Four Radio Benghazi journalists who worked on a programme that specialises in covering corruption were arrested yesterday evening outside the station in Benghazi (650 km east of Tripoli) and were released at midday today. Their arrests come amid a general crackdown by the Libyan authorities on news media, especially independent news websites.
“We firmly condemn these arrests and the campaign that has been waged since the start of the year against Libyan media that dare to criticise abuses in the system,” Reporters Without Borders said. “The authorities began to lift the lid on fundamental freedoms, including press freedom and free expression, in 2007, but now they have gone into reverse.”
The press freedom organisation added: “We urge the Libyan authorities to stop harassing journalists and to unblock the independent websites that have been inaccessible for more than a month.”
The four Radio Benghazi journalists who were arrested yesterday on the interior ministry's orders were Miftah Al-Qabaili, Sliman Al-Kabaili, Khaled Ali and Ahmad Al-Muqsabi. All four worked on “Massaa Al-Kheir Benghazi” (Good Evening, Benghazi), a programme that specialised in exposing administrative and financial corruption in Benghazi.
Qabaili was the programme's producer, while Kabaili was the production manager. The programme also tackled politically sensitive issues such as the June 1996 massacre in Abu Salim prison. Radio Benghazi's manager has suspended the programme, fired the four journalists and banned them from entering the station.
The arrests appear to be part of a broader crackdown that has also affected independent news websites based abroad. Sites such as Libya Al-Youm, Al-Manara, Jeel Libya, Akhbar Libya, Libya Al-Mustakbal and Libya Watanna have been inaccessible in Libya since 24 January. YouTube has also been blocked since 24 January following the posting of videos of demonstrations by the relatives of prisoners in Benghazi and videos of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi's relatives at parties.
Oea and Quryana, the first privately-owned newspapers to be launched by Al-Ghad, a company headed by Gaddafi's son, Seif Al-Islam, in August 2007, stopped publishing in January following the General Press Authority's refusal to continue printing them on the grounds that some of their bills had not been paid. They are continuing to post articles online.
The authorities have also created a new entity called the “Press Deputy” (Niyaba As-Sihafa), which has been tasked with monitoring journalists and other media employees who do investigative reporting on cases of corruption.
Reporters Without Borders hails yesterday's climbdown by a court in the Almaty district of Medeu as a victory for independent news media and press freedom organisations over a government bid to impose de facto censorship throughout the country.
The court rescinded the order it issued a week earlier banning all of the Kazakh media from publishing any information that could damage the reputation of President Nursultan Nazarbayev's son-in-law, businessman Timur Kulibayev.
“A campaign of intimidation has ended,” Reporters Without Borders said. “But it has caused a great deal of damage both in financial terms, because of the all the newspapers that were seized, and in terms of the fear that has been cast over all the media. The financial losses must be compensated and a closer watch must be kept on the manoeuvring by this autocratic president, who is bound to go back on the offensive, only this time more selectively.”
The Medeu district court issued the ban on 1 February in response to the legal action which Kulibayev brought against four independent newspapers, Respublika, Moya Respublika, Vzglyad and Kursiv, after they published an open letter by exiled politician Muhtar Ablyazov accusing him of corruption.
In its 1 February ruling, the court also ordered the immediate confiscation of their latest issues, although Reporters Without Borders believes that the four newspapers “just did their duty by mentioning – without endorsing – the serious charges that had been made against a high-profile public figure.”
Ablyazov's open letter accused Kulibayev of embezzling part of the proceeds from the sale of a Kazakh state-owned company to the Chinese National Petroleum Corporation. The court did not examine Ablyazov's claims and the prosecutor-general's office continues to maintain that it has not received documents sent by Ablyazov.
The authorities used the 1 February order as a pretext for launching a broad campaign of repression and intimidation against not only the four newspapers but also printers, distributors and other print media. Although virtually all newspapers referred to Ablyazov's allegations, only independent and opposition newspapers were systematically targeted.
A major arsenal of state resources was rapidly mobilised for an offensive that was waged not only in Almaty and Astana (the two largest cities) but also in Shymkent, in the Aktobe, Karaganda and Ust-Kamenogorsk regions, and elsewhere. A newspaper had only to mention the allegations against Kulibayev for all of its copies to be seized from printers or newsstands.
At least 21 news media (and a newsstand) in the Aktobe region received a formal notification from a local court on 5 February reproducing the Medeu court ruling and warning of the potential consequences of publishing anything about the case. Five judges and a detachment of police were deployed to take this warning to the headquarters of Diapazon, a newspaper critical of the government that has been targeted by other legal actions.
After the business newspaper Kursiv received its copy of the 1 February ruling, its editor was suddenly fired on 5 February. The staff refused to comment, but local observers pointed out Kursiv received particular attention from the authorities because it was distributed by all the Kazakh airlines. It also distanced itself from the protest movement about the court order.
Elena Burmistrova, the head of Vremya-Print, a printing house that publishes the newspaper Svoboda Slova (“Freedom of Expression”), was summoned before an Almaty administrative court on 8 February to account for the front page of its latest issue, which showed a large photo of Kulibayev under headline: “Kazakhstan's second president?” All copies of the issue were seized.
In the end no charges were brought against Burmistrova but local journalists said the summons put a lot of pressure on other publishing houses and newspapers. “They are all in complete disarray,” Rozlana Taukina, the head of the NGO Journalists in Danger, told Reporters Without Borders. “In practice, censorship now reigns.”
The ban issued by the Medeu district court on 1 February triggered a wave of protest within the country and abroad. It was condemned as flagrant censorship by press freedom organisations, the opposition parties Alga and Azat and even the semi-official Union of Journalists of Kazakhstan.
The Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe's media freedom representative, Miklos Haraszti, compared the situation to the recent libel actions against five major newspapers in neighbouring Tajikistan and condemned the practice of “shooting the bearer of bad news.”
In response to a call from eight newspapers and the NGOs Adil-Soz and Journalists in Danger, around 100 people waving placards saying “No to censorship” gathered outside the Medeu district court yesterday before it issued its second ruling. The request for the withdrawal of the original ruling was by submitted by Respublika and Vzglyad, and was subsequently supported by six other newspapers.
“We are astonished by the order's withdrawal,” Taukina said as she left the courthouse yesterday. “But this case had taken on a great deal of importance and was beginning to embarrass the authorities. The media were united and determined. The staff of the newspapers planned to go on hunger strike and to take their protest to the OSCE in Vienna. A case of such direct censorship in a country that holds the OSCE presidency was too provocative.”
After cracking down hard on independent media in recent months, it seems the authorities are now taking a more subtle tack. They are blowing hot and hold, maintaining tension to intimidate newspapers but now acting with more discretion. Unrelated prosecutions are continuing against Respublika, the cable TV station K+ and Diapazon, in what seems to be an attempt to pick off media one by one rather all at once.
Reporters Without Borders calls on the Chinese authorities to produce evidence that detained human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng, of whom there has been no news since 4 February 2009, is still alive.
“We fear the worst,” Reporters Without Borders said. “The authorities must provide his relatives with proof that he is still alive. They must give the family details about his current place of detention and must allow his wife to have direct contact with him.”
The press freedom organisation added: “If anything has happened to him while in detention, the authorities will be held responsible and those who had a direct hand in it must be identified and punished. The uncertainty about his fate has gone on long enough.”
After being sentenced for the first time to three years in prison in 2006, he was released and then rearrested several times. He was arrested for the last time in his home in Shaanxi by Public Security Department officials on 4 February 2009. When later asked what had happened to him, the police said he “disappeared” in September 2009.
As a defence attorney, Gao's clients included Zheng Yichun, a journalist and former professor who was sentenced in 2005 to seven years in prison because of what he had written. Recognised by the justice ministry as “one of the country's 10 best lawyers” in 2001, Gao also defended members of the Falun Gong spiritual movement and Cai Zhohua, a protestant pastor who was given a three-year sentence for printing and distributing bibles.
He was one of a group of activists (including Hua Jia) who staged a rotating hunger strike for human rights in 2006. Participants in a total of 29 provinces and abroad took it in turns to fast for 24 hours. Several of them were arrested.
In an open letter written in November 2007 and published in February 2009, he described one of the torture sessions he underwent as follows: “ ‘Gao Zhisheng! You mother****er! Your date with death is today! Brothers! Let's show the bastard how brutal we can get. Kill the bastard.' A leader of the group screamed. Then, four men with electric batons started to beat my head and body with ferocity. Nothing but the noise of the beating and my moaning could be heard in the room. I was beaten so severely that my whole body began shaking uncontrollably on the floor.”
Flouting a 15 January supreme court ruling, state-owned TV stations Rupavahini and ITN continue to openly favour President Mahinda Rajapaksa's campaign to win another term in the presidential election to be held on 26 January with a total of 21 candidates taking part.
Detailed monitoring by Reporters Without Borders has established that 98.5 per cent of the news and current affairs air-time on these two stations on 18 and 19 January was given over to the president and his supporters. This violates the constitution, above all its seventh amendment and article 104 (b) empowering the electoral commission.
“Alarmed by Gen. Sarath Fonseka's candidacy, President Rajapaksa and his followers are using and abusing all of the state's resources to get the president reelected,” Reporters Without Borders said. “The TV propaganda is deafening and the figures we are releasing today are worthy of the Burmese or North Korean regimes.”
The press freedom organisation added: “We urge the supreme court and the electoral commission to use all the powers at their disposal to force Rupavahini and ITN to come to reason. This glaring media imbalance shows that the incumbent is benefiting from an advantage that is unacceptable in a democratic election.”
The Reporters Without Borders monitoring on 18 and 19 January found that, of a total of 472 minutes and 5 seconds of news and current affairs air-time on Rupavahini and ITN, Gen. Fonseka and the other opposition candidates were granted only 7 minutes and 50 seconds, or 1.6 per cent, while the president, his government and his party were granted 465 minutes and 25 seconds, in other words, nearly eight hours of air-time in just two days.
On ITN, one had to wait until the 7 p.m. Sinhalese-language news programme for coverage of opposition activity (Gen. Fonseka for 30 seconds, the UNP for 40 seconds and the JVP for 45 seconds), while President Rajapaksa got 3 minutes on the 9 a.m. programme, 2 minutes on the 10 a.m. programme, 4 minutes 45 seconds on the noon programme and 4 minutes 20 seconds on the Tamil-language programme at 6 p.m.
Rupavahini is giving the government an overwhelming air-time advantage. In the 8 p.m. Sinhalese-language news programme on 18 January, for example, the government got 8 minutes and 30 seconds and the president got 7 minutes and 10 seconds, while Gen. Fonseka, the UNP and the JVP got a combined total of just one minute. And it is deplorable that the twenty or so other candidates are totally ignored by the state media.
Granting so much time to propaganda on behalf of the incumbent is not new. On 11 January, for example, Rupavahini carried a live broadcast of President Rajapaksa's election programme launch that lasted one hour and 15 minutes.
Even if some privately-owned media are campaigning openly for the opposition or are giving more space to the activities of all the candidates, the extremely biased coverage on the main TV stations is having an undeniable impact on the campaign. Meanwhile, Sirasa TV, a privately-owned station based in Colombo, has not resumed its independent style of coverage since it was attacked by gunmen in January 2009.
The coverage imbalance is being accompanied by a smear campaign against Gen. Fonseka, the former army commander, in certain pro-government media, prompting him to write to eight newspapers requesting apologies for articles he regards as libellous. And the website of the defence ministry, which is headed by the president's brother, is openly campaigning against him.
Control of the state media has become crucial to the election campaign. The Commissioner of Elections has issued several reminders about the rules requiring balanced coverage and tried to introduce a Competent Authority to monitor the TV stations, but the president's office resisted. The supreme court's ruling has also been ignored.
The president and his allies have abused other state resources in the course of the campaign. The Telecommunications Regulatory Commission, for example, forced all mobile phone operators to send SMS messages signed by President Rajapaksa to all their clients, while soldiers have been seen putting up the president's election posters.
Cases of intimidation and violence against the media have also increased. Thakshila Dilrukshi, a journalist with the BBC's Sinhalese-language service, was hospitalised after being attacked by supporters of a minister in the central city of Polonnaruwa on 13 January. Her equipment and personal effects were stolen during the assault, which occurred after she covered a clash between Rajapaksa and Fonseka followers.
The Colombo-based Sunday Leader, outspoken weekly, was raided the same day by police bearing a warrant who claimed to have been tipped off about the printing of "defamatory" posters.
Freelance journalist Jude Samantha was assaulted while covering clashes between government and opposition supporters on 16 January in Madurankuliya, in the western district of Puttalam.
Reporters Without Borders condemned Yemen's attempt to use the current anti-terror push to crush human rights after security forces today fired on a crowd of protestors staging a ‘sit-in' outside the offices of a banned newspaper.
“The Ali Abdallah Saleh government is taking advantage of support from foreign powers in the fight against terrorism on its soil to deliberately violate people's rights”, the worldwide press freedom organisation said.
“The international community must remind the Sanna government that the legitimate fight against terrorism can never be used to justify cracking down on the media”, it said.
More than 200 demonstrators answered a call from several Yemeni human rights organisations to hold a ‘sit-in' outside the offices of the newspaper al-Ayyam in Aden, in protest at the forced closure of the daily since May last year and to call for its reopening.
Editor Hisham Bashraheel described the scene to Reporters Without Borders: “The security forces started firing on the crowd at 16.07pm. The police even aimed at one of their own number to make it look like the demonstrators were armed, when in fact everyone came to protest peacefully”.
“We are surrounded. There are soldiers and police everywhere,” he added. “We have heard them calling for reinforcements. The demonstrators are still gathered at the entrance. It will be dark in Aden soon and we fear the worst”, the worried editor said.
Security forces previously fired on the offices of the newspaper on 13 May 2009 (http://www.rsf.org/Soldiers-fire-on-Aden-based.html), after the information minister banned the newspaper from printing on 4 May in the name of the principle of the “country's national unity” (http://www.rsf.org/Major-crackdown-on-independent.html). The situation deteriorated still further on 15 July when a journalist on the newspaper, Anis Ahmed Mansur Hamida, was sentenced to 14 months in prison for “attacking national unity” and “separatism” at the end of a politically motivated trial (http://www.rsf.org/Al-Ayyam-reporter-gets-14-month.html). He remains in prison.
The state of press freedom in the country has considerably worsened since May 2009, particularly in the south of the country. Nothing has been heard of Khalid Jahafi a journalist on the opposition news website Alsahwa.net since security forces arrested him on 27 December 2009 while he was taking photos of clashes between police officers and supporters of the southern pro-independence movement (http://www.rsf.org/Crackdown-on-media-reinforced.html). Shafi' al-Abd, a journalist on the newspaper al-Nada, as well as four members of the leadership of the Federation of Southern Youth, were arrested by police in Aden on 28 December, before being moved to Khor Maksar jail in Aden province. The journalist has been charged with forming a political party hostile to “security and national unity”. A court in Lahij province has also postponed indefinitely and without explanation the trial of journalist Iyyad Ghanem, who is in worsening health from a two-week hunger strike. He has been in custody for six months after filming a rally by supporters of the southern rebel groups in the city of Korsh.
Further, nothing has been heard since 18 September of journalist Muhammad al-Maqalih, who disappeared in unexplained circumstances. Many Yemeni journalists believe the security services were responsible for his abduction, despite their denials. Fouad Rashid, editor of the website Al-Mukalla Press, and Salah al-Saqladi, editor of the website Adengulf-website, are also still being held.
In response to a Democratic Alliance parliamentary question, the minister of labour has revealed that 10 statutory bodies that fall under his department held functions to celebrate the tabling of t
Verizon Wireless and Nokia introduce the Nokia 2705 Shade(TM), a compact flip phone that fits in a pocket or purse for stylish connectivity. Available initially as an online e
