Attacks on the Press 2000: Thailand
IN A COUNTRY PLAGUED BY CORRUPTION AND CRONYISM, the Thai press is taking advantage of constitutional reforms and a more open political environment to investigate official misdeeds. In late December, the leading opposition candidate for prime minister, telecommunications tycoon Thaksin Shinawatra, was indicted on charges of violating rules on the declaration of assets. The charges,…
Attacks on the Press 2000: Vietnam
ALTHOUGH PRESIDENT CLINTON RECEIVED STAR TREATMENT during his historic visit to Vietnam in November, little news of the trip was allowed into the country’s state-owned press. Huge crowds greeted the first U.S. president to tour the country since the Vietnam War. Speaking in Ho Chi Minh City, Clinton urged the Vietnamese government to allow more…
Attacks on the Press in 2000: Journalists in Prison
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…
CPJ Condemns Taliban’s Expulsion of BBC Reporter
New York, March 14, 2001 — The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is dismayed by the ruling Taliban militia’s decision to expel BBC correspondent Kate Clark from Afghanistan. Authorities ordered Clark to leave the country within 36 hours in response to BBC reports about the militia’s destruction of ancient Buddhist statues in Bamiyan, some 100…
Leftist editor disappears
Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is gravely concerned over the disappearance of Krishna Sen, editor of the Nepali-language weekly Janadesh. Though authorities claim Sen was released from Rajbiraj Jail on the night of March 10, following a March 8 Supreme Court ruling that his detention violated Nepal’s habeas corpus protections, local journalists and human rights advocates have reported him missing.
Government blocks international newsmagazines
New York, March 7, 2001 — The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is troubled by the Malaysian government’s decision to block distribution of the international newsmagazines Asiaweek and the Far Eastern Economic Review, both published weekly from Hong Kong. “The Malaysian government has a history of using bureaucratic restrictions to control the media,” said CPJ…
Internet publisher’s trial adjourned for health reasons
February 13, 2001—Internet publisher Huang Qi, whose Web site carried articles about human rights and political corruption, went on trial for subversion today in a closed courtroom in Chengdu, in the western province of Sichuan. Court officials told reporters that the trial had been adjourned due to Huang’s poor health. A CPJ source said that…
Pakistan: Journalists arrested for blasphemy
Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is deeply dismayed by the recent arrests of at least a dozen employees of the English-language newspaper The Frontier Post and its sister publication, the Urdu-language daily Maidan. District officials in Peshawar, where both newspapers are published, ordered the arrests and sealed The Frontier Post’s printing press without having conducted any investigation into allegations of blasphemy against the daily.
Indonesia: Foreign Minister seeks to limit journalists’ access to trouble spots
Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is alarmed by a proposal announced last week by Indonesian Foreign Minister Alwi Shihab that could severely restrict foreign journalists from traveling to a number of crisis-prone regions in Indonesia.
