News

Authorities in Kyrgyzstan should halt their ongoing crackdown on independent and opposition news outlets, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has said. A Bishkek court suspended a pro-opposition newspaper on Wednesday—the third such suspension in March—while financial police confiscated newsroom computers belonging to an independent Web-based television channel on Thursday, effectively...

Freelance Japanese journalist Kosuke Tsuneoka had apparently been abducted in northern Afghanistan, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has said quoting a Japanese official. Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirofumi Hirano told journalists he was aware of Japanese media reports about the abduction, according to Tokyo-based agency Kyodo News and international news reports, but declined to comment...

A Kuwait City court sentenced journalist Mohammed Abdulqader al-Jassem on Thursday to six months in prison on charges of slandering Prime Minister Sheikh Nasser Mohammed Al-Ahmed Al-Sabah, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has said. The charges were based on remarks Al-Jassem gave at a February human rights conference in which he said the prime minister was unfit to rule the country and...

Vedat Kursun, the biggest shareholder in Turkey’s only Kurdish-language daily, Azadiya Welat (Free Country), was sentenced to three years in prison by a court in the southeastern city of Diyarbakir on March 30 on a charge of propaganda for the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has said. The newspaper’s managing editor until jailed last year, Kursun is the...

Honduran journalist José Alemán fled the country on Sunday after threatening attacks, including the break-in of two unidentified gunmen at his home in the rural municipality of San Marcos de Ocotepeque, near the border with El Salvador, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has said quoting local press reports. Alemán, a correspondent for the daily Tiempo and the national broadcaster Radio...

Several Iranian journalists continue to be held in inhumane conditions at the notorious Evin Prison. At least one journalist is reported in deteriorating health, and two are under severe duress to “confess” to charges that could bring execution, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has said. The daughters of Badressadat Mofidi, the prominent Iranian journalist and secretary of the banned...

Gustavo Azócar Alcalá, a journalist based in the western Venezuela state of Táchira who had been detained since July 9, 2009, was sentenced to two and a half years in prison on March 26 on a charge of “administrative corruption” but was granted a conditional release, according to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). The court acquitted him on charges of embezzling public funds and fraud. The charges...

Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai has pardoned former journalist Ahmed Ghous Zalmai, who was sentenced to 20 years in prison in September 2008 for publishing a translation of the Koran into Dari (the Persian dialect spoken in Afghanistan), according to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). Issued a few days ahead of the Persian New Year festival of Nawruz, the pardon also affects Mohammad Ateef Noori...

There were a number of press freedom violations in March by the Israel Defence Forces, which routinely fire on Palestinian journalists, according to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). Eight journalists were injured by shots fired by Israeli soldiers during March in the West Bank and Jerusalem. “The incidents continue with complete impunity,” Paris-based RSF said. “The IDF soldiers involved are...

Vasyl Demyaniv, the editor of the local weekly Kolomyiski Visnyk, was violently attacked as he was returning home on the evening of March 23 in the western Ukraine city of Kolomyia, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has said. Demyaniv was hospitalised with severe head injuries and a broken leg following the attack, in which unidentified assailants repeatedly kicked him and beat him about the head...