IPI Press Freedom Adviser for Africa and the Middle East Naomi Hunt is speaking at the Oviedo Press Association World Press Freedom Day Event in Oviedo, Spain, on threats facing press freedom in the Middle East. Her speech is below.
Good evening Ladies and Gentlemen. Thank you very much to the Press Club of Oviedo for extending this invitation. Our director at the International Press Institute, Alison McKenzie, is unfortunately unable to be here today but asked me … on her behalf … to extend her warm greetings and to convey this World Press Freedom Day message:
World Press Freedom Day is a day when across the globe people gather to recognize the important work that journalists do for the benefit of all of us. It is a day on which to remember and reflect upon the fact that in so many countries around the world, reporters, camera people, photographers, publishers, editors and others in the journalism industry continue to face censorship, and also harassment, threats, attacks and sometimes even death – just for doing their job.
The importance of news, the value of accurate information, has been again underscored by the events of the past five months in the Middle East and North Africa, where so many people in country after country have chosen to stand up and demand democratic reforms despite the very real threat of imprisonment … assault … and death.
The demonstrations have all too often been met with violence, and, in the case of Libya, the situation has deteriorated into civil war – a civil war in which foreign powers are now involved.
The manner in which regimes throughout the Middle East and North Africa have sought to suppress the uprisings – through mass arrests … torture … assault … and outright murder – displays contempt for fundamental human rights … including freedom of expression and of the media.
The suppression of news about the uprisings revealed a sinister readiness to rely on censorship and violence to stifle the flow of information and freedom of the press.
In country after country – Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen, Oman, Libya, Syria, and others — we have seen the lengths to which governments will go, to conceal information about the size and diversity of demonstrations, and to stop any news of human rights violations and repression from reaching the wider world. At the same time, we have seen the lengths to which courageous … ordinary people will go to gather … and spread … the news.
Of course … the scenarios in each of the countries where demonstrators have taken to the streets differ … politically … socially … and economically.
But a pattern of media repression emerges; the same tactics of media suppression are used over and over again by governments across the Middle East and North Africa … and elsewhere in the world, too. We have seen efforts to break lines of communication, to prevent foreign reporters from entering the country, or to expel them if they’re already there. Other journalists are intimidated … attacked … and imprisoned.
In several countries, the authorities’ first move against demonstrators was to cut off communications with the outside world – cell phones … the Internet … and satellite broadcasts – to stop those using these technologies from spreading political messages, information and images.
In Tunisia, shortly after the riots in Sidi Bouzid began on 17 December, inspired by the self-immolation of vegetable seller Mohamed Bouazizi, the government immediately tightened its control of the Internet. Activists’ email accounts and social media profiles were hacked, websites were blocked, and blogs were disabled. Facebook, which has proved to be a crucial organizing tool for activists around the region, told reporters that accounts across Tunisia were being hacked for their passwords. Several bloggers were arrested.
• In Egypt, where thousands first took to the streets on 25 January, the authorities ordered cell phone service providers to stop coverage in certain areas. The Internet went down in late January, prompting Google and Twitter to create speak2tweet. In the days before former President Hosni Mubarak stepped down, the authorities tried to block access to Al Jazeera – which received praise for its coverage of the uprising – by jamming signals from several satellites.
• In Libya, particularly in the east, which is held by anti-Qaddafi rebels, cell phone service continues to be intermittent. The Internet, although not as fundamental an organizing platform as it was in Egypt, has provided a way for people to share images and news to compete with the narrative of state television. A firewall around the country’s internet was erected in early March, and access has been literally cut off in the East. Nonetheless … some citizens have managed to set up their own satellite connections, and others are working to fix the problem, according to media reports.
• In Syria, where most international media are banned, and many who were already in the country have been expelled, satellite cell phones and social media provide one of the few ways for mainstream foreign media to reach their sources. But phone lines have been cut in Deraa, an epicentre for the Syria uprising, as has electricity – which of course prevents any use of the Internet.
It appears to be a concerted effort to black out any information on an increasingly brutal and deadly crackdown on civilian demonstrators.
Governments have not just sought to sever the lines of electronic communication; they have also tried to prevent the physical presence of reporters on the ground.
There have been multiple news reports of foreign journalists denied entry into … or later expelled from … Tunisia, Bahrain, and of course Syria and Libya – which one Al-Jazeera correspondent called a “media black hole” before the uprising began. Some foreign reporters were eventually allowed to enter the country … but must operate under tight state control. A “media black hole” is a description that could as easily fit Syria today.
When journalists – both foreign and local – have been able to report on the uprisings they have been accused of representing a malign ‘foreign agenda’.
Foreign journalists have been barred from accessing certain areas, or have been provided with government minders, supposedly for their own security.
We have seen this in Libya, where foreign journalists in Tripoli have reported that they have been corralled into a particular hotel and have not been permitted to leave without government minders. Last Sunday, reporter Jonathan Miller from the UK’s Channel Four reported [24 April] that he and other foreign journalists are essentially under “unofficial house arrest,” that they have not been permitted to visit the besieged city of Misrata for weeks, and that they are fed up with what he called a “daily diet of government propaganda.”
That was why it was so significant when Ms. Eman al-Obeidy – who Jonathan Miller called a “real Libyan” – burst into the Rixos hotel. It was a rare uncensored encounter with a Libyan citizen – one who dared to speak out, and tell reporters … in front of government minders … that she had been repeatedly raped and beaten by a gang of Qaddafi’s militiamen. When hotel staff tried to silence her, a brawl between the journalists and hotel staff broke out.
This incident underscored two things – first the limited access of journalists to information … and stories. Secondly, the fact that Ms Obeidy chose to go to a hotel full of foreign journalists rather than bring her story to Libyan state television showed that people’s trust in the state broadcaster was waning. In fact, one anchor at the Libyan state broadcaster went so far as to say, according to a translation on Al-Jazeera English, “Even a whore has feelings of nationalism when her country is in danger.” State TV reacted to Eman Al-Obeidy’s outburst in the Rixos hotel by accusing her of being a prostitute, a drunk, and a traitor.
State-run broadcasters and newspapers in other countries where there was unrest were also used as mouthpieces for regimes to downplay the protests, refute claims that violence was being used against demonstrators, and blame foreign media outlets for inciting unrest.
In Libya, the state media were so closely associated with the regime that demonstrators ransacked the buildings of two state broadcasters in late February, Al-Jamahiriya Two television and Al-Shababia radio, forcing them off the air for one day. Likewise in Egypt, where the building housing the government broadcasters became a focal point for demonstrators angry at what they saw as skewed coverage. When Nile TV’s senior reporter Shahira Amin resigned, she told the media “I’m determined to be on the side of the people, not the regime. I can’t be part of the propaganda machine. I refuse to feed the public lies.” Even now, as many of these media are undergoing their own internal transformations, some activists say they still do not trust the state media.
But while these measures are repressive and unacceptable, they pale in comparison to the violent attacks, the deprivation of liberty and even the torture that has been meted out to both foreign and local reporters on the ground.
Hundreds of journalists covering the demonstrations and fighting in several countries have been harassed, have had their equipment broken and their pictures erased, or much, much worse, when they tried to record the demonstrations.
Media houses have had their offices raided or their equipment confiscated.
Journalists have been subjected to arrest and expulsion. Many journalists – along with protest leaders –have been arrested and detained, for a few hours or for many days. In some instances they were subjected to physical and psychological torture.
In Egypt, dozens of journalists covering the demonstrations in Cairo and elsewhere came under attack, or were briefly detained and interrogated. IPI counted attacks against news crews or journalists from at least 42 different news media, and in all likelihood the true number is much higher. Foreign-looking journalists in particular were reportedly singled out by pro-Mubarak supporters, but we must not forget that local reporters and media houses, including state-run ones, were also targets for violent attacks. On February 4th
Ahmed Mohammed Mahmoud, a reporter for the Al Taawun newspaper, was killed by gunfire on Tahrir Square. He worked for a state-run newspaper.
Most of the reported attacks against journalists on Tahrir Square were attributed to pro-Mubarak forces.
Many of the attacks were unpredictable. The sexual assault and beating of CBS correspondent Lara Logan, which took place on the same day that former President Hosni Mubarak stepped down, amidst a crowd on Tahrir Square that was widely described by the media as being happy and peaceful, showed this unpredictability.
It also showed that female journalists – not just in the Middle East and North Africa, but around the world – are subjected not only to the same kinds of attacks used against journalists in general – two weeks before she was sexually assaulted, Lara Logan told reporters that she and her team were detained, blindfolded, handcuffed and interrogated by the Egyptian army in a secret location, and their driver was beaten – but also to sexual violence.
Four reporters from the New York Times – Stephen Farrell, Anthony Shadid, Tyler Hicks and Lynsey Addario – were detained at a Libyan checkpoint and then held for three days. Addario later said that in addition to the beatings that the journalists received at every stop during their ordeal, that “Every man who came in contact with us basically felt every inch of my body short of what was under my clothes.” More disturbingly, Addario said one of her captors continually stroked her head. She told the Times, “‘he was caressing my head in this sick way, this tender way, saying, “You’re going to die tonight. You’re going to die tonight.”
We only know of this assault because, thankfully, the reporters from the Times were freed following the intervention of the Turkish government. We can only guess at the kinds of attacks that have gone unreported by the media.
In Bahrain, the founder of the private daily newspaper Al-Wasat, Karim Fakhrawi, died under mysterious circumstances only days after he was detained earlier this month. The Bahrain news agency reported that he had died of kidney failure, but other observers have said that the marks on his body indicated that he died of torture. Also at the newspaper, top managers were forced to resign. Earlier in April, Zakariya Rashid Hassan al-Ashiri, who wrote for a local news website in Bahrain, also died in custody. In that case, the authorities said he had died of sickle-cell anemia. Again, his family and rights groups believe that he was killed for his work. Like Fakhrawi, al-Ashiri had been accused of disseminating false information. One press freedom group, the Committee to Protect Journalists, said in a statement that it had read al-Ashiri’s work and had seen no reason for the charges brought against him.
Then there are regimes that have managed to keep most foreign media out, and those within the country on a short leash.
In Syria, since the first protests began in mid-March and have grown and spread, we have seen the arrest and expulsion of numerous journalists, the shutdown of phone service and electricity in areas with the most protests, and the hacking of social media and activist websites. Last week, Al-Jazeera said it had decided to suspend its Arabic language operations in Syria, because of the unacceptable threats and pressure against its staff in the country. Now only limited reports via activists are making it into the news.
In Iran, AFP’s Tehran bureau chief Jay Deshmukh was expelled in March.
Iranian journalists working for reformist media face threats and long prison terms, but many continue to write anyway. The result of the clampdown, which includes blocking Iranian citizens’ access to outside information, is that there was little international coverage of demonstrations in March, except that they were met with force.
In country after country, week after week, the media are threatened and persecuted by those with secrets to hide, who will go to any length to silence the voices of the press and the people. The picture becomes bleaker still when we consider that these are but a small handful of all of the attacks that have been perpetrated against the press of late, simply because the press have tried to report on civil unrest.
And yet, if there is anything that I have learned in the last five months, and which I hope the leaders of Syria, Yemen, Iran and so many other countries will also remember, it is that, as the saying goes, “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.”
That quote is attributed to American President Abraham Lincoln, who lived a century and half ago. Today, in an era of instant information, of cell phones and the Internet, we should revise President Lincoln’s quote:
If people are trying to find out the truth, you can fool some of them for a few hours, and that’s it.
In Egypt, when the Internet was shut down, presumably to stop protestors from using Facebook to organize and Twitter to report, word got out anyway. Google and Twitter immediately released a service through which you could publish a tweet via your cell phone. There were reports of protesters using fax machines to organize and share information, and by the time Mubarak stepped down not only was his regime discredited, so was the idea that you can stop news from spreading for any length of time. And the resignation of former President Ben
Ali in Tunisia showed the same thing.
In Libya, where there were no independent media, the first thing that the rebels did was take over state media and use them to spread their message. As Jonathan Miller from Channel 4 said, after his crew managed to sneak out of his hotel and meet with one rebel in Tripoli, “Had we just been fed Libyan rebel propaganda? Maybe. But after our incarceration in Tripoli’s Ministry of Truth, it felt like a breath of fresh air.” Citizen journalist Mohammed al-Nabbous in Benghazi used his computer skills to set up an online newscast, called Libya Al-Hurra, Free Libya. He was killed on March 19th, and was mourned by journalists around the world who wrote tributes to his bravery and said that he had become a good source of information. But even though Al-Nabbous died, the online newscasts he founded continue. And other media have sprung up as well – the Libya “for the free” satellite TV station established in March is now being run from Qatar, with a bureau in Benghazi, and other radio stations and newspapers have also reportedly emerged.
With the help of new tools, like satellite cell phones, social media and other online platforms, courageous citizen journalists, activists and reporters are getting the word out. You cannot control information, you can only block it temporarily. You cannot keep people in the dark, because people have shown that they are willing to risk their lives to make sure they get the news and spread the news. In countries where the foreign media have limited access, journalists are reaching out to witnesses on the ground for information, are finding ways to get around physical and electronic barriers, and are finding innovative ways to make sure that as many people as possible know what is going on.
But they need our support. The courageous journalists who are still in custody, like Manu Brabo, like Clare Gillis from The Atlantic, like James Foley from Global Post, like photographer Anton Hammerl, like Matthew VanDyke, like Al-Jazeera’s Kamel Al-Tallou, and so many others who are behind bars not just in Libya, but in Yemen, Syria, Iran, Bahrain, Egypt and around the world, need to know that they have not been forgotten. We must continue to urge our governments to push for their release, and remind those who would use humans as bargaining chips…and who would confuse the message with the messenger…that it will..not..work. We won’t forget and we won’t look away, and as news consumers, we will continue to demand to know what’s happening.
And we need to know.
Journalists are writing, as the saying famously goes, the „first rough draft of history.“ To that, I would add, they are writing the only version or versions of history that we have today. We may be physically far removed from events, but thanks to the work of journalists, we can see, to some degree, what is happening in other places. We have perspective; we see the world beyond our immediate line of vision. And we need that information, especially those of us fortunate enough to live in countries where we have the liberty of making our own decisions – to decide where to travel for our holidays, where to invest our money, who should govern our countries, and who needs to go.
Thank you.
