ENGLISH SPEECH ｜ AMAL CLOONEY： The Price of Truth (English Subtitles

Come on, stuck. Thank you. Thank you so much, Michelle, for your kind words. It is a real pleasure to be here tonight with so many distinguished people, Mr. Secretary General, ambassadors, but especially with so many distinguished members of the press. I am from a family of journalists. My mother is a lifelong journalist, my father-in-law is also a veteran journalist, and my husband has played one on TV. So although it's true to say that in my personal life I sometimes go to considerable lengths to avoid journalists, I am here tonight by choice and it's really a pleasure to be here among so many of you. I am here tonight to honor you, the journalists being recognized for groundbreaking reporting this year. It feels like an important, even essential time to honor responsible journalism. Journalism that takes time, tenacity, a commitment to finding reliable sources, digging deep and checking things over and over again, even if it means allowing another story to come out before yours. We need good journalists more than ever at a time when we are deluged with information from different platforms and when the accuracy of news is constantly being questioned for political purposes. So often we are paralyzed and unable to debate how to respond to international crises because we can't even agree on basic facts. How can you discuss what to do about rising sea levels with someone who doesn't believe they're rising because they think climate change is a hoax? You won't get far debating immigration with someone who has bought into propaganda that refugees and Muslims pose an inherent danger to society. We do not live in a post-truth world. We just need news that is based on truth. And for that, we need responsible journalists who are committed to exposing it. And yet you, the press, are under attack like never before. You are being jailed at a higher rate than ever. And you are dying while covering wars, not just because you walk unarmed into some of the most dangerous places on earth, but because you are being targeted for exposing crimes committed in war, for speaking the truths that perpetrators find the most difficult to hear. As we sit here tonight, two innocent reporters sit in a jail cell in Myanmar. Wallon and Chassaou were arrested a year ago while working on a Reuters story that the government did not want to see printed. A story with photos of an execution of 10 Rohingya men in Rakhine State where the UN says the gravest crimes under international law are being committed. A policeman tricked the journalist into coming to a cafe. And when they got there, he handed them rolled-up documents and said, read these later when you get home. But as the journalists walked out, other officers were lying in wait to arrest them. And then comes part two of the plan, a show trial in which a conviction for the crime of possessing secret material was guaranteed. I am counsel to Reuters and to the two journalists. And at trial, something extraordinary happened. A policeman, a prosecution star witness, took to the stand and actually told the truth. He gave explosive testimony confirming that he heard a senior police chief tell subordinates to plant these documents and then stage the journalist arrest. And yet instead of that testimony exonerating the defendants, the witness himself was charged, was himself subjected to a false conviction and is now in prison. In locking up these two journalists and a whistleblower, the authorities are of course signaling to others what can happen if you dare to tell the truth. The chilling effect is real and it has already been felt not only in Myanmar but further afield. And sadly similar examples abound in autocratic regimes from North Korea to Philippines to Hungary, Turkey and Brazil. The U.S. president has given such regimes a green light and labeled the press in this country the enemy of the people. And of course, two months ago, a Washington Post journalist, Jamal Khashoggi, walked into a consulate in Istanbul and was brutally tortured to death. In many of the cases that I have worked on, too, I have seen journalists and opposition figures ruthlessly targeted so that they can no longer criticize leaders or run against them in elections. And I've represented women and minorities targeted by those who seek not only to silence them, but to destroy them. In the Maldives, my client, Mohamed Nasheed, was a journalist who eventually became the leader of the opposition and then the first democratically elected president of the country. Once he was out of office, his rivals wished to keep him out, and the attempt to silence him was brazen. A false terrorism charge was followed by a trial in which two of the three judges had been witnesses for the prosecution. A conviction and 13-year sentence ensued and prevented him from running in the country's presidential elections. In Egypt, my client Mohamed Fahmy was the head of the Al Jazeera bureau in Cairo, arrested alongside all the other journalists from that station in a single day. False charges of terrorism and spreading false news, fake news, was followed by a trial filled with farcically irrelevant evidence and yet ultimately led to a three-year sentence. In Azerbaijan, I defended a young female investigative reporter, Khadija Ismayilova. She uncovered evidence of corruption by President Aliyev and his family. So the authorities first tried to intimidate her by placing a camera in her bedroom and threatening to publish the content online. When that did not silence her, they pursued five bogus cases against her. And ultimately, that led to a seven-year sentence of imprisonment. Further afield, in Iraq, my client Nadia Murad and her community, the Yazidis, faced extermination. Nadia lost most of her family in one day when ISIS encircled her village to target this non-Muslim group. Nadia was kidnapped and taken into ISIS captivity where she was bought, sold and gifted between fighters. She endured rapes, gang rapes, brutal beatings and burnings, all against the background of a constant refrain that ISIS would wipe her people from the face of the earth. As we mark this week, 70 years since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted, we can only conclude that we are far from achieving its goal of ensuring human rights for all. Yet we have come a long way, and I am optimistic. I'm optimistic when I see that Mohammad Nasheed is no longer in a prison cell where I first met him in the Maldives. After we secured asylum for him in the UK, he helped his party campaign in the country's recent elections and last month they won, restoring that country to a path that respects human rights. I am proud to watch former Al Jazeera journalist Mohamed Fahmy, whose pardon we secured from President Sisi, now free and working as a human rights campaigner and advocate for the release of other journalists who are still in prison. I felt hope for Azerbaijan when Khadija prevailed in her case and is now back at work reporting on corruption and other abuses in her country. These are all examples of individuals facing the full force of the state who refused to be silenced in order that they could have a voice for others. But most inspiring of all is Nadia. Nadia became the first Yazidi woman to speak publicly about what happened to her. And thousands of other women and girls. Instead of allowing ISIS to silence her, she has spent every day telling the world what happened and shaming them to do something. She has implored leaders to either give Yazidis safe refuge or help make her homeland safe enough for their return. She has challenged heads of state in the Arab world to promote more moderate Islam. And she and I have lobbied governments and the United Nations with one message. ISIS must be prosecuted because survivors deserve justice. After a long advocacy campaign, Nade and I sat in the chamber of the UN Security Council and watched finally 15 hands go up to adopt a resolution that would send a team of UN investigators to Iraq. And last Friday we filed a case on behalf of Yazidi women against the French multinational company Lafarge, which has been charged with complicity in crimes against humanity committed by ISIS. And in five days time, I'll be in Oslo to watch Nadia step up to a podium to collect a great honor because she is the recipient of the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize. Nadia has come a long way from her village in Iraq, and thanks to her courage and her voice, justice for her community is finally within reach. But this progress would not be possible without you. The people in this room, many of you here have written about Nadia. The investigation against the company Lafarge in France was actually triggered by investigative reporting by a local Syrian network and by a journalist for France 24, which I know is represented here tonight. Many of you report on the crimes being committed in Myanmar and document the reasons why journalists being held in its prisons should be released. I also want to recognize the role of the UN. which reported on each of these journalist trials and intervened to call for their release. It's the UN's investigators who told us that crimes committed against the Yazidis amount to genocide and it's the UN Security Council that now has a team there gathering evidence for future trials. I would also like to thank the UN Secretary General for his personal commitment to supporting Supporting these cases. Including his personal calls for the release of Walloon and Chesaou. Thank you. Now, there are two other people in this room who I would like to mention as well, two who are very close to my heart and who exemplify the values that we are celebrating here tonight. My father-in-law, Nick Clooney. Now, as many of you may know, Nick Clooney is a veteran journalist who has spent his career challenging authority and orthodoxy. From Cincinnati to LA to Buffalo to Salt Lake City, from television to radio to print, he has used his voice to stand up for those with less power than him and challenge those with more power than him. He has in turn raised a son who I am very lucky to be married to and who has spent his lifetime doing the same. One of George's movies, Good Good Night and Good Luck, is actually a tribute to his father and tells the story of a heroic journalist in the McCarthy era. George wrote the script at a time when he felt disappointed that the press was not doing enough to challenge his government's lies about the war in Iraq. To highlight the importance of the fourth estate when the three branches of government are failing. The movie was dedicated to his father, the journalist who made him notice and made him care. So thank you, thank you, Nick, for your honourable work and for raising such an honourable son. In closing, let me say a few words about the future. There is much that needs to be done to provide more protection for journalists. States should repeal criminal sanctions for laws that target speech, like sedition and blasphemy and defamation, and they should narrow the scope of other laws that can easily be used to silence critical speech. NGOs should push for the release of journalists who are subjected to politically motivated prosecutions, wherever they are and for as long as it takes. This is something that George and I are actually focusing on through our foundation's Trial Watch program. where we're going to be monitoring trials of journalists around the world, report abuses, and fund legal representation to assist journalists who are unjustly imprisoned. And the UN, for its part, should establish a standing panel of experts who can be on call to investigate credible allegations of serious human rights abuse, including crimes committed against members of the press. In the last story that Jamal Khashoggi wrote in the Washington Post, Published after his death. He lamented the fact that the vast majority of countries in the Arab world lack a free press and that as a consequence millions of Arabs are either uninformed or misinformed. He spoke of a colleague who was serving an unwarranted prison sentence for criticizing the Saudi establishment and he bemoaned the fact that the Egyptian government's censorship of an independent newspaper quote did not enrage or provoke a reaction from colleagues. His grim conclusion Was that, in his words... These actions no longer carry the consequence of a backlash from the international community. Instead, these actions may trigger condemnation followed by silence. Of course, the question now is whether his words hold true in the face of his own brutal killing. Will there just be condemnation followed by silence? To honor his memory, And to build a safer future for all journalists, we must make sure we prove him wrong. Thank you so much for your attention and for this great honor. 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