2005-2014

The Malawi government has imposed a ban on the publication of weekly tabloid The Weekend Times. In a letter dated October 28, the National Archives of Malawi issued an immediate suspension of The Weekend Times on charges of failing to register the paper, according to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). The letter cited the 1958 Printed Publications Act, which requires all...

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has called on Gabonese authorities to free a journalist who was jailed on Tuesday for failing to pay exorbitant damages stemming from a 2004 civil libel suit. Jean-Yves Ntoutoume, editor of the private bimonthly Le Temps, was imprisoned over his newspaper's failure to pay 10 million CFA francs (US $20,000) in damages to Albert Méyé, a former treasurer of...

Authorities in Ethiopia's northeastern region of Afar are holding a journalist without charge since September 11, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported. Akram Ezedin is jailed in Asaita, the regional capital of Afar. He is 17 years old. His father is Ezedin Mohamed, the editor of Al-Quds, a privately owned Islamic weekly newspaper based in capital city of Addis...

Free speech organisations are urging the US Congress to abandon consideration of the proposed Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA), which Sen Patrick Leahy introduced into the Senate on September 21. At the Center for Democracy & Technology’s initiative, nine organszations and experts have sent the attached letter to the senator. COICA’s provisions include introducing a...

A Yemeni terrorism court haccused freelance journalist and Al-Qaeda analyst Abdulelah Shai on Tuesday of working with Al-Qaeda, according to news reports. Shai, who is on trial along with his assistant Abdul Karim Daoud al-Shami, has been accused of “belonging to an illegal network” and “supporting the al-Qaeda network” from 2008 to 2010, AFP reported. The journalist’s arrest comes after Al...

Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has urged the Radio and TV Supreme Council (RTÜK) in Turkey to drop the prosecution it has brought against Kanal D, a privately-owned TV station critical of the government, for broadcasting the reactions of the families of ten soldiers who were killed in an ambush by members of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). The station...

During the 15th hearing Monday in the trial in Istanbul of newspaper editor Hrant Dink’s alleged killers, the court rejected the Dink family’s request for the murder to be reenacted in the presence of alleged hitman Ogün Samast at the spot where Dink was gunned down, outside the office of his Turkish-Armenian weekly Agos in the Istanbul district of Sisli. In a surprise development, the court...

On the first day of his trial Monday before a state security court, journalist Abdul Ilah Haydar Shae challenged the court’s legality and said those responsible for his abduction and forced disappearance should also be on trial, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). His lawyers, Abdel Rahman Barman and Khaled Al-Anssi, attended the hearing as observers and...

In a video posted Monday on the website of the daily newspaper El Diario (and subsequently posted on YouTube), the abducted brother of former Chihuahua state attorney general Patricia González, lawyer Mario Ángel González, has accused her of ordering the murder of two journalists. González is seen handcuffed and surrounded by five heavily armed masked men in the video. Responding to questions, he...

CBS radio in Uganda resumed normal broadcasting at 9:30 a.m. on October 23 after being closed for a year. Its return to the air turns the page on the government’s closure of four radio stations amid rioting in Kampala in September 2009, Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has said. The press freedom organization nonetheless remains concerned about the climate for the...