Index on Censorship, English PEN, Article 19 and Amnesty International UK held a demonstration last Thursday at the Azerbaijan embassy in London in support of jailed journalist Eynulla Fatullayev. Amnesty kindly made a video. Watch it below.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7ScV4oDNJU
Floribert Chebeya, 47, the president of the human rights organisation La Voix des Sans-voix (Voice of the Voiceless) has been found dead in his car in Kinshasa. Despite a series of text messages and phone messages sent by the victim on the evening of his disappearance, local police remain undecided as to the cause of the incident on 1 June. Police have gone on record stating that they are searching for the perpetrator of the crime. The prominent activist was previously arrested in March 2009 with two other individuals and held for a period without charge by police. Some local reports suggest that this was a direct result of his organisation’s high-profile media campaigns.
In Bangladesh a pro-opposition Bengali-language newspaper Amar Desh has been closed down, allegedly because of publishing irregularities. Reports suggest that more than 200 police stormed the paper’s offices. You don’t have to be a cynic to suspect that the content and stance of the newspaper might have been what is at issue here.
Meanwhile, in Italy, Silvio Berlusconi, who is Italy’s largest media owner, is backing a draft bill that could imprison or impose heavy fines on journalists who report public interest stories that involve wire taps before the final phase of prosecution. Given the length of many trials, this is a serious block on some kinds of reporting.
Curbing the powers of journalists to report information in the public interest either by direct or indirect means is a significant assault on free speech and on the values enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Remove their power to criticise government policy or to expose some types of corruption, and journalists risk becoming organs of propaganda for the ruling party.
If Machiavelli were writing his guidelines for conscienceless princes today, then he would no doubt advocate scaring journalists into cowering submission, making them terrified to publish anything critical of the ruler. Luckily, however, journalism attracts some extraordinarily brave people Anna Politkovskaya, who relentlessly exposed corruption in Putin’s Russia, and was murdered for this, is just one humbling example.
One side effect of the Internet’s invention is that today what is suppressed in one place often reappears somewhere else. In fact the more forceful the attempt to clamp down on what is published, the more likely it is that the views being suppressed will be spread widely. Would-be censors take note. You may be sowing dragon’s teeth.
Paul Chambers is to appeal against his conviction for sending a threatening message on the social media site Twitter. The trainee accountant, 26, the tweeted “Crap! Robin Hood airport is closed. You’ve got a week and a bit to get your shit together, otherwise I’m blowing the airport sky high!” On 10 May Chambers was convicted in Doncaster Crown Court, prosecutors successfully argued that the message had a “menacing character”. The defendant’s appeal is being coordinated by solicitor Allen Green — better known as the blogger Jack of Kent.