Posts Tagged ‘Reporters without Borders’
February 20, 2014
45 human rights organisations have launched a joint appeal to drop criminal charges against the journalist Ali Anouzla in Morocco. He appeared in court on February 18th, but his trial was postponed again to May 20th. Anouzla, journalist and editor of the Arabic edition of the news website Lakome, was arrested on 17 September 2013 in connection with a 13 September news article published on the Arabic edition of Lakome, which included a link to a video posted on the website of the leading Spanish daily El País. The video, embedded from YouTube, allegedly sharply criticized King Mohammed VI of Morocco, accusing him of despotism and corruption, and called on Moroccan youth to engage in “Jihad”. YouTube has since removed the video. Anouzla was released on bail on 25 October. Ali Anouzla was indicted for “glorifying terrorism” under Article 218-2 of the Moroccan Penal Code and “materially assisting” under Article 218-6.
With respect to the case the NGO statement recalls that: Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in films, human rights, Human Rights Defenders | Leave a Comment »
Tags: Ali Anouzla, anti-terrorist laws, freedom of expression, jihad, journalists, lakome website, Lakome.com, media, Media and Human Rights, Morocco, Reporters without Borders, video
December 20, 2013
Whether
Edward Snowden is a human rights defender or a criminal has been much debated and was also reported on in this blog. He was nominated for the European Parliament’s Sakharov Prize and received the Netizen’s award from the NGO Reporters without Borders. Now the highly respected
American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), through its Executive Director
Anthony Romero, has taken a clear stand and his article of 17 December 2013 is provided here in full:
Posted in human rights, Human Rights Defenders | 1 Comment »
Tags: ACLU, American Civil Liberties Union, American government, Amnesty, Anthony Romero, Congress, Edward Snowden, electronic surveillance, European Parliament, government surveillance, human rights awards, Human rights defender, National Security Agency, netizens award, NSA, patriot, Reporters without Borders, right to privacy, Sakharov Prize, Snowden, United States, USA, whistleblower
November 11, 2013
Authoritarian Vietnam has stepped up an alarming crackdown on domestic dissent even as it seeks a seat on the UN Human Rights Council, Amnesty International says on 7 November. Vietnam is using a raft of draconian legislation to clamp down on a growing number of citizens who seek to question the party’s stranglehold on power. “Vietnam is fast turning into one of Southeast Asias largest prisons for human rights defenders and other activists” said Amnesty researcher Rupert Abbott to AFP.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in AI, human rights, Human Rights Defenders | Leave a Comment »
Tags: AFP, Amnesty, Amnesty International, bloggers, Dieu Cay, freedom of expression, Human rights defender, human rights lawyer, internet, Le Quoc Quan, prisoners of conscience, Reporters without Borders, Rupert Abbott, UN Human Rights Council, United Nations Human Rights Council, Vietnam
March 17, 2013
Human rights group Reporters Without Borders has named and shamed five companies it claims allowed their products to be used by countries with bad human rights records and the NGO also named five countries as “enemies of the internet“. It said that five private sector companies; Gamma, Trovicor, Hacking Team, Amesys and Blue Coat are “digital era mercenaries”. The overall list of companies it believed were involved in selling products to authoritarian regimes was “not exhaustive” and will be expanded in the coming months. “They all sell products that are liable to be used by governments to violate human rights and freedom of information,” the group said.”Their products have been or are being used to commit violations of human rights and freedom of information. If these companies decided to sell to authoritarian regimes, they must have known that their products could be used to spy on journalists, dissidents and netizens.” It added that if surveillance products were sold to an authoritarian regime by an intermediary without their knowledge, “their failure to keep track of the exports of their own software means they did not care if their technology was misused and did not care about the vulnerability of those who defend human rights.” Research by Bloomberg, the Wall Street Journal and the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab has established that surveillance technology used against dissidents and human rights defenders in such countries as Egypt, Bahrain and Libya came from western companies, it claimed.
The Paris-based group labelled Syria, China, Iran, Bahrain and Vietnam as“enemies of the internet” Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in human rights, Human Rights Defenders | Leave a Comment »
Tags: Bahrain, China, digital security, European Union, Human right, Human Rights Defenders, human rights group, information technology, internet, Iran, private sector companies, Reporters without Borders, RSF, security, software, spy, Syria, United States, Vietnam, Wall Street Journal
March 10, 2013
On 10 January 2013 I posted something on the largest ever trial of internet dissidents in Viet Nam. On 8 March this issue was continued in the UN:
“We call upon the Council to press Vietnam to put an end to this repression,” said Vo Van Ai, speaking on behalf of Vietnamese campaigners and the International Federation of Human Rights. In a speech to the UN body he said a total of 32 bloggers and other cyber-dissidents were behind bars in Vietnam, either sentenced or awaiting trial. They face prison terms of up to 16 years.
“Such repression does not serve to protect national security, as the Vietnamese authorities claim, but to stifle the voices of an emerging civil society speaking out on corruption, power abuse, the plight of dispossessed peasants and farmers, human rights and democratic reforms,” he said. He condemned Vietnam’s use of Ordinance 44, a 2002 ruling which authorises the detention of suspected national security offenders without due process of the law and which is increasingly deployed against bloggers, sometimes in psychiatric hospitals.
Fellow-campaigner Penelope Faulker, with the French-based group Work Together for Human Rights, noted that after a 2009 United Nations review (UPR), Hanoi had pledged to uphold freedom of information. “However, in the past year alone, scores of bloggers, online journalists and human rights defenders in Vietnam have been harassed, intimated, subjected to police abuse, or condemned to extremely harsh prison sentences simply for expressing their peaceful views on the Internet,” she told the Council. The southeast Asian country has been branded an “enemy of the Internet” by freedom of expression watchdog Reporters Without Borders.
via: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/03/08/human-rights-activists-push-u-n-for-action-over-vietnams-treatment-of-cyber-protesters/
Posted in FIDH, human rights, Human Rights Defenders | Leave a Comment »
Tags: blog, cyber activism, dissidents, Human right, human rights, Human Rights Defenders, illegal detention, International Federation for Human Rights, National security, Penelope Faulker, Reporters without Borders, southeast asian country, United Nations, UPR, Viet Nam, Vietnam, Vo Van Ai
January 17, 2013
Via Brussels-based Protection International we have learned that the appeal court in the central city of Gitega, Burundi, imposed a heavy three-year jail sentence on the journalist Hassan Ruvakuki instead of overturning his conviction. The court changed the charge on which Ruvakuki is convicted to “participation in an association formed with the aim of attacking persons and property.” In June, a lower court sentenced him to life imprisonment on a charge of terrorism. Reporters Without Borders regards today’s decision as a sign that certain Burundian officials were determined to punish Ruvakuki at all costs. Several sources in Gitega reported that the appeal court had been under heavy pressure from the state security apparatus not to acquit him. Ruvakuki was accused of complicity with a rebel group when all he did was his duty as a journalist to anticipate the news. Shortly before his arrest, he went to neighbouring Tanzania to cover a Burundian rebel group that was being formed there.
In response to this incomprehensible verdict, Reporters Without Borders is launching a petition for the release of Ruvakuki, who was working for Bonesha FM, a local radio station, and the Swahili service of Radio France Internationale at the time of his arrest in November 2011. To Sign the petition control/click here.
More information about the Ruvakuki case: http://en.rsf.org/burundi.html
http://www.rfi.fr/afrique/20130115-burundi-journaliste-hassan-ruvakuki-manifestation-swahili-bonesha
Posted in Protection International | Leave a Comment »
Tags: Burundi, freedom of information, Hassan Ruvakuki, journalists, prison, Protection International, radio, Radio France Internationale, Reporters without Borders, Sentence (law)
December 21, 2012
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) and Reporters without Borders (RSF) have just released their annual counts of killed journalists. Although their figures differ somewhat: 67 killed for CPJ and 88 for RSF, both organizations show a sharp increase in the number of killings.The main reason is Syrian where journalists are also directly targeted by the governemnt security services or jihadist fighters.
For more information:
CPJ report http://www.cpj.org/reports/2012/12/journalist-deaths-spike-in-2012-due-to-syria-somal.php
RSF report http://en.rsf.org/2012-journalists-netizens-decimated-19-12-2012,43806.html
via Media and human rights: End of year: a sharp increase in the number of killed journalists.
Posted in human rights | Leave a Comment »
Tags: annual report, Committee to Protect Journalists, freedom of information, journalists, Media and Human Rights, netizens, Reporters without Borders, Syria
May 3, 2012
Prominent human rights defender Narges Mohammadi was arrested last month. On Wednesday 26 April Reporters Without Borders (RSF) in Paris said the group “strongly condemns” her jailing. Narges Mohammadi was a spokeswoman for Ebadi’s now-banned Center for Human Rights Defenders.
She was reportedly detained on Saturday 21 April and brought to Tehran’s Evin prison to begin serving a six-year sentence following a conviction in 2010 after she was accused of anti-government crimes. Mohammadi had remained free pending appeals. Ebadi left Iran after the disputed re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2009, which touched off unprecedented protests and harsh crackdowns by authorities. Several of her co-workers have been arrested and harassed, such as Nasrin Sotoudeh, recently announced as a 2012 nominee of the Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders (www.martinennalsaward.org).
For more details on her case see: http://www.iranhumanrights.org/2012/04/narges-arrest/
Reporters Without Borders is concerned by the case because Narges is a journalist and author. In its recently released report on press freedom in 2011, the organisation ranks Iran number 175 outr of 179 countries surveyed. I states inter alia: “It is no surprise that the same trio of countries, Eritrea, Turkmenistan and North Korea, absolute dictatorships that permit no civil liberties, again occupy the last three places in the index. This year, they are immediately preceded at the bottom by Syria, Iran and China, three countries that seem to have lost contact with reality as they have been sucked into an insane spiral of terror, and by Bahrain and Vietnam, quintessential oppressive regimes. Other countries such as Uganda and Belarus have also become much more repressive.”
For the full report go to:
http://en.rsf.org/press-freedom-index-2011-2012,1043.html
Posted in Human Rights Defenders, MEA | Leave a Comment »
Tags: Evin Prison, Human rights defender, Iran, Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders, Narges Mohammadi, Nasrin Sotoudeh, press freedom index, Reporters without Borders, RSF, Shirin Ebadi
Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards 