The Post newspaper’s assistant news editor George Chellah was threatened by a group of political party supporters while attending a United Party for National Development (UPND) press conference on November 24 in the Zambian capital, Lusaka, he told IPI by phone today. According to Chellah, he was personally invited to the UPND press conference by a member of the party's leadership. Once he arrived...
Shots were fired with a big-calibre firearm at Radio FM Cerrillos, a local station based in San José de los Cerrillos, in the northern province of Salta, on November 26 but no one was injured although it is located in the house where station’s owner and his family live. The unidentified gunmen fled immediately after the shooting, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans...
A Reuters photographer suffered a gunshot wound to the shoulder and one of the fugitive murderers of TV Globo reporter Tim Lopes was arrested during a six-day operation by soldiers and elite police units against drug traffickers in the Morro de Alemão complex of favelas in northern Rio de Janeiro that ended on 26 November. The operation against one of the city’s biggest drug trafficking...
Zimbabwean journalist Nqobani Ndlovu was released on November 25, more than a week after he was arrested in connection with a report alleging that the police force was allowing former war veterans and retired officers to take up senior posts without sitting for promotional examinations. His lawyers are now challenging the constitutionality of the law under which Ndlovu was charged. “We feel it...
Heads of state and high-ranking officials representing 55 participating states of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) must urge the current OSCE chair, Kazakhstan, to make good on its press freedom commitments when they meet in Astana for a regional summit this week, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said today. CPJ has repeatedly asked the OSCE to ensure that...
A talk show host on Trinidad and Tobago’s public broadcaster, Caribbean New Media Group (CNMG), was taken off his programme earlier this month after a challenging interview with Foreign Affairs Minister Suruj Rambachan over Prime Minister Kamla Persad–Bissessar’s handling of aid to Caribbean countries affected by Hurricane Tomas in late October. On November 7, two days after the morning television...
Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has condemned the latest proceedings that Croatian interior minister Tomislav Karamarko has initiated against journalist Zeljko Peratovic, the target of repeated legal actions by the minister during past two years accusing him variously of defamation, violating the confidentiality of a judicial investigation and divulging information...
A “repugnant” defamation conviction has been handed down by a Moscow court to the independent weekly The New Times for a report into police corruption and abuse, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). The verdict, obtained through false testimony, nullified the newspaper’s solid, truthful investigation headlined “OMON slaves” – in reference to the OMON riot...
Newspaper editors Serge Sabouang of the bimonthly La Nation and Robert Mintya of the weekly Le Devoir were freed provisionally Wednesday after more than eight months in Yaoundé’s main prison, Kondengui. Sabouang confirmed their release in a phone call last night with the Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) correspondent in Cameroon. “We hail the release of these two...
The body of Pakistani journalist Abdul Hameed Hayatan, 25, was found on November 18 near the Sami river in Turbat, in Pakistan’s Balochistan province, according to media reports. Hayatan, who wrote for a number of print dailies, was abducted along with a friend on October 25, while on his way home from a wedding in the city of Gawadar. His friends and family reportedly believed that Pakistani...
