this week by telling al-Jazeera TV that many officials visiting US embassies are “spies for the US in their countries”.

Generally though, the diplomats and politicians named and shamed (and sometimes praised) in the WikiLeaks cables tended to escape chastened but safe from the experience.

The risk is far greater for the many ordinary human rights defenders and civil society activists who have risked a visit to US embassies in their home countries. They come, often in suprisingly large numbers, to make advocacy cases to what they hope are sympathetic US ears, and until WikiLeaks, away from the dictators’ prying eyes.

Mercifully, it seems — though Assange now suggests otherwise, to al-Jazeera at least — the rights defenders have been saved from being cited in US embassy CIA staff reports.

Intelligence officers have a reputation for boosting the significance of their reports by making more out of routine contact with dissidents than the exchanges actually deserve. But the CIA removed them all from the SIPRNET digital shoebox of US diplomatic cables that alleged WikiLeaks source Bradley Manning drew from.

But the risk remains, as I was firmly told by a US embassy political attache in an Arab state this month. A veteran human rights campaigner had already warned that many local rights activists expect more support from US diplomats than they will actually get; in the vault-like security of a typical US embassy they speak more freely than they possibly should.

The embassy attache was adamant. It was only a matter of time before a human rights defender was exposed by WikiLeaks, and jailed or killed as a result. “Then in that case,” he said grimly, “you may ask Mr Assange exactly what he thinks he has done for ‘transparency and human rights’”.

Weirdly, almost on cue, Wikileaks released a cable that might have proven his point, in which the name of the source — a public critic of a particularly reprehensible head of state — was redacted by WikiLeaks. However the redactor, presumably unfamiliar with the dissident’s work, failed to recognise a giveaway clue cited in the cable’s title.

Even with the redactions, anyone with reasonable knowledge of the country concerned could have guessed who was being quoted giving off-the-record, publicly unatributable, deep background information — or so he thought — to US diplomats about top-level state corruption.

Again, dictators don’t need evidence to jail people, and the key equation at the heart of the work of free expression defenders supported by Index on Censorship is simple: risk balanced against effect.

The risk posed by exposure by WikiLeaks is one more fresh edge to the multi-faceted threat they, their families and friends already face.

But WikiLeaks is supposed to be helping, no?

Redaction of data was never meant to be WikiLeaks’ prime duty, so it should be no surprise that they do it unwillingly, and when they do, that they can do it badly or obscurely. Index on Censorship raised the issue of the giveaway clue in the title of the otherwise redacted leaked cable with WikiLeaks directly.

They replied sympathetically, but noted that the redacted name was already out there as author of a critical book about the head of state. “…(S)o we feel that too much redaction is futile,” said the reply. “However, we do feel it is better to be safe than sorry and so have redacted the title…”

Well, OK, but the root of the question is the same as that raised everywhere, very specifically at an Index on Censorship debate between WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange and UK journalist David Aaronovich at London’s City University this year.

Since WikiLeaks decided to take editorial responsibility for selecting, redacting and publishing the content, what editorial criteria do they apply, what process is followed, what in-house oversight is there of their work and what qualifies for redaction under its “harm minimisation procedure”?

WikiLeaks itself said this was a problem, solved by opening up the data in advance to selected international publications, The Guardian, Der Spiegel and the New York Times among them. That relationship has since splintered over coverage of Julian Assange’s personal issues, but the relevance of adding external expertise to the process — expertise that WikiLeaks doesn’t have — still stands.

Assange repeatedly maintains that “(WikiLeaks) must protect our sources at whatever cost. This is our sincere concern”. But while he says his organisation presently releases files in a “responsible” manner, he fears extradition to the US and makes a clear threat to everyone involved, willingly or otherwise. “If I am forced we could go to the extreme and expose each and every file that we have access to.”

It’s easy to underestimate how much time US embassy staff spend talking to dissidents, opposition leaders, human rights and civil society activists. Hundreds could be named in the WikiLeaks collection of diplomatic cables still unreleased. It might be helpful to provide advance warning to dissidents about to get their moment in the WikiLeaks sun, and prepare the various organisations charged to defend them.

The WikiLeaks core principles, at least as they were when Index on Censorship honoured the organisation in 2008, are good ones. But surely it’s possible to bring together independent groups of advisors, or draw on the advice of local human rights defenders. Maybe just three experts, easy to find, who before redacting or not redacting a name, will have at least read one of the redactee’s books or are more personally acquainted with the threats he or she faces?

Rohan Jayasekera is Associate Editor and Deputy Chief Executive of Index on Censorship

Foreign Office report on human rights skims over UK record

March 18th, 2010

Focus, partnership and joined-up advocacy in defence of human rights – the UK Foreign Office’s lost vocation, as revealed by the diplomats’ own annual report. Rohan Jayasekera comments
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Sri Lankan press crackdown 2.0

March 15th, 2010

Opposition voices targeted to silence them before parliamentary elections says Index’s Rohan Jayasekera

The word McCarthyite is all too easily tossed about these days, but it’s hard not to apply it to what’s happening in Sri Lanka, as President Mahinda Rajapaksa prepares to follow his snap re-election with a blitz parliamentary vote and a ruthless crackdown on political critics and independent media ahead of it.

Rajapakse’s January re-election and last year’s military victories over separatist Tamil Tiger insurgents have not slowed his habit of publicly denouncing his critics without evidence; fully aware that his words put his targets at risk from gangs of armed supporters.

“This is clearly a politically motivated practice of making accusation of disloyalty or treason without proper regard for evidence,”says journalist and rights activist Uvindu Kurukulasuriya. Brad Adams, Asia Director at Human Rights Watch describes it as “a carefully coordinated witch hunt… extremely dangerous and irresponsible in a country where journalists and activists have often been threatened and killed.”

With less than a month to go before parliamentary elections, Kurukulasuriya tells Index that the main aim is simple censorship. “It is a psychology of fear through abductions, killings and other form of pressure that is brought in,” he says. “It’s not so much about what is written, but what you should not write. For instance, we are asked not to refer to this and that, or to the President, or to the Secretary of Defence. Media in Sri Lanka certainly (suffer from) a certain censorship, but this is beyond the norm.”

Since the January 2010 presidential election, the government has engaged in a campaign to silence and discredit journalists and non-governmental organizations, a trend that reached a peak with the publication on March 3 of an apparently leaked government surveillance list of more than 30 journalists and activists.

Two of the names high up the list, Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA) Executive Director Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu and J.C. Weliamuna,  Executive Director of Transparency International, Sri Lanka (TISL) warned there are reasonable grounds for fear about the physical liberty and safety of those named.

“There has been no justice or punishment served by recourse to the criminal justice system in the numerous cases of killings, enforced disappearances and abductions,” they wrote to Rajapakse this week, “and the entrenched culture of impunity, arbitrariness and the ineffectiveness of law enforcement have only encouraged further abuses.”

“There is a fundamental misconception that opposition to specific actions and policies by the government is equal to support for the opposition,” said Saravanamuttu and Weliamuna. “It is not only a fundamental democratic principle but also part of the fundamental rights declared and protected by the constitution that Sri Lankans are entitled to the freedoms of thought, conscience, opinion, expression, association and occupation.”

“This smacks of retaliation for reporting on violations during the presidential election,” says Sam Zarifi, Amnesty International’s Asia-Pacific director. “Despite the elections and the end of the war against the Tamil Tigers, the government seems to have a hard time getting rid of the habit of repression.”

Both the CPA and TISL played a key role in monitoring the January presidential election, reporting on electoral violations and the government’s misuse of state resources to campaign in favor of incumbent Rajapaksa.

Dozens of journalists and activists have fled the country and am atmosphere of impunity and intimidation that has worsened since January. Journalist Prageeth Eknaligoda of Lanka eNews disappeared on January 24 and remains missing, despite calls for a serious investigation. On March 9, the parliament voted to extend emergency regulations, widely used to target activists, until after April’s elections.

“In the run up to the legislative elections slated for April, the Sri Lankan government is clearly trying to divert criticism from itself after the egregious violations perpetrated against the press and other opposition candidates during the recent presidential election,” said Jennifer Windsor, executive director of US based free speech group Freedom House this week. “This is yet another example of the government acting with impunity and trying to discredit voices of dissent.”