The Inter-American human rights system under threat

The Inter-American Commission on human rights is a key human rights institution that is seen as an inspiration on other continents. It is particularly important for journalists and press freedom advocates thanks to its Office of the Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression.
In the 70s and 80s it was a reference and a recourse for victims of right-wing dictatorships in Chile or Argentina. Now however it is threatened by a coalition of "nationalist-leftist" governments that reject its scrutiny and summarily describe it as a tool of U.S. or conservative interference.
"At the head of the pack", writes Jackson Diehl in the Washington Post, "is Rafael Correa, the 49 year-old president of Ecuador", followed by other Latin American "Bolivarian States", like Nicaragua, Venezuela, or Bolivia.
The issue is being currently discussed at a meeting of the Organization of American States (OAS) in Washington.

An attack against a key watchdog
Press freedom groups have been mobilizing and pointing at the risks of a serious blow to freedom in the Americas. In an open letter Joel Simon, executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, asked OAS member states to reject the proposal: "Approval of these proposals by the OAS assembly would seriously damage the independence of the commission, neutralize the work of a leader in the promotion of fundamental human rights, and strip a vital layer of protection for citizens throughout the region" he wrote. 
Today the United Nations High Commissionner for Human Rights Navi Pillay joined her voice to the criticism of these attempts at limiting the prerogatives of the Inter-American Commission. She urged  all members of the OAS to ensure that reform of the Inter American system for the protection of human rights does not affect its independence and capacity to defend victims and persons at risk of human rights violations".
"Governments that vote with Mr. Correa will essentially be sanctioning the suppression of independent media across the region; those that are democracies must stand up for free speech, stated the editorial board of the Washington Post.

A global challenge
This challenge does not only concern Latin America. In our globalized world this form of attack against press freedom is an attack against everyone everywhere. The European Union and the European Court of Human Rights, which have often praised the Inter-American human rights system, should take that issue "personnally" and advocate, like Ms. Pillay, for the protection of the independence of the Commission and of its Office for freedom of expression.
 
More on the issue: an thorough essay by Carlos Lauria, CPJ coordinator for the Americas, in the 2013 report "Attacks on the Press".  http://cpj.org/2013/02/attacks-on-the-press-how-the-americas-failed-press.php

 

Index on Censorship awards its 2013 freedom of expression Prizes

A great selection for 2013's Index on Censorship Freedom of Expression Awards. The four laureates, the Pakistani girls' rights advocate Malala Yousafzai, the Greek investigative journalist Kostas Vaxevanis, the Syrian blogger Bassel Khartabil and the South African photographer and LGBT activist Zanele Muholi, epitomize various facets of freedom of expression. But all of them offer examples of great courage in the defense of a cause that is under growing threat everywhere due to the rise of religious intolerance, economic chaos and civil wars.

Narco Estado by Teun Voeten: so close to us

« Nothing compares to the recent drug violence in Mexico, the sheer brutality and cruelty that I was able to photograph ». Dutch photojournalist and anthropologist Teun Voeten has covered the worst of the worst barbarities. He was in Sarajevo and in Kigali in the genocidal nineties. He was recently in Libya and, to paraphrase Robert Capa, his photographs were “good enough” because “he was close enough”.

In the last six years more than 60.000 people have been killed in the Mexican drug wars, as many as in the Syrian civil war. They have died in crossfires, in retaliatory actions, in targeted executions, in a senseless mayhem that has crossed all the red lines of inhumanity. 

People have been tortured, beheaded, dissolved in acid tanks. Journalists have been strangled, newspaper offices have been machine-gunned and fire-bombed. Thousands of Mexican troops have been sent to the cities on the border with the United States. In vain. The drug cartels have expanded and have even further infiltrated key institutions of the Mexican state. 

A fate of death

In Narco Estado, Teun Voeten depicts “the erosion of civil society and its gradual takeover by organized crime, the nascency of a new class of excluded and disposable people that choose a criminal career that ends in certain death, the devaluation of human life. All these elements present a nightmarish scenario of how our future could look like. The worst we can do is to close our eyes and ignore these developments”.

In fact once you have opened the book you cannot close it. You cannot escape the atmosphere of fear that exudes from these pictures of cities (Culiacan, Ciudad Juarez) overwhelmed by the drug barons and their serfs and criss crossed by tough-looking military in full war gear. You cannot turn your eyes away from the victims gunned down in their cars or lying on the sidewalks. You cannot abandon the grieving parents with their scared and tearful looks.

Our future?

Are these narco-cities the exception, are they islands of cruelty in an ocean of decency, death lands on the margins of a more peaceful reality? Teun Voeten’s camera shows some citizens who stand up against the chaos and the brutality, a young girl walking tenderly with her father in a street, a smiling waitress in a Juarez downtown bar as if there remained some form of normality. 

The violence however is everywhere: in the crosses that commemorate the killings and disappearances of hundreds of women, in the pictures of prostitutes that serve the sex economy, in the graffitis on the prison walls and destroyed bars. "The violence is no longer a police matter", writes Mexican journalist Javier Valdez Cardenas, of the crusading weekly Riodioce? "It's a way of life: fear, terror, is the first and sometimes the only feeling there is. Children are becoming so used to violent deaths, some even being taken by their parents to visit crime scenes, that they take murders to be natural deaths".  

It is impossible to throw away the somber feeling that these “new wars” could be the beginning of an inexorable plunge into generalized barbarism. 

It is impossible to deny that “if we close our eyes and ignore these developments” this world of No Future, of dimly lit streets, pock-faced walls and dumped corpses might indeed become a part of our future. 

Because if we do not care we ourselves will be losing part of ou humanity.

Narco Estado. Drug Violence in Mexico. Photographs by Teun Voeten. Introduction by Howard Campbell and Javier Valdez Cardenas. Lannoo Publishers, 2012, Tielt, Belgium. 

A Day Without News?

On the first anniversary of Marie Colvin and Remi Ochlik's death in Homs a new campaign A Day Without News? has been launched "to draw sharper attention to the growing numbers of journalists who have been killed and injured in armed conflict, in some cases as a result of direct targeting by the belligerents; to develop a public diplomacy, institutional and legal agenda to combat this more effectively; and to investigate and collect evidence in support of prosecutable cases in this area".
Supported by leading press freedom advocates and international journalists it will strive to further the work of associations like CPJ or Reporters Without Borders by raising awareness within the media community, by developing grassroots support and beefing up advocacy efforts. 
By asking citizens to wonder about "a day without news" the campaign wants to highlight the fundamental role played by the press in providing news in the public interest far from the perception sometimes that journalists put themselves in harm's way for money or glory.

Images of combat in Gao (Mali): the news black-out has been broken

As the war comes into the cities that had been reconquered by French and Malian forces the news blackout is becoming untenable. Yesterday French television showed images of armed clashes in the city of Gao. As France 2 special envoy Loic de la Mornais commented, "liberated cities are only islets of relative security in a desert of insecurity". Until the Malian forces can assume the defense of their own territory (a capacity that as the video shows they do not possess yet) the French army will have to hold the fort. And it will not be able to manage the news as efficiently as has been the case up to now.

One year ago in Homs

One year ago Sunday Times reporter Marie Colvin and French freelance photojournalist Rémi Ochlik were killed in Homs where they were covering the war from a rebels' makeshift "press center".
There are still doubts on who was responsible for the killing although Paul Conroy, who was with Marie and Rémi, points his finger at the government forces and a recent France 2 special investigation also leaned on the thesis of Bachar al-Assad forces' responsibility.
Today however is first and foremost a time for remembering two courageous journalists who refused to abandon to thugs the monopoly of informing on the civil war and doggedly tried to provide truthful information on the conflict and especially on the dramatic toll it is inflicting on the civilian population."It's a hard day for any of us who knew Marie or Remi", says Lindsey Hilsum, international editor of Channel Four News. "I guess the best we can do is look after each other and keep believing in what they believed in".

Tributes 
"It is the sad anniversary of the deaths of Marie Colvin and Remi Ochlik today", writes Peter Bouckaert, emergencies director at Human Rights Watch and the founder of the Vulture Club, a Facebook page aimed at better protecting journalists on dangerous assignments. "I can hardly believe it has been a year already, it feels like it happened just yesterday. It took a tremendous effort to get the wounded Paul Conroy and Edith Bouvier, and the trapped William Daniels and Javier Espinosa to safety, I am so glad they are still with us. Let's pay tribute to Marie and Remi by redoubling our collective efforts to stay safe out there. I so miss the incomparable Marie".
Paul Conroy has also written a moving piece remembering his dead companions and thanking all the people that came to their rescue. " I will just say a simple thank you from the bottom of my heart to everyone who carried me, treated me and showed the beautiful face of human compassion when I needed it most", he writes.
These two killings have had a chilling effect on the coverage of Syria. Although a few international reporters have dared to sneak into the country the flow of information is not at the level that one would expect for a such a brutal and politically decisive conflict.

Mali: the no-news-land

What's happening in Mali? Not much if we stick to the news circulated by the French army. The issue of censorship has not been aggressively pursued by the French media either. A few reporters have protested but the general line in Paris has been surprisingly soft on the French government and armed forces' news management.
To start a discussion on this subject of news coverage of the Malian war I (humbly) relay the articles that I published until now and that have triggered some attention at least in the Belgian media! I was interviewed, together with Olivier Basile, chief EU representative of RSF in Brussels, by the Belgian daily Le Soir, and I was a guest of the morning programme Connexions of the Belgian public radio La Première (RTBF).
The question of war reporting in situations like Mali however deserve much more attention from the media. As Walter Cronkite (the famous US CBS News anchor who as a war correspondent for UPI in the Second World War) famously said: "Correspondents should be with the troops, everywhere the troops are, in the air, on the ground, under the seas, wherever".
CPJ blogs on Mali
http://www.cpj.org/security/2013/01/in-mali-a-war-without-images-and-without-facts.php
http://www.cpj.org/security/2013/01/in-mali-a-war-without-images-and-without-facts.php
Le Soir
Mali, la presse en déroute
http://blog.lesoir.be/lalibertesinonrien/2013/02/08/mali-la-presse-en-deroute/