26 Jun 2012 | Americas, Mexico
As Mexican voters get ready to eelect their next president1 July , all four candidates have made statements in support of free expression and the protection of journalists. In the last five years, 44 Mexican journalists have been killed, most of them in the provinces.
During a June meeting with farming groups in the state of Veracruz, one of the most deadly provincial areas for journalists, Enrique Peña Nieto, the frontrunner candidate for the former ruling party Partido Revolucionario Institucional, (PRI) offered a one minute silence in memory of the nine journalists killed in that state in the last few months. Organised crime would not “force Mexicans to stop expressing their freedom of expression in terms of ideas; this is the pillar and strenght of our democracy,” said Peña Nieto.
Manuel Lopez Obrador, candidate for the leftist Partido de Revolucion Democratica (PRD), has also said that individual, religious, political freedoms and freedom of expression would be the most important rights his government would respect if he won the elections. And Josefina Vasquez Mota, the candidate for the ruling Partido Accion Nacional also hitched her wagon on freedom of expression. “When the right to freedom of expression is gone, we lose all our other freedoms,” during International Day for Freedom of Expression. Gabriel Quadri of the smaller Nueva Alianza party also endorsed better security for journalists.
This is good news. It took several years to reform the legal infrastructure to prosecute crimes against journalists. A new law that makes the murder of a newsperson a federal crime was recently approved, but many problems remain to make it work, including establishing a new legal infrastructure and incorporating new language in the penal code.
However, for the last few months of the campaign, the elephant in the room has been the mistrust that exists among sectors of the population which feel the media manipulates the information they get, especially at election time — a mistrust that goes back to the 70 years the PRI was in power, and was believed to have fixed elections with the help of the news media. The YoSoy132 university student movement, which was launchedin May, struck a chord when it protested against television monopolies. While cable television offers a variety of options, non cable subscribers can only see two companies, Televisa and Television Azteca. This is difficult in a country where 80 percent get their news from television.
The Guardian also drove the point home, when it published a story based on leaked documents that sought to prove that Televisa had received multi-million dollar payments to promote the image of the PRI´s candidate Peña Nieto. The documents had been first mentioned in an earlier story in 2006, and their veracity was downplayed by some media in Mexico.
Amedi, civil society organization that promotes media plurality, suggests that whoever wins the 1 July presidential election should push for two more national open channels at least, and better policies to promote digital television.
17 Feb 2012 | Sub-Saharan Africa
In places like Zimbabwe the need for “outsider” critique is essential: solipsistic regimes create complex narratives about betrayal and patriotism; no more so than in Zimbabwe. Whether material originates from “inside” or “outside” the regime can be important in establishing its veracity.
A very small minority of Zimbabweans (about 3 per cent) live in isolated elite comfort, with their cable televisions buffering the reality of Zimbabwe’s weak local media situation, watching whatever they feel like, from Hollywood films to BBC to Al Jazeera and DSTV, whilst the rest of the citizens either see it with their own eyes, or rely on the local media.
And herein lies the problem: no critical, debating, investigative or contextual news gets reported.
The recent news that the government plans to invoke a peculiar mangle of laws to prevent “foreign” papers (including the Sunday Times and various South African papers) distributing unless they have local offices, means that Zimbabweans access to information is even more limited than it was previously.
For some wealthier Zimbabweans, this move is not necessarily being greeted with alarm. Linda, a Zimbabwean journalist in who works across the region, says “Yes, I get foreign media, I like it. But it’s a pose, getting your information from abroad. Local media is fine. We get constant Russian television, that’s sufficient.” Others, however are astonished, and see this bill as an extension of the theme that Zimbabwe’s media really only exists to bolster and defend the ailing, and increasingly vulnerable president Mugabe.
Zimbabwe is a peculiar beast: at one level it is now several steps away from the hyper-inflation days of 2008. But, it is still floundering in economic and social chaos. Since the introduction of the Botswana pula, the South African rand and the US dollar, trade is improving, but this is not reflected in the health of the country’s media.
In the absence of spare cash to buy papers, the shoddy state of local newspapers, and the restrictions imposed on media operations, people get inventive. Kubutana stays afloat using a variety of techniques which employ both technology and people’s ability to talk to each other face to face. They’ve changed the way milions of people vote in Zimbabwe. They provide a symbolic and actual hub for information. Still it’s the life on the street that is important, the constant mingling, chatting and gossiping that keeps the public sphere alive, with a few exceptions.
In this context, the Zimbabwean market traders and street vendors are essential. They know stuff. They see it with their own eyes and they constantly have a stream of people to interact with: at a micro level they are intellectual hubs. When the licencing system of street fruit vendors forced Tunisian Mohammed Bouazizi to burn himself to death, Zimbabwe’s street traders clocked it.
In January 2012 in Harare, several police officers were left injured during clashes involving removing street vendors from central areas. The Zimbabwean reported that two vendors had to be hospitalised after being tortured by police, and two reporters from the local newspaper the Daily News were detained by police. But they didn’t give reasons, context or views of those involved. Although the protests are a long way from sparking a revolution in Zimbabwe, the determination of vendors to fight for their livelihoods is a sign that people will speak out.
Street vendors, like many in Africa, are living a hand to mouth existence, often moonlighting several jobs, and the licencing system is a well-known ploy of governments here in the region to “clean up” their unsightly presence- particularly when there’s foreign dignitaries visiting, or an African Union delegation. Even streets get renamed. It’s all about looking good, yet paradoxically street vendors are essential for the large majority’s needs. They only exist because of the numerous trade agreements the Zimbabwean government has signed with the Chinese to ensure there’s a steady flow of buckets, washing up bowls, plates and radios, which of course local people need, want, and it’s all they can afford. But still Zimbabweans are ambivalent and disparaging “We want real money, not zhing-zhong,” taxi driver Jourbet Buthelezi, referring to the pejorative term Zimbabweans use for sub-standard Chinese goods.
2 Nov 2011 | Egypt, Middle East and North Africa
Prolific Egyptian blogger Alaa Abdel Fattah was detained on Sunday after refusing to be interrogated by a military investigator, insisting on his right to be tried before a civil court. Rasha Abdulla reports
Egyptian blogger Alaa Abdel Fattah (@alaa) was jailed on 30 October for 15 days pending investigation after refusing to be interrogated by a military investigator on charges related to the now infamous Maspiro events, in which over 20 people died and many more were injured after a brutal crackdown on a Christian-majority demonstration.
Alaa was called in for investigation last week. He was active in the aftermath of the event, having spent two days at the morgue alongside other activists in solidarity with victims’ families, while trying to convince them to agree to autopsies and ensure the reports of said autopsies were correctly documented. He detailed the experience in a piece for Al Shorouk newspaper (a translation of which can be found here), in which he reminded everyone that solidarity is the solution to Egypt’s problems. Alaa has been detained before, in 2006 he spent 45 days in jail, a piece he wrote from behind bars was published today entitled “A Return to Mubarak’s Jails.”
Alaa was in San Francisco when he was asked to report last week. His father, veteran human rights lawyer Ahmed Seif El Islam Abdel Fattah, appeared in court and asked for the case to be postponed. Alaa returned to Cairo on Saturday afternoon and appeared in court on Sunday morning. The military prosecutor filed five charges against him including demonstrating, inciting to demonstrate, assaulting military personnel, destroying public property, and stealing military weapons. Alaa, whose sister Mona Seif (@monasosh) is one of the founders of the No to Military Trials for Civilians campaign refused to recognise the authority of an civic judge. He pointed out that the army is facing law suits accusing it as a defendant in the same case, which constitutes a clear conflict of interest. As a result he was detained, pending further military investigation.
Alaa has been active on the blogging scene in Egypt since 2004, when he and his wife Manal Hassan (@manal) started the award-winner blog and aggregator Manal and Alaa’s Bit Bucket. Both bloggers fought the Mubarak regime online and offline, breaking cases of corruption and police brutality that were later picked up by the traditional media.
Many believe Alaa’s detention is a warning to other bloggers and political activists, a ratcheting up of the series of violations against free expression committed by Egypt’s ruling Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF). The violations include summons sent to journalists Rasha Azab (@rashapress) and her editor, Adel Hammouda, over Azab’s coverage of a meeting between the No to Military Trials group and SCAF in which allegations that SCAF subjected female demonstrators to virginity tests were discussed. Later, when journalist and blogger Hossam El Hamalawy discussed SCAF on a popular Egyptian talk show, he and his show host, Reem Magued, were both called in before the military prosecutor. That visit was later described by the prosecutor as “a chat.” Other bloggers that have been interrogated and/or detained including Asmaa Mahfouz, Loai Nagati, and Maikel Nabil, who has been on a hunger strike since 22 August.
A military court sentenced Maikel Nabil to three years for “insulting the military & spreading false reports aiming to disturb public security.” The charges relate to a May blog entitled “The army and the people are not one hand,” in which he listed the army’s alleged wrongdoings, including the virginity tests claim. Maikel, who has a heart condition, was tried 12 days after being arrested on 28 March.
Other free expression violations have been committed on the satellite television front. In recent months, army police forces have raided the offices of Al Jazeera Mubasher Misr several times, as well as 25TV channel. Al Jazeera Mubasher has since been banned from broadcasting from Egypt, accused of incomplete licensing procedures. Most recently, popular television host Yosri Fouda chose to indefinitely suspend his highly-viewed political talk show because he felt he was under pressure to not report things as he sees them and did not want to force himself through “self-censorship.” He told the BBC that he did not want to “take the narrative of the army” and would rather step back in protest of the military rulers’ attempts to “stifle free expression.”
The No to Military Trials campaign, which has been actively lobbying on behalf of all military detainees, has published a press release condemning Alaa’s arrest in the strongest possible words, and asking for his immediate release, together with the other 12,000 victims of military trials in Egypt, who should at least be retried before a civil court. The group called upon Egyptians to refuse to cooperate with military interrogation and to support the cause of No to Military Trials for Civilians. You can read the press release in its entirety here. A press conference by the group is scheduled for tomorrow, 3 November, at 2pm Cairo time.
Rasha Abdulla is an associate professor at the Journalism and Mass Communication Department of the American University in Cairo. An advocate for freedom of expression, Abdulla has published several books and writings on Internet use and digital activism in Egypt and throughout the Arab World. You can follow her on Twitter:@RashaAbdulla
1 Nov 2011 | Europe and Central Asia, News and features
Elena Vlasenko reports on Russian state-owned television channel NTV’s move to censor a broadcast detailing a campaign for a fair investigation into the kidnapping and alleged torture of Chechen man Islam Umarpashaev
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