INSTABILITY PLAGUED THE THREE-ISLAND ISLAMIC REPUBLIC after the military government of Col. Azali Assoumani tried unsuccessfully to reintegrate the island of Anjouan, which had seceded from the federation in 1997. There were several attacks on journalists after a January referendum in which Anjouan rejected a settlement brokered by the Organization of African Unity (OAU). Violent…
EVEN AS COSTA RICAN JOURNALISTS BATTLED A FLURRY of defamation lawsuits, a proposed bill that would have greatly enhanced press freedom in the country failed to win legislative approval. On February 15, the Legislative Assembly’s judiciary committee rejected a bill, drafted by several leading journalists and endorsed by President Miguel Angel Rodríguez, that would have…
IN A COUNTRY WHOSE CONSTITUTION AND PENAL CODE specifically disallow press freedom, independent journalists continued to face repression from the Cuban government last year. Yet their ranks have grown steadily, and there are now about 20 independent news agencies in the country. In early 2001, a particularly courageous independent journalist saw the outside of a…
PRESS FREEDOM HAS BEEN ONE OF MANY CASUALTIES OF THE CIVIL WAR that began as a rebel insurgency in August 1998 and has continued to destabilize the entire region, with Angola, Zimbabwe, and Namibia supporting President Laurent-Désiré Kabila, and Rwanda, Uganda, and Burundi fighting on the side of Congolese rebel forces (although Kabila’s army includes…
AS SPORADIC GUN BATTLES CONTINUED BETWEEN GOVERNMENT FORCES AND REBELS of the United Revolutionary Front (FRUD), state broadcast and print outlets tailored their coverage to the propaganda needs of President Ismael Omar Guelleh’s government. The opposition press, led by the weekly papers La Republique, Le Temps, and Le Renouveau, was little more objective. The civil…
THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC’S VIBRANT PRESS WAS TARNISHED by accusations of biased coverage during the May 16 presidential election. The year also saw a landmark conviction in the murder of a journalist, and a proposed bill to enhance freedom of the press. The ruling Dominican Liberation Party (PLD) lost a three-way race between its own candidate,…
EMERGING FROM DARKNESS AND DEVASTATION, East Timor’s journalists took their first steps toward building an independent press for the fledgling nation. The leaders of the new country have pledged to promote press freedom after they achieve formal independence (expected by the end of 2001). “We have no intention to interfere in any way with the…
AMID SOCIAL AND POLITICAL TURBULENCE following a change of government in January and the dollarization of the economy, authorities intercepted a series of letter bombs sent to journalists. On January 21, President Jamil Mahuad was overthrown in an uprising led by junior military officers and Amerindian protesters who installed a “national salvation government.” The following…
IN A YEAR THAT SAW EL SALVADOR’S FORMER LEFTIST GUERRILLAS EMERGE as the country’s leading political party, conservative publishers reined in the journalists they employed. The Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) completed its transformation from a guerrilla army into a leading political party in the March 12 elections, winning a plurality in the Legislative…
REVERSALS IN THE BORDER WAR WITH ETHIOPIA and the signing of a peace agreement in December gave rise to a few skeptical stirrings in the Eritrean press. But the generally patriotic, pro-state orientation of local journalists impeded independent verification of reported press freedom abuses. In October, eight independent journalists were arrested for avoiding military service,…