abducted

New York, April 23, 2002—After two earlier adjournments, the trial of four men charged with the kidnapping and murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl resumed this week in Karachi, Pakistan. The trial, which is being held before a special anti-terrorism court convened at Karachi’s Central Jail, remains closed to journalists and to the…

Bogotá, April 9, 2002 — The body of Juan Carlos Gómez, an intern at a radio station in northern Colombia, was found floating in the Magdalena River on April 3, CPJ has learned. Authorities said he had been beaten to death. Gómez, 23, began working as an intern at La Voz de Aguachica (The Voice…

New York, April 8, 2002—CPJ is gravely concerned about the safety of journalist Demling Lama, who was abducted on April 5 by armed Maoist rebels, according to sources in Nepal. Lama is the correspondent in the Sindhupalchok District for both Radio Nepal and the national Nepali-language daily Himalaya Times. At some time during the morning…

New York April 4, 2002—CPJ commends the efforts of Pakistani authorities to apprehend and prosecute the killers of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. The trial of four men charged with the journalist’s kidnapping and murder is scheduled to begin tomorrow, April 5. Seven others accused in the case remain at large. “Around the world,…

There were 118 journalists in prison around the world at the end of 2001 who were jailed for practicing their profession. The number is up significantly from the previous year, when 81 journalists were in jail, and represents a return to the level of 1998, when 118 were also imprisoned.

Algeria’s boisterous press has been at odds with president Abdel Aziz Bouteflika since he took office in 1999. In 2001, the animosity took a more serious turn when the government promulgated harsh new press legislation. In June, despite intense local and international protest, the Algerian Parliament approved a series of new amendments to the Penal…

President Aleksandr Lukashenko continued his assault on the independent and opposition press in 2001, and he managed to cling to power in September 9 presidential elections amid charges of human rights violations and extensive electoral fraud. Throughout the year, independent publications faced harassment, censorship, seizures, and closures for criticizing the regime. Little progress was made…

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…

Another year of political turmoil saw the Indonesian press clinging to its hard-won freedoms. But President Megawati Sukarnoputri, who took over from the quixotic Abdurrahman Wahid in July, is showing worrying signs of being less friendly toward the press than her predecessor. One of Megawati’s first acts in office was to appoint a state minister…

Although Mali’s press laws include punitive presumption-of-guilt standards, the media environment is reasonably liberal compared with many other African countries. Mali also has a strikingly diverse press corps, with about 40 private newspapers, some in French and others in vernacular languages, and about 100 radio stations, one fifth of them unlicensed.