Photojournalist silhouette documenting war or conflict. stock.adobe.com/hamara

This showcase session looked at how harassment, intimidation and attacks against journalists and the media have increased worldwide. The session was co-hosted by the IBA Legal Practice Division and the IBA's Human Rights Institute.

Karen Kaiser, Senior Vice President, General Counsel, Corporate Secretary at The Associated Press; Chair, IBA Media Law Committee (KK): At least 360 journalists are [currently] imprisoned around the world, most of them held under arbitrary detention, which means without proper legal basis, on fabricated charges, denied fair trials and in violation of human rights standards. They are political prisoners whose crime was journalism, holding the powerful to account and informing the public. Each detained journalist represents an information void, stories untold, corruption unexposed, communities left in the dark and a chilling effect on those who remain.

Jason, you were held in Evin Prison in Iran for 544 days. Can you describe the circumstances of your arrest and your imprisonment?

Jason Rezaian, Washington Post: My wife and I were both accredited journalists in Iran. I was working for the Washington Post as their bureau chief. She was working for Bloomberg News. We’d both been working for years with the full knowledge of the Iranian state. We were exiting our apartment and when the elevator doors opened in the garage, there were three plain-clothed people with guns pointed at us. They took us back up to our apartment, forced us to allow them entry. We had to relinquish all the passwords to our electronics devices. [This is] without warrants, without explanation of what we might be charged with, without even an explanation of who they were. We were put into an unmarked van with tinted windows and driven off to Evin Prison. Except for court appearances, I would not leave that prison again for another year and a half.

When we talk about the arrest and imprisonment of journalists, especially foreign correspondents, it’s kind of a two-pronged win for [the state]. They are trying to extract something of leverage from our home governments – we’re hostages – but also sending [a] chilling message. And it works. Since my arrest in July 2014, the Washington Post hasn’t had anybody based in Tehran. The New York Times hasn’t had anybody based in Tehran since 2019. The number of Tehran-based bylines in major international newspapers has decreased dramatically. Even the wire services have challenges. It’s a very clear attack on journalism and democracy.

KK: Caoilfhionn, as a leading human rights lawyer, you’ve represented many journalists and media outlets over the years who’ve faced arbitrary detention. Can you walk us through where you’ve seen the arc from detaining a journalist to destroying the entire media organisation and targeting media owners?

Caoilfhionn Gallagher KC, Caoilfhionn Gallagher KC Strategy; Co-Vice Chair, IBA Media Law Committee: What I’m seeing now is authoritarian regimes going after the people who run the newspapers, the publishers. [For example] Maria Ressa, who won the Nobel Peace Prize a number of years ago in the Philippines, founded Rappler, an organisation set up to speak truth to power. Going after Maria as the owner, the founder, the editor in chief of Rappler, wasn’t just picking off an individual journalist, it was designed to try to target the entirety of the media ecosystem in the Philippines and to send a message. That’s the same thing that’s happened to my client, Mzia Amaglobeli, who in her early 20s founded a media organisation in Georgia and then a decade later founded a second. And these are two important independent media organisations in Georgia which hold power to account. Again, because of that, they’ve been targeted. She’s now been in prison since January, simply for the crime of conspiracy to commit journalism. Because make no mistake, that's really what we’re talking about.

It sends a chilling message to anyone else in that country who wants to be a journalist, who wants to speak truth to power. If they can imprison Maria Ressa, if they can imprison Mzia Amaglobeli, they can imprison anyone.

KK: Why do autocrats seek to silence the press first and how does this sequence typically unfold?

Baroness Helena Kennedy LT KC, Director, IBA’s Human Rights Institute (IBAHRI): Because what we know about autocrats almost invariably is that they're narcissists and there’s a way in which they cannot bear criticism. And the idea that there are those who are writing and critiquing their behaviours, their authoritarian inclination [is] to go after anybody who is undermining them in the eyes of their populace. The other thing is that the journalist is exposing corruption, is exposing abuses of human rights, is exposing the underbelly of authoritarianism, and so they can’t bear it. The trajectory is almost always that they go after the journalists, and then they go after the lawyers of the journalists, they go after the judges who are making independent assessments of cases and so on. So, you get the capture of institutions. The whole thing is actually a trajectory and right up at the front are journalists, and it’s because that fourth pillar is vital to the sustaining of democracy and the voice of the people.

Jose Carlos Zamora, Regional Director for the Americas, Committee to Protect Journalists: We are definitely living in [a period of] authoritarian regression. One [trend] is the use of the law to persecute journalists, to criminalise them, to imprison them. There’s a big range of how they use [the law], sometimes it can be to simply use SLAPPs [strategic lawsuits against public participation] or have journalists [through] civil lawsuits having to focus all of their time and resources in going to hearings and on lengthy processes and spending their limited funds on legal fees, all the way [through] to imprisonment.

The other thing we’re seeing is [in regards to] journalism from exile. Journalists have had to flee their countries and move to a new safe country, which is an entirely new way of doing journalism and it's not easy. It’s especially difficult when journalists still have families in their country of origin [and] their sources are there. We’re seeing transnational persecution. For example, journalists from Nicaragua who went into exile in Costa Rica – which was a safe haven – and now [authorities from their home country] are starting to persecute them in Costa Rica, so they have to go into a second exile. Unfortunately, they are still assassinating journalists throughout the world. But really, the main mechanism has become the use of the law.

Mark Stephens CBE, Consultant, Howard Kennedy; Co-Chair, IBAHRI (MS): Diane, could you share the story of your son James, his work, his capture and the journey that led you to founding the James Foley Foundation?

Diane Foley, President, James Foley Foundation (DF): Jim was a freelance conflict journalist. He was kidnapped twice, once in Libya and his final kidnapping was in Syria. His was more of an opportunistic hostage taking. ISIS was looking for ransom payments and clout as they took over northern Syria, and Jim was there with some of his colleagues. He was kidnapped in 2012 and held captive for nearly two years before he was brutally beheaded in 2014. And his murder was really an incredible wake-up call, for our government and for the world, in many ways, on the dangers journalists face.

Because even though the US has made a lot of progress, at the time when Jim was taken, along with three colleagues – another journalist, Steven Sotloff from Florida, and two aid workers, Kayla Mueller and Peter Kassig – they were really considered collateral damage by our country. Our country essentially lied to us. I don't want everyone to think we do everything right because they did not do very well by us at that time. And in all fairness to our government, they didn’t know what to do with us. At that time, we had no hostage enterprise. We had no structure, no one responsible for bringing an American citizen home unless they were a soldier. But they instead led me to believe Jim was the highest priority.

MS: It’s because of your case that American policy has changed.

DF: I think part of it was the shock of the murder of those four innocent Americans. Our administration did not expect it. It wasn’t just me at all. I merely stated the fact that we were misled and Jim, in fact, was abandoned, as were the others. Eventually, when Stephen was killed three weeks later, Peter a month later and Kayla later, our voice is what got the Obama administration to realise they had to look at this. How are we as a government handling hostage cases? And what they found was rather appalling to the government. So they asked the National Counterterrorism Center to conduct an in-government and out-of-government evaluation of how our country handled it. And in June 2015 the [Hostage Recovery Fusion Cell] was established.

MS: Paul, your mother Daphne was assassinated for her fearless reporting. What accountability have you achieved and what have you done to get that?

It was the Council of Europe that proved to be the most consequential, because we went to its parliamentary assembly, campaigned for a special rapporteur, [who] was assigned and then issued a number of recommendations.

MS: Negar, you personally live with the threat of assassination. Could you share what it means to live and work under such constant danger?

Negar Mojtahedi, Journalist, Iran International: Iran International focuses on Iran news in both Farsi and English. In 2022 at the height of the ‘Women, Life, Freedom’ movement, my network was doing a lot to amplify the voices of this movement that was sparked by the in-custody death of Mahsa Amini, who was killed while under police custody [after being detained] for allegedly not wearing her mandatory hijab properly. In September 2022, then-Iranian Intelligence Minister Esmail Khatib went on state television and declared my news network to be a terrorist entity. He said that that gives Iran the right to kill any Iran International journalist, and I quote, ‘anywhere, in any country, anytime’. So my colleague Fardad Farahzad, and my former colleague Sima Sabet, were both targets of a murder for hire plot on UK soil. And the perpetrator was allegedly hired by the Iranian regime to kill both of them. This was foiled before the attempted targeting could even take place. But the perpetrator was offered $200,000 to carry out the attack. Why is that important? Because it shows us that you don’t have to be ideological. You don’t have to be a supporter of the Iranian regime. As long as the price is right, you can get paid to kill journalists on Western soil.

Something they’re doing is that they are hiring young teenagers to carry out their attempts. It’s cost effective [and] they can use video games and Bitcoin and pay them that way. What they do, according to local intelligence and police officers, is they want to overwhelm the system with all these mini tasks that [local authorities] have to look after – a threat here, hostile surveillance there, et cetera. Then they can carry out something bigger behind the scenes.

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This is an abridged version of ‘LPD Showcase - killing the news: a global phenomenon’. The filmed session can be viewed in full here.