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Eritrea worst place for journos
16/10/2007 20:12 - (SA)
Paris - The group Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said on Tuesday that Eritrea had taken over from North Korea as the country in the world where media rights were the least respected.
North Korea and Turkmenistan were runners-up in RSF's annual poll of shame of 169 countries.
RSF said: "Eritrea deserves to be at the bottom. The privately-owned press has been banished by the authoritarian President Issaias Afeworki and the few journalists who dare to criticise the regime are thrown in prison.
"We know that four of them have died in detention and we have every reason to fear that others will suffer the same fate."
'Internet can play a key role'
Meanwhile, the internet has become a major target of press freedom violations, RSF reported, with bloggers arrested and news websites closed or made inaccessible.
"We are concerned about the increase in cases of online censorship," RSF said.
"More and more governments have realised that the internet can play a key role in the fight for democracy and they are establishing new methods of censoring it," it said.
RSF said at least 64 people were 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," it said, but cases were also reported in Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam and Egypt.
"We regret that China (163rd) stagnates near the bottom of the index. With less than a year to go to the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the reforms and the releases of imprisoned journalists so often promised by the authorities seem to be a vain hope," it said.
'Disturbed about situation in Burma/Myanmar'
"Russia (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.
"We are particularly disturbed by the situation in Burma (164th)," RSF said. "The military junta's crackdown on demonstrations bodes ill for the future of basic freedoms in this country. Journalists continue to work under the yoke of harsh censorship from which nothing escapes, not even small ads."
- SAPA
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