12/05/2012

My article from Tunis for the World Press Freedom Day


WORLD PRESS FREEDOM DAY
May 3, 2012
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By Melissa Chemam
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World Press Freedom Day: Tunisia leads the way in a stagnant Africa

Zied Mhirsi is an eternal optimist. And 2011 won’t turn him down. He has seen his country, Tunisia, change radically in terms of political and social issues and he believes it is time to make the Tunisian press play a life changing role. Zied Mhirsi is the manager of the first news website in English, Tunisia Live.
“After the revolution, Tunisians were having high hopes but lots of questions remained unanswered”, he admits. “One of journalists’ main problems nowadays is the lack of new laws and of a new Constitution, for this means the former laws are still in application to punish the media. But the context has already changed so much; there are no more censorship in Tunisia, for newspaper as well as the web; it is a major achievement”. Zied Mhirsi very much realised the work he is doing now with Tunisia Live would not have been possible at all two years ago, but that improvements are still necessary. “Now we also have to reform ourselves and to see some cleaning among the old guard of journalists who were so close to the former regime”.

As decades-old authoritarian regimes have vanished from Tunisia and countries like Egypt, Libya and others in the Arab World, freedom of the press gained precarious new footholds last year, according to a survey by the watchdog group Freedom House released Tuesday. “For the first time in eight years, global media freedom did not experience an overall decline”, according to the Freedom House report, “however, due to downgrades in some previously free countries, the percentage of the world’s population living in societies with a fully free press has fallen to its lowest level in over a decade”. The report, Freedom of the Press 2012: Breakthroughs and Pushback in the Middle East, found that three countries - Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia - experienced significant improvements as a result of the Arab Spring. “Dramatic gains in press freedom in Tunisia and Libya in particular marked major breakthroughs for countries long governed by autocratic rulers”. Outside the Middle East and North Africa region, positive improvements were seen in countries including Burma, Indonesia, Niger, the Philippines, Thailand, and Zambia.

It is one on the reasons why World Press Freedom Day, WPFD, is commemorated in Tunis, Tunisia, this year, 3-5 May, jointly by the UNESCO and Tunisian Government. The event intends to prove that media freedom has the “power to transform societies”. It does “by enlightening the decision making process with information, and thus empowering individuals to take control of their destinies”, the UNESCO says. In this context, media freedom plays a crucial role in the transformation of society by reshaping its political, economic and social aspects.

 

And Tunisia Live and the Centre for Developing Communication (CDC) organised a round table entitled “Media and Governance: Sustaining the Pioneering Role of Tunisia in the Arab Awakening”, sponsored by the African Development Bank (AfDB).

Africa still appears in bad rankings
But if North Africa evolves, the rest of the continent still remains press unfriendly, especially the Horn of Africa.
According to Amnesty International, the number of journalists killed increase from 2010 to 2011, and the number of those arrested nearly doubled. As protests spread across the Middle East and North Africa, so did crackdowns by security forces seeking to distort the first draft of history. In only the first few months of 2012, 17 journalists have already been killed around the world.
In its 2011 report, Reporters without Borders, RSF, shows that overall, 2011 took a heavy toll on media freedom, especially in the Arab world. Of the total of 66 journalists killed in 2011, 20 were killed in the Middle East - twice as many as in 2010. China, Iran and Eritrea continue to be the world’s biggest prisons for the media. According to RSF, among the 10 most dangerous cities for journalists in 2011 are Abidjan, in Côte d’Ivoire, Cairo in Egypt, Misrata in Libya and Mogadishu in Somalia. Four out of ten are in Africa.
The Committee to Protect Journalist in New York City, CPJ, declared Eritrea the most censored country in the world in 2011, followed by North Korea, Syria, Iran and Equatorial Guinea. Again, two African countries are in the first five on the list. For this list, CPJ considered only countries where restrictions are imposed directly by the state, but underline that in Somalia, journalists also practice extensive self-censorship in the face of extralegal violence. And in the runner-up can be found two other African countries: Ethiopia and Sudan. Addis where “censorship has become far more restrictive in recent years and the government of Meles Zenawi appoints managers of broadcasters and state newspapers and licenses all media; anti-terrorism legislation criminalizes any reporting that the Ethiopian government deems favourable to opposition movements designated as terrorist”. And in Sudan where “authorities frequently confiscate newspapers, which are the widespread form of media and security forces have increasingly confiscated newspaper editions wholesale to inflict financial losses on publishers.
 Shutting out international media and imposing dictatorial controls on domestic coverage, the Horn of Africa nation of Eritrea has emerged as the world's most censored country, the Committee to Protect Journalists has found in its newly updated analysis of press restrictions around the globe”, CPJ writes. No foreign reporters are granted access to Eritrea, and all domestic media are controlled by the government. Ministry of Information officials direct every detail of coverage. “Every time a journalist had to write a story, they arrange for interview subjects and tell you specific angles you have to write on,” an exiled Eritrean journalist told CPJ, speaking on condition of anonymity. Then in Equatorial Guinea, “all media is controlled, directly or indirectly, by President Teodoro Obiang”, the report says.
We can at this stage only hope that the North of the continent will inspire the rest.



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