Assassination, Intimidation and Censorship
Indie journalists speak out about threats to freedom of speech
There’s an old song by Thomas Dolby that I listened to in my teens called “Dissidents.” It was supposed to be a song about journalists who risked reprisals from the Soviet Union for telling the truth.
One more young writer slid away in the night,
Over the border, he will drown in light
Listening to that song now, though, I’m not thinking of a repressive Soviet empire, but a Western one.
“Dissidents” song, by Thomas Dolby.
Like tiny insects in the palm of history
A domino effect in a cloud of mystery
My writing is an iron fist
In a glove full of Vaseline
Dip the fuse in the kerosene
I too became a dissident
Became a dissident…
I was invited to attend an international forum yesterday, January 19th, along with several other journalists, to talk about the censorship and repression we face today when trying to report about the less-than-savory actions of the NATO empire.
I’ve experienced censorship. I’ve been banned repeatedly from Facebook for posting articles, memes, photographs and other content deemed “false” by the so-called “fact-checkers” (the very existence of which ought to make the hair stand up on the necks of anyone who claims to care about free speech), and some of my articles on Medium have “warnings” on them.
But so far, I have not faced the kinds of reprisals dealt against my colleagues in the field, who have been placed on the Mirotvorets hit list, physically attacked, sanctioned, had their bank accounts frozen, been stripped of their journalistic accreditation and even their citizenship simply for reporting what they believe to be the truth.
Courting disaster, we ran in the night
Wings of an angel were torn in flight
Check it — verify it
It’s all here in writing, my own writing!
You can watch the entire hour-long forum on my YouTube channel. It was organized by a Russian human-rights organization, the Foundation to Battle Injustice, and took place in St. Petersburg, Russia, in conjunction with Patriot Media Group, a Russian company.
The topic of discussion was the significant increase in the number of deaths of media employees in recent years and what can be done to support working journalists whose lives and work are threatened.
The panel included Mira Terada, head of the Foundation to Battle Injustice, Christelle Néant, a correspondent from France, Mike Jones, a British blogger, John Miller, a publicist and employee of the popular Iranian English-language TV channel Press TV, Miodrag Zarkovic, a Serbian journalist, Sonja Van Den Ende, a journalist from the Netherlands, Alina Lipp, a journalist from Germany, and myself.
Video of the international press forum
According to the Foundation to Battle Injustice, at least 94 journalists were killed in 2022, with many more facing threats, detention or censorship.
“This is a clear indication that the profession of journalism is becoming increasingly dangerous,” said Mira Terada, the head of the foundation, adding that about 90 percent of media workers who are killed are male, “despite the fact that the journalism profession is mostly dominated by women.”
Terada’s foundation accuses Western countries, such as the US, of using intimidation to silence dissenting voices of journalists such as those present at the forum, and of refusing to condemn violence against members of the press not in lockstep with US and NATO narratives. “By failing to condemn violence against members of the press, Europe and the United States are violating international conventions,” Terada said.
In the US, journalists are arrested and jailed unlawfully, Terada observed, referring to Grayzone Editor Max Blumenthal, who was arrested in 2019 on charges of rioting while covering a protest in Washington, DC.
And in 2019, Aaron Cantú, a freelance journalist who has written for The Nation, was arrested while covering another protest in the US Capitol. He faced numerous charges, including “conspiracy to riot” and was held in detention for several months before the charges were finally dropped.
Terada also listed several journalists who were assassinated in the course of performing their jobs:
Lyra McKee from North Ireland was shot and killed in 2019 while covering riots in Londonderry. Prior to her murder, she was investigating organized crime and the legacy of the “Troubles” in North Ireland.
Jan Kuciak, from Slovakia, was shot and killed along with his fiancé in 2018 after investigating corruption and links between organized crime and high-level politicians in his country.
Daphne Caruana Galizia, an investigative journalist from Malta known as “the Panama Papers journalist,” was killed in a car bomb attack in 2017, after investigating corruption and money laundering involving high level politicians and business people there.
And more than a dozen journalists, foreign correspondents, bloggers and other writers have been killed since the beginning of Russia’s Special Military Operation (SMO) in Ukraine:
Ihor Hudenko
Yevhenii Sakun
Roman Nezhyborets
Zoreslav Zamoysky
Brent Renaud
Oleksandra Kuvshynova
Pierre Zakrzewski
Oksana Baulina
Maks Levin
Mantas Kvedaravicius
Yevgeny Bal
Frederic Leclerc-Imhoff
Alexey Ilyashevich
Terada said that it’s important to note that many of the journalists who were murdered were covering issues in territories where Western countries have a geopolitical interest.
At the hands of the press
And in the eyes of the government
I fell from grace
I too became a dissident
I was a dissident, yeah…
Like tiny insects in the palm of history
A domino effect and an early end to this story
My writing is an iron fist in a glove full of Vaseline
Dip the fuse in the kerosene
I too became a dissident
Became a dissident…
Alina Lipp, an independent journalist from Germany, spoke in Russian in a pre-recorded statement, saying that she and her colleagues who covered the war in Ukraine from the Donbass region were hunted, possibly by the SBU, the Security Service of Ukraine, or by agents of Mirotvorets. Now she is afraid to return to Germany because of reprisals which may be waiting for her there.
“It’s a very uncomfortable, very frightening feeling,” Lipp said. She spoke of her colleague, French journalist Adrian Boquet, who was viciously attacked while he was in Istanbul.
Johnny Miller, a blogger from the UK who also worked with Alina, remembers the incident well. Boquet, who had been in Kiev, reported about alleged Ukrainian war crimes in Bucha (contrary to the established Western narrative that the war crimes were Russian) on live TV in France. Later, he was imprisoned and beaten by French police. He resumed his travels to the Donbass region of Ukraine and while he was in Istanbul (due to sanctions imposed by countries in the EU, Turkey is now a common stopover for people traveling to Russia) “there was an attempt on his life there, when two men grabbed his head and tried to slit his throat, stabbing him in the stomach,” Miller recalled.
“It’s a shocking story,” Miller said, “You have here a case of a French journalist, alleging [an attack] — and it seems to be pretty clear that it was an attempt against his life and not just some street thugs — on a French journalist, hardly made any news in France. And this is most likely for his reporting in Donbass and in Ukraine.”
French Journalist Adrian Boquet speaks about being attacked in Istanbul.
Miller also recalled how Alina Lipp was threatened with three years of prison in Germany, and how she was charged with the “crimes” of reporting that Ukraine targeted civilians in Donbass for eight years — since 2014, that the majority of people in Donbass support Russia, and that there is a genocide going on there.
“Now, most people understand that ‘genocide’ is debatable, whether it’s attempted ethnic cleansing or what have you. But there’s absolutely no doubt,” he laughed a little, “that Ukraine has been killing people in Donbass and the vast majority of people here in Donbass are called ‘Russian.’”
Miller also recalled how mainstream media in Germany and elsewhere wrote “hit pieces” about Alina, claiming she was “embedded with Putin’s forces.” Her life, already threatened because her personal information is available at the Mirotvorets database, was placed in even greater danger by mainstream European newspapers and broadcasters.
Miller warned that as Western powers push the world ever closer to the brink of nuclear war, threats against journalists who criticize NATO will become more common, and he criticized mainstream media for ignoring the threat to other journalists who do not always report along the same narratives. “Western media only seems to care about journalists that are politically important for them or beneficial for them to report on, whereas other journalists who face imprisonments or threat of death are simply not reported on or not promoted,” he said.
Sonja Van den Ende, a Dutch journalist, has also been the victim of repression. Not only is she named on the Mirotvorets hit list, she says that she is also listed by the secret service of the Netherlands. And in a series of additional reprisals, she was stripped of her accreditation in her home country and her bank account was closed.
“So, yeah, it’s actually horrible,” Van den Ende said, “and because of all this, I am not able to return to my country because I know as soon as I will come here they will put me on trial, that’s for sure.”
Van den Ende said that she previously wrote for a large media outlet in Belgium and that they “kicked her out” for not adhering to mainstream views. “So when you go and report from the Donbass, they straight-away say, ‘well, you are an asset for the Kremlin, you are paid by Putin, you are going around with Russian military who commit crimes,’” making you a criminal by association.
She now lives in Moscow, Russia, and is afraid to return to her home country where she was already questioned by police after returning from a journalistic stint in Syria. She says that they demanded to know why she was there and what business she had speaking with people in the Syrian Ministries or with President Assad.
Journalist Ollie Vargas, who works for Kawsachun News in Bolivia and reports on affairs in Latin America, says that the main problem in his country is that the “journalist unions and associations are dominated by those from mainstream outlets…in America. Those mainstream outlets almost all have a relationship with organizations such as the National Endowment for Democracy, such as USAID and all the NGO complex based in Washington.”
And the result of that, Vargas said, is that these journalist organizations are political when it comes to which journalists they will protect and advocate for, and they “often provide little to no protection to, for example, journalists from outlets that are critical of Western policies in Latin America or journalists from state media in countries like Bolivia or Venezuela, countries that, again, are critical of the United States and Western powers.”
Vargas told of how just a couple days ago, journalists from progressive outlets and state media held a protest outside the offices of Bolivia’s main journalist union after that group failed to condemn an attack on a colleague of his. “She was assaulted by roving groups, they were holding a protest here in La Paz. She had rocks thrown at her,” he said, adding that there are many more examples like that.
Vargas described an attack on another man who was set upon by “right wing mobs” during the 2019 US-backed coup in Bolivia. He worked at a media outlet which represented rural indigenous communities. “They pulled him out of his office and tied him to a tree and threatened to set him on fire. And again, none of the journalist unions stated any condemnation of this, none of them made any public statements in this regard because he worked for outlets that were critical of the policies that they represent — including their funders at the National Endowment for Democracy, USAID and the NGO complex in Washington.”
Vargas believes that that the money provided by those groups makes journalist unions and associations in Bolivia unwilling to support journalists who are critical of them and that “the challenge going forward will be to create free associations that can accredit journalists and provide protection regardless of if those journalists are critical of US foreign policy here in Latin America.”
Also speaking at the forum was Christelle Néant, a French journalist and the managing editor of Donbass Insider, an outlet which publishes news of the conflict in the Donbass region of Ukraine and features regular columns by Faina Savenkova, the 14-year-old writer from Lugansk.
“We see that there is in France a huge campaign to discredit, to defame all the journalists who speak about the truth in the Donbass,” Néant said, referring to reports funded by organizations which claim to fight against “Russian disinformation,” by smearing journalists like herself, Alina Lipp, Adrian Boquet, Patrick Lancaster and others whose viewpoint does not match official narratives.
During the Yellow Vests protests in France, Néant recalls, police arbitrarily arrested journalists or shot them with “non-lethal” ammunition such as rubber bullets which can cause serious injuries and break bones. “So several journalists were shot deliberately by the police to put them out of the protest, to deny them to film what was happening.”
Néant said that her bank account was closed after the beginning of the SMO. “So all the means I had of crowd funding and so on were closed immediately. So they are not only repressing physically, they also try to prevent us to obtain the money which is needed to be able to live from our work, so they try to prevent us to continue our work by cutting all of our financial means.”
Like others who have reported on the conflict in the Donbass, Néant is afraid to return to her home country where she might face trial or worse, “because now there are a lot of Ukrainian refugees which were arrived in Europe and they are really aggressive with, they are not afraid even to attack Russian people or people who speak Russian in the street, or Russian shops or Russian restaurants.”
And Néant has also been on the Mirotvorets list for seven years. “Did you see any human rights organization who made a public scandal about that? No, nobody.”
In fact, the only time Mirotvorets received any attention from Western media, Néant says, is when a journalist from German mainstream media was put on the list, after which then-Chancellor Angela Merkel managed to get the website closed for a few months. When it reappeared online, the German’s name was removed, but many more names had been added: The names of all the journalists who had applied for accreditation in the Donetsk People’s Republic in the Donbass.
“So there is a huge double-standard in the Western countries and we see that with France and it’s really for me a shame because before France was like the motherland of the human rights, it has this reputation,” Néant said. “And now we see that France is keeping silent about this kill list Mirotvorets.”
Miodrag Zarkovic, an independent Serbian journalist, said that it’s not so much the journalists who need protection as it is journalism itself. “Journalism,” he said, “was never a profession that was distant from danger. It was never a safe profession; the moment you start reporting on something that is really important, one or another group will try to silence you one way or another.”
Zarkovic is concerned that the wrong kind of “protection” could lead to control of journalists, which turns them into propagandists. “First you have to understand that mainstream media is practically no longer practicing journalism. They are effectively practicing propaganda.”
The real journalists, Zakovic said, are independent or alternative journalists with their own channels, their own websites. And, he added, the kinds of conversations he has had with these journalists “were much more energetic and lively than any discussion you can watch on mainstream media these days.”
Zakovic recalled when NATO bombed a Serbian broadcasting company in Belgrade in April of 1999. “It was the time of NATO’s aggression against Serbia. Sixteen media workers were killed. On site. None of them were journalists but they were people who work for a TV station, you know, crew guy, camera guys, cable guys and whatever.”
Zakovic said that no one ever answered for that crime, and the NATO spokesperson at the time, Jamie Shea, even bragged about the bombing. This is the same Jamie Shea who, according to Wikipedia, described the civilians and children killed by the NATO bombing of Serbia as the “cost to defeat an evil.”
“But the main point,” Zakovic said, “is that even if nobody was in the building, and there were no victims, it would still be a crime. Bombing a TV station should be a crime.”
Zakovic believes that there need to be effective mechanisms to hurt those who hurt journalism, but that for now the only way to hurt them is by doing journalism. “We have to use our channels, our associates, our knowledge, our experience, to direct our professional criticism or whatever we can against those who possibly hurt journalism one way or another.”
The last speaker was Mike Jones, a British blogger who lives in Russia and reports about the Donbass. He was wearing a t-shirt with the RT logo that says “Foreign Agent.” Like me, he said he hasn’t yet been added to Mirotvorets, though he has just returned from the Donbass. “I haven’t suffered quite the same level of attacks and retribution from, be it the government, be it from other actors and operators. Thankfully I’ve not been sanctioned by my government.” He pointed to the case of his less fortunate countryman Graham Phillips, who has been sanctioned by the UK for his writing.
Jones says that so far, he has “danced around the censorship” and managed to grow his audience to 100,000 subscribers in the “video spheres” where he operates. “And they are themselves very much aware and often tell me of censorship on Twitter, on Facebook, when they share my videos outside of this space.”
Jones believes that the Western audience is growing, despite all the attempts by the establishment to silence alternative views. “I do really see it across other channels as well. Where the people in the West are seeing the behavior of the government and are crying out against it, or at least expressing their dissatisfaction. And they’re coming to alternative media sources, if we can call ourselves that, to both share their experiences and show their support which I find encouraging.”
There was some discussion about what can be done to help independent and alternative journalists who are struggling against censorship, threats to their livelihood, and personal safety. The general consensus among those at yesterday’s panel was that there needs to be an international journalist union or association which does not discriminate against those critical of mainstream narratives.
“There does need to be an independent platform that can really lobby and do the utmost to bring people to justice. Not just individuals but, in fact, governments,” Jones said.
Ayten Karadag, a speaker from Azerbaijan, said that her organization, the International Union of Free Journalists, is prepared to help. The union was just initiated in September of 2022 and has been sending open letters to governments around the world demanding an end to the persecution of journalists including those covering the Ukrainian conflict from the “other side.”
So far, only the Russian Federation has offered any assurances.
How’s that for some irony, Mr. Dolby?
At the hands of the press
And in the eyes of the government
I fell from grace
I too became a dissident
Like tiny insects in the palm of history
A domino effect and an early end to this story
My writing is an iron fist in a glove full of Vaseline
But dip the fuse in the kerosene
I too became a dissident.
Became a dissident…
About the author:
Deborah Armstrong currently writes about geopolitics with an emphasis on Russia. She previously worked in local TV news in the United States where she won two regional Emmy Awards. In the early 1990’s, Deborah lived in the Soviet Union during its final days and worked as a television consultant at Leningrad Television.
Excellent article, Deborah. Good old censorship and "information warfare" (propaganda). You just prompted me to write an article about the Facebook fact checkers.