DESPITE PRESS FREEDOM ADVANCES ACROSS ASIA IN RECENT YEARS, totalitarian regimes in Burma, China, North Korea, Vietnam, and Laos maintained their stranglehold on the media. Even democratic Asian governments sometimes used authoritarian tactics to control the press, particularly when faced with internal conflict. Sri Lanka, for instance, imposed harsh censorship regulations during the year in…
INDIAN JOURNALISTS ARE JUSTIFIABLY PROUD OF THEIR FREEDOM, which remained largely intact last year despite ongoing sectarian and political violence, and a general climate of intolerance that has worsened under the leadership of the ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Journalists in India’s urban centers, especially those who work for the powerful English-language national…
Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is deeply disturbed by the August 26 bombing attack on the offices of two publications in Imphal, Manipur. The attack comes just one week after newspaper editor Thounaojam Brajamani Singh was assassinated on the streets of Imphal.
Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is deeply disturbed by the imprisonment of Nongthonbam Biren, chief editor of the Manipuri-language daily Naharolgi Thoudang, and Thounaojam Iboyaima, the author of a speech recently published in the newspaper.
By Kavita Menon and A. Lin NeumannMuch of Asia remained hostile to a free, independent media, despite the growing consensus that Asian political and economic stability depends in great measure on governments’ willingness to improve transparency and lift restrictions on the press. In China, Burma, Vietnam, and even Malaysia, government suppression of the media is…
Booker Prize-winning author Arundhati Roy is not yet out of the woods. On July 29, the Supreme Court postponed deciding whether to initiate contempt of court proceedings against Roy for publishing a highly critical essay about the social and environmental costs of Gujarat’s Sardar Sarovar dam, part of an ambitious irrigation and hydroelectric project along…
July 28, 1999 His Excellency Atal Behari Vajpayee Prime Minister of India Office of the Prime Minister South Block New Delhi 110 011, India Fax: 011-91-11-301-6857 Your Excellency, The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is deeply concerned by the latest efforts to suppress discussion of the social and environmental costs of Gujarat’s Sardar Sarovar dam…