World Press Freedom Day
Condi notes repression of journalists in China, Iran, Russia, Zimbabwe and Venezuela. hmmmmmm What about some of our other friends? I was censored in Egypt for writing about civil rights in the US, a big hole in the article. Didn’t this al-Baghdadi guy get arrested for writing about music classes in Kuwait? Saudi Arabia, enough said there. What about not only the censorship but the pressure from the militant Islamists that journalists are facing in the Middle East? What about the wall of governmental propagnda from the state run media outlets? Wassupwidat? Then there’s Yemen.
Secretary Condoleezza Rice
Washington, DC
May 3, 2006
As the United States celebrates World Press Freedom Day, we hail the courageous
sacrifices made by journalists around the world to report the facts, even at
the cost of their lives and their freedom. Every day brave men and women risk
harassment, beatings, detention, imprisonment and even death simply for seeking
to share the truth with others around the world. In other countries, the crack
down on press freedoms include: tightening libel laws, a concentration of media
ownership, restricted Internet search engines and diminishing independent press
outlets.
In China, 62 cyber dissidents are being held in prison. Zhao Yan, a New York
Times researcher, was also charged with revealing state secrets in connection
with a 2004 New York Times story on leadership changes in China. Despite the
charges recently being dropped, he has still not been released. In Zimbabwe,
security forces selectively harassed, beat and arbitrarily arrested members of
the media.
In Venezuela, the combination of new laws governing libel and broadcast media
content, legal harassment against journalists, and physical intimidation has
resulted in limitations on press freedoms and a climate of self-censorship. In
Russia, the government continued to weaken media independence, particularly of
the major television networks. In Iran, press freedom has eroded. In addition
to harassing and imprisoning journalists, the Iranian culture ministry ordered
the daily newspaper Asia to be closed, and banned a planned women’s
publication, Nour-e Banovan, from being published.
While the United States will continue working to advocate for greater global
press freedom, all free societies carry the responsibility to press restrictive
governments to allow an open press. Independent media empowers people, exposes
corruption, encourages transparency and prompts participation in the political
process. Without it, society as a whole suffers.
2006/45
Released on May 3, 2006
Then theres the Brits:
British foreign office minister Kim Howells said Muslims, and some non-Muslims, had been “rightly offended” by the publication of the cartoons.
But he also criticized some Islamic media for their handling of the issue, saying “the existence of anti-Western and anti-Jewish media and material in the Muslim world, some of it in state owned press, undermined as hypocritical the moral indignation that was expressed.”
Howells said it was right that the issue of Islamophobia was addressed, but Islamic governments and organizations should also address problems that give Islam a negative image.
He cited support for Taliban-type legal and social systems, “recent statements coming out of Tehran,” practices that segregate and subjugate women, and conspiracy theories about 9/11 being a CIA plot and polio vaccines being contaminated with viruses.
“And reports of raped women being punished and stoned, restrictions on other religions, including death sentences pronounced on Christian converts, poor human rights records and authoritarian, undemocratic environments all have a negative impact which we cannot ignore.”
Howells also challenged views in the Islamic world that he said were wrong, such as the perception that “our foreign policy is deliberately anti-Muslim.”
“The reasons for action in Afghanistan and Iraq had nothing to do with the faith of Islam but with the political and security issues that these countries posed.”
He said the Islamic world had the right to criticize policies pursued by Britain, the U.S. or the European Union, “but continuing to blame the West for all the ills of the Muslim world is an act of self-denial.”
