As leading European Union (EU) officials prepare for a mission to Hungary, the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ), the European group of the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), has urged President Manuel Barroso and his team to analyse and change the country's controversial new media law which the Federation claims is a breach of European law and violates principles enshrined in...
The year 2010 ushered in a number of major setbacks for the media across the globe, says the International Press Institute (IPI), from the numerous journalists murdered in Pakistan and Honduras to the oppressive media laws passed in South Africa. But what did IPI consider to be the number one press freedom event of 2010? The January 12 earthquake in Haiti claimed nearly 300,000 lives, including...
The former editorial manager and concessionaire of the Kurdish newspaper Azadiya Welat, Emine Demir, received a prison sentence of 138 years on charges of "spreading propaganda for the PKK", the militant Kurdistan Workers Party. The sentence is based on articles Demir accepted for publication in the paper, according to IPS Communication Foundation (BIANET). The 24-year-old journalist was convicted...
The Zimbabwean government on Thursday warned journalists and media organisations operating in the African country that they could be prosecuted if they fail to immediately comply with new registration fees that have soared by as much as 300 percent, according to Deutsche Presse-Agentur (DPA). The Zimbabwe Union of Journalists has condemned the new fees as 'shocking and retributive,' arguing that...
Online newspapers and blogs based in Saudi Arabia will now need to register with the Saudi Ministry of Culture and Information to operate. The new guidelines and rules will be added to the current publishing and printing law. Abdul Aziz Khaja, Minister of Information and Culture, stressed that the list is a tool of regulation – rather than restricting freedom of speech. He said it is in line with...
The Broadcasting Council (BC) of Uganda has blocked privately-owned radio stations from live broadcasting a conference organised by the Buganda Kingdom, according to the Human Rights Network for Journalists. The Ttabamiruka is an annual conference organised by the Buganda Kingdom to review and discuss the social, cultural, economic and developmental issues of the kingdom. The theme for the 2010...
The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has called on the police in Maharashtra to provide all details of the circumstances surrounding the arrest of journalist Sudhir Dhawle, in the state's eastern district of Wardha on January 2. According to IFJ sources in Maharashtra, Dhawle had visited the neighbouring district of Gondia to attend a convention on Adivasi and Dalit literature (i.e...
The National Union of Somali Journalists (NUSOJ) has welcomed the release of journalist Yusuf Ali Adan, an online reporter for Somalifans news website, whose whereabouts remained unknown until December 2010, when Puntland Intelligence Service (PIS) produced him at the Criminal Court in Bossasso town of Puntland. Adan, who was released on December 30, was first brought to the Criminal Court in...
A Cambodian man who shared web articles with two of his colleagues was convicted on incitement charges and sentenced to six months in jail under a new penal code, reports Human Rights Watch, which called the use of the law "a huge step backward for free expression in Cambodia." On December 17, Seng Kunnaka, a Cambodian employee with the United Nations World Food Programme in Phnom Penh, was...
The president of the government-run National Human Rights Commission (CNDH), Raúl Plascencia, said killings, disappearances, and kidnappings of media workers and activists will be a priority for the agency in 2011, Milenio reports, according to the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas. In order to face the growing number of crimes against journalists, Plascencia said the CNDH will...
