01 Mar 24 | Mexico, News and features, Opinion, Ruth's blog
In a world where there are too many tyrants and our politics seems increasingly divisive it is all too easy to look away, to turn off the news, to refuse to engage.
Yet there is a responsibility on all of us to bear witness. To hear people’s stories and to stand with those dissidents who are brave enough to speak truth to power.
In recent weeks, we have been reminded of how important this is, in countries that don’t always dominate the headlines.
In the ongoing battle for genuine freedom of expression in Mexico, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s relentless attacks on journalists and democratic institutions have reached alarming heights, posing a severe threat to press freedom and democracy in the country.
The latest incident involved an investigation by a New York Times journalist into the Obrador administration’s alleged connections with drug cartels. The report led to Obrador sharing the journalist’s telephone number during a televised press conference – this is a blatant attack on freedom of the press. By exposing a journalist to potential harm, Obrador is sending a chilling message to the media: report critically at your own risk.
These actions would be bad enough – but are compounded by Obrador’s proposals to overhaul democratic institutions, such as the election authority INE and the Supreme Court. Obrador is seemingly seeking to consolidate power and the democratic checks and balances which exist in any healthy democracy.
His proposal to directly elect both board members of the INE and Supreme Court judges threatens to politicise these institutions and erode their independence. Civil society groups, academics, and the opposition have rightly warned that such changes would undermine the very foundation of democracy in Mexico.
The widespread protests that erupted last Sunday, with thousands of Mexicans taking to the streets to reject Obrador’s vision, are a testament to the growing dissatisfaction with his authoritarian tendencies and for me a celebration of freedom of expression against one of the world’s less well known tyrants.
Obrador was faced by a sea of pink — the colour of INE’s logo — and thousands of national flags demonstrating a united front against the erosion of the democratic principles which the people of Mexico seem rightly reluctant to abandon.
I stand with the people of Mexico who will not bend to a tyrant. Obrador seeks to be a strong man – his actions show us exactly what he is a weak man – afraid of his citizens.
At the beginning of last year Obrador was voted Tyrant of the Year 2022 in Index on Censorship’s public vote. This recognition was based on his appalling record on media freedom. His response to our public poll was to attack the messenger rather than consider the message – again at a televised press conference.
Behind each action taken by Obrador to consolidate power is a victim. It may be a journalist, an independent member of the judiciary or an observer of Mexico’s elections. Each one embodies the democratic rights that we hold dear. Each of them wants to live in a thriving Mexico that can stand proud in its belief in freedom of expression for all. I stand in solidarity with the journalists and citizens of Mexico who are bravely speaking out against censorship and authoritarianism. I stand with those people exposing his authoritarian nature. And I stand with those who bravely seek to speak truth to power.
Index will continue to shine a spotlight on Obrador’s assault on freedom of expression because the future of Mexico’s democracy demands our attention.
27 Feb 12 | Russia
More than 30,000 people encircled Moscow in a human chain along Sadovoe Kolco, a 10-mile long road surrounding the city yesterday.
Protesters were calling for fair elections and for the ousting of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
Arguably, the biggest surprise of the protest was its participants. What was once referred to as a “hipster-revolution” has become a broader movement. Yesterday’s human chain united people across social class, age, gender and even political creed. There were hard-core leftists but also liberals and disillusioned former Putinistas. There were mothers and fathers with their children (and dogs, too). There were, of course, youngsters – but also many, many elderly people as well.
Kaya Ivanovna, a 80-year-old former librarian found out about the protests from the radio. “There are many more prohibitions, and all the interesting TV programmes that made us reflect and discuss were shut down. I want real change”.
The unusual protest started at 2pm and continued for a couple of hours under the abundant snow covering the capital. Moscow, a usually grey and unwelcoming city, yesterday displayed a ten-mile-long smile.
The only note of unrest in an otherwise peaceful demonstration was the impromptu action organised by the opposition party Left Front in Revolution Square. The unauthorised protest triggered scuffles with the police and the ultra-nationalist group Nashi.
Index was there and filmed the Left Front’s leader Sergei Udaltsov’s statement before the clashes and arrests started. “We are here to celebrate our own Maslennitsa [the Russian spring feast celebrated yesterday]”, he said. “We want to get rid of the political winter, and we want a new political spring to come to Russia starting from today”.
Meanwhile, thousands of Russians are preparing to serve as election observers for the elections to be held on 4 March. Referring to the huge number of registrations the daily newspaper Vedomosti referenced “A country of observers”.
The next protest action is planned for election day 4 March but many believe that 5 March will be the day when the movement “for fair elections” will see its biggest demonstration yet.
Tena Prelec is a freelance writer and consultant at the ESOP Centre, London.
01 Dec 10 | Egypt, Middle East and North Africa
For months in advance of Sunday’s parliamentary elections, Egyptian officials waged a rather strident campaign to fend off calls to allow international election monitors to observe the vote. The issue, they said, was out of the question and an insult to Egypt’s national sovereignty.
Instead, numerous officials said, an army of locally licensed election monitors and the combined focus of the international media would be more than enough to ensure that no electoral irregularities took place.
Journalists planning to cover the elections dutifully submitted to a tedious and bureaucratic process of applying for special Ministry of Information badges which, we were told, would allow us easy access into any of the country’s approximately 44,000 polling stations. In a parallel process, an estimated 6,000 prospective monitors from local non-governmental organizations received very impressive looking badges from the Higher Electoral Commission.
When election day came, it became very quickly apparent that there were no guarantees for anyone. Journalists across the country reported being turned away from polling stations by the police officers guarding the door. Licensed monitors reported the same phenomenon.
In Alexandria, I found a small group of monitors from a local NGO forced to observe a polling station from across the street after their cards were dismissed as insufficient.
“It has no value,” Mohammed Fawzi said of his monitoring badge. “They banned us from entering.”
Asked whether the officer had given any reason for dismissing the monitor ID, Fawzi, an architecture student at Alexandria University, smiled and shrugged. “It’s Egypt,” he said.
Instead Fawzi contented himself with observing the polling station from across the street, where he said he witnessed a pack of ranking officers establish control of the area and detain anyone taking pictures. To stay out of custody, Fawzi was forced to pretend he was talking on his cell phone, then sneakily take a picture using the built-in camera.
In a post-election day review of events, a coalition of local and international watchdog groups said examples like this were endemic across the country.
“The rather total lack of transparency about these elections puts the burden on Egyptian authorities to show others how these elections were not fatally compromised,” said Joe Stork, an official with Human Rights Watch who was briefly detained Sunday by police while documenting polling place violations.
It would be unfair to state that barring journalists and licensed monitors on election day was an official Egyptian government policy. After all, some journalists and some monitors were allowed in to some stations.
What’s probably more accurate is that there was no government policy at all. No matter what the Ministry of Information or the Higher Electoral Commission issued us, true power lay in the hands of each polling station’s supervisor and the police officers who controlled the entrance.
As one western television journalist told me, “It was all about the mood of the polling place supervisor and whether I could talk my way into the place. I don’t think my badge got me any (access) that I couldn’t have gotten without it.”
