Alerts

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NOT IN OLD HONG KONG

Newsday (New York, NY)
November 24, 2002
Copyright 2002 Newsday, Inc.

By A. Lin Neumann.


In many ways Hong Kong looks as good as ever. The soaring Bank of China building and its many gleaming neighbors in Central, the downtown business hub, still have the air of cocky optimism that built this former colony into an economic powerhouse and the freest Chinese city in the world. The streets are jammed with well-dressed office workers, the subway is crowded and yuppies belly up to the overpriced bars and fill the streets of the trendy Lan Kwai Fong district.

New York, December 9, 2002—Liberian authorities released journalist Hassan Bility, whom authorities had held incommunicado since June 24 as a "prisoner of war."

According to news reports, Bility, editor of the independent weekly The Analyst, was released without being charged or tried. He left the country this weekend for an undisclosed location.

On December 1, the Liberian government issued a statement saying that Bility and his colleagues would be released if the U.S. Embassy agreed to take them out of the country.

New York, December 3, 2002—Colombia's Constitutional Court has overturned sections of a government decree requiring foreign journalists to obtain authorization from the Interior Ministry before entering state-run security zones.

On November 25, the country's nine-member Constitutional Court ruled unanimously that the earlier decree requiring that foreigners traveling to the zones get permission first from the government could not be applied to journalists who are already accredited, according to a copy of the ruling obtained by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).

New York, December 2, 2002—The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is deeply concerned about growing threats against Haitian journalists in the wake of anti-government protests in the northern city of Cap-Haïtien that began on November 17 and continue to rattle the country.

On November 21, seven journalists from four private media outlets—including the director and three reporters from the privately owned Radio Etincelle—in Gonaïves, a seaside town northwest of Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince, went into hiding after receiving menacing telephone calls and verbal threats on the street for covering the Cap-Haïtien protests, said CPJ sources.

New York, November 26, 2002—The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) condemns the arrest in Bangladesh yesterday of three journalists working on a documentary for Britain's Channel 4 "Unreported World" series.

Reporter Zaiba Malik, director and cameraman Bruno Sorrentino, and Priscilla Raj, a free-lance journalist working for the documentary team as an interpreter, were taken into custody along with their driver, Misir Ali.

New York, November 25, 2002—The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) welcomes Russian president Vladimir Putin's decision today to veto restrictive amendments to the Law on the Struggle with Terrorism and the Law on Mass Media that were passed by Parliament earlier this month.

Putin announced his decision during a meeting with media chiefs. He also asked both houses of the Russian Parliament to form a commission to redraft the amendments.

New York, November 25, 2002—The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is alarmed that Irada Huseynova, a correspondent with the Azerbaijani weekly Bakinsky Bulvar who currently works for the Moscow-based Center for Journalism in Extreme Situations (CJES), was detained today in Moscow and could be extradited.

CJES director Oleg Panfilov told CPJ that Moscow police arrived at CJES offices and detained Huseynova at the request of Azerbaijan's Prosecutor General's Office. The journalist faces extradition to Azerbaijan, where she was facing possible jail time for criminal defamation charges.