Europe & Central Asia

New York, February 19, 2003—Vira Kytaihorodska, editor-in-chief of the twice-weekly newspaper Bukovynske Viche in the western city of Chernivtsi, said that a local government official has threatened to kill her for republishing an article on February 7 that accused Chernivtsi regional governor Teofil Bauer of corruption and violating customs regulations.

The official, deputy head of the Chernivtsi Regional Council, Ivan Muntian, told CPJ that he did not threaten Kytaihorodska. He said that he called the editor to ask why she had reprinted the article without fact-checking the claims made in it.

New York, March 3, 2003—A bomb destroyed the vehicle of Nino Pavic, an influential independent newspaper publisher, on the morning of Saturday, March 1, in Croatia's capital, Zagreb.

According to local and international press reports, the 50-year-old publisher and his family were sleeping in their home in the affluent suburb of Tuskanac when a bomb placed under their Mercedes SUV exploded at around 4 a.m. The car was parked down the street from their house.

New York, January 30, 2003—The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is disappointed by the prison term handed down on January 28 to prominent independent journalist Sergei Duvanov by the Karasaisky District Court in the southern city of Almaty.

The court sentenced Duvanov to three-and-a-half years in prison for allegedly raping a minor. Duvanov's colleagues and defense attorneys maintain that the journalist is innocent, and that Kazakh authorities fabricated the case against him to muzzle a critical voice. Duvanov, who turned 50 years old yesterday, is known for his criticism of Kazakh officials, including President Nursultan Nazarbayev.

New York, January 23, 2002—The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) welcomes today's decision by a court in the city of Ussuriisk, in the Russian Far East, to grant parole to military journalist Grigory Pasko. The journalist was released immediately and traveled to his home in Vladivostok.

Under Russian law, Pasko, who had served two-thirds of his four-year prison sentence, was eligible for parole based on good behavior. State prosecutors are contemplating protesting the parole decision, Russian and international news reported.

New York, January 2, 2003—A total of 19 journalists were killed worldwide for their work in 2002, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). This number marks a sharp decrease from 2001 when 37 journalists were killed, eight of them while covering the war in Afghanistan. Of the 19 journalists killed in 2002, most were targeted in direct reprisal for their work, and their killers had not been brought to justice at year's end.