Citizen of the world

"Citoyen du monde, partout chez moi, (pour tous) etranger." Words of
Erasmus, done as installation by Marie-Jo Lafontaine at Stockholm
Airport, in multilinguistic treatment. Brilliant and fitting for an
airport. A place where people are sedentarily transient....

Kurdistan's press pays for tackling corruption

The Financial Times - By Fnna Fifield07/11/2008 00:00:00
(Suleimaniya) - To promote freedom of the press and provoke social and political change, reporters are not shying away from stories of state corruption.

For three nights out of every 14, Ahmed Mira does not sleep at home. He no longer walks on the street either, nor does he drive his own car anywhere. Such is the life of an independent magazine editor in Kurdistan, the northern Iraqi province where journalists say they are coming under increasing pressure not to write about government corruption.

"We are proud of not having red lines, of crossing the boundaries and touching the most sensitive issues," says Mr Mira, editor of Lvin ("Movement"), a fortnightly magazine that has homed in on corrupt officials.

Such pride comes at a high price. One of Lvin's reporters, 23-year-old Soran Mama Hama, was gunned down outside his home in Kirkuk in July, shortly after writing about police links to a prostitution ring. His picture now adorns every wall and door in the Lvin office.

Freedom of the press does not seem to reign supreme"Soran received threatening messages for three months before he was killed," says Mr Mira, who also receives such calls, almost daily. Now, he stays elsewhere immediately following publication to try to avoid becoming a target at home.

While democratic Kurdistan is often heralded as a role model for the rest of Iraq, the government - or more specifically, the two parties that run almost every facet of life in the semi-autonomous region - are regularly accused of shady practices.

Lvin, circulation 25,000, and independent Kurdish newspapers including Hawlati, Awene and Rozhnama are leading the charge. Much more so than the rest of Iraq, Kurdistan has a lively independent press seeking to offer an alternative news diet.

"Our role is to bring about political change in this society," Mr Mira says in his office in Suleimaniya.

"We will try to change as much as we can, including the two corrupt political parties who monopolise everything," he says, referring to the Kurdistan Democratic party, which is headed by Masoud Barzani, the regional president, and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, led by Jalal Talabani, the president of Iraq. Mr Mira says he is most proud of publishing stories about Mr Barzani's official residence, which the magazine said was as secretive as an aircraft's black box recorder, and another entitled "The Sick Man", about Mr Talabani's health.

Questions of loyalty and patriotism

The latter story led to Mr Mira spending 13 hours in prison, accused of being a traitor. Independent Kurdish papers say they are coming under increasing pressure not to write such "unpatriotic" stories. Mr Barzani recently told editors not to write about corruption generally but rather to report specific details of specific cases, and to have the documents to back up their claims, according to three editors at the meeting.

"We will go on reporting corruption cases and the games that the political parties play to try to silence us," says Karam Rahim, editor of Hawlati, the biggest independent paper in Kurdistan, who says he told the president he would not desist. Hawlati ("Citizen"), which reaches more than 50,000 people each week, has been sued 35 times over stories about corruption.

"We are working to make sure that corruption does not become a habit among our people, and we are working to improve our society so it becomes more open minded and modern," Mr Rahim says.

American officials in Iraq are concerned about recent attempts to clamp down on the Kurdish press.

"There have been a number of instances in the past six months in which reporters have been harassed, detained, pressurised not to write about corruption," says a senior US official in Baghdad. "Sometimes we really question the [regional government's] commitment to a truly democratic Kurdistan."

Government denial of claims

The government denies suggestions it is corrupt or undemocratic, and the president's office refutes claims it is putting pressure on any media outlets.

"There is no official pressure," says Fuad Hussein, the president's chief of staff. "The president told the editors that it's their right to publish about corruption but that when they accuse someone they should have proof.

"They should not make black into white," Mr Hussein told the Financial Times. This was advice not pressure, he added.

Regardless, Judit Neurink, a Dutch journalist who runs the Independent Media Centre in Suleimaniya, training Kurdish journalists, says the non-state press is certainly "stirring things up".

"Independent media are necessary in this country to open up a few more eyes to what is really happening," Ms Neurink says, although she sometimes has difficulty convincing reporters of the difference between "freedom of the press" and fiction.

Mr Mira, for one, says he will not waver. "Yes, of course it is very difficult," he shrugs, "but we must not bow to the pressure from the government."

Pregnant journalist lost her baby as attacked by security forces

• KurdishMedia.com - By Mohammed Ali
• 27/11/2008 00:00:00
London (KurdishMedia.com) 27 November 2008: A Kurdish journalist lost her baby as she was attacked by the security forces, Asayish, reported the committee for the protection of Kurdistan's Journalists (CPKJ) this earlier this week.
On 21 November 2008, Asayish, the Kurdish security forces, in the Kurdistan governorate of Sulemani raided the residential home of a Kurdish woman journalist, Mrs Banaz Ali Noori, reported CPKJ.
During the raid by Asayish, her husband was arrested and Mrs Noori lost her baby by miscourage due to the trauma of the raid. She was four month pregnant, CPKJ stated.
The Committee to Protect of Kurdistan's Journalists has strongly condemned the raid and the arrest. The Committee states, "while in Kurdistan, there is a week-long campaign to promote women's rights, the Assaish of Sulemani ill-treats a female journalist and uses violence against her."
"The perpetrators of the attack should be arrested and face trial immediately," CPKJ added.

Posted By Adnan to MENA El AMAN at 11/30/2008

Resistence

Electronic Islamic Resistance Movement 'Hamasna' Launches Campaign against Torture in Egypt   By   Mohamed Abdel Khalek Mesahil    26/ 11/ 2007 'Torture to Death in Egypt' was the title of the campaign launched by The Electronic Resistance Movement 'Hamasna' (Our Enthusiasm) against the torture that it considered an ongoing and widespread practice in Egypt, pointing out that the police torture and ill-treat detainees, particularly during investigations. The new site of the movement, whose members belong to the Islamic trend in Egypt and other Arab states, calls for supporting the principles of freedom, justice, democracy and human rights. It said security officials in most cases do torture prisoners to obtain information or to extract confessions from them, which sometimes leads to death. The blog that takes the symbol of a red traffic light said officials use torture as an instrument of punishment, intimidation or humiliation. They even detain relatives of prisoners and torture them to obtain information or confessions from them, or to force them to handover wanted persons.   It cited reports of Egyptian and international human rights organizations, quoting Amnesty International as saying that torture of political prisoners and criminal suspects is common and systematic in Egypt, resulting in the deaths of several people during their detention. The management of the site, which derives its name from the Islamic Resistance Movement in Gaza 'Hamas', introduce themselves as a group of youths from Egypt and other Arab countries contributing to the Islamic Renaissance project, through a site for the youth marked by new ideas. They emphasized that they wage electronic campaigns and wars against corruption at all levels, and develop practical recommendations that they annex to the campaigns.   http://www.almasry-alyoum.com/article2.aspx?ArticleID=84316 NA

Citizen journalism in Mumbai

Citizen Journalists Provided Glimpses of Mumbai Attacks

By BRIAN STELTER and NOAM COHEN
Published: November 29, 2008
From his terrace on Colaba Causeway in south Mumbai, Arun Shanbhag saw the
Taj Mahal Palace & Tower Hotel burn. He saw ambulances leave the Nariman
House. And he recorded every move on the Internet.

Mr. Shanbhag, who lives in Boston but happened to be in Mumbai when the
attacks began on Wednesday, described the gunfire on his Twitter feed —
the "thud, thud, thud" of shotguns and the short bursts of automatic
weapons — and uploaded photos to his personal blog.

Read more on NY Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/30/world/asia/30twitter.html?partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

A phone call to the 4th estate...

I am back at work at SVT and I just walked into the perfect example of what we should be doing.

Saturday evening, Björn Bragée, a cancer patient at one of Sweden's largest hospitals (Danderyds Sjukhus) called our newsroom and told the reporter who picked up the phone that the hospital was very dirty. "I am a doctor by profession", he said, "and no wonder people get even more sick when they are admitted to the hospital when it is so dirty."

Our reporter Nike Nylander and camerman Pelle Wickman went the next day to the hospital and filmed dirty toilets, dusty and dirty rooms etc. They made an interview with the doctor/patient, and confronted the Director of the hospital with the dirty toilets and rooms. Nylander also added an interview with a representative from the National Health Authority that explained that uncleanliness was a root cause for malignant bacteria to flourish in hospitals.

The story was broadcast Sunday night and and scandal was a fact. Today, basically all media in Sweden are following the story or doing stories of their own. I bet hospitals all over the country are being checked right now.

The Director of the hospital has publicly apologized and admitted his responsibility. And we have a new public debate on how the local councils have saved money on hiring cheap cleaning companies that cheat on the job, and how the responsible authorities have failed to check if their
subcontractors actually are doing what they are being paid for. I am doing a follow-up today on it.

And the doctor/patient, Björn Bragée, is very happy. "When I heard the footsteps of the reporter and cameraman charging in sunday morning, it was like hearing the old democracy organ playing", he said Monday night in one of numerous interviews made with Sweden's latest whistle-blower.

Watch Nike Nylander's story (pictures speak for themselves):
http://svt.se/svt/play/video.jsp?a=342596

/SK

The list of the governments that have persecuted journalists

Friday Nov. 21, 2008 04:51 EST - Glenn Greenwald (originally published
on salon.com)
The list of the governments that have persecuted journalists

(updated below - Update II)

The Washington Post Editorial Page today hails the courage of six journalists who have faced down persecution and grave danger in their line of work and who, consequently, are this week receiving the International Press Freedom Award from the Committee to Protect Journalists:

Plainclothes Ugandan police officers descended yesterday on the newsroom of the weekly newsmagazine the Independent, seizing computer documents and attempting to deliver an arrest warrant to managing editor Andrew M. Mwenda. "Unluckily, I was out of Uganda," Mr. Mwenda told us. Unluckily? "Yes. I do not want them to think I am running
away" . . . .

Mr. Mwenda is in the United States to receive an International Press Freedom award from the Committee to Protect Journalists . . . .

Mr. Mwenda's courage is typical of CPJ award winners. Others being honored this year include photographer Bilal Hussein of the Associated Press, whom the U.S. military imprisoned in Iraq for two years without charges; Danish Karokhel and Farida Nekzad, who run a news agency in
Afghanistan, one of the world's most dangerous places for reporters, and especially for female reporters such as Ms. Nekzad; Beatrice Mtetwa, a lawyer who has defended journalists against the vicious persecution of President Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe; and Cuban journalist Héctor Maseda Gutiérrez.

So, to recap the award winners: we have a reporter persecuted by the Ugandan Government; another imprisoned by the Castro regime; a journalist-defending lawyer who faced down the intimidation and threats of Robert Mugabe; two journalists who work at great risk of
being attacked by the Taliban; and one who was arrested by the U.S. military and then imprisoned for two years without any charges or due process of any kind by the United States Government. As happens so frequently now, that is the company we keep.

As for Mwenda, why does the Ugandan Government consider him such a threat? This is why:

In his new post, Mr. Mwenda said, he has reported on paramilitary groups that detain civilians, take them to illegal detention centers and torture them.

In a different Editorial on the same page today, The Washington Post wrote about the five Algerians who were ordered yesterday by a federal judge to be released from Guantanamo after seven years in inhumane captivity as part of what The Post called "the utter travesty that is
holding people with virtually no evidence -- and certainly no evidence that can reasonably be considered reliable." That is all part of the U.S. Government's program to "detain civilians, take them to illegal detention centers and torture them."

The five Algerians were joined for most of their stay at Guantanamo by Al Jazeera camerman Sami Al-Haj, who was abducted in 2001 while attempting to enter Afghanistan to cover the war there for Al Jazeera, imprisoned at Guantanamo without ever being charged with any acts of
terrorism, questioned almost exclusively not about Al Qaeda, but about the work of Al Jazeera, and then, after more than six years, unceremoniously released with no charges or findings of any wrongdoing whatsoever. As Reporters Without Borders summarized:

Regularly tortured and subjected to close to 200 interrogation sessions by his jailers, Sami Al-Haj began a hunger strike on January 7, 2007, in protest against his detention and to demand that his rights be respected. In retaliation, his jailers force-fed him on several occasions. His lawyer, Clive Stafford-Smith, who visited him in July last year, said he had lost about 40 pounds and was suffering from serious intestinal problems. He was also subject to bouts of paranoia and was finding it increasingly difficult to communicate normally.

The same bipartisan political class which endorsed all of this and which -- to this day -- wants to deny detainees in U.S. custody any rights to challenge their detention in a court of law, now all agree in perfect unison that it's time to let bygones be bygones; that any high U.S. officials who broke the law in spawning these injustices should be immunized; and that the crimes that were committed by government officials over the last eight years should be ignored.

* * * * *

On a very related note, Jonathan Schwarz points out a highly revealing footnote in Scott Horton's cover article in the current edition of Harper's concerning restrictions imposed by the U.S. media on how these matters can be discussed. That is redolent of this still-amazing episode where a CNN anchor upbraided Al Jazeera for reporting on civilian deaths in Iraq -- illustrative of one of the reasons the Bush administration had such contempt for that media outlet, to the point of imprisoning one of their camermen at Guantanamo and "accidentally" bombing their offices on several occasions.

UPDATE: To get a sense for how corrupt and warped is the American political consensus against prosecuting American officials responsible for our torture and interrogation regime -- to say nothing of the wretched hypocrisy at the heart of that -- just see here.

UPDATE II: Writing about yesterday's ruling on the Guantanamo detainees, Andrew Sullivan says: "And Obama wants an apologist for this -- John Brennan -- at CIA? Has he lost his mind?"

I'm both entirely unsurprised and basically undisturbed by the fact that Obama's most significant appointments thus far are composed largely of standard Washington establishment figures and pro-Iraq-War hawks, and are devoid of people "on the Left". That is who Obama is
-- he's an establishment politician who, with a few exceptions, is situated smack in the mainstream middle of the national Democratic Party. The mentor he sought out when arriving in the Senate was Joe Lieberman, who he then actively supported against Ned Lamont. The
notion that Obama is some sort of aggressive or radical Leftist challenger of establishment power is and always was the by-product of fear-mongering from the Right and, to a lesser extent, the projected desires of some progressives. As I've said many times, I intend to wait and judge Obama on the policies he pursues, not the administrators he appoints to carry out those policies.

But John Brennan is a different matter. To appoint someone as CIA Director or Director of National Intelligence who was one of George Tenet's closest aides when The Dark Side of the last eight years was conceived and implemented, and who, to this day, continues to defend and support policies such as "enhanced interrogation techniques" and rendition (to say nothing of telecom immunity and warrantless eavesdropping), is to cross multiple lines that no Obama supporter should sanction. Truly turning a page on the grotesque abuses of the last eight years requires both symbolism (closing Guantanamo) and substantive policy changes (compelling adherence to the Army Field Manual, ensuring due process rights for all detainees, ending
rendition, restoring safeguards on surveillance powers). Appointing John Brennan to a position of high authority would be to affirm and embrace, not repudiate, the darkest aspects of the last eight years.

----------------

UPDATE III: Johan Brennan has declined to take any intelligence job AP reports:

November 25, 2008By PAMELA HESS, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON
John Brennan, President-elect Barack Obama's top adviser on intelligence, took his name out of the running Tuesday for any intelligence position in the new administration. Brennan wrote in a Nov. 25 letter to Obama that he did not want to be a distraction. His potential appointment has raised a firestorm in liberal blogs that associate him with the Bush administration's interrogation, detention and rendition policies.
"It is with profound regret that I respectfully ask that my name be withdrawn from consideration for a position within the intelligence community. The challenges ahead of our nation are too daunting, and the role of the CIA too critical, for there to be any distraction from the vital work that lays ahead," Brennan wrote.
Obama's advisers had grown increasingly concerned in recent days over online blogs that accused Brennan of condoning harsh interrogation tactics on terror suspects, including waterboarding, which critics consider torture.
Obama spokesman Denis McDonough did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday

/SK