April 1, 2003	Tuesday	Muharram 28, 1424

NEW YORK, March 31: Nineteen journalists were killed and 136 were jailed worldwide last year, according to a survey of press freedom around the world carried out by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).

The report, released by the New York-based watchdog group on Monday, documents some 500 cases of media repression in 120 countries, including assassination, assault, imprisonment, censorship, and legal harassment.

“Coverage of the Gulf war, in which two journalists have been killed and many injured, has increased public awareness of the risks that journalists take to report the news,” said CPJ acting director Joel Simon in a press release.

“But we must also remember that journalists in places like Colombia, Haiti, Zimbabwe, Russia, and China confront violence and government repression every day in order to do their jobs.”

The CPJ noted: “For the second year in a row, the number of journalists in prison rose sharply. There were 136 journalists in jail at the end of 2002, a 15 per cent increase from 2001 and a shocking 68 per cent increase since the end of 2000, when only 81 journalists were imprisoned. China arrested five journalist. In Eritrea, 18 journalists languish behind bars, and 16 journalists were incarcerated in Nepal.”

Although the number of journalists behind bars rose in 2002, there were some positive trends in press freedom worldwide, the CPJ observed.

After representatives of the watchdog travelled to Vladivostok, Russia, to pressure authorities to free imprisoned journalist Grigory Pasko, he was released early this year before completing his full term.

INDIA: “India is famous for being the world’s largest democracy, but government actions in 2002 to curb the press indicate a growing intolerance among the country’s leadership. Many journalists say the ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) seems to target its critics in the media as a matter of policy “and largely gets away with it,” the CPJ report said.

In the western state of Gujarat, the report said, police and political activists were responsible for a series of physical assaults against journalists covering the violence that swept the state after a mob attacked a train carrying Hindu activists in February.

Police in Rajkot, a city in Gujarat, beat Sudhir Vyas, a reporter from the Times of India, while he attempted to cover the unrest. “They said: Why are you here? Have you come to report on what we are doing?” Vyas told CPJ: “They knew I was seeing what they allowed others to do.”

In June, the government threatened to expel Time magazine’s New Delhi bureau chief, Alex Perry, after he wrote an article questioning Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s fitness to lead the country during heightened tension in the Sub-continent. Though officials interrogated Mr Perry about alleged visa infractions, they took no further action.

Less than a month later, the government forced Al Jazeera correspondent Nasir Shadid to leave India. “Al Jazeera is replacing its correspondent,” external affairs ministry spokeswoman Nirupama Rao said, according to The Associated Press. “This is a decision the government of India makes.”

PAKISTAN: Pakistani journalists have long navigated a treacherous course, threatened by militant groups, criminal gangs, political bosses, and powerful intelligence agencies, but the rest of the world scarcely noticed these dangers until the assassination of American reporter Daniel Pearl, said the survey.

Months after Mr Pearl’s murder, another journalist was killed in Pakistan: Shahid Soomro. Like Mr Pearl, Mr Soomro was killed in the volatile Sindh province, but he was the victim of local politicos angered by his reporting on their abuse of power. Mr Pearl, the South Asia bureau chief for the US-based Wall Street Journal, was kidnapped and killed in Karachi while reporting on links between local militant groups and the Al Qaeda network.

Many Pakistani journalists condemned Daniel Pearl’s kidnappers, the report recalled.

However, it added, the Pakistani press, “which includes everything from religious-party organs to scandal sheets to sober political journals”, largely holds its own under the military government.

“While self-censorship is widespread, the tenacity of the local media is remarkable.”

The report said although Pakistani journalists have long endured routine surveillance and harassment, these pressures have intensified under the present government.

Working without the protection offered by democratic institutions, many journalists avoid publicizing state-sponsored harassment for fear of reprisals, the CPJ said.

One of the country’s leading newspapers sent a private letter to President Musharraf after two of its correspondents complained of harassment and threats from intelligence officials. The letter, a copy of which CPJ obtained, urged the president to order an inquiry into the matter, but also explained that the newspaper “does not want to generate a public controversy through its publications when there is a dire need for greater harmony in the country to meet the external threat”.