CPJ RELEASES : ATTACKS ON THE PRESS IN 2000

Annual Report on State of Press Freedoms Worldwide Documents

24 Journalists Killed; 81 Imprisoned at Year's End; China World's Leading Jailer of Journalists

In its annual accounting of press freedom conditions around the world, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) reported today that 24 journalists were killed because of their work in 2000. Another 81 were in prison at year's end. The 550-page report, Attacks on the Press in 2000, documents more than 600 cases of media repression in 131 countries, including assassination, assault, imprisonment, censorship, and bureaucratic harassment.

In documenting these attacks, CPJ's report notes several disturbing trends:

• Of the 24 journalists killed for their work in 2000, at least 16 were murdered. In most instances, those who ordered the murders remain at large. Worldwide, the assassinations of journalists are seldom vigorously investigated and the killers rarely convicted, but the pattern of impunity is particularly acute in several countries, notably Colombia and Russia. Three journalists were murdered in Colombia in 2000, bringing the 10-year death toll in that country to 34. Another three journalists also died in Russia, and three more were killed in Sierra Leone.
• The number of journalists in prison at the end of 2000 showed a welcome decline from a year earlier (from 87 to 81), further evidence that international protests have made it diplomatically costly for governments to jail journalists for their work. In Eastern Europe and Latin America, particularly, many countries have turned to more subtle methods to control the press-punitive tax laws, expensive libel suits, and advertising boycotts. However, many of the dozens of journalists still in prison are jailed in pariah states that are often impervious to international criticism. At the top of the list was China, which held 22 journalists at year's end, several of them for using the Internet to disseminate information.
• Journalists working under repressive conditions are increasingly using the Internet and other technologies in an attempt to bypass restrictions, but the consequences can include more repression, violent attack, and even death. In Ukraine, the killing of Internet journalist Georgy Gongadze triggered an international political scandal. In Mozambique last year, gunmen assassinated investigative journalist Carlos Cardoso, who distributed his hard-hitting reports by fax machine. Throughout the Middle East, governments sought to restrict the sale and use of satellite dishes, in a desperate attempt to prevent their citizens from tuning in to the lively, often critical political programming of the Qatar-based satellite station Al-Jazeera.

Key statistics in Attacks on the Press indicate clear progress in the struggle to defend press freedom worldwide. Twenty-four journalists killed for their work in 2000 "is 24 too many," notes one essay in Attacks.But that number was significantly below the total of 34 killed a year earlier, and down from the annual rates of journalists killed during the first half of the 1990s.

The small decline in the number of journalists imprisoned at year's end also marked a positive trend. After reaching a record high in 1996, of 185 in prison, CPJ's census, which notes the number of journalists jailed on the last day of the year, has shown a steady decline each year. "These welcome changes are evidence that CPJ's 20 years of documenting and exposing abuses of the press have made a real difference in protecting journalists and press freedom," said CPJ executive director Ann Cooper. "At the same time, outrageous abuses of the media continue, as governments achieve their repressive goals with more sophisticated techniques of harassment," said Cooper

WORKING FOR CHANGE FOR 20 YEARS

CPJ marks its 20th anniversary in 2001. One of its founding board members, Peter Arnett, notes in his preface to "Attacks on the Press" that "Over its 20-year history, CPJ has become an important champion of press freedom, discomfiting authoritarian regimes around the world with detailed accounts of their abuses and challenging them to show more respect for their media."

Arnett, who participated in several CPJ missions during 2000, said, "Any doubts I might have about the value of continuing the struggle for press freedom in war-wracked areas of the world are resolved when I touch down in a troubled country and commiserate with journalists desperate for recognition and assistance."

CHINA, RUSSIA, AND VENZUELA: THREE SPECIAL REPORTS

Three special reports in "Attacks on the Press" take an in-depth look at press freedom conditions. "The Great Firewall" focuses on the Internet struggle in China, where new regulations turn Internet providers into de facto government spies, but where some citizens are finding creative ways to reach blocked Internet sites.

"Managing the Messengers" reports on Russian president Vladimir Putin's efforts to centralize control of the news media in a country where much of the population distrusts independent journalism.

And "Radio Chávez" shows how Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez Frías uses radio and television to marginalize and verbally attack the news media, causing concern for the future of his country's free press.

The annual "Attacks" series is widely recognized as the most authoritative and comprehensive source of information on press freedom conditions worldwide.

Copies of Attacks on the Press in 2000 will be available at a press conference at the National Press Club, Washington, DC, at 9:30 a.m. on March 19.

The entire text of the book will also be available that day on CPJ's Web site @ www.cpj.org

The Committee to Protect Journalists is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to the defense of press freedom everywhere.

Committee to Protect Journalists
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E-mail: info@cpj.org 

OVERVIEW: ASIA
by Kavita Menon 

DESPITE PRESS FREEDOM ADVANCES ACROSS ASIA IN RECENT YEARS, totalitarian regimes in Burma, China, North Korea, Vietnam, and Laos maintained their stranglehold on the media.

Even democratic Asian governments sometimes used authoritarian tactics to control the press, particularly when faced with internal conflict. Sri Lanka, for instance, imposed harsh censorship regulations during the year in order to restrict reporting on the country's long-running civil war.

And in countries with a vibrant independent press, including India, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, and Indonesia, journalists were frequently subjected to physical assault and intimidation. In some cases, commercial incentives have lured governments that resist political pressure, especially from the West, to reform restrictive media policies.

This has happened in Malaysia, where Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad pledged not to censor the Internet in a bid to attract high-tech investors to the country. Though his government still exercises tight control over the mainstream media, the rapid growth of Internet journalism is changing Malaysia's political culture.

In 2000, CPJ honored Steven Gan, editor of the online news site Malaysiakini (www.malaysiakini.com) with an International Press Freedom Award, recognizing the pioneering role he has played to promote independent journalism in an authoritarian political environment. (See page 547.)

However, across much of East and Southeast Asia, governments deflated the theory that economic liberalization begets political liberties, including press freedom. China continued to open itself up to international trade, but further tightened its control over mainland media, while expressing open hostility toward the free press in Hong Kong.

North Korea, Vietnam, and Laos followed suit, experimenting with increased links to the outside world while trying to maintain absolute control over news and information. Especially in high-tech Asia, the Internet has the potential to make independent news readily available in countries long dominated by official propaganda.

Yet most hardline governments seem determined to defend their turf. Vietnam, Laos, and Burma have all issued decrees and guidelines to curb independent news and opinion on the Internet. China has issued a slew of Internet regulations in recent years, each more onerous and elaborately contrived than the last, in what CPJ believes is the most comprehensive effort by any government to control new media. (See special report on page 2.) The world's leading jailer of journalists, China has imprisoned at least eight people for publishing dissent online.

Press conditions in Burma remain among the worst in the world. The ruling junta not only keeps domestic media on a tight leash, but also arrests its citizens for "crimes" that include listening to foreign short-wave radio broadcasts and using a fax machine. The isolationist junta has succeeded in blocking most information coming into or going out of the country, making it difficult to document press freedom violations.

While CPJ has recorded the cases of eight journalists imprisoned in Burma, the actual number of those jailed for their journalistic work is thought to be much higher. In September, Cheng Poh, a 77-year-old lawyer, was sentenced to 14 years in prison (having been jailed in July) for allegedly circulating photocopies of foreign news articles. Though he was released a few weeks after being sentenced, along with a group of elderly political prisoners, his case illustrates the vulnerability of anyone who tries to disseminate independent news in Burma.

Afghanistan ranks alongside Burma as one of the most information-poor Asian countries, but the ruling Taliban militia has at least begun to allow more foreign journalists into the country. The Taliban regime is eager for diplomatic recognition, and, after more than 20 years of civil war, the country desperately needs foreign aid. Though Taliban leaders are divided about the value of international media attention, some apparently believe that without news coverage, Afghanistan is doomed to slip off the global agenda completely.

North Korea, similarly, gambled that it might be in its strategic interest to grant limited access to correspondents from countries long deemed mortal enemies. Though foreign journalists were kept under close watch by government minders during the carefully stage-managed visits of South Korean president Kim Dae Jung and, later in the year, U.S. secretary of state Madeleine Albright, they still caught vivid glimpses of daily life in one of the world's last totalitarian states.

The local media, however, remain organs of state propaganda.

Coup attempts in Fiji and the Solomon Islands resulted in harsher conditions for the media there in 2000. One year after the successful military coup in Pakistan, the government made no overt moves to crack down on its critics in the press. Pakistani journalists were prone to self-censorship, however, given that they work without constitutional protections or democratic safeguards.

Censorship in various forms has been in force in Sri Lanka for more than two years, badly straining its democracy and preventing full public discussion of the war between the armed forces and the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The government has also refused to grant journalists regular access to the conflict areas, effectively ensuring that coverage of the war remains scant in both domestic and international media.

In India, journalists worried that proposed antiterrorism legislation would be used to stifle independent reporting on insurgencies in Kashmir and the Northeastern States.

And in Nepal, the government signaled its intention to crack down on publications sympathetic to Maoist guerrillas fighting to topple the constitutional monarchy.

By and large, however, the press in democratic Asia is threatened less by government action than by government inaction in the face of violent attacks against journalists. Seven Asian journalists were killed for their work in 2000, nearly all of them in countries with an aggressive independent press but weak or politicized law enforcement agencies, including Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and the Philippines.A newspaper editor in Thailand, meanwhile, narrowly escaped assassination.

In most of these cases, the journalists were apparently targeted for exposing political corruption or other criminal activities. In post-Suharto Indonesia, the Jakarta-based Alliance of Independent Journalists documented more than 100 cases of attacks and threats against the press in 2000. Many of these attacks were led by angry mobs, one symptom of the country's political instability.

Security forces also continued to pose a threat to journalists, particularly those reporting on independence movements in regions such as Aceh and Irian Jaya (also known as West Papua). After winning independence from Indonesia in 1999, East Timor began the hard task of building independent media from scratch. The country seems poised to enjoy a free press.

Journalists reporting on the months-long hostage crisis in the southern Philippines fell victim to a new type of attack. Many of them were kidnapped and held for ransom in what became a lucrative sideline for their captors, members of a loose confederation of armed gangs that claim to be fighting for a separate Islamic state.

On a positive note, aggressive investigative reporting in the Philippines and Thailand provided a powerful example of the media's watchdog role. In Manila, during the impeachment trial of then-president Joseph Estrada on charges of bribery and graft, prosecutors introduced as evidence a series of articles published by the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism, documenting the accumulation of Estrada's "hidden wealth."

In Thailand, the leading candidate for prime minister, telecommunications tycoon Thaksin Shinawatra, was indicted on charges of violating government rules on the declaration of assets after a Thai-language business paper published a detailed account of his holdings. Though Thaksin was elected prime minister in January 2001, his indictment remained before a constitutional court that could decide to force his resignation and bar him from politics. Meanwhile, the ongoing legal and media scrutiny has put Thai politicians on notice.

MALAYSIA

Using internal security laws and the Printing Presses and Publications Act of 1984, which requires annual relicensing of all publications, Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad's deeply entrenched ruling party and its allies maintained a stranglehold on the press.

Virtually all mainstream newspapers in Malaysia are owned or controlled by parties allied with the ruling Barisan National coalition.

Alternative publications were curbed or banned last year. Critical journalists were threatened with prosecution. There is no independent radio news, and allies of the prime minister control all television broadcasting. In March, stung by losses to the opposition Pan Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS) in general elections held in late 1999, Mahathir's government moved against the PAS party newspaper Harakah, reducing its publishing frequency from twice weekly to twice a month.

The newspaper had soared in popularity after the controversial 1998 arrest and prosecution of former deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim on charges of corruption and sodomy.

In January, the government charged Harakah's editor and the owner of the press that printed the newspaper with sedition, based on an article published in 1999. The printer pleaded guilty when the trial began in May and was fined US$1000. Harakah's editor, Zulkifli Sulong, could face three years in jail if convicted. "The government is trying to silence us," Zulkifli said.

During the course of the year, three other publications, the magazines Detik and Wasilah and the weekly tabloid Eksklusif, had their publication licenses cancelled or suspended by the Home Ministry, which controls media licensing. None had resumed publishing by year's end.

Self-censorship remains the most insidious effect of the official attitude towards the press. Malaysian journalists are among the best-paid in the region, and they have a lot to lose by bucking the system. As a result, most journalism is tame, and reporters have no effective organizational voice to fight for greater freedom. The National Union of Journalists, for example, failed to protest any of the closures or other restrictions placed on alternative publications in 2000.

Paradoxically, Mahathir insists that his government tolerates press freedom. "A government which controls the media is a government with no morals," he said in a September speech to the International Convention on the Role of Media in Non-Aligned Countries.

Despite such statements, CPJ named Mahathir to its annual list of the "Ten Worst Enemies of the Press in 2000." (In other statements during the year, Mahathir said that restrictions on the press were necessary to preserve national harmony and counter what he called "lies" perpetrated by foreign media.)

In an effort to promote itself as an international high-tech hub, Malaysia has allowed Internet sites to go online without licensing. The online news publication Malaysiakini (www.malaysiakini.com), which started publishing in late 1999, saw its traffic rise to over 120,000 readers a day, far surpassing the company's own projections.

Malaysiakini editor Steven Gan was honored by CPJ with its annual International Press Freedom Award in November. In his acceptance speech, Gan noted that Internet sites still face possible prosecution for sedition and libel, penalties that have frequently been used against journalists in Malaysia.