Reporters Against Power

Fidan visits journalists in Turkey, where critical journalists are being prosecuted and opposition media outlets are being closed down.

Fidan Ekiz travels to Uganda. There she meets Ntege Williams, a dirt-poor but very courageous video journalist. The country has been ruled by President Museveni for thirty years. On paper it is a democracy with freedom of the press, but in reality there is large-scale abuse of power, corruption and cronyism. Journalists are completely unprotected. If they are troublesome, they are intimidated, threatened, beaten up or taken to court on trumped-up charges. It all happened to Ntege too. He has had to move his wife and children to a secret address because of death threats. According to Diana Nanduda of the Human Rights Network for Journalists, this leads to journalists censoring themselves or simply finding another job. 'Unlike Ntege Williams', she says, 'who never gives up'. Fidan's journey begins when she receives a video message from Ntege. For the third time, the police have beaten him up and broken his video camera

Fidan Ekiz follows Henry Ramirez in Colombia, a local journalist in one of the most dangerous cities in South America: the port city of Buenaventura. It is the largest seaport in Colombia and therefore attracts powerful drug gangs. The poverty-stricken town suffers greatly from this. A year ago, Henry revealed the existence of 'casas de pique', or slaughterhouses in the middle of poor residential areas where paramilitary gang members hacked their victims to pieces while they were still alive. His story became world news, which prompted the army to come to Buenaventuras to restore peace and order. But Buenaventura is still dominated by drug gangs and that makes Henry extremely vulnerable. He is one of the few journalists who dares to report on organised crime and that means he can only go out with an armed bodyguard at his side. In some provinces in Colombia, criminals have complete control

Fidan travels to Myanmar, where a small TV station reports on the dictatorship in an ethnically divided country. When Fidan arrives in Myanmar, formerly Burma, it is the eve of the parliamentary elections of last November. The military dictatorship has promised to respect the results, but no one knows whether they will keep that promise. There are strong indications that the regime is in cahoots with a nationalist faction of Buddhists who are extremely violent against the Muslim minority in Myanmar. In doing so, the ruling elite is said to deliberately create chaos in the country and thus frustrate the democratization process. There is one television station that has set itself the goal of monitoring whether the elections are fair. It is called the Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB) and it broadcasts via satellite from Thailand. As a result, it cannot be taken off the air by the military.

Fidan Ekiz travels to Moscow where the newspaper Novaya Gazeta fights for the truth in a country where the truth is not always appreciated. There, Fidan meets star reporter Pavel Kanygin. He is one of the youngest journalists at NG and his field of work is Ukraine. There, he was kidnapped and abused twice because the Russian-backed rebels were angry about his critical reports. 'Forgive us, Netherlands' was the headline in Novaya Gazeta on 25 July 2014, a week after the MH17 disaster. Pavel has continued to search for the truth about the downing of the plane carrying 196 Dutch people. It has earned him threats, cost him friends and he never feels completely safe in Moscow. In the week that Fidan visits him, Pavel is sent to the Netherlands to report on the MH17 report of the Dutch Safety Board. Fidan stays in Moscow and witnesses how the Russian propaganda apparatus constructs an alternative truth.

Fidan travels to Hong Kong where the free press is slowly but surely being restricted by communist China. According to Shirley Yam of the Hong Kong Journalist Association, it is like boiling a frog alive. 'If you turn up the heat very slowly, the frog will not notice the water getting hotter until it is completely cooked and ready to be eaten.' Hong Kong is formally part of the People's Republic of China, but when it was handed over to Great Britain in 1997, it was agreed that the former crown colony would maintain its own democratic system until 2047. In 2014, China decided to have a say in the elections. The people rose up en masse during the three-month Umbrellah Revolution. They achieved nothing. Since then, press freedom in Hong Kong has been steadily declining. Investors are being pressured. Cyber ​​attacks are being organised. Newspapers are being bought up by investors from the mainland. Critical journalists are being fired.