2005-2014

The climate for the media has been continuously deteriorating in Côte d’Ivoire. Harassed, threatened and exposed to physical violence, journalists are now finding it virtually impossible to work freely, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). It urged civil society and the two rival camps led by Laurent Gbagbo and Alassane Ouattara to respect freedom of...

An armed raid was carried out Wednesday morning on the Baghdad headquarters of the Journalistic Freedoms Observatory (JFO), partner organisation of Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) in Iraq, in which all of the JFO’s computers and archives were stolen “A dozen gunmen belonging to private security forces burst into our office near Al-Fardous Square in central Baghdad...

The offices of the "People's Daily" ( Halkin Gunlugu) newspaper, the Democratic Peoples Association and the home of members of the Democratic Peoples Federation (DHF) in seven provinces and counties were raided by the police. Twenty-three people were taken into custody, among them two journalists - the paper's editor-in-chief, Hidir Gurz, and the paper's representative in Mersin, Deniz Kismetli...

Newspaper editor Raphaël Nkamtcheun has been detained for the past week for receiving allegedly confidential government documents from former finance minister Polycarpe Abah Abah when he visited Abah in Yaoundé prison on February 17. Abah has been jailed since 2008 on an embezzlement charge. “This is an arbitrary act designed to silence the press,” Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans...

Several sources in Iran have told Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) that the authorities have again been blocking the Internet and mobile phone networks since the start of a big protest at 3 p.m. on February 20. Internet connections have been slowed right down or entirely disconnected in certain neighbourhoods in Tehran, Isfahan, Shiraz and Mashad, making it hard or...

The Bahraini security forces had previously been restrained in the way they obstructed journalists but snipers in a helicopter fired at New York Times reporter Michael Slackman and cameraman Sean Patrick Farrell as they were filming the violence in Manama’s Pearl Square on February 18. The US network security company Arbor Networks reports a 20 per cent decrease in Internet traffic in and out of...

The violence against journalists has been continuing in Yemen. In one of the latest incidents, security forces assaulted Zaki Saqladi, a correspondent of the news website AlmasdarOnline, Tuesday in the southern province of Ad-Dali, confiscating his car and his camera, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). Swiss Info correspondent Abdel-Karim Salam was the...

The Libyan authorities have imposed a news blackout on what is going in the country. It was already very difficult to interview people on the spot before the government began to trying to crush the uprising. It is now virtually impossible for a journalist to work. The few foreign correspondents who were already in Libya before the crisis are kept under extremely close surveillance and have to...

A campaign was launched Tuesday by the National Press Owners Committee (CONAPP), the Togo Union of Independent Journalists (UJIT) and the Togolese Media Monitoring Centre (OTM) to draw attention to the plight of three privately-owned radio stations which the government closed three months ago. The three stations – Providence, Métropolys and X-Solaire – were closed by the Posts and...

A destructive attack was carried out by 50 masked gunmen Sunday on the headquarters of Naliya Radio and Television (NRT) in the compound known as “German Village” in Sulaimaniya, in northern Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region, to prevent it from continuing to cover unrest in the city. After firing at NRT’s guards, wounding one of them, the gunmen smashed all the broadcasting equipment and then set...