ATR

Despite a hostile political and economic atmosphere, the Solomon Islands’ small but tenacious media have managed to pursue controversial stories, including exposés of official misconduct and links between the government and ethnic militias. In 1998, a violent conflict erupted after indigenous residents of Guadalcanal, the archipelago’s largest island, formed the Isatabu Freedom Movement (IFM) to…

On September 27, in a landmark decision for press freedom in South Africa, a Johannesburg court dismissed a defamation lawsuit filed by Minister of Housing Sankie Mthembi-Mahanyele against the independent daily Mail & Guardian and its former editor Phillip van Niekerk. Van Niekerk and the Mail & Guardian had been sued over the paper’s December…

During 2002, Thailand’s reputation as a regional haven of constitutionally guaranteed free expression was frequently assaulted by the country’s powerful prime minister, Thaksin Shinawatra, and his political allies. The government booted radio and television programs off the air, threatened Thai journalists with financial investigations and foreign reporters with expulsion, and engaged in angry exchanges with…

The Togolese government attempted to create a veneer of openness and democracy by finally holding twice-postponed legislative elections, while President Gnassingbé Eyadéma and his ruling Rassemblement du Peuple Togolais (Rally of the Togolese People, or RPT) increasingly harassed the private press. Authorities’ routine censorship of private publications, imprisonment of reporters, and attempts to impose new…

In November, the Islamist-oriented Justice and Development Party won parliamentary elections in Turkey. The new prime minister, Abdullah Gul, and influential party head Recep Tayyip Erdogan affirmed that joining the European Union would be a top government priority. To that end, they promised greater democratic reform, including an easing of long-standing restrictions on freedom of…

The magnitude of President Saparmurat Niyazov’s cult of personality might even astonish the Soviet tyrant Joseph Stalin. A golden statue in Turkmenistan’s capital, Ashgabat, honors Niyazov, who is called “Turkmenbashi,” or “the Father of All Turkmen,” and his portrait graces the country’s currency. In 2002, Niyazov’s birthday was declared a national holiday, and he renamed…

During 2002, a worsening political crisis brought Venezuela to the brink of collapse and threatened to derail democracy there. As the degradation of state institutions continued, society’s extreme polarization and intolerance multiplied the risks for journalists.

President Levy Mwanawasa was inaugurated on January 2 amid opposition charges of fraudulent elections and editorial comments in the independent press that the new head of state was the “puppet” of his predecessor, Frederick Chiluba. The election controversy, power struggles, and financial scandals in the ruling Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD) dominated headlines in 2002.

New York, March 22, 2003— An Australian journalist was killed, and several British journalists disappeared today while covering escalating hostilities in Iraq. Free-lance Australian cameraman Paul Moran, who was on assignment for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), was killed today in an apparent suicide bombing when a man detonated a car at a checkpoint in…

New York, March 20, 2003— Mathurin Momet, publication director of the private daily Le Confident in the Central African Republic (CAR), was released by rebels under the command of General François Bozizé on Saturday, March 15. He had spent more than three weeks in prison. Momet was among a group of prisoners jailed by President…