15 Sep 2016 | Bahrain, Bahrain Letters, Campaigns, Campaigns -- Featured
Nabeel Rajab, Bahrain Center for Human Rights, – winner of Bindmans Award for Advocacy at the Index Freedom of Expression Awards 2012 with then-Chair of the Index on Censorship board of trustees Jonathan Dimbleby
Rights groups wrote to the governments of 50 states urging them to publicly call for the release of Bahraini human rights defender Nabeel Rajab, who faces up to 15 years’ imprisonment for comments he made on Twitter. Last week, Bahrain brought the new charge of “defaming the state” against him, after an op-ed was published under his name in The New York Times.
The letter from 22 NGOs, including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, urges the 50 governments to “speak out on Bahrain’s continued misuse of the judicial system to harass and silence human rights defenders, through charges that violate freedom of expression.”
Sayed Ahmed Alwadaei, Director of Advocacy, BIRD: “The Bahraini state is an enemy to the internet and free speech and must be condemned as such by the international community. Bahrain is committing a crime by prosecuting human rights defenders. A strong, clear message can save Nabeel Rajab from a 15 year prison sentence.”
Among those addressed are the governments of France, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States. While the US State Department called for Nabeel Rajab’s release on 6 September, other governments have not done so. The 50 states addressed in the letter are all previous signatories of statements at the United Nations criticizing Bahrain’s ongoing human rights violations and calling for progress.
The Foreign & Commonwealth Office has
urged “the Bahraini authorities to respect the rights of all its citizens, and call on them to protect the universal rights of freedom of expression.”
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Prince Zeid bin Ra’ad Al-Hussein, used his opening statement at the 33rd Human Rights Council this week to raise concern over Bahrain’s harassing and arresting human rights defenders. He cautioned Bahrain: “The past decade has demonstrated repeatedly and with punishing clarity exactly how disastrous the outcomes can be when a Government attempts to smash the voices of its people, instead of serving them.”
Nabeel Rajab, the President of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, has been held in pre-trial detention since 13 June. During this time he has been held largely in solitary confinement, and his health has deteriorated as a result. Since 2011, Nabeel Rajab has faced multiple prosecutions and prison sentences for his vocal activism. He was subjected to a travel ban in 2014 and has been unable to leave the country.
In his current trial, Nabeel Rajab faces charges including “insulting a statutory body”, “insulting a neighbouring country”, and “disseminating false rumours in time of war”. These are in relation to remarks he tweeted and retweeted on Twitter in 2015 relating to torture in Bahrain’s Jaw prison and the role of the Saudi Arabian-led coalition in causing a humanitarian crisis in Yemen.
Most recently, on 5 September Rajab was charged with “deliberate dissemination of false news and spreading tendentious rumours that undermine the prestige of the state and its stature” for an op-ed he wrote to the New York Times. In it, Rajab asked the US authorities: “Is this the kind of ally America wants? The kind that punishes its people for thinking, that prevents its citizens from exercising their basic rights?”
Husain Abdulla, Executive Director, Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain: “This has been another test for Bahrain’s attitude to free expression and it failed it once again. Bahrain has zero respect for free speech. Nabeel Rajab should never have been prosecuted, it is that simple. We want to see the international community take public action against Bahrain’s flagrant disregard of human rights.”
Bahrain was named an Enemy of the Internet by Reporters Without Border in 2014 and is a bottom scorer in Freedom House’s Freedom of the World report. Both RSF and Freedom House are signatories of today’s letter to 50 states.
Nabeel Rajab’s next court session has been set for 6 October, when he is expected to be sentenced.
Background
NGOs and others have been urging action on Nabeel Rajab’s case since he was imprisoned in pre-trial detention in June.
The Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy wrote to British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson on 7 September urging public action on Nabeel Rajab.
On 2 September, 34 NGOs wrote a letter to the King of Bahrain calling for Nabeel Rajab’s release.
In August, as part of an initiative organised by Index on Censorship, leading writers wrote a letter to British Prime Minister Theresa May asking the UK government to call on Bahrain, their ally, to release Nabeel Rajab. They included playwright David Hare, author Monica Ali, comedian Shazia Mirza, MP Keir Starmer and Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka.
Bahrain: Prominent rights activist charged for New York Times letter
Bahrain delays court date for human rights campaigner for third time
Index award winners and judges call for release of Bahraini campaigner
15 Sep 2016 | Tim Hetherington Fellowship
Award-winning photojournalist Tim Hetherington’s ‘Infidel’ exhibition had an emotional opening in Liverpool this week. The exhibition, being held at LJMU’s John Lennon Art and Design building, features moving and intimate images of American soldiers stationed in Afghanistan. Read in full at JMU Journalism.
15 Sep 2016 | Bulgaria, Europe and Central Asia, Mapping Media Freedom, mobile, News and features
Between 2013 and 2015, 10 Bulgarian municipalities spent a total of 2.7 million Bulgarian lev ($1.54 million) – mainly to media companies and PR agencies – in return for positive coverage of their activities, an investigative series by news site Dnevnik.bg found.
According to the articles, the local governments of the five largest, excluding the capital Sofia, and five of the poorest cities in the country were found to be engaging in “corrupt practices” and displayed a disregard for “journalistic ethics and loyalty to the audience”.
Under the guise of using contracts to create advertisements, “job posting messages and other texts” – not only in publications but also for radio and television broadcasts – all 10 municipalities were found to be buying influence in media outlets and attempting to eliminate criticism, Spas Spasov, the author of the series, told Index on Censorship. The cities reviewed were Plovdiv, Varna, Burgas, Ruse, Pleven, Stara Zagora, Shumen, Kazanlak, Blagoevgrad, Vratsa and Montana.
The data, which was obtained through freedom of information requests, does not claim to be exhaustive but provides an indication of administrative control over news in the cities covered by the investigative reports. “The idea behind the project was to reveal the deep crisis in which freedom of the press finds itself in Bulgaria,” Spasov said.
One visible trend in the series is that media content is sold at a discount to local governments who buy “wholesale”.
“The results of my investigation show that virtually all the media in the analysed municipalities are dependent on the public funding they get,” Spasov told Index. The lack of an advertising market outside the capital only strengthens this dependence on handouts from local government, he added.
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This article is a case study drawn from the issues documented by Mapping Media Freedom, Index on Censorship’s project that monitors threats to press freedom in 42 European and neighbouring countries.
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He found that in many cases the money private media outlets receive from municipal administrations often covers the entirety – or at least a significant portion – of their budgets. In one case a source told Spasov that the entire salary of a journalist was covered by Vratsa municipal funding.
In the city of Varna some advertising contracts were signed by municipal companies that are monopolies that were not in need of advertising. Spasov said that this is a way to buy political and institutional influence in a media outlet.
Many municipalities were found to be contracting “advertising” and “promotional activities” through private media despite the fact that almost every municipality has its own municipal media, through which they already publish official announcements.
“Of course, there is nothing vicious in the practice of municipal administrations buying advertising in private media,” Spasov said. He does, however, stress that in order to avoid buying media influence, local administrations and government institutions should publish their advertisements only in media outlets that comply with the Ethical Code of the Bulgarian Media.
“This code clearly stipulates that all text covered by the contracts will be marked as sponsored content but this is not the current practice,” he said, adding that vague wording–phrases such as “other texts”–helps to disguise sponsored articles published as editorial content.
This is possible because Bulgaria has no law requiring print and online media outlets to label sponsored content they are publishing. Existing regulation only addresses television advertisements.
“Transparency of sponsored content is crucial for a functioning free press. It is vital that existing legislation on advertisers be reformed swiftly to include all media outlets in order to protect the public,” Hannah Machlin, project officer for Index on Censorship’s Mapping Media Freedom, said.
The investigation went on to find that many media outlets from smaller municipalities were created by political entities with the purpose of bullying their opponents in local government.
Spasov told Index that if the remainder of the country’s 256 municipalities were also to be investigated, “there should be no doubt” that the findings would be similar to the 10 which were analysed in his investigation.
14 Sep 2016 | News and features, Turkey, Turkey Uncensored
Turkey Uncensored is an Index on Censorship project to publish a series of articles from censored Turkish writers, artists and translators.
Jailed Turkish journalist Ahmet Altan.
If made out of the right stuff a journalist is a tough nut. Some of us are, you may say, born that way. Our profession lives in our cells. We are compelled to do what our DNA instructs us to do.
Yet, these days, I can’t help waking up each morning in a state of gloom.
Never before have we, Turkey’s journalists, been subjected to such multi-frontal cruelty. Each and every one of us have at least one — usually more — serious issue to wrestle with. Many have already faced unemployment. According to Turkey’s journalist unions, more than 2,300 media professionals have been forced to down pens since the coup attempt. The silenced face a dark destiny: they will never be rehired by a media under the Erdogan yoke.
More than 120 of my colleagues are in indefinite detention – and that number does not include 19 already sentenced to prison. The latest to be added to the list are the novelist and former editor of daily Taraf, the renowned journalist Ahmet Altan and his brother, Mehmet Altan, a commentator and scholar.
The grim pattern of arrests comes with a note attached: “To be continued…”
Nobel Laureate Orhan Pamuk recently and eloquently summed up what Turkey is becoming: “Everybody, who even just a little, criticises the government is now being locked in jail with a pretext, accompanied by feelings of grudge and intimidation, rather than applying law. There is no more freedom of opinion in Turkey!”
Some of those who are still free, either at home or abroad, may consider themselves lucky – or at least be perceived as such. But the reality is that each and every one of us faces immense hardship.
Being forced into an exile, as I have been, is not an easy existence. Many like me have an arrest warrant hanging over their heads. Others are simply anxious or unwilling to return home.
Pressured by financial strains, a journalist in exile bears the burden of the country they have been torn from while remaining glued to the agony of others.
But there is more. Last week I offered one of my news analyses to a tiny, independent daily — one of the very few remaining in Turkey. Waiving any fee, I asked the editor — who is a tough nut — to consider publishing it. Soon, the text was filed and the initial response was: “This one is great, we will run it.”
Then came a telephone call. Because the editor and I have a friendly relationship, he was open when he told me this: “As we were about to go online with it, one editor suggested we ask our lawyer. I thought he was right in feeling uneasy because everything these days is extraordinary. Then, the lawyer strongly advised against it. Why, we asked. He said that since Mr Baydar has an arrest warrant, publishing a text with his byline or signature would, according to the decrees issued under emergency rule, give the authorities to the right to raid the newspaper, or simply to shut it down. Just like that. Tell Mr Baydar this, I am sure he will understand.”
I did understand. No sane person would want to bear the responsibility for causing the newspaper’s employees to be rendered jobless, to be sent out to starvation.
I have since published piece elsewhere.
This incident is but one in a chain, hidden in Turkey’s relative freedom. It’s a cunning and brutal system of censorship that aims to sever the ties between Turkey’s cursed journalists and their readership. It is a deliberate construction of a wall between us and the public. It is putting us in a cage even if we are breathing freedom elsewhere.
It’s enough to make George Orwell turn in his grave.
But there is some consolation. Thankfully we, the censored among Turkey’s journalists, have space to write about the truth, make comments and offer analysis in spaces like Index on Censorship. Thankfully, we have the internet, which is everybody’s open property, even if the sense of defeat when you awake some mornings leaves you convulsing in the gloom.
You know you have to chase it away and get on with what you know best: to inform, to exchange views, offer independent opinion, promote diversity, and hope that one day it will contribute to democracy.
More Turkey Uncensored
Can Dündar: “We have your wife. Come back or she’s gone”
Turkey: Losing the rule of law
Yavuz Baydar: As academic freedom recedes, intellectuals begin an exodus from Turkey
