Human Rights and Democracy - Official Documents

surge in abductions: 51 reporters were kidnapped in 2010, up from 33 in 2009.
Throughout 2010 our embassies and high commissions have highlighted the need to
tackle impunity for attacks on journalists through: raising individual cases, and calling
for prompt and full investigations; supporting criminal justice mechanisms to deal
with attacks on journalists; promoting dialogue between the media, civil society and
the authorities; supporting effective and well-implemented freedom of information
legislation; and supporting broad access to the media and pluralism of media
ownership.
We have also used our membership of international institutions to promote freedom
of expression. At the OSCE Review Conference in Astana in November we called
for journalists, media workers, bloggers and media organisations to be allowed to
work freely and safely, and for OSCE participating states to demonstrate their
commitment to media freedom in line with OSCE standards. At the UN, the Deputy
Prime Minister Nick Clegg emphasised the importance of freedom of expression in
his speech to the General Assembly in September. We work closely with the UN
Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Opinion and Expression Frank La Rue and have
encouraged him to focus his work on freedom of expression and the internet in 2011.
We have also encouraged technology companies to behave responsibly in terms of
supporting freedom of expression on the internet; for example Jeremy Browne met
representatives of Facebook in October and Google in November to explore what
more can be done to uphold international freedom of expression standards on the
internet.
We also lobbied governments for change on the ground, including by raising
individual cases. In Iran, blogger Hossein Ronaghi Maleki was sentenced to 15
years in prison in October. His sentence was upheld by the appeal court in
December. Another blogger, Hossein Derakhshan, was sentenced to 19-and-a-half
years in prison in September. Derakhshan is informally known as the “blogfather” of
Iran for his work in promoting blogging in Farsi. Between September and October,
FCO bloggers, including Minister for Europe David Lidington, highlighted his case
worldwide.
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