WORLD PRESS FREEDOM DAY

Press rights group influential but not uncontested

Saturday 03 May 2008

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has made a name for itself denouncing press freedom violations throughout the world. But not everybody is happy with some of their recent attention-grabbing practices. (Story: France 3)

Media rights campaigners Reporters Without Borders (RSF) marked World Press Freedom Day Saturday by highlighting threats to journalists' safety inside Europe.
   
In Tunisia meanwhile, two journalists continued a hunger strike in protest at what they said was pressure from the authorities on their newspaper.
   
RSF 's new report on the media rights situation inside the EU acknowledged: "There is genuine press freedom within the European Union.
   
"No state has ordered the murder or imprisonment of a journalist and state censorship is a thing of the past."
   
But it highlighted problems of security faced by some journalists in several western European countries including France, Denmark Italy, Northern Ireland and Spain.
   
In France, journalists covering the violence on the French Mediterranean island of Corsica had become used to threats and harassment from nationalist militants there, said the report.
   
In recent years however, those covering unrest in the deprived urban had also been assaulted, with "scores" of photographers, cameramen and reporters "physically manhandled" during the November 2005 unrest, it added.
   
In Italy, the threat comes from organised crime: the Camorra in Naples, the ’ndrangheta in Calabria, Cosa Nostra in Sicily and Sacra Corona Unita in Puglia.
   
"Around a dozen journalists work under police protection (...) Every journalist who writes about the mafia gets a message sooner or later, a signal warning that they are being watched," it added.
   
In Spain’s Basque Country, journalists have come into conflict with the Basque separatist militants ETA.
   
In Northern Ireland, reporters "continue to receive death threats, despite the peace process of the last few years and the formation in 2007 of a regional power-sharing government made up of former Unionist and Republican enemies," RSF added.
   
Arguably the highest-profile case comes from Denmark, where intelligence services said in February they had uncovered a murder plot against Kurt Westergaard. It was he who drew the most controversial cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed which triggered a wave of protests around the Muslim world.
   
"He has since been forced to live under the protection of the Danish secret services, changing his residence every two weeks," the statement underlined.
   
Individual journalists and media organisations and around the world used World Press Freedom Day to highlight abuses of press freedom.
   
In Tunisia the editor and director of opposition weekly newspaper Al-Mawkif have been on hunger strike since April 26.
   
"We are determined to continue our protest until the end of the pressure against Al-Mawkif," Rachid Khechana and Mongi Ellouze told reporters Saturday.
   
Tunisia's President Zine El Abidine said in a statement to journalists and press barons that he is doing all he can to "guarantee" a national press which is "advanced and intrepid."
   
"We have always considered freedom of expression as a fundamental human right," he added.
   
The World Association of Newspapers used the occasion to denounce what it called China's broken promises regarded human rights reforms ahead of the Olympic Games.
   
"Despite promises of reform made ahead of the Beijing Olympics, the Chinese authorities have not only failed to respect them, but they have intensified their crackdown on journalists and others who seek to exercise their right to freedom of expression," wrote WAN chief executive Timothy Balding.
   
United Nations chief Ban Ki-moon on Friday made a strong plea in support of freedom of the press around the world.
   
"A free, secure and independent media is one of the foundations of peace and democracy," Ban said.
   
UNESCO, the UN cultural organisation, honoured Mexican journalist Lydia Cacho Ribeiro for her coverage of political corruption, organized crime and domestic violence in Mexico. They awarded her the 2008 UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize.
   
Cacho, a freelance investigative journalist writing for the La Voz del Caribe daily, has already won awards for her coverage of the murders of hundreds of young women in the northern Mexican city of Ciudad Juarez.