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Top Developments• More access for foreign reporters, tighter rules for local assistants.• As online use grows, government censors sites, jails critics. Key Statistic 24: Journalists jailed as of December 1, 2009. While China’s ruling communist party celebrated 60 years in power in 2009, its critics commemorated antigovernment movements in Tibet in 1949 and Tiananmen Square…
Top Developments • RFI removed from FM frequencies; other stations censored.• Hundreds march in nine provinces to protest ongoing threats, violence. Key Statistic 3: Female journalists threatened with “a bullet to the head” after focusing their work on women’s issues. Authorities censored coverage of armed conflict and human rights violations in the mineral-rich eastern Kivu…
Top Developments • TV news politicized due to government manipulation. • Opposition-aligned broadcaster obstructed. Key Statistic 7: Percent of Internet penetration nationwide. While no journalists were killed or imprisoned in Georgia in 2009, press freedom in this small South Caucasus nation stagnated due to persistent state manipulation of news media, particularly television broadcasting. In a…
Top Developments• Fatalities and abductions plummet as security situation improves.• Prime minister, others file lawsuits to harass media. Kurdish courts jail six journalists. Key Statistic 4: Journalists killed in connection to their work, the lowest tally since the war began in 2003. Four Iraqi journalists were killed because of their work as the press continued to face…
Top Developments• Authorities censor, jail journalists to silence coverage of the royal family. • Politicized courts issue heavy defamation awards. Key Statistic 100,000: Copies of two weeklies destroyed by authorities because they carried a poll about the king. As King Mohammed VI marked his first decade on the Alawite throne, his government moved aggressively to censor coverage…
Top Developments• Government fails to investigate press freedom abuses. • Reporter slain after covering Maoist land seizures. Key Statistic 8th: Ranking on CPJ Impunity Index, making it one of world’s worst for press. Nepal’s news media entered 2009 in a state of crisis. Attacks on the press had escalated in late 2008 amid a climate…
Top Developments• Press has very limited access during two military offensives.• Reporters face attacks, threats from all sides. Four are killed. Key Statistic 6: Homes of journalists destroyed by militants in retaliatory attacks. As Pakistan’s military launched two major offensives within its borders, officials pressured news media to report favorably on the conflicts while the Taliban and…
Top Developments• Amid partisan conflict, media owner is target of failed assassination.• Heavily used lese majeste laws criminalize criticism of royal family. Key Statistic 2,000: Web sites blocked by government for violating lese majeste laws. Thai media were caught in the middle of a political conflict that entered its fourth year of destabilizing antigovernment street…
Top Developments• Nation is a persistent jailer of journalists.• Security agents enforce rigid censorship. Key Statistic 4: Years EU human rights sanctions were in place before being lifted in 2009. President Islam Karimov’s authoritarian government held at least seven journalists in prison, retaining its notorious distinction as the region’s leading jailer of journalists. Authorities harassed independent…
Top Developments• Regulators strip licenses from critical broadcasters.• Government wages politicized investigation into Globovisión. Key Statistic 34: Private radio and television stations pulled from the air. After scoring a major victory in a February referendum that granted indefinite presidential re-election, President Hugo Chávez Frías and his government intensified their years-long crackdown on the private media. The government’s…