Concern over press raids
HUMAN rights lawyer Amal Clooney has taken a swipe at Australia’s failure to protect press freedom after police raids and threats of criminal charges against journalists for doing their jobs.
Ms Clooney warned that Australian Federal Police raids on journalists in Australia and other leading Western countries could be used as a blueprint by other nations to clamp down on press freedom.
Speaking at the Global Conference for Media Freedom in London early yesterday, Ms Clooney was asked about the recent raids on News Corp and ABC journalists.
“What happens in a country like Australia or the UK or the US will be looked at by every other leader in the world and potentially be used as an excuse to clamp down even further on journalists,’’ she said.
“Journalists all around the world are less safe if the rhetoric, or even policies or laws, of states that are supposed to be free are actually a threat to journalists in those countries.”
Australia’s Foreign Minister, Marise Payne, rejected suggestions it was hypocritical for her to attend the conference given the recent crackdown on journalists in Australia.
“I would imagine that if Australia was not represented at a conference like this today then you would say that the Government wasn’t doing their job by being here,” she said. “So I suspect you would advance a position where the Government was in a no-win situation.”
Ms Payne spoke at the conference where she acknowledged the problems raised by the raids last month on Sunday Telegraph political editor Annika Smethurst and investigative reporters at the ABC.
She argued concerns were being addressed by a parliamentary inquiry, which Labor has criticised.
Ms Payne had referenced Ms Clooney in her speech to the conference, which appeared to have backfired when the human rights lawyer took aim at Australia.
“Australia also raises media freedom issues bilaterally — as Amal Clooney knows, as we did in the case of the Reuters journalists in Myanmar last year, including during my visit last December,” Ms Payne said at the conference.
Britain’s Foreign Minister Jeremy Hunt, who is fighting to become prime minister against Boris Johnson, also warned against using security concerns as an excuse to reduce media freedom.
But he backed Ms Payne for “subjecting herself to scrutiny” by attending the conference.
Ms Clooney criticised world leaders’ reactions to the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, who was killed in Istanbul last year.
Mr Khashoggi was a critic of the Saudi Arabian government, which has been accused of being involved in his death in Istanbul.
“World leaders responded with little more than a collective shrug,” she said.