2 Dec 2011 | Europe and Central Asia, Volume 39.04 Winter 2010
One of the writers championed by Index on Censorship and English PEN to mark 50 years of the Writers in Prison Committee, Uzbek journalist Djamshid Karimov was released from a psychiatric hospital on 30 November.
Djamshid Karimov, nephew of Uzbek president Islam Karimov, is an outspoken critic of the government, known for reporting on socio-political issues. He worked as a freelance journalist for the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, and contributed to independent newspapers and online publications under the pseudonym Andrei Nazarov. After reporting on the Andijan massacre in May 2005, during a period when his uncle systematically sought to silence all independent voices of protest, Karimov and his family were subjected to intense police surveillance.
In August 2006, after applying for an exit visa to attend a journalism seminar in Kyrgyzstan, Karimov’s passport was seized by the authorities. The head of the regional administration in Jizak visited the family home on 31 August, and offered Karimov positions at two state newspapers, apparently in a bid to entice him away from independent journalism. He refused and shortly afterwards, on 12 September, he disappeared. Two weeks later, Karimov’s friends discovered that he was being held against his will in a psychiatric hospital in Samarkand, initially under a six-month detention order. The authorities would not specify the reason for his detention, calling it a “private matter”. His fiancée was permitted to visit him and found him distressed by his detention; he had reportedly been forced to accept unnecessary treatment and anti-psychotic medication.
Karimov’s detention order was “reviewed” in March 2007 and extended for six months, but authorities disclosed no further details. Since then, as far as his family knows, the court has not officially passed a decision to further extend Karimov’s treatment. Nonetheless, despite regular promises that he would soon be discharged, he remains incarcerated. Karimov has now been undergoing forced treatment for more than four years.
Beyond Bars
This article originally appeared in Beyond Bars: 50 Years of the PEN Writers in Prison Committee. To subscribe to Index, click here.
2 Dec 2011 | Uncategorized
After four months of deliberation, Ofcom has fined Press TV £100,000 for broadcasting its interview with the journalist and filmmaker Maziar Bahari in 2009. In October, Press TV was reporting that it was in danger of losing its licence, bizarrely blaming the threat on the royal family. Instead, just as the UK faces a crisis in its diplomatic relations with Iran, following the attack on the Tehran embassy this week, it receives a hefty fine. Considering the serious nature of its breach and the feverish circumstances, it seems a relatively mild punishment. The BBC was fined £150,000 after the Brand-Ross debacle.
The broadcaster faced sanctions following its broadcast while Maziar Bahari was being held in Evin Prison. Bahari had been detained for 118 days following the elections that summer, which he was reporting for Newsweek. He was held in solitary confinement, subjected to beatings and forced confessions, and accused of spying and threatened with the death penalty. Index on Censorship took part in an international campaign for his release.
The interview was filmed in prison, under extreme duress and without Maziar Bahari’s consent. Nor were the circumstances in which the interview was conducted made clear to viewers. In July, Ofcom judged Press TV’s conduct to be “serious and deliberate” breaches of its code, describing the broadcast as an “unwarranted infringement of Mr Bahari’s privacy”. The regulator observed that Press TV had failed to obtain Maziar Bahari’s consent “while he was in a sensitive situation and vulnerable state”.
“If this was just a personal issue I would not have bothered pursuing it,” Maziar Bahari told Index. “But it is something that happens to other people on a daily basis. I have friends who were arrested in Iran and they are forced to make televised confessions on different channels. Unfortunately we cannot lodge a complaint against other channels of the Iranian government, so that’s what motivated me to do it.”
Maziar Bahari had hoped that Ofcom would deprive Press TV of its licence to broadcast on Sky cable. However he believes that the fine, along with Ofcom’s demand that Press TV’s head office in Tehran, rather than London, should be in control of its licence to broadcast, will have a significant impact on its future in the UK.
“I think Press TV will be under a lot of pressure,” he said. “It will either be shut down or will have to modify its programmes.”
The Communications Act 2003 requires that a licence is held by the body that is in effective control of the TV service. While Ofcom was deliberating on sanctions, evidence came to light that it was the Tehran office that was in effective control of broadcasts rather than the London-based body that holds the Ofcom licence. Press TV now has 35 days to bring the service back into compliance by applying to transfer the licence to the correct body.
“Press TV always said ‘it’s not us, we’re just the programme makers’,” says Maziar Bahari. ‘This move denies them that excuse.”
2 Dec 2011 | Leveson Inquiry
Over the past ten days, Lord Justice Leveson has been overseeing an Inquiry that resembles more a daytime chat show than the first public examination into the standards and ethics of the British press in thirty years.
There have been some memorable moments: ex-Formula 1 boss Max Mosley claiming Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre was “completely naive about sex”; we learned Hugh Grant‘s middle name is Mungo; and on two occasions — to the horror of the the press gallery —Leveson admitted he had not read the morning papers.
But the comedy gold of the Inquiry surely came from Paul McMullan. Those watching sat agog as the News of the World deputy features editor ran through his life as a tabloid hack. He told us stories of pretending to be “Brad the rent boy” to expose a priest — “there’s two of us, in our underpants, running through a nunnery at midnight after getting the priest…it was such fun” — he admitted he “loved giving chase” to celebrities (“fun” before Princess Diana died, he said); he had tried and failed to hack David Beckham’s phone; he claimed “circulation defines the public interest”; and, in a quote he’ll now forever be associated with, affirmed that “privacy is for paedos.”
Then there was his solemn regret for having discovered actor Denholm Elliott’s homeless and drug-addicted daughter begging outside Chalk Farm tube station, took her to his flat, photographed her topless and turned it into a News of the World splash. She later killed herself.
Blend these two and you get an Inquiry that has been a cocktail of surreal, intense, sometimes hilarious, and at other times haunting.
In the first week of evidence, it was at times impossible not to feel a sense of guilt for being a journalist, as witnesses gave example after damning example of press intrusion, harassment and, in some cases, indefensible and vile exploitation. In a raw, 30-minute account, the Dowlers recounted the moment they managed to get through to their missing daughter Milly’s voicemail, leading them to believe she was alive. It was only nine years later, this year, that they were told the reason they had managed to was because Milly’s voicemail messages had been hacked and deleted to make room for new messages to come through. She was almost certainly dead at the time.
How bizarre it was to have that chilling testimony juxtaposed with Hugh Grant’s lengthy afternoon account of press intrusion, sprinkled with his wit and movie-star charm.
As the first week drew to a close, paparazzi emerged as the villains. Sienna Miller described being chased down her street by 10 photographers —- “take away the cameras,” she said, “and you’ve got a pack of men chasing a woman”. Sheryl Gascoigne recalled driving to a police station to chase off a paparazzo who was following her, only to be told nothing could be done. JK Rowling had more than one tale of being long-lensed while out with her family, with her daughter, then aged eight, being snapped in her swimsuit. These photos were later printed in OK! magazine. An image, she said, “can spread around the world like a virus”.
It was hard not to sympathise with the witnesses as they doled out story after story of questionable press standards, reminding us of the worst of the trade to which we belong and have cultivated, seemingly limitless in its desire to get just one shot.
This reminder turned into guilt with the stories of ordinary people. The pain of the McCanns was almost palpable: a couple, desperate in the search for their missing daughter, being accused in the papers more than once of killing her and freezing her body. The wrongly arrested Bristol landlord Chris Jefferies described how, in a matter of days, the British media’s distorted coverage had “vilified” him and left him “effectively under house arrest.” And there was the haunting revelation by the Watsons, whose remaining son had killed himself and was found clutching copies of the articles that had, they said, defamed their murdered daughter.
That the Dowlers in particular remained balanced, conceding that the press had been helpful in spreading information about their missing daughter, made the tabloid pill an even more bitter one to swallow.
As journalists took to the witness box, we were been doled out sizeable home truths about the British press, elements of which Alastair Campbell deemed “putrid”. He slammed the Daily Mail for a “culture of negativity”, where speed and ideology reign supreme. Former tabloid hack Richard Peppiatt portrayed a tabloid culture of bullying, fabrication and agenda-setting more intent on delivering impact than seeking truth. And then there was McMullan, who revealed his editors did indeed know about phone hacking and were “scum” for denying it.
The PCC was criticised throughout the Inquiry, notably for its failure to investigate phone hacking in 2009 or mitigate in the coverage doled out to the McCanns. JK Rowling called the regulator “a wrist-slapping exercise at best”. Libel was also repeatedly highlighted as something for the “rich”.
Various solutions that were offered included a public interest advisory body to help guide reporters; a regulator with the power to issue fines and impose sanctions; and a league table of newspapers to see which ones adhered to a code of conduct. A cheaper and more accessible system in which it would be possible for libel or privacy cases to heard in county courts, not just the high court, was also suggested. Unsurprisingly, Max Mosley championed a policy of prior notification to warn people before publishing stories exposing their private lives.
The past ten days of revelations, criticisms and potential solutions hammered home the quandary Leveson has on his hands: how to avoid infringing free speech — “the cornerstone of democracy”, to quote Hugh Grant — while finding ways to restrain further bad behaviour in the British press. Listening to Nick Davies’ account alone, recounting a history of rigorous and meticulous reporting, we were reminded that it was an act of brilliant journalism that exposed an act of putrid journalism; and it is of credit to this Inquiry that it is giving those on the receiving end a rare platform to criticise the redtops.
But there is far more to come. Before Christmas we will hear from the former information commissioner, a solicitor for phone hacking victims, and News International. In the new year editors and proprietors will take to the witness box to face the accusations of unethical behaviour they have received.
McMullan may have set the entertainment bar high, but what will go on in court 73 is set to be no less intense than ten days just passed.
Follow Index on Censorship’s coverage of the Leveson Inquiry on Twitter – @IndexLeveson.
2 Dec 2011 | Europe and Central Asia, Russia
Rights activists have said there has been an onslaught of freedom of expression violations in Russia as the country’s 4 December parliamentary elections draw closer.
Russia’s leading independent election watchdog, GOLOS (voice) Association, has become the focus of a a propaganda war, coming under sustained attacks from pro-government media and persecution from law enforcement agencies. At the end of November, NTV channel reporters stormed the association’s Moscow office with a video camera, shouting out questions about the activists’ connections to the CIA. GOLOS’s deputy director Grigory Melkonyants recorded the invasion on his mobile phone and then posted it on YouTube. While recording, Melkonyants repeatedly described NTV as a propaganda tool of Vladimir Putin’s chief strategist, Vladislav Surkov.
“The channel’s reporters interviewed us several days ago and had a chance to receive all the answers they sought”, Melkonyants explained. “The same day they invaded the office, they could have gone to an independent press centre in Moscow where GOLOS was giving a press conference”. The head of GOLOS, Liliya Shibanova, called this “administrative harassment in order to prevent the association from doing its job — stopping violations of law at elections”. One of the association’s regional offices in Altay was also searched by local prosecutors.
GOLOS was established in 2000 as an independent organisation to monitor elections and prevent fraud. It is being financed mainly by grants from Europe and the United States, which ensures its members are not dependent on the Russian government.
The harrassment of the organisation continues. Soon after the NTV incident, deputies from three political parties (United Russia, A Just Russia and LDPR) appealed to Russia’s general prosecutor to investigate GOLOS and establish if it intrudes on the electoral campaign. Moscow Meschanskaya Prosecutor’s office complied and filed an administrative case against GOLOS, saying the association violated elections law by publishing research and poll results less than five days before the elections. Prosecutors claimed the association “aims to create a negative image of one of the political parties” but did not provide any details. GOLOS denied these allegations, calling them a part of a discrediting campaign.
Rights activists assume that the one party most unhappy with GOLOS is United Russia, which is led by Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin. The party may have been irritated by a special project from GOLOS titled The Map of Election Violations, which is a Google-based interactive map where all Russian internet users can leave messages about law violations during the electoral campaign. GOLOS experts check these messages and report violations to law enforcement agencies and election commissions. On 2 December, the map described almost five thousand incidents.
When prosecutors started investigating GOLOS’ activities, the organisations information partner, online news site Gazeta.ru, removed links to the map. The site’s deputy editor Roman Badanin resigned in protest.
According to the map, the most frequent subject of complaints is United Russia. The most common violation is using administrative resources to agitate for United Russia or against their opponents. Local authorities in Moscow and other cities told businessmen to make their employees vote for the party, and some offered money for votes.
Moscow mayor Sergey Sobyanin claimed it was absolutely fine that posters calling on citizens to vote were of a similar design to those calling for votes for United Russia. Several opposition members tried to hold an “elections funeral” in late November — a protest in front of the Central Election Commission in Moscow which was to symbolise the “death” of free election process. They were all detained, some of them fined. The head of the Central Election Commission Vladimir Churov also critisised GOLOS alleging the association agitated against United Russia.
As elections go ahead, those critical of the Kremlin have two strategies. One was proposed by a well-known blogger Aleksey Navalny, who suggests that people vote for any party except United Russia and work with GOLOS to report election law violations at polling stations.
Another was made popular by unregistered opposition People’s Freedom Party led by Boris Nemtsov, Mikhail Kasyanov and Vladimir Ryzhkov. They say the best thing to do on 4 December is to protest election violations across Russia.
