RIGHTS-COMMUNICATION: Two Billion People Lack Press Freedoms

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Alicia Fraerman

MADRID, Dec 28 1999 (IPS) - There are approximately two billion people around the world living in some 20 countries where governments do not grant freedoms of the press, said Fernando Castelló, president of Reporters Sans Frontiers (RSFJournalists without Borders), a hundred-year-old organisation based in Paris.

Castelló, a journalist for Spain’s Efe news agency, presented the RSF annual report Tuesday, which says that 36 reporters were assassinated worldwide this year because of their work, 446 were arrested and 653 were victims of physical assault or threats, while 357 media outlets were censored.

Currently, 85 journalists are in prison for having attempted to freely exercise their profession, according to RSF.

The report underscores that press freedoms are non-existent in approximately 20 countries, home to two billion of the world’s six billion inhabitants, while another 70 nations implement restrictive measures.

In 1999, the number of reporters who were assassinated while practicing their profession nearly doubled, in relation to the 19 who suffered the same fate in 1998. The organisation attributes the jump to the increase in armed conflicts around the world.

Of the total fatalities, 28 journalists were killed in war zones or regions in conflict: 10 in Sierra Leone, six in Yugoslavia, six in Colombia, three in Chechnya, two in East Timor and one in Lebanon.

In just six days – from Jan 6 to Jan 12 – nine reporters were “savagely executed by the rebels of the Sierra Leone Revolutionary United Front (RUF),” states the RSF report. Among those killed was Paul Abu Mansaray, assistant editor of the privately-run Standard Times newspaper.

The journalist, age 41, was praying with his wife and three children in a church when the rebels captured them, killing them later.

But the RUF rebels not only attacked their compatriots, they also murdered Myles Tierney, photographer for the U.S.-based Associated Press.

In Colombia, guerrilla or paramilitary groups have assassinated six reporters this year, among them humourist Jaime Garzón, a fervent activist for peace, says RSF.

In Kosovo, after the multi-national stabilisation force entered the region, two special correspondents from the German magazine ‘Stern,’ Gabriel Gruner and Volker Kramer, were assassinated “in circumstances that have not yet been clarified.”

In the days following East Timor’s Aug 30 plebiscite on national independence, two reporters were killed, apparently by soldiers from Indonesia, a nation that forcibly annexed this former Portuguese colony in 1975.

This year there were fewer cases of journalists being held in prison: 85, compared to last year’s 93, reported RSF.

The nations holding journalists in prison include Burma (13), Syria (10), China (9) and Ethiopia (9). RSF points out that in the Syrian and Burmese prisons, reporters are subjected to inhumane treatment and do not receive adecuate medical attention.

Burmese journalist San San Nweh, winner of the 1999 RSF Prize, has been incarcerated since 1994 and suffers from liver disease and visual impairments.

In Syria, reporter Nizar Nayyouf, who is serving a 10-year prison sentence, suffers paralysis, haemorrhaging and dermatosis as a result of being tortured. Authorities refuse to provide him the medical attention he needs.

Journalists also face the threat of being taken hostage. In Sierra Leone, the RUF has kidnapped 15 reporters, and 16 have been taken hostage in Colombia. But in Chechnya, “kidnapping journalists has become a sure way of obtaining money.”

In addition to censorship, in many countries laws establish prison sentences for crimes such as “diffusion of false information” or “offences against the head of state.” In others, authorities initiate legal claims of “defamation” in order to repress the media.

The governments of Burma, Cuba, China, Tunisia and Vietnam control access to Internet service providers by installing encryption systems, blocking sites for those they consider undesireable and punishing users who attempt to dodge the obstacles set up against the free circulation of information.

The RSF report cites the example of China, where Lin Hai and Qi Yanchen, two “cyber-dissidents,” have been imprisoned for “subversion,” accused of using the Internet to raise global awareness about human rights abuses in their country.