commissions. apple has denied this. ♪ >> this is "al jazeera." these are your top stories. joe biden raised the caps on refugees entering the country despite an earlier decision to keep the limit imposed by donald trump. within 62,000 people can now be admitted this year. the latest from washington, d.c. >> he says that that 15,000 was a figure that was going to be reviewed. he is attempting to walk himself back on this particular subject following that massive blowback he had from fellow democrats in

particular but now, here comes a caveat. the president says it is unlike -- unlikely it will be reached. there are such immense staff shortages in bodies like the department of homeland security. >> india is fast approaching 20 million confirmed coronavirus cases after recording a 12th straight day of more than 300,000 infections. 24 patients have died after yet another hospital ran out of oxygen. the world health organization is considering whether it can improve chinese made vaccines for covid-19 emergency use. the decision to authorize or reject sinopharm and sinovac shots will impact supply which has showed that -- slow down due to shortages. colombia's finance ministers resigned after days of protests against proposed tax increases left 17 people dead. there have been calls for mass

demonstrations this week despite the president withdrawing the plan. two of the world's top philanthropists are splitting up. bill and melinda gates said they made the decision to end their marriage after 27 years. in that time, they have given billions of dollars to charity including committing 1.75 billion dollars towards fighting covid-19. the u.k. is hosting the first meeting of foreign ministers in two years. antony blinken held sideline talks with his british counterparts. the pair singled out russian antenna for breaking international norms. those are your headlines. the news continues after "inside story." stay with us. ♪ ♪ ♪

>> press freedom under attack. journalists harassed and killed, but is -- isn't information a public good? this is "inside story." ♪ hello, welcome to the program. attacks on journalists are on the rise and becoming more obvious and open around the world. the international press institute has reported 600 35 violations globally and says at least 49 journalists were killed in the past year. the main offenders are authoritarian leaders who are

increasingly -- crackdown on the media. they almost never face justice for their efforts to silence journalists. ipi says the pandemic is accelerating those negative trends as governments use the public health crisis to restrict freedom. and it was new censorship rules which could become the permanent norm. the organization's executive director said the rise in open attacks on press freedom and the targeting of journalists in dictatorial and a liberal minded regime's around the world is an ominous sign for the future of democratic freedoms. press freedom is under assault everywhere we look with tactics and methods for doing so being shared and copied by governments. antidemocratic regime's increasingly feel that they can silence the media with impunity.

this has a domino effect, encouraging other states to follow suit. the international press institute says india has committed press freedom violations more than any other country in the world with 84 offenses. afghanistan has the greest number of targeted people with nine cases. myanmar, china, the philippines, belarus, and hungary are among the countries cracking down. an alarming number of physical and verbal attacks on journalists were reported in europe during the pandemic. fake news laws provide governments with control over the flow of information and they were introduced in 18 jurisdictions. let's bring in our guest in paris. she is a spokeswoman of the

reporters without borders, editing chieand founder of the hong kong ee press, independent publication indo hall. the share of journalism program for graduate studies. welcome to the program. how do you explain the rise in attacks targeting journalists? >> this year, with the pandemic, we have seen a number of increases. we have seen a big increase in the attacks on journalists due to the pandemic. it's extremely worrying and we have released a very shortly -- our last index on press freedom which shows that 73% of the monitors throughout the world have put some block -- have put

some blocks on information for journalists to do their job so it is worrying. >> tom, how do journalists operate in hong kong against the backdrop of the security law that was introduced last year? 5 -- tom: journalists have been scrambling to react to that mall. it's being broadly applied and it is having a chilling effect in every newsroom. we are not giving straight answers when we see this. can we interview this person, can we film that question marked it appears this law is designed purposefully to make the media self sensor and overcorrect. we have already seen the proprietor arrested. i would say we are in the midst of a full throated crackdown. to be honest, we have all got whiplash from the speed of what is going on. >> for decades, the general

sentiment was basically that there are areas which are safe for journalists to operate. others, historically speaking, talking about asia, sub-saharan africa, and parts of latin america, which were widely seen as unsafe them about those lines seem to be more blurred. >> absolutely. first of all, i think we have to note that governments everywhere in democratic societies and also in nondemocratic societies, have an interest in trying to control media narratives and journalists are often seen as troublemakers and rabble-rousers. but it has become increasingly difficult for journalists to navigate their spaces but it has always been difficult. just a couple of weeks ago in minneapolis, where i am from, journalists were targeted by police when they were trying to

cover the derek chauvin trial. derek chauvin being the officer who killed george floyd. so it is a problem, obviously, everywhere. it is more of an acute problem in nondemocratic societies. >> afghanistan is a country with the greatest number of targeted killings of journalists. how do you see the situation is evolving, particularly now that there is no growing sense of uncertainty and the future? >> with the uncertainty of the pandemic, of course, we are worried about what is going on. i think it is very important that organizations like ours continue to denounce the mergers that have been put in place by several countries during the pandemic to block journalists and prevent them from doing their job on the field. especially those measures that have been taken during the first

lockdown at the beginning of 2020. the other thing is that we have to make sure also that in countries where there were restrictions, they are now -- they have now disappeared and journalists can work and better ways. they cannot be under such curfew or lockdown for so long and it is important that this situation which has been implemented is not left in place for too long. this is probably the most worrying thing right now for us. the spread of disinformation that has really increased with this pandemic in the past year. it is very important that, altogether, we fight to express to the international audience public what information is and what information it brings,

especially at this time. >> the security law you spoke about his vaguely worded clauses and there are some paragraphs which talk about ones that will be heard behind closed doors and others tried in mainland china. is this an indication that we are talking about the end of an era, the beginning of a new era for journalists operating in hong kong? >> hong kong was always sebastien of press freedom within asia and i think there are certainly worse places to be journalists even now, certainly safety wise, but i don't know where else in the world you could point to where you have seen such a rapid sense of going from a free and open society with all of these guarantees on which this newsroom was built, free expression, press freedom, to

these authoritarian atmospheres we have now where indeed, figures like jim eli could be facing trial on the mainland. you could have warrantless raids under the security law, hand-picked judges, court cases behind closed doors. so you know, the rule of law is certainly under fire because it is just so unpredictable as to whether you are going to step on a landmine just doing your daily job. >> in places like afghanistan, yemen, syria, iraq, and different parts of the middle east, we are talking about the same pattern which has been going on for quite some time. journalists targeted a campaign of discrimination, threats. it's a very dire situation for those people. >> no question. you know, we talk about the middle east or specifically about the arab region, we do have to be careful to

differentiate between and among countries. i try to resist the temptation to treat the arab world as a monolith. clearly, it is not. there are places where there are comparatively greater levels of freedom, places like tunisia, kuwait, lebanon. in qatar, we have al jazeera. we don't want to treat those places like some of the others that you mentioned. obviously, the situation in syria is extremely dire. the situation in yemen, we can look to a country like egypt, which is one of the countries i focus on in my own research. egypt took a step forward during the arab spring, during the immediate aftermath of the uprising in 2011, and then took several steps backwards. >> we were talking about those concerns expressed by different international reports i the international press institute,

but what is quite striking this time is that it is also happening in europe. it's really an alarming situation. apollyon: -- pauline: it is an alarming situation and the situation is deteriorating in europe. we are still waiting for the investigation to bring some new we still do not know what has happened, whether there is a real link with this profession. yes, you mentioned he was killed in 2017 and another in 20 not talking about the number of attacks on italian journalists covering the mafia and criminal networks. serbia or montenegro,

journalists are shot at. we are talking about countries which are looking to enter the european union, so the situation is not good right now in the %-px out of 180 countries. the worst in the whole region with attacks on journalists and a number of journalists not able to report in the proper way or just not being able to get the information and publish them in proper conditions. so europe is not anymore a place where press freedom is free. there are good countries but it's that the whole deterioration of the press, only 7% of the countries monitors

throughout the world are still in the white zone. where they can do their job in good conditions. >> in hong kong and developed parts of the world, there is this debate between the need to preserve human rights and liberties, values, with respecting the national security issues, but most of the time, the ground seems to be tilting towards the national security matters, which explains why they will have to do it differently. >> we see a lot of excuses around asia, whether it's covid-19, national security, or so-called fake news for authoritarians to crack down on the press, having been emboldened to do so by the time era. we have seen beijing empowering, inspiring, and equipping more countries like cambodia to do so, to censor the internet. and particularly when it comes

to fake news, we are seeing potentially this year such a law being rolled out in hong kong according to the cities chief executive, according to the police. the big question that raises is who decides what is fake. is it news that is inconvenient to the government? the authorities in hong kong should not be the arbiters of truth. the media here hold the powerful to account and i would say we have already seen the authorities trying to fill that role of journalists with chief executive carrie lam appearing on tv for times a day every day in her own show, interviewing people, and during 2019, we saw the police picking up microphones and reporting from the front lines of the protest so it is not for them to be adopting the roles of journalists under this guise of combating misinformation. >> for quite some time, the

biggest challenge facing journalists was basically the warlords, the fanatics, the dictators, who were intent on clamping down on dissent. now, you have leaders, elected democratically, but suddenly, they have been moving forward towards a populist agenda, and they have become one of the main people at the forefront of the clamp on expression. >> i think here, you know, we would be remiss if we did not talk more about donald trump. his presidency was particularly harmful. as tom said, he sort of emboldened leaders all throughout the world to take these sort of aggressive stances against the media. he was constantly engaging in what hermon and chomsky called

flat, disciplining members of the press except, you know, the difference with trump is that he was very explicit in the way in which he was doing it. there was no settled data him. in the united states, there is a long tradition of the government engaging in tactics that manipulate media. you can read, for instance, any factoring consent by hermon and chomsky. talk about the various filters that exist, their natural structural constraints, built into the system, so we only end up with the news that is "fit to print. donald trump comes along and is basically not even trying to hide his intentions and he took measures, quite honestly, that went far beyond anything that we had seen in modern american hiory. >> in the european council, they

have warned against systematic attempts to dismantle freedom of expression in hungary and poland, which seems to be impressed by the styles of the hungarian authorities in which seem to be replicating across the world. >> absolutely. hungary is the country which put in place the first measures to prevent journalists to investigate on the pandemic and threatening journalists with prison sentences for publishing fake news even though no one knew what exactly -- fake news according to the hungarian government. the hungarian prime minister, victor orb on, is a problem for

press freedom because he's also followed by a number of authoritarian leaders. in slovenia, the new prime minister is also acting in the same way. we mentioned poland, which is in a very worrying state right now. with the low -- with the party in power since 2015, and all liberties, all freedom of expression and of the press have sort of disappeared with attacks on the justice. there was the one latest one against the old buns meant -- hope bud's men -- with the representative of the country. having such attacks invade countries like this -- in big countries like this has a big consequence on others. >> it's not always the physical threats.

governments are using restrictive laws, commercial takeovers, financial regulation, to silence journalists. do you think it is about time to rethink international regulations and laws to put an end to that and protect journalists? >> certainly, you are seeing ownership issues in hong kong and there's been efforts to self regulate through the journalists association here but in addition to the security law, you are getting the rise of indirect bureaucratic and legal attacks on the press if you look at the case of a freelancer who was held in court for using public records to investigate the police action during a mob attack in 2019. i imagine we are going to see more imaginative and innovative ways for going up to journalists in hong kong. at the same time as these new laws are coming in to regulate so-called fake news and such,

but these are not things i think that any of authority or international here should be seeking to regulate. they should not be the self-appointed arbiters of truth . it can cause problems, clearly, having press freedom, but it should not be upon governments to be seeking to regulate the disputed information. >> we got to a point where governors in the philippines and indonesia and different parts of the world, using the emergency laws for covid-19, are putting into place all sorts of mechanisms and punitive laws that would consider anyone who would dare make an investigation into what went wrong and accuse him of inciting sedition. >> right. we have seen that in india. in the philippines. we have also seen that in latin america. we have seen it in the arab region in places like egypt but

is not just the issues that you describe. it's really a simple matter of reporting of facts. when journalists have tried to describe accurately the covid cases, for instance, in particular countries, they have been disciplined. recently, in egypt, a journalist for the guardian, so-called western journalists in egypt, was expelled for contradicting the government narrative on the coronavirus. and another journalist from the new york times was warned by the addition government, so this is all documented in some recent analyses including arab that was published recently by men rights watch. so it is very concerning. governments are using the coronavirus pandemic as an excuse to try and exert greater and greater control. >> at the same time, we have this report from the united

nations about what it described as another launch of my size and the sick abuse targeting women journalists worldwide. it is the main form that has been used to spread those attacks targeting women journalists worldwide. >> it is true. there is a rise of attacks on journalists on the social networks and one of the explanations is also that female journalists are also attacked along with their families, their children, their daughters. we have seen a number of cases and there are these attacks against female journalists which are stronger but not down in the same way as for male journalists. they are monitoring the situation because even in the

best countries of our index, the nordic countries, sweden, finland, the netherlands, all these countries at the top of the index, we see a rise of these attacks. very famous journalists are insulted by trolls, anonymous trolls, groups of people using the social networks, and this is extremely worrying and it discourages young journalists from doing this job. >> from aldous huxley to george orwell, chomsky and others, the general sentiment was there was always going to be someone there , waiting for the moment to put pressure on their community and silence those who dare say no to him but you get a sense that the lines are completely blurred here. we are talking about democratic societies which are colluding

with leaders elected democratically to silence people. >> i think what you are seeing in hong kong right now is a true microcosm of what is happening on the world stage, a rising, increasingly assertive, some authoritarian china, verses, you know, the open, more democratic values in the west. we talk about hong kong being east meets west. it's worth paying attention to because the crackdown we are seeing here could happen elsewhere, but at the same time, you are seeing a pushback. executives from the public broadcasts have been quitting and protests amid the crackdown there. we hear every day, seeking to respond to business and legal advice, moving to a private office as we have had to do from a co-working space using encrypted devices and having an openness with staff about

potential self-censorship. i think everyone is picking a hill ion die on and for a lot of us, it is getting the news out. >> it seems to be a grim reminder of the way we have to go for freedom of expression to thrive in the near future but it's going to be a commitment from every one of us to continue the fight for the world to be a better place to live in. i really appreciate your insight. thank you for watching. you can see the program at any time by visiting our website. for further discussion, go to our facebook page. you can alsooin the conversation on twitter. for me and the entire team here in delhi. -- doha. xxxúúúúúóóóóóóóó??■

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