South Africa South Africa’s diverse and sophisticated news media are rarely targets of violence, and journalists say they are largely free to move around the country and criticize authorities. But press freedom groups are concerned that new antiterrorism legislation will impede investigative reporting and compromise the independence of journalists.
Sudan Sudan garnered international headlines in 2004 due to widespread atrocities and ethnic cleansing in Darfur, an impoverished region in the west of the country. Since February 2003, government-backed militias, known as janjaweed, have killed tens of thousands of people and displaced close to 2 million in a counterinsurgency campaign against rebel groups.
ThailandPopulist Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra’s press freedom record has been less than stellar since he took office in 2001. His political and financial interference, legal intimidation, and coercion continued to have a chilling effect on critical voices in the Thai press in 2004.
Togo With 37 years in power, Togolese president Gnassingbé Eyadéma is Africa’s longest-serving head of state. Even after multiparty elections were introduced in 1993, Eyadéma and his ruling Rassemblement du Peuple Togolais have dominated politics and muzzled opposition voices in this West African nation. However, the Eyadéma regime surprised the international community in April by…
TongaThe Tongan media won a great victory in 2004, when the Supreme Court in the capital, Nuku’alofa, reversed legislation aimed at stifling the nation’s independent press. The decision brought the New Zealand–based, Tongan-language newspaper Taimi ‘o Tonga (Times of Tonga), known for its independent coverage, back to the newsstands after an absence of several months.
Zimbabwe CPJ named Zimbabwe one of the “World’s Worst Places to Be a Journalist” in 2004, with the government of President Robert Mugabe continuing to crack down on the private media. Repressive legislation was used to close the country’s only independent daily newspaper, The Daily News, and to detain and harass journalists. Authorities were particularly…
MARCH 13, 2005 Posted: March 17, 2005 Mohamed Ould Lamine Mahmoudi, freelance IMPRISONED According to press reports and a Mauritanian source, police detained freelance journalist Mahmoudi after he interviewed a woman in the southern town Mederdra who claimed that she was kept as a slave by a family in another small Mauritanian town.
MARCH 7, 2005 Posted: March 17, 2005 SW Radio Africa CENSORED The shortwave transmission of SW Radio Africa, a private broadcaster based in the United Kingdom and founded by exiled Zimbabwean journalists, was jammed in Zimbabwe during the run-up to March 31 parliamentary elections, the station and other news media reported. According to the South…
MARCH 4, 2005 Posted: March 28, 2005 Forum CENSORED A court in the capital, Monrovia, ordered the offices of the privately owned weekly Forum shuttered for “contempt of court” after the paper’s managing editor allegedly missed several earlier summonses in connection with an ongoing civil libel case. The court also issued an arrest warrant for…
New York, March 3, 2005—The Committee to Protect Journalists has learned that Voice of America (VOA) correspondent Aklilu Solomon has been released after almost 18 months in jail. He was freed on December 31, 2004, and is said to be in poor health. Solomon was arrested in July 2003, after the VOA broadcast his report…