118 Journalists in Prison As of December 31, 1998

At the end of each year, CPJ attempts to document every case of everyone held in prison anywhere in the world on charges related to journalistic work. This includes newsgathering, writing, editing, publishing, broadcasting, and photojournalism. It applies to opinion, analysis, and commentary, as well as to factual reportage. We undoubtedly miss some cases. Information about these journalists and their convictions is often extremely difficult to obtain and verify. There are many reported instances of journalists' jailings that we do not consider confirmed because we cannot verify the information or because we cannot demonstrate a direct relationship between the imprisonment and the journalist's work. Based on all information available to us, we have verified 118 journalists in prison for their work as of December 31, 1998. The largest number, 27, were held in Turkey, while China and Ethiopia each held a dozen journalists prisoner. Sierra Leone, which last year had no journalists in prison, held 11 journalists at year's end. All of them caught up in the civil strife that has prevailed in the country since President Ahmed Tejan Kabbah returned to fight the rebels who had ousted him from elected office in 1997.

Information about all the imprisoned journalists, held in 25 countries from Algeria to Vietnam, is presented here chronologically.

The total is down from 129 confirmed cases of journalists in prison one year earlier. The most significant reduction was in Nigeria, where the June death of military dictator Sani Abacha, named one of CPJ's 10 Worst Enemies of the Press just a month earlier, led to the release of all but one of 17 imprisoned reporters and editors. Among those freed was Sunday Magazine editor Chris Anyanwu, a recipient in absentia of CPJ's 1997 International Press Freedom Award. In November, Anyanwu received her award, belatedly but in person, at CPJ's annual awards ceremony in New York City. She was followed at the podium by Doan Viet Hoat, a journalist from Vietnam who was in a Vietnamese prison when he was named an awardee in 1993. Hoat was freed in 1998 after eight years in prison.

At the end of 1998, officials in Eritrea freed Ruth Simon, the local correspondent for Agence France-Presse, who had been held for 20 months. Simon's release came one month after CPJ had honored her in absentia at the November benefit with an International Press Freedom Award.

The freeing of Anyanwu, Hoat, and Simon demonstrates that governments do respond to pressure; as Press Freedom Award recipients, each of these three journalists was the focus of intense efforts by CPJ to gain their release. But campaigns to free dozens of other imprisoned journalists continue, and 1998 saw scant progress in the three countries with the worst records.

Turkey's total has changed little from the 29 held a year earlier. Five of the 27 were newly imprisoned in 1998; all five are affiliated with pro-Kurdish publications. These numbers illuminate Turkey's long-standing pattern of outlawing reporting on the ongoing civil war with Kurdish insurgents in the southeastern part of the country. And the fact that 25 journalists imprisoned before 1998 remain behind bars is evidence of the Turkish government's failure to make good on its promises to CPJ in July 1997 to push for the release of all imprisoned journalists and the reform of the statutes used to criminalize journalism.

Ethiopia persisted in its practice of flouting the rule of law by intimidating outspoken journalists with frequent jailings without charge. Most of China's imprisoned journalists have been held since the early 1990s for publishing alleged "state secrets" or writing and distributing political leaflets critical of Communist Party rule. But in a disturbing milestone, the Chinese government in 1998 prosecuted an Internet entrepreneur for sharing e-mail addresses with a dissident website, an ominous sign that Beijing intends to squelch yet another medium of free expression.

Every name on this list represents someone who we, as fellow journalists, believe was unjustly imprisoned because of his or her work. Not everyone on this list is a career journalist, however. We include political analysts, human rights activists, and others who have been prosecuted because of opinion pieces or news features they have written or broadcast. All working journalists in these countries are directly threatened by such prosecutions, and thus we have an obligation to defend such imprisoned writers as colleagues.

In totalitarian societies where independent journalism is forbidden, CPJ often defends prosecuted writers who would be defined by their governments as political dissidents rather than journalists. This category would embrace the samizdat publishers of the former Soviet Union, the wall-poster essayists of the pre-Tiananmen period in China, and the underground pamphleteers of today's Burma. CPJ also classifies as an imprisoned journalist anyone with a news media background in an authoritarian or totalitarian state who is prosecuted for campaigning for free expression. We believe that working in the defense of press freedom is as legitimate an activity for a journalist as reporting or editing.

In addition to the 118 confirmed cases reported here, we have listed another four "unconfirmed" cases of imprisoned journalists, in Sudan and Turkey. In these cases, we could not verify that the journalists were in prison at year's end, and we are seeking additional information from local sources and clarification from the governments in question.