ATR

THE ASCENDANCY OF PRESIDENT VLADIMIR PUTIN brought an alarming assault on press freedom in Russia last year. Under the new president, the Kremlin imposed censorship in Chechnya, orchestrated legal cases against powerful media barons, and granted sweeping powers of surveillance to the security services (see special report).

WHEN FORMER VICE PRESIDENT PAUL KAGAME WAS ELECTED PRESIDENT in April, he berated local reporters for exaggerating Rwanda’s problems. Nevertheless, there were plenty of genuine problems for the country’s media to report. In neighboring Tanzania, meanwhile, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) was coming to grips with the 1994 slaughter of nearly a million…

SIERRA LEONE REMAINS THE MOST DANGEROUS COUNTRY IN AFRICA for journalists. In 2000, Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebels killed three reporters, bringing to 15 the total number of journalists killed in the war-plagued West African nation since 1997. The RUF alone is responsible for 13 of those deaths. On May 3, World Press Freedom Day,…

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…