FOCUS ON THE AMERICAS - International Press Institute

the equipment, were denounced by the
BAJ. A popular private station, Autoradio,
was forced to close by the government,
accused of broadcasting calls for “extremist
behavior”. Western countries have condemned
the government’s grip on press
freedom in Belarus and the European
Union signaled that it was ready to impose
visa sanctions on Lukashenko.
In Bulgaria, on February 3, 2010, the premises
of the Varna office of Bulgarian TV SKAT
were attacked with a Molotov cocktail, following
a similar attack on the head office of
TV SKAT in Burgas just one day previously.
The perpetrators remain unknown so far. In
2009, TV SKAT journalist Silvija
Trendafilova and her colleague, cameraman
Peter Georgiev, were beaten by the bodyguards
of a leader of a political party.
Police in Latvia, on May 11, searched the
home of a journalist working for Latvian
public TV broadcaster Latvijas Televizija
and confiscated her computer, along with
other storage media that contained personal
information. Latvijas Televizija had
broken the story of the leak of millions of
documents relating to tax information
from the National Revenue Services’ online
reporting system.
Police searched Ilze Nagla’s house, and several
others, hoping to find information relating
to a shadowy hacker, known only as
“Neo”, who claimed to have been behind
the cyber-attack at the origin of the leak.
Neo had contacted Nagla.
SEEMO, in October, called for police protection
to be extended to B92 journalist Sonja
Kamenkovic from Zajecar, Serbia. Kamenkovic
had reportedly been investigating
a local police official who, it is alleged,
had issued the threats.
Impunity continued to be a problem, with
limited progress being made in investigations
into attacks on journalists across
swathes of Europe. In Russia, after the acquittal
of all three defendants in the murder
of noted journalist Anna Politkovskaya in
2009, no new arrests have been made. In
Azerbaijan, journalist and focus of the IPI
Justice Denied campaign Eynulla Fatullayev
remains in prison, on what are widely
believed to be trumped-up drug charges,
despite a European Court of Human Rights
ruling demanding his release.
2010 saw five journalists killed for their work
across Europe. In January, Boris Nikolov
Tsankov, a radio host and author of books on
the Bulgarian mafia, was shot by unknown
gunmen on the way to meet with his lawyer.
He died instantly. Tsankov had survived a
previous attack on his life in 2004.
In Belarus, Aleh Byabenin, founder and director
of pro-opposition news website
Charter 97, was found hanged in his holiday
home outside the capital, Minsk, in
September. Although the death was ruled a
suicide, colleagues of the journalist said
that this was unlikely. Byabenin also had
unexplained injuries.
In Greece, Sokratis Giolias, 37, director of
the radio station Thema 98.9 FM and administrator
of the most popular social and
political Greek blog, Troktiko, was shot
Left: Demonstrators protest against the media law in
Hungary in front of the Hungarian embassy in Vienna,
Austria, January 14, 2011. Banner reads: "For media
and press freedom world-wide." (AP)
dead on July 19. During the early hours of
the morning, an unidentified man rang the
doorbell at Giolias’s home and informed
him that someone was attempting to steal
his car. Giolias went outside to the building
entrance where he had parked his car and
it was then he was shot several times. Giolias’s
body was riddled with bullets and he
died on the spot.
In Latvia, Grigorijs Ņemcovs, publisher of
Latvia’s biggest regional Russian-language
newspaper, Million, and owner of a local TV
station, also called Million, was shot twice
in the head at close range on April 16 in a
café in Daugavpils, in the south-eastern region
of Latgale. The murder appeared to be
a contract killing. Founded by Ņemcovs in
1995, Million is known for its investigative
reporting of political and local government
corruption. Ņemcovs had received death
threats in 2007 when his home was targeted
in an arson attack. He was also a local
politician and deputy mayor of Daugavpils.
Two journalists were killed in Russia this
year. Sayid Ibragimov, director of local television
station TBS in the Sergokalinsky
district of Dagestan, died on May 13 on his
way to restore a TV re-transmitter damaged
by militants’ fire a day earlier. Ibragimov’s
car, which was carrying a team of repairmen,
and an accompanying police jeep
were ambushed near the village of Ayazi.
Gunmen set off a bomb in front of the vehicles
and then opened fire on them, killing
five men, among them Ibragimov, and
wounding four others.
Magomedvagif Sultanmagomedov, a Muslim
scholar who was the head of
Makhachkala TV and the Nurul Irshad publishing
house in Dagestan was killed on August
11 when he was fatally injured by
unidentified gunmen as he was driving his
car in the centre of Makhachkala, the North
Caucasus republic’s capital. He later died in
hospital. Colleagues believe that his murder
was the result of his journalistic activities.
In Turkey, Metin Alataş, 34, a journalist
working for Kurdish daily newspaper
Azadiya Welat, was found hanged from a
tree in the Hadırlı district of Adana in the
predominantly Kurdish region of southeastern
Turkey on April 4. Alataş was last
heard from on April 3 when he went to the
district to distribute copies of the paper. He
was also attacked in December whilst distributing
the paper in the region. Colleagues
believe he was killed by “illegal
forces” or forced to commit suicide.
Middle East & North Africa
Overview: As the Region
Boils, Reporters Stand Up to
Repression
By Naomi Hunt
D
emonstrations in Tunisia at the
end of 2010 resulted in the overthrow of
President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, and observers
began to speculate as to whether
similar street-level movements could uproot
the decades-long rule of leaders in
other Middle East autocracies. The failure
of talks between Israel and the Palestinian
Authority, the continued
fear of Iran’s alleged nuclear
aspirations and the threat of
Islamist terrorism, drove a
high-level international political
agenda that often disregards
human rights on the
ground. But blogs and social
media websites including Twitter and Facebook
are giving ever more young people in
the MENA region a platform on which to
organize and exchange information and
opinions about day-to-day events. If the
example of Tunisia is anything to go by, the
combination of a young demographic and
new technology may mean that grassroots
concerns will be given more prominence
on the political agenda. But new technology
does not guarantee press freedom, and
across the region both traditional and new
media remain constrained by outdated and
repressive laws, sometimes implemented
by corrupt judiciaries, and the fear of attack.
In 2010, as per agreements made by the
United States under former president
George W. Bush, the U.S. reduced the number
of its troops in Iraq by more than half.
Parliamentary elections were held in
March 2010, but these resulted in months
of deadlock without the creation of a new
government. Prior to the elections, the
Iraqi Communications and Media Commission
(CMC) issued media rules on licensing
and registration, and ordered journalists
to refrain from inciting violence in
terms that were criticized for their vague
wording. Reporters and photographers
were fre-
While some journalists were
released, others were jailed
without charge; dozens remain
behind bars.
quentlythreatened,insulted
and assaulted
by
members
of the army and police, a trend that continued
throughout the year. In April, Omar
Ibrahim Al-Jabouri of Al-Rasheed TV survived
a car-bomb assassination attempt
that cost him both of his legs. Television
stations Al-Arabiya and Al-Baghdadia
came under attack in a suicide attack that
killed four and in a raid and series of arrests
by the government, showing that journalists
must reckon with threats from both terrorists
and the regime. The attacks also
showed that while Iraq now has a relatively
free media environment, it is still one of the
most dangerous countries in the world in
which to operate as a journalist. Particularly
in the autonomous region of Iraqi
Kurdistan, journalists face the threat of violence
and abduction by figures linked to
political parties for their reporting. Six Iraqi
journalists were killed in targeted, calculated
attacks in 2010. While this is a drastic
decline from the first few years of the U.S.-
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