The drug-related violence in Ciudad Juárez in northern Mexico in the past 20 years has made the border town into one of Mexico's most dangerous places. Shootings, kidnappings, carjackings, and curfews are a part of everyday life. The murder of two journalists prompted El Diario de Juárez to take a new approach.
74 journalists have been murdered in Mexico since 2000. Not a single case has led to charges or sentences. Either because the crimes are being committed with approval from the powers that be or due to a flawed legal system. Pat Hirschl and Lucina Kathmann from PEN San Miguel write about the consequences of when justice doesn't work.
Darío Ramírez, from ARTICLE 19, a freedom of expression organization, gives us up-to-date background information about the threats to journalists in Mexico—what does violence look like in the statistics that are a matter of life and death?
Journalist İrfan Aktan knows how to avoid time in prison: through self-censorship. More than a hundred journalists are presently being held in Turkey for either their own news reports or the political standpoints of the newspapers they work for.
The right to use the Kurdish language has been one of the major issues of controversy in Turkey during the republic’s entire existence. In recent years, the situation has been dedramatized and it is now possible to broadcast television programs and publish books in Kurdish.
In the late 90s, several Turkish media outlets decided to build a common network, “Bianet,” to help each other meet the numerous threats facing the freedom of speech at the time. The 1990s were a dark period, with the murders of many journalists.
PEN International has directed its spotlight on the situation in Turkey, which has been afflicted with serious throwbacks in the field of freedom of speech. Reforms aimed at opening up the society have been rolled back and an atmosphere of fear and self-censorship have followed.
Turkey has recently carried out several reforms rendering the country more democratic. At the same time, the same government imprisons increasing numbers of writers and opponents of the regime. How does this go together? The journalist and author Muhsin Kızılkaya depicts Turkey’s winding road toward greater openness—and points out the main problem: a constant deficit in democracy.
In the last few months, the repression in Belarus has tightened even more. Iryna Chalip, correspondent in Belarus for the Russian newspaper Novaja Gazeta, tells us about the recent attacks on freedom of speech by the secret police KGB—and about the aftermaths of the so-called “teddy bear attack”.
