Attacks and threats against journalists
The dangers posed to journalists in Mexico has been an ongoing issue since the Mexican Revolution, but in more recent times the crimes against journalists include attacks, kidnappings, being forced into exile and murder. In August 2016, Reporters Without Borders wrote that Veracruz was "one of the most dangerous states in Mexico for journalists," while also reporting that "176 cases of violence, intimidation, threats, aggression, cyber-attacks, blackmail, murder and enforced disappearance in which journalists were the victims from 2013 to June 2016." [5]
The Organization of American States (OAS) claims to uphold the principles that believe “the murder, kidnapping, intimidation of and/or threats to social communicators, as well as the material destruction of communications media violates the fundamental rights of individuals and strongly restrict freedom of expression. It is the duty of the state to prevent and investigate such occurrences, to punish their perpetrators and to ensure that victims receive due compensation.” [6] [7]
In a 2010 issue for the Committee to Protect Journalists, they describe the criminal justice system in Mexico as failing journalists from being unable to "successfully prosecute more than 90 percent of press-related crimes over the past decade." [2]
In a 2015 article in Foreign Affairs, Senior Partners in Control Risks Geert Abusers' (specializing in Brazil) and Nick Panes (specializing in Mexico City) claim that "local Mexican press is not free," [8] bringing attention to more recent corruption scandals that are often made public through the international press.
History
The history of censorship in Mexico can be traced to the extension of inquisitorial practices from the Spanish Inquisition [9] into Spain's New World territories in North, Central and South America. Censorship practices that had long been under the control of the Catholic Church were now under the discretion of a newly independent governments. They took actions through secular and legal channels rather than religious orthodoxy. Censorship in the 19th century occurred in many forms dissimilar to those that came before it and was dominated by the constant struggle between journalists and government officials as to what constituted free speech. [10] Issues of a free press remained salient throughout the Mexican Revolution and the following post-revolutionary rise of communist expression in the arts and journalism. [11] Although there are constitutional guarantees of freedom of expression, the reality is government control of media and continued silencing of journalists through violence and self-censorship due to intimidation. The current president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, has called out critical journalists by name.
Censorship by the Inquisition
The Holy Office of the Inquisition established by decree of King Philip II in 1569 created a centralized institution in Mexico to ensure religious orthodoxy. Its powers included censorship of expressions counter to Catholic doctrine and practice. [12] The function of the Holy Office in censorship continued from its establishment until the beginning of the 19th century. [13] After Mexico gained its independence from Spain in 1821 and dissolved the Inquisition (formally in 1812 but effectively by 1820) censorship changed in Mexico.
Although there was no separate Office of the Inquisition in New Spain until 1569, many practices of the Spanish Inquisition reached Mexico with the arrival of friars seeking to convert indigenous populations to Christianity and extirpate native religions. [14] Censorship prior to the establishment of the Holy Office of the Mexican Inquisition was in many ways similar to that which came after. Leaders of both periods maintained the aim of silencing individuals who spoke out against the Catholic Church or its practices and made their mission the institution of uniform spiritual and social order. Unique to this early period were censorship efforts that focused more directly on countering the heretical speech of groups that would later fall outside the jurisdiction of the Holy Office upon its codification in the 1570s. Such groups included non-Catholic or recently converted indigenous Mexicans who were disproportionately accused of idolatry and blasphemy. [15]
Prior to the creation of a formal tribunal, Inquisitional efforts were carried out by mendicants in monastic trials (1522-1534) and then by bishops who served as ecclesiastic judges (1535-1571). [15] These early monastic inquisitors focused their attention disproportionately on indigenous cases of idolatry and blasphemy and modeled their investigations and trials on informal structures they had assumed from medieval tradition. [13] They concerned themselves with investigating claims made against individuals and punished those who they found to uphold religious and spiritual values contrary to Catholic tradition. Although this monastic form of inquisition was replaced with the ecclesiastic form in central Mexico following the arrival of Bishops in New Spain in 1536, monastics in peripheral settlements continued to exercise intense persecution of natives who did not live up to their expectations as converted Catholics for at least the following three decades. [13] Fray Diego de Landa used torture as late as 1562 in his Inquisitorial procedures against indigenous Mexicans in the province of Yucatán and infamously burned Maya codices (bark paper books) containing pre-Columbian hieroglyphic writings in an attempt to eliminate indigenous access to non-Catholic spiritual guidance and rituals. [16] However, highly visible forms of censorship such as Landa's public destruction of indigenous codices occurred inconsistently and represent just part of the many smaller incidents of censorship that worked to systematically obscure ideas the Spanish believed were dangerous and subversive to upholding the Catholic faith and social order of colonial Mexico. [17] Smaller instances of idolatry that did not find themselves at the center of public burnings constituted the bulk of early censorship efforts against indigenous people and the zeal with which the Spanish perused non-Christian idols were rooted in their concern of exerting social order over an unfamiliar religion they did understand. [18]
The bishop led ecclesiastic Inquisition that followed this early monastic period was similarly active in its prosecution of the recently converted indigenous people of Mexico. Although these bishops led Inquisitions did not prosecute a large number of indigenous Mexicans before formal tribunals, they did often extend their trials further than colonial oversight in Spain would have preferred. [19] The first Bishop of Mexico Fray Juan de Zumárraga (1536-1546) tried 156 cases before the ecclesiastic Inquisition and, although defendants included Spaniards, mixed caste persons and a high number of those suspected to be illegally practicing the Jewish faith, it was Zumárraga's trials against indigenous Mexicans that proved to be his most controversial. [13] In his most recognized trial Zumárraga brought cacique of Texcoco, Don Carlos Chichimecatecolt before his ecclesiastical Inquisition and tried him as a "dogmatizer against the faith". [15] Despite the Bishop being unable to solicit a testimony that Don Carlos had explicitly practiced the more grave offence of idolatry and idol possession, he was executed for speaking out against the Church. [15] Although he was reprimanded by inquisitors in Spain for his actions, Zumárraga and the bishop inquisitors of this period dealt out harsh punishments to indigenous peoples for simply speaking out against the Church. Both Spanish officials and colonists would come to view this intensive force as a shortcoming of the central direction of the New World Inquisition in the following years. [13] [19] In fact, it was this extreme treatment of indigenous people and dissenters of the Church that would lead to the formal establishment of the Holy Office in Central America in 1571, after the decree of Phillip II in 1569. [15] [19] By the end of this period a strong precedent was set as to what could and could not be said in colonial Mexico and what objects one could and could not possess.
Censorship of Books 1569-1820
The Holy Office of the Inquisition was formally extended to the Americas by decree in 1569. However, although the Office now practiced censorship under specific guidelines, such censorship was not always consistent in its enforcement or standards throughout the Mexican Inquisition. [12] Similar to the preceding period, the censorship efforts undertaken by the Holy Office varied by location, time, and provincial discretion. In general the tribunal of the Mexican Inquisition operated under the same procedural guidelines as the civil criminal trials of the day. [13] The main differences being the religious nature of the investigations and the fact that the inquisitor, who served as the judge in the final trial, was also the one who would initially gather evidence against the subject. [12] It remained controversial for people to speak out against the Church and as a result suspected heretics could be brought before the tribunal if they aroused the suspicion of their neighbors, friends or Holy Office Officials. [20] The aim of these trials was to silence dissenters and eliminate visible opposition to the Church and Crown with the ultimate hope of bringing them back into alignment with Church doctrine. [13] The means by which this was achieved was the imprisonment, torture and finally public ridicule faced in the Auto-da-fé (a public display of humiliation or punishment for those proven guilty before the tribunal) of those convicted before the Holy Office. [12]
One of the most explicit forms of censorship that the Holy Office introduced was the Index. The Index of Prohibited Books, which was a list of prohibited reading materials given to the people of New Spain in 1573 and enforced through the Holy Office, became one of the chief means through which censorship in colonial Mexico was attained and one of the most intensive measures taken by New World inquisitors to suppress information. [21] Book censorship was one of the most consistent methods of censorship and remained a prominent measure taken by the Office even as other priorities shifted. [22] Although enforcement of the Index by the Holy Office varied from location to location, even distant tribunals of the Inquisition such as the one in New Spain had the authority to expurgate, prohibit, or remove from circulation any work it found offensive on its own volition. [21] Anyone found in possession of prohibited materials could be investigated by the Mexican Inquisition and subject to imprisonment and subsequent trial. [20] For example, in a 1655 investigation of the private library of colonial Mexican architect Melchor Perez de Soto, the Holy Office confiscated 1,592 books and permanently impounded many that did not even appear on the Index because they were written in Flemish and could not be formally reviewed by the local Inquisition. In instances such as this, the Mexican Inquisition had full discretion over what it would and would not allow under its jurisdiction and the boundaries of its own localized censorship gave it rather complete control over the intellectual life of its subjects. [20] The Index also gave the Inquisition oversight of all shipments into and out of colonial Mexico. Inquisitors had the right to search all cargo of a ship arriving from Europe in a process called visitation and the authority to confiscate anything they found offensive. While this process was mainly intended to find prohibited print material it was not limited to such items. It is likely that many of these searches were not thorough enough to catch all prohibited materials and depending on the port of entry visitations were sometimes incredibly lax. [22]
Aside from book censorship the Holy Office was also responsible for censoring countless other forms of written and crafted materials that were found to be offensive to the church. After the great auto-de-fé of 1649, an event that found 109 people guilty under the tribunal's codes (13 of which were put to death), the focus of the Inquisition in Mexico shifted from spectacle punishments to more mundane enforcement of smaller offences. [23] This included an increased vigilance of inquisitors over newly printed materials like pamphlets and plays. [23] Anything from dramatic scripts to Protestant icons that made their way across the ocean and arrived in Mexican ports became subject to searches similar to those of illicit books banned on the Index. The state of censorship in Mexico trended this way through much of the 17th and 18th century, going through phases of more intense and lax enforcement depending on when and where the censorship was occurring but largely focusing its attention on lesser offences than it had in the 16th and early 17th century. By the end of the colonial period the Holy Office increasingly became a tool of political ends and officials or prominent community members often used the tribunal as a means of silencing opponents through the wide scope of religious crimes they could accuse their foes of. [10]
Censorship in post-independence 19th-century Mexico
At the start of the 19th century censorship efforts were still legally bound to the Holy Office and the Mexican Inquisition carried out its duties much like it had at the close of the preceding century. However, in the years following 1812 the channels through which censorship operated changed rather quickly and by the time Mexico gained its independence in 1821 censorship had begun to be redefined through various secular mechanisms, mainly the press. [10] This process of managing censorship through the press began to take shape around the turn of the first decade. It was catalyzed by the Spanish Cortes' abolition of its old codes of censorship in favor of speech through article 371 of the 1812 Spanish Constitution of Cadiz. [24] [25] The Constitution's liberal changes quickly made their way to Mexico but were not initially influential due to colonial officials' present concern over the insurgencies of Miguel Hidalgo and other revolutionaries. [10] As a result, much of press and speech continued to be censored on the same religious and moral grounds they had been in preceding decades. [26] [25] Despite the apathy of colonial officials to consider a truly free press and the repeal of the 1812 Spanish Constitution in Spain in 1814, much of the 1812 Constitution's language and content, including its liberal conception of a free press, would find itself worked into the 1824 Constitution of Mexico and continue to influence the nature of Mexican censorship well after the nation's independence in 1821. [27]
However, the rather liberal and unrestricted sentiments pertaining to the press found in the 1824 Constitution would be modified soon after their implementation and it was not until the 1828 reform of the Constitution that press censorship began to resemble the form it would take for the rest of the 19th century. [10] The most fundamental of these changes was the redesign of the press jury. The press jury in 19th century Mexico was a jury of citizens that would assemble to hear complaints issued against publications and then deliberate over whether they were subversive, immoral, or slanderous. Although jury size fluctuated throughout the time the press jury was in use, its redesign in 1828 required 9 press jury members to deem a work subversive, immoral, or slanderous in order to bring the case before a lower criminal court, creating a buffer between defendant and prosecution that had not existed during the Mexican Inquisition. [10] The press jury would find itself in a tenuous position soon after its new codes went into effect when in 1829 President Vicente Guerrero gave the state the power to punish journalists without the use of a jury and then again in 1831 when the subsequent conservative government of Anastasio Bustamante placed all crimes of the press under the direct discretion of judges. [26] [10] Further, in 1839 then interim president Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna issued a proclamation that allowed his government to pursue and apprehend authors whose works it deemed salacious, investing itself with the power to imprison journalists without the use of a jury. [26] Although this proclamation was repealed only three weeks after it was issued, the punishments brought against journalists who deviated from safe topics during this time often included significant prison time. The culture of repression surrounding decrees like Santa Anna's were pervasive enough to keep writers from signing their work out of fear of being investigated: a problem that became so widespread that in 1855 President Ignacio Comonfort made it illegal to publish anonymously. [26] Ultimately, these initial backlashes were not the end of the press jury which found itself fall in and out of favor with the various governments of the time; they do, however, mark a trend of government mandated censorship in the early to mid 19th century that was characterized by rapid changes and inconsistent standards as to what constituted a free press. [10]
The 1857 Constitution signified a turning point for government censorship of expression and ushered in a more liberal conception of free speech than had existed in the first half of the 19th century. [28] Building off the Constitution of 1824, Articles 6 and 7 of the new Constitution guaranteed freedom of speech and the unrestricted expression of ideas. [29] [30] However, it was not until after the War of the Reform ended in 1861, and the Law of 2 February 1861 was enacted to regulate article 7 of the Constitution, that the press juries operation was laid out in clearer terms and re-instituted as a means of press regulation. [10] The press juries consistent use would be delayed until the French Occupation of Mexico ceased, and the Law of 2 February was successfully implemented through an identical text in the 1868 modification to the Constitution. This allowed freedom of the press and press juries to continue to operate with relatively few interruptions until 1882. [10] The rise of Porfirio Díaz in the late 1870s and his subsequent seven terms as president would see freedom of the press and speech censored mainly through threats of violence directed at newspapers and reporters. [31] In the closing years of the 19th century censorship was once again implemented through the press and the changes Porfirio and his government's made would continue to define freedom of speech and expression in Mexico into the revolution of the 20th century. [31]
Freedom of the press or freedom of the media is the fundamental principle that communication and expression through various media, including printed and electronic media, especially published materials, should be considered a right to be exercised freely. Such freedom implies the absence of interference from an overreaching state; its preservation may be sought through a constitution or other legal protection and security. It is in opposition to paid press, where communities, police organizations, and governments are paid for their copyrights.
Reporters Without Borders is an international non-profit and non-governmental organization headquartered in Paris, which focuses on safeguarding the right to freedom of information. It describes its advocacy as founded on the belief that everyone requires access to the news and information, in line with Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that recognises the right to receive and share information regardless of frontiers, along with other international rights charters. RSF has consultative status at the United Nations, UNESCO, the Council of Europe, and the International Organisation of the Francophonie.
Internet censorship in Tunisia decreased in January 2011 following the ousting of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. The successor acting government removed filters on social networking sites such as YouTube.
The Mexican Inquisition was an extension of the Spanish Inquisition into New Spain. The Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire was not only a political event for the Spanish, but a religious event as well. In the early 16th century, the Reformation, the Counter-Reformation, and the Inquisition were in full force in most of Europe. The Catholic Monarchs of Castile and Aragon had just conquered the last Muslim stronghold in the Iberian Peninsula, the kingdom of Granada, giving them special status within the Catholic realm, including great liberties in the conversion of the native peoples of Mesoamerica. When the Inquisition was brought to the New World, it was employed for many of the same reasons and against the same social groups as suffered in Europe itself, minus the Indigenous to a large extent. Almost all of the events associated with the official establishment of the Palace of the Inquisition occurred in Mexico City, where the Holy Office had its own major building. The official period of the Inquisition lasted from 1571 to 1820, with an unknown number of individuals prosecuted.
The Portuguese Inquisition, officially known as the General Council of the Holy Office of the Inquisition in Portugal, was formally established in Portugal in 1536 at the request of King John III. Although King Manuel I had asked for the installation of the Inquisition in 1515 to fulfill the commitment of his marriage with Maria of Aragon, it was only after his death that Pope Paul III acquiesced. In the period after the Medieval Inquisition, it was one of three different manifestations of the wider Christian Inquisition, along with the Spanish Inquisition and Roman Inquisition. The Goa Inquisition was an extension of the Portuguese Inquisition in colonial-era Portuguese India. The Portuguese Inquisition was terminated in 1821.
The Tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition, commonly known as the Spanish Inquisition, was established in 1478 by the Catholic Monarchs, King Ferdinand II of Aragon and Queen Isabella I of Castile. It began toward the end of the Reconquista and was intended to maintain Catholic orthodoxy in their kingdoms and to replace the Medieval Inquisition, which was under papal control. It became the most substantive of the three different manifestations of the wider Catholic Inquisition, along with the Roman Inquisition and the Portuguese Inquisition. The "Spanish Inquisition" may be defined broadly as operating in Spain and in all Spanish colonies and territories, which included the Canary Islands, the Kingdom of Naples, and all Spanish possessions in North America and South America. According to some modern estimates, around 150,000 people were prosecuted for various offences during the three-century duration of the Spanish Inquisition, of whom between 3,000 and 5,000 were executed, approximately 2.7 percent of all cases. The Inquisition, however, since the creation of the American courts, has never had jurisdiction over the indigenous. The King of Spain ordered "that the inquisitors should never proceed against the Indians, but against the old Christians and their descendants and other persons against whom in these kingdoms of Spain it is customary to proceed".
Censorship was an essential element of Portuguese national culture throughout the country's history up until the Carnation Revolution in 1974. From its earliest history Portugal was subject to laws limiting freedom of expression. This was mainly due to the influence of the Church since the time of Ferdinand I, who requested that Pope Gregory XI institute episcopal censorship. Later, the censorship would also apply to the publication of other written works. Portuguese citizens still remember the Estado Novo's censorship policy, institutionalizing strict control over the media, resorting to measures used previously against newspapers and systematic sequestering of books. In fact, every political regime was very careful with the legislation related to the area of press freedom—in most cases restricting it. In the five centuries of the history of Portuguese press, four were marked by censorship.
Censorship in Cuba is the topic of accusations put forward by several foreign groups-organizations and political leaders, as well as Cuban dissidents. The accusations led the European Union to impose sanctions from 2003 to 2008 as well as statements of protest from groups, governments, and noted individuals.
The World Press Freedom Index (WPFI) is an annual ranking of countries compiled and published by Reporters Without Borders (RSF) since 2002 based upon the organization's own assessment of the countries' press freedom records in the previous year. It intends to reflect the degree of freedom that journalists, news organizations, and netizens have in each country, and the efforts made by authorities to respect this freedom. Reporters Without Borders is careful to note that the WPFI only deals with press freedom and does not measure the quality of journalism in the countries it assesses, nor does it look at human rights violations in general.
Censorship in Myanmar results from government policies in controlling and regulating certain information, particularly on religious, ethnic, political, and moral grounds.
The working conditions of journalists in Algeria have evolved since the 1962 independence. After 1990, the Code of Press was suppressed, allowing for greater freedom of press. However, with the civil war in the 1990s, more than 70 journalists were assassinated by terrorists. Sixty journalists were killed between 1993 and 1998 in Algeria.
There are over ten different languages in the Israeli media, with Hebrew as the predominant one. Press in Arabic caters to the Arab citizens of Israel, with readers from areas including those governed by the Palestinian National Authority. During the eighties and nineties, the Israeli press underwent a process of significant change as the media gradually came to be controlled by a limited number of organizations, whereas the papers published by political parties began to disappear. Today, three large, privately owned conglomerates based in Tel Aviv dominate the mass media in Israel.
Nawaat is an independent collective blog co-founded by Tunisians Sami Ben Gharbia, Sufian Guerfali and Riadh Guerfali in 2004, with Malek Khadraoui joining the organization in 2006. The goal of Nawaat's founders was to provide a public platform for Tunisian dissident voices and debates. Nawaat aggregates articles, visual media, and other data from a variety of sources to provide a forum for citizen journalists to express their opinions on current events. The site does not receive any donations from political parties. During the events leading to the Tunisian Revolution of 2011, Nawaat advised Internet users in Tunisia and other Arab nations about the dangers of being identified online and offered advice about circumventing censorship. Nawaat is an Arabic word meaning core. Nawaat has received numerous awards from international media organizations in the wake of the Arab Spring wave of revolutions throughout the Middle East and North Africa.
Censorship in Armenia is generally non-existent, except in some limited incidents.
Censorship in Serbia is prohibited by the Serbian constitution. Freedom of expression and of information are protected by international and national law, even if the guarantees enshrined in the laws are not coherently implemented. However, instances of censorship and self-censorship have been reported; as of 2015 Serbia was deemed "partly free" as judged by Freedom House and ranked 59th out of 180 countries in the 2016 Press Freedom Index report compiled by Reporters Without Borders. According to the 2015 Freedom House report, media outlets and journalists in Serbia have been subject to pressure from politicians and owners over editorial contents. Also, Serbian media have been heavily dependent on advertising contracts and government subsidies which make journalists and media outlets exposed to economic pressures, such as payment defaults, termination of contracts and the like.
TV, magazines, and newspapers are all operated by both state-owned and for-profit corporations which depend on advertising, subscription, and other sales-related revenues.
The Kingdom of Bahrain is deemed ‘Not Free’ in terms of Net Freedom and Press Freedom by Freedom House. The 2016 World Press Freedom Index by Reporters Without Borders ranked Bahrain 162nd out of 180 countries.
This list of Internet censorship and surveillance in the Americas provides information on the types and levels of Internet censorship and surveillance that is occurring in countries in the Americas.
This list of Internet censorship and surveillance in Africa provides information on the types and levels of Internet censorship and surveillance that is occurring in countries in Africa.
Freedom of the press in China refers to the journalism standards and its freedom and censorship exercised by the government of China. The Constitution of the People's Republic of China guarantees "freedom of speech [and] of the press" which the government, in practice, routinely violates with total impunity, according to Reporters Without Borders.
