ATR

Dear Mr. President, We are writing to express our alarm about the increasing restrictions against Chad’s once-vibrant independent media, particularly following the deadly rebel assault on the capital, N’djamena, in early February.

CPJ asked Manuel Vázquez Portal, a Cuban writer, poet, and journalist swept up in the 2003 crackdown, to describe the year he spent in prison before being freed in 2004. He chose to describe his imprisonment in nightmare imagery. Vázquez Portal now lives and works in Miami.

Compiled by María Salazar as of March 3, 2008

New York, February 28, 2008—Police in the capital, Yaoundé, today forced a popular radio station off the air and confiscated its equipment over commentary critical of the government during a call-in program, according to local journalists. Magic FM is the third broadcaster summarily closed by authorities within a week in response to critical coverage of…

BELARUS: New York, February 25, 2008—The Belarusian Supreme Court has ordered the early release of Aleksandr Sdvizhkov, former deputy editor of the now-shuttered independent newspaper Zgoda, who was sentenced in January to three years in a high-security prison for reprinting controversial Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in 2006.

Amid South Asian Conflict, Remarkable ResilienceBy Bob DietzTraffic is sparse during a late-night run to the Bandaranaike International Airport north of the Sri Lankan capital, Colombo. Because of insecurity caused by war between the Sinhalese-dominated government and Tamil separatists in the country’s north and east, the streets are given over to police and army checkpoints.…

Rewriting the Law to Make Journalism a CrimeBy Nina OgnianovaIn its 17 years on the air, Moscow-based Ekho Moskvy Radio has enjoyed, by Russian standards, extraordinary editorial independence. Nearly alone among Russian broadcasters in its critical approach, the station employs some of the country’s most outspoken journalists, who produce in-depth reporting on the most sensitive…

Attacks & developments throughout the region

AZERBAIJAN Ignoring international opinion, the authoritarian government of President Ilham Aliyev clamped down on opposition and independent media and became the world’s fifth-leading jailer of journalists, with nine reporters and editors behind bars when CPJ conducted its annual census on December 1. On May 3, World Press Freedom Day, CPJ ranked the oil-rich Caspian Sea…

Increasing hostility between the government of President Evo Morales and the private media reflected a year of overall tension between Bolivia’s indigenous majority and the country’s conservative, European-descended opposition. Amid heated debate in December, a constituent assembly approved a proposal for a new constitution that grants more power to the country’s indigenous population. Journalists expressed…