3 Jan 2025 | Iran, Israel, Middle East and North Africa, News and features, Syria, Turkey
Three days before the start of the battle to oust Bashar al-Assad, a Syrian political figure I trust for his insights and analysis called me. With my 18 years of experience in journalism, his words carried weight to me. “The Assad era is officially over in Syria,” he declared.
Wael al-Khalidi, the leading Syrian opposition figure, told me: “We will return to Syria. Be certain that the moment the revolutionaries enter Aleppo, they will advance to every Syrian city, and Assad will fall.”
Hearing such news, and thinking about reporting it to the world, was monumental for me. It was 11pm on 7 December when the Syrian revolutionaries began entering Damascus. Personally, I was physically exhausted from days of sleepless work covering the rebels’ advances against Assad’s regime, but their proximity to Damascus gave me renewed strength.
I will never forget the historic moment when I posted on Facebook at 1.30am on 8 December: “Al-Assad has fled, Syrians!” I believe I was the first to break this news, ahead of any major media outlet in the world.
At that moment, I remembered my father, who was killed by the Syrian regime in 2012 when an airstrike hit our home. My father was an elderly, unarmed man. Overwhelmed with emotion, I wept with joy as the dictator Bashar Al-Assad fell. These feelings are indescribable, known only to Syrians who have endured 54 years of suffering under this regime, deprived of the simplest rights and subjected to all forms of killing.
In Syria, journalism was limited to writing only about the leader’s achievements. Criticism was forbidden, and one had to be a member of the Ba’ath Party to speak about accomplishments of both the party and its leader.
When the Syrian revolution began, I worked as an editor for a magazine focused on entertainment news. Frequently meeting with Syrian artists, I found myself in a real predicament: how could we praise Bashar al-Assad while innocent blood was being shed in the streets? I decided to leave journalism and work at a local food restaurant. Later, I fled Damascus for my hometown, Idlib, where I resumed journalism, documenting the violations committed by the Syrian regime and other factions during that period.
Unfortunately, at the time, the jihadist group Jabhat Al-Nusra sought to impose its control on Idlib by force. My writings criticising them openly led to my imprisonment by them. Later, they demanded I leave the country, so I fled to Turkey and continued my journalistic work.
In Turkey, journalism was relatively safe until certain restrictions began to emerge. Suddenly, I was arrested, accused of producing reports critical of Iran’s actions in Syria, with allegations that Israel was funding me. My time in Turkish prison felt absurd to both me and my defence attorney: reporting news is not espionage. The charge was collaborating with Israel against Iran in Syria: a regrettable accusation. I emphasised during my trial that I viewed Iran, Hezbollah, the Assad regime, and Israel as criminals. Eventually, I was acquitted.
Today, Syria faces a challenging phase requiring the media to play its role as the voice of people long silenced under a one-sided dictatorial narrative. We need free, independent Syrian media that competes with major global outlets. It’s not impossible.
Sadly, even weeks after the fall of the Syrian regime, there is a noticeable absence of an official Syrian media outlet addressing the Syrian audience. The country faces media chaos, where outlets and social media influencers depict events irresponsibly and unethically.
Syria needs more workshops to train journalists on professional ethics and innovative approaches, breaking away from the norms imposed for decades.
I am planning to take a significant risk: returning to Syria to launch an independent media project. This initiative aims to amplify the voices of people, addressing their concerns and struggles through a team of young Syrian men and women who believe in a free, independent Syria that respects its neighbours and the global community.
It is a big gamble, and I am fully aware of the dangers of returning to my country after a decade of absence. But with the risks, I carry dreams of finally writing freely in a liberated homeland.
7 Nov 2024 | India, News and features, Volume 53.03 Autumn 2024
The four editors of Assam’s English daily, The Drongo Express, meet in person once or twice a month. They sit hunched over their laptops and notebooks – either at parks or in someone’s house in Diphu, where the paper is headquartered – figuring out how to keep their newspaper afloat.
One of them, Helvellyn Timungpi, from the tribal district of Karbi Anglong, told Index: “Last year, our publisher decided to walk away from the newspaper. We who were on the editorial board came together and signed the partnership deed and got a transfer of ownership. We didn’t have any other employment, and we wanted to stop this newspaper from going down the drain.”
Like many newspapers in North East India – which is made up of eight states including Assam – The Drongo Express relies heavily on advertisements placed by government departments. “We haven’t received a single penny since last October,” said Timungpi.
“If we were receiving our bills regularly, we would be OK.”
Home to about 140 notified Scheduled Tribes [indigenous groups], the region remains poorly covered by the mainstream media. Most Delhi-based media houses continue to employ just one reporter in the region. Others send journalists to cover only stories of extreme violence – for instance, the ongoing ethnic conflict in Manipur or the botched security operation in Nagaland that led to several civilian deaths. Local news channels, newspapers and websites have played a significant role in filling this gap.
Karma Paljor, a former news anchor and founder of EastMojo – the first and only independent digital news outlet that primarily covers the North East – said media ownership was a big problem.
“Anyone with a reasonable amount of money, including contractors, lobbyists and politicians can start a media organisation,” he said. “There are very few newspapers here that stand for balanced news.”
The demographic complexity of the region also plays a part.
“On account of the region’s layered contemporary history as well as ethnic and linguistic faultlines, most local publications do tend to be nativist and, in many cases, unabashedly take sides on polarising topics such as immigration,” explained Tora Agarwala, an independent journalist based in Assam.
Media organisations in the region are often faced with a lack of revenue and resources. Kenter Joya, the managing editor of the Arunachal Pradesh-based Eastern Sentinel, said: “The cost of printing papers is 15 rupees, and we are selling it at three rupees. Vendors take 50% of this money … we try to make it up through advertisements from state government, which constitute 65% of advertisements placed, and corporate advertisements.
“Annually, bi-annually, we receive only 50-60% of what we are owed for the advertisements.”
She said she wondered if payment was being withheld as a form of punishment.
Meanwhile, repeated calls for subscriptions, especially by independent outlets such as EastMojo, haven’t yielded many results.
“The people of the North East are not aware of the power of media, hence they aren’t able to fathom why they should support us,” Paljor said.
“I don’t know who to blame,” said an exasperated Timungpi. “No matter how penniless I become, I want to cling to this profession. But it pains me when my three children have nothing to eat.”
24 Oct 2024 | India, News and features, Volume 53.03 Autumn 2024
On 25 June this year 40-year-old journalist Shivshankar Jha was returning to his home in Muzaffarpur, in the eastern frontier state of Bihar, when he was set upon by a group of men. He was taken to hospital with multiple stab wounds and later died of his injuries.
He worked for several Hindi news outlets in the region and had been reporting on liquor smuggling. His family said he had received death threats and blamed the criminal gangs he had been investigating.
In July, Unesco director-general Audrey Azoulay said: “I condemn the killing of Shivshankar Jha and call for a thorough investigation to ensure that the perpetrators are brought to justice. Journalists play a vital role in investigating crime and wrongdoing, and impunity for crimes against them must not prevail.”
This is not an isolated case. Waheed Azam, of Patna-based Democratic Charkha, explained that the illicit trade in alcohol and raw materials such as sand was open to exploitation from criminal gangs.
“Journalism in Bihar is extremely challenging,” he said. “The last decade has been marked by political instability, with frequent changes in government. Meanwhile, illegal liquor smuggling and the sand mafia have shaken the state’s economy. If you publish a report that displeases the mafia or those in power, you end up either dead or framed in false cases.”
Madhubani is globally renowned for its ancient tradition of painting. However, on 12 November 2021, the headlines were not about the city’s art but about the brutal murder of a 26-year-old journalist named Avinash Jha.
Jha, who worked for the local news website BNN, was found dead, his body charred beyond recognition. He had been missing for three days.
He had published a series of news reports exposing illegal nursing homes operating in the district, after which he began receiving threatening phone calls.
His last Facebook post read: “A major exposé on illegal nursing homes is coming soon.”
Kanhaiya Mishra, the editor of BNN News in Madhubani, called on the Central Bureau of Investigation to take up his colleague’s case.
“There was never an impartial investigation. Initially, the police tried to frame the murder as the result of a love affair, but everyone knows why Avinash [Jha] was killed,” he said.
One of the most notorious cases was the 2016 murder of Rajdev Ranjan in Siwan.
Ranjan, 46, had recently become bureau chief at the Hindustan Daily, where he had published several reports on the criminal activities of former MP and notorious gangster Mohammad Shahabuddin. His final report focused on how Shahabuddin continued to operate his gang from behind bars.
The Bihar police and the CBI have a track record of failure in solving journalists’ murders. In the Ranjan case, the CBI told a court in 2022 that the key witness, Badami Devi, had died.
She later appeared in court with all her identification documents.
Ranjan’s wife, Asha Devi, recalled: “The day after his murder was supposed to be our wedding anniversary. I was waiting for him, but he never came back. Everyone knows who ordered his murder, but people are too scared to even mention his name. Why? Because he is a powerful gangster and a former MP.”
Two common threads run through these cases: all the journalists were local reporters, covering grassroots issues in Bihar, and none of the cases has resulted in the conviction of the perpetrators. Bihar ranks high for incidents of violence against journalists but, living in the poorest and most backward state in the country, its local journalists often find no one to take up their cause.
14 Oct 2024 | News and features, Russia, Statements, Ukraine
Index on Censorship, the Media Freedom Rapid Response (MFRR) and partner organizations today mourn the death of Ukrainian journalist Victoria Roshchyna, who died in unclear circumstances while in Russian detention, and whose death was confirmed by Russian and Ukrainian authorities on Thursday. We welcome the opening of an investigation by Ukrainian authorities on grounds of “war crime combined with premeditated murder” and demand that Russian authorities do the same to elucidate the circumstances of Roshchyna’s death and bring to justice all those who could be responsible.
Roshchyna, a freelance journalist with Ukrainska Pravda, a major Ukrainian publication, and several other leading Ukrainian outlets, left Kyiv in late July 2023 with the intention to reach Russian-occupied territory in southeastern Ukraine. Soon after her departure, she went missing, with many of her colleagues expressing their fear that she was most likely being held by Russian forces.
In May 2024, nearly a year after her departure, Roshchyna’s family reported that Russian authorities had confirmed to them that the journalist was being held in Russian custody. However, the charges against her, as well as the place of her detention remained unknown.
Following the announcement of her death, reports emerged suggesting that Roshchyna had spent the past four months in an individual prison cell in the Russian city of Taganrog, which is located immediately next to the Ukrainian border. Prior to this, it has been reported that she was held in pre-trial detention by Russian forces in Berdyansk, a city in southeastern Ukraine currently under Russian occupation.
According to Russian authorities, Roshchyna died on September 19. Unconfirmed reports by Ukrainian media suggest that she passed away while being transported from Taganrog to Moscow. According to the same reports, Russia was preparing to include Roshchyna into a prisoner exchange with Ukraine.
While it is unclear what location the journalist managed to reach as part of the reporting trip she began in late July 2023, it was known that she planned to report from regions of Ukraine under Russian occupation.
“Victoria was herself from the Zaporizhia region,” Ukrainska Pravda editor-in-chief Sevgil Musayeva told IPI in October 2023, when Roshchyna’s disappearance was first made public. “She saw it as her mission to tell the stories of the people under occupation and when fears grew that the Russian military may be planning to blow up the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant, she wanted to go.”
Roshchyna was one of the very few Ukrainian journalists to travel to Russian-occupied territories to cover the impact of the war. In March 2022, she was taken captive by Russian forces while reporting near Mariupol, when the city was under a prolonged siege by Russian forces. She was released ten days later and continued working as a journalist from Kyiv. She documented her experiences in captivity here.
MFRR partners, Index on Censorship and Reporters Without Borders (RSF) reiterate their support of journalists who continue to report on Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. We mourn the death of yet another journalist who lost her life while attempting to cover the consequences of this brutal invasion, and demand justice for her and other deceased colleagues.
Signed:
International Press Institute (IPI)
European Centre for Press and Media Freedom (ECPMF)
The European Federation of Journalists (EFJ)
Index on Censorship
Reporters Without Borders (RSF)
ARTICLE 19 Europe
OBC Transeuropa (OBCT)
International Women’s Media Foundation (IWMF)
Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)
Free Press Unlimited (FPU)
