2005-2014

Israel has barred foreign journalists from entering the Gaza Strip for a week. The move is being seen as a serious violation of press freedom. According to media reports, military officials in Israel said only humanitarian aid workers and Palestinian patients are allowed to enter or leave Gaza as a result of the resumed shelling of rockets into Israel by Palestinians militants from Gaza. Israeli...

Zakari Alzouma, the editor the independent weekly Opinions, was released Tuesday, but given a three-month suspended prison sentence for supposedly libelling interior minister Albadé Abouba, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. Alzouma was arrested on October 30 in response to a complaint by the interior minister about an article reporting that he “took advantage” of Prime Minister Seini...

The Indian embassy in Sweden has denied visas to journalists for writing critical reports about social issues in the country, including trafficking of women in Mumbai and changing gender roles in India. Freelance journalist Ulrika Nandra and foreign correspondent of daily Göteborgs-Posten, Marina Malmgren, are two of the Swedish journalists whose visa applications have been rejected, according to...

A Somalian freelance journalist has been arrested for reportedly filming two bombings last month, the Mogadishu-based National Union of Somali Journalists (NUSOJ) has reported. Hadis Mohammed Hadis was arrested on November 3 at Igal International Airport in Hargeisa city by officers from Somaliland's Criminal Investigations Department (CID). According to local journalists, the arrest came after...

A magazine editor in Colombia is facing a prison term after a judge reviewing a complaint against the magazine deemed two published corrections as insufficient, according to the Bogotá-based Fundación para la Libertad de Prensa (FLIP). In spite of the fact that "Semana" magazine has issued two corrections concerning information it published on allegations about the influence a particular...

Four Azeri minority journalists who were arrested on September 10 while meeting at a political activist’s home in Tehran were released on November 8 after paying bail of 50 million toumen (45,000 euros) but they are still charged with “conspiracy” and “offence against national security.” They spent nearly two months in solitary confinement in section 209 of Tehran’s Evin prison where, according to...

A Spanish prosecutor has recommended five-month prison sentences for two journalists— reporter Asier Velez de Mendizábal of the daily Gara and photographer Lánder Fernández de Arroyabe of the Argazki Press agency—who covered a demonstration by a radical Basque nationalist group in Pamplona, in the northern region of Navarre. The sentences were requested on November 3 by prosecutor Edilberto...

Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has called for the release of Shawan Dawodi, the editor of the weekly Hawal, who was sentenced to a month in prison and a fine by a court in the Kurdish city of Sulaymaniyah on November 4 over a series of articles four years ago criticising judicial reform in Iraqi Kurdistan. “There are no legal grounds for this arbitrary sentence as it is based on a law that has...

The shooting down of a Pakistani journalist by security forces in a case of mistake identity in the country's Swat Valley region has come in for widespread comdemnation. Pakistani security forces shot Qari Muhammad Shoib, a Mingora-based print journalist on Saturday night when e failed to stop his car for a military convoy enforcing a curfew at Nishat Chowk of Mingora city in the restive Swat...

Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has condemned a Brussels court ruling on November 4 ordering weekly Humo to immediately withdraw all copies of its latest issue from sale on penalty of paying a fine of 250 euros for each copy left on sale. The summary judgment was issued in response to an action brought by the federal police chief about a satirical photo-montage showing his head, and that of his...