31 Mar 2023 | News and features, Nigeria
On 25 February, Punch Newspaper journalist Gbenga Oloniniran stood near the Governor of Rivers State’s residence in Southern Nigeria, covering the recent presidential election. As policemen gathered and arrested young people at a polling station, Oloniniran brought out his camera, taking snapshots of the incident. Instantly, the policemen left the youths, pounced on Oloniniran, snatched his camera, and bundled him away in a van. They denied him the right to cover the elections.
This was not an isolated incident. At least 14 journalists and media workers covering the presidential election were detained, intimidated or attacked by security forces, political groups or citizens. During the state elections held on 18 and 19 March, at least 28 more journalists suffered the same treatment, with many more cases likely going unreported.
“They threatened me, and that was under the rain, and I was shivering,” Bolanle Olabimtan, a journalist at The Cable, told Index after she was attacked in Delta State. She was punched, and had the photos deleted from her phone.
Haruna Mohammed Salisu, CEO of WikkiTimes, was arrested while covering a protest during the presidential elections. He was detained and charged with inciting disturbance of public peace. He claims he had his phone taken, was interrogated by security personnel and was then assaulted by violent supporters of the governor.
“My experience in detention serves as a stark reminder of how vulnerable journalists are in Nigeria,” he wrote in WikkiTimes.
On March 18 unidentified men attacked an Arise TV crew consisting of reporter Oba Adeoye, cameraman Opeyemi Adenihun and driver Yusuf Hassan. Adenihun suffered facial injuries and their drone was seized. Meanwhile in Ogun State, Adejoke Adeleye, a News Agency of Nigeria reporter, was attacked by a mob when filming at a voting station. Five people, including one masked person wielding an axe, chased the group of journalists that included Adeleye, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. In Lagos, 10 people hit reporter Amarachi Amushie and camera operator Aliu Adeshina from the privately-owned broadcaster Africa Independent Television, as they reported at a polling station. Security agencies issued threats. They harassed Adesola Ikulajolu, a freelance investigative reporter, deleting the image folder in his phone.
Nigeria is ranked at 129 out of 180 nations in the 2022 World Press Freedom Index compiled by Reporters Without Borders, with this latest assault on press freedom demonstrating part of the reason for the ranking.
After the attacks, Dupe Fehintola, Chairman of a branch of the Nigeria Union of Journalists, made a statement saying: “We condemn these attacks on journalists.”
During the elections, members of the Nigerian media investigated potential links between political parties and violent attackers, who threatened voters unless they proved they were casting their ballots in favour of the ruling All Progressives Party.
Adebola Ajayi, a journalist at People’s Gazette, experienced that violence first hand, saying: “I was attacked by political thugs at a polling unit in Orile-Oshodi ward in Lagos.”
This violence may have contributed to the fact that 71% of voters abstained from the elections. The election winner, APC’s Ahmed Tinubu, received only 8.8 million votes, while challengers Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party gathered 6.9 million and Peter Obi of the Labour Party received 6.1 million, in a country of 93 million registered voters and a population of over 200 million.
Evidence gathered by the media – including assaults on electoral officials and an incident where attackers destroyed ballot boxes with axes – showed that violence marked the elections. The pressure on journalists as they faced this violence themselves prevented them from covering the elections fairly.
Nearly two weeks after the end of the state and presidential elections, the media remains shaken.
“We strongly condemn these unacceptable attacks, which constitutes both the violation of fundamental human rights of the affected journalists and media worker and a major assault on press freedom,” Melody Akinjiyan, the spokesman of the International Press Center, Lagos, told Index.
5 Nov 2022 | Brazil, News and features
On 30 October, Brazilians took part in one of the most fiercely contested presidential elections in their country’s history. It divided the country right down the middle:, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Workers Party) received more than 60.3 million votes (50.9%), winning the support of more voters than any president in the history of Brazil, defeating the incumbent Jair Bolsonaro (Liberal Party), who was seeking four more years in power.
“Democracy has spoken in Brazil”, wrote the French newspaper Le Monde. For many, it was the victory of respect for democracy, against the intolerance represented by the extreme right personified in Bolsonaro.
I have been living in the United Kingdom since 2020 but travelled to Brazil a few days before the first round of the elections, which took place on 2 October. I was able to vote in both rounds and was glad to do so, as I believe we don’t vote only for ourselves. Voting is a collective action, especially in Brazil, where it has been mandatory since 1932. It is also easy and quick, as we vote using electronic machines where we type the candidate’s number, press confirm and it’s done. That’s why the counting of votes in Brazil is fast and allows the country to announce the results on the same day.
As soon as I arrived in my home town of Curitiba, in the south of Brazil, I noticed people were getting ready for the elections. Many homes and cars were decorated with Brazil’s flag, a sign of support for current president Jair Bolsonaro. Although in smaller numbers, I could also see people backing Lula, especially in pubs and neighbourhoods linked to the left-wing. This support for Bolsonaro was evident in the final results: in the second round, Bolsonaro won 720,322 votes in Curitiba, while Lula won 391,675. Curitiba is not alone in being pro-Bolsonaro; the incumbent president enjoyed some of his strongest support in the white-majority southern state of Paraná in which it is located. But the North East of Brazil, where he obtained 69% of the vote, proved decisive for Lula’s victory.
Throughout the presidential race, Bolsonaro tried to delegitimise the electoral process. More than once, the outgoing president tried to discredit the electronic voting machines, which make the elections in Brazil one of the most transparent and safest in the world The legitimacy of the elections was confirmed by international observers from the Organisation of American States. In the week before the second round, Bolsonaro said that without the presence of the Armed Forces it would be impossible to give a stamp of credibility to electronic voting machines. His supporters, encouraged by his anti-democratic speeches, pushed for a return to printed voting papers, where the possibility of fraud is higher.
As the elections approached, knowing his chances of re-election were diminishing, Bolsonaro began to take populist measures, such as increasing the value of Auxílio Brasil (Brazil’s social assistance programme) and lowering the price of petrol. Even so, Bolsonaro became the first president to fail to be reelected since reelection was instituted in 1997.
Historically in Brazil, the defeated candidate calls the winner on the same day the results are announced, wishing the future president luck, as well as making a statement to the press, recognising the result and respecting democracy. This was the first time that the defeated candidate had not spoken right after the result was confirmed since the adoption of electronic voting machines in the presidential elections of 1998. Bolsonaro broke his silence two days later, saying that as president, he would continue to respect Brazil’s Constitution. He did not mention his rival Lula and didn’t answer questions from journalists. Lula’s victory signals Brazil’s return to the international stage at a time of global crisis. The Guardian wrote that “his victory over the current right-wing extremist, Jair Bolsonaro, is also good for the world”. Norway has already announced that it will once again send financial resources in the fight against deforestation of the Amazon l, as Lula reinforced during his campaign the importance of preserving the rainforest and the lives of indigenous peoples. UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak congratulated Lula on his victory and said he wanted to work together with Brazil to strengthen the global economy and promote democratic values. Joe Biden also sent his congratulations to the future Brazilian president and stressed that the elections were fair and free. Emmanuel Macron said that Lula’s election opens a new page in the country’s history and wants to join forces to renew the bond of friendship between France and Brazil.
Since the beginning of his term in 2019, Bolsonaro has tried in every way to divide the country and promote hatred. Families have been fighting over politics and bonds have been broken because people can’t stand the other side anymore. When Bolsonaro took over the presidency, he said that minorities would have to bow to the majority. Lula, shortly after being officially declared the next President of the Republic, said that as of January 2023 he will govern for 215 million Brazilians and not just for those who voted for him.
“There are not two ‘Brazils’. We are one country, one people, one great nation,” said the president-elect.
As for freedom of expression and the press, it is expected that Lula’s victory will improve both. Many Brazilians opposed to Bolsonaro have not expressed support for their preferred candidates for fear of reprisal and violence. It was not uncommon for Lula supporters to be physically attacked or even killed, as in the case of Marcelo Arruda, treasurer of the Workers Party, who was shot dead in Foz do Iguaçu, at his own birthday party, by a supporter of Jair Bolsonaro. Likewise, journalists were constantly attacked by Bolsonaro in his speeches.
Shortly after Lula’s victory was announced, Bolsonaro supporters began to demonstrate on the country’s roads and introduced illegal blockades on 227 federal highways, in protest against the election results and asking for military intervention and new elections. The newspaper O Estado de São Paulo reported, on Telegram, that groups who support Bolsonaro claim to be at war against Communism and that they will use violence if needed. Some protesters were seen using Nazi salutes. On Tuesday, 1 November, the Federal Court of Justice ordered the unblocking of the occupied highways. One day later, Bolsonaro asked everyone to clear the highways, saying he believed this was not a legitimate demonstration.
Bolsonaro’s legacy is clear. Almost 700,000 deaths from the Covid-19 pandemic, disrespect for science, more than 33 million Brazilians going hungry, support for the 1964 military coup and a contempt for democracy and freedom of expression. On the night of 30 October, thousands of people headed to Avenida Paulista, one of the most important in the city of São Paulo, to celebrate Lula’s victory and await the future president.
“This country needs peace and unity,” Lula said. The front cover of O Estado de São Paulo quoted one of Lula’s phrases after his triumph: “time to put down our weapons”. The hope is that Lula will once again bring international respect to Brazil.
6 Sep 2022 | Americas, Brazil, News and features
President Bolsonaro has taken over the Brazilian flag as a symbol of patriotism to the country. Photo: Marcos Correa/Zuma Press
I was born in the city of Curitiba, in the south of Brazil, and I was always proud to be Brazilian. Since Jair Bolsonaro came to power on 1 January 2019 though it has been very upsetting to watch what has happened to my country.
Bolsonaro was elected – it wasn’t a coup – but he is not in favour of democracy. In fact he represents everything that a democracy isn’t — an enemy of women, Black people, the LGBTQ+ community and Indigenous peoples. During his election campaign he propagated hatred with homophobic, misogynistic and anti-environmental rhetoric. Then, as soon as he began his term in 2019, he put all of his words into actions.
To begin with, firearm registration grew in the country. Support for carrying a weapon was one of the pillars of Bolsonaro’s campaign back in 2018. This worries me, as I am totally against arming the population. It makes me distressed to think of the danger that people I love are in with more guns out there. Bolsonaro relies on the premise that Brazilians have a way to defend themselves against bandits and criminals, but he forgets the main focus, which should be greater investment in public safety, better working conditions for police officers and more educational resources — the only possible way to reduce crime in the country.
An incident on 9 July in the city of Foz do Iguaçu is one example of how gun ownership can have terrible consequences. Municipal guard Marcelo Arruda, treasurer of the Workers’ Party, was celebrating his 50th birthday at a private party when he was shot dead by federal prison agent Jorge Guaranho, a supporter of Bolsonaro. It was a political crime. Arruda supported left-wing candidate Lula and Bolsonaro has been known to promote violence against those with opposing political views, as he did in 2018 when he encouraged his supporters to “shoot the petralhada” (a reference to left-wing supporters) on a visit to the state of Acre.
This incident also raises concerns over freedom of expression in Brazil. Is it no longer possible to support a candidate who is against the current government without automatically becoming the target of violent and radical people?
Bolsonaro is clearly not concerned about the high rates of deforestation in the Amazon and Pantanal region. The situation in the Amazon received a lot of attention in June with the murder of British journalist Dom Philips, together with Indigenous activist Bruno Pereira, who were exposing the scale of environmental destruction at the moment. Their murders were awful, in general and for their families. They also spoke more broadly of Bolsonaro’s disregard for the lives of Brazilians.
For me, Bolsonaro represents death. It is difficult to forget his neglect of the Brazilian people in the worst moments of the Covid-19 pandemic. Since the pandemic started he adopted denialism. He encouraged the use of ineffective drugs and delayed the purchase of vaccines. As a result, people close to me saw family members and friends die from a disease even after the vaccine became available. My family and best friends received their first dose of the vaccine months after those in the UK did, a wait that made me anxious. (As an aside, because of Bolsonaro’s reckless actions, Brazil was on the UK travel red list for almost a year. I couldn’t go back to Brazil and no one could visit me in England. It was 10 months of loneliness, not knowing when I would see the ones I love the most.) In the end, Bolsonaro is partly responsible for the death of hundreds of thousands in Brazil from Covid. How can I not be disgusted by a president who, when asked if he had any words of solidarity with the victims’ families, said “I’m not a gravedigger, OK?”
In Bolsonaro’s Brazil, journalism has also been devalued and attacked with alarming regularity. The president himself has verbally attacked journalists. Examples date back decades and are many, but you don’t have to go back decades to find them. A couple of weeks ago will do. On 28 August, during a presidential debate when journalist Vera Magalhães criticised Bolsonaro’s approach to the Covid-19 pandemic, he called her a “disgrace to Brazilian journalism”. And just this week, he lashed out at the journalist Amanda Klein. When Klein asked Bolsonaro about his finances related to property acquisitions, he said: “Amanda, you are married to someone who supports me”. The journalist promptly answered by saying that her personal life was not on the agenda, which was followed by Bolsonaro questining why his was. “Because you are a public person. You are the president,” she responded, correctly.
These two journalists also shared another thing in common – their gender. Bolsonaro’s contempt and awful treatment towards women is widely known in Brazil. In 2003, for example, he told the politician Maria do Rosário that he wouldn’t rape her because she didn’t deserve it. Eleven years later, he elaborated by saying that she didn’t deserve to be raped because she was ugly and not his type. And yet there are still women who vote for him, something I just can’t understand.
Bolsonaro took over the Brazilian flag with his motto “God above all, Brazil above all”. Before him, when I saw the green and yellow flag – which I think is one of the most beautiful in the world – in houses or on the streets, it was usually people cheering for Brazil on the day of a World Cup match. Today, it’s difficult not to associate the flag with Bolsonaro supporters.
Bolsonaro does not represent me, nor the millions of other Brazilians who have taken a stand against his atrocities. Brazil is much bigger than Bolsonaro. It is a country of exuberant beauty and many kind and generous people. I am proud to be Brazilian and that will never change. One day Bolsonaro will be held accountable for all his actions. Hopefully that day is soon.
1 Apr 2022 | Hungary, News and features, Uncategorized
LGBTQI rights. Gender equality. Media freedom. The fate of liberties in Hungary hang in the balance as the nation heads to the polls on Sunday. With a falling currency, a mismanaged response to the pandemic still fresh to mind and a stronger opposition under United For Hungary – a coalition of six parties spanning the political spectrum – the election campaign has been the closest in years. But the war in Ukraine, right on Hungary’s border, has changed its course in unexpected ways. Below we’ve picked the most important things to consider when it comes to the April 2022 elections.
Basic rights could worsen
Since his election in 2010, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has whittled away fundamental rights in the country to the extent that Hungarian activist Dora Papp told Index in 2019 free expression had no more space “to worsen”.
Orban’s main targets have been people who identify as LGBTQI. Last year, amid global outcry, he passed a law that bans the dissemination of content in schools deemed to promote homosexuality and gender change. Seeking approval for this legislation, Hungary is holding a referendum on sexual orientation workshops in schools this Sunday alongside the parliamentary elections.
Orban also takes aim at the nation’s Roma and immigrants, and has revived old anti-Semitic tropes in his attacks on George Soros, a Hungarian-born Jewish philanthropist who Orban claims is plotting to flood the country with migrants (an accusation Soros firmly denies).
As for half of the population, Orban’s macho-style leadership manifests in rhetoric on women that is dismissive, insulting and focuses on traditional roles. Asked in 2015 why there were no women in his cabinet, he replied that few women could deal with the stress of politics. That’s just one example. The list goes on.
His populist politics have seeped into every democratic institution and effectively dismantled them. The constitution, the judiciary and municipal councils have all been reorganised to serve the interests of Orban. Education, both higher and lower, has seen huge levels of interference. Progressive teachers and classes have been removed. Even the Billy Elliot musical was cancelled after Orban called the show a propaganda tool for homosexuality.
But the media can’t freely report much of this
In response to claims of media-freedom erosion, the Hungarian government likes to point out that there are no journalists in jail in Hungary, nor have any been murdered on Orban’s watch. But as we know only too well there are many ways to cook an egg. Through gaining control of public media, concentrating private media in the hands of Orban allies and creating a hostile environment for the remaining independent media (think misinformation laws and constant insults), the attacks come from every other angle. Orban has even been accused of using Pegasus, the invasive spyware behind the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Kashoggi, to target investigative journalists.
It’s little wonder then that in 2021 Reporters Without Borders labelled Orban a “press freedom predator”, the only one to make the list from the EU.
As election day approaches the attacks continue. In February, for example, pro-government daily Magyar Nemzet said it had obtained recordings showing that NGOs linked to Soros were “manipulating” international press coverage of Hungary, a claim instantly rejected by civil society groups.
Ukraine War has shifted the narrative, for better and worse
Given Orban’s track-record on rights, it comes as no surprise that he’s the closest EU ally of Vladimir Putin. This wasn’t a great look before 24 February and it’s even less so today, as the opposition are keen to highlight. They are pushing Orban hard on his neutral stance, which has seen him simultaneously open Hungary’s borders to Ukrainian refugees and oppose sanctions and the sending of weapons.
But Orban is playing his hand well. Fears of becoming embroiled in the war appear to be stronger in Hungary than anger at Putin’s aggression, many analysts says. Orban is claiming a vote for him is a vote for stability and neutrality, while a vote for the opposition is a vote for war. He’s even tried to cast his February visit to Moscow as a “peace mission”.
And though he has condemned the invasion, he has yet to say anything bad about Putin himself. Worse still, Hungarian media is blasting out Russian propaganda. Pundits, TV stations and print outlets are pushing out lines like the war was caused by NATO’s aggressive acts toward Russia, Russian troops have occupied Ukraine’s nuclear plants to protect them and the Ukrainian government is full of Nazis.
Anything else?
Yes. Orban met with a coalition of Europe’s far-right in Spain at the start of the year. They discussed the possibility of a Europe-wide alliance. What that looks like now in a post-Ukraine world is hard to tell. We’d rather not see.
Then there’s the fact that Serbia also goes to the polls Sunday. Like Orban, the ruling Serbian Progressive Party (SNS), led by president Aleksandar Vučić, has been unnerved by growing opposition. Also like Orban, they’re close to Putin and using the Ukraine war to their advantage – reminding people of the 1999 Kosovo war when NATO launched a three-month air strike. Orban and Vučić have developed close ties and will no doubt be buoyed up by each other’s victories should that happen on Sunday.
So will the Hungary elections be free and fair?
If the 2018 elections are anything to go by, they will be “free but not fair”, the conclusion of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), who partially monitored the 2018 election process. That’s the optimistic take. Others are fearful they will be neither free nor fair, so much so that a grassroots civic initiative called 20K22 has recruited more than 20,000 ballot counters – two for each of Hungary’s voting precincts – to be stationed at polling centres on election day with the aim of stopping any voting irregularities.
News from yesterday isn’t confidence-boosting either. Hungarian election officials reported a suspected case of voter fraud to the police. Bags full of completed ballots were found at a rubbish dump in north-western Romania, home to a large Hungarian minority who have the right to vote in Hungary’s elections. Images and videos shared by the opposition featured partially burnt ballots marked to support them. As of writing, no details have been provided of the actual perpetrators and their motives, and Orban has been quick to accuse the opposition of being behind the incident. Either way, it leaves a bad taste in the mouth.
