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Human Rights
In recent years, hundreds of journalists have fled Belarus, Russia, Tajikistan and several other countries around the world, including Iran and Turkey. Emigration, however, does not always provide these people with safety. On Wednesday, the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of the Press, Irene Khan, presented her report on journalists who have been forced to flee their countries to the UN Human Rights Council. Many of them face numerous threats in exile.
International legal framework
In her report, the Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression addresses these threats and challenges and provides concrete examples. She notes that international standards provide a solid framework for the protection of journalists in exile, but that States often fail to live up to the commitments they have made.
Attacks on journalists on foreign territory violate human rights principles and the cardinal principle of international law that states are obliged to respect each other's territorial sovereignty, the expert says.
Transnational repression
Irene Khan calls the murder of exiled Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul "an outrageous and brazen act of transnational repression". The enforced disappearances and state-sanctioned killings, it says, violate international law and the UN Charter, and Saudi Arabia has never been held accountable.
In June 2023, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe adopted a resolution condemning transnational repression as a growing threat to the rule of law and human rights. The authors of the resolution were particularly concerned about the steps taken in this area by Azerbaijan, Belarus, the Russian Federation and Turkey. The Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances thus found that the Turkish Government had systematically carried out extraterritorial abductions and forced returns to Turkey of at least 100 Turkish citizens, including journalists, from several countries.
"Kidnapping and extradition to the country of origin, with subsequent prosecution and imprisonment, poses a tangible risk to journalists in exile, especially those without proper legal status in neighbouring countries," writes Irene Khan.
She said the world witnessed a glaring example of forced hijacking in May 2021, when Belarusian authorities used a false bomb threat to detain and divert a commercial plane carrying Raman Protasevich, a Belarusian media worker and activist in exile, from Greece to Lithuania, in violation of international law and air travel protocols. He was escorted off the plane, arrested, charged, convicted and sentenced to eight years in prison and then pardoned.
Digital surveillance
A civil society investigation has uncovered several cases of digital surveillance of journalists during their exile. The surveillance often preceded or followed threats, arrests or killings. In an investigation by civil society organisations, Pegasus spyware was found on the devices of approximately 10 individuals linked to the murdered Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, including his fiancée.
In September 2023, it was discovered that the phone of Galina Timchenko, the head of the Russian-language news website Meduza, based in Latvia, was infected with the Pegasus spyware shortly after the Russian Prosecutor General's Office recognized Meduza as an "undesirable" organization and banned its activities in the Russian Federation.
In October 2023, Le Trung Khoa, editor-in-chief of the Berlin-based Vietnamese news website Thoibao.de, fell victim to Predator spyware via the social media platform X, formerly Twitter. His website is blocked in Vietnam and his Facebook and YouTube pages are frequently targeted by hackers.
Criminal prosecution
"After the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the Russian Federation introduced draconian laws that impose harsh penalties on anyone who 'discredits' the armed forces or spreads 'false information' about the armed conflict," Irene Khan writes. The adoption of these laws has led to self-censorship of independent media in the Russian Federation, their closure or flight from the country.
Based on these laws, Russian courts have convicted several journalists in exile in absentia. A law banning "undesirable organisations" adopted in 2015 has been used to outlaw several Russian media outlets operating abroad.
Such a measure not only prohibits them from operating in the Russian Federation, but also makes it a crime to cooperate with them, participate in their work or even publish material created by them on social media. As a result, these publications can no longer openly engage with correspondents, sources and spokespeople and effectively engage with audiences in the Russian Federation.
Deprivation of nationality
Although deprivation of citizenship is prohibited under international law, some governments use it as a retaliatory measure against independent journalists. In 2022, Belarus adopted a law that includes 34 offences applicable only to persons in exile, for which they can be convicted in absentia and stripped of their citizenship and property.
In addition, as the report states, Belarus prosecutes journalists, as well as dissidents and human rights defenders in absentia, and imposes severe penalties on them. For example, in 2022, a court sentenced exiled journalists Stepan Putsila and Jan Rudik to 20 and 19 years in prison respectively.
In Kyrgyzstan, investigative journalist and human rights defender Bolot Temirov was accused of various fabricated crimes, for which he was acquitted by a court, yet he was stripped of his citizenship and deported to the Russian Federation. The circumstances of the case indicate that the prosecution and deportation occurred in retaliation for his reporting on corruption in the public administration.
Humanitarian visas
Only a few countries, such as Germany, Norway, the United States and Switzerland, grant humanitarian visas to journalists for urgent reasons. A number of EU Member States have introduced a flexible visa policy for human rights defenders that can also be applied to journalists.
These measures were taken in response to crisis situations and applied only to nationals of certain countries, not to all journalists in distress. Another disadvantage of these special visas is that they depend on the political will of specific governments.
In 2022, Ireland issued several hundred humanitarian visas to Afghan human rights defenders, including some journalists, while the Czech Republic, Latvia and Lithuania issued humanitarian visas to several hundred independent journalists, media workers and their families from Belarus and the Russian Federation.
TV channel Catch up
Political pressure from host countries can pose a threat to the existence of exiled media. For example, Latvia suspended the licence of the independent Russian TV channel TV Dozhd on national security grounds in circumstances that suggested disapproval of its coverage of the armed conflict in Ukraine.
"The decision to suspend the channel's licence appears to be an unnecessary and disproportionate restriction on freedom of expression, contrary to Article 19(3) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights," says the UN independent expert.
Opportunity to cover events in the country of origin
Despite the increased use of VPNs, connectivity remains a problem for media and journalists in exile in closed societies. For example, following the Russian Federation's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, some companies have taken steps to disconnect essential digital services for Russian and Belarusian users for fear of violating growing sanctions against individuals and institutions in those countries.
"The excessive enforcement of sanctions has limited the ability of independent exile media to cover events in Belarus and the Russian Federation, to provide news to users in those countries, and to monetize their content," says the report.
Keeping the profession alive
Maintaining a journalistic profession in exile is not easy. On an individual level, while most journalists leave their country to continue their work, many leave the profession once they are abroad.
More than two-thirds of Afghan journalists who have left the country are no longer working. According to one survey, about a third of the journalists who left Belarus and the Russian Federation in the last three years left journalism after going into exile.
The reasons why journalists leave their profession vary from lack of personal security and fear of reprisals against their family in the country of origin to lack of knowledge of the local language and culture in the host country.
For some of them, the skills and knowledge for which they were employed in their country of origin are no longer relevant in the new country. For others, bureaucratic and administrative requirements such as notarisation of diplomas or journalistic accreditation in the country of origin may be impossible to meet.
A major problem is the lack of work permits. Many of the countries where journalists in exile find themselves do not provide them with residence permits and without them they cannot obtain work permits. Without work permits, journalists cannot find work in the local media sector.
UN Special Rapporteurs are appointed by the Human Rights Council as independent experts. They are not employees of the UN and do not receive a salary from the world organisation for their work.
news.un.org/gnews.cz-jav_07
https://news.un.org/ru/story/2024/06/1453711
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