Guatemala's highest court has struck down laws that criminalised expressions deemed offensive to public officials. The court ruled that desacato, or disrespect, provisions were unconstitutional and constituted "an attack on freedom of expression and the right to be informed." ONE THAT GOT AWAY: Former military strongman Efrain Rios Montt, right, appears in court in Guatemala City, Friday January
The prophet cartoon frenzy is finally here in India. The Indian Prime Minister has expressed his "anguish" to his Danish counterpart even as protestors on Monday shut down Kashmir Valley and clashed with the police in capital New Delhi. FIRED UP: Protesting students of Jamia Milia Islamia University burn copies of a magazine, which published a photograph of a Koranic verse tattooed on a womans
A Russian journalist has ben convicted of provoking racial hatred for publishing articles by Chechen rebel leaders calling for an end to the Chechen war. Stanislav Dmitrievsky, head of the Russian-Chechen Friendship Society and editor of the Pravozashchita publication, received a two-year suspended sentence in the case on January 3. PEACENIK: Stanislav Dmitriyevsky, head of the Russian-Chechen
Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has voiced shock at the murder of journalist Ronald Waddell, a former talk-show host on HBTV Channel 9, who was gunned down outside his home in a Georgetown suburb on January 30. Waddell was also an opposition activist who was outspoken in his criticism of the current government. As Waddell was getting into his car in the garage of his home at about 8 pm, two men
A Caracas judge's decision last week to issue an order prohibiting news establishments from reporting on the investigation into the 2004 murder of prosecutor Danilo Anderson is being seen as an attempt by the state to censor the Venezuelan press. IN HIDING: Venezuelan journalist Patricia Poleo smiles during an interview with Channel 4 in Lima, Peru on Monday, January 9, 2006. Venezuela's attorney
The government of Thailand Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra has renewed its battle against its most vocal detractor by disrupting the signal of the satellite-based television news station Asian Satellite TV (ASTV) and blocking access to a news website, both owned by Sondhi Limthongkul, Thaksin's most bitter critic. FLEXING HIS ALMS: Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra (L) gives alms to a
The Guatemalan Association of Journalists has condemned the January 22 armed attack on the home of journalist Manuel Gilberto GarcÃa and his family in the city of Jutiapa, an act of intimidation which follows threatening telephone calls he has been receiving since March 2001. Unidentified individuals shot at his home in the "El Condor" neighbourhood in the city of Jutiapa on the night of 22
Press freedom organisations have voiced outrage that the military government of Burma ended 2005 by censoring two privately-owned weeklies and then went on to refuse conditional release for Than Win Hlaing, a journalist who is very ill after spending six years in terrible prison conditions. CHILD IS THE.. : Burmese tribal children shout slogans during a protest in New Delhi January 24, 2006
A growing number of Yemeni journalists have become the victims of brutal assaults, arrests, intimidation, and government-sanctioned newspaper closures. They now also face the prospect of a new press law that would impose harsh restrictions on the media. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), at a press conference in Yemen capital Sana'a on January 26, called on President Ali Abdullah Saleh to
With more Muslim countries clamming up on Denmark and Islamic radicals increasingly clamouring for a boycott of the Scandinavian country over the prophet cartoons controversy, trade relations between the Danish government and those in the Middle East stand in the danger of a possible breakdown. FARMED OFF: A Saudi man shopping at a Supermarket with empty shelf spaces that used to have Danish dairy
