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Massoud Barzani, the president of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and head of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) voiced clear support for media freedom during his party’s congress on December 13 but in recent months more and more lawsuits have been brought against the Kurdish media, and not just the independent ones. Newspaper editors nowadays seem to be spending their time in the...

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has accused authorities in Belarus of "violent bullying and intimidation" of journalists covering a peaceful protest in central Minsk yesterday, saying the brutality exposed the country's fragile attachment to democracy following presidential elections. "The sheer violence and blatant regard of journalists' right to cover a public event were...

Press freedom groups have urged US President Barack Obama and Attorney-General Eric Holder to avoid prosecuting WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange for publishing classified cables and other documents. Chairman Paul E Steiger and Executive Director Joel Simon of the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) , and Jean-François Julliard Secretary-General of Paris-based press...

Media organisations in Arunachal Pradesh on Sunday went on an indefinite strike in protest against the state government's failure to arrest those who had assaulted two women journalists last week, the Press Trust of India has reported. The women, working with The Sentinel Arunachal, were assaulted by some unidentified persons on December 12 when they were gathering news of an accident, according...

The Sunday Independent on Sunday said police have been harassing one of its journalists following an exposé on allegations of fraud, corruption and nepotism. Following the reports, the police were granted an interdict by the North Gauteng High Court to silence the paper, according to Eye Witness News. The paper said the journalist who wrote the article was being followed by the police and had her...

Sudanese security officers attacked BBC correspondent James Copnall on Tuesday as he was reporting on a demonstration and ensuing arrests, the journalist reported. Officers also confiscated Copnall's recording equipment, New York-based press freedom group Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported. Police in Khartoum, who had detained numerous protesters, also deleted photographs from the...

Musa Saidykhan, who was detained for three weeks in 2006 by Gambian state security agents, was tortured and must receive compensation, a West African regional court ruled on Thursday. Saidykhan, editor-in-chief of the now-banned private biweekly The Independent, was detained for 22 days without charge by the Gambian National Intelligence Agency (NIA) during a brutal government crackdown following...

Human rights lawyer and free speech defender Nasrin Sotoudeh has now been held for more than 100 days in Iran. She began her third hunger strike last week and is resolved to continue it until the end, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). Shirin Ebadi, Nobel peace laureate and president of the Tehran-based Centre for Human Rights Defenders, Jean-François...

Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has expressed concern over the consequences for journalists of the fight for control of state television and the media in general being waged by the supporters of Laurent Gbagbo and the ones of Alassane Ouattara. “We are very worried about the situation in Côte d’Ivoire,” RSF said in a statement. “The violent dispersal of yesterday’s...

Elba Yolibeth Rubio and Elia Xiomara Hernández, two reporters for community radio La Voz de Zacate Grande, were arrested in Honduras after covering a family’s eviction from land on the southern island of Zacate Grande by police and marines on December 15, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). Around 20 arrests were made when the family, with the support of...