censorship Archives

Turkey Arrests 24 for ‘Provocative’ Social Media Posts on Quakes

Posted on February 22, 2023February 23, 2023 by Ivana Jeremic

Turkish police on Sunday said they have arrested 24 people for “provocative” social media posts following the February 6 earthquake disaster that has killed more than 41,000 people.

“Legal proceedings were initiated against 441 account managers, 129 people were detained in line with the instructions received from the Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office, and 24 of them were arrested,” the Cyber Crimes department of the Police Directorate said in a written statement on Sunday.

The 24 had posted “provocative posts on social media platforms regarding earthquakes in order to create fear and panic among citizens”, police said.

Devastating twin earthquakes struck southern and south-eastern Turkey on February 6, registering 7.9 and 7.7 on the Richter scale.

Turkey’s Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency, AFAD, says it now believes more than 41,000 people lost their lives and more than 108,000 others were injured in addition to millions who lost their homes. At least 2 million people have since left the quake region for safer locations.

Since the first days of the disaster, police have targeted social media users, journalists and experts who commented critically about the government’s slow and ineffective response.

Journalists’ unions and watchdog organisations have reported several incidents when police prevented journalists from reporting in the quake zones.

“We are following and recording the increasing threats, violence and censorship targeting journalists covering the earthquakes and their aftermath,” the Media and Law Studies Association, MLSA, a leading NGO that monitors media freedom violations, said.

According to the government, search and rescue missions are about to wind up operations in 11 provinces hit by the quakes. Experts and officials fear the death toll will increase as the wreckage removal process comtinues.

The real death toll “is at least three to four, maybe five times worse than the announced figures. We will [have to]… and build provinces again,” Osman Bilgin, the provincial governor of Sirnak managing the earthquake response in the Nurdagi district in Gaziantep, said on Sunday.

The government previously blocked most access to Twitter, Tiktok and slowed down the internet in the country as public anger mounted about President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government’s response to the crisis.

Access to social media networks and the internet were fully restored a day later, however, following harsh critisism of the move. Critics accused the government of cutting off a key source of communication for relatives of victims, survivors and aid campaigners.

Turkish NGO Sues GSM Operators, Authorities, Over Social Media Ban

Posted on February 10, 2023February 23, 2023 by Ivana Jeremic

Veysel Ok, a lawyer and co-director of Media and Law Studies Association, MLSA, filed a criminal complaint on Friday against mobile network operators and the executives of Turkey’s Information and Communication Technologies Authority, BTK, following the ban imposed on Twitter and TikTok during the quake disaster.

Ok’s criminal complaint against them includes “misuse of public duty”, “prevention of communication”, “reckless killing” and “reckless injury”.

“At a time when people were literally holding onto life via social media, this kind of recklessness and irresponsibility are unacceptable,” Ok told BIRN, underlying that the application of bandwidth throttling is “a direct harm inflicted onto people”.

Monday’s massive earthquakes in Turkey registering 7.9 and 7.7 on the Richter scale have devastated the country’s south and south-eastern regions. Turkey’s Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency, AFAD, said it believed at least 18,991 people lost their lives and more than 75,500 were injured.

“Turkey is experiencing one of the worst disasters in its history. The authorities, who are responsible for protecting the lives of citizens, but cannot prevent this, actively seek to undermine citizens’ communication, journalists’ work and, unfortunately, search and rescue efforts,” Ok said.

The government’s response to the earthquake has been criticized by numerous survivors, experts and journalists, who say it has failed to deliver assistance to several devastated areas and not used the armed forces effectively, despite having 120,000 personnel in the region.

The government has meanwhile also banned, detained and investigated journalists and experts reporting on the disaster.

On Wednesday, it also blocked access to Twitter and TikTok – main sources of communication for relatives of victims, survivors and aid campaigners. Many people were rescued after they shared their situation and location via Twitter.

Internet connection was also reportedly slowed down by the authorities in what it calls a fight against misinformation.

“The responsibility of GSM operators and BTK officials should not be forgotten in the dust cloud of this disaster,” Ok said, adding that it is the duty of the state to effectively investigate related deaths and bring those responsible before the courts.

“We expect our criminal complaint to be processed promptly and investigated effectively,” Ok concluded.

Twitter was restored in Turkey on Friday following a meeting between government officials and Twitter on Thursday. According to Turkish officials, Twitter pledged to cooperate and to support “Turkey’s efforts to combat disinformation”.

Turkey Blocks Twitter After Public Criticism of Quake Response

Posted on February 8, 2023February 23, 2023 by Ivana Jeremic

The Turkish government has blocked most access to Twitter following growing public anger towards President Recep Tayyip Erdogan government’s response to Monday’s deadly earthquakes.

“Twitter has been restricted in #Turkey; the filtering is applied on major internet providers and comes as the public come to rely on the service in the aftermath of a series of deadly earthquakes,” NetBlocks, an internet observatory that follows global net freedoms, announced.

People now cannot access Twitter at all via two of the three main internet providers. TurkTelekom and Turkcell have completely blocked access. Vodafone still allows slower access to Twitter.

Days after the most devastating earthquake disaster in modern-day Turkey, the government has so far failed to deliver assistance to several areas devastated by two major quakes registering 7.9 and 7.7 on the Richter scale, leaving thousands dead.

⚠️ Confirmed: Real-time network data show Twitter has been restricted in #Turkey; the filtering is applied on major internet providers and comes as the public come to rely on the service in the aftermath of a series of deadly earthquakes

📰 Report: https://t.co/CEbfgeBpvz pic.twitter.com/3884wMpYD2

— NetBlocks (@netblocks) February 8, 2023

The government has not announced or commented on the Twitter ban. The government previously restricted social media access following disasters, terror attacks and protests.

Experts, politicians and people criticised the ban, saying that Twitter was the main source of communications for many people searching for survivors and victims as well as for local and nationwide aid campaigns.

Kemal Kilicdaroglu, leader of the main opposition Republican People’s Party, CHP said they will continue to use Twitter with VPN. “I told my friends in the field to use VPN for cooperation coordination. This insane … the government cut off social media communication,” Kilicdaroglu said.

His anger is shared by many people. “By restricting Twitter at this time, you are preventing or delaying help from reaching people who can reach it. You are killing people on purpose,” Ali Gul, a lawyer and activist, wrote on Twitter.

According to official figures, at least 8,574 people lost their lives, more than 49,000 people were injured and thousands of buildings were destroyed in the quakes.

President Erdogan visited quake-hit cities on Wednesday and asked for patience from people due to the government’s slow response.

Journalists, Opposition Slam Turkey’s Proposed ‘Censorship Law’

Posted on November 10, 2022January 26, 2023 by birdsuperadmin

Journalists’ unions, human rights groups and opposition parties have condemned the Turkish government’s proposed disinformation law and deemed it a further blow to media freedom, naming it the “censorship law”.

“While the draft bill … claims to be about combating disinformation, the contents cited in its articles target pluralistic independent media atmosphere, and it has a massive potential for silencing alternate voices in society,” Gurkan Ozturan, coordinator of Media Freedom Rapid Response at the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom, told BIRN.

Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party, AKP, and its ally, the far-right Nationalist Movement Party, MHP, brought the law to parliament without losing any time after the new legislative year started.

Ozturan deemed the draft bill an attempt at “censorship”. “Such laws are unacceptable, and so is censorship. They defy the European Convention on Human Rights,” he said.

The draft law for the first time defines “spreading misinformation on purpose” as a crime. It will increase government control and censorship in media and social media platforms.

“No matter how much the governing alliance might claim that this is to guarantee information safety and point to European laws, the threats we already see appear to disprove these claims, moreover, the draft bill has nothing to do with the existing laws on similar subjects in Europe, except for a law in Greece that is not being implemented,” Ozturan added.

The proposed law introduces penalties for anyone who “publicly disseminates false information regarding internal and external security, public order and the general welfare of the country, in a way that breaches the public peace, simply for the purpose of creating anxiety, fear or panic among the population”.

“The purpose of introducing the disinformation law is so that no one can write about the corruption of the palace [of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan] and its company,” Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the leader of the main opposition Republican People’s Party said in his parliamentary speech.

Huseyin Yayman, AKP president of the Parliamentary Digital Media Commission, dismissed the criticism.

“We are making a regulation on disinformation. Blocking or restriction of social media is out of the question. The AKP is a party that fights against censorship and bans,” he said, the pro-government Daily Sabah, reported.

Dozens of journalists and opposition MPs gathered outside parliament in Ankara on Tuesday, holding placards that read: “No to the law of censorship” and “Free press is a condition for democracy”.

“If this law is implemented in this form, there will be no freedom of press, expression and communication in our country,” said Kemal Aktas, chairman of the Turkish parliamentary reporters.

Under the proposed law, people who spread misinformation can be jailed for up to three years. If a court rules that a person spreads misinformation as part of an illegal organisation, the jail sentence will increase by 50 per cent.

Journalists can also be charged under the new law if they use anonymous sources to hide the identity of a person spreading “misinformation”.

The discussions and voting on the proposed law are expected to continue in the following days.

Albanian Journalists Gagged Over Organised Crime Case Leaks

Posted on June 16, 2022January 26, 2023 by Ivana Jeremic

Newsrooms in Albania received a gagging order on Thursday to stop publishing information about a major criminal case involving several organised crime groups, after the testimonies of two collaborators of justice that helped prosecutors issue some 32 arrest orders last month were leaked.

Prosecutors Doloreza Musabelliu, Altin Dumani and Behar Dibra underlined “the importance of the statements given by those two citizens and the fact that we are in the preliminary intensive investigation phase, and many investigative acts are being carried out,” as the reason for the gagging order.

“The statements of these citizens have proven value and are extremely important for the investigation. Due to this importance, and the need to have these statements covered by secrecy, it is necessary to order the protection of secrecy up to the conclusion of the preliminary investigations,” the prosecutors said.

Over the last few weeks, Albanian media have published dozens of news items about the statements of the two collaborators concerning several criminals suspected of murders and other crimes.

Albania’s penal code foresees jail sentences of up to three years for the publication of secret information by third parties, such as journalists. It also foresees jail sentences of up to six years when such secret information relates to protected witnesses.

This is not the first time that prosecutors in Albania issued gagging orders to the media. In 2019, after leaks exposed electoral crime and corruption, prosecutors issued a similar order.

But this was ignored by the media and was largely seen as an attempt to hide official failures to investigate political crimes.

Albania’s authorities organized a mass operation against organized crime on 19 May, following the statements of the collaborators. However, the most notorious bosses of the underworld weren’t found or seized, and remain on the run.

Montenegro’s Divided Govt Finally Silences Russian Media

Posted on April 8, 2022January 26, 2023 by Ivana Jeremic

Montenegro’s government on Friday finally suspended the broadcasting of Russian Today and Sputnik in line with European Union sanctions on Russia related to its war on Ukraine.

The government adopted the measures on Friday, more than five weeks after it joined EU sanctions on Moscow on March 1.

Deputy Prime Minister Dritan Abazovic said the move covers a wide package of restrictions on Russian officials, banks, companies and media.

“I am satisfied with the government’s decision, as the majority of ministers understood that it was important for the state. Those measures will have an economic impact,” Abazovic told the media. “If we reduced everything to economic logic, we would have a dilemma. But this is political logic,” he added.

In supporting EU sanctions, the would-be EU member committed itself to ban on Russian overflight of its airspace and access to its airports. It also banned transactions with the Russian Central Bank and joined the SWIFT ban on seven Russian banks.

On March 2, the EU suspended the broadcasting of Sputnik and Russia Today in all member states, accusing the outlets of spreading disinformation and manipulating information about Russia’s war on Ukraine.

The Podgorica government has now suspended all broadcasting licenses or approvals for Russian sponsored media, prohibiting broadcasting by any means, such as cable, satellite, IP-TV, internet service providers, internet video-sharing platforms or applications.

Only seven of the 12 government ministers reportedly supported the measures, reflecting deep East-West divisions in the country.

Minister of Agriculture Aleksandar Stijovic abstained from voting while Prime Minister Zdravko Krivokapic was absent in Greece. Minister of Education, Science, Culture and Sport Vesna Bratic, Health Minister Jelena Borovinic Bojovic and Minister of Ecology, Spatial Planning and Urbanism Ratko Mitrovic were also absent.

On Friday the US ambassador in Podgorica, Judy Rising Reinke, welcomed the government’s decision.

“It’s important to see a friend, partner and ally join EU sanctions, which are designed to undercut Russia’s ability to fund its inhumane, unjustified and unprovoked war on the people of Ukraine,” Reinke posted on Twitter.

But one of the leaders of the largest bloc in the ruling coalition, the pro-Russian Democratic Front’s Milan Knezevic, said the measures will damage the economy.

The Minister of Finance and Social Care, Milojko Spajic, said tourist income would drop due to the measures. “Every year around 23 per cent of tourists who come [here] are from Russia and Ukraine,” Spajic told television Vijesti.

Opinion in Montenegro is divided about Russia and its invasion of Ukraine. The country’s large ethnic Serbian community is traditionally sympathetic to Russia, while other communities are far less so. The smallest bloc in the government, Black on White, supports the EU sanctions, but the largest bloc, the Democratic Front, opposes them.

Censorship and Blackmail Accusations Rock Albania’s Top TV Station

Posted on April 1, 2022January 26, 2023 by Ivana Jeremic

An unknown person on Top Channel’s show Top Story’s Facebook page on Thursday sent shockwaves across Albania after claiming that the TV channel’s bosses had cancelled the airing of an important documentary entitled “The Oligarchs of the Urban Renaissance”.

“This #Investigation sheds light on abuses and corruption in town centre reconstructions carried over the last eight years,” the anonymous statement read.

“Top Story staff have been under pressure from the directors, starting from the way in which themes were dealt with to the firing of the show’s director,” it adds.

Shortly after, Top Channel issued a statement naming former director Endrit Habilaj as the author of the Facebook post, and accusing him of blackmail. The channel called the statement defamatory and said Habilaj had been fired for breach of ethics.

“Our legal team is preparing the documents and will forward them to the authorities to ascertain the legal responsibilities and damages that the individuals caused the company by using the profession and the show as a tool for extortion and threats, also misusing foreign donations,” the statement read.

It claimed that the doc was axed for breach of ethics.

“When the board analyzed the materials and observed serious ethical and professional breaches, it decided to not air this extortion, done in the name of two individuals who once worked for Top Channel but not in the interests of the truth,” the statement added.

Habilaj, who anchored the show for four years, responded by accusing the CEO and owner of Top Channel, Vjollca Hoxha, of a list of extortion campaigns against other businessmen and state officials.

He denied authoring the statement on the show’s Facebook page and dismissed claims that the canceled show was an act of blackmail.

“’Oligarchs of the Urban Resonance’ was not produced by me but by Esmeralda Keta, the winner of two EU Awards [on Investigative Journalism],” Habilaj said.

“This show was produced through an EU-funded project,” he added, listing several alleged acts of blackmail carried out by channel owner Hoxha.

Habilaj is also an entrepreneur who owns two companies whose stated activities are media production, marketing and media buying.

A number of businessmen in Albania have been targeted as “oligarchs” in reference to their alleged sway over the government of Prime Minister Edi Rama.

Rama has claimed these “oligarchs” do not exist and has accused the media of using its own influence on public opinion to extort money from businesses.

Turkey Threatens to Jail Journalists Reporting Critically on Companies

Posted on March 28, 2022January 26, 2023 by Ivana Jeremic

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Party, AKP, has submitted a new bill to parliament criminalizing critical news reports about companies.

According to the proposed law, journalists may be jailed for up to three years as well as face fines for having “deliberately created a report that could damage the reputation, trust and wealth of the company through the media”.

“Turkey’s ranking in press freedom and freedom of expression indexes has been showing a steady decline for years. Unfortunately, with steps taken like the most recent preparation to penalise journalists’ work citing the alleged protection of commercial images, it will take yet another hit,” Gurkan Ozturan, Media Freedom Rapid Response Coordinator at the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom, ECPMF, told BIRN.

“Journalists and journalism cannot be punished [for such reports]; it is not a crime,” he added.

Ozturan said the bill proposes to stiffen the protection of commercial entities by empowering them to lead strategic lawsuits against public participation, often known as SLAPPs, which are used increasingly to silence and target journalists.

According to the proposed law, the law will be applicable even if the name of the relevant company is not mentioned in the news report.

If private or public harm is done to the company as a result of the news report, the penalty may be increased further by one-sixth.

“While in the European Union, which the Turkish government aspires to be part of, there are steps to create protection for media freedom and journalists against such acts, Turkey seems to be heading in the opposite direction,” Ozurtan said.

“Also, as part of the same bill, there is provisionally going to be a reduction in the punishment for tax evasion,” Ozturan noted, saying the proposed law does not seem compatible either with the rules of the free market or with the principles of media freedom.

Erdogan’s government has been accused before of favouring certain private companies by delivering them large public tenders, multibillion construction projects and tax reductions.

The opposition says the new draft law clearly aims to protect those companies.

Turkey was ranked in 153th place out of 180 countries in 2021 in the latest press freedom index of the watchdog organisation Reporters Without Borders, RSF, which classifies the Turkish government’s control over media outlets as high.

According a recent report published by Association of Journalists, 241 journalists were put on trial and 115 physically attacked in Turkey in 2021.

EU Takes RT and Sputnik Off Air, But Not to Universal Acclaim

Posted on March 2, 2022January 26, 2023 by Ivana Jeremic

The European Commission published its sanction to take two of Russia’s state propaganda outlets off the air in the Official Journal on Wednesday, effectively giving national media regulators the power to silence them. Some worry that the EU is overreacting.

It was on Sunday that European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen first announced that the Kremlin-backed RT (formerly known as Russia Today) and Sputnik would be banned from broadcasting across the EU.

“We will ban the Kremlin’s media machine in the EU. The state-owned Russia Today and Sputnik, and their subsidiaries, will no longer be able to spread their lies to justify Putin’s war,” von der Leyen said. “We are developing tools to ban their toxic and harmful disinformation in Europe.”

Three days later, after discussions with member states and the European Regulators Group for Audiovisual Media Services (ERGA), the details were published of the media sanction, which will apply to transmission and distribution through satellite, cable, online video sharing platforms, and applications both old and new.

“In view of the gravity of the situation, and in response to Russia’s actions destabilising the situation in Ukraine, it is necessary… to urgently suspend the broadcasting activities of such media outlets in the Union,” the Commission said. “It shall be prohibited for operators to broadcast or to enable, facilitate or otherwise contribute to broadcast, any content by the legal persons, entities or bodies in Annex XV, including through transmission or distribution by any means such as cable, satellite, IP-TV, internet service providers, internet video-sharing platforms or applications, whether new or pre-installed.”

Even before that, accessing RT and Sputnik content in countries in Central Europe and across the rest of the bloc was becoming increasingly difficult. On February 25, two days before von der Leyen’s announcement, Poland’s media regulator had already deleted a number of Russian channels from the register of permitted TV services in the country. On Tuesday, Facebook and Google’s YouTube slapped their own bans on RT’s content.

As of Wednesday afternoon, it was still possible to access from the Czech Republic RT in Russian, though not Sputnik’s Czech site.

This move by the EU took many by surprise and has not been universally welcomed.

In a rather testy interview with the BBC on Monday, Commission Vice-President Josep Borrell Fontelles said the move was not a case of censoring media or free speech, but to stop the dissemination of “lies and toxic information”. This is not about stopping “free information flow but about massive disinformation flow,” he went on.

While few would dispute that most of RT and Sputnik’s output is drivel and barely disguised Russian propaganda, the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) said it fears the effects of this spiral of censorship on freedom of expression in Europe.

“This act of censorship can have a totally counterproductive effect on the citizens who follow the banned media,” EFJ General Secretary Ricardo Gutiérrez said in a statement. “In our opinion, it is always better to counteract the disinformation of propagandist or allegedly propagandist media by exposing their factual errors or bad journalism, by demonstrating their lack of financial or operational independence, by highlighting their loyalty to government interests and their disregard for the public interest.”

While several western journalists working for the Russian media outlets have resigned in light of the invasion, others call the move to ban them anti-democratic, a blatant case of censorship and worry about the impact on people’s jobs at a difficult time.

“Today a darker day dawns at the EU for the freedom of speech and the press,” Vaggelis Kotrozos, administrator of Sputnik Greece, told BIRN. “The attempt to silence a media outlet is anything but democratic but refers to authoritarian regimes. Russia, which is accused by the Western allies of being an ‘authoritarian’ country, has never resorted to such practices except in countermeasures to similar practices of Western countries, e.g. RT licensing in Germany.”

“The Greek office of Sputnik takes all the necessary measures for its smooth operation and the securing of all the jobs against the attempt to silence it,” he added.

Others worry that the banning of the Russian channels feeds into a wider panic about misinformation and disinformation. “RT is by no means the only target for state censorship – and if it’s taken off the air, it will not be the last,” predicted Fraser Myers, deputy editor of Spiked in the UK.

Czechia Mulls Penalising Support of Ukraine Invasion

Posted on March 1, 2022January 26, 2023 by Ivana Jeremic

Publicly backing the Russian invasion of Ukraine might be subject to custodial sentences of up to three years, Czechia’s Supreme State Attorney Igor Striz said in a statement on Saturday.

By the following day, Czech police were already investigating dozens of cases, local news site TN Nova reported. Czech police spokesman Ondrej Moravcik said: “We will carefully evaluate such actions and thoroughly analyse whether they represent such crimes.”

The Public Prosecutor’s Office appealed for Czech citizens to stay within the confines of the country’s constitutional and legal restrictions. Although freedom of expression is stipulated in the Czech constitution, meaning everyone has the right to express their views, it also has its limits just as in any democratic state.

This means that “under certain conditions”, anyone publicly supporting or praising the leaders of the Russian Federation regarding the country’s attack on Ukraine could face criminal charges, including at demonstrations or even online, Striz said.

Striz’s statement cited sections 365 and 405 of the Czech Criminal Code, which state that whoever publicly approves a crime or publicly praises the perpetrator can be imprisoned for up to a year, and that anyone who “publicly denies, questions, approves or seeks to justify Nazi, communist, or other genocide” can face a jail sentence of up to three years.

“We have recorded dozens of internet comments expressing approval for the Russian invasion and the activities of the Russian army. We are closely monitoring the online sphere and apologise for not responding to every sign in the posts,” Czech police tweeted.

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