U.S. Representative Howard Berman has expressed concern over increasing reports of intimidation and violence toward journalists in Azerbaijan.

In a letter to Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev on World Press Freedom Day, the congressman said recent «incidents have highlighted long-held concerns regarding the ability to express one’s thoughts and opinions freely» in Azerbaijan.

Berman (Democrat-California) said five journalists were beaten up by security personnel of a state oil company as they were reporting on the demolition of houses that the company said were illegally built on its land.

Berman also noted that RFE/RL Azerbaijani Service correspondent Khadija Ismayilova was the focus of a campaign of intimidation and coercion due to her investigative journalism.

Berman urged Baku to prosecute those responsible for the cases, and to protect journalists against future threats.

http://www.rferl.org/content/us_congressman_alarmed_at_azerbaijan_press_situation/24569158.html

A leading journalism watchdog group has listed authorities in Uzbekistan, Belarus, and Iran as among the world’s leading media censors.

In a new report released on the eve of World Press Freedom Day, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists said all three countries are guilty of seeking to cut off access to information by muzzling journalists and blocking websites.

Robert Mahoney, CPJ’s deputy director, said authorities in Iran, unnerved by several years of rising public unrest, have imposed one of the world’s harshest Internet censorship regimes and jailed dozens of journalists.

«Iran uses imprisonment of journalists to quash critical news coverage,» Mahoney said. «Reformist publications are often banned and their staff sent to prison. Satellite broadcasts and millions of websites are blocked. Sophisticated techniques are used to detect interference with anticensorship software.»

Iran was not among the worst media censors when the CPJ last published its list in 2006 but has since risen to become the world’s fourth-worst censor, behind only Eritrea, North Korea, and Syria.

In Uzbekistan, where the regime of longtime leader Islam Karimov has maintained a stranglehold on the press, the CPJ says all independent media outlets have been effectively eliminated.

Mahoney also notes that five reporters are currently serving prolonged prison terms in the country, which ranks sixth on the CPJ list.

These include Muhammad Bekjannov and Yusuf Ruzimuradov of the «Erk» opposition newspaper, who were imprisoned in 1999 and have now been jailed longer than any other reporters worldwide.

«No independent media outlets are based in Uzbekistan,» Mahoney says. «Access to some outside websites and even key words are blocked. Five reporters are serving extended prison terms. Foreign journalists are excluded.»

Delivering The Death Blow

CPJ’s censorship list ranks countries according to website access, journalists’ freedom of movement, and the presence of privately owned media.

In Belarus — 10th place on the CPJ list — the controversial 2010 reelection of authoritarian leader Alyaksandr Lukashenka was seen as delivering the death blow to what remained of the country’s free press.

Mahoney says even before the elections and the massive public protests that followed, Lukashenka’s regime had routinely subjected journalists to criminal prosecution and failed to investigate the suspicious deaths of at least three journalists.

These include Aleh Byabenin, the founder of the outspoken Charter 97 website, who was found hanged at his family’s dacha in 2010.

«The government of Belarus has raided newsrooms, confiscated equipment, imprisoned journalists, and banned reporters from traveling,» Mahoney says. «The remnants of its independent press operate underground. Independent websites are blocked and access to the Internet requires identification.»

Other countries on the CPJ’s top 10 censorship list include Equatorial Guinea, Myanmar, Saudi Arabia, and Cuba. Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, and China were listed among the runners-up.

The CPJ report comes one day after a second watchdog group, Freedom House, gave a grim assessment of the state of the media worldwide, saying the percentage of people with access to a free press had fallen to its lowest level in nearly 20 years.

In a separate statement, the Iraq-based Journalism Freedoms Observatory said pressure on Iraqi journalists was on the rise, with a marked increase in the number of arbitrary arrests and violence targeting reporters.

With reporting by AP, AFP, and dpa

Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty

Источник: http://www.rferl.org/content/uzbekistan_iran_belarus_media_censors/24567209.html

Europe’s largest association of national broadcasters says a top Azerbaijani official has pledged that his government will probe accusations of abuses against journalists.

Ali Hasanov, who heads President Ilham Aliyev’s political department, told the European Broadcast Union (EBU) during a daylong closed meeting on May 2 in Geneva, that the authorities would fully investigate «alleged cases of jailed and mistreated journalists.»

A statement from EBU after the meeting said Hasanov also agreed for the government to change legislation «to reduce defamation to a civil, and not a criminal, offense.»

Hasanov was speaking as the country prepares to host the Eurovision Song Contest.

Azerbaijan is to host the glitzy televised competition on May 22, 24, and 26.

With reporting by AFP

http://www.rferl.org/content/azerbaijan_official_pledges_to_investigate_abuses_against_journalists/2

A leading journalism watchdog group has listed authorities in Uzbekistan, Belarus, and Iran as among the world’s leading media censors.

In a new report released on the eve of World Press Freedom Day, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists said all three countries are guilty of seeking to cut off access to information by muzzling journalists and blocking websites.

Robert Mahoney, CPJ’s deputy director, said authorities in Iran, unnerved by several years of rising public unrest, have imposed one of the world’s harshest Internet censorship regimes and jailed dozens of journalists.

«Iran uses imprisonment of journalists to quash critical news coverage,» Mahoney said. «Reformist publications are often banned and their staff sent to prison. Satellite broadcasts and millions of websites are blocked. Sophisticated techniques are used to detect interference with anticensorship software.»

Iran was not among the worst media censors when the CPJ last published its list in 2006 but has since risen to become the world’s fourth-worst censor, behind only Eritrea, North Korea, and Syria.

In Uzbekistan, where the regime of longtime leader Islam Karimov has maintained a stranglehold on the press, the CPJ says all independent media outlets have been effectively eliminated.

Mahoney also notes that five reporters are currently serving prolonged prison terms in the country, which ranks sixth on the CPJ list.

These include Muhammad Bekjannov and Yusuf Ruzimuradov of the «Erk» opposition newspaper, who were imprisoned in 1999 and have now been jailed longer than any other reporters worldwide.

«No independent media outlets are based in Uzbekistan,» Mahoney says. «Access to some outside websites and even key words are blocked. Five reporters are serving extended prison terms. Foreign journalists are excluded.»

Delivering The Death Blow

CPJ’s censorship list ranks countries according to website access, journalists’ freedom of movement, and the presence of privately owned media.

In Belarus — 10th place on the CPJ list — the controversial 2010 reelection of authoritarian leader Alyaksandr Lukashenka was seen as delivering the death blow to what remained of the country’s free press.

Mahoney says even before the elections and the massive public protests that followed, Lukashenka’s regime had routinely subjected journalists to criminal prosecution and failed to investigate the suspicious deaths of at least three journalists.

These include Aleh Byabenin, the founder of the outspoken Charter 97 website, who was found hanged at his family’s dacha in 2010.

«The government of Belarus has raided newsrooms, confiscated equipment, imprisoned journalists, and banned reporters from traveling,» Mahoney says. «The remnants of its independent press operate underground. Independent websites are blocked and access to the Internet requires identification.»

Other countries on the CPJ’s top 10 censorship list include Equatorial Guinea, Myanmar, Saudi Arabia, and Cuba. Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, and China were listed among the runners-up.

The CPJ report comes one day after a second watchdog group, Freedom House, gave a grim assessment of the state of the media worldwide, saying the percentage of people with access to a free press had fallen to its lowest level in nearly 20 years.

In a separate statement, the Iraq-based Journalism Freedoms Observatory said pressure on Iraqi journalists was on the rise, with a marked increase in the number of arbitrary arrests and violence targeting reporters.

With reporting by AP, AFP, and dpa

http://www.rferl.org/content/uzbekistan_iran_belarus_media_censors/24567209.html

By Richard Solash

WASHINGTON — A new report by U.S.-based pro-democracy group Freedom House says just one in six people around the world enjoys a free press — the lowest percentage in more than a decade.

The 2012 edition of the annual «Freedom of the Press» survey evaluated the level of print, broadcast, and internet media freedom in 197 countries last year based on legal, political, and economic factors.

It found that the percentage of the world’s people living in a free-press environment fell slightly, to 14.5 — the lowest level since 1996, when the group began factoring population data into its findings.

But amid the distressing news, the report said one of the biggest developments last year was the «potentially far-reaching gains» that came with the Arab Spring.

Christopher Walker, vice president for strategy and analysis at Freedom House, maintained that «major steps forward» were made in Libya and Tunisia, and to some extent in Egypt.

«At the same time, there were a number of countries in the region with already very harsh media environments that cracked down fiercely,» he said. «These included Iran, Syria, and Bahrain.»

The report says the trend in those countries «reflected the regimes’ alarmed and violent reactions» to the wave of popular uprisings.

Iran landed in its usual place in this year’s report: among the «worst of the worst.» Walker says the country’s government «defines itself by the ferocity of its crackdowns, both on online and traditional media.»

Ranking as low as Iran are countries like Belarus, North Korea, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, where Freedom House says «independent media are either nonexistent or barely able to operate, the press acts as a mouthpiece for the regime, citizens’ access to unbiased information is severely limited, and dissent is crushed through imprisonment, torture, and other forms of repression.»

Late last year in Uzbekistan, one of the last independent newspapers, «Zerkalo XXI,» shut its doors, supposedly for financial reasons.

Walker believes pressure by the authorities was behind the closure.

«For newspaper-publishing, finding ways to publish this within Uzbekistan’s borders and then disseminate is practically impossible,» he said. «So the fact that authorities are now moving to essentially cleanse the information landscape of the small remaining ways in which people in the country can get information also bodes very, very poorly for the country’s development and speaks to the depths of the repression that ordinary Uzbeks experience.»

As a region, Eurasia remained mired in severe press freedom problems, with Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, and Tajikistan also rated «not free.» Ukraine barely hung onto a rating of «partly free,» just one point away from being downgraded.

Russia is in 172nd place, tied with Zimbabwe. Walker noted «systematic [official] interference and obstruction in the key areas of Russia’s media environment.” Afghanistan ranked 164th.

The most positive signs in the non-Baltic former Soviet Union last year came in «partly free» ranked Georgia, with increased media choice and transparency.

The United States ranked 22nd freest, while Finland, Norway, and Sweden were judged to have the world’s most press freedom.

Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty

Источник: http://www.rferl.org/content/freedom_house_free_press_lowest_in_a_decade/24565840.html