STATE-SPONSORED ATTACKS ON JOURNALISTS ABATED significantly and some reforms were initiated last year, but the Albanian press still faced economic underdevelopment, low professional standards, and ongoing security risks. High taxes and printing costs, poor distribution networks, low advertising revenues, limited business skills, and endemic corruption have made editors and publishers dependent on subsidies from political…
LATE IN THE YEAR, A SURGE OF POLITICAL VIOLENCE FURTHER DIMMED the prospects of President Abdel Aziz Bouteflika’s plan for national reconciliation and an end to Algeria’s nine years of civil strife. Particularly in Algiers and other cities, however, the country was far more peaceful than in previous years, and the intense government censorship and…
AS ANGOLA’S AUTHORITARIAN GOVERNMENT CONTINUED ITS LONG SIEGE against all forms of dissent last year, independent journalists received special attention from the repressive apparatus of the state. Although most private media outlets are weekly newspapers that reach no more than a few thousand people, the hypersensitive regime of President José Eduardo dos Santos has routinely…
IN A COUNTRY WHERE THE GOVERNMENT DOMINATES THE MEDIA, the year ended with two contradictory developments. After winning a four-year court battle, the island’s first independent radio station was expected to start broadcasting soon. However, the High Court restrained a weekly newspaper from further coverage of a medical benefits scandal that the paper exposed in…
IN A FRUSTRATING YEAR FOR PRESS FREEDOM in Argentina, a proposed bill that would have eliminated criminal penalties for defamation cases involving public officials foundered after local journalists implicated members of the Senate in a major bribery scandal. Senators who had supported the proposed bill quickly withdrew their support. The long battle to reform Argentina’s…
ARMENIAN JOURNALISTS SUFFERED FROM LINGERING POLITICAL INSTABILITY last year, following the October 1999 terrorist attack on Parliament that left eight politicians dead, including Prime Minister Vazgen Sarkissian. In March 2000, the attempted assassination of Arkady Ghukasian, self-declared president of the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region, contributed to the general turmoil. Advertising revenues are generally low in Armenia,…
PRESIDENT HEIDAR ALIYEV AND OTHER AZERBAIJANI OFFICIALS repeatedly proclaimed their support for freedoms of association and expression, but the November parliamentary elections highlighted the regime’s authoritarianism. The government banned opposition rallies, harassed opposition leaders, and temporarily suspended several opposition parties from the contest. International observers found multiple problems with the election itself, which was nevertheless…
FACING ROUTINE THREATS, HARASSMENT, AND OTHER ATTACKS, Bangladeshi journalists continued to work at great risk as political and criminal violence went unchecked. Two journalists were assassinated: Mir Illias Hossain, editor of the newspaper Dainik Bir Darpan, and Shamsur Rahman, a senior correspondent for the national daily Janakantha and a frequent contributor to the BBC’s Bengali-language…
PRIOR TO THE OCTOBER 15 PARLIAMENTARY ELECTIONS, President Aleksandr Lukashenko cracked down on political dissent in Belarus, including the independent media. Lukashenko, who refused to step down when his term expired in 1999, was expected to maintain his repressive ways in 2001, when the country faces presidential elections. Three months before the election, opposition parties…
AS THE MAJOR POLITICAL COALITIONS CAMPAIGNED VIGOROUSLY in anticipation of the 2001 presidential elections, independent journalists enjoyed relative freedom in reporting on issues of national importance, breaking stories of rumored coup plots, and allegations of corruption and financial misappropriation by members of President Mathieu Kerekou’s administration. Government and opposition parties enjoyed equal access to state-run…