One Up, Three Down

After nine years, press freedom came back to Argentina last week by proclamation of Provisional President Eduardo Lonardi. On the same day, anti-Peronist employees of the famed independent La Prensa, seized by Peron in 1951, threw pictures and busts of the dictator and his wife, Eva. from the building, began publishing the paper minus the masthead slogan "in the era of Peron." Editor and Publisher Alberto Gainza Paz, who has lived in exile in Manhattan, prepared to fly back to Buenos Aires in hopes of resuming control of Latin America's greatest newspaper. Said he: "I will fight for the reopening of all the other newspapers Peron closed or seized." But in the long struggle for complete freedom of the press throughout the world. Argentina was the sole bright spot last week.

In Colombia, President Gustavo Rojas Pinilla put on a big show of lifting the government's press censorship, but actually clamped down with a "code of ethics" that banned all stories that stir up politics, "imply lack of respect" for him or for friendly nations, hurt the economy or simply cause disorder.

In Turkey, the government used martial law in Istanbul and Ankara to close five of the nation's biggest newspapers--one indefinitely, four for two weeks. Chief reason: most of them had printed a request from ex-President Ismet Inonu for a parliamentary investigation into the government's handling of the destructive riots against Turkey's Greek minority {see FOREIGN NEWS).

In India, Prime Minister Nehru's government turned down a request from the New York Times for permission to print its daily international edition in India,* because of a new regulation against printing "Indian editions of foreign periodicals which deal mainly with news and current affairs." This was the latest in a long list of attempts by the Nehru government to curb freedom of the press; if Nehru has his way, India's entire press will be brought under government control. His government has asked the Indian Parliament to give it the authority to fix prices of papers, to set up a press council that would "censure anyone guilty of infraction of the ethics of the profession," to empower a press registrar to get full financial and business data from newspaper owners.

* Now being printed in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and Lima, Peru.

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