Tag: Iran

Corruption, Instability Deters Investment in Caspian Sea

A recent conference on the status of the Caspian Sea area highlighted the ongoing lack of development due to corruption and a lack of any stable structure determining who has development rights over the area.

Prior to the dissolution of the Soviet Union, control of the Caspian Sea was divided between Iran and the USSR. Currently five nations — Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Turkmenistan — claim rights over the sea, though so far the five nations have been unable to come to an agreement over the sharing of those rights.

That has left a lot of confusion that has deterred investment in the region. As U.S. envoy Steven Mann told the conference, “Successful development of the Caspian basin is not something we can consider inevitable.” That is true especially when the problem with corruption in the former Soviet republics is taken into account.

So what should be one of the wealthiest regions of the world, thanks to enormous untapped oil reserves, is nowhere near its potential due to a lack of a predictable legal structure.

Source:

Corruption ‘deters Caspian investors’. The BBC, February 26, 2002.

China Leads World in Imprisoning Journalists

A new report by the Committe to Protect Journalists says that China leads the world in imprisoning journalists. China accounted for 22 of the 87 journalists imprisoned worldwide.

The CPJ report noted that China seems to have hardened its stance against journalists over the past couple years, likely in response to the chaos created by rapid Internet adoption.

In previous years, the Chinese government made concessions to international public opinion by carefully stage-managing the release of prominent dissidents, including journalists, at critical moments. Authorities took a harder line in 2000, when not a single journalist was released.

Other countries which had jailed journalists as of December 2000 were,

Country

Imprisoned
Journalists
Algeria
2
Burma
8
Central African Republic
1
China
22
Comoros
1
Cuba
3
Democratic Republic of Congo
4
Egypt
1
Ethiopia
7
Iran
6
Kuwait
2
Nepal
1
Niger
1
Syria
1
Tunisia
2
Turkey
14
Uzbekistan
3
Vietnam
2

The number of imprisoned journalists has fallen dramatically since 1998, when 118 journalists were imprisoned, but these numbers do underestimate the problem since they only count journalists who were still in prison at the end of 2000. A much larger number of journalists were imprisoned for at least part of 2000 but released before the end of the year.

Of course arrest isn’t the only way of intimidating journalists. Last year 24 journalists were killed around the world either in the act of reporting on a story or in retaliation because of their reporting or affiliation with a news organization. The murder of journalists breaks down like this,

Country

Journalists
Killed

Bangladesh
 2
Brazil
 1
Colombia
 3
Guatemala
 1
Haiti
 1
India
 1
Mozambique
 1
Pakistan
 1
Philippines
 2
Russia
 3
Sierra Leone
 3
Somalia
 1
Spain
 1
Sri Lanka
 1
Ukraine
 1
Uruguay
 1

Additionally another 20 journalists were murdered worldwide, but the motive for those murders remains unclear.

Source:

Attack on the Press in 2000. Committee to Protect Journalists, 2000.

China: ‘Leading jailer’ of journalists. The BBC, March 19, 2001.