Issues
The Impact of the “War on Terrorism” on the Media and Civil Society in North Africa
Al-Shikaki Ahmed
Globalization is an important factor in the spread of international terrorism. Radio and television, satellite, Internet, cell phones and international travel provide a facilitating environment. Through television and other media, the demonstration effect provided by highly publicized acts, such as bomb explosions and aircraft hijackings, the intimate focus on the effects of state and sub-state terrorism in areas serve to mobilize and instigate others to do the same and to also violently protest against these actions. Population displacement and migration, the establishment of large Diasporas in many liberal states with their own sub-cultures, unintegrated within their host societies, are further facilitating factors that serve to internationalise terrorism.
North Africa may come to play a central role in international terrorism. The motivation, means and targets all exist and these opportunities will not go unheeded for much longer. This region presents both a facilitating environment and a target-rich environment for terrorists that seek to attack the United States, and indeed the global system.
North African countries stand at a crucial crossroad in their political evolution as they face simultaneous challenges from domestic, regional, and global forces. All Maghreb states are governed autocratically. As such, they will be unable to meet the upcoming threats to their political stability, social cohesion, cultural integrity, and economic viability. One result will be increased domestic, regional, and global tensions as militant forces seep through these sociopolitical fault lines finding support from and identification with similarly discontented co-religionists living in Europe.
The conditions of political oppression, social marginalization, economic deprivation, and cultural alienation have created a wide-ranging landscape of disaffected young people ever ready to engage in militant activity often catalyzed by religious invocation and Islamist appeal inspiring, among the most fanatical among them, a sense of martyrdom justifying the use of terror including suicide bombing.
Levels of modernization and development vary enormously among the countries of North Africa. Many of the states in this region have stable authoritarian governments while others have been plagued by violence and instability. The region’s economies are fragile, for some individuals, criminal activity has been a gateway to direct participation in terrorism violent extremist group target unemployed and underemployed young men or recruitment into terrorist organizations. These disenfranchised youth are vulnerable to ideologies that offer simple solutions to their problems and promise great rewards for their participation. If the economic situation in North Africa continues to stagnate, association with extremist groups will become more appealing for both financial and ideological reasons.
North Africa could be a home to a number of terrorist groups whose increasingly international activities have generated concern in Washington as well as European capitals. These groups are supported by overlapping financial, logistical, and operational network in Europe. The growing involvement of North Africa in international terrorism has led to a recent focus on North Africa as a potential safe haven for terrorist.
Al-Qaeda's influence is spreading into the cities and deserts of North African states. From the Salafist Group of Preaching and Combat in Algeria (GSPC) , the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group, the Salafiya Jihadia in Morocco, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Groups in Libya, to the Islamic Jihadist Group in Tunisia, one can see the beginning of the formation of a pan-Maghreb militancy organization network with possible devastating impact on local populations and governments. At the top of this network is the Al-Qaeda’s spiritual guidance which leads these organizations into a struggle to destabilize the region and move beyond. Since September 2006, Al-Qaeda has an official presence in Algeria, the Salafist Group of Call and Combat (GSPC) is now calling itself "The Organization of Al-Qaeda in the Land of Islamic Maghreb".
Al-Qaeda's global ideology intersects with local anger directed at undemocratic regimes. Simultaneously, Al-Qaeda has renewed its efforts to tap into local grievances, focusing them on the global jihad against the West. One of the keys to Al-Qaeda's resilience has been its ability to co-opt and exploit local, readymade networks to its ideological and operational advantage.
The latest suicide-bombing attacks in Casablanca targeted the American Cultural Centre and the U.S. consulate, and the recent bombings in the Algerian capital signs that the terrorists are working more effectively together. The coordination of activity reveals that even though terrorist groups now recruit, train, and finance themselves locally to avoid detection, they still plan and communicate across national borders. It means also that Al-Qaeda is getting stronger. And its tactics, such as using smaller operations that require only a few young men are getting harder to stop.
Counter terrorism
To begin, let me say a few words about the relationship between protecting human rights, democratic freedoms and fighting terrorism. Terrorism is a threat to liberty, to law and to human rights values. But terrorists are often the first to benefit when governments fail to uphold those values. It is precisely in societies where ordinary people have limited peaceful ways for expressing their grievances that violent movements tend to thrive. When governments restrict free expression, shut down political parties, and punish peaceful dissent, they do not hurt those who use violence to advance their aims. They hurt the moderate, democratic, political movements that need these freedoms to endure, the very forces that can be a counterweight to violent groups.
The suppression of recognized human rights in the name of protecting the state may only fuel the sense of injustice that terrorist fanatics seek to exploit. It may also convert innocents swept up in antiterrorist dragnets into active terrorist supporters. Others argued that terrorist attacks will lead people to accept more limits on their personal freedoms. So it is very important that state and civil society organisations playing their role in educating the public about the effectiveness of the existing arrangements.
The human rights framework is not soft on terrorism. It acknowledges that states must sometimes take exceptional measures to ensure public security. But whatever the emergency situation, some fundamental human rights and freedoms can never be suspended or derogated, such as the right to life, the right to freedom from torture and all forms of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment, and the right to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion. In addition, human rights treaties such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights establish that any restrictions on other rights must be, among other requirements, exceptional and temporary in nature, limited to the extent strictly required by the exigencies of the situation, non-discriminatory solely on the ground of race, colour, sex, language, religion or social origin; and consistent with the state party’s other obligations under international law, particularly the rules of international humanitarian law. Protecting human rights during counter-terrorist efforts is more than a legal requirement. It is integral to the success of the campaign against terrorism itself. Terrorism will not be defeated solely by military or security means. By indiscriminately attacking civilians, terrorism breaches the most basic values of human rights. Combating terrorism requires a reaffirmation of human rights values, not their rejection. State repression and human rights abuse closes off peaceful and political channels for political dissent and can channel alienation and grievance into extremism and violence.
The threat of terrorism and the responses by the authorities in North African countries differ in many ways and need to be understood in their country specific context. Tunisia and Morocco have each seen a major terrorist act against civilians in the course of 2003, whereas Algeria has lived through a decade long internal conflict marked by acts of terror of particular cruelty, but also by grave human rights violations, including enforced disappearances, committed by security forces.
The North African countries have responded aggressively to the terrorist group’s activities, but the physical territory in North Africa is so vast and the underlying socioeconomic conditions so dire that external assistance and coordination are necessary.
The war against global terrorism has significantly raised the Maghreb’s geopolitical profile especially in American eyes. In so doing, fighting terrorism has joined access to reliable oil and gas supplies as two key concerns justifying intense foreign involvement with existing army backed regimes in Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia. In that way United States and international support are accorded to North Africa states.
This leaves the governments of Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia caught between official allegiance to the Unite States who led war against terrorism and extremism. The governments of all three nations brought little dissent, and tough national security measures initially prevented Al-Qaeda from establishing itself in the region. Meanwhile, as the threat has progressed, the leaders of Algeria and Tunisia have used constitutional amendments to tighten their grip. Morocco has swept thousands of Islamists into its jails.
Among the unintended consequences of increased U.S. and other international military, political, and economic assistance to all three Maghreb countries has been a clamp down on press freedoms, increased violations of human rights through random arrests of hundreds if not thousands of so-called Islamic terrorists in Morocco, and a general deterioration of political and civil rights. It is within such a degraded political environment that terrorism finds its most willing recruits.
Many crimes were committed under special counter-terrorism laws. This can lead to abuse, including prosecution of legitimate political or social opposition. The inclusion of subversive acts within the definition of terrorist acts in Algeria’s counter-terrorism law is a particularly problematic example in this regard.
The impact of “Anti terrorism law” on the Media in North AfricaMediatic freedoms in the region on North Africa have witnessed some relative or temporary tolerance due to social pressures, or as a natural outcome of globalization, and the revolutionary forms of communication provided by satellite T.V. and the internet. During recent years certain red circles and lines, which were unapproachable, have been overstepped, especially regarding the ability of the media to criticize ruling figures or reveal cases of corruption and/or serious human rights violations. Furthermore, additional exceptional legislation has been increasingly enacted of late under the pretext of combating terrorism in North Africa countries. Such legislation tends to extend its impact to cover peaceful activities and opinion, if considered by the authorities in those countries to constitute “incitement to terrorism”. Following are the most prominent limitation on press freedom imposed in North Africa states:
1.Restricting the right to publish newspapers by requiring a license as a precondition, instead of accepting a notification, as is the case in Egypt, or according to the prior license condition adopted in Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco, which does not significantly differ from the prior license system.
2.Press-related legislation in North Africa vests the executive authority with broad power regarding administrative arrest or the banning of newspapers. Legislation is rather strict when it comes to foreign newspapers, which are subject to in-advance censorship prior to circulation.
3.Legislation throughout North Africa permits detention of journalists pending investigation in publication crimes. This procedure is used as a tool to intimidate journalists.
4.The scope of prohibitions is rather broad in the legislation of North African countries. Such legislation, also, usually tends to enlarge the scope of criminalization in a way that far exceeds the acceptable restrictions on freedoms of media and expression.
5.Exceptional emergency laws continue to be enforced for long periods, with all the broad powers accompanying them and which permit the breach of constitutional guarantees of public freedoms, and the censorship and confiscation of newspapers and printed material. These laws also permit eavesdropping, control of messages and telephones, interference in the application of justice, the constitution of exceptional courts and deprivation of citizens of their right to trial by an independent judge.
6.All Arab countries in North Africa still retain absolute control over radio and television broadcasting, especially land broadcasting. The states also control the powers of granting licenses to establish satellite transmission corporations or stations, in addition to the censorship of all that is transmitted. These countries, in their entirety, lack legislation that guarantees plurality and diversity in the ownership of means of audio and video mass media.
7.North African countries continue to practice their hegemony over the information infrastructure, and monopolize, in one way or another, the distribution of Internet services. Those countries also seek to restrict the flow of information through several means of technology, by using various forms of web content control.
The war on terrorism is fought in a pervasive atmosphere of paranoia in which the spirit of press freedom and pluralism is fragile and vulnerable. Every conflict is fought on at least two grounds: the battlefield and the minds of the people via propaganda and media. The governments and the terrorists can often both be guilty of misleading their people with distortions, exaggerations, subjectivity, inaccuracy and even fabrications, in order to receive their support.
The world of media is rife with rumours. Everyone involved with war on terrorism must ensure that its program activities are not misinterpreted by the local population. Suspicion, distrust, or confusion about the nature of anti-terrorism measures could undermine the goal of these measures in confronting the terrorism and reducing radicalism.
Media manipulation often involves government. Sometimes organizations and governments can feed fake news or politically or ideologically slanted stories to broadcasters which describe them as quality news items and journalism.
Terrorist manipulate the traditional mass media as a means of waging psychological warfare against a population. Information and Communications Technologies provide a new medium through which the terrorist can attack the nation-state. States increasingly use information and communication technologies to store and broadcast information.In order to fully understand the interplay between terrorism and the media, we must not only examine the various forms of news media but other media forms and technologies as well—video and audio cassettes, DVDs, video games, popular music, and novels. Video tapes, audio cassettes and DVDs have been used by Al Qaeda and likeminded groups in the Middle East, Europe, and elsewhere to spread propaganda and condition teens and young adults for recruitment.
Contemporary terrorists use the Internet like marginalized elements of civil society to communicate with sympathetic diaspora, disseminate propaganda and issue statements unfettered by the ideological refractions of the mass media. Terrorists benefit from the rapid and low cost communication available to all ‘civil’ sub-state actors on the Internet.
However the existence of a terrorist website does not guarantee that people will be exposed to the raison of the terrorist organization. The Internet will not guarantee an increased numbers of sympathizers or even increased financial aid.
In the name of war on terrorism, the members of the media and the journalists face threats of restriction, beatings and even death for reporting issues that may be controversial or not in the interests of power holders. The government reserves its worst treatment for journalists it believes to be sympathetic to the Islamists. While the radio and particularly television remain under tight state control, the independent print media are outspoken and often quite critical of the government. However, their situation remains precarious. What I see is that the truth is not always reported and that the media are paying a very high price for this.
Some offences contained in special counter-terrorism laws, such as praising or justifying terrorism, or the association with terrorist organisations, are so broadly worded that they may lead to excessive interferences with freedom of association, expression and the media. Some lawyers, especially in Morocco and Tunisia, questioned the justification of special legislation on counter-terrorism given existing laws.
Government’s censorship takes many forms. In addition to the censorship of security matters, the authorities use more subtle means to constrain political discourse in the press. The government controls the supply of newsprint and owns the printing presses and is thus able to put economic pressure on newspapers. When subtle means fail to restrain the press, the Interior Ministry suspends publications and summons reporters to court.
Algeria
Algeria is particularly important because of its proximity to Europe and the large presence of Algerian diaspora in many European countries, and the radicalization of many of these diaspora groups.The Algerian constitution of 1989 recognizes the plurality of the media and modifies the relation between politics and the Media. The law No.90 published on 3 April 1990 abolished the monopoly of the state over the newspapers. Many of journalists left the public sectors and tried to establish new newspapers and benefit from state support.
During few years the number raised from 30 to more than 148, 14 among them are dailies. This process of liberalisation was hindered by the state as a result of its politics of eradication to the Islamic groups. In this way, the liberty of expression was reduced and the financial support granted only to non hostile newspapers as an essential requirements in confronting the terrorists.
Algeria is home to two prominent extreme Islamic terrorists groups, the Armed Islamic Group (GIA) and the GSPC (Salafist Groups for Preaching and Combat) which are both seeking an Islamic state in Algeria. Algeria first adopted anti-terrorist laws in 1992 and these were adapted for the penal code in 1995. These restrict access to information, freedom of movement and the rights of journalists to report on certain subjects.
In recent years, the Algerian government has tightened laws on freedom of expression. On September 2003, six daily newspapers were suspended for the reason of publishing critics concerned the regime of the president Bouteflika. The most recent measure was taken in February 2006 when a law was introduced making public criticism of the conduct of the security forces punishable by up to 10 years’ imprisonment. President Abdelaziz Bouteflika’s amnesty for journalists convicted of “defamation” and “insulting state institutions” freed many journalists from legal harassment but repression of the media continued with further prosecutions and several editors still feared their papers would be shut down.
The case of the attorneys Sidhoum and Boumerdassi known for their public defence of human rights is a good example. They regularly represent detainees charged with terrorism and security offences, families of people that the security force made “disappeared” during the civil strife of the 1990s, and suspects who claim the police tortured them under interrogation. Amine Sidhoum and Hassiba Boumerdassi have been on trial on charges of handing unauthorized documents, “their business cards” to their clients in prison. They face up to five years in prison if convicted.
Morocco
Morocco’s progress in human rights over the past decade is being seriously undermined by government moves to fight terrorism, which include sweeping powers to detain suspected Islamic militants and arrest journalists who report on terrorist-related issues.Since the passage of a tough new anti-terrorism law that was rushed through the parliament in 2003 following the Casablanca bombings, thousands of terrorism suspects have been arrested and several journalists were arrested and sentenced to prison under the anti-terrorism law. Numerous trials of arrested Islamic radicals have taken place with hash sentences meted out to many. The result has been a return to some of the regime’s worst authoritarian excesses including flagrant abuses of human rights, including arbitrary arrest, torture, and unfair trials.
Security forces several times banned journalists from covering demonstrations or trials. Three editors from the weekly newspapers Al- Sharq and Al-Hayat Al-Maghribiya were charged with supporting terrorist acts after they published an article that discussed the history of the Islamist movement in Morocco and its alleged relationship with the country’s intelligence services.
Jamal Wahbi, of the weekly Assahifa al-Maghribiya, was arrested by detectives in Tetuan for photographing three prisoners who were suspected terrorists coming out of a court building in the city. He was questioned by the public prosecutor and various state security officials and his camera seized. Morocco blocks access to websites close to the Polisario Front and to the online publication of the Islamist organisation Justice and Charity, which challenges the monarchy’s legitimacy.
Further more, accusation of collision with Islamists have made working conditions even worse for journalists. Mohammed El Hard, director of the Al-Charq newspaper, Abdelmajd Ben Tahar, editor in chief of the same magazine and Mustapha Kechnini, director of the weekly magazine Al-Hayat al-Maghribia, were convicted in November 2003 and given sentences ranging fro six months to two years in prison for allowing Islamist points of view to be expressed in their papers.
Tunisia
The Tunisian government is working actively to prevent the formation of terrorist groups inside Tunisia, including prohibiting the formation of religious-based political parties and groups that it believed would pose a terrorist threat. Overall, the government is responsive to United States requests for information and assistance in counterterrorism investigations.
According to the IFEX Tunisia monitoring group, the Tunisian government has used September 11 to further restrict freedom of association, movement, and expression, and to trumpet its support for President George Bush’s “global war on terror”.
The “Anti-terrorism” Law of 10 December 2003 aimed at supporting “international efforts to combat terrorism and money laundering, has a very vague and broad definition of terrorism. This law prompted widespread concern amid local and international human rights groups that acts of freedom of expression criticizing President Ben Ali’s policies would be considered as “acts of terrorism. People arrested in connection with alleged terrorist activities have been charged and tried under a controversial counter-terrorism law introduced in 2003.
Despite these prisoner releases, Tunisian security forces continue to harass and seek to intimidate local human rights defenders, lawyers and other rights activists as well as families of political prisoners and former prisoners, and to severely restrict the rights to freedom of expression and association. Additionally, all the Internet cafes in Tunisia are state-controlled. They filter web content and are under close police surveillance.
Khadija Cherif, the head of the Tunisian Association for Women’s Rights, said in an interview in Tunis in after government forces clashed with an Islamist terrorist cell, killing more than two dozen people said that “In the absence of debate, people turn to the simplest ideas”. She argued that the repression of President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali had left no political space for progressive moderates who might otherwise help slow the drift among Tunisian youth toward fundamentalist political Islam.
Under anti-terrorist laws, it is very difficult for the journalist to interview people, to talk to them, because they are threatened and scared. At the same time, the states that are fighting terrorism impose a huge burden on the media trying to make a point, that there are things that the media shouldn’t say and others shouldn’t cover. Here I wonder whether the media can be neutral in the war on terrorism. The governments try to control the flow of information and to manipulate the media in their interest. Meanwhile, Terrorists use the assassination of the journalists as a way to get into the news. And the government exploits the brutal murders of journalists and intellectuals as a propaganda tool to sustain international support for its all-out war against terrorism. In the light of the country’s continuing rigorous control over media, both written and audiovisual, efforts by journalists to scrutinize or express critical opinions remain extremely limited.
The expression of counter-terrorism has frequently been co-opted by regimes to legitimate brutal internal security measures and institute all-embracing anti-opposition crackdowns, which have had a highly damaging impact on human rights and notions of responsible and responsive civil governance. The combined effect has been the emergence of states lacking most, if not all of the prerequisites for viable socio-political development.
The impact of “Anti terrorist law” on the civil society in North Africa
The notion of civil society is a free space where citizens can take charge of their own destiny, a form of resistance and struggle, a source of knowledge, public debate and social reflection, and a mechanism for mediation, reconciliation and compromise. Civil society gives voice to different social groups and causes, provides channels of expression for minorities and dissenters, and promotes – by its very diversity – a culture of tolerance and pluralism. Civil society includes the radicals and the moderates, those who resist and those who negotiate.
The cooperation between the civil society and human rights organisations with the media institutions in North Africa could be an important factor for the advancement of the professional media in North Africa, especially, in the light of the impact of long years of action in an environment characterized by political despotism and a culture where various forms of fanaticism and hostility to the freedom of expression are embraced. This could be achieved either through joint activities between political and trade-union frameworks, for the review and amendment of the oppressive legislative structure in general, or by disseminating a culture of human rights and democracy, and promoting the values of plurality, diversity, tolerance, the right to differ, the renunciation of the values of fanaticism, and the exclusion and denial of the other.Dealing with the threat from terrorism should be the responsibility not only of governments but of all sectors of society. Indeed, a vibrant civil society can play a strategic role in protecting local communities, countering extremist ideologies and dealing with political violence. The civil society can play an important role in strengthening democracy and countering terrorism. Civil society gives a voice to different social groups and causes, which provide a channel of expression for the minorities and the dissenters, which promotes by its very diversity a culture of tolerance and pluralism. Civil society also ensures a countervailing power to the ever present risk of state authoritarianism. In other words, civil society is about creating a framework of trust where people can discuss and deliberate without fear, and by using reason rather than superstition or prejudice.
Journalists, academics, lawyers, spiritual leaders, trade unionists, the private sector, human rights activists and other civic and democratic forces find themselves caught between threats from terrorist groups on the one hand, and excessive and arbitrary restrictions imposed by states in the name of counter terrorism on the other. This has seriously put at risk their ability to monitor human rights and the democratic process and generated a climate of fear, potentially silencing and immobilizing those who would be forces for democratization.
Nevertheless, NGOs, aid organizations and other civil society groups also face attempts to control or curb their activities. The thesis promoted by the United States and its partners is that terrorist groups use laundered money for their activities and that charitable and non-profit organizations are potential conduits for these groups. Moreover, in the war on terrorism political activists and protest groups everywhere face new restrictions on their association and movement.
An institutional or procedural approach to democracy implies “that no group in civil society—including religious groups—can a priori be prohibited from forming a political party. Constraints on political parties may only be imposed after a party, by its actions, violates democratic principles. The “twin tolerations—freedom for democratically elected governments and freedom for religious organizations in civil and political society—serve as the minimal definition of democracy.
A prominent civil society can serve as the natural challenge to the autocratic state and thereby facilitate the evolution of a political society within which democracy can be nurtured, liberal or otherwise. In addition to the state response, strengthening civil society against extremists and violent ideologies, as well as mobilising citizens in favour of democracy, are an essential part of the long-term response to terrorism. If civil society is to become an effective means of prevention in the struggle against terrorism, it needs to develop a systematic understanding of its potential and limitations. The war on terrorism and the restricted democracy doesn’t only squeeze out Islamists, but it prevent more liberal elements of civil society from participating in politics as well. That leaves most people without a political voice, caught between a distant, elitist and often corrupt government and a militant opposition rooted in fundamentalist Islam.Yet, to date, North Africa states has succeeded in manipulating, co-opting, or coercing civil society’s most politically effective organizations both secular and Islamist.
Conclusion and recommendationsThe long-term monopoly of video and audio mass media by the state has contributed to the consecration of a one-sided media which fundamentally serves official view points. Such types of media would eventually render the conveyed content or message rather far from expressing political plurality or cultural diversity within the society. Under the ongoing hegemony and monopoly, the opportunities for competition that might develop media performance, and the diversity and plurality of media outputs, diminish and almost vanish.
In countries that have never known freedom of expression, the war on terrorism has added to existing twilight conditions. It has become a further check on the progress towards democratic reform. Some countries are using the perceived threat of terrorism to justify new laws to stifle political opposition and free expression.
Journalists and media face a range of problems – restrictions on freedom of movement, increasingly strident demands from authorities to reveal sources of information, and undue pressure from political leaders to toe the official line on security issues.All Arab countries in North Africa still retain absolute control over radio and television broadcasting, especially land broadcasting. These countries, in their entirety, lack legislation that guarantees plurality and diversity in the ownership of means of audio and video mass media.
Lately much additional exceptional legislation has been increasingly enacted under the pretext of combating terrorism in North Africa. Such legislation tends to extend its impact to cover peaceful activities and opinions, if considered by the authorities in those countries to constitute “incitement to terrorism”.
The war against terror cannot be won by police force alone. Force is effective in defeating the terrorists that are already active, but it is useless in combating the regeneration of terrorists. Poverty and extremism incite suicide bombers to bluster. Salafism represents a very attractive philosophy for unemployed Maghreb youth searching for meaning. Work must be done to improve the living conditions of the Maghreb and terminate its conversion into a breeding ground for radical Islamists.
The chances for promoting media freedom are conditional upon the adoption and promulgation of serious reform programs, as well as the governments political will to achieve political, constitutional and legislative reform. This would eventually secure the balance between authorities and put an end to the control by the executive authority of the legislative and judicial authorities. Thus, the rule of law and judicial independence will be promoted, and the right to intellectual, political and partial plurality will be consecrated, as well as the right of civil society organizations to practice their roles, without governmental intervention.
Recommendations
•States have a duty to protect their citizens from terrorist acts. At the same time, any measure to counter terrorism must be proportionate to the actual threat in the country.
•The principles of human rights and non-discrimination must be respected at all times, especially regarding measures adopted by states against terrorism.
•It is urgent to put an end to the state of emergency laws used in certain countries, and to revise the anti terrorism exceptional legislation, in a way that would prevent the usage thereof in the incrimination of opinions, ideas and circulation of information.
•It is important that governments commit themselves to freedom of information, and give regular as well as easy access to information in order to enable as broad participation as possible in the effort to stem terrorism.
•In order to create a wider support of human rights, civil society needs to market its concerns more creatively. Therefore human rights defenders in their national contexts must be supported, so that they can monitor and report on violations by state and non-state actors without fear of revenge.
•Developing coordination mechanisms and joint action with human rights organizations and civil society institutions to face the pressures and violations committed under the anti-terrorist law.
•Appealing to civil society institutions to develop effective training programs for journalists and media professionals, especially among youth, in coordination with trade union organizations and press and media institutions. In the meantime, it is necessary, while devising these programs, to ensure that trainees accomplish knowledge accumulation. More attention should be attached to application-based trainings which help promote professional performance and deepen the legal awareness of media professionals of the space of freedom and the ethical responsibilities required by such freedom.
•Elimination of the restrictions imposed on the freedom of publication of newspapers. Instead, newspapers should be published upon notification systems. All forms of prior control on newspapers should be abolished, and banning newspapers without a court judgment should be prohibited.
Al-Shikaki Ahmed
Political Researcher in CERMAM
Master in Political Sciences
DEA in Development Studies
Permanent link to this entry (permalink)
- Origin CERMAM
- http://www.cermam.org/en/logs/dossier/the_impact_of_the_war_on_terro_2/
- Publié le 7 June 2007
