While Albania is still far from having free and functioning media, there were no direct state attacks on independent journalists during 1999. This marked a vast improvement over just a few years ago, when journalists were routinely imprisoned or attacked for critical reporting on government activities. CPJ documented only one violent attack on an Albanian…
The October murders of Armenian prime minister Vazgen Sarkissian and parliamentary speaker Karen Demirchian, by heavily armed gunmen who raided the Parliament building, shocked the nation and divided local media. While the assassins’ motives remained inscrutable at year’s end, some journalists jumped to the swift and as yet unsubstantiated conclusion that the killings represented an…
Azerbaijani press groups have proposed that August 6, 1998, the day that censorship was officially abolished, be declared Press Freedom Day. The move may be premature. While conditions have improved notably since then, journalists still must contend with lawsuits and threats of violence. The 1998 presidential decree that abolished censorship also dismantled Glavlit, the Soviet-era…
President Aleksander Lukashenko, facing international condemnation for his boldfaced attempts to cling to power, resorted to increasingly crude tactics to rein in his media opponents. On July 20, President Lukashenko lost what little democratic legitimacy he still had when he refused to step down after his five-year term ended. Western countries, including the United States,…
Journalists in Bosnia-Herzegovina suffered physical attacks that ranged from beatings and abduction to the car-bombing of a noted Bosnian Serb newspaper editor. The attack on Zeljko Kopanja came in October, after his Banja Luka paper published investigative reports about alleged war crimes and acts of corruption committed by Bosnian Serbs. Reports from the Helsinki Committee…
Sustained pressure from local journalists and domestic and international press freedom advocates, including CPJ, pushed the Bulgarian Parliament to modify its press law, eliminating jail sentences for libel. The reform, which was approved by Parliament on January 12, 2000, also forces public officials to press libel charges themselves rather than having the prosecutor’s office launch…
Croatia’s new center-left ruling coalition, elected in parliamentary polls on January 3, 2000, has pledged to improve the country’s dismal press freedom and civil- rights record after a decade of abuses by the nationalist Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ). The newly elected government and president, the latter to be chosen in a runoff presidential poll on…
The Czech Republic became a member of NATO in March and continues to look westward toward EU membership in the next few years. The country is moving steadily toward stability and respect for democratic rights, but its overall good record on press freedom was tarnished by the new government’s increasingly hostile attitude toward the press.…
While many of its neighbors in the former Eastern Bloc grew increasingly intolerant of independent journalism, Georgia offered its journalists good news in 1999: the repeal of libel from the country’s penal code, effective in July 2000. Another critical change in civil-libel law requires government officials to prove malicious intent to demonstrate that they have…
Hungary joined NATO in April and remained a front runner for European Union membership. However, these diplomatic victories could not mask the government’s growing contempt for the press and especially for journalists investigating stories that might embarrass the ruling Fidesz Party. In 1999, Prime Minister Viktor Orban and the Fidesz Party sought more control over…