(WiPC/IFEX) – The following is a 3 March 2003 International PEN press release: International Women’s Day 8 March 2003 Impunity and Freedom of Expression International Women’s Day, 8 March, is an occasion marked by organisations around the world. This 8 March, International PEN places the spotlight on the stories of courageous women who have exercised […]
(WiPC/IFEX) – The following is a 3 March 2003 International PEN press release:
International Women’s Day 8 March 2003
Impunity and Freedom of Expression
International Women’s Day, 8 March, is an occasion marked by organisations around the world. This 8 March, International PEN places the spotlight on the stories of courageous women who have exercised their fundamental right to freedom of expression in the face of enormous obstacles. In particular, the organisation will highlight the cases of women writers and journalists who have been killed simply for speaking out. These crimes in themselves are deplorable, but also because of the fact that those responsible for carrying out and ordering the murders have, in their majority, evaded prosecution and punishment.
Killing the messenger
The unhindered respect for freedom of expression is a cornerstone of a flourishing democracy. All citizens must be able to express themselves freely on any matter and through any form of communication. In many countries around the world, this right is practised without obstacle.
However, in other countries, violations to this fundamental right are commonplace. Although the impediments are varied, International PEN has documented that the threat to free expression is as strong today as it was when its work began. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the continued murder of journalists and writers every year because of their work. Over the past ten years, more than 400 writers, journalists and media workers have been killed. Thirty-seven of those were women. Investigations into these cases have been thwarted by threats, official corruption and lack of political will. The families of the victims have yet to see full justice done. International PEN has selected three representative cases to draw attention to as part of its statement on International Women’s Day on impunity and women writers and journalists:
– Larissa Yudina. A political activist and editor-in-chief of the daily Sovietskaya Kalmykia, she was kidnapped and murdered in Elista in the Russian republic of Kalmykia in June 1998.
– Parvaneh Forouhar. The Iranian poet and activist was brutally murdered, along with her husband, in their house in Tehran in 1998.
– The nine Algerian female journalists who were murdered during the height of the country’s vicious civil war in the 1990s.
In general, International PEN notes that the deficient administration and application of justice encourages violent people to continue attacking journalists and writers. When there is no political support, a rigorous police investigation and a quick call for justice to try to find those responsible, a repetition of violence against journalists exists. Whenever these perpetrators benefit from full impunity, their victims’ right to know the truth is also sacrificed and every government’s responsibility to uphold the truth abused.
Challenging impunity
In order to fight for justice in the cases of murdered journalists and writers, International PEN marked International Human Rights Day last December 10, by announcing a year-long campaign to challenge impunity for violation of the right to freedom of expression. PEN centres around the world will be active in highlighting the issue and calling on governments where unpunished crimes against journalists and writers exist to identify and punish those responsible under the law. The campaign will culminate with the release of a report on the problem of impunity and a series of public programs during International PEN’s 69th World Congress of Writers in Mexico City in November 2003.
Supporting female media workers and writers
Women are increasingly present in the media in terms of numbers. This development, of course, has benefits. A greater female presence can serve to enhance the free flow of independent and pluralistic information, as all talented journalists, regardless of gender, will have an equal chance of executive roles in the profession. However, as the highlighted cases mentioned above prove, women journalists and writers in many countries still risk their lives for expressing their opinions. Some women work in small, local settings where their lives are very vulnerable, as they have to deal more directly with local warlords, politicians or crime syndicates.
Those who belong to big, national media institutions or who are high-profile writers normally have better security. Nevertheless, being national or prominent does not mean that those women are entirely safe. If those who oppose what these women write wish to silence them, they will.
Carmen Gurruchaga has been a target on many occasions in her native Spain, a country where the lives of journalists and writers are perceived to be relatively safe. But Gurruchaga is on the death lists of terrorist organisations there. She has covered the Basque terrorist group ETA for more than 20 years. Gurruchaga said, “Right here, in the heart of the Western world, journalists live and work like many of their colleagues in the Third World countries, with fear of being assassinated by a terrorist organisation, simply for thinking differently from them. In Spain, and in the Basque country, being a journalist and trying to do your job in freedom may cost you your life.”
Such women are threatened because of their writing or the way they live, which provides a sufficient pretext for censors as long as there are people who believe that a woman should have no right to free expression and no public voice.
International PEN, through its own work and its collaboration with networks of organisations defending censored writers, is committed to protecting the lives and rights of women writers and journalists. This kind of work can be vitally important in overcoming the disorientation experienced by a writer or journalist who suddenly finds herself under attack. Often she is quite isolated in her own country. Knowing that somebody outside cares can be a lifesaver.
Iran, Parvaneh Forouhar
Over four years ago, writers and secular activists Dariush and Parvaneh Forouhar were murdered in their house in Tehran. Dariush was stabbed 12 times; Parvaneh, 23 times.
Parvaneh and Dariush, married for nearly 45 years, had met in their teens at Tehran University gatherings. Both were young, passionate idealists and had started their life together in the struggle against dictatorship. Dariush had been imprisoned on and off during the Shah’s time and then again after the revolution. Parvaneh, an outspoken critic of the clergy’s oppression of women, had been actively involved in human rights issues.
Parvaneh, in particular, was a vocal proponent of freedom of expression. Her accomplishments as a poet served to augment her commitment to fight for the unhindered expression of all voices in contemporary Iran. Parvaneh’s support for the often fatal struggle for human rights in the country is reflected in the following lines of her poem, “Rights”:
Let us clear this dark trail
with the chimes of our hearts.
Let us put aside our sorrows
and wash the tombstones of our companions
with our own blood.
Let us sing the song of life
in the path of freedom in Iran.
However, her beliefs clashed with those of the government, in spite of the election of reformer Mohammad Khatami to the Presidency in 1997. Authorities frequently placed restrictions on the couple’s activities and they lived under close surveillance. Their telephone was controlled and visitors to their house were monitored. This harassment was just part of the widespread state repression that targeted prominent dissidents who had become emboldened after Khatami’s election, but who also had fallen foul of conservative forces.
In spite of the harassment, the Forouhars were among a small number of opposition activists who chose to remain in Iran while continuing to criticise government policies. Under difficult circumstances, the Forouhars prepared and distributed a weekly human rights bulletin to journalists and human rights organisations around the world. They gave interviews to international radio stations broadcasting to Iran about human rights issues. Parvaneh once remarked upon the acute insecurity they felt, saying that “at the end of every day they thanked God for granting them another day to live.”
In late 2000, the calls for justice in the case of Parvaneh and Dariush, and in the murders of other intellectuals and dissidents in 1998, appeared to be heeded with the trial of the presumed killers. Eighteen members of the Iranian intelligence stood trial before a military court. In January 2001, three of the defendants were sentenced to death and two to life imprisonment. Nevertheless, human rights groups charged that the trial and verdict were inconclusive. They pointed to the secrecy of the proceedings, the inability to determine if the judgements were based on facts and, perhaps most importantly, the refusal to hear testimony that would have implicated the then-Minister of Intelligence in ordering the killings.
In a 2001 interview, the Forouhars’ son, Arash, said that his parents “had done nothing wrong throughout their lives, except to stand by the people and protect freedom.” He added, “Despite all the imprisonments, injustices and name calling, they never stopped their fight for the cause of justice and liberty in Iran.”
Arash recalled the day of their murder. “Hundreds carried out the stabbed bodies of my parents ? I know that they will forever live in the minds and hearts of all Iranians. And I know those who killed them will one day have to answer like all others who commit injustice. That day will not be far.”
Russia, Larissa Yudina
“I am tired of being afraid.”
Those were the words of Larissa Yudina to Alexei Simonov of the press freedom watchdog Glasnost Defense Foundation, after he had asked her, “Aren’t you afraid?”
“And this is also rare,” he said in a 1998 interview, recalling a conversation with the journalist. “Most of us are not yet tired of being afraid.”
Yudina’s fearless work as a journalist won her the respect and admiration of colleagues, but ultimately cost her her life. Editor-in-chief of the opposition daily Sovietskaya Kalmykia, in the Russian Republic of Kalmykia, she was kidnapped and murdered in Elista, the capital of Kalmykia, on 8 June 1998. The previous evening, an unknown person claiming to be a representative of the Agency for Co-development, reporting to the President of the Republic, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, had made an appointment with the journalist. He was to give her documents on the misappropriation of funds, which implicated Ilyumzhinov. The next morning, the police, alerted by Yudina’s husband, found her body with several stab wounds and a fractured skull in a dam.
Authorities had often threatened Sovietskaya Kalmykia, the only opposition newspaper in Kalmykia. Since 1993, Yudina had personally received numerous threats due to the paper’s reports on the wealth and authoritarianism of Ilyumzhinov and on corrupt business practices by regional officials. Her newspaper was in constant conflict with the President, who is also an influential businessman.
The murder of Yudina, 53, prompted public protests in Elista, as people demanded a federal investigation into her murder. Legal action did follow when Russia Prosecutor-General Yuri Skuratov took over the investigation from local authorities, and three unidentified suspects, described as close to the republic’s leaders, were arrested in connection with the crime. The official investigation was completed with the conviction of two of its executors.
Following those 1998 arrests, Valeri Ostanin, Deputy of the State Duma who headed the Yabloko party’s independent investigation of the crime, said, “We think that it is too early to close the case. The organisers and people who ordered this murder have escaped responsibility.”
“We know that there are many blank spots in this case and many sinister circumstances. One of the most important witnesses was killed in a car crash in very strange circumstances. He was going to testify and explain who had ordered the crime and why,” Ostanin added.
Yudina’s life did not go unnoticed by the Russian government. In September 2000, President Vladimir Putin posthumously granted her the Order of Courage.
“The Order of Courage is a deserving reward for Larissa Yudina. It requires courage to be an honest journalist in the present Russia,” Deputy Head of the Yabloko faction, Sergei Ivanenko, commented after the decision. “However, this reward should in no case put an end to the criminal investigation of the murder that happened over two years ago.”
Eve Conant of National Public Radio in Moscow was the last person to interview Yudina, just a few weeks before her murder. The journalist told her: “Democratic freedoms and human rights are violated [in Kalmykia] more than anywhere in Russia. We have laws that contradict the Russian constitution. I live in Russia, but I am not sure that Russian laws protect me here.”
It is hoped that, nearly five years after her murder, Russian law will be used finally to identify and punish those individuals who ordered the crime.
Algeria’s civil war takes a fatal toll on female journalists
“We shall fight with the sword those who fight us with the pen.”
With those ominous words, the Armed Islamic Group (GIA) in January 1995 vowed to carry on with its campaign of premeditated attacks on the Algerian media. During the 1990s, Algeria was probably the most dangerous place in the world in which to be a journalist or writer. Over 60 editors, reporters and media workers were killed, and over 500 fled into exile.
Given the choice of killing a general or a journalist, the terrorists always chose the latter. This is because they believed that they could do more damage to the government’s cause that way. According to Liberté editor-in-chief Hacene Ouandjeli, “they want to kill us for the simple reason that journalists are defending the ideals of democracy, which are not the ideals of the fundamentalists. We are adversaries that have to be eliminated and killed.”
Women were not immune from the terror. PEN documented the murder of nine female journalists during the height of the country’s civil war in the early 1990s: Yasmina Drici, Nabila Djahnine, Rachida Hammadi, Malika Sabour, Yasmina Brikh, Saida Djebaili, Naima Hamouda, Khadija Dahmani and Farida Bouzain. All of the killings were horrific. The murder of Sabour in May 1995 occurred at her family home; her assassins forced her parents to watch the murder. Sabour was just 22-years-old and had recently left journalism school. Brikh, a reporter for Radio Culture, was killed near her home in September 1995. It took authorities a week to identify her corpse.
These nine murdered female journalists, as well as all the others who have survived but who had been subject to various threats and harassment, found themselves doubly targeted: because of their gender and because of their work in journalism.
One of the beliefs of the Islamic extremists was that women should not be educated. “For them, it’s inconceivable that a girl goes to college or works,” said journalist Mouloud Benmohamed. “They started attacking women because they’re a symbol. Women are the backbone of the family. If you terrorise women, you terrorise the whole society.”
A cornerstone of the extremist agenda is the targeting of women who deviate in any way from their very restricted prescribed role within the extremist framework. This retaliation, which some organisations have termed “gender-based censorship”, transformed in Algeria into an explicit war on women. Algerian author Aïcha Lemsine wrote in a 1995 essay:
“Algerian women writers live under the twin threats of religious fundamentalism and a quasi-fascist military regime. For us, women’s issues are issues of survival, our financial resources are nil and our psychological balance is weakened by fear and anxiety… The intimidations of the regime and the threats of the Islamists have one purpose: to reduce us to silence. Fear is supposed to drive us away from critical thinking and writing, or stress and exile render us unable to produce any literary creation… Arab and Muslim women need not only to have their lives saved, but also opportunities to create and write. Our voices must be strengthened; we need a network that will give us space for free expression, publication and international media exposure.
Although Algerian women have been victims of violence, they are also actors in their society. Since the late 1990s, they have been at the forefront of civil society, organising for peace, democracy, human rights, religious freedom and equality in still dangerous conditions. Women journalists collected testimonies, took photographs and worked to break the silence that surrounded the civilian victims in Algeria. They have written and spoken out against government censorship as well as the extremists’ agenda and violence. On an annual basis and despite threats to their lives, they have organised major demonstrations to commemorate International Women’s Day. Their work is a tribute to the nine journalists and other women who lost their lives during Algeria’s bloody internal conflict.
International PEN is the leading voice of literature worldwide, bringing together poets, novelists, essayists, historians, critics, translators, editors, journalists and screenwriters. Its members are united in a common concern for the craft and art of writing and a commitment to freedom of expression through the written word. The Writers in Prison Committee of International PEN was set up in 1960 as a result of mounting concern about attempts to silence critical voices around the world through the detention of writers. It works on behalf of all those who are detained or otherwise persecuted for the opinions expressed in writing and for writers who are under attack for their peaceful political activities or for the practice of their profession, provided that they did not use violence or advocate violence or racial hatred.
Recommended Action
WOMEN’S DAY 8 MARCH 2003 RECOMMENDED ACTIONS
Letter-writing to governments re United Nations Commission on Human Rights
The issue of impunity was the subject of a resolution passed at the 58th Session of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights held in Geneva in April 2002. The full text is available on the UN High Commission on Human Rights web site www.unhchr.ch or on request to Sara Whyatt at intpen@gn.apc.org. The resolution no. 2002/79:
1. Emphasizes the importance of combating impunity to the prevention of violations of international human rights and humanitarian law and urges States to give necessary attention to the question of impunity for violations of international human rights and humanitarian law, including those perpetrated against women and children, and to take appropriate measures to address this important issue;
2. Also emphasizes the importance of taking all necessary and possible steps to hold accountable perpetrators, including their accomplices, of violations of international human rights and humanitarian law, recognizes that amnesties should not be granted to those who commit violations of international humanitarian and human rights law that constitute serious crimes and urges States to take action in accordance with their obligations under international law;
The 59th Session of the UN Commission is to sit from 17 March to 25 April 2003. [Individuals] are requested to write to their own government delegations to the UN Commission:
– Raising concerns that over 400 writers and journalists have been killed in the practice of exercising their right to freedom of expression;
– Pointing out that few of those who have committed murder or ordered the killing of writers and journalists are brought to justice, and are thus granted impunity;
– Welcoming the Resolution 2002/79 on Impunity passed at the 58th session of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, in particular its emphasis on the importance of holding those who commit murders accountable;
– Urging that all States take note of and abide by Resolution 2002/79 and that government delegations to the UN Commission session promote and support further measures ensuring that those who carry out murder to silence their critics can no longer do so without fear of prosecution.
Letters to the Iranian, Algerian and Russian governments
Appeals referring to the UN Commission Resolution 2002/79 may also be sent in support of the highlighted appeals cases.
Those to the Russian authorities, relating to Larissa Yudina, and to the Iranian authorities regarding the Forouhar killings, should welcome the fact that that those found guilty of carrying out the murders have been prosecuted. However, appeals should refer to continuing concerns that those who ordered the killings, in both cases thought to be in the highest level of government, have not been brought to justice.
In the Algerian case, note that in recent years the terrible levels of violence have subsided. Urge that the Algerian authorities do all that is in their power to bring to justice those involved in the murders of journalists in the early to mid-1990s.
Russia
His Excellency Vladimir Putin
President of the Russian Federation
The Kremlin
Moscow, Russia
Fax: +7 095 206 5173/206 6277
Iran
His Excellency Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahrudi
Head of the Judiciary
Ministry of Justice
Park-e Shahr
Tehran, Islamic Republic of Iran
LOBBYING IRANIAN EMBASSIES
Please note that there are no fax numbers available for the Iranian authorities, so you may wish to ask the diplomatic representative for Iran in your country to forward your appeals. It would also be advantageous to ask your country’s diplomatic representatives in Iran to intervene in the case.
Algeria
His Excellency President Abdelaziz Bouteflika
President of the Republic of Algeria
Algiers, Algeria
Fax: +213 21 686 480 / 609 618
Please copy appeals to the source if possible.
