By Anne Garrels ON NOVEMBER 19, 2001, I was at the border negotiating with officials to get across into Afghanistan. There was suddenly an unexplained problem, yet journalists arriving from Afghanistan said they had no trouble along the way. I was frustrated. None of us knew that a caravan of our colleagues had just been…
The exhilarating prospect of broad press freedoms that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union a decade ago has faded dramatically in much of the post-communist world. A considerable decline in press freedom conditions in Russia during the last year, along with the stranglehold authoritarian leaders have imposed on media in Central Asia, the Caucasus,…
Rife with corruption, organized crime, and political instability, Georgia is full of stories that are dangerous to tell. Journalists who dare to report on them risk reprisals, often from President Eduard Shevardnadze’s strong-armed government. Most chilling for journalists was the July murder of Georgy Sanaya, a popular, 26-year-old reporter for the Tbilisi-based independent television station…
New York, October 31, 2001—The Committee to Protect Journalists today denounced a government raid on the independent Georgian television station Rustavi-2. On October 30, some 30 agents from Georgia’s National Security Ministry raided Rustavi-2’s headquarters in the capital, Tbilisi, in an effort to obtain the station’s financial records. Rustavi-2 is Georgia’s most influential and respected…
New York, September 26, 2001— Japanese free-lance journalist Kosuke Tsuneoka has now been missing since late July, when he reportedly left Georgia for Chechnya to interview Chechen rebels. Tsuneoka, 32, last communicated with his family via e-mail at the end of July after arriving in Tbilisi, Georgia’s capital, the Japan Economic Newswire reported. He wrote…
New York, July 27, 2001–A popular 26-year-old Georgian journalist was found dead in his Tbilisi apartment yesterday, according to local and international reports. Georgy Sanaya was shot once in the head at close range with a 9mm weapon. Sanaya anchored “Night Courier,” a nightly political talk show in which he interviewed Georgia’s leading politicians on…
October 17, 2001 – The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) will present its 2001 International Press Freedom Awards to four journalists from China, Zimbabwe, Argentina, and the West Bank who have defied death threats, braved bullets, and endured jail to report the news. The 11th Annual Press Freedom Awards will be presented at a dinner…