Jamil Anderlini, in an op-ed in POLITICO entitled Europe’s growing polarisation spells trouble, says that Europe is witnessing worrying trends regarding press freedoms.
He describes China as “the world’s biggest jailer of writers and reporters,” with more than 100 writers and more than 100 journalists behind bars in China, about a third of the world’s total prison population, according to Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and PEN American. But he highlights that the situation in the former British colony of Hong Kong has deteriorated markedly more severely relative to other regions.
In 2002, when RSF first published its World Press Freedom Index, Hong Kong ranked 18th in the world and was a relative bastion of free speech despite being returned to China in 1997, but as late as 2016 the position had dropped to 69th in the world, but still Hong Kong enjoyed many of its former freedoms under the “one country, two systems” principle and was still much better off than China, which ranked 176th.
This year, Hong Kong ranked 135th out of 180 and would have been lower if several other countries had not slipped even faster.
According to local reports, the Wall Street Journal told staff this week that its Asian headquarters would move from Hong Kong to Singapore, while Radio Free Asia closed its Hong Kong office, citing concerns about staff safety. The New York Times and Washington Post have already moved their regional headquarters from Hong Kong to Seoul.
Despite China’s growing influence in Hong Kong, Jamil Anderlini said that even in Europe, which by definition ranks highest in press freedom, there are worrying trends. On top of economic hardship, there is growing polarisation and a tendency to vilify those who hold different political views.
“This is evident on the left and the right and is somewhat baffling to me. Having lived most of my adult life in a totalitarian state, the gap between those on the left and right in these Western democracies can seem ludicrously small.”
As we said earlier, politicians are the main threat to free media in Europe, with a third of EU member states classified as “problematic,” even in countries with “good” and “satisfactory” indicators there was a decline.
Anderlini said that in the run-up to the June elections, all registered European political parties were invited to nominate a candidate, but there was a certain amount of pressure to exclude anyone deemed “far right.” This is despite the fact that parties in this category are expected to receive an unprecedentedly high share of the vote across Europe this year.
