ICCEE: Czech Constitutional Court Is Asked to Question Hillary Clinton on RFE/RL / Sacked Croatian journalist feels harmed by RFE (CTK)
Information Centre
CAUCASUS – EASTERN EUROPE (ICCEE),
Tel. +420/724 938 783, +420/775 581 100, +420/603 317 078
Email: pelivans@volny.cz ; hakob@orer.cz
For immediate release
Czech Constitutional Court Is Asked to Question Hillary Clinton on RFE/RL
(Prague, 12 March 2009) – Hillary Clinton who as the serving Secretary of State sits on the Board of Directors of the Prague-based Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), might be asked to testify before Constitutional Court on employment practices of that U.S.-funded radio station in Czech Republic.
Petition to question Hillary Clinton is submitted to Constitutional Court by Snjezana Pelivan, Croatian citizen suing in that court RFE/RL for infringement of her labor and human rights resulting from violation by RFE/RL the legislative sovereignty of the Czech Republic, its host country.
Armenian citizen Anna Karapetyan brought similar charges against RFE/RL earlier this month in the Supreme Court. The plaintiffs, former employees of RFE/RL, which is subordinate to Broadcasting Board of Governors in Washington, a governmental agency overseeing all U.S. nonmilitary international broadcasting, are suing RFE/RL for practicing national discrimination in labor relations with its non-American and non-Czech employees.
Broadcasting in 28 languages, the nationals of 20 RFE/RL target countries – Afghanistan, Armenia, fm. Yugoslavia, Iraq, Iran, Russia, states of Central Asia, etc. – compose the bulk of RFE/RL total personnel in the Czech Republic. Their uniform employment agreements with RFE/RL effectively deny them any protection of U.S. and Czech labor laws. Official Policies of RFE/RL allow unmotivated terminations of such foreign employees at any time for any reason without informing them why the employment was terminated.
Czech newspaper Lidove noviny, Prague, wrote in editorial commentary “Equality With Precondition. Practice of Free Europe Contradicts Its Ideals”: “Employees are divided in three castes… That situation, as it seems, is brutally abused by the management of the radio station. With foreign employees from the third caste the propagators of democracy deal as colonial power with rightless aborigines.”
Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) is appointed by the President “with the advice and consent of the Senate”. Secretary of State is BBG member ex officio. By law, BBG collectively serves as RFE/RL Board of Directors and “makes all major policy determinations governing the operations of RFE/RL.” Also by law, “United States international broadcasting … shall be consistent with the broad foreign policy objectives of the United States.”
Petitioning Constitutional Court to question Hillary Clinton, Snjezana Pelivan notes that after Mrs. Clinton became on January 22, 2009, the member of BBG and RFE/RL Board of Directors, RFE/RL’s “discriminative to foreigners Policies and practices remain the same”. Hillary Clinton’s testimony should clarify if RFE/RL Policies, “which violate labor (employment protection) and human rights (national equality) of RFE/RL foreign workers in the Czech Republic and, thus, contradict Czech labor laws, are dictated by
the ‘broad foreign policy objectives of the United States’.”
Commenting on lawsuits against RFE/RL in Czech Republic, an Armenian daily AZG (“People”), Yerevan, wrote recently: “These legal cases are a stamp of shame, a stigma on the history of well-respected Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, which has supported democracy for decades.” The article was titled “Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) Betrays Its Ideals” http://www.azg.am/EN/2009021204
President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are expected on April 4th and 5th to be in Czech Republic holding presently rotating presidency in the Council of European Union.
# # #
ICCEE is a non-governmental non-profit organization established in Prague in 1999. ICCEE is the publisher of the main Armenian magazine in Europe, Orer (Days).
**********************************************************************************
The CTK News Agency also reported on this issue in the following News Item:
Sacked Croatian journalist feels harmed by RFE
ČTK /
12 March 2009
(NOTE: The CTK (Mr. Karel Petrak) granted us permission to re-print this news story)
Brno, March 11 (CTK) - Croatian journalist Snjezana Pelivan, dismissed by the Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), demands that the Czech Constitutional Court (US) question U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the proceedings over her complaint, Pelivan's lawyer David Uhlir told CTK Wednesday.
Pelivan worked in the Prague RFE/RL office and she was given a notice in 2004 that was, according to her account, not properly explained, Uhlir said.
The U.S.-sponsored radio station treated its staff from the third countries in a discriminatory and anti-constitutional way, Uhlir said.
Before the Czech Republic joined the EU, the RFE/RL staffers who were not from the USA or the Czech Republic were insufficiently protected against immediate and unsubstantiated sackings, Uhlir said.
This was the case of not only Pelivan, but also of Armenian Anna Karapetyan, another client of Uhlir, the lawyer said.
Uhlir said the foreigners who work in the Czech Republic for foreign companies deserved the same protection as other employees.
Uhlir said that Clinton's testimony before the Czech Constitutional Court was rather hypothetical. In her position, she enjoys diplomatic immunity and she can refuse the testimony, Uhlir said.
Pelivan said that Clinton might make it clear in the court whether the approach to the employees was dictated by the aim of the general U.S. foreign policy.
Pelivan is demanding the cancellation of earlier verdicts that rejected her complaint.
According to the complaint, there were three groups of employees in the Czech RFE/RL office. The first consisted of U.S. nationals subjected to the U.S. law. The second included Czech citizens with whom the radio station concluded work contracts according to the Czech law and who were protected by the Labour Code.
The third group consisted of foreigners from the third countries, who were, according to Pelivan, disadvantaged.
The RFE/RL broadcasts to 20 countries. It has its headquarters in Prague.
Source: http://praguemonitor.com/2009/03/12/sacked-croatian-journalist-feels-harmed-rfe
U.S. State Department: Azerbaijan is primarily a source and transit country for men, women, and children trafficked for the purposes of sexual exploitation and forced labor
Azerbaijan: Journalists, beware
A series of arrests and prison sentences for charges that include terrorism have journalists in Azerbaijan wondering if there is any sort of future for a free press.
Commentary by Karl Rahder for ISN Security Watch (25/05/07)
Increasingly bad news for freedom of expression has recently come out of Azerbaijan, the US' oil-rich ally in the Caspian Sea region, where five journalists have been sentenced to harsh prison sentences in the last few weeks in what critics say is a government campaign to stifle free speech.
Rafiq Tagi, a journalist with the independent newspaper Senet was sentenced on 3 May in Baku, the capital, to a four-year term for “inciting religious hatred,” while his editor Samir Sadagatoglu received a three-year sentence.
The prison terms and prosecution came as a result of a commentary written last November by Tagi entitled “Europe and Us,” which according to press reports compared Muslim societies such as Azerbaijan with historically Christian Europe and concluded that Islam had, on the whole, hindered social and political development.
While this sort of reflective social commentary might be the norm in the West, the outcry from some quarters in secular, Shi’ite Azerbaijan was shrill, with ultra-conservative Muslims in the village of Nadaran calling for the two men’s deaths and the public prosecutor bringing criminal charges against them.
In neighboring Iran, Grand Ayatollah Fazel Lankarani has issued a fatwa calling for the execution of Tagi and his editor, saying on his
website: http://www.lankarani.org/eng/mes/016.html
that “it is necessary for every individual who has an access to him to kill him. The person in charge of the […] newspaper, who published such thoughts and beliefs consciously and knowingly, should be dealt with in the same manner.” Another cleric who lives in the city of Tabriz has reportedly offered his house as a reward for anyone who kills the two men.
The sentence was handed down despite protests from Azerbaijan’s embattled journalistic community, a number of non-governmental organizations and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).
What emerges from the trials, convictions and physical attacks over the years is an apparent pattern of coordinated assaults against freedom of speech in Azerbaijan. On 27 April, independent journalist Eynulla Fatullayev was convicted of “criminal libel” and “insult” and sentenced to 30 months in prison for allegations he purportedly made having to do with events surrounding the massacre of civilians in the Azerbaijani town of Khojaly during the 1992-1994 Nagorno-Karabakh war. Fatullayev’s original article evidently
attached some blame for the tragedy to the failure of Azerbaijani military forces to protect the town. But in the furor that followed the article, Fatullayev was charged with libeling the residents of Khojaly.
Fatullayev, perhaps Azerbaijan’s best-known opposition journalist, denies having made libelous comments, but his conviction - and the physical attack on the same day against his colleague Uzeir Jafarov - reminds critics of the government of the price they may be forced to pay when they stray too far from what is acceptable, to both the government and the conservative Shi’ite establishment.
Journalism in Azerbaijan was a high-risk endeavor even before the 2005 murder of Elmar Huseynov, editor of the independent Monitor newspaper, and a friend of Fatullayev’s. It clearly remains a high-risk endeavor.
In October last year, well-known poet and opposition journalist Sakit Zahidov was convicted on charges of illegal possession and use of drugs. The charges were widely believed to be politically oriented, with the arrest coming only three days after Ali Akhmedov, the executive secretary of Azerbaijan's ruling New Azerbaijan Party, called for Zahidov’s arrest for his alleged “slanders” against government officials.
Zahidov’s brother Ganimat happens to be the chief editor of the opposition newspaper Azadlig, which has been a thorn in the side of the government for years and was ejected from its office space in 2006 along with the Turan News Agency and the Popular Front Party.
Last week, Rovshan Karbili - the editor of opposition newspaper Mukhalifat - and reporter Yashar Agazade were sentenced to two and a half years in prison (identical to Fatulayev’s sentence) for libel in connection with an article that accused Jalal Aliyev, an uncle of President Ilham Aliyev, of corruption.
OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media Miklos Haraszti expressed “shock” over the sentence in a statement to the press.
"Azerbaijan's relentless persecution of journalists annihilates the security of journalism, a major OSCE commitment," said Haraszti.
The conviction and sentence came less than three weeks after a meeting between Haraszti and President Aliyev, during which the OSCE representative asked the president to halt the persecution of journalists, reminding Aliyev that "Azerbaijan today is the country in the OSCE region with the highest number of journalists in prison […]"
The US embassy in Baku issued a statement after the most recent convictions, saying that the imprisonment of seven journalists in toto in Azerbaijan "is part of a trend of pressure - including violence, threats and libel cases - that runs counter to Azerbaijan's stated commitment to media freedom. Journalists in democratic countries are not imprisoned for exercising freedom of expression. We urge the Azerbaijani government to remove libel from the criminal code and to take steps to create the necessary conditions
for media freedom."
In 2005, Freedom House, a non-governmental organization that monitors democratic development, downgraded Azerbaijan from "partly free" to "not free."
Finally, on 21 May, authorities closed down the offices of Fatullayev’s newspaper Real Azerbaijan as well as another opposition paper, the Azerbaijan Daily, two of the most popular newspapers in the country. While the government says the closure was due to maintenance and fire safety issues, no other tenants in the building were evicted. And as of 23 May, Fatullayev faces additional charges of "making a terrorist threat," a development that could extend his prison term for many years.
The independent media are being all but shut down in Azerbaijan. The terrorism charges against Fatullayev and the stiff sentences handed out for a harmless editorial and criticism of a member of the president’s family send a message to the press that the confines for freedom of expression in Azerbaijan are becoming more circumscribed.
It is hard to imagine that the remaining opposition newspapers such as Azadlig will tone down their editorial coverage, although independent television network ANS is perceived by many to have done just that since it was allowed back on the air last year after a brief closure. The atmosphere in the country has certainly chilled in over the course of the past couple of weeks, and the government now will have to decide if it has communicated the new rules with sufficient clarity or whether more arrests are in the
offing.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Karl Rahder has taught US foreign policy and international history at colleges and universities in the US and Azerbaijan. In 2004, he was a Visiting Faculty Fellow in Azerbaijan with the Civic Education Project, an academic program funded by the Soros Foundations and the US Department of State. He is currently based in Chicago.
The views and opinions expressed herein are those of the author only, not the International Relations and Security Network (ISN).
URL: http://www.isn.ethz.ch/news/sw/details.cfm?ID=17659