A BATTLE TO FIGHT AND WIN

Following 15 months of brilliant campaigning, Hassan Ruvakuki was finally freed by the government of Burundi. Hassan was arrested in November 2011 after covering a story in Tanzania for Radio France Internationale. He was first charged with terrorism and sentenced to life in prison but on appeal, the charge was downgraded to "participating in an association formed for the purpose of attacking people and property" but still given a three year jail sentence.

From then on, court proceedings turned into a grotesque farce as judges refused him parole using the pretext that he may appeal and denying his lawyers notice of what’s been cooked up.

Suddenly on March 6^th, the authorities released Hassan stressing that this was for health reasons only.

It was indeed a great victory for his supporters worldwide, his colleagues at home and in France, and his union, an IFJ affiliate, which mounted a formidable campaign to get him released.

However the judicial persecution of Hassan is far from over. It is not a coincidence that while the Burundian authorities ignored the international outrage, the strong petitioning effort and the powerful mobiisation of journalists by the union, they moved swiftly to release him only days before their president, Pierre Nkurunziza, was due to visit France. The danger that the judges will have a go again still lurks.

One thing is certain. His colleagues, his union and the IFJ will be there again to stand up with him. In fact the campaign mounted by the Union Burundaise des Journalistes was tremendous and effective. Its weekly protests were perceived by the authorities as a major threat and they moved swiftly to attack and intimidate the assembled journalists with tear gas and baton charges.

The campaign had also a huge resonance among IFJ unions which played a major role in pressurising the Burundian government.  The UBJ demonstrated with its determination and campaigning skills that, when journalists combine together in unions, they can stand up to some of the most repressive authorities to defend their social and professional rights and they can win no matter their size or their resources.

AUTHORITARIANS USE ARCHAIC LAWS TO JAIL WRITERS

Two writers, a poet and a journalist, have been in the dock recently in high profile court cases where judges rowed back and cut sentences that shocked the world. The first was Muhammad Ibn al-Dheeb al-Ajami, a poet who was jailed for life in Qatar. His crime was to have posted a poem on-line, the “Jasmine poem”, lauding the Tunisian revolution but which, according to the criminal charges levelled against him, offended the emir and contravened the Gulf state's penal code which explicitly bans calls for the overthrow of the government. Alarmed by the international outrage, judges in a higher state security court generously reduced his sentence to 15 years in prison. 

The second, Abdiaziz Abdinuur, a Somali freelance journalist was charged with insulting the government when he interviewed a woman claiming to have been raped by government forces. The Bernadir Regional Court in Mogadishu gave him a one-year prison sentence later reduced by an appellate court to six months. Abdiaziz did not even publish the story.

Both cases were received with astonishment around the world. For one, these cases exposed the wanton criminalisation of journalists still operating in many countries. Outdated laws are sill used by unscrupulous governments to gag journalists and instill fear in them that they cannot cross a line in the sand. In most cases, this line is that rulers are above the law and cannot be given a bad press.

Most important is that both authorities claiming to have been offended are friends of the West. President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud of Somalia, is relentlessly portrayed by his backers including UK Prime Minister David Cameron, as committed to human rights and reform. Perhaps he should have told him when he welcomed him to Downing Street that such antediluvian laws have no place in the statute book of a country craving for recognition, even it is a failed one peddling hope to donor countries to encourage further funding.

As for Qatar, everybody knows how its massive oil wealth propelled it to become a major international player, in particular acting as a proxy for the Westin in helping the NATO-backed uprising and more recently backing the anti-Bashar rebels in Syria. But its support for the street uprisings in Tunis, Cairo or Sanaa is cruelly wanting when it comes to press freedom or the rights of the majority of workers in its own backyard.

The Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, is almost never referred to by mainstream media as a dictator and you often hear his regime referred to as “moderate”. Al Jazeera, a key weapon in his soft power arsenal, relentlessly bolsters its carefully crafted image as a benevolent monarchy.

It is left to the global labour movement to stand up against such hypocrisy. A campaign recently launched by the International TUC exposes sharply the ugly face of the kingdom, epitomised by the 1.2 million workers in Qatar who are prohibited from joining a trade union in violation of international rights.

The campaign now focuses on the 2022 world cup which Qatar won controversially the bid to host. The message from the ITUC is “Don’t let your World Cup team play in a shamed stadium. There will be no World Cup in 2022 without workers' rights.”

OMBUDSMEN WILL FACE THE AXE

We often watch in disbelief newspaper managements cutting off their nose in spite of their face. Faced with technological changes and previously profitable financial models that no longer deliver rich profits, employers say they have no alternative but to slash jobs, and shrink whole sections and editorial departments. The latest function that may come under the hammer is the ombudsman with the Washington Post leading the charge..

The newspaper that gave us the Watergate scandal, a story that inspired a whole generation of journalists, is thinking seriously about not replacing Patrick Pexton, the paper’s ombudsman, after his contract came to en end. If indeed he is not replaced, and it looks almost certain he won’t be, this would be for the first time in 43 years that this post would remain unfilled.

Pexton told his readers “I think the tea leaves are clear. For cost-cutting reasons, for modern media-technology reasons and because the Post, like other news organisations, is financially weaker and hence even more sensitive to criticism, my bet is that this position will disappear”.

There is a strong argument that, even during lean times when many newspapers are tightening their belt, doing away with the ombudsman is not only wrong headed but it would harm newspapers. 

It has long been proved that quality journalism builds trust which in turn helps win market share and commitment from readers. The work of ombudsmen has been crucial in maintaining the credibility of newspapers at a time when readers’ expectation of accurate and fair reporting continues to rise in a world of information flooded by internet speculation. Showing readers that a newspaper care about accuracy and is prepared to make corrections is the best way to maintain a loyal readership and, in the end, save lawyers’ bills.

But is it a dying function? US newspapers have said the same thing about in-house photographers and subs to justify gutting their newsroom. Pexton claims to deal with 5000 complaints every month. Replacing him with direct online access for readers to file their complaints is shortsighted in the extreme. Soon they will realise there is nobody there to adjudicate or to analyse and respond to their complaints.

If it is indeed a disappearing function, why then have ombudsmen started popping up all over the world? Stephen Pritchard, president of the News Ombudsmen Organisation, claims that he never received so many invitations from editors worldwide wanting to know about how to set one up.  Once again in a media world in tumult, profit hungry US publishers are at the forefront of ditching some of the most basic ethical traditions that underpin the work of journalists.

UK PRESS REGULATIONS: LEVESON LITE FAILS TO CONVINCE

After weeks of huffing and puffing, the coalition government in the UK has finally unveiled its plans for a new regulator for the press following the Leveson recommendations. Having said he accepted them, the UK PM set out to walk out a tight rope, placating the families of the victims of the phone hacking scandal while negotiating with media barons.

The anti-Leveson camp upped the ante by running in advance of the publication of the report a vicious campaign against the anticipated changes, focusing in particular on the legislative underpinnings of any new watchdog, describing them as a Mugabe-like end of press freedom. The PM himself was forced to say that any Leveson law would be like crossing a Rubicon and end centuries of press freedom.

In the ensuing furore, media moguls splintered in different directions. Lord Hunt, the current Press Complaint Commission chair, surrounded by legal and policy advisers, led efforts to create a successor body to the discredited press regulator. Editor of the Daily Mail, Paul Dacre, fought a lone battle with his proposal for a new system of press cards to license journalists which he argued will help to transform the regulation of journalistic behaviour. Lord Black, executive director of the Telegraph Media Group, emerged as the eminence grise of the newspaper industry following his successful campaign, the Free Speech Network, to demonise legislative underpinning. However his contract plan relying on civil law, while largely welcomed by the industry, started losing ground.

At the same time, the three main political parties started their all-party consultations which dragged on for weeks and finally ran into the sand. All this ferment was getting nowhere, some even arguing over the minutia of the differences between self-regulation and independent regulation, and, as we were then truly in the smoke and mirrors stage so beloved of the Westminster machine, Cabinet minister Oliver Letwin came in with his alternative, a royal press charter.

The proposals included some fresh thinking such as a new regulator, with real teeth and investigatory powers and the ability to bypass the courts to settle libel and privacy cases swiftly and cheaply, that it can deal with third party complaints, provide an arbitration process in relation to civil claims for alleged libel and privacy breaches and even levy fines up to £1m and exemplary damages for breaches of privacy.

However proposals that the new watchdog would be audited by a recognition body – a sort of verifying panel – every three years to be established by a royal charter, raised hackles from all sides.  After waging a stubborn fight for months against statutory underpinning, now the Tory party is proposing a regulator which could be amended at any point by the privy council, made up of cabinet ministers – not even Parliament. “It requires some suspension of disbelief to take seriously the notion that Conservative ministers are now proposing that this device be used to regulate the British press” said an editorial.

Party managers are again huddled in cross-party talks that seem to be going nowhere. If the prospect for a royal charter bites the dust, there may still be room for other proposals for legislation emerging in particular from the majority in Parliament in favour of the full Leveson recommendations.

WHAT’S IN IT FOR US JOURNALISTS?

Google Inc. and the French IPG (association of l’Information Politique et Générale) shook hands on a deal hailed by some as “historic” and by other as a “sell out”. Worth €60 million, this is what Google agreed to throw in to settle a festering dispute about how much the search company would pay to link their stories on the web.

Google chairman Eric Schmidt and France's President Francois Hollande sat side by side at the presidential palace to present a deal mediated from months by Marc Schwartz, a partner at the global audit firm Mazars.

The one-off fund was supposed to pay for innovation projects for digital publishing, while also kicking off partnerships with publishers to increase their online revenue. Something a smug President Hollande hailed as  “the first of its kind in the world" and the French news press representative “a global unifying event”. It was neither.

Not long ago, Goggle passed another agreement with Belgian publishers to settle a six-year copyright dispute with Google covering the publishers’ legal fees amounting to around €5 million, and the papers buying Google ads to promote themselves – something seen in the US as a win for Google, an easy way to pay the publishers enough to keep them happy, without directly paying any copyright fees.

France is not the only country where Google is facing opposition from publishers. In Germany, publishers are lobbying hard for a “Lex Google” legislation that news aggregators, not just Google, will have to pay for the content that they use. In Brazil newspapers have been boycotting Google News, hoping that this will turn audiences directly to their homepages.

So in the end, there may not be much in it for the publishers. In return, newspapers will drop their demands that Google pay them for every click on online versions of their stories. €60 m is a drop in the ocean for a giant with a turnover of $50 billion and profit of $10 billion. La Stampa called it “a cultural defeat” and a “Waterloo.”

What’s in it for us journalists? The creators once again were not party to negotiations and their rights swept under the Elysée carpet.

WE ALL KNOW THE TRIGGERMAN BUT WHO IS THE PAYMASTER?

The story of the killing of investigative journalist Georgiy Gongadze has become a textbook case about how impunity unfold in many countries when journalists are murdered – sustaining the grim statistic that in no less than 89 percent of journalist murders worldwide, there has been little or no prosecution whatsoever.

We have always argued that impunity occurs when there was no political will to set the necessary level of investigations; when the legal framework is substandard; when judges are weak or corrupt; when the police or investigating authorities are incompetent; when there are meager resources assigned to those responsible for providing security and enforcing the law; and when official negligence and corruption is rife.

In the case of Gongadze it was many or perhaps all of these factors that made the investigation take 13 years before a conviction was finally made a few days ago by a Ukranian court. A former police officer Oleksiy Pukache was jailed for life after being found guilty of personally strangling Gongadze to death. Three other policemen also received jail terms of 12 and 13 years.

From the beginning, Ukrainian authorities wanted to turn a bind eye if it was not for the courage of his partner Myroslava and the doggedness of solicitor Valentina Telychenko. His colleagues in the Ukraine and IFJ unions played a huge role in keeping the issue alive. The NUJ UK, thanks to his activist Simon Pirani, organised countless pickets and rallies and, for 12 years, commemorated every year his murder by lobbying the Ukrainian ambassador in London, who, on every occasion, displayed much hand-wringing and made promises.

In reality, the authorities dragged their feet and hoped the campaigners would get tired of lobbying, demonstrating and petition signing. The IFJ cooperated with the NUJ UK, the Institute of Mass Information in the Ukraine and the Gongadze Foundation to produce four reports over these years which set out to unravel the misinformation campaign by the government and scrutinise the failure of the legal and judicial processes to bring Gongadze’s killers to justice.

The first report exposed almost with forensic precision how the investigative authorities deliberately obstructed the investigation, and made inconsistent announcements, often on the basis of fabricated “solutions”.

The second report entitled “The instigators are getting away” dealt in detail with the failure of the general prosecutor office and made advanced recommendations to the Council of Europe rapporteur on the Gongadze case.

The third report dealt with how senior Ukrainian officials continued to frustrate and sabotage investigations of the murder, and how some of them, like former general prosecutor Mikhail Potebenko, were rewarded in February 2007 by president Yushchenko despite a failure to carry out an effective investigation.

The final report in 2009 entitled “After Pukach’s arrest, the instigators are still untouched” concluded by raising concern that, although the arrest is to be welcomed, there is a “danger that it will lead not to a furthering of the search for the instigators of the crime, but to the avenues of investigation that lead to them being closed off.”

These words still ring true today. When the judge asked Pukach if he had understood the sentence, he replied: "I'll understand it better when Kuchma [the country’s former president] and [then presidential chief of staff Volodymyr] Lytvyn are seated here alongside me."

Earlier in the trial, Pukach also implicated former Interior Minister Yuriy Kravchenko who was found dead in his apartment in 2005. Official reports said that he committed suicide, but there are still pending claims that he died of two gunshot wounds to his head.

In March 2011 a criminal case was opened against Kuchma but a court ruled that the prosecutor's case for being unlawful.

Myroslava Gongadze is right to feel that justice is yet to be done. “We believe that the crime was ordered and we want to bring the people who were named by Pukach to justice."  

All the four reports can be found at http://piraniarchive.wordpress.com/home/investigations-campaigns-and-other-stuff/

DAVOS SCHMOOZE-FEST IN DENIAL

Not many working people would have ever heard of the World Economic Forum. Once again the captains of capitalism spread across the sleepy Alpine ski town partying and chitchatting. One of the most revealing clips was to see the sleek plutocrats emerging from a session on the world’s hungry to tuck into a lavish Chinese buffet to the sound of Abba’s Money, Money, Money.

And despite the valiant efforts of business journalists trying to make sense of the chatter, in the end there was anything new said, apart from the usual managementese speak which is no surprise considering that the WEF vacuous motto itself would not stretch beyond “improving the state of the world”.

Whilst many economists now predict a double dip recession with the latest unemployment figures continuing to wreak havoc for working people, the sleek plutocrats left the resort feeling relaxed about the state of the global economy – something that Axel Weber, chair of Swiss bank UBS, blasted as bordering on complacency. "The mood has been good, in brackets too good to be true." he said.

Complacent also was Christine Lagarde, IMF chief, who waxed lyrical about the benefits of “a more equal distribution of income” while turning a blind eye to the ravages of deregulation and privatisation she has been championing. The rampant inequality since the 80s continue to rise. Recent research by Oxfam uncovers the frenzy by a kleptocratic corporate elite which keep feeding inequalities in many countries – “in the US the share of national income going to the top 1% has doubled since 1980 from 10 to 20%. For the top 0.01% it has quadrupled”.

Representatives of the international labour movement also attended the schmooze-fest armed with dramatic statistics and well-thought out arguments. But this is the trick. Davos gives the impression that it is a forum for the free flow of ideas where everybody is open-minded and prepared to be convinced.  Unfortunately when delegates hear that the worst of the financial crisis was over and see opportunities to dismantle the welfare state once and for all, thereby not having to be responsible anymore for their less fortunate fellow countrymen, would they listen?

So where is the call-to-arms in response to this ghastly situation? It was left to the Ukrainian women activist group Femen to expose the sham by protesting topless with “SOS David” painted over their chest to raise the plight of women’s poverty around the world. It proves once more that only direct action makes the headlines.