FOCUS ON THE AMERICAS - International Press Institute

Hungary was not the only EU country to
witness a backsliding of press freedom.
In June 2010, IPI’s affiliate organization
SEEMO (South East Europe Media Organization),
expressed concern at a National Defence
Strategy that was adopted by the Romanian
Supreme Defence Council (CSAT)
and passed on to the Romanian Parliament.
According to SEEMO, the President of Romania
initiated a National Defence Strategy,
which contained, among other things, serious
allegations against the media - which it
described as a security threat and vulnerability
for Romania, due to press campaigns
allegedly aimed at “spreading false information”
about the activities of state institutions.
The document was adopted by the
CSAT and was passed on to the Romanian
Parliament on June 23, 2010.
In June, the Italian government
sought to pass a law imposing
heavy restrictions on
magistrates seeking wiretaps,
and on journalists who want
to publish leaked ‘wiretap’
material. The restrictions
would remain in place until
the ‘preliminary’ hearing - a period which in
Italy varies between three and six years, and
in some cases extends to 10 years.
Furthermore, only “professional journalists”
(i.e. journalists belonging to the Italian National
Order of Journalists) would be allowed
to record and film individuals without
previous authorization, solely for journalistic
purposes. This would effectively prevent
a great number of practicing journalists
from carrying out their work, therefore limiting
the media’s ability to expose the effects
of corruption and other illegal activities.
The law foresees a penalty of up to 450,000
euros for publishers and 30 days in jail, and
up to 10,000 euros for journalists who publish
leaked wiretapping material before the
beginning of a trial.
Furthermore, documents related to ongoing
investigations cannot be published in
full, but only as an abstract. According to
the law, publishers who disregard this ban
face a fine of up to 300,000 euros.
An IPI report, based on the findings of a November
2010 press freedom mission to
Italy, drew attention to the legal and institutional
system that allows for political interference
in the content of the public service
broadcaster RAI, as well as in the decision-making
process about who can practice
as a professional journalist, and in issues
related to professional ethics in Italy.
Europe in 2010 saw a trend of governments
continuing to use laws, related most frequently
to national security or licensing,
but also occasionally to defamation, to silence
journalists and media houses.
Turkey, where dozens of journalists are in
prison, was the worst example of this
trend. The journalists were arrested over
their alleged affiliation with terrorist organizations,
according to IPI’s Turkish National
Committee.
As late as December, Emine Demir, the
former editorial manager of Kurdish
newspaper Azadiya Welat, was sentenced
to 138 years in prison over articles that she
accepted for publication in the newspaper.
The 24-year-old was found guilty of
spreading propaganda for the outlawed
PKK, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party.
In Turkey, journalists were arrested
over their alleged affiliation with terrorist
organizations, according to IPI’s
Turkish National Committee.
In April, another IPI statement called attention
to Vedat Kurşun, former editor of
Azadiya Welat, who was sentenced by a
Turkish court to three years in prison in
connection with two articles deemed to
have spread propaganda for the outlawed
Kurdistan Workers’ Party, PKK – which is
considered a terrorist organization by
Turkey, the European Union, the United
States and many other countries.
Kurşun had already served 13 months in
jail while awaiting his trial, after being arrested
in Istanbul in January 2009 as he arrived
in the city to testify in another case.
Also in December, authorities arrested two
journalists working for the Renge Heviya
Jine magazine. On December 5, authorities
arrested the former editor-in-chief of the
magazine, Berivan Eker, as she was on her
way to a meeting with her lawyer.
According to information from IPI’s National
Committee in Turkey, Eker was
under investigation for “spreading propaganda
for an illegal organization" and,
based on two articles she wrote in June
and July of 2010, on separate charges of
"committing a crime on behalf of an illegal
organization". The investigations were
later merged.
According to the recently-founded Freedom
for Journalists Platform (FJP), of
which IPI’s Turkish National Committee is
a member, the magazine's former editor-
in-chief, Gurbet Çakar, had earlier been arrested
by the Public Prosecution of Diyarbakır,
a Kurdish-majority province in
south-eastern Turkey. The prosecutor was
demanding a prison term of up to 20 years
for Çakar on charges of "spreading propaganda
for an illegal organization via the
media" and "membership of the PKK".
Renge Heviya Jine is the only magazine for
women in Turkey publishing in both Kurdish
and Turkish. The first editor-in-chief of
the magazine, Sultan Sonsuz, has been indicted
under charges of “propaganda” in five
different cases. She was sentenced to a year
and three months in prison on one of the
charges, and is facing a maximum of 20
years if found guilty on the others. Her successor,
Ruken Aktas, was facing three years
and nine months in prison. Aktas’ successor,
Sibel Esmer, was sentenced to one year and
three months on propaganda charges. The
sentence was under appeal at the year’s end.
In June, IPI reported on the sentencing of
journalist Irfan Akhtan to a year and three
months in prison, for an article he wrote in
October 2009, and a fine of 16,000 Turkish
Lira was imposed on Merve Erol, the editor
of Express, the fortnightly magazine that
published the article. The two journalists
were found guilty of dispersing “propaganda
relating to a terrorist organization,” under
Article 7 of the Turkish anti-terror law.
In December 2009, a Turkish court sentenced
Ozan Kilinc, the editor of a Kurdish
newspaper to 21 years in prison for publishing
what the court called Kurdish propaganda,
only two weeks after the European
Court of Human Rights ordered Turkey to
pay over 40,000 euros to 20 Turkish journalists
as compensation for having violated
their rights.
In Ukraine, meanwhile, independent
media continued a struggle with the government
carried out in the country’s courts.
Ukraine’s administrative Supreme Court
met in December in Kiev to examine the
appeals of two independent television stations,
TVi and 5 Kanal, against the removal
of broadcast frequencies.
Pressure had been applied on the two privately
owned stations since President
Yanukovych took office in February. Since
his election, the government has been accused
of attempting to restrict freedom of
the press by inducing pro-government censorship.
Some journalists have claimed
that top government intelligence agents
have been monitoring them.
TVi and 5 Kanal appealed against Judge
Nataliya Blazhivska’s ruling on June 8 to
invalidate the National Council for Tele-
Above: Protesters holding portraits of disappeared opposition activists during a 'Day of Solidarity' in the Belarus capital Minsk, August 16, 2010. (AP)
vision and Radio Broadcasting’s January
27 grant of additional frequencies to both
stations. These frequencies would have
ensured development and greater audience
for both channels.
The decision was made in response to legal
protests filed by Inter Media Group (IMG),
the nation’s largest broadcasting group,
when the Broadcasting Council allocated
33 frequencies to TVi, 26 to 5 Kanal and
only 20 to IMG’s stations.
On June 7, Kanal 5 published an open letter
accusing owner of IMG, and member of the
High Council of Justice, Valery
Khoroshkovsky, of interfering in the dispute.
Khoroshkovsky, coincidentally, is also the
chief of Ukraine’s main spy agency, the Security
Service of Ukraine (SBU), whose
agents were allegedly caught on film following
TVi executive-director Mykola
Knyazhytsky in June.
The Council of Europe’s parliamentary assembly
criticized the state of affairs on November
25, while the European Council,
in a resolution written the same day, condemned
the clear conflict of interest in the
decision to withdraw frequencies from the
two stations.
On December 13, in a joint letter addressed
to President Yanukovych and Prime Minister
Azarov, journalists from both TVi and 5
Kanal urged the government to consider
the resolutions of these European institutions
by relieving Khoroshkovsky of some
of his positions.
President Yanukovych later dismissed
Khoroshkovsky as a member of the
Higher Council of Justice. The decision
came after Khoroshkovsky submitted a
letter of resignation.
In Russia, the ‘guilty’ verdict against journalist
Mikhail Beketov on a charge of
defamation in November was met with
widespread condemnation, both in Russia
and in the international community. Beketov
was found guilty of defaming the
mayor of Khimki in a 2007-television interview,
where he alleged that the mayor,
Vladimir Strelckenko, had been involved in
an arson attack on Beketov’s car. A year
later, Beketov was attacked by unknown
assailants, who beat him so severely that he
was left with permanent disabilities, and
can no longer speak or walk.
Although no arrests have been made over
the attack on Beketov, as of the time of writing,
it is widely believed to be related to his
coverage of political issues in Khimki, where
environmental activists are fighting a government-ordered
highway which will pass
through protected forests.
In 2010, noted political journalist Oleg
Kashin was brutally attacked in Khimki. The
investigation into his attack is predicated on
the assumption that it was related to his
journalistic work.
In September, political technologist and
journalist Erenst Staratelev was attacked
in his apartment by unknown assailants,
who stabbed him 15 times. Investigators
believe the attack may be connected to
his work as a journalist, as nothing was
taken from the apartment.
Staratelev is known for his criticism of the
city administration. On September 3, he
hosted a program dealing with the transfer
of objects that are the property of the city to
private individuals, and on September 22 he
reported on money paid into the election
fund of the city's Mayor Viktor Tarasov.
Attacks on journalists continued in other
parts of Europe.
Dozens of journalists were arrested in the
riot police crackdown on the rally that
followed the re-election of President
Alexander Lukashenko in Belarus. According
to the Belarusian Association of
Journalists (BAJ), 24 journalists were detained
and 21 were physically assaulted.
Among them, there was Iryna Khalip, correspondent
for the Moscow-based newspaper
Novaya Gazeta, a BAJ member, and
the recipient of an award from IPI’s affiliate,
SEEMO. Khalip was giving an interview
with the radio station Echo Moskvy
when she was pulled out from her car
along with her husband, the opposition
presidential candidate Andrei Sannikov,
and arrested by the Belarus’ security
agency, still called KGB.
Since then, prosecutions and harassments
of journalists have continued to stifle
press freedom in Belarus. Khalip and her
husband were, at the time of writing, still
in prison facing charges of organizing and
participating in the demonstrations in
December. Several raids on Belarusian
journalists’ apartments and independent
media newsrooms, with the seizure of all
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