ATR

RI LANKA’S LIVELY AND COMBATIVE MEDIA FACED NUMEROUS CHALLENGES from a hostile government, with the most intense battle waged over the president’s tightening of censorship restrictions. Press coverage of the country’s 17-year-old civil war remained thin, due to intermittent censorship and because the government refused to grant journalists regular access to the conflict areas in…

ALTHOUGH CIVIL WAR NO LONGER RAGES IN TAJIKISTAN, popular unrest and an increasingly authoritarian regime have made conditions hard for journalists in the republic. Reporting remains a dangerous profession, especially for the few journalists who dare to investigate power struggles in the political and military elite or trafficking in weapons and drugs by criminal mafias.…

IN A COUNTRY PLAGUED BY CORRUPTION AND CRONYISM, the Thai press is taking advantage of constitutional reforms and a more open political environment to investigate official misdeeds. In late December, the leading opposition candidate for prime minister, telecommunications tycoon Thaksin Shinawatra, was indicted on charges of violating rules on the declaration of assets. The charges,…

PRIME MINISTER BASDEO PANDAY, WHO HAS SPENT MUCH of his five years in office feuding with the media, found his government embroiled in a constitutional crisis at year’s end, after winning a narrow victory in elections held on December 11. The population of this oil- and gas-rich country is equally divided between people of African…

In December 1999, the European Union (EU) finally agreed to accept Turkey’s application for membership. Yet questions remained about the government’s committment to the human-rights reforms needed to actually join the EU. If press freedom is any indicator, Turkey has a long way to go. Government censorship, criminal prosecutions, physical attacks, and imprisonment were among…

SINCE ITS FOUNDING IN 1981, CPJ HAS, AS A MATTER OF STRATEGY and policy, concentrated on press freedom violations and attacks on journalists outside the United States. CPJ aims to concentrate its efforts on those countries where journalists are most in need of international support and protection. As a result, we do not systematically monitor…

ALTHOUGH PRESIDENT CLINTON RECEIVED STAR TREATMENT during his historic visit to Vietnam in November, little news of the trip was allowed into the country’s state-owned press. Huge crowds greeted the first U.S. president to tour the country since the Vietnam War. Speaking in Ho Chi Minh City, Clinton urged the Vietnamese government to allow more…

PROSPECTS FOR PRESS FREEDOM IN YUGOSLAVIA BRIGHTENED when President Slobodan Milosevic finally accepted election results and resigned on October 6. The elected dictator’s all-out war on the independent media was a thing of the past, but official habits of intimidating the press did not disappear, and the difficulty of reforming Serbia’s state-run media became evident.…

JOURNALISTS IN ZIMBABWE FACED INCREASING DIFFICULTIES IN 2000, as President Robert Mugabe’s government tried to extend its control over the news in the face of serial political crises. Mugabe’s problems included a faltering economy, an unpopular military intervention in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a contentious election, and a controversial move to seize white-owned land.…

EIGHTY-ONE JOURNALISTS WERE IN PRISON AROUND THE WORLD at the end of 2000, jailed for practicing their profession. The number is down slightly from the previous year, when 87 were in jail, and represents a significant decline from 1998, when 118 journalists were imprisoned. While jailing journalists can be an effective means of stifling bad…