Media violations remain frequent in Turkey, Russia and Azerbaijan
Turkey, Russia and Azerbaijan, member states of the Council of Europe (CoE) are among the countries with most cases of media violation as recorded by the new platform launched by the CoE to promote the protection of journalism and safety of journalists.
Since the launch of the platform early this month, a total of 42 alerts were recorded by partners of the platform including the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ). Among the 42 cases, Turkey came at the top of the list with the highest number of media violation, Azerbaijan and Russia came second (7 cases of media violation) and Ukraine came third (4 cases of media violation). Currently, four more cases are being processed.
The list of violations recorded by the platform reveals the extent of media violations taking place. The violations range from the killing of journalists to the introduction of surveillance legislations by Member States to restrict media freedom.
The CoE has notified all cases of media violation to relevant Member States where the violations took place for follow-up action. Thus far, the violations reported concern 13 CoE Member States. Thorbjørn Jagland, the CoE Secretary General and Nils Muižnieks, the Coe Commissioner for Human Rights have condemned several times the media violations. Jagland said that he would want the CoE to be ”even more assertive in defending free speech”.
If you know of or experience any violations of media freedom, please report it to us so that we can take further action. For the list of media violations recorded by the platform, please refer to https://europeanjournalists.org/blog/2015/04/02/coe-online-platform/
Photo : Council of Europe
