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Following national and presidential elections in February, decades of military rule ended with the installation of a new civilian government on May 29, headed by President Olusegun Obasanjo. Both in Nigeria and abroad, expectations ran high that the dark days of repression under former dictator Gen. Sani Abacha were finally over. However, the transition to…
Among many Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza, the optimism that accompanied the establishment of Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian National Authority (PNA) six years ago appears to have given way to disillusionment. Widespread corruption within the PNA, its perceived failure in negotiating a just peace, and worsening economic conditions for much of the population…
The Paraguayan press was deeply divided by a constitutional conflict between Congress and the president that polarized the entire country and threatened to undermine Paraguay’s fragile democracy. The political crisis began in 1998, when Gen. Lino Oviedo, who led an unsuccessful 1996 coup against then-president Juan Carlos Wasmosy, emerged as the leading presidential candidate to…
“We have to protect the state from the media,” said Mikhail Lesin, the head of Russia’s new Ministry for the Press, Radio and Television Broadcasting, and Media Affairs, shortly after taking office in July. Coming in advance of the country’s legislative and presidential elections, it was a stunning statement of Kremlin intent. Lesin’s demonization of…
The prosecution of Rwandan journalists suspected of inciting members of the ethnic Hutu community to massacre ethnic Tutsis in 1994 proceeded in fits and starts over the last three months of the year. Four journalists currently face charges that include incitement to genocide. In June, Belgian-born radio-talk show host Georges Ruggiu admitted his involvement with…
President Slobodan Milosevic first used the threat of war, then an actual war, and finally international hostility toward his regime to justify the use of government censorship and crippling fines to decimate Serbia’s various independent media. The press crackdown was particularly brutal in Kosovo, where a 1998 military offensive by the separatist Kosovo Liberation Army…
Click here to read more about press freedom conditions in PANAMA New York, August 3, 2000 — Carlos Singares, editor of the Panama City-based daily El Siglo, is currently serving an eight-day prison sentence for “disrespect” of the attorney general. Yesterday, an appeals court confirmed a 20-month prison sentence against him for having allegedly defamed…