DUSHANBE, October 17, Asia-Plus — Tajikistan has been ranked 115th in an index measuring the level of press freedom in 169 countries throughout the world that is published yesterday by Reporters Without Borders for the sixth year running.
G8 members, except Russia, have shown slight improvement, according to the report. After falling steadily in the index for the past three years, the G8 members have recovered a few places. France (31st), for example, has climbed six places in the past year. French journalists were spared the violence that affected them at the end of 2005 in a labor conflict in Corsica and during the demonstrations in the city suburbs. But many concerns remain about repeated censorship, searches of news organizations, and a lack of guarantees for the confidentiality of journalists’ sources.
There were slightly fewer press freedom violations in the United States (48th) and blogger Josh Wolf was freed after 224 days in prison. But the detention of Al-Jazeera’s Sudanese cameraman, Sami Al-Haj, since 13 June 2002 at the military base of Guantanamo and the murder of Chauncey Bailey in Oakland in August mean the United States is still unable to join the lead group.
While Russia ranked 144th is not progressing. Anna Politkovskaya’s murder in October 2006, the failure to punish those responsible for murdering journalists, and the still glaring lack of diversity in the media, especially the broadcast media, weighed heavily in the evaluation of press freedom in Russia.
All of the European Union member countries made it into the top 50 except Bulgaria (51st) and Poland (56th).
Of the 20 countries at the bottom of the index, seven are Asian (Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Laos, Vietnam, China, Burma, and North Korea), five are African (Ethiopia, Equatorial Guinea, Libya, Somalia and Eritrea), four are in the Middle East (Syria, Iraq, Palestinian Territories and Iran), three are former Soviet republics (Belarus, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan) and one is in the Americas (Cuba).
The report also noted that the
Internet is occupying more and more space in the breakdown of press freedom violations. Several countries fell in the ranking this year because of serious, repeated violations of the free flow of online news and information. The governments of repressive countries are now targeting bloggers and online journalists as forcefully as journalists in the traditional media.
At least 64 persons are currently imprisoned worldwide because of what they posted on the Internet. China maintains its leadership in this form of repression, with a total of 50 cyber-dissidents in prison. Eight are being held in Vietnam. A young man known as Kareem Amer was sentenced to four years in prison in Egypt for blog posts criticizing the president and Islamist control of the country’s universities.
Reporters Without Borders compiled this index by sending a questionnaire to the 15 freedom of expression organizations throughout the world that are its partners, to its network of 130 correspondents, and to journalists, researchers, jurists and human rights activists. It contained 50 questions about press freedom in their countries. The index covers 169 nations. Other countries were not included because of lack of data.
