(WiPC/IFEX) – The following is a WiPC press release: WORLD PRESS FREEDOM DAY – 3 MAY 2001 INTERNATIONAL PEN HONOURS THREE JOURNALISTS On 3 May 2001, writers and journalists world wide join forces in support of their colleagues who have stood up against oppression and reported on corruption and other sensitive issues only to find […]
(WiPC/IFEX) – The following is a WiPC press release:
WORLD PRESS FREEDOM DAY – 3 MAY 2001
INTERNATIONAL PEN HONOURS THREE JOURNALISTS
On 3 May 2001, writers and journalists world wide join forces in support of their colleagues who have stood up against oppression and reported on corruption and other sensitive issues only to find themselves oppressed.
Over the course of the past year, International PEN, the world association of writers, monitored over 700 cases of writers and journalists under attack in 99 countries. These figures show that the optimism of the early nineties that the democratisation of many former repressive regimes would bring an easing of human rights abuses was misplaced. At the beginning of the new decade, writers and journalists remain suppressed and attacked.
Since its formation in 1960, members of PEN’s Writers in Prison Committee have campaigned to end suppression of freedom of expression. Today, PEN members in over 90 countries continue to lobby governments for an end to the repression of writers, raise media publicity and provide moral support to their writer colleagues. This year International PEN joins the international freedom of expression community by highlighting the cases of three journalists who are currently under persecution for the practice of their profession. Their plight serves to illustrate the problems of hundreds more.
In Syria, Nizar Nayuff is in his ninth year of imprisonment for his membership of a banned political group and for editing its monthly newsletter. In Russia, Grigory Pasko, whose exposé of the dumping of nuclear waste into the Japan Sea led him to being charged, then acquitted, of espionage, is once again being brought before the courts. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, Jean-Luc Kinyongo Saleh is one of many journalists who are suffering harassment and imprisonment despite hopes that there would be change for the better following the death of President Laurent-Desiré Kabila.
Further details of the cases are attached.
World Press Freedom Day, 3 May 2001
Syria – Nizar Nayuff
Nizar Nayuff, writer and human rights activist, was arrested in January 1992 and sentenced to 10 years imprisonment for his membership of the banned Committee for the Defence of Democratic Freedoms and Human Rights (CDF), and for “disseminating false information” via its monthly newsletter Sawt al-Democratiyya (Democracy’s Vote), of which he was editor-in-chief. Nizar Nayuff is held in solitary confinement in Mezze Prison, Damascus, and there are serious concerns for his health. Nayuff suffers from serious medical problems, some of them reportedly related to torture under interrogation following his arrest. According to our information, prison authorities have refused to administer urgent medical treatment to Nayuff unless he pledges to refrain from political activity and states that he made “false declarations concerning the situation of human rights in Syria”. He was not included in the presidential amnesty announced by President Bashar al-Assad following his inauguration on 17 July 2000.
Nizar Nayuff recently staged a hunger strike in protest at a ban on family visits imposed by prison authorities in November 2000. The three-month ban has reportedly now been lifted, and according to our information Nayuff was visited by his family on 24 February 2001. He has now ended his hunger strike, which he staged in protest at the ban. There are grave concerns for Nayuff’s health, which was already precarious and has again deteriorated as a result of the hunger strike.
International PEN considers Nizar Nayuff to be detained solely for the peaceful exercise of his right to freedom of expression and association, and is calling for his immediate and unconditional release on humanitarian grounds and in accordance with Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Syria is a signatory. PEN is gravely concerned for Nayuff’s health, and urges that he receive immediate and unconditional access to medical treatment.
Appeals to be sent to: His Excellency Bashar al-Assad, President, Presidential Palace, Abu ruman al-Rashid Street, Damascus, Syria, Please note that there are no fax numbers for the Syrian President. You may prefer to send your appeal to the Syrian representative in your country asking him/her to pass on your appeal to Damascus.
World Press Freedom Day, 3 May 2001
Russia – Grigory Pasko
On 20 July 1999, Grigory Pasko, a Russian military and environmental journalist, walked free from a Vladivostok jail after having been acquitted of espionage. In June 2001, almost two years later, he will once again face a judge for the same offence.
Pasko, then an army captain working for the Russian Navy’s Pacific Ocean magazine, Boyevaya Vakhta, was arrested in November 1997 on accusation of gathering “state secrets” with the intention of disseminating them abroad. His arrest came after he had filed a report for a Japanese television station which reportedly showed Russian sailors dumping radioactive waste into the Japan Sea. After 19 months in prison, and a trial lasting six months, during which Pasko argued that evidence against him had been fabricated as a means of punishing him for exposing environmental pollution by the Pacific Fleet, in July 1999, the judge presiding the case accepted the defence lawyer’s complaints, dismissed the charges of espionage, but handed down a 3-year sentence for “military misconduct”. He was freed the same day under an amnesty bill passed earlier that year.
However, in November 2000, the military section of the Supreme Court overturned the acquittal, accusing it of being “incomplete, biased and ill-founded”. The case was returned to the military court in Vladivostok, and the re-trial opened on 22 March 2001, but was adjourned to 4 June. Pasko remains free. He faces at least eight years in prison.
International PEN considers the re-opening of the trial against Grigory Pasko to be an attempt to deter those who report critically on environmental issues in Russia. The charges against him are in direct violation of his right to freedom of expression and information. PEN therefore calls on the charges against him to be dropped and that he is once again acquitted.
Appeals to the Judicial Authorities Vladivostok, Military Prosecutor of the Pacific Fleet, Trossiyaskaya Federatsiya, Primorsky Krai, Vladivostok, Voennaya prokuratura Tihookeanskogo flota, Russian Federation
Fax: + 74232 22 79 33 or +74232 41 41 05
World Press Freedom Day, 3 May 2001
Democratic Republic of Congo – Jean-Luc Kinyongo Saleh
Jean-Luc Kinyongo Saleh’s story is an all too familiar one in the ill-named Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Editor of the bi-weekly Vision, he was arrested on 16 February 2001 and taken to the Kin-Mazière cells in Kinshasa. The arrest was linked with a Vision article that had accused the former interior minister Gaëtan Kakudji of profiting personally from the civil war.
Kinyongo Saleh was sentenced to four months’ imprisonment and fined 500,000 Congolese francs (US$2,500) for libelling Kakudji. Where the Vision editor’s fate differs from many other journalists in the DRC is that in between his arrest and court case, he managed to escape. Using his contacts, he was able to slip out of prison and go into hiding, leaving the court to sentence him in absentia.
Though free, Jean-Luc Kinyongo Saleh is a hunted man. Meanwhile, his lawyer, Jean Kabongo, is seeking to have the verdict overturned. As evidence of the accuracy of his client’s article, Kabongo has produced a report by the United Nations which accuses top officials of systematic pillaging of the country’s natural resources. Not for the first time, it appears that the DRC’s courts had been used in an attempt to silence those whose writing the government finds inconvenient.
At the beginning of the year it had all looked so different. The DRC went into 2001 as the comfortable leader in terms of detentions of journalists in Africa but on 4 January a surprise wide-ranging amnesty saw the release of all imprisoned reporters. With the assassination of Laurent-Desiré Kabila in January and the succession of his son Joseph, it was hoped that the country had turned the corner – hopes that were soon dashed.
On 10 February, Justin Tsimba Wa Nzuzi was arrested and held for two days after articles in his newspaper, Kiese, had reportedly upset the governor of Lower-Congo. Five days later, the bureau chief of the Egyptian daily Al Ahram, Yehia Ghanem, was searched, interrogated, threatened and robbed by policemen who accused him of “tarnishing the country’s image”. Barely a fortnight after that, Guy Kasongo Kilembwe was arrested in connection with a piece which suggested that certain government ministers be sacked. He was released four weeks’ later after having been coerced into signing a document in which he promised “not to write articles hostile to the current regime in Kinshasa”. Kasongo claims that he was routinely tortured during his imprisonment and that he received numerous death threats.
In total, no fewer than seven journalists have been detained in the first four months of this year in connection with articles that have uncovered corruption or malpractice in government circles. Four more have been threatened whilst another three have been attacked by police or soldiers. Two, including Kinyongo Saleh, have swelled the numbers of journalists in hiding.
At the time of writing, Washington Lutumba and Jules-César Mayimbi are still being held for having reported the sale of flour that was allegedly unfit for human consumption. Sadly, the future for freedom of expression in the DRC looks just as unpalatable.
International PEN condemns the harassment, arrest and prosecution of journalists in the Democratic Republic of Congo. It calls on the authorities to put a halt to attacks on a free press and release all those who are detained solely for the practice of their right to freedom of expression.
Appeals to: His Excellency Joseph Kabila, President of the Democratic Republic of Congo, USA Fax: + 1 202 234 2609
