Kazakhstan to Tighten Internet Control

By Alishba I. Kassim
Impunity Watch Reporter, Asia

ALMATY, Kazakhstan – Kazakhstan’s parliament has approved a law tightening government control of the internet. The new bill will subject chat rooms, blogs, and other social networking sites to potential criminal prosecution.

Media activists in Kazakhstan have been opposing the law and say it will vastly limit freedom of speech, and is designed to allow arbitrary crackdowns on anyone opposing Nursultan Kazarbayev, Kazakhstan’s president.

Kazakh authorities have denied the media’s allegations, and instead maintain that the new law is aimed to curb the distribution of child pornography, extremist literature, and other “unsuitable” material. “The law is not a regulation of the internet. The amendments introduced to the law are aimed at stopping the dissemination of illegal information on the internet,” the government’s state information agency said.

The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), Europe’s main human rights and security agency, has criticized the bill. Miklos Harszti, a representative on media freedom, said the law “limits the freedom of the internet and media freedom in general. Its adoption would be a step backwards in the democratization of Kazakhstan’s media governance.”

He further said that Kazakhstan is due to take over chairmanship of the OSCE in six months and “refusing to enact this law will send a strong signal that the forthcoming OSCE chairmanship of Kazakhstan in 2010 intends to fully honor the country’s OSCE media freedom commitments.”

Several leaders from Kazakhstan’s political opposition as well as the media community have started to stage small protests in Almaty, Kazakhstan’s largest city.

For more information, please see:

Al Jazeera – Kazakhstan to Tighten Internet Law – June 26, 2009

Daily Times – Kazakhstan Adopts Tough Internet Law – June 25, 2009

Radio Liberty – Kazakhstan Adopts Controversial Internet Law – June 25, 2009

French Polynesian Nuclear Test Veterans Denied Compensation

By Angela Marie Watkins
Impunity Watch Reporter, Oceania

PAPEETE, French Polynesia – French Polynesia’s Nuclear Workers’ Association, Moruroa E. Tatou, is dismayed that the Papeete labor court has thrown out compensation claim cases by eight former test site workers. This morning, the court found that under local law the complaints cannot be ruled on.

However, the court found that the Atomic Energy Commissariat had failed in its obligation as an employer to provide security and awarded 11,000 US dollars to each of the three children of a deceased local veteran.

French Polynesians who have had their claims for compensation for the effects of nuclear testing rejected say they won’t give up their bids for redress.

John Doom, of Moruroa E. Tatou, says eight people who took their cases to French Polynesia’s industrial relations tribunal were unsuccessful.

He says the three surviving workers have leukemia, and they and the five widows will consult with lawyers over how to continue with their bids.

“We will not give up anyhow, we will continue this fight and represent again the three who were not accepted, and these three have leukemia,” said Doom.

For more information, please see:
New Zealand International Radio – Former Moruroa workers fail in nuclear testing compensation bids – 26 June 2009

New Zealand International Radio – French Polynesian test veterans dismayed at Tahiti court decision – 26 June 2009

Radio Australia – French Polynesia rejects nuclear compensation – 26 June 2009

Journalists Arrested Daily in Iran

By Meredith Lee-Clark
Impunity Watch Reporter, Middle East

TEHRAN, Iran – The BBC, Newsweek, and the Washington Times are among several western news organizations that have recently announced that their correspondents in Iran have disappeared or been detained, allegedly as a result of the Iranian government’s crackdown on media freedom.

Reporters Without Borders, an international organization that advocates for freedom of the media, condemned the disappearances, along with the arrests of several Iranian journalists.  The organization also reported that the entire editorial staff of Kalemeh Sabz, a newspaper owned by opposition presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi, was arrested by plain clothes agents from the office of Tehran’s prosecutor Saeed Mortazavi.  Mortazavi has previously come under international scrutiny due to implications of torture, illegal detentions, and the coercion of false confessions.

“Iran is in the midst of a violent and arbitrary crackdown on reformist protesters that has already claimed lives and has led to over a thousand arrests,” said Sarah Leah Whitson of Human Rights Watch.  “The role of Mortazavi in the crackdown suggests that the authorities are preparing to bring trumped-up charges against its opponents.”

Some Iranian reporters have begun to publicly advocate for media freedom.  On June 23, 180 Iranian journalists wrote an open letter to Iran’s government and the public, protesting the “deplorable and critical” state of Iran’s media and calling upon the government to abide by the Iranian constitution and to allow reporters to do their duty.  As of June 25, the Committee to Protect Journalists estimated that approximately forty journalists and media workers had been arrested by the Iranian government since the election on June 12.  One media outlet has declared that Iran is now the world leader in imprisoning journalists.

President of the European Parliament, Hans-Gert Pottering, said that he planned to visit Iran, on an invitation of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi.  Ebadi told Reporters Without Borders that she has urged Pottering and the UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-Moon, to condemn Iran’s media repression and to investigate human rights abuses against journalists.

For more information, please see:

Committee to Protect Journalists – More Journalists Arrested in Iran; CPJ Seeks Their Release – 25 June 2009

Reporters Without Borders – Confessions, Arrests and a Campaign Against the Media – 25 June 2009

Washington Times – Washington Times Reporter Arrested in Iran – 24 June 2009

Human Rights Watch – Iran: Violent Crackdown on Protestors Widens – 23 June 2009

IFEX – Three More Journalists Detained, BBC Correspondent to be Deported – 22 June 2009

Formal Arrest Made in China of Prominent Activist

By Hyo-Jin Paik
Impunity Watch Reporter, Asia

BEIJING, China– Liu Xiaobo, one of China’s most prominent political activists, was formally arrested after being held for six months in a secret Beijing location.  Liu was taken from his home and held by the police without formal notification to his family until yesterday.

Liu XiaoboLiu Xiaobo (Source: BBC)

The police took Liu away one day before the publication of “Charter 08,” a document he co-authored with 300 other intellectuals calling for a new constitution, human rights, elections, freedom of speech and religion in China, and to end the Communist Party’s control over the military, courts and the government.

Beijing’s public security bureau claimed Liu is being arrested for “spreading of rumours and defaming of the government, aimed at subversion of the state and overthrowing the socialism system in recent years.”

Despite Chinese government’s allegations, there has been global support for Liu’s release.  Leader of the U.S. House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi wrote to China’s president asking for the release of Liu and other “prisoners of conscience.”

In addition, Amnesty International said, “This use of state security charges to punish activists for merely expressing their views must stop.  This is another act of desperation by a regime that is terrified of public opinion.”

Charter 08, published on the 60th anniversary of the promulgation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, also called for the abolition of a Chinese criminal code that allows imprisonment for “incitement to subvert state power,” which is the crime Liu is accused of committing.

Fighting back tears, Liu’s wife said, “I am so worried about him.  I don’t know how many more years he will be imprisoned now.”  She was allowed to see Liu during a supervised visit back in March where she noticed that he looked thin and pale.

The charge against Liu carries maximum of 15 years in jail, and Liu’s arrest is the highest-profile arrest of Chinese activists since last year.

For more information, please see:

AP – China arrests dissident who championed reforms – 24 June 2009

BBC – China activist formally arrested – 24 June 2009

CBS News – Chinese Media Says Dissident Liu Xiaobo Arrested – 24 June 2009

China Digital Times – Chinese Dissident Liu Xiaobo Formally Arrested – 23 June 2009

China Digital Times – Dissident Writer Liu Xiaobo Held in Secret after Sentence Ends – 9 June 2009

French Polynesian Court Rules For Nuclear Test Veteran

By Angela Marie Watkins
Impunity Watch Reporter, Oceania

PAPEETE, French Polynesia – French Polynesian court has ruled in favor of three children of a deceased nuclear weapons test veteran who sought compensation for the effects of the tests.

The court found that the Atomic Energy Commissariat had failed in its obligation as an employer to provide security and ordered that each claimant be paid 11,000 US dollars.

The Nuclear Workers’ Association Moruroa E. Tatou has expressed disappointment at the low compensation sum. However, today’s decision coincided with the French parliament beginning debates on a landmark bill for compensating the victims of nuclear tests carried out in French Polynesia and Algeria over more than three decades.

About 150,000 civilian and military personnel took part in 210 nuclear tests carried out in the Sahara desert and the Pacific between 1960 and 1996, many of whom later developed serious health problems.

The government unveiled a bill on compensating the test victims in March, after decades of denying its responsibility for fear the admission would have weakened its nuclear program during the Cold War.

Under the bill, which is to be put to the vote on June 30, a nine-member committee of physicians, led by a magistrate, will examine individual claims for compensation.

Defense Minister Herve Morin told the lower-house National Assembly that the bill, thirteen years after the end of the tests in the Pacific, will allow France to serenely close a chapter of its history.

For more information, please see:

New Zealand International Radio – French Polynesian Court rules in favour of nuclear test veteran’s children – 25 June 2009

New Zealand International Radio – France begins debating nuclear compensation bill – 25 June 2009

Australian News – French debate nuclear test compo – 26 June 2009