CJA E-letter
from the Commonwealth
Journalists Association www.cjaweb.com
Headquarters: c/o Canadian Newspaper
Association, 890 Yonge Street Suite 200, Toronto
ON, Canada M4W
3P4
President: Hassan Shahriar (Bangladesh) shahriar@bangla.net
Vice-presidents: Doyin
Mahmoud (Nigeria) doyinmahmoud@yahoo.co.uk
Martin Mulligan (UK) emsquared2002@yahoo.ie
Executive director: Bryan
Cantley bcantley@cna-acj.ca
Newsletter editor: David
Spark david@dspark.fsnet.co.uk, who would like to hear from you. Views
expressed in this newsletter are those of contributors, not the CJA
The CJA thanks
the Commonwealth Foundation for its financial support
Issue No 23 March 2008
Page 2 Bangladeshi spooks
bludgeon their critic/Two journalists killed in Pakistan
Page 3
Sri Lankan
army seizes state TV
Page 4
Ugandan radio
presenter murdered
News from round the world
Commonwealth’s new Secretary-General invited to Kuching conference
Kamalesh Sharma, who becomes Commonwealth
Secretary-General on April 1, and Sarawak’s chief
minister, Pehin Sri Haji Abdul Taib Mahmud, are among guests being invited to
the CJA’s conference in the Crowne Plaza Hotel, Kuching, from October 14 to 18.
The
conference, marking the CJA’s 30th year, will send journalists home
afterwards with greater knowledge of current issues and more tools for better
reporting. Ninety-minute training sessions will be offered to working
journalists on three mornings during the conference.
The
CJA is pleased to have support from the Sarawak CJA branch and from Azam, a
leading local organisation concerned with the community and the media.
Bangladesh
spooks bludgeon their critic
The 22-hour ordeal of a journalist, Tasneem Khalil, is
described by Human Rights Watch in a report entitled The Torture of Tasneem
Khalil: How the Bangladesh
Military Abuses its Power under the State of Emergency.
Khalil worked for the leading English-language daily, The
Daily Star, and was a critic of torture, arbitrary killings and arrests and
other abuses. One night in May last year, armed men went to his Dhaka
flat. He says that one of the men “pulled out a revolver, pushed it against my
lips and shouted ‘You are under arrest’. I started shouting back, telling them
that what they were doing was illegal. Then all of them started shouting
abusive words at me, telling me to shut up, or there would be problems for my
wife and child.”
They
took him to an interrogation centre run by the Directorate General of Forces
Intelligence. “They asked me about my connections with Human Rights Watch. I
told them I worked as their consultant. I worked with Human Rights Watch on a
report about extrajudicial killings. That infuriated them. They started
shouting at me: ‘You are an immoral, unethical insect, an anti-state criminal.’
“Someone
came round the table and started punching me on the head. One article made my
interrogators furious. They started beating me mercilessly, from all possible
directions, with hands and batons and kicks.”
Khalil
was forced to confess to anti-state activity and to implicate friends and
colleagues. International and national pressure got him released after 22
hours. He went into hiding and then fled with his family to Sweden.
Two journalists killed in Pakistan
unrest
Siraj Uddin who wrote for The Nation was one of 40 people
killed by a suicide bomber at a police officer’s funeral in the troubled Swat
valley in Pakistan
on February 29. Another journalist was badly hurt.
Chishti
Mujahid, a veteran Punjabi columnist, was shot dead outside his Quetta (Baluchistan) home on February 9. Also
in Baluchistan in February three TV
reporters and two stringers were badly hurt by a bomb attached to a bicycle,
just before an election candidate’s press conference.
Baluchis
seeking independence are in conflict with Pakistan’s government. Three
reporters for a Quetta-based Urdu daily, are missing.
A fourth Baluchi journalist went missing last October.
Pakistan’s political turmoil
continues to hit the media. Journalists were attacked outside Karachi press club in March when
they covered a demonstration by MQM women. On March 10 the Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists called a
Black Day against anti-media laws and a police ban on TV coverage of a leading
lawyer’s speech. The All Pakistan Newspapers Society also
protested against the failure to withdraw press restrictions introduced when
the state of emergency – now ended – was imposed. The new coalition government
has promised to remove media restrictions within 100 days.
Sri Lankan army seizes state TV
Sri Lankan soldiers seized state-controlled SLRC
television on March 17, reports Reporters Sans
Frontieres. Staff were sent on compulsory leave. A
retired general was appointed to join the management.
Staff had threatened a strike in protest against attacks
on staff members, which they suspect were related to an assault by labour
minister Mervyn Silva and others on SLRC and its news director in December.
One
week in January, two SLRC journalists were stabbed. They are Lal Hemantha
Mawalage, a news producer at SLRC and Suhaib M.Kasim of state-controlled
Thinakaran. Five intruders broke into Kasim’s house. In February, black-clad
assailants tried to break into the home of an SLRC journalist, who was involved
in videotaping the December attack.
On March 14 Arunasiri Hettige was clubbed at a bus stop.
The previous day he had represented SLRC staff at a meeting about the Mervyn
Silva incident. On March 16 the home of a newspaper journalist who interviewed
Silva was ransacked.
Club-wielding assailants seriously injured the father
and sister of journalist Munusami Parameshwari near Kandy
in March. Parameshwari is in hiding after threats to her life. She worked for a
Sinhala paper, Mawbina, now closed after the government froze its assets. In
November 2006 she was arrested by anti-terrorist police on fabricated evidence.
Last year she was kidnapped by uniformed men who threatened her with death if she
continued to investigate abductions.
Five Tamil journalists were detained in Colombo
in March by anti-terrorist police who accused them of receiving money from the
Tamil Tigers to fund a website called Outreach. The money came from a German
foundation and Tamil exiles. Three of those detained were released after ten
days without charge. Still detained were the website’s editor,
J.S.Tissainayagam, and Tamil nationalist writer N.Jasiharan. Tissainayagam
protested to the supreme court, claiming unlawful detention.
A thousand march for press freedom
A thousand people marched for press freedom in Sri
Lanka’s capital, Colombo,
on February 14. Journalists were joined by trade unionists, human rights
activists and members of the women’s movement.
They
demanded swift investigation into attacks on journalists, an end to unofficial
censorship and to intimidation and harassment of the media, and the right to
report from all sides the conflict with the Tamil Tigers.
Press
freedom organisations meeting in Malaysia urged the Sri Lankan
government to stop interfering in editorial independence and using draconian
press and anti-terrorist laws.
In
January the defence secretary called for censorship of the media, the
reintroducion of a law of criminal defamation and the prosecution of two
leading media institutions for critical reporting, says the Free Media
Movement.
Ugandan radio
presenter murdered
Rebecca
Wilbrod Kasujja, who presented a morning show on a community radio, Buwama FM,
in Central Uganda, was raped and killed in February on her way to work. She was
32.
Radio
listeners packed Fort Portal High Court in March when
Life FM appealed against a police order banning live political debates. The
court found that the ban contravened the constitution. Nevertheless the police
commander warned Life FM not to invite again five panellists arrested in
January and charged with defamation. The five are prominent local people
critical of Uganda’s ruling party.
News from round the world
For fuller details go to www.ifex.org
CAMEROON
A TV station and two radios were shut down in February as unrest
mounted over price rises and President (since 1982) Biya’s desire for another
term in office. In March, four journalists were attacked while covering street
protests.
Jacques Blaise Mvie, publisher o a weekly, La Nouvelle
Presse, was arrested by troops on March 3. The paper had accused the defence
minister of being involved in a coup attempt last September.
Two journalists from the weekly Le Front were held for five
days in February. They were accused of trespass while investigating property
owned by politicians.
CANADA
Two broadcasting networks plus the Toronto Star and the Associated
Press appealed in March against a ban on reporting bail hearings in a terrorism
case, including reasons why five of 17 accused were given bail. The 17 are
accused of trying to obtain three tons of ammonium nitrate fertiliser, which
can be used for bomb making.
The Court of Appeal in March quashed a contempt citation
against Ken Peters of the Hamilton
Spectator for refusing to reveal a source. It also rescinded an order that he
pay $31,000 costs. The case concerned documents about a nursing home.
FIJI
The Fiji Sun
published an article in February criticising the military-led government’s appointment
of three new judges to the Appeal
Court. The three promptly summoned and warned
the Sun’s editor, Leone Cabenatabua. No charges were brought
THE GAMBIA
US-based
Gambian journalist Fatou Jaw Manneh remains stranded in The Gambia after yet another
court failed to hear the sedition case against her. The magistrate did not turn
up. She was arrested a year ago when she returned to The Gambia for her father’s
funeral. Since then, her case has been batted back and forth by Gambian
magistrates. The charge relates to a web article in 2005 which accused
President Jammeh of tearing The Gambia to shreds.
An appeal hearing was adjourned for the second time in February into
the case of Lamin Fatty, the young journalist whose reporting error led to the
banning of The Independent. The appeal court said it could not proceed because
it had not received the 57-page judgment from the lower court that convicted
Fatty of false information.
Muhamed Oury
Bah, a journalist from Sierra Leone who worked for the banned Independent, has
fled The Gambia following threats to
his life.
Mam Sait Ceesay, former editor-in-chief of the pro-government Daily
Observer, was brought before a court for the second time in February, and
charged with publishing false information. The case arises from an Observer
report in September that President Yammeh’s press secretary had been replaced.
At the time, Ceesay was charged with passing information to a foreign
journalist.
GRENADA
Jamaican journalist Tenesha Thomas was saved by information minister
Einstein Louison from being expelled from Grenada.
She was there to cover parliamentary elections for the Caribupdate news agency.
Immigration officials claimed her residence permit had expired.
INDIA
Manoranjana Sinh, chairman of NETV, an increasingly popular service in Assam,
was shot at near her office in February. Also in Assam,
armed members of the Bodo People’s Front seized a newspaper van and destroyed
an edition of the daily Asamiya Pratidin. They were displeased with a report of
an extravagant wedding ceremony held for the BPF’s leader.
KENYA
The media were preachy and timid in reporting the election dispute
which nearly plunged Kenya
into civil war, according to Article 19, Reporters Sans Frontieres and
International Media Support.
Sam Ooko of the CJA was forced to flee to the Tanzanian
border after being seized by one of the thuggish gangs roaming Kenya
after the election.
Journalists were arrested
and attacked by soldiers when they tried to cover a military sweep against
militia in the Mount Elgon region.
MALAYSIA
No opposition candidate got a hearing on state TV and radio during the
Malaysian general election. As for private free-to-air TVs, they are all owned
by Umno, the governing party. Nevertheless, with Malaysia’s
Chinese and Indians discontented, the opposition did well, leaving Umno with
only a third of the assembly seats.
MAURITIUS
The editor and another journalist were detained and questioned for
three hours in March after Radio One reported that the cabinet would not meet
because the prime minister was apparently ill. The report was denied.
NIGERIA
Tunde Raheem of The Sun was
detained for 12 days in February. He had gone to interview a professor at Ado-Ekiti
University, to verify information
about a murder. The professor had him arrested.
PAKISTAN
The number of newspapers and periodicals declined rapidly,
to 1,464, in the decade to 2006 but circulations doubled to eight million.
Publishers are concerned about the price of newsprint. In Baluchistan,
regional-language newspapers struggle, relying on content translated from
English and Urdu.
European election observers visited the Rural Media
Network Pakistan
at Ahmedpur East in Southern Punjab.
SIERRA LEONE
The justice minister
announced in February that criminal libel laws were to be repealed. One such
law is the Public Order Act. The same month, the transport minister brought a
charge under this act against Jonathan Leigh, editor of The Independent
Observer. The Observer alleged that, soon after taking office, the minister had
two houses built. Silvia Blyden,
publisher of The Awareness Times, was detained for several hours on March 5,
over a caricature of President Koroma. She may be charged under the Public
Order Act. The president said he did not complain.
SWAZILAND
Assembly speaker Prince
Guduza, brother of the king, is seeking two million euros damages from the
Times of Swaziland over reports linking him to a company which imported
cigarettes impounded by the customs. Lawyers say he resigned in February from
the company, which has not been found guilty of any wrongdoing.
TANZANIA
The two young editors of
a popular discussion website were detained in February and interrogated for 24
hours about postings criticising the government. Maxence Mello who is 21 was
arrested at his college, the Dar-es-Salaam Institute of Technology. His
18-year-old colleague, Mike Mushi, was arrested later. Their site, Jambo
Forums, published a controversial contract made by a former prime minister with
an American firm. The minister resigned on February 7 after a parliamentary
inquiry. Other government contracts with foreign companies are also posted on
the site.
UNITED KINGDOM
Research by Cardiff University shows that the number of stories produced by increasingly-deskbound UK journalists has, on average, trebled.in the last 20
years. Many have to provide copy for broadcasting and on-line services as well
as print.
ZIMBABWE
The Media Monitoring
Project found Zimbabwe’s sole public broadcaster gave far more coverage to
the ruling Zanu PF party in the election campaign than to its MDC opponents.
Zanu PF rebel Simba Mokoni got more cover, mainly
attacks on his candidature for the presidency. In the state-owned Herald
newspaper, Caesar Zvayi mocked Mokoni’s revolt as “the loud fart
all silently agree never happened”.
The independent Zimbabwean newspaper has launched a new
publication, The Zimbabwean on Sunday
Our
thanks
We once again thank our
news sources including Canadian Journalists for Free Expression, the Institute
for War and Peace Reporting, the Inter American Press Association, the
International Freedom of Expression Exchange, the Committee to Protect
Journalists, the Freedom of Expression Institute (South Africa), the Free Media
Movement (Sri Lanka), the International Federation of Journalists, the
International Press Institute, the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance
(Australia), Media for Democracy in Nigeria, the Media Foundation for West
Africa, the Media Institute of Southern Africa, the Pakistan Press Foundation, the
Rural Media Network Pakistan, Reporters Sans Frontieres, the South-East Asian
Press Alliance and the World Association of Newspapers.
The
CJA’s officers
Past presidents Derek Ingram (UK), Ray Ekpu (Nigeria), Murray Burt (Canada)
Executive committee
East Africa Sam Aola Ooko (Kenya), Cindy Wirtz (Seychelles)
Southern Africa John Gambanga (Zimbabwe)
West Africa Demba Jawo (Gambia)
East Asia Florence Yii (Malaysia)
South Asia Ashis Chakrabarti (India), Champika Liyanaarachchi (Sri Lanka)
West Asia S.M.Fazal (Pakistan)
Caribbean Josanne Leonard, Dale Enoch
North America Chris Cobb
Europe Syed Belal Ahmed (UK)
East Pacific Lance Polu (Western Samoa)
West Pacific Reggie Dutt
(Fiji)