10 Jul 2012 | Leveson Inquiry, Media Freedom, United Kingdom
This post originally appeared on the Independent Blogs
As the often theatrical spectacle of the Leveson hearings — with its mix of posturing, jousting, inquisition and exposé — draws to a close, the big question is what Leveson will recommend this autumn. Will we see proposals that defend press freedom and promote high professional standards, or do we risk facing proposals that limit press freedom and serious investigative journalism?
Given the range of unethical and illegal behaviour exposed in the phone-hacking scandal, and the tawdry tales of political-media cronyism under the spotlight at the Inquiry, there may be a risk that Lord Justice Leveson will prioritise standards and regulation over our sometimes riotous press freedom.
Calling for independent, self-regulation in the face of the excesses of some in News International and elsewhere cuts little ice with many. But it is worth recalling the most basic elements of our democracy that underpin the need to keep the state well out of our press. Our universal and fundamental right to free speech, to hold opinions, share information (across borders and different types of media), and express views is enshrined in international charters and laws for good reason, not least given governments’ proclivity to interfere in that right.
The governments that most go in for controlling the press, bugging their own citizens, snooping on the net, or criminalising speech tend to be the authoritarian or totalitarian ones, whether we are thinking China, Azerbaijan, Iran or North Korea. But intrusions into press freedom in Italy and Hungary show the problem is closer to home and within democracies too. Without a free press — both online and off — we would lose a big element of our free speech, our ability to hold government and other power-holders (including big business) to account, to investigate wrongdoing, lies, and other cock-ups and conspiracies.
So higher press standards cannot come from statutory government control or regulation. But if the excesses of phone-hacking, and over-close cronyism between some in the media, police and politics, are to be tackled, then we need a new deal. That must include a new self-regulatory body with greater teeth to tackle unwarranted invasions of privacy, false allegations and unethical behaviour. It must be a body that can set and monitor standards. And one that can offer rapid, effective and fair resolution of complaints — including a quick, fair voluntary mediation service as an alternative to lengthy, expensive court cases.
One solution propounded by some given the inadequacies of our current set-up is that press outsiders and retired editors should run the new body. But a press regulator that does not include current senior representatives of the press — not least at a time of rapid change in the technology and business model — will not get buy-in. Nor do we need to reinvent the wheel. Where appropriate laws exist we don’t need to give those powers to a statutory regulator: current laws can tackle most unwarranted invasions of privacy and can deal with bribery of public officials.
One big challenge for a new self-regulating body — and for Leveson in his report — will be how to balance the right to privacy with the need for serious journalism in the public interest. Journalists need to know that if they are digging deep into questions of misleading or false statements by politicians, or investigating public health or security risks, or tracking potentially criminal behaviour, that they have a public interest defence. At the moment, some UK laws allow such a defence, others don’t. Journalists are operating in an ad hoc and unclear legal framework that can lead them to draw their horns in and shift towards self-censorship.
And last but not least, while the tales of texts, lunches and cosy chats between some leading media figures, politicians and police may encourage an ever downward trend in trust for these groups, regulating such contacts, beyond existing law, is not the way to go either. Whether it’s the whistle-blower, or just a good source in a government department tipping a journalist off in the right direction, serious probing journalism depends on informal interaction with politicians and officials.
Some of our senior figures have shown they have little idea of where to draw the line in such relationships, so clear professional standards need setting out. But the state will over-regulate given a chance. Voluntary and professional standards combined with good corporate governance remain the only route to go if we still credit press freedom and democracy as inextricable. That is the challenge for Leveson.
Kirsty Hughes is Index on Censorship’s Chief Executive.
Index is co-hosting a panel discussion, What will Lord Justice Leveson conclude about the future of the British press? at the Frontline Club on 19 July. Details and tickets are available here.
6 Jul 2012 | Europe and Central Asia
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]“I will be arrested the minute I land in Uzbekistan and then thrown in prison,” an Uzbek human rights activist tells me, “and what happens with me afterwards is a good question.”
For his family’s safety, I cannot tell you the name of the young man. Let’s call him Rustam, a common name in Uzbekistan.
“I only have five minutes, then they cut off the phone,” the 26-year old explains.
Since 12 June he has been held at the immigration services detention centre in Oslo, Norway, after having received the third and final rejection of his appeal for political asylum. He will be deported on 12 July.
Looking at his case it is obvious that the Norwegian authorities are ignoring evidence showing that returning Rustam to Uzbekistan is as good as sentencing him to torture, even death. They have also disregarded UN evidence that says returned Uzbek dissidents who sought refugee status abroad have been disappeared and subjected to torture.
It is easy to detect the fear in Rustam’s voice. In 2004, he and some friends started an NGO called Movement for Freedom and initiated a campaign against child slave labour. Every year, two million Uzbek school children — the youngest just 7 years old — are forced to spend six to eight weeks picking cotton, eight to 10 hours a day.
Uzbekistan has been heavily criticised for this abuse of children. But the income from cotton exports runs into hundreds of millions of dollars, and much of it falls into the pockets of the Uzbek dictator Islam Karimov, who has been in power for 23 years since Soviet times.
When Rustam and his friends started their campaign against child slavery, he was detained and tortured. Upon his release, Rustam fled to Russia. While he was in hiding, he heard that one of the Movement’s co-founders had been killed in an Uzbek prison. He decided to move on to Norway.
I understood how dangerous it would be for me if I returned or was extradited…I too could very easily be killed.
Russia, a close ally of the Karimov regime, routinely extradites Uzbeks. Afterwards many of them ‘disappear’.
The authorities in Norway have two problems with Rustam’s plea for asylum:
1/ Rustam does not have a passport. Rustam says he threw it away when he smuggled himself out of Uzbekistan to ensure he could not be identified by the police if he was apprehended. But it means outside Uzbekistan Rustam now cannot prove that he is who he claims to be.
2/ While Rustam was in Norway hoping to be granted asylum, he started working as a volunteer for the Uzbek human rights defender Mutabar Tadjibaeva. This is now the heart of Rustam’s appeal: the Norwegian authorities do not believe that he worked as her webmaster.
Because of her international standing, Tadjibaeva is hated by the Karimov regime; working with her would land Rustam in very serious trouble in Uzbekistan.
Tadjibaeva has been living in exile in France since in 2008 escaping after three years of prison, rape and torture in Uzbekistan. The country has more than 10,000 political and religious prisoners and experts put it amongst the harshest dictatorships in the world, on par with North Korea.
Tadjibaeva runs the website Jayaron, one of very few independent sources of information about Uzbekistan, a country in which media are strictly controlled by the regime. She has established a widespread network of informants inside the country who send her details about corrupt court cases, unfair imprisonments and cases of torture. Her site is a thorn in the side of a regime that has almost managed to completely isolate its population from the outside world.
The Karimov regime call Tadjibaeva an “extremist” and accuse her of planning to overthrow the government, which is rather difficult to imagine when you meet her in person — a small, soft-spoken 49-year-old woman, her health scarred by years of torture and prison.
In 2008 the US State Department gave Tadjibaeva the prestigious Woman of Courage award. After Tadjibaeva received it, a Wikileaks telegram revealed that the American ambassador in Tashkent received a “tongue lashing” from the Uzbek dictator, who threatened to block US transit to Afghanistan in retaliation.
The ambassador advised his government to tone down the criticism of the Uzbek regime, advice they took. And relations are nearer to the close relationship the countries enjoyed before Karimov’s army killed 800 demonstrators, many of them women and children, in May 2005.
Mutabar Tadjibaeva stresses to me that Rustam has worked with her since August 2010. She cannot understand why the Norwegian immigration authorities rejected Rustam’s asylum plea, stressing that they do not believe that he and Mutabar work together.
We have worked closely together, you can even find his name on our website. Because of this, his life would be in great danger if he were returned to Uzbekistan.
“The Uzbek regime does not like people telling the truth,” she adds. “I have no less than 343 emails here in which we discuss Rustam’s work with our website and my blog,” she tells me, “that obviously prove that we worked closely together.”
“If the Norwegians really wanted to know the truth, all they have to do is check his computer, mobile phone and emails.” She showed me the email and text communication between the two.
“I have even transferred money to him in Norway, so he could buy a computer and work on our website,” Mutabar explains. She shows me receipts.
If he is sent back to Uzbekistan, a long time in prison and severe torture awaits him. There is a real risk that the regime will kill him, as a warning to others to stay away from human rights work.
At the moment it looks like that Rustam will be deported to Uzbekistan within the next week.
But in June something happened which Mutabar hopes will help Rustam. The UN Committee against Torture censured Kazakhstan — Uzbekistan’s neighbour — for deporting 29 Uzbek asylum seekers in 2010. Several of the 29 were later given lengthy prison sentences, kept in isolation and therefore, say analysts, most likely tortured.
UN conventions forbid states deporting people to their home countries if there is a risk that they will be tortured.
Exact numbers are impossible to come by — this is Uzbekistan — but according to local human rights organisations dozens of people are tortured to death each year in Uzbek prisons, and the favourite victims of the security police are those who have been in the West asking for asylum or even speaking poorly about the regime. This description clearly applies to Rustam.
Mutabar Tadjibaeva hopes that the UN decision will make Norway re-consider his case. “But,” she adds, “so-called democratic countries in Europe have often shown themselves full-willing to close their eyes to the atrocities of the Uzbek regime. I have lost all faith in them.”
Michael Andersen is a Danish journalist who has covered Central Asia for more than 10 years. His newest feature-length documentary on Uzbekistan is called Massacre in Uzbekistan.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]
22 May 2012 | Leveson Inquiry
A former home secretary has attacked elements of the British press as “spiteful”, telling Lord Justice Leveson today that problems of nastiness were rooted in culture.
“Why are some elements of the media in this country so spiteful?” Alan Johnson MP asked the Leveson Inquiry today.
“It’s the nastiness, real nastiness you have to face. That’s a cultural thing,” he said. He pointed to the singling out of female politicians as subjects of spite, adding that he felt the sections of the press’s attempts to attack politicians’ families was “concerning”.
Johnson, who was home secretary from June 2009 to May 2010, told the Inquiry about a story the News of the World was due to run in January 2008 while he was health secretary alleging he had had an affair with a district nurse in Exeter.
“I’d never been to Exeter,” Johnson said, adding that he rang the paper’s editor to tell him the story was “absolute rubbish”.
“Run the story — it will be a good pension fund when I take you to court,” Johnson told the editor. The story — which was untrue — was never published.
On the topic of future regulation, Johnson toyed with the idea of a Parliament-backed system similar to the Independent Police Complaints Commission, which oversees complaints made about police forces in England and Wales, but stressed the need to avoid “doing anything North Korean”.
“It is important that the press is not dragged kicking and screaming to a regime they fiercely disagree with,” Johnson said.
Also appearing this morning was Labour MP Tom Watson, one of the fiercest critics of News International, describing the publisher as the “ultimate floating voter” that behaved “with menace”.
Watson, a member of the Culture, Media and Sport select committee, said there was a sense of “mystique about the News International stable” and of it having “unique access to Downing Street.”
“They were the ones that had the connections and everyone was aware of it,” Watson said. “As a minister when I discussed issues or policy, there was always a conversation about how this would play out in the Sun,” he added.
When asked by Leveson if there was a similar concern about other titles, Watson described the Daily Mail as more “constant” in its editorial position. “There were no surprises,” he said.
He named justice secretary Ken Clarke as one of the Murdoch-owned Sun’s “target MPs” and subject of “frequently harsh comment” in the redtop due to his willingness to “swim against the tide”.
Watson admitted he had “no hard evidence that there was a craven understanding” between politicians and executives at NI, but said he believed this was the “general view” among the public. He stressed that reforms were needed to restore public confidence in relations between the two.
Watson also revealed he had been contacted by a dozen MPs who had told him of their intimidation by NI titles and other British tabloids. He said they feared “ridicule and humiliation over their private lives or political mistakes”.
He also briefly described the surveillance the now-defunct News of the World subjected him to. An email trail between investigative journalist Mazher Mahmood and two executives at the tabloid suggests private investigator Derek Webb had been commissioned to survey Watson at a Labour Party conference in the hopes of proving he was having an affair; an allegation Watson said was untrue.
When asked about the phone hacking scandal that has engulfed the Murdoch empire, Watson argued that politicians had “closed their minds to the potential of a major scandal at one of the key outlets for their message.”
“Relations between them [NI and politicians] were too fibrous, so politicians couldn’t divorce their objective thinking,” he added.
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