Haiti’s press suffered a crackdown this year that coincided with the February inauguration of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and continued after an apparent December coup attempt that sought to oust him. On December 17, about two dozen gunmen stormed the National Palace at dawn. At least 13 people were killed in the attack and ensuing mob…
The independent press faced pressure from the government of President Carlos Roberto Flores Facussé. Powerful politicians dominated the media during the November 2001 presidential elections, while small political parties received little coverage and had very limited access to the press. Both the National Party (PN) and the ruling Liberal Party (PL) flooded radio and TV…
Even as Hungary moved closer to joining the European Union, Prime Minister Viktor Orban and his right-wing Fidesz-Hungarian Civic Party (Fidesz-MPP) continued to bully Hungary’s public service broadcasters and retaliate against unfavorable coverage in the independent media.
India’s free press is perhaps the strongest pillar of its democracy, but Indian journalists continued to face numerous challenges in 2001, including physical threats, legal harassment, and more subtle pressures applied by the central government. In the disputed territory of Kashmir, where fighting between local separatists, foreign fighters, and Indian security forces has long forced…
Another year of political turmoil saw the Indonesian press clinging to its hard-won freedoms. But President Megawati Sukarnoputri, who took over from the quixotic Abdurrahman Wahid in July, is showing worrying signs of being less friendly toward the press than her predecessor. One of Megawati’s first acts in office was to appoint a state minister…
The Iranian judiciary pushed ahead with its year-old crackdown on media dissent, further exacerbating an ongoing power struggle between conservative and reformist factions in the Islamic Republic. The crackdown began in April 2000, when Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei delivered a fiery speech accusing the country’s reformist press, which generally backs President Muhammed Khatami’s agenda…
Saddam Hussein’s repressive regime maintained its stranglehold over all of Iraq’s institutions, including the press. Print and broadcast media are closely controlled by the government or by Hussein’s infamous son Uday, who owns or runs a number of influential media outlets.
Israel’s Hebrew-, Arabic-, and English-language media are extremely lively and, despite some military censorship, mostly free. Yet, journalists covering the second intifada, which began in September 2000 in Gaza and the West Bank, faced a variety of restrictions and hazards from the Israeli army and militant Jewish settlers, including bullets, tear gas, shrapnel, and physical…
Because press freedom is generally respected in Italy, CPJ does not routinely monitor conditions in the country. However, CPJ did protest brutal attacks by police officers and demonstrators on journalists during the July 20-22 Group of Eight (G-8) summit of the world’s industrialized nations in Genoa.
On January 8, President Laurent Gbagbo’s government thwarted an attempted coup by mercenaries whom the ruling Popular Front (FPI) accused of being in the pay of Burkina Faso and other countries bordering Côte d’Ivoire. The rebels occupied the compound of the official RTI broadcasting network and aired communiqués saying that the elected government had been…