Journalists who report on environmental issues are encountering growing difficulties in many parts of the world, reports Reporters Without Borders.

According to the tally kept by RSF, 200 journalists have been subjected to threats and physical violence, including murder, in the past 10 years because they were working on stories linked to the environment.

Twenty four were murdered in Latin America and Asia — including the Pacific, which makes these two regions the most dangerous ones for environmental reporters.

• READ MORE: Other environmental journalism reports
• Other RSF reports

From restrictions on access to information and gag suits to physical attacks, the work of environmental journalists and their safety are increasingly threatened.

RSF has denounced the obstacles to the right to information about ecological and climate issues and calls on all countries to recognise the vital nature of the work of environmental journalists, and to guarantee their safety.

Nearly half of the journalists killed in India in the past 10 years — 13 of 28 — were working on environmental stories that often also involved corruption and organised crime, especially the so-called “sand mafia,” which illegally excavates millions of tons of this precious resource for the construction industry.

Amazon deforestation
Journalists covering the challenges of deforestation in the Amazon are also constantly subjected to threats and harassment that prevent them from working freely.

The scale of the problem was highlighted in 2022 by the murder of Dom Phillips, a British reporter specialised in environmental issues.

“Regarding the environmental and climate challenges we face, the freedom to cover these issues is essential,” said RSF’s editorial director Anne Bocandé.

“RSF’s staff battles tirelessly to prevent economic and political interests from obstructing the right to information. Your generosity makes this fight possible.”

Pacific Media Watch collaborates with Reporters Without Borders.

• RSF’s annual World Press Freedom Index will be released on May 3 to provide a reality check on global press freedoms.

Protests in at least 30 cities across the US following the police killing of George Floyd have resulted in violent attacks from police and protesters alike against journalists, reports Reporters Without Borders.

Dozens of incidents have been reported so far, ranging from threats to serious physical assaults.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has condemned these attacks in the strongest possible terms and calls for immediate measures to protect journalists.

READ MORE: Reporters Without Borders World Press Freedom Index 2020

PACIFIC PANDEMIC DIARY: By David Robie, self-isolating in Auckland under New Zealand’s Covid-19 lockdown as part of a Pacific Media Watch series.

Against a backdrop of many governments using tough controls under cover of fighting the covid-19 coronavirus pandemic to strengthen “creeping authoritarianism”, a global media freedom watchdog has signalled draconian virus reactions as a major threat.

From Papua New Guinea where media briefings have been curtailed with a lockdown of the national information and operations “nerve centre” at Morauta Haus, to Fiji where media personalities have been arrested, to the Philippines where state troll armies “weaponise” disinformation on social media, and to Indonesia where street artists have stepped in fill an information void, the signs are really worrying for defenders for media freedom.

The pandemic is “highlighting and amplifying the many crises”, already casting a shadow on press freedom, says the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders watchdog, which released its annual World Media Freedom Index this week.

READ MORE: The Reporters Without Borders 2020 World Press Freedom Index

While China and Iran have been singled out for strong criticism for suppressing details of the coronavirus outbreak early in the crisis, several countries traditionally strong on media freedom in the Asia-Pacific region have slipped down in the rankings – including Australia, New Zealand and Papua New Guinea.

In the case of New Zealand, which has usually been in the top 10 of media freedom nations, it has dropped two places to ninth, mostly because of shrinking media plurality.

Only Timor-Leste made gains in regional media freedom, with Fiji and Samoa barely holding the line.

According to RSF secretary-general Christophe Deloire, the pandemic has encouraged some regimes to “take advantage of the fact people are stunned and mobilisation has weakened to impose measures that would be impossible to adopt in normal times”.

RSF accused China and Iran – in 177th, three places from the bottom of the 180-nation list, and 173nd place respectively – of censoring major coronavirus outbreaks.

Few rankings changed dramatically from last year, with Scandinavian countries again doing really well. Norway was top for the fourth year in a row with Finland again in second place.

Rounding off the bottom nations, unsurprisingly, were Turkmenistan and North Korea.

‘Information hyper-control’

RSF says China “maintains its system of information hyper-control, whose negative effects for the entire world have been seen during the coronavirus public health crisis”.

However, Europe has also not been immune with countries such as France (34th) – suffering violence against journalists in state crackdowns – and the United Kingdom (35th) also slipping.

Hungary (89th) has been criticised too over Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s widely condemned law on false information which was a “completely disproportionate and coercive measure”.

According to RSF, there is a “clear correlation” between suppression of media freedom in response to the coronavirus pandemic and a country’s ranking in the index.

The watchdog’s Asia-Pacific director, Daniel Bastard, says this year’s Index shows that press freedom is potentially in danger in any country. He adds that the region has shown the highest increase of violations (up 1.7 percent).

“The proof is Australia (26th), formerly cited as a regional model, which has fallen five places – above all because of federal police raids on a journalist’s home and the state TV broadcaster’s headquarters last year,” says Bastard.

“The precedent set by the raids poses a serious threat to investigative reporting and the confidentiality of journalists’ sources.

Constitution lacking guarantees
“It also drew Australians’ attention to the fact that their constitution is completely lacking in guarantees for the right to inform and to be informed.”

Bastard says the report shows that “business imperatives also threaten media independence” through encouraging an “extreme polarisation and search for sensationalism” – as with Tonga (down 5 at 50th), Papua New Guinea (down 8 at 46th),  one place below the United States, and Taiwan (down 1 at 43rd).

“Even the regional model, New Zealand (9th), has fallen two places because media ownership continues to be highly concentrated,” says Bastard.

“It shows that regardless of where in the world you want to exercise the right to press freedom, you have to keep fighting for it.”

In the Philippines (136th), after a decade-long wait, leading members of the Ampatuan political clan were finally convicted in December 2019 of carrying out the biggest ever massacre of journalists, in which 32 journalists, many of them women, were killed on the island of Mindanao in 2009 and dumped in a mass burial site.

President Rodrigo Duterte’s government employs an army of trolls to attack media critics and has mounted a relentless campaign against some media companies.

A quick snapshot of selected Asia-Pacific nations in the Index report:

Australia 26th (down 5 places)
“In 2019, Australian journalists became more aware than ever of the fragility of press freedom in their country, whose constitutional law contains no press freedom guarantees and recognizes no more than an ‘implied freedom of political communication’. Federal police raids in June 2019 on the home of a Canberra-based political reporter and the headquarters of the state-owned Australian Broadcasting Corporation in Sydney were flagrant violations of the confidentiality of journalists’ sources and public interest journalism. ‘National security’, the grounds given for these raids, is used to intimidate investigative reporters. They also have to cope with a 2018 defamation law that is one of the harshest of its kind in a liberal democracy.”

Fiji 52nd (no change)
“Under Voreqe ‘Frank’ Bainimarama, who has proved impossible to remove as prime minister ever since a military coup in 2006, journalists who are overly critical of the government are often subjected to intimidation or even imprisonment. The media have to operate under the draconian 2010 Media Industry Development Decree, which was turned into a law in 2018, and under the regulator it created, the Media Industry Development Authority, over which the government has direct oversight. Those who violate this law’s vaguely worded provisions face up to two years in prison. The sedition laws … are also used to foster a climate of fear and self-censorship. Sedition charges put the lives of three journalists with The Fiji Times, the leading daily, on hold until they were finally acquitted in 2018. Many observers believe it was the price the newspaper paid for its independence.”

New Zealand 9th (down 2)
“The press is free in New Zealand but its independence and pluralism are often undermined by the profit imperative of media groups trying to cut costs to the detriment of good journalism. Concern was voiced about the editorial integrity at New Zealand’s leading news portal Stuff after its owner, Fairfax Media, was taken over by the Australian entertainment giant Nine Television Network in July 2018. Stuff was forced to close a third of the sites it hosted and major budget cuts were imposed on all the local media outlets it owns. The situation could have been even worse if the Commerce Commission had not blocked another proposed merger between Stuff and New Zealand Media and Entertainment (NZME), which owns the country’s leading daily, The New Zealand Herald.”

Papua New Guinea 46th (down 8)
“Although the media enjoy a relatively benign legislative environment, their independence is clearly endangered. The last months of the government led by Peter O’Neill, a prime minister with dictatorial tendencies, were marked by many press freedom violations, including intimidation, direct threats, censorship, prosecutions and attempts to bribe journalists. The installation of an O’Neill rival, James Marape, as prime minister in May 2019 was seen as an encouraging development for the prospects of greater media independence vis-à-vis the executive.

“Journalists nonetheless continue to be dependent on the concerns of those who own their media. This is particularly the case at the two main dailies, The Post-Courier, owned by Australian media tycoon Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, and The National, owned by the Malaysian logging multinational Rimbunan Hijau, which does not want its journalists to take too much interest in environmental issues.”

Samoa 22nd (down 1)
“Despite the liveliness of media groups such as Talamua Media and the Samoa Observer group, this Pacific archipelago is in the process of losing its status as a regional press freedom model. A law criminalising defamation was repealed in 2013, raising hopes that were dashed in December 2017, when Parliament restored the law under pressure from Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi so that that he could attack journalists who dared to criticise members of his government. … In response to … repeated threats, the Samoa Alliance of Media Practitioners for Development (SAMPOD) urged the media to reaffirm the right of Samoans to pluralist, free and independent journalism as an essential condition for democracy.”

Timor-Leste 78th (up 6)
“No journalist has ever been jailed in connection with their work in East Timor since this country of just 1.2 million inhabitants won independence in 2002. Articles 40 and 41 of its constitution guarantee free speech and media freedom. But various forms of pressure are used to prevent journalists from working freely, including legal proceedings designed to intimidate, police violence and public denigration of media outlets by government officials or parliamentarians. The creation of a Press Council in 2015 was a step in the right direction, despite the reservations expressed by the media about the way its members are elected.

“However, the media law adopted in 2014, in defiance of the international community’s warnings, poses a permanent threat to journalists and encourages self-censorship. Relatively unrestricted coverage of government instability in 2019-20 nonetheless served to show the importance of the role that media pluralism can play in East Timor’s democracy.”

Tonga 50th (down 5)
“Independent media outlets have increasingly assumed a watchdog role since the first democratic elections in 2010. However, politicians have not hesitated to sue media outlets, exposing them to the risk of heavy damages awards…. The re-election of [the late] Prime Minister Samuela ‘Akilisi Pōhiva’s party in November 2017 was accompanied by growing tension between the government and journalists. This was particularly so at the state radio and TV broadcaster, the Tonga Broadcasting Commission (TBC), where two senior editors were sidelined under pressure from the government. Pohiva Tu’i’onetoa, who became prime minister in October 2019, must put a stop to the pressure and meddling and ensure that journalists enjoy full editorial independence.”

Not all Pacific nations are surveyed by the Index. At least Vanuatu should be there and West Papua is “hidden” within the Indonesian (119th) statistics.

A final word on the status of Timor-Leste. The country has a dynamic young media industry with a group of dedicated and creative journalists and industry leaders. In many respects they are showing the way to their more established Pacific neighbours and this ought to be reflected with a higher ranking.

Perhaps next year if the media freedom improvements keep coming?

Pacific Media Watch collaborates with Reporters Without Borders.

An Australian federal court decision upholding the legality of the police raid on the Sydney headquarters of the national public broadcaster ABC last June has dealt a major blow to the protection of journalists’ sources and poses a grave danger for the future of public interest journalism, says Reporters Without Borders (RSF).

In its ruling issued on February 17, the court rejected the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s challenge to the legality of the search warrant that allowed federal police to search computers, emails and USB sticks at its headquarters on 5 June 2019.

The police were trying to identify the source for The Afghan Files reporting by ABC journalists Sam Clark and Dan Oakes in 2017 about the role of Australian special forces in the illegal killing of civilians in Afghanistan.

READ MORE: The Afghan Files: Defence leak exposes deadly secrets of Australia’s special forces

The reporters used material provided by a whistleblower within the Defence Ministry.

“If confirmed on appeal, this federal court ruling will set a disturbing legal precedent by turning investigative reporters and whistleblowers into criminals,” said Daniel Bastard, the head of RSF’s Asia-Pacific desk.

“The ABC story never compromised national security and clearly served the interests of the Australian public, who have a right to reliable and independent information freely reported by journalists.

“We call on the federal judges to guarantee this right on appeal by recognising the search warrant’s illegality.”

Ruling fraught with consequences
Under the warrant, the police were authorised to search for evidence that the two journalists had “unlawfully obtained military information” and “dishonestly received stolen property”.

The supposedly stolen property was the leaked documents that exposed the illegal killings reported in The Afghan Files.

The federal police raid on ABC was all the more shocking for coming just one day after a raid on News Corp political editor Annika Smethurst’s home in Canberra. The timing of the two raids was widely seen as a deliberate attempt to intimidate investigative journalists.

The judicial precedents set by these two cases are particularly fraught with consequences inasmuch as Australia’s constitutional law contains no guarantees for press freedom.

• Australia is ranked 21st out of 180 countries in RSF’s 2019 World Press Freedom Index.

Indonesia recently hosted a bold public relations window-dressing expo in Auckland presenting itself as a “Pacific” nation while attempting to provide an unconvincing impression of normality in the two Melanesian provinces known collectively as West Papua.

Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi hailed “a new era of Pacific partnership – a Pacific Elevation” while New Zealand’s counterpart Winston Peters responded to human rights questions with a remarkably naïve statement that Indonesia was “making progress” by welcoming a press pack to West Papua.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Papuan critics have dismissed this Pacific Expo as effectively “fake news” – a cover-up of more than a half-century of repression and distortion.

READ MORE: ‘It opened my eyes’: The Indonesian woman fighting for West Papuan rights

Frequent reports from human rights agencies have detailed a litany of abuse, violence and repression tantamount to “slow genocide”, as at least one author has described it.

The atrocious current conditions in West Papua were highlighted yet again last week with a report by the relief aid group Solidarity Team for Nduga claiming that at least 139 people have died in internal refugee camps in the Highlands of West Papua and more than 5000 people have been displaced since renewed fighting broke out between the Indonesian military and West Papua pro-independence rebels last December.

Among the latest human rights violation reports has been a document presented to Britain’s House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee last month.

Prepared by researcher Pelagio Da Costa Sarmento of the respected London-based Indonesian human rights agency Tapol and editor Victor Mambor of the Jayapura-based newspaper and website Tabloid Jubi, the submission was in response to an inquiry by the Commons Select Committee into the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) and Global Media Freedom in an effort to combat disinformation.

A covering declaration accompanying the submission made it clear it was exposing the current state of lack of media freedom in West Papua.

“Over the last 10 years, journalists and news organisations have faced serious threats to their personal security, as well as being targeted by digital disinformation campaigns that aimed to disrupt the work of legitimate news sources and reporting,” the declaration said.

“The death of two local journalists, assaults on multiple others and several cases of international journalists being deported from Indonesia for reporting on or in West Papua underscores the lack of media freedom of West Papua.”

Promises not kept
Indonesia ranks 124th out of 180 countries in the Reporters Without Borders Global Press Freedom Index, which states “President Joko ‘Jokowi’ Widodo did not keep his campaign promises during his five-year term.

“His presidency was marked by serious media freedom violations, including drastic restrictions on media access to West Papua … where violence against local journalists keeps on growing.”

Victor Mambor and I shared the podium in an “alternative” media freedom forum in Jakarta at the time of the UN World Press Freedom Day conference in May 2017 and my Media Asia article about the crisis outlined efforts to “gag” discussion about media freedom in West Papua.

Mambor has been a strong advocate for the Alliance for Independent Journalists (AJI) over the West Papuan media freedom cause.

The submission by Tapol and Jubi declares:

• There are patterns of threats that implicate the safety and security of local journalists in West Papua.
• A clearing house, “an intricate red-tape”, was re-introduced in May 2019 to select foreign journalists coming to West Papua. (Once a permit is granted, security forces supervise the selected journalists during their work in West Papua).
• Over the past 10 years, there have been two deaths, multiple assaults, arrests on local journalists and deportation of international journalists. (Most of the cases remain open with no clear investigation process).
• Disinformation using bogus online media disrupts the work of legitimate news sources.

Human rights violations
“West Papuans have been experiencing serious human rights violations including torture, imprisonment and extrajudicial killings by the Indonesian security forces (police and military),” the submission says.

“The West Papuans have long expressed their desire for self-determination since Indonesia took over the territory in 1963. It was officially incorporated into the Indonesian state in 1969 after the ‘Act of Free Choice’.

“Simmering low level conflict between various pro-independence groups and the Indonesian army have been ongoing since then, with the continued existence of local armed groups in West Papua. Indonesia has maintained a significant military presence in the region.”

However, in recent years “civil resistance movements have gained traction organising protests against human rights violations in West Papua and demanding the right to self-determination”.

The submission says that as a result the Indonesian government has “tightened security control over West Papua by maintaining the presence of both military and police forces and deploying these state security forces to stop rallies or discussions on human rights and/or political issues, and clamp down on the freedoms of expression, association, and assembly”.

Human rights violations and extrajudicial killings by the military and police in West Papua “rarely make the headlines in the mainstream media,” says the submission.

There have been many cases since where access to foreign media has been limited or refused. There have also been several cases of foreigners visiting West Papua being deported from Indonesia “on suspicion of being journalists”.

Relaxed media rules
While four journalists from New Zealand (from RNZ Pacific and Māori Television) took advantage of a brief period of relaxed media rules in 2015 after President Widodo took office to visit West Papua, none have been there since.

In May 2019, the head of the immigration division in the regional office of the Ministry for Law and Human Rights in Papua Province reaffirmed a “clearing house” system for any foreign journalists wanting to visit West Papua.

If a permit is granted the foreign journalist would then be supervised by the security forces during their entire working trip in West Papua.

Here is a list of human rights violations against journalists documented by Tapol and Jubi researchers over the past decade:

Local journalists:
2010: Journalist Ardiansyah Matrais, a correspondent for Jubi and Merauke TV, was reported missing on July 28. Two days later, his tortured body was retrieved from the Gudang Arang Merauke river. The police autopsy report said he was still alive when he had been thrown into the river. His case remains unresolved.

2011: Journalist Banjir Ambarita, correspondent of the Jakarta Globe daily and Vivanews.com, was stabbed while driving a motorbike. It is suspected that the motive was related to an article he had written on the sexual abuse of a detainee by three police officers. No further investigation undertaken.

2012: Leiron Kogoya, a journalist for Pasific Post and Papua Pos Nabire, died when gunmen plane shot down his plane at an airport in Papua province. Though he was not specifically the target, his death served as a reminder of the dangers that journalists face in West Papua.

2015: Abeth You, a journalist writing for Jubi was attacked by police in October when covering a demonstration on human rights violations in West Papua.

2017: Journalist Ardi Bayage, a reporter for Suarapapua.com, was arrested when covering a protest during World Press Freedom Day in 2016. Bayage showed his press card to the police, however the police ignored and accused him of lying. He was held for several hours in the police headquarters in Jayapura.

2018: Journalist Abeth You of Jubi in May captured the police beating his colleague Mando Mote on his mobile phone. He was choked by a member of the police; his mobile phone was taken away and his press card was destroyed.

Foreign journalists:
2006: Five Australian journalists from Channel Seven were detained and put under surveillance in Jayapura, Papua province, and then deported. Naomi Robson, Rohan Travis, Peter Andrew, Paul Richard and David John were detained on charges of entering the province with tourist visas. They were forced on a flight back to Jakarta on September 14 from where they were expelled from the country.

2014: Two French journalists, Thomas Dandois and Valentine Bourrat, were detained in August in Papua province. They were doing a report on West Papua for the Franco-German TV channel Arte. They were charged with violation of immigration regulations and promoting instability. Their local guide and interpreter were also arrested and interrogated by the police for 36 hours.

2016: A visa was denied for French journalist Cyril Payen to report in Papua. On January 8, the Indonesian Embassy in Bangkok informed Payen that his application for a visa to visit Indonesia and carry out reporting in Papua province had been denied. The Indonesian Ministry of Foreign Affairs officials later informed the French Embassy in Jakarta that the denial was because his previous reporting on the pro-independence movement was “biased and unbalanced”.

2017: French journalist Basil Longchamp and his camera crew were deported from Indonesia after being granted permission to work on a documentary in Indonesia covering West Papua. On their arrival in Indonesia, they were expelled and banned from returning to Indonesia.

2018: Rebecca Henschke, an Australian journalist working for the BBC and her crew received an official permit to cover a military aid operation in West Papua. However, when the authorities found out about her Twitter post showing troops providing only non-nutritious foodstuffs, the journalist and her crew were expelled on the grounds that her post “hurt the feelings” of the soldiers.

2018: Australian doctoral candidate Belinda Lopez doing Indonesian studies at Macquarie University, Sydney, was detained in Denpasar, Bali, after arriving from Australia for her honeymoon in Indonesia.

“She was also planning to visit West Papua to attend a festival. Immigration officials told her that her name was blacklisted without offering any justification She had formerly worked as a reporter in Jakarta and had already been deported from West Papua once in 2016 on suspicion of being a journalist.”

The researchers said the evidence demonstrated “acute risks and barriers for journalists working in West Papua”.

‘Bogus online media’
The submission also declared that West Papua suffered from the existence of “bogus online media”.

According to a 2018 investigation by Jubi and a Jakarta-based website, Tirto, there were about 18 online media platforms that were “dubious and bogus”.

“Their style of reporting includes producing hoaxes and propaganda regarding West Papua, quoting fictitious sources and conveying strong bias in favour of the police and the military in West Papua,” stated the submission.

“Their work severely disrupts the work of genuine media organisations which also have an online presence. They make a major contribution to the spread of disinformation to the public regarding the issues in West Papua.

“They also affect the work of civil society organisations that have limited access to the region, and that rely on the online news reporting that comes out of West Papua.”

In their report, Tapol and Jubi cite an example of how a bogus online media had “disrupted critical humanitarian work”.

Describing the difficulties in verifying information and human rights violations allegedly taking place in Nduga regency, in the Central Highland of West Papua, the submission explains how Indonesian police and military have been conducting a joint operation against the West Papua Liberation Army since last December.

Nduga lockdown
“Independent sources have been very difficult to reach, and the military has been the sole source of information. Any accounts differing from the military are declared as a hoax, whereas not a single press worker can access Nduga due to the lockdown,” states the submission.

“A local Papuan senator was reported to police when he stated that there were civilian deaths resulting from the operation. This makes balanced and accurate reporting from the ground nigh on impossible.

“It is also undermining the image of a free and fair media in Indonesia – one of the largest democratic nations in the world. There is very limited accountability on the part of the authorities towards the ongoing human rights crisis in West Papua.”

In the past two UN Universal Periodic Reviews of Indonesian human rights, New Zealand and France have called for Indonesia to respect press freedom and open access to national and international journalists to West Papua.

Call for protection
Among recommendations by Tapol and Jubi are:

• The United Kingdom – as host of the recent Global Media Freedom conference – should ensure freedom of the press is upheld universally, including in West Papua.
• Indonesia ought to “maintain its credibility” by providing access to national and international media so that they can provide unrestricted coverage in West Papua.
• Indonesia should be pressed to protect journalists working in West Papua and ensure that they are free from any harassment by security forces.
• Indonesia must bring to justice those responsible for attacks and killings of journalists in West Papua.
• Development aid funding should be increased to strengthen capacities of local organisations, media outlets, and journalists in West Papua, and to enable greater transparency and credible documentation of the ongoing human rights crisis in West Papua.
• More West Papua reports
• Pacific media freedom and news ‘black holes’ worsen
• Māori Television’s Native Affairs in West Papua
• Tapol
• Tabloid Jubi

In the wake of an attack against a hard-hitting Filipino broadcaster in Kidapawan City – the 14th media practitioner to be killed during the administration of President Rodrigo Duterte – the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP) is holding a forum in Cagayan De Oro this weekend to discuss the safety of journalists in Mindanao.

Pamela Jay Orias, chair of NUJP’s Cagayan de Oro chapter, said the forum gathered the union’s key officers throughout Mindanao to discuss the current state of media safety and security in the region.

Orias described the present situation as “alarming and the atmosphere no longer secure for journalists working in Mindanao”.

READ MORE: 13 journalists killed under Duterte admininistration

On Wednesday night, Kidapawan City broadcaster Eduardo Dizon was gunned down while driving home.

Prior to the shooting, Dizon had received threats to his life.

The continuing attack against journalists in the country since the end of the Marcos dictatorship in 1986 has left a bad mark on its democratic credentials.

Most dangerous
The Paris-based media freedom organisation Reporters Without Borders listed the Philippines as among the most dangerous countries – 134th – for media workers in the Asia-Pacific region.

Adding to the muddled scene is the continued imposition of martial law throughout Mindanao, Orias explained.

The forum, Orias said, hoped to provide “a much-needed venue for journalists to bring these issues and discuss them with colleagues” in the spirit of sharing approaches and techniques in handling similar situations.

The NUJP, according to Orias, has kept reminding journalists of the utmost importance of safety “in doing coverage, especially in conflict areas, or when tackling sensitive topics”.

“As they say, ‘no story is worth dying for,’” Orias said.

• Jigger J. Jerusalem is a journalist reporting for the Philippine Daily Inquirer.
• More media freedom stories

While Pacific countries have got off rather lightly in a major global media freedom report last month with most named countries apparently “improving”, the reality is that politicians are becoming more intolerant and belligerent towards news media and information “black holes” are growing.

The Pacific is at the milder end on the scale of media freedom violations – there are no assassinations, murders, gaggings, torture and disappearances.

But the global trend of “hatred of journalists [degenerating] into violence, contributing to an increase of fear” warned about by the Paris-based global watchdog Reporters Without Borders is being reflected in our region.

READ MORE: Pacific countries score well in media freedom index, but reality is far worse

Lack of safety for journalists is a growing concern for media organisations around a world where 80 journalists were killed last year, with 348 being jailed and 60 held hostage.

At least 49 of the slain journalists were “deliberately targeted” because they were media workers.

“If the political debate slides surreptitiously or openly towards a civil war-style atmosphere, in which journalists are treated as scapegoats, then democracy is in great danger,” says RSF secretary-general Christophe Deloire in the introduction to RSF’s annual World Press Freedom Index.

“Halting this cycle of fear and intimidation is a matter of the utmost urgency for all people of good will who value the freedoms acquired in the course of history.”

Global concerns
The global concerns have been echoed in the Pacific in recent times.

In Papua New Guinea last week, for instance, amid what appeared to be the unravelling of Prime Minister Peter O’Neill’s coalition government – described by many critics as a “dictatorship” – with the defection of seven members including the finance minister and attorney-general, an opposition leader made an extraordinary threat against the country’s two foreign-owned newspapers.

Vanimo-Green MP Belden Namah, leader of the PNG Party, one of the two major parties in the opposition, put the Australian-owned Post-Courier and Malaysian-owned National newspapers “on notice” that a new government would “deal” to the media.

Angered by the two dailies for not running his news conference stories, he threatened to regulate the print media if a new government is installed in vote of no-confidence due on Tuesday.

Last November, one of Papua New Guinea’s leading journalists, EMTV’s award-winning Lae bureau chief Scott Waide, was suspended by his company under pressure from the O’Neill government to have him sacked.

Why? Because he exposed the “inside story”of a diplomatic Chinese tantrum and a scandal over the purchase of a fleet of luxury Maserati cars during the Asia Pacific Economic Forum (APEC) hosted by Port Moresby.

Writing in Pacific Media Watch, columnist Vincent Moses thundered:

“Peter O’Neill is acting like another Chinese dictator in Papua New Guinea by exerting control over both state-owned and private media to not report truths and facts that expose his government and their corrupt acts to PNG and the world.”

‘Huge attack’
“This is a huge attack on media freedom in PNG and must be condemned by everyone,” Moses added.

The strong condemnation that followed forced EMTV to reverse its decision and the network reinstated Waide.

Ironically, Papua New Guinea’s Index “freedom” score lifted it 15 places to 38th in the global list of 180 countries.

Other Pacific countries and Timor-Leste also improved in the report assessing 2018 – except for Samoa, which was unchanged at 21st (just one place behind Australia). But this improvement must be seen against the background of global deterioration of media freedom.

The qualitative assessments in the index report make it clear media freedom in Pacific countries is also declining, just not as rapidly as in many other countries.

In the North Pacific, a Pacific Island Times magazine editorial last month blasted the traditional chiefs on Yap in the Federated States of Micronesia for demanding the expulsion of a probing US reporter as harassment and an attempt to “silence a journalist”.

The magazine’s editor-in-chief, Mar-Vic Cagurangan, strongly defended her Yap correspondent, Joyce McClure, who has been living on the island for the past three years, saying that declaring her persona non grata would set a “dangerous precedent”.

Joyce McClure’s reporting provided transparency, which was “vital to every democratic society”.

‘Truthful information’
“The Pacific Island Times and Ms McClure have no agenda other than to provide truthful information to the people of the Pacific region. She is doing this job not as an outsider but as a member of the community, which has become home to her,” the Times said in its editorial.

Stories that McClure has written include reports on a private company’s apparent attempt to bribe newly installed state officials. She has also exposed Chinese commercial vessels harvesting Yap fish with local help.

The Yap media freedom saga was well documented last week by my Pacific Media Watch colleague Michael Andrew in his Bid to Expel Journalist report.

This week, on Wednesday, the Times reported that Joyce McClure “won’t be kicked off the island” as demanded by the chiefs.

“And questions are being raised about the legitimacy of the letter conveying the chiefly demands to the Yap State Legislature and then on to the Federated States of Micronesia Congress,” the Times added.

Replying to questions from Pacific Media Watch, Cagurangan admitted the stakes are high for small and vulnerable “self-funded” independent island publications such as Pacific Island Times.

“During last year’s elections [on Guam], the campaign team of then candidate and Bank of Guam president (now governor) Lou Leon Guerrero signed a political ad contract with us,” she said. “Despite the signed contract, the campaign team pulled out their ad following the publication of an op-ed piece written by a guest writer, which displeased them.

“Although we rely on advertising revenue to keep going, we refuse to compromise our journalistic integrity and independence.”

Malolo environmental expose
In Fiji, an independent New Zealand website, Newsroom, investigated a major environmental development disaster by the Chinese company Freesoul real Estate on the remote tourism island of Malolo, exposing how Fijian news media had been effectively gagged by 13 years of draconian media legislation and a climate of fear since the 2006 military coup.

Although democracy has returned and two post-coup elections have been held, the most recent last November, journalists are often intimidated into silence.

Opposition Leader Sitiveni Rabuka, the man who staged Fiji’s first two coups in 1987, said the “rot and culture of fear” in the civil service and the “intimidated and cowed media” were now so ingrained in the country that it had taken foreign journalists to break the story.

The three New Zealand Newsroom journalists reporting about Malolo were arrested early last month but Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama ordered their release a day later and apologised to them personally for their ordeal at the hands of “rogue officers”.

The intimidation of the Fiji media is an issue that the editor of the award-winning Wansolwara student journalist newspaper, Rosalie Nongebatu, and three of her fellow students will address at a World Press Freedom Day seminar hosted by the University of the South Pacific today.

Censorship, intimidation
About the Asia-Pacific region, the RSF media watchdog warned in its report that totalitarian propaganda, censorship, intimidation, physical violence and cyber-harassment meant that it now took a “lot of courage … nowadays to work independently as a journalist” in the region where democracies were struggling to resist various forms of disinformation.

It singled out China and Vietnam, which both dropped one place to 177th and 178th respectively on the global list of 180 countries, as the worst culprits (although the bottom placed country on the index is now Turkmenistan).

About 30 journalists and media workers are detained in Vietnam, with nearly twice as many being held in China, a country of major concern to the Pacific in view of the growing economic, aid, trade and strategic influence in the region.

“China’s anti-democratic model, based on Orwellian high-tech information surveillance and manipulation, is all the more alarming because Beijing is now promoting its adoption internationally,” said the RSF report.

“As well as obstructing the work of foreign correspondents within its borders, China is now trying to establish a ‘new world media order’ under its control, as RSF showed in its latest special report on China.”

The RSF Index report sees the growing raft of cyberlaws – such as in the Pacific – as an example of this Chinese-inspired media manipulation.

Special mention was made of the Philippines, whose President Rodrigo Duterte is one of the world leaders – along with US President Donald Trump – most consistently spreading “hate” towards journalists.

‘Silenced with impunity’
“When sworn in as president in June 2016, Duterte issued this cryptic but grim warning: ‘Just because you’re a journalist, you are not exempted from assassination, if you’re a son of a bitch. Freedom of expression cannot help you if you have done something wrong.’”

Three Philippine journalists were killed in 2018, “most likely by agents working for local politicians, who can have reporters silenced with complete impunity”.

“The government, for its part, has developed several ways to pressure journalists who dare to be overly critical of the summary methods adopted by ‘Punisher’ Duterte and his notorious ‘war on drugs’.

“After targeting the Philippines Daily Inquirer and the TV network ABS-CBN in 2017, the president and his staff have now unleashed a grotesque judicial harassment campaign against the news website Rappler and its editor, Maria Ressa” (who was recently arrested and now faces six charges).

“The persecution was accompanied by online harassment campaigns waged by pro-Duterte troll armies, which also launched cyber-attacks on alternative news websites and the site of the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines in order to block them.

“In response to all these attacks, the Philippine independent media have rallied to Ressa’s call to, ‘Hold the line’.”

Pacific report cards:
The Pacific report card on media freedom from the RSF World Press Freedom Index includes:

New Zealand (7) + 1 = 10.75
“The press is free in New Zealand but its independence and pluralism are often undermined by the profit imperatives of media groups trying to cut costs. Concern was voiced about the editorial integrity of New Zealand’s leading news portal, Stuff, after the Australian entertainment giant Nine Television Network took over its owner, Fairfax Media.

“Stuff was forced to close a third of the sites it hosted and major budget cuts were imposed on the local media outlets it owns. The situation could have been even worse if the Commerce Commission had not blocked another proposed merger between Stuff and New Zealand Media and Entertainment (NZME), which owns the country’s leading daily, The New Zealand Herald…”

Australia (21) – 2 = 16.55
“Australia has good public media but the concentration of media ownership is one of the highest in the world. It became even more concentrated in July 2018, when Nine Entertainment took over the Fairfax media group. Mainly concerned with business efficiencies and cost-cutting, this new entity resembles Australia’s other media giant, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation.

“Under the very conservative Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, the government has abandoned any attempt to regulate the media market. The space left for demanding investigative journalism has also been reduced by the fact that independent investigative reporters and whistleblowers face draconian legislation …

“At the same time, the migrant detention centres run by government contractors on the islands of Manus and Nauru are in practice inaccessible to journalists and have become news and information black holes.’ [Manus is now closed with the asylum seekers living with the local community].

Samoa (22) Unchanged = 18.25
“Despite the liveliness of media groups such as Talamua Media and the Samoa Observer group, this Pacific archipelago is in the process of losing its status as a regional press freedom model. A law criminalising defamation was repealed in 2013, raising hopes that were dashed in December 2017 when Parliament restored the law under pressure from Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi, giving him licence to attack journalists who dared to criticise members of his government.

“A few months later, in early 2018, the prime minister warned Samoan media outlets not to ‘play with fire’ by being too critical in their reporting or else his government would censor their websites…”

Papua New Guinea (38) + 15 = 24.70
“Although the media enjoy a relatively benign legislative environment, their independence is clearly in danger. Journalists are exposed to intimidation, direct threats, censorship, prosecution and bribery attempts.

“The situation is all the more precarious because the media groups they work for rarely defend them when they are under attack. As a result, self-censorship is on the rise and many media outlets are regarded as Prime Minister Peter O’Neill’s mouthpieces.

“All this was particularly visible during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in the capital, Port Moresby, in November 2018, when journalists who wanted to raise sensitive issues were censored by their bosses and the government was accused of accommodating the Chinese delegation’s demands for certain journalists to be excluded although they had obtained accreditation for the events concerned…”

Tonga (45) + 6 = 24.41
“Independent media outlets have increasingly assumed a watchdog role since the first democratic elections in 2010. However, politicians have not hesitated to sue media outlets, exposing them to the risk of heavy fines. Some journalists say they are forced to censor themselves due to the threat of bankruptcy. In an effort to regulate ‘harmful’ online content, especially on social networks, the government adopted new laws in 2015, one of which provides for the creation of an internet regulatory agency with the power to block websites without reference to a judge.

“The re-election of Prime Minister Samuela ‘Akilisi Pōhiva’s [‘pro-democracy’] party in November 2017 was accompanied by growing tension between the government and journalists. This was particularly so at the state radio and TV broadcaster, the Tonga Broadcasting Commission (TBC) …”

Fiji (52) + 5 = 27.18
“The relatively pluralist and balanced coverage of the 2018 parliamentary elections – the second since the 2006 coup d’état – confirmed the Fiji media’s liveliness and spirit of resistance. But journalists are still restricted by the draconian 2010 Media Industry Development Decree, which was turned into a law in 2018, and the regulator it created, the Media Industry Development Authority, whose independence is questionable.

“Journalists who violate this law’s vaguely worded provisions face up to two years in prison. In this hostile legal environment, the acquittal of the country’s leading daily, The Fiji Times, and three of its journalists on sedition charges in May 2018 was seen as an encouraging victory for press freedom.”

Timor-Leste (84) + 11 = 29.93
“No journalist has ever been jailed in connection with their work in East Timor since this country of just 1.2 million inhabitants won independence in 2002. Articles 40 and 41 of its constitution guarantee free speech and media freedom. But various forms of pressure are used to prevent journalists from working freely, including legal proceedings designed to intimidate, police violence, and public denigration of media outlets by government officials or parliamentarians.

“The creation of a Press Council in 2015 was a step in the right direction despite the reservations expressed by the media about the way its members are elected. But the media law adopted in 2014, in defiance of the international community’s warnings, poses a permanent threat to journalists and encourages self-censorship.

“Coverage of the parliamentary elections in May 2018 nonetheless served to show the importance of the role that media pluralism can play in the construction of East Timor’s democracy.”

West Papua
Media freedom issues in West Papua are dire, but are partially hidden from a global gaze in the RSF Index report because they are reported on as part of Indonesia, which as a country is unchanged at 124th. The Index notes the following about President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo’s “broken promises”:

“President Widodo did not keep his campaign promises during his five-year term [and he now appears to have won a second term]. His presidency was marked by serious media freedom violations, including drastic restrictions on media access to West Papua (the Indonesian half of the island of New Guinea), where violence against local journalists keeps on growing.

“Foreign journalists and local fixers are liable to be arrested and prosecuted there, both those who try to document the Indonesian military’s abuses and those, such as a BBC correspondent in February 2018, who just cover humanitarian issues.

“As the Jakarta-based Alliance for Independent Journalists often reports, the military also intimidate reporters and even use violence against those who cover their abuses. Many journalists say they censor themselves because of the threat from an anti-blasphemy law and the Law on ‘Informasi dan Transaksi Elektronik’ (Electronic and Information Transactions Law).

Dr David Robie is a correspondent for Reporters Without Borders.

• RSF 2019 World Press Freedom Index
• Indonesian political system has ‘failed’ its minorities

China wants to create a “new world media order”. Video: Reporters Without Borders

An opposition party leader who believes there will soon be a change in government in Papua New Guinea has warned the country’s two foreign-owned daily newspapers that the new regime will “deal” to them.

Vanimo-Green MP Belden Namah, leader of the PNG party, one of the two major parties in the opposition, has put the Australian-owned Post-Courier and Malaysian-owned National newspapers on notice.

Angered by the two dailies for not running his news conference stories, he threatened to regulate the print media when a new government is installed in a likely vote of no-confidence next month, reports the Post-Courier.

READ MORE: No media freedom in PNG, says senior journalist

“One thing I also want to say, especially to the print media, the Post-Courier and The National you have to report what’s coming out from the Opposition as it is healthy for the country,” he said.

“You know I held a media conference two days ago, the Post-Courier and The National never printed it.

“I congratulated the two ministers who resigned and the Post-Courier, you only printed about the OTC land at Five-Mile [land designated for a controversial K2 billion Chinatown development],” he said, with three Highlands provincial governors and two other MPs also resigning yesterday from Prime Minister Peter O’Neill’s divided government.

O’Neill is in China this week to attend a “Belt and Road” initiative conference.

Newspapers ‘on notice’
“I am putting the Post-Courier and The National on notice, tomorrow when government changes it will be a totally different story and we will regulate to ensure that you do the right thing for the people of this country.”

Namah has a controversial background being both a former Opposition Leader and part of the O’Neill government.

Before entering politics he was a PNG Defence Force captain and jailed for sedition in the Sandline mercenary affair in 1997. The scandal surrounding the ill-fated mercenary operation, planned to crush Bougainville rebels, forced the resignation of Sir Julius Chan as prime minister.

In 2014, a former police chief issued an arrest warrant for Namah, accusing the politician of having threatened him.

Although Papua New Guinea has risen 15 places to 38th in the latest RSF World Press Freedom Index this month, Reporters Without Borders warned that the country’s media independence was “at risk”.

Pacific Media Watch is a regional media freedom project of the Pacific Media Centre.

• Five PNC rebels break away from O’Neill’s cabinet in shock move

Democracies across Asia and the Pacific are struggling to resist disinformation and protect press freedoms, according to a new report.

Reporters Without Borders released its 2019 index last Thursday showing an increase in self-censorship of journalists in parts of the Pacific last year.

Although Pacific Island countries generally rose in press freedom rankings, Reporters Without Borders was also concerned about an absence of editorial independence.

READ MORE: Pacific ‘bright spots’ amid World Press Freedom Index Asian warnings

In Papua New Guinea, it said journalists faced intimidation, direct threats, censorship, prosecution and bribery attempts.

“All this was particularly visible during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in the capital, Port Moresby, in November 2018, when journalists who wanted to raise sensitive issues were censored by their bosses and the government was accused of accommodating the Chinese delegation’s demands for certain journalists to be excluded although they had obtained accreditation,” the RSF 2019 index said.

The group said self-censorship was also on the rise in Tonga, where politicians have sued media outlets and keeps tight controls over state media.

“This was particularly so at the state radio and TV broadcaster, the Tonga Broadcasting Commission (TBC), where two senior editors were sidelined under pressure from the government.

Suppressing editorial independence
“In 2018, the government gained full control over the TBC, suppressing all vestiges of editorial independence.”

Elsewhere, Reporters Without Borders said balanced election coverage in Fiji and the acquittal of Fiji Times journalists on sedition charges was an “encouraging victory”.

“The relatively pluralist and balanced coverage of the 2018 parliamentary elections – the second since the 2006 coup d’état – confirmed the Fiji media’s liveliness and spirit of resistance.”

In Samoa, the group said the country was “in the process of losing its status as a regional press freedom model”.

RSF said defamation laws had given Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi a licence to attack critical journalists.

In Solomon Islands, similar defamation laws were criticised by RSF as intimidating journalists and encouraging media self-censorship

“Indonesian diplomatic pressure for an end to any form of support for West Papuan separatism could pose a threat to the public debate.”

It also praised public broadcaster Solomon Islands Broadcasting Corporation (SIBC) as playing a “vital role in keeping the population informed by radio” in a country with low literacy rates.

This article is republished under the Pacific Media Centre’s content partnership with Radio New Zealand.

• The RSF World Press Freedom Index 2019

Fiji, New Zealand and Timor-Leste have made significant gains in the latest annual Reporters Without Borders World Press Freedom Index while the Paris-based global watchdog has warned that totalitarian propaganda, censorship, intimidation and cyber-harassment have been on the rise in the Asia-Pacific region.

“A lot of courage is needed nowadays to work independently as a journalist in the Asia-Pacific countries, where democracies are struggling to resist various forms of disinformation,” the RSF report said.

Fiji gained five places to rise to 52nd in the world due to a “relatively pluralist and balanced” coverage of the 2018 parliamentary elections and the acquittal of three of The Fiji Times journalists and executives and a letter writer on sedition charges last May in what was seen as an “encouraging victory for press freedom”.

READ MORE: The RSF World Press Freedom Index

Timor-Leste jumped 11 places to 84th because of the way the media covered the 2018 elections and showed how news organisations could “play a role in the construction of democracy”.

New Zealand rose one place to seventh among the world’s top 10 countries because the business regulator Commerce Commission had blocked a merger between the country’s two major news groups, Stuff and the NZ Media and Entertainment (NZME), in a victory for media plurality.

Malaysian ‘fresh air’
Two significant rises in the RSF Index – both of 22 places – highlighted the degree to which a country’s political ecosystem impacts on the freedom to inform.

In Malaysia, the ruling coalition was ousted in an election for the first time in the country’s 62 years of independence.

This blew fresh air through the ossified media and transformed the environment for journalists, propelling Malaysia to 123rd place.

In Maldives, the election of a new president who had given firm – and partially kept – promises to improve press freedom enabled this Indian Ocean archipelago to jump to 98th place.

News ‘black holes’ sink further
Conversely, two countries already festering near the bottom of the Index – China and Vietnam – both managed to fall another place, to 177th and 176th respectively, because of the monopoly of power exercised by their presidents, Xi Jinping and Nguyen Phu Trong.

The first amended the constitution in order to be “president for life” in March 2018. The second now heads both the Communist Party and the state.

In each country, the ruling elite suppresses all debate in the state-owned media while cracking down relentlessly on citizen-journalists who try to make a dissenting voice heard.

Around 30 professional and non-professional journalists are detained in Vietnam, and nearly twice as many are detained in China.

China’s anti-democratic model, based on Orwellian high-tech information surveillance and manipulation, is all the more alarming because Beijing is now promoting its adoption internationally.

As well as obstructing the work of foreign correspondents within its borders, China is now trying to establish a “new world media order” under its control, as RSF showed in its latest report on China.

Laos also fell one place to 171st, above all for preventing journalists from covering the dramatic collapse of a dam in July 2018.

These one-party states are inexorably drawing closer to their North Korean “brother”, which managed a miniscule one-place rise to 179th thanks to the semblance of an opening as a result of the summits that brought Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un and President Trump together.

Growing censorship, self-censorship
While the islands of press independence are under attack, the Chinese system of total news control is increasingly serving as a model for other anti-democratic regimes such as Singapore (151st), which has established self-censorship as the norm, Brunei (152nd, -1) and Thailand (136th).

Similarly, censorship has become the norm in Cambodia (143rd), where the government has eliminated all independent media, and Hong Kong (73rd), where the leading traditional media now receive pressure to comply with Beijing’s dictates.

In the absence of editorial independence vis-à-vis the authorities, Papua New Guinea (38th) and Tonga (45th) also saw an increase in self-censorship in 2018.

In Pakistan (142nd, -3), the military establishment’s harassment of the media in the run-up to the general election in July 2018 resulted in an increase in censorship comparable to the worst moments during Pakistan’s military dictatorships.

Deadly field reporting
Reporters are also exposed in the field in Pakistan, where the environment is extremely unsafe. At least three were killed in connection with their work in 2018.

The security situation is even more worrying in Afghanistan (121st, -3), where – despite the government’s efforts – 16 media professionals were killed in connection with their reporting, nine of them in a double bombing that explicitly targeted the press.

Much courage is now needed to be a field reporter in Afghanistan. Although less dramatic, the situation was also worrying in Bangladesh (150th), where reporters covering protests and the election were the targets of unprecedented violence.

Physical violence against journalists is encouraged by the fact that the perpetrators usually enjoy complete impunity, as is still the case, for example, in Sri Lanka (126th). In India (140th, -2), at least six journalists were also killed while trying to work in 2018. This tragic toll was accompanied by an increase in violence coming from all quarters, including the security forces, organized crime and political activists.

Cyber-harassment, disinformation
India’s journalists are being attacked online as well as in the field. All those who dare to criticize Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist ideology online are branded as “anti-Indian” scum who must be purged.

This results in appalling cyber-harassment campaigns in which journalists are threatened not only with death but also rape (as the troll armies like harassing women journalists, in particular).

The same phenomenon is found in the Philippines (134th, -1), where attacks against the independent press by President Rodrigo Duterte’s government are accompanied by coordinated cyber-attacks.

The most emblematic case is undoubtedly that of the news website Rappler and its editor, Maria Ressa, who is the target of both recurring online harassment campaigns and a series of prosecutions orchestrated by different government agencies.

The use of social networks is also worrying in Myanmar (138th, -1), where disinformation and anti-Rohingya hate messages spread on Facebook without being moderated, benefitting the government led by Aung San Suu Kyi, who reacted with a deafening silence to the seven-year jail sentences imposed on Reuters journalists Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo in September 2018 for trying to investigate the Rohingya genocide.

Democracies swamped
These waves of disinformation are helping to erode democracy throughout the region, and press freedom with it. Democratic countries are having more and more difficulty in resisting this toxic groundswell, with the result that many are failing to improve their ranking in the RSF Index.

On the grounds of regulating social networks, some countries such as Nepal (106h) and Samoa (22nd) have, for example, adopted repressive laws that hamper investigative journalism.

The absence of structural reforms that foster greater press freedom is also preventing countries such as South Korea (41st) and Indonesia (124th) from progressing. And independent journalism is rendered extremely difficult when the media environment becomes too polarized, as in Taiwan (42nd) and Mongolia (70th).

Pluralism in danger
Finally, it is becoming increasingly difficult for media pluralism to resist the imperatives of media ownership concentration and business interests, as in Japan (67th) and Australia (21st, -2).

New Zealand (7th, +1) is exposed to similar phenomena, but has a regulator that was able to prevent too much media concentration. It therefore rose one place, in a sign that institutional guarantees pay off.

Indonesia’s National Press Day (HPN), which falls on February 9 – yesterday, is a reminder of the murder of Radar Bali journalist Anak Agung Gede Prabangsa in 2009.

Based on the results of an investigation by the Alliance of Independent Journalists (AJI), which was later published under the title “The Bloody Trail After News“, Prabangsa was murdered because he wrote at least three articles on the manipulation of project budgets valued at around 40 billion rupiah (NZ$47 billion) in Bangli regency, Bali.

The three reports were titled, “Supervision after a Project is Running”, “Sharing the Bangli Education Office P1 Project” and “Agency Head’s Document Deemed Flawed”.

READ MORE: The Bloody Trail After News [Bahasa Indonesian]

The mastermind behind Prabangsa’s murder was Susrama, a contractor who routinely handled contract and procurement tenders for several government offices and agencies in Bangli, Bali.

Susrama is also the younger brother of Bangli Regent I Nengah Arnawa, who at the time was an Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) legislative candidate in the 2009 elections, and was then elected as a member of the Bangli Regional House of Representatives (DPRD). Susrama was subsequently sentenced to life imprisonment for Prabangsa’s murder.

The irony, however, is that Susrama’s life sentenced has been commuted by President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo.

Through a sentence remission contained in Presidential Decree Number 29/2018, Widodo reduced Susrama’s sentence from life to 20 years imprisonment. Susrama was the 94th in a list of 115 convicts who received sentence remissions.

Convict profiling
Legal Aid Institute for the Press (LBH Pers) executive director Ade Wahyudin says that the Susrama’s remission failed to consider a variety of aspects.

“What was missed in the convict profiling study, was what were the case details, the social effect of a case such as this”, Wahyudin told Tirto.

In the same vein as Wahyudin, AJI chairperson Abdul Manan said that Widodo’s decision was very disappointing because the remission given to Susrama completely ignored the public’s sense of justice.

On Friday afternoon, Wahyudin and Manan met with the Director-General for Correctional Institutions at the Ministry for Justice and Human Rights (Kemenkum HAM), Sri Puguh Budi Utami.

Accompanied by a representative from the Indonesian Legal Aid Institute (YLBHI), the two conveyed their complaints over the remission and handed over a petition put together by AJ, the LBH Pres and YLBHI.

“We asked that the remission for Prabangsa’s murder be revoked,” said Manan explaining the demands they took to the president.

Poor press freedom ranking
According to Manan, using the standards set by Paris-based global media freedom agency Reporters Without Borders, the state of press freedom in Indonesia is indeed very dim. Indonesia’s ranking is 124th out of 180 countries, lower even that Timor-Leste.

“It’s below 100, that’s in the underdog league, right. Categorised very bad,” said Manan.

Widodo has indeed routinely appeared at annual celebrations of National Press Day organised by the Indonesian Journalists Association (PWI). However, explained Manan, this has not automatically translated into efforts to strengthen press freedom in Indonesia.

“The February event commemorated by PWI was largely ceremonial. Totally inadequate to show that he sides [with journalists]”, he said.

There are many things that Widodo should be able to do rather than just taking part in ceremonial National Press Day commemorations. For example, said Manan, asking the Kemenkum HAM to look at the proposed revisions to the Criminal Code (KUHP), specifically the new on “contempt of court”.

The current formulation is problematic because journalists can be sentenced to five years jail if their journalistic work influences a judges’ verdict.

In addition to this, there is Article 494 on revealing confidential information. Likewise, Article 309 Paragraph (1) which has the potential for multiple interpretations and is susceptible to being used to criminalise journalists.

Articles too vague
“He should, if he wants to defend the press, [be able] to initiate the creation of regulations that support a climate of press freedom. Annul the articles which endanger the independence of the press because they are too vague,” he said.

The need to revise these problematic articles is becoming more urgent bearing in mind that in the last year there have been two efforts to criminalise journalists.

Those who have fallen victim were the former editor of Serat.id, Zakki Amali and Manan himself. The two were criminalised for investigating alleged plagiarism by Semarang State University (Unnes) rector Fathur Rokhman and the IndonesiaLeaks “red book” scandal allegedly involving National Police Chief (Kapolri) General Tito Karnavian.

“The Serat.id case was clearly just a press dispute. Police should be very careful in handling this. Ideally, pushing for the case not to be handled as a criminal case, so that it can be resolved though the mechanisms of the UU Pers (Press Law), namely by asking Unnes to submit a complaint with the Press Council”, explained Manan.

“Meanwhile the IndonesiaLeaks case is very clear cut and if they want to make an issue out of reports which were carried by five different media outlets, it’s inappropriate it to deal with it as a crime. The party that feels injured, if that’s Kapolri, should set an example by dealing with the case through mechanisms which are already provided for by the UU Pers”.

Still lots of homework
There is lots of homework that Widodo which needs to prioritise in order to protect press freedom in Indonesia.

Take for example his vision, mission and action program when he first ran as a presidential candidate in the 2014 presidential election. Widodo pledge to reorganise the ownership of broadcast frequencies in the hope of preventing monopolies by groups of people or broadcasting industry cartels.

According to doctoral research by Ros Tapsell from the Australian National University which was publish as a book titled “Media Power in Indonesia” (2017), there are eight media conglomerates that monopolise the public broadcast frequencies.

Aside from the problem of media conglomerates, Widodo also needs to fix the problem of the clearing house, a mechanism aimed at screening requests for permits by foreign journalists wanting to report on Papua.

The clearing house involves 19 working unit from 12 different ministries and is known for being convoluted and time consuming.

When he attended the great harvest in Marauke regency in Papua on May 10, 2015, Widodo asserted that these procedures would be abolished. Widodo declared that there should be a transparent mechanism with objective standards used to evaluate foreign journalist permit requests to report on Papua.

Journalists spied on
“Journalists find it difficult to obtain permits to report [on Papua], they are even spied on. In other cases their fixers are intimidated”, he said.

The other no less important problem is intimidation. Based AJI’s advocacy team’s records, during Widodo term in office new patterns of violence against journalists have emerged in the form of harassment and releasing private information through social media.

In 2018 there were three cases of journalists being persecuted in the online media. The victims were journalists from kumparan.com and detik.com. Their private data was publically released after they reported on the “211 Defend Islam Action” by a group who objected to the reports that they wrote.

“No legal action is ever taken in case journalists being persecuted. But, several cases of persecution where the victims were not journalists have been pursued legally. The president must show a clearer commitment to press freedom, particularly in its real application,” he said.

Wahyudin also raised the issue of poor protection for journalists under Widodo’s watch.

“There has been absolutely no progress. He’s been exactly same as the SBY [Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono] era, Jokowi. He hasn’t given attention to press freedom. Perhaps he thinks it’s already safe or resolved. Yet every year there are [incidents] of violence against journalists,” said Wahyudin.

Concrete steps
The government’s role, said Wahyudin, should be to guarantee that press freedom is protected. Yet Widodo has not fully realised this.

“It’s not enough. The government must take concrete steps in resolving murder cases. [Otherwise] the effect of ignoring cases of murder and valence will just be mushrooming impunity. Our democracy [itself] will become sick,” he said.

“In general terms, Widodo’s [new] vision and mission does not address press freedom. It more prioritises infrastructure but the aspect of civil freedoms are still very lacking.”

Translated by James Balowski for the Indo-Left News Service in partnership with the Pacific Media Centre. The original title of the article was “Hari Pers Nasional: Tak Ada Progres Kebebasan Pers di Era Jokowi“.

• More Pacific Media Watch stories

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has condemned the latest “absurd charges” that the Philippine Justice Department is planning to bring against the news website Rappler – this time libel charges in connection with an article posted in 2012 – and has called for the case to be dismissed.

The Justice Department has announced that Rappler, its editor and CEO Maria Ressa, and one of its former reporters, Reynaldo Santos Jr., are to be charged over a 2012 article about alleged ties between businessmen Wilfredo Keng and the then president of the country’s Supreme Court.

The charges, which carry a possible 12-year jail sentence, are based on the complaint that Keng brought five years later, in October 2017, under a cyber-crime law that was enacted several months after the article’s publication.

READ MORE: DOJ to indict Rappler for cyber libel

The National Bureau of Investigation dismissed the complaint in February 2018 because the law was not retroactive and because of a one-year moratorium on filing complaints, but reversed its decision the following month.

The Justice Department is reviving the case on the grounds that a principle of “continuous publication” can be applied to websites.

‘Grotesque persecution’
“The judicial harassment used by President Rodrigo Duterte’s administration to persecute Rappler’s journalists is becoming grotesque,” said Daniel Bastard, head of RSF’s Asia-Pacific desk.

“It would be almost laughable if it weren’t for the terrible judicial precedent that this decision would set, if upheld. We urge the court that handles this case to show independence and wisdom by dismissing it once and for all.”

The authorities have been systematically targeting Rappler for more than a year with the aim of intimidating its journalists. Four charges of tax evasion and failing to file income tax returns were brought against Rappler and Ressa in November.

A fifth, “completely spurious”, charge was brought in December, said RSF.

In January 2018, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced that it was revoking Rappler’s licence on the grounds that it had violated a ban on foreign ownership of media outlets, spuriously claiming that, by issuing Philippine Depositary Receipts to raise funds, it had sold some of its stock to foreign investors.

RSF referred this “unacceptable attack on media independence” to various international bodies.

In response to Rappler’s appeal against the SEC decision, a court ruled in July that the website should be allowed “reasonable time” to resolve any dispute about its financial structure.

The Rappler reporter assigned to covering the Malacañang presidential palace was meanwhile denied entry to the palace in February 2018 on Duterte’s personal orders.

The Philippines is ranked 133rd out of 180 countries in RSF’s 2018 World Press Freedom Index.

The Pacific Media Centre collaborates with Reporters Without Borders.

Rudy Bartley, president of the Journalist Association of Samoa (JAWS), has supported the international call for Samoa’s government to abolish the Criminal Libel Act.

International Press Institute (IPI) deputy director Scott Griffen, appealed in his speech at the 40th anniversary of the founding of the Samoa Observer newspaper at the Sheraton Samoa Aggie Grey’s Hotel last Friday, appealed to the government to scrap the law.

Bartley, in an interview with the Observer, echoed the call, saying JAWS supported the call.

READ MORE: IPI praises Samoa Observer

He said the government’s abolition of the law in 2013 marked a “monumental signal” to progress press freedom, but its reintroduction in December last year was a step backward for Samoa.

“This reintroduction of libel is a regression in Samoa’s media freedom advancements. We agree with the statement by Griffen entirely,” he said.

He said JAWS continued to raise the issue with the government and they have suggested a more practical and realistic alternative to the draconian legislation.

“The JAWS has raised this before and our concerns with this and yes we too have suggested the same – other more practical and realistic solutions to addressing issues why this law was reintroduced.”

Obstacle to press freedom
Griffen, in his celebration speech, highlighted the importance of press freedom and the role it played in people’s lives.

He said the criminal libel law would continue to be an obstacle to press freedom in Samoa and an alternative solution should be considered.

Samoa was ranked 22nd on this year’s World Press Freedom Index by Reporters Without Borders – the Paris-based media freedom watchdog that annually compiles international press freedom rankings.

However, RSF warned in May this year that the country was in danger of losing its standing as a regional press freedom model due to the Government’s decision to reintroduce the law.

• Samoa’s ‘model’ status now in danger
• IPI congratulates Samoa Observer

The Dili Dialogue Forum, sponsored by UNESCO and organised by the Timor-Leste Press Council, will be held again next year after the inaugural successful one last week.

It is a forum of Asia/Pacific press councils and it hopes to become an alliance of all press councils in the region by next May. May 3 is World Press Freedom Day.

This year Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, South East Asia Press Alliance (SEAPA) and Thailand were represented. It was held in an US$8 million auditorium (capacity 400) in the high-rise new Ministry of Finance building.

Topics included country reports of press freedom, ethics, training, social media issues and cybersecurity for journalists.

The TL Press Council impressed delegates.

Timor-Leste at 95 has the highest Asian ranking in Reporters Sans Frontiers World Press Freedom Index.

The TL Press Council was established two years ago with seven directors (two appointed by the government but possibly for the last time), mostly veteran newsmen.

Solid funding
It has solid funding sourced from the Timor-Leste government, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), New Zealand, Japan and the Netherlands (but not Australia).

The council has 38 full time staff including media monitors, trainers, IT and a transport team with nine cars and 21 motorbikes in well-equipped premises (50 PCs) opposite Dili University.

The government has no influence over its operations and has enshrined freedom of speech in its national constitution.

The council runs regular monthly training and certification of graduates, backed by UNDP, for young reporters and students in all formats of print, TV and the most popular medium radio.

One objective is to become an avenue for resolution of media complaints instead of costly legal action, similar to Australia’s Press Council and New Zealand’s Media Council.

Current campaigns include lobbying Google to include Tetum, one official language alongside Portuguese, and seeking assistance from Facebook to include Tetum-speaking content monitors to quickly react to reported offensive posts, a major issue in the country’s recent elections.

Next year it is hoped countries such as Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, Samoa, Solomon islands and Vanuatu will attend the Dili Dialogue.

The next forum will be held on May 9-10 next year.

Bob Howarth, a media consultant and correspondent for Reporters Without Borders, was a delegate at the Dili Dialogue Forum and is a regular contributor to Pacific Media Watch.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has condemned the killing of Philippine radio journalist Joey Llana near Legazpi City, at the southeastern tip of the island of Luzon, and has called on the authorities to do everything possible to find those responsible.

Joey Llana, 38, was gunned down yesterday as he drove to work at Radio DwZR in Legazpi City, where he hosted a morning radio programme, reports the Paris-based global media freedom watchdog RSF.

Local police said he was hit at least 14 times in the head and body by shots fired by five unidentified gunmen.

The police have not yet identified a motive but a relative said Llana had recently received death threats, which suggested that he had been targeted in connection with his work.

President Rodrigo Duterte’s spokesman, Harry Roque, condemned the murder and said it would be investigated by the Presidential Task Force on Media Security.

“We condemn radio journalist Joey Llana’s murder in the strongest terms as it is a serious press freedom violation, and we welcome the decision by the president’s office to open an immediate investigation and its declared desire to render justice to the victim,” a statement from RSF’s Asia-Pacific desk said.

“The Philippines, which is one of the most dangerous countries for journalists in Asia, must do everything possible to effectively combat violence against the media and impunity for this violence.”

Third journalist killed
If the initial suspicions are confirmed, Llana will be the third journalist to have been murdered this year in the Philippines in connection with their work, reports RSF.

Newspaper journalist Dennis Denora was slain in a similar fashion in the southern province of Davao del Norte in June, as was radio show host Edmund Sestoso in the central province of Negros Oriental in May.

At least six other journalists have been killed in connection with their work since Duterte, who is prone to virulent verbal attacks on the media, was elected president in 2016.

The Philippines fell six places in RSF’s 2018 World Press Freedom Index and is now ranked 133rd out of 180 countries.

By David Robie in Paris

When Reporters Without Borders chief Christophe Deloire introduced the Paris-based global media watchdog’s Asia-Pacific press freedom defenders to his overview last week, it was grim listening.

First up in RSF’s catalogue of crimes and threats against the global media was Czech President Miloš Zeman’s macabre press conference stunt late last year.

However, Zeman’s sick joke angered the media when he brandished a dummy Kalashnikov AK47 with the words “for journalists” carved into the wood stock at the October press   conference in Prague and with a bottle of alcohol attached instead of an ammunition clip.

Zeman has never been cosy with journalists but this gun stunt and a recent threat about “liquidating” journalists (another joke?) rank him alongside US President Donald Trump and the Philippines leader, Rodrigo Duterte, for their alleged hate speech against the media.

Deloire cited the Zeman incident to highlight global and Asia-Pacific political threats against the media. He pointed out that the threat came just a week after leading Maltese investigative journalist – widely dubbed as the “one-woman Wikileaks” – was killed in a car bomb blast.

Daphne Caruana Galizia was assassinated outside her home in Bidnija on 16 October 2017 after exposing Maltese links in the Panama Papers and her relentless corruption inquiries implicated her country’s prime minister and other key politicians.

Although arrests have been made and three men face trial for her killing, RSF recently published a statement calling for “full justice’” – including prosecution of those behind the murder.

Harshly critical
While noting the positive response by UN Secretary-General António Guterres to the journalists’ safety initiative by RSF and other media freedom bodies, Deloire was harshly critical of many political leaders, including Philippines President Duterte, over their attitude towards crimes with impunity against journalists.

In the Philippines, for example, there is still no justice for the 32 journalists brutally slain – along with 26 other victims – on 23 November 2009 by a local warlord’s militia in to so-called Ampatuan massacre, an unsuccessful bid to retain political power for their boss in national elections due the following year.

Rappler published a report last year updating the painfully slow progress in the investigations and concluded that “eight years and three presidential administrations later, no convictions have been made”.

Ironically, Rappler itself – hated by President Dutertre – has also been the subject of an RSF campaign in an effort to block the administration’s cynical and ruthless attempt to close down the most dynamic and successful online publication in the Philippines (133rd in the RSF World Media Freedom Index – a drop of six places).

Founded by ex-CNN investigative journalist Maria Ressa, Rappler has continued to challenge the government, described by RSF last year as the “most dangerous” country for journalists in Asia.

Duterte’s continuous attacks against the media were primarily responsible for the downward trend for the Philippines in the latest RSF Index, with RSF saying: “The dynamism of the media has also been checked by athe emergence of a leader who wants to show he is all powerful.”

The media watchdog also stressed that the Duterte administration had “developed several methods for pressuring and silencing journalists who criticise his notorious war on drugs”.

Test case
The revocation of Rappler’s licence by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is regarded as a test case for media freedom in the Philippines.

National Union of Journalists of the Philippines advocate Jhoanna Ballaran says the situation is very worrying.

The RSF consultation with some of its Asia-Pacific researchers and advocates in the field has followed a similar successful one in South America. It is believed that this is the first time the watchdog has hosted such an Asia Pacific-wide event.

Twenty three correspondents from 17 countries or territories — Afghanistan, Australia, Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, India, Japan, Hongkong, Maldives, Mongolia, Nepal, New Zealand, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Taiwan, Thailand and Tibet — took part in the consultation plus a team of Paris-based RSF advocates.

Asia Pacific head Daniel Bastard says the consultation is part of a new strategy making better use of the correspondents’ network to make the impact of advocacy work faster and even more effectively than in the past.

The Pacific delegation – Associate Professor Joseph Fernandez, a journalist and media law academic who is head of journalism at Curtin University of Australia (19th on the RSF Index), AUT Pacific Media Centre director Professor David Robie of New Zealand (8th) and former PNG Post-Courier chief executive and media consultant Bob Howarth of Papua New Guinea (53rd) – made lively interventions even though most media freedom issues “pale into insignificance” compared with many countries in the region where journalists are regularly killed or persecuted.

Nauru’s controversial ban on the ABC from covering the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) this September was soundly condemned and the draconian 2010 Media Industry Development Decree in Fiji (57th) and efforts by Pacific governments to introduce the repressive “China model” to curb the independence of Facebook and other social media were also strongly criticised. (Nauru is unranked and China is 176th, four places above the worst country – North Korea at 180th).

Media highlights
Highlights of the three-day consultation included a visit to the multimedia Agence France-Presse, one of the world’s “big two” news agencies, and workshops on online security and sources protection and gender issues.

No sooner had the consultation ended when RSF was on the ball with another protest over two detained local journalists in Myanmar working for Reuters news agency.

An RSF statement condemned Monday’s decision by a Yangon judge to go ahead with the trial of the journalists on a trumped up charge of possessing secrets and again demanded their immediate release.

Wa Lone, 32, and Kyaw Soe Oo, 28, have already been detained for more than 200 days with months of preliminary hearings.

They now face a possible 14-year prison sentence for investigating an army massacre of Rohingya civilians in Inn Din, a village near the Bangladeshi border in Rakhine state, in September 2017.

RSF secretary-general Deloire says: “The refusal to dismiss the case against the journalists Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo is indicative of a judicial system that follows orders and a failed transition to democracy in Myanmar.”

The chances of seeing an independent press emerge in Myanmar have now “declined significantly”.

The Pacific Media Centre’s David Robie was in Paris for the Reporters Without Borders Asia-Pacific consultation. Dr Robie is also convenor of PMC’s Pacific Media Watch freedom project.

• RSF’s World Press Freedom Index 2018
• Who murdered Malta’s most famous journalist?
• ABC ban: News Corp rejects media boycott of Nauru forum

Czech President Miloš Zeman’s “joke” threat against journalists. Video: The Young Turks