15 Jan 2021 | Belarus, News and features
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”116010″ img_size=”full”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Dedicated and principled. Brave and committed. Optimistic and humorous. A fan of Liverpool FC and of pubs.
This is Andrei Aliaksandrau, a journalist who has been detained this week in Belarus on charges of “organisation and preparation of actions that grossly violate public order, or active participation in them”. A video of him making a “confession” of paying the fines of those who have been protesting at the rigged re-election of President Alexander Lukashenko has been released by the authorities in Belarus.
His arrest and forced confession have hit home hard at Index on Censorship, where he was on the staff for a number of years, leading a project looking at freedom of the media across the Caucasus, and writing regularly about Belarus and Ukraine. After he returned to Belarus, he also continued working for Index as a freelance contributor from the region.
Former Index on Censorship editor-in-chief Rachael Jolley says he is the sort of person who puts his life and soul into the cause of making people realise what is going on in Belarus.
“He feels really strongly about media freedom and feels the world doesn’t pay enough attention to what is going on there,” she says.
“He worked so hard to bring stories out of Belarus when most journalists would be too worried to cover them. He keeps covering stories when others have given up.”
Natasha Schmidt, editor of IranWire and who worked at Index for 13 years, most recently as deputy editor, says, “He is such an amazing journalist and a great colleague.”
She says, “Andrei is so knowledgeable about Belarus and the wider region, including Ukraine from where he produced a lot of reports in recent years.”
That Aliaksandrau is in Belarus at this time of huge popular protest comes as no surprise.
Jolley added, “A lot of people have come onto the streets of Belarus feeling there was a moment of hope that there might be change. Andrei would have been on the front line of this.”
Schmidt says, “Given what has been going on in Belarus, he would have thought if he wasn’t already there then it was time for him to go back and join in this important movement.”
She adds, “Andrei is one of those people who is brave without trying to be. He is very committed to his work and freedom of expression in the region.”
Sean Gallagher, who also worked alongside Aliaksandrau at Index, says his arrest is of great concern but not entirely unexpected.
“I hate to be fatalistic but it was only a matter of time before he was detained, given the nature of the regime,” he says.
“I remember clearly talking to him about how we should communicate and whether he should continue to use Gmail or whether we should move to an encrypted platform. His response was ‘Gmail is fine because using encryption raises a flag’”.
“He was well aware he was being watched,” says Gallagher, “but knowing that he has been detained just for telling the truth, that pisses me off.”
Aliaksandrau is devoted to his work but he also has a life outside work. All of his former colleagues mention his love of British pubs. He was a regular at the Betsey Trotwood pub in Farringdon in London when Index was based at the Free Word Centre and has a particular passion for a good malt whisky, taking trips to various distilleries in Scotland during his time in the country.
They also reflected on his easy-going nature.
“As a colleague, he was very easy to spend time with and has a great sense of humour. He was a good person to have around, he was so relaxed and would have a laugh and ease any tension in office politics,” said Schmidt.
Andrei is also a keen supporter of Liverpool FC and has a love of nature.
Despite his detention and enforced confession, former editor Jolley says Aliaksandrau is an “optimist”.
“He always felt there would be change and would do everything he could to make it change. He strongly believes Belarus will one day have a free society,” says Jolley.
That time cannot come soon enough. Aliaksandrau – no Andrei – must be released.
Schmidt speaks for us all when she says: “We all hope we can see him soon and hear he is safe.”
Index has sent letters to the foreign secretary Dominic Raab and Belarussian ambassador to the UK Maxim Yermalovich calling for Andrei’s release.
Please sign this petition to call on the Belarusian authorities to release Andrei and his girlfriend Irina. [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][three_column_post title=”You may also want to read” category_id=”172″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
18 Dec 2020 | Iran, Media Freedom, Middle East and North Africa, Opinion, Ruth's blog
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”115908″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Yesterday, for the first time, the team at Index suspended its normal social media engagement. We stopped highlighting each attack on free speech around the world. We stopped giving comment on emerging events. Instead for 24 hours, we tweeted, on the hour, every hour, about one man – Ruhollah Zam.
We did this because Ruhollah’s story exemplifies why Index on Censorship exists. And because we are heartbroken at his death.
Ruhollah was executed by his government, the Islamic Republic of Iran.
His “crime” was to be journalist and a human rights activist – running an alternative news channel which criticised the Government. A brave and honourable endeavour.
Ruhollah’s “crime” was to exercise his rights as stated in Article 19 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights. For the record, Iran was an original signatory to the UN DHR. When they signed the declaration in 1948 they committed to a world where all of us have basic human rights. On Saturday, they ignored this commitment.
Ruhollah was killed by his government. He was hanged. He was silenced.
Please take a few minutes today to read about Ruhollah’s life – as with all of us he was more than his job title. He was a son, a husband and a father. His life touched literally hundreds of thousands of people because of his activism. His death must reach millions.
The Iranian execution of Ruhollah Zam is a stark reminder of why Index was launched nearly 50 years ago. We were established to shine a light on repressive regimes, to ensure that attacks on free expression were documented and to provide a home for the writings of dissidents when they couldn’t publish in the countries of their birth.
Ruhollah Zam embodied the fight for free expression and a free press. It’s now down to us to live up to his legacy and make sure that journalists, activists, artists, academics and writers know that they have a home and that someone is making sure that their voices are heard – even when they are incarcerated.
Ruhollah Zam, 27 July 1978 – 12 December 2020
May His Memory Be A Blessing
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16 Dec 2020 | Iran, Iraq, Media Freedom, Middle East and North Africa, News and features
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On Saturday 12 December, the founder of the Telegram news channel Amadnews, Ruhollah Zam, was hanged in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison.
Zam was born in Shahr-e-Rey, just outside Tehran, in 1978. He first came to prominence in 2009 after the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad when he was jailed for voicing his opposition.
In 2011, after his release from prison, Zam, together with his wife and young daughter Niaz fled the country and were granted asylum in France, living initially in Paris before moving to a small town near Toulouse after he received threats.
Two and a half years ago, Zam co-founded the Amadnews channel on Telegram, which is hugely popular in Iran – it has 50 million users there and was reported at one point to account for 60% of the country’s entire internet usage.
Amadnews became popular for its criticism of Iran’s leaders and informed descriptions on the 2017 protests, which started as a protest against the economic policies of the government before developing into wider protests against Iran’s leaders. Twenty-five people died during the nationwide protests.
The channel grew quickly to have a million subscribers but at the end of 2017 Telegram shut it down saying the channel had called for armed uprisings. The channel reappeared under a new same, Sedaiemardom (voice of the people), just a few months later.
The story of how he even came to be in Iran again is mysterious.
In 2019, it is believed that he was lured to Iraq from his exile in France to meet the grand Ayatollah Sistani, the spiritual leader of the Iraqi Shia Muslims. While there, he was captured by agents of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps which issued a statement saying he had been detained “in a complicated operation”.
The statement said: “Despite being under the guidance of the French intelligence service and the support of the US and Zionist intelligence services…, and being guarded round the clock by various means and covers, he fell into a trap laid by… the IRGC’s Intelligence Organization.”
He was thrown into Evin prison and tortured for months and forced to make televised confessions of his ‘crimes’.
In June this year, Zam was tried in front of the Islamic Revolutionary Court in Tehran, presided over by Judge Abolqasem Salav and convicted on 13 counts of “spreading corruption on earth”. He was sentenced to death.
Despite going to appeal, on 8 December, the supreme court announced it had upheld the death sentence.
Zam’s father, the moderate cleric Mohammad Ali Zam, has revealed on Instagram what happened after the sentence was confirmed.
Last Friday, he was telephoned by an Iranian intelligence agent who said he could come and visit his son in the notorious Evin prison but not to tell him that the sentence for execution had been confirmed. His father reports that during the visit the family started to cry and the agent was afraid that Ruhollah might find out why and told him.
“Don’t worry Ruhollah. These are happy tears from visiting you. Even if the execution is confirmed, the process would take a while to be carried out and we will inform you of the whole process.”
On Saturday 12 December at 8am French time, his eldest daughter Niaz received a WhatsApp call from a number she didn’t recognise. It was her father.
They talked about her studies and getting her diploma but after five minutes the call had to end and her father said goodbye. There was a finality in his tone and Niaz knew this would be the last time they would speak.
Just a few hours later, Zam was paraded in front of television cameras and hanged.
There has been widespread condemnation of his execution.
United States Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a statement, “The international community must continue to hold the regime accountable for its unconscionable actions…The Iranian people deserve a free and diverse media, not censorship, arrests, and the execution of journalists.”
The European Union said it “condemns this act in the strongest terms and recalls once again its irrevocable opposition to the use of capital punishment under any circumstances. It is also imperative for the Iranian authorities to uphold the due process rights of accused individuals and to cease the practice of using televised confessions to establish and promote their guilt.”
Masih Alinejad, author of The Wind in My Hair: My Fight for Freedom in Modern Iran and who had campaigned to prevent the execution of young Iranian wrestler Navid Afkari, told Index, “By killing Zam, the Islamic Republic has shown that it is not interested in diplomacy. It is ironic that Zam was named after Rohallah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic, an evil system that is not willing to tolerate dissent from journalists. Zam was a media pioneer who created the most influential news channel in recent memory.”
Javaid Rehman, UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran and Agnes Callamard, UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, said: “The conviction and execution of Mr Zam are unconscionable. The reports of his arrest, his treatment in detention, and the process of his trial, as well as the reasons for his targeting by the Iranian authorities, are a serious violation of Iran’s obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, including the right to freedom of opinion and expression and the right to life.
“It is clear that Ruhollah Zam was executed for expressing opinions and providing information on AmadNews that dissented from the official views of the Iranian Government.”
Index on Censorship’s CEO Ruth Smeeth has written a letter to the UN Secretary General condemning Zam’s murder.
She wrote: “Press freedom is a pillar of democracy. When journalists are targeted, all of society pays the price. Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights guarantees the right to freedom of opinion and expression to all…As a journalist, as a human rights activist, as a global citizen Ruhollah Zam should have been protected by the state of his birth, not murdered by them.”
Ruhollah Zam is survived by his wife Mahsa Razani and their two daughters.
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15 Dec 2020 | News and features
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Justice for Assange campaign protester outside a court hearing in 2010. Photograph: Nadia Cosentino
Assange’s partner, Stella Moris, is remaining resolute despite his extradition hearing decision being less than a month away and him being held in a prison that has recently had a Covid-19 outbreak.
Speaking over the phone to Index, Moris discusses the hearing’s details and what it could mean for the future of freedom of expression. And she talks about the deep implications it has had for her and her young family.
“Obviously it is very difficult. I speak to Julian on a daily basis unless there is a problem. [But] he is in prison. Soon to be for two years. He has been there for longer than many violent prisoners who are serving sentences. All in all, he has been deprived of his liberty for ten years now,” she told Index. She adds:
“The kids speak to their father every day; we try to normalise it as much as we can for them. But of course, this is not a normal situation and our lives are on hold. It is inhumane and shouldn’t be happening in the UK.”
The current hearing – which will decide whether there are grounds for Assange to stand trial in the USA – should reach a conclusion on 4 January. A trial in the USA (should the decision go against Assange) will have major ramifications for free speech and whistleblower journalism.
The WikiLeaks founder is charged with conspiring with US intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning and hackers from groups such as Anonymous and LulzSec to obtain and publish classified information. Each of the 18 charges laid by US authorities, if Assange is extradited and convicted, carry a maximum penalty of 10 years. The allegations brought forward under the 1917 Espionage Act, alongside one other under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, mean Assange could face up to 175 years in prison – effectively a life sentence. Manning was initially sentenced to 35 years, but under the Obama administration her sentence was commuted to less than seven years.
It is easy to get sidetracked about the current extradition hearing and get into arguments about whether Assange is a journalist, whether he is guilty of other crimes or whether the publication of the documents brought harm to anyone involved. Instead people’s attentions should focus on the precedent that will be set should the case go to trial in the USA.
As it stands the case is unprecedented. No publisher has ever been tried under the Espionage Act, which itself was essentially created for spies imparting official secrets either for profit or otherwise. This is perhaps a direct contradiction of rulings of the courts in the UK. In December 2017, the UK’s information tribunal recognised WikiLeaks as a media organisation, in direct contradiction to the view of the US State Department. Australia’s media union, the Media, Arts and Entertainment Alliance, also presented an honorary member card to Assange’s Melbourne-based lawyer.
Amidst the noise of the separate matters around the case, Moris insists people need to “forget what they think they know” and assess the issues involved.
“There are a lot of assumptions being made over what this case is really about. There are all these sideshows. It is not about people being harmed because the US has admitted it has no evidence to make this argument. It comes down to the fact that the material published was classified. People who care about free speech and press freedom need to forget what they think they know about this case and look at it afresh and understand Julian is in prison for publishing. This is not something that democracies do.”
“Are they saying what he published was not in the public interest? They say that is irrelevant. They can’t deny [what he published] wasn’t in the public interest because he was publishing information and evidence of state crimes, of state abuse, torture, of rendition, blacksites and of illegal killings. What they are arguing is that Julian published information that was secret and therefore he can be prosecuted over it.”
Journalists publishing secret information is not new (nor is pressure for them not to publish) and can often be key to upholding democracy and ensuring states act properly. The Watergate revelations relied heavily on news organisations pressing on with publication despite attempts by the USA to stop them, including the threat of jail time. It proved a significant victory for free speech.
If Assange is extradited and tried the case will impact journalists and the media “for years to come”, says Rebecca Vincent, director of international campaigns at Reporters Without Borders (RSF).
“It feels like many in the media do not see the implications of this case as something that will possibly affect them,” she told Index. “This case will have ramifications on the climates for journalism and press freedom internationally for years to come.”
“This is the first time we have seen the US government prosecute anybody for publishing leaked information. If they are successful, they will not stop with Assange and WikiLeaks. This could be applied, in theory, to any media outlet.”
It’s common for journalists and publishers to cite a public interest defence for disputed documents. It is a centrepiece of a defence case against libel, for instance.
“The information published was certainly in the public interest; it served to inform extensive public interest reporting that exposed war crimes and other illegal actions by states,” said Vincent.
“The Espionage Act lacks a public interest defence. He cannot use it if he is sent to the United States and tried.”
Essentially, what this means is that Assange is being treated as a spy not a publisher. If Assange is extradited and loses his case against the US government, any time classified information is published by a journalist there will be a precedent set that they can be charged and tried as a spy in the same way.
“These sorts of cases are really highlighting the need for more robust legislation that cannot be manipulated to be used against journalists, whistleblowers and other sources. Ultimately, it is the public’s right to access information that is being impacted,” Vincent added.
“You can see this for what it is; this very much feels like a political prosecution by states that are not meant to engage in this behaviour. The reason our states can get away with this is because of a lack of public pressure. A lack of public sympathy has resulted in a lack of widespread public pressure to hold our governments to account.”[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]
