4 Jan 2013 | Middle East and North Africa, Tunisia
Free speech in Tunisia will continue to remain in jeopardy as a new year kicks off.
During the next few months, the National Constituent Assembly (NCA) is scheduled to adopt Tunisia’s new constitution. Last December, the NCA published a second draft constitution which guarantees the right to free speech and prohibits prior censorship. Yet a vague and repressive legal framework created by former President Zeine el-Abidin Ben Ali to silence dissident voices is still in place, and free speech advocates remain concerned over Islamist vows to criminalise blasphemy.
A woman protests against censorship, Tunis, October 2011. Wahida Sannene | Demotix
Although Ben Ali’s autocratic rule ended almost two years ago, his legacy remains on the books. Ben Ali-era laws represent a serious threat to free speech. Last year, the public prosecutor’s office used Article 121 (3) of the Tunisian Penal Code to take legal actions against Nessma TV boss Nabil Karoui over the broadcast of the animated film Persepolis and a newspaper director for publishing a nude photo. The article prohibits the distribution of publications “liable to cause harm to the public order or public morals”. As 2012 ended without any serious political will to amend or abolish this article and other anti-free speech laws, journalists, bloggers and artists risk facing more “public disorder” and “morality” charges.
Media executives and journalists’ unions expect that 2013 will bring an end to the legal void that characterises the audio-visual media landscape through the putting into effect decree-law 116, dated 2 November 2011. Implementing this decree would establish an independent body tasked with organising the audio-visual media landscape in a “pluralistic, democratic and transparent manner”.
Over the last year, street attacks on free speech in the name of religion increased dramatically. This trend is expected to continue in 2013, given a staggering level of impunity. Tunisia’s current government has always expressed its condemnation of violence and its commitment to guaranteeing free speech. Yet, every time free expression comes under attack, officials turn a blind eye to the perpetrators and blame the victims. When ultraconservative protesters attacked the Spring of Arts fair last June, the Minister of Culture rushed to blame the artists for attacking Tunisians’ sacred religious symbols and vowed to take legal action against the fair’s organisers.
Last August, the ruling Islamist Ennahdha Movement, which controls 40 per cent of parliamentary seats, vowed to “legally protect the sacred” and filed a blasphemy bill. The party has already agreed to drop an anti-blasphemy clause from the new constitution after negotiations with the other two parties in the ruling coalition, the Congress for the Republic and the Democratic Forum for Work and Liberties. Will the Islamists also abandon their plans to criminalise blasphemy?
2 Oct 2012 | Index Index, Middle East and North Africa, minipost
An Iranian court on Sunday convicted the Tehran bureau chief of the Thomson Reuters news agency of “propaganda-related offences” for a video that briefly described a group of women involved in martial arts training as killers. Parisa Hafezi was found guilty of “spreading lies” against the Islamic system for the February video, which initially carried a headline saying that the women were training as ninja “assassins.” A sentence by the court is expected within a week.
28 Sep 2012 | Russia
Last week was a painful one for free speech in Russia.
Tens of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Moscow bureau journalists were fired within two days. First an entire internet department, then radio hosts, reporters and producers — around 90 per cent of RFE/RL’s Moscow staff became jobless.
A further 5 per cent quit in protest, including me.
RFE/RL broadcasts on medium waves will end on 10 November due to amendments to the law on mass media which state a radio cannot broadcast in a primary service area if more than 5 per cent of it is owned by foreign individual or legal entity. RFE/RL’s broadcasts in Russia will only be available online through its website.
In a in a statement released on 24 September, the service’s American manager Steve Korn stressed changes were made to improve RFE/RL’s Russian service. Yet in a letter to the US Congress Committee on Foreign Relations, notable Russian human rights activists wrote: “The KGB couldn’t have done worse for Radio Liberty’s image, as well as the image of USA in Russia, than American managers Julia Ragona and Steve Korn have done”. In a letter, the activists added:
Professionals with irreproachable reputation were fired; while a newly appointed RFE/RL’s Russian Service director [Masha Gessen] is a person whose managing skills were receiving negative assessments on her previous positions.
They asked the Congress to create a commission for a thorough investigation into Radio Liberty’s managers’ activities, which they said “harmed the USA’s public image in Russia”, and requested they “revise the decisions”.
Gessen, who will oficially take her post of RFE/RL Russian Service director on 1 October, denies allegations of “cleaning up the media for her new team”.
Korn and Ragona have not commented on the issue.
The switch to online and departure from medium waves will occur without the people who, over past few years, made Radio Svoboda (as it is known in Russian) the second most quoted radio station after Echo Moscow (which has an FM frequency), according to data from monitoring service Medialogia. Radio Liberty’s website was very much original. Decoded programmes’ texts formed just a small part of website content. It consisted mainly of informative pieces, blogs and a large multimedia section with video reports, documentaries and live video broadcasts.
The internet team, which I had the honour to be a part of, increased the number of visitors and the core audience tenfold. Radio Svoboda achievements were hailed by Broadcasting Board of Governors.
However, the mass dismissals were made.
RFE/RL was established in the 1950s in the United States as a private non-profit mass media organisation funded by the American Congress through the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG). RFE/RL broadcasts in 21 countries and 28 languages. Russian service history began soon after Stalin died in March 1953, but until 1988 its broadcasts were jammed as “anti-Soviet”. It was the “enemy’s voice” during the Cold War.
In August 1991, after RFE/RL’s full coverage of the August Coup, president Boris Yeltsin issued a decree allowing Radio Liberty to broadcast in Russia. The document was given personally to former RFE/EL journalist Mikhail Sokolov, who was fired last week together with the overwhelming majority of his colleagues.
Since Yeltsin’s decree Radio Svoboda was retransmitted by Russian FM stations. This ended soon after Putin’s second presidential term began in 2006. The official reason concerned incorrect registration documents. However, most Radio Svoboda staff believed this was a form of censorship. The radio was forced to broadcast across short and medium waves, AM frequencies and online.
No law was violated in last week’s events, Radio Svoboda former staff say, but moral and ethical values were.
The amendments to the mass media law are not the only means of targeting groups that receive overseas funding. Since Vladimir Putin’s return to the presidency in May this year, a law has been passed which forces foreign-funded NGOs involved in political activity to register as “foreign agents” in Russia.
The tragicomic element is that the editorial office, which consisted of people fighting against censorship and advocating for freedom of expression, was destroyed not by its antagonists, but by its own chiefs at the expense of American taxpayers, whose money was used in the name of promoting democracy.
24 Jul 2012 | Middle East and North Africa, Tunisia
In an unexpected move on 4 July, the National Authority for Information and Communication Reform (INRIC) put an end to its activities. INRIC was created after the fall of the 23-year rule of Zeine el-Abidin Ben Ali last year to help reform the Tunisian media landscape by proposing a set of recommendations and legislation which would guarantee the Tunisian citizen’s right to a “free, pluralistic, and fair media”.
In a communiqué, INRIC said:
In the absence of practical steps reflecting a real political will which would build a free and independent media committed to international standards, the authority announces its rejection to continue serving as décor at a time when the media sector keeps moving backwards. Thus it [the authority] does not see the point of carrying on its missions.
The media freedom body has had some sharp disagreements with PM Hamdai Jebali’s interim government. On 2 November 2011 the former interim government of PM Beji Caid el Sebsi approved decree-laws drafted by INRIC which guarantee press, print and publishing freedom and the creation of an independent authority for audio-visual communications. These two laws have not yet been implemented.
On two occasions, the current government appointed heads of public media institutions without consulting any media bodies or syndicates. For INRIC, this was a blow to public media independence.
Index on Censorship spoke to Hichem Snoussi, a member of the dissolved INRIC, and representative of the freedom of expression organisation Article 19.
Index: Can you briefly summarise the most significant work results of INRIC?
Hichem Snoussi: Decree-law 41 on the right to access administrative documents, decree law 115 on press, printing and publishing freedoms, and decree-law 116 which stipulates that an independent authority for audio –visual broadcasting needs to be created, are among our major work results [unlike decree-laws 115 and 116, law 41 was implemented]. We also granted broadcasting licenses to 12 private radios and five private TV stations. In April, INRIC submitted a general report on the reality of the media landscape in Tunisia, and the need for keeping the reform process going.
INRIC does not want the executive branch to interfere with the media sector in general, and public media in particular, since the latter’s new mission should be scrutinising and questioning the government’s performance. This was a key point of disagreement between the government and INRIC.
Index: Last April, Rached Ghannouchi, leader of Ennahdha Movement, which heads the three-party coalition government, suggested the privatisation of public media institutions. There are those who have speculated that by privatising the public media sector, Ennahdha would seek to impose a certain editorial line which would serve its political interests. What was INRIC’s reaction to such a suggestion?
HS: We rejected the suggestion, because such proposal would only seek to put pressure on public TV journalists, and push them back to square one, the square of propaganda, and marketing for a certain point of view. When it was made clear that this silly proposal is not open to discussion, the government resorted to the appointment method. The government has succeeded in appointing heads of all public media institutions, in light of the non-implementation of the decree-law 116 stipulating that the appointment process is participatory and takes place according to measures set by skilled and competent figures [from the media sector].
Index: What role for the current government in the non-implementation of decree-laws 115 and 116?
The government abused its powers, and broke the law in an authoritarian manner by not implementing these decree-laws which gained the satisfaction of different international freedom of expression organisations like Article 19, the BBC and the Open Society. The government did not only stand in the way of implementing these decree-laws, but it went further by breaking law 115 by creating a committee for granting professional press cards. This committee is illegal because the government appointed Mr. Kazdaghli, who is in charge of media in the Prime Ministry’s office, as its president instead of a judge. [Chapter 8 of law 115 stipulates that an independent committee presided by a judge from the administrative court should take in charge granting journalists professional press cards.]
Index: During a press conference [on 6 July] Lotfi Zitoun, an advisor to the PM, said that the decision on whether or not to implement decree laws 115 and 116 lies in the hands of the National Constituent Assembly (NCA) [elected on 23 October 2011]. Is this a legitimate reason for not implementing the two laws?
HS: There is no doubt that the NCA as an elected institution reflecting the people’s democratic will has the right to examine decrees and valid laws. However, the NCA is supposed to amend and support democratic processes, within the framework of these legal texts. Deploying the majority pretext by the NCA as a way to thwart the establishment of a democratic path is a betrayal to the people’s will and the martyrs’ blood.
Index: The Islamist party Ennahdha (which controls more than 40 per cent of the parliamentary seats) has, in several occasions, called for the draft of a constitutional clause which would outlaw assaults on “the sacred”. In case the NCA passes such clause, to what extent would freedom of expression be threatened in Tunisia?
HS: In France, and Germany there is the Holocaust law which prohibits the denial of the Holocaust. If we are going to pass a law that condemns assaulting the “sacred”, we also need a law that criminalizes atheism accusations too. The “sacred” has to be defined in a very specific and detailed way. This definition cannot be expanded, so that it would not stand in the way of art and creativity. Today the debate on the “sacred” comes within an electoral propaganda, and aims at diverting the public debate from its direction. We do not need chains. We need freedom to face past wounds.
