New York, July 19, 2001–A CPJ representative testified before a joint congressional subcommittee yesterday about the terrible state of press freedom in Central Asia. [Read the transcript] “Repression and violence, or the threat thereof, are ever present for many reporters, encouraging self-censorship as a survival mechanism,” CPJ Washington representative Frank Smyth told the joint hearing…
Your Excellency, The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) welcomes the recent decision of the Almaty prosecutor’s office to drop criminal defamation charges against Bigeldy Gabdullin, editor of the opposition weekly XXI Vek. However, we remain deeply concerned about your government’s frequent use of politically-motivated criminal charges to harass opposition journalists.
POLITICAL REFORMS AND ECONOMIC GROWTH, along with the advent of democratic governments in Croatia and Serbia, brightened the security prospects for journalists in Central Europe and the Balkans. In contrast, Russian’s new government imposed press restrictions, and authoritarian regimes entrenched themselves in other countries of the former Soviet Union, particularly in Central Asia, further threatening…
In North Korea, listening to a foreign broadcast is a crime punishable by death. In Colombia, right-wing paramilitary forces are suspected in the murders of three journalists in 2000. Meanwhile, paramilitary leader Carlos Castaño was formally charged with the 1999 murder of political satirist Jaime Garzón.
IN AN APRIL 19 SPEECH, PRESIDENT NURSULTAN NAZARBAYEV called for increased state oversight of the press-even though his decade in power was already marked by rigid control of independent expression. The National Security Committee (KNB, successor to the KGB) regularly harassed independent and opposition media last year. Journalists also faced countless defamation lawsuits filed by…
Your Excellency, The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is outraged by your government’s apparent efforts to shut down the independent newspapers SolDat and Vremya Po for reprinting articles from foreign media about alleged corruption in the Kazakh government.
Your Excellency, The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is disturbed by your government’s apparent efforts to intimidate, bankrupt, and ultimately silence the Almaty independent weekly Nachnem s Ponedelnika in response to its revelations of alleged official corruption.