BY EXPOSING CORRUPTION, POLITICAL INTRIGUE, and massive abuse of power, journalists in Peru helped bring down the regime of President Alberto K. Fujimori last year. Fujimori’s dramatic fall demonstrated that the Latin American press remains a key bulwark against leaders who continue to use subtle and not-so subtle means to control the flow of information.…
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.
IN A COUNTRY WHOSE CONSTITUTION AND PENAL CODE specifically disallow press freedom, independent journalists continued to face repression from the Cuban government last year. Yet their ranks have grown steadily, and there are now about 20 independent news agencies in the country. In early 2001, a particularly courageous independent journalist saw the outside of a…
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…
Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) welcomes yesterday’s release of independent journalist Jesús Joel Díaz Hernández, who was imprisoned for two years because of his work, in clear violation of international law. We urge Your Excellency to release the two other journalists who remain behind bars, Bernardo Arévalo Padrón and Manuel Antonio González Castellanos.
New York, January 18, 2001 — Independent journalist Jesús Joel Díaz Hernández was released from a Cuban prison yesterday, after serving two years of a four-year term for practicing independent journalism. He had been convicted on the charge of “dangerousness.” Díaz Hernández, the executive director of the independent news service Cooperativa Avileña de Periodistas Independientes…
New York, September 20, 2000 — State security agents detained Jesús and Jadir Hernández Hernández, two brothers who report for the independent news agency Habana Press, for over three days in a small town outside Havana, according to foreign press reports and CPJ sources in Cuba. Early in the morning on September 15, agents from…
New York, August 30, 2000 — The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) deplores the recent detention and imminent expulsion of three Swedish journalists in Havana, reportedly because of their contacts with members of Cuba’s beleaguered independent press. At around seven a.m. on August 29, Interior Ministry agents arrested Birger Thuresson, Peter Götell, and Helena Söderqvist…