Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) appreciates your rapid response to our protest letter about the Taiwanese government’s recent attempt to censor news reports on the basis of national security concerns.
There were 118 journalists in prison around the world at the end of 2001 who were jailed for practicing their profession. The number is up significantly from the previous year, when 81 journalists were in jail, and represents a return to the level of 1998, when 118 were also imprisoned.
By Anne Garrels ON NOVEMBER 19, 2001, I was at the border negotiating with officials to get across into Afghanistan. There was suddenly an unexplained problem, yet journalists arriving from Afghanistan said they had no trouble along the way. I was frustrated. None of us knew that a caravan of our colleagues had just been…
IN THE WAKE of September 11, 2001, journalists around the world faced a press freedom crisis that was truly global in scope. In the first days and weeks after the terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C., governments across the globe–in China, Benin, the Palestinian Authority Territories, and the United States–took actions to…
Journalists across Asia faced extraordinary pressures in 2001. Risks included reporting on war and insurgency, covering crime and corruption, or simply expressing a dissenting view in an authoritarian state. CPJ’s two most striking indices of press freedom are the annual toll of journalists killed around the world and our list of journalists imprisoned at the…
In recent years, it had become common for people who care about Afghanistan to worry about its growing invisibility. The all-encompassing burqa gown, which the ruling Taliban forced women to wear, seemed a metaphor for the militia’s efforts to hide Afghanistan’s people and problems from the world. Visits by foreign correspondents were restricted; taking pictures…
In 2001, the anti-corruption watchdog group Transparency International ranked Bangladesh the most corrupt country in the world. The almost complete collapse of law and order in the country was seen as one of the prime reasons behind the fall from power of the Awami League. The year began with a brutal attack on a young…
An absolute monarchy whose leader, Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah, rules by decree, tiny Brunei has enormous oil and gas reserves and is one of the richest countries in the world on a per capita basis. This wealth has not made for a free press, however. The government controls the electronic media through Radio Television Brunei, and…
Controlled by a harsh military junta and operating under a regime of severe censorship and threat, Burma’s media are barred from reporting even the most mundane local events. Debate about government policies or the dire state of the economy is unheard of, and most political news consists of glowing stories recounting the presumed achievements of…