We all know how US citizen Marzieh Hashemi was arrested at the St. Louis Lambert Airport, and transferred into FBI custody. We also watched on Wednesday as she was finally released, having never been charged with a crime. RNA - Hashemi is a journalist and an anchor for Iran’s PressTV, and her arrest was the subject of mounting international scrutiny, though the US government had refused virtually all comment. Officially she was kept in prison as a “material witness”.
Broadly there is still no information from the US government about what happened. Hashemi was in court on at least thee occasions, but it is as yet unclear what, if anything, was discussed therein, and the Justice Department has in the past overtly abused the material witness law as a way to detain people when they lack any legal basis for doing so.
In terms of what’s going on with journalists, it’s clear that Hashemi’s release won’t change the fact that this is indeed a very unique period for independent journalists in the United States, particularly for those who question the Trump administration’s domestic and foreign policies:
- A growing animosity towards independent journalists in the US and other parts of Europe, is being increasingly violently expressed. The chief editor of Wikileaks is still under embassy arrest by the British government in London.
- The same is true in places like Saudi Arabia and occupied Palestine, where there are verbal attacks, threats, and murders, and the discussions on stories are much more aggressive and deadly than before. A case in point could be the grisly murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi Embassy in Istanbul last October.
- Palestinian journalists continue to receive Israeli threats, including calls for massacre and airstrikes at their newspapers and press headquarters for covering the grim stories about the situation in the West Bank and besieged Gaza Strip.
- It is just under a year since the murder of Slovak journalist Jan Kuciak, who had been investigating links between the Slovak government and the Italian mafia. Journalists covering the stories of mafia and organized crime like drugs and human trafficking are also a target.
- What’s changed over the course of the last two years is that in the past a lot of journalists didn’t pay much attention to anonymous threats or regime aggressions, but as they are seeing now, this kind of hate and threat is being expressed in physical and deadly attacks on journalists, including detention and imprisonment without charges. A case in point could be Hashemi’s incarceration by the FBI in Washington.
- The illegal imprisonment and harsh treatment of Hashemi made headlines around the world, raised questions about press freedom and the safety of journalists in the US, and focused international attention on serious shortfalls in human rights. It comes at a time when the West continues to struggle with eroding press freedom, as well as growing and very serious concerns about not just declining press freedom in the US, but a complete lack of it even in European Union member states.
According to Fars News Agancy, Despite Hashemi’s release, there remain concerns about the US and media being controlled by the pro-Zionist government and business/military associates, as well as President Trump’s openly hostile attitude to reporters and independent media outlets. There have also been massive protests in the last few days against President Trump and government, in part over Hashemi’s detention and a lack of press freedom.
Her imprisonment without charges will have a chilling effect on other independent journalists who dare to question Washington’s domestic and international policies that have destabilized the planet. It is about time media watchdogs like RSF as well as international organisations such as the European Commission and the United Nations highlighted declining press freedom and human rights abuses in the United States in recent years.
They know and the whole world knows that the United States and its regional allies have all fallen significantly in Reporters Without Borders’ press freedom rankings in the last few years amid concerns over their authoritarian use of tactics, imprisonment, embassy arrest, national security legislation, takeovers, forced closures and, even security service surveillance and murder, to try and silence critical news outlets and independent journalists.
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