India

AMID SOCIAL AND POLITICAL TURBULENCE following a change of government in January and the dollarization of the economy, authorities intercepted a series of letter bombs sent to journalists. On January 21, President Jamil Mahuad was overthrown in an uprising led by junior military officers and Amerindian protesters who installed a “national salvation government.” The following…

FIJI’S PRESS, AMONG THE FREEST AND MOST DIVERSE IN THE PACIFIC REGION, endured a tumultuous year, marked by a coup attempt that effectively dismantled the country’s democratic foundations. While former prime minister Mahendra Chaudhry had been a harsh critic of the press during his brief tenure, journalists came under much greater pressure during the months…

OPPOSITION LEADERS CONTINUED TO CHALLENGE THE JUNE 1999 ELECTION results, which saw President Bakili Muluzi elected to a second five-year term. The opposition’s claims of election fraud were bolstered in March, when the British anticensorship group ARTICLE 19 released a report claiming that the ruling United Democratic Front (UDF) had set up two disinformation teams…

IN A WATERSHED YEAR FOR MEXICAN DEMOCRACY, the dissolution of ties between much of the media and the long-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) helped foster a more professional and competitive press in 2000. The election of National Action Party (PAN) candidate Vicente Fox to the presidency on July 2 ended the PRI’s 71-year hold on…

THE MILITARY GOVERNMENT OF CHIEF EXECUTIVE GEN. PERVEZ MUSHARRAF sought to create an impression of benign rule last year. In part, this meant avoiding the bare-knuckle tactics that former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif used to control the press. However, Musharraf’s patience with his critics seemed to be wearing thin toward the end of 2000, and…

PERU’S INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISTS HELPED drive President Alberto K. Fujimori from power after forcing his once-mighty intelligence chief Vladimiro Montesinos into exile. Fujimori’s November departure led to the unshackling of the independent press, which had seriously suffered under a regime that tried to manipulate public information for a decade. President Fujimori used all resources at his…

SIERRA LEONE REMAINS THE MOST DANGEROUS COUNTRY IN AFRICA for journalists. In 2000, Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebels killed three reporters, bringing to 15 the total number of journalists killed in the war-plagued West African nation since 1997. The RUF alone is responsible for 13 of those deaths. On May 3, World Press Freedom Day,…

LONG-STANDING SOVEREIGNTY DISPUTES BETWEEN THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT and the semi-autonomous island of Zanzibar continued to affect relations between government and the media. Several journalists were arrested, interrogated, and then released without charge during the run-up to general elections in late October, which were marred by violent outbreaks in Zanzibar and resulted in the reelection of…

PRIME MINISTER BASDEO PANDAY, WHO HAS SPENT MUCH of his five years in office feuding with the media, found his government embroiled in a constitutional crisis at year’s end, after winning a narrow victory in elections held on December 11. The population of this oil- and gas-rich country is equally divided between people of African…

New York, January 4, 2001 — Of the 24 journalists killed for their work in 2000, according to CPJ research, at least 16 were murdered, most of those in countries where assassins have learned they can kill journalists with impunity. This figure is down from 1999, when CPJ found that 34 journalists were killed for…