Features

Two journalists and a human rights activist went on trial today in the Turkmen capital of Ashgabat. The hearings lasted just a few minutes and ended with the judge handing long jail sentences to all three defendants, Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) reported. A LAW UNTO HIMSELF:President-for-Life Saparmurat Niyazov himself decides what prison sentences are to be handed down in a country

A Guatemalan radio host was seriously injured Wednesday when unidentified assailants shot him in the face as he was jogging in Guatemala City, according to news reports and the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). PENSIVE BROTHER: Brother of radio journalist Vinicio Aguilar Mancilla looks at local reporters at the Herrera LLerandi Hospital where Aguilar is recovering from a gunshot wound in

In Bangladesh a journalist doesn't know who is going to attack him/her next. Reckoned to be one of the most dangerous places for a journalist to be in, the country unfailingly lives up to its reputation every few weeks. Barely had the brutal attack on an Indian journalist sunk in, that activists of the ruling Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) let loose their ire on a newspaper that is one of its

Life for investigative journalists in Brazil is increasingly becoming difficult. This month alone one journalist has been abducted (and subsequently released), one threatened and thus forced into hiding, while a newspaper has been barred by a court to write on a trafficiking case in which investigations are on. GRABBED AT WORK: A television frame grab aired on August 13, 2006, shows undated

Pakistan does not investigate murders of its own journalists as vigorously as it does of foreign journalists. An international press freedom group last week urged Pakistan to investigate the deaths of seven Pakistani journalists as diligently as it did the killing of US journalist Daniel Pearl in 2002. ABDUCTED AND MURDERED: Hayatullah Khan, a Pakistani journalist, is seen during his funural near

Press freedom organisations are outraged by the decision of a judge in Burkina Faso to drop charges against the only suspect in the 1998 murder of a journalist probing criminal allegations against the president's family. BROTHER'S PRESIDENT: Before his death, Norbert Zongo was investigating allegations that François Compaoré, brother and special advisor to President Blaise Compaoré (above)

A seventh journalist in Colombia has been forced to flee following death threats. Marcos Perales Mendoza, editor of La Portada, an investigative monthly based in Barrancabermeja (in the northern department of Santander), has been forced to flee the region by the death threats he has been getting since May 2005 in response to his articles about local corruption. He finally decided to leave after

The idyllic charm of the Maldives belies the numerous cases of arbitrary arrests, detention, harassment and intimidation of media practitioners, an international factfinding mission to the country has revealed. Journalists covering political and social events and demonstrations, as well as the participants in those demonstrations, have been the victims of excessive use of force by security forces

As leaders of the world's wealthiest democracies descend on St Petersburg, these G-8 heads of states are not likely to see a critical press coverage from the Russian media. President Vladimir Putin is firmly in saddle, and press freedom is comatose. ANGRY OLD WOMAN: An elderly woman argues with riot police, during a march by Russian commnists through St Petersburg, Russia, Saturday July 15, 2006

Twenty-eight months after Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak promised to initiate legislations to decriminalise press offences comes a new law which does not do enough to protect journalists from prosecution for reporting stories critical of the government. The law, in fact, sharply increases fines for defamation. A BAD CUFF: An Egyptian journalist cuffs his hands in a symbolic gesture during a