Mick Hartley

Reporters Sans Frontières have published their press freedom index for 2007:

Eritrea has replaced North Korea in last place in an index measuring the level of press freedom in 169 countries throughout the world that is published today by Reporters Without Borders for the sixth year running.

“There is nothing surprising about this,” Reporters Without Borders said. “Even if we are not aware of all the press freedom violations in North Korea and Turkmenistan, which are second and third from last, Eritrea deserves to be at the bottom. The privately-owned press has been banished by the authoritarian President Issaias Afeworki and the few journalists who dare to criticise the regime are thrown in prison. We know that four of them have died in detention and we have every reason to fear that others will suffer the same fate.”

Outside Europe – in which the top 14 countries are located – no region of the world has been spared censorship or violence towards journalists.

Of the 20 countries at the bottom of the index, seven are Asian (Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Laos, Vietnam, China, Burma, and North Korea), five are African (Ethiopia, Equatorial Guinea, Libya, Somalia and Eritrea), four are in the Middle East (Syria, Iraq, Palestinian Territories and Iran), three are former Soviet republics (Belarus, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan) and one is in the Americas (Cuba).

The top placings aren’t of much interest: as with all those country-ranking quality of life lists, the Northern Europeans come out on top – mainly, I imagine, because there’s not much to challenge the bland conformity (am I showing my prejudices here?). The UK come in at 24, the US at 48. Some of the criteria are a little strange: the US get marked down, for instance, because of the murder of Chauncey Bailey in Oakland back in August, which would make more sense if he’d be killed by some government agency, rather than by a semi-criminal organisation whose dealings Bailey, in the finest traditions of investigative journalism, had exposed.

Anyway, it’s the bottom countries which merit attention – Iran at 166, above only Eritrea and North Korea, Cuba at 165, Burma 164, China 163.

“We are particularly disturbed by the situation in Burma (164th),” Reporters Without Borders said. “The military junta’s crackdown on demonstrations bodes ill for the future of basic freedoms in this country.

Bodes ill – that, I think you could say, is putting it mildly.