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[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Ahmet Altan is one of over 150 journalists who is in detention in Turkey. Altan stands accused of “attempting to overthrow the government” and “attempting to eradicate the parliament” and they face three counts of life sentences without the possibility of parole.
Altan, who testified on 19 September through the judicial teleconferencing system from Silivri Prison, mainly addressed the presiding judge. The next hearing in his case will take place on 13 November.
The belief that makes people gather around a religion is rooted in their trust in the honesty of God.
God cannot tell lies.
Lying would deprive God of his divinity.
In ancient times, even a pagan tribe that worshipped a pear tree believed in the tree’s honesty; that it would bear the promised fruit at the promised time.
Ever since people were created they have gathered around authority, worshipped it and entrusted themselves to it.
People who don’t trust each other, who divide into groups, tribes, and clans, can only come together around an authority which they trust to be honest.
In the same way that a person needs an honest authority in order to become religious, there is need for an honest authority in order for millions of people to become a nation and establish a state.
The honest authority which enables the millions to turn into a nation and establish a state is not one of politicians, soldiers, executives, or political parties.
That honest authority, that great source of trust, resides in the judges.
The magical link that turns millions of dispersed pearls into a necklace is the honesty of those judges.
Without judges, there cannot be a nation. Without judges, there cannot be a state.
What makes a nation and what makes a state is its judges.
In the same way that removing the oxygen atom from a water molecule turns the very source of life into one of death, removing the judges from the state turns it into an armed gang.
If there are no judges then there is no state.
When you remove the oxygen atom from a water molecule it no longer qualifies as water. Similarly, when you remove the judges from the state, the state no longer qualifies as a state.
What distinguishes a state from an armed gang is the presence of judges.
Well, then what makes this ever so vitally important judge a judge?
It is not his or her diploma, his or her cloak, his or her podium.
What makes a judge a judge is their possession of an almost godly honesty and the people’s undoubting belief in that honesty.
In the same way that there cannot be a lying God there cannot be a lying judge.
A judge would lose their qualification as judge the moment they were to lie in court.
If a state were to allow a judge who no longer qualifies as a judge to continue, that state would no longer qualify as a state.
A judge demolishes the state as they demolish their qualification as a judge by lying in court.
A year ago, Mehmet Altan and I were arrested on the charges of “giving subliminal messages to the putschists.”
Later on, this ridiculous allegation disappeared and we were sent to prison on the charges of staging the coup on 15 July and attempting to overthrow the government with weapons.
We are said to have staged an armed coup d’état.
This is the crime we are charged with.
This is a case in which the absurdity of the allegation overwhelms even the gravity of the charges.
Now, I’ll say something loud and clear to this court, to this country and to those around the world who have taken an interest in this trial:
Show us even a single piece of concrete evidence of the strange allegations against us, and I will not defend myself anymore. Even if I am sentenced to the gravest penalty I will not appeal the ruling.
I am saying this loud and clear.
Show me a single piece of evidence and I will waive my right to appeal.
I will submit to spending the rest of my life in a prison cell.
During this past year, which we spent in prison, a judge ruled each month for the continuation of our imprisonment by claiming that “there was solid evidence” against us.
In the previous hearing, you, too, said there was “concrete evidence” against us.
Now, for you to be able to preserve your integrity and your qualification as a judge and for the state to be able to preserve its qualification as a state, you need to show us what those pieces of “solid evidence” are.
Since you declared with such ease that there was solid evidence, that evidence needs to be in our case files.
Come on, show that solid evidence to us and to the rest of the world – the evidence which proves that we staged a coup on 15 July.
You won’t be able to show it.
Both you and I know that there is no such evidence.
Because these allegations are utter lies.
Go ahead, disprove what I have been saying, pull out that piece of evidence and show it to us.
There are some difficult aspects to arresting people on nonsensical allegations, Your Honour, and now you are confronted with those difficulties.
Either you will end this nonsense by saying “there is no solid evidence” or you will show us some “solid evidence.”
Or, you will insist on saying “there is solid evidence” while there is no solid evidence and thus lose your integrity and your qualification as a judge?
And with you, the state will lose its qualification as a state.
Thereby we will cease to be defendants.
We will become hostages of the judges, who have lied and therefore lost their qualification as judges, and to an armed gang, which has lost its qualification as a state.
Because in a real state with real judges there can be no allegation without evidence, there can be no trial without evidence, there can be no arrest without evidence.
Because a state, if it is to be a state, needs evidence to put a person on trial.
Only armed despots lock people away without evidence.
If you continue trying and incarcerating us without evidence you will demolish the judiciary and the state.
You will be committing a serious crime.
Turkey will turn into a jungle of thuggery and despotism, where the guilty try the innocent.
Now, you need to decide whether you are an honest judge or a criminal.
If you accept an indictment that makes such absurd allegations and declare “there is solid evidence” while there isn’t even a single piece of evidence, you’ll discover life’s capriciousness and will put yourself on trial while thinking you are trying us.
I wait for your decision.
As an aged writer, one much more experienced than you are, my advice to you is to save yourself, save your profession, and save your state.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_basic_grid post_type=”post” max_items=”12″ style=”load-more” items_per_page=”4″ element_width=”6″ grid_id=”vc_gid:1507033820060-8b45a65c-3de0-8″ taxonomies=”8607″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
Jeremy Corbyn speaks at Labour Party conference in Brighton, September 2017. Credit: DaveLevy/Flickr
During his first speech at conference as Labour Party leader in September 2015, Jeremy Corbyn called for an end to “personal abuse” and urged delegates to “treat people with respect”.
“Cut out the cyber-bullying and especially the misogynistic abuse online,” he added. “I want kinder politics.”
The BBC had also decided to bolster Kuenssberg’s personal protection during the general election in June after she faced threats over alleged bias in her reporting surrounding Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. She has also been accused of partiality by Conservative and Ukip supporters.
“It is unprecedented that a journalist would need protection to do her job covering a political conference in the UK, which makes this all the more troubling,” Hannah Machlin, project manager for Index on Censorship’s’ Mapping Media Freedom project, said. “Laura’s case indicates that sexist online abuse against women journalists has become part of the job, and it’s affecting not only the safety of reporters but also a functioning free press.”
Two other journalists were refused entry altogether to the conference. On 23 September, Sussex police refused to give Huck magazine editor Michael Segalov a press security clearance required to attend. Segalov wrote that he applied for press accreditation three months prior to the conference but was informed the evening of 19 September that it had been denied based on the police’s refusal to grant him security clearance.
“Rather than provide reasons and rationale for our journalistic freedom being curtailed, the police said they would not divulge why they made their call,” Segalov wrote. He has never been arrested, charged or convicted of any crime.
“This might be a single incident, but the repercussions should it go unchallenged are worrying. The police restricting the rights of a journalist from attending a political event without giving any rationale, basis or reason puts our civil liberties on the line.”
On 24 September, Michael Walker, a left-wing journalist working for Novara Media, was also barred from entering by police.
“Barring reporters is a form of censorship,” Machlin added. “Political parties interfering with access to events undermines key parts of democracy and sends a clear message from the labour party to all other journalists.”
Earlier this year,Corbyn’s press team barred Buzzed from campaign events. On 9 May, in the run-up to the general election, a senior Corbyn aide told BuzzFeed News political editor Jim Waterson that his access was limited and that the website’s access to the Labour leader would be limited for the rest of the campaign. This was because of an interview with Corbyn published on 8 May had “disrupted media coverage of Labour’s launch event”, the website reported.
Buzzfeed published a piece quoting Corbyn that he remain as the party’s leader even if he lost the election. Corbyn told the BBC he had only said he would stay in power because they would win. BuzzFeed then published an extract of the interview, which showed they had quoted him accurately.
A reporter from Cornwell Live who was live-blogging the event wrote: “We’ve been told by the PM’s press team that we were not allowed to stand outside to see Theresa May arrive.”
In the wake of the Grenfell Tower fire in June, the Kensington and Chelsea Council, which has been Conservative-run since 1964, tried to prevent journalists from attending its first after the atrocity. The council had sought to exclude the public and media from the cabinet meeting, arguing their presence would risk disorder. But after a legal challenge from five media organisations, a high court judge ordered the council to allow accredited journalists to attend half an hour before the meeting was due to start. [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_basic_grid post_type=”post” max_items=”4″ element_width=”6″ grid_id=”vc_gid:1507044011187-4d3c340a-bdf9-4″ taxonomies=”6564″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
Albania’s mainstream media outlets have been reluctant to cover and expose corruption in the country, and observers blame vexatious lawsuits for the hesitancy.
BIRN Albania, which specialises in investigative reporting, publishing and media monitoring, along with Likmeta and Bogdani were accused of causing the couple reputational damage and anguish, for which Gjoni and Caushi are demanding 7 million Lek (€54,000) in compensation.
The BIRN Albania journalists had written about the closure and subsequent reopening of an investigation, carried out by the High Inspectorate for Declaration and Audit of Assets and Conflicts of Interest, into Gjoni for concealing wealth, falsifying official documents and money laundering.
In a separate lawsuit, Gjoni and Caushi, based on the same reference, are asking for 4 million Lek (€30,000) in compensation from Shqiptarja, Doci and Qyno.
Kristina Voko, the executive director of BIRN Albania, considers the lawsuit malicious in nature. She pointed to the high journalistic standards held by the organisation for the work it produces.
“We are confident we will win the case because our reporting has been in public interest and solidly based on facts,” she told Index.
Doci wrote on Facebook that he was honoured by the lawsuit and that he would not remove anything in his article about Gjoni because he considers it to be accurate.
Media organisations within the country and internationally have expressed solidarity with BIRN Albania and Shqiptarja. Many think the cases will further discourage investigative journalism, which is already scarce.
Flutura Kusari, a media lawyer, said in an article published at the website Sbunker that the Gjoni lawsuits fell under the category of Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPP), which she believes are being used to intimidate Albanian journalists.
“In the SLAPP lawsuits you can see prima facie that are not based in facts and they are going to be unsuccessful in the court. With them the plaintiff does not aim to win the case, but aims to frighten and discourage journalists from further reporting issues of public interest, making them pass through long and costly court processes,” she wrote.
The Union of Albanian Journalists called for Gjoni to stand down while the case is ongoing as his position in the judicial system may influence the decisions.
Blendi Salaj, the vice chairman of Albanian Media Council, considers the case as one against investigative journalism that also aims to keep the media silent.
“There are no grounds for this case but the fact that true journalism and the dissemination of information goes against the interest of subjects whose shifty activities are revealed in the press,” he told Index.
Salaj also pointed to the large damages requested as compensation by the plaintiff.
“The amount of money they request is meant to scare, worry and intimidate journalists and outlets that expose facts they don’t want out there,” he said.
Kristina Voko also agrees that lawsuits are being used as a form of intimidation.
“It is true that during the last year, there has been an increased number of lawsuits against Albanian journalists or media outlets from judges or private companies involved in different concessionary agreements,” she told Index.
“This poses concerns related to media freedom in the country,” she said.
Investigating private companies also poses difficulties for journalists in the country. It is already a rare practice in the mainstream media as result of advertising contracts and strong ties that some of these companies have with politicians.
A vetting process for all judges and prosecutors in the country supervised by an international body is underway as the first step to reform the system. [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_basic_grid post_type=”post” max_items=”4″ element_width=”6″ grid_id=”vc_gid:1506959873796-92fda719-8e40-6″ taxonomies=”6564″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
The Guggenheim Museum in New York, after a week of resisting calls for the removal of three works from Art and China after 1989: Theater of the World, announced that it will pull the works from the exhibition. These include two videos documenting performances with live animals in 1994 and 2003, and a sculpture that replicates a 1993 work including live insects, snakes and lizards. Their removal came in response to “repeated threats of violence” and “concern for the safety of its staff, visitors and participating artists.”
The Guggenheim’s alarming action continues a growing worldwide trend in which threats of violent protest are silencing artistic expression and posing a danger to free speech in general. Whether or not the provocations of artists are defensible or morally unacceptable, we need to take an uncompromising position against threats of violence. When cultural institutions cave in to such threats, others who are convinced of the moral rectitude of their cause are encouraged to embrace similar tactics. This time it is animal rights activists. Next time it could be religious or political extremists.
Cultural institutions need to work with law enforcement to protect their staff, the public, and the works on view and to ensure that the right to protest does not override the right to free expression. Every time threats of violence succeed in silencing expression, fear’s stranglehold on the imagination tightens, stifling our ability to fully explore the world and our place in it.
The protesters insist that this is not about free speech: they claim the controversial works are not art expressing a controversial view but are themselves unacceptable acts of cruelty. That may have been a valid argument had the Guggenheim commissioned the performances represented in the videos. The Museum did not do that. The show’s curators sought to represent a period of art production from a specific political and cultural context. Artists in that period used live animals in their performances on multiple occasions.
Whatever the ethical issues may be, the fact of those historical performances remains. Their erasure from the show cannot reverse history, and will only succeed in offering viewers a sanitized version of an intense and troublesome period.
The only piece in the exhibition involving live creatures is Theater of the World (1993), where insects are likely to be consumed by larger animals. Asking for the removal of a piece that replicates what naturally happens between species and where the only animals harmed are insects that are bred to be fed to pets, suggests that the artistic representation of that process is always gratuitous because art is merely an “entertaining indulgence.”
While art can be indulgent or entertaining, this certainly does not characterize the work of Chinese conceptual artists of the 1990s. By exploring taboos and testing the boundaries of the permissible, their art reveals the brutality within the oppressive conditions of living in an authoritarian system and dealing with the massive displacements brought on by globalization.
By daring to face dark aspects of existence and represent them in all their stark cruelty, art can provide necessary insights into realities that are difficult to face. This is the type of art that censorship always targets, and it is this art that needs the most vigorous defense.
Hunter O’Hanian
Executive Director
College Art Association
Jodie Ginsberg, CEO
Index on Censorship
Chris Finan, Executive Director
National Coalition Against Censorship
Index on Censorship urges Ukraine to not extradite journalist Narzullo Okhunjonov to Uzbekistan where he faces prosecution.
On 20 September authorities detained Okhunjonovwhen he arrived at an international airport in Kyiv, Ukraine, following an Interpol red notice.
Uzbek authorities issued an international arrest warrant on fraud charges against Okhunjonov, who denies the charges.
A Kyiv court then approved a 40-day detention period for the journalist, the limit under an Interpol notice.
Okhunjonov along with his wife and five children were seeking political asylum from the Ukrainian authorities. The journalist has been living in exile in Turkey since 2013 in order to avoid politically motivated persecution for his reporting.
“This abuse of the Interpol system is a direct violation of Article 2 of its constitution and a clear effort to silence critical journalists,” Hannah Machlin, project manager of Index on Censorship’s Mapping Media Freedom platform, said. “We call on the Ukrainian authorities to allow Narzullo Okhunjonov to remain in Ukraine, grant him political asylum and reject requests to extradite him to his home country.”
Okhunjonov writes in Uzbek and Russian for media outlets including BBC Uzbek on topics such as Uzbekistan’s authoritarian government and has criticised by the late president Islam Karimov.
The journalist’s family is currently residing in Kyiv.
The Council of Europe’s parliamentary assembly published Resolution 2161 in April 2017 on the abuse of the Interpol system. The resolution underlined that“in a number of cases in recent years, however, Interpol and its Red Notice system have been abused by some member States in the pursuit of political objectives, in order to repress freedom of expression”.
In August, two exiled Turkish journalists, Hamza Yalçın and Doğan Akhanli, were detained in Spain following Interpol red notices from Turkey. Both are no longer facing extradition. [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_basic_grid post_type=”post” max_items=”4″ element_width=”6″ grid_id=”vc_gid:1506702230284-c0425a2a-f87f-6″ taxonomies=”6564″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
The government of Catalonia, the semi-autonomous northeastern-most region of Spain, is scheduled to hold an independence referendum on 1 October. Despite heavy opposition from the government in Madrid, Catalan president Carles Puigdemont says the plebiscite will go ahead.
The Spanish government has deemed the referendum illegal and unconstitutional, resulting in arrests, raids and clashes between protesters and the police. Mariano Rajoy, the Spanish prime minister, has since stated that the referendum “won’t happen” after the seizing of millions of ballot papers and a crackdown on Catalan officials. Puigdemont has announced that regardless of voter turnout, a majority of the “yes” vote will result in a declaration of independence within 48 hours.
The stern reaction by the national government has caused not only much conflict within the region but also violations against media freedom.
Francesc Fàbregas, the director for the magazine, later told reporters that police were looking for voting papers and ballots that could have been printed at the office. “We didn’t commit any crime. They didn’t take any voting papers because they didn’t find them.”
About a hundred left-wing supporters of Catalan independence, summoned by anti-capitalist political party CUP, protested in front of the local police barracks. At the same time about a hundred Spanish right-wing supporters organised a counter-protest against the independence movement and supported the police.
Gemma Aguilera, a journalist for the news website El Món, received death threats as an unidentified protester shouted at her: “I will find you and kill you.” Protesters shouted at Aguilera using the word “bitch” and threatened another male reporter, telling him they would “cut [his] throat”.
Responding to these media violations, the Association of Catalan Journalists, a Barcelona-based organisation committed to protecting press freedoms in the region, released a statement reporting that since the beginning of the referendum they have “received complaints from journalists who have been coerced or forced to identify themselves during the coverage of events of public interest, pressured on writings and warned about their work”.
“These events constitute a serious and frontal attack on the freedom of expression and information. As professionals of journalism and communication, due to the respect for the society we serve and to whom we are responsible, we cannot allow silence to be the answer,” ACJ stated. “The fundamental rights of freedom of expression and information cannot be eroded, and the public and private media have the duty and the right to work freely to be able to inform about them.”
ACJ have since “demand[ed] the immediate halt” of the threats and obstructions.
Daniel Gascón, an editor for Letras Libres España, has explained in a recent article on the referendum that the Spanish authorities are simply employing its full legal arsenal to stop the unconstitutional referendum. In a statement to Index on Censorship, Gascón said: “The Spanish government’s duty is to uphold the Constitution. The Spanish state has to protect the rights of its citizens – in doing so it must obviously respect its own laws, which consecrate the principle of freedom of expression.”
In regards to the Catalan media being a part of either side’s campaigning strategy, Gascón said that “public media in Catalonia have often assumed a partial point of view”, yet “there should be a conversation about the use of TV3 as a political instrument and about the promiscuity between the media and the political sphere”.
“In June the Catalan parliament passed a notion not to pay subsidies to media that did not publicize the referendum,” Gascón added. “In the last few months, there have been some worrying instances of journalists singled out by Catalan government officials.”
Reports submitted to Index on Censorship’s Mapping Media Freedom project regarding the referendum do not just show violations from unionists. Voices critical of the Catalan government have also been silenced in the heated run-up the referendum.
The piece, entitled The Media of the National Movement (Los Medios del Movimiento Nacional), mentioned Márius Carol, the director of La Vanguardia, and quoted part of one of his articles.
Morán accused the Catalan media of receiving large sums of public money and added that it was no surprise to see them praising Catalan independence. He also called the Catalan government “corrupt” and described them as the “taliban who govern us”.
Morán was not given an explanation as to why his article was pulled.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_basic_grid post_type=”post” max_items=”4″ element_width=”6″ grid_id=”vc_gid:1506684697693-438cce07-99f6-8″ taxonomies=”199″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
Manus Island, in Papua New Guinea, is the location of a controversial detention centre which the Australian government uses to hold over 1,000 asylum seekers indefinitely. It is also home to Iranian journalist and 2017 Index journalism award nominee Behrouz Boochani. His film Chauka, Please Tell Us the Time, which exposes the realities of life as a detainee on Manus Island, has been selected for the BFI London Film Festival.
An urgent and powerful documentary, shot in a detention centre where asylum seekers trying to reach Australian shores are indefinitely detained. Secretly shot on a mobile phone by Boochani while detained on Manus, the film is a collaboration with Dutch-Iranian filmmaker Arash Kamali Sarvestani. Boochani recounts, via the testimonies of fellow inmates, the abuse and violence inflicted and the precarious state of limbo they find themselves in.
Chauka, the name of the dreaded solitary confinement unit within the detention centre, was originally the name of a beautiful bird and symbol of the Manus Island. By interweaving dialogue with two Manusian men and shots of daily life on the island, the film gives a much-needed voice to Manus inhabitants, understandably distressed by the current situation. With marked restraint, the film exposes lives broken by shocking immigration policies.
Free to air is the autumn 2017 edition of Index on Censorship magazine
Mexico is among the world’s most dangerous places to be a journalist, with a record number of journalists being killed in Mexico this year. We explore this in the autumn issue of Index on Censorship magazine 2017, which features two excellent articles on the dangers journalists face in the country today.
In an in-depth exclusive for Index, Duncan Tucker writes: “A record 11 journalists were murdered in 2016, and 2017 is on course to surpass that grim tally.”
Tucker says that Mexico’s drug war has brought record murder rates in 2017 and that this trend looks set to only get worse, with next year’s elections likely to cause further instability across the country.
“More than 100 Mexican journalists have been murdered since 2000 and at least 23 others have disappeared.”
“According to the Committee to Protect journalists, 95% of those killed in direct retaliation for their work are reporters for publications, which are typically in remote regions where the rule of law is undermined by rampant crime and corruption.”
“While journalists from the capital can retreat to relative safety after reporting in hazardous areas, local reporters are constantly exposed to the consequences of their work.”
Several local journalists are interviewed in the article, including Adrian Lopez, editor of a newspaper in the state of Sinaloa, who says: “We need professional help to understand and talk more about these things and the trauma that the violence could cause us.”
Alejandro Hope, a security analyst, says: “Federal authorities have failed to properly investigate and prosecute these cases.”
In the second article in the magazine to spotlight Mexico, journalist Tim MacGabhann is interviewed about his fictional book, which follows the life of a non-Mexican journalist in Mexico, who is haunted by the ghost of a colleague, a Mexican journalist. MacGabhann, who has reported from Mexico for Al Jazeera, amongst other publications, spoke of the protection foreign correspondents are afforded in the country and how this protection is not extended to Mexican journalists. The ramifications of this are becoming more visible at present.
“As foreign correspondents we depend on the work of local reporters, as fixers, to read their stories, and yet they pick up the tab,” says MacGabhann, who was visibly shocked by the growing tally of dead journalists this year when interviewed.
“NGOs can get you a panic button, one that you wear around your wrist or at home, but lots of journalists don’t use them. They’re too afraid because the person threatening you is likely to be a cop and you’re not going to call the cops about the cops.”
MacGabhann also spoke of his tremendous respect for journalists who continue to report there. Despite the violence, journalists continue to write and expose the country’s crime and corruption. They would rather be killed than stop reporting,” said MacGabhann.
For more information on the situation journalists face in Mexico and to read these articles, alongside other articles spotlighting Mexican journalists this year, please contact Rachael Jolley, editor of Index on Censorship magazine at rachael@indexoncensorship.org or Jemimah Steinfeld, deputy editor, at jemimah@indexoncensorship.org
Notes:
You can order your copy here, or take out a digital subscription via Exact Editions. Copies are also available at the BFI, the Serpentine Gallery, MagCulture, (London), News from Nowhere (Liverpool), Home (Manchester) and on Amazon. Each magazine sale helps Index on Censorship continue its fight for free expression worldwide.
About Index on Censorship magazine
Index on Censorship magazine was first published in 1972 and remains the only global magazine dedicated to free expression. Since then, some of the greatest names in literature and academia have written for the magazine, including Nadine Gordimer, Mario Vargas Llosa, Amartya Sen, Samuel Beckett, as well as Arthur Miller and Harold Pinter. The magazine continues to attract great writers, passionate arguments, and expose chilling stories of censorship and violence. It is the only global free expression magazine.
Each quarterly magazine is filled with reports, analysis, photography and creative writing from around the world. Index on Censorship magazine is published four times a year by Sage, and is available in print, online and mobile/tablets (iPhone/iPad, Android, Kindle Fire)
Winner of the British Society of Magazine Editors 2016 Editor of the Year in the special interest brand category.
As the Boston Globe said, Index has bylines that Vanity Fair would kill for. “Would that bylines were the only things about Index people were willing to kill for”
CHIEF executive of Index on Censorship, Jodie Ginsberg will deliver a talk at the Limerick Civic Trust’s Autumn Lecture Series to mark Banned Books Week – a global series of events celebrating the freedom to read. Read the full article
Dutch journalists launched a campaign to pressure advertisers into reconsidering advertising on sites that denigrate women.
Journalists are increasingly subjected to online harassment, but when the journalist is a woman misogynistic abuse quickly escalates into gender-based defamation and threats of sexual violence, according to a review of incidents reported to Index on Censorship’s Mapping Media Freedom project.
In the latest case,political editor Laura Kuenssberg, who works for the BBC, was provided with a security detail while she covered the Labour party conference in Brighton. Kuenssberg had been targeted with sexist abuse by individuals who were upset by what they saw as her anti-Labour and anti-Jeremy Corbyn bias.
A derogatory poster depicting Laura Kuenssberg as a Nazi (Credit: duncan c / Flickr)
“Sadly, Laura Kuenssberg’s experience is all too common across the 42 countries that Mapping Media Freedom monitors. Women are often targeted with threats of death and rape. As a society, we only hear about the most high-profile cases, which obscures the fact that this type of misogynistic intimidation is a widespread and pernicious obstacle to the performance of journalists’ professional duties,” Hannah Machlin, project manager at Index on Censorship’s Mapping Media Freedom project, said.
In July, Poland’s state-controlled news channel TVP INFO ran a critical piece about Dorota Bawołek, Brussels correspondent for Polsat, a private Polish TV channel, which led to online harassment.
Bawołek reported that she had received hundreds of insulting messages on social media after TVP INFO accused her of asking provocative questions with intent “to harm Poland”. In the messages Bawołek was called a “prostitute”, “anti-Polish manipulator”, “stupid” and “a snitch”.
In May, there were two cases that exemplify the seriousness of the threats that women journalists receive online.
In Ukraine, journalist Darina Synytska was threatened with rape and kidnapping on Facebook. Responding to a post in which Andriy Knyazev, a resident of Poltava, accused Synytska of passing the personal information of activists, three Facebook users — Ruslan Zarubin, Vitaliy Soloniy, Danylo Plakhov — left threatening comments. Other users were urged to “disappear” the journalist. The journalist union for the region issued a statement of support and solidarity of Synytska, and pledged to monitor the police investigation of the incident. The threats followed Synytska’s investigation of a conflict over a construction site in the centre of Poltava.
In The Netherlands, Loes Reijmer faced a storm of sexual harassment including threats of rape after a popular right-wing blog published her photo with the text: “Would you do her?” Reijmer had previously published critical columns about the controversial site GeenStijl, which has been routinely criticised for sexist content.
The GeenStijl post targeting Reijmer resulted in a public call on advertisers to stop advertising with the outlet backed by an open letter signed by over 100 women from the media and entertainment industries.
“Combating online threats against female journalists will remain at the top of my agenda as it is an integral part of the safety of journalists. There can be no freedom of the media without safety,” said the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media Harlem Désir.
“These cases highlight the seriousness of the threats women journalists face in the course of their work. These online campaigns are intended to silence and intimidate women who write critically. The solidarity of unions and a wider community reaction has been crucial in communicating that threats of sexual violence or otherwise are unacceptable,” Machlin said.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_basic_grid post_type=”post” max_items=”4″ element_width=”6″ grid_id=”vc_gid:1506602857542-6ca50442-57e4-6″ taxonomies=”8189, 7132″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
Award-winning journalist David Aaronovitch was joined in conversation with Irish young adult author Claire Hennessy and Saqi Books publisher Lynn Gaspard. With Ege Dundar reading poems by Moris Farhi and Bidisha reading from her own poetry.
Last week, Azerbaijani queer rights activist Javid Nabiyev posted a video on Facebook, in which he revealed that a series of police raids disproportionately aimed at LGBTQ+ people had been carried out in Baku, the country’s capital, over a series of days. Read the full article
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Ahmet Altan is one of over 150 journalists who is in detention in Turkey. Altan stands accused of “attempting to overthrow the government” and “attempting to eradicate the parliament” and they face three counts of life sentences without the possibility of parole.