News

Flouting a January 15 supreme court ruling, state-owned TV stations Rupavahini and ITN continue to openly favour President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s campaign to win another term in the presidential election to be held on January 26 with a total of 21 candidates taking part. Detailed monitoring by Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has established that 98.5 per cent of the news and current affairs air-time...

There has been an increase in press freedom violations and violence against independent journalists in Iraqi Kurdistan since the July 25 regional elections, according to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). Both of the two political parties that control the region have had a hand in these violations, of which there have been several recent cases. The most recent is that of freelance journalist Sabah...

Reporters Without Borders today condemned as an act of political revenge the cancellation of a television station’s licence, seven months after the same action was taken against radio La Voz de Bagua Grande, also in the Amazonas region. Televisión Oriente, based in Yurimaguas in the north-east Peru, lost its broadcast licence on January 15 on the order of the Transport and Communications Ministry...

Freelance journalist Stanley Kwenda, a contributor to the private weekly the Zimbabwean, fled the country on Friday after he said he received a telephone threat from a high-ranking police officer, according to the paper’s editor, Wilf Mbanga. The reporter identified the caller as Chief Superintendent Chrispen Makedenge, Mbanga said. The caller allegedly said that Kwenda would be dead by the...

An appeals court in the city of Nabeul refused Wednesday to release Tunisian Zuhair Makhlouf despite his completion of a three-month prison term imposed in October, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported. Makhlouf, a contributor to news website Assabil Online and the opposition weekly Al-Mawkif, remains in prison following his lawyer’s motion for a provisional release, according...

More than 1,000 people took part in Tuesday's rally in Moscow in homage to journalist Anastasia Baburova and human rights lawyer Stanislav Markelov on the first anniversary of their murder. Young anti-fascist activists, representatives of human rights NGOs and above all ordinary citizens made up the unusually large crowd that defied freezing temperatures and marched with photos of Baburova and...

US journalist, Jared Malsin, editor for the English service of the Palestinian press agency Ma’an, was expelled from Israel under suspicious circumstances, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has said. “The journalist was expelled after giving up his right of appeal. This decision was taken in dubious circumstances in that the journalist’s lawyer was not present,” Paris-based RSF said. "Did the...

Yemeni journalist Moaz Ashhabi was sentenced on January 16 to one year in prison by a court in Sana’a dealing with press matters which also banned him from working as journalist for one year for “falsification" of the Koran, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. The charge related to his column that was carried by the weekly al-Thaqafa (Culture) on October 7, 2009. Ashhabi was taken to the...

A three-month jail sentence has been slapped by a Sana’a special court for press matters on Anissa Mohammed Ali Othman for “insulting the president” in two articles for the weekly Al-Wassat in July 2007. The court on Saturday also banned her from working as a journalist for a year and fined her editor, Jamal Amer 10,000 rials (34 euros), Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. Published in...

US journalist Jared Malsin is still being held in a detention centre at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion international airport, according to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). He was arrested on arrival at the airport on January 12 and questioned for eight hours about his work as a journalist for Ma’an, an independent Palestinian news agency based in Bethlehem. He was due to be taken before a judge on Sunday...