IRAQ ORDERS FOREIGN JOURNALISTS TO LEAVE COUNTRY
New York, October 25, 2002—Iraq’s government has ordered a number of foreign news reporters to leave the country after their recent coverage of events inside Iraq angered authorities. The U.S. network CNN reported that its chief Baghdad correspondent, Jane Arraf, and five other non-Iraqi reporters and staff members were ordered to leave the country by…
Attacks on the Press 2001: Middle East Analysis
Bucking a worldwide trend toward democracy in the post-Cold War era, the political landscape of the Middle East and North Africa remained dominated by an assortment of military-backed regimes, police states, autocracies, and oligarchies. A new, younger generation of leaders has emerged in some countries in recent years, inheriting power and bringing hope for political…
Attacks on the Press 2001: Iraq
Saddam Hussein’s repressive regime maintained its stranglehold over all of Iraq’s institutions, including the press. Print and broadcast media are closely controlled by the government or by Hussein’s infamous son Uday, who owns or runs a number of influential media outlets.
Attacks on the Press 2001: Journalists in Prison
There were 118 journalists in prison around the world at the end of 2001 who were jailed for practicing their profession. The number is up significantly from the previous year, when 81 journalists were in jail, and represents a return to the level of 1998, when 118 were also imprisoned.
Attacks on the Press 2000: Middle East and North Africa Analysis
ALTHOUGH RIGHTS TO FREE EXPRESSION AND PRESS FREEDOM are enshrined in national constitutions from Algeria to Yemen, governments found many practical ways to restrict these freedoms. State ownership of the media, censorship, legal harassment, intimidation, and imprisonment of journalists were again among the favored tools of repression and control. In Iraq, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Syria,…
Attacks on the Press 2000: Facts
In North Korea, listening to a foreign broadcast is a crime punishable by death. In Colombia, right-wing paramilitary forces are suspected in the murders of three journalists in 2000. Meanwhile, paramilitary leader Carlos Castaño was formally charged with the 1999 murder of political satirist Jaime Garzón.
Attacks on the Press 2000: Iraq
TEN YEARS AFTER THE GULF WAR, Saddam Hussein’s brutal Baathist regime maintained its hold on the Iraqi police state, allowing no dissent and exerting relentless control over information. On December 4, the United Nations General Assembly overwhelmingly condemned what it termed Iraq’s “systematic, widespread, and extremely grave” abuses of human rights-an assessment that left little…