'Voice of the voiceless' - Al Jazeera's response over Saudi-led blog gag pressure

The Doha headquarters of the global news network. Photo: Al Jazeera

An important media freedom statement: An open letter from Al Jazeera
Republished on Café Pacific from the Doha-based global news network

OVER two decades ago, Al Jazeera Arabic was launched with a simple mission: to provide reliable information to viewers across the Arab world. Ten years later, in 2006, Al Jazeera English began broadcasting with the same mission - to provide people around the world with accurate, balanced and impartial information.

When Al Jazeera Arabic went on air in 1996, it was unique in the Arab world. Most media in the region at the time were state-controlled and often unchallenged mouthpieces for the different rulers and governments in the region. Al Jazeera was different, a truly independent voice, with a mission to hear and report the human stories that were otherwise ignored; to cover events with balance and integrity; and to hold power to account.

Al Jazeera Arabic quickly gained a huge and loyal audience across the region. The information we provided became a lifeline to millions of people who wanted to know what was really going on around them.

'I'll not be intimidated ... by cowards,' says Fiji death threat journalist

Fiji Sun's Jyoti Pratibha ...death threats via fake Facebook profiles. Image: Pacific Scoop

THE PARIS-based media freedom advocacy organisation Reporters Sans Frontières and the Pacific Media Centre have condemned threats and intimidation against political reporters covering Fiji’s first parliamentary election campaign since the  2006 coup.

Pacific Media Watch reports from Paris:

Two women journalists – Vosita Kotowasawasa of the Fiji Broadcasting Corporation (FBC) and Jyoti Pratibha of the Fiji Sun newspaper – received death threats on Tuesday over their previous day’s coverage of the cancellation of a live TV debate between the leading contenders for the post of prime minister.

According to Pacific Scoop, a news website affiliated with the Pacific Media Centre, Kotowasawasa received several threatening phone calls while Pratibha was threatened via fake Facebook user profiles.

Both had covered the previous day’s last-minute decision by Ro Teimumu Vuikaba Kepa, the Roko Tui Dreketi and head of the Social Democratic Liberal Party (SODELPA), to pull out of the debate with interim Prime Minister Josaia Voreqe “Frank” Bainimarama.

Bad news from East Timor as media faces petro fund 'guided democracy' gag

Timorese students protest over Australian spying in its efforts to manipulate Timor-Leste's oil industry
... free speech at risk under the new media law. Photo: Global Voices

By Tempo Semanal editor/publisher José Antonio Belo

SADLY, I have bad news to report from East Timor. It is not yet clear how long my colleagues and I will be able to freely report the news. But readers should know, things are not what they seem in the glowing press releases from Government Palace in Dili.

The government, through its members in the national Parliament, is taking steps to limit basic freedoms held by Timorese citizens.

East Timor is now a vibrant and peaceful young democracy, but a few weeks ago it took a significant step backwards towards the days of the Suharto regime, when Indonesia occupied East Timor for 24 years between 1975 and 1999.

On May 6, the national Parliament of East Timor passed a law to regulate the media and freedom of expression in East Timor. The law has yet to be promulgated by the President of the Republic, Taur Matan Ruak, although it was sent to him to pass last week.

The law is not only undemocratic but is also in violation of the constitution. The constitution gives rights to the media and citizens for freedom of expression in articles 40 and 41, but the new law seeks to limit, restrict and in some cases terminate those rights.

Bouquets for the Fiji media from a ‘new wave’ politician

Professor Biman Prasad ... sound credentials - for democracy and a free media.
Photo: Republika Magazine

FIJI ‘new wave” political hopeful Biman Prasad, a University of the South Pacific academic and economist with some sound democratic credentials, had positive messages for the beleaguered media last weekend.

In a speech to a working group of the rejuvenated National Federation Party, he handed out a few bouquets to the Fiji scribes.

Professor Prasad was at pains to acknowledge the handicaps that journalists faced in Fiji under the Media Industry Development Decree (MIDA), saying that while this remained in force, the 2014 general election in September “cannot be free and fair – period”.

And unlike many other politicians, he actually knows what he is talking about with the country’s media. In 2008, he was co-editor of a Fijian Studies academic journal with the theme “Media and democracy” in Fiji. And this followed a rare Pacific media textbook textbook Media and Development: Issues and Challenges in the Pacific Islands. In both collaborations his partner was then USP head of journalism Shailendra Singh.

So his commitment to media freedom is sincere and well-argued. But after eight years under this military backed regime, it is hard to think back to the days when Fiji actually had a feisty, truly independent media, arguably the best in the region.

Papuans Behind Bars - a new support initiative for political prisoners

Buchtar Tabuni (right in the sunglasses) with KNPB's Victor Yeimo.
Photo: Andrew Suripatty/Tempo Politik/Antara

PAPUANS BEHIND BARS is a new project about political prisoners in West Papua. The group aims  to provide accurate and transparent data, published in English and Indonesian, to facilitate direct support for prisoners and promote wider debate and campaigning in support of free expression in West Papua.

Papuans Behind Bars is a collective project initiated by Papuan civil society groups working together as the Civil Society Coalition to Uphold Law and Human Rights in Papua.

It is a grassroots initiative and represents a broad collaboration between lawyers, human rights groups, adat groups, activists, journalists and individuals in West Papua, Jakarta-based NGOs and international solidarity groups.

The project holds records of over 200 current and former political prisoners and the website - www.papuansbehindbars.org - will go live sometime later this month.

The group pledges to publish monthly Updates, providing alerts on political arrests and a round-up of latest developments affecting Papuan political prisoners. The recent Update is the first in the series.

Turkey branded as world’s ‘biggest prison’ for journalists

Thriving Turkish press in Istanbul ... Photo: David Robie

CAFÉ PACIFIC has returned from a Greek and Turkish odyssey – exploring ancient Greco-Roman cities and the like in mid-winter. Refreshing. Great to get away from the small island politics and pseudo media freedom issues and self-serving egotism of the South Pacific and grapple with serious issues for a change. Unlike Greece’s Euro travails, Turkey is enjoying an economic boom and even some market liberalism. On the face of it, it is a tribute to secularism in an Islamic state. However, scratch a little deeper and in spite of a thriving national media (more than 40 national dailies in Istanbul, 1000 plus private radio stations and 300 or so private TV stations competing with the state broadcaster TNT and countless online news websites) one of the most insidious contemporary campaigns against free speech is exposed.

In spite of efforts to clean up the media scene in line with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s aspirations to join the European Union, the country’s oppression against journalists has come in for some serious recent international condemnation. In spite of a raft of reforms, under Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code, “insulting the nation” is still a crime.

The military, Kurds and “political Islam” are also highly sensitive issues. So much so that a robust editorial or other expression of opinion can easily land a journalist in prison. Recent global freedom reports have cited Turkey as the world’s most notorious “media jail” – some 70 editors and reporters are reportedly still behind bars. This is embarrassing for Erdogan whose Islamist-leaning Justice and Development (APK) Party that won a third term of office in 2011 and is committed to joining the European Union. 

In The Guardian’s quality Media Report, Peter Preston last week highlighted how the provocative but brave Turkish daily Taraf had finally been axed, noting that while the International Press Institute had ranked Syria and Somalia “top of the murder league”, Turkey was still “leader of the incarceration championship”. 

For five years of feisty existence, a Turkish daily called Taraf (circulation just over 50,000) has told truth to power with brave élan. Its owner, a bookshop entrepreneur, cheered its editors on as they broke stories other papers wouldn't touch. He even picked up the bill when Turkey's prime minister sued for libel (and won) after Taraf called him "arrogant, uninformed and uninterested".

But now the grinding of government axes offstage appears to have claimed another victim: the editor and his deputy have resigned. No one knows what will survive. Freedom doesn't necessarily die.

The Press TV website highlighted the pressure that Turkish journalists had faced ever since Erdogan had won office in 2002, quoting the Turkish daily Aksam saying: “Turkey is the number one violator of freedom of speech and the government intensified its suppression of press freedom in 2012.”

The daily said a large number of journalists critical of the Turkish government were arrested last year because Erdogan [did] not tolerate any criticism.

Last month, press freedom watchdog, Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), named Turkey as the world’s worst jailer of the press in 2012. Reporters Without Borders has also named Turkey as the world’s "biggest prison" for journalists.

According to the CPJ, Turkey detained 49 journalists as of December 1, with dozens of Kurdish reporters and editors held on terror-related charges. A number of journalists are also being held on charges of involvement in anti-government plots.

The problem, say critics, is that the Turkish government fails to differentiate between “freedom of expression and terrorism”.

 In Kuwait’s Arab Times Online, former Oil Minister Ali Ahmed Al-Baghli condemned the “disciplining of journalists” in both Turkey and Palestine in his regular column. While observing that the Middle East nations were “bedazzled by the economic success of Islamic Turkey” when compared with Islamic Iran, there was a tendency to ignore disturbing news coming from Istanbul.

One eye-catching aspect is that, most journalists who are jailed by Turkey are Kurds. They are accused of terrorism. The accounts and reports from the CPJ affirm they are mere prisoners of opinion.

To add insult to injury the Islamic government of Erdogan has officially cemented that trait. Erdogan summoned the editors-in-chief of newspapers and ordered them to discipline their reporters.

In one incident Erdogan called one of the Kurdish journalists a “traitor” for writing an article which did not go well with him and the next day he was fired by a hypocrite editor-in-chief of that particular newspaper.

Here in Kuwait, we thank Allah the Almighty because we don’t see any journalist behind bars.

Just after Café Pacific left Turkey, journalists from nine countries gathered in Edirne for the region’s inaugural working journalists'  “Balkan Meeting”. Journalists from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Greece, Montenegro, Kosovo, Macedonia, Romania, Serbia and Turkey took part in discussing “common problems”. Said the Thrace Journalists Association president Ali Soydan: “We hope this will mark a beginning. We hope nice events and cultural changes would make news in the Balkans that became house to blood and tears for many years.”

We hope so too – but we also hope that they will be investigating ways to enhance the reporting of the tough stories impacting on the region. Fiji might learn something too.

Happy New Year everybody. Café Pacific usually hands out annual media freedom bouquets – and wooden spoons – at this time, but with such extensive travelling the awards were skipped this year.

Café Pacific 2010 media freedom awards

Journalists and human right activists protest in front of a courthouse in Istanbul 
during the trial of two prominent Turkish journalists. Photo: PressTV website

Greek free speech editor Kostas Vaxevanis acquitted over leaked 'tax evader' list

Greek editor Kostas Vaxevanis (right): “My job is simply to tell the news and tell it straight.
My job is to tell the truth,” he says. Photo: Orestis Panagiotou/EPA

By HELENA SMITH, reporting from Athens for The Guardian
  
KOSTA VAXEVANIS hates being the centre of attention. On Thursday moments before taking the stand in one of the most sensational trials to grip Greece in modern times, the journalist said he was not in the business of making news. "My job is simply to tell the news and tell it straight," he averred. "My job is to tell the truth."

Truth in the case of Vaxevanis has been a rollercoaster that has catapulted the 46-year-old from relative obscurity to global stardom in a matter of days. But, after a hearing that lasted almost 12 hours – with a three-member panel of judges sitting stony-faced throughout, he was vindicated: the court found him not guilty of breaking data privacy laws by publishing the names in Hot Doc, the weekly magazine he edits, of some 2059 Greeks believed to have bank accounts in Switzerland.

"Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed; everything else is public relations," Vaxevanis said, citing George Orwell, before observers packed into the crammed courtroom broke into applause. "As such it was my duty to reveal this list."

Even before Thursday's court drama – proceedings that veered from comic to tragic as handcuffed Asian migrants looked on in bewilderment – the nation was up in arms over the list.

In the two years since it had been handed to Greek authorities by the IMF's chief Christine Lagarde, the infamous tally of suspected tax evaders had caught the popular imagination. With tax avoidance widely blamed for the debt-stricken country's inability to balance the books, the failure of successive governments to act on the list and crack down on tax evaders had raised suspicions that corrupt vested interests ran to the top of society.

"It is quite clear the political system did everything not to publish this list," said Vaxevanis, who had faced up to two years in jail and a €30,000 fine (£24,000) if convicted.

"If you look at the names, or the offshore companies linked to certain individuals, you see that these are all friends of those in power. Phoney lists had also begun to circulate. It was time for the truth," he told the Guardian during a recess.

Tax evasion rampant
"We live in a country where, on the one hand, tax evasion is rampant and, on the other, people are eating out of rubbish trucks because of salary cuts, because they can't make ends meet."

Three years after Europe's worst crisis in decades erupted in Athens, Vaxevanis has emerged as an unwitting crusader – a defender of truth in an environment ever more electrified by the perceived menaces of malfeasance and mendacity.

Five days after a public prosecutor ordered his arrest – dispatching special agents to seize the journalist in a nation whose justice system has almost never moved with such alacrity – there are few who do not agree that his trial has been "politically motivated". For defence witnesses such as the popular singer Dimitra Galani, bringing Vaxevanis before the court was proof that even press freedom was now at risk in the birthplace of democracy. "The whole thing is absurd, the theatre of the absurd. Greeks really don't know what to think anymore," she said.

For veteran leftists such as Nikos Kostantopouloulos, one of the reporter's three lawyers, the affair was further evidence that the country at the centre of the continent's debt drama was falling down a very slippery slope. "We have a schizophrenic situation where, on the one hand, a journalist is being penalised for revealing a document in the interests of informing public opinion and, on the other, the parliament itself is now saying the handling of the list should be investigated."

From the outset, said Kostantopouloulos, a former leftist politician, the case had defied the principles of justice.

"Right down to the way the prosecutor so hastily issued the charge sheet without even bothering to stamp it, it has been handled very badly," he said. "Furthermore, none of those on the list have even filed a complaint about privacy violation."

With ordinary Greeks hammered by a fifth year of recession, the case has ignited widespread fury. The list, reprinted on Monday by the leading daily Ta Nea, includes politicians, businessmen, shipping magnates, doctors, lawyers – a far cry from those who have borne the brunt of relentless austerity measures on the margins of society.

'Stashing their loot'
"While we have been paying our taxes, some out there have been stashing their loot away in Switzerland, not being taxed at all," said Petros Hadzopoulos, a retiree, who had come to the court to get a glance of the journalist he called "his new, best hero". Hot Doc, which normally has a circulation of about 25,000, sold 100,000 last week.

As Athens teeters once again on the brink of bankruptcy – its public coffers set to run dry in less than a month – Vaxevanis's arrest has highlighted the pitfalls of press freedom in a nation where this week alone two anchors on state television were also fired for publicly "undermining" a minister.

The presenters' "crime" had been to question the failure of the public order minister Nikos Dendias to act on a threat to sue the Guardian for publishing a story alleging police torture of protesters that he said had "defamed Greek democracy".

For those packed into the chamber it was clear that in the birthplace of freedom, democracy itself was at stake. Yesterday's often shambolic proceedings, which frequently saw the panel's presiding female magistrate thumping the bench as she demanded "silence" under an icon of Jesus Christ, included court-appointed interpreters being unable to translate with one confusing friend for French and absurd with illegal.

"I am very pained to have to be here in Greece the mother of democracy explaining the obvious," said Jim Boumela, who, as president of the International Federation of Journalists, flew in from London to testify at the trial.

"This is what I have to do in countries like Uganda," he said. "Kostas should be applauded for what he has done. It's a very worrying turn that journalists are being suppressed in Greece – and I think we are going to see more of it."

BRITISH REVENUE OFFICIALS SCOUR LISTS
More than 500 individuals on the so-called "Lagarde list" of suspected tax evaders with secret bank accounts in Switzerland have been, or are currently, under investigation by UK Revenue and Customs for serious fraud.

Tax investigators are still working their way through the 6000 names on the list, two and a half years after it was handed over to the UK by then French Finance Minister, Christine Lagarde, who also passed versions to other European members states, including Greece.

While HMRC said its handling of the data was "a major success" and expected to recover hundreds of millions of unpaid taxes, only one person has been successfully prosecuted so far. The long-standing HMRC policy of reaching settlements and imposing penalties mean that the vast majority of those on the list are unlikely to be prosecuted or named as a result. - Ben Quinn

• Original Guardian publication
• Former Greek finance minister defends 'Lagarde list' action
• Greek is 'governed by a corrupt clique' 

Cyberspace gag condemned as e-Martial Law in Philippines recalls Marcos era

The Anonymous view of the Filipino digital danger.

IN HIS recent AUT University inaugural professorial about global media truth, transparency and accountability, David Robie condemned the new so-called e-Martial Law in the Philippines, saying it was a warning for the Pacific.

“The most disturbing trend in the digital age is electronic martial law - a draft new law in the Philippines which criminalises e-libel in an extreme action to protect privacy,” he said.

“The Supreme Court has ruled to temporarily suspend this law. But what happens next? Will it be ruled unconstitutional or will the politicians prevail?

“This Cybercrime Prevention Act 2012 is like something out of the Tom Cruise futuristic movie Minority Report.  An offender can be imprisoned for up to 12 years without parole and the law is clearly a violation of Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

“And truth is not recognised as a defence.

“It would be disastrous if any Pacific country, such as Fiji, wanted to do a copycat law and gag cyberspace.” 

Professor Robie highlighted the fact  that in the Philippines at least 165 journalists have been murdered since 1986 – 32 of them in the Ampatuan massacre in Mindanao in 2009, the world’s worst single killing of journalists.

Three years later nobody has been convicted for these atrocities.

“The Philippines is a far more dangerous place for the media under democracy than it was under the Marcos dictatorship,” Professor Robie said.  “There is a culture of impunity.”

In a joint statement by independent digital and online media, communications and journalism schools and media people in the Philippines, a strong attack has been made on the “cyberspace outrage”.

Professorial speech on AUT on demand
http://tinyurl.com/cda7ke9

FREE THE NEW MEDIA, DEFY E-MARTIAL LAW

As outrage against the Cybercrime Prevention Act 2012 continues to snowball and create unprecedented unity and defiance among netizens, the Aquino administration has not backed down in its resolve to implement a clearly draconian measure designed to curtail our most basic civil liberties—the right to freedom of expression, of speech, and of the press.

As alternative media practitioners, filmmakers, bloggers, and artists who maximise the new media to bring to the public information, opinion and analysis, as well as works of art that serve to illuminate social conditions and present ideas for social change, we believe that the government’s repression of the medium is the message. With the Cybercrime Act, the government wants to ensure that no avenue for expression exists that is free from control by the rich and powerful elite.

The existing law on libel has long been used by powerful public figures mostly to harass and prosecute journalists for doing their job. Instead of decriminalising libel as urged by international human rights and media institutions, the government has even increased penalties. Worse, it now considers each and every citizen who uses Information and Communications Technology (ICT) as potential criminals.

With the rise of new media, ordinary citizens have been given the extraordinary power to reach large audiences, a power that has previously been the monopoly of the government and corporate media. The new media has been the recourse of citizens who see, report, and interpret social realities that traditional institutions ignore, hide or obliterate. 

Citizens have long been marginalised from discourse on national issues through the agenda-setting powers of the government and corporate media. Through the new media, citizens have the opportunity to counter this marginalisation—to give voice to the poor and oppressed, to gain an audience without the need for huge capitalization, to criticise freely and creatively.

We believe that the Cybercrime Law is primarily a tool that exploits the rise of the new media and the use of ICT to suppress dissent and spy on citizens. The way the law is being defended by those who crafted it, and especially by the President who signed it, reveals that they enjoy, and will use to their own interest, the immense powers that the Cybercrime Law has given the government, such as the ability to take down websites, undertake surveillance, and seize electronic data.

Abuses that will surely arise from such powers will undermine any gains that this law claims to have against “cybercrimes.” For instance, online child pornography and sex trafficking should be addressed by the strict implementation and strengthening of existing laws to reflect the developments in ICT.

It is still debatable if hacking and cracking, spamming, online piracy, and cyberbullying are indeed crimes or if they can be covered under a single piece of legislation. What is clear is that these “cybercrimes” will not be addressed by a law makes expressing oneself online punishable by a jail term, or one that assumes that authorities can dip their hands into private electronic communication.

In other words, a law that throws us back to the dark ages won’t protect our women and children, nor our personal identities and safety. On the contrary, it makes every citizen using ICT vulnerable to abuse by the biggest band of criminals: a government that is corrupt, loathes criticism (as can be judged by President Aquino’s reaction to the online phenomenon ‘Noynoying’), and uses all of its resources to crush dissent.

Even the US government—the footsteps of which the government only follows—did not confer such broad powers unto itself when it attempted, but failed, to pass its Stop Online Piracy Act and Protect Intellectual Property Act.

However, the Cybercrime Law probably pleases the US government, as it strengthens their existing network of surveillance in the country, and boosts the counter-insurgency programme Oplan Bayanihan. The said law also pleases local and foreign big businesses that operate in utter secrecy in this country, further shielding them from public accountability and oversight while penalising those who use ICT to expose wrongdoing and abuses in the private and public sectors.

For e-martial law only reflects the de facto martial law already in place. Under Oplan Bayanihan, more than 100 citizens have been killed for their advocacies, forever silenced by bullets. More than 350 are imprisoned for their political beliefs. The Cybercrime Law makes it even easier to slap dissidents with trumped-up charges and send them to jail. After all, it now takes so little to be considered a cybercriminal.

Repression and lack of freedom is a daily reality for millions of Filipinos in the militarised countryside, violently demolished urban poor communities, and highly controlled workplaces and schools. Now it has become a daily reality as well for netizens who seek comfort in the freedom, however limited, of the new media.

As poverty, exploitation, and repression worsen, the duty to speak up and express ourselves through new media is more necessary than ever. As we begin to feel the grip of Aquino’s iron fist rule, it becomes more urgent to struggle to break free through actions both online and offline. E-martial law has been declared, and as those who fought the Marcos dictatorship taught us, the only way to end it is to start defying it.

          Junk the Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012!
          Don’t criminalise criticism!
          Defend our freedom of expression, speech and the press!
          Resist tyranny!

Independent digital media supporters:
Pinoy Weekly Online/ PinoyMedia Center
Bulatlat.com
Davao Today
Northern Dispatch Weekly
Burgos Media Center
Mayday Multimedia
Tudla Productions
Kodao Productions
Southern Tagalog Exposure
UPLB Zoomout

• The rest of the signatories 
• E-martial law - a mini-critique
• Bulatlat.com - "Journalism for the people"

Papua's Freeport miners tell their struggle stories

A clip from the documentary Alkinemokiye.

Ika Krismantari

THE VOICES of local workers in the world’s largest gold and copper mine controlled by the US-based mining giant Freeport McMoRan in West Papua can be heard loud and clear in a new documentary that chronicles the biggest strike in the company’s history.

Alkinemokiye is the latest feature documentary from filmmaker Dandhy Dwi Laksono. It captures the fight of 8000 workers for increased wages in what is believed to be the longest and most widely joined strike since the mining company began operations in Indonesia in 1967.

• Full story

Other West Papuan updates:

• Papuan leaders jailed for speaking out - New Matilda
• Drop treason charges against jailed Papuan leaders, say rights group - Pacific Scoop
  

Bula for global journos, crackdown locally

THE FIJI regime hasn’t stopped at booting out three Australian and New Zealand journalists. After a raid on the regional news service Pacnews, another journalist has been detained and others are on the “wanted” list. Ironically, this comes just when the regime’s Ministry of Information has put out a statement claiming that international reporters are “most welcome” to come to Fiji – providing they report “accurately and responsibly”.

Pita Ligaiula was escorted out of his Pacnews newsroom in Suva earlier today ago by two police officers and senior Ministry of Information officer Viliame Tikotani. The regime isn’t too impressed with the stories running under his byline for the American news agency Associated Press. Two other local journalists reportedly in the regime’s sights are Ricardo Morris (stringing for Radio Australia) and Matelita Ragogo (Radio New Zealand). He is now free after spending 12 hours in police custody.

Meanwhile, Information Secretary Major Neumi Leweni says in a statement that the regime now welcomes foreign journalists. He says the regime didn’t stop foreign media representatives before the 30-day emergency regulations were imposed. The statement appears to contradict the regime Prime Minister, Commodore Frank Bainimarama who told Radio New Zealand's Morning Report yesterday foreign journos didn’t need to go to Fiji. Just ask him the questions, he said. This followed the expulsion of three media people from Australia and New Zealand on Tuesday – ABC’s Pacific correspondent Sean Dorney and New Zealand TV3’s Sia Aston and cameraman Matt Smith.

Leweni claims Fiji is like many other countries where entry by journalists is controlled: "Fiji is no exception. Journalists who have been deported because they breached the visa conditions will not be allowed back into the country."

Reporters Sans Frontières and many other media organisations (including the Pacific Media Centre) have made strong condemnations of the regime’s assault on free speech and media freedom, RSF claiming that Fiji’s media had been dealt a “mortal blow”.

The military government is heading dangerously towards a Burmese-style system in which the media are permanently subject to prior censorship and other forms of obstruction. We appeal to the international community, especially the European Union and United Nations, to respond to this manifest desire to restrict the free flow of news and information by speaking out and firmly condemning media censorship.

Many media colleagues and former workmates at the University of the South Pacific are reporting to Café Pacific on their deep anxiety about developments. Comments one:

I guess back in 1987 or even 2000 some people were saying that the coup was all right because it was for indigenous rights. Even before the 2006 coup the president of the Fiji Labour Party said that the next coup would be different because this time it would be for the Labour Party. Well now we have that coup revealed finally for what it always was, and regardless of Frank's democratic motivations it is still a coup, people have been killed, jobs lost and rights removed. For me it's hard to imagine what sort of Fiji Frank will allow. Even if he is true to his word and he changes the constitution to remove racial voting (a good thing) he and his military will have established their pre-eminence politically and will always sit in the wings deciding which government should come in and which should go.
But we have been here before.

A handy news blog (published by journalists) for updates is coup four point five and an independent roundup of blogger views is at Global Voices. For a more balanced assessment of developments than most of the media, check Croz Walsh's Fiji and Gordon Campbell and Shailendra Singh's backgrounders on the complexities are also useful. Graham Davis, writing in the Australian, about "dealing with the dictator" is also far more perceptive than the simplistic narratives being served up in the New Zealand media.

Graphic: Malcolm Evans cartoon for PMC's Pacific Journalism Review adapted by Josephine Latu for Pacific Media Watch.

NZ'S MEDIA7:
Barbara Dreaver, David Robie and Ranjit Singh talk Fiji censorship on Thursday night's Media7

Bland and descriptive - and free speech?

A Singapore clarification from Alan Knight, the Oz board member of AMIC:
"I recall saying from the podium in Singapore, I thought the WJEC declaration was bland and descriptive. I also wondered why there was no reference to freedom of speech or the Declaration of Human Rights.
"Just for the record, the journalism education declaration was formulated by the WJEC which is a completely separate organisation from AMIC which in this case merely hosted the conference."
Just to add my few words, I tend to dismiss the recent negatives about "development journalism" - it is often misunderstood by western journos, particularly from Oz and NZ (most NZ j-schools cover little about news values outside the Kiwi environment). Vigorous development journalism as often practised in the Philippines and the Pacific, for example, uncovers corruption, is committed to media freedom and demands accountability - and usually requires a level of personal courage from journalists rarely needed in western media environments.
Alan noted the closing day speech by Anwar Ibrahim - this was inspired, even brilliant. It was worth being at this conference to hear him! Certainly he was one of the highlights for me.