This has nothing to do with Judy Miller but of journalists being held in Iraq and at Guantanamo Bay. In this regard, we rank right up there with China, Cuba and tied with Burma. The US is officially holding five journalists in detention. The article mentions nothing about who these people are or what they are suspected of doing. Truly frightening.
http://news.yahoo.com/...
NEW YORK (AFP) - China and Cuba were the world's leading jailers of journalists in 2005, while the United States was listed among the top 10 for the first time, placing it on a par with Burma.
The annual list compiled by the watchdog Committee for the Protection of Journalists (CPJ) named 125 editors, writers, and photojournalists imprisoned around the world as of December 1.
China topped the list with 32 journalists in custody, followed by Cuba with 24. The African nations of Eritrea and Ethiopia came next with 15 and 13 respectively.
The United States, which is holding five journalists in detention centers in
Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, rose to sixth place, just behind Uzbekistan and tied with Burma.
"Anti-state" allegations, including subversion, divulging state secrets, and acting against the interests of the state, were the most common charges used to imprison journalists worldwide, accounting for 78 cases.
"We're particularly troubled that the list of the worst abusers now includes Ethiopia and the United States," CPJ Executive Director Ann Cooper said.
"Journalists covering conflict, unrest, corruption, and human rights abuses face a growing risk of incarceration in many countries, where governments seek to disguise their repressive acts as legitimate legal processes."
In Iraq, journalists have been military targets and some that were captured have told of their mistreatment. Their price for not being "embedded." I wonder if the US is ranked first in the outright killing of journalists.
This is from the Nation.
http://www.thenation.com/...
These include not only the events of April 8, 2003, but credible accounts of journalists being tortured by the US military in Iraq, such as Salah Hassan and Suheib Badr Darwish of Al Jazeera [see Christian Parenti, "Al Jazeera Goes to Jail," March 29, 2004] and three Reuters staffers who say they were brutalized by US forces for seventy-two hours after they filmed a crashed US helicopter near Falluja in January 2004. According to news reports, the journalists were blindfolded, forced to stand for hours with their arms raised and threatened with sexual abuse. A family member of one journalist said US interrogators stripped him naked and forced a shoe into his mouth.
In many of these cases, there is a common thread: The journalists, mostly Arabs, were reporting on places or incidents that the military may not have wanted the world to see--military vehicles in flames, helicopters shot down, fierce resistance against the "liberation" forces, civilian deaths.
So much for freedom of the press...