Warnings over increasing media surveillance

A resolution issued by WAN in Cape Town at the 60th annual congress and World Editor's Forum (WEF) meeting read: "WAN believes that though balancing the sometimes conflicting interests of security and freedom might be difficult, democracies have an absolute responsibility to use a rigorous set of standards to judge whether curbs on freedom can be justified by security concerns."

Concerned with increasing surveillance measures, WAN called on all democratic governments and their agencies to take seven specific steps to protect press freedom while tightening anti-terrorism measures:

1. To guarantee public availability of officially held data, information and archives accessible under Freedom of Information laws or related legal provisions.
   
2. To guarantee the right of journalists to protect their confidential sources of information, as a necessary requirement for a free press.
   
3. To make electronic surveillance of communications dependent on judicial authorisation, control or review, to protect the imperative independence and confidentiality of newsgathering.
   
4. To ensure that searches of journalist offices or homes are conducted uniquely by warrant issued only when there is proven ground for suspicion of lawbreaking.
   
5. To guarantee journalists the right to cover all sides of a story, including that of alleged terrorists, and to restrain from any hasty and unjustified criminalisation of speech.
   
6. To abstain from prosecuting journalists who published classified information. In free societies, courts have held that it is the job of governments, not journalists, to protect official secrets, subject to the common sense decisions that editors normally make against, for instance, endangering lives.
   
7. To abstain from resorting to “black” propaganda – in other words, peacetime use of government services to plant false or misleading articles masquerading as normal journalism as well as the false use of journalistic identities by intelligence agents.
   

Read the full resolution at www.wan-press.org/article14263.html.

Zimbabwe condemned

Zimbabwe has come up time and again in the conference , and WAN issued a resolution on the persecution of the media in that country.

The WAN board strongly condemned the continuing harassment, forceful arrest, detention and torture of journalists and the overall repressive government policy against a free press in Zimbabwe: “The recurrent violations of journalists' basic rights and the complete disregard for the rule of law of the Zimbabwean leadership and law enforcement agencies are unacceptable. WAN is also alarmed by the recent assaults against human rights lawyers representing journalists in court.

“WAN is appalled by the 29 March abduction and murder of former Zimbabwe state broadcaster ZBC cameraman Edward Chikombo, whose killing might be related to the leaking of footage of police brutality against opposition activists earlier that month,” the WAN statement read.

WAN as well condemns the recent threat of reprisal made by the Information Ministry to foreign correspondents over what it considered to be “fabricated stories.”

“In its policy to suppress press freedom and to asphyxiate the very last private media, the government is assisted by the Media Information Commission (MIC), which disrupts independent newspapers and strips journalists from their accreditation. In this context, WAN wishes to praise the rulings regularly made by Zimbabwean courts, including the Harare High Court, to quash abusive MIC decisions. “

The Board of WAN calls on President Robert Mugabe to put an end to arbitrary and violent arrest, detention and torture of journalists, to firmly commit to the rule of law and to uphold international standards of freedom of expression and freedom of the press in Zimbabwe.

UN protest

The Board of the World Association of Newspapers has strongly protested the 30 March 2007 approval of a resolution by the United Nations Human Rights Council that "attempts to justify censorship of free speech under the guise of protecting religious sensibilities".

WAN is concerned that this resolution will be used by authoritarian governments to justify suppression of freedom of expression on the grounds of religious defamation. It moreover believes that it is wholly inappropriate for the Human Rights Council to justify censorship and the stifling of dissenting voices.

The resolution, sponsored by Pakistan on behalf of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, condemns defamation of religions in general, although it mentions only Islam specifically. Presented as a measure to protect the religious sensibilities of Muslims, the resolution asserts that freedom of expression “should be exercised with responsibility and may therefore be subject to limitations as provided by law”. The resolution passed the Council by 24 votes to 14, with nine abstentions.

The Board of WAN calls on the UN Human Rights Council President to take all necessary steps to ensure that international standards of freedom of expression are fully supported by the Council and not undermined by such resolution.

Further protest

WAN also issued five other resolutions, to protest against:

• The almost complete lack of arrests and convictions in the cases of 21 journalists who have been killed in Russia since President Vladimir Putin came to power in March 2000. The brutal murder on 7 October 2006 of Novaya Gazeta journalist Anna Politkovskaya, known for her critical reporting on the conflict in Chechnya in which she sought to expose human rights abuses, was yet another reminder to Russian journalists that violence awaits those who investigate or criticise. WAN thus calls on the Russian authorities to investigate all acts of violence against journalists, to search for persons alleged to have committed, or to have ordered to be committed, a crime against journalists, and to bring such persons to justice. Read the full resolution at www.wan-press.org/article14266.html.

• The decade-long judicial harassment of Spanish journalist José Luis Gutiérrez, who was convicted by Spanish courts of violating Moroccan King Hassan II's "right to maintain his honor" after Gutiérrez published an accurate report about the seizure of five tons of hashish inside a truck belonging to the Moroccan Royal Crown. Read the full resolution at www.wan-press.org/article14265.html. The two laws that were used against Gutiérrez, inherited or adapted from the Franco dictatorship, place the burden of proving truth or falsity upon the defendant. Also, by these laws not only the author of the article is incriminated but also the editor-in-chief and the publishing company as well, in what is known as the "cascade effect." WAN calls on the European Court of Human Rights to declare the case null and void, to reinstate Gutiérrez's good name, to urge the Spanish State to eliminate the two laws that were used to indict and sentence him, and to call on the Spanish State to financially compensate him after more than a decade of unjust judicial harassment.

• A raid on the offices of the independent daily Le Quotidien in Senegal by armed soldiers, the closure of its radio station Premiere FM and the seizure of broadcasting equipment. WAN is appalled by the government's closure of Premiere FM hours before it was due to launch on 31 May, an attack which has prevented owner Madiambal Diagne from attending this Congress. About 70 armed soldiers raided the Dakar offices of Avenir Communication – publisher of Le Quotidien, Week End magazine and the satirical Cocorico – as Mr Diagne was holding a press conference to launch Premiere FM. When Mr Diagne refused to order a halt to Premiere FM broadcasts, the soldiers removed radio equipment, leaving the station off the air. Read the full resolution at www.wan-press.org/article14339.html.

The Paris-based WAN, the global organisation for the newspaper industry, defends and promotes press freedom world-wide. It represents 18 000 newspapers; its membership includes 77 national newspaper associations, newspaper companies and individual newspaper executives in 102 countries, 12 news agencies and 10 regional and world-wide press groups.