WPFR: Europe Overview
Muzzling the Messenger
Hopes for a less violent year for journalists in Russia were crushed at the very start of 2009, with the brutal murder of young Novaya Gazeta reporter Anastasia Baburova in a Moscow street on the afternoon of 19 January.
Baburova, a journalism student working part-time at the Gazeta, was accompanying human rights lawyer Stanislav Markelov to a metro station when an unidentified man stepped up to Markelov from behind and shot him point blank in the back of the head, killing him instantly. Baburova intervened, the gunman turned his weapon on her, and she paid with her life.
In the months that followed, at least four more journalists were killed or died in suspicious circumstances in Russia.
Although Russian authorities have since charged two suspects with the murders of Baburova and Markelov, the general climate of impunity for those who take the lives of journalists continues to cause serious concern.
An IPI mission to Moscow in October 2009 learnt first-hand of the impact these unsolved killings have had on press freedom, with self-censorship rife because of fears of reprisal.
In a statement, IPI warned that impunity for the killers of journalists remained Russia’s gravest press freedom problem.
IPI called for action on the part of Russia's federal government to ensure that both federal and local law enforcement agencies conduct transparent and conclusive investigations into such acts of violence.
Vladimir Lukin, the Russian Human Rights Ombudsman, assured the IPI delegation that he would raise its concerns over the impunity enjoyed by the killers of journalists in Russia with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. IPI will be holding him to his word.
A stark highlight of the impunity plaguing Russia was the deterioration into farce in 2009 of the high-profile trial of three individuals charged with the 2006 murder of journalist Anna Politkovskaya. A Moscow jury acquitted police officer Sergei Khadzhikurbanov and Chechen brothers Dzhabrail and Ibragim Makhmudov on 19 February, following proceedings that were plagued with inconsistencies, including the temporary shutting out of the media for reasons that would later turn out to be illegitimate, claims that phone records presented by the prosecution had been manipulated, and a defendant testifying that the authorities had offered him a reduced sentence should he frame Russian businessman Boris Berezovsky.
In August, a Moscow court decided to retry the three men, along with one more individual who was also acquitted on a separate but related case. This decision was reached despite requests from both Politkovskaya’s family and the prosecution to have the case returned to the prosecutor-general for further investigation.
A journalist was also killed in Turkey this year, capping what turned out to be another poor twelve months for press freedom in the European Union candidate country.
On Friday 18 December, an unknown assailant ambushed and shot Cihan Hayırsevener, editor-in-chief of western Turkish newspaper Güney Marmara’da Yaşam, as he left his office. Hayırsevener, who had received death threats following his reporting of a local corruption scandal, died of his injuries later that evening in hospital.
At the time, IPI Board Member, and Chairperson of the IPI Turkey National Committee, Ferai Tinc told the IPI Secretariat: “We think that the climate enforced by the authorities when attacking and criticising the media with very harsh words encourages the perpetrators of such acts.”
Press freedom in Turkey has further suffered this year due to a protracted stand-off between the Turkish Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and the critical media, with Erdoğan continuing his loud and very public condemnation of opposition-leaning and critical newspapers – condemnation that has often been characterised by accusations.
The pace of these comments quickened as regional elections approached in the early part of the year, and one incident in Istanbul in February exemplified what can happen when a leading public figure provokes antipathy for the media; during a speech given at the inauguration of an Istanbul metro station, Erdoğan chastised the media for “standing by others rather than standing by the prime minister of the Turkish Republic.” Government supporters then physically attacked journalists at the event.
And then later in February, an unprecedented 345 million Euro fine handed down to the Dogan Media Group for an alleged overdue tax payment drew criticism from freedom of expression advocates both inside and outside Turkey.
Despite official denials, many saw the massive fine as government retribution for the Dogan media’s harsh criticism of Erdoğan and his Justice and Development party (AK) – in particular over their reporting of a charity corruption scandal in which AK party members may allegedly have been implicated. Suspicions of political motivation behind the financial penalty grew later in the year when Turkish tax authorities slapped another 1.74 billion Euro fine on Dogan Yayin Holding, owners of the Dogan Media Group, dwarfing the earlier amount.
In the first of several condemnatory statements about the fines, IPI said: “Prime Minister Erdoğan has escalated his verbal attacks on Dogan’s newspapers for their reporting. He has called for his supporters to boycott Dogan and other newspapers, but this has not silenced them. The timing and unprecedented size of this tax fine raise serious concerns that the authorities are changing their approach from rhetoric to using the state apparatus to harass the media.”
Other press freedom issues in Turkey this year included concerns that a large-scale investigation into an alleged plan to bring down the government – otherwise known as the Ergenekon investigation – was being used as a catch-all to arrest and intimidate journalists, close newspapers on charges of “praising terrorism,” and illegally wiretap conversations between journalists and their sources.
Meanwhile, the trial into the 2007 murder of Hrant Dink trundled on, with little hope that those who ordered his assassination will ever face justice.
In March 2009, IPI took its concerns about press freedom in Turkey to the European Commission in Brussels.
It appealed to European Commission leaders to make press freedom a priority in ongoing membership talks with Turkey amid concern over verbal attacks on news organisations and continued legal hurdles to free expression in the country.
IPI Director David Dadge held meetings with EU Enlargement Commissioner Ollie Rehn, and other officials, to emphasise the European Union’s influence in seeking reforms during membership negotiations with Turkey.
“IPI hopes the European Commission can use its influence to encourage Prime Minister Erdoğan to take a step back from his position of criticising the media and calling for boycotts,” Dadge said after the meetings. “The EU can play a central role in ensuring free expression and pluralistic media in candidate countries such as Turkey.”
Dadge also expressed concern about Turkish laws used to prosecute journalists, including Article 301, which bans insults to the Turkish state. Although amended in 2008 to reduce the jail time from three years to one, Dadge said the law “risks inciting attacks on journalists by questioning their loyalty.” It has been used in the past to punish journalists and intellectuals who criticized government policies, including murdered newspaper editor Hrant Dink.
Another political leader who showed a tendency to openly vent his dislike for media criticism was Slovakia’s Prime Minister, Robert Fico. In so doing, he helped tarnish Slovakia’s press freedom reputation.
Fico’s verbal attacks on the press were not the only press freedom issue in Slovakia this year. Perhaps more worrying was the increased recourse by public figures to exaggerated civil defamation suits against the media, with the awarding of large damages in highly debatable cases.
IPI conducted a fact-finding mission to Bratislava in March 2009, and revealed the extent of Slovakia’s civil defamation problem in a subsequent report. IPI discovered, for example, that a Slovak judge who won more than 30,000 Euros in damages in 2008 in a highly controversial ruling against a privately-owned radio station, was suing at least 10 other media organisations in related cases for a combined total of over 4 million Euros. In all of the lawsuits, the judge was suing the media over comments they had published or broadcast which were based on official information obtained from the Ministry of Culture.
IPI also conducted a press freedom audit in the Czech Republic in 2009 and found that the issue of greatest concern to Czech journalists is legislation that came into force on 1 April making it illegal to publish any data obtained from police wiretaps, as well as to publish information indicating that wiretapping has taken place.
The maximum penalty for breaking the law is a harsh, five-year prison sentence, in a country where journalists have often used leaked wiretaps to reveal corruption.
IPI also visited Serbia in 2009, on a joint mission with the South East Europe Media Organisation (SEEMO) – an IPI affiliate. During the three-day mission, IPI and SEEMO met with over 50 representatives of leading media companies, journalists’ associations and high-ranking government officials. Particular attention was drawn to amendments to the country’s Law on Public Information, passed at the end of August, which could lead to increased self-censorship and even the closing of some media organisations.
Press freedom problems were also registered in large, Western European countries in 2009.
In the UK, a gag order slapped on The Guardian in October caused a furore, because it infringed on the newspaper’s right to report freely on parliamentary affairs. The gag-order – in this case a so-called “super injunction” – not only stopped the newspaper from reporting on an alleged toxic waste-dumping scandal, but also from reporting that it had been gagged at all. However, a member of parliament introduced a question concerning the press freedom aspect of the gag order at the House of Commons, bringing the injunction into direct conflict with “privileges guaranteeing free speech established under the 1688 Bill of Rights,” the newspaper reported.
The Guardian was able to publish enough about the matter to set the ‘blogosphere’ alight – and it was not long before the nature of the injunction was exposed online. The injunction was lifted the following day, although this was apparently at the behest of the legal firm responsible for the injunction in the first place.
In Germany, political intervention in public service broadcasting was a concern, after the advisory board of Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen (ZDF) voted to deny the request of the station’s director to extend the contract of current editor-in-chief Nikolaus Brender. The board is a highly-politicised body, and many critics, including IPI’s German National Committee, felt that its decision not to extend Brender’s contract was aimed at removing a journalist who refused to buckle under political pressure.
In both Germany and France, the security services’ usage – or potential usage – of computer spyware caused some controversy, due to the potential threat this may pose to journalists’ ability to protect the confidentiality of their sources.
The concerns in Germany focused on the passing of a new law that greatly increases the capacity of police to conduct secret surveillance of computers belonging to citizens, while in France a bill containing amendments to the penal code would allow the police to remotely obtain information from privately-owned computers and Internet cafes, without the knowledge and consent of those concerned.
Meanwhile in Italy, a legislative proposal that threatens journalists’ ability to provide the public with vital information drew criticism in June. The bill echoes the new wiretapping law seen earlier in the year in the Czech Republic, while also containing provisions that restrict journalists’ right to report on police investigations, including a ban on the publishing of any official investigation documentation until hearings in that investigation have started – even if those documents are already in the public domain.
Later in the year, freedom of expression advocates accused Italy’s Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, of attempting to stifle the media, after he brought hefty defamation suits against two Italian newspapers, La Repubblica and L’Unitá, as well as international newspapers including El País and Le Nouvel Observateur.
Berlusconi’s lawyers have demanded huge compensation in response to articles about the alleged participation of prostitutes at parties held by Berlusconi. These lawsuits include a one-million-Euro defamation suit against La Repubblica for a series of articles about Berlusconi’s controversial private and political life.
And in Spain, authorities came down hard on journalists for allegedly compromising state secrets through their reporting. In September, a Madrid prosecutor demanded a three-year prison term for El Mundo deputy-editor Antonio Rubio, for supposedly “discovering and revealing state secrets” in articles published in the Spanish daily in 2005.
The articles detailed confidential reports an informer supplied to the Spanish secret services, and appeared to show that Spanish authorities were warned that a radical group planned to attack on Spanish soil more than a year in advance of the 2004 Madrid bombings.
Then, towards the year’s end, on 30 December, two journalists received suspended jail terms, temporary bans from practising journalism, and large fines, for allegedly “revealing secrets.”
The charges stemmed from an article published online in 2003 that included a list of individuals who allegedly registered in an irregular manner as members of one of Spain’s main political parties, the Partido Popular. When deciding on the case, the court considered neither the accuracy of the reporting nor its public interest angle, and handed down the harsh sentence partly because the online nature of the reporting was not seen to benefit from the same protections as TV or print journalism.
Elsewhere in Europe, Azerbaijan retained its position as the continent’s most prolific jailer of journalists. The courts imprisoned at least four more journalists this year: Nota deputy editor Sardar Alibeyli and journalist Faramaz Novruzoglu, in October, on insult charges, and then two bloggers, Emin Milli and Adnan Hajizade, in November, on charges of hooliganism, and Talyshi Sado editor-in-chief, Novruzali Mamedov died in detention in August. The Baku-based Institute for Reporters Safety and Freedom, a local press freedom monitor, said it believed that the two bloggers were jailed in retaliation for publishing material that criticised the government online.