Thank you very much everybody welcome very nice to see you here

I Have only 30 minutes and I propose to not talk for too long because I would like for this to be a bit of an Interactive session and I also would like to hear from you. What I'll do is first Say a few words about what the media legal defense initiative the organization that I work with does in a defense of bloggers

Then I'd like to proceed by telling you a little bit about the overall numbers that you see worldwide and a prosecution of bloggers and online Journalists and then discuss a couple of themes that we've come across in our work as to the types of prosecutions that are taking place of online journalists worldwide and then finally

address the million-dollar question of what can be done against these attacks So our organization MLDI prefer provides legal assistance to journalists and bloggers worldwide We work in about 40 countries at the moment and we provide both regular case support and do strategic litigation With regular case support. I mean the situation in which a journalist or a blogger publishes something

Gets prosecuted for it and needs legal support We then make sure that the journalist or blogger in question has a proper lawyer to assist them We can assist with the payment of legal fees if this is necessary and we also work together with the lawyer To make sure that the strongest possible case for the blogger or journalist is presented and that they get a solid legal

Strategy to to help them get out of trouble we also organize legal workshops on media law on an international human rights law for the lawyers that we work with in countries worldwide to defend these cases and we also have strategic partnerships with a number of organizations worldwide

Particularly in countries where we see a great number of cases I'm sure that's for me In which you see a great number of cases and where it's really good to have someone on the ground to handle those Immediately, we have about a hundred active cases at any one time. The number is still growing sadly

The situation for the press worldwide isn't getting that much better and we have about a 75 percent success rate And that means that we either win a case or that it gets dismissed or a claim gets withdrawn Either way, it ends well for the journalist or blogger that we're defending

This is just a kind of overview of the types of cases that we do I don't expect you to read the entire pie chart But what I do want you to take away from this is that these are both traditional media journalists and online journalists and the types of cases that you see the types of legal challenges that they face are actually

Quite similar and I want you to keep that in mind When you look at the numbers that I've collected here from two NGOs Reporters Without Borders and a committee to protect journalists They collect data every year on You know the challenges that bloggers or as Reporters Without Borders calls it netizens face and for 2013

You see that the numbers vary a bit which you know, they each have their own with methodology, of course, but you'll see that The types of charges that are being brought are quite similar to what you would see with traditional media. It's defamation charges. It's charges of threatening national security

False news publication those kinds of things so in that sense There of course are particular challenges that come with publishing online and there's particular vulnerabilities for bloggers But to a large extent at least on the legal front the charges are very similar to those that are faced by traditional media So I wanted to address a couple of themes here one case from Zambia which deals with website blocking and you know the

pressing of quote-unquote other criminal charges a case of terrorism in Ethiopia and then The charge of tax evasion that are brought against various bloggers in Vietnam And then finally, I just wanted to highlight the issue of cross-border litigation

Which obviously comes into play when you deal with online publication? So the first case that I wanted to highlight is that of the Zambian watchdog The Zambian watchdog is a website that publishes on issues of Zambian politics They are very critical about what the current government is doing and particularly also about the president and they are not very much liked for that

in fact Recently the government actually issued a statement saying that they were going to hunt down The Zambian watchdog and anyone who was related to it what this means that the website is Constantly facing challenges They have been trying to disable access to the website from Zambia

And also anyone who is alleged to be affiliated with the website or to contribute to it Can risk legal prosecution? So it's not even established of a number of people that have been recently prosecuted that they actually in fact wrote for this website But at one point in time they found the police knocking on their door

Confiscating their laptops any other types of documents or books that could be found in in their in their homes and facing charges ranging from possession of Military documents to possession of pornography and anything else that they could think of to make life difficult

For the journalists in question or the alleged journalists. I should probably say Then in Ethiopia a completely different type of prosecution Ethiopia in 2009 adopted an anti-terrorism proclamation Which it has been using effectively as a tool to suppress free speech in a country not only journalists and bloggers

But also political opposition or any other dissenting voices that can be heard The case that I have highlighted here is that of a Skinner Nega and Rios Alemou Skinner is a veteran Ethiopian journalist. He previously opened and saw shut down several Newspapers

He at some point then resorted to writing online because he basically couldn't print in paper anymore then the articles that he wrote prior to his latest arrests were Asking the question whether or not something like the Arab Spring could ever happen in Ethiopia Was it possible to have peaceful resolution revolution in the country?

This was enough for the authorities to Say that he was participating in a terrorist organization and to order that he'd be locked up for 18 years Rios Alemou also was found guilty of Participating in a terrorist organization

She's a freelance journalist who wrote for several online publications as well as one of the last Independent newspapers called fete which has now been shut down as well Her conviction was to 14 years imprisonment originally which was reduced to five years later on But both of them are basically serving jail time at the moment in Kaliti prison

We have taken their case to the African Commission on human and people's rights Asking them to not only speak out against the conviction of these two journalists, but also Against the use of the anti-terrorism proclamation as a tool for oppression as such Then on to Vietnam This is local Kwan local Kwan actually is a lawyer that we used to work with. He defended bloggers and journalists in the country

He said he was he was working as a human rights lawyer and the Vietnamese government didn't like this and decided to disbar him Preventing him from practicing law. He did however continue to write about you the human rights situation in the country on his blog

And the government didn't like this either and decided to prosecute him for trumped-up charges of tax evasion You will see two photos here of of Kwan on the left hand side the photo From before he went to prison and the photo on the right hand side was taken during his appeal hearing

This was a couple of months ago and you will see what it does to a person to be locked up in a Vietnamese prison and then finally a case of cross-border litigation Sahara reporters is a website that's being run on a shoestring budget from the US but reports on issues of public interest in Nigeria

They expose potential issues of corruption and other bad practices and Obviously are not very much liked for that and at some point in time Two Nigerian officials decided to sue the website in the US because that is where they were based in two different states And as everyone here probably knows litigation in the US is quite expensive

So this could be something that could send an online publisher into hiding basically close down the website stop publishing and And hope that it all goes away We fortunately were able to find them a good pro bono support an excellent US law firm was willing to take on their case

At a cost only basis and managed to defend it very well and Sahara reporters is still publishing On the next sheet you will see just a couple of examples of other cases that been working on There's many many more and it would be impossible to list them here. I'm sure you all know Examples out of your own practice. I just wanted to use one example

That's quite recent to also kind of tie into the to the big question of What we can all do to fight back for these cases you probably all heard about the the zone 9 bloggers case in Ethiopia There's an enormous crackdown going on in the country at the moment, which is termed to be the widest crackdown since the 2005

crackdown on the press at the previous elections Obviously elections are forthcoming next year in Ethiopia. So Yeah, the press is being silenced The zone 9 bloggers were the six of that collective were arrested a number of freelance journalists as well regular journalists and other opposition

voices and One of the things that I highlighted on this list of things that can be done is the sharing of information Last week. I was in Luanda where the African Commission is currently holding its session because we have a number of cases ongoing there And I got to speaking with with a couple of other organizations that are also working on Ethiopia

And we were talking about the fact that they were trying to push the Commission to adopt a resolution to speak out against these arrests As it turned out in our conversation not a formal request or a petition had been submitted to the African Union so far So what we did is offer our legal Drafting expertise we started drafting a petition to the special rapporteurs of the African Union and the United Nations

Other organizations joined in for example global voices joined the electronic frontier foundation joined a number of other human rights organizations joined and together we were able to verify all the information in our petition and Ask formally from the special rapporteurs at the AU and the UN to speak out against these arrests and the clarity's

arrest and its attention gross human rights violations So it's important that in various organizations often work on the same cases And it's really important that they share information amongst themselves to make sure that where forces can be joined this indeed

Takes place and also to make sure that everyone is spreading the correct information about cases And this also ties into the to the wider issue of raising awareness with the wider public There of course are situations in which it's actually Quite dangerous for a case to be aired more in the in the public and in the general mainstream media

we have had cases particularly in the Middle East where the family has been very adamant and saying like please just Let this go away quietly because we have a better chance of resolving the case if we can do it You know off the radar But we have similarly seen in a great number of other cases that actually raising the public profile of a case

Can have very positive results you see that Some of the cases that become more celebrity cases that indeed sentences are reduced on appeal and that Diplomatic solutions can be found to get someone out of jail So it's also important to make sure that the wider public knows this and I've I've put the logo of the global voices advocacy

Blog here on this sheet Which I think is an excellent platform on which people can share information Can provide the wider community at large with updates on various cases and to keep the conversation going And this is the last point that I wanted to raise keeping the conversation going

The zone 9 case now is very much in everybody's radar. They've just been arrested. It's uncertain what's going to happen It is news But you very often see at some point in time that someone's conviction has been upheld on appeal and they just disappear from the news Cycle which is you know the nature of news and but it is something that should be kept in mind

So one of the things that we did for example in the case of local Kwan Whose case we brought to the attention of the UN working group on arbitrary detention? With a collective of other organizations that were working on this case was Whenever we had the opportunity to highlight Kwan's case either because there was a hearing on appeal or

Because there was a decision from the UN working group finding that his attention was a violation of his right to freedom of expression Is say like look, you know, we want you to pay attention to Kwan's case his situation is unjust But his situation is the exact is just one example of many other bloggers many other

Journalists in the country that are being held in prison for exercising their right to free expression So just basically use those ongoing cases as an opportunity to highlight the ones that people otherwise will forget But I'm sure that there are many people in the audience here who have

either experience in working on these types of cases and have good ideas on on possible collaboration or anyone might have questions as to the issues that I just raised or Think that there's something I should have talked about but haven't so I would like to Open the floor to you. I would like to ask what are the

The best preventive measure measures for online journalists or bloggers in terms of I mean what do you think of technical solutions of an anonymity or How about going abroad or what?

What can you do before you actually get into contact with the authorities? Yes, a very good question and also a bit of a general question to which I would say that there are probably are different solutions Depending on the actual context where you are I think well one of the things that I was thinking of when earlier on when I mentioned that there are specific dimensions to

People publishing online is that of course publishing on the web is available to anyone and and I think a very basic Precautionary measure to take is to familiarize yourselves with the rules. What is the famatory? What would expose you to potential?

Lawsuits and I mean this is just talking about about defamation but which is you know a large chunk of the cases that are being brought against publishers be it online or or in traditional media so this is one thing then I suppose for the rest of this really kind of depends in which regime you operate and and and what country you're

Publishing on I think the problem that we face in a lot of these cases is that it it to a large extent It doesn't really matter what people have have been writing You very often see people who've been writing about legitimate concerns on matters of public interest and they get sued just the same if if a government in question doesn't like what people are writing define an excuse to prosecute so

Yes, it just really depends on the on the concrete scenario The organization you work for is called the legal defense initiative. My question would be

How do you see the role of legal defense in especially countries where the regime Tries to use legal means to

silence bloggers and journalists and How much of your work is actually political when you talk about? partitioning the a you Representative isn't this more of a political approach? Thank you, good question

Our organization indeed focuses on legal defense. We're not a lobbying Organization and not an advocacy organization for that. We try to work together with others So the collective petitions that I just mentioned are ones that we did together with organizations that do specialize in lobbying and an advocacy

There is there is a difficulty of course always in in in assessing whether or not it's quote unquote Useful to fight on the legal front in in in in a country where the legal system Might not be as fair as she would hope it to be etc However, I'm of the view that fighting back in and of itself is a very strong signal and it's important

The moment that you decide beforehand that it's futile is when you basically hand over power to the to the to the government I Do agree that to a certain extent some of these Legal measures are are perhaps, you know slightly less strict

Are a bit more broad or can be used in a broader way and However, we do see petitioning the UN working group on arbitrary detention for example which is a procedure in which the responding state gets the opportunity to reply and a legal type of decision is being made as

Something that is of a sufficient nature to actually Make proper legal arguments and hopefully also get a solid decision in return That it then can also be used by others to lobby and for advocacy purposes. That is great That's only like an added bonus in my view any more questions

Thank you, if anyone has any questions that they did not want to share with the wider audience

Particularly issues, please come speak to me afterwards. Thank you very much you