262 journalists jailed in 2017 – rights group

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) says no fewer than
262 journalists were jailed in 2017 for “doing their work”.

The group said at an event on the sidelines of the UN General
Assembly on Friday that journalists were regularly threatened,
attacked and killed, and also being imprisoned in record numbers
around the world.

CPJ is a U.S.-based non-governmental organisation promoting
press freedom and advocating for the rights of journalists
worldwide.

It warned that these practices undermined not only the
fundamental human rights of the reporters themselves, but also the
public’s right to receive and impart information.

According to CPJ, at the end of 2017, 262 journalists jailed
included over 70 in Turkey, 40 in China, and 20 in Egypt, while
about 52 per cent of those jailed, were behind bars because of
their reporting on human rights violations.

A May 2018 report by the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural
Organisation (UNESCO) mandated with safeguarding the freedom of the
press and the safety of journalists – decried the rise in the
arbitrary imprisonment.

UNESCO stated that “arbitrary imprisonment of journalists, which
fosters self-censorship and impinges on the public’s right to
access information, has reportedly continued to rise.

“Many governments have maintained that particular journalists
have been imprisoned for reasons unrelated to their journalistic
work”.

CPJ’s Executive Director, Joel Simon, declared that “governments
around the world routinely use emergency laws to censor media
outlets and publications.

“Increasingly they also bring ‘fake news’ charges against
journalists who contradict official statements. They try
journalists in military courts, they hold them in pre-trial
detention indefinitely.

“These are all actions that contradict international human
rights law, and the standards set by the UN”.

Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,
guarantees the “freedom to hold opinions without interference and
to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media
and regardless of frontiers”.

The universality of this was reinforced in the 1966
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

In 2013, the UN General Assembly declared November as the
International Day to End Impunity for Crimes against Journalists,
which is increasingly observed across the world.

The event at UN headquarters on Friday highlighted in particular
five cases of journalists currently imprisoned, including Alaa
Abdelfattah from Egypt, Azimjon Askarov from Kyrgyzstan.

They were both arrested while covering alleged human rights
abuses by security forces, and Shahidul Alam from Bangladesh,
imprisoned while covering students protests.

Others are the high profile case of two Reuters journalists in
Myanmar, Kyaw Soe Oo (also known as Moe Aung) and Wa Lone (also
known as Thet Oo Maung).

They were sentenced to seven years in jail on charges of
violating the country’s Official Secrets Act while covering the
story of a massacre of Rohingya men by the Myanmar military in
September 2017.

“Their conviction and draconian seven-year sentence are a
travesty of justice and it is up to the government to set them
free,” their legal counsel, world-renowned human rights lawyer,
Amal Clooney, told the meeting at UN Headquarters.

Early September, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights,
Michelle Bachelet, said the two journalists’ coverage of the
massacre – for which the military subsequently admitted
responsibility – “was clearly in the public interest as it may
otherwise never have come to light”.

She called for their convictions “to be quashed and for them to
be released, along with all other journalists currently in
detention for their legitimate exercise of the right to freedom of
expression”.

The UN warns that the “imprisonment of journalists for their
legitimate work not only fosters a culture of self-censorship but
also impinges on the broader rights of society to obtain
information”.(NAN)