Mouctar Bah, the Conakry correspondent of Agence France-Presse and Radio France Internationale, and Amadou Diallo, BBC correspondent, are reported to have gone into hiding in Guinea. The two had been threatened after reporting on the government massacre of demonstrators on 28 September.
Read more here
Dozens of protesters were shot dead in a crowded football stadium by Guinean security forces at a demonstration against the country’s military leader Captain Moussa “Dadis” Camara on 28 September. As many as 58 people had been brought in to the Conakry morgue on Monday, according to a doctor who wished to remain anonymous.
Read more here
A major new global ranking index tracking the state of free expression published today (Wednesday, 25 January) by Index on Censorship sees the UK ranked as only “partially open” in every key area measured.
In the overall rankings, the UK fell below countries including Australia, Israel, Costa Rica, Chile, Jamaica and Japan. European neighbours such as Austria, Belgium, France, Germany and Denmark also all rank higher than the UK.
The Index Index, developed by Index on Censorship and experts in machine learning and journalism at Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU), uses innovative machine learning techniques to map the free expression landscape across the globe, giving a country-by-country view of the state of free expression across academic, digital and media/press freedoms.
Key findings include:
The countries with the highest ranking (“open”) on the overall Index are clustered around western Europe and Australasia – Australia, Austria, Belgium, Costa Rica, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Sweden and Switzerland.
The UK and USA join countries such as Botswana, Czechia, Greece, Moldova, Panama, Romania, South Africa and Tunisia ranked as “partially open”.
The poorest performing countries across all metrics, ranked as “closed”, are Bahrain, Belarus, Burma/Myanmar, China, Cuba, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Eswatini, Laos, Nicaragua, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, South Sudan, Syria, Turkmenistan, United Arab Emirates and Yemen.
Countries such as China, Russia, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates performed poorly in the Index Index but are embedded in key international mechanisms including G20 and the UN Security Council.
Ruth Anderson, Index on Censorship CEO, said:
“The launch of the new Index Index is a landmark moment in how we track freedom of expression in key areas across the world. Index on Censorship and the team at Liverpool John Moores University have developed a rankings system that provides a unique insight into the freedom of expression landscape in every country for which data is available.
“The findings of the pilot project are illuminating, surprising and concerning in equal measure. The United Kingdom ranking may well raise some eyebrows, though is not entirely unexpected. Index on Censorship’s recent work on issues as diverse as Chinese Communist Party influence in the art world through to the chilling effect of the UK Government’s Online Safety Bill all point to backward steps for a country that has long viewed itself as a bastion of freedom of expression.
“On a global scale, the Index Index shines a light once again on those countries such as China, Russia, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates with considerable influence on international bodies and mechanisms – but with barely any protections for freedom of expression across the digital, academic and media spheres.”
Nik Williams, Index on Censorship policy and campaigns officer, said:
“With global threats to free expression growing, developing an accurate country-by-country view of threats to academic, digital and media freedom is the first necessary step towards identifying what needs to change. With gaps in current data sets, it is hoped that future ‘Index Index’ rankings will have further country-level data that can be verified and shared with partners and policy-makers.
“As the ‘Index Index’ grows and develops beyond this pilot year, it will not only map threats to free expression but also where we need to focus our efforts to ensure that academics, artists, writers, journalists, campaigners and civil society do not suffer in silence.”
Steve Harrison, LJMU senior lecturer in journalism, said:
“Journalists need credible and authoritative sources of information to counter the glut of dis-information and downright untruths which we’re being bombarded with these days. The Index Index is one such source, and LJMU is proud to have played our part in developing it.
“We hope it becomes a useful tool for journalists investigating censorship, as well as a learning resource for students. Journalism has been defined as providing information someone, somewhere wants suppressed – the Index Index goes some way to living up to that definition.”
Tomorrow anti-mafia writer Roberto Saviano stands trial for defaming the good name, if that it be, of Italy’s neo-fascist Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, after he condemned her remarks calling for ships that sought to rescue refugees in the Mediterranean be sunk and the migrants left to drown. Saviano spoke out on a TV show in 2020 when an NGO rescue ship picked up 111 migrants stranded in the Mediterranean. But a six-month-old baby boy, originally from Guinea, drowned when the dinghy he was in capsized.
A clearly distressed Saviano said: “They’re bastards: Meloni, Salvini… How is it possible, given such despair? They have a legitimate policy which opposes receiving [migrants] – but surely not in the case of an emergency on the open sea?”
The trial has been widely seen as an attack on free speech and, yet again, raises questions about the ability of the far right to use Italy’s bizarre legal code to gag their critics. The case is even more fraught because Meloni was the leader of the ultra-right Brothers of Italy party then but is now also the country’s prime minister. If found guilty, Saviano faces a potential jail sentence. But the writer is no ordinary target. Since 2006 he has been under sentence of death from the Camorra, Naples’ number one crime organisation, after he published Gomorrah, a book that challenged the clan’s silent grip on much of southern Italy.
The title comes from anti-Camorra Catholic priest Giuseppe Diana in 1994, who was murdered for his courage: “The time has come to stop being a Gomorrah.”
Saviano faces calls from Meloni’s camp to cut his police protection. In plain English, by criticising Meloni he may end up being murdered by the very gangsters the writer says are in secret association with the far right. He faces a second trial for criticising Meloni’s coalition partner, Matteo Salvini, in the same TV interview: this case is already grinding its way through the courts.
Saviano told The Observer: “There was a dramatic, tragic shipwreck… A baby was drowned. But from Meloni and Salvini came ferocious and inhuman anti-migrant propaganda. In the light of this, and the libel charge, do you really think mine were such offensive words?”
PEN’s President Burhan Sonmez has written to the prime minister calling on her to drop the trial. He wrote: “Despite calls by Italy’s Constitutional Court to undertake a comprehensive review of criminal defamation laws, journalists and writers are still liable to prison sentences in case of defamation through the press. Criminal defamation lawsuits exhaust their victims. They rob them of their time, of their money, of their vital energy. Crucially, they are punitive and can lead to self-censorship and discourage the investigative journalism that is so necessary in a healthy and functioning democracy.”
Thus far there has been no response from the prime minister’s office to PEN’s letter but Meloni has given no signs of backing down. She said three days ago: “On that boat were migrants, not shipwrecked people. People boarded those ships in international waters … The ship that took them in its charge was equipped to accommodate them and provide for all their reception needs…The banana republic in which citizens are so vexed but which is so popular on the left is over.”
What the prime minister fails to realise is that, along with the case brought by her, Italy’s standing as a civilised democracy is on trial too.