Tag Archives: Jean-Francois Julliard

Reporters Without Borders secretary-general to step down in new year

Press freedom organisation Reporters Without Borders announced this week that its secretary-general Jean-François Julliard will step down on 31 January, in order to take up a role as director-general of Greenpeace France.

According to the announcement from RSF, “the organisation’s board of governors is currently looking for a replacement”.

Until they find a successor for Julliard, who was first appointed to the position in 2008, the organisation’s current representative in Brussels, Olivier Basille, will cover the role.

In a statement Julliard said:

I am leaving Reporters Without Borders at a time when it is in good shape. I have been pleased with what we have achieved recently. The development of our cyber-censorship unit and our repositioning as a press freedom NGO in both France and Europe have been important changes for our organisation.

We have just opened a bureau in Tunisia for the first time and we are soon going to reinforce our activities in Libya. I hope that this development at the international level will continue. Reporters Without Borders will have more exciting challenges to face.

Marking the World Day Against Cyber Censorship

“Against the enemies of the internet”  – this is the short but incisive message for today’s World Day Against Cyber Censorship, organised by press freedom campaign group Reporters Without Borders (RSF).

Jean-Francois Julliard, secretary-general of RSF, explains the day in this video:

To mark the day, RSF has published an article, ‘Web 2.0 versus Control 2.0’, emphasising the idea of the internet as a force for democracy and freedom.

The fight for free access to information is being played out to an ever greater extent on the Internet. The emerging general trend is that a growing number of countries are attempting to tighten their control of the net, but at the same time, increasingly inventive ‘netizens’ demonstrate mutual solidarity by mobilizing when necessary.

Last night RSF, with support from Google, awarded the inaugural Netizen Prize to the Iranian creators of website Change for Equality, “a well-known source of information on women’s rights in Iran […] and rallying point for opponents of the regime.”