26
March 2021
ANALYSIS
In COVID-19 Fight, Free Speech Becomes Collateral Damage In trying to control the pandemic narrative, governments in the region have turned to draconian tools, muzzling media, arresting critics and bombarding social media giants with requests to take down posts and shut down accounts.
A
t first, journalist Tugay Can had no idea why he had been taken in for police questioning on March 25 last year in the Turkish port city of Izmir. Then cybercrime officers told him he was suspected of spreading fear and panic because of a report he wrote, published two days earlier, about COVID-19 outbreaks in two community health centres in the city that were subsequently quarantined. “After I confirmed it with my sources, I reported the situation”, Can, who at the time worked for the local Izmir newspaper Iz Gazete, told BIRN. Pressed to name his sources, Can refused. Hours of questioning resulted in a charge of spreading fake news and causing panic. The case was dropped several months later, but Can’s chilling experience was far from a one-off. According to the media rights watchdog Reporters Without Borders, Can was among 10 Turkish editors and reporters interrogated just in March of last year concerning their coverage of the pandemic that had just begun. “Governments are using the pandemic as an advantage over freedom speech,” Can said. Turkey is well-known for its jailing of journalists, but it was not the only country in the region to employ draconian tools to control the pandemic narrative. Nor have journalists been the only targets. BIRN has confirmed dozens of cases in which regular citizens have faced charges of causing panic on social media or in person. There are indications the true number of cases runs into the hundreds. Whether dealing with accurate but perhaps unflattering news reports or with what the World Health Organisation called last year an “infodemic” of false information, governments have not hesitated to turn to social media giants to get hold of the information that could help them track down those deemed to be breaking the rules. “Every government has a duty to pro-
mote reliable information and correct harmful and untrue allegations in order to protect the personal integrity and trust of citizens,” said Tea Gorjanc Prelevic, head of the Montenegrin NGO Human Rights Action. “But any measure taken to combat misinformation should not violate the fundamental right to expression.” Internet sites shut down Battling an invisible enemy, governments across the region have sought to restrict information while cracking down on media reporting or social media posts that deviate from the official narrative. ‘Misinformation’ has been criminalised. Some of these restrictions were part of the states of emergency that were declared; others were introduced with new legislation that outlasts any temporary emergency decrees. But who draws the line between the right to free speech and the need to preserve public order? In its November 2020 COVID and Free Speech report, the Council of Europe rights
Illustration: Unsplash.com/Erik Mclean.
Illustration: BIRN/Igor Vujcic.
body cautioned that “crisis situations should not be used as a pretext for restricting the public’s access to information or clamping down on critics.” But that’s precisely what has happened in some countries. In Hungary, the Penal Code was amended to criminalise the dissemination of “false or distorted facts capable of hindering or obstructing the efficiency of the protection efforts” for the duration of a state of emergency, first between March and June and again since November. Parliament subsequently passed a bill making it easier for governments to declare such emergencies in future. In March, the government introduced punishments of one to five years in prison for spreading “falsehoods” or “distorted truth” deemed to obstruct efforts to combat the pandemic.
Similar restrictions were imposed in Bosnia’s mainly Serb-populated Republika Srpska entity and in Romania. In Bucharest, the government closed down a dozen news sites for promoting false information concerning the pandemic. The Centre for Independent Journalism, CJI, an NGO that promotes media freedom and good journalistic practices, has raised concern that provisions enacted as part of a state of emergency between mid-March and mid-May 2020 to combat the spread of the novel coronavirus in Romania could hamper the ability of journalists to inform the public. “The most worrying aspect of all this is, from my perspective, the limitations to the access to information of public interest,” said CJI executive director Cristina Lupu. “The lack of transparency of the authorities is a very bad sign and the biggest problem our media faces now,” Lupu told BIRN, lamenting the fact it left the public without “access to timely information.” In March 2020, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, OSCE, raised concern about what it said was the “removal of reports and entire websites, without providing appeal or redress mechanisms” in Romania. The Venice Commission, the CoE’s advisory body on constitutional affairs, stressed that even in emergency situations, exceptions to freedom of expression must be narrowly construed and subject to parliamentary control to ensure that the free flow of information is not excessively impeded. “It is doubtful whether restrictions on publishing “false” information about a disease that is still being studied can be in line
