Click here to read CPJ’s letter to Mayor Giuliani New York, March 28, 2000 — Journalist Errol Maitland of the radio station WBAI was attacked by members of the New York Police Department (NYPD) while covering the March 25 funeral of Patrick Dorismond, a Haitian-American who was fatally shot by an NYPD officer on March…
Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is deeply troubled by the events of Saturday, March 25, when thirty-five journalists were among the hundreds detained in connection with a demonstration held in Minsk to protest your government’s ban on a march that was to have been part of opposition-staged festivities commemorating the 1918 founding of the Belarusian National Republic.
Click here to read CPJ’s protest letter. New York, March 27, 2000 — A total of thirty-five journalists were among the hundreds detained in connection with a demonstration held Saturday March 25 in the Belarus capital, Minsk. The demonstration was held to protest the official ban on a march that was to have been part…
New York, March 27, 2000 — Jailed Syrian journalist and human rights activist Nizar Nayyouf has been awarded the 2000 UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize. Established in 1997, the award is given annually to individuals or institutions that have “made a notable contribution to the defense and/or promotion of press freedom anywhere in the…
Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is deeply concerned about the recent arrest of veteran journalist Aziza Abdrasulova and the continued legal harassment of her newspaper, the Bishkek weekly Res Publika. We believe the arrest is part of an intimidation campaign being mounted by your government against independent media during the run-up to parliamentary elections in Kyrgyzstan.
PREFACE by Philip Gourevitch INTRODUCTION by Ann Cooper REGIONAL ANALYSES: Africa | Americas | Asia | Europe and Central Asia | Middle East and North Africa AFRICA: Country summaries Angola | Benin | Botswana | |Burkina Faso | Burundi | Cameroon | Chad | Comoros | Republic of Congo | Democratic Republic of Congo |…
By Philip GourevitchNearly a hundred years ago, in Boston, the Congo Reform Association published a pamphlet by Mark Twain, titled King Leopold’s Soliloquy, A Defense of His Congo Rule (1905). The text is an imagined monologue by the Belgian monarch, delivered as he reads through stacks of literature protesting the systematic murder and mutilation of…
By Ann CooperAs a foreign correspondent covering the Soviet Union a decade ago, I was an eyewitness to a dramatic example of the press’ critical role in building democracy. Granted a bit of freedom by Mikhail Gorbachev’s mid-1980s glasnost policy, long-suppressed Soviet journalists set their own daring agenda: they probed forbidden history, investigated contemporary corruption,…
By Claudia McElroyAll over Africa, conflict continued to be the single biggest threat to journalists and to press freedom itself. Both civil and cross-border wars were effectively used as an excuse by governments (and rebel forces) to harass, intimidate, and censor the press–often in the name of “national security”–and in some cases to kill journalists…
By Marylene SmeetsGovernments in several Latin American countries took steps to bring their media laws up to international standards. But as the Latin American press continued to expose wrongdoing, its very strength rendered it vulnerable to a new kind of harassment: defamation campaigns.