(CPJ/IFEX) – The following is a CPJ press release: Columnist Clarence Page And Zimbabwean Reporter Who Endured Prison And Torture Tell Of Attacks On The Press At National Press Club Launch Of CPJ Annual Report Washington, March 19, 2001 – Ray Choto, chief reporter for the Zimbabwe weekly The Standard, and Pulitzer Prize-winning Chicago Tribune […]
(CPJ/IFEX) – The following is a CPJ press release:
Columnist Clarence Page And Zimbabwean Reporter Who Endured Prison And Torture Tell Of Attacks On The Press At National Press Club Launch Of CPJ Annual Report
Washington, March 19, 2001 – Ray Choto, chief reporter for the Zimbabwe weekly The Standard, and Pulitzer Prize-winning Chicago Tribune columnist Clarence Page were among the speakers at the launch of Attacks on the Press in 2000, the annual report of the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), which documents more than 600 attacks on journalists or news organizations worldwide in the past year.
Speaking of the current abysmal press conditions in Zimbabwe, Choto told a news conference at the National Press Club in Washington, “There is no law that obliges government officials to supply information to the press. Instead, we have the Official Secrets Act that makes it a criminal offense to publish, or to just receive unauthorized information.”
“After Several Hours Of Torture…I Said, ‘There is Only One Thing To Do…Turn And Fight.”
Choto, now a Knight Fellow at Stanford University, was jailed and tortured in 1999, along with his editor Mark Chavunduka, for publishing a report about a coup plot against President Robert Mugabe. Speaking of the ordeal he and Chavunduka endured, Choto said that after several hours of torture he told his editor, “When your back is against the wall, there is only one thing to do…turn and fight.” He told the press conference, “And I’m pretty sure, when we turn around and fight, we will have the spirit of the Committee to Protect Journalists in our corner.”
Page, a CPJ board member, said, “The men and women chronicled in this annual report humble the rest of us with the high standards of courage and tenacity that they have set. Of those who have survived, many operate under great pressure and remain in great danger. The information in this book tries to help them by doing what journalists do best; it gathers facts and tells the public in the hope that truth will make everyone free.”
24 Journalists Killed In 2000 Because Of Their Work; 81 In Prison At Year’s End
In its annual accounting of press freedom conditions around the world, CPJ reported that 24 journalists were killed because of their work in 2000. Another 81 were in prison at year’s end. The 550-page report documents 605 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, at least 16 were murdered. In all but two 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 decline from a year earlier (from 87 to 81), further evidence that international protests have made it diplomatically costly for governments to jail journalists. 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. But many of the dozens of journalists still in prison are held 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 are increasingly using the Internet and other technologies 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.
Statistics in Attacks on the Press show clear progress in the struggle for press freedom worldwide. To have 24 journalists killed for their work in 2000 “is 24 too many,” notes one essay. But that number was significantly less than the 34 killed last year, and well below annual death tolls from the first half of the 1990s (see chart).
Another positive trend was the small decline in the number of journalists imprisoned at year’s end. CPJ’s census notes the number of journalists jailed on the last day of the year. After reaching a record high of 185 in 1996, the number has shown a steady decline each year.
“These welcome changes suggest that CPJ’s 20 years of documenting and exposing attacks on 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, Venezuela: Three Special Reports
Three special reports in Attacks on the Press cover press conditions in China, Russia and Venezuela. “The Great Firewall” focuses on the Internet struggle in China, where new regulations have turned Internet service providers into de facto government spies. “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” explains 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. The entire text of the book Attacks on the Press in 2000 is available 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.
-end-
PRESS FREEDOM FACTS
From: Attacks On the Press In 2000
In North Korea, listening to a foreign broadcast is a crime punishable by death.
In Colombia, right-wing paramilitary forces are suspected in the murders of three journalists in 2000. Meanwhile, paramilitary leader Carlos Castaño was formally charged with the 1999 murder of political satirist Jaime Garzon.
Given Liberian president Charles Taylor’s history of brutality, local journalists were duly alarmed when Taylor threatened to become “ferocious with the New Democrat” after the newspaper questioned the sudden death of the country’s vice-president. In September, the newspaper’s entire staff fled the country.
Cuba, where state control of the media is enshrined in the constitution, was the only country in the Americas holding journalists in jail at the end of 2000. One of Cuba’s three imprisoned journalists, CPJ International Press Freedom Award winner Jesús Joel Díaz Hernández, was released on January 17, 2001. Another journalist was jailed and released on trumped-up charges of “hoarding toys.”
Zimbabwean soldiers stationed in the Democratic Republic of Congo detained a television crew and forced its members to roll around in the dust while singing military anthems. In Côte d’Ivoire, seven journalists were detained at a military base and forced to crawl, sing pro-junta anthems, and do push-ups.
In northern Nigeria, fundamentalists seek to impose a version of Islamic law (sharia) under which reporters guilty of publishing “offensive material” could receive 60 strokes from a cane. One case is currently being tried.
In Burma, 77-year-old lawyer Cheng Poh was sentenced to 14 years in prison for allegedly circulating photocopies of foreign news articles.
Two journalists were murdered in the Philippines in 2000, bringing to 34 the total number of journalists killed since democracy was restored there in 1986.
The Jordan Times complained that “water officials on Saturday said only the minister, who was in Libya on Saturday, could tell the press how much rain fell on Jordan last week.”
Saddam Hussein’s son Uday controls a vast media empire in Iraq, where there is no independent press. In April, the National Press Union, which Uday heads, named him “journalist of the century” for his “innovative role, his efficient contribution in the service of Iraq’s media family…and his defense of honest and committed speech.”
Turkish journalist Nadire Mater was acquitted on charges of insulting the military in her book of interviews with former conscripts who had fought against Kurdish separatists. “Banning the truth does not eradicate it,” Mater said.
On November 4, Bulgarian justice minister Teodossyi Simeonov punched Aleksandr Mihaylov, an 18-year old photographer for the newspaper Sega, claiming he was defending his constitutional right not be photographed.
In two Central Asian countries, governments restricted access to the Internet. Turkmenistan’s president for life shut down all the country’s private Internet Service Providers last year. In Kazakhstan, the government blocked access to an independent Web site for “technical reasons.”
