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| Photo Credits: Khamenei (AP/Enric Marti),
Taylor (AP/POOL), Jiang (AP/Greg Baker), Mugabe (AP/Rob Cooper), Putin
(AP/ITAR-TASS/Vladimir Rodionov), Castaña (AP), Kuchma (AP), Castro(AP),
Ben Ali (AP/Remy de Mauviere), Mahathir (AP/Itsuo Inouye). |
New York, May 3, 2001 - The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)
today named the Ten Worst Enemies of the Press for 2001, focusing
attention on individual leaders who are responsible for the world's
worst abuses against the media. 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.
Khamenei, the religious leader who exercises enormous influence over key
institutions in Iran, is the instigator of a relentless campaign that
has shuttered the country's vibrant reformist press by closing dozens of
newspapers and jailing outspoken journalists. In Liberia, Taylor has
used censorship, prison, and threats of violence to silence virtually
all independent media. China's Jiang appears on CPJ's list for a fifth
straight year, for maintaining the Communist Party's obsessive control
over information, enforced in part via harsh prison sentences that have
now made China the world's leading jailer of journalists.
In addition to Taylor, three other press offenders, each using very
different methods to intimidate media in their countries, are also new
to CPJ's list this year: President Robert
Mugabe of Zimbabwe, President Vladimir
Putin of Russia, and Colombian paramilitary leader Carlos
Castaño. CPJ put Ukrainian
president Leonid Kuchma back on the
list (he last appeared in 1999), and once more named perennial press
freedom offenders President Fidel Castro
of Cuba (a seven-year veteran of the press enemies list), President Zine
Al-Abdine Ben Ali of Tunisia (listed for four years), and
Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad
(listed 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
in the past year, there was no shortage of candidates to replace
them," said CPJ executive director Ann Cooper. "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,"
Cooper said.
"President Putin, for example, pays lip service to press freedom in
Russia, but then maneuvers in the shadows to centralize control of the
media, stifle criticism, and destroy the independent press. Others, like
Mahathir in Malaysia, don't even bother to try to hide their abuses
behind a screen of empty rhetoric," said Cooper. "We hope that
by naming these ten press tyrants, we can focus world attention on their
deeds and, by exposing them, bring about change."
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Enemies of the Press 2001
Illustrations
by Mick Stern / CPJ
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Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Supreme Leader of
the Islamic Republic of Iran. Ayatollah Ali 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. To
date, the conservative 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." Today,
the press law remains untouched, and at least nine journalists
(including CPJ 2000 International Press Freedom Award winner Mashallah
Shamsolvaezin) languish in jail.
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Charles Taylor, President of Liberia. Since
he became president of this war-plagued nation in 1997, Charles Taylor
has been single-minded in clamping 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. In September, Taylor, known for his
erratic and bloody tactics, pledged to become "ferocious" with
local media that did not toe his line. Several papers immediately closed
down and their staffs fled the country en masse.
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Jiang Zemin, President of The People's Republic of China. Jiang
Zemin presides over the world's most elaborate system of media control.
Twenty-two journalists were jailed for their work in China at the end of
last year, more than in any other country. Wary of the Internet's
potential power to break the state's information monopoly, Jiang has
poured huge resources into policing online content. His campaign to
strengthen "ideological conformity" has led to closings or
reorganizations at several media outlets that had begun operating with
unacceptable editorial independence.
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Robert Mugabe, President of Zimbabwe. Robert 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." Bomb attacks twice damaged the
premises of the independent Daily News; the second bombing
followed close on the heels of a call from Mugabe's information minister
to silence that paper "once and for all." Meanwhile, Mugabe
makes liberal use of his courts to prosecute independent journalists for
criminal defamation.
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Vladimir Putin, President of Russia. Since
taking office last year, Vladimir 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. In an ominous and dramatic move this April, the
Kremlin-controlled Gazprom corporation took over NTV, the country's only
independent national television network. Within days, the Gazprom coup
had shut down a prominent Moscow daily and ousted the journalists in
charge of the country's most prestigious newsweekly. Despite Gazprom's
insistence that the changes were strictly business, the main beneficiary
was Putin himself, whose primary critics have now been silenced.
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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. His AUC has been implicated in the
murders of at least three other journalists. Castaño's vicious public
relations strategy is to grant frequent interviews to journalists who
defend his actions, while using violence and threats of violence to
terrorize those whose coverage he dislikes.
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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. Allegations that Kuchma himself
may have directed the elimination of Gongadze sparked a political crisis
that threatened to bring down his government, and police security
services made numerous attempts to muzzle publications that carried
coverage critical of the Gongadze scandal.
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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. Meanwhile, foreign journalists who
write critically of Cuba are routinely denied visas, and early this year
Castro threatened some international news bureaus with expulsion from
Cuba for "transmitting insults and lies." Cuba is the only
country in the Western Hemisphere that currently holds a journalist in
jail for his work. Bernardo Arévalo Padrón continues to serve a six
year sentence for reporting critical of Castro and the Communist Party.
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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. With the exception of a few courageous journalists, the
totalitarian tactics of Ben Ali's police state have produced one of the
most heavily self-censored presses in the region, while his propaganda
machine churns out endless paeans to the dictator's supposed
achievements in democracy and human rights. Last year, incredibly, Ben
Ali chided local journalists for self-censorship. "What are you
afraid of?" the president asked.
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Mahathir Mohamad, Prime Minister of
Malaysia. Mahathir Mohamad 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. Officials are now considering legislation to regulate
the Internet, a crucial venue for independent news and opinion in a
country where traditional media outlets are overwhelmingly controlled by
Mahathir's political allies. Notoriously thin-skinned, the prime
minister regularly demonizes the foreign media for reporting he
considers unfair. This past year he repeatedly blocked the circulation
of international news magazines that featured articles about Malaysia.
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