CWA # 134
Global Politics
From Moscow to Manila:Â Attack on Journalists, Public Protests and Culture of ImpunityÂ
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Sourina Bej
19 June 2019
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Photo Source: CBS News
What is emerging as a trend in the slew of incidents across the globe is the role of technology in both curbing the public opinion and also shaping public opinion.
Sourina Bej is a Research Associate at the ISSSP, NIAS
On 12 June, the Russian police detained over 200 people at a protest march in Moscow demanding the release of the investigative journalist Ivan Golunov who has been believed to be framed by the police over illegal possession of drugs. At a similar juncture, the social media in India on 8 June was pouring with demands crying out the detention of a freelance journalist Prashant Kanojia for sharing a video that seemingly showed the Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath in poor light. After five days, he was released. Similar to Moscow, in February, Philippine journalist and critic of Rodrigo Duterte’s ‘war on drug’ policy was suddenly arrested on “cyber libel” charges and later released on bail. In Myanmar, two Reuter’s journalists, Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe, investigating the Inn Din killings in Rakhine were arrested, detained for 500 days and later released earlier this year after international condemnation.
What is happening in Moscow, New Delhi, Manila and Nay Pyi Taw have one single thread binding them: the journalists who wrote against the system has been systematically detained but what has followed is a public or international protest that ultimately leads to either the release of the journalist or a state apology. Apart from the above-citied incidents, according to Reporters without Borders, in the past few years the majority of those imprisoned globally, 70 percent of the journalists are facing anti-state charges.
Taking a look at the individual countries of Russia, India, Philippines and Myanmar, the freedom of press has never been strikingly flourishing, liberal and without abuse of the fourth estate (the express). Time and again authoritative attempts to stifle the media, targeting killing of the bloggers, journalists and activists have unfortunately remained an overwhelming reality in these countries. xPost 1999, with the breakdown of the Soviet and the liberalisation of Russia to the hard toiled democratisation of Myanmar, this trend has continued. The democratisation has though liberalised the economy, the politics of these countries has remained in the hands of the selected few. According to the World Press Freedom Index, India ranks 140th out of 180 countries in 2019 and has become the nation with the maximum number of murders of journalists under police investigation. In 2017 the International Press Institute recorded the targeted killings of 12 Indian journalists. Russia has been ranked at 149th, Myanmar at 138th, the Philippines at 134th and Iran with 59.56 per cent recorded abuse in this year till April. With this background, why in the current scenario, the chain of incidents of the arrest of the journalists so significant and what does it tell about the global trends that are unfolding in these countries simultaneously?
Deepening of the Deep State
In all the above countries, the role of the deep state in the form of security forces, the army and the representatives of the sub-state political structures are apparent. What is also clear is the carefully protected culture of impunity enjoyed by the structures. When alike like Russian journalist Golunov, Reuter’s journalists Lone and Soe attempted to expose the corruption, extrajudicial killings, etc. their arrests have become a necessary tool to sustain the control.
Golunov’s recent works included the exposés about how control of the funeral industry shifted from criminal gangs to a monopoly by government officials. In Russia, the security forces were known to have a habit of filing drug charges against activists and journalists they find troublesome, send them to jail for several years. Similarly, when Maria Ressa, editor of the Rappler news website, covered of the Philippines’ President’s war on drugs that claimed lives of a lot of innocent children, she was charged based on an act that was drafted four months back in a rush. In India, when Kanojia was arrested, it didn’t follow the due process. According to the wife of the journalist, two police officers in plain clothes knocked on the door and whisked him away. In addition to this, a disturbing trend has emerged in the past in India: the day Kanojia was detained unknown gunmen fired shots on a TV crew in New Delhi going to cover a crime story, besides the targeted killing of journalists, a coordinated online harassment in the form of troll and moral policing have simultaneously emerged against those who are critical of the government. This also means that opinion in social media is read by many that it is now beginning to matter politically.
Thus we see along with the security forces, simultaneous actors working in the social media have also emerged who have kept the vigil and the tool of surveillance in order.
Judiciary and the Public Protests
In the presence of the deep state, what has now emerged is the role of other law enforcement agencies like the judiciary juxtaposing against this culture of impunity, a unified media at the international level and the public outcry against the arrests.
In Russia until now, the public acceptance by the Kremlin that their security forces have acted unprofessionally and all Russian media acting in solidarity are a rare occurrence. Thus when Vedomosti, RBC and Kommersant and pro-Kremlin TV anchor came out together to print identical front pages that read as “I/We Are Ivan Golunov”: it is significant. Golunov is not a household name in Moscow; his reputation as a thorough journalist is only among his media circles. Still, the public outcry with more than 200 supporters for him is reflective of only one fact: the frustration on unattended issues like abuse of power, corruption and economy. It is these issues that became important, and the Golunov is only a symbolic representation of the public anger on these issues.
In India, on June 11, the Supreme Court ordered the "immediate release" of Kanojia stating that freedom of speech cannot be breached or restricted at any point. However, what was significant was to see the pouring hashtags that were kept alive in the social media until the judgement. In the Philippines, the numbers of the children caught in the cross fires of Duterte’s drug war was rising and at that juncture, the arrest of Ressa came across to many as more than just a coincidence. Thus in the veil of her arrest, what flew past was an equal public protest against the government policy.
International Support
Slowly and steadily, the international support for the detained journalists is rising. However, what is significant to notice is why some cases receive more attention than the rest. Like in the case of Russia, before Golunov, several arrested are still languishing. For them, neither the government has apologised nor shifted them to house arrest. This brings in the necessity to look at how national media over the years have been able to internationalise their presence, integrate into the global news chain and with it, the issues in the home country. What has facilitated most in it is the combination of print and social media.
Ivan Golunov is a journalist with the online news website Meduza with an English counterpart. However, instead of being based in Moscow, Meduza is based out of Riga, Latvia. The reason being establishing an independent Russian language publishing house is possible in Latvia but not in Russia (Galina Timchenko, CEO of Meduza said in her interview to the Forbes) Timchenko was able to internationalise the issue precisely because of its presence in Latvia and not in Moscow. Secondly, Rapper in the Philippines is against a news website and more so the person, Ressa was among the group of journalists collectively named the Time magazine’s 2018 Person of the year. Hence in her arrest, the collective pressure was much. In Myanmar, the rally against the journalist was relatively strong owing to them being a part of a reputed organisation the Reuters in addition to them winning the Pulitzer Prize for their work. The narrative of them symbolising world freedom struck a chord with not only the domestic ‘public’ but also the global ‘public.’ In India, the incident happened over a social media post. Though it was targeted or centred on a political representative, it was not a joint media report. The social and personal constructions could be many; thus, the support for him also increased.
Role of Technology and Fake News
What is emerging as a trend in the slew of incidents across the globe is the role of technology in both curbing the public opinion and also shaping public opinion. Slovak media in April revealed the existence of a massive surveillance operation on journalists conducted between March 2017 and February 2018 by a former intelligence agent, Peter Tóth. Similar could also be observed in several protests where technology is used to gather a crowd, but the same technology is used to spread fake news and divert dissent. According to a report by the Committee to Protect Journalists, “the number imprisoned on charges of false news rose to 28 globally, compared with nine just two years ago.” Egypt jailed the most journalists on false news charges with 19, followed by Cameroon with four, Rwanda with three, and one each in China and Morocco.
