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AS ANGOLA’S AUTHORITARIAN GOVERNMENT CONTINUED ITS LONG SIEGE against all forms of dissent last year, independent journalists received special attention from the repressive apparatus of the state. Although most private media outlets are weekly newspapers that reach no more than a few thousand people, the hypersensitive regime of President José Eduardo dos Santos has routinely…
IN A FRUSTRATING YEAR FOR PRESS FREEDOM in Argentina, a proposed bill that would have eliminated criminal penalties for defamation cases involving public officials foundered after local journalists implicated members of the Senate in a major bribery scandal. Senators who had supported the proposed bill quickly withdrew their support. The long battle to reform Argentina’s…
PRESIDENT HEIDAR ALIYEV AND OTHER AZERBAIJANI OFFICIALS repeatedly proclaimed their support for freedoms of association and expression, but the November parliamentary elections highlighted the regime’s authoritarianism. The government banned opposition rallies, harassed opposition leaders, and temporarily suspended several opposition parties from the contest. International observers found multiple problems with the election itself, which was nevertheless…
PRIOR TO THE OCTOBER 15 PARLIAMENTARY ELECTIONS, President Aleksandr Lukashenko cracked down on political dissent in Belarus, including the independent media. Lukashenko, who refused to step down when his term expired in 1999, was expected to maintain his repressive ways in 2001, when the country faces presidential elections. Three months before the election, opposition parties…
IN A DEVASTATING YEAR FOR COLOMBIA, journalists were murdered, assaulted, threatened, and kidnapped. Many fled into exile. With the peace process that began in 1999 largely moribund, a nearly four-decade conflict that pits two major leftist guerrilla groups against the army and right-wing paramilitary forces continued to escalate throughout the year. All the warring factions…
GUINEA-BISSAU REMAINS THE ONLY COUNTRY IN WEST AFRICA that has not signed the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Article 19 of which guarantees press freedom. In the absence of an international legal standard, the democratically elected but unstable new government of President Kumba Yala was quick to wield strong-arm tactics, along with a…
THE HONDURAN PRESS CONTINUED ITS STRUGGLE to find an independent voice in the face of pressures from the executive and the judiciary. In April, when the Tegucigalpa daily El Heraldo published a report by the state Human Rights Commission denouncing corruption in the judiciary, Judge Rita Núñez called El Heraldo journalist Leonarda Andino to her…
A YEAR AND A HALF AFTER THE END OF PRESIDENT SUHARTO’S authoritarian rule, the most significant reform in Indonesia remains the emergence of a largely unshackled press. With hundreds of islands and a large, fragmented population, the press plays a crucial role in allowing Indonesians to debate their future and in calming tensions that arise…
SOLDIERS UNDER THE COMMAND OF ROBERT GUEI, the retired general who seized power from an elected government on Christmas Eve, 1999, terrorized Côte d’Ivoire during their 10 months in power. As part of a general pattern of human rights abuses, they raided newsrooms at will, seized reporters’ equipment, banned news organizations, and forced journalists to…
THE PANAMANIAN GOVERNMENT NOT ONLY FAILED TO LIVE UP TO its promise to repeal the country’s so-called gag laws, but also made several attempts to impose new restrictions in 2000. Meanwhile, several journalists were handed jail sentences for defamation. The gag laws consist of a range of articles, laws, and decrees-many promulgated under military governments-that…