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From the February 2004 issue of World Press Review (VOL. 51, No. 4)

From the Editor

Bad News for Blissful Ignorance

Alice Chasan

Do me a favor: Spend a minute focusing on the riveting back stories behind every issue of World Press Review. Each time you open this magazine, you benefit from the courage and tenacity of my colleagues worldwide, who often put themselves in jeopardy to give you and readers in their countries what you find in these pages.

On global journalism’s front lines, there’s some good news and bad. The bad news is depressingly familiar: Authoritarian governments in Iran, Zimbabwe, and Pakistan recently have moved to silence independent press outlets or journalists.

After months of harassment of the Daily News, Zimbabwe’s only remaining independent daily newspaper, the regime of Robert Mugabe moved in January against the journalists of the Zimbabwe Independent, a Harare weekly true to its name, whose editor, Iden Wetherell, richly deserved the International Editor of the Year Award WPR gave him in 2002. Wetherell, news editor Vincent Kahiya, and reporters Dumisani Muleya and Itai Dzamara were arrested and charged with criminal defamation for reporting that Mugabe “grabbed” an Air Zimbabwe jet for a holiday in Asia. They face 10 years in prison if convicted.

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On the eve of parliamentary elections in February, Iran’s judiciary closed the country’s two remaining reformist newspapers, Yas-e No and Shargh, and three news Web sites. Coming after weeks of mounting tension between reformists and the hard-line Guardian Council that speaks for the supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, the move sought to control coverage of the balloting, from which the council barred thousands of reformist candidates.

Meanwhile, Khamenei declared on Feb. 20, “Today the country enjoys a total freedom of expression.” How do you say “Orwellian” in Farsi?

And in Pakistan, where a U.S.-backed military regime poses as a democracy, journalist Khawar Mehdi Rizvi vanished on Dec. 16 after working with French reporters investigating Taliban activity in the border provinces between Afghanistan and Pakistan. He was held for more than 40 days, then charged with sedition and conspiracy—offenses that carry a life sentence.

Gen. Pervez Musharraf, the country’s president, said he holds Rizvi “in the poorest of opinion,” calling him “a most unpatriotic man.” Apparently, Musharraf’s benevolence—seen in his pardon of Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, who parlayed his stature as father of Pakistan’s bomb into a black-market business in nuclear blueprints and gear—stops short of journalists who highlight his regime’s weaknesses.

Now, the good news: More often than not, efforts to muzzle the independent press fail.

After a weekend in jail, Wetherell and his team returned to work. He pledged: “This clumsy attempt to silence us by locking us up for 48 hours, prosecuting us over a story where much of the facts are agreed, will do nothing to silence the voice of the Zimbabwe Independent.”

February’s closures in Tehran were the latest move in a complex cat-and-mouse game between the hard-liners and the reformists; for years, Iran’s resilient journalists have resurrected new publications from the remains of their shuttered predecessors.

And in Pakistan, Musharraf has yet to evade the scrutiny of such courageous publications as Dawn and The News, which keep a spotlight on the nuclear proliferation story and the regime’s other seamy secrets.

Ignorant populations may spell bliss for authoritarian rulers, but time and again, journalists’ resourcefulness trumps repression. Information will out, and we are all the better for it.




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Bad News for Blissful Ignorance

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