Reporters Without Borders spreads f

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Reporters Without Borders spreads free press mantra in Asia

By Sarju Kaul

(From Asian Age Newspaper: March 2, 2000)

New Delhi, March 1: Paris-based Reporters Sans Frontieres (reporters
Without Borders) plans to increase its focus on Asia, a continent which
has made very few advances in the field of press freedom. "We would like
to start mobilising more individual members and media organizations in
Asia, especially India so as to create awareness and sensitise them
about the problems facing journalists worldwide", Mr Robert Menard,
secretary-general and founding members of the organization, said here on
Wednesday.

"Although some Asian countries like Jordan, Indonesia and Malaysia have
improved their track record on press freedom, the overall situation
hasn't improved much in the last 40 years," Mr Menard added.

The RCF secretary-general said that the Asian governments use excuse of
traditional values in order to deny freedom to the press. The situation
is very bad in the Arabian nations which use Islamic laws to repress the
press, he added.

Reporters Sans Frontiers though initially started in 1985 to cover
"countries forgotten by the media," shifted its focus since 1989 to seek
and check information about violations of press freedom and try and
secure the release of imprisoned journalists.

The organization also publishes an annual report on the violations of
press freedom and according to the latest figures, out of 185 members of
the United Nations, only 30 have a free press, the next group is that of
60 nations that have a free press but journalists face a few problems in
their work. India is included in this group of 60 nations because of the
harassment that journalists face in Jammu and Kashmir and Assam due to
rise of militancy in these two states, Mr Vincent Brossel of the RSF's
Asia-Pacific Desk said.

The third category also has 60 nations which record numerous violations
and the freedom allowed to the press is very low. Turkey with a record
of imprisoning hundreds of journalists belongs to this group. However,
China, Burma, Syria and Laos form the last group of 30 nations where the
press has no freedom at all.

The two-member RCF delegation was in India to primarily gather
information about a Tibetan journalist jailed in China. They also held
talks in Dharamsala with Tibetan journalists working for underground
press in China.

In order to press for release of imprisoned journalists, the Reporters
Sans Frontieres organizes press campaigns, sends about 500 protest
letters annually to the governments involved, appeals to various UN and
international human rights fora and even provides lawyers and pays the
bail amount, Mr Menard said. To help in various activities, the
organization has 15 full time employees and about 100 corespondents
worldwide.

"Once all the data about the imprisoned journalists is verified, the
process of sponsoring the journalist begins," explained Mr Menard and
added: "This basically involves writing articles about the journalist
till his/her release. The deal may also involve forming a link with the
person's family and helping out with money in certain cases".

Till now, most of these sponsorships have involved only the Western
journalists, he said. Now we are focussing on a nation like India, which
has thousands of newspapers to help out in sponsorships, the RCF
secretary-general added.

Surprisingly, the organization does not even have a single member from
India. "We are trying to increase our presence in South Asia due to
problems in subcontinent ? civil war in Sri Lanka, unrest in Bangladesh,
junta rule in Burma and militancy in parts of India," Mr Menard said.

Another important reason, he said, was that there is no organization
working for the freedom of press in India. "We are holding a meeting in
New Delhi by the end of the year to formulate an exact plan to increase
presence in India," Mr Brossel said.

The membership fee for media organization is $250 per annual and for
individual members it is $ 50. The details about membership can be
checked out at the official website: www.rsf.fr