Abstract
In many countries around the world, the coronavirus pandemic has been used to try to restrict the right to report.
Between 18 March and the time of writing, more than 150 incidents had already been logged by the mapping and monitoring project, which was set up by Mark Frary, associate editor at Index.
“When it comes to times of crisis, those attacks increase,” he said, citing the examples of General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi seizing power in Egypt in 2013 and the failed coup in Turkey in 2016.
“What happens is that those governments, whoever succeeded in that crisis… often use that as an excuse to clamp down on the media who have previously held them to account.
“When opposition voices, and journalists who report on those opposition voices, are not able to shine the light on those in power, then the hard-won freedom that we have in society can very quickly be eroded.”
And Frary believes patterns have emerged in these recent attacks on media freedom.
“I think that one of the things that has come through is how governments are saying that only state-approved media can report on coronavirus. That’s happened in a few places,” he said. “For example, there was a case in Liberia recently where the government said, ‘We’re rescinding all of the press cards that have been issued by the press union of Liberia’, and they’ve only reissued them to state-owned media. That’s not an isolated incident.”
Journalists and activists, now more than ever, are faced with governments that want to censor vital information. To highlight some of those cases, Index embraced innovation with determination to host the 20th annual Freedom of Expression Awards, despite the pandemic. The event was originally set to be held in April at the May Fair hotel in London.
Writer, presenter and Index contributor Timandra Harkness hosted the awards from her home, with a live blog, tweets and Instagram posts revealing the winners and their acceptance speech videos throughout the day on 16 April.
Harkness said there were silver linings to be found in the cloud of being unable to hold a physical ceremony.
“Rather than concentrating all the love and appreciation into one evening with food and drink, maybe we can continue it in our everyday lives a bit longer,” she said. “Flatten the curve of appreciation.
“The whole point of the awards, whether it’s live from my living room or in a much more festive setting, is to remind everybody how important it is to do this work, and that people have, in some cases, taken personal risks and certainly worked very hard to defend freedom of expression.”
Leah Cross, Index’s senior events and partnership manager, said: “One huge benefit was that moving the announcement online made the awards more accessible, and enabled us to have a much bigger reach than a live event. As the awards celebrate those fighting censorship around the world, it was wonderful to dedicate a whole day to the nominees and winners, sharing their stories through video.”
There were five winners over the four categories, with joint winners in the campaigning category.
Sayed Ahmed Alwadaei, a Bahraini activist now living in exile in the UK, was one of the campaigning winners for his work with the Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy. Harkness said she found Alwadaei particularly inspiring as he “used his recorded acceptance speech to remind us all about his friend Nabeel [Rajab], himself a former Index awardee, who is currently in prison in Bahrain for criticising the government on Twitter. A reminder that we need both personal courage and solidarity with others to win this fight for free speech”.
In an interview with Index, Alwadaei described how much winning the award meant to him and fellow Bahrainis.
“This is something I feel very proud of,” he said. “Firstly it is a recognition of the important work the organisation does, but also it is something that would make my own country very proud. I get a lot of messages from people expressing their happiness about it.”
He also talked about the difference the award would make to his work.
“As a local NGO, sometimes it’s really hard to express yourself strongly – but if you are being recognised and receiving an international award, that says quite a lot,” he said. “It’s something that helps the recognition of our work and [helps us to] reach out in a much more effective way.”
He said that the coronavirus pandemic at first proved to be a challenge to the work Bird did, but then it became an opportunity to draw attention to issues that might have otherwise been ignored.
For example, the group pitched a story to Reuters explaining that an outbreak of coronavirus in Bahraini prisons would be “some sort of life sentence” for the prisoners, many of whom are human rights activists.
Alwadaei continued: “We were also able to mobilise with international organisations to shed light about the challenges those prisoners face.”
Attacks on freedom of expression are not restricted to authoritarian countries. There are several reports on the Index map of US President Donald Trump verbally attacking journalists, either during press briefings or on Twitter.
Downloading a Covid tracking app is mandatory for government employees in India
CREDIT: Eirik Newth/Flickr
Hana Meihan Davis, a member of Index’s youth advisory board currently living in the USA, said: “Trump’s attack on liberal media, his delayed response to the Covid-19 outbreak… have only fueled the devastation caused by the virus.
“Now, driven by Trump-approved accounts of the situation, the president’s supporters fight for the full reopening of the country, while others are left to wonder when the sickness and fear will end.”
US President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally in Arizona, USA. The president is known for showing open contempt towards members of the media
CREDIT: Gage Skidmore/Flickr
As well as attacks on media freedom, Index is covering attacks on privacy through the increased surveillance conducted in the name of coronavirus. In India, downloading the tracking app Aarogya Setu is mandatory for government employees.
Youth advisory board member Satyabhama Rajoria, from Madhya Pradesh, said: “While the app can help to trace the cases of Covid-19, it can also potentially act as a surveillance system which can be misused. It is a potential threat to our right to privacy.”
This theme is explored in depth in the special report in this magazine.
While there has been a spike in attacks on media freedom during the pandemic, it is just part of a trend throughout the world in recent years.
Index was one of the partner organisations to the recently published annual report on the Council of Europe Platform to Promote the Protection of Journalism and the Protection of Journalists. The report analyses alerts filed on the Council of Europe’s platform.
Index’s senior policy research and advocacy officer, Jessica Ní Mhainín, said: “I think it’s always important to look back and take account of violations that happened over the past 12 months and also to compare them with previous reports… to understand what trends are in place.”
A particularly concerning section of the report is on the number of alerts relating to impunity for those who murder journalists.
Ní Mhainín said: “There are 22 cases of impunity, meaning that there was essentially not full justice given to the journalists who were killed… I think that’s very alarming for most of the countries in the COE which are democratic, or purport to be democracies.”
Ní Mhainín also observed that the report “acknowledged the significant rise in legal threats and judicial and administrative harassment against journalists in Europe”.
This ties in with a recently published Index report Ní Mhainín worked on covering how law suits are used against investigate journalists in the EU, the UK and Norway.
Ní Mhainín said the report provided a review of the legal systems in the 29 countries “that are being abused in favour of the powerful”, resulting in journalists being subjected to vexatious lawsuits brought by private individuals or companies intended to silence them.
Media freedom is being attacked globally in myriad ways and the situation is worsening in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.
“It’s easy to lose sight in an emergency of other important issues,” said Harkness. “But the struggle for freedom of expression doesn’t go away just because we have a pandemic – in many ways it’s more important than ever.”