A YEAR AND A HALF AFTER THE END OF PRESIDENT SUHARTO’S authoritarian rule, the most significant reform in Indonesia remains the emergence of a largely unshackled press. With hundreds of islands and a large, fragmented population, the press plays a crucial role in allowing Indonesians to debate their future and in calming tensions that arise…
SOLDIERS UNDER THE COMMAND OF ROBERT GUEI, the retired general who seized power from an elected government on Christmas Eve, 1999, terrorized Côte d’Ivoire during their 10 months in power. As part of a general pattern of human rights abuses, they raided newsrooms at will, seized reporters’ equipment, banned news organizations, and forced journalists to…
IN A MAJOR VICTORY FOR THE JAMAICAN PRESS, the government agreed to amend a new law that made it a crime to report on certain government investigations. The government of Prime Minister Percival Patterson first introduced the so-called Corruption (Prevention) Bill as part of its efforts to bring national legislation into compliance with the 1996…
EVEN AS KENYAN POLITICS WERE DOMINATED BY CALLS for constitutional and legal reform, the government introduced restrictive legislation governing the press. In May, the government of President Daniel arap Moi proposed an amendment to the Books and Newspapers Act that would have required new publications to post a bond of one million shillings (US$13,459) as…
CELEBRATIONS OF A QUARTER CENTURY OF COMMUNIST RULE, a wave of bomb attacks, and signs of internal dissent all contributed to foreign media interest in Laos in 2000, which in turn spurred the government to reassert its control of information and the press. In July, Laotian viewers were able to tune in live Thai television…
ALTHOUGH LESOTHO’S CONSTITUTION GUARANTEES FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION, it also provides for the protection of the “reputations, rights, and freedoms” of individuals. Criminal defamation statues reamin on the books, making independent journalism a difficult and expensive career. Throughout the year, Lesotho struggled to cope with the economic impact of large-scale retrenchments in the South African mining…
THREE YEARS SINCE HIS NATIONAL PATRIOTIC PARTY (NPP) came to power after multiparty elections ended a brutal, eight-year civil war, Liberian president Charles Taylor has become one of Africa’s fiercest enemies of the press. On March 15, for example, Taylor’s government shut down the independent station Star Radio and suspended the Catholic Church-owned Radio Veritas.…
OPPOSITION LEADERS CONTINUED TO CHALLENGE THE JUNE 1999 ELECTION results, which saw President Bakili Muluzi elected to a second five-year term. The opposition’s claims of election fraud were bolstered in March, when the British anticensorship group ARTICLE 19 released a report claiming that the ruling United Democratic Front (UDF) had set up two disinformation teams…
USING INTERNAL SECURITY LAWS AND THE PRINTING PRESSES and Publications Act of 1984, which requires annual relicensing of all publications, Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad’s deeply entrenched ruling party and its allies maintained a stranglehold on the press. Virtually all mainstream newspapers in Malaysia are owned or controlled by parties allied with the ruling Barisan National…
THE GOVERNMENT CONTINUED TO PROSCRIBE OUTSPOKEN PUBLICATIONS under Article 11 of the 1991 Press Ordinance, which gives authorities power to ban any newspaper deemed detrimental to Islam or state authority, threatening to public order, or defamatory to foreign heads of state. During 2000, several independent newspapers were confiscated or suspended for long periods. Victims included…