Free the Press 2014: Stemming the Tide of Media Repression

Humanrights.gov | April 25, 2014

Journalists are being silenced around the world. In too many places, they are imprisoned, attacked, intimidated, disappeared, exiled or murdered for trying to report the news or exercise their freedom of expression. In the weeks leading up to World Press Freedom Day on May 3, the U.S. Department of State highlights emblematic threats to journalists while continuing to call on all governments to protect the universal human right to freedom of expression.

• Assistant Secretary Malinowski on Stemming the Tide of Media Repression
• Ambassador Power at the Overseas Press Club 75th Annual Awards

Sergey Reznik

Sergey Reznik, Russian a journalist and blogger from the city of Rostov-on-Don, has been serving an 18 month prison sentence since November 2013. A Rostov court recently upheld his conviction on April 15. Before his imprisonment, Reznik’s writing routinely criticized municipal and regional authorities and uncovered local corruption and abuses. The series of unrelated charges pursued against him, including insulting a public official, bribery, and deliberately misleading authorities, are widely seen by media freedom watchdog groups to be politically-motivated and in retaliation for his journalistic work. A month before his conviction, Reznik was also physically attacked, when two unidentified men beat him with baseball bats and shot at him. Although not hit by the bullets, Reznik suffered head and neck injuries from the beating. While Reznik sits in jail, authorities have made no progress in investigating the attack against him, consistent with a broader pattern of impunity in Russia for those who attack journalists. We call on the government of Russia to release Reznik, and to cease all politically-motivated prosecutions and other forms of pressure on the independent press, and to promote and protect the internationally-guaranteed right to freedom of expression.

Nguyen Van Hai, Ta Phong Tan, and Phan Thanh Hai

As part of the Department’s ongoing Free the Press campaign, we note the continued detention on orders of the Government of Vietnam of three important bloggers — Mr. Nguyen Van Hai, better known as Dieu Cay and Ms. Ta Phong Tan are imprisoned, and Mr. Phan Thanh Hai is under house arrest. They were arrested in 2012 for writing blog entries and advocating freedom of expression, and their unfair and illegitimate trials produced convictions for “anti-state propaganda” that carried sentences of 12, 10, and four years respectively. Dieu Cay and Ta Phong Tan’s sentences — 12 and 10 years respectively — were upheld on appeal and will be followed by five years each of house arrest. We continue to call for the immediate release of all three individuals, who were jailed merely for exercising their basic human rights, and we call on Vietnam to honor its international human rights commitments.