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CPJ Jinx: Top-ranked 'enemies of the press' meet untimely fates

By W. Joseph Campbell
freedomforum.org

05.08.01

From left, Foday Sankoh, Sierra Leone; Sani Abacha, Nigeria; Slobodan Milosevic, Yugoslavia; Abu Abdul Rahman Amin, Algeria.

Call it coincidence. Call it a jinx.

But above all, call it hazardous for the person ranked atop the "enemies of the press" list released every year in May by the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists.

The organization says the ratings of what it calls "press tyrants" are meant to train attention "on individual leaders who are responsible for the world's worst abuses against the media."

But there is another, less-discussed effect, in appearance if not reality: In recent years, the CPJ's top international enemy of the press has been either killed, jailed, or has fallen victim to a fatal heart attack. In most cases, what can be called the CPJ Jinx struck soon after the press enemies list was announced.

Specifically:

• Abu Abdul Rahman Amin, leader of the Armed Islamic Group of Algeria, topped the enemies list in 1996. His faction "claimed responsibility for many of the 58 assassinations of journalists in Algeria" during the early and mid-1990s, CPJ said. It quoted Rahman Amin as having vowed: "Those who fight with the pen shall die by the sword." Rahman Amin, who also went by the name Jamel Zituni, was killed in an ambush in July1996. (China's Deng Xiaoping, the second-ranked press enemy that year, died in February 1997.)

• Sani Abacha, the ruthless dictator of Nigeria, was CPJ's leading enemy of the press in 1998. About a month after the rankings were announced, Abacha was dead, reportedly from a heart attack. His death set in motion changes that led to the release of all journalists jailed in Nigeria and the return of multiparty democracy in Africa's most populous state.

• Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia led the press-enemies list in 1999 for the systematic crackdown against independent journalism. Milosevic clung to power for 17 months after the enemies list was announced. He was deposed in October last year and has since been jailed by Yugoslav authorities.

• Foday Sankoh, leader of a rebel movement in Sierra Leone, topped the press-enemies list in 2000. The year before, 10 journalists were killed in war-torn Sierra Leone, most of them targets of Sankoh's Revolutionary United Front. CPJ said in announcing Sankoh's dubious distinction that it doubted he and his rebel movement would "ever face charges for their deadly campaign against journalists." Less than three weeks later, however, Sankoh was in detention. He reportedly is in the custody of Sierra Leonean police and may soon face trial.

This year, CPJ's top-ranked press enemy is Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader, who has presided over the systematic repression of the country's reform-minded press. Khamenei, who was second on last year's enemies list, set in motion the crackdown with what CPJ called a "fiery … sermon against the press" in April last year. Since then, more than 30 newspapers have been closed and several prominent journalists have been imprisoned.

CPJ makes no claim that being at the top of the enemies list is a causal factor in the deaths or the ouster of the men it identifies as the leading "press tyrants."

But the CPJ Jinx is "obviously very interesting," said Ann K. Cooper, the organization's executive director, when asked about it yesterday. "I'm really quite surprised," she said, by the extent of the phenomenon. (She was reluctant to call it the "CPJ Jinx," saying: "I don't think it's a jinx. Well, maybe from their perspective.")

Cooper added: "I don't know that we can claim credit for [the top enemies'] leaving power. The fact that they are on the list is because they are oppressors of press freedom and, usually, a lot of other things go along with that," such as large-scale human rights violations.

Sankoh in Sierra Leone, for example, was in 1999 "committing atrocities and journalists were exposing those atrocities," Cooper said. "Sankoh in turn was targeting those journalists. Thankfully, he has been sidelined."

Many of the CPJ press enemies are leaders of states or movements in violent and unstable parts of the world and that, inevitably, heightens the odds of their untimely death or sudden ouster. And there's always sheer coincidence as a likely explanation.

After all, several other dictators have made the CPJ list, year after year, without apparent consequence to their health or their regimes. What CPJ calls the "perennial press freedom offenders" include Cuba's Fidel Castro, who has appeared on the list seven times, and China's Jiang Zemin, who has been listed five successive years and has ranked as high as second in 1999 and 1997.

While they may be "repeat offenders," neither Castro nor Jiang has ever reached the top of the CPJ list.

And there's one "press tyrant" who, in a way, has defied the CPJ Jinx. He is Antar Zouabri, CPJ's top-ranked enemy in 1997 and Rahman Amin's successor as head of the Armed Islamic Group. Zouabri was reported slain in July 1997, a little more than two months after the CPJ list was announced, but those reports were in error.

In recent years, however, Algeria has become far less lethal for journalists and Zouabri's shadowy movement has been riven by defections and internal dissension. His whereabouts are uncertain. An Algerian newspaper, Le Matin, said early this year that "despite a number of reports about [Zouabri's] death no one is sure about his fate."

But he is scarcely the worrisome figure he was four years ago, when he topped the CPJ press-enemies list.