Shami Chakrabarti, human rights lawyer: Healthy democracies need a free media

“There aren't enough lawyers and judges on the planet if journalists are silent, because abuses of power just don't come to light, in my experience, without this relationship between a free media, fair courts, fair trials, robust judges, investigators, the police and so on. Without journalists there'd be no human rights protection and the rule of law.”

Anna Holligan speaks to human rights lawyer and European Council special rapporteur Shami Chakrabarti.

Born in London in 1969, Chakrabarti rose to prominence in the early 2000s when she was appointed director of the human rights organisation, Liberty. She and her team made headlines around the world campaigning against what they considered excessive anti-terror legislation introduced in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.

She stepped down from the position just over a decade later, after being appointed a life peer in the British House of Lords.

Since then, she’s been involved in a number of high-profile inquiries both in the UK and abroad. Most recently, she’s been tasked with leading a Council of Europe investigation into the fallout from the 2017 assassination of Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia.

Caruana Galizia, one of Malta’s best-known anti-corruption journalists was killed by a car bomb in October 2017. Her assassination and the continuing questions over the murder has raised serious concerns about the rule of law in Malta, an EU member state, as well as fears that corruption at the highest-levels could have wider implications for the European Union.

Thank you to the Global Eye team for their help in making this programme.

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Presenter: Anna Holligan
Producers: Vara Szajkowski, Lucy Provan, Liz Gibbons and Ben Cooper
Editor: Farhana Haider

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(Image: Shami Chakrabarti. Credit: Reuters)