Reporters sans Frontières (Paris)
2 January 2008
(Page 2 of 2)
The trial of those who murdered Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya is also expected and the government must end the failure to punish the killers of a long list of journalists. Eighteen have been murdered since President Vladimir Putin was elected in 2000 and Politkovskaya was the most recent one. Only one of the 18 cases has been solved and those responsible put on trial..
At least two journalists arrested each day in 2007
135 journalists were in prison around the world on 1 January 2008 and the figure has hardly shrunk for several years. Those freed are immediately replaced by new journalist prisoners. At least 887 were arrested in 2007, mostly in Pakistan (195), Cuba (55) and Iran (54).
Response of Reporters Without Borders
"About 30 governments continue to imprison journalists they dislike and rulers who belong to a past era still see this as the only answer to media criticism. We call for the immediate release of the 135 journalists in prison around the world.
"Kidnappings of journalists also increased in 2007 and became very common in Iraq and Afghanistan, where several victims were executed by their captors. Governments must fight these crimes by trying those responsible."
China (with 33 in jail) and Cuba (24) have been the world's two biggest prisons for journalists over the past four years. Their governments free one every now and then, at the end of their sentences, but others replace them immediately.
Seven more journalists were arrested in Azerbaijan in 2007, to make a total of eight in prison, showing how far press freedom has been eroded there and how the regime has cracked down on the most critical journalists.
65 cyber-dissidents are also in prison for speaking out on the Internet, with China the main culprit (50 imprisoned). Eight are in jail in Vietnam, and in Egypt, young Internet user Kareem Amer was given a four-year prison sentence for criticising President Hosni Mubarak on his blog and criticising the hold of Islamists on the country's universities.
Imprisonment is not the only way to gag a journalist and at least 67 media workers were kidnapped in 15 countries in 2007. The worst place to be was still Iraq, where 25 were seized. Ten were executed by their kidnappers. In Afghanistan, two assistants of Italian journalist Daniele Mastrogiacomo, who was kidnapped in March, were killed by their captors. Five journalists were kidnapped in Pakistan, some by security forces, but were later freed unharmed.
At least 14 journalists are still being held as hostages, all of them in Iraq.
More than 2,600 websites and blogs shut down
The governments of China, Burma and Syria are trying to turn the Internet into an Intranet - a network limited to traffic inside the country between people authorised to participate. At least 2,676 websites were shut down or suspended around the world in 2007, most of them discussion forums.
The fiercest censorship was in China before and during the 17th Communist Party congress when about 2,500 websites, blogs and forums were closed in the space of a few weeks. Syria also blocked access to more than 100 sites and online services at the end of 2007, including the social networking site Facebook, Hotmail and the telephone service Skype, all of them accused by the government of being infiltrated by the Israeli secret police.
During the October 2007 demonstrations by Buddhist monks in Burma, the country's military rulers tried to block the flow of news being e-mailed out of the country by cutting off Internet access. Censorship ranged from anti-government sites to all means of communication, including film cameras, ordinary cameras and mobile phones.
Response of Reporters Without Borders :
"Some countries censor the Internet as much as they do the traditional media and China is the world champion here. Its cyber-police have been very active before every major political occasion, notably in the months before the 2007 Communist Party congress when about 2,500 websites and blogs, many of them political, were blocked.
Press Freedom Round-up 2006
Reporters Without Borders defends imprisoned journalists and press freedom throughout the world. It has nine national sections (Austria, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland). It has representatives in Bangkok, London, New York, Tokyo and Washington. And it has more than 120 correspondents worldwide.
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