Attacks on the Press in 2006: Preface
By Anderson CooperSilence. When a journalist is killed, more often than not, there is silence. In Russia, someone followed Anna Politkovskaya home and quietly shot her to death in her apartment building. The killer muffled the sound of the gun with a silencer. Her murder made headlines around the world in October, but from the…
Police confiscate Russian newspaper’s computers
New York, February 5, 2008—On Friday, police in the southern Russian city of Togliatti raided the newsroom of an independent weekly, confiscating all 20 of its computers, newspaper staff told CPJ. Special agents from the police department for high-tech crimes told the staff of Tolyatinskoye Obozreniye (Togliatti Review) that they were confiscating the…
Attacks on the Press in 2006: Introduction
By Joel SimonAs Venezuelan elections approached in November, President Hugo Chávez accused news broadcasters of engaging in a “psychological war to divide, weaken, and destroy the nation.” Their broadcast licenses, he said, could be pulled–no idle threat in a country where a vague 2004 media law allows the government to shut down stations for work…
Attacks on the Press 2006: Countries That Have Jailed Journalists
ALGERIA: 2 Djamel Eddine Fahassi, Alger Chaîne III IMPRISONED: May 6, 1995 Fahassi, a reporter for the state-run radio station Alger Chaîne III and a contributor to several Algerian newspapers, including the now-banned weekly of the Islamic Salvation Front, Al-Forqane, was abducted near his home in the al-Harrache suburb of the capital, Algiers, by four…
Attacks on the Press 2006: Asia Analysis
Afghan-Pakistani border off-limits to most journalists By Bob Dietz The Afghanistan-Pakistan border is a critical front in the most challenging news story in the world: the confrontation between U.S.-led Western countries and militant Islamists. Yet access to the border region has become increasingly restricted, and the Pakistani government continues to do everything in its power…
Attacks on the Press 2006: Europe and Central Asia Analysis
Getting away with murder in the former Soviet states By Nina Ognianova The assassin in a baseball cap who gunned down Anna Politkovskaya outside her Moscow apartment used a silencer. But reverberations from the contract-style slaying of Russia’s icon of investigative journalism were felt around the world.
Attacks on the Press 2006: Russia
RUSSIA As Russia assumed a world leadership role, chairing the Group of Eight leading industrialized nations and the Council of Europe’s powerful committee of ministers, the Kremlin cracked down on dissent and shrugged off astounding attacks on critics and journalists. In a grim year for the press, parliament passed a measure to hush media criticism…
Attacks on the Press 2006: Countries That Have Jailed Journalists
ALGERIA: 2 Djamel Eddine Fahassi, Alger Chaîne III IMPRISONED: May 6, 1995 Fahassi, a reporter for the state-run radio station Alger Chaîne III and a contributor to several Algerian newspapers, including the now-banned weekly of the Islamic Salvation Front, Al-Forqane, was abducted near his home in the al-Harrache suburb of the capital, Algiers, by four…
Putin pledges to protect journalists
New York, February 1, 2007—Responding to an international outcry over the murder of Russia’s top investigative reporter, President Vladimir Putin vowed today to protect the press, a pledge welcomed by the Committee to Protect Journalists. For the first time Putin also acknowledged the importance of the work of Anna Politkovskaya, whose murder in October put…