Belarus / Europe & Central Asia

Did a respected military reporter really jump to his death? In the case of Ivan Safronov, there are many questions, few answers, and not much hope.

New York, March 21, 2007—A judge in the western city of Grodno has sentenced Igor Bantsyr, a reporter for the independent Polish-language magazine Magazyn Polski na Uchodzstwie, to 10 days in prison for “uncensored swearing” in public. Judge Natalya Kozel of the Leninsky district court convicted Bantsyr on Monday after hearing testimony from two police…

Getting away with murder in the former Soviet states By Nina Ognianova The assassin in a baseball cap who gunned down Anna Politkovskaya outside her Moscow apartment used a silencer. But reverberations from the contract-style slaying of Russia’s icon of investigative journalism were felt around the world.

BELARUS Determined to forestall the kind of democratic uprising that toppled the government in neighboring Ukraine, authoritarian leader Aleksandr Lukashenko and his government crushed dissent in the run-up to the March presidential election—and well beyond. Official results showed that Lukashenko collected 83 percent of the vote to gain a third term, but international observers said…

August 31, 2006 Posted: September 25, 2006 Galina Abakunchik Radio Free Europe /Radio Liberty Sergei Pulsha, Belapan Yuliya Doroshkevich, Nasha Niva Yelena Yakzhuk, Solidarnost Yekatirina Gerasimov, Vladislav Pyatnitsa, Pavluk Konovalchik, Navinki

Could you pick out Equatorial Guinea on the world map? Or Turkmenistan, or Eritrea? Probably not at the first attempt. These countries are usually below the radar of the international media, and the autocrats who run them like it that way. It helps them crush press freedoms and keep their population in the dark. That is why the Committee to Protect Journalists, a New York-based press freedom group, has drawn up a league table of the world’s 10 most censored countries. We hope that the list, issued on World Press Freedom Day, will shine a light into the dark corners of the world where governments and their political cronies decide what people will read, see, and hear.

CPJ Update May 22, 2006 News from the Committee to Protect Journalists Return to front page | See previous Updates

See updated list of 10 Most Censored Countries at: https://cpj.org/reports/2019/09/10-most-censored-eritrea-north-korea-turkmenistan-journalist.php. North Korea tops CPJ’s list of “10 Most Censored Countries”

By Ivan KarakashianA Yemeni editor’s decision to reprint cartoons of Muhammad sparks government reprisals. Other cases abound.

New York, April 27, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns authorities in Belarus for preventing local and foreign journalists from covering an opposition rally in the capital Minsk on Wednesday to mark the 20th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. Police in the eastern city of Bobruisk detained journalists Nikita Bytsenko and Yuri Svetlakov of…