Gruesome fate of Khashoggi is a chilling threat to our free press
WHEN veteran Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi sat down last month to write what would be his last column for the ‘Washington Post’, he chose to return to a subject close to his heart: press freedom in the Middle East and North Africa. Khashoggi knew only too well that journalists are under increasing threat from a new authoritarianism sweeping the region. Driven by autocrats new and old, the crackdown on journalists as well as activists and dissidents springs from a determination to prevent any repeat of the popular uprisings that collectively became known as the Arab Spring in 2011.
Khashoggi noted that only one country in the region – Tunisia – is considered “free”, according to a
2018 survey. He called for the establishment of a media “platform for
Arab voices” free from government censorship. He did not live to see it. Khashoggi was last seen entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2 to get papers required for his impending marriage. Turkish authorities believe he was murdered on the premises as his fiancée waited outside. The Saudis last night admitted that he died there.
Khashoggi’s apparent fate has not only greatly disturbed journalists in the Middle East, it is also a reminder of how press freedom across the world is increasingly threatened, with reporters working often in fear of their lives.
No longer is this limited to authoritarian states and conflict zones, open hostility towards the media is now a key part of public discourse in European democracies where various shades of right-wing populism is on the rise and also in the US, where President Donald Trump has repeatedly denounced journalists as “the enemy of the people”.
This month has been particularly grim. Khashoggi’s disappearance made headlines at the same time Viktoria Marinova, a Bulgarian investigative reporter, was raped and killed. Bulgarian authorities have said they do not know if her murder was related to her work as a journalist.
Marinova had been investigating alleged corruption related to EU funds in Bulgaria and the European Commission has demanded a full investigation. She is the third journalist murdered in the EU over the past year.
This month marks the anniversary of the car bombing that killed Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia just outside her home. The attack is widely believed to be related to her reporting on corruption in Malta.
On a recent visit, I observed scores of people take part in a demonstration in her memory in central Valletta. They chanted slogans demanding justice, a demand also made in graffiti seen on walls around the island.
In February this year, Slovakian journalist Ján Kuciak and his fiancée Martina Kušnírová were shot to death as Kuciak probed ties between Slovakian officials and elements of the Italian mafia.
Beyond Europe, high-profile journalists in India, Mexico, Syria, Afghanistan, Turkey, Brazil and Nicaragua have been assassinated this year.
According to advocacy organisation Reporters Without Borders (RSF), at least 66 accredited or citizen journalists have been killed around the globe this year.
Hundreds more have been jailed because of their work. One case in particular has made headlines, that of Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, two Reuters journalists who were detained in Myanmar (Burma) in late 2017 because of their investigation into the killing of 10 Rohingya Muslim men and boys.
The UN has accused the Myanmar army of genocide and war crimes in their ongoing persecution of the country’s Rohingya minority.
The Myanmar authorities, including de facto leader and Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi,
Open hostility towards the media is now a key part of public debate in Europe
have rejected the accusations. In September Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo were sentenced to seven years in jail for breaching the Official Secrets Act, yet another damning stain on Suu Kyi’s record.
The fight to maintain freedom of the press in the face of growing authoritarianism and populism has intensified across the world but the situation in Europe, in particular, should give us pause for thought.
Earlier this year, RSF in its annual World Press Freedom Index, found that Europe – despite still being described as “the region where press freedom is the safest” – had experienced the steepest decline from the previous year.
The rise of so-called “illiberal democracies” – as Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban puts it – on the continent has endangered press freedom more than at any point since the fall of the Iron Curtain. Tactics used by Orban and his fellow travellers to silence the media have included takeovers of media outlets to turn them into instruments of the state. The day after he won election again in April, he shut down the country’s largest opposition paper while a pro-government outlet published a list of 200 Orban critics, including journalists.
Chilling times indeed.