Continued from here ...

In the Americas, the present situation is hit and miss.

For Central America, Costa Rica and Panama are looking pretty good, but Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras see political control of media forcing self-censorship.

In Guatemala and Honduras, these problems combine to produce violence against a lively media. Guatemalan radio journalist Eduardo Maas Bol was killed on 9 September and Vinicio Aguilar Mancilla, of the independent station Radio 10, escaped assassination in August.

Haitian journalists got by with few attacks in 2006, but this is not a particularly good sign.

... the killers of journalists murdered under the rule of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and the interim government that succeeded him remained unpunished and the suspects walk freely in public. New President René Préval has a big job ahead of him to create a fair and effective system of justice.

Peru holds the record again for daily physical attacks and threats. More than 100 incidents against journalists were recorded in 2006, and two politicians who'd been serving time for killing two reporters in 2004 were released.

An emerging dissident press in Vietnam got off to a good start with the government feeling liberal, but by the end of the year the situation was changing fast.

Everything seemed to be smiling on the Vietnamese press at the start of 2006. In April, a dissident publication Tu Do Ngon Luan began appearing in the big cities and online ...

... Repression of dissident activities was stepped up in November, in the run-up to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Hanoi. Journalists working for independent publications Tu Do Ngon Luan and Tu Do Dân Chu were put under house arrest, with notices in front of their homes reading, “Security zone. No foreigners”. Police deployed for several days in front of the home of Hoang Tien, while newly-released cyber-dissident Pham Hong Son was savagely beaten by police.

Once the foreign delegations had left Vietnam, the government launched its counter-attack. The foreign ministry spokesman, Le Dung, said it was unacceptable that people should abuse the “mask of democracy, with false, distorted and invented claims about the situation in Vietnam”. The authorities gave a firm reminder that dissident publications were illegal.

Continued ...