News

6 March 2011

Radio presenter in Uganda suspended over critical report

A presenter at Masaka-based Top Radio, Ssozi Lyazi Ssekimpi, is reported to have been suspended over a talk show which discussed electoral malpractice witnessed during recent presidential and parliamentary elections, according to Human Rights Network for Journalists (HRNJ-Uganda). Ssekimpi, who joined Top Radio four years ago, has been working as an editor and presenter of the weekly talk show...

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6 March 2011

Investigations re-opened into the murders of five Russian journalists

Russian investigators have pledged to re-open investigations into the cases of five murdered journalists. Valery Ivanov, Natalia Skryl, Aleksei Sidorov, Yuri Shchekochikhin and Vagif Kochetkov were all killed—or are suspected to have been killed—in connection with their journalistic activities. They are all Writers in Prison Committee (WiPC) of PEN International cases from the last nine years...

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6 March 2011

Mayor wanted Kurds to have co-wives, journalist sentenced for criticising

Turkish journalist Ahmet Topcu has been sentenced to eleven months in prison in connection with his criticism of a mayor. In June 2010, Halil Bakirci, mayor of Rize (eastern Black Sea coast) and a member of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), had proposed that "Kurds should have co-wives" in order to solve the Kurdish question. The mayor was broadly criticised for his suggestion and...

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6 March 2011

Two journalists receive death threats in Nepal

Freedom Forum has expressed concern over the growing incidence of press freedom violations across the country. Freedom Forum's attention has recently been drawn towards an incident that occurred in Bajura, a district in the far-western region of the country, on March 1. Chief of the District Sports Committee, Nrip Singh Baduwal, leveled a death threat against journalist Prakash Singh, accusing him...

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6 March 2011

Ukranian authorities scuttling probe into Georgy Gongadze murder

Ukrainian authorities are threatening to upend progress in the 10-year-old investigation into the September 2000 abduction and murder of independent journalist Georgy Gongadze, according to New York-based press freedom group Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). The Kyiv Court of Appeals on Wednesday ruled to reject a second appeal by Myroslava Gongadze, the journalist's widow, against the...

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6 March 2011

In wave of censorship, Equatorial Guinea suspends state radio broadcasts, journalist

There has been a wave of government censorship in the past few days at Radio-Télévision Nationale de Guinée Équatoriale (RTVGE), a state-owned broadcaster that is kept under very close surveillance by information minister Jeronimo Osa Osa. On Thursday, the state radio’s French-language broadcasts were “temporarily suspended on the orders of a higher authority,” the head of the station, José Esono...

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6 March 2011

Turkey: Wave of searches and arrests of investigative journalists

There has been a wave of searches and arrests of investigative journalists in Istanbul and Ankara in connection with a probe into an alleged anti-government plot. Journalists who have helped to shed light on this case are being made to pay for the tension between the government and the secularist and ultra-nationalist opposition, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans...

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3 March 2011

Newspaper in Ecuador faces lawsuit for publishing allegations against local prefect

José Cadena, owner of the weekly El Vocero in the Amazonian province of Sucumbíos, in northeastern Ecuador, is facing a lawsuit filed before the Prosecutor's Office by the local prefect, Orlando Grefa, who has accused the newspaper of damaging his image and his honour after it published allegations made against him by Vice-Prefect Oswaldo Calvopiña. Cadena told Fundamedios that the lawsuit was...

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3 March 2011

Printer violently killed by suspected pro-Ouattara militants

Marcel Legré, a machine operator at La Refondation Printing Press, printers of Notre Voie, a pro-Gbagbo newspaper, was in the afternoon of February 28 violently killed by alleged pro-Ouattara militants during an armed confrontation in the town of Koumassi, in the centre of the country. The Media Foundation for West Africa's (MFWA) correspondent reported that machete-wielding militants from the...

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2 March 2011

Media personnel attacked by armed individuals in Morelos

Armed individuals intercepted Oswald Alonso Navarro, a correspondent for the international news agency the Associated Press (AP), and Marco Antonio Vallejo Estrada, a publicist for the Radio Fórmula radio station, on February 25 as they were driving on a street in Cuernavaca, in the central Mexican state of Morelos, according to ARTICLE 19 and Centro Nacional de Comunicación Social (CENCOS). The...

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