Romania / Europe & Central Asia

Remembering a Friend Lost to Saddam’s Terror by Frank Smyth International Herald Tribune June 3, 2003

Since the Social Democratic Party (PSD) came to power in 2001, the Romanian government has repeatedly tried to silence its critics in an attempt to stabilize relations with Europe and the United States and thereby secure membership in the European Union (EU) and NATO. Rather than battle the corruption that jeopardizes its status within the…

December 11 Jonathan C. Randal, The Washington Post The U.N. International War Crimes Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague (ICTY) ruled to limit compelled testimony from war correspondents. The decision, announced at the tribunal’s Appeals Chamber, came in response to the appeal by former Washington Post reporter Jonathan C. Randal, who had been…

Emboldened by the growing number of U.S. troops in the country, President Askar Akayev has used the threat of international terrorism as an excuse to curb political dissent and suppress the independent and opposition media in Kyrgyzstan. Compliant courts often issue exorbitant damage awards in politically motivated libel suits, driving even the country’s most prominent…

Government officials, wary of any media coverage that could potentially threaten the country’s efforts to join NATO and the European Union, used threats and intimidation to promote docile reporting–resulting in increased self-censorship in 2002.

Press freedom is generally respected in Slovenia, but journalists investigating sensitive issues continue to face occasional intimidation or pressure in retaliation for their coverage.

Press freedom is generally respected in the United Kingdom, but CPJ was alarmed by a legal case in which Interbrew, a Belgium-based brewing group, and the British Financial Services Authority (FSA), a banking and investment watchdog agency, demanded that several U.K. media outlets turn over documents that had been leaked to them. The case threatened…

New York, March 28, 2003— The body of Iosif Costinas, a 62-year-old journalist for the independent daily Timisoara, was discovered last week by police in a forest in western Romania. Costinas disappeared in June 2002. Police spokesman Cornel Iures said the journalist’s remains were found near the village of Pischia, 16 miles northeast of the…

New York, September 11, 2002—The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is concerned that Iosif Costinas, a 62 year-old reporter for the Romanian independent daily Timisoara, has been missing since early June. Costinas’ journalism focused on highly sensitive political issues, including a number of unsolved murders that occurred during the 1989 anti-communist revolt, which began in…

The exhilarating prospect of broad press freedoms that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union a decade ago has faded dramatically in much of the post-communist world. A considerable decline in press freedom conditions in Russia during the last year, along with the stranglehold authoritarian leaders have imposed on media in Central Asia, the Caucasus,…