In North Korea, listening to a foreign broadcast is a crime punishable by death.
In Colombia, right-wing paramilitary forces are suspected in the murders of three journalists in 2000. Meanwhile, paramilitary leader Carlos Castaño was formally charged with the 1999 murder of political satirist Jaime Garzón.
Given Liberian president Charles Taylor’s history of brutality, local journalists were duly alarmed when Taylor threatened to become “ferocious with the New Democrat” after the newspaper questioned the sudden death of the country’s vice-president. In September, the newspaper’s entire staff fled the country.
Cuba, where state control of the media is enshrined in the constitution, was the only country in the Americas holding journalists in jail at the end of 2000. One of Cuba’s three imprisoned journalists, CPJ International Press Freedom Award winner Jesús Joel Díaz Hernández, was released on January 17, 2001. Another journalist was jailed and released on trumped-up charges of “hoarding toys.”
Zimbabwean soldiers stationed in the Democratic Republic of Congo detained a television crew and forced its members to roll around in the dust while singing military anthems. In Côte D’Ivoire, seven journalists were detained at a military base and forced to crawl, sing pro-junta anthems, and do push-ups.
In northern Nigeria, fundamentalists seek to impose a version of Islamic law (sharia) under which reporters guilty of publishing “offensive material” could receive 60 strokes from a cane. One case is currently being tried.
In Burma, 77-year-old lawyer Cheng Poh was sentenced to 14 years in prison for allegedly circulating photocopies of foreign news articles.
Two journalists were murdered in the Philippines in 2000, bringing to 34 the total number of journalists killed since democracy was restored there in 1986.
The Jordan Times complained that “water officials on Saturday said only the minister, who was in Libya on Saturday, could tell the press how much rain fell on Jordan last week.”
Saddam Hussein’s son Uday controls a vast media empire in Iraq, where there is no independent press. In April, the National Press Union, which Uday heads, named him “journalist of the century” for his “innovative role, his efficient contribution in the service of Iraq’s media family…and his defense of honest and committed speech.”
Turkish journalist Nadire Mater was acquitted on charges of insulting the military in her book of interviews with former conscripts who had fought against Kurdish separatists. “Banning the truth does not eradicate it,” Mater said.
On November 4, Bulgarian justice minister Teodossyi Simeonov punched Aleksandr Mihaylov, an 18-year old photographer for the newspaper Sega, claiming he was defending his constitutional right not be photographed.
In two Central Asian countries, governments restricted access to the Internet. Turkmenistan’s president for life shut down all the country’s private Internet Service Providers last year. In Kazakhstan, the government blocked access to an independent Web site for “technical reasons.”
In Azerbaijan, editor Rauf Arifoglu was arrested and accused of hijacking after he reported that one had occurred. Arifoglu was released after six weeks in jail but is still facing charges.
