By Michael Carl
A report by a press freedom watchdog group, the Committee to Protect Journalists, says Burma is among the worst offenders in arrests of free-lance journalists worldwide.
The CPJ website reports 68 journalists were killed in the field this year, the largest number ever recorded by the group.
The CPJ also reports 136 journalists are in prison worldwide. China leads the pack, holding 24 members of the press in prison. While most of the working journalists being held in Chinese jails are also free-lance reporters, little attention has been paid to China’s southern neighbor Burma.
CPJ spokesman Andrew Levinson reports Burma is holding nine members of the press in jail. This is the second highest total in East Asia and the fifth largest worldwide according to the CPJ study.
Former ABC News Jerusalem and Moscow correspondent and Hoover Institution Fellow Bob Zelnick believes Burma is more than a dictatorship.
“Burma is also a military junta which puts them in a special category regarding their narrow-mindedness towards dissent,” he said.
“Military dictatorships have run the gamut from some that aren’t very brutal but still exercise control. The Greek military states are in that category. There are those who have been brutal. Argentina and Chile are in this category,” Zelnick said.
“Burma is sort of a cross between the two. I think their record of massive killings isn’t as bad as some of the dictatorships in the world, but they’re not very tolerant of dissent.”
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http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=119432
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This post was written by mcarl on December 21, 2009
