By Marwaan Macan-Markar
MEXICO CITY, May 4 2001 (IPS)

Champions of media freedom drew global attention Thursday to some of the notorious offenders of the right to free expression, including Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, China’s Jiang Zemin, Cuba’s Fidel Castro and Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe.

This initiative by media rights watchdogs like the New York City- based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) and the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders (known by its French acronym RSF) to condemn media abusers was among a number of high-profile activities pursued across the world to mark Press Freedom Day, observed annually on May 3.

According to CPJ, its 2001 list of the “10 Worst Enemies of the Press” had a few familiar names with a long record of media suppression in addition to new abusers. “This year, repeat offenders Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei of Iran and President Jiang Zemin of China are joined by Liberian President Charles Taylor at the top of CPJ’s annual accounting of press tyrants.”

Other new faces that qualified for this list of notoriety were Russian President Vladimir Putin, Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma, and Zimbabwean President Mugabe, while previous abusers listed again by CPJ were President Castro (a seven-year veteran of the press enemies list), Tunisian President Zine Al-Abdine Ben Ali (named for four years) and Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamed (named for three years).

“Although three of last year’s worst press enemies – Sierra Leonean rebel leader Foday Sankoh, Peru’s Alberto Fujimori and Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia – were ousted from power, there was no shortage of candidates to replace them,” charged Ann Cooper, CPJ’s executive director. “Whether they are sly or blatant, the goal of each of these leaders is to hold on to political power by controlling information and muffling criticism.”

For RSF, though, simply identifying the enemies of the press is not enough, given that “these predators of the freedom of the press have the power to imprison journalists, abduct them, torture them and, in the worst cases, have them bumped off.”

Consequently, it made use of this year’s World Press Freedom Day to broaden its recently launched ‘Name and Shame’ campaign. In France, for instance, that meant a number of bookshops publicly displaying the portraits of the 30 “enemies of the press” blacklisted by RSF on Thursday.

In addition to the media abusers identified by CPJ, the RSF blacklist contained such names as Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, North Korea’s Kim Jong-il, Democratic Republic of Congo’s Joseph Kabila and Mullah Mohammed Omar, the head of the Taliban in Afghanistan.

And like the CPJ, RSF also pointed an accusing finger at guerrilla groups for suppressing press freedom during the course of 2000, like the Basque separatist group ETA, the armed gangs in Chechnya and leaders of the leftist rebels and right-wing paramilitaries in Colombia.

According to CPJ, Carlos Castano, the leader of the United Self Defence Forces of Colombia was included in this year’s ’10 Worst Enemies of the Press’ due to his organisation being “implicated in the murders of at least three journalists” in addition to being responsible for ordering the 1999 murder of a Colombian commentator and political satirist.

“Too many journalists fall under the blows of independence- seeking organisations, fundamentalist religious movements, criminal gangs and drug traffickers,” Robert Menard, RSF’s secretary-general said.

An RSF report released in January showed that in 2000, 329 journalists had been arrested, 77 were imprisoned, 510 threatened or harassed and 300 media organisations censored.

For RSF, the level of abuse journalists have been subject to reveals a tremendous shortcoming in the global movement toward democracy over the last 10 years. In a 450-page report on the state of media freedom released a few days before World Press Freedom Day, it stated that the promise of a healthier democratic climate hoped for by the end of the Cold War has not been achieved in a number of countries.

“Regimes which began to liberalise in response to the aspirations of the people and the pressure of the international community have slipped back into their old authoritarian, intolerant ways,” it added.

Such a view was also echoed by the global human rights lobby Amnesty International (AI) in its assessment of media freedom in Africa and Asia to mark World Press Freedom Day. In Africa, charged the London-based AI, some of the most “egregious violators of press freedom” include Zimbabwe, Liberia, Ethiopia, Burundi and Angola.

“In Zimbabwe, President Robert Mugabe has carried out his threat, made several times, to take ‘firm action against the gutter press’. In recent months, the Daily News has come under severe pressure both from the police and from officials of the ruling ZANU-PF party,” revealed AI.

Regards Asia, AI made a pointed reference to media suppression in countries like Myanmar (formerly Burma) and China. “In Myanmar, the media is strictly controlled by the military authorities, and the law imposes draconian restrictions on the right to freedom of expression. Journalists, writers and editors are among the more than 1,800 political prisoners currently held in the country’s prison.”

Among those imprisoned is 71-year-old journalist, U Win Tin, who is currently serving a 20-year sentence for “allegedly urging the opposition party, the National League for Democracy, to adopt a civil disobedience campaign.

“In 1996, U Win Tin was accused of passing on information about prison conditions to the United Nations,” states AI. “Together with a group of other men, he was held in tiny military dog cells, made to sleep on concrete floors and denied visits from his family.”

According to RSF, the plight faced by journalists in Myanmar is no different from those in China and Iran given the number of them imprisoned. And it accuses these three countries of having “the world’s biggest prisons for journalists”.

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