Prime Minister Lester B. Bird was reelected on March 9, but critics say the victory was achieved through widespread vote buying and total control over broadcast media in the tiny three-island nation. In the days preceding the vote, many opposition political ads were pulled off the air. The Bird family and its Antigua Labour Party…
In late 1998, the breakdown of the 1994 Lusaka peace accords led to the resumption of a brutal civil war that has killed more than half a million Angolans and devastated the country’s economy. Since then there has been a marked increase in the frequency and seriousness of reported press freedom violations in Angola. At…
During his decade in office, former president Carlos Menem used a flurry of lawsuits to stifle independent reporting in Argentina. His best efforts failed. When Menem stepped down on December 10, he left behind a vital and independent Argentine press. Journalists, particularly those in the provinces, continue to worry about their physical safety. The May…
The October murders of Armenian prime minister Vazgen Sarkissian and parliamentary speaker Karen Demirchian, by heavily armed gunmen who raided the Parliament building, shocked the nation and divided local media. While the assassins’ motives remained inscrutable at year’s end, some journalists jumped to the swift and as yet unsubstantiated conclusion that the killings represented an…
Azerbaijani press groups have proposed that August 6, 1998, the day that censorship was officially abolished, be declared Press Freedom Day. The move may be premature. While conditions have improved notably since then, journalists still must contend with lawsuits and threats of violence. The 1998 presidential decree that abolished censorship also dismantled Glavlit, the Soviet-era…
Journalists in Bangladesh were frequently subjected to physical assault, harassment, and intimidation as the country was wracked by political and criminal violence. The opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), led by former Prime Minister Begum Khaleda Zia, intensified its campaign to oust the current government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wajed, frequently calling countrywide strikes during…
President Aleksander Lukashenko, facing international condemnation for his boldfaced attempts to cling to power, resorted to increasingly crude tactics to rein in his media opponents. On July 20, President Lukashenko lost what little democratic legitimacy he still had when he refused to step down after his five-year term ended. Western countries, including the United States,…
Under the rule of President Mathieu Kerekou, who was elected in April 1996 after ruling as a left-leaning military dictator from 1972 until 1989, the Benin government has won international praise for its efforts to liberalize the country’s political environment. These efforts have not always worked to the advantage of local journalists. In January, the…
While President Hugo Banzer’s government used the state intelligence apparatus to intimidate journalists, the Bolivian press continued to report aggressively on a number of public scandals. Banzer, a general who led a military government from 1971 to 1978, publicly embraced press freedom after he was democratically elected president in 1997. But many local journalists are…
Journalists in Bosnia-Herzegovina suffered physical attacks that ranged from beatings and abduction to the car-bombing of a noted Bosnian Serb newspaper editor. The attack on Zeljko Kopanja came in October, after his Banja Luka paper published investigative reports about alleged war crimes and acts of corruption committed by Bosnian Serbs. Reports from the Helsinki Committee…