29 Aug 2012 | Digital Freedom, Russia
Vladimir Putin says [Ru] he doesn’t use the internet very much. But he has definitely recognised its power. The biggest protest rallies in post-Soviet Russia, against Putin and his party United Russia, were organised online. No wonder that the parliamentary and presidential elections and Putin’s inauguration were all marked by the hacking of independent media websites and LiveJournal, Russia’s most popular blogging platform, via DDoS (distributed denial of service) attacks. (more…)
13 Jul 2012 | Europe and Central Asia, News and features
Russian parliamentarians have passed legislation that will establish a central register of banned websites. The new laws are ostensibly designed for child protection, but Andrei Soldatov says the real aim is to take control over the country’s burgeoning social networks
(more…)
15 Jun 2012 | Middle East and North Africa
This is a propaganda war, a diplomat in Damascus told the BBC’s Paul Danahar, “you can’t take anyone at face value now”.
The war of words over the Syrian revolution has been brutal, and for some,
fatal. Revolutionaries and Assadists have tried desperately to control the narrative, with Bashar Al-Assad
admitting on Russian TV that he was losing the propaganda battle.
From the beginning of this uprising reporters have feared that the regime was targetting journalists — they were set up as legitimate targets as soon as the government accused some of being part of the international conspiracy against Syria. The regime arrested and threatened journalists from Al Jazeera, which it believes is supporting the uprising. Before its Damascus bureau was shut, there were regular pro-regime demonstrations outside and staff faced regular harassment in attempts to silence them. Syrian authorities barred members of the station from entering the city of Daraa, where the uprising began on 15 March last year. Officials also pressured Syrian employees of the station to quit, and told journalists that they could not appear on air or communicate with Al-Jazeera’s headquarters in Qatar.
And now there is evidence that some Free Syrian Army [FSA] fighters may also be trying to get journalists killed to score points in the media battle.
Earlier this month, Alex Thomson, chief correspondent at the UK’s Channel 4 News, accused four fighters (two armed) of forcing his convoy into onto a blocked road in the middle of “no-man’s land” near the city of Al-Qasyr, where the regime was shooting. He speculated that the FSA wanted to land Assad with an international diplomatic incident, similar to that which followed the killing of Marie Colvin in Homs. Thomson’s team had a lucky escape.
The day after Thomson made his accusation, a Qatari member of the now disbanded Arab League monitoring mission, Nawaf Al Thani, accused the FSA of leading him into a trap to be killed in the city Zabadani, which is close to the Syrian-Lebanon border. That day, Al Thani was travelling with CNN reporter Nic Robertson who also reported on the incident, but didn’t blame the FSA.
Despite Al Thani’s support for the British reporter’s claims, some revolutionary activists were outraged, accusing Thompson of exaggerating the story for career gain. As the chorus of anger grew, Thompson stood by his story, saying that he merely reports reality.
Of course, the Assadists are milking this for all it’s worth. Iran’s Arabic-language state broadcaster Al-Alam (and its sister station Press TV) ran Thompson’s accusations, although I can’t quite remember them discussing his reporting of the graphic Houla massacre, where he suggested that the government had been lying.
Both the revolutionaries and the Assadists are reporting half-truths, often picking and choosing the stories or accusations favourable to their version of events. That is understandable. What is unforgivable is the way that some broadcasters and publishers have bought the opposition or regime line wholesale and uncritically.
“There’s almost no one condemning the regime, for example, whilst simultaneously questioning the dominant opposition narrative,” complains Jillian C York. “Those who dare search for truth are immediately labelled as being on one side or the other.”
That search for the truth has been hampered by the Syrian government’s refusal to allow international journalists into the country during most of the uprising. Reporters were forced to choose between YouTube videos uploaded by activists, or the regime’s increasingly ludicrous propaganda. The revolutionaries’ strategy was far more sophisticated, immediate and effective. A senior Western official told the BBC World News Editor that their tactics were “brilliant,” if sometimes misleading.
But is that surprising? The revolutionaries have an agenda. Citizen journalists are not supplying the international media with footage to further their own careers – they are doing it to tell the world about the horrors taking place on their doorstep. When they use mobile phones to film demonstrations, they put themselves in the firing line – they are active participants in the revolution, not outsiders looking in.
With an official ban on journalist visas in place, handfuls of brave reporters have managed to sneak across the border to report on the massacres that the government did not want them to see. The revolutionaries are often desperate for a voice, and have escorted journalists into the country and protected them once they were in the war zone, often at considerable risk to themselves.
Journalists — reporters sneaking across the border, and brave citizen journalists living under siege — are at the heart of this story. They are Bashar Al-Assad’s greatest fear. His father crushed the uprising in Hama in 1982 because the world was not watching. Back then, news of the killing of at least 10,000 people did not reach the outside world for weeks.
This time, things are very different, and it is the reason that Syrians are being threatened with death for simply daring to tell the world what is happening.
The regime knows it can still outgun its opponents on the battlefield. But on screen, it has already lost the war.
Sakhr Al-Makhadhi is a British-Arab journalist who has lived and worked in Damascus. sakhr.co.uk
18 May 2012 | Russia
Vladimir Putin’s inauguration on 7 May was marked with mass protest actions, arrests and clashes with police, which have continued for the last two weeks and seem unlikely to stop.
Since the inaguration ceremony, protesters have been holding an anti-Kremlin action in Moscow’s Chistye Prudy boulevard, in defiance of authorities. Opposition figures Alexey Navalny and Sergei Udaltsov were sentenced to 15 days of administrative arrest for allegedly not following orders from police. Eventually, protesters convinced police they had the right to camp in their home city. The police forbade them from using tents, sound-amplifying equipment and told them to keep off the lawns.
The camp was attended by several hundred people: different political groups, representatives, and politically active citizens, who don’t support a particular party or movement. They rejected opposition leaders, such as Sergei Udaltsov, Alexey Navalny, Ilya Yashin and Ilya Ponomarev as authorities and established a people’s assembly — a collective self-government institution where all the protesters decide organisational issues.
The camp on Chistie Prudy has become known as Occupy Abai, after Kazakh poet Abai Kunanbaev, whose monument stands in the centre of protest camp. It has became a masterpiece of self-organisation, to the pride of Moscow anarchists, who were widely represented in opposition camp. Special work groups made sandwiches and tea, cleaned the camp territory and scheduled lectures, mainly about protest movements.
Notable Russian writers and poets gathered thousands of people to march through Moscow boulevard ring against mass detentions during Putin’s inauguration and his presidency, in support of OccupyAbai.
But this week the situation changed. Basmanny court ruled that the camp must be removed from Chistye Prudy by Moscow central district prefecture within less than 24 hours. The police broke up the camp at 6 am, when no journalists were around and protesters were asleep. Tens of people were arrested when they said they didn’t want to leave the camp. According to them, policemen took away protesters’ food, water and the box with the cash donated by their supporters, which contained up to 250 000 roubles (around £5000 GBP).
The protesters roamed to another central square, Kudrinskaya, where they again were attacked by the police, who claimed protesters didn’t have special permission to share food and water with each other. Tens of people were arrested, including Khimki forest defence leader Evgeniya Chirikova. Opposition activist Ilya Yashin was sentenced to 10 days of administrative arrest. The others stayed, fearing riot police can arrest them any time.
The district’s municipal deputies from United Russia and the Communist party blocked attempts from local opposition deputies to legalise the protesters’ camp at Barrikadnaya by granting it the status of a festival.
Meanwhile United Russia deputies in State Duma prepared a bill, which will toughen the fines for those who break rules of holding rallies. Such charges are often brought against Putin’s protesters in Moscow courts. Hundreds of people protested against the bill in front of State Duma building, but didn’t seem to convince United Russia deputies.
Alexei Navalny and Sergei Udaltsov, who were arrested during peaceful protest actions on 9 May, are considered prisoners of conscience by Amnesty International. “These people were persecuted for having realised their right to express themselves,” – the organisation head in Russia Sergei Nikitin said to Interfax news agency. The other protesters are persecuted for the same reason, but they are not famous enough to be considered political prisoners by world human rights organisations.
