News

“You have guns, we have pens,” was the message that the Sulaymaniyah-based independent newspaper Hawlati (Citizen) printed on an otherwise blank front page on February 24 in a bold protest against a spate of threats, harassment and physical violence against journalists in Iraqi Kurdistan in the run-up to a parliamentary election on March 6. Hawlati’s front page is just one example of the growing...

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has called on the Palestinian Authority (PA) to heed a High Court order and release journalist Tariq Abu Zaid immediately. A four-person special military court in Nablus sentenced Abu Zaid, a correspondent who reported on camera for Hamas-run Al-Aqsa TV, to 18 months in prison on February 16 on charges of "undermining the status of the authority, and...

One month after the disappearance of her husband Prageeth Eknelygoda, the journalist’s wife, Sandhya Eknelygoda , has said that she has not been able to get police or other government officials to actively investigate the case. “I have written to the president and have not gotten a response,” Eknelygoda told the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Our children want their father back, and we...

Aylin Duruoglu, editor the Vatan newspaper’s website, Gazetevatan.com, was granted a conditional release by an Istanbul court on February 23, 10 months after her arrest on April 27 for alleged links to a clandestine armed group called Devrimci Karargah (Revolutionary Headquarters), Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. Nine other people who were arrested in the same operation, including...

Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) and the National Union of Somali Journalists (NUSOJ) have expressed grave concern over the fate of Ali Yusuf Adan, a journalist who was arrested on February 21 in an area controlled by the Islamist militia Al-Shabaab. “Al-Shabaab, which we have already classified as a ‘Predator of Press Freedom,’ has added yet another misdeed to the long list of violations of free...

Newspaper journalist Maan Aqil was released from prison Tuesday after the authorities held him for three months without ever charging him, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. The national criminal investigations department still has not said why it arrested Aqil at his place of work on November 22. A reporter with the government daily Al-Thawra, he had written articles denouncing...

A man believed to have gunned down Venezuelan journalist Orel Sambrano in 2009 in reprisal for his reporting on drug trafficking was arrested on Sunday, the local press reported. Venezuelan investigative police, known as CIPC, arrested former police officer David Antonio Yánez Inciarte during a police drug raid in the city of Moron, department of Carabobo, according to local press reports. Yánez...

Cote d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast) authorities banned international French broadcaster France 24 on Monday on bogus allegations of unprofessionalism over coverage of political unrest in the West African nation, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has said. Speaking to Reuters on Wednesday, Frank Anderson Kouassi, the president of Ivory Coast’s National Broadcasting Council (known by its French...

A court in the Kigali district of Nyarugenge Monday imposed jail sentences on Charles Kabonero, the publisher of the weekly Umuseso, Didas Gasana, its editor, and Richard Kayigamba, one of its reporters, after finding them guilty of invading privacy in one of their articles. Kabonero got 12 months, while the other two got six months. “We firmly condemn these sentences, which deprive the newspaper...

The Colombian attorney-general’s office Monday directly implicated four senior intelligence officials and the secretary-general of the president’s office, Bernardo Moreno, in the phone-tapping of journalists and other prominent government critics, a scandal that was first exposed in early 2009. This occurred during the trial of Jorge Noguera, the former head of the intelligence agency known as the...