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Friday, November 16, 2001
WORLD'S WORST ENEMIES
OF THE FREE PRESS
Compiled by Bulldog
News Staff
Illustrations
by Mick Stern,
Committee To Protect Journalists
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FRESNO STATE - The Bulldog
Newspaper Foundation today named the Worst Enemies of
the Free Press for 2001, focusing attention on individual
leaders who are responsible for the world's worst abuses
against the media. They are:
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Ayatollah Ali Khamenei,
Supreme Leader of Islamic in Iran. Khamenei's fiery April
2000 sermon against the press inspired an unsparing campaign
of repression against Iran's reformist media that continues
to this day. Courts have banned more than 30 papers and jailed
the country's best-known liberal journalists. When parliament
debated reversing harsh provisions of Iran's notorious press
law, Khamenei stopped things cold, declaring that any easing
of the rules was not "in the interests of the system and the
revolution."
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| Charles Taylor,
President of Liberia. He became president in 1997, Taylor
has beenclamping down on the independent press. He has jailed
outspoken journalists on trumped-up charges, censored some
media outfits at will, and forced others out of business through
abusive tax audits. The popular Star Radio was effectively
banned in March 2000. Since August, at least eight journalists
have been jailed in Liberia on baseless charges of espionage.
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| Jiang Zemin, President of The
People's Republic of China. Zemin presides over the world's
most elaborate system of media control. Twenty-two journalists
were jailed for their work in China last year. Wary of the
Internet's potential power to break the state's information
monopoly, Jiang has poured huge resources into policing online
content. |
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| Robert Mugabe, President of
Zimbabwe. Mugabe's government has launched an all-out
war against independent media, using weapons that range from
lawsuits to physical violence. Since January 1999, two local
journalists have been tortured and two foreign correspondents
expelled, while the secret service screens e-mail and Internet
communications to preserve "national security." |
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Vladimir Putin, President of
Russia. Putin has presided over an alarming assault on
press freedom in Russia. The Kremlin imposed censorship in
Chechnya, orchestrated legal harassment against private media
outlets, and granted sweeping powers of surveillance to the
security services. Despite Putin's professed goal of
imposing the rule of law, numerous violent attacks on journalists
have been carried out with impunity across Russia.
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Carlos Castaño, Leader
of The United Self Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC). Even
against the violent backdrop of Colombia's escalating civil
war, in which all sides have targeted journalists, Carlos
Castaño stands out as a ruthless enemy of the press.
The leader of the United Self Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC),
the ultra-violent right-wing paramilitary organization, Castaño
has been formally charged with ordering the 1999 murder of
commentator and political satirist Jaime Garzón.
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| Leonid Kuchma, President of
Ukraine. Leonid Kuchma's government has stepped up its
habitual censorship of opposition newspapers and increased
attacks and threats against independent journalists. The disappearance
and presumed murder of Internet editor Georgy Gongadze late
last year brought the plight of Ukrainian journalists into
sharp focus. |
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Fidel Castro, President of
Cuba. Fidel Castro's government continues its scorched-earth
assault on independent Cuban journalists by interrogating
and detaining reporters, monitoring and interrupting their
telephone calls, restricting their travel, and routinely putting
them under house arrest to prevent coverage of certain events.
A new tactic of intimidation involves arresting journalists
and releasing them hundreds of miles from their homes.
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| Zine al-Abdine Ben Ali, President
of Tunisia. For more than a decade, Zine al-Abdine Ben
Ali has brought Tunisia's press to almost total submission
through censorship and crude intimidation. Newspapers were
closed. Journalists have been dismissed from their jobs, denied
accreditation, put under police surveillance, and prevented
from leaving the country. Some have been subjected to physical
abuse. |
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| Mohamad Mahathir,
Prime Minister of Malaysia. Mahathir is openly contemptuous
of press freedom. He has manipulated Malaysian media to cement
his hold on power and has signaled plans to introduce even
more stringent controls on a severely constricted media such
as: legislation to regulate the Internet news venue where
traditional media outlets are overwhelmingly controlled by
Mahathir's political allies. |
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