WASHINGTON (AFP) — Reporters Without Borders, a global media watchdog, on Wednesday called on US President George W. Bush to use his attendance of the Olympic Games in Beijing to push for press freedom and other democratic reforms in China.
Bush should "push for change and urge the Chinese authorities to release political prisoners and end censorship," Lucie Morillon, director of Reporters Without Borders USA, told a forum in Washington where the group's annual report was released.
"This could be an important part of his legacy," she said, referring to Bush's last year in office after being first elected in 2000.
The annual report said 2007 was a tough year for the media with 87 journalists killed, the highest since 1994.
Eighty-two journalists, Internet users and bloggers are currently imprisoned in China, according to Reporters Without Borders.
Chinese authorities promised "total press freedom" when awarded the Olympic Games, which will officially open on August 8, "but none of their promises were kept," Morillon said.
Chinese journalist He Qinglian, author of "How the Chinese government controls the media," told the forum that even journalists who wrote on health and pollution issues were not spared in her country.
"The government is shameless. China is not a respectable member of the international community," she said.
Five years after the US invasion, Iraq remains the world's biggest graveyard for journalists, Reporters Without Borders said.
All but one of the 47 journalists killed in the insurgency-wracked nation last year were Iraqis.
"I have been close to many car bombs, and even held at gun point," said Iraqi journalist Ayub Nuri, who related his experience in the war zone when conflict began in March 2003.
Reporters Without Borders was asking the Iraqi authorities to set up a special task force to investigate the circumstances under which journalists were killed and "end the climate of impunity," Morillon said.
Eritrea replaced North Korea at the bottom of the media watchdog's index of press freedom covering 169 countries in 2007.
Even in the United States, journalists are not entirely safe.
A newspaper editor in Oakland, California was murdered in broad daylight in August last year on his way to work while investigating a financial crime.
Oakland Post editor Chauncey Bailey was the first American journalist since 1975 believed killed for his work.
Now, the publisher of the Oakland Post, Paul Cobb, said he was receiving death threats.
"We have heard stories of oppressive regimes around the world, but those of us who dare to write about police corruption and black-on-black crime run the same risk here in the United States," he told the forum.
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