2005-2014

(ARTICLE 19/IFEX) - The very day Blair formally announced his intention to step down as leader of the Labour Party, an Old Bailey judge sentenced a whistleblower to six months' imprisonment and issued a gagging order against the media, sending a clear signal that government secrecy remains strong. Parallel efforts by the government to undermine the two-year-old Freedom of Information Act reinforce...

(HRinfo/IFEX) - Hrinfo has expressed dismay that Judge Abdel Fatah Murad has asked the Administrative Judiciary Court to block 29 websites, in addition to the 21 he had previously requested be made inaccessible. The judge amended his original list of websites following a 5 May 2007 investigation of the case by the court, resulting in a total of 50 websites presently vulnerable to closure as a...

(AJI/IFEX) - On World Press Freedom Day on 3 May 2007, the Alliance of Independent Journalists (AJI) Indonesia received the sad news that the state is seeking the arrest of journalist Risang Bima Wijaya, who has been in hiding following a 2005 Supreme Court ruling rejecting his appeal against a libel verdict handed to him by a lower court. The Supreme Court sentenced Risang Bima Wijaya, former...

QUITO, Ecuador – President Rafael Correa is suing a local newspaper for libel over an editorial that said he was leading the politically unstable nation with “mobs, rocks and clubs.” Correa said the La Hora editorial was “unfounded” and offended “the dignity of the country's foremost authority.” But he added he would drop the lawsuit if the paper's president, Francisco Vivanco, who is named in the...

(FLIP/IFEX) - Adamis Guerra Bermúdez, photographer for the Valledupar edition of the newspaper "Vanguardia Liberal", was assaulted on 9 May 2007 by informal gasoline vendors protesting a recent decision by the national tax authority. The incident occurred near the town hall of La Paz, 15 minutes from the city of Valledupar in Cesar department. The photographer and journalist Edgardo Mendoza were...

Baghdad, May 11, (VOI) – Iraqi journalist Jamal al-Atabi said the U.S. forces released his son Furat, a layout designer in the Iraqi newspaper al-Sabah, on Friday after three months in detention. "Iraqi Member of Parliament Mathal al-Alusi had several contacts with the U.S. forces for the release of my son, detained since February 2007, without any charges," Atabi told the independent news agency...

New York, May 11, 2007—Plainclothes officers raided the Dhaka home of prominent journalist and human rights advocate Tasneem Khalil early this morning in an action that the Committee to Protect Journalists called “an indication of the fragile state of press freedom in Bangladesh.” Four men identifying themselves as a “joint task force” came to Khalil’s house after midnight and said they were...

Reporters Without Borders has hailed the progress being made in the inquest into the 1975 deaths of cameraman Brian Peters and four other journalists in East Timor but deplored some of the comments made to the Coroners Court in Sydney on 8 May 2007 by former Prime Minister Gough Whitlam and his defence minister, Bill Morrison. "We share the anger expressed by some of the journalists' close...

May 11 (Bloomberg) -- Thomson Corp. agreed to sell its textbook and educational testing for $7.75 billion in cash to fund its $17.5 billion offer for Reuters Group Plc and create the biggest financial news and information company. Apax Partners, a London-based buyout firm, and the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System agreed to buy Thomson Learning and Nelson Canada, Thomson said today in...

The attack on the Dinakaran offices in Madurai by DMK supporters Wednesday has come in for condemnation from press freedom organisations worldwide. The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) mourned the deaths of three employees of Tamil daily Dinakaran who were killed in an attack on the newspaper’s offices. “We are horrified by the attack on Dinakaran newspaper and mourn these...