Rimawi was instrumental in fostering the organisation’s growth and its dedication to promoting and advancing freedom of expression, safety of journalists, and the right to access information in Palestine. Today, MADA documents violations against media workers, provides legal and professional support to journalists, conducts research and studies on media-related issues, and advocates for policy changes to enhance press freedom. In 2016, a decade after its founding, MADA achieved a significant milestone by gaining special consultative status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). 

“Only when we strengthen freedom of expression can our society really develop – that is our firm conviction.”

Mousa Rimawi in an interview with DW Akademie 

A vocal advocate for the release of imprisoned journalists and the creation of a safe and enabling environment for media professionals to operate in Palestine, Rimawi was also involved in various regional and international initiatives dedicated to advancing media freedoms. He participated in initiatives, conferences, and workshops where he shared his expertise and insights on the challenges faced by Palestinian journalists.  

With a record of collaborating extensively with regional networks dedicated to media freedoms and information integrity in the region, Rimawi served as president of the MENA Network for Countering Hate Speech in media and on social networks. In 2016, he was elected to the Executive Committee of the Global Forum for Media Development to represent MADA and later chosen as one of Deutsche Welle’s Champion of free expression. 

Mousa Rimawi passed away in December 2022, leaving behind an enduring legacy of tireless advocacy for media freedom and human rights. His unwavering dedication to the protection of journalists serves as an enduring source of inspiration. 

“Mousa was an active participant in the IFEX Network. He recognized the importance of connecting with other groups in the region as well as international organisations and others involved in promoting and defending freedom of expression and information. He was dogged in his support of the Palestinian people and those who worked on improving media freedom in such a challenging environment. He worked so hard and engaged actively wherever he could to ensure these issues remained top priority. Mousa brought a pragmatic approach tinged with his wry and sharpened sense of humour that made him a valued member and friend in the network.”

Annie Game, former IFEX Executive Director 

Illustration by Florian Nicolle

The post Mousa Rimawi: A legacy of advocacy for Palestinian media appeared first on IFEX.

For over a decade, Saviano has been living under police protection. Every part of his life has to be planned in advance; nothing can be improvised. This has taken a severe toll:

“This life is shit – it’s hard to describe how bad it is. I exist inside four walls, and the only alternative is making public appearances. I’m either at the Nobel academy having a debate on freedom of the press, or I’m inside a windowless room at a police barracks. Light and dark. There is no shade, no in between. Sometimes I look back at the watershed that divides my life before and after Gomorrah. There is a before and after for everything, including friendship. The ones I lost, who drifted away because they found it too hard to stand by me and those I’ve found – hopefully – in the last few years. The places I knew before, and the places I’ve been since. Naples has become off-limits to me, a place I can only visit in my memories. I travel around the world, leaping from country to country as though it were a checker board, doing research for my projects, searching for any tattered remains of freedom.”

Saviano started out in journalism in 2002. His early articles appeared in magazines and newspapers such as Pulp, Diario, Sud, Il manifesto and on the website Nazione Indiana. He was also a contributor to the Camorra reporting unit of the Corriere del Mezzogiorno. But it was Gomorrah that brought him worldwide fame and misfortune.

Gomorrah is a true crime book unlike any other; it reads like a series of crime scenes viewed through the eyes of a novelist. At times cool and analytical; at other times angry and scatological. It shows us inter-clan warfare and child-gangsters in bullet-proof vests. It explores the ethical no-man’s land that exists on the edges of capitalism, where the ‘legitimate’ market intersects with the illegitimate one, where the fashion industry does questionable business deals with sweatshops in Naples using Camorra go-betweens. Above all, Gomorrah tears away the cloak of anonymity under which the Camorra has always thrived. That was not acceptable to the bosses of these crime clans.

The first sign that Saviano’s life had changed forever came in the form of a note left in his mother’s mail box shortly after Gomorrah was published; it showed an image of her son with a gun pointed at his head and the word ‘condemned’ written above it. Shortly afterwards, the police intercepted messages from jailed Camorra bosses saying that Saviano was to be killed: he was assigned two police officers for his protection. Since then, the security measures around Saviano have increased; he currently lives with a team of ten bodyguards, travelling with them everywhere in two bullet-proof cars.

The threats that Saviano has received have come in many forms. Some have been explicit; others have been indirect, but no less sinister for being so. In March 2008, during the so-called Spartacus Trial, defence lawyers for two Camorra bosses read out in court a letter (signed by the bosses) which claimed that their clients had been arrested solely because of the work of Saviano and another journalist. It was a barely veiled act of intimidation, and was recognised as such by the authorities. As a result, the bosses and their lawyers were charged with making “mafia-style” threats. Security around Saviano was strengthened. And it was needed: later that year, a former member of the Camorra revealed that there was a plan in the works to kill the journalist and his bodyguards “by Christmas.”

International concern for Saviano’s safety grew every time a new assassination plot was reported. In late 2008, six international Nobel Prize winners (including Mikhail Gorbachev, Günter Grass and Bishop Desmond Tutu) petitioned the Italian government to provide the journalist with better protection and (perhaps optimistically) defeat the Camorra once and for all; the Italian daily, La Repubblica, posted their petition online, allowing members of the public to add their names to it (which more than 150,000 did). Various Italian cities showed their support for Saviano by offering him honorary citizenship. None of this, however, made his life any easier or secure.

Ironically, one of the most recent threats to Saviano’s safety came from those responsible for protecting him. In 2018, reacting to the Italian government’s anti-immigrant, anti-Roma positions, Saviano wrote an article in which he described his fears for his country: “Italians are going backwards, socially, amid an upsurge of nationalism that displays racist animus against anything perceived to be an alien body”. In response to this and other criticisms by Saviano, the far-right, then Interior Minister, Matteo Salvini, threatened to remove the journalist’s police security.

In May 2021, the trial of Camorra member Francesco Bidognetti and his lawyer Michele Santonastaso – both on charges of threatening the lives of Saviano and another journalist – came to an end. These were the men who, during the aforementioned “Spartacus” trial, had filed a document explicitly pointing the finger at the two journalists, blaming them for the trial of the Camorra bosses. Both men were found guilty. Their trial had lasted 13 years.

Saviano went on trial for criminal defamation in November 2022, after he called Italy’s far-right prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, a “bastard”. Saviano’s comment was a response to Meloni’s call for migrants to be repatriated, and for the boats used to rescue refugees from the sea to be sunk. Saviano faces up to three years in prison if convicted.

At the first trial hearing on 15 November 2022, far-right Lega Nord leader Matteo Salvini (whom Saviano also called a “bastard”) asked to be admitted as a plaintiff in the trial. He has a separate, pending defamation suit against Saviano, initiated in 2018.

IFEX joined European and Italian press freedom groups in calling on Meloni to immediately withdraw her lawsuit against Saviano, and on Italy to bring forward anti-SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation) legislation to tackle the use of these vexatious lawsuits.

In July 2023, Saviano’s new anti-mafia TV show, Insider – faccia a faccia con il crimine (Insider – Face to face with crime), was cancelled by the state broadcaster RAI after four episodes had been recorded (the series was due to air the following November). The writer suggested that Italy’s government had pressured RAI to drop his series due to his public criticisms of government ministers. The cancellation came days after members of the ruling coalition called on RAI to cancel Saviano’s show.

Roberto Saviano has received numerous prizes for his work, including, in 2011, the PEN/Pinter Prize and the Olof Palme Prize and, in 2019, the Oxfam Novib/PEN International Award for Freedom of Expression. He continues to work out of hotel rooms and secure locations, maintaining his journalistic focus on organised crime.

Illustration by Florian Nicolle

The post Roberto Saviano and the unacceptable price of exposing corruption appeared first on IFEX.

As well as being a human rights advocate, Bialiatski is a writer and a political activist. He first became politically active in the 1980s and was a founding member of the Belarusian Popular Front, a political party and cultural movement that advocated for democracy after the collapse of the Soviet Union. But Bialiatski is best known for the Viasna Human Rights Centre, a Belarusian NGO that he founded in 1996 to provide support to Belarus’s political prisoners.

Belarus functions in much the same way as the old Soviet Union used to; it controls press, political and religious activity, and imprisons and tortures dissidents. It has been repeatedly condemned for its human rights abuses by the European Union, barred from the Council of Europe and described by the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Belarus as having a political system “incompatible with the concept of human rights.” Elections in Belarus do not meet international standards and the president, Alyaksandr Lukashenka (in post since 1994), is regularly described as “Europe’s last dictator.”

Bialiatski was arrested in August 2011 at a particularly tense time in Belarus. The previous December had seen a mass protest erupt in Minsk following elections that had returned Lukashenka to power. The official response to the demonstration had been savage: riot police had thrown stun grenades into the crowd of thousands and then given the protesters a brutal beating. Over 600 demonstrators had been arrested, hundreds had been injured, and almost all the candidates for the political opposition had been locked up. It had been the beginning of a new wave of repression aimed at silencing dissent.

The regime had long been seeking an opportunity to shut down Bialiatski’s work, and in August 2011 they were presented with a way to do so through Viasna. Every request that Viasna had made for official registration had been turned down, meaning that the organisation was unable to open a bank account in Belarus. In order to get around this obstacle, Bialiatski had opened personal bank accounts in Poland and Lithuania, into which international donors could transfer the vital money that funded Viasna’s work.

When the authorities found out about these foreign accounts they accused Bialiatski of tax evasion and arrested him. International human rights groups protested, saying that Bialiatski was the victim of a system cynically designed to force activists into holding funds abroad, thereby making them vulnerable to prosecution when the state wanted to silence them.

Bialiatski’s trial took place in Minsk in November 2011. Although trial observers were not allowed to attend, there were reports that key documents were not verified as genuine or even translated. On 24 November, Bialiatski was convicted and sentenced to four and a half years in prison.

Following his conviction, 47 Belarusian NGOs signed a public statement condemning the verdict and calling for Bialiatski’s immediate release. This call was echoed by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and also by the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Belarus. Similarly, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention found that Bialiatski’s detention was arbitrary and said that he should be released.

But Bialiatski stayed in prison for nearly three years. During that time he endured extremely harsh conditions, including forced labour and frequent periods of solitary confinement. Of his detention, he would later say: “I was always under surveillance; even some of the prisoners were there only to watch over me day and night. I could feel they were provoking me … We were 15 people in the same room but for two years I didn’t speak.”

Ales Bialiatski was eventually released on 21 June 2014. He continued to campaign for civil liberties in Belarus with Viasna, which produces vital human rights reports for activists outside the country. His persecution at the hands of the Belarusian regime did not curb his outspokenness, as was seen when he was asked about the president just one month after his release from prison. “You can’t compare Lukashenka to dictators in the middle of the 20th century,” he said disparagingly. “He is not a Stalin; I would call him the degenerate grandson of Stalin.”

In 2020, Viasna was presented with the OSCE’s Democracy Defender Award “for its mission of defending human rights in Belarus and building a just, free and democratic society for all its citizens”.

In August 2020, a disputed presidential election triggered massive protests against Lukashenka’s government. The demonstrations met with a violent wave of repression in which tens of thousands of peaceful protesters, civil society activists and journalists were detained. The crackdown continued into 2021 as the authorities targeted independent media and civil society groups, arresting staff and forcing many organisations to close. In July 2021, as part of this crackdown, Bialiatski and Viasna colleagues were arrested on spurious tax evasion charges.

In September 2022, it was revealed that the charges against Bialiatski and his jailed Viasna colleagues Valiantsin Stefanovic and Uladzimir Labkovich had been upgraded. They were now charged with smuggling and financing protests.

In October 2022, Bialiatski was awarded the Nobel Prize for his work as a human rights defender in Belarus.

On 3 March 2023, Bialiatski was sentenced to ten years in prison. His co-defendants, Stefanovic and Labkovich, were handed prison sentences of nine years and seven years respectively.

In April 2023, a Minsk court rejected Bialiatski’s appeal against the verdict. In May it was reported that he had been moved from remand prison #1 in Minsk to penal colony #9 in Horki, Mahilioŭ region.

On 21 May 2023, more than 100 Nobel laureates signed an open letter calling for Bialiatski’s immediate and unconditional release.

Illustration by Florian Nicolle

The post Ales Bialiatski appeared first on IFEX.

Keskin is co-founder of the Legal Aid Project for Women who were Raped or Otherwise Sexually Abused in Custody and for many years a senior member of the Human Rights Association (HRA) in Turkey. Her exposure of human rights abuses by Turkish armed forces and police has meant that she herself has come under acute risk. In 1994, when she was chief executive of the Istanbul office of the HRA, she was shot at. Luckily the bullets missed. In 2001, a man entered her office and shot at her. He was arrested, but released only six months later. The threats against her continue to this day.

Her consistent and outspoken support for women and minorities has also led to Keskin being prosecuted over the years on an array of charges, from insult of the Turkish state for suggesting that armed forces had been perpetrators of sexual violence in the Kurdish southeast, to “incitement to hatred” for having referred to ‘Kurdistan’ in speeches. Mostly, these trials have ended with acquittal, suspended sentences or fines. However, in 1995, she spent several months in prison for “inciting separatism” in an article calling for a cease-fire between the PKK and government forces. She was also banned from practising law for a year in 2002.

In an interview for IFEX in March 2014, Keskin said that there were around ten cases open against her, including under the controversial Penal Code Article 301 that penalises insult to the state and its institutions. She explained, “If you write of the rape of a woman or a child by a policeman, it is regarded as an insult to the state as they are an operative of the state, and then by implication you are insulting the state a whole.” Keskin told of how she continues to receive threats, although fewer than in the past, but that she does not report them, “Because we focus on the problems of others, we don’t focus on our own personal problems. Our work is for other people rather than ourselves.”

In December 2014, Keskin was sentenced to ten months in prison under Article 301 for insult to the state for having said in a speech in 2005 that ‘Turkey has a dirty history’. She was linking the death of a 12-year-old boy who was shot dead alongside his father by police during an anti-PKK operation in 2004 to what she described as a long history of violent oppression by the Turkish state going back to the 1915 Armenian genocide. Police implicated in the killings were eventually acquitted, a decision that led to an outcry among Kurdish activists.

Keskin was one of hundreds of journalists and lawyers to be targeted for prosecution and imprisonment during a series of crackdowns that followed a failed coup in July 2016. A few months earlier, in March 2016, she was banned from travelling under Turkey’s Anti-Terror Law for her work for Özgür Gündem, a newspaper that covered Kurdish issues and which was for many years subject to closures and court cases. In May 2016, as attacks on the publication escalated, the Editor-in-Chief-on-Watch campaign was launched under which writers, journalists, lawyers, activists and others took turns as volunteer editor for a day in an act of solidarity. The campaign ended with the forced closure of the newspaper in August 2016 under a state of emergency declared after the failed coup.

Just prior to the closure, the Özgür Gündem offices and Keskin’s home were raided by police, and 23 members of staff were briefly detained. Thirty-eight of the 56 people who had acted as volunteer co-editors were put on trial accused of aiding terrorism for taking part in the campaign. Keskin was one of the accused.

Keskin was also put on trial for her earlier work for Özgür Gündem. In January 2016, hearings against her and Reyhan Çapan, the newspaper’s editor, were opened on charges under Article 301. They were accused of insulting security services in an article implicating the armed forces in the killing of a youth during conflicts in Mardin, south east Turkey in November 2015. In addition to this, Keskin also faced prosecution for ‘insulting’ President Erdoğan and aiding terrorism because of an article published in September 2015 (entitled The palace has gone mad) that criticised the President’s abandonment of peace talks.

Despite all this, Keskin remained defiant. In July 2017 she was among a group of human rights defenders who gathered outside an Istanbul court house in solidarity with ten other advocates who had been arrested a few days earlier.

On 30 March 2018, Keskin was sentenced to 7.5 years in jail for having published articles in Özgür Gündem that “degraded” the Turkish nation and “insulted” President Erdogan. She appealed the sentence and is currently under a travel ban.

On 21 May 2019, Keskin was again convicted on charges related to articles published in Özgür Gündem when she was the co-editor-in-chief. On this occasion she was found guilty of “propagandising for a terrorist organisation” and was sentenced to 3 years and 9 months in prison.

In October 2019, Keskin’s home was raided by the police ; she was not at home, but was deposed the following day at court. She was reportedly accused of “propagandising for a terrorist organisation” on social media.

In January 2020, in another trial connected to Özgür Gündem , Keskin faced charges of “membership of a terrorist organisation”. Prosecutors demanded that she serve 15 years in prison. In February 2021, Keskin was convicted on these charges and sentenced to six years and three months in prison. In April 2021, the appeals court upheld this sentence.

Keskin’s contribution to human rights advocacy has been widely recognised. She was awarded the Aachen Peace Prize in 2004, followed by the Theodor Haecken Prize in 2005. In November 2013, she featured in IFEX’s International Day to End Impunity campaign. In 2021, she was given the Peace and Democracy Award by Diyarbakır Medical Chamber in recognition of her work for women and against racism and discrimination.

According to Keskin, she has had 143 criminal cases filed against her.

Illustration by Florian Nicolle

The post Eren Keskin: Speaking out for women’s and minority rights appeared first on IFEX.

In July 1998, an explosion at the Spice Bazaar in central Istanbul left seven dead and over 120 others injured. Selek was arrested two days after, along with five others. The evidence against Selek was based on the testimony of a suspect accused of being a member of the banned Kurdish Workers Party (PKK), whose account was later found inadmissible, having been extracted under torture. He subsequently denied knowing Selek at all. Two and a half years later, all five were freed after experts concluded that the blast had been caused by the accidental ignition of a leak from a gas canister.

What should have been the end of the story proved to be the start of one of the most convoluted trials in Turkey’s recent history. The prosecution challenged the decision to release Selek and, in December 2005, a new trial was opened against her. Once again, the court concluded that there was not enough evidence that the Spice Bazaar tragedy was anything other than an accident, and, in June 2006, Selek was acquitted. Prosecutors appealed the decision, and, in March 2009, the case was once again before the courts, only to end with a second acquittal in May that year. Dogged in their pursuit of Selek, prosecutors called for another review, and in February 2010 the case was reopened again. A year later, in February 2011, Selek’s acquittal was upheld – for the third time.

Apparently hell-bent on getting Selek convicted, again the prosecution appealed against the acquittal, and her case was back in court in December 2012. In January 2013 came the shocking news that she had been sentenced to life imprisonment. By this time, Selek had left Turkey to study for a PhD in Sociology in Strasbourg, France. She was tried in absentia, and an international arrest warrant was issued against her.

Selek appealed against the sentence, which led to her acquittal for the fourth time, in December 2014. The court concluded that the prosecutor’s insistence that there had been a bomb in the Bazaar in 1998 contained “irreconcilable contradictions”.

In 2022, Turkey’s Supreme Court reversed the 2014 acquittal decision and Selek was put on trial again in March 2023. Following a further hearing in September 2023, the trial was adjourned to 28 June 2024. The international arrest warrant against her remained in place.

Even in Turkey where prosecutions of people who are involved in Kurdish issues is common, Selek’s experience is extraordinary and her case created an outcry amongst writers, lawyers and academics who rose to her support. They and NGOs gathered outside the courts in protest whenever there was a hearing. The case was taken to the European Court of Human Rights.

Selek has since the mid-1990s worked with the homeless, Roma, street children, sex workers, transgender and other vulnerable people. After gaining her masters in sociology in 1997, she began research on Kurdish issues, interviewing over 60 people for an oral history project.

What lies behind these extraordinary trials could be Selek’s refusal to name people linked to the PKK during her research. It could also be that her commitment to the rights of marginalised people, combined with her sympathies for Kurdish rights makes her a scapegoat. Whatever the reasons, not only has there been injustice against Selek, there has been no justice or reparation for the victims who were in the Spice Bazaar on that terrible day.

After her release from prison in 2000, Selek set up Armagi, an organisation combating violence against women, and was one of the founding editors of a Turkish feminist magazine of the same name. She remains in exile in France, and has published several books on feminist and minority issues.

In 2019, Selek was awarded the Mediterranean Culture Prize, which recognises contributions to inter-cultural dialogue. Accepting the award, Selek said: “I am here as someone from the Mediterranean, as a woman in exile, as a writer, researcher and activist. I strive to resist with my work… and [am] trying to contribute to the growth of a counter-culture based on freedom, justice and solidarity.”

Illustration by Florian Nicolle

The post Pinar Selek appeared first on IFEX.

He has received numerous awards and recognition over the years. In 2012 he was honoured with the prestigious PEN/Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write Award for his courage in the face of persecution. He was also awarded the Golden Pen of Freedom Award by the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers in 2014, and the International Press Institute (IPI)’s World Press Freedom Hero award in 2017.

Born in 1966, Nega began his journalism career in the 1990s and quickly established himself as a leading voice in his country’s media scene by launching the independent newspaper Ethiopis. Authorities soon shut it down. Nega also worked as general manager of Serkalem Publishing House, which produced the independent newspapers Menelik, Sateneaw, and Asqual, all of which were shuttered for their critical articles.

Nega’s criticism of the Ethiopian government led to his first arrest in 1993 when he was charged with spreading “false information” and spent over a year in prison. In 2005, Nega and his wife Serkalem Fasil, in addition to a dozen other journalists, were arrested and charged with treason – charges associated with their reporting on a violent crackdown by the government following disputed parliamentary elections.

Serkalem would later give birth to the couple’s son while still in prison, in 2006. The journalist couple were released in 2007, but were denied permission to launch any new newspapers.

In February 2011, Nega was briefly detained – allegedly for attempting to “incite Egyptian and Tunisian-like protests”. He was then arrested in September 2011 under the country’s draconian anti-terrorism law, after publishing a column questioning government claims that the journalists it had detained earlier were suspected terrorists, and for criticising the arrest of Ethiopian actor Debebe Eshetu on terror charges. He was sentenced to 18 years in prison.

Released in February 2018 after serving nearly seven years at Lakiti Prison in Addis Ababa, Nega was among 746 Ethiopian prisoners pardoned by then Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn, following pledges to release jailed prisoners of conscience.

The harassment and persecution continued. One month after his release, Nega was re-arrested at a social event for allegedly displaying a prohibited Ethiopian flag; he was later released, without official charges filed. Despite this, the harassment persisted as authorities prevented the journalist from holding press conferences in June 2019 to announce plans for a new independent TV station, Senai.

Venturing into the political arena, in March 2019 he helped establish the Addis Ababa Baladera Council, to advocate for an elected Mayor for the capital city. Months later, the advocacy group was transformed into a political party called Balderas for Genuine Democracy.

In July 2020, Eskinder was physically assaulted and detained by armed security forces during a widespread protest in the capital sparked by the killing of a popular Oromo singer. Faced once again with terrorism charges, Nega remained in detention during the June 2021 parliamentary elections. After nearly 18 months in detention he was released in January 2022 following a pardon of political prisoners by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed.

Nega resigned as the party’s leader in August 2022, writing that his decision was “due to dictatorial pressure from the reigning repressive government on Balderas [party] and at the national level” that had made his leadership untenable. He would not remain in a space where power was being abused.

In an interview with Ezega News, Nega said: “Ethiopians have paid a heavy price and sacrificed a lot. However, they continue to be mistreated by officials and anti-democratic forces. Therefore, as a journalist, I hope to be one of the voices of the people.“

The post Eskinder Nega: An unwavering commitment to free expression and human rights appeared first on IFEX.

At their November 2022 meeting, the IFEX Council noted: “There’s no self-aggrandisement with Annie. She’s driven by passion for freedom of expression and human rights, a keen sense of fairness and equity, creative spark and genuine care for those doing the work with her.”

It’s simple, really: Game is passionately committed to creating space so those most affected, those most silenced, those most marginalised can speak for themselves. They are the experts. She has worked tirelessly to foster the culture of respect, learning and collaboration that has fuelled IFEX as a relevant and effective force in the freedom of expression landscape.

It’s an approach many espouse, but few embrace as consistently as Game has. Developed over decades of work in the NGO sector for organisations such as Canada World Youth, Save the Children, War Child and others, Game’s leadership is grounded in feminism, activism and social justice – and the deeply held beliefs that every meeting is made better with music that makes your feet want to move, that creativity breaks through the noise, and that wit wins. A recent campaign that embodies Game’s humour and love of wordplay sits atop IFEX’s Twitter feed: “Dissent is healthy. Feel free to disagree.”

Given Game’s love of language, she would likely delight in the observation that in a field where the talk is often of censors, Game is lauded for her finely-tuned sensors. Rachael Kay, Game’s long-time leadership collaborator and IFEX’s incoming Executive Director, points to Game’s early recognition that digital rights and freedom of expression groups needed to learn from and strategise with each other. “Annie understood that digital rights were human rights before this was the common view, and knew that digital rights organisations could learn from the work and approaches of human rights groups – utilisation of international human rights frameworks and processes, for instance – while free expression groups could learn from the online campaigns and user mobilisation tactics of digital rights organisations.”

“New ideas, new understanding and new tactics must be developed,” Game wrote five years ago in an editorial titled “Free press: Still worth defending?” “Mutual support, amplification of each other’s messages and tireless defense of our most marginalised and most targeted communities is at the heart of the work that we do in defending freedom of expression – the work that we must continue to do… work that requires resistance and resilience…”

That same year – 2017 – Game was presented an Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Pioneer Award, alongside American First Amendment champion Mike Masnick and renowned whistleblower and transparency advocate Chelsea Manning. Game was at first reluctant to accept the prize, but eventually agreed, seeing it as an opportunity to highlight IFEX’s work. Tellingly, the bio she submitted included only 23 words about herself, and 127 about the network.

Game’s approach is grounded in a keen understanding of the power of words – and the dynamics of power. Under her leadership, IFEX has consistently evolved the language it uses, both in terms of specific words, but also in terms of the multiple languages used around the IFEX table. Grounded in an activist’s understanding, Game has also diligently worked to shift power relationships. One recent example: an invitation to donors to join IFEX members in an online situation room, welcoming them to learn at the IFEX member table, as opposed to having members present to the donor table.

During her time at IFEX, freedom of expression advocates have faced a growth in anti-democratic forces around the world and their intrusions into civic spaces, the influence of technology giants on free expression, and the ongoing impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. Game’s commitment to building the strength of the IFEX network sustainably and equitably positions the organisation to tackle free expression’s next challenges and continue to contribute to strengthening human rights globally.

As she moves on from the leadership of IFEX, Game will be moving from global to local. Her next chapter involves taking what she’s learned on the global activism stage, and applying it in her local context, as she works with local climate and environmental activists to preserve critical green spaces in her home region. Her insights and strategies will enrich the efforts of the individuals and organisations she works with – though she’ll likely continue to position herself at the edge of the camera frame.

Illustration by Florian Nicolle

The post Annie Game: More than a face in the crowd appeared first on IFEX.

As a student in London in the 1970s, Al-Khawaja marched in protests against the unlawful arrest of citizens in Bahrain. His participation was costly. Many students, including Al-Khawaja, were denied renewal of their passports. In the summer of 1980, after fellow protesters who returned to Bahrain were detained and interrogated under torture and his family house had been ransacked, Al-Khawaja decided to remain and work from abroad.

In 1991, he was granted political asylum in Denmark, where he established the Bahrain Human Rights Organisation, which gained international recognition for its role in contributing to positive political changes in Bahrain after a new ruler, Hamad ibn Isa Khalifa, took over in 1999.

Al Khawaja returned to Bahrain under a general amnesty in 2001, and founded the Bahrain Center for Human Rights. From 2008 to 2011, he served as the Middle East and North Africa protection coordinator for Front Line Defenders, an organisation founded in 2001 that protects human rights defenders at risk.

Al-Khawaja’s long and distinguished history of activism came to an abrupt standstill on 9 April 2011 when masked men broke into his daughter’s house, attacked him, and dragged him into detention. He was put on trial with 20 other Bahrainis on charges of “managing a terrorist organization” and “attempting to overthrow the government by force”, and on 22 June 2011 he was sentenced to life imprisonment in Bahrain’s notorious Jaw prison – from which alarming reports of torture have emerged.

Since September 2013, when the highest court in Bahrain upheld his life sentence, the only form of protest available to Al-Khawaja has been to go on hunger strike, with his first strike lasting 110 days.

Today, Al Khawaja’s family continue his work. His daughter, Maryam Al-Khawaja, has been the acting president of the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights during Nabeel Rajab’s periods of detention, and speaks frequently to international audiences about human rights in Bahrain. Zainab Al-Khawaja, Maryam’s older sister, has been detained several times since joining the protest movement in 2011.

Meanwhile, the Bahraini authorities are continuing to target Al-Khawaja even in prison. In December of 2017, he wrote to the Ministry of Interior complaining about conditions in prison. According to Maryam, political prisoners were collectively punished “due to things happening outside the prison, or even outside the country”. This included confiscating all books, papers, pens and shutting down the TV.

Since his imprisonment, rights groups have repeatedly called for his release, with numerous protests taking place outside Bahrain in support of the prominent activist. Yet, despite the international solidarity Al Khawaja’s case has received, Bahraini authorities have been unmoved to grant his release.

In March 2020, Bahrain excluded Al Khawaja and other prominent human rights defenders from its list of 1,486 prisoners, including 300 political prisoners, released amidst the Covid-19 pandemic. Al Khawaja has also seen his ability to communicate with family restricted during the pandemic, and prison authorities arbitrarily denying him necessary medical treatment.

Rights groups have underscored the urgency of Al Khawaja’s underlying medical conditions, which have been exacerbated by Bahrain’s unsanitary prisons where prisoners of conscience are routinely denied medical care.

In January 2021, over 100 rights groups signed an open letter to Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen ahead of the tenth anniversary of Al Khawaja’s imprisonment. Calling attention to his need for medical care, the letter called on Denmark to help secure the release of the Bahraini-Danish citizen, and reunite him with his family.

On 5 April 2021, to mark Al Khawaja’s 60th birthday, IFEX joined rights groups around the world in calling on Bahraini authorities to drop his life sentence, and unconditionally release him and other human rights defenders.

On 2 June 2022, Al Khawaja was awarded the Martin Ennals Award for his human rights work. In an audio recording played during a moving ceremony, Al Khawaja paid tribute to his wife, Khadija Al-Mousawi, who attended the event with their daughters, Zaynab and Maryam. He also expressed his hope that the award would help shine a spotlight on other political prisoners, especially those who are less well known.

In September 2022, Al Khawaja and other prisoners of conscience faced reprisals after protesting the Jaw prison administration’s promotion of a number of perpetrators who have tortured prisoners of conscience in the past.

In an effort to silence him, prison authorities repeatedly denied Al Khawaja necessary medical care, and communication with his family. In November 2022, new charges were brought against him for his protests in prison, including insulting a public servant and Bahrain’s normalisation with Israel, as well as breaking a plastic chair after being denied the right to call his daughters. Despite already serving a life sentence, Al Khawaja  was subsequently convicted and fined following a trial where he was not present, and was denied legal representation to challenge the case.

Denouncing the sentence, Maryam Al Khawaja called it: “a clear example of how the judicial system in Bahrain is not a dysfunctional system of justice but a highly functioning system of injustice.”

Illustration by Florian Nicole

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Born in La Esperanza, in western Honduras, Cáceres grew up in the 1970s – a time of civil unrest and violence in Central America. Her mother, Bertha, was a mayor and governor, as well as a midwife, and taught Berta and her siblings to believe in justice. As a student in 1993, Cáceres co-founded COPINH and helped to harness the strength of the indigenous community at a time when being indigenous in Honduras was neither a source of pride or power. COPINH is now made up of 200 Lenca communities in western Honduras and fights for the rights of the Lenca people to defend their land and way of life against mining, damming and other environmentally harmful projects.

In 2006 Cáceres began what would become a long-standing campaign against the Agua Zarca hydroelectric project for the construction of four dams on the Gualcarque river. Local Lenca activists in Río Blanco were worried that the dams would reduce their access to water and damage the surrounding environment, and because they had not been consulted in earlier stages of the project’s planning, contravening an International Labour Organization convention ratified by Honduras. For their work, the Río Blanco community and COPINH have received numerous threats over the years.

When President Manuel Zelaya was ousted in a military coup in June 2009, activists and local leaders who had run campaigns for change were once again under threat. Before the coup, Honduran activists had been successful in getting Zelaya to make decisions that improved the lives of Hondurans, such as lowering school fees, raising the minimum wage, and blocking many hydroelectric projects.

On 28 June 2009, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) put Cáceres on a list of people who were at risk during the coup, including other popular leaders, state authorities and people related to the ousted president. The following day, Cáceres was granted precautionary protection measures by the IACHR, which asked the Honduran government to guarantee her “life and personal integrity”. At the time, the IACHR had received reports that military forces had surrounded her home.

According to a report by Global Witness, 101 environmental activists were killed in Honduras between 2010 and 2014. Despite the threats and extreme violence that skyrocketed in the fallout of the coup, Cáceres and COPINH continued their activism, including campaigning against the Agua Zarca project. In 2013 Tomás Garcia, a Lenca Indigenous Council representative, was killed by members of the Honduran army during a peaceful protest. Following the murder, Sinohydro, a Chinese investor, pulled out of the Agua Zarca project.

In 2014 Cáceres was a finalist for the 2014 Front Line Defenders Award and in 2015 she received the Goldman Environmental Prize, which honours “grassroots environmental heroes” and their efforts to protect and enhance the environment, often at the expense of personal safety. Máxima Acuña, a Peruvian activist who won the 2016 Goldman prize for the Americas, has also faced repeated threats, physical attacks, and police harassment for her efforts to defend her land.

In a statement the day after Cáceres was murdered, the IACHR noted that only months earlier it had met with a delegation from Honduras and spoken about the risk that continued to face Cáceres, as well as “the shortcomings in the implementation of protective measures” that the state was supposed to have supplied to her.

Unfortunately, Cáceres had no protection when she was shot dead in her home on the night of 2 March 2016. The one witness to her murder, fellow Mexican activist Gustavo Castro Soto, was also shot in the attack, but pretended to be dead until the assailants left. He was later detained by authorities when trying to leave Honduras.

On 15 March 2016 another of Cáceres’s fellow activists, Nelson García, was shot and killed, while Lenca community members nearby were being forcefully evicted from the land. Following García’s murder, FMO, a Dutch development financier, and Finnfund, another investor, suspended their financial backing for the Agua Zarca project, leaving the project stalled, but not cancelled.

Those behind Berta Cáceres’s murder tried to send a message that if the best-known activist in Honduras could be brazenly killed for her work, then the same could happen to anyone else. It was a crime that shocked many, but her murderers have not succeeded in killing her message or her movement. Demonstrations following her murder were full of posters reading “Berta Vive” (Berta lives) – and it’s true. Not only is COPINH continuing their work, her family and supporters continue to demand justice in her case, and her daughter, Bertha, continues to fight for the rights of indigenous peoples in Honduras. As Castro Soto wrote in an open letter after her death, “I saw Berta die in my arms, but I also saw her heart planted in every struggle that COPINH has undertaken.”

Significant international attention to Cáceres’s case led to trials and convictions. On 29 November 2018, seven men were convicted for Berta’s murder. More than a year later, in December 2019, they were sentenced to 30 to 50 years. The group had been formed by former employees of Desarrollos Energéticos S. A. (DESA), the company behind the Agua Zarca project, and former military. The verdict confirmed that the accused gunmen were working under the orders and coordination of a DESA executive, identified as the company’s president, David Castillo. In 2022, Castillo was sentenced to 22 years in prison for his role in the assassination; he was accused by Honduran prosecutors of being one of the top links in a complex chain of command that organised and directed the hit squad. For many defenders, however, the sentencing is by no means the end of the story; they allege that complicity in the killing goes higher, and the full extent of those responsible for the killing are still at large with impunity.

Caceres’s family and friends have affirmed that they want to see the masterminds behind the crime also held accountable. It was evident from the investigation that Berta suffered attempts to defame and criminalize her, in addition to direct threats, aimed at harassing her to give up her struggle against development projects in Lenca lands and across Honduras. The proceedings also affirmed that Berta’s assassination took place with the knowledge and assent of other executives of DESA.

In December 2019, a special report by The Intercept looked into the communication logs, SMS and WhatsApp messages extracted by the Honduran Public Prosecutor’s Office during investigations. According to the news outlet, “[t]he call log evidence was examined by an independent expert, and it showed that the assassins had communicated through a compartmentalized chain that reached the highest ranks of leadership of the company whose dam she had been protesting”. This included members of the Atala Zablah family, a powerful Honduran family with “ties to the government and the international financial industry”.

In February 2020, weeks before the fourth anniversary of Berta’s murder, a group of international expert observers composed of 17 international and regional organizations (Misión de Observación Calificada – Causa Berta Cáceres) released a report in which they documented several irregularities in the case.

COPINH’s webpage continues to count the ‘months without justice’ for Berta’s killing – “We’re missing the Atala”, they say. Marcia Aguiluz, from CEJIL, affirms that covering up for the masterminds behind the crime, may have consequences that extend far beyond Berta’s case, in a country known as one of the most lethal to environmentalists.

The Misión de Observación highlights in its report that “the murder of Berta Cáceres affected both the victims directly impacted and the whole society and, for that reason, the search for integral truth and justice is crucial.”

Illustration by Florian Nicolle

The post Berta Cáceres appeared first on IFEX.

On 8 January 2009, Wickrematunge was shot dead in his car as he was driving to work. His killers, men on motorcycles, got away.

Wickrematunge was the founder and editor of the Sunday Leader. He was an outspoken critic of the Sri Lankan government, which he accused of corruption and of having used the long-standing war against the Tamil Tigers (LTTE) to hold onto power. He was equally critical of the LTTE. As Wickrematunge himself said: “The Sunday Leader has been a controversial newspaper because we say it like we see it: whether it be a spade, a thief or a murderer, we call it by that name. We do not hide behind euphemism.”

Press freedom in Sri Lanka is severely curtailed, with journalists confronted with defamation suits, intimidation, bans and smear campaigns. Since 1999, Nineteen journalists have been killed, and no one has been brought to justice for their murders. Wickrematunge was at the forefront of the campaign to stand up for freedom of expression, prepared to speak out despite the danger.

Death threats became the norm for Wickrematunge. There were phone threats, copies of the newspaper splattered with red paint, even a funeral wreath, left at his office entrance. In 1994, soon after founding the Sunday Leader, he and his wife Raine were set upon by attackers with sticks pierced with nails. On another occasion the family home was sprayed with gunfire. Fearing for her family, Raine eventually left with their children for safety in Australia.

Wickrematunge was a lawyer who was engaged in politics before turning to journalism. He had stood for election as an MP and served for a time as private secretary to former prime minister Sirimavo Bandaranaike. He was a friend of now ex-president Mahinda Rajapaksa, describing in his final editorial evenings talking politics and exchanging jokes with him. Yet this did not stop his vocal criticism of the president as being unwilling, or unable, to address the acute problems in his country. Rajapaksa referred to Wickrematunge as a ‘terrorist journalist’ in interviews in the months before the murder. At the time of his death, Wickrematunge was embroiled in a legal dispute with the president’s brother, then-defence minister Gotabaya Rajapaksa, whom the journalist had accused of corruption over the purchase of second hand military equipment.

For six years after the murder, there was no outcome to the promised investigation, leading to accusations of impunity for the killers, and even government complicity in his death. Then, in January 2015, Mahinda Rajapaksa was defeated in presidential elections. Within days, the new government announced that it would be reopening the inquiry into Wickrematunge’s murder, following a public complaint by a former cabinet minister that the president’s brother and former minister of defence, Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, had ordered the assassination, alongside that of three others – two Tamil MPs, and a government minister. The government announcement stated that the investigations into the killings of Wickrematunge and three others, and been ‘stalled or abandoned without credible conclusion’, raising hopes that there will finally be an end to the impunity enjoyed by the killers.

Eighteen months later, in September 2016, Wickrematunge’s body was exhumed as part of an investigation into his death. Earlier, in July, a military intelligence officer had been arrested on accusation of the journalist’s murder. Five more military men were then arrested in January 2017 and evidence that they may have been involved in the abduction of another journalist in 2008 implied that there had been a ‘death squad’ headed by a top military officer. In March 2017, a court heard that a police report pointed to Gotabhaya Rajapaksa as being involved in Wickrematunge’s killing, suggesting that he had controlled a secret unit outside of the military structure that targeted journalists and government critics. The investigation continued but later stalled, especially after the election of Gotabhaya Rajapaksa as Sri Lanka’s president in 2019.

Wickrematunge was posthumously granted several honours, among them the UNESCO World Press Freedom Prize in 2009 and, in 2010, the International Press Institute’s World Press Hero Award.

In April 2019, a lawsuit was filed by Ahimsa Wickrematunge in a Los Angeles district court seeking damages from Gotabaya Rajapaksa for alleged involvement in the killing of her father. But the court dismissed the suit in October 2019 arguing that it lacked jurisdiction. Gotapaya Rajapaksa was a dual US-Sri Lankan citizen at the time.

On 8 January 2021, during the 12th anniversary of the killing of Wickrematunge, the San Francisco-based Center for Justice and Accountability filed a complaint on behalf of Ahimsa Wickrematunge with the United Nations Human Rights Committee over the alleged role of the Sri Lankan government in her father’s death. The complaint asked the Human Rights Committee to help seek accountability, by ensuring that the government conduct an “independent, exhaustive, and effective investigation” into the killing of the journalist, prosecute those responsible at all levels of government, and give an apology and compensation to the Wickrematunge family for the violations they have suffered.

Wickrematunge’s case was included in the People’s Tribunal initiated by Free Press Unlimited, Reporters Without Borders, and the Committee to Protect Journalists in November 2021 to hold governments accountable for the killing of journalists. Witnesses gave testimonies about the role of Sri Lanka authorities in stalling the investigation, covering up the crime through misleading clues, and hinting at the possible involvement of the Ministry of Defense. The tribunal coincided with the massive protests in Sri Lanka that eventually led to the ouster of the Gotabaya Rajapaksa government. In a symbolic victory against impunity, the tribunal handed out a guilty verdict against the states of Mexico, Sri Lanka, and Syria in September 2022.

Illustration by Florian Nicolle

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