ATR

IRAQ For the fourth consecutive year, Iraq was the most dangerous reporting assignment in the world, exacting a frightening toll on local and foreign journalists. Thirty-two journalists and 15 media support staffers were killed during the year, bringing to 129 the number of media personnel killed in action since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003.…

IVORY COAST The news media were caught in the middle of political tensions that have split the country between a government-ruled south and a rebel-held north since 2002. In the south and west, militant groups harassed, intimidated, and attacked media outlets as a U.N.-backed power-sharing government installed at the end of 2005 failed to bring…

NIGERIA President Olusegun Obasanjo’s attempt to amend the constitution so he could seek a third term in the April 2007 election galvanized opponents and stoked political tensions and violence. Media critical of the president’s move found themselves the targets of harassment by security services. But the climate for all media worsened, and attacks on the…

RUSSIA As Russia assumed a world leadership role, chairing the Group of Eight leading industrialized nations and the Council of Europe’s powerful committee of ministers, the Kremlin cracked down on dissent and shrugged off astounding attacks on critics and journalists. In a grim year for the press, parliament passed a measure to hush media criticism…

A year of political turmoil climaxed in a military coup that accelerated the deterioration of Thailand’s press freedom climate. Royalist generals seized power on September 19 while Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra was in New York attending the U.N. General Assembly. The coup was condemned abroad, but the new leadership was endorsed by King Bhumibol Adulyadej,…

TURKMENISTAN The December 21 death of Saparmurat Niyazov, the self-proclaimed president-for-life, ended a two-decade rule that plunged Turkmenistan into a dark abyss in which the state maintained absolute control over information. His sudden death from heart failure at age 66 left the nation with an indelible legacy of repression. Niyazov’s eccentric personality probably won’t be…

UNITED STATES After consuming the press freedom landscape for more than two years, an investigation into the leak of a CIA operative’s name wound down with a whimper. News organizations reported in August that special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald apparently knew from the day his investigation began in December 2003 that then-Deputy Secretary of State Richard…

UZBEKISTAN President Islam Karimov continued his crackdown on the independent press, political opponents, and civil-society groups. As his foreign policy shifted away from the West, Karimov’s regime expelled dozens of foreign-funded nongovernmental organizations, including those supporting local media. The few remaining independent journalists were forced to choose whether to sever ties to foreign-funded media or…

VENEZUELA President Hugo Chávez Frías, who has outlasted a coup and a recall, swept to victory in the December 3 presidential election amid tense relations with the press. Chávez threatened to withhold licenses from broadcast outlets critical of his administration, while the attorney general quashed coverage of a prosecutor’s assassination amid press reports that exposed…

ALGERIA: 2 Djamel Eddine Fahassi, Alger Chaîne III IMPRISONED: May 6, 1995 Fahassi, a reporter for the state-run radio station Alger Chaîne III and a contributor to several Algerian newspapers, including the now-banned weekly of the Islamic Salvation Front, Al-Forqane, was abducted near his home in the al-Harrache suburb of the capital, Algiers, by four…