Washington, D.C., March 25 — The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) reported today in its annual worldwide study of press freedom that at least 118 journalists were in prison in 25 countries at the end of 1998, and 24 journalists in 17 countries were murdered during the year in reprisal for their reporting.
An intensive, nearly year-long effort by the Committee to Protect Journalists to gain the release of imprisoned CPJ International Press Freedom Award winner Ocak Isik Yurtçu, a prominent Turkish editor, and other imprisoned Turkish journalists resulted in an amnesty law, passed by Turkey’s parliament, that freed six newspaper editors, including Yurtçu.
An intensive, nearly year-long effort by the Committee to Protect Journalists to gain the release of imprisoned CPJ International Press Freedom Award winner Ocak Isik Yurtçu, a prominent Turkish editor, and other imprisoned Turkish journalists resulted in an amnesty law, passed by Turkey’s parliament, that freed six newspaper editors, including Yurtçu.
An intensive, nearly year-long effort by the Committee to Protect Journalists to gain the release of imprisoned CPJ International Press Freedom Award winner Ocak Isik Yurtçu, a prominent Turkish editor, and other imprisoned Turkish journalists resulted in an amnesty law, passed by Turkey’s parliament, that freed six newspaper editors, including Yurtçu.
An intensive, nearly year-long effort by the Committee to Protect Journalists to gain the release of imprisoned CPJ International Press Freedom Award winner Ocak Isik Yurtçu, a prominent Turkish editor, and other imprisoned Turkish journalists resulted in an amnesty law, passed by Turkey’s parliament, that freed six newspaper editors, including Yurtçu.
Ocak Isik Yurtçu had little to celebrate last July 24, Journalists Day in Turkey. “Nobody in the world has been sentenced to so many years in prison for articles others have written,” he said from his jail cell in an interview with the daily Yeni Yuzyil. Yurtçu, former editor in chief of the now-defunct daily…