2009 has been the bloodiest year for media professionals killed in the line of duty worldwide since 1992, and has seen the highest death toll for journalists in Sub-Saharan Africa in this decade, according to an annual analysis of media fatalities worldwide released today by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). In a week marking the anniversaries of the unsolved murders of journalists Norbert Zongo of Burkina Faso and Gambian Deyda Hydara, the report denotes that none of the perpetrators of the 2009 journalist murder cases have been brought to justice.
In Sub-Saharan Africa, 12 journalists have been murdered in direct relation to their work this year, just one less loss of life than the heavy toll recorded in 1999, which was largely caused by Sierra Leone ’s civil war. This time, Somalia’s ongoing conflict claimed the most victims, but other journalists were murdered while investigating local corruption in Nigeria and Kenya or covering the political crisis in Madagascar. CPJ is investigating the cases of two other journalists in Republic of Congo and the Democratic Republic of Congo to determine whether their deaths were related to journalism.
In Somalia, nine local journalists were murdered or killed in combat situations. Throughout 2009, violent Islamist extremists waged a terror campaign against the Somali press, threatening and murdering journalists and seizing news outlets. “The nine deaths in Somalia are a tremendous loss for the tiny band of journalists who risk their lives every day just by stepping out into the street,” said CPJ Deputy Director Robert Mahoney, who helps oversee CPJ advocacy in the region. “Their courageous reporting exposes them not just to crossfire and random violence but to targeted killing by insurgents who want to control the message.”
Worldwide, at least 68 journalists were killed for their work in 2009, the highest yearly tally ever documented by CPJ. This figure was largely due to an election-related slaughter of more than 30 media workers in the Philippine province of Maguindanao , the deadliest event for the press in CPJ history. The worldwide tally surpasses the previous record of 67 deaths, recorded in 2007 when violence in Iraq was pervasive and media fatalities there were common. CPJ is still investigating 20 other journalist deaths worldwide in 2009 to determine whether they were work-related.
“This has been a year of unprecedented devastation for the world’s media, but the violence also confirms long-term trends,” said CPJ Executive Director Joel Simon . “Most of the victims were local reporters covering news in their own communities. The perpetrators assumed, based on precedent, that they would never be punished. Whether the killings are in Iraq or the Philippines , in Russia or Mexico , changing this assumption is the key to reducing the death toll.”
The enormity of the Philippine massacre is unparalleled. Twenty-nine journalists and two support workers were among the 57 people brutally murdered in a November ambush motivated by political clan rivalries. The deadliest prior event for the press came in Iraq in October 2006, when 11 employees of Al-Shaabiya television were killed in an attack on the station’s Baghdad studios, CPJ research shows.
The Maguindanao killings, while extreme, reflect the deep-seated climate of impunity in the Philippines , where long-term law enforcement and political failures have led to high numbers of journalist murders and low rates of convictions over two decades. For two years running, CPJ has identified the Philippines as one of the world’s worst nations in combating violence against the press.
Four journalists were killed in Pakistan during the year, among them Musa Khankhel, a local television reporter known for his critical coverage. Abducted while covering a peace march in a militant-controlled area near the town of Matta , Khankel was tortured and then shot repeatedly.
As in past years, murder was the leading cause of work-related deaths in 2009. At least 50 journalists were targeted and slain in retaliation for their work, representing about three-quarters of the deaths in 2009. Eleven journalists were killed in crossfire while in combat situations, while seven died while covering dangerous assignments such as police raids or street protests.
Many of the deadliest nations for the press in 2009 have long-term records of violence against journalists and high rates of impunity in those attacks.
Three journalists were murdered in Russia, which has had a high media fatality rate over two decades. The 2009 victims included Abdulmalik Akhmedilov, a Dagestani editor who sharply criticized government officials for suppressing religious and political dissent. He was found shot, contract-style, in his car. In September, CPJ issued a report, Anatomy of Injustice, examining the high number of unsolved journalist murders in Russia , prompting government pledges to re-examine several cases.
Two journalists were slain in both Mexico and Sri Lanka. In Durango state, Mexico , assailants abducted crime reporter Eliseo Barrón Hernández from his home as his wife and two young daughters watched. His body, a gunshot wound to the head, was found the next day in an irrigation ditch. Barrón had just broken a story about police corruption.
Here are other trends and details that emerged in CPJ’s analysis:
Ø The 2009 toll is up more than 60 percent from the 42 deaths recorded in 2008.
Ø All but two of the 2009 victims were local journalists. While local reporters have long been more vulnerable to deadly violence than their foreign counterparts, the divide has never been wider in CPJ’s annual assessment.
Ø Print journalists constituted 56 percent of the toll, indicating that print media continue to play a front-line role in reporting the news in dangerous situations. Although CPJ research has found a notable decline in the number of print journalists in jail, it has charted no comparable drop in fatalities among print reporters, editors, and photographers.
Ø In addition to the murders in Maguindanao, CPJ recorded three other work-related deaths in the Philippines in 2009. In all, 32 journalists and two support workers were killed in the country during the year.
Ø Two journalists died of neglect or mistreatment while imprisoned on work-related charges. Novruzali Mamedov died in an Azerbaijani prison after being denied adequate medical care, while Iranian blogger Omidreza Mirsayafi died in Evin Prison under circumstances that were never fully explained.
Ø At least two journalists were reported missing during the year, one in Mexico and the other in Yemen .
Ø Nine freelance journalists were among the 2009 victims. The proportion of freelancers was consistent with past years.
Ø Other places with media fatalities were: Afghanistan, Colombia, El Salvador, Indonesia, Kenya, Madagascar, Nepal, Nigeria, the Occupied Palestinian Territory, and Venezuela.
CPJ began compiling detailed records on all journalist deaths in 1992. CPJ staff members apply strict criteria for each entry; researchers independently investigate and verify the circumstances behind each death. CPJ considers a case work-related only when its staff is reasonably certain that a journalist was killed in direct reprisal for his or her work; in crossfire; or while carrying out a dangerous assignment.
If the motives in a killing are unclear, but it is possible that a journalist died in relation to his or her work, CPJ classifies the case as “unconfirmed” and continues to investigate. CPJ’s list does not include journalists who died from illness or were killed in accidents—such as car or plane crashes—unless the crash was caused by hostile action. Other press organizations using different criteria cite higher numbers of deaths than CPJ.
CPJ’s database of journalists killed for their work in 2009 includes capsule reports on each victim and a statistical analysis. CPJ also maintains a database of all journalists killed since 1992. A final list of journalists killed in 2009 will be released in early January.
Thursday 17 December 2009
Wednesday 16 December 2009
IPI Calls on Jammeh to Find Hydara's Killers
By Naomi Hunt, Press Freedom Advisor for Africa & the Middle East
VIENNA, 16 December 2009: Today marks the fifth anniversary of the brutal murder of Deyda Hydara, editor and co-founder of the Point daily newspaper in Gambia. Hydara was fatally shot by unknown attackers on 16 December 2004. The murderers remain at large.
Disturbingly, Gambian President Yahya Jammeh seems uninterested in pursuing the murderers. In June this year, he told reporters that his government "has for long been accused by the international community and so-called human rights organizations for the murder of Deyda Hydara, but we have no stake in this issue." Referring to the online version of the Point, he added, "And up to now one of these stupid websites carries "Who Killed Deyda Hydara"? Let them go and ask Deyda who killed him."
When the Gambia Press Union (GPU) issued a statement in response to President Jammeh's June comments, six journalists including the Point's editor-in-chief, Pap Saine, were charged and eventually found guilty of six counts of seditious publication and criminal defamation, and sentenced to two years in prison. They were later pardoned by the president at the start of the holy month of Ramadan. At the time, IPI welcomed their release but noted that the courts should have rejected the case out of hand rather than relying on the "arbitrary mercy" of the president.
In a statement issued today, the GPU remained defiant: "To those who brutally murdered Deyda Hydara, you have failed miserably in your evil design to silence the voice of truth. Your criminal act has in fact turned his voice into a universal voice of truth and a universal voice of condemnation of evil and injustice."
According to information gathered for the IPI Justice Denied campaign, which highlights this and other cases of impunity, Hydara was killed as he made his way home from work this evening five years ago. The journalist was driving his colleagues Isatou Jagne and Niansarang Jobe home from a celebration of the Point's 13th anniversary. When they reached Sankung Sillah Street, a man in the passenger seat of a passing car shot at Hydara, who was killed instantly by bullets fired into his head and chest. His colleagues were wounded in the attack: Jagne was hit in the ankle, and Jobe in the knee.
Jagne, who managed to scramble from the car before it landed in a ditch, sought help from police officers at a nearby station. She and her colleague were taken to the police station and, after refusing to issue statements, were brought to a Banjul hospital. They flew to Dakar, Senegal for medical treatment and, fearing for their safety, have since refused to disclose their location.
It is widely believed that Hydara was murdered in connection with his work. In his last published article for The Point, he announced plans to challenge two controversial laws that had been introduced two days earlier: the Criminal Code (Amendment) Bill 2004, which imposes prison sentences for press offences such as defamation and sedition; and the Newspaper (Amendment) Bill 2004, which requires expensive operating licenses and obligates newspaper owners to register their homes as security for the payment of any fines.
The "Green Boys," an officially disbanded youth group from the radical wing of the ruling Alliance for Patriotic Reorientation and Construction (APRC), are suspected of involvement in the killing. The group was tied to threats made against Alagi Yorro Jallow, founding editor of the Independent, who was forced to flee the country for fear of his life after Hydara's murder. Hydara had reportedly received an anonymous letter some months before his death, threatening to "teach a very good lesson" to President Jammeh's critics.
"On this sad anniversary, IPI calls on President Yahya Jammeh to ensure that the murderers of Deyda Hydara are finally pursued and brought to justice," said IPI Director David Dadge. "The press freedom situation in the Gambia is bleak, but Deyda Hydara remains a symbol for other brave Gambian journalists who try to do their job by reporting the news and revealing the truth."
The Gambian authorities have notoriously little respect for press freedom. Pap Saine, surviving editor and co-founder of the Point, has faced numerous frivolous and expensive law suits in the past. Another journalist, Chief Ebrima Manneh, was arrested by National Intelligence Agency (NIA) operatives in 2006 and has not been heard from since; the Gambian government has ignored an ECOWAS Community Court order to disclose his whereabouts and release him from prison. The Court is also hearing a case brought on behalf of former Independent editor-in-chief Musa Saidykhan, who claims he was tortured during his detention by the NIA in 2006.
GPU -UK calls for more Int'l pressure on Banjul
United Kingdom branch of Gambia Press Union GPU is hereby calling for urgent intervention by United Nations and other International organizations to put pressure on government of The Gambia to seriously investigate the murders of prominent Gambian journalists.
Deyda Hydara and Omar Barrow have both been murdered by agents of Gambia Government and nothing done about their killing for many years now. Omar Barrow serving as journalist and Red Cross Volunteer was gunned down during April 2000 student demonstration in Gambian that consumed the lives of more than dozen young students. Deyda Hydara, co-proprietor and Managing Editor of The Point Newspaper was stalked by secret agents of Gambia Government and brutally gunned down near a Police Station in Kanifing District of urban Gambia, Five years today on 16 December 1994. Eye-witness accounts indicated that he was shot at from a car without number plates.
Two members of Hydara's staff, Ida Jagne-Joof and Nyansarang Jobe, who were in his vehicle at the time both sustained varying degrees of injuries as a direct consequence of bullets directly released on their moving vehicle. In the case of Ms Jobe, a bullet was lodged somewhere in her legs and later extracted by surgeons at a hospital in the capital city of neighbouring Senegal, Dakar.
We extend our call to have international organizations bear on Gambian authorities put an end to persistent reign of terror against journalists, human rights activists and innocent civilians in the West African state. Mr. Hydara's death is among a trail of murders and arson attacks by brutal groups of criminals, who use vehicles without number plates at night targeting unsuspecting preys in their perpetual reign of terror against journalists, human rights activists and innocent civilians. Since Hydaras murder, 5 years ago there has been total lack of progress in the investigation into his death despite widespread condemnation by journalists, media organizations, human rights groups and other concerned groups for justice, locally and rule of law elsewhere around the globe.
Initial reaction of the Gambian government was to pretend that the murder of Mr Hydara was nothing more than a routine criminal activity. It was only after intensive pressure that the government of Gambia took calls for an immediate investigation into this seriously most ghastly crime. Four months after Hydara's assassination on April 29th 2005, the National Intelligence Agency (NIA) released a purported 'confidential' report, said to 'acquaint the Government of The
Gambia and other interested parties with outcome of investigation so far'. The report which could best be read as a smear campaign veered towards maligning the good name of Mr Hydara, his family and colleagues was full of logical disjunctions, contradictions, harebrained reasoning. In the look of it this report fell short of standards as one that could very well have been written by high school juniors called into investigate the fatal shooting of a high school senior.
Five years on, government of the Gambia appears not bring the matter anywhere near closure.
With no suspects been brought to justice and Gambia government being very jumpy about any mention or call for an effective investigation, barely 5 months ago seven (7) Gambian journalists were illegally arrested and sent to prison for merely calling on the government to investigate Mr Hydara’s murder properly and
bring the perpetrators to justice. Their call for the President of the Gambia Yahya Jammeh to desist from making statements of ridicule about Hydara's murder was regarded as a crime against the state. Though the journalists were later purportedly pardoned by junta leader Yahya Jammeh, the President of the
Gambia Press Union, Ndey Tapha Sosseh is being prevented from returning to the country for fear of persecution by state agents who continue to harass and intimidate media practitioners daring to ask the legitimate question: 'who killed Hydara?'.
As the custodian of the instruments of human rights, the United Nations has a duty to ensure that human rights are not just respected but secured everywhere no matter the size of any given country. It cannot and should not rest while injustice and the abuse of these rights continue. It is in view of the above that The Gambia Press Union branch of United Kingdom, a non partisan body of
Gambian journalists residing in the United Kingdom, is urging the United Nations to put pressure on the government of The Gambia to ensure that media practitioners, human rights activists as well as innocent civilians are protected against state organized invasion of citizen’s rights in Gambia.
Trail of some of the atrocities can be summed as follows:
• 10th April 2000 – Journalist Omar Barrow shot dead at the entrance to the Red Cross headquarters
• 10th & 11th April 2000 – Student demonstrators massacred
• 8th August 2001 – Arson attack on Radio 1 FM radio station. Its proprietor, George Christensen who escaped with burns.
• 10th August 2001 – Arson attack on the home of a member of staff of Radio 1 FM
• 26th December 2003 – Leading barrister, Ousman Sillah was shot and seriously injured
• 13th April 2004 – Arson attack on the press house of The Independent newspaper, burnt down and the paper's printing machine damaged beyond repairs.
• 16th December 2004 – Leading newspaper editor and journalist, Deyda Hydara was assasinated
• July 2006 – Journalist Ebrima 'Chief' Manneh kidnapped by state agents (NIA)
• June/July 2009 – 7 journalists of The Gambia Press Union sent to prison for criticizing President Jammeh over insensitive remarks he made about the unsolved murder case of veteran journalist Deyda Hydara.
We are extremely disturbed by the fact that in all the above mentioned
cases any investigation promised by the police only to end up with excuses, such as 'witnesses have not been forth coming.' As a result, such crimes end up being swept under the carpet. Such a trend is inimical to peace and security, and constitutes a threat to democracy and the rule of law in Gambia.
We trust that you will utilize the full weight of your good office within the best outfit of protocol to salvage Gambia media and civil society from the horrors of state inflicted injustices and threats since the junta seized power more than 15 years in a coup that placed Yahya Jammeh in a self imposing life-president seat all the time since.
Signed:
Sarjo Bayang
President
Gambia Press Union (UK)
Murder Most Foul: The Killing of Deyda Hydara
By Baba Galleh Jallow
December 17, 2004. Deyda Hydara, 58, Editor and co-founder of The Point newspaper has been brutally murdered. Deyda was gunned down last night, around 11:00pm, as he drove home from his office.
It was the thirteenth anniversary of The Point and Deyda and his colleagues had spent the day celebrating. But for Deyda, the meal he had that day was his last. Among the guests at his office, chatting and talking, showing teeth hiding streams of hot blood, or just waiting nearby outside his office, were some men who knew that Deyda would not see the light of the day tomorrow.
As he drove home, an unmarked taxi cab overtook him, drove adjacent him, and a man in the front passenger seat pumped two bullets into an unwary Deyda’s head and one into his chest. He lost control of the car, which swerved into a ditch. He died on the spot. His passengers, two young ladies, members of his staff he had offered a ride home, suffered gunshot wounds to the legs. The killers sped past the spot where Deyda slumped over his steering wheel, his skull shattered, his chest punctured, drenched in his own innocent blood. Deyda, who could not even hurt a fly. Deyda, who stammered and smoked and was ever so cheerful even when engaged in heated debate over matters of principle. Deyda was also the Gambia correspondent for Reporters Without Borders and the French news agency AFP.
Who killed Deyda Hydara? Who wanted Deyda dead? What could be the motive for such cold-blooded murder of a 58-year old journalist who had spent all his life trying to make ends meet and who ran a small bi-weekly tabloid just mildly critical of the state? Clearly, as long as this regime remains in power, we will never get an answer to these questions. Investigations will be touted in the media for a while and then all would be silence. Deyda’s last shroud would be like the shroud of silence that still covers the gruesome murder and incineration of Finance minister Ousman Koro Ceesay. Deyda’s last shroud would be like the shroud of silence that surrounds the murder by security forces of twelve students and one radio journalist on April 10/11 2000. Deyda’s shroud will be like the shroud surrounding the killing by security forces of Lt. Almamo Manneh, of an unknown number of alleged coup plotters on the bloody night of November 11, 1994. I am certain that Deyda’s murderer will never be brought to book as long as the current regime is in power.
Deyda was an uncompromising champion of press freedom and respect for human rights. Over the past year, he had been at the forefront of the Gambia Press Union’s fight against the promulgation of the media commission that had more powers than the Supreme Court of the land. That law was repealed only to be replaced by an even more draconian piece of non-legislation that gave the state power to jail journalists for a minimum of six months without the option of a fine for publishing ‘untruths’. This new bill also increases the fee for the registration of a newspaper from a whopping hundred thousand dalasi (about $5,000) to an unbelievable five hundred thousand dalasi. Again, Deyda was at the forefront of the press union’s fight against this draconian bill. Clearly, the state had gotten tired of seeing Deyda oppose any piece of unjust legislation in this country. And if that indeed is the case, as many of us believe it is, then Deyda’s murderer will never be brought to justice as long as the current regime is in power, which could be for God knows how long.
Deyda’s murder is a very good indicator of where we are as a nation. It is a good indicator that yes, we were not mistaken in our accusations of the authorities that there is absolutely no security for the powerless in today’s Gambia. How could anyone claim the existence of security in a country in which journalists could be murdered with impunity, media houses set on fire with impunity, and police and soldier-brutality perpetrated against innocent civilians with impunity? Deyda's murder is a good indicator that in today’s Gambia, the murder of government critics can be committed with blatant impunity and no one would ever be arrested for it. Why? Because the police are afraid to ask too many questions. Because the NIA can look only so far. Because the police, the NIA and everyone else find themselves emasculated and reduced to pretending that what they see is really not what they see, and what they know is really not what they know. They all know, or at least suspect very strongly that they know, who killed Deyda Hydara. But they are blind and dumb to the truth because the truth is too ugly to contemplate.
Deyda’s murder is an act of terrorism. It is a good indicator that terrorism does not have to be male, Arab, skinny, with an eagle nose and long flowing beard; that terrorism could also be black, African, Gambian, with a head like a square piece of dead wood. Deyda’s murder is calculated to terrorize not only the Gambian media, but all Gambians. It is calculated to stun and petrify the people, to say to everyone that this is what happens to people who engage in activities like those Deyda engaged in. It is a calculated attempt to repeat the message that was sent out to the Gambian people on April 10 and 11, 2000, when 12 innocent school children and one radio journalist were murdered by security forces in broad daylight and no one was prosecuted for the murders. The message that whoever dares make too much unpleasant noise in The Gambia will go six feet deep, and nothing will come out of it.
But Deyda’s murder also represents a victory for the forces of truth and justice in The Gambia. Death, Foucault argues, is the ultimate defiance to state power; it is the point at which naked power is rendered totally impotent. By his death Deyda has dealt a devastating blow to the forces of evil in our country. He has exposed the shameful cowardice of those who, because they have the guns, feel that they can commit any crime and get away with it. He has, by his death, grown larger than life in the global imagination and focused the world’s attention on this small corner of the world where, for over ten years now, a small group of tyrants have lorded it over the people and broken every law in the book with ruthless impunity. If Deyda’s murderers were hoping to stop him from exposing their evil deeds, the ironic result is that by his death, Deyda has turned the full light of international attention on his killers. They have achieved the exact opposite of what, in their sick and jaundiced imaginations, they had set out to achieve. Not only are the world’s curious searchlights now fully focused on The Gambia, they will remain focused on The Gambia until the truth about Deyda is known and the culprits brought to justice in one way or the other. There is no doubt that one day, someone will stand in front of the world and say with total certainty, this is Deyda’s murderer. That day will come, and when it comes, those who feel that they can commit such despicable crimes with impunity shall be condemned to eternal damnation.
(culled from Mandela’s Other Children: The Diary of an African Journalist)
December 17, 2004. Deyda Hydara, 58, Editor and co-founder of The Point newspaper has been brutally murdered. Deyda was gunned down last night, around 11:00pm, as he drove home from his office.
It was the thirteenth anniversary of The Point and Deyda and his colleagues had spent the day celebrating. But for Deyda, the meal he had that day was his last. Among the guests at his office, chatting and talking, showing teeth hiding streams of hot blood, or just waiting nearby outside his office, were some men who knew that Deyda would not see the light of the day tomorrow.
As he drove home, an unmarked taxi cab overtook him, drove adjacent him, and a man in the front passenger seat pumped two bullets into an unwary Deyda’s head and one into his chest. He lost control of the car, which swerved into a ditch. He died on the spot. His passengers, two young ladies, members of his staff he had offered a ride home, suffered gunshot wounds to the legs. The killers sped past the spot where Deyda slumped over his steering wheel, his skull shattered, his chest punctured, drenched in his own innocent blood. Deyda, who could not even hurt a fly. Deyda, who stammered and smoked and was ever so cheerful even when engaged in heated debate over matters of principle. Deyda was also the Gambia correspondent for Reporters Without Borders and the French news agency AFP.
Who killed Deyda Hydara? Who wanted Deyda dead? What could be the motive for such cold-blooded murder of a 58-year old journalist who had spent all his life trying to make ends meet and who ran a small bi-weekly tabloid just mildly critical of the state? Clearly, as long as this regime remains in power, we will never get an answer to these questions. Investigations will be touted in the media for a while and then all would be silence. Deyda’s last shroud would be like the shroud of silence that still covers the gruesome murder and incineration of Finance minister Ousman Koro Ceesay. Deyda’s last shroud would be like the shroud of silence that surrounds the murder by security forces of twelve students and one radio journalist on April 10/11 2000. Deyda’s shroud will be like the shroud surrounding the killing by security forces of Lt. Almamo Manneh, of an unknown number of alleged coup plotters on the bloody night of November 11, 1994. I am certain that Deyda’s murderer will never be brought to book as long as the current regime is in power.
Deyda was an uncompromising champion of press freedom and respect for human rights. Over the past year, he had been at the forefront of the Gambia Press Union’s fight against the promulgation of the media commission that had more powers than the Supreme Court of the land. That law was repealed only to be replaced by an even more draconian piece of non-legislation that gave the state power to jail journalists for a minimum of six months without the option of a fine for publishing ‘untruths’. This new bill also increases the fee for the registration of a newspaper from a whopping hundred thousand dalasi (about $5,000) to an unbelievable five hundred thousand dalasi. Again, Deyda was at the forefront of the press union’s fight against this draconian bill. Clearly, the state had gotten tired of seeing Deyda oppose any piece of unjust legislation in this country. And if that indeed is the case, as many of us believe it is, then Deyda’s murderer will never be brought to justice as long as the current regime is in power, which could be for God knows how long.
Deyda’s murder is a very good indicator of where we are as a nation. It is a good indicator that yes, we were not mistaken in our accusations of the authorities that there is absolutely no security for the powerless in today’s Gambia. How could anyone claim the existence of security in a country in which journalists could be murdered with impunity, media houses set on fire with impunity, and police and soldier-brutality perpetrated against innocent civilians with impunity? Deyda's murder is a good indicator that in today’s Gambia, the murder of government critics can be committed with blatant impunity and no one would ever be arrested for it. Why? Because the police are afraid to ask too many questions. Because the NIA can look only so far. Because the police, the NIA and everyone else find themselves emasculated and reduced to pretending that what they see is really not what they see, and what they know is really not what they know. They all know, or at least suspect very strongly that they know, who killed Deyda Hydara. But they are blind and dumb to the truth because the truth is too ugly to contemplate.
Deyda’s murder is an act of terrorism. It is a good indicator that terrorism does not have to be male, Arab, skinny, with an eagle nose and long flowing beard; that terrorism could also be black, African, Gambian, with a head like a square piece of dead wood. Deyda’s murder is calculated to terrorize not only the Gambian media, but all Gambians. It is calculated to stun and petrify the people, to say to everyone that this is what happens to people who engage in activities like those Deyda engaged in. It is a calculated attempt to repeat the message that was sent out to the Gambian people on April 10 and 11, 2000, when 12 innocent school children and one radio journalist were murdered by security forces in broad daylight and no one was prosecuted for the murders. The message that whoever dares make too much unpleasant noise in The Gambia will go six feet deep, and nothing will come out of it.
But Deyda’s murder also represents a victory for the forces of truth and justice in The Gambia. Death, Foucault argues, is the ultimate defiance to state power; it is the point at which naked power is rendered totally impotent. By his death Deyda has dealt a devastating blow to the forces of evil in our country. He has exposed the shameful cowardice of those who, because they have the guns, feel that they can commit any crime and get away with it. He has, by his death, grown larger than life in the global imagination and focused the world’s attention on this small corner of the world where, for over ten years now, a small group of tyrants have lorded it over the people and broken every law in the book with ruthless impunity. If Deyda’s murderers were hoping to stop him from exposing their evil deeds, the ironic result is that by his death, Deyda has turned the full light of international attention on his killers. They have achieved the exact opposite of what, in their sick and jaundiced imaginations, they had set out to achieve. Not only are the world’s curious searchlights now fully focused on The Gambia, they will remain focused on The Gambia until the truth about Deyda is known and the culprits brought to justice in one way or the other. There is no doubt that one day, someone will stand in front of the world and say with total certainty, this is Deyda’s murderer. That day will come, and when it comes, those who feel that they can commit such despicable crimes with impunity shall be condemned to eternal damnation.
(culled from Mandela’s Other Children: The Diary of an African Journalist)
FIVE YEARS ON DEYDA HYDARA'S KILLER(S) STILL AT LARGE
On the occasion of the fifth anniversary of the murder of our colleague, mentor, friend and brother journalist Deyda Hydara, on December 16, 2004, the Coalition for human rights in The Gambia once again denounces the fact that the perpetrators of this heinous crime are yet to be brought to book.
Today, we wish to honour the memory of Deyda Hydara and to register our stance against the overt or covert condoning of any form of impunity by the Government of The Gambia.
We are outraged that after five years, apart from a National Intelligence Agency Published “confidential report” in 2005, two GPU/National Security Council Meetings (2004/2008), the recent jailing of six journalists including three senior members of the Gambia Press Union over comments by President Yahya Jammeh on the Deyda Hydara murder, the perpetrators are still unidentified and the investigations into the case stalled.
Today, the Coalition wishes to call the public’s attention to the fact that the perpetrators of this heinous crime have not yet been brought to book. They roam our streets freely lurking behind dark shadows.
We express our utmost disappointment and concern that the State institutions responsible for the protection of life and property in this country have to date woefully failed to find the culprits. Instead, they would speedily and heartlessly detain and imprison innocent journalists who question the motives for the murder of Deyda Hydara and the apparent failure of the authorities to show commitment in investigating other atrocities against the private media and journalists.
Regrettably, we are obliged to draw the attention of the Gambia Government and the State Security Apparatus’ to the fact that unless and until the State re-commences the investigations into the murder of Deyda Hydara and that this time around it leaves no stone unturned to trace the perpetrators of this dastardly act; the media fraternity will have no faith and confidence in the ability of the security forces and the government to put an end to IMPUNITY and crimes against the media and media practitioners. We have observed a similar trend in our society at large. Such a scenario is inimical to national peace and security.
The Coalition for Human Rights in The Gambia sincerely hopes that at the end of five years, the Gambia Government will take stock and that in an effort to pave the way for an end to impunity and to demonstrate its commitment to the protection of the life, liberty and limb of every Gambian without discrimination against media professionals by:
• Publicly stepping up efforts into investigations of the murder of Deyda Hydara in particular and on all pending cases relating to the assaults on journalists and media houses;
• Stopping the unwarranted and unnecessary arrests, detention and show trials of journalists and media workers;
• Reopening all arbitrarily closed media houses and allowing them to operate without fear of reprisals;
• Seriously consider repealing obnoxious media laws in particular the Newspaper Amendment Act 2004, the Criminal Code Amendment Act 2005, the Newspaper Registration Act 2005 and the Communications Bill 2009.
To those who brutally murdered Deyda Hydara, you have failed miserably in your evil design to silence the voice of truth. Your criminal act has in fact turned his voice into a universal voice of truth and a universal voice of condemnation of evil and injustice.
We rejoice in the fact that Deyda Hydara will always be remembered as a courageous, steadfast and committed journalist. One who ascribed to the singular pursuit of truth, justice, transparency and accountability. He died a hero and a martyr to the cause of a free press for The Gambia.
For more information, contact :
Coalition for Human Rights in The Gambia
Tél : 33 867 95 87
Mail : coalitiongambie@gmail.com
Organizations :
-Amnesty International, Section Sénégal
-Article 19
-Réseau Interafricain pour les Femmes, Médias Genre et développement (FAMEDEV),
-Fédération Internationale des Journalistes (FIJ),
-Gambia Press Union (GPU),
-Organisation Nationale des Droits de l’Homme (ONDH),
- Rencontre Africaine pour le Défense des droits de l’Homme (RADDHO),
-Radio Alternative Voice for Gambians (AVG),
-Réseau Presse et Parlement du Sénégal (REPPAS),
-Syndicat des Professionnels de l’Information et de la Communication du Sénégal (SYNPICS),
-Union des Journalistes d’Afrique de l’Ouest (UJAO)/West African Journalists Association
Monday 14 December 2009
Freedom Newspaper vs. FJC
I am no Christian or Jew, but have always respected and observed the Biblical teachings contained in Ephesians 4:29 which states: “Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers.”
This is why my conscience cannot allow me to ignore some of the foul mouthed insults being hurled at Fatoumata Jahumpa-Ceesay, former speaker of the Gambian National Assembly in the Dr Njomborr corner of the Freedom Newspaper.
Last Saturday immediately after The Gambian Echo ran a newsflash that they will be running an interview they had with Mrs. Jahumpa-Ceesay which was conducted while she was out shopping at the popular Right Choice Supermarket on Kairaba Avenue, Dr Njombor for whatever reasons went bananas calling her a ‘whore’.
Again this Sunday, while reading the online news at my brother’s residence in Telford, Dr Njombor in his attack at the former speaker stated: “Fatou Jahumpa Ceesay, do you remember when you tried to lure a former Daily Observer reporter into a sxxx at your Kanifing house? What? Your naked axxx was waiting for that d.... What? You are nothing but a whore!!! What? Fxxx you all and your mxxxx fxxx king mxxxxs! See you in court. I am no coward! I rather die to be a coward. You get that!!! Author the unknown!”
My eyes couldn’t believe what I was reading and I had to read it three times to believe that such foul mouthed language is actually published in a Gambian owned online newspaper which is read by even school children.
And what really surprised me is the decision of the publisher and managing editor of the Freedom Newspaper, who recently acquired a degree in Mass Communication from the reputable Arizona University, Phoenix, to allow such foul mouthed language to slip through.
I am not trying to lecture anyone about ethics of the profession as I haven't got a degree in communication like Mr. Mbye, but my long work experience with the media have always thought me that it is not professional for journalists to insult or hurt people in the name of freedom of expression.
Let me be quick to point out that I am not defending Mrs. Jahumpa-Ceesay, but I am compel to speak out because I totally believe that Dr Njombor went far beyond the line. I would not have raised a voice if the rude language used by Dr Njombor were contained in a Hollywood film script for Samuel L. Jackson rated PG 16.
As journalists and online contributors, it is normal that we disagree with each other in our day-to-day work on many issues. But as Baba Galleh Jallow, one of my editors at The Independent told me in an interview last year, "no one should claim infallibility or consider himself or herself to be above criticism. After all, we are trying to build a democratic political culture in the Gambia whose cardinal principle would be tolerance and respect for contrary opinions."
Using foul languages does not show any sign of bravery or make one look better. It also does not show any sign of cleverness either.
Writing under the caption What Purpose hath foul Language? in February 2007, renown US blogger, Harrison Beckmann, stated: “It is uncreative. People who use it [foul language] as expressions of whatever they are feeling at the moment forsake far more creative ways to say it. People who use it are limiting themselves to a very small, undesirable portion of all language. People who use it show that they are ignorant enough not to know to use something better. It is rude.
I know that some people will disagree with me and may jump to launch personal attack on me. I don't care because I am a sinner and is not perfect. But before you do, please take a moment and put yourself in Mrs. Jahumpa-Ceesay’s position. How would you feel if your mother, wife, sister, aunty, step-mum, or whatever relative is being so publicly insulted in an online newspaper?
I will hate to see anyone whisper an insult at my parents and am sure you too will hate that. Mrs. Jahumpa-Ceesay no matter what she may have done or no matter what her political belief is is a mother, a wife, aunty, sister, cousin, and niece etc to many Gambians who must have been really hurt. We may not share the same political ideologies or beliefs, but I will always respect her constitutionally given rights like every Gambian to belong to any political party of our choice.
Peace.
For comments, write to papak196@yahoo.com or pk@jarju.com
This is why my conscience cannot allow me to ignore some of the foul mouthed insults being hurled at Fatoumata Jahumpa-Ceesay, former speaker of the Gambian National Assembly in the Dr Njomborr corner of the Freedom Newspaper.
Last Saturday immediately after The Gambian Echo ran a newsflash that they will be running an interview they had with Mrs. Jahumpa-Ceesay which was conducted while she was out shopping at the popular Right Choice Supermarket on Kairaba Avenue, Dr Njombor for whatever reasons went bananas calling her a ‘whore’.
Again this Sunday, while reading the online news at my brother’s residence in Telford, Dr Njombor in his attack at the former speaker stated: “Fatou Jahumpa Ceesay, do you remember when you tried to lure a former Daily Observer reporter into a sxxx at your Kanifing house? What? Your naked axxx was waiting for that d.... What? You are nothing but a whore!!! What? Fxxx you all and your mxxxx fxxx king mxxxxs! See you in court. I am no coward! I rather die to be a coward. You get that!!! Author the unknown!”
My eyes couldn’t believe what I was reading and I had to read it three times to believe that such foul mouthed language is actually published in a Gambian owned online newspaper which is read by even school children.
And what really surprised me is the decision of the publisher and managing editor of the Freedom Newspaper, who recently acquired a degree in Mass Communication from the reputable Arizona University, Phoenix, to allow such foul mouthed language to slip through.
I am not trying to lecture anyone about ethics of the profession as I haven't got a degree in communication like Mr. Mbye, but my long work experience with the media have always thought me that it is not professional for journalists to insult or hurt people in the name of freedom of expression.
Let me be quick to point out that I am not defending Mrs. Jahumpa-Ceesay, but I am compel to speak out because I totally believe that Dr Njombor went far beyond the line. I would not have raised a voice if the rude language used by Dr Njombor were contained in a Hollywood film script for Samuel L. Jackson rated PG 16.
As journalists and online contributors, it is normal that we disagree with each other in our day-to-day work on many issues. But as Baba Galleh Jallow, one of my editors at The Independent told me in an interview last year, "no one should claim infallibility or consider himself or herself to be above criticism. After all, we are trying to build a democratic political culture in the Gambia whose cardinal principle would be tolerance and respect for contrary opinions."
Using foul languages does not show any sign of bravery or make one look better. It also does not show any sign of cleverness either.
Writing under the caption What Purpose hath foul Language? in February 2007, renown US blogger, Harrison Beckmann, stated: “It is uncreative. People who use it [foul language] as expressions of whatever they are feeling at the moment forsake far more creative ways to say it. People who use it are limiting themselves to a very small, undesirable portion of all language. People who use it show that they are ignorant enough not to know to use something better. It is rude.
I know that some people will disagree with me and may jump to launch personal attack on me. I don't care because I am a sinner and is not perfect. But before you do, please take a moment and put yourself in Mrs. Jahumpa-Ceesay’s position. How would you feel if your mother, wife, sister, aunty, step-mum, or whatever relative is being so publicly insulted in an online newspaper?
I will hate to see anyone whisper an insult at my parents and am sure you too will hate that. Mrs. Jahumpa-Ceesay no matter what she may have done or no matter what her political belief is is a mother, a wife, aunty, sister, cousin, and niece etc to many Gambians who must have been really hurt. We may not share the same political ideologies or beliefs, but I will always respect her constitutionally given rights like every Gambian to belong to any political party of our choice.
Peace.
For comments, write to papak196@yahoo.com or pk@jarju.com
Saturday 12 December 2009
Senegal imams use prayers to condemn giant statue
By Caspar Leighton
BBC News West Africa correspondent
Imams in Senegal have begun a concerted campaign against a giant statue being built in Dakar.
They are using Friday prayers to denounce it as idolatrous and a waste of money.
The Monument to the African Renaissance is a pet project of Senegal's President Abdoulaye Wade and will be bigger than the Statue of Liberty when complete.
The main controversy has been the cost - at $27m (£16.6m) it is a big outlay for a poor country.
It is also on questionable aesthetic ground.
The imams are tapping into a strong vein of discontent with the giant statue.
'War of words'
Depicting a muscular man holding aloft a child and sweeping a woman along behind him, it is pure socialist realism - and not very African.
It is being built by North Korea.
Imams agreed a text for Friday sermons quoting the Koran and the Hadith (Islamic sayings), which forms a denunciation of the idolatrous nature of the giant structure.
The protests do come a bit late though, for the statue is almost finished.
The new campaign is an escalation in a long war of words between imams and President Wade.
One imam put it pithily, saying it was not on that the first thing air travellers see of Senegal when their plane descends is a near-naked man and woman.
What sticks in the throats of many Senegalese though is President Wade's plan to charge visitors and pocket a share of the takings himself.
The president says he helped design the statue, so he should share some of the revenue.
Friday 11 December 2009
On-the-run killer found dead in Gambia
A convicted murderer on the run from a Scottish open prison has been found dead in a West African holiday resort.
John Brown, convicted of murder in 1976, absconded from Castle Huntly prison, near Dundee, after he was let out on home leave in May.
The 57-year-old's body was discovered in The Gambia on 29 November. It is understood he was found hanged.
A Foreign Office spokesman said: "We can confirm the death of a British national in The Gambia."
He added: "Next of kin have been informed and we are providing consular assistance."
Brown previously lived and worked in both Glasgow and Edinburgh.
His disappearance was described by the authorities as being "completely out of character".
Home leave
At the time, Justice Minister Kenny MacAskill was put under pressure to resign as the escape followed that of armed robber Brian Martin, known as The Hawk, who also went on the run from Castle Huntly.
Brown had been transferred to the open prison on the advice of the Parole Board in February this year.
He was being considered for release in July, Scotland's Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill said at the time of his disappearance.
He said the prisoner had "no history" of absconding, and had completed a "successful" period of home leave a month before he vanished.
Scottish Conservative justice spokesman Bill Aitken has demanded an investigation into how Brown managed to leave the country.
He said: "There are clearly questions which have to be asked, the most obvious one being how did this man get a passport when he had been in prison for many years?
"Secondly, how was he able to fund this trip to The Gambia? I am also intrigued as to why he should have gone there of all places."
First Minister Alex Salmond said the Scottish government would discuss whether to demand powers to withhold prisoners' passports.
He said: "In terms of John Brown leaving the country, you'll be aware that the Passport Agency is not under the control of this government.
"We don't actually have the power to withdraw anyone's passport, in terms of the ability of the Scottish Prison Service or any other agency of government."
The Home Office said Brown could not have been stopped from travelling abroad as no warrant was in place for his arrest.
BBC
Thursday 10 December 2009
Climate change puts us all in the same boat. One hole will sink us all
By Kofi Annan
Global warming does not respect borders. A mindset shift is required if world leaders are to save us from ourselves
The UN climate change conference in Copenhagen offers the prospect of a robust political deal, endorsed by the world's leaders and witnessed by the world's people, that sets out clear targets and a timeline for translating it into law. To be a truly historic achievement, such a deal must do two things.
First, it must lay the basis for a global regime and subsequent agreements that limit global temperature rise in accordance with the scientific evidence. Second, it must provide clarity on the mobilisation and volume of financial resources to support developing countries to adapt to climate change.
The stakes are enormous. Economic growth has been achieved at great environmental and social cost, aggravating inequality and human vulnerability. The irreparable damage that is being inflicted on ecosystems, agricultural productivity, forests and water systems is accelerating. Threats to health, life and livelihoods are growing. Disasters are also increasing in scale and frequency.
But despite the mounting evidence of negative impacts, reaching a deal will not be easy. It will require extraordinary political courage – both to cut the deal and to communicate its necessity to the public.
A mindset shift is required. Distrust and competition persist between regions and nations, manifest in a "no, you must show your cards first" attitude that has dogged the negotiations leading up to Copenhagen. This has to be overcome.
A deal that is not based on the best scientific evidence will be nothing better than a line in the sand as the tide comes in. But short-term considerations, including from special interest groups and electoral demands, are working against long-term solutions.
Success in reaching a deal will require leaders to think for future generations, and for citizens other than their own. It will require them to think about inclusive and comprehensive arrangements, not just a patched up compilation of national or regional interests.
A deal that stops at rhetoric and does not actually meet the needs of the poorest and most climate vulnerable countries simply will not work. The climate cannot be "fixed" in one continent and not another. Climate change does not respect national borders. We are all in the same boat; a hole at one end will sink us all.
For it to work, climate justice must be at the heart of the agreement. An unfair deal will come unstuck. Industrialised countries such as the United States must naturally take the lead in reducing emissions and supporting others to follow suit, but developing countries like India or China also have an increasing responsibility to do so as their economies continue to grow.
Tragically, it is the poorest and least responsible who are having to bear the brunt of the climate challenge as rising temperatures exacerbate poverty, hunger and vulnerability to disease for billions of people. They need both immediate help to strengthen their climate resilience as well as long-term support to enable them to adapt to changing weather patterns, reduce deforestation, and pursue low-emissions, clean energy growth strategies.
The deal must include a package of commitments in line with the science and the imperative of reducing global emissions by 50-85% relative to 2000 levels by 2050.
This requires a schedule for richer countries to move to 25-40% emission cuts by 2020 from 1990 baselines; clear measures for emerging economies to cut emissions intensity; and clarity about both immediate and longer term finance and technical support for developing countries, notably the poorest and most vulnerable among them.
Will we get there? The targets that have been proposed for emission reductions by many industrialised countries such as the EU, Japan and Norway are encouraging, as are those being made by the big emerging economies including Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, and South Korea.
Recent announcements by the US on emission targets represent a significant shift and provide a basis for scaling up commitments in the coming years. So does the recognition by emerging economies that they also have a role in supporting the most vulnerable countries.
Welcome too are the proposals for financial support to LDCs and small island states made at the Commonwealth summit in Trinidad, as well as proposals by the Netherlands, France, and the UK, among others.
But much greater specificity on finance is needed. Existing official development assistance (ODA) commitments to help the poorest countries meet the Millennium Development Goals need to be met. And significant additional finance that is separate from and additional to ODA needs to be mobilised to support them meet the incremental costs generated by climate change.
A deal that is not clear on the finance will be both unacceptable to developing countries, and unworkable. Finding the additional resources and communicating its necessity will not be easy, particularly in the current economic climate, but it must be done.
A successful deal could incentivise not only good stewardship of forests and more sustainable land use, but also massive investment into low-carbon growth and a healthier planet, including in sectors such as energy generation, construction and transportation.
And it could usher in an era of qualitatively new international co-operation based on common but differentiated responsibilities – not just for managing climate change, but for human development, social justice and global security.
Ultimately, at stake is whether our leaders can work to help us save ourselves from … well, from ourselves. The legacy of today's politicians will be determined in the weeks to come.
• Kofi Annan was UN secretary-general from 1997 to 2006. He now chairs the Kofi Annan Foundation and the Africa Progress Panel and is president of the Global Humanitarian Forum
Global warming does not respect borders. A mindset shift is required if world leaders are to save us from ourselves
The UN climate change conference in Copenhagen offers the prospect of a robust political deal, endorsed by the world's leaders and witnessed by the world's people, that sets out clear targets and a timeline for translating it into law. To be a truly historic achievement, such a deal must do two things.
First, it must lay the basis for a global regime and subsequent agreements that limit global temperature rise in accordance with the scientific evidence. Second, it must provide clarity on the mobilisation and volume of financial resources to support developing countries to adapt to climate change.
The stakes are enormous. Economic growth has been achieved at great environmental and social cost, aggravating inequality and human vulnerability. The irreparable damage that is being inflicted on ecosystems, agricultural productivity, forests and water systems is accelerating. Threats to health, life and livelihoods are growing. Disasters are also increasing in scale and frequency.
But despite the mounting evidence of negative impacts, reaching a deal will not be easy. It will require extraordinary political courage – both to cut the deal and to communicate its necessity to the public.
A mindset shift is required. Distrust and competition persist between regions and nations, manifest in a "no, you must show your cards first" attitude that has dogged the negotiations leading up to Copenhagen. This has to be overcome.
A deal that is not based on the best scientific evidence will be nothing better than a line in the sand as the tide comes in. But short-term considerations, including from special interest groups and electoral demands, are working against long-term solutions.
Success in reaching a deal will require leaders to think for future generations, and for citizens other than their own. It will require them to think about inclusive and comprehensive arrangements, not just a patched up compilation of national or regional interests.
A deal that stops at rhetoric and does not actually meet the needs of the poorest and most climate vulnerable countries simply will not work. The climate cannot be "fixed" in one continent and not another. Climate change does not respect national borders. We are all in the same boat; a hole at one end will sink us all.
For it to work, climate justice must be at the heart of the agreement. An unfair deal will come unstuck. Industrialised countries such as the United States must naturally take the lead in reducing emissions and supporting others to follow suit, but developing countries like India or China also have an increasing responsibility to do so as their economies continue to grow.
Tragically, it is the poorest and least responsible who are having to bear the brunt of the climate challenge as rising temperatures exacerbate poverty, hunger and vulnerability to disease for billions of people. They need both immediate help to strengthen their climate resilience as well as long-term support to enable them to adapt to changing weather patterns, reduce deforestation, and pursue low-emissions, clean energy growth strategies.
The deal must include a package of commitments in line with the science and the imperative of reducing global emissions by 50-85% relative to 2000 levels by 2050.
This requires a schedule for richer countries to move to 25-40% emission cuts by 2020 from 1990 baselines; clear measures for emerging economies to cut emissions intensity; and clarity about both immediate and longer term finance and technical support for developing countries, notably the poorest and most vulnerable among them.
Will we get there? The targets that have been proposed for emission reductions by many industrialised countries such as the EU, Japan and Norway are encouraging, as are those being made by the big emerging economies including Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, and South Korea.
Recent announcements by the US on emission targets represent a significant shift and provide a basis for scaling up commitments in the coming years. So does the recognition by emerging economies that they also have a role in supporting the most vulnerable countries.
Welcome too are the proposals for financial support to LDCs and small island states made at the Commonwealth summit in Trinidad, as well as proposals by the Netherlands, France, and the UK, among others.
But much greater specificity on finance is needed. Existing official development assistance (ODA) commitments to help the poorest countries meet the Millennium Development Goals need to be met. And significant additional finance that is separate from and additional to ODA needs to be mobilised to support them meet the incremental costs generated by climate change.
A deal that is not clear on the finance will be both unacceptable to developing countries, and unworkable. Finding the additional resources and communicating its necessity will not be easy, particularly in the current economic climate, but it must be done.
A successful deal could incentivise not only good stewardship of forests and more sustainable land use, but also massive investment into low-carbon growth and a healthier planet, including in sectors such as energy generation, construction and transportation.
And it could usher in an era of qualitatively new international co-operation based on common but differentiated responsibilities – not just for managing climate change, but for human development, social justice and global security.
Ultimately, at stake is whether our leaders can work to help us save ourselves from … well, from ourselves. The legacy of today's politicians will be determined in the weeks to come.
• Kofi Annan was UN secretary-general from 1997 to 2006. He now chairs the Kofi Annan Foundation and the Africa Progress Panel and is president of the Global Humanitarian Forum
The Oppressor and the Oppressed
By Baba Galleh Jallow
Clearly, one of the most intractable problems facing Africa today is the problem of oppression. The continent is littered with an ugly coterie of oppressive political regimes as well as a critical mass of people trying to resist this oppression, getting stigmatized, jailed, maimed, exiled, and killed in the process. One of the means at the disposal of this critical mass of oppressed “freedom fighters” is the acquisition of knowledge and a greater understanding of the nature of the oppressor in relation to themselves, the oppressed. For it is not enough that we know the oppressor; we also need to know ourselves as people trying to bring about an end to oppression. This short essay is meant as a modest contribution to that self-knowledge and knowledge of the nature of oppression.
The oppressor, whatever his motivations, seeks to distort the humanity of the oppressed. He seeks to retard the growth of the people, chops off any emerging buds of popular progress, plucks out any spots of light and sight, seals tight any outlets of enlightenment, and menacingly hovers over the heads of the oppressed in order to instill maximum terror and compliance through a regime of actual or potential violence, physical and psychological. Oppression manifests itself as a form of violence because it constitutes a denial of full humanity to the oppressed; because it denies people the possibility of self-affirmation, the pursuit of one’s right to self-fulfillment as a full human being. Oppression is violence because the oppressor appropriates to himself all rights of being, of self-fulfillment, of the enjoyment of unrestricted freedoms, of a certain state of exception in which he stands outside the law, while engaging the law to impose an unquestionable regime of hegemony on the people. As the Brazilian writer Paulo Freire puts it, “The oppressor consciousness tends to transform everything surrounding it into an object of its domination. The earth, property, production, the creation of people, people themselves, time – everything is reduced to the status of objects at its disposal.” Everything within its territory, in effect, is considered the personal property of the oppressor and everything within its territory that refuses to be owned, domesticated, and controlled must either be eliminated or neutralized. Any individual or institution within this space that refuses to be turned into a dehumanized, passive, and unquestioning object is regarded as a subversive entity.
We do not need to look far to see the manifestation of this oppressive reality. We do not need to look far to see oppressors turning on the oppressed and calling them evil beings, subversive liars, unpatriotic and envious demons, enemies of progress and other negative imaginaries because they refuse to be turned into lifeless objects and possessions of the oppressor to be exploited and discarded at will. The oppressor does not see that he is the source of the resistance he is confronted with, that the oppressed are merely reacting to his untenable claims to their ownership and the ownership of the collective property that is the nation-state, that they are simply following the natural and healthy course of reaffirming and pursuing their inalienable right to remain fully human, to refuse to be dehumanized, objectified and relegated to the status of nonentities who must live the rest of their lives in a state of tortured nothingness.
Faced with the prospect of being rendered null and void as human beings even as they live the one and only single life they have, it is the natural vocation of a conscious people to resist oppression, to refuse to be terrorized and dehumanized through engagement in an uncompromising regime of self-humanization, self-expression, and the total rejection of the unjust oppressive order bolstered by a regime of violence and intimidation. While the goal of the oppressed must never be the counter-oppression of the oppressor, the message to the oppressor must be couched in no uncertain terms. It must be made loud and clear to the oppressor that the oppressed refuses to be dehumanized and objectified and that the oppressed insists on the enjoyment of their right to full humanity – all those rights that come with the reality of being fully human. But while the possibility of becoming human and ending oppression must always be made implicit in the message to the oppressor, the person who seeks to end oppression must never fall to the temptation of trying to pacify the oppressor because this, as Freire tells us again, makes the person who seeks justice a dispenser of false generosity, an adherent to a regime of circular self-truths who grows strangely agitated whenever any of those self-truths are challenged or questioned.
History is replete with examples of “freedom fighters” who become oppressors as soon as they assume positions of power. This is because at the critical moment of their fight against oppression, they had conceived a fear of freedom itself. They had wavered between their initial principled positions of uncompromising opponents of oppression and a newly assumed position of a fake perception of pacification as a more viable alternative and line of defense against oppression. They tend to edge closer to the oppressor, granting him a certain veiled acceptance through a lame regime of rationalizations and apologetics, through a lame appeal to reason and fairness, and by citing lame pointers to the reality of an unalterable imperfection of being, of life, the necessity of compromise in the service of the exigencies of daily life. They are caught between the desire for freedom and a cold, belly-numbing fear of freedom or its possibility. They swing and waver with dizzying uncertainty and tend, to quote Freire again, “to prefer the security of conformity . . . to the creative communion produced by freedom and even the pursuit of freedom.” They experience this dilemma because from the very beginning, what they really “fought” for was not the full liberation and full humanization of society, but the privilege, perhaps subconscious, of identifying with the oppressor, of enjoying the privileges enjoyed by the oppressor, of the opportunity to rise to the level of the oppressor and share in the glittering trappings of the oppressor’s perceived high station. This freedom-fighter-turned-oppressor started out really focusing on the pursuit of individual or class interests rather than the interests of the social collectivity. Such a pursuit inevitably distorts and corrupts his mission so that he becomes an oppressor as soon as he becomes powerful enough. It is an absolute prerequisite for one who desires to resist oppressive dehumanization that he must lose sight of individual and class interests and set his sights upon the interests of the popular collectivity. One cannot be free from the “oppressor consciousness” so long as one is obsessed with the protection or preservation of individual or class interests. While seeking to preserve individual or class interests might appear the sensible thing to do in an environment of oppression, it is in reality a dangerous path to perdition. The ancient African aphorism that you cannot dance and dig at the same time exemplifies the folly of trying to rationalize oppression even as we pose as enemies of oppression and injustice.
The person who desires freedom from oppression must therefore assume a principled and uncompromising posture of rejection of oppression. Short of engaging in physical violence, the person who seeks liberation must relentlessly shove bitter doses of truth medicine down the throat of the oppressor. And equally important, such a person must see the current oppressive situation not as a hopeless permanent situation, or a situation that has to be endured at all costs, but as a situation that, like all others, is located within the ever-rotating wheel of life and must therefore one day pass from actuality to potentiality or non-being. The person who seeks liberation must therefore engage in a regime of resistance perpetually inspired by an unshakeable conviction that oppression is to be rejected without qualification, and that what comes next must be carefully and constantly contemplated and visualized every step of the way.
A discussion of oppression and the oppressed must inevitably lead us to the issue of who leads the struggle for liberation from oppression. In most cases, such a role is assumed by people who are academically and economically better off than the average oppressed person; these people step forward to assume the mantle of leadership against oppression, to act as champions of the oppressed, and as voices of those they consider the voiceless. They form political organizations and create manifestos and slogans proclaiming their aims and objectives, and set about condemning the oppressors while at the same time courting the support of the oppressed by offering themselves up as better alternatives to the oppressors. The interesting thing is that in at least 8 out of 10 cases, these champions of the oppressed fail in their endeavors; or in the rare situations in which they succeed, find themselves proving unequal to their self-assigned task of ending oppression, becoming instead as bad as, or even worse than, the oppressors they dislodge.
While there are undoubtedly many reasons for this failure of leadership, a failure to truly identify with the oppressed masses must rank among the top causes. Coming mostly from middle-class backgrounds, most leaders of anti-oppression movements fail to truly identify with the oppressed people. Rather than view and treat the people as partners to be creatively engaged and dialogued with in the course of the struggle against oppression, such leaders specialize in the ephemeral politics of propaganda, slinging mud at their opponents on all sides of the political divide and preaching endlessly to the people on how morally superior they are and what glittering goodies they would deliver should they assume positions of power and authority. They engage in such empty politicking with the erroneous presupposition that all the people want to hear is how their current lot will be improved once the oppressor is removed from power. Sadly, in most cases, these messages, because they sound so commonplace and monotonous, fail to register with the people and these leaders are dismissed as just another bunch of power-hungry politicians.
During Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde’s struggle for liberation from Portuguese colonialism, Amilcar Cabral repeatedly taught that those intellectuals who wanted to be true and effective leaders of the people must commit what he called class suicide. They must be able to purge themselves of all pretences to superior knowledge, wisdom or leadership skills, and identify totally with the oppressed if they wanted to be authentic leaders of the people. He argued that a leadership that seeks to lead from whatever kind of high pedestal is doomed to failure. Once they totally identify with the people and the people with them, those who assume leadership of the oppressed will find, when they assume positions of political power, that they are either unable or unwilling to become oppressors because of their internalized and assimilated affinities with the people.
The necessity of class suicide aside, it has also been observed that some oppressed people tend to be more hostile towards each other than towards their oppressors. Many oppressed people tend to assume a fatalistic attitude vis-à-vis their oppression, blaming their unhappy conditions on divine providence and therefore failing to see any connection between their sufferings and their oppressors. And the oppressor, through a malicious combination of vicious cunning and open brutality, dedicates all his energies at keeping things just this way by making the people believe that the best way to keep out of unnecessary trouble is through a slavish regime of total, unquestioning submission. This often leads to a situation in which all the repressed humiliation and rage of the oppressed are horizontally unleashed at their fellow oppressed at the slightest semblance of provocation. Frantz Fanon observed this curious phenomenon among the oppressed Algerian peasants in The Wretched of the Earth. “While the settler or the policeman has the right the livelong day to strike the native, to insult him, and to make him crawl to them,” he writes, “you will see the native reaching for his knife at the slightest hostile or aggressive glance cast on him by another native.”
But while a certain degree of fear may be excused at the level of the peasant – the oppressed person who does not entirely blame his wretched plight on the oppressor – the issue becomes tricky when we note that this horizontal hostility towards fellow oppressed is also found among the ranks of those who pose as champions of the oppressed. Indeed, the mutual hostility and unhealthy rivalry within and between the leadership of opposition and alternative political parties and organizations in Africa is far more acrimonious than that expressed towards the oppressive regimes they are out to replace. The oppressor regime can dish out any number of demeaning slurs and even outright insults on the heads of opposition leaders with little or no comparable reaction or response. But one mild word of criticism or disagreement from one opposition leader to the other often has the effect of eliciting a disproportionate barrage of invectives against the daring culprit. Some scholars like Paulo Freire and Albert Memmi attribute this strange phenomenon partly to a certain inferiority complex on the part of the opposition leaders and partly to an unconscious desire to be seen as high and mighty as the oppressor and therefore way above being the object of such petty criticisms from their fellow equal opposition leaders.
But this tendency of the oppressed to be hostile to their fellow victims of oppression is not limited to the peasant and the leaders alone. It is also observed among the ranks of oppressed people located between the masses on one hand and the leaders on the other. This middle section of “freedom fighters” are often observed engaging in a kind of horizontal hostility with their supposed comrades in the anti-oppression struggle to the extent that they lose sight of their original objective. Thus in discussion groups, Diasporan communities, and internet mailing lists, one observes a troubling level of horizontal hostility and acrimonious debate between people supposed to be fighting for an end to oppression. One observes a troubling trend towards the creation of acute hostility and enmity within the ranks of people who are supposed to be fighting the same monster of oppression and for a certain level of tolerance and mutual respect for one another. What should happen in such forums is not endless bickering, the assumption of rigid, unchanging positions, or the presumption of infallibility, but the observance of maximum civility on all sides – a desire to teach and a readiness to learn; a desire to convince and a readiness to be convinced; a desire to prove that one’s position is right, and a readiness to be proven wrong; a habit of always keeping in mind that all human beings are fallible, that people have a right to their opinions, however contrary to one’s own; that in building a democratic culture, we must start from within our own selves. Intolerance of dissenting opinion, it should be remembered, is one of the chief defining characteristics of oppression.
Clearly, one of the most intractable problems facing Africa today is the problem of oppression. The continent is littered with an ugly coterie of oppressive political regimes as well as a critical mass of people trying to resist this oppression, getting stigmatized, jailed, maimed, exiled, and killed in the process. One of the means at the disposal of this critical mass of oppressed “freedom fighters” is the acquisition of knowledge and a greater understanding of the nature of the oppressor in relation to themselves, the oppressed. For it is not enough that we know the oppressor; we also need to know ourselves as people trying to bring about an end to oppression. This short essay is meant as a modest contribution to that self-knowledge and knowledge of the nature of oppression.
The oppressor, whatever his motivations, seeks to distort the humanity of the oppressed. He seeks to retard the growth of the people, chops off any emerging buds of popular progress, plucks out any spots of light and sight, seals tight any outlets of enlightenment, and menacingly hovers over the heads of the oppressed in order to instill maximum terror and compliance through a regime of actual or potential violence, physical and psychological. Oppression manifests itself as a form of violence because it constitutes a denial of full humanity to the oppressed; because it denies people the possibility of self-affirmation, the pursuit of one’s right to self-fulfillment as a full human being. Oppression is violence because the oppressor appropriates to himself all rights of being, of self-fulfillment, of the enjoyment of unrestricted freedoms, of a certain state of exception in which he stands outside the law, while engaging the law to impose an unquestionable regime of hegemony on the people. As the Brazilian writer Paulo Freire puts it, “The oppressor consciousness tends to transform everything surrounding it into an object of its domination. The earth, property, production, the creation of people, people themselves, time – everything is reduced to the status of objects at its disposal.” Everything within its territory, in effect, is considered the personal property of the oppressor and everything within its territory that refuses to be owned, domesticated, and controlled must either be eliminated or neutralized. Any individual or institution within this space that refuses to be turned into a dehumanized, passive, and unquestioning object is regarded as a subversive entity.
We do not need to look far to see the manifestation of this oppressive reality. We do not need to look far to see oppressors turning on the oppressed and calling them evil beings, subversive liars, unpatriotic and envious demons, enemies of progress and other negative imaginaries because they refuse to be turned into lifeless objects and possessions of the oppressor to be exploited and discarded at will. The oppressor does not see that he is the source of the resistance he is confronted with, that the oppressed are merely reacting to his untenable claims to their ownership and the ownership of the collective property that is the nation-state, that they are simply following the natural and healthy course of reaffirming and pursuing their inalienable right to remain fully human, to refuse to be dehumanized, objectified and relegated to the status of nonentities who must live the rest of their lives in a state of tortured nothingness.
Faced with the prospect of being rendered null and void as human beings even as they live the one and only single life they have, it is the natural vocation of a conscious people to resist oppression, to refuse to be terrorized and dehumanized through engagement in an uncompromising regime of self-humanization, self-expression, and the total rejection of the unjust oppressive order bolstered by a regime of violence and intimidation. While the goal of the oppressed must never be the counter-oppression of the oppressor, the message to the oppressor must be couched in no uncertain terms. It must be made loud and clear to the oppressor that the oppressed refuses to be dehumanized and objectified and that the oppressed insists on the enjoyment of their right to full humanity – all those rights that come with the reality of being fully human. But while the possibility of becoming human and ending oppression must always be made implicit in the message to the oppressor, the person who seeks to end oppression must never fall to the temptation of trying to pacify the oppressor because this, as Freire tells us again, makes the person who seeks justice a dispenser of false generosity, an adherent to a regime of circular self-truths who grows strangely agitated whenever any of those self-truths are challenged or questioned.
History is replete with examples of “freedom fighters” who become oppressors as soon as they assume positions of power. This is because at the critical moment of their fight against oppression, they had conceived a fear of freedom itself. They had wavered between their initial principled positions of uncompromising opponents of oppression and a newly assumed position of a fake perception of pacification as a more viable alternative and line of defense against oppression. They tend to edge closer to the oppressor, granting him a certain veiled acceptance through a lame regime of rationalizations and apologetics, through a lame appeal to reason and fairness, and by citing lame pointers to the reality of an unalterable imperfection of being, of life, the necessity of compromise in the service of the exigencies of daily life. They are caught between the desire for freedom and a cold, belly-numbing fear of freedom or its possibility. They swing and waver with dizzying uncertainty and tend, to quote Freire again, “to prefer the security of conformity . . . to the creative communion produced by freedom and even the pursuit of freedom.” They experience this dilemma because from the very beginning, what they really “fought” for was not the full liberation and full humanization of society, but the privilege, perhaps subconscious, of identifying with the oppressor, of enjoying the privileges enjoyed by the oppressor, of the opportunity to rise to the level of the oppressor and share in the glittering trappings of the oppressor’s perceived high station. This freedom-fighter-turned-oppressor started out really focusing on the pursuit of individual or class interests rather than the interests of the social collectivity. Such a pursuit inevitably distorts and corrupts his mission so that he becomes an oppressor as soon as he becomes powerful enough. It is an absolute prerequisite for one who desires to resist oppressive dehumanization that he must lose sight of individual and class interests and set his sights upon the interests of the popular collectivity. One cannot be free from the “oppressor consciousness” so long as one is obsessed with the protection or preservation of individual or class interests. While seeking to preserve individual or class interests might appear the sensible thing to do in an environment of oppression, it is in reality a dangerous path to perdition. The ancient African aphorism that you cannot dance and dig at the same time exemplifies the folly of trying to rationalize oppression even as we pose as enemies of oppression and injustice.
The person who desires freedom from oppression must therefore assume a principled and uncompromising posture of rejection of oppression. Short of engaging in physical violence, the person who seeks liberation must relentlessly shove bitter doses of truth medicine down the throat of the oppressor. And equally important, such a person must see the current oppressive situation not as a hopeless permanent situation, or a situation that has to be endured at all costs, but as a situation that, like all others, is located within the ever-rotating wheel of life and must therefore one day pass from actuality to potentiality or non-being. The person who seeks liberation must therefore engage in a regime of resistance perpetually inspired by an unshakeable conviction that oppression is to be rejected without qualification, and that what comes next must be carefully and constantly contemplated and visualized every step of the way.
A discussion of oppression and the oppressed must inevitably lead us to the issue of who leads the struggle for liberation from oppression. In most cases, such a role is assumed by people who are academically and economically better off than the average oppressed person; these people step forward to assume the mantle of leadership against oppression, to act as champions of the oppressed, and as voices of those they consider the voiceless. They form political organizations and create manifestos and slogans proclaiming their aims and objectives, and set about condemning the oppressors while at the same time courting the support of the oppressed by offering themselves up as better alternatives to the oppressors. The interesting thing is that in at least 8 out of 10 cases, these champions of the oppressed fail in their endeavors; or in the rare situations in which they succeed, find themselves proving unequal to their self-assigned task of ending oppression, becoming instead as bad as, or even worse than, the oppressors they dislodge.
While there are undoubtedly many reasons for this failure of leadership, a failure to truly identify with the oppressed masses must rank among the top causes. Coming mostly from middle-class backgrounds, most leaders of anti-oppression movements fail to truly identify with the oppressed people. Rather than view and treat the people as partners to be creatively engaged and dialogued with in the course of the struggle against oppression, such leaders specialize in the ephemeral politics of propaganda, slinging mud at their opponents on all sides of the political divide and preaching endlessly to the people on how morally superior they are and what glittering goodies they would deliver should they assume positions of power and authority. They engage in such empty politicking with the erroneous presupposition that all the people want to hear is how their current lot will be improved once the oppressor is removed from power. Sadly, in most cases, these messages, because they sound so commonplace and monotonous, fail to register with the people and these leaders are dismissed as just another bunch of power-hungry politicians.
During Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde’s struggle for liberation from Portuguese colonialism, Amilcar Cabral repeatedly taught that those intellectuals who wanted to be true and effective leaders of the people must commit what he called class suicide. They must be able to purge themselves of all pretences to superior knowledge, wisdom or leadership skills, and identify totally with the oppressed if they wanted to be authentic leaders of the people. He argued that a leadership that seeks to lead from whatever kind of high pedestal is doomed to failure. Once they totally identify with the people and the people with them, those who assume leadership of the oppressed will find, when they assume positions of political power, that they are either unable or unwilling to become oppressors because of their internalized and assimilated affinities with the people.
The necessity of class suicide aside, it has also been observed that some oppressed people tend to be more hostile towards each other than towards their oppressors. Many oppressed people tend to assume a fatalistic attitude vis-à-vis their oppression, blaming their unhappy conditions on divine providence and therefore failing to see any connection between their sufferings and their oppressors. And the oppressor, through a malicious combination of vicious cunning and open brutality, dedicates all his energies at keeping things just this way by making the people believe that the best way to keep out of unnecessary trouble is through a slavish regime of total, unquestioning submission. This often leads to a situation in which all the repressed humiliation and rage of the oppressed are horizontally unleashed at their fellow oppressed at the slightest semblance of provocation. Frantz Fanon observed this curious phenomenon among the oppressed Algerian peasants in The Wretched of the Earth. “While the settler or the policeman has the right the livelong day to strike the native, to insult him, and to make him crawl to them,” he writes, “you will see the native reaching for his knife at the slightest hostile or aggressive glance cast on him by another native.”
But while a certain degree of fear may be excused at the level of the peasant – the oppressed person who does not entirely blame his wretched plight on the oppressor – the issue becomes tricky when we note that this horizontal hostility towards fellow oppressed is also found among the ranks of those who pose as champions of the oppressed. Indeed, the mutual hostility and unhealthy rivalry within and between the leadership of opposition and alternative political parties and organizations in Africa is far more acrimonious than that expressed towards the oppressive regimes they are out to replace. The oppressor regime can dish out any number of demeaning slurs and even outright insults on the heads of opposition leaders with little or no comparable reaction or response. But one mild word of criticism or disagreement from one opposition leader to the other often has the effect of eliciting a disproportionate barrage of invectives against the daring culprit. Some scholars like Paulo Freire and Albert Memmi attribute this strange phenomenon partly to a certain inferiority complex on the part of the opposition leaders and partly to an unconscious desire to be seen as high and mighty as the oppressor and therefore way above being the object of such petty criticisms from their fellow equal opposition leaders.
But this tendency of the oppressed to be hostile to their fellow victims of oppression is not limited to the peasant and the leaders alone. It is also observed among the ranks of oppressed people located between the masses on one hand and the leaders on the other. This middle section of “freedom fighters” are often observed engaging in a kind of horizontal hostility with their supposed comrades in the anti-oppression struggle to the extent that they lose sight of their original objective. Thus in discussion groups, Diasporan communities, and internet mailing lists, one observes a troubling level of horizontal hostility and acrimonious debate between people supposed to be fighting for an end to oppression. One observes a troubling trend towards the creation of acute hostility and enmity within the ranks of people who are supposed to be fighting the same monster of oppression and for a certain level of tolerance and mutual respect for one another. What should happen in such forums is not endless bickering, the assumption of rigid, unchanging positions, or the presumption of infallibility, but the observance of maximum civility on all sides – a desire to teach and a readiness to learn; a desire to convince and a readiness to be convinced; a desire to prove that one’s position is right, and a readiness to be proven wrong; a habit of always keeping in mind that all human beings are fallible, that people have a right to their opinions, however contrary to one’s own; that in building a democratic culture, we must start from within our own selves. Intolerance of dissenting opinion, it should be remembered, is one of the chief defining characteristics of oppression.
Wednesday 9 December 2009
CPJ’s annual prison census 2009:
In Sub-Saharan Africa , 9 out of 10 detained without charge
New York, December 8, 2009—On December 1, a total of 25 journalists were imprisoned in Sub-Saharan Africa in retaliation for their journalism, and nearly 90 percent of these journalists were detained without charges in secret detention facilities, according to an annual census of the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Countries as wide ranging as Eritrea , Iran , and the United States were on the list of nations who had imprisoned journalists without charge.
With at least 19 journalists behind bars, Eritrea by far leads the list of shame of African nations that imprison journalists. Eritrea holds this dubious distinction since 2001when the authorities abruptly closed the private press by arresting at least ten editors without charge or trial. The Eritrean government has refused to confirm if the detainees are still alive, even when unconfirmed online reports suggest that three journalists have died in detention. CPJ continues to list these journalists on its 2009 census as a means of holding the government responsible for their fates. In early 2009, the government arrested at least six more journalists from state media suspected of having provided information to news Web sites based outside the country.
Eritrea’s neighbor, Ethiopia ranked second among African nations with journalists in jail. Four journalists were held in Ethiopian prisons, including two Eritrean journalists who are detained in secret locations without any formal charges or legal proceedings since late 2006. The Gambia , with its incommunicado detention of reporter Ebrima Chief Manneh since July 2006, and Cameroon , which has imprisoned the editor of a newspaper since September 2008, completes the list of imprisoned journalists for Sub-Saharan Africa.
Worldwide, a total of 136 reporters, editors, and photojournalists were behind bars, an increase of 11 from the 2008 tally. The survey also found that freelancers now make up nearly 45 percent of all journalists jailed across the globe.
China continued to be the world’s worst jailer of journalists, a dishonor it has held for 11 consecutive years. Iran , Cuba , Eritrea , and Burma round out the top five jailers from among the 26 nations that imprison journalists. Each nation has persistently placed among the world’s worst in detaining journalists.
At least 60 freelance journalists are behind bars worldwide, nearly double the number from just three years ago. CPJ research shows the number of jailed freelancers has grown along with two trends: The Internet has enabled individual journalists to publish on their own, and some news organizations, watchful of costs, rely increasingly on freelancers rather than staffers for international coverage. Freelance journalists are especially vulnerable to imprisonment because they often do not have the legal and monetary support that news organizations can provide to staffers.
“The days when journalists went off on dangerous assignments knowing they had the full institutional weight of their media organizations behind them are receding into history,” said CPJ Executive Director Joel Simon . “Today, journalists on the front lines are increasingly working independently. The rise of online journalism has opened the door to a new generation of reporters, but it also means they are vulnerable.”
The number of online journalists in prison continued a decade-long rise, CPJ’s census found. At least 68 bloggers, Web-based reporters, and online editors are imprisoned, constituting half of all journalists now in jail. Print reporters, editors, and photographers make up the next largest professional category, with 51 cases in 2009. Television and radio journalists and documentary filmmakers constitute the rest.
The number of journalists imprisoned in China has dropped over the past several years, but with 24 still behind bars the nation remains the world’s worst jailer of the press. Of those in jail in China , 22 are freelancers. The imprisoned include Dhondup Wangchen, a documentary filmmaker who was detained in 2008 after recording footage in Tibet and sending it to colleagues overseas. A 25-minute film titled “Jigdrel” (Leaving Fear Behind), produced from the footage, features ordinary Tibetans talking about their lives under Chinese rule. Officials in Xining , Qinghai province, charged the filmmaker with inciting separatism.
Most of those imprisoned in Iran , the world’s second-worst jailer, were swept up in the government’s post-election crackdown on dissent and the news media. Of those, about half are online journalists. They include Fariba Pajooh, a freelance reporter for online, newspaper, and radio outlets. Radio France International reported that she was charged with “propagating against the regime” and pressured to make a false confession.
“Not long ago, Iran boasted a vigorous and vital press community,” CPJ’s Simon added. “When the government cracked down on the print media, journalists migrated online and fueled the rise of the Farsi blogosphere. Today, many of Iran ’s best journalists are in jail or in exile, and the public debate has been squelched alongside the pro-democracy movement.”
Cuba , the third-worst jailer, is holding 22 writers and editors in prison, all but two of whom were rounded up in Fidel Castro’s massive 2003 crackdown on the independent press. Many have seen their health deteriorate in inhumane and unsanitary prisons. The detainees include Normando Hernández González, who suffers from cardiovascular ailments and knee problems so severe that even standing is difficult. Hernández González was moved to a prison hospital in late October.
With Eritrea as the world’s fourth-worst jailer, Burma is the fifth with nine journalists behind bars. Those in custody include the video-journalist known publicly as “T,” who reported news for the Oslo-based media organization Democratic Voice of Burma and who helped film an award-winning international documentary, “Orphans of the Burmese Cyclone.” Journalism is so dangerous in Burma , one of the world’s most censored countries, that undercover reporters such as “T” are a crucial conduit to the world.
The Eurasian nations of Uzbekistan and Azerbaijan placed sixth and seventh on CPJ’s dishonor roll. Uzbekistan is holding seven journalists, among them Dilmurod Saiid, a freelancer who exposed government agricultural abuses. Azerbaijan is jailing six reporters and editors, including investigative journalist Eynulla Fatullayev, a 2009 CPJ International Press Freedom Awardee. A seventh Azerbaijani journalist, Novruzali Mamedov died in state custody in August, after authorities denied him adequate medical care.
Here are other trends and details that emerged in CPJ's analysis:
· About 47 percent of journalists in the census are jailed under antistate charges such as sedition, divulging state secrets, and acting against national interests, CPJ found. Many of them are being held by the Chinese, Iranian, and Cuban governments.
· In about 12 percent of cases, governments have used a variety of charges unrelated to journalism to retaliate against critical writers, editors, and photojournalists. Such charges range from regulatory violations to drug possession. In the cases included in this census, CPJ has determined that the charges were most likely lodged in reprisal for the journalist's work.
· Violations of censorship rules, the next most common charge, are applied in about 5 percent of cases. Charges of criminal defamation, reporting “false” news, and engaging in ethnic or religious “insult” constitute the other charges filed against journalists in the census.
· Internet and print journalists make up the bulk of the census. Radio journalists compose the next largest professional category, accounting for 7 percent of cases. Television journalists and documentary filmmakers each account for 3 percent.
· The worldwide tally of 136 reflects a 9 percent increase over 2008 and represents the third-highest number recorded by CPJ in the past decade. (The decade high came in 2002, when CPJ recorded 139 journalists in jail.)
· The United States , which is holding freelance photographer Ibrahim Jassam without charge in Iraq , made CPJ’s list of countries jailing journalists for the sixth consecutive year. During this period, U.S. military authorities have jailed numerous journalists in Iraq —some for days, others for months at a time—without charge or due process. U.S. authorities appear to be using this tactic less frequently over the past two years.
CPJ believes that journalists should not be imprisoned for doing their jobs. The organization has sent letters expressing its serious concerns to each country that has imprisoned a journalist. Over the past year, CPJ advocacy helped lead to the release of at least 45 imprisoned journalists.
CPJ's list is a snapshot of those incarcerated at midnight on December 1, 2009. It does not include the many journalists imprisoned and released throughout the year; accounts of those cases can be found at www.cpj.org. Journalists remain on CPJ's list until the organization determines with reasonable certainty that they have been released or have died in custody.
Journalists who either disappear or are abducted by nonstate entities, including criminal gangs, rebels, or militant groups, are not included on the imprisoned list. Their cases are classified as “missing” or “abducted.”
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