PARIS, May 2: Press freedoms in Asia’s dictatorships and democracies alike suffered last year, with the Philippines and Bangladesh among the world’s most dangerous countries for journalists, a watchdog group said in a report marking world press freedom day. The region’s independent media continued to be dogged by violence and censorship, while authoritarian governments such as China, North Korea, Myanmar and Vietnam tightened control of news and information, according to the annual report by Reporters Sans Frontieres (Reporters Without Borders, or RSF).

“The year 2004 was horribly similar to the year that preceded it,” the RSF said in the report, which noted that 16 of the 53 journalists killed worldwide last year died in Asia, excluding Iraq. Six were killed in the Philippines and four in Bangladesh. “In the Philippines, where press freedom flourishes more than almost anywhere on the continent, hired killers targeted radio and local newspaper journalists on the orders of corrupt local politicians,” the report said.

Last year six journalists were killed for doing their jobs in the Philippines, while seven others were killed in cases with unclear motives, the report added. It also named Bangladesh, where there was a physical attack on a journalist every two days on average last year, as “a kind of hell for the independent press”. Four reporters were killed and 10 were arrested there last year.

Violence is “a daily reality” for hundreds of journalists there as well as in Nepal, where the army arrested or questioned some 400 reporters, Afghanistan and Pakistan, it added. Of the world’s 107 imprisoned journalists as of Jan 1, 46 were in Asia, the report said. The junta in Myanmar has harassed or arrested journalists critical of military rule, while North Korea “kept an iron grip on its journalists, reduced to a pathetic role as propagandists”.

It said democracies, as well as China, “seized on the pretext of the fight against terrorism to justify attacks on press freedom”. China, Pakistan and Indonesia closed off large areas of territory to the media during anti-terrorist operations last year, while Australia toughened security measures allowing its secret services to monitor communications, including those of journalists, it said.

South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun’s government passed a new law trying to limit the influence of major dailies critical of his administration, although it was amended under intense opposition pressure.

In its annual worldwide index of press freedom released late last year, it placed several Asian countries at the bottom of the list, including North Korea last at 167th place, Myanmar at 165th, China 162nd, Vietnam 161st and Laos 153rd. —AFP