Belarus occupies 18th place from the end of press freedom rating

An international human rights defending organization “Reporters without Borders” has published one more yearly rating of press freedom. Belarus occupies 151st place out of the 169 possible positions on the list. “Reporters without Borders” note that three former republics of the USSR - Belarus, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan – are among the 20 countries placed at the end of the rating.

Iceland leads the list. It is followed by Norway, Estonia, Slovakia, Belgium, Finland, Sweden, Ireland and Portugal. Latvia occupies the 12th position, Germany – the 20th, Lithuania – the 23rd and Great Britain – the 24th.  The USA is in the 48th place.

Poland is in the 57th place, Kosovo – in the 60th. Ukraine occupies the 93rd position, Russia - the 144th. The situation concerning the freedom of the press in Pakistan, Syria, Vietnam, China and Myanmar is worse then it is in Belarus.

The last five countries on the list are Cuba, Iran, Turkmenistan, North Korea and Eritrea. The press freedom rating is created by 15 organizations from different regions of the world struggling for protection of the freedom of expression.

These partnership organizations fill in a questionnaire of 50 questions and the list is created according to the results.

BelaPAN