The Freedom of the Press Committee has had a productive month, having written 13 letters to foreign governments protesting violations of press freedom. The bad news is that there were so many cases demanding our attention.
Your Committee has had a productive month, having written 13 letters to foreign governments protesting violations of press freedom. The bad news is that there were so many cases demanding our attention. Among the highlights:
We wrote to Kim Jong Il of North Korea, protesting the arrests of the American journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee on charges of illegal entry into the country and unspecified "hostile acts," and requesting their release. We also wrote to the government of China asking it to use its influence with North Korea in the same cause. Unfortunately, the two women were sentenced to 12 years at hard labor, and their case is inextricably caught up in the murky diplomacy of North Korea’s defiance of the rest of the world.
The committee had a happier result in protesting to British Prime Minister Gordon Brown that Suzanne Breen, Belfast editor of the Dublin Sunday Tribune, was well within her rights in refusing to turn over her notes and source material about the Real IRA to a Belfast judge. Breen was the first to publish the Real IRA’s claim of responsibility for the murder of two soldiers last March, and she also interviewed a member of the militant group. She argued that complying with the request would be a violation of journalistic ethics and an effective death sentence for herself and her family, and shortly after our letter was sent, the British courts agreed.
We told President Hu Jintao of China that it was entirely understandable that his government wanted to obliterate all traces of the Tiananmen Square massacre twenty years ago, since it was a shameful episode and a continuing blot on China’s efforts to take its place as a force in the modern world. But we predicted that the memory could not be erased, and that "only a thorough airing . . . can persuade your people that their government has their interests at heart."
We wrote to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, supreme leader of Iran, that "whatever the outcome of the current electoral dispute, no good can result to your country from continuing the increasingly heavy-handed repression of journalists who are trying to report these events to the world." Among 13 journalists being held when we wrote was Newsweek‘s veteran correspondent, Maziar Bahari. At Newsweek‘s request, we prepared a second letter appealing to Iran on his behalf, but we are withholding it, again at Newsweek‘s request, on the ground that negotiations are now at a delicate point.
We criticized the government of Iraq for more than 70 cases of assault and harassment of independent journalists by Iraqi security forces, and pointed out that since March, 2003, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, 139 journalists and 51 media workers have been killed in Iraq. We asked Prime Minister Nouri Kamal al-Maliki to enforce his country’s constitutional guarantee of press freedom.
Our other letters this past month have gone to Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Somalia, Kenya, India, Mexico and Pakistan, and at this writing, more letters are in the works to Egypt, the Gambia and Russia. I should add that while none of the committee’s members are doing this work for any sort of glory, they do not get enough recognition for what they do. So I want to mention in this report that the writers of this month’s letters were Jeremy Main, Bob Dowling, David Alpern, Jackie Simon, George Bookman, and our three co-chairmen, Norman Schorr, Kevin McDermott, and myself. I urge you to read the letters, all of which are posted on the Web site, and to encourage the writers by adding your comments in the space provided.