Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is deeply disturbed by the April 12 statements of a senior Chinese official, warning Hong Kong media that they are not free to report independently on the contentious issue of Taiwan’s political status.
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is outraged by the prolonged imprisonment of Gao Qinrong, a reporter for China’s state news agency, Xinhua. Gao has been in jail on trumped-up charges since December 4, 1998, for exposing flaws in a much-touted irrigation system in drought-plagued Yuncheng, Shanxi Province, according to his wife, Duan Maoying.
Click here to read more about press freedom conditions in SRI LANKA. New York, April 4, 2000 — Shortly before midnight on April 3, an explosive device was detonated at the home of Nellai G. Nadesan, a columnist for Veerakesari, the country’s leading Tamil-language newspaper. Nadesan was not injured in the blast, though the explosion…
By Ann CooperAs a foreign correspondent covering the Soviet Union a decade ago, I was an eyewitness to a dramatic example of the press’ critical role in building democracy. Granted a bit of freedom by Mikhail Gorbachev’s mid-1980s glasnost policy, long-suppressed Soviet journalists set their own daring agenda: they probed forbidden history, investigated contemporary corruption,…
By Claudia McElroyAll over Africa, conflict continued to be the single biggest threat to journalists and to press freedom itself. Both civil and cross-border wars were effectively used as an excuse by governments (and rebel forces) to harass, intimidate, and censor the press–often in the name of “national security”–and in some cases to kill journalists…
By Kavita Menon and A. Lin NeumannMuch of Asia remained hostile to a free, independent media, despite the growing consensus that Asian political and economic stability depends in great measure on governments’ willingness to improve transparency and lift restrictions on the press. In China, Burma, Vietnam, and even Malaysia, government suppression of the media is…
Each year on World Press Freedom Day (May 3), CPJ announces its list of the ten worst enemies of the press. Those who made the list this year, as in the past, earned the dubious distinction by exhibiting particular zeal in the ruthless suppression of press freedom. They were singled out for their unrelenting and…
[Click here for full list of documented cases] At its most fundamental level, the job of a journalist is to bear witness. In 1999, journalists in Sierra Leone witnessed rebels’ atrocities against civilians in the streets of Freetown. In the Balkans, journalists watched ethnic Albanians fleeing the deadly menace of Serbian police and paramilitaries. In…
Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban militia continues to maintain a hostile attitude toward journalists and journalism. There are no independent local media, because of the Taliban’s famous intolerance and because resources are scarce in this war-ravaged country. Although several news agencies–including the BBC, The Associated Press, and Agence France-Presse–maintain bureaus in Kabul, visas to foreign correspondents are…