The OPC Press Freedom Committee has written letters of protest to Russia, China, Egypt, Mexico and Thailand this quarter. We also recommended the immediate release of Harry Nicolaides, and Australian novelist whose misfortune was to mention, in three lines of a 300-page novel, that the King of Thailand’s son had been married, but his wife had to leave the country.
Your committee has protested to Russia ‘s President Dmitry Mevedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin the killing of yet another Russian journalist, under what we called "even more damning circumstances than any of the previous twenty journalists’ deaths since Vladimir Putin became president of Russia in 2000."
The case is outrageous, and speaks for itself. Magomed Yevloyev, an on-line journalist whose Web site was widely read as a source of independent news and opinion about unrest in the Ingushetia region, was shot by police while under arrest in what has been officially labeled an accident. The official story is that he was arrested at an airport in Ingushetia, reportedly on suspicion of having taken part in a terrorist bombing. While being driven to a police station he allegedly tried to grab an assault rifle from an officer. According to a spokesman for the prosecutor general’s office, by an unexplained accident, “M. Yevloyev received a gunshot wound in the temple area," which proved fatal. The Associated Press has reported that his body was then dumped on the road.
Yevloyev’s Web site had reported on widespread allegations of abuses, abductions and killings in Ingushetia. As we told Putin and Medvedev, "Journalists around the world are taking this case as a signal that your government has declared open season on independent journalists." Once again, we urged the two officials to reverse course "if you have any interest in the world’s opinion of Russia." We do not expect that they will.
We wrote to Hu Jintao, president of China, to warn him that a three-month ban on publication of the China Business Post, a financial weekly, threatens to shut down all investigative journalism in China . The paper had reported that a branch of the Agricultural Bank of China had written off, possibly illegally, a large sum of money. The press authorities accused China Business Post of violating media rules by failing to attempt to get the bank’s comments on its story. However, the story clearly stated that the bank was contacted, but refused comment.
If this precedent is allowed to stand, we told President Hu, it would mean that anyone accused of wrong-doing could simply refuse to comment, and any media reporting the charges would be punished for it. "We ask your immediate action to reverse this ruling and lift the publication ban," we concluded.
In another, more notorious case in China , we called Hu’s attention to several moves by the Central Propaganda Department to curb reporting on the growing international scandal over the poisoning of Chinese milk. The department has ordered journalists from at least four newspapers to leave Shijiazhuang , in Hebei province, where the milk products company, Sanlu, is based. The department has also deleted articles about the tainted milk from Web sites, has insisted on pre-approving articles about the scandal before they are published, and has forbidden the media to take milk products to laboratories for testing.
We told Hu that these actions "appear to reflect a fallacy pervading your government ever since tainted products became an international issue in 2007. Your officials seem to believe that the problem is not the poisoned products, the deaths and illnesses they cause, or even the callous acts of the greedy producers; the problem is that the media have reported these cases and thus humiliated China ." We added that this attitude guarantees that more such episodes will inevitably crop up, that more people will be sickened and killed, and that China ‘s reputation will be further damaged. And we suggested that the remedy is not further curbs on good journalism, but stronger laws and better enforcement of them, to ensure that Chinese goods are as safe and reliable as any products on world markets. Since this logic is so obvious, we think there is some hope that our message might be heard.
The committee wrote to Hosni Mubarak, president of Egypt, to protest several new episodes in the continuing repression of the media in a country that receives huge sums of foreign aid from Washington . In the most recent case, Ibrahim Eissa, writing in the newspaper Al Dustour, quoted unofficial reports that the President was in ill health. He was prosecuted for publishing “false information and rumors" that were reports “liable to disturb public security and damage public interest.”
As often happens in such cases, Eissa was later pardoned. Similarly, an Al Jazeera journalist was convicted earlier this year for having shown pictures re-enacting police torture in Egypt , but her jail sentence was later revoked. The government is also cracking down on bloggers and proposing a bill that would punish TV journalists for a wide range of vaguely defined offenses. And in yet another case, two journalists have been accused of criminal defamation for making fun of the rector of the Al-Azar mosque.
As we pointed out to Mubarak, in many ways, Egypt’s media are diverse and vibrant. They can criticize government policy, but evidently not public figures or institutions. "In a truly free country," we concluded, "these two must not be above criticism. If a public figure really feels slandered, the appropriate response should be in civil, not criminal, courts."
In a letter to Mexican President Felipe Calderon, the committee protested the killing of a radio host, Alejandro Zenon Fonseca Estrada, who was gunned down on September 23 by four unidentified men carrying assault rifles as he was putting up at least twenty one journalists who have been killed in Mexico since 2000, and two more have died in the past four days. Another letter is in the works.
Finally, a letter today to Thailand’s prime minister, Chuan Leekpai, protested brutal police tactics in suppressing recent political demonstrations and two recent murders of journalists, bringing the total to four killed so far this year. We warned the prime minister that Thailand risks emulating the sorry image of the Philippines , where journalists have been assassinated with impunity for years.
We also recommended the immediate release of Harry Nicolaides, and Australian novelist whose misfortune was to mention, in three lines of a 300-page novel, that the King of Thailand’s son had been married, but his wife had to leave the country. For this, he has been accused of “lese majeste” and held, without formal charges, since August 31. Nicolaides has issued an apology from his prison cell.