Attacks on the Press 2000: Somalia
WITH NO FUNCTIONING CENTRAL GOVERNMENT IN RECENT YEARS, Somalia remains fractured into rival fiefdoms controlled by warlords. Threats to local journalists have been correspondingly decentralized. In the last months of 2000, however, newly-elected president Abdiqasim Salad Hassan and a new transitional legislature tried with some success to assert central authority. (Both Hassan and the legislature…
Attacks on the Press 2000: Yugoslavia
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.…
Attacks on the Press in 2000: Journalists in Prison
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…
Belarus: Missing journalist feared dead; official investigation stalled
Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is deeply disturbed by the lack of progress in the investigation into the disappearance of Dmitry Zavadsky, a cameraman with the Russian public television network ORT who has been missing since July 7. Because no group has come forward to take responsibility for Zavadsky’s disappearance over the past six months, we now fear that the journalist may have been killed. The official investigation, which has been carried out in secret, now appears to be stalled.
Georgia: Italian radio reporter found dead near Tbilisi
Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is gravely disturbed by the death of Italian radio journalist Antonio Russo, whose body was found on October 16 outside the capital, Tbilisi. Because of the highly suspicious circumstances surrounding his death, Russo’s colleagues in Tbilisi fear the journalist may have been murdered in reprisal for his coverage of the conflict in neighboring Chechnya, according to local media reports.
Kidnapped journalists released
New York, October 11, 2000 — Guerrilla forces from the National Liberation Army (ELN) released reporter Jaime Horacio Arango and photographer Jesús Abad Colorado on October 8, two days after abducting them at a roadblock in the central department of Antioquia, according to local reports and CPJ sources.
French journalists escape from rebel captivity
Press freedom conditions in the PHILIPPINES | Map of Philippines | Previous coverage of the Jolo hostage crisis | Hostage to the News: A journalist’s first-hand account New York, September 20, 2000 — French journalists Jean-Jacques Le Garrec and Roland Madura escaped last night from their rebel captors on the southern Philippine island of Jolo.…
French Journalists Vulnerable As Philippines Launches Military Assault In Jolo CPJ Exclusive: One Former Hostage Recounts His Ordeal
Click here to read more about press freedom conditions in PHILIPPINES See map of Philippines New York, September 18, 2000—As Philippine military forces pursue rebels on the island of Jolo, Der Spiegel correspondent Andreas Lorenz, who spent much of July as a hostage on Jolo, examines the ethical challenges journalists face when they pursue extremely…
No progress in Bedoya investigation
Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is deeply concerned about the lack of progress in the prosecutor general’s investigation into the kidnapping and torture of Jineth Bedoya Lima, a noted investigative reporter with the Bogotá-based daily El Espectador.