WITH NO FUNCTIONING CENTRAL GOVERNMENT IN RECENT YEARS, Somalia remains fractured into rival fiefdoms controlled by warlords. Threats to local journalists have been correspondingly decentralized. In the last months of 2000, however, newly-elected president Abdiqasim Salad Hassan and a new transitional legislature tried with some success to assert central authority. (Both Hassan and the legislature…
A LONG-AWAITED REPORT ON MEDIA AND RACISM IN POST-APARTHEID South Africa was issued in August, to the relief of many who had feared it might erode constitutional protections for press freedom. Titled Faultlines, the report of the quasi-independent South African Human Rights Commission (HRC) was the end result of an investigation announced in late 1998,…
WITH NO LEGAL FRAMEWORK TO PROTECT FREEDOM OF SPEECH, journalists in Swaziland are at the mercy of a government that actively discourages critical reporting about the royal family and the political system in general. King Mswati III is Africa’s last absolute monarch. He rules by decree, maintaining a decades-old ban on political parties and labor…
LONG-STANDING SOVEREIGNTY DISPUTES BETWEEN THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT and the semi-autonomous island of Zanzibar continued to affect relations between government and the media. Several journalists were arrested, interrogated, and then released without charge during the run-up to general elections in late October, which were marred by violent outbreaks in Zanzibar and resulted in the reelection of…
WIELDING A HARSH NEW PRESS CODE, THE TOGOLESE GOVERNMENT stepped up its harassment of the media last year. At the same time, local and international monitors sharpened their focus on human rights violations in the country. The new Press Code, which replaced a widely praised and far more reasonable 1998 law, was passed on January…
IN LATE JUNE, A NATIONAL REFERENDUM REAFFIRMED PUBLIC CONFIDENCE in Uganda’s unique no-party political system. President Yoweri Museveni suspended the activities of political parties in 1986, arguing that the parties, many of which had religious or tribal bases, were the root of the armed conflicts and other problems afflicting Uganda and the rest of Africa.…
AS TENSIONS WITH NEIGHBORING ANGOLA MOUNTED and politicians maneuvered to prepare for elections in 2001, Zambian journalists faced censorship, physical assault by police, and a host of repressive media laws. The most egregious attack on the independent press during the year was the trial of eleven journalists from the Lusaka daily The Post on charges…
EIGHTY-ONE JOURNALISTS WERE IN PRISON AROUND THE WORLD at the end of 2000, jailed for practicing their profession. The number is down slightly from the previous year, when 87 were in jail, and represents a significant decline from 1998, when 118 journalists were imprisoned. While jailing journalists can be an effective means of stifling bad…
JOURNALISTS IN ZIMBABWE FACED INCREASING DIFFICULTIES IN 2000, as President Robert Mugabe’s government tried to extend its control over the news in the face of serial political crises. Mugabe’s problems included a faltering economy, an unpopular military intervention in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a contentious election, and a controversial move to seize white-owned land.…
New York, March 14, 2001 — Police in Mozambique arrested two businessmen and a former bank manager accused of ordering the murder of investigative journalist Carlos Cardoso, according to international news reports and CPJ sources. The three suspects, who are being held in a maximum security prison in the capital, Maputo, include Momade Abdul Assife…