New York, April 8, 2002—CPJ is alarmed that the independent television channel A1+ has lost its broadcast frequency and been forced off the air. On April 2, the National Committee on Television and Radio (NCTR), whose members are appointed by the president, awarded the A1+ frequency to the entertainment company Sharm, which has close government…
Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is gravely concerned about pending criminal libel charges against Igor Zotov, deputy editor-in-chief of the Moscow independent daily Nezavisimaya Gazeta. Based on our research, CPJ believes that Zotov is facing politically motivated retribution for Nezavisimaya Gazeta’s critical reporting, as well as for its association with Boris Berezovsky, a vocal critic of Your Excellency and the newspaper’s majority shareholder.
New York, April 3, 2002— The trial of Abdullah Keskin, a Turkish publisher charged with “separatist propaganda” in connection with a U.S. journalist’s book about the Kurdish issue, opened today in a State Security Court in Istanbul. The charges against Keskin came after his publishing house, Avesta, printed a Turkish edition of After Such Knowledge,…
New York, April 2, 2002—The body of 26-year-old Sergei Kalinovsky, editor-in-chief of the daily Moskovsky Komsomolets—Smolensk, was found yesterday by a lake outside the city of Smolensk in central Russia. Kalinovsky, who reported on local politics and crime for the Smolensk edition of the Moscow daily Moskovsky Komsomolets and the local SCS television station, disappeared…
New York, April 2, 2002—CPJ calls for an independent, international inquiry into the July 2000 disappearance of Belarusian cameraman Dmitry Zavadsky. Although two former members of the elite Almaz special forces unit were recently convicted of kidnapping Zavadsky, local sources view them as scapegoats. CPJ is disturbed that state prosecutors failed to investigate allegations that…
Turkish Republic State Security Court of the City of Istanbul Chief Prosecutor Charges Presidency of the State Security Court Accused: Abdullah Keskin, son of Ramazan and Selime, born 1969, in Nusaybin District, Mardin Province, registered in Yenituran district and residing in Istanbul, Beyoglu district, Mesrutiyet Street, number 1230/10
There were 118 journalists in prison around the world at the end of 2001 who were jailed for practicing their profession. The number is up significantly from the previous year, when 81 journalists were in jail, and represents a return to the level of 1998, when 118 were also imprisoned.
By Anne Garrels ON NOVEMBER 19, 2001, I was at the border negotiating with officials to get across into Afghanistan. There was suddenly an unexplained problem, yet journalists arriving from Afghanistan said they had no trouble along the way. I was frustrated. None of us knew that a caravan of our colleagues had just been…
IN THE WAKE of September 11, 2001, journalists around the world faced a press freedom crisis that was truly global in scope. In the first days and weeks after the terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C., governments across the globe–in China, Benin, the Palestinian Authority Territories, and the United States–took actions to…
Journalists across Asia faced extraordinary pressures in 2001. Risks included reporting on war and insurgency, covering crime and corruption, or simply expressing a dissenting view in an authoritarian state. CPJ’s two most striking indices of press freedom are the annual toll of journalists killed around the world and our list of journalists imprisoned at the…