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Old issues, new debates on Internet freedom in India

2012-02-10T20:09:46Z

Just how free should the Internet be in India? And whose job is it to police the Web?

Two recent court cases turn on these questions and, more specifically, whether Internet companies have a responsibility to filter content. In a country where Internet usage is growing exponentially, but where the scars of communal violence, terrorism, and identity politics are fresh, the answers are likely to have deep ramifications for years to come.

]]> Google and Facebook complied on Monday with an injunction by a Delhi civil court to remove some web pages from their sites. The order was passed in December in response to a complaint filed by an Islamic cleric that 22 sites operating in India, including 12 foreign sites, were carrying 'anti-religious' and 'anti-social' content offensive to the country's numerous religious communities, according to news reports.

Google refused to elaborate on the nature of the web pages that were removed, or their specific number. "This step is in accordance with Google's long standing policy of responding to court orders," a Google India spokesperson told CPJ.

Facebook did not respond to a request for comment.

The companies have been given a two-week deadline to show the court how they will monitor their sites or face charges.

In a separate case, 22 social networking sites, including some run by Google, Facebook, Yahoo and Microsoft, are facing a far more serious charge. After a complaint was registered against them in December in a Delhi metropolitan court, executives from the company face criminal charges, punishable by seven years imprisonment, for violating Sections 292 and 293 of the Indian Penal Code, which relates to the sale of obscene materials to minors. They've been accused of "promoting enmity between groups" and "deliberate acts intended to outrage," according to NDTV.

The complainant in that case is Vinay Raj, the 42-year-old editor of Akbhari, a Hindi and Urdu weekly. Since there is no control over content, Raj told CPJ, a system should be put in place to prevent offensive material being uploaded.

Certainly, the judiciary is taking a stern stand. During an initial hearing of Rai's case, High Court Justice Suresh Kait admonished the global companies severely, saying that if they did not have a suitable system in place to filter offensive content they could be banned, much like in China. The next hearing is scheduled for February 14.

Both these cases are part of the growing debate on Internet freedom in India.

"It is natural when new technology emerges new issues will crop up," Ajit Balarkrishnan, chairperson of India's largest Internet company Rediff.com and chairperson of the Government's Information and Technology Committee on Internet Governance and Proliferation, told CPJ. "These two cases have sparked a healthy, constructive debate about absolute freedom and responsibility."

The debate increasingly centers on the role of Internet companies in policing content. Does putting the onus on Internet companies pre-empt the need for state censorship? Or does it simply put the burdens and costs of censorship on the shoulders of private companies?

As Internet usage burgeons -- India has the third largest online community in the world, according to the International Telecommunication Union -- new issues are emerging. "The 2000 Information Technology Act did not define what was considered offensive," says Sajai Singh, who specializes in technology law and practice in Bangalore with the legal firm J. Sagar Associates. ''It was therefore modified with the addition of the Information Technology (Intermediary Guideline) Rules 2011 last April."

Drafted by Balarkrishnan, its clauses are extremely wide-ranging, enjoining companies to remove content deemed "defamatory" 'disparaging" ''unlawful" "ethnically objectionable", "blasphemous," "grossly harmful" within 36 hours of a complaint being registered or face punishment.

Singh believes that a broader issue of censorship of the Internet has emerged out of these cases. "The key issue is whether the government intends the intermediaries to be their partners in effecting the censorship. The judiciary will decide on this freedom of speech."

Supporters of online freedom are appalled.

"The Internet is a whole different medium," stresses Sunil Abraham from the Centre for Internet Societies, Bangalore. "What is at stake here is the whole notion of freedom of the media, especially of the Internet, which is the only platform that can be called free. The print media and the air waves are regulated. Private radio channels have not been allowed to air news programs. The only platform left for complete freedom of expression in this country is the Internet. It should not be selectively censored. "

Speaking to the media on the sidelines of an event in Bangalore on Monday, Sachin Pilot, Minister of State of Telecommunication, said, "There is no question of censorship." But he added that companies should be "accountable" for objectionable content on their site. "There must be responsible behavior at both ends," he said.

Official assurances aside, questions of censorship will remain.

India: Let us in!

2012-02-10T16:25:27Z

In 2005, we deliberately violated the immigration laws of India. We broke the law by producing a documentary film even though we had entered the country on a tourist visa. We broke the law because we wanted to show that Scandinavian companies were in violation of many other laws in India.

]]> Ever since then we have been unable to get either a journalist or tourist visa. We have been banned from India. But the problem has recently grown to be much bigger than just our own.

We did nothing worse than - I guess - hundreds of colleagues have been doing for years. Getting a journalist visa to film a documentary requires at least six weeks of waiting. And you have to tell the Indian authorities what you are going to do, who you are going to talk to, where and when you will do that, as well as submit a synopsis for the project.

This sort of restrictions makes critical, investigative journalism impossible.

Our 2005 film, "A Killer Bargain," showed how Danish and Swedish multinational pesticide and textile companies grossly violated the labor and environmental laws of India.

India has, on paper, some very good laws to protect human beings and the environment but, as in many developing countries, it is the implementation of such laws that is lacking. And the Western companies doing business in India know this. A little "grease" here and there and there will be no problem. No problem, that is, until the journalists arrive.

At the end of "A Killer Bargain," one of the main characters quotes Ghandi: "Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not every man's greed."

Those wise words, spoken decades before this phase of roaring globalization hit us, were precisely what the film is about. No matter how much "corporate social responsibility" we hear about, no matter how much Western companies tell us of their global citizenship, we have to investigate these issues, no matter where they take place. We have to ask the critical questions.

This is what drives us as journalists; this is the obligation we have.

Our film had a huge impact, especially in Scandinavia. A large Danish pesticide company, which had sold extremely dangerous chemicals to poor Indian cotton farmers, stopped producing and selling those hazardous products that long had been banned in our part of the world. Large Swedish and Danish textile manufacturers got a huge wakeup call. Several of them changed their policies and now do much more to investigate and exert control on their supply chain.

Our film, made on a tourist visa, has been shown in more than 20 countries, sold to hundreds of American universities, and has been the recipient of numerous international awards. And even better, we have continued to follow the case and I am proud to say that the film has helped farmers and workers as well as the fragile environment in India.

In 2006 we wanted to go back to India and do more stories. But when we tried to get visas we were ordered out of the Indian embassy in Copenhagen with a V.A.F. stamp -- visa application failed -- in our passports. That means that any Indian embassy or consulate anywhere in the world must refuse us permission to enter the country.

Since then, our attempts to get into India have been stonewalled. We've written letters to the ambassador in Denmark, explaining the reasons for our earlier decisions and expressing our regrets. We wrote to the ambassador that we would apply for a legitimate journalist visa. No answer.

We've kept on trying. So has our Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Union of Journalists in Denmark. And so did the World Health Organization's Southeast Asia office in Delhi. And so have several Indian NGOs, which have invited us to do training sessions and lectures for journalists and field workers. Still, no response.

In 2008 we tried again to write to the then-newly-appointed Indian ambassador. As did our foreign affairs ministry. No answer.

I'm not the sort of person that normally keeps my mouth shut, but in this case I had thought it would be better if we tried, quietly, to let diplomacy work.

A couple of weeks ago, we again tried to get a visa. This time we applied for a tourist visa. My wife and I wanted to go to Delhi and Goa to visit some close friends. We, along with some others, are sponsoring the education of four children of a dear friend in India. And we wanted to catch a little sun.

Again we were refused, and again we could not get an explanation. And again we got V.A.F. stamps in our passports. I'm convinced that we will never get a visa to India, so I've decided to break with our six years of quiet diplomacy. And my reason has to do with more than just our problem. Our case is nothing compared to a much more serious blow to international press freedom:

Just a week before we got the latest mark of Cain in our passports, the Indian embassy in Denmark announced that any staff or freelance journalist working for the Danish Broadcasting Corporation (DR), the largest media company in Denmark, will not be able to get any kind of visa to India.

Maybe this intransigence is due to anger over the 2010 DR version of the BBC-program, "Blood, Sweat and T-shirts." It was a mix of a reality show and a documentary, following a group of Danish kids who went to work in the Indian textile industry, teaching them the harsh realities the Indian workforce faces every day producing goods for the Western world. It was popular here, but perhaps not so much with factory owners in India.

Or India's decision might be due to a long-simmering dispute over the release of a Danish citizen accused of taking part in a 1995 airdrop of weapons in the Indian state of West Bengal. In 2011, Danish courts made the final decision not to hand him over -- Denmark refuses to release anyone for trial to a country where there is a risk they will be tortured or their basic human rights violated. Ever since, diplomatic relations between the two countries have been as cold as the Siberian winter we are experiencing these days.

We must judge a democracy by how it treats even the worst kind of behavior. But we must also judge a democracy by how it allows media to work. Any democratic country should be strong enough to let journalists cover any story they deem worthy, no matter where or what that story might be.

Now diplomats, many international journalist organizations like CPJ, our friends around the world, and our colleagues at DR are working hard to help us. My wife, the camera operator on our team, and I, are truly overwhelmed and honored by the massive global support that we have received. When these messages reach Delhi we hope they will have an even greater impact than we have been able to have.

Despite our critical coverage, we are deeply in love with India, a magnificent country in all its complex, colorful, warm, brutal, heart-breaking reality.

Let us in.

In high-tech China, low-tech media control works too

2012-02-09T19:24:20Z

China's investment in high-tech Internet surveillance technology is well known, and the byzantine rules of its Central Propaganda Department have inspired books and academic treatises.

But among the many tools in the box for media control, there's one that's very simple and low-tech: Keep journalists away.

]]> That's the main tool that the state is employing to suppress news of Tibetan protests against Chinese rule. International journalists have been barred from visiting the site of the protests.

When BBC reported today that four officials were fired for their handling of Tibetan unrest, the source was the Chinese state-controlled Tibet Daily.

And when The New York Times reported on January 27 that police fired on protesters in Sichuan province, the dateline was Hong Kong. Foreign journalists were turned away by security forces more than 60 miles away, the Times said.

Some news organizations have managed to do detailed reporting despite the physical restrictions. Radio Free Asia, which is based in Washington, D.C. but has a network of sources inside and outside China, reported yesterday that 2000 Tibetans gathered in mass demonstrations in southwest China.

Overseas advocacy groups have also filled some of the gap. One such group is the Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy, based in Dharamsala, India, the home of many exiled Tibetans. That group has reported that as many as 21 ethnic Tibetans have set themselves on fire in protest during the past year. In Sichuan province's Aba prefecture yesterday, a 19-year old named Rinzen Dorjee was the latest to do so, the group said.

It's not just international reporters who face travel restrictions. Chinese journalists, already hamstrung by censorship, are similarly barred from visiting places where news is happening. Radio Free Asia points to several microblog posts in the past week by Chinese journalists who have been turned away by authorities in Wukan, in Guangdong province.

In Wukan, a village uprising in protest of land deals resulted in the expulsion of local officials. On February 1, villagers cast a ballot for a new election commission, raising hopes that Wukan could provide a model for grassroots democracy. But Chinese journalists who have tried to cover the developments in Wukan have been subject to surveillance and monitoring, or simply told to go home, RFA reports, citing microblog posts.

Placing travel restrictions on journalists may have one unintended effect. It means that when it comes to unofficial news from China, activists and advocacy groups play a vital role in collecting and disseminating information.

Chinese authorities are hard on activists--even harder than they are on journalists. But by preventing reporters from doing their jobs, Chinese officials all but guarantee that activists are the ones reporting the news.

Rousseff quiet as Cuban blogger denied travel to Brazil

2012-02-09T15:06:45Z

The response from Cuban officials did not take anyone by surprise. Prominent Cuban blogger Yoani Sánchez had been, once again, denied permission to leave her country after she was granted a visa by the Brazilian Embassy in January to attend a film festival. "I feel like a hostage kidnapped by someone who doesn't listen nor provide explanations. A government with a ski mask and a gun in a holster," tweeted Sánchez on Friday after the Cuban government denied her request to travel to Brazil. It was, according to the blogger, the 19th time Cuban officials have turned down her request to leave the island. As in the past, officials gave no reason for the rejection.

]]> Brazilian filmmaker Dado Galvao announced Tuesday that he was postponing the premiere of the documentary "Connection Cuba-Honduras," a movie about press freedom in both countries, in solidarity with the Cuban blogger, who participated in the film. Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, who visited Cuba last week and declined to meet with Sánchez or any dissidents, spoke to reporters before Cuba denied the blogger permission to leave the country. "Brazil gave the visa to the blogger. The rest is not a matter for the Brazilian government," Rousseff said at the time.

Sánchez's work is well known outside Cuba. She has received several international awards, including Columbia's University's Maria Moors Cabot Award for excellence in Latin American reporting, and she blogs regularly for the U.S.-based Huffington Post. Sánchez also gained a measure of fame when President Barack Obama responded to a written questionnaire she sent to the White House in November 2009.

Sánchez has not only been denied permission to travel abroad but has suffered official harassment for her work. In early November 2009, Sánchez and two other independent Cuban bloggers were detained, harassed, and assaulted by state security agents on their way to a peaceful march in Havana. Sánchez has also been the victim of smear campaigns in Cuba's state media, which have described her as a "cybermercenary" at the service of foreign governments.

A vibrant and enthusiastic independent blogging community has emerged in Cuba in the past few years, according to CPJ research. The bloggers, who face severe legal, economic, and technological limitations, are mostly young and from a variety of professions. They critically examine the issues that Cubans face daily: food shortages, health care, education, housing problems, and the lack of Internet access, a 2009 CPJ special report found.

Free press advocates and Cuban journalists point to Sánchez as a pioneer in this evolving community. Sánchez, who started blogging in April 2007, was the first to write under her own byline. Her blog, Generación Y, and several other Cuban blogs are hosted by the German-based portal Desde Cuba (From Cuba), a place where, as its introduction says, "citizen journalists" can offer "opinions that don't have room in official Cuban outlets or any other publication that is conditioned by political requirements."

Rousseff's first visit to Cuba as president had raised expectations among some independent reporters, bloggers, and political dissidents that she would speak about human rights on the island. But the Brazilian leader stayed away from the topic, sticking instead to the trip's key mission of developing trade and boosting Cuba's economy. Sánchez wrote a blog entry prior to her visit, in which she expressed hope that Rousseff's behavior would be "consistent with the clamor for democracy, instead of opting for a complicit silence before a dictatorship." But Rousseff's visit learly showed that Latin American leaders are still reluctant to address Cuba's grave human rights violations when they travel there.

Chinese media little help with Chongqing mystery

2012-02-08T22:40:19Z

The website of Xinhua News, China's state media flagship, leads today with EU's threats of sanctions against Syria. Elsewhere on their Chinese-language site, one can read about Wen Jiabao's remarks to the visiting Canadian prime minister, or look at photos of pretty white ladies lounging around, if that's your style.

]]> What you won't find is any explanation of a recent mystery in the southwestern city of Chongqing: a famous cop has disappeared. According to a terse announcement on the city's microblog, Wang Lijun, until recently the deputy mayor and police chief and something of a national celebrity, has been put on a medical "vacation." This followed an unexplained reassignment, less than a week ago, to a new job overseeing municipal education, science, and environmental affairs.

Wang won national attention and praise by spearheading an anti-crime campaign that led to the arrest and eventual execution of his superior in the police department, Wen Qiang. He's also a close associate of Bo Xilai, the Communist Party chief in Chongqing and a candidate for a top leadership post in the coming political transition.

So what happened? The full announcement from today's Chongqing microblog, according to a translation by BBC News, is this: "It is understood that Vice-Mayor Wang Lijun, who has suffered overwork and immense mental stress for a long time, is seriously physically indisposed. After agreement, he is currently taking holiday-style medical treatment."

Huh?

With no help from newspapers or broadcast news outlets in China, citizens who come across this mystifying tidbit are left to make their own conclusions. The WeiboScope, a marvelous invention of Hong Kong University's Journalism and Media Studies Center, allows a quick search of individual microblogs in China on the topic.

"At this point, I firmly support him," says one netizen. "Of course his anti-crime campaign provoked the interest of certain people. It's within reason that he's suffering retaliation."

There are rumors that Wang has come under investigation for corruption, and that he has sought asylum at the U.S. consulate in nearby Chengdu. The Christian Science Monitor notes a larger than usual police presence at the consulate.

International news outlets have speculated that Wang's "vacation" is a sign that his patron, Bo, has come under attack by his political rivals.

You can bet that, if they were allowed to chime in, China's professional journalists would have plenty to say on the matter.

But it's clear that they can't talk. Caixin, a Beijing-based news outlet, comes closest. In a lengthy article, Caixin examines Wang's legacy, describing his aggressive anti-crime campaign and raising questions about the strength of Chinese rule of law in relation to some of the resulting prosecutions. It's a smart story. But it's not the story.

What's behind India's Internet censorship?

2012-02-08T22:35:43Z

We have been posting a lot about the challenges facing the Internet in India recently--see Mannika Chopra's "India struggles to cope with growing Internet penetration." On Tuesday, Angela Saini, a guest blogger on The Guardian's Comment Is Free site, posted "Internet censorship could damage India's democracy," with the subhead "Google and Facebook have been asked to remove offensive content, but it's not just out of a fear of stoking religious hatred." Saini makes the point that the official resistance to the increasing penetration of the Internet goes beyond fears of religious or ethnic violence:

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The simple answer might be that this is a state that has suffered religious violence in the past, and it's just trying to keep the peace by taking down some hateful material. It is the kind of censorship that, while not ideal for freedom for speech, quite a few Indians could buy into. Look a bit deeper, though, and the reality is more insidious. The loudest pro-censorship calls among politicians seem to be reserved for websites that are about them. Their aim appears to be not just to censor the dangerous stuff, but to polish the government's image, too.

Saini, based in London, maintains a wide-ranging site called Nothing shocks me, I'm a scientist. Her book about the rise of India as a scientific superpower, Geek Nation, was recently released.

DRC journalist Solange Lusiku honored for fortitude

2012-02-08T20:42:13Z

Seated near the fireplace in a historical home in Tournai, a medieval town 70 miles from Brussels and a stone's throw from the French border, while snow fell outside, Solange Lusiku Nsimire was enjoying not only the company of friends, but the chance to live for a few days without fearing suspicious noises in the garden or ominous knocks on the door.

]]> Lusiku is editor-in-chief and publisher of the independent newspaper Le Souverain in her hometown Bukavu, the capital of South Kivu province in eastern Congo, one of the most troubled regions of the DRC. It is a small and crusading newspaper devoted to promotion of democracy and women in a country where abuses against democracy and against women are too often the norm.

Two days earlier, on February 2, Lusiku had been awarded a prestigious honorary doctorate degree at the Université catholique de Louvain (UCL), a tribute to her courage as a journalist and women's rights defender. (Also honored were Salil Shetty, the general secretary of Amnesty International, and Daniel Cornu, ombudsman of the Swiss media group Edipresse and the author of the acclaimed essay "Journalisme et Vérité," or Journalism and Truth.)

In her acceptance speech, Lusiku, 39 years old and the mother of six, directly addressed the dangers of being a journalist and a woman in South Kivu.

"Our life expectation is 24 hours, renewable," she said. "Since the 2006 elections, eight journalists have been killed because of their profession: Franck Ngyke, Bapuwa Muamba, Serge Maheshe, Mutombo Kahilo, Patrick Kikuku, Didace Namujimbo, Bruno Koko Cirambiza, [and] Pascal Kabungulu. Three of them were murdered in South Kivu."

Journalism is a risky assignment in Eastern Congo, a region crisscrossed by roving bands of Rwanda génocidaires, undisciplined army conscripts, and predators of all stripes. In 2004, while Lusiku was working for a local radio station, she had to go underground for a few weeks in order to escape the security services that had been upset by one of her stories.

Since she took over the editorship of Le Souverain in 2007 from founder Emmanuel Barhayiga, the dangers have not faded. Since the launch of the paper in 1992, 67 issues of the paper have been printed. The 68th issue will cover the highly contentious issue of last year's general elections, in which the incumbent President Joseph Kabila has been declared winner over the strident protests of his main rival, Etienne Tshisekedi. Ideally, Lusiku would publish the paper monthly.

"Journalism is my calling, the print media is my struggle, and independence is my motto," Lusiku insisted in her speech. Against the backdrop of mauve robes, costumed trumpeters, and other university pageantry, a large screen showed Lusiku at her desk in a modest building in Bukavu, together with her staff, preparing the next edition of the paper.

"Publishing is not a cakewalk," she said two days later. "We have to live with constant electricity stoppages, sending email is like sending snail mail, we have to print in Bujumbura, the capital of neighboring Burundi." Although its printing costs seem low at US$1200 per issue, Le Souverain is not sustainable. It produces 500 copies sold at US$1 a piece. The fact that each copy is read, according to Lusiku, by more than 100 people, does not help. Le Souverain needs outside funding.

What makes her endure all the risks and hardships? A passion for journalism, democracy and women's dignity. "I will remain an independent pen. Whatever happens I will continue my struggle to promote democratic values," she said in her speech at the UCL ceremony.

But there is also a passion for solidarity. The cooperation of Belgium's French-speaking community, the city of Brussels, and local civil society organizations like the Christian workers' movement have been supporting the paper. Interns from a Brussels journalism school (IHECS) have helped with layout and newsroom management. The UCL rector has pledged to mobilize university networks on Lusiku's behalf, and her friends have shipped a 13-ton press to Bukavu so the paper can be printed locally. "As far as I know the ship is approaching Dar Es Salaam," she said with hope.

The solidarity of local journalists' organizations and international press freedom groups is also a crucial factor in protecting media professionals from the violence and arbitrariness that prevails in the region.

"It is so comforting to know that friends and colleagues thousands of miles away from Bukavu care for you," Lusiku said. "I dare hope that those who want to silence the press understand that is riskier for them if there are people out there who watch and monitor their abuses."

"It reminds me of an old proverb that my parents used to tell me," she said. "If a woman enters the forest to fetch water and has a lion at a distance that protects her, she knows that she can take all her time and that no other wild animal will attack her."

Pakistan's Abbas: Journalists hostage to 'power of gun'

2012-02-07T18:42:56Z

CPJ award winner Mazhar Abbas penned a strong Sunday op-ed piece, "Death is the only news--Challenges of working in conflict zones," for The News. It's about conditions for journalists working in Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and Baluchistan. As Abbas says, "The killing of one journalist is a message for another." He goes on to describe the situation in FATA:

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The murder of tribal journalist Nasrullah Afridi a few months back [May 10, 2011] was perhaps the warning for Mohammad Khan Aatif [January 17, 2012], a stringer for Voice of America's Pashto service. Journalists in FATA are now waiting for the next target, as everyone seems to be hostage to "gun power" whether from the state or non-state elements, making it world's most dangerous area for reporting.

For more background reading on FATA: I did a five-part series, "Frontier War," published in October 2009. In his October 2011 piece, "Baluchistan's press under siege," Malik Siraj Akbar described conditions in one of Pakistan's most under-reported hot spots.

Accreditation disputes at center of US arrests

2012-02-07T18:25:32Z

The issue of press accreditation continues to reverberate. In November, when the Occupy movement came into conflict with law enforcement across the country and at least 20 journalists covering the events were arrested, CPJ reported that disputes over press accreditation were at the center of many of those arrests. Last week, credentials played a role in the arrests of journalists not only at tumultuous Occupy demonstrations in Oakland but also inside the more hushed chambers of Capitol Hill.

]]> The reporters and photographers who were rounded up along with protesters last year for demonstrating in allegedly unauthorized places found that their appeals as members of the press often fell on deaf ears. Across the country, police repeatedly refused to acknowledge as a journalist anyone who did not have what they considered to be official accreditation, leaving freelancers and new media journalists particularly vulnerable, CPJ reported.

At least six journalists found themselves in the same situation on January 28, when they were arrested during violent clashes between Occupy demonstrators and Oakland police officers in California. It was the largest roundup of journalists covering the Occupy movement since 10 were detained while reporting on the eviction from Zuccotti Park in New York on November 15. The journalists in Oakland were caught up in the mass arrests of several hundred demonstrators who were corralled by police officers outside a YMCA building, according to press reports.

For Susie Cagle, the scenario was familiar. The freelance journalist and cartoonist was arrested back on November 3, and after police officers belittled her press pass, was charged with "presence at the scene of a riot." After pressure by press freedom groups, the charges were dropped and Cagle said she was granted an official police press pass that was valid through the end of 2011. Cagle wrote in the Guardian that she was wearing the expired press pass, along with valid accreditations from the Guild Freelancers, when she was arrested on January 28. Because the police-approved pass had expired, she wrote, the arresting officer told her, "You're not press tonight." After being held for around 40 minutes, she was released without charge.

Yael Chanoff, a reporter for the San Francisco Bay Guardian, was not so lucky. The journalist wrote in the Bay Guardian that she was arrested, transported with other protesters to a county jail, and held for 20 hours. Chanoff had been hired by the Bay Guardian three weeks earlier and didn't have a police press pass, though she said she showed the police a business card and identification. She was charged with failure to leave the scene of a riot and has an arraignment scheduled for March 5.

Gavin Aronsen, an editorial fellow at Mother Jones magazine, reported that the police ignored his press credentials and transported him to a jail, where he was held in a cell for approximately one hour. Arresting officers told Kristin Hanes, a reporter with KGO radio, that her press credentials were only valid for San Francisco, not Oakland, and held in her custody on the scene for approximately 30 minutes, KGO reported. Vivian Ho, a journalist with the San Francisco Chronicle, posted on twitter that she was cuffed in zip-ties along with the other journalists, but convinced the police officers to release her shortly thereafter. Ho also had San Francisco police-approved credentials, according to Mother Jones. John C. Osborn of the weekly East Bay Express reported that he was arrested because he did not have police-accredited credentials and was held in custody for an hour. None of these journalists were charged.

On the other side of the country, the validity of credential rules and how they are enforced was called into question with the arrest of filmmaker Josh Fox on Capitol Hill on Wednesday. As The New York Times reported, Fox was seeking to film a congressional session on the natural gas drilling technique known as "fracking" for a follow-up to his Academy Award-nominated documentary "Gasland," which was highly critical of the process. A subcommittee of the House Science Committee scheduled a hearing at the last moment to discuss an EPA report that found fracking had caused water contamination in the city of Pavillion, Wyoming, a town that was featured in Fox's film. According to the Times, Fox said his appeals for accreditation were not answered, but he decided to attend the session with a small camera crew nonetheless. When Fox refused to stop filming the session, he was arrested.

In a press release after the hearing, the Committee said "Section 9(j) of the Committee's rules expressly states that 'Personnel providing coverage by the television and radio media shall be currently accredited to the Radio and Television Correspondents' Galleries.'" Democratic Representatives Brad Miller and Jerry Nadler told The Huffington Post, however, that it is extremely uncommon to turn away journalists or filmmakers who want to film hearings, which are open to the public. Miller tried to halt the session to allow Fox to stay, calling for a motion to allow "all of god's children" to film the hearing, according to Politico. Republican congress members, led by subcommittee Chairman Andy Harris, voted against it and capitol police led the filmmaker away in handcuffs. As Fox pointed out to The Huffington Post, there was no such censuring of the camera phones of congressional aides, some of whom filmed the arrest as can be seen here.

Fox, who was released shortly thereafter, was charged with unlawful entry and is scheduled to appear in court February 15. The filmmaker wrote in a statement: "As a filmmaker and journalist I have covered hundreds of public hearings, including Congressional hearings. It is my understanding that public speech is allowed to be filmed. Congress should be no exception."

Does the Internet boost freedom? We decide, book says

2012-02-02T22:22:09Z

The Internet doesn't bring freedom. Not automatically, anyway.

That's one of the main messages of Rebecca MacKinnon's new book, Consent of the Networked, which had its New York launch at the offices of the New America Foundation last night. In a conversation with CNN managing editor Mark Whitaker, MacKinnon, a CPJ board member, said it's up to concerned citizens, governments, and corporations to make decisions about how the Internet is used. She contrasted the Twitter-powered revolt in Egypt last year with the "networked authoritarianism" of China, where corporations are collaborators in a system designed to preserve Communist Party rule.

]]> "China is Exhibit A for how an authoritarian government evolves and survives in the Internet world," MacKinnon said.

By now, Chinese authorities' savvy use (or abuse) of new technologies to maintain its hold on power is old news. But it came as a surprise to the foreign reporters who were living in China, as MacKinnon was, when the Internet first made its appearance there.

"The Communist Party will never survive the Internet" was the consensus, she recalled. "That was in 1995."

In 2012, there are plenty of examples of the Internet's power to affect change in China. (Earlier this week, I pointed out a study showing that the Chinese government can be surprisingly responsive to scandals reported in the local media and online.)

But MacKinnon emphasizes that this does nothing to chip away at Communist Party authority. In fact, she argues, these Internet-fueled scandals may actually help keep the party in power, by improving governance at the local level. Any attempt to use the Internet to call for broader political reform gets shut down quickly, and can land a person in jail. Just ask Liu Xiaobo.

MacKinnon's book is about a lot more than China. Much of her focus is on corporations that hold enormous power in our privacy protections, the limits of our expression, and our ability to connect online. In some cases, these Internet corporations can enhance our rights and promote democracy. But just as easily, she points out, they can make people more vulnerable or extend a government's reach.

She makes the argument that we're having a Magna Carta moment. For those of you, like me, who had to consult Wikipedia for a reminder of what exactly the Magna Carta was all about, here's the gist: In 1215, the English people forced their king to accept a set of limits on his heretofore unquestioned power. In 2012, says MacKinnon, it's time for us to acknowledge the great power we've put in the hands of our kings -- Google, Facebook, and Twitter, to name just a few -- and get down to the task of limiting it.

India's challenge: Intolerance vs. intellectual freedom

2012-01-31T21:59:41Z

Because of criticism from Hindu fundamentalists, the showing of a documentary by filmmaker Sanjay Kak at the Symbiosis College of Arts and Commerce in Pune has been indefinitely postponed. The conservative student organization Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parisha protested Kak's film, "Jashn-e-Azadi" (How we celebrate freedom), which is critical of the Indian army's role in Kashmir. In fact, the whole conference, scheduled to start Friday, has been postponed, according to the investigative magazine Tehelka and the BBC.

]]> This kerfuffle comes shortly after the organizers of the Jaipur Literary Festival cancelled a video link with Indian-born author Salman Rushdie on January 24, the last day of the high-profile event. Ignoring critics who accused the organizers of censorship, Sanjoy Roy, the festival's producer, said the video interaction had to be cancelled to prevent violence by Muslims activists who, the local police said, had entered the crowded venue of the festival. "We have been pushed to the wall,'' said an emotionally charged Roy. The controversy has turned on whether the threats to Rushdie were real; the writer initially decided not to attend the festival because he believed it would be unsafe, but came to believe that Rajasthan state police had fabricated the threats to keep him away. Home Minister P. Chidambaram denied Rushdie's claim at a press conference.

Regardless of what really happened in Jaipur, there are endless examples of very real and very physical threats to writers, documentary makers, cartoonists, and journalists in India. The question is what the appropriate response should be. Instead of silencing those who might be attacked, it's up to local and national authorities to act aggressively to protect free expression legally and to prosecute attackers.

In recent weeks, CPJ has reported on a cartoonist coming under legal pressure, not for criticizing politicians (who are apparently considered fair game) but for mocking the state. We also reported on a January 28 attack by dozens of supporters of the Shiv Sena, a rightwing Hindu nationalist party, on the Times of India building in Mumbai, protesting an article that ran in the Maharashtra Times, a Marathi-language daily that is part of the Times of India group. The group was angered by the newspaper's coverage of their internal politics. Police have arrested 28 people so far, according to a Times report.

In December, we noted in a blog headlined "India struggles to cope with growing Internet penetration" that grassroots activists were using local courts to confront what they considered controversial Web content and its near-universal accessibility, with little oversight, to India's vast population. The local courts are often sympathetic, handing down decisions to have the online material suppressed that are largely unenforceable for the companies hosting the material. And, while resorting to the courts is much better than trashing a newspaper office or threatening death, an overly litigious atmosphere can prove to be almost as daunting to the media in the long run.

None of this is new in India, as CPJ has recorded over the years. And while the state is sometimes involved in the pressure on media (see the CPJ September 2011 alert on a freelancer charged with antistate activities and numerous alerts on the suppression and abuse of journalists covering the battle over Kashmir), anti-media pressure is just as likely to come from conflicting groups within the country: Maoists, and the vigilante groups confronting them; religious groups, some of them wearing the cloak of nationalism; patriotic grassroots organizations, or disgruntled power elites angered by coverage of corrupt practices, just to mention a few.

CPJ data showthat 30 journalists and media workers have been killed in India for their work since 1992. Slightly more than 50 percent of them had covered business or corruption; only 4 percent were covering violent conflicts. CPJ counts 17 others dead possibly because of their work, but with enough doubt about the motive for us not to include them with the larger number. Globally, India ranks as the eighth most deadly country for journalists. And it joins five other South Asian nations--Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, Nepal, Pakistan, and Bangladesh--among the 20 worst countries on our global Impunity Index, which spotlights countries where journalists are slain and their killers go free. India ranks 13th on the Impunity Index.

The problems of sectarian strife are not unique to India, or even South Asia. But it is the government's responsibility to move beyond the rationale of not wanting to inflame the cultural differences among its 1.2 billion people to address the conditions under which its journalists work. India cannot easily solve all of its society's many pressing problems, but it can begin to attack the sad record of impunity that has allowed the deaths of so many journalists to go unpunished.

Cabezas' convicted killers are free, 15 years after murder

2012-01-31T21:12:53Z

It was a cold winter morning more than 15 years ago. As part of my daily routine as a foreign correspondent, I opened my laptop to read the Argentine papers. I was shocked by a headline: my colleague José Luis Cabezas, a photographer for the newsweekly magazine Noticias, had been murdered. His bullet-ridden body was found on January 25, 1997, inside a burned car, handcuffed and charred, on the outskirts of the beach resort of Pinamar.

]]> The murder of Cabezas, the most brutal assassination of a journalist since the restoration of democracy in 1983, stunned Argentine society. Local journalists, free press activists, and other citizens took to the streets to urge the government of President Carlos Saúl Menem to thoroughly investigate the crime. Cabezas was the first media professional to take a photograph of Alfredo Yabrán, a reclusive and powerful businessman described as the head of the local mafia. Yabrán had built up a fortune through lucrative government contracts and by controlling half of the country's private mail delivery and a large portion of government printing. Yabrán was not known to the public until Noticias published articles about his businesses and ties to politicians and the government. Cabezas' photographs had illustrated stories about corruption of the business and political elite, who traditionally migrate to Pinamar in the summer.

As the New York-based bureau chief for the magazine, I was given the task of contacting press freedom activists in the U.S. who would sustain pressure on the Argentine government to fully investigate the crime. On January 27, CPJ sent a letter to Menem urging his government to conduct a thorough investigation into the murder and calling for a swift prosecution of those responsible. I also interviewed Katharine Graham, owner of the Washington Post Company and a CPJ board member, who expressed her solidarity with Noticias, Cabezas' family, and the Argentine press corps. In May, CPJ published a special report on the photographer's slaying.

The murder occurred in the middle of a political battle between Menem and Buenos Aires Governor Eduardo Duhalde, as both Peronist leaders were embarking on campaigns to be the party's presidential candidate in the 1999 election. (Pinamar is in the province of Buenos Aires). The administration had ties with Yabrán, and while Menem initially denied knowing the businessman personally, investigators soon found that the mogul had made several phone calls to Justice Minister Elias Jassan immediately after Cabezas was murdered. That discovery, exposed by the press (along with the fact Menem had traveled in Yabrán's private plane), led to the minister's resignation.

As a result of both international public opinion and concerted pressure by the Argentine press, in the year following the murder several people were arrested, including Yabrán's chief of security and some former policemen. In May 1998, Yabrán was subpoenaed to testify in the murder trial. The elusive tycoon disappeared and was found dead days later in the province of Entre Ríos. He had shot himself in the mouth.

In early 2000, eight men were sentenced to life in prison for participating in the murder of Cabezas, and the court found that the crime had been masterminded by Yabrán. Another suspect received the same sentence in 2002. But all of the convicted killers have been freed in the past four years. After their sentences were reduced on appeal, they took advantage of legal provisions that allowed each year they served while their appeals were pending to be computed as two years. They served less than 10 years each. Last week, the local press group Foro de Periodismo Argentino (FOPEA) called on judicial authorities to send the convicted murderers back to prison--which could happen if the original sentence is upheld by an appeals court.

For Argentines, the murder of Cabezas was reminiscent of the thousands of killings that took place during the "dirty war" of the late 1970s and 1980s in the midst of the military dictatorship. It revived distressing memories in a country where dozens of journalists were killed during that period, and as many as 30,000 people disappeared after being kidnapped and tortured. In recent years, Argentina has made major strides in bringing members of the dictatorship to justice for crimes against humanity. The fact that all of Cabezas' killers are free is a setback for the country's fight against impunity.

Chinese press has impact, against the odds

2012-01-30T21:06:18Z

In China, state control over the media hasn't become more lax in recent years. Each year brings a new excuse for Communist Party censors to tighten the screws. The year of the rabbit brought the Arab Spring, and fears of a Jasmine Revolution. The year of the dragon brings a major political transition.

]]> If you're a Chinese journalist, as any reader of this website understands, working conditions are tough in any year. Publish press releases and government pronouncements, and you'll probably be fine. Report critically, and you risk the wrath--and sometimes violence--of local officials and thugs. You can expect your editors to be watching censorship guidelines, or lose their jobs. And if you're a Uighur or Tibetan online journalist reporting on protests--well, watch out.

But by one unlikely measure, Chinese journalists seem to do pretty well. When it comes to having impact--shifting policies, changing local laws, and even provoking the arrests of party-connected criminals--the media in China have shown their power repeatedly.

The New York Times on Friday reported one example of media impact. To paraphrase: After years of insisting officially that the sky is blue, the government has been pushed to admit that it's actually gray.

The Times story focuses on the role of Internet activists in pushing the government to back off its line that air quality in China is improving. Taking to the microblogs with their own air quality readings, activists in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Wenzhou forced the Chinese government to track--at last--the tiny particulates (2.5 microns in diameter or less, known as PM 2.5) that are one of the deadliest forms of air pollution.

But traditional media in China also played a role in voicing perspectives at odds with the official clean-air story. In December, the straitlaced, state-owned China Daily was giving voice to environmental experts' concerns about PM 2.5 particulates. Around the same time, the Beijing-based Caixin was reporting on Beijing authorities' refusal to disclose this data to a concerned citizen named Yu Ping. Caixin, for its part, repeated (in English) this quote first published (in Chinese) by the hard-charging Guangzhou-based tabloid Southern Metropolis Daily:

"[Environmental Protection Bureau] Deputy Director Du Shaozhong previously said that he is willing to compare Beijing's PM 2.5 readings to that of the U.S. embassy's," Yu said to Southern Metropolis Daily, "If foreigners can see these statistics, why not Chinese?"

Surely, it was this combination of online rabble-rousing and traditional reporting that led the government to change its tune.

Was this a one-off? A paper presented at last year's American Political Science Association suggests not. (It's behind a pay wall; you need access to an academic database to read the whole thing.) But in short, political scientists Jonathan Hassid and Jennifer N. Brass compare what they call "government responsiveness" in China, where the press is not free, to Kenya, where it is. What they found was surprising. In one example after another in China, scandals led to public pressure, which led the government in China to respond. In Kenya, by contrast, enormous public pressure seemed to fizzle with few results.

And while it wasn't exactly the point of their paper, it was hard not to notice the huge role that the not-free Chinese press played in bringing scandals to public attention.

In 2003, Southern Metropolis Daily's aggressive reporting on the death in custody of a man named Sun Zhigang led to changes in the national law that authorized detention of migrants.
In 2007, it was Henan TV that first reported on the brick factories that were employing kidnapped children as workers--a scandal that led to the jailing and even execution of "dozens of colluding Shanxi officials," according to Hassid and Brass.
Southern Weekend had to fight through months of official censorship in 2008 to publish a report that the dairy company Sanlu was selling baby formula contaminated with melamine. When the story finally broke, executives from the company were jailed and even executed--though the larger problems in food supply seem to remain.

Paradoxically, these examples also illustrate the excruciatingly high cost of official censorship. Six babies died and another 54,000 were hospitalized because of the contaminated milk. Lives would have been saved if Southern Weekend had been allowed to publish its reporting when it initially had the story in July 2008--which was (not coincidentally) the month before the Olympic Games were held in Beijing.

In other cases, journalists themselves paid the price for the impact their work had. After their excellent reporting on Sun Zhigang, some of the journalists of Southern Metropolis Daily were rewarded with jail time.

It's clear that the Chinese press is thriving against the odds. Imagine the impact journalists could have there if the odds weren't quite so long.

Can an Indian cartoonist be barred from mocking the state?

2012-01-30T20:37:46Z

The case of a cartoonist charged with treason and offending India's national sentiments reflects a growing debate over what constitutes freedom of expression in India. His accusers argue that while it is permissible to make fun of politicians, you cannot make fun of the state. Not everyone agrees.

]]> Aseem Trivedi, a 25-year-old political cartoonist, was charged with treason and insulting the Indian national emblems, according to local news reports and CPJ interviews. The Bheed District Court, in the west Indian state of Maharashtra, has instructed police to bring Trivedi to court by February 6. Should Trivedi be found guilty, he could face up to three years' imprisonment and heavy fines.

The charges stem from a complaint filed by local political and social activist Hanumantha Upre. In a recent blog entry, I noted a similar effort by conservative local activists to stifle online content that they found anti-religious.

Trivedi, a freelancer from the central state of Uttar Pradesh, was inspired by the well-known social activist Anna Hazare's fight against corruption and graft. Trivedi drew cartoons criticizing the Indian government, some of which were exhibited while Hazare was fasting in Mumbai in December.

Back in Mumbai, Trivedi faces another legal attack. There, lawyer R.P. Pandey has filed his own complaint, alleging that the cartoons are "defamatory and derogatory" and requesting "strict legal action," according to news reports. While Mumbai police have yet to file charges, the complaint has had repercussions: Big Rock, a domain name registrar, suspended Trivedi's website, www.cartoonistsagainstcorruption.com, citing the criminal complaint, The Times of India reported.

Speaking to CPJ from Mumbai, Pandey said that while parodying politicians was a legitimate pursuit, mocking national institutions like the Indian Parliament and national symbols was "completely unacceptable."

Trivedi's activities are protected, countered the prominent Delhi-based human rights lawyer Colin Gonsalves, who said expressing political dissent and questioning government policy are integral to free expression. For his part, Trivedi told CPJ that he sees the ban against his website as arbitrary and a sign of the government's growing intolerance toward dissent.

Banning cartoons and harassing cartoonists, though rare, is not unheard of in India. In 1987, in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, the editor of a weekly magazine was arrested and sentenced to three months of rigorous imprisonment for publishing a cartoon mocking politicians, according to a 2003 account in Frontline magazine. The ensuing furor from the media community saw him released within a few days.

Certainly, the blocking of Trivedi's website has caused a sense of disquiet. Sudhir Tailang, a well-known political cartoonist based in Delhi, says, "The very essence of cartoons are their anti-establishment note. Take away that and you take away dissent."

In Mexico mission, PEN speaks for a silenced press

2012-01-30T19:55:38Z

The leading American author Russell Banks set the tone on Sunday as he stood among international writers and their local colleagues in Mexico City: "A nation's journalists and writers, like its poets and story-tellers, are the eyes, ears, and mouths of the people. When journalists cannot freely speak of what they see and hear of the reality that surrounds them, the people cannot see, hear, or speak it either." Banks is among the leaders of a high-level PEN International delegation that is meeting with top Mexican officials to pressure them to improve law enforcement in the murders of journalists, and to change the law to bring more cases under the federal government's jurisdiction.

]]> Mexican journalists are being killed at a terrible rate. Since December 2006, 43 journalists have been murdered or disappeared. In 13 of those cases, CPJ has established a clear connection between the victim's journalism and their murder. The actual number may be higher. Often, it appears that those responsible for the murders are members of organized crime cartels that want to silence press coverage of what they are doing. In many cases, the murders come as organized groups take over a town or a region and move to control the press there. Sometimes, the bodies are found with notes from organized crime groups taking credit. The consequence of the murders--aside from the personal tragedies for the families--is that in a large and growing part of Mexico the press has simply stopped operating as journalists. Newspapers, radio, and TV are terrified to cover stories about crime and corruption because of threats from the cartels. These gangs, having taken over whole regions by corrupting civilian and police authorities, are making money through a vast network of criminal activities, from drug dealing to extortion.

This is what Banks was talking about: The press in these areas must now be blind and deaf, and so then is the public. Shortly after he spoke to the roughly 40 writers and journalists, Elena Poniatowska, the renowned Mexican author and journalist, put into a few words what it means to be a journalist in Mexico: "In Mexico, to tell the truth is to put your life on the line."

Those two speakers put the problem well. But now there are two questions. First, how did things get this way? And then, what can be done? Both questions trace back to the federal government. It has not been able to effectively stop criminal cartels from invading and occupying large sections of the country, which means that the public and the journalists there are pretty much without protection, day to day. Then when a journalist is threatened, the federal government has not been able to safeguard them; or if they are killed, it has not been able to solve the case and punish the killers. In other words, there is impunity for threatening or killing journalists.

PEN hopes to eat away at that by undertaking an international campaign featuring famous writers, an effort designed to embarrass Mexico into doing more. The pressure began last Friday with a full page ad in a major national newspaper, El Universal, in support of Mexican journalists and writers. It was signed by 170 leading international writers, including winners of the Nobel Prize. It came on the day that the PEN delegation was meeting with the Mexican attorney general and the president of the Senate. There are other similar meetings set for this week, according to delegation officials.

John Ralston Saul, a Canadian author, is president of PEN International. He said the report on the mission will go out to PEN's more than 100 chapters around the world. He didn't use the word "warning" to describe how the group handled meetings with Mexican officials. Rather, he used the words, "cordial" and "polite." But PEN's warning to Mexico was hanging in the air. He told CPJ: "We stand in solidarity with our people, the people of the word. We are saying if you don't do better, this is going to be a worldwide issue."