Letters

Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is gravely concerned about government restrictions on press freedom in Morocco this year. During the past four months, Moroccan authorities have taken several punitive measures against the press, including the censorship of newspapers and the criminal prosecution of journalists.

Your Excellency: CPJ is gravely concerned by your government’s further tightening of censorship restrictions governing coverage of the civil war between the government of Sri Lanka and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The recent regulations are the most draconian ever imposed on the media in Sri Lanka, according to local journalists.

Your Excellency, The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is alarmed by yesterday’s raid on the head office of Media-Most, the company that owns NTV Television, Ekho Moskvy radio, the daily newspaper Segodnya and the weekly news magazine Itogi.

Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is outraged by the prison sentences recently imposed on free-lance journalist Rafael Marques and on Aguiar dos Santos, publisher of the private weekly newspaper Agora.

Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is deeply disturbed by the recent attack on the Surabaya-based daily newspaper Jawa Pos by members of Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), the grassroots Muslim organization that you chaired for fifteen years before becoming president of Indonesia.

Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is writing to strongly protest the prosecution of Hisham Basharaheel, the editor in chief and publisher of the independent thrice-weekly newspaper Al-Ayyam.

Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) condemns the May 2 murder of Sufi Mohammad Khan, an investigative reporter with the Daily Ummat Karachi. While we are relieved that the gunman and two accomplices are now in police custody, we believe, based on interviews with local sources, that others involved in this crime may still be at large. We call on you to ensure that a complete and impartial investigation is carried out.

Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is disturbed by the continued detention of Hippolyte Agboh, publisher of the private weekly L’Exilé, who is being prosecuted on criminal defamation charges. We are equally concerned about the recent spate of reprisals against news organizations that have criticized your government.

Your Excellency, The Committee to Protect Journalists is deeply concerned about the recent assassination of political columnist José Luis López de la Calle. López de la Calle, a regular contributor to the Basque edition of the Madrid-based daily El Mundo, was gunned down outside his home on Sunday morning, May 7. Though no arrests have been made, Interior Ministry officials are reportedly attributing the crime to the Basque separatist group ETA.

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.