Your Majesty: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is writing to protest the recent arrest of Fahd al-Rimawi, editor of the weekly newspaper Al-Majd. On January 13, according to press reports and CPJ sources, a State Security Court prosecutor in Amman summoned al-Rimawi and accused him of publishing “false information,” an offense under Jordan’s Penal Code. He was subsequently ordered detained for 15 days for questioning.
Read first-hand accounts by journalists covering the war in Afghanistan. • December 21, 2001—The New York Times reported that on December 20, Afghan tribal fighters detained three photojournalists working for U.S. news organizations. The journalists were detained for more than one hour, apparently at the behest of U.S. Special Operations forces in the Tora Bora area….
New York, March 28, 2001 — Six Israeli journalists were prevented from covering this week’s Arab summit in Amman after Jordanian security authorities requested that they leave the country, citing threats on their safety, CPJ has learned. Roey Gilad, a spokesman for the Israeli embassy in Amman, told CPJ that Jordanian authorities asked the journalists…
ALTHOUGH RIGHTS TO FREE EXPRESSION AND PRESS FREEDOM are enshrined in national constitutions from Algeria to Yemen, governments found many practical ways to restrict these freedoms. State ownership of the media, censorship, legal harassment, intimidation, and imprisonment of journalists were again among the favored tools of repression and control. In Iraq, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Syria,…
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 HIS FIRST TWO YEARS ON THE THRONE, KING ABDULLAH II has spoken out in favor of strengthening press freedom and modernizing the media. In a February speech, the king advocated “transparency in our society, because we have nothing to fear.” The Jordanian press has seen several positive developments under King Abdullah’s reign, including the…
WITH A PALESTINIAN UPRISING RAGING IN THE ISRAELI-OCCUPIED TERRITORIES, the Oslo peace process dead, and his popularity slipping, the future of Yasser Arafat and his Palestinian National Authority (PNA) seemed precarious. But Arafat’s leadership position appeared unchallenged for the time being, with the result that press freedom remained under threat. The year was marked by…