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	When human rights defenders are silenced, who will stand up for the rights of all? by Lisa Maracani Amnesty International   Aug. 2018   'It is painful to live not knowing where your loved one is. Every day I think that he will come back, or that someone will tell me that he has been found. I am always pained when my children ask where their father is. I don't have an answer for them'.   In a moving account, Sheffra, the wife of Zimbabwean journalist Itai Dzamara, told of her painful search to find out what happened to her husband, who was last seen in 2015. Itai is just one of many people who have been forcibly disappeared, just for doing his job.   On International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances (August 30), and as the Declaration on Human Rights Defenders turns 20, we pay special tribute to those brave people who have been forcibly disappeared as they stood up for human rights and those who continue to fight against enforced disappearances despite the constant threats, harassment, and lack of response from the authorities.   Enforced disappearance is one of the worst human rights violations. It has a devastating impact on the victim, their family and friends and society in general. Relatives and friends of people who have been forcibly disappeared feel deep anguish decades after they last had news of their loved ones. The uncertainty about not knowing what happened, wondering whether they are still alive or perhaps still suffering in some hidden, horrible place, makes enforced disappearance an ongoing agony.   It has long been a tactic of repressive governments seeking to silence dissenting and critical voices. Enforced disappearance does not just affect one individual: it spreads fear like wildfire as a product of its secrecy and impunity, sending a chilling message to many others. No one can feel safe, because no one knows what happened and who might be next.   For Amnesty's recent report 'Deadly but preventable attacks', we talked to relatives, friends and colleagues of human rights defenders who have been killed or forcibly disappeared simply because of the work they do. These attacks send a ripple effect expanding outwards to loved ones, other human rights defenders and entire communities, with fear and despair seeping into their everyday life. This is further exacerbated when there is no accountability, sending a message that these are tolerated by the authorities, increasing the risk these abuses might happen again.   Enforced disappearances are an atrocious tactic used to intimidate and inhibit human rights defenders. And when human rights defenders are silenced, who will stand up for the rights of all?   Over the past year we have seen minor progress. In Thailand, authorities finally announced they would open a special investigation into the case of Pholachi Rakchongcharoen, known as Billy, an ethnic Karen activist who was forcibly disappeared while in custody in 2014. Thai authorities also pledged to progress with a long-delayed bill criminalising enforced disappearances in 2018.   In Pakistan, Samar Abbas, an activist who was forcibly disappeared in January 2017, was finally released in March 2018. However, no one has been brought to justice for this crime, with enforced disappearances continuing and the space for critical voices becoming smaller.   In other cases, there has been no progress at all. There has been no news since 2013 of Syrian human rights defenders Razan Zaitouneh, Wael Hamadeh, Samira Khalil and Nazem Hammadi, known as the Douma 4. Dong Samuel Luak, a South Sudanese human rights lawyer, and Aggrey Idri, a vocal government critic, were abducted in Nairobi in January 2017 and last seen in detention in Juba. So far, neither Kenyan nor South Sudanese authorities have admitted responsibility for their enforced disappearance and their families have not received any official information about their fate or whereabouts.   More than two decades after the armed conflicts in former Yugoslavia ended, 12,000 people remain missing in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Croatia, Serbia and Montenegro. The fate of the missing remains unresolved and their relatives are still bravely demanding truth, justice and reparation.   Ahmed Mansoor, a human rights defender from the United Arab Emirates, has been held in detention since 2017 in an unconfirmed location, with almost zero contact with the outside world, his family and his lawyer. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison in May this year, and continues to be held in conditions that amount to enforced disappearance.   In other cases, those seeking truth, justice and reparations for people who have been disappeared have themselves been targeted. In Sri Lanka, Sandhya Eknaligoda, a campaigner against enforced disappearances and the wife of disappeared cartoonist Prageeth Eknaligoda, was recently the subject of a barrage of hate, abuse, intimidation, harassment and death threats on social media.   Last year, students in Bangladesh peacefully protesting at the lack of truth and justice for Kalpana Chakma, an Indigenous human rights defender who was forcibly disappeared in 1996, were attacked by the security forces.   Truth, justice and reparation   Calling for truth, justice and reparations for victims of enforced disappearance takes time, courage and dedication. Friends and families are often forced to lead the efforts to find their loved ones and, in the process, become human rights defenders themselves. They need our support and solidarity.   As we commemorate the International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances and remember those who have been forcibly disappeared, we must also embrace the struggles of those brave human rights defenders who continue fighting to put an end to this atrocious crime and unite with them in their call for truth, justice and reparation.   http://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/research/2018/12/human-rights-today/ http://www.ipsnews.net/2018/12/womens-resistance-inequality-marks-2018/ Visit the related web page
	350 US newspapers issue coordinated rebuke of Donald Trump for attacks on press by RSF, CPJ, OHCHR, PEN, agencies USA   October 16, 2018   Today PEN America, represented by the nonpartisan nonprofit Protect Democracy and the Yale Law School Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic, filed a lawsuit in federal court against the president of the United States, Donald J. Trump. The suit seeks to stop President Trump from using the machinery of government to retaliate or threaten reprisals against journalists and media outlets for coverage he dislikes.   President Trump’s tirades against the press are not new. His cries of “fake news” are an almost daily occurrence. The White House has called for individual journalists to be fired, and the president has referred to the media as “the enemy of the American people.”   This has created an environment of hostility toward the media wherein journalists have been subject to death threats, needed bodyguards to cover political rallies, and have faced attacks in their newsrooms. The president has also threatened book publishers and authors who have published critical volumes.   While many media outlets are unrelenting in their robust coverage, individual writers may think twice before publishing pieces or commentary that could put them in the White House’s crosshairs.   As you know, over the last 18 months PEN America has been doing research, reporting, advocacy, outreach events, and more to spotlight and call out the president’s assaults on writers and journalists.   Yet most of the president’s verbal attacks on the press are speech that is protected under the First Amendment. Our country’s broad protections for free speech allow the president to denigrate the press and even go after individual journalists by name. However, when President Trump crosses the line and threatens to use his authority to punish the media, or actually does so, it is vital for the courts to step in and affirm that such threats and reprisals are unconstitutional.   We have worked closely with leading First Amendment scholars and practitioners in private practice and academia in order to hone a request to the court to do just that. http://pen.org/pen-america-v-trump/   Oct. 2018   White House Correspondents’ Association - Statement on President’s Remarks in Montana   All Americans should recoil from the president’s praise for a violent assault on a reporter doing his Constitutionally protected job. This amounts to the celebration of a crime by someone sworn to uphold our laws and an attack on the First Amendment by someone who has solemnly pledged to defend it. We should never shrug at the president cheerleading for a violent act targeting a free and independent news media. -Olivier Knox, President, White House Correspondents’ Association   The British government has joined press freedom advocates and journalists in expressing dismay and disgust with Donald Trump’s remarks at a rally, where he praised the unprovoked assault on a Guardian US journalist by the state’s congressman, Greg Gianforte.   At the Republican rally in Montana on Thursday night, the president lauded and made jokes about the violent attack by Gianforte, when he was a candidate, on the Guardian’s political reporter Ben Jacobs in 2017.   A spokeswoman for the British prime minister, Theresa May, when asked about the president’s remarks, said on Friday: “Any violence or intimidation against a journalist is completely unacceptable.”   Journalists across the US launched into fierce criticism of the congressman, via social media.   “Gianforte is a criminal. He pled guilty to assault. The president is congratulating a criminal on committing a crime,” said the New York Times correspondent Binyamin Appelbaum on Twitter.   Trump’s comments “mark the first time the president has openly and directly praised a violent act against a journalist on American soil,” added the New York Times reporter Sheryl Gay Stolberg.   Katharine Viner, the editor-in-chief of the Guardian, said on Friday: “At a time when reporters around the world are being harassed, arrested and even murdered these are incredibly irresponsible comments, which fly in the face of press freedom and send a dangerous message to autocrats and dictators around the world.”   She added: “The world’s press would welcome a clear statement from the US government that it remains committed to the rights of journalists everywhere to do their work without fear of violence or repression.”   http://en.unesco.org/themes/safety-journalists http://en.unesco.org/themes/press-freedom-all-platforms   16 Aug. 2018   350 US newspapers issue coordinated rebuke of Donald Trump for attacks on press. (Reuters/AP)   350 US newspapers have launched a coordinated defence of press freedom and a rebuke of Donald Trump for denouncing media organisations as enemies of the American people. All of the newspapers ran editorials.   "A central pillar of President Trump''s politics is a sustained assault on the free press," said the editorial by the Boston Globe, which coordinated publication among more than 350 newspapers.   "The greatness of America is dependent on the role of a free press to speak the truth to the powerful.. To label the press ''the enemy of the people'' is as un-American as it is dangerous to the civic compact we have shared for more than two centuries."   The first amendment of the US constitution guarantees freedom of the press.   The Portland (Maine) Press-Herald said a free and independent press was the best defence against tyranny, while the Honolulu Star-Advertiser emphasised democracy''s need for a free press.   "The true enemies of the people — and democracy — are those who try to suffocate truth by vilifying and demonising the messenger," wrote the Des Moines Register in Iowa.   In St Louis, the Post-Dispatch called journalists "the truest of patriots".   The Chicago Sun-Times said it believed most Americans knew Mr Trump was talking nonsense.   The Fayetteville Observer said it hoped Mr Trump would stop, "but we''re not holding our breath".. "Rather, we hope all the President''s supporters will recognise what he''s doing — manipulating reality to get what he wants," the North Carolina newspaper said.   Mr Trump has frequently criticised journalists and described news reports that contradict his opinions or policy positions as fake news.   In its editorial, the New York Times wrote there was nothing wrong with being critical of the media but said there was a line.   "Insisting that truths you don''t like are ''fake news'' is dangerous to the lifeblood of democracy. And calling journalists the ''enemy of the people'' is dangerous, period."   The US Senate unanimously adopted a resolution on Thursday, affirming the "vital and indispensable role" played by the news media and declared, "the press is not the enemy of the people".   July 2018   Trump attacks on media violate basic norms of press freedom, human rights experts say. (OHCHR)   UN and Inter-American experts on freedom of expression have condemned U.S. President Donald Trump’s repeated attacks on the free press and urged him and his administration to cease efforts to undermine the media’s role of holding government accountable, honest and transparent.   “His attacks are strategic, designed to undermine confidence in reporting and raise doubts about verifiable facts,” said David Kaye and Edison Lanza, the Special Rapporteurs on freedom of expression for the United Nations and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, respectively.   The President has labelled the media as being the “enemy of the American people” “very dishonest” or “fake news,” and accused the press of “distorting democracy” or spreading “conspiracy theories and blind hatred”.   “These attacks run counter to the country’s obligations to respect press freedom and international human rights law,” the experts said. “We are especially concerned that these attacks increase the risk of journalists being targeted with violence.”   Kaye and Lanza said that, over the course of his presidency, Mr. Trump and others within his administration have sought to undermine reporting that had uncovered waste, fraud, abuse, potential illegal conduct, and disinformation.   “Each time the President calls the media ‘the enemy of the people’ or fails to allow questions from reporters from disfavoured outlets,” the experts added, “he suggests nefarious motivations or animus. But he has failed to show even once that specific reporting has been driven by any untoward motivations.   “It is critical that the U.S. administration promote the role of a vibrant press and counter rampant disinformation. To this end, we urge President Trump not only to stop using his platform to denigrate the media but to condemn these attacks, including threats directed at the press at his own rallies.. “We stand with the independent media in the United States, a community of journalists and publishers and broadcasters long among the strongest examples of professional journalism worldwide. We especially urge the press to continue, where it does so, its efforts to hold all public officials accountable.”   The experts encouraged all media to act in solidarity against the efforts of President Trump to favour some outlets over others. “Two years of attacks on the press could have long term negative implications for the public’s trust in media and public institutions,” Kaye and Lanza said. “Two years is two years too much, and we strongly urge that President Trump and his administration and his supporters end these attacks.” http://bit.ly/2KmNiqb   * (In July, A.G. Sulzberger, Publisher of The New York Times met with Donald Trump at the Whitehouse. Following Mr. Trump’s subsequent tweets, Mr. Sulzberger decided to respond to the president’s characterization of their conversation).   Statement of A.G. Sulzberger, Publisher, The New York Times:   ''My main purpose for accepting the meeting was to raise concerns about the president’s deeply troubling anti-press rhetoric. I told the president directly that I thought that his language was not just divisive but increasingly dangerous.   I told him that although the phrase “fake news” is untrue and harmful, I am far more concerned about his labeling journalists “the enemy of the people.” I warned that this inflammatory language is contributing to a rise in threats against journalists and will lead to violence.   I repeatedly stressed that this is particularly true abroad, where the president’s rhetoric is being used by some regimes to justify sweeping crackdowns on journalists. I warned that it was putting lives at risk, that it was undermining the democratic ideals of our nation, and that it was eroding one of our country’s greatest exports: a commitment to free speech and a free press.. I implored him to reconsider his broader attacks on journalism, which I believe are dangerous and harmful to our country and the world''.   * The Boston Globe: The liberty of the press is essential to the security of freedom: http://bit.ly/2MNbKDf NYT: http://nyti.ms/2nFMdkn Politico: http://politi.co/2nIlu6Y   * The Washington Post reports President Trump has made 4,229 false or misleading claims in the last 558 days: http://wapo.st/2MbOxug http://wapo.st/2Aq2AZI   * Joel Rosenthal, President of the Carnegie Council on Mr. Trump’s Assault on Ethics: http://bit.ly/2L2e9bG   May 2018   Rising Hostility to Media threatens Real Democracy, Emma Daly. (Human Rights Watch)   “Enemy of the people” is how more than 50 percent of Republicans see the media, according to a US poll. Two reporters are detained in Myanmar for investigating a massacre, one of two independent daily newspapers in Hungary closes, and in Afghanistan, nine journalists are killed covering a bombing. Animosity toward journalists is growing worldwide as we mark World Press Freedom Day.   Governments the world over want to control the media – without an inconveniently free press, officials find it easier to do what they want. They can claim almost 100 percent literacy rates, squander national assets on mansions abroad, forcibly disappear opponents, and hide infectious disease outbreaks or critical health data.   There are many ways to suppress the media, all of which encourage self-censorship. Dozens of countries jail journalists on dubious grounds of protecting national security, with Turkey atop this dismal league. Others use overbroad laws to silence criticism, including imprisoning journalists and bloggers for “defamation” which resulted in a Myanmar poet being jailed after writing, “On my manhood rests a tattooed/portrait of Mr President.”   In many countries it’s unlawful to insult the leadership, be it the president, the king, the “father of the nation,” or the military.   Singapore bans “scandalizing the judiciary” and Bahrain punishes “offending a foreign country.” Bureaucratic tactics also include burdensome regulations on pesky outlets and threats to withhold government advertising or limit license approvals. The countries with the tightest media controls are North Korea and Eritrea, say press freedom groups.   If legalistic strategies don’t work, governments try threats, violence, imprisonment, or murder.   We know autocrats target the media; what’s especially disturbing today is that democratically elected leaders are following suit. US President Donald Trump’s expressed disdain for the media is so severe that press freedom groups created the US Press Freedom Tracker to monitor legal and physical threats facing journalists in the land of the First Amendment, which reads “Congress shall make no law.. abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.”   Trump’s characterization of any reporting he doesn’t like as “fake news” has been seized upon and echoed by authoritarian circles in Syria, Venezuela, Libya, Somalia, and beyond. The Russian Foreign Ministry has a “fake news” web page that denounces critical foreign coverage and promotes conspiracy theories about “the Western media.” Malaysia has just convicted the first person charged under its new “fake news” law.   It’s not only in war zones and dictatorships that journalists take risks to hold those in power to account. And independent media are fundamental not only to a well-functioning democracy, but to anyone who wants to know whether tap water is safe for your kids to drink, if veterans are getting proper medical care, if the women in your life face sexual harassment at work or sexual assault on campus, or if the land you live on has been poisoned by industry. So today, stand up for a free press. http://bit.ly/2Ioq7Pw   The 2018 World Press Freedom Index, compiled by Reporters Without Borders (RSF), reflects growing animosity towards journalists.   Hostility towards the media, openly encouraged by political leaders, and the efforts of authoritarian regimes to export their vision of journalism pose a threat to democracies.   The climate of animosity is steadily more visible in the Index, which evaluates the level of press freedom in 180 countries each year.   Hostility towards the media from political leaders is no longer limited to authoritarian countries such as Turkey (down two at 157th) and Egypt (161st), where “media-phobia” is now so pronounced that journalists are routinely accused of terrorism and all those who don’t offer loyalty are arbitrarily imprisoned.   More and more democratically-elected leaders no longer see the media as part of democracy’s essential underpinning, but as an adversary to which they openly display their aversion.   The United States, the country of the First Amendment, has fallen again in the Index under Donald Trump, this time two places to 45th. A media-bashing enthusiast, Trump has referred to reporters “enemies of the people,” the term once used by Joseph Stalin.   The line separating verbal violence from physical violence is dissolving. In the Philippines (down six at 133rd), President Rodrigo Duterte not only constantly insults reporters but has also warned them that they “are not exempted from assassination.”   In India (down two at 138th), hate speech targeting journalists is shared and amplified on social networks, often by troll armies in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s BJP Hindu nationalist party. In each of these countries, at least four journalists were gunned down in cold blood in the space of a year.   Verbal violence from politicians against the media is also on the rise in Europe, although it is the region that respects press freedom most.   In the Czech Republic (down 11 at 34th), President Milos Zeman turned up at a press conference with a fake Kalashnikov inscribed with the words “for journalists.” In Slovakia, (down 10 at 27th), then Prime Minister Robert Fico called journalists “filthy anti-Slovak prostitutes” and “idiotic hyenas.”   A Slovak reporter, Ján Kuciak, was shot dead in his home in February 2018, just four months after another European journalist, Daphne Caruana Galizia, was killed by a targeted car-bombing in Malta (down 18 at 65th).   “The unleashing of hatred towards journalists is one of the worst threats to democracies,” RSF secretary-general Christophe Deloire said. “Political leaders who fuel loathing for reporters bear heavy responsibility because they undermine the concept of public debate based on facts instead of propaganda. To dispute the legitimacy of journalism today is to play with extremely dangerous political fire.”   Norway and North Korea, first and last again in 2018   In this year’s Index, Norway is first for the second year running, followed – as it was last year – by Sweden (2nd). Although traditionally respectful of press freedom, the Nordic countries have also been affected by the overall decline. Undermined by a case threatening the confidentiality of a journalist’s sources, Finland (down one at 4th) has fallen for the second year running, surrendering its third place to the Netherlands. At the other end of the Index, North Korea (180th) is still last.   The Index also reflects the growing influence of “strongmen” and rival models. After stifling independent voices at home, Vladimir Putin’s Russia (148th) is extending its propaganda network by means of media outlets such as RT and Sputnik, while Xi Jinping’s China (176th) is exporting its tightly controlled news and information model in Asia. Their ongoing suppression of criticism and dissent provides support to other countries near the bottom of the Index such as Vietnam (175th), Turkmenistan (178th) and Azerbaijan (163rd).   When it’s not despots, it’s war that helps turn countries into news and information black holes – countries such as Iraq (down two at 160th), which this year joined those at the very bottom of the Index where the situation is classified as “very bad.” There have never been so many countries that are coloured black on the press freedom map.   It’s in Europe, the region where press freedom is the safest, that the regional indicator has worsened most this year. Four of this year’s five biggest falls in the Index are those of European countries: Malta (down 18 at 65th), Czech Republic (down 11 at 34th), Serbia (down 10 at 76th) and Slovakia (down 10 at 27th). The European model’s slow erosion is continuing.   Ranked second (but more than 10 points worse than Europe), the Americas contain a wide range of situations. Violence and impunity continue to feed fear and self-censorship in Central America. Mexico (147th) became the world’s second deadliest country for journalists in 2017, with 11 killed. Thanks to President’s Maduro’s increasingly authoritarian excesses, Venezuela (143rd) dropped six places, the region’s biggest fall. On the other hand, Ecuador (92nd) jumped 13 places, the hemisphere’s greatest rise, because tension between the authorities and privately-owned media abated.   In North America, Donald Trump’s USA slipped another two places while Justin Trudeau’s Canada rose four and entered the top 20 at 18th place, a level where the situation is classified as “fairly good.”   Africa came next, with a score that is slightly better than in 2017 but also contained a wide range of internal variation. Frequent Internet cuts, especially in Cameroon (129th) and Democratic Republic of Congo (154th), combined with frequent attacks and arrests are the region’s latest forms of censorship. Mauritania (72nd) suffered the region’s biggest fall (17 places) after adopting a law under which blasphemy and apostasy are punishable by death even if the accused repents.   But a more promising era for journalists may result from the departure of three of Africa’s most predatory presidents, in Zimbabwe (up two as 126th), Angola (up four at 121st) and Gambia, whose 21-place jump to 122nd was Africa’s biggest.   In the Asia-Pacific region, still ranked fourth in the Index, South Korea jumped 20 places to 43rd, the Index’s second biggest rise, after Moon Jae-In’s election as president turned the page on a bad decade for press freedom. North Asia’s democracies are struggling to defend their models against an all-powerful China that exports its methods for silencing all criticism. Cambodia (142nd) seems dangerously inclined to take the same path as China after closing dozens of independent media outlets and plunging ten places, one of the biggest falls in the region.   The former Soviet countries and Turkey continue to lead the worldwide decline in press freedom. Almost two-thirds of the region’s countries are ranked somewhere near or below the 150th position in the Index and most are continuing to fall. They include Kyrgyzstan (98th), which registered one of the Index’s biggest falls (nine places) after a year with a great deal of harassment of the media including astronomic fines for “insulting the head of state.” In light of such a wretched performance, it is no surprise that the region’s overall indicator is close to reaching that of Middle East/North Africa.   According to the indicators used to measure the year-by-year changes, it is the Middle East/North Africa region that has registered the biggest decline in Media freedom. The continuing wars in Syria (117th) and Yemen (down one at 167th) and the terrorism charges still being used in Egypt (161st), Saudi Arabia (down one at 169th) and Bahrain (down two at 166th) continue to make this the most difficult and dangerous region for journalists to operate.   * Published annually by RSF since 2002, the World Press Freedom Index measures the level of media freedom in 180 countries, including the level of pluralism, media independence, the environment and self-censorship, the legal framework, transparency, and the quality of the infrastructure that supports the production of news and information. It does not evaluate government policy: http://bit.ly/2qUUiDN   World Press Freedom Day: A brief history, by Joel Simon. (Columbia Journalism Review)   In 1993, the United Nations General Assembly came together to declare May 3 World Press Freedom Day. The date was chosen to commemorate a UN-hosted conference held in the south African country of Namibia at which participants expressed support for “independent and pluralistic media.”   If you’re yawning at this point, I forgive you. Even as someone who has devoted my career to defending the rights of journalists around the world, I find it hard to get excited each year when World Press Freedom Day rolls around. Governments that routinely violate the rights of journalists emit solemn proclamations. UN agencies host international conferences at which everyone speaks and nothing gets done.   Then there is the chilling data. More than 260 journalists were in prison around the world at the end of last year, the highest number ever recorded by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Earlier this week, at least nine journalists were killed in a suicide attack carried out by the Islamic State in Kabul that appeared to deliberate target the media. In a separate attack that same day, a reporter for the Pashto service of the BBC was gunned down in Khost province.   This record of murder and repression is why World Press Freedom Day matters, certainly this year when the international consensus about the importance of press freedom and independent media has begun to disintegrate. For a quarter century, that consensus helped define critical global free expression policies, including those that facilitated the creation of the World Wide Web. Without it, the future of global free expression is in jeopardy.   To understand why, we need to take a historical look at how the consensus emerged. Free expression, is enshrined in Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a founding document of the United Nations, created in 1948. It declares that “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive, and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”   In the 1970s, UNESCO, the UN agency responsible for press freedom, commissioned a report which concluded that news agencies based in New York, Paris, and London were setting the global information agenda. This was undoubtedly true. But for the Soviet Union, it was also a political wedge. The solution the Soviets proposed was for governments to step in to regulate the media and establish ethical standards.   International media organizations and Western governments, including the United States, opposed the proposal, which would have gravely undermined press freedom. In 1984 the US withdrew from UNESCO in protest.   Five years later, the Soviet Union began to unravel. The Russian media, given latitude to work more freely under Glasnost (the term for Mikhail Gorbachev’s more lax government rules), challenged the historical myths at the heart of the Soviet Union and exposed corruption and incompetence that had been hidden from the public. By the time the hammer and sickle was lowered over the Kremlin in 1991, a global consensus had emerged that a free and open media could be an engine for accountability and democratic empowerment.   This notion was ratified when World Press Freedom Day was declared two years later. Over the next decade, the world witnessed an unprecedented expansion of press freedom as authoritarian leaders moved away from state control and direct censorship. It’s no coincidence that the global internet emerged during this period, as there was little ideological opposition to the creation of a shared global resource.   The trend began to reverse with the onset of the war on terror. To put it into numbers, 81 journalists were in jail around the world at the end of the 2000. By the end of the following year it jumped to 118, and it’s been an upward trajectory ever since. Today, around, the world, nearly three quarters of all journalists jailed are being held on anti-state charges. Of course, the actual war on terror has been been deadly for journalists. A record 185 journalists have been killed in Iraq by both terrorists themselves and the governments fighting them.   The next round of backsliding followed the Arab Spring in 2011. The toppling of entrenched regimes in Egypt and Tunisia, celebrated by democracy advocates, was interpreted differently by authoritarian leaders around the world. They recognized the need to control information in order to retain power, and that the internet posed a threat to this control. A new wave of online repression ensued across north African and Middle Eastern countries.   Russia, too, responded not just by restricting its own media, but by developing an offensive capability that it could deploy against countries like the US that it believed were using information to destabilize Russia.   At the moment when information is being weaponized, the historic defenders of press freedom, the US and Europe, are failing to step up. The EU is having a hard time finding its voice, perhaps because it is grappling with a press freedom crisis in two of its member states, Poland and Hungary, which are challenging democratic norms by imposing restrictions on the media through punitive media laws and control of government advertising. In Malta and Slovakia, two leading investigative journalists have been murdered.   Meanwhile, the president of the United States is engaged in permanent war with the media and declares journalists to be enemies of the American people. Donald Trump shows no interest in defending the international system that has supported press freedom for the past two decades.   Without global leadership, there is little consequence for countries that violate press freedom norms–whether it’s the Turkish government jailing journalists in record numbers or Israeli snipers shooting reporters as they cover the ongoing protests in Gaza, or a suicide bomb in Kabul targeted at journalists   In this context, I will take every World Press Freedom Day proclamation that I can get. Every public protest, every UN-hosted panel discussion, bolsters, however slightly, the global norms that for several decades supported the expansion of press freedom around the world. While it’s easy to roll your eyes at a UN-designated holiday, without a shared consensus about the value and importance of press freedom this fundamental right will fade into oblivion. http://bit.ly/2Kx072I   * Joel Simon is the executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists.   Digging deeper into corruption, violence against journalists and active civil society - Transparency International   To mark the release of Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index 2017, we analysed corruption levels around the world and looked at how they relate to civil liberties – specifically, the ability of citizens to speak out in defence of their interests and the wider public good.   Fraying civic space   As journalists and activist groups are coming under mounting pressure from governments around the world, evidence sheds new light on the vital importance of civil society organisations (CSOs) and independent media in anti-corruption efforts. Yet, CSOs working on governance and human rights issues are subject to ever-greater restrictions on their operations, while attacks on journalists are on the rise in many parts of the world.   Such crackdowns are not only deeply concerning in their own right, but they also add to an environment in which corrupt public officials, shady businesses and organised criminals are able to act with impunity.   Freedom of association and expression in the fight against corruption   As Transparency International marks its 25th anniversary this year, our experience over the last quarter-century shows that curbing corruption requires more than just introducing well-designed laws. Corrupt individuals have proven very adept at finding ways to get around formal constraints, which is why grassroots and bottom-up approaches to fighting corruption tend to be more sustainable in the long run than isolated institutional and legal reform.   Often, well-intentioned laws are poorly enforced and institutions lack the ‘teeth’ to make anti-corruption efforts truly effective. Civil society and media are essential in applying pressure and keeping governments honest and accountable.   Specifically, freedom of association, including the ability of people to form groups and influence public policy, is vital to anti-corruption. CSOs play a key role in denouncing violations of rights or speaking out against breaches of law. Similarly, a free and independent media serves an important function in investigating and reporting incidences of corruption. The voices of both civil society and journalists put a spotlight on bad actors and can help trigger action by law enforcement and the court system.   Civil liberties in retreat? What the data shows   To further examine these relationships, we explored how four leading measurements of press freedom and civil society space relate to our index of public sector corruption. In doing so, we found evidence to suggest that those countries that respect press freedom, encourage open dialogue, and allow for full participation of CSOs in the public arena tend to be more successful at controlling corruption. Conversely, countries that repress journalists, restrict civil liberties and seek to stifle civil society organisations typically score lower.   The relationship between press freedom and corruption is further underlined by data provided by the Committee to Protect Journalists, which documents cases where journalists are killed while reporting on a story. Since 2012, 368 journalists died while pursing stories and 96 per cent of those deaths were in countries with corrupt public sectors. Moreover, one in five journalists killed worldwide were investigating corruption-related stories.   The relationship between civil liberties and corruption cuts both ways. Academic research points to a vicious cycle, where widespread corruption chips away at remaining civic space and targets groups that pose a challenge to authority. At the same time, the inability of citizens to hold their governments accountable contributes to even greater abuse.   Our experience of working with more than 100 chapters around the world shows that CSOs, grassroots movements and journalists are vital for improving the quality of governance. However, respect for civil liberties, such as freedom of expression and association, is only one component of an effective anti-corruption agenda. These elements prove all the more powerful when combined with genuine political will on the part of governments to tackle problems at their root. http://bit.ly/2HcZv0Q   * Global Witness on exposing corruption: http://www.globalwitness.org/en-gb/blog/world-press-freedom-day-why-free-press-important-freedom/ http://www.globalwitness.org/en-gb/blog/corruption-deep-rooted-and-pervasive-how-were-tackling-it/
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