2005-2014

Yemeni journalist and activist Tawakkol Karman was released Monday, two days after her arbitrary arrest in Sana'a. Charged with “inciting disorder and chaos” and organizing unauthorised demonstrations and marches, she was freed on condition that she does not violate “public order and the law” again. Karman has been a leading figure in a three-week-old wave of protests demanding political reform in...

Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has expressed its deep concern in respect of the conditions in which journalists and political opponents have been held since the demonstrations of December 19, 2010. “The pressures exerted on them and their defence teams, and the efforts to limit dissemination of news about them, recall the repression campaigns of the Soviet era,”...

Targeted physical attacks were carried out Tuesday on journalists in several Lebanese cities including Beirut, the northern city of Tripoli and the southern city of Sidon, during violent protests that followed the announcement that a Hezbollah-backed candidate has been appointed prime minister, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). The press freedom...

Journalists were arrested and attacked physically while covering demonstrations on Tuesday and Wednesday in various Egyptian cities. The authorities have been doing everything possible to keep the media at a distance in order prevent the circulation of images of protesters demanding President Hosni Mubarak’s departure, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF)...

A local radio presenter with a reputation for outspokenness was shot in the head and killed January 24 on the island of Palawan in the west of the Philippines. Gerardo Ortega hosted a daily programme "Ramatak", on the station Radio Mindanao Network (RMN) dwAR. A man, identified as Marvin Alcaraz and said to be resident in Manila, is reported to have been arrested at the scene of the crime carrying...

A violent raid was carried out by Turkish police late last year on the offices of a far-left Turkish weekly following which five people were held, according to delayed reports received by Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). The raid took place on the offices of Yürüyüs and was described officially as an operation to arrest a member of a terrorist organisation. It has...

In a second such incident in Chhattisgarh, a journalist was shot dead by two masked gunmen in Raipur district, police said on Monday. Umesh Rajput, a reporter with Hindi daily Nai Duniya, was shot on Sunday night by the assailants outside his residence in Chura village, they said. The masked duo, then, fled on a motorcycle from the spot. Rajput was taken to a hospital by his family members and a...

Fahem Boukadous, a correspondent for the satellite TV station El Hiwar Ettounsi, has been released after 189 days in detention, Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. He had been serving a four-year jail sentence for allegedly participating in protests in the Gafsa mining region, 350 km south of Tunis, in 2008. Originally imposed in his absence, the sentence...

The police in Zambia have detained two journalists working for an independent newspaper and a local radio, apparently because of their displeasure at their coverage of a secessionist movement in the west of the country, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). Mwala Kalaluka, of the daily The Post, was detained on January 17 after he had reported on events last...

Leading Afghan journalist Hojatullah Mujadadi was acquitted Wednesday at the end of a two-day trial on a trumped-up charge of abetting insurgents, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). A former National Radio reporter who now runs Radio Kapisa FM, a station based in the northeastern province of Kapisa, Mujadadi was arrested by the National Directorate of...