Iraq / Middle East & North Africa

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…

EIGHTY-ONE JOURNALISTS WERE IN PRISON AROUND THE WORLD at the end of 2000, jailed for practicing their profession. The number is down slightly from the previous year, when 87 were in jail, and represents a significant decline from 1998, when 118 journalists were imprisoned. While jailing journalists can be an effective means of stifling bad…

By Joel CampagnaRoyal succession and rubber-stamp elections set the tone for a year in which Middle Eastern and North African governments continued to restrict press freedoms through a combination of censorship, intimidation, and media monopoly. Ballots in Egypt, Syria, Tunisia, and Yemen produced few surprises as longtime rulers stayed in power and maintained formidable obstacles…

In the ninth year of crippling UN economic sanctions and after last year’s frequent U.S. and British air strikes, President Saddam Hussein showed little sign of loosening his iron grip on Iraqi society. All media remained at the government’s disposal, functioning as instruments of propaganda for Hussein’s brutal Baath regime. In his 1999 report about…

Among many Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza, the optimism that accompanied the establishment of Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian National Authority (PNA) six years ago appears to have given way to disillusionment. Widespread corruption within the PNA, its perceived failure in negotiating a just peace, and worsening economic conditions for much of the population…

Research Conducted in July 1999

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.

Six Jordanian journalists were among 405 prisoners released from Kuwaiti prisons on Feb. 25 as part of a pardon by Emir Jaber al-Ahmad al-Sabah marking the sixth anniversary of the country’s liberation from Iraqi occupation.

Africa For the third consecutive year, Ethiopia held more journalists in jail–31 at year’s end–than any other country in Africa. Most were detained without charges.