SEAPA Gender and Alerts workshop report

SEAPA Gender and Alerts workshop report
Same problems, different conditions
By Jose Bimbo Santos

During the farewell meal for participants in the Gender and Alerts Workshop and the Organizational Development Training in Bangkok, at least one person had reason to be pleased.

Chuah Siew Eng, alerts coordinator of the Southeast Asian Press Alliance (SEAPA), had just asked Rosario Marins of the Timor-Leste Journalists Association (TLJA) if she could  expect to get alerts from East Timor soon.

Marins replied, “Of course.”

Siew Eng gave a broad smile. It was a good way to cap the workshop which was held Nov. 21-24 in Bangkok.

Its independence barely a decade old, unlike the Philip-pines, East Timor has laws that specifically apply to the media,  most of them from its former colonial master Indonesia.  The East Timorese participants said, however, that these laws do not adequately  meet the growing needs of their country’s mass media.

“We don’t know where to go right now. We have no legal framework to protect us,” said Marins, who heads the Interna-tional Relations desk of the TLJA.

“Our needs actually come in all  forms, from human resource  and financial problems to capacity-building,” he added.

Different needs
Held in conjunction with SEAPA’s eighth anniversary, the gender and alerts workshop provided a venue for the discussion of the different needs of media practitioners and press freedom advocates in the region. The four-day activity was attended by representatives from Burma, Cambodia, East Timor, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philip-pines, and Thailand.

“We want this meeting to be a sharing of experiences and strategies. We want to know what’s working, and what’s not in your regions,” SEAPA execu-tive director Roby Alampay said.

Participants told one another how politics, racial and religious issues, and the law affect freedom of expression in their countries.

Malaysia has a law guaranteeing “every citizen the right to freedom of speech and expression (Article 10, Section 1)” but it also has the Internal Security Act (ISA) of 1960, which allows authorities to detain people for 60 days without trial during police investigations.  Two years’ detention, renewable indefinitely, may follow depending on the outcome of the investigation.

Hishamudin Rais, a columnist for the independent news website Malaysiakini, was arrested in 2001 and detained for two years because of the ISA. He was imprisoned without any trial on charges of trying to overthrow the government through “militant means.”

Censorship
By Oct. 27, 1987, a total of 106 individuals have been arrested. The publishing licenses of two dailies (The Star and Sin Chew Jit Poh) and two weeklies (The Sunday Star and Watan) were revoked by virtue of  ISA provisions.

This prompted Angeline Loh, writer and researcher for the Malaysian-based Aliran Monthly, to say, “Where is freedom of expression in Malaysia? There is none actually.”  She added that the country’s media laws “actually encourage self-censorship.”

Burma has more restrictive laws. By virtue of the Printers and Publishers Registration Act of 1962, all “books, magazines, other periodicals, and even song lyrics and motion picture scripts” are subject to censorship by the Press Scrutiny Board.

Because of the hostile environment in Burma, the London-based organization Article 19, an advocate of global free expression,  wrote the United Nations Security Council on Nov. 13 urging a resolution to help end human rights violations in that country. Such violations include  the curtailment of press freedom  and the detention of political prisoners like Nobel Peace Prize laureate Daw Aung San Suu Kyi who has been under house arrest since 2003.

Nenem Haokip, of Mizzima News, said freedom of expression is non-existent in Burma, but stressed that the situation is not totally hopeless.

“We can’t do anything inside Burma, but we are fighting from the outside,” Suanching said, in reference to self-exiled Burmese reporters who still report about their country.

Political interests
The press in other countries in the region might have  press freedom, but this does not mean they are immune to threats  or attacks.

Seang Soleak of the Cambodian Association for the Protection of Journalists narrated how media continue to be under the control of the government.

“Media in Cambodia are not that independent. They are controlled by different elements, most of them  political interests,” Soleak said.

SEAPA campaigns officer Kulachada Chaipipat meanwhile described how the ousted prime minister of Thailand, Thaksin Shinawatra, changed the media landscape during his governance.

“When Thaksin Shinawatra came to power, he used his influence to muzzle the press and make it less independent,” Chaipipat said. “The media here in Thailand are still a victim of suppression. We thought after Thaksin, media would be better, but we were wrong.”

The continued intimidation of journalists by political personalities in the Philippines, on the other hand, was discussed by Romer Sarmiento, Mindanao-based correspondent of BusinessWorld.

The plan of  Filipino jour-nalists to file a class suit against presidential spouse Jose Miguel Arroyo drew eager support from the seminar. Arroyo had filed libel charges against 43 jour-nalists. Participants signed the statement drafted by SEAPA, applauding the effort by the Filipino journalists, and even joining in the call for the decriminalization of libel.

Alerts network
Because of the various problems that the media face in the Southeast Asian region, the training on alerts reporting  was  the primary component  of the workshop. Alerts are reports about press freedom violations circulated  through the interna-tional press freedom network. The Toronto-based International Freedom of Expression eXchange (IFEX) serves as the global clearing house for alerts.

Established in 1992, IFEX is made up of 57 organizations campaigning for greater media rights and free expression. The Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility (CMFR) is an  IFEX member. CMFR is also a founding member-organization of SEAPA.

SEAPA, in its goal to defend and expand press freedom in Southeast Asia, serves as the monitoring arm of IFEX in the region.  Although alerts can be effective in advancing press freedom, caution should still be exercised in its practice, Kulachada said.

“When issuing the alert would do more harm than good to the victim, it would be better not to issue the alert,” Kulachada said.

Nathan Lee, CMFR press alerts officer and the seminar’s resource speaker for field investigations,  stressed that the reporter should  not endanger his own life when investigating reports on press freedom viola-tions. Before  a field investi-gation, reporters should prepare and research on the case as well as ensure their own safety , Lee said.

International provisions
Apart from learning alerts writing and safety guidelines, another safeguard against oppression is knowledge of international laws relating to freedom of expression.

Toby Mendel, Article 19’s law program director, discussed with participants the concept of free expression and why every person is entitled to it.

“It’s more than a basic human right from government provisions or international covenants. It’s an entitlement we have simply because we are  human beings,” Mendel said. “Government does not give us that right. That’s our due and they just recognize it.”  He also discus-sed the nature of regulatory bodies and self-regulation laws in various countries.

Betty Yeoh Siew Peng, alliance and services manager for the All Women’s Society of Malaysia, also gave a brief talk on the role the mass media play in  enlightening society on gender issues. “The media influence collective decision-making processes and policy formation in the public and political space,” Siew Peng said.

Thus, she added,  “The media can play a crucial role in bringing about social change.”

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