[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”81193″ img_size=”full”][vc_column_text]Each week, Index on Censorship’sMapping Media Freedom project verifies threats, violations and limitations faced by the media throughout the European Union and neighbouring countries. Here are five recent reports that give us cause for concern.
A Hatay court issued a detention order for Ceren Taşkin, a reporter for the local newspaper Hatay Ses, on the basis of her social media posts, news website Gazete Karinca reported.
Taşkin was detained earlier for “spreading propaganda for a terrorist group” via her social media posts. Taşkin was arrested and sent to prison on 12 January on the same charges.
Her arrest brings the number of journalists in prison to 148, Platform 24 reported.
The National Radio and TV Council has banned independent Russian television channel Dozhd from broadcasting in the country.
“The channel portrayed the administrative border between Crimea and Kherson region as the border between Ukraine and Russia,” national council member Serhiy Kostynskyy said during a council meeting, Interfax-Ukraine reported.
According to Kostynskyy, the channel repeatedly violated Ukrainian law in 2016 by broadcasting Russian advertising and having Dozhd journalists illegally enter annexed Crimea from the Russian Federation without receiving special permission.
The ban is set to be officially published by the authorities on 16 January, Interfax-Ukraine reported.
Dozhd Director Natalya Sindeyeva said that the channel is broadcasting through IP-connection without direct commercial advertising in Ukraine and follows the Russian Federation law requiring that media outlets use maps to show Crimea as part of Russia.
Dunja Mijatovic, media freedom representative at the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, wrote on her Twitter that this decision is “very damaging to media pluralism in Ukraine.”
Police arrested Giannis Kourtakis, publisher of Parapolitika newspaper, and its director, Panayiotis Tzenos, following a lawsuit filed against them for libel and extortion by the defence minister and leader of the Independent Greeks Party (ANEL), Panos Kammenos, the news website SKAI reports.
Kourtakis said he voluntarily went to police headquarters after being informed about the lawsuit, while director Panagiotis Tzenos was arrested in his Athens office.
ANEL issued a statement stressing that the lawsuit was prompted by allegedly slanderous claims about Kammenos’s son, saying that he was an “anarchist” and involved in a terrorist group on their radio programme which aired on 9 January.
In July 2015, Kammenos gave Athens press union (ESIEA) a list of journalists who had allegedly received improper funding through advertising from the state health entity KEELPNO, which included the Parapolitika executives.
According to SKAI, Kammenos claims that the journalists made slanderous statements about his son in order to make him retract allegations that the Parapolitika executives were receiving funding.
The public prosecutor who investigated the lawsuit has since reportedly dropped charges of criminal extortion.
Vladislav Ryazantcev, correspondent for the independent news agency Caucasian Knot, reported on Facebook that he was assaulted by five unknown individuals whose faces were covered by scarves.
According to Ryazantcev, one of them grabbed his hand and asked him to “follow him for a talk.” Right after that an additional four individuals came up and started to hit the journalist on the head.
Ryazantcev reported that bystanders then helped rescued him.
“I do not know what the attack is connected to,” he wrote on Facebook. He later filed a complaint to the police.
A TV crew working for TF1 channel was reportedly assaulted in Compiègne while trying to film a building set to be emptied of its inhabitants because of alleged high criminality linked to drug trafficking, Courrier Picard reported.
“We tried to film a story there this morning. Our crew was attacked and stoned by thugs who stole our camera in this unlawful zone. It was very violent,” TF1 presenter Jean-Pierre Pernaud said. The assault occurred in the Close des Roses neighbourhood.
One of the journalists told Courrier Picard that the channel would file a complaint.[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Each week, Index on Censorship’s Mapping Media Freedom project verifies threats, violations and limitations faced by the media throughout the European Union and neighbouring countries. Here are five recent reports that give us cause for concern.
After passing a law issued by the interior ministry, Turkey has shut down and arrested members of approximately 370 independent organisations, including many media platforms.
A full list of these organisations is unavailable since the Turkish government claims some cases are still under investigation.
Since the state of emergency declared by Turkey this summer after the attempted military coup, the government has been shutting down media and civil organisations. Some of the organisations recently shut down have been the Dokuz8 News Site, Free Women’s Congress, the Kurdish Writers’ Association and the Fair Women’s Association.
Turkey has declared that all these independent organisations are allegedly linked to terror groups.
One organisation to fall victim to Turkey’s crackdown was the Cumhuriyet Foundation, a secular, liberal media platform. Nine journalists for Cumhuriyet, as well as the president of the executive board, Akın Atalay, were arrested within the past several weeks. They were charged with terrorism, the government saying that although the journalists were not official members of the terrorist group they engaged in activities for the organisation.
The arrest of the Cumhuriyet journalists raises the number of jailed journalists to 144.
Les Jours journalist, Olivier Bertrand, was working in Gaziantep to collect stories about post-coup Turkey. While there, Bertrand was detained by police with no reason given. On Sunday, French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault demanded that Bertrand be set free.
Bertrand was released by Turkish authorities and deported back to France.
Freelance journalists Kastus Zhukouski and Aleksei Atroshchanka were working for Belsat TV in Svetlahorsk. While attempting to film trees being cut down by authorities, the two journalists were approached by police, who demanded to see their credentials.
After their IDs were initially checked, a police major who identified himself as Vyazhevich, approached and demanded to see the journalists’ credentials.
Zhukouski and Atroshchanka told the major that they had just shown their IDs and saw no reason so show them again.
Zhukouski told Belsat.eu that, the “major began to shake– his reaction was strange. He began to yell at us, asking if we have accreditation? We said that the right to freely spread information is guaranteed by the Constitution of Belarus. Major said we had to go to the police station. We did not resist. In the station he behaved inappropriately: grabbed the camera, my arm, pushed me, insulted me, and tried to provoke me in every way. I wrote a complaint about such actions of the police…”
After being held in the police station for three hours and having their belongings searched, the journalists were released.
Dennis Schouten, a journalist for PowNed was assaulted at a Rotterdam protest against the children’s character, Black Pete, who is part of the yearly celebration of Saint Nicholas. The character is supposed to be Saint Nicholas’ servant and is usually portrayed by a white person in blackface. The protesters were arguing the portrayal is racist.
While interviewing a protester, Schouten was pushed in front of a moving car. The reporter received no injuries.
The perpetrator was arrested by police at the scene.
Each week, Index on Censorship’s Mapping Media Freedom project verifies threats, violations and limitations faced by the media throughout the European Union and neighbouring countries. Here are five recent reports that give us cause for concern.
Former french president Nicolas Sarkozy is back on the campaign trail but fundraising from his 2012 run for office is raising questions. A new documentary investigating these finances was due to air on 29 September but following pressure from Michel Field, the head of news at France Télévisions, a French public national television broadcaster, it now won’t show until after the primary elections of Sarkozy’s Republicans party at the end of November.
On 6 September, the satirical and investigative newspaper Le Canard Enchaîné revealed that in mid-July, Field told Elise Lucet, the new director of Envoyé Special, that the documentary must be delayed. The publication also revealed that Field was in talks with Sarkozy, who had agreed to be the first guest on a new political programme by France Télé, but that Sarkozy’s team would prevent his appearance if the documentary was to air.
According to Le Canard, Field also tried to have a heavily-edited version of the documentary air 8 September, which Lucet refused to comply with. Lucet accused Field of censorship and the director of France Télévisions, Delphine Ernotte Cunci, is taking some time to decide whether to air the documentary or not.
In court, Geriev said that on 16 April he was kidnapped from a public bus on his way to Grozny. He added that he was taken to the woods, where he was beaten and tortured, and then taken to a local cemetery. There, according to the prosecutors, he was arrested for possession of 160 grams of marijuana and admitted he was guilty.
Kavkazski Uzel issued a statement saying that they believe that the case against Geriev is fabricated and motivated by his professional activities.
If passed, this law would allow the “relevant public authorities” to obtain journalists’ communications data with the aim of identifying or confirming the identity of anonymous sources.
The news agency Unian, citing the State Emergency Services division, reported: “At 16:31 on Sept. 4, Kyiv Emergency Situations Service operators received a call about a fire that had broken out at a building of a TV channel at 26 Schuseva Street. Upon arrival at the scene, firefighters discovered two piles of tyres had been set ablaze during a rally outside the building and an external source of ignition brought [into the building] had caused a fire on the first floor…and second floor.”
Thirty people were evacuated and one journalist suffered a broken leg and smoke inhalation.
Dilek Dundar, the wife of prominent Turkish journalist and former editor-in-chief of Cumhuriyet newspaper Can Dundar was prevented from leaving the country at the Ataturk International airport on 3 September. She was on her way to Berlin, Germany, when airport officials confiscated her passport and informed her that it had been cancelled.
Can Dundar said of the situation: “This … is an excellent example of authoritarian rule. The new legal order … treats the whole family as criminals.”
In almost four months covering protests against France’s labour reform bill, a number of journalists in the country have faced intimidation, detention and injury. Others have had their equipment broken or been physically prevented from doing their job.
On 9 April, a group of protesters threatened journalists in Rennes. The following month, a journalist working for Le Figaro newspaper was hurt by a projectile, likely to have been thrown by a protester and aimed at the police.
Journalists have also been attacked with batons and one as hurt by a Flash-Ball gun. On 23 June, two independent journalists, including Gaspard Glanz from Teranis News, were detained for hours in a police van while on their way to cover a protest in Paris.
“I didn’t think this could happen in France,” Julie Lallouet-Geffroy, an administrator for Club de la Presse de Rennes et de Bretagne and journalist for Reporterre, told Index on Censorship.
Club de la Presse de Rennes et de Bretagne, a press club based in the city of Rennes, Brittany, has been particularly active in denouncing violence against journalists covering the local protests. After journalists were attacked in Rennes on 2 June, the group took the case to France’s constitutional ombudsman for citizens’ rights and met with the interior minister.
Lallouet-Geffroy told Index what happened when journalists were caught in the middle of the clash between police and protesters. “Police forces first hit an independent photographer, then they hit Vincent Feuray [a contributor to Libération],” she said. “He fell to the ground unconscious and remained unconscious for a few seconds.”
Lallouet-Geffroy said she was also shoved by police.
She told Index that meetings with journalists at the club resemble “group psychotherapy”: “Journalists often won’t talk about this type of incidents – they consider it’s just behind-the-scenes stuff. But soon you realise that journalists working for very established media outlets, such as AFP or France 3, who have a 12kg camera on the shoulder, are teargassed at point-blank range. What really struck me is the banalisation of such violence.”
Reporterre recently published a report on police violence against protesters, which includes a few pages on cases where journalists were targeted. “What’s disconcerting is this litany of violence in all French cities, with the same words and the same incidents reappearing while police forces are supposed to protect citizens,” said Lallouet-Geffroy.
The emergence of new journalists and new media outlets that occupy a grey zone between journalism and activism has been seen as disconcerting for some.
“There are young journalists who will go on the hotspots, taking risks that journalists who have a steady job won’t take,” Lallouet-Geffroy said. “Sometimes it feels like they are cannon fodder, particularly isolated, with no outlet to have their back if they get in trouble or if they are sued for libel. Some of the images they get are really valuable, though.”
The deteriorating relationships between French police and young people continues to be a problem. It was announced on 29 June in the National Assembly that a plan to issue written receipts to people stopped by police, which organisations fighting police violence have long campaigned for, would not be implemented. A popular chant among French protesters remains: “Tout le monde déteste la police” (“Everybody hates the police”).
Mapping Media Freedom
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