Georgia / Europe & Central Asia

CPJ: One in 6 jailed journalists held without charge Census shows an overall decline; China remains the leading jailer

New York, November 8, 2007—The Georgian government should immediately allow two private television stations to resume broadcasting, and it must lift a ban on news-gathering imposed on all other private broadcasters, the Committee to Protect Journalist said today. The government shut two popular Tbilisi-based television channels shortly before declaring a state of emergency Wednesday night.…

New York, June 29, 2007—The Committee to Protect Journalist is concerned about an attack reported by Nukri Kacharava, a camera operator for the independent Georgian television station Mze, who said Russian military officers assaulted him and confiscated his equipment as he was filming their move out of a Russian military base in Batumi, capital of…

Some press gains are reported in Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan but the Color Revolutions have yet to deliver lasting reforms.

Positives: Libel is decriminalized. Reporting of state secrets also decriminalized. Assaults on journalists decline slightly. Negatives: Government still harasses media, using such methods as retaliatory tax investigations. Administration pressures media to tone down coverage, replace critical journalists. Pending bill would set a “code of conduct” for news media.

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.

GEORGIA Television news, which had rallied support for Georgia’s pro-democracy revolution three years earlier, suffered serious blows from government harassment, business takeovers, and, as many saw it, self-inflicted scandal. President Mikhail Saakashvili’s administration took an aggressive approach in managing television coverage by pressuring and harassing critical TV reporters. Georgia’s largest television company, with holdings that…

JANUARY 17, 2007 Posted: January 26, 2007 Ilya Chachibaya, Giya Boklomi ABDUCTED, THREATENED Two unidentified men briefly abducted Chachibaya on his way to work in the western Georgian city of Zugdidi, according to local press reports and CPJ interviews. The men intercepted Chachibaya, forced him inside their sedan, threatened him, and told him to stop…

As the Taliban embed themselves deeper into Pakistan’s restive provinces along the border with Afghanistan, journalists covering the region are coming under attack and driven away from a story with global consequences for the U.S.-led coalition fighting militant Islamists.

China media-watchers are accustomed to seeing moderate pendulum swings in the government’s approach to press freedom. Over the years, rules have been eased, only to be reined back when social conditions or political administrations change.