Paris, March 25, 2022 – Russian authorities should stop harassing journalists from the independent news website Sota.Vision, and allow all members of the press to work freely, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Friday.
Since March 7, authorities have detained at least seven journalists with Sota.Vision, including two who were sentenced to multiple days in prison, and also fined and harassed employees of the outlet, according to mediareports and Sota.Vision editor Aleksey Obukhov, who spoke to CPJ via messaging app.
“Russian authorities must stop their repeated harassment and detentions of journalists with Sota.Vision and other independent outlets,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator, in New York. “With independent Russian journalists fleeing abroad in droves to avoid being jailed for factual reporting on the war against Ukraine, the few that remain must be allowed to provide crucial information to the Russian people.”
On March 7, authorities fined Sota.Vision correspondent Gleb Sokolov 20,000 rubles (US$200) for allegedly violating the establishes procedure for rallies after he covered an anti-war protest in Moscow on February 25, the outlet wrote on its Telegram channel.
On March 17, law enforcement searched the home of Sota.Vision journalist Elena Izotova in the southwest city of Kazan and seized her technical equipment, according to Sota.Vision and Obukhov, who said that authorities have labeled her as a witness to an investigation into incitement to mass disorder, which he believed was a pretext to harass her.
On March 18, authorities detained Sota.Vision journalists Pavel Ivanov, Ruslan Terekhov, Artyom Kriger, Nika Samusik, and Aleksandr Filippov in Moscow and St. Petersburg ahead of planned rallies in those cities supporting the Russian military, according to news reports and Obukhov.
Kriger, Samusik, and Filippov were released later that day without charge, and Ivanov and Terekhov were charged and convicted of disobeying authorities, according to those sources, which said that Ivanov was sentenced to three days of administrative detention and Terekhov to 10 days.
The Second Special Regiment, a special police unit designed to disperse rallies, alleged that Terekhov refused to show his camera cases for inspection to determine whether they contained explosives, according to Sota.Vision, which said he had appealed the conviction.
On March 19, a police officer visited the home of Sota.Vision journalist Pyotr Ivanov in St. Petersburg in connection with the journalist’s detention at an unsanctioned rally on March 6, according to his outlet and Obukhov.
“The visit was most likely an attempt to intimidate him” before he covered an anti-war rally, Obukhov told CPJ, saying that such a visit “makes you understand that you are ‘on the hook’ and will be detained if you show up at the rally, despite your press card, editorial assignment, [press] vest, and so on.”
On March 23, Russian Investigative Committee operatives searched the home of Sota.Vision editor Darya Poryadina in the northwestern city of Arkhangelsk, according to multiple posts on Sota.Vision’sTelegramchannel and media reports.
After the search, authorities held Poryadina for more than 12 hours at the Investigative Committee’s Arkhangelsk office, and released her after she signed a non-disclosure agreement, according to those reports.
During her detention, authorities interrogated Poryadina as a witness in a criminal case over opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s creation of an alleged “extremist community,” according to those reports. During the search, authorities seized her equipment and press card, as well as about 100,000 rubles in savings, according to Obukhov.
“Darya had never been affiliated with any of Navalny’s organizations, but had covered protests in Arkhangelsk, including the January 21 return and arrest of Navalny,” Obukhov said.
And on Friday, March 25, police briefly detained Sota.Vision freelance contributor Aleksandr Peskov, and released him after designating him as a suspect in an investigation for allegedly insulting law enforcement, according to Sota.Vision and Obukhov. If charged and convicted under Article 319 of the criminal code, he could face a fine of up to 40,000 rubles (US$400) or up to one year of corrective labor.
CPJ was unable to contact the Russian Interior Ministry or Investigative Committee for comment, as their websites did not load.
[Editors’ note: This article has been changed in its second paragraph to correct Obukhov’s title.]
Temperatures are below freezing in Minneapolis with rain and snow falling as teachers enter their third week on strike. Negotiations are occurring at the Davis Center, where Minneapolis Public School District has refused to provide a living wage to Educational Support Staff or accept other demands. Outside, hundreds of teachers are dancing, chanting and picketing. “We have decided to organize an occupation of the Davis Center. We are going to have students here 24-7. We are going to be here all the time. And this is to increase awareness of the strike,” said one of the students.
This past weekend, protests calling for the resignation of President Kais Saied were organized in Tunisia’s capital Tunis. Protesters also rejected the online consultation poll started by the current interim government in January to invite public suggestions and amendments after the president announced the holding of a referendum in July to replace the current constitution with a new one. General elections governed by the new constitution are scheduled later in December. On Saturday March 19, a major left opposition party, the Workers’ Party of Tunisia organized a rally on Habib Bourguiba street in central Tunis in defiance of the decision of the governor to ban protest actions on the street. They also condemned President Saied’s moves to consolidate authoritarian, individual rule.
After more than three years of negotiating their first contract since they unionized, 150 full-time lecturers are expected to strike at Howard University beginning this Wednesday. Unless an agreement is reached in the coming days, they will strike alongside almost two hundred adjunct professors hoping to secure their second contract.
Nearly 600 oil workers at Chevron’s Richmond, California refinery walked out on strike early Monday morning after rejecting two local contract proposals pushed by the United Steelworkers (USW) union. The refinery workers are demanding higher wages, shorter work hours and better health and safety protections after laboring up to 70 hours a week and risking their lives as “essential workers” throughout the pandemic.
The Minneapolis Public School district says it has shared its “last, best and final offer” to striking education support professionals (ESPs). But the ESP and teacher chapters of the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT 59) say the district can do better, and they’ll continue to strike until that happens. Classes were canceled in Minneapolis on Monday, marking the 10th day nearly 30,000 students have missed school since the strike began on March 8.
Fans of Red Star Belgrade rolled out banners featuring the number of US military interventions during the club’s match on Thursday. According to local media, the performance was dedicated to the anniversary of the ethnically-motivated violence against Serbs in Kosovo and Metohija.
Workers at the Overland Park Starbucks location at 10201 W 75th Street walked out on strike Saturday morning. “The response to our union campaign from our district manager, Sara Jenkins has been aggressive. She has cornered us one on one, sometimes with another manager to intimidate us. Forced us to decide between being demoted, resigning or changing availability that conflicts with college classes and second jobs…We want the one-on-ones to stop,” Starbucks employee Hannah Edwards said in a statement.
On Wednesday, March 16, hundreds of Palestinians took to the streets in the Qalandia refugee camp near occupied East Jerusalem to oppose the killing of a Palestinian man by the occupying Israeli forces a day earlier. Israeli forces fired tear gas and rubber coated bullets against the protesters. 22-year-old Alaa Shaham was killed by Israeli forces on Tuesday, March 15 and at least six others were injured. The Israeli forces fired at people gathered to protest them storming the camp. Israeli forces also killed at least two other Palestinian youths in similar incidents in the Balata refugee camp near Nablus and in the Naqab (Negev) desert. In the Balata refugee camp, Israeli forces shot dead 16-year-old Nader Rayan when a group of Palestinians were resisting the arrest of another Palestinian.
Labor is on fire in the Twin Cities. Educators in Minneapolis are wrapping up their second week on strike, and cafeteria workers are poised to join them. St. Paul educators came close to walking out as well; the unions fed off one another as they built their contract campaigns. “St. Paul has the experience,” said St. Paul special ed teacher Jeff Garcia. “Minneapolis has the energy. They are really fired up.” ESPs in both cities are being paid poverty wages and living out of cars. The strikers are demanding a living wage for ESPs, along with more mental health workers and smaller class sizes—all of which they say translates directly into stability and supportive learning opportunities for students.
The years since the first global school strike have not been easy to navigate — for climate activists or almost anyone else. They have seen a global pandemic, a long-overdue uprising against racial injustice in the U.S. and — most recently — a war in Ukraine that has upset the established world order. COVID-related restrictions made large climate demonstrations hard to organize, and school closures made the idea of striking from class moot. While a surge in youth voter turnout helped sweep Donald Trump from the presidency and flip the Senate blue, the Democratic Congress has failed to advance comprehensive clean energy legislation. What’s more, President Biden’s administration has also walked back on some of its most important climate promises.
At 8:50 PM today, a young supporter of Just Stop Oil ran onto the pitch during the Everton vs Newcastle United game to draw attention to the group’s demand that the Government ends all new fossil fuel supply projects.
Louis, 21, locked on to the goalpost at Goodison Park wearing a Just Stop Oil t-shirt, causing the referee to stop play or nearly 10 minutes.
Dozens of Minneapolis public school students organized a march and a sit-in to stand in solidarity with public school educators who entered their second week on strike. The students gathered at North High School and many held homemade signs, as well as some of the union signs speaking about the need for smaller class sizes, hiring more BIPOC teachers, and more.
On March 8, around 3,500 Minneapolis teachers and educational support professionals went out on strike, effectively shutting down a system of 35,000 students. The action, led by Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT) Local 59, is the first walkout the city has seen in over 50 years. In An Interview, One Striking Teacher Explains How Community Support Is Providing Energy And Optimism On The Picket Line.
On Monday, hundreds of students staged a walkout at a high school in Orange County, Florida, demonstrating against a bill that would limit discussion of LGBTQ issues in schools throughout the state.
More than 500 students participated in a protest at Winter Park High School, organized to oppose legislation — colloquially known as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill — that was being debated in the state Senate at the time. The legislation would ban discussion of LGBTQ issues in primary school classrooms and severely curtail what can be discussed in older grades, and could have disastrous repercussions beyond lesson plans.
An employee of a Russian television station who went missing after she protested the government’s war with Ukraine on the air has been found, her lawyers indicated on Tuesday.
On Monday, Marina Ovsyannikova, who worked as an editor for the state-run Channel 1 station in Russia, interrupted a live broadcast of the country’s most-watched news program by holding up a sign with anti-war language and yelling “Stop the War” over the words of the station’s anchor.
Her sign included the words “No War,” and “Don’t believe the propaganda, they’re lying to you here.”
The show quickly cut from filming the anchor to stock footage, and Ovsyannikova was immediately detained. Following her arrest, her lawyers released a video statement explaining why she felt compelled to take action; in it, Ovsyannikova explained that she is “deeply ashamed” to have worked for the station, as it produced “Kremlin propaganda” that she disagreed with.
A female employee of a Russian television channel protests no to war live on air
A spokesperson for the Russian government later tried to downplay Ovsyannikova’s protest as “hooliganism.” But on Tuesday, it appeared that the Kremlin was taking her supposed offense seriously, as Ovsyannikova briefly went missing, according to her lawyers, who said they could not locate their client.
Later on Tuesday, Ovsyannikova and one of her lawyers, Anton Gashinsky, showed that she was no longer missing by sharing a photo of themselves in a Moscow court on social media.
Ovsyannikova’s arrest highlights the dangers that Russian residents face in standing up to President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. There is currently a growing anti-war movement within the country, with protests springing up in dozens of Russian cities over the past three weeks.
Kremlin authorities have responded to these protests by arresting and detaining people. At the start of this month, the Russian government criminalized protests against its invasion of Ukraine; individuals who are found guilty of illegally protesting the war — or independently reporting on it — face up to 15 years in prison.
As of last week, around 13,000 Russians had been arrested by the country’s police for speaking out against the invasion.
On Thursday evening, March 10, community members who are without permanent housing and their advocates arrived at the Carla Madison Recreation Center in an attempt to take over the public facility overnight to be out of the below freezing weather.
The Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT) strike entered its fourth day on Thursday March 11 as Minneapolis Public Schools remained closed. Picket lines continued to have large crowds with many schools reporting 100% turnout to their picket lines every day of the strike, and the others reporting nearly all educators on their lines.
The Minneapolis teachers’ strike kicked off this week with a huge turnout. With the George Floyd uprising, Minneapolis saw the rebirth of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement. During the Derek Chauvin trial which coincided with the police murder of Daunte Wright, community members were once again brutalized with tear gas and rubber bullets, and the Twin Cities were crawling with National Guard. Against this backdrop, it comes as no surprise that the teachers who do the labor of nurturing the younger members of our society are on strike for racial justice. All of their demands are directly connected to the Black struggle.
Nearly two decades after Bush administration began a nationwide crackdown on the U.S. movement against the invasion of Iraq, antiwar activists in Russia are experiencing a wave of brutal repression as President Vladimir Putin’s regime wages an extremely deadly war on Ukraine.
This is a pivotal moment for the antiwar movement in Russia. Some activists are fleeing the country to avoid persecution and agitate against the war under international protection, according to a Russian activist who must remain anonymous due to fear of arrest. There are also “plenty of examples” of others staying in Russia and developing creative ways to resist despite the threat of arrest.
“Plus, actually many don’t mind getting arrested,” the activist said over an encrypted chat this week. Many Russian antiwar organizers have emphasized that they feel strongly about putting themselves on the line at a time when Ukrainians are suffering so much at the hands of the Russian government.
Still, human rights groups say key organizers face serious criminal charges, and multiple protesters have reported injuries after being arrested and detained. Videos of police wielding batons against demonstrators and using “excessive force” have emerged from recent antiwar protests in Russia, according to Human Rights Watch. Nearly 14,000 people in Russia have been arrested or detained for participating in antiwar actions since February 24.
Meanwhile, Alexi Navalny, the Russian opposition leader jailed by the Putin regime, has reportedly called for mass antiwar protests across Russia this Sunday that could bring thousands of people into the streets.
Human Rights Watch reports that 5,000 people were detained during actions in 69 cities on March 6 alone, and several women allegedly endured violent interrogations by police at Moscow’s Brateyevo police station that could amount to torture under international law. Two activists, 22-year-old Marina Morozova and 26-year-old Aleksandra Kaluzhskikh, discreetly recorded their interrogations and gave the audio to independent media outlets.
The question of whether the Russian antiwar movement will grow into a serious challenge to Putin — or be stifled by police and the propaganda pushed by state-run media — could be answered in the coming weeks as Russian forces continue aerial bombardments of civilian areas and lay siege to key cities in Ukraine. Negotiations aimed at ending the conflict are not making progress, and with everyday Russians suffering under economic sanctions and fallen soldiers coming home in body bags, the truth is slowly seeping out despite the government’s efforts to control news outlets and social media.
In interviews, antiwar activists in the United States say they no longer discuss the war with their friends and counterparts in Russia over the phone. A new Russian law imposes a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison for statements “discrediting” the military or cutting against the official narrative of Russian’s mission in Ukraine, which the Kremlin and state media often describes as a “special military operation” rather than an “invasion” or a “war.”
Activists worry the anti-dissent law will be enforced retroactively, allowing authorities to target activists for statements and online posts made before the crackdown and even call for the extradition of activists who have fled the country.
Women Transforming Our Nuclear Legacy, an antiwar and anti-nuclear proliferation group that brings Russian and American women together, recently published a petition calling for an immediate ceasefire. Unlike in previous appeals, the group withheld signatures of Russian members due to fear of arrest, according to Ann Wright, a well-known antiwar activist who resigned from the U.S. military in 2003 to protest the invasion of Iraq.
“There are a few that are still speaking to the international media … but it’s very, very dangerous for them,” Wright said in an interview.
In a recent international poll by LexisNexis, less than half of Russians approved of the war but only 27 percent disapproved. Another 26 percent had no opinion, possibly reflecting the Kremlin’s crackdown on dissent and independent media outlets, which has left many Russians with access to only the state’s narrative on the news.
Younger, tech-savvy Russians use Virtual Private Networks or VPNs that encrypt online data and web surfing for privacy to bypass the country’s censorship of social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook and access international news about the war. However, increased sanctions imposed by the U.S. are making VPNs difficult or impossible to use. Activists say most students and young people in major metropolitan areas such as Moscow and St. Petersburg oppose the war, while members of older generations swallow the Kremlin’s misleading narratives on state-run TV.
“The Russian people are going to suffer big time in terms of all of the sanctions on them,” Wright said. “The people are isolated; nobody is giving them visas to leave the country.”
Paula Garb, a longtime activist who lived in the Soviet Union for 20 years and worked as a peacemaker during conflicts in Georgia and other areas of the post-Soviet bloc, said she remembers living in an “information bubble” created by state television broadcasts when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979. However, the repression of activists and independent news media appears to be more severe now, resembling the Soviet Union under the authoritarian grasp of Joseph Stalin after World War II, Garb said.
“It does seem as though maybe there is 50 or 60 percent of the whole country which may not be happy about the conflict, but are just accepting the Russian government’s narrative,” Garb said in an interview. “Thousands of people are willing to be activists, but it may not be enough — yet.”
Garb and Wright said observers across the world were taken by surprise by Putin’s brutal assault on Ukraine. Many assumed Russian troops would defend the two pro-Russian breakaway provinces in the Donbas region, but the full-scale effort to topple the Ukrainian government that has claimed thousands of lives so far seemed like a remote possibility just a few weeks ago. Antiwar organizers were forced to act quickly as Russian military action escalated into an all-out invasion, pushing more than 2.5 million civilians out of the country.
“Russians say ‘don’t hate us for what our leaders have done,’” said Wright, who has visited the country twice in the past five years. “We were hoping in the U.S. that the world wouldn’t hate American citizens for what both Bush administrations did to Iraq.”
However, Wright said, the U.S. antiwar movement was also sidelined by the media as the U.S. went to war with Iraq and Afghanistan under President George W. Bush, and thousands of activists were arrested by police over the course of several years.
“It’s not like our government here was pleased with the antiwar sentiment,” Wright said.
Activists say we must not draw absolute parallels between the conflict in Ukraine and the U.S.-led wars in the Middle East, or the many other conflicts fueled by U.S. military support around the world, such as the occupation of Palestine and the civil war in Yemen. However, like many of these conflicts, the future of the war on Ukraine remains unpredictable.
Putin has not achieved the swift victory he may have imagined, and the conflict in Ukraine is already a humanitarian catastrophe that threatens to become a quagmire lasting for months, if not years.
Wright said multiple international antiwar coalitions continue to organize and support Russian activists, but they still need all the support — and media attention in and outside Russia — that they can get.
“We have to keep looking for those who are brave enough to speak out,” Wright said. “They are going to be heroes at the end of all this, if they are still alive.”
Palestinians in the occupied East Jerusalem neighborhood of Jabal al-Mukabir organized protests and observed a general strike on Thursday, March 10, against home demolitions planned by the Israeli municipal authorities. The Israeli municipality of Jerusalem reportedly plans to demolish around 800 Palestinian-owned homes in the area. Palestinians believe this is part of a much larger and long-running Israeli project of expulsion and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from East Jerusalem in order to colonize and repopulate the area with Jewish Israelis, and ultimately to annex the occupied Palestinian territory into the present-day state of Israel.
We go to Moscow to look at the growing antiwar movement in Russia, where activists are risking a brutal crackdown to oppose their government’s assault on Ukraine. Arshak Makichyan is a climate activist who recently joined protests against the invasion and says the actions of the Russian government do not reflect the will of the people. He says Russian citizens suspect President Vladimir Putin could declare martial law soon, as part of a broader campaign to suppress dissenting voices. Meanwhile, U.S. sanctions have unintended consequences on peace activists, whose access to virtual private networks and foreign social media platforms has been hurt, leaving them less able to find alternative sources of information. “It’s difficult and dangerous to fight this regime,” says Makichyan.
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
For the first time in 50 years, Minneapolis public school teachers and educational support professionals (ESPs) went on strike yesterday to demand better wages, smaller class sizes, mental health support for students, and retention of educators of color. The last time Minneapolis teachers went on strike was in 1970 when it was illegal for public employees to strike.
On March 3, 2022, police in Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad, opened an investigation into Asad Ali Toor for allegedly leading an unauthorized protest earlier that week, according to newsreports and Toor, who spoke to CPJ in a phone interview.
On March 4, the Islamabad High Court ordered police not to arrest anyone named in the case until another hearing on Monday, March 7; at that hearing, Chief Justice Athar Minallah said that police officers’ use of excessive force and the registration of a criminal case against the protesters constituted an abuse of state power, according to newsreports.
Toor, who was present at the March 7 hearing, said that Attorney General Khalid Jawed Khan told the court that the state would withdraw the case. Toor told CPJ on March 9 that he had not been formally notified that the case had been withdrawn.
Khan and Shabbir Ahmad, the station house officer of Islamabad’s Kohsar police station who filed the complaint, did not respond to CPJ’s requests for comment sent via messaging app.
Toor told CPJ that he denied any leadership role in the protest, held on March 1 at the city’s National Press Club to protest the disappearance of an ethnic Baloch student, and only attended to cover it as a journalist.
A number of students were injured when police charged the protesters and attacked them with batons, according to Dawn. Toor alleged that the investigation was retaliation for his coverageofthe protest and the police crackdown on his YouTube-based current affairs channel, Asad Toor Uncensored.
In a first information report, a police document opening an investigation, authorities accused Toor and several others of criminal conspiracy, rioting, unlawful assembly, obstruction of a public servant’s duties, defamation, and intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of peace. The most serious of those crimes, criminal conspiracy, can carry a death sentence, according to Pakistan’s penal code.
Previously, in September 2020, the cybercrime wing of the Federal Investigation Agency in the northern city of Rawalpindi filed a first information report against Toor for allegedly defaming the army through his social media posts, according to newsreports.
After four months of legal proceedings, the Lahore High Court dismissed the case for lack of evidence, according to news reports and Toor. He said that the state never informed him or his lawyers about who filed the complaint that led to the registration of a first information report, or which social media posts were allegedly defamatory.
Separately, in May 2021, unidentified armed men attacked Toor at his home and left him bound and gagged, as CPJ documented at the time. Toor told CPJ that police have not identified the perpetrators of that attack.
CPJ emailed the Federal Investigation Agency and Islamabad Police Inspector-General Muhammad Ahsan Younas for comment, but did not immediately receive any replies.
“I have never had that fear before that I might get physically hurt,” says Patrice Allen, a Ngati Kahungunu and Newshub camera operator based in Wellington.
“You’re going down there, you don’t know what it’s going to be like. A person from Wellington Live got beaten up.”
Māori Television’s press gallery videographer David Graham (Taranaki Whānui and Waikato) started working as a news cameraman in Wellington in 1989. He was there for the seabed and foreshore protests, and “in the 1990s it was Moutua and Pakitore,” he recollects. “But this is the most volatile one I have seen.
“Back then we [the media] were part of the show. They wanted us to be there. Now we are a part of the ‘axis of evil’, along with the police and government.”
Up against your own
“Now there are Pākehā calling you kūpapa [Māori warriors who fought on the British colonial troops side during the New Zealand Wars in the 19th century],” he says. He has just returned from filming with his phone in the crowd, and has heard protesters say things. Nasty things.
“Stuff like ‘you should be ashamed of yourself. You should be ashamed of your whakapapa!’”
“I just don’t engage,” says Graham. “And I am not a random man with a camera here. I actually have whakapapa back to this marae on my father’s side,” he says, referring to Pipitea Marae where Taranaki Whānui laid down Te Kahu o Raukura as a cultural protection over the surrounding land that includes the Parliament grounds.
The protesters had lots of livestreams and many of them kept filming media camera-ops who were filming them. (Below: David Graham finds himself in one of the live feeds while a protester in the crowd heckles him.)
A standup by Maori Television’s Parliament videographer David Graham captured on protester’s social media grab. Image: Māori Television
Allen feels the mamae is stronger when it comes from your own people.
“He was a big dude and he was really getting in my face. I was not feeling very safe. And I thought, ‘how can I diffuse this?’” So she asked them where they were from.
“And they were like where are you from? What are you?”
“Oh, Ngati Kahungunu, just over the hill in Wairarapa,” she replied. The man said something targeting not just her but also her iwi. “And that just broke my spirit,” says Allen.
“It was one of the days I went home and cried.”
‘We’re the enemy now’ “We are the enemy now,” says Allen. “And there is nothing you can do or say that will change their minds.”
Her teammate Emma Tiller thinks the camera can be a beacon in the crowd. “As soon as you put it up, everyone knows who you are. And they hate you.”
And even though security cover has become standard practice for all news camera-ops filming in the crowd, there are times she feels vulnerable. “It’s hard to think back to protests when we were out there. We didn’t have security with us. It didn’t even cross our minds.
“But now who wants to risk the violence?” she says.
“They have thrown things at the police. If they can do that to them, what can they do to us?”
The Speaker’s balcony is empty today … a far cry from Wednesday, March 2, when it was packed with camera operators and reporters (below) as police cracked down on the occupation and cleared Parliament grounds. Image: Māori TelevisionThe balcony was allocated by the Speaker of the House to media workers as a safe space. David Graham (left) and Patrice Allen (third from left). Māori Television
“The last time I had security was when I was filming in East Timor,” says Allen. It was a long time ago, she adds, and at a time and place when there were terrorists around.
“It’s really bad because it’s made it ‘us and them’, media against protesters, and it’s not supposed to be like that.”
‘Difficult to turn off’
Sam Anderson, 22, is TVNZ’s camera operator at the press gallery. “It has been difficult to turn off,” he says “ I have been there [on the Speaker’s balcony] from 9am to 6pm just streaming the whole day.
“It’s all you are doing – copping the abuse, being yelled at, having your morality questioned.
“I sometimes hide behind the pillars from the frontliners who can yell all day.
“And throw that in with reading all the signs around you,” says Tiller.
“And they yell at you. And you go home and you can’t switch it off.”
Throughout the protests, the signs have been as much anti-“mainstream” media as they have been anti-government. Image: Māori Television
Anderson’s teammate, Sam von Keisenberg, was on that balcony on February 11 when police made many arrests. Shortly after they arrested someone at the forecourt and the crowd was yelling at the police, a lady pointed a finger at him and said “You! You are a paedophile protector!”
“At first I was like, ‘that’s new’. But then she said it 50 times, as loud as she could, just at me.”
He pulled his camera off the tripod. “It was getting to me”, he says. “I have children. I would never protect a paedophile.”
His colleague asked him where he was going. “Just to punch some lady in the face,” he said under his breath. “And I walked out and just went to the bathroom.”
Sweeping generalisations
“Sometimes you have to take a step back,” von Keisenberg says.
“I had never experienced hate [directed] at me before,” RNZ video journalist Angus Dreaver says. Especially this type, he says, where they think media are traitors, and they want them to know.
“Four months ago, I was doing kids’ TV.”
Dreaver thinks the generalisation works both ways. While the protesters see the mainstream media as a monolith and sweep them with one giant brush, “it’s important for us, conversely, not to see them that way.”
Von Keisenberg believes there were more moderates in the crowd than extremists. “I always felt there were enough people around me,” he says. And that made him feel safe in the first week when he was filming undercover, knowing that “if things did get violent, there would be some moderate ones who would stop them”.
He saw that in action, too. In his forays of the first week, when he joined the crowd unmasked to avoid attention. He saw a man there in his 70s wearing a mask.
“The first thing he said to me was that he was immunocompromised, which is why he was wearing the mask.”
“It’s fine, mate. It’s a freedom rally, do what you want,” von Keisenberg said. But another protester came up and “tried to pull his mask off and started berating him, saying he had no identity. The mob mentality started and people around the gate joined in and started giving him grief.”
Von Keisenberg intervened. “Oi! chill out man. It’s a freedom rally, he’s free to wear a mask!”
“A woman close by turned around and said, ‘Yeah, come on guys! leave him alone.’ And they did.”
Mainstream media
When people tell von Keisenberg that they don’t watch mainstream media, his follow-up is, “Well then, how do you know we are ‘lying’?”
“They say, ‘we get our news from Facebook, which is different’. Yeah, different, because there aren’t many rules around it,” von Keisenberg says.
“Mainstream media is held more to account than social media,” Allen says. “But they think the opposite.”
Some of Dreaver’s acquaintances have shared his photos on Instagram, in posts that read “Mainstream media are liars”. “Bro, that’s me!”, he says.
Trying to remain objective in the face of constant harassment is a real challenge.
“I am almost hyper-aware of that, where I am trying to capture the mundane and relax as much as the heightened states,” he adds. “And I am trying to not let my anger affect the pictures I take or how I cover it.”
But for camera operators, the task ends once they take the picture. “We only aim for clear sound and sharp, steady pictures,” Graham says. “The rest of the stuff is for other people to decide what to do with.”
Anderson thinks there are differences in perspectives within newsrooms. People who have watched the protests from a distance or from their desks often take a kinder view of the protesters, he says.
“But me and the other camera ops, we copped a lot of abuse over three weeks. We just have a more bitter taste in our mouths for this crowd.”
The PM in ‘disguise’
There have been the fun moments, though, Anderson admits. There have been “raves” with young people dancing on the frontlines and he found himself almost filming to the beat. And there was a protester who thought he was the prime minister in disguise.
A Reddit thread with a screenshot of a protester’s post. Image: Sam Anderson screenshot
“Now that is one theory I know is not true,” says his teammate von Keisenberg. But how does he know for sure?
“Because I have seen both of them in the same room at the same time.”
And von Keisenberg has had his fun moments in the crowd, too. In one instance when he was filming undercover, a woman went on the stage and started talking into the mic about electric and magnetic fields (radiation) and how crystals could block them.
“Bullshit!” von Keisenberg turned around and shouted.
“We are here for the mandates,” he added, not snapping out of character, and for the benefit of those around him who were listening to the woman speak.
A potential for volence
“The vibe changed every few days, and that was because people kept coming and going,” von Keisenberg says. “But there were always the elements who were there for whatever happened on day 23.”
One camera op I spoke to said there had been a “potential for violence” right throughout. And when someone like Winston Peters visits the crowd and says “the mainstream media have been gaslighting you for a long time,” it gives them validation, and lends credibility to their theories.
But for those on the ground gathering news amid a hostile crowd, it exacerbates the possibility for harm.
Added to this potential of violence is the constant anticipation of things to come. “You have to be always prepared for when something will happen,” as Tiller puts it. “And that is exhausting.”
Emma Tiller describes her experience of the Speaker’s balcony as, “You feel like you have to be prepared for if something is going to happen, and that is exhausting.”
Emma Tiller on the Speaker’s balcony … “You feel like you have to be prepared for if something is going to happen, and that is exhausting.” Image: Sam James/Newshub
“The day things turn to custard, you want to be there on the ground,” Graham said to me a few days before the police operation. “You don’t want to be at home watching it on TV.”
And turn to custard it did; the threat of violence became reality on day 23. While the “battle” raged between the police and the protesters, the media people found themselves being targeted.
Dreaver was in the crowd by the tent where a fire had started. “A Mainstream! We have got a Mainstream here,” a woman who spotted him started shouting.
Brandishing a camping chair, she told him to, “get out of here! Out! Out!” The riot police were advancing behind him and he stood his ground.
“She started hitting me on the back with it,” he said. “She didn’t have a lot of speed but it was still a metal chair.”
“It hurt a bit,” he reckons.
“Get out of here,” demands the woman who attacked Dreaver with a chair. “Just go” shouts a man standing beside her. Screengrab from RNZ’s video story.
“Get out of here,” demands a woman who attacked RNZ’s Angus Dreaver with a chair. “Just go” shouts a man standing beside her. Image: RNZ screengrab from video story.
‘Not everyone’
“There were some protesters who were trying to stop the violence. Even right at the end,” says Dreaver, recollecting how when some people were breaking up bits from the concrete slabs to get smaller throw-able chunks, another person tried to physically get in the way and stop them.
“But the other guys had a metal tent pole and whacked him over the head with it.”
Throughout the three weeks of protests, there had been repeated calls from the protesters asking the media to talk to them. On the morning of day 23 when I was filming from the Speaker’s balcony, a TV reporter had just finished a live cross into the bulletin.
A man’s voice rang out from among the crowd, on the PA, inviting the media on the balcony to “come down and talk to real people and report the truth.” The same voice went on to berate us for wearing masks, behind which we were allegedly smiling smugly.
Less than a minute after the initial invitation, he followed up with another call to step down so he could put a fist through the mask.
“Why don’t you come down to talk to us? Because getting bashed with a chair was always inevitable,” says Dreaver. “It’s crazy it took so long.”
Protesters whacked another protester with a tent pole as he tried to stop the violence. “It didn’t look as though it injured him, because the tent poles are quite light, but it looked quite gnarly,” Dreaver says.
Protesters whack another protestor with a tent pole as he tries to stop the violence. Image: Screengrab from RNZ video story
The aftermath
Parliament’s grounds have been reclaimed. All but one street around the buildings is now open to the public. On Sunday, Te Āti Awa held a karakia to reinstall the mauri of the land. There is currently a rāhui over the Parliament grounds.
It is time for healing. And moving on.
“I was feeling sad last week. And then I look at Ukraine and realise there are bombs going off next to all these journalists and camera operators,” Dreaver says “I got hit with a camping chair and I am going to sit around and complain about it?”
The effect of these protests linger though. Graham spent last Friday a week ago filming the hau kainga at Wainuiomata on high alert, and trying to keep the protesters from entering and setting up camp on their marae, as have other hapū around the capital.
The crowd has dispersed but not vanished, and neither has their kaupapa.
“I have seen some of their kōrero online,” Graham says. The mandates might be gone soon, but “there will be other stuff,” he reckons.
“It’s definitely not over.”
Rituraj Sapkota is Māori Television’s videographer in Parliament’s press gallery. Republished with permission from Te Ao Māori News.
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More than 93% of the Minneapolis educators voted to authorize the upcoming open-ended strike, along with a 78% strike vote from Saint Paul educators. In the week after the educators’ votes, food service workers in the Minneapolis school system also authorized a strike by a 98% vote. The food service workers’ strike is expected to start soon after the educators’ strike begins.
About a dozen environmental activists took to the streets of downtown Green Bay Friday evening to protest a proposed oil pipeline reroute in northern Wisconsin.
“We’re trying to raise awareness about Line 5,” said organizer Justice Peche.
Canada-based Enbridge Energy is rerouting the Line 5 pipeline around the Bad River Ojibwe Reservation at the request of the tribe.
