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Tag: Press Freedom

  • News Deserts Are Rampant in Latin America

    News Deserts Are Rampant in Latin America

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    A photo of journalists dedicated to covering the agendas of nearby communities, like these ones in a town in Colombia, is uncommon in poor areas of Latin American countries, where millions of people have no access to information of local interest. CREDIT: Chasquis Foundation
    • by Humberto Marquez (caracas)
    • Inter Press Service

    CARACAS, Jun 14 (IPS) – Without the means to receive information about what is happening around them, millions of Latin Americans who live in poor remote rural or impoverished urban areas inhabit veritable news deserts, according to an increasing number of studies conducted by journalistic organizations in the region.

    There are, for example, 29 million people in Brazil, 10 million in Colombia, seven million in Venezuela and up to three-quarters of the Argentine territory without access to journalism due to the absence of media outlets, or because the few existing local outlets are dedicated to entertainment, rather than news.

    “When we talk about information deserts, we are also talking about what a robust media ecosystem implies: that there are not only enough media outlets, but also pluralism,” said Jonathan Bock, director of the Colombian Foundation for Press Freedom (FLIP).

    This plurality must encompass “the topics that are covered, diversity of formats, media that address different audiences. A healthy ecosystem,” Bock added in a conversation with IPS from the Colombian capital.

    A Jun. 7 forum organized by the Venezuelan branch of the Press and Society Institute (IPYS) displayed atlases and maps on news deserts in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia and Venezuela, based on research by organizations of journalists and academics from those countries.

    Even without extrapolating from the results of these assessments, it is possible to estimate that news deserts affect a good part of the region, judging by the structural deficiencies of the population, and by conflictive situations in the media and journalism in nations such as those of Central America and the Andes.

    “The social and geographical marginalization found in parts of our countries means that important segments of the population are in these news deserts. For example, indigenous populations lacking media outlets in their languages,” Andrés Cañizález, founder and director of the Venezuelan observatory Medianálisis, told IPS.

    Journalistic organizations from Argentina, Brazil, Colombia and Venezuela show maps or atlases that indicate, using colors, the most and least deserted areas in terms of access to news in their respective countries. CREDIT: IPS
    Journalistic organizations from Argentina, Brazil, Colombia and Venezuela show maps or atlases that indicate, using colors, the most and least deserted areas in terms of access to news in their respective countries. CREDIT: IPS

    Atlases and statistics

    A study by the Argentine Journalism Forum (FOPEA), coordinated by Irene Benito, took a census of 560 areas in that country and considered 47.9 percent of them news deserts, 25.2 percent in “semi-desert” conditions, 17.1 percent as “semi-forests”, and 9.8 percent as “forests”, or areas with an abundance of media outlets and news.

    “As in other Latin American nations, in many areas there are media outlets and journalists, but there is no quality coverage. They deal with other things, not the interests of their communities, while the propaganda apparatus of the powers-that-be is in overly robust health,” Benito said in the IPYS forum.

    In Brazil, the most recent News Atlas, released in March, recorded the existence of 13,734 media outlets in that country of 208 million inhabitants, but not a single one in 312 of its 5,568 municipalities. These 312 municipalities are home to 29.3 million people with no access to local news.

    Although hundreds of online media outlets emerge every year “and now more municipalities have at least one or two media outlets, many are not independent or are biased, because they depend on the city government or religious movements,” said Cristina Zahar, from the Brazilian Association of Investigative Journalism (ARAJI).

    In a third of Colombia, where 10 of the country’s 50 million inhabitants live – many areas far from the big cities – there are no mass media, and in another third, home to 16 million people, the existing media outlets are dedicated to entertainment, according to FLIP’s Cartography of Information.

    In Venezuela, seven million people live in municipalities where there are no media outlets, and that figure rises to 15 million – in a country of 28 million people – if municipalities with only one or two media outlets, considered “semi-deserts”, are included, according to IPYS.

    Unlike other countries, “the situation has worsened, with the massive closure of radio stations ordered by the government – at least 81 in 2022 alone, and 285 since 2003 – with radio being the medium that has the greatest penetration in remote areas,” Daniela Alvarado, head of freedom of information at IPYS, told IPS.

    Remote rural areas far from the main cities and often in border regions are among the most affected by deficient infrastructure and lack of media outlets that enable local residents access to general information about their local environment and possibilities of participation in decisions that concern them. CREDIT: ECLAC
    Remote rural areas far from the main cities and often in border regions are among the most affected by deficient infrastructure and lack of media outlets that enable local residents access to general information about their local environment and possibilities of participation in decisions that concern them. CREDIT: ECLAC

    Exclusion, once again

    In the case of Colombia, one cause for the breadth of news deserts is violence, “war, one of whose strategic aims is to pressure or close down news, journalism that can reveal, report, warn and monitor what happens in areas of conflict,” said Bock.

    In 45 years of armed conflict in Colombia, 165 journalists were murdered, “strategic killings, because they reported on things, and became symbols,” Bock stressed.

    “But it also has to do with a different kind of exclusion, of weak economies and little interest on the part of politics and government institutions in promoting independent and plural journalism, seen in some contexts as the enemy, and with society getting used to it and not demanding” independent reporting, the Colombian analyst said.

    Another thing that has happened in countries in the region is that “traditional media, and many new digital outlets, emerged and are concentrated where there was already an audience and sources of advertising, which is combined with pre-existing inequalities to create an abyss between big cities and small towns and the countryside,” said Cañizález.

    In news deserts, infrastructure failures abound and there are absences or deficiencies in internet services, with providers that do not access these territories, aggravating the situation of local inhabitants who often only have simple mobile phones and cannot obtain news and information through digital or social networks.

    However, news deserts are not exclusive to rural, remote or border areas; in cities themselves there is a dearth of local media outlets, or the outlets have their own agendas on issues in poor urban communities, which are also impacted by the crises that face journalism in general.

    This is the case of Venezuela, which “is caught up in a complex and continuous economic, political and social crisis that has led to the deterioration of its media ecosystem,” Alvarado said, adding that it also faces “a communicational hegemony (on the part of the State) that is manifested in censorship and self-censorship.”

    Newspapers and television stations were driven to shut down, by government decision or suffocated due to lack of paper and advertising, or their sale paved the way for their closure; or, as in the case of many radio stations, closure is a constant looming threat. Online media suffer from internet cuts and harassment of their journalists.

    Even in urban areas, such as this one in Caracas, the adverse climate of news deserts has an impact, for example with the closure of print media outlets caused by political decisions or economic crises, which forces traditional kiosks to subsist by replacing newspapers, which are no longer available, with candy and snacks. CREDIT: Public domain
    Even in urban areas, such as this one in Caracas, the adverse climate of news deserts has an impact, for example with the closure of print media outlets caused by political decisions or economic crises, which forces traditional kiosks to subsist by replacing newspapers, which are no longer available, with candy and snacks. CREDIT: Public domain

    What can be done?

    “The challenge seems immeasurable, but we are not sitting quietly by, we must not give up on what is our right as a community public service,” said Benito.

    The State “should promote, at least in the area of ??its competence, which is radio, television and internet, inclusive policies throughout the nation’s territory, guaranteeing basic rights, including the right to communication and information for all citizens,” stated Cañizález.

    Zahar said that “sustainability is the challenge,” due to the difficulties many new media outlets, local or not, face in supporting themselves, and the advantages of digital media “that have fewer barriers to entry, can experiment with formats and financing mechanisms, and make quick changes.”

    Bock said “we must think about the financing of journalism where there are fragile economies, see it as a public service but an independent one, to address the training of people practicing journalism in those places.”

    Together with the support of the government and the international community, “models could be developed in which the big media sponsor local media in very small places or where there is clearly a news desert,” Cañizález said.

    “But that’s still not even discussed in a number of our countries,” he said. “It is an issue that concerns journalism but has not drawn public attention. The debate is still very much confined to reporters.”

    © Inter Press Service (2023) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service

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  • Hong Kongs Lights of Freedom Extinguished

    Hong Kongs Lights of Freedom Extinguished

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    Credit: Yan Zhao/AFP via Getty Images
    • Opinion by Andrew Firmin (london)
    • Inter Press Service

    LONDON, Jun 09 (IPS) – Nothing was more predictable than repression. Merely for holding candles and flowers, people were taken away by Hong Kong’s police.

    The occasion was the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre, 4 June 1989. Hong Kong was until recently home to mass annual vigils where thousands gathered to keep alive the memory of that day. But that’s all gone now in the crackdown that followed large-scale protests for democracy that erupted in 2019.

    Hong Kong’s authorities are evidently determined to erase any form of acknowledgement that the massacre ever happened. Memorials and artworks commemorating it have been removed. Books that mention the tragedy have disappeared from libraries. Shops selling the LED candles commonly used to mark the occasion were visited by the authorities in the run up to this year’s anniversary.

    The organisation behind the vigil, the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Movements in China, closed itself down in 2021 following a police investigation. Several of its leaders were jailed in March.

    Instead of hosting the usual vigil, this year Hong Kong’s Victoria Park was home to a carnival celebrating Chinese rule. People wanting to mark the occasion had to do so in private.

    This is only the tip of the iceberg. People are mourning not only the many who died on 4 June 1989 but also the Hong Kong vanishing before their eyes.

    Further than ever away from democracy

    When Hong Kong was handed over to China by the UK in 1997, China agreed to maintain the country’s distinct political and economic structures for the next 50 years, under the banner of ‘one country, two systems’.

    Hong Kong’s Basic Law guaranteed civic rights, including freedoms of association, peaceful assembly and expression. China committed to move towards universal suffrage for the election of Hong Kong’s Chief Executive, the head of government.

    But following the democracy protests that burst out in 2019, China has unilaterally torn up that agreement. Three years ago, the government passed the National Security Law, a sweeping piece of legislation that criminalises criticism of the authorities. It’s been used alongside existing laws, such as the law on sedition, to jail leaders of the democracy movement.

    China never made good on its promise of universal suffrage. It’s gone in the opposite direction. Current Chief Executive John Lee – who as security chief led the violent crackdown on democracy protests – was chosen last year by a hand-picked 1,500-member Election Committee, which duly endorsed him as the sole candidate.

    The Legislative Council, Hong Kong’s parliament, had already been neutered. The number of directly elected seats has been slashed and people are disqualified from standing if they question China’s sovereignty over Hong Kong.

    Now the District Councils are in the firing line. When the last elections for the municipal bodies were held, in the thick of democracy protests in November 2019, pro-democracy parties triumphed.

    Such a result is now impossible. In 2021, a law was passed requiring all district councillors to swear an oath of allegiance affirming their ‘patriotism’ for China. Most of the pro-democracy candidates elected in 2019 were disqualified or resigned.

    Now when new district councillors are chosen in November, only 20 per cent of seats will be directly elected. The authorities will fill the rest with their supporters, all vetted to ensure their ‘patriotism’. Little wonder that the Civic Party, one of Hong Kong’s leading pro-democracy parties, recently announced it was closing down.

    A hollowed-out Hong Kong

    Hong Kong was once a country where people felt safe to protest. It had a flourishing media and publishing industry. Now journalists are criminalised and key independent media have shut down.

    Civil society organisations and trade unions have done the same. The remaining organisations are scattered, practising self-censorship. Protests continue to be heavily restricted: this year a planned International Women’s Day march was cancelled after police threats.

    People continue to try to find ways to express dissent, but any small gesture can attract the state’s ire. The death of Queen Elizabeth II gave people an opportunity to use public mourning to express at with the regression since handover. But when a vigil was held during the Queen’s funeral, a harmonica player was arrested for daring to play the tune Glory to Hong Kong, associated with the democracy protests.

    Last year five speech therapists were convicted of producing ‘seditious publications’. Their crime was to produce children’s books in which sheep defend their villages from wolves. This was taken to be an allegory of China’s control of Hong Kong.

    Everyday repression is making Hong Kong a hollowed-out country, its population falling. Some schools face closure due to falling student numbers. Many have fled, not wanting their children to grow up in a country where education is indoctrination. The curriculum has been reworked to teach students loyalty rather than independent thought. Many teachers are leaving the country or taking early retirement.

    With the legal system facing increasing interference and political pressure, lawyers are also among those fleeing.

    A key test will be the trial of Jimmy Lai, former media owner and democracy campaigner. He’s already been found guilty on numerous counts. His newspaper, Apple Daily, once Hong Kong’s most widely read pro-democracy paper, shut down in 2021. He faces trial under the National Security Law, which could mean a life sentence.

    The judges who will try Lai have been handpicked by John Lee. Meanwhile the authorities have tried to prevent Lai’s defence lawyer, UK barrister Tim Owen, representing him in court. In March they passed a law giving Lee the power to ban foreign lawyers working on national security cases. It isn’t looking promising.

    Lai is one of Hong Kong’s 1,508 political prisoners. Even as the population shrinks, the imprisoned population just keeps getting bigger. The candles that commemorate the Tiananmen Square Massacre and the yearning for democracy will continue to flare around the world in exile – but those lights are being extinguished in Hong Kong.

    Andrew Firmin is CIVICUS Editor-in-Chief, co-director and writer for CIVICUS Lens and co-author of the State of Civil Society Report.


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    © Inter Press Service (2023) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service

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  • Urgency for a Global Fund for Media & Journalism

    Urgency for a Global Fund for Media & Journalism

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    • Opinion by Simone Galimberti (kathmandu, nepal)
    • Inter Press Service

    KATHMANDU, Nepal, May 30 (IPS) – There have been an array of proposals to sustain journalism around the world — from tax incentives and subsidies to the idea of allocating 1% of governments’ GDP to a drastically increased ODA for independent journalism in the global South.

    The debate has been intense and rightly so.

    What is needed is a long-term project that would put together a global architecture supporting serious and reliable journalism regardless of the size and business model of the outlets producing it. Amid such calls for governments and philanthropies to do more, something finally is moving.

    Yet the needs require real ambition and farsightedness that in practice means a coherent global governance to safeguard trustworthy media worldwide. The International Fund for Public Interest Media, initially announced by France during the Paris Peace Forum in 2022, is taking shape and an initial pilot cohort of media outlets already got selected.

    Because of its hybrid form of governance, independent but backed by governments and major philanthropies alike, the IFPIM could become the biggest source of funds for media around the world.

    As per the information provided on its website, it has already raised $50 million USD from more than 15 governments, philanthropies, and corporate entities but the ambition is much bigger.

    The Center for International Media Assistance (CIMA), an initiative of the bipartisan National Endowment for Democracy, an entity funded by the American Congress, estimates that global spending to support independent media globally should be $1 billion a year.

    The reality on the ground– considering also how many legacy media houses are struggling with revenues and a declining readership– might require a much bigger figure.

    If the situation was already dire before the pandemic, COVID was the knockdown blow for many media around the world that were already assaulted by the damaging impacts of big tech companies and their social media platforms. And now we also have to deal with an even more threatening and disruptive use of artificial intelligence.

    While AI-based technologies can offer some positive elements on how media engage with public, the risks are enormous. “AI-based technologies also have an enormous potential to harm our information ecosystems and threaten the fundamental human rights on which robust, independent media systems, and free societies” reads a resolution recently passed at the International Press Institute General Assembly just held in Vienna.

    With this gloomy scenario, the public interest media landscape is rapidly turning into what experts define as “news desert. We should be all very weary of the perils associated with its consequences. After all, as explained by the World Trends Report published by UNESCO, it is a vital issue because journalism is a public good that must be protected at any costs.

    In such a scenario the fact that the IFPIM aims to reach $500 million USD, itself a milestone in this quest, is a relief. Still, it is not enough.

    An issue to be taken into account is the fact that we are dealing with a fragmented landscape in this line of sector. There are already a small but increasingly more visible and impactful ecosystem, still in construction that is made up of blended agencies supporting independent media around the world.

    Some of the most significant among them are the Media Development Investment Fund, MDIF that takes a more investor like approach then what seems the still in construction approach of IFPIM, has been already able to provide a variety of funding options.

    With also a mixed lineup of investors, MDIF has already invested $300 million USD in 148 media outlets from 47 different countries. In addition, there is an increasing number of “intermediary” organizations.

    Some of them like Pluralis acts more like investors (among its own backers there is MDIF). Others offer a blended package, financial and capacity building like Free Press Unlimited IMS, International Media Support while United for News takes a market approach of linking ads with local online news outlets.

    BBC Media Action and Internews, on other hand, are intermediary closer to the field.

    Though each of these represent a different model of support, are different from each other, they are all aimed at enhancing the viability of robust, independent media.

    Interestingly we are seeing a crosspollination of such initiatives because their backers are often interlinked to each other with a major philanthropic foundation or bilateral donor supporting multiple initiatives at the same time.

    And we are not mentioning the mechanisms that several bilateral institutions in the West are putting together only exclusively to safeguard and protect journalists in danger.

    For example, the recently announced Reporters Shield, an undertaking of USAID, is particularly designed on tackling SLAPPs, the strategic lawsuits against public participation.

    Undoubtedly the IFPIM is going to be a standout catalyst but it is rightly showing commitment to partner with other key stakeholders.

    The recent MoU signed with Reporters without Frontiers, RSF and the Forum on Information and Democracy, the latter itself a global initiative leading the debate on safeguarding journalism that is housed at RSF, is promising but it is not enough.

    If the ambitions of IFPIM is to become a global fund for media and journalism support akin to the funding mechanisms being used to fight HIV and Tuberculosis, all the actors investing in independent media must truly come together.

    The fact that some of the major philanthropic organizations are putting resources in different baskets could be a positive element in a yet to establish globally coordinated multilayered approach promoting journalism and media houses.

    Such common intent would enable a truly global ecosystem allowing media to return to prominence they used to command and becoming, once again, a central pillar of public debate.

    First governments with adequate fiscal capacity should do whatever it takes to support their own media industry. Some of them in Europe are already doing so and also in the USA there are discussions for a new legislation and other financial tools, including cash vouchers for the citizens to buy subscriptions.

    Yet if we want to safeguard journalism and media around the world, it is essential to boost public and private media working with integrity in the North, including legacy newsrooms.

    It is not just about providing incentives, rebates or other financial support or ensuring that big tech owned platforms pay what is due to the newsrooms like it is slowly starting to happen.

    It is also about re-persuading people, including the youths, to read news, on and off line.

    Massive awareness initiatives involving schools and universities should also be prioritized in a way that a common user of news, can also turn into a citizen journalist or opinion writer.

    Second, a truly global and truly massive funding for media and journalism should be established even by merging existing entities. The result could become mega funder or donor of donors, a true Global Fund for Media and Journalism.

    All major governments and philanthropic organizations would inject financial resources and know-how that would then trickle to other smaller actors in the supply chain.

    In a potential ecosystem protecting media and journalism, there would be enough spaces for intermediary organizations like the ones already operating close to media houses on the ground, especially in the global South.

    It might be that entities like IFPIM and MDIF, each with its unique identity and features but united in their intents, one day might come together or might themselves act as at the upper level of a pyramid sustaining journalism and media, just a step below what would be a Global Fund for Media and Journalism.

    Journalism and the thriving of media should also become a central area of focus of the United Nations. Despite the obvious resistance that might come from certain camps, the United Nations Secretary General António Guterres should include it in its ambitious Our Common Agenda.

    Two of its twelve strategic pillars, “promote peace and prevent conflict” together with “build trust” should be strengthened with initiatives focused on media. A global code of conduct that promotes integrity in public information, one of the milestones under “build trust” should be accompanied by other bolder actions.

    Let’s not forget that UNESCO has been already involved in the promotion of media with two programs, like the International Programme for the Development of Communication (IPDC) on the top of the narrower, journalist focused protection tool Global Media Defense Fund.

    Positively, at the present, the momentum to save the media is gaining strength.

    Yet it is indispensable to ensure that the focus is going to be on medium and long term measures rather than on a short term fixes.

    Without a global design and ambition, it’s certain that the situation is only going to be worse. All global actors, together with the professionals and activists on the ground, must come together. The level and speed of discussions around the future of media must step up.

    It is only with profound changes in the funding mechanisms of journalism that serious and reliable news outlets both in North and South, either legacy or startups thriving on internet, will be able to continue to operate and thrive.

    There is no firewall to stop the journalism’s decadency. Only urgency and bold actions offer the best chance to ensure a “New Deal” for global media and journalism.

    Simone Galimberti is the co-founder of ENGAGE and The Good Leadership. He writes mostly about youths’ involvement in the UN, social development and human rights.

    IPS UN Bureau


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  • How Wagner Group, Mercenaries With a Wider Agenda, Impact Civil Society

    How Wagner Group, Mercenaries With a Wider Agenda, Impact Civil Society

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    Founder of Wagner private mercenary group, Yevgeny Prigozhin (here pictured with fighters), claims that Bakhmut is now in Moscow’s control. However his claims are disputed by Ukraine.
    • by Fawzia Moodley (johannesburg)
    • Inter Press Service

    JOHANNESBURG, May 24 (IPS) – The Wagner group, a shadowy mercenary group that has been operating for many years in African countries such as Sudan, Mali, the Central African Republic, and other mainly Francophone countries, has again been thrust into the limelight due to its involvement in the Ukraine war on behalf of Russia.

    Wagner’s and other Russian private military companies are believed to have a presence in 18 countries in Africa – and its influence goes far beyond security matters.

    Julian Rademeyer of the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime told DW.com, “Wagner itself has developed over time as an organization that’s gone from being a purely private military contracting entity into a multiplicity of business alliances and relations and a network of companies. Some of them are front companies across the countries in which they operate on the African continent.”

    He sees the Wagner Group as primarily a Kremlin military tool to boost Russia’s economic and military influence in Africa.

    Rademeyer’s colleague and lead author of a study titled Russia’s military, mercenary and criminal engagement in Africa, Julia Stanyard, told IPS, “The Wagner Group is unique as an organization in the breadth, scale, and boldness of its activities. However, our study also shows that Wagner did not emerge in a vacuum: The group’s activities and characteristics reflect broader trends in the evolution of Russia’s oligarchs and organized crime groups, their respective relationships with the Russian state, and their activities in Africa.”

    “The group comprises a network of political influence operations and economic entities such as mining companies.

    “It appears to target unstable governments embroiled in civil wars and forms alliances with the ruling elite and offers them military support and weapons.”

    This is exactly what happened in the CAR, where the government has been fighting multiple rebel forces since December 2020. A beleaguered President Faustin-Archange Touadéra reached out to Russia shortly after taking power in 2016.

    “He received Russian military instructors and weapons, and Wagner mercenaries soon followed,” says CIVICUS, a global alliance promoting civic action.

    In return, Wagner receives economic and mining concessions. According to the New York Times, the group has been involved in mining operations in the CAR, where it has secured contracts to mine gold and diamonds.

    Stanyard says: “The group comprises a network of political influence operations and economic entities such as mining companies.”

    While the governments and sections of their population have welcomed the group, Wagner’s been accused of gross human rights abuses, with local communities reporting forced labour and sexual violence.

    Human Rights Watch says it has collected compelling evidence that Russian fighters have committed grave abuses against civilians in the CAR with complete impunity since 2019. The HRW interviewed 40 people between February 2019 and November 2021 about abuses by men speaking Russian.

    Stanyard’s research substantiates the allegations of abuse: “Wagner Group has been accused of using whatever means necessary to achieve its aims, including criminal activity.”

    Russia officially does not recognize mercenaries, but Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin, a Russian oligarch, has close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Significantly, on Sunday, May 21, Putin reportedly congratulated the Wagner mercenary force for helping in what he called the “liberation” of the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut. Reuters quoted Putin from a statement on the Kremlin’s website, saying: “The Head of State congratulated Wagner’s assault groups, as well as all members of the units of the Russian Armed Forces who provided them with the necessary support and cover on their flanks, on the completion of the operation to liberate Artyomovsk (Bakhmut).”

    Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, however, said Bakhmut had not been occupied by Moscow.

    Wagner’s activities go beyond promoting the military and economic interests of the Kremlin.

    Stanyard says the group is also involved in promoting Russian propaganda and interests by “targeting the social media profiles of Kremlin critics — spamming them with pro-Putin and pro-war comments.”

    Britain, in particular, has expressed concern that among the targets are “senior UK ministers’ social media accounts, alongside other world leaders.”

    “The operation has suspected links to Prigozhin,” she says, quoting a UK report exposing the misinformation campaign by Russia.

    The Wagner Group’s involvement in Africa has raised concerns about the role of private military contractors in the continent’s conflicts. While some African governments have welcomed its presence, others are concerned about the lack of oversight and accountability.

    In 2019, the African Union adopted the African Standby Force Concept of Operations, which seeks to strengthen the capacity of African states to respond to crises and reduce their reliance on external actors. However, the implementation has been slow, and there are concerns that the Wagner Group and other mercenary groups will continue to operate with impunity.

    CIVICUS warns that Wagner’s involvement is “contributing to the closing of civic space. In the CAR, with his position bolstered, Touadéra has further repressed dissenting voices. Humanitarian workers and independent journalists are among those subjected to violence and intimidation by Wagner forces.”

    Likewise, in Mali, French media outlets have been banned and “the junta banned the activities of civil society organizations that receive French support, at a stroke hindering civil society’s ability to help people in humanitarian need due to the conflict and monitor human rights abuses.”

    The issue of private military contractors in Africa is not limited to the Wagner Group. Other companies, such as Academi (formerly known as Blackwater), a private firm hired by the U.S. that became synonymous with civilian killings in the Iraq war, have been involved in conflicts in the continent, often with little oversight or accountability.

    Dyck Advisory Group (DAG) was also involved in Mozambique in areas where the country is trying to deal with the Islamist insurgency. DAG claimed to have worked closely with the government to keep the insurgency at bay before the Southern African Development Community (SADC) sent deployments to Cabo Delgado province. Wagner was reportedly also involved in the conflict but left after experiencing a number of losses.

    The use of private military contractors has raised questions about the role of states and the responsibility of corporations in conflicts, as well as the need for greater transparency and accountability.

    IPS UN Bureau Report


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  • USAID Offers Protection to Journalists & NGOs Facing Defamation Lawsuits

    USAID Offers Protection to Journalists & NGOs Facing Defamation Lawsuits

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    • by Thalif Deen (united nations)
    • Inter Press Service

    UNITED NATIONS, May 12 (IPS) – The world’s news media — both under authoritarian regimes and democratic governments– continue to come under relentless attacks and political harassment.

    “Freedom of the press is the foundation of democracy and justice. It gives all of us the facts we need to shape opinions and speak truth to power. But in every corner of the world, freedom of the press is under attack,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on World Press Freedom Day May 3.

    Journalists and media workers, he said, are directly targeted on and offline as they carry out their vital work. They are routinely harassed, intimidated, detained and imprisoned.

    At least 67 media workers were killed in 2022 — a 50 per cent increase over the previous year. Nearly three quarters of women journalists have experienced violence online, and one in four have been threatened physically, according to the UN.

    But there is also an increase in non-physical attacks, including defamation lawsuits against media organizations challenging their legitimate right to free expression.

    The Washington-based US Agency for International Development (USAID) last week launched Reporters Shield, a new membership program that protects journalists around the world– who report in the public interest– from defamation lawsuits and legal threats.

    Established as a U.S.-based nonprofit organization by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and the Cyrus R. Vance Center for International Justice, Reporters Shield has been described as “a first-of-its-kind global program that defends investigative reporting around the world from legal threats meant to silence critical voices”.

    USAID, which has a long history of fostering the growth of independent media across the world, plans to work with Congress to contribute up to $9 million in seed funding for this groundbreaking new program to support media outside the United States, according to a May 2 press release.

    In a statement released last week, USAID said investigative journalists and civil society organizations reporting in the public interest are increasingly facing lawsuits that aim to harass and silence them by burdening them with the cost and time of a legal defense until they abandon their stories or go out of business entirely.

    Reporters Shield will help to reduce these risks through training and pre-publication review, as well as funding legal representation to fight lawsuits and other legal actions meant to intimidate and financially burden reporters.

    In order to keep the program sustainable, member organizations participating in Reporters Shield will pay reasonable annual fees that are based on a variation of factors, including location of the outlet and how many stories they produce a year.

    “To be considered for membership in Reporters Shield, an organization must be legally registered and focus primarily in news, public interest, and/or investigative reporting; publish reporting in print and/or online; have non-profit status or transparent ownership; be independent from political, commercial, or other undue influence or interference; and have editorial independence and adhere to professional editorial standards”.

    Reporters Shield is accepting applications worldwide and will be reviewing them in a phased approach, with some regions receiving benefits in the coming months, and others added later this year and in 2024.

    Interested organizations can find more information and apply for membership by visiting reporters-shield.org.

    The development of Reporters Shield has been supported by the generous pro bono legal support of the law firms of Proskauer, Primmer Piper Eggleston & Cramer PC, and Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP.

    www.usaid.gov/democracy/reporters-shield.

    Mandeep S. Tiwana, Chief Programmes Officer at CIVICUS, a global alliance of civil society organizations (CSOs), told IPS “these are hard times for media freedoms due to disinformation and attacks on civic space spurred by deepening authoritarianism, denigration of democracy through populism and consolidation of wealth by oligarchs”.

    Uncovering serious human rights violations and high-level corruption, he pointed out, is becoming increasingly dangerous and costly for investigative journalists and civil society activists.

    When few companies are ready to sign the Anti- Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPP) pledge and crafty politicians are busy undermining the independence of judiciaries, this initiative comes at a critical time,” he declared.

    According to the Anti-SLAPP pledge by Global Citizen, an international education and advocacy organization, strategic lawsuits against public participation, or SLAPPs, are not a legitimate business strategy for companies.

    “The private sector thrives in functioning democratic societies, where the right to freedom of expression is a respected bedrock principle and where everyone can express their views without fear of intimidation or reprisal”.

    “Lawsuits and legal tactics meant to silence civil organizations and human rights defenders aren’t just bad for societies, they’re also damaging to companies. When companies stifle free expression, they limit their ability to manage risk related to their operations and global supply chains.”

    As companies that are committed to operating in societies where people are able to exercise fundamental rights, said Global Citizen, “we pledge to: define Strategic lawsuits against public participation, or SLAPPs, as both lawsuits and legal tactics that are designed to silence critics and abridge citizens’ ability to exercise fundamental rights.”

    — Refrain from engaging in SLAPPs against human rights and environmental defenders and civil society organizations that support affected rights-holders.

    — Recognize the critical role that civil society organizations and human rights defenders play in creating a profitable enabling environment for the private sector.

    — Encourage partners and suppliers within our value chain to refrain from engaging in SLAPPs to silence legitimate activism.

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  • Uzbekistan: A President for Life?

    Uzbekistan: A President for Life?

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    Credit: Victor Drachev/AFP via Getty Images
    • Opinion by Andrew Firmin (london)
    • Inter Press Service

    LONDON, May 05 (IPS) – Where will you be in 2040? For Uzbekistan’s President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, the answer is: in the Kuksaroy Presidential Palace. That’s the chief consequence of the referendum held in the Central Asian country on 30 April.

    With dissent tightly controlled in conditions of closed civic space, there was no prospect of genuine debate, a campaign against, or a no vote.

    Repression betrays image of reform

    Mirziyoyev took over the presidency in 2016 following the death of Islam Karimov, president for 26 years. Karimov ruled with an iron fist; Mirziyoyev has tried to position himself as a reformer by comparison.

    The government rightly won international recognition when Uzbekistan was declared free of the systemic child labour and forced labour that once plagued its cotton industry. The move came after extensive international civil society campaigning, with global action compensating for the inability of domestic civil society to mobilise, given severe civic space restrictions.

    While that systemic problem has been addressed, undoubtedly abuses of labour rights remain. And these are far from the only human rights violations. When one of the proposed constitutional changes announced last July sparked furious protests, the repression that followed belied Mirziyoyev’s reformist image.

    Among the proposed changes was a plan to amend the status of Uzbekistan’s Karakalpakstan region. Formally, it’s an autonomous republic with the right to secede. The surprise announcement that this special status would end brought rare mass protests in the regional capital, Nukus. When local police refused to intervene, central government flew over riot police, inflaming tensions and resulting in violent clashes.

    A state of emergency was imposed, tightly restricting the circulation of information. Because of this, details are scarce, but it seems some protesters started fires and tried to occupy government buildings, and riot police reportedly responded with live ammunition and an array of other forms of violence. Several people were killed and over 500 were reported to have been detained. Many received long jail sentences.

    The government quickly dropped its intended change, but otherwise took a hard line, claiming the protesters were foreign-backed provocateurs trying to destabilise the country. But what happened was down to the absence of democracy. The government announced the proposed change with no consultation. All other channels for expressing dissent being blocked, the only way people could communicate their disapproval was to take to the streets.

    Civic space still closed

    It remains the reality that very little independent media is tolerated and journalists and bloggers experience harassment and intimidation. Vague and broad laws against the spreading of ‘false information’ and defamation give the state ample powers to block websites, a regular occurrence.

    Virtually no independent civil society is allowed; most organisations that present themselves as part of civil society are government entities. Independent organisations struggle to register, particularly when they have a human rights focus. New regulations passed in June 2022 give the state oversight of activities supported by foreign donors, further restricting the space for human rights work.

    It’s been a long time since Uzbekistan held any kind of recognisably democratic vote. The only presidential election with a genuine opposition candidate was held in 1991. Mirziyoyev certainly hasn’t risked a competitive election: when he last stood for office, to win his second term in 2021, he faced four pro-government candidates.

    A flawed vote and a self-serving outcome

    The referendum’s reported turnout and voting totals were at around the same levels as for the non-competitive presidential elections: official figures stated that 90-plus per cent endorsed the changes on a turnout of almost 85 per cent.

    Given the state’s total control, voting figures are hard to trust. Even if the numbers are taken at face value, election observers from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe pointed out that the referendum was held ‘in an environment that fell short of political pluralism and competition’. There was a lack of genuine debate, with very little opportunity for people to put any case against approving the changes.

    State officials and resources were mobilised to encourage a yes vote and local celebrities were deployed in rallies and concerts. State media played its usual role as a presidential mouthpiece, promoting the referendum as an exercise in enhancing rights and freedoms. Anonymous journalists reported that censorship had increased ahead of the vote and they’d been ordered to cover the referendum positively.

    Mirziyoyev is clearly the one who benefits. The key change is the extension of presidential terms from five to seven years. Mirziyoyev’s existing two five-year terms are wiped from the count, leaving him eligible to serve two more. Mirziyoyev has taken the same approach as authoritarian leaders the world over of reworking constitutions to stay in power. It’s hardly the act of a reformer.

    The president remains all-powerful, appointing all government and security force officials. Meanwhile there’s some new language about rights and a welcome abolition of the death penalty – but no hint of changes that will allow movement towards free and fair elections, real opposition parties, independent human rights organisations and free media.

    The constitution’s new language about rights will mean nothing if democratic reform doesn’t follow. But change of this kind was always possible under the old constitution – it’s always been lack of political will at the top standing in the way, and that hasn’t changed.

    Democratic nations, seeking to build bridges in Central Asia to offer a counter to the region’s historical connections with Russia, may well welcome the superficial signs of reform. A UK-based public relations firm was hired to help persuade them. But they should urge the president to go much further, follow up with genuine reforms, and allow for real political competition when he inevitably stands for his third term.

    Andrew Firmin is CIVICUS Editor-in-Chief, co-director and writer for CIVICUS Lens and co-author of the State of Civil Society Report.

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  • Safeguarding the Future of Independent Media & Our Democracies

    Safeguarding the Future of Independent Media & Our Democracies

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    Khadija Patel. Credit:: Syracuse University
    • Opinion by Khadija Patel (johannesburg, south africa)
    • Inter Press Service

    JOHANNESBURG, South Africa, May 02 (IPS) – There’s a now familiar groan every time the lights go out in South Africa. Due to a critical shortage of electricity, the national power utility institutes a daily regimen of scheduled power cuts.

    Some areas in large cities experience up to ten hours of blackouts per day. The damage to businesses and a general sense of safety and security is yet to be properly calculated.

    But it has also had profound implications for how community radio stations can continue broadcasting through the darkness. Most community radio stations have simply gone silent. Bush Radio, the country’s oldest community radio station, found itself off air for several hours per day.

    In the townships of Cape Town’s sprawling Cape Flats district, Bush Radio has a special relationship of solidarity and belonging with the communities it serves.

    Through its talk shows, training programmes and social engagement campaigns, it acts as a sounding board for communities who often struggle to find representation and recognition beyond daily reports of gang violence.

    Khadija Patel. Credit:: Syracuse UniversityAmidst all the other challenges facing the radio station, like ageing equipment and dwindling sources of funding, broadcasting through the dark is the latest setback. It is a typical story. The challenges news media face may be different from place to place, but they are rapidly compounding everywhere.

    And they have an impact on more than whether Bush Radio can remain on air. What is at stake is the avenues available for their audience to communicate with each other, to take part in decisions that affect their lives, and to celebrate their own cultures.

    This week, as the United Nations celebrates World Press Freedom Day – also 30 years old – it’s time to get serious about stopping what’s been labelled a media extinction event.

    Until June 2020, I was the editor of the Mail & Guardian newspaper in South Africa. I’d hoped to restore the start-up rigour of one of Africa’s most cherished independent news institutions.

    However, my experience of trying to run a newsroom, to keep public interest journalism alive in the face of broken business model, revealed the grave structural crisis facing news media today.

    Advertising revenue was already in free fall as so much of it had migrated to the social media platforms, but it was the pandemic that sent us over the edge.

    We were forced to issue an urgent appeal to our readers to keep the paper afloat and while this allowed us to meet our most pressing commitments at the time, it did not resolve the deeper problem of quickly finding a consistent revenue stream that would allow the institution to be relevant in new ways.

    My experience is replicated across Africa – and beyond. Media outlets are trying to innovate but cannot do so quickly enough to defy the harsh economic headwinds.

    Independent journalism faces an existential economic crisis: traditional business models have broken down; new ones will take time to emerge. Economic levers are being used to silence critical voices, and private and political interests are capturing economically weak media.

    So, what do we do?

    In this moment of profound crisis, we must assert the value of news media. This is a moment for the world to come together to recognise that something drastic must be done to ensure independent journalism is supported as a public good.

    So, when so much of the discourse around news media is steeped in despair – for good reason – working on the founding team of International Fund for Public Interest Media, as Journalist-in-Residence, has been energising.

    Launching today at the UN’s World Press Freedom Day conference, the International Fund is the first multilateral body dedicated to helping independent media in low and middle-income countries to weather the storm.

    Bush Radio is one of its pilot grantees. It will use its small grant to supplement salaries and update its computer systems. It has also used its grant to purchase a generator to power the studio during blackouts.

    So far, the International Fund has received support from world leaders such as Presidents Biden and Macron, with pledges from over a dozen governments and corporate entities, raising US$50m.

    But its ambition is to emulate the success of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria or the GAVI Alliance, bodies which transformed the level of treatments and vaccines available to fight deadly disease. In the coming years we want to raise $500m, a sum more commensurate with the scale of the problem facing media today.

    A free, independent media is what underpins freedom of expression, human rights and all our development goals. Its decline will have a profound impact on democracy – for the fewer stories journalists are able to get to, the less we understand what is happening around us, the more we lose of our understanding of each other.

    Khadija Patel is Journalist-in-Residence, International Fund for Public Interest Media, and Chairperson of the International Press Institute.

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  • UN Plan of Action on Safety of Journalists

    UN Plan of Action on Safety of Journalists

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    Credit: Shutterstock
    • Opinion by Audrey Azoulay (paris)
    • Inter Press Service

    PARIS, May 01 (IPS) – Freedom of the press is the cornerstone of democratic society. Without a debate of ideas, without verified facts, without diversity of perspectives, democracy is a shadow of itself; and World Press Freedom Day was established to remind us of this.

    On World Press Freedom Day 2023, UNESCO will organize a special anniversary event at UN headquarters in New York, marking the 30 years since the UN General Assembly’s decision proclaiming an international day for press freedom.

    This anniversary edition of World Press Freedom Day will include a full day of activities at the UN Headquarters on 2nd May. Partners from the media, academia, and civil society are invited to organize events in New York and around the world centered on this year’s theme.

    For the international community, it is first and foremost a question of combating the impunity that still surrounds crimes of which journalists are victims, with nearly nine out of ten murders of journalists going unpunished.

    This, for instance, is the objective of the United Nations Plan of Action on the Safety of Journalists and the issue of Impunity, which UNESCO has been leading for ten years. It is also about ensuring that independent media can continue to exist.

    With the digital revolution, the information landscape and its modes of production and distribution have been radically disrupted, jeopardizing the viability of independent professional media.

    To ensure that information remains a common good in the digital age, our Member States, through the Windhoek +30 Declaration of 2021, have undertaken to support independent journalism, ensure greater transparency of online platforms, and develop media and information literacy.

    We will not be able to do this without the actors who now have significant control over access to information: the digital platforms. This is why UNESCO held the “Internet for Trust” conference in February, as an essential step towards the development of principles to regulate digital platforms.

    This is a fundamental issue, because it involves both protecting freedom of expression and fighting disinformation and hate speech. Thirty years after the first World Press Freedom Day, we can see how far we have come and how far we still have to go.

    So, let this Day be an opportunity to renew our commitment, within international organizations, to defending journalists and, through them, press freedom.

    Footnote: As the UN Organization responsible for defending and promoting freedom of expression, media independence and pluralism, UNESCO leads the organization of World Press Freedom Day each year.

    This year’s celebration will be particularly special: the international community will mark the 30th anniversary of the proclamation of the Day by the United Nations General Assembly.

    It will serve as an occasion to take stock of the global gains for press freedom secured by UNESCO and its partners in the past decades, as well as underline the new risks faced in the digital age.

    IPS UN Bureau

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  • A Proposal for a UN Freedom of Information Act Never Got Off the Ground

    A Proposal for a UN Freedom of Information Act Never Got Off the Ground

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    Credit: UNESCO Attribution 3.0 IGO
    • by Thalif Deen (united nations)
    • Inter Press Service

    UNITED NATIONS, May 01 (IPS) – The United Nations has consistently been a vociferous advocate of freedom of the press – and, most importantly, the right of journalists to report without fear of reprisals.

    But regrettably, the UN is also one of most opaque institutions where transparency is never the norm.

    Celebrated every 3rd of May, this year’s theme for World Press Freedom Day will be “Shaping a Future of Rights: Freedom of Expression as a Driver for all other Human Rights.”

    Journalists, rarely if ever, were able to get any on-the-record comments or reactions from ambassadors, diplomats and senior UN officials because most of them follow the advice given to Brits during war-time censorship in the UK: “Be like Dad, Keep Mum”.

    As Winston Churchill once remarked: “Diplomacy is the art of telling people ‘to go to hell’ in such a way that they ask for directions.”

    But as a general rule, most ambassadors and diplomats did not tell us either to go to hell or heaven– but avoided all comments on politically-sensitive issues with the standard non-excuse: ”Sorry, we have to get clearance from our capital”.

    But that “clearance” from their respective foreign ministries never came. Still, it was hard to beat a response from a tight-lipped Asian diplomat who told me: “No comment” – and as an after-thought, added: “And Don’t Quote Me on That”.

    And most senior UN officials, on the other hand, never had even the basic courtesy or etiquette to respond to phone calls or email messages even with an acknowledgment. The lines of communications were mostly dead.

    When I complained to the media-savvy Shashi Tharoor, a former UN Under-Secretary-General, head of the one-time Department of Public Information (DPI) and a prolific author, he was explicit in his response when he said that every UN official – “from an Under-Secretary-General to a window-washer”—has the right to express an opinion in his or her area of expertise.

    The US Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), which dates back to 1967, has provided the public and mostly the press in the United States the right to request access to records from any federal agency—and has been described as “the law that keeps citizens in the know about their government”.

    As a result, some of the newspaper scoops and insider information in the US mainstream media have come following requests from American journalists under the FOIA.

    But a longstanding proposal for a FOIA at the United Nations has failed to get off the ground due largely to the inaction by the 193-member General Assembly, the UN’s highest policy making body, resulting in the lack of transparency in the inner workings of the UN and its Secretariat.

    So has the proposal for a UN Special Envoy to deal with safety of journalists—dead on arrival (DOA).

    Andreas Bummel, Executive Director, Democracy Without Borders, told IPS: the UN is an institution that exercises public authority directly and indirectly with over 30,000 working in the Secretariat (plus the UN system worldwide).

    “As such, it needs to be accountable not only to its member states but to citizens and the public at large.

    Establishing a proper freedom of information procedure at the UN will be an important tool to enhance this, declared Bummel, co-author of “A World Parliament: Governance and Democracy in the 21st Century.”

    Martin S. Edwards, Professor and Chair, School of Diplomacy and International Relations at Seton Hall University in the US, told IPS: “I must admit I don’t know the legal angles here. This having been said, it’s pretty clear to me that the only way forward for the UN in an era of political division is greater transparency”

    Greater efforts to “tell your story better” are not enough. You can’t advocate for “effective, accountable, and inclusive” institutions at the national level without it, within the UN system too. Things like access to information are an essential step in that direction, he added.

    In the US, federal agencies are required to disclose any information requested under the FOIA unless it falls under one of nine exemptions which protect interests such as personal privacy, national security, and law enforcement.

    In Australia, the legislation is known as Right2Know; in Bangladesh, the Right to Information (RTI) provides resources for those seeking to file a request with government agencies; in Japan, the Citizens’ Centre for Information Disclosure offers help to those interested in filing requests; in India, the Right to Information: a Citizen Gateway is the portal for RTI; Canada’s Access to Information Act came into force in 1983 and Kenya’s Access to Information Act was adopted in August 2016, according to the Centre for Law and Democracy (CLD).

    And Sweden’s Freedom of the Press Act of 1766 has been described as the “oldest in the world.”

    While FOIA covers access to federal government agency records, the Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) guarantees access to state and local government records. All 50 states in the US also have freedom of information laws that govern access to these documents, though the provisions of the state laws vary considerably.

    The Paris-based UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), which is mandated to oversee press freedom, defines Freedom of Information (FOI) as the right to access information held by public bodies.

    According to UNESCO, the FOI is an integral part of the fundamental right of freedom of expression, as recognized by Resolution 59 of the UN General Assembly adopted in 1946, as well as by Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), which states that the fundamental right of freedom of expression encompasses the freedom to “to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers”.

    FOI has also been enshrined as a “freedom of expression” in other major international instruments, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966) and the American Convention on Human Rights (1969).

    In an interview with IPS back in 2017, Samir Sanbar, a former UN Assistant Secretary-General who headed the one-time Department of Public Information (DPI), said the right to information is an integral part of U.N. principles.

    But providing that right—even the basic information available in the public domain– has been stymied both by member states and the UN bureaucracy, he added.

    He pointed out that the need to “inform the peoples” is implicitly indicated in the UN Charter.

    But implementing it was “a basic issue I had experienced throughout my work, with both certain government officials– including those publicly claiming open channels– and many senior U.N. Secretariat colleagues”.

    Those who believed “Information is Power” were very hesitant, to what they perceived was sharing their authority with a wider public, said Sanbar who served under five different UN Secretaries-General.

    “It was most evident that when I launched the now uncontested website www.un.org, a number of powerful Under-Secretaries-General (USGs) and Permanent Representatives cautioned me against “telling everyone what was happening” (in the UN system) and refused to authorize any funds.”

    “I had to raise a team of DPI volunteers in my office, operating from within the existing budget, to go ahead and eventually offer computers loaned from an outside source, to certain delegations to realize it was more convenient for them to access news releases than having to send one of their staffers daily to the building to collect material from the third floor.“

    Eventually, everyone joined in, and the site became one of the ten best official sites worldwide.

    “We had a similar difficulty in prodding for International World Press Freedom Day through the General Assembly. It seems that even those with the best of intentions– since delegates represent official governments that view free press with cautious monitoring– are usually weary of opening a potentially vulnerable issue,” said Sanbar, author of the book “Inside the U.N. in a Leaderless World’.

    This article contains excerpts from a 2021 book on the United Nations—largely a collection of political anecdotes– titled “No Comment – and Don’t Quote Me on That,” available on Amazon. The link to Amazon via the author’s website follows: https://www.rodericgrigson.com/no-comment-by-thalif-deen/

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  • Media Freedom is Vital but have we Passed Peak Press?

    Media Freedom is Vital but have we Passed Peak Press?

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    • Opinion by Farhana Haque Rahman (toronto, canada)
    • Inter Press Service

    TORONTO, Canada, Apr 30 (IPS) – Peak oil was first up, followed by peak gas, gold and others, as if the world was draining natural resources like toilet roll panic buying in a lockdown supermarket. But should we now be worried about Peak Press?

    Farhana Haque RahmanShifting and even intangible is it possible that we are already sliding downhill, and that moment of peak media freedom is disappearing in the rear-view mirror?

    World Press Freedom Day, child of the UN General Assembly, marks its 30th birthday on May 3 – still relatively young, but definitely showing signs of wear and tear.

    Measuring the state of its vital organs is not an exact science. The Paris-based non-profit media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) compiles an annual and thorough medical bulletin, and the latest check-up, country-by-country, makes for mostly alarming reading.

    There are common denominators in all the ailments afflicting press freedom around the world, but with each region or continent seeming to specialise in certain characteristics.

    Asia is particularly worrying, with the common theme of muscle-flexing autocrats vying for absolute control of information and exercising what RSF calls a dramatic deterioration of press freedom. Post-coup Myanmar and China are the world’s biggest jailers of journalists. Afghanistan back under the Taliban is brutally repressive. North Korea brings up the rear of the rankings, again.

    Hong Kong, under China’s imposition of the draconian national security law, fell 68 places in the RSF league table. Vietnam and Singapore also tightened their grip on the media.

    Anuradha Bhasin, executive editor of The Kashmir Times recently wrote in The New York Times that his newspaper “may not survive Mr. Modi. His repressive media policies are destroying Kashmiri journalism, intimidating media outlets into serving as government mouthpieces and creating an information vacuum in our region of about 13 million people.”

    This year Pakistan was placed at 157 among 180 countries on RSF’s World Press Freedom Index list. The country has been ruled by the military for more than half of it’s 75 years of independence since 1947. In a report last year, along with a list of global leaders who suppressed opposing voices, RSF named former Prime Minister Imran Khan as one of the “predators of press freedom”.

    Repression is dressed up in legislation as seen in Bangladesh’s Digital Security Act, passed in 2018 and applied to journalists, activists and others.Two days after a journalist with Prothom Alo was detained, the UN Human Rights Chief Volker Türk called on Bangladesh to suspend application of the DSA immediately.

    Where Asia can be ruthless and draconian, it is lawlessness and societal fragmentation that make parts of Latin America the most dangerous place for journalists. Mexico and Haiti lead the way. At least 67 journalists and media workers were killed in 2022, an increase of almost 50 percent on 2021, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. Research published by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism found that 30 to 42 media workers were killed in Latin America in the line of duty.

    Rocío Gallegos, a journalist and co-founder of La Verdad Juárez, an investigative journalism outlet in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, was quoted as saying the situation is desperate and complex, not just due to growing conditions for violence, but because there is “less and less support from society towards journalists and journalism.”

    Courageous reporters like Gallegos and the underground citizen journalists covering Myanmar’s horrific civil war inspire us, and lend hope to the survival of the ideals of a free press.

    But it is in the West, the cradle of a free media, that we can feel most cynicism over the frightening erosion of media credibility led by its very own moguls and conglomerates.

    The wanton and deliberate peddling of conspiracy theories over the 2020 US election results by Fox News (among others) was laid bare by the defamation case brought by Dominion Voting Systems. Fox settled out of court for $787 million in damages. Its lies were not trivial as we know. Five people died as a result of the January 2021 storming of the US Capitol by a mob of Donald Trump’s supporters.

    Democracies need truth-telling media to flourish, and it was telling that much of the media coverage focused instead on 92-year-old Rupert Murdoch and his family succession machinations.

    Fox News was – and quite possibly will remain — the ultimate mainstream player in the theatre of performance media, where facts don’t get in the way of a good conspiracy.

    The recent demise of BuzzFeed News and its Pulitzer-prize winning department can also be seen as marking the end of an era. The suggestion by its founder, Jonah Peretti, that there may not be a sustainable business model for high-quality online news should be ringing alarm bells everywhere.

    To add to this potentially toxic mix, where social media platforms become a blurry cauldron of conspiracy theories and state-sponsored disinformation, we now have to contend with the new disruptive age of ChatGPT.

    The polarisation of the press in the West and its weaponisation in superpower conflicts are highly damaging trends. Russia’s arrest of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and China’s detention of Taiwan publisher Li Yanhe are the most recent examples. A possible Biden-Trump rematch in the 2024 US elections, and the dangerous deterioration in Sino-US relations threaten to exacerbate both polarisation and weaponisation of the media.

    As for Peak Oil – the world may have passed that point already, and economists are debating whether 2019 was when overall fossil fuel demand reached its zenith. There are many reasons for this historic shift, not least that the alternatives, such as renewable energy, are becoming cheaper.

    But what is the substitute for a free and healthy press – the lifeblood of free and healthy societies? The alternatives are clearly on view all around us and they don’t look good.

    Farhana Haque Rahman is Senior Vice President of IPS Inter Press Service; a journalist and communications expert, she is a former senior official of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization and the International Fund for Agricultural Development.

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  • Fiji: Deeper Democracy or Continuing Danger?

    Fiji: Deeper Democracy or Continuing Danger?

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    Credit: Pita Simpson/Getty Images
    • Opinion by Andrew Firmin (london)
    • Inter Press Service

    LONDON, Apr 28 (IPS) – It’s been a time of significant change in Fiji following the country’s December 2022 election. A close vote was followed by the formation of a new coalition government. Frank Bainimarama was out as prime minister after 16 years, replaced by Sitiveni Rabuka.

    Rabuka was hardly a new face, having been prime minister in the 1990s, and both Bainimarama and Rabuka had previously led military coups. For Fiji’s civil society, the question was whether this political shift would bring improvements in civic and democratic freedoms. Bainimarama’s government had shown itself increasingly intolerant of dissent.

    People who criticised the government were subjected to harassment and arrest. In July 2021, nine opposition politicians were arrested, questioned and accused of inciting unrest. In 2020, opposition party offices were raided by police in response to social media posts critical of the government.

    The outgoing government used the Public Order Act to restrict protests, including by opposition parties. The Fiji Trade Union Congress was repeatedly denied permission to march and its leader charged with public order offences. Police often used excessive force against protests, with impunity. There was, in short, much room for improvement.

    Positive steps on media freedom

    The most encouraging move so far is the repeal of the Media Industry Development Act. This law, passed under the Bainimarama government, established a highly interventionist government-controlled media regulator. Journalists could be jailed for two years and media outlets slapped with heavy fines if their reporting was judged to go against the national or public interest – vague terms open to broad interpretation. This encouraged self-censorship.

    The law was one of the main reasons Fiji was the lowest-ranking Pacific Island nation on Reporters Without Borders’ World Press Freedom Index. Media freedom constraints came from the top, with the government favouring state-aligned media, including by withholding advertising from more critical outlets.

    Now the media and civil society will be looking for the government to go further. A sedition law that can bring extensive jail sentences remains in need of reform. And beyond this, the government needs to actively support the development of independent Fijian media, including through the fairer distribution of ad spending.

    The new government has also moved to rebuild relationships with trade unions. In February it confirmed it would re-establish an effective tripartite forum that brings together government, trade unions and employers; its predecessor was accused of not taking this seriously. The new government has said it will bring to an end the harassment, intimidation and arrest of union leaders. Unions will work to hold the government to these promises.

    A fall from grace

    These changes have come against a backdrop of continuing political polarisation. It’s been quite the journey for Bainimarama since losing power. In February he was suspended from parliament. This came after he used his first speech as leader of the opposition to deliver a stinging critique of Fiji’s president, Ratu Wiliame Katonivere.

    In his speech, Bainimarama appealed to the military to ‘not forsake their constitutional role’. This seemed a coded plea for military intervention: the 2013 constitution, introduced by Bainimarama, gives the military the power to intervene to ensure the ‘safety and security of the country’. When he was still prime minister, as post-electoral negotiations were taking place, Bainimarama had ordered the military onto the streets.

    Bainimarama’s response to his suspension was to resign from parliament. But he made clear his intent to stay politically active and remains party leader.

    Last month Bainimarama was charged with abuse of office while prime minister. He was granted bail after pleading not guilty. He’s alleged to have intervened to stop a police investigation into alleged corruption at the University of the South Pacific. Police Commissioner Sitiveni Tukaituraga Qiliho, currently suspended, is also charged with abuse of office for the same case and has also pleaded not guilty.

    Dangers ahead

    The obvious danger is that Bainimarama, no longer confined by parliamentary niceties, could seek to stir unrest through sensationalism and disinformation, which could offer a pretext for his supporters in the military to intervene. The spectre of military rule is never far away in Fiji. There have been four coups since independence in 1970. Rabuka led two in 1987 and then Bainimarama headed coups in 2000 and 2006. In this context, it’s ominous that in January the head of the army expressed concern about ‘sweeping changes’ being introduced by the new government.

    On all occasions the pretext for coups has been ethnic unrest, with Fiji’s population broadly divided between Indigenous Fijians and people of Asian heritage. Civil society and the international community will need to stay alert to any attempts to foster division and mobilise one population group against the other.

    At the same time the new government needs to beware of fuelling narratives that it’s being vindictive towards Bainimarama and his party. There’s a need to ensure that diverse points of view can be aired – including from the new opposition. As a former coup leader, Rabuka needs to keep proving his commitment to democracy.

    What happens next in Fiji is of concern not just for Fijians but for the region, since the country is a major hub and host of key regional institutions. China and the USA, along with Australia, are trying to build closer relations with Fiji as they compete for influence among Pacific Island nations. So whether Fiji becomes more democratic and opens up civic space matters.

    In these early days of the new government there can be no room for complacency. Fiji’s civil society must be supported and enabled as a vital democratic force. And it must keep on engaging constructively to ensure that government promises are followed by deeds that advance rights.

    Andrew Firmin is CIVICUS Editor-in-Chief, co-director and writer for CIVICUS Lens and co-author of the State of Civil Society Report.

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  • Defending Human Rights Is a Crime in Some Countries and a Deadly Activity in Others

    Defending Human Rights Is a Crime in Some Countries and a Deadly Activity in Others

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    • Opinion by Bibbi Abruzzini, Clarisse Sih – Forus (brussels)
    • Inter Press Service

    BRUSSELS, Apr 27 (IPS) – In today’s world, human rights defenders face immense challenges, with threats, attacks, and repression being rampant in many countries. According to the latest report by Front Line Defenders, killings of rights defenders increased in 2022, with a total of 401 deaths across 26 different countries. Despite the adoption of the UN Declaration on Human Rights Defenders 25 years ago, the threats faced by defenders persist globally.

    One striking example of the dire situation is in Bolivia, where violations of freedoms of expression, association, peaceful assembly, and the right to defend rights have been recorded by the Observatory of Rights Defenders of UNITAS, with the Permanent Assembly of Human Rights of Bolivia (APDHB) being a longstanding victim of attacks and delegitimization. A total of 725 violations of the freedoms of expression, association and peaceful assembly, democratic institutions and the right to defend rights have been recorded by the Observatory of Rights Defenders.

    Gladys Sandova, a human rights and environmental defender in the Tariquía Flora and Fauna National Reserve in Bolivia, reveals how the state often aligns with oil businesses instead of protecting communities. “Tariquía is the lung of Tarija,” Gladys explains, yet this vital source of water for southern Bolivia and home to over 3,000 people, is at risk due to the state-owned Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales Bolivianos (YPFB) seeking to revive oil exploration in the reserve.

    “Oil companies are here, we are going to lose our natural richness, they are going to affect the lives of families, and contaminate our water and our air,” says Gladys, reflecting the urgent need to defend human rights and the environment.

    Her story is similar to that of several other human rights defenders across the globe : they are victims of hostilities, interference, threats, and harassment. The campaign, ReImagina La Defensa de Derechos, by UNITAS collects the testimonies of human rights defenders and indigenous leaders across Bolivia raising awareness about the challenges they face.

    Stories from human rights defenders from across the globe are also featured in the #AlternativeNarratives campaign, which seeks to amplify the voices of civil society organizations and grassroots movements that work towards social justice, human rights, and sustainable development. The campaign encourages the use of storytelling, multimedia tools, and creative expression to highlight alternative perspectives, challenge stereotypes, and advocate for positive chang while fostering a more inclusive and equitable narrative space that reflects the diversity of human experiences and promotes solidarity, empathy, and mutual understanding.

    Human rights defenders, including women defenders, continue to mobilize against repressive regimes and occupying forces in countries like Afghanistan, the DRC, El Salvador, Iran, Myanmar, Sudan, and Ukraine. Mary Lawlor, UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders, highlights the underreporting of human rights violations against defenders, particularly women, and outlines “disturbing trends” in relation to civic space worldwide.

    Repongac, representing over 1,200 NGOs in Central Africa, states that “human rights in Central Africa are no longer guaranteed,” with civil society actors, journalists, and defenders facing repression, prosecution, and arrests. Recent campaigns organized by Repongac in Central Africa and Repaoc in West Africa, supported by Forus and the French Development Agency, brought together diverse stakeholders, including human rights defenders, political parties, parliamentarians, journalists, and security personnel, to initiate a dialogue and protect civic space amnd fundametnal freedoms in the region.

    To support activists and defenders globally, the Danish Institute for Human Rights has launched a monitoring tool that assesses whether an enabling environment for human rights defenders exists across five critical areas. Developed in collaboration with 24 institutions and organizations, including the United Nations and civil society networks, the tool not only tracks the number of killings of human rights defenders but also analyzes the presence of appropriate legislation and practices to protect defenders.

    As Carol Rask, a representative of the Danish Institute for Human Rights, explains, defending human rights is a crime in some countries and a deadly activity in others. It is a call to action for change, urging individuals, organizations, and governments to prioritize and protect the crucial work of human rights defenders worldwide.

    Griselda Sillerico, human rights defender in Bolivia for over 30 years, quotes Ana María Romero and says “human rights are seeds that we continue to plant and that over the years we harvest.” Griselda Sillerico’s quote echoes the enduring spirit of human rights advocacy, where the work of human rights defenders like her is a constant effort to sow the seeds of justice, equality, and dignity for all. Despite the challenges and setbacks, human rights defenders across the world continue to plant these seeds, often at great personal risk, with the hope of reaping a future where human rights are universally respected and protected.

    IPS UN Bureau


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  • Russias Press Freedom ‘Worst Since the Cold War’ – Analysts

    Russias Press Freedom ‘Worst Since the Cold War’ – Analysts

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    • by Ed Holt (bratislava)
    • Inter Press Service

    BRATISLAVA, Apr 12 (IPS) – The arrest of a US journalist in Russia has not only sent a chilling warning to foreign reporters in the country but is a sign of the Kremlin’s desire to ultimately stifle any dissent in the state, press freedom watchdogs have warned.

    They say the detention at the end of March of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich signals the Russian regime may be tightening its already iron grip on control of information and expanding its repression of critics.

    “The scale of this move is enormous. Not only is it the first time since the Cold War that an American journalist has been detained, but very serious charges have been brought against him. This is a big step,” Karol Luczka, Advocacy Officer at the International Press Institute (IPI), told IPS.

    “ has been the Kremlin policy for some time now and it seems they are targeting more and more people,” he added.

    Gershkovich, a US citizen, was arrested in Yekaterinburg on suspicion of spying. He is being held at Lefortovo prison in Moscow pending trial and faces up to 20 years in jail on espionage charges. Among his recent reporting were stories about problems Russian forces faced in their war effort, as well as how Western sanctions were damaging the Russian economy.

    The Wall Street Journal has denied the accusations against their reporter and the arrest has been condemned by western leaders and rights campaigners.

    Some have seen the detention as a political ploy by the Kremlin and believe Gershkovich is being held to be used as part of a prisoner exchange with the US at some point in the future.

    But press watchdogs say that, even if that is the case, the arrest also sends out a very clear message to any journalists not following the Kremlin line.

    “I have no doubt that the arrest is a political thing. When I heard about the charges against Evan, the first thing that I thought was, ‘what high-profile Russian do the Americans have in one of their jails at the moment?’” Gulnoza Said, Europe and Central Asia Program Coordinator at the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), told IPS.

    “Foreign correspondents offer a rare glimpse of the real picture in Russia to a global audience. The arrest sends a message to all foreign journalists that they are not welcome in Russia, and they can be charged with a crime at any time. From now on, it’s clear that the situation for them unpredictable and unsafe,” she added.

    Independent media in Russia had faced repression even before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, but it has increased since then.

    The regime has moved to block websites of critical newspapers, as well as social media platforms, to stop people from accessing information critical of the war, while military censorship has also been introduced with new draconian laws criminalising the “discrediting” of the military.

    This has led to some outlets shutting pre-emptively rather than risk their employees being sent to prison, while others have been forced to drastically slash staff numbers, or move newsrooms out of the country, operating in de facto exile.

    But until now, foreign media outlets had been relatively unaffected by this crackdown. At the start of the war, many pulled their correspondents out of the country amid safety concerns. But a number, like Gershkovich, returned and had been able to report on the war with comparatively far greater freedom than their Russian counterparts.

    For this reason, Gershkovich’s arrest is so worrying for the future of independent journalism under the current Russian regime, Jeanne Cavelier, Head of Eastern Europe and Central Asia desk at Reporters Without Borders (RSF), said.

    “To arrest a foreign journalist for such serious charges is a new critical step in Putin’s information warfare. The aim is to intimidate all the remaining Western journalists on Russian territory who dare to report on the ground and investigate on topics linked to the war on Ukraine,” she told IPS.

    “It is a signal that they are no more relatively protected than their Russian colleagues. As usual, to spread fear and silence them. Dozens of foreign media outlets have already left Russia since March last year, as well as hundreds of local independent journalists. This blow may worsen the situation and further reduce the sources of trustworthy information from Russia.”

    Others believe that the arrest could signal the Kremlin is moving towards a goal of almost total control over information in Russia.

    “We are still some way off the kind of censorship that existed in the USSR, but Putin and the Russian ruling regime have said for a long time that the system of censorship in the USSR is a role model for them. This is the way it is going in Russia and the way the government wants it to go. It is deplorable but it is the reality of things,” said Luczka.

    “Eventually, it could become like the Cold War when all information coming out of Russia was strictly controlled,” added CPJ’s Said.

    Meanwhile, some believe that the arrest is also a signal to the wider population.

    In recent years the Kremlin has moved to shut down the opposition, both political and in other areas of society. While vocal critics such as opposition leader Alexei Navalny have ended up in jail, many civil society organisations, including domestic and foreign rights organisations, have been closed down by authorities.

    This repression has intensified since the start of the war, and Russians who spoke to IPS said that, particularly following the introduction of legislation criminalising criticism of the invasion, many people have grown increasingly wary of what they say in public.

    “It’s crazy. There are shortages because of the war, there are supply problems, and we see it at work all the time. We can talk about the shortages as much as we want to at work, but we cannot say what is causing them – the war – because just using the word ‘war’ can land you in jail for years,” Ivan Petrov*, a public sector worker in Moscow, told IPS.

    He added that he knew many people who were against the war but were afraid to express even the slightest opposition to it.

    “They know it’s wrong but just can’t speak about it. There is so much censorship. You can get jailed for treason just for mentioning its negative effects on the economy,” he told IPS.

    Against this backdrop, Gershkovich’s arrest is likely to reinforce fear among ordinary Russians who do not support the war or the government and stop them speaking out, rights campaigners say.

    “It’s hard to separate the stifling of all media freedoms from the stifling of all independent voices – they go hand in hand. When  arrest such a high-profile reporter on patently bogus grounds, no matter what the true purpose of the arrest may be, they are no doubt fully aware of the chilling message it sends to the broader public,” Rachel Denber, Deputy Director of the Europe and Central Asia Division at Human Rights Watch, told IPS.

    *Name has been changed

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  • CIVICUS Report Exposes a Civil Society Under Attack

    CIVICUS Report Exposes a Civil Society Under Attack

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    Ines Pousadela at the launch of the CIVICUS State of Civil Society Report. Credit: Joyce Chimbi/IPS
    • by Joyce Chimbi (nairobi)
    • Inter Press Service

    NAIROBI, Mar 31 (IPS) – As conflict and crises escalate to create human emergencies that have displaced over 100 million people worldwide, civil society’s vital role of advocating for victims and monitoring human rights cannot be over-emphasised.

    The 2022 Nobel Peace Prize award to activists and organisations in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine for working to uphold human rights in the thick of conflict underpins this role.

    Yet this has not stopped gross violations of civic space as exposed by the State of Civil Society report from CIVICUS, the global civil society alliance, which was officially launched on March 30, 2023.

    “This year’s report is the 12th in its annual published series, and it is a critical look back on 2022. Exploring trends in civil society action, at every level and in every arena, from struggles for democracy, inclusion, and climate justice to demands for global governance reform,” said Ines Pousadela from CIVICUS.

    The report particularly highlights the many ways civil society comes under attack, caught in the crossfire and or deliberately targeted. For instance, the Russian award winner, the human rights organisation Memorial, was ordered to close in the run-up to the war. The laureate from Belarus, Ales Bialiatski, received a 10-year jail sentence.

    Mandeep Tiwana stressed that the repression of civic voices and actions is far from unique. In Ethiopia, “activists have been detained by the state. In Mali, the ruling military junta has banned activities of CSOs that receive funding from France, hampering humanitarian support to those affected by conflict. In Italy, civil society groups face trial for rescuing migrants at sea.”

    Ines Pousadela at the launch of the CIVICUS State of Civil Society Report. Credit: Joyce Chimbi/IPS
    Ines Pousadela at the launch of the CIVICUS State of Civil Society Report. Credit: Joyce Chimbi/IPS

    Spanning over six chapters titled responding to conflict and crisis, mobilising for economic justice, defending democracy, advancing women’s and LGBTQI+ rights, sounding the alarm on the climate emergency and urging global governance reform, the analysis presented by the report draws from an ongoing analysis initiative, CIVICUS Lens.

    On responding to conflict and crisis, Oleksandra Matviichuk from the Center for Civil Liberties in Ukraine spoke about the Russian invasion and the subsequent “unprecedented levels of war crimes against civilians such as torture and rape. And, a lack of accountability despite documented evidence of crimes against civilians.”

    Bhavani Fonseka, from the Centre for Policy Alternatives, Sri Lanka, addressed the issue of mobilising for economic justice and how Sri Lanka captured the world’s attention one year ago through protests that start small in neighbourhoods and ultimately led to the President fleeing the country.

    Launched in January 2022, CIVICUS Lens is directly informed by the voices of civil society affected by and responding to the major issues and challenges of the day.

    Through this lens, a civil society perspective of the world as it stands in early 2023 has emerged: one plagued by conflict and crises, including democratic values and institutions, but in which civil society continues to strive to make a crucial difference in people’s lives.

    On defending democracy, Amine Ghali of the Al Kawakibi Democracy Transition Center in Tunisia spoke about the challenge of removing authoritarian regimes, making significant progress in levels of democracy only for the country to regress to authoritarianism.

    “It starts with the narrative that democracy is not delivering; let me have all the power so that I can deliver for you. But they do not deliver. All they do is consolidate power. A government with democratic legitimacy demolishing democracy is where we are in Tunisia,” he said.

    Erika Venadero from the National Network of Diverse Youth, Mexico, spoke about the country’s journey that started in the 1960s towards egalitarian marriages. Today, same-sex marriages are provided for in the law.

    On global governance reforms, Ben Donaldson from UNA-UK spoke about global governance institutional failure and the need to improve what is working and reform what is not, with a special focus on the UN Security Council.

    “It is useful to talk about Ukraine and the shortcomings of the UN Security Council. A member of the UN State Council is unable to hold one of its members accountable. There are, therefore, tensions at the heart of the UN. The President of Ukraine and many others ask, what is the UN for if it cannot stop the Ukraine invasion?”

    Baraka, a youthful climate activist and sustainability consultant in Uganda, spoke about ongoing efforts to stop a planned major pipeline project which will exacerbate the ongoing climate crisis, affecting lives and livelihoods.

    His concerns and actions are in line with the report findings that “civil society continues to be the force sounding the alarm on the triple threat of climate change, pollution and biodiversity loss. Urging action using every tactic available, from street protest and direct action to litigation and advocacy in national and global arenas.”

    But in the context of pressures on civic space and huge challenges, the report further finds that “civil society is growing, diversifying and widening its repertoire of tactics.”

    Moving forward, the report highlights 10 ideas, including an urgent need for a broad-based campaign to win recognition of civil society’s vital role in conflict and crisis response as well as greater emphasis by civil society and supportive states on protecting freedom of peaceful assembly.

    Additionally, the need for civil society to work with supportive states to take forward plans for UN Security Council reform and proposals to open up the UN and other international institutions to much greater public participation and scrutiny.

    In all, strengthening and enhancing the membership and reach of transnational civil society networks to enable the rapid deployment of solidarity and support when rights come under attack was also strongly encouraged.

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  • Bahrains Botched Whitewashing Attempt

    Bahrains Botched Whitewashing Attempt

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    • Opinion by Ines M Pousadela (montevideo, uruguay)
    • Inter Press Service

    MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay, Mar 31 (IPS) – The Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), an organisation whose motto is ‘For democracy. For everyone’, just held its global assembly in a country with a mock parliament and not the slightest semblance of democracy.

    For Bahrain’s authoritarian leaders, the hosting of the IPU assembly was yet another reputation-laundering opportunity: a week before, they’d hosted Formula One’s opening race.

    The day after the race, Ebrahim Al-Mannai, a lawyer and human rights activist, tweeted that the Bahraini parliament should be reformed if it was to be showcased at the assembly. His reward was to be immediately arrested for tweets and posts deemed an ‘abuse of social media platforms’.

    That same week, the Bahraini authorities revoked the entry visas for two Human Rights Watch staff to attend the assembly.

    Rather than opening up to host the event, Bahrain further shut down.

    A mock parliament and no democracy

    Bahrain is member of the IPU, which defines itself as ‘the global organization of national parliaments’, because, on paper at least, it has a parliament. But its parliament is neither representative nor powerful. Bahrain is an absolute monarchy.

    The king has power over all branches of government. He appoints and dismisses the prime minister and cabinet members, who are responsible to him, not to parliament. The two prime ministers the country has had so far – the first served for over 50 years – have been prominent members of the royal family, and many cabinet ministers have been too.

    The king appoints all members of the upper house of parliament, along with all judges. Parliament’s lower chamber is elected – but everything possible is done to keep out those who might try to hold the government to account.

    Political parties aren’t allowed; ‘political societies’, loose groups with some of the functions of political parties, are recognised. To be able to operate, they must register and seek authorisation, which can be denied or revoked.

    In recent years the government has shut down most opposition political societies, arresting and imprisoning their most popular leaders. All members of dissolved groups and former prisoners are banned from competing in elections. And just in case new potential opposition candidates somehow emerge, voting districts are carefully gerrymandered so the opposition can’t get a majority.

    In November 2022 Bahrain once again went through the motions of an election. A large number of eligible voters were excluded from the electoral roll as punishment for abstaining in previous elections – a tactic used to ensure any boycott attempts wouldn’t affect turnout. Exactly as it was meant to, the election produced a legislative body with no ability to counterbalance monarchical power.

    No space for dissent

    In 2018, the king issued a decree known as the ‘political isolation law’. It banned members of dissolved opposition parties standing for election. It also gave the government control of the appointment of civil society organisations’ board members, limiting their ability to operate, and has been used to harass and persecute activists, including by stripping them and their families of citizenship rights.

    In 2017, Bahrain’s last independent newspaper, Al-Wasat, was shut down. No independent media are now allowed to operate. The government owns all national broadcast media outlets, while the main private newspapers are owned by government loyalists.

    Vaguely worded press laws that impose harsh penalties, including long prison sentences, for insulting the king, defaming Islam or threatening national security encourage self-censorship. Many people, including journalists, bloggers and others active on social media, have been detained, imprisoned and convicted.

    This has turned Bahrain into a prison state. It’s estimated that almost 15,000 people have been arrested for their political views over the past decade, at least 1,400 of whom are currently in jail. Most have been convicted on the basis of confessions obtained under torture. Appallingly, 51 people have been sentenced to death.

    An advocacy opportunity

    Given the IPU’s evident lack of interest in the human rights records of host states, civil society focused its advocacy on parliamentary delegations from democratic states.

    Ahead of the assembly, two dozen civil society groups published a joint statement addressed at parliamentarians who would be attending, urging them to publicly raise concerns over Bahrain’s lack of political freedoms, including violations of the rights of parliamentarians, and to ensure their presence wouldn’t be used to legitimise the authoritarian regime.

    Civil society’s calls for the freedom of political prisoners were loudly echoed by parliamentary delegations from countries including Denmark, Ireland and the Netherlands, among several others.

    The director of the Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy described the event as ‘a PR disaster for the Bahraini regime’, a failure of its image-laundering plan.

    The response of the Bahraini authorities was however far from encouraging. They reminded foreign parliamentarians they shouldn’t interfere in Bahrain’s domestic affairs and continued to deny evidence of imprisonment and torture.

    Sustained international pressure is needed to urge the Bahraini regime to free its thousands of political prisoners and allow spaces for dissent. That, rather than high-level image-laundering events, is what will fix the country’s well-deserved bad reputation.

    Inés M. Pousadela is CIVICUS Senior Research Specialist, co-director and writer for CIVICUS Lens and co-author of the State of Civil Society Report.


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  • Press Freedom on Trial in Zimbabwe Ahead of Elections

    Press Freedom on Trial in Zimbabwe Ahead of Elections

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    Flashback to the 2018 general election in Zimbabwe. Press Journalists and media analysts are concerned about press freedom in the run up to the election. Credit: Ignatius Banda/IPS
    • by Ignatius Banda (bulawayo)
    • Inter Press Service

    BULAWAYO, Mar 28 (IPS) – With only a few months to go before national elections in Zimbabwe, press freedom advocates are raising concerns about stringent reporting conditions set by the government.

    From exorbitant registration fees to cover the much-anticipated polls to physical harassment of journalists covering ruling party rallies, media practitioners report an escalation of attempts to muzzle press freedom, creating hostile conditions for election reporting.

    Zimbabwe’s national elections have a long history of rekindling and escalating hostility towards the press corps, with journalists from privately owned media houses especially being targeted by political activists and members of the security forces.

    In recent months, independent journalists have endured physical attacks from President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s ruling Zimbabwe African National Union (Patriotic Front), accused of unfavourable reporting.

    While these journalists – some from small start-ups and privately-owned media houses to those working for international news agencies – have been barred from covering ruling party political rallies, their colleagues from state-controlled media outlets have been allowed free access, raising concerns from press freedom advocates about access to information for voters.

    The media polarisation has also seen retaliatory responses, with state media being barred from covering opposition Citizens for Coalition for Change (CCC) rallies.

    The CCC, Zimbabwe’s main opposition tipped by pollsters to unseat the ruling party, accuses state media of biased and hostile coverage while acting as the ruling party’s propaganda arm.

    However, these accusations have been dismissed as unfounded by senior editors at outlets that include the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation (ZBC) and The Herald, a government-controlled national daily.

    Journalists have also challenged the requirements that they pay what they say are exorbitant accreditation fees to the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) when the journalists are already accredited by the Zimbabwe Media Commission (ZMC).

    “It’s understandable to accredit foreign journalists to cover the elections, but for local journalists who are already accredited by ZMC, this is an unfair move meant to control and manipulate the media practitioners and, ultimately, the information that gets into the public domain,” said Tawanda Majoni, national coordinator of the Information for Development Trust, a local non-profit working with local investigative journalists.

    The Media Institute for Southern Africa (Miss) has also added its voice to the controversy around double accreditation.

    “The issue of accreditation is a major concern as we have over successive elections we have approached the authorities highlight the issue of dual accreditation which is tantamount to double taxation,” said Tabani Moyo, MISA regional director.

    “Government must rethink this issue as it is tantamount to attempts to deny ordinary people who are voters access to information,” Moyo told IPS.

    Pressure continues to mount on the government to create a safe working environment for journalists, but with only a few months before the June national elections, confidence is waning among analysts.

    “It seems unlikely there will be conditions in place for equitable media access in media coverage in the run-up to elections. We have not really seen this in any election period,” said Piers Pigou, a senior southern Africa analyst at the International Crisis Group (ICG).

    “It is the arena of broadcast media that presents the major challenges both in terms of who gets access and the content of what is put out there. We have not seen proper independence of the media,” Pigou told IPS.

    “It is highly unlikely that we are going to see independent media voices operating effectively and the majority of Zimbabweans will able to access crucial information,” he added.

    An unfettered press is seen by analysts as playing an important role for international observers to get an informed view of pre-election conditions in a country where the government has not been too keen to allow observers free movement.

    “The role of international monitors should be to assess the wider conditions that include issues around access and content of the press. One would expect observation teams to reflect on that, but that will also depend on the teams allowed in the country,” Pigou told IPS.

    Concerns about election reporting conditions in Zimbabwe come after Reporters Without Borders reported last year that conditions for working as a journalist in Zimbabwe continue to decline amid the arrest and detention of journalists during the course of their constitutionally protected duties.

    “We cannot expect the relevant stakeholders to ensure sufficient reforms in four or so months when not much had been done in four decades,” Majoni said.

    “That means we are going into the 2023 elections with a muzzled media. Since the media is severely constrained, it means it’s ill-prepared to cover the elections. In essence, therefore, the elections are already discredited because free media is a necessary condition for democratic polls,” Majoni told IPS.

    While UNESCO says “the protection and safety of journalists and media personnel are key to the advancement of democracy and general development of society,” critics contend that Zimbabwe has continued to disregard those internationally recognised benchmarks, raising concerns about the role of the press in free and fair elections.

    “We are in the tenth year of the UN Action Plan on the safety of journalists. Those who violate the rights of journalists with impunity and those who have a reflex to attack journalists during elections must be brought to book,” Moyo told IPS.

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  • Georgia: Danger Averted, for Now

    Georgia: Danger Averted, for Now

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    • Opinion by Andrew Firmin (london)
    • Inter Press Service

    LONDON, Mar 17 (IPS) – Georgian civil society can breathe a sigh of relief. A proposed repressive law that would have severely worsened the space for activism has been shelved – for now. But the need for vigilance remains.

    Russia-style law

    A proposed ‘foreign agents’ law would have required civil society organisations (CSOs) and media outlets in Georgia receiving over 20 per cent of funding from outside the country to register as a ‘foreign agent’. Non-compliance would have been punishable with fines and even jail sentences.

    The law’s proponents, including Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili, claimed it was modelled on one passed in the USA in 1938. The US law was introduced to check the insidious spread of Nazi propaganda in the run-up to the Second World War, and wasn’t targeted at CSOs.

    For civil society it was clear the source of inspiration was much more recent and closer to home: Russia’s 2012 law, since extended several times, which allows the state to declare a ‘foreign agent’ any person or organisation it judges to be under foreign influence. The law has been used extensively to stigmatise civil society and independent media. It’s been imitated by other repressive states looking for ways to stifle civil society.

    In Georgia, as in Russia, the ‘foreign agent’ terminology is deeply suggestive of espionage and treachery. Any organisation it’s applied to can expect to be instantly viewed with suspicion. This meant the law would stigmatise CSOs and media organisations.

    Alarmingly, the proposed law was no isolated event: the government has been ramping up the rhetoric about groups ‘opposing the interests of the country’ and the need to save Georgia from foreign influence.

    The initial proposal for the law came from a populist political faction, People’s Power, that split from the ruling party, Georgian Dream, but works in coalition with it. People’s Power has a track record of criticising foreign funding, particularly from the USA, which it claims undermines Georgia’s sovereignty, and has accused CSOs and the main opposition party of being US agents.

    CSOs insist they already adhere to high standards of accountability and transparency, making any further regulations unnecessary. They point to the vital role civil society has played over the years in establishing democracy in Georgia, providing essential services the state fails to offer and helping to introduce important human rights protections.

    This work necessarily requires financial support, and since there are few resources within Georgia, that means foreign funding, including from the European Union (EU) and other international bodies – sources the government is also happy to receive funding from.

    The power of protest

    The scale of the reaction took the government by surprise. Many states around the world have enacted repressive civil society laws, and it’s often hard to get the public to take an interest. But the issue cut through because of the larger concerns many people have about Russian influence, heightened by the war on Ukraine.

    Russia is an ever-present issue in Georgian politics. The two countries went to war in 2008, and two breakaway parts of Georgia – Abkhazia and South Ossetia – claim autonomy and receive heavy Russian support. Georgian Dream, founded by billionaire business tycoon Bidzina Ivanishvili, has an official policy of pragmatism towards Russia while also cultivating links with the EU – but opponents accuse it and People’s Power of being too close to Russia.

    Many see the country’s future as lying within a democratic Europe and fear returning to Russia’s domination. This made the proposed law about a fundamental question of national identity.

    That’s why, when parliament started discussing the bill in early March, thousands gathered over several nights, many waving Georgian and EU flags and chanting ‘no to the Russian law’.

    When the bill passed its hurried first reading it sparked some violent clashes. Some people threw stones and the police responded disproportionately with teargas, stun grenades, pepper spray and water cannon. But people kept protesting and the government feared the situation could spiral out of its control. So, at least for the time being, it backed down.

    What next?

    The immediate threat may have passed, but it isn’t game over. The government hasn’t said the law was a bad idea, merely that it failed to explain it properly to the public and withdrew it to reduce confrontation.

    Georgia was one of three countries that applied to join the EU following the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. While the other two, Moldova and Ukraine, were quickly granted EU candidate status, Georgia wasn’t.

    The EU cited the need for both economic and political reforms. This includes measures to reduce corruption, organised crime and oligarchic influence, improve the protection of human rights and enable civil society to play a stronger role in decision-making processes. In introducing the proposed law, the government took steps further away from the EU and made clear it doesn’t trust civil society.

    This raises concerns the bill could return in some revised form, or other restrictions on civil society could be introduced. In numerous countries, the kind of verbal attacks on civil society recently made by the government have led to restrictions.

    But Garibashvili should be more attentive to the message of the protests. By taking to the streets, people told the government they’re paying attention and disagree with its current direction – and forced it to back down. Civil society has shown its power, and deserves to be listened to rather than treated with suspicion.

    Andrew Firmin is CIVICUS Editor-in-Chief, co-director and writer for CIVICUS Lens and co-author of the State of Civil Society Report.


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  • Press Freedom Is an Illusion in Today’s Afghanistan

    Press Freedom Is an Illusion in Today’s Afghanistan

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    ‘The road to Kabul airport was a one-way street, – We couldn’t go back. Not to pick up clothes, computer or notebooks, says Afghan journalist Seyar Sirat. Credit: Gie Goris/IPS
    • by Gie Goris (brussels)
    • Inter Press Service

    BRUSSELS, Mar 17 (IPS) – Every year, Afghan journalists celebrate their national day on 18 March. This year, there is little reason to party, because of general restrictions, increasing intimidation and a recent attack on journalists. However, at a unique gathering in Brussels, Afghan journalists showed resilience.

    ‘I have always felt good at my desk,’ says Seyar Sirat. ‘I am rather introverted by nature, and so spending hours in front of my screen for TOLO News was a blessing rather than a curse. Until 15 August 2021, when the world of Afghanistan began to crumble. But even that morning, I continued to work with concentration until the moment the news arrived that President Ashraf Ghani had left the country. That was the moment some people burst into tears. That was the moment I left.’

    Sirat tells his story at the first international gathering of Afghan journalists since the day Kabul fell. Some journalists were able to come over from Afghanistan, others travelled from various European countries where they now live and try to work. And where they have to try to build a second life, “like newborn babies”, as Sirat puts it. In a new language, in a foreign context, but with intense and family ties to the homeland. And with deep, mental scars.

    ‘The road to Kabul airport was a one-way street,’ Sirat observes visibly emotional. ‘We couldn’t go back. Not to pick up clothes, computer or notebooks. Not to go back to work or old life. Those three days and nights around and at the airport are the most tragic and traumatic moments of my life.’

    Dead and injured

    There is no shortage of trauma, among Afghan journalists. A colleague from the north of the country informed me of this just a few days ago that on 11 March, in the city of Mazar-e-Sharif, there was an attack on a meeting of local journalists from various media. The toll was heavy: three dead and 30 injured, including 16 journalists. Te Afghanistan Journalists Centre confirms. The attack, meanwhile, was claimed by IS-KP, the local branch of Islamic State.

    After the attack in Mazar-e-Sharif, a number of journalists ended up in hospital. Even there, they were not reassured by the armed representatives of the current rulers. ‘They should have killed you all,’ they heard from the Taliban, who had to guard and protect them.

    In his opening address to the meeting of Afghan journalists in Brussels on 15 March, EU Special Envoy for Afghanistan Tomas Niklasson also referred to that recent tragedy and put it in the broader context of a dramatic deterioration of human rights and rule of law since the Taliban took power. He cited the recent report by UN Special Rapporteur Richard Bennett, who was able to document 245 cases of press freedom violations since August 2021. These include not only attacks, but also arrests, arbitrary detention, physical violence, beatings and torture. ‘Most of you will say that this figure is an underestimate,’ Niklasson said. All the journalists present nodded.

    Lost space

    The trauma does not begin for everyone on 15 August 2021. ‘At least 120 journalists from home and abroad have been killed in Afghanistan over the past 20 years,’ Hujatullah Mujadidi, director of the Afghan Independent Journalist Union, noted in his opening remarks to the meeting. ‘Afghanistan had 137 TV stations, 346 radio stations, 49 news agencies and 69 print media until two years ago. Together, these accounted for 12,000 jobs. Little of that remains. 224 media platforms meanwhile closed their doors and at least 8,000 media workers – including 2,374 women – lost their jobs.’

    ‘We had finally created space for ourselves after centuries of restrictions,’ says Somaia Walizadeh, a journalist who was able to flee the country. ‘That space has been taken away from us again. Of the few media that were founded, run and nurtured by women, a few still exist. But even there, men now call the shots.’ Reporters Without Borders states that in half of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces, not a single female journalist is still employed and more than eighty percent of female journalists are out of work. RSF also estimates that 40 per cent of media platforms have ceased to exist and 60 per cent of all media workers became unemployed after August 2021. No wonder, then, that some 1,000 journalists have already fled abroad.

    The heart of the problem

    Those who want to do real and independent journalistic work in Afghanistan come up against one difficulty after another. “It was never easy to get reliable information,” says Somaia Walizadeh, “but today it is quasi-impossible. According to her colleague Abid Ihsas, who remains active in Afghanistan, this has to do with the fact that journalists on the ground face Taliban fighters ‘who do not know or recognise the importance of independent media.’ But it doesn’t stop there, he says, because the entire administration under the current authorities is extremely centralised and hierarchised. ‘Every detail and every shred of information has to be approved and released by a higher authority every time.’

    But the real root of the problem, according to Ihsas, lies in the deliberately created ambiguity. There is a 10-point regulation – which is very vague – but no real media law. ‘It is never clear what is allowed according to the authorities and what is not. Ultimately, it depends on the moment and the person in front of you. Usually, the rules are communicated verbally and ad hoc. This not only leads to a lot of outright censorship, but also too much self-censorship due to the constant uncertainty.’ Rateb Noori, a refugee journalist, summed it up this way: ‘The fact that relatively few journalists are in jail is not even good news in these circumstances. It mainly shows how effective the intimidation is.’

    The insecurity also applies to what journalists do outside their formal assignment. ‘Forwarding a WhatsApp message or liking a tweet or FB message can already get you in trouble,’ says Ahmad Quraishi, director of the Afghanistan Journalists Centre. Other problems he identifies: ‘There are very limited lists of journalists invited to press conferences or given access to those in charge. These almost never include women, and if they do, they are additionally screened and checked.’

    Fariba Aram adds that foreign journalists are treated much better than domestic colleagues. ‘It seems that those in power still want a reasonable image in the rest of the world, while in Afghanistan they are averse to anything journalistic,’ she says. Hujatullah Mujadidi of the Afghan Independent Journalist Union confirms that: They are trying to divide us. International against national. Diaspora against interior. “Good media” against “bad media”. That is why it is crucial that journalists and media continue to speak and negotiate with one voice,’ he concludes. True as that be, maybe Tomas Niklasson put it better when he described the journalists in the room as ‘not united, as this is overly ambitious, but connected’.

    The hard hand and the long arm of power

    Legal uncertainty, censorship, lack of access to information and economic difficulties combine to form an almost insurmountable obstacle for Afghan journalists. And for the hundreds of journalists who continue to practise their profession from Europe, Pakistan, Australia or North America. Indeed, they face the same barriers to information and have to navigate with extreme caution what they write or bring, as there is always a chance that family members left behind will pay the price for their truth-telling.

    Someone testified about an article he was to write for an international news site on climate change and air pollution. The requested information never came, but the statement that they knew where his family lived, did. Rateb Noori also had a similar experience. His news site investigated a story on the de facto lifting of the requirement for women to appear on TV wearing a face mask. In that case, it was not the journalist’s family that was threatened, but local colleagues – even though they thought they were safe at their changing hiding addresses.

    What to do?

    Analysing the current situation proved to be the simple part of the programme. When asked what could or should be done about it, Afghan journalists and their international partners from the EU, Unesco, RsF and the International Federation of Journalists got little beyond tentative ideas. ‘You cannot solve problems that are more than 20 years old in a matter of weeks,’ argued Najib Paikan, who recently had to shut down his own TV station. ‘But what we should resist is the idea that Afghan media is helped by helping Afghan journalists flee the country. There they become package deliverers, taxi drivers or cooks, while the country needs their expertise, commitment and courage.’

    That earned Paikan applause, even though everyone knew that leaving is the choice of a large section of now desperate journalists. Moreover, the problems do not disappear when you cross the border, Wali Rahmani, a fugitive media activist, noted. ‘Hundreds of journalists are stuck in Pakistan and are only concerned with survival. Food and shelter for themselves and for their families. They too are entitled to international support.’

    At the awards

    On the sidelines of the conference in Brussels, the annual Journalist of the Year Awards were also presented. The 2023 Awards went to Mohammad Yousuf Hanif of ToloNews, Mohammad Arif Yaqoubi of Washington-based Afghanistan International TV, and Marjan Wafa, reporter for Killid Radio. Over the past 10 years, a total of 14 journalists received the award, including five women.

    © Inter Press Service (2023) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service

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  • Belarus: A Prison State in Europe

    Belarus: A Prison State in Europe

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    • Opinion by Andrew Firmin (london)
    • Inter Press Service

    LONDON, Mar 15 (IPS) – Last October, Ales Bialiatski was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. He was one of three winners, alongside two human rights organisations: Memorial, in Russia, and the Center for Civil Liberties in Ukraine. The Nobel Committee recognised the three’s ‘outstanding effort to document war crimes, human rights abuses and the abuse of power’.

    But Bialiatski couldn’t travel to Oslo to collect his award. He’d been detained in July 2021 and held in jail since. This month he was found guilty on trumped-up charges of financing political protests and smuggling, and handed a 10-year sentence. His three co-defendants were also given long jail terms. There are many others besides them who’ve been thrown in prison, among them other staff and associates of Viasna, the human rights centre Bialiatski heads.

    Crackdown follows stolen election

    The origins of the current crackdown lie in the 2020 presidential election. Dictator Alexander Lukashenko has held power since 1994, but in 2020 for once a credible challenger slipped through the net to stand against him. Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya ran against Lukashenko after her husband, democracy activist Sergei Tikhanovsky, was arrested and prevented from doing so. Her independent, female-fronted campaign caught the public’s imagination, offering the promise of change and uniting many voters.

    Lukashenko’s response to this rare threat was to arrest several members of Tsikhanouskaya’s campaign staff, along with multiple opposition candidates and journalists, introduce additional protest restrictions and restrict the internet. When all of that didn’t deter many from voting against him, he blatantly rigged the results.

    This bare-faced act of fraud triggered a wave of protests on a scale never seen under Lukashenko. At the peak in August 2020, hundreds of thousands took to the streets. It took a long time for systematic state violence and detentions to wear the protests down.

    Everything Lukashenko has done since is to suppress the democracy movement. Hundreds of civil society organisations have been forcibly liquidated or shut themselves down in the face of harassment and threats. Independent media outlets have been labelled as extremist, subjected to raids and effectively banned.

    Jails are crammed with inmates: currently it’s estimated Belarus has 1,445 political prisoners, many serving long sentences after trials at biased courts.

    Lukashenko’s only ally

    Lukashenko’s repression is enabled by an alliance with an even bigger pariah: Vladimir Putin. When the European Union and democratic states applied sanctions in response to Lukashenko’s crackdown, Putin provided a loan that was crucial in helping him ride out the storm.

    This marked a break in a long strategy of Lukashenko carefully balancing between Russia and the west. The effect was to bind the two rogue leaders together. That’s continued during Russia’s war on Ukraine. When the invasion started, some of the Russian troops that entered Ukraine did so from Belarus, where they’d been staging so-called military drills in the days before. Belarus-based Russian missile launchers have also been deployed.

    Just days after the start of Russia’s invasion, Lukashenko pushed through constitutional changes, sanctioned through a rubber-stamp referendum. Among the changes, the ban on Belarus hosting nuclear weapons was removed.

    Last December Putin travelled to Belarus for talks on military cooperation. The two armies took part in expanded military training exercises in January. Following the constitutional changes, Putin promised to supply Belarus with nuclear-capable missiles; Belarus announced these were fully operational last December.

    Belarussian soldiers haven’t however been directly involved in combat so far. Putin would like them to be, if only because his forces have sustained much higher-than-expected losses and measures to fill gaps, such as the partial mobilisation of reservists last September, are domestically unpopular. Lukashenko has struck a balance between belligerent talk and moderate action, insisting Belarus will only join the war if Ukraine attacks it.

    That may be because Belarus’s enabling of Russia’s aggression has made people only more dissatisfied with Lukashenko. Many Belarussians want no involvement in someone else’s war. Several protests took place in Belarus at the start of the invasion, leading to predictable repression similar to that seen in Russia, with numerous arrests.

    Crucially, Belarus’s security forces stuck by Lukashenko at the peak of protests; if they’d defected, the story could have been different. Full involvement in the war would likely see even Lukashenko loyalists turn against him, including in the military. Soldiers might refuse to fight. It would be a dangerous step to take. As Russia’s war drags on, Lukashenko could find himself walking an increasingly difficult tightrope.

    Two countries, one struggle

    It’s perhaps with this in mind that Lukashenko’s latest repressive move has been to extend the death penalty. State officials and military personnel can now be executed for high treason. This gives Lukashenko a gruesome new tool to punish and deter defections.

    As well as worrying about their safety, Belarus’s activists – in exile or in jail – face the challenge of ensuring the cause of Belarussian democracy isn’t lost in the fog of war. They need continuing solidarity and support to make the world understand that their struggle against oppression is part of the same campaign for liberty being waged by Ukrainians, and that any path to peace in the region must also mean democracy in Belarus.

    Andrew Firmin is CIVICUS Editor-in-Chief, co-director and writer for CIVICUS Lens and co-author of the State of Civil Society Report.


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  • Russia and Ukraine: Civil Society Repression and Response

    Russia and Ukraine: Civil Society Repression and Response

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    • Opinion by Andrew Firmin (london)
    • Inter Press Service

    LONDON, Feb 24 (IPS) – Over the year since the start of Russia’s war on Ukraine, on one side of the border civil society has shown itself to be a vital part of the effort to save lives and protect rights – but on the other, it’s been repressed more ruthlessly than ever.

    Ukraine’s civil society is doing things it never imagined it would. An immense voluntary effort has seen people step forward to provide help.

    Overnight, relief programmes and online platforms to raise funds and coordinate aid sprang up. Numerous initiatives are evacuating people from occupied areas, rehabilitating wounded civilians and soldiers and repairing damaged buildings. Support Ukraine Now is coordinating support, mobilising a community of activists in Ukraine and abroad and providing information on how to donate, volunteer and help Ukrainian refugees in host countries.

    In a war in which truth is a casualty, many responses are trying to offer an accurate picture of the situation. Among these are the 2402 Fund, providing safety equipment and training to journalists so they can report on the war, and the Freefilmers initiative, which has built a solidarity network of independent filmmakers to tell independent stories of the struggle in Ukraine.

    Alongside these have come efforts to gather evidence of human rights violations, such as the Ukraine 5am Coalition, bringing together human rights networks to document war crimes and crimes against humanity, and OSINT for Ukraine, where students and other young people collect evidence of atrocities.

    The hope is to one day hold Putin and his circle to account for their crimes. The evidence collected by civil society could be vital for the work of United Nations monitoring mechanisms and the International Criminal Court investigation launched last March.

    As is so often the case in times of crisis, women are playing a huge role: overwhelmingly it’s men who’ve taken up arms, leaving women taking responsibility for pretty much everything else. Existing civil society organisations (CSOs) have been vital too, quickly repurposing their resources towards the humanitarian and human rights response.

    Ukraine is showing that an investment in civil society, as part of the essential social fabric, is an investment in resilience. It can quite literally mean the difference between life and death. Continued support is needed so civil society can maintain its energy and be ready to play its full part in rebuilding the country and democracy once the war is over.

    Russia’s crackdown

    Vladimir Putin also knows what a difference an enabled and active civil society can make, which is why he’s moved to further shut down Russia’s already severely restricted civic space.

    One of the latest victims is Meduza, one of the few remaining independent media outlets. In January it was declared an ‘undesirable organisation’. This in effect bans the company from operating in Russia and criminalises anyone who even shares a link to its content.

    Independent broadcaster TV Rain and radio station Echo of Moscow were earlier victims, both blocked last March. They continue broadcasting online, as Meduza will keep working from its base in Latvia, but their reach across Russia and ability to provide independent news to a public otherwise fed a diet of Kremlin disinformation and propaganda is sharply diminished.

    It’s all part of Putin’s attempt to control the narrative. Last March a law was passed imposing long jail sentences for spreading what the state calls ‘false information’ about the war. Even calling it a war is a criminal act.

    The dangers were made clear when journalist Maria Ponomarenko was sentenced to six years in jail over a Telegram post criticising the Russian army’s bombing of a theatre where people were sheltering in Mariupol last March. She’s one of a reported 141 people so far prosecuted for spreading supposedly ‘fake’ information about the Russian army.

    CSOs are in the firing line too. The latest targeted is the Moscow Helsinki Group, Russia’s oldest human rights organisation. In January, a court ordered its shutdown. Several other CSOs have been forced out of existence.

    In December an enhanced law on ‘foreign agents’ came into force, giving the state virtually unlimited power to brand any person or organisation who expresses dissent as a ‘foreign agent’, a label that stigmatises them.

    The state outrageously mischaracterises its imperial war as a fight against the imposition of ‘western values’, making LGBTQI+ people another convenient target. In November a law was passed widening the state’s restriction of what it calls ‘LGBT propaganda’. Already the impacts are being felt with heavy censorship and the disappearance of LGBTQI+ people from public life.

    The chilling effect of all these repressive measures and systematic disinformation have helped damp down protest pressure.

    But despite expectation of detention and violence, people have protested. Thousands took to the streets across Russia to call for peace as the war began. Further protests came on Russia’s Independence Day in June and in September, following the introduction of a partial mobilisation of reservists.

    Criminalisation has been the predictable response: over 19,500 people have so far been detained at anti-war protests. People have been arrested even for holding up blank signs in solo protests.

    It’s clear there are many Russians Putin doesn’t speak for. One day his time will end and there’ll be a need to rebuild Russia’s democracy. The reconstruction will need to come from the ground up, with investment in civil society. Those speaking out, whether in Russia or in exile, need to be supported as the future builders of Russian democracy.

    Andrew Firmin is CIVICUS Editor-in-Chief, co-director and writer for CIVICUS Lens and co-author of the State of Civil Society Report.


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