COMMONWEALTH COUNTRIES SHOW LEADERSHIP IN DEFENDING MEDIA FREEDOM
COMMONWEALTH COUNTRIES SHOW LEADERSHIP IN DEFENDING MEDIA FREEDOM
Rt Hon. Jeremy Hunt, MP was
appointed as the United Kingdom’s Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs from July 2018 to July 2019. He was elected Conservative MP for South West Surrey in May 2005. He served as Secretary of State for Health and Social Care and became Secretary of State for Health in 2012. In 2010, he became Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport. He was formerly Shadow Culture Secretary and Shadow Minister for Disabled People. Before his election as an MP, he ran his own educational publishing business, Hotcourses. He also set up a charity to help AIDS orphans in Africa in which he continues to play an active role.
Freedom of expression and a free and responsible media are enshrined in the Commonwealth Charter, which brings together the values and aspirations that unite the Commonwealth’s member states, the Commonwealth Secretariat, and its vast and rich network of organisations. On 10 and 11 July 2019, two Commonwealth countries, the UK and Canada, hosted the Global Conference for Media Freedom at the Printworks in London. Over 100 countries were represented by members of governments, civil society and the media. This was the first ever Ministerial gathering of its kind, and included twenty-four Ministers from the Commonwealth. The Commonwealth added its own distinctive voice to the debate. On the second day of the conference, Hon. Julie Bishop, AO, the former Foreign Minister of Australia, chaired a panel discussion on strengthening media freedom across the Commonwealth. She was joined by
226 | The Parliamentarian | 2019: Issue Three | 100th year of publishing
a panel of three Commonwealth Ministers: Hon. Kamina JohnsonSmith, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade of Jamaica; Hon. Richard Sezibera, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Rwanda; Hon. Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, Ghana’s Minister of Information; as well as Desmond Browne, QC of the Commonwealth Lawyers Association and Zoe Titus, Strategic Coordinator of the Namibia Media Trust. The panelists showcased to an audience including a number of Commonwealth Ministers and the Commonwealth SecretaryGeneral, shared best practice in protecting and promoting media freedom, and discussed further practical actions the Commonwealth can take, including the development of Commonwealth principles on freedom of expression and the role of the media in good governance. All of the Commonwealth’s component parts have an important role to play working together to advance the values of the
Commonwealth Charter, which were at the heart of the UK Foreign Secretary’s keynote speech, delivered on the first day of the Global Media Freedom Conference. Plenary speech by Rt Hon. Jeremy Hunt, MP, UK Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs: Just two months ago, on 16 May 2019, a 28-year-old Mexican reporter called Francisco Romero Diaz got a call before dawn about an incident at a nightclub in Playa del Carmen. Romero specialised in exposing organised crime. He responded as any good journalist should by getting to the scene as quickly as possible. In fact, he was probably walking into a trap. As he arrived, Romero was ambushed and shot dead. He would have known the risks he was taking. In the previous two months, he’d been detained by the police – allegedly for refusing to pay a bribe – and abducted by armed men. He’d been called anonymously by