South Sudan

ATTACKS ON THE PRESS: 2009 • Main Index MIDDLE EAST and NORTH AFRICA • Regional Analysis:Human rights coverage spreads despite government pushback Country Summaries • Bahrain • Egypt • Iran • Iraq • Israel, Occupied Palestinian Territories • Libya • Morocco • Sudan • Tunisia • Yemen • Other developments ALGERIA Police confiscated a manuscript…

Your Excellency: We are writing to express our grave concern at the detention of our esteemed fellow journalist Maziar Bahari and to request his immediate release. Mr. Bahari has been detained since June 21. No charges have been brought against him, and he has not been granted access to a lawyer. As one of the most impartial and committed journalists in his field, he has reported regularly over the past decade from the Middle East, principally from Iran and Iraq, and provided consistently balanced and insightful reports. As an award-winning documentary filmmaker, he has earned global respect for his work.

Dear Prime Minister al-Maliki: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) and the Journalistic Freedoms Observatory (JFO) would like to bring to your attention several issues that harm press freedom in Iraq. In recent months, our organizations have documented a number of assaults and instances of harassment committed by government officials against journalists in various parts of the country under the control of Iraq’s central government.

Uneasy about satellite television coverage of civil strife and economic hardship, Arab governments are trying to reassert control over the medium. Will a new regional agreement halt the satellite revolution? By Joel Campagna

Eleven journalists were killed because of their work, making Iraq the most dangerous nation for the press for the sixth consecutive year. Nevertheless, the figure was the lowest yearly toll since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003–and two-thirds lower than the annual figures for 2007 or 2006.

With a shaky six-month truce coming to an end in late year, Hamas rocket attacks on Israel were met with the largest bombardment of the Gaza Strip since 1967. The headquarters of Hamas-controlled Al-Aqsa TV was destroyed and at least two journalists were injured amid massive airstrikes by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). As 2008…

This deeply divided country reached the brink of full-scale conflict in mid-year after political and religious leaders used the news media to inflame sectarian divisions and failed to abide by the consensual style of government agreed upon at the end of the 1975-1990 civil war. A battle of words that began in December 2006 with…

Morocco continued to backslide on press freedom as independent journalists and news outlets were targeted in a series of politicized court cases. In May, the National Syndicate for Moroccan Press noted a “dangerous trend” in which authorities were “imposing exaggerated fines in defamation cases, resorting to preventive arrest of journalists … banning newspapers and instructing…

The September abduction of writer Slim Boukhdhir was a chilling reminder of the insecurity that critical journalists face in this North African nation. President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, in power since 1987, continued to operate a virtual police state, despite the moderate image his government vigorously promoted to the rest of the world.