[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]This article is part of Index on Censorship partner Global Journalist’s Project Exile series, which has published interviews with exiled journalists from around the world.[/vc_column_text][vc_single_image image=”97724″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes” alignment=”center”][vc_column_text]Charles Atangana knows as well as anyone the challenges of being a journalist in Cameroon.
In the 1990s and early 2000s, Atangana was an investigative reporter covering economic issues for the now-defunct La Sentinelle as well as Le Messager, Cameroon’s first independent newspaper, and frequently pursued articles about government mismanagement and corruption in the central African nation.
There was much to cover in Cameroon, which ranks 145th out of 176 countries on Transparency International’s most recent Corruption Perceptions Index. His reporting on the lack of transparency in government oil revenues ran on the front-page for three consecutive days and a separate story on bribery in school admissions implicated the country’s then minister of education.
His reporting wasn’t welcomed by the government of President Paul Biya, who has ruled the country since 1982 and frequently jailed journalists critical of his government. In 2004, Atangana helped organize a press conference for the Southern Cameroons National Council, a group supporting independence for Cameroon’s English-speaking minority in the country’s southwest. During the event, Atangana was kidnapped and taken to a military detention center in Douala, Cameroon’s largest city, where he was beaten and tortured by captors demanding to know who his government sources were.
Atangana says that from the way he was interrogated, he believes that his arrest was ordered by the education minister, Joseph Owona, a longtime Biya loyalist who went on to become head of Cameroon’s soccer federation. Owona did not respond to messages seeking comment. Reached via Facebook, his son, Mathias Eric Owona Nguini, denied his father’s involvement in Atangana’s arrest, writing that some journalists “want to justify their exile by trying to get political asylum even with false data.”
Atangana was able to escape from prison with the help of family, and knew he could no longer remain safely in Cameroon. He eventually made his way to the United Kingdom, where after a lengthy struggle, he was granted asylum.
Today Atangana lives in Glasgow, Scotland, where he is a freelance journalist. He spoke with Global Journalist’s Ailean Beaton about being tortured, sneaking out of Cameroon, and the challenge of winning asylum in the U.K. Below, an edited version of their interview:
Global Journalist: What first attracted you to journalism?
Atangana: From the age of six, we had a classroom activity to encourage those of us who could read a newspaper to tear out a story from the weekend that interested us and then stick it up on the wall. Our teacher called it the “wallpaper journal.”
[In college] I joined the press club. We would sometimes receive journalists who had worked on the radio to come in and speak to us and try to give us the basics of journalism. I wasn’t very interested in the job at that time because these guys who came to visit the college and explain what journalism is… they weren’t rich guys. The way they dressed- it wasn’t impressive. But my mind changed after growing up. I would sometimes see journalists walking around with a camera. It seemed exciting, all of a sudden.
GJ: How did you end up focusing on economic investigations?
Atangana: When I started my journalism career no one was really interested in economic issues. Whenever you would see such stories it was usually just the press release from the government for IMF funding… No one was focused on investigating; trying to work out what was behind the figures.
I had received corporate training from the World Bank, where I used to work. So myself and some colleagues from state media, we decided to create a group of economic journalists.
We were sick of seeing announcements of projects from the government saying things like: “We are going to build 600 classrooms in provinces across Cameroon.”
And once the money had been taken and the work had been done there was nobody to travel across the country to check– because if you did, you’d find only maybe five or 10 had been built, and the money had all been spent.
GJ: How would you describe the pressures that journalists face in Cameroon?
Atangana: When a journalist writes critically of government figures they might get approached while they are out drinking and get offered a bribe.
They might ask you to soften your writing and maybe put some honey in there about a government minister or someone else. A journalist in Cameroon does not make very much money and so this can be an effective way [of silencing them]. But other times there’s threats or beatings.
GJ: What were you working on that caught the government’s attention?
Atangana: One time my story ran on the front page for three days. It was a story concerning the government’s transparency surrounding their oil revenues and how the World Bank had made them promise to be clear with how that money was moving around in exchange for a large loan.
The story was that for the first time, the government had been pushed down to their knees. The World Bank had said we will give you the money but only if the government published their figures related to the oil flow.
I also worked on a story where I showed that some of the administrators at the colleges were taking bribes from parents so as to admit their children. Some of these people were quite close to the Education Minister.
GJ: What were you doing on the day you got detained?
Atangana: I had just introduced the speakers at a conference and I was called outside. I was confronted by three men who were dressed as journalists, though as it turns out they were not. One of them said to me: “Charles, we’ve followed your writing, we’ve seen your appearances on TV.”
And they began to hit me; first slapping my left cheek and then my right before kicking me down to the ground.
I was taken to the military police cell in Douala- a place where they usually kept serious trouble makers, so I suppose that made me one of them. I was there for a couple of weeks and nobody knew where I had went.
I picked up from the questions they were asking that it was the education minister who had ordered my arrest.
GJ: What did they want from you?
Atangana: I was asked about my sources. That was the main thing they wanted to know: who in government was giving me my information. I had very good contacts in government committees- education, health, finance and in the military– and it was clear to them from my reporting that somebody had been giving me private information.
The second night was painful because I was beaten properly. I remember, the first night I had slept on the floor in my underwear but on the second night they made me sleep without my underwear. They were using wires tied around my genitals to try and put pressure on me to reveal my sources.
I was taught to always protect my sources. When I was a student we had a journalist from Washington come to speak with us. She told us that we must protect our sources at any cost.
The choice was this: reveal my sources and destroy my reputation or die protecting them.
GJ: So how did you escape?
Atangana: After two weeks I realized that this was my end. It was easy for them to kill me- nobody knew where I was. They were feeding me so poorly I got diarrhea, so I asked them to take me to hospital. There, I met a guy who was about to get released and he had a phone. I managed to tell this guy to get word out to my Dad.
I was with somebody from the military police, but he didn’t know who I was or why I was there and so I promised him money. He allowed me to go out to the car park [where my father was waiting].
My sister has a friend who travels to France on business and I managed to organize a journey with him.
GJ: How difficult was it to get asylum in the U.K.?
Atangana: The first few years were very difficult. It took me a couple of months to recover from the ordeal and I started to come back to life.
I feel the discrimination in the asylum system in the UK is strong. You are spending all your time speaking to people in organizations about a country where nobody among the staff has ever been. It was very difficult.
I was arrested in 2008 [in the U.K.] because it appeared my asylum claim was rejected. They didn’t believe I was a real journalist or that I was under threat.
We spoke to an old colleague from the World Bank, he sent a statement. A colleague from Le Messager did the same. The National Union of Journalists in Scotland helped a lot and the Committee to Protect Journalists in the U.S. also wrote about me and forwarded a statement on the situation of press freedom in Cameroon. There was a public campaign and a petition with over 7,000 signatures that we sent to the Home Office. All of this allowed me to get released and I was granted [asylum] in 2011 after seven years in limbo… seven years of fighting.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_video link=”https://youtu.be/tOxGaGKy6fo”][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]Index on Censorship partner Global Journalist is a website that features global press freedom and international news stories as well as a weekly radio program that airs on KBIA, mid-Missouri’s NPR affiliate, and partner stations in six other states. The website and radio show are produced jointly by professional staff and student journalists at the University of Missouri’s School of Journalism, the oldest school of journalism in the United States. [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”Don’t lose your voice. Stay informed.” use_theme_fonts=”yes”][vc_separator color=”black”][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]Index on Censorship is a nonprofit that campaigns for and defends free expression worldwide. We publish work by censored writers and artists, promote debate, and monitor threats to free speech. We believe that everyone should be free to express themselves without fear of harm or persecution – no matter what their views.
Join our mailing list (or follow us on Twitter or Facebook) and we’ll send you our weekly newsletter about our activities defending free speech. We won’t share your personal information with anyone outside Index.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/2″][gravityform id=”20″ title=”false” description=”false” ajax=”false”][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][vc_separator color=”black”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_basic_grid post_type=”post” max_items=”6″ style=”load-more” items_per_page=”2″ element_width=”12″ grid_id=”vc_gid:1516872643203-6b958ecf-7eea-6″ taxonomies=”22142″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
This article is part of Index on Censorship partner Global Journalist’s Project Exile series, which has published interviews with exiled journalists from around the world.
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Upali Tennakoon (courtesy)
When former editor Upali Tennakoon speculates about what led to the attempt on his life in 2009, two incidents jump to mind. One was an editorial he wrote for Rivira, the Sri Lankan newspaper he managed. The other was an article he chose not to publish, a move that angered a powerful army general.
At the time, Tennakoon knew well the dangers for journalists in the South Asian nation. The government had barred reporters’ access to the war zone and criticized independent media’s “unpatriotic” coverage of the war, particularly reporting on human rights abuses by the military.
On Jan. 8, 2009 government critic Lasantha Wickrematunge, the editor of another Sri Lankan newspaper called The Sunday Leader, was shot and killed by four motorcycle-riding gunmen on his drive to work. Wickrematunge’s assassination came days before he was slated to give evidence in court about alleged corruption involving then-defense secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa. The editor had foretold his death in an editorial he had ordered to be published in just such an event.
“When finally I am killed, it will be the government that kills me,” he wrote.
Fifteen days after the attack on Wickrematunge, it was Tennakoon’s turn. As he drove to work with his wife near the capital Colombo, a man approached his car at about 6:40 a.m. “I thought he was trying to talk to me,” says Tennakoon, in an interview with Global Journalist.
Instead the man smashed the side window of the car with an iron bar and started attacking Tennakoon. Three other armed men on two motorbikes also joined the attack with knives, wooden rods and iron bars, breaking the windshield and the side windows. Tennakoon’s face and hands were bleeding. From the passenger seat, his wife flung herself on top of him in a desperate effort to shield him from the blows.
“[We had] nothing to do, anything,” he recalled. “They also tried to break my neck, but they missed it; otherwise I would have been dead.”
The assailants fled, and Tennakoon was taken to a hospital. Three weeks later, he and his wife fled to the United States, where they have lived for the last nine years.
Looking back, Tennakoon says that the attempt on his life may have been retribution for an editorial he wrote criticizing then-president Mahinda Rajapaksa’s government in the wake of Wickrematunge’s death.
Tennakoon says there is also a second possible motive. He was attacked for choosing not to publish an article written by one of his reporters based on information from army commander Gen. Sarath Fonseka. Tennakoon thought the information was a misleading attempt by Fonseka to blame a rival, Sri Lanka’s then naval commander, for failing to stop a successful supply mission by Tamil rebels.
The precise motive remains a mystery in part because to date, no one has been successfully prosecuted for either the attack on Tennakoon or Wickrematunge. In 2016, with a new government in power, Tennakoon returned to Sri Lanka and identified one of his attackers from a lineup as an army intelligence officer named Premananda Udalagama. Udalagama had already been taken into custody in connection with Wickrematunge’s death, but was later released on bail.
Last year, police told a Sri Lankan court that the former army commander Fonseka had testified that the former defense secretary, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, ran a secret intelligence unit outside of the normal command structure that targeted Wickrematunge as well as other journalists and dissidents, according to al-Jazeera. Rajapaksa has denied any wrongdoing, and both he and Fonseka did not respond to messages from Global Journalist.
Tennakoon’s experience was hardly unusual. Between 2004 and 2009, 16 journalists were killed in Sri Lanka, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. In at least 10 cases, not a single suspect has been convicted.
Tennakoon, 65, now lives in Los Angeles and works for a rental car agency. He still blogs and writes occasionally for Helabima, a U.K.-based Sinhala-language publication. He spoke with Global Journalist’s Yanqi Xu about his attack and the problem of impunity in Sri Lanka, where a new government elected in 2015 came to power promising to prosecute those responsible for attacks on journalists during the civil war. Below, an edited version of their interview:
GJ: What happened right after you were attacked?
Tennakoon: I called the police. We stayed in the hospital for five days.
The situation was fearful. I got threatening calls and was asked to leave the country immediately. My friend at the newspaper asked [then] defense secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa to send security to me while I was in the hospital, but the defense secretary refused and said it was not necessary.
[After the hospital] I didn’t go back to my place and stayed at my wife’s parents’ house… I knew the perpetrators might be waiting for a second chance to finish their job… We left on Feb. 14 [2009] because I did not have any backup in Sri Lanka. My wife and I both had five-year multiple-entry visas to the U.S., so we decided to come. After we arrived, we applied for asylum. We were granted asylum about seven months later.
GJ: What do you know about the people who attacked you?
Tennakoon: The Crime Investigations Department [CID] investigated the telecommunications of those who might have been involved in these cases [of attacks on journalists]. They thought some were related to my case.
My wife and I went back to Sri Lanka in 2016 and identified one attacker, who was actually intelligence personnel. I went alone again in early 2017, but didn’t identify anyone.
Evidence has emerged over the connections between the killing of Lasantha Wickrematunge and the assault on me. It can be assumed that the same squad handled both attacks and I believe their intention was to kill me. Such a squad involving the members of the military could not have been formed without the support of the top-brass of the military.
GJ: Do you think you’ll see justice for your attack?
Tennakoon: I do not believe that in the current political situation the attackers will be brought to justice. The previous government never inquired or arrested anyone.
The new government promised to inquire into cases of violence against journalists and bring the criminals to court during the election.
But now they are not helping the police and CID to access the information they needed. I have the feeling that current political authorities too are trying to protect the perpetrators… their intention is only to take political mileage out of these cases. They are not bothered about bringing culprits to book.
The current president [Maithripala Sirisena] asked why the attackers were remanded for so long and talked about their human rights, but he was not talking about our human rights. We, in hundreds, lost our jobs, and Lasantha Wickrematunge even got killed. The case is still being heard… the issue is that justice is getting delayed. And, as we all know, justice delayed is justice denied.
GJ: Was it a hard choice to leave Sri Lanka? Do you feel safe to returning now?
Tennakoon: It was difficult to give up journalism as it was a huge part of my life. I also had to leave my parents behind. I have no wish to return since the individuals who I believe to be responsible are still in positions of power… Sarath Fonseka, the then Army Commander, is now a cabinet minister. Former defense secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa plays an active role in the political domain too, though he is out of power.
I feel [releasing suspects on bail] jeopardized my personal safety. I don’t know what will happen to me when I visit Sri Lanka next time. I do not feel safe to return.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_video link=”https://youtu.be/tOxGaGKy6fo”][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]Index on Censorship partner Global Journalist is a website that features global press freedom and international news stories as well as a weekly radio program that airs on KBIA, mid-Missouri’s NPR affiliate, and partner stations in six other states. The website and radio show are produced jointly by professional staff and student journalists at the University of Missouri’s School of Journalism, the oldest school of journalism in the United States. [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”Don’t lose your voice. Stay informed.” use_theme_fonts=”yes”][vc_separator color=”black”][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]Index on Censorship is a nonprofit that campaigns for and defends free expression worldwide. We publish work by censored writers and artists, promote debate, and monitor threats to free speech. We believe that everyone should be free to express themselves without fear of harm or persecution – no matter what their views.
Join our mailing list (or follow us on Twitter or Facebook) and we’ll send you our weekly newsletter about our activities defending free speech. We won’t share your personal information with anyone outside Index.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/2″][gravityform id=”20″ title=”false” description=”false” ajax=”false”][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][vc_separator color=”black”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_basic_grid post_type=”post” max_items=”6″ style=”load-more” items_per_page=”2″ element_width=”12″ grid_id=”vc_gid:1517223145889-6c84a978-58ad-0″ taxonomies=”22142″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Jan. 25, 2018 (London and Columbia, Mo.) – Index on Censorship and the Missouri School of Journalism’s Global Journalist have formed a new partnership to help tell the stories of journalists exiled from their home countries for reporting the news.
Under the agreement, the U.K.-based freedom of expression group will publish interviews and articles about journalists in exile written by student journalists and professional staff at ‘Global Journalist’ on the Index on Censorship website.
The partnership is an extension of Global Journalist’s “Project Exile” series, which has published 52 interviews with exiled journalists from 31 different countries since September 2014. The series has included interviews with former New York Times’ Iran correspondent Nazila Fathi, Iraqi BBC News cameraman Qais Najim and Newsweek Japan cartoonist Wang Liming of China, also known as “Rebel Pepper,” who is the 2017 Index on Censorship Freedom of Expression Awards Arts Fellow.
According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, 262 journalists were in jail for their work in 2017. Though estimates vary, many others escape prison or violence by fleeing their home countries each year.
“Telling the stories of journalists who lose their right to live in their own country for simply doing their job is one way to highlight efforts to roll back freedom of expression around the globe,” said Fritz Cropp, the associate dean for global programs at the Missouri School of Journalism. “Together with Index on Censorship we hope this effort will intensify scrutiny of governments that seek to intimidate the press into submission.”
Index on Censorship is a London-based nonprofit that campaigns for and defends free expression worldwide. It publishes work by censored writers and artists, promotes debate, and monitors threats to free speech through its Mapping Media Freedom project. Founded in 1972, Index on Censorship magazine publishes original creative writing and articles about free expression from across the globe. Its contributors have included noted authors and journalists including Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Salman Rushdie, Ken Saro-Wiwa and Václav Havel.
Global Journalist is a website that features global press freedom and international news stories as well as a weekly radio program that airs on KBIA, mid-Missouri’s NPR affiliate, and partner stations in six other states. The website and radio show are produced jointly by professional staff and student journalists at the University of Missouri’s School of Journalism, the oldest school of journalism in the United States. [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_basic_grid post_type=”post” max_items=”6″ style=”load-more” items_per_page=”2″ element_width=”12″ grid_id=”vc_gid:1516816724036-b6713aa4-3a80-10″ taxonomies=”22142″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]This article is part of Index on Censorship partner Global Journalist’s Project Exile series, which has published 52 interviews with exiled journalists from 31 different countries.[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]
2017 Freedom of Expression Journalism Fellow Zaheena Rasheed, Maldives Independent (Photo: Elina Kansikas for Index on Censorship)
For many tourists, the Maldives is a resort destination with straw-thatched luxury bungalows perched atop the clear blue Indian Ocean. But for journalist Zaheena Rasheed, this small island nation, located off the southwest coast of India, is home. At least, it was.
Index on Censorship Freedom of Expression Awards 2017 Journalism Fellow Rasheed, who was born in the Muslim-majority archipelago of 400,000 and attended college in the USA, developed an interest in journalism in 2008 when she took a semester off school to intern at the Maldives Independent news site. While there, she covered the country’s first multiparty elections, in which human rights activist and former political prisoner Mohamed Nasheed defeated longtime dictator Mamoon Abdul Gayoom.
Rasheed went to work full-time at the Independent and began climbing the ranks, but her professional life took a turn in 2012 after the democratically-elected Nasheed was forced from power and the space for the independent press and government criticism began closing. In 2014 a colleague who was known for criticising Islamists and the government, Ahmed Rilwan, went missing. By 2015, she was editor-in-chief of the Independent, but the political situation in the Maldives had worsened. The former president Nasheed was jailed and eventually went into exile in the UK while travelling there for medical treatment.
Press freedoms worsened in August 2016 when the new president Abdullah Yameen signed into a law a sweeping criminal defamation law that carried large fines and jail terms for slander as well as speech that threatens “social norms” or national security. Rasheed and 16 others journalists were detained for protesting the law.
By then Rasheed had earned the government’s ire through the Independent’s investigation intoRilwan’s disappearance as well as corruption in Yameen’s government. A tipping point came when she appeared in an explosive Al Jazeera investigative documentary in September 2016 called “Stealing Paradise.” The program implicated the highest reaches of Yameem’s government in a $1.5 billion international money laundering scheme.
Knowing she would face repercussions, Rasheed fled to Sri Lanka just days before the documentary was released. Hours after it appeared online, police raided the offices of the Maldives Independent.
“Sri Lanka, in many ways, has been the first stop for Maldivian dissidents,” Rasheed says, in an interview with Global Journalist. “It’s housed many, many different Maldivian dissidents, politicians, journalists, human rights defenders over the years, over the decades.”
Rasheed continued to edit the Independent remotely, but in April 2017 she moved to Qatar and accepted a reporting job with Al Jazeera.
Currently living in Doha, the 29-year-old spoke with Global Journalist’s Rayna Sims about witnessing firsthand the decline of press freedom in the Maldives and her hopes of returning home. Below, an edited version of their interview:
Global Journalist: What have been some of the effects of the anti-defamation law in the Maldives?
Rasheed: I left just three weeks after the defamation law came in, so I haven’t felt the effect of it myself, and it’s been about a year since I’ve left the Maldives…But it’s really had a chilling effect. People are a lot more careful about what they report on and what they say. One of the television stations has been fined a number of times, and they’ve essentially had to set up donation boxes to collect the money to pay off these fines. And the law allows for the government to shut them down if they’re unable to pay the fines.
Tell me about the disappearance of your colleague, Ahmed Rilwan.
He was about 28, I think, when he disappeared. He was just a really wonderful human being, and he cared a lot about doing stories about rural Maldives, which is not covered very well by the local media. He also was quite a prominent blogger. He was quite prolific on social media before he joined our team. He was known for satirizing the religious extremists, and he received quite a lot of threats over the years…as did many other journalists.
For me, it was obviously one of the most important events of my life in some ways. Just to have someone you work with, you know, just to have them disappear like that. It was the first disappearance of that kind, and I think it made us all realize that it could happen again, and it did. In April one of Rilwan’s best friends [a political blogger] was killed as he came home from work.
What has it been like living in exile and working for Al Jazeera in Doha?
Al Jazeera has been really, really great. I think a lot of people who go into exile, it’s just this sense of having your moorings cut and not knowing what to do next. You know, to have this life and then just to be uprooted from it, to be away from your family and your daily routine and your job and everything that gave you meaning. It’s very jarring in many ways…it really impacts your sense of both identity and also…what gives you purpose and meaning in life. Suddenly all of that is taken away.
Do you think you will return to the Maldives one day?
I do hope to return to the Maldives one day. I think the hardest part about living in exile has been missing deaths and births. My grandmother died last December, and then I just add[ed] a baby niece, so I’d like to go back and see her.
When you return to the Maldives, do you think you will continue being a journalist?
Not for a little while I guess, and it depends on what happens in the Maldives. It will be really hard to go back and do exactly the same thing I was doing without persecution. I think if I were to go back and continue doing the same job, it’s just a matter of time before I’m picked up again.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_video link=”https://youtu.be/tOxGaGKy6fo”][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]Index on Censorship partner Global Journalist is a website that features global press freedom and international news stories as well as a weekly radio program that airs on KBIA, mid-Missouri’s NPR affiliate, and partner stations in six other states. The website and radio show are produced jointly by professional staff and student journalists at the University of Missouri’s School of Journalism, the oldest school of journalism in the United States. [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_basic_grid post_type=”post” max_items=”6″ style=”load-more” items_per_page=”2″ element_width=”12″ grid_id=”vc_gid:1516806129189-84da7a6a-de56-3″ taxonomies=”9028″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
