The statement reads: “Today the Cambodian government has launched what appears to be a campaign against key FM radio stations that carry Radio Free Asia (RFA) and Voice of America (VOA) broadcasts. These FM stations are a critical means for the Cambodian people to access accurate and independent news about Cambodia and the world. Reports indicate that at least one station has been intimidated into indefinitely ceasing broadcast of any RFA and VOA content, and another station has been completely shut down.”
“As networks supported by the Broadcasting Board of Governors, RFA and VOA work tirelessly to provide top-notch investigative journalism and reporting to audiences in Cambodia. This disturbing development is part of a pattern of intimidation and harassment of independent news sources that coincides with the run up to the 2018 elections. We call on the Cambodian government to reverse this decision to muzzle objective sources of news and to allow all impacted stations to resume normal operations immediately.”
The BBC World Service launched its first new language service in its biggest expansion since the 1940s on 21 August.
A digital Pidgin service for West Africa has launched and will be followed by new online services in Amharic, Afaan Oromo and Tigrinya, aimed at Ethiopia, Eritrea and diaspora audiences around the world. Further services, including Korean, are set to launch from this autumn. This expansion means BBC News will operate in more than 40 languages.
The BBC World Service expansion comes following a funding boost of £289m from the UK Government.
Director-General of the BBC Tony Hall (pictured left) says: “Today marks the start of a new chapter for the BBC.
“The BBC World Service is one of the UK’s most important cultural exports. In a world of anxieties about ‘fake news’, where media freedom is being curtailed rather than expanded, the role of an independent, impartial news provider is more important than ever. The new services we’re launching will reach some of the most under-served audiences in the world.”
World Service Director Francesca Unsworth (right) says: “For more than 80 years the BBC World Service has brought trusted news to people across the globe. I’m delighted that millions in West and then East Africa will be able to access the BBC in the languages they speak.
“The BBC World Service expansion will also bring benefits to audiences in the UK. Having more journalists on the ground will enrich our international reporting, bringing news from areas which are often under-reported.”
Pidgin is spoken by an estimated 75m people in Nigeria alone, with additional speakers in Cameroon, Ghana, and Equatorial Guinea.
The Pidgin service is fully digital featuring six daily editions of BBC Minute – a 60-second audio news update – followed by two daily news video bulletins in November. Two further services for West Africa – Yoruba and Igbo – will launch at the beginning of next year.
The Amharic, Afaan Oromo and Tigrinya services will launch online and on dedicated Facebook pages next month. This will be followed later in the year with shortwave radio services in each language, consisting of a 15-minute news and current affairs programme, followed by a 5-minute Learning English programme, from Monday-Friday.
BBC World Service has called on the Iranian authorities to reverse a new order which appears effectively to freeze the assets of BBC staff in Iran, preventing them from selling or buying property, cars and other goods.
BBC World Service Director Francesca Unsworth said: “We deplore what appears to be a targeted attack on BBC Persian staff, former staff, and some contributors. It is appalling that anyone should suffer legal or financial consequences because of their association with the BBC.
“We call upon the Iranian authorities to reverse this order urgently and allow BBC staff and former staff to enjoy the same financial rights as their fellow citizens.”
The BBC’s Persian Service is banned in Iran and BBC Persian staff and their families routinely face harassment and questioning from the authorities.
Reception of foreign TV and radio via privately-owned satellite dishes is banned in Iran, although there is widespread flouting of this rule. Dishes are often hidden on balconies and below rooftop parapets, as the image above from BBC Persian shows.
In July 2016, authorities seized and destroyed a reported 100,000 satellite dishes and receivers. According to media reports from Iran, General Mohammad Reza Naghdi, the head of Iran’s Basij militia, oversaw a destruction ceremony in Tehran after the equipment was confiscated and warned of the impact that satellite television was having in the country.
“The truth is that most satellite channels… deviate the society’s morality and culture,” AFP news agency reported him as saying. “What these televisions really achieve is increased divorce, addiction and insecurity in society.”
Naghdi claimed that a total of one million Iranians had already voluntarily handed over their satellite dishes to authorities. Iranian conservatives regularly denounce the channels as an attempt to corrupt Iranian culture and Islamic values and the police regularly raid neighbourhoods and confiscate dishes from rooftops. Under Iranian law those who distribute, use, or repair them can be fined up to $2,800.
Despite the ban on the BBC, the latest figures show the BBC World Service has an audience of 13m in Iran, making it BBC News’ seventh biggest market worldwide.
The AIB is saddened to learn that Les Murray, the former football broadcaster and known to football fans across Australia as “Mr Football”, has died aged 71.
Regarded by many as the voice of Australian football, Murray had been battling a long-term illness, according to his long-term employer SBS. He had retired from his role on the The World Game in July 2014, having played a major role in the game’s development in Australia since the 1980s.
In a statement, SBS said: “Les will be remembered not just for his 35-year contribution to football in Australia, but for being a much-loved colleague, mentor and friend who has left a unique legacy. To say he will be sorely missed is an understatement.
Murray pioneered football broadcasting in Australia following the launch of the National Soccer League in 1977, initially on Channel 10, and went on to become the voice of World Cup coverage on SBS for several decades. He hosted eight World Cups in total, his debut coming at Mexico 1986.
He also worked across the Asia-Pacific region as Chair of the ABU Sports Group for more than 10 years, and had been an advisor to the Association for International Broadcasting. Murray was also a member of the FIFA Ethics Committee.
Murray came to Australia from his native Hungary at the age of 11 after the 1956 uprising, without any knowledge of the English-language. Murray began his career at SBS in 1980 as a Hungarian subtitle writer, but it was his passion for football that rapidly brought him into the network’s sports team. By 1986, he was hosting SBS’s World Cup coverage. As an SBS football commentator and presenter, he covered eight World Cups before retiring in 2014.
Tributes have flown from all circles, with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, the football community and fans sharing their accolades of the lauded sports commentator.
Over his career, he championed the cause of immigrants in Australia, devoting much time to breaking down the many barriers that newcomers to the country had to face and helping to develop the country as a model of tolerance to all races. It was fitting that he worked for SBS, Australia’s multicultural network.
Les Murray will be greatly missed by his colleagues at SBS, the AIB, ABU and across the world of football and sports broadcasting.
A journalist working with RT Arabic, Khaled Alkhateb, has been killed in shelling from co-called Islamic State in the eastern suburb of Homs, Syria. The journalist was filming a report on the Syrian Army’s operations against IS terrorists.
He and a Syrian Army official were killed in a rocket attack by so-called Islamic State militants near a village called Bghailiyah, in Homs province, according to the head of RT Arabic’s office in Damascus, Abdelhameed Tawfiq.
Khaled Alkhateb was just 25 years old and had recently started to work with RT.
“Today RT Arabic lost a young colleague, journalist Khaled Alkhateb. This is very painful news for all of us,” the head of RT Arabic, Maya Manna, said in a statement.
Saying that Khaled had just recently become a stringer for RT Arabic, Manna added that he had been on assignment to cover the Syrian Army fighting IS in the Homs region.
“This morning, together with soldiers of the Syrian Army, he was heading to the town of al-Sukhnah, where heavy fighting is currently underway to free it. On their way there, not far from Homs, the convoy was attacked by IS militants,” she explained.
“We express our condolences to family and friends of Khaled, and will support them in any way possible. We thank Khaled for his courage and bravery,” Manna said.
Khaled’s father, Gasan Alkhateb, told RT his son loved his work and was always ready to risk his life for the sake of telling the truth.
RFE/RL Turkmen correspondentSoltan Achilova has said that she was threatened with death on July 29, while en route to take photos documenting Turkmenistan’s “Day of Bicycles.” Achilova has also said that the man who made the original threat on 29 July identified himself to her as a police officer tasked to watch her wherever she goes, and again warned her against taking photos, or she will be “finished.” The threats follow an assault last week when a man tried to steal her cellphone as she was about to take a picture.
The recent attacks on Achilova, 68, resemble assaults she experienced in November 2016, when two women approached her, yelling “This is the one who takes pictures and pours dirt on Turkmenistan” in the cafeteria at a rehabilitation centre northeast of the capital, Ashgabat. This attack came one day after Human Rights Watch issued a statement decrying an October 25 assault on Achilova, saying “Achilova’s ordeal was clearly yet another orchestrated attempt to silence a critic.”
“Journalism is not a crime, in Turkmenistan or elsewhere in the modern world. Soltan’s life has now been explicitly threatened in an effort to stop her from doing her job in Turkmenistan,” said RFE/RL President Thomas Kent. “The Turkmen government must immediately put an end to the persecution of Soltan Achilova and assure her safety.”
Achilova’s reports appear regularly on the website of RFE/RL’s Turkmen Service, known locally as Azatlyk radiosy. According to Turkmen Service director Farruh Yusupov, she is one of the main contributors to the website of photos and videos from within Turkmenistan. Recently, the focus of her reporting has been the government’s preparations for the Asian Games, including a story on the removal of a statue of former Turkmen president Saparmurat Niyazov from a major thoroughfare in the capital, Ashgabat.
Attacks on RFE/RL contributors in Turkmenistan, one of the world’s most closed societies, have intensified over the past three years. Saparmamed Nepeskuliev, a video journalist who contributed to the Turkmen Service, disappeared more than two years ago, and is now in prison on narcotics charges that rights groups say were “trumped up” in retaliation for his reporting on decrepit infrastructure and economic inequality in the country’s western region. After filing video reports about local life in Turkmenistan’s northern Dashoguz province, correspondent Khudayberdy Allashov was taken into custody and severely beaten in December, 2016; he and his mother were subsequently jailed for three months on charges of possessing chewing tobacco, a product that is widely used in Turkmenistan and is not known to have led to any previous arrest. In December 2014, Achilova was questioned by unidentified men in civilian clothing, as she interviewed people waiting to purchase fresh meat that had suddenly became available in shops around the country.
The United States, the OSCE, and media advocacy organizations have expressed concern about Turkmenistan’s persecution of journalists.
Turkmenistan is ranked “not free” in Freedom House’s 2017 press freedom survey of 199 countries and territories, tied with North Korea at the bottom of the scale with 98 points out of 100.
Because of political conditions, RFE/RL has no bureau inside Turkmenistan, instead working through a local network of contributors to provide the country’s only Turkmen-language alternative to state-controlled media. Its Turkmen Service website logged a monthly average of 440,000 visits and 800,000 page views in 2016, and it has 175,000 followers on Facebook.
Director-General of the BBC Tony Hall (pictured left) says: “Today marks the start of a new chapter for the BBC.
World Service Director Francesca Unsworth (right) says: “For more than 80 years the BBC World Service has brought trusted news to people across the globe. I’m delighted that millions in West and then East Africa will be able to access the BBC in the languages they speak.
