Corruption is Everywhere > Hong Kong eliminating Free Press; Putin locks up another opposition politician

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The heroic Jimmy Lai could have left Hong Kong before being arrested but he refused to.

Hong Kong court sentences media tycoon Jimmy Lai

to long prison term

By Matt Bernardini

   

Media mogul Jimmy Lai was sentenced to five years and seven months in prison on Saturday by a Hong Kong District Court. Photo by Jerome Favre/EPA-EFE

Dec. 10 (UPI) -- Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai on Saturday was sentenced to five years and seven months in prison after being convicted on two counts of fraud.

A Hong Kong district court said that the 75-year-old breached land lease terms by deliberately concealing a consultancy firm at the offices of his now-defunct Apple Daily newspaper.

Judge Stanley Chan Kwong-chi said Lai had played a significant role in deceiving the publication's landowner under the cover of a "fairly sizeable and reputable" news outlet, the South China Morning Post reported.

"If a media organization, representing the so-called fourth power, allowed a firm to occupy its space without authorization to carry out its businesses, was it not that such organization did so under the aegis of its reputation as the media?" the judge asked.

The case against Lai has increased concerns about diminishing press freedom in Hong Kong.

Several pro-democracy media outlets closed after the introduction of a strict security law, which has been used to jail much of the city's political opposition.

Hong Kong has fallen 68 places from a year earlier to No. 148 in Reporters Without Borders' most recent World Press Freedom Index.

"Illegal demonstration, fraud, national security crimes -- the diversity of the charges against Jimmy Lai, and the staggering severity of the sentences imposed on him, show how desperate the Chinese regime is to silence this symbolic figure of press freedom in Hong Kong," Reporters Without Borders bureau head Cédric Alviani said Saturday.

Lai is already serving 20 months for his role in unauthorized assemblies during 2019 anti-government protests. The pro-democracy activist also faces charges under the national security law, including conspiracy to collude with foreign forces.

Foreign forces - does that mean media?

After the ruling, Lai must also pay a $256,850 fine and he is banned from managing companies for eight years.

No, I am not Russophobic or anti-Russian - but when you write laws for the express purpose of silencing political opposition, and then use those laws to lock up your opponents, then I have a problem. And I cannot see how you can pretend to be a democracy.

Russian antiwar politician Ilya Yashin sentenced to 8 1/2 years in prison

By Doug Cunningham

Antiwar Russian politician Ilya Yashin gives peace signs from glass cubicle in Russian court Friday.Yashin was sentenced to 8 1/2 years in prison for criticizing Russia's war on Ukraine, alleged by the Russian state of "spreading false information" about Russian atrocities in Ukraine. Photo courtesy of Ilya Yashin Facebook page

Dec. 9 (UPI) -- Russian opposition politician Ilya Yashin was sentenced Friday to 8 1/2 years in prison after criticizing Russian Presdient Vladimir Putin and the war on Ukraine on his YouTube channel.

In a democracy, criticizing the government is what political opponents do!

A Russian court found him guilty of "spreading false information" about Russian atrocities in the Ukrainian city of Bucha committed in February and March. Yashin was prosecuted under a law passed after Russia invaded Ukraine

Yashin posted a message on Telegram reacting to his sentence.

"So, the court sentenced me to 8 years and 6 months in prison," he wrote. "Well, the authors of the verdict are optimistic about Putin's prospects. In my opinion, way too optimistic."

Yashin added that with the "hysterical verdict," the Russian government wants to intimidate all Russians, but he said in fact it demonstrates weakness.

"Only weaklings seek to shut everyone up, burn out any dissent," Yashin wrote in the Telegram post. "So today it only remains for me to repeat what was said on the day of my arrest: I am not afraid, and you are not afraid."

Yashin's conviction and sentence is another example of Russian suppression of dissent, and media coverage criticizing the war on Ukraine.

In a courtroom speech, Yashin said, "It physically pains me to think how many people have been killed in this war, how many lives have been ruined, and how many families have lost their homes. You cannot be indifferent. And I swear I do not regret anything."

He said it's better to spend 10 years behind bars as an honest man than "quietly burn with shame over the blood spilled by your government."

Russian antiwar protests have led to thousands of arrests. Thousands of Russians have also fled the country rather than be drafted to fight in Ukraine.

Putin has done a very poor job of selling this war to the Russian people.  He hasn't attempted to explain that the war is actually a proxy war with NATO and America. 

The Media is the Message > Crackdowns to Control the Media in Russia and Ukraine and Elsewhere

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As much as many Ukrainians hate Russians, they have so much in common, like their attitudes toward controlling the media.

Zelensky’s media crackdown gathers pace: Kiev blocks twelve Russian websites,

including popular news outlets ‘Vedomosti’ & ‘MK’

23 Aug, 2021 09:33

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky speaks during a news conference at the Antonov aircraft plant,

in Kyiv, Ukraine. © Sputnik

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has signed a decree ordering the country’s internet providers to block access to the websites of 12 different Russian companies, including newspapers Vedomosti and Moskovskiy Komsomolets.

The document, signed on Friday, also targets Rostelecom, Russia’s leading telecoms company.

Restrictions have also been imposed on TRK-3, the Foundation for the Study of Historical Perspectives, the Mutual Aid Association, Novinfo, Nashe Zavtra, Light Print, Narodnye Novosti, and Anna-News.

As well as blocking their websites, many of the companies are also subject to financial sanctions, such as asset freezes and restrictions on transactions.

Since the 2014 Maidan, Kiev has put in place blanket bans on more than a dozen Russian outlets, including RT’s news channels.

The latest restrictions on foreign outlets came the same week as Zelensky took aim at Ukrainian publications and companies, such as Strana.ua, one of the country’s best-known mainstream news sites. The opposition-leaning outlet is strongly critical of Zelensky’s leadership of the country.

Just six months earlier, in August, the Zelensky administration clamped down on another eight media outlets, including three TV channels – ZIK, NewsOne, and 112 Ukraine. These stations are all owned by opposition politician Taras Kozak, a lawmaker for the pro-Russian Opposition Platform for Life party. He dubbed the decision “an act of blatant censorship.”

Almost all news outlets in Ukraine are bankrolled by wealthy individuals, (oligarchs), including the 1+1 Media Group, a conglomerate that helped Zelensky himself come to power.

The president has also taken aim at politicians themselves, including the head of the Opposition Platform for Life party, Viktor Medvedchuk. The opposition leader is currently facing charges of high treason and is awaiting trial. Prosecutors are yet to set out the evidence against him.

‘Foreign agents’: As Russia & Ukraine target press outlets,

Western media’s selective coverage exposes bias behind its concerns

23 Aug, 2021 11:46

(L) © Sputnik; (R) Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. © Sputnik

By Paul Robinson, a professor at the University of Ottawa. He writes about Russian and Soviet history, military history and military ethics, and is author of the Irrussianality blog.

In moments of extreme crisis, it might be understandable if a government decides to dispense with the ‘luxury’ of a vibrant free press. In normal times, though, it’s regarded as essential for any society that wishes to prosper.

Without such a media, the accepted wisdom goes, capable of bringing errors to light and wrongdoers to account, to provide a forum to discuss solutions to national problems, a state will likely start to stagnate.

Whether such a press truly exists in the Western world is a matter of dispute. Still, the Western press, broadly speaking, does at least enjoy a fair degree of legal freedom, even if its corporate funding – and control – is shadier. Beyond laws on libel and hate speech there is little to limit it, at least in theory.

Unfortunately, this is less the case in parts of the former Eastern bloc – notably Russia and Ukraine, but also in places like Poland and Hungary, where governments are resorting to ever-tougher measures that critics say restrict press freedom.

The question is, are they restricting press freedom, or restricting destructive propaganda, or both?

In Russia, this is an effect of the past few years of East-West tension, which has convinced the authorities that the Russian non-systemic opposition is acting as a fifth column, seeking to destroy the state from within, backed by financial assistance from the West. It appears that a decision has been made to root this alleged fifth column out.

The result has been the official labelling of activists and opposition-leaning media outlets as ‘extremist’, ‘undesirable’, or ‘foreign agents’, legal categories which bring with them certain restrictions and obligations. Among those designated foreign agents in the past few months is the Latvia-based media outlet Meduza. Now the liberal online TV station Dozhd and the investigative website iStories have been added to the list.

The targeting of iStories is not altogether unsurprising, given that the website’s exposes into organizations like oil company Rosneft may well have antagonized those in authority. The attack on Dozhd is more unexpected. Although the TV station has annoyed state officials in the past, it was generally felt that the Russian state found it useful to keep Dozhd alive as a means of indicating that Russia still tolerates anti-government opinions, and thereby of rejecting claims that the country lacks a free press.

It seems, though, that the days of tolerating the foreign funding of anything political are over. Dozhd is said to have received cash from the likes of British company StoneX Financial and the French pharmaceutical firm Sanofi. In the current climate, that is enough for the state to take action.

The results of the move remain to be seen. In the past, institutions designated foreign agents have said they have found it harder to attract advertisers, and some people do not want to work or otherwise be associated with them, fearing that it may damage their reputation or employability. Being labelled as a foreign agent does, it seems, have negative consequences.

That said, it’s not fatal. The law requires individuals or organizations so designated to report regularly on their activities and to indicate their foreign agent status on any material that they distribute. This is irritating, and off-putting, but it doesn’t prevent anyone from operating.

In that sense, however restrictive the Russia government’s actions may be, they pale into insignificance when compared to what has taken place recently in Ukraine. Kiev has gone far beyond harassing opposition media and has taken to outright banning it as its first course of action.

This is not entirely new. The Ukrainian state has been waging a war on freedom of speech ever since the 2014 Maidan. This has included banning Russian books, media, and websites, as well as materials published in other countries that are deemed to contradict the state’s self-declared ‘European’ course.

Until recently, though, the Ukrainian state largely left the domestic media alone. That has now changed. A major turning point came in February this year when Ukrainian authorities banned three TV stations associated with the main opposition OPFL party on the grounds that they were spreading “Russian propaganda.” This coincided with the arrest of one of its leaders, Viktor Medvedchuk, for alleged treason.

Now, Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, has followed this up with a decree imposing sanctions against a number of notable political opponents. These include a member of the Ukrainian parliament, Andrey Derkach; the well-known blogger Anatoly Shariy; and the editor of the opposition internet outlet strana.ua, Igor Guzhva. Along with this, strana.ua has been banned. Access to the site is now blocked, although reporters have set up an alternative web address at strana.news for the time being.

Justifying the action, the head of the Security Service of Ukraine, Ivan Bakanov, claimed that “all of them are waging an information war against Ukraine and are active participants in hybrid aggression.” “The Security Service clearly distinguishes between freedom of speech and the attack on the statehood and sovereignty of Ukraine,” he said.

In reality, what strana.ua and other banned outlets have done is challenge the government’s narrative that the war in Donbass is entirely the fault of “Russian aggression.” In doing so, they’ve not only expressed a legitimate opinion, but have actually contributed to Ukraine’s sovereignty and statehood, since it is only by recognizing its own partial responsibility for the situation in Donbass that the Ukrainian state can ever hope to resolve the problem in a manner to its advantage.

Repressing freedom of expression in this way is ultimately counterproductive, as it prevents those in authority from hearing unwelcome truths. But it serves Zelensky, who has shown that he has absolutely no idea how to end the Donbass war. Unable to admit this reality, he has resorted to silencing all those who dare to point it out. And there may be more to come. Just a few days ago, the Ukrainian TV and Radio Broadcast Council called for the last remaining major opposition TV station, Nash, to be shut down.

If that happens, the independent media in Ukraine will have been completely destroyed in less than a year.

As Ukrainian academic Volodymyr Ishchenko points out, the remarkable thing about this is that “all this happened under little criticism and, most, shameful silence or sometimes even legitimation and justification by the Western officials and media, unimaginable in relation to political repression in Russia and Belarus.”

While the labelling of media as foreign agents in Russia has attracted significant attention, and much criticism, in the Western press, the much more serious destruction of the free media in Ukraine has passed by without complaint – and even, as Ishchenko points out, occasional approval.

In the end, both Russia and Ukraine will be weaker for having fewer press outlets able to hold government to account. Meanwhile, the selective attention of the Western media casts doubt on its own objectivity. Wherever one looks, the situation is far from healthy.

Philippines' Largest TV Network Shutters After Government Order

What happens when you don't have the sophistication of Justin Trudeau to bribe the networks into not printing anything negative about you.

By Sommer Brokaw

Supporters of ABS-CBN held a demonstration calling for government to uphold press freedom,

outside the House of Representatives in Quezon City, east of Manila, Philippines in March. Despite

the protest, the network shutdown Tuesday because of a government order to cease operations.

File Photo by Rolex Dela Pena/EPA-EFE

(UPI) -- The Philippines' largest television network, ABS-CBN, shut down Tuesday after its license expired under government order.

The network, which employed about 11,000 people, signed off after broadcasting its evening news.

The National Telecommunications Commission ordered it earlier in the day to cease TV and radio broadcasts since its 25-year franchise license expired Monday, a statement posted on Twitter shows.

"This is in compliance with the cease and desist order issued by the National Telecommunications Commission today that prohibits ABS-CBN from continuing its broadcast operations effective immediately," a company statement said.

Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte and his allies previously accused the network of airing his opponents' advertisements during the 2016 election campaign, but not his.

Network President Carlo Katigbak apologized to Duterte during congressional hearings on the franchise's renewal in February and clarified operations regarding how it aired advertisements.

Duterte has also been upset by critical news coverage of his bloody war against drugs.

Lawmakers had a resolution to allow the network to continue operation as its renewal was pending. But on Sunday, which marked World Press Freedom Day, Philippines Solicitor General Jose Calida threatened to charge the NTC with corruption if it granted a temporary permit.

Calida also filed a petition in February with the Supreme Court seeking to revoke the ABS-CBN franchise.

Network supporters had protested back in March outside the House of Representatives in Quezon City. Critics added that the network was singled out because of Duterte's disdain for it.

"It sends a clear message: What Duterte wants, Duterte gets," the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines said in a statement. "And it is clear, with the brazen move to shut down ABS-CBN, that he intends to silence critical media and intimidate everyone else into submission."

The Philippines has been considered one of the world's most dangerous countries to be a journalist and this year fell down two spots on the World Press Freedom Index to 136th place.

"The order threatens press freedom at a time when the public needs an unfettered press the most," the Foreign Correspondents Association of the Philippines added in a statement. "As the Philippines reels from the fallout of the coronavirus pandemic, ABS-CBN's critical eye is needed now more than ever to help inform the public."

A free press is the only thing that stands between a healthy democracy and autocracy. Some countries simply murder journalists who reveal state corruption, while others just disappear, and still others are bought and paid for. When the press stops criticizing the government, democracy is in its death throes.