Despite a year of extraordinary political turmoil and uncertainty, the Indonesian press survived and prospered. Greater legal protections were put in place for media, and the once-feared Ministry of Information was eliminated. But the agonizing separation of East Timor from Indonesia (see separate entry on East Timor), and ethnic and political tensions in other parts…
The Iranian press was again the main battleground in a bitter power struggle between reformist president Muhammad Khatami and Iran’s conservative clerical establishment, led by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, supreme leader of the Islamic Republic. With crucial parliamentary elections slated for February 2000, the conservative-controlled judiciary pressed ahead with a steady campaign of repression against reformist…
In the ninth year of crippling UN economic sanctions and after last year’s frequent U.S. and British air strikes, President Saddam Hussein showed little sign of loosening his iron grip on Iraqi society. All media remained at the government’s disposal, functioning as instruments of propaganda for Hussein’s brutal Baath regime. In his 1999 report about…
Since Israel began turning over parts of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip to the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) six years ago, its repression of the local press has noticeably declined. The censorship, intimidation, and arbitrary arrests of Palestinian journalists that marked full-fledged Israeli occupation are now practiced by Palestinian president Yasser Arafat and…
“Press freedom will be total,” promised Gen. Robert Gueï, Côte d’Ivoire’s new head of state. General Gueï, 58, who overthrew the government of President Henri Konan Bedie on Christmas Eve, made this announcement just hours after his nine-man junta imposed a dusk-to-dawn curfew in this west African country, historically noted for its political stability. However,…
While Jamaican journalists were generally free to cover sensitive stories such as the country’s economic decline and its rising crime rate, there were widespread concerns that pending legislation could deter aggressive reporting. For example, a new anticorruption bill introduced by the government of Prime Minister Percival Noel James Patterson would also restrict the ability of…
In February, Abdullah II assumed the Hashemite throne after the death of his father, King Hussein. Promising more democracy and public freedoms, the new monarch immediately addressed press freedom concerns, calling on the government to amend the highly controversial Press and Publications Law of 1998. In September, legislators approved amendments that improved on the 1998…
After securing reelection in a hastily arranged January snap poll, President Nursultan Nazarbayev continued to consolidate his grip on the press by harassing independent and opposition media, covertly buying out some outlets, and attempting to put others out of business. Nazarbayev boasts that his regime privatized state-run media but generally fails to mention that most…
The year saw several arrests and other legal actions aimed at stifling press coverage of such issues as official corruption and constitutional reform, along with several cases of open violence against journalists by agents of the state. One shocking example of the last was the February 15 abduction and beating of David Makali, editor of…
Among the increasingly authoritarian leaders of Central Asia, Kyrgyz president Askar Akayev is perceived as relatively democratic. At least publicly, Akayev has attempted to accommodate Western demands for improvements in the legal climate for media. Yet Kyrgyzstan’s small but feisty independent press is increasingly muzzled, and journalists say the Akayev administration is to blame. In…