Category: Letters to Countries

For the second time this year, a working journalist has been murdered in Mexico, apparently because of
his reporting on drug trafficking and corruption in the Tijuana area.

For the second time this year, a working journalist has been murdered in Mexico, apparently because of
his reporting on drug trafficking and corruption in the Tijuana area.

Under normal circumstances, we might rejoice at the news that two Cuban journalists imprisoned since March of last year have been released by your government. The provisional freedom given these two in no way atones for Cuba’s appalling record of suppressing journalists and others who express dissent — a record which has earned your government almost universal condemnation since the crack-down on Cuban activists in March, 2003.

It is shocking to learn that a court in Egypt has sentenced a journalist to two years in jail given your public commitment this past February to end prison sentences for press offences.

We write to express our shock and dismay at the June 6 attack on journalists in Saudi Arabia
that left BBC cameraman, Simon Cumbers, dead and BBC security correspondent and al-Queda expert, Frank Gardner, injured and in critical condition. Gunmen opened fire on the two BBC journalists and their Saudi information ministry “minder” as they were filming in a street in the
al-Suweidi district of Riyadh, a neighborhood seen as a militant stronghold.

Growing governmental control and deterioration of independent media and freedom of expression in Russia were demonstrated dramatically on June 1, 2004 when NTV, one of your country@quot;s leading TV channels, was compelled to ban Namedni , its popular news program and to fire the station@quot;s prominent journalist, Leonid Parfyonov.

We write to express the Overseas Press Club@quot;s serious concern about escalating threats to press freedom in Hong Kong. In recent weeks, three of Hong Kong@quot;s leading radio talk show hosts have left their radio programs. Each said that they or their families had been harassed and threatened with reprisals, in some cases from Chinese government-affiliated officials.

The Overseas Press Club of America (OPC) is disappointed that your government has not taken seriously the perpetually hazardous state of affairs for journalists in Bangladesh, officially one of the world@quot;s most dangerous places for reporters, with eight killed in the country during the past seven years.

The recent arrest of Abdishakur Yusuf Ali, editor of the independent newspaper War-Ogaal is a clear violation of international standards for free expression as established in Article 19 of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights.

Azerbaijan@quot;s persistent legal and financial harassment of the independent newspaper, Tezadlar ,
is most distressing to members of this non-partisan organization, which has defended press freedom around the world for 65 years.