John Emerson

ARMENIA Widespread poverty, polarized politics, and flawed legislation kept the media at the mercy of government officials and wealthy sponsors during 2001. Libel remained a criminal offense punishable by imprisonment, though it was not used against journalists during the year.

Although President Heydar Aliyev claimed to be the “guarantor of freedom of speech and the press in Azerbaijan,” his government continued to crack down on independent and opposition media while suppressing public criticism. Journalists who dared to criticize officials suffered harassment, defamation lawsuits, imprisonment, and physical assaults. Publications faced financial pressure and closures, as well…

Major political reforms augured well for press freedom in the tiny Persian Gulf country of Bahrain, which was plagued by social tension and political unrest for part of the 1990s. In a mid-February referendum, voters overwhelmingly approved Emir Sheikh Hamed Bin Issa al-Khalifa’s national charter, which seeks to transform the country into a constitutional monarchy…

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…

President Aleksandr Lukashenko continued his assault on the independent and opposition press in 2001, and he managed to cling to power in September 9 presidential elections amid charges of human rights violations and extensive electoral fraud. Throughout the year, independent publications faced harassment, censorship, seizures, and closures for criticizing the regime. Little progress was made…

In March, President Mathieu Kerekou won a second term in office by a landslide amid allegations of fraud from the opposition. Press coverage of the candidates became a major issue in the months preceding the vote. In an early January television address, Timothé Adanlin, head of the High Authority for Audio-Visual Communications (HAAC), cautioned reporters…

On August 6, Former military dictator Hugo Banzer, who was suffering from advanced cancer, resigned his post as president and handed over power to Vice President Jorge Quiroga Ramírez, who will head the government for the remainder of the five-year presidential term, which ends in August 2002. Despite widespread social and political unrest, the Bolivian…

While Bosnia’s ethnically fragmented media showed modest signs of integration in 2001, independent journalists endured threats, harassment, and violence from political parties and government officials. Nationalist and reformist parties battled in the November 2000 elections, with mixed results. The Bosnian Serb nationalist SDS party, formerly led by indicted war criminal Radovan Karadzic, handily won in…

Botswana is generally considered a model of peace and stability in southern Africa, and its press, though relatively small, is vibrant and outspoken. Relations between the government and the press were strained this past year, however, as officials tried to influence editorial policy and cooperated less with independent journalists.

Sustained media coverage of corruption during 2001 helped increase pressure on powerful Congress members and other government officials, several of whom were forced to resign amid accusations of misconduct and embezzlement. In February, the weekly ISTO reported that taped conversations between federal prosecutors and Senator Antônio Carlos Magalhães, who was president of the Congress at…