NEPAL Journalists played a lead role in resisting and ultimately reversing an audacious 14-month power grab by King Gyanendra Bir Bikram Shah Dev. Hundreds took to the streets in the capital, Kathmandu, and elsewhere to protest measures by the king to suspend radio news broadcasts and deploy the country’s security forces and civil authorities to…
NIGER Authorities used a repressive press law to jail journalists despite President Mamadou Tandja’s 2004 pledge to abolish prison terms for so-called press offenses. Three journalists spent months behind bars, prompting demonstrations and international outcry. In a country suffering from chronic food shortages, the private press frequently accused public figures of corruption and the mismanagement…
NIGERIA President Olusegun Obasanjo’s attempt to amend the constitution so he could seek a third term in the April 2007 election galvanized opponents and stoked political tensions and violence. Media critical of the president’s move found themselves the targets of harassment by security services. But the climate for all media worsened, and attacks on the…
PAKISTAN The military-backed government of President Pervez Musharraf, now in its eighth year, said in 2006 that it was fostering a free press, but the details belied the claim, and journalists continued to be targeted from many sides. While the government has allowed the expansion of broadcast media, a three-person CPJ delegation that met with…
PARAGUAY The death of former dictator Alfredo Stroessner in August triggered a wave of stories about the widespread human rights and press freedom abuses woven into the fabric of Paraguayan history. As today’s journalists reflected on the institutionalized attacks of the past, they confronted different, yet grave dangers of their own. Reporters in isolated regions…
PERU A Supreme Court decision overturning a local mayor’s conviction in the murder of a radio journalist alarmed the news media and punctuated a year in which provincial reporters faced threats and attacks from local officials and their supporters. Citing a lack of evidence, the high court ordered the release of Yungay Mayor Amaro León…
PHILIPPINES The Philippines remained one of the world’s most dangerous countries for journalists, but it also became one of the more litigious as numerous criminal defamation lawsuits were filed by President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s husband and other political figures. A deteriorating political situation and increased security concerns in February led Arroyo to declare a state…
RUSSIA As Russia assumed a world leadership role, chairing the Group of Eight leading industrialized nations and the Council of Europe’s powerful committee of ministers, the Kremlin cracked down on dissent and shrugged off astounding attacks on critics and journalists. In a grim year for the press, parliament passed a measure to hush media criticism…
The Rwandan media continued operating in an atmosphere of pervasive self-censorship periodically reinforced by government repression. In a January 24 speech broadcast on state radio, President Paul Kagame accused Rwandan journalists of unprofessional conduct, including corruption, and suggested that this justified limits on press freedom.
SAUDI ARABIA Prompted by post-9/11 criticism that Saudi Arabia’s closed society had bred violent religious extremism, the government has eased constraints on the country’s heavily censored domestic press, and local journalists have seized the initiative to produce more daring reports on crime, drug trafficking, unemployment, and religious extremism. But progress has been uneven and limited,…