Each
year, World Press Freedom Day provides an opportunity for press freedom
organizations to put anti-press violations on the map. This year, CPJ did just
that.
In
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry's statement commemorating World Press Freedom Day,
he cited CPJ research: "This is a critically important time to acknowledge
the contributions of journalists. As the Committee to Protect Journalists
recently reported, this is the 'most deadly and dangerous period for
journalists in recent history.'"
Kerry's
words echoed the theme found in CPJ's 2015 Attacks on the
Press, that journalists are caught between terrorists and
governments. The secretary of state said, "From violent extremists and
criminal gangs who abduct and kill reporters to authoritarian governments that
persecute them, press freedom is under attack."
CPJ
staff also participated in a number of World Press Freedom Day initiatives.
(See below for more details.)
Journalists
freed ... ...
in Bahrain
Welcome
news on the heels of World Press Freedom day was the release of Bahraini
journalist Ammar Abdulrasool. The photographer, who was
arrested on July 24 during a raid on his house by security officers, was
sentenced to two years in prison on charges of participating in riots and
possessing Molotov cocktails, according to news reports. He was freed on bail on May 4.
Abdulrasool
was one of six journalists in prison in Bahrain during CPJ's most recent
prison census. The journalist was also profiled in CPJ's Press
Uncuffed campaign, which calls on governments to free journalists
imprisoned for doing their jobs.
...
in Mexico
CPJ
welcomes the release from prison of Pedro
Celestino Canché Herrera, an independent Mexican journalist and an activist for
Mayan causes. Canché was released from jail on May 29 after being imprisoned
for almost nine months on charges of sabotage in the state of Quintana Roo. A
local court declared Canché innocent of the charges and ordered him to be
released, his lawyer told CPJ.
Canche
was also featured in CPJ's Press Uncuffed campaign. Because of his
imprisonment, Mexico appeared in CPJ's 2014 prison
census for the first time since 2006 and was the only country in the
Americas--besides Cuba--to be included.
Drawing
attention to cartoonists in danger
"Cartoons
generate a really emotional response that can transcend languages or
borders," Elana Beiser, CPJ's editorial director, told The New York Times
on May 19, the day CPJ released its first-ever report on the global threats
to cartoonists.
Drawing the Line: Cartoonists Under Threat
provides an in-depth look at the risks that political cartoonists face from
both militant extremists and governments. While the attack on French satirical
magazine Charlie Hebdo in January 2015 shed some light on the dangers
confronting cartoonists, CPJ pointed out that threats against cartoonists are a
global phenomenon and are as diverse as the content of the cartoons themselves.
The report explores the crackdowns on cartoonists by examining cases in
Malaysia, India, South Africa, Bangladesh, Venezuela, the United States,
Ecuador, Sri Lanka, Syria, and Iran.
Globally,
journalists "are caught between terrorism and governments who are
purporting to fight terrorism, but are curbing free speech more
generally," Beiser told the Times. "Obviously there is a
security threat, but so much legislation is written in such a vague manner that
it is open to political abuse."
The
report was widely covered in other local and international outlets including
the Guardian and Voice of America.
UN
Security Council passes draft resolution on journalist security
The
UN Security Council on May 27 unanimously passed a draft resolution condemning
all abuses and violations against journalists. The resolution called on all
parties in situations of armed conflict to comply with international law and do
their utmost to prevent violations against journalists. The resolution also
called on all parties to conflict and all member states to create a safe
environment in which journalists can carry out their duty.
For
years, CPJ has advocated for the safety of journalists, both within the
international community and with individual states themselves. In June 2013, Associated Press Executive Editor and
CPJ Vice Chair Kathleen Carroll, noted at the UN Security
Council that "most journalists who die today are not caught in some
wartime crossfire; they are murdered just because of what they do. And those
murders are rarely ever solved, the killers rarely ever punished."
The
May 27 open debate at the UN Security Council featured Mariane Pearl, wife of Daniel
Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter who was kidnapped and
killed in Pakistan in 2002. The debate also paid special tribute to the work of
France-based Reporters Without Borders, which has long advocated for the
resolution. Christophe Deloire, head of RSF, who was at the Security Council, called it "an historic
day for the protection of journalists and also, we hope, for freedom of
information."
The
resolution is a significant statement but, as CPJ noted when launching this year's Attacks on
the Press, member states also have a responsibility to ensure that the
actions they take in response to the terror threat do not further inhibit the
work of journalists. CPJ also raised this in a press conference at the UN on
April 27.
Fighting
impunity in Colombia
Carlos
Lauría, CPJ's senior program coordinator for the Americas, just returned from a
meeting with Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, where the president pledged to prioritize combating impunity in
attacks against journalists.
Lauría
also visited the presidential palace in Colombia in 2010, as part of a CPJ-FLIP
delegation, and met with former President Álvaro Uribe Vélez.
But that meeting, Lauría said, went very differently.
"Then,
we were discussing how Colombia's national intelligence was allegedly spying on journalists. That conversation
distracted us from the main issues--the dangers that Colombian journalists
face, including lethal violence and impunity in journalist murders."
This
time, Lauría said, the delegation was able to meet not only with the president
but also with prosecutors from the attorney general's office. The conversation
was very open and very frank, he said. "We were able to address all the
issues were hadn't been able to before."
The
delegation brought up a number of journalist attacks and murders and discussed
them "case by case," Lauría said. The cases included the 2002 murder
of print journalist Orlando Sierra; the 2000 attack against reporter Jineth
Bedoya; the attack against editor Ricardo Calderón in 2013; and the threats made in
2013 against investigative reporter Gonzalo Guillén.
Santos
told the delegation: "I am the person who is most interested in those
cases being solved. It is a priority for my government."
The
delegation, which visited the national palace known as Casa de Nariño on May
26, included Lauría; Pedro Vaca Villarreal, FLIP's executive director; John
Otis, CPJ's Andes correspondent for the Americas; Andrés Morales, a member of
CPJ's Americas program advisory group; and Ignacio Gómez, FLIP board member and
2002
recipient of CPJ's International Press Freedom Award.
In
our own words
In
his column in May for the Columbia
Journalism Review, CPJ Executive Director Joel Simon discussed how
technology has transformed the act of witnessing from a subjective and personal
experience to something that is shared. "In its most stripped down,
elemental form," Simon argued, journalism is "nothing more than
gathering information and disseminating it to the public."
CPJ's
Asia research associate, Sumit Galhotra, was quoted in a Foreign Policy article about the dangers of reporting in South
Asia, particularly India. "Journalists are being threatened and silenced
by various non-state actors that include religious and political groups,
criminal elements, and corporate houses," he said. "The state
has been clamping down on media freedoms and engaging in flagrant censorship.
The Modi government's recent ban on Al Jazeera
and documentaries like India's Daughter are
prime examples."
Where
we've been
May
3, 2015: CPJ Advocacy Director Courtney
Radsch spoke about physical and digital security for journalists at UNESCO's
World Press Freedom Day event "Let Journalism Thrive! Towards better reporting, gender
equality and media safety in the digital age" in Riga, Latvia.
May
3, 2015: Cheryl Gould, CPJ's board member,
was on the panel "Defending press freedom today: new tools, new
challenges," at the Beirut Spring Festival.
May
6, 2015: CPJ's EU correspondent, Jean-Paul
Marthoz, spoke on a panel in Brussels called "Democracy in crisis: freedom of the media under threat
in the EU & its neighbourhood," in which he discussed
press laws in authoritarian regimes.
May
7, 2015: Frank Smyth, the founder and
executive director of Global Journalist Security and CPJ's senior adviser on
journalist security, participated in a panel called "Finding Security in Unsafe Passages: Protecting Journalists'
Safety & Rights" about the challenges journalists face in
the field. The panel was presented by the National Writers Union at the UN.
May
21, 2015: CPJ's East Africa correspondent, Tom
Rhodes, addressed the state of press freedom in Kenya at the Mohamed Amin Africa Media Awards held at Kenya's
Multimedia University. The awards, which were named after videographer and
photographer Mo Amin, were accompanied by a training workshop for journalists
from across the continent.
May
22, 2015: CPJ board member Sheila Coronel,
joined Latin American and international journalists at the Central
American Journalism Forum and discussed the risks that journalists
face in the region. CPJ's Americas research associate, Sara Rafsky, also
attended the forum.
June
3, 2015: CPJ's advocacy director, Courtney C.
Radsch, moderated two debates, held at the WAN-IFRA World Media Policy Forum in Washington, about the
media's challenges, addressing Internet governance and the key issues of
privacy versus freedoms and the right to be forgotten.
Upcoming
events
June
18, 2015: The Committee to Protect Journalists
and Human Rights Watch are co-presenting The Unravelling: Human rights reporting and digital
storytelling. The film follows Human Rights Watch
Emergencies director Peter Bouckaert and leading photojournalist Marcus
Bleasdale as they cover the war in the Central African Republic. Tickets can be
purchased here.
EDITOR'S
NOTE: The text above has been corrected
to reflect that Bahraini photographer Ammar Abdulrasool was released on bail
after being sentenced to two years in prison.
When News Breaks Out, We Break In. (The 2014 Bloggies Finalist)
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