ATR

Relations between Fiji’s lively independent press and the newly elected government of Prime Minister Mahendra Chaudhry deteriorated badly over the course of the year, as the administration’s near-constant verbal attacks against local media were punctuated by more serious actions. On June 21, Assistant Minister for Information Lekh Ram Vayeshnoi announced that the government would introduce…

Struggling to maintain their independence in Ghana, journalists continued to run the risk of violating the country’s criminal- and seditious-libel laws. Some of these laws date back to the colonial era and carry such penalties as exorbitant fines and prison sentences. The recent rise in the number of libel suits against Ghana’s indepen-dent press continued…

“Press freedom will be total,” promised Gen. Robert Gueï, Côte d’Ivoire’s new head of state. General Gueï, 58, who overthrew the government of President Henri Konan Bedie on Christmas Eve, made this announcement just hours after his nine-man junta imposed a dusk-to-dawn curfew in this west African country, historically noted for its political stability. However,…

The Liberian press has been given to self-censorship ever since Charles Taylor and his National People’s Party won a landslide victory in the July 1997 elections that officially ended the war that Taylor himself started on Christmas Eve 1989. Although local media have criticized the Taylor government on social-service and devel-opment issues, they have generally…

In April, President Bakili Muluzi declared that his party, the United Democratic Front (UDF), believed in “the tenets of constitutional democracy,” including press freedom. The political reality has failed to live up to this rhetoric. After the June 15 general elections gave Muluzi a second five-year term in office, the opposition contended that the elections…

At the heart of Malaysia’s authoritarian reputation is its Printing Presses and Publications Act of 1984, which requires all publications to obtain licenses that can be revoked at will by the Minister for Home Affairs. The minister’s decisions are final, and there is no judicial review. A holdover from British rule, when a communist insurgency…

While the Mexican press started covering local politics with greater confidence and independence, the drug trade was still an extremely dangerous assignment. As in past years, the government made little progress investigating attacks when they did occur. 1999 saw the first-ever primary election within the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which has dominated Mexican politics since…

Following national and presidential elections in February, decades of military rule ended with the installation of a new civilian government on May 29, headed by President Olusegun Obasanjo. Both in Nigeria and abroad, expectations ran high that the dark days of repression under former dictator Gen. Sani Abacha were finally over. However, the transition to…

Former Prime Minister Muhammad Nawaz Sharif’s efforts to muzzle the press, and bring the legislative, judicial, and executive branches of government under his personal control, earned him the reputation of a tyrant and badly discredited Pakistan’s democracy. His slide toward authoritarianism ended abruptly with a bloodless coup on October 12, in which army chief Gen.…

Among many Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza, the optimism that accompanied the establishment of Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian National Authority (PNA) six years ago appears to have given way to disillusionment. Widespread corruption within the PNA, its perceived failure in negotiating a just peace, and worsening economic conditions for much of the population…