NKorea, Turkmenistan, Eritrea at bottom of press freedom ranks

PARIS: North Korea, Turkmenistan and Eritrea are the "worst predators of press freedom", according to a new study published that also finds the United States, France, Japan and Denmark among those slipping in the global press freedom scale.

"Unfortunately nothing has changed in the countries that are the worst predators of press freedom, and journalists in North Korea, Eritrea, Turkmenistan, Cuba, Burma and China are still risking their life or imprisonment for trying to keep us informed," said the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders (RSF), which authored the 168-nation "Worldwide Press Freedom Index 2006."

"These situations are extremely serious," Reporters Without Borders added in its fifth such study, "and it is urgent that leaders of these countries accept criticism and stop routinely cracking down on the media so harshly." The report is not all bleak. Haiti has jumped from 125th to 87th place in the two years since former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide fled the turmoil- torn country. Although several murders of reporters remain unpublished, RSF said, violence against the media has subsided.

Press freedom also improved in Bolivia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Panama, Ghana and several Gulf countries, the media watchdog group said. And a crop of northern European countries, including Finland, Ireland, Iceland and the Netherlands continue to top the index, sharing first place this year.

But elsewhere in the world, a mix of factors -- including war, political repression, national security concerns and rising nationalism -- pose new threats to journalistic liberty. Wartorn Lebanon, for example, tumbled from 56th to 107th place in the past five years, the study reports, "as the country's media continues to suffer from the region's poisonous political atmosphere, with a series of bomb attacks in 2005 and Israeli military attacks this year.

" The study also criticizes the Palestinian Authority (134th) for failing to maintain internal stability and Israel (135th) for behavior outside its borders that "seriously threaten freedom of expression in the Middle East," it said. Elsewhere, political repression in Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia left those countries near the bottom of the index.