Re por t i ngonMol dov a Pr e s sF r e e dom: whya ndwhynot ? An t h r opol og i c a l Ma g a z i n e
Phot oE s s a y : Roma
Oc t obe r2 009V ol u me1 7Nu mbe r1
Kaya: As anthropology students who practice being journalists, as idealistic young people living in a wealthy nation, we, the editors of the Cul journal, felt the need to do something for freedom of press. We contacted the Chisinau School of Advanced Journalism, an independent school in Moldova's capital that aims to train and support young journalists. Moldova turned out to be not that far from Amsterdam and we decided to go there ourselves, to see and experience what it means to be a journalist in a country like Moldova.
Freek: It wasn't very far indeed, but still we took the hard way getting to Chisinau, Moldova’s capital. With train, taxi, airplane, bus and taxi again, it took us two days just to get there. I remember the moment we arrived at our hotel: the taxi parked and the whole editorial board, counting eight people, popped out of the vehicle. Only one editor was missing. When the driver opened the trunk, she jumped out, after being stuffed away behind the suitcases. Kaya: From the moment we got there, we ran from one appointment to the other. After a few days we finally found the time to gather and have a meeting with all Cul editors, where we tried to find some structure in this interesting chaos. With the telephone numbers we got our hands on we called some important people in Chisinau, to whom we liked to talk. The big‐shot human‐rights lawyer we got on the phone told us he only had time right at that moment. And off we were again; running through Chisinau to our next appointment.
Freek: At 9 AM we knocked on the door of the Mayor's office. Could we have a chat with him about the political situation in Chisinau? We were invited in. We achieved more than we dared hope. Campaigners, young and involved students, editors of a wide variety of newspapers and TV studios, Roma gypsies and wine cellars ‐ we discovered beautiful, exciting and shocking stories about freedom of press in Moldova. We took this wealth with us when we started our long journey back to Amsterdam. The journal you are holding now, is our invitation to you to become part of our experiences in Moldova and read about conflicts, ideals, freedom, fashion, internet and much more.
Take a moment to think about this: what do you actually know about Moldova? Most people in Western Europe probably will have to answer that it is not an awful lot. This can at least partially be attributed to our press, which rarely reports on events in the country, and when it does, the news is not very positive. Articles often do not get much more detailed than sentences such as “Moldova, one of the poorest and most corrupt countries in Europe...”.
If newspapers were our only source of information, how could we, the readers, ever understand what is really happening in this part of the world? This article is an at‐ tempt to broaden the reader's knowledge about Moldova, by giving more background information on the short articles that usually appear in our news. As we will see, the more in‐ formation one gets, the more question marks will arise. The answer to these questions you will find throughout the who‐ le magazine.
P h ot o: Pa u l H od orog e a
What can we learn about a country by reading one single newspaper article? Let's see what the Western press can tell us about Moldova in their reports on the events of last April, when peaceful protests ended in violent riots, which were repressed just as violently.
If we try to read between the lines by exploring the article sentence by sentence, we will see that we can find more information about Moldova, as well as asking ourselves some critical questions.
Vororin's Moldovan Communist Party (CPRM) has ruled the country since 2001. Many elder Moldovans hold good memories of the Soviet times. They remember it as a time when there was food, work and security for everyone. This might partially explain why many Moldovans vote for the communist party. However, communism today seems to ha‐ ve little in common with what it meant in the past. “The CPRM only uses the word communism, to attract voters,” says Catalina Iucal, the founder of a local NGO. “But in fact, the government is highly capitalistic! And dictatorial; they use the ideal of communism to get a grip on all as‐ pects of society, from education to the judiciary.” Nistor Grozavu, vice‐mayor of the capital city of Chisinau: “This is not communism, this is a dictatorship. Even people in the communist party do not have the freedom to express themselves. There is just one family, called Vororin, and they control everything”.
In broadcastings of the TV channel Moldova Uno, the de‐ monstrators were pictured as highly violent and destructi‐ ve. However, no attention was paid to rumours that a hired group of rioters were given instructions to let the demon‐ strations, that had started out peacefully, escalate. The government‐owned Moldova Uno is the only television channel that broadcasts throughout the whole country. The amount of national newspapers that are read in the coun‐ tryside is small, which means that most people out of the cities rely on news highly edited by the government. As a consequence, they got the impression that the crowd was merely formed by crazy hooligans who just wanted to cau‐ se social unrest. As a student told us: “My friends that had joined in the protests got angry phone calls from their pa‐ rents in the countryside, telling them ‘I raised you to be a
P h ot o: W ikip e d ia . org
Both liberal and communist resources have a completely dif‐ ferent story about the events, and who is to blame for what. We conducted interviews with both people who represent the communist block, as well as those who stand for the libe‐
much, but those people had the right to protest since the elections were a fraud: names of dead people came up in the lists of voters, and some names were on there seven times. We have evidence that the violence during the pro‐ tests was provoked: we believe that there were released prisoners in the crowd who got paid to let the peaceful pro‐ test escalate. And the destruction of the parliament came in a time that was too convenient to not be planned, because in the city hall we found evidence that a project existed to reconstruct the parliament in 2006!” Elena Danu, editor in chief of the communist paper Communistul, had quite a dif‐ ferent opinion: “The claim that the elections were unfair is simply not true. The opposition parties just say that because they are angry that they have lost. For the same reason, they have paid students to go and put on a protest. Some money also came from Romania. The Romanian president wants to destabilize Moldova's political situation, because this would win him votes from Romanians who would like to see Moldova become a part of their country. Demonstrating is a good thing, but when so much violence gets involved, it is not. There was certainly a lot of misbehaviour under the protesters.” When we asked her whether her paper only projected the opinion of the communist party, she said: “We do present the view of the communist party in our paper, but no single journalist is completely objective. Every paper is colored, we just admit it”. With such different stories, who should we believe? And is every paper colored in a way, like Elena Danu says? Is full objectivity possible in the media?
As was mentioned before, the protesters were punished vi‐ olently. But perhaps this came as no surprise, since Moldovan police forces have a somewhat ambiguous reputation in their handling of protests. This is not something new; when mem‐ bers of Amnesty International held a demonstration in Febru‐ ary 2009 against violent police action during protests in general, the protesters were attacked by masked men. Poli‐ ce officers stood by and did nothing. One might start to think that at a certain point, repression of demonstrations is the rule, not the exception. What is it really like to be part of such violent events? Is it something you get used to? How can an individual gain the strength to not let such an ex‐ perience break his or her spirit?
ral side. We asked both parties to share their opinion about the riots of last April. Nistor Grozavu, who is a member of the Liberal Party besides his work as vice‐mayor of Chisinau, said the following: “I just cannot believe that the communist party blames the opposition or Romania to be responsible for the riots. That is ridiculous. We regret the violence very
The protest had started after a massive call for action via Twitter and Facebook. Besides that, a fair amount of Moldo‐ van youths have a blog online, on which they were able to post their stories and pictures taken of the riots. To what ex‐ tent can new media such as the Internet circumvent the existing restrictions on press freedom? Is it in the Internet that the road to more press freedom lies?
Ph oto: Pa ul Hod or ogea
man, not a murderer!’, since that was how the protesters got portrayed on Moldova Uno.” And the influence of state TV does not stop at Moldova's borders, as BBC News seems to ha‐ ve copied some of their information straight from the govern‐ ment channel. In their broadcasts on the subject, not the extremely violent police repercussions are shown, just young people throwing stones and dancing on police cars. In a coun‐ try where the majority of the people only have access to in‐ formation which is edited by the government, how can this be changed? How much space do those journalists who want to be independent and as objective as possible have to per‐ form their job in this way?
The latest developments are the following: After the electi‐ ons of April, the opposition put a boycott on the CPRM. Be‐ cause they did not give a green signal to any of the presidential candidates that the party put forward, new elections had to be written out. For this occasion, the four opposition parties formed a coalition, and together re‐ ceived 53 of the 101 seats in parliament in the elections of 29th July. The coalition has set out economic growth, clo‐ ser ties to the European Union and improvements con‐ sidering press freedom as its main goals. In a recent report they also claim to try to calm down strife with Russian in‐ habitants of Moldova, since “we all, regardless of our eth‐ nicities, are paid equally miserable salaries [...] and we all have the same objectives to achieve”. However, it is not clear what will happen. The opposition has a majority of seats, but to be able to choose a new president 61 mem‐ bers of parliament need to agree. This means that eight members of the communist party would have to give their permission to a non‐communist president to be elected. The Democratic Party, whose leader formerly was a mem‐ ber of the CPRM, does have 61 seats together with the Communist Party, so it is still possible that the DP might choose to form a coalition with the ruling communist party. So where will we go from here? Will a new government suc‐ ceed in bringing change to Moldova? And what role will the media play in this? And the civil society? As was said before: the more information one gets, the more question marks appear. By turning the next pages, an answer will be given to these questions, and hopefully will contribute to a more complete picture of the country.
Moldova's relations with Russia, neighbour Romania and the European Union play an important role in the coun‐ try's political climate. Ever since independence, Moldo‐ va has been tied to Russia in several ways. Like other countries in the region, it relies on the former Soviet Union for its gas supplies. This caused tension in 2006, when supplies were cut off when Moldova refused to pay twice the price they had done before. In 2009, be‐ cause of a dispute between Russia and Ukraine, supplies were cut off again. Not only for gas is Moldova de‐ pendent of Russia: the country is an important investor in key sectors of the Moldovan economy. Apart from this, negotiations on when the Russian troops will with‐ draw from the Trans‐Dniester region, have been postponed for many years. 2002 was first set as a deadline for withdrawal. Then this was postponed to 2003, an later 2004. In 2005, they were still there. Re‐ lations with Romania have been fairly unfriendly the last couple of years. A part of the Moldovan population calls for more cooperation, and a great deal wishes to emigrate to this country. However, relations have he‐ ated up since the Moldovan government has accused Ro‐ mania of undermining its rule, for the country had eased its Romanian citizenship application procedures in 2007. Citizenship of Romania, a member of the EU, would allow Moldovans to travel freely in all EU coun‐ tries. For Moldova, a country where brain drain forms a serious problem, this would mean even more migration. As a sanction, the Moldovan government has forbidden Romania to open two new consulates in the country. Al‐ so, Romania was heavily accused by the Moldovan and the Russian government of playing a part in the riots of April 2009. As a consequence, the Romanian ambassador was announced persona non grata, and a visa requi‐ rement was reinstated for Romanians to enter their neighbouring country. The EU fears to intervene too much in the hostile si‐ tuation between Romania and Moldova. Since the first is an EU country and the second is supported by Russia, Brussels is worried that it could lead to a conflict bet‐ ween the Russia and the union. According to some this fear of facing Russia has shaped the way the EU deals with Moldova: despite the fact that the country has expressed its wish to join the union, this is unlikely to happen in the near future. Moldova is part of the EU Neighbourhood Policy, a set of agreements that were designed not to fully exclude countries that share borders with the EU, but who are not on the current agenda to gain membership. The help that Moldova gets from the EU is concentrated on technical and economic development, and explicitly non‐political in character.
In 1994, the two regions were granted a special autonomy status. After almost winning the elections three years earlier, the communists came to power under Vladimir Vororin in 2001, with just over 50 percent of the vote. In the same year, the heads of state radio and TV were dismissed by the parliament. Vororin was re‐elected in 2005. The parliamentary elections in April 2009 resulted in riots. After new elections on July 29, the Communist Party was unseated and pro‐Western opposition parties are scrambling to form a broad governing coalition.
S our c e: wi k i ped i a. or g
The principality of Moldova, which stretched roughly between the Carpathian mountains and the Dniester river, was split up by the treaty of Bucharest in 1812. Western Moldova was taken in by the Ottoman Empire, while the eastern part, Bessarabia, was put under Russian control. In 1878, the Ottoman empire recognized the independence of Romania, which then included western Moldova. As a consequence of the Bolshevik revolution in Russia in 1918, Bessarabia declared its independence, and expressed its wish to join Romania. This union was internationally recognized two years later, but the Bolsheviks did not. In 1939, the territory of Romania got divided as a consequence of the pact between Hitler and Stalin. Bessarabia was again in Russian hands, and now formed the Moldovan Soviet Socialist Republic together with a part of Ukraine. The situation stayed like this until in the 1980's, under the influence of Gorbachev's glasnost policy, Moldovan nationalism came up again. When the Berlin Wall fell in '89, the first steps were taken towards independence from Russia: Romanian was installed as the official language, and the Latin script was adopted to replace the Russian Cyrillic alphabet. As Moldova declared its sovereignty in 1990, so did its regions of the Gagauz in the southwest, and the Trans‐ Dniestr in the east. However, the central government annulled the declarations of these two regions. A year later an independent Moldova was a fact. Protests remained heavily in the Trans‐Dniestr region, where a civil war broke out in 1992. When a ceasefire was finally called for, hundreds of people had died and the Russian army had stationed itself in the region for an unknown period of time.
Molodova occupies an area of 33,843.5 square kilometers. It has Romania as a neighbour in the West and shares the rest of its borders with Ukraine. The country has 4,3 million inhabitants. Ethnic Moldovans account for the largest part of the population, Ukrainians and Russians form the largest minorities. Smaller minorities are compiled of Gagauzi, Bulgarians, and other groups.
CPRM: the Communist Party of the Republic of Moldova LDP: the Liberal Democratic Party LP: the Liberal Party DP: the Democratic Party AOM: the Alliance Our Moldova
Journalists whose phones are tapped and who call their children every hour to ask if they are safe; a large part of the population has access to only one propaganda TV channel which is owned by the government; the government blocks the access to internet, after journalists and students published critical articles and photographs; people are captured and tortured by government forces because they were taking undesirable photographs at the protests in April. Welcome to Moldova. However, Moldova is not the only coun‐ try where the freedom of press is res‐ tricted. Worldwide freedom of press differs immensely. What is press free‐ dom, why is it important and what is it like in other parts of the world?
The right to freedom of press is part of the right to free expression of opinion, which is stated in the Universal decla‐ ration on human rights, signed by all members of the UN in 1948. Article 19 says that every human being has the rig‐ ht to freedom of opinion and expression of this opinion. This right concerns the freedom to hold a certain opinion wit‐ hout interference by others and to search for, receive and pass on ideas through any media, regardless of frontiers. It guarantees that citizens can express their opinions in everyday li‐ fe without the fear of persecution. When we take a look at the Dutch con‐ stitution, it tells us the boundaries of the right to free expression of opinion. To make an appeal for violence is not al‐ lowed, neither are unfounded insults, child pornography, making certain busi‐ ness secrets public and publish detailed private information. In some countries, the law does not allow opinions to be expressed which differ from a religion or ideology. Since this is not confirmed by what is written in article 19, the in‐ ternational law on freedom of expressi‐ on is vulnerable. It is possible to reform this by other laws stated by the country itself.
In his speech on World Press Freedom Day on May 3 2009, United States’ pre‐ sident Barack Obama recalled the follo‐ wing words of his predecessor Thomas Jefferson: “The basis of our govern‐ ments being the opinion of the people,
the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without news‐ papers or newspapers wit‐ hout a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter”.* Press freedom and total democracy cannot be seen without the other. Democra‐ cy is based on the opinion of the population of a country, and an important way for people to form their opinion is by reading newspapers, watching television and lis‐ tening to the radio. In the words of Christie Miedema, working for Amnesty Inter‐ national in the Netherlands: “The press has to restrain the politics.” But what if the press is ow‐ ned by that same gover‐ nement? If the media only publishes good news about the government and ignore the negati‐ ve news? In Italy for example, Ber‐ lusconi showed his influence in the national media a few weeks ago. He cal‐ led into the studio of a talkshow on Rai Uno after one of the guests critisized the government policy. The Italian pre‐ sident was furious and wanted the conversation to stop immediately.
Miedema: "In countries with no freedom of press, mostly the young people who live in the cities find it easier to get a more realistic view on what happens in their country. They have access to in‐ ternet, which makes a big difference. On the internet it is easier to post their own news and to read news posted by their compatriots. But for the people
who live in the countryside, it is a dif‐ ferent story. Most of them only have access to television and have one chan‐ nel or maybe a few, nine times out of ten owned by the government. Setting up a TV station is much more expensive than setting up a newspaper. So it is hard for the independent press to reach the people in the countryside". If a large part of the population only has access to news brought to them by their government, it’s difficult for them to form their own opinion and to support the foundation of a democracy.
In Moldova, there are a few inde‐ pendent newspapers. Ziarul de Garda is one of them. This newspaper investiga‐ tes political issues and wants to bring people different sides of a story, so
Ph oto: M i k e Ri j k er s
(21). The index also shows that coun‐ tries involved in war have less press freedom, like the United States of America (41), Sudan (135) and Af‐ ghanistan (156). In quite a few coun‐ tries on the list, such as Gabon (110), Marocco (122) and Cambodia (126), it is strictly forbidden to report anything that is negative about the president or monarchy. Moldova is covering position 98, accompanied by Kenia (97) and Guinea (99).**
they can form their own opinion. In this way, Ziarul de Garda makes politics transparent, and contributes to the fur‐ ther development of democracy. Becau‐ se Ziarul de Garda is an independent newspaper, it is hard for them to survi‐ ve. They don't get any money from the state and they have to fight against the rich newspapers, owned by the state and companies. About 70 percent of the press in Moldova is owned by the state and magnates, according to Elisabetta Plebani of Press Now, an organisation for press freedom.
Every year the organization Reporters sans frontieres (reporters without boun‐ daries) publishes an index of press free‐ dom, which contained 173 countries in
2008. This index gives an impression of the situation on press freedom worldwi‐ de. It shows where journalists are free to do their work, where there is inde‐ pendent press, where journalists have been killed or imprisoned in the last year and which countries have a stable parliamentary democratic system. The first twenty positions on the list, with Iceland as number one, are held by European countries apart from New Zealand and Canada. The Netherlands are ranked 16, together with Portugal, Lithuania and the Czech Republic. Other highly ranked countries are from Central America and the Caribbean, such as Costa Rica (22) and Jamaica
The last position, the 173rd, is held by Eritrea, ‘thanks’ to the cruel policy of dictator Isaias Afewerki. In Eritrea, sixteen journalists have vanished into one of the 314 prison camps since Afe‐ werki has been in charge. In May 2008 a journalist asked Afewerki about the missing journalists. He answered:
“There were never any. There aren’t any. You have been misinformed.” *** Since the first celebration of the World Press Freedom Day in 1993, 692 jour‐ nalists have been killed worldwide (May 2009). At this moment 174 jour‐ nalists are in prison worldwide, accor‐ ding to the RSF Press freedom barometer 2009.
Did you know that Moldova is world famous for its underwater hockey team? Well, OK, infamous then. You wouldn’t normally associate such a sport as underwater hockey with Moldova (come to think of it, there aren’t any countries you’d associate it with, but that’s another story…). However, in the 2000 Underwater Hockey Championships held in the world‐renowned underwater‐hockey metropolis of Hobart, in Tasmania, Australia, the Moldovan men’s team puzzled referees and judges by not even knowing how to put their fins and flip‐ pers on properly. After being trounced by such stalwarts as Columbia 30‐0 and Argenti‐ na 23‐0, it came out that the entire team had filed for (and eventually received) refu‐ gee status with the Australian government.
It’s a good thing for Moldovans that Ca‐ nadian’s aren’t known for their good memo‐ ries or efficient bureaucracy. Two years, after much hounding from a so‐called Moldo‐ van Underwater Hockey Federation based in Tiraspol, the Canadian Embassy in Bucharest granted the women’s team visas to participa‐ te in the world championships in Calgary. There was much head‐scratching as the Mol‐ dovan national anthem was played – and no team came out to play. But how could they? They were in Toronto, filing for refugee sta‐ tus. In this elaborate visa scam, each woman on the team (who no doubt wouldn’t know what to do with an underwater puck even if it bit her) had paid organizers some $1200 – not bad for refugee status in Canada. While this incident sadly spells out an uncer‐ tain future for the world of underwater hockey in Moldova, it does speak volumes about the creativity and persistence of Mol‐ dovans!
At first, cameraman and founder of action group Hyde Park Oleg Brega is barely visible behind his laptop, when we visit the TV channel he works for. Unexpectedly he opens up and takes us right to the frontline of the events of that dark day in April.
When the broadcasting of a discussion programme on Jurnal TV (part of news‐ paper Jurnal de Chisinau) has ended, Di‐ na Pripa invites us into the studio to talk about the online television chan‐ nel, of which she is producer. The si‐ tuation is a bit uncomfortable, since Dina speaks as much English as we speak Romanian. With hands and feet and some occasional words in English, the web master of Jurnal TV, Valeriu Op‐ rea, tries to translate our questions and answers back and forth. He is trying re‐ ally hard, but we notice the silence that, at times, painfully fills the studio. Next to Dina sits another man. He is qui‐ et and hardly visible behind his laptop. He wears a rainbow‐coloured wristband and a baseball cap. Sometimes I see him keeping an eye on us. However, he is not interested in joining our conver‐ sation. When we talk about television
in Moldova, he doesn’t look up. Proba‐ bly, he speaks even less English than Va‐ leriu. “As a television station, we have a huge responsibility in informing the people about what’s going on,” Dina entrusts me. Especially after the riots that have occurred following the April 5 parliamentary elections. Something moves behind the laptop and the baseball cap’s peak. So he does lis‐ ten to what we are talking about. He does speak English, even better, as tur‐
ns out later, than Valeriu. The guy sit‐ ting in front of us is Oleg Brega (35). He is cameraman at Jurnal TV and widely known in Chisinau for his group Hyde Park, which he and his brother founded in 2003.
We leave the studio, while Oleg, whose attention we have now and who seems very willing to tell his story, explains how he used to be involved in a radio station called Antena C. “Six years ago, I used to make a regular late night pro‐ gramme called Hyde Park in which I in‐ vited speakers to discuss current issues in Moldova and abroad. I did this for three years, when one day men entered the studio and prevented us from broad‐ casting. They turned out to be police and secret services personal in civilian clothes. They told us there was a bomb alarm and they had to close the station. After that, I founded the action group Hy‐ de Park, of which I was the first pre‐ sident. The aim of Hyde Park is to fight against these brute interventions in the press by our government. We have named our group after the famous park in London with its speakers' corner, a place where people can openly com‐ ment on public affairs. However, short‐ ly after we founded Hyde Park, we had to dissolve it. The police were frus‐ trating all our activities and they often arrested members of Hyde Park for no reason other than speaking out. It be‐ came too dangerous for us, so we went
underground as an association for five years. Now we are an officially regis‐ tered NGO.” Hyde Park is a platform through which he hopes to give people a voice. The organization and the ac‐ companying website and magazine cu‐ raj.net, fight for freedom of press, human rights and access to information in Moldova. Their website is often blocked, the Ministry of Justice denies them services of Posta Moldova to dis‐ tribute the magazine and they are phy‐ sically threatened. The confrontations with the police we‐ re not the first time Oleg was confron‐ ted with Moldova’s cops and secret services, and they would by far not be the last. While we walk through the streets of Chisinau, he tells us about many more cases, amongst others the events of April 7. “I was in the midst of it. I’m a cameraman for the online TV station Jurnal TV, and I was going to cover the events. I saw how the police provoked the riots by breaking the sidewalks into pieces of stone to throw with, and how other men, who turned out to be policemen as well, dragged people behind the government’s buil‐ ding. There, I filmed how they beat pe‐ ople and threw them into cars that were already waiting.” While Oleg tried to film what was happening, he was noticed by men dressed in civilian clothes, who turned out to be police as well. Afraid that Oleg's material would be made public, they started to beat Oleg. He pro‐ tested, saying that he worked for a TV station as a journalist and he was fil‐
Ph otos : M i k e Ri j k er s
ming the events for his work, but the men kept on beating him. After the riots, he was taken to the hospital. As he offers us some homemade wine in his kitchen, I notice he doesn’t drink any himself. It’s because of the medici‐ ne, he explains, which he still has to take on a daily basis, as part of his reco‐ very from the beatings. To this day, the attorney general has not started a cri‐ minal investigation into what has happened to Oleg.
Life as a critical journalist in Moldova is not without risk. After Oleg was beaten by the police, his video camera was con‐ fiscated in an attempt to hide the sce‐ ne that Oleg just recorded. Even after the violent outburst in April, the Moldo‐ van state apparatus has not changed its brute manners. “Just a few weeks ago,” Oleg tells me, “I was sitting here with some other members of Hyde Park when the police stormed in. They took all my tapes and equipment, and our computers, on which we make our jour‐ nal and host our website curaj.net. They even took a thousand copies of the newest edition of curaj.net, which we were about to distribute. I got some of it back later, with the content erased.” Like many other young people in Moldo‐ va, Oleg wants to escape the poor conditions, both economically and poli‐ tically, by leaving the country. He applied for political asylum in various countries, including the US and the Czech Republic, but always without suc‐ cess because he was not on American or Czech ground when he did so. A more realistic option would therefore be to go to Romania, a new member of the
European Union and Moldova’s neighbour. With his brother Ghenadie, Oleg studied in Bucharest. Both of them have the Romanian nationality as well. “I will go to Romania as soon as I can. But now, the police have taken my bro‐ ther’s passport, so we can’t cross the border. I am also sought after by the po‐ lice. There are all kinds of false accu‐ sations, like drinking in public, and they regularly arrest me and put me in jail for some days. Since the riots of April 7 and the Moldovan accusations of Romanian involvement, the Moldovan government suspects everything Romani‐ an. Life has become harder for people with Romanian passports now. As soon as my brother gets his papers back, we will flee to Romania.”
While Oleg speaks about living in Ro‐ mania, he is at the same time very awa‐ re of the importance of free and critical press in Moldova. “I can’t be quiet,” he says, “it isn’t me; I should talk, I should write, I should express, I should show my pictures!” Oleg is a sup‐ porter of one of the most well‐known protesters in the country, Anatol Mătăsa‐ ru, and has dedicated a website to him. Where other protesters in Moldova use more common techniques – including fasting, which Oleg has practiced himself once – Mătăsaru always draws an explicit link to the aesthetic domain in his protests. “He made an artistic project in which he goes to markets and different town squares to sell a donkey that he dressed as a ‘muliti‐ oner,’ a physical wordplay of ‘militi‐ oner’ (policeman) and ‘mule.’ “Please buy this stupid animal from me, it doe‐ sn’t serve me at all! Please buy this ly‐ ing donkey, this corrupted animal!” He
then talks to the people he meets and through his project, he shows people how the Moldovan government, and es‐ pecially the police force, really works.” Earlier this year, Mătăsaru used a simi‐ lar wordplay when he walked back and forth in front of Moldova’s prosecu‐ tors’building wearing a large pink cos‐ tume of a pig, with on his jacket the word ‘porcuror’, combining the words ‘procuror’ (‘prosecutor’) and ‘porc’ (‘pig’). As a reaction to this, Mătăsaru was arrested by the police. In fact, he has been arrested several times while protesting and has also lived under long periods of house arrest, because the Moldovan government cannot tolerate his peaceful protest. This led the mem‐ bers of Hyde Park to gather in front of the Palace of Justice. Oleg: “All of a sudden, men with white masks appea‐ red and started to beat us. There was no police around and even when we started to shout for help, no police showed up. After I called the police station, it took them one and a half hours to come to the Palace. And even more suspicious; the men who arrived with the masks are clearly identifiable on video tape, but they are not being subjected to any criminal investigati‐ on.” Regardless of how dangerous it might be, Oleg’s story shows that Moldova is very much in need of institutions as Hy‐ de Park. As an old sticker of Hyde Park in a Chisinau school‐building says: ‘Eşti liber atît cît poţi să spui’ ‘You are free as much as you can say’
Ph oto: M i k e Ri j k er s
It is not the political parties that make democracy possible in a country, it’s the people in it, the ‘civil society’. By sup‐ porting the growth of strong media, Press Now tries to stimulate democracy in Moldova.
An organisation which supports demo‐ cratic values in countries where these barely exist is Press Now. It was foun‐ ded after the fall of the Berlin wall, with the aim to support free journalism in Eastern Europe. It believes that true democracy can only be established when it is supported by internal organi‐
sations and institutions. It’s not the poli‐ tical parties that make democracy possible, it’s this ‘civil society’ that does. Institutions and organisations like the media, social associations and com‐ panies that support those democratic values build the foundation a democra‐ cy can’t do without. This civil society is found within any culture, changes along with it and thus needs time to grow. This is why it is very difficult, if not im‐ possible, to force democracy upon a country or to change it overnight. Press Now aims to support or create demo‐ cratic facilities that help build a stronger civil society together with the people, instead of trying to change a country from above.
In Moldova, Press Now has several projects that advocate and try to develop a free media system, becau‐ se the organisation believes this is a very important part of civil society. One of these
projects is a one year journalism master program which teaches free journalism and tries to establish a dif‐ ferent view on media in Moldova. The program has been acknowledged by the government, which shows that the media are not entirely restricted or controlled. Frank van Vree, historian and Professor of Journalism and Cultu‐ re at the University of Amsterdam, hel‐ ped improve this program. About the media system in Moldova he says: “It is not as if everyone with a different opi‐ nion will be arrested or killed, but the‐ re is a certain system of punishment and reward to which people are sub‐
Ph o t o : Mi k e Ri j ke r s
After the April riots the division in Mol‐ dova could be sensed everywhere in the country. There seemed to be a clear di‐ vision between people in favour of the former communist regime and those in favour of a new, democratic regime. The demonstration was started by peo‐ ple who proclaimed that the elections, held earlier that month, were rigged. They believed that the winning commu‐ nist party, the same party that had ru‐ led Moldova before, was corrupt. When new elections were held in July and other democratic parties formed a ma‐ jority, a lot of people spoke of a true Moldovan revolution. Although Moldova had long been known to be a democracy in name, this change in political power made people believe that it was now on the brink of beco‐ ming a true one. True democracy is the wish of many Moldovans. The question, however, is whether democracy is a re‐ alistic goal for such a divided country and if so, how this can be done.
Ph oto: M i k e Ri j k er s
jected on account of their opinions.” Ta‐ tiana Sokonari, a former student of the Journalism master program, now wor‐ king for an economic newspaper in Mol‐ dova said: “I can write anything I want, as long as the subject is neutral and will not cause commotion.” Athough she is happy with the job she has, she knows that she will never be able to write about things that could harm the newspaper’s sponsors. Daniela Gutu, another student comments: “The envi‐ ronment of fear pushes everyone to choose for themselves in order to survi‐ ve.” This is why she, like many other students, is considering a job abroad in‐ stead of trying to change the one she li‐ ves in.
Civil society in Moldova shows its weak‐ nesses not just in its censured media. In a country that has just known one way of ruling in which individual free‐ dom was never really supported, it is difficult for a civil society to grow strong. Furthermore, although many students have walked the streets of Chi‐ sinau to fight for democracy, many peo‐ ple in the countryside do not really believe in politics, do not care or simp‐ ly believe and trust everything they’ve been told by the government. This is not because of a lack of interest but mainly because they do not know any‐
thing else, because critical thinking is not supported and mostly just because they are too busy surviving. Another thing to keep in mind is that there are two generations of Moldovan people that share good memories of the former communistic regime, which helped them through troublesome times. Because of these good memories a lot of people trust communism without asking too many questions. The culture has been shaped around it, people have grown up in it. The results from the last elections are therefore all the more remarkable. It shows that not only is there a change in attitude among students in the capital of Chisinau, there is now also a change in the rest of the country. People are starting to raise questions about the lack of democracy in Moldova and accor‐ ding to these results, want something to change.
In Moldova, it was the party that sup‐ ported communism that suppressed ci‐ vil society the most. Freedom of press, a very important part of this civil soci‐ ety, was not supported at all. In commu‐ nism, (personal) freedom can be seen as a threat to social equality and can lead to one dictatorial party leading a country, as we saw in Moldova. There is
a difference, however, between Marxi‐ an thought and the way communism is being practiced in Russia and also in Moldova today. While Marxian thought supports having a strong civil society uniting people to rule a country
together, the communism in Moldova was not uniting people at all. Today, Moldova seems to be forced to choose between this Stalinist bureaucracy that we call communism, and a completely European, capitalist democracy. Is the‐ re something in between? Is it possible to create strong civil society within communism? Up till now, this struggle between the two has only divided the country and kept the people of Moldo‐ va from uniting. Press freedom, a strong civil society and democracy can only exist when this can be overcome.
To criticize the freedom of press in a foreign country is easy. But are we able to keep an objective eye on ourselves concerning this subject? How free is the Dutch media landscape exactly? It might be more difficult to point at restrictions on press freedom when it does not concern clear signs, such as a government instructed murder of a critical reporter, but this does not mean that in the Netherlands journalists are not facing problems concerning independence or integrity.
Reporter Betty Glas from the RTL News is wading through a muddy river at the Thai border with Myanmar. From the look on her face and the way she is dragging her plump body through the swamp, you can tell she is glad this is not part of her normal daily work activities. The journalist is taking part in the program ‘Nieuwsllink’, in which reporters from the Netherlands experience what it is like to work for media in countries where press freedom standards are questionable. One episode after another, we see Dutch journalists looking at the working circumstances of their colleagues abroad with astonishment. They express their doubts about whether they would be able to function outside of ‘the free and safe Dutch media landscape’, as it is referred to in the description of the program. In recent discussions about press freedom, the cartoon riots and the freedom of speech have been given a lot of attention already. Therefore it would seem more interesting to look into other forms of restricted press freedom, that are a bit more hidden away for people not working in the field of journalism. Quite a number of examples can be found in the report ‘Shifting Borders’, compiled by master students in Journalism at the University of Amsterdam. Judging from this report, it appears that there is a transformation taking place in the Dutch media landscape.
In the current unfavorable economic climate many newspapers have been obliged to drastically cut down expenses. One can imagine what an editor might feel forced to do, in order to raise the income of his paper. Last year Pieter Broertjes, the editor in chief of the Volkskrant, faced a difficult decision like this. His paper was in the middle of an advertisement deal with supermarket Albert Heijn, when one of his journalists published a column in which he called for a boycott of the supermarket, because of the high salary of the new manager. Albert Heijn threatened to back out, and Broertjes saw himself obliged to choose sides between one of his journalists and the advertisement department. He decided to stand behind the writer of the column, but
this example shows how much influence an advertiser can have on the contents of a newspaper. And what if it had not been a column, but merely a news article stating the height of the salary of Albert Heijn's manager? Would the supermarket have pulled out of the deal then? This case brought the disturbing situation in many countries, in which influence of companies on papers is nothing new, alarmingly close.
Also according to the report, the same financial situation made some editors decide papers should undergo a change in mentality. Newspapers should concentrate more on what the readers want to read, instead of reporting about events that might not be of interest to the consumer. Raymond Vermeulen, assistant editor in chief of the Algemeen Dagblad, states it as follows: “If your reader wants to read more about pop stars, you have to give that to them. It is not important whether we are fond of strawberry ice cream. If our reader is, we write about it”. The possible consequences of this view on a newspaper as a commodity, a product that needs to be sold and thus must be attractive for a certain group of
consumers, has been widely investigated in the United States. This is mentioned in the publication 'The newspaper has to make a choice', written by Warna Oosterbaan and Hans Wansink. They write that in the USA, journalists were put under pressure to identify with the middle class, who possess the most purchasing power. As a result, the amount of articles published about people from the lower class had dropped dramatically. Apparently it has no economic benefit to report on labourers, the unemployed or their unions. This way a whole part of society is being excluded.
Another potential threat to the critical view of Dutch media, put forward by the writers of 'Shifting Borders', is the professionalization of the governments and companies’ Public Relations department over the last years. PR staff members have learned how to make use of the fact that the press business has become a rat race between reporters of different newspapers. Whenever there is an interesting scoop, a PR employee can choose to wait until right before the paper goes to the press to inform a journalist. Facing a deadline, the reporter has little time to check the story. However, with the risk of seeing another paper publish the scoop, it sometimes happens that these stories appear in the newspaper without further investigation. This way, stories can get published exactly in the form how the government or a company wants them to appear.
Although press freedom standards in the Netherlands are a lot better than in many other countries, we have seen that mainly because of market forces the Dutch media climate is undergoing some negative changes. It is important that the changes like the ones mentioned above do not go unnoticed. Something that might make this more difficult is the fact that in the Netherlands press freedom feels like such an integral part of society. In our experience, it has always been there, which makes it more difficult to imagine that it might not always stay like this. Some food for thought: on the one side we have countries such as Moldova, in which independent news broadcasting is something that still has to be fought for every day. On
the other side we have the Netherlands, in which independence of media is something that has been established somewhere outside our present memory. In several broadcasts of Nieuwsllink, the Dutch reporter calls out: “This is so inspiring: journalists here still really have something to fight for!” To what extent does the fact that our battles seem to have already been fought for us lead to us taking contested freedoms for granted? In the current climate, in which certain media principles threaten to decline, are we fully aware of the value these principles have for our democracy? Apart from the discussion on freedom of speech, are we ignoring the long term consequences of factors mentioned above for the state of our press freedom? In a way, this leaves Moldova and the Netherlands to shape different sides of the same coin: in Moldova, the value of press freedom is underestimated by a certain part of the population because they have never experienced living in a different type of society, in which the press gets more space to really act out its role as watch‐dog of the government. On the opposite side, the value of press freedom is underestimated by a certain part of the population here in the Netherlands because we have never experienced living in a society in which the press was not for the greater part independent. This can make Dutch people think that press freedom in the Netherlands has always been and always will be. But press freedom is not a natural part of our society. It can be lost if we do not appreciate it and take care of it enough. It is something that we, even today, have to constantly fight for.
In her book ‘Een selectieve blik, zelfcensuur in de Nederlandse media’ (A selective view, self‐censorship within the Dutch media), journalist and historian Mirjam Prenger attempts to show the level of self‐censorship in the Dutch mediaworld. Professional Dutch journalism claims to be objective and independent, but what about the internal influences within our own media, like political correctness or editorial staff who reject articles?
Eight compact research‐reports into journalistic cases, carried out by MA‐students in Journalism of the University of Amsterdam, are discussed and the level of self‐censorship within each case is compared. The focus is not on the judicial implications and sanctions but on the personal considerations of the journalists and their editors. Editor Mirjam Prenger starts the book with an illustration of the methodology. The central issue of ‘self‐censorship’ seems to be difficult to measure and therefore it is risky to investigate as a basic principle for a book. For example, the difference between the journalistic considerations and self‐censorship is quite vague. Prenger shows there’s no concrete border but only a fragile balance between the two. For example, a journalist can make a conscious choice to show shocking pictures because of the novelty value to the public. On the other hand, this choice can dramatise the news and gives the reader a selective perception.
One of the central issues of the book is the “ideal of the professional journalist who is able to make his or her own choices and work completely independently” (Prenger: 6). For example, did journalists stick to self‐censorship when they reported about the Moroccan youth before the events surrounding Pim Fortuyn? Sarah Sylbing compares the television reports of 1998 and 2003 about the disturbances caused by the Moroccan youths in Amsterdam. Journalists
who were involved were also interviewed. According to Hans Laroes, chief editor of the NOS News “This is what Fortuyn made us realise; we had very little knowledge of what was going on within the society” (Prenger: 32). The analysis shows a gap between the media and the Moroccan youth because of biased editorial staff in the media, who are ruled by white men over the age of forty. Apart from that, there were few reports on the problems within the multicultural society until the political views of Pim Fortuyn started to be made public. One of the causes for this could be the rules
regarding political correctness within the media and society. Prenger critically opposes that the social‐ideological climate continued to be under pressure after Fortuyn, which “...is proved by the fact that interviewed journalists point out that after Fortuyn the risk of a new way of political correctness may be around the corner, which could lead to a one‐sided exaggeration of the problem”, (Prenger: 140). A consequence of the existing political correctness before Fortuyn, was that journalists kept quiet on the problems with Moroccans. After Fortuyn it became an insulting expression to be political correct, and problems with Moroccans received unstoppable and unbalanced attention.
Prenger concludes that several factors such as the social‐ ideological climate could lead to self‐censorship within the professional Dutch media. “Together they influence the ideal‐typical freedom of journalists, which means that other factors than novelty values will get priority within journalistic selection processes,” (Prenger: 139). The book gives an innovative and renewed critical signal. Although self‐censorship might be an arguable judgement as mentioned above, Prenger touches a raw nerve within the Dutch media world in which journalistic independence has high priority. As Prenger shows, it is easier to see the selective view of others than of ourselves. Even though self‐ censorship might be controversial, it seems that Prenger succeeds in grounding her argument, since the eight researches were all reported and analysed very differently. The quoted feedback from journalists on their own work strengthens the argument. By reading the analyses it becomes clear how easy and unnoticed self‐censorship enters journalism. This is a liberating and topical book for anyone who is prepared to look at the Dutch media with a critical mind.
It is raining. The bus struggles driving up the hill, over the bumpy road. Outside it’s quiet, there is hardly a soul to be seen. Huge, fully decorated houses stand alongside the road. They look like palaces; stone lions guard the entrance, pillars in Greek style form galleries up to two stories high which are ornamented in the smallest detail. With every turn more of these palaces appear. We have entered the kingdom of the Roma, with houses that would suit princes and princesses, if it weren’t for the fact they look empty, lacking glass windows and any trace of being lived in.
Soroca is a Moldovan city located in the north of the country, close to the Ukrainian border. To Moldovans the city is known as the Romani capital of Moldova, because of the large Roma community and the extravagant palaces. “Do you want to see how the Roma people live? Then go to Soroca.” is what many Moldovans will tell you. So it happens that Soroca, the palaces and the Roma people living there have themselves become, in some way, a tourist attraction. The Roma people are also known as gypsies and are said to have originated from medieval India. For centuries Roma have been living in Europe, especially in Central and Eastern Europe and ever since they have constituted a minority. Being a minority has almost always gone hand in hand with discrimination and prosecution, the most extreme example being the prosecution of Roma during World War II. Although hostility towards Roma people doesn’t take such extreme forms today, it still exists. They are subject to discrimination in a lot of aspects of social life, such as employment and education and are often viewed of as second‐class citizens. Besides, Roma often have little access to the media and are thus more or less excluded from active participation in society. Due to all these factors, poverty is quite common in Romani communities. The Roma in Moldova face problems such as poverty and discrimination as well, but when compared to other Roma people in Europe, the Romas living in Soroca are relatively well‐off. At least that is what one might assume, looking at the village full of the outrageous houses. Yet there is something odd about these palaces; they are uninhabited. The Roma who have built them live next door, in tiny houses or caravans. The houses are saved and used for hosting guests or giving parties; some say that is because it is too expensive for the Roma to live in the houses, others say it is because they do not want to give up their ‘old lifestyle’. As Pavel Braila, an artist from Moldova who has made an art project on the Sorocan Roma people, named Baron’s Hill, describes it: ‘[The Roma] have created both museums of desire and power, dreams of beauty and freedom, and museums of isolation and poverty.’ The houses thus represent status, dreams and daily reality.
As an anthropologist, you don’t need to enter the dark Amazon jungle or visit remote clans in Africa to find fascinating people. Even the New York bankers at the J.P. Morgan group are an interesting tribe to observe.
Anthropologist Gillian Tett defended her PhD on Muslim women in the former Soviet Union at the University of Cambridge in 1994. Nowadays, she works for the Financial Times, an autho‐ ritative newspaper for business affairs and printed on pink pages. In 2005, she decided to attend a conference where banking people would discuss the credit derivatives world. She was utterly baf‐ fled by the financial lingo of the slick power point presentations, but then she realized that the same approach she on‐ ce used to decode Tajik weddings see‐ med useful in the credit derivatives tribe too. The conference did fill a simi‐ lar function as wedding ceremonies. Both events allow an otherwise dispa‐ rate tribe of players to unite, to mingle and to forge all manner of fresh allian‐ ces on the periphery of the main event.
In her Fool’s Gold. How unrestrained greed corrupted a dream, shattered global markets and unleashed a cata‐
strophe (Little Brown 2009) she descri‐ bes the wheeling and dealings of the bankers at the J.P. Morgan group over a period of fifteen years. Morgan was one of the largest merchant banks in New York before the American bank crises. At the moment Morgan has recovered quicker than any other bank in New York. The book is divided into three parts: innovation, perversion and disas‐ ter. Because Tett explains the banker’s jargon quite well, her book is accessi‐ ble for those who have difficulties to un‐ derstand what bankers do and are ignorant about economics. As a good journalist she tells much about the ac‐ tors involved, and her story is breathta‐ king. How could bankers be so reckless that they completely underestimated the risk of their fanciful operations? Wit‐ hout doubt, they wanted to prove that they were the Masters of the Universe, while their minds became clouded by greed. Their predator’s behaviour tur‐ ned out to be disastrous to all of us. First, a few words on credit derivatives, the new financial instrument that origi‐
nally was introduced by the J.D. Mor‐ gan group. I take Tett’s simple example. A derivative is a way to pro‐ tect a buyer against the uncertainty of future price swings of a commodity, for instance money. A traveller wants to buy dollars against the present pound‐ dollar exchange rate in six months time. One way to guarantee the same price in the future is to close a contract that the trade must happen at the pre‐ sent rate. Such a contract is called a future. Another way is paying a fee to have the option to buy dollars at the present price. However, in that case the traveller has no obligation to use his option if the rate becomes more fa‐ vourable for her. A new financial instru‐ ment against volatile swings in the exchange rate is the possibility to buy derivatives offering clients the rights to purchase currencies at specific exchan‐ ge rates in the future. Interest rate fu‐ tures and options allow investors and bankers to gamble on the level of exchange rates in the future. Highly risky, but also highly profitable if suc‐ cessful. But after the introduction of new mathematical methods it became for most bankers even more difficult to understand the risks involved, as eve‐ rybody was acting according to the same model. As one banker puts it: “That means that if there is a storm all the boats in the water will capsize.” After the introduction of their new in‐ struments some banks became very successful. JPMorgan Chase was lagging badly behind the new pack of players.
In 2004, the brash financier Jamie Dimon became Chief Operating Officer and President. Tett offers a fascinating portrait of him and the ways he operated. He grew up in a family of Greek immigrants who lived in Queens and would keep a Queen accent ever af‐ ter. His grandfather was a small‐time broker and his father took a similar job at Wall Street. Dimon has an MBA from Harvard. At his first day at his new job he was well‐prepared for his first brie‐ fing. “You gotta do homework; I always do my homework,” Dimon likes to say. And he was a very practical man. The old Morgan’s financial elite might have seen themselves as part of a quasi‐no‐ ble financial guild; Dimon saw banking as a business like any other business. To him, bankers were neither noble nor Masters of the Universe, they were just business people doing a job. Obviously, he shocked the old guard but he was very successful with his strategy as well. Disturbing to many was also his way to look into any detail, like saving telephone costs. He ordered that eve‐ rybody should buy his own cell phone. “Banking is a bit like running a small re‐ tail shop,” he sometimes said, “You got to work out what kind of stuff your cus‐ tomers want.” And he added: “You got‐ ta have good book‐keeping.” Dimon also changed the approach to risk much to the chagrin of the senior staff who was forced to attend presentations on the topic. It was not necessarily that Simon was more cautious, but he had a much wider perspective than those fundamentalist believers in mathema‐
tical models which worked as long as they worked, but were unable to deal with any sudden change in the financial world, as soon became clear. As it trans‐ pired, the JPMorgan Chase staff would have reason to be grateful that Dimon had arrived at the scene on time and held to his principles of risk mana‐ gement, even as most of the rest of the banking world broke free from bounds of rational discipli‐ ne. Dimon is Tett’s example of an extremely intelligent man who knows how to do a proper job. However, it was not a lack of intelligence that caused the problems with the other bankers, but their incapacity to look at a wider world.
On 12 June 2007, the news broke in New York that a crisis was erupting at a hedge fund. It was the first signal that something was going wrong in the fairy‐ tale world of the Masters of the Univer‐ se. The risky world of the subprime mortgages would collapse very soon. Still, it would take a while before the Federal Reserve would act. As always, people ignored bad news for as long as possible. First, Henry Paulson, US Trea‐ sury Secretary told the Congress that the subprime problem ‘appears to be contained.’ But new tremors started to
hit the financial world, although every‐ thing remained very abstract. No‐ wadays, the predictions are that these shock‐waves will start to hit the ‘real’ world. It certainly did in the United States where many people not only lost job, but their homes as well. Tett shows that an anthropological way
of looking helps to understand this shadowy world of bankers. As she re‐ marks at the end of her book what she learned from anthropology is that no‐ thing in society ever exists in isolation. That was exactly the problem with the bankers: they lived in their own world showing no interest in wider social matters. Bankers have treated their mathematical models as if they were an infallible guide to the future, failing to see that those models were based on a ridiculously limited set of data. Tett also demonstrates that an aca‐ demic training as anthropologist offers good prospects for a fine career as journalist on bankers’ affairs.
Students of the School of Advanced Journalism in Chisinau receive a crash course in journalism. Experienced in different areas of journalism, they have to face the Moldovan media world, where they have to fight for their rights. “We have freedom of press in Moldova,” states Corina Cepoi, director of the School of Advanced Journalism. It is a remarkable statement in contemporary Moldova. When the Communist Party won the doubtful elections of last April and lots of people protested against them, the police intervened disproportionally to stop the protesters and they made it impossible for journalists to do their jobs of covering this violent intervention. How is it possible that Cepoi speaks about freedom of press in this country?
The school is an initiative of the Independent Journalism Centre that is also established in Chisinau. The schools mission is to stimulate journalism based on independent research, to inform the population of Moldova about what is happening in their country. Cepoi: “We teach professional journalism based on our own situation.” Each year twenty students, who already have a bachelor's degree from another university, learn all the facets of journalism during the ten months course. The focus on a wide variety of practical skills is exceptional in Moldova. Several media that have criticized the government have been hampered in their distribution and threatened with the loss of their license. The School of Advanced Journalism also suffers from such obstruction. It was regularly restricted in their publications. The school website was blocked for several days after the protest of last April, for example. Cepoi: “The regime does everything to control the media and to keep an influence on
their publications.” This situation makes local instructors very important. “We are very grateful to the instructors from the Netherlands and the University of Missouri. Their courses are very interesting, but it’s not always clear how we can translate this information into our own reality, the reality our students have to work in. That is why we are focused on recruiting as many local instructors as possible. Unfortunately we have still not enough expertise on every subject.”
One of the local instructors is the 28 year old director of Pro TV Chisinau Artur Corghencea: “The school has a different method in teaching. They focus far more on practical skills in journalism than other courses. For example the students who have graduated from the university have enough theoretical knowledge, but they miss the practical skills that will help them with the start of their career. For me as director of a TV station it is an advantage to hire somebody who is experienced enough to actually do his or her job.” During his three weeks’ course in broadcasting there are only two or three days theory, in which the students learn some basic knowledge about broadcasting. After that the students have to go in the field, find a subject, collect information by filming and publish their stories.
Cepoi was only at the start of her career when she was asked to take on the function of director of the School of Advanced Journalism. She wants to tell the truth and her critical voice will not be stopped by any pressure or threats. “It is the duty of a journalist to be the watch‐dog of democracy. We have to be critical at the government, especially here in Moldova.” Meanwhile the school is of great importance in Chisinau. Cepoi’s contacts with the media in Moldova are intensive. Most of the alumni work in various sites of the media landscape. “Even at the media controlled by the state,” says Cepoi. “We tell them not what is right or wrong, but we teach them professional journalism. They have to judge for themselves. Perhaps they get a job at the state media where they can use the skills learned on this school. I have heard that they are not on political issues anyway.” The political issues of the state media are often biased or even controlled by the government, which is in contrast to the mission of the school.
One alumnus of Cepoi’s school, who prefers to stay anonymous, works at Moldova 1. For her, there was no other choice than to work at this state controlled TV station. “There were a lot of jobs available at Moldova 1 and the independent media
companies are relatively small. I just needed a job, I have a child.” She confirms that she has never worked on a political subject, and she would rather work somewhere else. It is hard for her to find a job in the independent media, because they do not believe she has the right skills to write critically about the government. “Once with the state media, always with the state media. I hope one day this will change.” From now on the students are ready for the struggle for more independence, more freedom, and to safeguard the democracy. On Friday June 26, the annual graduation ceremony of the school was held traditionally in Soroca, a city in the north of Moldova. In front of the local castle the students received their diplomas. Some of them will hopefully develop as journalists like Cepoi who, despite all the pressure, threats and violence, keeps on struggling for freedom of press. Cepoi: “I fight for the freedom of press by educating young people in professional journalism. I fight for equal rights for everyone, even for the communists. Like I said: we have freedom of press in Moldova. If I say that there is not freedom of press here, I have failed. I will continue to believe in the future.”
When going somewhere new, most people ‐ perhaps women more than men ‐ think about what to wear. Going to a country where you have never been before can ma‐ ke you wonder what the people there are like, how they dress and, therefore, how you should dress. How much of your body can be shown without being indecent?
This differs widely, of course. In Western Africa for example, it doesn’t matter too much if the upper side of a woman’s body is totally naked. This part of the body can be seen everywhe‐ re, with mothers breastfeeding their children. But the legs should be covered as much as possible. We ge‐ nerally think most countries don’t accept the way Western European women are dressed, as it is considered too sexy. Ther‐ efore most of them are likely to consider covering up when going abroad. When we (the female editors of this magazine) got to Moldova, we expected to attract attention with our western, maybe a bit too sexy clothing, but wal‐ king through Chisinau the opposite turned out to be true. We were almost invisible with our apparently pretty normal clothing, whereas some Moldovan women could not help but be noticed with their bright colored, flashy and really short outfit. There were shine‐through blouses, fishnet‐shirts and very small skirts or shorts, leaving al‐ most nothing to the imagination. Catalina Iucal, coordinator of a British Charity* in Moldova, even told me that Moldovan men were com‐ plaining that nowadays, when driving, it is hard to concentrate on the road with so much female distraction walking around.
However, the clothing was not the only thing that surprised me in Moldova. The‐ re are not only some very visible women; there are also many women who have a whole lot to say in their country. In fact, most of the renowned people we spoke with in Moldova were women, including the director of the Chisinau Advanced School for Journalism (Corina Cepoi) and the director of Ziarul de Garda (Alina Radu). At first sight these two different types of women, the ‘noticeably‐dressed‐ woman’ and the ‘important‐job‐woman’ appear to contradict each other. The important‐job‐woman seems to be strong and independent, while the noticeably‐ dressed woman gives the impression to be very dependent on (male) attention. However, Catalina, an important‐job‐wo‐ man herself, didn’t see the contradicti‐ on. She thought the noticeably‐dressed‐woman to be a strong and independent woman, who shows by her clothing that she doesn’t care what other people think. Catalina was not the only one to think that way. All important‐ job‐women I spoke to about this issue, shared her opinion. And therefore I started wondering: how can a woman who dresses herself in such a way that she definitely gets attention, be inde‐ pendent or free?
Ph oto: M i k e Ri j k er s
Ph oto: M i k e Ri j k er s
Anthropologist Saba Mahmood offered me an answer. Mahmood investigated a women’s mosque movement in Cairo, Egypt. The women of this movement try to dedicate their lives to the Islam and pious living; they pursue virtues li‐ ke modesty, shyness and passivity (Mahmood, 2001). This seems to be a paradox: a women´s movement that tries to achieve ideals and virtues that are at the same time strongly related with women´s subordination. Mahmood argues that this in fact is no paradox for the women themselves, it is only perceived as such by liberalists and the western society. In our society, the dominant idea about freedom is that it equals autonomy and that it means fig‐ hting obstacles. It does not include being docile and passive. Mahmood thinks our concept of freedom is too narrow. She compares the women of the mosque movement with a professi‐ onal piano player, who forces himself to the discipline of practice, however diffi‐ cult this may be, in such a way that in the end he will master the piano. The women from Cairo discipline them‐ selves as well; they want to be ideal women and therefore they master them‐ selves. They have control over their own actions and as a result they have a kind of freedom. They do not resist the power of their submission, but at the same time they are not passive actors either, they have agency.
The Moldovan noticeably‐dressed‐wo‐ man can be compared to this. Although Mahmood’s women try to hide their bodies as much as possible and try not to draw attention to themselves, where‐ as the Moldovan women with the stri‐ king outfits certainly do so, there is a similarity. Both types of women use the means with which they are oppressed for their own benefit. In the case of the women from Cairo this is the covered way of dressing and the ideal of being shy and docile. They actively try to pur‐ sue this ideal, and it makes them free in a way, instead of subordinated. In the case of the Moldovan women it is the clothing that makes them into a sexual object. They are not hiding themselves in protest to this sexualisati‐ on and objectification; they still wear these clothes, and probably like it or are trying to fit in. This way these women create a different kind of free‐ dom for themselves.
In western society we are taught that freedom means fighting oppression. Using this definition the Egyptian and
Moldovan women are not free. However, freedom can also mean ha‐ ving control over yourself in a certain situation, being able to take action, even if this action isn’t active resistan‐ ce. This is what the Moldovan noticea‐ bly‐dressed‐woman does and it makes her free. She chooses to wear whatever she likes, even if this means that people, men, see her as a sexual object. What is the lesson to be learned from this story? Next time you go on holiday, or someplace new; don’t worry about what to wear, feel free!
Ph oto L i ek e Wi s s i nk
Democracy can only function well if it has a free exchange of ideas and an objective media system. In contrast to the Ne‐ therlands, such an objective media‐system is rare in Moldova. “Moldovan press in general is much divided,” says Vasile Botnaru, head of the Moldovan branch of the international channel Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL). “In each newspaper we have only one colour. Communist or democrat.” RFE/RL has the advantage to view the Moldovan national media and their in‐ terests from an independent point of view. According to Vasile Botnaru objec‐ tive reporting starts with the growth of press freedom: “People in Moldova don’t think about what freedom me‐ ans.” Freedom of press means among other things that journalists can work independently of any ideology. When the Moldovans call their national media independent, it may be that it is not state directed media, but it will often be linked to ideologies other than state ideologies. Botnaru says: “We as inter‐
national media try to be in the middle, to be a mix of different ideo‐ logies. This is very diffi‐ cult in these conditions. People ask: ‘Why do you open your microp‐ hone for the communists? You side with the communists!’”
Last summer, part of the media was still owned by the Communist Party. The part that was not communist, was therefore automatically on the side of
the opposition. This situation makes it difficult to be objective as a national medium. The media finds itself in the middle of the battle between two ideo‐ logies and the fight is openly played. As Elena Danu of the newspaper The Com‐ munist says: “We are not objective, we are the newspaper of the Communist
Ph oto L i ek e Wi s s i nk
Party. We bring the news from our own point of view.” This statement shows how non‐concealed the media shows their political meaning. Rival paper of The Communist is Timpul. This paper pretends to report objectively, but Sori‐ na Stefarta, editorial staff of Timpul, admits: “We are anti‐communist”. Ac‐ cording to Stefarta this does not harm the objectivity of the paper: “Of course we are objective! It is my objective me‐ aning to be anti‐communist!” The con‐ tradiction in this sentence is clear. To which extent is an opinion ever objecti‐ ve? Obviously, it never is. If there are no objective media, the citi‐ zens don’t get a chance to form their own opinion about the state of affairs in their society. They continue to be de‐ pendent on what the leaders make them believe. Botnaru: “It is exactly the Soviet tradition to be very de‐ pendent on the authority. This tradition continues now in Moldova”. His goal is to change people’s mentality so they be‐ come individuals with a personal view independent of state ideologies. “We try to let people think about what free‐ dom is,” says Botnaru. “Our goal is to open the mind.” He is convinced that this will happen once the people have been exposed to other issues than the Soviet tradition they are used to. He ho‐ pes people will realise that communism might not be the right ideology for ex‐ Soviet governed Moldova. But on the
other hand he knows citizens still have firm roots within communism. To reject communism would mean to reject the past. So Botnaru remains realistic: “I cannot fight my grandfather, who was a Soviet officer. We are relatives of Soviet people.” Botnaru feels pri‐ vileged to have the radio station as an internati‐ onal medium to follow the conflict in Moldova from a distance. “If you practice journalism at a distance you might not always be the best, but you are good every time.” From a distance you are not forced to choose one side of the discussion in con‐ trast to the ones who are part of this discussion. About the national media Botnaru says: “They are in the middle of a process. They justify their subjecti‐ ve position like civil goals. Now you ha‐ ve a lot of newspapers who feel the obligation to fight communism. I prefer not to judge.”
Within the Moldovan political struggles, RFE/RL may be reporting objectively, but the radio station is internationally subsidised by the American Broadcas‐ ting Board of Governors. RFE/RL was founded during the Cold War with the main task to give information from the ‘West’ to the citizens of the communist
countries. After the Cold War, they de‐ cided to continue broadcasting in com‐ munist countries. The question is, how independent is the radio station? RFE/RL has to work within the view of their financier, who’s got an unam‐
biguous goal. But Corina Cepoi of the Independent Journalism Center in Chi‐ sinau critically argues: “Take into ac‐ count that to judge how free or objective the reporting at RFE/RL is you need to listen to them. By all standards they are doing a very good job being a platform for the society, not the donor.” Still, a communist soci‐ ety might be unfree according to the western opinion in general; to be against communism as a journalist is no objective position. And if we prolong this critical view towards ourselves, then a struggle for press freedom is not objective either. Because isn’t press freedom a democratic and therefore a subjective principle? After all it is no solution not to take any position. The one who is convinced to be objective himself is probably the most subjective of all.
P ho to : T h in kMol d ov a . org
Ph ot o: T h i nk M ol d ova . or g
What started with only a few people contemplating peaceful protests with an expected fifty people, turned into a demonstration of thirty thousand. Appa‐ rently it took some text messages and a new communication device called Twit‐ ter to organize this big protest in Chisinau against the election results of last April in Moldova. Therefore the global media quickly dubbed this demonstration the ‘Twitter Revolution’. Are new digital communication technologies which enable people to share their opinions like Facebook, blogging and Twitter, fit to support democratization and the development of civil society?
They were ten anxious days for 25 year old Natalia Morari when she was held under house arrest in April 2009. After the fraudulent elections, Natalia and other activists had organized a flash mob in front of the Parliament of Moldo‐ va. A flash mob is a large group of peo‐ ple who assemble suddenly in a public place, perform an action for a brief time, then quickly disperse. They did this using social‐networking tools such as Twitter. She expected no more than 300 people to show up at the flash mob, but tens of thousands protesters came to the Parliament, including the leaders of the major opposition parties. On April 9, Natalia Morari was officially charged by the Moldovan government with ‘calls for organizing and staging mass disturbances’ and she was put un‐ der house arrest. After her release she said on BBC News that: “It was really terrible, I was totally cut off from all sources to find out what happened to my friends, who were with me in the street”. Flash mob gatherings are only possible with modern communication techno‐ logies such as Twitter. Yet the protests in Moldova are on themselves not ne‐ cessarily the consequence of new me‐ ans of communication. Internet communication technologies do not ha‐ ve a substantial merit to democracy or civil society but they do add some value. This becomes clear in protests li‐ ke this which are organized through the‐ se new media. In the greater whole the question is if new media are well es‐
tablished in Moldova. The short answer is that there are not many journalistic organisations in Moldova that are solely active on the internet, but there is one shining exception: Unimedia.
A high temperature office packed with PC screens, cardboard boxes and pro‐ European flags is the working place of Dimitru Ciorici. He is an energetic re‐ porter of Unimedia, a small news ag‐ ency and a blog network on the web. In their daily work the reporters of Uni‐ media face problems in a country that basically only knows self‐censored com‐ mercial and state controlled media. Di‐ mitru sees it as their mission to report news in Moldova before other media bring out their own interpretation of the news. An idealistic goal, but thanks to the internet they can succeed in this mission. Unimedia became quite suc‐ cessful during and after the protests, the number of visitors on their blog sky‐ rocketed. Their stories and impressive photos – many made by Dimitru – were used all over the world by mainstream media like BBC and CNN. This success can be explained with some of the ob‐ vious advantages that the internet brings: news can spread quickly, state censorship is difficult and there is a lar‐ ge community always helping with sug‐ gestions or leads. But regardless of these advantages Uni‐ media stands more or less alone as a digital news medium. Although state censorship isn’t easy, the small or‐
Ph ot o: W i k i ped i a . or g
ganization still has had to deal with inti‐ midation, cutting off the internet connection or power. The treatment they receive might partly be a consequence of their political orientati‐ on. Dimitru: “Unimedia supports EU membership for Moldova and tries to convince their public of this.” The re‐ porters of Unimedia work eager to achieve their ideal: a democratic Moldo‐ va.
The Moldova's Twitter Revolution was a succesful step towards this ideal. It was not the first and definitely not the last demonstration organized by using new media. Recently thousands upon thou‐ sands of people took to the streets of Teheran during the big turmoil in Iran. Many people filmed the violent events with their phones and posted the videos on the internet. Twitter was also used in Greece to organize the student riots at the end of 2008. And already in 2004 the use of weblogs and cell phone texts were used to get people on the streets at the so called ‘Ukrainian Oran‐ ge Revolution’ where people protested
against the election results. Digitally powered revolutions like these are analysed in a case study on the ‘role of digital networked technologies in the Ukrainian Orange Revolution’ per‐ formed by Joshua Goldstein (2007). Goldstein wonders whether digital media can and do support democratiza‐ tion and the development of a civil so‐ ciety. ‘Civil society’ refers to those institutions and individuals that active‐ ly monitor and criticize the state as well as support the constitutional grounds on which the state is based from the perspective of the nation's community. He asserts that in many former Soviet countries including Uk‐ raine and Moldova almost all commer‐ cial media is controlled by oligarchs, which causes self‐censorship in these sectors. A little pressure, or even a manipulative suggestion from the state towards these oligarchs is enough to make sure that certain sensitive details are not broadcast in the general media. This one way, top‐down com‐ munication came under threat by the internet which, according to Goldstein, “allowed for the creation of a space for
dissenting opinions of ‘citizen journalis‐ ts’ in an otherwise self‐censored media environment.” Moreover Goldstein adds that “pro‐democracy activists used the convergence of mobile phones and the internet to coordinate a wide range of activities including election monitoring and large‐scale pro‐ tests.” Thus the new media definitely brings up new challenges for any semi‐ authoritarian government. However, Goldstein warns against ha‐ ving too much faith in the merits of digital media, a faith he calls ‘cyberu‐ topianism’. For technologies in them‐ selves cannot determine democratization. Technology doesn't de‐ termine the end of (semi‐)authoritari‐ an regimes. It is only a medium that happens to be available and, when used well, can bring great effects. But in the end it is the people that really make a revolution. Goldstein: “Given the multiplicity of factors in play du‐ ring a political revolution, it is not appropriate to infer that in similar cir‐ cumstances the application of technolo‐ gy will lead to the same outcome.” It is also of a temporary and spontaneous nature.
At the same time we should not be overly skeptic about the use of digital media in a democratization process ei‐ ther. Goldstein advocates that there is a middle ground between ‘cyber‐utopi‐ ans’ and ‘cyber‐skeptics’. New media can help democratization in giving peo‐ ple the means to voice their concerns and desires, but digital media do not determine any political consequences in themselves.
The protests might have happened as they did without Twitter. Chisinau is not a very big city. A group of people ga‐ thering on the square could quickly gar‐ ner attention in the entire area. But Twitter and other new media most cer‐ tainly ease the communication and ma‐ de it happen a lot faster. The demonstrations in Chisinau are therefo‐ re the combined result of both a spon‐ taneous flash mob summoned through
Twitter and furious and determined youths who are motivated to action. Keeping this in regard, it might be a bit overdone to assuredly suggest that Twitter adds anything substantial to ci‐ vil society, but there is something more important to note: the digital organi‐ zed protests get a message across. Using Twitter, people like Natalia Mo‐ rari are able to get involved in what they think is important, namely stan‐ ding for an open government and democracy. Using blogs and the speedy uploading of videos and photos, agencies like Unimedia are able to get the truth out into the world. All these people and organizations combined made a powerful statement that, using Twitter and social networks, very quickly allowed the entire world to witness what was going on in this tiny country on the edge of Europe.
Uzbekistan occupies a vast area between the Kaucasus and China, bordering on Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgystan and Tajikistan. Its 26 million population is landlocked geographically and many argue also politically, socially and economically. Uzbekistan used to be part of the Soviet Union next to other four Central Asian republics. Since 1991 the country gained independence and president Karimov has ruled it for the last two decades. Karimov's heavily police regime is not expected to change till his death. Regular elec‐ tions should give the regime a status of democracy, however people ironically joke: “What a luxury, we don't even have to go to the polling station, they do it for us”. Up to 80 percent of the economy is said to be underground while corruption is the rule rather than the ex‐ ception. The newspapers and the three national TV channels in Uzbekistan are all state owned. There is no independent press, which means that the people always get to read positive and propaganda news about the government. And this is the reason why most of the people don't even read the newspapers, they know that the media only tell ‘fairytales’.
In summer 2008 the security service arrested Solijon Abdurakhmanov, an independent journalist, and made sure he was sentenced to ten years in prison. Accor‐ ding to the accusation and the sentencing Solijon was a drug trafficker. This verdict shocked many in the field. They prevented him writing anything, whether good or bad. It is very hard, if not impossible, for jour‐ nalists to work in this situation. The forms of terror and repression are widespread. At a marriage celebrati‐ on people are dancing and eating. One of the guests is complaining about the fact that the government has built a new road. Now it's impossible for him to reach his land with his cows. Later that evening it is quite possible that the complaining guest has disappeared; he might be questioned by secret security people. In‐ formers and spies can be found at various levels. Peo‐ ple are not allowed to be critical about their president and government, not even when they are at the hair‐ dresser or at friends. Since the shooting on peaceful demonstrators after the arrest of 23 businessmen in May 2005, Uzbekistan has been increasingly isolated from the rest of the world. All international organisations have been sent out of the country and the repression has increased. Dis‐ sidents, critical voices, media makers, and human rig‐ hts defenders have either been arrested, fled the country or have ‘accidentally’ died.
To make people aware of the situation in Uzbekistan and to stop the silence, Press Now is organizing a one‐ day‐long event on Uzbekistan. During this day you can mingle with intellectuals, writers and journalists to discuss and assess the situation in Uzbekistan. Possible live connections with people in Uzbekistan, interviews with refugees in the Netherlands, round tables discus‐ sions with Dutch politicians and experts on this subject will contribute to take Uzbekistan out of the isolation. Impressive film and documentaries, a striking photo exhibition, music and books from and on the country are all part of the programme. Press Now welcomes volunteers for this day!
Queen’s Wine, of which Buckingham Palace orders a vast amount (three thousand bottles) every year since Queen Victoria made it clear that she loved this wine, is only just the top of Moldova’s largest winery. In fact, the wine‐cellars of Mileştii Mici reach a total length of 250 kilometres, con‐ taining as much as two million bottles of wine. These are indeed two world records.
Although few people will associate wine with Moldo‐ va, the country proves to have a significant wine‐his‐ tory. Visitors can learn this history when the bus (!) takes them along the endless galleries packed with huge barrels of wine, waiting for the day when their time has come to be put into bottles. Inside the cellars, a whole parallel universe exposes itself. Visitors are told a story about the corres‐ pondence of human life above the ground and the life underground, of the wine in the cellars. In its early years the life of both is fresh, spontaneous, and sparkling, waiting to discover the new. As the world turns, life becomes more mature, more responsible. Humans as well as wines, who have reached adult‐ hood have found their balance, they are in a stable and perfect position. When the years pass by, most life experiences decay. Legs won’t carry you as easily as they did before, and the bouquet has become a bit dry. In both super‐ and subterrestrial life, however, the real gems only come about at old age. The slow, grey man is the wisest of all, and the utmost wine experience is uncorking a super‐premium bottle. But life isn’t only about the birds and the bees. Like the human counterpart, the history of wine in Mileştii Mici has experienced periods of terror, deep frustrati‐ on, and cruelty. In this underground world, a solution was found to situations in war time. In a deep and dark part of the cellars the best wines of the collecti‐ on laid hidden from the Soviet inspectors behind a heavy, old‐looking, moveable wine‐cabinet. Carefully shielded from the enemy, protected like precious hu‐ man lives hidden behind moveable bookshelves in Amsterdam.