John Emerson

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,…

SOMALIA The killing of a Swedish photojournalist at a pro-government rally in Mogadishu underscored the dangers faced by journalists covering renewed political turmoil in Somalia, which has had no effective central administration since the fall of dictator Siad Barre in 1991. Against a background of military conflict between the U.N.-backed transitional government and the Islamic…

SRI LANKA Hopes that the Sri Lankan government and Tamil rebels would be able to salvage their crumbling cease-fire were dashed in 2006. By September, the military and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) were again locked in combat in the north and east of the country. While the conflict looked similar to that…