Your Excellency: One year after the Committee to Protect Journalists conducted a fact-finding mission to Bangladesh in response to a pattern of violence against the press, death threats and deadly attacks against journalists continue at an alarming rate. You offered assurances last year that the press in Bangladesh “enjoys full press freedom,” but that freedom is at great risk today. We are deeply concerned about this press freedom crisis, and join with our Bangladeshi colleagues in calling for swift and decisive action to stanch this relentless tide of violence against journalists.
Your Excellency: Today marks the six-month anniversary of the imprisonment of Zhao Yan, a news assistant at The New York Times who has been held incommunicado and without charge or trial since September 17, 2004. The Committee to Protect Journalists deplores Zhao’s ongoing detention, which violates international law and the 2004 amendment to the Chinese Constitution safeguarding human rights.
Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists is deeply troubled by the apparently secret enactment of two new laws that threaten press freedom in the Gambia. Your Excellency signed these laws on December 28, 2004, but their promulgation was not made public until two months later, according to news reports and local sources. CPJ raised its concerns about these laws in a March 14, 2005, meeting with your ambassador to the United States, H.E. Dodou Bammy Jagne in Washington, D.C., attended by CPJ board member Clarence Page and CPJ Africa Program Coordinator Julia Crawford.
Dear Secretary Rumsfeld: The Committee to Protect Journalists is alarmed by the events of March 4 when a car carrying the freed Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena came under fire from U.S. forces while en route to Baghdad International Airport. Italian intelligence agent Nicola Calipari was killed and Sgrena, a reporter for the Rome-based daily Il Manifesto, was wounded. Sgrena, who was held by kidnappers for a month, had just been released.
Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists is extremely concerned about an ongoing campaign by the Federal Security Service (FSB) and prosecutors to intimidate and obstruct the work of independent journalists reporting on the ongoing war in and around the southern republic of Chechnya.
Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists is concerned that a bill to repeal the crime of desacato (disrespect) has been languishing in Congress for more than a year. We urge you to use the power of your office to expedite the elimination of these anachronistic provisions.
Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists is outraged at your government’s harassment and intimidation of three Zimbabwean journalists working for international news agencies, which has forced them to flee the country in fear for their security. Last week’s police action against freelance reporters Angus Shaw, Brian Latham, and Jan Raath seems aimed at silencing these senior journalists in the run-up to Zimbabwe’s general elections on March 31. CPJ is also disturbed to learn of police accusations against another freelance journalist, Cornelius Nduna, who has been forced into hiding.
Dear President Bush: The Committee to Protect Journalists is extremely concerned about the dramatic decline in press freedom under Russian President Vladimir Putin’s tenure, including a recent surge in new media restrictions spearheaded by the Kremlin and its allies.
Dear Ambassador Shrestha: Thank you for meeting with Joel Simon, deputy director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, and CPJ Washington, D.C., Representative Frank Smyth last week. As communicated in that meeting, CPJ is deeply alarmed at the treatment of Nepalese journalists since King Gyanendra’s February 1 declaration of a state of emergency, and we urged your government to restore press freedom immediately in the interests of your nation’s citizens and its international standing. We greatly appreciate your offer to convey our grave concerns to the king.
Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists is deeply troubled that Radio France Internationale’s (RFI) FM broadcasts in Djibouti have been cut since January 14. According to RFI and French media reports, Djiboutian authorities silenced the broadcaster because of its report on an ongoing French legal inquiry into the 1995 death in Djibouti of Bernard Borrel, a French judge. RFI reported on January 12 that a French court had summoned the head of the Djiboutian secret services, Hassan Saïd, as a witness in the inquiry. An earlier French inquiry conducted in Djibouti had concluded that Borrel committed suicide.