News

Police in Kazakhstan said Monday that they have identified several suspects in this month’s murder of prominent Kyrgyz editor Gennady Pavlyuk, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported. Police did not identify the suspects or describe their alleged roles, other than to say the suspects are citizens of neighbouring Kyrgyzstan. In a statement Tuesday, the Kyrgyz...

The weekly Semana has just revealed the existence of an instruction manual for employees of the Administrative Department of Security (DAS), Colombia’s leading intelligence agency, that explains how they should spy on, threaten, intimidate and discredit NGOs, judges and journalists who create problems for the government. The revelation is the latest in a series of scandals implicating the DAS...

Reporters Sans Frontières (RSF) has called for the immediate release of Hanevy Ould Dehah, the editor of the website Taqadoumy, who should have been freed 10 days ago on completing a six-month jail sentence on a charge of “offending public decency.” Arrested on June 18 and convicted on August 19, Dehah began a hungerstrike on December 25 in protest against his continuing detention. “We urge the...

A Yemeni reporter is being held without charge after being arrested on Sunday while covering clashes between security forces and separatists in Yemen’s southern province of Dhala, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported quoting local news reports. The arrest is the latest attempt by the government to silence media outlets and journalists covering civil unrest in the...

José Alberto Velázquez López, owner of the Mexican newspaper Expresiones de Tulum in the southeastern state of Quintana Roo, died late Tuesday after being shot in his car by a gunman aboard a motorcycle, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported quoting local news reports. Mexican authorities must swiftly investigate this crime and bring those responsible to justice...

José Alberto Velásquez López, a journalist and lawyer based in Tulum, in the eastern Mexico state of Quintana Roo, died on the night of December 22 after being shot as he drove home, Reporters Sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. The editor of the Diario Express de Tulum newspaper and a contributor to Canal 30, a local TV station, Velásquez left a wife who is about to give birth and a five-year-old...

Iranian authorities censored coverage of the death of a leading reformist cleric, shut down yet another reformist newspaper this week, and continued to arrest journalists in recent days, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported. The BBC reported on Monday that the Iranian Labor News Agency was warned by the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance to report less on...

Kyrgyzstan journalist Gennady Pavlyuk, who was thrown from a sixth floor window in Almaty, Kazakhstan on December 16, died Tuesdayin hospital, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. “Ten days ahead of taking over the presidency of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the Kazakh authorities cannot allow a murder like this to go unpunished and the Kyrgyz side must...

Tuesday morning after falling from an upper-story window of an apartment building in Kazakhstan’s economic capital, Almaty, last week, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported. Pavlyuk, 40, described by colleagues as one of Kyrgyzstan’s most prominent journalists, had travelled to Almaty from Bishkek on business on Wednesday; the exact purpose of the trip remains...

A suicide bomber detonated an explosive Tuesday on the grounds of the Press Club building in Peshawar, in the North West Frontier Province in Pakistan, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported quoting local and international media reports. Three, possibly four, people were killed, though none of the approximately 30 journalists waiting for a press conference to start...