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RSF
annual survey on press freedom - Sharp deterioration of press freedom
in the world in 2001
Reporters
sans frontières
January 09, 2002
More
and more journalists arrested, press
freedom on the decline in several countries.
In 2001:
- 31 journalists killed
- 489 arrested
- 716 attacked or threatened
- 378 press media censured
As of January 1st, 2002, 110 journalists imprisoned in the world
As compared to 2000:
- 32 journalists killed
- 329 arrested
- 510 attacked or threatened
- 295 press
media censured
Trends and priorities
Except for the number of journalists killed, which remained stable,
all indicators (journalists arrested, attacked, threatened or media
censured) rose compared to the year 2000. The number of journalists
arrested (489 in 2001) rose by nearly 50 per cent, and the number
of journalists attacked or threatened (716) by more than 40 per
cent. More and more journalists have been imprisoned throughout
the world. At present there are 110 behind bars. The number had
dropped constantly since 1995 but climbed again sharply in 2001.
Some part of the press is censured somewhere in the world every
day, and nearly a third of the world's population lives in countries
where there is no press freedom. The situation deteriorated considerably
in numerous countries (Bangladesh, Eritrea, Haiti, Nepal and Zimbabwe,
among others), whereas very few regimes made progress in terms of
press freedom. The impunity that is typical of nearly all these
cases is unacceptable. Governments and intergovernmental organisations
must focus their efforts on this sector. If they do not, the odds
are good that murders of and attacks on journalists will continue
to increase in the coming years.
31 journalists killed in 2001
Again this year, some thirty journalists were killed in the world
for their opinions or in the exercise of their profession. Fifteen
of them were murdered by armed groups or militias. In at least three
cases, the authorities were partly responsible. Nine press professionals
were killed in armed conflicts (8 in Afghanistan alone). Above and
beyond these 31 journalists, ten media collaborators (technicians,
administrative staff and so forth) were also killed in the year.
Asia
In
2001 Asia was the deadliest continent for journalists (14).
In Afghanistan the war waged by the United States following
on the September 11th attacks was especially hard on the press.
Eight correspondents were killed while covering the conflict. In
China, Feng Zhaoxia, a journalist on the daily, Gijie Daobao,
was found dead on January 15th in Shaanxi province (to the southwest
of Beijing), his throat slit. Despite protests from his family,
his colleagues and local journalist associations, the police came
to the rapid conclusion that he had committed suicide. Everyone
else agreed that the murder was due to the articles published by
the journalist. He had only just finished revealing the connivance
going on between Mafia-like groups and certain local political leaders.
Americas
In
the Americas there were ten journalists and ten media collaborators
killed in the year.
Haiti
saw another journalist murdered again this year. On December 3rd,
Brignol Lindor, news chief for Radio Echo 2000, was stoned
and hacked to death with machetes. After inviting members of the
opposition onto his radio show, he received death threats from local
leaders of the party in power. The murder was like a warning shot
for the rest of the profession, which now feels threatened. In the
United States a journalist and eight technicians died in the
September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center in New York. Another
reporter was also one of the anthrax victims after receiving a contaminated
anonymous letter. Three journalists were murdered in Colombia.
Flavio Bedoya of the weekly, Voz, was shot to death on April
27th. He had received death threats after publishing an article
about the violence committed by paramilitary groups. He criticised
"the army's and the police's inability to capture the criminals".
Europe
In
Europe the number of press professionals killed for their opinions
also rose (7). A journalist was killed in Northern Ireland
for the first time since the early 1960s. Martin O'Hagan, a reporter
for the weekly, Sunday World, was killed in the evening of
September 28th in front of his home near Belfast. "The Defenders
of the Red Hand", a loyalist military group accused him of having
committed "crimes against Loyalists". Elsewhere, other journalists
were murdered in Ukraine, Kosovo and in Spain's
Basque country.
The two bits of good news come from Africa and the Middle East where
no press professionals were killed in the context of their jobs.
Twenty-seven other journalist murder cases in the world are still
under investigation, but as of January 1st, 2002, nothing proves
that links exist with their professional activities.
Impunity is still the rule
Nearly no murders and assassinations of journalists have ever been
solved. The people giving the orders are still free and have never
been very worried by the judicial system in their countries.
In Burkina Faso, for example, more than three years after
the assassination of Norbert Zongo, director of L'Indépendant,
on December 13th, 1998, the investigation has gone nowhere. The
brother of the country's President, François Compaoré,
deeply implicated in the incident, was questioned by the investigating
judge for the first time in January, 2001, or more than two years
after the fact.
Things are pretty much the same in Haiti, where the investigation
into the murder of Jean Dominique, manager of Radio Haiti Inter,
in April, 2000, has almost been quashed several times. The Senate,
controlled by Fanmi Lavalas of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide's
ruling party, has stacked up quibble upon quibble so as not to have
to rule on lifting the parliamentary immunity of Dany Toussaint,
the main suspect in the case. Not only that, despite their confessions
for killing Brignol Lindor, his murderers, in cahoots with the party
in power, have not yet been arrested.
The murder in Sri Lanka in October, 2000, of BBC collaborator,
Mylvaganam Nimalarajan, has still not been solved. No one has yet
been arrested, and the police are nowhere near employing the means
necessary for getting at the truth.
In Ukraine the State apparatus has thrown up major barriers
in the search for the truth in the murder of journalist Georgy Gongadze
in September of 2000. The General Prosecutor's office and the Ministry
of the Interior are against any investigation worthy of the name.
In September, 2001, the Council of Europe approved a recommendation
calling for "the Ukrainian authorities to undertake a new investigation
into the disappearance and death of Georgy Gongadze and, to this
end, set up an independent investigative commission" composed in
particular of international experts.
Nearly five hundred journalists arrested in the year
As of January 1st, 2002, 110 of the world's journalists are still
in prison because of their opinions or their professional activities.
We'd have to go back to January 1st, 1995, to find so many. Nearly
half (50) are being held in Asia. The jails holding the most journalists
in the world are in Iran (18), Burma (18) China
(12), Eritrea (8) and Nepal (7).
Most imprisoned Iranian journalists are serving long sentences.
In January four of them were sentenced to from three to eight years
for having "infringed on national security". On the other hand,
Raza Alijani, editor-in-chief of the suspended monthly, Iran-e-Farda,
and winner of the Reporters Sans Frontières-Fondation de
France 2001 Prize, was freed in December after nine months of detention.
In Burma the authorities behave in a criminal way with imprisoned
journalists, depriving them of the medical care their state of health
calls for. Under heavy sentences for having "spread information
hostile to the State" or for having informed foreign journalists,
they are being held in inhuman conditions that have significant
consequences on their physical and mental health. Myo Myint Nyein,
in jail since September 1990, is very weak and suffering from mental
problems. For eight months, he was even held in one of the dog kennels
of Insein Prison in Rangoon.
In China
Twenty-two cyberdissidents, arrested for having spread information
considered "subversive" over the Internet, can be added to the twelve
journalists in jail. One of the cyberdissidents has been sentenced
to four years in prison.
In all, 489 press professionals have at one time or another been
denied their freedom in 2001, often with no explanations. In
Nepal where a state of emergency was decreed at the end of November,
more than fifty journalists and press professionals have been arrested
by the authorities. In Cuba, Pakistan, the Congo
Democratic Republic and Zimbabwe there have been more
than twenty journalists arrested. In many cases no official explanations
are given, and no official arrest warrant issued. Most of them are
freed quickly, but some spend several weeks, even months, behind
bars. On the whole, their conditions of detention are very poor,
the interrogations strong-armed and beatings frequent. In Iran
journalists undergo poor treatment for the purpose of extracting
false confessions from them or of making them write letters of repentance.
In the Congo Democratic Republic again this year a journalist
was flogged by his jailers.
Over seven hundred journalists attacked or threatened
There are more and more attacks on press professionals. Whether
committed by the authorities, political party activists, armed bands
or criminals, these attacks are almost never investigated in serious,
sustained ways. It is no surprise that the feeling of impunity enjoyed
by the perpetrators grows stronger. In many countries political
leaders are often the instigators of these violent acts. They'd
rather take direct revenge on the journalists who have criticised
them than undertake court actions against them.
In Bangladesh more than 130 journalists have been attacked
by political party activists or sympathisers. Most of these attacks
have been committed by activists of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party
and the Jamat-e Islami (two members of the ruling coalition) or
the Awami League, which was in power until July. Journalists exposing
corruption, political violence or religious intolerance are their
favourite targets.
In Colombia nearly thirty journalists have been the victims
of attacks or threats by the different armed groups that fight one
another in the country. In Zimbabwe veterans of the war for
independence are often the instigators of many attacks on reporters
of the independent press. In Ukraine, Russia and the
former Soviet-bloc republics of central Asia, violence is always
present, and there have been many recorded attacks.
In the territories occupied by Israel eight journalists have
been shot and wounded. Upon investigation, Reporters Sans Frontières
has ascertained the Israeli army's responsibility for most of the
cases. The Israeli authorities, however, after cursory investigations,
have claimed that they had no responsibility in these cases.
Forcing journalists into exile is another kind of threat used by
some governments. Numerous journalist, fearing reprisals, have thus
fled Cuba, Colombia, Ethiopia and Somalia.
A new press medium censured every day
In 2001, 378 press media were censured in the world. In Turkey
more than one hundred Television channels, radio stations and press
agencies were temporarily suspended by the RTUK, the governmental
agency for monitoring the audiovisual press, or by various State
security agencies. In most cases these press media are accused of
"inciting violence" or "infringing State security" after criticising
the regime or reporting on certain extreme left-wing movements.
In Eritrea in September the government ordered the suspension
of all independent press media, thus making it one of the rare countries
in the world without a privately-owned press. On the very same day
at least eight journalists were arrested and taken to a police station
in the capital. Others disappeared or fled the country. The director
of public-sector television went on the air to explain that "the
independent media endangered the country's unity".
In Morocco no fewer than nine newspapers, including seven
foreign ones, were censured for dealing with topics such as the
Western Sahara, corruption or for having criticised the king. The
Spanish and French media especially are kept under close surveillance
by the Moroccan authorities.
In Tunisia
there is no censure as such simply because there is no independent
press. On the other hand the few journalists who try to spread news
on the Internet or work for the international press are harassed.
Their phone lines are systematically blocked, tapped or sometimes
simply cut. Internet access is also tightly controlled.
The foreign press under tight control
Foreign press corespondents are under tight surveillance by numerous
heads of State or governments. In Zimbabwe three foreign
correspondents were expelled from the country. The government is
using all possible means to get a law passed obliging the international
press media to employ only journalists of Zimbabwean nationality.
The Reuters correspondent in Cuba was forced to leave the
island after attacks in the local press. The Liberian government
constantly complains about the "massive negative propaganda" conveyed,
according to it, by certain foreign media against President Charles
Taylor. Foreign correspondents based in China must first
receive authorisation from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs before
carrying out investigative reports.
Elsewhere journalists cannot travel to certain countries without
being constantly watched. Such is the case in Saudi Arabia,
Burma, North Korea and Vietnam. They also encounter
enormous difficulties in obtaining visas for working in Algeria,
Libya and Iraq. Pakistani authorities rejected
visas for Indian journalist or Indian-born journalists wishing to
cover the Afghani conflict. Two correspondents of American dailies
were expelled from the country for this reason.
The aftermath of September 11th for press freedom
Above and beyond the heavy price paid by correspondents who died
in the field, the September 11th attacks in New York and Washington
and the military operation undertaken in Afghanistan, had considerable
consequences on press freedom in the world. Several laws adopted
for fighting terrorism are especially worrying, and weaken the basic
principle of the free circulation of information. In Canada
and the United States some of the measures throw the protection
of sources into question and strengthen surveillance of the Internet.
The American and British governments have rapped their media on
the knuckles.
This surveillance has sometimes taken a repressive turn. In Kazakhstan,
for example, the armed forces of the Ministry of the Interior in
November occupied the building of the independent television station,
KTK, temporarily interrupting its broadcasts. The authorities
explained that in the context of the Afghani conflict "all the Republic's
strategic installations had to be monitored by the Ministry of the
Interior".
For more information,
contact:
Reporters
sans frontières
Africa
desk
Email: africa@rsf.org
Website: www.rsf.org
Tel: 33 1 44 83 84 84
Fax: 33 1 45 23 11 51
5, rue Geoffroy-Marie
75009 Paris
FRANCE
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