When it comes to press freedom offenders, the Czech Republic is not among the countries that come to mind. So what happened to the main national television channel on March 11 left many flabbergasted. I arrived in Prague that day with a group of New York University graduate students to participate in a weeklong series…
Overview by Alex Lupis Authoriatarian rulers strengthened their hold on power in many former Soviet republics in 2004. Their secretive, centralized governments aggressively suppressed all forms of independent activity, from journalism and human rights monitoring to religious activism and political opposition.
New York, January 20, 2004–The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) condemns this weekend’s attack on Tomas Nemecek, editor-in-chief of the independent weekly Respekt, which is based in the Czech Republic’s capital, Prague. On Saturday, January 17, two unidentified men in their early 20s assaulted Nemecek while he was leaving a grocery store near his home…
New York, July 1, 2003–A Czech court yesterday convicted the former general secretary of the Foreign Ministry, Karel Srba, of plotting to murder Sabina Slonkova, an investigative reporter for the independent Prague daily Mlada Fronta Dnes. According to local and international press reports, a regional court in the southern city of Ceske Budejovice convicted Srba…
Despite having joined NATO in 1999 and being a front-runner for European Union membership in 2004, many senior politicians in the Czech Republic remain hostile toward the country’s feisty press and regularly obstruct critical media coverage of political scandals.
December 11 Jonathan C. Randal, The Washington Post The U.N. International War Crimes Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague (ICTY) ruled to limit compelled testimony from war correspondents. The decision, announced at the tribunal’s Appeals Chamber, came in response to the appeal by former Washington Post reporter Jonathan C. Randal, who had been…
Emboldened by the growing number of U.S. troops in the country, President Askar Akayev has used the threat of international terrorism as an excuse to curb political dissent and suppress the independent and opposition media in Kyrgyzstan. Compliant courts often issue exorbitant damage awards in politically motivated libel suits, driving even the country’s most prominent…
Press freedom is generally respected in the United Kingdom, but CPJ was alarmed by a legal case in which Interbrew, a Belgium-based brewing group, and the British Financial Services Authority (FSA), a banking and investment watchdog agency, demanded that several U.K. media outlets turn over documents that had been leaked to them. The case threatened…