The joint communiqué published by IFEX, the Toronto-based International Freedom of Expression Exchange, is exceptional. Not only because this "coordination of associations" does not release often joint statements but also because it shows that a significant number of Arab organizations are out there working for press freedom in their own country or region and join international groups to defend common values. Isn'it the best antidote to the clash of civilizations?
23 October 2009
Thirty-one IFEX members and 24 other organisations condemn harsh crackdown on press freedom
(ANHRI/IFEX) - 23 October 2009 - Calling on the Moroccan government to stop the current crackdown against press freedom, 31 IFEX members and others condemn the recent arrests and harassment of journalists and independent press:
We, the undersigned organisations defending freedom of expression, call on the Moroccan government to stop the current crackdown against press freedom, which has become the most serious since King Mohamed VI was crowned in 1999.
Repression of free expression rights has been escalating for the last three months. After publishing a survey about the King's rule, two magazines, "TelQuel" and "Nichane", were confiscated in early August 2009 because they had disrespected King Mohammed VI and "violated public morality."
On 28 September, the Ministry of the Interior closed down "Akhbar al-Youm" without a court order and the newspaper's editor, Taoufik Bouachrine, and cartoonist Kalid Kadar were brought to court on charges for printing a cartoon that was considered "disrespectful of a member of the royal family."
Despite procedural violations, on 15 October 2009, a Rabat misdemeanor court sentenced Driss Chahtan, editor of "Al-Michaal" newspaper, to one year in prison for publishing articles on the King's health. He was imprisoned directly after the ruling. Rashid Mahameed and Mostafa Hiran, reporters of the same paper, were also sentenced to three months in prison and fined 5,000 dirham (US$655) each, though they have not been arrested.
In a separate case, editor Ali Anouzla and reporter Bochra Daou of the independent daily "Al-Jarida Al-Oula" are also being tried for publishing articles on the King's health and are accused of "intentionally publishing false information." The ruling on their case is scheduled for 26 October.
These trials, all directed at independent papers, demonstrate severe setbacks to freedom of expression in Morocco, which puts the press in jeopardy across the Arab region. The country was once a role model of press freedom for Arabic newspapers.
Imprisoning journalists and confiscating papers in Morocco is a violation of Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which the Moroccan government is a party. Article 19 (2) reads:
Everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of his choice.
We condemn the politically motivated trials and the on-going harassment of journalists who are carrying out their professional duties by reporting on matters of public interest.
In solidarity with the Moroccan press, we request that the government immediately stop this crackdown against press freedom by lifting the ban on "Akhbar al-Youm", overturning the criminal cases filed against journalists and repealing legislation that allows for criminal defamation.
Signed,
Arabic Network for Human Rights Information
ARTICLE 19: Global Campaign for Free Expression
Adil Soz - International Foundation for Protection of Freedom of Speech
Arab Archives Institute
Bahrain Center for Human Rights
Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies
Canadian Journalists for Free Expression
Center for Media Studies & Peace Building
Centro de Reportes Informativos sobre Guatemala
Comité por la Libre Expresión
Committee to Protect Journalists
Egyptian Organization for Human Rights
Ethiopian Freepress Journalists' Association
Exiled Journalists Network
Freedom House
Greek Helsinki Monitor
Index on Censorship
Institute of Mass Information
International Press Institute
Maharat Foundation (Skills Foundation)
Media Institute of Southern Africa
Media Rights Agenda
Media Watch
Pacific Freedom Forum
Pacific Islands News Association
Pakistan Press Foundation
Palestinian Center for Development and Media Freedoms
Public Association "Journalists"
Reporters Without Borders
World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers
World Press Freedom Committee
Al-Karamah "Dignity" Foundation for Human Rights, Egypt
Andalus Institute for Tolerance and Anti-Violence Studies, Egypt
Arab Commission for Human Rights
Arab-European Forum for Human Rights
Arab Organization for Supporting the Civil Society and Human Rights
Arabic Program for Human Rights Activists, Egypt
Association for Freedom of Thought and Expression, Egypt
Awlad Alard Organization for Human Rights
Bahraini Association for Human Rights
Bahrain Youth Society for Human Rights
Damascus Center for Theoretical and Civil Rights Studies, Syria
Egyptian Association against Torture
Egyptian Center for Economic and Social Rights
Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights
Euro-Arab Forum for Freedom of Expression
General Assembly for Human Rights Defenders in the Arab World, France
Hisham Mubarak Law Center, Egypt
Human Rights First Society, Saudi Arabia
Nadeem Center for Psychological Therapy and Rehabilitation of the Victims of Violence, Egypt
One World for Development and Sustainability of Civil Society
Palestinian Human Rights Foundation (Monitor)
Reporters without Rights
Voix Libre pour les Droits de l'homme, Switzerland
Yemeni Organization for the Defense of Democratic Rights and Freedom
Friday, October 23, 2009
The downside of Twitter for dissidents
The new information and communications technologies and social networks like Facebook and Twitter have been described as tools of freedom, helping dissidents in closed or semi-closed societies to communicate with each other and with the rest of the world.
There is a downside however to the proliferation of “new media”: security services, often assisted by technological systems put in place by Western companies, are able to track dissidents and protesters.
As Evgeny Morozov, a researcher based at Georgetown university (Washington), writes in the current issue of Dissent magazine, “as it happens, both Facebook and Twitter give Iran’s secret services superb platforms for gathering open source intelligence about the future revolutionaries, revealing how they are connected to each other. These details are now being shared voluntarily, without any external pressure. Once regimes used torture to get this kind of data; now it’s freely available on Facebook”.
Therefore this security aspect has to be factored in when press freedom or human rights groups get in touch with dissidents. These traceable links can be used as “evidence” by the forces of repression to “prove” their conspiracy theories and harass democratic opponents.
www.dissdentmagazine.org
There is a downside however to the proliferation of “new media”: security services, often assisted by technological systems put in place by Western companies, are able to track dissidents and protesters.
As Evgeny Morozov, a researcher based at Georgetown university (Washington), writes in the current issue of Dissent magazine, “as it happens, both Facebook and Twitter give Iran’s secret services superb platforms for gathering open source intelligence about the future revolutionaries, revealing how they are connected to each other. These details are now being shared voluntarily, without any external pressure. Once regimes used torture to get this kind of data; now it’s freely available on Facebook”.
Therefore this security aspect has to be factored in when press freedom or human rights groups get in touch with dissidents. These traceable links can be used as “evidence” by the forces of repression to “prove” their conspiracy theories and harass democratic opponents.
www.dissdentmagazine.org
Thursday, October 22, 2009
New tools for old traumas
The Center for American Progress has just published a very interesting paper – New Tools for Old Traumas - on how to use 21st century technologies to combat human rights atrocities. Satellite imagery, DNA testing, databases management, cryptography or social networking technologies have enhanced human rights investigators capacities to document and disseminate.
The authors, Sarah Dreier and William Schulz, appeal to the U.S. government to take human rights into account in their development of new technologies and to support initiatives that reinforce the use of these new tools.
Some donors have already integrated these tools into their programmes. The European Commission, for instance, is funding projects to help human rights defenders to protect their Internet communications.
The success of these efforts does not depend only on technological capacities although the “digital divide” between NICs haves and have-nots affects many poor countries. It is also determined by the level of freedom in the countries where human rights violations are taking place. Internet control, censorship laws, are serious matters in many countries.
Technology cannot completely replace direct access. As Reporters without borders (RSF) has just reported, the military government in Guinea, recently guilty of a brutal massacre of demonstrators, has been refusing visas to international journalists.
However the generalization of these technological tools can greatly contribute to reduce the space of impunity that abusive regimes try to preserve around them.
Read: New Tools for Old Traumas, www.americanprogress.org
The authors, Sarah Dreier and William Schulz, appeal to the U.S. government to take human rights into account in their development of new technologies and to support initiatives that reinforce the use of these new tools.
Some donors have already integrated these tools into their programmes. The European Commission, for instance, is funding projects to help human rights defenders to protect their Internet communications.
The success of these efforts does not depend only on technological capacities although the “digital divide” between NICs haves and have-nots affects many poor countries. It is also determined by the level of freedom in the countries where human rights violations are taking place. Internet control, censorship laws, are serious matters in many countries.
Technology cannot completely replace direct access. As Reporters without borders (RSF) has just reported, the military government in Guinea, recently guilty of a brutal massacre of demonstrators, has been refusing visas to international journalists.
However the generalization of these technological tools can greatly contribute to reduce the space of impunity that abusive regimes try to preserve around them.
Read: New Tools for Old Traumas, www.americanprogress.org
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Hillary Clinton relays CPJ's mission in Russia
Sometimes you wonder about the impact of a report or an advocacy mission. Of course the major point is often to show human rights defenders and independent journalists in an authoritarian country that you care for their safety and appreciate their work and courage.
But the feeling that noone in power will really listen is always there. The Russia mission of the CPJ (Committee to Protect Journalists)- a delegation composed of Kati Marton, Nina Ognianova and me - broke the rules. First we had some serious interaction with Russian officials and especially with investigators of crimes against journalists. Second in Brussels we were asked by the various European Union institutions (Council,Commission and Parliament) to share our findings with their experts. The report "The anatomy of injustice" was distributed by EP staff at a special hearing of the human rights subcommittee on Russia.
And third, secretary of state Hillary Clinton actually quoted the CPJ report during her visit to Moscow. Here are her remarks.
"Speaking at a town hall meeting with rights activists and opposition journalists during a visit to Russia this month, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton publicly cited CPJ during a town hall meeting and expressed concern at Russia’s poor record of impunity in the cases of murdered journalists. “A society cannot be truly open when those who stand up and speak out are murdered. And people cannot trust in the rule of law when killers act with impunity,” said Clinton. “According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, 18 journalists have been killed in Russia since 2000 in retaliation for their work. But in only one case have the killers been convicted. When violence like this goes unpunished in any society, it’s undermining the rule of law, chills public discourse, which is, after all, the lifeblood of an open society, and it diminishes the public’s confidence and trust in their own government.”
Human rights advocacy is like Sisyphus's work,it requires a sense of time and history, it is often exhaustingly slow, but its success is based on an accumulation of sometimes modest sometimes larger achievements.
It requires in particular a convergence between civil society actors and diplomats in order to transform denunciations and facts into a strategy in the realm of power.
But the feeling that noone in power will really listen is always there. The Russia mission of the CPJ (Committee to Protect Journalists)- a delegation composed of Kati Marton, Nina Ognianova and me - broke the rules. First we had some serious interaction with Russian officials and especially with investigators of crimes against journalists. Second in Brussels we were asked by the various European Union institutions (Council,Commission and Parliament) to share our findings with their experts. The report "The anatomy of injustice" was distributed by EP staff at a special hearing of the human rights subcommittee on Russia.
And third, secretary of state Hillary Clinton actually quoted the CPJ report during her visit to Moscow. Here are her remarks.
"Speaking at a town hall meeting with rights activists and opposition journalists during a visit to Russia this month, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton publicly cited CPJ during a town hall meeting and expressed concern at Russia’s poor record of impunity in the cases of murdered journalists. “A society cannot be truly open when those who stand up and speak out are murdered. And people cannot trust in the rule of law when killers act with impunity,” said Clinton. “According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, 18 journalists have been killed in Russia since 2000 in retaliation for their work. But in only one case have the killers been convicted. When violence like this goes unpunished in any society, it’s undermining the rule of law, chills public discourse, which is, after all, the lifeblood of an open society, and it diminishes the public’s confidence and trust in their own government.”
Human rights advocacy is like Sisyphus's work,it requires a sense of time and history, it is often exhaustingly slow, but its success is based on an accumulation of sometimes modest sometimes larger achievements.
It requires in particular a convergence between civil society actors and diplomats in order to transform denunciations and facts into a strategy in the realm of power.
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Yoani Sanchez gets no visa
Yoani Sanchez, the famous Cuban blogger (Generation Y)www.desdecuba.com has ben refused her visa by the Cuban government.
She had been invited to New York for the award ceremony of the prestigious Maria Moors Cabot Prize at the Columbia School of Journalism.
The Cuban government apparently did not want to give her a yet bigger world platform.
A prolific blogger, author of the book Cuba libre, Yoani Sanchez has built an impressive world audience for her candidly tough description of daily life in Cuba. The Columbia U. Jury gave her a citation for journalistic excellence.
She had been invited to New York for the award ceremony of the prestigious Maria Moors Cabot Prize at the Columbia School of Journalism.
The Cuban government apparently did not want to give her a yet bigger world platform.
A prolific blogger, author of the book Cuba libre, Yoani Sanchez has built an impressive world audience for her candidly tough description of daily life in Cuba. The Columbia U. Jury gave her a citation for journalistic excellence.
Monday, October 12, 2009
Coming back...
Writing a blog while being « on the move » is challenging and I have kept quite few weeks away from my desk. First with a summer university devoted to the “clash or encounter of civilizations” held in Andorra (with experts like Gilles Kepel and Fred Halliday), second with the photojournalism festival in Perpignan, and third a one-week mission in Moscow to present the new CPJ (Committee to Protect Journalists) report, “The anatomy of injustice, on unsolved killings of journalists in Russia since 2000.
A summary of this trip, with U.S. writer Kati Marton and CPJ coordinator of Europe and Central Asia, Nina Ognianova, can be found on the CPJ’s website. It was packed with meetings with journalists, human rights defenders, Western diplomats and Russian officials.
I drew a few lessons from this trip: first, the rediscovery of courage in journalism. Working in the quiet Brussels press environment leads to a form of complacency and shuts off from the tough realities that our best colleagues in other countries are confronted with. Journalists at Novaya Gazeta and in the other few remaining independent media live in an atmosphere of intimidation and impunity that one tends to forget too quickly.
The second lesson is that we need them to try to understand what is happening in Russia. Kremlinology is back in fashion in Moscow, opacity is the rule. And most Russian journalists do their job as stenographers of power. Dissent is again the key to a better flow of information and punditry.
The third lesson is the feeling that the international community has not much leverage on Russian leaders. What can be done from abroad to help independent journalists, protect them, as well as their close friends, the human rights defenders?
The European Union has published guidelines on human rights defenders that apply to journalists but we have discovered that quite a few diplomats of EU members states did not know –or pretended not to know- these guidelines although they are supposed to implement them.
They do enforce some of them though, by talking to human rights defenders, funding projects or attending trials, like the Anna Politkovskaia’s. But seen from the perspective of these brave writers and investigators these efforts, although welcome, do not seem to make a big impression on Moscow’s rulers.
The strategic discussion on how to influence governments and support human rights defenders is a crucial point and should be a priority for NGOs and press freedom groups. Old systems do not work as well. The “realist” approach has become dominant. State institutions seem exclusively focused on bread and butter or military interests, marginalizing human rights even in their rhetoric.
That should be part of our focus in the next blogs: how to use the media in order to shift the balance back towards a more “ethical” foreign policy.
A summary of this trip, with U.S. writer Kati Marton and CPJ coordinator of Europe and Central Asia, Nina Ognianova, can be found on the CPJ’s website. It was packed with meetings with journalists, human rights defenders, Western diplomats and Russian officials.
I drew a few lessons from this trip: first, the rediscovery of courage in journalism. Working in the quiet Brussels press environment leads to a form of complacency and shuts off from the tough realities that our best colleagues in other countries are confronted with. Journalists at Novaya Gazeta and in the other few remaining independent media live in an atmosphere of intimidation and impunity that one tends to forget too quickly.
The second lesson is that we need them to try to understand what is happening in Russia. Kremlinology is back in fashion in Moscow, opacity is the rule. And most Russian journalists do their job as stenographers of power. Dissent is again the key to a better flow of information and punditry.
The third lesson is the feeling that the international community has not much leverage on Russian leaders. What can be done from abroad to help independent journalists, protect them, as well as their close friends, the human rights defenders?
The European Union has published guidelines on human rights defenders that apply to journalists but we have discovered that quite a few diplomats of EU members states did not know –or pretended not to know- these guidelines although they are supposed to implement them.
They do enforce some of them though, by talking to human rights defenders, funding projects or attending trials, like the Anna Politkovskaia’s. But seen from the perspective of these brave writers and investigators these efforts, although welcome, do not seem to make a big impression on Moscow’s rulers.
The strategic discussion on how to influence governments and support human rights defenders is a crucial point and should be a priority for NGOs and press freedom groups. Old systems do not work as well. The “realist” approach has become dominant. State institutions seem exclusively focused on bread and butter or military interests, marginalizing human rights even in their rhetoric.
That should be part of our focus in the next blogs: how to use the media in order to shift the balance back towards a more “ethical” foreign policy.
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