Never Be Silent

I posted about this case back in August. The jist:

The editor of Zambia’s largest independent newspaper, The Post, is currently on trial for distributing pornography. Chansa Kabwela was charged in July for ”circulating obscene matters with the intention to corrupt the morals of society,” punishable by a five year prison sentence. What exactly did Kabwela circulate that was so dangerous to the moral character of Zambians? Pictures of a woman giving birth on the ground outside a hospital.

A recent nurses’ strike led to dangerous medical conditions in the country, a fact Kabwela wanted to highlight. When she received pictures of the incident, she decided not to publish them in the paper, but instead sent copies to the vice president, the health minister and several organizations. The pictures were taken by a relative of the woman, who visited clinics and the hospital in search of medical assistance due to the breach birth position of the baby. Eventually she laid down on the ground near the hospital before doctors from the hospital finally assisted her. The baby did not survive.

Thankfully, the charges against Chansa Kabwela have been dropped! From Reporters Without Borders, excerpt:

A Lusaka court yesterday acquitted The Post editor Chansa Kabwela of a charge of “distributing obscene material” for sending the vice-president photos of a woman giving birth in a hospital car park during a strike by hospital staff. Judge Charles Kafunda dismissed the case on the grounds that there was no evidence that the photos would corrupt public morals.

“The judge took the right decision as the charges against Kabwela were ridiculous and baseless,” Reporters Without Borders said. “We nonetheless regret that the authorities subjected her to this ordeal for many months for no reason.”

As she emerged from the courtroom, Kabwela told Reporters Without Borders she was happy and relieved. “My victory is also a victory for all those who suffered during the health sector strikes,” she said. “I am happy that the court acquitted me. I had no intention of causing anyone any harm. The letter I wrote to the vice-president was very clear. I just wanted to draw his attention to the situation in the hospitals.”

From the Amnesty International blog, in its entirety:

I heard some very disturbing news last night.  Dileesha Abeysundera, a Sri Lankan journalist and media rights activist, is in danger.  Several unidentified people traveling in white vans tried to break into her compound in Colombo (Sri Lanka’s capital city) at 11:45 P.M. on Sept. 28.  While they didn’t succeed and Dileesha wasn’t harmed, I’m very worried for her.   The use of white vans was particularly chilling; they’ve been used in many abductions and enforced disappearances in Sri Lanka since 2006.

Dileesha had organized a meeting on Sept. 28 calling for the abolition of the Press Council Act, a law which restricts freedom of expression in Sri Lanka by prohibiting publication of materials relating to economic policy, government documents and other topics.  The Sri Lankan government has repeatedly defended the Act.  It’s thought that she was threatened that evening because of her work in organizing the meeting that day.

Over 14 media workers have been killed since 2006 with no one brought to justice in any of these cases.  For more information on how freedom of expression has been under attack in Sri Lanka, please see our report, “Sri Lanka:  Silencing dissent.”

Please write to President Mahinda Rajapaksa in Sri Lanka and ask him to ensure Dileesha’s safety and to investigate the attempted intimidation of her.  Please also ask him to investigate the attacks, including killings, of other Sri Lankan journalists and media workers.  His address is:  Presidential Secretariat, Colombo 1, Sri Lanka; email:  prsec@presidentsoffice.lk.  Thanks for your consideration.

thesmarttart:

“W. Horace Carter, the founding publisher of a small-town North Carolina newspaper that won a Pulitzer Prize in 1953 for his reporting on and editorials against the Ku Klux Klan, died yesterday in Wilmington, NC… In 1950, after witnessing a Ku Klux Klan motorcade drive through Tabor City, Carter began reporting on and editorializing against the white-supremacist terrorist group, which at the time was resisting the growing Civil Rights Movement. Three years and 130 stories later, the Tabor City Tribune became the first weekly newspaper to win the Pulitzer Prize for Meritorious Public Service for its work on the Klan. It shared the award with the News Reporter in nearby Whiteville, N.C. under editor Willard Cole, who along with Carter received numerous threats. Their crusade helped helped lead to the convictions of 254 Klansmen, with 62 sent to prison or fined…”
via the Institute for Southern Studies

Follow-up on last week’s post. From AP, excerpt:

KHARTOUM, Sudan – A Sudanese judge convicted a woman journalist on Monday for violating the public indecency law by wearing trousers outdoors and fined her $200, but did not impose a feared flogging penalty.

Lubna Hussein was among 13 women arrested July 3 in a raid by the public order police in Khartoum. Ten of the women were fined and flogged two days later. But Hussein and two others decided to go to trial.

“I will not pay a penny,” she told the Associated Press while still in court custody, wearing the same trousers that had sparked her arrest.

Hussein said Friday she would rather go to jail than pay any fine, out of protest of the nation’s strict laws on women’s dress.

“I won’t pay, as a matter of principle,” she said. “I would spend a month in jail. It is a chance to explore the conditions in jail.”

The case has made headlines in Sudan and around the world and Hussein used it to rally world opinion against the country’s morality laws based on a strict interpretation of Islam.

Galal al-Sayed, Hussein’s lawyer, said he advised her to pay the fine before appealing the decision. She refused, he said, “She insisted.”

The lawyer said the judge ignored his request to present defense witnesses.

“The ruling is incorrect,” he said, adding that the prosecution witnesses gave contradictory statements.

Al-Sayed said the judge had the option of choosing flogging, but apparently opted for fine to avoid international criticism. “There is a general sentiment in the world that flogging is humiliating.”

Ahead of the trial, police rounded up dozens of female demonstrators, many of them wearing trousers, outside the courtroom.

The London-based Amnesty International on Friday called on the Sudanese government to withdraw the charges against Hussein and repeal the law which justifies “abhorrent” penalties.

From Amnesty International, excerpt:

On Wednesday 1 September, the Sri Lanka Team at Amnesty International’s International Secretariat organised a vigil outside Parliament Square in London. We gathered to protest against the sentencing of Jayaprakash Sittampalam Tissainayagam, known as Tissa to his friends and family, to 20 years ‘vigorous imprisonment’ by the Government of Sri Lanka.

Tissa has been named a Prisoner of Conscience by Amnesty International. We believe that he has been imprisoned simply for publishing articles critical of the Government of Sri Lanka.

Tissa’s case was noted by President Barack Obama on world press freedom day as an “emblematic example” of media repression; a symbol of what has become the fate of many journalists and media workers in Sri Lanka held under sweeping anti terrorist legislation.

The aggressive stifling of independent media in Sri Lanka has meant that a true picture of what is happening to civilians caught up in the conflict has not been allowed to emerge, and a dangerous culture of silence and self censorship has developed among members of the international community and local civil society.  Approximately 280,000 civilians remain displaced by the recent war, and are living in de facto detention camps without adequate food, sanitation or shelter.

Many passers by reacted with messages of solidarity and support for Tissa’s case, illustrating the need for groups like Amnesty International to speak out on behalf of those who have been silenced.

Find out how you can help Tissa.

The Amnesty International press release:

Amnesty International Calls on Sudanese Government to Repeal Law Against Women Wearing Pants as Trial of Journalist Set to Resume

Organization Says Law Used to Justify Flogging of Women for Wearing “Indecent” Clothing

(New York) — As a court in Khartoum prepares to resume its trial of Sudanese journalist Lubna Hussein for wearing pants, Amnesty International called on the Sudanese government today to withdraw the charges against her and repeal the law used to justify the flogging of women for wearing clothing deemed to be “indecent”.

“The manner in which this law has been used against women is unacceptable, and the penalty called for by the law – up to 40 lashes – abhorrent,” said Tawanda Hondora, deputy director of Amnesty International’s Africa Program. “No one should be flogged. This is cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment and flies in the face of international law and common standards of human decency.”

Article 152 of the Sudanese Penal Code 1991 states, in summary, that:
“Whoever does in a public place an indecent act… or wears an obscene outfit…shall be punished with flogging which may not exceed forty lashes or with fine or with both….”

“The law is crafted in a way that makes it impossible to know what is decent or indecent,” said Hondora. “In practice, women are routinely arrested, detained, tried and then, on conviction, flogged simply because a police officer disapproves of their clothing. The law is also discriminatory, in that it is used disproportionately against women.”

In 2003, the African Commission ordered Sudan to amend Article 152 on the grounds that flogging amounted to state-sanctioned torture, after eight women brought a case against the government when they were arrested for having a picnic in public with male friends. The eight were flogged in public using a wire and plastic whip, which reportedly left permanent scars on the women. The government has made no moves to amend the law since the commission’s decision.

Written by Laura Ling and Euna Lee, the two journalists that were recently granted amnesty by the North Korean government after being sentenced to 12 years of hard labor for trespassing and “hostile acts.”

Excerpt from the LA Times:

When we set out, we had no intention of leaving China, but when our guide beckoned for us to follow him beyond the middle of the river, we did, eventually arriving at the riverbank on the North Korean side. He pointed out a small village in the distance where he told us that North Koreans waited in safe houses to be smuggled into China via a well-established network that has escorted tens of thousands across the porous border.

Feeling nervous about where we were, we quickly turned back toward China. Midway across the ice, we heard yelling. We looked back and saw two North Korean soldiers with rifles running toward us. Instinctively, we ran.

We were firmly back inside China when the soldiers apprehended us. Producer Mitch Koss and our guide were both able to outrun the border guards. We were not. We tried with all our might to cling to bushes, ground, anything that would keep us on Chinese soil, but we were no match for the determined soldiers. They violently dragged us back across the ice to North Korea and marched us to a nearby army base, where we were detained.

From the Amnesty International blog, in its entirety:

I was shocked this morning when I heard the news that J.S. Tissainayagam, the detained Sri Lankan journalist, was sentenced to 20 years rigorous imprisonment by the Sri Lankan High Court.  Tissainayagam has been detained for the last 18 months and was tried under Sri Lanka’s draconian Prevention of Terrorism Act for writing two magazine articles in 2006 critical of the government’s conduct of the war against the opposition Tamil Tigers.  Amnesty International considers Tissainayagam to be a prisoner of conscience, detained and prosecuted solely for his legitimate work as a journalist, and has been calling for his immediate, unconditional release.

Tissainayagam was one of the journalists singled out for praise by President Obama this past May in his statement in honor of World Press Freedom Day.

Organizations working in defense of press freedom reacted strongly to today’s sentence.  The International Federation of Journalists condemned the sentence, calling it “brutal and inhumane.”  The Committee to Protect Journalists announced today that it will honor Tissainayagam with a 2009 International Press Freedom Award.  The group Reporters Without Borders said it was “appalled” by the “shameful” sentence; the group also announced today that Tissainayagam had been selected as the first winner of the newly created Peter Mackler Award for Courageous and Ethical Journalism.

Please write to Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa and ask that J.S. Tissainayagam be released immediately and unconditionally.  President Rajapaksa’s address is:  Presidential Secretariat, Colombo 1, Sri Lanka; fax:  00-94-11-244-6657; email:  prsec@presidentsoffice.lk.  Thanks for any help you can give.

From AP, excerpts:

Glenn Beck returns to Fox News Channel after a vacation on Monday with fewer companies willing to advertise on his show than when he left, part of the fallout from calling President Barack Obama a racist.

A total of 33 Fox advertisers, including Walmart, CVS Caremark, Clorox and Sprint, directed that their commercials not air on Beck’s show, according to the companies and ColorofChange.org, a group that promotes political action among blacks and launched a campaign to get advertisers to abandon him. That’s more than a dozen more than were identified a week ago.

While it’s unclear what effect, if any, this will ultimately have on Fox and Beck, it is already making advertisers skittish about hawking their wares within the most opinionated cable TV shows.

The Clorox Co., a former Beck advertiser, now says that “we do not want to be associated with inflammatory speech used by either liberal or conservative talk show hosts.” The maker of bleach and household cleaners said in a statement that is has decided not to advertise on political talk shows.

The shows present a dilemma for advertisers, who usually like a “safe” environment for their messages. The Olbermanns, Hannitys, O’Reillys, Maddows and Becks of the TV world are more likely to say something that will anger a viewer, who might take it out on sponsors.

They also host the most-watched programs on their networks…

Beck’s strong ratings — even at 5 p.m. EDT he often outdraws whatever CNN and MSNBC show in prime-time — make it unlikely Beck is going anywhere even with the list of advertisers avoiding him approaches three dozen.

But it could mean advertising time becomes cheaper on his show than such a large audience would normally command. Some of his show’s advertisers last week included a male enhancement pill, a law firm looking to sue on behalf of asbestos victims, a company selling medical supplies to diabetics and a water filter company.

From Human Rights First:

Last week Raul Figueroa Sarti was sentenced to one year in prison for alleged copyright infringement. Figueroa is a well-known, human rights-focused publisher in Guatemala.

Figueroa was sentenced to prison for publishing a photo on the cover of a book, supposedly without the permission of the photographer. His prosecution appears baseless given that the photographer reportedly consented to use of the photo and was given credit for it on the book cover.

Figueroa is an important journalistic voice in Guatemala, regularly publishing groundbreaking works on human rights violations. It is vitally important that journalists, such as Figueroa, not be subjected to unjust prosecutions and be allowed to continue their important work promoting human rights.

Take action now to urge Guatemala’s Attorney General to support Figueroa’s appeal against his conviction and to support media independence in Guatemala.