Kalinga SENEVIRATNE in MaleThe latest report on press freedoms in South Asia produced by the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) released on Wednesday was criticised by some media experts who participated in the first South Asian World Press Freedom Day (WPFD) event held in the Maldivian capital from 2-3 May.
The report on press freedom in South Asia 2006-2007 titled “The fight goes on” was officially released here during a two-day WPFD seminar organised by the Asian Media Information and Communication Centre (AMIC) in association with UNESCO and the Government of the Maldives.
This is the first time a South Asian version of the WPFD commemoration was held and AMIC’s secretary general Dr. Indrajit Banerjee indicated that this would be an annual event from here on to be held in a different South Asian country each year.
The seminar brought together media practitioners - from both mainstream and alternative media - and experts or analysts from the region.
In a foreword to the report released in Male, IFJ’s director for Asia-Pacific Jacqueline Park describes South Asia as being one of the most dangerous places for journalists to work in the world.
“Those who threaten them (the journalists) are too often protected from prosecution by a culture of immunity and indifference” she says.
The IFJ report document murder and harassment of journalists in almost all countries in South Asia with Bangladesh having the worst record with at least 462 journalists reported attacked or harassed in 238 separate incidents.
Nepal is the only bright spark where press freedoms have improved since the signing of the peace accord between the government and the Maoist communists in November last year.
Meanwhile in Pakistan the report said that government officials, the police and military intelligence are often behind “systematic and frequently brutal, attacks on journalists”.
“There is a tendency throughout this report to focus only on tragic negative consequences of the exercise of freedom” noted Javed Jabbar, a former Information Minister of Pakistan, a keynote speaker at the WPFD event in Male.
“There is no adequate acknowledgement of the enormous growth in freedom of expression in the media (in Pakistan) by which most people who use that freedom are not subjected to persecution or harassment” he noted, adding that there is now a thriving private broadcast and newspaper industry in Pakistan, even though the country is ruled by a military regime.
“To see it in only one perspective is to deny the readers of this report that essential requirement of fairness and balance,” added Jabbar.
Sugeeswara Senadhira of Sri Lanka also found the report biased and one-sided. The IFJ report is very scathing on Sri Lanka’s press freedom record in the past year, which it says “has severely worsened”.
IFJ says that Tamil journalists in particular have been targets of murder, kidnapping and harassment; and the president and a number of government leaders have labelled journalists who are critical of government policy as traitors to the country working in collusion with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).
Senadhira, after reading the report released here pointed out in an interview that the biggest violator of press freedom in Sri Lanka is the LTTE and there is only passing reference to them in the IFJ report.
He explained that the LTTE does not allow any Tamil newspaper to function in the areas they control in the north and the east of the country, even the three Tamil newspapers published in Colombo are not allowed to be distributed in their areas without subjecting to censorship.
“Every day LTTE cadres check the contents of the newspapers at their checkpoint before allowing it to pass through. So suppression of the media is in LTTE areas,” he argues.
Senadhira also added that the report has exaggerated comments made by the environment minister Champika Ranawaka of the JHU. “He has been misquoted and he has not made any death threats at all,” he noted, adding that the said comments were made some three months before he became a minister, not after, as indicated in the report.
One of the participants who agreed with IFJ’s assessment of his country’s press freedom index was Kanak Dixit, publisher of Nepal’s Himal magazine. He said that the “media (in Nepal) is now free, but its challenges have become much more complex”.
“Grassroots democracy requires grassroots journalism in the language of the mass public” argues Dixit.
“Nepal was able to bring change because the Nepal media is primarily in the Nepali language. Thus, we can take information to the masses at the grassroots in their own language so that they could fight for their freedoms”.
This is a point endorsed by one of India’s well-known investigative journalists, Aniruddha Bahal, who was also a speaker at the WPFD seminar here. “There is a need to address threats faced by local journalists in small towns and provinces,” he said in an interview.
“There is this tendency by district level administrations who are all powerful to intimidate journalists. That intimidation rarely filter to the national media nor reported upon”.
The IFJ report did point out a number of attacks on journalists in districts, especially in the conflict driven states such as Kashmir, Assam and Manipur.
Amanullah Khan, chairman of United News of Bangladesh said that although the figures of media repression in Bangladesh given in the report seem to be accurate there needs to be a distinction made on the type of people who indulge in this harassment, otherwise the government as a whole could be seen as taking direct part in these activities.
“The cases of assault on press freedom were perpetuated mostly by corrupt politicians, by criminals and mafia elements under the patronage of their powerful godfathers” he said. “All these activities occur in retaliation for reports by journalists that expose the perpetuators’ corruption and abuses of authority”.
For foreign participants at the Male WPFD event, a reality check was offered by the public confrontation between a small group of local journalists and the young articulate Information Minister of the Maldives Mohamed Nasheed.
Those who were most vocal in their attempts to paint the Maldivian government as a repressive regime as far as press freedom was concerned came from the local alternative media network MinivanNews.com, a Maldivian version of a free media movement which, in addition to its locally-operated website, has recently started broadcasting a local radio programme via SW believed to be originating from the UK.
The author of IFJ’s Maldivian chapter was its British expat managing editor Paul Roberts.
The network seems to be heavily funded by overseas donors and they even spearheaded a banner-carrying protest demonstration outside the conference hall when the President of the Maldives arrived to address the gathering on WPFD.
They (including Roberts) had a lively confrontation after an impromptus lunch-time speech was given by the minister to both local and international participants about his media reform moves in the Maldives.
Though the IFJ report, claimed that the Maldives press freedom record was dismal with constant harassment of journalists, the minister said that he has 6 bills in parliament designed to liberalise the media environment in this far-stretched archipelago of 240,000 people.
“What has changed today is policy. Media policy of the government has changed” said Nasheed. “People should not expect us to achieve in one year, what took many countries 100 years to achieve”.
When one of the journalists told the minister that he should take steps to stop police harassment of journalists on the beat, the minister fired back saying that the problem is with what he calls “multitask journalists” - that is NGO activists who claim to be journalists.
“We have offered to have an accreditation scheme for journalists so that they could be protected but you people refused to accept it” he told the accuser.
“How can we identify activists from journalists without an accreditation scheme?” asked the minister. Many media experts attending the seminar here tend to agree with that point.
Source: Sri Lank Daily News
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