[R-G] Media Watchdog as Democracy Manipulator Part 2

[Anthony Fenton]

Media Watchdog as Democracy Manipulator
The ‘Democratic’ People Behind RSF (Part 2 of 4)
by Michael Barker
	
November 18, 2007
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=21&ItemID=14322

Having provided a detailed outline of the financial support that  
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has received from the ‘democracy  
promoting’ community in Part 1 of this series of articles, this  
section of the article will now turn to examine the ‘democratic’  
affiliations of some of current and former employees of RSF.

Tala Dowlatshahi and the International Rescue Committee
Based in New York, Tala Dowlatshahi is the US representative of RSF:  
she is also a successful journalist who has previously worked with  
the International Rescue Committee (IRC), Amnesty International, and  
various UN agencies. While RightWeb has produced a detailed profile  
examining the elite and ‘democratic’ linkages of the IRC, the IRC  
also received a massive $1 million grant from the NED in 1987 (which  
was used to support Solidarity’s work in Poland). Furthermore, in  
1990 they received another $1 million from the NED which the IRC  
passed on to the Solidarity Social Fund (Poland). More recently, the  
Afghan Information Center received two $24,000 grants from IRC (via  
the NED) “to publish a quarterly journal in Pashtu-Dari to promote  
open discourse and the concepts of human rights, freedom and  
democracy among Afghanis living inside Afghanistan and abroad.”

Given that Dowlatshahi has recently worked for the IRC it is relevant  
to examine the ‘democratic’ credentials of some of the people  
involved with the IRC’s work. Thus particularly ‘democratic’ members  
of IRC’s board of directors include Vera Blinken (who is married to  
Donald M. Blinken, who is a honorary trustee of the Institute of  
International Education), Morton I. Abramowitz (who is a director at  
the NED, and has served as the president of both the International  
Crisis Group and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace),  
Andrew H. Brimmer (who is a director of the International Crisis  
Group), Frederick J. Iseman (who is a director of the Academy for  
Educational Development), Winston Lord (who is married to Bette Bao  
Lord, who in turn is chairman emeritus of Freedom House), Jay Mazur  
(who is a trustee of Freedom House, a director of the Franklin and  
Eleanor Roosevelt Institute, a former vice-president of the AFL-CIO  
from 1986 to 2001, and a former member of the League for Industrial  
Democracy), Indra K. Nooyi (who is a honorary trustee of the Asia  
Society), David L. Phillips (who is a director of Search for Common  
Ground), Samantha Power (who was the founding executive director of  
the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy (1998 to 2002), is a member  
of the strategy committee of the Project on Justice in Times of  
Transition, is a director of both the US Committee for Human Rights  
in North Korea and the International Center for Transitional Justice,  
and has worked as a political analyst for the International Crisis  
Group), and George Rupp (who is a trustee of the Institute of  
International Education, and a director of InterAction). In addition,  
other interesting members of IRC’s board of overseers are Madeleine  
K. Albright, Henry Kissinger, and Colin L. Powell.

While it is fairly simple to illustrate the intimate links between  
IRC and the ‘democratic’ community, demonstrating such a relationship  
between Amnesty International (AI) – where Dowlatshahi has also  
worked – and the NED crowd is not so straightforward. Unfortunately,  
it is not such of a stretch of the imagination to link AI to the NED,  
especially as I have already illustrated the close relations that  
exist between Human Rights Watch and the NED in my article Hijacking  
Human Rights. In the case of AI however, I have not undertaken a  
similarly detailed analysis of their ties to US foreign policy  
elites, but the little research that I have undertaken clearly  
illustrates that some of AI’s work can be linked to the NED.

Thus in 1999, AI’s Sierra Leone section (known as the Human Rights  
Now Association), received a grant from the NED to “reinforce its  
human rights education efforts by introducing a human rights  
curriculum in 10 senior secondary schools that already have AI  
clubs.” Moreover, in 1999 AI’s director for Africa, Maina Kiai,  
represented both AI and the Kenya Human Rights Commission (KHRC) at  
the World Movement for Democracy’s annual conference. This is  
significant because not only was the World Movement for Democracy  
created by the NED (in 1999), but Kiai’s attendance at the conference  
is noteworthy because the KHRC (of which Kiai was their founding  
executive director) has received numerous grants from the NED (in  
1993, 1994, 1995, 2001, and 2003), and has also obtained grants from  
both the Westminster Foundation (in 1998) and Rights and Democracy  
(in 2001). [1] It is also worth pointing out that Kiai has also  
served as the Africa director for the NED-funded group, Global Rights.

A full examination of AI’s ‘democratic’ ties will be outlined in a  
forthcoming article. However, for those interested in exploring some  
of the problems associated with AI’s work a good starting point is  
Paul de Rooij’s (2004) Amnesty International: A False Beacon?

Todd Lester: RSF’s Second International Rescue Committee Connection

Other than Dowlatshah, another former International Rescue Committee  
(IRC) employee who has also worked for RSF is Todd Lester: who  
between 2006 and 2007 helped RSF “establish it’s New York  
communications desk”. As with Dowlatshah it is informative to examine  
Lester’s previous institutional affiliations. Prior to his working  
with RSF in New York, Lester served as the information and advocacy  
manager for IRC in Sudan before going on to act as the Katrina relief  
project manager for FilmAid International – a position that enabled  
him to design and implement “the organization’s first domestic and  
natural disaster response intervention.” Although there is little  
critical commentary surrounding the work of FilmAid, Lester’s links  
to this group are particularly relevant to this article, because many  
of the people associated with FilmAid have numerous ‘democratic’  
ties, links which will now be explored in some detail.

FilmAid is a US-based non-profit organization that works closely with  
the IRC and a number of other human rights organizations (like CARE  
and Witness) [2] to use “film and video to promote health, strengthen  
communities and enrich the lives of the world’s vulnerable and  
uprooted.” Their website notes that although FilmAid was established  
in 1999 in response to the Kosovar refugee crisis, they have now  
extended their remit and aims to cater to the entertainment needs of  
people living in refugee camps all over the world. FilmAid has three  
specifically ‘democratic’ directors, these are Bill Carmichael (who  
currently serves on Human Right Watch’s Africa advisory board, is a  
former executive director of the (former) Soviet Union and Eastern  
European programs of the Institute of International Education, and  
prior to this spent 20 years working for the Ford Foundation), Bob  
Kissane (who is a director of both Human Rights Watch and Witness),  
and Bruce Rabb (whose substantial ‘democratic’ ties were outlined in  
one of my earlier articles).

Although FilmAid’s advisory committee is dominated by Hollywood movie  
stars it is home to a number of individuals with ‘democratic’ ties,  
these include Lisa Anderson (who is a director of Realizing Rights, a  
member of the US advisory board of the Democracy Coalition Project, a  
member of Human Right Watch’s Middle East advisory committee and an  
emeriti member of HRW’s board of directors, and she is also the  
former head of Columbia University’s Middle East Institute), Robert  
P. DeVecchi (who is a director of the Foundation for a Civil Society,  
is on the advisory board for the Civil Courage Prize, serves on the  
strategy committee for the Project on Justice in Times of Transition,  
and is an emeritus director of Refugees International), Mathilde Krim  
(who is a director of the Drug Policy Alliance, a founder of the  
Carter Center, a former trustee of the Rockefeller Foundation, and is  
a life trustee of the Africa-America Institute), Amy Mitchell (who is  
a former American Enterprise Institute media researcher), Susan  
Patricof (who is a member of IRC’s board of directors, and is an  
individual funder of the International Crisis Group), Richard Plepler  
(who is a trustee of the Asia Society, and serves on the advisory  
council of the Nixon Center), and actress Liv Ullmann (who is vice  
chairman of the IRC, and is the honorary chair of their affiliated  
Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children).

Returning to Lester’s career, it is informative to observe that he is  
currently the executive director of FreeDimensional, a group that  
“organizes community arts space and local resources for the support  
and protection of individuals [and] create dialogue on global issues  
and inequalities through their art and media.” Predictably,  
FreeDimensional – like many of the organizations described in this  
article – works closely with ‘democratically’linked organizations,  
some of which include RSF, Human Rights Watch and the International  
Women’s Media Foundation. Furthermore, FreeDimensional’s Africa  
representative, Ebenezer Obadare, has received awards for his work  
from two prominent liberal foundations (the MacArthur and Ford  
Foundations’) and also from the Council for the Development of Social  
Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA). (In 1996, CODESRIA received a  
$15,000 grant from Rights and Democracy, and their executive  
secretary, Adebayo Olukoshi, is a former member of the governing  
council of the ‘democratic’ Society for International Development.)  
Finally, two of FreeDimensional’s European representatives have  
‘democratic’ ties: thus Melita Rogelj has previously received a two- 
year Leadership for Environment and Development fellowship from the  
Rockefeller Foundation, and Diana Fakiola has worked as a “practicum  
in the Executive Office of the EastWest Institute focused on building  
economic partnerships for Russia and Ukraine”.

Julien Pain Deliberates for Global Voices
Since 2003, Julien Pain, a “journalist who specialises in new  
technologies”, has been head of RSF’s internet freedom desk. In 2005  
Pain served on the Deutsche Welle jury, a jury that gave their Best  
of the Blogs award to a media project known as Global Voices.  
However, it is intriguing that Global Voices was also nominated for  
Deutsche Welle’s Best Weblog prize, “but because two judges (Hoseein  
Derakshan and Julien Pain) were Global Voices contributors, there was  
[considered to be] a perception of conflict of interest” by Deutsche  
Welle. Although Pain only appears to be a contributor to Global  
Voices, this is still interesting because three members of the  
advisory board of this “non-profit global citizens’” media project  
(that was founded at Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet  
and Society) have ‘democratic’ ties. These three ‘democratic’  
advisors are Akwe Amosu (who is a senior policy analyst for Africa at  
the Open Society Institute, and is a director of the International  
Women’s Media Foundation), Joi Ito (who is a director of Witness),  
and Isaac Mao (who is a co-founder of CNBlog.org which was the  
“earliest evangelizing site in China on grassroots publishing”, and  
was also “listed as the people of ‘2006-2016, Map of the Decade’, by  
Institute for the Future” – a group whose board of trustees is  
chaired by William P. Fuller – who is a former president of the Asia  
Foundation, and a former member of USAID’s Advisory Committee on  
Voluntary Foreign Aid).

Faisal Elbagir: ‘Humanitarian’ Concerns for Sudan
In 2003 (at least) Faisal Elbagir was RSF’s correspondent for Sudan,  
while simultaneously acting as the information and research program  
director for the Sudan Organisation Against Torture (SOAT). The  
London-based SOAT was established in 1993 and describes itself as “an  
independent non-governmental human rights organisation” despite the  
fact that they received a $27,000 grant from the NED in 2003 to  
“organize the first ever symposium on human rights education in  
conjunction with the Ahfad University for Women of Sudan.” SOAT’s  
Sudanese partner organization, the Khartoum Centre for Human Rights  
and Environmental Development KCHRED, is headed by Ahmed El Mufti –  
an individual who acted as Legal Counsel for the Ministry of Energy  
and Mining in Sudan (from 1979 to 1980), and has also headed the  
legal department of the Khartoum-based General Petroleum Corporation  
(from 1983 to 1985). This is worth noting because while the corporate  
media is currently beating a drum beat for launching a war on Iran,  
it is also pushing for a ‘humanitarian intervention’ in Sudan: yet  
although rarely talked about, there appears to be clear geostrategic  
reasons for supporting such an intervention (read: humanitarian  
imperialism) in Sudan. As I noted in a recent article:

“Vijay Prashad (2007) draws our attention to the US’s oil interests  
in Sudan, while former NATO commander, General Wesley Clark (2007)  
explains that in 2001 a classified memo from the office of the  
Secretary of Defense described how the US planned ‘to take out seven  
countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon,  
Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran’.”

Perhaps not coincidentally, in 2002 Elbagir was arrested and  
questioned about an international press freedom conference he  
attended in Senegal that was organized by International Media Support  
and the NED-linked IFEX. More recently (in 2007 at least) Elbagir has  
been acting as the Africa program officer for the ‘democratically’  
funded Article 19 – an organization which between 1996 and 1997  
received three grants from the Westminster Foundation, and in 1997  
obtained a single grant from Rights and Democracy.[3]

George ‘Soros’ Tarkhan-Mouravi
Yet another former RSF reporter with ‘democratic’ ties is George  
Tarkhan-Mouravi, a reporter who acted as RSF’s correspondent in  
Georgia between 1996 and 1999. During this time, Tarkhan-Mouravi  
worked closely with George Soros’ local ‘democracy promoting’  
organizations and in 1994 he cofounded the Open Society – Georgia  
Foundation, and headed the preparatory team for their social science  
support program between 1998 and 1999. Tarkhan-Mouravi maintained his  
relations with Soros after leaving RSF’s service in 1999 because from  
2001 to 2003 he was an Open Society Institute fellow.

In addition , to his Soros connection, over the years Tarkhan-Mouravi  
has also obtained strong support from the US government. For example,  
in July 1996 he was a US Information Agency (USIA) international  
visitor to the USA, in January 1999 he was a USIA exchange visitor to  
the USA, and between 2000 and 2002 he was a NATO Euro-Atlantic  
Partnership Council research fellow.

Given Tarkhan-Mouravi’s numerous ‘democratic’ links it is not  
incongruous that in 1992 he cofounded the Caucasian Institute for  
Peace, Democracy and Development (CIPDD), a group that received  
support from the NED between 1993 and 2001. Tarkhan-Mouravi was vice- 
chair of CIPDD’s board of directors from it’s founding until 1996, a  
during which CIPDD obtained four NED grants  used to “help promote  
democratic and free-market values and consider solutions to the  
problems of the democratic transition in Georgia and the Caucasus.”  
The present chair of CIPDD, Ghia Nodia, currently serves on the  
steering committee of the NED-created World Movement for Democracy.

More recently, in 2002, Tarkhan-Mouravi helped launch the Tbilisi- 
based Institute for Policy Studies, where his fellow co-director,  
Nana Sumbadze, also exhibits vigorous ‘democratic’ credentials.  
Between 1995 and 1997 Sumbadze was a NATO research fellow, and from  
2001 to 2002 he was both an Open Society Institute fellow and a  
consultant to the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral  
Assistance. Finally, Tarkhan-Mouravi is a member of the North America- 
based Central Eurasia Studies Society (CESS) – a society whose  
president, Alexander Knysh, currently acts as the moderator for a  
three-year summer institute (2005 to 2008) titled Teaching Islam in  
Eurasia (a project that is funded by the Open Society Institute and  
the Mellon Foundation). Another notable director of CESS, Anara  
Tabyshalieva, has also worked on numerous projects for the US  
Institute for Peace, and directed the Kyrgyzstan Institute for  
Regional Studies while it was being funded by the NED (CESS received  
NED grants in 1998, 2000, and 2001). It is also relevant to note that  
from 2000 to 2003 John Schoeberlein acted as CESS’s first president  
while also working (from 2001 to 2001) as the director of the Central  
Asia Project of the International Crisis Group.

Saleem Samad, Ford, and the Academy for Educational Development
The last RSF reporter to be examined in this section is Saleem Samad,  
an investigative journalist who specializes in reporting on South  
Asian affairs. Although no dates are available (online) to indicate  
when Samad last worked for RSF, in 2002 he was arrested by Bangladesh  
security agencies “along with two foreign journalists working for  
British Channel 4 TV for documenting Islamic extremism & expatriate  
jJihadis.” Subsequently, “[h]is arrest caused global uproar by  
international media, press watchdogs and human rights groups” (like  
Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International) and he was released  
from prison after 55 days and now lives in exile in Canada. Samad has  
several ‘democratic’ ties. Firstly he has worked as a senior fellow  
at the Advocacy Center (in 1996) – a position funded by the Ford  
Foundation – and he has also worked training small town journalists  
for the Academy for Educational Development.

To be continued… Having investigated RSF’s ‘democratic’ ties, the  
following two parts of this series will go on to reveal how many of  
the recipients of their annual Fondation de France Prize are  
intimately linked to the ‘democracy promoting’ community.

Michael Barker is a doctoral candidate at Griffith University,  
Australia. He can be reached at Michael.J.Barker [at]  
griffith.edu.au. All four parts of this article and some of his other  
recent articles can be found right here.



Endnotes

[1] Maina Kiai is currently he chairman of the Kenya National  
Commission on Human Rights – a group that was appointed in 2003  
through a parliamentary process – which has received NED support in  
2005. Plenary Speakers.

[2] The current president of Witness is Andrew Blau, who is co-head  
of the consulting practice at Global Business Network – a strategic  
consulting firm that “works with Fortune 500 companies from virtually  
every industry and continent, as well as with many national  
governments, nonprofits, and foundations.”

[3] For an expanded discussion of Article 19’s ‘democratic’ ties see  
Barker, Polyarchy and the Public Sphere. (Forthcoming.)