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02/01/07
Report says 81 journalists killed in 2006; deadliest year
in a decade
By HOPE YEN
Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The number of journalists killed or jailed
worldwide has reached its highest level in a decade, with
arrests rising as governments seek to control the Internet,
an advocacy group said Thursday.
The survey by Reporters Without Borders, a media-advocacy
group, found that 81 journalists were killed last year and
more than 140 are behind bars. It was the worst year for deaths
since 1994, which was marked by the Rwandan genocide, civil
war in Algeria and conflict in the former Yugoslavia.
In the United States, blogger Josh Wolf was jailed last August
after defying a federal judge's order to hand over his video
of a protest at an economic summit of the world's industrial
powers. Sudanese Al-Jazeera cameraman Sami al-Haj was imprisoned
at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, without charges
on suspected al-Qaida links.
"There has never been a more dangerous time to be a journalist,"
said Lucie Morillon, Washington director of Reporters Without
Borders. "But even more deplorable was the lack of interest,
and sometimes even the failure, by democratic countries in
defending everywhere the values they are supposed to incarnate."
The report said many governments were seeking to gain more
control over the Internet, a popular medium for dissent in
less democratic countries and a growing source of news in
the U.S.
At least 60 people are in prison worldwide for posting criticism
of their governments online, from 50 in China to four in Vietnam,
three in Syria and one each in Tunisia, Libya and Iran.
China has been a leader among those countries in installing
spyware and demanding that U.S. companies Yahoo Inc., Google
Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Cisco Systems Inc. alter their search-engines
to filter out Web sites critical of the government, the report
said.
In the U.S., the report said journalists and bloggers' "freedom
of expression" is at risk. It called for laws requiring
that telecommunications companies treat Internet broadband
content alike and move the information at the same network
speed -- whether the content is on a small, independent blog,
or Web log, or well-heeled Web site.
Legislation to do that was rejected by the Senate last June,
but backers are hopeful that the new Democratic-controlled
Congress will change course.
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, meanwhile, has said that
Congress should require Internet providers to preserve customer
records as a way to assist prosecutors' investigations into
child pornography and possibly terrorism.
"It has become vital to examine new technology from a
moral standpoint and understand the secondary effects of it,"
the report said. "If firms and democratic countries continue
to duck the issue ... we shall soon be in a world where all
our communications are spied on."
Iraq was the most deadly country for journalists last year,
with 39 reporters and 26 other media workers killed. Among
them were two Americans -- Paul Douglas of CBS and his soundman
James Brolan, while the rest were Iraqis.
At least 30 journalists were arrested by Iraqi security forces
during 2006. The U.S. Army arrested eight media workers, including
AP photographer Bilal Hussein, who was taken into custody
last April and has yet to be charged.
During the international uproar over cartoons of the Prophet
Muhammad, countries did little to help journalists who were
threatened or arrested, the report said.
"It was as if, fearing a fight with Arab and Muslim regimes,
Europe, for one, renounced all desire to make itself heard,"
the report said.
The Muhammad drawings were first published in September 2005
in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten and were reprinted
four months later by a range of Western publications, triggering
massive protests from Morocco to Indonesia and some attacks
on Danish embassies.
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On the Net:
The full report can be found at: http://www.rsf.org/IMG/pdf/rapport_en_md-2.pdf
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