Attacks on the press, while still rife, have slowed down since the end in 1997 of Tajikistan’s five-year civil war, during which 29 journalists were murdered in the line of duty. But the government has found other means to keep a tight lid on the press. Throughout the year, the government of President Imomali Rakhmonov…
While the government of Prime Minister Basdeo Panday pressured journalists to cover only the positive aspects of national life, several violent incidents highlighted the adversarial relationship between officialdom and the press. The Panday government established the National Broadcasting Network (NBN), which unites various state-owned television and radio stations into a single corporate entity. Panday urged…
For years, Turkey has had one of the liveliest yet most restricted presses in the region. This paradox was again on display in 1999. Print and broadcast media continued to cover sensitive social and political topics and were often unbridled in their criticism of the government–notably during the authorities’ sloppy rescue efforts after the devastating…
Among all the countries of the former Soviet Union, Turkmenistan stands out as having the most repressive climate for journalists. President Saparmurat Niyazov, known as Turkmenbashi, “father of all Turkmen people,” has created a personality cult not seen since the days of Stalin. In the capital, Ashgabat, a huge statue of Niyazov dominates the city…
Over the past several years, Ukrainian press freedom has deteriorated to such an extent that Ukraine, unlike even neighboring Belarus, now lacks any genuinely independent major news media. From a barrage of violent assaults in 1996Ð97 to relentless bureaucratic pressures and lawsuits aimed at bankrupting them, media outlets have been forced into the arms of…
A series of February bomb explosions in Tashkent that killed 16 people and injured more than 100 prompted Uzbek authorities to crack down on press freedom and other civil liberties, already nearly nonexistent in one of the most repressive countries of the former Soviet Union. Uzbek authorities claimed that the bomb attacks marked an attempt…
President Slobodan Milosevic first used the threat of war, then an actual war, and finally international hostility toward his regime to justify the use of government censorship and crippling fines to decimate Serbia’s various independent media. The press crackdown was particularly brutal in Kosovo, where a 1998 military offensive by the separatist Kosovo Liberation Army…
New York, March 17, 2000 — Nebojsa Ristic, head of an independent television station in Serbia, was released from prison today after serving almost 11 months of a one-year sentence imposed last April, according to CPJ’s sources in Belgrade. Ristic was arrested in April, 1999, and charged with disseminating false information under Article 218 of…
New York, March 14, 2000 — In the latest government attack on independent media in Yugoslavia, police have shut down the opposition-run station Radio Television Pozega in the city of Pozega, 60 miles southwest of Belgrade. Police seized the station’s transmitter during the night of March 11-12, after accusing RTV Pozega of operating without a…
New York, March 10, 2000 — Artyom Borovik, a legendary figure in Russian journalism, died in an air accident yesterday. He was one of four passengers and five crew members who were killed when their private plane crashed during takeoff from Moscow on a flight bound for the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv. Officials are looking into…