Europe & Central Asia

Click here to read more about press freedom conditions in AZERBAIJAN. New York, May 4, 2000 – Seventeen journalists were beaten by police while covering an opposition demonstration on April 29 in the capital city of Baku, according to the Journalists’ Trade Union and other sources in Azerbaijan.

Dear Mr. McKinnon, On the occasion of World Press Freedom Day, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is writing to express its concerns about press freedom violations in Malaysia and Sierra Leone, which have been Commonwealth member states since 1957 and 1961, respectively. We would like to draw your attention to the fact that the leaders of these Commonwealth countries rank among CPJ’s “10 worst enemies of the press” for 2000.

On World Press Freedom Day ENEMIES OF THE PRESS 1999 ENEMIES OF THE PRESS 1998 ENEMIES OF THE PRESS 1997ENEMIES OF THE PRESS 1996

[Click here to read CPJ’s April 7 protest letter.] [Click here for a map of Nagorno-Karabakh].

Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists is deeply disturbed by your government’s recent crackdown on the Baku-based magazine Monitor Weekly and the continued harassment of its editor in chief, Elmar Huseynov.

Click here to read more about press freedom conditions in YUGOSLAVIA. New York, April 21, 2000 — Serbian ultranationalist leader and deputy prime minister Vojislav Seselj has insinuated that an independent journalist’s life may be in danger. Appearing April 12 on a government TV program called “Fifth Column,” about the anti-Milosevic opposition, Seselj named a…

Click here to read more about press freedom conditions in KAZAKHSTAN. New York, April 20, 2000 — A TV news director in Kazakhstan was dismissed under official pressure after she covered the harassment of three opposition leaders, according to CPJ’s sources in Almaty. On March 31, Tatyana Deltsova was fired from her job as news…

Click here to read more about press freedom conditions in KYRGYZSTAN. New York, April 4, 2000 — A Bishkek city court recently found the local independent weekly Res Publika liable in yet another defamation suit. The paper is currently banned from publishing until it pays a fine resulting from an earlier lawsuit.

Independent journalism is under siege in Russia, where President-elect Vladimir Putin surfed to victory on a wave of docile press coverage

Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is deeply troubled by the events of Saturday, March 25, when thirty-five journalists were among the hundreds detained in connection with a demonstration held in Minsk to protest your government’s ban on a march that was to have been part of opposition-staged festivities commemorating the 1918 founding of the Belarusian National Republic.