Europe & Central Asia

For some delegates, just getting to the West African Journalists Association (WAJA) regional conference in Dakar, Senegal, was an impressive achievement. While his colleagues used more conventional modes of transportation, Sierra Leone Association of Journalists (SLAJ) president Frank Kposowa navigated his way out of the country by night in a hired motorized dugout canoe. The…

Executive Director William A. Orme, Jr., who was interviewed on CNN International, Fox News “In Depth,” MSNBC “Online,” and numerous radio shows about Attacks on the Press in 1997, traveled to California for the April 6 launch of the book at a program at the Freedom Forum in San Francisco. He also addressed the regional conference…

In his first day in office last July, Mesut Yilmaz, Turkey’s prime minister, met with an international delegation led by CPJ and pledged to end the jailing of journalists in his country. Seven months later, representatives of CPJ and the Press Council of Turkey revisited Yilmaz, urging him to fulfill his promise to reform the…

“Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.” —Article 19, Universal Declaration of Human Rights

On May 3, in conjunction with World Press Freedom Day, CPJ announced its annual choices of the top 10 Enemies of the Press worldwide. Those who made the list this year, as in the past, earned the dubious distinction by exhibiting particular zeal for the ruthless suppression of journalists. For the second consecutive year, the…

CPJ, Turkish Press council meet with Yilmaz to encourage Reform Representatives of CPJ and the Press council of Turkey met with Prime Minister Mesut Yilmaz, urging him to fulfill his promise to reform the Turkish press laws, and to review the cases of 12 imprisoned reporters and editors the two groups say have been convicted…

Ruth Simon Correspondent, Agence France-Presse Imprisoned Journalist Ruth Simon, a correspondent for the news agency Agence France-Presse (AFP), has been in detention since April 25, 1997. Simon, an Eritrean citizen, was arrested after reporting that President Isaias Afewerki told participants at a seminar in Asmara that Eritrean soldiers were fighting alongside rebels in neighboring Sudan.…

Pavel Sheremet Bureau Chief, ORT Russian television Editor, Belarusskaya Delovaya Gazeta Pavel Sheremet has endured every conceivable type of official harassment for his coverage of Belarus‘ slide toward authoritarianism. Minsk bureau chief for the Russian public television company ORT since 1996 and editor in chief of the newspaper Belarusskaya Delovaya Gazeta since 1995, Sheremet —…

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Caucasian republics of Azerbaijan and Armenia have declared their desire to model themselves after Western European societies, with free-market economies and democratic government. But their passage from communism to a new social order has been rife with contradictions. In the current transition period, leaders of both countries…