In an attempt to shine light on continued lethal threats against journalists and journalism, Northwestern University’s Law Center for International Human Rights is representing a journalist thousands of miles from the school illegally charged and forcibly deported from Kyrgyzstan and sent to Russia.
“We announced this specifically on ‘World Press Freedom Day’ to show this case is part of a larger systemized attack on free press globally,” said Megan M. Osadzinski, a Schuette Clinical Fellow in Health and Human Rights at the Center for International Human Rights (CIHR) at Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law.
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“World Press Freedom Day” is held on May 3 and was first proclaimed by UNESCO in 1991 in response to an increasing number of attacks on journalists and media outlets around the world. In December 1993, World Press Freedom Day was proclaimed by the UN General Assembly to celebrate the fundamental principles of press freedom, assess the state of press freedom throughout the world, defend the media from attacks on their independence and pay tribute to journalists who have lost their lives in the line of duty.
“This is not just a domestic issue in Kyrgyzstan,” Osadzinski said. “It is a global issue.”
She said that Kyrgyzstan journalist, Bolot Temirov, a human rights defender and prominent journalist, has not been allowed to return to Kyrgyzstan since he was forcibly removed to Russia last November on trumped up charges after reporting on government corruption.
She said the Center for International Human Rights at Northwestern University’s Pritzker School of Law is representing Temirov alleging his wrongful prosecution in Kyrgyzstan and illegal deportation to Russia.
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“We’re continuing to explore which of Bolot’s rights have been violated,” said Osadzinski. “But I think we’re continuing on a path to kind of look to see what freedom of expression and fair trial rights and other kind of civil and political rights have been violated.”
And attacks against journalists are not confined to imprisonment or deportation, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. The organization says that 2022 was deadly for journalists globally with at least 67 journalists and media workers killed, the highest number since 2018 and an almost 50% increase from 2021. It said that much violence has been driven by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — where at least 40 journalists were killed in 2022 — and civil unrest following the assassination of Haiti’s president.
“What’s also frightening is that it not only happens in authoritarian countries,” said Kalyani Chadha, associate professor at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism in Evanston. “It’s also happening in other countries that thought themselves to not necessarily be authoritarian in their political systems.”
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Chada said she sees a pattern of delegitimization of the journalism profession all over the world.
“They’re trying to do the most basic function of journalism which is to highlight corruption, to highlight systemic problems in their respective countries, problems with the actions of specific political leaders or political parties,” she said.
Temirov is not the only prominent journalist who has recently faced wrongful arrest in Russia, Osadzinski said. Evan Gershkovich, an American reporter for the Wall Street Journal, is currently imprisoned in Russia, where he has been accused of spying by the Russian government.
“It’s important for us to stand up for people who are targeted for their beliefs, for their news gathering activities and this case is really emblematic of the larger ‘weaponization’ of criminal law against human rights defenders and journalists occurring worldwide,” she said. “For us, that’s really the main factor that drew us to Bolot’s case.”
Chadha said that while reporters in first world countries like the United States do not necessarily face the same dangers journalists in other countries do, they face a different kind of threat as news outlets continue to close due to financial woes and those that remain face severe staff and spending cuts.
“Some of it is economic in the sense that as a profession journalism has been in sort of a financial and moral crisis for quite some time,” she said.
What is lost, she noted, is a common understanding of what is going on in the world.
“When you have political figures or politically aligned news organizations pushing a certain narrative what is lost is not just that different people have different facts, but that there are some things that are true and there are some things that are just not true,” she explained. “I think people’s ability to discern the difference between what is true and what is not becomes really challenged.”
Brian L. Cox is a freelance reporter with Pioneer Press.