16 Oct 2024
Marina Litvinenko is the widow of Alexander Litvinenko, a prominent opponent of Russian president Vladimir Putin, wo died in 2006 after being poisoned in London. After the death of her husband, Marina led a campaign for a full investigation into the assassination via the Litvinenko Justice Foundation. This led to a public inquiry that indicated there was a strong probability the FSB was responsible and it was probable Putin was aware of the operation. Marina continues to campaign for Russian dissidents.
14 Oct 2024 | News, Russia, Statements, Ukraine
Index on Censorship, the Media Freedom Rapid Response (MFRR) and partner organizations today mourn the death of Ukrainian journalist Victoria Roshchyna, who died in unclear circumstances while in Russian detention, and whose death was confirmed by Russian and Ukrainian authorities on Thursday. We welcome the opening of an investigation by Ukrainian authorities on grounds of “war crime combined with premeditated murder” and demand that Russian authorities do the same to elucidate the circumstances of Roshchyna’s death and bring to justice all those who could be responsible.
Roshchyna, a freelance journalist with Ukrainska Pravda, a major Ukrainian publication, and several other leading Ukrainian outlets, left Kyiv in late July 2023 with the intention to reach Russian-occupied territory in southeastern Ukraine. Soon after her departure, she went missing, with many of her colleagues expressing their fear that she was most likely being held by Russian forces.
In May 2024, nearly a year after her departure, Roshchyna’s family reported that Russian authorities had confirmed to them that the journalist was being held in Russian custody. However, the charges against her, as well as the place of her detention remained unknown.
Following the announcement of her death, reports emerged suggesting that Roshchyna had spent the past four months in an individual prison cell in the Russian city of Taganrog, which is located immediately next to the Ukrainian border. Prior to this, it has been reported that she was held in pre-trial detention by Russian forces in Berdyansk, a city in southeastern Ukraine currently under Russian occupation.
According to Russian authorities, Roshchyna died on September 19. Unconfirmed reports by Ukrainian media suggest that she passed away while being transported from Taganrog to Moscow. According to the same reports, Russia was preparing to include Roshchyna into a prisoner exchange with Ukraine.
While it is unclear what location the journalist managed to reach as part of the reporting trip she began in late July 2023, it was known that she planned to report from regions of Ukraine under Russian occupation.
“Victoria was herself from the Zaporizhia region,” Ukrainska Pravda editor-in-chief Sevgil Musayeva told IPI in October 2023, when Roshchyna’s disappearance was first made public. “She saw it as her mission to tell the stories of the people under occupation and when fears grew that the Russian military may be planning to blow up the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant, she wanted to go.”
Roshchyna was one of the very few Ukrainian journalists to travel to Russian-occupied territories to cover the impact of the war. In March 2022, she was taken captive by Russian forces while reporting near Mariupol, when the city was under a prolonged siege by Russian forces. She was released ten days later and continued working as a journalist from Kyiv. She documented her experiences in captivity here.
MFRR partners, Index on Censorship and Reporters Without Borders (RSF) reiterate their support of journalists who continue to report on Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. We mourn the death of yet another journalist who lost her life while attempting to cover the consequences of this brutal invasion, and demand justice for her and other deceased colleagues.
Signed:
International Press Institute (IPI)
European Centre for Press and Media Freedom (ECPMF)
The European Federation of Journalists (EFJ)
Index on Censorship
Reporters Without Borders (RSF)
ARTICLE 19 Europe
OBC Transeuropa (OBCT)
International Women’s Media Foundation (IWMF)
Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)
Free Press Unlimited (FPU)
11 Oct 2024 | Brazil, Israel, Mexico, News, Newsletters, Palestine, United States
Hello, readers. This is Sarah Dawood here, the new editor of Index on Censorship. Every week, we bring the most pertinent global free speech stories to your inbox.
This week, headlines have been dominated by the ongoing devastation of the war in the Middle East, where the death toll is now more than 42,000 in Gaza, and more than 2,100 in Lebanon. Monday also marked a painful milestone for Israelis and Jewish people everywhere, as the first anniversary of Hamas’s attacks, which killed 1,200 people. You can read Jerusalem correspondent Ben Lynfield’s forensic analysis on the region’s risks to journalists and press freedom below.
Attention has also been on the destructive Hurricane Milton in Florida, which has killed at least 16 people. The climate event has resulted in human tragedy, physical damage and the distortion of truth, with false information and AI-generated images accumulating millions of views on social media, including a fabricated flooding of Disney World in Orlando. Such imagery has been seized upon by hostile states, far-right groups, and even US politicians to advance their own aims: Russian state-owned news agency RIA Novosti reposted the fake Disney World photos to its Telegram channel, whilst Republican members of Congress have proclaimed conspiracy theories of government-led “storm manufacturing”. This emphasises how crises can be manipulated and monopolised to stir up division.
But while disinformation can undermine democracy, so too can information blockades. This brings us to some important stories coming out of Latin America. In Brazil, the social media platform X is now back online after a shutdown in September. The platform was banned by a top judge during the country’s presidential election campaign, in an attempt to prevent the spread of misinformation. But as Mateus Netzel, the executive director of Brazil-based digital news platform Poder360 told Reuters, social media bans not only restrict public access to information, but can undermine journalists’ ability to gather and report on news. Elon Musk himself was using X to post about the development of the ban, but this was inaccessible to Brazilian journalists. “In theory, there are journalists and outlets who do not have access to that right now and this is a very important restriction because they need to report on this issue and they will have to rely on indirect sources,” said Netzel.
We also heard frightening news from Mexico, where a local politician was murdered and beheaded just days after being sworn in as city mayor of Chilpancingo. Whilst we don’t yet know the reason that Alejandro Arcos Catalán was killed, his murder is yet another example of journalists, politicians, and other public figures being routinely targeted by criminal gangs. Bar active war zones, Mexico has consistently been the most dangerous country in the world for journalists, topping Reporters Without Borders’ list in 2022.
Meanwhile, in El Salvador, climate activists are being silenced through false imprisonment. Five protesters, who fronted a 13-year grassroots campaign to ban metal mining due to its devastating environmental impacts are now facing life in prison for the alleged killing of an army informant in 1989. The charge has been condemned by the UN and international lawyers as baseless and politically motivated, and echoes heavy-handed prison sentences being handed to climate protesters globally, including in democratic countries. As Index’s Mackenzie Argent reported last month, human rights lawyers have called out the UK’s hypocrisy in claiming egalitarianism whilst disproportionately punishing environmental activists, pointing specifically to the sentencing of Just Stop Oil’s Roger Hallam to five years in prison in July. These two stories, although taking place 5,000 miles away from each other, underline how climate defenders are currently on the front line of attempts to be silenced.
