MEDIA: More Journalists In Prison 1

[QWA01214@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

Subject: MEDIA: More Journalists In Prison 1996

Many countries are unsafe for reporters and Free Speech.

Burma is mentioned at the bottom of this article.

Martin


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Date: Wed, 19 Mar 1997 15:12:02 -0800 (PST)
Errors-To: owner-nigeria-watch@xxxxxxx

/* Written  2:47 PM  Mar 18, 1997 by newsdesk in igc:ips.english */
/* ---------- "MEDIA: More Journalists Thrown Into" ---------- */
       Copyright 1997 InterPress Service, all rights reserved.
          Worldwide distribution via the APC networks.

                      *** 15-Mar-97 ***

Title: MEDIA: More Journalists Thrown Into Prison in 1996

WASHINGTON, Mar 15 (IPS) - A New York-based press freedom group is
urging U.S. officials to speak out against the abuse of
journalists in countries like Nigeria, Turkey, and Burma.

The Committee To Protect Journalists, in its new report,
'Attacks on the Press in 1996: A Worldwide Survey', says that
Turkey was the worst offender for imprisonment of reporters for
the third year in a row, with more journalists in jail that the
next five countries combined.

In a year that ended with 27 journalists killed because of
their work and a record 185 journalists in prison in 24 countries,
Turkey alone imprisoned 78 reporters -- 27 more than they held in
1995, says the survey.

''Turkey is once again the most egregious example of a
government that criminalises independent reporting,'' says William
A. Orme, Jr., CPJ's executive director.

Almost all the imprisoned Turkish reporters were held for
reporting on conflicts with the country's Kurdish minority, says
the CPJ. The next five countries on the CPJ's list are Ethiopia,
which imprisoned 18 journalists, China (17), Kuwait (15), Nigeria
(8), and Burma (8).

Algeria is, however, ''the most dangerous place in the world
for journalists'', according to the CPJ report.

As the fourth year of brutal civil conflict ended, reporters
continued to face grave peril. Since the army cancelled
parliamentary elections in January 1992, an estimated 60,000
people have died in the ensuing violence. Since May 1993, 59
journalists have been murdered, says the CPJ. In 1996 alone, seven
journalists were assassinated, while several other media employees
were also killed.

''Factors such as the Armed Islamic Group (GIA) -- which has
claimed responsibility for nearly half the total number of
journalists' murders in Algeria -- indiscriminately kill
journalists for what they view as the media's complicity with the
Algerian government,'' says  the CPJ.

In addition to the official censorship of news relating to
security forces' casualties, human rights abuses, and the
exclusion of the Islamist viewpoint, the government has further
tightened its control over the press by setting up ''reading
committees'' to ensure that stories on the civil strife conform
with official accounts.

Among the journalists killed on the job in other parts of the
world, six were murdered in Russia while reporting on the war in
Chechnya. Journalists were also killed in Angola, Bangladesh,
Colombia, Cyprus, India, Indonesia, Ireland, the Philippines,
Tajikistan, Turkey and Ukraine. The 26 cases of journalists killed
because of their work in 1996 compares with the 57 killed the year
before.

In Colombia, Norvey Diaz of Radio Colina was found with a
gunshot wound in his neck Oct. 18 in the resort town of Girardot.
He had received death threats  because of his reporting on alleged
police involvement in the murder of street people and on
investments in local resorts by drug traffickers. In Turkey, Metin
Goktepe, a columnist for the daily, Evrensel, was beaten to death
by police Jan. 8, 1996. He had been covering the deaths in
Istanbul of two leftist inmates killed during a prison riot.

The CPJ says they arranged a meeting in the last few days with
officials here at the U.S. State Department to bring the killings
and imprisonment of journalists to their attention and to urge
officials to speak out against the abuse of journalists.

''We urged U.S. diplomats to be more outspoken in their
condemnation of imprisonments of journalists in Turkey, Ethiopia,
Nigeria, and Vietnam -- all countries where CPJ believes that a
clear show of U.S. support for these jailed reporters could help
lead to their release,'' says Orme.

Nigeria is again in the spotlight with the military
government's recent charge of treason against exiled Nobel
laureate playwright Wole Soyinka and 14 others. The 15 have been
charged with being behind a series of bomb blasts that have rocked
a number of cities in Nigeria over the last few months.

The past year saw a rash of detentions of independent Nigerian
journalists -- all without charge -- in connection with articles
that were critical of the military regime and its officials, says
the CPJ.

''Gen. Sani Abacha escalated his brutal tactics aimed at
decimating the independent press and driving journalists out of
their profession or into exile,'' says the CPJ report, which adds
that journalists were under constant pressure to name their
sources but chose, instead, to endure indefinite prison stays.

The year ended with a number of arrests of editors and
correspondents and the announcement of the introduction of a
separate press court to function with the sole purpose of
prosecuting journalists and media professionals.

But Ethiopia succeeded, for the fourth consecutive year, in
throwing more journalists into prison than any other country in
sub-Saharan Africa. The CPJ reports that journalists are regularly
harassed, censored, arrested, and illegally detained for weeks or
months without charge or trial. By year's end, four editors of the
Amharic daily newspaper and weekly magazine, Tobia, had suffered
arrest and detention without charge. In March last year, CPJ
delegates went to Ethiopia to research press freedom issues and
meet with government officials and members of the press.

Following the visit, the CPJ issued a series of recommendations
aimed at improved working conditions for the Ethiopian press. The
press freedom group called for the immediate and unconditional
release of all journalists who have been imprisoned for exercising
their legal right to report the news; it called on the government
to eliminate excessive bail, ''which primarily serves to render
private publications financially insolvent; it urged that police
officers, the judiciary, and government officials be trained in
the rights of journalists, the role of the press in a democratic
society, and in general human rights issues.

The CPJ's list of recommendations also included a call for the
introduction of an equitable system that permits private ownership
of broadcast media.

Journalists in some countries in Asia also faced major
impediments.

The CPJ notes that civil strife and separatist wars provided
the backdrop to most of the press freedom violations in South
Asia, while regimes in East Asia impeded access to information
through Internet censorship and the suppression of dissident
journalism.

China blocked access to Internet sites run by Hong Kong and
U.S.-based news organisations as well as by the Chinese language
daily, Ming Pao. Singapore set up a body to police the Internet
and required the state's three Internet providers to install
equipment capable of blocking access to certain sites.

Meanwhile, China and Indonesia continued to crackdown on
dissident reporters, says the CPJ.

A Beijing court sentenced noted dissident, Wang Dan, to 11
years in prison, charging him with trying to subvert the
government through articles written for overseas press. With the
handover of Hong Kong from Britain to China scheduled for July
1997, Hong Kong journalists are reportedly observing these
developments warily.

In Burma, political arrests and repression have dramatically
increased as the ruling State Law and Order Restoration Council
(SLORC) keeps a tight rein on the flow of information, says the
CPJ report. On Jun. 7 last year, the SLORC introduced a law that
made it an offence to instigate, protest, say, write, or
distribute anything that would ''disrupt and deteriorate the
stability of the state, communal peace and tranquility, and the
prevalence of law and order.'' Persons convicted under the law
face prison terms of up to 20 years.

The regime also made owning, using, importing, or borrowing a
modem or fax machine a crime punishable by up to 15 years in
prison. The SLORC also barred access to the residence of Daw Aung
San Suu Kyi, leader of the opposition National League for
Democracy (NLD) in late September and conducted mass arrests of
NLD members and supporters. (END/IPS/YJC/97)

Origin: Washington/MEDIA/
                              ----

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