1 Jul 2021 | Belarus, News
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In a shocking development, Belarusian journalist and former Index on Censorship staff member Andrei Aliaksandrau has been charged with treason. Detained on 12 January with his partner Irina Zlobina, Andrei was originally accused of organising actions that grossly violate public order. He was due for release later this month. The new charge marks an escalation in Belarus’s draconian crackdown on press freedom and human rights activism. Andrei now faces up to 15 years in prison.
For Index on Censorship, all victims of human rights abuse are cause for concern when their right to speak out is denied, their right to freedom of expression at risk and their liberty unjustly curtailed. The excessive and groundless charges against Andrei bring the injustice faced by thousands of Belarusian journalists painfully home. For Andrei was also a key part of Index’s team in London from 2012 to 2014, bringing his expertise, his insights and his great sense of irony to the publication’s coverage of Belarus and the region. He also embraced British culture, loving pubs and beer and Liverpool FC. He is part of the Index family.
Andrei returned to Belarus after some years working in the UK out of commitment to his country and faith that a democratic future is possible. It was an act of courage, but he has never lost his sense of humour or the habit of downplaying the danger he faces.
After the sham elections in 2020, a former colleague at Index (and Everton fan) messaged him to see if he was all right. He replied: “This got to be the year Liverpool finally won the Premier League! I knew it was going to be a hell of a year.”
In the months before his detention he was working as a media manager and trainer with DW Akademie. He was previously deputy director of the Belarusian Private News Agency (Belapan). Following Andrei’s arrest, officers from the Department for Combating Economic Crimes of the Ministry of Internal Affairs searched Belapan’s office and confiscated computer hard drives along with other material.
The treatment of Andrei is a violation of his fundamental rights under the International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights, ratified by Belarus in 1973.
Andrei’s former colleagues are devastated by the news of the charges against him and will fight for his release as an act of solidarity. He was part of the UK’s human rights community – working for Index’s sister organisation Article 19 as well during his time in London. It is often the individual stories of repression and victimisation that move people to action. His unjust imprisonment must be a focus for activists, politicians and the government in the fight for long overdue democracy in Belarus.
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22 Jun 2021 | China, Hong Kong, Media Freedom, News
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”116952″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes”][vc_column_text]Ten months after the arrest of Next Digital founder Jimmy Lai and a massive raid at the group’s headquarters in August last year, the Hong Kong Police’s national security department launched a bigger strike against the Apple Daily, the group’s major publication, last Thursday (17 June).
They were alleged of colluding with foreign forces, one of the crimes under the national security law (NSL).
It marks the beginning of the end of the beleaguered newspaper founded by the controversial businessman in 1995. Hit by a government freeze on its bank accounts, the Next Digital’s board of directors said after an emergency meeting on Monday the newspaper will cease operation on Saturday unless the Government releases assets frozen.
Staff were allowed to leave immediately without giving prior notice. As this article went to press, its online operation was largely shut down.
The imminent demise of the media group, inaugurated with the launching of its flagship newspaper Apple Daily in 1995, will deal a body blow to the city’s press freedom.
More importantly, it signifies the deplorable failure of the Chinese Communist Party in honouring its promises to Hong Kong people and the world under the “one country, two systems” policy.
The troubled daily plunged into a deeper crisis after the Government launched the second, now fatal, strike on Thursday. Five top executives and editors were arrested. They were alleged of colluding with foreign forces by the publication of dozens of articles on their newspaper and online platform. Details of the articles have not been revealed.
On the same day, the Police’s national security department sent more than 500 officers to raid the newspaper’s headquarters. They took away more than 40 computers from the local news section.Security minister John Lee warned citizens and staff to “cut ties with these criminals,” referring to the newspaper.
The newspaper’s publisher, Cheung Kim-hung, and chief editor Ryan Law, were formally charged on Saturday. Their bail request was denied.
The other three executives were released on bail late Friday. Deputy publisher Chan Pui-man, who is one of them, has vowed to keep publishing.
Beginning in the early hours of Friday, readers snapped up copies of the newspaper to lend their support – and to say no to the authoritarian rule of the Government.
Half a million copies were sold like hot cakes. It was a scene reminiscent of the mass-buying in August following the arrest of Lai and the raid.
This “people power” will not be able to rescue the newspaper against the enormous power given to the national security organ under a law with almost zero checks and balances – even by the judiciary.
Invoking the NSL to take journalists to court for the first time, the case stoked fear of penalising journalists for “speech crime”, which is not uncommon in Communist-ruled China, but is rare in Hong Kong.
The confiscation of journalistic materials during the latest raid also set a damaging precedent. It will seriously shake public confidence in the protection of sources of information by reporters. Citizens will become more reluctant in talking to journalists, not to mention revealing sensitive information.
When the provisions of the NSL were announced about one year ago, journalists voiced their concerns about the profound ramifications on press freedom. That Lai and the Apple Daily have long been seen as a hostile force by the Government and Beijing is an open secret.
Ignited by an extradition bill in 2019, the prolonged months-long protest that was followed by foreign sanctions against top officials in the two governments has prompted the party leadership under Xi Jinping to harden their strategy towards dissenting voices in Hong Kong.
First came the NSL. Then a revamp of the election system. Democrats were arrested and prosecuted en masse. Dozens of them are either in jail after being convicted of other charges or are being held in custody.
On the media front, it is hardly surprising the government-run Radio Television Hong Kong and the Apple Daily have emerged as the immediate targets of a clampdown on press freedom.
The swiftness and ruthlessness of the use of harsh laws and powers have caught many by surprise.
Government officials have sought to allay fears among journalists by saying those who are engaged in “normal journalist work” have nothing to fear.
Speaking at a weekly press briefing on Tuesday, chief executive Carrie Lam rejected criticism that the move was a suppression of press freedom, but ducked the question “what is normal journalist work?”
“I think you are in a better position to answer that question,” she told reporters.
With the NSL taking effect nearly one year ago on 30 June 2020, Lam gave a clear message that they will not soften their approach in upholding national security, at least in the foreseeable future. “We won’t let this law be treated as if it doesn’t exist.”
With Apple Daily closing down, journalists have begun to ask “who’s next?”[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]
24 May 2021 | Belarus, Media Freedom, News
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There has rightly been international condemnation of the arrest of Roman Protasevich after his Ryanair flight from Greece to Lithuania was diverted to Belarusian capital Minsk. It is of particular concern that the state hijacking of Flight FR4978 was carried out on the personal orders of President Alexander Lukashenko. His disgraceful “confession” on state TV comes straight from the authoritarian playbook.
The 26-year-old has been described in a single report on the BBC as a “Belarusian opposition journalist”, a “dissident” and an “activist”. This extraordinary young man is all these things and more. But it is important that the western media does not let the Belarus regime define the narrative.
Protasevich is an independent journalist, but to be so in Belarus is to immediately become an activist. And, meanwhile, the regime is in the process of defining all activists as terrorists. Index has been reporting for months on the systematic crackdown on independent journalism by the Lukashenko regime. Hijacking is just the latest method to control free expression in Belarus.
British MP Tom Tugendhat (chair of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee) has described the arrest as a “warlike act”, and this is no understatement. He has emphasised that a hijacking is an escalation of the situation. But we should not lose sight of why Protasevich represented such a threat. It is because he was a journalist the regime has not been able to control since he fled the country for Poland in 2019.
Protasevich is the former editor of Nexta, a media organisation that works via the social media platfrom Telegram, which circumvents censorship in Belarus. Nexta was instrumental in reporting on the opposition to Lukashenko during the elections of 2020. Until this week Protasevich had been working for another Telegram channel Belamova. Like the underground “samizdat” publications of the Soviet era, these Telegram channels provided much-needed hope to civil society in Belarus.
Parallels have been drawn between Russian dissident Alexei Navalny and Roman Protasevich and it is true that he provides a similar focus for the Belarusian opposition. However, he has been targeted not as a political leader, but as a journalist. It is as a journalist that we should defend him.
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27 Apr 2021 | News, Northern Ireland, Slapps, Statements, United Kingdom
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”116630″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes”][vc_column_text]“We call on governments to translate their public commitments on the protection of journalism and safety of journalists into working realities backed up by effective safeguards,” Index on Censorship and thirteen other organisations say in the newly launched Annual Report of the Council of Europe Platform.
According to the report, a total of 201 media freedom alerts were published on the Platform in 2020, the highest annual total recorded in any year since the platform was launched in 2015. Online harassment, physical attacks, surveillance, and strategic lawsuits against public participation (SLAPPs) are among the themes covered in the report, which draws on the media freedom alerts that were submitted to the platform over the course of 2020.
Although the United Kingdom’s National Action Plan is cited as an example of good practice, the UK is primarily mentioned in less favourable contexts in the report. The UK is mentioned, alongside Russia and Italy, as having one of the highest numbers of reported attacks on the physical integrity of journalists. Northern Ireland is mentioned as a particular area of concern, as journalists continue to face violent threats there on a recurring basis.
The UK was also mentioned in the context of SLAPPs. In May and June 2020, five Maltese media outlets received letters from a UK-based law firm demanding the removal of articles under threat of legal action, and in November 2020 legal action was filed in London against Swedish outlet Realtid as a result of their investigative work. “The UK has been identified as the foremost country of origin of such vexatious actions, and this practice threatens to bring the UK and its legal profession into disrepute in the eyes of the world,” the report says.
“SLAPPs are just one of the issues that demand immediate attention from the UK and other Council of Europe member states, from the Council of Europe itself, and from the European Union,” said Jessica Ní Mhainín, Index’s Policy and Campaigns Manager, who was involved in the creation of the report. “We need to stand behind our independent journalists and to ensure that they can carry out their work without interference. We will not be able to protect our democracies, our rule of law, and our human rights if we cannot protect our free press.”[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]
