John Emerson

Under the rule of President Mathieu Kerekou, who was elected in April 1996 after ruling as a left-leaning military dictator from 1972 until 1989, the Benin government has won international praise for its efforts to liberalize the country’s political environment. These efforts have not always worked to the advantage of local journalists. In January, the…

While President Hugo Banzer’s government used the state intelligence apparatus to intimidate journalists, the Bolivian press continued to report aggressively on a number of public scandals. Banzer, a general who led a military government from 1971 to 1978, publicly embraced press freedom after he was democratically elected president in 1997. But many local journalists are…

Journalists in Bosnia-Herzegovina suffered physical attacks that ranged from beatings and abduction to the car-bombing of a noted Bosnian Serb newspaper editor. The attack on Zeljko Kopanja came in October, after his Banja Luka paper published investigative reports about alleged war crimes and acts of corruption committed by Bosnian Serbs. Reports from the Helsinki Committee…

As Africa’s oldest multiparty democracy, with a code of human rights enshrined in the constitution, Botswana enjoys a relatively free and open press. Yet problems do exist, including the arbitrary use of the Immigration Act to silence foreign journalists working in the country by declaring them “prohibited immigrants.” One of the most contentious issues this…

While journalists in Brazil enjoy widespread popular support, restrictive laws pending before Congress and a number of violent attacks against the provincial press sparked concern among press freedom organizations in the country. Efforts to reform the 1967 press law, considered “undemocratic and anachronistic” by local reporters, stalled in the Chamber of Deputies. Although most local…

Sustained pressure from local journalists and domestic and international press freedom advocates, including CPJ, pushed the Bulgarian Parliament to modify its press law, eliminating jail sentences for libel. The reform, which was approved by Parliament on January 12, 2000, also forces public officials to press libel charges themselves rather than having the prosecutor’s office launch…

President Blaise Compaoré seized power in 1987 before seeking legitimacy through the ballot box in 1991 and again in 1998. But his regime still draws much of its authority from the army, especially from the infamous Presidential Guard Regiment (RSP), which local independent journalists blamed for several extrajudicial killings last year. It remains dangerous to…

Forcing their citizenry to live behind a wall of repressive ignorance, Burma’s military leaders have shown no signs of liberalizing one of the world’s harshest regimes. With all media controlled by the state, and access to the Internet, modems, fax machines and other communication devices strictly licensed and controlled, local journalists are reduced to reproducing…

Since October 1993, when Tutsi soldiers killed the democratically elected Hutu president, Melchior Ndadaye, successive regimes have used physical and bureaucratic coercion to stifle independent journalism in Burundi. That includes the incumbent strongman Major Pierre Buyoya, who seized power in 1996. Six years into Burundi’s civil war, Hutu guerrillas continue to fight the Tutsi-dominated government…

Cambodia in 1999 was as peaceful as it has been in decades. The Khmer Rouge insurgency was defeated, and most of its leaders were either dead or in custody, awaiting the possibility that a tribunal would be formed to judge their complicity in the genocidal Pol Pot regime. No elections, or coups d’état, divided the…