CPJ and the World
The publication in March of CPJ’s Attacks on the Press in 1996 was the culmination of months of intense preparation by CPJ staff, investigating and verifying more than 1,000 documented cases of violations of press freedom worldwide. The 376-page volume, edited by Publications Director Alice Chasan, is the longest and most comprehensive of CPJ’s annual…
Briefing Paper on Press Freedom In Bosnia And Herzegovina Before the September 14th Elections
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), a nonpartisan, nongovernmental organization based in the United States, is dedicated to defending the rights of journalists around the world. Since the Dayton Peace Accords, the treaty that ended the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, was negotiated in Dayton, Ohio, and signed in Paris in December, 1995, CPJ has…
Clampdown in Addis: Introduction
IN OCTOBER 1995, TESFAYE TEGEN, the editor of a weekly newspaper in Addis Ababa, made a very costly editorial decision. U.S.-backed insurgents who had toppled Soviet-backed dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam four years before had just held elections to legitimize their rule. Tesfaye’s* paper, Beza, ran cartoons lampooning members of the new government as a submissive…
CPJ Names Ten Worst “Enemies of the Press” on World Press Freedom Day, May 3
NEW YORK –The leaders of China, Nigeria, and Turkey are among 10 world figures identified by the U.S. based Committee to Protect Journalists as “Enemies of the Press.” All are responsible for brutal campaigns against journalists and press freedom, as documented by CPJ in its ongoing monitoring of press freedom violations worldwide. The Enemies of…
Press Faces Hard Times in Africa: Repression Persists in Many Countries
Abidjan, Ivory Coast, Jan. 13–When this country opened the way for an independent press at the turn of the decade, the blossoming of newspapers of nearly every political persuasion was widely hailed as a critical stepping stone toward true multiparty democracy. But here, as elsewhere in Africa, rather than marking a clean break with an…
Enemies of the Press: The 10 Worst Offenders of 1996
Abu Abdul Rahman Amin, leader of the Armed Islamic Group of Algeria His insurgent faction has claimed responsibility for many of the 58 assassinations of journalists in Algeria over the past three years. Rahman Amin has threatened all secular journalists with death. “Those who fight with the pen,” he proclaimed, “shall die by the sword.”…
1996 Awards – Yurtcu
There was little for Turkish editor Ocak Isik Yurtçu to celebrate last July 24, Journalists Day in Turkey. “Nobody in the world has been sentenced to so many years in prison for articles others have written,”he said from his jail cell in an interview with the daily Yeni Yuzyil. Yurtcu, former editor in chief of…