Pen of freedom

VIENNA – The main story in one of the English language newspapers here is the progress of investigations into corruption scandals involving five former ministers of defense, finance, transport, infrastructure and health who served between 2000 and 2007. See, the P-Noy administration isn’t the only one doing this to former officials.

The scandals have forced former Austrian chancellor Wolfgang Schussel to resign from Parliament after 22 years in government service.

Over in the UK, Liam Fox also resigned as defense chief on Friday amid an influence-peddling scandal. Something like that is unheard of in the Philippines – the resignation, I mean, not the influence peddling, which is done openly and shamelessly.

As we can see, corruption is not unique to the Philippines. But in other countries, the corrupt lose their government jobs and often their liberty when they are convicted and sent to prison.

In our country, those indicted for corruption go to the hospital, or get elected to Congress. Truly, we deserve the government we get.

The anti-corruption campaign is not the only matter where the P-Noy administration must show some dramatic progress soon. The government also has to put an end to the killings of journalists.

* * *

A newspaper editor-cum-bank manager in Isabela was shot dead shortly before I left for this Austrian capital. He was the fourth journalist killed this year, although two of the previous murders were found not to be work-related.

I’m in Vienna for the 18th World Editors Forum and 63rd World Newspaper Congress. Eric Newton, senior adviser to the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, which underwrites (among other things) the Global Campaign Against Impunity of the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, told me that Russia and the Philippines were the worst offenders in this area.

In the 2011 Impunity Index, the Philippines ranked third with 56 unsolved killings of journalists from Jan. 1, 2001 to Dec. 31, 2010, behind Iraq with 96 and Somalia with 10. The number of unsolved killings is compared against the population size. So we are ranked ahead of (in descending order) Sri Lanka, Colombia, Afghanistan, Nepal, Mexico, Russia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Brazil and India.

In fact the situation looks worse in other countries. We were told that more than 70 journalists were killed in Mexico last year and 22 in Afghanistan, but more cases remain unsolved in the Philippines.

So on Nov. 1, the UK-based group Article 19 is launching a 23-day campaign against impunity, culminating on the second anniversary of the Maguindanao massacre. Article 19 is the provision on freedom of expression and information in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The massacre, with 37 media workers among the confirmed victims, was the worst attack in the world on members of the press. But journalists are also working under difficult and often life-threatening circumstances in many other countries.

At the start of the editors’ forum, the 2011 Golden Pen of Freedom was awarded by the World Association of Newspapers (WAN)-IFRA to Dawit Isaak, an Eritrean journalist who also holds a Swedish passport. Amid the violent war for liberation in his native land, he fled in 1987 and became a refugee in Sweden, later working for years as a cleaner.

After Eritrea gained independence in 1996, Isaak returned from exile and co-founded the country’s first independent newspaper, Setit. The paper published investigative reports, and in 2001 ran a series of open letters addressed to President Isayas Afewerki, demanding democratic reforms. Afewerki’s response: all private press outlets were shut down on Sept. 23, 2001. Isaak as well as 13 newspaper owners, editors and journalists were arrested together with 11 reformist politicians.

All of them have been detained without charges since then. Four of the journalists have reportedly died. In 2009, Afewerki said in a Swedish interview that Isaak would face no trial and would not be freed. All we saw of Isaak at the newspaper congress were pamphlets bearing his image, demanding his release.

* * *

Even in the Arab Spring, journalists are threatened. Shahira Amin, former deputy head of Nile TV in Egypt, was the one who broke the story on virginity tests being conducted by the Egyptian Army on women attending protest rallies in Tahir Square.

That was when she was told by an Army officer, “We have your picture in Tahir.”

Amin refused to be intimidated. A television broadcaster for 30 years, she walked out as TV anchor when she was told to read a government statement condemning the protests. “I thought I would be committing career suicide,” she told us.

Concerns have been raised that Egypt is backsliding in democratic reforms. To this day, all stories that concern the military must be approved by its officials.

Meanwhile, we were told that in Tunisia, there are still people who don’t want an end to controls on media.

Outside the Arab world, journalists are facing similar risks. In Ecuador, the president has sued El Universo, the largest circulation daily. Its publisher and deputy director for new media, Nicolas Perez Lapentti, said such lawsuits have “a chilling effect” on the press.

Over in Mexico, Luis Hoarcio Najera was forced to flee his country in 2008 after incurring the ire of drug cartels. He told us that a woman who blogged about drug trafficking was decapitated recently, with her severed head placed beside her computer keyboard.

Even American journalists have their problems with their government, with the war on terror used to suppress the flow of information. Alison Bethel McKenzie, director of the International Press Institute in Austria, called it a “terrorism blanket.” Press freedom, she said, has taken “a big hit” in the United States.

Callamard said violence against journalists is worst in places where the justice system is ineffective and there are institutional weaknesses in government.

That sounds like the Philippines. Dealing with the killings will be easier if P-Noy’s anti-corruption campaign can take off.