Reporters Without Borders 2008 Report On The Gambia > The Gambia Echo > The Gambia Echo

Reporters Without Borders 2008 Report On The Gambia

Reporters Without Borders:

Gambia - Annual Report 2008

Area : 11,300 sq. km.
Population : 1,663,000.
Language : English.
Head of state : Yahya Jammeh.

The Gambian press does its best to survive in a climate in which an authoritarian president believes Aids can be cured with ointments and by reading the Koran, where intelligence services are dreaded for the brutality of their methods, the murder of the doyen of the journalists remains unpunished and there is an absolute intolerance of any form of criticism.

Swaying palms, immaculate beaches, a refreshing sea breeze and clear nights... Gambia, a former British colony surrounded by Senegal, is a tourist paradise whose sea coast is dotted with luxury hotels and holiday villages. But the country headed by the young president Yahya Jammeh is also the realm of an often irrational military regime, that tortures and terrorises those who dare to stand up to the head of state or his friends. The murder of the country’s most renowned journalist, Deyda Hydara, on the night of 16 December 2004, brought to an end the era in which a well-organised, rigorous, privately-run press could still stand its ground against a government which did not conceal its hostility towards it. Since that date, almost all those who were an annoyance to the president have fallen into line through force or free will, or have left the country.

Murder with impunity

Deyda Hydara, editor of the privately-owned daily The Point, correspondent for Agence France-Presse (AFP) and Reporters Without Borders, was shot dead as he drove staff on his paper home. He had previously received regular threats from the National Intelligence Agency (NIA) which was watching him minutes before his murder, in a street housing a police barracks. Two Reporters Without Borders’ investigations in Gambia have highlighted aspects casting strong suspicion on the NIA and a small militia group answering to President Yahya Jammeh. But no serious investigation has been carried out to identify the killers or those who instigated the killing. The only official statement made by the Gambian investigators, six months after the murder, suggested in a clearly trumped up accusation that Deyda Hydara, whom they termed a “provocateur”, was killed in a sexual case. At an interview marking the New Year in January 2007, Yahya Jammeh said Hydara’s murder had been carried out by “enemies of Gambia”. He added that those responsible wanted to prevent him from being elected president of the Economic Community of West Africa States (ECOWAS) but he did not elaborate.

Very disturbing reports come out of Gambia, although it is often difficult to check them because of bad faith and obstruction on the part of the authorities. This was the case, on 12 January, when the opposition weekly Foroyaa revealed that “Chief” Ebrima Manneh, journalist on the privately-owned Daily Observer, had been held for three months and three weeks at a police station in Fatoto, a small town 400 km east of the capital after being taken to various police stations since his arrest by the intelligence services, on 7 July 2006. The authorities have always denied holding the journalist, who has no charges pending against him. He was arrested for unknown reasons shortly after the closure of the African Union (AU) summit held in Banjul when there were a number of arrests within the independent press, accused of having disrupted the event. In autumn 2007, several international press freedom organisations, including Reporters Without Borders, obtained an account from a former political prisoner who said he had been held with “Chief” Ebrima Manneh and that he had “definitively disappeared” after being taken away at night for interrogation by the NIA.

Police on the prowl

Having used unfairness and brutality to gag the country’s journalists, the authorities now take on anyone else who comes within range. Gambian journalist, Fatou Jaw Manneh, a US resident for around ten years, was arrested on 28 March as she got off the plane on a visit to Gambia for the funeral of her father. She was arrested by NIA agents after she was denounced by another passenger and taken to the HQ of the intelligence services on the sea front at Banjul. A former journalist on the privately-owned Daily Observer, Fatou Jaw Manneh is a pro-democracy activist and contributor to several websites and the opposition movement, "Save The Gambia Democracy Project". She published an article in 2003 in a daily which has since been illegally closed, The Independent, which prompted the arrest and unfair detention for three days of its editor, Abdoulie Sey. From then on she contributed to the website AllGambian.net, and was prosecuted for an article, in October 2005, in which she accused President Yahya Jammeh of “tearing our beloved country to shreds” and describing the head of state as “a bundle of terror”. She was charged with “intention to commit sedition”, “publication of seditious words” and “publication of false news intended to create public fear and alarm” and faces three years in prison. Throughout 2007, her trial lurched from one adjournment to another leaving her with a constant threat hanging over her.

Never ending trials are one of the specialities of the government to force awkward journalists to live in permanent insecurity. In this way, a young journalist on The Independent, Lamin Fatty, endured a process lasting more than a year before being sentenced to one year in prison or the option of a fine of 1,850 dollars (about 1,375 Euros). He had already spent two months in prison in 2006, along with the publication director and the editor, Madi Ceesay and Musa Saidykhan, for publishing a false report, which had been corrected in the next edition alongside an apology. Thanks to the solidarity of his colleagues, who contributed to a collection to pay the fine, the journalist was able to avoid going back to prison.

But it is not always opposition figures or critical investigators who fall victim to the intolerance of the president. Crackdowns are also inflicted on the ranks of the faithful. Malick Jones, chief producer on the state-run Gambia Radio and Television Services (GRTS) and Mam Sait Ceesay, communications director of the Gambian presidency, were arrested on 9 September for having informed the pro-government Daily Observer of the supposed sacking of the president’s press and public relations director, which turned out to be false. The two were also accused of sending information to the US-based opposition website, Freedom Newspaper, which goes in for virulent criticism of the Gambian government and claims to have sources within the presidency. Mam Sait Ceesay was released from Mile Two prison, in Banjul, on 19 September, after paying bail of 200,000 Dalasis (about 6,730 Euros). Malick Jones was only released on 22 September 2007, after finding the same amount of bail. Hydara’s newspaper The Point continues to appear against this background of permanent surveillance, paranoia and brutality. It is headed by Pap Saine, who is also correspondent for Reuters in Gambia. The editorial staff knows that each edition is examined, taken apart and discussed high up and that the least pretext can serve to send the dreaded NIA against the journalists or to ransack the premises of the country’s last independent daily.

Cracking down without any complexes

Africa - Annual report 2008

African governments in 2007 began doing what they had not dared to do before. Boundaries they would not previously have crossed, to crack down on journalists who annoyed them, were all removed. Free of hang-ups, several information ministers spent the year defending a certain idea of Africa - one with the face of repression. The press is disrespectful ; it must be punished. Journalists are making demands ; they must be gagged. Even in Mali and Benin, countries hitherto viewed as models of respect for press freedom, presidents Amadou Toumani Touré and Yayi Boni have at least once in 2007 picked up the phone to send displeasing journalists to prison. In both these cases, the heads of state have acknowledged their decisions. The year was thus one of bare-faced repression, in which they openly freed themselves from promises made. Government by effrontery.

Habitual predators

For some it’s a habit. President of the young republic of Eritrea, Issaias Afeworki, guilty of imprisoning his former companions in arms and journalists who did not have the good fortune to escape the police, dismissed press questions about human rights in his country with utter contempt while on a visit to Europe in May. He could do so without fear, because apart from the United States, very few go in for much criticism of him. Democratic governments say they are impotent in the face of his brutality. During this time, Eritrea, which over the years has become an open air prison, has seen the country emptied of its people. Those who have not died in the inhuman conditions in prison camps have fled, on foot, to seek refuge anywhere, including in poverty and death. His rival, Meles Zenawi, prime minister of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, has continued to treat the press in Addis Ababa with huge disdain. Even if, under pressure from his US allies, he agreed to release journalists arrested in the roundups of November 2005 during opposition demonstrations in protest at a stolen election a few months earlier.

In Zimbabwe and Gambia, presidents Robert Mugabe and Yahya Jammeh have not released the stranglehold of their intelligence services on an independent press which has been left injured and humiliated. President Joseph Kabila, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, has never had much time for unwanted witnesses or the thorns in the foot which journalists represent to him. This year, the authorities reacted with disdainful indifference even to those murdered by unidentified killers, like Serge Maheshe, of Radio Okapi. Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, the head of the transitional government in Somalia, which has been atomised by 17 years of anarchy, has let the military off the leash and they have set about arresting journalists who get in their way. At the same time, others have been murdered by hired killers, in the pay of the leaders of the Islamic Courts from their comfortable exile in the Eritrean capital Asmara.

In Rwanda, President Paul Kagame keeps a nervous eye on the few newspapers which his government and his allies do not yet control, to ensure they are subjected to sufficient intimidation to keep silent. For their part, the despots Teodoro Obiang Nguéma in Equatorial Guinea and Ismael Omar Guelleh in Djibouti do not need to worry about disobedient editors. They make do with the sycophancy of the public media. All those who fail to publicly fawn on them will end up with their personal file on the desks of the chief of police or the chief prosecutor.

Disgrace and prison

If African “predators” of press freedom have not yet given it up, men in power who were believed to be above all suspicion have demonstrated that journalists are not always free on the continent. This includes leaders who were thought to have been convinced of the benefits that can accrue to a poor country from a diversity of news, from harnessing public debate, public transparency and the vigilance of demanding citizens. Confronted with a revolt which he refuses to recognise as a political movement, the President of Niger, Mamadou Tandja, has imprisoned and tried several Niger and foreign journalists, who took too close an interest in the “drug traffickers” who have humiliated the army in the Air mountains. His determination not to see the Tuareg question referred to - a crisis which is undermining his fragile democracy - has ended by prompting huge international interest in the subject.

From presidents like José Eduardo dos Santos in Angola, Abdoulaye Wade in Senegal, Idriss Deby Itno in Chad, Omar al-Beshir in Sudan and Omar Bongo in Gabon, for example, one expected no more than that they stop treating the state as their personal possession and the country’s journalists like their servants. But even there, argument has failed to convince the powerful, because in all these countries, journalists have been arrested, often brutally, faced frequently absurd charges and imprisonment, which is always unpleasant. These heads of state are not despots or comic opera kings, but they have violated their constitutions that guarantee freedom of the press, promises to funders and democratic standards promoted by the United Nations, with modernity, refinement and supported by administrative sophistication - with the light heart of an official, who always has to give some justification.

African journalists - perpetually facing charges of “defamation”, “publication of false new”, “damaging imputations”, “insulting the head of state”, harming national security, “sedition”, “incitement to disturb the public order” or who knows what - have to manage their own cases alone. Innocent or guilty, they have experienced the filth of a prison cell. Their families, whose chief characteristic is not to be rich, have to manage on their own resources while their breadwinner is unable to earn money.

Yes, across the continent, chiefly in the French-speaking part, there are numerous scandal sheets, which feed on ordinary corruption, chasing spectacular headlines and “little envelopes”. But the politicians, from Madagascar to Mauritania, from Guinea to Cameroun, via Cote d’Ivoire and the Central African Republic, are the main beneficiaries, making use of badly or unpaid journalists to settle their scores with opponents through bogus “revelations”. They do it because they have the means to do so and they can get way with it. Disgrace and prison are for others. Absurd logic, unjust justice.

Financial impunity

Freedom of the press in Africa was badly damaged in 2007. On at least 12 occasions during the year, men received orders to kill journalists. Police received orders on almost 150 occasions to make an arrest, not of a corrupt minister or a notorious killer but of a journalist. Even governments of countries in which Reporters Without Borders had invested some hope in previous years, have brought instruments of repression to bear against the press. Outside certain countries, like Ghana or Namibia, among others, the year was marked by a general setback. What exactly happened ?

The ever greater penetration of China, oppressive superpower if ever there was one, allowed some African governments to marginalise their western support. Encumbered by vociferous NGOs and virtuous political demands, democratic countries stand no chance against Beijing’s free-flowing dollars and multinationals, which send Chinese workers to supervise the building sites of African infrastructure without demanding anything in return. And then when it comes to repression, China has become an expert in it. It is Chinese technicians who scramble the signals of opposition radios in Zimbabwe. In addition, the difficulty in shedding the criminal past of the former colonial powers has been given a fresh impetus in the African nationalist revival. How many French ambassadors have been sent away with a flea in their ear, in the name of rejection of “French-Africa”, when they have attempted to negotiate the release of a journalist ? Chinese ambassadors do not have this problem. How many African journalists or foreign reporters have been accused of being British spies in Zimbabwe ? We would be wrong not to take these insinuations seriously. At the start of 2008, a fanatical newspaper in Abidjan tarnished the memory of Jean Hélène, a correspondent for RFI who was killed in a cowardly attack by a gendarme in October 2003, in claiming that he was working for French intelligence at the time.

African media, like a crumbling dam, have taken in water. Taboos have been proudly broken. A host of questions which are vital for the future of press freedom on the continent remain unanswered after this very testing year.

Léonard Vincent
Africa desk head

Detente is not around the corner, despite history

Europe - Annual Report 2008

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Press freedom is deteriorating throughout this very diverse region. The leaders of the most authoritarian regimes bitterly resent journalists who expose their corruption, embezzlement and self-enrichment. In countries with more press freedom, journalists are often not sufficiently protected against legal action. Overall, journalism needs to be better defended, including in European Union countries where press freedom is a reality.

Attacks on the right of journalists to keep their sources secret increased in the major democracies in 2007. Journalists were arrested and questioned and their offices and homes searched in France, Germany and Italy. Legal officials tended to approve this kind of behaviour especially when legal confidentiality had been violated.

This has made it more necessary than ever for the European Union (EU) to pass laws to efficiently protect this cornerstone of press freedom. French President Nicolas Sarkozy promised journalists on 8 January 2008 that he would push through a law to this effect. “Proper journalists do not reveal their sources,” he said. “Everyone must understand and accept this.”

Physical violence against the media is less common in the EU than in the former USSR, but Bulgaria (now an EU member) and Italy were exceptions. Organised crime dislikes exposure of its activities and was quick to threaten a journalist in Bulgaria with an acid attack. In Italy the mafia forces journalists to have constant police protection if they want to stay alive.

Death threats and harassment are still common in central Europe and the Balkans, a region struggling to recover from a violent past that haunts every social and political upheaval. The media is still very polarised, with journalists suspected of taking sides and thus becoming targets of violence. The Serbian radio and TV station B92, which has bravely tackled the issue of war crimes for several years, was publicly accused in 2007 of being “paid to take an anti-Serbian stand.” Physical attacks continue, including with grenades, but the media remains vigorous and stands up to the pressures.

The authoritarian regimes in the former USSR countries make every effort to crush press freedom. Elections in Russia and Uzbekistan in 2007 confirmed governments in power and gave no short or medium-term hope of more press freedom. Editorial independence exists but only for media outlets with little public impact. Building civil society to loosen the monolithic grip of the authorities is a hard job.

The country in the region with the worst record, Turkmenistan, has made a wide range of foreign alliances of unclear meaning since the death in December 2006 of President-for-life Saparmurad Niyazov. The direction of his successor, President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, is also rather a mystery. Will the EU present a firm and united front to the oil and gas rich country? Except for a few encouraging signs, such as the opening of a few cybercafés, the country has not liberalised and press freedom has not improved.

In the former Soviet Caucasus countries, Azerbaijan continued its crackdown on the media and treated as criminals journalists who exposed corruption among top officials. Heavy penalties for those who wrote “undesirable” articles had a dissuasive effect and President Ilham Aliev ignored the many appeals from NGOs and international bodies such as the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). The regime also broke off contact with Reporters Without Borders after harsh criticism from it.

Political violence against the media returned to Turkey with the murder of Turkish-Armenian editor Hrant Dink in January. The country needs more than ever to face up to its past and get rid of old-fashioned nationalistic ideas. The arrest of the killers and the start of their trial has thrown a shadow over the country - the involvement of the police and judiciary in Dink’s death. Debate about amending articles of the criminal law about Turkish identity has resumed but they are meanwhile still being used to prosecute and convict people, including Dink’s journalist son. The law and the behaviour of the judiciary must change so that disagreement with the country’s official principles is no longer punished.

Detente is not around the corner, despite history

Europe - Annual Report 2008

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Polarisation of the media

Americas - Annual Report 2008

Seven journalists were killed in the Americas in 2007 for doing their job, compared with 16 the previous year. Crimes against the media continue to plague countries where the media, sophisticated or not, is exposed to reprisals from organised crime and drug-traffickers. Mexico remains the deadliest country for journalists, with two murders in less than a month and three disappearances. The killings coincided with a large-scale federal police and army drive against drug-trafficking in the first half of the year. But state-level courts barely cooperated with the special legal unit to combat attacks on the media (the Fiscalía Especial de Atención a los Delitos Cometidos contra Periodistas - FEADP) set up in February 2006 but with few resources.

An example from Haiti

A journalist was killed in each of Peru (which broke its own record with about 200 physical attacks on the media), Paraguay and Brazil. In all three cases, the victims had been investigating the sensitive matters of drug-trafficking or police corruption. Justice was finally done (even if only partly) in Haiti, where the killers in 2001 of radio journalist Brignol Lindor and in 2005 of Jacques Roche were punished. Gang activity decreased, except in some suburbs of Port-au-Prince, such as Martissant, where photographer Jean-Rémy Badiau, who had witnessed gang score-settling, was murdered in January.

Only one of the six murders of journalists in Colombia could be attributed to their journalistic work. This was the killing of Elacio Murillo Mosquera, shot dead on 10 January in the Pacific coast province of Chocó while investigating armed groups in the region and after covering the demobilisation of a unit of the United Self-Defence Groups of Colombia (AUC).

But demobilisation did not mean disarming and the AUC remained influential among politicians. Like their sworn enemies, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), who resumed sabotage and physical attacks on media premises in 2007, the AUC paramilitaries were formidable predators of the media, especially those critical of President Alvaro Uribe’s government, such as the Latin American TV station Telesur. Outbursts by Uribe against some journalists, such as the correspondent of El Nuevo Herald, Gonzálo Guillén, were sometimes followed by death threats as a prelude to enforced exile. Six journalists had to flee the country in 2007.

One journalist was killed in the United States, a rare event, when Chauncey Bailey, editor of the weekly Oakland Post, was shot dead on 2 August apparently because he had criticised the running of a local black community bakery. A suspect, arrested a week after the murder, confessed to carrying out the murder and then retracted.

Job-related motives were not certain in the four killings of journalists in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras, but seemed likely in the case of Carlos Salgado, of the Honduran Radio Cadena Voces (RCV), murdered in Tegucigalpa on 18 October in a very bad atmosphere between the media and the government. President Manuel Zelaya said that “if I was (Venezuelan President) Hugo Chavez, I would’ve shut down this station long ago.”

Public/private division

Zelaya was alluding to Chavez’ move against Venezuela’s oldest and most popular privately-owned TV station, Radio Caracas Televisión (RCTV), which was forced to stop terrestrial broadcasting on 27 May, heightening the “media war” between the government and the hardline opposition since the failed attempt to oust Chávez in 2002. It marked the almost complete takeover of national broadcasting by a president with a permanent and compulsive need to communicate.

Chávez’ media obsession led to a proposed constitutional reform that would allow him to declare an indefinite state of emergency, including suspension of press freedom. But the proposal was even criticised by some of his supporters (as they had criticised the move against RCTV) and was defeated in a referendum on 2 December, but this probably will not end the “media war.” RCTV, now broadcasting by cable and satellite, has an uncertain future. The very violent referendum campaign highlighted the national division that the media has come to symbolise.

Will the Venezuelan situation spread to Bolivia and Ecuador? The closeness between Chávez and the presidents of Bolivia (Evo Morales) and to a lesser extent Ecuador (Rafael Correa) is deceptive. Both Andean leaders, with help from Chávez, promoted new public or community media outlets in 2007 to counter the influence of the traditional media that are mostly owned by big business and opposed to their policies. Both also began a constitutional reform (better handled in Ecuador) that has led to great polarisation of which the media is a part. But the Bolivian media, state or privately-owned, have often been unfairly accused of being on one side or other and physically attacked during many street demonstrations. Violence in Ecuador was limited to a few exchanges between Correa and certain media outlets, apart from threats against Telesur.

Government hostility towards the media was shown in Argentina, where President Néstor Kirchner completed his term of office without holding a single press conference. The media, which is not excessively polarised, is the target of brutality and abuses of power at provincial level.

Legislative progress

Press freedom is fragile in the Americas but managed to score some victories in 2007. Mexico decriminalised press offences at federal level on 12 April. A similar draft law presented in Brazil in December by pro-government federal deputy Miro Teixeira could put an end to the 1967 press law inherited from the old military dictatorship. In Uruguay, parliament approved a measure, drafted by civil society groups, to encourage and support community media. A similar bill is going through parliament in Chile.

In the United States, the last journalist held in prison was released in April after being jailed for refused to disclose his sources to a federal judge. The House of Representatives passed a “shield law” on 16 October giving journalists the right not to reveal their sources at federal level. Important exceptions are included however (as in Canada), especially concerning national security. President Bush, who dislikes transparency, signed into law on 31 December a new freedom of information act expanding public access to government documents, but this came two weeks after the CIA destroyed videotapes of prisoner interrogations in secret locations and at the Guantanamo detention centre.

25 journalists in prison on an island

The US military base at Guantanamo in eastern Cuba still holds about 275 prisoners, including Al-Jazeera cameraman Sami al-Haj, who went on hunger-strike on 13 June as he began his sixth year in prison without being charged with any crime. He is very ill, including psychologically, and may be released shortly.

There is less hope for the 24 journalists in prison in Cuba, the only country in the region that does not guarantee basic freedoms. The handover of power to President Castro’s brother has not seen any improvement in human rights. The form of repression has changed from political trials to daily brutality. Twenty journalists held since the “black spring” crackdown of March 2003 continue to serve sentences of between 14 and 27 years in prison. Three others have been jailed since Raúl Castro took over.

Benoit Hervieu Head of Americas desk

A year of crises. What impact on press freedom ?

Asia-Pacific - Annual report 2008

The Asian continent turned into a battlefield for journalists in 2007, with 17 killed during the year and nearly 600 assaulted or faced with death threats. In Pakistan alone, security forces arrested 250 reporters, frequently clubbing them first, for covering marches organised against President Pervez Musharraf or at their own demonstrations against restrictions imposed on them under the state of emergency. In Sri Lanka, several senior figures on the Tamil-language newspaper Uthayan lived holed up at their offices for fear of being gunned down in the streets of Jaffna where paramilitaries have sown terror. In Burma, soldiers ordered to restore order in September shot dead a Japanese reporter and hunted down Burmese cameramen and photographers.

Asia has never had so many privately-owned TV and radio stations and news websites, all trying to provide the public with news of which they have been deprived for so long. Seven of the world ten highest circulation dailies are now Asian and the continent boasts the largest number of Internet-users.

Who could have imagined that footage of public executions in North Korea would one day be broadcast by international television? Who could have expected to see dozens of Burmese journalists smuggling reports out of the country from victims of atrocities by the ruling junta? However, the authorities continue to do their utmost to restrict access to sensitive regions. Journalists find it impossible to reach the scene of clashes between the army and the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, or the tribal zones between Pakistan and Afghanistan, or some Chinese and Tibetan villages shaken by demonstrations.

Authoritarian counter-attacks

Dictators and other self-proclaimed presidents have been responsible for brutality and bad faith in countering the emergence of free media. Master of this medium, Pervez Musharraf has presented himself as the “last bulwark of democracy”, while allowing his secret services to kidnap and torture journalists. He also, in November, ordered the banning of all privately-owned television and radio. The tyrant of Pyongyang, Kim Jong-il, decided on appeasement of the international community in relation to his nuclear programme, while allowing the most outrageous mistreatment to prevent North Koreans having contacts abroad. One man was executed for having made a phone call to a foreign country and international and dissident radios in Korean were systematically jammed.

This wave of damaging footage for governments prompted some very virulent counter-attacks. In Bangladesh, when the interim government was faced with demonstrations, it ordered independent television stations to remove news bulletins and talk shows from their schedules.

In the run-up to the 17th Chinese Communist Party Congress in October, the Propaganda Department began bringing liberal media to heel and closing thousands of websites, blogs and discussion forums. Not one of the promises made by the authorities to secure the 2008 Olympics was kept. At least 180 foreign journalists were arrested, physically assaulted or threatened in China, even though at the time the games was awarded in 2001 an official said: “There will be total freedom of the press”. And 15 Chinese journalists and cyber-dissidents were arrested in 2007 for “inciting subversion” or “disclosing state secrets”.

Vietnam’s sole political party set out to get rid of leaders of opposition movements, including those of underground publications which started in 2006. Around a dozen journalists and cyber-dissidents were given prison sentences during the year. While in Malaysia, the internal security ministry hounded media and arrested several bloggers and opposition columnists.

Beware of taboo subjects

It can be a dangerous business to: criticise the royal family in Thailand, to raise the problem of the influence of religion in Afghanistan, to oppose Lee Kwan Yew in Singapore or to expose corruption among those close to primer minister Hun Sen in Cambodia. As a result, Asian journalists are frequently driven to self-censorship. The law provides for long prison sentences, and even the death penalty, for those who take the risk of breaking religious political or social prohibitions.

A young journalist in the north of Afghanistan had this terrible experience in 2007. He was arrested for “blasphemy” and sentenced to death, while the Council of Mullahs put pressure on the authorities for even tighter control on the content of Afghan privately-owned TV. In Bangladesh, a cartoonist was imprisoned for innocent wordplay about the prophet Mohammed. A blogger was arrested in Bangkok for posting a remark about the Thai royal family. Finally, several Cambodian reporters were forced into exile after they investigated lucrative timber-trafficking involving relatives of the head of government.

Communist governments in particular use imprisonment of journalists and cyber-dissidents to punish critics and intimidate the rest of the profession. 55 reporters and Internet-users have been arrested in China since the country was awarded the Olympic Games in 2001. And Burma’s Win Tin is at 77 the world’s oldest imprisoned journalist. In total, almost two-thirds of the world’s imprisoned journalists are being held in Asia.

Censorship reaches into new technology

China is undoubtedly the most technically advanced country in terms of censorship and repression of the newest means of communication. Cyber-censors have continued to hound news websites as shown in Reporters Without Borders’ report, “Journey to the heart of Internet censorship”, which it released in 2007, based on information from a Chinese technician. A variety of state administrations imposed strict control on online content.

Bolstered by this success, the government extended its influence to blogs, for which the main hosts were forced to sign a self-discipline pact in 2007. Foreign-based independent news websites, such as the Boxun platform, fell victim to ferocious attacks by hackers emanating from China.

Chinese and Vietnamese dissidents continued to use the Internet and new technology to break out of the straitjackets in which they are held. The activist Hu Jia was arrested at the end of December a few weeks after giving evidence to the European Parliament via his webcam. He had been under house arrest for nearly a year. In Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh-City, journalists, lawyers and trade unionists were arrested for posting articles critical of the government online. Before his arrest, the lawyer Nguyen Van Dai had his own blog nguyenvandai.rsfblog.org. Despite filtering and surveillance, discussion forums in Vietnamese are full of political remarks and dissidents use Skype, paltalk and Facebook to communicate with one another.

The terrorist threat

The increase in suicide bombings by Al-Qaeda followers has created fresh dangers for the media, who have to closely cover the figures involved and sensitive events. Two Pakistan reporters got killed in this way in 2007. One died in the first suicide attack against Benazir Bhutto in Karachi and the other was killed by a bomber targeting the Pakistani interior minister.

Henchmen of Mullah Dadullah who cut the throats of the Afghan fixer and driver of Italian special correspondent Daniele Mastrogiacomo, then released him in exchange for several imprisoned Taliban leaders, created a precedent that only increased the risk run by journalists in southern and eastern Afghanistan. The murder of the respected head of Peace Radio, Zakia Zaki, stunned the entire profession and a botched investigation failed to find the perpetrators.

In Nepal, it was armed groups fighting for the rights of the Madhesi people in the south, who were responsible for creating terror. Some 100 journalists were assaulted, threatened or forced to flee the region. Hit lists of journalists to kill were posted up in some towns by Madhesi militants.

Impunity still holds sway

The authorities in Sri Lanka systematically blocked investigations into murder cases involving the press. Police made no attempt to probe further when suspects were indicated or vital clues found in the murders of two staff on the newspaper Uthayan or in the 2005 murder of Sivaram Dharmeratnam, the editor of Tamilnet. Pakistani authorities refused to reveal the conclusions of two investigations into the kidnapping and murder of Hayatullah Khan, a journalist from the tribal areas, whose widow was killed in 2007, as if to punish her for having sought justice in the murder of her husband, in which the secret services could be implicated.

It is rare for the determination of a judge to alter the course of history. An Australian judge concluded that the murder of five journalists in East Timor in 1975 was a war crime committed by Indonesian forces, after taking detailed evidence from dozens of witnesses, including a former Australian prime minister. But Jakarta immediately rejected his conclusions, thus prolonging the impunity of soldiers accused of atrocities in East Timor.

In the Philippines, Nena Santos, the courageous lawyer of murdered journalist, Marlene Esperat, succeeded in getting the justice system to investigate who ordered the killing. However this did not prevent two more journalists from being killed in 2007 by hit-men in the pay of corrupt politicians.

Vincent Brossel
Head of the Asia-Pacific Desk

Between repression and servility

Annual report 2008 - Middle East

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Journalists are among the first witnesses, and also the first victims, of the instability that plagues the Middle East. The political and religious divisions in Lebanon, the spectre of civil war in Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have deep repercussions on media workers, beyond national borders. The region’s chronic instability is used by political leaders as a permanent excuse to silence journalists, whose every criticism is seen as wilfully destabilising their regimes.

The violence in the region has made Western democracies surprisingly unenthusiastic about denouncing human rights violations committed or tolerated by their economic partners there. Defending freedom of expression was apparently not an issue during the visit to France of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi or during the trips to the region of US President George Bush and French President Nicolas Sarkozy. Iran’s aggressive foreign policy and the bogging-down of the US army in Iraq have also downgraded the human rights issue in the two countries.

The law of silence

Some countries in the region have started to modernise but a complete opening-up of political life is out of the question. Jordan’s King Abdallah II, King Mohammed VI of Morocco and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak all talk of more democracy but with some control over the media. Journalists in these countries are accused of crimes and brought to court when they tackle sensitive matters, such as religion, or dare to criticise the monarchy or the regime. A dozen Egyptian journalists were prosecuted in 2007 after complaints filed by members of the ruling party. A journalist in Morocco faces a possible five years in prison in 2008 for criticising a speech by the king and a former member of parliament in Jordan was sentenced to two years in prison in October for criticising abuses in the country on his website.

Press freedom is in no way guaranteed in Syria, Tunisia, Libya and Saudi Arabia and journalists there know they must censor themselves on pain of serious consequences. The authorities exert heavy pressure on journalists and especially media owners. Journalists who cross the line are quickly dismissed or even imprisoned in a total denial of justice. Flattery is still the best way to keep one’s job and freedom. The Tunisian media has accepted this and the press gushes with praise for President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, who celebrated his 20th year in power in 2007. Syrian President Bashar el-Assad’s regime imprisoned several journalists and political activists who called for more democracy.

In the Gulf states, the freedom of expression enjoyed by some satellite TV stations, such as the Qatar-based Al-Jazeera and Saudi Arabia’s Al-Arabiya, were offset by their soft treatment of the governments that host and fund them. An increasing number of prosecutions of print-media journalists in 2007 endangered a budding diversity.

Iran, bottom of the regional list

Iran comes last in the region in the Reporters Without Borders worldwide press freedom index. Evin prison, overlooking Teheran, is the region’s biggest jail for journalists and at the end of the year, five journalists were still languishing there for “undermining national security” by simply being outspoken. Only journalists in media outlets close to the regime’s leaders (and thus protected by them) are allowed to criticise President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s government. Independent or community media outlets do not get the same favourable treatment. A Kurdish journalist was condemned to death for allegedly making “separatist propaganda.”

No reforms in 2007

Needed changes to press laws in the region have still not been made and legislators seem in no hurry to decriminalise press offences. Most parliaments in the region have very little power and no reforms will be made as long as regimes want to keep control of the media. The only encouraging sign during 2007 was when United Arab Emirates prime minister Sheikh Mohammad bin Rashid al-Maktoum said in September (as an appeals court struck down a prison sentence against two journalists for libel) that he favoured a new press law. Meanwhile, negotiations in Morocco between the communications and justice ministries on one side and journalist unions and media owners on the other reached deadlock.

Journalists were also prosecuted and convicted under the criminal law in Iran, Morocco, Syria and Tunisia. A constitutional reform in Egypt seems likely to immobilise political opponents but also independent or critical journalists.

War reporting

Arab journalists work in very dangerous conditions and 56 media workers were killed in Iraq in 2007, all but one of them Iraqis. Violence has still not diminished there nearly five years after the fighting began and has forced most foreign journalists to flee. Those who have stayed keep to their highly-protected offices and rarely go into the field, which has meant fewer casualties among them. Reporting is mainly done by Iraqi colleagues and nine who worked for US media outlets were killed in ambushes. These journalists have become the favourite target of armed Islamist groups. Twenty-five journalists were also kidnapped in 2007. The authorities took no action to prevent attacks on journalists and 207 media workers have now been killed in Iraq since fighting started in 2003.

Journalists in the Palestinian Territories were also victims of the fighting between President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah party and the supporters of Hamas and former prime minister Ismael Haniyeh. The June 2007 takeover of the Gaza Strip by Hamas endangered journalists working for pro-Fatah media outlets and all those who criticised Hamas and its leaders. Many journalists fled to the West Bank, where pro-Hamas colleagues were in turn arrested and mistreated by Palestinian Authority officials. The Gaza Strip became virtually out of bounds for foreign reporters. The kidnapping of British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) journalist Alan Johnston for 114 days by a powerful Gaza faction put the foreign media off from sending in any more permanent correspondents and, as in Iraq, reporting was done by local stringers. Along with this inter-Palestinian violence, Israeli army gunfire wounded a dozen journalists covering their operations.

Hajar Smouni
Head of Middle East and North Africa desk

posted @ Saturday, February 23, 2008 7:35 PM by egsankara