“Malawi’s Constitutional Court has taken a monumental step towards protecting press freedom and affirmed that criticism and dissent are essential to democracy by ruling criminal defamation to be unconstitutional,” said Muthoki Mumo, CPJ’s Africa program coordinator, in Nairobi. “Authorities should immediately comply with the judgment, and other laws that may unduly restrict the work of journalists must also be reformed.” 

In a unanimous decision, three constitutional court justices ruled that the defamation law was a “disproportionate and unjustifiable limitation on constitutional freedom,” according to a summary of the judgment reviewed by CPJ.

The ruling follows social media influencer and activist Joshua Chisa Mbele’s 2022 legal challenge of criminal defamation charges for his remarks about a military official.

In its decision, the court ordered that no further prosecutions on criminal defamation charges be brought under the law.

The Malawian chapter of the Media Institute of Southern Africa and other civil society organizations urged the government not to appeal the ruling and to reform other laws that restrict free expression. Section 60 of Malawi’s penal code criminalizes publishing false news, with penalties of fines or up to two years in jail, and the 2016 Electronic Transactions and Cyber Security Act makes unauthorized transmitting data or information punishable by a fine of 2,000,000 Malawian kwacha (USD $1,153) and a 5-year imprisonment. 

In 2022, Malawi amended its Protected Flag, Emblems, and Names Act of 1967, to decriminalize insults against the president but retained prison time for those convicted of insults to flags or protected emblems.

Malawi Attorney General Thabo Chakaka Nyirenda did not respond to CPJ’s calls or text messages for comment on the court’s decision.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

“This is a bold move by Spain and Brazil to drive forward taxing the super-rich as a key solution to the lack of funds being delivered by rich countries for climate action. We want more countries to join this coalition so that billionaires and multi-millionaires help to foot the bill for the climate damage they have caused and decrease the huge gap between the rich and the poorest. We won't rest until governments like the UK, France, and Germany make the right choice to force the super rich to pay what they owe and increase their spending on climate action and public services at home and around the world.” Kate Blagojevic, 350.org Associate Director for Europe Campaigns.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

In its ruling, the court found the prosecution’s evidence “grossly insufficient” to establish any criminal liability. In 2024, the Philippine Court of Appeals had already overturned the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) order to revoke Rappler’s license, affirming that the media outlet did not violate the constitutional ban on foreign ownership.

“The Hold the Line Coalition welcomes this ruling, which, although long overdue, marks another victory for Rappler and for press freedom in the Philippines,” said the Hold The Line Coalition Steering Committee. We call on the Philippine justice system to overturn Maria Ressa’s conviction in the last case still pending against her, to put an end to the years-long campaign of legal harassment against her and her colleagues. This legal harassment began in 2018 – it’s time to end it,” the Hold the Line Coalition said

Hold The Line Coalition Steering Committee

Since 2018, Rappler, Ressa, and her colleagues have been subjected to a sustained campaign of legal persecution and online attacks. A total of 23 legal cases have been filed against them. Ressa and former Rappler researcher Reynaldo Santos still face up to six years and nine months in prison from a 2020 criminal cyber libel conviction, which remains under final appeal before the Philippine Supreme Court.

In a historic precedent, Rappler was officially issued a shutdown order in June 2022, reinforcing an earlier decision to revoke the outlet’s license to operate. The order was the first of its kind for the issuing agency and the Philippine media. The site had been able to continue operating due to the cumbersome nature of the appeal process.

Bringing together over 80 organisations worldwide, the Hold the Line Coalition urges states, international bodies, and civil society to defend press freedom in the Philippines and call on President Marcos to renew the country’s commitment to a free press.Contact #HTL Steering Committee Members for further details: Aleksandra Bielakowska (abielakowska@rsf.org); Julie Posetti (jposetti@icfj.org); and Gypsy Guillén Kaiser (gguillenkaiser@cpj.org).

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

“Zamora brings a unique portfolio of well-rounded experiences to CPJ, including press freedom advocacy, campaigning, communications, and philanthropy,” said CPJ Chief Programs Officer Carlos Martinez de la Serna. “I am delighted to see Zamora in this new role where he will lead our work in a vast region at a time when the free press here is under sustained pressure.”

“At a time when press freedom is under attack around the world, I’m honored and deeply grateful for the opportunity to join the Committee to Protect Journalists,” Zamora said. “I’ve seen firsthand how vital independent journalism is to holding power to account and defending democracy. I’m committed to advancing CPJ’s mission to ensure that reporters everywhere can do their work freely and safely.”

Zamora previously held senior communications roles at Exile Content Studio and Univision News, and led the Knight News Challenge at Knight Foundation, where he helped support more than 100 grants focused on media innovation and freedom of expression. At the beginning of his career, Zamora worked to promote civic engagement and digital innovation at elPeriódico, a daily newspaper in Guatemala founded by his father, José Rubén Zamora Marroquin. In 2024, he founded Ilumina Communications, a bilingual consultancy to help purpose-driven organizations amplify their impact through strategic storytelling. He also helped launch and advise the Central American Independent Media Archive, created to preserve and protect independent journalism in a region where reporters face escalating threats under authoritarian regimes.

###

About the Committee to Protect Journalists

The Committee to Protect Journalists is an independent, nonprofit organization that promotes press freedom worldwide. We defend the right of journalists to report the news safely and without fear of reprisal.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

The Trump administration has suspended refugee resettlement for most of the world, but welcomed 59 white South African Afrikaners Monday who were granted refugee status. President Trump claims Afrikaners face racial discrimination — even though South Africa’s white minority still own the vast majority of farmland decades after the end of apartheid — and claims they are escaping “genocide.” This accusation “is a conspiracy theory and a myth that has been floating around echo chambers of right-wing populists and white nationalists for many decades now,” says Andile Zulu, political essayist and researcher at the Alternative Information and Development Centre in Cape Town. We also speak with Herman Wasserman, a South African professor of journalism at Stellenbosch University, who says the Trump administration is using Afrikaners as “pawns, as props in a campaign that purports to promote whiteness.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

Entities and individuals that thrived under the previous government with public relations contracts now want to be part of the media or run media organisations, says Fiji Media Association (FMA) secretary Stanley Simpson.

He made the comments yesterday while speaking at a World Press Freedom Day event hosted by the journalism programme at the University of the South Pacific.

“We were attacked by fake accounts and a government-funded propaganda machine,” he said.

• READ MORE: PINA on World Press Freedom Day – facing new and complex AI challenges
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“It is ironic that those who once spinned and attacked the media as irrelevant  — because they said no one reads or watches them anymore — now want to be part of the media or run media organisations.”

“There are entities and individuals that thrived under the previous government with PR contracts while the media struggled and now want to come and join the hard-fought new media landscape.”

Simpson said the Fijian media fraternity would welcome credible news services.

“We have to be wary and careful of entities that pop up overnight and their real agendas.”

“Particularly those previously involved with political propaganda.

“And we are noticing a number of these sites seemingly working with political parties and players in pushing agendas and attacking the media and political opponents.”

Republished from The Fiji Times with permission.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.

The former head of BenarNews’ Pacific bureau says a United States court ruling this week ordering the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM) to release congressionally approved funding to Radio Free Asia and its subsidiaries “makes us very happy”.

However, Stefan Armbruster, who has played a key role in expanding the news agency’s presence in the region, acknowledged, “there’s also more to do”.

On March 14, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to defund USAGM outlets Radio Free Asia and Middle East Broadcasting Networks, including placing more than 1300 Voice of America employees on leave.

• READ MORE: Victory for US press freedom and workers — court grants injunction in VOA media case
• Victory for US press freedom and workers – court grants injunction in VOA media case

“This order continues the reduction in the elements of the Federal bureaucracy that the President has determined are unnecessary,” the executive order states.

Armbruster told RNZ Pacific Waves that the ruling found the Trump administration failed to provide evidence to support their actions.

“[Judge Royce Lamberth] is basically saying that the actions of the Trump administration [are] likely to have been illegal and unconstitutional in taking away the money from these organisations,” he said.

Order to restore funding
“The judgments are saying that the US administration should return funding to its overseas broadcasters, which include Voice of America [and] Radio Free Asia.”

He said that in America, they can lay people off without a loss, and they can still remain employees. But these conditions did not apply for overseas employees.

“Basically, all the overseas staff have been staff let go, except a very small number in the US who are on visas, dependent on their employment, and they have spoken out about this publicly.

“They have got 60 days to find a job, a new sponsor for them, or they could face deportation to places like China, Cambodia, and Vietnam.

“So for the former employees, at the moment, we are just waiting to see how this all plays out.”

Armbruster said there were hints that a Trump administration could take such action during the election campaign, when the Trump team had flagged issues about the media.

Speed ‘totally unexpected’
However, he added the speed at which this has happened “was totally unexpected”.

“And the judge ruled on that. He said that it is hard to fathom a more straightforward display of arbitrary, capricious action, basically, random and unexplained.

“In short, the defendants had no method or approach towards shutting down USAGM that this Court could discern.”

Armbruster said the US Congress funds the USAGM, and the agency has a responsibility to disburse that funding to Radio Free Europe, Voice of America, and Radio Free Asia.

The judge ruled that the President does not have the authority to withhold that funding, he said.

“We were funded through till September to the end of the financial year in the US.

“In terms of how quickly [the executive order] came, it was a big surprise to all of us. Not totally unexpected that this would be happening, but not this way, not this hard.”

BenarNews ‘gave a voice’
The BenarNews Pacific bureau was initially set up two-and-a-half years ago but evolved into a fully-fledged bureau only 12 months ago. It had three fulltime staff based in Australia and about 15 stringers and commentators across the region.

“We built up this fantastic network of people, and the response has been fantastic, just like Radio New Zealand [Pacific],” Armbruster said.

“We were doing a really good thing and having some really amazing stories on our pages, and big successes. It gave a voice to a whole lot of Pacific journalists and commentators to tell stories from perspectives that were not being presented in other forums.

“It is hard to say if we will come back because there has been a lot of court orders issued recently under this current US administration, and they sometimes are not complied with, or are very slowly complied with, which is why we are still in the process.”

However, Armbruster remains hopeful there will be “some interesting news” next week.

“The judgment also has a little bit of a kicker in the tail, because it is not just an order to do [restore funding].

“It is an order to turn up on the first day of each month, and to appraise the court of what action is [the USAGM] taking to disburse the funds.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.

The former head of BenarNews’ Pacific bureau says a United States court ruling this week ordering the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM) to release congressionally approved funding to Radio Free Asia and its subsidiaries “makes us very happy”.

However, Stefan Armbruster, who has played a key role in expanding the news agency’s presence in the region, acknowledged, “there’s also more to do”.

On March 14, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to defund USAGM outlets Radio Free Asia and Middle East Broadcasting Networks, including placing more than 1300 Voice of America employees on leave.

• READ MORE: Victory for US press freedom and workers — court grants injunction in VOA media case
• Victory for US press freedom and workers – court grants injunction in VOA media case

“This order continues the reduction in the elements of the Federal bureaucracy that the President has determined are unnecessary,” the executive order states.

Armbruster told RNZ Pacific Waves that the ruling found the Trump administration failed to provide evidence to support their actions.

“[Judge Royce Lamberth] is basically saying that the actions of the Trump administration [are] likely to have been illegal and unconstitutional in taking away the money from these organisations,” he said.

Order to restore funding
“The judgments are saying that the US administration should return funding to its overseas broadcasters, which include Voice of America [and] Radio Free Asia.”

He said that in America, they can lay people off without a loss, and they can still remain employees. But these conditions did not apply for overseas employees.

“Basically, all the overseas staff have been staff let go, except a very small number in the US who are on visas, dependent on their employment, and they have spoken out about this publicly.

“They have got 60 days to find a job, a new sponsor for them, or they could face deportation to places like China, Cambodia, and Vietnam.

“So for the former employees, at the moment, we are just waiting to see how this all plays out.”

Armbruster said there were hints that a Trump administration could take such action during the election campaign, when the Trump team had flagged issues about the media.

Speed ‘totally unexpected’
However, he added the speed at which this has happened “was totally unexpected”.

“And the judge ruled on that. He said that it is hard to fathom a more straightforward display of arbitrary, capricious action, basically, random and unexplained.

“In short, the defendants had no method or approach towards shutting down USAGM that this Court could discern.”

Armbruster said the US Congress funds the USAGM, and the agency has a responsibility to disburse that funding to Radio Free Europe, Voice of America, and Radio Free Asia.

The judge ruled that the President does not have the authority to withhold that funding, he said.

“We were funded through till September to the end of the financial year in the US.

“In terms of how quickly [the executive order] came, it was a big surprise to all of us. Not totally unexpected that this would be happening, but not this way, not this hard.”

BenarNews ‘gave a voice’
The BenarNews Pacific bureau was initially set up two-and-a-half years ago but evolved into a fully-fledged bureau only 12 months ago. It had three fulltime staff based in Australia and about 15 stringers and commentators across the region.

“We built up this fantastic network of people, and the response has been fantastic, just like Radio New Zealand [Pacific],” Armbruster said.

“We were doing a really good thing and having some really amazing stories on our pages, and big successes. It gave a voice to a whole lot of Pacific journalists and commentators to tell stories from perspectives that were not being presented in other forums.

“It is hard to say if we will come back because there has been a lot of court orders issued recently under this current US administration, and they sometimes are not complied with, or are very slowly complied with, which is why we are still in the process.”

However, Armbruster remains hopeful there will be “some interesting news” next week.

“The judgment also has a little bit of a kicker in the tail, because it is not just an order to do [restore funding].

“It is an order to turn up on the first day of each month, and to appraise the court of what action is [the USAGM] taking to disburse the funds.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.

“We welcome the ruling that USAGM must continue to fund RFA, as Congress intended. It’s now up to the U.S. Agency for Global Media to release RFA’s Congressional funding.

“While we want to resume our operations as they were before, for that to happen we need to receive timely disbursement of our funding on a consistent basis. Until then RFA unfortunately remains in the same position as last month when we began to furlough our journalists and staff.”

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by RFA.

“Sara’s extensive and broad experience working with journalists in some of the most challenging environments makes her uniquely qualified to guide our efforts in advocating for press freedom and accountability in the region,” said Carlos Martinez de la Serna, CPJ Chief Programs Officer. “I am delighted to welcome Sara to lead our work in the MENA region and work closely with an incredible team of researchers and advocates.”

“I am honored to join CPJ as the Regional Director for MENA,” Qudah said. “There has never been a more critical role for CPJ’s vital work in the region and I’m eager to work alongside an amazing, insightful group of colleagues to fight for an environment where journalists can do their jobs without fear.”

Qudah brings a wealth of experience at the intersection of media development, advocacy, and journalism. She most recently served as the MENA Program Manager for Internews Network, overseeing a portfolio of programs across the MENA region. Qudah’s career began as a journalist in Jordan, where she worked for Al-Rai newspaper and later became the Editor-in-Chief of 7iber.com. Over the years, Qudah led impactful media programs in Yemen, Sudan, and Morocco, gaining a reputation for developing regionally informed strategies that promote media independence and address evolving challenges to press freedom in the MENA region.

###

About the Committee to Protect Journalists

The Committee to Protect Journalists is an independent, nonprofit organization that promotes press freedom worldwide. We defend the right of journalists to report the news safely and without fear of reprisal.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

Vanuatu has celebrated the reconstruction of the national council of chiefs meeting house, called the Malvatumauri nakamal, destroyed by fire two years ago.

Dozens of chiefs from across the country — and also Kanaky New Caledonia — joined the ceremony in the capital Port Vila on Wednesday, March 5, during the Chiefs Day national public holiday alongside the president, prime minister and general public.

Traditional dances, kastom ceremonies, and speeches highlighted the building’s cultural significance, reinforcing its role as a place for conflict resolution, discussions on governance, and the preservation of oral traditions.

After independence in 1980, the chiefs decided a symbol representing unity for all of Vanuatu’s peoples and customs be built in Port Vila. The nakamal was officially opened in 1990.

Ahead of the ceremony, Prime Minister Jotham Napat emphasised all are welcome at the meeting house, in the heart of the capital.

“Nakamal does not separate the people, nakamal has a place for everyone,” Napat said.

President of the Malvatumauri Council of Chiefs Paul Robert Ravun used the occasion to call for greater parliamentary consultation with customary leaders.

‘Right time to speak’
“For 44 years we have been silent, but now, in this moment, I believe it is the right time to speak,” Ravun said.

“Any bill that is to be passed through Parliament must first pass through the father’s house, the father must agree and have the final say before it can proceed,” he said, referring to the council of chiefs.

The nakamal took two years to rebuild using locally sourced materials, including natangura palm for the thatched roof and hardwood for the framework, after it was destroyed by fire in early 2023.

Volunteers including chiefs, community members, and apprentices eager to learn ancestral building techniques all contributed to its construction and it survived December’s 7.3 magnitude earthquake intact.

Vanuatu’s government and international donors France, Australia, New Zealand, and China provided financial and logistical support for its reconstruction, costing about 20 million vatu (US$160,000).

Republished with permission from BenarNews.

• Images by the VBTC

The Malvatumauri nakamal

1 of 10

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

Kenneth Roth, visiting professor at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs and former executive director of Human Rights Watch, responds to the shocking Oval Office meeting between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, U.S. President Donald Trump and U.S. Vice President JD Vance, in which Vance and Trump publicly admonished Zelensky over the Russia-Ukraine war and accused him of not being grateful for the U.S.'s military support. “It's embarrassing, frankly,” says Roth, “to see the two leading American officials behaving in such a juvenile fashion when these are life and death matters, not only for Ukrainian people, but also for Ukrainian democracy and European democracy.” Roth, whose new memoir Righting Wrongs: Three Decades on the Front Lines Battling Abusive Governments is now available, joins us for the hour to discuss human rights issues around the globe.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

UN Special Rapporteur to the Occupied Palestinian Territory Francesca Albanese has hailed the formation of The Hague Group, describing it as the “best news” from a coalition of policymakers “in a long time”.

Formed on Friday in the city of its namesake, The Hague Group’s members — Belize, Bolivia, Colombia, Cuba, Honduras, Malaysia, Namibia, Senegal and South Africa — have joined together to “end Israeli occupation of the State of Palestine”.

The groups said in a joint statement that they could not “remain passive in the face of such international crimes” committed by Israel against the Palestinians.

• READ MORE: Joy as first Palestinian prisoners freed after 3 captives released in Gaza

They said they would work to see the “realisation of the inalienable right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, including the right to their independent State of Palestine”.

Albanese said on social media: “Let’s make it real. And let’s keep growing.”

BREAKING The Inaugural Joint Statement of The Hague Group. https://t.co/J2BsKIRmd8 pic.twitter.com/76noGvDE8v

— Progressive International (@ProgIntl) January 31, 2025

“The Hague Group’s formation sends a clear message — no nation is above the law, and no crime will go unanswered,” said the South African Minister of International Relations and Cooperation Ronald Lamola.

South Africa filed a case before the International Court of Justice alleging genocide in 2023 and an interim ruling in January 2024 said that there was “plausible genocide” and accepted the case for substantive judgment. Since then, 14 countries have joined the proceedings in support of South Africa and Palestine.

Malaysia has been preparing a draft resolution for United Nations to expel Israel from the global body.

Joyful scenes erupted today as buses carrying Palestinian prisoners released under last month’s Gaza ceasefire deal arrived in Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank. A total of 183 prisoners were due to be freed today.

Three captives — Keith Siegel, Ofer Kalderon and Yarden Bibas– were earlier released in two separate locations in southern and northern Gaza.

NZ ‘march for the martyrs’ protest
In New Zealand’s largest city Auckland Tāmaki Makaurau today, hundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters staged a vigil and march for the more than 47,000 Palestinians killed in Israel’s war on Gaza — mostly women and children.

More than 44,500 names of the victims of the genocidal war were spread out on the pavement of Te Komititanga Square in the heart of Auckland and one of the organisers, Dr Abdallah Gouda, said: “It is important to honour the names, they are people, families — they are not just numbers, statistics.”

A canvas with an outline of Palestine flag was also spread out and protesters invited to dip their fingers in black, red and green paint — the colours of the Palestinian flag — and daub the ensign with their collective fingerprints.

This was part of a global campaign to “stamp my imprint” for the return to Palestine.

“Each mark represents solidarity and remembrance for those who have lost their lives in the struggle for justice,” said the campaign.

“As you add your fingerprint, please take a moment to reflect on their sacrifice and the collective desire for peace and freedom.

“This canvas will become a living tribute with each fingerprint contributing to a powerful symbol of unity and support.”

The protesters followed with a “march for the martyrs” through central streets of Auckland past the consulate of the United States, main backer and arms supplier to Israel, and beside the city’s iconic harbourside.

More than 100 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces since the ceasefire was signed and came into force on January 19.

UNRWA chief “salutes’ aid staff defying Israeli ban
Meanwhile, Al Jazeera reports that the head of the UN’s agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) has hailed staff for continuing to work despite an Israeli ban on their operations coming into force on Thursday.

In a post on social media, Philippe Lazzarini said: “I salute the commitment of UNRWA staff”.

“We remain committed to upholding the humanitarian principles and fulfil our mandate,” Lazzarini said.

He noted that nearly 500,000 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, including occupied East Jerusalem, continued to access healthcare provided by UNRWA.

Since the start of the ceasefire in Gaza, UNRWA has ensured that humanitarian food supplies entering the territory under bombardment have reached more than 600,000 people, he said.

“UNRWA must be allowed to do its work until Palestinian institutions are empowered and capable within a Palestine State,” he added.

Israel passed a law in October that came into effect this week, banning UNRWA from operating on Israeli territory — including in East Jerusalem where its headquarters is located — and prohibiting contact with Israeli authorities.

However, Israel is occupying the Palestinian territories illegally in defiance of many UN resolutions ordering it to leave.

UNRWA has said that it is mandated by the UN General Assembly and is committed to staying open and delivering services to Palestinians despite Israel’s prohibitions.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

The Fijians for Palestine Solidarity Network (FPSN) and its allies have called for “justice and accountability” over Israel’s 15 months of genocide and war crimes.

The Pacific-based network met in a solidarity gathering last night in the capital Suva hosted by the Fiji Women’s Crisis Centre and issued a statement.

“A moment of reflection . .. for us as we welcome the ceasefire but emphasise that true peace requires justice and accountability for the Palestinian people,” it said.

• READ MORE: ‘Multi-front war’: Israel warns of new army operations in West Bank’s Jenin
• Other Gaza ceasefire reports

“There can be no just and lasting peace without full accountability for the war crimes and human rights violations committed against the Palestinian people.”

The temporary ceasefire began last Sunday with an exchange of three Israeli women hostages held by the freedom fighter movement Hamas for 90 Palestinian women and children held by the Israeli military — most of them without charge or trial — and a massive increase in humanitarian aid.

The Fiji solidarity network said the path to peace must address the root causes — “Israel’s ongoing colonisation of Palestine, its apartheid system and illegal occupation that began with the Nakba 77 years ago.”

The network appealed for continued pressure for Palestinian statehood.

“We urge all supporters of justice and human rights to continue to stand up for Palestine and maintain pressure on our government and institutions until Palestine is free,” it said.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

“Journalists have been paying the highest price – with their lives – to provide the world some insight into the horrors that have been taking place in Gaza during this prolonged war, which has decimated a generation of Palestinian reporters and newsrooms,” said CPJ CEO Jodie Ginsberg in New York. “We call on Egyptian, Palestinian, and Israeli authorities to immediately allow foreign journalists into Gaza, and on the international community to independently investigate the deliberate targeting of journalists that has been widely documented since October 2023.”

Since October 7, 2023, CPJ has documented at least 165 journalists and media workers killed, 49 journalists injured, two journalists missing, 75 journalists arrested, and multiple other violations of press freedom in Gaza and the neighboring region. 

To date, CPJ has determined that at least 11 journalists and two media workers were directly targeted by Israeli forces, which CPJ classifies as murder. A deliberate attack on civilians constitutes a war crime under international law. 

CPJ’s data shows that eight journalists were murdered in Gaza — Ayman Al Gedi, Fadi Hassouna, Faisal Abu Al Qumsan, Hamza Al Dahdouh, Ismail Al Ghoul, Mohammed Al-Ladaa, Mustafa Thuraya and Rami Al Refee — and threein Lebanon — Ghassan Najjar, Issam Abdallah, and Wissam Kassem. In addition, CPJ has classified two media workers as murdered: Mohammed Reda in Lebanon and Ibrahim Sheikh Ali in Gaza. 

CPJ is investigating about 20 other cases where there is evidence of deliberate targeting of journalists, their homes, and media outlets in Gaza during the war. 

When approached for comment by CPJ about the deliberate targeting of journalists, the Israel Defense Forces said that some were members of militant groups but provided either questionable or no evidence for those alleged links. 

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

The 2025 National Defense Authorization Act was passed by the U.S. Congress on Dec. 18 and signed by President Joe Biden on Dec. 22. It authorizes $895 billion in defense spending for 2025 and contains a plethora of other bills, with the final document standing at 1,813 pages.

Among those were the bipartisan Uyghur Human Rights Policy Reauthorization Act of 2024, which was co-sponsored by Sen. Marco Rubio, a Republican from Florida, and Sen. Jeff Merkley, a Democrat from Oregon, and renews the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act.

(Mark Schiefelbein, Mark Schiefelbein/AP)

The legislation was passed in 2020 during the first administration of President Donald Trump and was on track to “sunset” in 2025 if not renewed, but will now expire in 2030.

It authorizes sanctions against Chinese officials responsible for what the U.S. government calls a “genocide” against the Uyghurs in China’s Xinjiang region.

Omer Kanat, the executive director of the Uyghur Human Rights Project, called the inclusion of the bill “a gift of hope for Uyghurs.”

“Congressional leaders stand with the Uyghur people to dial up the pressure to end the atrocities in our homeland,” he said in a statement. “We thank the Republicans and Democrats who came together in the House and the Senate … to ensure that sanctions continue.”

RELATED STORIES

Trump signs Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act into law

New U.S. bill would appoint expert to monitor rights abuses in Xinjiang

US Congressional Uyghur Caucus introduces new sanctions bill

Also included in the 2025 defense package is a bill restricting the U.S. military from using federal funds to “buy any solar energy products made in the Uyghur Region or any other place in China, which are known to be produced with forced labor.”

Under the 2021 Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, it is already illegal to import such products into the United States, but the new provision prevents the Department of Defense from sourcing such items for use by the U.S. military anywhere else in the world.

The legislation also requires the Pentagon to compile a report about whether it is procuring seafood caught using slave labor in China, and detailing the measures in place to prevent that.

Edited by Malcolm Foster.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Alex Willemyns.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.

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The post The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays – November 26, 2024 Biden welcomes news of Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire announcement, truce begins Wednesday. appeared first on KPFA.

This content originally appeared on KPFA - The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays and was authored by KPFA.

“The sentencing of Robert Telles marks a significant milestone in the quest for justice. Although the jailing of Telles cannot undo Jeff German’s murder, it can act as an important deterrent to would-be assailants of journalists,” said CPJ U.S., Canada, and Caribbean Program Coordinator Katherine Jacobsen. “German’s murder by a county politician is a stark reminder of the dangers that journalists – especially local reporters worldwide – face simply for doing their jobs and reporting on matters of public interest.”

German, a veteran reporter who covered organized crime and local politics, was stabbed to death on September 2, 2022, outside his home in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Telles, a former Clark County public administrator, lost a re-election bid in June 2022 after German reported on alleged mismanagement in Telles’ office.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

“This report from the FTC is yet more proof that Big Tech’s business model is harmful to children and teens,” Fairplay Executive Director Josh Golin said. “Online platforms use sophisticated and opaque techniques of data collection that endanger young people and put their healthy development at risk. We thank the FTC for listening to the concerns raised by Fairplay and a coalition of advocacy groups, and we call on Congress to pass COPPA 2.0, the Children and Teens’ Online Privacy Protection Act, and KOSA, the Kids Online Safety Act, to better safeguard our children from these companies’ dangerous and unacceptable business practices.”

The FTC’s staff report, released today, finds that social media and video streaming services didn’t adequately protect children and teens. The report cites research showing that social media and digital technology contributed to negative mental health impacts on young users.

Based on data collected for the report, the FTC says that many social media and video streaming companies assert there are no children on their platforms because their services are not directed to children or do not allow children to create accounts. This is an apparent attempt by the companies to avoid liability under the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act Rule, the report says.

The report adds that social media and video streaming services often treat teens the same as adult users, with most companies allowing teens on their platforms with no account restrictions.

In 2019, Fairplay helped lead a coalition of 31 advocacy groups — including the Center for Digital Democracy, the American Academy of Pediatrics, Common Sense Media and others — in urging the FTC to use its subpoena power to obtain information from leading digital media companies that target children online.

On Wednesday, Sept. 18, the House Energy and Commerce Committee voted to advance both COPPA 2.0, the Children and Teens’ Online Privacy Protection Act, and KOSA, the Kids Online Safety Act. Both bills passed the Senate in July by the overwhelming bipartisan vote of 91-3.

Read the FTC’s report.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

“This report from the FTC is yet more proof that Big Tech’s business model is harmful to children and teens,” Fairplay Executive Director Josh Golin said. “Online platforms use sophisticated and opaque techniques of data collection that endanger young people and put their healthy development at risk. We thank the FTC for listening to the concerns raised by Fairplay and a coalition of advocacy groups, and we call on Congress to pass COPPA 2.0, the Children and Teens’ Online Privacy Protection Act, and KOSA, the Kids Online Safety Act, to better safeguard our children from these companies’ dangerous and unacceptable business practices.”

The FTC’s staff report, released today, finds that social media and video streaming services didn’t adequately protect children and teens. The report cites research showing that social media and digital technology contributed to negative mental health impacts on young users.

Based on data collected for the report, the FTC says that many social media and video streaming companies assert there are no children on their platforms because their services are not directed to children or do not allow children to create accounts. This is an apparent attempt by the companies to avoid liability under the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act Rule, the report says.

The report adds that social media and video streaming services often treat teens the same as adult users, with most companies allowing teens on their platforms with no account restrictions.

In 2019, Fairplay helped lead a coalition of 31 advocacy groups — including the Center for Digital Democracy, the American Academy of Pediatrics, Common Sense Media and others — in urging the FTC to use its subpoena power to obtain information from leading digital media companies that target children online.

On Wednesday, Sept. 18, the House Energy and Commerce Committee voted to advance both COPPA 2.0, the Children and Teens’ Online Privacy Protection Act, and KOSA, the Kids Online Safety Act. Both bills passed the Senate in July by the overwhelming bipartisan vote of 91-3.

Read the FTC’s report.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

“While Wednesday’s ruling will not bring Jeff German back to his family, friends, and colleagues, the conviction sends an important message that the killing of journalists will not be tolerated,” said CPJ U.S., Canada, and Caribbean Program Coordinator Katherine Jacobsen. “It is vital that the murder of journalists should be taken seriously and perpetrators held accountable.”

German, a veteran reporter who covered organized crime and local politics, was found stabbed to death on September 2, 2022, outside his home in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Telles, a former Clark County public administrator, lost a re-election bid in June 2022 after German reported on alleged mismanagement in the official’s office.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

It is Lam’s first foreign trip since the 67-year-old was elected general secretary of the Communist Party on Aug. 3, which “fully reflects the great importance he attaches to the relations between the two parties and the two countries,” China’s Xinhua news agency cited Xi as saying.

Xi also said the road would expand wider as the two countries “walk together,” underscoring good working relations and a personal friendship with Lam, Xinhua reported.

“I am willing to establish good working relations and a personal friendship with you and jointly lead the creation of a China-Vietnam community of a shared future, with deeper and solid progress,” Xi told Lam, according to Xinhua. 

China’s Global Times tabloid hailed Lam’s visit as a demonstration of “practical actions” that could improve bilateral ties. 

The neighbors, who fought a brief but bloody border war in 1979, normalized relations in 1991. In 2008, Vietnam elevated their relationship to a “comprehensive strategic partnership,” the highest level of engagement.

China and Vietnam have clashed over competing territorial claims in the South China Sea, which have earned diplomatic rebukes from Hanoi and sparked widespread public protests in Vietnam.

Vietnam has adopted a flexible approach to foreign policy, known as “bamboo diplomacy,” under which it has also established comprehensive strategic partnerships with Russia, India, South Korea, the United States, Japan and Australia.

The U.S. became a comprehensive strategic partner during a visit to Hanoi by President Joe Biden in September 2023, during which the U.S. president courted Vietnamese tech executives in a push to develop new semiconductor supply chains.

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Lam arrived in China’s southern province Guangzhou on Sunday for a three-day visit that will include meetings with Chinese Premier Li Qiang and other top officials. He visited some locations where Vietnam’s independence hero Ho Chi Minh conducted revolutionary activities while in Guangzhou. 

The two sides last year signed dozens of agreements when Xi visited Hanoi, covering a wide range of cooperation to strengthen defense communications and increase trade. They also discussed enhancing rail connections and building a new bridge across their border.

Edited by RFA Staff.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Taejun Kang for RFA.

“We want a meeting with Vice President Harris so we can talk to her to get a commitment for an arms embargo and a ceasefire.” That’s the demand of “uncommitted” delegates to the upcoming Democratic National Convention, who have pledged to withhold support for the Democratic presidential nominee over the Biden administration’s backing of Israel’s ongoing attack on the Gaza Strip. We’re joined by Asma Mohammed, a DNC-bound uncommitted delegate with Uncommitted Minnesota. She shares how pro-Palestine activism has shaped the 2024 presidential race, including Kamala Harris’s decision to tap Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate over Pennsylvania’s Josh Shapiro, who recently likened pro-Palestine protesters to the KKK. Walz has also been “pretty clear in his support for Israel” but, unlike Shapiro and other politicians, has additionally demonstrated a “willingness to learn and to move,” says Mohammed, a Minnesota resident. Overall, she says, the choice of Walz has renewed hope for many in the uncommitted movement as “a reminder that Kamala Harris is different” than President Biden and may be more receptive to restraining Israel if elected.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

“Evan and Alsu have been apart from their families for far too long,” said CPJ CEO Jodie Ginsberg. “They were detained and sentenced on spurious charges intended to punish them for their journalism and stifle independent reporting. Their reported release is welcome – but it does not change the fact that Russia continues to suppress a free press. Moscow needs to release all jailed journalists and end its campaign of using in absentia arrest warrants and sentences against exiled Russian journalists.”

Gershkovich and Kurmasheva were sentenced on July 19 to 16 years and 6½ years in prison respectively. Gershkovich, a U.S. citizen, spent 16 months in detention before being convicted on charges of espionage; Kurmasheva, a dual U.S.-Russian citizen, was held for more than nine months before she was convicted on charges of spreading “fake” news about the Russian army.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Arlene Getz/CPJ Editorial Director.

Vice President Kamala Harris has the backing of enough Democratic delegates to secure the party’s presidential nomination, with Democrats planning to hold a virtual roll call in the coming days to formalize her place atop the ticket ahead of the Democratic National Convention in August. The Democratic Party has quickly coalesced around Harris following President Joe Biden’s stunning decision Sunday to drop his reelection bid, but questions remain about whether she will significantly alter Middle East policy. The “uncommitted” movement of voters seeking to pressure Democrats to stop U.S. support for Israel’s war on Gaza “breathed a sigh of relief” when Biden dropped out, says Democratic strategist Waleed Shahid, an adviser to the movement, and activists are hopeful for Harris to take a new approach. Shahid adds that the Democratic Party cannot cast itself as a champion of democracy standing against far-right authoritarianism while continuing to arm the extremist Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu, saying it “makes a mockery of our party’s claim to be fighting on the right side of history.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

CPJ has reported on allegations linking Richemond to the murder of Haitian radio journalist Garry Tesse in October 2022. In the June 27 correspondence placing Richemond on leave, Hercule notes that the decision came after “various complaints” against the prosecutor and was done to “guarantee the impartiality of the investigation that will be conducted by a commission designated for this purpose.”

“We are glad that Haiti’s government has placed on leave and plans to investigate Les Cayes prosecutor Ronald Richemond, who has failed to conduct a thorough and fair investigation into the killing of Haitian radio reporter Garry Tesse,” said CPJ U.S., Canada, and Caribbean Program Coordinator Katherine Jacobsen. “This action is a positive sign that the Haitian government plans to take seriously the killing of journalists and end the country’s cycle of impunity.”

Tesse, who was 39 when he was killed, was a vocal critic of political and judicial corruption on his midday radio show, “Gran Lakou” (Creole for “Big Yard”), on Radio Lebon FM. His murder—and the failure to prosecute his killers—is an example of impunity in Haiti, which was listed in CPJ’s 2023 Global Impunity Index as one of the countries where the murderers of journalists are most likely to go free. 

The investigation announcement comes after a lengthy campaign by the Haitian group SOS Journalists, which has repeatedly denounced Richemond’s handling of the case.

In a statement reviewed by CPJ, SOS Journalists called the decision to remove Richemond “an important milestone,” adding that the new government must prioritize Tesse’s case and those of other killed journalists to “kick off the much-needed war” against impunity and corruption.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

“We are pleased with the acquittal of journalist Sezgin Kartal, but let us not forget that the case against him was built on next to no evidence and should not have existed in the first place, let alone cost the journalist five months of his life in jail,” said Özgür Öğret, CPJ’s Turkey representative. “Authorities should not appeal the acquittal and ensure that members of the media are not prosecuted or so easily imprisoned without concrete evidence of wrongdoing.”

Authorities arrested Kartal in January 2023, and raided his home on the basis of his alleged resemblance to a man in a 2014 photograph of members of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which Turkey recognizes as a terrorist organization. He spent more than five months behind bars before being released pending trial.

Kartal is a freelance journalist who covers Alevi issues, human rights, corruption, and labor issues and hosts a news show for the independent outlet Özgün TV.

CPJ attended Tuesday’s trial at the 22nd Istanbul Court of Serious Crimes. Kartal, who wasn’t present, was represented by his lawyers, who emphasized the lack of evidence against their client in closing arguments.

The indictment said the journalist met with alleged terrorists in Syria on September 24, 2014, pointing to a three-hour window in Kartal’s phone records, during which his cellphone did not receive any signal from Turkish towers, according to CPJ’s review of the document.

Kartal’s lawyer, Oya Meriç Eyüpoğlu, said the journalist was in the Suruç district in Şanlıurfa Province at Turkey’s southeastern border with Syria on that date, covering the ongoing refugee crisis. However, Eyüpoğlu said there is no evidence or chance that Kartal could have illegally crossed to Syria, had his photograph taken with a group of armed men, and returned to Turkey within three hours without being noticed by Turkish border guards.

Eyüpoğlu cited a forensic report that determined the photograph was taken during the daytime at 1:13 p.m., while the three-hour window that Kartal’s phone was off was from 8-11 p.m. that night.

Berfin Karaşah, Kartal’s other lawyer, argued that even if her client was the man in the picture, that would provide grounds for charges regarding illegal arms and violating border security, not terrorist organization membership.

CPJ emailed the Istanbul chief prosecutor’s office for comment but did not immediately receive any reply.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

“Julian Assange faced a prosecution that had grave implications for journalists and press freedom worldwide,” said CPJ CEO Jodie Ginsberg. “While we welcome the end of his detention, the U.S.’s pursuit of Assange has set a harmful legal precedent by opening the way for journalists to be tried under the Espionage Act if they receive classified material from whistleblowers. This should never have been the case.”

According to news reports, Assange is expected to plead guilty to an Espionage Act charge of conspiring to unlawfully obtain and disseminate classified national defense information. 

Assange is expected to return to his native Australia once the plea deal is finalized in federal court in the Mariana Islands, a U.S. commonwealth in the Western Pacific. 

Assange was indicted on 17 counts under the Espionage Act and one count under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act in relation to WikiLeaks publication of classified material, including the Iraq War logs. If convicted under these charges, he would have faced up to 175 years in prison. 

CPJ has long opposed U.S. attempts to prosecute Assange and campaigned for his release jointly with other organizations.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Arlene Getz/CPJ Editorial Director.

With the apology, issued on Monday in Oaxaca’s state capital of Oaxaca de Juárez, both authorities acknowledged “errors and omissions” made by public officials after Sánchez entered into a federally sanctioned protection program, which created circumstances that increased risks to his life.

“We welcome that the Mexican authorities apologized to Gustavo Sánchez’s family and acknowledged that his death could have been prevented had the state acted decisively and provided him with adequate protection, as he had been promised,” said Jan-Albert Hootsen, CPJ’s Mexico representative. “An apology, however, can only be the first step in a process that must lead to not only appropriate reparation of damages to Gustavo Sánchez’s family, but also the sweeping changes necessary to make the state of Oaxaca and Mexico safer for journalists. Never again must the Mexican state be complicit in a journalist’s death, whether it be the perpetrator or by omission.”

Sánchez, a crime and politics reporter, was enrolled in the protection program after surviving an attempt on his life in July 2020, when unidentified gunmen shot him near Morro Mazatán, according to news reports and video that Sánchez recorded at the time. 

The public apology was issued in a solemn ceremony in the state governmental palace in Oaxaca de Juárez at noon on Monday, with Sánchez’s widow Marilú Zarate, state and federal officials, journalists and representatives of press freedom groups, including CPJ, in attendance. It took place three years to the day after Sánchez, a reporter in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec region in southern Oaxaca, was shot by unidentified attackers in his home town of Morro Mazatán.

The legal counsel to Oaxaca Governor Salomón Jara acknowledged that the state had acted slowly to provide Sánchez with police protection, even though this has been agreed upon with the Federal Mechanism for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders and Journalists, and that state authorities had “minimized” threats against his life.

Tobyanne Ledesma, the head of the Federal Mechanism, which is overseen by the federal government, acknowledged that her institution had also made errors in coordinating safety measures for Sánchez with the Oaxaca state government. She announced a number of steps her institution had taken to prevent the same from happening again, including improved risk evaluation methodologies.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

The 36^th Ankara Court of Serious Crimes on Tuesday, June 11, sentenced seven men to nine years in prison each on charges of causing “intentional injury” and making threats, according to a report by 12 Punto, a news website known for its critical coverage of the government, and court documents reviewed by CPJ. Demirağ will appeal the verdict in an effort to have the victims tried on attempted murder charges.

“The sentencing of seven men who brutally beat Turkish journalist Yavuz Selim Demirağ in 2019 is a positive step on the path to end Turkey’s culture of impunity for violence against journalists,” said Özgür Öğret, CPJ’s Turkey representative. “However, Turkish authorities should heed Demirağ’s appeal of the verdict and take concrete, swift action to ensure journalists in Turkey feel safe from similar assaults and threats.”

Demirağ was beaten by at least six men with baseball bats outside his home in an attack that left him hospitalized exactly five years, one month, and one day before the sentencing, Demirağ told CPJ by phone, adding that the trial began 3.5 years after the incident. The journalist told CPJ he believes his attackers were instigated to assault him due to his political commentary.

The sentences had increased time because the defendants acted as a group and told the court they regretted their actions, according to the 12 Punto report and court documents. The defendants have maintained that the attack was not in connection to Demirağ’s journalism but was instead caused by a traffic disagreement.

None of the defendants were immediately arrested after the verdict pending an appeal, Demirağ told CPJ, adding that one is already in prison and a second is expected to be arrested for a delayed sentence, both from unrelated trials.

Demirağ told CPJ that he hoped the verdict in his trial and the May 2024 sentencing of seven people involved in a raid on a broadcast studio would be a “deterrent” for future attacks against the media in Turkey. “Despite everything, this is a positive development against impunity,” Demirağ said.

In April 2022, at least 50 people raided the Deniz Postası’s broadcast studio, during which attackers beat journalist Azim Deniz and his guest.

CPJ emailed the law firm representing the defendants and the chief prosecutor’s office in Ankara for comment but did not receive any reply.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

“We welcome the Dutch court’s conviction of three perpetrators for the murder of crime reporter Peter de Vries in 2021,” Attila Mong, CPJ’s Europe representative in Berlin, said on Thursday. “While the verdict is an important step towards ending impunity in this case, Dutch authorities should keep up their efforts to ensure real justice is achieved by identifying those who ordered the murder and pursuing their prosecution.”

On June 12, a court in the capital Amsterdam sentenced three men for their involvement in the shooting of de Vries — shooter Delano G. and getaway driver Kamil E. were each given 28 years in prison, while the organizer of the attack, Krystian M., received a sentence of more than 26 years. Full names of suspects were not released to comply with Dutch privacy regulations.

Three other unidentified men were convicted of complicity in the murder, receiving sentences ranging from 10 to 14 years.

It was unclear at the time of publication whether the convicted men would appeal the verdict.

De Vries was gunned down on July 6, 2021, outside a television studio in Amsterdam, where he had just finished appearing on a talk show, and died nine days later in the hospital. Authorities believe he was targeted for his role as an adviser and spokesperson for a witness in the trial of a drug kingpin rather than for his reporting. The witness’s brother and lawyer were both murdered.

CPJ’s emails requesting comment from the Dutch Public Prosecution Service and the de Vries family did not receive any replies.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

“The ICC’s application for arrest warrants for crimes against humanity in Israel and Palestine recognizes atrocities committed against civilians,” said CPJ CEO Jodie Ginsberg. “The civilian deaths include an unprecedented number of journalists killed since October 7. The ICC’s action is a promise for an end to the impunity that has historically plagued the killing and persecution of those who write the first draft of history.”  

Since the start of the war on October 7, 2023, CPJ has documented an unprecedented number of journalists killed, the vast majority of them killed by Israel in Gaza. As of May 20, 2024, at least 105 journalists have been killed: 100 Palestinian, two Israeli, and three Lebanese, according to CPJ research. Journalists are civilians according to international humanitarian law. The conflict claimed the lives of more journalists in three months than have ever been killed in a single country over an entire year.

CPJ research and multiple investigations show that at least three cases of journalists killed by Israel involved deliberate targeting; therefore these cases should be expedited for investigation. Another 10 cases may also involve deliberate targeting, which would constitute war crimes. CPJ encourages the ongoing ICC investigations to probe these killings and for Israel to grant investigators unrestricted access to Gaza. The denial of access to investigators, alongside the near-total ban on international journalists in Gaza, are obstacles that must be overcome.

CPJ is pursuing and supporting every possible path for accountability in the cases of violations against journalists. Prior to the war, CPJ exposed a disturbing pattern of Israeli actions, with a May 2023 report showing that in the 20 killings of journalists by the Israel Defense Forces over 22 years, no one had ever been charged or held to account.

CPJ recently filed an urgent appeal with the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention challenging the persecution of Palestinian journalists detained by Israel utilizing administrative detention under abusive conditions that have been described as torture. U.N. experts have previously called on Israel to discontinue the practice of administrative detention, given the likely violation of Articles 76 and 78 of the Geneva Conventions. CPJ is seeking to make additional filings in collaboration with the families of other jailed journalists.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

“We are heartened that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange will be allowed to appeal his extradition to the United States,” said CPJ President Jodie Ginsberg, in New York. “Assange’s prosecution in the United States would have disastrous implications for press freedom. It is time for the United States Department of Justice to drop its harmful charges against Assange.”

If extradited and convicted in the U.S., Assange’s lawyers have said that he faces up to 175 years in prison under the Espionage Act and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, although U.S. prosecutors have said the sentence would be much shorter.

Last week, CPJ and partners sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland urging the Justice Department to drop charges against the Wikileaks founder.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

At least 50 people raided the studio, led by suspected members of a local branch of the Turkish nationalist group Ülkü Ocakları (Gray Wolves), according to reports.

On May 10, the 1^st Kayseri High Criminal Court. sentenced seven defendants involved in the incident to 11 years and 4 months in prison each on numerous charges, including “causing simple bodily harm” and “depriving someone from his freedom by force”, according to news reports. All defendants remained free pending appeal, Deniz told CPJ via phone.  

“The sentencing of some of the perpetrators of the raid on Deniz Postası’s broadcast studio is a welcome step in the right direction to fight violence impunity against Turkey’s media,” said Özgür Öğret, CPJ’s Turkey representative. “Turkish authorities should continue investigating the attack to identify and hold all those involved to account and ensure that members of the media are safe from such attacks.”

Deniz told CPJ that several other people allegedly involved in the attack were not charged by authorities, and he is considering appealing the verdict.

Deniz and his lawyers also said they believe that the sentences could have been higher. The court acquitted the defendants of the charge of “violating the right to the freedom of communication,” which carries up to 3 years in prison, because the attack happened minutes before the beginning of the broadcast instead of during it, Deniz said. He also noted that the defendants also received reduced sentences for good behavior in court. 

But he also welcomed the ruling as a warning to others who would attack media offices. “The perception of impunity was broken, at the very least,” he said. 

CPJ sent questions about the case to a lawyer for the defendants over messaging app but did not receive any reply by publication. CPJ also emailed the Chief Prosecutor’s Office in Kayseri for comment but didn’t receive a reply.

In a separate incident on February 5, 2024, Deniz was shot near his home in the central city of Kayseri. The shooter, who was quickly apprehended by the police, claimed that he acted on his own accord, but Deniz said that he believes there was an instigator in the attack.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

Borrell, the high representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, told the European Parliament that the European External Action Service was “appalled” by the “unprecedented” number of journalists and media workers killed in the six months of war. “Journalists are civilians and their voices are crucial to keeping disinformation at bay and citizens being informed,” Borrell said during a debate on the EU’s response to the Israeli Defense Forces’ killing of humanitarian aid workers, journalists, and other civilians in Gaza.

Borrell also expressed concern about newly adopted legislation allowing Israeli authorities to prevent foreign media networks from operating in Israel. “This, coupled with the lack of access to foreign media to Gaza, raises further concerns about what we know about what is going [on] there,” he said.

Read the full text of the debate here and a January letter to Borrell from CPJ and other partner groups here.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Arlene Getz/CPJ Editorial Director.

On April 3, Ramaphosa signed the Judicial Matters Amendment Act (2023), which includes a provision repealing “the common law relating to the crime of defamation,” according to news reports and a statement by the president’s office.  The South African parliament forwarded the bill to Ramaphosa for signature after approving it in December last year.

South Africa becomes the latest country in southern Africa to decriminalize defamation, following its neighbors Zimbabwe (2016)  and Lesotho (2018). Other countries in the Southern Africa Development Community regional bloc which continue to use criminal defamation against journalists include Angola and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, according to CPJ research.

“The long-awaited repeal of the crime of defamation in South Africa is an important victory for press freedom and hopefully will reverberate positively across other parts of the region, such as Angola and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where defamation continues to be used to criminalize  journalism,” said Angela Quintal, head of CPJ’s Africa program, in New York. “South African authorities should also move swiftly to reform other laws, as well as draft legislation that threaten, or have the potential to undermine media freedom and the public’s right to information.”

South Africa’s parliament voted to abolish the common law crime of defamation, which is based on Roman Dutch Law and court precedents,  on December 6, 2023 after decades of advocacy by the press,  media lawyers, and civil society activists  who argued  that there were other remedies that did not involve prosecution or jail, such as civil defamation lawsuits for aggrieved parties who believed their reputations were impugned. 

The  2013 conviction of newspaper journalist Cecil Motsepe was the most recent case in which a South African journalist was found guilty of criminal defamation, according to a guide on South African media law by the Thomson Reuters Foundation, a philanthropic body that works to advance press freedom. The conviction was overturned on appeal in 2014, although the court  ruled that criminal defamation remained constitutional. CPJ was among a group of organizations that filed an amicus brief in support of Motsepe, arguing for the decriminalization of defamation in South Africa.

Despite the repeal of criminal defamation, several problematic laws remain, including the Cybercrimes Act, according to press freedom advocates. In a 2022 Universal Periodic Review submission, CPJ and four other partner organizations urged South African authorities to amend the Cybercrimes Act, which lacks public interest overrides for journalists and could affect the ability to publish leaked information. The organizations also called for reform of the Protected Disclosures Act in order to strengthen protection for whistleblowers and the Prevention and Combating of Hate Crimes and Hate Speech Bill, which criminalizes speech on broad terms and which commentators fear could undermine public debate. That bill is pending presidential approval.

Justice Deputy Minister John Jeffery told CPJ by phone that the lack of a public interest override was not raised during public submissions about the proposed Cybercrimes Act. The justice department was not averse to making changes to draft laws if threats to press freedom arose, and it had done so previously, even when journalists had raised concerns at the eleventh hour.

Civil society groups also raised concerns about the General Intelligence Laws Amendment Bill currently before Parliament arguing in December last year that it posed a threat to democracy. When the bill was first tabled in December last year, critics feared that  the power given to state security to vet individuals who accessed national key points, including  the public broadcaster, SABC, was a threat to journalists’ independence. Although several amendments were subsequently made, free expression groups remain concerned that SABC journalists could still be targeted on the pretext that the intelligence services were establishing their trustworthiness. The National Assembly approved the revised bill last week, and it is now before the National Council of Provinces for processing.

State Security Agency spokesperson Sipho Mbhele did not respond to CPJ’s requests by messaging PP and telephone calls for comment.

Caroline James, the AmaBhungane Centre for Investigative Journalism’s  advocacy coordinator, told CPJ by phone there were also other laws and draft legislation that indirectly affect media freedom, contributing to a lack of transparency and restricting access to information for journalists and the public. These include the Protection of Personal Information Act and Public Procurement Bill.

Quintal is a non-executive board member of amaBhungane.

Since the advent of democracy in 1994, South African courts have generally  acted as a  bulwark against threats to press freedom, including  striking down efforts to legally gag the media or to judicially harass journalists.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

According to the court’s decision, the U.S. government has three weeks to give assurances that Assange will be able to rely on First Amendment rights of the U.S. Constitution and to confirm whether he would be subjected to the death penalty. If the U.S. fails to provide proper assurances, Assange will be granted permission to appeal his extradition. 

The next hearing is scheduled for May 20. The U.S. assurances must be filed by April 16, according to the court documents.

“We are glad that the extradition of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to the United States will be delayed,” said CPJ CEO Jodie Ginsberg, in New York. “His prosecution in the U.S. under the Espionage Act would have disastrous implications for press freedom. It is time that the U.S. Justice Department put an end to all these court proceedings and dropped its dogged pursuit of the WikiLeaks founder.”

In 2019, U.S. prosecutors indicted Assange on 17 criminal charges under the Espionage Act and a separate charge under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) in connection to WikiLeaks’ publication of thousands of leaked military and diplomatic documents. Assange’s lawyers have said that Assange faces up to 175 years in prison although U.S. prosecutors have said the sentence would be much shorter.

In 2021, the U.K. High Court ruled that Assange should be extradited, and that decision was approved by the government in June 2022.

Assange’s legal team separately submitted an appeal to the European Court of Human Rights in December 2022 and launched a case against Britain at the ECHR, seeking to stave off his extradition to the U.S. should he exhaust his appeals in U.K. courts.

The Wall Street Journal reported on March 20 that the Justice Department is considering whether to allow a plea deal for Assange, in which the Wikileaks founder would plead guilty to a reduced charge of mishandling classified information. However, the article noted, the discussions remain in flux.

Assange has been held in the U.K.’s Belmarsh prison since Ecuadoran officials revoked his asylum status in their London embassy, allowing British police in to arrest him on April 11, 2019.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

After more than six months in jail, Bujakera was released from prison on Tuesday, Ndikulu Yana and Charles Mushizi, two of Bujakera’s lawyers, told CPJ via messaging app. The lawyers said they planned to appeal the conviction and sentencing.

“While it is good news that journalist Stanis Bujakera is no longer behind bars, his conviction and sentencing is alarming because it seeks to justify his months in detention and sends a frightening message to the broader media community. His case has been a heavy blow to press freedom in the DRC,” said Angela Quintal, head of CPJ’s Africa program. “DRC authorities should take urgent steps to improve press freedom conditions, including releasing and dropping the case against Blaise Mabala, who has been jailed since December 2023, and reforming the country’s laws to ensure journalism is not criminalized.”

Bujakera is a Congolese citizen and a permanent U.S. resident. He worked as a correspondent for privately owned Jeune Afrique and Reuters news agency, and was also deputy director of publication for the DRC-based news website Actualite.cd.

DRC police arrested Bujakera in Kinshasa, the DRC’s capital, on September 8, 2023, and authorities charged him with spreading falsehoods, forgery, use of forged documents, and distributing false documents under the combined application of the DRC’s penal code and a new digital code and press law. The charges relate to an August 31 report about the military intelligence’s possible involvement in the murder of an opposition politician by Jeune Afrique, which the outlet said Bujakera did not write.

During a hearing on March 8, the report of a technical expert commissioned by the court suggested that Bujakera was not the principal source of a document cited in Jeune Afrique’s article that the DRC intelligence service has said was false. During the same hearing, the public prosecutor requested that Bujakera be sentenced to 20 years in prison and fined 1 million Congolese francs ($361). But the judge on Monday sentenced him to six months in prison, which he had already served, and that fine, which Yana told CPJ had been paid before his release.

In the hours before Bujakera’s release, the prosecutor submitted and then withdrew an appeal of the sentencing, Yana said. In a separate case, Malaba, coordinator of the privately owned radio Même moral FM and correspondent for the privately owned news site okapinews.net, who was arrested on December 29, is being held in pre-trial detention in Makala central prison in Kinshasa. He is accused of defamation and contempt against Rita Bola, governor of Maï Ndombe province, over an October broadcast in which listeners called in and criticized the politician.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Arlene Getz/CPJ Editorial Director.

PRISTINA -- Kosovar Prime Minister Albin Kurti says he will not suspend a move by the central bank to ban the circulation of the Serbian dinar in parts of the country with Serbian majorities but will accept the forming of an Association of Serb-Majority Municipalities once Belgrade agrees to sign a basic agreement on bilateral relations.

The basic agreement for the normalization of relations with Serbia was reached in February 2023, and includes the formation of the association, which is expected to more adequately represent predominantly ethnic Serb areas in Kosovo.

Kosovo is not a member of the European Union or its common currency area, the eurozone, but it unilaterally adopted the euro in 2002 to help bring monetary stability and to simplify and reduce transaction costs inside and outside the country.

Serbia, which has never acknowledged its former province's 2008 declaration of independence, still pays many ethnic Serbs at institutions in Serb-dominated parts of Kosovo in dinars. Many also hold their pensions and get child allowances in dinars.

"Regarding the Serbian-dinar-versus-euro issue, it is Kosovo's central bank that decides and they have already decided on December 27 last year," Kurti told RFE/RL's Balkan Service in an interview on March 19, arguing that the ban, which came into force on February 1, was meant to fight financial crime and terrorism.

"We have, thanks to them, a new regulation that is going to enhance the integrity of the financial system to fight illicit activities financing terrorism," Kurti said in Pristina on the same day top Serbian and Kosovar negotiators were holding bilateral meeting in Brussels with EU special envoy Miroslav Lajcak.

The Serbian dinar ban was reported to be high on the agenda, although no joint trilateral meeting has been confirmed so far.

The ban ratcheted up already high tensions between Serbia and Kosovo and threatened to scupper efforts by Washington and Brussels to get the dialogue between Pristina and Belgrade back on track.

"The dinar is not banned in Kosovo, but the euro is the only means of payment," Kurti told RFE/RL, echoing the central bank's line that the ban doesn’t stop anyone from accepting money from any country, it just means the money is converted into euros.

Still, the conversion adds a layer of cost and complication to the daily lives of ethnic Serbs still tied to the dinar.

"We cannot allow bagfuls of dinars in cash to enter our country. (It can happen) only through official financial channels with full transparency, who sends money to whom and for what purpose," Kurti said, adding that any disparities on the ground would have time to be smoothed out over the three-month transition period.

"Serbia can send dinars, we will exchange them into euros and Serbs in Kosovo can benefit from that financial aid," Kurti added.

However, the U.S. envoy to the Western Balkans last week warned that the ban had caused problems for some citizens in the region and challenges for the U.S.-Kosovo relationship.

Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Gabriel Escobar told RFE/RL on March 14 that Kosovo's controversial decision on the dinar was "an issue that we need to address immediately."

Escobar said that the issue had presented challenges in the bilateral relationship, although Washington remains Kosovo's most reliable ally.

The U.S. envoy also said that his proposals for resolving the issue had been rejected by Kurti during their meeting.

"It's not me as prime minister to decide about this thing," Kurti told RFE/RL when asked about why he refused Escobar's solutions.

"We're a democracy where powers and duties are separated. Therefore, I can only help the central bank to affect a smooth transition," Kurti said, declining to elaborate on Escobar's proposals.

"Let those who made the proposals speak," he added, reiterating that he cannot cancel the decision of an independent institution.

"No suspension will come out of talking to me, because the bank is an independent institution," he said, adding that its governor reports only to parliament, not the government.

Asked whether he would at least advise the bank to extend the transition period, Kurti replied: "I cannot also advise the central bank of Kosovo. The governor has his own advisers."

Referring to the basic agreement, Kurti said it was Belgrade that was hampering its implementation.

"I want the normalization of relations and I think that the signing of the basic agreement and its implementation annex can certainly cancel previous violations on one hand and, on the other hand can bring legal certainty for the future.

"The problem is that eight out of 11 articles of the basic agreement have been violated by Belgrade," Kurti said, mentioning a letter sent by Serbian Prime Minister Ana Brnabic to the European Union, in which, according to him, her government said they were withdrawing their pledge to the deal "because they will never recognize independence of Kosovo, never accept Kosovo's membership in the United Nations, and likewise they are not going to respect the territorial integrity of our country."

Referring to the forming of the Association of Serb-Majority Municipalities, which is mentioned in Article 7 of the basic agreement, Kurti reiterated his government's statement from October 27, which blamed Serbia for refusing to sign the document endorsed by the leaders of France, Italy, and Germany.

"What more can I do? We are leaders who are supposed to turn the text that we have agreed upon into signed agreements. Obviously, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic initially said yes to the agreement without intending to sign it and then regretted saying yes, as Mrs. Brnabic's letter explained," Kurti said.

"I believe that whoever mentions an association of Serbian-majority municipalities outside the basic agreement or before it serving Serbia's quest to turn Kosovo into Bosnia," he said, adding that such an association has to be established withing the framework of the Kosovar Constitution.

"In Brussels I said one cannot serve coffee without a cup. If you ask for coffee without a cup, I will show you an empty cup. The cup is the Republic of Kosovo. What is the legal framework of the association? Is it the constitution of the Republic of Kosova or that of Serbia? If I'm there, it's the constitution of the Republic of Kosovo. No coffee without a cup.

"This is crucial to understand. Belgrade wants to put the cart before the horses. It's not possible. There will be no movement as we have seen since February and March last year," he said, adding that he was ready to go to Brussels again together with Vucic.

Referring to the frustration voiced by the United States and the European Union because of the lack of progress toward the Serbian dinar and the municipalities association, Kurti said that while they are indispensable partners, sometimes differences may arise.

"I consider United States an indispensable ally, friend, and partner. But this does not mean that we have an identical stance toward official Belgrade. As the prime minister of Kosovo, I cannot regard Belgrade through the eyes of the State Department...they do not see Belgrade as I see them. We do not have an identical stance. We have a different experience and history," Kurti said.

This content originally appeared on News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.

“Alongside Kyrgyzstan’s ongoing media crackdown, jailing of journalists, and Russian-inspired ‘foreign agents’ bill, the vague and repressive mass media bill could have been the nail in the coffin for Kyrgyzstan as a regional beacon for the free press. It is only right that it be retracted,” Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator, in New York, said on Wednesday. “Kyrgyz authorities must now engage in meaningful consultation with the media and press freedom advocates to ensure that any new version of the bill allays journalists’ fears that it would be used to silence critical voices.”

Japarov’s spokesperson Askat Alagozov said in a statement that the president ordered the bill withdrawn following a meeting with media representatives and that  the draft would be revised, without providing further details.

The bill was proposed in May and entered parliament in December. Journalists and rights advocates feared that provisions requiring registration of internet news websites and expanding authorities’ powers to suspend and shutter press organizations by court order would make it easier for authorities to stifle critical media.

The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe criticized the draft bill and called on the Kyrgyz authorities to repeal it.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

“I am proud to welcome three eminent leaders with trailblazing careers in journalism, strategic litigation, and freedom of expression as new board members,” said CPJ Chair Jacob Weisberg. “Their experience and unwavering commitment to press freedom and journalist safety worldwide will prove to be a tremendous asset to CPJ and, in turn, the journalists we serve.”

Caoilfhionn Gallagher KC is a barrister, human rights lawyer, and international expert in media freedom who has acted in many landmark cases before the European Court of Human Rights, United Nations human rights mechanisms, and international tribunals. She is a Commissioner of the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission and Ireland’s Special Rapporteur on Child Protection. Gallagher KC’s caseload includes leading the international legal teams for the bereaved family of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia and publisher Jimmy Lai, imprisoned in Hong Kong.

Graciela Mochkofsky is the dean of CUNY’s Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism. Under Mochkofsky’s leadership, the Newmark J-School trained bilingual journalists who are working in newsrooms across the country. She has continued her journalistic work as a writer for The Paris Review, The Atlantic, and The New Yorker, where she produces a monthly column on Latinx culture and politics.

Julie Owono is the executive director of Internet Sans Frontières and the founder of the Content Policy & Society Lab, an organization first incubated at Stanford University that focuses on human rights-based internet content policies. She is also one of the inaugural members of the Meta Oversight Board and a researcher affiliated with the Berkman Klein Center at Harvard University.

CPJ recognizes the long-standing contributions of Jane Kramer, Matt Murray, Clarence Page, Norman Pearlstine, and Alan Rusbridger, all of whom departed their role as directors in February. Their many years of service coincided with CPJ’s increased prominence as attacks on the press continue to proliferate worldwide. 

CPJ’s board of directors is composed of journalists, media executives, and leaders from related professions in the United States and around the world.

About the Committee to Protect Journalists

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is an independent, nonprofit organization that promotes press freedom worldwide. CPJ defends the rights of journalists to report the news safely and without fear of reprisal.

More information about CPJ’s board of directors can be found here.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

In a February 14 decision, a Kwara State High Court dismissed a February 2023 magistrate judgment convicting Yushau, publisher of the privately owned website News Digest, and freelance reporter Olufemi of criminal defamation and conspiracy. The high court ruled that the findings of the magistrate court did not sufficiently prove conspiracy and defamation offenses, and that the original judgment was premised on a police “investigation report which came out before the arrest” of the journalists, according to the decision.

“The acquittal of Nigerian journalists Gidado Yushau and Alfred Olufemi is welcome, but the two should have never been tracked down using telecom surveillance, charged, or convicted for their reporting,” said Angela Quintal, head of CPJ’s Africa program, from New York. “Lawmakers in Nigeria must reform their country’s laws to ensure that acts of journalism are never criminalized.” 

Yushau and Olufemi’s 2023 convictions were related to a 2018 report about the alleged use of cannabis by employees at a rice processing facility and followed a complaint by a company representative of Hillcrest Agro-Allied Industries, which owns the facility.

Police arrested and charged the journalists in 2019, leveraging access to call data and briefly detaining a News Digest web developer and at least two other journalists in their efforts to locate Yushau and Olufemi.

Yushau told CPJ that while the appeal court decision had brought some relief, he and Olufemi continue to face a civil lawsuit in a Kwara State high court over the same 2018 report, in which Hillcrest Agro-Allied Industries is seeking 500 million naira (over US$300,000) in damages.

“If we lose it will definitely take us out of work,” Yushau said of the civil suit. Their next court date is scheduled for April 30, according to the journalists’ lawyer, Ahamad Sa’eed Ibrahim-Gambari.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

A Russian metals tycoon's assets in a company that produces a key component in making steel have reportedly been nationalized days after President Vladimir Putin criticized his management of his company.

Yury Antipov, 69, the owner of Russia’s largest ferroalloy company, was also questioned by investigators in Chelyabinsk, the Urals industrial city where his company is based, and released on February 26, according to local media.

Earlier in the day, the government seized his shares in Kompaniya Etalon, a holding company for three metals plants that reportedly produce as much as 90 percent of Russia’s ferroalloy, a resource critical for steelmaking.

Russia’s Prosecutor-General Office filed a lawsuit on February 5 to seize Etalon, claiming the underlying Soviet-era metals assets were illegally privatized in the 1990s. It also said the strategic company was partially owned by entities in “unfriendly” countries.

While campaigning for a presidential vote next month, Putin criticized Antipov on February 16 without naming him during a visit to Chelyabinsk, whose working-class residents are typical of the president’s electoral base.

Putin told the regional governor that the Chelyabinsk Electrometallurgical Plant, the largest of Etalon’s five metals factories, had failed to reduce dangerous emissions as agreed in 2019 and the asset would be taken over even though the court had yet to hear the case on privatization.

“I think that all the property should be transferred to state ownership and part of the plant -- [where there is ecologically] harmful production -- should be moved outside the city limits,” Putin told Governor Aleksei Teksler.

In a closed hearing, a Chelyabinsk court approved the transfer of Etalon’s assets to the state, a move potentially worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

Antipov ranked 170 on Forbes 2021 list of richest Russians with a net worth of $700 million.

The nationalization of a domestic company owned by a Russian citizen is the latest in a series of about two dozen by the state since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.

Prosecutors have based their cases on illegal privatization, foreign ownership, criminal activity, or a combination of the three. A rare-metals producer whose owner had been critical of the war effort was among the other assets seized. l

The seizures contradict Putin’s repeated promises in the nearly quarter century he has been in power that he would not review the controversial 1990s privatizations. In return, businessmen were expected to be loyal to the Kremlin and stay out of politics, experts say.

That unofficial social contract had more or less functioned up until the war. Now businessmen are also expected to contribute to the war effort and support the national economy amid sweeping Western sanctions, experts say.

The current trend of state seizures has spooked Russian entrepreneurs and raised questions about whether that social contract is still valid.

U.S. Ties

Antipov began his business career in the 1990s selling nails, fertilizer, dried meats, and other goods. In 1996 he and his business partner plowed their profits into the purchase of the Chelyabinsk Electrometallurgical Plant and subsequently purchased four more metals plants in the ensuing years.

The plants sold some of their output in the United States, where the firm had a trading company.

Antipov received full control of the metals holding in 2020 when he split with his business partner. That year he put 25 percent of the company each in the names of his wife and two eldest sons, Sergei and Aleksei Antipov, according to Russian business registration records.

In 2022, the metal assets were transferred to the Etalon holding company, whose ownership was hidden. Ferroalloy prices surged in 2022 as the war triggered a spike in commodity prices.

A hit piece published by The Moscow Post in December -- six weeks before prosecutors launched the privatization case -- claimed Antipov paid himself a dividend of more than $300 million from 2021-2023 using a structure that avoids capital gains taxes. RFE/RL could not confirm that claim. The Moscow Post is a Russian-language online tabloid that regularly publishes compromising and scandalous stories.

According to public records, Antipov’s two sons own homes in the United States and may be U.S. citizens. Sergei Antipov founded the trading company around the year 2000 in the U.S. state of Indiana. If he and his brother together still own 50 percent of the company, prosecutors could potentially have grounds for seizure.

Russia has changed some laws regulating the purchase of large stakes in strategic assets since its invasion of Ukraine.

One is a 2008 law that requires foreign entities to receive state permission to buy large stakes in strategic assets. An exception had been made for foreign entities controlled by Russian citizens.

Under the change, a Russian citizen with dual citizenship or a residence permit in another country may be considered a “foreign” owner and must receive permission to own an asset.

Nationalization is among the punishments for failure to do so. Thus, if Antipov’s two sons are U.S. citizens or if they have U.S. residency permits, their combined 50 percent stake in the company could be seized.

This already happened to a Russian businessman from St. Petersburg. His business was determined to be strategic and seized after he received foreign residency.

This content originally appeared on News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.

“The case brought against Senegal at the ECOWAS court is an important effort to hold accountable those responsible for shutting down the internet in 2023,” said Angela Quintal, head of CPJ’s Africa program. “Senegal’s internet shutdown in early February 2024, following the postponement of the presidential election, showcased the continued need for action to curb such blunt censorship. The internet is crucial for journalists to work freely and safely, and for the public to access information.”

Media Defence, a human rights organization that provides legal support for journalists, and the Stanford University Law School’s Rule of Law Impact Lab filed a case before the ECOWAS court on January 31 challenging the Senegalese government’s shutdowns of the internet in the country during June, July, and August 2023, according to a press release published Tuesday by those groups. The plaintiffs in the case include Senegal-based human rights group AfricTivistes and local journalists Ayoba Faye and Moussa Ngom. Ngom also works as CPJ’s Francophone Africa Correspondent.

In June, July, and August 2023, the Senegalese government disrupted access to the internet and social media platforms amid protests over the arrest and prosecution of opposition leader Ousmane Sonko.

Senegalese President Macky Sall, on February 3, 2024, announced the postponement of the country’s presidential elections, originally scheduled for February 25. Over the next two days, amid protests and other press freedom violations, authorities blocked access to mobile internet. Mobile internet access was restored on February 7.

Similar blocks of access to social media platforms were reported in 2021.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

However, the ICSGP also recognizes that Israeli and U.S. government officials have made repeated official declarations in the past week making clear their plan to ignore the ICJ’s legally binding ruling and rejecting the Court’s process as illegitimate, and that the U.S. has been threatening world governments with sanctions and war—a promise it is making good on already by bombing Yemen—for opposing the ongoing genocide. The ICSGP also recognizes that numerous powerful state allies of the U.S. and Israel, including Germany and Canada, have already made clear their intent to back Israel against an ICJ finding of genocide. The dangerous rejection by the United States, Israel and their allies of this process—which was set up through the United Nations precisely to prevent genocide—undermines the legitimacy of that institution and in particular the U.N. Security Council, where the U.S. has long used its veto power as a tool to promote war and genocide. The ICSGP calls upon social movements to demand that world governments uphold international law and protect the integrity of the United Nations by ensuring that the ICJ’s provisional measures are immediately enforced, and to hold Israeli war criminals and their powerful U.S. accomplices accountable for genocide.

The ICSGP stands in full solidarity with its Palestinian coalition members, who have emphasized in their own statements today the need for governments and social movements around the world to double down in their efforts to bring the ongoing genocide in Gaza to an end. Dr. Luqa AbuFarah, North America Coordinator for the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee (BNC), an ICSGP member organization, states:

“It’s clear we have a moral obligation to take action and end our government’s complicity with Israel’s Gaza genocide. We must have the courage to speak out and take action to advance the struggle for justice. We must end US military funding to Israel which at $3.8 billion USD a year could instead provide more than 450,000 households with public housing for a year or pay for 41,490 elementary school teachers. I also hope that every person outraged with the blatant disregard for Palestinian life will join and escalate our BDS Campaigns and make sure companies know that complicity with Israeli apartheid and genocide is unacceptable. We must take action now more than ever!”

ICSGP, together with numerous legal and human rights organizations including coalition members The PAL Commission on War Crimes and The Global Legal Alliance for Palestine, held press conferences in New York and Chicago following the Court’s Order on the request for the indication of provisional measures this morning, expressing gratitude to South Africa for its steadfast support, and calling on all organizations and countries to support South Africa’s legal actions against the Israeli military campaign.

Lamis Deek, cofounder the PAL Commission on War Crimes and convener of the Global Legal Alliance for Palestine, states:

“This historic decision changes international and domestic approaches—military, legal, and political—to stopping the genocide in Palestine. This verdict profoundly reshapes the geopolitical and legal topography, regardless of whether Israel complies or not. Following the Court’s decision we must issue calls on state parties to the ICJ and the Genocide Convention as regards their compliance obligations, and address our legal colleagues and our communities regarding the next steps we think will be most critical on the heels of this decision.

The brutal Israeli genocide and torture in Gaza, alongside the targeted assassinations, destruction of civilian infrastructure including all of Gaza’s hospitals and universities, blocking of aid, and use of starvation and spread of disease as a war tactic, constitute a grotesque series of the highest war crimes. We commend the Court’s positive decision. The question now is how to deal with the anticipated US-Israeli obstruction of that decision.”

Monisha Rios, president of SOLI PR, an international network of Puerto Ricans focused on growing solidarity with the Puerto Rican struggle for independence and ICSGP member organization, states:

As Puerto Ricans directly involved in the struggle against U.S.-led settler colonial violence, land grabs and the ongoing neoliberal assault, we have a special obligation to stand in firm, unwavering solidarity with our Palestinian cousins. Not only does the Zionist entity’s genocidal regime in Palestine owe its existence as such to U.S. financial and political backing since its inception, Israel has also directly contributed with military technologies, weapons and police training to the violent repression of peoples fighting for self-determination against the U.S. and its puppet regimes around the world, and of Indigenous Peoples and descendants of enslaved African Peoples subject to structural apartheid within the continental United States. Israeli Zionists themselves have recognized the parallels between Palestine and Puerto Rico, for example with the Minister of Heritage—who publicly called for using a nuclear bomb in Gaza—recently calling for a “Puerto Rican” solution to Palestine. The South African Case at the World Court, and the Court’s decision this morning provide Puerto Ricans and colonized peoples around the world a unique opportunity—in recognizing our common struggle and joining together to fight against Zionist fascism, we have tremendous power to both stop the ongoing genocide against Palestinians, and to contribute to our own liberation by shifting the balance of global power away from the U.S. and toward the Global South.

The ICSGP calls upon the over 2,000 organizational signatories to its original letter, and to social movements everywhere, to hold the profiteers and promoters of the Zionist genocide to account through concrete actions of boycott, divestment, and sanctions; to mobilize to demand the immediate enforcement of the ICJ’s Order of Provisional Measures and denounce accomplices to the genocide; and to continue to pressure all state parties to the Genocide Convention to issue Declarations of Intervention in support of the South African case at the ICJ.

Previous ICSGP press statements are available from January 17, January 8 and January 3, 2024.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Black Alliance for Peace.

Hours after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) announced its preliminary ruling in a case brought by South Africa, ordering Israel to stop acts of genocide in Gaza, the United Nations Relief and Public Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) announced it had fired 12 of its 30,000 workers after the Israeli Foreign Ministry called for "an urgent investigation by UNRWA regarding the involvement of its employees in the terrorist events of 10/7."

"The Israeli authorities have provided UNRWA with information about the alleged involvement of several UNRWA employees in the horrific attacks on Israel on October 7," Philippe Lazzarini, commissioner-general of the agency, said in a statement.

Lazzarini said the agency was opening a thorough investigation into the allegations, while the U.S. State Department quickly released a statement saying it had "temporarily paused additional funding for UNRWA" while the investigation takes place.

As The New York Times reported Saturday, "it's not entirely clear" what Israel's precise allegations are, how the employees were allegedly involved in the attack on southern Israel, or "what kind of work they did or how senior they were" at UNRWA.

The agency is almost wholly funded by donations from U.N. member states. After the State Department announced its suspension of some of its funding, countries including Canada, the United Kingdom, Finland, Australia, and Italy said they were following suit.

Chris Doyle, director of the Council for Arab-British Understanding, toldSky News that the decision by several countries to slash funding for the UNRWA "on the basis of allegations, not proven claims," was "a disgrace."

"The rest of the world is looking at this—they are aghast quite frankly," said Doyle. "How has the U.S. reacted to these allegations against UNRWA? It suspended funding. How has the U.S. reacted to the International Court of Justice ruling that there are plausible grounds that Israel is committing genocide? Nothing. Did the U.S. say it would be suspending the sale of arms, the massive bombs that have been used in the Gaza Strip to destroy civilian infrastructure, as part of [what] might constitute genocide? Not a bit. Is it continuing? Yes."

UNRWA is one of the largest employers of Palestinians in Gaza—where nearly half of adults are unemployed—and operates schools, medical clinics, and shelters while administering housing assistance, emergency loans, and overseeing other operations.

Lazzarini said Saturday that the suspension of funding would "threaten our ongoing humanitarian work across the region including and especially in the Gaza Strip" and said it was "shocking" that countries would halt funding even as the workers in question were fired—particularly since Israel and other countries were long aware of all the employees working for UNRWA:

UNRWA shares the list of all its staff with host countries every year, including Israel. The Agency never received any concerns on specific staff members.

Meanwhile, an investigation by OIOS into the heinous allegations will establish the facts. Moreover, as I announced on 17 January, an independent review by external experts will help UNRWA strengthen its framework for the strict adherence of all staff to the humanitarian principles.

I urge countries who have suspended their funding to re-consider their decisions before UNRWA is forced to suspend its humanitarian response. The lives of people in Gaza depend on this support and so does regional stability."

Cutting funding to the agency is akin to accelerating "genocide by collective punishment, cutting desperately needed relief aid," said historian and former British ambassador Craig Murray.

Doyle wasn't alone in noticing the contrast between the U.S. responses to the ICJ and to Israel's allegations.

"It took [U.S. Secretary of State] Antony Blinken about three seconds to suspend UNRWA aid based on mere allegations that 12 employees [were] linked to Hamas' attack, but despite concrete evidence that the Israel Defense Forces has indiscriminately and deliberately massacred tens of thousands of Palestinians—plausibly a genocide, ICJ said—ZERO suspension of Israel military aid," said Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of Democracy for the Arab World Now.

Following the ICJ ruling, U.S. Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and Cori Bush (D-Mo.), who have led lawmakers in a call for the U.S. to demand a cease-fire since October, released a statement arguing the court's findings put "the U.S. government on notice for enabling violations of the Genocide Convention."

"The Biden administration must not only affirm the legitimacy of this ruling and facilitate an immediate cease-fire—it must comply with federal and international law by suspending military assistance to the Israeli government," said Tlaib and Bush.

Like Israeli officials, the Biden administration has dismissed the findings of the ICJ, with National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby saying Friday that the court did not find Israel "guilty" of genocide.

Journalist and rights advocate Daniel Denvir pointed out that hours after the ICJ said South Africa's claim that Israel is committing genocidal acts in Gaza is "plausible," the news was dwarfed at the Times by its coverage of the UNRWA allegations.

"Israel has killed 101 UNRWA workers in Gaza and has bombed its schools and camps. Guess what you get when you google UNRWA & Israel now?" said Al Jazeera's Sana Saeed.

Historian Remi Brulin noted that Israel has previously designated Palestinian civil rights organizations as terrorist groups "on wholly spurious grounds."

"None of this necessarily means that the specific allegations about these 12 UNRWA members are untrue," said Brulin. "But evidence needs to be provided. And it is quite remarkable that the U.S. could decide so quickly that cutting all funds to UNRWA was the correct, necessary measure here."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

Below is a statement by Chitra Kumar, the managing director for the Climate and Energy Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS).

“Assuming the news reports are accurate, it’s welcome news that the Biden administration is hitting pause on this massive LNG export terminal to fully evaluate its potential to damage the climate and environment. There’s no question that a proper accounting of these harms would make clear that this project—and others like it in the United States—are definitely not in the public interest. With the climate crisis rapidly worsening and given long-standing environmental injustices from the production and use of fossil fuels, the nation must chart a path toward a fast, fair phaseout of these polluting fuels and ramp up clean energy solutions.

“The science is unequivocal: nations will not be able to collectively limit the worst climate harms if the world’s largest emitting countries continue to build out huge, long-lived fossil fuel infrastructure. A sharp turn away from fossil fuels in this critical decade and beyond is paramount to meeting global climate goals and building a healthier, safer and more just world. Getting there will require the Biden administration and other world leaders to stop facilitating the expansion of fossil fuel infrastructure, and instead embrace and increase the use of proven clean energy solutions.

“The disingenuous and self-serving pushback from the fossil fuel industry in the wake of news reports about this possible action is an unambiguous indication that they will continue to prioritize dubious profits over the health and safety of fenceline and frontline communities and our global climate system.

“UCS calls on the administration to stand up to industry pressure and confirm they will, as reported, do a full evaluation of the harms of this project. Further, we urge them to heed the latest science and the resounding voice of the communities harmed most by environmental injustices and heat-trapping emissions from fossil fuels by rejecting the CP2 application.”

In addition to Kumar, UCS has the following experts on staff available for interviews on this topic:

• Dr. Rachel Cleetus, the policy director and lead economist for the Climate and Energy Program at UCS. She is based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Click here for her biography.
• Julie McNamara, the deputy policy director for the Climate and Energy Program at UCS. She is based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Click here for her biography.
• Laura Peterson, a corporate analyst and advocate for the accountability campaign at UCS. She is based in Washington, D.C. Click here for her biography.

UCS experts have extensive experience doing live and taped TV, radio, and print interviews with international, national and state media outlets. If you have any questions or would like to arrange an interview with one of our experts, please contact UCS Climate and Energy Media Manager Ashley Siefert Nunes.

Additional Resources:

• A letter signed by more than 150 organizations, including UCS, urging the U.S. Department of Energy to reject the application for CP2.
• UCS’ position supporting a fast and fair phaseout of fossil fuels across the globe.
• A blogpost by McNamara, “New Global Energy Market Risk: War Pushes Overreliance on U.S. LNG in Path of Climate-Amped Hurricanes.”

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

“We are pleased that Turkey’s highest court found unconstitutional the legal article that had been used to take down online news with public value under the guise of protecting individuals’ rights,” Özgür Öğret, CPJ’s Turkey representative, said on Thursday. “The road to legally protect the press and the free flow of information in Turkey remains long and challenging, but we applaud the court’s step in the right direction.”

The legal changes introduced in 2020, which CPJ raised concerns about at the time, amended Turkey’s 2007 internet law to allow individuals to ask local courts to remove online content that violated their “personal rights” or privacy.

The Constitutional Court said in its ruling on Wednesday that this clause interfered with freedom of expression and the press, according to news reports. The new ruling will take effect in nine months.

The law forced media outlets to remove hundreds of pieces of critical content, according to the Freedom of Expression Association, a Turkish nonprofit. Its 2021 report found that 432 out of 548 news articles that were blocked by the law covered topics that was in the public interest.

The court also cancelled another clause in the law which gave the regulatory Information Technologies and Communication Authority (BTK) the power to take down content without a court order.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

“CPJ is delighted to announce Lydia Polgreen as the incoming vice board chair and welcome four distinguished journalists to our board,” said CPJ Chair Jacob Weisberg. “They represent a tremendous range of knowledge and experience, and share a fundamental commitment to press freedom and safety around the world.”

“Lydia’s decades-long experience as an international correspondent and as a media executive leading a team of hundreds of journalists worldwide makes her uniquely qualified to understand the challenges journalists face to report the news globally during a period of unprecedented attacks on the press,” said Weisberg.

Weisberg added: “All four new board members are not only accomplished journalists but passionate about the role that a free press plays in the world. We look forward to working with them to keep journalists free and safe. As a correspondent in the Middle East, a foreign editor, and now editor of the Financial Times, Roula is one of the UK’s most distinguished journalists. Alan is one of America’s most admired business journalists, with a storied career at the Wall Street Journal and Fortune. Maria, the co-founder and CEO of Rappler in the Philippines and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, is an inspiration to me and so many others in our field. Jacqueline is a leader at Bloomberg, where for more than two decades she has managed coverage from the Americas to Europe to North Africa.”

Lydia Polgreen is an opinion columnist for The New York Times. She previously served as managing director of Gimlet, a podcast studio at Spotify, and as editor-in-chief of HuffPost, leading a team of hundreds of journalists publishing 16 editions in nine languages across the globe.

Roula Khalaf is editor of the Financial Times. She was previously deputy editor from 2016 to 2020, overseeing a range of newsroom initiatives and award-winning editorial projects and leading a global network of over 100 foreign correspondents.

Alan Murray is CEO of Fortune Media, where he oversees all of the company’s operations. Prior to joining Fortune in 2015, Murray was president of the Pew Research Center and spent almost two decades at The Wall Street Journal.

Maria Ressa co-founded Rappler, the Philippines’ leading digital-only news site. As Rappler’s CEO, Ressa faced political harassment and numerous arrests during the administration of former President Rodrigo Duterte. In 2021, Ressa was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of her “efforts to safeguard freedom of expression, which is a precondition for democracy and lasting peace.”

Jacqueline Simmons has held various news reporting and managerial roles at Bloomberg in Europe and the U.S. since starting in 1996. Currently, as editorial lead, she oversees 30-plus bureaus in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, as well as multi-platform content strategy and planning.

CPJ’s board of directors is composed of journalists, media executives, and leaders from related professions in the United States and around the world.

###

About the Committee to Protect Journalists

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is an independent, nonprofit organization that promotes press freedom worldwide. CPJ defends the rights of journalists to report the news safely and without fear of reprisal.

More information about CPJ’s board of directors can be found here.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Arlene Getz/CPJ Editorial Director.

“The German court’s conviction and sentencing to life imprisonment of death squad driver Bai Lowe is an important first step for the family of Deyda Hydara and all those seeking justice and accountability for the crimes against humanity perpetrated by then Gambian president Jahya Jammeh and his murderous ‘junglers’,” said Angela Quintal, CPJ’s Africa program coordinator.

“But Jammeh, not only his foot soldiers, must stand trial for his reign of terror. Justice will only prevail when Jammeh is extradited from his exile in Equatorial Guinea and faces charges in Gambia’s special criminal court.”

A German regional court found Lowe guilty of crimes against humanity, murder, and attempted murder for his role as a driver for Jammeh’s so-called junglers under the principle of universal jurisdiction, which allows a country to prosecute crimes against humanity regardless of where they were committed. Lowe was the first person accused of human rights violations during Jammeh’s dictatorship to be tried outside Gambia.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Arlene Getz/CPJ Editorial Director.

“That said, justice will not be completely served in this case until those who hired Azari are exposed and held to account. Whoever that is though, they ultimately failed. They failed to stop elected leaders across the country from pursuing some level of accountability for actions that – over time – amount to one of the greatest corporate crimes against humanity ever committed.”

“Overwhelmingly, the American people want climate action, and Big Oil will use every tool in their toolbox to stop it. Cyber attacks like this are one of the many tactics designed to silence and oppose climate activists. They have serious impacts on people’s lives–and thus their ability to do the important work of protecting our planet. But we aren’t backing down – in our work, our pursuit of justice. The stakes are too high.”

Greenpeace International Executive Director Mads Christensen said:

“Today’s sentencing of a hacker-for-hire, who facilitated an international spear-phishing campaign, serves as a stark warning to those who seek to intimidate and silence climate activists. But this case will not be closed until those who hired the hacker are held accountable.

"Greenpeace International is shocked to learn from the Government’s sentencing memorandum that ExxonMobil cited media articles based on hacked and stolen information in filings it made in US courts, while litigating against investigations into the company's early knowledge and potential misrepresentation of climate risks. This revelation won’t stop the mounting global efforts to hold fossil fuel companies accountable for their role in contributing to deadly and devastating climate impacts. From the Philippines to the Netherlands, courageous communities impacted by the climate crisis are seeking justice to protect their human rights from being harmed by oil, gas, and coal companies, and they are winning.”

Greenpeace India has been closely following the developments pertaining to the sentencing of Private Detective Aviram Azari, for his involvement in a hacking campaign targeting several climate activists and lawyers, including individuals from Greenpeace US, Greenpeace International and Greenpeace India. The news of successful targeting of some individuals from Greenpeace India is concerning and we believe that the case is not closed until those who hired the hacker are held accountable. Greenpeace India condemns such underhanded tactics intended to target, intimidate and silence climate activists and other public interest advocates.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

The New Zealand government has given its full blessing to Cook Islands and Niue establishing diplomatic relations with the United States.

At the US-Pacific summit on Monday (Washington time), President Joe Biden said he recognised the two island nations as sovereign and independent states, an announcement which the US Embassy in Aotearoa has labelled as “historic”.

Both countries are self-governing in ‘free association’ with New Zealand.  

Prime Minister Chris Hipkins acknowledged that and responded to questions around what the US’s move means for both countries’ relationship with Aotearoa.

“That’s the way that the American system works,” Hipkins said.

“So in order to recognise those specific countries, the wording that they use is they recognise their sovereignty but actually they also recognise, through diplomatic channels, the unique constitutional relationship that those countries have with New Zealand as well.”

The establishment of diplomatic relations does not change the constitutional relationship Aotearoa New Zealand has with either the Cook Islands or Niue, a Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade spokesperson said.

“Aotearoa New Zealand welcomes the establishment of diplomatic relations between US, Cook Islands and Niue,” the MFAT spokesperson said.

Diplomatic relations
“The Cook Islands has diplomatic relations with 61 countries, and Niue has diplomatic relations with 21 countries.

“[The NZ government] expects that the establishment of diplomatic relations[with the US] will better enable close engagement.”

In his speech, Biden said building a better world started with stronger partnerships.

“And that’s why the United States is formally establishing relations with the Cook Island’s . . .  and Niue,” Biden said.

Pacific Islands Forum chair and Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown has hailed the move as a milestone that marks an “era of change”.

He said Niue and the Cook Islands were “celebrating”.

“These milestones celebrate era’s of change and demonstrate that with unshakable resolve and leadership, remarkable achievements are possible,” Brown said.

Brown thanked the US President for his elevated level of engagement with the Pacific over the last year.

Development funding
Massey University’s defence and security analyst Dr Anna Powles said formalising diplomatic ties was “very much about ensuring that Cook Islands and Niue are able to receive development assistance funding”.

“There’s obviously also a strategic benefit from the United States perspective to have diplomatic presence, or at least diplomatic reach, into both of those countries.”

On top of the diplomatic ties talk, Biden also announced climate assistance at the summit.

He told Pacific leaders more than US$20 million is being injected into climate assistance.

The announcement for climate support and affirming the US’s commitment to climate action comes just days days after he was slammed by Pacific youth climate activist Suluafi Brianna Freuan following the UN Climate Ambition Summit.

Suluafi said not all nations were being ambitious enough when it came to climate ambition.

“What are the commitments that they will make to financing those most vulnerable to climate change, including those in their, their very ocean, their neighbours in the Pacific,” Suluafi said.

“[Countries] really need to talk about how they will phase out fossil fuels.”

But President Biden wanted to be clear that the Pacific’s stance on the climate crisis was the US’s position too.

‘I hear you’ – Biden on climate crisis
“I want you to know I hear you, the people in the United States and around the world hear you,” Biden said.

“We hear your warnings of a rising sea that they pose an existential threat to your nations. We hear your calls for reassurance that you never, never, never will lose your statehood, or membership of the UN as a result of the climate crisis.”

The President also announced the doubling of US-Pacific exchange student spots.

He committed to a free, open, prosperous and secure Indo-Pacific region.

Biden also plans on investing US$5 million into co-funding a fisheries and ocean science vessel.

It is expected to be used to manage the region’s tuna resources and for ocean science research.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

The Biden Administration’s move is an important victory for the Venezuelan community as well as organizers and state and local officials who have been welcoming high numbers of Venezuelans into their communities. Around the country, people are mobilizing to welcome asylum seekers with dignity, but they can’t do it alone. TPS for Venezuela is a critical relief that will ease the pressure on local cities to provide for a new population of Venezuelans seeking safety and security, but were left without the ability to work and build lives for themselves.

While we celebrate these important protections for Venezuelans, the Biden Administration must act to extend protections for nationals from other countries, including Cameroon and Central American countries who are facing conditions warranting protection. In particular, Cameroon is dealing with three concurrent crises in the country, marked by political instability, multiple armed conflicts, and unrest. The humanitarian and human rights situation in Cameroon has only worsened since it was initially designated for TPS. The current designation for Cameroon will expire on December 7th of this year, and the Administration must act by October 8th to extend and redesignate TPS for Cameroon.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

On Thursday, September 14, a federal judge in the central Mexican state of Guanajuato sentenced José Luis Martínez Aguilera, alias ‘El Pizzero,’ to jail and ordered him to pay reparations for the murder of Vázquez, who was shot while investigating reports of human remains found in a street, according to multiple news reports.  

It was the second verdict in Vázquez’s case, after a 20-year sentence was given to Martín Eduardo López Orozco, alias ‘El Tacones,’ on December 14, 2021, according to news reports. Both convicted men were members of a local criminal gang, those reports said.

The Special Prosecutor for Attention to Crimes Committed against Freedom of Expression (FEADLE) has appealed for Thursday’s sentence to be increased to 35 years because it did not recognize Vázquez’s work as a journalist as a motive for the crime, according to those reports.

“The second conviction for the brutal murder of Mexico’s Israel Vázquez Rangel is welcome news in a country where most criminals who kill journalists escape justice. However, it is troubling that Vázquez’s work as a journalist was not considered as the principal motive for the attack,” said Jan-Albert Hootsen, CPJ’s Mexico representative. “Mexican authorities need to be far more proactive in investigating crimes against the press and ending impunity for those who target journalists.”

Vázquez, a reporter for the El Salmantino news website, was shot at least five times while reporting in the city of Salamanca and died several hours later in hospital.

CPJ has documented 28 unsolved journalist murders in Mexico in the past 10 years—the most of any country on its Impunity Index, which spotlights countries where journalists are murdered regularly and killers go free.

Mexico is the Western Hemisphere’s most dangerous country for journalists. In 2022, 13 journalists were killed in Mexico, the highest number CPJ has ever documented in that country in a single year.  At least three of those journalists were murdered in direct retaliation for their reporting on crime and political corruption, while CPJ is investigating the motive behind the 10 other killings. 

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

A young Samoan climate activist says the UN’s new guidance on children’s rights to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment is “the first step to global change”.

The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child have affirmed for the first time that climate change is affecting children’s rights to life, survival and development.

“General Comment No. 26” specifies that countries are responsible not only for protecting children’s rights from immediate harm, but also for foreseeable violations of their rights in the future.

• READ MORE: New UN guidance affirms children’s right to a clean, healthy environment
• UN child climate rights

It found the climate emergency, collapse of biodiversity and pervasive pollution “is an urgent and systemic threat to children’s rights globally”.

Children have been at the forefront of the fight against climate change, urging governments and corporations to take action to safeguard their lives and the future, said committee member Philip Jaffé.

Samoan-born Aniva Clarke, 17, is an environmental activist based in New Zealand. She has been a climate advocate since 10 years old.

Amplifying Pacific youth voices
Growing up in Samoa, she helped to amplify Pacific youth voices about climate change.

“Children and young people have been calling on action for so long and I think this is one of the many things and sort of products of that action working.”

Clarke was one of 12 global youth advisors on the inaugural Children’s Advisory Team, established to facilitate youth consultations on children’s rights, the environment and climate change.

She said the comments “create a framework” that hold 196 UN countries to account.

“They have recognised that there is a call and need for action,” she said.

Countries that have ratified the UN Child Rights Convention are urged to take immediate action including towards phasing out fossil fuels and shifting to renewable energy sources, improving air quality, ensuring access to clean water, and protecting biodiversity.

A lot to lose for Pacific nations
Clarke said Pacific Island nations had a lot to lose and larger nations responsible for emitting the most carbon emissions must take a stand to preserve the environment for future generations.

“The climate crisis is a child rights crisis,” said Paloma Escudero, UNICEF Special Adviser on Advocacy for Child Rights and Climate Action.

Clarke is worried that future generations are at risk of not only losing their land but their “culture”.

“We lose our ancient traditions … we live off the land but we live for the land,” she said.

For island groups like Tokelau and Tuvalu, which are low lying atolls, if climate change continues, then “those communities risk losing their islands completely”.

The committee received more than 16,000 contributions from children in 121 nations, who shared the effects of environmental degradation and climate change on their lives and communities.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

In spite of again being denied full membership of the Melanesian Spearhead Group, the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) has welcomed the call from the MSG Leaders’ Summit in Port Vila last week for Indonesia to allow the long-awaited visit of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to West Papua.

“I hope that the MSG chair will honour the commitment to write to Indonesia as a matter of urgency, as every day that international intervention is delayed sees more West Papuans suffer and more Melanesian blood spilt,” ULMWP president Benny Wenda declared.

“Even in the run up to the MSG summit, with the eyes of the Pacific region on human rights in West Papua, Indonesia brutally cracked down on peaceful rallies in favour of ULMWP full membership, arresting dozens and killing innocent civilians,” he said in a statement.

• READ MORE:  OPM accuses Melanesian group of taking Jakarta’s ‘blood money’ at expense of West Papuan justice
• Wenda calls on MSG for urgent action to back pledge over human rights
• MSG throws away golden chance to reset peace and justice for West Papua
• MSG leaders defer Papua membership decision to Pacific Islands Forum
• Flashback: Fiji, PNG lead betrayal, but still West Papuans triumph (in 2015)
• Other MSG reports

As an associate member of the MSG, Indonesia must respect the chair’s demand, Wenda said.

“If they continue to deny the UN access, they will be in violation of the unified will of the Melanesian region.

“As the leaders’ communique stated, the UN visit must occur this year in order for the commissioner’s report to be put before the next MSG summit in 2024.”

Wenda said he also welcomed the MSG’s commitment that it would write to the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) chair to ensure that the UN visit was undertaken.

‘Guarantee UN visit’
“The PIF must honour this call and do all they can to guarantee a UN visit,” he said.

“We must remember that the UN visit has already been demanded by over 85 states, including all Melanesian states as members of PIF, and the 79 members of the Organisation of African, Caribbean, and Pacific States.”

Wenda said that in 2019, Pacific leaders described West Papua as a “festering human rights sore” and called for UN intervention as soon as possible.

“Since then, we have seen 100,000 West Papuans displaced by Indonesian military operations, villages depopulated and burned, and massacres in Wamena, Timika and elsewhere.

“And yet Indonesia has come no closer to allowing the United Nations access. Mere words are clearly not enough: the MSG Leaders’ Summit must be the trigger for international pressure of such overwhelming force that Indonesia has no choice, but to allow a UN visit.

“Although we are disappointed to have been denied full membership on this occasion, our spirit is strong and our commitment to returning home to our Melanesian family is undiminished.

“We are not safe with Indonesia, and will only find security by standing together with our Pacific brothers and sisters.

“Full membership is our birthright: culturally, linguistically, ethnically, and in our values, we are undeniably and proudly Melanesian.”

6/9) @MsgSecretariat must set terms, that should Indonesia fail to allow & respect the visits of an independent fact-finding mission by PIF, and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, then Indonesia must be BANNED from the MSG. pic.twitter.com/FUrJZQSvK0

— Youngsolwara Pacific (@YoungsolwaraP) August 28, 2023

Youngsolwara Pacific criticises MSG
Meanwhile, the Youngsolwara Pacific movement has made a series of critical statements about the MSG communique, including deploring the fact that the leaders’ summit was not the place to discuss human rights violations and reminded the leaders of the “founding vision”.

They called on the MSG Secretariat to “set terms, that should Indonesia fail to allow and respect the visits of an independent fact-finding mission by PIF, and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, then Indonesia must be BANNED from the MSG.”

They also demanded “clarity on the criteria for associate members and their respective engagement”.

Indonesia is the only associate member of the MSG while the ULMWP has observer status.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

On what would have been Emmett Till’s 82nd birthday, President Joe Biden designated a new national monument in Mississippi and Illinois honoring Emmett Till and his mother, Mamie Till-Mobley. Emmett Till was just 14 years old when a white mob abducted him from his great-uncle’s home in Money, Mississippi, in 1955 before torturing and lynching him. His mother’s decision to hold an open-casket funeral revealing his mutilated body shocked the country and served as a galvanizing moment in the civil rights movement. This comes amid efforts to suppress such history from being included in school textbooks, led by Florida governor and Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis. We speak with Emmett Till’s cousin, Reverend Wheeler Parker Jr., who was Till’s best friend and witnessed his abduction.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

“It is absurd and counterproductive to forcefully hold back the expansion of clean wind energy unless we continue to expand dirty and dangerous offshore drilling. Building offshore wind energy should never come at the cost of more fossil fuels, and this bill allows us to make that a reality. The climate crisis is here, now, and it’s affecting all of us through more frequent and intense weather events charged by fossil fuel use. Our oceans can and should be part of the solution, and the NOW Act is an important step in the right direction,” Oceana Acting Campaign Director Michael Messmer said.

"Oceana is proud to endorse the NOW Act, and we applaud Rep. Ocasio-Cortez, Rep. Ross, and all other members of Congress who understand how important it is to prevent new offshore drilling, promote responsibly developed offshore wind, and begin to shield our communities from the devastating impacts of climate change.”

A 2021 analysis by Oceana found that protecting all unleased federal waters from offshore drilling in the United States could prevent over 19 billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions. That is the equivalent of taking every car in the nation off the road for 15 years. Ending new leasing could also prevent more than $720 billion in damage to people, property, and the environment.

“The NOW Act builds upon the record-breaking climate investments made last year and puts us further down the path of moving beyond a reliance on fossil fuels and toward a more sustainable future,” said. Rep. Ocasio Cortez. “The climate crisis is a national emergency for the United States and disproportionately impacts our most vulnerable communities, including indigenous communities and communities of color. In the midst of this crisis, there is no reason that we should require more oil and gas drilling as a prerequisite for building renewables. This legislation will help end the stranglehold oil and gas has kept on our country while enabling good, union jobs in renewable energy development.”

Without the NOW Act, new offshore wind lease sales will continue to be paired with compulsory oil and gas leasing for at least the next 10 years. This new legislation allows offshore wind energy development to advance without selling millions of acres in the oceans to the oil and gas industry. The Biden administration is already on track to exceed 30 gigawatts of offshore wind production by the end of the decade, which is enough energy to power 10 million homes and support 77,000 jobs.

“New offshore drilling leases compromise the critical effort to address the climate crisis,” Oceana Acting Campaign Director Michael Messmer said. “The NOW Act is the logical next step in our fight to protect our coasts, advance the transition to a clean energy future, and safeguard a habitable planet for future generations.”

For more information about Oceana’s efforts to prevent the expansion of offshore drilling, please click here.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

“This decision finally puts an end to the eight-year legal saga involving prominent investigative journalist Jovo Martinović, who was twice wrongly convicted on drug-related charges,” said Attila Mong, CPJ’s Europe representative. “The verdict is a critical vindication for Martinović, and we can only hope Montenegro authorities have learned that covering crime does not mean a reporter is involved in criminal activity.”

Martinović, a prominent investigative journalist who covers crime, was detained in 2015, along with 17 others, on suspicion of participating in a drug trafficking ring and held for more than 14 months pending a trial on drug-related charges. Martinović denied the charges and said they were in retaliation for his journalism.

In 2019, he was sentenced to 18 months in prison, but the verdict was overturned. In a 2020 retrial, his sentenced was reduced to one year; the journalist’s appeal, which was initially rejected, went to the Supreme Court, which ordered a second retrial. In January 2023, Martinović was acquitted of all charges. The prosecution’s appeal was denied Wednesday.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

Gvaramia, founder and director of independent broadcaster Mtavari Arkhi, had been serving a 3.5-year prison sentence since May 2022 for alleged abuse of office during his previous role as director of another broadcaster. As a presenter for Mtavari Arkhi, Gvaramia was known for his trenchant criticism of Georgia’s ruling party, and his jailing has been widely denounced by local and international rights groups as politically motivated.

Earlier this month, CPJ visited Georgia and pressed authorities to release Gvaramia. The visit included a meeting with Gvaramia’s wife Sofia Liluashvili outside the prison where Gvaramia was being held. Liluashvili told CPJ on Thursday that she was on her way to the prison after hearing about the pardon in the news.

“We are thrilled that Nika Gvaramia has been pardoned. He should never have been jailed, and his continued imprisonment stood at odds with the country’s purported commitment to press freedom,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ Program Coordinator for Europe and Central Asia.

OC Media reported that Zurabishvili said she made the decision after the Supreme Court rejected Gvaramia’s appeal of his conviction on June 19, saying, “I am not going to give any explanation for this decision, because it is my discretionary right that I use today.”

In April, CPJ and 10 other major rights organizations wrote to Zurabishvili, calling on her to release Gvaramia.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Erik Crouch.

The pro-independence United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) has welcomed Vanuatu Deputy Prime Minister Jotham Napat’s comments on West Papua during this week’s diplomatic visit to Indonesia.

In a joint press conference with Indonesian Vice-President Ma’ruf Amin, Napat restated his commitment to the “Melanesian way”.

Movement president Benny Wenda has issued a statement saying that hearing those words, “I was reminded of Vanuatu’s founding Father Walter Lini, who said that ‘Vanuatu will not be entirely free until all Melanesia is free from colonial rule’ — West Papua and Kanaky included.”

• READ MORE: Other Vanuatu and West Papua reports

The Melanesian way had been shown in full membership of the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG) being extended to the Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front (FLNKS), despite them representing a Melanesian people rather than a Melanesian state [New Caledonia], Wenda said.

It has also been demonstrated in Papua New Guinea’s approach to Bougainville, where Prime Minister Marape showed true moral courage by respecting their right to self-determination with a 98 percent vote in favour of independence in 2019.

“Vanuatu has always shown the same courage in supporting West Papuan freedom. By referencing the Melanesian way in the joint press conference, Deputy Napat was conveying to Indonesia the message Moses gave to Phaoroah: ‘let my people go’,” Wenda said.

“As West Papuans we are also committed to Melanesian values. This is why we have turned to our Melanesian family in seeking full membership of the MSG.

Vanuatu ‘steadfast in support’
“In their role as chair of the Melanesian Spearhead Group, Vanuatu has been steadfast in supporting ULMWP full membership.

“At this crucial hour, we need all Melanesian leaders to show the same commitment, and help bring West Papua home to its Melanesian family.

“Indonesia must respect Vanuatu and other Melanesian nations by allowing the fulfillment of this decades-long dream.”

To resolve the West Papuan issue peacefully in the Melanesian way, the first step was admitting the ULMWP as a full member of the MSG at the forthcoming summit of the group, Wenda said.

The joint Indonesia-Vanuatu foreign ministers media statement from Jakarta.

Jakarta announces ‘development steering committee’
RNZ Pacific reports that the joint talks between Vanuatu and Indonesia this week had West Papua high on the agenda

The talks have come amid tensions in the region, and ahead of a state visit next month to Papua New Guinea by Indonesian President Joko Widodo.

Indonesia’s state-owned news agency Antara reports Vice-President Amin meeting with Minister Napat in Jakarta on Monday.

Vanuatu has strongly supported the pro-independence push in West Papua for many years and Antara reports the issue of conflict in the Melanesian region was discussed.

Amin announced a Papua Special Autonomy Development Acceleration Steering Committee had been formed to evaluate development in the Papua region.

“The granting of this special autonomy has been planned for the long term up to 2042,” he said.

Amin said Indonesia “respected the diversity” in West Papua.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

Defenders of Wildlife was among the conservation groups that sued to overturn these regulations back in 2019.

While much of the new language will need to be more closely scrutinized in order to determine long-term impact, one important victory for wildlife is the reinstatement of automatic ESA protections, or the “blanket 4(d) rule”, for threatened species managed by the Fish and Wildlife Service.

“While areas of concern exist within these new regulations, restoring automatic protections for our nation’s threatened species is a huge step in the right direction for the Endangered Species Act and biodiversity,” said Jamie Rappaport Clark, president and CEO of Defenders of Wildlife. “As humans, we are inextricably linked with the ecosystems around us. Saving nature and establishing scientifically-sound ways to coexist with wildlife must be a national priority. Our future depends on it.”

The “blanket 4(d) rule” automatically gives threatened species on land and in freshwater the same protections as endangered species unless otherwise specified. This is an important component of Congress’ original intent for the ESA - to stem the slide of threatened species toward extinction and support their recovery to the point where they can be delisted in accordance with best available science.

An additional bright spot is the withdrawal of regulations that injected economic considerations into the analyses to determine whether a species should be listed under the ESA. The ESA requires such listing decisions be made using the best available science, and specifically prohibits consideration of the economic costs of listing.

“Removal of economic considerations that had infected the scientific-based process for determining whether a species was afforded protections against extinction is a welcome proposal,” added Clark.

At the same time, the proposal still retains several of the 2019 regulatory changes that undermine protections for imperiled wildlife and weaken the Endangered Species Act.

In 2022, Biden also rescinded two other Trump regulations that conservation groups had challenged, which had heavily favored industry by altering the way that critical habitat was designated under the ESA.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

“When it comes to defending journalists and press freedom, CPJ has shown itself to be effective and essential,” said Jacob Weisberg, chair of CPJ’s board. “As threats continue to mount around the globe, the demand for the organization’s objective research, advocacy, and emergency assistance is greater than ever. I am thrilled to have the opportunity to support CPJ President Jodie Ginsberg and CPJ’s expert and dedicated staff in advancing this vital work.”

Weisberg joined CPJ’s board in 2011 and has served as the vice chair for the past six years. He is the CEO of Pushkin Industries, a media company focused on audio content, which he co-founded with journalist and author Malcolm Gladwell. Until September 2018, Weisberg was the editor-in-chief of Slate Group.

A native of Chicago, Weisberg attended Yale University and New College, Oxford. He worked at The New Republic, Newsweek, and New York Magazine before joining Slate.

“I know how passionate Jacob is about the role journalism plays in holding power to account, in exposing wrongdoing, and communicating vital information – and how crucial it is to defend it at this time of global threat,” said Jodie Ginsberg, CPJ’s president. “I look forward to executing CPJ’s new strategic plan under his leadership. I also want to thank Kathleen Carroll, who has steered CPJ through immense change and growth. CPJ is well prepared to face the challenges ahead thanks to her tireless leadership and wise counsel.”

CPJ’s bylaws dictate that a chair is elected for one three-year term and may serve an additional three-year term. CPJ’s board of directors is composed of journalists, media executives, and leaders from related professions in the United States and around the world.

###

About the Committee to Protect Journalists

The Committee to Protect Journalists is an independent, nonprofit organization that promotes press freedom worldwide. We defend the right of journalists to report the news safely and without fear of reprisal.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

“We welcome the Hong Kong court decision to quash the conviction of journalist Choy Yuk-ling. It’s high time for the Hong Kong government to stop persecuting the media and drop all criminal cases against journalists for their work,” said Beh Lih Yi, CPJ’s Asia program coordinator. “Press freedom is constitutionally guaranteed in Hong Kong. No journalists should be criminally charged, let alone convicted, for their reporting.”

Choy was convicted in April 2021 on two counts of giving false statements to obtain car ownership records on a public registry while researching a documentary for Hong Kong’s public broadcaster Radio Television Hong Kong about a mob attack on a group of protesters. The court fined her 6,000 Hong Kong dollars (US$765).

In unanimously overturning her conviction on Monday, June 5, a panel of five judges at the Court of Final Appeal ruled that when Choy chose “other traffic and transport related matters” to search the public registry, that category should not exclude “bona fide journalism.”

Separately, on Sunday evening police detained Mak Yin-ting, a correspondent with French broadcaster Radio France Internationale and former chair of the Hong Kong Journalists Association, while she reported on public attempts to commemorate the 34th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown, according to the HKJA, a report by the journalist in RFI, and news reports. She was released after a few hours without charge.

CPJ has documented the dramatic decline of press freedom in Hong Kong, once a beacon of free press in the region, since Beijing introduced a national security law on June 30, 2020, with journalists being arrested, jailed, and threatened.

Among them include Chung Pui-kuen and Patrick Lam, editors of the now-shuttered news website Stand News, who are on trial for conspiracy to publish seditious publications.

Jimmy Lai, founder of the shuttered pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily and CPJ’s 2021 Gwen Ifill Press Freedom Awardee, is facing life imprisonment on national security charges in a trial that is due to start in September. Lai, a British citizen, is serving a sentence of five years and nine months on fraud charges. He has been behind bars since December 2020.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Erik Crouch.

“We welcome the decision by Hungary’s parliament to take a step in support of press freedom by partially decriminalizing defamation. Authorities should move to further align with international and EU standards by fully decriminalizing speech,” said Attila Mong, CPJ’s Europe representative. “Hungary should have scrapped criminal defamation from its books long ago. Laws that threaten journalists with prison sentences have no place in a democracy.”

On Tuesday, May 23, the parliament voted in favor of a draft law put forth by the ruling Fidesz party, which scraped criminal penalties for libel and defamation committed by members of the press under certain circumstances.

The law states that a defamatory statement will not be considered a criminal offense if it is made “within a scope of discussion of public affairs and is committed by means of a press product or media service,” unless the statement is “aimed at an obvious and seriously humiliating denial of the victim’s human dignity.”

Prison sentences of up to three years remain for defamation convictions outside of those circumstances. The draft will be sent within five days of passage to President Katalin Novák, who can sign it into law.

Recommendations from the European Union and Council of Europe encourage member states to remove prison sentences for defamation from their legal framework and favor the use of administrative or civil law.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Erik Crouch.

Chiefs are to serve people and not to be served, Fiji President Ratu Wiliame Katonivere told the Great Council of Chiefs (GCC) on Bau Island in Fiji today.

The Council — regarded as the apex of traditional Fijian leadership and also accused of being a racist institution — was discarded by former prime minister Voreqe Bainimarama following his 2006 military coup.

Today, 16 years since it was removed, the Great Council is returning under Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka’s coalition government.

• READ MORE: Other great Council of Chiefs reports

Ratu Wiliame Katonivere said the Great Council was now challenged more than ever in their decision making as traditional leaders to safeguard, collaborate and promote inclusivity in the dynamics of an evolving Fiji.

He said the Turaga Tui Macuata urged chiefs to stand to together in unity in their service, while expecting challenges and changes.

Ratu Wiliame said the chiefs met in a new dawn and they needed to welcome those who made up Fiji’s multicultural society and have made Fiji their home.

“We are chiefs in our own right — we have subjects, we are inheritors of our land, sea, and its flora and fauna,” Ratu Wiliame said.

‘Unifying vision’
“As we meet, we bring with us the hopes and the needs of our people and our land that depend on our vision in unifying our wise deliberations that shall lead to inclusive decisions that encompasses all that we treasure as a people and a nation.”

“As it reconvenes, the GCC must focus on two principles, firstly, we need to be conscious of the existence of those who will challenge the status quo; and secondly, to encourage our people to work together for our advancement as a people, where no one is left behind,” he said.

Ratu Wiliame said the reinstatment of the Great Council was happening at a critical stage in Fiji’s development and the challenge was for the chiefs to stand up and be counted by playing their roles that they were born into, reminding them of the words of the late Ratu Sir Lala Sukuna that being a chief was not an ornament.

“The title of chief is not an ornament. An ornament is adorned to be marveled and admired, or as fashionable wear, rather as chiefs we are bound by duty and responsibility that require our intentional and undivided attention,” he said.

With this new beginning, it was “paramount that we reflect on our traditional ties with one another as iTaukei, to the government of the day and to the church.”

He said it was crucial that the reconvened Great Council of Chiefs delivered on the very purpose with which it was initially established, for the preservation of the iTaukei land, marine and natural ecosystem, guided by relevant legislation.

“The Great Council of Chiefs is duty-bound to safeguard, defend, liberate all-encompassing matters of all Fijians respecting the rule of law,” Ratu Williame said.

Ratu Sukuna’s legacy
Speaking to the gathering on Bau Island, Ratu Wiliame also referred to the late Ratu Sir Lala Sukuna.

“He was predestined for leadership that included military training and he was awarded the Croix de Guerre for his gallant role in World War I under the French Foreign Legion.

“The preordained life of Ratu Sir Lala Sukuna became the gateway to his life of servitude to his people, the land and the crown.”

He said these were traits that the late Ratu Sir Lala Sukuna was renowned for, a visionary, decisive and intellectual leader that was indicative only of a leader who was divinely anointed.

Ratu Sukuna was Fiji’s older statesman and he helped in setting up iTaukei leadership and land systems.

New vision and mission
Ratu Wiliame said it was therefore crucial that the Great Council of Chiefs establish and build on its previous accomplishments and embark on a new vision and mission to be able to better navigate the new changes and developments as we chart our way forward.

He said their role as leaders remained to be the fiercest defender of Fiji’s natural resources both on land and at sea, particularly with protecting their frontier from the current effects and impact of climate change.

He also called on chiefs to remember their role equally lay in encouraging iTaukei and people to contribute to growing the economy and to promote economic empowerment and stability to better enhance their livelihoods.

“Should we want a better Fiji, it is pertinent that our younger generations are groomed in iTaukei protocol, leadership and all mannerism befitting a servant leader,” he said.

“The Great Council of Chiefs is now challenged more than ever in our decision making as traditional leaders to safeguard, collaborate and promote inclusivity in the dynamics of our evolving Fiji.”

Ratu Wiliame acknowledged the Turaga na Vunivalu na Tui Kaba, Ratu Epenisa Cakobau for inviting the Great Council to be held on Bau Island.

Ratu Epenisa is the paramount chief of Fiji in his traditional title as the high chief of the Kubuna Confederacy.

Forgiveness
The opening ceremony also saw the seeking of forgiveness from government and the Christian churches in Fiji for past events that had caused splits within the Great Council and Fiji as a nation.

The government’s traditional apology, or matanigasau, was presented by Apimeleki Tola, Acting Commissioner of the Native Lands Commission and was accepted by the Marama Bale Na Roko Tui Dreketi, Ro Teimumu Kepa, the traditional head of the Burebasaga confederacy.

Tola asked the chiefs to forgive the past government and its decision to de-establish the Great Council and also asked for their blessings and support in the work that government is doing for the people of Fiji.

Ro Teimumu accepted on behalf of the chiefs and urged government and civil servants to continue their service to the people of Fiji.

Two other apologies were presented and accepted.

The first was from the government to the church and religious leaders and the second from the religious leaders to the chiefs of Fiji.

The official opening ceremony was preceded by a church service conducted by the president of the Methodist Church in Fiji and Rotuma and full traditional Fijian ceremony of welcome.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

Chiefs are to serve people and not to be served, Fiji President Ratu Wiliame Katonivere told the Great Council of Chiefs (GCC) on Bau Island in Fiji today.

The Council — regarded as the apex of traditional Fijian leadership and also accused of being a racist institution — was discarded by former prime minister Voreqe Bainimarama following his 2006 military coup.

Today, 16 years since it was removed, the Great Council is returning under Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka’s coalition government.

• READ MORE: Other great Council of Chiefs reports

Ratu Wiliame Katonivere said the Great Council was now challenged more than ever in their decision making as traditional leaders to safeguard, collaborate and promote inclusivity in the dynamics of an evolving Fiji.

He said the Turaga Tui Macuata urged chiefs to stand to together in unity in their service, while expecting challenges and changes.

Ratu Wiliame said the chiefs met in a new dawn and they needed to welcome those who made up Fiji’s multicultural society and have made Fiji their home.

“We are chiefs in our own right — we have subjects, we are inheritors of our land, sea, and its flora and fauna,” Ratu Wiliame said.

‘Unifying vision’
“As we meet, we bring with us the hopes and the needs of our people and our land that depend on our vision in unifying our wise deliberations that shall lead to inclusive decisions that encompasses all that we treasure as a people and a nation.”

“As it reconvenes, the GCC must focus on two principles, firstly, we need to be conscious of the existence of those who will challenge the status quo; and secondly, to encourage our people to work together for our advancement as a people, where no one is left behind,” he said.

Ratu Wiliame said the reinstatment of the Great Council was happening at a critical stage in Fiji’s development and the challenge was for the chiefs to stand up and be counted by playing their roles that they were born into, reminding them of the words of the late Ratu Sir Lala Sukuna that being a chief was not an ornament.

“The title of chief is not an ornament. An ornament is adorned to be marveled and admired, or as fashionable wear, rather as chiefs we are bound by duty and responsibility that require our intentional and undivided attention,” he said.

With this new beginning, it was “paramount that we reflect on our traditional ties with one another as iTaukei, to the government of the day and to the church.”

He said it was crucial that the reconvened Great Council of Chiefs delivered on the very purpose with which it was initially established, for the preservation of the iTaukei land, marine and natural ecosystem, guided by relevant legislation.

“The Great Council of Chiefs is duty-bound to safeguard, defend, liberate all-encompassing matters of all Fijians respecting the rule of law,” Ratu Williame said.

Ratu Sukuna’s legacy
Speaking to the gathering on Bau Island, Ratu Wiliame also referred to the late Ratu Sir Lala Sukuna.

“He was predestined for leadership that included military training and he was awarded the Croix de Guerre for his gallant role in World War I under the French Foreign Legion.

“The preordained life of Ratu Sir Lala Sukuna became the gateway to his life of servitude to his people, the land and the crown.”

He said these were traits that the late Ratu Sir Lala Sukuna was renowned for, a visionary, decisive and intellectual leader that was indicative only of a leader who was divinely anointed.

Ratu Sukuna was Fiji’s older statesman and he helped in setting up iTaukei leadership and land systems.

New vision and mission
Ratu Wiliame said it was therefore crucial that the Great Council of Chiefs establish and build on its previous accomplishments and embark on a new vision and mission to be able to better navigate the new changes and developments as we chart our way forward.

He said their role as leaders remained to be the fiercest defender of Fiji’s natural resources both on land and at sea, particularly with protecting their frontier from the current effects and impact of climate change.

He also called on chiefs to remember their role equally lay in encouraging iTaukei and people to contribute to growing the economy and to promote economic empowerment and stability to better enhance their livelihoods.

“Should we want a better Fiji, it is pertinent that our younger generations are groomed in iTaukei protocol, leadership and all mannerism befitting a servant leader,” he said.

“The Great Council of Chiefs is now challenged more than ever in our decision making as traditional leaders to safeguard, collaborate and promote inclusivity in the dynamics of our evolving Fiji.”

Ratu Wiliame acknowledged the Turaga na Vunivalu na Tui Kaba, Ratu Epenisa Cakobau for inviting the Great Council to be held on Bau Island.

Ratu Epenisa is the paramount chief of Fiji in his traditional title as the high chief of the Kubuna Confederacy.

Forgiveness
The opening ceremony also saw the seeking of forgiveness from government and the Christian churches in Fiji for past events that had caused splits within the Great Council and Fiji as a nation.

The government’s traditional apology, or matanigasau, was presented by Apimeleki Tola, Acting Commissioner of the Native Lands Commission and was accepted by the Marama Bale Na Roko Tui Dreketi, Ro Teimumu Kepa, the traditional head of the Burebasaga confederacy.

Tola asked the chiefs to forgive the past government and its decision to de-establish the Great Council and also asked for their blessings and support in the work that government is doing for the people of Fiji.

Ro Teimumu accepted on behalf of the chiefs and urged government and civil servants to continue their service to the people of Fiji.

Two other apologies were presented and accepted.

The first was from the government to the church and religious leaders and the second from the religious leaders to the chiefs of Fiji.

The official opening ceremony was preceded by a church service conducted by the president of the Methodist Church in Fiji and Rotuma and full traditional Fijian ceremony of welcome.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

 “This decision should not overshadow the country’s shameful record on press freedom,” said Carlos Martinez de la Serna, CPJ’s program director, in New York. “While we welcome the pardon of Pratasevich, authorities should also immediately release all journalists imprisoned for their work, none of whom should ever have been detained and prosecuted in the first place.”

Lukashenko pardoned Pratasevich, co-founder of the Telegram channels NEXTA and former chief editor of the outlet Belarus Golovnogo Mozga (Belarus of the Brain), on May 16 and the news was made public on Monday, May 22, according to multiple news reports.

Pratasevich was convicted on May 3 of organizing mass protests, publicly calling for the seizure of state power and acts of terrorism, slandering and insulting Lukashenko, and leading an extremist formation, and was sentenced to eight years in prison.

On the same day Pratasevich was convicted, the court convicted NEXTA co-founder Stsypan Putsila and Yan Rudzik, an administrator of NEXTA and former chief editor of Belarus Golovnogo Mozga, on similar charges and sentenced Putsila to 20 years in prison and Rudzik to 19. Both journalists live outside of Belarus.

Belarusian authorities caused a global outcry when they diverted a Lithuania-bound commercial flight to the Belarus capital of Minsk to take Pratasevich into custody in May 2021. He was placed under house arrest in June 2021, was forced to make several televised “confessions,” and has cooperated with authorities in the investigation, media reported.

Pratasevich was not transferred to a detention facility after the May 3 verdict, according to a representative from the banned human rights group Viasna, who spoke to CPJ on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal.

On Tuesday, Pratasevich told Belarusian state agency BelTA that he had just signed “all the relevant documents” stating that he was pardoned and called the decision “great news.” CPJ was unable to immediately determine when Pratasevich was released from house arrest.

Belarus is one of the world’s worst jailers of journalists, with at least 26, including Pratasevich,  detained in the country at the time of CPJ’s December 1, 2022, prison census.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Erik Crouch.

Quito, April 20, 2023—The Committee to Protect Journalists welcomes the Ecuadorian government’s commitment to fund and implement mechanisms that will advance press freedom and improve journalist safety in the country, following a meeting with representatives from CPJ and the local press freedom organization Fundamedios on Tuesday, April 18.  

The government’s secretary of the administration, Sebastián Corral, agreed during the meeting to deliver critical funds to the existing mechanism to protect journalists, as well as additional funding to support the attorney general, and new efforts to combat misinformation. 

The CPJ delegation traveled to Quito to meet with President Guillermo Lasso to discuss the deteriorating press freedom conditions and the impact of the public safety crisis on journalists throughout the country, as documented by CPJ and Fundamedios.

Lasso was not able to attend the meeting due to illness, but the delegation met with Corral, other government representatives, local journalists, editors, members of the national assembly, authorities, representatives from foreign embassies, and international donors. 

Program Director Carlos Martinez de la Serna and Senior Consultant for Latin America Carlos Lauria led the CPJ delegation, together with former CPJ awardee Janet Hinostroza and Fundamedios Executive Director César Ricaurte.  

“The government’s commitment to investing in mechanisms that bolster journalist safety is consequential and supports Ecuador’s expressed commitment to press freedom,” said Martínez de la Serna. “In a country confronting a public safety crisis, Ecuadorian journalists’ ability to report on sensitive issues of public interest is crucial for the country’s democracy.”

“This CPJ mission has confirmed the serious deterioration of press freedom conditions for the Ecuadorian press due to several forms of violence,” said Ricaurte. “The government’s commitment and the request to international donors to become more involved in efforts to protect journalists are specific results from this mission that we value positively, and that we hope will be a first step for Ecuador receiving more attention from the international community.”

In recent months, Ecuadorian journalists have increasingly come under attack. CPJ found that at least five Ecuadorian journalists had bombs mailed to them and that local journalists were forced into exile due to death threats. Fundamedios and other local press freedom groups have documented a serious spike of violence against journalists coming from different actors, including protesters, organized crime, and government officials.

In 2022, the killing of three journalists—Gerardo Delgado, Mike Cabrera, and César Vivanco—and the disappearance of journalist Fernando León, further emphasized the dire state of press freedom in Ecuador. (Mike Cabrera and César Vivanco are not included in CPJ’s 2022 killed report as CPJ was not able to establish their killings were related to their work as journalists.)

Last week marked the fifth anniversary of the killing of two Ecuadorian journalists and a driver working on the Ecuadorian-Colombian border assignment for the daily El Comercio. The case remains unsolved.

 ###

The Committee to Protect Journalists is an independent, nonprofit organization that promotes press freedom worldwide.

Media contact: press@cpj.org

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

Urresti, 66, a retired army general, was convicted of taking part in an ambush that killed Bustíos and wounded reporter Eduardo Rojas. Both were covering the conflict between government troops and Shining Path guerrillas. After the sentence was read on Thursday, Urresti was led out of the Lima courtroom in handcuffs, news reports said. 

“The sentencing of Daniel Urresti for the murder of journalist Hugo Bustíos is an important step toward ending impunity for crimes against the press in Peru, and a powerful reminder of the long and painful road for families seeking justice,” said Carlos Martínez de la Serna, CPJ’s program director, in New York. “The family and colleagues of Hugo Bustíos finally have a measure of closure, though nearly 35 years later.”

Bustíos, 38, was a reporter for Caretas, Peru’s most influential newsmagazine, and president of the National Association of Journalists in the war-ravaged Andean Mountain town of Huanta. He often wrote about human rights abuses committed by both the army and the guerrillas.

Bustíos was killed on November 24, 1988, in an ambush on the outskirts of Huanta where Urresti was serving as an army intelligence officer. The attack was initially blamed on Shining Path rebels but allegations soon emerged that Bustíos and Rojas were deliberately targeted by an army patrol.

For years, the case bounced between military and civilian courts, but in 2007, the commander of the Huanta military base and another officer were found guilty of killing Bustíos. In 2011, one of the convicted officers implicated Urresti, who in 2015 was formally charged with murder. Three years later, a court cleared Urresti, but Peru’s supreme court in 2019 overturned that ruling and ordered a new trial, which concluded Thursday with his conviction.

CPJ, Human Rights Watch, and the Center for Justice and International Law brought the case before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, which in 1997 found the Peruvian state responsible for the murder of Bustíos.

Despite his connection to the killing, Urresti served as Peru’s interior minister between 2014 and 2015, twice ran for president, and was nearly elected mayor of Lima last year.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

“President Biden’s executive order limiting the United States’ use of commercial spyware is an important step in recognizing and mitigating the harm that these technologies can have on journalists and democratic institutions more broadly,” said CPJ U.S. and Canada Program Coordinator Katherine Jacobsen. “This order serves as an important reminder as this week’s Summit for Democracy begins that unfettered use of technology to surveil journalists is a threat to core democratic values in the U.S. and abroad.”

The global use of spyware has prompted what CPJ views as an existential crisis for journalism and the organization has been among those calling for moratoriums on its use.

In 2021, the European Union adopted similar regulations on the export of surveillance technologies. Also that year, the U.S. Department of Commerce imposed export controls on the Israel-based technology company NSO Group over its development of Pegasus spyware.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Erik Crouch.

“It is heartening to see the recognition of former Haitian Mayor Jean Morose Viliena’s crimes, including the 2008 attack on a community radio station, after a decades-long pursuit of justice,” said CPJ Program Director Carlos Martinez de la Serna, in New York. “Those who seek to violently silence the free flow of information should be held to account no matter where they are located. This verdict shows that the United States is not a safe haven for those attempting to evade justice.”

In 2008, Viliena and his armed supporters ransacked New Vision Radio, a station in Les Irois operated and financed by members of the Struggling People’s Party and which broadcasted local news, political debates, and gospel music, according to the Center for Justice and Accountability, a San Francisco-based human rights organization that served as representation in the civil complaint against Viliena, along with two private law firms.

On Tuesday, March 22, the plaintiffs, including the son of the man who owned the building where the radio station rented a room, were awarded $15.5 million in damages, including $11 million in punitive damages by the jury for the attacks on the station as well as other instances of political violence, according to a press release by the CJA. Viliena denied any wrongdoing, according to The Associated Press.

Haitian authorities arrested Viliena in 2008 in relation to the killing of a man who had accused him of misconduct as well as the shootings of two people at the New Vision Radio office, building owner Nissage Martyr and local high school student Juders Ysemé. Martyr was shot in the leg during that attack, and Ysemé was blinded in one eye, according to the CJA press release.

Viliena was provisionally released and then fled to the United States, according to news reports. The plaintiffs filed a civil complaint in a U.S. District Court in 2017, and Nissage Martyr died later that year. The complaint was filed under the 1991 Torture Victim Protection Act, which allows for the filing of U.S. civil lawsuits against foreign officials who allegedly committed wrongdoing in their home countries, if all legal avenues in their homeland have been exhausted.

“I agreed to have the station at my house because I know the media would serve the population,” Nissage Martyr said in 2017, according to those reports, saying that Viliena “did not like the radio station and destroyed it because he knew that the population would become aware of the crimes he was committing.”

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Erik Crouch.

“We are elated that journalist Oliver Dubois is finally free and able to return home to his family and his colleagues,” said CPJ Africa Program Coordinator Angela Quintal, in New York. “Mali’s conflict and constitutional crisis have acutely increased risks for journalists. While Dubois’ release is a relief, journalist safety continues to be concerning. We urge all parties, including jihadists, to refrain from criminal actions to silence the press.”

Dubois, a freelancer, went missing on April 8, 2021, in the Malian region of Gao while seeking an interview with the local leader of the Al-Qaeda affiliated group Jamaa Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin. His abduction was made public in a video posted online that May.

On Monday, March 20, Dubois was released and arrived at an airport in Niamey, in the neighboring country of Niger, according to those news reports.

“It’s amazing for me to be here, to be free,” Dubois said while thanking Nigerien authorities for their role in his release, according to those reports.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Erik Crouch.

Papua New Guinea’s The National newspaper has welcomed a statement by the Information and Communication Technology Department (DICT) that the government has no wish to control the media to limit freedom of expression.

Editor-in-chief Christine Pakakota said a free media provided oxygen to any country claiming to be democratic, and effectively promoting transparency and accountability.

She was responding to a government statement last week, saying that the proposed national media development policy had “no intention of giving powers to the government to control the media or infringe on the freedom of expression”.

• READ MORE: ‘Chilling effect on journalism’ – Fiji academic warns PNG against media law change
• Other PNG media policy reports

The National submitted its response to the draft policy last Tuesday.

Pakakota said it was obvious that the government’s intention and concern was “to ensure that the people get important and accurate information”.

“We are with any government that wishes to improve the standard of living of the people as well as to develop the country,” she said.

“And when the government says it aims to do so through the promotion of democracy, good governance, human rights and social and economic development, as stated in the covering statement to the draft policy, we will proudly stand beside it.”

‘Long journey’
She regretted that the government had given stakeholders only two weeks “to respond to a matter that would have serious and long-lasting impact on the country’s long journey to becoming a developed nation and take its rightful place in the world”.

“We also believe that the PNG Media Council must be fully independent and adequately funded by the state and/or donors, and run by highly-respected persons,” she said.

“It represents the interests of the media industry in PNG.”

She said the council should also have a complaints committee to judge complaints about press and broadcasting conduct as set out in a Media Code of Ethics and Practice.

“The council should have a chairman and executive secretary selected from the public,” she said.

“Members of the complaints committee (at least five) are also to be picked from the public.”

• Pacific Media Watch reports that the DICT has removed the draft media policy from its website.

Republished with permission.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

Exquisitely merging their sacrosanct tenets - reproductive rights, separation of church and state, the freedom to offend and playing artful devil's advocate - The Satanic Temple is opening the first-ever "religious abortion clinic" to offer free, virtual, medication abortion to "involuntarily pregnant women" in states where abortion has been banned. The "non-theistic" group, whose real-world-based "Satanic good works" range from food drives to After-School Satan Clubs, have named their telehealth clinic for Samuel Alito's mother, because, "In 1950, (she) did not have options, and look what happened."

Based in Salem, Mass., the Satanic Temple is somewhat of a baroque misnomer. Co-founded a decade ago by social activists Lucien Greaves and Malcolm Jarry, TST is a non-theistic group that seeks to "encourage benevolence and empathy, reject tyrannical authority, oppose injustice and undertake noble pursuits" while remaining faith-based enough to qualify for federal protections and benefits afforded religious organizations, without the deity part. While they "don't have any supernatural beliefs," they argue the Satanic label is more than just a political ploy; it "provides a metaphorical narrative construct by which we contextualize our values," and renders them "every bit of a religion in that religion and the privileges and exemptions that come with it shouldn’t be the exclusive rights of superstition." To date, they've been most visible advocating to enforce the sometimes-waning separation of church and state: In one campaign, they erected a bronze statue of the god Baphomet outside the Arkansas State Capitol after lawmakers put up a Ten Commandments statue there, prompting Christian groups to protest with hymns and signs reading, "Let Them Offend Our Lord No More."

Now, after years of supporting bodily autonomy and suing to block anti-abortion laws in Idaho, Indiana, Texas' Heartbeat Act, they're launching the first TST Health online abortion clinic Feb. 14 in New Mexico, where abortion remains largely legal, amidst a surge of anti-abortion laws and rabid rhetoric about "pre-born babies" and a "pro-life war" against "pro-death forces." Battling "reproductive laws that violate our religious conscience (and) necessary health and safety standards," they claim abortion as an “essential part of a religious practice” protected by the First Amendment and state religious freedom laws. Their clinic will provide free telehealth consultation with licensed medical staff, followed by a scrip for pills "discreetly" sent by mail, to women medically eligible for but lacking access to abortion; in return, they must perform a religious abortion ritual" of reciting a Satanic affirmation like, “One’s body is inviolable, subject to one’s own will alone." TST hopes to launch clinics in several more states; you can donate here. Their first facility really will be named “The Samuel Alito’s Mom’s Satanic Abortion Clinic," to remind us what's at stake. "Prior to 1973, doctors who performed abortions could lose their licenses and go to jail," says Jarry. "In 1950, Samuel Alito’s mother did not have options, and look what happened." Holy hell, we wish them well.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Abby Zimet.

Exquisitely merging their sacrosanct tenets - reproductive rights, separation of church and state, the freedom to offend and playing artful devil's advocate - The Satanic Temple is opening the first-ever "religious abortion clinic" to offer free, virtual, medication abortion to "involuntarily pregnant women" in states where abortion has been banned. The "non-theistic" group, whose real-world-based "Satanic good works" range from food drives to After-School Satan Clubs, have named their telehealth clinic for Samuel Alito's mother, because, "In 1950, (she) did not have options, and look what happened."

Based in Salem, Mass., the Satanic Temple is somewhat of a baroque misnomer. Co-founded a decade ago by social activists Lucien Greaves and Malcolm Jarry, TST is a non-theistic group that seeks to "encourage benevolence and empathy, reject tyrannical authority, oppose injustice and undertake noble pursuits" while remaining faith-based enough to qualify for federal protections and benefits afforded religious organizations, without the deity part. While they "don't have any supernatural beliefs," they argue the Satanic label is more than just a political ploy; it "provides a metaphorical narrative construct by which we contextualize our values," and renders them "every bit of a religion in that religion and the privileges and exemptions that come with it shouldn’t be the exclusive rights of superstition." To date, they've been most visible advocating to enforce the sometimes-waning separation of church and state: In one campaign, they erected a bronze statue of the god Baphomet outside the Arkansas State Capitol after lawmakers put up a Ten Commandments statue there, prompting Christian groups to protest with hymns and signs reading, "Let Them Offend Our Lord No More."

Now, after years of supporting bodily autonomy and suing to block anti-abortion laws in Idaho, Indiana, Texas' Heartbeat Act, they're launching the first TST Health online abortion clinic Feb. 14 in New Mexico, where abortion remains largely legal, amidst a surge of anti-abortion laws and rabid rhetoric about "pre-born babies" and a "pro-life war" against "pro-death forces." Battling "reproductive laws that violate our religious conscience (and) necessary health and safety standards," they claim abortion as an “essential part of a religious practice” protected by the First Amendment and state religious freedom laws. Their clinic will provide free telehealth consultation with licensed medical staff, followed by a scrip for pills "discreetly" sent by mail, to women medically eligible for but lacking access to abortion; in return, they must perform a religious abortion ritual" of reciting a Satanic affirmation like, “One’s body is inviolable, subject to one’s own will alone." TST hopes to launch clinics in several more states; you can donate here. Their first facility really will be named “The Samuel Alito’s Mom’s Satanic Abortion Clinic," to remind us what's at stake. "Prior to 1973, doctors who performed abortions could lose their licenses and go to jail," says Jarry. "In 1950, Samuel Alito’s mother did not have options, and look what happened." Holy hell, we wish them well.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Abby Zimet.

New Zealand Prime Minister Chris Hipkins has described today’s Waitangi Day dawn service as moving and says he welcomes the shift away from a focus on politics.

Hundreds of people gathered before dawn to commemorate 183 years since Te Tiriti o Waitangi was signed.

• LISTEN TO RNZ MORNING REPORT: ‘We should allow good honest conversation’ – PM Chris Hipkins
• ‘I didn’t mean to say the treaty is an experiment’ – Christopher Luxon
• Live: Hundreds gather for Waitangi Day commemorations
• Waitangi Day 2023 in pictures
• What the party leaders said at Waitangi

Hipkins said the national day had a greater focus on reflection and celebration than years ago.

The criticism that politicians had come to Waitangi in the past and used Māori as a way to increase their votes was a fair one, he said.

Hipkins said he saw his role as lighting the path forwards and not playing in the uncertain space where politicians could create fear and division.

“I think Māori have often been used as a way for politicians to whip up votes in other parts of the population and that’s something that I find abhorrent.”

Trend for less politics
Asked to compare this year’s Waitangi commemorations to previous years, Hipkins said in the last five years there had been a trend for less politics on Waitangi Day.

“I think there’s been a trend in the last five and a half years or so . . . for a bit less politics on Waitangi Day and a bit more reflection and a bit more commemoration and a little bit more celebration and I really welcome that.”

Hipkins said he first attended Waitangi commemorations at Waitangi about 15 years ago and overall he had always found it “to be a pretty positive experience”.

As prime minister his role was “to try and preserve a sense of unity and common purpose,” Hipkins said.

“It’s easy to create division when it comes to race relations and we’ve seen that in the past; governments have tried to to avoid that, it tends to have come from those who are not in government who are trying to get into government and I think that’s most unfortunate.”

National Party leader Christopher Luxon said New Zealand was an intelligent country that could engage in proper debates.

“I think what I’ve seen in reaction to some of our positions, say on co-governance, is you end up with some lazy sort of baseless accusations of racism frankly,” he said.

“Because that’s not what I’m doing, I’m having a conversation to say I’m interested in the ends of advancing all Māori and all non-Māori . . .  the means by which I do that may be different.”

The fact that National does not support co-governance of public services should not be misinterpreted as the party lacking ambition or aspirations for Māori in New Zealand, he said.

Open discussion needed
A lot of New Zealanders were scared to talk about the treaty and our history, we needed good honest relations to take place, Hipkins said.

“We have to create sort of safe spaces for people to say what they think. I think we get into dangerous territory when people stop saying what they think because they’re worried what the response to that might be and then you just perpetuate misunderstanding.

“I think when you create an environment where people can say what they think and other people can challenge that and people don’t have to feel offended or confronted by that.”

The signing of Te Tiriti o Waitangi was a bold vision, Hipkins said.

“If we go to the spirit of what they were trying to accomplish, I think they were trying to accomplish an ability for us all to live here together, to all prosper together without conflict.”

The goal of the treaty was to try to avoid the conquest and conflict that occurred during settlement of some other countries during the mid-1800s, he said.

The history of Aotearoa shows this attempt was somewhat limited and conquest and conflict still followed, Hipkins said.

But the goal was a very noble one and the ongoing importance of the treaty recognises that it was a goal that was worth striving for, Hipkins said.

“I think when people say he aha te mea nui o te ao, he tangata, he tangata, he tangata, when I was here with my mokopuna last year and we were the only ones here due to covid, and we had our own karakia.”

“Funnily enough, it was a similar bleak sort of a morning.

“You just can’t beat having so many people, a throng of people, hearing different voices, hearing the diversity, but feeling the unity that everybody is seeking.”

History was also made this today with the delivery of the first Muslim prayer at the dawn service, from Labour MP Ibrahim Omer.

“We look at Te Tiriti of Waitangi as being between Māori and European or Pākehā, but we really need to be thinking much, much more of the other ethnicities in our country that make up a multicultural tapestry of our nation,” he said.

“How we view it is that we have tangata whenua, or people of the land, and tangata Tiriti, which is the broad application of all people who have come here over time.”

Luxon defends ‘little experiment’ statement
Luxon spoke at Waitangi yesterday, but missed the dawn service today, instead opting to go to an event at the Takapuna Boat Club in Auckland.

One part of Luxon’s speech yesterday caused some controversy: “We started on the 6th of February 1840 as a little experiment, and look at us now — the 21st century success story able to tackle the challenges that come our way.”

Today, Luxon clarified that he did not mean to say that the treaty was an experiment.

“What we’ve done here in New Zealand is incredibly special, I mean if you think about the goodwill of those people who were here negotiating that treaty, it was unprecedented in many ways.”

Looking at what happened in other countries and how they have developed over time the treaty that had been done in New Zealand was incredibly special, he said.

“So it was a brave experiment to set up a treaty as a foundation for a whole new country, that didn’t happen if you think about it pre-1840 around the world.”

The intention was great, but the Crown did not honour its obligations and that was what a lot of New Zealand’s modern history had been about in terms of trying to deal with that issue, Luxon said.

Treaty settlements, Ngāpuhi and rangatiratanga
Asked about the concept of rangatiratanga, or the right of Māori to rule themselves, Hipkins said he was comfortable with the notion of “by Māori for Māori”.

In education there had been significant expansion of things like kura kaupapa Māori and in health some progress was being made in a by Māori for Māori approach, he said.

“I think the government can be a better partner, we can have a better relationship, we can work together better when it comes to all things Māori.”

Hipkins said the Ngāpuhi settlement was likely to be one of the most complex and difficult to achieve, but it was important to continue to approach it “with good faith and good will”.

“We’ve still got a process that we’re going through, what I can provide assurance about though is that the Crown will approach that with good faith and we want to get a settlement, so that’s a pretty good starting point.”

Luxon defended National’s goal that all treaty settlements should be completed by 2030.

Having a deadline made a government focus on getting that job done, he said.

“Treaty settlements are full and final, I mean the individual settlements are full and final, not to be opened up and discussed again.”

He acknowledged that everyone had a lot of work to do in terms of digesting the latest Waitangi Tribunal report on the Ngāpuhi claim.

On rangatiratanga, Luxon said there was one sovereign state here in New Zealand and it was the government.

Equity and equal opportunity
Equity and equal opportunity were two concepts that politicians needed to spend more time talking about, Hipkins said.

“Equal opportunity doesn’t guarantee an equal outcome, but equal opportunity also in itself isn’t necessarily equity because if you’re starting from a very different place then the opportunity in front of you might be the same, but your ability to take up that opportunity might be vastly different.”

For example, a child who starts school and already has a good base of education will be ahead of a child starting school with no education base, Hipkins said.

So treating them exactly the same in the classroom is not equity, although it might be equal opportunity, he said.

To try and address this in the education sector the government had just changed the way schools were funded to allow targeted additional funding to schools with equity challenges, and the same would be done for early childhood centres, he said.

National rejects co-governance of public services
Luxon said National was very supportive of co-management arrangements and it had led to better outcomes.

“But when it comes to the provision of national public services, from a government that’s accountable to all New Zealanders, and those services are designed to deliver to people in need, we think the better way is to have a single system of delivery.”

But there could be innovation within that system to ensure services were being delivered to those communities that needed it, he said.

Luxon said he was focused on outcomes which were targeted on the basis of need which could be delivered through many organisations which would do a much better job than central government would.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

Citing section 404(c) of the Clean Water Act, the EPA will ban waters in the South Fork Koktuli River and North Fork Koktuli River watersheds from being used as disposal sites for material tied to the proposed mine.

In response, Peter Morgan, senior attorney with the Sierra Club's Environmental Law Program, released the following statement:

“For decades, Pebble Mine has faced nearly universal and overwhelming opposition from all sides. Finally, this terrible idea can be put to rest, so we can protect the world-class salmon runs and treasured and abundant wildlife on which local communities depend. We must protect lands and waters like Bristol Bay, not sell them off to Big Polluters, and we welcome the Biden Administration’s action to preserve this iconic place."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

Students at the Fiji-based regional University of the South Pacific have welcomed the announcement by the new coalition government to release $10 million in grants owed as Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka assured the region’s premier institution they were committed to restoring outstanding grant contributions totalling $78.4 million since 2019.

Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka, along with Finance Minister Professor Biman Prasad, had earlier said the reinstatement of Fiji’s grant contributions to the 12-nation USP was a promise they had made in their party manifestos during the election campaign.

USP Students Association (USPSA) secretary-general Emosi Vakarua said thousands of USP students were faced with new learning challenges brought about by covid-19 and exacerbated by the withholding of the obligatory grant payment by the former FijiFirst government.

• READ MORE: Other USP grants reports

“We appreciate the commitment made by the current government of Fiji in honouring its grant contribution with the latest installment,” he said in a statement.

“We thank the government of Fiji for restoring trust and confidence in the region and showing us the true meaning of our Pacific vuvale [family] partnership.”

He said the student body would continue to work closely with the USP Council and senior management in shaping Pacific futures.

Since 2019, the FijiFirst government remained steadfast in its decision to withhold grant contributions to USP until independent investigations into alleged mismanagement by current vice-chancellor Professor Pal Ahluwalia were carried out, ultimately leading to Dr Ahluwalia and his wife’ being deported from Fiji.

Invitation by Rabuka
Professor Ahluwalia, who has since been operating in exile from USP’s Samoa campus, was offered an invitation by Rabuka last month to return to Fiji, a move that has gained widespread support from USP students and staff.

Early this month, Professor Ahluwalia congratulated Rabuka on being elected the new Fiji Prime Minister.

“The new government’s continued reassurance to resuming the payment of grants to USP is a great relief for staff and students and revives the longstanding relationship between Fiji and the regional institute,” he said.

“I look forward to working together with the new coalition government to strengthen the relationship between USP and Fiji.

“As a regional institution, USP will continue to serve its island countries, particularly Fiji and work hard to shape Pacific futures.”

Professor Ahluwalia also acknowledged Rabuka’s support and contribution towards the wholesome development of the institute over the past years through his chairmanship of the advisory committee appointed by the USP Senate to assist the Labasa campus with its various programmes.

It is understood a redeployment of funds from the 2022-2023 National Budget would allow the new government to release an initial $10 million to USP as Rabuka noted discussions were being held with USP about a repayment plan for grants owed alongside the restoration of the university’s annual grant, expected to be included.

Republished from Wansolwara News in collaboration.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

The head of the University of the South Pacific has welcomed the return of payments by the new Fiji coalition government, reports ABC Pacific Beat.

Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka announced an initial payment of $7 million to the university from Fiji’s current budget.

Apia-based vice-chancellor Professor Pal Ahluwalia, who has been working in exile from Samoa and Nauru, welcomed the payment.

He said he would be visiting Fiji in February, the first time he will back in country since his deportation two years ago by the FijiFirst government.

Pacific Media Watch: It is understood the host country Fiji owes USP more than $80 million in grants since the FijiFirst government withheld payments.

Nick Fogarty, Reporter

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

If they had failed to defend the charges, Ressa could have gone to jail for up to 34 years and Rappler would have faced a substantial fine. 

Rappler and Ressa have maintained their innocence and will continue to hold the line in defense of press freedom in the Philippines as they fight a barrage of pending cases designed to silence their reporting. 

“This verdict indicates that it is possible for President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to hit reset on his predecessors’ vast campaign of media repression,” said the Hold The Line Coalition Steering Committee. “We hope we are seeing the beginning of an end to the previous administration’s strategy to instrumentalize the courts as a means to undermine independent news organizations and damage journalists’ credibility. As an immediate next step, we call for all remaining cases against Rappler and Ressa to be closed and their constant persecution to be stopped once and for all.”

“Maria Ressa and Rappler will continue to fight the broader wave of multipronged attacks because they will not have their reporting stymied or their voices silenced,” said the HTL Steering Committee. 

The decision by the Philippines Court of Tax Appeals applies to three cases on alleged failure to provide accurate information regarding investments, and the fourth is an accusation of knowingly avoiding paying taxes. While this judgment represents a reprieve, there is no doubt that being forced to maintain continuous legal defenses in the face of 23 cases leveled by the government since 2018 is meant to debilitate the news organization and Ressa, as well as making investors in the media sector wary of the ramifications of supporting independent local news outlets.

Ressa, her colleagues and Rappler face a sustained campaign of legal persecution and online violence, with 23 individual cases opened by the State against them since 2018. Ressa could face close to seven years in prison on a previous conviction for criminal cyber libel, which is currently in its last cycle of appeal before the Philippine Supreme Court – meaning she could still face a possible imminent prison sentence. 

In an historic precedent, Rappler was officially issued a shutdown order in June 2022, reinforcing an earlier decision to revoke the outlet’s license to operate. The order was the first of its kind for the issuing agency and for Philippine media.

The Marcos administration still has an opportunity to turn the page on the Duterte government’s approach to intimidating independent news media, which has included threats to withdraw media groups’ licenses or hurt their commercial interests to encourage self-censorship when reporting on sensitive issues.

The Philippines was one of the governments participating in the U.S.-hosted Summit for Democracy in 2021, when President Rodrigo Duterte addressed other leaders as part of the event. The summit will reconvene governments and civil society in March 2023. 

The HTL Coalition calls on states committed to freedom of the press and democracy, on intergovernmental organizations, on international development investors, and on international civil society groups to defend press freedom in the Philippines and urge President Marcos to revitalize the country’s commitment to a free press.

Contact #HTL Steering Committee members for further details: Rebecca Vincent (rvincent@rsf.org); Julie Posetti (jposetti@icfj.org); and Gypsy Guillén Kaiser (gguillenkaiser@cpj.org).

Note: The #HTL Coalition comprises more than 80 organizations around the world. This statement is issued by the #HoldTheLine Steering Committee, but it does not necessarily reflect the position of all or any individual Coalition members or organizations.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Arlene Getz/CPJ Editorial Director.

A year after re-opening its borders, Fiji has recorded an injection of F$805 million into its economy from international visitor arrivals between April and August.

After shutting its borders for almost two years at the height of the covid-19 pandemic, Fiji has welcomed 520,000 tourists to its shores in the past 12 months.

Tourism Fiji chief executive Brent Hill said the steady increase in international visitors is promising for an economy where tourism is its largest asset, previously accounting for 40 percent of the country’s GDP.

• READ MORE: Other Fiji tourism reports

“It’s been wonderful to welcome back international visitors for the last 12 months and to see a steady increase in numbers as the world gets used to travelling again.

“The recovery trajectory for visitor arrivals has exceeded our expectations, and the impact can be seen in our economy with tourists buzzing in resorts, towns, and villages as people experience the true Fiji,” Hill said.

Success in structure
Last year, Fiji was one of few Pacific nations to open its doors to tourists with minimal restrictions. What may have seemed like a bold decision at the height of the pandemic has today paid off for a nation that heavily relies on tourism as its highest income earner.

The successful rebound is attributed to the covid-safe measures implemented by the industry prioritising vaccination and the Care Fiji Commitment programme, Tourism Fiji’s New Zealand regional director Sonya Lawson said.

Lawson said while tourists were eager to travel again, security and well-being remained a priority for travellers.

“The programme implemented by Tourism Fiji was a standard of best practice protocols and standards, and certified tourism operators as having rigorous measures in place to manage covid-19 was reassuring,” she said.

“This really provided confidence to travellers, tourism provider providers and locals alike, and that was a key factor in the initial stages, and from there, the confidence has just continued.”

New Zealanders flocking to Fiji
Tourism Fiji said bookings from New Zealand in October this year exceeded pre-pandemic levels at 103 percent of the same period in 2019.

July welcomed over 25,000 New Zealanders which is 91 percent of 2019 levels; in August, that hit 87 percent, and September achieved 95 percent before exceeding Kiwi visitor numbers by October.

Hill said similar to New Zealanders, the resilience of the Fijian people, hospitality, and a commitment to welcoming back visitors is why Fiji has been successful in standing out as a destination.

“We look forward to a bigger and better 2023 focusing on sustainable, authentic tourism.”

New Zealand is Fiji’s second largest international visitor market, now accounting for 26 percent of total visitors – an increase of 3 percent from the 2019 figures.

Lawson added that New Zealand’s visitor arrivals into Fiji had also increased as it previously used to sit at around 23 percent.

There was a 4 percent increase in visitors from Auckland, and 2 percent rises from both Wellington and Christchurch in July this year compared to 2019. This coincided with the phased re-opening of New Zealand borders when Kiwis could travel freely without MIQ.

“Many hotels and resorts have recorded growth in their number of Kiwi visitors — New Zealand is now the second largest market for Six Senses Fiji (resort), having been fourth in previous years,” she added.

New trends for tourists
Leisure and spending also took a turn from pre-pandemic activities. Tourism Fiji recorded tourists travelling around the country with more extended stays.

“For New Zealanders, Denarau, Coral Coast, and Nadi are generally a fan favourite, but we’ve noticed high demands for other regions like the Yasawa Islands and the northern parts of Fiji where there are unique experiences. New Zealanders who have been to Fiji more than once are now discovering other regions to discover,” Lawson said.

“We also previously noticed an average stay of around five nights, but in the last eight months this has increased to around nine nights. We’ve also seen that the spending has increased by an average of 12 percent per day per visitor.

“So we’re putting a lot of this down to the fact that people are embracing travel, have missed the ability to travel, and are taking longer to enjoy a holiday in Fiji.”

Lawson explained that Fiji noticed an increase in ‘multi-generational travel’ where extended families travel together and reconnect in Fiji.

Tourism Fiji has set an ambitious goal of 3 million extra visitor arrivals by 2024, and they believe they are trekking to achieve this target.

“At this stage, Fiji has exceeded all of our expectations for this year, and we’re delighted with how Fiji has resumed and bounced back this year,” said Lawson.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ. 

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

“Canada's interpretation of China's domestic and foreign policies is completely wrong,” a spokesperson from the Chinese Embassy in Ottawa said in a statement.

Canada’s perception of the leadership of the Communist Party of China is also wrong, the spokesperson said, as it is “the choice of history, the choice of the people.”

The Embassy’s spokesperson said that “it is completely wrong for Canada to engage in geo-confrontation in the Asia-Pacific region” and called on Ottawa to “abandon the Cold War mentality,” and stop actions that “harm China's interests.”

“If the Canadian side acts recklessly in spite of its own strength, it will surely suffer a shameful failure, and it will also receive a strong counterattack from the Chinese side,” the statement warned.  

The Global Times, a sister publication of the Chinese Communist Party’s flagship People’s Daily, also published an editorial condemning the Canadian approach.

It said that by naming the document ‘Indo-Pacific Strategy’, the Canadian government is “copying” its ally and neighbor the U.S.

The new strategy “not only harms Canada's interests, but also hurts the dignity of the country,” the Chinese newspaper said, arguing that it “strengthens Canada's subordinate position to Washington in terms of diplomacy.”

It also warned that the country would be taught an expensive lesson, saying: “Canada's tuition fees will be high if it follows Washington's lead blindly.” 

‘Like-minded partners’

On Sunday Ottawa released the long-awaited strategy outlining its policy towards the Indo-Pacific region and clearly defining China as “an increasingly disruptive global power.” 

Over the next five years, Canada will invest nearly CA$2.3 billion (U.S.$1.7 billion) in different initiatives to boost its economic and strategic role in the region, according to the new strategy.

CA$720 million (U.S.$535.8 million) will be invested in boosting its naval presence and increase Canadian armed forces’ participation in military exercises in the Indo-Pacific region.

The Canadian government said it will continue to work with partners “to push back against any unilateral actions that threaten the status quo in the Taiwan Strait, as well as the East and South China Seas.”

Since 2021, Canadian warships have taken part in some U.S.-led Taiwan Strait transits that China denounced as “provocative” as Beijing considers Taiwan a Chinese province and the Taiwan issue its “internal affair.”

Taiwan’s Foreign Ministry said it “affirms and sincerely welcomes the new policy directions pronounced in Canada’s Indo-Pacific Strategy, especially the importance placed on enhancing cooperation with Taiwan and maintaining peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait.”

The document refers to Taiwan multiple times, it noted, showing Canada’s commitment to “foster economic and people-to-people ties with Taiwan while supporting Taiwan’s resilience.” 

“Taiwan and Canada are like-minded partners, share the values of freedom and democracy, and work jointly to safeguard the rules-based international order,” the ministry said.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Staff.

Brazilian President-elect Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva addressed world leaders at the U.N. climate conference in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, on Wednesday, vowing to end deforestation of the Amazon rainforest and create a ministry to represent Indigenous peoples in his government. Brazil’s new approach to climate change aims to reverse outgoing far-right President Jair Bolsonaro’s policies that have devastated Indigenous lands. “With Lula’s support, we can fight against deforestation and support Indigenous peoples in protecting and confronting the threats they face, including assassinations and human rights violations,” says Gregório Mirabal, an Indigenous leader from the Venezuelan Amazon. His colleague Atossa Soltani, board president of Amazon Watch, translated for him.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

Brazilian President-elect Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva addressed world leaders at the U.N. climate conference in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, on Wednesday, vowing to end deforestation of the Amazon rainforest and create a ministry to represent Indigenous peoples in his government. Brazil’s new approach to climate change aims to reverse outgoing far-right President Jair Bolsonaro’s policies that have devastated Indigenous lands. “With Lula’s support, we can fight against deforestation and support Indigenous peoples in protecting and confronting the threats they face, including assassinations and human rights violations,” says Gregório Mirabal, an Indigenous leader from the Venezuelan Amazon. His colleague Atossa Soltani, board president of Amazon Watch, translated for him.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

After a three-day jury trial, Maurício Borges Sampaio was sentenced to 16 years in prison for masterminding the killing. Found guilty of participating in planning and carrying out the crime, the court sentenced Ademá Figuerêdo Aguiar Filho to 16 years in prison and Marcus Vinicius Pereira Xavier and Urbano de Carvalho Malta to 14 years. A fifth accused individual was found not guilty.

“The decision by a Goiás jury to convict those responsible for the murder of Valério Luiz de Oliveira is an encouraging sign, although it should not have taken 10 years,” said Natalie Southwick, CPJ’s Latin America and the Caribbean program coordinator. “Murders of Brazilian journalists rarely lead to the convictions of the masterminds, and we are relieved that the Oliveira family’s decade-long quest for justice has not ended in impunity. We hope this sets a new precedent for Brazilian authorities in bringing the killers of journalists to justice.”

Oliveira was shot and killed on July 5, 2012, in the city of Goiânia. In March 2013, the Goiás state public prosecutor charged the five men. Since then, multiple appeals from defense attorneys and decisions by the Goiás Court of Justice have postponed proceedings, as CPJ documented.  

Brazil was ninth on CPJ’s 2022 Global Impunity Index, which ranks countries where journalists are regularly murdered in retaliation for their work and their killers go free.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

“This is an important step to protect press freedom in the United States,” said CPJ U.S. and Canada Program Coordinator Katherine Jacobsen. “These significant restraints to the Justice Department’s ability to subpoena journalists’ source material send a powerful message about the importance of reporters’ ability to protect their sources. CPJ and other press freedom organizations have long been advocating for this decision—it is heartening to see the Justice Department commit to these changes.” 

Wednesday’s decision codifies Garland’s policy change to extend the protections in July 2021, the Department of Justice said.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

“CPJ welcomes the sentencing of Ali Riza Polat and Amar Ramdani in an appeal trial, ending the lengthy judicial process for the deadly 2015 terrorist attack on Charlie Hebdo magazine,” said Attila Mong, CPJ’s Europe representative. “This verdict sends an important message to violent extremists that they will not have the last word and their attempts to silence free speech will not prevail.”

On January 7, 2015, heavily armed and hooded shooters attacked the Paris office of Charlie Hebdo, injuring 11 people and killing 12, including eight journalists. The Islamic terrorist group Al-Qaeda took responsibility for the attack.

Polat and Ramdani were the only defendants to appeal the 2020 verdict, which found 14 people guilty, according to news reports.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

Bruneian Lim Jock Hoi, the bloc’s current secretary-general, said at a recent event at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington D.C., that while the U.S.’s presence in the ASEAN region is important, it “should complement existing regional architecture that is open and inclusive.”

Its most senior official took part in a special discussion about the U.S-ASEAN partnership, hosted by the CSIS on Monday as its “inaugural” ASEAN Leadership Forum. 

ASEAN is marking the 45th anniversary of its relationship with Washington this year. 

“Peace and stability has always been a primordial concern of ASEAN since it was founded in 1967,” Lim emphasized.

U.S.-led initiatives such as the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF) could provide opportunities to ASEAN countries, he said, but they “have to be in line with ASEAN’s outlook [on the] Indo-Pacific.” 

“We stress, among others, ASEAN centrality, openness, transparency, inclusivity, making sure that all relevant actors in the region are included,” Lim said.

U.S. President Joe Biden announced in May the launch of the IPEF which comprises 13 nations but not China and which has been criticized by Beijing as a U.S. tool “to coerce regional countries.”

The U.S. continues to be the largest source of foreign direct investment in ASEAN and the second largest trading partner, with bilateral trade reaching U.S.$364 billion last year. 

China’s has remained ASEAN’s number one trading partner for 13 consecutive years, according to the Chinese government’s Information Office. Trade between China and ASEAN reached U.S. $544.9 billion in the first seven months of this year.

“We see both are important for ASEAN. We hope that both major powers discuss constructively in order to make the region more conducive to trade and investment and create opportunity for all of us,” the senior official said.

ASEAN’s neutrality

ASEAN’s leadership so far has been careful not to take sides in the U.S.-China rivalry in their backyard, said Kasit Piromya, former foreign minister of Thailand who has been active in ASEAN political circles.

“ASEAN should continue to maintain dialogue partnerships with both, reflecting that ASEAN is friendly and cooperative with all,” he said.

Officials from both ASEAN and the U.S. are working on the establishment of a so-called Comprehensive Strategic Partnership later this year. It is unclear how far-reaching the new form of partnership will become but the U.S. “needs to think more and do more” in terms of working with ASEAN, in Kasit Piromya’s opinion.

“I don't think that the U.S.-ASEAN relations have matured because there is no common base or foundation as such, unlike the U.S. relations with Japan, South Korea and Taiwan which are based on democracy,” he said.

“There seems to be no sense of real purpose and enthusiasm on the part of the U.S. side to really forge a more intensive and robust relationship with ASEAN in spite of the Indo-Pacific strategy and IPEF,” the former top Thai diplomat said. 

Critics say that the ASEAN’s centrality was overlooked and bypassed when the U.S. put more efforts into other regional groupings such as the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or the Quad, that also includes Australia, India and Japan. 

ASEAN was also not alerted or informed in advance of the setting up of AUKUS, the trilateral security pact between Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

These Indo-Pacific security groupings are widely seen as countering China’s rising influence and assertiveness in the region.

“The U.S. has not fully utilized the inherent belief and desires of many of the ASEAN member states for its continued presence in the region,” Kasit said, adding: “Washington cannot fail to realize that all the countries in the region are afraid of China.” 

South China Sea disputes

The U.S. has provided over U.S. $12.1 billion in development, economic, health, and security assistance to Southeast Asian allies and partners, including the members of ASEAN, since 2002, according to a U.S. State Department fact sheet. 

“The United States supports the international rules-based order in the South China Sea, and in close cooperation with our allies and partners, the United States promotes a free and open Indo-Pacific in which the freedoms of navigation and overflight are enjoyed and respected by all states in accordance with international law,” the fact sheet reads.

China and several ASEAN member states hold conflicting claims over parts of the South China Sea but Beijing’s claims are the most expansive, up to 90% of the sea.

There was only a brief reference to the South China Sea disputes in the ASEAN secretary-general’s speech at CSIS on Monday, when Lim Jock Hoi listed maritime security as one of the challenges that the region has been facing “for the longest time.”

“Efforts towards the conclusion of the Code of Conduct on South China Sea, one [that] is mutually acceptable to all parties concerned, [have] effectively and consistently been pursued,” said Lim without mentioning the United States.

Some analysts believe that policy differences between ASEAN members in dealing with South China Sea issues led to a divisive approach to the role the U.S. could play.

The U.S. Navy, and maritime forces from the ten ASEAN countries held the first ASEAN-U.S. Maritime Exercise in Thailand in 2019 but the drills have not occurred again.

China has been warning against what it sees as “interference by external actors” in South China Sea disputes.

“Sometimes, the U.S. has come across as a little too keen to help, prompting concern among some claimants that it might inadvertently trigger an escalation of tensions or an unwanted incident in the South China Sea that Southeast Asian countries will have to bear the brunt of,” said Elina Noor, Director of Political-Security Affairs at the Asia Society Policy Institute in Washington D.C.

Noor said that the U.S. side could try to “have more effective communication and coordination with Southeast Asian partners so that their presence and shows of force don’t trigger misunderstanding.”

“ASEAN does not have common foreign policy goals, so member states have their own say regarding maritime cooperation,” said Nguyen The Phuong, a Vietnamese defense analyst.

“Some want more cooperation [with the U.S.], some want less.”

“There are also opinions that those countries which wish to cooperate more with the U.S. in the field of maritime security could set up a smaller group, unofficial of course, within ASEAN to bolster their cooperation,” he said.

In May, President Biden announced a new Indo-Pacific Partnership for Maritime Domain Awareness (IPMDA) that would provide better access to space-based, maritime domain awareness to countries across the region.

“It’s new, but a rising cooperation area,” said the Vietnamese analyst.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Staff.

“Although it will never bring back the lives of those killed, the sentencing of El Shafee Elsheikh for his role in the deaths of Islamic State hostages, including the horrific beheadings of journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff, is an important milestone in the justice process,” said Katherine Jacobsen, CPJ’s U.S. and Canada program coordinator. “The murders of Foley and Sotloff are poignant reminders of the heightened risks freelance journalists take when doing their jobs.”

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Jennifer Dunham.

A Leadership Tribunal has been appointed in Papua New Guinea to enquire into allegations of misconduct against the Member for Madang Bryan Kramer, a cabinet minister in the previous Marape government.

Kramer, a former police and justice minister and Minister of Immigration and Citizenship in the outgoing cabinet, has also been a social media strategist and publisher of the Kramer Report.

The Tribunal will be headed by a senior judge, Justice Lawrence Kangwia, and magistrates, Ms Nidue, Principal Magistrate and Senior Provincial Magistrate for Eastern Highlands, and District Court Magistrate Edward Komia.

• READ MORE: Other PNG elections reports

Acting Chief Justice Ambeng Kandakasi announced the composition of the Tribunal yesterday.

Kramer welcomed the opportunity for the misconduct allegations to be heard and determined by the Tribunal.

“Today I was contacted by the Secretariat of the Leadership Tribunal and served the instrument signed by Acting Chief Justice appointing a Leadership Tribunal to enquire into and determine the 14 allegations of misconduct in office filed against me by the Ombudsman Commission,” he said in a statement.

“I was also served a statement of allegations of misconduct in office prepared by the Public Prosecutor.

Without reasons
However, it was served without the statement of reasons by the Ombudsman Commission that was supposed to be attached, Kramer said.

“I’ve taken note of the allegations and find them ridiculous and nonsensical. I look forward to the opportunity to prove the same before the Tribunal.

“The 14 allegations fail to raise any actual elements of dishonesty, material misconduct or personal benefit and appear to be mere administrative issues and or absurd allegations.

“Three allegations relate to social media publications purportedly scandalising the judiciary — namely the conduct of Chief Justice Sir Gibbs Salika — in suggesting a conflict of interest.

“It is further alleged that I published a letter of criminal complaint which was authored by the Chief Justice and addressed to the Commissioner of Police. This letter of complaint alleged that my publication on an interlocutory ruling was ‘inciting trouble and tending to cause trouble or ill feeling among people’.

“The letter went on to request that police investigate the matter and lay appropriate charges against me under Section 11 of the Summary Offences Act.

“Other allegations against me relate to decisions made by the Madang District Development Authority to establish its own company, Madang District Works & Equipment Ltd and Madang Ward Project Limited, to implement the DDA’s own development programs, by funding the wards to construct their own classrooms, aid posts as well as repair of town roads that had failed to be maintained by successive Provincial Administrations.

‘Ethical and transparent’
“The DDA approved completing the work at cost that was not possible with private contractors, is ethical and transparent with no kickbacks paid to government or members and represents value for money for Madang Open constituents.

“It is further alleged that I misappropriated K30.6 million [NZ$14 million] of Madang DSIP funds to a company owned by a member of Madang DDA (Madang District Works & Equipment Ltd). This allegation is wholly ridiculous.

“The company is fully owned by Madang DDA, and a nominated representative of the Madang DDA is listed as the sole director on behalf of the DDA. This is common and correct practice, and complies with Section 7.2 of the DDA Act as well as advice provided by the former Chief Ombudsman back in 2018.

“As for K30.6 million — this is a ridiculous claim and entirely fictitious. K30.6 million was in fact an entire 2020 DDA budget appropriation, which was submitted to the Department of Treasury and approved. It was certainly not spent or paid to a District Works company.

“A simple review of the relevant acts and documents would have shown the Ombudsman and Public Prosecutor that there is no case to answer. I am surprised, and somewhat shocked, that they failed to do their homework before making these allegations.

“Surely it is their job to ascertain the facts supported by credible evidence before pursuing a vexatious allegations.

“Unsubstantiated and vexatious actions like this only serve to further undermine the public’s trust in these important Constitutional offices.

‘Breached constitutional obligations’
“In the Ombudsman Commission’s haste to have me prosecuted over these allegations, it breached its own constitutional obligations by failing to provide me the right to be heard insofar as providing me documents [that] I requested to ascertain the truth of their allegations.

“The Supreme Court, in the case Pruaitch vs Manek in 2019, ruled that ‘any relevant documents are to be furnished to the leader if requested to enable the leader to fully respond to the allegations’.

“On 14 December 2022, I wrote to the Chief Ombudsman requesting the commission provide an extension of time to respond to the allegations and provide the evidence they relied on in forming their opinion that I was guilty of fourteen allegations of misconduct. As reported previously, the Ombudsman refused my request stating that ‘in practice we do not generally release information because all our investigations are confidential’.

“This is clearly in breach of Section 59 of the Constitution, the right to natural justice, and is clearly contrary to the Supreme Court’s own ruling on the issue.

“I now plan to challenge the Ombudsman Commission and hold it accountable to the law it claims to uphold. I look forward to my opportunity to put these vexatious allegations to rest and the opportunity to subpoena and cross examine all relevant persons behind these allegations before the Tribunal.”

Todagia Kelola is a PNG Post-Courier reporter. Republished with permission.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

“While CPJ welcomes President Biden’s public call for accountability into the death of journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, we are disappointed that he did not commit to an investigation led by the FBI and that he did not meet with Shireen’s family during his Middle East visit,” said CPJ Middle East and North Africa Program Coordinator Sherif Mansour. “The Biden administration must understand that the campaign to bring real justice for Shireen is not going away and that any perception of indifference towards journalists would be a huge disservice to the human rights the U.S. president claims to cherish.”

Abu Akleh, a correspondent for Al-Jazeera Arabic, was fatally shot in the head on May 11, 2022, while covering an Israeli army operation in the West Bank town of Jenin. A U.S. forensic investigation found that the Israel Defense Forces were “likely responsible” for shooting and killing Abu Akleh, but that there was “no reason to believe that this was intentional.” 

CPJ has called on the U.S. to take the lead in a “credible and transparent” investigation into her death and for Biden to call for concrete actions on press freedom – including the release of jailed journalists — as he meets with the leaders of Egypt and Saudi Arabia on the next leg of his Middle East tour.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Erik Crouch.

Manukau Urban Māori Authority (MUMA) is welcoming the government’s health reforms as an important first step to improving Māori and Pasifika health in south Auckland.

But some in the health sector say the jury is still out on what will be achieved in Counties Manukau.

Under the reforms, the country’s 20 district health boards have now been replaced by Te Whatu Ora (Health New Zealand).

• READ MORE: Other Health New Zealand reform reports

The new Crown entity will be responsible for running hospitals, primary and community health services.

The government says it will allow for more consistent delivery of health services nationwide and help stop the postcode lottery people face accessing healthcare based on where they live.

The reforms also include the establishment of Te Aka Whai Ora (the Māori Health Authority) to improve indigenous health which will work in partnership with Health NZ.

Muma chairman Bernie O’Donnell has seen the country’s district health boards work first-hand, as a member of the now-defunct Auckland DHB.

Greater responsibility for Māori
He said establishing a Māori Health Authority would give Māori greater responsibility for the delivery of their own health services.

“For too long the health system hasn’t addressed the wellbeing of Māori, or those at the bottom of the cliff,” O’Donnell said. “The reality is we couldn’t continue with what we had. Something had to be done and this is it.”

He said critics of the health reforms are defending a system which had to be replaced.

“The old way the DHBs were run didn’t work for our people. For too long it’s been non-Māori telling us what’s best for us.”

He said ongoing issues left by the Counties Manukau DHB, such as Middlemore Hospital’s under-pressure emergency department and its workforce shortages would all have to be addressed under the changes.

“But what we’re expecting is that Māori and Pasifika health in south Auckland will get better under the reforms,” O’Donnell said.

However, he admitted there’s a lot at stake.

‘Time will tell’
“If that doesn’t happen we won’t have achieved anything of significance,” he said. “But only time will tell.”

Yet not everyone is as certain as O’Donnell on what impact the changes will have.

Turuki Healthcare chief executive Te Puea Winiata said there were still a lot of unanswered questions about the reforms.

Winiata said the creation of the new authority dedicated to indigenous health is an important first step.

But she said it was vital that the new entity had the ability to make its own decisions and help support Māori self-determination.

“The resourcing of the Māori Health Authority is going to be critical to its success,” she said.

Many reform attempts
Winiata said she had worked in the health sector for the past 30 years and in that time had seen a number of attempts by the government of the day to restructure the health system.

She said it was hard to predict what impact the health reforms would have in south Auckland.

“But I think in 12 months’ time we will be able to look at what changes have been made and see what’s been achieved.”

Local Democracy Reporting is Public Interest Journalism funded through NZ on Air. Asia Pacific Report is an LDR partner.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

Meetings with opposition stakeholders could be held via video conference calls and other means if the junta prohibits such meetings in-person, Foreign Minister Saifuddin Abdullah told BenarNews after an informal gathering here with other top diplomats from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations ahead of a leader-level summit here with the United States.

“I thought the ASEAN special envoy, in his concluding remarks – though I cannot speak on his behalf – ... in some ways welcomed the idea of engaging the NUG and the NUCC and the other stakeholders,” Saifuddin said.

“Two other ministers spoke along the same lines, but not necessarily mentioning the NUG and the NUCC.”

He was referring to the National Unity Government, Myanmar’s parallel, civilian-led government. The NUCC is a more representative body, which includes members of the NUG, civil society groups, ethnic armed organizations, and civil disobedience groups.

Saifuddin’s proposals at Wednesday’s meeting in Washington included strengthening the role of the bloc’s envoy to Myanmar and ensuring that the United Nations special envoy to the country, Noeleen Heyzer, is invited to relevant ASEAN meetings.

Heyzer could not attend an ASEAN meeting last week to coordinate humanitarian aid to Myanmar because the Burmese junta does not recognize her.

“I mentioned that the U.N. secretary general’s special envoy needs to be invited to all of the relevant meetings, regardless what the junta is saying. You cannot allow the junta to dictate who is to be invited,” Saifuddin noted having told meeting with the ASEAN ministers.

“If it is an ASEAN meeting, then it is ASEAN that should decide who is to attend. And in this context we should invite Dr. Noeleen Heyzer.”

Two weeks ago, the Myanmar junta reacted furiously when Saifuddin said he planned to propose that the ASEAN envoy must engage informally with NUG. In its response, the junta branded the NUG “terrorist groups.”

Judging from that response, the Burmese generals won’t be happy to learn that Saifuddin said he was planning to have his first in-person meeting with the NUG’s foreign minister, Zin Mar Aung, in Washington on Saturday. He said he planned to solicit her opinion on how the people of Myanmar can move on.

‘We need to be more creative’

The foreign ministers of the ASEAN member-states are in Washington with their countries’ leaders to participate in the U.S.-ASEAN summit.

Saifuddin said the ministers had planned the informal meeting here to mainly discuss the crisis in post-coup Myanmar and the non-implementation of a five-point agreement that the junta agreed to with ASEAN to return the country to peace and democracy.

The junta’s reneging on the agreement notwithstanding, ASEAN members plan to stick with the five-point consensus, Saifuddin said.

“We are very much still on board with the five-point consensus, but I think many of us are quite frustrated …,” Saifuddin acknowledged.

“I think we need to be more creative and that is why, for example, we [need to] start naming the stakeholders …the NUG, the NUCC, all of them.”

The points of the consensus call for  a constructive dialogue among all parties; the mediation of such talks by a special envoy of the ASEAN chair; and a visit to Myanmar by an ASEAN delegation, headed by the special envoy, to meet with all parties.

BenarNews asked Saifuddin if he believed the NUG should attend the U.S.-ASEAN summit, because the junta is being kept out of ASEAN meetings and Washington is following the regional bloc’s lead on that. The NUG foreign minister was in Washington, as of Wednesday.

“Well, we have not come to that point. My suggestion to the ASEAN meeting this morning was to engage informally. We, as you know, many of us are democrats at heart and our countries are democracies,” the Malaysian minister said.

“But at the same time, we do not want to, you know, to do something that is probably beyond what we can handle. So I thought the best way forward for now is to engage with the NUG informally.”

Meanwhile, when a senior Biden administration official was asked Wednesday about who would represent ASEAN member-state Myanmar at the summit, he replied “we’ll have more to say on this tomorrow.”

“We have had diplomatic engagement with the government in exile. We are in discussions about the best way to represent what has transpired in Burma and how to represent that in the meeting,” the senior administration official told Radio Free Asia, the parent company of BenarNews, in a briefing to media.

“I think one of the discussions has been to have an empty chair to reflect our dissatisfaction with what’s taken place and our hope for a better path forward.”

BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated online news service.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Shailaja Neelakantan and Nani Yusof for BenarNews.

SLAPPs (strategic lawsuits against public participation) are abusive lawsuits filed by powerful officials, businesspeople, or corporations against individuals, including critical journalists or news outlets, to restrict or censor critical reporting. They are characterized by long and costly legal proceedings that aim to deter journalists from pursuing their reporting.

On Wednesday, April 27, the European Commission put forward a Directive requiring member states to make necessary legal reforms to prevent cross-border SLAPPs, including early dismissal of cases and compensation for damages. On the same day, a Recommendation was also proposed to Member States which, although not legally binding, encourages authorities to tackle SLAPPs at a national level by putting in place legal safeguards and providing support to victims.

“This move by the European Commission to stop SLAPP lawsuits demonstrates important, decisive action,” said Tom Gibson, CPJ’s European Union representative. “However, the initiative needs the support of member states if journalists are going to reap the benefits of greater legal protection against these abusive lawsuits. We are not there yet.”

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

“We are pleased that Salah and Fayed are getting some relief after their unjust and prolonged detention, but there must also be justice for the many other journalists being held in Egypt’s jails,” said Sherif Mansour, CPJ’s Middle East and North Africa Program Coordinator. “The Biden administration and other U.S. officials should continue to hold President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s feet close to the fire if he doesn’t deliver on reforms.”

The reports said the latest releases follow el-Sisi’s promises to call for political dialogue in the wake of growing concern among U.S. lawmakers about Egypt’s human rights record and the Biden administration’s decision to make a portion of U.S. military aid to Cairo conditional upon improvement of that record.

As of December 1, 2021, Egypt was the world’s third-worst jailer of journalists, with at least 25 reporters imprisoned in the country in retaliation for their work, according to CPJ’s most recent prison census.     

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Arlene Getz/CPJ Editorial Director.

The U.S. has hit a record number of apprehensions at the border shared with Mexico, arresting over 1 million asylum seekers in the past six months alone. We speak with immigration attorney Erika Pinheiro about the Biden administration’s unequal treatment of different nationalities, as refugees from countries like Haiti, Cuba and Cameroon face harsh restrictions on asylum, but Ukrainian refugees seem to be receiving special treatment and even exemption from Title 42. “Asylum is supposed to be a universal standard protecting individuals fleeing persecution from any country, but in practice it’s always been a political tool wielded by the United States to favor those fleeing regimes that the United States opposes,” says Pinheiro.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

This content originally appeared on openDemocracy RSS and was authored by Kaspars Germanis.

“It is great news that Ethiopian journalist Temerat Negara is out of prison, but it is a grave injustice that he was held for four months behind bars without being charged with any crime,” said CPJ’s sub-Saharan Africa representative, Muthoki Mumo. “Officials who abused Ethiopia’s judicial system to arbitrarily detain Temerat must be held to account, and authorities must drop any pending investigations into him and allow him to continue working freely.”

Temerat, co-founder and editor of the Terara Network online news outlet, was granted bail of 50,000 birr (US$980) on Tuesday, and was released from a detention facility in Oromia regional state on Wednesday, according to news reports.

Authorities held Temerat without charge since arresting him on December 10, 2021, amid a nationwide state of emergency as part of the government’s response to a civil war against rebel forces allied with the Tigray People’s Liberation Front.

Temerat was first detained in the capital, Addis Ababa, and was transferred to Oromia, where authorities requested he be detained while they investigated allegations that he disseminated disinformation, smeared the name of Oromia regional state, and defamed senior government officials including Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed Ali, according to CPJ reporting and media reports.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Erik Crouch.

“It is a great relief that Ethiopian journalists Amir Aman Kiyaro and Thomas Engida are home with their families, after four months of arbitrary detention during which they were not charged with any crime,” said CPJ’s sub-Saharan Africa representative, Muthoki Mumo. “The journalists should never have spent a single day behind bars, and authorities should bring this ordeal to a close by dropping any pending investigations into their work and guaranteeing that they can do their jobs freely and safely.”

On November 28, 2021, authorities arrested Amir, a freelance video journalist who contributes to the Associated Press, and Thomas, a freelance camera operator, as CPJ documented at the time. Authorities accused them of breaching Ethiopia’s state of emergency and anti-terrorism laws by interviewing members of an insurgent group.

The two journalists were granted bail on Tuesday; on Thursday, the country’s Supreme Court rejected a police appeal to keep them in detention, and on Friday they were released, according to media reports and two people familiar with their case who spoke to CPJ on condition of anonymity, citing safety concerns.

Amir and Thomas were among a group of journalists detained in a crackdown that followed Ethiopia’s declaration of a state of emergency in November last year, as CPJ reported. They were not listed in CPJ’s 2021 prison census — which ranked Ethiopia as sub-Saharan Africa’s second-worst jailer after documenting at least nine journalists in custody there as of December 1 — because CPJ did not have the full details of their arrests at the time.

Even though the state of emergency was lifted in February, at least three other journalists — Temerat Negara, cofounder of the online outlet Terara Network, Oromia News Network editor Dessu Dulla, and ONN reporter Bikila Amenu — remain behind bars in the Oromia regional state, according to media reports and a person familiar with the ONN case who spoke to CPJ on condition of anonymity, citing safety concerns.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Erik Crouch.

As the U.S. says it will welcome up to 100,000 Ukrainian refugees fleeing the Russian invasion, immigration officials say they’re preparing for a surge of migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border as it ends the Trump-era pandemic restriction Title 42 in response to humanitarian outcry. We speak with Guerline Jozef of the Haitian Bridge Alliance about how Haitian refugees are treated, and with award-winning journalist Maria Hinojosa about the Haitians she met in a migrant caravan. Jozef says President Biden’s pledge to welcome Ukrainian refugees, while necessary, is a painful display of the double standard faced by Haitian immigrants and other people of color seeking humanitarian relief in the United States. “Why is it that when it comes to people of color, Black and Brown people, we must continue to push and beg to validate our humanity?” asks Jozef. Hinojosa has been reporting on migration for her podcast series “The Moving Border” and says the Biden administration is “appeasing” anti-immigrant forces in the U.S. by continuing rejections, deportations and detentions at the southern border. “What we are seeing is … white supremacy in the context of refugees and desperate people,” says Hinojosa.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

Last Monday, the European Union’s commissioner for home affairs, Ylva Johansson, visited a border crossing and refugee camp in the Romanian town of Siret, as thousands of Ukrainians arrived fleeing war and seeking asylum. Speaking to the press, Johansson praised the “heartwarming” cooperation and solidarity of authorities and volunteers. Europe, she said, was united “in a way we have never seen before.” On Sunday, Johansson had announced plans to grant temporary protection to all Ukrainian refugees, and by Thursday, the EU had unanimously agreed to fast-track residency permits for everyone fleeing the war. The commissioner was not naive or sanguine about the situation: “We need to prepare for millions,” she said.

Johansson’s statements came amid an outpouring of international support for Ukrainian refugees, now numbering over 1.7 million, as politicians, journalists, and commentators across the Western world articulated a shared sense of empathy and solidarity with the victims of Russian military aggression. White House press secretary Jen Psaki said that the Biden administration — a government that in less than two years has carried out over 1 million expulsions of Latin American and Caribbean migrants, without giving them the chance to request asylum — “is certainly prepared” to take in Ukrainian refugees. On Thursday, the Department of Homeland Security promised Temporary Protected Status to all Ukrainians currently present in the United States, a designation yet to be extended to Afghans, among others whose home countries the U.S. played a direct role in destabilizing. European states made even greater and more concrete commitments, expressed with an air of pride and patriotic duty, as if opening borders to those in need was simply a time-honored European tradition, taken for granted as the right thing to do.

These deaths, it bears repeating, are the result of policies created by the same governments now welcoming millions of Ukrainians without hesitation.

The book cover for Sally Hayden’s “My Fourth Time, We Drowned: Seeking Refuge on the World’s Deadliest Migration Route.”

Image: Courtesy of Melville House Books

“I wanted to document the consequences of European migration policies beginning from the point at which Europe becomes ethically culpable: when refugees are forcibly turned away.”

Migrants hold placards during United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’s visit to Ain Zara detention center for migrants in Tripoli on April 4, 2019.

Photo: Mahmud Turkia/AFP via Getty Images

Europe’s welcoming response to Ukrainians must be a model for future responses to displacement and migration.

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Max Granger.

We go to Georgia, where a jury has found the three white men who hunted and fatally shot unarmed Black jogger Ahmaud Arbery guilty of committing federal hate crimes, acknowledging the racial animus behind the killing. It marks the first time in Georgia’s history that there has been a conviction for a federal hate crime. Today is the anniversary of Arbery’s murder, now marked as Ahmaud Arbery Day in Georgia. We speak with Anoa Changa, editor at NewsOne and retired federal government attorney. The verdict feels like a victory for proponents of racial justice, but “it isn’t the end-all be-all that a lot of people think it is,” says Changa. “Prosecutorial misconduct and prosecutorial accountability continue to be something that organizers around the state are working on.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Raymond Chung and Cai Ling.