overview of Asiaby Vikram Parekh
Civil strife and separatist wars provided the backdrop to most of the press freedom violations in South Asia, while the more autocratic regimes of East Asia impeded access to information through Internet censorship and the ongoing suppression of dissident journalism.
China blocked access to Internet sites run by Hong Kong- and U.S.-based news organizations, including The Washington Post, The New York Times, and the respected Chinese language daily Ming Pao. Singapore established a regulatory body to police the Internet and required the city-state's three Internet providers to install equipment capable of blocking access to banned sites. Vietnam-which allows only limited access to the Internet, primarily to foreigners working in the country-continued to vacillate on the question of legalizing broader Internet use. As a preliminary step, the government drafted regulatory guidelines that reportedly hold subscribers responsible for the content of both transmitted and received communications, and permit the government to shut down service providers if their subscribers transmit "offensive" or "subversive" material. These and other press freedom issues formed the basis for ground-breaking discussions betweenVietnamese officials and a CPJ delegation that visited Vietnam in September 1996.
Crackdowns on dissident journalism proceeded apace in China and Indonesia. A Beijing court sentenced a noted dissident, Wang Dan, to 11 years in prison for conspiring to subvert the government, a charge based in part on articles that Wang had written for the overseas press. And in a year marked by massive civil unrest in Indonesia, President Suharto's regime stepped up its persecution of Indonesia's only independent journalists union, the Alliance of Independent Journalists (AJI). Authorities shifted two imprisoned AJI members, including CPJ's 1995 International Press Freedom awardee Ahmad Taufik, to a more remote facility after they smuggled out an interview with a fellow inmate, East Timorese leader José Alexandre ("Xanana") Gusmaõ. Indonesian police also raided a printing press used by the underground magazine Suara Independen, which was founded by AJI, and arrested two of its employees, charging them with the distribution of printed materials defaming Suharto.
With the handover of Hong Kong from Britain to China scheduled for July 1997, Hong Kong journalists looked warily across the border. What they saw was not encouraging. Senior Chinese leaders said publicly that Hong Kong journalists would not be allowed after the handover to advocate Hong Kong or Taiwanese independence, nor would they be able to publish what Chinese Foreign Minister Qian Qichen termed "personal attacks" on Chinese leaders.
Political turmoil in much of South Asia put journalists in danger of both physical and legal assault. In Bangladesh, many journalists were physically attacked early in the year after opposition parties boycotted elections called by the government. Police fatally shot a journalist for the weekly Neel Sagar as he attempted to cover an opposition protest, while the government charged the daily Ajker Kagoj with sedition and raided its offices. In Karachi, Pakistan's largest city, journalists for party organs and independent publications alike continued to be caught in the crossfire between a provincial government dominated by ethnic Sindhis and an opposition party of Urdu-speaking immigrants from India. One journalist who was put in prison in 1995 on charges of terrorism was still there at the end of 1996. Many of his colleagues believe he was framed. In India, inconclusive assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh, the country's most populous state, allowed a powerful political figure-whom all the major parties were courting in hopes of forming a coalition government-to lead a physical assault on a group of journalists without fear of prosecution.
India and Sri Lanka sought to contain separatist movements within their borders by imposing gags on the local press. In India's northern state of Jammu and Kashmir, the Indian government held elections for Kashmiri representatives to the national Parliament for the first time since 1989, when separatists in Kashmir began an armed uprising against Indian rule. During the elections, federally appointed state authorities in Kashmir issued a directive to the local press, warning journalists against publishing statements by separatist leaders, material deemed prejudicial to national unity, or articles that expressed a lack of faith in the elections. In Sri Lanka, the government for the second time in two years introduced strict censorship of all reporting on the military in conjunction with an army offensive against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) on the country's northern Jaffna Peninsula.
Vikram Parekh is the program coordinator for Asia. He holds a J.D. from Rutgers Law School and a B.A. in politics from the University of California, Santa Cruz. Before joining CPJ, he was a Ford Foundation Fellow at the International Center for Law in Development, and has worked both for the International Human Rights Law Group in Washington, D.C., and the International Institute of New Jersey.
James Bucknell, the research associate for Asia, contributed extensively to this report. Paul Zielbauer, who was the research associate for Asia from January through May 1996, also contributed to the report.