2005-2014

A bill introduced this week by Australia's Parliament would give the Australian federal police the power to control which sites can and cannot be viewed by Australian Web surfers. Introduced on Thursday, the bill--titled the Communications Legislation Amendment (Crime or Terrorism Related Internet Content) Bill 2007--would empower the federal police to alter the "blacklist" of sites that are...

(WiPC/IFEX) - The Writers in Prison Committee of International PEN welcomes the release of Mohamed Hussein Jimale, correspondent for the news website Puntlandpost.com ( http://www.puntlandpost.com ) on 17 September 2007 following five days of detention. It would like to share the following statement issued by Somali-Speaking PEN: The Somali-speaking Centre of International PEN welcomes the...

(FMM/IFEX) - The Mix Media Foundation in Ampara district informed FMM that one of its members, Mr. U Wijesinghe, was threatened in abusive language by a deputy inspector general of the police who also forcibly seized the journalist's camera and tape recorder. Mr. Wijesingha is the Pothuvil correspondent for "Lankadeepa" and "Daily Mirror" newspapers. FMM unequivocally condemns this uncivilized act...

(CEPET/IFEX) - Mexico, 20 September 2007 - Dalia Villatoro, a reporter with the daily newspaper "Cuarto Poder", was detained briefly and had her camera seized by members of the Independent Labour Organisation of Agrarian Workers and Peasants (Central Independiente de Obreros Agrícolas y Campesinos, CIOAC). According to a 19 September 2007 report from the press agency of "Proceso" magazine (Agencia...

(IPYS/IFEX) - On 16 September 2007, a group of women assaulted journalist Cora Cadena, the hostess of the programme "Transgresor Jatarishun" on Radio Luna, a station based in Quito, capital city of Ecuador. The assailants belong to the neo-Nazi group "cabezas rapadas" ("shaved heads"), which opposes social and ethnical diversity, issues regularly discussed on Cadena's programme. The journalist was...

(RSF/IFEX) - Reporters Without Borders voiced indignation at the authorities' hounding of Munir Mengal, one of the managers of Baloch Voice television, who was released by the Baluchistan High Court on 12 September 2007. The court declared that he was guilty of no crime, but he was nonetheless rearrested by police. The inspector general of police in Balochistan told journalists in Quetta on 14...

(RSF/IFEX) - Reporters Without Borders calls on the secretary of the Maldives parliament, the People's Majlis, to rescind a ban on reporter Lushan Saeed of the daily "Miadhu" from entering the parliament building until the end of the year. Saeed, who specialises in parliamentary affairs, was notified of the ban in a letter from the parliament's secretariat on 17 September 2007. He is being...

(RSF/IFEX) - The authorities announced the suspension of a finance ministry official on 14 September 2007 for criticising the military government in blog posts. The announcement came eight days after the military proclaimed a state of emergency to prevent the return from exile of former Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase, who is accused of inciting the military government's overthrow. Charges were...

(MISA/IFEX) - The chief executive officer of Zimbabwe Broadcasting Holdings (ZBH), Henry Muradzikwa, has admitted that political interference and censorship of news reports is the order of the day at the state-controlled national broadcaster. Appearing before the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Transport and Communications, Muradzikwa said interference with ZBH's editorial policy and...

(AJI/IFEX) - AJI condemns the actions of the Indonesian police and the telecommunications company P.T. Telkom in tapping the cellular telephone account of "TEMPO" journalist Metta Dharmasaputra, and circulating print-out copies of text messages and conversations recorded without the journalist's consent. P.T. Telkom acknowledges that it released the documents at the request of the police. This...